Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness (14 page)

Chapter 40

The Blackhawk swept in from the south of
Fort Lewis and Carlie could see the flames licking skyward from the helo bay.
Bodies were scattered on the ground along with several mutants that had been
dispatched, their body parts strewn along the pavement. Other mutants were
still bounding loose throughout the compound, chasing personnel whose weapons
had run dry or were busy engaging Mitchell’s men in the windows of B & C
Wings. She stared in horror at the structural damage to the helo bay and the
carnage on the ground, wondering if they were too late.

“Set it down on A-Wing. Shane and I will
head to the operations center. I want the rest of you to head to D-Wing and
secure Pavel and his research team.”

As the helicopter came in for a hasty
landing, the teams disembarked. Carlie rushed down the stairwell to the fourth
floor landing while the rest of the group kept descending. Carlie and Shane
headed to the secure service elevator at the rear of the building. While they
went down two levels, she quickly did a magazine check on the fresh rifle she
had procured from the Blackhawk.

They rushed through the elevator doors
upon opening, their rifles focused ahead. The hallway wall to the right had a
streak of blood coating the side like someone had dragged a ruby-colored mop
along its surface. Shattered glass from the fire extinguisher case sparkled
along the ground beside a bloody ax. Carlie could hear the scream of a woman
and then a gurgling noise as her life was extinguished. The noise came from the
end of the hallway near the briefing room.

 As they proceeded towards the sound, three
mutants emerged into the hallway. Carlie raised her rifle to shoot but Shane
nudged her with his elbow. “Look at the vests—those things are rigged with
explosives. We suffer one miss and this whole wing goes up.”

The creatures had already spotted them and
began hissing while bounding down the hallway. They were already within thirty
feet when Carlie began shooting at their legs. Shane was doing the same, the
rounds from both rifles eventually punching through the shins and knees as the
howling mutants lost their locomotion, skidding along the floor. The three
mangled beasts kept coming, like rabid wolves driven by a primal drive to
consume anything in their path. With their shattered legs, the mutants began
slithering along the floor, pulling themselves up on their sinewy arms.

“We’re gonna have to do this at close range,”
yelled Carlie as she cautiously stepped forward to one on her left. She shot
the disgusting beast in its right shoulder, further reducing its crawling
ability, then kicked it hard in the temple while following up with a single
round to the cranium. She spun and did the same thing to the middle creature
while Shane dispatched the third.

“Damn, look at that—that’s a lot of C4,”
said Shane, staring at the tiny clusters of explosives and wiring tucked into
the vest pockets.

“Yeah, I’m sure Mitchell’s fallback plan
is to detonate the rest of these if he can’t complete his plan of attack.” She
leaned down and studied the wiring pattern and then removed the central attachment
at the neck transmitter.

They heard a transmission coming through
their earpieces from Jared on the ground level. “With the hole that was just
blasted in the side fence near the helo bay, there’s a shitload of our usual
zombie pals that were massed outside all these months moving towards the breach.”

Shane looked at Carlie, his eyebrows
scrunched together. “If we don’t stem that tide, this whole base is going to be
overrun within the hour,” he said.

She looked at the explosive vests and back
at him. “Can you take all this C4 and rig it up on the remaining walls of the
helo bay so it comes crashing down and seals off that area?”

Shane nodded and then began removing the
soiled vests from the crumpled figures. “Alright, that oughta do it—let’s go,”
he said, standing up and starting to retrace his steps towards the elevator.

She caught his arm. “I’m heading to
operations. Mitchell has to be taken out before he can detonate the rest of the
vests and bring this place down.”

“You’re not going alone!”

“There isn’t any time to debate this. Go
below and seal off the perimeter.”

“Carlie, you…” She cut him off as she
began walking the opposite way. “You know I’m right. If we don’t act now on
both fronts, this place we call home is finished and then we’re back on the run
again.”

Shane grit his teeth and shook his head. “I’m
tellin’ you right now that if you do something crazy and get yourself killed, I
will be pissed as hell at you forever.”

“That’s not something I think I ever want
to experience, in this life or the next,” she said and then nodded at him to go
as she turned and began running down the hallway.

Chapter 41

Duncan was down at the ground level of the
dam, a hundred feet from the humming turbines of the spillway. He saw the
hordes of zombies shambling towards them and what looked like the more rhythmic
walking pattern of people clad in ghillie suits. He needed to get to the third
generating station before the throng reached the dam. Duncan stood behind a
security booth surveying the terrain. He saw muzzle flashes erupting from the
distant treeline and noticed the figures of some of his own troops scattered
along the base of the spillway to his right.

“Dammit, how much longer before you’re
here?” he snapped into his ear-mic to Kulovitz. “My window is closing.”

“Thirty seconds.”

Duncan lowered into a squat and stayed
concealed. He raised the scope of his rifle up and scanned the mass of unholy
creatures ahead. A few seconds later he paused and noticed one man standing out
near the front of the group moving at the same pace as the zombies but with
more coordination in his gait. The wiry man was completely clad in an outfit
covered with strips of putrid flesh and he had a faint goatee.

Duncan heard the stairwell doors open
behind him and sensed Kulovitz and a dozen other men fill in around him.

“I need your men to provide cover for me
while I make a dash for the third generating station. Once I gain access, you
retreat back inside the dam. I’m going to override the spillway controls and
flood the lower basin here. That will take out the third station and everything
in its path.”

“What about you?” said Kulovitz, raking a
hand through his red crop of hair. “And what about the dam—won’t that defeat
the whole purpose of us being here?”

“The third station is the oldest and
provides the least amount of power. As long as the other two are intact, we’ll
suffer a minimal loss. Besides, we’re out of options,” he said, waving his
thumb towards the approaching menace that was two hundred yards out.

“You still haven’t told me how you’re
gonna get out of there safely.”

“You worry about your job here, my friend,
and I’ll cover my own ass,” he said, patting Kulovitz on the shoulder. “Get
into position. I’ll create a temporary distraction in their ranks and then sprint
for the station while you boys cover me.”

Duncan resumed peering through his scope
and fixed his crosshairs on the moving target ahead. He slowed his breathing
and squeezed off two rounds into the gut of the man with the goatee. Jeffers
slumped forward as blood leaked out on the parched grass, causing the zombies
around him to stop and realize the feeding opportunity before them. Jeffers
tried crawling away as his limbs were yanked apart and his oozing wounds greedily
dug into by frantic yellow fingers.

With a temporary halt in the left flank of
the horde, Duncan bounded along the row of waist-high cement pylons and then
beelined for the third station. Kulovitz and the other warriors began dropping
the other convicts hidden amongst the mass of undead. This caused the freaks to
halt briefly to extract their fleshy rewards but the crowd numbered over five hundred
and the flow of beasts resumed their push to the dam, their sights now focused
on Kulovitz’s team.

The air was filled with the odor of rancid
flesh, disturbed soil, and gunsmoke as shots continued ringing out on both
sides and the sound of bullets ricocheted off the concrete around Duncan as he
made his way to the front security door of the rectangular generating station.
He fumbled with his key ring, locating the correct one and hastily inserting it
just as a lumbering zombie in blue coveralls stumbled around the edge of the
building. He raised his rifle, slamming the butt into its pudding-like cheek,
sending it reeling back onto a smaller creature that was flattened under the
weight. Duncan opened the door and darted inside, resealing the door and
resting against the wall for a second to catch his breath.

He tapped on his ear-mic to relay a
message of his intended plan to Lavine in case any friendly forces might be
sweeping in from the rear but he got no response. He looked around the room
which was filled with automated computer monitors hooked up to the utility
conduits emanating from the walls. Duncan went to the mainframe computer,
typing in the override code. Three numerically labeled red boxes came online.
He selected the third generating station and tapped on the icon that indicated
Purge
.
A warning flashed on the screen and an overhead alarm rang out. The computer
prompted him with another security code which he entered. His finger hovered
above the Enter button. Duncan hesitated and then tapped on his ear-mic again,
this time calling Kulovitz, but only static ensued. He stepped back from the computer
and raced up the stairs to the second floor, opening the fire exit at the top.
Stepping out onto the roof, he saw the sea of zombies within twenty feet of the
dam. His men had already begun retreating into the stairwell, stepping over
thousands of rounds of spent shell casings. He could see Kulovitz being dragged
on his heels, a large bullet wound piercing the side of his head. Duncan felt
his stomach constrict and the taste of bile welled up in his throat, the scene
around him unfolding in slow motion. With the hatchway to the dam sealed and
his men safely inside, he refocused his attention on the group of four convicts
moving up to the dam entrance with a crate of explosives. He raced back inside,
down the steps to the ground floor and slapped his hand down on the Enter
button. The lights overhead flickered as the circuit breaker connection was
severed. Duncan turned on the flashlight mounted on his rifle and found his way
back to the main entrance. The ground beneath his feet began trembling from the
approaching tidal wave that had been unleashed and he knew the old building
would soon be underwater.

As he swung the steel door open, Duncan
saw the raging waters bursting through the turbines and watched the surging
river tear through Mitchell’s army. Duncan shot his way through a gauntlet of
zombies as he sprinted away from the dam to a nearby hilltop on the edge of the
forest. When his rifle ran dry, he cast it aside and intensified his stride. He
heard a roar behind him as a huge wave overtook the third generating station
and then blasted its way towards him, the vicious torrent overtaking him and
the remaining crowd of flesh-eaters. He was sucked under into a frothing
cauldron of putrescent limbs and earthen debris. Bursting to the surface, he
caught a brief glimpse of the hill to his right and swam against the rising
current until his lungs began to burn.

Chapter 42

Carlie snaked her way down two more protracted
hallways, running past offices with half-consumed corpses of people she had
greeted in passing each morning, their bodies torn apart by the mutants or
riddled with bullets. Some showed signs of resistance while others were clearly
trying to escape out the windows but were caught before their exodus was
completed.

The operations center was one more hallway
to the left. She stopped at the intersection and knelt down to listen. After
she was sure no person or creature was in the hallway between her and the door
of operations, she peered around the corner. She crouch-walked along the
corridor, stepping over the mangled bodies of three guards and four computer
specialists. Next to the wall was Lavine’s headless figure, the stump still
pulsing out spinal fluid onto the white tiled floor while the remains of his
flattened skull were spread along the shattered tiles like red sludge.

Despite all the carnage she had witnessed
during the ensuing months of combat, she couldn’t ever recall seeing anything
this brutal before. These were people she had worked with on a daily basis and
now they were nearly mauled beyond recognition. Her awareness snapped back to
the door before her. She could hear faint hissing coming from inside where
several mutants were evidently poised. Then she heard the deep voice of a man barking
orders over a radio.

Carlie backpedaled around the corner and
then tapped her ear-mic, forcing herself not to look at the horrific scene on
the floor. “How much longer before the C4 is in place?”

“Five more minutes,” said Shane.

“Alright, squelch me one time just before
you blow it.” She squatted down and did a tactical reload, replacing her
half-empty magazine with a full one. Then she leaned her right shoulder against
the wall and stared at a chipped floor tile while steadying her breathing. She
didn’t know how many mutants were inside but it didn’t sound like more than
three or four. Mitchell would have the detonator on him and probably be fixated
on the wall monitor as he awaited any satellite images he was trying to pull up.

Once Shane detonated the explosives, she
would have to make a swift room entry and shoot Mitchell first then deal with
the mutants. She ran through the plan in her head as her right hand clutched
the grip on her M4 and she continued her rhythmic breathing.

She heard Shane’s voice again. “Thirty seconds
and then it’s 8.5 on the Richter scale.”

“Copy that,” she whispered as she crept
back along the hallway to the ops center door. She stood to the left with the
muzzle of her rifle angled at the handle.