by Dan McMartin
Pete heard Gunny ask about him down below. He was working on the roof of another building, this one right on the edge of the frontier. The same one, in fact, where that young Marine had been shot the previous day. An inspection had revealed holes in the roof from the firefight he had witnessed. He was patching those holes.
“Up here,” Pete shouted down after going to the edge of the roof. The roof, like many in the city, was flat with a small wall around the edges and a door leading up from below.
“There you are. Just wanted to thank you and Anna again. Last night was...,” Gunny began to say but Pete held up a hand to stop him.
“Hold on,” he said and dashed downstairs to speak to Gunny face to face. He was breathing hard when he arrived on the sidewalk below but Gunny wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, he was looking down the street towards his platoon. They were all staring over the crest beyond, pointing and shouting.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” he yelled. Several of the Marines turned but only one came running.
“There’s...Uh...,” the young Marine stammered.
“Spit it out, devil,” Gunny demanded.
“Zombies, Gunny. Lots of them,” he replied. Several other construction workers were paying attention now, gathering about to see what was up. They worked closely with the Marines, never more than a few blocks away. They had seen a lot of stuff and heard stories about even more. But they, like Pete, had never seen one of the tough Marines look like that young man did.
“Holy fuck! You guys gotta see this!” one of the other workers on the roof shouted down. Everyone looked up to see him pointing in the direction the platoon of Marines stared. Pete couldn’t see over the hill that peaked just a block away but apparently, the man on the roof could.
“Come on,” Gunny said and headed for the front door of the building. Pete, the young Marine and several other workers followed. They all trudged up the stairs to the roof and then went to where the other construction workers stood staring south. No one said anything at first as they saw what was causing the commotion. Pete wondered how he didn’t see them before but then again, he wasn’t looking.
But now, you could hear them. The groaning and moaning, the scraping of shoes and feet on the pavement and then the odor of rotting flesh. There were thousands of animated corpses, maybe tens of thousands, filling the street from building front to building front. The adjacent street was filled as well. There was an army of zombies advancing on the frontier...that was the only word that came to Pete’s mind. Army.
“Everyone, get back to the checkpoint. Don’t grab your tools or the trucks. Just go,” Gunny ordered. Pete and his fellow workers looked at one another in shock and confusion. “Now!” Gunny ordered sternly. That broke the spell and the construction workers began to leave the roof. “Tell the others. Get everyone back beyond the secured perimeter,” Gunny added but he didn’t move.
“What are you going to do?” Pete asked as he stopped short of the door leading to the stairwell.
“My job. You build, I fight,” Gunny said. Pete couldn’t let that go.
“There are thousands of those things. You’ll die,” he told his friend. Gunny laughed.
“I’m not stupid and I’m not going to waste my Marine’s lives. But we can buy time to get the defensive forces in place, bring up artillery, get people to safety. I’ll be fine,” Gunny told Pete.
“I’m staying,” Pete said and he barely got it out before Gunny was shaking his head. “You don’t have time to argue and my girlfriend is back there,” Pete said as he pointed back towards the waterfront. “She’s all I got,” Pete said. Gunny sighed.
“Fuck! Fine. Grab your rifle and meet me down there,” Gunny said.
“I thought you said you weren’t stupid,” Pete replied. Gunny glared at him, not understanding. “Bring your men up here,” Pete said. Gunny’s eyes lit up. He got it.
“You’re pretty smart for a civilian,” Gunny said and rushed off to get his men. Pete grabbed his rifle, a bone stock M-16, and the extra magazine. Every man working on the frontier was issued a rifle. Pete supposed this was why.
Gunny emerged from the building below and began barking orders. He broke his platoon into four separate squads and each headed for a different building that overlooked the intersection below. Gunny and seven other Marines joined Pete on the roof again. One of them was a radioman and he began informing others of the situation as the rest of the men took up firing positions. Pete found his own position among them.
He could hear the radio chatter. Every construction crew, every platoon of Marines or Special Forces, every checkpoint saw the same thing. A wall of zombies that seemingly spanned the entire width of the city. How they gathered into such a large herd, Pete had no idea but they were, bearing down on the safe zone. Bearing down on all the men, women and children that lived there. Bearing down on any hope Pete might have felt.
“One shot, one kill, devils! We’ve only got the ammo we’ve got. Don’t waste it. They can’t get you up here so take your time and kill as many of those freaks as you can,” Gunny ordered.
The roof went quiet as the Marines waited. The army of the undead advanced, but slowly. It was tempting to begin firing, the M4’s the Marines wielded have optics that would allow them to make shots at longer distances but Gunny held them back. The percentages weren’t good enough for shots of hundreds of yards. He reminded his Marines that at less than one hundred yards, the percentages would approach one hundred percent.
So they waited for the inevitable and hoped the defenses behind them would hold because as the army of zombies approached, it became clear a handful of men on a handful of rooftops weren’t going to be nearly enough.
Chapter 15
The humans scurried about ahead of Stanley’s army. They couldn’t know what was approaching. They saw a mob of the undead approaching. An army of mindless cannon fodder that could be disposed of with enough firepower. Stanley, however, knew different.
Yes, his minions were essentially mindless eating machines. He understood them all too well. He was infected by the same sickness, the plague, that ravaged them and left them with nothing more than an instinct to feed. Whatever virus, bacteria or parasite that had caused this, needed sustenance. It drove the once-human host to obtain that sustenance at all costs.
Yet the body didn’t die along with the consciousness. The muscles and organs functioned, seemingly independent of each other. Stanley had seen severed heads, the eyes still roving and the jaws still biting. A severed arm or leg would die but connected to the brain it lived somehow. Odd how it worked, thought Stanley. But that’s how it worked. His instincts and observations told him so.
But not Stanley. He still had his wits about him. His mind was as keen, maybe even more so, as it ever was. But his body was as his minions, able to take damage yet still function as long as his brain remained alive. It had to be the radiation from the nuclear bomb. During his trek across California Stanley hadn’t seen another like himself. He was unique as far as he knew. Right place, right time. Good for him but bad for the poor souls here in San Francisco.
That turn of fortune allowed his army to be more than just a herd of mindless eaters. With his leadership, they could do things like the humans. They could have purpose and direction. They did have a brain...his. And like a hive of bees, they followed their queen...or king in this case. They sensed his wants and needs. They followed his direction without direct orders or explanation. A good thing as they wouldn’t have understood anyway.
It wasn’t like that. The virus or bacteria or parasite that infected his army, as well as his own body, was communicating his demands somehow. Stanley didn’t pretend to understand. Maybe they always communicated but without a brain behind it, the communication was rudimentary at best. But with Stanley’s mind, those communications carried real meaning. And Stanley meant to punish the humans with that quirk of science, that stroke of luck.
Stanley didn’t lead his army. He was just another shambling hus
k of a former human in the midst of thousands. He didn’t stand out, at least from a distance. Up close, an observer would notice the light in his eyes, that spark of intelligence, that the others around Stanley lacked. But amongst his army, he was just another mindless zombie.
And when the humans discovered what Stanley was and what he could do, it would be too late.
~~~
“Wait for it,” Gunny said, his arm held ready. The Marines positioned on the four rooftops surrounding the intersection below watched for Gunnery Sergeant Chris Rodriquez’ signal. The mass of freaks approached closer. The shuffling and scraping of thousands of feet and the moans of thousands of slack jaws, not to mention the stench of thousands of rotting corpses, was frightening.
But Gunny and his men were safe on the rooftops. Nothing led him to believe that the zombies had the intellect to open doors, much less climb several flights of stairs and navigate the corridors of buildings, to get at their prey. The first zombie reached the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection. That was the point Gunny had selected, the point he would call on his men to rain death and destruction down on their enemy.
Gunny raised his hand and clenched his fist, the signal to open fire. Within moments, thirty some odd rifles roared to life. Though his men carefully selected their shots, the sheer number sounded like endless rolling thunder. The freaks below fell to the pavement, motionless, and the streets were paved in blood. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The only thing that would keep Gunny and his devil dogs from destroying this wall of freaks was their limited supply of ammunition and their barrels becoming too hot.
At other intersections along the frontier, the same scene repeated itself over and over. The word had been passed to other units. Some Army units had moved up to fill in the gaps. By the time the men on rooftops or hidden in upper floors were out of ammo, more men, ammo and artillery would have arrived to finish the job.
It was all planned. Not exactly like this but close enough. Marines and some special operators cleared buildings. The army manned the checkpoints and patrolled the edge of the secured zone just inside the frontier. More Army units were part of quick reaction teams. Others were held in reserve. Camp San Francisco was surrounded by water on three sides and the last side was heavily defended and guarded.
Even if a checkpoint was overrun, the zombies would be cut down in the street by lines of defenses or the quick reaction teams inside the city. It was foolproof. And the bodies piling up in the streets below proved that. Gunny picked his targets and pulled the trigger until his magazine was exhausted. It reminded him of qualifying back in boot camp. It definitely wasn’t like Afghanistan. Clearing buildings of freaks reminded him of that but not this. This was like shooting targets.
Gunny slapped in another magazine. He felt optimistic. They had this. Despite the thousands of freaks coming his way, there was a plan, things were normalizing. The freaks probably funneled together as they hit the southern end of the bay and were concentrated on the relatively narrow peninsula. He’d seen them gather in herds before, though not this large. Not even close.
That’s what he thought until four groups of roughly fifteen or twenty freaks peeled away from the herd and turned down the side street. They went directly for the buildings his Marines occupied. The idea that this was just some kind of natural occurrence disappeared entirely as he watched them go right for the doors, break them down with their combined weight and head inside as if on some kind of mission.
He was a seasoned enough warrior not to ignore what he saw. “The stairs!” he shouted but the constant gunfire drowned him out. He tapped men on the shoulders and soon his squad understood. “They’re coming up the stairs,” Gunny told them. Marines rushed to the door that led to the stairwell below. Men on the roof across the street understood the situation as well. Their roof, it appeared, had a hatch and a ladder instead of a door. The men on the other two roofs, however, didn’t see the danger.
Gunny’s men were thrown back as a surge of zombies hit the door but they managed to close it against struggling hands and arms to contain the surge. The men on the adjacent roof had an easier time holding their hatch closed. Gravity was on their side, not to mention the narrow ladder leading down. But on the other roofs, Gunny watched in horror as zombies surged forth and caught his men off guard.
Gunfire erupted on two of the rooftops as dozens of the undead rushed forth. Zombies went down but so did Marines. Gunny had no time to contemplate their fate. He put his shoulder into the back of one of his men and pushed with all his might as he called to the radio man.
“Helicopters. We need helicopters,” he shouted. The young man knew what his Gunnery Sergeant meant. They needed to be rescued. He put out the call. Explosions rocked one of the rooftops, grenades. That gave Gunny an idea.
“Put some grenades in that stairwell. Blow those motherfuckers to shreds,” he ordered. His Marines closest to the door put their weight against the door, rotting hands and gnashing teeth just inches away through the partially opened door. They pulled the pin on the grenades and then pushed them inside.
The defenders abandoned the door and hit the deck. Zombies threw open the door and emerged but a split second later, the grenades tore them apart. Blood and flesh covered the rooftop and one Marine was hit by shrapnel but not critically. More zombies appeared from the stairs below but two Marines gained their feet and managed to close the door fully before they could reach the door.
Suddenly Pete was up and moving. He called out to the remaining men. “Help me carry this over there,” he said as he picked up lumber and dragged it towards the door. He was joined by several young Marines. They carried the lumber to the door and then Pete grabbed a nail gun. The Marines understood and held boards up as Pete nailed them in place. Gunny tended to his wounded man as the others secured the door.
“That ought to do it,” one Marine said.
“Fuck that,” Pete said and nodded towards the remaining lumber. The Marines picked it up and Pete nailed that over the first layer of boards until the nail gun was empty.
“Watch that door. Don’t let them out,” Gunny warned. No one questioned the order. The wounded man was fine, a piece of shrapnel had nicked his leg. It looked worse than it was. Gunny surveyed the situation. His roof was secure. One other was secure as well. Two, however, had been overrun.
“You okay,” he called over to the secured roof across the street.
“Yeah, they can’t get up through the hatch,” one Marine, Staff Sergeant Billings, replied.
“Keep it that way,” he called back and turned to the radioman. He knelt on the roof still talking to someone. Then he looked up and pointed.
“There, Gunny!” he shouted. Gunny turned and on the horizon, four helicopters approached. Black Hawks, it appeared. The helicopters came in low over the rooftops of the city and then as they came close they flared and two hovered over the rooftops. The pilots deftly lowered their aircraft until the Marines could pile in.
The injured man went in first and then the rest of Gunny’s men. While this helicopter hovered just over the rooftop, the other across the street was able to nearly land on the roof. The other Black Hawks circled the area, checking the other roofs. Pete was next to last and as he got inside and turned around, he shouted and pointed.
“Behind you,” Pete exclaimed. Gunny turned just in time to see the boards holding the rooftop door give way. The first crush of zombies fell out of the door onto the roof as others from behind climbed over them, bent on tasting human flesh. Gunny was all but pulled into the helicopter by his men as it drifted away from the roof. Zombies rushed to the edge of the roof, many falling to the sidewalk below, unable to stop their momentum.
Gunny pushed through his men to speak to the pilot. “Any survivors on those other buildings?” he asked but he could already see the knots of undead feasting on his Marines. He wanted to turn away but he forced himself to look at the gory scene. Those were his men and he was responsible for their safety
. Gunny silently chastised himself for failing them.
“Sorry, they didn’t spot any,” the pilot replied after checking with the other aircraft.
“Blow those buildings to hell,” Gunny replied coldly.
“I’m not authorized...,” the pilot replied but Gunny cut him off.
“Those are my men. I don’t want to have to fight any of them later on. Destroy those buildings,” Gunny shot back through clenched teeth. The pilot stared at him for a moment and then turned and called the two empty aircraft.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he replied to the other pilot’s misgivings. Gunny moved back to the door and watched as the other aircraft circled and then unleashed their Hellfire missiles on the two overrun buildings. The rooftops exploded in smoke and fire consumed his dead Marines and the freaks that attacked them. One building collapsed entirely as the other burned.
Hundreds of zombies emerged from the smoke and ash caused by the collapsed building, advancing towards the safe zone. Adjacent streets were filled with the undead as well. From the air, Gunny saw the true scope of the army that they faced. Tens of thousands of freaks streamed into the city, stretching back as far as the eye could see.