“No.”
“Get off the ground, or I’ll kill every last one of them. Or worse,” he said with a scowl.
“You’ll just have to take your chances against an assault rifle and my wife. Good luck. She wanted to kill all of you days ago,” Alex said dryly.
“Sounds like my kinda woman. Maybe we’ll spend some quality time together,” he whispered, and then screamed, “Now get the fuck up!”
Alex just stared at him.
“I’ll leave them all alone if you walk into that house with me. I don’t have a problem with them,” he said in a calmer voice.
He’s really worried about going in there alone.
“Just like you didn’t have a problem with the Hayes’ kids?” Alex asked, and Manson took another step toward him.
Manson flashed a wicked smile and relaxed his stance. “You and me ain’t that different…Alex. We’re both just doing whatever it takes to keep our people safe. I’ll kill every person on this block before I let my family suffer.”
“Looks like you’re off to a good start,” Alex muttered.
“What, you think you’re different? The only difference between you and me is that I don’t have the choice to sit around. I gotta hunt for my family. I’m a predator, Alex.”
“You should get your own Animal Planet show,” Alex said and quietly chuckled at his joke.
“Think about this, smart ass. How many people around here have you killed by doing nothing? You’re like those Germans that lived around the gas camps. Just ignored what was happening,” Manson said.
Alex shook his head in mock confusion.
“Time to get up. You tell them everything’ll work out just fine.”
“Can I get another one of your history lessons instead?” Alex asked.
“Look here, you little fuck, one way or the other the house is mine. We can do this the easy way, or the very, very hard way. I promise I’ll make it horrible for them,” Manson threatened.
“Good luck inside the house.”
“Fine.” Manson braced the shotgun in the crook of his right arm and swung it toward him. Alex turned his head slightly to the left and looked up at the nearest bedroom window.
Please don’t let them see this.
Mercifully, all he saw in the window was the muted reflection of a dull gray sky. Just as he started to turn his head to face his executioner, the bottom right pane of the window shattered, and the snow around Alex’s feet exploded. Supersonic cracks filled the air between the two men, and Alex felt a warm spray on his face as the deafening sound of rapid gunshots caught up with the bullets flying past them.
Manson plummeted to his left knee, just as a red mist exploded into the air behind his right shoulder. Several more bullets struck the snow between the two men, and Alex saw a massive red hole in the back of Manson’s left thigh.
Manson twisted on his knee toward the house and fired the shotgun, obliterating the top window pane. The ear-shattering drum of the assault rifle ceased, and Manson fired the shotgun again, scoring a direct hit on the bottom half of the window.
Alex tried to get up in the snow, desperate to reach his shotgun, which lay just a few feet away. He managed to struggle to his knees by the time Manson turned the shotgun back on him.
Almost did it.
He closed his eyes and heard the distinct snap of a single bullet passing within a few feet of his head. He opened his eyes and saw that Manson’s attention was drawn somewhere up and behind him. Manson fired the shotgun toward Ed’s house and struggled to chamber another shotgun shell. While fumbling with the shotgun, a small red hole appeared between the man’s eyes and snapped his head back, ejecting the camouflage hat and blood onto the snow behind him.
Manson grunted incoherently and dropped face first into the edge of a snow drift as the sound of a single gunshot echoed through the backyard.
“I don’t know how to eject the magazine!” he heard his son yell from the upstairs window.
“He’s dead. It’s over,” he yelled weakly up at the window.
Alex, still kneeling, felt lightheaded and gently lowered himself down onto his back. He looked up at the window and saw both Ryan and Kate peer down.
“Oh shit!” she yelled and disappeared.
“Yeah. I’m…I’m going to need some help,” he mumbled to himself and dropped his head all the way back onto the snow.
Alex heard snow crunching behind his head, from the direction of the Walkers’ yard and twisted his body to the right, writhing in the snow toward his shotgun.
“Alex! Alex! Take it easy. It’s me, Charlie,” he heard. He relaxed and twisted his head back around. The crunching got closer as Charlie bore down on him, holding an assault rifle similar to his own, and knelt in the snow by his head.
He heard someone else approaching from the direction of Ed’s house and tried to contort his body to get a better view.
“It’s just Ed. You need to lie still until we figure out what to do. You took a hit to your left shoulder,” Charlie said and slung the rifle over his shoulder.
A few seconds later, Ed arrived, holding a .22 caliber bolt action rifle in his right hand. He stood over Charlie, staring at Manson’s body first, then Todd’s.
“Did I hit him?” Ed asked in a daze.
“Right between the eyes. He was dead before I got around the corner. God, I wanted to kill that son-of-a-bitch myself. Nice shooting,” Charlie said.
“Jesus Christ. I actually hit him. I haven’t fired this thing in forever,” Ed said.
“Punched one right through his skull,” Charlie crowed.
“I used to shoot this with my dad every weekend,” Ed said, still staring at the bodies in disbelief.
“If I hadn’t put these goddamn gloves on, I would’ve been there to blast his head clearly off his shoulders,” Charlie said.
“I should’ve let you finish him off last night,” Alex whispered weakly.
Ed snapped out of it, kneeling next to Charlie to take a closer look at Alex’s wounds.
“We need to get you some help, buddy. I’m gonna load you up on a sled, and we’ll pull you over to that surgeon staying at the Carters’. You just hang in there. You’ve lost a little blood,” he said and dug his hands under Alex’s back.
He propped Alex’s torso up, applying direct pressure to the mangled shoulder. Alex winced and cried out. Charlie walked over to examine Todd’s body.
“Sorry, man. You’re bleeding, but not too badly. Nothing spurting. I just need to slow this down a little.”
“Make sure he’s dead,” Alex whispered again.
“Which one?” Ed asked.
“This guy’s definitely dead, but Todd’s still breathing. Barely. Want me to finish him off?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t care,” Ed said.
“No, leave him alone. We can’t orphan Jordan,” Alex said.
“What’s he rambling about?” Charlie asked, still pointing the gun at Todd’s head.
The garage door opened, and Kate spilled out, followed by Ryan. Both were still dressed in their pajamas. Ryan moved forward, pointing the AR-15 at Manson’s body and then shifting it to Todd’s. Kate ran up and grabbed Alex. Ryan followed her closely, standing vigilant guard with an empty rifle. Alex could see that he was disturbed by the grisly, blood-splattered mosaic in the snow.
“Careful! Careful! Where’s Emmy?” he asked Kate.
“She’s hiding in the closet with Max. She’s fine. We need to get you to a hospital immediately. I’ll start up the car,” Kate said.
“I have a better idea,” Ed said. “Let’s get him over to the Carters’. The young couple there…the guy’s a surgical fellow, or something like that. Grab as much medical stuff as you can, and meet me over there. I’ll drag him over on one of your sleds.”
“I don’t know. I think we need to get him to an ER.”
“The hospitals are slammed with the flu. He needs attention now. This guy can do what needs to be done right now, Kate, sew him up f
ast, and pump him up with meds. We can take him later if we need to.”
“All right. We have a makeshift surgical kit that might work. I’ll grab everything and meet you there. The sleds are on the wall in the garage.”
“Charlie, get the medical kit from Kate and run it over to the Carters’ house. Let the surgeon kid know what happened, and that we’ll be there with Alex in ten or twenty minutes,” Ed said, taking charge now.
“Got it,” Charlie said.
“You might want to leave that behind,” Ed said, glancing at Charlie’s rifle.
“Not while any of those fuckers over there are still alive.”
“How are you feeling, hon?” Kate asked, caressing his face.
“Like I’ve been shot. Are you sure Emmy’s okay?”
“She’s scared,” Kate admitted and stood up.
“Kate, have her dress up in her snow gear and head over to our house. Sam and the kids can take care of her while we’re dealing with this,” Ed said.
“All right. I’ll get her over there with Max,” she said and sprinted back to the house.
Charlie and Ed followed her, and Ryan turned toward the house.
“Ryan!” Alex called.
Ryan walked over to kneel next to him, still clutching the rifle. He looked pale and nauseous. He avoided looking at Alex’s shoulder and could barely look at Alex’s blood- spattered face.
“I love you, Dad. You’ll get fixed up quick,” he said.
“Damn right I will. Whose idea was it to use the rifle?” he asked.
“Mom’s, but she didn’t know how to work it. Sorry, I barely hit him. I just kept pulling the trigger. I didn’t want him to kill you, Daddy,” he said and broke down crying, leaning into Alex.
Alex grabbed him with his right arm, grimacing through the pain. “You did great, buddy. Two hits was all it took,” he said and squeezed his son.
“I didn’t know how to reload it, Dad,” he said, sniffling into Alex’s good shoulder.
“You didn’t have to.”
Ryan hugged him harder.
“All right, all right already. You’re starting to dig into the shoulder,” he grunted.
“Sorry, Dad.” Ryan stood back up and picked up the rifle.
“Let me see that for a second,” Alex said to him. Pain shot through his entire left side as Ryan held the rifle out. Alex slowly moved his right arm and pointed to a button on the right side of the weapon, just forward of the trigger well. “Press this and the magazine slides out. Put another one in, and pull back…”
“On the handle,” Ryan said and placed his right hand on the charging handle.
“Right,” Alex whispered as a wave of nausea passed over him.
“I saw that in Modern Warfare. Just never saw the magazine release button,” Ryan said, managing a smile.
“I don’t think your mom’s gonna bitch about that game anymore. Go help her out. I love you, buddy.”
“Love you too, Dad,” Ryan said and disappeared into the garage.
Just as Ryan vanished, Ed emerged from the doorway with a green sled. “This is the biggest one you have in there,” he said as he approached Alex. “Can you fit on this?”
“You calling me fat?”
“Oddly enough, you’re probably the fattest man on the block right now,” Ed said as he carefully lifted Alex and tried to slide him onto the sled.
“Aghhhh. Jesus. Careful, man,” he said, struggling not to laugh.
“Sorry. This might hurt a little.”
“Thanks for the warning. What about Todd?”
“You’re my only priority right now. He can wait,” Ed said, staring angrily at Todd’s motionless figure.
“He won’t make it if we don’t help him. Jordan’s home by herself. She’s gonna be really freaked out,” he mumbled.
“We’ll take care of her. Just stay with me, buddy.” Ed lifted him again. A wave of heaviness dropped over Alex, and he tried to lift his head.
Nope.
His vision narrowed and darkened, and Alex vaguely remembered being lifted onto the green foam sled. He regained full consciousness a short time later when Ed tugged hard on the sled’s tow line.
They broke through a deep drift, and Alex lifted his head to see where they were. They emerged from between Alex’s house and the Thompsons’. Alex watched as Ed struggled to pull his dead weight forward through the deep snow. His gaze settled on the back of Ed’s dark green jacket as he faded out again.
Chapter Forty-Three
March 2003
Euphrates River Bridge on the outskirts of An’ Nasiriyah, Iraq
“Here they come!” Corporal Reyes announced over the internal communications circuit.
All of the gun turrets in Captain Fletcher’s Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) company start firing at once, sending a continuous maelstrom of heavy caliber bullets and high explosive grenades across the river. A few seconds later, assault rifle fire erupts from the marines along the Euphrates River bank, joined by bursts of light machine-gun fire.
Captain Fletcher turns his attention to the other side of the Euphrates Canal. Two hundred meters back from the opposite side, he sees droves of disorganized enemy fighters rushing forward through the palm groves and dilapidated shacks. Hundreds of tracer rounds reach the onrush, as rifles, machine guns and grenades pulverize the oncoming enemy troops.
“All Zombie tracks, continue to your new positions. I say again, move to your new positions,” Captain Fletcher reinforces. They have to move.
A salvo of several high-explosive artillery shells lands fifty meters closer than the last barrage, launching columns of rocks and dirt skyward and spraying shrapnel at anything exposed nearby. This encompasses most of the AAVs and over half of Charlie Company’s marines. The shockwave from each successive blast rocks the AAV’s and pulses through the prone marines. The last artillery shell in the barrage lands two meters behind one of the AAVs near the bridge and blasts through the thin armor, shredding the rest of the vehicle with shrapnel. The AAV immediately ignites from the heat of the explosion.
One of the explosions throws Alex sideways, and the right side of his helmet strikes the lip of the hatch opening. Dazed, he regains his balance and spins around to scan the impact area. He can barely see the damaged AAV through the descending dirt and debris. Shit. He sees the gunner jump down from the turret onto the front of the vehicle and help the vehicle commander get out of his hatch.
“Zombie Three Eight, this is Zombie Three actual, over.” Come on guys. Someone answer.
Captain Fletcher scans the vehicle again and assesses the damage as a mission kill to the AAV. He doesn’t think anyone in the rear compartment could have survived the blast. Several infantry marines rush from a nearby position to the burning AAV, and a corpsman from the nearby aid station joins them. Within seconds, they start to carry the vehicle commander to the aid station. From his stretcher, the vehicle commander frantically points to the back at the AAV, yelling something to the other marines near the vehicle. Two marines enter the damaged rear hatch of the burning AAV, which is consumed with flames, and pull a limp human form back through the hatch. As the group moves to the aid station, several mortar rounds fall into Charlie Company’s perimeter, spraying dirt and creating havoc, but mercifully failing to injure any marines.
The Zombie Three Eight burns fiercely, along with the Zombie Three Nine, the first AAV destroyed, sending columns of thick black smoke into the air. Maybe someone will see this and figure out we’re in deep shit over here. With two of his ten vehicles destroyed, and no radio contact with battalion, Captain Fletcher feels an impending sense of doom.
“Gents, I really hope our counter-battery folks take out that artillery,” he says into the vehicle comms. Not likely.
The volume of fire from the marines picks up after a temporary lull caused by the last series of impacts, and Charlie Company’s mortars fire furiously in response to the enemy mortars. He sees a group of marines carrying disassembled 60mm mortars and
moving in the open toward the AAV’s. Sanchez is spreading out the mortars. Smart.
They make it halfway to the AAVs , when another round of enemy artillery shells lands directly to the north of Captain Fletcher’s AAV, right on top of the marines and the mortar position they just departed. Blast waves from successive explosions jar the AAV, slamming rock and shrapnel into the sides of the AAV. Alex hears a quick buzz near his right ear and ducks into the AAV more out of instinct than logic. Whatever snapped by his head was long gone by the time he reacted.
“Banshee Six, this is Zombie actual, those rounds landed on our mortar position.”
“Roger, sending help.”
“Hillock, Manny, we have marines down just north of the track. Let’s get them out of that kill zone.”
Alex disconnects his helmet comms cable and steps up on the seat to pull his body out of the hatch. His driver, Lance Corporal Manuel Rodriguez, hits the ground seconds before Alex, and they both see that Sergeant Hillock is already halfway toward the downed mortar team. Alex and Manny merge with several marines sprinting over from positions near the canal, and Captain Fletcher tells at least half of the marines to help out the mortar position, which is about twenty meters further along, just past a small rise of ground. Two of the corpsman sprint across the area recently hit by artillery and arrive at the mortar position to assess casualties. They split up and one heads toward Alex.
Alex and the other marines stagger at the sight of the destroyed mortar team. Immediately, Alex can see that at least four of the marines are dead, and the rest are wounded. Obliterated. First Lieutenant Dave Pardell, weapons platoon commander, is the only apparently uninjured member of the team. He stumbles onto his feet, face blackened with dirt, and starts to run toward the bridge. He is missing his helmet and rifle.
“Grab him,” Alex shouts to one of the marines closest to the lieutenant.
Mortar rounds start to hit the area south of the marines and straddle the AAVs next to the canal. All of the marines hit the ground, except for Pardell. A sergeant pulls him to the ground by his left arm, and Pardell screams. Alex now sees that his left forearm is bent at a right angle. Jesus.
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