The street below wound back and forth across a small field that could have been used for sporting events or maybe small carnivals or fairs. Adderson spotted plenty of bodies down there, but most of them were lying in gory pools. A few wolves picked at the carcasses and barked up at the helicopter, but the real action didn’t pick up until the grass gave way to a parking lot surrounding a small complex of three story apartments. Two Humvees were parked at right angles to each other to provide some measure of cover for the soldiers keeping their backs to the doors. The helicopter’s gunners were both still pulling the triggers of their .50 cals, which did nothing to discourage the onslaught of Class Twos pouring out of the middle apartment building.
Placing his finger to the button that would open the connection between him and the pilot, Adderson said, “Bring us in above those Humvees so we can lay down some support fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dusting in above the soldiers forced the troops on the ground to lower their heads and secure their loose clothing, but it also brought a few grateful shouts from the men who still had enough breath in their lungs to cheer. The copter’s gunner sighted along the top of his belt-fed machine gun and sent a stream of lead into the encroaching werewolves. Cement and dirt alike were chopped up along with plenty of Class Two flesh and bone. The wolves that weren’t cut into enough pieces divided into smaller groups and scattered. Once they got too close to the Humvees, the gunner eased back on his trigger.
“Where’s the closest place you can set us down?” Adderson asked the pilot through the helmet radio.
“On one of those rooftops. Any closer and we’re risking the bird, sir.”
The IRD might have had the support of the United States military, but NH-90s didn’t come cheap. And if this battle was going to be won, no available asset could be wasted. “Fine,” he said. “Do it.”
The helicopter rose straight up and eased over to settle above one of the apartment buildings. As soon as the gear touched down, the door was opened and troops were deployed. Last man out shut the door behind him and the bird was once again in the air and firing at another group of targets. Bing, bang, boom. Now if the rest of the day could run like that, Adderson thought, he would be a happy man. He carried his HK-G36, but some of the other troops had brought along semiautomatic Benelli M-4 shotguns. Several paces before reaching the door that led into the building, two shotgunners moved forward to take point. They kicked the door in and headed down a narrow set of stairs that led to a maintenance room at the end of a long hall. The next set of stairs was lit by a flickering set of emergency lights. Judging by the boards nailed to the interior of the frames, the residents of those apartments had tried to defend their homes against the beasts that invaded their city.
One of the lead shotgunners stopped and raised a fist so everyone behind him could see it. The entire group came to a halt and waited silently for the next signal. With a minimum of hand motions, the shotgunner told them he saw something ahead and down the next set of stairs. At least two possible threats.
A pair of Marines carrying HKs moved up to join the shotgunners, and Adderson moved back. Once the new marching order had been arranged, he ordered them to proceed down the stairs and assess the situation. It was an open, square stairwell, which allowed the shotgunners to proceed downward and the Marines to cover them from higher ground. Adderson hung back with the remaining team members and divided his attention between the soldiers ahead and behind. There was no way for anything to get the drop on them without being spotted first. Of course, considering what they were up against, spotting the enemy usually wasn’t the problem.
At the bottom of the stairwell something heavy smashed through a set of reinforced doors. Adderson could hear the doors being knocked off their hinges, followed by the loud clanging of iron bars hitting the floor. The IRD fire team remained where it was, sighting along their weapons and waiting for a target to present itself. When several rasping growls drifted in from beyond the broken entrance, he knew every one of the trigger fingers around him was tensing. He held up his hand, signaling the team to remain where it was as the scraping on the lower floors reached the bottom of the stairs. They were definitely Class Twos. Adderson recognized the mixture of hunger, pain, and rage in their rasping grunts.
He sent the two shotgunners forward so they worked their way to the next landing and dropped to one knee. By now Adderson and the Marines with the HKs had once again positioned themselves on higher stairs to look down at the shotgunners. The Class Twos were ripping at something. Those sounds, mixed with the tearing of wet meat and the lack of screaming, told him the wolves had found a dead body at the bottom of the stairwell. When one of the shotgunners looked up to him for instruction, Adderson pointed toward the rest of the team and made a sweeping motion that ended by pointing his fingers directly to the bottom of the stairwell. If the wolves decided to pick the wrong time for a snack, there was no reason that mistake couldn’t be their last.
The lead shotgunner held up three fingers, ticked them off one by one, then led a shuffling charge down the stairs. All of their steps started quietly enough, but built in pace as well as intensity as the team got close enough to where they knew the wolves would hear or smell them at any second, no matter how stealthily they tried to approach. The chomping downstairs stopped as the first werewolf grunted and then barked up the stairs. By the time the small pack started scrambling upward, they were already being met by a volley of gunfire.
The shotgunners were first, and they unleashed a twelve-gauge torrent that tore into the werewolves’ faces in a way that put a smile on the team members pulling the triggers. But despite that gloriously visceral payback for all of the blood they’d seen spilled, the IRD shooters weren’t able to put the Class Twos down. That’s where the team members on the upper stairs came in. Once the shotguns slowed the wolves down and ripped away enough of their flesh, more precise rounds drilled into the creatures’ spines and skulls from a downward angle. For any other living thing, the result would have been instantaneous. Then again, Adderson mused as he pulled his trigger to send bursts into the pack of shapeshifters, no other living thing could have withstood the shotguns. Even though his team performed by the numbers, one of the Class Twos made it to a shotgunner and clamped its jaws around his shin.
Gritting his teeth as the fangs drove in deeper, the man pressed the Benelli’s barrel against a gaping wound on the creature’s face and pulled his trigger. The shotgun round exploded out through the back of the creature’s head, but its grip on his leg only tightened. It took a few more concentrated bursts from the HKs to put an end to that reflex so the shotgunner could kick the dead beast away.
“You all right, soldier?” Adderson asked as he moved to the lower landing.
The shotgunner looked up and nodded without showing surprise that Adderson’s gun was pointed at him. “I’m good to go, sir.”
“Did the fangs get through?”
“Yeah, but just into the armor and some meat. Not the bone.” Pulling in a pained breath, he said, “The specialists said they had to get all the way through to bone before I’d turn, right?”
“Right.”
Adderson stared at the messy wound on the shotgunner’s leg. Instead of the compassion he’d felt when seeing lesser wounds in other conflicts, he could only think about whether he should take the questionable data gathered by what amounted to a supernatural militia member over the knowledge he’d gained from the battlefield. “Do we have any more of that stuff the specialists mixed up for us to clean these wounds?”