These Dead Lands: Immolation (70 page)

Mortars cracked behind them, and rounds exploded among the dead a hundred meters out. Fifty-caliber machine guns racked the zombie ranks from the towers, along with the slower MK19 grenade launchers. Some of the guys on the wall were even lobbing hand grenades over the side, blowing up knots of zombies trying to climb the berm. For every zombie face blasted apart, fifty more seemed to take its place. They were piling up on the berm, actually making contact with the bottom of the container wall. The dead paid a price for the attack, but they just didn’t care. They were coming, and nothing as mundane as several thousand guys shooting at them was going to change their minds.

A CH-47 pounded overhead, flying out over the sea of dead. It banked around, and the gunners in the shoulder doors and on the ramp began slanting lead into the zombies, hitting them from behind. Their fire wasn’t particularly accurate, and the reekers didn’t care either way. While a human enemy would have had to duck to avoid the grazing fire, the ghouls below just ignored it.

“You know, I kind of wish I’d gone into aviation right about now!” Slater yelled. “At least those guys can get the hell out of Dodge!”

“And go where?” Ballantine asked.

“Bragg, of course. We could land at every airport on the way and take on fuel. At a hundred seventy knots, we could make it there in a day!”

“How’re you going to get the fuel with no power for the pumps?” Ballantine asked. He ejected an expended mag and slapped in a new one. He waved the rifle around a bit, hoping to cool off the barrel before resuming firing. It was probably a dumb thing to do, but the last item on his bucket list was Get Caught by Zombies While Holding Busted M4.

“They have portable pumps for sucking gas out of blivets,” Slater said. “I’ll bet if we could tap into a fuel pond, we could use one of those to tank up a shithook, easy!”

“And what if Bragg is gone by the time we get there?”

“Bite your tongue, Ballantine. In that case, I’d reverse course and head for the Great Lakes. I could grab a boat and make a run for Canada if the fuel ran out. Less people up there, less zombies, a lot of unsettled land—that’s the ticket. Better than fighting zombies and alligators in Florida, don’t you think? Maybe I should bring that up to Hastings.”

“Yeah, well, like you said, you’re not an aviator. Unless you’re going to tell me you know how to fly a helicopter?” Ballantine resumed firing.

“I don’t, but I’m willing to learn!”

Guerra leaned toward Ballantine as he swapped out magazines. “Hey, ladies, I hate to barge in on your conversation, but we’ve got a fucking problem to the right!”

Ballantine looked that way, and all he saw were Stilley, Reader, Tharinger, and Hartman going to guns on the dead. Hartman had scrounged up a SAW, and he was tearing through the dead, trying to push them back from the wall. All the men were lying in a virtual sea of expended cartridges that was a good four inches deep.

“What’s Stilley doing now?”

“It ain’t Stilley, for once,” Guerra said. “Push up and check it out!”

Ballantine stopped firing and rose to his knees. At the far end of the wall, about three hundred feet from where he stood, he saw soldiers retreating while firing. The zombies had managed to gain a foothold and were coming over the wall.

The sound of the Chinook’s rotor beat changed substantially, and the big aircraft looped around and headed toward the incursion. It settled into a hover, and the gunners on the aircraft’s right side started hammering the reekers with everything they had.

“What is it?” Slater shouted. “What do you see, Ballantine?”

“You were right,” Ballantine said, as more and more zombies piled up against the wall and began climbing over the top. More soldiers dashed toward the breakthrough, hurrying to reinforce the soldiers that were being pushed back. “We really
are
fucked.”

*

“Colonel, they’ve pushed
over the line. We’ve got several dozen reekers on our side of the wall, with more coming over,” Major Bonneville said. “This is confirmed by Wildcat.”

Hastings knew Wildcat was the call sign for Lieutenant Colonel Gavas, the Cav squadron commander who was in charge of overseeing the wall defenses. When he heard gunfire that sounded much, much closer than that coming from the wall, he pulled out his M4 and got to his feet.

“Relax, Hastings,” Victor said. “Pontiac, where’s the breakthrough?”

There was a big map of the post on the table where Victor, his executive officer Herbert, Command Sergeant Major Parker, and several other members of Victor’s senior staff sat. The map had been annotated with all the defensive modifications made over the past several days.

Bonneville pointed at the long line that demarcated the container wall that stretched along the Gap’s southern exposure, blocking it from highway access. “Right here, sir, over by Area Eleven. Near the utility group and not too far from the general hospital.”

“The hospital?” Hastings looked from Bonneville to Victor. “Sir, we need to—”

Victor waved him to silence. “It’s already been shut down, Hastings. It was evacuated yesterday. We didn’t have any critical care patients there, anyway. They’re in the barracks at Area Six.” He turned back to Bonneville. “Okay, we have a response team on the ground mopping up the squirters?”

“Underway. But if we can’t plug that hole, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble,” Bonneville said.

“AMP, can we get a surveillance platform over there?”

“Uh, sir, report from Hawk Three,” said one of the enlisted soldiers manning the bank of radios. Hawk was the call sign issued to the remaining Chinooks.

“Let’s hear it. What’ve you got?”

“Southern wall has been compromised in the same area, sir. They say we can expect over a thousand reekers on the ground inside the wall at any moment.”

Victor nodded to Bonneville. “Get some firepower out there, Pontiac. Right now.”

Outside, the gunfire on the ground increased almost exponentially. Bonneville turned back to the radios, and Lieutenant Colonel Herbert started going through the papers on the table before him.

“Sir, they’re pretty close to us,” Herbert said. “We should consider relocating to a more secure area. We have all the C&C Humvees right outside.”

“I’m not convinced we need to go anywhere just yet,” Victor said. “Captain Hastings?”

“Sir?”

“Do me a favor. Run out there, take a quick look around, and give me a no-bullshit assessment. Avoid enemy contact, but try to get a good picture of what’s going on. All right?”

Hastings put down his rifle and slung into his rucksack. “You got it, sir.”

“You have commo with you?”

Hastings slapped the MBITR clipped to his vest. “I have the freqs already, sir.”

“All right. Take one of the Humvees out front. Make it quick.”

Hastings left the headquarters building at a run and crossed the parking lot to where a line of Humvees sat. He ignored the ones with the boxes on them. They were full of radios and the like. He pulled off his ruck, tossed it into one of the regular troop trucks, and hopped behind the wheel, ignoring the young NCO who stood nearby, rifle in hand.

He didn’t have to guess where the action was. The sound of active fighting led him right to it. He drove across the parking lot, turned right onto Fisher Avenue, then hung another right onto Service Road. The container walls were straight down Utility Road, which was the next intersection. He saw armed Humvees already clustered there, along with several Strykers and what would be called a “shit-ton” of dismounts, all already going to guns on reekers stumbling through the trees. They weren’t that far from the headquarters building, maybe only a ten-minute walk. But the group at the intersection of Utility and Service were making short work of them, especially the GAU-19s, which didn’t leave a lot left of any zombies that happened to get into the stream of .50-caliber fire.

A reeker wearing a bloody Army uniform stepped out into the road, right in front of Hastings. He cursed and stomped on the brake pedal while cranking the wheel to the right and damning himself for being fixated on what was happening up in the intersection instead of driving. He couldn’t entirely avoid the reeker, and it caromed off the Humvee’s front left bumper as the vehicle skidded to a halt at the edge of where pavement gave way to grass. The reeker floundered on the cement and sat up. Half its face had been ripped away from sliding across the road, but it stared at him with milky, vacant eyes. The ghoul had come out of the tree line to the left. Hastings looked beyond the zombie as it slowly rose to its feet, and he saw more figures pushing through the foliage.

A
lot
more.

He put the Humvee in reverse as the firing in the intersection suddenly trebled. A wave of ghouls shambled toward the vehicles there, and as Hastings backed out of the area, he saw two soldiers go down. Despite the directed fire, a mob of reekers descended on one of the Humvees and pulled the gunner right out of the turret before the man could duck inside. And a few dozen reekers stepped out of the woods to his left, joining the military zombie Hastings had tagged with his fender.

He reached for his MBITR’s push-to-talk button. “War Eagle, this is Crusader One One. Over.”

“Crusader One One, this is War Eagle. Send it.”

“War Eagle, Crusader. We have reekers in force on Service Road. Checkpoint at intersection of Service and Utility is being overrun. Estimate number of enemy contacts to be”—Hastings did a quick estimate—“approximately seven hundred in force and growing. Over.”

“Crusader One One, this is War Eagle. Roger. Container wall has been overrun in that area. Six says you need to get back and prepare to relo to the train yard. Over.”

Hastings kept rolling backward until he came to a parking lot. He cut the wheel right and slalomed into the area. He was surprised to see a small group of reekers already there, and they drunkenly turned toward his Humvee as it braked to a halt. He must have driven right past and not noticed them only minutes ago.

“Crusader One One, War Eagle. Negative contact. Over.”

“War Eagle, this is Crusader One One. Roger. Will regroup with you at the rail yard. Out.” Hastings put the Humvee in gear and zoomed out of the parking lot, leaving the zombies in the dust.

As he crossed Service Road, he saw the Strykers and Humvees in the intersection pulling out and heading his way, firing as they went. Groups of zombies clustered around fallen men to feed. More ghouls emerged from the trees, and several reached for Hastings’s Humvee as he went past.

When he was clear, he slowed and flipped frequencies on his radio. “Crusader One Seven, this is Crusader One One. Come in. Over.” He repeated the call twice before Ballantine’s voice came over his headset.

“One One, One Seven—send it!” The big sergeant first class sounded as though he was running and gunning at the same time.

“One Seven, are you retreating at this time? Over.” Hastings pressed the gas pedal. He zoomed past Fisher, heading down Service Road at fifty miles per hour. He kept the Humvee pretty much in the middle of the road, straddling the yellow line.

“Roger, One One, we’re pulling out of here. Container wall is falling. Over.”

“Crusader One Seven, Crusader One One. Roger that. I’m moving to the civilians now. I want you and the rest of the team to get to the barracks ASAP. Do you have transportation? Over.”

“One One, negative. We’re working on that. Papa Zero Three has his eye on a target, and he’s appropriating it now. Have not had time to make contact with the civilians. Over.”

Hastings heard Stilley shouting in the background, “Queer zombies! They only eat men! Fruit on the bottom!” Stilley was half-laughing while firing. Clearly, the guy had just gone off his last rocker.

“One Seven, let me know when you’re headed our way. I’ll advise you of our exact position if we have to relocate. One One, out.”

Hastings put both hands on the wheel and concentrated on driving. He stomped on the brakes when he closed on the intersection with Smathers Road and tried not to roll the Humvee as he took the hard left turn.

*

When the gunfire
began to become more localized, Bill Everson became more than a little bit worried. He had lookouts on security: the two Navy vets on either side of the barracks at a couple of windows and Walker on the front stoop with him. Everson couldn’t see anything, but some of the rifle fire was close, no more than five hundred meters or so.