Rick was looking at the port monitor from the passenger’s seat up front. “Yeah, there’s quite a few, but it looks like that one wasn’t spared.” He pointed toward one of the islands, the bridge that had spanned from east to west missing a large piece in the middle. Stumbling forms reached for the LAV from the beach, but they wouldn’t enter the water. “That must be Long Island, the bridge gives it away.”
“I thought Long Island was in New York?” Dallas said over the radio.
“This is a different Long Island…” Rick seem lost in thought. “Shit, Colonel, we should head northeast for a mile.”
“Negative, Rick, we’re too close to our mission objective to go on a foray.”
“Sir, there’s a fort on George’s Island, Fort Warren. It would be a perfect place for scared people from Boston to hide out, the place is huge with giant walls.”
“All the more reason to bypass it. I don’t want to get in a firefight with scared civvies looking to protect their assets, or have the LAV appropriated by anyone who appears friendly and then draws weapons on us.”
Rick acquiesced, admitting to himself that the colonel was probably right.
As they got closer to the city, evidence of the plague grew easy to distinguish. Several of the taller buildings that could be seen from the water were covered in scorch marks, dozens of their glass windows shattered or missing. Any smoke plumes had long since faded as the fires in the city burned out. As they moved past Logan Airport on their right, the bones of several aircraft were splayed at every angle on the tarmac. One seared fuselage was half in the water, its grisly inhabitants doomed to remain belted in until the seatbelts or the occupants themselves rotted enough for release.
The inner part of Boston Harbor was devoid of any type of ships other than the roof and upper deck of a submerged ferry boat. A lone zombie walked the deck like a trapped pirate. Unwilling to get its feet wet, it was ensnared by the waist-high railing on three sides and the harbor on the fourth. It stared at the LAV as it chugged past, its eyes full of iniquitous desire. It didn’t reach, but put its sodden hands on the railing
The route that the team had decided on would take them into the heart of the city by way of the Charles River. MIT was located immediately next to the river, and using the waterway to gain access seemed the safest way to progress. Rick’s ex-wife and the rest of the scientists were on the sixth floor of the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratories building. Rick had been in there several times to visit his wife (when they were married), and he related to the group that because of the various projects going on in this particular building, security had been extensive. Heavy steel doors with both mechanical and electronic locks secured each floor. Just getting into the building prior to the plague took an act of God, even for an off-duty cop. It was the largest building on campus, and Rick told everyone that the architecture was…weird.
Boston was eerily quiet as the vehicles made their way up the Charles. Androwski was manning the turret in the LAV, and he noticed Seyfert come out on the deck of the Brilliance, rubbing his eyes and stretching. “You took a nap?” Androwski asked into his throat mic.
“Damn skippy. Still tired too. I could have slept another ten hours if we weren’t so close to the friggin’ AO.”
Androwski flashed his middle finger and Seyfert blew him a kiss in return.
32
Half of the Harvard Bridge was missing. There were cars on both sides of the missing span, apparently attempting to travel in both directions as the span was taken out. Lurching forms appeared to the sides of the bridge when they heard the motors of the two vehicles. Several overzealous creatures fell or were pushed off the jagged edge of the broken road into the river, or spilled over the rails.
The undead population was light in the immediate area considering how large a city Boston had been. That would all change soon though, as the noise from the LAV and the Brilliance resounded through the silent streets. Bourne gave the order to cut the engines and drop anchor at 1535. Seyfert tossed a line to Androwski, and they lashed the boat to the LAV. Bourne, Dallas, Murray, and Seyfert moved to the LAV, while Wilcox and Anna moved to the Sundancer.
A small incursion team of Androwski, Seyfert, Rick, Murray, and Dallas would seek to gain entrance to the required building and assist the scientists with any gear they had. Stark would, of course, drive. The rest of the team would attempt to appropriate three armored trucks from the Steele Securities and Transport Company further up the river. If the trucks weren’t there or were not operational, Bourne would appropriate any vehicles he could to get the scientists and their gear back to the river.
The Brilliance would carry the scientists and the military men as they moved toward the as yet undisclosed location that was hinted at during Rick’s ex-wife’s previous conversations with Rick and Bourne.
The colonel took a deep breath as he picked up the radio microphone in the LAV. “This is Wanderer for Brenda Barnes or anyone in the Strata Building at MIT, do you copy, over?”
Rick harrumphed. “She hates being called Barnes, her maiden name is Poole.”
“Sorry, Rick, I’ll call her Poole.”
Rick smiled a wicked half-smile. “Don’t. It will piss her off to no end.”
Bourne raised a graying left eyebrow, “Repeat this is Wanderer calling…”
A panicked man’s voice cut him off. “We’re here! I mean, we read you! I mean, we copy! Have you come to help us?”
“I need to speak with Brenda Barnes, repeat Barnes.”
“Barnes? There’s nobody here by…”
A small scuffle was heard over the radio, with several voices speaking at once. A woman’s voice came on in a few moments. “This is Brenda Poole, to whom am I speaking?”
Bourne looked at Rick, who mouthed: That’s her.
“Ms. Barnes…”
“Poole!”
“Ms. Poole, you called me and your ex-husband on a jury-rigged phone last month. What is your husband’s name?”
“Rick Barnes. He lives in San Francisco, and he’s with my daughter, Samantha.”
“And my name, do you remember my name, over?”
“I believe it is Bran or something. I wasn’t the one who called you, Kerry did.”
“Kerry Cushing? Major Cushing’s wife?”
“Yes. Where are you? When can you get here? We’re down to stale pretzels, the Snickers bars were finished this morning.”
Bourne was still apprehensive. “Would you please put Mrs. Cushing on?”
There was a small pause before Brenda answered, “I’m sorry. She’s dead.”
“How many of your original eighteen are dead?”
“There are four of us left,” she answered. “How far away are you?”
“Depending on the presence of hostiles, the amount of equipment and supplies you need to carry with you, and applying the fact that there are only four of you left, we can probably have you out of there by the end of the day.”
“You mean today? The end of today?”
“Affirmative, Ms. Poole.”
There was excited banter and even a small cheer from the other end of the mic. “Ms. Poole, I need tactical information to better assess the situation. Can you see any undead in your area?”
“Undead…yes.”
“Can you make an accurate count?”
She paused, “Uh...no, there are too many.”
“Where exactly are you in the Strata Building?”
“We’re on the sixth floor of the CSAIL lab. We hold the fifth and sixth floor, but the seventh…” Again, a hesitation.
Bourne picked up on it. “The seventh floor?”
“The seventh is compromised. There are infected up there.”
“Okay, we’re coming to get you now, is there anything else you want to tell me that could help us?”
“Help you? No. But we could all really use a sandwich.”
33
Murray looked at his feet and noticed water sloshing around.
He swallowed hard, “Uh, are we…?”
“Relax, Army,” Seyfert cut in, “we won’t sink.”
The LAV motored toward the north bank. Several undead had heard the engine and had shown up to investigate. As there were only four scientists left to save, Bourne had decided to join the party even with his injury. It would be a tight squeeze to get everybody in, but they were only going to have to travel a quarter of a mile to the building, and assuming they were able to retrieve the scientists quickly, they could be back to the boats by midnight with the survivors and their data or samples.
Bourne had taken stock of their ammunition before they began the trek overland. They had two hundred rounds for the bushmaster and eleven hundred rounds for the LMG. The coaxial LMG hadn’t been used yet, and that had been loaded to capacity as well, with four hundred rounds. The various small arms that the team possessed were all cleaned and loaded prior to the incursion, and everyone had a decent amount of ammo and spare magazines except Dallas. He only had fourteen shells left for his shotgun.
“I got this though,” he said and patted his rebar. Stenner had given him two M9 tactical pistols, one of which was suppressed. Three magazines extra was all he had left, and he fortified the big Texan with those as well. “Now we’re loaded fer bear! I jus’ hope they ain’t zombie bear.”
They sailed the amphibious vehicle upriver until they found a breach in the embankment. Spitting mud and river rock, the LAV gained access to the MIT campus, and rolled toward Building Thirty-Two. What should have been a two minute drive proved to be significantly more difficult than previously imagined. Apparently the students at MIT had tried to build barricades to slow the advance of the tide of dead. Elaborate structures and traps some still containing squirming victims, were placed at seemingly random locations throughout the campus and its streets. These had to be skirted or run over in order to gain access to the quad next to the Ray and Maria Strata Center, also called Building Thirty-Two, which housed the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL, as Brenda called it. In addition, there were the same abandoned vehicles that every other city had, and some emergency vehicles, including a huge yellow fire truck with its ladder fully extended toward the sky.
The LAV turned the corner between two dormitory-style buildings once connected by a recently destroyed glass skyway, and stopped dead.
“Oh,” Stark said aloud. “Oh fuck me…”
Bourne turned and looked at the forward monitor in front of Anna. What looked like a sea of tall white penguins was ambling toward the vehicle. “Stark, get us out of here! Back up, move! Androwski, get on the Bushmaster! Seyfert, the LMG!” Everyone except Dallas and Rick already had their headsets on, and the two civvies scrambled for them. Androwski was already firing the coax, tearing through the undead forerunners.
The gears ground as Stark hastily threw the LAV in reverse. The noise from the transmission and all other sounds were drowned out when Androwski opened up with the Bushmaster. The sound got more intense when Seyfert popped the top hatch and reached for the swivel LMG, as did the smell. Even with the noise dampening headsets, the roar of the gun was so loud Seyfert couldn’t hear himself gag.
“Wanderer, this is Brilliance, we hear fire, SITREP, over?”
“Brilliance, this is Wanderer Lead, we’ve engaged hostiles and are bugging out for now. Do not leave your position! Repeat, remain on station, do you copy?”
“Five by five, Lead, copy, out.”
Rick put his hand on Bourne’s shoulder. “Colonel, unless we go out on the street out front, we have to go through the quad to get to Building Thirty-Two. If we back up slowly and have them follow us, we can use Plan B and move around Building Sixty-Eight,” Rick pointed to a long building on their left, “and come at Thirty-Two from the northeast.”
“Murray, let me sit.” The Army corporal slid out of the seat in front of the cabin monitors, and Bourne slid in. The colonel punched a few keys and a globe showed on the screen. He punched another few keys and the globe spun and zoomed in. Boston, the Charles River, and the MIT campus came zooming on screen. Rick pointed, then traced his finger on the screen, “There, around here, boom.” He tapped the screen in finality.
“Good intel. Stark, did you copy that?”
“Roger that, sir, moving now.” Stark kept the LAV in first gear and backed up. Androwski and Seyfert continued to thin the herd in front of them, but they had slowed down their shots considerably. “Androwski, Seyfert, ammo?”
“Under two hundred!” Seyfert bellowed.
“Coax is down to half, Bushmaster has about one-fifty left.”
“Conserve as much as possible, but we still need to take out as many as we can. Cease fire at fifty rounds on the Bushmaster, and one hundred on the LMGs.”
The LAV backed up and the dead followed. Stark did a three-point turn and put the nose north, speeding up Ames Street with the Koch Biology building, also known as Building Sixty-Eight on their left. He stopped the vehicle halfway up the street and revved the engine. The horde rounded the corner of the structure and came at them as fast as their rotten legs would allow.
These creatures were black with rot, some having been dead for more than two months. Many were missing appendages, and all walks of life were represented. Men in business suits, teenagers in cut-off shorts, a fat woman in a bridal gown, a small boy in filthy pajamas. The plague had been thorough and hadn’t left anyone out. All of them were hungry too, and they knew that the LAV held fresh vittles.
When the festering black and yellow palm of a former soldier in camouflage gear made a wet slap on the rear hatch of the LAV, Stark threw it in gear and high-tailed it up the street taking a left into the quad. There were still dozens of undead milling about, or crawling from the wounds they had received in the earlier hail of ordnance. That didn’t bother Stark though, and he crushed any unfortunate creatures which got in front of the vehicle under the wheels.
They reached a fire escape on the east side of the building, and Seyfert opened fire on a small crowd that had meandered too close. The SEAL climbed out and, standing on the hull of the LAV, was able to leap to the black iron rungs of a ladder locked in the upright position. He pulled himself up and undid the catch, the ladder slamming down on the nose of the LAV, making a sound reminiscent of a gong echoing across the quad. Seyfert began climbing, as Rick, Dallas, Bourne, and Murray exited the armored vehicle via the gun turret and climbed to the first wrought iron landing. “Pass the packs up, quick!” Androwski passed three ALICE packs up and Murray handed them further up the chain. He then pulled up the ladder and locked it back in place while Androwski looked on. Androwski turned his head around, scanning for signs of the horde. The front line was just coming into view on the north side of Building Sixty-Eight when his eyes settled back on Murray. With a casual “Good luck!” he shut the hatch, and Stark gunned the engine, the LAV heading back to the river to wait.
A shirtless young dead man in shorts stumbled close and reached his left arm for the folks on the fire escape, the other arm and shoulder missing. Several broken ribs were visible below the gaping chasm where his shoulder had been. Soon more dead showed up and reached toward the men climbing upwards. The diesel drone of the LAV was faint as they got to the third landing.
34
It was at the fourth landing where Murray stopped to take a look below them. In the minute it had taken them to climb the iron-grated stairs to the fourth floor, twenty or so undead had made it to the base of the fire escape. Murray swept his gaze east and saw the tide of putrid bodies making its slow way toward the building and the living humans. There were a lot of dead people.
A thud behind him made the window shudder and his heart leap into his throat. Murray spun, weapon extended, and saw a dead woman in a lab coat looking at him with blood red eyes. She smacked the glass again, putting her mouth on it and leaving a smear of vile fluids which dribbled down the pane.
“Jesus!” The soldier extended his middle finger to the dead woman. �
��Fuck you, dead bitch-nerd. You’re stuck in th…” He stopped talking, eyes going wide as a flood of undead materialized out of the darkness behind the initial woman, and they surged forward, all hitting the glass at once. The glass didn’t break, but the silicone used to affix it to the frame gave way and the entire windowpane pushed out from the bottom. The low end of the pane slid into Murray’s shins and he screamed, falling backwards against the iron railing. Fresh blood rained down into the greedy maws of the dead below. The rest of the team heard the commotion and noticed a score of undead spilling out onto the structure beneath them. Murray pushed the glass back toward the building, but several dead had made it out and were scrabbling at the man through his clear obstruction. Murray was backed against the railing, the glass pushing on him with a dozen dead a quarter of an inch away. Bourne fired three shots with his pistol destroying three dead, but there were many more still in the building. One industrious dead man in a blood-stained lab coat had fallen to his hands and knees and crawled past the barrier on the right side. The thing grabbed Murray’s leg and sunk its teeth into his calf. Murray screamed again, and stopped pushing to try and shake the thing away. The railing on the fire escape buckled outward and Murray looked up into Bourne’s eyes before the black iron let go, dropping Murray and eight undead over the edge to the quad forty feet below.
Three more undead simply walked off the edge, following Murray to the ground. Another noticed the survivors above and started climbing the iron stairs. The rest of the dead followed, slowly up, or quickly down. “Go,” yelled Bourne, “get to the sixth!”
Dallas grabbed Seyfert. “Tell me ya brought it!”
Seyfert undid a flap on his tactical webbing and pulled out a small white square. He molded the clay on to the portion of the fire escape that was bolted to the building as Bourne, Rick and Dallas fired into the growing crowd coming up the steps. The zombies in the rear were falling over the re-killed ones in the front trying to get to their meal, so progress was impeded some. Seyfert stuck a small cylinder into the plastique. “Go, go, go,” he yelled, “it’s ready!”
Run (Book 2): The Crossing Page 21