He didn’t see as the minigun turned straight on them. Max stood, paralyzed with a sudden fear: were they going to be killed as well? Did the man firing the weapon not realize they were the good guys? The heat and fire belching from the gun washed over him and Max let out a frightened sound: “Huh-ah!” In the next few seconds, hundreds of 7.62mm rounds blazed all around him and he dared not move a muscle for fear of getting killed.
Finally, a thought managed to get beyond the fear that had him paralyzed: Get your ass down!
Max dropped into a squat and looked back to see what was happening to the zombies. Everywhere they were falling, mowed down by the endless stream of bullets. Even far back into the trees they were dying. Max stared until the same voice yelled through the noise pounding his eardrums: Get your ass up!
Right. The Blackhawk wouldn’t stay forever. He pushed himself to his feet, grabbed Will by the back of his outer MOPP coat and heaved him toward the beckoning door of the chopper. They were within an arm’s reach when the machine suddenly rose into the sky. It went straight up like an elevator.
“Wait!” Johnny screamed. The Blackhawk paused as if it had heard Johnny. As though confused as to where it was, it slowly spun in place and, as it did so, the minigun continued to spit lead in a ceaseless stream.
“They’re simply clearing the area of zombies before they land,” Max said to himself. That made perfect sense. Only, the copter began to lift higher and then the angle of the blades shifted slightly and it began to move forward, slow at first, but then with gaining speed.
“What the fuck?” Will said.
“Come back!” screeched Johnny at the top of his lungs.
It didn’t come back. It flew until it was just a spec in the sky and Max had to squint to see it. When he blinked, the speck was gone and they were all alone. Nearly all alone. They were surrounded by hundreds of bodies, some of which still moved. Some crawled, dragging ropes of intestines after them. Some pulled themselves along, their legs shot away or their bones turned to crumbs by the bullets. More of them laid there in a hot tangled mess, their bodies no more than punctured and torn bags of flesh, draining the black essence of their hated lives. But they did not die. They stared with an unholy longing at the three soldiers.
And some still walked on two legs.
From deeper in the forest more zombies came to discover what all the noise was about. “Come on,” Max said. “We have to get out of this place.”
“They left us,” Johnny blubbered. “They just fucking left us.”
“They saved us,” Max said. “Now, come on! There are more zombies coming. Look at the forest.” Johnny swayed in place, staring in disbelief. Max took him by the arm and started to drag him toward the town, but Will stopped him.
“Not that way,” he said. He stretched out a thickly padded arm; dozens of zombies were lurching down Main Street. “We’re trapped.”
“Ammo check!” Max snapped and started to pull out his magazines. They were all empty. The only rounds he had were in the mag in his gun. How many were there? Ten? Eleven?
“I don’t want to die,” Johnny whispered.
Max shook his head and lied: “You’re not going to die. No one’s going to die.”
Chapter 14
The Skin of a Balloon
12:19 p.m.
General Collins looked down from the helicopter at a battle in progress. Kingston was in flames. It was chaos. At the north end of the town, citizens were fighting three hundred soldiers, reinforced by sixty state troopers. They were fighting to get out. At the southern end, Collins guessed there were close on three thousand zombies trying, not to get into the town, but to feed on those fleeing. The people stuck in the middle weren’t going down without a fight.
“I could use some artillery,” Collins muttered, forgetting he was on a hot mike.
He was overheard by the pilot. “Sir, we have a dozen Apaches back at the base getting rusty. Their chain guns would do a number on those zom…I mean those op-fors. Maybe we should consider dusting those birds off.”
“Shut up,” the general snarled. He didn’t need to be reminded that his best weapons platforms: M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, AH64 Apaches, A10 Thunderbolt, M109A6 Paladin, and the M270 multiple launch rocket system, which could drop six-thousand “grenades” in an area slightly larger than a football field, were all off limits to his troops. Hell, they couldn’t even use their light machine guns! They were going toe-to toe with the civilians and barely holding their own.
Collins put his field glasses to his eyes and scanned the fight to the north. Only half his men were wearing their masks. “Son of a bitch!” He didn’t care if they threw out the ROE concerning shoot on sight, especially when it came to the zombies, but the masks were a must. He flicked on his radio and then glanced at his cheat sheet for company commander frequencies before remembering that the men had been thrown into the fight piecemeal and that it was impossible to know what parts of which companies were down there.
As a remedy, he began bitching out everyone who was listening. Were they clueless about what they were dealing with? Sure, the civvies might look healthy but there was no way of knowing that for sure without a prolonged stay in a quarantine facility.
“They’re not wearing their masks because men can’t see what they’re supposed to be shooting at with their masks on,” someone said over the radio.
“Who is this?” Collins demanded.
There was a pause and then the man said: “A concerned soldier. Listen sir, there’s not much danger from the germs. We are engaging at ranges well over sixty yards and the wind is at our backs. We are…”
“Shut your trap!” Collins shouted. “You have been trained…” He was interrupted as there was a thump on the frame of the helicopter, as though someone had hit it a golf ball at it. Next, the windshield suddenly cracked in the shape of a small star. Collins stared around, his mind slowly gaining understanding. They were being shot at! The question was, by whom? By which side? He was sure that some of his men weren’t exactly happy with him at the moment. No one liked to fight in MOPP gear and no one sure as hell liked to fight their own countrymen.
“We’re taking some incoming fire, sir,” the pilot said, casually. “I didn’t mean to interrupt but I thought you’d like to know.”
The general clicked off the radio. There was no sense arguing with each individual soldier. “I’ve seen enough,” he said into his mike. “Get us back to the command post.”
As they flew, he opened his map and penciled a question mark over Kingston. There were four other question marks on the map—all places he didn’t think would hold. But he needed Kingston. Well, really he needed the bridge that crossed the Hudson just north of the town. He had given up New Burg and the bridge that went with it. That had been a mistake. He should’ve listened to Courtney Shaw. Now, he was in danger of losing another bridge. If it fell and became a part of the quarantined zone, his growing logistics nightmare would be that much worse. His convoys would have to battle through roads congested with traffic forty miles out of their way.
He could still chopper men and equipment around but that was a tremendous strain on his fuel resources. At the moment, there were only so many Blackhawks available and only so much fuel. He had a third of his squadrons simply ferrying fuel so the other two thirds could pluck half-formed companies stranded by the traffic that stretched southward into New York City, and east all the way into Harford Connecticut. Westward he had lines of cars from Binghamton and Scranton. With most of his men coming from the western part of the state, things were progressing at a snail’s pace.
Of the thousand men he had managed to get to The Zone, he only knew the whereabouts of approximately seven hundred and these were constantly demanding more ammo, more water, and more men! Of the three-hundred missing men, most had simply vanished back into the civilian world when confronted with the reality of the situation. Collins was sure it wasn’t the zombies that were the issue. It was pointing guns at women
and children.
It was impossible to ask anyone to do it. They had to be ordered to do it and Collins had to be the man doing it. He would be hated, he was sure. He would go down in history as a butcher, but that was a price he was willing to pay. It was a heavy price. He had felt sick to his stomach ever since he had flown over the barricade at Salt Point northeast of Poughkeepsie. His men had done their duty. They had made sure the disease hadn’t spread. The bodies of ninety-three women and children attested to it. They looked like they had been ground up in some sort of industrial accident. The civilians had counted on the fact that the soldiers wouldn’t shoot women and children.
They had bet their lives on it. They had lost.
A number of them had been battling a late spring flu, while more than a handful were struck by allergies. One too many coughs, one too many sneezes doomed them. Once the panicked men started firing it was as though they couldn’t stop. The Salt Point civvies fought back, but the soldiers were out of their minds with grief and mad with anger for being put in such a horrible predicament. They fought like demons, killing everything than moved. Of the three soldiers who survived, one shot himself five minutes after the battle, another just wandered away, and the third stayed at his post and wouldn’t leave even when a rifle squad came to relieve him.
Collins knew he wouldn’t bring charges against any AWOL soldier. That would be like charging someone with the crime of sanity.
“Excuse me, Sir,” the pilot broke in on his thoughts, which was just as well, they were turning uselessly morbid. “We have friendlies on the ground involved in a fight.”
“Huh? What?” The general looked out the window at some no-named little burg. A hundred feet down three soldiers were surrounded, fighting off waves of undead. The first thing the general noted was that they were masked properly. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Myers Corner. Permission to interface with targets.”
Interface? Who talks like that? “No. The rules of engagement are clear. Maybe we can scare up some reinforcements.” He started to scan his map for Myers Corner. “Where are we?” he asked again.
“We’re over The Zone. Permission to engage targets with our miniguns.” The general looked up from his map and found the pilot staring hard at him. Before the general could tell him no a second time, the pilot yelled: “Permission to save your fucking men.”
A huge part of him wanted to rip into this mere captain for yelling at a general, however the man was right to speak to him that way. Those were his men down there doing exactly what he had ordered them to do. Collins closed his eyes as indecision swept him. He’d been obeying orders for most of his life. It was ingrained in him. The bad orders, the stupid orders, the blind orders all had to be obeyed. But his time would be over soon. The video of his men gunning down unarmed civilians would see to that. Fingers would be pointed, charges would be brought, the heat would come down on someone’s head and it wouldn’t be Governor Stimpson’s head or the President’s.
Just this once, he said to himself. Obeying was so instilled in him that he couldn’t force himself to countermand a direct order orally. He nodded to the pilot.
The pilot gave a thumbs up to the door gunners and then lowered the copter down to about forty feet above the treetops. The gunners let loose with the minis, spinning the six barrels in a blur and firing a thousand rounds each in the course of a minute. The 7.62 millimeter rounds cut a swath through the zombies, ripping limbs off and sending chunks flying in a storm of black blood. Still, they came on dumb, ignoring the fire of death coming from the helicopter.
“Lower! Go lower!” cried one of the door gunners over the fury of his gun.
The Blackhawk dropped with a lurch, as if the rug had been slipped out from beneath it. “Sorry,” the pilot said in a high voice. “It’s just tight here for an extraction.”
“Extraction?” Collins demanded. “No! No extraction. They’re in The Zone and they’re staying there. Kill the zombies but the men stay.”
They were six feet off the ground at that point and the soldiers were running for the open bay door as the gunner fired all around them. He was good with the minigun, painting a silhouette of lead around the three. Collins ripped his pistol out of its holster and pointed it at the pilot. “Pull up now. That is a direct order. No one gets out of The Zone, damn it!” The general would pull the trigger if he had to. He wouldn’t let anyone out of The Zone, no matter what. It was the one order that had to remain sacrosanct if the country had any chance of surviving. “Get this Blackhawk in the air, now.” He turned to one of the gaping door gunners. “Fire your weapon, soldier, or get out.”
The gunner turned back to the bloody work of butchering the zombies as they came out of the woods. His weapon was hot as a furnace and he was lathered in a sweat. The general turned back to the pilot. “Now.”
The pilot pulled back on the collective and the helicopter lifted away from the stunned soldiers. They began screaming however, the wash from the rotors swept away their voices. The pilot hovered, turning slowly, allowing his gunners the full leeway with their guns. They chopped down zombies, killing with rage in their hearts. Only when the last of the beasts was cut straight in two did the pilot throttle up and point the Blackhawk northeast.
The silence was uncomfortable and the hard looks given the general by the crew didn’t help. Collins didn’t care. Leaving the three soldiers behind had been one of the least despicable orders he had given that day. When they landed at the field command post just behind the lines on the eastern perimeter where things were quietest, he waited until the crew had unmiked before looking at the pilot. “If anyone asks, I authorized some target practice and if you take anyone out of The Zone I’ll have you shot.”
“Yes sir.”
He held the pilot with a steely gaze until the man dropped his eyes. Only then did he step out of the Blackhawk to see men scurrying around. In his eyes, they were men and not soldiers. Civilians still. Infantryman always reverted back to their soldier status quickly, however the cooks and the clerks and the, God forbid, marching band, always remained civilians at heart. They put on the uniform once a month, saluted when they had to, fired their weapons once a year and collected their pay. They did this with their minds on their “real” job or their family, or their football team.
It showed.
The command post was a disorganized mess. The officers who knew better were scrambling like mad to make heads or tails of the perimeter situation and the NCOs were out trying to instill a fighting spirit in men who were shocked to their core at what was being asked of them.
“It’s early yet,” Collins reminded himself. It was barely eight hours into the deployment, after all. Even regular army troops would’ve been hard pressed to have done better under these same circumstances.
The division S-3, Colonel Hall, came hurrying up, bent at the waist as the Blackhawks’ blades were still whipping overhead. “General, the operations tent is this way.” He pointed at one of the dozens of tents that had been erected. Someone had tried to form them in a grid, but it held its shape as well as a Dali painting. It bothered Collins and it bothered him that it bothered him. He had the heart of a warrior and the fuss and nuisance that went with the military’s predilection for perfection where perfection wasn’t necessary, got under his skin. In battle, who would care if the line of tents wasn’t true on the cardinal points of the compass and exactly linear as the straight edge of a ruler?
What he cared for was a perfect fighting machine…and he had one before the rules of engagement had stripped him of his fighting machines. Yes, he had fighting men. He had artillerymen carting rifles, tank drivers blinking at the sun and wondering how deep to dig their foxholes and he had infantrymen playing traffic cop. It was pathetic.
Collins tilted his chin at the one lone tent set up sixty yards away. It was the only one under guard. “Is that the quarantine tent? Why’s there only one?”
“The tents weren’t considered a priority. The men
have been burning through ammunition so fast that every truck in the division is being repurposed to carry munitions and reinforcements.”
“Let me see what you have going on in Operations,” Collins said, heading for the operations tent. When he entered someone cried, “Ah-ten shun!” and the men leapt to their feet. “At ease,” Collins said, heading for the “Big Map”, a computer screen larger than his flat-screen back home. It showed the area around Poughkeepsie—friendlies were marked in blue, while the “Op-for” was in its traditional red. The seven hundred men were spread in the thinnest of lines around a vast perimeter.
“How was the Governor?” Colonel Hall asked. “Did he cave at all on the use of force guidelines?”
Collins shook his head and then sighed. “No. It was that damned video. It’s being aired every five minutes on CNN…or at least it was. The governor asked me what would’ve happened if the men had machine guns.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them we would’ve held that check point and not let two-hundred possibly infected people escape. He didn’t seem to care about that. The only good news is that the President is taking this more seriously. He’s already authorized an emissions blackout for The Zone and the surrounding area.”
“We know,” Hall said, shaking his head. “It’s making our job difficult to say the least. Many of these units either weren’t issued the proper communications devices or they were left behind in their hurry. The men were keeping in touch with their NCOs via cellphones. Now they’re in the dark and so are we. See these units with the asterisks? We have no way of contacting them other than to send men around in Humvees.”
The general shrugged. “Then that’s what we do until we can get them all linked up.”
“We would but we don’t have the man power yet. The traffic jams…”
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