This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  “Like I said, I’m hoping there won’t be any fighting.”

  “You want the road blocked.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s six lanes of highway.”

  “I’m sending the engineers with you. They’ll handle the demolitions.”

  “You’ll be blocking the route to Drum,” Muldoon noted, “if we’re going that way.”

  “We’re not,” Lee told him. “Change of plans. We’ll be going west along other routes. Try to bypass some of the major cities. Fewer people, fewer problems. No National Guard.”

  “Smaller roads. They’ll be blocked in places. Slow going.”

  “The alternative is a pitched battle with Brock.”

  “Sold. So let’s leave then.”

  “We’re not ready. We’ve got stragglers coming in, and we’re still packing equipment. We can’t leave anything for the crazies. If they hoof it, the Guard may get here sooner than we’re ready to egress. We need time.”

  “And you want me to buy it for you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s doable.”

  “There’s more. The drones are picking up big movement among the infected. A lot of them are coming this way. So you might have company out there.”

  Lee didn’t tell him about Radio Scream. Radio Scream, the voice on the FM dial rasped, where we pay to play. An infected engineer had figured out a way to take back control of the broadcast from Mount Weather’s override. The infected DJ preached his sadist gospel between “songs” that consisted of grating laughter and the screams of tortured innocents.

  Last night, the DJ told his listeners that Tenth Mountain was leaving the playpen without permission and that they should go and say bon voyage to the brave boys in uniform and personally thank them for their service to this great nation. He kept at it all night. By morning, the westward migration out of the burning Boston core began to shift. Toward Hanscom.

  He also didn’t tell Muldoon that he suspected Brock had put the word out. If First Battalion wouldn’t stay in Boston, Brock would use them while he had them. He’d flush the infected out and send them all into Tenth Mountain’s guns. If true, the man was utterly ruthless. Desperate. Smart. Either way, they weren’t getting out of here without a fight.

  “Great.” The sergeant leaned back and put his hands behind his head, revealing massive biceps. Lee knew Muldoon sometimes fired an M240 machine gun with one hand as a party trick at the firing range. “It’s a choice mission. All right. Convince me.”

  Lee frowned. “Most real soldiers find a direct order convincing.”

  The man laughed. “I’m about as much a real soldier as you are a real colonel. Sir. Times have changed. My boys and I could walk out of here anytime I say so.”

  The man was right. There was no use trying to argue otherwise. “Then why don’t you?”

  Muldoon leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. His eyes blazed. “Because I am a real soldier. Sir.”

  Lee grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

  “And we’re coming back. Don’t think we’re a bunch of Dixie cups.”

  Dixie cups. Disposable. “I don’t dislike you that much, Sergeant.”

  “Tell me something, Colonel. How far would you go for a mission? Where do you draw the line?”

  Lee said nothing. The meeting was over. Both had gotten what they wanted. Lee had the best man he could find to screen their withdrawal, and Muldoon had a mission and his pound of flesh.

  THIRTY-FIVE.

  The convoy of military vehicles roared down a barren stretch of I-95—Humvees and a couple of five-tons filled with engineers and hastily packed explosives.

  Sergeant Andy Muldoon rode in the point vehicle. He listened to the bang of the rig’s iron suspension, the V8 diesel engine’s grind, the hum of the big tires gripping the road. The Humvee was a perfect example of what he liked about Army life: nothing comfortable about it, no frills, everything utilitarian, designed to last and built to survive. There was a kind of Zen in it.

  He’d experienced real hardship in Afghanistan: constant fighting, hunger and thirst, scorching heat and numbing cold, days and nights without sleep, scorpions and giant spiders and bugs that ate you alive. The cherries came, and he taught them war. Some got hit; most went home different men than when they’d arrived.

  Muldoon couldn’t go home. Civilian life, with its comforts and niceties, kicked his ass, chewed him up, and spit him out. In the real world, he woke up with night terrors and flinched at loud noises. He drank all the time and got into fights. He’d pound some poor guy over nothing. He’d woken up in jail in Vicenza and Rome. His relationships with women tended to be stormy and short. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they called it. After some time home, he always asked to go right back into the shit. The Army psychologists kept an eye on him. But in the field, all his anxieties melted away. He grew stronger. Afghanistan was the devil he knew.

  America had been turned into a war zone. Nobody was going home. It sucked for everybody, but he personally didn’t mind it. It somehow felt right. Again, the devil he knew. In the new age, war wasn’t the anomaly; the real world was. War had become the norm. And he wasn’t just surviving. He was thriving. He could puzzle over that for years.

  The only problem was serving under Harry Lee.

  The Tomcats dropped them into the bush outside a village in Korengal Valley near the Pakistani border. Taliban and foreign fighters crossed over from Pakistan each year to take on the American infidels. Lee had solid intel that a Taliban commander was going to be traveling along a certain route at a certain time. Muldoon’s squad was supposed to do the grab. Lee came along to see if he could get something from the man before they handed him up the ladder for interrogation. Muldoon was happy to get the mission. It was real Special Forces shit.

  They lay all night and most of the next day under cover in a gully, waiting for their guy to show up. Instead, boy walked straight through their area of operations; he couldn’t have been older than ten or twelve. The soldiers hunkered down. Lee looked at Muldoon.

  The kid had no business here. From the way he kept glancing around, he’d either spotted the Americans or had already known they were there.

  The captain drew his finger across his throat. He wanted Muldoon to kill the kid.

  Muldoon refused the order.

  Thirty minutes later, a heavy machine gun thudded on the ridge above, chewing up the ground around the squad’s position. Another opened up from the west. They were surrounded. The air filled with flying metal. The Taliban threw rocks down at them, hoping the Americans would believe they were grenades and leave cover.

  Captain Lee called in fire mission after fire mission on the ridges above. The big arty rounds rained down, but the Taliban didn’t quit. They smelled blood. After an hour of fighting, every weapon in the squad was suppressed. The insurgents could maneuver almost at will. They bounded down the rocks, closing in for the kill with their AKs. The Taliban didn’t take prisoners.

  Apaches roared overhead, like their cavalry ancestors, in the nick of time. The gunships had to drop their ordnance practically on the squad’s heads to keep them from being overrun. The Taliban were that close.

  Lee blamed Muldoon for the failure of the mission. Lee thought the kid had spotted them and reported their presence to Taliban in the village.

  Muldoon believed the kid hadn’t just shown up at that exact place and time by chance, not in all that wide open nothing. The Taliban had already known they were there. The kid was probably just being used to collect intel on their unit. A spotter. Besides, he didn’t kill ten-year-old kids unless they were pointing a gun at him.

  But Muldoon understood why Lee had given the order. Hell, Muldoon sometimes questioned whether he’d made the right call. That was one of the fucked-up things about war—you often faced horrible moral choices that sucked no matter what you did. You ended up plagued with guilt because you didn’t cut a kid’s throat.

  His problem
with Lee was that the man hadn’t called off the mission, even after there was a good chance they’d been spotted. If there was any chance of the Taliban leader rolling through, Lee wanted to nab him, regardless of the risk.

  Lee was a good soldier, a good officer. His intelligence work had saved lives. Muldoon respected that. But the man was a fanatic when he had a cause. Fanatics got good men killed.

  Not today. Not if Muldoon could help it. He and his boys were coming back alive.

  THIRTY-SIX.

  Wade awoke from a long, dreamless sleep with a start. He raised his head from Rawlings’s shoulder. She stirred.

  “Rise and shine,” Gray said as he kicked the men awake.

  The soldier had taken off his helmet and blouse and wore his tactical vest over his T-shirt. He had large stains around his armpits. He grinned under mirrored sunglasses, chewing gum. He looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune.

  The asshole’s starting to enjoy this, Wade thought. Thinks it’s fun.

  “On your feet, lovebirds. It’s oh-dawn hundred.”

  Sunlight streamed through the closed blinds. The room was hot. Wade felt like crap. But he’d slept the whole night, from dusk to dawn, perhaps for the first time in weeks.

  The classroom had a whiteboard and little desks. Books and art supplies filled the shelves. Posters hung on the yellow walls. School was out. He wondered if kids would ever go to school here again.

  Rawlings gave him a bleary smile. “’Morning, Private Wade.”

  He gave her hand one last squeeze and let go. “Thanks.”

  “You should know I don’t let every guy I meet sleep on my shoulder.”

  He smiled at her. “I got your back today, Sergeant.”

  “Eat up,” Gray said. “We got a long day. Get your calories.”

  A soldier burned up to six thousand calories a day in a combat zone. The Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, provided twelve hundred calories. They’d have to eat every chance they got. The men tore into the pouches and ate their breakfast cold. Gray turned to Wade with a big, satisfied smile.

  What does he think, I’d tell the men NOT to eat? Wade was already tired of the pissing contest. If Gray wanted to be in charge, so be it.

  Then he realized Gray wasn’t looking at him. As far as Gray was concerned, the pissing contest was over. He was looking at Rawlings. The soldier licked his lips. He had a thing for her, then. Love or lust, it didn’t matter. Gray was going to be a problem.

  The men hauled themselves to their feet and checked their gear. They cleaned and reloaded their weapons and counted magazines.

  “Let’s move,” Gray said. “We’ll stay on this side of the highway. Check out some houses and see if we can find a few working vehicles. Get the fuck out of here.”

  The squad geared up and filed out the window. They moved quietly through the residential neighborhood, flashing hand signals to communicate where they were going and what they saw. Wade limped after them with Rawlings, refusing her help. He had to pull his own weight.

  They found plenty of abandoned vehicles, but none of them would run. Even the vehicles still drivable and that had keys in the ignition had been drained of gas by scavengers.

  The houses turned into low-rise apartment buildings with retail stores on the bottom floors. The squad filed down the middle of the street, weapons ready, faces pale and drawn. Dead bodies drew clouds of flies. Loose litter fluttered in the breeze. Most of the houses had Xs painted on the doors; the area had been ordered evacuated by the government. Graffiti invited them into some buildings and warned them out of others. The air smelled of smoke.

  Wade and Rawlings exchanged a glance. They were going to die there, and they knew it.

  The Klowns had disappeared, but they were still here. They’d gone somewhere to sleep. The sun was rising. Soon, they would wake up and come out to play.

  Fisher and Brown fell out of formation and waited for Wade and Rawlings to catch up.

  “He’s looking for a fight,” Fisher said. “He’s going to get us killed.”

  “Dude thinks he’s Lord Humungous,” Brown added.

  Wade caught up to Gray. “We should find somewhere to hole up until it gets dark.”

  “Get back in line, Wade.”

  “At least get out of the middle of the street. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  Gray glared at him and spit his gum onto the road. “All right.” He signaled the squad to get onto the sidewalk and keep moving.

  Wade grunted with each step. They were going to need to find some vehicles soon. He doubted he’d be able to walk all the way to Hanscom.

  Brown said, “We can’t shoot our way there. I got just one mag, that’s it.”

  “We should break off on our own,” Fisher said. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

  She said, “I think all options are on the table at this point.”

  Wade opened his hand. Stop. He tapped the guy in front of him and repeated the gesture. The soldier passed the message up the line to Gray, who turned with a frown.

  Wade cupped his hand to his ear. I hear something. Waved his hand to the ground. Get down. A listening halt.

  The squad crouched behind the line of cars parked against the curb.

  Gray looked at Wade and mouthed, What the fuck?

  Then they all heard it—a distant rattle growing louder by the second.

  Wade fixed his bayonet to the end of his carbine. A vehicle rolled up the road, scattering trash. The shiny BMW convertible was driven by a middle-aged couple wearing black sunglasses and smiling as if out for a pleasant Sunday drive in the city. The man wore a brown suit and tie, the woman a polka-dot dress.

  The rattling sound was chains. The car was dragging dozens of bodies shredded into hamburger over miles of road. The stench of death struck the soldiers as the vehicle passed.

  The car came to a halt. The V8 engine roared. The couple’s heads swiveled toward the squad’s position.

  The man grinned and said, “I smell lunch.”

  Gray popped up and opened fire. The Klowns jerked as blood sprayed across the windshield. They slumped in a smoking mess.

  Gray turned to the squad and patted his weapon. “I’m sick of this shit. No more skulking—” He stopped and gaped up at the buildings across the street.

  Wade followed his gaze. Dozens of grinning faces looked back at him from the windows.

  Gray sighted on one of them. “Contact.”

  Wade barely heard him over the tramp of feet on asphalt coming from all directions.

  “What are we going to do?” Rawlings asked.

  Wade looked at her. “We’re going to get that vehicle.”

  A body landed heavily on the car in front of them, setting off its alarms.

  “Christ!” Fisher screamed.

  “Contact!” Gray repeated.

  A few shots. Seconds later, the scattered gunfire turned into a steady roar.

  The Klowns came up the street. They poured out of every building and rained from the windows like human missiles. One ran up to Wade’s group and emptied a handgun. Wright flopped backward onto the sidewalk, shot through the face. Wade returned fire, the rounds thudding into the Klown and making him do a jig before collapsing. Young propped his SAW against the hood and started hammering anything that moved.

  Gray dumped a grenade into the entrance of the building on the other side of the street. It detonated with a BOOM, vomiting smoke and burning bits of wood onto the street.

  Gray pumped his fist. “Booyah!”

  “Fuck!” Brown sat on the ground with an arrow through his shoulder.

  “Man down!” Fisher cried.

  Another body fell from the sky onto Young, knocking him down. The SAW slid off the hood. A moment later, a man popped up with it and opened fire at the squad.

  Three soldiers were thrown through the plate glass window behind them.

  Wade sighted on the Klown, but his gun jammed. Rawlings fired, and the man dropped. Wade spared a quick look around whi
le he cleared the two rounds stuck in the firing chamber. The street was filled with laughing maniacs falling under a rain of hot metal. Klowns in the store behind them hacked at the wounded soldiers with hatchets and machetes. Gray was shooting grenades down the street as fast as he could load them. Half the squad was out of action. The rest fired at close range or were locked in hand-to-hand combat. A Molotov cocktail burst in their midst, catching Steele’s legs on fire. If they didn’t move, they were going to die.

  Brown was laughing as he tried to stand. “It hurts soooo good!”

  “To the car!” Wade shouted. “Get to the car!”

  Rawlings led the way, spearing Klowns with her bayonet. Fisher picked up Brown’s carbine and fired wildly. Wade hobbled after them, dropping Klowns with aimed fire.

  Gray was already at the car. He yanked out the bodies and dumped them onto the sidewalk. He got in. “Hurry up!”

  Wade, Rawlings and Fisher leaped inside as Gray stomped the gas pedal. The car lurched into the crowd, slamming into Klowns and hurling them down the street. A woman tumbled over the vehicle and crashed onto the road behind them.

  Wade pushed Fisher off him and looked back. The last few members of the squad unloaded everything they had before the infected swarmed over them. A grenade exploded in their midst, ripping through the crowd and covering them all in a pall of smoke.

  The Klowns brayed like hyenas as they closed in with knives to collect their trophies.

  THIRTY-SEVEN.

  Muldoon radioed the convoy to halt. His squad piled out of the Humvees to clear the area. Lee was right; there were a lot of Klowns in the neighborhood, all heading to Hanscom. The squad went to guns on them. Muldoon called out the combat engineers.

  This was a good place to break the road. On the right, the ground sloped past the guardrail through some trees to the Cambridge Reservoir; on the left, a patch of thick woods. And in between, six lanes of highway dotted with abandoned vehicles and wrecks. The job was to blow some massive craters all the way across. A piece of cake for the engineers.