by Luke Duffy
Soon, Marcus and the rest of the team arrived and began the final checks and preparations to leave. The tension was thick in the air. They all knew of other teams trying for the same thing and being swallowed up within the city. He had received the text the day before from Steve informing him that they were at the Safari Park and what the situation was, and now it was their turn to take their chances.
None of them had been out into the city since the contact that had left three of their men dead, but they had seen and heard enough. Reports flooded the operations room of the virus spread and the hordes of infected that roamed the streets. Any civilian that was able and had the means, had tried to flee the city, but the majority had never gotten far. With the road blocks, unorganized roadways, burning streets and civil unrest, they had been easy prey for the masses of dead and infected in the confusion of a city brought to its knees.
News footage and reports showed the dead and infected staggering through streets around the world and attacking people, but it was still hard to believe; the dead had actually returned to life and now fed on the living.
Gunfire and explosions could still be heard from within the city as the survivors fought off the dead as well as each other. Militias had taken control of individual districts and as well as fighting the common enemy, the infected and the dead, they also fought each other and the security forces. It was hard to believe that even with all that was going on, loyalty to certain Imams and religious and political views were still strong enough to make them wage war on one another.
Marcus had decided to take three vehicles with two men in each. The gun turrets would be left unmanned until needed. Marcus had reasoned that most of their trouble would be from stalled traffic and blocked roads rather than armed attack. Ian and Jim would take the lead with Marcus and Sini in the second vehicle, leaving Stu and Yan to bring up the rear.
They loaded up and began the final checks of their personal kit and weapons, making sure that it was all easily accessible and ready to use. Marcus checked that his M4 rifle was ready to fire and that the magazine was firmly attached. Next he checked the pistol on his hip and his spare magazines in his assault vest and in the grab bag at his feet. Every man in the team was doing the same thing.
“All call signs this is Marcus, radio check.”
“That's good to me mate,” Stu answered.
“Strength five to me,” Ian said.
Marcus clicked the send button again. “Roger, that's Lima Charlie all round. Lead off when you're ready, Ian.”
“Roger that mate. That's us mobile.”
They left the car park just as the first rays of sun touched the tops of the buildings. Marcus looked over toward the operations room as they passed and Mickey was stood there watching them. Marcus expected him to be ranting and raving and trying to stop them, but Mickey just waved and over the radio they heard, “Good luck boys”.
There was nothing to say in reply so Marcus just gave him the thumbs up.
It was obvious that Mickey had been aware of their preparations but he had done nothing to stop them. Marcus doubted that it was due to fear and more to do with him being a decent man. He probably knew that the end was coming and that eventually the International Zone would be overrun and that it would be too late by then to escape. He hadn’t asked any of the teams to hand over their weapons or vehicles and probably had his own plan of escape. Marcus hoped that he would make it as he watched him walk back to his office.
They headed south through the International Zone and toward the 14th July bridge that crossed the river Tigris from the safe area and into the southern part of Baghdad. The plan was that once across, they would head east through the outer edges of the suburbs and pick up the road North toward Ba-qubah and from there, they would continue North along the length of Iraq and toward the Turkish border.
Everyone knew all too well that it would be easier said than done. They had studied every map and aerial photo they could find, checking routes and scrutinising streets and towns. Any information and intelligence about the cities and towns along their intended journey was gathered and a number of alternatives had been discussed and planned should the primary plan go wrong.
One of the alternatives was to head for Syria. But that would mean travelling through places like Fallujah and Ramadi; cities that were trouble even at the best of times. Now with the world falling apart and the militias in those towns seizing control with no one to stop them, it would be a tough job to get through untouched. On top of that, those places were densely populated and if they didn't receive trouble from the militia, then it was a guarantee that they would from the infected.
The primary choice was the best that they could come up with. After Ba-qubah the only large cities on their route were Kirkuk and Mosul, both easily bypassed as long as the roads were still accessible.
The decision had been made to try and make the entire journey to the border in one day and be in a laying up position close to the crossing point by last light. That would leave time to have a look at the actual border crossing and any obstacles or problems, and to take the necessary action from there.
“There's always a chance that the border could be heavily manned,” Stu had said during the planning. “With all the shit going on, the Turks may have brought extra troops and armour into the area to stop the flood of refugees and the likes of us too.”
Marcus had agreed. “That's just a bridge that we will have to burn as we cross it. By the time we get there, it'll be too late to turn back I reckon and we’ll be committed to whatever course of action the enemy and ground dictate.”
Jim looked up, his eyebrows knitted together. “Enemy? We at war with the Turks now?”
“We are at war with everyone my friend. It is survival of the fittest,” Sini laughed and slapped him on the back then looked to the rest of the group for approval in his statement.
“Sini is right lads,” Marcus nodded to him, “anyone who gets in our way, we have to treat them as a threat. Every person out there is gonna want our food, weapons and vehicles and they're not gonna ask nicely if they think they can just take it from us. Plus, I promised my missus I’ll be home for Christmas.”
The group let out a bout of nervous laughter.
As they reached the bridge they began to slow down. The checkpoint was still manned by the American Army, as they knew it would be, and it would take some smooth talking to explain what they were doing and get through. The cover story that the team had agreed upon was that they were tasked with rescuing a bunch of western reporters from the Sheraton Hotel.
If it was any other checkpoint manned by the Iraqi Army, they would have just barged through, but the Americans had an M1 Abram’s Tank pointed straight at them.
As the lead vehicle approached, an officer stepped from the other side of the tank and waved them forward. He gestured something to one of his men and the road was made clear for them to continue. The two APC’s that completely blocked the road were manoeuvred just enough to let the team through.
Sini raised an eyebrow at Marcus and as they passed the American guards; the officer waved and shouted to them, “Stay safe guys and God speed.” Everybody waved in return. The first hurdle was crossed.
“That's the call sign complete.” Stu spoke over the radio informing Marcus that the whole team was through the checkpoint.
They continued across the bridge toward the first junction. The ground was littered with countless corpses that had been picked off by the snipers that flanked the checkpoint. The soldiers had probably taken no chances and had more than likely shot infected and non-infected alike as they had approached the bridge.
Bodies lay sprawled in the morning sun, some on the hard tarmac and others entangled in the chicanes and barbed wire; all had shots to the head.
“Roger that, Stu, okay Ian, hang a left at the second junction.”
They turned east and headed through the suburbs. A low drifting smog from the numerous fires clung to the ground. Buildings smouldered and crashed cars a
nd dead bodies were everywhere. Some bodies were nothing more than skeletons, others were burned or dismembered, lying in pools of festering and bloated entrails and clotted blood. Debris was all over the road and the drivers had to pick their way through as the commanders in the seat next to them kept an eye open for the infected or any other threat.
Apart from the bodies and trashed vehicles and buildings, the streets seemed deserted. Packs of dogs scurried between houses and along alleyways feeding off the corpses', and birds swooped in to pick up the bits left behind when the dogs dropped their guard. Swarms of flies were thick in the air and, even from inside the vehicle, Marcus and Sini screwed their faces in disgust at the pungent smell of the bodies that littered the streets.
Marcus watched as they passed a broken down car. Across the hood lay the body of a man sprawled on his back, his arms and head hanging down to the wheel arch. His rib cage looked like it had been torn open, with dried blood splattered all around him and his rib bones pointing up into the sky. His skin had turned black and green as it lay baking in the hot Spring sun. His hands were gone from the wrists down and a large dog had its snout buried into the wide open skull, smearing its face with blood and gore. A cloud of black bloated flies took to the air as the vehicles passed the corpse, and the dog turned and growled at the men in the trucks as they passed, as though protecting its meal from them.
After crossing another junction, Ian’s vehicle came to a shuddering halt and began to reverse. The rest of the team followed suit and Ian’s voice came through the radio, “Back up, there's a huge crowd in front of us about fifty metres up.”
The team continued to reverse.
“Man the guns but hold fire for now.” Marcus was climbing into the turret as he spoke. “Do they look like infected, Ian?”
“They look it to me, Marcus, and they're heading for us too. Fuck, there's shit loads of them coming from the side streets too.”
Without time to think, Marcus had to make a decision. Turn back or try and push through? He didn't like the idea of heading back because there was nowhere really for them to go other than back to the I.Z or into the city and neither option was appealing.
“Fuck it. Put your foot down, Ian, we have to try and push through. Use your guns to try and clear us a path. We’ll be right behind you doing the same.”
Ian’s vehicle lurched forward and began to gather speed as he blazed away with the gun in the turret. He fired directly ahead and into the crowd and Marcus and Stu fired left and right, trying to keep the mass of infected at bay.
Over the roar of the guns they could hear the crowd. The loud constant hum of the moans with individual wails and cries from the dead. They all surged toward the moving SUVs with no consideration for the damage that the vehicles and guns were doing as they tore through the crowd. They were completely focused on reaching the vehicles.
Many did reach them, only to be slammed out of the way as the bumpers smashed into them, or they were dragged underneath and chewed up by the heavy armoured wheels. Some sprinted at the sides of the trucks and bounced off, rebounding back into the crowd or to the ground.
Marcus looked down as he fired into them. They were just a seething mass of blackened, foul-smelling, growling figures and couldn’t be recognised as being in anyway human. He saw no features in their faces, just the gaping mouths and swollen blistered skin. They attacked relentlessly and some literally exploded on impact with the vehicles as the bumpers pierced the skin and caused the gasses and entrails to escape from their rotten, bloated bodies.
The heavy armour of the vehicles was impenetrable and there was no way that the crowd could get through it. But Marcus feared that enough of them could get in front and underneath to cause the team to lose momentum and traction on the road surface.
“Keep going. Don’t let them slow us down,” he yelled. “We get stuck here and we’re fucked!”
The last of the rounds on the belt of ammunition fed through his gun and then stopped. Quickly and without thought, through years of practice, he lifted the top cover, cleared the feed tray and placed in a fresh belt of two hundred from the ammunition tray. He slammed the top cover back down, gave it a tap with his fist and pulled the cocking leaver back to feed the first of the link and belted rounds into the machinegun. In all, it took just a few seconds and he was soon staring down through the sight again firing at the attacking mass of diseased faces.
With ringing ears, and the fast rhythmic crackling of the gun as it shuddered against his shoulder and vibrated through his body, he watched as body after body fell. Sweat was dripping into his eyes making them sting and blurring his vision, but he couldn’t afford to wipe them clear. He had to keep up the rate of fire.
He could hear the other guns firing, and in his peripheral vision he could see Stu’s vehicle as it swayed and rocked over the piles of bodies that it crushed beneath its wheels. His own SUV was doing the same. Marcus was being jolted and tussled around in the gun turret and, on a few occasions, his rounds flew in to the air as he clung to the gun for balance and the barrel was forced upward.
The SUVs struggled, pushing hard against the weight of the crowd. Ian was ploughing ahead and leaving a trail of smashed and twisted bodies in his wake. Though for every walking corpse they lay to rest, another soon took its place and filled the gaps as they clambered to reach the men in the trucks. They pulled and pushed and tore at each other in their determination to reach their prize, only to be cut down or crushed under the wheels once they reached it.
The air was thick with the stink of the dead and the cordite and smoke of the hundreds of rounds fired into them. Bodies collapsed all around as hot 7.62 mm sized pieces of metal spat from the machineguns and punched through them. Limbs and entrails covered the ground like a thick repulsive swamp, with the broken bodies of the dead mixed in as the feet of the others stepped on them and trampled them beneath.
Sini had his foot pressed down hard on the accelerator but the vehicle was slowing. They were losing momentum. The wheels were losing traction even though they were in four wheel drive. The sheer mass and weight of the crowd that filled the wake of Ian’s vehicle was straining the engine to its limit. Bodies and limbs were clogging up the wheels and the drive shaft and they were reduced to a crawl. All the time, more and more of the relentless shambling creatures attacked the convoy.
Marcus noticed the loss in momentum and screamed down through the turret, “Sini, put your fucking foot down, get us outta here.”
“This is as good as it gets, Marcus. There's just too many of them under the wheels.”
Sini was steering the vehicle left and right, trying to shift the piles of corpses from underneath and gain just a moment of traction on the road in the hope that they could then gain power. It was no use; the ground was too soft and fluid.
Marcus never let up his rate of fire. He felt panic rising within him. The thought of being slowed to a halt and stranded in a sea of rotting walking corpses that wanted to do nothing other than tear him apart and eat him, filled him with terror. It occurred to him that many other teams could have succumbed to the same kind of onslaught and were either overwhelmed or even trapped and surrounded, unable to move from their vehicles.
He stole a glance to the left and saw that Ian was almost clear with his truck and swerving through the thinner edges of the crowd. Between Marcus and Ian though, was a swarm of grotesque heads and faces and arms, crammed shoulder to shoulder, surging toward them. They were coming from every direction, spilling out from buildings and the streets and alleys that ran between them.
He heard Ian’s voice through his earpiece. “Stu, Marcus is pretty much dead in the water. I’ll do what I can from here to clear the path for you, but you're gonna need to close up and ram him forward.”
“Roger that, Ian. We’re struggling ourselves. The ground is thick with the fuckers,” Stu replied.
Marcus looked to his right, and through the crowd he saw the upper part of Stu’s SUV rocking as though on a choppy sea
. To Marcus, it looked like there were thousands of the infected between their vehicles, but Stu was approaching at a steady speed. Yan was aiming his bumper straight for the rear of Sini and Marcus’ vehicle.
Ian was laying down a tremendous weight of fire into Marcus and Stu’s path. The butt of the machinegun pounded into his shoulder as the belted ammunition rattled through the feed tray and into the chamber. Below his feet, the pile of link and used cases grew rapidly, creating a slag heap of brass and steel. His fire never let up and his barrel was beginning to smoulder and glow red with the heat of thousands of rounds thundering through it.
Stu gripped the edge of the turret as the vehicle made contact with the rear of Marcus’ SUV, causing them to jolt hard and bounce about in their positions. Without letting up on the pedal, Yan pushed the SUV to its limit. The engine screamed with the effort and threatened to burst, but the vehicle kept on going, the wheels spinning and gripping in turn and they began to make headway.
Rounds began to whizz down the sides of Marcus and Stu’s SUVs as Ian concentrated his fire to the left and right of the line of advance. Red tracer rounds whipped through the air with their loud cracks and dozens of bodies continued to drop on both sides of the road.
The progress was slow and the ammunition stored in the turrets was dwindling fast, but all three vehicles were making progress with Ian’s pushing forward and Marcus and Stu almost clear of the tightly packed crowd.
Finally in the clear, the wheels gripped the hard dry tarmac and the engines roared as the gears changed. The filth-coated SUVs raced away from the scene as the dead vainly staggered after them.
A few kilometres further along, Marcus, heart still pounding in his chest, called a halt on an open stretch of road that was flanked by open wasteland and provided them with good all around visibility. Marcus, Stu and Ian dismounted while the drivers stayed behind their wheels in case of the need for a quick bug out.
The first thing needed to be done was to restock and reload the machineguns in the turrets with ammunition. Thousands of rounds had been fired and the depleted supplies stored within the ammunition bins, directly below and inside the turrets, were replenished from the crates in the rear of the vehicles amongst the other supplies and stores.