by Nick Cole
“Alpha Six, we have your access point. The New China Bank on the northeast corner of Olive and 5th. Next to the Starbucks… do you have eyes on objective?”
“Confirmed Overlord. What do I do?”
A few Infected began to bash into the side of the SUV below him. Braddock put bullets in their heads.
“… enter the bank with extreme prejudice. Expect armed resistance. Enter the vault and we’ll be waiting for you inside.”
Great, thought Braddock and didn’t bother to articulate the insanity of pulling a bank job in the middle of the end of the world.
He grabbed the nuclear weapon and jumped down onto the hot street, heading toward the bank on the northeast corner of the wide intersection. The mob of Infected on the opposite corner beneath the second story window was more interested in the gunshots coming from inside the building there.
As he approached, Braddock could see that security screens had been rolled down across the windows and doors of the bank. He holstered the 9mm, set the case down ten feet away from the door, and ran up to the nearest shutter as he fished around in the wide pocket of his ruck for one of the three breach charges he was carrying.
More and more Infected were filling the large intersection. One of them rounded the corner. Its eyes widened then blazed hate and murder as it reached for Braddock who tucked the charge into his chest and spun into a roundhouse that landed on the dead woman’s jaw and ear. The thing rag-dolled off the shutter and fell to the ground. It struggled to right itself, but Braddock knew its eardrum was smashed. It wasn’t getting up any time soon. He returned to the door and placed the charge on the roll down door, activating the magnetic clamps. He adjusted the explosive cone to its widest spread and then activated the timer. Fifteen seconds.
Ten seconds later he was standing around the corner, gripping the case carrying the nuclear bomb. Three Infected came at him, and he tried to remember how many bullets were left in the magazine.
He struggled for a moment. Everything was beginning to haze over. The past week, ops, tango down, uncountable undead, it was all becoming one big long day. He raised the matte black 9mm and aimed at the nearest Infected. An old man, bloody and drooling. He was cut and torn and bitten all over. His eyes were rolling white as his toothy mouth opened for Braddock.
How many bullets have you fired? He asked himself again, as two more Infected joined the undead old man.
“You’re too stupid to quit.”
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Three undead and the slide popped back. Empty.
The breach charge went off like rolling thunder as it ripped the metal shutter and the door to the bank inward. Braddock holstered the empty 9mm and readied the silenced MP5 with his free hand, leaving the strap around his neck.
Feels loaded, he told himself when he wondered how many bullets were in the mag.
He walked up to the smoking gash and pulled a frag grenade from his LCE vest. Zombies swarmed from all four corners of the intersection, closing in on him.
They’d said, “Extreme Prejudice”.
And…
She’d said, “Whatever it takes.”
He tossed the grenade in, pulled another and aimed for a different section of the room beyond the torn seam in the door. Then he pulled his only CS Grenade from the other side of his harness.
Knew I shoulda brought a mask, he thought, as all the zombie groups in the intersection came together and formed a wall surging toward him like a tsunami. I knew it! He popped the CS grenade and tossed it in. Gunfire was coming from inside the bank, punching holes in the flimsy metal roll down door. Braddock pulled the MP5 sling over his head, drew in a lungful of air and held it. He pointed the weapon in front of him and entered the smoking tear in the shutter.
I can hold my breath, he calculated, engaged in a firefight, for at least one minute. If it went hand to hand, he knew he’d have to breathe. So conserve your ammo, he told himself. He knew that once the CS started on his tear ducts, he’d be blind. That was when he’d freak out and want air, badly.
Inside the bank, within the billowing tear gas, the smart glasses showed him three Asian men bent over and retching from the tear gas as they struggled to breathe. One looked up at Braddock, his eyes bulging, snot running like a river from his nose and pleaded silently with Braddock to let him take a breath. Braddock knew how the guy felt. He felt like his lungs were filled with cement and that he’d never breathe again. Braddock shot him in the chest and the man pitched backward against the dusty marble floor. The others had dropped to their knees as they struggled for even the tiniest bit of air.
Behind Braddock, the undead were crawling through the gaping hole, pushing over each other to get inside. Their collective rasps seemed like a distant roar inside Braddock’s blood-thundering ears.
Ahead lay the counter and beyond that, the open vault. At the corners of his vision, darkness began to swirl into a mist. From some desk on the other side of the room, maybe the place where people asked for a loan or opened a new checking account, a woman began to fire an AK-47 at him. Braddock watched as the tellers’ counter in front of him and the stations along its face began to erupt in disintegrating wood splinters. Braddock ran. It cost him, but he took three large strides and slid over the counter and onto the carpet behind.
He almost took a breath as he lay on the floor wanting to pant. His lungs were screaming. There wasn’t an ounce of air left in them. His heart felt like it was going to explode. He struggled to his feet, still holding the MP5 and the old Soviet nuclear weapon with the new wiring. His vision was slowly surrendering down into a tiny circle. The woman with the AK-47 fired her last few rounds into the chests and stomachs of the more than twenty undead that had crawled inside the bank. More, many more, were still flooding through the smoking tear gas like wrong way rats surging onto a sinking ship. The zombies already inside overran the woman in a wave of rotting human flesh and drove her into the rich mahogany wood of the back wall as she collapsed beneath their onslaught. Braddock sprayed the crowd with what bullets remained in the MP5 as they crossed the marble floor, dropping some, causing others to stumble over the dying dead. Then he heaved himself into the vault, shoved the case carrying the nuclear weapon further inside, and turned back with the last of his strength to grab the massive door, its shiny locking mechanism displayed proudly beneath polished glass.
As he began to black out, every cell in his body begged for him to take a breath of the swirling yellow poison that filled the bank. He hoped the door would just swing shut. He didn’t have any other way to go. Too many of the Infected had entered the building, too many more were pressing forward to get in. To get at him.
He heard the woman screaming. Someone else too. He reached forward with his massive arm, bicep flexing, and pulled on the vault door.
It closed swiftly, sealing Braddock inside the vault.
An automatic ventilation system whirred to life, and Braddock could feel fresh cold air rushing down on his hot, dusty arms and neck. He pulled at the fresh air and began to immediately cough as some of the CS still clinging to his clothes got to him. A moment later, he reached into his pack and drank the last of the warm, chlorinated water from his collapsible water system. Water he’d topped off back in the hangar, in the dark that morning when the wind was hot, and the air smelled like jet fuel and helo exhaust and fires burning out of control out in Malibu Canyon.
“Alpha Six, this is Overlord, get down and stay away from the back wall of the vault. We’re coming in.”
Braddock didn’t have time to reply before the entire vault began to shake. Distantly he heard what sounded like some massive drill, chewing and then grinding through concrete, as a moment later, the lock boxes on the far wall began to twist and turn, and then fly off the wall and crash to the floor. Money, jewelry and documents landed in piles or ricocheted off the other three walls.
A massive circular drill, six feet wide, first poked its tip through the rubble and then bored its way through the wall. Armed Marines entered the vault, laser sights cutting the debris-made dusk and smoke of the drill’s damage.
A moment later, the sergeant in charge gave the “All Clear” order as he stood before Braddock with three other heavily armed Marines, weapons aimed at Braddock, lasers dancing across his forehead.
“You injured?” shouted the Marine in the typical affected Basso Profundo they used for commands.
“Good to go,” muttered Braddock, and picked up the metallic case carrying the nuclear weapon he was about to take into what was probably the last remaining bastion of the U.S. Government.
Do whatever it takes.
That’s what she’d said, Darling, that’s what she’d said. The last thing she’d said to him.
“Follow us!” ordered the Marine. They withdrew through the still-smoking drill hole, one Marine bringing up the rear. Beyond the hole, they entered a shadowy network of tunnels and maintenance walkways beneath Downtown LA, all part of the under-funded, over-promised new rail system that would never be completed.
“We’ve lost the streets,” noted the sergeant without rancor, or animosity, or even responsibility. “But we still control the tunnels beneath most of downtown. Doesn’t matter though, we’re evacuating by dark.”
“Yeah, we goin’ to Hawaii,” whispered another Marine in the darkness. No one said anything, but Braddock knew they were hoping that was real. That Hawaii, a safe place, was something that could happen for them.
Smaller side tunnels led to a main tunnel where some kind of rail system was under construction. Massive lights illuminated everything. Constant patrols moved up and down its length, each one in sight of at least two others. At intervals, they passed fortified positions where long fifty caliber machine guns pointed off into the darkness amidst stacks of linked brass and more ammo in boxes nearby.
No one offered to carry the case for Braddock.
A few minutes later, they entered a wide underground sprawl of a space under construction. It was a future subway platform, and Braddock read the construction notice pointing out that this was Stop Nine, US Bank Tower.
As they climbed up rickety wooden slap-job stairs onto the high platform, Marines began running from the far entrance of the tunnel. The sergeant leading Braddock stopped, raised his right arm and made a fist as he listened to incoming radio traffic. At the same time, machine gun teams were breaking down the emplacements and falling back to the main platform.
“Alright, we gotta get you up to the lobby,” said the sergeant. “We just lost the Sheriff’s station at Parker Center, bottom of the hill. Tunnels are wide open now.” He said the last part more for his men than Braddock.
They took a massive cargo elevator up to the main floor and entered a grand marble columned business lobby through a maintenance door. Slatted steel shutters shrieked and cackled as fists showered the groaning metal that covered every window and entrance where multitudes of the Infected raged beyond these barriers.
An “incoming call” tone whispered in Braddock’s earpiece as the phone itself vibrated in his chest pocket. The Marines walked forward to the large group of more Marines, a quick reaction force guarding the lobby. Every Marine was armed to the teeth. An escalator led up onto an upper level where snipers ringed the chrome and glass railings, watching the lobby, the shutters and the mob outside. Braddock had no doubt that their orders were to take out any Marine that managed to get infected if the undead broke through.
Braddock reached up with one hand, rubbed at his grimy neck and discreetly touched the channel select button on the earpiece to accept the call. He heard the dull tone change and a pleasant beep indicating a new channel. “Go ahead,” whispered Braddock under his breath as the sergeant reported to a nearby Marine officer who threw a quick, emotionless glance over at Braddock.
“Go with Ramirez.” The call ended. It had been the same voice. The man known only as Mr. Steele.
Braddock scanned the chaos and watched a lithe young olive-skinned Marine come down the escalator two steps at a time. When he reached the main lobby floor, he made straight for Braddock’s cluster, briefly looking Braddock in the eye. “Ramirez” was printed on the stitched name tag of his digital camo BDU’s.
“Follow me, Captain,” said Ramirez, indicating Braddock loud enough so the Marine officer could hear. The officer, still conferring with the sergeant, threw another quick look at both of them and watched as Ramirez led Braddock off toward the escalators. It wasn’t his business. He had to hold the lobby or else… If the Infected broke through, the Marine officer estimated everyone in the lobby had about fifteen seconds of life left. Drone Recon put the strength of the living corpses just beyond the shuddering security doors at ten thousand and rising. He was keeping a grenade for himself, just in case.
Ramirez led Braddock up the escalator and straight to another executive elevator. He said nothing until the doors were shut. On the twenty-ninth floor, they exited and walked straight into an ad hoc command center. Two homeland security goons greeted them at the elevator, guns drawn, but not pointing.
“General Hirsch wants to see him, now!” ordered goon one who looked more like a defensive tackle on ‘roids rather than a soldier or a marine.
“S’posed to get him on a bird A-S-A-P, Warren,” protested Ramirez.
“Shut it Ramirez,” ordered the Homeland goon named Warren.
A minute later they were in the heart of the command center with computers scrolling status updates, monitors showing live feeds of everything from the chaos on the beach at Marina Del Rey to The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan Super Carrier looming close to shore with an army of helicopters like insects hovering over a flotilla of sport cruisers ferrying survivors. Braddock, Ramirez and the two goons found themselves standing in front of a short man who looked more like an accountant than a three star general. Braddock noted the general was Ranger tabbed.
“That’s the package, I take it,” murmured the general, his gray eyes flicking toward the metallic case Braddock was still carrying.
“Yes sir.” Braddock kicked himself again. He didn’t have to say “sir” anymore. He was a private contractor now. Oh well, he thought, old habits die hard.
“All we had was a heads-up from some outfit working for DOD called Tarragon,” said the general. “Said we had to terminate that vehicle on the street before it reached the tower or it was lights out for the whole operation. Who were the carriers?”
“Jihadis. Probably a homegrown terror cell.” Braddock remembered the woman in the black hijab and her brains all over the tinted window inside the SUV.
“Hell.” The general shook his head and turned back to a sheaf of papers he was still holding. “World’s going to hell in a handbasket and they decide it’s time for another 9-11. What is it?”
Braddock didn’t hesitate.
“It’s a nuke. I think it’s dirty, made from old soviet hardware.”
The general’s eyes widened.
“Seriously, son?”
“Seriously,” said Braddock.
He felt the tension in the room. It was sudden and charged. Behind him, he felt the two goons take a step backward. As if two steps or ten miles would make a difference if the thing went off.
“And you didn’t think you should tell somebody before you brought it into the command center?”
“No sir. Couldn’t leave it out on the street. And the Marines downstairs are ready to piss their pants. I didn’t think letting them know there was a low-yield nuclear weapon inside the perimeter would’ve helped matters much.”
The general thought about that for a sec.
“You’re Delta. Or at least you were… at one time, weren’t you?”
Braddock said nothing.
“Aaronson, Crenshaw, get this man to a chop
per and get him airborne. He is the only one to touch that case and you are to watch him at all times. We will give you a destination once you’re in the air.”
There was a pause as no one, especially the two goons known as Aaronson and Crenshaw, knew what the protocol for escorting a man carrying a nuclear weapon was. You can’t just grab him by the arm and say, “come with me, buddy.” After all, he’s carrying a real, live, end of the world weapon. Braddock knew beyond the shadow of a doubt each of them was thinking something to that effect.
Ramirez stepped in. “I’ll get them on the next bird, sir.”
“Good, see that you do.” The general turned back to his paperwork. Ramirez nodded toward Braddock, and the two goons fell in behind as he led them back to the elevator.
Ramirez entered the elevator first, standing near the back, then Braddock who leaned against the wall and set the case down, if only just to bother the two goons who entered next. Eyes wide, they turned their backs as the elevator doors closed. One of them reached over to touch the button that would take them to the top floor. Braddock could see Ramirez pull a pistol, a small twenty-two, from behind his back. Then faster than Braddock had ever seen any other man move, Ramirez shot both goons in the back of the head. Each hit the elevator door, landing in their own brain matter and blood spatter as Ramirez slid in front of one of them and punched the thirty-fifth floor. Just shy of the top.
“It’s cool,” said Ramirez as he held the weapon up and away from Braddock who was waiting the one second Ramirez would need to explain himself. Otherwise, his massive arm would have shot forth like a piston and pushed Ramirez’s nose into the back of his skull. “I’m with Mr. Steele. We gotta stop on thirty-five, but don’t worry, it’s empty. We need to do a little surgery on that bomb, first.”
The doors opened on a sprawling cubicle farm of empty desks and dark monitors. Ramirez blocked the door with one of the dead goons and led the way to a nearby desk and swept a monitor, keyboard and cat mug off onto the floor.