Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness

by JT Sawyer

  With a temporary halt in the left flank of the horde, Duncan bounded along the row of waist-high cement pylons and then beelined for the third station. Kulovitz and the other warriors began dropping the other convicts hidden amongst the mass of undead. This caused the freaks to halt briefly to extract their fleshy rewards but the crowd numbered over five hundred and the flow of beasts resumed their push to the dam, their sights now focused on Kulovitz’s team.

  The air was filled with the odor of rancid flesh, disturbed soil, and gunsmoke as shots continued ringing out on both sides and the sound of bullets ricocheted off the concrete around Duncan as he made his way to the front security door of the rectangular generating station. He fumbled with his key ring, locating the correct one and hastily inserting it just as a lumbering zombie in blue coveralls stumbled around the edge of the building. He raised his rifle, slamming the butt into its pudding-like cheek, sending it reeling back onto a smaller creature that was flattened under the weight. Duncan opened the door and darted inside, resealing the door and resting against the wall for a second to catch his breath.

  He tapped on his ear-mic to relay a message of his intended plan to Lavine in case any friendly forces might be sweeping in from the rear but he got no response. He looked around the room which was filled with automated computer monitors hooked up to the utility conduits emanating from the walls. Duncan went to the mainframe computer, typing in the override code. Three numerically labeled red boxes came online. He selected the third generating station and tapped on the icon that indicated Purge. A warning flashed on the screen and an overhead alarm rang out. The computer prompted him with another security code which he entered. His finger hovered above the Enter button. Duncan hesitated and then tapped on his ear-mic again, this time calling Kulovitz, but only static ensued. He stepped back from the computer and raced up the stairs to the second floor, opening the fire exit at the top. Stepping out onto the roof, he saw the sea of zombies within twenty feet of the dam. His men had already begun retreating into the stairwell, stepping over thousands of rounds of spent shell casings. He could see Kulovitz being dragged on his heels, a large bullet wound piercing the side of his head. Duncan felt his stomach constrict and the taste of bile welled up in his throat, the scene around him unfolding in slow motion. With the hatchway to the dam sealed and his men safely inside, he refocused his attention on the group of four convicts moving up to the dam entrance with a crate of explosives. He raced back inside, down the steps to the ground floor and slapped his hand down on the Enter button. The lights overhead flickered as the circuit breaker connection was severed. Duncan turned on the flashlight mounted on his rifle and found his way back to the main entrance. The ground beneath his feet began trembling from the approaching tidal wave that had been unleashed and he knew the old building would soon be underwater.

  As he swung the steel door open, Duncan saw the raging waters bursting through the turbines and watched the surging river tear through Mitchell’s army. Duncan shot his way through a gauntlet of zombies as he sprinted away from the dam to a nearby hilltop on the edge of the forest. When his rifle ran dry, he cast it aside and intensified his stride. He heard a roar behind him as a huge wave overtook the third generating station and then blasted its way towards him, the vicious torrent overtaking him and the remaining crowd of flesh-eaters. He was sucked under into a frothing cauldron of putrescent limbs and earthen debris. Bursting to the surface, he caught a brief glimpse of the hill to his right and swam against the rising current until his lungs began to burn.

  Chapter 42

  Carlie snaked her way down two more protracted hallways, running past offices with half-consumed corpses of people she had greeted in passing each morning, their bodies torn apart by the mutants or riddled with bullets. Some showed signs of resistance while others were clearly trying to escape out the windows but were caught before their exodus was completed.

  The operations center was one more hallway to the left. She stopped at the intersection and knelt down to listen. After she was sure no person or creature was in the hallway between her and the door of operations, she peered around the corner. She crouch-walked along the corridor, stepping over the mangled bodies of three guards and four computer specialists. Next to the wall was Lavine’s headless figure, the stump still pulsing out spinal fluid onto the white tiled floor while the remains of his flattened skull were spread along the shattered tiles like red sludge.

  Despite all the carnage she had witnessed during the ensuing months of combat, she couldn’t ever recall seeing anything this brutal before. These were people she had worked with on a daily basis and now they were nearly mauled beyond recognition. Her awareness snapped back to the door before her. She could hear faint hissing coming from inside where several mutants were evidently poised. Then she heard the deep voice of a man barking orders over a radio.

  Carlie backpedaled around the corner and then tapped her ear-mic, forcing herself not to look at the horrific scene on the floor. “How much longer before the C4 is in place?”

  “Five more minutes,” said Shane.

  “Alright, squelch me one time just before you blow it.” She squatted down and did a tactical reload, replacing her half-empty magazine with a full one. Then she leaned her right shoulder against the wall and stared at a chipped floor tile while steadying her breathing. She didn’t know how many mutants were inside but it didn’t sound like more than three or four. Mitchell would have the detonator on him and probably be fixated on the wall monitor as he awaited any satellite images he was trying to pull up.

  Once Shane detonated the explosives, she would have to make a swift room entry and shoot Mitchell first then deal with the mutants. She ran through the plan in her head as her right hand clutched the grip on her M4 and she continued her rhythmic breathing.

  She heard Shane’s voice again. “Thirty seconds and then it’s 8.5 on the Richter scale.”

  “Copy that,” she whispered as she crept back along the hallway to the ops center door. She stood to the left with the muzzle of her rifle angled at the handle.

  Chapter 43

  Carlie heard the squelch in her earpiece and then the cavernous roar outside to her left. The shock wave rippled through her muscles and the fluorescent lights flickered temporarily as rivulets of dust streaked down from the ceiling. Instantly, she fired two rounds into the door and then furiously kicked it open, slamming the backside into a mutant that crashed into the computers. Mitchell was directly ahead standing beside his spent weapons. He had one hand on a remote control device as he turned and saw Carlie enter. With the front sight on his head, she squeezed the trigger at the same time a mutant lunged from her right side, sending her into the door frame. The round caught Mitchell above the clavicle, causing him to fall back onto the desk and drop the remote.

  Carlie’s rifle was jammed against her vest as she struggled to fend off the ferocious creature. It was holding onto the barrel, snapping its frothing jaws at her. She twisted her hips violently in a Judo throw, flinging the mutant off her while releasing her weapon. The creature landed on a table while Carlie transitioned to her pistol and shot it in the upper lip then turned and shot another one running at her from the right.

  Mitchell had one hand clamped on his wound while floundering around on the floor for the remote. The mutant behind the door stood up and leapt forward onto Mitchell’s back. It snarled, leaning in near his neck, its open jaws ready to snap off a hunk of flesh from behind his ear. Mitchell tried with outstretched hands to grasp the remote but Carlie bounded over and kicked it away. As the creature’s teeth began to press into his flesh, Carlie slammed her heel into the head of the mutant then fired off a round into the side of its skull, the blood and bone showering down onto the ground near Mitchell’s face. He sat up, hastily brushing the goop off his ear. If possible, she wanted the man alive so she could learn if he had set any other plans in motion.

  Carlie reached down and grabbed the remote and turned off the detonator then removed th
e batteries from the rear. She stood a few feet away with her pistol fixed on his head as the man slowly rose to his feet.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  Mitchell balled his fists and ground his teeth. “The battle has just begun. My men at the dam will soon cripple that facility and then your precious Fort Lewis will be finished.” Despite his obvious pain from the bullet wound, Mitchell’s eyes were wild and bloodshot while his limbs trembled from the stimulants raging through his veins.

  As Carlie moved to the communication station, she felt something grip her ankle as the mutant she had shot through the jaw began thrashing at her. Carlie shoved it away and fired two rounds into the back of its neck but couldn’t return to covering Mitchell in time. She felt a sharp jab of pain in her forehead from the laptop Mitchell had flung in her direction. The blow drove her back into a desk, causing her to lose her grip on her pistol. Carlie shook her throbbing skull and returned to a fighting stance as he made a dash at her, this time swinging furiously at her face. She deftly blocked his strikes and countered with a right hook to his jaw then a fluid shin kick to the back of his leg which brought him crashing to the floor. Carlie slammed her boot into his chest but he only let out a sickening groan and then jumped back on his feet. She knew he had to be in tremendous pain and operating on more than adrenaline at this point.

  She pulled out her blade and sidestepped his next assault, slicing him across the back of his left arm. He was like a rabid dog, getting more enraged with each wound, but his intensity didn’t waver.

  Mitchell withdrew his own knife and smiled at her. “Alright, my pretty little whore, I will match blades with you and dice your fine face to shreds.”

  Carlie closed the gap between them before he could move and slashed him across his blade hand, slicing through tendon and causing him to drop the weapon. She had no intention of dueling with him. This had to end now. Mitchell swung with his other fist, seemingly unaffected by the rush of blood pouring from his wounds. Carlie ducked to the left and she came back with a slash to his neck, just missing the carotid, followed by a thrust into his abdomen. He backpedaled with a sickening gulp as his legs buckled. Mitchell resumed his forward assault as if he was possessed by the same electrical charge as his deranged mutants. If he was going to bleed out it was going to take a while and he could inflict serious damage before he went down. Her precision strikes should have ended this conflict already but Mitchell rushed forward, his body bent low in an all-out effort to tackle her. She met his charge with a wide slash that cut him across the right shoulder but he locked his arms around her waist in a bear hug. She was inches from his growling face as he laughed and snarled, baring his teeth, his eyes wide with some kind of hurricane-like malevolence. She was gazing into a black vortex that existed to consume others—a hunger that had devoured countless lives. Beyond the pain in her ribs, she felt the pit of her stomach growing sick like she had swallowed black tar. He lifted her boots off the floor slightly as the force of his grip began constricting her breathing. Her chest heaved and she yelled out in fury while driving her blade into the side of his ear until the hilt was buried, her own face contorting from the might she exerted.

  Mitchell immediately dropped her and staggered back, his eyes widened in amazement. He tilted his lopsided head then collapsed to the floor, his drug-ravaged body still twitching. She stood ready, her fists clenched, wondering if he was going to spring back up somehow. Carlie gazed in wonder at his death throes, eyeing the crimson fluid leaking out of his ear and his body finally ceasing to move like some spent locomotive. Once his convulsions stopped, she leaned against the wall, her arms trembling. Her ribs were aching and she pressed gently on her side to check on the damage then moved her hand along the contusion on her forehead. She stood huffing in air then glanced around the room to make sure there were no more surprises.

  Returning to the front of the operations center, she retrieved her pistol and swapped out the magazine with a fresh one. Carlie sat down on a leather swivel chair and dragged a sleeve across her sweat-soaked cheeks. Then she snapped her head up and swung around to the main communications console, flipping through the remaining knobs that hadn’t been destroyed. After running through various channels she came across the low chatter of a soldier’s voice at the dam yelling at the troops to cease fire as the enemy scourge was swept away in the floodwaters.

  Carlie stared at the body count in the room and hallway around her then reached down and grabbed her rifle off the ground. As she proceeded towards the door to check on the others outside, she saw Shane, Jared, and Amy walking around the corner.

  “It’s over,” said Shane. “The rest of Mitchell’s men and the remaining mutants were taken out just before they got to the medical center in B-Wing.”

  “And the perimeter—did you stem that breach?” she said, easing up the grip on her M4.

  “For now; nothing’s getting through that pile of rubble,” said Jared, rubbing his chin. “Shane excels at makin’ a mess of things.”

  They all went back inside the room, taking in the sheer amount of damage and the splayed corpses strung out in every direction. Shane walked over and stood beside Mitchell then glanced around at the mutants. “I’m not sure which monsters are worse.”

  “I’m sure,” said Carlie, staring down at Mitchell.

  “It seems like this pandemic didn’t cleanse the world of evil after all—only magnified it,” said Jared.

  “Can you imagine what things would have looked like if he had succeeded,” said Amy.

  “We could have lost everything today—all that we have fought for during these many months. One man’s twisted will nearly brought this place down,” Carlie said. “And here, we’ve always held out that the virus was our greatest threat when, in fact, it’s our own kind. Seems like little has changed.”

  “What hasn’t changed is that we also have bad-asses willing to go the distance with tyrants like this,” said Shane, moving beside her and brushing a lock of hair from her cheek and nodding back towards Amy and Jared. “And that is what makes me get up each day to greet the sunrise and continue the fight—the people on my right and left.”

  Carlie patted Shane on the shoulder while nodding at the others. “Let’s get the comms fully restored and see what Duncan needs on his end. The day’s not over yet.”

  Epilogue

  Once they regrouped at Fort Lewis, Duncan took over the command and ordered a general assembly to honor the fallen. Four days after the battle on both fronts, a funeral service was provided for the fifty-seven men and women who lost their lives. Lavine was buried in a grove of sycamore trees near the edge of the base as he had requested in his personal journal while Kulovitz was laid to rest at the rear of the compound in a small cemetery for other members of Duncan’s beloved fellow fighters from the 1st Special Forces. A rotating garrison of soldiers was assigned to the Grand Coulee Dam, whose energy output had only been reduced by one-sixth with the collapse of the third generating station. And for a while, the hilltop beside the dam was unofficially renamed Duncan Summit for the narrow escape he made during his defiant swim in the raging rapids.

  The day after the service, Carlie strode up the stairs to the roof of D-Wing where she often went alone to contemplate the future and enjoy the feel of the moist saltwater breeze drifting in from the coast. This time, the rest of her closest friends were there for a small gathering and they stood quietly taking in the plum-orange skyline to the west. She saw Eliza beside Jake and the two twin girls as they shared their common interests. Jared and Amy had their arms around each other’s waists while Duncan, Pavel, and Matias were arguing over their preferences for whiskey as Pavel poured from a bottle.

  Carlie sidled up next to Shane, interlacing her fingers with his. She looked up at him, their eyes meeting in a warm embrace. He pulled her close as they looked out to the setting sun. Carlie saw Matias looking back at her while a slow smile crept over his tan face. He raised his whiskey shotglass in a toast to her before turning aro
und. She recalled his words from before the battle: Love is the solution to most problems in life—finding that one love of your life that you would cross an ocean to be with. She looked at Shane, his eyes taking her in, and she leaned her head onto his shoulder. “I’d cross the ocean for you a thousand times over,” she whispered while he kissed her softly.

  For the first time since she lived in Arizona, Carlie felt like she had found a home—a place that was more than an edifice designed as a refuge against the perils of the world. She let out an easy exhale, feeling her body relax. Carlie watched a flock of seagulls overhead making their way to the coast and, for once, forgot about the uncertainty of the future.

  During the ensuing months as winter transitioned into spring, the tight-knit community at Fort Lewis began to rebuild and they resumed their acquisition missions for research equipment, food, and medical supplies. Then one afternoon in late April, Pavel announced that he and his team of tireless researchers had made the breakthrough on the initial antidote. Now, their attention would be focused on obtaining primates for testing the vaccine and seeing if their toil and sacrifice would finally come to fruition.

  With the warm months ushering in migratory birds and emerging wildflowers, there was a renewed sense of hope amongst the personnel at Fort Lewis and for a time, people slept easier and occasionally remembered what it was like to smile without effort.

  About the Author

  JT Sawyer is the pen name for Tony Nester. Tony is a fulltime survival instructor and the author of numerous non-fiction books and DVDs on survival. His training school is the primary provider for the Military Special Operations community and he has served as a consultant for the NTSB, FAA, Travel Channel, New York Times, Outside Magazine, and the film Into the Wild. For more information, visit apathways.com.