The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead )

by Stephen Knight

  The reverend looked up at the tent overhead. “So they’re here now?”

  “Almost.” Gartrell looked at the taller man, taking note of the fear in his eyes. Even though Gribble was supposed to be only inches away from God’s holy grace, he was still frightened, as all men were when their mortality clock started winding down. Gartrell thought about trying to say something comforting, but the wetware just wasn’t up to it.

  “Take care of your flock,” was all he said, before he turned for the tent’s exit.

  Outside, SPARTA was coming alive. The Rangers were manning up and moving out, heading for their positions. The camp perimeter was already manned, but the Ranger commander wanted more meat on the line just in case, to make sure the first engagement was managed as well as possible. Helicopters were spooling up in the distance, and one of the unmanned reconnaissance units blatted past overhead, invisible in the night sky, but louder than a teenager’s tricked-out Honda Civic street racer with fart pipes for an exhaust system.

  Gartrell pushed through the crowd, heading for the tactical operations center, then stopped and turned toward the east wall. That was where the main entrance to the camp lay, bathed in the hot glow of generator-powered floodlights. A lot of the Rangers and some of the SF troops would be there, and that was where the first contact was likely to occur.

  That was also where the civilians were still camped, pleading with the troops manning the gates to let them in. Their time was up, and while he had no desire at all to witness what was about to come down, he knew his presence would help keep the troops manning the wall oriented and mission-focused.

  “Gartrell!”

  He turned and found McDaniels hurrying toward him. Like himself, McDaniels was fully manned up and ready for action—he wore full body armor and carried all of his personal weapons, with extra ammo on his belt and, Gartrell guessed, in the knapsack at his side. Other operations personnel walked behind the colonel.

  “You heading for ops?” McDaniels asked as he drew closer.

  “Negative, was going to take a walk down the perimeter,” Gartrell said.

  McDaniels nodded. “Good call, I was going to suggest that when I saw you. The zeds are still a few miles out, but they’re arriving in Odessa in force. It’s going to start to get hairy pretty soon, especially for the external security teams.”

  “Maybe we should bring them back inside,” Gartrell said. “Or at least have them fall back a few phase lines closer to the perimeter.”

  McDaniels nodded. “Once I get a better picture of the current threat level, I’ll start moving them around. I haven’t forgotten how the zeds caught Zero-Three-Four with their pants down, so I’m not going to be too conservative on how I protect the force. Keep an eye on the wall and let me know how the rest of the troops are doing on the inside. Hooah?”

  “Hooah.”

  “Later, then.” McDaniels marched off toward the operations trailer, taking his sudden coterie with him. Gartrell watched the procession with some small amusement. He’d never thought that McDaniels would be the kind of officer to attract an entourage, of all things.

  ***

  “Odessa’s gone,” Jaworski said when McDaniels slid into his seat in the operations center. “There are still some holdouts where folks have barricaded themselves into well-fortified positions, but a lot of them are under siege. They won’t last for long.” To illustrate, he pointed to a monitor that showed real-time UAV surveillance of a well-defended house being attacked by wave after wave of stenches.

  To McDaniels, the structure seemed to be a farmhouse of sorts, with the big wraparound porch and a steeped roof. Every window had been boarded up and then covered with chain-link fence, the doors had been reinforced by walls of cinderblock and mortar, and firing slits had been cut into the house walls. Through the drone’s infrared cameras, McDaniels saw the gunfire quite plainly. Whoever was inside the house was laying it on thick, and there were already piles of dead stenches all across the property. But the house was under attack by at least ten thousand zombies. Even if the folks inside the house had five hundred thousand bullets, their defenses weren’t layered, and the zeds could essentially walk right up to the dwelling and attack it directly. Under those conditions, the walls would eventually fail.

  “And there they go,” Rawlings said from his station.

  On the screen, one of the cinderblock fortifications crumbled beneath the press of walking corpses. The stenches flooded inside the house, and a moment later, the gunfire stopped. The UAV continued to orbit the dwelling, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. McDaniels was about to ask if the unit should be retasked when one of the windows on the house’s second floor opened. White-hot bodies leaped out onto the roof, both adults and children. They scrambled up the incline to the roof’s peak, then turned and fired at the dozens of zombies boiling out of the window after them. At first, the zeds fell several at a time. The gunfire leveled against them was lethal and accurate, and their bodies rolled off the roof and fell onto the undulating mass of the walking dead below.

  “You know, Colonel, we could send a Black Hawk to pull those people off the roof.” Rawlings’s tone was almost conversational.

  Jaworski watched the display with emotionless eyes. “None of the Black Hawks have rescue hoists, which means they’d have to hover low to the roofline. If one of those things hit the main rotor system, we’d lose the asset.”

  “So uh, I guess that’s a no, right, sir?”

  Jaworski pointed at the screen. More stenches broke through another window on the other side of the house. They streamed out of the opening and stormed up the roofline to where the civilians sat. The people were fixated on the original threat and slow to take notice of the second front opening up behind them. When they did, it was too late.

  That didn’t take long …

  “Bird Dog control, this is Leonidas Six,” Jaworski said into his headset. “All right, let’s move that bird to another location. Let’s get some more eyes on the city’s southside.” He turned back to McDaniels. “Cord, let’s pull all of our guys back to Phase Line Dare. I’ve arranged for airstrikes to start against the advancing elements to the east. They’ll be underway in less than forty minutes, and all of our guys are starting to see some heat. Let’s take it off them for a while.”

  A phase line was a cartographic line utilized for control and coordination of military operations, usually a terrain feature extending across the zone of action. Since the majority of the terrain surrounding SPARTA was featureless and generally unremarkable, most of the phase lines were represented by GPS coordinates that every maneuver element in the field had stored in their GPS receivers and written on their maps. Each phase line was one mile apart and extended from the outer perimeter of the camp to just outside the Odessa city limits. There was no reason for them to extend beyond ten miles, since SPARTA didn’t have the resources to influence the battlespace any further. Usually, phase lines were given milquetoast designations, such as the names of beers or automobiles or even letters. Jaworski was having none of that. He’d selected the names of famous pornography starlets from the 1970s and 1980s as the phase line designations in this operation. For instance, Phase Line Dare, located at the five-mile mark, was named after Barbara Dare, a mid-tier performer from the 1980s.

  “Roger that. What airframes are we talking about?” McDaniels pulled his workstation keyboard toward him and typed in a command. The display showed him a map of the area and the current disposition of SPARTA’s forces. Each unit was represented by an icon, and appended to that icon was a brief operational status. All but two units were listed as IN CONTACT, meaning they were actively engaged with zeds.

  “B-52s. They’ll be pounding the area with incendiaries. It’s full of zeds anyway, and I’m sure the Air Force will be eager to get rid of some older munitions.”

  “Is this going to be a Vietnam-era ARC LIGHT mission?” McDaniels asked.

  “Exactly, only they’re called WILD FIRE runs in this instance
. Glad to see I’m not the only one who paid attention to that stuff during OCS.”

  McDaniels grinned and looked back at his display. “Rawlings, I see Alcatraz One-Six is in the heat, and they’re way out in bandit country. Let’s bring them back behind Dare. Have them reposition to the coordinates I’m sending to you. Switchblade, I want you to move Alpha Zero-Two-Two into the same position so they can back each other up. We’ll have them secure the northern approach down the interstate. There’s a gas station on the corner. If it’s deserted, they should wire it up for demolition. We might get lucky and fry a few hundred of the bastards.” As he spoke, McDaniels typed in the GPS coordinates into a command and control message on his workstation and forwarded it to Rawlings, Switchblade, and the aviation commander, Major Carmody. “Rusty, you might want to make some AH-6s available to cover their retreat if they need it.”

  “Roger that, Colonel. Reapers One and Two are already spooling up.”

  “Hooah.”

  “Cord, when can we expect meaningful contact?” Jaworski asked.

  “One hour, max.” McDaniels looked at another monitor that showed the situation at the main gate. While the crowd of civilians had thinned over the hours—most had taken the military’s advice and headed west across the scrubland, either on foot or in hardy vehicles—some had held back. He estimated there were at least a hundred or so souls out there. “Any change in your orders regarding the civilians, sir?”

  Jaworski only glanced at the screen. “Negative. This installation remains closed.”

  “Roger that,” McDaniels said evenly. But in the pit of his stomach, he felt sick at the prospect of abandoning so many helpless people, and he wondered if Jaworski felt the same way.

  ***

  “Man, check that shit out,” Doofus said as he stood up and looked over the sandbagged revetment he manned with Roche and Shin. He had his night vision goggles pushed up on their helmet mount since there were so many floodlights everywhere. Roche rose and looked toward the north. The city of Odessa was on fire, and it left a glowing orange smear that seemed to stretch across the entire horizon.

  “Never seen anything quite like that before,” Shin said from behind him. “Not even when I was in LA once during the wildfire season.”

  “That shit’s definitely messed up. I mean, even if it’s just Odessa, it’s still an American city burning to the ground.” Doof shook his head sadly. “Never thought I’d see that kind of shit here at home.”

  “I hear you, Doof,” Roche said. “I don’t think any of us ever did.”

  Shin raised his SCAR to his shoulder and peered through its night vision scope. He slowly panned the rifle from left to right, then stopped suddenly. “Target, about four hundred meters out. Single zed, coming in from the desert—” A muffled crack sounded from the observation tower to their left, and Shin grunted in disdain. “Scratch that. There was a target coming at us.”

  Roche grinned. “Don’t sound so down and out, man. A few million more where that one came from.”

  “Rangers, you guys doing all right?”

  Roche turned and found Command Sergeant Major Gartrell standing beside their position. He held his AA-12 in a ready position, and like the rest of the Rangers manning the wall, his NVGs were pushed up on their mount, ready for use when required. Roche knew Gartrell was a hard-assed SOB, one real hard-charger who would ride a troop hard just to make a point. But he’d also fought the stenches in New York City, which was no party at all, and he’d even been left behind the lines by himself for a few days. Any guy that could get through that and walk out alive was someone Roche thought he should pay attention to.

  “We’re good here, Sarmajor. Just waiting for the hammer to come down.”

  “It will. Don’t worry about that.” Gartrell looked at him. “Roche, is it? I thought you were one of those Darth Vader types.” The reference was to the SOICS gear that some of the Rangers used to give them additional mobility and greater firepower during raids. While still new to even the special operations community, the high-tech exoskeletons were already well-regarded as powerful tools that turned individual soldiers into significant force multipliers across the battlefield. But the Army changed slowly, and any new technological advance was always met by some flat-headed Neanderthals who pooh-poohed its utility. So SOICS-equipped Rangers were called Darth Vaders, and the intimation was they were more robot than human.

  “We’ll only deploy that outside the wall,” Roche said, gesturing past the sandbags toward the tiers of deep trenches, berms, HESCO barriers, and concertina wire.

  Gartrell looked in the direction he indicated, and Roche pointed out the SOICS troops manning the decontamination/hazmat areas that had been set up inside the wire… back when they were still allowing civilians inside.

  “Up here, SOICS isn’t of much use since we don’t have to cover a lot of terrain to fight,” Roche explained. “We’re just moving along the CONEX containers. But if the stenches can make it through the wires and trenches, we’ll man up and deploy it against them down there, to keep them back from the berm.”

  Gartrell nodded and looked toward the inferno on the horizon. “When did that start? Looks like the entire town’s going up.”

  “About forty minutes or so,” Shin said. Gartrell nodded to him, and when the sergeant major looked back at the blaze, Shin started making faces behind his back. Roche kept his face blank, even though it was kind of funny—juvenile, but funny too, kind of like a man putting his head inside an alligator’s open mouth and daring it to bite him.

  “So, Shin, you wear the Darth Vader outfit, too?” Gartrell asked.

  “That’s right, Sergeant Major.” When Gartrell didn’t turn back to him, Shin made another face, flipping his tongue in and out of his mouth as if licking an ice cream cone at full speed. Roche shook his head slightly, and Doofus hid a grin behind his hand.

  “Then I’ll tell you what.” Gartrell turned back to Shin and looked at him flatly. “If you stop making faces when my back is turned, I won’t kick your robot balls so hard they’ll need to give you a full series of WD-40 transfusions to bring you back from the brink of death. What do you say to that, Ranger?”

  “Uh, I say that’s a great trade, Sarmajor.” Shin was obviously surprised that Gartrell had known about his antics.

  “Hey, Sarmajor, check this out,” Doofus said. He rolled up the sleeve of his uniform and showed his tattoo to Gartrell. “Whaddaya think of this? Pretty awesome, huh?”

  Gartrell looked at the tattoo. “Soy sauce? You got a tat that says soy sauce, son?”

  The Doofus looked as though he was about to jump off the side of the tall container. “What? Sarmajor, you know Chinese? This says killing dragon, man!”

  “I know several key words and phrases in several different languages, soldier. That tat says ‘soy sauce.’ Which means you’re either very odd, very stupid, or very gullible and got punked in a pretty major way.”

  “Oh, fuck.” Doof looked at his tattoo with wide eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me, Sarmajor? Tell me you’re fucking kidding me, man!”

  Gartrell looked at him with a hard, almost reptilian gaze. “Do I look like I’m having a ha-ha moment, Ranger?”

  “Oh, fuck,” Doofus repeated.

  “Snap out of it, son. Look at it this way. At least the zeds will know who to turn to when they want to season their next meal.”

  “Gee, thanks a whole hell of a lot.”

  Gartrell patted Doofus on the shoulder. “Remember, son. I’m here for you whenever you need me.”

  “That’s comforting, Sarmajor. Really, man. Thanks.”

  “Attention in the camp. Attention in the camp,” a voice said over the PA system. “Airstrikes are going to begin in the east in two minutes.”

  “Airstrikes?” Doofus asked. “That’ll be so cool!”

  Gartrell clapped Doofus on the shoulder again. “That’s the spirit, son.” He glared at Shin. “Any further facial contortions you might want to thrill me with, Sergea
nt Shin?”

  “I got nothing, Sarmajor,” Shin said, his face as expressive as Mount Rushmore.

  “Consider yourself lucky. Where’s your chalk?”

  Shin turned and pointed to the next set of sandbagged positions to their right. “My unit’s there. This is Roche’s. Dobbins’s is over that way.”

  “You’re the senior guy here, Roche?”

  “Yes, Sarmajor. But our officers are right down there, at the corner.” Roche pointed to where the wall of CONEX containers turned and headed in a westerly direction. “So if we need some adult supervision, they’re right over there.”

  Gartrell nodded and looked at the array of Rangers surrounding them. Roche was certain the sergeant major would make some suggestions to firm up their emplacement, but he did no such thing.

  Gartrell merely turned and regarded the three Rangers soberly. “Get your war faces on, boys. This is going to be one long ass fight,” he said, then turned and headed up the wall.

  Shin, Roche, and Doofus all exchanged glances.

  “Okay, what the fuck was that about?” Shin asked.

  “Dude, what the hell were you thinking, making faces at the guy? He’s a Jedi Knight. He could’ve busted your neck before you knew what was going down.” Roche was actually a little pissed. “You need to dial that shit back, bro. Really.”

  “Yeah, whatever… like I’m supposed to be all scared of the big bad Special Forces soldier,” Shin said. He almost sneered at Roche, which only served to further piss him off.

  “Hey, go and sit with your chalk, all right? The shit’s rolling, and we’re downhill, so get ready for it.”

  “Whatever,” Shin repeated. He turned and walked over to where his element was set up.

  Roche sighed and turned back to the Doofus, who was busy staring at his arm.

  “You think I can cut this off with my knife?” Doofus asked, touching his tattoo with one finger.

  Roche shook his head. “Dude, you’re—”

  Brilliant light far out in the desert shut him up. He turned and watched as blossoming fields of fire erupted on the horizon, racing from right to left in jerking evolutions. A few moments later, the rumble of the explosions reached Roche’s ears, and over that, he could make out the distant roar of jet engines. He looked up, and in the clear sky, he could see the dim outlines of the bombers.