“It’s a nightmare,” the President croaked. Even General Knight – a man accustomed to the gruesome reality of war – stood shaken and stony faced.
Some of the aides around the wall began weeping softly. Walter Ford cuffed brusquely at his cheeks. His lip trembled and he was forced to look away, sobbing shaky breaths.
The footage cut dramatically to a scene in another street of Seoul, filmed from a camera that might have been located in a nearby office window. There were explosions in the background and high pyres of black smoke boiled into the night sky. On the street, in the foreground, parked cars by the side of the road burned. Broken glass and grey rubble littered the street. People were running in all directions, screaming with terror. The footage showed a pack of blood-covered rioters marauding from building to building. They were out of control, snarling and growling. One of the horde cornered a teenage girl against a wall and lunged for her throat with gnashing jaws. The child fell to the ground under the frenzied attack, flailing her arms like she was drowning. The rioter was filthy with blood and gore. Its eyes were beastly. It crouched on the girl’s chest and ripped open the soft pouch of her stomach with its clawed hands. The girl went into thrashing spasms of shock, then lay very still, twitching while the ghoul feasted on her guts.
The President leaned forward and switched the television off. For a long moment there was stunned silence, everyone staring blankly into space, unable to forget the gruesome horror they had witnessed, the ghastly images burned indelibly on their minds.
“Walter, I need you to find me someone,” President Austin turned to his National Security Advisor, ashen and drawn. “Someone who understands biological and chemical weapons. I need an expert here who can tell me what the hell is going on, and what we can do about it.”
Walter Ford nodded soberly. “Colonel Quentin Fletcher heads up USAMRIID, Mr. President. I’ll make the call.”
USFK (UNITED STATES FORCES KOREA) COMMAND
CAMP HUMPHREYS
PYEONGTAEK, SOUTH KOREA
Vince Neuwirth had been a soldier his entire adult life. He had fought in the mud and blood of Kosovo, and led troops during the War on Terror. He had commanded a Cavalry Division during the Iraq War, and then been appointed commanding general, United States Forces Korea. He figured he had seen all of warfare’s gruesome faces in thirty-four years on the frontlines – until the North Korean missiles rained down on Seoul and the world was suddenly plunged into a new and terrifying kind of hell.
Fifty miles south of the capital, Camp Humphreys was thrown into frantic chaos by a torrent of alarming, horrifying messages that began pouring out of Seoul just minutes after the first missile had impacted. Television monitors in the new Headquarters building flashed grisly riot scenes. General Neuwirth watched in mute incredulity as Seoul’s downtown streets became overrun with screaming maddened hordes that roamed the burning cityscape like wild packs of animals. Police vehicles were set on fire. Ambulances were attacked and overturned.
“Here and here!” Neuwirth stood in the American base’s underground command center with a laser pointer, indicating key strategic locations on a projected map of the capital. Red glowing circles marked the impact zones of the five North Korean missiles that had struck the city. “Our top priority is to protect local first responders and civilians. Our second priority is to contain the unrest and prevent the agitators from reaching the suburban districts of the city.”
The command center was filled with a dozen aides and officers who had been summoned by wailing alert sirens. Outside the building’s walls, the night sky began to fill with helicopters. Columns of Bradley Fighting Vehicles loaded with troops raced north as America’s massive military machine began to shake itself awake.
“We need men on the ground,” General Neuwirth insisted. “And we need them in position quickly. I want a defensive perimeter across Itaewon District, stretching all the way to Myeong-dong; a solid bristling line of men on the ground to give these rioters pause until we can get a handle on the damage done by the missile strikes and deal with the collateral consequences. The last thing we need is for these riots to get out of control. We must keep the threat contained until sunrise when we can get eyes overhead to make an assessment of the situation.”
“Sir?” One of the aides frowned with deep concern. There was a sense of shock and surreal disbelief in the room. The assembled officers had seen the gruesome, savage scenes being broadcast on the news. They were stunned and appalled. “What about ROE’s for the troops?”
Before he answered, General Neuwirth turned and stared again at one of the monitors. On the screen he could see a pack of rioters savaging a man who had fallen to the sidewalk. The rioters were on their knees, mauling the victim like frenzied animals, clawing his feebly struggling body apart with their bare hands. The gutters ran with gore.
General Neuwirth felt an ominous chill of foreboding turn his blood to ice.
“I’m authorizing ‘Weapons Free’.”
FLIGHT 553
INCHEON to LOS ANGELES
When the cabin crew made their first circuit of the aircraft, Jascinda Poole asked for a blanket. She felt impossibly tired, and her cheeks felt flushed and burning.
“You look like you’re coming down with something,” the young blonde flight attendant said. She frowned just enough to show superficial concern.
Jascinda hung her head. “I think I caught a cold before we left Seoul.”
ITAEWON DISTRICT
SEOUL
SOUTH KOREA
The interior of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was a dark suffocating furnace as the troop carrier jounced and swerved through the narrow side streets. Inside the cramped steel coffin, the ten men of 2nd squad, 1st Platoon of Bravo Company rocked and swayed like bowling pins with each new bump, squashed together with their gear stored and stacked around them. Burdened with fifty pounds of full battle rattle, sweat dripped from the men’s faces and soaked through their uniforms beneath Kevlar Interceptor body armor.
“Two minutes,” the voice of the vehicle’s commander crackled a warning through the Bradley’s internal speaker. “Get ready to dismount.”
Through the keyhole-sized viewing ports in the rear of the Bradley, downtown Seoul looked like a scene from a disaster film. People were running, screaming along the sidewalks, their faces wrenched in horror, pushing and shoving while others – in abject despair – simply gave up the fight for life. An old woman sat in the gutter, hunched and crying, her head in her hands and her body trembling with despair and fear.
Squad leader, Sergeant Bill Hilderbrandt, searched the faces of the men sitting opposite him and saw fear and apprehension. Above the grinding whine of the Bradley’s surging engine and the clank of her tracks, wailing sirens pierced the air, punctured by the crump of far-away explosions.
Then suddenly the Bradley lurched to a halt and the rear ramp flopped down, clanging when it hit the street.
“Dismount right!” the Brad’s commander barked over the intercom.
“Move it!” Hilderbrandt snarled.
The men sprinted out into the night. The air was thick with smoke.
The soldiers looked huge and bulky, burdened with smoke grenades, reinforced knee pads, a CamelBak of water, Ballistic armor, night vision goggles, grenades and weapons. Underneath their Kevlar Advanced Combat helmets their faces were pale and tense, their eyes wide and their bodies alert and pumped with adrenaline.
The darkness of the night was being torn apart by fires and explosions. The Bradley had slewed to a stop across an intersection that was fringed by tourist-trade shop fronts on every side. In the distance huge columns of black smoke rose into the starlit sky and the ground seemed to rumble. Red embers hung in the air, carried on the breeze from brewing fires.
Sergeant Hilderbrandt flipped his night-vision goggles down over one eye and scanned in every direction. To the north and to the east of where the squad had disembarked, the streets were oddly deserted, swirling with debris and
litter. To the south and west, the pavements were filled with screaming streams of civilians, fleeing and horror-filled. Hilderbrandt turned his attention to the nearby buildings.
Itaewon commercial district was situated north of the Han River in the city’s heart. It was a shopping haven, normally filled with crowds of foreigners who gravitated to its shopping centers and thriving nightlife. Most of the shop fronts around the intersection were tourist outlets and restaurants aimed at western tastes. The streets were narrow, the buildings lit up by a kaleidoscope of neon signs. Overhead black cables crisscrossed power poles. Somewhere in the dark sky a helicopter’s rotors churned the air.
“What the fuck is going on?” Hilderbrandt cursed.
Inside the turret of the Brad, the vehicle’s gunner was hunched behind the 25mm Bushmaster chain gun looking for threats. There were none. He switched to thermal optics to search for heat signatures, but still no targets appeared.
“I have no fucking idea!” the gunner thrust his head up out of the turret and called back. Hilderbrandt cursed. His men were kneeling, using the steel bulk of the Bradley for cover. They were looking to him for direction.
“Spread out!” the big brawny sergeant shouted. Two men were carrying Squad Automatic Weapons. Hilderbrandt set both SAW’s to the southern corner, ignoring the convention of keeping one weapon with each fire team, and faced the rest of the squad to the west. Civilians streamed past, their faces white and terrified. They saw the American soldiers and swerved into the middle of the narrow road to avoid them. They washed past the Bradley and disappeared down dark side streets.
Suddenly the night turned silent and eerie.
Private Wayne Hazelwood dropped to his stomach on the pavement and took aim along the street west of the intersection. He was trembling with a rush of excitement and adrenaline. He had joined the army searching for adventure after struggling through high school in Berryville, Virginia. He was the youngest member of the squad, a kid who had been terrified of going into combat until months of hard training had infused him with a cocky confidence and a dark elation of anticipation. He felt ready. He felt wound up like a spring. He prayed the infected would appear, so he could prove himself.
The sound of the helicopter rose to a deafening roar, seeming to hover directly over the intersection. A wash of turbulent air blew swirling litter and dust clouds. The night was so well lit by neon lights and the glow of the approaching fires that there was no need for night vision. Hazelwood licked dry lips and flicked a glance sideways. He saw two more men on the opposite side of the road, both kneeling. One was hunched behind the cover of a roadside stall of flowers. The other waited, crouched in the brightly-lit entrance of a jewelry store. Hazelwood couldn’t identify the men but he drew comfort from their proximity.
Sergeant Hilderbrandt cursed under his breath. He couldn’t see anything from ground level. He clambered onto the steel back of the Bradley and stood beside the turret.
“You see anything?” he shouted down at the Bradley’s gunner.
“Not a fuckin’ thing, Sarge.”
Hilderbrandt grunted. He was a career soldier – a man with the build of a linebacker. He had been in Korea for eighteen months. He didn’t like the place.
He swept his eyes across the intersection to check his men’s positions, then cast his gaze south. The buildings on either side of the street turned the road into a narrow funnel, splashed with garish light. In the distance, the skyline was aglow with orange flames. The eerie silence was menacing and ominous. Hilderbrandt’s instincts told him it couldn’t last.
He cocked his head like a hunting dog and listened carefully, trying to filter out the clatter of the helicopter, the rumble of the idling Bradley’s engine and the far-away wail of alarms and sirens. There was another sound on the air; not a noise perhaps, but a kind of vibration – a tremor that filled the hard-as-nails sergeant with a premonition of dread.
The squad was isolated on the edge of a company-strength containment line that stretched for three blocks. Hilderbrandt’s orders from his CO were specific; the infected must be stopped at all costs.
Suddenly the Bradley’s radio exploded in a panicked garble of voices shouting over the top of each other and rising in alarm. It was a chaos of message fragments, interloping on the squad’s frequency. Hilderbrandt heard the vehicle’s commander.
“Get off our fucking net. Repeat. Get off the fucking net!”
The voices were too panicked to take notice. They were pleading for fire support, begging for helicopters…
Then suddenly none of it mattered.
“Jesus...!” Sergeant Hilderbrandt breathed.
He snatched for his radio and keyed the mike. “Break! Break!” he called to cut into the network with a high priority message. “Black Heart. Black Heart. This is Razor Two. How do you copy? Over.”
There was a long crackling pause before the platoon Lieutenant responded.
“Copy Lima Charlie, Razor Two.”
“We are under attack, Black Heart. I say Again. We are under attack. Enemy force TRP 7. I say again Target Reference Point 7. Roger so far? Over.”
“Roger. Over.”
“Enemies estimated one zero kilo. Direction south of my grid at three zero zero yards. Roger so far? Over.”
“Over.”
“Request urgent air support and support armor. Over.”
The lieutenant’s voice washed out in a moment of hissing static. “Wait one.”
Hilderbrandt fumed. He imagined the lieutenant a mile behind the battle lines, snug and comfortable in his Bradley – a contemptible wannabe Napoleon in a starched clean uniform. Fucking remf.
“We are minutes away from a Charlie Foxtrot, Black Heart. Request urgent air support! Over.” Swearing over the net was forbidden so ‘Charlie Foxtrot’ had become military code for ‘cluster fuck’.
“Negative Razor Two. Charlie Mike. I repeat. Your orders are to Charlie Mike. Out.” The lieutenant’s voice squawked.
Charlie Mike; it was the acronym for ‘continue mission’.
Hilderbrandt cut comms and swore long and bitterly.
The far end of the street had filled with a wild swarm of blood-drenched figures; snarling, howling ghouls that poured across the road, three hundred yards away. Hilderbrandt felt the blood in his veins turn to ice. He had seen student protests on the streets of Seoul before – they had been organized marches with waving banners and placards. This was something else entirely.
The infected came around the corner at a run. They saw the Bradley parked across the intersection and they saw the handful of soldiers scattered about the crossing. The sight of the men seemed to incense the horde. They bayed and howled – then charged.
The Bradley’s gunner on the Bushmaster opened fire and then the two men on the SAW’s joined in a moment later. The sound was a deafening roar that seemed to shake the air. It was a shooting gallery. A solid flail of lead tore into the swollen phalanx of infected and flung them down like a scythe.
“Hill. Gonzalez. Drake. Get your asses to the south side of the intersection,” Sergeant Hilderbrandt shouted to draw men away from the western side. Despite the furious torrent of machinegun fire, incredibly, the infected were still charging towards the intersection.
Wayne Hazelwood looked over his shoulder and watched the three men move to cover the southern intersection. He was sick with frustration. He felt slighted. He was staring down an empty street while over his shoulder the other members of the squad were in the firefight of their lives. He cursed bitterly.
Sergeant Hilderbrandt dropped to the road from the back of the Bradley and ran to the southern intersection. He flung up his M4 and opened fire, hitting an infected man in the chest with a short aimed burst from a hundred yards. The crushing impact of the bullet’s strike flung the infected ghoul backwards, its arms windmilling. The crowd trampled over the fallen figure and ran on. Hilderbrandt gaped and fired again. Inexorably the horde pressed closer. Shop windows were smashed and blood spatt
ered the blacktop. Hundreds of broken crumpled figures lay on the road like untidy clumps of discarded rubbish while still the crowd surged closer. Behind his position, the sergeant heard the driver revving the Bradley’s engine. The Bushmaster suddenly fell silent. Hilderbrandt spun and shot a glance at the vehicle. It was backing up, reversing and pivoting, its steel tracks clanking and its exhaust belching black smoke. Hilderbrandt ran back to the Bradley. The commander was up out of his turret hatch, staring fixedly as the vast horde of infected pressed closer.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the big sergeant snarled.
“We’ve got orders to bug out!” the Bradley’s commander shouted back. His eyes were wide, his face streaked with sweaty grime and dust. “We’re gonna fall back to the next intersection.”
“Fuck! What about us?”
The Bradley’s commander shrugged his shoulders. Hilderbrandt swore again and made a snap decision. On the eastern corner of the intersection stood a two story Mexican restaurant with mustard-colored walls and a flat roof. A dark narrow alley bordered the building. There were imitation shutters on the windows and a giant fiberglass cactus by the front doors.
Sergeant Hilderbrandt ran to the western edge of the intersection and clapped Wayne Hazelwood on the shoulder. The young private looked up. Hilderbrandt barked at him.
“It’s time to go!” the sergeant shouted over the chattering roar of the two SAW’s, still firing into the infected horde. “Take the others with you. Your objective is the Mexican restaurant,” he pointed. “Go!”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 10