The Rising Horde, Volume Two

by Stephen Knight

  “I’ll take it,” Gartrell said.

  “You have the remote detonator safety on?” Roads asked when Gartrell lifted the acetylene tank and put it on the ATV’s flat bed.

  “Yes, Janice, I do.”

  “Just checking, Marlene. By the way, you hear about Barney?” Roads put the ATV in gear and executed a slow, tight left turn after Gartrell jumped on the flat bed.

  Gartrell held the tank near him with his left hand, his right gripping the AA-12’s pistol grip handle. “What about Barney?” Gartrell asked, even though he already knew the answer.

  “He and Betty went bye-bye,” Roads said. “He and the rest of the team wouldn’t abandon the cash when the stenches rolled up on them. They were still doing surgeries in there, so they weren’t going to let the stenches get to them without a fight.”

  “Well. Fuck. I know Rick did more than his share of the work. That’s the kind of hooah he was.”

  “Fuck, yeah,” Roads agreed, and then they were done talking about Rick “Barney Rubble” Forringer. He’d met his end with honor and courage, even if it was at the hands of a slavering horde of carnivorous corpses and not from jihadis, right- or left-wing guerrillas, or even plain, old-fashioned Communists.

  Gartrell pulled the tank closer to his body. See ya, Barney.

  ***

  Plenty of action was still going on inside the tent city. Zeds were everywhere. Dusty Roads rocketed past them, gunning the ATV around corners, leaning into the turns so he wouldn’t lift one set of tires off the deck.

  Gartrell cursed as he slid from side to side across the ATV’s bed, having to surrender his grip on the AA-12 in order to keep himself from being flung out of the vehicle. Twice, Dusty rolled right up and over a shambling necromorph he couldn’t easily avoid, and Gartrell could have sworn he heard their bones cracking as the laden ATV bulled over them.

  “Hey, this isn’t like Death Race 2000, pal,” Gartrell told Roads.

  “This is exactly like Death Race 2000, bro! Or maybe The Road Warrior. See, that’s the problem with us, mano. We can just never agree on anything.”

  “Well, I do like your perfume. A pleasant choice, goes well the scent of rot and decay.”

  “And cordite. Always remember the cordite. So uh, just how deep in do we have to go?” Roads asked as the ATV bore down on a thick collection of zombies. The zeds roared and hissed when the vehicle drew near, even though it was running without lights, and Roads and Gartrell both used their night vision goggles. The stenches could hear it, but they likely couldn’t see it yet.

  “Here will be just fine, I think,” Gartrell said. “We’re, what, two hundred meters from the airfield?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Cool. Got your hearing protectors in?”

  “What?”

  “I said, do you have your hearing protectors in your ears?”

  “What?”

  Gartrell realized he’d been played, so he smacked the back of Roads’s helmet. He hopped off the ATV’s bed and put the rigged acetylene tank on the ground beside a tent, then returned to the ATV. As the zombies drew near, Roads cut the vehicle around and blasted back the way they had come.

  ***

  “Leonidas, this is Hercules Seven. We’re heading back, and I’m ready to start the home fires burning. Over,” Gartrell said over the radio net.

  McDaniels sat up straighter in the MRAP’s driver’s seat. “Roger that, Hercules Seven. Do it to it and get back here ASAP. Over.”

  A muted rumble rolled across the camp as he spoke, something barely audible above the small arms fire and the continually falling bombs that plastered the landscape outside the walls. McDaniels opened the heavy door, clambered out of the vehicle, and turned toward the camp. Sure enough, there was activity going on somewhere near the middle of all the civilian tent area.

  Suddenly, a great raging fireball was born. It burned quickly, savagely, and consumed several dozen tents before it disappeared, leaving a gigantic black smoke ring that climbed into the air. But the damage was done. The flames lived on, leaping from tent to tent, consuming them and the necromorphs that hungrily walked around them.

  “Hercules Seven, Leonidas. Fantastic job, Gartrell. That’ll give them something to think about. Over.”

  “Roger, Leonidas. Hercules Seven, out.”

  A few moments later, Gartrell arrived back at the MRAP on the bed of an ATV driven by Master Sergeant Dusty Roads.

  Roads saluted McDaniels. “I thought I’d give the old war horse a ride, save his tender hoofs.”

  “Thought it was pronounced ‘hooves,’ Dusty.” Gartrell rolled off the ATV’s bed and onto his feet in one lithe action.

  “You say tomato, I say tomahto.”

  “I say you’re a tool frantically in search of a shed,” Gartrell told him.

  “Dusty, since you’re here, see if there’s room for you in Major Lewis’s rig,” McDaniels said, interrupting what promised to be yet another in a long series of harangue grudge matches. “We’ve got to move out in—”

  Another explosion shook the camp. A huge fireball lit up the night sky for several seconds. It came from the northern wall, and as the angry mushroom cloud crawled higher, McDaniels saw the dark, egglike shape of the AH-6M Little Bird attack helicopter flit past it, momentarily silhouetted against the orange-red mass.

  “Goddamn it, why are my efforts always being reduced in stature every time I turn around?” Gartrell asked, staring at the mushroom cloud.

  “No comment,” Roads said, as he dismounted from the ATV. He clapped Gartrell on the shoulder and walked toward the next MRAP in the line.

  “That was the other incendiary tanker,” McDaniels explained. “Try not to be upset.”

  “Well, I guess the nuke is going to make even that one look pretty dinky.”

  McDaniels spoke into his headset boom microphone. “This is Leonidas to all SPARTA units. Fall back to the vehicles ASAP. We’re abandoning the camp. I say again, all SPARTA units, fall back to the vehicles. We’re abandoning the camp.”

  23

  It took more time than planned to get the rest of the troops mounted up, but the blazing inferno created by the incendiary tanker truck and the smaller, but still blistering blaze from Gartrell’s improvised fuel air explosive kept the horde at bay for a bit. The only necromorphs that continued to be a threat were those on the walls, and as the troops fell back, the zeds advanced steadily along the top of the CONEX containers.

  “Sir, we’re ready to go here,” Chase announced finally. “All vehicles are ready to roll out. Drawbridges are down.”

  “Roger that.” McDaniels keyed his microphone button. “Berry, this is Leonidas. Are you ready to roll out? Over.”

  “Leonidas, this is Berry. Roger, ready to go. Make sure your guys keep them off me. Over.”

  “We’re on it, Berry. Roll through as soon as the gate is clear. Over.” McDaniels flashed his lights at the Rangers standing beside the roller. One of them lifted the panel that revealed the gate controls, and he pressed a button. Then the soldiers hightailed it out of there, heading for their assigned vehicles.

  One of them—the kid named Roche, McDaniels realized—climbed up the side of McDaniels’s MRAP and joined the three other soldiers sitting up there. More soldiers remained on the wall, firing off into the night, taking down zombies that started across the just-lowered drawbridges. They also had to contend with the ghouls creeping up from either side of the wall.

  The gate rumbled open, and the reinforced road roller slowly accelerated through the gap. It rolled right over the zombies that lunged toward the open gate and smashed them flat. As McDaniels pulled the MRAP through the gate, he noticed that the rollers on the heavy vehicle ahead already glistened with black ichor and other juices that had been fermenting inside the corpses. None of the vehicles had any lights turned on once they left the camp. Their mission would be completed under night vision goggle conditions only. There were already millions of zombies outside—no rea
son to give them a hand.

  As the convoy pulled through the western gate at a steady six miles per hour, the zombies inside the compound seemed to realize their prey was getting away. They redoubled their attempts to get at the soldiers manning the final battlements on the wall, and if it weren’t for the Little Birds that suddenly screamed out of the night sky and made several gunnery runs against the stenches, the stenches might have succeeded. But the hail of 7.62-millimeter bullets left them barely recognizable as former human beings. As the last vehicles made for the gate, the Rangers on the wall leaped onto them, grabbing at bungee cords stretched across the armored shells of the MRAPs. Not one of them missed their target, and none lost their hold on the straps and tumbled to the ground.

  The last vehicle left the camp without incident, even though hundreds of ghouls shuffled after it.

  At six miles an hour, the convoy eventually left the pack behind… but just barely.

  ***

  The road roller slowly moved down the length of the first drawbridge, crushing every zombie that blundered into its path. It slowed down to four miles an hour to make the crossing, and some necromorphs did manage to elude death. Even though the roller was quite wide, there was still space on either side of the vehicle, and that allowed some of the zombies to sidestep being crushed. They reached out for the roller clumsily, but had trouble finding adequate purchase on its armored form to pull themselves up onto it. One zombie did manage to hold on for a few moments, its fingers locked in the holes in the planking, but as it was dragged, its feet got caught up in the rear roller. The zombie was ripped away, leaving several fingers behind in the steel planking.

  McDaniels kept the Cougar right behind the road roller as it drove down the bridge. The zombies that had missed their opportunities with the piece of road equipment had another chance with the MRAP, and they reached for it with dead fingers. One of them went down as the driver’s side mirror clipped it in the head. Another managed to grab the forward passenger door and press its face against the thick glass, peering inside the darkened vehicle. Captain Chase, sitting in the front right seat, fidgeted uncomfortably as the ghoul pounded on the glass with one fist.

  “Don’t open the door, Captain,” McDaniels said, keeping his eyes glued to the rear of the road roller ahead. As it crossed the first bridge and drove across the patch of asphalt that remained between the two defiles, more zombies launched themselves at it. Many were crushed beneath the vehicle’s thousand-pound rollers, but others managed to haul themselves onto the vehicle.

  “Should we start firing, sir?” Chase asked, indicating the roller.

  “Negative. Let’s not attract any more attention than we have to at the moment.” McDaniels pressed his radio’s transmission button. “Berry, this is Leonidas. How’re you holding up? Over.”

  “I’m a little freaked out, Leonidas. But I’m all right, I guess. Doesn’t look like these things can get at me, but boy are they trying. Over.”

  “Berry, Leonidas. Let me know if you need us to start picking them off. I’d rather wait for a bit before we open up, just to conserve ammunition, but if you need some relief, let me know. Over.”

  “I’m… I’m all right for now, Leonidas. Over.”

  “Roger that. Keep at it. You’re doing a hell of job. Over.”

  “Leonidas, this is Berry. I will. Over.”

  More zombies stumbled toward the MRAP McDaniels drove. Those that managed to get between the roller and the MRAP disappeared beneath the big six-wheel drive vehicle without even a bump. Others latched onto the mirrors or the armored boxes that surrounded the vehicle’s saddle tanks. Several zeds pressed their faces against the driver’s window, peering in at McDaniels with flat, dead eyes. He wondered if they could see him, then decided they couldn’t. It was just too dark to see anything without NVGs.

  “Gartrell, how are things up there?” he asked.

  “Doing all right. The soldiers are being very, very still. No one wants to attract any stenches just yet. None have climbed up, right?”

  McDaniels checked the windows. “Not as far as I can tell. I think they’re all down here, on either side of the driver’s cab.”

  “Hooah.”

  Ahead, the roller drove onto the second drawbridge. It coasted along at a steady six miles per hour, running almost all out. Its rollers were filthy with gore and tattered pieces of rotting flesh. And again, those zombies that missed the roller and stepped in front of McDaniels’s MRAP basically disappeared without a sound. There wasn’t even any control feedback through the steering wheel.

  “Seems pretty rock steady,” Chase said, still pointedly trying to ignore the festering faces pressed against the window beside him.

  “So far, so good. Let’s see how it does overland, though.”

  Light strobed behind them, and McDaniels heard the crackle of small arms fire. He checked the mirror on his side, but couldn’t see anything due to the stenches blocking his view. “Chase, see that joystick there?”

  “Yes, sir. Is that for an infrared camera?”

  “Yep, this rig has two, one front and one rear. Fire it up and see if you can see what’s happening back there.”

  Chase fooled around with the controls before he found the right combination to bring the rear camera to life. He panned it around and examined the rest of the convoy. “Looks like some zeds managed to crawl up one of the Cougars. Rangers or Special Forces had to put them down.”

  “This is how it’s going to be for a while,” McDaniels said. The road roller was coming to the end of the second drawbridge, and beyond it lay a virtual sea of corpses, their pale, bloodied faces turned toward the convoy as it slowly moved forward.

  “Oh shit,” Chase said.

  McDaniels glanced over at him quickly, and saw he was staring past the road roller. He couldn’t see the captain’s eyes because his goggles were blocking them, but he could see his mouth hanging open.

  “Easy there, Captain. Remember, we’re in the heavily armed vehicle.”

  “Sir, they go all the way to the horizon,” Chase said breathlessly.

  “Let’s hope they stop there.” McDaniels kept his eyes rooted to the back of the road roller, only a few feet in front of the MRAP’s bumper.

  Once they left the drawbridges behind, the ride became rougher, more disturbing. Some of the zombies were thrown from the vehicle, but in an instant, more took their places. The MRAP shouldered its way through the bodies that pressed against it. More stenches were grabbing onto the road roller, hauling themselves onto it. McDaniels wondered what would happen when they finally draped themselves over the small vision block that had been left in the plating covering the roller’s windshield.

  “Chase, contact Rapier. Tell them we’ve left the camp. Then have one of your Air Force controllers make a call for a MOAB. I want one dropped a mile or two ahead of us, between us and Interstate 20. If the highway is clear enough, I want to try to use it to gain some distance from the camp.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  McDaniels spoke into his microphone, keeping one hand on the wheel, the other free to toggle the TRANSMIT button. “Berry, this is Leonidas. Keep doing what you’re doing. We’re right behind you. I see that you’ve got stenches all over your rig, but they can’t get to you. If you find your vision becomes blocked, keep on going. We’ll guide you from here using infrared and GPS. Understood? Over.”

  “Leonidas, roger that. The terrain is getting kind of bumpy, so this thing might start sliding around, or even worse, get stuck. When that happens, how’re you guys going to get me free? Over.”

  McDaniels thought about that. The necromorphs were literally everywhere. How would they be able to rescue the roller driver if—when—his equipment got stuck?

  “We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, Berry. We’ll pull up beside you, clean you off, then open a door and you’ll hop in. That’s the only way. Over.” McDaniels kept his eyes on the roller, a ghostly image through his night vision goggles. The rig was a
ctually making a good seven miles per hour, which was encouraging. And the MRAP showed little indication the mass of zombies it was plowing through even mattered. The steering wheel felt solid in McDaniels’s hand, and the vehicle bounced no more than normal over the uneven desert terrain.

  “Roger that, Leonidas,” Berry transmitted finally. “I hope you guys can pull that off. Over.”

  “Have faith, Captain Berry. Now I’d like you to turn slightly to the north. Only a few degrees. Can you do that? Over.”

  “Roger that, Leonidas.”

  The road roller slowly turned to the right, almost imperceptibly. If it hadn’t been for the NVG-ready global positioning system display built into the MRAP’s console, McDaniels might never have noticed it was even turning.

  “Rapier’s up to speed, sir,” Chase said. “They have a MOAB in the area, just waiting for your command to drop it. The Hercules carrying it has another two hours of station time, then they’ll have to RTB.”

  “We’ll be making use of that inside of an hour,” McDaniels said. “Contact the Card Sharks. Ask them to range ahead of us and do some reconnaissance. There are some farm roads up there that look like they intersect with the highway. I want to know what condition they’re in, and if the highway is passable as well.”

  “Roger.” Chase selected another frequency on the radio, then issued the orders.

  McDaniels kept the MRAP tooling along in first gear, barely breaking six miles per hour. He prayed the highway was navigable; otherwise, they’d never get far enough from the site before the nuke was dropped. He wondered if the B-52H tasked to deliver the weapon was already on-station, orbiting thousands of feet overhead.

  “Card Sharks are on it, sir,” Chase said. “What do we do about the 160th?”

  “The Little Birds can scout ahead of us and look for alternate paths in case we find something’s closed off. When their fuel starts to go, they should break off and make for the closest operational airfield…once they’ve exhausted their munitions on our behalf, of course. That should make them lighter and give them some more range, anyway. Gartrell, how’s it looking from your position?”