These Dead Lands: Immolation (67 page)

“Hey, wait. What do you mean, ‘when the dead come over the wall’?”

“There’s a couple million of them out there, Vega. They’re going to roll over us as soon as they get sufficient mass. We don’t have a lot of time, and we have to get ready so we can pull our guys back under fire, rescue any wounded, and then get our asses out of here before we get cut off. You following me, Captain?” Hastings figured Vega was a few years younger than he was, so he was probably pretty new in grade, a fresh company commander who was acting like a newly minted second lieutenant who just got handed a rifle and shoved into combat.

“Yeah, I get you, Hastings,” Vega said, but his head was back on a swivel. He was nervous. Worse than that, he was losing his self-control.

“You can let your men see you sweat, Vega, but don’t let them see you lose your nerve.”

Vega jerked upright, as if Hastings had just pricked him with a pin. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

Hastings dropped the mentor act and cut to the chase. “You look like shit, you have no idea what’s going on, and we’re about to have a few hundred thousand of our best reeker pals join us back here. Pull your shit together and get with your NCOs and senior staff. Brief them on defensive operations. Vogler didn’t ask us to come down here and be nice enough to lend a fucking hand; he asked us to come down and take charge. I’m giving you a chance to get your shit together. I recommend you listen to what I have to say and get on with it. Questions?”

“Hey, lightfighter? Go fuck yourself!” Vega slammed his thumb against his vest. “
I
know what I’m fucking doing here. You? Your entire fucking
division
got wiped out. Who the fuck are you to tell
me
what to do, shit cake?”

Hastings stepped forward, rolling up on Vega so quickly that the smaller man back up, eyes wide. “Vega, go find someplace to sit down and suck your thumb for a bit. You couldn’t even get your men organized enough to effectively load three trucks, so it’s pretty obvious you aren’t going to be able to ready a defense. Don’t worry, though. I’ll take over.” He pointed at one the five-tons. “Go on and take a seat in one of the trucks. Crochet yourself a new happy sock. I’ll take over from here. Thanks for nothing, fuck face.”

Hastings walked over to where Ballantine was monitoring the men. “Keep at it, Carl. I’m going to go talk to the company XO and see if we can’t get a perimeter plan together for when the reekers come over the top.”

Ballantine looked over at Vega, who was still standing in the same spot, staring at Hastings. Ballantine shrugged and shot Hastings a thumbs-up. “Roger that, sir.”

Hastings found the company executive officer loading mags with a couple dozen other troops. “Hey, you the company XO?”

The first lieutenant glanced up then continued pushing stripper clips of ammo into metal magazines. “Yes, sir. What’s up?”

“Stop doing what you’re doing for a second. We need to have a chat.”

“Say what you need to say, sir,” the young officer said, not looking up again.

Hastings admired the dedication, so he didn’t call him on it. Instead, he took a knee beside the man. “Listen, the reekers are going to come over the top in just a few minutes. I want you and your men to be ready to form a defensive perimeter and buy the guys up top enough time to get off the wall and mount up. The first few dozen reekers won’t be very effective after they’ve fallen twenty feet, but a lot of them will still be able to fuck up anyone who gets too close. After that, more will come down and land on the first ones. Those might be more or less okay. They’ll need to be taken down fast, especially the runners, because this is flat terrain here. They’ll be able to move.”

The lieutenant nodded. “I’m with you on that, sir.”

Hastings spotted a pair of Strykers pulling security. They were armed with evil-looking GAU-19 .50-caliber Gatling guns. “I’m going to have the Strykers roll forward a bit,” Hastings told the XO. “Maybe some gun trucks, too. We’ll want to use the heavy weapons as soon as we can, and it looks like the GAUs will be able to mess up the initial reeker advance. You guys will need to be mindful of that. Don’t step into their lanes of fire. When you retreat, bound back and keep each other covered. Got it?”

“Pretty basic stuff, sir. I got it.” The lieutenant raised his head long enough to yell, “Hey, you guys! Listen up. This is what we’re going to do if the zombies come over the wall!” He shouted out the orders almost verbatim, all while continuing to load up magazines. The kid had his shit together. Hastings liked that.

From overhead, the tempo of the firing changed. It became wild, a bit sporadic.

“Okay, this might be it,” Hastings said, rising to his feet.

The lieutenant glanced up then went back to loading. “We’ll line up like you told us the second they come over the wall.”

Hastings slapped the man on the shoulder then dashed over to one of the eight-wheeled Strykers. Up in the cupola, the soldier behind the impressive-looking GAU-19 leaned toward him. The guy wore dark sunglasses that hid his eyes and a combat vehicle crew helmet with additional facial armor that made him look like a storm trooper from
Star Wars
.

“Hey, soldier, I want you to contact your buddies over there”—Hastings pointed at the other Stryker several yards away—“and move up to flank those soldiers over there.” He waved in the other direction. “We’re about to have reekers coming over the wall, and I want your GAUs up front.”

The gunner straightened up and looked past his weapon. “You want one unit on either side, right?”

Hastings nodded. “That’s correct. On the double.”

The gunner gave him a thumbs-up and began speaking into the boom microphone behind his facial armor. Hastings jogged back to the five-tons. Vega had joined one of the lines passing cargo.

When Hastings got close, he called, “Hey, Ballantine, stop humping MREs. We’ve got enough. Let’s concentrate on water and ammo.”

“Roger that.” Ballantine bellowed the order to the rest of the men then looked up at the container wall. “Looks like the boys are having a bit of a problem.”

Hastings turned and saw the soldiers rising out of their fighting positions. They were no longer firing straight into the approaching zombies. Some of their fires were directed toward the flanks. Through the swirling smoke, Hastings could make out reekers clawing their way over sandbags.

“Okay, here it comes,” Hastings said. “Stay with the reloading op. I’m going forward to the defensive perimeter. If things get too hot, saddle up and move out. All right?”

Ballantine frowned. “What? Without you, sir?”

“I’ll catch up,” Hastings said.

After a short hesitation, Ballantine shrugged. “Hooah.”

Hastings headed back to the lieutenant. On the way, he pushed through a knot of Guardsmen hauling gear back to another set of trucks—medical equipment, it looked like. The lieutenant and his men were still working on the ammunition, but two were on their feet, M4s held at low ready, faces turned toward the top of the container wall. The pair of Strykers pulled forward and came to a halt twenty yards behind the troops. Hastings made eye contact with the gunner he had spoken to earlier and waved a hand in thanks. The soldier nodded back, his hands on the grips of the fearsome-looking GAU-19.

The tempo of combat atop the container wall changed drastically. Hastings saw soldiers pulling back and not in the most orderly fashion. They were heading for the ladders. He heard Vogler shouting orders, but he couldn’t make out the words. A few reekers shambled across the top of the barricade, stumbling and flailing. As the soldiers gathered around the ladders, they turned and fired on the zombies.

“Lieutenant, get your men on their feet,” Hastings said. “Form a single line, and get ready to open up.”

The lieutenant dropped the magazine he was fiddling with and leaped to his feet as if his legs were spring loaded. He shouted for the rest of the troops to line up, and the collection of thirty or so soldiers did as they were ordered. There was no need to be fancy about it—the zombies wouldn’t give a damn what formation they were in.

Atop the container, a soldier suddenly went down, falling over some object Hastings couldn’t see. The reekers attacked immediately, grabbing his feet and pulling themselves along his body as he kicked and struggled, firing his rifle into the sandbags at his side. Other soldiers rushed in, firing on the move. Several reekers fell. A bunch fell on the stricken soldier, and the rest pushed on toward the advancing soldiers.

“Holy fuck,” the lieutenant said quietly.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Hastings said.

The soldiers began climbing down the ladders, moving as fast as they could. One slipped and jumped off, taking the next man with him. They both landed badly with cries barely audible above the gunfire. Two medics ran over and dragged the guys away from the container wall. The firing picked up in intensity. A zombie fell over the side, crashed to the ground, and lay motionless, its head savaged by a bullet. Another came over the side and slammed to the highway. It thrashed about, trying to rise on shattered legs. The soldiers in the line opened up, hitting it a dozen times and sending it flopping around. Hastings could see rounds bouncing off the cement and steel container.

“Cease fire!” the lieutenant shouted. “Take aimed shots, and watch what you’re shooting at. Our guys are going to have to retreat toward us!”

“Mother of
God
!” one of the men down the line screamed.

Hastings looked up and saw a wave of reekers splashing over the top of the container. Thousands poured over the sandbag fighting positions, revetments, and machine-gun positions. It was a tsunami of cannibalistic corpses, and they surged toward the soldiers massing around the ladders with single-minded determination. The men on the container wall didn’t have a chance, and several of them apparently knew it because they charged for the ladders. One of the ladders fell with four soldiers on it and a zombie hanging onto the end. The ghoul was flung forty feet into the rear area, where it was hit by a deluge of rounds. Hastings saw Vogler go down, fighting until the zombies covered him in a heap.

Reekers walked off the container wall by the dozens. The men forming the defensive line opened, and Hastings joined them. Dead bodies jerked and fell as bullets tore through their heads, and within a minute, the highway behind the barricade was covered with corpses. But more and more zombies came, not just dozens but hundreds. They’d already torn through the men on top of the barricade, and they were hungry for more. Those few soldiers who had managed to evacuate the container wall staggered past the line. Hastings saw that more than a few of them had been bitten. Their faces were slack. They knew what lay in store for them.

“Getting kind of tough to hold them back, sir!” the lieutenant shouted.

“Fall back. Ten meters!” Hastings responded. “Ten meters, now!”

The line of defenders began to retreat one step at a time. Hastings burned through his mag, ejected it, and slapped in another. He fired at a zombie only feet away, and the barrel of his rifle actually went off inside the corpse’s mouth, flowing out the back of its head. A runner came surging toward him, and he capped it twice. It might have still gotten to him if it hadn’t stumbled over a body on the ground. He fired a third round into it, and the corpse went still.

More reekers poured over the top of the barricade, an endless progression of horrible death. The defenders were pushed back another ten feet, even as the zombies’ bodies began to stack up in front of them. Hastings realized they were going to be overrun if something didn’t give.

The GAUs on the Strykers opened up then, raking the oncoming mob with a fusillade of .50-caliber rounds. Limbs were blown off, heads exploded, and body cavities were torn open. The air was full of ripping thunder and pulped viscera. The thudding impacts of corpses and body parts hitting the deck were offset by the moans of the dead and the screams of the living. Another Shadow UAV raced across the sky, the sound of its propeller engine lost in the din of the combat.

More heavy weapons joined the fray, vehicle-mounted M2s, M240s, and MK19s. The dead went down a dozen at a time, only to be replaced by two dozen more. Hastings and the defensive line were driven back another thirty feet, leaving several of their men screaming beneath piles of zombies. Hastings took down four more reekers, stepped back to avoid a charging screamer that was killed by the lieutenant, then popped another four. The bodies fell atop one another, and more ghouls, many of them slick with fresh blood, crawled over those, hissing and moaning. The voices of the reekers were giving the noise from the big guns some competition.

From the corner of his left eye, Hastings could see the Stryker gunner working over the advancing reekers. Torrents of expended cartridges rained off the truck roof as the soldier depressed his weapon as far as it would go, raking zombies only ten feet in front of the armored vehicle. The Stryker began to reverse, pulling away from the horde.

Something grabbed Hastings from behind, almost hauling him off his feet. He twisted, trying to bring his rifle to bear. Ballantine, wide eyed with panic, had a gorilla grip on the back of Hastings’s harness as he half dragged, half pulled Hastings along behind him. Fifty-caliber rounds snapped past their heads, and Hastings could hear the fat rounds slapping into bodies right behind him. Ballantine screamed something Hastings didn’t catch.

“What?” Hastings shouted back. “
What
?”

“Are you fucking trying to commit suicide out here, sir?” Ballantine yelled.

In that moment, Hastings realized he had been fighting alone. The rest of the men had fallen back to the vehicles. Hastings had remained behind, and Ballantine had risked his neck to save him.

“Sorry, Carl,” Hastings said.

Ballantine jerked Hastings over to the MRAP and practically threw him inside. Hastings sprawled across the soldiers already sitting in the armored vehicle, and they hauled him farther inside. He turned so he could look out the open hatch, and he saw Ballantine blasting away at reekers as the ramp slowly rose on its hydraulic rams. Ballantine leapt backward and tumbled into the truck as the ramp closed. The MRAP began rolling forward, leaving the barricade behind.