“I will! I will!” Jolie looked at Jaden with a pained expression. “Oh, baby-” She reached past Gartrell’s shoulder to touch her boy’s face. Gartrell slapped her hand away.
“Later! Stay focused on what we have to do now! Let’s move out!”
He pushed against the door, and it opened slowly. He looked down and saw why; the quivering remains of a zombie lay just outside. The ghoul had been blown into three different pieces, but its upper body was still moving, and the shredded remains of one arm slapped against the door, leaving blackened streaks of gore on the pitted metal. Its jaws opened and closed and its remaining eye rolled in its socket until it locked onto Gartrell. It stared at him hungrily, with a mindless malevolence that he felt would terrify even a Great White shark. He reached behind him and grabbed Jolie’s arm, tugging her after him as he pushed the door open, sliding the thrashing corpse out of the way. Jaden’s struggles increased, and Jolie spoke to him as comfortingly as she could over the din of the hovering helicopters.
Gartrell sidestepped the gory remains of the stenches that had been on the sidewalk. Above and behind their position, two AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters hovered fifty feet above the buildings, their 30mm chainguns panning from left to right. Ahead, facing in the opposite direction on the other side of Second Avenue, another Apache bobbed in the breeze. Its chaingun barked as it fired on targets Gartrell couldn’t see, zeds that were hidden by the billowing smoke of the burning cars.
Gee, if I’d known we’d be getting some close air support, I guess I could’ve saved my grenade.
“Come on!” Gartrell shouted over Jaden’s shrieking and the pounding thud of rotor beats. He hurried up the sidewalk, stepping around body parts and puddles of gore. Many of the zombies that had been mutilated in the attack were still functioning, and they crawled toward him, trailing shattered limbs or in several cases, nothing more than coiled ropes of intestine. Gartrell was able to walk around them without shooting them. Ammunition was at a premium right now, and he knew he would have more opportunities to go to guns on any number of stenches in the near future.
“Oh my God!” Jolie cried, and Gartrell turned to find her staring at the shattered monstrosities that crept after them. “Oh, dear sweet Jesus!”
“Keep moving! Don’t look at them, just keep moving!” As he spoke, Jaden suddenly began screaming. Gartrell turned and found a zombie advancing toward him in a crouch, its eyes fixed on him, its movements swift and certain. It wore a fireman’s uniform, and one arm had been half-devoured. As it darted toward him, hissing, Gartrell took one step back and raised the AA-12. He had forgotten how surprisingly fast some of the dead could be.
One shot from the shotgun ensured it would no longer be a threat. The headless corpse collapsed to the street, black ichor shooting from the ragged stump of its neck.
Jaden continued screaming and thrashed on Gartrell’s back despite his bonds. Behind them, the two hovering Apaches opened up again as more zeds came around the corner of Second Avenue and East 86th Street. Even though they were hundreds of feet away, the roar of their chainguns was loud, even for Gartrell, who wore hearing protectors beneath his radio headset. For Jaden and Jolie, who only had cotton balls in their ears, it must have been ten times worse. The zombies disappeared into spreading explosions of body parts, asphalt from the street, and chunks of concrete and glass blown out of nearby building facades. The Apaches’ cannons were fearsome weapons, but they were a little too imprecise for Gartrell’s taste at the moment, which was why they were classified as ‘area suppression weapons’-the guns kicked so hard that even the Apache itself rocked from side to side when firing.
Behind him, he heard Jolie’s shotgun go off, and he looked over his shoulder. The zeds from the apartment building were free now, and they streamed into the street behind them. One of them-a runner-had taken off after Jolie, and she had dropped it with a blast from the.410. She hadn’t killed it, however; the ghoul thrashed about on the ground, kicking the asphalt with its feet while flailing its hands in the air. Gartrell hadn’t seen that kind of activity before; apparently, the zeds could be knocked down for the count by a severe enough head injury.
“Jolie, run!” Gartrell shouted. “Let the gunships take care of those things!” As he spoke, he waved to the hovering Apaches and pointed at the dozen or so zeds streaming toward them. The attack helicopters did as instructed, and a moment later, 30mm rounds were slashing through the zombies. Even as they were being cut down, the ghouls never gave any indication they knew they were under attack. They only had eyes for Gartrell, Jaden, and Jolie, and they continued to pursue them even after their legs had been blown into ribbons and their torsos disemboweled by the high explosive dual purpose rounds.
As they drew nearer to the cloud of dense black smoke that blew down Second Avenue, Gartrell slowed. Jaden had stopped struggling now, and he sagged against the first sergeant’s back. Blood ran from his wrists where the plastic ties had pierced his flesh, and his struggles had only served to turn scrapes into ragged tears. Jolie stayed close behind them, and she fired her shotgun once again as a ghoul emerged from a shattered storefront-the Starbucks she and Gartrell had met in hours earlier.
“Uh, Terminator. This is Summit. Top cover says you’re getting within sixty meters of the Second Avenue engagement area, and they can’t suppress the zeds without maybe hitting you as well. What do you want to do? Over.”
Gartrell looked at the intersection ahead and gauged that the smoke just wasn’t heavy enough to adequately shield them. In fact, as he watched, several zombies strolled right through it. One of them was on fire. When they saw the humans, they hurried toward them as fast as their dead limbs could propel them. Gartrell checked behind him, and saw two other zeds were making their way up the sidewalk; an overhang prevented the Apache gunners from getting a visual on them, so they were unable to fire. One of the zombies crawled. The other hobbled.
“Jolie, shoot those things in the head once they’re within twenty feet. Shoot the walker first, then wait for the crawler.”
“All right.”
“Summit, Terminator. I want the Apaches to use rockets on Second Avenue. I want them to light up the entire intersection and give us enough cover to make it into the subway without being detected. Can they do that for us right away? Over.”
“Your call, Terminator. Stand by.”
Gartrell raised the AA-12 and went to guns on the closest zombie, blasting its skull into fragments. It sank to the street like an empty plastic bag. Behind it, the ghoul that was on fire suddenly collapsed as well; the flames had consumed so much tissue that it couldn’t walk any longer. Behind him, Jolie’s shotgun cracked once. As Gartrell waited for the rest of the zombies ahead to get closer, he pulled his pistol and thumbed off the safety. Holding it in both hands, he carefully dispatched all the oncoming zeds with perfectly-placed headshots.
Five rounds out of the pistol, two out of the shotty.
“Terminator, Summit. Party in ten seconds, top cover recommends you pull back immediately while they do their thing, over.”
Gartrell holstered his pistol and grabbed Jolie as she sighted on the zombie crawling up 86th Street. He ran back the way they had come, dragging her along behind. She squeaked as they passed the zombie crawling in the street and it reached out for her with one filthy hand. Flies buzzed around the dirty, bloodstained corpse.
“Where are we going? The subway station is back there!” Jolie said.
Her question was answered from above when a hissing roar cut through the air. Gartrell looked up to see one of the Apaches surrounded momentarily by flame and smoke as 2.75-inch rockets spat from the outboard pods slung beneath the attack helicopter’s stubby wings. The rockets flew for less than a second before they slammed into the intersection at speeds approaching 400 miles an hour. They detonated the instant the point-contact fuses at the tip of each warhead made contact with something solid, and 17 pounds of high explosives ripped at dead flesh, automotive sheet metal, asphalt, and concrete again and again. Windows shattered and the faces of every building on the block cracked and crazed as each explosion yielded a strong shock wave that ripped through the intersection. Gartrell spun around and faced the devastation, not because he wanted to see it, but because he wanted to shield Jaden from any debris which might come hurtling their way.