“You mutherfucker,” spat Rob.
“That’s enough,” she enjoined. “Quentin. You have to go.”
“I’m sorry.”
She raised the gun. “I’m begging you, Quentin. You have to go.”
He backed away, shocked. He looked down at Thomas ruefully. Then back at them. “Just listen. Please. One last time. And just trust me.”
“Go ahead. And then you leave.”
“Ok. I think maybe someone died in town, and there was an outbreak. People flee and lock the gates behind them to contain the outbreak. But say there’s an underground tunnel. What if somebody got locked in, and ran out the tunnel without closing it off? The zombies follow that guy. You arrive and there’s no zombies. But then every once in a while, some leak in through that hole.”
“Why now?” she asked.
“Maybe they smell me ridin’ around. Maybe it’s my fault, I’m leavin’ my scent all over town. I don’t know. But if I stop it…if I find the hole and seal it…will you forgive me?”
“Go,” she said, gun held at her side.
Desperate, he ran through the grass, got back on his bike and pedaled. He rode hard toward the center of town. As he did, he saw the zombies moving in loose formation, sweeping the terrain, heading north. They had sensed him, somehow, found his trail and followed it.
He stopped. “Come on! Follow me! Food time!”
They shifted course. Some ran, some lumbered, and one crawled. Darting down the road he outpaced them easily, but they wouldn’t lose his scent. Another mile and he was downtown.
Going to where he tended to find them, he looked around, trying to think. He had been everywhere, except behind the shops on the south side of the road. He rode behind those, dropped the bike and walked along the grass.
“Do you see it, Billy? Help me, come on.”
Finally, he did see something in the moonlight.
One of the Dead, rising from the high grass.
Pulling out his bat, he ran to it, swung and knocked the zombie down. His feet spilled out beneath him and he slid down an embankment, landing on cold concrete beneath. Before him yawned the mouth of an underground tunnel at least seven feet in diameter.
He went in.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness. A runner charged through the grass above, dashing into the tunnel after him. When it was close enough he crunched the bones of its skull with his weapon, then ran. More flooded in through the gaping maw, hunting him with abandon.
A zombie caught up to him, grabbing hold and coming in for a chew. But he kicked it and smashed its head against the wall and rushed onwards.
The chase felt like it might last forever. He wanted to give in but Billy begged him to keep running. Then he saw the light up ahead. Faint, but no illusion.
They were behind him, catching up.
He exploded out of the tunnel into the forest. “Come! Come out and get me!” he screamed. He jogged up the embankment, only to see that he was just outside the fence line. The moon illuminated everything, including two large doors, both wide open, at the mouth of the tunnel.
It was a drainage system, large, aimed at the river below. The doors had been built after the fact, to keep the dead out, but when the people had died inside and the plague had spread, someone had come out this way and left the doors open. Eventually all the zombies left the ghost town in search of life. That was the only explanation.
He waited above as the zombies poured out. Seeing him, they clambered up the embankment. He knocked the first down with the bat but it grabbed his ankle and another tackled him from behind. As the bat slipped away he drew his Ka-Bar, punching the blade into both zombies as they riddled him with bites. More piled on and he squirmed and kicked and shoved and lost the knife, but snaked out from the dogpile, raced up the embankment, leading them toward the fence, and then alongside it, and then at the last instant he turned and ran back to the tunnel. With all his strength he shoved one huge metal door shut, and then the other. Just as it was about to close he slipped in. He closed the door, felt for and found a latch, secured it. The Dead pounded and roared against the doors but couldn’t get in. Eventually, he knew, they would give up and move on, forgetting why they were even there.
He made his way back into town. Got on his bike and rode to his friends’ home. His wounds seeped. “I know, Billy,” he said. “I know.”
When he got there he was lightheaded but he got over the fence and into the yard, and to the house. He called out to them, and eventually they all came.
From the porch, they stared at him: bloodied, pale, sweating profusely. They uttered words of disbelief.
He walked up the steps of the porch and faced Elizabeth, who remained composed despite her fear. She raised the gun at his chest. “Stay away, please.”
Quentin took the gun gently by the barrel, his breathing rapid and shallow. He guided it upwards until it reached his head.
“I sealed it,” he said. “They won’t come in anymore. I stopped the leak.”
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, and spent the last bullet in town.
8 From Dead to Dust by T. S. Alan
There was no antiviral coming. The contagion had spread too quickly for the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to identify the viral pathogen before it spread across the country. Time had run out. The living dead in New York City now outnumbered those still alive.
The Army Sustainment Command that had been set up at the Javits Convention Center had fallen. MEDCOM HQ, which was the Headquarters and Headquarters Company for USAMRIID and the 1st Maneuver Enhancement Brigade (1st MEB), at Madison Square Garden was hastily being evacuated. Command knew they were not going to be able to hold the base for very much longer. Thousands of the living dead had gathered outside at the barricades and along the perimeter fencing of the multi-use indoor arena, all clamoring feverishly to get in and get a meal of human flesh. Brigadier General Ford ordered all operation commands in the city to recall their troops, evacuate and rendezvous at Stewart Air National Guard Base (ANGB) in Newburgh, New York. There was nothing more the military could do for the city; it was time to fall back to the military bases at Colorado Springs, where the virus had yet to reach.
However for the remaining soldiers of MEDCOM Bravo at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, leaving by land was impossible. The armory was under siege by the living dead from outside as well as inside. The perimeter fencing had failed and there were now hundreds packed into the compound as well as a large agitated contingent at the building’s main doorway that were frantically scraping their nails on the heavy wooden entry trying to get in. Inside there was chaos, too. Most of the soldiers of the 1/69th Infantry Regiment Mechanized were sick or had already succumbed to the virus and turned into zombies, all because their CBRN protection equipment had arrived too late.
The armory’s commander Colonel Walter Travis had also become afflicted with the virus. There was only one way his remaining uninfected soldiers were going to get out and that was airlift by helo from the roof. MEDCOM HQ informed him that air mission command at Stewart ANGB was going to send a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk to extract them.
Colonel Travis had locked himself in his office. He was writing in a journal again. The colonel had no idea if it would ever be found and read, but he needed to put pen to paper for a record of what had transpired:
It is now 0245 hours and this will be my last journal entry. More and more of the undead have gathered outside our walls. It seems like the entire city has succumbed to the plague… A while ago there had been attempts by my men who are now the living dead to break into my office. But for the last fifteen minutes I have heard no one beating on my door.
Staff Sergeant Becker had called earlier for reinforcements but I could not send any. Though I have not heard from him since, and do not know if he was successful in his mission, I have no choice but to order the last of my non-infected soldiers t
o the roof for exfil. HQ has informed me that ASOC will send a helicopter to transport them to Stewart ANGB for final withdrawal. I pray that my soldiers make it safely out of the city.
I tried several times throughout the day and evening to get hold of my wife and children, to hear their voices and know they are alive, but I am certain they are dead or worse. All is lost and this illness drains me of my energy and my mind. Before I become too incapacitated I will follow Command’s orders. I will kill myself. It is better I die than to become one of the unholy abominations that now roam this metropolis.
Faugh an Beallach!
***
Captain Cullin Arn and her six men never heard the pistol shot that ended their commander’s life. They were too busy attempting to make it to the stairwell that led to the roof. The hallways were overrun with the living dead, slowing their progress. Arn was at the front of the fight. The strawberry blonde officer wasn’t one to pass off point position to a subordinate. Her fierceness as a warfighter was only outdone by her proactive commitment to getting the job done against a determined and tenacious enemy.
Down the second-floor hallway they went, slowly pushing through the enemy ahead while keeping the ones in the rear at bay. Killing a fast-moving zombie with a headshot wasn’t as easy as it was often portrayed in movies and television. Soldiers are trained to shoot center mass, which gives the greatest chance of a bullet landing somewhere in the vicinity of the organs, and so end hostilities by seriously incapacitating or killing the aggressor. However, when you aim small, you miss small, and Arn and her soldiers were expending a lot of ammunition. They were fighting to get to the stairwell that would lead them up to the third floor to the stairwell to the roof.
The stairway from the second to third floor was clear, but the upper level hallway was awash with dead zombies as well as the corpses of Sergeant Becker’s team. Becker and his fire team had been sent earlier to the third level to facilitate the eradication of those in the hospital wing that had died and reanimated. There were so many of A and E Company that had “turned” that the fire team had called they were being overrun and needed reinforcements. However, Colonel Travis could not spare anyone; they were too busy with the zombies on the main floor. Becker’s team never returned.
The floor and walls were splattered with blood and bits of brain matter and flesh, so much that the hallway looked like an abstract painting by Norman Bluhm. Slowly, stealthily, and one at a time, the team exited onto the floor. It was eerily quiet. Not one zombie roaming about. All the team had to do was travel two-thirds down the corpse-strewn corridor to where the roof access door was located. First Lieutenant Matthew Cooper was the last to come through the stairwell doorway. He cautiously closed it so the noise of the lock latching back into its recess was barely audible. The floor was tacky with coagulated blood and entrails. Carefully, the group moved toward the roof access door in standard military formation, stepping over bodies as they progressed toward their objective.
They had almost made it undetected when one of the corpses reared up from under another and groaned as it grabbed onto Cooper’s leg and tripped him. Cooper stumbled and then tripped over another corpse and landed face up, his head landing in the body cavity of a member of the fire team that had perished hours earlier.
For a bullet-riddled zombie with one leg missing and the lower half of the other barely attached, it was swift in getting to the fallen lieutenant. Before Cooper had gotten the boot of his free foot onto the skull of the ravenous monstrosity that had latched onto his other foot, it had started crawling up his leg. Cooper forcefully kicked the zombie atop its skull, trying to beat it off him, but the zombie was unfazed by the boot strike.
Sergeant Anthony Richardson had been right ahead of Cooper when he fell. When he heard the groan he turned just in time to see his superior tumble over a corpse and land on the flesh-stripped corpse of one of his own. Richardson didn’t hesitate to come to Cooper’s aid. He tried to pull Cooper clear of the crawling zombie, but the creature had been too quick and had latched onto the lieutenant’s ankle.
Specialist Emmett Emery reacted immediately to the situation, too. He also grabbed onto Cooper, trying to help the sergeant pull their lieutenant clear of the threat. As Cooper put his boot to the zombie’s head for a third time, it bit deeply into his leg just above his kneecap. As Richardson and Emery kept pulling back, the flesh around the bite wound ripped away, freeing Cooper long enough to allow the two to pull the first lieutenant clear before the zombie could get its grip on Cooper again.
Cooper tried to hold back his wail of pain as the flesh tore from his leg, but the agony was too intense. Though Cooper’s cry hadn’t been extremely loud, it had been audible enough for it to reverberate down the hall and around the corner ahead of them. A loud distant groan came from around the hall. Except it wasn’t just the groan of one zombie; it was the collective groans of multiple zombies. A moment later a horde came from around the corner.
When Captain Arn heard the loud moans of the living dead, she immediately bolted for the access door to the roof. Specialist Harold English and Staff Sergeant Patrick Murphy covered their leader’s door entry, as Corporal Mark Watson watched down the hall covering the entire team. The narrow stairwell passage up to the roof was clear. Arn ordered her soldiers through the doorway, just as the horde came around the corner.
Richardson and Emery hauled the incapacitated Cooper through the stairwell entry just before the zombie pack reached them. They struggled to get him up the stairs with the zombie horde only steps behind them.
As they reached the top of the stairs, Cooper urgently told Richardson and Emery, “Go. Go!” He knew he wasn’t going to be able leave on the helicopter, but he could try to stave off the zombie onslaught so his comrades could escape.
Richardson and Emery tried to pull the lieutenant through the door, but he broke free of them. “That’s an order!” he forcefully commanded.
As the sergeant and specialist crossed the threshold and closed the door behind them, they heard the latch bolt engage and then Matthew Cooper cry “Faugh an Beallach!” It was the battle cry of the 69th Infantry Regiment, an Irish saying that meant “Clear the way!”
Cooper had the high ground. It was a tactical advantage that would only last as long as he had enough 30-round magazines for his Colt M4A1 carbine. The stairwell started to fill up with zombie corpses as he ripped their heads apart with the weapon’s 5.56mm caliber ammo, spraying blood and brain matter into the air like a wet dog shaking off water. Even with the high ground it took a lot of bullets to stop them. He ejected his third magazine and grabbed for his last one, but when his hand hit his vest he discovered it was missing. He always kept accurate track of his ammo magazines. He had had one chambered in the carbine and three on his tactical vest when he entered the third floor. It must have dislodged when he had tripped and fallen in the hallway. If he had had a hand grenade he would have dove into the oncoming pack with it and taken out as many with him as he could, but hand grenades were not a standard-issue item for his regiment.
Cooper was not going to allow himself to be torn apart. It was one horror he was going to avoid at all cost. He grabbed his M9 pistol, but before he could shoot himself in the head the pack seized him and dragged him down. They tore at him, first shredding his clothes and then clawing at his flesh. Luckily for him it wasn’t like a Hollywood horror film; zombies couldn’t simply claw flesh away by grabbing at your skin, but they sure as hell could bite and pull. He struggled to keep hold of his pistol as the pack pulled at his arms, trying to tear them from its sockets. A bite to his left hand severed his wedding ring finger, and then he felt his left arm being torn off. First the arm dislocated. Then he felt the flesh and muscle start to give way. With all his remaining strength he forced himself to pull back his right arm, as if he were in an arm-wrestling match, to get the pistol to his head. The pistol went off. The shot echoed in the stairwell. Cooper was dead a split second before his left arm was torn from his body. It only
took a few moments for the zombie pack to tear Cooper’s limp corpse to pieces. Those that got a part of him retreated with their meal. Several of the group fought over Cooper’s torso, dragging it down the stairs as they did, leaving a bloody streak like the slime trail of a snail. For the moment, the smell of blood and freshly mutilated body parts overpowered the scent left behind by the fleeing soldiers. But the ever-hungry mass would soon be drawn back to their forgotten quarry.
***
A temporary reprieve: that is what Cooper’s self-sacrifice had earned the six that had made it to the roof. Captain Arn and her team heard Cooper’s single pistol shot and they surmised he had taken his life rather than be eaten alive. Arm knew that once the ravenous undead creatures were done consuming their fallen companion, they would turn their attention back to them. She also knew that the door to the roof would not hold the tide of zombies back for long.
The extract helo was late, which for them had been a good thing. It had taken Arn’s team longer to get to the roof than anticipated. However, Arn also knew a delayed extract could mean the helo was in trouble or not coming at all.
“Valkyrie One-Nine, Valkyrie One-Nine this is Wolfhound Zero-Zero. How copy? Over,” Arn radioed to the helicopter from the 3rd General Support Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment that was supposed to be coming to extract them. There was no response. She heard some radio chatter stating to rotate right, and then hold. She radioed again. “Valkyrie One-Nine, Valkyrie One-Nine this is Wolfhound Zero-Zero. Do you copy? Over.”
“Wolfhound Zero-Zero, standby this frequency,” the responding voice instructed over the sound of machine gunfire.
As Arn patiently waited, she could hear the guttural noises from the throngs of the living dead at street level. If they could not be extracted from the armory’s roof, they were going to have to make their escape from the adjoining building to their northwest. However, they had limited ammunition and she had no idea if that building had been compromised. The situation was dire.
Apoc Series (Vol. 1): Whispers of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse] Page 16