Chapter Four up.

Big battle scene. Enjoy.

Gravedigger: It'll get better. Just… bear with, OK?

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Chapter Four: Fight of the Century

"HERE THEY COME!"

Tom quickly jerked around, CAR-15 ready. All around, the troops yanked themselves out of their reveille and got ready. Sergeant Arnold sprang to life and right away began ordering his men to hold their fire.

Through the haze and smoke, silhouettes of figures began to emerge. One at first, then two, four, eight… more still. Soon, what had once been an empty street was now filled with many men, stumbling as though they had had twelve Miller Times in one night.

Hands gripped on the .50, Master Sergeant Martin was shouting to his men to hold position. Captain Roberts did the same with his men. The force of some hundred men now all trained their weapons on this one street.

"What the hell?"

Tom looked at the group through his binoculars. There was something too off about them. Their skin looked like shit- literally like the living dead. Their eyes had that glassy, unfocused look to it. They moved with arms outstretched, and, listening carefully, he could hear a loud moan emitting from their mouths. For some reason, the sound of those moans sent a shiver down his spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

"Stay sharp, guys," he ordered. There was something about this that really wasn't right. He was starting to realize why everyone was so damn terrified.

Sergeant Waters had to keep rubbing his eyes to make sure he wasn't imagining this. He wasn't; large bodies of civilians, all looking like something out of a Romero movie, coming at them. Memories of nights as a kid when his older brothers made him watch Night of the Living Dead played in his head. It was one of his old nightmares revisited. He gulped.

"Hold your fire," Martin reminded them. Not that they needed reminding.

Tom fixed the sights on his CAR-15. He wanted to make sure the first shot dropped the guy. He wasn't too concerned now with killing a familiar face; right now he was starting to doubt they were even human.

SMASH! "chomp!"

"YEEEOOOOOW!" Cribbs suddenly jolted in pain and ripped away, clutching his now bleeding shoulder. One of those guys had come up right behind them and had taken a bite right out of his shoulder. The man, the piece of flesh still clamped between his teeth, looked hungrily at the Delta soldier.

Now up close, Tom could definitely see the un-canniness of these people. This one's eyes were pretty much translucent, his teeth sharp and decaying, fingernails and hair long and the former sharp. With a clear good look at his skin, the sergeant could've sworn this guy had been dead for days.

As he lunged at them, Tom whipped out his trusty Beretta and aimed it right at his chest.

"Sir, I request that you back off," he ordered. The man paid no mind, and instead, went at him, determined for another bite. Tom didn't bother to hesitate.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

The three bullets tore through the chest, heart, and gut. The bullets ripped into the skin, mangling it and pretty much decimating the skin tissue. The last one had clearly pierced the heart, embedded deep in it. The man paused and looked down at three death-dealing wounds.

And from that point on, things got really weird. The man all of a sudden snapped his head back up and snarled an angry, inhumane snarl. Tom blinked, not believing his eyes. True, the .45 wasn't all that of a reliable gun in the field, at least not at a distance, but three bullets at point-blank range? How in the hell was this guy still standing?

"Fucking hell?" Jackson aimed his SAW right at him and fired another burst into this things chest. These bullets were bone mangling, and Tom definitely saw the ribcage twist, but this guy just shook it off and came at the sergeant again.

"click."

Cribbs had gone forward and pressed the muzzle of his M-4 against the thing's brain. BAM! He fired the bullet that tore in and out, with blood and brain matter flying out with it. The soldiers even saw the steam pour out as the creature finally fell on his back and this time, did not get back up.

"OPEN FIRE!"

All of that happened in a matter of seconds, though it seemed like hours. By the time they had finished the guy off, Martin had given the order to open up. All at once, the blockade spring to life with fire. The .50 was the loudest, and its bullets and tracers tore through ribcages, mangled legs, and tore heads off at the neck.

Tom went back to his perch and aimed through the sight. One guy was about 150 meters away from him, to him, well within the range of his beloved rifle. He brought his CAR-15 to his shoulder and took a quick bead on the guy's head. He couldn't miss. The bullet zinged by just as soon as he pulled the trigger and the man fell back as the top of his head disappeared in a flash.

Smirking, no longer feeling like a wuss, he pat Jackson on the back, who was taking short, concentrated potshot bursts at a group off to the left 200 meters. The sergeant had to say, the guy got his shit together when danger faced them with its ugly head in the air. He went over to where Nelson was patching up Cribbs.

"Hows it looking?" he asked, kneeling down next to them.

"Bastard took a chunk clean out of my shoulder. JESUS!" Cribbs hollered in pain as Nelson shot some morphine in.

"Easy, easy," the medic said softly, applying a compress bandage to the shoulder.

"Jesus, they're NOT STOPPING!"

Tom looked back out into the field. The ones that weren't hit were completely un-wavered by the wave of lead flying at them and still proceeded with their attack. But the real horror was that of those who were so torn up by bullets that they were pretty much just a head, one arm, and half a chest, nothing more, were still mustering all their strength to try to get at them.

Oh no way, was what ran through his mind right now as he went back to his perch. "Alright, look alive, guys, look alive. Those stupid sons of bitches are trying to break through, don't let up!"

From their perch near the low-roof house, Sergeant Bradley was aghast when he saw that, after all the mayhem wreaked on those things, they still had the balls to go at them like that. Hell, some of them didn't even have those anymore. He had seen a lot of things in Delta, and a lot of fights, but the enemy to this one seemed to be on a whole new level. The first one Bradley had shot, he had gone through half a clip on semi-auto blast, and the guy still wasn't on the ground. It was, purely put, bedlam.

Above him, on his perch, Foley was sniping away. His beloved Light Fifty made a large crack sound whenever he fired. He fired at a target 80 yards away, and there was a spurt of pink brain matter as it tore through the skull and killed him.

Bradley watched this, and, as he saw the headshot, which was the only wound on the body, something clicked. He got on the radio on his helmet and called into the whole unit.

"The enemy is susceptible to headshots. Repeat, AIM FOR THE HEAD!"

Made sense; every bullet Tom fired was a head shot, and everyone he hit went down, whereas Jackson ripped them in half with his machine gun and they still kept coming. The force began taking more concentrated headshots. However, with every enemy brought down, more seemed to pop up.

Waters was reloading his M-4. This was probably his fourth clip, and so far, he had only killed about twelve of them. These things just didn't seem to want to die.

Behind him, Owens' rifle fired with a deafening BANG! and another went down.

"Ha! Score's at twenty-three now, dipshit! Whaddya say to that?" he called over to Mabrey.

BAM!

"Twenty-five's what I say to that, Pea-brain," Mabrey answered.

The look on Owens' face could probably match the violent look on the engaging enemy's face as he went back to his rifle.

Jones, firing his Remington 870 at a group that had miraculously come within 50 feet of Delta One and in doing so got their heads blown off simultaneously, finally figured it was time to set the C-4 off. He had hoped, what with the way these guys were moving, that one of them would trip a Claymore and set off the minefield. But apparently, dumbasses that they were, they still managed to navigate themselves around the mines. So he grabbed the detonator and, after firing a shotgun shell single handedly, pressed the trigger.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

All the C-4 went off simultaneously, the explosion also setting off the Claymore charges. The end result was a loud explosion that could greatly rival a landing missile. The enemy was engulfed in the fiery inferno. When the blast finally settled down, there was a loud cloud of smoke, signaling the demise of the threat.

A loud cheer and a unanimous sigh emitted from all the members of the ground force as they cheered their victory. Waters blinked. It was over. This had been a lot easier for him to handle than he had thought.

At the Jeep, Cribbs lit a cigarette, completely unnerved by the blood smeared on his face and his shoulder, which hadn't stopped bleeding yet.

"Some battle, eh?" he grinned at Tom.

"You said it," Tom sat next to him and sighed a huge sigh, exhausted. He looked towards the smoke cloud, which had not cleared up yet.

"What was up with those guys?" he pondered.

"Who knows? Just glad it's over," Cribbs exhaled the smoke.

"Oh my God… THEY'RE STILL COMING!"

Tom and Cribbs' heads immediately whipped back towards the battleground. Both pairs of eyes nearly bulged out of their heads and both pairs of mouths fell agape.

The smoke had cleared only to reveal a decrepit, battered, torn-apart enemy force that was still coming at them with an unwavering force, as though they had not just been burned to death. More had yet again joined their ranks and the bloody holes that were in their ranks had been repaired by new recruits, returning it to a battalion sized army.

"Oh, you've gotta be fucking me," Tom said softly, not believing this.

Without another word, both soldiers picked up their rifles and again started firing. They were soon joined by the rest of the exceptionally weary troops as they grudgingly began firing again.

Tom aimed his rifle at a target and fired. The man fell. He fired it at another target and she, too, went down. Over and over again he fired, but the more he shot at, the more came. Over time, he was starting to feel piss off. Who were these bastards? What right did they have to be coming at them like this? And why the hell weren't they dying?

What had happened to these people?

"Arnold!" Martin yelled over to the Delta Three sergeant. Arnold bolted over while Atkins gave him covering fire with his M-60. Martin looked down at the sergeant.

"Time for extraction. Take your team and get to that garage. Hurry up or we're screwed. Get going."

"Delta Three, on me!" Arnold called, tapping the top of his helmet. Atkins pulled his M-60 off of the roof of the car and Lake crawled out from under it as they followed Pettigrew after their sergeant. They were soon gone in a hurry.

"Webber!" Martin next called to his radioman, "Get on the horn and tell the halos to get Delta Five onto the ground. Now!"

88888

Up in the air, Hughes heard over the radio Briggs' next orders to Howe.

"Star Four Five, come inbound and land Delta Five at the LZ, over."

"Roger. Four Five inbound."

Hughes didn't envy this request. Howe was now flying into the hornet's nest, the heaviest part of the shooting. At least when he had dropped his team in, it had been quiet. But now was when it was at its most dangerous point.

Which was, of course, just the way Howe like it.

"Alright, hang on back there," Wilkes called to Delta Five. Sergeant Sanderson gave him the thumbs up and ordered his men to put goggles on. Shipley and Bielski both grinned. It was on.

The chopper began its decent. It was still at a high altitude, but all was going according to plan.

Until-

"whoooooosh!" BOOOOOOOOM!

Something slammed into the rear propeller of the Bird. The aircraft rocketed forward, the team desperately holding on to their benches to keep from falling to their deaths. Howe quickly straightened his bird back into position.

"Four Five, are you alright?" Popeye's voice came in over the radio.

"Yeah," Howe was inhaling and exhaling heavily. He was a tad bit shaken up. "Yeah, we're good. All systems looking normal."

"You look like you got clipped pretty good. Why don't you set it down on the airfield, have someone check it out?"

"Affirmative. Dropping in team, falling back to airfield, over."

Sanderson looked over and saw that the tail was pretty much destroyed. How this thing was still flying straight was a mystery.

Suddenly, on the ground, about four blocks away from the fighting, he saw it. A flash of light, and the presence of what was undoubtedly a missile launching its way right towards them.

"RPG!" he screamed, but to no avail; the rocket hit again, this time clipping the main rotors. The shrapnel miraculously missed the soldiers, but the rotors were torn to shreds. To Sanderson's horror, the chopper began its spinning decent.

In the cockpit, Howe and Wilkes had just managed to secure the loss of the tail rotor when the second rocket hit. Then they lost all flight controls completely. With both rotors out of control, there was little they could do as the helicopter began spinning. Howe got on the radio.

"We've lost the main rotor. Four Five going down, repeat, Four Five is going down, latitude 54 degrees, longitude 48, do you copy, over?"

To hell with this, Sanderson though. With every ounce of strength that he possessed, he slid back off his bench and into the little crawlspace behind the cockpit. On the other side, Hallings was freaking out. There was no way the sergeant was gonna let this kid die here. Sanderson grabbed the nervous gunner by the scruff of his neck and yanked him into the crawlspace.

"Jeff," Shipley heard Bielski over his helmet-link.

"Yeah?" he radioed back.

"See those dumpsters down there?"

The spinning was not yet at its serious point, so Shipley could indeed make out the two dumpsters on adjacent ends of an alleyway.

"Yeah."

"Count of three, we're gonna make a jump for 'em, copy?"

"Better than dying in the crash, I read you, Mikey."

"Aiight… one, two… THREE!"

Both jumped at the same time, weapons and all, and fell the remaining twenty-five feet into the dumpsters, landing with a loud thud.

"Four Five going-" But before Howe could finish the transmission, the rotors clipped the entry to the alley. The chopper skidded through the alley and then plowed into the ground cockpit first. It skidded to the other end of the alley and smashed through the brick wall, then came to a halt, the rotors either torn up by shrapnel or torn up by the crash.

The radio went deadly silent.

Fear flooded over Hughes like one of the many waves he used to ride in Newport, Rhode Island. He flew his chopper over the crash site and looked down.

"You see any movement?" he asked Greeno, who was looking out the other side.

"Nada, I got nothing," his co-pilot replied.

This wasn't good. This so wasn't good. Not part of the plan. Howe was supposed to land his bird, drop the team in, and then get the hell out. Plain and simple. Oh, how simple it was!

But now, he didn't even know if anyone was alive down there.

88888

Tom had just reloaded his gun and began aiming again when he heard the first BOOM! He looked up and saw that Delta Five's Bird had been hit. He saw smoke pouring out of the tail rotor.

"What the hell?" he proclaimed aloud.

"Sonuva…" Jackson stood up and just stared at it.

And then, just when they thought Four Five had it under control, they saw another rocket shoot up. They followed the smoke trail in time for them to see the giant explosion to the main rotor. Tom literally saw the shrapnel pierce through the metal rotors as if they were noting but paper.

Then, he felt his heart sink down to his stomach as he watched the Bird begin spinning, slow mostly, picking up just a bit of speed. He saw two soldiers, who he'd recognize anywhere as Jeff Shipley and Mike Bielski, jump from the Bird and plummet into a couple of dumpsters. And then they heard it crash into the alleyway- the horrible screeching noise it made as the rotors tore against the walls of the buildings. It was concluded by a large crash, and then smoke poured from the wreckage.

Tom stood up and tried to crane his neck. It was hopeless- the crash had to be miles away, though it had seemed so close. His mind wandered towards the other two, Sanderson and Hallings. He remembered the promise Sanderson had made him back before they took off. No, he thought, there's no way Sandy could be…

Waters was pondering a different question: Where the hell did that RPG come from? More importantly, who had fired it? And another winner, why? What could possibly be gained by shooting down a U.S. Army helicopter with highly elite soldiers on board?

"Waters!" Martin's voice brought him out of his thoughts and sent him running over to the master sergeant, "I need you to take your team on a reconnaissance mission over to the downed bird. Hurry up or those things are gonna be all over them. We'll make sure Delta Three picks you up. Get going."

Waters nodded and tapped his helmet. Slowenski slowly got up, big man that he was, from his comfortable spot and ran over. Owens and Mabrey scrambled off their bellies and the four took off, soon lost down the street.

Now, instead of a replacement team, they were now two teams short. Not much, but an eight-man gain/loss could be the difference between life or death in the field. Now, the remaining teams tried their best to hold off the enemy.

Delta Nine's machine gunner used sweeping fire to keep the enemy at bay, but the enemy proved to be too over whelming for him. He stood up, emptying his belt, and tried to reload when they fell on top of him and, to the horror of his teammates, began devouring him, tearing out is entrails first. Jackson, witnessing, almost threw up.

"KEEP 'EM BACK! KEEP THE-AAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

They had broken through. The pandemonium that reigned was massive. Cops and S.W.A.T tried to pull away but were being yanked in and torn apart by these beings. The U.B.C.S refused to go down without a fight, throwing grenades, firing point-blank at the enemy. But in the end, most, if not all, went down.

"HOLD THE LINE! HOLD THE FUCKING-"

BOOOOM! Another RPG appeared out of nowhere and hit the .50's position. It, Mater Sergeant Martin, and Private Webber were soon lost in a fiery inferno.

"FALL BACK!"

The dreaded call. Retreat. Once it was heard, there was no stopping it. A mass retreat was deadly, and it accomplished nothing. More especially in this case.

The enemy, disregarding all rules of engagement, fell upon all of the living and began to feed off of them. Cops, Delta, S.W.A.T, U.B.C.S, it didn't matter- all were victims.

"Pull Back!" Bradley hauled Foley off the roof and began running. Connors provided suppressing fire as Jones cleared out, firing both his MP-5 and his Remington at once. When his buddies were clear, Connors turned and ran for it.

The Delta Four men all hopped off the roof to begin their run, but this proved to be a mistake; the creatures were waiting for them, and they jumped straight into a slaughter fest. They never stood a chance.

"PULL BACK, GODDAM IT!" Tom screamed to his men. Jackson ran first, firing his SAW in short bursts and then turning completely and running for it. Cribbs went next, but tripped and fell. Tom and Nelson ran up and threw an arm over both their shoulders.

"You alright, man?" Tom asked.

"Yeah, yeah, just… a little woozy," Cribbs answered, pulling off both and running forward.

Nelson turned and fired a three round burst into the nearest head, then turned the other way and ran. Tom fired three rounds into the fray and, with one last look at the mayhem, ran for it.

He caught up to Jackson and grabbed the radio to call to Hughes.

"This is Horan! We have a break-through in our lines! Need immediate evacuation, over!"

He paused for a second. But all that greeted him was static.

Up ahead, Nelson and Cribbs cleared the path of enemy. Tom stayed on the radio.

"Hughes, pick up and get us out of here, goddam it!"

Still no answer. Tom didn't know it yet, but neither Hughes and Greeno, or any other pilots in the fleet, could even know someone was radioing them.

They were on their own.

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Yeah, here it is.

Hope you find it somewhat enjoyable.

Review please.