Necrophobia - 01 Read online

  I looked down and Dorian pulled the rifle away from her chin. “My last bullet,” she said. Maybe that girl had no true sniper training, but she knew the basics all right and was one hell of a shot. Growing up in the country will do that to you. But it was a natural talent, I knew. You could give twenty grunts rifles and drill them every day for a month and they still wouldn’t be the kind of shot Dorian was.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She shrugged, shucks, ‘tweren’t nothing. I pulled myself up into the belfry and almost slid on the gore up there. A .30-06 full-metal-jacketed round really takes a head apart and was the bullet of choice for Marine snipers in Vietnam. I looked back down and watched the women coming up. When they got near the top they threw me their rifles and I set them aside. Dorian, Sabelia, Katherine, and Carrie were easy because they were very tall so you didn’t have to reach down too far to get a hold of them. Brittany and Casey were both petite types and we had to practically dangle out in space to get a hold of them.

  But we did it. We got everyone up there in one piece.

  “We better go easy now,” Katherine said. “If there’s one militiaman here, there’s bound to be others.”

  Warning to the wise.

  There was no stairway leading to the belfry but a series of ladders that led down to the second floor. After what we’d been through it was no big deal. We heard or saw nothing on our way down. We gathered together in a little room at the bottom. I went over to the door and listened. It was quiet out there. I didn’t hear a thing.

  I turned off the walkie-talkie because stealth was going to be important now.

  Sabelia threw open the door and I went out there in a crouch.

  Nothing.

  Just an empty hallway.

  We started down it. At the end was a window and we could see the living dead down there. It seemed like there were more than ever. Sabelia led us down to the far end. We came around a corner and another empty corridor greeted us. We crept down it, thinking we were being very quiet and quite unseen. And that was our first mistake. Seeing the empty corridors I think we all relaxed a little too much. The first rule in a combat zone is to pay attention to your surroundings, scope out ambush sites and possible killzones, find places to hide in case the lead starts flying.

  I knew that.

  I’d been trained to do that.

  I had survived the war by following those rules.

  So I should have seen the partially opened door at the end and I should have seen the gun barrel poking out. But, God help me, I didn’t. There was the report of a weapon and we all hit the floor. Katherine did, too, only she never got up again because she’d taken a slug right through the left eye.

  Two more shots rang out, punching into the walls.

  I saw where they came from and fired a three-round burst and with some accuracy because a man cried out. We put a few more rounds into the door. Sabelia, Carrie, and I crept over there. Without telling them a thing about tactics they both knew what to do. While Sabelia and I crouched down and made ready, Carrie kicked in the door the rest of the way.

  I went in fast, scoping the room out in a split second.

  There was a man in those Russian fatigues up against a wall radiator. He was hit in the chest. His fatigue shirt had gone red.

  “Doctor,” he said. “I need a doctor…please…”

  His weapon, a Colt .357 was on the floor, forgotten now in his agony. I knew right then this guy was a fucking amateur like all the others. No matter how bad your wound was, if you were conscious you held onto your weapon. It was the only thing that stood between you and death sometimes.

  “That’s Tanner,” Sabelia said with venom in her voice.

  “Piece of shit,” Carrie said.

  The others had arrived and I could see by the looks on their faces that they all knew him and I knew without a doubt he was one of the animals that ran the little rape factory in the school.

  “He was one of them,” Dorian said.

  I saw those women all staring at him, seething with hate, positively rabid with the need for vengeance. I’m glad they weren’t directing it at me. They looked like animals ready to feed. This is the place in some crappy old war movie where the hero defends the bad guy against those he has treated like shit and put through hell. We can’t do that! It’ll make us no better than him. Shit. I’m no hero and I’ll be the first to admit it.

  I looked at the girls. “Wreak your vengeance,” I said and stepped from the room.

  I don’t know what happened in there exactly and I didn’t go back for a second look, but I heard that asshole scream. I heard him screaming his lungs out the way a lot of his victims must have and I felt no pity for him. What goes around comes around, as they say. After he had gone silent they were still kicking and stomping him in there until Sabelia said, “Enough. He can’t get any fucking deader.”

  They came out and I asked no questions or made no judgments: what they had done was necessary. It was no more a crime than stepping on a spider that sank its fangs into your toe or a zombie that tries to tear out your throat. They had killed a parasite. Now they had closure of sorts and that was important for them and I could see it in their eyes: like after they had eaten, putting down that animal had mellowed something in them and let something else stretch and relax. That was good. All victims need this sort of catharsis and so few ever get it.

  We found the stairs okay and we descended them unopposed. We saw no militiamen or zombies. The chapel was quiet as a chapel should be. While the main body of my little force waited near the steps with gunners in defensive posture, I took a walk over to the front doors. They were double doors, as I said, of good stout oak two inches thick with heavy locks in place. No wonder the zombies had never gotten in. They could have beat their fists to pulp without putting so much as a dent in the wood. Set up high to either side were narrow stained glass windows. I got on a little table and boosted myself up. The zombies were still there, so damn many of them. Through panes of yellow, blue, and red glass it was made all that much worse. But from what I could see none of the dead were near the chapel steps.

  That was good.

  I got on the walkie-talkie. “Okay, we’re in place. Do your thing.”

  “Hell, yeah!” Tuck cried.

  I got back up on the table. I wanted to see it happen…or what of it that I could. I heard the Stryker roar into life. I could only see a little bit of the street out in front of the school compound and there were zombies everywhere. The .50-cal started hammering and zombies started falling, torn into pieces. Then the grenades started dropping and there were a series of booming explosions that rattle the stained glass. I saw zombies blasted into rains of flesh and blood and then the Stryker was nearing the gates. The .50-cal barked again and two dozen zombies just inside the gates were pulverized and then more grenades landed in the compound. These were incendiaries and roaring blankets of flames burst engulfing the dead. Countless zombies were trying to escape, many of them burning.

  Tuck drove right through curtains of fire, rolling over burning zombies, swinging around and pointing the nose of the Stryker right at the chapel doors. He was beginning his run. I jumped down and opened the locks on the doors and then dove out of the way. Seconds later the Stryker burst right through them. One of the doors was slammed inward and the other came right off its hinges. The Stryker pulled right into the entry of the chapel which was as big as a garage. Tuck swung it around so the nose was facing out and dropped the rear ramp.

  “GET INSIDE!” I shouted. “GET INSIDE! GET INSIDE!”

  My squad knew when freedom was at hand and they scrambled inside and I was making for the ramp myself, Sabelia waiting there for me. Diane stuck her head out and said, “The fifty’s jammed, Steve!”

  Shit!

  I climbed up onto the Stryker just as the zombies began coming up the steps in waves.

  “GET THAT RAMP UP!”

  I heard it close and saw Sabelia climbing up onto the Stryker with me and I
knew there was no way I could talk her out of it. She got up there with her AK and started busting rounds, trying to drive the zombies back. It worked with the first wave. She dropped six of them and the others either fell over them or stopped to feed on them. But there were more, wave upon wave of the dead coming at us. By then Tuck had poked out of the driver’s hatch with his CAR-15 and was dropping the dead, too. Pieces of zombie anatomy were flying like rice at a wedding.

  “TUCK! ROLL US OUT!”

  He dropped a few more then disappeared back inside while Sabelia emptied the last rounds of her AK, tossed it, grabbed up my CAR-15 and started putting them down again.

  “HANG ON!” I told her when the Stryker began to move.

  I figured sitting there was the most dangerous thing we could do. The Stryker moved forward, knocking the dead out of the way and bouncing down the steps into the courtyard. Sabelia and I hung on tight. I went to the fifty and saw the problem immediately: one of the links had caught and jammed the gun. I pulled back the bolt and freed it. The entire operation probably took thirty seconds. It would have taken less, but the Stryker was bulling its way forward, rolling over dozens of zombies and I had a hell of a time hanging on.

  As we cleared the gates, the vehicle mowed down a pack and rolled right over them and I lost my balance. I slid towards the edge and felt my legs dangling out in mid-air. And all around us, converging from every side were the dead, hundreds of them. I felt hands grip my ankles and pull me and I hung onto the .50-cal mount for dear life. The Stryker was still moving and some of the zombies let go only to be replaced by more and more of them.

  Sabelia rose up, screamed something, and emptied the clip of the CAR-15 into a cluster of heads and then I was loose. She pulled me up and more zombies reached for me. I kicked out, my boots smashing into soft rotten faces and then I was safe, but the zombies were everywhere. We were like a ship caught in a sea of thrashing, biting sharks.

  I knocked on the gunner’s hatch and Diane opened it.

  Sabelia got in and then I followed her. I locked down the hatch and jumped in the gunner’s seat. We had made it.

  DEAD ZONE

  I knew our problems were hardly over, though.

  The Stryker is a powerful vehicle and Tuck was jamming it forward through the bodies in eight-wheel drive, but the more they piled up the more trouble we were going to have. It would literally become a bog of putrescence out there and I didn’t care for the idea of us becoming mired in it.

  I opened up with the .50-cal, cutting a path through their ranks. I followed this with a patterned barrage from the grenade launcher: high explosive, incendiary, HE, incendiary. Ranks of zombies were obliterated in explosions of blood and meat that rose up in boiling red mists. They were incinerated and pulverized, but there were more, always many more. I zeroed in on them with the crosshair on my screen and dropped row after row of them and it was no easy bit with the Stryker jumping and bucking as we rolled over heaps of corpses. I fired off more grenades and blasted a path…and then we saw daylight.

  The dead were not congregating now.

  We’d made it through the main force and we were going to make it.

  We were really going to make it.

  Tuck steered the Stryker through the last zombie groups and we plowed aside a wrecked car and we were really rolling, really on our way.

  That’s when we heard the chopper.

  It zipped right over our heads.

  I caught sight of it on the screen and it was a Kiowa scout helicopter armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles. We got hit by one of those and we were done. It zipped over us again and I got on the radio and tried to hail them, telling them we friendly, we were not a militia, that I was a soldier formerly with a Stryker Cavalry Brigade and I was evacuating people from the city. I thought if they were the Army it would work. But if they were listening, they ignored me. Which told me one thing: barring communications failure, these guys were members of ARM. And I had just told them we were not part of their forces. I knew they had a chopper. Katherine had told me so, but I had no idea they had something like this…a freaking Kiowa armed to the teeth.

  Jesus.

  Out in the streets we were sitting ducks. The Hellfire missiles were laser-guided and we had no maneuverability in those avenues with wrecked cars and overturned busses everywhere.

  “I don’t like this,” Tuck said as he pushed the Stryker forward.

  On my screen I saw the Kiowa coming in again and I didn’t think he was just going to buzz us this time. I was pretty sure he meant business. I looked around and all I could see were huge ramparts of mangled cars and trucks that had been pushed aside by someone to clear the streets. It was our only option.

  “GET US AROUND THAT PILE OF CARS!” I called out to Tuck. “TWO ‘O CLOCK!”

  Tuck jammed the Stryker forward, and cut to the right just as the Hellfires came screaming through the sky. They missed us by mere feet, striking the rampart of cars with resounding explosions that threw the Stryker off its wheels and threw all of us around. The Hellfires obliterated the heaped cars and a rain of burning metal and vehicle parts slammed into the outside of the Stryker and I knew one of them had hit the .50-cal above which was our only true defense against the Kiowa.

  We were in a real world of shit.

  Then I remembered the AT4 anti-tank weapon. It would do in a pinch and it was our only chance. I told Tuck to jig us around a bit and zig zag so they couldn’t target us so easily and I went into the rear and grabbed the AT4. I had just got it out when Tuck plowed through some cars and I hit the floor of the vehicle and I heard another Hellfire detonate. Like before, the Stryker jumped into the air and came down with a concussion that threw us all over the place. I ended up in a tangle with Susan, Sabelia, Riley, and Mia. More wrecked cars and pieces of them struck the outside of the Stryker.

  AT4 Anti-Tank Weapon

  Type: Disposable Rocket Launcher

  Kill Range: 900 feet

  Warhead: 84 mm High explosive Anti-Armor

  “TUCK!” I cried out as I disentangled myself. “STOP US DEAD!”

  He did.

  Carrying the AT4 I went over to my screen at the gunner’s station. We were right in the middle of the Hellfire blast area. There were burning remains of cars everywhere. Plumes of black smoke rose up into a dark haze above us. One flaming car was standing on its hood and leaning right up against us. We were nicely camouflaged by burning wreckage. There was no way the Kiowa crew could know if it was the Stryker burning or the wrecks.

  And that’s exactly what I wanted.

  I popped the gunner’s hatch after warning Sabelia in no uncertain terms that she was not allowed to follow me or try to retrieve my ass if the shit hit the fan. I got out there and it was hard to see in the smoke. The fire around us was so hot it was like being downwind from a blast furnace. I heard the Kiowa flying over the tops of the buildings.

  Strictly recon now: he thought he’d hit us.

  The driver’s hatch opened and Tuck stuck his head out. “We got company,” he said, then went back inside.

  Of course we did.

  The zombies were coming again from behind us. Like sharks that sense a ship has gone down in mid-ocean, the dead realized that something was happening and it might mean meat in the offing. They were about a half a block away and closing. Whenever the smoke cleared, I saw them. First forty or fifty and then twice that number. Things were getting dicey. The Kiowa started its run from the opposite end of the street. Unless I was wrong, I didn’t think he’d waste Hellfires on us when it probably appeared from the air that we were already hit and immobile.

  The zombies kept coming.

  The Kiowa zoomed in. We were sandwiched now between them.

  It was time.

  The smoke in my eyes and fire singing my hair, I wiped sweat from my face and took up the AT4. The AT4 is a fire-and-forget-it weapon meaning that it’s disposable after you shoot it. I pulled the safety pin at the back of the tube. I got into firing po
sition and removed the first safety. Then I sighted in on the chopper as it came down at us. It was still a good distance away but definitely in range of the AT4. I held down the red safety lever and it was armed. I zeroed in on the chopper and pressed the red firing button.

  The missile took off with a thundering jolt, spewing a cloud of back-blast flames and at that distance, the Kiowa was helpless. The pilot tried to bank it to the right and the missile went right into the chopper’s underbelly and the explosion was deafening. The chopper went up into an immense fireball and its forward momentum carried it right over us, dumping over a ton of burning metal and debris right on top of the zombies and scattering fiery wreckage in every direction. A chunk of blazing metal seared my forearm and another lit my hair on fire.

  I patted my head out and slid back down into the gunner’s seat and I got a round of cheers from everyone and Sabelia came over and kissed me full on the mouth. Diane did the same.

  Then we were rolling again.

  Really rolling.

  And by then there was nothing left to stop us.

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  I was never so happy as to be free of the city.

  We didn’t head directly back to the airfield, of course. There was no way we were leaving those three other Strykers behind. I drove one, Riley drove another, and Diane drove the one with the TOW missile launch platform. Sabelia jumped into the Jeep with Dorian and away we rolled. We danced with some zombies in the streets when we got to the garage and we had to break a window to get in because I’d locked the big door. There was some shooting, a few moments of anxiety, but we got it done.

  When we rolled into the airfield I was nervous.

  Nervous because no one came out to greet us.

  Then they must have seen the Jeep and Jimmy came out followed by Paul, Jilly and Maria who were holding hands. I held my son, the weight of everything pressing down upon me, and I could barely stand. I got inside and it was still on my shoulders. Everything that had happened since the Necrophage/Necrovirus outbreak was rolling through my mind and I was thinking about my wife and my neighbors and the tower and what happened to Davis and all the rest. It made me want to cry but I knew that there was a place and time for that, but it wasn’t now. Yet…I couldn’t stop thinking about Ricki. I hoped to God that she was not walking around out there. I remembered the day it started for me and how I was wiring the damn air conditioner and planning on grilling a few steaks that night.