by Spell, David
The gangsters searched the bodies, confiscating six more pistols, two shotguns, and a few items of food. Three women were still alive, managing to avoid the gunfire by diving to the floor. The gang took turns violating them until they, too, were dead. The corpses had been loaded into one of their stolen vans and dumped behind a school a block away.
JK had been the number two man in the WP until Lamar had gotten killed a few weeks earlier. One of the little bitches in a house down the street had gotten off a lucky shot, hitting him in the heart. She and her friend had paid dearly, along with their male friends, but there was nothing they could do to bring the gang leader back.
Lamar had tried to take care of his boys while the zombies roamed the area, but it had been a difficult time for the street gang. They had started off with twenty-two associates, but they had seen their main man cut down by a lucky shot and seven others had been devoured or infected by the Zs over a few months, reducing their ranks to fourteen. And now, six more of their members resided on the first floor, having been infected by the zombie virus, leaving just eight of the remaining brothers to carry on the WP legacy.
Alex and Lil’ Will had gotten bit after a supply raid two weeks earlier. They all managed to get back to the rec center, but the two infected gangsters collapsed just as they got inside, with a big group of Zs chasing them. No one had seen how their friends had gotten infected but within minutes, the two had reanimated as zombies and turned on the others, creating four more flesh-eating creatures. The surviving WP thugs rushed up the stairs, locking the stairwell door behind them.
JK wanted to kill the infected brothers but the rest of the gang protested, no one wanting to pull the trigger on a fellow WP associate. They had all grown up together and JK understood that if he tried to kill their zombie brothers, the rest would probably shoot him. After some discussion, JK announced that it was better to leave the six Zs alone on the first floor as security against anyone who might try to break in.
This decision seemed to make everyone happy, except for the fact that they only had food and water to last another three weeks and were now trapped, confined to the upper three floors of the building, their infected friends preventing them from getting out. And now the police were right across the street. Shamar had only seen seven cops. Seven cops, eight WP members, and six WP zombies, JK thought, liking their chances.
Of course, each of his thugs was tougher than ten pigs. The gang had even killed a few cops after the virus had been released. The thugs had needed more weapons and ammo and the three pigs he and his men gunned down supplied them with a rifle, a shotgun, and three pistols.
The cops would get a surprise when they entered the rec center. The zombie gang members were guarding the lower level and maybe they could take out a couple of the pigs. JK had no doubt the police would kill the Zs, but maybe their dead brothers would help out the living brothers one more time.
JK knew that the zombie crisis was mostly over because of the reduced numbers of infected roaming the streets. The amount of police activity in the surrounding areas had been picking up over the last couple of months. At the same time, the WP associates were not ready to relinquish control of the neighborhood and were more than ready to fight the authorities.
Officer Jamal had drawn a diagram on a piece of notebook paper, showing the floor plan of the round recreation center. There were only two entrances. The front had two sets of double doors that led into a lobby with an information desk. Two more double doors led from the lobby into the main building. A hallway ran down the middle of the facility, separating the two basketball courts on the left from the two swimming pools on the right. Another corridor circled around the inside perimeter of the building.
The restrooms and showers were toward the rear of center, along with a stairwell that provided access to the other three floors. The elevator was there as well but wasn’t a factor, with electricity just starting to be restored across the city. The entry and exit point on that side of the building was a single set of double doors.
Andy and Scotty’s teams would make entry in the front, with Eric’s group coming in the rear. Fleming was the group leader and he briefed the three squads as they prepared to move.
“Scotty, can you stay behind and cover us while cross the road?”
The big bearded man nodded. “No problem.”
“Eric, get your people around back and in position. We’ll wait a couple until Smith joins us. I’ll do a countdown over the radio and we all go in at the same time. Fire discipline, guys,” Andy said, looking at the police officers. “Don’t be afraid to pull the trigger, but remember for all we know, there could be survivors in there.”
As they were getting ready to move out from behind the apartment building, Gray handed Fleming and Smith each a small round object.
Both men’s eyes lit up with surprise. “You’ve been holding out on us, Gunny,” Scotty smiled.
“You never know when you might need a little packaged backup,” Eric said. “Hopefully, we won’t need them, but if we do those little guys will even the odds a bit.”
The three team leaders tucked the fragmentation grenades into pouches on their plate carriers and turned to make sure that their people were ready.
Shamar had peeked over the side of the roof a few times from different vantage points. He remembered seeing in a movie that it was important not to show your head in the same place more than once. JK had sent him and Terry back to the roof after learning that the police were nearby. Their job was to slow the cops down and maybe take out a couple as they moved.
Terry held a Ruger Mini-14 rifle while Shamar had a Bushmaster AR-15. The two gangsters were on either ends of the roof, both men glancing over occasionally and then moving a few feet to the left or right. Suddenly, Terry froze as he looked down and then dropped quickly behind the edge of the two-foot wall that surrounded the top of the building.
In a loud whisper, Terry called over to his friend, “They’re coming now!”
Both men took a deep breath, rising to their knees, and bringing their weapons up. Before either could squeeze their triggers, the sound of something striking flesh carried over to Shamar. He pulled his eyes away from the heavily armed cops rushing across the street to see Terry collapsing backwards, blood spurting out of a hole in the middle of his forehead.
The gangster realized that the police were almost to the rec center, many more than the original seven that he had seen, and he still hadn’t fired a shot. JK wasn’t going to be happy. As Shamar swung his AR-15 around, the glint of sunlight off of glass next to the apartment building drew his attention just as he saw a flash of flame. He never heard the sound of the shot or felt the 5.56mm bullet that punched through his right eye, blowing off the back of his head.
JK waited to hear Shamar and Terry engaging the cops. He knew they would probably take out two or three of the pigs. The recreation facility had very few windows preventing him or his men from shooting at them from their second floor perch. The lack of windows was an indicator of what kind of neighborhood the structure was located in.
The six other gang members waited in the dark at the top of the second floor landing. They had extinguished all the candles that they used to illuminate the dark building. JK had instructed them to shoot if the police got past their infected friends on the first floor. When the pigs tried to come up the stairs the WP associates would all crank off a bunch of rounds and then retreat to the third floor landing. They would repeat the process at the fourth floor, hoping they had killed all the cops by then.
“Maurice, go up and check on Shamar and Terry. See if they’ve seen anything,” JK ordered.
An athletic looking young man holding a 9mm Beretta nodded and sprinted up the stairs.
Andy had heard the quiet shots from Scotty’s suppressed rifle as he ran, leading the police officers to the front entrance of the facility. He couldn’t see anyone on the roof, hoping the former Ranger sniper had eliminated whatever threats were there.
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nbsp; “Two down,” Smith’s calm voice came over the radio. “I’m on my way to join you.”
Eric’s team was in place at the rear of the recreation center. The other two groups of officers staged beside the main entry point, waiting for Fleming’s orders. They could see that the glass doors and adjacent windows were covered with plywood from the inside.
The bearded agent sprinted up, moving surprisingly fast for a man his size. Andy let his friend catch his breath.
“Who’d you shoot?” Fleming asked softly.
“Just two punks with rifles. They were gonna to shoot you guys when you crossed the street,” he nodded at the officers.
The DC cops looked at the muscular man, surprised at how nonchalant he was about killing two suspects. While all of the officers had taken out their share of zombies, only the SWAT members had been in actual shootouts with living, breathing suspects.
“Cool,” Andy commented. “That’s two less that we’ll have to deal with inside.”
A sudden banging startled the group, all fourteen of the officers swinging their weapons towards the door. The haunting zombie growl carried through the boarded up entrance, letting Andy, Scotty, and their teams know that things were about to get even more interesting when they made entry. Fleming pressed transmit on his radio and called Gray.
The gangsters could hear their infected friends slamming into the front doors, letting the WP members know that the police were probably outside, preparing to come in. Standing inside the dark stairwell was making all of the thugs nervous. Several of them kept flicking on their flashlights for a few seconds and then turning them off, not realizing they were destroying their ability to see in low light.
JK couldn’t understand why he hadn’t heard the two sentries on the roof firing their weapons. The pounding on the doors by the downstairs zombies seemed to intensify. The gang leader wanted to see what was going on but felt blind.
“T-Rex, you and Bruce come with me. We’re gonna go take a peek out the door at the bottom of the stairs,” JK whispered.
“Man, are you sure? Lil’ Will and Alex might put the bite on us,” T-Rex answered. His nickname came from the fact that his short arms seemed out of place on his tall, skinny frame.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine. They’re over banging on the front door. I think the cops are gettin’ ready to bust in. Let’s cap a couple when they come down the hall.”
The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs from above caused the thugs to bring their weapons up and turn their lights on. Maurice was making no effort to limit his noise as he hurried back to his friends. He stopped in front of JK, panting. He was carrying both of the dead gangsters’ rifles.
“They’re…both…dead…shot…in the…head,” he gasped.
“What? Where are the cops?” JK asked. “Did you see the pigs?”
The young man shook his head, his breathing coming back under control. “I crawled over and checked them. The cops have a sniper out there somewhere. I wasn’t raising my head to get it shot off. I grabbed their guns and crawled back to the door.”
The gang leader felt something he hadn’t felt in a while: fear. Normally, being surrounded by his brothers, he was confident and cocky. Now, he wasn’t so sure of himself. Gunfire suddenly exploded from downstairs.
Scotty led the two teams around to the rear of the building where Eric’s squad waited. He had told Andy over the radio that one of the plywood boards covering the back door was loose. From the rear, it sounded like all the infected were on the front side of the building.
Andy held a quick conference with the Eric, Scotty, and the three SWAT officers.
“What do you guys think? We don’t have to make entry here. We can keep going across 8th Street clearing the neighborhood.”
Metro DC Sergeant Alexander Bell spoke up. Alex was wearing a Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun across his chest.
“I don’t like it. We don’t have much intel and there’s no telling what we could be walking into. At the same time, if we don’t do it and we keep going, we’ve got potential bad guys behind us. Plus, our mission is eliminating the Zs and we can definitely hear some inside.”
The SWAT sergeant articulated what they all knew. Fleming was glad that Bell had been the one to vocalize it. His and the other two federal agents’ job was to support the local cops, not tell them what to do. Andy had never been afraid to take risks in fulfilling a mission, but he didn’t want to get any of these local cops killed, either.
Fleming nodded. “Agreed. Let’s do it. I’ve got point, then Scotty and Eric. Sarge, you and the other two SWAT guys are next. You set everyone else up the way you see fit. We’ll go in two minutes.”
Ferebee Hope Rec Center, Washington, D.C., Friday, 1120 hours
Gray found that one of the boards sealing the rear doors was not bolted down, allowing him to pull it out. They now had a way into the building.
“I’ll go first,” the former gunnery sergeant whispered, fully understanding the danger that lurked on the other side of the entrance. They knew that there were zombies inside and probably more armed living people to go along with the two Smith had taken out.
Fleming nodded at his friend to go, stepping up to cover him, suppressing a smile at how his former MARSOC comrade had jumped in front of him. Suddenly, Andy felt the phone vibrating on his belt with an incoming call. He reached down and pressed a button on the side, sending the caller to his voicemail. The officers peered into the dark building, everyone wishing they had night vision goggles.
The combined team of federal and local police officers met no resistance as they climbed through the back door of the recreation center. That is, until one of the Metro cops tripped and slammed loudly to the floor inside the building. The three federal agents and the three SWAT officers knew what was about to happen and brought their weapons up, activating the attached flashlights. They moved further into the facility down the hallway, so the rest of the team could get in, and took up a position looking down the corridor, aiming towards the other side of the rec center. Up ahead was a sign indicating the stairway, elevator, and restrooms off to the left.
In less than a minute, six growling, snarling, bloody gang-members-turned-zombies stumbled towards the loud noise from the opposite side of the building. The gunfire was deafening in the enclosed environment, but in seconds all the gangster Zs were on the floor with holes in their heads, the smell of their decaying flesh causing several of the cops to gag in the small space. In the silence, Andy felt his phone vibrate again, this time with an incoming text. After listening for two minutes, confirming no more Zs were charging them, Fleming led the officers deeper into the darkness.
JK, T-Rex, and Bruce eased slowly down the stairs, now standing just inside the door that led out to the first floor. The thugs could hear whispers and then footsteps moving slowly down the hallway towards them, the single flashlight of the officer on point lighting up the area. The gang leader put his lips next to Bruce’s ear and told him what he wanted.
JK quietly pulled the stairwell door ajar, the light from the officer and from the open rear entrance allowing them to see enough not to use their own flashlights. Bruce stood in the doorway pointing Terry’s Mini-14 rifle towards the walkway, waiting for a target to step into view. The plan was to ambush the lead cops, shooting quickly then ducking back into the stairwell.
The cop’s flashlight was extinguished but Bruce sensed that the police were right around the corner from where he stood, his finger tensing on the trigger. In the low light, however, he couldn’t see that the lead officer was ‘slicing the pie,’ easing slowly to a place where he could see around the corner only exposing the slightest sliver of his body and weapon. Suddenly, a burst of light blinded the WP associate and two 5.56mm rounds ripped through his chest, causing the thug to gasp loudly. A third round caught the gangster in the nose and he crumpled to floor without firing his own weapon, Bruce’s dead body blocking the doorway open, blood coating the metal door frame behind him.
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br /> JK reacted quickly, shoving his .40 caliber Glock through the opening and pulling the trigger three times before grabbing T-Rex and pulling him back up to the next landing. The gang leader’s shots were met by a blistering barrage of return fire that thudded into the heavy wooden door and wall.
Andy had taken out the thug with the Mini-14, but he heard Eric grunt as someone else fired at them from the doorway. He glanced over at his friend, noticing that he was still standing, but with a pained looked on his face. Scotty motioned to the rest of the team to move backwards, towards the door where they had made entry.
The muscular man withdrew the fragmentation grenade, holding it up for Fleming and Gray to see. Andy then directed the three SWAT cops to move further down the middle corridor towards the front of the building to cover the stairwell. He told the rest of the team to stay put while he and Eric joined the SWAT officers twenty yards down the hallway.
Scotty pulled the pin on the grenade, keeping the charging handle depressed, as he cautiously approached the stairwell, keeping his body clear of the partially open door. The former Ranger knelt, reaching over the dead man and tossed the grenade inside and then retreated quickly to where Andy was waiting. The cops all turned away, covering their ears with their hands.
The explosion shook the building with smoke and dust filling the air as groans came from the open doorway.
“Eric, are you OK?” Andy asked, his own ears ringing, as they moved towards the stairs, knowing he needed to assess his friend’s injuries before they kept going.