Necrophobia - 02 Page 21

  Then I scanned up the stairway with my NODs and I saw there was a zombie standing there. A large woman, also naked, blood had run from her mouth and stained her pale, pendulous breasts. She looked at me and smacked her lips. I should have just shot her, but the fear she induced in me in the dark cave of the stairwell was just too much.

  I gripped the doorknob and ran out into the corridor.

  The door closed behind me.

  The woman did not come out.

  The corpse of the other was probably more than enough to keep her occupied, I figured. The hallway was dim, but I didn’t need any night vision. I slid my NODs from my eyes and made my way down there. I had a real bad feeling suddenly. It gripped me, and wouldn’t let go. I didn’t know what it was.

  I was wishing I had just left the way I had come.

  I wished I had snuck back out using the fire escape.

  The only reason I hadn’t was that there was so much gunplay out in the streets I was afraid somebody might shoot me. Under the circumstances, that was a very real concern.

  Feeling tense and studying each doorway I came to very carefully, I made for the end of the corridor, knowing that I had to reach the lobby sooner or later. I kept my finger on the trigger. I was ready for what was coming next because I knew something was.

  Sonny Boy was chattering over the Icom, so I shut it off and then pulled out my earpiece. I had enough trouble without him distracting me. I had nearly reached the end when I saw an open doorway and something move in it. At first, I froze up, and then I saw it was a soldier in BDUs. His back was to me and he was just inside the door, peering around.

  It was Fifer.

  I sighed. God knows I had little affection for any of them, but he was a sight for sore eyes.

  At least until he turned around and I saw the dark slobber coming from his mouth. He hadn’t been checking out the room, I saw, he’d been feeding on Rulo’s dismembered corpse.

  I brought my gun up but too late.

  I’d made the cardinal sin of getting in too close, when I knew damn well that anyone could potentially be the enemy, even soldiers became zombies in the end and the fact that Panacek had run upstairs should have clued me in that he’d lost his men. And here was one of them.

  “Fife…” I said.

  He moved very fast for one of them or maybe I just moved too damn slow. He still had his rifle and he swung it like a club. I brought mine up at the last possible moment and that probably saved me from getting my jaw broken. But as it was, Fife had put all his strength and weight behind the swing and it was considerable. His TR-15 struck mine and knocked it out of my hands. He swung again, and I barely sidestepped it.

  Then I moved.

  I got back in combat mode.

  As the TR-15 swung over my head, the arc of it bringing Fife nearly around in a circle, I dove at him, pile driving him into the wall. He lost his weapon. I took hold of his greasy hair and smashed his face into the dirty plasterboard until it left a red splat-mark there. He went wild, throwing himself backwards and throwing me free.

  I had no time to get to my rifle.

  I pulled my Gerber fighting knife (Brightwater’s Brigade, standard-issue) as he came for me, hands hooked into claws and going for my face. I slashed him across the eyes, across the throat, slitting three fingers from his left hand. But I had him. He was manic and frenzied, just enraged with some kill-happy desire to destroy me at all costs. But he could no longer see. His eye sockets were filled with blood and bubbling clear liquid.

  He moved at where he thought I was, guided by sound.

  I feigned him, threw my knife at the wall to draw him away.

  When he heard me groping on the floor, he pivoted and came at me with outstretched hands, ever the B-movie ghoul as if some part of his brain was re-spooling some zombie movie it had seen, anxious to get every clichéd move down.

  Nevertheless, by then I had my TR-15.

  I sighted in on him as he reached for me and shot him in the face. I jacked two rounds into him and his blood and brains hit the wall like an especially ripe and rancid tomato. He folded up at my feet.

  Then something grabbed me.

  It wasn’t Fife.

  It was big and powerful. It grabbed me and propelled me against the wall. I came down on the hardwood floor without my TR-15. I saw the large, naked woman from the stairwell reaching down for me. I was dazed and slow, but as she took hold of me yet again, my fingers closed around the hasp of the Gerber.

  Her face was an atrocity.

  Like a juicy black plum with teeth.

  Her breath was enough to make you swoon with revulsion.

  As she made to bite me, I did the only thing I could. I still had my CVC helmet on, so I arched my head back on my neck and swung it forward with everything I had. The helmet struck her dead center of that horrible face and it burst like a rotten, pulpy squash, spraying corpse-goo on me.

  That stopped her.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  A split second after my helmet erased her face; I plunged the Gerber into her swollen belly and yanked it up, the blade splitting her wide open, intestines coming out with a slushing flow of organic rot and tissues gone to liquid.

  She made a growling sound in her throat.

  But she released me.

  Well, one hand did. Enough so that I could force myself around her side and stomp the side of her knee. I heard something snap in there, but still she stayed on her feet and still she held onto my ammo vest with one gnarled claw. I’m not sure what I was thinking or if I was even thinking at all, but I kept plunging the knife into her. With her weakened leg, she stumbled back and took me with her, squashing me between her bulk and the wall. As she staggered forward, I was still kind of mashed into her.

  I took advantage of this and jumped up on her back as if she was going to give me a piggyback ride. Something that made her angry. She spun around in circles, trying to throw me. But I would not be thrown. I rode her like a mechanical bull, taking hold of her wiry/nappy hair with one hand and yanking her head to the side as I brought the Gerber to play, sliding the blade into the soft tissue under her ear. But I was no expert. I jabbed her ear three times before the blade went in the way I wanted it to and with the depth, I needed.

  I had never done it before.

  I had seen it done to a dummy by a hardcase Ranger instructor before we went to Iraq. But that guy was a pro; I was no commando. But it finally worked. The blade went in and I held it in, giving it a little twist just like the Ranger had shown us. After a few seconds, that great female mountain of zombie rot stopped moving so frantically.

  She began to shudder almost convulsively.

  Black, festering juice ran down the back of my knife hand.

  She quivered and quaked, then went absolutely limp and we went to the floor. I crawled free. The only thing moving on her was her outstretched right hand. The fingers were trembling, but she was done and I knew it. I wiped off brain-slime from my hand and grabbed up my TR-15.

  I made damn sure that there were no others bearing down on me.

  Then I moved out.

  The corridor ended and split into two directions. I took the left and ahead saw more light. The lobby. I knew it was the lobby, but as I got within feet of the archway, I saw that it was filled with zombies. There had to have been sixty of them in there and they were sharing a meal, the bodies of maybe a dozen soldiers. Maybe it had been a reaction force which had come to rescue Panacek and the rest of us. Regardless, the zombies had them now and with the way they were going at it, there was no chance those soldiers would reanimate.

  What was even worse is that there were more in the streets outside the door.

  Dozens of them, all trying push their way in.

  Congregating. Ravenous. Relentless.

  I stood there feeling completely hopeless. I couldn’t go this way. That was for sure…but to have to go back the way I came. No, that wouldn’t do either. There was a simpler way. Another room. Shoot out the
window and get outside. It would mean playing tag with the zombies, but it was getting so I was world class at that sort of thing.

  That was my plan.

  Maybe it would have worked, but about the time I made to move, the Bradley came rolling down the street. The gunner opened up with the M240 Bravo machine gun. A flurry of 7.62 mm rounds began tearing into the dead, punching through them, taking their heads off. The Brad came forward slowly, putting down the dead and clearing the path for me with a barrage of slugs. But there were so many zombies already inside the lobby, the machine gun couldn’t get at them.

  “Shit,” I remember saying right before the chain gun opened up and high-explosive incendiary rounds came flying through the door. The chain gun, also known as the M242 Bushmaster, is an auto cannon that’s absolutely devastating to the enemy. Depending on the ammo used, the chain gun can knock helicopters out of the sky, disable armored vehicles, blow breaching holes in walls for the infantry, and turn an attacking enemy ground force to hamburger. It’s something to watch. A marvel of technology.

  But when you’re on the wrong end of it, it’s pure hell on earth.

  And I was on the wrong end.

  I hit the floor as explosions rocketed left and right, zombies flying into pieces, gore splashing around in wild loops and sprays. Walls came down, glass shattered, the ceiling caving-in. I threw myself to the left as ceiling tiles and beams fell, as plasterboard was obliterated, smoke and fire belching in every direction.

  Then something came down right on top of me and I knew no more.

  M242 Bushmaster Chain Gun

  Type: Autocannon

  Munitions: 25 mm High Explosive/Incendiary

  Kill Range: 3200 yards

  Cyclic Rate: 250 rounds per minute

  DEAD ZONE

  When I came to, there was smoldering wreckage everywhere. My body seemed to be intact but I was trapped. The upper floor had collapsed into the lower and I was stuck in a narrow crawlspace created by debris. My head was wedged beneath a heavy beam. Only my CVC helmet had saved my life. The beam had cold-cocked me, but if it hadn’t been for my lid it would have split my head right open. Carefully, I worked my head free of the helmet. It was pinched between the beam and what was left of the wall.

  I could see fading light in the distance.

  My heart pounding, my throat dry and scratchy from the smoke and dust, I pulled myself forward through the little crawlspace. At any moment, I knew, the rest of the building might come down on me. I snaked forward, twisting my body around fallen pipes and timbers and sheets of wood that were still burning. My crawlspace began to open up as I made it into the lobby. The remains of zombies were like a carpet of gore beneath me.

  On my belly, I crawled through a river of blood and entrails, scratching my way forward, my body armor snagging on things, my equipment a hindrance but one I could not do without. I slipped over the torso of a zombie, the rotten stink of it in my face. What was really bothering me besides the obvious was that it was so absolutely quiet out there. I heard the wreckage shifting, the crackling of fires, dust and powdered debris raining down from above…but nothing more.

  Finally, I pulled my way free.

  Jesus…how long had I been out? It was nearly dark out. Shadows were clustering in the streets. Judging from the position of the sun as it dipped over the rooftops, I figured I had been out at least a couple of hours, and in that time, it had been all-out war in the streets.

  The Bradley vehicle was just up the street. It was smoldering, one of its treads nearly torn free, its armor dented and pitted, blackened from an immense blast. As I got closer, I saw that it was tipped to the side, half in some huge crater. Rubble from a nearby building had fallen around it, plate glass windows shattered into the street.

  An IED.

  The Brad must have been hit by an IED. There was no doubt about it in my mind. ARM had been pushed and beaten down, now they were striking back the way insurgents in Iraq used to strike back at us. As I made my way over to the Brad, I saw forms moving around it. The dead. The back ramp of the Brad was down and two soldiers were spilled from it, zombies feeding on them. There were two deadheads and I killed both of them.

  I listened.

  I could hear no action anywhere. Either the troops had pulled back or they’d died in the streets. Either way, I was free of Brightwater’s Brigade. There was a satisfaction in that, but there was also great danger. I cut over to the avenue and into the next street. Everywhere, there were huge heaps of rubble and the blackened remains of cars and buses, immense craters in the streets that were filled with stagnant water. Nothing moved. I saw the corpses of soldiers everywhere. Zombies and rats were picking at them. A Guardian ASV was nearly split in half, its insides burnt black along with the men that had been in it. Down near the corner I saw Sonny Boy’s Desert Warrior. It was plowed right into a building, a gaping hole in its side…no, as I looked closer, there were three gaping holes in its side as if it had been hit by multiple RPGs.

  More corpses.

  More zombies feeding on them.

  ARM had opened up a can of whoop-ass and sprayed it everywhere. They weren’t as stupid as I had originally thought because it was obvious to me that they had drawn the Brigade into a carefully set trap, then sprung it. I wondered if they had been allowing themselves to take losses for weeks just to draw the Brigade into a killzone like this.

  The next street over was the same.

  Dead soldiers scattered about like plastic Army men, many of them ripped into pieces, the dead gnawing on the remains. A burning truck. Another Bradley caught in an IED trap, blackened and crumpled. ARM must have laid out radio-controlled IEDs all over the damn place. They must have been powerful ones to cause that much damage. Once the vehicles were disabled, they hit them with barrages of RPGs. Probably from the windows above where it was easy to pick off the soldiers below as well.

  So far, the zombies were ignoring me.

  A shot rang out. I could hear it pass close to my head. The snapping sound it made was telltale; I had heard bullets snap by my head like that in Iraq. I threw myself into the doorway of a bank. Two more rounds chewed into the bricks inches from me. I was being fired on from two locations, I figured. Somebody was up in one of those windows and another was across the street, probably around the side of the burning truck. With the gathering shadows, smoke and haze, it was hard to see exactly.

  Surging with adrenaline, I made myself wait.

  I had all the time in the world. Let them play their hand. I lit a cigarette and just lounged there, waiting for something to shoot at. A few more rounds peppered the brickwork. Gonna take more than that to draw me out, assholes. I waited there, crouched down, rocking on the balls of my feet, my TR-15 in hand. I was good at waiting. I had learned to be terribly patient since The Awakening. Things would happen when they happened. That was Rule #1 of warfare, particularly urban warfare.

  The shooter across the street was getting impatient.

  At his angle, he couldn’t hit me, but getting into position where he could meant exposing himself. Now I would see whether he was a pro or an amateur. Luckily for me, he was the latter. The smoke and haze that helped to hide him also limited his vision. He came around the truck at a low crouch, waiting for the smoke to shift. He moved forward carefully. I drew a bead on him. As he brought his weapon to bear, I shot him. I hit him with a couple slugs and he cried out, folding up.

  I ran out there.

  The other gunner was throwing led all around me. When I got to the shooter, he was already dead. One of my rounds went through his throat, tearing out his carotid. He bled out in seconds. He was one of the Brigade. One of Little John’s boys.

  The guy up in the window fired a few indiscriminate rounds in my direction. I fired a few back. In the distance, I heard the building sound of rotors. A chopper was incoming. If it was the Apache, I was a dead man. I thought that maybe I could make into the ruins of the building behind the truck. That was a good idea…except half a
dozen zombies were coming up the sidewalk in my direction. They were ragged things, their flesh perforated by shrapnel. But the hunger drove them on, the need to sink their teeth into flesh.

  The chopper was closer.

  I pulled a grenade and let it fly at the dead. It exploded right amidst them, limbs flying and gore splashing. One of them was still moving. I shot her in the head. By then the chopper passed overhead. It was the Blackhawk and I was willing to bet the shooter up in the window was also one of the Brigade.

  “HEY!” I shouted. “THIS IS NILES OVER HERE! STEVE NILES OF THE BRIGADE!”

  After a pause of maybe three seconds, a voice called out: “PRAISE THE HOLY GOD OF HOSTS! I’LL BE RIGHT DOWN!”

  The chopper circled overhead again and soon enough Sonny Boy showed himself. My first instinct was to kill him. I wanted to get out of there, right? I wanted to get back to my son and my friends. All I had to do was wait for him and pop him. Or not wait at all and make my way north. Or get that chopper down and hijack it.

  For reasons I wasn’t even sure of, I waited for Sonny Boy.

  When he got out into the street, he was on his Icom radio calling in the chopper, I suspected. It touched down at the intersection in the distance. Side by side, we ran for it. We ran like a couple giddy boys off to play sandlot baseball. I wanted to kill him but now wasn’t the time. I wanted the chopper. I wanted that pilot.

  My chance was coming now.

  HELL NIGHT

  Once Jonesy got us into the air and we got our helmets on, I told Sonny Boy over the com what had happened to us in that building. I left out the friendly-fire incident with Panacek, but other than that, I told him the truth. It didn’t take too long. Then it was his turn. Like I thought, ARM had drawn the Brigade into a battlefield that they had carefully prepared beforehand.

  “But how could they know where we’d raid next?” I said. “It could have been anywhere.”