A Glimpse of Decay (Book 3): Lost in Twilight (17 page)

Karnes ran down the ramp and jumped into the Humvee, shutting the door to cut out some of the noise.  “Bravo-Six here.”

“Okay son, we’ve got some support on the way.  They should be here in the next twenty minutes or so.”

“What do we have for support?” Karnes asked.

“We’ve got one Bee-One with a payload of five hundred pound bombs.  Where do you want them?”

“Damn, just one bomber?  Well, we’ll take what we can get.  If they could walk them in right down Binz-Engleman to the front of the gate, it would really relieve some of the pressure on us.  Then maybe we could get the tracks out there and smash them back.”

“Okay, you’ll have to mark your location with smoke to give the bomber a landmark.”

“General, can we get the chopper in the air to mark the target zone?  We can drop one smoke where we want it to start and another where we want it to end.  Just to make sure we don’t get a stray impact on the perimeter.”

“Okay, that’s a good idea.  I’ll get Novak and his bird in the air.  Just keep your asses down.  SAMSEE Actual out.”

Karnes jumped out of the Humvee and ran back up onto the rampart.  “Alright everyone, we got a bomber about twenty minutes out.  We’re gonna get them to walk their load right down this main road here.  Novak and his chopper will mark the target zone.”

“Shit, there’s one right there!” screamed one of the troopers as a reanimated woman tumbled over the wall and onto the rampart.  The dress she was wearing was dangling off of her and her stench was revolting.  Karnes ran up to her and delivered a rifle butt to her head before she could get to her feet.  He smashed her two more times and her brains spilled out from her head and dribbled down through the steel grate that formed the rampart.

“Fuck, they’ve made it to the top of the wall!” screamed one of the mini-gunners.  Several more zombies began to clamber over the wall and he swiveled the gun to his left.  With the press of the trigger, he cut them in half.  In his fear-induced haste, he had failed to see that Darkowitz was standing next to the last corpse that had made it over the wall.  In the blink of an eye, the sergeant’s body was cut to ribbons by the stream of lead.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Karnes screamed.  “You just killed Sergeant Darkowitz!”

In shock at what he had just done, the stupefied soldier stood with his mouth hanging open, staring blankly at what remained of Darkowitz.  He didn’t notice another corpse that had made it over the wall just to his right.  Karnes raised his rifle to shoot the attacker, but it was too late.  Before the unsuspecting soldier could react, the zombie was sinking his rotting teeth into the base of his skull.

“Oh my God, help me!” screamed the soldier as he fought to pull away from his attacker.  With one adrenaline filled impulse, the stricken trooper was able to reach back and grab the attacker by his shirt, tossing him over his hip.  Part of the man’s spine was torn away in the zombie’s jaws and the wounded troop crumpled down to the grate rampart, kicking and flailing as his nerves fired away in a final flurry.

“They’re coming over the wall,” Carrie screamed as more corpses piled over onto the rampart.  Seeing their deteriorating situation, some of the troopers jumped down from the wall and began to fire up at the lumbering dead.

A fast mover leapt down onto the rampart, running directly towards Carrie.  Turning to face the threat, she had just enough time to bring up her rifle, shoving it between the two of them as they collided.  The force of the crash caused the both of them to fall down, rolling off of the walk way and tumbling down to the hard asphalt below.

“Carrie,” Karnes screamed as he leapt down to the pavement.  He ran up to the embattled woman and he slammed the butt of his rifle down onto the head of the attacker.  Catching her breath after having it knocked out of her lungs, Carrie kicked away from the fast mover as Karnes smashed its head into a pulp.

“Cowboy-Six, get your tracks up to the main entrance!” Karnes yelled into his radio.  “We’ve got reanimated and fast movers pouring over the wall!”

“Shit, did he say that the wall has been breached?” Davenport asked Morrow as the two sat in the idling Bradley.

“Cowboy-Six, we’re on the way,” Morrow replied to Karnes.  “Let’s go!” he yelled to the driver.  Standing in the commander’s hatch, Morrow looked at the other three vehicles and he waived his right hand over his head.  “Let’s go!” he screamed to the vehicle commanders.

***

“Fuck, look at all those things,” Chief Warrant Officer-Two Novak said into the mic boom of his flight helmet.  He had just cleared the helipad and was slowly orbiting the scene of the ongoing fight at the main entrance to the compound.  His co-pilot, Warrant Officer Brasher, watched in horror as the living mass of dead humanity was threatening to wash over the steel walls.

“Alright, we’ll mark one end of the strike zone over down by the freeway,” Novak said as he pointed with his free hand.  He nudged the cyclic with the other hand as the Blackhawk drifted over the roadway that fed from Interstate 35 to the hospital and its clinics.  “Jonesy, get ready to pop smoke,” Novak said to his crew chief, Sergeant Tony Jones.

Jones shuffled across the deck of the craft and retrieved a smoke grenade from a large rucksack.  He then made his way over to the open cargo doors and sat down, allowing his legs and feet to hang outside of the helicopter.  “Ready to go, Mister Novak,” Jones said into his helmet mic.

“Man, look at that,” Brasher said as he pointed towards the skyline of the city.  Dozens of plumes of smoke were coiling up into the heavens and several of the skyscrapers had brilliant flames flickering from out of their windows.  The revolving restaurant and lounge of the Tower of the Americas—a famed landmark of San Antonio that stood above all the other downtown buildings—sat motionless and denuded.  A fire had devoured the structure, leaving a steel framed skeletal remain sitting atop the concrete tower.

“Yeah, that’s pretty bad,” Novak said.  Looking back down at the gate, he pressed a button on his control that allowed him to communicate with people outside of the helicopter.  “Bravo-Six, just wanna make sure we’re correct on the target.  From Thirty-Five down to the gate, right?”

“Yeah, that’s correct!” Karnes yelled.  Novak and Brasher could hear shooting and screaming in the background.  Switching back to the copter’s internal comms, Novak commented, “Man, it sounds bad down there.”

“Poor bastards,” Brasher said.  “I just hope the general has a plan in case the place folds.”

“I’m sure he does.”  Novak leveled the helicopter and scanned the sky around him.  “Alright Jonesy, just hang on ‘til we get word from the bomber.”

“Will do,” the crew chief replied.  “Damn, I wish we had a door gun on here.  I could at least strafe those fucks—maybe kill off a few of them.”

“I know,” Brasher said.  I don’t know why we didn’t get armed before we got sent over here to Fort Sam.”

***

“Okay, everyone fall back behind the tracks!” Karnes yelled as he pointed to Morrow and his approaching Bradleys.  “Carrie, get the Humvee behind the armor.”  Taking Karnes’s directions, Carrie ran and jumped into the Humvee and cranked it up.  She was quickly joined by several other troopers as they sought some kind of shelter from the mayhem going on around them.  A sudden blast from the coaxial machine gun of one of the tracks made Karnes duck as he trotted back towards Morrow and his vehicles. 

“Get on line with me,” Morrow said into his radio as he directed the other Bradleys.  “Sergeant Davenport, have the men deploy along the tracks.  We’ll form a skirmish line and see how long we can hold them.  We’ll sweep the ramparts with the coaxes, but we’ll try to avoid using the auto-cannons because we don’t want to damage the walls.”

Seeing Morrow standing in the commander’s hatch, Karnes pulled himself up onto the deck of the Lieutenant’s vehicle.  Looking back down at his soldiers, the sergeant shouted, “Get in line with the tracks.  If any of them get close enough, use your rifle butts instead of shooting them!  We gotta try and save ammo!”

“I hope that fucking support is close-by!” Morrow shouted over to Karnes.  “If not, I don’t know how long we can hold out!  There’s just too many of them!”

Karnes stepped back from Morrow’s turret as it raked the rampart with its machine gun.  The other Bradleys were doing the same, and the portion of the wall above the walkway was being shredded from the sheer volume of fire being put out by the armored vehicles.  Bodies and body parts were now beginning to pile up along the rampart.  Some of the fast movers who had been killed by the gunfire were now beginning to reanimate into zombies.

***

“Dark Horse-Three, we are on station and awaiting your go,” a voice called over the radio in the command center.  It was the B-1 bomber.

“SAMSEE Command, stand by for target information,” Collier replied.

“Alright, have Novak mark the target area!” Hartman yelled with a dry, shaky voice.  He had been watching the battle down below through a window and fear was beginning to grip him.  His worst nightmare had come to life—the perimeter had been breached…and he had no backup plan.

“Steel Horse, mark the target zone,” Collier directed to the helicopter.  She turned to Hartman, and while covering the mic of hear headset, she asked, “What if it doesn’t work, General?  What do we do?”

Hartman didn’t respond.  He stood at the window, looking down at the unfolding scene in disbelief.

“Alright, Jonesy, pop it,” Novak said.

Jones pulled the pin on the smoke canister and dropped it out of the copter.  A plume of purple smoke began to whip up into the sky.

Novak navigated down Binz-Engleman and yelled for Jones to drop the second smoke about a hundred yards shy of the main security gate.  With the active shooting taking place at the wall, he wanted to avoid catching a stray round, so he increased his speed and altitude.  As Jones was releasing the second canister, a ricochet from one of the Bradley guns zipped right past his head.

“Fuck!” Jones screamed.

“What!” Brasher yelled back.

“I almost got my damn head blown off by those fuckers down there!”

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Novak exclaimed.  He took the copter higher and darted out over the abandoned portion of the army base.

“Dark Horse-Three, we see your smoke.  Get your people back and cease fire.  We’re going to make a low run in two minutes.”

“Bravo-Six, get back from the wall!” Collier screamed into the radio.  “The package is on the way!”  She didn’t realize that she was yelling because she was so consumed with panic and fear.

“Everyone back away!” Karnes yelled.  “Get the fuck back!”

“How far?” yelled a trooper.

“At least a couple hundred yards,” Karnes answered.  “Now let’s go!”

The fragile skirmish line began to fall back and Karnes and Morrow looked up to the see if they could catch a glimpse of the closing bomber.

“Shit, there it is!” Karnes yelled as he pointed to the east.

With its beak-like nose and its swept wings, the rapidly descending bomber reminded Karnes of a bird of prey swooping down for a kill.  Its bomb bay doors were open.

“Get your men down!” Morrow yelled to Karnes as he dropped down into the turret.

“Down!” Karnes ordered as he jumped off of the deck, throwing himself to the ground behind the Bradley.

A deafening set of booms shook the ground as the bombs began to detonate along the roadway.  As each new explosion inched closer to the wall, decimated bodies were hurled hundreds of feet into the air.  The concussion from the blasts ripped the atmosphere and shattered the windows on every building within the blast radius of the bombs.  The mass of living dead and fast movers that had clogged the street just a moment ago were now scattered in every direction, and many of them were on fire.  Signaling the end of the bomb run, a loud burst from the afterburners shook the ground near the strike area as the bomber shot off into the distance.

Although flying low had allowed the bomber to be more precise with its bombs, the last two weapons had detonated within a hundred feet of the main gate.  When the gate had been hastily constructed a few weeks earlier, its builders never anticipated that the wall and its welded joints would have had to endure an airstrike.  With the massive force from the explosions of the last two bombs, the joints that attached the left section of the wall to gate had been sheared off.

“Okay, we gotta retake the wall!” Karnes yelled as he stood up and dusted himself off.  At least fifty zombies and about a dozen runners were within the wall and were making their way towards the men and the armored vehicles.  Karnes gritted his teeth and tightened his jaw as he prepared himself for battle.

Morrow stood back up in the hatch and yelled down to Karnes.  “Get your men back in a skirmish line and we’ll advance back to the perimeter!”

“Come on, guys, get in line!” Karnes yelled as he stepped out in front of Morrow’s track; drawing an imaginary line at his feet.

Seeing that the bomber was long gone, Novak orbited high over the carnage and saw that although a large portion of the herd had been annihilated, an even larger number had survived and were still moving towards the gate.  He then came to the terrible realization that the bombing run had been a failure.  Taking his helicopter to the north and then coming in behind the embattled troops, he hovered just above them.