Deadrise (53 page)

A pair of white robed men broke clear of the tree line along the beach and made for the boathouse, their AK-47’s firing wildly at the mansion. Matt returned their fire, squeezing off several three-round bursts at the running figures. At over one hundred yards away, it was not an easy shot, but Matt could hear the chatter from the other defenders weapons around him. One of the white robed men went down under the hail of bullets but the other made it to cover behind the boathouse.

The three dogs wasted no time in charging the downed man, who was still alive. They went at him with a savage ferocity, as if they were avenging Lady, tearing out his throat, groin, and belly, spilling his intestines across the grass…

Zack was been hiding in the boathouse, his mind block up so as not to alert the dogs, when it all began. Dusk was setting in, the sun far to the west. He could see south, down the length of the lakeshore and spotted the horde of zombies as soon as they had started up the beach. Even though his mind block was up, he knew at least one, if not all three Sentinels were guiding the horde. The dogs began to bark and run toward the water, the lithe greyhound pulling ahead. He saw the two white robed fanatics armed with AK-47’s break from the trees and run along the beach toward the boathouse and the lead man shoot the greyhound as it reached the beach. Zack couldn’t help but smile with pleasure as one of the men went down under a hail of bullets from the house, but the other one made it to cover behind the boathouse. Zack crouched lower to avoid being seen by the man, but he avoided the bay altogether, instead climbing the back stairs to the second floor where he no doubt hoped to take up a position to snipe at the house defenders while hidden from sight. A low snarl escaped Zack’s throat as the hunger of the
Beast
flared inside him, festering hot. He crept along his belly to the small spiral staircase in the corner that accessed the second floor from inside the bay.

He moved up without a sound, the fading sunlight filling the upper floor through the glass roof. Zack paused at the top of the stairs, his eyes narrowing to slits as he scanned the room. It held a large billiard table, a bar and cooking grill and several lounge chairs and couches. He spotted the white robed man at the east end of the room, just entering and closing the door behind him. Zack curled his legs beneath him, tensing his muscles, ready to pounce. The man hurried across the room, headed for the windows at the west end. The man passed within six feet of the spiral stair, a dark, shadow filled hole that he paid no attention to as he walked bye.

That was when Zack sprang.

He took the man down with ease, pinning the gun to his chest with one arm. The man tried to scream but Zack’s feeding proboscis slammed through his right eye and into his brain. He was not surprised when he found the microchip implanted in the center of the brain, and he withdrew his proboscis to spit the chip aside before finishing his meal.

Once finished Zack took the man’s ammo pack and slipped it over his head and under one arm before grabbing his AK-47 and checking the load of the magazine.

He moved to the west windows and peered between the curtains. The three dogs, a black Labrador, a Shar-Pei and a black and white mutt were tearing the downed man to pieces but broke and ran when the horde began spreading out of the forest and onto the back lawn.

Zack moved down the back stairs and once on the ground he peered around the side of the boathouse, took aim and began to shoot the drones carefully, meticulously, one at a time…

From her position on the second floor balcony, Susan could easily look back through the bedroom, across the hallway and through the bedroom on the other side to the rear balcony, where she could get a better sense of what was going on back there. She could see Matt flat on his belly, bulky armor and helmet obscuring his features just as her own armor must be doing to hers. She could see his body rock from the recoil of his M-16.

"Ten O’clock." Rick whispered from her left side and let loose a three round burst. The gunfire was so close it startled Susan, causing her to whip her head around so hard her neck cracked, followed by the sharp, warm pain of a strained muscle. The white robed man had come out of the forest to the south of the driveway, but was now sprawling face first on the cobblestone drive as his life blood leaked out of his broken chest, soaking into his robes. Two more robed figures broke cover just behind the fallen man and started across the circle toward the house. From a covered position somewhere behind them, covering fire was issued, chewing into the balcony railing just above their heads. She pressed her face into the deck as woodchip’s fell around her head and shoulders but she could hear Rick returning fire. When she dared raise her head and look again she saw the two advancing attackers had taken cover behind the leaping dolphins in the center of the parking circle and were looking to get shots off.

"Give me some cover fire!" Rick screamed, pulling a grenade from his web gear. Susan aimed her gun at the men as best she could and began squeezing the trigger, getting off several three-round bursts. She saw the wood chips and splinters begin flying from the dolphins as she traced her fire toward the attackers.

Rick rose to his knees and pulled the pin on the grenade. He took a quick second to fix his target then lobbed the heavy, egg shaped device like a baseball. It was a perfect throw, sailing over the dolphins and landing on the cobblestone five feet behind the crouching gunmen. Rick flattened on his belly beside her just as the grenade exploded and Susan felt the shockwave rattle her guts. She looked up to see the remnants of the two men splattered across the base of the dolphins amidst tatters of white robe…

Maybe it was because he was on the third floor balcony and the view was panoramic and overwhelming, but when the wave of zombies began to pour from the beach all the way up the southern tree line to the back patio, David had the sudden urge to take a shit.

"Oh my god!" Jennifer yelped in fear beside him.

"Don’t panic." David said to himself as much as Jennifer.

Steeling himself, David set his assault rifle for single shot, took up aim at a deadfucks head and fired. He had unloaded half a dozen rounds before he noticed that Jennifer had yet to fire her weapon. She just stared in wide-eyed fear at the sea of zombies emerging from the forest...

"GONNA GET SOME!" Cpl. Philips screamed with delight as he started the tank rolling across the yard toward the army of zombies.

"GET SOME!" echoed Cpl. Carey, firing the turret mounted 20mm automatic grenade launcher in a strafing sweep along the advancing zombie line. A dozen explosions went off along a fifty-yard stretch, taking out nearly one hundred deadfucks.

"GET SOME!" finished Commander King, opening up with the .50-caliber, hosing it back and forth along the entire line of marching zombies. Heads exploded like watermelons and bodies were ripped into pieces under the heavy machine gun fire.

A superzombie in heavy military battle gear and carrying an M-16 with attached M-203 grenade launcher emerged from the forest near the house and charged onto the back patio. It raised its weapon and fired the grenade launcher at the
Tincan.
The grenade hammered into the side of the tank and exploded, peppering the thick armor plating with tiny fragments of shrapnel. They may as well have been rubber bands for all the effect it had on the tank. King swung the .50 back toward it but the superzombie was already out of his arc of fire…

From the second floor balcony, Mac spotted the superzombie rushing across the rear deck of the house out of the corner of his right eye. With a surge of adrenaline, he rose to his feet and tracked the barrel of his rifle onto the deadfuck and began firing, single shot, one after another. His bullets tore into the heavy battle armor the deadfuck wore, deflected off the helmet or plowed into the exposed throat. But the bullets had no effect on the creature and it kept running, aiming its weapon and shooting out the rear patio doors below which shattered into a thousand smaller fragments before disappearing inside, out of his sight.

Mac felt a bullet bite into the left breast of his armor, the force of impact throwing him around. Two more bit into the chest plating where they were stopped by the superior armor, but the impact still felt like sledgehammers smashing him. The wind was forced out of his lungs with a loud cough and he fell to the balcony floor, but not before he felt a bullet drill into his left thigh with the blinding pain of a freight train…

Downstairs Pvt. Cordoba stepped out of the foyer into the kitchen, his gun aimed at the shattered glass doorway. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted the superzombie stepping through. He flipped his M-16 to automatic and squeezed the trigger, emptying the clip into the creature’s upper torso and face. Its already damaged armor ate up half the clip, but the remainder turned its chest to gooey black hamburger and blew its teeth out the back of its head. The superzombie fell backwards out the doorway. Cordoba stepped up to the splintered bar, and peered out the door at the fallen superzombie. It had already rolled to its side, propping itself on one elbow and was pointing its M-16 into the kitchen in his direction. He dove back into the foyer a split second before the superzombie fired, the bullets spraying the interior of the kitchen.

Cordoba pulled himself to his feet just as Pvt. Irving came rushing up, his eyes wide with fear behind his round glasses, his pudgy face covered with sweat, his rifle shaking in his hands. Irving had been a national Guardsman, not a regular soldier and it had been by the grace of Sgt. Turner and the rest of the men that Irving was still alive.

"I-I-is there a breach?" he blurted out. Cordoba looked over his shoulder into the kitchen and could see the superzombie had regained its feet and was aiming its M-16 into the foyer at Cordoba.

"Keep back!" Cordoba screamed, motioning Irving back up the stairs and trying to take cover in the stairwell himself. The bullets ripped through the foyer, one hitting Cordoba in the right shoulder as he made for the stairs. The force of impact spun him to the other side of the foyer where he fell facedown onto the living room floor, the blood from his shoulder wound splashing out onto the carpet…

Cpl. Norris crawled onto the second floor balcony where Mac lay clamping a hand over his thigh wound, trying to stem the flow of blood.

"In here!" The medic cried, grabbing Mac by his web gear and dragging him off the balcony into the bedroom. Mac just moaned with pain but kept his hand clamped on the leg wound.

"Let me see, let me see!" Norris pulled Mac's hand away to examine the wound. The bullet had passed clean through his leg, exiting out the back eight inches below his left buttock. Norris probed the leg, feeling for a broken femur or signs of a ruptured femoral artery.

"How bad is it?" Mac asked through pain clenched teeth.

"You're one lucky bastard." Norris laughed. "The bullet passed clean through the meat, missing everything else. No broken femur, no arterial bleeding."

"Well it sure hurts like a motherfucker!" Mac retorted, in no mood for humor.

"A tourniquet and a shot of morphine should do for now." Norris reached into his bag for a disposable, one shot battlefield dose of morphine.

"Just worry about the tourniquet for now. I need to get back out there." He motioned to the balcony with his head. "I don’t want to go into battle doped up."

"The pain must be intense." Norris pulled out a long plastic zip tie from his bag and used it as a tourniquet four inches above the wound. Mac screamed in pain as the medic cinched it tight, but it stopped the blood flow almost immediately.

"Norris?" Mac said between large gasping breaths.

"Yeah?"

"Forget what I said. Give me a shot of morphine…"

No more white robed assailants had revealed themselves, and no more gunfire had come out of the forest across from the parking circle, but Susan could still hear plenty of gunfire coming from the rear balconies and the heavy rattling of the tanks machinegun. Mac’s screams of pain attract her attention and Susan looked back through the room to the other side of the house. From what she could see it appeared he had been wounded in the leg. The medic was preparing to give him a shot in the leg. He locked eyes with her, his face a mask of pain, but he still smiled and gave her a thumbs-up! The two men blocked her view of the rear balcony, but she could still hear gunfire from multiple sources.

"We got deadfucks." Rick alerted her. She looked and spotted them stumbling out of the forest at the south end of the house, near the garage. Five…Ten… Twenty… They kept coming through the trees onto the cobblestone parking circle like rotting pebbles slipping through fingers, slowly stumbling for the front porch.

"Matt do you have a copy?" her radio crackled. "Matt, this is Jenkins do you have a copy?" She knew Matt was too busy to answer so she grabbed her radio.

"JENKINS? JENKINS IS THAT YOU?" The bastard doesn’t answer his radio for hours then he calls right in the middle of an attack.

"It's Jenkins." He answered back.

"WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO REACH YOU FOR HOURS? WE ARE UNDER ATTACK! DO YOU COPY? WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!"

"By who?" The radio was hard to hear over the gunfire.

"DEADFUCKS!" she screamed into the radio. "AN ARMY OF DEADFUCKS!"

"Park City is under attack too, at least ten thousand deadfucks and a mess of superzombies."

"What are you going to do?"

"Things couldn’t be much worse down here. General Parker is dead and I’m the asshole left in command of defending the city."