Sever, p.22
Sever, page 22
His sense of revulsion at the creatures rose as he observed them through the long-range scope on his SCAR. He’d been up close and killed a lot of them, but he hadn’t actually watched the way that they reacted to stimuli and seemed to ebb and flow as a group. The more he watched them, the more he believed that they communicated in some way because there was a pattern to their movements. It felt like he was observing at an ant colony working to bring food back to the hive.
The operator wondered which building along the Mall that they had been protecting. Large museums lined the entire length. The only places that he felt that he could rule out were the National Archives and the National Museum of Art since they’d visited those places extensively last spring. The crowd surged back and forth in one mass near the fourth and fifth patch of dirt that had once been the lush, green grass of the Mall. There were hundreds of zombies spread out along the length of the open area by themselves, but they were likely just the ones that couldn’t get near the main group.
After watching the crowd for over an hour, he was confident that the Type One controlling these things was in one of two buildings. There was the red brick building that jutted out close to the Mall on the south side that looked like an honest-to-goodness castle and there was the large National Museum of Natural History directly across from that one on the north side. The creatures were incredibly thick in front of those two buildings, so he was confident that it had to be one of them. He’d been to the museum before during his counter-observation training for the Agency, but he didn’t have any clue what the red building had been when the city was still alive.
He’d seen all that he needed to and decided that it was time to make his move. He lined up his first shot, far into the middle of the pack away from his own position on the hill. He’d decided to begin there in case the creatures figured out that something was wrong, hopefully they wouldn’t head toward his position and instead go to where their fellow zombies had died.
He’d also determined that the best course of action would be to kill the healthiest-looking ones first. Those would be able to move quickly if they identified his location. A large male ambled across his scope. Its clothes had long since rotted away, which meant that it had been out there, on guard in the elements for a long time. Yeah, you’ll do nicely, Big Guy, he told himself.
Breathe, exhale, pause, squeeze and observe. A thick stream of blackish crap erupted from its head and flew into the evening air. The big zombie dropped like a sack of shit. Kestrel waited for a reaction from the creatures around the one he’d shot, but none of them seemed to notice. A couple of them even tripped over the body until they communicated to one another to avoid it and then the crowd parted ways around the corpse while still moving at their normal pace. His spine tingled at the pure insect-like nature of the creatures. Insects felt no remorse and had no sense of self-preservation; their only goal was to further the hive’s lifespan.
He lined up another shot and took his time killing creatures one at a time at various points within the mass. He went with headshots to make every round count and changed out magazines as needed. Kestrel rapidly went through all five mags in his backpack, plus the one that had been in the weapon when he started, 180 rounds total. Every shot had been a kill. It had taken less than fifteen minutes and he’d barely made a dent in the crowd. It had gone quickly, but this would take a lot longer than he’d anticipated and he would have given his left nut for a gunship. That wasn’t coming, he was alone. The only thing he could do was to clear the zombies himself, so he sat down and began the tedious work of manually reloading the magazines as quietly as possible.
The ten full magazines in his chest rack remained untouched. Those were for run and gun firefights, like if his position became compromised and he had to go quickly, possibly even leaving behind the heavy backpack full of ammo. It was a lesson he’d learned early on as a SEAL in East Timor fighting with the Aussies against Muslim terrorists. Always leave yourself with readily accessible ammunition and reload your mags when possible; you never knew when you’d need them.
Finally, nine empty cardboard boxes lay scattered on the ground, each empty of its twenty 7.62-millimeter rounds to fill the six thirty-round magazines. Kestrel stood and placed the rifle on the crumbling wall once again and began selecting targets at random from the crowd. Time to cull the herd.
*****
31 October, 1824 hrs local
Lehigh Valley International Airport
Allentown, Pennsylvania
They were trapped. The creatures had followed them into the wreckage, effectively removing any escape route back down the highway and now the way forward was blocked off by, of all things, a big jumbo jet on its side. “Well what are we going to do now, genius?” Katie snarled.
“I don’t know. I’m… I’m thinking!” he stammered.
“You better think a little faster, because we’re about to have company,” Maria stated from the back seat, much more calm than the younger woman.
“We could abandon the car and make a run for it,” Shawn suggested.
“No, I’m not walking anymore if I don’t have to,” Katie said. “We could turn around and ram them, right?”
“There’s not enough room to get up enough speed. We’d just end up getting trapped along the road and then the creatures would trap us when we stop,” Maria said.
“Our only option is to get out of the car,” Shawn agreed. “We can find another one before too long.”
“How’d that work out for you last time you went looking for cars?”
“Katie, you’re not helping. Why are you being like this?” Shawn asked. He did not need her attitude right now. He wasn’t happy about being the group’s de facto leader and their insistence that he be the one to make the final decisions about their fate. It seemed like everything was a life and death decision; he just wanted to make a simple choice for once—something mundane like most of his decisions in life had been before the apocalypse.
The teenager’s face softened and then she replied, “You’re right, Shawn. I’m sorry. I’m stressed out that I might die in a few minutes.”
He glanced into the rearview mirror at the slowly advancing mass of undead behind the Buick. They were certainly rambling slower than the ones that he’d seen before, especially those back in Parsippany. Once again, it seemed to Shawn that the creatures had changed how they operated. It was certainly strange, but he didn’t have time to think about why they kept changing their tactics.
What he did have to think about was what they were going to do. It was an easy decision, there really weren’t any choices left except to abandon the car. “Okay, we’re gonna grab our gear and go. There’s no way that we can make it past them in the car and if we get stuck in here, then we’re done for.”
Katie grumbled, but the other two passengers opening their doors got her moving in the right direction. Shawn wondered briefly what they were going to take. They hadn’t accumulated a lot of random things, but they had a decent supply of food and borrowed clothing. He hated to lose any of it, but they didn’t have enough backpacks to get everything. Plus, they’d gotten lax about re-packing their supplies into their packs and now they didn’t have the time to stuff everything into them.
Stupid, Shawn thought. He needed to get his shit together and be a leader. They couldn’t afford to make mistakes. No more shortcuts. This new world meant that they had to be prepared to flee at any moment. If something happened to one of them, it would be his fault. These two women looked to him to help keep them alive, they were his responsibility and it was time he started acting like their leader.
“Let’s go. Stuff what food you can into your backpacks and don’t forget your weapons,” he ordered as he opened the trunk. It was a disaster, they’d put food in the back without boxes or bags of any kind and it had flown everywhere when they weaved around the rubble in the city. They were going to lose most of it.
He crammed a few cans of soup into his pack and checked the creatures. Had they sped up? He didn’t know, but they were definitely closer than where he thought they should be. A few more cans went into his bag and then a noise made him stop and look skyward.
The sound of far off helicopters made him stop. If there were helicopters, then maybe the city hadn’t been abandoned! He wondered if they could get up on top of some of the wreckage and make a fire that the pilots could see. One thing at a time, Buddy. He eyed the zombies again; he was sure that some of them had seen the car now. They’d altered their course and now headed directly for them instead of following the crowd. It was time to go.
“Okay, that’s it. They’ve seen us. We’re leaving,” he said. He wanted to shoot into the group of them with Jon’s rifle, but he knew that would only alert all of them that they were there, not to mention everything within earshot of them as well.”
“But what about all of our stuff?” Katie pleaded.
“We’ll get more. It won’t do you any good if you’re dead. We’re going that way,” he said as he gestured toward the wreckage of several taller buildings with the infamous baseball bat.
*****
31 October, 1835 hrs local
En Route to Target Location
Allentown, Pennsylvania
The beating of the rotor blades pounded into Kevin’s chest. He loved the feeling of soaring above the ground, flying across the devastation below at over 125 miles per hour. Since the zombie war started, he’d put in tons of hours flying in the Guard’s helicopters, which was something that the young sergeant wouldn’t have been able to do if there hadn’t been a war.
As infantryman in the Indiana National Guard’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the Night Hawks, he’d deployed to Afghanistan, but all of his movements had been by ground in the giant MRAP vehicles; none of their missions had been in helicopters. It took a zombie outbreak to get him and his squad up in the air. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
The young noncommissioned officer had been running search and rescue missions for weeks now as part of the brigade’s forward deployed element. His battalion had been attached to the newly-designated Joint Task Force East Coast that was commanded up by the New Jersey Army National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division. Their missions ran almost nonstop as the command found new groups of survivors that the rescue teams had to go out and secure.
Kevin secretly wondered what good it would do to rescue all of these people. What they should have been doing was focusing on wiping out the zombies, not flitting around, risking soldiers’ lives to rescue a couple of people at a time. Sure, it was the right thing to do for the individuals, but was it the right thing to do for the country? His squad could kill hundreds of the creatures from the safety of the air instead of inserting behind the lines and potentially getting themselves killed while they were on the ground.
That wasn’t his mission. All he wanted to do was kill zombies, but he’d do his duty and follow his orders.
The headset that he wore over the top of his helmet crackled and then he heard the co-pilot’s voice, “Hey, Sergeant Lamar, we’re one minute out from the insertion point.”
“Thank you, sir. We’re ready to go,” he responded into the headset’s integrated microphone.
“Roger. We’ll find a nice, calm place to put you down this time.”
He winced at the pilot’s statement. Yesterday they’d put down in Quakertown, Pennsylvania to search for survivors, where they’d been inserted onto the football field and the zombies came out of the woodwork for a meal. Thankfully, they were the kind that just wandered around wherever their feet took them and attacked only what they could see; those were mostly harmless on an individual basis and were easily killed without much effort. Not like the ones that continued to attack the bulk of the Army. That kind was different somehow, like a swarm of angry ants. There were rumors among the troops that all of the zombies were the same until they got together and then they got smarter collectively.
Kevin didn’t know about that, but he’d watched groups of the creatures work together to find ways around obstacles when he was on the defensive line the first few days of the war when his unit was sent east. Since then, the governor had imposed restrictions on the way his troops could be used and front line fodder wasn’t one of them. He laughed to himself, Thank goodness for the Russians. They loved being in the line and challenging their manhood against the creatures. They’d lost so many soldiers to stupid individual acts of bravado, but he was glad that they were on the humans’ side instead of fighting against them.
He glanced out of the door as the back of the helicopter dipped slightly in preparation for landing. It looked like they were coming down onto the roof of the mall—which had sustained significant damage, but the satellite imagery made it appear to be stable enough for the troops to walk across. He would make the call on the ground about whether or not to leave the safety of the roof after he assessed the local situation.
The door gunner on the opposite side let off a quick burst and the pilot came back on the radio, “Okay, Smitty tagged a few off to the south of our position. We’re going to begin hover… Now. You’re cleared to exit the bird.”
The infantryman took the headphones off and turned toward his squad. Using a combination of hand gestures and screaming above the helicopter’s big engines, Kevin ordered his soldiers to dismount the bird. Once he was sure everyone knew what he wanted, he rotated the locking mechanism on his own safety harness, swung his legs out over the side of the helicopter and then jumped the two feet down to the roof of the mall.
It only took a few seconds for everyone to get onto the roof and then the Blackhawk was lifting skyward. The pilots would fly to a location about a mile from the Lehigh Valley Mall and then the door gunners would open up, making a lot of noise and hopefully drawing away any of the creatures that had begun movement toward the drop off location. They’d used the technique successfully on every mission that Kevin’s team had run so far and it worked brilliantly.
“Got visual on the target vehicle, Sergeant.”
Kevin walked quickly to where Specialist Vaccaro pointed out toward the highway. He squinted, but at that distance he couldn’t see well enough to discern what she pointed to. “Are you sure?”
“Positive, Sergeant,” she replied with a curt nod of her chin. “My parents had a 1991 Buick LaSabre. I’d recognize that outline anywhere.”
He opened a small aftermarket pouch strapped to his ballistic vest and pulled out the miniature folding binoculars inside. After scanning the area that she indicated for a second, he saw the target, a dark gray early ‘90s model Buick. Damn, that girl’s got some good eyes.
It looked like they’d traveled down the main highway until they came to the choke point where there was too much debris to turn around and a freaking airplane fuselage blocked the way forward. Zombies surrounded the car, but they weren’t actively trying to get inside, which meant that the passengers had already fled or were doing a really good job at hiding inside the vehicle. If the creatures knew that they were inside, they’d be attacking the car.
“The roof is secure, Sergeant,” another of his soldiers called over to him. The rehearsals were paying off, they knew that immediately upon setting down, they had to ensure that the roof was free from any potential threats and that access to the area was secure.
“Alright, guys,” Kevin addressed his squad. As he spoke, he pointed out beyond the mall parking lot to US Route 22. “We know that there was a Buick traveling west down that highway right there and now it’s sitting on the other side of the river, abandoned. Even though we’re too late to intercept the occupants while they’re still in the car, our mission hasn’t changed. We’ll move out from here, find any survivors and kill any zombies that we see. Questions?”
“Wouldn’t it be smarter to hold up here overnight and then go out in the morning?” Private Majors asked.
He grinned as Specialist Vaccaro slapped the private on the back of the helmet and answered, “Nope. We know that the Buick was moving at least an hour ago when we were scrambled for this mission. Sometime during our flight, those people had to abandon their car which means that they’re on foot in Indian Territory and don’t know their way around. We know that they’re close, if we wait until the morning, they could be miles from here if they went in the opposite direction.”
“Majors is just afraid of the dark, Sarge,” Private Folsom said.
“That’s because there really are monsters in the dark,” Vaccaro answered darkly. “We’ve got this, Sergeant. Let’s go rescue those people.”
“Alright. Set up the beacon lights on the wall and let’s go do this. We leave in five minutes.”
*****
31 October, 1849 hrs local
Lehigh Valley International Airport
Allentown, Pennsylvania
They’d been running for more than ten minutes, but the girl knew that they hadn’t gone nearly far enough to be safe. When she glanced back at the airplane wreckage, it was still clearly visible, even if the zombies weren’t. It drove her crazy that despite her injuries from less than a week ago, Maria seemed like she was a machine, running smoothly and not out of breath or overly tired.
Before all of this went down, Katie hadn’t thought that she was out of shape. She went to the gym once or twice a week and walked a long ways across campus every day back at school, so she thought that she’d easily be suited for a life on the road when her boyfriend suggested that they leave the safety of their apartment near the County College of Morris back in Randolph. One day, he’d left for a supply run and never returned.
The need for food and water had driven her farther from the apartment and that’s how she ended up with these two. They were alright, but she felt like the third wheel and was shocked to find out that they’d only known each other for about two weeks. They seemed to work very well together and she could easily see them dating, although Shawn’s wife had been killed only a month ago.
