“Gotta be at least fifty thousand of the things there,” Haley said. “You were right, Cord. Those things are dumb as posts.”
“Not all of them.” Gartrell jerked his chin toward the screen. “What you see there is the lowest denominator. They outnumber the smart ones by thousands to one, but the smart ones are a thousand times more lethal, because sometimes, they can still remember stuff that helps them to work against you.”
“Hooah, Sergeant Major,” Haley said.
“How long until the MOAB is dropped, Chase?” McDaniels asked.
Chase looked at one of the Air Force controllers who whispered something to him. “Thirty seconds, Colonel,” Chase said.
“We have no aviation assets in the area other than the drone?”
“Negative on that, sir,” Major Carmody said. “All our rotary wing units are here, except for one Chinook flying up to Carson.”
“Chase, can the MOAB explosion destroy the drone?”
“We don’t think so, sir. We’re holding it at eight thousand feet.”
“You don’t think so, or you know so?”
Chase hesitated. “Sorry, sir, we don’t know. This is only like the third MOAB to ever be detonated and the first one where there’s a Shadow UAV on-station. The Air Force tells us eight thousand feet should give us enough of a cushion, but we won’t know if they’re right until it happens.” He glanced at one of the digital clocks above the monitors. “Fourteen seconds, sir.”
“We need some popcorn,” Haley said.
“I can send someone to the D-FAC for some, sir,” Chase said.
“We don’t have any here?”
“No, sir. Sorry.”
“Don’t look so disappointed, Bull,” McDaniels said. “Here, let me cheer you up. Gartrell, give Colonel Haley a lap dance.”
Both Gartrell and Haley glared at him, but others in the operations center chuckled.
“You really need some rack time, Colonel,” Gartrell said.
“You got that right,” McDaniels agreed.
One of the Air Force controllers spoke to Chase, who passed on the information. “MOAB has been deployed. Five seconds to detonation. Shadow UAV data stream is on main screen one; Air Force satellite downlink is on main screen two.”
Of the two big screens, the one showing the view from the UAV was clearer, more immediate. McDaniels concentrated on that one. “Showtime,” he said, watching the undulating mass of dead bodies that had been attracted into the kill zone by some lights and blaring mariachi music. He caught a glimpse of a large cylinder with a pointed nose plunging into view, and then it disappeared in a flash of white light. The MOAB had exploded, and its flash had momentarily overpowered the FLIR on the circling Shadow drone.
“MOAB has detonated,” Chase reported dutifully. “OPUS reports a successful delivery, on time and on target.”
“Man, they always say that,” Carmody said.
Gartrell leaned forward and pointed at the second big display. “Look at the satellite link!”
McDaniels looked away from the first screen. On the second, the satellite clearly showed the MOAB’s tremendous shock wave ripping across the great mass of the dead, incinerating them in one fell swoop. As the shock wave cooled, it blasted even more zeds into pulp, crashing over them like some gigantic steamroller. Those ghouls that weren’t instantly immolated by the weapon were thrown to the ground with such force that they did not get up again. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen alike cheered and clapped their hands at the ferocious display of devastating firepower.
“Now that’s what I call entertainment!” Gartrell said.
“Colonel, I’m getting reports from the observation posts. They report a mushroom cloud on the horizon!” Chase said.
“Pass on that it’s a MOAB, not a nuke,” McDaniels said. “Things are bad, but they’re not so bad we’re nuking our own country.” He saw the screen hosting the drone footage was back, so the drone’s FLIR camera must have reset. The view was a glimpse into Hell. The entire landscape was blasted and shattered, and a deep crater indicated where the MOAB had gone off. Even though the weapon hadn’t actually struck the ground, it had exploded with enough force to blast a huge divot into the earth. Scattered all around were the smoldering remains of tens of thousands of necromorphs; almost all that was left of them were twisted limbs and decimated torsos. A few hundred feet from the explosion’s epicenter, more stenches could be seen, but they lay motionless on the desert floor. A thousand feet out from ground zero, thousands more zombies thrashed about, so mutilated by the blast’s force that they could no longer walk.
“Chase, work on getting some solid battle damage assessment on that attack,” McDaniels said. “And pass on my congratulations to the pilots of that 130. They did a hell of a job!” For the first time in a long while, he felt something akin to hope blossom in his chest.
Bull Haley slapped him on the back. “Goddamn, we can finally start hitting them back now!”
“Chase, find out when we can arrange for another attack like this one,” McDaniels said. “We’ll need to figure out how to deploy a rigged generator with lights and audio, and then switch it on remotely, but once we do that, we’ll want to start some more attacks.”
“Sir, I wouldn’t count on that,” Chase said solemnly.
“What are you talking about?”
“This was just a demonstration run, sir. The Air Force won’t commit to any further MOAB attacks just yet.”
McDaniels frowned. “Why the hell not?”
Chase sighed. “Well sir, it’s like this. I’m told the Air Force only has fifteen—fourteen, now—MOABs in the inventory, and they don’t want to use them all up.”
McDaniels stared at Chase for a long moment. Overhead, the roar of turbine engines filled the air, and the operations center trembled as another air raid against the dead commenced. A moment later, sniper rifles cracked in the near distance as surviving zeds were picked off one by one.
Haley snorted and sat down in his chair heavily. He shook his head in disgust. “Too good to be true, like a date with a supermodel. It’s always like that with the Air Force.”
“Chase, tell me the Air Force is building more of them,” McDaniels said.
Chase sighed again. “Sir, they were built by the Army, at the ammo plant at McAlester. And the plant was overrun by the stenches three weeks ago. No one’s going to be working there again for a very long time.”
McDaniels laughed humorlessly. “Well, fuck me.”
13
At two in the morning, McDaniels finally returned to his tent for some rest. He just couldn’t keep going. It had been three days since he’d slept for any reasonable amount of time, and the tactical situation remained static. The firebombing continued. The snipers would service any targets that made it through the maelstrom, and the troops manning the walls remained vigilant for any additional incursions, backed up by the electronic monitoring systems deployed around the perimeter. The Chinooks kept flying product out, but with every trip, they took five civilians. Regina Safire had vetted the list of essential personnel and made only two changes. The company president, Blye, had complained to McDaniels. When McDaniels compared Blye’s original list with Regina’s version, he found only two deletions and no additions. McDaniels conceded the point to Blye, and his two original designates were moved back onto the list. With everything else that was going on, it just wasn’t worth the extra aggravation. Before leaving the operations center, he did instruct Carmody to work with the InTerGen people to see if the loads of vaccine could be palletized further, so they might be slung beneath the Chinooks. The big helicopters were leaving the airfield with their cargo bays full, but with plenty of power remaining. McDaniels wanted the loads further optimized so room could be made for more personnel.
What he didn’t tell Carmody was that he was planning on a full withdrawal of civilian personnel from the camp. After being told the Air Force had only a handful of MOABs available, he knew that if push came to shove, the
joint task force would eventually have to withdraw. Even though their defenses hadn’t been stressed as of yet, the stenches were just too numerous. The Air Force, snipers, and attack helicopters couldn’t hold them at bay forever.
It was too late to call Paulette, and Lenny was already sleeping. The boy had adapted to the sounds of combat and could likely sleep through an artillery barrage. McDaniels had stopped by the tent Lenny was sleeping in—separate from his girlfriend’s family, of course—and stood inside the entrance for a few minutes, just listening to his son’s soft snoring. Lenny had been born when McDaniels was twenty-one years old. McDaniels marveled at the time that had slipped past. In his mind’s eye, Lenny was still a bright, happy baby boy that he had bathed in the kitchen sink. McDaniels prayed Lenny would live to see his twenty-first birthday.
With that heavy thought in his mind, McDaniels finally retreated to his tent and fell into a deep, dreamless, but still restless sleep.
He awoke what seemed like only moments later to the sounds of thunder and fury. The ground seemed to shake beneath his cot, and the basso rumble hit him right in the chest. He rolled off the cot and checked his watch—three minutes after five in the morning. Outside the tent, he heard the sounds of frantic activity—sustained gunfire, troops yelling, helicopter engines coming to life. He grabbed his radio, switched it on, then slipped the headset over his ears.
“Ops, this is Leonidas. What’s going down? Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Ops. Looks like the last bombing run didn’t have the right loadout. They dropped high explosive munitions, not incendiaries. Uh, it looks like we’ve got stenches in the wire all along the eastern wall. They’re pushing past the perimeter. Over.” The operator on the other end sounded harried.
The gunfire outside increased, and McDaniels could tell the volume was far more than anything the snipers were capable of generating. The mortar battery came to life, thumping rounds into the darkness.
McDaniels stepped into his boots and laced them up quickly. “Roger that, Ops. Is Hercules Six still in the TOC? Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Hercules Six. I’m still in the TOC. Over.” Haley didn’t sound as excited as the operator had, but there was a palpable undercurrent of tension in his voice. He was doubtless busy coordinating the military response.
“Hercules Six, Leonidas. Let’s get some eyes in the sky so we can track what’s happening. Let’s not overreact and start burning through our ammo. The necromorphs still have the wire and the trenches to deal with. Over.”
“Leonidas, Hercules Six. Roger that, we have a drone up now. And from what I see, the outer trench is going to get very full in less than two minutes. I believe our response is proportionate. Over.” There was a “don’t fuck with me now” quality to Haley’s voice that told McDaniels all he needed to know. Without the incendiaries to hold them back, the legions of dead were finally storming the camp.
“Hercules Six, Leonidas. Roger. You keep running the fight. I’m headed for the wall. Leonidas out.”
***
McDaniels ran through the camp as fast as he could in all of his gear. Rangers, Special Forces, and SEALs joined him, rushing to their combat positions even though there wouldn’t be enough room on the wall for everyone. The mortar team kept firing rounds every few seconds, and from the growing glow on the other side of the wall, he could tell they were running through their own high-explosive incendiary rounds at a pace that seemed almost frantic. Two AH-6 Little Birds shrieked past overhead, firing rockets over the wall before they had even cleared the camp. McDaniels shouldered his way through the crowd and up the gangway that led to the top of the eastern wall. Expended cartridges rolled underfoot as he made his way toward one of the sandbagged fighting positions and squeezed in between two Rangers firing their SCARs into the night.
What he saw took his breath away.
The inferno created by the previous incendiary runs had waned, and it appeared that delivery of high-explosive weapons had served to mute it further. Five hundred meters from the outer wire, deep bomb craters could be seen in the wan moonlight. Pieces of the dead lay scattered everywhere, a great many of them still moving. Boiling over the devastated landscape like some polluted, diseased tide were thousands of the dead. Their moans filled the air, audible even above the crackle of gunfire and the explosions of rockets and mortars. The leading element of the dead army’s charge had already met the wire at the outer perimeter. Hundreds of flailing bodies were hung up in the razor wire, slashing themselves open as they tried to fight past the obstacle’s cruel embrace. The snipers in the towers and the Rangers on the wall blasted away at them, but their fires sometimes serviced the same target multiple times. And for every zed they stopped, dozens more took its place. As McDaniels watched, the zombies clambered over their fallen brethren and lurched past the wire. They crashed into the second layer in such numbers that it didn’t even appear to slow them down.
The mortars were firing past them, detonating in the midst of the horde outside the perimeter. Incendiary-driven flames rose into the sky as the dead caught fire. Scores of the burning corpses continued to march forward until their bodies gave out and they collapsed on top of other dead stenches. Even more zombies slogged forward, throwing themselves over the growing piles of corpses, drawing inexorably nearer.
Behind McDaniels, more soldiers pushed onto the wall, crushing him against the sandbags. He yelled for them to step back, to leave the wall and wait until they had to relieve other soldiers. The last thing he wanted was for men to fall off the wall and kill themselves in their zeal to get into the fight. He repeated the order to the operations center, and a moment later, Bull Haley’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker system.
“This is Hercules Six. Do not force yourselves into fighting positions that are already manned. If you cannot shoot, you should not be on the wall. Leave the walls and wait to be rotated in to engage the enemy. I say again, if assigned fighting positions are already full, leave the wall and return to the camp to await rotation! Position commanders, see to it that all fighting positions are cleared of any obstructions!”
Overhead, the Little Birds continued making gunnery passes, strafing the approaching dead with their miniguns and rockets. They didn’t last for long. The small attack helicopters weren’t loaded for prolonged combat, and after two passes, they were guns dry.
As the smaller units retreated, the more heavily armed Apaches rotored in, firing their rockets, blasting deep into the advancing walls of necrotic flesh. The fourteen-pound warheads were packed with high-explosive incendiary, and the concussive blasts painted the zombies with burning accelerant. Still, the dead kept coming, raging over the fallen perimeter fences until they arrived at the first trench. They fell headfirst into the deep channel and plummeted into the Napalm mixture at its bottom.
“Let’s light ’em up!” one of the soldiers yelled.
“Negative on that,” McDaniels called. “Wait until the trenches are full!” He spoke into his headset microphone. “Hercules Ops, this is Leonidas. We have zeds through all the wires, and they’re going into the first trench. When is the next incendiary bombardment scheduled? Over.” As he spoke, he remembered his iPad. He pulled it out and switched it on. He had the bombing schedule right there.
“Leonidas, this is Hercules Ops. Next run is a pair of F-15Es due in approximately fourteen minutes. We can have an AC-130 on station in seven minutes. It was already on a gunnery mission. It has a special payload the Air Force wants to deliver. Over.”
“Ops, this is Leonidas. What payload is that, and when was an AC-130 added to the battle roster? Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Ops. Hercules Six got the message about two hours ago, and he approved the addition to the rotation. Payload is classified. Over.”
McDaniels looked at his iPad and thumbed through the air tasking orders. Sure enough, it had been updated, and a new AC-130J was inbound. He was puzzled by the classified payload, but he had other things to worry about at the moment.
“Okay, roger that, Ops. It doesn’t matter. This is what I want to happen. Let’s light up the rest of the kill zones and bring more of the zeds in. Once the first and second trenches are full, we’ll ignite them and use the flames to hold the stenches back until we can get more air support on station. Have someone call the zoomies and find out what the hell they’re doing; they know firebombs are what we need. Conventional explosives aren’t much good. Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Ops. Roger, we’ll pass that on right now. Kill zone lights are coming up now. Over.”
“Roger, Ops.” McDaniels turned and looked across the camp. The floodlights outside the rest of the gates snapped on, serving to bait the gathering dead and draw them into the trenches. The snipers in the rest of the observation towers opened up immediately, killing as many of the approaching corpses as they could. It might have been a waste of ammunition, since he wanted the trenches full, but he didn’t order them to stand down. Dead stenches were good stenches in his book.
The dead clambered over their fallen comrades and picked their way closer to the camp. Like lemmings, they walked right into the first trench, tumbling with total abandon. McDaniels unslung his rifle and shouldered it. The Rangers nearest him did the same.
“Stand down, guys. I’m just taking a look,” he told them. “Save your ammunition.”
The Rangers grumbled a bit, but did as they were told.
Through the scope, McDaniels watched the horde shamble through the fallen fences. Their single-minded determination to feed was certainly formidable, and thousands of them surged forward, reaching for the lights with outstretched arms even though they were hundreds of meters from it. They plummeted into the first trench at a rate of at least hundreds per minute. It wouldn’t take long until the pile at the bottom was high enough for the rest of the stenches to use their fellows as a bridge of sorts and walk across it.
The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 14