The Gathering Dead (29 page)

There was movement in the elevator shaft. “Help me, someone,” Regina Safire called. “I can’t get in by myself!”

“She’s right there, Gartrell. An American citizen, who needs help. Going to turn your back on her?” McDaniels kept the iron in his own voice.

“Help her out, Ritt,” Gartrell said. To McDaniels: “Next time, we won’t have this conversation. You get me?”

“I get you, first sergeant.”

Gartrell returned his pistol to its holster in one swift, fluid move, then snapped his NVGs back over his eyes. He turned and looked at Finelly, who still stood nearby, feet planted apart, MP5 at his shoulder.

“Secure that weapon, troop. And get that man loaded into the van,” he said, pointing to Safire. “You’ll be driving, I have shotgun.” He patted the AA-12 slung across his chest. “No pun, of course.”

He then stalked past McDaniels without looking at him and joined Rittenour at the elevator door. McDaniels reached up and dropped his NVGs over his eyes, and was surprised to see his hand wasn’t trembling. Was it because he doubted Gartrell would shoot him?

No. It was because he knew that when a man like David Gartrell had his mind set on something, it took an act of God to get them not to follow through. And God had apparently acted through the core of decency Gartrell was wrapped around, and that prompted him to finally decide to save the civilians.

Even though the mission was by far more important.

“Don’t look down,” Earl begged his youngest daughter as he slowly climbed down to the end of the rope. “Just keep your eyes closed, baby, keep ‘em closed.” Zoe said nothing as she clutched her father’s shoulders with her hands, her thin legs wrapped around his waist. She didn’t respond when Gartrell and Rittenour reached up and grabbed the man and his daughter and guided them to safety. Earl caught a quick glimpse of what was left of his eldest daughter, and he stifled a sob in his throat.

“All right, Derwitz, Leary... get the hell out of there,” McDaniels commanded. Derwitz scampered down the rope like a monkey from his perch on the fourth floor, and he swung over the corpse at the bottom of the elevator shaft with a deft agility that McDaniels admired.

“On my way down, coming down fast,” Leary broadcast over the Special Forces soldier’s net. “These things are about to pop through the doors on a couple of different floors, they’re probably working their way downstairs now, major. Over.” The rope shuddered, and McDaniels looked up to see Leary rappelling down its length as quickly as possible, barely stopping to push off from the wall after each bound. After a hundred feet or so, he was practically fast roping, sliding down the rope as if it were a fire pole.

Finally, they were all assembled in the parking garage, and not a moment too soon. As they pushed the doors closed, the zombies apparently succeeded in shoving open the doors on a higher floor. The impacts made by the bodies slamming to the bottom of the elevator shaft was pure cacophony.

“Time’s up, we’re out of here!” McDaniels said.

“Leary, get on the door! There’s a pull-chain there that’ll open it up. When the van pulls past, you hop in the back!” Gartrell said, asserting himself without any deference to McDaniels. Leary bolted across the garage while Gartrell and Rittenour shepherded the others into the waiting van.

“I’ve got shotgun, major,” Gartrell said when McDaniels climbed into the front right seat.

“Think again, first sergeant,” McDaniels said, and slammed the door shut and buckled himself into the seat next to Finelly. Finelly gave him a quick grin and a thumbs-up as Gartrell oversaw the rest of the loading. McDaniels ignored both gestures.

“You know how to drive this thing?” he asked instead.

Finelly nodded. “Yup, drive something similar at Campbell. This one even has an automatic transmission and fulltime four wheel drive, so it’s gonna be a breeze.” He turned the key, and the big motor under the center cowling roared to life. Finelly nodded appreciatively when he heard the engine’s song.

“Ten cylinder engine, gas burner. Two tanks, both full. Damn major, this thing’s loaded for bear.”

“Let’s hope it’s what we need.”

Gartrell slammed the van’s side door closed and pulled open the rear doors, then ran to the garage door. He stood opposite Leary, and nodded to him.

“Ready?”

“Ready, first sergeant.” There was a furious pounding from the elevator door. The zombies were getting too close. Again.

“Van, ready?” Gartrell asked over the radio.

“Good to go here, first sergeant. Rittenour has security in the back of the vehicle, over,” McDaniels said.

Gartrell pointed at Leary. “Crack it open! I’ll secure the zone!”

“Here we go!”

Leary yanked the chain downward, and the solid garage door rose slowly a foot at a time. Beyond the door, darkness reigned, slashed by wet rain. Gartrell fell to his knees and peered under the slowly rising door.

“Good so far,” he reported. When the door had raised enough for him to duck under it, he darted out into the wet night, his AA-12 at the ready. “No zeds on the street just yet, but I can see ‘em gathering at the corner, must be where the entrance to the building is. They can’t hear the door being jacked open. Street’s empty, most of the traffic was already cleared when the barricades went up, so haul ass out of there as soon as you can and turn hard right.”

McDaniels relayed the information to Finelly, who stomped on the brake and dropped the van into drive. He didn’t flip on the headlights, relying on his NVGs to see with. The door rattled and shook as Leary cranked it up, his expression all hard lines as sweat rolled down his face. McDaniels mentally urged him on as the banging noises behind them became even more furious.

“Things’re gonna get through, man,” Derwitz said. He aimed his MP5 out the back of the van, mirroring Rittenour’s stance. The Safires and the Browns were buckled up in the bench seats in the van’s windowless interior, and young Zoe had her face buried against Regina’s breast. Regina cooed to her as comfortingly as she could, though her eyes were wild, full of fear. In direct counterpoint, Earl and Safire were almost pictures of calm, the former still stunned by the sudden death of his firstborn, the second probably too terrified to display any meaningful emotion. McDaniels knew how he felt, how they
both
felt.

The din outside the van seemed to reach a crescendo, and Rittenour epitomized it with two words: “Fight’s on.”

He started shooting. Zoe shrieked and buried herself against Regina as McDaniels spun in his seat. Through the van’s open rear doors, he saw the stenches push open the elevator doors. Dozens of them boiled out of the dark shaft, zeroing in on the idling van. Their pallid skin reflected the red glow of its brake lights. Rittenour fired his M4 on semiautomatic, cracking off head shot after head shot that left zombies collapsing to the oil-stained concrete floor. Derwitz was less precise, squeezing off bursts from his MP5 that did little to stop the advancing horde. McDaniels yelled for him to flip to semi and go for head shots, but if he heard, Derwitz did not comply.

“We’re attracting some attention from outside,” Gartrell reported.

“Gate’s up!” Leary cut in suddenly. “Major, get that fucking dumbass cowboy to jump on it!”

McDaniels looked at Finelly and found his attention was rooted to the vision of zombies swelling in the driver’s side view mirror. He slapped the big man on the arm mightily, jarring him out of his shocked silence.

“Finelly!
Drive!
”

Finelly snapped out of it and stomped down on the van’s accelerator. Rubber screeched as the four-wheel drive vehicle’s knobby tires spun across the smooth concrete for a moment before developing enough purchase to send it hurtling out into the rain-filled night. He cranked the wheel hard to the right just outside the garage, almost scraping the van’s side against the rear bumper of a car parked at the curb. As the vehicle came around and ground to a halt, McDaniels saw the car had a mass of parking tickets trapped beneath its windshield wipers, tickets that would go forever unpaid.

Gartrell and Leary sprinted for the van, the former firing several rounds from his AA-12 into the garage as he backpedaled through the rainy darkness. Leary launched himself into the van, then turned and grabbed the collar of Gartrell’s body armor and hauled him inside. Gartrell scooted backwards and sat inside the van’s cargo area, his legs hanging over its raised bumper.

“Go!” Leary shouted, as the first of the zombies came around the van’s open rear doors. Its head disappeared into an explosion of visceral goo as Gartrell blasted it with the automatic shotgun. Finelly slammed his foot on the accelerator once again, and the van fishtailed as it surged down the street. But not before a ghoul could grab onto Gartrell’s left boot, almost yanking him out of the van as it pulled away.

“Motherfuck!” Gartrell let go of the AA-12 and braced himself against the sudden weight as Leary grabbed onto him with both hands. The zombie pulled itself up as it was dragged behind the vehicle and bit down on the tip of Gartrell’s boot. It shook its head back and forth like a dog playing with a chew toy.

“Leary, hold on to me!” Gartrell shouted as his right hand reached for his holster. He pulled his pistol and fired at the zombie trying to devour his foot, steel-toed boot be damned. He missed with the first shot, and succeeded only in hitting it with a graze with the second. But the impact was enough to make the zombie open its mouth and reach upward with one hand. Gartrell raised his free leg and kicked the abomination in the face with his right foot. Bone crunched beneath the heavy sole of his boot, and the zombie slid away, rolling across the wet street. Leary and Rittenour hauled Gartrell inside, and they slammed the van’s rear doors shut. Gartrell leaned against the back of the seat the Safires and Browns sat on and wiped the rainwater from his face.

“Now that,” he said, “is what I call entertainment.”

###

The
Escanaba
reached her intended loiter position of north of Roosevelt Island at almost three in the morning. There was no way to drop a hook to hold her position, due to the occasional dead floating in the dark waters. Hassle instructed the sailor manning the con to maintain station using the boat’s diesel engines, something every swabbie had been trained to do if he was going to helm a vessel of any size in the Coast Guard. It was still a tall order; while the river current was generally north to south, the wind was pushing the
Nob
from the aft starboard quarter, and the air pressure was enough to make the ship’s stern swing out. The helmsman was adroit enough to feel the ship slipping out from under him, and he increased the output from the starboard engine to bring it back in line. It was a repetitive process, but Hassle was glad to see the job was being handled competently.

“All lookouts, keep sharp. Watch for any of those things that might be trying to get aboard,” he told the bridge crew. “And let’s give those Special Forces guys a call on their frequency and let them know we’re here, and find out how long they’re going to make us wait in this crap.”

###

The van bolted down 79th Street, heading east as fast as Finelly could make it go. The wide thoroughfare was hardly vacant, despite the military and police blockades that had been designed to force evacuees onto only the north/south avenues, like Lexington behind them and Third Avenue ahead. But Finelly was able to weave the big van around the vehicles that had been halted on the street, including one bus which had crashed into a storefront, its long length blocking most of the road. To get around that, Finelly merely steered the vehicle onto the sidewalk, smashing through a pile of garbage bags as he did so. The windshield wipers snapped back and forth, slapping out a furious tempo as they fought to keep the windscreen clear.

“This thing’s got power, but it handles like a pig,” Finelly said. “It really must be armored, feels heavy as hell!”

As if to prove that, a zombie stepped in front of the van, its mouth open, its arms raised. McDaniels felt only the slightest shudder as the van crashed into the zed at thirty miles an hour.

“That worked out well,” Gartrell said from the back. “Keep doing that whenever you have the opportunity, Finelly.”

“You got it, first sergeant.”

A voice came over the Green Berets’ radio headsets. “Terminator Six, this is the
Escanaba
. We’re in position and waiting for you to get to the shoreline. We’re looking for an ETA, over.”

McDaniels smiled when he heard the voice on the other end of the radio link. “
Escanaba
, Terminator Six. We’re en route now. It’s going to be a while. Can’t give you an ETA, but I hope to God you’re going to wait for us, over.”

“Roger that, Terminator. We’ll hold station until you arrive, we’ve got plenty of fuel and hot coffee, over.”

“Save some for us,
Escanaba
. Got to go now, we’re about to try and cross Third Avenue. Terminator, out.” McDaniels said. “That was the Coast Guard boat. They’re onstation and waiting for us. All we have to do is get there,” he told the rest of the van’s occupants.

Finelly slowed the van as it approached Third Avenue. The barricade there had been deserted, but shapes still moved in the gloom. Several zombies turned toward the van as it hurtled up the street, their faces pale and drawn, eyes casting about wildly in their skulls. McDaniels realized they were almost entirely blinded by the night and the storm, but they still sensed a meal ticket was coming their way. Beyond the ghouls and the barricade, Third Avenue was choked with traffic, but there had been some sort of accident just south of the barricade, and that had let some of the traffic in the intersection thin out a bit before things went to hell in a hand basket.

“We going to be able to push our way through that?” McDaniels asked, pointing toward the intersection ahead.

“No way to know other than to give it a shot,” Finelly said. “Those zeds’ll be able to get all over us though.”

“No gun ports to shoot through,” McDaniels said, “and maybe it’s better if we don’t. The noise’ll bring every zombie in the area on top of us, even in the storm. Just do your best, Finelly.”