We pull up to the roundabout at the entrance, with corpses wandering around the burning guard posts. The Hummer rams through bodies, sending them skidding down the grass embankments beside the road.
The inside of the base is worse than a fucking war zone. Hundreds of the dead shamble around the grounds. As soon as they hear the engines of our vehicles, the things swarm toward our position.
“Don’t shoot unless they grab on to the truck,” Sarge says. “Conserve ammo.”
We pass by the BX and the officers club, both of which are also on fire.
“Left on Range Road,” the lieutenant says over the comms.
We make the turn and drive down a road lined with vast rows of solar panels. About half a mile down we turn into a parking lot for the gun range and the armory. We climb out of the truck and scan the area. Several of the recently departed wander through the solar panels, but we seem to be far enough away from the other facilities that there are not too many immediate threats.
“Let’s move,” says the lieutenant. “Five minutes. Graves, wait out here with Miss Davies. You radio at the first sign of trouble, copy?”
“Copy, sir,” I tell him and I move over to the Hummer to post up outside the vehicle as the rest of the guys run inside.
A few gunshots ring out before the guys call out clear on the comms. I glance at Claire and notice her eyes on the building.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “They got it under control in there.”
Claire glances down at my injured hand. I turn to the side casually to prevent her from staring at it.
“I’m trying...” she begins, but then seems to lose the thought. I notice how tired she looks. She probably hasn’t slept in nearly two days by now.
“Pardon ma’am?” I say.
“I’m not sure I can get used to living like this,” she says. “I don’t know how you guys do it.”
“No choice,” I tell her.
“I guess you’re right about that,” Claire says. She tilts her head back and rests her head on the back of the seat and closes her eyes. She seems to doze off so I continue to scan the area through my NVGs. A little snore sneaks out of her nostrils and then her eyes jerk open again and she lifts her head. She glances around.
“What was that?” she asks.
“I believe you woke yourself up when you started snoring, ma’am,” I inform her.
She raises a hand up and shields her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You should try to sleep if you can, ma’am.”
“Please, stop calling me ma’am,” she says.
“Shh,” I tell her.
Something scuffles over the sands nearby, but I can't locate the source. I listen as I scan the darkened shapes surrounding us for movement. I raise my rifle to a firing position and keep scanning the area near the corner of the building where the sounds are coming from.
“Nightmare One,” I whisper into the comms. “I’m hearing some activity out here, but I don’t have a visual.”
“Hold tight, Graves,” says the Lieutenant. “We will be out in two Mikes. Over.”
Something moans and I hear glass shattering.
“Stay in the car,” I tell Claire as I advance toward the building. I shoulder the rifle and pull out my sidearm. I know I need to keep the brainiac in the Hummer safe, but I don’t want those things getting inside and taking the squad by surprise. I catch a glimpse of the stiff, moving slowly out of the shadow of the building and I pull the trigger.
The first shot hits it in the neck and it gurgles. I fire again and hit it in the skull. It groans and drops to its knees, and then the stiff topples over and lands face first in the sand. I start to lower the pistol until I hear another moan.
I take a few steps to the left to see around the side of the building and more shapes begin to emerge. There are dozens of the things coming at us from a trailer park a couple hundred meters behind the armory.
“We need to go now,” I call into the comms as I make a run for the Hummer.
Several seconds later, the doors to the armory swing open and Mac and Sarge hustle out carrying a bag between them. Gibby hauls out as many weapons as he can carry. I holster the nine-mil to switch back to my M4 and begin firing at the dead as they round the corner of the building. The recoil makes it difficult to focus my fire with much accuracy so I run through a mag in a matter of seconds trying to slow the things down. My team loads the munitions into the back of the truck and then they begin firing on the dead. Tracer rounds streak through the darkness, so I pull the trigger once more and swap in a fresh mag.
The lieutenant bursts through the door, followed by Corporal Collins. Each holds one end of another heavy bag. Corpses focus in on the closer prey and start trudging toward the entrance, ignoring the vehicles.
“Get ready to move!” the lieutenant yells as he waves his free arm to urge us to get back in the trucks.
Gunny and Sergeant Lowe push through the doors with another bag as the dead close in on the entrance. The first of the things reaches their position and Gunny reaches back and slugs it in the face as the thing lunges for him.
“Shit stain!” Gunny barks.
The two men have no choice but to drop the bag and raise up their weapons to open fire on the corpses that surround them. More and more of the dead emerge from the darkness. Some of the population from the base is approaching through the solar farm.
We are running out of time.
“Get ready to move, Corporal!” the lieutenant says to me as he reaches the Hummer.
We still have people inside the building. Zamora, Carrasco, Hurst, and Carver have yet to return. Reluctantly, I open the door and squeeze in the backseat of the vehicle beside Claire, then I prop my rifle and lay down some more fire through the window. From this distance, in the dark, with dozens of moving targets, we hardly even slow them down.
“Javi! Eddie! Get the fuck out of there!” Sergeant Lowe yells over the comms.
The things encircle the building, cutting off the rest of our platoon. Gunny and Lowe keep firing as they backpedal to the Hummer, even though the lieutenant is yelling for them to get inside the vehicles.
“My guys are still in there!” Lowe screams. “I’m not fucking bailing on them!”
“We are leaving, Sergeant!” yells Will.
Gunny climbs in behind the wheel as Will hops in the passenger seat. Sergeant Lowe keeps firing at the corpses as they pour into the front door of the armory. A segment of the mob splits off from the crowded entrance and focuses on the vehicles. Colin keeps firing until his mag runs dry, then he swaps to a new mag.
“Get in this truck right now, Sergeant!” the lieutenant barks, but Lowe just keeps shooting at the dead.
Rifles rattle inside the building.
“Hurst is down!” yells Eddie on comms.
“Fuck, we got to go back in there!” Colin yells.
The lieutenant doesn’t answer right away. He looks at Gunny who shakes his head. He knows we can’t go back even if we want to.
“We’re boxed in,” Zamora comes through on the comms. “I’ll keep them busy as long as I can, sir.”
“No!” insists Sergeant Lowe. “Get your ass back out here, Javi!”
“Go get him,” the lieutenant says to Gunny.
Gunny gets out and opens the back door. He grabs Lowe by the collar and yanks him toward the truck. I scoot over as Gunny tosses him into the backseat and slams the door. Lowe loses his shit and curses at Gunny as he accelerates away from the armory. A frag grenade explodes inside the building as we pull out of the parking lot, then there are three more explosions in short succession.
I can’t think of anything to say. Colin just lost his whole squad. Nothing will make that any easier. I just put a hand on his shoulder as we flee the endless throngs of the dead.
Ten
My hand throbs as I stare at the blood-soaked bandage. I try to put the pain out of my mind as the convoy s
peeds down Range Road toward the airfield. The lieutenant assures us that we will be able to requisition more adequate vehicles.
“I sure hope you’re right. We’re running on fumes here, sir,” Sarge informs him.
“What the fuck is that?” Gunny blurts as he stares through the window at something along the right side of the road. A tall fence topped with barbed wire separates the street from a huge field. In the distance, the shape of a large building looms. Several raging bonfires burn out front. I hear the faint pop of small arms fire in the distance and spot figures moving around in the firelight.
The lieutenant consults the onboard navigation, and then looks back out the window.
“That’s a correctional facility,” Will says.
“Looks like somebody let the inmates out,” Gunny says.
“Fuck,” says the lieutenant. “Get us out of here Gunny. We don’t need more problems right now.”
Gunny pushes the gas down as bullets ping off the side of the vehicle. The prisoners have definitely spotted us on the road.
“Nightmare One,” Sarge says. “We’re taking fire back here.”
“Copy that, Rodriguez,” says Will. “That is a prison to our nine o’clock. We’re going to push passed it. Keep your heads down. Over.”
More shots zip passed the Hummer and I turn my body to shield Claire from any bullets. We lost too many of our guys to let something happen to this woman now.
A round ruptures one of our tires with a loud pop a second before the Hummer swerves to the side of the road. Gunny curses as he maneuvers the wheel to steady the speeding vehicle, but the damage is done. The rims grind against the pavement as the tire runs flat.
“Don’t slow down!” the lieutenant orders him.
Gunny keeps the pedal to the metal, even as the tire shreds away and sparks fly up into the night. I can see the airfield ahead in the dim glow of dawn on the horizon. We just have to make it another half a mile and hope to god the whole damn motor pool isn’t overrun with the dead.
As we near the intersection, the gunfire from the prison tapers off. I glance over and notice pairs of headlights outside the massive buildings.
“Looks like they’re coming after us,” I tell the lieutenant.
He glances back over his shoulder.
“I’ve had about enough of this shit,” the lieutenant growls. “Stop the truck, Gunny.”
Gunny brings the Hummer to a stop in the intersection. The brakes on the pickup squeal behind us. The pair of vehicles form a blockade across the intersection.
“You sure you want to do this, sir?” Gunny asks.
“I’m done fucking around,” the lieutenant says.
He opens the door and steps out of the truck. Will positions himself behind the hood with his rifle pointed at the vehicles and men approaching us on the road. Sergeant Lowe takes up a shooting position behind the trunk of the Hummer and I scoot closer to the window and prop my gun in the opening.
A mob of forty or fifty men march up the road alongside a pair of pickup trucks. Some of the prisoners appear to have shotguns and pistols, but most of them carry makeshift weapons. They notice our vehicles stopped in the road and charge toward us.
“Those men aren’t dead,” Claire says.
“They will be soon,” I inform her.
“Stop this,” she begs me.
I ignore her so she sticks her head out the window and pleads with Lieutenant Reasoner.
“They can always turn around instead of dying,” he tells her.
“This is insane,” she complains.
“They’re criminals,” Sergeant Lowe reminds her. “The less of them there are now the better.”
“That’s not the point,” she says.
Will fires a warning burst from his rifle. The men in prison jumpsuits duck in the road as the bullets fly over their heads.
“Stay the fuck back!” Will yells.
The prisoners seem to pause for a moment, then begin sprinting toward us, yelling and screaming like a bunch of fucking savages.
“Engage!” Will orders and we unleash hell on them.
The hail of bullets stops their advance in an instant. The unfortunate ones in the front of the pack get chewed up and drop to the ground. Their bodies trip up the men behind them.
Bullets punch holes in the windshields of the pickup trucks. One rolls off the road into the ditch. The horn blares as the dead driver slumps against the steering wheel. The other truck wheels around, plowing over several prisoners as it speeds away.
As the mob turns to run the other way, we keep firing. Bullets tear through the backs of the men. By the time Will tells us to cease fire, there are only a handful of prisoners still fleeing. The rest are either dead, or writhing on the ground in pain.
The whole thing only lasts about a minute.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.
“Mount up,” the lieutenant says and the men of Nightmare platoon return to the vehicles.
“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” Claire asks.
“We’re doing our jobs,” says Will. “We’re keeping you safe. Let’s go, Gunny.”
Gunny accelerates the broke-ass Hummer and we grind along the road.
“You murdered them,” Claire insists.
The lieutenant doesn’t answer but turns to look out the passenger window at the horde of the dead headed for us. All our gunfire out on the perimeter road drew them away from the fires near the BX and the private military industrial buildings. There are so many of the things it looks like a massive audience for a concert as they wander through the sandy desert.
“Did the world a fucking favor,” Sergeant Lowe mumbles.
“It was wrong,” Claire pushes back.
“Wrong?” The lieutenant spins around. “You think that was wrong? Look around, lady. I lost seventeen men to save your sorry ass, and you don’t see anything wrong with that fucking picture?”
The lieutenant swivels back around in his seat.
“How about you just show a little goddamn appreciation for the sacrifice those guys made and shut the fuck up?” Will says.
A silence fills the vehicle.
Maybe I should feel bad about what just happened, but that doesn’t mean I do. I lost some of my brothers in all this.
Hell, I lost half my fucking hand.
If it comes down to it, I’m willing to kill anybody that gets in the way before I accept losing any more than I already have.
We grind to a stop in front of a row of long storage buildings alongside the airfield. We scan the columns of parked fighter jets and drones on the tarmac.
“There’s the motor pool,” says Sergeant Lowe. “Ten o’clock.”
Gunny turns the wheel and steers between the hangars. This area of the base is eerily empty, but with the dead on the way that won’t last long. We pull to a stop beside a fleet of Humvees and get out.
“Let’s load this shit up quick,” says the lieutenant before he opens the door.
After Claire exits the truck, I follow her out and escort her to one of the Humvees.
“Out of one Hummer and into another,” she sighs and she climbs in the rear passenger seat.
“This is a Humvee,” I tell her. “It’s got armor and shit.”
“I liked the leather seats better,” she says.
“Suck it up,” I tell her. I close the door and try not to let her complaints get to me, but I’m tired and she is the last person I want to listen to right now. The rest of the guys are grabbing the bags of supplies and ammunition out of the truck, so I go over to give them a hand instead.
“We got this,” Sarge tells me as I reach for a bag.
I give him an annoyed look.
“Just because my hand is fucked up—” I start to say but Sarge interrupts me.
“That’s not what I meant, Chase,” Sarge says. “Chill out, bro.”
I take a deep breath and watch as Sarge and Mac remove the bag from the truck bed. I walk alongside them as they
carry it over to the Humvee.
“Hold up,” Sarge tells Mac before they load it up. He pats me on the chest with the back of his hand. “I got you something, man.”
He unzips the bag and pulls out a rifle and hands it to me.
“What’s this?” I ask. I turn it to inspect it and my mouth drops open. “Is this a fucking Honey Badger?”
“Told you he’d like that shit,” he says to Mac.
Mac bends down and zips the bag back up, then he stands up and smiles when he sees me checking out the gun.
“Holy fuck,” I smile, in spite of all the shit that has happened. This assault rifle costs like three grand. It has a telescopic stock, signature suppression, and chambers .300 Blackout rounds. The shorter seven-inch barrel makes it only slightly bulkier than a submachine gun, but with all the firepower of an assault rifle. It is an efficient dealer of death.
“Spoils of war,” Sarge says.
“It’s fucking light,” I say assessing the weight of it.
“You be careful with that,” Mac teases me. “Don’t shoot your eye out.”
I know these guys only grabbed this for me because I fucked up my hand. This rifle should be easier to handle than the M4. Maybe they did it out of pity, but I don’t care. It still means a lot to me to know they got my back.
“Thanks, Sarge,” I say.
“What about me?” Mac says. “I helped carry it.”
“You didn’t do shit,” Sarge says.
“Hurry the fuck up!” the lieutenant yells. “I don’t feel like dying today.”
“Come on,” Sarge says. “You got the wheel, Graves.”
I climb in and start the engine as the dead round the corner of the hangar behind us. They hear the rumble of the Humvees and start moaning and hobbling as fast as their fucked up bodies will carry them.
We roll onto the highway and leave Las Vegas behind us. The throbbing pain in my hand returns once again. Maybe it was there the whole time. I was just too riled up to notice it.
Once the adrenaline is gone, that’s when the real battle begins. When you have to deal with the pain and the loss. I’d heard that from guys who had really been in the shit before, and now I understand it.
ROTD (Book 3): Rage of the Dead Page 7