Soon thereafter, the Humvees were lost in much the same way. They weren’t as heavy as the MRAPs or the M949s, so they weren’t as capable at pushing through the zeds. Eventually, they were stalled because they just couldn’t push through a thousand zombies at one time, even with their rugged four-wheel drive system. The zombies came in through the windows, and the men inside the vehicles screamed for help over the tactical net. The Apaches and Little Birds tried to hold back the tide, but it was a waste of ammunition. Soon, the Humvees were lost as well.
How many people have I lost so far under my command? McDaniels thought as he listened to the screams of the dying over the radio. How many more will die before this is done? He gripped the wheel in his gloved hands and pressed down on the accelerator, slamming through the zombies in the vehicle’s path, watching as their heads snapped forward and shattered against the armored grille and hood of the big six-wheel-drive truck. The noise the impacts made was horrible, and a fine black mist of pulped matter began to settle across the windshield.
Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!
“Hey, Colonel, you might want to back off on the throttle a bit,” Gartrell said. “Not that I’m not in a hurry to get out of here, but this pig’s thrashing all over the place, and it’s hell for the guys up top. Unless you want to shake off the Rangers, that is.”
McDaniels got the message and slowly eased up on the accelerator. The MRAP bumped over the terrain. Several zombies clung to the vehicle, and every time one of them hoisted itself upward, the Rangers put a bullet through its head. They’d been doing that more and more regularly for a while. Even though the convoy drove without lights, the necromorphs could still hear them and feel the rumble of their passage. It drew them toward the convoy like bees to honey, and if the vehicles weren’t so heavily armored, the crush of so many bodies would have ground them to a halt.
A dark shape suddenly blasted past on the right of the convoy. An instant later, zombies began exploding as a thick beam of light slashed through them, burning at such a high temperature that it left a channel of condensation lingering in the air even after the beam had stopped firing. The AC-130U continued flying its course, straight and true, making at least two hundred knots at four hundred feet above the flat Texas desert. Two beams of laser energy lanced out from it at regular intervals, burning through the horde, leaving a swath of destruction. But before the convoy could make much use of the path, the necromorph horde closed up, like some sort of amorphous creature healing its injuries in time-lapse photography.
Another AC-130 appeared a few moments later, reattacking the same areas as the first. More stenches disappeared into sparking explosions, but again, the attack was of limited value. The necromorphs felt no fear, knew no respect, and practiced no caution. The modified Spooky gunships could orbit all day and night long, and the only time they would be one hundred percent effective was when the last zed was fried.
“Air Force is going to keep making passes like that until the MOAB ship gets into position,” Chase said. “Just another few minutes on that, sir. Do you have any specific instructions for them as far as preferred placement of the weapon?”
“Far enough ahead of us that it doesn’t destroy our convoy, but close enough that we can make it through the blast radius before the zeds close it up,” McDaniels said.
“Roger that, sir.” Chase spoke into the radio again, passing the instructions along. Out in the desert, more explosions flared—the bright, sparking detonations of incendiary weapons. The great clouds of burning gel splashed all across the desert some miles to the left and rear of the convoy.
“Looks like the Air Force finally got its hands on some more firebombs,” Gartrell said. “I guess they’re using them to keep the zeds back. Bottle ’em up in the camp, so they won’t follow us.”
“Better late than never, Sergeant Major.” A small rise lay ahead, and McDaniels gunned the MRAP up its face. The heavy vehicle began to bog down as the loose soil broke apart beneath the big tires. McDaniels kept the vehicle as straight as he could. Even though it was wallowing, it was still moving. “Someone tell the rest of the convoy to go around this rise if they can!”
“On it, sir,” said one of the controllers in the back.
The MRAP shuddered and bucked its way up the incline, but as it slowed, the dead attacked savagely, pounding on it with their fists and bodies. Some used rocks or tools, and one enterprising stench even used a shotgun, blasting away at the vehicle at point-blank range, despite the weapon’s load of buckshot being turned by the MRAP’s armor. The zombie could care less if it was eviscerating itself and other nearby ghouls.
As more and more stenches slammed into the vehicle, McDaniels felt it bog down even further. “Fire on these things! Their weight isn’t exactly helping us out here!”
The men in the back opened up through their firing ports, and Gartrell returned to the cupola to unleash the .50 cal. It thumped powerfully over their heads as the sergeant major fired into the nearest zeds, blowing them into ribbons.
Two AH-6 Little Birds dove out of the sky, their miniguns blazing as they strafed the horde on either side of the stricken MRAP, disintegrating rows of necromorphs as their weapons spat out four thousand rounds per minute.
McDaniels kept pushing the MRAP forward. Its diesel engine bellowed, and with all the firing going on, Chase had to hunch over and press his headset’s earphones against his skull to hear.
“MOAB’s been deployed!” he shouted over the gunfire. “Detonation in fifteen seconds!”
“Where?” McDaniels asked.
“A little over a mile in that direction!” Chase pointed dead ahead, where more zombies surged over the crest of the rise the MRAP labored to climb. The stenches threw themselves against its grille, and the vehicle gained another ton of weight in an instant.
Goddamn it!
“Is the convoy clear behind us?” McDaniels yelled.
Chase grabbed the control arm for the infrared and slewed the camera around to peer behind the vehicle. He indicated that the rest of the convoy was shearing off, avoiding the incline as instructed.
“Awesome.” McDaniels dropped the MRAP into reverse and gunned it. The heavy vehicle practically flew down the slope, propelled by the weight on its nose. There was a horrible racket from the rear as the zombies behind the rig bounced off its flat rump. Those in front of it fell flat on their faces as the vehicle suddenly pulled away from them. The zeds fell onto each other, crushing those on the bottom of the pileup into the earth.
“Someone get on the radio and notify the rest of the convoy that the bomb is coming in,” McDaniels said. “Once the shockwave has rolled past, they need to get through the blast zone as quickly as possible!”
“Roger that, Colonel,” said one of the operators in the back.
“They have five seconds to get ready,” Chase added, as McDaniels cranked the wheel to the left, heading toward the rest of the convoy.
“Message out!” the operator said a moment later.
Night turned into day.
The MOAB went off on the near horizon, emitting a bright flash and then a rising mushroom cloud full of fire. The shockwave rolled across the zombies like a freight train, flattening them to the ground like blades of grass before a hurricane’s growing gale. The shockwave struck the MRAP as well, and the overpressure wave made a distinct sound against its metal hide, like that of a large mallet striking it once. The zombies wilted, and several even flew through the air like grisly missiles of putrid flesh that exploded open when they slammed into the MRAP.
“Gartrell! Status on the Rangers!”
“They’re still there, Colonel,” Gartrell said.
“Roger that. Here we go again, boys. Hitch ’em up.” McDaniels pushed down the accelerator, and the MRAP surged forward as quickly as a vehicle of its great weight could.
The going was much easier. Almost every zed in sight was down on the ground, probably deafened by the blast, and the convoy was moving at best possible speed
across the wide expanse that had been temporarily cleared by the blast. McDaniels did the same, cutting across the clearing at twenty miles an hour. The MRAP bounced across the landscape, and while he was sensitive to the three soldiers holding on for their very lives, he had to get the vehicle across the clearing as quickly as possible.
Already, the dead were starting to rise. One staggered to its feet right in front of the speeding MRAP, and the vehicle hit it hard enough to split it in two at the waist. The upper half of the zombie landed on the hood right in front of McDaniels, and the two stared at each other for a quick moment before the half-corpse fell off the vehicle. Above, one of the Rangers began firing. He made some pretty impressive shots, too.
McDaniels saw one zombie go down three hundred meters out, which was a hell of a shot with a SCAR while riding atop a violently moving vehicle. “Who’s that up there shooting?”
“Roche,” Gartrell said. “The kid doesn’t have enough sense to hold on with both hands, but he can shoot great with just one.”
“Hot damn.” McDaniels noticed for the first time that the vehicle’s sides were finally clear of zombies. He was able to check the side view mirror, and he saw his MRAP was outdistancing the rest of the convoy. He eased off on the throttle a bit.
“Second MOAB on its way,” Chase warned.
“Notify the convoy, and instruct them they’re to close on us as soon as they can,” McDaniels said. He pointed out the gore-marred window at the wall of dead moving toward them from across the blast zone. It wasn’t as thick as the one they had driven through, but it was still big enough to cause him some concern.
A quick look at the GPS told him they were nearing the reported outer band of the massive necromorph herd. They had left the bulk of it behind them. If they punched through the stench’s rear lines, then they would be able to make it to the highway.
And the highway would take them to safety.
“Thirty seconds,” Chase reported.
Thirty-one seconds later, the night again turned into day for one fleeting moment, just as the heavy-duty bumper on McDaniels’s MRAP met the first of the latest crop of zombies. The shockwave blasted down on them a few moments later.
***
“Here it comes!” Roche screamed as the light flared again, overwhelming his night vision goggles.
It probably wasn’t the worst time for the MOAB to go off, considering. True, they were just plowing into a new band of necromorphs, and the convoy was still some distance behind. But they were making good speed, and the thousands of bodies arrayed before them allowed for a decidedly adventurous deceleration that made Roche laugh in spite of himself. He felt like a kid on a carnival ride, albeit an extremely grisly one.
He knew the shockwave would come next, and it would be vicious. He didn’t know why, but he felt the latest MOAB had gone off closer than the first, and that it would ring his bell something fierce. He opened his mouth to tell Shin and Horst to hug some steel when Shin starting firing on full automatic. Roche looked up and saw that three stenches had managed to climb onto the side of the slowing MRAP, and that they were embracing Shin like a long-lost child.
Shin fired into them point blank, rocking and rolling on full auto, but he was hitting them in the centers of their mass; in short, he wasn’t even inconveniencing them. One of them seized his wrist in its jaws and bit into him deeply, while another took a large chunk out of his thigh.
“Roche!” Shin screamed, right before the zombies yanked him off the top of the MRAP.
Roche lunged across the rig’s top as the cupola traversed. Gartrell had seen the same thing, and he was bringing the .50 around. Roche grabbed onto the bungee cord and braked himself to a halt before he went over the edge. He looked down into hundreds of upturned faces, their features illuminated by the angry orange-red fireball climbing into the sky ahead of the MRAP. Their eyes were flat, lifeless, their skin flayed open and parched from the desert sun. But there was no sign of Shin.
“Horst!” Roche shouted. “Horst, get ready for the sho—”
When he turned to the rear of the MRAP, he saw Horst was gone, too. Whatever had taken him had yanked him hard enough that the metal hooks on the end of the bungee cords he had held onto had been snapped off. The cord trailed off the end of the vehicle, and as he watched, a necromorph used it to climb aboard. It was a youth, maybe a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy, and it was in good shape. It looked at Roche with avaricious, desperate eyes, hissing through blackened teeth.
Roche heard a minute rumble over the racket of the MRAP, and he knew that was all the warning he would get. He tightened his grip on the bungee cords.
***
The second shockwave slammed into the MRAP with more intensity than the first. McDaniels saw it coming as it approached the vehicle, could see the thousands of zombies being flattened by it seconds before it hit them. And when it hit, it hit hard. The steering wheel seemed suddenly ineffective, and the vehicle slowed dramatically as its bulky, square-nosed profile caught the full force of the wave head on. McDaniels felt his ears pop, and behind them, Captain Berry—the man who had driven through the first part of the horde all by himself, inside a piece of construction equipment that had defenses which were decidedly jury-rigged—suddenly threw up all over himself. The act added the reek of vomit to the ever-present stink of the dead zombie Chase had kicked to death in his footwell.
“Jesus, Berry!” Gartrell said. “Why don’t you just shit and piss yourself, too, so you can cover the entire ejective spectrum?”
Bodies and parts of bodies bounced off the MRAP like lead weights, even though they didn’t seem to damage the vehicle in any meaningful way. A cloud of dust hung over the entire area, so thick that McDaniels couldn’t see through it with his NVGs. He looked down and viewed the scene through the infrared camera. It was much the same as it had been after the previous MOAB attack. The horde was temporarily flattened, but not destroyed, thrown for a powerful loop, but hardly down for the count. It was their best and last opportunity to make it to the highway.
“Little Birds are breaking off,” Chase reported. “They’re running on fumes.”
“They should have left a while ago, then,” McDaniels said.
“Looks like we lost two of the Rangers, Colonel,” Gartrell reported tiredly from the cupola. “But one of them was not Roche. That kid has a charmed life.”
“Roger that. All right, send a message to the convoy. All possible speed to the highway. It’s four miles ahead. We’re almost there! We get through this band of zeds, and we’re on our way.”
“You should step on it, sir,” Gartrell said. “Berry just farted, and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen next.”
***
Dead Jeffries stumbled into the flaming facility with thousands of the Others, the sun rising behind them, and they cast long shadows ahead. As the Others searched the area for prey, Dead Jeffries pressed ahead. Moving deeper into the camp on dead legs that were becoming less useful by the day, Dead Jeffries looked at the burning tents and smoldering corpses that littered the area. They meant nothing. Dead Jeffries moved deeper into the camp, until it came upon the great buildings of the office park. Most were burned, blackened husks, including the medical manufacturing facility in the back. Dead Jeffries saw that it was demolished, half of it scooped away, obliterated. Whatever their quarry had been doing there, they would not be able to finish it.
If it still had its faculties remaining, Dead Jeffries might have smiled.
A second sun blossomed into being almost directly overhead. In the instant Dead Jeffries registered the increasing illumination, its body disintegrated in the fury of the nuclear flash.
***
Dawn was a smear on the horizon as the convoy of bloodied, battered MRAPs pushed their way westward on Interstate 20. The highway was eerily clear, devoid of almost all traffic. Ten miles after the convoy climbed across the shoulder and onto the wide thoroughfare, it came across two AH-6M Little Birds sitting on the side of th
e road. McDaniels slowed and brought the MRAP to a halt. Behind him, the rest of the convoy did the same. He opened the heavy driver’s door and looked down at the four men in tan flightsuits as they ran toward him.
“Damn, I guess you guys were low on fuel, Randy,” he said to the flight lead, a soft-spoken Mississippi gentleman who commanded the attack aviation slice the 160th had provided.
“Things were just too exciting to leave, Colonel,” the senior Army aviator said. “You mind if we tag along with you guys?”
McDaniels pointed to the top. “Join the Ranger in the executive lounge. But do it fast, we’ve got another twenty miles to go.”
“Hooah!”
The Night Stalkers climbed aboard the MRAP as if they were half-monkey. McDaniels accelerated down the road, and soon had the MRAP blazing along at almost sixty miles an hour. Either someone had been watching out for the convoy, perhaps through satellites or aerial drones, or more likely, the zombies massed more slowly than had been anticipated. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t until seven thirty that McDaniels noticed a flash behind the eastern horizon, and with that flash, the radios went dead.
The United States of America had just released a nuclear weapon on its own soil.
And here’s hoping it burned up about a million stenches when it went off.
25
Four days later, McDaniels was surprised to find himself and Gartrell stuffed into a C-141 cargo jet bound for Pope Air Force Base, located next to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He thought it odd that he, Gartrell, and several other Special Forces troops were suddenly pulled off the battle roster and loaded up to go home. The official word was that the 4th Infantry Division and its reinforcing element, the 25th Light Infantry from Hawaii and Alaska, would continue to prosecute the remaining necromorph formations. Even after the bomb had gone off, the stenches continued to move toward Texas. Those that had survived the attack resumed their westward trek, which put them on course to meet the forces arrayed against them. Greatly reduced, their numbers were considered low enough for it to be “feasible” for the remaining military forces in the nation to engage and destroy them.
The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 28