by Evan Currie
“No matter how we cut it, we’ve got to penetrate a lot of enemy territory to get where we’re going,” Masters said seriously. “Last time we tripped off a response before we got much more than half the distance we need to get to now. Alex, you said they smell heat?”
Norton nodded. “That’s as close as anyone’s been able to describe it, yes.”
“No idea of range?”
Norton shrugged. “Probably relatively close range. A few meters at best.”
“Say about ten feet, then?” Masters considered the information.
“It’s as good a guess as any.”
“All right, I think we screw stealth,” Masters said.
Rankin stared, half raising a hand like he was a child in class. “Uh, I don’t know about you, boss, but I don’t have the ammo to take on a few thousand rotting bloodsuckers.”
“You’re not alone, Eddie.” Masters quirked a half smile. “But the longer we loiter around the shadows of these buildings, the more likely one of them sniffs us out. What if we just hammered right through?”
“Ballsy,” Eddie said after considering it for a moment. “Stupid, but ballsy.”
Besides Hannah, everyone chuckled at the comment. The goth girl just turned her lips up slightly and seemed mildly amused by Eddie’s creative description of Masters’s plan.
“We know they’re not hanging around the windows,” Masters offered up.
“You have a point,” Norton conceded, “but it’s high risk. If you’re wrong…”
He didn’t need to finish that statement. If Masters was wrong, they could find themselves surrounded by hundreds of enemies before they got halfway to their goal.
“If I’m a little wrong,” Masters said, “we run and gun our way to the generators and hold the building for as long as we can while we get it shut down. If I’m a lot wrong…well, we withdraw as we can and come in using another method.”
“As we can,” Norton said dryly. “That’s the part I’m worried about.”
Perry Rand chuckled. “What’s the matter, Black? Do you want to live forever?”
“So what if I do?” Norton rejoined dryly. “It’s a noble goal.”
“I would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory against overwhelming odds,” Rand told him, then shrugged and chuckled softly. “Though I admit, even as an Asatru, I’d prefer to do that after a few more decades.”
“While the image of you doddering off to war with a broadax in one hand and a walker in the other is terribly amusing,” Norton replied, rolling his eyes, “none of us gets to choose our time.”
“Not true,” Rick Plains said quietly, drawing their attention. “We all get to choose our time to die, Black. It’s just that the choice is either now or later. Most men inevitably choose later until they no longer have the choice. I, for one, will choose now, and if it becomes later…well, I’ll have some bonus years to spend, now won’t I?”
“I hate Asatru,” Norton grumbled. “Not even fundamentalists can make suicide sound so logical.”
“I object to your choice of words, Black,” Hannah said, her eyes gazing out over the town before them. “What Richard speaks of is not suicide; it is the mastery of one’s own fate.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Alex said, giving up.
Honestly he knew that she was right, and as he’d said, he even found Rick’s argument compelling. That was the problem — he didn’t like any argument that might compel him to walk into crazy situations on a regular basis. One of the many, many reasons he regularly cursed the day he’d met Hawk Masters.
“Enough,” Masters said finally, his eyes on the town as he calculated the best entry path. “Unless anyone has a better idea, I say we move in fast and stay clear of the buildings.”
Norton sighed, but nodded. “Fine, but we’d better avoid the scene of the little massacre you engineered the last time we were in town.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re vampires, and they may still be…active, for lack of a better word,” Norton explained. “Say you paralyzed one with a shot to the spine but didn’t take off its head.…Well, if we’re spotted by one, we’re spotted by them all.”
“Ah,” Masters grimaced, quickly unfolding his map and playing his flashlight across it. “Damn. That’s right on our best path.”
“Then it’s not our best path.”
“All right, we have to cut in along the south then,” Masters said, “following this road here up along the airport fence, then cutting north. After that we move in an almost straight line.…Everyone got that?”
He looked around, but there were no questions and everyone was nodding, so he put the map away.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
* * *
All but sprinting down the center of a street in a town held by enemies was not an action that put any of the military people in the group at ease. When they infiltrated a town, it was usually done from wall to wall, building to building, in short sprints. This time they felt like they were open to the world and begging for a sniper to take them out.
Masters had to keep telling himself that the enemy this time didn’t have snipers, they didn’t even have people throwing rocks, but it was hard for them to go against their training and instincts the way they were. They were making great time, but he couldn’t help but feel bare-ass naked in the cold Alaskan night.
In just a few minutes they made it to the first intersection, which they blew through without a sign of the enemy.
Luck like that couldn’t last. Just no way in hell, and Masters knew it.
By the time they passed the second intersection, they spotted their first hint of motion, a door swinging open as they bolted past.
“They’re onto us!”
“Damn it! I was hoping for a bit longer,” Masters growled when Rankin warned him of the motion. “Double-time!”
They moved from a trot to a near sprint, moving hell-bent for leather for the next intersection. Masters kept an eye on the two civilians he had along for the ride, but he was pleased and surprised when he saw that Norton and Hannah were easily keeping pace. Norton surprised him moderately less — the man didn’t carry a lot of weight on him and was in good shape. But Hannah wasn’t even breathing hard from what he could see. Granted, she carried even less weight than Norton, but that was still impressive.
“Hawk. Djinn.”
Masters keyed his radio on the move. “Go for Hawk.”
“They’re coming out of the woodwork, boss. There’s a grouping ahead of you at the next intersection.”
“Shit,” Masters hissed, fist coming up to halt the group.
“What is it, boss?” Rankin asked from behind him.
“Detour! North, now!”
They hung right into somebody’s front yard, throwing their plan out the window.
The door of the house swung open as they came close, but Masters couldn’t see what was behind it, so he didn’t bring his AA-12 up to engage. Instead he threw his full weight into the door, slamming it hard, which catapulted the body behind it back into the house.
It slowed him down marginally, so he pumped his legs harder to catch up.
“Have fun, boss?” Rankin asked, sounding like the strain was starting to filter through on him.
“A blast,” Masters said, eyeing the street ahead. “Hang left on the street.”
“Right.”
“Got it.”
They burst out of the yard and into the street, hanging left as they continued to run east so that they could get onto the street that led them to the generators.
“Hawk, group converging, next street north.”
Shit! Masters was not a happy camper. They needed to cut up that street for the fastest approach, otherwise they’d have to muck through someone’s sodden yard.
“Numbers?” he demanded.
“Thin,” Djinn answered. “Count five hostiles.”
“Roger,” he said, glancing at the others by his side. “Small group ahead to the
north. We’re going to blow through.”
“Got it,” Rankin answered instantly, and he heard assent from the others as well.
They cut the corner at the intersection, blasting through someone’s yard and coming into the street at an angle. Masters brought his AA-12 to his shoulder as the figures appeared out of the night.
The group slowed to a fast walk, their weapons all coming to the ready as they assessed the figures. Given what they’d seen, it was pretty unlikely that there would be any civilians wandering around, but there was very little chance of the enemy opening up on them with automatic fire, so Masters felt they could spare a couple of seconds to identify the enemy.
“Hostiles confirmed!” he called when he saw the dead look in their eyes, and a hint of decomposition filtered through to his nose. “Engage!”
The AA-12 was joined by two other twelve-gauge shotguns and Eddie’s M4 in an engagement that lasted about three seconds.
They group sped up again, running past the fallen as they swung north and headed for the power generators.
* * *
Nathan “The Djinn” Hale adjusted his sighting slightly for the wind shift, though it was almost pointless in many ways. For his Sassy, any engagement within the ranges he was looking at was basically point blank. He could have corrected automatically for wind, but habit and detail were the bread and butter of his world.
He kept moving between his rifle and his spotter scope, wishing that they’d had time to recruit a good spotter before being deployed. A sniper without a spotter was like a fighter pilot without his wingman; he was maybe a third as effective on a good day.
Reliable spotters had been hard to come by since he first crossed over, however. His life had become hard on him, but even harder on those around him.
Honestly, he’d been planning on taking his discharge papers the next time they tried to get him to re-up.
When the call came in from Rankin, he’d expected this to be his last hurrah with the Teams. That could still turn out to be the case, of course, but Nathan was beginning to feel that same sense of belonging he’d originally found in the Teams.
It was like coming home again.
Speaking of which…
He narrowed his gaze as he glanced through the spotter scope, then casually keyed open his radio.
“Converging from the west and east, dead ahead.”
“Roger,” Masters responded. “Request cover.”
“Wish granted,” The Djinn said, tilting his head away from the spotter scope and leaning into the rifle.
He focused onto the group to the west of the team’s approach. Like those who had shown themselves earlier, they were moving more or less as a group, but there was a degree of milling and staggering that gave them away. Nathan had never encountered vampires before, but he had seen more than one form of the dead that refused to stay in the ground.
Every culture on the planet had what the modern world would term “the undead,” creatures that wore the skin and bones of recently deceased humans. In all but a few very rare cases, that was exactly what they were, creatures stealing bodies that weren’t theirs and using them to wreak havoc.
The most common forms of the walking dead shared certain features. They were generally a little clumsy and usually a little slower than their living counterparts, but they almost always outclassed the living in terms of sheer strength. They felt no pain, so they could work their bodies beyond the limits that plagued a human.
You didn’t want to let them get within arm’s reach, but compared to some of the things he had seen, the walking dead were the lowest form of supernatural scum on the planet.
Dead meat walking. Literally. Nathan smiled as he put his crosshairs on one of the shambling figures, choosing one at the back of the group. He aimed high, picking a point at the very crown of his target’s head, and slowly brought the pressure up on the trigger until it was riding the edge as he waited for his moment. It came when the group started to turn to go after the team, several of them bunched together, and Nathan relaxed as he gently pressured the trigger over the edge.
The M82 SASR roared.
There was no other word to describe the sound of a light fifty in action. It just roared. The heavy bullet briefly drew a line that connected Nathan to his target, popping the crown of the first vampire’s head off in a brutal spray of blood and ichor. The fifty was a penetrator, however, and it barely slowed as it blew through the next figure at neck level, then into the chest of a third, finally blowing the leg off a fourth before it plowed into the ground beyond.
Four with one shot, he mused idly as he re-centered the rifle on the next target. I do believe that’s a personal record.
* * *
The team had a goal, a place they had to be, so unlike with Masters’s earlier stand, there was no attempt to draw the enemy in and create a distraction. They slowed only enough to steady their aim, and marched right into the teeth of the beasts, guns blazing.
“That’s the power station, up ahead!” Eddie called over the roar of the twelve-gauges and the bark of his M4. “It’s a clear run beyond these guys!”
The distant roar of Hale’s light fifty was a comfort — they knew that someone had their backs as they ran — but each roar of that big rifle was a reminder that hostiles were riding their heels. They blew through the few of the shambling figures that were in their way, and then the race was on.
“Haul ass!” Masters called, waving them forward.
In a dead sprint they broke for the big buildings that held the town’s power generators. With nothing but clear roads ahead, there was no holding back. The group of six raced down the street, ignoring the sporadic shots of Hale’s light fifty roaring in the night behind them.
They skidded to a stop as they arrived at the building’s front doors, and Masters surged up the stairs and grabbed the handle, pulling it hard. The door opened, and he ushered the others through with a wave of his AA-12.
“Inside, move!”
They rushed in past him as he covered the rear, eyes and AA-12 seeking out targets.
When they were inside, he backed into the building after them and pulled the door shut, casting around for a way to barricade it. Before he could say anything, Norton stepped in and pushed him slightly out of the way. Masters couldn’t see what he was doing, but a second later he heard the click of the door locking.
“How did you—” he started to ask, then paused and shook his head. “Never mind.”
They were in a reception area, he saw as he turned around, and security doors were at the back of the room. The place was clearly labeled, for ease of navigation, he supposed, which was certainly going to make things easier on them.
“Okay, back to the generator rooms,” he said. “We need to shut this place down.”
The group nodded and they breached the security doors, still on the alert for any signs of current “occupation.” They followed a long corridor deeper into the building, pausing when it ended in a large pair of heavy-duty doors. Beyond, they could hear the thrum of machinery, even through all the insulation.
Masters nodded at the door and Rankin stepped up, nudging it open with his shoulder as Masters took up the entry position. When it opened, he stepped through, AA-12 to his shoulder, eyes scanning the room.
It was a huge room, large enough that he could see no fewer than four house-sized buildings inside of it, but other than the expected machinery, there didn’t seem to be anything or anyone around. Masters waved the others in, and they quickly joined him.
“Okay, the generators will be in there.” He nodded to the house-sized constructions. “We need to figure out which ones are active and shut them down.”
“Right,” Norton said, scowling over the scene. “Any idea how to do that, mate?”
“Just help us find the ones that are running, will you?” Rankin asked sarcastically. “They’ll be the ones making noise, just so you know.”
Norton flipped him the bird, but he stepped forward
to help nonetheless. The group stayed more or less together, walking up the center line between the large insulated buildings that housed the massive generators.
“This one is making a racket,” Rankin said as they passed the first.
When no one responded, he looked around, raising his voice, ”Did you hear me?…Oh.”
“Yeah,” Masters said from a short distance away, turning slowly as he looked up and around.
Above them, lining the catwalks of the massive room, were dozens, if not hundreds, of pairs of dead eyes looking down on them.
“Well…shit,” Rankin muttered.
“Richard, Perry,” Hannah said softly, “I believe that you may be about to meet with your fate.”
The two men grunted as they fingered their shotguns idly.
“Do try to leave an impression, if you would?”
The two suddenly grinned widely, nodding.
“Ah, Hannah, love,” Perry chuckled. “What would we do without you?”
“Die,” she said, “alone and peacefully in your beds in five decades or so.”
“And to avoid such a fate, we’ll owe you well into the afterlife.”
Masters ignored them, muttering instead to Norton, “Alex…check your six high.”
Norton frowned, looking up over his shoulder. There was a female figure above them that was standing apart from the mob and glaring down at them.
“Ah. Well, no need to flush her out then, yes?”
“That’s my guess.”
Norton sighed. “We’re screwed, but at least this saves time.”
Above, the figure that was watching them spoke loud enough for her voice to reverberate through the immense room.
“Kill them.”
* * *
The whine of the Coast Guard chopper winding up was loud enough that the SEALs had to strain to listen when Captain Andrews headed their way.
“Masters is making his play!” she called. “We’re going to get in the air and provide what support we can. I still don’t know what the hell is going on in that damned town, but we’re not leaving them flapping in the wind. Clear?”