Slaughterhouse - 02

by Stephen Knight

  She had to leave the file to grab Nutter when he tripped over a rock and went under. She spent a few frantic seconds casting about in the darkness with one hand, while holding her rifle out of the water with the other. The river’s surface tended to reflect light like a giant serpentine mirror, so she’d lost a visual on Nutter as soon as he went down, despite the night vision goggles. But her searching fingers grazed his rucksack, and she grabbed it and pulled with all her strength as one of the soldiers behind her steadied her, preventing her from going down as well. Nutter came to the surface, sputtering, trying to mute his coughs.

  “Fuck,” he said after hacking up at least a cup of water. “I can’t believe I got saved by a girl.”

  “Takes one to know one, asshole,” Rawlings said.

  “Knock it off and keep going,” the soldier behind them said.

  Nutter grunted and pressed on, holding his waterlogged rifle above his head.

  Later, slipping in the mud, Rawlings followed Nutter up the bank and into the dark woods that stood silent watch nearby. The soldiers who had already made it into the tree line had taken up defensive positions, waiting for the rest of the element to close up.

  Rawlings took a knee and checked her rifle. It seemed to be fine. Water slowly rolled off her, dripping to the forest floor. A hundred meters to their right, New York Highway 26 spanned the river, and a hundred yards beyond that, a small set of waterfalls roared, providing some acoustic cover as the lightfighters behind pressed into the woods. They moved as quietly as they could, but just the same, branches snapped and dried leaves rustled. If there were any Klowns in the vicinity, they would have heard the approaching force and come to investigate.

  Rawlings looked up as the commander, Colonel Lee, surveyed the area with light-intensifying binoculars. They were already inside the perimeter of Fort Drum. Beyond the trees, Rawlings could see a good-sized building surrounded by a parking lot. A thousand feet to the northwest lay the post airfield, but Rawlings couldn’t see it just yet. She presumed that the lack of operating aircraft indicated the field was out of service. From deeper inside the post, gunfire ripped through the night and sporadic flashes of light briefly played along the horizon. Hell lay in that direction.

  Lee put his binoculars away, dropped his NVGs over his eyes, and got to his feet. He motioned for the rest of the soldiers to do the same. The lightfighters rose to their feet, weapons clanking, feet shuffling, muffled oaths uttered. Lee pushed out of the trees, followed by the hulking figure of Muldoon and the other lightfighters.

  The battalion had come home.

  TWENTY-FOUR.

  Lee led the element across Dunn Avenue and through the vacant parking lot of the Reserve Coordination Center Building, heading toward Colyer Drive. Everything looked normal, other than the fact the street lights were out and there was no sign of vehicular traffic. Fort Drum was a pretty sedate post, not a hotbed of action twenty-four hours a day like Bragg or Campbell, but the base should have felt more alive. A major contingency action was being fought somewhere, though. He could hear the sound of gunfire as they hurried across the parking lot, weapons at ready. Distantly, Lee thought he heard the soft buzz of one of the battalion’s Raven drones puttering across the sky. Lee was gratified to know Walker was keeping some eyes on them.

  The unit crossed Colyer and surged in a southwestern direction. Lee’s plan was to get to 10th Mountain Division Drive, where the divisional headquarters was located. That was over three miles away from their current position, and the ruddy glow on the horizon indicated that was also where the action was. The bulk of the base lay in smoke-choked darkness, save for the areas where fires burned out of control. The problem with military installations was that there was lots of hazardous stuff that could burn, and while Lee was unaware of any biological or chemical agents being housed on post, it wouldn’t surprise him to discover just that.

  As if the Klowns weren’t bad enough.

  Between Colyer Drive and Nash Boulevard, one of the post’s main arteries that ran roughly east to west, was a large open parade field. Lee remembered it as being a fairly peaceful place, especially in the winter, when a lot of troops would gather to play football in the deep snow or practice their cross-country skiing, one of the hallmark missions given to a mountaineer of the 10th. Like the rest of his planned axis of advance, the area had been thoroughly reconnoitered by the Raven unmanned aerial vehicles, so Lee had already known what to expect. But actually seeing the state of the field with his own eyes almost sent him reeling.

  The field had been a killing zone. Thousands of corpses were scattered across the field, which measured at least a thousand feet across. Men and women of all ages and sizes. Animals moved through the abattoir, eating their fill of rotting meat.

  As Lee led the troops to the field’s edge, the stench hit him almost like a physical blow. His gut churning, Lee stopped and took a knee, facing the field and examining it through his NVGs. Behind him, one of the troops vomited, and the retching sound attracted the attention of a group of raccoons feasting nearby. They turned their heads toward the noise for a moment then went back to their cold, fetid meal. In the middle of the field, a black bear prowled through the human refuse, its snout glistening in the augmented image presented by Lee’s goggles. The animal carried a man’s leg in its mouth. Flies buzzed everywhere.

  Lee turned toward Muldoon, who squatted a few feet away. “Stay put,” he said, then got to his feet.

  Muldoon rose as well. “Where you headed?”

  Lee gestured at the field. “I just want to see who these people were.”

  “What the fuck for, sir?”

  “I want to know if they were the good guys, or the bad guys, Sergeant.”

  Muldoon shook his head. “Gotta ask again, sir… what the fuck for?”

  Lee stepped closer to him. “If these are our dependents, Sergeant, it might be worth knowing. Right?”

  Muldoon didn’t respond.

  Lee started into the bloody, stinking gloom, rifle shouldered. Someone moved in step to his left.

  “You can’t go out here alone,” Rawlings said. Her face looked pale and drawn behind her goggles, and her lips were compressed into a tight line.

  “Not going far,” Lee said.

  “That’s totally cool by me, sir.”

  Lee shrugged. “All right, Rawlings. Come on.” Despite his outward demeanor, Lee was glad the woman was with him.

  He led the way into the zone of the dead, somehow managing to keep his gorge at bay. He studied the bodies as he walked. They’d been hit by heavy weapon fire, most likely indirect fires from the post’s artillery units, which hadn’t been deployed with the rest of the combat teams. That left more body parts as opposed to complete bodies, but when he finally came across a few whole people, he was able to easily discern who they had been. Even through the damage done by high explosives, Lee could see the wreaths of fingers, the ritual mutilations, and the wild-eyed expressions frozen on the fly-encrusted faces. They had been Klowns, cut down as they overran the perimeter fences, which meant they were coming in from the outside, from places like Carthage, Deferiet, and Great Bend. He was looking at the entire populations of those towns, cut down right there in that field.

  He concluded that the divisional HQ must be under attack from thousands more from Watertown, not to mention the troops from Drum who had been infected and attacked from within. With most of the post’s combat power deployed elsewhere, the division’s headquarters staff, the military police, and non-deployed troops and civilian employees were all that was left to defend the headquarters, which wasn’t some fortified bunker, but a relatively plush office building. Despite how things were portrayed in Hollywood movies, Army bases weren’t really configured to defeat dedicated attacks, and not every headquarters element had a hardened bunker as a retreat sanctuary. That the 10th’s headquarters element had survived as long as it had was nothing short of amazing.

  So Lee was being cautious by not informing the 10th’s
deputy commanding general that the battalion had arrived. While all the evidence indicated that there was indeed a pitched firefight going on, Lee had no idea if Mountaineer Five was really in charge. He could have been a Klown, and the absence of Apaches indicated that the attack battalion had been wiped out. Lee had no intention of following in Fleischer’s footsteps.

  “Hey, heads up,” Rawlings said, dropping to a crouch and raising her M4.

  Lee turned and saw two figures bounding toward them, zipping around the piles of the dead and the scavenging wildlife. Lee recognized them almost immediately. The commanding general had two Italian greyhounds—small, fleet animals that he had taken with him everywhere on the base. Their names were Athena and Hera, and one was black and white, while the other was a bluish gray. As they ran, they yipped excitedly. Lee remembered them as being very social animals, the kind that loved to be around people. And presuming the small canines were immune to the Bug, he figured they were probably overjoyed to see normal people again.

  Lee raised his rifle and squeezed off two shots, killing the dogs before they got within a hundred feet of him. The noise was loud, but likely blended in with the din of combat taking place only a few miles away.

  Somewhere out in the field of the dead, a series of wet rattles could be heard. Someone was laughing while choking on their own blood.

  “Gonna get you,” a voice said, between hitching breaths and hacking laughter. “Gonna get you so good…”

  Lee heard movement from behind him and stepped to the side, bringing his rifle around. Rawlings did the same.

  Muldoon held up his hands.

  “I come in peace. Sir, did you just shoot General McLaren’s dogs? Did they make a move, or was it, like, a cold-blooded kill?”

  “They would’ve been running all around the place after us, Muldoon. You think some yipping dogs would improve our stealthy entry?”

  Muldoon shrugged. He looked out over the field full of dead—and apparently a few not so dead—then turned back to Lee. “Get what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah. They’re not ours. These are Klowns.” Lee tugged at the front of his harness, adjusting the set of his body armor. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got some territory to cover.”

  TWENTY-FIVE.

  The unit pushed through the post, paralleling the main roads and crossing them only when necessary. They stuck to the pools of darkness that punctuated the areas between buildings and avoided the glow of fires wherever possible. They came across bodies—lots of bodies. Almost all were Klowns, but they did find some of their own who had fallen as well. One group of soldiers had apparently fought it out until their revetted machinegun position was overrun, and the bodies had been mutilated and torn apart, their intestines strewn about like foul-smelling streamers. Lee also noticed their gear had been left pretty much untouched. The Klowns weren’t interested in armament. They were interested in blood.

  Paralleling Tigris Valley Road until it met Restore Hope Avenue, Lee turned to the left, leading the unit through the open areas between Restore Hope and Oswego Avenue. Some scrub and overgrown weeds lined the road, nothing that provided a remarkable amount of cover, but they could potentially hunker down and avoid detection if a unit of crazies stumbled too close. There were some storage units to their right, dark and vacant, completely uninteresting to both Lee’s troops and the Klowns. The unit marched as fast as they were able, taking a knee when they had to rest and drink to replace the fluids they were sweating out in the humid night. The sounds of combat were much closer, and amidst the chattering, sporadic gunfire and occasional explosion, they could hear the titters and guffaws of the infected. Apparently, the Infected were still cheerfully throwing themselves into whatever crucible the remains of the military had left to repel them.

  Major Walker’s voice came over Lee’s headset. “Six, this is Wizard.”

  “Wizard. This is Six. Go. Over.” Lee kept his voice low and his eyes out.

  “Six, Wizard. Hold your pos. You’ve got a group of vehicles headed your way. We watched them pull out of the Sustainment Brigade area at Euphrates, heading your way down Restore Hope. Don’t know their target yet. Over.”

  Lee held up a fist in the air, and the troops behind him took a knee. Lee couldn’t hear anything over the rumble of combat to their north, but he saw a splash of lights as a Humvee turned toward him, three blocks from their position. It was followed by four trucks. People stood in the beds of the trucks, hooting and hollering, each holding makeshift weapons. Lee pushed his goggles aside and brought his binoculars up to his eyes. He zeroed in on the Humvee, which was moving erratically. The soldier—or former soldier, actually—in the cupola was in full-on laugh mode, holding on to an M2 machinegun. The Klowns had apparently gotten tired of sacrificing themselves on the altar of combat. They were bringing some new toys to the fight, though the trucks they had liberated from the Sustainment Brigade compound were unarmed.

  “We gonna do something about that?” Muldoon asked.

  Lee thought about it. They had AT4s and M203 grenade launchers as part of their load-out, so the unit had the capability to stop the Klowns. But before he could order anyone into firing positions, the small Infected convoy turned left up Second Street and headed away from them. Mosquitoes danced around him, their tiny wings whining like small turbojets.

  “Six, this is Wizard. You’re good. Looks like they’re headed up the engagement area around the Hays Hall,” Walker reported. “Over.”

  “Wizard, this is Six. That was a Klown element. Are there any more in the area? Over.”

  “Six, this is Wizard. Negative on that. You look clear. Over.”

  “Wizard, this is Six. Have one of the Ravens make a circuit around the Sustainment Brigade’s motor pool. Give me an idea of what’s left over there. And tell me how long it will take. Over.”

  “Six, this is Wizard. Stand by. We’ve got a unit overhead right now. Shouldn’t take long. Over.”

  Lee waited, panning his binoculars across the area. There were other vehicles in the motor pool ahead, but most looked like trucks—nothing that really suited his fancy. The chances of finding anything serviceable were a long shot, but the Klowns had apparently discovered some live trucks, and maybe there were a few more left.

  “Are we getting tired of marching, sir?” Muldoon asked.

  “We might be changing the axis of approach a bit, yeah,” Lee said. “Got a problem with that?”

  “No, sir. My dogs are tired, and I’m not the sort to pass up a free ride.”

  Lee grunted, and dropped his NVGs back over his eyes. “Eyes out, Muldoon.”

  “They are, sir. Count on it.”

  Lee knelt in the grass, listening to the whine of mosquitoes and the hammer of gunfire. The rest of the troops silently held their positions. On the horizon, over in the direction of Hays Hall—the large, brick building that housed the divisional command elements—something exploded. Closer, amidst the burned out shell of the Columbia College building which was located over on Camp Hale Road, Lee spotted the fragmented wreckage of two Apaches. He had wondered what had happened to Major Fleischer and his aviators. He guessed they’d been sandbagged while trying to provide close air support for the troops at Hays Hall. At some point, the Klowns had been out there, and as Lee looked around, he saw signs of concentric defenses that had been erected, either by the Army or by the Klowns. There were bodies lying not far from where the element knelt in the darkness, and Lee could smell the rot emanating from them, a vague, sickly sweet smell carried by the light breeze.

  “Six, this is Wizard. Over.”

  “Go for Six, Wizard. Over.”

  “Six, you’ve got what appear to be a few functional trucks, and that’s about it. Most of the compound is empty. Don’t quote us on the operational condition of the rigs we can see from the Ravens. Over.”

  “Roger, Wizard. Any sign of hostile ground units in our vicinity? Over.”

  “Six, this is Wizard. Negative, you look good. Over.” />
  “Roger, Wizard. Stand by. We’re going to move to the Sustainment Brigade compound and take a look around. Over.”

  “Roger, Six. We’ve been getting traffic from Mountaineer. They’re broadcasting in the blind, asking for our location. Over.”

  Lee motioned to Muldoon, urging him to get the element up and ready to move out. “Roger, Wizard. Do not respond. Over,” Lee said, rising to his feet.

  “So we going in with some trucks?” Muldoon asked.

  “We’ll get close,” Lee said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get inside their lines and start making some mischief.”

  “‘Mischief?’” Rawlings asked.

  Lee smiled. “The kind of mischief the Klowns love—the lethal kind.” He turned and looked at the rest of the element. Everyone was up and ready. “Wizard, this is Six.”

  “Six, this is Wizard. Over.”

  “Wizard, Six. Is Thunder set up? Over.” Thunder was the designation for the battalion’s attached mortar platoon.

  “Six, this is Wizard. Thunder’s ready. Over.”

  “Wizard, this is Six. I want you to start moving. Get the battalion up to the Forty-Fifth Infantry gate. Once you’re there, pass on to Wizard Seven he’s to take his biggest and baddest and take the Seventy-First Cavalry compound. There might be some toys there. Once the area is secure, move the battalion forward to the Cav motor pool and wait for further instructions. Over.”

  “Roger that, Six. Wizard is on the move. Over.”

  TWENTY-SIX.

  Command Sergeant Major Doug Turner sat in the passenger seat of the lead Humvee, staring down the length of 45th Infantry Division Drive as First Sergeant Boats drove. The road had been cut through a large rise in the land, and on either side, walls of sedentary rock rose like the twin, humped backs of some prehistoric beasts, arcing upward into the night sky. The Ravens had overflown the area just a few minutes before Turner’s element made its approach. There were no indications that any Klowns lay in wait along the ledges, but Turner still felt a squirming nervousness in his belly. They were in the perfect place for an ambush.