The Rising Horde, Volume One (Sequel to The Gathering Dead )

by Stephen Knight

  One of those redeploying units was the 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry (Light), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kent Royko, call sign Summit 6. Royko’s unit had been the one to rescue the Special Forces NCO and pull him out from behind the lines. Upon recovering him, Royko had put him to work transferring his knowledge of fighting stenches to the 1/87th’s operations team. Gartrell had gone in over twenty-four hours before, as part of the large-scale evacuation of high-value individuals from New York City, an operation that ended in total disaster when the helicopter assembly area at Central Park had been overrun by the zombies. Gartrell and his mission’s survivors had found refuge in a skyscraper, but that hadn’t lasted for long. Even though Gartrell’s Special Forces team had taken all possible precautions, Royko was told that the zeds had managed to penetrate their defenses and take the building from them—because reanimated members of the Special Forces Operational Detachment had retained their military skill sets. Royko was from a steel-belt town in Ohio, and he’d considered himself a tough and hardy sort even before joining the US Army. But when he found that the dead could actually fight smart, he felt the bottom start to drop out. The stenches already had tremendous numbers on their side. If even a small percentage of them were able to interact with their environment in a meaningful manner—which meant acting against his troops in a measured, willful way—how the hell could the Army hope to bottle them up on Manhattan island?

  The answer was simple. They couldn’t.

  More reports came back from the field, reports of not only reanimated soldiers using weapons against their former teammates, but of civilian stenches ambushing patrols and mounted elements. Vehicles were being used to ram armored Humvees to pin them in place so the dead could swarm over the mounted troops and consume them in minutes. The dead were jumping out of buildings and piling up on foot patrols, where the soldiers were ripped limb from limb. And the most sinister: reanimated children were used to lure troops into areas where their egress was cut off, and swarming stenches rolled in, overwhelming the troops’ defenses. It was madness, utter madness. There was just no way to stop the zeds, not with a divisional element. On paper, it certainly looked as though it were possible. After all, the stenches had no real ability to conserve their forces, had no ability to reliably project force toward the division itself, but they were winning, through sheer numbers if nothing else.

  Royko reported all of this to Mountaineer 6, the major general in charge of the 10th. His orders were to gather his remaining forces and retreat to an assembly area located at Yonkers Raceway and await further instructions. The order sounded so easy, but the fact of the matter was, almost all of Royko’s forces were in contact, and pulling them back was no easy affair. It was chaos on the radio net, but when the orders to fall back were finally acknowledged, the soldiers standing between Royko’s small tactical operations center and the zeds didn’t just retreat. They ran.

  Not that it mattered. The exodus of civilians out of the Bronx was far from orderly. Most of Royko’s troops were pinned between the retreating civilians and the advancing stenches. He received reports that his own troops were gunning down American citizens so they could get past, in turn spawning more zeds. The Army had told Royko that only those bitten by the dead reanimated. Gartrell had already confirmed that if a person was infected with the whatever-it-was-called virus and they died, they would reanimate whether they had been bitten or not. The Army had passed it down that such was not the case; the infection was spread by contact with the dead, and that was that. It was a lie. Those who died without any contact with the stenches were reanimating.

  Which means we’re all infected already.

  The four Humvees which made up the 1/87th’s tactical operations center slowly moved northward through the night, followed by three M939 tactical trucks. The trucks should have been full of troops. Instead, they were mostly empty, each carrying only a few soldiers and several wounded. Royko had tried to ascertain exactly how the wounded had sustained their injuries, and it appeared none had been bitten. He was thankful for that, for it meant he wouldn’t have to deal with a zombie uprising in what was left of his battalion.

  After almost two hours of creeping north in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was obvious the headquarters detachment would not be able to make it to the assembly area. The NYPD had not been able to close off Route 9A, despite assurances the roadway would be reserved for military-only traffic. And the reason for that was obvious: the NYPD was being broken down by resource constraints from having too much to do with suddenly too-few personnel. Royko knew the department was around thirty-five thousand strong a few days ago, twice the size of the entire 10th Mountain Division, but it still struggled to secure its home turf and provide enough stability for the lightfighters to do their job. He ordered the headquarters element to pull off into a baseball field in Van Cortlandt Park. Until the traffic situation got straightened out, Royko would operate wherever he could. He notified the division command and requested a helicopter be dispatched to take his wounded. He was told that a Chinook had just become available and would make it to the park in less than ten minutes. Royko was impressed. The Army was running short on aircraft, but the decision had been made to extract the wounded whenever possible, and that was a good thing.

  When the Humvees stopped at the designated setup point, Royko jumped out and personally surveyed the area through his night vision goggles. It was hardly secure. The Saw Mill Parkway was nearby, and it was a virtual parking lot. Through the trees, he saw cars and trucks sitting motionless amidst a frenzy of blaring horns and flashing lights. Nearby McLean Avenue was no better, and the pedestrian traffic was even more worrisome. Any one of those people could be a zed, and Royko wouldn’t know it until one of them walked up and practically bit him on the ass.

  Then, to the lieutenant colonel’s surprise, a National Guard CH-47F was suddenly overhead, its blades slashing through the air. Before he could order any of his men to assist in securing the landing zone, the helicopter touched down in the park only a few hundred feet away. Royko watched as the twin-rotored behemoth settled to Earth in a clearing amidst a cloud of fallen leaves, twigs, and branches. Crewmen wearing night vision goggles leaned out of the aircraft on both sides and from its open tail, no doubt giving the pilots the necessary information to avoid taking the tops off any trees.

  Royko turned to one of his soldiers and motioned toward the M939 trucks. “Get our wounded onto that Chinook! I want ’em out of here immediately!”

  “Hooah, Colonel!”

  Royko ran back to the Humvees as they pulled into a diamond formation, with the rear of each vehicle pointing at the diamond’s center. Tailgates were opened, radios and infrared lights mounted, and maps unrolled.

  Royko pushed his way into the center of the activity, his eyes on the maps. “Major Fisch, where are the rest of our troops?”

  “Still trying to sort that out, sir,” the S-3 reported. “Lots of fragmented reports, but most of our guys are MIA. I haven’t been able to raise a single full-strength unit, and those troops I’ve been in contact with are either on foot and trying to make it to us, or they’re trapped in traffic.”

  “That’s bullshit. If they can’t move with their vehicles, tell them to bail out and pound the pavement! We can get the machinery later. Let’s get the troops! Pass that down right now!”

  “Roger that, sir.” The S-3 reached for one of the field radios and relayed the order.

  Royko pulled one of the maps toward him and studied the graphics written all over it in wax pencil that reflected the infrared light so the icons could be seen through his night vision goggles. To the uninitiated, it would look like a two-year-old’s errant scribbling. To Royko, it was anything but. The 1/87th’s disposition was written right there for him to see, and he didn’t like the picture one bit.

  “Are these graphics correct?” he asked.

  “They are, sir,” an operations NCO answered. “I’ve tried to keep them updated as carefully as possible, but it’
s been a bitch. A lot of our guys no longer have reliable commo, so I will admit to writing down some guesswork.” The NCO was a master sergeant, and if he had any fear of invoking the ire of Summit 6, he didn’t show it.

  Even though he’d been in the TOC for well over a day and hadn’t even had time to take a piss, Royko only had eyes for the maps. And what they showed was that, out of his entire battalion, only around thirty-six troops could be accounted for, beyond the headquarters staff.

  “How many troops have you been able to account for, Master Sergeant?” he asked, even though it was written right in front of him.

  “Thirty-six positive, sir.”

  “I see no number here for killed in action. Explain that.”

  “I haven’t received a KIA status in over seven hours, sir. We presume the rest of the battalion is just NORDO, but the reality is, a fair number of them are probably zombie chow.” The master sergeant’s voice was cold and mechanical, and he displayed no discernible emotion on his face behind his NVGs when Royko glared at him. At first, Royko had thought the man was a hard-core professional, but then he realized the senior NCO was shocked silly, and he just couldn’t respond in any other way.

  “Colonel, dismount orders are out. All units who can’t maneuver are abandoning their vehicles,” Major Fisch said.

  “Master Sergeant, send them a pulse to get a headcount,” Royko said. “I need to know how many we have. It can’t be just thirty-six!” He tapped the map taped to the Humvee’s tailgate with his finger.

  “Roger that, sir.” The master sergeant turned to the radio, and the major handed him the handset.

  Royko looked back at the operations officer. “Major, that man’s got the thousand yard stare. I’m not sure he’s very reliable right now. If he isn’t, I want you to replace him with someone who is. Are you with me?”

  “Yes, sir. One hundred percent. But who would I replace him with, sir?”

  The question pissed Royko off, but he took a moment to rein in his emotions. He elected to ignore it. “I want you to redouble your efforts to gain situational awareness at the operational level. If this battalion has been rendered completely combat ineffective, I need to know that right away. I can’t be standing around playing games of pocket pilot when division is tasking me with orders I can’t possibly commit resources to; you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” The major’s response was barely audible as the Chinook powered up. Royko glanced over at it and watched the big helicopter climb into the sky. His remaining soldiers hurried back toward the 1/87th’s vehicles, their M4 carbines slung, but close at hand.

  Royko turned back to the waiting major and started to ask him to look into what other units were in the area when the honking horns from the Saw Mill Parkway suddenly reached a crescendo. He heard shouts, then screams of fear and pain. Engines revved, and the sounds of crunching metal and cracking fiberglass cut through the air. Royko looked off in the direction of the parkway, but it was on the other side of Van Cortlandt Park, and he couldn’t see what was going on from where he stood. Several popping noises cracked through the air from beyond the trees. Gunfire.

  “Colonel!” one of the soldiers said. His voice was almost a shriek. Royko turned and saw the soldier standing beside one of the Humvees. His attention wasn’t oriented east, toward the commotion from the Saw Mill; he looked southerly, across the dark baseball field. Royko’s view was blocked by one of the Humvees, so he hurried forward and looked over the soldier’s shoulder.

  Shapes emerged from the tree line and moved into the baseball field. At first, it was only a few figures; then, as Royko watched, dozens—no, hundreds!—more came forward, leaving the comparative cover of the trees behind them. Most shambled, some trotted, and a few even bolted across the baseball field, like guided missiles heading directly for the Army vehicles, their lifeless eyes fixated on Royko and his troops.

  “Mount up!” Royko shouted. “Pack it up! We’ve got to get the fuck out of here right now!” He unslung his M4 while the soldiers behind him exploded into a flurry of activity.

  The Humvee parked with its grille pointed into the baseball field was outfitted with an M2 .50 caliber machinegun. A soldier climbed into the vehicle and emerged from the cupola. He grabbed the .50, yanked back on its cocking lever, leaned into the weapon, and fired. The .50 cal thundered as it spat its heavy projectiles downrange, and the bullets glowed white-hot in Royko’s NVGs. The first few rounds hit nothing more than the field itself and kicked up great gouts of sod in front of the advancing zombies. The gunner got his weapon under control and walked the next flurry of rounds through the runners sprinting toward the TOC. The big bullets blew off legs and arms, and blasted bodies into putrid wreckage… but the ghouls kept coming. Another .50 opened up, and Royko frantically stuffed his yellow foam hearing protectors in his ears, then shouldered his M4 and cracked off three rounds at an advancing zombie. The first two missed, the third hit the zed in the breastbone, driving it back a few steps. It started forward again, but went down as a .50 caliber round blasted through its head, exploding it like a melon filled with gray-black oatmeal.

  Royko glanced behind him and saw the radios had been secured and the tailgates of the Humvees were being slammed shut. Overhead, the CH-47 returned, thundering through the air as it passed by off to Royko’s right. The aircraft added its .50 caliber firepower to the fray, peppering the field with rounds, striking the approaching zeds from the side. Several zombies went down, but not for the count; even missing arms and with great, gaping holes torn through their abdomens, they slogged back to their feet and continued their advance.

  Unreal… simply unreal. Royko couldn’t rationalize what he saw, and as he watched the ghouls surge forward against the withering firepower, he realized why his troops’ discipline had been sorely tested. The stenches were relentless.

  “Sir, we gotta go!” Major Fisch shouted from behind him.

  Several other soldiers joined the fray with their personal weapons, firing at the advancing horde as Humvee engines were brought to life. But they were shooting as they’d been trained, aiming for the center mass of the approaching enemy; their rounds did nothing to stop the zeds. Royko shouted for the soldiers to mount up and move out. When they fell back to the Humvees, Royko sprinted for his vehicle.

  He leaped inside the Humvee’s front passenger seat and slammed the heavy, up-armored door shut. The staff sergeant behind the wheel put the vehicle in gear as another soldier took charge of the Mk 119 grenade launcher mounted atop the Humvee.

  “Get us out of here!” Royko said. “However you can, just get it done!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The Humvee surged forward, its tires spinning on the grassy field. The driver didn’t bother to go around the chain link fence that surrounded the baseball diamond. He just drove right through it. But the traffic on the street was another matter entirely. As the rest of the Humvees piled up behind Royko’s, he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell they would get very far at anything other than a slow crawl. Civilian vehicles were all over the place, and he suddenly understood how some of his soldiers had been able to open up on them, just to get past in a frantic bid to escape the zeds.

  “What do you want me to do, sir?” the driver asked as the Humvee accelerated toward the street.

  “Hard right, up the sidewalk!” Royko answered.

  The driver cut the wheel to the right. The sturdy vehicle bounced along the sidewalk, sending those civilians who had tried to flee on foot scattering in all directions. Royko checked the side view mirror and saw the rest of the Humvee-mounted TOC element coming up behind him, but the big M949 trucks were being swarmed by the dead. He knew the soldiers manning the trucks were experiencing a death worse than any Royko could dream. The Humvee bounced up and down subtly on its suspension, and the driver released a keening sigh. Royko faced forward and watched in horror as they drove over a woman with a baby stroller. The Humvee began to slow as it bore down on yet even more people. The crowd shrieked as
they tried to get out of the way, but with the stalled traffic to their left and the approaching walls of several buildings to their right, the people had no place to go.

  Royko put a hand on the driver’s arm. “Stop here, son.” To the rest of the soldiers in the Humvee, he ordered, “All right, dismount! Let’s give these fuckers what-for!”

  Royko threw open his door and leaped out of the Humvee. He pulled his M4 into position as the rest of the element braked to a halt. The Humvee immediately behind his was splattered with blood, having driven right over the poor people the first had mowed down. Even through his hearing protectors, Royko could hear the screams of the living and the never-ending moans of the dead. Zeds closed in on the detail, but the .50 calibers and the Mk 119 grenade launcher broke their advance. Royko was jostled by terrified civilians fleeing from the melee.

  The master sergeant with the thousand-yard stare had shaken it off; he was in combat, and his training had kicked in. He barked orders at the rest of the enlisted men, organizing them into a fighting team.

  Major Fisch ran around his Humvee and took a position on the other side, covering the team from the street. He started firing almost immediately.

  Royko hurried forward, his M4’s stock pressed against his right shoulder. He stopped behind the troops the master sergeant had organized into a skirmish line. They fired, some from a standing position, some while kneeling, sniping at the stragglers that managed to get through the .50 cal and grenade fire. One troop ripped off on full auto.