The Gathering Dead (31 page)

“Gartrell?” McDaniels fired a quick burst at one of the OMEN zeds as the four of them advanced, two on either side of the street. He hit it, for the zombie stumbled to its knees. It wasn’t hurt, of course; the impact of the bullets against its chest armor had knocked it off balance. McDaniels seized the moment to go for a headshot as it slowly clambered back to its feet, ignoring the return fire of the other OMEN zombies. He was rewarded with at least one bullet striking true, and the OMEN zombie wilted to the ground and lay still.

“I heard you major, you want us to fall back to the van. You have me covered?”

“You’re covered, first sergeant.”

“Hooah.” Gartrell rose and fell back, keeping low as more rounds zipped past. “Good shooting there,” he said as he moved past McDaniels. McDaniels didn’t answer, just kept pouring on the heat, firing on semiautomatic, trying to keep OMEN pinned. But what he saw moving behind the dead Special Forces soldiers sent a stab of fear lancing through his heart.

Thousands of zombies filled the street behind OMEN team, drawn to the commotion like bees to honey. They surged forward in a single mass, as if they weren’t individual corpses but one huge, integrated creature. And at their head was OMEN team.

A bullet struck McDaniels square in the chest, and he stumbled backward. Another zipped by his ear—
crack!
—as loud as a firecracker and infinitely more lethal. McDaniels gathered his footing and fell back to the van as the smoke from the grenades finally petered out.

And then, the rain stopped.

“Leary, move it! We’re about to be overrun!” McDaniels shouted over the radio as he ran back to the van.

“We’re good to go, major,” Leary said. “I just blasted my way through the intersection and am moving down the street to clear the next one, over.” As he spoke, McDaniels heard the NYPD tow truck’s diesel engine winding out, growing distant.

“Roger that!” McDaniels threw himself toward the van as Gartrell helped Rittenour load Derwitz inside. With the vehicle to his back, he turned and fired at OMEN as they advanced, sending a fusillade of bullets ripping into one soldier and several other zombies behind it. The salvo did nothing to stop them, but did slow them momentarily.

“Major, let’s roll!” Gartrell said over the radio.

McDaniels broke from his position and returned to the front passenger seat of the van. He slammed the door shut as a mottled corpse crashed against it, trying to pound through the reinforced, bullet-resistant glass. Finelly didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do, he put his foot on the pedal and the van accelerated away. Bullets struck the rear of the vehicle.

“We’re going to catch up to the tow truck pretty quickly,” Finelly said.

“We’ll do what we did last time,” McDaniels said. “No other choice. But we might need you to dismount and fight, if Derwitz can’t.”

“I don’t think he can,” Rittenour said.

“I can fight, major,” Derwitz said weakly.

McDaniels turned in his seat and looked into the back of the van. Earl and his daughter clung to each other. Safire and Regina sat side-by-side, holding hands, their expressions tense and frightened. In the very back of the van, Rittenour and Gartrell worked on Derwitz, but McDaniels exchanged a quick glance with the first sergeant. He knew then that Derwtiz was bleeding out.

“Finelly, we’ll need you outside,” McDaniels said, turning to face front again. “Earl, can you drive this van? Aggressively, like Finelly, but not wreck it at the same time?”

Earl’s voice was soft and subdued, the terror of the situation blunted by the pain of his eldest daughter’s death… and the potential for his surviving daughter to follow suit. “I can do whatever you need me to do, major. You need me to drive, I can drive. I drove trucks bigger than this before, and in all kinds of cities.”

“Any of those cities overrun by zombies?” Finelly asked.

“You think that’s funny or something, kid?” The disapproving scowl was audible in Earl’s voice.

“No, sir. Not funny at all. Sorry.”

“I can drive this truck, McDaniels,” Earl said.

McDaniels nodded. “And I thank you for that. When we stop at the intersection ahead, take the driver’s seat when we bail out. Leary, how is it up ahead?” McDaniels asked over the radio.

“Wet with the occasional flesh-eating zombie, but at least the rain has stopped,” Leary said. Over the transmission, McDaniels heard more rending metal. “I’m already blasting through this intersection, but be careful when you guys pull up, the zeds are starting to get a bit thicker on this side of town… don’t know why. Over.”

“It’s the FDR Drive,” Safire said quietly.

“Doctor?” McDaniels prompted.

“It’s the dead from the FDR Drive on the east side of the city, major.” Safire’s voice was plain and direct, almost scholarly. “All those people who were caught by the dead, or who… expired… by other means. They’ve reanimated, and there were doubtless thousands of people there, as that was one of two main escape routes from the city.”

“Understood. Thank you.”

“You’ll have to fight through them, major. There could be thousands of them.”

McDaniels jerked a thumb toward the rear of the van. “It’s no longer novel, sir. There are thousands of them right behind us.”

“Second Avenue, coming up,” Finelly said. “The tow truck’s almost through the intersection already—” As he spoke, a zombie jumped in front of the van. The van crashed into it, and the zombie flew over its snub nose and slammed across the windshield before it fell to the pavement. Regina shrieked, and McDaniels swore.

“Sorry sir,” Finelly said. He hadn’t even hit the brake.

“No problem. Troops, we’ll do it as we did before. Uh, Doctor Safire”—McDaniels turned and looked to Regina—”could we impose upon you to attend to Specialist Derwitz after we exit the vehicle? He
is
wounded, after all.”

Regina looked at McDaniels with a confused expression, then suddenly turned and looked behind her. It was as if she had just realized there was a wounded man present. She turned back to McDaniels and nodded quickly.

“Of course. I’m sorry I wasn’t… wasn’t already doing something.”

McDaniels faced forward as Finelly slowed the van to a halt. “Let’s go, troops,” he said, and bailed out the door. Finelly put the vehicle into park and did the same. McDaniels glanced back into the van and saw Earl climbing into the driver’s seat as he slammed the door closed. At the same time, something moaned behind him, and he whirled to find several zombies moving toward him from the corner of 79th and Second Avenue. They had doubtless been called to the scene by the ruckus Leary was making, and the sight of an actual person got their attention in a major way. Of course, as the person in question, McDaniels was far from flattered.

He dropped them all with careful, precise shots. When the last one hit the pavement, its fingertips brushed the toe of his left boot. McDaniels looked down at the corpse through his night vision goggles.

My, that was close.

A sudden explosion of gunfire from the rear of the van captured his attention. He remained where he was, keeping watch over the front right corner of the van as the tow truck continued to bash its way through the traffic that choked the intersection.

“Leary was right, major. There are more zeds down this way,” Gartrell said over the radio. He wasn’t kidding. No sooner had the first sergeant’s words filtered into his ears through the radio headset he wore, McDaniels saw yet another gaggle of zombies approaching the van, moving amidst the abandoned vehicles choking Second Avenue.

“Leary, this is Six. Watch out for the zeds at your three o’clock position, over.”

“Roger that, Six. I don’t intend to stop moving long enough for them to get to me, over.”

“Finelly, you have activity on your side of the vehicle? Over.”

“Roger that, major, got stenches all over the place, just ranging them out now…” An MP5 spoke from the other side of the van, and McDaniels gathered that Finelly had gotten a bead on his targets and was servicing them with all possible dispatch. He raised his M4 to his shoulder and started plinking away at the advancing zombies on his side of the vehicle while they were still among the cars on Second Avenue. He was able to terminate almost all of them before they mounted the sidewalk.

“Gartrell, Rittenour, any sign of OMEN? Over,” he asked as he took care of the remaining zeds.

“Negative, no contact. Which is a little spooky. Over.”

“Roger that.”

“Major, route is clear, you’d better get on it.” Gunfire came from the other side of the intersection, and McDaniels looked away from his work long enough to see Leary firing his pistol at a group of walking dead on the eastern corners of 79th and Second. He saw figures moving along the tow truck’s bed.

“Leary! You have zeds on your vehicle!”

“I know that, major. Can’t do anything about them right this second. I’ll see you guys at the other intersection, and maybe you can help clean them off. Over.”

With that, the big blue NYPD tow truck charged down 79th Street, heading for the next intersection. It left a cloud of foul-smelling diesel exhaust floating in the air behind, and the sudden pungency of the scent was surprising to McDaniels.

“Team, mount up!” he shouted, and the soldiers returned to the waiting van. As he hauled himself into the front passenger seat and slammed the door shut, Finelly chased Earl out of the driver’s seat.

“Thanks for keeping the seat warm,” Finelly said.

“Man, you’re lucky it ain’t wet,” Earl said.

“Go, Finelly!” McDaniels said once Gartrell and Rittenour were aboard. Finelly stomped on the accelerator, and the van bounced slightly as it drove over several bodies. Many of them were still moving.

“Major McDaniels?” It was Regina Safire, from the rear of the van.

“Go, Miss Safire. How is Derwitz doing?”

“I’m… I’m afraid he’s dead, major. He’s… he bled out. There was no way I could stop the bleeding. His femoral artery had retracted back into his leg, and I have nothing I could have used to cut open the thigh to find it and clamp it.” She stopped for a long moment, then added, “I’m terribly sorry, major.”

McDaniels nodded curtly. “Understood, ma’am. First Sergeant Gartrell, at the next stop—”

“I’ll dump the body after removing all the valuables, sir,” Gartrell said.

“Thank you, first sergeant.”

“It’s part of the job, major.”

McDaniels nodded again and concentrated on the route ahead. He suddenly remembered Finelly and Derwitz served in the same unit, and he turned to look at the big, blond-haired soldier driving the van.

“Finelly, are you—”

“Good to go, sir. Losing Derwitz sucks, but it’s not like we were tight buddies. But I think he did pretty damn well today, didn’t he?”

“I’ll be putting him in for a silver star, for damned sure.”

Finelly nodded and drove on silently. McDaniels took the time to examine his M4 before they arrived at the next intersection. He wanted to ensure it was 100% operational before stepping out of the van. He heard Gartrell and Rittenour doing the same, changing out magazines and cycling the weapons to make certain their actions weren’t getting fouled.

Ahead, a barricade separated the street from the intersection The NYPD tow truck smashed through it at well over forty miles an hour, sending wooden saw horses and sand bags flying. The rig hurtled into the intersection on the other side, sending a police cruiser pinwheeling away. The tow truck slammed into the vehicles in the intersection and knocked several of them askew. The rig’s reverse lights snapped on, and the vehicle rolled back for another run. Through his NVGs, McDaniels saw the zombies stumbling toward the truck from the various shops and alleyways. Dozens of them. He heard Earl gasp from the bench seat behind him, and he guessed the janitor caught a glimpse of the shapes in the reverse lights’ glow.

“Leary, you’ve got about forty zeds closing on you from the rear, and you still have at least two holding onto the back of the truck. Recommend you bash the shit out of everything in your way and get the hell out of there, over.”

“Workin’ on it, major,” Leary responded. “It would be awesome if you guys could hold them off me while I’m doing my job, over.”

“Finelly, stop here,” McDaniels said. Finelly tapped the brakes and brought the van to a halt two hundred feet from the intersection.

“Am I parking, or just waiting for a moment?” he asked.

“Park it. Earl, get in the driver’s seat. Ritt, come forward with me. Finelly, stand guard at the rear with Gartrell. Everyone out.”

The soldiers exited the vehicle and slammed the doors shut behind them. Rittenour joined McDaniels at the front of the van while Finelly faded back and positioned himself with Gartrell.

“What’s the op, sir?” Rittenour asked.

“You get to show me how good a sniper you are with an M4. Take those zeds off Leary’s back.”

Rittenour raised his NVGs on their mount, then looked through the night vision scope atop his M4. McDaniels kept an eye out for any zombies in the immediate vicinity, but the racket caused by the tow truck had captured the attention of every zed in the area. None of them were looking toward the van.

Yet.

Rittenour lined up for a shot, then fired one round. Downrange, one of the zombies riding in the bed of the tow truck toppled into the street. It had only been steps away from the rig’s cab, and Leary. McDaniels saw several of the zombies at the rear of the pack that was descending upon the tow truck slow and turn. They peered in the van’s direction, but in the darkness they apparently couldn’t see it.

The muzzle flash will change that,
McDaniels told himself.

And right he was. Rittenour fired again, and the other zombie in the tow truck fell face first into the bed. The stenches which had been staring in the van’s direction clearly saw the flash of Rittenour’s weapon, and several of them began shambling up the street. Yet most of the horde remained fixed on the dark shape of the tow truck, it’s brake lights flashing on and off as Leary horsed the mammoth vehicle into the intersection.