The Gathering Dead (5 page)

The crew chief looked at the pilot. “Mr. Goggins...”

“Go on, Terry. Go with the major. This is the end of the road for me.” Goggins looked at McDaniels imploringly. McDaniels nodded and raised his M4.

“NSDQ,” he said before pulling the trigger.
Night Stalkers Don’t Quit
was a legendary credo in the special operations community, and McDaniels had seen it in action once again on this day. His M4 barked once, and Goggins sank into his seat. McDaniels pulled the pistol from the pilot’s dead hand and jumped off the car.

“God damn!” the crew chief said. His voice was high, almost a panicked shriek. “You shot Mr. Goggins! You fucking
shot
him!”

“Cap off those zeds in the helicopter and get the hell out here!” McDaniels snapped. More gunfire from behind, and more zombies fell. Something moved atop the wrecked helicopter; the only warning McDaniels had was the lazy bobbing of one broom-strawed rotor blade. He raised his rifle as a female zombie leapt toward him, its jaws spread wide, its filthy dark hair trailing behind it like the tail of some ebony comet. McDaniels’ first round passed through its neck, and the zombie’s head lolled sickeningly to one side as it crashed to the street. It scrambled to its hands and knees, and its head fell downward, hanging from its neck by skin alone—it was obvious that McDaniels’ errant shot had severed its cervical vertebrae. McDaniels fired again and this time dropped the grotesquerie to the pavement.

Inside the Black Hawk, the crew chief continued to swear in total panic as he fired several shots at the reanimated corpses of his flight crew. He then half-jumped, half-fell from the aircraft, slamming into a smashed SUV. If he hadn’t still been wearing his flight helmet, he might have knocked himself unconscious against the vehicle’s stout A-pillar.

“Let’s go, major! Last chance!” Gartrell shouted from the corner. He was already backing toward the office building with Rittenour while the rest of the soldiers held the lobby under guard.

McDaniels grabbed the crew chief’s arm and pulled him along as he ran toward the office building. A zombie crashed to the ground ten yards from him; another jumper, and its skeleton was pulverized by the impact, yet it still tried to make its jellified extremities work so it could pursue. Something cracked past his ear—a bullet—and he heard it strike something fleshy only a few feet behind him. Without turning to look, McDaniels knew the ensuing clatter was a zombie collapsing against a car.

The crew chief screamed, and his wrist was torn from McDaniels’ grasp. He looked over his shoulder and saw the young sergeant being taken to ground by no fewer than three zombies; one of them tried to bite his skull, but the flight helmet saved him. The crew chief writhed and struggled beneath the weight of the zombies, and he fired his weapon into one of them at point blank range. The rounds passed through the ghoul’s thorax without causing any real damage. McDaniels dropped it with one shot, then took out the one trying to chew its way through the crew chief’s helmet. It fell upon him, and for a moment, the younger man was trapped beneath the dead weight of two corpses.

The third ghoul grabbed up the crew chief’s left hand and ripped off all his fingers in a single, vicious bite. The crew chief screamed and struggled to throw off the ghouls, but it was too late. McDaniels knew that once bitten, the man was as good as a zombie. He fired two rounds, one through the zombie’s skull, the second through the crew chief’s. The young sergeant collapsed to the street, motionless.

“
Major!
” Gartrell shouted.

McDaniels ran for the office building as fast as he could, his pack jerking from side to side on his back, his feet slamming into the asphalt. He hopped over the curb and fired blindly at the zombies closing in on him from the right. One of the rounds was lucky enough to strike one in the femur, and the destruction of the bone made it collapse in the heap, taking down the rest of the zombies moving with it. It was only a momentary respite; all of them clambered back to their feet and continued to pursue him, whatever injuries they had accrued ignored.

But then he was at the open lobby door. McDaniels threw himself across the threshold and slid face-first across the cool marble floor as Gartrell slammed the heavy glass door shut.

The ghouls rammed into the door with their entire weight, but it couldn’t be budged. Just the same, Gartrell and Leary hung on to it for dear life. Even though the door only opened one way—outward—they didn’t have the key to lock it. And while the zombies had the cumulative intellect of the average pen holder, they might eventually get lucky and pull on the handle as opposed to trying to push their way inside.

McDaniels got to his feet, shocked to see dozens more zombies stumble toward the building. All of them catapulted themselves against the windows of the glass-walled lobby with a single-minded fixation that was almost awesome to witness. Even though they only succeeded in breaking their own bones and leaving smears of gore across the glass, they immediately got to their feet and charged again. And again. And again. The lobby was filled with the din of bodies smashing against glass.

A nearby door popped open, and McDaniels spun, rifle at the ready. It was Rittenour and one of the Night Stalker security troops, emerging from a stairwell.

“Stairway is clear, first sergeant! We checked the first five landings, and there’s no one inside!”

“You got it ready to go?” Gartrell asked, still holding onto the lobby door.

“Roger that, ready to go,” Rittenour said.

“Gartrell, you have something in mind?” McDaniels asked. He joined the burly NCO at the door.

“I figured if we couldn’t get this place locked up, we’d have no choice but to go up. And if we did that, we’d have to blow up some of the stairwells to make sure those things can’t come after us. Ritt’s the demolitions NCO in OMEN team, he’s got enough of the goods on him to make it happen.”

“Has anyone checked any of the floors above?”

Rittenour shook his head. “No time. Some of the doors are exit only, so the first floor that’s open to us is the fifth. I opened the door and looked in, but didn’t see anything other than cubicles and offices.”

“Jimenez, have you found a damned key yet?” Gartrell asked. McDaniels turned and saw the Night Stalker with the bad back going through all the drawers in the lobby security desk. The young soldier’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Affirmative, I got the key!” Jimenez said suddenly. “At least, I think I do—”

“Get over here!” Gartrell said.

Jimenez started toward the door, but his gait was slow and stiff. The tall, rawboned Night Stalker snatched a key ring out of Jimenez’s hand and dove toward McDaniels, Gartrell, and Leary. The door locked in two places, at the top and the bottom. The soldier fell to his knees and inserted a key into the bottom lock. The cylinder wouldn’t turn. The soldier fumbled about and tried another key. It also wouldn’t turn.

“Finelly, what the fuck are you waiting for?” shouted a small, wiry Night Stalker as he pounded up and helped hold the door as well.

“Fuck off, Maxi!” the soldier on the floor said. He tried another key, and this time, metal snapped home as the lock set. The soldier jumped to his feet and repeated the process with the top lock. After some hesitation, Gartrell and Leary stepped back from the door, but the other soldier kept pressing against it, his face blank. McDaniels could tell the soldier was on total autopilot, terrified out of his mind. He grabbed the soldier’s backpack and pulled him backwards.

“Keep it together, soldier,” he said, right in the soldier’s ear.

“Hooah,” the soldier replied automatically, his gaze rooted on the glass door.

The zombies continued to batter it, but the door held. Gartrell examined all the doors in the lobby critically, then nodded to himself.

“Locked up tight,” he said.

“Good work, soldier,” McDaniels said to the aviation trooper who had locked the door. He let go of the soldier’s backpack and turned to the rest of the soldiers in the lobby. “You’ve
all
done great work. Now let’s keep doing it, and hope to high hell we can all get out of this alive. And the beers are on me at Campbell and Bragg.”

There was a chorus of “hooahs”, the Army term that could be anything from an affirmation to a zoological classification. The crashes against the glass increased, and McDaniels estimated the number of zombies outside the lobby had swollen to several hundred.

“We should probably get upstairs, major,” Gartrell said over the growing din. “We’re attracting a hell of a lot of attention, and even though this glass is pretty thick, it might give eventually.”

McDaniels nodded. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

###

Rittenour took the lead as the seven soldiers and two civilians mounted the stairs, leaving the din of the lobby behind. The building still had power, which was a blessing, as the stairwell was brightly lit. The stairwell was all gray-painted concrete, with florescent tape marking the edges of each step, so they could be navigated in a lights-out situation. As they climbed, Rittenour pointed out the plastic explosives he had planted and various intervals. He explained that it was enough to blow out two sets of stairs and one landing, and McDaniels believed him.

“Any chance of the explosion screwing up the building structurally?” he asked the demolitions expert.

“Don’t believe so. Looks like the core support is in the center of the building, around the elevator shafts. The stairwells are close to them, but not too close, if you get what I mean.” Rittenour kept the butt of his M4 tucked against his shoulder as he walked up the stairs, eyes scanning each landing for a threat before stepping onto it.

As they passed by one of the reentry doors leading to the third floor
—
the lobby below was two stories tall, so the first floor available was the third
—
McDaniels tried to push it open. It was locked. There was a card reader next to the door, where he presumed an employee would swipe his card to gain access to the floor.

“Locked, like I told you it would be,” Rittenour said.

McDaniels leaned against the door and pressed his ear against it. He heard nothing.

“Might be a good idea to try and get inside anyway. See what we might be sharing a building with.”

Gartrell patted the key card reader. “Tall order, major.”

McDaniels nodded. “Still, something to think about, if we’re going to be here for a while.”

They made it to the fifth floor. Rittenour and Leary took positions on either side of the stairwell reentry door, while the short Night Stalker readied to pop it open. McDaniels motioned for Gartrell to remain behind with the Safires. The first sergeant gave him a grim smile, and then stepped forward, his sidearm in his right hand.

“I’ll back up Leary and Ritt,” he said.

Leary looked at him from over his shoulder. “You sure you’re still ready for this kind of stuff, first sergeant?”

“Sergeant Leary, I’m a plank-holder with Delta.” He raised his pistol. “And I’m still able to double-tap a man in the right eye with this at fifty meters.”

Singularly unimpressed, Leary grunted and turned back to the door. Gartrell looked at the two uninjured Night Stalkers.

“You aviators come in after we secure the immediate area on the other side of that door. Depending on the lay of the land, we’ll probably split up into two groups and do our recon. Jimenez, with your back I don’t want you moving any more than you have to, so you stay here with the major and civilians, understood?”

“Roger that, first sergeant.”

Gartrell rolled his head from side to side, loosening up. He conspicuously avoided looking at McDaniels as he moved the Safires down a few steps. Gartrell firmed his grip on his pistol and nodded to the short Night Stalker.

“Open it on three, son. One. Two. Three!”

The soldier yanked open the fire door and stumbled to one side, wincing in pain. Rittenour and Leary surged inside, followed closely by Gartrell who held his pistol in a double-handed grip. The soldiers from the 160
^th
moved to the open door and took up their overwatch position, assault weapons at the ready. They all held Heckler & Koch MP5K Personal Defense Weapons, modified variants of the time-tested H&K submachine gun that was heavily favored by most of the American special operations community for close-in work. As he watched them form up, McDaniels realized that other than Jimenez, he still didn’t know their names. Jimenez fell back from the doorway and leaned against the concrete wall, his own MP5K held in both hands. The Safires stood with their backs against the opposite wall.

After a minute or so, Gartrell drifted back into sight and waved the Night Stalkers forward. They shoved their way into the brightly-lit office space beyond. McDaniels grabbed the door and softly closed it, then kept it covered with his M4. For a long while, the only sounds he heard were the breathing of those in the stairwell with him.

“How long will this take?” Regina asked after a moment. She watched Jimenez slowly pick his way past them, his MP5K’s barrel oriented toward the stairwell they had just ascended.

“It’ll take as long as it has to,” McDaniels said. “Now please, keep quiet.” He looked back at Jimenez. “What’s up, sergeant?”

“Don’t like having the back door unguarded, sir,” Jimenez responded. His hair was cut short on the sides in the medium whitewall fashion that a lot of Army grunts favored with a semi-Mohawk on top. His eyes were dark and dwelled deep in his head, and he blinked often as beads of sweat ran down his face. McDaniels reached back and grabbed his shoulder firmly.

“Hang in there, soldier,” he said.

Jimenez nodded. “I will, sir. This is just a totally FUBAR situation, you know?”

McDaniels smiled as easily as he could. Fucked Up Beyond All Repair definitely fit the circumstance. “I definitely know that.” He turned back to the closed door and glanced over at Safire after a moment. Safire looked back at him with expressionless eyes. His daughter put her hand on her father’s arm and looked at McDaniels herself, her eyes full of both terror and annoyance. McDaniels found that combination almost laughable under the circumstances.