The Gathering Dead (6 page)

The minutes passed, and they waited in the stairwell as patiently as they could. McDaniels listened to the sounds that entered the stairwell: machine noises from HVAC, the gentle gurgle of water in pipes, the soft susurration of air cycling past. There were no sounds he could attribute to the walking dead. No moaning, no banging on doors, no footfalls. As far as McDaniels could tell, they were alone in the stairwell.

When the reentry door slowly opened, it was still a shock. McDaniels pointed his rifle at the door as it swung open. Gartrell was on the other side, and he waved them in.

“We’re clear inside.”

McDaniels motioned the others forward while he hung back, covering the stairways leading to the landing. The Safires entered the office floor, followed by Sergeant Jimenez, who moved gingerly. McDaniels could tell by the set of his jaw that he was in no small amount of pain. Once the Night Stalker had crossed the threshold, McDaniels backed into the office and silently closed the door behind him.

“We should probably figure out a way to block this door,” he said to Gartrell.

Gartrell nodded. “We’re already looking into that. Lots of heavy file cabinets and credenzas we could use, but this seems to be the only exit. Would be a shame to block it off and not have a way out.”

McDaniels sighed. “Well, let’s have one of the troops stand guard, then. What’s the lay of the land around here?”

“Typical office environment.” Gartrell waved to the virtual sea of cubicles that made up the office. “Cube farm, with offices on the far side that have windows overlooking Lexington. They’ll probably rename it to Dead Avenue, though
—
tons of stenches everywhere.” He paused. “It ain’t looking pretty out there, sir.” The older NCO sighed and adjusted his backpack. “You might as well walk the floor, and take a look around. I’ve got the rest of the troops poking around. Latrines are that way”
—
he pointed to his right
—
“along with a pantry. Vending machines, coffee, hot chocolate, even a refrigerator with that Parmalat milk. Tastes like crap, but you can drink it and it won’t kill you. I think.” He paused. “Radios work out here, since they’re not cut off by the stairwell walls, but they’re pretty much useless. Our private freq is blank, but there’s still some activity on the common net. All fragmented. Some of our guys are still alive, but they’re on the run, I think.” His face hardened a bit, and McDaniels knew the first sergeant had heard some things he didn’t like.

McDaniels flipped frequencies on his radio. The private frequency USASOC had allocated for them was indeed silent, nothing but a vague hiss of static. The common tactical frequency was a mish-mash of static broken every now and then by pleas for assistance or other units trying to reconstitute. Most of the calls were unintelligible, and some of them carried with them the sounds of distant combat.

He looked at Gartrell. “We need to keep focused on staying alive, first sergeant. Once we get established here, we should make sure the civilians are safe, and then take an inventory of our gear and ammo. We’ll also need to break out the sat phone and see if we can get a hold of anyone at Bragg.”

“Satcom’s not going to work in here, sir. We’ll need to be up on the roof. And this building is 27 stories, so we’re going to have to go for a walk, unless you want to consider taking one of the elevators. Which are in a locked bay over there.” Gartrell pointed to his left. McDaniels turned and walked over to a nearby reception area. A set of glass doors separated the elevator bay from the office floor. When he tried to pull them open, he found they were locked.

“Magnetic lock, major.” Gartrell hadn’t followed him, and remained near the fire exit. “To get out, you press that button on the wall there. To get in, someone either swipes an entry card or is buzzed in from that receptionist’s desk, there.”

McDaniels saw the illuminated red button on the wall beside the glass entry doors. It was clearly labeled EXIT, and he pressed it. A loud metallic click sounded, and he pulled open one of the doors easily enough. He listened, but heard no evidence that any of the elevators were in operation. He let the door close, and the click sounded again. The doors relocked automatically.

“I wonder if it’ll still work when the power fails,” he said.

Gartrell said nothing. They would deal with that when it happened.

McDaniels looked around. “The Safires?”

Gartrell pointed to over his shoulder. “In the pantry. No windows, single point of ingress. Seemed to be the safest place to put them for the moment. Jimenez has guard duty.” As he spoke, the remaining two Night Stalkers appeared, carrying a heavy wooden credenza by either end.

“Put that here,” Gartrell ordered, and stepped aside while the red-faced soldiers pushed the ornate piece of furniture against the fire door. It only blocked half of it, and the door opened into the stairwell anyway, but it was a start.

“I’m thinking one of us should be on the other side of that door,” one of them said. McDaniels couldn’t see his nametape, as the ballistic vest he wore covered up the blouse of his battle dress utilities. He didn’t know any of these soldiers at all, and they didn’t know anything about him, other than the gold oak leaf insignia on his uniform lapels.

“I’m Major McDaniels, with USASOC J-2,” he told them, “and this is First Sergeant Gartrell. Who’re you guys?”

“Staff Sergeant Dane Finelly,” said the first, a tall, broad-shouldered man who spoke with a subtle twang. “Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 160 SOAR.” Finelly’s face was almost as broad as his shoulders, and he had the ruddy, rawboned look of a farmer’s son.

“Sergeant Eugene Derwitz, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 160 SOAR,” said the second, a smaller-framed man with dark eyes and a hooked nose. The way he truncated his Rs spoke of somewhere on the Jersey Shore.

McDaniels nodded to both men. “Keep doing what you’re doing, troops. Any problems taking orders from a couple of ground pounders for a while?”

Finelly shook his head. “Negative on that, sir. If you’re Special Forces, then this is your show.” Derwitz offered nothing further, so McDaniels presumed Finelly spoke for both of them.

“All right. Keep bringing over stuff to form a barricade. When you’re done, one of you relieve First Sergeant Gartrell at the door. The other will inventory his ammo and gear. Once that man is finished, he’ll stand overwatch while the other man does his own inventory. Count every bullet, every MRE, every NVG battery you have. And fill your canteens. We don’t know how long the water will hold out.”

The soldiers murmured their assent and set off to gather more furnishings to use as barricades. McDaniels looked back at Gartrell.

“When they’re done, come join me in the pantry. We’ll need to plan our next step, and we should get that done sooner rather than later.” He nodded toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “It’ll be dark soon, and I don’t think things are going to get any better.”

“How long will we be here for?” Regina Safire asked. Her dark eyes had taken on what McDaniels supposed was their usual predatory cast, and they followed the tall black Special Forces officer as he stepped into the pantry and slowly removed his Kevlar helmet. McDaniels made her to be about thirty-five years old, a few years younger than he was. He knew she had been a medical doctor before joining her father’s company as a medical consultant, but he didn’t know what her specialty was. He hoped her bedside manner was a bit more refined than what she was presenting now.

Just the same, beneath the hard exterior, there was a certain softness that was visible whenever she looked at her father. She was a Daddy’s Girl, as incredible as it might seem. She was also very attractive, McDaniels thought. Her dark hair and tanned face were complemented by what seemed to be a trim body beneath her sturdy jeans and long-sleeved work shirt. Her denim jacket lay across the top of a nearby Xerox copier.

“Major?” she prompted.

McDaniels set his helmet on the counter next to the sink and allowed his radio headset to hang around his neck. He looked at the Safires for a moment, then focused on the woman. He held out his hand.

“I’m Cordell McDaniels. I’m afraid we were never properly introduced.”

She looked at him for a long moment, as if his sudden politeness was something alien, untrustworthy. Then she finally extended her own manicured hand and shook his.

“Regina Safire. But I’m sure you know that already?”

McDaniels nodded. “But an introduction is never something you should waste.” He looked at Safire, who sat on a pile of copying paper boxes next to two softly-humming vending machines. He didn’t meet McDaniels’ eyes; instead, he kept his gaze rooted on the industrial-looking white-tiled floor.

“Doctor Safire?”

Safire looked up at him. In the pantry’s harsh overhead light, he suddenly looked like Andy Warhol, only not quite as swishy. “I already know who you are, major. There’s no need to waste time with pleasantries. Are they coming for us?”

“Is
who
coming for us?”

Safire frowned. “The military, of course.”

McDaniels turned to the sink. There was a Keurig coffee machine next to it, the kind that used the single-dose K-cups that McDaniels was so fond of. He opened one of the overhead cabinets and found several boxes of coffee. He sorted through them and pulled one down.

“We’re having communication problems at the moment. Our uplink to the communication satellite was at the assembly area in Central Park, and it seems to be offline. The helicopters had satellite radios built into them, but we obviously lost access to those as well.” He opened the coffeemaker and dropped in a K-cup of extra-bold coffee. After positioning a cup beneath the spout, he pressed the brew button.

“So you mean we’re
stranded
here?” Regina asked.

McDaniels watched the dark liquid fill the paper coffee cup. “Not at all. Once the men have this floor secured and we take an inventory of our consumables, I’ll go up to the roof with my satellite phone. I’ll be able to reach my component command and arrange for another extraction, probably by helicopter.”

“How long will that take?” Safire asked. “Shouldn’t you do that now?”

“I’ll attend to it as soon as we can fortify our position, Doctor. As far as how long it will take, I can’t tell you. I would imagine we lost a lot of aircraft back at the park. I don’t know what resources are still in the area, so it could be some time until we see any kind of rescue mission mounted. Which is why we have to fortify our position. Coffee?”

Safire rocketed to his feet, and his pale face flushed with sudden color. “No, I don’t want any fucking coffee! I want you and your people to do your job, which is to
get us out of here!
”

“Dad! Take it easy,” Regina said softly.

McDaniels stirred a serving of light cream into his coffee. He brought the cup to his lips and tasted it, noticing for the first time his hand was trembling slightly. Was it from fear, or just the aftereffect of what seemed to be a gallon of adrenaline wearing off? He couldn’t tell which.

“Doctor Safire.” McDaniels kept his voice low and level, striving to at least sound calm and collected, though in truth giving the scientist a nice shiner sounded good at the moment. “You might have noticed that no fewer than fifteen men have died trying to get you and your daughter away from... those things out there. We’re now down to seven gunslingers against probably thousands of the walking dead. The precariousness of our situation is hardly lost upon me. I think maybe you can cut us a little slack?” He stared at Safire as he took another sip of his coffee. Right now, it tasted better than a cold beer on a hot day.

If Safire was moved by McDaniels’ comment, it did not show. “You need to get us out of here,” he said.

McDaniels sighed. “As I tried to tell you, that’s pretty much what I’m all about right now.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest as looked at Safire.

“Tell me who else knows what you do, doctor. Because if things go any further south, we’re going to need a contingency plan.”

“What do you mean by that?” Regina asked. She walked over to Safire and put a hand on his arm.

McDaniels ran a hand over the stubbly bristle on his head. Even though he wasn’t required to keep his hair as short as it was, he found a tight crew cut suited him just fine after fifteen years in the Army.

“He means that in case I get killed, someone else will need to know what I do,” Safire said in an acidic tone.

“I mean we might need to spread the wealth a bit,” McDaniels countered. “Who else knows what you do, Doctor? Who else knows how to stop the walking dead?”

“No one,” Safire said immediately.

“So you’re telling me that all of your research is
—
what? In your head?”

“I’m the only person who knows what RMA is, and what it does to a living human host.”

“RMA?” McDaniels asked.

Safire loosened up a bit, now that he had something else to occupy his thoughts other than fleeing from the walking dead. He straightened his navy blue dress jacket by pulling on its lapels.

“RMA.
Rex Articulus Morte
. Essentially, ‘the moving dead’, the name I assigned to the bioengineered virus that started all of this.”

“Bioengineered? So whatever’s causing this is man-made?”

“Without question. The signature in some of the precursors that I was able to find in the bug’s building blocks definitely point to something from the old Soviet Union. I learned all about Soviet biological weapons when I was working for the government in the 1970s and 1980s.” As he spoke, Safire drifted toward the vending machines behind him and regarded their wares through the glass in their doors. “How it can reanimate the dead is still something we don’t know. There’s obviously some components that make up the virus which we’ve never dealt with before. But I have developed a method for preventing humans who are bitten by the dead from becoming one of them, and if the drug is administered while the individual is alive, even their death won’t result in them rising again.”