The Gathering Dead (20 page)

He let the AA-12 hang across his chest by its patrol strap and met the oncoming zed head-on. It leaped for him, and Gartrell grabbed one of its wrists in his hand and flung the corpse over his hip. It crashed into a nearby water fountain, severely denting its stainless steel casing. The zed didn’t even seem to care; it clawed its way to its feet. Gartrell was ready for it, and as the corpse whirled upon him again, he sank his knife through the top of its skull. The zed stiffened, then fell to the carpeted floor, where it hissed and kicked and slashed at the air. Gartrell was disappointed the knife attack hadn’t killed the thing, but at least it rendered it inoperative for the moment.

He seized a hold of the AA-12 and spun as another zed closed upon him, this one being an entirely nude woman. He didn’t have time to aim for the head, so he merely blasted away at the corpse’s midsection and blew it ten feet away. It collapsed to the floor with its face and buttocks pointed in more or less the same direction. The shotgun blast had completely severed its spine, leaving the zombie grotesquely twisted. But it was still operational; even though its legs couldn’t work, the thing started crawling back to him.

The zombie Gartrell had seen initially bore down on him. An office door popped open then, and Leary stepped out of the darkened room, his M4 shouldered and ready. He took aim and fired once as Gartrell jumped to his left. The 5.56mm bullet found its target, and the zombie’s forehead exploded outward in a spreading flower of brackish blood and putrid gray matter. It fell to the floor face-first next to the fat woman in the flowery dress.

Leary pumped his fist in the air. “I GOT YOU, YOU FUCK!” he shouted.

Gartrell turned to the last zed that was still moving, and was surprised to see it was an Orthodox Jew, complete with yarmulke and black suit. It moaned at Gartrell as it hobbled toward him, its mouth a black maw surrounded by a matted gray beard. Gartrell dropped it before it got within fifteen feet of him.

“GOOD SHOOTING, FIRST SERGEANT!” Leary shouted as he ran up. He put a round through the broken zombie crawling on the floor, and its movements stilled.

“GOT THAT ONE!” he reported.

Gartrell said, “Leary, where’s Rittenour?”

Leary turned and looked around the darkened office with unaided eyes. His NVGs were still in their pouch on his belt. He advanced down the row of cubicles with his rifle shouldered, and began clearing them systematically.

“Leary?
Leary
!” Gartrell shouted. “Where the hell is Rittenour?”

“Right here, first sergeant.” Rittenour appeared then, walking out from behind a file cabinet he’d been hiding behind. He looked down at the zombie thrashing about on the floor. It made no attempt to pull the knife from its skull, nor did it seem to know the men were even there.

“Man, that’s some weird shit,” Rittenour observed.

Gartrell slapped him on the arm. “Hey dumbass, why didn’t you answer the radio?”

“Huh? Oh... I guess it got busted in the blast. I’ve been trying to transmit our SITREP for a few minutes, in between hosing zeds. You didn’t hear me?”

“Negative. Why didn’t Leary answer?”

“Because he’s —”

Leary appeared beside Gartrell and tapped him on the shoulder. He pointed to the shuddering corpse on the floor when Gartrell turned to him.

“THAT’S SOME STRANGE SHIT HUH, FIRST SERGEANT? WE OUGHT TO SHOOT THAT THING AND GET YOUR KNIFE BACK.”

“Leary! Stop shouting!” Gartrell said. “What the hell is wrong with you, you go fucking deaf?”

“He did,” Rittenour said. “He wasn’t wearing any hearing protection when the charges went off.”

“What? Why the fuck not?” Gartrell turned back to Leary. “Where the hell is—”

“SORRY FIRST SERGEANT, BUT I CAN’T HEAR YOU! MY EARS ARE REALLY RINGING, LIKE—” He stopped when Gartrell clamped his hand across Leary’s mouth. The first sergeant stared right into his eyes.

“Leary! Read my lips
—
shut... the fuck...
up
!” When Leary nodded, Gartrell removed his hand.

“SORRY FIRST SERGEANT, WAS I TALKING TOO LOUD?”

Gartrell shook his head and turned back to Rittenour. “Are either of you hurt?”

Rittenour shook his head. “Negative. Some bumps and bruises, but no bites or anything like that.”

“Good. Recharge your weapons and get ready to move out. We’re going back up to 27. And you’re in charge of Copernicus here.” Gartrell jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Leary. “I’m going to check out the damage to the stairway.”

“Be careful, first sergeant. OMEN’s still out there.”

Gartrell nodded as he pushed his way past the twisted door. “Roger that. Get squared away ASAP.” He shoved the door open as far as it would go, its bottom scraping across the concrete floor. Cautiously, he picked his way down the debris-strewn stairway that went nowhere. Where there should have been a landing and a return to another set of stairs, there was nothing but gloomy darkness, but the NVGs revealed all in stark green and white imagery. The fourth floor landing and all those below it were gone, a mass of rubble at the bottom of the stairwell. Gartrell slowly looked over the edge. The zombies swarmed about down there; dozens of them had shoved their way into the stairwell. They moaned as if one when they saw him and reached upward, as if they could somehow pull him from his high perch. Gartrell realized that even though the zeds were in almost total darkness due to the lights being blasted out, there were still lights shining above and behind him, which meant he was presented to them as a clear silhouette. Cursing himself for forgetting such a basic soldiering skill, Gartrell climbed back to the fifth floor landing. Rittenour and Leary were waiting for him. Gartrell looked at Leary and held a finger before his lips. Leary nodded. Gartrell pointed to the stairway and motioned for them to start climbing up. As the two soldiers mounted the stairs, Gartrell hung back, wondering what could be done about the zombies massing below.

Nothing, he decided. He followed the Special Forces soldiers instead, and once they were on the tenth floor, he made a quick report to McDaniels. Plan B was looking pretty good right now.

Once Gartrell and the rest of the soldiers had returned to the 27th floor, McDaniels gave them some time to rest. Rittenour and Leary looked pretty worn down, especially the latter, who complained about a constant ringing in his ears which was slowly subsiding. Regina Safire examined him as well as she could, and determined that he didn’t have perforated ear drums, but that tinnitus might be something he should consider getting used to. McDaniels sent them to the men’s room to wash up, then get some chow.

“You too, first sergeant,” McDaniels said. “Take a load off for the moment.”

“We really need to plan our next move, major,” Gartrell said. “Those things are still down there, and if what Ritt says is true, then OMEN is just that
—
a real bad sign.”

“I track that, first sergeant. Just the same, take a few minutes to get yourself squared away.”

Gartrell wanted to resist that, but he finally nodded. “Hooah.” And with that, he headed for the kitchen.

McDaniels returned to the dining area. He motioned to Finelly and Derwitz, who stood near the door leading to the corridor. When they approached, McDaniels looked at them critically.

“Someone has to keep a good overwatch in the stairwell,” he told them. “I need both of you out there with booger hooks on the bang levers. Position yourselves so one is below the other, but stay in sight of each other. Swap positions every ten minutes or so, and keep at least one weapon pointed downrange at all times. Keep your ears open. Those things tend to make a lot of noise to begin with, but who knows... if OMEN team is with them, and if they have any sort of skill retention, they might use stealth.”

“Got it, sir,” Finelly said.

“Keep it tight, troops. Remember your training?”

“Hooah,” both soldiers replied in unison. McDaniels nodded to them, and they stepped out of the cafeteria. McDaniels made to follow them, but Safire’s voice stopped him.

“Your dead friends are very interesting, Major McDaniels,” he said. He sat at the booth he had occupied earlier, another bottle of water before him, enshrouded by shadow. McDaniels couldn’t see his face clearly.

“That’s a word for it,” McDaniels said, turning to walk away.

Safire rose. “We thought there might be a possibility that the newly dead could retain some memories,” he continued. “Memories like where they used to live, work, things like that. But we’d thought that more complex tasks, such as operating machinery, even door knobs, were beyond them. That whatever electrochemical activity remained in their dead brains couldn’t possibly process complex actions. But your soldiers threw a grenade through the lobby windows?”

“It does seem that Mr. Keith tossed a live grenade at the lobby windows and blew them open,” McDaniels said. “I’m not sure if that equals a ‘complex action’, as you call it.”

“How many moves does it take to use a grenade?” Safire asked.

McDaniels shrugged. “Four, maybe. Pull the weapon, compress the safety, remove the pin, and throw it. Five, if you include stepping back, which Sergeant Rittenour said they did.”

“They all stepped back.” Safire rubbed his chin and slowly walked toward McDaniels. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses. “So it wasn’t just
—
Keith, his name is?
—
it wasn’t just him who stepped back. Of course, he threw the grenade, so perhaps some sort of muscle memory made him drop back. But the others? That indicates a shared understanding of consequence. They knew the grenade could damage their bodies.”

McDaniels nodded. “But the explosion wouldn’t kill them, as they happen to be already dead.”

“No... but it could damage them. Make them slower. Less able to effectively hunt.” Safire looked at McDaniels directly. “This is something we’d never observed before, but we never had trained soldiers to work with. It seems to me that procedural memory is strong in them. I would presume that throwing a grenade is practiced routinely in the military?”

“Somewhat,” McDaniels said. “Not as often as gunnery practice with an assault rifle or pistol, but grenade practice is something that’s taught in the Army from the very beginning.” He paused, considering what Safire was hinting at. “So you think Keith and the others, they’ll be able to use their weapons against us as well?”

“More than that, major. They apparently still have the ability to
plan
.”

Not what I wanted to hear,
McDaniels thought.

“In your estimation... how effectively could they plan their moves against us?” he asked, even though he was sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

“I don’t know, major. How effectively could they plan before they died?”

“I’m told that CW3 Keith was an exceptional Alpha Detachment leader. I’m not familiar with his service record, but I do know that he and OMEN team carried out complicated operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Seems to me they were a cut above, to a man.”

“Better than you, would you say?”

McDaniels shrugged. “Sure.”

Safire returned to the booth and sat down heavily. Regina slid in across from him, and looked from her father to McDaniels.

“Then our problems are very likely going to get quite a bit worse,” Safire said finally.

McDaniels had nothing to counter that, so he put a hand on the holstered sat phone and stepped into the corridor outside.

###

The rain and wind hadn’t eased when McDaniels climbed back to the roof, so he stayed inside the stairwell. He was able to get a lock on one of the communications satellites easily enough.

“Terminator, Rapier. Good to hear from you. When we got word that Thunder Three’s ELT had gone off, we thought the worst had happened,” said the USASOC radio operator. The relief was evident in his voice, but McDaniels couldn’t bring himself to give a damn.

“The worst did happen, pal. All those Marines and one of the Night Stalkers died. Their airplane is still burning in the street. Pass on to their commander that Thunder Three is down, all KIA.”

“Roger that, Terminator. Any other fatalities? Over.”

McDaniels took the time to brief the operator on everything that had occurred since their last communication. When he spoke of the appearance of OMEN team’s leader and how the zombies had used a hand grenade to blast through the lobby windows, the operator grew very quiet. McDaniels finished with their present circumstances, that they were still trapped in the building but had blown out the stairs so they were safe for the moment.

“Uh... Terminator, this is Rapier... you say that members of OMEN Team conducted forced entry ops against the building. And you’re
sure
these guys are zeds? Over.”

“Absolutely one hundred percent sure, Rapier. Safire seems to feel that the recent dead can access some parts of their brains... ‘procedural memory’, he called it. It means not only can our guys can remember drills and the like, they might still be able to recall tactics and skills. Enough to make our lives even more difficult than they already are. Over.” There was a long pause, and McDaniels wondered if the connection was still good. “Rapier, you copy all that? Over.”

“Roger, Terminator. Rapier’s got good copy. We’d like to know what you want to try and do next, over.”

“The sixty four thousand dollar question, Rapier. What’s the latest on Tenth Mountain’s advance?”

“Still en route, the last we heard. They’ve run into the leading bands of the storm that hit you a while ago. Their aviation brigade is down for the count until it blows over, so it’s a complete ground movement now. It’s slow going, Terminator.”

McDaniels hadn’t expected anything different. “What’s the situation in New York? Has the entire city fallen? Over.”

“Uh... hold one, Terminator.” The line went dead for a moment, and McDaniels took a moment to check around the roof. The flames from the Osprey wreckage were starting to die down, though the faces of the buildings facing the roof were agleam with its ruddy orange glow. The zeds had stopped falling from the building across the street, the one the MV-22 had slammed into. McDaniels guessed they were all on the ground, jockeying for a nice cooked meal.