by D. J. Molles
He swung his rifle in Lee’s direction and Lee didn’t break stride. He could see the first sergeant’s eyes weren’t locked on Lee, but on something behind him. Lee didn’t take the time to look. Brinly’s rifle barked, the concussion of it smacking Lee full in the face and the sound of bees buzzing by Lee’s head. Something behind him yowled.
Lee hit the gate and shoved it closed. Brinly rammed his entire body against the gate along with Lee, pinning it closed as three infected hit the other side, pressing their fingers through the fencing, their teeth trying to bite through like wild animals, chipping and breaking off in the process.
Lee felt terror. They were close enough to him that he could smell their breath as they screeched. He forced himself to grab the latch of the gate and slam it home—a temporary fix, but all they needed was a second, just a second for the gate to hold while they stepped away from it.
“Get off the fence!” Lee bellowed. “Everyone off the fence!”
Brinly might have known what Lee was about to do, or maybe he didn’t, but he echoed the order to the few Marines that were posted right up against the chain links. “Get off the fucking fence, Marine!”
And then he stepped clear of it himself.
Lee staggered back two steps and hit a command on his GPS device.
There was a sound like a clap of lightning and all around them the fence let off showers of sparks. The infected that had been pressing the gate were jolted back in a cloud of smoke, their screeches suddenly cut off by instantaneous death.
Lee felt elation, and then immediate dread again. The woods were filling, like the fenced-in area was an island sitting in the middle of a rapidly flooding riverbed. They were crowding in, pressing in, and they seemed to sense the electricity coming off the field, or maybe they could feel the thrum of it somehow, but they didn’t touch it. At random spots around the entire perimeter, the crowd of them pushed in and caused one to stumble into the fence where it died in another cloud of stinking smoke and sparks.
“Holy shit!” Brinly coughed. “That thing’s got some juice.”
“Into the bunker.” Lee was already running for it. He looked up and over his shoulder and could see the Black Hawk hovering above them at about two hundred feet. The noise behind them was swelling like the cusp of a riot breaking out, the voices of hundreds, and more every minute.
As the bunker doors slid closed and the elevator descended, Brinly let his anger flare up again. “So how the fuck do we get out now?”
Lee was breathing heavily. He forced himself to take a breath through his nose and regain control of his respiration. There were only a few autonomic functions of your body that you could control to help bring yourself back out of the black, and one of them was breathing. Slow and steady. In through the nose, out through the mouth, even when your lungs were burning for more.
As the elevator slowed, Lee spat some gummy saliva into the corner of the elevator. “Like I said. The bunker can defend itself. Let me worry about that. You worry about getting this lift loaded up with more rifles and ammo. Load as many rifles as you can carry on your persons and sling into them. Load up a bunch of magazines and fill up your pockets and pouches with them. Then grab a case of ammunition, or two if you can manage it. But whatever you carry on you is all we’re getting. We’re only gonna have one shot at this and we can’t make trips. Everyone understand?”
“Aye.”
“Yeah, we got it.”
Brinly’s lips pulled back like a growling dog’s. “Fine.”
The elevator opened and Lee ran out first while the Marines made for the unlocked armory. The bunker could defend itself, but it could not do so indefinitely. And the more infected arrived on scene, the harder this was going to be, so the sooner they got back up top, the better chances they had to actually make it work.
To actually survive.
Because now they were committed. It wasn’t just about the cargo now. They’d had a chance to board that helicopter and get gone, but they’d passed on it for the chance to grab the weapons and ammunition. Now it was all or nothing.
Lee stopped at a door just prior to the living quarters and punched in the code on the keypad to access it. The door opened just like the armory and inside the lights came on to reveal a small room with walls and banks of computer screens. The bunker’s command module.
Lee moved quickly to the main console and pulled out the keyboard. The screen in front of his face came to life. The others were already switching on all around him and he was surrounded by images from the outside. The horde had grown, just in the time it had taken them to get down into the bunker. But it was milling; that was good. The ones closest to the fence still seemed enwrapped with the possibility of prey still being on the inside, but the outer edges of the horde that surrounded them seemed to be losing interest and were milling about.
“Good, good, good,” Lee said quietly to himself. “Walk away.”
Maybe if they were losing interest, more of the infected horde that arrived wouldn’t crowd around the fenced-in perimeter. But this whole thing had him on edge. He’d never been through this. He’d never dealt with a horde of this size. He’d thought that the worst were the ones that ran in packs through the rural areas. And then he thought that it was the hunters, the larger, more adaptable ones that were not only getting by, but thriving with the sudden and dramatic changes occurring in their bodies. But this… this seemed unstoppable. Like water. Like waves. Like an avalanche. It was just so huge, so vast, there were simply so many of them, that he feared these hordes more than he had feared any other infected.
He tore his eyes away from the video monitors and ran through a few command sequences, pulling up the bunker’s online security systems and activating the ones that were not already activated. He rolled through a series of command protocol options and found the one labeled SIEGE PROTOCOL. When selected, it prompted for target identification and discrimination—the computer’s way of asking for rules of engagement.
Lee selected the option that said ALL.
Then he transferred command of the execution from the console to his GPS device. It took a maddening moment for a status bar to finish creeping its way across the screen, and then the image that had just been on the console monitor came alive on his handheld device, with a new button that simply said EXECUTE.
“Okay,” Lee breathed. “We got it. We’re good.”
He ran out of the command module, letting the door swing closed behind him.
At the armory door, the Marines were strapping three and four rifles to their backs, all fully loaded. One Marine was on the ground, hammering stripper clips of cartridges into magazines and handing them to his buddies, who stuffed them in their pockets.
Lee stepped in and took his fair share of the load. He quickly loosened the straps on four rifles so that they would not choke him when he slung them crosswise on his back. He loaded each of them up and then stacked them onto his back. Then he started grabbing magazines and filling his own pockets and pouches.
The Marine filling the magazine looked up, grinning, as he worked. “You know, I always thought stripper clips were fucking bullshit. But seriously… thank God.”
The last of them finished loading up. Lee took a good look at the men, mostly young, skin and bones, and weighed down by a ridiculous amount of gear, their pockets bulging with filled magazines, the weight causing them to have to hitch their loose fatigues back up onto their hips.
“Y’all ready?” Lee said, clutching the GPS again.
Brinly nodded once. “It would seem so.”
They loaded quickly into the elevator and Lee hit the button to ascend. He turned to the Marines. “When the doors open, we’re running for the gate. Hopefully the bird will pick us up and we can get the fuck out of here in time.”
“I think that sounds like a great idea,” one of the Marines said, hitching the awkward weight of the weapons around and adjusting his grip on the wooden crate of ammunition.
For a momen
t the elevator whirred on, the sound of cables winding and gears turning. The interior of the elevator was filled with the smell of gun oil and sweat and dirt. Lee repeated his breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—trying to force his heart rate down. Always best to be clearheaded. You never knew when a split decision would have to be made. When something important will be playing at the edge of your vision that just a few deep breaths would have allowed you to see.
The elevator slowed, then stopped.
Brinly stepped up to the door.
Lee consulted his GPS device.
“You gonna open the doors?” Brinly asked hotly.
“Hold on,” Lee said, distractedly. He accessed the screen and then tapped the EXECUTE button. A prompt for a security code came up and Lee entered the digits steadily and deliberately. Clear thoughts. Clear mind. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
The code prompt disappeared.
“What…” Brinly began, but was cut off.
The heavy doors of the bunker muffled the sound, but they all could feel the vibration, rumbling through their feet, and the sound, the very distinctive sound, like a giant buzz saw chewing through hardwood trees. Then explosions shook them, rapid and steady, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The Marines looked around, their faces displaying shock. Then they all looked at Lee.
But Lee was focused on the GPS device, his hand hovering over the elevator control panel, poised next to the button to open the doors. Outside, the buzzsaw ripped through trees and the explosions kept pounding, pounding, obliterating. Lee felt sweat at the top of his brow, gathering at his hair line. He rubbed it away.
The explosions suddenly stopped.
The buzzsaw paused, then started again, then paused and started again.
It went on like this for another few seconds, the noise starting and stopping, and Lee standing there, sweating, with his eyes affixed to the GPS screen. Lord, let this work, please let this work, this has got to work. Good God this is so damn risky, please don’t punish me for being so fucking risky. I’m just doing what I gotta do…
The GPS screen flashed. A window appeared: PROTOCOL TARGET ELIMINATION “ALL” COMPLETE. RUN AGAIN?
Lee clicked NO and pressed the Open Door button on the elevator console. “Get ready, guys.”
The doors opened.
Smoke washed in. The heavy smell of spent casings and blood. The sound of wailing. The beating of helicopter rotors. Lee took a big lungful of it. Felt it burn his throat and cauterize his mind. The wind from the rotors was pushing the smoke away. The scene was outlandish in how suddenly it had changed from only moments ago. The electrified fence sat in sparking shreds. The bodies beyond lay in squirming heaps, ripped into sections and pieces. The Black Hawk helicopter was lowering its bulk out of the sky, directly ahead of them, emerging out of the smoke like a dragon from a fog.
“Holy fuck me running,” someone behind Lee muttered.
Lee broke out of the elevator, heading for the gates. There was an odd, chaotic, horrific beauty to scenes of destruction like this. Something that Lee would have never admitted, but he felt it like wonder and awe in his soul. It was not a good feeling. It was an otherworldly one.
To his right, the giant, rusted drain grate in the center of the concrete island had been pushed aside, and the huge drainpipe beneath had sprouted some contraption full of barrels and hydraulics and thermal imaging lenses. But Lee could see the guts of the machines that had been cyborged onto this contraption—an M134 Minigun and an Mk-19 grenade launcher. The weapon system sat there, silent now, though smoke was still rolling off of it like someone had poured water on a fire.
A long time ago, Harper had asked Lee what would happen if you entered the wrong code when trying to access one of the bunkers. Lee had told him that they should definitely avoid that.
The bunker defends itself.
Lee deactivated the electrified fence, though he was sure all the bullets ripping it to shreds had already done that for him. Behind him, the doors to Bunker #3 slid shut, and the whole thing sealed itself off from the world. Ahead of him, the Black Hawk lowered itself to the gravel. Lee ripped open the gates and ran for it, with the Marines in tow. All around them the infected were dead and dying, but there were more coming. There were always more.
In the woods beyond the smoke and mangled bodies, shadows shifted and screeched.
The five heavily laden men clambered and clattered their way onto the Black Hawk, and as the second to the last set of boots left the ground, Carl shouted into his microphone, “We’re good! Dust off! Dust off!”
Lee lay on his back, staring up at black metal rivets. He breathed deep of the smell of the helicopter, the fuel, the exhaust, the oil. He felt the gravity pulling him, the force of the helicopter’s sudden ascension pressing him. He let out one big breath as the tops of the trees slipped by underneath them.
Carl was sitting there, calm as ever. He nodded in Lee’s direction. “I gotta tell you… that was some impressive shit. Good job.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, a little shakier than he would have liked. “It got the job done.”
Brinly slid himself up into a seat and hiked a foot up onto the crate of ammunition he’d carried. He looked at Lee, and Lee couldn’t tell whether he was irritated or grateful. Maybe both. The first sergeant huffed air and then grabbed the satellite phone and dialed it. He seemed to gradually relax as the helicopter banked away. They could all look out the windows below them and see more of the infected, trampling over the dead, many of them falling to feed on them.
“Yeah,” Brinly said into his satellite phone. “We’re clear. We got the guns. The chopper on its way?” He listened for a moment, nodding in thought. “Okay. Rog. Thank you, sir.”
He hung up and rubbed his brow, which was still sweating despite the cold. “That cargo chopper is en route back to Camp Lejeune. Colonel Staley says they plan to move the artillery convoy out within the hour.” A pause to collect his thoughts. “He also said that our scouts are reporting zero activity from the Followers, even out past Wilmington. They’ve been pressing and not making contact. It looks like they’ve all just up and left.”
Lee righted himself off of the floor and sat his butt onto one of the bench seats, again next to Carl. “Well… that sounds like a good thing… I guess.”
“Maybe,” Brinly agreed hesitantly. “Hopefully.”
THIRTEEN
HOSTAGES
HARPER MANAGED TO DOZE off somewhere around noon. His dreams were half real and half manufactured. The Marines that were holding them would be walking around, changing their guards, and a fight would break out and Kensey would be there with an axe, hacking one of his comrades to pieces, spraying blood across Harper’s face. But then the body on the ground wasn’t a Marine anymore; it was Julia, and Kensey was speaking reassuring tones as he hacked away at her legs.
“We have to amputate the leg,” he would say quietly. “Here’s something for the pain. How are you feeling?”
Julia looked up dreamily at Kensey as he chopped her right leg off and moved to her left. She smiled tiredly and nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just fine. Never been better.”
“You need to drink something,” Kensey said. “Hey. Hey.”
Harper snapped awake.
It was not Kensey that stood in front of him, but Baker. The Marine had long, slender arms and long, skinny fingers that gripped a green plastic canteen, held out to Harper. “Hey. Harper. Wake up.”
Harper blinked a few times. “I’m awake.” His eyes jagged to the floor where moments before Kensey had been making a bloody mess of Julia’s legs, but there was nothing there. He felt behind him with tingling numb fingers and felt Julia’s hands, still bound to the same wooden post as he was.
Harper coughed. His tongue was dry. “I’m awake.”
“Thirsty?” Baker said. “You should drink.”
Harper looked at the young Marine. The boonie hat that he tended to prefer was swept back and hanging from the lanyard around
Baker’s neck. His crew cut was extending out into a short, nappy afro, pressed down in a ring where the hat had been sitting. The Marine’s light brown skin was showing the contusions he’d received from Kensey: a scrape on the left cheek, some bruising and swelling around the left eye.
Harper nodded slowly. “Yes. Thirsty.”
Baker put the canteen to Harper’s lips and tilted. The water was cool, but it tasted stale and plastic. Still, he was parched enough that he didn’t care. He drank deeply, four long gulps, before Baker withdrew the canteen and capped it.
Harper licked the dribbles of water off his lips and cleared his throat again. “What was that earlier? With Kensey?”
Baker just smiled, like he was considering how to explain an adult concept to a child. “You know, my dad used to tell me, ‘When words fail, blows must follow.’ Sometimes brothers fight.”
“Brothers?” Harper half-laughed at him. “I don’t know if Kensey considers you a brother, given what he said.”
“Ha.” Baker just shook his head. “You mean all the racial shit? You think me and Kensey ain’t brothers ’cause he’s white and I’m black? Marine Corps don’t care whether you’re black, white, brown, or yellow, my friend.”
“Kensey seems to care.” It was the only button Harper had to push. Driving a wedge was pretty much his only way to fight back when he was tied up to a wooden post in a barn in the middle of nowhere.
Baker looked thoughtful. “You know, I’m light-skinned. When I first got to Kensey’s squad, everyone called me ‘the little mixed kid.’ But it’s cool. I call them cracker and honky and redneck. None of it fucking matters, bro. All that matters is that we have each other’s backs at the end of the day. Civilians don’t get that. That’s all just words. They leave bananas in my gear bag, I leave saltines in theirs. But when the bullets fly, they got my back. And I got theirs.”