by R W Krpoun
“What a bunch of hotdogs,” George Sanchez shook his head. The newly-promoted Operator was driving; another of Marv’s rules was that every Gnome had to be comfortable driving the trucks.
“Yeah, they’re a bunch of puffed-up boys playing soldier,” Bear sneered. “Let’s see how shiny they look after they hit the zeds. I don’t think Grase picked a milk run for this operation.”
“What’s he like, Grase?”
“He could drink boiling water and piss ice cubes. Mister Cool, dresses like he’s expecting a photo op, but I don’t believe it is to look good; I’ve known guys like him, they make a zen thing out of appearance. I think he’s a lot more dangerous than the starched pants suggests. Walters thinks he’s a bureaucrat, but that just shows what a moron the Colonel is.” Bear made air quotes at ‘the Colonel’, something several Gnomes were doing.
The last few hours had dragged as they rumbled north across Oklahoma; Walters had made a dozen forays into their flatbeds with a stream of orders masked as aggressive suggestions, annoying the blazes out of the Gnomes, who were keenly aware of their inferior level of personal equipment as compared to Hard Eight but who were in no way willing to concede a junior status in this endeavor. And the former officer always had a couple muscle-bound minions in tow who would be exchanging sotto-voice comments that set everyone’s teeth on edge.
Bear thought that the pairing of companies was going to be a pain in the ass, but a useful pain: being the poor men of the pair and enduring a constant barrage of open scorn from Hard Eight had already fostered a stronger sense of identity amongst the Gnomes. There was a growing eagerness to get stuck into an operation so as to be able to demonstrate their worth.
“Six to four, how does it look?”
“Four to six, looks a little beat up,” Bear eyed the battered line of buildings ahead. He checked the GPS. “The route is still clear.”
“Six to four, received.”
JD slapped Addison on the shoulder. “Nice work on the Net. Hitting a wholesaler’s freight relay point will really maximize our limited time.”
The dark Gnome nodded shortly. “I’ve got a lot of experience…studying situations.”
“Well, keep it up. Between you and Chip we’re going to show those bastards how it’s done.”
Colonel Walters cursed to himself. US flags flying from each long radio aerial Hard Eight Rescues had charged boldly into Bangs, Oklahoma, keenly aware of the cameraman and Dirk Chambers in his command HUMVEE. They had zigged and zagged between a couple abandoned vehicles with considerable élan and then nearly had a major collision with the cinderblock roadblock the local hicks had erected on the outskirts of their wretched little burg.
He had had a half-dozen men pull down a HUMVEE-sized hole in the barricade while sentries sniped off zombies, and they had proceeded. Spotting a sign indicating the business district, Walters had impulsively ordered his driver into it, throwing the column into some confusion.
Bang’s main street was a picturesque thoroughfare with red paving stones, graceful black cast-iron cages around the young trees planted every twenty feet, art-deco street lamps, and lovingly refurnished store fronts.
And a fire engine on its side from sidewalk to sidewalk barely a block in.
“Turn around,” Walters snapped irritably, shaking his head as his driver jumped the curb and braked, cranking the wheel as he shifted into reverse. “Just a minor bump in the operation,” he advised Dirk Chambers, who was sprawled in the rear seat. “Happens to the best of plans.”
“I understand,” the big man growled. “I expect the zombies won’t be any trouble?”
“Zombies never are,” the Colonel advised him airily. “We’ll deal with them should we encounter any.”
“I meant those zombies in particular,” Dirk leaned forward to rap on the passenger window.
Walter turned and jumped as a gray-skinned woman, her hair radiating from her head like a dandelion’s fluff, slammed both forearms into the HUMVEE’s window. He grabbed the radio mike at his lapel as the radio exploded with units talking on top of each other and gunfire erupted along the little caravan.
Zombies were pouring out of the buildings on both sides of the street in a seemingly endless flow, assaulting the military vehicles as the drivers struggled to get turned around without hitting each other or the various light poles, tree-guards, and steel-and-concrete benches.
“All units withdraw!” Walters bellowed into the microphone. “Do not dismount! Support each other! Dammit, Luke, get us out of here,” he snapped at the driver, not realizing he was still holding down the transmit button.
“Working on it, sir.” The HUMVEE’s rear bumper screeched as it bent and deformed a tree cage, shucking paint like a snake shedding skin.
Looking over his shoulder the Colonel saw that the cameraman was curled up on the floorboards while Dirk was standing up in the turret hatch firing at zombies with Luke’s rifle.
“Come ON!” he shouted at Luke, who was ignoring his commander as he tried to maneuver with both side mirrors torn away and a dozen zombies beating on his vehicle. Finally their nose was pointing back the way they came, rewarding the Colonel with a view of one of his HUMVEES broadside across the road and covered with a seething mass of zombies. As he watched the operator in the turret hatch was dragged bodily out of the vehicle and vanished beneath a vicious mob. Someone in the HUMVEE managed to get the hatch shut as the vehicle lurched back and forth, gradually getting turned around.
After an eternity of crouching inside the vehicle while a score of zombies beat on the vehicle like it was a massive metal bongo drum the vehicle ahead lurched forwards and Luke stepped on the gas. As more HUMVEES reached the state highway they all picked up speed and left the infected attackers behind.
The radio traffic finally died down enough for Colonel Walters to transmit effectively. “All Hard Eight units, ACE report. One Green-Green-Green.”
The ACE Report, Ammunition Casualties Equipment report was a quick survey of a unit dispersed between vehicles.
“Two, Yellow, one Black, Yellow.
“Three, Yellow, Green, Yellow.
“Four, Yellow, Green, Yellow.”
“Five, Green-Green-Green.”
“Six, Green-Green-Green.”
Walters kept his face blank. A Yellow report for ammunition meant the operators had half their usual load of ammunition left. The Black report was for the operator who had been dragged out of the HUMVEE and infected.
“One to Two, equipment specifics?”
“Two to One, lost gear bags from outside the vehicle.”
The other Yellows had the same issue; to free up space in the vehicles mission equipment and reserve ammunition had been stored in packs and strapped to the brackets on the outside of the HUMVEES. In their mindless eagerness to get to grips the zombies had ripped away numerous packs.
“Well, that was not the most auspicious start,” Walter said lightly.
“It looked like Zulu Dawn out there,” Dirk pulled the hatch closed and replaced Luke’s rifle in the rack. “Thanks for the use of your weapon, son.”
“Anytime, sir.”
“All right, let’s sweep the residential districts, check for survivors,” the Colonel recovered his map case which had fallen to the floorboards.
The Gnomes’ target as chosen by Addison’s hasty Net search was a long, low warehouse on the rail line where freight trains delivered dry goods which were configured into truckloads and dispersed to the chain’s stores across a fifteen-county district. The long truck-loading docks on its south end faced a four-acre paved lot surrounded by chain-link fencing that was sagging in places and whose gates had collapsed inward. The loading bay doors showed signs of hasty attempts at fortification, and numerous inert corpses were scattered around the dock and parking lot.
Around fifty active zombies were shambling around the parking lot, moving together into a herd as the three trucks rumbled up.
“Six to all units, we’ll stay in s
ingle file and roll straight in, stop, and engage. Remain mounted, weapons free.”
The three trucks rolled in and halted as planned. Marv leaned out the passenger window to put the green neon circle of his ACOG sight (he preferred the sight’s green circle in bright light, the red circle in darker conditions) on a zombie’s head and squeezed the trigger as the Gnomes in the back of the truck opened fire. More zombies were pouring out of the warehouse, drawn by the gunfire, sounding their horrible moaning wail as they lurched and staggered into the fray.
Settling into the rhythm of aim, squeeze, locate target, aim, squeeze, Marv dropped one infected after another, tuning out the gunfire while keeping an ear on the traffic over the headpiece in his left ear. It was almost relaxing just being a grunt again with no more concerns or responsibilities than to acquire and drop a target.
Chip stood upright, bracing his hip against the cab, focusing on the red dot of his carbine’s reflex sight and the outline of the heads without taking in much detail: it was a lot easier that way. He had killed enough zombies to have gotten past the fact they looked like people, but it still was easier just to think of them as targets.
He was standing the way he was to set an example: if the Associates saw that he wasn’t afraid (at least outwardly-there was a greasy ball of ice in the pit of his stomach) it might steady them. The three black circles on his collar turned out to weigh a lot more than he had expected; half the time he felt like he needed to somehow prove that he deserved his rank and the other half of the time the Associates talked to him like he was some wise old man, which in some ways was worse.
Sylvia couched on the floor of the truck’s cargo bed as gunfire roared to both sides; Chip had told her and Bambi to watch the tail gate, but the blond girl was firing her carbine over the side with enthusiasm. The Cuban girl crouched as miserably as a cat in the rain, thumb on the selector switch, hoping the shooting would end soon.
Then a pair of scabby hands were feeling the top of the tailgate and caching hold. She gasped and shouldered her weapon, banging her long, elegant nose (her mother had told her it made her look like Cher) on the weapon’s carrying handle because the stock was still retracted. Cursing in rapid-fire Spanish she squeezed the stock’s bar catch and slid it back until it locked into place. Shouldering it, she yelped at the sight of a very dead-looking Native American man with a pony tail dragging his elbows up into the top of the tail gate.
Pointing the muzzle in his general direction she squeezed the trigger, which did not budge. Cursing faster she flipped the selector to Fire and shot the tailgate a foot from the zombie’s position, the round screaming off at a crazy angle leaving a bright smear of bare metal.
Caught somewhere between panic, tears and blind fury, the beautician pulled the stock in tight and looked through the peep sight the way Chip had shown her, putting the front peg on the molting scalp of the zombie, which was facing the bed of the truck as it wriggled up over the tail gate. The round punched through its skull but did not exit, and the infected man wearing a filthy flannel shirt and greasy jeans instantly went limp, slumping down to lie half in and half out of the truck.
The sound of clapping jolted her like a bucket of cold water; looking up, she realized the shooting had stopped and the Gnomes in her truck were all watching her.
“Man, that would have been one for YouTube,” Tinkler laughed. “You should have seen your face.”
“Point is, you got it done,” Chip grinned as he offered her a hand up. “First one is always hard.”
Her cheeks burned and her stomach fluttered, but as she flipped the selector back to Safe and grabbed Chip’s hand to stand she also felt kind of good in a funny way. Like she had walked through something bad and was a little surprised to find out she was OK.
“It’s like killing a scorpion or a snake,” Chip patted her shoulder. “Just something unpleasant you have to do sometimes.”
“Sure,” she nodded, managing a smile.
Bambi gave her a sideways hug. “I had my eyes closed half the time,” she whispered.
“All right,” Marv thumbed rounds into a magazine. “Good shooting. But shooting zeds on open ground like that isn’t exactly the Superbowl, and now we need to clear the warehouse. Dyson, take two guys and make sure the exterior is secure.”
“Got it.”
“Addison, we need the drone. You need a helper? OK. Bear, take six people and secure the vehicles. Once Dyson comes back we’ll clear the building and begin to load up.”
“I wonder why there are so many zeds here, dude?” Chip scratched his cheek. “This isn’t the populated part of town.” He gestured towards the houses a quarter mile away.
“The people who forted up here probably drew them,” JD suggested. “It’s way too close to town.”
“Could be.”
Dyson, George, and Upchuck rejoined the group. “The rest of the ground level is secure,” the Georgian reported. “They rolled a van two blocks away and have a couple vehicles at the front doors. Looks like they got chased and panicked, ran home in plain view, and wrecked out on the way.”
“That’s what I said,” JD observed smugly.
“Bad news is there’s still about twenty or so stragglers stumbling this way,” Dyson waved to the north. “And I saw movement around the houses. This place is loaded with zeds.”
“OK, then Chip, Brick, and Sauron stay with Bear as extra security on the vehicles,” Marv decided. “The rest come with me to clear the building.”
The Harris H18 heavy-left octocopter, which had been christened SkyGnome by the troops, was simple enough to assemble from its case, and Addison had already put in several hours of practice with it. As he assembled the device Addison wondered whether Hodges was in direct contact with his mother, or if there was a cut-out between them. It was apparent from the hours he had spent searching the deep net that Hodges had been living undercover for much of his life, even before Addison went on the run. He always made every effort to keep from getting his hopes up, but from the timeline Hodges was on a par with his mother’s age, and it was entirely possible that he had gotten into this teeth business on the ground floor, as it were.
The thought of getting to a key conspirator brought with it a terrible uncertainty that Addison usually avoided: what if Hodges led to specific information about his mother? That was a dilemma that had haunted the dark Gnome for years. On the one hand she had been trying to kill him for most of his life, and should she get her hands on his teeth the world would suffer terribly, but on the other hand…she was his mother. He remembered that terrible summer of sickness, the fevers, the pain, and the way she had stayed by his side reading to him, talking to him…of course she was just waiting for his teeth to become available, wasn’t she? That was in the early days, before she stopped waiting for Nature to take its course and started hiring contract killers.
But sometimes…just sometimes, usually just before falling asleep the memories came back shaded in a simpler way that raised doubts…just wishful thinking, he reminded himself. He shook his head and double-checked the assembly before powering up SkyGnome. Doubt would never save the world. He had devoted his life to keeping the unthinkable at bay, and there was no way to go back now.
But Hodges, now, there was something interesting. The man had hidden his education, or the really dynamic part of it, and had operated on the grid but in a fictitious shell for so long that the shell had become the official reality. If he had tried it after 9/11 the NSA would have tracked him down, but in the easy-going world before the NYC attack things were much simpler. After the attack the USA had finally understood the truth about the world; he wondered how the country would react if they had any idea of the greater game that was afoot centered on his teeth. It was probably better that they did not know.
Dyson left his bow case at the trucks; switching on the tactical light built into the forearm of his MP-5 he eased forward. “Remember I’m in front of you,” he reminded Bugsy. “Watch your backstop.”
&nbs
p; “Got it: a stray round could mean a promotion,” Morales grinned.
“Or a boot colonoscopy if it’s just close.” The Georgian caught Marv’s wave. “Time to go.”
Moving forward past foul-smelling downed zombies, Dyson eased up to the crude barricade assembled from pallets; its center apparently had been pulled down during the final assault. Picking his way gingerly over the wood frames he swept his light across the floor on the other side, illuminating dozens of expended shell casings, a tactical shotgun, two more head-shot infected, and a lot of dried blood.
Five-sixths of the building was a tall open bay filled with heavy-duty metal shelving units used to store goods awaiting transshipment, most still full.
Swinging his light towards movement to his left revealed a heavy-set back man in ragged coveralls bearing the shipping company’s logo lurching forward, his skin ashy and his eyes milky. Dyson shot him squarely in the forehead and instantly heard a half-dozen wails from deeper into the building.
“Switching to hammer,” Bugsy advised from behind him. “OK, ready.”
Working in pairs, the Gnomes spread out into the warehouse. Dyson eased around the end of a shelving unit and started up the aisle, freezing when he heard the hissing sound of a zed in the attack behind him, the dragging shuffle of steps, and the wet impact of a war hammer.
“Clear,” Bugsy reported, his report echoed by the unpleasant sound of a steel beak being pulled out of a skull.
Gunshots blasted the silence apart in the aisle to Dyson’s left, followed by someone shouting “Clear.”
Moving forward Dyson crossed half the length of the aisle as behind them the first overhead door rolled up on its casters, dramatically increasing the light level. A dozen steps deeper into the building another warehouse worker, this one a hissing young Native American woman, came at him from behind a ten-foot stack of cases of soda. He shot her twice in the head and kept moving, hearing Bugsy kick the body as he passed.