The Flood (18 page)

Basically, the Hargeisa hospital was ground zero of ground zero.

And, once again, this place felt to Handon like more than the sum of its physical aspects. It was dark, cramped, ruined, and filled with gore. But there was something else. A profound heaviness, or dead weight, that seemed like it wanted to drag them all down. This place wasn’t just awful.

It was evil.

Much of the interior was so dark they had to use their weapon-mounted IR illuminators to augment the NVGs. Now, as they moved down the first long, wide, main corridor in a staggered line, their green IR beam cones panned over walls, ceiling, and floor, as well as the distant end of the hallway. Body parts, gnawed to the bone, were scattered around overturned carts and medical equipment.

Handon actually saw bloody handprints on a window in a swinging door.

He approached another door on the right, which didn’t have a window in it. Scrawled on it in magic marker were the words, “DON’T GO IN HERE.” Handon disliked being told where to go so he took his left hand from his weapon and turned the handle, then gently pushed it open.

Inside was a complete horror show – virtually every inch of the walls and floor, and half the ceiling, thickly textured with gore. The scene inside took a little resolving. But, pretty clearly, the worst thing in the world had happened here.

A surgical team had made a meal of their patient.

Handon blinked once and pulled the door closed again.

Maybe next time he’d listen.

* * *

The long hallway ended in a T-intersection.

To the right was a radiology suite – though more recently it had been an improvised fortress. Someone had made their last stand here – barricading the doors, piling up furniture. But it had ultimately been knocked over again. There were knives caked with black gunk on the floor, along with a lot of empty shell casings. Handon couldn’t tell for sure whether this had gone down at the time of the fall, or whether survivors had come in later and cleared a corner of the hospital for themselves. Either way, the dead had followed them back.

They probably held them off until the ammo ran out.

Handon had seen enough. He hit his mic. “There’s nothing here for us.”

“Not a sausage,”
Henno echoed.

“Exfil, the way we came in.”

When they left, they closed the door behind them.

Homer said, “Never know when you’ll need a place to hole up.”

“Or a wall at your back,” Pred added.

There was still enough light outside that they definitely didn’t need their IR illuminators now. In fact, Handon flipped his NVGs up on his head.

“Okay. Where to now?” he said. “I’m open to ideas.”

Juice said, “We haven’t checked the location of that quarantine tent. It was supposed to be set up adjacent to the hospital. Should be just out of sight there, around the west side of the building.”

“No, sod that,” Henno said, as he flipped his own NVGs up, nodded, and spat. “Follow me. We’re going to the town center.” He marched off down the road that fronted the hospital, clearly expecting the others to follow. They did. In four minutes they emerged into a dusty square with some kind of military monument – a fighter jet mounted on a plinth of bricks. The square was surrounded by a couple of hotels, a bank, and the police station. This was also the junction where Hargeisa’s four major roads met. All of this was smudged in the dark.

Henno marched out into the middle of the square and turned back to face the others. “We’ve been doing this wrong,” he said. He then unscrewed the suppressor from the end of his rifle, pointed the weapon at the sky, flipped his fire selector to full auto – and cranked off an entire magazine.

When it went dry, the roar of the rolling burst echoed for seconds.

Henno nodded, satisfied.

“Now the dead bastards will come to us.”

* * *

A mile away, the echo of distant gunfire brought the Marines to a halt.

They all knelt where they were and went firm – waiting, listening, tuning in, and watching the black-and-green night through their NVGs. They all knew better than to run off half-cocked. If Alpha needed help, they’d ask for it. When there was nothing after the single long burst, Fick imagined he even knew the purpose of it.

They were trying to draw the dead.

It slightly pissed him off that they hadn’t warned him. But Big Boy Rules applied on this one. If Fick didn’t like it, he could lump it. And he had to admit it was not only a good idea – it was perhaps the exact right idea. Maybe the only one.

It just didn’t have the effect intended.

Fick, Brady, and Reyes heard a single, long, blood-curdling, high-pitched shriek from behind them. They had all heard enough Foxtrots scream to immediately know this wasn’t that. And underneath the shriek came a deep-throated barking and growling – like a pit bull mixed with a dinosaur.

Frankly, none of the Marines had the least idea what the ever-loving fuck any of that was. All of them turned to the rear, weapons up.

Just in time to see the night come alive and take Graybeard.

He went over on his back as they descended on him, manic movement and violence, a dozen other shrieks and howls joining the chorus.

And for two seconds, Fick froze dead.

This wasn’t like a bad fucking dream. This was far worse. He only came out of his stupor when Brady and Reyes sprinted past him, the latter yanking Fick to his feet. By the time they were up and moving, they could hear, and partially see, Graybeard fighting like a man possessed. His rifle must have been tangled up under him, or ripped away, because he had his pistol in one hand and knife in the other, and he was stabbing and shooting at the mountain of flesh and fur and teeth that had descended on him.

They were too small to be Zulus – and too fast. Limbs were pistoning and punching and tearing, muscular backs arching – and bared white fangs lighting up in the Marines’ night vision. As they approached, everything around them bobbing from their frantic run, Fick thought he could make out bald patches in the fur and rheumy eyes – and he sure as hell couldn’t miss the stench of rotted flesh.

Without question, death itself had fallen on Graybeard – just not in any form they had ever seen before. This was death teeming and shrieking and swarm-attacking. Somehow Fick intuitively knew these things had peeled Graybeard off the back of the pack. He wasn’t the weakest. But he was last – and he had been separated out.

And before the others could reach him, the dark shapes started dragging him away, off the road and into the forest. This was, by far, the worst and most terrifying part. Not least for Fick.

These things were taking him – taking his Marine.

At the same time, compact but heavy and globular bodies were flying out of the fray as Graybeard stabbed and shot, not giving up or giving in for a single second. When the others finally reached him, their immediate impulse was to reach in and start yanking bodies off him. But some other instinct repelled them. Those flashing fangs and powerful jaws were not only dangerous – everything about the creatures was repulsive in a way only infected matter can be.

So Fick, Brady, and Reyes formed a semicircle and started taking headshots. The shots were suppressed – but the shrieking and roaring was spectacular in volume. Anything that might have been sleeping in Hargeisa was awake now. But in only a few seconds, the rampaging pack on top of Graybeard had been converted into an inert mound of sloping backs and rotted fur and flesh.

However, no sooner had they taken down this group than more came at them out of the treeline. The three Marines still on their feet pushed out a salient to protect the mess on the ground that was Graybeard – and they took knees and started shooting.

Normally wild animals flee when faced with humans or gunfire. These ones just kept coming – until they were all cut down.

And finally there were no more left.

* * *

If the single peel of gunfire had alarmed the Marines, the noises Alpha heard now, from almost a mile away, were a thousand times more disturbing.

But, exactly as had the Marines, the Alpha operators went firm, after pushing out into a defensive perimeter around the center of the square. And they listened and waited. Handon knew Fick would update him the instant it made sense to do so. That was about a minute later.

“Cadaver One from Two. We’ve got a man down, one times critical WIA. Have called for helo medevac.”

“Copy that, Fick. Can you defend an HLZ inside the ville?”

“No, I think Hargeisa’s a no-go. We’re going to get him out of town, just on the road somewhere. ETA sixty mikes on medevac.”

Handon read between the lines. Fick wasn’t worried about the safety of his medevac inside the town. He was worried about compromising the mission even more with helicopter noise.

“Copy. We’ll move to you to support.”

“Don’t be a dipshit, Handon. You stay as far away from us as humanly possible, and I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Anyway, we’re consolidated and combat effective. We’re fine. You watch your asses there.”

Handon knew Fick was right. The point of being separated wasn’t to support each other. It was the opposite – for one to be able to survive the destruction of the other. But destruction by what? “What are we looking at? What attacked you?”

Before Fick could answer, though, Handon could hear the beginnings of an answer from much closer by. It was heavy breathing, or panting, with some kind of barking – and a lot of heavy appendages hitting the ground.

In another two seconds the shadow creatures flooded into the dark square from the southwest corner, another whole pack of them, sluicing through the gaps in the surrounding buildings. All Handon could really make out was big puffed-out chests, long thick tails flapping behind some of them – and all of the creatures loping heavily along on all fours like lions or hyenas.

Galloping. Charging.

But Ali, leaning serenely into her rifle, could also see them leading with long snouts, like a dog’s muzzle, framed with long but patchy fur, their powerful jaws already snapping, opening and closing over long white fangs, or upper canines. She traded a quick look with Juice. They were both thinking the exact same thing, though neither had time to vocalize it:

Five thousand pounds of baboon coming at you – DEAD baboon.

And then everyone started shooting as one. Within seconds, Alpha was hunkered down, firing non-stop into the darkness, which had come alive and was rushing in on them like they were the last free meal in the entire ZA. They were being regarded as what they had always been to Africa, to the rest of the predatory universe: meat. Meat on the hoof.

But in another few seconds, it was many of the attacking primates that were themselves meat, perhaps as many as two dozen of them cut down – but the rest of the pack now swarmed through Alpha’s lines, right into them.

And the melee weapons came out – spinning and flashing in all directions.

It was 360-degree zombie warfare like never before.

* * *

Graybeard couldn’t speak – much of the left side of his neck had been torn out – but his serene eyes spoke eloquently. There was defiance, but also resignation. This man had cheated death a hundred times. If today was his day, then so be it. It didn’t change who he was, and he wasn’t changing his attitude toward any of it.

And he’d put up a hell of a last fight.

Lying on his back, gulping as he tried to breathe, he was actually bleeding from a dozen places at the very least. While Reyes stood ten feet away with his rifle to his shoulder, pulling security, Brady tried to get pressure dressings on some of the worst bleeders, while Fick applied pressure with his bare hands to the neck wound. The trouble was that enough pressure to stop the bleeding would likely be enough to strangle him.

There was probably only one way out of this mess for Graybeard.

But his fellow Jarheads weren’t going to let him take it if they could help it.

Moving a thousand miles an hour, Brady unslung his ruck, got a bag of plasma out, and got a jab in Graybeard’s trembling arm. Then he rose, moved to Reyes, and pulled their folding stretcher out of his ruck. This was the same one the grievously wounded Corporal Raible had been carried out of the South African naval base on. It still had some of his bloodstains on it.

But Raible had been a walking wounded case compared to Graybeard now. He was just torn to pieces. And he was bleeding out.

Pressing down with both hands and looking around the area, Fick knew it might be even worse than that. Maybe it was too dangerous for the helo to land here, maybe it wasn’t. But there was little question the noise of the bird would draw more of whatever the hell else was out there. And the mission was still on.

The mission was still everything.

Leaning down and helping Brady get the wounded old guy on the stretcher, he spoke quietly. “We’ve gotta get out of town.”

“Back to the MRAP?” Brady asked.

“No. It’s too far. We can get out of town quicker on foot. Straight to the north.” It always paid to know exactly where you were – because when you needed to move, you didn’t always have time to check the map.

Leaning in closer, just before lifting up the stretcher, Fick said, “You’re going to have to hang on, old man. Help’s coming.”

Graybeard could neither speak nor nod his head.

But his steely eyes answered for him.

No problem, Master Guns. Semper fi.

Five Thousand Pounds of Baboon

Hargeisa - Memorial Square

Homer kept firing until they were on top of him.

And then he kept firing longer, keeping his rifle held in tight, pivoting and whirling and making tight groupings on oblong heads until his rifle went dry. Then he fired some more, dropping the rifle in mid-air and pulling his SIG P226 from its chest rig – not actually having room to extend his arms, but firing with it clutched tight to his chest. Only when that went dry did he pull his boarding axe in a blur from over his shoulder.