Land of the Dead (Book 1): Infected (7 page)

Dillon spoke one simple word to describe the scene in front of him. “Clear.” He was truly in the zone. He would deal with the emotional consequences later.

It took another hour and a half to clear the upper floors of the apartment complex. Dillon had eliminated four threats, and Talbot had eliminated two. There were roughly sixty people alive and well, and there were eight vehicles designated to transport them to the 505. The silencers had, so far, held the noise down, but that wasn’t going to last. First, they were degrading rapidly. Second, the shots had been muffled by closed doors up until now. When they cleared the parking lot, it would be louder. How much louder was yet to be seen. Talbot looked tired. People who weren’t accustomed to CQB began to fray at the edges after an hour or so. They began to make mistakes. Still, the MP-5 couldn’t make accurate shots past twenty five meters with these jury rigged silencers on, and Dillon didn’t want to try and take down seven targets in the four or five seconds it would take them to travel the distance. He needed Talbot, badly.

Only, right now, he was standing at the bottom of the stairwell, ready to go through the door into the parking lot, and Talbot looked like he was spent.

“Talbot. Captain Talbot, I need you to get back in the game.”

“What game? This isn’t a fucking GAME, Dillon. We’re killing people.”

“We’re SAVING people, Sir. We’re taking out targets to save people. Now, we have to go out and take down seven more targets. SEVEN. You start left and sweep right. I start right and sweep left. And we keep placing well-aimed shots until they are all down and we can get out of here. And then we drive to the 505 and we do it again. I’m sorry, sir, but that’s the way it has to be. Are you in or are you out?”

“There’s no out, Dillon, so I’m in.”

“Head in the game, then?”

“Head in the game. Let’s get this over with.”

“Okay. Let’s do this. Ready. Steady. Go.”

Both men moved through the door in one fluid motion. The infected had managed to crawl under the vehicle and get a hold of the remote control Ferrari, but they were still confused as to what they should do with it. Those that couldn’t get underneath were trying to do so. Dillon looked over at the Suburban. Doc and Rick were still inside, looking frayed at the edges as well. He gave them the sign to kill the RC vehicle. The seven infected…he hoped all seven were there…stopped moving almost immediately. Dillon turned on his weapon mounted flashlight and stomped his foot twice. Soon after, the first one started to crawl out from underneath the car. It was an easy shot.

Another crouched between the vehicles. Talbot fired twice, hitting it in the chest.

“Try for the one shot kill, these silencers are wearing out.”

Talbot took another shot and one fell. The others were up and running. Dillon fired again, hitting one in the abdomen. He swore under his breath and fired again, downing the man. Talbot began to step backwards as he slowly fired at the oncoming infected. Dillon knew it was a bad idea, and a good way to trip on something behind you, but he found himself stepping back to stay out of Talbot’s line of fire, and out of sheer fear at being bitten.

Dillon fired twice more, and one of the rounds was significantly louder than the others, though still much quieter than it would have been without the silencer. He watched as Talbot put two rounds into the last one, then he turned to check the rear and flanks. Talbot moved forward cautiously, checking for any movement that might suggest the targets were still a threat.

“Clear.” Talbot said after a few moments. Dillon responded with a “Clear.” of his own. Dillon motioned for the Doc to pull the Suburban in, and he moved over with Talbot to close the rolling gate behind them. It took twenty minutes to get everyone quietly downstairs to the parking lot, and another ten minutes to pull the fuses from the cars to disable the headlights and tail lights. Then, he gave instructions to the drivers to stay no more than five feet from the vehicle in front, and keep their radios on. Two people had to go back upstairs to get their radios…

The convoy moved slowly for the block and a half. There were building burning in the distance, and it looked like the local shops and mall had been looted. Gunshots fired in the distance, mostly north Maadi, towards downtown Cairo. Occasionally, Dillon could hear heavy machine gun fire. He wondered how much worse things would be in two days.

Dillon and Talbot hopped out to open up the rolling gate. They immediately had movement from the side street to the left. Talbot raised his weapon to fire. Dillon noticed they were walking, not running. They didn’t seem to be very aggressive if they were infected.

“Stand down!” It was too late. Talbot fired two shots into the lead target, a local Egyptian that worked at a restaurant that frequently delivered to the 505 apartments. The woman went down in a heap. The others scattered, except for a teenage boy, obviously her son, who knelt in front of her. She was rapidly bleeding out, already unconscious.

“Jesus. What have I done….”

“Fuck, Talbot. Don’t worry about it. They came out of nowhere. I was only a second behind you on pulling the trigger. Let’s get everyone inside.”

“They…they probably just wanted help.”

“Maybe. It’s help we can’t give them, though. They aren’t getting on that plane. Hell, we’ll be lucky to get on it.”

“What have I…”

“Talbot, I need you to get inside now. Captain!”

“Moving.” was Talbot’s half-hearted reply.

Dillon was very worried about Talbot’s ability to continue the task at hand. He watched Talbot move towards the gate, then glanced at the convoy of vehicles entering the compound. It was a victory, a major victory, to have everyone in one place; everyone except the Director of USAID, who lived in a private villa. Oh, and he still had Bryce, ten marines, the Ambassador, and the Ambassador’s assistant up at the Embassy. That would have to wait until tomorrow. Tonight they still had to clear THIS compound and make it safe.

Three shots rang out, and Dillon felt like someone hit him in the back with a baseball bat. As he slumped to the ground, he tried to figure out what had happened. Those shots had been loud.

His vision blurred, but he managed to lift his neck off the ground enough to see the teenage boy, pistol in hand, firing in their direction. He couldn’t get to his MP-5 for some reason, so he drew his USP and fired at least once. Did he fire twice? The target went down. There was a crunching noise behind him. What was that all about? Dillon felt his back. Was he bleeding? He didn’t feel any blood, didn’t feel any holes in his back. Dillon tried to get up again, and managed to get up to his knees this time. His vision blurred again at the pain. Talbot had moved up to his right side and had just fired at several infected who were nearby enough to be attracted to the noise of the gunfire.

Talbot was moving his lips. Dillon took a few seconds to realize he was shouting.

“Dillon, get up. Get up, damn it!”

“I’m up. Shit. I’m up.”

“Someone get into that car and pull the driver out! Back it up and get it inside. We can’t have it blocking the entrance. Dillon found his MP-5 laying on the ground nearby. He holstered his USP before picking it up and checking its condition. Captain Talbot was doing whatever needed to be done behind Dillon, so he concentrated on keeping this area secure. Occasionally, he braved a quick glance to the rear for situational awareness. One of the cars had come to rest against the compound wall. Talbot was opening the driver’s side door. Apparently, the driver was dead and Talbot unceremoniously dumped him in the dirt before hopping in the car and backing it up. After that, the rest of the convoy began to enter the compound. Dillon saw shadows moving in, but wasn’t yet sure if it was his vision blurring or one – or more – infected moving in for the kill.

Dillon fired at a threat as it ran out of the dark, a mere twenty feet from him. “That answers my question, doesn’t it.”

Talbot moved up to his right side again, reaching down with his left hand to pull Dillon to a standing position. “Can you walk, Sergeant?”

“I’m not a fucking Sergeant, Captain, and I can walk just fine.” Dillon said as his knee buckled a bit, causing him to stagger.

“Well, I’m going to help you anyways. Let’s get you inside so the Doc can check you out.”

“That sounds good. Do you think I can get some ice cream?” was the last thing that Dillon said before he passed out.

Luckily for Dillon, he regained consciousness as he clattered to the ground.

“Doc! Over here.”

“Fuck. I’m up. I’m up.” Dillon said in protest. He found that he could only sit up.

“Dillon’s been shot, Doc. I think he took one in the side or back.”

Doc began to assess Dillon immediately. After about a minute of checking him over, Doc looked at Talbot. “His vest stopped the round, but there’s some blunt force trauma and one hell of a bruise. Let’s get him up and help him inside. I’ll have Hannah monitor him throughout the night, just in case there’s internal bleeding.”

“Shit. Hannah’s going to kill me.” Dillon said.

“I’m sure she will be happy you were wearing your vest. Come on, let’s get you inside.”

Dillon felt stupid. Years in the field had taught him not to turn his back on a possible threat, and he had failed. Maybe he had just been too tired to maintain HIS concentration. How arrogant was he that he had worried so much about Talbot unraveling and not looked at his own mental condition.

Hannah was pissed. Well, pissed and crying and glad that he was alive. Mikey looked a bit shattered. Apparently, he had built his father up as someone who was unstoppable. It took ten minutes of light conversation to convince everyone that he was okay. He clinched it by standing up at the end and going to get a glass of water. It hurt to do so, but it made everyone feel better.

“Even superheroes wear armor, Mikey.”

Dillon allowed himself another 30 minutes rest, during which time he grabbed a sandwich, another glass of water, and a cocktail of over-the-counter pain meds to take the edge off. He was going to have one hell of a bruise. It would be ugly, multi-colored, and lightly shaded directly over the impact point. As a joke, he used to call bruises like this “The Eye of Sauron.” Today he only had one. Once, in Afghanistan, he had ended up with two on his chest and a cracked rib.

Afterward, Dillon thought about sleeping, but he knew that he couldn’t sleep until the compound was secured. Dillon did what he could to repair the silencers on the two MP-5s, only to find Mikey making one from scratch. The only thing that Mikey had wrong about the design was the interior piece of PVC piping. Mikey’s didn’t have any openings in it for the sound to dissipate into the wet sponges.

Dillon complimented Mikey on his work, even pointing out that Mikey’s design was a bit better than his in some respects. Then, he took a few minutes to take one of the working models apart and showed Mikey how the entire thing worked. Mikey’s eyes lit up in understanding, and he immediately asked if he could use the dremel. Dillon told Mikey that he thought it was a better idea to have Rick do the dremeling, and have Mikey do the rest. Then, Dillon asked Mikey to build two more. He made sure Mikey understood that he was under no circumstances allowed to place them on the spare MP-5s or touch a weapon for any reason whatsoever.

“But Dad…I can help!”

“You could help, but I don’t want you to. I want you to stay safe.”

“But it will all be easier if you have more people with you…and you’ll be safer.”

“I’ll stay safe, critter. I promise.”

With that, Dillon finished his third glass of water and headed out the door, where he found Talbot waiting for him.

“We start at the top and clear unit by unit, just like earlier. Where are all of the people from your building?”

“We put them in the rec rooms on the ground floor. It’s crowded, but we figured we wouldn’t move them into units until everything was clear.”

“Good. Let’s get this over with so we can get some sleep.”

“Sleep? What’s that?” Talbot said, laughing. “Seriously, though, we need to come up with a watch schedule for the night.”

“Yes, we do. And we need to bring everyone up from the first floor, lock down the elevators and lock the stairwells as well.” Dillon opened the stairwell door and Talbot began to clear. Talbot cleared up while Dillon watched down.

“Good call, Dillon. I’ll get with Rick and have him do it all, after we clear the place. Come to think of it, we can probably have other people take watch tonight. We’re going to need our rest, and they won’t need guns to do the job if we’re all safe on the upper floors.”

“Agreed. Now, didn’t you say something about getting this over with and sleeping?”

Talbot laughed. “Well, here we are, the fourth floor. Let’s do it.”

The fourth floor cleared fairly quickly. Only seven of the units were occupied, and everyone was healthy. The third floor rapidly became problematic. Dillon knocked on a door, and heard something slam into it from the other side. Talbot, standing to the side, called for Dillon to step back, and did so a little too loudly. One of the infected came through the window at Talbot, but tripped over the lip of the window and brought the curtains with it.