by D. J. Molles
And in the middle of that burning sea, the hospital was just a lonely island, and it seemed that it was going to be washed away.
They’re swallowing the fucking city.
Lee coughed to clear himself and keyed his radio. “Tomlin, Tomlin, this is Lee, how copy?”
Gunshots, and panic in Tomlin’s voice. “Go, Lee! I hope you’re fucking close!”
“I’m right here, buddy, I’m looking at you and we’re coming in quick, so get ready!”
They’d ripped the parking garage barricades to shreds and were storming through. It only took a few of them to figure out where they needed to go to ascend the parking garage, and then the rest began to follow. Still others were climbing up the sides of the parking garage. The entire structure had just become scaffolding for them to reach the top of the hospital.
Tomlin and his small team weren’t shooting them off the walls anymore. They were down to their last few magazines per person, and they were picking targets as they came over the top of the parking garage now, choosing to take out the ones that were closest and the most threat.
The top level of the parking garage was still one level below them, but Tomlin doubted that would hold the horde off for long. They would climb on each other’s shoulders, trample their brethren down to create a staircase of bodies if they had to. They were singularly minded.
He fired his rifle haphazardly with one hand. The targets were pouring into the top level of the parking garage in such great numbers, Tomlin didn’t think he could miss. With the other hand, he keyed the radio back to Lee. “We’re fucking ready now! Just get here!”
He dropped the radio again and ran to Jared and Joey, who were beside each other. “When the chopper lands, I want you two to grab Brandy and get on it first. Then you cover for me and Nate and Devon. You got that?”
“I got it!” Jared said, the pitch of his voice raised in fear.
Tomlin took a few shots, then crossed quickly to Nate and Devon. “Nate! We’re holding while Jared and Joey and Brandy get on the bird! It’s almost here! When they’re on, they’ll cover our retreat! Got it?”
“Okay!” Nate shouted back, not even bothering to look back.
Devon kept firing, but yelled at Tomlin in a shaking voice. “I’ll hold them for you guys! Let me do it!”
“Shut the fuck up and do what I tell you to do!” Tomlin yelled back in the kid’s ear. Was he fucking serious with this hero bullshit? This wasn’t the time or the place…
Devon spun suddenly and Tomlin could see his eyes were wide with terror and wet with tears. “I got bit! In the fucking truck! I got bit!”
Movement over Devon’s shoulder caught Tomlin’s eyes. He looked up, saw the horde pouring into the top level of the parking garage, wall-to-wall bodies. It seemed like shooting at them was pointless. Trying to empty the ocean with an eye dropper.
He got bit.
Tomlin was processing.
The sound of helicopter rotors beating the air over their heads. The feeling of the air buffeting down onto them. A sudden explosion of lights. Tomlin turned and squinted. The massive signal fire on top of the roof just barely lit the outline of the helicopter in flickering oranges, and the pilot had switched on the helicopter’s lights.
Nate was yelling something at Devon. Devon was yelling back. They were both shooting.
Tomlin started shooting with them. The radio handset flopping on his shoulder was squawking mindlessly—Lee yelling at them to get the hell on the helicopter. He kept shooting down into the crowd of insanity below him as it suddenly crushed itself against the wall eight feet below them, and the infected began to climb, to claw over each other. Never ending. Never stopping. He stood between Nate and Devon, the three of them spread out along the northeastern wall of the roof, trying to hold the line just long enough…
He glanced over his left shoulder.
Jared, Joey, and Brandy were sprinting for the helicopter.
They should’ve been in that shit already! My God, keep us alive…
A filthy, gnarled hand grasped the lip of the roof, the fingernails overgrown and black underneath. Tomlin grit his teeth and stomped one boot down onto the hand while he stuck his rifle blindly over the edge and fired. He felt the hand moving underneath his foot, and then it slipped away.
“They’re climbing over!”
Madness, madness, madness, don’t die in this madness.
Tomlin looked over his shoulder again, and this time the three others were climbing into the cabin of the Black Hawk, and Tomlin could see Lee there, rifle strapped to his chest, hauling them up onto the aircraft as it hovered just a few inches off the ground.
Tomlin turned back and faced the hundreds, the thousands, the uncountable faces. He was screaming. He was shooting. He started moving backward away from the wall. Nate held for a half beat longer, then followed suit. Devon did as well, but then stopped and held his ground as dozens of spidery arms reached over the edge of the roof and began to straddle their way over.
Nate was screaming for Devon.
Tomlin grabbed Nate by the shoulder, getting a good firm grip on his jacket, and started dragging him backward as he heard the sound of gunfire taking up cadence behind him, the bullets whizzing over their heads.
“Let’s go! We gotta go! We gotta…”
At the edge of the roof, Devon took another step back and then stood again, firing to his left, then his right, and then something got a hand on him and ripped the rifle out of his arms, and then pulled him to the ground as bodies crawled over the edge and piled on top of him, ripping him to shreds in a frenzy.
Tomlin turned to face the helicopter, still dragging Nate behind him. Lee jumped down out of the bird and grabbed the other shoulder, hauling the screaming man on board, and then climbed on top of him to pin him down.
Tomlin could feel the infected at his back; he could feel them grasping at his heels; he could feel their breath on his neck. He had one leg into the cabin of the helicopter.
Lee was shouting, “Go! Go! Go!”
Tomlin leaped and sprawled himself onto the cold metal of the floor, rolling as he did and feeling the sudden down-thrust of the helicopter erupting off of the roof, faster than he’d ever felt a helicopter take off. It flattened him onto the deck and pressed at his chest. He looked out, trying to see Devon, but only caught the top of the flames from the signal fire, and then even that disappeared.
The helicopter banked, and Tomlin looked down into moving, thrashing darkness, the signal fire the only point of light in it all, and it illuminated the building around it that looked like ants swarming a mound.
“Tomlin!” Lee yelled at him over Nate’s wails. “Tell Brinly to send it!”
Tomlin fumbled with the Marines’ radio, but managed to bring it to his mouth and key it with numbed fingers. He realized he was completely out of breath and had to take a few before he could speak: “Smith… ah… Smithfield to artillery! Brinly! Send it! Send it! Level this fucking town!”
Julia stood leaning against one of the Marine trucks, her mind scattered into a million different places, pain coursing through her, and grief pressing down on her chest. One of the Delta men stood by with her, though she told him that she was fine.
She heard Tomlin’s voice on the radio, shouting for Brinly to “Send it! Send it!” and she could even hear Lee in the background, yelling, “Tell them to expand the radius! Expand the radius!”
Brinly heard the command over the radio and nodded to the Marine artillery commander. Then he turned and looked at Julia. “This is gonna be loud.”
She stared on numbly, not bothering to plug her ears, though a few of the men around her did.
The artillery commander turned and barked in the direction of the gun crews: “Battery… fire!”
Julia felt the earth shake and the air pound against her chest and her ears, almost deafening her. She closed her eyes, letting the devastating noise wash over her, letting it spark her anger back to life, like breath blown on embers.
Kill those motherfuckers. Kill ’em all.
The sky spat flame. Lee watched the first volley erupt in the night, maybe a few hundred yards from the base of the hospital, shattering concrete and bodies in clouds of billowing black-and-gray smoke, eviscerating, incinerating, demolishing.
Tomlin shouted into his radio: “Splash! Right on target! You got about a mile radius from that point. Fire for effect.”
Lee didn’t need to tell the helicopter pilot to get them out of there. They were already banking sharply, heading south, trying to make the run to Fort Bragg. Lee watched out the open cabin doors of the helicopter. Even from inside the helicopter, he could hear the distinctive warbling noise of the incoming rounds, the jarring explosions as they crashed down. The dark world below them became a flashing, strobing cloud. A massive thunderhead that grew out of nothing. The dust cloud climbed on itself, billowing up and up. In the heart of it, the rounds kept striking, and the cloud of dust and smoke flashed like lightning. It just kept growing, kept building, compounding on itself, consuming everything. It struck down buildings and flattened houses, though Lee could not see this happening. He only could see the ever-expanding cloud, swallowing everything whole, destroying in seconds what had taken decades to build, and smashing everything to blood and dust and rubble. In that black cloud, in the strobing light of high explosives and fragmentation, all those warm bodies were being burned, incinerated, ripped to shreds. In the distance, the artillery was thundering, and the rounds just kept coming, unending, unsatisfied. A god of war with a bottomless hunger. Lee’s mouth hung open at the spectacle of it. An image of destruction. Apocalyptic and wrathful.
Lee had no words. Only a feeling. Like falling. Like vertigo.
From the cockpit, an unpleasant sound blared through his shock and awe.
Lee came up to his feet, wanting to know what it was.
The pilot answered before he could ask.
“Fuel’s almost done,” he shouted. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it back.”
The feathery feeling of vertigo—almost giddy—solidified into a brick. Lee could think of only one thing as he felt the aircraft shudder. He flipped down the NVGs and looked below them. Heat signatures in the trees, in the streets. Not the sea of fire he had seen, but still hundreds of them.
“There’s a lot of infected down there!” he called out. “We’re still over top of the horde. You need to get us a little bit farther!”
“I don’t know how much farther we’re going to go.” The pilot sounded irritated. “One second this goddamn fuel gauge says we got twenty minutes of fuel, and the next it says we’re empty. Trust me, brother, you don’t want this thing to crash.”
“Just get us as far as you can,” Lee said, then turned to the others. “Everyone strap in and grab ahold of something.”
“Are we gonna crash?” Joey stammered, while Brandy started swearing.
Jared and Tomlin and Nate dragged themselves into the available seats and started strapping themselves in, their faces set like rocks.
“I don’t know,” Lee said, grabbing one of the seats for himself and fumbling with buckles. “I hope to hell not…”
The helicopter shook and dropped.
“Aw, fuck,” the pilot yelped from inside the cockpit. “Everyone hang on!”
Lee felt the bird plummet what must have been a few yards.
This was the risk we had to take. Maybe we’ll make it.
“Everyone grab something and make yourself small!” Lee demonstrated by seizing the side of the seat he was strapped into and tucking his legs, arms, and head in tightly, almost to a fetal position.
“I think I got it,” the pilot yelled back. “It’s gonna be hard, but I think… I think…”
The helicopter’s lights were still blazing. One second Lee saw the tops of trees flashing through the bright lights. Then it was the ground. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, every muscle in his body tensed.
This is gonna hurt…
TWENTY-FOUR
CRASH
LEE REMEMBERED THE IMPACT, but vaguely. His brain jarred around inside of his skull, unable to fully comprehend what his senses were telling him. The impact felt like an explosion and Lee recalled thinking, I’m gonna die because of this.
Then things were fuzzy.
Even nonexistent.
He felt hands on him.
Infected… No…He could hear someone yelling.
“… somewhere between you and Smithfield!” It was Tomlin’s voice. “Just get a fucking truck on the road and I’ll try to guide you in!”
Another voice, much closer. “I got you, man.”
Lee could tell his body was flopping around, but it felt very numb. Almost insensate.
Oh my God, I’m paralyzed.
Lee felt the ground moving beneath him. Peripherally, he felt his heels dragging. He looked up and saw Nate’s face, straining as he pulled him out of the darkness. Lee looked back to his feet. They looked normal. He’d half-expected them to be all mangled up and twisted. They were just now exiting what was left of the helicopter’s cabin.
Lee felt his lungs suddenly burning. He tried to intake a breath, but it didn’t want to go. He coughed out instead. His ribs erupted in fire. Felt like they were cracking and recracking every time that he tried to breathe.
Tomlin was suddenly there, hovering over him. “Breathe. There you go. You’re just jammed up, that’s all. Take a second and breathe.”
Lee tried again, felt a little more air get past his shocked diaphragm. He grimaced around the pain in his side, then coughed again, which only made it worse. He managed a few words: “Others? The others?”
Tomlin just shook his head. “I need you to get up, buddy. Please tell me your shit’s still working, because we just made a fuck of a loud boom and there’s a lot more things in this woods than you really want to think about. Please tell me those legs are still working.”
Lee felt his vision crossing. He blinked rapidly to clear it. “Naw… I… just… concussion.”
“You can live with a concussion. But I need you on your feet!”
Lee’s awareness was gradually expanding. Past his feet, about ten yards, the helicopter was a mess of disjointed parts. Flames and gouts of smoke were issuing out of the cabin. Lee could hear the sound of the engine ticking loudly, still groaning, though nothing seemed to be moving. A heavy booming in the background and then the feeling of the earth shaking underneath him.
Artillery, that’s the artillery. They’re still going.
Lee managed to rise up onto his elbows, drawing in breaths, and each breath a little more steady than the last. “I’m good,” he said. “I’m good. I got it. Where the fuck are we?”
“No fucking idea,” Tomlin said, heaving Lee up so that he was in a sitting position. “C’mon, buddy, let’s get you to your feet.”
Nate and Tomlin pulled Lee to his feet. For a second they felt awkward and ungainly, but the moment passed quickly and the feeling started to return to his limbs. And it wasn’t good. They hurt like a motherfucker. Not broken. But banged the hell up, that was for sure. And being upright put more strain on his side, and the pain compounded there.
“Are they dead?” Lee pointed to the helicopter.
“Left side of the helicopter didn’t do well,” Tomlin said.
The guns in the distance continued to boom. The earth kept shaking. Somewhere in the darkness beyond them, something howled and screeched.
“Okay,” Lee said, forcing some feeling back into his fingers—at least enough to grip his rifle. “Do we know which way is south?”
Tomlin pointed in the general direction that the helicopter seemed to be pointing in. “My guess would be somewhere in that direction.”
Something crashed through the brush, very near to them.
“Let’s go.” Lee turned in the direction that they’d determined to be south and started his unwieldy legs running.
LaRouche staggered into the clearing wher
e they’d staged their vehicles. The wound in his side would not stop bleeding. The pain kept needling through him with every step. He pressed through the trees and suddenly found himself there, under the sign of an old gas station that had long since been abandoned, probably even before the collapse. They’d parked their collection of trucks and vans and Chalmers’s camper behind the boarded-up business.
About a dozen of the men from the assault had made it back to the staging area. LaRouche was sure that there were more, but whether they were turned around back in the woods or deliberately avoiding the staging area, LaRouche did not know. Perhaps they were unsure of how Chalmers would react to this catastrophic failure. Perhaps they had deserted.
LaRouche stood there, just out of the woods for a moment, trying to catch his breath, but never quite able to. The dozen men in the staging area had not noticed him yet. They looked nervous and twitchy. A group of them was arguing outside of Chalmers’s camper, all puffed chests and rapid gesticulations. The camper was dark, but LaRouche thought he could hear yelling coming from inside, and the camper was rocking back and forth violently.
The other men inside the staging area were spread out in a few pairs, but their attention was on the camper.
LaRouche scanned the area and found the flatbed truck with the wooden cage in the back, the huddled forms of women under blankets, trying to stay warm. Then he looked back at the camper. Scanned back and forth, wondering what he should do, wondering what was best, what was the right thing to do. Finally, he lurched into motion again and cut around the outside of the staging area, the woods to his left and the vehicles to his right.
He made his way to the passenger’s side of the flatbed truck. He opened the door and peered inside, looking for the keys. In the back, a few of the women stirred, but no one made a noise. LaRouche held a breath and grimaced against the pain. He climbed up into the cab of the truck. His clumsy, bloody hands ripped through the dashboard and center console. He couldn’t find the keys.