Crysis: Escalation (6 page)

The diseased congregation charged. Barnes had a moment to register a moving wall of people running at him. He opened fire, long bursts, the muzzle flash flickering at the end of the M4’s
barrel. They started going down, but not nearly enough of them. Those hit were carried along in the press of the charge or fell to the floor, tripping over others coming from behind them, but
always another person took their place.

T was firing long bursts as well, playing them across the press of the diseased people who were charging the three soldiers. The M249 SAW was designed for suppressing crowds, but that
didn’t work when the people you were trying to suppress had no sense of self-preservation, when all they wanted to do was turn you into one of them.

Earl was killing with every shot from his concealed position, but there were still too many of them.

Chavez emptied the clip from her M4 then turned and ran to the next fall-back point.

‘Reloading,’ she cried over the tac radio as she ejected the empty clip, rammed another one home, racked the slide, charged the weapon and then grabbed a grenade from her
webbing.

Barnes’s M4 ran dry.

‘Danger close!’ He reached forward and squeezed the trigger on the underslung M203 grenade launcher, aiming it straight into the charging crowd that was nearly on him. He fired the
grenade launcher but didn’t stop to see the effects of the grenade. Barnes turned and sprinted towards the fall-back point. Earl was trying to say something over the tac radio as the
fragmentation grenade exploded in the crowd. Bodies and limbs flew about the street. More of the diseased people went down as fragments flew through limbs and bodies at velocity. Barnes staggered
as something sharp tore into his upper arm. Something wet hit his head, tearing his fleece hat off.

‘Say again!’ Barnes shouted as he sprinted, reloading the M4 and sliding another forty-millimetre grenade, a beehive round, into the grenade launcher.

‘Grenade!’ Chavez shouted as she threw a fragmentation grenade into the right flank of the charging diseased people, away from T on the left.

‘They’re flanking you, running behind the houses parallel with the street on both sides,’ Earl shouted over the tac radio.

Chavez’s grenade exploded amongst them, sending more flying, sending limbs spinning and cutting more of them down. Those that had been hit but not killed by fragments and bullets kept
coming, limping, crawling or just pulling themselves along with their remaining fingers as others trampled them.

Barnes skidded to a halt by Chavez, turned and started firing. He saw T as he turned to run but they were on him, grabbing and tearing at him. He tried to break free but there were too many of
them. Then those closest to T started dying. The top of the head of one came off. Another spun round as he got hit in the chest. Another went down, and then another, as Earl shot them from
cover.

More of them were still running at Barnes and Chavez.

T broke free.

‘Reloading,’ Earl said over the tac radio. It sounded like a death sentence to Barnes. He reached forwards again and fired the M203. The beehive round filled the air with buckshot as
if he’d just fired an enormous shotgun. A line of people directly in front of Barnes went down in a spray of red. He was trying to buy time for T.

They brought T down. The M249 was still firing and a few rounds impacted close to Barnes. Barnes shifted the M4 and started firing single shot at those around T. T was fighting like a demon.
Barnes was horrified to see them trying to bite him, claw at him. He saw one of the diseased people, an old man covered in tumorous growths, tear T’s cheek open with his teeth. The medic was
trying to crawl out from under them. The last Barnes saw of him T was reaching towards them, then he was dragged back and disappeared amongst the diseased crazies.

One of the diseased people hit the ground, sliding across the ice, almost colliding with Barnes. He’d been shot by Earl. Barnes shifted aim and started firing as he backed away –
they were almost on him again. He heard Chavez screaming. Barnes glanced to his right. They’d come pouring out of an alley between two of the houses. They had her and were tearing at her
face, her arms, her legs, anywhere that wasn’t armoured. She was already turning red. Her cries were cut off as her throat was torn open.

Barnes shifted aim, trying to help Chavez, knowing it was too late. He fired. It was a tracer round, warning him that he only had two more rounds in the magazine. He fired those and ran. He had
no choice. She was dead already. He would just keep telling himself that.

Barnes pulled a fragmentation grenade off his webbing, pulled the pin, let the spoon flip off and then threw it over his shoulder in a way that he really hadn’t been trained to do. He
ejected the empty clip and tried to reload whilst sprinting but dropped the magazine.

Ahead of him he saw Earl move out onto the street, firing his M14 rifle quickly. Barnes was aware of bullets passing him. He heard people fall and others collide with them and go down, but there
were always more.

He saw Earl’s head jerk to the left. One of them came sprinting out of a gap between two houses. The diseased woman was practically on top of the sniper.

The grenade exploded behind Barnes and the pressure wave hit him, almost knocking him down. He felt fragments impact his Kevlar but he managed to keep running.

He watched as Earl grabbed his knife and moved to the side, ramming it into the diseased woman’s throat. She ran past him a few steps and then sprawled out on the ice, turning it red. Earl
drew his Mk 23 and began firing rapidly into the alley between the houses. Diseased people were collapsing to the ground as they tried to reach the sniper. Earl kept backing away, firing the
pistol.

Barnes felt someone grab the back of his webbing. Then another hand grabbed him, and another. He was yanked back. He slipped on the ice and was taken to the ground.

They were all around him, hands reaching for him. They threw themselves onto the ground next to him, on top of him. His vision was filled with beatific faces, tumorous growths and teeth. As they
clawed at him he heard disturbing ecstatic moans.

‘Run! Run!’ he screamed at Earl.

He kicked, punched, tried pushing himself away from them. Somehow he had his knife in his hand. There was blood. He felt teeth and ragged nails against his skin and there was more blood.

He heard a sound like a buzzsaw. Diseased people started going down close to him. Hydrostatic shock blew limbs off sick bodies and sent them spinning into the air as a frightening amount of
bullets rained down on the street.

Barnes renewed his fighting. There was no room for the advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques he’d been taught at Fort Bragg. He was kicking out with his feet, punching out with his left
fist and every time he felt someone break skin he tried to stab them, a lot.

There was now the constant buzzsaw noise of minigun fire. Someone was cutting down the diseased like a scythe through wheat. Barnes kicked one of the diseased people in the face, a little girl.
A man got Barnes’ knife in the face. Barnes found that he had enough room to draw his pistol. He started firing the Mk 23 rapidly, trying to clear himself room. Firing one-handed he pushed
himself to his feet. Someone grabbed at him. Their face caved in as Barnes shot him at point-blank range. The muzzle flash set the man’s beard on fire. Barnes practically hurdled him as he
broke free of the diseased people and ran.

He felt them grab at him again but he was free and ahead of the mass, but then there were more of them ahead of him. He fired at them on the run. One fell, but now his pistol was empty. As he
ran he reloaded the Mk 23, trying not to drop the magazine again.

A civilian Blackhawk hove into view over him. It was flying sideways. Barnes had a moment to register that the door gunner was wearing a protective NBC suit. The door gunner’s rotary
minigun started firing. The muzzle flash was a constant as the buzzsaw noise started again and the diseased people chasing him started falling.

With it clear behind him, Barnes stopped running and started firing at the four ahead of him. He couldn’t see Earl anywhere. He took the four sick people ahead of him down and then swung
around. One of the diseased people had managed to avoid the minigun’s onslaught. Barnes shot him twice in the head. The slide on the pistol came back, the magazine empty. Barnes ejected it
and replaced it rapidly. His M4 had been torn away in the fight.

He was gasping for breath. There were three of the helos. He could see that now. All of them were pouring fire down into the village. One of them was firing into the rainforest. Bullets from the
minigun cut swathes through the frozen trees, shattering them like crystal.

He looked around for more of the sick people. All he saw was a sea of corpses.

They circled the village looking for more of the infected to kill. Lockhart looked down at the patrol leader stood in the middle of the street, holding a smoking pistol, looking
for more targets, his people gone. Lockhart felt sorry for the man.

‘It’s very exciting this,’ Asher said. Lockhart wished that his orders had allowed him to ride in a different helo. ‘Is it safe for us to go down?’ Lockhart just
gave the scientist a look of contempt.

The commander listened as he received a message through the headset he was wearing.

‘Well?’ Asher demanded. Lockhart took a deep breath.

‘The Joint Chiefs have agreed with the boards’ recommendation. The Firestorm protocol is enabled. The bird’s already in the air.’

Asher nodded. ‘Typical tiny military minds. We’ll have to act quickly, then.’

‘What about Lieutenant Barnes?’

‘What about him?’

Barnes watched as armed men fast-roped out of two of the choppers, whilst the third chopper covered them. They were wearing NBC suits with body armour over the top.

Four of them advanced on him, covering him with their carbines.

‘Lieutenant Barnes. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to relinquish your weapon.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?! We’re on the same side!’ For one moment he thought that maybe they worked for the cartel, or FARC, except they had called him by his name. He
handed over his Mk 23 and then sat down hard.

It was then he started to realise how badly hurt he was. He was covered in cuts, abrasions and bite marks. Some of them were deep and bleeding quite badly. He’d taken a through-and-through
in his right upper arm, probably fragmentation from one of his own grenades. He had another graze on his forehead, either from another fragment or a bullet. Judging from how hard he was finding it
to breathe he reckoned he had at least one broken rib, probably due to a stray round, at a guess from the minigun. It had only grazed his body armour. Frankly, he was lucky to be alive. He noticed
that none of the people in the NBC suits were rushing to offer him medical aid. They
had
supplied him with a number of armed guards, however.

Then he started to think about T, and Chavez, and wonder where the fuck Earl was.

Then he remembered them all around him, reaching for him, teeth in his flesh. He started to shake uncontrollably.

The folding table had a number of scientific instruments on it. Asher was pouring over an instrument that Lockhart took to be some kind of microscope. Lockhart glimpsed the
stopwatch on the table, checked the countdown, and then turned to look at the strange tower. Three members of Asher’s team were using a plasma cutter in an attempt to remove part of it. Their
attempt was working but it looked to be taking a lot longer than he would expect for a plasma torch to cut through anything.

‘What happened here?’ Lockhart asked the scientist. Asher sighed so theatrically that Lockhart was able to make it out through the heavy NBC suit.

‘At a guess it was an incursion that didn’t fully initialise. Probably due to a lack of energy.’

‘And the virus?’

This time Lockhart heard the theatrical sigh over the radio link. The commander started grinding his teeth.

‘Commander, I’m working in the most appalling conditions, under ridiculous time restraints and trying to do science through these preposterous suits, which is a bit like trying to
play tennis whilst zipped into a body bag . . .’

‘Just answer the fucking question,’ Lockhart snapped.

Asher stared at the commander. The effect was wasted due to neither of them being able to see very much as a result of the suits’ masks.

‘The answer to the fucking question, commander, is yes, according to my preliminary, and I emphasise the word preliminary, findings, this is very similar to the Tunguska strain.’

‘Is it contagious?’

‘In your terms that,’ Asher pointed at the spire, ‘is basically a big landmine crossed with a fungus.’

‘An area denial weapon?’

‘Whenever it breaches the surface it spores and, as far as we know, only those infected with the spores come down with the virus. The spores themselves become inert after an amount of time
we have yet to determine.’

‘So he’s going to be fine?’ Lockhart asked, nodding towards where four of his men were guarding Barnes. ‘Even with the amount of contact he’s had?’

‘As far as I’m aware he’ll be perfectly fine. Fit as a badly-beaten fiddle, right up to the moment that this area is sanitised.’

‘And you have enough samples?’ Lockhart asked. Asher didn’t answer immediately. Instead he just looked around at the carpet of corpses on the ground.

‘I think so,’ the scientist finally said, sarcastically.

‘Good. Get that sample of the spire and get your people back on the helo.’ Lockhart turned and started walking towards Barnes.

‘Commander, I do hope you’re not forgetting your instructions,’ Asher said. Lockhart swung around to face the piggy little scientist.

‘They’re called orders, and I don’t need a stinking little pig of a man to remind me of my duty, do you understand me?’ Without waiting for an answer he turned back and
strode towards the battered Delta Force officer.

Major Winterman strode across the playing field the US and UK forces were using as an airfield for their helicopters. He was heading towards the British quarter.