Soldier On: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

A voice crackled in his headset. “We have an unwanted passenger onboard Badger Three. How copy?”

“Copy that, this is Captain Gaines, is the stowaway a female?”

“Affirmative.”

“She’s one of us. Keep her onboard for the duration.”

“Copy that, Badger Three out.”

Goddamnit
, Gaines thought,
that woman is a persistent one
. It didn’t surprise him that Mrs. Grayson took after her husband, after all Wyatt had been known to push the edge of the envelope himself, from time to time.

“Five mikes.” The call sounded in everyone’s headset.

The Little Birds hovered in front of Saint Francis Hospital while the snipers onboard thinned the mob of walkers with their long guns.

Gaines stared at the biggest pile of occupied body bags that he had ever seen; quite a few of the thick rubber bags undulated, enclosed in each, a trapped zombie struggling to get free.

***

In the rear of the hovering Chinook, Brook noticed the men start to check their loadouts. Magazines were inspected, a firm rap in the palm made certain the rounds were seated before the soldiers jammed the mags home and charged their weapons.

A chorus of
hooaahs
preceded the tail gunner’s covering fire. His M240 emitted a distinct ripping sound as he poured the tracer rounds into the walking dead. Down below, undead bodies jerked and shuddered; the creature’s skulls exploding like festering boils.

Brook was pissed. She had been told to stay put, in no uncertain terms, by the bigger of the two crewmen, who parked himself near the side door, manning the pinnacle mounted M240 machine gun.

Although she didn’t have a rifle pointed at her any longer-the threat was definitely implied; furthermore, the load master kept shooting glances her way. It was going to take a hell of a diversion for her to get past him.

Brook strained to see out the open rear of the helicopter. Her line of sight was obscured by the Rangers getting into position to deploy. On the starboard side, facing the modern cement and glass hospital, the crew chief let loose again with his weapon. Brook heard the droning M240 abruptly go silent, followed by a salvo of colorful language. While the crew chief struggled with the jammed weapon, Brook took full advantage, melted into the crowd, and followed the Rangers into the fray.

***

The snipers on the two MH-6s, Badger One and Badger Two were putting very effective lead downrange. On approach the ramp gunner on the Chinook, designated as Badger Three, was decimating the creatures below.

The five minute mark struck and the CH-47 touched down, Gaines watched the Ranger chalk pour from the back and proceed to fan out, then, a small figure in civilian attire, scurried from the chopper and formed up behind the last Ranger.

The Captain continued his observation as each Ranger began clearing their sector with precise fire; walkers were falling fast under the constant barrage from the 240s on the CH-47.

Gaines observed a knot of zombies flanking the Ranger’s positions. Focusing on the threat to the chalk, like a football coach with a birds eye view, Gaines started calling out plays. He would have to deal with Mrs. Grayson later...if there was indeed a
later
.

“Chalk leader, be advised you have Z’s at your two o’clock, directing fire your way.”

“
Roger that
,” Staff Sergeant Todd answered, making himself as small a target as possible.

The SOAR pilots rotated the Little Birds to afford the snipers clean shots. The flanking walkers were systematically cut down by the sharpshooters.

One lone crawler inched closer to the prone soldiers. “
Chalk leader check your six. I repeat enemy at six o’clock.
” Gaines watched helplessly, realizing that the warning was too late for the man on the ground.

Sergeant Vasquez felt something wrap around his legs and he instinctively rolled onto his back. The creature fell to the side and then continued clawing its way on top of him its raw femur bones scrabbling against the asphalt. The Ranger’s rifle was pinned by the ghoul’s weight, all he could do was put one hand around the creature’s shriveled neck and squeeze its vertebrae in his strong grip. In a fight for his life the young Ranger searched for his sidearm.

Vasquez was struggling to keep the monsters snapping teeth away from his face when his fingers finally found the butt of his pistol. Before he could bring the gun to bear, someone kicked the legless zombie off of his chest sending it flying through the air.

Vasquez sat up and squeezed off three rounds, rapid fire, into the crawlers head, and looked at his savior. He couldn’t believe who was standing in front of him; it was the woman from the chopper.

“Lady, how the hell did you get off that helicopter?”

Brook had saved the same Ranger who only minutes ago had his rifle trained on her. “
It doesn’t matter...but I’m not getting back on,
” she said defiantly.

“Do you know how to use this?" Vasquez asked, as he handed the Beretta to her.

“I think I can handle it...” she answered.

“Keep close to me...and thanks for stepping in when you did.”

Brook shot him a quaint smile, “You owe me one.”

***

The Army Rangers leap-frogged around a white and orange ambulance, one at a time each man moved forward with the rest of the team providing cover. One by one they formed up under the covered circular drive directly in front of the emergency room drop off area.

A badly decomposed, half eaten, human body wedged open the pair of wide sliding glass doors; the look of terror on the corpses face retold its last moments alive.

A score of undead moved about the lobby. Shell casings littered the tile floor; the walls and ceiling was pock marked with puckered bullet holes. Long dried blood trails criss-crossed the waiting room heading nowhere in particular.

Taking it all in, Brook thought it must have been hell on earth when the infected descended on the hospital. From her experience as an ER nurse, patients were looking for first-aid, comfort, answers and to have their fears assuaged. Judging from the signs of violence and mayhem, those needs had not been met here. She shuddered and then marvelled at the hand fate had dealt her. If she had been home in Portland instead of visiting her folks at the apex of the outbreak, she would have been smack dab in the middle of a catastrophe such as this. The whole macabre scene, eerily illuminated by the emergency lighting, would surely haunt her for the rest of her days.

“
Engage at will
,” Staff Sergeant Todd ordered his men over the squad’s comms. Todd aimed for center mass, as every professional soldier was conditioned to, and placed a three round burst into the nearest ghouls chest. The impact launched the walker off of its feet, the undead boy crash landed, limbs askew, on a row of folding chairs, scattering them across the waiting room floor.

Vasquez watched the boy immediately get back on his feet; the hole in the kid’s chest was the size of a volleyball.

“God damn,” Vasquez never took the Lord’s name in vain, but the sight in front of him was a worthy exception to the rule. His hands shook as he shouldered his M4 and put the kid out of its misery.

The noise from the discharging weapons was deafening indoors. It was amplified greatly because of the low dropdown ceiling. The cordite haze hovering in the air reduced the visibility somewhat.

Moving in from the left, Sergeant Stanley Loomis engaged the threat nearest him first; the undead woman was clothed only in a blood stained hospital gown, split down the rear. Her naked backside was colored with dark black and purple post mortem bruising; she had apparently been positioned face up shortly after her first death. With a determined deliberate pace the flasher lurched in his direction. Her hissing and moaning was the most evil thing he had ever heard.

Sergeant Loomis had the woman in his sights and pulled the trigger. There was no recoil, no report and no shell casing pinging on the floor. The round in the chamber had failed to fire and the ghoul was almost on top of him.

Brook squeezed off two shots from an oblique angle, three feet to Loomis right. The walker’s face disappeared in an explosion of flesh, bone, and dark gray brain matter. Brook brushed past the ashen faced soldier and took cover behind a chest high nurses station.      

The remaining Rangers had their hands full fighting the zombies as they pushed deeper into the lobby of Saint Francis hospital.

***

The SOAR pilot held his ship in a hover directly over the Life Flight landing pad. It was situated on the ground level so that the incoming medical crew had direct access to the trauma center through a set of wide sliding glass doors. The landing pad was ringed with seven foot tall fencing to prevent anyone from accidentally wandering into a spinning tail rotor.

Captain Gaines planned to catch the zombies in a classic pincer. The Rangers would close on them from the front. The Delta Team, consisting of Gaines and five other shooters would fast rope, from one helo at a time and form up, before venturing into the bowels of the trauma center. For insurance, Gaines left one sniper on each of the Little Birds to provide over watch security as well as relay any Z movement to the teams on the ground.

***

“Go,go,go,” as soon as Captain Ronnie “Ghost” Gaines gave the order, the three Delta operators from Badger Two hit the fast ropes.  In seconds they were on terra firma, silenced SCAR rifles at the ready. Badger One side slipped into position the rotor tips passing dangerously close to the hospital wall. The Night Stalker pilot hovered in place while Gaines and the other two operators quickly rappelled to the ground.

The Delta Team moved as one, each man watching a specific sector. Gaines abruptly went to one knee and signaled for his men to follow suit. A throng of undead shambled past, directly in front of the six motionless operators. Captain Gaines initiated contact, his SCAR silently spit lead missiles head high, ribbons of flesh and shards of cranium plastered the stark white walls. The spent brass bounced and tinkled on the floor.

In unison, Sergeant Jackson engaged the ghouls on the left and Sergeant Yates targeted the zombies on the right. In seconds nine undead, in various stages of decay, lay heaped on the floor, their ravaged bodies intertwined in a final orgy of death.

Gaines ejected the nearly full magazine and replaced it with a fresh one. The other men followed suit.

The NICU was near the rear of the three story facility. Gaines felt very fortunate that the equipment they needed was on the ground floor, meaning there were no stairs to negotiate. In a moment of absurd clarity Gaines remembered how much he had hated moving before the shit hit the fan and a real life
George Romero
movie became his new reality.

“
Clear
.” Gaines yelled after looking through the glass windows inset into the swinging double doors labeled “NICU.”

Once in the neonatal intensive care unit it became obvious the widespread horror spawned by the Omega virus had been taken to a new level. The entire room looked like a set from one of those
SAW
movies.

Usually unaffected by the violence he encountered in his line of work Captain Gaines involuntarily froze in his tracks and took in the carnage. It was the first time in days that he had felt empathy for the dead. The infected had already gotten to the helpless newborns unfortunate enough to come into the world during the hellish outbreak.

If there were any reason to question God’s existence
, Captain Gaines thought,
this is it
.

Most of the incubators contained bits and pieces of tiny corpses. Inside of one, an underdeveloped hand scratched at its plastic coffin, the tiny undead brain instructing it to feed.

At the first sight of the dismembered miniature bodies, Sergeant Yates, a father of two nearly fainted, his knees hit the ground first, followed by a torrent of hot vomit.

Sergeant Jackson registered the movement first but couldn’t react quickly enough. An undead nurse sprang from a darkened supply closet and pounced on the kneeling Yates; her weight propelled him face first into the floor shattering his teeth into jagged shards. Instantly the monster latched onto the side of his neck and drew back with a mouthful of skin and carotid artery.

Yates let out an anguished howl and bucked the infected woman off of his back; blood cascaded from his horrific neck wound and mixed with the puke on the floor.

Reacting to the attack, Gaines leveled his SCAR and delivered a double tap to the rear of the ghouls head.

“Medic,” the Captain bellowed as he probed the rest of the room for lurking zombies. He was physically ill because they had let their guard down and failed to check the small closet.

Except for Yates fighting to live, it was eerily silent in the hospital, even the raucous shooting in the ER had ceased.

“This is Chalk Leader, how copy?”

Gaines ignored Staff Sergeant Todd and withdrew his Beretta. After he was certain there was a round chambered, he made the sign of the cross over his fallen comrade with slow deliberate motions. Yates had passed and was now starting to reanimate. “Sorry friend,” Gaines whispered before shooting the fallen man behind the ear.