McDaniels didn’t know what to make of that. “Head our way, Rapier? You mean they’re heading in our general direction, or they are heading for the task force location specifically? Over.” McDaniels was aware of several heads turning in his direction.
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. We just don’t have enough information, Cord. When we have some sort of analysis, we’ll get back to you on that. But our general advice is for you to make whatever preparations you can. Over.”
McDaniels looked at Jaworski’s note lying on the desk in front of him. “Rapier, this is Leonidas. If that’s the case, we’d like to start evacuating the civilians, starting with the pharmacologists and other vital personnel, as soon as possible. We don’t want to wait until the last second, and we have enough folks on staff to keep things going while capabilities are recovered in Canada. But we can’t afford to have all the smart folks in one place. We have the defenses to keep them alive and keep the zeds at bay for a time, but if the dead are going to be receiving substantial reinforcements, then common sense dictates we get these people out of the way as soon as we can. Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. Understand your logic; it makes sense. Let’s wait until sun up before we start that. Just in case a chopper goes down, I want to make sure search and rescue has enough light to see by. Over.”
McDaniels leaned back in his chair. “Rusty Carbody!”
Major Carmody leaned back in his chair, where he sat at the far end of the TOC, next to Rawlings and Lewis. “Here, sir.”
“If we start moving people out of here, do you prefer to do it at night or in the day? In case a Chinook goes down, is nighttime preferable?”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Carmody said. “If we go down at night, it’ll be tougher for the zeds to find us. But the same goes for CSAR, and the chances of us getting hurt increase as well.” He pronounced the acronym for Combat Search and Rescue as “see-sar.”
“Roger that, thanks.” McDaniels returned to the satellite phone. “Rapier Six, this is Leonidas. I just consulted with our aviation liaison officer, and he’s not convinced waiting is the way to go. The Night Stalkers think dark is still their best friend. I’d like to start pulling people out of here right away. Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Rapier Six. I’ll leave the decision up to you, but please, use all due caution when it comes to exposing essential personnel to any unnecessary dangers. Over.”
Like leaving them here in the path of fourteen million more zombies is a smart, conservative thing to do? “Roger, Rapier. Will do. Over.”
“Thank you, Leonidas. Is there anything else to report? Over.”
“Rapier, this is Leonidas. Negative, we’re continuing to hold out over here. Just keep the air support coming. Without that, things are going to get really tough, really quickly. Over.”
“Roger that, Leonidas. Rapier out.” The satellite link went dead.
McDaniels handed the phone to one of the enlisted operators, who in turn dropped it back into the charger. McDaniels looked around the tactical operations center, gazing at every face he could see. He didn’t like what he saw. Not only had the zombies arrived, but everyone was spooked by Jaworski’s suicide. Morale was swirling around the drain already, and they had only just made contact with the necromorph army.
“Let’s keep up with operations, folks,” McDaniels said. “Chase, are you overseeing the forward air controllers, or—”
“I’m the senior controller, Colonel. Larry Blanding,” said a blond-haired man with a thin, hooked nose and an overbite. He looked sunburned.
“Captain Blanding, good to have you guys with us. You’re keeping tabs on the close air?”
“Yes, sir, though it’s not exactly close air just yet—more like air support,” Blanding said.
“Well, whatever it is, keep on doing it. Those attacks are keeping the majority of the zeds away from the wire, and that’s a good thing. How many of you guys are on shift?”
“Three of us at a time, though only one of us is usually engaged managing attacks. There just aren’t that many of them at the moment, and they come in waves, so we can manage them pretty easily right now.”
“Are there any gaps in our coverage? Any breaks that might allow the zeds enough time to mass and push through the incendiaries to move on us?”
“Nothing like that’s in the order of battle, sir, but you can never tell. An aircraft might have to abort due to mechanical difficulties or other circumstances. But the coverage is layered up nicely.”
McDaniels nodded. “Let’s hope the pace doesn’t change. Keep at it, Captain Blanding.” He looked back at Chase. “How are the rest of the elements doing, Chase?”
“Everything’s in the green at the moment, sir. We’re good.”
“Bull?”
“Rangers stand at the ready, Colonel.”
“Rawlings? SEALs are good?”
“All up and loaded, Colonel.”
“Switchblade? Special Forces status?”
“All good, sir. All drunk, but they’re good.”
McDaniels snorted. “Typical.” He rose to his feet and looked up and down the trailer that housed the tactical operations center. Most of the troops manning the center were heads down, doing their work. Only a few looked back at him.
“All right, Jaworski is history. His body is flying out on the next Chinook. Is there anything I need to know which might not be in any of the smart books or someplace I’d be likely to find it? Does anyone have an update or a pulse that hasn’t already been socialized?” He waited for several long seconds, watching as controllers and operators looked up from their work and glanced around. No one spoke up.
“Very well, then. We’ll maintain our current optempo for the next several hours, at least. QRF elements, you should probably start rotating your assets out of the zone. We need our shooters as well rested as possible. Let’s start with the snipers and mortarmen. They’ve been banging out for the longest.”
“We have enough Special Forces snipers on hand to ensure everyone gets some rest,” Switchblade said. “Not to worry about that, sir.”
“And I have another mortar team ready to stand up,” Haley said. “We came into this knowing the mortars might be going for twenty-four hours a day, so we have enough relief to ensure the human parts of the machine don’t break down very easily.”
“Outstanding. And let’s not forget the troops on the walls. They’ll need to be relieved as well.”
“Will do,” Haley said.
McDaniels compared the time on his watch with that of the clocks on the wall. The battle clock, which displayed the engagement time, read 1:21:42.
Not even an hour and a half yet. Not even an hour and half, and things have already started to go a little sideways.
8
Weapons continued firing throughout the night, and the heavy explosions of munitions going off in the desert rolled through the camp in ceaseless waves, underscored by the distant drone of jet engines and whirling helicopter rotors. The tempo of operations remained steady. More stenches would move toward the camp, the snipers and mortar team would reach out and pound them for a bit, and then the Air Force would essentially atomize the walking corpses with incendiary devices. Then the gunships and snipers would pick off any that managed to totter through the raging inferno left by the bombers and attack jets. It took a few hours to get the synchronicity established, but the zombies weren’t exactly trying to outfox anyone. All the soldiers, sailors, and airmen manning the camp’s defenses knew the zeds were only interested in chowing down and would simply keep coming until that goal was reached.
For the military personnel, it wasn’t an especially arduous engagement as of yet. There were pauses, usually when the big bombers moved through and dropped the curtain across the necromorph advance. The lulls might last only fifteen minutes to an hour, but they were long enough for the defenders to recharge their weapons, take a quick bio break, and generally get squared away. Killing was what they were
trained to do, and killing was what they did. As far as combat operations went, things weren’t that bad. Yet.
For the civilians, it was a nightmare. The rumbling thunder of turbofan engines in the night sky, the almost incandescent explosions of liquid fire that rolled across the desert, the constant crackle of gunfire in a wide variety of calibers, were all nothing they could grow used to in a few short hours. Children cried, women shook with fear, and men paced, the worry plain on their faces. Even though surrounded by over a thousand soldiers with some of the most powerful weapons of war ever assembled, the civilians in the camp weren’t dumb. They had seen the news reports and had noticed as the broadcasts switched out of their New York, Washington, and Atlanta main offices to affiliates in the west. The necromorphs numbered in the millions, and they were eating their way across the nation. That led to some very upset and worried civilians who spent the first night of the engagement wishing for sleep, but knowing it would never arrive.
Nor did sleep appear on McDaniels’s agenda. He spent the night in the TOC, overdosing on caffeine while overseeing the operations with Haley on one side and Gartrell on the other, when the sergeant major wasn’t out walking the line and looking over the troops. When the first smudges of dawn gathered on the eastern horizon, he finally stepped out of the tactical operations center. The pre-dawn air was chilly and smelled vaguely of chemicals—the tang jellified fuel from the incendiary bombs being dropped on the necromorphs, accented by the sharper scent of expended propellants from the mortar battery and the helicopters that continued to cross the sky. McDaniels looked up and noticed the Apaches were nowhere to be seen. The Night Stalkers had taken wing, using their AH-6 Little Birds to bring the battle to the zeds.
“Calling it a night, Colonel?” one of the sentries asked with a salute.
“Don’t I wish,” McDaniels replied. “I’m heading over to have a chat with the boss of the facility.”
“Isn’t that you now, sir?”
“I meant the president of the company whose land we’re currently defending,” McDaniels explained. He clapped the man on the shoulder and started off into the gloom.
The soldier called out, “Hey, sir, hold up. You should take an escort with you. You shouldn’t be walking through the camp by yourself, now that we’re engaged by the enemy.”
“I’ll be fine, Corporal. Don’t worry about me.” He pointed to the Special Forces tabs on the shoulder of his BDU blouse. “See? I’m qualified to eat any snake that comes my way.”
“Uh, if you say so, sir,” the Ranger corporal said.
McDaniels laughed and continued on his way. He marched through the camp at an aggressive pace, fully armed and armored, his night vision goggles attached to the mount on his helmet. He didn’t need them, for the generators still hummed, and there was plenty of light all across the camp. He had no difficulty seeing where he was headed as he bore down on the first of the office buildings in the complex. As he walked, he took stock of the camp and its occupants. The military members didn’t seen unduly stressed by the current state of events, though they were hardly relaxed. Those who were off duty sat in their tents and tried to read or talked amongst themselves, but few slept. That would come later, McDaniels knew, once the true exhaustion set in. At the moment, even the most experienced soldier who understood the camp was safe would have a tough time catching some shut-eye.
The civilians, of course, had it much worse. Without the same core of discipline to draw from, or the advanced training to inform their decisions, there was little they could do to keep the fear at bay. Several approached him with questions he could not easily answer.
Are we safe?
Yes.
Are the zombies in the camp?
No.
When will the air raids stop?
I don’t think they will.
When will the zombies leave?
I don’t know that they will.
McDaniels left dissatisfaction, and perhaps even more fear, in his wake, and as he approached the office building, he called the TOC to inform them of the possible breakdown they might face among the camp’s civilian components. He asked the TOC staff to add that to one of the many things they would need to tend to, and if there was anything they could do to put the civilians more at ease, McDaniels was all for it.
Looks like no one thought about psyops. I guess we could have used some of those guys after all. But who would have guessed we’d need them for our own people?
No guards were posted around the office buildings. McDaniels made a mental note of that—would they need to be guarded, at some point?—but he knew it was something that would probably slip off his radar. There was just too much going on, and the truth of the matter was, the manufacturing facility behind the office buildings was of primary importance.
He noticed that thick, sliding shield doors had been set in place on deep rails cut through the flagstones in the courtyard. If the stenches managed to get inside, the doors could be drawn closed. Similar plates covered all of the first floor windows and several of the second story windows as well. Scaffolding had been erected at one end of the building, and engineers stood on it, working on welding another plate in place amidst an explosion of angry sparks. The arc of their plasma torch cut through the gloom like a lighthouse’s beacon.
The security guard on duty in the building’s lobby looked tired, rumpled, and scared. He was an older man in his fifties with a big gut that strained against the fabric of his white dress shirt. He practically leapt to his feet when McDaniels stepped into the lobby. McDaniels nodded as he passed through the door, the buttstock of his HK417 glancing off its metal frame.
“Sorry to bother you,” McDaniels said.
“No, no, no bother. Is there something… wrong?” The man’s pale eyes were bloodshot, and his face had an ashen cast to it, as if he’d just come off a long tequila bender.
In the distance, another rumble rolled across the desert. Another airstrike was underway.
“We’re good,” McDaniels told him. “The camp is secure. I’m looking for Doctor Regina Safire. I think she’s staying in this building?”
“Uh…” The security guard looked down at his desk for a moment, then seemed to remember what it was he needed to do. He typed on a computer keyboard that McDaniels couldn’t see. “Uh yeah, she’s in this building. Not sure where she is right this second, she could be in the group quarters set up downstairs or in the cafeteria on the top floor.” He turned and glanced at the ornate clock hanging on the wall behind him. “It’s just after five o’clock. Do I need to make a PA announcement for her to come to the lobby?”
McDaniels considered that, then shook his head. “Is the cafeteria open?”
“Yes, sir. Should be open now. Extended hours and all that.” The guard pointed to the elevator bank at the end of the lobby. “Take one of those to the top floor, then follow the signs. It shouldn’t be tough for you to find. But uh… you might frighten some of the folks up there, with all your gear and stuff.”
McDaniels looked down at himself. He was in full battle rattle—battle dress utilities, armor, weapons, helmet, and radio headset. He shrugged. “If this is something that’s going to frighten them, they’ll have to deal with it. There are more important things to be scared of.”
***
McDaniels walked down the eighth floor hallway, his dun-colored boots whispering across the carpet. He smelled cooking food and heard the bustle of activity coming from the cafeteria at the far end of the hall. Some InTerGen employees were already up and at it, and they looked at McDaniels with open curiosity as he stepped into the cafeteria. McDaniels smiled as reassuringly as he could as he walked through the facility, scanning for Regina.
“Well hello, Colonel McDaniels,” said a tall, broad-shouldered man with a craggy face, silver hair, and tanned skin. He stood up from a nearby dining table. He wore a holster on his belt, and the butt of a pistol stuck out of it. “What brings you up here?”
It took a moment for M
cDaniels to recall the man’s name. He advanced toward the table slowly. “Uh… it’s Ed, right?”
Ed nodded. “Ed Wallace, facilities manager.” He stuck out his hand, and McDaniels shook it automatically. “Is everything all right? Anything going down we need to know about?”
Another flash in the desert drew McDaniels’s attention toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the courtyard and the fortified camp beyond it. Several employees stood at the windows, watching the airstrikes, oohing and aahing as if they were watching a fireworks display.
“I think everyone already knows what’s going down,” McDaniels said, motioning toward the glow of incendiary weapons going off. “We’re keeping the stenches back with airstrikes. It’s noisy, and it’s intrusive, but it’s probably preferable to having a hundred thousand of them running up to the walls.”
Ed nodded. “Of that, sir, I have no doubt. Of course, we’ve all been watching the news. Looks like even CNN is operating out of Los Angeles now.” He jerked his chin toward one of the fancy widescreen LED televisions mounted on the wall.
McDaniels turned and glanced at it. The same anchor who had been broadcasting for the past two hours was on the screen, but soon, his image was replaced by grainy footage of the dead overwhelming a network news van. The crew was slaughtered, but the fixed cameras kept recording. It was a gruesome sight, even if the network blurred out the most offensive imagery.
“Yeah, the dead are withdrawing from the east coast and moving west,” McDaniels said.
“Running out of people to eat, are they?” Ed asked.
McDaniels thought about spilling the truth—No, Ed, they’re all just coming to Odessa—but there was no need to start a panic. Eventually, the news networks would get a hold of the same information the military had, and it wouldn’t be long before everyone in the camp knew the InTerGen complex was about to become Zombie Ground Zero.
The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 9