“Zombies,” I mutter to myself. “Un-fucking-believable.”
For years, I thought the world could not possibly get any more fucked up, but then something like this happens. I’m not all philosophical like Mac or anything, but part of me thinks maybe we did have this coming.
Most human beings pretend to be civilized. We like to think we have some higher purpose. Take that purpose away and we act just like other animals. We go around and kill each other for no reason at all.
At least these walking carcasses aren’t pretending to be something they’re not.
As night falls, the dwindling lights of Las Vegas still burn, but the raging fires illuminate the city in a sinister glow. Mac returns about twenty minutes later, whistling some tune as he crosses the roof. If any of this is bothering him, he is doing a pretty good job of keeping it in.
“What’s the word?” I ask him. “We getting out of here any time soon?”
“Nellis is still dark,” he says. “Collins was able to reach Pendleton but it sounds like shit is out of control there. No one has the resources available. Guess we’re running low on helicopters and pilots.”
“Ain’t seen any of them around out here, that’s for sure.” I say. “Seems like we’re going to have to get ourselves out of this hellhole.”
“Probably,” Mac agrees. “Lieutenant is on top of it. He’ll figure something out.”
“I hope so,” I say. “We can’t hold out up here forever.”
A few moments later, gunfire erupts inside the building. We hear shouts of alarm coming from the maintenance room. We grab our rifles and gear and get ready. It sounds like we just ran out of time.
“Graves! Mackenzie!” Sarge barks over the comms. “Get your asses down here!”
Eight
I follow Mac down the stairs and we hurry through the maintenance room. Everyone is scrambling around, trying to mobilize our injured men and gather up the radio equipment and supplies.
“They’re pushing through the west stairwell,” Arnes yells over the comms.
The gunfire picks up as we make our way into the hall and head for the stairs in the west wing.
“We need to move now, Will,” Sarge barks over the comms.
“Hold them off!” yells the lieutenant.
No one is bothering with standard radio protocols now. A sure sign that shit is getting bad real quick.
We hustle down the hall. Gibby, Sarge, Harding and Arnes lay down suppressive fire on the mob of the dead pushing through the barricade. The things just keep coming forward, one after another, climbing over the lifeless bodies as we shoot them down.
We must have drawn every walking stiff in town after that firefight in the casino.
“We’re Oscar Mike,” Will says on comms to let us know they are moving out.
The remnants of our platoon have to haul all our gear and Pittman. They won’t be moving very fast and it will be up to us to keep the horde at bay.
“Hold them off us as long as you can, Sergeant,” Will says. “Then head for the east stairwell and get down to the parking garage.”
“Copy that,” says Sarge. “We’re right behind you.”
The dead topple the pile of furniture and force the door open halfway. Several of them push through at a time now. Within a few minutes, they will come pouring through, but it won’t matter because we don’t have the ammunition to hold them off forever.
I pull the trigger and spot a few tracers marking the last rounds of my mag. I swap in a fresh mag and fire again.
Only five mags left before I’m out.
I space my shots a little more, trying to focus my fire and conserve my 150 remaining bullets.
Meanwhile, Arnes is tearing up the hallway with the SAW. Bullets splinter the furniture, sending chunks of wood and stuffing from the mattress flying in every direction. Arnes keeps his finger on the trigger of the light machine gun and sprays bullets at the dead with impunity.
“Focus your fire, Arnes,” Sarge barks, but Arnes just holds the trigger down, the discipline from his years of training is gone.
“These fucks just keep coming,” Arnes growls.
The dead crawl over the destroyed furniture. One of them completely clears the barricade before I put a round into the cranium of the fuck, and it collapses on the ground. There are at least a dozen more in the hallway behind it, and still more pushing through the door, which is flung wide open now.
“I’m out!” Arnes yells as he scoops up the SAW in his arms.
“Let’s move!” Sarge calls back.
I keep firing as the guys retreat down the hall. After shredding the faces off a few of the corpses that get within twenty feet of me, the tracer rounds come out and tell me it’s time to move. I turn and sprint down the hall to catch up with my team.
We bolt by the elevators and head for the stairs at the far side of the building, putting some distance between ourselves and the dead. I have no idea what the plan might be for now, other than running for our fucking lives. The only thing I know for sure is that we won’t be sticking around here and waiting for a helicopter to rescue us.
Before we reach the stairwell, the entire building goes black. Without any windows, the hall is as dark as the inside of a coffin.
I try to slow myself down, but I bump into someone in the darkness. A fresh surge of pain hits me as my hand makes contact with something.
“Damn it,” I curse as I double over in agony.
I flip down my night vision goggles to find Sarge fumbling with his rifle in the darkness.
“Fuck man, fuck, I’m sorry,” Sarge pants. “You got to keep moving, Chase. They’re coming.”
We hit the door and begin taking the stairs two at a time. I grab the handrail to guide me in the darkness, but the sudden pain reminds me that isn’t an option.
As we round the landing on the twenty-fourth floor, the door above us slams open and the sound of those things moaning fills the stairwell. The horde stumbles down the stairs after us, tipping over the railings and crashing onto the floors above us.
Getting down the stairs without stumbling is becoming increasingly difficult. I have to watch my feet through the unsteady goggles to make sure I don’t miss a step, so I start to lag behind the rest of the squad. When I dare to look back up I discover the stairwell is empty in front of me. I glance back down at my feet, but it’s already too late. My foot misses a step and I tumble forward. Unable to grab the railing and steady myself, I crash down the steps.
“Sarge!” I yell out. I cradle my mangled hand to my chest and reach down to grab my rifle off the ground with the other. I struggle to get to my knees and get moving again.
“Don’t quit on me,” Sarge yells. He yanks me up by my arm and hauls me onto my feet.
With Sarge pushing me to move faster, I limp down the stairs. We finally reach the main floor. My knee will probably hurt like hell later, if I live long enough for it to swell up.
We keep going down to the sub-level and follow a long hallway that leads to an underground parking garage. Muzzle flashes flicker in the darkness as the guys up front engage the dead inside the garage.
“Clear!” someone yells.
“We only have minutes,” says Will. “Let’s get some vehicles and get our asses out of here.”
“On it,” says Jax. He holds up a pair of car keys he pulled out of the pocket of a corpse and clicks the button. Headlights flash on the other end of the garage, and Jax dashes off to retrieve the vehicle.
“Gibby!” Arnes yells as he jabs out the window of an old electrical repair van with the butt of the shotgun. “I got this one. Get that truck over there.”
“I don’t know how to hot wire a truck!” Gibby yells.
“I thought you were from the ghetto?” Arnes shakes his head before he ducks inside the van.
“I got it,” says Mac. He opens the door of the truck and climbs in to the driver seat.
“Hurry it up,” Sarge reminds them.
“Just start
getting in,” Arnes tells the rest of us as he reaches below the steering wheel.
Sarge helps me over to the back of the van and I crowd in with Doc, Sykes, what is left of Pittman, and the redhead. There is hardly room for all of us with all the electrical supplies in the back. The engine of the van turns over and the headlights illuminate the inside of the garage.
“Here they come!” someone yells.
Sarge leaves me in the van and moves to engage the corpses. The door to the access tunnel smashes into the concrete wall and the things start moaning as they rush into the garage. They are greeted with a barrage of 5.56 mm rounds. A moment later, the truck engine fires up as well.
“Let’s go, go, go!” yells the lieutenant before he hops into the Hummer that Jax acquired.
Arnes slams on the gas and pulls the truck out of the parking space. I notice Claire losing her balance and toppling over, so I hold out my arm to steady her. All I end up doing is causing myself a ton of pain.
“Fuck!” I growl as I retract my hand and clutch it to my chest.
The van crashes through the thin metal door to the garage and out into the night. Tires screech as Arnes swerves around the road.
“Will. Where the fuck are we going?” he yells into the comms.
“Take a right up here, Arnes,” responds the lieutenant.
Arnes tells us to hold on and cranks the wheel to the right. The force of the turn causes Doc to lose his balance and fall forward. He places a hand on the floor beside Pittman to steady himself.
Then he seems to notice something.
Doc turns his head to the side and leans down close to Pittman.
“Damn it!” yells Doc.
“What is it?” I ask him.
“Pittman stopped breathing,” Doc says.
“When?” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” Doc says as he reaches a hand behind him to grab his medical supplies. “I need to start CPR.”
I glance up at Pittman and notice that his eyes are open.
“Shit,” I say and fumble with my rifle, but I remember the mag is empty. “Doc!”
Doc jerks away as Pittman sits up and grabs onto him. He sinks his teeth into Doc’s jugular and rips out a chunk of meat. Blood sprays all over. It even splatters the front windshield of the van.
“I can’t see!” Arnes yells right before we slam into something in the road.
The van lifts off the ground and tosses us around as the vehicle flips over. Tools, ladders, spools of electric wire and bodies fly around the rear compartment. I hear Claire screaming and Pittman snarling, and then the van crashes down on its side and skids to a stop in the middle of the road.
Nine
After we come to a stop, I open my eyes. Through the hole in the windshield, I spot Arnes lying in the middle of the road. Hunks of the windshield are embedded in his face and blood trickles down to the pavement.
I hear someone moan inside the van.
It could be Pittman. It could be Doc. Hell, it could be anybody.
I feel around for my rifle, but I can’t locate it in the dark so I pull out my sidearm. As soon as I have it out of the holster, Pittman lunges at me out of the darkness. I fire off two rounds from the nine-mil into his face at point blank range. His body collapses on top of me and goes limp.
“Claire,” I call out into the dark as I shove Pittman off of me.
“Here,” she moans back. Claire sits up and crawls over the copper wiring and tools to get to me.
“Come on,” I urge her.
The back door of the van pops open and a trio of flashlights illuminate the interior.
“Damn,” Gibby mumbles when he sees the chaos.
“Come on,” Sarge urges us. They help Claire out while I take a look back inside the van.
Sykes is doubled over against the front seats with his neck at an awkward angle. His eyes are open and pupils fixed. I lean to the side and see Harding in the front passenger seat but his face is smashed, his brains spilling out onto the dashboard. I finally locate my rifle and climb out of the chaos.
The rest of my team covers me while I limp toward the overloaded pickup truck. Sergeant Lowe and Corporal Hurst have to reach down and haul me up into the truck bed as the remaining members of my squad hold off the dead closing in around us. Sarge bangs on the fender of the truck as he hops on and then Zamora peels out and speeds into the night.
“What the fuck happened back there?” Sarge asks me.
“Pittman,” I say. “He turned into one of those things and attacked Doc. I couldn’t stop him. Then Arnes lost control.”
“Listen, it’s not your fault, man,” Sarge says. “Nothing you could have done.”
Maybe if I had two hands I could have done something.
“We ain’t out of this shit yet,” Sarge says. “I need you back in this fight, Marine. You copy?”
Hurst, Lowe, Gibby and Mac call out different targets and open fire as Zamora follows the Humvee down the side streets. I look down at my hand, feeling useless.
“Hey,” Sarge says. “Don’t you fucking quit on me, Corporal.”
“Yes, sir,” I manage to say.
Sarge grabs my helmet off the bed of the truck and places it on my head. Then he bangs the top of it down with his fist.
“You’re a badass motherfucking Marine,” he reminds me, then he turns and covers his ear so he can hear the lieutenant on the comms.
“We need to get out of this city,” says Will. “Then we can find a place to hole up until dawn.”
“Will,” says Zamora. “I sure hope you know where the fuck we’re going, homie.”
“We got navigation,” says the lieutenant. “Garmin is leading the way.”
“The worlds greatest fighting force in the world and we’re relying on commercial-grade GPS in a stolen Hummer,” says Mac.
“Sir,” says Sarge. “We’re nearly black on ammo back here.”
“Then Corporal Zamora better make sure he keeps up,” Will says.
“Copy that, sir,” Zamora says.
As the vehicles speed up, I twist my body around and get to a kneeling position in the back with my M4 propped on the wall of the truck. I manage to swap in a fresh mag and flip down my NVGs and scan the street for targets. The rifle still feels all wrong, and I keep adjusting my grip on the hand stop to try to compensate for my missing digits. I finally pull the trigger and fire a burst at one of the green figures about twenty meters out. Every bullet misses.
“Fuck,” I curse myself.
I pull the trigger again and this time the bullets hit home. The body collapses on the street.
“Goddamn Graves,” says Gibby. “You’re a better shot with one hand than Mac is with two.”
“Normally, I’d take exception to that,” Mac says. “But Graves is a cold-blooded killer.”
The guys are just trying to help, and it does, a little. But I know I’m just not as effective as I could be. I glance up at Sarge and notice he is staring at my injured hand. I grin to let him know I’m still in this fight.
“Enough fucking around,” Sarge chimes in. “I’m getting tired of getting our shit pushed in, so stay fucking frosty.”
We pass by a gentleman’s club with half-devoured strippers on the sidewalk. The dimmed neon sign in the window that says “LIVE NUDE GIRLS” is clearly outdated now. Abandoned vehicles, debris, broken glass and bodies fill the streets. Some of them are already starting to smell from being out in the desert heat all day.
I mentally count the rounds left in my mags until I am completely out. One hundred fourteen bullets. The scary thing is, I probably have the most rounds left out of all of us.
The Hummer hooks a left and the pickup follows cautiously down a narrow residential street. Parked cars line the curbs on either side of our vehicles.
“Help!” a young girl slides open a second story window on one of the houses and sticks her head out. “Help me! Please!”
Her yelling draws moans from the dead all around us. They emerg
e from alleys and doorways, swarming toward the street in droves. The line of parked vehicles prevents the dead from reaching us. Even if we tried we couldn’t possibly help that woman. We would all just end up dead.
“Shut up lady,” Gibby grumbles.
She curses and screams at us as we roll away. The horde surrounds her building. Even after she closes the window, the dead remain outside. They moan and pound away at the front door.
“We should have helped her,” Sarge says.
“That’s not our mission,” I remind him.
“Would have been the right thing to do,” Sarge says.
“I’m starting to feel like shooting her would have been the right thing to do there,” says Gibby.
We reach Nellis Boulevard and take a left turn to head north toward the airfield. In the distance, a massive fire burns and a huge cloud of smoke drifts up to the sky.
“Is that the base?” I ask Sarge.
“Has to be,” Sarge says.
“Looks like the party is already over,” says Mac.
“Listen up,” Will says on the comms. “We need to recon Nellis. Stay frosty and maintain dispersement, copy?”
Sarge hesitates as he looks at the fiery military installation in the distance.
“Do you copy, Sergeants?” Will repeats.
“Copy,” answers Sergeant Lowe.
“Sir,” says Sarge. “Not to question your orders, but that base looks pretty wasted.”
“Unless you guys feel like rolling around in civilian vehicles with no ammo, we have to recon the base and salvage some supplies,” says the lieutenant. “If you have another option Sergeant, I’m listening.”
“Negative, sir,” says Sarge. “Solid copy. Over.”
The convoy rolls on.
“This is a bad idea,” says Mac.
I get a bad feeling I can’t shake either, but I keep my mouth shut. As much as I don’t like it, I know the lieutenant is right. If we don’t figure out a way to improve our situation we will not last very long out here. Complaining about it won’t make anything better.
“Our first priority is to hit up the armory,” the lieutenant says. “Then we will head for the motor pool.”
ROTD (Book 3): Rage of the Dead Page 6