These Dead Lands: Immolation (55 page)

“Can you define ‘sizeable,’ sir?” Ballantine asked.

“Around fifty to seventy-five thousand”—Hastings tapped the map—“right about here.”

The position he indicated was only about fifty miles east of the barrier’s location along I-78. Ballantine did the work in his head, figuring out engagement ranges, topology, and the mass of wreckage that faced the container wall. It might take days, but he figured the barricade would hold. They could easily kill that many reekers, as the forests on either side of the interstate would serve to dissuade the zombies from breaking off.
Besides, they always come to the noise.

“That’s doable, so long as they show up later rather than sooner,” Ballantine said.

“That’s just a preliminary estimate,” Hastings said. “It could be the leading edge of a larger force.”

“What, seventy-five thousand zombies ain’t enough for you?” Vogler asked.

Hastings looked up from the map. “Huh?”

Vogler chuckled, but there was more fear in the laughter than mirth. “Seventy-five
thousand
? You guys are acting like that’s just another day on the job, Hastings.”

Hastings straightened. “Hey. This is the tip of the iceberg. For all we know, there could be five million more right behind them. You need to get yourself and your men squared away and ready to fight, Vogler, because this is where things start to get hot.”

Vogler looked at Hastings, eyes hard. “Oh, really? I didn’t know I needed a
lightfighter
to tell me how to do my job, Hastings.”

Hastings returned the glare. “Apparently you do, Vogler. Because if you’d been paying attention, all of this shit”—he pointed toward the container wall behind them—“would have been in place already, and we wouldn’t be sweating our balls off, worrying about setting up defenses. Am I right, or am I right?”

Vogler took a step fowared. “Who the fuck do you—”

Ballantine moved to stand between the two men. “Whoa, guys. Cease fire,” he said, raising his hands. “Let’s save the heat for the enemy, all right?”

“Step aside, Ballantine,” Vogler snapped.

Ballantine knew which side his bread was buttered on, so he shook his head. “Don’t think so, Captain.” He looked at the rest of the officers, who were just standing around the Humvee, watching and waiting. “Anyone else want to maybe give me a hand defusing this? If not, I’ve got ten bucks on Hastings.”

A first lieutenant stepped up beside Ballantine, helping him block off Vogler. “No one’s doing anything.” He looked at Hastings. “Let’s get back on target. Sir, if we’ve got seventy-five thousand reekers heading our way, we’re going to need a lot more troops up here.”

Hastings backed away a little. “There’s another infantry company rolling out, and they should be here in just a few minutes. They’re going to pitch in and help fortify this position, then the plan is to create a secondary fallback in case the shit gets too real. Once we get a better handle on the approaching force and can determine when it’s going to get here, we’ll start ramping up the combat power. But don’t expect carte blanche. We can’t leave other flanks wide open.”

“We’re going to need at least a thousand guys, plus support,” Vogler said.

Hastings nodded. “Agreed. Victor’s working that up in concert with Jarmusch, so I think we can count on it happening. Right now, we need to finish our work while the intel folks do theirs.” He motioned toward where the Shadow crew was readying their small aircraft for launch and fixed his gaze on Vogler. “So let’s stop bitching to each other about roles and responsibilities and get it done. What do you say?”

“I say you’re on, Lightfighter.”

Hastings smiled thinly. “Prove it, Airborne.”

*

The two Chinooks
pounded through the air at an altitude of five thousand feet, a luxury the pilots normally didn’t get to experience. For Army aviation, staying close to the ground regime was the order of the day. Even big, fat CH-47s were expected to at least approximate nap-of-the-earth flight, rising and falling with the terrain at an altitude of less than one hundred feet. To the aircrews, flying along at five thousand feet was like cruising the flight levels with airliners and fighter jocks. Maintaining a trail formation, the aircraft buzzed along at one hundred forty miles per hour, which was their normal cruise speed. Both helicopters were traveling light. The lead machine had eight people aboard: four flight crew and four soldiers from Victor’s brigade intelligence section. Everyone was fully manned up with weapons and gear, including food and water, in case the helicopter went down and the personnel couldn’t be immediately evacuated, not that there was much worry in that regard. The second helicopter carried only its flight crew, and the massive Chinook had more than enough space to retrieve the personnel from the first aircraft in the event of a mishap.

Heading easterly, the two Chinooks paralleled I-78 after crossing over Swatara Creek. The day was clear, though the high humidity conspired to create a haze that obscured the far distance, so visibility was not unlimited. Winds were light, and so was the accompanying turbulence. The aircrews thought that it was a great day for flying. Below, the landscape alternated between relatively dense woods and cultivated land that was beginning to return to the wild without the attentive ministrations of farmers. The rural roads and highways were either full of abandoned vehicles or surprisingly vacant. Small groups of figures moved along the roadways, stopping to stare up at the big olive-drab helicopters. No one waved, begging for rescue. They were zombies.

As the flight pressed on, it slipped past the apparently vacant town of Hamburg. The observers in the first helicopter noted no activity that appeared to be man-made—no smoke from fires, no coordinated movements, no built-up communities that might have housed the living. All they saw were scores of reekers stumbling through the town on stiff legs that might have been made from wood.

But when the helicopters bore down on the town of Fogelsville, the community outside of the much larger city of Allentown, things became noteworthy. The highway leading out of Allentown was full of bodies—a moving, undulating mass of zombies slowly heading west. Like some sort of gigantic creature, the horde pushed through the debris-choked streets, walking over cars, barricades, and even each other. The scope of the mob was breathtaking, and for minutes, no one in the helicopters said much as they stared down at the legions of corpses that seemed to extend for miles, all the way back to the horizon. The reekers were sticking to the roads where they could, but their numbers were so vast that thousands more struck out across fields, drifting back to the crowded interstate when they encountered heavy woods. From five thousand feet, the interstate looked like nothing less than some gigantic rotting serpent slowly winding its way toward Fort Indiantown Gap.

*

Colonel Victor stared
at the remote video display in the TOC, watching the video feed from the Shadow UAV that had followed the same flight path as the Chinooks. He had moved well beyond terror. The scope of the situation was so vast that it left him feeling numb and hollow. As a combatant commander, he had never faced such an array of enemy forces, and their numerical superiority was almost beyond his ability to comprehend.
Millions
.
Six thousand troops and civilians against
millions
of dead
.

“Should we start hitting them now, Colonel?” Henry Cornell asked.

The big helicopters were on their way back, having flown to Bridgewater, New Jersey, before turning around. The flight had confirmed what Victor and the others had already suspected. Having eradicated all food sources in the New York City metropolitan area, the zombies were heading west like one great migratory herd.

If they made it past the barricades, the reekers could surround Fort Indiantown Gap, blocking every approach and exit. The National Guard training facility would be like an island floating in a sea of rot and decay. They would have no escape.

“Colonel?”

Victor looked away from the screen. Cornell was staring at him, his dark face composed and almost serene, despite what was coming for them. Victor admired the politician’s poker face. The man seemed to be outwardly unflappable, even under the direst of circumstances.

“We’ll send out teams to try to slow them down,” Victor said. “But honestly, I’m not sure that’ll have much effect. That’s a lot of bodies to take out. We’ll start with mortars and long-distance sniping, but I can’t say how effective those measures will be, either.”

“I’ve heard there’s some equipment that’s been successful at defending observation points,” Cornell said. “What about those?”

“You mean the mulchers, sir? Those have to be transported by truck, and they require a good amount of work to relocate. Even though they’re on tracks, they’re not designed for long-distance travel under their own power. We’d like to keep them closer, to defend the post itself.”

Cornell nodded slowly. “All right, sounds fair enough.” He looked at the screen again, and Victor thought he saw the senator’s mask slip a little bit. “So how will we get out, if it comes to it?”

“We still have the helicopters, sir. And the trains. We’re thinking the majority of personnel will depart by train, while senior staff and VIPs like you are taken out by helicopter.”

“To where?”

Victor sighed. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, sir. We don’t have an actual destination yet.”

“That could be a problem. Not that those are in short supply.”

“Obviously, we’ll leave if the post is about to be overrun,” Victor said. “We’ll get out before it can be taken down. As much as I’d hate to go out into the world without a plan, staying and fighting the dead to the last man doesn’t sound like the way to tactical success.”

“It is not. I agree,” Cornell said. He looked up as Sergeant Major Parker hurried toward them.

The command sergeant major’s bald head gleamed in the light. “Excuse me, sir,” Parker said. Parker looked a bit agitated.

Victor sighed. He had never seen Oratious Parker get agitated over anything in the past, not even back when the brigade combat team was trying to retreat from Philadelphia and the troops were getting hammered by the dead. “More bad news, Oratious?”

“Not this time, sir.”

Victor raised his eyebrows. “Oh? What’ve you got?”

“We’ve been working the radios, using those frequencies Master Sergeant Slater provided. We’ve received a response.”

Cornell smiled. “Well, that might be worth a hot damn.”

“What else, Parker?” Victor asked.

“I’m told that Bragg is secure, sir, and under the operational control of Lieutenant General Remsen and his staff at Army Special Operations Command. Call sign is Rawhide.”

Victor slapped the table, almost sending his coffee mug skittering across the surface. Burt Remsen was a hard-charger but also an astute thinker, reputed to be an aggressive general officer, despite his relatively low profile. While Victor had never been formally introduced to the general, he had certainly seen the man during visits to his duty station at Fort Campbell when the commander of Army special operations assets had visited the 5th Special Forces Group and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Remsen was an old school Green Beret with nothing left to prove.

“Bragg is secure?” Cornell asked.

“That’s what they said, sir.” Parker looked back at Victor. “They’d like a pulse from you directly, sir.”

Victor got to his feet. “Hell, yes!”

*