“06, get your ass back here.”
“Little busy right now, Nick!” came back Red, over the firing of the gun. I did see the truck start back, though, as the crowd of undead flowed past it, despite the dozens mowed down by the gunfire and smashed under the truck. They quickly outdistanced the Zs and skidded to a stop in front of 05, adding a further blockage to the doorway. I couldn’t see what happened after that, but the gun started firing again.
“Nick, I need a few seconds more to set this charge!” yelled Ahmed up the stairway. Then Redshirt piled into the room and fell to the floor.
“Where the fuck is Ziv?” I yelled at him.
“He stayed to cover us!” He was out of breath and crying.
“Goddammit! Ziv, get your ass up here!” I yelled into my headset.
“My country. It is gone.” And his next words were drowned out by the zombie howl and the firing of the gun. “… will give you time. Ahmed, you heathen bastard blow the stairs!” Then a long string of curses in Serbian and the gun fired nonstop.
Screw that, I wasn’t going to lose another team member. I looked over the windowsill as the firing stopped and shifted to single shots from Ziv’s 9 millimeter.
“Ziv, drop in the turret, now!” He had drawn his machete and was hacking at the arms reaching for him as he stood on the roof. They were climbing onto the hood and over the pile of parts from the Zs he had shot down already. He stood there swinging the machete with a mad look of battle rage on his face. As I watched, he kicked one more in the face as it lurched onto the roof, then dove face first into the turret opening.
I yelled to the team. “Grenades, on three!” On the count of three we threw them over the edge in front of the parked vehicles. Brit held hers a bit to cook it off. Five grenades went off, four on the ground, one in the air. The crowd of Zombies were knocked back by the shrapnel and concussion, and the sharp explosions rocked the uparmored HUMVEES, bursting tires, knocking off a sideview mirror and scoring the windows.
I yelled into the radio as we poured fire into the quickly recovering Zs. “Ziv, out of the turret, across to the other one and drop through, then out the side door into the building!” I saw him struggle out of the turret and crawl across the roof, then roll off into the gap between the trucks. I had hoped he would be able to jump it. Then I saw the side door open on 05, and he struggled in. Ahmed appeared on the other side of the truck, pulling open the door and grabbing Ziv by the strap on his body armor. He pulled him across the back seats and out the door. As he dragged him in, I saw a streak of blood left on the ground.
“Red, Espo, go get him, let Ahmed blow the stairs. Doc, get the kit, he’s wounded.” Doc was already opening up his medkit. The two others charged out the door and down the stairs. They returned with Ziv, blood running down his leg and onto the floor, just as the demo charge went off and wrecked the landing below. Doc set to work immediately, first checking for other wounds, then cutting open his pants leg.
I knelt next to him. “No more hero shit. We thought you were dead, Brother.”
“I thought I was dead too. For a while I felt like it. Ah, dammit, that hurts!” Another Serbian curse as Doc pulled a piece of grenade shrapnel from his upper calf.
Brit jumped up. “That was mine! Mine went off in the air, how frigging cool! Must have gone through the turret opening and hit you in the leg! Can I keep that?”
He glared at her. “If you were daughter I would beat you with belt. Impudent wench.” He threw the bloody piece of metal to her.
“YES!” She took it off the floor and put it in the extra grenade pouch where she kept her “mission souvenirs.”
I sat down, opened up an MRE and started to heat it. That whole episode had left me drained.
“Sergeant Ozturk, what’s the deal with the equipment? Is the airport OK?”
He leaned over his laptop. “Well, the runway is in good enough shape for C-130 or C-17 operations. They have rough field capability, but I wouldn’t land a 757 or C-141 on here. Too many cracks in the pavement. The electronics are good to go. We can set up a data link to a mobile radar unit and run flight ops from here. I already sent the report up to the Air Liaison at Corps.”
“OK, great. At least something went right this time. Going to be a long night, People. Get some chow, start the watch rotation.”
Brit leaned over and swiped the candy out of my MRE. She turned to Ziv, who was staring stonily at Doc as he bandaged his leg. She ripped open the packet of candy and poured it out onto Ziv’s lap.
“Here, you grumpy old man. Skittles make everything better!”
Chapter 30
The sun rose over a horde that had grown to several thousand, and they packed the stairwell and the bottom floor of the building. We didn’t shoot them in the stairwell because we didn’t want a pile to start that the Zs could climb and reach us. The smell, however, was bad enough to make us want to vomit, and we were caught between the smell coming up from the stairs and the smell wafting in through the window.
At first light I got on the radio to update the TOC on our situation:
“GRIFFIN MAIN, THIS IS LOST BOYS, AND WE ARE STILL SURROUNDED, OVER.”
“ROGER, LOST BOYS. IS YOUR POSITION STILL SECURE, OVER?”
“ROGER THAT, UNTIL WE RUN OUT OF FOOD AND WATER. ESTIMATE THREE THOUSAND PLUS IN HORDE. AIRFIELD STATUS REPORT BEING SENT NOW, OVER.”
“UNDERSTOOD, LOST BOYS. STAND BY FOR THE CAVALRY, OVER.”
“GARRY OWEN, LOST BOYS, OUT.”
The Iraqis, when we fought them in the Gulf, called the Abrams tank “Whispering Death” on account of how quiet the turbine engines were. In any case, we would never have heard them over the sound of the zombies moaning below us.
What we did hear was the sound of the case shot being fired by the tank cannons, a rolling boom that echoed across the airfield first thing the next morning. We had waited, dozing on and off, and trying to ignore the sounds from below. When the first volley of tungsten pellets cut through the horde like the proverbial hot knife through butter, we jumped up and crowded around the window to watch. Hundreds of bodies fell, in four huge swaths. The next volley came twenty seconds later, aimed along a different axis, cutting apart more zombies. Then the Abrams charged across the field. They hit almost forty mph in the short stretch, and plowed into the milling crowd of bodies, firing as they went. The drivers started spinning their tracks, knocking down Zs and grinding them into the airport tarmac. When they had gone completely through the horde, they spun on their treads and charged back in, the tank commanders firing their own MK-19a3s into individual clumps. I don’t think anyone who has ever seen an Abrams tank charging full on into a crowd will ever forget the sight.
We had been watching the fight and cheering the tanks on, but we all ducked down beneath the sill of the window when a stray pellet came ricocheting into the tower, sixty feet above the ground, and pinged off Redshirt’s kevlar helmet, knocking him down. He gave a weak thumbs-up and an “I almost peed myself” look, and we all laughed. When we looked back, after the cannon fire had stopped, a dozen armored personnel carriers had joined the fight, forming a circle with the tanks. Soldiers on top of the APCs fired individual shots as the Zs rushed at them. When the pile threatened to get high enough where the zombies might come over the top, the tracks peeled out and pulled backward fifty meters, and the slaughter resumed. They had done this countless times in the battle for the northern plains and operated like a well-oiled machine.