Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness (6 page)

Chapter 12

Duncan and Kulovitz kept low and slunk
along the back walls of the buildings until they were at the rear of the
medical clinic. It was a three-story building that appeared largely intact by
the look of the windows. Duncan peered around the side at the growing menace of
zombies headed their way. “We’ve got about twenty minutes if we’re lucky before
they overrun the main compound,” he whispered. As he turned to speak, he saw a
flash of movement to his right. Behind Kulovitz was a slick-faced mutant
squatting on a half-wall by a dumpster. It sprung onto the ground and bounded
like a cheetah towards them, weaving around bushes. Both men began firing off
short, controlled bursts until its bloody form came to a sliding halt eight
feet from Kulovitz. He stared at the crumpled mess and then gave a wide-eyed
look to Duncan, who pointed to the rear exit and then began moving.

They cleared the lobby, which looked
untouched except for a few spent tear-gas canisters lying on the tiled floor
underneath a small broken window. 

With each floor they cleared, Duncan noted
that there was very little disturbance to any of the furniture, desks, or
supplies. After reaching the third floor, they moved cautiously towards the
second room on the right where the heat signatures were indicated in the
previous transmission from Fort Lewis. Duncan gazed around the edge of the
wooden doorframe and saw a man in jeans and a camouflage parka pacing back and
forth along the window. He was clutching an AK-47 and nervously muttering
something to himself. Lying on the floor a few feet away was Mike Rollins.
Duncan studied the supine figure of his friend, watching to see if his chest
was rising and falling. Then he heard Rollins moan and saw his fingers twitch.
Thank
the almighty, he’s alive.

The man by the window moved next to
Rollins and kicked him in the ribs. “Be quiet or I’ll break the rest of your
ribs.” As the man swung his leg back to deliver another kick, a 9mm round tore
through his jaw followed by another one to his forehead. Duncan sprang into the
room as the man fell backwards against the windowsill before sliding down to
the floor. Kulovitz followed behind, sweeping to the right as the two men
secured the small space.

Duncan squinted in the sunlight and slowly
moved forward towards the two figures, kicking the rifle aside and then
removing the dead man’s pistol and knife. Then he knelt down on the cold floor
beside his friend.

“My God—Mike, are you OK, buddy? What
happened?”

“Duncan,” whispered the man, his bleary
eyes trying to focus.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said, lowering his
pistol. Mike was shivering and pale. On the floor were empty vials of drugs and
used syringes. Duncan examined a dried bloodstain on Mike’s left temple. “Do
you have any other injuries other than your ribs and head?” he said, examining
the man before pulling up the wool blanket from around Mike’s waist. The
pale-faced figure just shook his head. “There were several other goons up here
until this morning,” he said, whispering but only managing a raspy cough.
Duncan reached into his vest and removed a small flask of water, putting it up
to Mike’s cracked lips.

Duncan placed his other hand on his
friend’s shoulder and looked around the room, his face cloaked with dread at
the next question. “Mike, where are the rest of your people?”

The man’s facial muscles slumped further
and tears began forming in his eyes. He just shook his head and clutched
Duncan’s jacket, sobbing. Mike tried to sit up but slid sideways, trying not to
lapse into unconsciousness. He pulled Duncan to him and struggled to stay
alert. “They came in on the main road—two guys in a semi-truck. Said their convoy
was attacked a few miles away and they needed help. While we scrambled to
muster our resources, they turned loose a shitload of zombies from the back of
their rig. Must’ve had a hundred of those things,” he panted, struggling to
catch his breath. “Then they fired tear gas into the windows of the buildings
to drive us out while the creatures tore people apart in the confusion. There
were at least four of those fast-moving mutants too but we got a few of them
early on in the battle.” His face went blank. “My crew—my entire crew was wiped
out before my eyes.”

Duncan hung his head, trying to process
the information and worrying about the timeline for the inbound helos. He
looked at his friend, running a cool compress across his forehead. “We received
a message from here two days ago. Sent by you, Mike Rollins, requesting us to
come out with our tactical specialists.”

Mike grimaced in pain as he tried to
straighten his back against the wall. “We were attacked four days ago. They
kept me alive—drugged me with some heavy shit and then had me read the messages
you received.” He rolled his head back and forth. “I heard myself talking,
knowing what I was saying but unable to stop myself.” Mike began weeping and
then choked on a cough, curling onto his side. “Why did they do it—why? We were
just a small outpost—there’s nothing in this area of worth. They took a few of
our fuel trucks and supplies but we just didn’t have that much.”

Chapter 13

Carlie, Eliza, and Brinkman had moved into
the treeline a hundred yards away from the main buildings. They raced along an
old deer trail for another hundred yards, making an abrupt left turn followed
by another short bounding movement to the right to evade anyone watching from a
distance. With their location concealed by the dense shrubs, they paused to
catch their breath. She scanned the surrounding forest for signs of movement
but saw nothing. The sound of the shambling mass of undead below drowned out
even the wind rushing through the trees and the smell of pine was quickly
replaced with the stench of decaying flesh.

“We have to remove the mortar team first
and then worry about the other spotters after that,” said Brinkman as another
round whirred through the air, impacting the cafeteria below.

“I concur,” said Carlie while removing her
tinted snow goggles and lowering them around her neck. She raised up her
binoculars and focused on the direction the mortar had just come from.  When
she was done she glanced over at Brinkman, noting his youthful face. She knew he
had been in a recent deployment to the Middle East before the pandemic struck
but was unsure just how much combat experience he possessed. Anyone still
breathing in this new world had done their share of dispatching the undead and,
regrettably, most likely other humans who had threatened their survival. Still,
combat had enough unknown variables and chaos and she hoped that Brinkman was
as versed in real-world fighting as he was with the concepts on paper that he
often presented in pre-mission briefings.

“I want your tactical updates on anything
pertinent to what we’re about to do but follow my lead when we breach their
perimeter and eliminate the personnel,” she said, finally settling her gaze on
a small dug-out to the southwest where the mortar crew was located.

“Copy that.”

She lowered the binoculars and stood up
then made her way along the narrow trail that led through the dense spruce
trees while Eliza provided rear cover. After ten minutes of stalking through
the brush, they came to a bowl-shaped depression. Eighty yards below were four
men huddled around a mortar and two wooden crates full of 120mm rounds. One of
them was fidgeting with an electronic device but it was too far away to make
out what it was. The team of poorly clad goons was hunkered down in a four-foot-deep
circular pit which was further fortified with two feet of sandbags. The men
stopped firing the mortar and started bickering amongst themselves.

“Pretty elaborate setup,” said Brinkman.
“These guys used up some time and calories to dig in here.”

Twenty feet away, cloaked in a
white-and-gray-dappled camouflage net, was an F-350 pickup truck. On the
tailgate was a radio and two AK-47s. There were no vehicle tracks in the snow
and the amount of footprints in the immediate camp area informed Carlie that
there had been no movement outside of their layup position. She scanned the
forest to her right and then out to the meadow to her left where the hordes of
undead were streaming around the buildings on the central part of the base. A
plume of black smoke from the burning helo wreckage wafted into the low-hanging
clouds.

“We can snipe those guys from here,” said Eliza,
who was squatting on one knee beside her.

“Yeah, that seems a little too easy,” said
Carlie. “These guys should…” She paused and then secreted herself against the
tree trunk while the others did the same just as a small drone flew into the
encampment. The black device circled the mortar pit and then clunkily landed on
the hardpacked snow by the truck. A man in greasy brown coveralls climbed out
of the foxhole and walked over to the device. He flipped it over and removed a
battery pack then set the drone down on the tailgate beside the radio. He
walked around to the side door and began sifting through a cardboard box on the
back seat.

“How the hell do they have drone
capabilities?” whispered Eliza.

“They must have procured it from the base
here or some other installation as that’s a military-grade device,” said Brinkman.

“That’s why they must have stopped the
shelling,” said Carlie. “We need to take them out now while their eyes are down.”

She shifted her weight forward and raised
up her M4 rifle. “You two dispatch the men remaining in the foxhole. I’ll take
the drone operator.
“Wait until I’ve removed him as he’s closest to the radio.”

They all got into position, with Brinkman and
Eliza squatting down on either side of her, resting their rifles on fallen
logs. Carlie peered through her red-dot scope and aligned the head of the stout
figure beside the truck. He kept bobbing around as he frantically tried to
replace the batteries. She could see a red wreath of crude tattoos around his
neck beyond his tattered wool scarf. He twisted back to curse at the other men
in the foxhole who were berating him. As he turned forward, a round struck him
in the left side of the head, exiting out his right jaw. He slumped forward
onto the tailgate. Carlie heard muzzles crack next to her as the others
dispatched the surly goons below. Within seconds the woods were silent again,
with only the churning flow of undead resounding off the natural amphitheater
of the meadow.

They waited and watched for anyone moving
below then scurried down the steep hillside until they were at the foxhole.

“Get those bodies out of the way and
reconfigure the mortar so we can start sending rounds downrange into the undead
and the spotters,” said Carlie as she made her way to the vehicle. She grabbed
the shirt collar of the slumped figure and slid him out of the way then grabbed
the drone and remote control. “This was transmitting to this guy’s handheld remote
and also to another location,” she said, noticing a green light on the remote
beside the words,
Console 2.

She smashed both devices with the butt of
her rifle and then grabbed the two-way radio on the tailgate. She made out the
voices of two men, one of whom was clearly the leader based upon his
reprimanding tone.

“You can depart now—bring the video
footage you’ve recorded. I have all the intel I need from our little
experiment. The rest will be obtained from the personnel we’ve captured. Leave
the others from Lewis to the zombies.” The gruff voice went silent and static
ensued.

Carlie placed the radio down and tapped on
her ear-mic, connecting to Fort Lewis. “This is Gray Wolf, do you copy? I need
a fix on the remaining spotters, over.”

A few seconds later, a woman responded and
she read off the coordinates that Carlie requested. Carlie relayed them to
Brinkman, who had repositioned the mortar. He dialed in the bearing and then
delivered a round into the dense treeline a quarter-mile to the east.

Brinkman adjusted the mortar to the second
location and released a round, lighting up a small cluster of spruce trees to
the west. She tucked the radio in her coat pocket and then rummaged through the
interior of the truck. Not finding anything of significance, she moved back
towards the others.

Eliza pointed to the half-empty box of 120mm
rounds. “We’ve got eight more left.”

Carlie scanned the cluster of buildings in
relation to the zombies then glanced back at the treeline. “Take out the
remaining spotters and then punch a hole through the center of the undead.
That’ll give us a route to get this truck up to the medical clinic. From there,
we’ll have to hold the fort until the helos arrive.”

Eliza and Carlie began grabbing the
weapons and magazines from the foxhole and jamming everything in the truck. They
only stopped to cover their ears upon hearing Brinkman’s announcements for a
new round being launched. With the last mortars pummeling the zombies, Carlie
fired up the engine and motioned to Brinkman to get in. The three of them sped
down the narrow road through the pines and entered the meadow, slicing through
the center of the fractured horde enroute to the main compound a half-mile
away. She and the other occupants were flung from side to side from the
undercurrent of shattered corpses under the tires, making it feel like they
were driving over a boulder field in the desert.

The last portion of the undead horde was
still intact, at least forty bodies thick and representing the last barrier
between them and the medical clinic ahead. “I need you to take out a few creatures
at twelve o’clock or this is gonna be a shorter ride than expected.”

With the truck slowing slightly, Eliza and
Brinkman poked out of the windows on either side and began sniping zombies twenty
yards ahead. For every one they hit, they missed two more because of the bumpy
conditions. As the vehicle progressed, the windshield was smeared with an
amalgam of blood, snow, and viscera. Carlie had to hunch forward to see through
the thick film, slamming into the occasional freak that managed to squeegee
into her path.

“They’re starting to close in from the
sides,” yelled Eliza, who had just emptied her second magazine.

“Copy that—almost there,” said Carlie.
“Fifty meters.”

Carlie tapped on her ear-mic. “Shark Tank,
this is Hammerhead Two, we are inbound to Hammerhead One. We are under heavy
attack. This is going to be a hot extract.”

She didn’t wait for confirmation from the
helo and grabbed Eliza’s belt, yanking her into the cab, then yelled back at
Brinkman, “I’m slamming this right into the lobby. Brace for impact.”

The cluster of intact zombies at the front
of the horde had turned like a school of barracuda and arrowed towards the
truck, led in part by two fast-moving mutants.

Carlie shuddered upon seeing the creamy-faced
mutants and swung the vehicle to the right slightly, clipping the first one in
the waist and hearing it crunch beneath the tires. The second one blurred past
her into the crowd as the front end of the F-150 crashed through the glass and
structural supports of the medical clinic. She slammed the brakes on just
before the staircase to the right. Grabbing her M4, she leapt out of the side
door and ran around the front of the truck to the stairs with Brinkman and
Eliza on her heels.

Bounding up the steps to the second floor,
Carlie saw the fast-moving mutant rushing into the lobby followed by dozens of
zombies slipping around on the floor like they had paper plates underneath
their shoes. She yelled for the others to continue up and stopped on the
landing with her rifle. The first volley she unleashed struck the left pectoral
of the mutant, only slowing it slightly. It leaped on the back of the truck and
then into the air towards the staircase. Carlie struck it in the head and
throat with several rounds, seeing a spray of sparks fly off the back of the neck.
It landed on the tiled floor amidst the crumbled mix of glass and drywall. She
gazed down at it to make sure it was no longer a threat, noting a jumble of
wires emanating from the cervical region. Carlie squinted at the puzzling sight
but immediately shifted her gaze back to the inbound horde pouring through the
shattered entrance. She dispatched a handful of yellow-faced freaks to create a
temporary jam and then vaulted up the stairs.