The smoke was so thick that he could barely see them at times. Tears ran down his cheeks and pooled in the bottom of his mask. Too much smoke was getting past the filters, and he was close to choking. His throat and sinuses were raw, and his lungs felt full. He wasn’t hacking up a lung yet, but that wasn’t very far in his future.
Some troops were falling out of the line, overpowered by the foul, acrid smoke that billowed up from the burning automobiles. The smoke gave the zombies perfect cover for their advance. Even though thousands of them lay dead at the foot of the barricade, wave after wave of hungry reekers climbed over the mounds of stilled corpses and continued to surge upward, reaching for the soldiers. Aside from Hastings, there were probably two dozen soldiers still slugging it out with the ghouls. All the wire barriers had been flattened, and the claymores had been exhausted. Everything was up to men with rifles, and their numbers were falling because of the smoke.
Over the shooting, Hastings heard a startled yelp. He ignored it, but then he heard another. A flurry of firing erupted to his right, a booming collection of shots that couldn’t have been aimed. Hastings half-turned onto his left side so he could look over the top of the sandbags.
Floundering about through the dark smoke were several gaunt, pallid figures. Zombies. Hastings was shocked to discover they had boiled up over one side of the container wall. He raised his rifle and drilled two of them while bellowing for the retreating soldiers and Guardsmen to attack. The reekers were slow, and the smoke worked against them as well, plus they had to navigate across the sandbags. Hastings spotted a soldier still in position just before the reekers reached the guy. Hastings couldn’t tell if the soldier was unconscious or simply unaware of the breakthrough, but the man was apparently still alive. The reekers piled up on him like linebackers, tearing away at him. Hastings couldn’t shoot because the troops that were falling back crossed into his lane of fire. Vogler was shouting for the troops to hold their positions.
Hastings pushed forward, grabbed one soldier by the shoulder, and shook him roughly. “Hey! Get back in the fight!”
The soldier tried to respond but coughed instead. His nostrils and mouth were covered with soot, and he seemed barely able to stand, much less fire aimed shots at the approaching zombies. Hastings pulled him to the left and pointed him toward one of the ladders. A lot of the soldiers were as bad off as that one. They’d been hanging tough, inhaling poisonous smoke so they could keep the heat on the zombies, and they were paying the price for it. Hastings snaked toward the group of reekers coalescing around the soldier lying in the fighting position. He shouldered his rifle and fired three times, scoring three kills. Then, the bolt in his rifle locked back. He was out of ammunition. Again.
Hastings ejected the mag, pulled a fresh one from his vest, and slapped it into the rifle’s magazine well. While he was reloading, more zombies—those who couldn’t get a place at the feeding trough of the prone soldier—headed his way, moaning as they clawed toward him through the smoke. By the time Hastings hit the bolt release on his rifle, a wrinkly old ghoul was upon him, pushing his rifle to one side as it practically dove into him. Hastings went down, one shot going wild as he fell across a row of sandbags. He shouted as he pushed against the reeker with his rifle, trying to create a void, but the combined weight of his body and the zombie’s prevented him from pulling any slack from the weapon’s sling. The zombie hissed as it leaned forward and sank its teeth into the mandarin collar of his uniform. It pulled back, and its teeth flopped right out of its mouth.
Hastings froze in surprise, and the zombie looked confused. Hastings looked down and saw the dentures lying on his uniformed chest. He almost laughed. Instead, he released his rifle, grabbed the zombie’s head, and wrenched sideways. He hurled the emaciated figure over the edge of the container wall, where it crashed into the zombies pooling only a few feet away.
Gunfire rang out as another zombie grabbed Hastings’s right boot and hauled itself upward along his leg. The ghoul’s head snapped back as a round cut through it, and the body went limp. Hastings kicked it off and picked up his rifle. He began taking one-handed shots at the rest of the gaggle as they advanced toward him. He sensed rather than saw Ballantine standing just behind him, firing over his head and dropping the reekers so Hastings could get to his feet. The two of them went to town, expending their magazines, racking up at least forty kills before their weapons went dry.
That forty was a drop in the bucket. More and more reekers clambered onto the container, taking the place of the fallen, leering and moaning as they surged forward. Vogler shouted for the troops to fall back to the second line of containers.
Hastings pushed Ballantine toward the ladder. “Come on! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Ballantine hesitated then reached out and pulled something from Hastings’s body armor. He held up a set of dentures. “You always carry a spare set of chompers, sir? I guess they come in handy when you have to choke down some of our MREs, huh?”
Hastings slapped the dentures out of his hand and shoved him toward the nearest ladder. “Come on, Carl! Get out of here!”
Ballantine headed for the ladder, but there was a queue of men waiting to get down. Ballantine took a knee, rifle at the ready. Hastings shadowed him, and they opened up on the reekers picking their way through the smoky darkness, tripping and stumbling over sandbags and other gear. At the far end of the container wall, a .50 cal kept chattering.
“Ladder’s clear!” Ballantine said after a few minutes.
“Go on and get down! I’ll keep the reekers off you!”
Ballantine fired another couple of shots and hurried over to the ladder. Hastings backed toward it, still firing. The .50 fell silent. He risked a glance and saw that Ballantine was halfway down the ladder. The gap between the two container walls was full of men scurrying about, making final adjustments to the wire barriers. They would close them up as soon as the last man was through.
Hastings popped another two zombies then slung his rifle and hit the ladder. Fifty feet to his left, more men filed down a second ladder. Vogler stood at its base, urging them on. Once the last soldier—presumably the one who had been manning the .50—started down, the troops atop the second container wall opened up. They were farther away from the smoke and had a better sight picture. When a few rounds slammed into the container several feet away, Hastings jumped down, skipping the last few rungs.
When his boots finally met the highway’s concrete surface, he breathed a sigh of relief. Ballantine wasn’t wearing his mask, so Hastings took his off. The air was cleaner, but he still coughed and spit out a load of phlegm.
“Jesus,” Hastings said, clearing his throat. “Come on. Let’s get to—”
Ballantine yanked Hastings almost off his feet with one hand while raising his rifle with another. Something smash into the ground behind him, and Hastings whirled to face it. He was half off-balance, and the first row of razor wire barriers was only a few feet away. For an instant, he hopped around in a kind of crazy dance, simultaneously trying to bring his rifle to bear while pinwheeling his arms so he didn’t fall into the wire.
A zombie lay at the base of the ladder, still moving sluggishly even though half its skull was caved in. Black ichor dribbled from its nose, and one eyeball had popped out of its socket, rolling crazily on the cheek. Hastings stared at the ghoul for a moment, trying to figure out where it had come from.
Another slammed to the concrete nearby, shattering both its legs. It moaned and reached for Hastings, and he turned and popped a round through its head while Ballantine did the same for the one lying on its back at the base of the ladder. Hastings looked up. More zombies appeared at the top of the container. They walked right over the edge like lemmings, reaching for the men below.
“Hey, you guys! You need to get the fuck outta there!” someone shouted from the second container wall. “Like, right now!”
As soon as Hastings processed the warning, scores of reekers fell through the smoke. A
gigantic wave of them seemed to break right over the first container wall. Many were riddled with bullets, but they were still moving and still hungry, and that condition didn’t change very much by the time they crashed to the concrete behind the wall.
Hastings grabbed Ballantine’s arm and pulled him toward the gap in the razor wire. “Move it!”
Ballantine moved through the wire, and Hastings followed. Both men juked left, heading for the next gap as they picked their way through the tanglefoot wire between the barriers.
“Thank God that idiot Stilley isn’t here,” Ballantine shouted over his shoulder.
“Why’s that?”
“He’d probably start singing ‘It’s Raining Zombies’ like he was one of the Weather Girls.”
Hastings snorted. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Stilley broke out into a song and began break dancing right in the middle of the shit that was going down. That was one reason why he’d assigned him to work with Guerra. If Hector couldn’t get Stilley straightened out, then he would probably shoot him and spare the rest of the troops the trouble.
He and Ballantine pulled the barriers closed behind them, mindful of the sharp razors. The first barrier shook as reekers stumbled into it and became ensnared in its steely embrace. Hastings didn’t pause to watch the dead flounder about in the wire; he’d seen it far too many times. Also, some on top of the second barricade were firing right over his and Ballantine’s heads. Staying in the no man’s land between the wire barriers wasn’t a great idea, especially since some of the Guardsmen weren’t even close to being accurate with their fire. It took several minutes to navigate their way through the maze. On the other side of the engagement area, Vogler was leading a small element toward the wall. Hastings and Ballantine were met by a small collection of Guardsmen who secured the base of the ladder that reached up over the HESCOs and claymores.
Ballantine fell back and waved Hastings ahead of him. “You first, sir,” he said, shouldering his rifle and taking a knee.
Hastings climbed the ladder as fast as he was able. Less than a minute later, he was on top of the twenty-foot wall. While Ballantine ascended, Hastings looked over at the first barrier wall. Zombies were cresting it in putrid waves, clambering over the array of fighting positions, jostling each other through the swirling smoke. They continued to walk right off the edge and fall into the gap between the barricade walls. Dozens were already in the gap, maybe even hundreds. The first razor wire barrier was sagging beneath their weight, and one or two had made their way across by walking over their trapped fellows. The rotting nightmares were already caught up in the tanglefoot wire, but they thrashed against it, ignoring the fact that in doing so they were stripping cold, gray flesh from bone.
Ballantine made it to the top of the barricade, and he and Hastings helped the remaining Guardsmen on the ground off the ladder when they scurried up. They then hauled up the ladder and placed it on the far side of the barricade, where a company of runners were already engaged in reloading. Several MRAPs and four Strykers were positioned in the motor pool, along with a half dozen Humvee gun trucks and five-tons. The trucks and MRAPs were already oriented in the direction of Indiantown Gap. When it came time to load up and roll, at least the rubber wheels were pointed in the right way.
Vogler came toward them, his face blackened with soot. “Man, that collapsed too fucking fast.” His voice was raw and gravelly, as if he’d been out on an all-night bender.
“The smoke really fucked us up,” Hastings agreed. “We should’ve thought about that.”
“I did think about it,” Vogler said. “I thought it would help us out. Screwed that one up.”
“Yeah, you did. Let’s not do that shit again,” Hastings said. He wasn’t feeling merciful at the moment. “Next time you want to set up some obscurants, pop smoke. Don’t set a pile of parked cars on fire.”
Vogler nodded. “Roger that.” He looked over at the men in the fighting positions. “Looks like we’re full up here. Take a break, service your weapons, rearm, whatever you want to do.” He stalked off, and Hastings wondered whether the officer was pissed at him or at himself.
Ballantine took a long hit from his CamelBak. “Well, imagine the damage he could do if he starts thinking.”
“You get through to the Gap?” Hastings asked.
“Yes, sir. They’re good. Talked with Everson, and he’s got everything under control.”
“How are the civvies? Your wife and kids all right?”
Ballantine nodded. “Yeah. For the moment. There’s contact at the Gap, but I’m told it’s under control.” He pointed toward the first barricade, which was almost entirely covered by reekers. “Hopefully, it’s not as bad as it is here.”
The troops were lined up two deep, with soldiers firing over the heads of troops lying prone. They seemed to have a good rhythm going, having stabilized after falling back from the first wall. But the mounds of zombies forming in the wire barricades didn’t bode well for the defenders. There just wasn’t enough firepower available to hold back the reekers. If things kept going the way they had been, the companies manning the barricades would be pushed back to the Gap by early afternoon. While the highway barricades had been intentionally configured to channelize the reekers into kill zones, Fort Indiantown Gap was too big. There was a lot of real estate to secure, and only the main approaches to the base had been fortified. The plan had been to use the woodlands to slow the reeker advance, but their numbers were just too great. It would be like trying to hold back the entire Atlantic Ocean with a three-foot Play-Doh breaker. Besides, it took only a couple of squirters to cause utter mayhem behind the lines.
“This is gonna suck,” Hastings muttered. Ballantine probably couldn’t hear him over the firing, anyway.
*
Hector Guerra, Reader, and Stilley were plugging away at the dead on the latticed bridge. Despite the wire barriers, sniper fire, machine-gun fire, and claymores, the bridge was full of both moving and unmoving dead. The still ones numbered in the thousands, forming a squishy carpet that actually served to somewhat impede the walking dead’s advance. But the hindrance was short-lived, and the metal span had become full of moaning, hissing reekers. Dozens fell off the bridge and into the creek, while hundreds more managed to ford the rivulet. Scores of bodies floated in the water, dead from head shots. As far as Guerra could see, the wire barriers along the Swatara’s bank were fully involved. He knew they would be coming down soon, and that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. The Humvee gun trucks were rocking and rolling with .50 cals, slicing through the undead that tore at the wire with fingers that felt no pain. For every reeker they took out, two or three more took its place.
“Yes!” Reader shouted. “Two with one shot! That’s five times now!”
“I’m at six,” Stilley yelled back.
“Oh, fuck you! Who do you think you are? Legolas from The Lord of the Rings?”
“Naw, man. I’m Shaft—John Shaft!” Stilley fired his M4 regularly. “I’m a complicated man, motherfuckers!”
“Yeah, as complicated as one plus one,” Guerra yelled. “You guys don’t shut the fuck up, you’re going to get the reeker shaft right up the ass! Stop your jawin’, and keep shooting!”
Stilley fired again, and Guerra saw two reekers go down through his scope.
“You see that, Reader?” Stilley crowed. “One plus one equals two more dead reekers! Suck it!”
Reader made a frustrated sound and raised his rifle. He fingered the M203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel and sent a 40-millimeter grenade right through the bridge’s latticework. It exploded, sending reekers tumbling off the bridge and into the creek. Several of them just lay in the water.
“That’s cheating!” Stilley said. “Five-five-six only in this game!”
Guerra watched the reekers pile up at the base of the container wall with no small degree of worry. The soldiers were getting tired. Even though it wasn’t physically arduous to lie on your belly and shoot reekers, th
e repetition started inducing a bit of tunnel vision and inured the soldiers and Guardsmen to the omnipresent threat. Guerra shifted his aim toward the front of the container and resumed firing. The press of bodies was so tight that the reekers he killed didn’t fall away but just kind of floated, buoyed up by the zombies behind and beneath them. That was becoming a problem because the corpses blocked the animate ones from receiving dedicated fire.
“Okay, guys, get ready to pull out of here,” Guerra said. “Shit sandwich has arrived.”
A reeker grabbed the edge of the container and started hauling itself up, eyes dull and emotionless, mouth open wide. It took a round right in the face almost immediately. Another appeared, standing on the pile of dead. It reached up and flailed at a sandbag before a Guardsman put it down. Two more popped up, then three, then twelve. The gunfire was constant. Guerra watched as one zombie fell back, taking a soldier’s rifle with it.
“Uh, yeah, shit’s gettin’ real,” Stilley said.
“Goddamn, really?” Reader said. “I mean, what’s your next analysis going to prove out there, Einstein?”
One bullet-riddled zombie climbed halfway into a fighting position before it was taken out. It had managed to lay its hands on one of the Guardsmen, and the trooper was in full freak-out mode, trying to abandon his position. He didn’t get far because another zombie—a runner—vaulted over the sandbags and landed right on top of him. There was some confusion as soldiers wrestled with it, trying to pull it off the man before it could bite him. For an instant, there was a void in firepower.
The reekers exploited that immediately. Shamblers, runners, and screamers surged onto the container, pushing through the line as men and women shouted and shot in panic. The captain went down when a stray bullet ripped through his face. The female radio operator, who had been standing behind Wilkins, screamed and reached for him as his body went over the edge. A reeker caught her outstretched arm, pulled it close, and bit down hard. The woman’s screaming became suddenly shrill.
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