gatheringdeadkindle

by Stephen Knight

  “Damn it major, keep these things off me!” Leary said over the radio.

  Before McDaniels could reply, the tow truck’s diesel engine chattered, then caught. Even above the storm, it was loud enough to be noticeable. McDaniels knew it would be the next best thing to a dinner bell. The rig’s backup alarm sounded as its reverse lights snapped on, and the truck shuddered into motion, backing up toward the sidewalk. Leary cut the wheel hard to the left, swinging the vehicle back onto the street as its reinforced rear bumper slammed into a mailbox and ripped it off its mounts. The tow truck straightened out on the street, then shuddered to a halt. At the same time, several more zeds shambled toward the vehicle. McDaniels fired on them with his M4, dropped them to the wet street.

  “Ready here, major,” Leary said over the radio net.

  From behind him, more automatic gunfire broke out, followed by two sharp, loud explosions. Someone was using grenades.

  “We gotta boogie, major,” Gartrell reported. “The smoke’s slowing ‘em down a bit, but there’s so many we can’t hold them back for long. And OMEN is hanging back, not engaging us directly. Even dead, they’re still smart bastards.”

  “Leary, you’re good to blast open that intersection. Break, Gartrell, you and the rest of the troops fall back to the van and get ready to pull out. Set up a tight perimeter to keep the zeds off it, over.”

  “Roger, done that,” Gartrell said.

  The NYPD tow truck surged forward, its tires spinning on the rain-slicked street. McDaniels fell back, keeping his eyes on the tow truck as it slammed into the vehicles choking the intersection ahead. Metal crumpled and glass shattered as the rig’s thick bumpers and push bars crashed into the cars and shoved them aside. The backup alarm sounded, and the tow truck reversed up the street, then surged forward again, colliding with the abandoned cars and trucks, shoving them aside as metal screamed and fiberglass fractured.

  Something landed on the street off to McDaniels’ right, and he glanced over to see a zombie writhing about on the curb. A moment later, another one slammed to the ground beside it, followed by another, and another. The impacts were horrific, and some of them did not survive the engagement with gravity as their skulls burst open. But many of them did, and even though the plunge splintered their skeletons, they still tried to crawl toward him, mouths open, lifeless lips drawn back, teeth exposed.

  “We got window divers on scene,” he told the rest of the team. “Pick it up, Leary, we’re attracting a lot of attention here.”

  “Almost done,” Leary said. “Tough to get traction on the wet ground.” As he spoke, the tow truck rammed into the mass of vehicles again. Its engine roared as its tires spun, and McDaniels smell the diesel exhaust despite the wind. More corpses slammed to the ground, and McDaniels backed away from them, moving back to the van. A group of zombies came around the corner, their attention fixated on the roaring tow truck. One of them must have caught sight of McDaniels moving in the gloom, and it shuffled toward him on stiff legs. The rest of the group followed. McDaniels fired his last two rounds and dropped two of them in their tracks, then busied himself with changing out his spent magazine.

  Something slammed into him from behind and knocked him sprawling across the rain-slicked street. McDaniels tried to roll with the impact, but his back pack got in the way, leaving him lying on his side. His night vision goggles were knocked askew, rendering him effectively blind as he blinked against the rain and the wind. The darkness of the city street worked against him now; he couldn’t see his attacker, but he certainly felt it as it gripped him with strong, cold hands. McDaniels responded immediately and lashed out at his assailant. His left hand closed around a human wrist, and before he could stop himself, he yanked it toward him as his combat training took over.

  It was a female zombie, a black woman with close-cropped hair. Instead of fighting against McDaniels, the zombie lunged toward him, jaws spread wide. McDaniels barely had enough time to get his hand around the zed’s neck to hold it at bay. There was no way he could use his rifle in such close quarters, so he pulled his pistol instead. He thumbed off the safety while wrestling with the moving corpse, then placed the weapon under its chin and fired. The sound and fury of the gunshot left him momentarily dazzled, but he recovered quickly and shoved the now-motionless corpse off him.

  “Six, we’ve got a problem back here,” Gartrell said over the radio.

  “On my way. Break. Leary, do you need me to provide security? Over.”

  “Negative, major. I’m almost through here, you guys should have a pathway in just a second,” Leary said, over the crashing of metal and the squeal of tires spinning out on wet pavement.

  McDaniels grabbed his rifle, charged it, and ran to the rear of the van. As he came around the vehicle’s rear, a bullet slashed through the upper surface of the sheet metal, tearing a long gouge through the white paint, before flattening against the armor underneath. McDaniels didn’t bother to inspect the damage as he adjusted his NVGs, but there were several such impact points all along the rear of the van.

  He found Derwitz was down with a bullet wound to the thigh. He was being tended to by Rittenour, and the Night Stalker continued to fire his MP5 at the approaching zombies, backing up Gartrell by zeroing any which happened to get through his field of fire. For his part, Gartrell wasn’t playing nice, nor was he wasting time trying to line up the AA-12 for head shots. He was firing low, blasting the legs off the zombies as they stumbled through the windblown smoke emitted by the smoke grenades he had thrown.

  “Gartrell, hit them in the head!” McDaniels shouted.

  “Negative, major. If I can blow their pelvises to jelly, they won’t be able to make up that much ground before we’re out of here!” Gartrell didn’t look up when he spoke. He remained focused on the mission at hand, and kept blowing the legs off the zombies. There was already a good amount of them down on the ground, slowly crawling toward them on their bellies.

  And in the near distance, muzzle flashes lit up the night. McDaniels automatically returned fire, trying to zero the OMEN zombies before they could advance further. It didn’t work; they moved just enough to prevent him from lining up for head shots, and the rounds that struck their bodies didn’t slow them at all. Not only were they wearing ballistic armor, they also happened to be dead. 5.56mm bullets to the body were no longer effective.

  “Ritt, how’s Derwitz?” he asked.

  “Busted femur, losing a hell of a lot of blood,” Rittenour said. “Can’t really treat it well. Bad shot, combat gauze isn’t really doing what it should.”

  “I can still fight, sir!” Derwitz’s voice was pinched from the pain, but he continued pumping rounds downrange, killing stenches that got too close to Gartrell’s position from outside his field of fire. McDaniels admired the small soldier’s chutzpah, but enough was enough.

  “Let’s fall back! Leary’s almost got a path made for us, so let’s load Derwitz into the van and get ready to get the hell out of here.”

  “Roger,” Rittenour said, and without further comment he scooped up Derwitz and ran back to the idling van that sat twenty feet away. Derwitz made a complaining noise, but there was nothing else he could do. As McDaniels assumed the guard duty and kept the zeds off Gartrell, he caught a glimpse of Derwitz’s face as Rittenour carried him past. Even through the night vision goggles, he didn’t like what he saw. Derwitz must have been in a remarkable amount of pain.

  “Gartrell?” McDaniels fired a quick burst at one of the OMEN zeds as the four of them advanced, two on either side of the street. He hit it, for the zombie stumbled to its knees. It wasn’t hurt, of course; the impact of the bullets against its chest armor had knocked it off balance. McDaniels seized the moment to go for a headshot as it slowly clambered back to its feet, ignoring the return fire of the other OMEN zombies. He was rewarded with at least one bullet striking true, and the OMEN zombie wilted to the ground and lay still.

  “I heard you major, you want us to fall back to the van. You
have me covered?”

  “You’re covered, first sergeant.”

  “Hooah.” Gartrell rose and fell back, keeping low as more rounds zipped past. “Good shooting there,” he said as he moved past McDaniels. McDaniels didn’t answer, just kept pouring on the heat, firing on semiautomatic, trying to keep OMEN pinned. But what he saw moving behind the dead Special Forces soldiers sent a stab of fear lancing through his heart.

  Thousands of zombies filled the street behind OMEN team, drawn to the commotion like bees to honey. They surged forward in a single mass, as if they weren’t individual corpses but one huge, integrated creature. And at their head was OMEN team.

  A bullet struck McDaniels square in the chest, and he stumbled backward. Another zipped by his ear—crack!—as loud as a firecracker and infinitely more lethal. McDaniels gathered his footing and fell back to the van as the smoke from the grenades finally petered out.

  And then, the rain stopped.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Leary, move it! We’re about to be overrun!” McDaniels shouted over the radio as he ran back to the van.

  “We’re good to go, major,” Leary said. “I just blasted my way through the intersection and am moving down the street to clear the next one, over.” As he spoke, McDaniels heard the NYPD tow truck’s diesel engine winding out, growing distant.

  “Roger that!” McDaniels threw himself toward the van as Gartrell helped Rittenour load Derwitz inside. With the vehicle to his back, he turned and fired at OMEN as they advanced, sending a fusillade of bullets ripping into one soldier and several other zombies behind it. The salvo did nothing to stop them, but did slow them momentarily.

  “Major, let’s roll!” Gartrell said over the radio.

  McDaniels broke from his position and returned to the front passenger seat of the van. He slammed the door shut as a mottled corpse crashed against it, trying to pound through the reinforced, bullet-resistant glass. Finelly didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do, he put his foot on the pedal and the van accelerated away. Bullets struck the rear of the vehicle.

  “We’re going to catch up to the tow truck pretty quickly,” Finelly said.

  “We’ll do what we did last time,” McDaniels said. “No other choice. But we might need you to dismount and fight, if Derwitz can’t.”

  “I don’t think he can,” Rittenour said.

  “I can fight, major,” Derwitz said weakly.

  McDaniels turned in his seat and looked into the back of the van. Earl and his daughter clung to each other. Safire and Regina sat side-by-side, holding hands, their expressions tense and frightened. In the very back of the van, Rittenour and Gartrell worked on Derwitz, but McDaniels exchanged a quick glance with the first sergeant. He knew then that Derwtiz was bleeding out.

  “Finelly, we’ll need you outside,” McDaniels said, turning to face front again. “Earl, can you drive this van? Aggressively, like Finelly, but not wreck it at the same time?”

  Earl’s voice was soft and subdued, the terror of the situation blunted by the pain of his eldest daughter’s death… and the potential for his surviving daughter to follow suit. “I can do whatever you need me to do, major. You need me to drive, I can drive. I drove trucks bigger than this before, and in all kinds of cities.”

  “Any of those cities overrun by zombies?” Finelly asked.

  “You think that’s funny or something, kid?” The disapproving scowl was audible in Earl’s voice.

  “No, sir. Not funny at all. Sorry.”

  “I can drive this truck, McDaniels,” Earl said.

  McDaniels nodded. “And I thank you for that. When we stop at the intersection ahead, take the driver’s seat when we bail out. Leary, how is it up ahead?” McDaniels asked over the radio.

  “Wet with the occasional flesh-eating zombie, but at least the rain has stopped,” Leary said. Over the transmission, McDaniels heard more rending metal. “I’m already blasting through this intersection, but be careful when you guys pull up, the zeds are starting to get a bit thicker on this side of town… don’t know why. Over.”

  “It’s the FDR Drive,” Safire said quietly.

  “Doctor?” McDaniels prompted.

  “It’s the dead from the FDR Drive on the east side of the city, major.” Safire’s voice was plain and direct, almost scholarly. “All those people who were caught by the dead, or who… expired… by other means. They’ve reanimated, and there were doubtless thousands of people there, as that was one of two main escape routes from the city.”

  “Understood. Thank you.”

  “You’ll have to fight through them, major. There could be thousands of them.”

  McDaniels jerked a thumb toward the rear of the van. “It’s no longer novel, sir. There are thousands of them right behind us.”

  “Second Avenue, coming up,” Finelly said. “The tow truck’s almost through the intersection already—” As he spoke, a zombie jumped in front of the van. The van crashed into it, and the zombie flew over its snub nose and slammed across the windshield before it fell to the pavement. Regina shrieked, and McDaniels swore.

  “Sorry sir,” Finelly said. He hadn’t even hit the brake.

  “No problem. Troops, we’ll do it as we did before. Uh, Doctor Safire”—McDaniels turned and looked to Regina—”could we impose upon you to attend to Specialist Derwitz after we exit the vehicle? He is wounded, after all.”

  Regina looked at McDaniels with a confused expression, then suddenly turned and looked behind her. It was as if she had just realized there was a wounded man present. She turned back to McDaniels and nodded quickly.

  “Of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t… wasn’t already doing something.”

  McDaniels faced forward as Finelly slowed the van to a halt. “Let’s go, troops,” he said, and bailed out the door. Finelly put the vehicle into park and did the same. McDaniels glanced back into the van and saw Earl climbing into the driver’s seat as he slammed the door closed. At the same time, something moaned behind him, and he whirled to find several zombies moving toward him from the corner of 79th and Second Avenue. They had doubtless been called to the scene by the ruckus Leary was making, and the sight of an actual person got their attention in a major way. Of course, as the person in question, McDaniels was far from flattered.

  He dropped them all with careful, precise shots. When the last one hit the pavement, its fingertips brushed the toe of his left boot. McDaniels looked down at the corpse through his night vision goggles.

  My, that was close.

  A sudden explosion of gunfire from the rear of the van captured his attention. He remained where he was, keeping watch over the front right corner of the van as the tow truck continued to bash its way through the traffic that choked the intersection.

  “Leary was right, major. There are more zeds down this way,” Gartrell said over the radio. He wasn’t kidding. No sooner had the first sergeant’s words filtered into his ears through the radio headset he wore, McDaniels saw yet another gaggle of zombies approaching the van, moving amidst the abandoned vehicles choking Second Avenue.

  “Leary, this is Six. Watch out for the zeds at your three o’clock position, over.”

  “Roger that, Six. I don’t intend to stop moving long enough for them to get to me, over.”

  “Finelly, you have activity on your side of the vehicle? Over.”

  “Roger that, major, got stenches all over the place, just ranging them out now…” An MP5 spoke from the other side of the van, and McDaniels gathered that Finelly had gotten a bead on his targets and was servicing them with all possible dispatch. He raised his M4 to his shoulder and started plinking away at the advancing zombies on his side of the vehicle while they were still among the cars on Second Avenue. He was able to terminate almost all of them before they mounted the sidewalk.

  “Gartrell, Rittenour, any sign of OMEN? Over,” he asked as he took care of the remaining zeds.

  “Negative, no contact. Which is a little spooky. Over.”

  “Ro
ger that.”

  “Major, route is clear, you’d better get on it.” Gunfire came from the other side of the intersection, and McDaniels looked away from his work long enough to see Leary firing his pistol at a group of walking dead on the eastern corners of 79th and Second. He saw figures moving along the tow truck’s bed.

  “Leary! You have zeds on your vehicle!”

  “I know that, major. Can’t do anything about them right this second. I’ll see you guys at the other intersection, and maybe you can help clean them off. Over.”

  With that, the big blue NYPD tow truck charged down 79th Street, heading for the next intersection. It left a cloud of foul-smelling diesel exhaust floating in the air behind, and the sudden pungency of the scent was surprising to McDaniels.

  “Team, mount up!” he shouted, and the soldiers returned to the waiting van. As he hauled himself into the front passenger seat and slammed the door shut, Finelly chased Earl out of the driver’s seat.

  “Thanks for keeping the seat warm,” Finelly said.

  “Man, you’re lucky it ain’t wet,” Earl said.

  “Go, Finelly!” McDaniels said once Gartrell and Rittenour were aboard. Finelly stomped on the accelerator, and the van bounced slightly as it drove over several bodies. Many of them were still moving.

  “Major McDaniels?” It was Regina Safire, from the rear of the van.

  “Go, Miss Safire. How is Derwitz doing?”

  “I’m… I’m afraid he’s dead, major. He’s… he bled out. There was no way I could stop the bleeding. His femoral artery had retracted back into his leg, and I have nothing I could have used to cut open the thigh to find it and clamp it.” She stopped for a long moment, then added, “I’m terribly sorry, major.”

  McDaniels nodded curtly. “Understood, ma’am. First Sergeant Gartrell, at the next stop—”

  “I’ll dump the body after removing all the valuables, sir,” Gartrell said.