The Fräulein slewed the APC up onto the ramp to the Manhattan Bridge. As the road rose, Vadim could make out what looked like state housing on either side. They were dark and still. Whatever had happened here had happened while they were still uptown. Even so, he wondered at where all the millions of people living in New York City had gone. He envisaged them sweeping away from the city, sprinting as fast as they could, like a viral herd migration. Perhaps the squad had stayed close to each other at Central Station, even as they had succumbed to the mindless hunger, out of loyalty to each other, their own herd instinct.
If the bridge had been a choke point, it had passed. It was deserted now, though thoroughly blocked by abandoned cars, their windows broken, stained with blood, like the rest of the city. The whole tableau was illuminated by a flickering glow from the south and the west.
The APC slowed as its caterpillar tracks clawed its way up onto the roofs of the abandoned cars, crushing them under its weight as it made its way across a carpet of Detroit metal. They passed under an ornate arch flanked by colonnades and out onto the bridge proper on the upper Brooklyn-bound lane.
Looking back down the East River, through the Brooklyn Bridge, past the twin sentinels of the World Trade Centre, he realised that part of New Jersey and much of the Upper Bay was on fire. The Statue of Liberty, tiny at this distance, was almost lost amongst the flames, but somehow she looked unbowed. Between Manhattan Island and the Atlantic, he could see burning ships in the flames. He assumed an oil storage or tanker leak had been ignited by the firestorms. At his back was the now-silenced city, the city they had killed.
“We need to be punished for this,” he whispered to himself.
“It’s fucking beautiful,” Gulag said from behind. It seemed that Gulag was embracing his condition. Vadim tried to ignore him.
Below them, he saw ships making their way up the East River, away from the Upper Bay and the fires. A huge container ship, looking too large for the river, headed towards the Brooklyn Bridge; a coast guard cutter ran alongside it, shining searchlights up at the larger ship. Vadim could hear shouting over a loudhailer, but couldn’t make out words. There were people running all over the decks of the larger ship, clambering around the containers, and that was when Vadim realised it was already a ship of the dead. The crew must have tried to help evacuate people and only too late realised that they had the infection on board.
There was the sound of tortured metal as the container ship collided with the coast guard cutter. Vadim saw the flicker of muzzle flashes from the cutter and heard the gunfire moments later as the dead spilled from the larger ship, plummeting to the decks of the boat. The gunfire intensified. The sheer weight of the container ship forced the cutter into shallower water; he heard more shrieking metal and an almighty crash as the cutter hit one of the bridge’s supports. Then the container ship ran aground as well, sending the dead tumbling into the river. Meanwhile, a smaller container ship was trying to slowly pick its way past the colliding craft without running aground, and without getting too close to the larger ship and its cargo of zombies.
Seeing his vague plan of hijacking a ship from one of the Brooklyn Ports going up in smoke, Vadim turned to look over the bridge to the Brooklyn side, hoping for inspiration. That was when he saw the dead running at them from Brooklyn, scrambling across the carpet of abandoned cars. He looked down at the smaller container ship. There were people on the decks, more than would be needed to crew a ship that size, but they weren’t running around trying to eat each other. He pounded on the roof of the APC.
“Stop! Stop!” he shouted. The APC lurched to a halt. Vadim checked behind him, looking towards the Manhattan side of the bridge. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could see dark figures sprinting towards them from that direction as well, the horde from the Bowery catching up. He turned to Gulag and gestured towards both groups of the dead. “Man the .50,” he told the Muscovite, “but don’t fire until I tell you to.”
Gulag nodded and crawled out of the rear hatch across the roof as Vadim sank down into the APC, moving out of the way so the gangster could stand on the gunner’s pedestal. The rest of the squad were all looking to him.
“Switch off the engine,” Vadim told the Fräulein, and she did so. “We have forces closing in on us from both ends of the bridge. There’s a container ship going by under...” The thunder of the .50 cal overhead drowned him out as Gulag fired a short burst, and then another. Hot shell casings rained down into the APC. “Gulag, cut it out!” Vadim shouted. Gulag laughed, but didn’t fire again. “Gulag, Fräulein and myself will cover; New Boy, you rig a rope and drop it over the side. Everyone gets into harness and rappels down onto the ship. Understand?” They all nodded. New Boy kicked the rear hatch open and threw out the duffel bag full of climbing gear he had taken from the outdoors shop.
“Can I fire now, Infant?” Gulag asked insolently.
“I want the whole belt gone before we leave,” Vadim told him as he looked around at the weapons they had taken from the National Guard squad. He grabbed the M16/M203 combination assault rifle and grenade launcher, along with ammo for both weapons, and followed Princess out of the APC. As she stepped out she fell forward, hitting the ground. He saw an arm reach out from under the vehicle and a zombie – one leg missing, the other a crushed, mangled mess – pulled itself out from under the APC and tried to climb up her. The roar of the .50 cal atop the armoured vehicle drowned out any warning cry. Vadim’s hands were full, nothing readied. He was about to drop the assault rifle and reach for his saperka but Princess used her boot to ram the zombie’s head against the lip of the rear hatch as she drew her pistol. There was a crack as powerful leg muscles broke something in her attacker’s spine. Then Vadim flinched away, more by instinct than anything else, as she fired two rounds into its head, perilously close to where he was standing. Then the torso was still. Princess didn’t even look at him. She just stood, holstered her pistol and grabbed the M16 she’d taken.
Vadim quickly pulled the climbing harness on, securing it in place. The APC’s tracks – the whole lower half of its body – were caked in dripping gore. He then moved a little way away. Gulag was firing towards Brooklyn, every three-round burst sending one bright tracer arcing lazily into the mass of the dead. Vadim loaded a fragmentation grenade into the M203 grenade launcher mounted underneath the M16’s barrel. Gulag didn’t need a head hit with the .50 cal. A limb hit would destroy and probably remove the limb, the hydrostatic shock of a centre mass torso hit could pop the head off. Just like Pavel, he thought. There was an explosion as one of the API rounds from the .50 ignited a fuel tank, blossoming into flame over the bridge; in the red light, the dead looked like ants swarming from a nest.
Mongol fixed a second belt of ammunition to the first in the M60 the Fräulein had taken off the jeep. The big East German woman lifted the large weapon to her shoulder like an oversized rifle and started laying down fire towards the Manhattan side of the bridge, Skull feeding the belt into the machine gun. Vadim saw targets taking hits; the 7.62mm round did significant damage, but the zombies kept moving until they were utterly destroyed.
Skull and Princess both had M16s and were aiming carefully, firing single shots and taking aim every time. Both were probably good enough to reliably make head shots from that distance.
Vadim fired the launcher, sending a fragmentation grenade into the masses coming from the Brooklyn side. Then he reloaded and fired towards the Manhattan side. He saw dark figures torn apart, flung into the air, but some of them kept on crawling when they landed.
“Ready!” New Boy shouted, flinging the rope over the side of the bridge. Vadim glanced over and saw that the ship was almost below them.
“Go!” Vadim shouted and New Boy disappeared over the side of the bridge. “Princess, go!” Vadim ordered, firing another grenade towards Brooklyn. Princess was shooting down into the lower level of the bridge, where the subway lines and extra car lanes were.
“They’re below us!” she shouted b
efore dropping the M16 and sprinting for the line, attaching her descender to it and following New Boy over the edge. Looking down, Vadim could see more of the dead moving through the lower levels. He fired a high-explosive grenade into a mass of them. It detonated, throwing cars into the air. There was a second explosion as another fuel tank went up, fire blooming up through the bridge.
“Skull, you’re next,” Vadim called. The bow of the container ship was now under the bridge. Skull fired a few more shots down into the lower levels of the bridge and then dropped his M16 and made for the line. Vadim loaded another fragmentation grenade and saw the last few bursts from the .50 cal tear zombies apart.
“Empty!” Gulag shouted from the APC.
“Mongol, go!” Vadim shouted. Mongol abandoned the Fräulein as she cut loose with a long burst of fire from the machine gun. Vadim was firing the M16 now. They were close enough. Three-round burst, shift, three-round burst, shift, fire again. The fire from the gas tank that Gulag had hit had spread; a tanker truck exploded, blowing burning cars off the bridge and into the East River. Vadim heard a clang as car bounced off the side of the ship below. It looked as though the fireball had consumed a number of the zombies, but they just came sprinting out of it a moment later, on fire.
Gulag didn’t wait for an order. He pulled on a climbing harness, attached his descender and rolled over the side of the bridge. Vadim heard gunfire from below; it didn’t sound like anything carried by his people.
“Liesl, go!” Vadim shouted. The dead from the lower level were starting to clamber up towards them. Vadim was firing the M16 and backing towards the riverside edge of the bridge. His magazine ran dry. He ejected it as three of the dead climbed up onto the upper level. Vadim grabbed the last magazine he’d taken for the weapon and slammed it home as they charged him. The long burst from the M60 sent the zombies staggering backwards, the rounds churning up their unliving bodies as they tumbled back into the lower levels. The Fräulein dropped the M60 and ran to the line. Vadim fired his last grenade towards Manhattan and then turned towards Brooklyn, firing the M16, illuminating the bridge one more time before dropping the weapon, and attaching his descender to the line. Charging zombies from both sides were almost upon him, several of them on fire, reaching for him. He clambered over the railings and tried to kick off, but there were already people on the rope below him, holding it taut, and he slid down, battering himself against the superstructure. The dead just threw themselves off the bridge at him, grabbing at him as they plummeted by. As he slid past the lower level, he saw more of them sprinting along the subway lines to throw themselves out over the river, whether to try and get to him or the container ship, he wasn’t sure. He slid below the lower level into open air. The bridge castle of the ship was beneath him now. He saw Gulag on top of it, removing himself from the line, the Fräulein just about to touch down. Gunfire sounded from the tops of the containers and the decks running along either side of the stacks, answered by fire from the bridge castle and the stern.
Vadim was trying to make sense of the situation as he rappelled towards it, when a shadow fell across him. He looked up in time to see one of the dead falling towards him, its chest cavity glowing from within. The zombie half-landed on him, and he half-caught it. At first he thought it was one of the burning zombies, but realised it had one of the .50 cal API rounds lodged inside it. The round must have passed through a number of vehicles, slowing it down, before it had hit the zombie, but the incendiary was still burning.
The zombie had hold of one of the straps on his climbing harness, and seemed to be simultaneously trying to climb him and claw at him as they swung around beneath the bridge. The creature managed to wrench its hand free and started to fall, but Vadim grabbed its wrist, not wanting to add another zombie to whatever was happening on the ship below. He pulled his knife from its scabbard and rammed it down again and again onto the top of the struggling, glowing creature’s head. The awkward angle of attack meant that the knife was mostly scraping off the thing’s skull. Finally, however, with a sickening crunch, Vadim managed to get a solid enough blow to pierce the skull and the zombie was still. Then Vadim let it drop and bounce off the ship. He continued sliding down the rope, conscious he was about to run out of ship.
He could see the stern of the vessel. A man he didn’t recognise was standing by the rear edge of the bridge castle, firing a Heckler & Koch G3 with a distinct lack of expertise. Behind him, Vadim could see a limp-legged zombie dragging itself across the deck towards the man.
Vadim tried to rappel even faster, but the rope jammed in the descender. The ship was about to disappear beneath him. He cut the rope and fell through the night air.
CHAPTER TEN
0059, 17th November 1987
The East River, New York City
THE EDGE OF the ship’s stern was rushing up to meet Vadim. Cold fingers stretched out for it. The flames of the burning bridge glittered in the dark waters. Dead flesh touched metal, slipped. His right hand found purchase. He slammed into the hull, hard, and almost let go. He spent a few seconds hanging in space, finding an odd moment of peace. Then he felt his fingers starting to slip and reached up with his other hand to pull himself onto the deck.
The short podgy man with the G3 rifle stood at the aft corner of the tower; he still hadn’t noticed the dead woman crawling across the deck towards him. Vadim swung his AK-74 forward on its sling, raised the weapon to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, blowing the top of the woman’s head off. The sailor jumped and started to swing round, and Vadim caught the barrel of the G3 and wrenched it out of his hands. The man looked terrified. Vadim wondered just how dead he looked right now.
“Do you have people on deck?” Vadim demanded in English. The man just gaped at him. “Answer me now!” He slung his AK-74 again and checked the G3 over. The man was nodding, but seemed to be struggling to speak. “Ammunition,” Vadim ordered. The stranger handed over two more twenty-round magazines for the rifle. “Okay, you need to listen to me and do exactly as I tell you if you want to live, do you understand me?” The man just nodded again. Vadim could hear the cracks of single shots from various directions around the ship. “Get all your people inside.” Vadim patted the superstructure of the bridge castle. “Anyone bitten, wounded, you leave them out here, understand me?”
A hatch in the side of the bridge castle opened, and another man in uniform, also carrying a G3, stepped out onto the deck. Vadim aimed his own rifle at the man.
“Don’t move!” he shouted, and the man froze, his back still to Vadim. The report of an AK-74 sounded, nearly on top of them, and the top of the man’s head exploded.
“No!” The podgy man found his voice, as his shipmate toppled to the deck. Vadim risked looking up. Gulag was standing atop the bridge castle, rifle pointing down.
“Just target the dead!” Vadim shouted. “Tell the others!” Gulag disappeared from view, and Vadim turned back to the podgy sailor. “Get your people inside, now!”
“You’ll shoot me!” the man protested as Vadim knelt over the corpse, searching him, removing two more magazines for the G3 before taking the weapon itself. Even wanting to preserve their own ammunition, he was carrying altogether too many weapons.
He didn’t answer the man; after all, it was a distinct possibility. He could hear the Fräulein shouting in Russian from the roof of the bridge castle, and saw muzzle flashes light up the night as she fired a short burst from her RPKS-74. This was not a good situation. They were spread out across the ship; there were zombies on board, though presumably damaged from the fall; and they had a civilian crew wandering around. Ideally, Vadim didn’t want to kill the civilians, but they were armed. “Fine,” Vadim finally said. “Go ahead and hide, your friends can take their chances.” He looked up at the man. He was pale, almost as pale as Vadim, and coated in a cold sweat. He nodded. He would help. “Stay behind me.”
“Wait,” the sailor said. Vadim opened his mouth to say something harsh, but the man had pulled out a radio han
dset and was speaking into it in German. He hooked the radio back on his belt. “Okay.”
Vadim moved forward along the narrow walkway next to the bridge castle, heading towards the stack of containers along the long flat front of the ship. Cranes fore and aft of the cargo area cast long shadows over the stacks. Vadim saw the spark of a muzzle flash from the fore crane, heard the boom of Skull’s .303 and assumed that something or someone had just died. He reached the edge of the bridge castle and found himself face to face with a young black man in a police officer’s uniform, pointing a pump-action shotgun at him.
“Freeze! Drop the weapon!” the police officer shouted. Vadim kept his G3 levelled at the man. He was young, late twenties at the oldest. Short, with neatly-cropped hair, he looked in good shape. He had a plain honest face, wracked with strain.
“Put the gun down,” Vadim said evenly.
“Are you Russian?” the police officer demanded.
“I’m trying to keep you alive...”
“Please, officer,” the German sailor said from behind him. There was more gunfire from above, on the stacks of containers.
“You did this!” the police officer said. Vadim saw the pain on his face, and knew he was going to have to kill him. There was a soft whistle from behind the officer, and Princess stepped out of the shadows, her AKS-74 levelled at the back of the police officer’s head. Then the shadows at his feet shifted and pulsed, as if something overhead were –
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