The Gathering Dead (22 page)

“Roger that, sir.” Gartrell practically leaped to his feet, obviously happy to have something constructive to do.

###

McDaniels left Sergeant Leary on the 27th floor with the civilians after ascertaining he was fit for duty (“I can hear now sir, really,” the Special Forces soldier assured him) and entered the fire escape stairway. He found Derwitz had taken a position on the 26th floor landing, and Finelly was one floor below. Both were discharging their duties as vigilantly as possible, which essentially meant they were standing around waiting for something to happen. Neither soldier reported any unusual activity
—
no stenches, no noises, no nothing.

“It’s kind of boring duty, sir,” Finelly admitted. “But you know, it’s a
good
kind of boring, when you think about the alternatives.”

McDaniels smiled and clapped the tall soldier on the shoulder. “You guys are doing all right. Keep up the good work. You’re doing some real good, here.” Both men kept their voices low, mindful of the echoes the stairwell would cause.

“Thanks, major.”

McDaniels nodded and looked down between the stairway handrails. Far below, darkness loomed. McDaniels listened as intently as he could, but heard nothing. Had the zeds left? Gartrell had reported they were massing on the ground floor, but McDaniels heard nothing from the 25th floor landing. If there was much commotion going on down there, he was sure he would have been able to hear it, especially since the stenches were hardly stealthy by nature.

He turned back to Finelly. “Go tell Derwitz to return to the cafeteria. Have him inform Sergeant Leary he’s to take your position, and you fall back to the landing on twenty-six. We can’t really communicate effectively since our radios are different, and Leary will be able to talk to myself and Gartrell if something goes down.” He pulled the sat phone from its holster and handed it to the tall soldier. “And keep this with you. Without the booster relay at the assembly area, it’s the only way we can communicate with Rapier. Move out, troop.”

Finelly nodded, and walked up the stairs, where he had a whispered conversation with Derwitz. A moment later, McDaniels heard Derwitz’s footsteps as he climbed up the stairs to the 27th floor. Finelly waited on the 26th floor landing, looking down at McDaniels, his MP5K held in both hands, his NVGs pushed back on their helmet mount.

McDaniels looked back down to the ground floor. Still nothing but a small patch of blackness.

Leary appeared, walking down the stairs as quietly as he could. He looked at McDaniels with a raised brow, and McDaniels leaned toward him.

“Sergeant, are you sure about your ears? If you were to get a call on the net, would you be able to hear it?”

Leary nodded. “Yes, sir. Only a slight buzzing in my ears now, nothing like it was before.” As if to prove this, Leary kept his voice low, barely above a whisper.

“Okay. I’m going to head down and check things out. I want to see what the deadheads are up to. Things are pretty quiet, and if OMEN is back in the zone, that’s probably not a good sign.”

Leary looked over the railing and peered down the gap. “You think Mr. Keith’s got something going on?”

“Won’t know that until I see it for myself.”

“I dunno, sir. Those things aren’t really intellectual heavyweights. They might have forgotten all about us by now, since there’s no way for them to get to us. But if they see you, that might change things. Again.” As he spoke, Leary his eyes focused on the darkness below.

“I’ll do my best to keep things as cool as possible,” McDaniels said.

Leary straightened and reached into one of his pockets. He pulled out a plastic tube that was perhaps an inch and a half long, and handed it to McDaniels.

“IR chem stick,” he said. “When you get down there, activate it and drop it, then use your NVGs. Ambient light might not be sufficient to see everything that’s going on. It’ll last for about three hours, and I doubt the stenches can see in the IR spectrum, right?”

McDaniels nodded and took the chem stick. He put it in a pocket on his body armor and started off.

“Major?”

McDaniels turned back. Leary looked at him then down through the handrail again.

“Long walk down, and a long walk up. Hope your legs are up for it if something goes down. And if that happens, what are your orders?”

“Stay here. Defend the civilians, and report to Gartrell. If I’m gone, I’m gone. Your job is to zero as many of those zeds as possible, until Gartrell gives you something else to do.”

“Roger that. Does the first sergeant know you’re doing this?”

McDaniels smiled and started down the stairway.

###

The elevator ride to the garage level was smooth as smooth as silk with no problems, which is how Gartrell liked it. His primary fear wasn’t that he and Rittenour would be mobbed by a raging tide of hungry stenches once the door slid open (though they were ready for that with weapons cocked and locked), but that the building would suddenly lose power and leave them stranded between floors. To that end, they had already checked to ensure the elevator had a maintenance access through the roof, and that it was accessible to them once they removed the panels covering the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. They also had the heavy coil of rope Gartrell had taken from the cafeteria, and it lay in one corner on the elevator floor. Of course, its utility would be in going down, not going up, but Gartrell was something of a pack rat when it came to items that might be of use. He had also squirreled away some sandwiches and bottles of cold water in his back pack, just in case they were in for a longer stay in the elevator than they had planned for.

Ding.
The elevator came to a halt, and both men took deep breaths. Gartrell had the point position with the AA-12 at the ready. Rittenour had his Heckler & Koch Mk 23 pistol clasped in both hands as he stood off to the side. Both men had their NVGs powered up but raised; if the doors opened and total darkness was on the other side, they could flip them down and be operational in a split second.

The heavy stainless steel clad door slid open, and Gartrell tensed, his finger on the AA-12’s trigger. Rittenour flipped the safety switch that locked the elevator in place, so it couldn’t be called away.

The elevator didn’t open into the garage itself, but into a dimly-lit, glass-walled vestibule that was in the center of the garage itself. Gartrell stepped out and spun left while Rittenour covered the area to the right. The garage was illuminated by several lights, yett it was hardly a bright affair; there were still more shadows than either man liked, but the ambient light was too strong for the NVGs to be effective. Glass doors were on either side of the vestibule, and both were closed. Gartrell motioned for Rittenour to follow him. He slowly pushed the door open, then eased out into the garage proper. Rittenour followed, both moving as stealthily as possible.

The garage door was closed, as was the personnel entrance beside it. Two vehicles were parked inside. One was a black Audi A8, and its lustrous paint gleamed even in the garage’s meager light. The second vehicle was much larger, a Ford E350 van. Gartrell ignored it for the moment, electing to do a full search of the garage. There was a ripe, pungent aroma in the air, and he exchanged a glance with Rittenour. There were only two things Gartrell could think of that would emit that odor: rotting food, or a zed.

It turned out to be garbage. There was a dumpster in the garage, which Earl had told them about, and it hadn’t been emptied. As such, its contents were quickly going south. Both men made a quick but thorough search of the garage. They were alone.

Gartrell returned to the van and examined it critically. It was a monster, all right, something he hadn’t expected to see in the middle of New York City. White in color, the only windows were up front; there weren’t even windows in the double doors on the back. It rode high on a heavy duty suspension and slightly oversized tires that sported an aggressive tread. Gartrell moved to the front and found the vehicle was outfitted with a brush guard to protect the grille and a heavy duty bumper. He knelt and peered underneath the vehicle’s nose. A transfer case bulged between the front tires. The van had been converted into a seemingly-hardy four wheel drive vehicle.

Gartrell straightened and looked at Rittenour. “Well, someone was certainly planning to be able to get out of here.” His voice seemed loud in the garage’s close confines.

Rittenour nodded. “I guess they wanted to make sure no one was stuck here during a blizzard, or something. I’ll tell you, the thing looks tough. A guy in another ODA has something like this at Fort Bragg. He uses it when he and some of his buddies go camping and hunting.” Holding his pistol in his right hand, Rittenour walked toward the van and pounded on its side with his left fist. He was rewarded with several solid thumps. “Wow, definitely up-armored. I’ll bet this thing’s going to be a total pig to drive.”

Gartrell tried to open the driver’s door, but it was locked. He and Rittenour tried all the doors. No luck. The van was locked up tight. Gartrell sighed and looked around the garage.

“All right, let’s find the keys to this thing. I hope they’re down here somewhere.”

The farther he descended, McDaniels became less certain that going down alone was a great idea. While he’d encountered no difficulties other than a growing ache in his knees and lower back, the lower he went, the more uncomfortable he became.

And then, there was the smell.

As he descended, a decidedly unpleasant odor wafted up from below. A fetid breeze moved through the stairway, venting upward like a draft through a chimney. The dead were down there, that was for sure. They hadn’t grown bored or otherwise left the building. But what they were doing was another matter entirely.

10th floor.

9th floor.

8th floor, and the air was foul.

7th floor, no improvement.

The 6th floor, and it was difficult not to gag.

McDaniels stopped on the 6th floor landing. Chunks of shattered concrete and cinderblock crunched beneath his boots. He kept motionless and just listened, breathing as lightly as he could. He heard movement from below, but exactly how far below, he could not tell. A scrabbling sound, cloth moving against cloth, the occasional crackle of rubble being displaced. The stairway leading to the fifth floor was gloomy, as some of the lights had been blasted out when Rittenour triggered the charges. McDaniels reached up to his helmet and switched on his NVGs, but left them in the stowed position. He firmed his grip on his M4 and slowly walked down the stairs, keeping his back against the wall as he moved. He took it step by step, moving as slowly and stealthily. A keen sense of dread filled his chest, but his training maintained supremacy... for now.

There were bodies on the fifth floor landing, as he had known there would be. Above the stench of rotting corpses, he could still sniff out traces of gun powder and the residue of the explosives. A few shell casings littered the ground. The door leading to the fifth floor offices was bent and misshapen, as if Thor had struck it with his mighty mallet. He worried that when he turned his back to it that a zed might scuttle out from beyond it and attack him from behind, but he had come down alone and there was no way to protect himself from that other than to trust his reactions would be quicker than that of the dead. McDaniels gingerly stepped around the corpses and flipped down his night vision goggles. Carefully choosing his footing, he slowly descended the final stairway, the one which led to a chasm of darkness. Before easing himself toward the edge, he slung his assault rifle and pulled his pistol. He held it in his right hand while clenching the remaining hand rail in his left. If nothing else, it was still solidly set into the wall. Ignoring the stench as much as he was able, he took a breath and leaned over.

The dead were rising.

It took a moment for him to realize that he was looking down onto an undulating mass of twisted, decrepit bodies that roiled and fell like some ungodly ocean. Ruined faces turned toward him, unblinking eyes gleaming dully through the light intensification provided by the NVGs. The heap of bodies flailed this way and that as zed after zed added itself to the pile and struggled to climb over its fellows in an attempt to get to the top of the heap. As he watched, the top of the pile fell away from McDaniels as the mountain of dead collapsed. It reformed again as the zeds, fixated on feeding, merely started over. For sure, those at the bottom were crushed beneath the weight of the hundreds of bodies above, but the dead would not be denied. McDaniels was horrified. The pile reformed and surged upward yet again. It grew and grew and grew, rising closer and closer to the stairway where he stood, transfixed.

Then one of the zombies moaned, reaching for him even though it was still dozens of feet away. It was joined by another, and another, and another. The cacophony was jarring, almost as overwhelming as the grotesque sight below. McDaniels heard a voice through his headphones.

“Major, this is Leary... you okay down there, sir? We hear the zeds, are you in trouble? Over.” Leary’s voice was professional, mechanical. McDaniels envied him for it, but he knew that practiced veneer would fracture and crack against a visage such as this one. There was no way a man could look at a scene like the one McDaniels faced and not go a little mad.

“Six, this is Leary, come in. Over.”

Static crackled over the radio. “This is Gartrell, what the hell is going on up there? Six, what’s your pos, over?”

“This is Six,” McDaniels said finally. “I’m on the fifth floor. Gartrell, we’ll need to find out if that vehicle exists and if we can use it. Over.”

“Six, Gartrell. Are you
alone
on five, over?” The transmission was marred by static, doubtless due to the fact that Gartrell was encased in a tomb of concrete down in the garage.

“Gartrell, Six, answer my question. Over.”

“Roger Six, we have found the vehicle and are looking for keys to get inside. This is a new Ford, I doubt we can hotwire it and drive off... it’s all computerized. Over.”