These Dead Lands: Immolation (66 page)

“Yes!” Reader shouted. “Two with one shot! That’s five times now!”

“I’m at six,” Stilley yelled back.

“Oh, fuck you! Who do you think you are? Legolas from
The Lord of the Rings
?”

“Naw, man. I’m Shaft—John Shaft!” Stilley fired his M4 regularly. “I’m a complicated man, motherfuckers!”

“Yeah, as complicated as one plus one,” Guerra yelled. “You guys don’t shut the fuck up, you’re going to get the reeker shaft right up the ass! Stop your jawin’, and keep shooting!”

Stilley fired again, and Guerra saw two reekers go down through his scope.

“You see that, Reader?” Stilley crowed. “One plus one equals two more dead reekers! Suck it!”

Reader made a frustrated sound and raised his rifle. He fingered the M203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel and sent a 40-millimeter grenade right through the bridge’s latticework. It exploded, sending reekers tumbling off the bridge and into the creek. Several of them just lay in the water.

“That’s cheating!” Stilley said. “Five-five-six only in this game!”

Guerra watched the reekers pile up at the base of the container wall with no small degree of worry. The soldiers were getting tired. Even though it wasn’t physically arduous to lie on your belly and shoot reekers, the repetition started inducing a bit of tunnel vision and inured the soldiers and Guardsmen to the omnipresent threat. Guerra shifted his aim toward the front of the container and resumed firing. The press of bodies was so tight that the reekers he killed didn’t fall away but just kind of floated, buoyed up by the zombies behind and beneath them. That was becoming a problem because the corpses blocked the animate ones from receiving dedicated fire.

“Okay, guys, get ready to pull out of here,” Guerra said. “Shit sandwich has arrived.”

A reeker grabbed the edge of the container and started hauling itself up, eyes dull and emotionless, mouth open wide. It took a round right in the face almost immediately. Another appeared, standing on the pile of dead. It reached up and flailed at a sandbag before a Guardsman put it down. Two more popped up, then three, then twelve. The gunfire was constant. Guerra watched as one zombie fell back, taking a soldier’s rifle with it.

“Uh, yeah, shit’s gettin’ real,” Stilley said.

“Goddamn, really?” Reader said. “I mean, what’s your next analysis going to prove out there, Einstein?”

One bullet-riddled zombie climbed halfway into a fighting position before it was taken out. It had managed to lay its hands on one of the Guardsmen, and the trooper was in full freak-out mode, trying to abandon his position. He didn’t get far because another zombie—a runner—vaulted over the sandbags and landed right on top of him. There was some confusion as soldiers wrestled with it, trying to pull it off the man before it could bite him. For an instant, there was a void in firepower.

The reekers exploited that immediately. Shamblers, runners, and screamers surged onto the container, pushing through the line as men and women shouted and shot in panic. The captain went down when a stray bullet ripped through his face. The female radio operator, who had been standing behind Wilkins, screamed and reached for him as his body went over the edge. A reeker caught her outstretched arm, pulled it close, and bit down hard. The woman’s screaming became suddenly shrill.

“Uh, Sergeant G?” Reader asked, still firing.

“Grab your shit, and let’s go!” Guerra said.

Guerra, Reader, and Stilley made a mad dash to abandon the container top. They fired as they retreated, pausing to take aimed shots. Many of the Guardsmen running with them reverted to training and tried to use suppressive fire. It was ineffective, and several of the Guardsmen went down, disappearing beneath piles of zombies that tore at them, ripping them apart. The fallen gave the rest a chance at life. The zombies zeroed in on the caught prey, giving the rest of the troops just enough time to clear the container and head for their vehicles. The troops manning the rearm stations didn’t have much time to pack up, and Guerra wondered how much ammo was going to be left behind as he watched the troops begin throwing everything they could into the back of a waiting five-ton. Behind them, zombies were already leaping off the container, crashing to the ground and snapping legs, backs, and necks. But they kept coming, even if it was at an elbow crawl. M2s and grenade launchers boomed as troops in armed Humvees opened up, racking the top of the container with rather impressive fire. But it still wasn’t enough. As Guerra led Reader and Stilley to their Humvee, he saw the last of the razor wire barriers fail beneath a mass of reekers that had come across the creek.

One of the dead was the old Amish man, missing his hat, half of his face, and most of his right arm. His long beard was torn and bloody, hanging from the scraps of his cheek and chin. His white shirt was dirty and torn, exposing deep rents gouged from his flesh. The Amish man turned dead eyes to Guerra, moaned as if in recognition, and headed toward him.

Madre de Dios!
Guerra pounded up to the Humvee and tore open the driver’s door. He leaped inside and slammed the door behind him. With shaking hands he managed to get the vehicle started as Reader and Stilley joined him.

“Man, this is all sorts of fucked up!” Stilley shouted as he sprawled across the backseat, floundering on the drivetrain cover.

“Can’t believe I agree with you,” Reader said as he slammed the front passenger door shut. “What’s the op, Sarge?”

“We get the fuck out of here,” Guerra said, shifting the Humvee into gear. “We’ll probably pull off every now and then to try to thin out the herd before it gets to the Gap, but I’m not expecting a lot to come from that.”

*

Everything was falling
apart.

Victor watched the displays that showed the feeds from the UAVs buzzing across the entire battlespace. The contact at the perimeter of Fort Indiantown Gap hadn’t gained much traction, despite that fact that the zombie horde coming up from the south was well over twenty thousand strong. The forces there, commanded by the cavalry officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gavas, were able to hold back the reekers. While it was more than only slightly troubling that the installation was under attack, the gravity of that situation paled to virtual insignificance when compared to what was going in the east. Almost all the barricades erected along the high-speed avenues of approach had been overrun or were about to be, as in the case of the second-tier barricades on I-78. The amount of fighting there was almost awe-inspiring, with a thousand soldiers and Guardsmen duking it out with
millions
of zombies. While the soldiers were well trained and equipped, the zombies had numbers on their side. Fort Indiantown Gap was going to be crushed.

“Colonel Jarmusch,” Victor called, keeping his eyes on the screens.

“Go ahead,” Jarmusch said. The garrison commander was a couple of tables away, working with some of his Guard team.

“Is that train ready to roll? We might need it a lot sooner than we thought.”

Jarmusch looked up at him. “Lieutenant Munn and anyone else who has train experience are on it. When the time comes, we’ll be ready.”

“Once that main body gets here, we’re not going to be able to hold them off,” Victor said. “We’ve already lost most of our fighting positions, except for the one up north. Let’s get Senator Cornell and his wife aboard that train and keep it guarded.” Even though Cornell was likely the new president of the United States, Victor found he had difficulty conferring the title on the man. “Do we have vehicles loaded up on the flat beds for the road movement from the Naval facility?”

“We do,” Jarmusch said. He studied the screens. “But do you really think that—”

“Fort Indiantown Gap is going down, Alex,” Victor said. “We’re going to have to recall the troops still holding the line. If we don’t, they’re going to be cut off by the reeker formations that have crossed the Swatara. We need every joe we can get, so we can’t wait. If they get trapped, we’ll never get them out.” Victor spun in his chair to face the comms team. “Contact Vogler and have him retrograde all his elements out of there immediately. They’re to return to the Gap ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.”

*

Hastings was still
waiting for a turn on the firing line when Vogler appeared. The tall, broad-shouldered officer looked wild-eyed. Hastings thought that was odd, since he felt almost numb from all the shooting, the smoke, and the carnage.

“We’re being ordered out!” Vogler shouted. “Let’s fold up the tents and get the hell out of here!”

“Why’re we pulling back now, sir?” Ballantine asked. He pointed at the gap separating the two container walls. Thousands of dead zombies lay in it. “In another couple of minutes, we’ll have that thing filled to the top, and then they’ll be able to walk right across.”

If Vogler thought the comment was even remotely funny, he didn’t let it show. “We’re going to get cut off. A few thousand reekers are moving on us from the Swatara. We don’t have enough guys to fight two engagements at once!”

“What happened to the bridge barricades?” Hastings asked, thinking of Guerra and his other men.

“Overrun, I was told.” Vogler gestured at the logistics area behind the container wall. It was already full of activity, troops packing up and readying to roll out. “I’ll call everyone off the wall in ten minutes. Listen, I’ll stay up here. You guys go down and take charge of the retrograde operation. Captain Vega is in charge down there. Go ahead and tell him I’ve given you oversight.”

“Sure thing,” Hastings said. “But remember what happened last time. If those things make a pile and gain access to the top of the container, things are going to go tits up in a major way, and fast. Don’t forget—some of the reekers can run.”

“Roger that,” Vogler said as he turned away.

“Okay, let’s get off the wall,” Hastings told Ballantine.

He and the NCO scaled a ladder down to the ground. After some searching, they found Captain Vega. He was a man of medium build and dark complexion, with some rather severe acne scarring on his face and a genuine unibrow across both eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved in about three days, and his vague, pinched expression told Hastings the guy had been run through the wringer a couple of times and was just barely holding on.

Just like the rest of us,
Hastings thought. “Hey, Vega?” Hastings called as they approached.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Vogler told us to swing by and help you get things squared away. I guess he figures he needs you to get your company stood up. Sergeant Ballantine and I will take over the loading operation from you. You good with that?”

Vega nodded like a bobble-head toy. “Yeah… yeah, that’s great, man. Thanks.” He pointed at the three five-tons a few feet away. Soldiers were humping food, water, and ammunition over and loading the beds. “We’re doing it by class, one class per truck.”

Hastings turned to Ballantine, but the big sergeant was already on it. The NCO started organizing them into a delivery line, making the soldiers line up and hand off materials to each other like a living conveyer belt.

“Cool, Vega. We got it,” Hastings said.

“Hey, you one of the guys from the 10th?” Vega asked.

“Yeah.”

“Shit, man. Heard you guys went through the tough shit. Was it like this?” Vega jerked a thumb toward the barricade, where the soldiers atop it were slugging it out with the dead. The racket was incredible.

Hastings stared at the barricade for a moment. Smoke drifted past overhead, but it was nowhere near as thick as it had been up front. At least the guys on the container wall weren’t choking to death. They had a chance. “Worse,” he replied. “But it’s still the same shit. Just a different day.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I hear you,” Vega said, but his tone was vague, and his eyes looked a little wild.

Hastings stepped closer to him. “Vega, listen to me.” When the captain continued looking all around, Hastings waved his hand. “Dude, do I have your attention?”

Vega finally focused on Hastings. “Yeah, what?”

“Get ready to organize your men into a defensive perimeter. Make it like a skirmish line. Nothing fancy, just guys standing next to each other, maybe with another echelon behind them. Talk to your NCOs about it now, because when the dead come over the wall, there’s not going to be a lot of time to get organized. You hear me?”