The tank’s coaxial machine gun, mounted in the turret to the right of the man gun, erupted in a flash of flame. The weapon’s aim was fixed along a parallel axis to the tank’s long barrel and relied on the turret’s traverse to bring the machine gun to bear.
The tank began wading through writhing ocean of snarling, clawing bodies. The faces of the running ghouls were hideous with rage, their howling mouths dark pits as they snarled and screamed. The undead crashed into the hull and were bulldozed beneath the heavy tracks. They were flung sideways and knocked over. Brown oozing blood spattered the tank like splashed paint. The sound of the machine gun was a deafening noise like ripping heavy canvas.
Working side-by-side, the front rank of Chinese tanks carved a deep gouge into the massed undead. Behind them the following rank of heavy vehicles moved more haphazardly, zig-zagging from side to side, locking their tracks to pivot the monstrous machines on the piles of bodies, grinding the undead bones into dusty paste.
Quickly the Type 99’s were surrounded, as if they had waded waist deep into an ocean. The undead began to scramble up onto the hull. Kong drew his pistol and shot the ghoulish beasts in the head, barking at his gunner to keep firing and urging his driver to maintain momentum.
The ground beneath the steel tracks became uneven. The fallen bodies piled into mounds so the tank swayed and jounced. Kong’s head was jolted by a sudden violent lurch and his teeth bit through his tongue. A gush of warm copper-tasking blood flooded his mouth. He spat over the side of the tank and saw the demented figure of a hideous undead child that was streaked with grime and gore. Kong shot the ghoul in the face. The bullet struck the infected youth in the temple. The girl’s head distorted, erupting in a hideous rubbery explosion of grey custard-like gore.
“Faster!”
“Commander it is dangerous!” the driver protested in his headset.
Kong’s face turned swollen and dark. His eyes blazed with temper.
“Do as I order you!” he demanded over the tank’s comms. “Go faster!”
Kong knew that if the big tank slowed or stopped, a seething rush of bodies would overwhelm them. The charging tanks on his left flank were maintaining good formation, but on his right the line was ragged. Several of the tanks had slowed to dangerous speeds, crawling forward and sinking slowly under the weight of the undead. Kong cursed bitterly, feeling betrayed by the incompetence of the men he led.
He dropped down inside the station of his tank and closed the hatch. The gunner dropped down into the dark steel chamber beside him. The air inside the cramped steel box was thick with sweat, cordite, and oil.
“Attention all tanks!” Kong barked on the open comms net, his voice carrying to every tank under his command. He was furious, but also becoming panicked. The press of undead bodies seemed as endless as the ocean. His voice shook with a cocktail of emotions. “Maintain your speed. Maintain your formation. Keep driving through the undead until we meet up with the southern pincer.”
*
“We need the IFV’s now!” General Guo saw the northern attack begin to falter, as if the tanks were becoming bogged in the clogging mire of undead bodies. The armored troop carriers were still behind the defensive line at Fuxin. It would take them thirty minutes to round the northern edge of the mountain range and arrive on the battlefield. So far the attack had gone well – a swathe of undead lay strewn and destroyed, but the attacking tanks had lost momentum, and only now was the southern column approaching the battle. Guo understood that timing in warfare had often decided the fortunes of empires. The arrival of reserves at the right moment could turn an enemy’s flank and force a route. But reserves that joined the fight too late could not remedy lost momentum. Guo began to regret his tactical contempt for the infected. Standard military doctrine called for tanks to be closely supported by IFV’s when fighting against an enemy’s infantry. But because the undead were merely an unarmed disorganized rabble, he had allowed himself to recklessly dismiss the need for such close support. He had made a mistake. The thought left him shivering and nauseous. “Now!” Guo roared at his operations officer, his voice rising with alarm. “Now!”
*
“Load!” Kong barked at his gunner, hearing the rising panic in his voice and hating himself for the treachery of his fear. His belly was full of oily terror – a taste in his throat that was foul and putrid.
The tank continued to drive forward, but it was slowing. The crushed, pulverized bodies of the undead clung to the tracks like thick glutinous clumps of mud. Kong could no longer see out of his cupola periscopes because the tank was being overwhelmed by a riot of ghouls. They were like a swarming army of ants.
“Fire straight ahead!” Kong shouted. “Blow a hole in the bodies that we can escape through.”
The tank’s main gun had to be manually loaded because all of the autoload ammunition on the carousel had been expended in the first few frantic minutes of the battle. It took an agonizing thirty seconds before the hammering recoil of the shot crashed and echoed inside the tank.
“Now drive for the gap!”
The tank picked up speed. Kong could see the way ahead miraculously thinning. He felt the first faint lift of relief from the claustrophobic press.
The coaxial machine gun cut the undead down in swathes of gore and guts. The tank began to accelerate, battering and crushing bodies before its avalanche of impetus.
Then suddenly Kong’s tank was hurled up and forward as if the earth beneath them had erupted in an explosion. The driver screamed in panic. The huge engine roared and the vehicle canted like a sinking ship to one side.
Kong cried out in fear and then alarm. He was hurled violently forward at the abrupt slamming halt, striking his shoulder and brow on the steel interior of the turret. The tank hung drunkenly as if suspended off the ground by some invisible wire. Kong groaned with choking frustration, cursing his bad fortune. The tank had been banked by an unseen ridge or ground, leaving it stranded like a beached whale. The engine continued to strain, spinning the huge steel tracks uselessly until the driver cut the power and the world inside the Type 99 turned suddenly, ominously silent.
Kong’s impulse was to reach for the turret hatch. He stopped himself suddenly.
To remain locked down inside the tank would lead to their eventual death. To open the hatch would invite frenzied attacks from the undead. Kong looked back at his terrified men – their faces were wide-eyed with fear and shock. The gunner’s cheek was awash with bright red blood from a cut above his eye. His face was grimy and slick with sweat.
Kong felt crushed by a sense of failure and humiliation. A wave of reaction washed over him so that he shook uncontrollably. Tears of shame and despondency stung his eyes. His impulsive attack into the heart of the undead horde had ended in abject disaster. He forced open the hatch.
A bright blue circle of sky appeared overhead, tinged brown by swirling skeins of dust. Kong sucked in a last lungful of air. Then a demented, hideous face blocked out the light. The Chinese tank commander was fear-struck by the ferocious madness in the wild eyes. They appeared inhuman; possessed. He stumbled backwards and died in a blood-curdling scream of terror.
*
“Good!” General Guo grunted his relief as the tanks of the southern pincer finally reached the edge of the undead horde and began to batter their way through the mass of tightly-pressed bodies. The General had seen a tank in the northern attack slam to a sudden halt and disappear in clouds of dust. The vehicle had banked itself on a low ridge of broken ground, and the northern attack was faltering. But now the southern attack hit the undead with a mighty force. It had happened at just the right time – just as the column of charging IFV’s had appeared around the foothills of the mountain range. Within minutes they would join the fight. Guo barked orders to his subordinates aboard the helicopter for relay to the armor on the ground. The attack had taken a huge gouge out of the undead enemy. It was a giant bite; as much as could be chewed. Now it was time to begin an orderly withdr
awal, back behind the wire barricade.
“Like this and this!” the General snatched a map out of the hands of his Colonel and drew lines of retreat in bold black strokes. “Immediately.”
The operations officer bent to his radio and relayed the instructions, then worked studiously over the BMS to confirm the General’s instructions. Guo watched on impatiently. It seemed an eternal delay between the orders and the first response of the tanks, but the sudden about-face was performed with admirable skill. The IFV’s gnawed at the fringes of the horde with their chattering machine guns as they withdrew. The tanks were less controlled. They were buried deep in the heart of the massive horde. They reversed in wild disarray, like panicked people fleeing a dark and dangerous room. One by one the tanks emerged, ragged but not quite in route. The IFV commander brought his ZBD-04’s across the front like a curtain being drawn, to cover the tanks as they broke into open ground.
At last Guo sat back against the steel side of the helicopter, wrung out with nervous exhaustion. He stared blindly into space, his shoulders slumped, suddenly old and frail, and relieved.
“Take me back to the command post,” Guo could barely keep his eyes open. His voice was hoarse. “We have done all we can do for one day.”
Chapter 9:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON D.C.
Nick Blakely was trembling with anxiety and exhilaration when he arrived at the southwest gate of the White House. The structure reminded the CIA analyst of a large highway tollbooth, with a glassed-in office and a covered floodlit verandah for shelter from the weather. The walkway where Blakely stood was divided by a low iron railing to create an inbound pedestrian lane and an outbound exit. At the exit was a turnstile.
A guard standing attentive watch requested his identification and asked him the purpose of his visit. The guard studied his CIA credentials carefully.
Blakely tried not to look nervous, but the harder he struggled the more suspicious he feared he was acting, and the more paranoid he became. He took a deep breath and composed his features into a calm, natural expression. This was not his natural environment. He felt uncomfortable being the center of attention. He liked analytical work because it kept him quietly in the shadows.
“I’m here to brief the President in the Situation Room. The meeting was arranged by the National Security Advisor.”
The guard took Blakeley’s credentials from him and checked his name against the appointment list, then picked up an internal phone and punched a button. He turned back to Blakely a few moments later.
“An escort has been called for you, sir. Please wait.”
Blakely nodded. Two Secret Service agents in dark suits appeared. They introduced themselves formally with firm handshakes, but Blakely’s mind was in too much of a blur to remember their names. Together the trio walked up West Executive Avenue. The tarmac was strewn with a litter of wet brown leaves. Other Secret Service agents stood milling around several parked black Government cars with heavily tinted windows. They watched on with professional curiosity as Blakely turned right into the West Basement entrance, past two immaculately uniformed Marines.
Inside the wide doorway yet another guard stood alert and waiting his arrival. The Secret Service Agents stood back, their faces impassive while the sentry checked Blakely’s pass for White House access.
With one agent leading the way and the other close behind him, they took the first turn right, descending down stairs. To the left stood the door to the White House Mess.
On the right was a locked door…
FUXIN CITY
JINZHOU-TONGLIAO DEFENSIVE LINE
NORTHEAST CHINA
This was as good a place as any to die, General Guo decided, staring from his command vehicle behind the high whorls of barbed wire fencing. He was not despairing. He was not grief-stricken; those emotions were not worthy of a Chinese General. But he was overcome with a melancholy that felt like the soft sadness that follows a night of joyous drinking.
The highlight of his career had been the brilliant tactical attack of the tanks through the passes the day before. Now, with the new dawn, would come the hangover that led to death. It was the way of things, the General shrugged. All men died – but he was determined to make a valiant fight of this moment; one that would be forever remembered.
The sun was cresting the horizon, casting long shadows on the stringy brown grass of the plain and turning the burned out trees along the distant crest into ghost-like silhouettes. To his right were the outskirts of Fuxin, and to his left stretched the road that dog-legged to Tongliao. He was positioned in the center of the line, in command of a reserve of eighty tanks. Every other piece of armor, and every other soldier he had was committed to the line.
Ahead of him, the land was open plain, all the way to the ridge of the mountain range with broken uneven ground where the grass had not taken hold and where the earth had been churned flat under the tracks of his retreating tanks.
In his rear stood the city of Fuxin, her buildings and streets abandoned, swirling with dust and breeze-blown litter. Behind Fuxin lay an open road to Beijing. Guo knew there could be no withdrawal this day. It was a fight to the death. The infected would press against the wire, and when they came they would be unrelenting until eventually the defenses collapsed.
The General climbed into his APC and stood with his head poking through the passenger turret. The driver gunned the big diesel engine and the vehicle lurched forward. Guo’s features were haggard, his body sagged by crushing fatigue, but he punched his fist and smiled at the men, like an ancient general in his chariot making one last inspection of his troops.
As he passed, the soldiers cheered him. They stood from their small trenches and waved their rifles in salute. Some of the men were eating, their faces grubby, their uniforms covered in dirt and filth. The tank crews clambered onto the cold steel backs of their camouflaged beasts and cheered lustily. They held their water bottles high like drinks raised in a toast.
Guo felt tears of humility and pride prickle his eyes. He waved benevolently to the soldiers and smiled. A lump of emotion choked in his throat.
“We will stand firm, General!”
“We fight for the glory of China!”
One young recruit, still a teenager, sprang impulsively from his foxhole and ran alongside the command vehicle, reaching up, his face shiny with adoration. Guo reached down and brushed the soldier’s fingers as he passed.
“We fight for you, General!”
The troops had been at their battle positions through the night. Now, under dawn’s growing light, the General studied their dispositions with a critical eye. He could see no fault. The infantry was entrenched along the wire, with the heavy tanks drawn up in long lines – like cavalry of old – directly behind. Between the tank battalions were the APC’s, formed up in columns that could be quickly rushed to weak points along the perimeter, or punched through a gap should the undead somehow falter and fall back.
On the western edge of the city, the artillery waited, and in the nearby car parks and fields crouched the attack helicopters, like birds of prey, poised to strike.
Eventually, the command vehicle trundled back to its place in the center of the long tenuous line and parked on a low rise of ground that straddled the main road running southward from Fuxin. To the left of Guo’s position was the vast black crater of an open-cut coal mine. A dozen other APC’s were parked in the sun nearby, their doors wide open, staff officers milling around camp-tables strewn with maps.
From his position, Guo could see miles in every direction and clear to the razor-back crests of the ranges. He snatched up a pair of binoculars and ran his gaze over the tank positions one last time. The morning was eerily hushed.
One of his aides brought a cup of rice-wine. Guo sipped thoughtfully and then felt a brush of a breeze against his cheek, blowing from the east. It smelled of smoke, and then something more insidious; the stench of rotting corruption. Guo knew the peaceful dawn was abo
ut to give way to a day of deadly slaughter.
The infected horde reached the outskirts of Fuxin at noon. They came on a seething, hissing front many miles across. They swarmed over the ranges and spilled around the steps of the hills like a flash-flood. They came as a million or more howling, enraged beasts, their feet stampeding so the very ground trembled. They came without order or organization, crushed into a solid, heaving mass, so the air turned rank with their stench and the sky somehow seemed to darken.
They came as a countless tide of death, so there was no end to the attack.
Guo felt himself turn weak with fear. His bowels seemed to drop out of his body. He stared aghast, overwhelmed by the battering-ram of undead that would soon fall upon his defenses. The cup of rice-wine slipped from his nerveless fingers and shattered on the ground.
Guo turned to his aides and gave the first command, his voice a fraud of calm composure.
“Get the helicopters in the air immediately.”
The dust kicked up by the swarming horde rose into the thick stinking air like a smoke screen and draped itself over the battlefield.
Guo felt the first prickle of panic. He estimated the front ranks of the infected to be just two kilometers away. They flitted like ghosts through the brown haze.
“Fire!” Guo barked.
There was a pause of ten seconds, and then the earth reverberated under the massed retort of an artillery barrage. The air filled with screaming shells, whining through the arcs of their trajectories. The bombardment fell amongst the densely-packed infected and the explosions hurled their bodies cartwheeling and crumpled into the fiery air.
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 32