Even after the firing stopped, it still took Wilkes a full minute to realize that the one-sided firefight was over. Lifting his head, he looked at the haze of gunpowder hanging in the air to his front before looking back at the lifeless bodies of the dead. From beyond the wire, a cheer rose up and calls of “We won” and “We beat them back” came to his ears.
Standing, he looked down as he brushed the dirt and mud off his clothes so his people wouldn’t see the rage etched on his face. Trying to contain himself, he forced himself to be grateful that they had saved his life, while at the same time choking back a tirade at how badly they had fucked up.
Don’t you see that this is only the tip of the iceberg?
his mind screamed at them. You dumbasses blew your load for a few hundred dead. Now what the fuck happens when the rest of them come rolling toward us? That’s why we’ve been using the bows and arrows and spears. We need to save our ammunition for the main body, and we’ve got to maintain noise discipline.
Finally getting control of himself, he raised his head and called for his radioman to report that the dead-asses had reached the outer fence on the south side of the fort.
“But we wiped them out,” the man called back.
Completely exhausted from his close call, Wilkes didn’t have the strength to put him in his place. In a quiet voice, he said, “Just call in the report.”
Making his way through the gate, Wilkes heard the whine coming from behind him. From a distance, it sounded to him like a car with bad breaks coming to a long stop. The sound gradually rose in a crescendo until the first of the Ds appeared, staggering wildly down the road as they fought to move faster toward the food. The two-lane blacktop was quickly packed from one side to the other with the hungry dead as the trees on either side waved crazily with their passing.
Attracted by the gunfire, they were coming at a run.
As the dead rushed toward them, Wilkes found the strength to scream, “Prepare to be overrun.”
Russellville, Arkansas:
Brain took a long look at the burned out interior of the radio room to get his bearings, then got to work. Pulling out a screwdriver, he took the front panel off the main receiver and studied it. After removing two more and peering at their interior, he said, “I know what the problem is. If you have an electrician, you need to get him in here.”
Not entirely trusting the young technician, Fagan asked, “You figured out what’s wrong with it that fast?”
Annoyed at his skills being questioned, Brain told him, “Yeah, you need a new Flux capacitor.”
Seeing the Staff Sergeant ball his fists, Cage intervened by stepping in front of him and asking, “So you think you can fix it?”
Brain gave him a withering look and said, “I don’t
think
I can fix it, I
know
I can fix it. It’s going to take a little while, though.”
Slightly annoyed at Brain’s arrogant manner, Major Cage asked, “How long is a little while?”
Feeling like he had asserted his dominance enough, Brain told him, “If you can get your electrician in here to restring the burned out crap, I should have you up and running in about thirty minutes or so.” Patting the side of the receiver, he added, “This is the military version of the same stuff I used to put together from kits when I was a kid. Being the military version, its casing is built to be resistant to water, shock and fire. It doesn’t look like any of the insides were damaged, but I won’t know for sure until I power them up. Even if some of the electronics got fried, I should be able to cannibalize the other equipment for parts.”
Having surveyed the damage for themselves, Cage and Fagan looked at him in shock that it would be so easy.
Seeing their hesitation, Brain raised one eyebrow and gestured toward the door as he said in a trying voice, “An electrician, please.”
Annoyed by the insolence in Brain’s tone, Fagan let it out as he called through the door, “I need the electrician on duty in here A.S.A.P. If he’s eating, I want you to wipe his mouth and drag him in here. If he’s on the shitter, I want you to wipe his ass, pull his pants up and drag him in here. If he’s fucking someone, I want you to pull him out, pull his pants up and drag him in here.”
His command was met by a flurry of movement in the outer office as the men and women on duty scurried to do the Staff Sergeant’s bidding.
Satisfied, Fagan turned to Brain and said, “I’m going to station a runner outside the door. If you need anything, you tell them to get it. As soon as you have the radio fixed, I want you to send them to get us.”
Brain gave a half-salute and said, “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Reminding himself that the technician was a civilian, Fagan held his temper at the man’s disrespect as he led Cage and Steve through the door. When they were outside the building, he said, “He’s an arrogant little fucker, isn’t he?”
Steve laughed and said, “You should have met him before all this.”
Seeing the Staff Sergeant’s face grow red as he dwelled on Brain, Cage changed the subject by saying, “We should go up to the farmhouse and see how Doctor Connors is doing.”
“If she’s available,” Steve said. “She was deep in some tests or something when we dropped Cindy and Heather off.”
Cage stopped in his tracks. Looking worriedly at Steve, he asked, “You didn’t turn the girl over to Connors?”
Anxious at the Major’s reaction, Steve hesitantly said, “She was busy, so her assistant met us. He and a Sergeant took them into the house.”
From behind him, Fagan said ominously, “Connors doesn’t have an assistant.”
Leaning forward, Cage asked, “What was the name of the man that met you up at the farmhouse?”
“Some guy named Hawkins,” Steve told him, his blood running cold with fear at the reaction this brought from Cage and Fagan.
Both men said, “Shit,” at the same time and started running for the farmhouse.
Not knowing what was going on, but deciding it wasn’t good, Steve followed right behind them, quickly catching up with Cage.
Men and women stopped to stare at their commanding officer, his chief NCO and a civilian racing through the camp. Those in their path found they had to jump out of the way or get forced out of the way by Fagan, who had taken the lead. He was going from point A to point B, and anything in front of him moved to the side or got bowled over. As they ran, Cage filled Steve in on the basics of Hawkins and the Malectron. He got as far as telling him about the strange disappearance of Lieutenant Randal when he noticed that Fagan had stopped by the side of a shipping container and was peeking around its corner.
Sliding to a halt next to him, Cage asked, “What is it?”
Fagan said, “Take a look, sir,” and moved out of the way. Cage took his place and cautiously leaned out. At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then he noticed the windows. Every single one of them on the second and third floor was wide open. Looking closer, he noticed that their curtains had been drawn back and someone was visible just inside. The windows on the first floor were closed, but on closer inspection he could see that they were boarded up on the inside.
Leaning back, Cage said, “It looks like Hawkins has got his men watching for us. He’s got the first floor barricaded, too.”
“But what in the hell is he doing?” Fagan asked. “He can’t stay in there forever. He’ll need food and -” His voice cut off as he thought of the fire. In a flash, it all made sense.
Cage came to the same conclusion and said, “He’s pulling out, that’s what he’s doing. He got hold of someone to come pick his scumbag ass up, then had the radio room torched so no one would find out.”
Anxious to move forward, Steve said, “So let’s take them out and move in. That bastard’s got Heather in there.”
“And he’ll shoot her as soon as we attack,” Fagan told him.
“If she’s even still alive,” Cage said. Instantly regretting this, he added, “My bet is, he’ll use her as a hostage.”
Fagan moved forward and took a look around the corner. After a few seconds, he leaned back and said, “The only way would be a frontal assault across open ground, and that’s out.”
“Why not?” Steve asked. “You’ve got armored Humvees with heavy machine guns. We can get close, then rush them.”
“We’ve also got rocket launchers and grenades to blow the windows open on the first floor,” Fagan told him, “but none of that will do us any good. We’d have to use small arms only or risk torching the building. That farmhouse must be about a hundred years old, and it’ll go up like a roman candle when the first tracer from one of the .50 calibers or a rocket hits it. On top of that, Hawkins has your woman and the little girl, as well as however many of the scientists he’ll grab to use as hostages. My guess is, he’ll bring them out and use them as shields the minute we start to roll up on them.”
“So a frontal assault is out,” Steve said. “What else can we do?”
With a sigh, Cage said, “There is another way in, but it won’t be pretty.”
***
Swallowing hard, Second Lieutenant Perry’s mind raced as he thought of all the ways that the Major’s plan could go wrong. At first when he and Fagan approached him and explained that they needed him to create a diversion, his mind had been full of heroic images of nighttime infiltrations and remote detonated explosives. Ready to do just about anything to make up for handing the little girl over to Hawkins, he never expected this.
Awkwardly holding a spray of flowers as he walked through the foyer of the farmhouse and stopped in front of the guard sitting behind a desk, Perry said, “I’m here to pick up Doctor Connors for our date.”
Having been told to expect some kind of assault on the farmhouse to steal the Malectron, the guard had pulled a .45 caliber pistol and held it underneath his desk when the lookouts on the second floor reported that someone was approaching the front door. They had been vague about who it was, saying only that it was a surprise. Expecting Rambo to burst in armed with everything that could kill, he looked in disbelief at the Second Lieutenant in full dress uniform, holding a bouquet of flowers, and asked, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Perry shook his head and replied, “It’s our first date.”
“Isn’t she a little old for you?” the guard asked.
Saying the first thing that came to mind, Perry blurted out, “Age means nothing. Don’t you know that love is blind?”
The guard chuckled as he said, “And that’s definitely what I’d have to be to date that.”
Before he could pick up his phone to page Connors, it buzzed with an incoming call. Picking the handset up, he said, “Front desk.”
“Are those flowers for you?” a voice asked, followed by laughter in the background.
“Fuck you, Stiller,” the guard said.
“Make sure he buys you dinner before you put your ass in the air,” Stiller said. This was followed by more laughter. “Just to let you know, we’re all glued to the closed-circuit TV. We want to watch when you and your boyfriend walk off hand-in-hand into the sunset.”
Slamming the receiver down, the guard stared at it malevolently.
In an exasperated tone, Perry said, “Now that you and your buddies are done screwing around, could you call and tell Miss Connors that I’m here?”
Wanting to get the Second Lieutenant out of there as fast as he could and get everyone’s attention off him, the guard picked up the phone and hit the page button. After a second, he said, “Doctor Connors, please call or come to the foyer.” Hanging up the receiver, he turned to the camera mounted on the wall and flipped it the bird.
***
After radioing Second Lieutenant Perry to start walking toward the front of the farmhouse, Major Cage, Staff Sergeant Fagan and Steve covered the last fifty feet to the back of it. It had taken them half an hour to get into position, since to avoid being seen by the spotters on the upper floors they had gone out through the fence by the helicopter pad before circling around and coming in through it behind the farmhouse. With their night vision goggles, they could see the dead clustered in the woods. Their whining and moaning increased at the appearance of food, but the Malectron kept them at bay. Having to stay as close to the trees as possible to avoid being spotted, occasionally one of the dead would stagger toward them before reeling back into the woods, making it a harrowing trek.
Leaning against the back wall of the farmhouse, Major Cage looked for the coal chute. Shuddering when he finally spotted it, he steadied his breathing and tried to clear his mind for the task ahead. The forty-inch square flap of metal looked innocuous, but he knew it was the door to hell.
Pointing it out to the others, he said quietly, “We go in one at a time, just like we planned. I’m first, followed by Staff Sergeant Fagan, and then Steve. Kill everything that you see because there are no friendlies down there. Once we’ve cleared the area, we need to find the door that leads into the labs.”
Fingering the silencer attached to the M16 Fagan had given him, Steve said, “I want to go first.”
“Not happening,” Cage told him. “You’re a civilian, and you’re personally involved with the hostages, so you’re lucky I even brought you along.”
Moving to the coal chute, Cage reached down and unlatched its metal cover. Lifting it up, he stepped back at the smell wafting out of the opening. Along with the expected moldy odor of the dead was the stink of putrefying flesh. Pulling a bandana out of his pocket, he tied it around his face and looked in.