The Gathering Dead (36 page)

Then the night was torn apart by the first of the
Escanaba
’s 76 millimeter rounds.

The intersection lit up as the high explosive round slammed into it at a slant, decimating the cars and trucks there as it essentially vaporized the zombies standing nearby. The shock wave of concussive force radiated outward at speeds over 200 miles an hour, carrying with it shards of glass and chunks of metal. Flames blossomed into existence as fuel tanks exploded; the fires hungrily consumed everything it could, gasoline, rubber tires, vehicle upholstery, anything that would support fire. Even the zeds themselves turned into walking funeral pyres, thrashing about before the flames consumed so much of their tissue that they could no longer move. Thick, black smoke roiled into the sky. Then another round hit. And another. And another. Shock waves raced through the intersection, intensifying as they were channeled up the streets, carrying with them a fusillade of shrapnel. Safire went down with a cry, pulling McDaniels with him. McDaniels hit the sidewalk hard, but maintained enough presence of mind to keep firing at the approaching zombies as they themselves stumbled and fell from the force of the attack. In the intersection, more cars exploded, and anti-theft alarms wailed. Another round hit, and the windows of every building facing the intersection finally shattered, stressed beyond their limits. Window unit air conditioners fell into the street, and one crashed through the plywood roof of the sidewalk scaffolding, crushing a zombie’s skull in the process. Dozens of ghouls still shambled about in the street, their primitive minds overwhelmed by the fury of the attack, blinded by the bright flames and the thick, acrid smoke. The soldiers concentrated their fire on them, dropping them one by one by one.

Until finally, the immediate vicinity was secured. For the moment.

“
Escanaba
, Terminator Six! Check your fire, check your fire!” McDaniels shouted into the radio.

“Roger, Terminator Six—fire mission cancelled, over.”

“Daddy?” Behind McDaniels, Regina Safire’s voice was barely audible over the crackle of raging fire and the moaning of distant zombies. Farther away, the .50 caliber machinegun on the
Escanaba
continued to chatter. McDaniels pulled himself into a kneeling position and took the opportunity to recharge his weapon. More muted clicks and snaps told him the rest of the soldiers were doing the same.

“
Daddy!
” Regina said again, her voice building into a ragged shriek.

McDaniels turned. Wolf Safire lay on his back just behind him, his face paler than usual, his eyes unfocused and glassy. Clearly visible in the glow of the firelight, a dark stain spread across the front of his white shirt. It grew larger and larger with each second. McDaniels gasped. A long shard of glass protruded from Safire’s chest, right where his heart would be.

No, no, no, no, no—

“Regina.” Safire’s voice was muted, barely audible. “My little Reggie-girl…”

Regina threw herself to the sidewalk beside her father’s prone form, already going to work. “Don’t move, Daddy. Don’t move. I need to look at this.” As she gently pulled open Safire’s shirt, she looked up at McDaniels. “Help me, God damn it!”

Gartrell finished reloading his AA-12, and he looked down at Safire quickly. “Fuck,” he muttered, then went back to work. Rittenour joined him a moment later.

McDaniels knelt beside Regina, weapon still in hand as tendrils of smoke drifted over them. He was no doctor, but he had seen his share of battlefield injuries, and this one looked serious. As Regina pulled the blood-soaked shirt away from her father’s chest, he saw more blood pump up from around the large splinter of glass in Safire’s chest. That his heart had been pierced was beyond questioning. Regina wept as she tried to wipe away the blood with her sleeve.

“McDaniels.” Safire’s voice was soft and dry but still audible, his words perfectly enunciated. “McDaniels, my daughter…”

“We’ll get her out,” McDaniels said. “And you too.”

“My jacket pocket. It’s in my pocket. Hurry.”

McDaniels reached past Regina and searched the man’s jacket. He found the pocket and reached inside. He pulled out a thick, silver IronKey thumb drive, and held it up to where Safire could see it.

“This?”

Safire nodded slightly. “I lied. All the data… it’s on that. Password protected. It’s ‘Regina Marie 1971’. That’s the password.”

“Regina Marie 1971. Your daughter’s birth date?”

“Yes.”

Gunfire rang out, and Gartrell said, “More zeds inbound, major. We’ve got to get moving.”

McDaniels pocketed the thumb drive and reached for Safire. “Come on, doctor. Let’s get you out of here.”

Safire slapped his hand away with surprising strength, then turned toward Regina. “My Reggie-girl… you always stood by me.”

Regina cried openly now, still wiping at the blood on his chest. The flow had diminished remarkably in just the last few seconds. It was clear to McDaniels that his heart was giving out.

“Daddy,” she said, her voice full of emotion.

Safire’s fingers touched her cheek. “My little Reggie-girl… how I lo—”

His hand fell away, and the light left Wolf Safire’s eyes for good.

Regina wailed. Earl sidled over and put his arm around her, tears brimming in his own eyes.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” he said. He reached out and put his other arm around Zoe. The young girl was crying too.

“Major!” Gartrell’s voice was sharp and hard-edged even above the gunfire. McDaniels nodded and grabbed a hold of Regina’s jacket as he hauled her to her feet.

“We have to go! Let’s get moving!” He pulled Regina down the sidewalk, but she screamed and fought against him.

“No! No! We can’t leave him to become one of
them!
” she cried.

McDaniels dropped a naked, singed zombie that advanced toward them, its flesh burned almost black by one of the car fires. It fell to the street, wisps of smoke rising from its seared flesh.

“Come on!” he said, pulling harder.

Regina ripped his hand off her jacket and reached for his belt. Before he could stop her, she pulled his pistol from its holster and whirled back to face her father’s corpse. Holding the weapon in trembling hands, she clicked off the safety as Earl pulled Zoe away, her face against his chest. Regina pointed the pistol at her father’s body.

“Oh Daddy,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

She pulled the trigger, and the pistol bucked in her hands. A single round, right through Safire’s forehead.

“Damn, if we’d known you could shoot we would have given you a gun earlier,” Gartrell said. “Better let her keep it, major. And let’s get the hell out of here!”

McDaniels grabbed Regina’s arm and pulled her after him. “Okay, he’s gone. Let’s go. Hurry!”

He led them down the sidewalk, dropping any zeds that got in their way. Gartrell moved out into the street, extending their perimeter, and waited until the zombies were close enough to ensure they got head shots. McDaniels led them into the inferno of the intersection and picked his way through the morass of burning automobiles and trucks, coughing as the acrid smoke seared his throat and nostrils. A zombie wearing a fireman’s uniform lurched toward them, half its face a scorched mass of smoking flesh. Regina fired at it, hit it in the neck, driving it back a step. Her second shot hit it right below its one remaining eye, and it collapsed against the hood of a crumpled taxi.

Suddenly, a group of zombies stepped around an overturned mail truck and surged toward the group, right behind Rittenour. He shouted warning and went to guns on them, but he was too late. Though one, then two zombies fell to the street, the rest hit him like linebackers for the Green Bay Packers and slammed him up against another car. He screamed as their teeth found his flesh.

“Get away from me!” he screamed to the others as Finelly backtracked, firing on the zeds. “Get away from me!
Grenade!
” McDaniels saw the grenade in Rittenour’s hands, and he knew what was about to happen.

“Finelly, run! Run!” he said, obeying his own command as he reached back and dragged Regina with him. Gartrell pushed Earl and Zoe before him as Rittenour pulled the pin and dropped the grenade to the ground between his feet. Finelly hobbled away as fast as his injured leg would allow, a keening cry escaping from his lips. Rittenour collapsed, either by purpose or from the mass of ghouls, to fall across the grenade. It went off with a thunderclap, obliterating him and sending several tattered corpses cartwheeling through the air.

McDaniels kept pressing forward, ignoring the scalding heat of a nearby car fire that left him feeling baked. The heat and brilliant light overwhelmed his goggles, so he flipped them up on their mount. Just in time—separating itself from the inferno, a flaming zombie staggered toward him, too close for him to turn his MP5 on it. He lashed out with his left hand and punched it in its blackened face, driving it back a few steps until it tripped over a twisted bumper lying in the street. He ignored it as it slowly thrashed about and hurried across the shattered intersection.

Ahead, 80th Street came to an end, as proclaimed by a pair of twisted, bent signs that read DEAD END. The trees on the corner were awash with flame, their trunks cracking and splitting with firecracker-like snaps and pops. At the end of the street was an iron security fence, more decorative than anything else that served to separate the street from the southbound lanes of the FDR. Beyond it, floating in the black waters of the East River, was the darkened silhouette of the USCGC
Escanaba
. Light flared from a point on its side as the .50 continuously fired at the mass of zombies that had been drawn to the shoreline. They stood three deep, despite the withering firepower being leveled against them.

This just gets better and better.

McDaniels glanced over his shoulder to make sure the rest of the team was with him, then flipped his goggles back over his eyes. “I’ll go down first. Gartrell, you and Finelly help the others. The southbound lanes look clear.” Without waiting for a response, McDaniels hauled himself over the fence and dropped down onto the bed of a pickup truck right below. The abandoned vehicle bounced on its shock absorbers, and for a split instant, McDaniels was afraid he would fall out of it. He regained his balance and looked around the vicinity, his MP5 in both hands. There were no zeds in the immediate area. Across the three lanes of dead traffic, the street seemed to disappear on the other side of the concrete guard rail. He knew the ten foot drop Safire had mentioned lay on the other side.

The truck bounced again as Regina Safire jumped into it and fell face first. She lost her grip on the pistol, and it clattered across the pickup’s metal bed. Earl was next, landing on his ass right beside her. He jumped to his feet and extended his arms upward, waiting for Finelly to help Zoe over the fence.

McDaniels jumped out of the truck. “Get up, Regina,” he said, raising his voice over the gunfire and the flames above. “I need you down here.” She reclaimed the pistol and eased herself out of the pickup truck as Zoe fell into her father’s arms with a small shriek. Both of them fell into the bed, and Gartrell jumped into it.

“Let’s go, Sergeant Finelly!” he said, landing on his feet like a cat.

Finelly lifted his injured leg over the twisted iron fence, wincing at the pain. His wound was bleeding again, McDaniels noticed as he scanned left and right, waiting for the first zed to appear. And there they were… shuffling out from under an overpass several hundred feet to the north. In the glow of the fires above, they could clearly see the band of humans, and they accelerated toward them as fast as they could manage.

Finelly shrieked suddenly as five zombies attacked him from behind, pulling him away from the fence. Both Gartrell and McDaniels fired at them, but they were too late. Finelly was pulled away out of sight, but they heard his screams and one frantic burst of full automatic fire that ended almost as quickly as it had started.

“Run!” Gartrell pulled Earl to his feet. “Run now!”

Earl grabbed Zoe and flung both of them out of the pickup truck, with Gartrell right behind. And not a moment too soon; a literal wave of deadheads poured over the fence, collapsing into the pickup’s bed like a grisly tsunami, moaning and writhing. Those below were crushed within seconds as the pile grew and grew. McDaniels pushed Regina ahead of him, then did the same with Earl and Zoe.

“Run down in that direction—we’ll have to go down to where we can cross over into the northbound lanes!” he said, pointing south. There, the sloping southbound lane met the northbound where the ground leveled out, separated from each other by a thick concrete guardrail that was less than four feet high. As they passed him, he pulled his last smoke grenade and tossed it behind him in an attempt to obscure their retreat. Gartrell backed toward him, firing his AA-12 at the zeds in the pickup. As the smoker went off, Gartrell pulled a fragmentation grenade and tossed it into the pickup, then joined McDaniels. The two men sprinted down the lane, pushing past abandoned cars. Some of them were still running. The frag grenade went off in a fiery flash, its retort muted by the scores of bodies that surrounded it. Shrapnel whirled through the area, bouncing off cars, shattering glass, and mutilating bodies that felt no pain.

“
Escanaba
, Terminator Six! We’re running south to where we can cross over to the northbound lanes—concentrate your fires there! Give us a path!”

“Terminator,
Escanaba
—we’re on it, you might want to hold up for as long as you can. Cover your ears, rounds out!” As the Coast Guardsman spoke, the 76 millimeter gun on the ship’s foredeck spoke once again. Microseconds later, the powerful explosions ripped through the area in blossoming flashes of light and smoke. McDaniels and his group were pelted with all manner of debris, concrete, metal, plastic, pieces of deboned ghouls.

“Let me past! Let me past!” Gartrell shouted as he shoved his way past McDaniels. Behind, the first of the zombies stepped through the smoke screen. McDaniels fired two shots, dropping one. The zeds behind stepped over the body, stumbling and fumbling as they moaned, but still they came, ignoring the powerful explosions that ripped the night asunder on the other side of the retaining wall. Ahead, a ghoul suddenly appeared, right before Regina. She cried and stopped short, raising her pistol. She fired and missed. She fired again, but hit the zombie in the chest, which did nothing to deter it. As it advanced upon her, she raised the weapon higher, focusing on its head. But then Earl plowed into her from behind, and both of them went down. Zoe shrieked when she saw the zombie step toward them, its jaws spread wide. Its head disappeared in a pulpy flash of expanding tissue and fragmented bone as Gartrell fired a single shot over Zoe’s head. He then pushed past the shrieking girl and leaped over Earl and Regina as they thrashed about on the roadway between the stalled cars.