Carver knew that fires were unpredictable, especially ones that were carried by the dry Santa Ana winds. Fortunately, the location where he was leading them was a giant tinder box. Being a bit early or late wouldn’t make much of a difference.
Carver radioed to Burke. “Tiger One. Send three rounds into the wall.”
The Abrams 120mm cannon erupted, ripping a massive chunk of concrete and soil from the side of the freeway. A second and third round decimated the barrier, exposing the campus buildings beyond.
“Tiger One. Back up and get ready to retreat. Over,” Carver ordered.
“Red One. I can see the horde massing. Let me take a shot. Over.”
“Negative, Tiger One. We’re here to get their attention. Do not fire. Retreat to my position. Do you copy? Over.”
Burke didn’t respond. Instead, he sent two more rounds into the campus. The explosions could be seen over the wall as dirt and body parts sprayed dozens of yards into the air.
Carver yelled into his radio. “Tiger One. You will retire to my position. You are compromising our situation. Do you copy? Over.”
“Red One. I got this,” Burke replied.
The tank maintained its position. It sent several more rounds into the campus as Burke treated his cannon like a giant sniper rifle.
“Goddammit, Burke. Get your ass back here.”
There was no answer. Another cannon blast destroyed more of the barrier near the Stryker, raining chunks of concrete down on the front of Carver’s vehicle.
“Are you all right?” Carver yelled up to his gunner.
“Yeah. But that was close. Tell that asshole to watch his aim.”
“Damn it, Burke. Retire now!” Carver repeated over the radio.
The Abrams sent another shell into the campus.
“Sir!” the gunner yelled down into the Stryker. “It’s a jail break to our right. Get us the hell out of here!”
Carver leaned forward and looked to the right. Hundreds of Variants were pouring over the wall.
“Burke. The horde is massing to your rear. GET BACK NOW!”
Carver backed the Stryker up to the split in the freeway. He spun around and aimed back toward March Air Base.
Burke finally put his tank in reverse and began pulling straight back. The giant vehicle could do twenty-five miles per hour in reverse on the straight, but he had to swerve around an eighteen-wheel truck. His driver spun late, sending the back of the tank into the front of the massive rig, crushing the truck’s front right side. The tank pushed the cab and trailer back, causing it to jackknife. The trailer was now blocking the road, with the cab wedged against the barrier wall that separated the north and southbound lanes.
The Abrams began to try to climb the trailer and got half the way over before the mob swarmed it. The tank continued to send rounds into the crowd, ripping apart dozens of creatures. Its machine gun spat lead as well, tearing apart scores.
Carver watched with morbid fascination as thousands of Variants covered the giant armored vehicle. He could see the pile moving as the tank’s driver attempted to push through the crowd. That didn’t last long. The thousands of bodies crushed down on the Abrams, their sheer weight stopping the tank from moving. The engines simply couldn’t move that much mass.
“Sir! We’ve got to go!” the gunner called as he opened up with his .50-caliber Browning.
The kid was right. The mass piled on top of the tank was nothing compared to the swarm of creatures pouring over the freeway barrier. They were flowing from both sides and would be on them in moments.
Carver accelerated and put about a quarter of a mile between him and the Variants. He held his speed at twenty kilometers an hour, just fast enough to stay ahead of the horde.
“Save your ammunition,” Carver said over the radio. “Just fire a burst if you see them losing interest.”
“Yes, sir,” the gunner replied.
As they continued to move south, the whine of the Stryker’s engine was drowned out by the screams and cries coming from their rear. Hundreds of thousands of the beasts were on their six. It was as loud as the crowd noise at a football stadium when the home team scored. The only difference was that the sound behind them never abated, and it consisted of primal screams rather than cheers of joy.
“What’s going to happen to Burke?” the gunner asked over the squad radio.
“He’ll die. The tank will probably keep structural integrity, but he’ll run out of oxygen. The stupid bastard just asphyxiated his crew and himself.”
“Jesus,” the gunner replied before going silent.
— 24 —
And I’m going down
All the way
Whoa!
I’m on the highway to hell
— Angus Young
AC/DC
March Air Base
The Stryker had been driving for almost thirty minutes. The constant drone of the monsters that were chasing them filtered through Carver’s ear protection. It was torture.
“Damn, I wish I had…”
Carver stopped his private rant and smiled. Less than a minute later, the vehicle’s sound system began to play. The iPod was once again blasting its music, drowning out the screams coming from behind.
“Nice track,” the young gunner said over the radio. “You have any Eminem? I really don’t like this old shit.”
Carver smiled. Obviously, this kid needed some music education. “Young man, this is when music was great.”
Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” was rocking. Carver glanced down at the next song and pressed the forward icon. Guitar riffs began to play, the four-beat refrains pulsing from the outside speakers. Carver could hear the young man’s radio come to life.
The gunner chuckled. “Seriously? AC/DC?”
“Highway to Hell. For some reason, that band really goes well with the apocalypse.”
“Now, there’s a ringing endorsement for hair bands.”
The sarcasm silenced Carver; the kid had a point.
He glanced to his left once again and watched the approaching wall of fire. The tall, dry grass on the side of the road was bending with the gusts of the Santa Ana winds. A steady ten miles per hour would suddenly become a gust over twice the speed, bending the thin, desiccated vegetation nearly horizontal.
Smoke was becoming a problem as well. Black clouds streaked across the land, completely obscuring Carver’s vision. He was driving by thermal camera most of the time.
The gunner’s voice came through the radio again. “Sir. We might be losing the pack.”
Carver switched to a rear camera, confirming that the horde was losing interest in them. It was the smoke.
“Send some rounds,” Carver ordered.
The vehicle’s machine gun spoke, sending the large bullets into the wall of infected. The horde began to stop. They weren’t taking their bait.
“Not working, sir.”
Carver didn’t want to do it, but he had no choice.
He stopped the eight-wheel vehicle and put it in reverse, moving them back toward the leading edge of the swarm.
“Let them know we’re here,” he said.
The .50-caliber gun began to bark. The half-inch-wide rounds shot through the creatures at the front of the horde as sparks flew up from the concrete wherever tracers found the road.
They had pulled to within a hundred yards of the first of the Variants. Even with the gunfire, the throng to the rear failed to respond. They were losing the crowd.
“Time for plan B,” Carver said before hailing Everly. “Viper One. This is Red One actual. Do you copy? Over.”
“Reading you five-by-five, Red One. Over.”
“How are my fans? Are they sticking together? Over.”
“You’ve got quite a crowd behind you, Red One. They’re pretty bunched up, but there are some stragglers about three klicks back. Over.”
Carver saw the base in the distance. They had drawn the creatures out enough to have them all on the “X”. It was
time to finish them off.
“Viper One. Begin your run. We’ll keep them occupied at this end. Over.”
“Copy that, Red One. Initiating run. Viper One, out.”
Carver called the gunner back inside. “Get in here and dog that turret hatch.”
The kid dropped back into the rear compartment and locked the hatch in place.
“Hold on,” Carver said.
The gunner took the seat normally assigned to the squad leader, directly behind Carver.
The Stryker drove straight at the confused mob. The smoke wafting through the crowd brought the scent of death. Regardless of their instinctive drive to feed, the Variants also recognized the destructive power of fire.
With the music blaring, Carver drove through the thin front line and crushed a group of the infected. He spun back out of the crowd and shot a quarter mile away down the road. The rear camera image showed no response.
“We have to hold them here a little bit longer,” Carver told the gunner. “Get up front and take over. When I tell you to, get us down the road past March.”
They switched places. Carver retrieved his rifle and shuffled to the back hatch. The door opened into a ramp, and Carver walked down onto the highway.
The wall of infected he faced was enormous. The line was roughly shaped like the tip of an arrow. The faster creatures were clustered at the tip while the remaining monsters were spread out behind. From east to west, the line was nearly a mile in width.
Somewhere in the distance, Everly was unloading his missile racks, sending high explosives into the dried fields to the horde’s rear. The fires would block the swarm’s retreat. They’d need to hold the horde for a few more minutes.
Carver strode toward the infected front line. The smoke was thick and masked his presence. The screams coming from the Variant army were becoming louder, as anger was being replaced by fear.
The smoke swirling around him caused Carver to cough. He had a sudden urge to pet Shrek. He instinctively reached down to find his war dog’s fur. The old guy wasn’t there. He realized that the Mal comforted him, as much as it was his protector. Carver felt hollow. He missed his canine warrior.
Carver kept walking and was about fifty yards from the Stryker when he saw it. Near the front of the line was a clutch of large creatures. In the middle of them stood a giant monster, over seven feet tall. Its red hair exposed its identity.
It was the alpha, and, like its subservient minions, it was spinning around in panic, confused by the smoke. It still hadn’t seen him yet.
Carver knew what to do.
The SEAL looked back at the open ramp and gauged the distance. He strode forward, toward the stalled swarm. The wall of fire was rapidly approaching. The flames from the inferno provided Carver with all the light he needed to see the massive creature. An opening in the smoke gave him a few moments to take aim. He put the triangular reticle of his ACOG over the skull of the confused monster king and squeezed the trigger.
The alpha was not to be taken just yet.
Just as Carver depressed the trigger, a one-armed creature nearby spotted him. It spun the alpha while pointing toward Carver. The jolt to the alpha’s shoulder pushed the creature enough that the 300 Blackout round grazed its cheek and exploded the head of the Variant directly behind it.
The crazed king finally saw Carver. When the SEAL lowered his rifle, its eyes widened, and it screamed a horrific cry that cut through the din of the horde. It lunged forward, followed by dozens of the largest of the creatures in the group.
“Oh, shit!” Carver turned and sprinted back to the Stryker. “Coming in hot,” he barked into his neck mic.
He jumped into the back cargo space and screamed, “GO! GO! GO!”
The door began to rise as the Variants closed in. The Stryker accelerated. One of the creatures at the front of the group jumped at the rising ramp, grabbing it before it could completely close. It was being dragged behind the Stryker, pulling down with both claws, trying to pry the hatch open.
Carver reached back and grasped the pistol grip of his shotgun, which was slung over his back. The low ceiling in the cargo area kept him from pulling it over his shoulder and out of its sheath. He dropped to his knee and tried again. The hatch began to groan as the monster forced the door back down.
The blaster finally slid out of its holster. He brought it around as the Variant rolled over the top of the door and fell into the cargo area not two feet away.
“Eat it,” Carver hissed. He shoved the end of the barrel into the Variant’s face and pulled the trigger. The buckshot blew out the back of its skull, leaving a hole from its face to its neck. The corpse dropped to the ground while its black-speckled blood spattered across the back wall of the vehicle.
“Crap,” Carver said as he did a body check to make sure a ricochet didn’t catch him. He was fine, as far as he could tell.
Carver moved forward, avoiding the expanding puddle of infected blood. He took the squad leader’s seat behind the driver just as the Stryker skidded to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Carver asked the young man.
“You better look.”
As the two exchanged places, Carver warned him about the infected blood. He stuck his head into the driver’s compartment and saw a wall of fire directly to their front. The flames had jumped from the advancing inferno, likely from embers that were being carried by the tornadic Santa Ana winds. The road forward was impassable.
Carver pushed the accelerator, steered right, and took the exit to March Air Base. The rear camera showed the squad of Variants just a few dozen meters behind. That’s when he saw metal glinting off the nearby firelight. It looked like there were holding something.
“Are they carrying knives and swords?” Carver asked himself.
He immediately passed the vision off as the fire playing tricks on his eyes. He tried to get a better look as he rushed down the ramp, but the smoke was too thick. The inferno blocked the road to the right, so Carver skidded into a left turn and shot under the bridge.
The fire also engulfed the grass on either side of this road, but he could make out the concrete airfield just beyond. Carver aimed down the middle of the highway and barreled through the wall of death. The vehicle was surrounded by flames. Seconds seemed like minutes as the tires ignited and flames licked the glass windscreen.
Just as he began to doubt that they’d survive, the Stryker cleared the inferno. Carver checked the rear camera and saw several Variants staggering out of the flames they’d just driven through. The fire consumed them as the winds pushed the blaze across the bridge.
Carver looked ahead. The main wall of fire had yet to reach the base. It was a terrifying but magnificent sight. The entire base was illuminated by orange-and-yellow light that seemed to be alive as it flickered from the spinning cones of fire.
The distant town of Moreno Valley burned with intensity as the wooden-framed structures combusted from the intense heat. Heavy black smoke wafted across the concrete landing strip. Like an airborne specter it roiled and morphed, staying low to the ground, its finger-like tentacles stretching forward.
Carver turned south on a frontage road and sped south, keeping ahead of the flames. He didn’t doubt that this fire would eventually burn its way across the entirety of Southern California. The Santa Ana Mountains might provide a buffer and contain the fire within the valley, but everything south and west would be in peril. The flames might even take San Diego or Los Angeles.
Carver decided it was a risk worth taking. The time to purge had come. The loss of man’s fingerprint on the Southern California landscape was worth it if it meant eliminating the Variant threat.
Carver drove on. With each passing minute, the inferno receded in his rear-facing camera. They made it out of the immediate threat with no sign of any trailing Variants.
“Viper One. This is Red One actual. Do you copy? Over.”
“Red One. This is Viper One. Send your traffic. Over.”
Carver filled
Everly in on Burke’s stupidity. The loss of the tank was tragic, but not fatal. It was the overeager L.T.’s fault that he’d killed himself and his crew. He hoped that the rest of the Marines from Twentynine Palms would agree with him.
“Viper One. Do you see any squirters? Over.” Carver wanted to know if he had seen any of the Variants escaping—or squirting—out of the trap.
“I had a few,” Everly replied. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Job well done, Red One. We got them. Congratulations.”
Carver sat back and relaxed. As he drove toward Temecula, he had a good feeling that they had made their home safe. He could stop worrying about his family’s safety and start planning for a stable and lasting future. After nearly six years struggling to survive, things were finally going to be back to normal.
Flying above him, Everly had the same idea. He started planning for his own future, including children with Donaldson. He was on autopilot as he shadowed the Stryker. They had a good two hours to get back to camp, and his fuel gauge told him he had to refuel.
“Red One. This is Viper. Over.”
“Go ahead, Viper. Over.”
“I’m not critical yet, but I won’t be able to stay with you the whole trip. I’ve got about an hour of fuel before I start into my reserves. Over.”
“No problem, Viper. Head on back to the barn. We’ll be fine. Over.”
“Copy that, Red One. I’ll refuel and stand by. I’m just a few minutes away if you need me. Over.”
“That’s a hard copy, Viper. See you in a few hours. Red One, out.”
Everly swooped down and did a low pass over Carver’s Stryker. He shot forward and followed the road to Temecula, where he would turn east toward Lost Valley. The way looked clear from two hundred feet up. It made him feel better that nothing showed up on his thermals. Carver would be fine.
John watched Everly rocket by. He was taking the same road back to camp. There had been no Variant presence from Temecula to Lost Valley over the last two years. If Everly didn’t call to report problems, about the only thing that would delay the Stryker was a mechanical malfunction. Carver was confident they’d soon be home.
Extinction Survival Series | Book 4 | Warrior's Fate Page 27