"Sir, I don't think we can get through them. There's too many..."
Joel stared in awe at the hundreds upon hundreds of zombies that milled about in the street before them. The sheer number of them was staggering, and his little unit did not have the firepower or vehicles to get through them. Their only choice was to turn around.
"Ok boys, let's get this convoy turned around, we're gonna have to take a different route..."
"Um, Sergeant, I think that's a negative on that different route, look to our six o'clock."
Joel shifted his gaze to the rear of the convoy and swore. A separate horde of zombies had appeared and even now was closing off their exit. Joel saw the desperate need for them to move so acted instantly.
"Everyone get your vehicles turned around! We need to blow through those zombies before they mass in the street and block us off. It's our only chance, shoot them down if you can, run them over if you can't. Go now!"
A moment later, the Humvees and police cruisers were all desperately maneuvering to turn around and head in the other direction. Already the zombie mass was thickening and it was questionable whether or not the convoy would be able to break through. Had the Humvees been in the lead, they might have made it. But the police cruisers were ahead and tearing rampantly into the zombies.
Officers hung out the windows trying to shoot as many of the zombies in their path as possible, but there were too many, and the shotguns the police carried proved inadequate in mowing down large numbers of stumbling zombies.
The Marines and Delta operators similarly hung out of their windows, and were using their automatic weapons to a greater effect. And the .50 caliber Ma Deuce's on the tops of the Humvees reaped a savage tally on the zombies, but were held in check by the Marines for fear of hitting the squad cars ahead of them.
Seconds after the initial charge, the squad cars' progress through the crowd immediately slowed as more and more zombies spilled out into the street in front of them. One cruiser, an SUV, continued to plow through the zombies like the Humvees, but the other two Chevy Impalas were slowed and eventually stopped. The convoy had been broken up and the lone SUV charged ahead while the Marines stopped the Humvees by the stalled cruisers to pick up the officers.
"Let's go! Debark and create a perimeter! Clear these bastards out and load those officers, we need to get out of here!"
The Humvees formed a circle around the two patrol cars and the Marines and Delta got out to provide covering fire for the officers. Eight officers got out of the squad cars and ran to the nearest Humvee while the Marines and Delta tried vainly to keep the zombies at bay. Closer and closer the zombie advanced, many of their number falling to the devastating firepower of the soldiers and Marines, but not nearly enough to halt their stumbling walk.
Already the zombies had closed to within twenty feet of the circle and were advancing still when Joel looked past them to see the progress of the other police car. It too had been stopped and was swarming with zombies. Gunfire exploded from within, blasting zombie off the body of the SUV and two officers tried to climb out onto the roof. One made it, but the other was pulled from the vehicle when he slid out the window. He was dragged to the ground screaming and covered in zombies seconds later.
The last officer stood on the roof of the SUV and fired into the horde surrounding him. A zombie would attempt to climb onto the roof and he would shoot it, sending it plunging back into the mass below. But after about thirty seconds, his shotgun was silent and he dropped it to the roof. He un-holstered his pistol and began firing randomly at zombies while screaming in fear.
The zombies swarmed onto the car and brought the screaming officer down, devouring him on the roof of the SUV. Joel shook his head and continued firing at the zombies near him.
"Carlos, we've got to get out of here. And there's no way we can drive through them, they'll just swarm us like that."
"Yeah, but we've got to do something quick, or they'll just swarm us anyway!"
One of the big .50 cals on the lead Humvee stopped firing.
"Gunny, this one's out of ammo!"
Baker, on the other .50 on the second Humvee yelled, "I'm running low too Sarge!"
"Johnson, get on the radio and tell C&C we need and airlift or an airstrike, right now. Tell them right goddamn now or we're finished!"
"Yes sir!"
Johnson raised the Command Center and tried to call in air support while everyone around him tried to buy them time.
The zombie crowd that had initially blocked the convoy's path had been attracted to the fray and was now threatening to overrun the backside of the circle. On both ends, zombies closed in on the small circle of men.
"Sarge! These guys are almost on me!"
Closer and closer still the zombie got, the Marines and Delta and remaining officers could not, it seemed, even put a dent in their number. The horde seemed undiminished and now zombies had reached the northernmost Humvee and began crawling over its hood.
"Gregory! Get the hell out of there!"
The Marine leaped to comply and abandoned his position behind the .50 cal which had just run out of ammunition. He sprinted back to the inner circle which had compressed against the south side of the ring of Humvees.
"Form two lines each way! First line fires then second line fires when the first reloads. Pour it on, or we won't survive to get airlifted out!"
"Sir, C&C says a Blackhawk is on the way."
"A BLACKHAWK? How the hell do they think we're all going to fit on a single fucking Blackhawk?"
The Marines and Delta formed the four lines and the officers moved to the sides to protect their flanks. Zombies were pushing past the northern Humvee and were beginning to cross the southern as well. All three .50 cals were silent now, and all the Marines and Delta were firing with deadly accuracy with their rifles.
The piles of zombie bodies were growing, almost building walls in front of the desperate men. This slowed the advance, but did not stop it. Wretched, rotten forms crawled and staggered over other, broken and rotting forms that lay limply before them in spreading pools of filth.
Joel looked above but saw no sign of the helicopter. His apprehension grew as he saw one of the police officer's fire getting increasingly haphazard. His shotgun shells were striking the police car in front of him more than any zombies and Joel was about to reprimand him when Murphy struck the battlefield.
A stray shell ricocheted off the concrete and struck the gas tank of the car. Fuel began leaking out of the tank and followed the downhill gradient of the street to beneath the northern Humvee. Another stray shot from the shocked officer set the fuel ablaze which in turn spread fire to the police car and the Humvee.
The fire spread and damaged the cars, but didn't seem to be too much of a danger until it strayed too close to a stick of C4 which had been misplaced in the rush to leave St. Laurence and knocked out onto the street. He heat and fire ignited the volatile compound and sent and explosion ripping through the Humvee which ignited another five pounds of C4. The resulting explosion obliterated most of the zombies north of the defending Marines and Delta, but it also wiped out most of the northern line of defenders while knocking down the rest along with all the other zombies in the street.
Joel rose dazedly a minute later, trying to clear his head from the pounding in his ears. A few of his Marines staggered to their feet while three Delta operators and a single surviving police officer got up. The rest lay dead on the ground.
He took stock of the dead and noted, disheartened, that Hansen, Carlos, Baker, Gregory, Knox, Pierce, and Stanton were dead. Altogether there were only eight survivors from an original group of thirty-five men.
Though the humans got up quickly, the zombies did not, and the first had barely made it to its knees when the Blackhawk appeared in the sky. It came down the wide street and touched down to the north of the survivors where the space was clearest because of the explosion. The crew chiefs signaled them to hurry as the zombies were stirring again.
"We're not leaving them behind for those things. Who's got a thermite grenade?"
"I got two sir..."
"Torch the bodies, let's move!"
Crisp pulled the pins on both his grenades and waited for everyone to get clear before rolling them into the pile of bodies. Then he turned and ran for the chopper as the thermite grenades went off, vaporizing most of the remains and setting the rest on fire to burn away. In the chopper, Joel gave the blazing pile a quick salute and watched the flames rise as the chopper lifted off.
"Damn those things..."
Ten minutes later the chopper set down inside the college stadium and let the survivors out. Then it took off again, following up on some other mission. The survivors stepped down, charred and soiled, in stark contrast to the freshly uniformed Rangers who greeted them.
"Goddamn, looks like you've been through hell."
Joel just looked vacantly at the Ranger as he walked past to report to the CO of the safe zone. His three remaining Marines followed loyally behind and the Delta operators followed suit. The officer looked up and found everyone gone and wandered about confused.
Joel limped into the command tent, looking every bit as tired as he felt for having been in the field for more than a week. His face was blacked past its usual dark color from the explosion, and blood seeped from a shrapnel wound on his arm. But he walked into the tent none the less and saluted the Army colonel sitting behind a fold out table covered with papers.
"Sir, Gunnery Sergeant Joel Roscord, reporting from Grid H, Sector 32. I also have the survivors from a Delta unit sir, Grid G."
The three Delta operators stepped forward and saluted the colonel.
"Good job out there Gunny, I heard your unit facilitated the evacuation of more than two hundred civilians. That's excellent work. You and your men will receive commendations for this."
Joel signed inwardly at the empty promise. It was empty because first of all, Joel knew that it would never happen, but most importantly because medals and citations didn't mean anything to the men he had lost.
"Sir, with all due respect, most of my men are lying dead on the road. We burned they're bodies because we couldn't carry them out on the one chopper, and because we don't leave our own behind."
"I understand your feelings Sergeant, and I'm sorry to have come off as being too condescending. I appreciate the sacrifice you and your men made, and this country appreciates it. Those civies out there appreciate it. And once this disaster is over, they will all know about it. You have my word."
"My men don't need the recognition sir, there are hundreds of Marines and soldiers doing the same thing across the country, it's the job. I'm sorry I'm bitter about my men sir, but they were my responsibility, and I'm just a bit touchy right now."
The colonel nodded appreciatively.
"I understand Sergeant. Well you men are all due for some downtime, so go get chow and hit a rack. Rest up, we'll been needing you soon enough. For the time being, I'm consolidating the seven of you into one unit. We're not going to get any reinforcements for a while now, so we'll have to make due with what we've got. Dismissed."
Joel and the others all saluted and waited for the colonel to return the salute before wheeling about and exiting the tent. Once outside they looked about for a moment, searching for a chow line and a place to hang up their helmets for a moment and put up their feet and sleep.
Author's note: Please review, let me know any ideas you have, anything you'd like to see and I'll see if I can fit it into the story somehow.
Joel stared in awe at the hundreds upon hundreds of zombies that milled about in the street before them. The sheer number of them was staggering, and his little unit did not have the firepower or vehicles to get through them. Their only choice was to turn around.
"Ok boys, let's get this convoy turned around, we're gonna have to take a different route..."
"Um, Sergeant, I think that's a negative on that different route, look to our six o'clock."
Joel shifted his gaze to the rear of the convoy and swore. A separate horde of zombies had appeared and even now was closing off their exit. Joel saw the desperate need for them to move so acted instantly.
"Everyone get your vehicles turned around! We need to blow through those zombies before they mass in the street and block us off. It's our only chance, shoot them down if you can, run them over if you can't. Go now!"
A moment later, the Humvees and police cruisers were all desperately maneuvering to turn around and head in the other direction. Already the zombie mass was thickening and it was questionable whether or not the convoy would be able to break through. Had the Humvees been in the lead, they might have made it. But the police cruisers were ahead and tearing rampantly into the zombies.
Officers hung out the windows trying to shoot as many of the zombies in their path as possible, but there were too many, and the shotguns the police carried proved inadequate in mowing down large numbers of stumbling zombies.
The Marines and Delta operators similarly hung out of their windows, and were using their automatic weapons to a greater effect. And the .50 caliber Ma Deuce's on the tops of the Humvees reaped a savage tally on the zombies, but were held in check by the Marines for fear of hitting the squad cars ahead of them.
Seconds after the initial charge, the squad cars' progress through the crowd immediately slowed as more and more zombies spilled out into the street in front of them. One cruiser, an SUV, continued to plow through the zombies like the Humvees, but the other two Chevy Impalas were slowed and eventually stopped. The convoy had been broken up and the lone SUV charged ahead while the Marines stopped the Humvees by the stalled cruisers to pick up the officers.
"Let's go! Debark and create a perimeter! Clear these bastards out and load those officers, we need to get out of here!"
The Humvees formed a circle around the two patrol cars and the Marines and Delta got out to provide covering fire for the officers. Eight officers got out of the squad cars and ran to the nearest Humvee while the Marines and Delta tried vainly to keep the zombies at bay. Closer and closer the zombie advanced, many of their number falling to the devastating firepower of the soldiers and Marines, but not nearly enough to halt their stumbling walk.
Already the zombies had closed to within twenty feet of the circle and were advancing still when Joel looked past them to see the progress of the other police car. It too had been stopped and was swarming with zombies. Gunfire exploded from within, blasting zombie off the body of the SUV and two officers tried to climb out onto the roof. One made it, but the other was pulled from the vehicle when he slid out the window. He was dragged to the ground screaming and covered in zombies seconds later.
The last officer stood on the roof of the SUV and fired into the horde surrounding him. A zombie would attempt to climb onto the roof and he would shoot it, sending it plunging back into the mass below. But after about thirty seconds, his shotgun was silent and he dropped it to the roof. He un-holstered his pistol and began firing randomly at zombies while screaming in fear.
The zombies swarmed onto the car and brought the screaming officer down, devouring him on the roof of the SUV. Joel shook his head and continued firing at the zombies near him.
"Carlos, we've got to get out of here. And there's no way we can drive through them, they'll just swarm us like that."
"Yeah, but we've got to do something quick, or they'll just swarm us anyway!"
One of the big .50 cals on the lead Humvee stopped firing.
"Gunny, this one's out of ammo!"
Baker, on the other .50 on the second Humvee yelled, "I'm running low too Sarge!"
"Johnson, get on the radio and tell C&C we need and airlift or an airstrike, right now. Tell them right goddamn now or we're finished!"
"Yes sir!"
Johnson raised the Command Center and tried to call in air support while everyone around him tried to buy them time.
The zombie crowd that had initially blocked the convoy's path had been attracted to the fray and was now threatening to overrun the backside of the circle. On both ends, zombies closed in on the small circle of men.
"Sarge! These guys are almost on me!"
Closer and closer still the zombie got, the Marines and Delta and remaining officers could not, it seemed, even put a dent in their number. The horde seemed undiminished and now zombies had reached the northernmost Humvee and began crawling over its hood.
"Gregory! Get the hell out of there!"
The Marine leaped to comply and abandoned his position behind the .50 cal which had just run out of ammunition. He sprinted back to the inner circle which had compressed against the south side of the ring of Humvees.
"Form two lines each way! First line fires then second line fires when the first reloads. Pour it on, or we won't survive to get airlifted out!"
"Sir, C&C says a Blackhawk is on the way."
"A BLACKHAWK? How the hell do they think we're all going to fit on a single fucking Blackhawk?"
The Marines and Delta formed the four lines and the officers moved to the sides to protect their flanks. Zombies were pushing past the northern Humvee and were beginning to cross the southern as well. All three .50 cals were silent now, and all the Marines and Delta were firing with deadly accuracy with their rifles.
The piles of zombie bodies were growing, almost building walls in front of the desperate men. This slowed the advance, but did not stop it. Wretched, rotten forms crawled and staggered over other, broken and rotting forms that lay limply before them in spreading pools of filth.
Joel looked above but saw no sign of the helicopter. His apprehension grew as he saw one of the police officer's fire getting increasingly haphazard. His shotgun shells were striking the police car in front of him more than any zombies and Joel was about to reprimand him when Murphy struck the battlefield.
A stray shell ricocheted off the concrete and struck the gas tank of the car. Fuel began leaking out of the tank and followed the downhill gradient of the street to beneath the northern Humvee. Another stray shot from the shocked officer set the fuel ablaze which in turn spread fire to the police car and the Humvee.
The fire spread and damaged the cars, but didn't seem to be too much of a danger until it strayed too close to a stick of C4 which had been misplaced in the rush to leave St. Laurence and knocked out onto the street. He heat and fire ignited the volatile compound and sent and explosion ripping through the Humvee which ignited another five pounds of C4. The resulting explosion obliterated most of the zombies north of the defending Marines and Delta, but it also wiped out most of the northern line of defenders while knocking down the rest along with all the other zombies in the street.
Joel rose dazedly a minute later, trying to clear his head from the pounding in his ears. A few of his Marines staggered to their feet while three Delta operators and a single surviving police officer got up. The rest lay dead on the ground.
He took stock of the dead and noted, disheartened, that Hansen, Carlos, Baker, Gregory, Knox, Pierce, and Stanton were dead. Altogether there were only eight survivors from an original group of thirty-five men.
Though the humans got up quickly, the zombies did not, and the first had barely made it to its knees when the Blackhawk appeared in the sky. It came down the wide street and touched down to the north of the survivors where the space was clearest because of the explosion. The crew chiefs signaled them to hurry as the zombies were stirring again.
"We're not leaving them behind for those things. Who's got a thermite grenade?"
"I got two sir..."
"Torch the bodies, let's move!"
Crisp pulled the pins on both his grenades and waited for everyone to get clear before rolling them into the pile of bodies. Then he turned and ran for the chopper as the thermite grenades went off, vaporizing most of the remains and setting the rest on fire to burn away. In the chopper, Joel gave the blazing pile a quick salute and watched the flames rise as the chopper lifted off.
"Damn those things..."
Ten minutes later the chopper set down inside the college stadium and let the survivors out. Then it took off again, following up on some other mission. The survivors stepped down, charred and soiled, in stark contrast to the freshly uniformed Rangers who greeted them.
"Goddamn, looks like you've been through hell."
Joel just looked vacantly at the Ranger as he walked past to report to the CO of the safe zone. His three remaining Marines followed loyally behind and the Delta operators followed suit. The officer looked up and found everyone gone and wandered about confused.
Joel limped into the command tent, looking every bit as tired as he felt for having been in the field for more than a week. His face was blacked past its usual dark color from the explosion, and blood seeped from a shrapnel wound on his arm. But he walked into the tent none the less and saluted the Army colonel sitting behind a fold out table covered with papers.
"Sir, Gunnery Sergeant Joel Roscord, reporting from Grid H, Sector 32. I also have the survivors from a Delta unit sir, Grid G."
The three Delta operators stepped forward and saluted the colonel.
"Good job out there Gunny, I heard your unit facilitated the evacuation of more than two hundred civilians. That's excellent work. You and your men will receive commendations for this."
Joel signed inwardly at the empty promise. It was empty because first of all, Joel knew that it would never happen, but most importantly because medals and citations didn't mean anything to the men he had lost.
"Sir, with all due respect, most of my men are lying dead on the road. We burned they're bodies because we couldn't carry them out on the one chopper, and because we don't leave our own behind."
"I understand your feelings Sergeant, and I'm sorry to have come off as being too condescending. I appreciate the sacrifice you and your men made, and this country appreciates it. Those civies out there appreciate it. And once this disaster is over, they will all know about it. You have my word."
"My men don't need the recognition sir, there are hundreds of Marines and soldiers doing the same thing across the country, it's the job. I'm sorry I'm bitter about my men sir, but they were my responsibility, and I'm just a bit touchy right now."
The colonel nodded appreciatively.
"I understand Sergeant. Well you men are all due for some downtime, so go get chow and hit a rack. Rest up, we'll been needing you soon enough. For the time being, I'm consolidating the seven of you into one unit. We're not going to get any reinforcements for a while now, so we'll have to make due with what we've got. Dismissed."
Joel and the others all saluted and waited for the colonel to return the salute before wheeling about and exiting the tent. Once outside they looked about for a moment, searching for a chow line and a place to hang up their helmets for a moment and put up their feet and sleep.
Author's note: Please review, let me know any ideas you have, anything you'd like to see and I'll see if I can fit it into the story somehow.