Ghost Run (32 page)

The damn thing didn't budge. I pulled my composite cleaning
rod from my pack frame and pushed it up into the manhole key opening. It went about eighteen inches before stopping against something metal.

A fucking car was parked on the lid.

Cursing, I stepped back into the northwest tunnel, checking my wrist compass often, using its bright tritium lamp as a lantern in conjunction with my NOD. I went for two or three hundred meters based on my steps, when the tunnel ahead got so bright that my NOD had to once again compensate and adjust to the beaming moonlight. I kept moving slowly, my back aching from being hunched over. I approached the source of the light and hit
Follow
on the command watch as I saw where the moonlight was coming from.

The drain was washed out completely up ahead and the whole road above it had collapsed into a sinkhole. An overturned cement truck lay far down into the ditch, its intense weight probably responsible for the spillway damage. I felt like Andy Dufresne, crawling out of that nasty sewer pipe outside of Shawshank Prison. The air, although laden with flesh rot, was fresh. I climbed upon the overturned cement truck and waited. Consulting my maps, I knew I was only a few short miles to my objective at the tower.

The game was afoot.

The GARMR didn't show up. I hysterically rummaged through my pack from atop the concrete mixer truck. Rushing to turn the tablet on, I unlocked it and attempted to connect with the machine's video feed. I went through every single menu realizing that
find my mechanical dog
wasn't an available option. Panicking, I kept switching spectrums on the machine's optics and was continually greeted with
attempting connection
each time. I impatiently waited for two hours, watching the moon rise up over the trees before making a decision. I held my wrist up high, pressing the follow button multiple times in the hopes that Checkers would receive my signal and come to me.

Through my NOD, I could see figures moving in the distance and moans were carried on the wind, reminding me of the danger I was walking into on my way to the distress signal. Reluctantly, I slid down the side of the overturned concrete mixer truck into the tall grass and disappeared north into the thick foliage adjacent to the gridlocked road.

•  •  •

The wind shifted out of the west, bringing their smell to me. The pungent odor of forty thousand dead washed over my body, coating every cilium inside my nostrils. I pulled the shemagh up over my mouth and nose in a bid to somehow abate the rancid stench of death. I walked into the wind, all the while listening for the bellows of an army of dead as well as hopefully the clicking of synthetic GARMR feet. With the shift of the wind once more, the smell intensified to a level I didn't think was possible, and the moans I expected to hear based on the radio transmissions were
carried to me in that rhythmic way in which they travel, infecting the dark fear recesses of the living mind. I imagined that the creatures were speaking telepathically to each other and what they might have to say.

Come to us, let us embrace

Like old friends meet face-to-face

What's living is bad and what's dead is good

Give us the chance to be understood . . .

The creatures' moans were infecting my logical thought, their smell driving me mad. I wanted nothing more in the moment than to raise my gun up into the sky.
Come and get it, motherfuckers, come on!

My anger at the undead grew as I stomped forward without my metal companion. At about four in the morning, I crested a hill and was met with the terrible sight of a tall building. Writing it like that may not seem terrifying to whoever may pull this journal from my bony (un)dead hands, but the building had a companion, a great cancerous growth that rose from the base, rising to an apex near the roof itself. It was too dark to see the grisly details, but it was great stacks of corpses. Thousands and thousands of them had been dispatched, forming a massive pile. I studied the scene in disbelief, realizing that the corpses had formed a giant biological ramp.
This is impossible,
I thought. My epiphany arrived simultaneously with the great flamethrower blast that shot from the building's roof down to the top of the advancing creatures.

The massive stream of flames sent corpses tumbling down over thousands of arms, legs, heads, and torsos. The undead slowly but deliberately kept driving forward, unable to be concerned with their own attrition. Every one of them that was fried and fell upon the charred pile of corpses below added to the foundation that would slowly but eventually give the creatures passage to the roof, inevitably overtaking the entire building like ants on a dropped ice cream cone. Judging by the raw numbers of burned and dismembered bodies, it appeared that this giant formation of corpses had been slowly constructed over some time; the undead being the bricks and the men with flamethrowers the masons.

I sat there watching the flamethrower deliver hell on the undead and wondered how the survivors kept from burning the building down. The creatures aflame had to be touching the building's exterior. Whoever was firing that from the rooftop was using their last option: Do not pass Go; flame or death. I slung my pack to the ground, lying prone over it with my binos. I could see only two men on the roof. I also saw a balloon hovering above the roof access structure. It was just like the dead soldier's antenna balloon from when I found the GARMR. I was too far away to make out fine details. Eyes down in the binoculars, I lost situational awareness.

As I stared at the flames attacking the ramp with extreme prejudice, the wind was suddenly knocked out of me by a growling mass of fur. Some sort of wild dog had grabbed my shemagh at the nape of my neck and begun to shake back and forth, making breathing impossible. I saw stars and began to flail and punch blindly against my attacker. I now had the large dog in a bear hug, and it still had a death grip on my shemagh; I had to rotate it to the front of my neck.

With my shemagh locked tightly in the dog's jaws, I went forward with it, tumbling into a culvert and hitting my shoulder against the concrete. I could make out the dog's white fangs in the light of the bright flamethrower. The dog was heavily scarred, missing an ear, the outline of undead jaws in its place. I pulled my bayonet but it was too late; the feral dog jumped. I tried to stab it through the neck but it was all I could do to keep it at bay, keep it from biting through my jugular, spilling my blood everywhere. It would then wait for me to bleed out and go unconscious before eating me half alive as my brain shut down in the darkness. If the dog left my brain in one piece, I'd wake up and try to join the great undead ramp that was being built over there, fire-hardened by the most badass flamethrower I'd ever seen.

I felt the wet muzzle of the animal under my chin just before the loud yelp. The feral beast was tossed several feet away by the charging GARMR. After hitting the beast so hard I thought I heard ribs crack, Checkers took a defensive posture between the wild dog and me. The GARMR cocked its head to the side as it always does, and so did the dog. Sizing one another up, the dog didn't like what it was looking at, so it turned and ran off into the tall grass.

I was scratched up from its claws and I thought it might have nicked my forearm on its fangs, but I'd be okay for now. I didn't stop to notice if its mouth was foaming, but I was quadruple-digit miles from the nearest possible rabies shot; I just had to make things work.

I patted the GARMR on its titanium head and thanked it out loud for its performance. Would it understand me? I don't know, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I really hope that some special ops team on the ground in Afghanistan had one of these before everything went to shit. It would have been a valuable thing to have around.

I checked the saddlebags on the machine, confirming that my extra 5.56 mags were still inside. Removing those and placing them in my cargo pockets, I slung my pack and my M4 and looked for some high ground to set up shop.

The first hint of sunlight was beginning to peek over the trees. I needed to hurry. I had no shelter and was surrounded by undead near enough that I couldn't escape if detected. I had a loud gun, suppressed or not.

I broke through some foliage and arrived at an opening in the trees. Just up ahead, I could see a large playground with a fort and a tunnel slide. I slowly crept to it, keeping aware of my surroundings. The large wooden fort had two ways up—three if you counted going up the corkscrew tunnel slide.

Ladder or steps?

I stepped up onto the fort and climbed on the roof, giving me a view of the top floor of the building as well as the immediate playground area. The GARMR negotiated the first step and went into standby mode within ten feet of where I was at the mouth of the corkscrew slide. I was about fifteen feet off the ground, with multiple ways down if too many creatures showed up and cornered me.

I unslung my pack and pulled out my small handset radio. I dialed up the Morse freq—nothing—and then the voice recording freq—nothing. Switching frequencies to the UHF band, I began to spin and grin, looking for anything that sounded like communications. After finding nothing, I went out on the common Motorola
two-way freqs I had written down in my notebook and began to broadcast in the blind. You'd be surprised how many survivors had small Motorola radios.

“Wachovia Tower, I've received your distress call. Is anyone out there?” I keyed, sending my voice at the speed of light out into the rotting wind.

Day 27

The sun peeked up over the horizon, revealing the ant-like movements of the mass of corpses piled up the side of the building. As soon as my watch said 0600, another burst of flames erupted from the roof down onto the apex of the mass. It wouldn't be long now. My radio crackled.

“Station calling Wachovia Tower; please come in,” a voice I recognized from the recording said.

Fishing for my handset, I keyed a response, identifying myself by my name, rank, and home area.

“Commander? Of Hourglass?” the voice on the radio said.

I rogered up to the affirmative and could hear hoots and hollers from atop the building hundreds of meters distant.

“How many with you, sir?” the man asked.

“Just me, I'm afraid,” I responded.

There was a long silence before the defeat-stricken voice responded.

“Commander, might as well turn back. Don't know if you can see, but we're surrounded on all sides. A hundred thousand dead, maybe. The bottom half of the building is compromised; we did everything we could, but they just kept coming, piling up, and smashing through the floors as the corpses stack higher.”

“What about the goddamned cure?” I said, annoyed that they'd written off their chances of getting out.

“We have it, but there's only two canisters of chemical coolant remaining. We lost generator power a week ago, and without chemical coolant the RF-shielded container needs to be plugged in to 110 soon to keep the cure viable,” the voice said.

“Who am I talking to?” I asked.

After a short pause, the radio beeped before the response: “Doc, Task Force Phoenix.”

“Damn good to hear your voice, Doc. Can you toss the transport container off the building?”

“No, the tech says the coolant unit wouldn't survive the impact. We've got three parachutes from the Hotel 23 drop with us. We thought about BASE jumping off the roof and catching a lucky breeze, but there are just too many fucking zombies down there. We'd land on top of them, Commander,” Doc responded.

“First off, I'm Kil. Neither of us has been paid in two years, so let's lose the formalities. How much ammo?” I asked.

“We're dry. All we got are homemade flamethrowers. We still have our M4s, but the bolts are locked back, dry as fuck,” Doc said.

“Roger,” I said flatly.

“Me and Billy don't blame you if you skin out. There ain't no way up here unless you got a helicopter we don't know about.”

“I'm not leaving you up there. How many you got in the building with you?”

“We're overrun two floors below, all the way to the ground. They climbed in the windows and took most of us out. We've got me, Billy Boy, and a CDC researcher, bit yesterday when we lost the sixteenth floor. He knows he's not gonna make it,” said Doc.

“Thought you guys had the cure up there.”

“We were briefed that it doesn't work like that,” Doc said, annoyed by my question.

“How much longer before they pile up to the roof?” I asked.

“I don't know, Kil. Tonight? Tomorrow, maybe. We only have one can of fuel left for the flamethrowers. They keep clawing their way up here, and pretty soon we'll be fighting them at eye level, hand to hand.”

“Sit tight, Doc, I'm coming for you.”

“You're fucking crazy.”

My pockets were jammed with 5.56 mags and the M4 Commando was slung across my chest. I had the bayonet crudely duct-taped to my silencer, jutting out in front of the muzzle. The GARMR tablet was stuffed down the back of my pants and my pack lay hidden under the corkscrew slide. The GARMR looked at me curiously as I stepped off the fort onto the shredded-tire-covered ground. Reluctantly, I left my pack and pressed toward the building with only the minimum essentials.

The cure was getting off the roof of that fucking building today.

I slowly worked my way through the thick growth, stopping just short of the Wachovia Tower's south parking lot. The massive corpse pile had formed on the west side of the building, with only “small” ten-foot piles of writhing bodies on the south side where I was accompanied by a mob of a hundred or so.

I keyed the radio.

“Doc, Kil,” I said.

“Doc can't come to the phone right now: He's on vacation in Tahiti” was the response.

“Cute. Toss a line down, center south,” I said.