by Mark Tufo
“Now what?” I turned and looked into the booth.
“We wait for Etna to acknowledge you,” Winters said.
“So, I just stand here like an idiot?”
“Make no mistake, Mike, you don’t need to stand to look like an idiot,” BT said.
“Tommy, will you make sure Stenzel and Harmon make it up here? BT, that moves you to the door.”
“Just trying to get rid of me.” He moved that way.
I was acutely aware that I was on the same stage as so many legends had been; I could almost hear their voices as they made millions laugh. I wasn’t even aware when I said: “No Coke, Pepsi!”
“Sir?” Winters asked.
“Sorry, just remembering a better time.”
“Not all that hard to do,” I heard him say. “Wait, message coming through. Patching it out your way.”
“This is Etna Station, Lieutenant Talbot. Hold one while we get Colonel Bennington.”
“Better make it quick, we’re in a bit of a rush.”
Bennington’s voice came on in less than a minute. “Lieutenant Talbot, good to see you. When we lost communication, we feared the worst.”
“Did you lose any sleep, sir?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. It’s been a long few days.”
“Stick to the sitrep.”
“This is a party line, sir, not going to go into specifics.”
“Understood.”
“Our ride was attacked, lost comm, and they lost the ability to keep giving us passage. We were dropped off early.”
“And your transportation?”
I had to bite my tongue. In the grand scheme of things, that plane was a much more valuable asset than any of the occupants within it; didn’t ease the feelings of being downgraded.
“Safe, but not going anywhere without help. We’ve run into the next iteration of zees; they have the ability to communicate intelligently and can direct other zombies over an unspecified distance. That and they can talk with us.” Like the rest wasn’t terrifying enough.
“Your original mission, Lieutenant.”
“Did you hear the part, sir, where I said we were dropped early from our target and encountered smart zees?”
I could hear Winters’ gasp from where I stood.
“Your hardships notwithstanding, the mission is of paramount importance.”
“No disrespect, sir, but even if we somehow escape our current predicament, what do I do with…”
“What you can, Lieutenant,” he shot back. I almost forgot I wasn’t on a radio and was so close to flipping him the finger I had to consciously stop the movement with my other hand.
“We have your ride’s location and will be sending assistance. In the meantime, I expect you will be doing all you can to complete what you have been tasked with.”
“Understood, sir.” I gave Winters a cut motion across my throat.
“I don’t think he’s done.”
“Yeah, but I am.” I walked off-camera; a moment later the light turned red. “What does he mean he knows where the plane is?”
“Transponder?” Winters guessed.
“So they’ve known all along.” Then I put it together. “But if they thought we’d crashed or been shot down, they weren’t going to spend the resources to come and look for us. I’ve been in a couple of the shittiest armpits in the world, and I’ve never felt so abandoned as I do in downtown New York.”
“I’m here, sir.”
I looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. “I mean from Support.”
He cleared his throat. “I knew that, sir.” We heard gunfire; our attention turned to the stairwell.
“Where’s Belushi and his samurai sword when you need it?” I quickly moved to where BT was. “See anything?”
“Nothing yet. What did Etna say?”
“Pretty much told us to stop slacking off and get what we were sent here for accomplished.”
“I’d say you were full of shit but you look pissed.” He was looking over the handrail and down the stairs, as was I. We could see muzzle flashes and hear the reports as Stenzel and Harmon made their way up.
“Winters! Look for an alternate exit!”
“On it!”
“Tommy…what’s going on?”
“On the fifth floor. Zombies have stopped coming in. Stenzel and Harmon are with me.”
“How many we talking about?”
It was Stenzel that replied, “A couple dozen came in, but twice that are outside sir.”
“This shit is getting old. I wonder if they think that too.”
“Don’t start rolling down the inner highway now, Mike. There aren’t going to be any peace accords down the line.”
“Stop being a realist, BT.”
“My bad.”
Stenzel and Harmon came up first. “Sergeant is watching our back,” Stenzel said, referring to Tommy staying back a few flights lower.
Winters was back within a few minutes. “South stairwell is empty.”
“Tommy, let’s go,” I told him.
“Etna sir?” Harmon asked.
“They’re coming. We still have some work to do though,” I told her, not giving any indication of how frustrated I was.
BT clapped Tommy on the shoulder as the other came up.
“Anyone by any chance see, or, better yet, put a bullet in Dewey?”
Got some head shaking. “Unfortunate. Alright, let’s do a gear check and get ready to leave. Winters, get on the horn with Corporal Rose, find out what’s going on there and then fill her in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of these missions, I’m just going to forgo all the other shit we carry and just pack out ammo.” BT was thumbing rounds into a magazine. “Seriously. Not once have I used the sleeping bag and bedroll we bring. Or that little infant shovel…what am I supposed to do with that thing? About the size of the spoon I use for breakfast. For fuck’s sake, Mike, I carry extra underwear. I mean, sure, there are plenty of times when I want to shit my pants, but at that point, man, I’m not stopping to change my drawers.”
“You all right?” I was smiling, but the look that BT gave me back was not one of jest. Humans aren’t built to deal with continued, unrelenting stress; it starts to break down who we are at our core, infecting every other aspect of our existence. “We do this, BT, we go home, take some time, be with my sister. There is an end.”
He wanted to question how I knew this, but he didn’t ask, because yes, there would be an end, but I’d not said it would be a good one. The important part was to live the good life while you could, in spite of the enemy that was out there.
“Rose says the church is clear.” Winters looked from me to BT, not sure he was thrilled with what he saw.
“Change of plans. We’re not going back there. Tell them the primary meeting place is Central Park Zoo. If we’re not there, they are to head to the Bio-Reference Labs and continue the mission.”
“What should I tell her about the people in the church?” Winters asked.
“We’re going to have to come back for them. I can’t take them with us, not yet.” This only compounded my problems. I knew what I’d promised Jason; how I was going to deliver was eluding me at the moment.
Winters did not look thrilled to relay the message.
“Let’s go, people. We’re out of here.”
Didn’t smell anything, or better yet, see anything, as we quickly made our way down the south stairwell. We skipped the first floor and headed to the basement.
“Clear.” Winters had first looked through the small safety window in the door then poked his head out to check.
“What are the odds any of these will start?” I was looking at ten long-abandoned cars.
“Not good,” Harmon said. “My dad was a mechanic; worked with him a lot. If we had a new battery and could drain the old fluids, then yeah. Otherwise…” She left it there.
We could have ridden in style. I touched the front end of a late model Benz; the thing was s
tout, heavy enough that we could have used it as a dozer for the zees we were likely to encounter. We were cautiously making our way up the ramp that led to street level; we somehow had the good fortune to not encounter any zombies.
I nodded to Stenzel to take point. “I’ve got this,” Harmon spoke up.
“Right behind you,” I told her. I saw her shoulders heave as she took in a great gust of breath and then she soldiered on. BT pursed his lips and nodded slightly; impressed, I think, that she was marshaling.
I had an unshakable fear that the moment she stepped from the shadows of the parking garage and into the light of day, the alarm would sound and we would be once again sprinting for our lives. She had one foot in the light and was swiveling her head; she took another, then a third, until she was basking in the sun.
“All clear.” Hadn’t heard more magical words since I’d been with my wife, and I’m not telling you those words, though, how many guesses do you need? “Which way, sir?”
“Not the front.”
“Helpful,” BT said as he shouldered past.
“Don’t worry, Mr. T. It was extremely helpful to me.” Tommy was moving up front.
“Kiss ass.” BT hip-checked Tommy.
We went two city blocks away from where the majority of the zombies we knew of were, and hopefully, far enough away from Dewey’s influence. We stayed tight on the sidewalk, but it was impossible to stay hidden.
“How far to the zoo?” I asked. We all had handheld GPS units, but Winters, by default, was generally where our information came from.
“Little less than two klicks,” he answered, pausing to check.
“That a mile?” BT asked.
“About,” Winters clarified.
One mile. We could make that in about twenty minutes at our current, cautious pace. It was one mile closer, not to safety, but to getting out of this hellhole, and I was good with that, especially since we would meet up with the rest of the squad. We heard gunfire off to the east; this was followed by some garbled transmission.
“Winters!”
“Buildings are messing with the signal, sir.”
I wanted to tell him to fix it, but short of demolishing all the scrapers, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Contact…” came through loud and clear; everything else sounded like a television underwater, two rooms away.
“Forward or back?” BT looked antsy.
“Hold. We don’t know what we’re getting into or where they’re going.”
I had my hand up while I tried to catch snippets of the quick conversation going on.
“Kirby, watch our six!”
“They’re coming from the side!”
I looked at the anxious faces of those with me.
“Lieutenant, this is Corporal Rose.” They were close, if the quality of the transmission was any indication, even if the gunfire still sounded far away.
“Go, Rose.” I gripped my rifle tight.
“We got company. Going to be coming in hot. You still want us to rally at the zoo?”
“Affirmative. Can you make it?”
“We’ve got some room, but they’re converging–coordinated, even.”
“Dewey,” I hissed.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. We’ll set up some support for your arrival. How’s Sergeant Talbot?”
“Holding his own, sir. I’m going to be happy when he doesn’t look like a giant smurf, though…tough to take him seriously.”
“Just get all your asses there.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Let’s go! Double time.” Eight minutes later we were standing in front of the zoo, and unfortunately, a turned-over and long-abandoned hot dog truck.
“Think the animals are gone?” BT asked as we hit the entrance.
“For all our sakes I hope that’s the case.” For obvious reasons; the big cats were scary, but monkeys were terrifying. They seemed to take the violence they doled out personally. Like each of them knew all about the fucked-up experiments we humans had performed on their kin over the years. I mean, why else would they bite fingers off and rip faces, along with genitalia, free from our bodies?
“Sir, we’re coming down 64th; be there in five minutes.” Rose sounded out of breath.
“Admin building to our left–looks like a fortress. We’ll give them some cover here.” It was a three-story brick building. The front entrance was of thickset, wooden double-doors. Tommy lifted Stenzel so she could go through a broken-out window. The father in me wanted to tell the woman, who was my daughter’s age, to be careful of getting cut. I wisely held back; she might be young, but out of us all, she was, arguably, the best at her job. “Go,” I told Tommy, who looked back at me once the corporal was in. He jumped up, grabbed the windowsill, and swung a leg to get in.
“Must have been closed the day the zombies came,” Stenzel said. “Except for some dust, this place looks like it’s just waiting for the next work day. Heading for the front door.”
“We’ll meet you there,” I told her. “Rose, take a quick left when you get to the end of 64th; you’ll see a tall brick building. We’re leaving the front doors open for you.”
“Yup,” was her quick reply; not sure she had much more than that to give.
I was worried–and I mean a lot. Rose was my PT freak; she worked out regularly on her cardio, and if she was on her last legs, the rest of the group was going to be in trouble, especially my brother, who wasn’t ever going to make a cross-country team even on his best days–and he was far from those.
“Need a volunteer.” The last word hadn’t even come out of my mouth when everyone there said: “I’m in” or a variant. “Tommy, you and I are gonna go out there and see if we can give them some cover.”
“Sir, I’d feel better if you stayed here,” Stenzel said.
“Me too,” I told her as I followed Tommy out. We’d no sooner rounded the corner when we saw the rest of the squad humping it towards us with most of hell on their heels. They couldn’t spare any time to turn and fire upon the enemy. I saw why Rose was struggling; she was hefting a fair portion of Gary’s weight, nearly dragging him along. His mouth was open and his head almost thrown back in a scream. His bright blue outfit was coated in a fair amount of his own blood as he continually broke open his freshly scabbed wounds.
“I’ll get him.” Tommy was on the move; he didn’t wait for me to tell him yay or nay. There wasn’t much of anything I could do with my rifle; the two groups were too close and my angle, or my lack of angle, rather, made it impossible to shoot safely. Rose had her head down, concentrating on moving as fast as she could. Kirby and Springer were behind her, doing their best to give her a cushion and help when they could. I saw the relief flood into her face as Tommy came in from the other side and grabbed Gary into a fireman’s lift. There was now only a hundred yards between them and me. I moved to the sidewalk and started blowing rounds into the zombies nearest them. When they got to twenty yards out, I took a few more shots and got ready to join them in their final sprint.
“Sir,” Grimm shouted as he passed by.
I motioned for him to keep going. Springer, Halsey, and Kirby were next. Rose was keeping stride with Tommy and Gary. I fell in right behind them. I saw puffs of smoke from the zoo admin building; couldn’t hear the shots because of the sheer number of feet smacking against the pavement. It was that loud; trapped between the buildings, the sound was amplified. By the time I made it up the stairs and in, I didn’t have more than ten feet on the lead zombies, all of which were met with a hail of lead and a hearty, Fuck You! from me. I flipped them off as Stenzel and BT shut and barred the doors.
“That help?” BT asked.
“You betcha.”
The six runners were in various states of catching their breath or reliving the horror. A couple were on the floor, chests heaving, ragged breaths shuddering through their bodies. Rose was close to the doors, doubled over, her hands on her knees. Winters was taking a look at my brother, who w
as sitting in an office chair. Gary looked miserable, and what I was about to say wasn’t going to help.
“You’ve got five minutes. Don’t get comfortable.” I could feel the heated gazes upon me. “I know you’re all tired. So am I, but we can’t afford to stay here. We don’t have the supplies to do it and help isn’t coming until this mission is complete.”
“Fuck this mission,” PFC Kirby blurted out.
“If you think about it, it’s really the mission fucking us,” Harmon said. I was thankful for her bit of humor; it created the motivation I was going to have to work with.
Kirby was the first off the floor, and he helped the others.
“Still clear,” BT informed me regarding the rear of the building.
“Rose, can you rig me a quick something on those doors?” I asked.
“I can give them a little welcome surprise.”
“Three minutes.” I was looking at my watch. In my mind, I was thinking how much I wanted to punch Bennington in the head. On one end of the spectrum, I completely understood the necessity of what we were doing. But the thought that these people under my command, most of them kids, were expendable in his eyes…well, that pissed me off to no end. If none of us came back, save the bio-engineers we were here to retrieve, I’m not sure he’d lose a single night of sleep. I knew that was an oversimplification on my part; as a commander, it was his job to put men and women at risk every day. If it furthered the advancement of the cause we were fighting for, then that was what had to happen. But as one on the front line, watching a team suffer, I tended to see things differently.
As far as I was concerned, the three minutes took an hour to pass; I’m sure for those whose legs and lungs still burned it was more like twelve seconds.
“Just about ready. No one sneeze,” Rose said as she looked upon her handiwork. “That ought to give them a little what for.”
We were out the back and heading through the zoo; I was happy to be on the move again. The zoo was its own special kind of hell. The animals that had not broken out on their own had met some terrible fates. Some, like the giraffes, had been overrun by zombies and stripped clean; massive, long-necked skeletal structures remained crumbled behind fences. In some of the enclosures, the starving animals had turned on each other, with no other food source. Starvation had forced them to become cannibals. The fight in the polar bear pen had been an epic one, if the dried blood splashes across the heavy Plexiglas of the now empty water pools was any indication. I was not thrilled that the grey wolves seemed to have found their way out; I wondered if they were going to be a problem further on down the line.
