For the first half mile of the trip, it was easy to pretend it was just another day, despite the MOPP gear. Then Marsh spotted thick plumes of smoke ahead. They slowly rose into the sky, coiling and winding like slow-witted serpents. The Kiowa Warriors orbited the area at three hundred feet, flying in a clockwise formation.
“Bushmaster, this is Birddog Five. Over.”
“Birddog, go for Bushmaster. Over.”
“Bushmaster, we have some car fires in a parking lot about, uh, three hundred meters from your position. Looks like it’s next to some park. Something went down here, lots of bodies but no activity. You might want to keep an eye on the trees. We don’t see anything through our thermal sights, but that’s not much of an insurance policy. Over.”
Each scout helicopter had a mast-mounted thermal imaging sight above the main rotor. Marsh had checked them out and been impressed with the system’s fidelity, especially at night. The system could also designate targets with a laser, allowing another helicopter to attack with Hellfire missiles or other guided ordnance. Despite their age, relatively low speed, and fairly short range, the little armed scout helicopters were pretty useful where the ground troops were involved, even though their rounded, goggle-eyed mast-mounted sights looked like Kenny from South Park.
“Roger that, Birddog. We are eyes out. Over.”
The scouts broke off and buzzed farther downrange. As Renner guided the Humvee down the vacant two-lane highway and approached a stately old brick house with four chimneys, Marsh saw something lying on the side of the road. He straightened up and leaned toward the window. It was a decapitated corpse. Actually, it was even less than that—as the Humvee drew closer, he saw it was really little more than a bloodied torso. A patina of gore covered the road. He saw the door to the house was standing open, and more bodies lay on the doorstep.
“McNeely, eyes out!” he shouted to the gunner in the cupola.
“You got that right, sir!” the gunner shouted back as the Humvee rolled past the remains.
The two soldiers behind Marsh stirred, and he sensed they were drawing their rifles closer. He did the same thing.
Something was burning less than a hundred feet off the road, in a parking area for the Brooks Village Historical Area, apparently a recreation of an old English town built back in the late 1600s. Marsh had no idea what the minutemen of the Revolutionary War would have made of the conflict that currently embroiled Boston. Hell, Marsh didn’t know what to make of it himself, and he had access to more information than the soldiers of that era could have even dreamed of. All he knew was that it seemed that every other person in the state of Massachusetts had turned into a cackling lunatic who wanted to kill, maim, and desecrate. And infect. Always infect. Marsh kept the fingers of his right hand wrapped around his M4’s pistol grip. Something was going to happen. He could feel it in his bones, and he scanned the trees on either side of the road, waiting for the rush of crazies to flood out onto the asphalt in front of them, carrying all manner of weapons.
Marsh could tell from the set of Renner’s jaw that he was expecting things to go pear-shaped, as well. But as the park with its lot of burning cars receded in the distance, Marsh forced himself to relax. Looking down, he found his right index finger was almost lying across his rifle’s trigger, and that the safety was off. He didn’t remember doing that.
Damn. He clicked the selector back to SAFE.
The convoy continued on, driving down to the Concord Turnpike Cut-Off. There, Marsh led the column to the left, sticking to Route 2A. This would take them along the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts. They already knew Concord center was in a world of hurt, and they didn’t want to get caught up in anything they weren’t ready to handle. While the battalion was armed to the teeth, the goal was avoid contact with the Killer Clowns for as long as possible.
The road spread out into four lanes, two in each direction, and traffic began to mount. The scout helicopters made some low passes over the cars and trucks, attempting to herd them over into one lane. Renner bullied the traffic in the right lane with the Humvee, forcing civilian vehicles over to the side. Marsh smiled. Nothing like seeing an uparmored Humvee in your rearview mirror, complete with weaponry, bearing down on your ass. Ahead, smoking buildings loomed. Marsh checked his map, and saw it was the remains of Emerson Hospital. That made him nervous. The scouts reported no undue activity, but advised them that traffic began to slow as it drew closer to the traffic circle a few miles ahead.
The convoy rolled past the burnt-out hospital, its parking lots vacant save for a few scattered cars and trucks. And bodies. Lots of bodies. Marsh kept his eyes out. The hospital was doubtless full of raving crazies before they burned it to the ground, so they were probably still in the area. Somewhere. He checked his map again, confirming their location.
“Target!” McNeely shouted.
Marsh snapped his head up. Just ahead, another road intersected the turnpike, overseen by dark, inactive traffic signals. As the Humvee bore down on the opening, a battered school bus appeared, hurtling toward the intersection from the right, slamming cars out of its path. Its yellow hide was splattered with blood, and several of its windows had been shattered. Tied to the bus’s grille were two nude, mutilated bodies of teenagers hanging upside down, the whiteness of their pale flesh offset by the dark cavities in their torsos. They had been eviscerated. Written across one kid’s narrow chest in what appeared to be dried blood or possibly excrement was the word GOOD. Written on the other corpse was FUCKS. As the school bus surged toward the Humvee, it shed all manner of debris from its roof—branches, leaves, brush, anything that could have been used to break up the vehicle’s outline from the air and disguise it beneath the leafy canopies of the trees lining the road. The Klowns manning the vehicle had waited until the Kiowas had flown past, then inched into position, hoping to ambush the Bushmasters.
“Shoot!” Marsh shouted.
His command disappeared amidst the din of the Mk 19 autogrenade launcher as Specialist McNeely opened fire. Forty-millimeter high explosive rounds ripped across the front of the bus, blasting apart its grille and the grisly trophies that had been mounted there, sending plastic and sheet metal and ribbons of flesh whirling through the air. In less than a second, the bus’s diesel engine lay bare after the engine compartment surrounding it disintegrated. Next, the engine itself lurched back like a startled cat, shorn off its mounts by bright sparking explosions of orange flecked with gray as the grenades pulverized it.
But the bus kept coming, a victim of its own momentum. Marsh caught a glimpse of its driver. A woman leaned over the big steering wheel, her face painted with blood, her teeth a brilliant white against the darkness of her wide mouth as she laughed uproariously. Her face disappeared as the second Humvee’s fifty caliber chattered behind them, audible over the Mk 19 as it continued to slam round after round into the bus. The driver exploded as the big rounds lanced through the compartment, blasting her into pieces.
The bus kept rolling, even as McNeely shifted his fire, raising the Mk 19’s barrel until it was firing directly into the bus’s cabin. The grenades exploded, sending a shower of safety glass raining across the street. Marsh watched as the bus’s black bumper seemed to target him, growing larger and larger.
Then, the Humvee darted past like a fortunate fat pig that miraculously managed to bolt across the path of a charging hippo without injury. McNeely spun around in the cupola, continuing to fire at the bus. Seconds later, he stopped. Either the soldier had run out of ammo, or he had remembered his training and ceased fire lest he risk blowing away the friendly vehicles behind him. Marsh heard expended forty-millimeter cartridges rolling around on top of the Humvee as he looked in the side view mirror. Trailing smoke from its ravaged engine compartment and smoldering interior, the bus hurtled through the intersection like a mortally wounded B-17 bomber in an old World War II movie. It slammed into traffic on the opposite side of the roadway in a cacophonous explosion that sent shattered glass and sheet me
tal flying through the air. The bus plowed halfway over a pickup truck and came to an unceremonious halt, its squared rear end pointing toward the sky. One lane on the eastbound side was blocked by its carcass, but it was out of the westbound lanes entirely. The rest of the convoy would be able to get through.
“McNeely, reload!” Renner shouted. “Reload, reload, reload!”
Marsh faced forward again as several dozen people emerged from the tree line on either side of the turnpike. They grinned slavishly, caught up in the grips of some great hilarity, their eyes bright and aflame with madness. Some were naked, adorned with necklaces of fingers, ears, hands, and feet. Others wore clothing, from jeans and sneakers to police uniforms to business suits. They carried all manner of implements, from chainsaws to baseball bats, to golf clubs to hunting rifles. The rifles got Marsh’s attention immediately.
“Wizard, Wizard, Bushmaster is in contact!” he shouted over the radio as the Humvee bore down on the crowd.
“Reloading!” McNeely shouted from the cupola.
Lee responded, instead of the expected radio telephone operator. “Bushmaster, this is Wizard. Say pos. Over.”
Just past the fucking burning school bus in the intersection, Copernicus, Marsh wanted to shout. “Wizard, we are approximately four klicks west of Hanscom. We were ambushed but made it past the first element. Approaching second element now.” Someone stepped out from behind the brush just in front of the Humvee and hurled something. Marsh caught a glimpse of a small figure cartwheeling through the air before it bounced off the windshield, leaving behind a smear of bright blood.
“Did they just throw a fucking baby at us?” Weir shouted through his mask.
Marsh didn’t want to think about it, but the notion chilled him to his very core. He keyed his microphone. “We need some Apaches up here. We are danger close to a platoon-sized enemy element. Over!”
“Bushmaster, Tomcat is enroute. Over.”
“What do you want me to do?” Renner asked.
“What do you think I want you to do, man?” Marsh snapped. “Drive!”
Overhead, the Mk 19 opened up again as McNeely walked rounds through the grouping that was dead ahead. The Klowns didn’t even seem to notice. In fact, every time one of their number fell, legs blasted away, body ripped asunder by shrapnel, they howled with laughter. McNeely swung the autogrenade launcher from side to side, but its cyclic rate was fairly low. If it had been an M2, he could have cut them all down in just a few sweeps. While the high explosive rounds caused horrible damage, the Humvee’s rate of closure made it difficult for the gunner to hose them all. Something else struck the windshield right in front of Marsh’s face, gouging a large chip out of the bullet-resistant glass. A bullet. Another round caromed off the Humvee’s hood, and McNeely swore as a third bullet slammed into the armor surrounding his weapon. He kept firing, but despite the onslaught, the people charged, still cackling with mad glee.
Marsh pushed himself back in his seat as the Humvee roared right into the crowd at sixty miles an hour. The first ambusher met his end when the Humvee’s reinforced bumper slammed into him, driving him backward into the crowd before he slipped from sight. The Mk 19 fell silent, and the vehicle bounced ferociously as Renner cursed, fighting against the wheel while keeping the accelerator pinned to the floor. The din was fantastic. All Marsh could hear were the horrible impacts, punctuated by shouts and jeers and never-ending laughter. The side view mirror struck a woman with a chainsaw, sending her tumbling through the air before it folded against the door with such force that the glass inside its frame shattered. From behind, the fifty cal opened up again, which Marsh took to be a good sign. They weren’t cut off from the rest of the element, and that was positively heartwarming.
“Bushmasters, get ready for close-quarters battle!” he said over the radio. He was pretty certain the rest of the column knew what was up, but he wanted to warn them, anyway. The Klowns were attacking with a zeal he had never seen before. In Cambridge, they had certainly tried their best to kill the lightfighters, but he’d never seen them sacrifice themselves quite so readily.
And then, they were through.
“How’s it holding up?” Marsh asked Renner.
“Could use an alignment,” Renner said.
Marsh turned in his seat to check on the soldiers behind him. Weir and Jacobs looked back at him from behind their MOPP masks, expressions unreadable. McNeely had dropped down between them, holding on to the lip of the cupola with both hands. When Marsh met his eyes, the soldier seemed to sigh before returning to his position behind the Mk 19’s control grips. Behind the speeding Humvee, more gunfire crackled before it was drowned out by the heavy BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM of the Apache chain guns.
Marsh faced forward again. Ahead, trees exploded. More cackling nut jobs had been lying in wait, but they had exposed themselves too soon, and now the Apaches were delivering their world-famous thirty-millimeter pain killer. Marsh watched no fewer than twenty people disintegrate beneath the withering firepower the attack helicopters delivered.
He got back on the radio. “Birddog, this is Bushmaster. You guys need to do a better job scouting. We’ve been engaged twice! Over.”
The lead Kiowa pilot responded, the aircraft’s fifty caliber chattering in the background. “Roger that, Bushmaster. We’re clearing the intersection just south of phase line alpha. Be advised, the approach to the traffic circle has been barricaded, but you can probably push through it with your Big Foots if you don’t want to go around. Over.”
Marsh grunted. The M925 trucks were nicknamed Big Foot, due to the fact they no longer sported twin sets of dual wheels on their rear axles, just single mammoth tires. “Roger, Birddog. We have some maneuvering room around that barricade? Over.”
“Bushmaster, Birddog. Plenty of room on the medians to get past. Uh, be advised, substantial dismounted forces are in the area. We’re working them over.”
“You have support moving up? Over.”
“Roger, Bushmaster.”
A trio of Apaches raced past the Humvee, bolting toward the still-unseen traffic rotary. More Apaches hung back, still pounding the ever-living snot out of the engagement area ahead. The high-explosive shells left divots in the roadway, and any time they struck near one of the Klowns ahead, the Infected went down…in pieces.
“Renner, slow down a bit. We don’t want to drive into their firing lanes.”
“Hooah,” Renner said, taking his foot off the accelerator.
As the Humvee slowed, Marsh thought he felt it wobbling in the front. They needn’t have bothered. The Apache attack ended, and the blacktop ahead was littered with body parts. Wet gore gleamed in the sunlight.
“You got eyes on the rest of the convoy?” Marsh asked.
Renner checked his side view mirror. “Roger, I see ’em.”
“All right, get back on it.”
Renner stomped on the accelerator again, and the Humvee slowly accelerated back to sixty miles per hour. The tires made wet sloshing sounds as they rolled through the carnage left by the gunships. Marsh saw a few bodies still moving, though not with any purpose, which was understandable, given that they were missing several body parts, and blood literally poured from horrendous wounds. The downed Klowns were still laughing, though, their bloodied faces turning toward the vehicle, lips parted, chuckling with their last breaths.
Oh, man…
“Bushmasters, Bushmaster Two-Six. Maintain your formations. Do not stop to engage—leave that for the follow on units. Break. Wizard, we’re still enroute to phase line alpha. Expect to be in position in about four minutes. Over.”
“Bushmaster, Wizard. Roger that.”
Renner cleared his throat. “Captain, I gotta ask you a question, sir.”
“Go ahead,” Marsh said, happy to have something to take his mind off what he had just seen—shattered, broken people, choking on their own blood… and still laughing.
“Captain—I mean, do I call him Colonel?—Lee. Is this guy off his rocke
r, trying to pass himself off as a field grade officer?”
It was a legitimate question, but Renner had picked a hell of a time to ask it. “Fuck if I know, Renner. What’s your problem?”
“Just want to know if we’re all going to fry for this. I mean, we know the guy isn’t a lieutenant colonel, right?”
Another fair question, but Marsh wasn’t in the mood to entertain notions of punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was certain Lee might have more than a little explaining to do once everything was over, but the rest of them were just following orders, and Major Walker had pretty much told the battalion to listen to Lee. That suited Marsh just fine. While he didn’t particularly care all that much for Harry Lee, he knew Walker was a blue falcon—a “buddy fucker,” someone who would screw over another soldier if it was to his advantage. Marsh had decided back at Hanscom that he’d rather take directions from Lee, who at least appeared to want to save the battalion. Walker, as far as Marsh was concerned, was looking to save himself.
“Thinking’s not your strong suit, Renner. Just drive the fucking Humvee where I tell you, and leave the rest to me. Worrying is my job. All right?”
Renner bobbed his head. “Roger that.”
The Humvee led the way down the turnpike at just over sixty miles an hour, which was probably faster than they needed to go. Marsh told Renner to ease off a bit. The Big Foots hauling the lightfighters behind them were rated for fifty-five miles per hour and would have a tough time keeping up. Marsh didn’t want to invoke any unnecessary separations in the column. The convoy’s only bonus point was its consolidated firepower, and the trucks were depending on the Humvees to provide covering fire, the same way the Humvees were counting on the good-for-nothing aviators to do the same for them. Marsh understood the desire to speed, but arriving at the phase line with insufficient forces to enact the mission wasn’t going to end in a win for anyone.
“Bushmaster, this is Birddog. Over.”
“Birddog, go for Bushmaster. Over.”
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