gatheringdeadkindle

by Stephen Knight

  “I want to stay with my daddy,” Zoe said quietly, her voice small and childlike.

  “He won’t be far from you, hon. We’ll make sure nothing happens to either of you, all right?” That was a total lie. McDaniels knew that if the shit has going to hit the fan any harder than it already had, then he would heft Wolf Safire over one shoulder and run straight for the river. They were out of time, and the mission had to be completed. Had to be.

  “Anyone have any issues with their assignments? Shooters, are you ready? I want smoke dropped behind us the second we stop and dismount. Everyone stay with their partner, and we move together, shooters on the outside, civilians on the inside. Civilians, grab on to our belts. Shooters, leave everything that you can’t use in a fight. If we can’t make it to the boat, we’re not going to need it anyway.”

  There was a muted chorus of hooahs from the soldiers, and McDaniels heard Gartrell and Rittenour shrug out of their heavy packs. Gartrell tapped him on the shoulder with something hard, metallic. McDaniels turned, and saw three magazines of nine millimeter in his hand.

  “They were Derwitz’s,” he said. “You’d better take them. Also have some more pistol ammo for you as well.” Gartrell handed over another three magazines, and McDaniels pocketed them.

  The van glided to a halt, and Finelly slammed it into gear.

  “Let’s go,” McDaniels said, and he snapped the door open and jumped out into the night.

  The rain had stopped completely some time ago, and now the wind was abating. Overhead, the clouds thinned, and McDaniels saw the spectral halo of the moon. He reached behind him and yanked open the van’s side door. Gartrell emerged, and behind him, Wolf Safire regarded the dark street beyond with blinking eyes. McDaniels reached in and grabbed his arm as Finelly hobbled around the van’s battered and bloodied grille. Safire stepped out into the night, his head snapping this way and that like a bird’s. Nearby zombies shuffled along, their attention focused mostly on the ship in the river as it fired on the shoreline. That wouldn’t last for long, McDaniels knew. He was eager to get going, but he waited for Regina to get situated with Finelly and Zoe to be parted from her father by Gartrell. Everyone worked silently. No words were spoken. It didn’t take very long for the group to get organized. McDaniels nodded once and led them toward the sidewalk that was covered by the scaffolding and blue-painted plywood. It was quite dark under the scaffolding’s cover, and he intended to use the darkness to their advantage.

  As he walked, he contacted the Escanaba and informed the Coast Guardsman on the other side what the plan was.

  “Got that, major. The captain says he’ll halt the attack the second you give the word.”

  “Roger that. Six out.” Behind him, Safire shuffled along, his fingers wrapped around McDaniels’ belt. McDaniels panned his head from left to right and back again at regular intervals, as the NVGs had only a 40 degree field of view. This was the only way to avoid developing tunnel vision and remain aware of what was going on around them in the big picture.

  As McDaniels led Safire toward the corner of 80th and East End, a zed shuffled around the corner and moved toward them. Through his goggles, McDaniels saw the ghoul was unaware of their approach; its face registered none of the usual excitement they exhibited whenever the opportunity to feed presented itself, and its eyes were mostly fixed on a point somewhere in infinity. It tottered toward them, dragging one foot behind the other, its jeans and denim shirt speckled with black droplets. Blood. McDaniels took a deep breath and raised his rifle to his shoulder. Not for the first time, he wished the suppressor at the end of the MP5’s barrel worked exactly like they were supposed to in the movies: a gentle spitting sound, and then the zombie would simply collapse into a heap. None of the other ghouls surrounding them would ever know a thing. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way.

  More ghouls milled about in the street, slowly walking toward the pyrotechnics caused by the Escanaba’s barrage. McDaniels quietly spoke into his headset’s boom microphone.

  “Escanaba, Terminator Six… I need you to start hitting the intersection with your big guns, can you do that? We’re about twenty meters west of it, over.”

  “Terminator, Escanaba. We can shift fires that way, but we need to reposition the boat. In the meantime, you’d better fall back, over.”

  “No time, Escanaba.” The zombie approaching the group stopped suddenly. It moaned and shambled toward them as quickly as its stiff legs could carry it. Other stenches in the street turned toward the sound, their interest obviously piqued. Behind him, McDaniels heard the rest of the soldiers raise their weapons and prepare to engage. Safire’s grip tightened on McDaniels’ belt.

  “We need that to happen right now, Escanaba, or we’re dead. Six out.” McDaniels raised his MP5 and sighted on the zed hurrying toward him. It moaned again, its hands outstretched, fingers wiggling as it groped about in the darkness, searching for the human it knew was nearby.

  Crack! The zombie’s head exploded when McDaniels fired. It collapsed to the sidewalk, twitched once, then lay still.

  That was all it took. The rest of the ghouls surged toward the group, moaning and shrieking like banshees.

  “Fight’s on!” Gartrell said, and the roar of his AA-12 drowned out the ululations of the dead.

  “Conn, let us drift backwards about fifty yards so the 76 can service the targets!” Hassle ordered.

  “Aye sir!” said the helmsman, and he dropped the Escanaba’s big diesel engines into idle. The current did its job, and the 270-foot cutter lazily drifted out of its station keeping position, gently rolling from side to side despite the stabilizer fins that were supposed to keep the vessel steady even in heavy seas.

  “Weaps, let us know when you can put steel on target,” Hassle said. “And notify the gunners that the .50 should maintain its firing pattern!” he added when the big machinegun on the port side of the ship fell silent, likely in response to the vessel’s sudden relocation. The command was given, and the .50 started up again, firing into the night, raking across the zeds standing along the shoreline. The .50 caliber rounds made short work of the targets, blasting them into chunks of disassociated necrotic flesh.

  “Ready for firing!” weaps reported.

  “You’re clear to fire. Do it!” Hassle said as the Escanaba’s engines growled back to life, holding the vessel steady in its new position.

  “This isn’t my idea of a hot date!” Gartrell said as he blazed away at the approaching mass of ghouls, dropping them to the street as quickly as the AA-12 could fire. The other soldiers poured it on, hitting zombies in the head, adding their again lifeless bodies to the pile that grew around the group.

  “Continue the advance!” McDaniels said. “We can’t get trapped here. Form up on me!” As he spoke, McDaniels moved, blasting a path through the zombies that approached him on the sidewalk. Safire moved with him, whimpering beneath the gunshots and the cries of the dead, his hand clenched around McDaniels’ belt. Gartrell and Rittenour stayed on the outside, blazing away at the zeds that approached them from the street, dropping them as quickly as possible. Finelly played rear guard, using his own MP5 to secure the rear. He stumbled over the corpses left lying on the sidewalk, and narrowly avoided the clutches of a ghoul that managed to get past Gartrell and Rittenour. He shot it in the face at point-blank range, blasting skull and dead brain matter all over the blue scaffolding.

  Then the night was torn apart by the first of the Escanaba’s 76 millimeter rounds.

  The intersection lit up as the high explosive round slammed into it at a slant, decimating the cars and trucks there as it essentially vaporized the zombies standing nearby. The shock wave of concussive force radiated outward at speeds over 200 miles an hour, carrying with it shards of glass and chunks of metal. Flames blossomed into existence as fuel tanks exploded; the fires hungrily consumed everything it could, gasoline, rubber tires, vehicle upholstery, anything that would support fire. Even the zeds themselves turned into walking funeral pyres,
thrashing about before the flames consumed so much of their tissue that they could no longer move. Thick, black smoke roiled into the sky. Then another round hit. And another. And another. Shock waves raced through the intersection, intensifying as they were channeled up the streets, carrying with them a fusillade of shrapnel. Safire went down with a cry, pulling McDaniels with him. McDaniels hit the sidewalk hard, but maintained enough presence of mind to keep firing at the approaching zombies as they themselves stumbled and fell from the force of the attack. In the intersection, more cars exploded, and anti-theft alarms wailed. Another round hit, and the windows of every building facing the intersection finally shattered, stressed beyond their limits. Window unit air conditioners fell into the street, and one crashed through the plywood roof of the sidewalk scaffolding, crushing a zombie’s skull in the process. Dozens of ghouls still shambled about in the street, their primitive minds overwhelmed by the fury of the attack, blinded by the bright flames and the thick, acrid smoke. The soldiers concentrated their fire on them, dropping them one by one by one.

  Until finally, the immediate vicinity was secured. For the moment.

  “Escanaba, Terminator Six! Check your fire, check your fire!” McDaniels shouted into the radio.

  “Roger, Terminator Six—fire mission cancelled, over.”

  “Daddy?” Behind McDaniels, Regina Safire’s voice was barely audible over the crackle of raging fire and the moaning of distant zombies. Farther away, the .50 caliber machinegun on the Escanaba continued to chatter. McDaniels pulled himself into a kneeling position and took the opportunity to recharge his weapon. More muted clicks and snaps told him the rest of the soldiers were doing the same.

  “Daddy!” Regina said again, her voice building into a ragged shriek.

  McDaniels turned. Wolf Safire lay on his back just behind him, his face paler than usual, his eyes unfocused and glassy. Clearly visible in the glow of the firelight, a dark stain spread across the front of his white shirt. It grew larger and larger with each second. McDaniels gasped. A long shard of glass protruded from Safire’s chest, right where his heart would be.

  No, no, no, no, no—

  “Regina.” Safire’s voice was muted, barely audible. “My little Reggie-girl…”

  Regina threw herself to the sidewalk beside her father’s prone form, already going to work. “Don’t move, Daddy. Don’t move. I need to look at this.” As she gently pulled open Safire’s shirt, she looked up at McDaniels. “Help me, God damn it!”

  Gartrell finished reloading his AA-12, and he looked down at Safire quickly. “Fuck,” he muttered, then went back to work. Rittenour joined him a moment later.

  McDaniels knelt beside Regina, weapon still in hand as tendrils of smoke drifted over them. He was no doctor, but he had seen his share of battlefield injuries, and this one looked serious. As Regina pulled the blood-soaked shirt away from her father’s chest, he saw more blood pump up from around the large splinter of glass in Safire’s chest. That his heart had been pierced was beyond questioning. Regina wept as she tried to wipe away the blood with her sleeve.

  “McDaniels.” Safire’s voice was soft and dry but still audible, his words perfectly enunciated. “McDaniels, my daughter…”

  “We’ll get her out,” McDaniels said. “And you too.”

  “My jacket pocket. It’s in my pocket. Hurry.”

  McDaniels reached past Regina and searched the man’s jacket. He found the pocket and reached inside. He pulled out a thick, silver IronKey thumb drive, and held it up to where Safire could see it.

  “This?”

  Safire nodded slightly. “I lied. All the data… it’s on that. Password protected. It’s ‘Regina Marie 1971’. That’s the password.”

  “Regina Marie 1971. Your daughter’s birth date?”

  “Yes.”

  Gunfire rang out, and Gartrell said, “More zeds inbound, major. We’ve got to get moving.”

  McDaniels pocketed the thumb drive and reached for Safire. “Come on, doctor. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Safire slapped his hand away with surprising strength, then turned toward Regina. “My Reggie-girl… you always stood by me.”

  Regina cried openly now, still wiping at the blood on his chest. The flow had diminished remarkably in just the last few seconds. It was clear to McDaniels that his heart was giving out.

  “Daddy,” she said, her voice full of emotion.

  Safire’s fingers touched her cheek. “My little Reggie-girl… how I lo—”

  His hand fell away, and the light left Wolf Safire’s eyes for good.

  Regina wailed. Earl sidled over and put his arm around her, tears brimming in his own eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, miss,” he said. He reached out and put his other arm around Zoe. The young girl was crying too.

  “Major!” Gartrell’s voice was sharp and hard-edged even above the gunfire. McDaniels nodded and grabbed a hold of Regina’s jacket as he hauled her to her feet.

  “We have to go! Let’s get moving!” He pulled Regina down the sidewalk, but she screamed and fought against him.

  “No! No! We can’t leave him to become one of them!” she cried.

  McDaniels dropped a naked, singed zombie that advanced toward them, its flesh burned almost black by one of the car fires. It fell to the street, wisps of smoke rising from its seared flesh.

  “Come on!” he said, pulling harder.

  Regina ripped his hand off her jacket and reached for his belt. Before he could stop her, she pulled his pistol from its holster and whirled back to face her father’s corpse. Holding the weapon in trembling hands, she clicked off the safety as Earl pulled Zoe away, her face against his chest. Regina pointed the pistol at her father’s body.

  “Oh Daddy,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  She pulled the trigger, and the pistol bucked in her hands. A single round, right through Safire’s forehead.

  “Damn, if we’d known you could shoot we would have given you a gun earlier,” Gartrell said. “Better let her keep it, major. And let’s get the hell out of here!”

  McDaniels grabbed Regina’s arm and pulled her after him. “Okay, he’s gone. Let’s go. Hurry!”

  He led them down the sidewalk, dropping any zeds that got in their way. Gartrell moved out into the street, extending their perimeter, and waited until the zombies were close enough to ensure they got head shots. McDaniels led them into the inferno of the intersection and picked his way through the morass of burning automobiles and trucks, coughing as the acrid smoke seared his throat and nostrils. A zombie wearing a fireman’s uniform lurched toward them, half its face a scorched mass of smoking flesh. Regina fired at it, hit it in the neck, driving it back a step. Her second shot hit it right below its one remaining eye, and it collapsed against the hood of a crumpled taxi.

  Suddenly, a group of zombies stepped around an overturned mail truck and surged toward the group, right behind Rittenour. He shouted warning and went to guns on them, but he was too late. Though one, then two zombies fell to the street, the rest hit him like linebackers for the Green Bay Packers and slammed him up against another car. He screamed as their teeth found his flesh.

  “Get away from me!” he screamed to the others as Finelly backtracked, firing on the zeds. “Get away from me! Grenade!” McDaniels saw the grenade in Rittenour’s hands, and he knew what was about to happen.

  “Finelly, run! Run!” he said, obeying his own command as he reached back and dragged Regina with him. Gartrell pushed Earl and Zoe before him as Rittenour pulled the pin and dropped the grenade to the ground between his feet. Finelly hobbled away as fast as his injured leg would allow, a keening cry escaping from his lips. Rittenour collapsed, either by purpose or from the mass of ghouls, to fall across the grenade. It went off with a thunderclap, obliterating him and sending several tattered corpses cartwheeling through the air.

  McDaniels kept pressing forward, ignoring the scalding heat of a nearby car fire that left him feeling baked. The heat and bri
lliant light overwhelmed his goggles, so he flipped them up on their mount. Just in time—separating itself from the inferno, a flaming zombie staggered toward him, too close for him to turn his MP5 on it. He lashed out with his left hand and punched it in its blackened face, driving it back a few steps until it tripped over a twisted bumper lying in the street. He ignored it as it slowly thrashed about and hurried across the shattered intersection.

  Ahead, 80th Street came to an end, as proclaimed by a pair of twisted, bent signs that read DEAD END. The trees on the corner were awash with flame, their trunks cracking and splitting with firecracker-like snaps and pops. At the end of the street was an iron security fence, more decorative than anything else that served to separate the street from the southbound lanes of the FDR. Beyond it, floating in the black waters of the East River, was the darkened silhouette of the USCGC Escanaba. Light flared from a point on its side as the .50 continuously fired at the mass of zombies that had been drawn to the shoreline. They stood three deep, despite the withering firepower being leveled against them.

  This just gets better and better.

  McDaniels glanced over his shoulder to make sure the rest of the team was with him, then flipped his goggles back over his eyes. “I’ll go down first. Gartrell, you and Finelly help the others. The southbound lanes look clear.” Without waiting for a response, McDaniels hauled himself over the fence and dropped down onto the bed of a pickup truck right below. The abandoned vehicle bounced on its shock absorbers, and for a split instant, McDaniels was afraid he would fall out of it. He regained his balance and looked around the vicinity, his MP5 in both hands. There were no zeds in the immediate area. Across the three lanes of dead traffic, the street seemed to disappear on the other side of the concrete guard rail. He knew the ten foot drop Safire had mentioned lay on the other side.