Escape From Metro City

by Mandel, Richard

  The ubermensch's original data feed had included information on the earlier Army convoy that had previously tried and failed to rescue any Metro City survivors before being taken out by the zombie hordes. It knew that the convoy personnel had been equipped with both body armor and heavy weapons. That was why it had acted on this information. Now it was returning to its primary mission, with enough armor and weaponry scavenged from the wreck of the Army convoy and adapted to its unique physique to do its job. Now suitably equipped with defenses and weaponry superior to what its targets had available to them, it would do everything in its power to terminate them with the most extreme of prejudices. Furthermore, if the Army tried to interfere again, as it had tried to do with the downed Huey Hog gunship, then it would deal with them too. Its feet thundered as they pounded the road, its high-speed run intended to return it to the location of its intended prey despite the heavy burden of its new gear. It would let nothing stop it this time. For the ubermensch, either Lisa Stanridge and her friends would die or it would die. It was that simple.

  Chapter 12

  Showdown

  A large crowd of zombies had gathered behind the barricade across the northern end of Highway 9 that ran out of the quarantine zone from Metro City. Somehow, someway, by what means unknown, they had found out that the human guards had been drawn back from there, and now several hundred of them had massed at that currently unprotected point to attempt a breakout. They moaned and wailed, pounded and pushed, massing their might as they attempted to break down the barricade by sheer strength and moving mass alone. It was stoutly built and held despite their efforts, but it creaked and groaned down the entire section where they were massed, visibly shaking and even twisting a bit with their efforts. There would eventually come a time when the torque of that massed force would be too great for the barricade to bear, but not yet. It was still holding, and only needed to hold for a little longer.

  The zombies lessened their efforts as the steadily growing sound of multiple vehicle motors caught their attention. Soon they stopped altogether as the front end of a long column of U.S. Army and Marine vehicles rounded the far turn beyond the barricade and began to move down the highway towards them. In the lead were two tanks with Marine markings that had oddly flattened barrels, escorted by two U.S. Army tanks and a number of soldiers on foot bearing both automatic weapons and portable flamethrowers. Behind the tanks came three Army APCs and three Army cargo carriers fitted with large storage tanks, and behind those came more tanks, more APCs, more cargo carriers, a large assortment of both trucks and other Army and Marine vehicles, and even more soldiers on foot. Overhead and moving with them were two attack helicopters, longer and narrower than the one which had been downed earlier, and even more deadly looking than it had been. The zombies snarled and growled, and began to push and beat on the barricade again, sensing that a fight was coming and ready to make it happen. The barricade still held.

  The armored column came right up to the barricade and stopped once they were about a hundred yards from it. The soldiers on foot held their weapons at the ready but did not fire. The men manning the heavy machine guns on most of the vehicles turned them to face the barricade and pulled their breeches to chamber their first shells, but they too held their fire. All of the tanks and all of the APCS that had what looked like little gun turrets on them traversed them and locked onto the zombie horde at the barricade, but they too held their fire. The zombies attempting to break down the barricade grew even more frenzied. Some of them clambered up on it as high as its razor wire fitted top would allow and began to pull back and forth. Those sections of the barricade began to twist and groan. More zombies followed suit. In mere minutes, perhaps even seconds, the strain on the barricade would be too great and its connecting sections would snap from metal fatigue. The barricade would fall, and then the zombies could devour their second military convoy.

  "FIRE!!!" came General Ryan's shouted order.

  Ryan's voice sounded through loudspeakers mounted on several of the vehicles. Both of the lead Marine tanks, which were M67 Zippo flame tanks, immediately opened fire on the barricade. Instead of spewing shells at them from their main guns, however, they fired two long and very hot burning rods of flame that hit the zombie horde dead center. The tank crews then began traversing their turrets back and forth in order to cover the entire horde with burning fuel, and creating a giant fireball at the center of the barricade. An intense wave of heat and the charnel stench of crisping flesh quickly filled the air as most of the zombies were incinerated where they stood. Some still lived even though they were on fire and tried to run away, but they did not get very far. They would attempt a staggering run away from the now burning horde for a half-dozen or so steps, then fall and move no more as their own flaming flesh was quickly consumed. The affair lasted perhaps twelve seconds at most, and it was no contest. By the time both of the Marine Zippo tanks quit firing their M7-6 flame guns, every single zombie that had been massed at the barricade was a burning corpse, and the barricade itself had twisted and bent from the intense heat.

  "CLEAR THE BARRICADE!!!" came Ryan's next command.

  The armored column parted, both of the Marine Zippo tanks spun around on their treads, and then they quickly moved back to the front of either side of the parted column. Up the middle came three regular Army M60A2 Patton tanks, save that the fronts of all three were fitted with M9 Combat Dozer Blades. Their turrets had been traversed around fully in order to prevent damage to their main guns, and now all three deployed side to side and as close as they could get across the highway. They charged the fire-damaged barricade and the burning bodies beyond at full speed, with the former collapsing immediately as they hit it and many of the burning bodies flying aside. A fair number of these began to pile up in front of them but they quickly stopped and reversed themselves, making them fall off their blades as they trundled backwards. One burning body fell over the blade of one of these tanks and was carried back with it as it continued to back beyond the hole in the barricade. Several soldiers equipped with firefighting gear wearing backpack tanks of spray foam quickly ran up and doused the body before pulling it off the tank and flinging it back towards the barricade. The charge by the three blade-fitted tanks was repeated three more times, until a sufficiently large hole had been cleared through the broken barricade and burned zombie bodies for the armored column to pass. By now most of the fires had died down and what few remained were being put out by those soldiers equipped to do so and Army firefighting trucks that had driven up through the parted column, although the stink of burned flesh still filled the air. The officer-in-charge of the clearing operation took one final look, then keyed his radio and relayed a report to General Ryan farther back in the column. He only had to wait a second after he was done before Ryan's third command sounded over the armored column's loudspeakers.

  "FORM UP AND MOVE OUT!"

  The Army firefighters and firefighting vehicles quickly cleared away to both sides of the highway, even as Ryan's armored column reformed. Once it had, it began to pass through the large hole in the broken highway barricade, maintaining a slow but steady speed as it moved farther down the highway. Marine Zippo tanks, Army Zippo APCs, Zippo support vehicles, regular Army tanks, transports and jeeps and other various military vehicles, General Ryan and Colonel McKeegan along with their aides riding in an Army Ford MUTT, and along with them the hundreds of armed soldiers on foot. The entire column cleared the barricade, with General Ryan leaving behind only a sufficient contingent with enough support to both mop up behind them and guard the hole they had made, and then they were on their way southward down Highway 9.

  Colonel McKeegan gave General Ryan a grim grin as the column continued to move. "Now that's a sight I haven't seen since the war," he said.

  "Let's hope this action is the only time we have to use these on American soil," Ryan replied.

  McKeegan nodded. "Agreed." He now looked ahead. "How far away are those survivors?"

  "Just u
nder three miles as the crow flies, three-point-six by the highway."

  "Damn," McKeegan muttered. "As slow as we're moving, that's gonna give that thing plenty of time to get there before we do."

  "If it isn't there already," Ryan conceded. "We might find nothing but bodies and that thing waiting for us."

  "And yet you're doing this anyway."

  Ryan nodded. "I have my orders direct from the President himself. Besides," and with this he forced a smile, "I'm hoping they're still alive, especially that Stanridge girl. You know the saying. Hope springs eternal." He looked again at the road. "I just hope nothing else goes wrong with this op."

  "Me too," McKeegan said with a nod, and then also looked at the road.

  The two senior officers fell silent, saying no more as the armored column and its overhead attack helicopter escort continued moving southward down Highway 9.

  It was the raven that alerted both Cy and Raul to the return of the ubermensch to the Pandora industrial complex. It awked loudly, then flew up from its perch and towards the main gate. Cy and Raul followed its movements just in time to see a very large high-speed blur running down the road from the highway entrance. Both immediately opened fire on it, Cy with his AK-47 and Raul with his M-16. The blur immediately swerved and dodged behind a large stone sign set near the main gate announcing the identity of the complex in big carved letters facing the highway for all passers-by to see. Cy stopped shooting and motioned for Raul to do so as well, and that was when the ubermensch popped back up from behind its cover, swung up a Browning M2 50-caliber machine gun, propped it on the stone sign, and opened fire.

  Cy managed to get a good look at their foe before its return fire forced both him and Raul to scramble for cover themselves. Its appearance had changed dramatically since he had seen it stagger away down Highway 9, naked and missing the lower half of its right arm, with ugly wounds and burns on the right side of its head, right shoulder, right upper side, and right upper arm. Those had come from the single grenade he had managed to land on it. The creature now wore a crude smock woven together with rope and cargo netting from multiple Army armor vests and flak jackets, all of which had come from the ruin of Cy's rescue convoy in downtown Metro City. An Army helmet with the liner stripped out for a better fit was on its oversized head, although it did not completely hide the nasty wound and burns on the right side. Cy would later swear he had even seen a bare patch of skull surrounded by bloody and burnt skin in that head wound, during the few times he was able to get a look at it in the ensuing fight. The stump of its right arm now sported both a crude bandage and a tightly attached Army backpack for ammo storage. It had even more ammo in the crudely fashioned large pouch on its back that looked as if it had been made from a Humvee top cover, as well as multiple weapons. The creature was holding the back of the heavy machine gun with its one remaining hand, which was enough to work its double-handle trigger. Cy and Raul immediately scrambled to either side of the hedge as fast as they could, once they had seen the ubermensch bring up that big-ass weapon, so all that got chewed up where they had been were the ground and the shrubs that had once decorated that spot. A second later, seeing that it had missed its intended targets, the ubermensch redirected its fire at the Pandora main lab building. Its front windows shattered as multiple belt-fed .50 caliber shells tore into it, flying through the shattered windows and ripping through the front walls and into the rooms and hallways beyond. Within seconds, a young woman's anguished screaming could be heard above the din.

  "LISA!" Cy yelled, a look of horror on his face as he hid behind the orange Datsun pickup their group had used earlier to get there. From his own position behind a nearby retaining wall, Raul shook his head and crossed himself.

  The screaming stopped even as the ubermensch immediately redirected its fire at Cy. The Army corporal had to scramble for new cover as fast as he could, while the Datsun was shot to pieces. A spark from struck metal ignited the fuel in its gas tank and it promptly exploded. Cy was flung into another decorative set of shrubbery from the blast just as the Browning's breech clicked empty on a spent ammo belt. The creature tossed the now-useless gun aside and bounded towards Cy, reaching his position in two giant leaps and pulling an M60 from its back pouch as it did. Raul had popped up from behind the retaining wall and opened fire, trying to hit it on the move, but it reached into its right arm stump pack, grabbed something on its first landing, and then flung a grenade with the pin pulled at Raul while it flew through the air towards its second. Raul was forced to quit shooting and break cover. He ran madly to get behind a parked Pandora delivery truck across the way, and then the grenade exploded. By that time the ubermensch had landed less than a dozen feet away from Cy, who was still tangled in the shrubbery and fighting to break free. His struggling stopped as he looked up at the nearby ubermensch, towering above him despite the distance, as it whipped its M60 around and leveled it at him. It then brought up the stump of its right arm and used it to hold up the M60's ammo belt so it would feed properly, and then gave the poor human a devilishly wicked grin. Cy gulped, knowing there was nothing either he or Raul could do, that Lisa was probably dead and Mercy either also dead or badly wounded, and that his own impending death was less than a second away. He looked straight into the eyes of the ubermensch and mentally resigned himself to his fate.

  Suddenly the head of the creature snapped around. Two new sounds now impressed themselves on Cy's consciousness. The first had been there before, starting low but steadily growing in volume, but the sudden ferociousness of the ubermensch's attack coupled with its devastating results had helped to hide it. Now that first sound could clearly be heard. It was the rumble of multiple approaching diesel motors. The second was the sound of a 105mm main tank gun being fired from less than a thousand yards away. The ubermensch immediately took a great leap to one side, and a 105mm tank shell tore through the air where it had just been a split second later. It howled past Cy's position and sailed on down the Pandora complex parking area before slamming into one of the side buildings next to the main lab building. There was a tremendous explosion as the roof and part of the upper walls of the side building were blown apart and the pieces flung in all directions. Cy snapped his head around to the main gate. There was a U.S. Army M60A2 Patton main battle tank sitting there, its main gun still smoking and its turret traversing as it tried to track the still-moving ubermensch. Cy could see other tanks behind the first one, and both tanks and APCs with both Army and Marine markings moving up to the high security fence on either side, apparently intending to knock it down and plow on through. He now heard the whirring of helicopter rotors as two AH-1 Air Cobras came in flying fast and low, chain guns blazing at the ubermensch. It broke off its attack and immediately bounded away, twisting and dodging the rain of shells being directed at it. Cy looked at the back end of the road, and he could just make out other military vehicles of various shapes and sizes heading down it towards the complex. Inwardly, the Army corporal breathed a big sigh of relief.

  Cy sensed rather than saw Raul break cover and run back to him. He felt tugging on his trapped arms and legs, and within a few seconds he was free of the shrubbery. He came back to his feet just as Raul was scooping up his fallen AK-47, and then the stout Mexican handed it back to him. Cy took it and together the both of them ran for the nearest decent piece of cover.

  "Thanks, man!" Cy said as they ran.

  "Si!" Raul exclaimed as he ran beside him. "Look like your cavalry, it come over the hill, eh senor?"

  "Si!" Cy agreed wholeheartedly.

  The pair found their new cover behind yet another retaining wall in front of another set of shrubbery behind the Pandora factory complex's administrative building. They dashed behind it and then crouched there, watching as General Ryan's armored column and air cover took on the ubermensch. Raul hunkered down and kept his assault rifle at the ready, quietly cursing in Spanish as he did. As for Cy, he gritted his teeth and wished his fellow soldiers the best of luck. They had to succeed, fo
r Lisa's sake, if nothing else. They simply had to succeed.

  As for the raven, it had somehow found its way back to the top of the lab building despite the battle now raging within the Pandora lab complex. It resumed its perch as if nothing unusual were going on, then watched with interest the proceedings below. Such a sweet feast of souls was about to be laid before it ... including one in particular it intended to claim in place of the one it had been denied.