The Gathering Dead (16 page)

“And you being someone who actually still knows his way around a combat zone, I’m thinking everyone else would be better off if you were on the Osprey. Just in case and all that.”

Gartrell shrugged. “However you want it, major.” He pointed to the windows. “Weather looks positively nasty. I quizzed Finelly on the MV-22, and he says that even though the 160
^th
doesn’t use them, he thinks they’re pretty solid. Saw them in action in Iraq. Says this weather might push it against the wall, though. We should probably come up with an alternative, in case we can’t get out of here and can’t stay put.”

“If we get compromised up here on twenty-seven, not so sure we’re going to have a bonanza of options,” McDaniels said. “We could relocate to another floor and fortify that, but we can’t do anything there we can’t do here. And staying out on the roof is probably a non-starter, since all those things can see us. Eventually they’ll figure out they can’t get to us from another building, and they’ll just surge up here in such numbers that we can’t hold them off.”

“It is a bit of a sticky wicket,” Gartrell said. “But that’s why you’re an officer. I’ll see to that weapon detail you wanted squared away while you think it over.”

“Thanks, first sergeant.”

“My mission is to make you seem even more amazing, major.” With that, Gartrell headed off to ensure everyone’s weapons received a basic cleaning and check before the MV-22 arrived. McDaniels wondered if that would include Rittenour and Leary, down on the first floor, but doubted it would. No one on the line stripped down a weapon to clean it when the goblins were right outside.

He wandered back into the kitchen and poured himself some more coffee, adding sugar to it to give it a little extra boost. He then found a pastry and chowed down on that as well, giving his body as much reactive fuel as possible. He figured he would need it all in about the next twenty minutes.

Earl wandered inside the kitchen and looked at McDaniels with his customary smile.

“Another ciggie?” he asked.

McDaniels thought about it, then shrugged and nodded. “What the hell.”

“Well, let’s go, then.” Earl started to backtrack toward the door.

“Let’s do it here, Earl. No one’s going to care, and the ventilation’s got to be better than what we have in the stairwell. We can douse ‘em in the sink when we’re done.”

Earl seemed unusually reluctant, and McDaniels had to smile at that. He sipped his coffee and watched as Earl slowly shuffled over, pulling the pack of Marlboros from his front pocket.

“Not really supposed to smoke in the kitchen areas, but I guess it don’t matter. ‘Specially since we’re leavin’ soon, right?”

“Sounds like. First Sergeant Gartrell tells me the Marines are almost here. We’ll be going upstairs in about fifteen minutes or so.”

Earl grunted and held out a cigarette, then lit it with his lighter once McDaniels had parked the cigarette in his mouth. McDaniels inhaled deeply while Earl lit his own cigarette.

“Damn, this is just divine. Thank you, Earl.”

“Well, you welcome, major.”

McDaniels was content to allow a few seconds to slip past while he smoked and sipped his coffee. But those few moments he allowed himself expired quickly, and he circled back to what Gartrell had suggested. They needed a decent Plan B just in case Plan A went tits up and left them stranded with zeds pounding on the doors.

“Earl, that fire key you have, we can use it to take an elevator to any floor in the building, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know if there’s any sewer connection in the building? Or any kind of, I don’t know, run off system that would be big enough for us to use to crawl out of here if we had to?”

Earl considered it for a moment. “Naw, nothin’ like that. I saw the sewer pipes before, they ain’t big enough for my little girl to crawl through. Not sure about anything else like you asked about. Maybe there’s a way to the sewer tunnel in the street, but I don’t know where that is. Why you askin’?”

“Well, we need a backup plan. Just in case things don’t go so well for us on the roof.”

“Oh. I see.” Earl fell silent and puffed on his cigarette for a moment. “Could we drive out of the city?” he asked finally.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, like I said. Could we drive outta here?”

“Our vehicles are back in Central Park, Earl. We’d have a hell of a time getting to them and then getting back here to pull everyone out. Besides, we’d need a tank or something real heavy to drive over the stenches when they line up to eat our brains.”

“What about an armored car?” Earl asked.

McDaniels did a double take. “Sorry?”

“An armored car. We have stuff like that in the garage. After 9/11, some of the execs got a van or an SUV or somethin’ like that and made it all armored and shit. So they can drive around and not get shot, or somethin’.” Earl shrugged. “They might not a needed it right after 9/11, but once the economy went into the shitter, there was all sorts of trouble from people wantin’ to try and take on some of the investment folks, you know. Some real bad shit for a while there.”

McDaniels took another drag off his cigarette and gathered his thoughts. “Earl... are you telling me there’s an armored transport in this building?”

Earl rubbed his chin. His beard stubble was gray, and it stood out on his dark skin like feathery strokes of whiteout correction fluid from the old days.

“Well, yeah. Somethin’ like that, anyway.”

McDaniels snorted and finished his cigarette. He turned to the sink and wetted down the butt, then tossed it into a nearby trash can. He looked back at Earl with a thin smile.

“Earl, you amaze me. You manage to hole up in this place and keep out of harm’s way, and then you come up with a possible alternative for us to get the hell out of here. Well... at least the first step toward getting out of here, anyway. Thanks for that, you’ve just helped me save some face with my first sergeant. Now I can at least
pretend
I have the beginnings of a Plan B.”

“That’s good though, right?”

McDaniels clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s more than good. That’s just fucking magnificent, man.”

Earl beamed.

###

“Holy fuck,” Rittenour said. His voice was scarcely more than a choked whisper, and Leary automatically tensed. He pushed off from the cinderblock wall he’d been leaning against and joined Rittenour at the door. Rittenour was bigger than Leary and about thirty pounds heavier, so there was no way Leary could look past him and see anything through the small crack in the fire door.

“What is it?” he asked, voice low.

Rittenour slowly moved out of the way. “Take a look for yourself, man.”

Leary stepped forward and pressed his helmeted head against the fire door. He peered out through the small crack between the door and the frame, which allowed him to look across a small sliver of the lobby. Beyond the pale marble floor, he could barely see the windows facing the street
—
which street it was, he could not remember, nor was it important to him. Dark shapes loomed in the deepening night. Even though the streetlights were still on, most of the details were lost upon him, but from their aimless, shambling gait he knew the building was still surrounded by the walking dead. Only a few of them pressed against the windows, however; they had probably forgotten about the soldiers and civilians inside, but the lobby was brightly lit, and it doubtless attracted them. Leary wondered if they should work on a way to douse the lights.

Then another shape appeared, and Leary’s eyes widened when it stepped into full view, brushing against the thick glass separating the lobby from the street. The figure wore the filthy remnants of battle dress utilities, and still had a helmet strapped to its head. Its eyes were wide and unblinking, and a bloodless gash had been opened across its chin, gaping like a second mouth. The zombie’s eyes moved in its skull as it peered in and scanned the lobby.

“It’s Mr. Keith,” Leary whispered. “Jesus, Mr. Keith’s a fucking
zed
!”

“I always knew the guy was a real stiff,” Rittenour said, going for humor when none could be found. Leary glanced back at him, and saw the taller soldier was as shocked by this as he was. Death was nothing new to the troops who served in the nation’s elite Special Forces branch, but seeing a teammate come back as a member of the walking dead was enough to tax anyone’s neurons, not matter how hard core they were.

Leary looked out through the cracked door again. His former team leader examined the lobby with dead eyes, his
—
its?
—
bloodless lips moving in a silent cadence. Was it actually saying something? Leary thought not, but the thought that Keith’s body might still be inhabited by some sort of residual intelligence merely served to ramp up the creep factor.

And then, to Leary’s horror, Keith was joined by another uniformed special operator. And another. And another.

“Oh my God... it looks like the rest of the team is out there!” he said, his voice a strangled whisper. “I think I see Sanchez. And Larrabee. And Meltser!”

“Get out of the way, let me look.” The two soldiers swapped places, and Rittenour peered through the opening. He was silent for a few moments as he took in the scene. The muscles of his jaw knitted as he clenched his teeth. Finally, he straightened and stepped back from the door, motioning Leary to take over. As the shorter soldier stepped back into position, Rittenour activated his radio.

“Major, this is Rittenour. Uh, we’ve got some pretty spooky shit happening down here. Looks like the rest of OMEN Team has found us, over.”

The news of OMEN Team’s arrival at the building caught McDaniels by surprise. He had been on his way to find Gartrell to discuss what Earl had told him when the message came over the radio. It stopped him dead in his tracks and it took a moment for him to process what Rittenour had said.

“This is Six. Say again, over.”

“Major, this is Rittenour. Looks like several members of OMEN Team have, uh, reanimated. Leary and I can see them outside, over.”

Gartrell appeared then, marching through the cafeteria to stand at McDaniels’ side. The two men looked at each other, and McDaniels saw his “What the fuck?” expression reflected in Gartrell’s face.

McDaniels chose his words carefully. “Let me get this straight, Ritt. You say you see members of OMEN outside the building... and they’re zeds, correct? Over.”

“Roger that, Six. That’s
exactly
what I’m saying. Over.”

“Wow, that’s totally off the hook,” Gartrell muttered.

“Rittenour, give me a count,” McDaniels said.

“Trying to get that now, major. Stand by.”

McDaniels put his hands on his hips, his thoughts whirling. Was the arrival of the team significant? If they were zeds, then there was very little chance it was intentional. Once a corpse was reanimated, there was no evidence intelligence remained in the corpse. But the Black Hawk the Special Forces team had been aboard went down right after takeoff. How was it they found their way to the building?

“Interesting that they should show up here,” Gartrell said, apparently thinking along the same lines as McDaniels.

“Unnerving, is more like it. What do you make of it, first sergeant?”

Gartrell shrugged. “Well... there
is
a crashed helicopter right outside, after all...”

McDaniels hadn’t considered that, and the notion gave rise to a new level of dread in his heart.
Jesus... even after they’re dead, do these things still have memories? Is Keith
trying
to find us?

“Is there a problem?”

Both men turned to see Regina Safire walking up on them, her hands in the pockets of her trousers. She looked from McDaniels to Gartrell and back to McDaniels again.

“Just a report from downstairs, ma’am. Nothing to worry about, our security posture remains the same.” Gartrell used his best “you civilians wouldn’t understand” tone, something he had previously reserved for inquires from various reporters during the time he had spent as McDaniels’ team NCO in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was usually an effective response, one that almost always resulted in shutting down the civilian interrogator and sending him or her packing.

This was not one of those times. Regina was completely undeterred.

“So if nothing’s changed, why do you guys look so spooked?”

“It’s a spooky situation, Miss Safire,” McDaniels said, a little testily. “We’re in a pretty bad spot, and there’s a lot going on with the rescue.”

“Six, this is Rittenour. I count four OMEN guys outside. They still have most of their gear, but one guy
—
looks like Larrabee
—
well, something must’ve eaten his left arm, it’s gone, only a tattered stump left.” Rittenour paused, and McDaniels turned away from Regina and Gartrell and walked toward the windows. “This is a little weirder than I signed up for, major. Over.”

“It’s a little weirder than any of us were looking forward to, Ritt. You guys need to keep eyes on target down there. I don’t like that these things just showed up all of a sudden. Not here, not now. Something about it stinks, over.”

“Was that a pun, major? If so, it was a bad one, given we’re surrounded by stenches. Over.”

McDaniels looked down at the rain swept street below. The wind moaned as it hurtled past the corner and curved around its shape. Zeds of all shapes and sizes lingered about, some barely moving, others more active. They continued to shamble about in that mindless way of theirs, waiting with infinite patience for... what?

For food. For us.

“That was unintentional, Ritt, I swear. Listen, that MV-22 is inbound. Should be getting close now. When we give the word, you guys need to haul ass up here. But until we call, you two stay on top of things down there. Understood? Over.”

“Got it, Six. We’ll stay put until you call us up. Do you want us to blow the stairs when we pull back? Gotta tell you, sir, the concussion might be enough to bust some of the windows down here, and if the extraction gets FUBARed, we could be in a worse spot. Over.”