The Dead Walk The Earth II (26 page)

Peter rolled his eyes and grinded his teeth irritably. He was not thrilled and he was not particularly enthusiastic. He just wanted them both to survive. He knew full well that his time on the mainland was going to be completely taken up with watching out for the thousands of corpses roaming the land and keeping his brother out of danger, while at the same time, keeping himself safe.

“Michael,” he roared into his brother’s ear in an attempt to be heard over the noisy engines, “calm the fuck down.”

Michael froze and stared at him solemnly. He saw the serious expression in his brother’s eyes and knew that he had somehow angered him. He sunk back into his seat and tightened his seatbelt, feeling deflated.

“But I just want to…”

“But nothing, Michael. This is not a game,” Peter hollered back at him with the veins of his neck protruding from beneath the skin with the strain of having to shout so loudly in order to be heard.

Michael said nothing but merely blinked back at him as he wiped the flecks of his brother’s spittle that splashed against his face.

“You need to calm down and think about what you’re doing now. I can’t do it for you, Mikey. Do you remember what I said to you?” Peter hesitated for a moment, hoping that his brother would offer up the information without needing to be reminded. “Stay close to me and don’t get separated, whatever happens.”

Michael nodded his acknowledgement but his eyes continued to drift towards the window, worried that he will miss the take-off.

“People are going to die, Michael,” Peter continued, hoping to force his brother into the realisation of the seriousness of their situation. “A
lot
of people will die. I just don’t want any of them to be us.”

The sound of the engines began to change and the fuselage rocked slightly as the aircraft prepared to rise. Instantly, Michael’s attention was no longer in Peter’s grasp. His expression changed suddenly and the look of comprehension in his eyes was quickly replaced by the familiar vision of a young man on the verge of soiling himself with exhilaration as he turned to peer out through the window.

Peter turned away to continue staring at the large piles of ammunition and the pale and tense faces of his comrades.

“Shit.”

16

“
Just do what you can to keep the area clear, Taff
,” Stan’s voice instructed them through their earpieces.

Taff stared in disbelief at Bobby before keying the send button on his radio.

“Like what, Stan?” He asked cynically. “There’s about thirty of them already inside and mincing about the car-park. If we can’t shoot them, what else can we do?”

Up on the roof, Stan was getting annoyed. Over the last hour while the sun’s rays slowly made an appearance over the rooftops a number of bodies had stumbled in through the open gate to their rear. Taff and Bobby, unable to use their rifles for fear of drawing attention to themselves, had been sending regular situation reports to their commander. Even with the silencers attached to their barrels, the discharge of their rifles would still make enough noise that could potentially be noticed by some of the crowd surging by in the street. Instead, they had no option but to sit and watch while the numbers of dead within their perimeter steadily grew.

So far, the meandering corpses had shown no interest to the entrance of the apartment building and remained at a distance, stumbling about in the car park in confusion while the music continued to echo from the walls of the buildings all around them.

The team had just received word from Samantha back at headquarters that the assault on the harbour and airfield had begun. No news on the progress of the advance was available as it was too soon to tell but she also informed them that the first wave of bombers was on route to their location.

“Taff,” Stan growled into his microphone, “I don’t care what you have to do, just hold your fire and keep out of sight. The airstrikes are inbound and will be here any minute. Once they start, you’ll have enough noise cover to deal with them then.”

Out to the front of the building was an ocean of rotting bodies. By now, they were in their hundreds of thousands and no patch of ground remained unoccupied. For as far as the eye could see, stretching out to the south, there was a mass of flailing arms and shifting heads. The music still managed to triumph over the moans of the dead but only barely.

“I like big cock in June…how about you?”
Bull sang absentmindedly as he watched the surging crowd.

Marty was sitting beside him. He lowered the binoculars and turned to his friend. Watching him closely with a questioning look carved into his face, Marty felt a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“What the hell are you singing there, Bull?” He finally asked after listening to the big man singing words he had never before heard to that particular tune.

“It’s Frank Sinatra,” Bull simply replied without looking at him and nodding in the direction of the first junction. “The song playing down there is one of Ol’ Blue Eyes’. I think it’s called ‘How about you?’ or something like that. You never heard it?”

Marty began to laugh, holding a hand up to his mouth so that the sound did not carry and alert anything at ground level to their presence. With the noise of the infected and the music, added to the continuous shifting of the crowd, it was not likely that any of the bodies below were going to notice.

“Yeah, I know the song but I don’t remember there being anything about a big cock mentioned in it. I’m pretty sure that it’s ‘New York’.”

Bull turned to him and grinned.

“Yeah, well, I like to mix it up a little.”

“Two minutes,” Stan said as he folded down the antenna of his satellite phone. “They’re approaching from the south. Get the LTD ready and pointing at the southern intersection. They can hit that first and creep their way north towards us.”

Danny switched on the Laser Target Designator, aimed it towards their first intended target, and checked the range.

“Target painted, Stan,” he confirmed. “One-point-two kilometres.”

Far off to the south, through his binoculars, Stan watched as a cluster of small black specks appeared over the horizon. He checked his watch and then returned his attention back to the approaching aircraft. Further to the left and right of the first group were a number of other distant planes, growing larger by the second, as they flew in along their respective flight corridors, guided in by the teams in place on the ground.

Reaching into one of the pouches attached to his assault vest, Stan retrieved the Tactical Beacon, TACBE. Normally used as a personal locator beacon for downed pilots, the TACBE could also be utilized for short-range communications with passing aircraft on the emergency frequency.

Stan pressed the talk-switch.

“Sierra-three, this is Golf-four,” he said hailing the particular group of aircraft that had been assigned to his assault lane. “Sierra-three, this is Golf-four. Radio check.”

“Golf-four, this is Sierra-three. Strength five,” came the crackling reply of the pilot, indicating the strength of the signal he received from Stan.

“Roger, you’re good to me. Approach on bearing zero-one-zero degrees, north. Targets in the open and painted with laser. Seen?”

There was a pause in the conversation as the pilot checked his heading and looked for the splash of the infrared laser.

“Roger, target confirmed. Coming in on zero-one-zero, thirty seconds. Get your boys down and into cover. Sierra-three out.”

“Okay, head’s down, fellas,” Stan ordered to everyone around him. “We’ve got incoming from the south and will be here within the next twenty seconds. Danny, keep the target well painted. We don’t want any stray ordinance taking us out.”

Stan turned away from the junction and crouched himself down behind the low wall running around the roof of the building. He looked across to Bull and Marty who were doing the same, taking cover before the bombs were dropped. They were well beyond the danger area of the first junction but as Stan had already pointed out, there was always the possibility of some of the ordinance overshooting their target.

“Taff,” Stan called through his radio as the growling sounds of jet engines became audible over the city. “Get yourselves low down there. Ten seconds to the first drop.”

Down in the foyer, Taff and Bobby readied their weapons, taking off their safety catches and crouching further down into the cover of the barricade. As soon as the first wave of airstrikes was over, they intended to neutralise the infected that had stumbled into their rear area. With the noise of the blasts and the confusion created by the bombers, they would have the cover they needed to begin dealing with the threat.

Danny waited until the last second before taking cover himself as the aircraft engines rose to a tremendous howl. The Laser Target Designator was secured to the lip of the roof and still pointed towards the target. He ducked down and drew his knees up close to his chest, counting off the final few seconds in his head as the roar of the Tornados and Typhoons grew to a crescendo.

At ground level, as the sound of the engines overhead drowned out the music, hundreds of thousands of eyes turned upwards. Every corpse in the area suddenly became still as they turned their faces towards the sky and watched the dark shapes of the bombers soaring in from the south. Their voices had fallen silent and they did not attempt to reach up towards the aircraft or move away to safety. Their hands hung limply by their sides and their attention remained transfixed on the strange shapes above them, hypnotised by the sight. Even when the first black cylindrical shaped object detached itself from the undercarriage of the lead plane and began tumbling towards them, the dead did not move but looked on as the bomb hurtled towards the ground and landed in their midst.

The heavy steel casing crashed into the hard concrete and detonated instantaneously. The blast sent hundreds of torn and dismembered bodies sailing through the air over a wide area. All the windows that were still intact and stubbornly clinging to their frames in the buildings around the intersection and beyond were blown outwards in a silent explosion of glass fragments. The hordes of infected that had been pressing themselves against the glass from inside tumbled out through the empty frames and crashed into the streets below, bursting in clouds of blood and bone on impact with the ground. Structures buckled under the immense pressure wave and abandoned vehicles were flung far and wide at phenomenal speeds, crashing into buildings and scattering the bodies of the walking dead like bowling pins as they tore through the packed street.

A fraction of a second later, every molecule of oxygen in the immediate vicinity was sucked into the centre of the blast where the air immediately ignited into a huge white fireball that surged outwards in a blinding flash, incinerating all in its path. Everything burst into flames and immediately vaporised in the intense heat. Flesh was seared from bone and bodies shattered while steel and concrete melted and fractured.

Stan and the others felt the shockwave of the initial blast as the first of the aircraft, a Tornado, shot overhead. The heat of the firebomb followed close behind, turning the cool crisp morning air into a blazing furnace. The roof shook and the teeth of the men clashed together as the apartment block struggled to withstand the shockwave that ripped through its foundations. Even from a range of over a kilometre, the effects of the blast could be felt and just seconds after the first, there was another massive explosion of heat, and then another as the planes began their individual drops on the first target.

A few seconds later and the four men raised themselves to look out over the lip of the roof. To the south they saw nothing but carnage. Buildings were mangled beyond recognition and blazing wildly as the fires violently spread through their floors and engulfed everything in their path. The centre of the junction was distorted out of shape and awash with the charred and fused remains of thousands of bodies and dozens of vehicles. In that particular intersection, there was very little that remained standing. A small number of infected blindly stumbled towards the raging flames and were quickly consumed. The incendiary bombs had mostly done their job and destroyed everything in the area.

However, within moments, thousands more bodies piled into the intersection from the closest streets. They blindly staggered into the area of the junction, stumbling through the flames and quickly filling the area with blazing bodies.

“Christ,” Bull grunted as he looked out towards the south through his binoculars. “That worked better than I expected it to.”

“There’s more coming,” Marty whispered from beside him.

“More aircraft? Yeah, I know.”

“No,” Marty said and pointed his finger to the streets on the right that were feeding into the nearest junction. “Infected, there are more of them coming.”

Bull turned and looked to where Marty was pointing. The exodus of rotting flesh was showing no sign of slowing and more of them were squeezing themselves into the already tightly packed junctions. Despite the losses that they had just sustained in the first airstrike, they continued to advance on the area, showing no signs of retreat.

“Our six o’clock is clear, Stan,”
Taff informed their leader over the net.

With the thunder of the explosions and the roar of the fireballs, Taff and Bobby had gone to work in clearing the car park at the rear of the building. As plaster dust fell from the ceiling and windows shattered all around them, the two men took careful aim at the heads of over thirty staggering corpses. As the floor juddered beneath them and the walls shook violently, some of their shots missed, whizzing harmlessly through the air and smashing into the brick wall that formed the perimeter. However, with slight corrections to the aim and hold of their weapons, the dead were soon dealt with. They now lay still, their skulls splayed open and the remnants of their brains spewing out over the ground around them.

“Roger that, Taff. First wave complete. Target destroyed. Confirmation from Ops that the other teams are having the same results throughout the city. The second wave will be here in one minute. Stay down.”

Out in the street at the rear of the apartment block, the river of dead had turned into a stream. There were still a lot of shuffling corpses headed for the target area but nothing like the numbers that they had witnessed throughout the previous day and night.

“You think this is going to work?” Bobby asked as he changed out his magazines.

“Seems to be working so far, mate,” Taff shrugged.

Danny angled the LTD so that it was now pointed at the next intersection. Although the fires were quickly spreading further to the south, the dead at the second target location were mostly unaffected and remained mobile and in vast numbers. Some had been hit with shrapnel and a small percentage had caught fire from the heat wave that irradiated out from the first bombs but overall, they were untouched.

Once again to the south, the team saw the faint dark shapes of aircraft as they raced towards their targets, flying just two-hundred metres above the ground. Stan guided them in on the TACBE again before ordering his men to take cover.

This time, as the bombs detonated at a much shorter range from their over-watch position, the shockwaves were far stronger, the heat more intense, and the rattle of their teeth and bones all the more forceful. The building beneath them shook fiercely and felt as though it was about to come apart at the seams.

Bull was curled into a ball, his hands covering his head with his elbows tucked closely into his chest. He shifted and squirmed, flinching with each thundering impact and gasping as the air pressure around him threatened to suck his lungs out from his chest. He could feel the heat against his bare skin and the sweat that soaked through his clothing.