Degeneration (20 page)

The blast caused a crescendo of car alarms echoing out for miles.

“What the fuck was that?!” Col. Mathis asked from inside the command post, blocks away. The entire auditorium shook from the explosion and chunks of plaster shook loose from the ceiling.

Humvees
quickly
arrived at the scene of the RBC tower explosion along with
mul
tiple FEMA vans. White-suited soldiers poured out of the Humvees and
took
position
around the breached lo
bby, sighting-in their weapons. H
elicopters
circled above the engulfed lobby entrance
.

“Delta Lead to
Delta Base!
Delta Lead to
Delta Base! There has been an explosion at Site 21! There are multiple causalities and the building is breached!
I r
epeat, Site 21 has been compromised!  A CDC disposal unit is at the scene.
Requesting immediate
additional security
support, over
,
” one of the
white-suits
screamed into the radio
.

CDC white-suits wielding flamethrowers hopped out the back of the FEMA vans and formed a semicircle around the breached lobby.

“
Copy, Delta Lead. Base to all downtown detachments! Attention all downtown detachments! Converge on Site 21 immediately! Code Orange! Wea
pons hot! Engineer detachment, report to the breach and get it sealed,
over!”

A man staggered out of the breached lobby
entrance
, head twitching as he looked around with glazed eyes. He gave a feral cry and
started to run towards the amassed soldiers.

The CDC white-suits fired-up their flamethrowers and engulfed the infected man.

The man staggered towards one of the CDC white-suits and collapsed to the ground a few feet away from him, withering in the flames.

“Delta Lead to Delta Base
! We have confirmed Whiskey-Tangos! I repeat, confirmed W
hiskey-Tangos, over!”

Two more i
nfected
men wearing blood-stained dress shirts
staggered out of the lobby with their
mo
uths fastened in a bloody snarl.

The CDC white-suits engulfed the two men in flames.

Both men, despite being covered in flames, charged towards the CDC white-suits but were quickly put-down by the white-suited soldiers just a few yards away in front of the Humvees.

“Copy, Delta Lead! Attention all downtown detachments! Confirmed Whiskey-Tango sighted! Code Red!
Break. Repeat. Code Red!
”

Suddenly, ten
people ran out of the lobby in a full-
sprint, screaming,
snarling rabidly, and
two of them were
already on fi
re.

The
CDC
white-suits
fired-up their flamethrowers, sweeping the flames back-and-forth as they collectively took several steps backwards
.

The infected continued, unimpeded by the fire dancing off of them, and leapt onto several of the CDC white-suits, biting through their protective suits.

The CDC white-suits panicked and turned their flamethrowers on each other, screaming.

The white-suited soldiers opened indiscriminate fire on both the infected and the CDC white-suits, riddling the corpses with bullet holes.

The corpses collapsed on the ground, engulfed in flames.

“Delta Lead to Delta Base! The CDC disposal detachment has been neutralized! I repeat, the CDC detachment has been–”

Infected ran out of the lobby
sixteen strong and effortlessly hurdled
over the
engulfed
bodies of the fallen.

The frightened
soldiers
managed to take
down about eight whe
n twenty more
rushed out of the lobby
.

As the soldiers fired, infected started to jump out of the shattered lower-floor windows.

Soon, the infected outside were over a hundred strong
.

Bullets fired wildly into the air as the
soldiers were tackled to t
he ground
one-by-one
. Infected swarmed the
soldiers, ripped open
their white-suits
, and tore into
them ruthlessly.

All the while, i
nfected
men, women, and children
continued
to pour out of the breached RBC l
obby
and jump out of the lower-floor windows
.

The
soldiers
manning
the
Humvee’s mounted
machine guns
indiscriminately
fired into the rapidly growing
horde of infected as they converged all around them.

Infected climbed
onto the
Humvees and pulled the screaming gunners out of their nests, tearing into them
.

The infected horde
ran
dow
n the street, snarling, towards an
arriving convoy
of
four armored personnel carriers and a battalion of jogging white-suited soldiers.

The soldiers opened fire and managed to take down
a few
scattered targets but failed to eff
ectively slow down the
horde. W
ithin seconds, the horde swarmed
th
e soldiers and climbed onto the four armored personnel carriers. The personnel carriers crashed against each other in the middle of the street as the infected swarmed past them and climbed over them.

“
Overwatch Four to
Delta
Base, Overwatch Four to
Delta
Base, we lost primary
ground
position and have multiple targets! Whiskey-Tangos have pushed through and are Oscar-Mike, over!”
one of the pilots hovering above cried out into the radio.

“
Delta Base to all ground and O
verwatch units! This is Colonel Mathis, downtown operations commander! Use of indiscriminate fire is authorized! Fire at will! Fire at will! Do not allow th
e Whiskey-Tangos
to get anywhere near the
downtown
quarantine border!”

T
wo
Blackhawk
helicopters hovered low and fired their machine guns into the
massive
crowd
on the street
, killing both inf
ected and non-infected
alike. It was no use
. F
or every infected
person
they killed
,
dozens
more seem
ed
to
emerge from the RBC tower
.

On the street, terrified white-suits
fell back and ran away from the advancing horde while firing
wildly
into it, tearing
through
many
unfortunate
white-suits
caught in the panicked cr
ossfire.

The horde overtook soldier-after-
soldier as
it
relentlessly advanced towards the
bright halogen lamps of the
161
st
base camp a few blocks away at the Meymandi Concert Hall.
The bright lamps led the infected like moths to the flame.

Four
Humvees
careened around the corner at the intersection of Hargett and Fayetteville,
crushing
four terrified
white-suits
in the process.
The gunners manning the
Humvee
’s rooftop
M2 Browning machine guns
opened fire
into
the
advancing horde
.

Large sections of the horde disintegrated into bloody splotches, but more bodies filled-in the gaps from the back of the horde, bounding over the bodies of their fallen comrades
. Within seconds
, the horde swarmed over the vehicles.

The gunners manning the
Humvee’s machine guns
screamed as
the i
nfected
ripped into them and
tore
into their
flesh with rabid intensity. One of the terrified gunners squeezed down on the trigger, screaming,
as
an infected woman
grabbed hold of
him; the
M2 Browning’s
barrel jerked towards the sky a
nd the rounds flew
wildly into the
sky
.

“Overwatch Four to
Delta
Base! Overwatch Four to
Delta
Base! Whiskey-Tangos are nearing your perimete
r! I repeat, Whiskey-Tangos are
–
”

The pilot’s radio broadcast was cut short
when
one of the
M2 Browning’s
errant
.50 BMG
rounds punched through the
floorboard of the cockpit,
shattered out the back of the pilot’s skull, and exited through the roof. The pilot
slumped
forward onto the controls. A shrill alarm started chirping in the blood-spla
ttered cockpit as the craft
twirled
out of control towards another
Blackhawk
hovering nearby.

“Overwatch Two to Four! Two to Four! Check your- Jesus!”

Bot
h helicopters collided and blossomed into an
orange fireball. The flaming remn
ants cascaded
aga
inst a nearby skyscraper, ripping
the plastic tarp
off of
the building
. The remnants of the two helicopters
landed at
the base of
the skyscraper and erupted into
a billowing explosion.

Swarms of i
nfected poured out of the
newly
breached
skyscraper and joined
the horde on the
street as they sprinted towards the downtown base’s bright halogen lights.

Alarms started
wailing at the base. Searchlights placed
along the roof of the Meymandi Concert Hall powered on a
nd encircled the pavement below as white-
s
uited soldiers
scrambled into position.

Sentries along
the base perimeter opened
fire at the advancing horde and emptied clip-after-
clip
,
but the horde continued unabated. Within seconds the
sentries were overwhelmed and overrun.

The i
nf
ected, many soldiers newly amassed amongst their ranks
,
shook the flimsy c
hain-link perimeter fence that had been
temporarily
erected around the Meymandi Concert Hall. The fence toppled over and
infected sprinted
towards the concert hall, overtaking
the scattered pockets
of soldiers they encountered.

Reinforcements
ran out of the hall, guns
b
lazing, but
, they too,
we
re quickly overrun
.

Inside the concert hall
’s main venue, a
make-shift command console had been erected in the cente
r of the concert hall’s main stage. The s
oldiers
positioned themselves out in
the stadium-style seating surrounding the stage, crouched down, and
sighted-in
their weapons towards the venue doors.

The gunfire and screams coming from
outside the main concert hall was intense.
The radio traffic had become garbled and incoherent.

Col. Mathis crouched next
to
the radio operator manning the command console in the middle of the stage.
Col. Mathis’
skin was pale behind his facemask and his heart was beating wildly
inside his stuffy white-
suit. Whatever
false
sense of calm he felt earlie
r had dissipated.

“Try
them again, goddamnit!” Col.
Mathis shouted at the bac
k of the radio operator’s head.