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

by Stephen Knight

  “Colonel, stop!” Gartrell shouted. “Do not fire!”

  McDaniels did a double take. The figure rising from the earth wasn’t a zed; it was an Army Ranger, and an injured one at that.

  The man’s neck and cheek had been torn open by whirling shrapnel, and his night vision goggles had been sheared off their mount. He looked at McDaniels with glazed eyes. “Currahee, sir,” he said, and blood poured from his mouth.

  McDaniels grabbed the Ranger and pulled him from the earth. Gartrell waded up the shifting incline and started to pull one of the Ranger’s arms over his shoulder, then suddenly stopped.

  “Shit, it’s hanging on by a thread,” Gartrell said. He folded it at the elbow and put the soldier’s other hand on it. “Ranger, you need to support your arm, like this. Let the colonel and me do all the work. We’re getting you out of here. Just take it easy, son.”

  “I can fight,” the Ranger said. “I’m still operational; I can fight.”

  “Ranger, you will do as you’re told,” McDaniels said. He slung his rifle, then reached down and folded the Ranger into his arms. He carried him down the slope while Gartrell supported him. More Rangers sprinted toward them, carrying every weapon they had. One of their NCOs stopped when he saw the injured Ranger in McDaniels’s arms.

  “We got him, sir!” the NCO said, motioning another Ranger over. “Tidona, get your ass over here! We’ve got wounded!” The second Ranger practically teleported to the injured Ranger’s side, and McDaniels saw he was a medic.

  “You guys good?” Gartrell asked.

  “Roger that, Sarmajor. We have this.”

  McDaniels had to shout over another explosion. “Don’t fuck around. Get him to the cash as soon as you can. Have the rest of your men stand ready to fight. We’re about to have ten thousand necros charging for that hole in the wall as soon as they see it!” A moment later, he was pelted by falling objects. He was disgusted to discover severed limbs and body parts were raining down on them, spiraling down out of the night sky.

  “What the fuck?” he asked, shocked by the hellish scene. It was so bizarre he couldn’t process it for a moment.

  “Don’t ask me, sir,” Gartrell said as more Rangers ran past and scaled up the earthen mound. Gartrell joined them, and McDaniels followed. On the other side of the wall, gunfire suddenly raged, and shapes pushed into the camp.

  McDaniels grabbed his rifle, and for the second time in just as many minutes, he found he was only an instant away from firing on a fellow soldier. Rangers equipped in SOICS gear were falling back, laying down concentrated fire as they retreated. The rest of the Rangers joined them, shouldering their weapons as they blazed into the night, their SCARs burping in semi-automatic mode.

  “Leonidas, this is Hercules Ops,” Captain Chase said on the radio. “Reinforcements are on their way, and the Apaches are jumping out now. Over.”

  “Roger that, Ops. I’m at the breach in the wall now, and we have Darth Vaders falling back through it. Let’s get more troops up here on the wall itself, and advise the snipers to be very careful about the targets they engage. We are probably going to be danger close with the necromorphs at any moment. Over.”

  “Roger that, Leonidas. Engineers are heading your way, and they’re going to try and get another CONEX to drop into the slot. Over.”

  “Ops, Leonidas. Roger that last.” McDaniels moved back to the crest of the dirt mound, moving past one of the Rangers backing into the camp. On the other side of the wall, one of the huge piles of zombie corpses had been struck by an artillery shell. The explained the gruesome rain of body parts, and it also explained the Rangers’ sudden retreat under fire. The pile had been parted by the blast as Moses had parted the Red Sea, and a thick column of zombies boiled through the opening. Within moments, they had filled the smoldering trenches and had made it across both of them in numbers that were surprising. McDaniels saw muzzle flashes amidst the horde, and he realized to his horror that several Rangers hadn’t retreated. They had stood their ground and fought, only to be overrun.

  Gartrell shouted something unintelligible and darted forward, his AA-12 rocking on full automatic as he fired into the wall of advancing necrotic flesh. Dozens of corpses fell to the ground, not because he had killed them, but because the AA-12 was loaded with mini-grenades that blasted their legs off. The zombie advance faltered, but only slightly.

  “Grenades!” McDaniels shouted. “Rangers, if you have incendiaries, use ’em now!” Into his microphone: “Ops, Leonidas. We have a very big surge occurring right outside the wall, the trenches have been compromised. Can we light them up? Over.”

  “Leonidas, this is Ops. We’re told there isn’t enough mixture in the trenches to get them to burn all across the camp. Over.”

  “I don’t care about the rest of the camp, Ops. We need it burning in front of this hole. We have to slow them down! Over.” As he spoke, machine guns opened up from the wall.

  The concentrated fire wasn’t enough to kill a great number of stenches, but it was voluminous enough that it blasted several of them to pieces. Even the walking corpses couldn’t move through that much firepower without pausing. Then, explosions went off amidst the horde, bright sparking explosions that sent fiery arcs across the stenches as the white phosphorous grenades went off. Several stenches were turned into walking funeral pyres almost immediately as the substance burned through their flesh and bones, but the concentration wasn’t great enough to halt the advance.

  “Ops, what about lighting up the trenches? Over.” McDaniels raised his rifle and fired into the horde, dropping zombies one at a time.

  Another whoosh reached his ears, and he dropped to the dirt as another artillery shell landed a hundred feet to his left, right in front of another CONEX container in the wall. More metal whirled through the air, and McDaniels watched as huge pieces of the metal container slashed through the zombies, beheading several. The corpses crashed to the ground, but there were a hundred more to take their places.

  “Leonidas, this is Ops. We’ve told the troops on the wall to try and fire up the trench. Standby. Over.”

  McDaniels became aware of more explosions occurring out by the trench line as the soldiers on the wall hurled phosphorous grenades toward the trenches. But the excavations were already filling with the dead, and even though the grenades went off, it would take time for the heat to make it through the bodies and ignite the pooling mixture at the bottom of each trench.

  Then, McDaniels remembered how the trenches were being refilled. Parked on the inside of the gates were Heavy Expanded Tactical Truck-Tankers filled with the incendiary mixture. If one of the HEMT-Ts should happen to get hit by an artillery shell…

  Not much we can do about it right now. “Ops, this is Leonidas. If one of those arty rounds hits a HEMT-T full of incendiary, we will be sorely fucked. What’s the status on the Apache raid? Over.”

  “Leonidas, this is Ops. Apaches are out now. We should have a SITREP from them in just a moment. Over.”

  ***

  Lieutenant Colonel Theodora “Teddy” Masterson worked the tuning controls connected to the mushroom-shaped millimeter wave-radar array that sat on the mast just above the Apache’s whirling rotors. Originally envisioned as the next generation of anti-armor weapon systems, the Longbow fire control radar was initially optimized to pick out Soviet tanks from ground clutter. Once identified, the Apache could then fire a Hellfire missile, which had its own millimeter wave seeker in the warhead. The main system would hand off the target to the missile, and the missile would use its radar to hone in on the targeted tank as the weapon accelerated toward it at speeds around eight hundred miles per hour. The tank would go boom, and the Apache would never have had to expose itself to danger, as it would be hovering three or four miles away, with only the fire control radar extended above intervening terrain.

  Of course, the abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union had changed all of that.

  Just the same, the advanced radar system had no trouble picki
ng up the inbound artillery shells as they were flung toward the camp. It looked to be only two tubes, collocated at the same sight about five miles to the east. She forwarded the information to her helicopter’s wingman, then led the two Apaches into a high-speed sprint, their landing gear only twenty feet above the undulating mass of the horde below.

  “Getting a great image from the radar,” her copilot/gunner said after a few moments. “Definitely two artillery pieces, parked right next to each other. Man, I can’t believe the stenches can do this kind of stuff. What next, they take over a missile silo and lob a nuke at us?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Masterson said. She keyed her radio switch. “Card Shark Two, let’s do Hellfires. I’ll take the gun to the north; you service the gun to the south. Over.”

  “Roger, Card Shark Six. We have the southern gun, Hellfire up. Over.”

  “Laser or radar?” Masterson’s CPG asked. The gunship carried a mixed load of Hellfires. On the rails beneath the left wing, they had radar-guided “fire and forget” missiles, while on the right station they had semi-autonomous laser-guided weapons. The laser systems were generally used when pinpoint precision was needed.

  “Laser it is,” Masterson said.

  “Roger.”

  “We’ll open up when we get within three klicks.”

  “Hooah, roger that.”

  The two Apaches sped through the night, soaring over the field of zombies that looked up at the racket created by the two attack helicopters. Masterson could see them through her helmet’s monocle, the dumb, almost herdlike response to the passage of the aircraft overhead. How they could get enough smarts together to find, relocate, and operate part of an artillery battery against SPARTA was beyond her. The two Apache Longbows closed the gap between them and the arty in minutes, and shortly afterward, Masterson and the pilot of her wingman’s aircraft were bringing the helicopters into stable hovers at fifty feet above the horde. It was easy to see the artillery guns. Not only did they read very well through the forward-looking infrared systems on the Apache’s nose, they emitted quite the visual signature when they fired. There was no other light source in the area, so when the guns went off, they illuminated everything for a mile around.

  “Lasing now,” Masterson’s CPG said. “Okay, target is illuminated. Just under two klicks away.”

  “Roger that. Hercules Operations, this is Card Shark Six. We have the artillery in sight. We’re engaging in ten seconds. Over.”

  The response from the camp was immediate. “Card Shark, this is Ops. No need to wait so long if you have them in your sights. Over.”

  “Heh, things must be a little hectic back at the camp,” the CPG said.

  “We ready to fire?” she asked.

  “Roger, ready to fire here.”

  “Roger. Fire.”

  The AGM-114C Hellfire leaped off the rail, trailing a column of fire as it raced into the sky. The missile climbed up and away from the Apache for a moment before nosing down and exposing its glass-covered receiver to the sparkle of the Apache’s laser light below. Even though the laser was invisible to the human eye, the electronic components inside the Hellfire’s nose had no problem detecting the specific spectrum of energy the laser system discharged, and it honed in on the beam’s termination like a faithful hunting dog retrieving its master’s prey. Less than five seconds after launch, the Hellfire from Masterson’s helicopter slammed into the base of the Howitzer, and several dozen pounds of high explosives did the rest. The gun was decimated instantly, along with several stenches tending to it. The blast effectively blinded and deafened several more, so they had no opportunity to witness the second explosion as Card Shark Two’s missile lanced into the second artillery gun a moment later.

  “Card Shark Two, Card Shark Six. Let’s do rockets and hit the area with two shots each. Over.”

  “Roger that, Six. Two shots each. Over.”

  Masterson selected rockets on her fire control panel, disarming the Hellfires and activating the rocket pods beneath the Apache’s wings. The pods depressed their elevation by a few degrees, lining up the rockets on the target area. Each Apache fired two rockets. Unlike the Hellfires, which arced up high to gain the best acquisition possible on the reflected laser light, the rockets had no need to do anything other than fly straight to their target. Sparking explosions tore through the night once again, further demolishing the already inoperative artillery pieces. The Apache crews were rewarded by massive secondary explosions as the heat of the rocket blasts ignited some of the battery’s ammunition. The one hundred five millimeter rounds detonated with enough force to send visible shock waves rippling through the night air.

  “Wow!” Masterson’s CPG said. “Now that was a show!”

  “Hercules Operations, this is Card Shark Six. Artillery has been neutralized. Over.”

  “Ah, roger that, Card Shark Six. Do you see any other arty in the vicinity? Over.”

  Masterson scanned the ground with her infrared-enhanced vision. All she saw were necromorphs, miles and miles of necromorphs that extended from horizon to horizon. “Negative, Ops. There’s nothing else out here but corpses. Over.”

  “Card Shark Six, Hercules Operations. Roger, you’d better get back here. The wall has been breached, and we’re probably going to need you on station as soon as possible. Over.”

  A thrill of fear ran through Masterson. The wall is breached? “Ops, this is Card Shark Six. Roger that, we’re on our way. Break. Card Shark Two, let’s break station and return to base at full boogie. Over.”

  Her wingman was already turning away from the engagement area. “Roger that, Six. Let’s cruise! Over.”

  ***

  The troops poured into the area around the gap in the wall, weapons ready. Little Birds and Apaches orbited overhead, their rotors pounding in the night sky. Civilians, both armed and unarmed, flooded away from the gap, dragging wounded along with them. The main InTerGen building was on fire, and McDaniels noticed that the artillery strikes had blasted a huge hole through one wall. Even if the upper floor wasn’t on fire, there was no chance of using it as a fallback point.

  One of the other smaller office buildings was simply gone. Where the artillery shell had blasted deep into the earth and punctured the buried propane tanks, the resulting blast seemed to have essentially atomized it. The area was a mass of flaming debris and chaos.

  The Rangers, Special Forces, SEALs, and other security forces were trying hard to get organized. Each component relied on its own chain of command, and McDaniels noticed that the Special Forces and SEALs weren’t listening to the senior Ranger officer on scene, a major who was trying to get the forces to coordinate their fires and hold back the zeds until the engineers could repair the wall.

  The trenches had failed to reignite, since only a fraction of the required incendiary mix had been transferred into them. And from his vantage point atop the earthen pile where the twisted remains of the blasted CONEX container stood, McDaniels saw both trenches were absolutely full of writing corpses. Hundreds of zeds streamed across the filled channels, heading directly for the gap in the wall. McDaniels shouldered his rifle and fired, blazing through one magazine in only a few seconds, his measured shots taking down every one of his targets. Beside him, a mix of special operators lined up almost shoulder-to-shoulder, hosing the advancing necromorphs with everything they had. The bodies began to pile up, but the area of advance was too large for them to hold indefinitely.

  Overhead, a Little Bird screamed in, its 7.62-millimeter miniguns buzzing like souped-up chainsaws, delivering hundreds of rounds into the leading edge of the necromorphs’ advance. Several of the zombies literally disintegrated beneath the salvo, disassembling beneath the fury of dozens of bullets that struck them virtually at the same time. As the Little Bird pulled up and climbed out nose-high, a second special operations aviation gunship streaked in and released a volley of its own. The stream of bullets walked right through the zombies, from south to north, repeating the results of the fi
rst gunnery run. The Little Bird pulled up and charged away into the night sky. Both helicopters went into tight right turns as they sped around to make another pass.

  From the wall and observation towers above, more gunfire rang out. Machineguns of various calibers roared, pumping rounds into the zombie advance. The smaller caliber Squad Automatic Weapons weren’t nearly as effective as the .50 caliber M2s. Every time a zombie was hit by one of the bigger rounds, it was essentially blasted in two. Sparking explosions went off amidst the wall of dead flesh staggering toward the camp as defenders tossed hand grenades among them. Farther out, more explosions rang out as mortar shells and forty-millimeter grenades from emplaced Mk 149 grenade launchers opened up, trying to sap the energy from the zombie attack. If they had been human troops, it would have worked. But since the dead felt no pain and registered no fear, the assault continued without abating.

  McDaniels slammed another magazine into his HK and yanked back on the charging lever. He shouldered the rifle and took out a zombie trudging up the earthen mound. The body rolled down the embankment, but many more took its place. McDaniels continued firing. He blazed through his fresh magazine in no time, and before he knew it, zombies were lying in the dirt only a few feet from where he stood.

  Stenches crawled over the fallen corpses, their moans and shrieks audible even over the thumping rotor blades of the Apaches that fast approached the camp. More bombs fell in the near distance in one long, thundering cavalcade that sent shock waves raging across the flat desert. McDaniels pulled the empty magazine from his rifle and inserted another. Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

  “McDaniels, you can’t be here!” Bull Haley shouted over the din. He raised his SCAR and fired, zeroing a zed crawling up the incline. “Get back to the TOC! You’ve got to figure out how the hell we’re going to get through this, not get chowed down leading from the front!”