Rotter Apocalypse (18 page)

“If you don’t count the rotters,” said Dravko.

“They won’t be around forever. At some point the humans will regroup and fight back, and will take care of them for us. Once they do, they’ll be in for a surprise.”

“What about them?” Tibor used his head to gesture toward the barn. Dravko picked up on the fact that he didn’t use Robson’s name.

“They’ll be given the same choice the others have. They can join us or they can feed us.”

“Do you think they will?” asked Tibor.

“From what you’ve told me, most of them will be happy to put an end to their suffering, one way or another.”

“What about Robson?” Dravko asked. “Does he get to make the choice?”

Vladimir shook his head. “I have something special planned for him.”

Ari stood in the open hatch of the M1127 Stryker Reconnaissance Vehicle while the convoy made its way down Route 101. Doreen and half the squad sat comfortably inside, with Mesle and the others in one of the accompanying vehicles. Every time the Stryker swerved to avoid an abandoned car, she reached out to steady herself on the mount of the M2 .50 caliber machinegun. It reminded her of standing in an open sunroof, only your typical car wasn’t followed by three more Strykers and ten two-and-a-half-ton trucks loaded with troops.

The Battle of San Francisco had played out much easier than anyone had anticipated thanks to the use of the RCZs. Despite isolated incidents like Westwood Highlands, the ten-mile-long line of troops had reached the Bay by dusk, clearing the streets of rotters. This morning, they were redeployed across the peninsula in a line running southeast from Pacifica on the West Coast to north of Burlingame on the east. Intelligence indicated that most of the locals not trapped inside San Francisco had escaped south during the outbreak, leaving much of the peninsula abandoned, which meant fewer humans had remained behind to become the living dead. Since the eastern corridor would be pushing through cities, the government-in-exile had provided them with ten Abrams tanks, sixteen Strykers, fifteen M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, three mobile M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and fifty troop transports. The initial push had run into minimal activity, with various units encountering nothing more significant than stray rotters. By the time the line had reached the southern outskirts of San Mateo, the Revenant Body Count had numbered less than two thousand, so command decided to take advantage of the lack of resistance. The mechanized units were divided into four groups, three recon units of four Strykers and ten transports each to travel south along the three major highways running down the peninsula, and the fourth group, which remained behind as a reserve. The ground troops would continue their block-by-block advance on foot. Mesle’s squad had been assigned to Tango Alpha, the recon unit moving down Route 101, the easternmost of the three highways. They had been on the road for close to an hour and had run into no more than a hundred rotters.

Ari felt someone pull on her pants leg. Doreen stood beneath her and lowered the microphone of her CVC to her mouth. “How far do you think we’ve traveled?”

“We’ve covered thirty miles, give or take. We passed Moffett Airfield in Sunnyvale a few minutes ago. San Jose is about five miles ahead of us.”

“Can the chatter,” said Lieutenant Barnes, the commander for the Tango Alpha recce unit in the Stryker ahead of them. “Keep this line open for official communications.”

Doreen waved and stepped back to her seat.

Ari scanned the area for rotter activity. The column passed through a residential neighborhood, with an AMC movie theater off to their left. She thought the number of rotters was increasing, although not by enough to pose any threat. A voice over the CVC headphones interrupted her thoughts. She recognized it as the commander of the Stryker scouting ahead of the column.

“Tango Leader, Tango Alpha Two.”

“Tango Alpha Two, Tango Leader,” responded Colonel Allen from his Bradley Battle Command Vehicle (BCV) back with the main column.

“Tango Leader, we have reached Objective Blue. We got slowed down by abandoned vehicles. Hostile activity is minimal.”

“Tango Alpha Two, Tango Lea—”

“Jesus Christ!” The expletive came from Reynolds, the driver in the Stryker behind hers. “We have heavy hostile activity on our right.”

Ari shifted her position in the hatch to get a better view. The column approached the northern end of Mineta San Jose International Airport, which sat a few hundred feet from the highway. Tens of thousands of rotters stretched the length of the runway. Those closest to the column clutched at the surrounding chain link fence, pulling at it to get to them. The commotion spread like a wave, and soon every one of the living dead inside the perimeter was swarming the fence. Rotters also approached from the neighborhood to their left and from farther down the highway. A quick estimation put their number in the thousands, all converging on the Strykers. They’d be overrun within minutes.

“Tango Leader, Tango Alpha One,” Barnes said into the CVC. “We have heavy contact with hostiles at our nine, twelve, and three o’clock positions.”

“Tango Leader copies. Tango Alpha One, set up a defensive line to cover the withdrawal of your exposed troops.”

“Tango Alpha One copies.”

The Strykers ground to a halt in a line abreast across Route 101 with ten feet between each vehicle. The transports pulled into three-point turns and headed west. By now, the rotters had approached to within fifty feet of the recce unit. Ari wished she was on one of those retreating trucks.

“All Alphas, Tango Alpha One. Line up your shots and make them count. Fire on my command.”

Rotating the machinegun to face forward, Ari lowered the weapon and aimed at the approaching horde, which had closed to within thirty feet.

She lined up her site on a rotter with no arms draped in the remnants of a flight attendant’s uniform.

Twenty feet.

“Fire!” Barnes ordered.

Four .50 caliber machineguns fired simultaneously in short, well-aimed bursts. Ari and the others had become so familiar with close-in contact with the living dead that no one paid attention to the stench or the swarms of insects that hovered around them, concentrating instead on making each shot count. Each time the gunners pulled the trigger, they tore the rotters apart. Limbs were dismembered, torsos shredded, heads shattered. A pool of blood and body parts formed around the Strykers. However, the numbers were stacked against them. For each rotter taken down, dozens more filled the gap. The concentrated fire only slowed their advance.

Reynolds’ voice came over the CVC again. “Tango Alpha One, Tango Alpha Three. Things are about to go FUBAR on our right.”

Inside the airport, the mass of living dead pushed against the perimeter fence, their weight bending the supports at a forty-five-degree angle. The entire structure would soon give way, releasing a massive horde to join the melee.

“Tango Leader, Tango Alpha One. We have a situation developing inside the airport.”

“Tango Alpha One, I’m already on it. We should have incoming rockets from Tango Charlie Five in a few minutes.”

“Tango Alpha One copies.”

Rotters had begun to outflank both ends of the line of Strykers. “Lieutenant, we’re about to be swarmed.”

“Copy that,” said Barnes. “All Alphas, Tango Alpha One. Fall back three hundred feet. Stop at a ninety-degree angle to the right so the 7.62s can engage.”

As instructed, the four Strykers pulled back and swerved so their right flanks faced the horde, allowing a soldier to open one of the hatches and arm the rear-mounted 7.62mm machinegun. A kill zone had formed, and the living dead surged forward into a storm of concentrated fire. The machinegun fire took its toll on the rotters, churning them in a mist of blood and gore. A barrier of corpses formed in front of the horde, tripping many of those surging ahead and creating an obstacle for those behind. The advance slowed. The weight of the rotters to the rear pushed forward, and the barrier of human detritus could only hold them back for so long. It reminded Ari of the videos she had seen of the massive tsunamis that struck the Japanese coast years ago where retaining walls held back the water only so long before the tidal waves flooded over the tops and swept away coastal towns. It would be the same thing here, except this time it would be a tidal wave of living dead.

A whoosh off to her right caught Ari’s attention. A dozen contrails from twelve rockets from Tango Charlie’s M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System streamed from the northwest, each spaced three seconds apart and converging on the northern end of the airfield. When each rocket was at an altitude of twenty feet, it released its payload of six hundred and forty-four M77 submunitions, each about the size of a hand grenade, over a six-hundred-foot diameter area. The submunitions detonated on impact with the ground, fragmenting the grenade’s steel casing and sending the shards ripping through everything within a twelve foot radius. For half a minute, thousands of explosions burst from the perimeter fence down the runway toward the terminal. When the smoke cleared, Ari saw a killing field. Every rotter, except those on the far edges of the horde, had been ravaged by the barrage, their bodies eviscerated and their legs having been torn out from under them. Where the wounds inflicted by the submunitions would have been fatal to the living, they succeeded only in immobilizing the rotters. The piles of bodies still pulsed as one organism, with torsos thrashing around and arms still clutching at the air. Their moans of hunger could be heard even from this distance.

Barnes’ voice came over the CVC. “Tango Leader, Tango Alpha One. We are running low on ammo. Where is my supply train?”

“Tango Alpha One, it’s about three klicks behind you and is on the way.”

“Tango Leader, copy that.”

The roar of battle diminished as the gunners’ weapons ran low on ammunition and they slowed their rate of fire. The decrease in gunfire allowed the rotters to regain the momentum. An increasing number made it past the line of corpses and shambled toward the Strykers.

“I’m out,” one of the gunners announced.

“Same here,” said another a few seconds later.

One by one, the machineguns on each Stryker went silent. Fifty rotters had closed to within ninety feet of the recon vehicles, with another few hundred following. As the noise of battle faded, the only sound came from the idling of the four Stryker engines and the moaning of the rotters. They had slaughtered most of the living dead, yet a few hundred still remained.

“We’re screwed now,” Reynolds said over the CVC.

“Tango Alpha One, maybe we can help,” said a new voice over the radio.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Barnes asked.

“Tango Delta One.”

From the north, five Bradleys bore down on the Strykers.

“Tango Delta One, we are glad to see you. Tango Alpha has expended its ammo.”

“Then we arrived in the nick of time. You can’t get much more American than that.” The five Bradleys pulled up in a line abreast across Route 101 and stopped two hundred feet from the Strykers. “Tango Alpha, fall back behind our position.”

Barnes didn’t need to pass on the message because the Strykers had already started to withdraw. Once the recon vehicles were out of the way, the five Bradleys opened fire, raking the horde with their 25mm 242 Bushmaster chainguns. The rounds chewed apart the line of living dead, decimating what remained of the horde. A cloud of blood and body parts formed, making it impossible for the Bradleys’ gunners to clearly identify targets. They continued to fire, knowing they would hit something hidden behind the grotesque mist. Even over the heavy staccato of the chaingun motors, Ari could hear the thumping of 25mm shells impacting with bodies. By the time the chainguns went silent, only a few dozen rotters still stood. These staggered into the pile of gore, tripped, fell, and were not able to get back up. Ari almost felt bad for them.

“Tango Leader, Tango Delta One. Hostile activity neutralized.”

“Tango Delta One, copy that. Set up a Forward Area Rearm Point at your location. Your supply train should be there any moment. The rest of Tango Alpha will join you within the hour.”

“Tango Leader, Tango Delta One copies. All Alphas and Deltas, deploy and set up a watch in case any stray hostiles wander into the perimeter.”

As the main hatches on the Strykers and Bradleys opened and the troops poured out, Ari looked around at the devastation. She had experienced some scary moments since the outbreak began, although nothing as intense as today. This was only the second day of the war. She wondered what other horrors were in store for her.

“Can I pet Walther?” Cindy asked.

Windows continued purifying the bull’s drinking water, hesitating in her response. Given what was going on up north, she wanted to keep Cindy close at all times. On the other hand, she didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings or, even worse, alarm her.

For God’s sake, Windows chastised herself. There’s being cautious and there’s being paranoid.

It wasn’t like the situation had changed dramatically in the last twenty-four hours. Sure, they could still see black smoke rising from whatever was burning. They hadn’t had to fight off hordes of rotters or marauders yet, so Cindy would be safe. And Walther was milling around by the fence three hundred feet away.

“Go ahead,” Windows said. “Just keep in my sight at all times.”

Cindy dramatically sighed and spun around. She trudged away, huffing, “Yes, Mother.”

Mother
? Windows couldn’t hold back the tear that streamed down her cheek.

She went back to purifying the rain water from last night’s storm, adding a few drops of bleach into the barrel and stirring it before transferring the water into sealed containers to prevent the sunlight from turning it into a Petri dish of diseases. She had used the hand pump to transfer half the rain water into the sealed tank when she heard a soft voice cry, “Help us!”

Windows stopped what she was doing and looked for Cindy. The girl stood in front of the fence by Walther, standing on the middle slats and reaching over, with the bull lifting his head to be petted and swishing his tail. The call hadn’t come from her.

“Please! Help us!”

Windows grabbed her AK-47 and stepped back from the fence to get a better view down the access road leading to the farm. A woman was stumbling along the road, holding the hands of two children, a boy and a girl, approximately seven and ten, respectively, pulling them along behind her. Nine rotters pursued them, the closest less than a hundred feet distant. Windows raced along the perimeter fence to the pasture and removed the two-way radio from her pocket. “Denning, are you there?”

A few seconds of silence elapsed.

“Denning, can you hear me?”

“Yes. What’s the urgency?”

“We have a woman and two kids heading for the farm followed by a pack of rotters. They’re coming down the access road.”

“Shit. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Windows reached Cindy, whose gaze shifted between her and the approaching threat. Fear welled up in her eyes. “Are we going to help them?”

“I am. You’re going back to the house.”

“I want to help.”

“Do as I tell you.”

Windows waited until she saw Cindy heading away, and then focused back on the threat. The woman and kids were still several hundred feet from the compound, and the rotters were closing in. Windows ran to the perimeter fence. The little boy tripped and crashed onto the road, yanking the woman to a halt. The closest rotter, a male in a blue and red flannel shirt with half its neck torn open, moaned and quickened its pace. The woman tried to drag the boy to his feet, but he wouldn’t move. Releasing the girl’s hand, the woman told her to run. The girl refused, so the woman shoved her toward the farm. “Run!” The girl broke into a sprint and headed for Windows, wailing at the top of her lungs. The woman leaned over to protect the boy from the living dead.

Stopping at the fence, Windows unslung the automatic weapon from her right shoulder. She was not a good shot, but she had no choice. The rotter was twenty feet from the woman and boy, and she would never get to them in time. Resting her left elbow on the support post, she focused down the sight on its head and jerked the trigger. The bullet missed its target and thudded into the chest of a rotter in a fireman’s uniform forty feet to the rear. Readjusting her aim, she slowly squeezed the trigger. This time the bullet hit the flannel-shirted rotter in the sternum, knocking it off balance. Windows aimed again, held her breath, and pulled on the trigger. The rotter’s head exploded. It teetered for a moment and fell forward, its carcass landing on the woman’s back and sliding to the road. The woman screamed in terror and held the boy tighter.

Windows raced down to the gate and opened it. She ushered the little girl inside the compound and pointed to the farmhouse. “Head for that house. You’ll be safe there.”

“What about my mother and brother?”

“I’ll get them.”

Windows didn’t bother to see if the girl obeyed. She rushed toward the woman and boy. “Come this way. Hurry!”

The woman didn’t respond, remaining hunched over the boy.

Windows reached her at the same time as a naked male rotter. She raised her automatic weapon into its face and fired, ducking as the exploding skull splattered her back and shoulders in chunks of brain and bone. Facing the rest of the horde, she lined up a shot on a rotter in a blue down jacket, the lining of which had been torn open so that blood-encrusted feathers covered the front. Windows fired. The bullet thudded into its upper left chest, jerking its shoulder back. She aimed, fired carefully, and took the rotter down with a shot right between the eyes. Switching to the next nearest rotter, the abdomen and chest of which had been torn open leaving a gaping cavity, she brought it down with a headshot. The remainder of the horde was a good thirty feet away.

Windows reached down and grabbed the woman by the arm. The woman screamed and clutched the boy.

“I’m here to get you and your son to safety.” When the woman didn’t respond, Windows yanked her arm. “Come on! We have to get out of here.”

The woman stared up at Windows, gradually registering that the figure above her was human. Her gaze drifted to the left and she screamed again. A rotter in soiled fireman’s gear approached, its arms outstretched and its mouth opening to feed. Windows surged forward, slammed the stock of the automatic weapon into its chest, and pushed it over backwards onto the ground. Lowering the barrel, she fired off three rounds into its head, vaporizing it. The bolt had locked in the open position. Windows did not have a spare magazine with her. The last four rotters moved in.

Windows crouched down and stared the woman in the face. “If you don’t haul ass now, we’re all dead, including your son.”

The woman blinked once, and then understood. Grabbing the boy by the shoulders, she lifted him into a standing position and the two raced for the house. A female rotter in tattered red silk pajamas had closed to within ten feet, its single arm reaching for her. Windows raised her automatic weapon and waited, preparing to slam the stock into its face when it got close enough, concentrating on the forehead where she intended to strike. Suddenly, the forehead blew apart and the rotter dropped to the ground.

“I got this!” Denning yelled from behind her.

Denning stood at the perimeter fence, his rifle against his shoulder. Ducking to be out of the line of fire, Windows dashed toward the fence, keeping herself between the woman and the rest of the horde. Denning continued shooting, and by the time she reached the fence, none of the living dead remained standing. When Denning met Windows at the gate, he was inhaling long, deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he panted. “I’m winded… from running… from the other end… of the compound.” Denning held his chest and inhaled. After a few seconds, he pointed to her clothes. “You’re covered in blood. Did one of them bite you?”

“No. It’s backwash from shooting one of them too close.” Windows patted Denning on the shoulder.

She stepped over to check on the woman and boy. Cindy stood on the other side of the perimeter fence talking to the little girl, who had calmed down considerably now that the crisis had passed, and the two girls were chatting like old friends.

“I thought I told you to go back to the house,” Windows said sternly.

“I was heading there, and then I saw Rebecca running for the fence. I went back to help her.”

The little girl waved at Windows. “I’m Rebecca.”

Despite her motherly instincts telling her to be mad at Cindy, Windows admired her for showing such courage. “I’ll let it slide this time.”

Cindy tried not to grin.

“Are you all right?” Windows asked the woman. “Were you or your son bitten?”

She shook her head. “Th-thank you for saving us.”

“No problem,” said Windows.

“First things first,” said Denning. “Let’s get these people back to the farmhouse, clean them up, and feed them. Then we can chat.”