A New World: Untold Stories (22 page)

I sense a foggy grayness around me and my head hurts. Fuck, does my head hurt. I slowly open my eyes and am almost blinded by the blazing sun overhead. I begin to take stock of my body, trying to find what works, and what doesn’t. Thankfully, it seems I can at least wiggle everything so that is a start. I try to sit up.

“Whoa there, buddy!” I hear. The unmistakable sound of Hal’s voice is a relief.

“What in the hell happened? How did I end up out here?” I say, noticing that I’m lying in grass.

“It seems the pilot forgot how to parallel park so he improvised. And as to how you got out here, you’re welcome. Now, let’s try and sit you up nice and slow.”

Hal places a hand between my shoulder blades and helps me to sit. Pain shoots through my skull, but otherwise I seem to be okay.

“Where’s everyone else? Where’s Oefje? Where’s my team?” I say, starting to panic.

“Oefje is really,
really
pissed, but seems fine. I’ll let you open his kennel because I don’t want to get eaten,” Hal answers.

“What about Jim, Steve, and their dogs?” I ask, but I get my answer as Hal drops his eyes and shakes his head. “Anyone else at all?”

“A few, but the ones that can walk have wandered off. Those that can’t are either too far gone to help, or being helped by others. We managed to belly flop onto the runway but there’s nobody here.”

“How long before sunset?” I ask.

“Well, assuming my watch is as tough as I am, we don’t have long. We need to find someplace to hunker down until we figure out what to do,” Hal replies.

I finally turn my head enough to get a good look at Hal and am stunned by what I see. His left ear is missing along with a good patch of skin and hair. His entire left side is covered in blood; I assume most of it is his.

“You look like shit,” I state.

“Thanks. We can trade beauty secrets later but first we need to get moving.”

“Right, where’s Oefje?” I ask and Hal points to a shaded area near some buildings.

Hal helps me to my feet and we make sure nothing is broken before we make our way to Oefje’s crate. Arriving, he begins to bark furiously until I talk to him and get him calmed down. After I get him to a less murderous state of mind, I open his kennel and attach his leash to get him out. I’m relieved to see he’s moving around okay. I was sure something would be broken.

Looking up at the darkening sky, I turn to Hal and ask, “So, where’s the armory?”

“The cop shop is in that direction about half a klick. I think we can make it before sundown if we don’t screw around. You up for it?” he asks.

“I’m good for now, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be a sore son of a bitch in the morning. What about you?” I reply.

“Other than some cosmetic surgery and a pounding headache, I’m good to go.”

“Then let’s get moving. I don’t want to be caught out here with my pants down,” I say.

“Trust me, entering a gunfight with your pants around your ankle is awkward,” he responds.

Again, I’m not going to press for details because I’m fairly certain that I don’t want to know.

We start off at a quick walk to make sure our bodies don’t decide to yell “Surprise!” and choose to tell us something is broken while in a full sprint. Once we’ve gone about twenty meters, we pick up the pace to a jog, then on to full sprint as the Security Forces building comes into view.

“Wait, why are we heading here? Shouldn’t we be heading to the special forces armory?” I ask.

“We’d never get in before sunset. The security system is too advanced even without power. This one I can get into as long as they haven’t upgraded their entry system since I was here last,” Hal answers.

Just ahead, I see the building we are heading to. It’s a fairly new structure from what I notice and the front doors are shut tight. I really hope we can at least get inside the building. Once up the four steps from street level to the door, we take up positions on either side of the entrance. I try to get Oefje to give the door a sniff, but he’s still too shook up from the landing to be of any use at the moment. I shake my head at Hal and he nods back. Reaching up, he grasps the door handle and gives it a tug. With an almost imperceptible hiss, it opens. He is pulling the door from his side which leaves the opening towards me. Toward me, why am I suddenly thinking about the instructions on a claymore? “THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY”.

Peeking in, the building is dark, but not pitch black. I can see most of the areas in front of me pretty well as there are a number of windows in this building. I nod to Hal and he opens the door the rest of the way, allowing me and Oefje to enter the building. Hal is right on our heels. This time Oefje seems to perk up and gives a cursory sniff and listen, but doesn’t seem to be overly interested in anything.

That’s good
, I think.
At least he doesn’t sense anything dangerous
.

We push farther into the building with no sign of anyone living, dead, or other. Hal directs us towards a heavy looking iron door with a keypad where the door handle should be. With a grin, Hal tinkers with the keypad even though there is no electricity.

“These things have a short-term battery backup. The trick,” he says as he messes with some now exposed wires, “is to find just the right spot to tickle with the juice to get it to open up.”

As if it was staged, the door pops open with a heavy clunk. “Voila!”

Pulling open the heavy door, inky light from the windows behind us penetrates the utter blackness within, revealing racks of weapons and equipment. I look down at Oefje who doesn’t seem overly concerned or interested until we hear a shriek coming from somewhere else inside the building. Hal and I look at each other and quickly enter the armory, shutting ourselves in.

“Fuck its dark!” I say.

“Hold on, got it covered. Put out a hand,” Hal says.

I suddenly feel something in my palm. Feeling it, I realize I’m now holding a set of NVGs. I attempt to turn them on only to realize they are stored with the batteries out of them.

“Got any batteries?” I ask.

“Working on it,” He answers.

I hear him fumbling around in the dark. Suddenly a beam of light turns on from the direction I last heard Hal.

“YES!” he quietly exclaims. “Found a flashlight!”

“Good, now stop pretending it’s a light saber and get that door secured. I didn’t like the sound of that scream.”

I find a weapons rack nearby and tie off Oefje’s leash. I don’t like doing it, but he’s still skittish from the crash and doesn’t know Hal that well yet, and I don’t want to risk getting him bitten. While I’m doing that, I hear some metallic noises coming from the door. I glance over to see Hal setting up a cross bar to prevent the door from being opened from the outside.

“That should do it,” he says.

Looking around with the flashlight, Hal finds a small battery-operated lantern and turns it on. It’s not much but it puts out enough light so we won’t trip on anything.

“Let’s get a few of these things chambered and ready, just in case,” Hal says, motioning to the weapons racks.

I walk over to the nearest line of M4s and select one. No bells or whistles, just your standard carbine. Looking around, I see where they store the magazines, grab one, and insert it. With a dry, mechanical click, I pull back the charging handle chambering a round and then sling the weapon over my shoulder. We both continue to look around the small room and find plenty of goodies, including batteries for the NVGs. I also find a decent first aid kit and bandage Hal’s head as best as I can in the low light.

Out of nowhere, the door suddenly shakes as something big collides with it, followed immediately by more pounding and multiple shrieks. Hal and I put on our NVGs and kill the meager light before taking positions to cover the entrance with our M4s. After a few hours the overly excited attack slows but doesn’t stop.

“I think the neighbors are getting tired,” I say.

“I hope so. There were a couple of those hits that I thought for sure were going to bust that crossbar,” he replies.

No sooner than the words are out of his mouth, the door is rattled by another huge impact. I look at my watch which shows it to be around 4:30 in the morning. About another half hour before the sun starts to show itself, and an hour before it breaks the horizon. I glance over at Oefje, who has been alternating between barking himself hoarse and attempting to lie down and rest.

As I’m about to move in his direction, there’s another huge impact, this time accompanied by the sound of rending metal.

“Shit!” we both yell at the same time.

Although I know that my weapon is ready to go, I check it anyways to make sure that I have a round chambered.

Suddenly, the door flies open. Coming through the entrance is human-looking creature that isn’t quite human. With a shriek, it starts for Hal and we both open up. The first few rounds catch it in the upper thigh, but the bullets quickly stich upward with the recoil of the weapon. I can’t see the wounds themselves, but I can see the impact of the projectiles as they meet flesh. One thing I’ve always thought of as strange is the lack of sound during moments like these. We are in an enclosed concrete room that is only about 10x10 so it should be deafening, but it’s not. I guess it has something to do with the fight or flight response of the body, but I don’t know. I just know that we have more of these things coming at us from the entrance.

Hal engages the next one through the door. Looking behind it, I see another which I target. Our rounds are mostly hitting their marks with devastating effect. We have standard ball ammunition so the rounds simply go through the bodies, sometimes striking the creature next in line. In short order, we have a pile of bodies inside the door. As suddenly as it started, the attack ends. The smell of gunpowder is heavy in the air. In ordinary times I like that smell, it’s comforting to me. Now it smells like death.

“Cover me!” I yell to Hal who nods.

I move forward to the mound of corpses in an attempt to get a look outside of the door. As I draw closer, I see that a few are still twitching, quickly dispatching them before moving to the door. I peek around the door jamb as best I can while crouching on top of the stinking pile of bodies. Behind me, Oefje is going ape-shit, straining at his leash to get to me, his protective nature coming out in full force. Normally I’d give him a command to try and shut him up, but I feel like screaming myself so I understand. In the hall all I see are dirty tracks, some made from boots, and others look like bare feet. The wall directly across from the door looks like someone tried to paint another door in blood. Bullet holes riddle the wall and blood has formed a rough outline of our door from the spatter of our rounds leaving their bodies. Seeing nothing else in the hall, I suddenly get hit with an olfactory wall of wet copper and released bowels, causing me to gag. I just hope I’m not the one who shit themselves.

Removing myself from the pile, I nod to Hal to let him know it looks clear. I then head over to Oefje to let him know that I’m okay and to calm him down a bit. Hal makes his way to the door and peeks out for himself, then lets out a low whistle.

In his best Steve Erkle voice, he asks, “Did I do that?”

Shaking from the adrenaline dump, I can’t help but chuckle.

“We need to find a ride and better gear if we want to get home,” Hal states.

“Think you can manage your way into the Spec. Ops. toy chest?” I ask.

“I think so. Let’s wait until the sun is completely up, then head over there” Hal answers.

“In the meantime, I want to get a better look at these things,” I say.

Walking back to the bodies, I lean over and inspect the first one I find. It’s a soldier. ‘US. Army’ on one strip on his uniform, ‘Harrison’ on the other. Like the soldier on the plane, his skin is mottled, almost translucent. There wasn’t any obvious trauma prior to this engagement, at least none that would account for his sudden change in personality. I was expecting to see a bite mark or something like Hollywood says causes zombies. At this point, I’m willing to believe just about anything now that these things are no longer myths, so the movies hold as much credence as a medical journal as far as these things are concerned.

Somewhere from deeper within the building, we hear a shriek. Both of us tense and bring our weapons around in that direction. After a few moments, it becomes clear that another attack is not imminent so we reload and move on towards the Spec. Ops. building and, from there, hopefully home.