Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

  Downs let go but did not back away. “They don’t have clearance for this.”

  “Actually, most of them do. The rest are guys I’ve known since I was a private in the First Recon.” Hicks made a motion towards Cole, Thompson, and Holland. “I trust these men with my life, and I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Downs looked at each of us in turn, then at Hahn. She shrugged, “He hasn’t led us wrong so far, Nathan. I’m good.”

  Downs nodded as though coming to a decision and said, “Okay.”

  “Uh, boss,” the radio squawked. “Got some bad news.”

  “How many?”

  “Wait one.”

  I heard a very large rifle firing from somewhere not far away. A fifty-caliber, unless my ears deceived me.

  “There were three a second ago. Down to two now. They’re on the move.”

  “Do you have a shot?”

  “Negative, but I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble following them.”

  “Roger that. You and Widget get down here and rendezvous at the main entrance.”

  “Roger that. On our way.”

  Hicks plugged the earpiece back in, clipped his radio to his vest, and heaved a sigh. “Okay everyone, listen up. We don’t have much time, so I’m giving you the really short version.”

  We all stood quietly and listened.

  “Okay. You all remember a few years ago when we took down the Republic of California, right?”

  “All too well,” Gabe said. I knew Gabe had been a part of the assault force, but he had never shared the details and I had never asked. Looking at his face, I decided I might need to amend that policy.

  “Right. Well, we captured a couple of scientists who know more than anybody should about the infection that caused…” he made a vague gesture toward the wall. “Well, everything. We learned the organism that spreads the infection is changing. Evolving. Emerging into a new…I don’t know what to call it. Species, strain, whatever the fuck. Bottom line, if you take one of the Grays and feed it too much, it changes and becomes like the things you saw at the Refugee District. We call them Draugr.”

  He paused to let the news sink in. I looked one by one at the faces of my friends and saw what I was feeling reflected back at me. Confusion, fear, curiosity, and about a thousand questions, all of which we did not have time for.

  “So how does that help us?” I said, trying to stop the flood of questions before it could start.

  “They’re bigger, stronger, and faster than normal infected,” Hicks went on. “If they infect someone, they turn within minutes rather than hours. The infected turned by Draugr are faster than other infected, and the infected turned by them are also faster than normal infected. The Draugr strain makes faster ghouls, who make more fast ghouls, who make more fast ghouls…get the picture?”

  “Holy Christ,” Thompson said quietly, echoing my own sentiments. “They could swarm the city in a few hours.”

  “That fits with what we saw in the Refugee District,” Gabe said.

  “Hold on, now,” Cole said. “Back up a minute. You said there were scientists who know about this shit. What scientists?”

  Hicks shook his head. “I’m sorry Isaac, but there’s no time. Here’s what you need to know. Headshots still work, but their brains can function even when damaged. So make it a double tap. Their skulls are thick and dense as hell, so hand weapons won’t do you any good. Bullets only. If you don’t have enough time to line up a shot, run like hell. The Draugr are fast, but not as fast as an able-bodied person. You can still outrun them. If you do, chances are pretty good they’ll latch onto someone else before they get to you. They’re just as easily distracted as any other Gray. I hate to put it this way, but you don’t necessarily need to outrun the Draugr.”

  “You just need to outrun the guy next to you,” Great Hawk said.

  Hicks nodded. “Exactly.”

  Thompson looked sharply at Hicks. “Caleb, have you ever done that?”

  Rather than answer, Hicks keyed his radio. “Overwatch, what’s your twenty?”

  “We’re here, boss. Front entrance. Might want to hurry, it’s getting pretty dicey out here.”

  “On our way.” Hicks checked his carbine. “Time to decide. You with us or not?”

  “Are you fucking serious?” Holland asked, looking indignant. “Why would you even ask?”

  Hicks glanced around and saw the rest of us looking at him like he was an idiot.

  “Right. Dumb question. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Eric,

  Red Barrel Tavern, Southtown

  “What do we do with him?” Holland asked, pointing at the kid.

  Hicks looked at him, hesitated, and then took out a knife.

  “Whoa, hey, wait a minute…” the kid stammered.

  “Relax.” Hicks said as he stepped around behind him and cut his riot cuffs. The kid flexed his hands and rubbed at his wrists for a second, then just stood there looking scared and unsure of himself.

  “So…what now?” he asked.

  “What now is you get the fuck out of here,” Hicks told him. “In fact, if I were you, I’d get out of Colorado Springs altogether and never come back. Because if I ever see you again, I’ll put a bullet in your face, and I won’t bother asking questions. You copy that?”

  The kid nodded quickly and began backing away. “Yeah, yeah, I got it, man. Fuck this shit. I’m going back to Wichita.”

  And with that, he turned and scurried away.

  “Think he’ll be a problem?” I asked Hicks.

  “No,” he said, watching as the kid nearly fell down the stairs in his haste to get away. “I think we put the right kind of fear in him.”

  On the way to the front entrance, Gabriel took out his satellite phone. I listened to him deliver the news in brief, forceful sentences. He wanted everyone available called in and ready to deploy, and he wanted both helicopters in the air as soon as possible.

  “And tell Lieutenant Keitel to grab five crews and get their asses to the Red Barrel Tavern in Southtown and do it fucking yesterday,” he said. “If he needs directions, talk to Alicia Conyers at the intel hub.”

  By the time Gabe hung up, we were all outside.

  “The Blackthorns have been activated,” he said.

  “What about the FBI?” Hicks asked.

  “Let me find out.”

  Gabe called, but got no answer. “They’ve had time to get to the other two locations,” he said. “If Stan’s not answering, he’s either fighting, or he’s on his way to the Outer Boroughs.”

  “Jacobs said he was going to have Colonel Bryant tell him to stand down,” Hicks said.

  Gabe snorted. “Yeah, I don’t see that happening.”

  “Boss, are we going to do this or what?” Chopra said, looking anxiously down the street.

  He was in tactical gear and had a SCAR 17 on a two-point sling. His vest was full of spare magazines and there was a Desert Eagle slung low on his thigh. It was a lot of firepower for a guy his size, but he seemed comfortable with it. Muir, for his part, had apparently abandoned his fifty-caliber sniper cannon and carried a SCAR 17. His sidearm was a large caliber revolver and there were several pouches for speed loaders on his belt. I had a Glock 17 and my sniper carbine, and I was beginning to feel underdressed.

  “Right,” Hicks said, and looked down the street. “We’ll head south. My team will take everything to the east. Gabe, you and your guys go west. We need to take these Draugr out fast and then get the hell out of here.”

  “What about evac?” Downs asked.

  “I haven’t heard anything from General Jacobs yet. Think you can help with that, Gabe?”

  “Five Humvees are already on the way,” Gabe said.

  “Outstanding.” Hicks took a second to check his rifle, then blew out a hard breath. “Okay, remember everyone, work in teams and back each other up. If you can’t get a headshot, aim for the legs. If civilians engage you, treat them the same as any
other combatant, but try to scare them off before you shoot them. We don’t want the locals turning on us.”

  “Let us hope it does not come to that,” the Hawk said.

  “Right. Okay, let’s move.”

  I paired up with Great Hawk, Gabe paired up with Cole, and Thompson paired up with Holland. We set off down the street toward the sounds of roars and screaming. The sky overhead was a dull gray, just beginning to glow with the coming of dawn. It could not arrive fast enough, as far as I was concerned.

  As we moved, in the distance, I heard more explosions. Five in all. Which meant, if I counted the one we were engaging, the two the FBI were headed for, and the one we had destroyed in the warehouse, there were a total of seven caches of monster Grays. Or Draugr, as Hicks called them. Of the five explosions, only two had armed men headed toward them. Which meant there were three we had not known about, and no one was onsite to cover them. I just had to hope the Blackthorns could get to them fast enough to stop the Draugr from spreading their strain all over the city.

  We had only gone two blocks when I heard Muir, who had moved ahead on point for his team, call out contact left. I kept moving, trusting that Hicks had drilled his team well and could handle whatever they were attacking. Curiosity got the best of me, though, and I spared a glance toward them as I ran by.

  A Draugr stood in the middle of the street just past the intersection. There were three dead bodies on the ground, two men and a woman. The creature must have seen them, hung a hard left at the traffic stop, and attacked. All three bodies had gaping wounds where their necks used to be and all three were beginning to twitch. They could not have been dead for more than a minute, but the reanimation process had already begun.

  The Draugr held a fourth person in its hands, a screaming old man with his face twisted in pain as the monster tore huge bites of flesh out of his shoulders. The beast was hunched over with its back to Muir, denying him a clear shot at its head. He made a hand gesture, and the rest of his team fanned out around him. At a signal I could not detect, they all opened fire at the same time. Some of the shots missed, but most did not. The Draugr’s legs twitched where the bullets hit, the impact barely registering as it fed. Within a few seconds, though, the sheer volume of fire did enough structural damage the beast started tipping to one side and raised its head to look around in confusion. Chopra reloaded, took a knee, and fired two shots in quick succession. The rounds burst through the Draugr’s left knee, nearly severing the lower leg. The creature dropped the old man and pinwheeled its arms for a second before toppling over.

  As I watched, it thrashed angrily for a moment, then used its arms to roll over onto its stomach, push itself up, and drag itself with alarming speed toward Hicks and his team. The gunfire shifted aim, and the creature’s head burst apart as dozens of rounds slammed into it at close range.

  “One to go!” Muir shouted in our direction, and then joined his team dispatching the soon-to-be fast ghouls the Draugr had left in its wake.

  At the same instant, I heard a roar to my right. I looked over and saw a Draugr leap up, grab the edge of a roof about twenty feet off the ground, and begin laboriously hauling itself over the edge. From the screams I heard, I knew there must be people up on that roof.

  I did not have much time. The Draugr was a slow climber, but it was strong, and it was determined. I stopped, took a knee, sat back on my heel, and took aim. Let out a slow breath. Timed the heartbeats. The Draugr’s hand reached up and slammed into the roof, its bony claws digging in, feet scrambling for purchase.

  I let out another breath.

  The arm pulled, and the Draugr’s head cleared the edge of the roof. It stopped for a second to peer around, saw its prey, and opened its mouth to let out a roar.

  The second of pause was all I needed.

  The breath came out halfway and stopped. I aimed a tiny bit high, the crosshairs slightly below the top of the creature’s head. Range was just shy of fifty yards, but with a two-hundred yard zero, that was pretty much dead on. I kept the rifle steady and gently squeezed the trigger. It bucked, surprising me, letting me know I had done it right. Through the scope, I saw the Draugr’s head snap to the side, and for a moment, it dangled loosely from the roof. Then its claws came loose, and it fell limply to the ground.

  “Damn,” I heard Cole say from somewhere to my right. “Nice shootin’, boss.”

  I stood up. “Let’s go make sure it’s dead.”

  We approached cautiously, fanning out in a skirmish line. There were no living people on the street, but there was a pair of dead bodies, both children, neither over the age of ten. One of the boys had a ragged stump where his arm used to be, an impossible amount of blood staining the snow around him, his head twisted around nearly backwards. The other boy had a huge hole scooped out of his chest, as if the Draugr had opened his mouth wide and rooted around in the boy’s innards. Probably it had.

  “I got ‘em,” Holland said.

  I looked at him and saw an uncharacteristic sadness in his eyes. I nodded in gratitude, and he nodded back. Then he walked over to the two boys, made the sign of the cross over them, muttered a prayer, and put two bullets into each boy’s head.

  Up the street, closer to where I had shot the Draugr, I heard a startled shout.

  “Shit!” Thompson said, bringing his rifle up. “The fucker’s not dead!”

  I began running, but Great Hawk got there first. Not much hope of outrunning that guy. He was faster than anyone I had ever seen, and I had seen some runners in my time. He stopped when he was near the Draugr and fired four times. The creature had been halfway to its feet, but with its head now a bloody mess, it collapsed back to the ground.

  “It is dead now,” the Hawk said.

  “Fan out,” Gabe said. “Search the area. Make sure there’s no one else infected.”

  “What do we do if we find someone bit?” Thompson asked.

  Gabe thought for a moment. “Put ‘em down. No point in restraining them. Cops are going to be busy elsewhere.”

  We formed back into pairs and searched the area. Hicks and his team did the same. We found no one bitten and found no other dead bodies. It took about fifteen minutes, at the end of which Gabe called everyone back where we had killed the last Draugr. When both teams had gathered in the street, we saw people slowly begin to emerge from doorways and poke their heads out of windows. A couple of kids saw the Draugr and began walking cautiously toward it.

  “Hey,” Hicks shouted, startling them. “Stay away from that thing. It’s infected.”

  To my relief, a few grownups appeared, and someone took charge. It was an old woman with a face like a roadmap and a voice like a drill instructor. She ordered the men to gather tarps and put them over the bodies and ordered the women to get the children inside. Whatever was happening, she told them, it wasn’t over. And like people do in these situations, when they are scared and their world has been turned upside down and they do not know what to do, they obeyed.

  “Where’s our evac?” Hicks asked, looking at Gabe. Gabe took his satellite phone out of his vest.

  “Hang on.”

  He made a call and had a brief conversation. I gathered he was talking to Rossi, the Blackthorn that had been in the chopper with Great Hawk back at the Refugee District. In less than a minute, he hung up.

  “Evac will be here in five,” he said. “Let’s get back to the tavern.”

  When we got there, I could hear the rumbling of engines in the distance. I could also hear the popping of faraway gunfire and the rhythmic thrum of helicopters taking to the sky. People were out on the streets in force now, and a few stopped to ask us what was going on. Hicks told them the situation was under control and to get back inside and stay there. No one obeyed, instead choosing to walk down the street and see for themselves, but at least they stopped bothering us. The amount of hardware on display in our group probably had something to do with that.

  “What now?” Thomson asked, looking around. “Where do we go ne
xt?”

  A black Humvee turned the corner a half mile up the street and headed straight toward us, followed closely by four more. The vehicles in front and back had gunners manning M-240s mounted up top. People on the streets stopped and stared, mouths agape, as the convoy rolled past them.

  “We go back to headquarters,” Gabe said, staring at the Humvees. “There’s nothing more we can do here, and I need to find my family.”

  Thompson looked startled. “What do you mean there’s nothing more we can do? There’s more of those things out there, and-”

  “And there’s a few hundred Blackthorns and a few thousand soldiers on the way to put them down,” Gabe said sharply. “Not to mention FBI and CSPD tactical teams. At this point, we’ll just be in the way.”

  “Hold on now,” Cole said, stepping forward. “You tellin’ me we just gonna sit this one out?”

  Gabe fixed him with a level stare. “Isaac, listen to me. We need to face the facts. The whole point of everything we’ve done over the last few days was to stop this attack from happening.” He pointed a finger down the street where we had just come from. “And we failed. You hear those choppers up there? Did you hear the explosions?”

  Cole did not answer. Gabe waited a few seconds to let the idea take root.

  “It’s over. I need to find my family, and then I need to get back to headquarters to help coordinate the Blackthorns’ response. The rest of you,” he waved a hand to encompass mine and Hicks’s teams. “Should come back with me. You’ll be safer at BSC than anywhere else in the city.”

  Gabe turned and walked a few feet away before taking out his satellite phone and calling someone. I looked at Cole to see his reaction. He was standing completely still, his face blank. He stayed that way a few seconds before shaking his head, walking over to a bench in front of the tavern, and sitting down. At first, he sat up straight, then he unslung his weapon, set it aside, put his elbows on his knees, and laid his head in his hands.

  I looked around and saw the same emotions play out on the faces of the other fighters. Muir absently stroked his beard with his arms crossed over his chest, his face unreadable. Hahn rubbed tears from the corners of her eyes and stepped away with a muttered curse. The muscles in Thompson’s jaw worked back and forth as he stared down the street, hands tight around his rifle. The Hawk pulled out some water and chugged it down, then side-armed the empty canteen at a broken window and cursed venomously in Apache. Everyone drifted a short distance away from each other, each person occupied with their own thoughts. No one spoke or made eye contact until the Hunvees arrived. I was the only one who did not move from where I stood.