“Terminator, Falcon. Come in, Terminator.”
“Falcon, Terminator. Give me the good news, over.”
“Terminator, we have one light infantry platoon that’s a company advance element about ten blocks north of your position, in the T-line tunnels. We haven’t been able to contact them yet, but they are due to report in soon. There’s another unit in the Q line, and we just notified them of your situation-they’ll try and raise the platoon in the Second Avenue tunnel. They might have better luck than we will in the short term. Chinook is still refueling, and I’ve been told the aviators are going to head your way, over.”
“Roger that, Falcon. Is that all you’ve got?” The news left Gartrell feeling spectacularly underwhelmed, but there wasn’t much sense in berating the man on the other end of the radio link. Even though a full division was supposedly camped out across the river from Manhattan, getting it into the city was a major operation itself, and it would take several more hours to secure the zone.
“Terminator, we’re working to chop some Apaches your direction for close air, but that’s all I’ve got right now. We’re working on it. Over.”
Gartrell zipped up the backpack and looked at Jolie. She had Jaden calmed down a bit now, and he was drinking water from a Sippy cup. The boy was still quite disorganized, and he looked remote and detached from the current events. He stared up at the ceiling as his mother zipped up his jeans. Gartrell watched them both for a long moment, and he wondered how he could possibly save both of them.
Seize the initiative, dumbass.
“Jolie, I’m going to have to make a whole lot of racket. Cover Jaden’s ears. I’ll need to open the window in the back bedroom.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give us some cover.”
Jolie pulled Jaden into her arms and didn’t say anything further. Gartrell grabbed the backpack and carried it into the bedroom and shoved it through the hole into the next apartment. He then tore away the tape holding the window in place and opened the window. The air outside was only mildly warm, and the sun had set behind the buildings across the street. The avenue below was in light shadow. There were hundreds of zombies in the street. Most were still headed north, but several made their way toward the apartment building. Directly below, there was a large cluster of zeds pushing and shoving each other as they tried to get into the building. Many more than he could possibly kill with the amount of ammunition he had on hand.
Oh fuck.
He pulled his pistol and stuck it out the window. He aimed at a big Cadillac down below and fired three shots into its trunk. The pistol reports were loud and sharp, and they echoed throughout the concrete canyon of Second Avenue. Hundreds of stenches looked up and moaned when they saw Gartrell, and a new rush of decrepit corpses surged toward the apartment building’s entrance. Gartrell ignored the ruckus and leaned out the narrow window and stared at the Cadillac. He saw a wet stream slowly emerge from behind the vehicle. Zombies stepped through the trickle of gasoline without noticing it; their attention remained riveted on what they hoped was their next meal.
Overhead, glass shattered. Gartrell sensed movement, and he ducked back into the bedroom as shards of glass fell to the street, raining down on the ghouls below. And then a slight, wasted corpse streaked past the window, bouncing off the apartment building’s facade as it went, its white, dirty hair trailing behind it. The zombie screeched as it reached for him with hands twisted from a long battle with arthritis, but it didn’t even touch the window sill. Gartrell leaned forward and watched the corpse slam into the sidewalk with enough force to shatter its arms and, he suspected, its spine. But the body of the old woman from the seventh floor still moved. Twitching and hitching, it turned toward the apartment building’s entrance, trailing its useless legs behind it as it crawled. The rest of the zombie horde fairly trampled the new arrival, unaware of its presence beneath their feet.
Gartrell pulled the last fragmentation grenade he had from the clip on his body armor. He kissed the cold metal orb, yanked the pin free, and lobbed it toward the Cadillac. The safety spoon flew off with a metallic ping! that he could still hear over the undulating mass of moaning carcasses below. The grenade struck a zed right in the skull and left a good-sized dent in it before it hit the street and rolled toward the car. It disappeared beneath the shiny black Caddy.
All hell broke loose.
The explosion was strong enough to rattle windows in every building overlooking the street. The Cadillac fairly leaped into the air as the grenade’s explosion momentarily superheated the air beneath it and ignited the fumes emanating from its punctured fuel tank. A column of bright fire chased away the shadows in the street, and Gartrell slammed the window closed as the mushroom cloud of flame and smoke rushed into the sky.
“Dave! Dave, what’s going on?” Jolie shouted from the living room. There was pure panic in her voice, and Jaden was shrieking.
Gartrell hurried through the kitchen and into the living room. Jolie and Jaden were huddled together on the living room floor. He knelt beside them and touched Jaden’s head gently. He continued crying anyway.
“We’re probably going to have to leave this building and head for the subway,” he told Jolie. “There are other soldiers in the tunnels who can link up with us and lead us to safety. But in order for us to have even a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the subway station alive, I had to give us some cover.” Another blast shook the building again as a second car exploded into flames. “The second stairway, across the hall from the next apartment-where would it take us?”
“To an exit on Eighty-Sixth Street,” she said. “But Dave, I thought they would send a helicopter-”
“It’ll never get here in time. Get Jaden pulled together as well as you can.” He got to his feet and picked up the shotgun. He cycled it, testing its action-everything worked perfectly. He opened the box of.410 shells. They looked old, but Gartrell was confident they would still fire. He loaded one into the old shotgun and pumped it, dropping the shell into the chamber. He loaded another five into the weapon until it was full, then returned to the bedroom and placed the small-bore weapon in the next apartment. As he returned to Jolie’s apartment, he saw Jaden run into the entry foyer. Jolie ran after him, her eyes wide.
“Jaden,” she said, but her voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper.
Gartrell spun around and looked on as she caught up to Jaden and grabbed him. She pulled him away from the door, hugging him to her chest. He resisted quietly, and reached toward the door.
Gartrell almost jumped as one of the deadbolts unlocked with a startlingly loud click.
Oh please, kid…don’t say a word…
“Dah-dee,” Jaden said.
Whatever was on the other side of the door heard the small voice, and it grunted and slammed against the door with all its might. More ghouls in the hallway outside the apartment moaned, and the door shook and trembled as they added their bodies to the fray. Gartrell heard metal scraping against metal, and he knew the former man of the house was about to unlock the remaining deadbolt, which would leave only the security chain as their last defense.