Pandemic Collapse - The First Horde: An Apocalyptic GameLit Thriller

by Leif Kennison

  I needed to find Nyla.

  I had more training to do.

  FOURTEEN

  Burner City

  When I woke up, Elgin and the team were eating. I joined them at the table and they made me eat too. A lot.

  “Gotta fill up,” Tong said. “You need the calories for the recovery mode.”

  I raised an eyebrow as I downed some hot nasty chili out of a bag. “Recovery mode?”

  “Yeah, the pod’s got a recovery mode. It’s like a suntan.” He laughed. “You know how you feel super tired after getting out of STESIS? It’s because the whole time, the system’s been stimulating your muscles, breaking it down just like if you were working out.”

  My eyes shot open in surprise.

  “Holy hell, that’s crazy. Sounds kinda scary, actually.”

  “Yeah man, that’s part of the accelerated training that the ARL helped implement.”

  He looked at me and saw a question in my eye, so he explained. “Army research lab. But yeah, there’s a recovery mode in the STESIS. It helps you rebuild your muscles.”

  I was impressed.

  “So, what…you get faster recovery times after working out?”

  He nodded and walked off to grab something out of the food crate. He tossed one to me.

  “Here, have some barf.”

  I chuckled. “Lemme guess…it’s another acronym.”

  He came back and sat down.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Beverage for accelerated fitness recovery. B-A-F-R.”

  “Tastes that bad, huh?”

  “Actually, it’s not terrible.”

  I tore mine open and tilted it so that its viscous contents started to ooze towards my mouth.

  Tong said, “Tastes like chocolate milk with cherries…”

  And just as the shake hit my mouth, he added, “mixed with aspirin and cigarette butts.”

  After we all ate as much as we could without throwing up, Elgin had me figure out how to put everyone in the recovery mode. We put on the bodysuits and hopped into the machine. We didn’t have to put on the visor or enter STESIS though. The recovery phase lasted for a few hours.

  When I got out, I flexed my arms and did a couple of squats. I felt like a new man.

  Next thing Elgin had me do was load up the next simulation from BPMS.

  TASK: Contain an Area (Fireteam) (12-60D822)

  CONDITION: Operating in a platoon responsible for a biocontainment zone, the squad must work in conjunction with other squads to contain a hostile population consisting of both combatants and noncombatants.

  LOCATION: Built-up area

  Elgin read the entire briefing and sighed. She explained that we were a quick reaction force responding to an emergency—the scenario generator kept it a secret what that emergency would be to keep us on our toes.

  “We’re short a lot of manpower for a QRF,” she noted. Then, to me, she said, “Well, we’d best get to it. Load us up.”

  I did the same drill as before. Got everyone strapped in except for their left arm. I did the same for me.

  Beeeeep.

  Let’s do this.

  We spawned in a parking lot again, just like last time. I guess the system needed to make sure that we had enough clear space. After we all got up and did a gear check, Elgin explained what we were doing.

  Our objective was to keep a containment zone secure. The containment zone was a massive housing project that was six city blocks long and four blocks wide. There were twenty apartment towers, totaling over 4,500 apartments. More than 14,000 people lived there. Our assigned post was in the middle of the block, right in front of the main entrance. There was supposed to be a fireteam every few blocks, but we were running the exercise on our own. Hard mode.

  Since we were really shorthanded, Elgin assigned me to the role of rifleman and gave me a crash course on shooting. Thankfully, we all had a fire control optic on our rifles. It’s a direct view optic with a lot of fancy tech that makes it a lot easier to hit what you’re aiming at. Without it, you have to use the iron sights and adjust your aim. But with it, it does all the mental work for you—rangefinding, ballistic calculation, all that. Basically, all you have to do was point the rifle and look through the optic. The reticle in the middle changes from black to red if you’re clear to fire.

  Anyway, our post was only about a half-mile away, so we got there pretty quickly. We’d taken a route through the local roads. As we approached the projects, the view of the boulevard in front of us widened, and it was a nerve-racking scene.

  The air had the angry buzz of a riot that was about to break out. Masses of residents were out on the street, pressing up on the blue wooden barriers on one side, NYPD officers on the other side of the line. Angry shouts and raised fists pumped in the air. You could feel the tension. It was like a crackling bolt of electricity waiting to snap out at whatever got close enough.

  People were arguing with police officers. They were hollering at the top of their lungs.

  “You can’t keep us locked in here!”

  “This is against our rights, you can’t do this to us!”

  “There’s mawfuckin’ zombies in there, you gotta save us!”

  Suddenly, the crack of a gunshot sounded out.

  Nobody could tell who fired the shot. Or if it was even a gunshot at all. But that’s all it took for hell to break loose.

  The broad and dense crowd of residents surged forward in a stampede.

  The few police officers and National Guardsmen didn’t stand a chance. They put up a good fight, trying to push back against the crowd, but the crowd was a wave of fear and anger that crashed through the line and swallowed them up.

  Halstead and Addie started bringing up their rifles, but Elgin held up a fist.

  “Watch your ROE, they’re non-combatants,” she said.

  The team was nervous. But the residents didn’t attack us. They were just breaking out of the containment zone. Our job was to contain threats in the zone, not to stop the residents.

  It didn’t take long for the residents to disperse. We were watching from across the street, and they all ran in every which way. One young guy was running past us and he slowed down to a jog when he got near us. He looked like he wanted to do something—punch us, throw something at us, something—but Tong shot him a deadly look and he kept moving.

  A few tense moments passed. It was quiet, and we didn’t see any movement. Since there was a bit of time, I was able to assess the situation.

  Standing there in front of the housing project, I looked at the main entrance. To the left and the right were apartment complexes rising high. In the middle was a low long building. To get up to it, there was a semi-circular driveway. You know, kind of like how a lot of hotels have it set up so you drive up to the entrance and drive out the exit, only this was a cheap attempt to spruce up an otherwise shitty place to live.

  The main entrance led into the lobby, which was basically just a long hallway running to the left and right. You could see through the building—it was just floor to ceiling windows on both sides of the structure. Behind the lobby was an empty green space, and further beyond were even more apartment towers made of pale yellow brick. The thought flashed through my mind that it was crazy how there were more than fourteen thousand people living in there. All those people, and the main entrance was just a pair of glass double doors. I thought we’d have a pretty easy time killing the burners if they were only coming out two at a time. But then I had another thought. If they break through those glass panes…that’s gonna be one hell of a flood.

  Warner called out.

  “Contact front.”

  From the left and right of the lobby, burners started coming out in small groups. The ones coming out looked pretty fresh. Their clothes weren’t that bloody or torn up, and they moved in a more or less human way towards us. And sure enough, they were walking through the door, which opened to outwards to the street.

  Elgin walked us onto the parking lot directly in front
of the lobby, but I warned her.

  “Elgin, if we shoot straight, we might hit the window panes. We’ll have less control of where they’re coming from.”

  She nodded.

  “Good thinking, slick.”

  Quickly, she set us up so that we were a good distance away, maybe eighty yards. The burners would have to get through the door, down the steps, and turn a right angle towards us if they were to get at us. We’d be shooting parallel to the length of the building to avoid shattering the glass. What bullets did miss would hit the wall of the eastmost apartment tower.

  We got into an echelon right formation. Warner was the one closest to the left wall, and he was furthest ahead in the formation. To Warner’s right was Halstead with a rifle, then me. Elgin was to my right, and next after her was Tong with the M340 UMG—universal machine gun. Addie was the last one, and furthest back, armed with a rifle and grenade launcher.

  Standing together, we aimed our rifles at the incoming burners.

  Elgin shouted. “Free to engage!”

  I looked through my rifle’s scope.

  Pulled the trigger.

  A burst of three bullets exploded out of my rifle.

  The burner tumbled down the steps.

  Easy.

  Another 20 XP.

  Another step closer to my goal.

  All of us fired at will. With the crack of our rifles echoing off the brick exterior of the high towering apartments that loomed above us, our bullets flew through the air and hit all that necrobiotic tissue. There was something satisfying about hearing the rhythm of our controlled fire. Single shots, well-aimed, sending bullets straight through the burners’ skulls.

  After the first few burners, groups of six, eight, maybe twelve burners trudged out of the main entrance, walking towards the sound of our gunfire. Looking through my digital holosight, I tried aiming for some headshots. The group had come down the steps and turned towards us, and most of the ones in front were shambling hard enough that it was hard to get a steady bead on their heads. When I settled my reticle on this one burner in the middle of the group that was walking properly, I could see that he wasn’t that far gone. His eyes were still working plenty good, looking around as his legs carried him in the same direction that the other burners were going.

  I let loose a single round.

  Headshot.

  +20 XP.

  Elgin yelled at me.

  “Always kill the ones that are closest, asshole. This isn’t the time for you to take your dandy time doing target practice.”

  The crack of all of our rifles popped off in a staccato rhythm. The more shots we fired off, the more burners started coming out.

  As aiming, firing, and killing burners started to come more automatically to me, I started to pay closer attention to the little things. For example, I noticed that the first burners actually lifted their hands up to push the door open, and that they seemed to act more like a human being. They looked at things, walked along on the sidewalk. They reacted to the environment. When a burner got downed next to another burner, it would react in the tiniest way, like swaying a little over in its direction and turning its head a little that way. They were still kind of independent too. They didn’t group up as densely, almost like they were still practicing social distancing.

  But the later groups of burners were more…feral. Animalistic. Their eyes were redder, and they were bloodier. The had a tendency to group up closer, and they moved with more urgency. Aggression and frustration tinged their jerky movements.

  Either way, I dropped them all the same.

  Eye. Sight.

  Breathe.

  Finger. Trigger.

  Crack.

  Burner down.

  +XP.

  Again.

  And again.

  And over again.

  The team and I killed enough of them where the burners were tripping over the dead bodies, or undead, depending on who you ask.

  I know I keep saying dead bodies...but Elgin says they’re undead bodies. These days me and Elgin still get into little arguments about whether we’re really killing them and whether they’re living or dead after they turn. I tell her there’s research that indicates that people never really outright die before they came back as burners. The secondary virus actually saves them from the first one, only it costs them their humanity. So is it really alive when it comes back? I sure think so. But Elgin tells me the same thing every time. If it looks like a zombie, walks like a zombie, and eats people like a zombie…well, you know. Her question was—How can you kill something that’s already dead?

  Whatever you wanna call them—dead or undead or whatever—the burners that we’d dropped were piling up.

  It was a sign for me to check the console.

  We’d all leveled up a few times and I dumped their stat points into Constitution. Me, on the other hand…I wanted to put some into my Fitness stat. I knew it was a little risky, but at that point I just didn’t feel like I needed it, and I was safe with the team. I wanted that Fitness to carry over when I got out of STESIS.

  But I wouldn’t get a chance to make a decision.

  A mass of grimy bodies surged into sight.

  The wide window panes started filling up with bodies as more trickled in behind them. That greenspace that we could see through the lobby? Gone. Nothing but bodies and more bodies pressing up against that glass.

  Burners were banging on the glass, trying to get through. That’s when I realized that these burners didn’t know how to open doors.

  Warner shouted.

  “They’re gonna break through if enough of them start piling on!”

  Elgin got up to reposition the team. She pointed out towards the sidewalk, at a low wall where the metal sculpture of the building name was displayed.

  “Set up a defensive line over there!” she shouted.

  We all started running there. I got there first, knelt down on one knee and propped my rifle up on the wall to cover them. Just as Warner got into position, there was a loud, explosive crushing sound.

  The burners had burst through the glass.

  Elgin yelled.

  “Hold our position! On my command, we’re going to fall back into the street behind us”!

  The sheer number of burners in the horde was terrifying. At least thirty bodies across and countless more deep, they ran towards us.

  Tong opened up the bipod on his UMG and opened fire.

  Hot brass tore through the barrel of his machine gun at a fearful rate. It sounded like the roar of a thousand angry hornets.

  He swept across the horde, and the first line went down quickly.

  But there were more.

  Elgin commanded us.

  “Put ’em on blast!”

  It was no time to be aiming for headshots.

  I flicked the selector switch to full auto, got the stock of my rifle snug into my shoulder, and squeezed that trigger and didn’t let go.

  My rifle kicked and kicked and kicked. I was firing blindly. I couldn’t tell if I was hitting anything at all. I was just praying that they were.

  To my left and to my right, bullets were exploding out of the rifles. In front of me, mists of blood appeared and disappeared just as quickly as sweat droplets splatter on the ground. Bodies dropped, burners tripped. A low mass of dead bodies quickly began to form, and the mass was beginning to creep closer and closer to us.

  Elgin noticed that we were losing ground.

  “Move!” she shouted.

  In two teams of three each, we alternated between providing overwatch while the other three withdrew. We didn’t have enough firepower to keep them at bay. While there were moments where the edge of the flood seemed to back off a little like the ebb and flow of the ocean washing up on the shore of a beach, ultimately they were taking ground.

  We backed up, getting off the wide-open boulevard and running to the narrower street, creating a fatal funnel for the burners. All we’d have to do is aim straight ahead—less wor
ry about getting flanked. At least, that was what we all hoped.

  But when we ran into the narrow street, Elgin cursed.

  “There’s too many goddamned cars!”

  The streets were lined with cars to the left and right. It blocked our line of sight to the sidewalk and didn’t give us the clear field of fire we needed to maximize our firepower.

  We held the position briefly and continued firing, killing the running swarms of burners as they ran at us. Most of the burners were running at us from the middle of the road, and we were killing enough of them over there. It was the ones that ran on the sidewalks that were creeping up. We only had one rifleman on each side, with four of us spanning across the road in between the cars. The dirty rusty cars, untouched from the national lockdown, were making a deadly problem for us. The horde was pushing us further and further back.

  Briefly, I glanced behind us. The street we were retreating into was long and hilly. To continue falling back, we were going to have to follow the road straight, and the road dipped down before it inclined up again.

  Looking around, Elgin spotted a minivan on the street.

  “Tong, get on top and tear into ’em!” she shouted.

  He clambered up the hood of the minivan, knelt, and opened fire.

  As his machine gun ate up the belt of ammo and vomited a forceful, growling stream of bullets into the wide mass of bodies, I felt like there was hope. Some of the bullets were tearing through the burners and violently tumbling into other burners’ legs and torsos. It didn’t always kill the second one, but it did take out their means of moving.

  Tong’s fire went from full-auto to medium bursts, then to controlled shots.

  The horde was thinning.

  Then, he yelled out.

  “Reloading!”

  Elgin gave the order to fall back, and we leapfrogged again. The rhythm of the leapfrogging was defined by how many burners we could kill with three of us while the other three would run back to the new position. The longer one team could hold them off, the farther the other team could run. But those intervals were getting shorter and shorter.