Left With the Dead (13 page)

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Once he had created a buffer zone between himself and the zombies to the north, he turned and engaged those rolling up on them from the rear. They were close, much closer than he had expected them to be, only fifteen feet from where Jolie crouched over Jaden. She hugged her screaming son to her chest with one arm, her lips pressed against the top of his head as she rooted through the backpack with her other hand. Gartrell dropped the leading zed as it lurched toward them, zeroing in on Jaden’s cries.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

The MP5 ran dry then, and Gartrell ejected the spent magazine and slammed the new one into the weapon. He yanked back on the cocking lever and cycled a round into the chamber and resumed firing.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

“I have the flashlight!” Jolie said.

“Turn it on and shine it at them, both sides of the tunnel! Make sure those fuckers see it!”

She did as he instructed her to without hesitation. The zombies blinked at the sudden bright light, their dead pupils slowly narrowing to pinpoints. But when they charged forward, emboldened by the light, Jolie cried out in horror.

“Shit, now what?” she screamed as Gartrell continued firing.

“Throw it across the tracks! Throw it
now!
”

Jolie pitched the metal Maglite toward the southbound tracks, and the bright flashlight tumbled through the air end over end. It sailed through one of the openings in the barrier wall and came to a rest on the other set of tracks, its bright beam shining into the gloom. The zombies all turned to watch it travel, and then they moved after it.

Just like with the flare…they associate the light with food!

Yet some hung back. Either they didn’t fall for the trick, or Jaden’s whimpering was a stronger indicator that a hot meal was very nearby. These remaining zombies, perhaps twelve in all, closed in on them ahead and behind. Gartrell clenched his teeth. This wasn’t working out. The second he started firing again, the shots would only recall those who had crossed over to the other side of the tracks.

For an instant, an inelegant solution presented itself: he could slip past the encroaching zombies, and leave them to make their way to Jolie and her son, while he made his escape.

Not happening.

“Jolie, get ready to move—they’re still closing in on us. We’re going to advance. Leave the pack, just grab Jaden, and get ready.”

And with that, Gartrell resumed firing, blasting away at the zombies in front of them, methodically cutting them down. He scanned to his left and saw the rest of the horde hovered around the shining flashlight, but now they looked up, the MP5’s stroboscopic muzzle flashes capturing their attention.

Behind him, Jolie screamed.

Gartrell spun around, and Jolie shoved Jaden toward him as a zombie grabbed her from behind. Gartrell grabbed Jaden’s arm with one hand as Jolie pulled her revolver and fired over her shoulder, right into the zombie’s face. It fell away from her, but pulled her down with it. She screamed again as she fell to the railroad ties between the rails, and before Gartrell could move to assist her, another zombie fell upon her.

“Jolie!”

“
Save Jaden, save Jaden!
” she shouted, and then her words turned into a shriek as another zombie landed upon her and its teeth found her flesh. The revolver cracked again and again beneath the writhing mass of bodies, but it was too late for that. Gartrell fired twice into the pile, and hoped the bullets ended Jolie’s life before the zombies took it from her.

“Momma!” Jaden cried. “Momma-Momma-Momma!”

Gartrell snatched the boy up in one arm and turned back to the north. A stench lunged for him, and he fired two rounds through its face, then turned sideways as it fell past him. Another zombie loomed before him. Gartrell killed it. Jaden screamed and thrashed in his arm, calling out for his mother, again and again. Gartrell continued to advance, firing. But Jaden was ruining his accuracy; two rounds missed taking down a zombie, and he had to waste a third to finish it off. He missed the next ghoul entirely, and didn’t zero it until it was within arm’s reach. When it fell to the railroad ties before him, its ruined skull bounced off his boots.

God, I’m losing it…

“Term…inder One…your pos…”

The fragmented message over his radio buoyed his spirits immediately. “Pathfinder, this is Terminator! I’m in the tunnel, moving northbound toward what looks to be a stalled subway train, over!” As he spoke, Gartrell kept moving, bobbing and weaving past the zombies now. He just wasn’t able to shoot all of them. Something brushed across his back, and he spun to find a ghoul standing
right there
, so close he had to swing the MP5 at its head to push it back far enough from him that he could shoot it. Which he did, and the zombie collapsed to an unmoving heap.

And then the MP5 was empty.

Gartrell threw the weapon at advancing zombies and pulled his pistol. He had fired five times.

Which meant he had eight rounds left in the magazine.

He had to put Jaden down, and he pushed him against the wall, pinning him there with his body. He pulled his final magazine of .45 caliber ammunition for the pistol from his pocket and discharged the weapon, taking out eight zombies in less than five seconds. The slide locked in the open position when the weapon ran empty. Gartrell ejected the magazine, slammed in the fresh one, and thumbed the slide release, sending the first round into the chamber as a stench slammed into him. It sank its teeth into his armor’s shoulder strap and dug in with its legs, dragging him away from the wall with surprising strength. Gartrell shouted and pounded on its head with the butt of the pistol, but it made no difference; the zed hung on like a dog clenching its most favored chew toy between its jaws. It shook its head from side to side, and Gartrell wound up wrapping his left arm around it, just to hold it in place. He extended his arm and dropped a zombie that moved to join the fracas. They were so close now that they didn’t need any light to see. They knew food was so very near.

Gartrell fired again and again, the Mk 23 pistol kicking hard in his hand. He shouted over the radio for the infantry platoon, but received no response he could fully comprehend. It seemed the unit was close, but not close enough to count. Gartrell kept firing, and the bodies kept stacking up.

And then he was down to two rounds.

In the darkness, Jaden screamed.

Gartrell punched the zombie hanging onto his body armor full in the jaw, fracturing it. The ghoul finally fell away, rolling across the railroad ties. Gartrell evaded another zed by ducking past it. More stenches surrounded Jaden, his cries drawing them to him like bees to honey. There were so many, too many. And more swam in the darkness around Gartrell, circling, trying to locate him now that the shooting had stopped. Gartrell looked at Jaden as the small boy kept crying for his mother, his eyes wide in the darkness, the tears pouring down his beautiful face, his copper hair matted with sweat and grime. The boy’s last few moments would be spent in absolute terror, terror that would be all he knew before guttural agony set in as the stenches set about their work. Gartrell felt a heavy sadness descend upon him. Only seven feet separated them.

Gartrell found himself mentally reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and a small measure of peace came to him.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

“Jaden,” he called, raising the pistol. “Jaden, baby. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Jaden heard his voice, and he calmed a bit, looking through the darkness, trying to find Gartrell. His hands were bloodied from the rents cut into his wrists, and he had small bloody handprints on his seared denim jacket. The zombies swung toward Gartrell’s voice, just as he had hoped they would. He aimed the pistol at Jaden, and time seemed to dilate in a way he had never fully experienced before, even when he was in the full heat of combat where every moment stretched out over the course of an hour. As he lined up the pistol’s sights on Jaden’s small head, he had a sudden premonition, the sudden
idea
that this is what McDaniels had struggled with so long ago in Afghanistan, when the two of them were the leaders of PHANTOM Team, and they had wrestled with a horrible decision: to kill an unarmed boy who had discovered them, so that he couldn’t warn others and bring the Taliban upon them. Gartrell had supported the execution, out of sheer military necessity. And he would have carried it out as well. But the decision was not his to make. McDaniels had wrestled with the choice for as long as he could, but in the end, his morality overcame his discipline. While Gartrell had always known that was what happened, he had never fully appreciated it until now. First Sergeant David Gartrell had seen combat in every war and participated in scores of clandestine operations, where many people met violent ends. He had seen utter brutality up close, and had managed not to participate in the worst of it, but there was still some blood on his hands.

And here he was, confronted with circumstances that demanded a specific outcome: that he execute a small boy to save him from an even more heinous end.

And he couldn’t do it.

A zombie seized Jaden’s shoulder finally with a hissing roar, and it bent toward him. Gartrell adjusted his aim and put a bullet through its head as Jaden screamed yet again, the terror returning. The rest of the zeds whirled, their ranks split—half turned toward Gartrell, half turned upon the screaming young boy who never truly understood what was happening. He only wanted the comfort of his mother.

He would never have that comfort, ever again.

So Gartrell reached deep inside himself and found the strength to act, to give the boy the only comfort he could. His last round made Jaden’s small head seem to explode, and the child’s body wilted to the bottom of the subway tunnel where it was trampled by the zombies as they turned toward the rangy first sergeant. Gartrell pulled his knife.

“Come on, you stupid sacks of shit,” he said. His voice was small amidst the moans of the dead, practically lost in the flood of sound. He had failed to protect the woman and the boy, had failed to accomplish even a mission as basic as that, and now his time was up. No more options left, just fight and die.

The subway tunnel was filled by fire and thunder, and Gartrell’s NVGs overloaded as something exploded nearby, something that burned bright and loud for a moment or two before disappearing, as if a camera flash had gone off in the darkness. A cascading series of cracks assaulted his ears, even through the radio headset and the hearing protectors beneath it, and long ribbons of fire spat out at the stenches. Their heads exploded, and in some instances their bodies just
disintegrated
, as if they had been hit by some sort of death ray. Gartrell watched all of this with a detached, remote interest as well as he could; his goggles kept overloading, and the racket was so loud and vicious he couldn’t even think properly. He just stood where he was, even as a zed reached toward him with grimy hands, its jaws spread wide, its tongue black and swollen, maggots pouring from one eye socket, its hair singed away and the skin on its face and scalp blackened, as if by some incredible heat. Just as it touched him, something cracked again, and the zed pitched over onto its right side at Gartrell’s feet. He saw a small hole in the side of its head.

Beyond the corpse lay Jaden, and Gartrell’s eyes burned with sudden tears when he saw the tiny boy. He lay on his back, his forehead pushed slightly inward; the back of his skull had been blown away. His cranium looked deflated, irregular beneath his beautiful hair. His alabaster skin was almost white through the NVGs, and his eyes were closed, as if he had fallen asleep. His lips were slightly parted, and Gartrell knew what the boy’s last words had been.

Momma…Momma…Momma…

Gartrell walked to the small corpse and sank to his knees beside it, his chest on fire. Tears streamed down his face as he picked up Jaden and held him close, ignoring the ropy mass of matter that dangled from behind the boy’s ears. He just held the body to him and wept, shutting out all else, tuning out the death and devastation that raged all around him.

And finally, even that came to an end. Gartrell became aware of someone talking to him, someone kneeling right next to him. A hand gripped his arm and shook him roughly, and Jaden’s head turned away from Gartrell’s chest. He fully saw the damage his round had done for the first time.

Dear God, you fucking cheat, you fucking piece of shit, how could you let this happen to someone who couldn’t even fucking
understand
what was going down?

“Hey guy—hey first sergeant, you all right?” Someone shook Gartrell again, and he slowly looked to his right. A young second lieutenant knelt beside him, peering at Gartrell through his own night vision goggles. His face covered with beard stubble and sweat-streaked grime. He clutched an M4 carbine against his chest. Behind him, another soldier stood. This one carried a bulky Squad Automatic Weapon, the M249 SAW. Gartrell looked around. More soldiers had taken defensive positions in the gloom. They carried a variety of weapons, all standard issue, nothing esoteric like his AA-12. These were regular Army soldiers, and from their shoulder patches they were with the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry). The platoon Gartrell had been trying to link up with. The lightfighters had finally arrived.