Biohazard, Part III

Disclaimer: Same rules apply. A line of * indicates a change in perspective, a line of - indicates a change in time forward or backward. This takes place before, during, and after the Biohazard Part I and II.

The Porpoise class submersible glided through the inky depths of the ocean, guided by the deft hands of its pilot, twenty-year-old Machinists Mate Third Class Victor Garibaldi of Orlando, Florida. The United Systems Navy operated its submarine training facility out of Bayville, New Jersey along with several oceanic research vessels, aboard, which Garibaldi served.

This was his first solo with the Porpoise class multi-role submersible, no instructor behind him haranguing him over mistakes made, nothing but himself and the waters that surrounded him. It was cold inside the submersible and Garibaldi shivered in spite of his green submariner's jacket. As his searchlights flashed they shined upon a peculiar obelisk.

Two hours later, the obelisk was raised to the surface and prepped for transport to the Isla Del Rio research facility. Garibaldi was assigned to an undersea habitat placed to study the old ruins near the obelisk. It was almost thereafter where the difficulty began.



In the submersible maintenance bay, Victor Garibaldi was made aware of this when he heard what sounded like gunshots and screams echoing down the passageway of the undersea habitat. He was going down the passageway to investigate when he was made aware, painfully, that he was unarmed. A crewman staggered his way, "Are you alright?" Garibaldi said.

Nothing but a groan escaped from the crewman's throat. And it was when he ventured closer that Garibaldi smelled the stench of rot. He looked around frantically for a weapon and saw a derelict pulse rifle lying on the floor. The zombie was between him and the pulse rifle. Skirting around it, he scooped the weapon up, turned around as the zombie was bearing down on top of him and squeezed off a shot, the zombie taking the 10mm explosive round to the chest. It kept coming. Garibaldi squeezed of two more shots, killing it finally, but the gunshots drew out more zombies and Garibaldi realized that the rifle only had one magazine, and he wasn't sure if it had been fully loaded. Retreat seemed like the best option and he took it.

As he reached the temporary shelter of a storage bay, he weighed his options. First was to try and find more ammunition and weapons, also to get to his room in the enlisted barracks to retrieve some additional firepower in the form of his Auto Ordinance M1911A1 .45 caliber pistol and three spare magazines.

He found the additional ammo he was looking for from a dead marine lying face up on the deck. He grabbed the bandolier from the corpse's shoulder, slung it across his chest and saw that the body armor on the corpse was totally useless, as it had been destroyed. Pity, the marine was about his size too. His clip was half full and Garibaldi moved cautiously through the corridors rifle at the ready, ready to put rounds into whatever had killed several of the personnel in his sector of the habitat.



Almost a year far removed from the situation developing in the undersea habitat, Vincent Taine rubbed his cold finger tips together in the frozen basement he and his men were holed up inside. Looking past his machinegun at the water fountain on a nearby intersection where many on both sides had been cut down trying to reach it, an unreachable oasis across a desert of ice.

The 3rd Marine expeditionary unit had landed a few weeks ago and the distant chord of pummeling artillery off in the distance were the sounds of their approach but they seemed far removed from the savage fighting over wrecked shells of gutted buildings.

What had seemed like a grim situation where the Seventh Army was in immediate danger of annihilation was beginning to turn around but the men in the cellar saw only the daily fighting, a single machinegun interdicting side streets from the basement's few sources of light save for the loopholes knocked into the wall to fire rifle shots out of, the window where the machinegun was protruding.

A soldier climbed the steps of the cellar to relieve Taine at the machinegun and Taine scooped up his electric gun and went down to his section of the wall where he stowed his gear.



A wrecked half-track was the scene of a fierce fight where a massive force of enemy infantry was kept stalled by a force of two snipers and surviving half-track crewmen of the 144th Australian. With only their sniper rifles, weapons salvaged from the wreckage, and a single machine gun with a few belts of ammunition things didn't look too promising. They were a block away from Taine's basement and it's machinegun's field of fire.

PFC Beasley, one of the snipers along with his spotter PFC Watkins an Aborigine from the Outback, tracked individual zombies through telescopic sights as the enemy force closed on the wrecked half-track. Firing again, two zombies telescoped downward, dead.

Watkins reloaded another twenty round magazine into his Borchadtz semi automatic sniper rifle as a lull in the action began. Chambering a round into his Lindstradt bolt action rifle, Beasley's field glasses confirmed what the lack of noise suggested, no enemy forces present.

Again the enemy forces appeared, this time the zombies were accompanied by a force of slashers. Watkins targeted a slashed between the eyes and opened fire. Moving about the wreckage, the two snipers picked off attacking enemy soldiers with deadly accuracy. The two half-track crewmen, PFC Leon Canby and Corporal Ernie Faye, fired machinegun bursts into the enemy swarm.

Beasley tracked a slasher running towards the machine gunners at full tilt and drilled it through the chest as a fragment from a drill bit struck him in the arm. Watkins hit the drill wielding slasher in the middle of the forehead.

Beasley fired again, despite the wounded arm and the zombie telescoped forward with a round blown through its chest. The contest continued and as his rifle ammunition was depleted he drew his pistol and continued fighting. Watkins, his rifle down to five rounds, handed it over to one of the two half-track crewmen and drew his own pistol. Both Watkins and Beasley were killed.



Taine and the men in his cellar could hear the gunfight, which was just out of the machinegun's field of fire. Muldoon in the other building couldn't fire the mortar for risk of hitting the other troops and mortar rounds were growing scarce, ammunition had to be rationed.

Another lull in the fighting, another deadly silence in the ruins, save for the occasional rifle shot or distant shell burst. Because of the size of the enemy force, Taine put every man in the cellar on alert. Twelve pairs of eyes peered through the few windows and firing slits in their basement and tension mounted to a point where every shadow was a zombie, every rustle of leaves the sound of a mass assault.

At the machinegun, Taine looked out of the window. For almost twenty-seven days he and his men had been confined in the dark basement, their only contact being a single squad radio and the occasional runner bringing information and ammunition needed for a day's fighting.

Taine sought to remove himself from the hellish fighting that was daily life in Dyson and he began to reach back, seven years into the past as he remembered the ankh affixed to his dog tags. He reminisced about a time where he wasn't sitting in a dark basement at a machinegun fighting a seemingly pointless holding action until the impossibly far away Marines could link up with him.



"Vincent," Kitty said, "Come here, I found something."

Vincent Taine turned around toward her, a delicate brunette with clear blue eyes who was a few yards away, excavating at a square of ground at the expedition site. This was a Vincent Taine seven years removed from the one holed up in the basement. As Kitty brushed the dust away from a ceramic fragment of some sort, she gestured him over.

"What did you find?" Vincent asked.

"I've never seen anything like it. From what I know it reads, One obelisk for it to awaken, another for it to arise. Needs any man to sound its waking call, needs one only to return it to its rest."

"Kitty, what is 'it' though?" Taine asked.

"I have no idea, but there's apparently more of it somewhere around here." Kitty said, "I'm taking this to the research tent."

"I'll go with you." Taine replied.

"So I heard you're going into the Army." Kitty said.

"I am." Taine said.

"Why aren't you going to school?" Kitty said.

"Well, Kit, I want to see the world for a few years before I go back and get stuck in the classroom and study Egyptology." Taine replied. He wanted to say what was really on his mind, that he was in love with her, but he couldn't say it. The Army offered a convenient run away and he was taking it.

"When are you leaving?" Kitty asked.

"Next week." Taine replied.

Kitty dug into a pocket, as they stopped under the shade of a statue of Horus, "Take this with you."

She pressed a tiny silver ankh into his hand, "An ankh."

"A symbol of life, I know." Taine replied, grinning.

"A symbol of eternal life," Kitty replied, grinning back, "Don't you pay attention."

"I do. When I need to that is." Taine replied.

"Another gift from a good friend, before you go." Kitty said, putting her arms around him in a friendly way. He returned the hug and sat under the statue of the god of life as Kitty left him alone with his thoughts.

He left for Basic the next week, but that memory of that moment under the statue of Horus where things could have been different where he could have said what he felt haunted him.

Even when he sat his post at the machinegun years later, he thought about that moment and rubbed the tiny ankh between his fingers, a symbol of life inside a place where death abounded.



The rubble of the wrecked city proved to be the perfect place for snipers. The 7th Army realized that trained marksmen scouring the front picking off targets of opportunity would be perfect to harass, confound, and confuse the enemy, keeping them off balance. It was when this directive was instituted that a modest, unassuming nineteen year old, Private Frank Mackenzie from the 3rd Infantry, jumped into the front lines.

Moving from ruin to ruin, the snipers hunted targets of opportunity, supported infantry positions under heavy attack, and conducted daring delaying operations. It wasn't an easy war, though; frequently creatures equipped with their own sniper weapon systems went to counter the sniper threat.

Over the radio in the shelter where the snipers were quartered, Mackenzie heard of a strong enemy presence near the central plaza. Climbing into a clock tower overlooking the plaza, Mackenzie spotted a platoon of enemy infantry maneuvering around the square. Other snipers had taken positions throughout the plaza.

Zeroing in his telescopic sight on a single slasher, Mackenzie squeezed the trigger. The slasher was struck in the chest, a little upward and to the right of its heart. Mackenzie knew what he was doing, attempting to lure out the healer, a spidery creature that would secrete a sort of healing salve onto wounded creatures to close wounds and enable them to fight.

It didn't seem to be coming out though, as Mackenzie tracked along the rubble with his telescopic sight, a round chambered in long after he had expended the first shot. Then he saw it, moving stealthily through the shadows. Shifting his aim, leading just a little, his left eye closed for focus, he breathed in let half of it out and squeezed. Dead center, fatal wound inflicted at point of impact, he had just hurt the enemy platoon's effectiveness by a third. Pulling back on the bolt, he continued to pan for targets. A single zombie shambling through the square presented a tempting target, but for all he knew an enemy sniper had set it out for bait. Lying low seemed to be the best idea.



The 11th Armored, the mobile reserve suffered a horrific attack concentrated on its positions. For two hours energy orbs rained into the northern part of Dyson City, when the barrage lifted, thousands of enemy troops rushed the cellars as USM machine gunners fired their last belts of ammunition.

The stronghold began to collapse as several troops panicked and stormed to the rear. The first wind Taine had of this was when he saw several soldiers in full retreat, their patches those of the 11th Armored Division. Several of them hastily dug into many of the cellars and ruins, others continued on further to the rear.

An 11th Armored tank crewman jumped into their cellar and nearly got shot by the jumpy men inside. "What's going on?" Taine asked.

"They've taken the northern side of town, they kicked the shit out of us. They overtook the command post when I was on the run." The soldier said.

"What've you got?" Taine asked.

"A rifle, and about half a bandolier." The soldier said.

"Well you just joined infantry, tanker." Taine replied, kicking a firing loophole out of the stairwell wall.

The folded in 11th Division flank, and indeed the entire well entrenched but reeling 7th Army, was expecting an attack on every sector. The front had been echoing with rifle shots and other noises of war but usually off in a distance and the result of minor engagements. The Marines were still far off, within city limits, but still far off, fighting their way through enemy positions in the rubble.

The thirteen men crammed into Taine's cellar were ragged and worn from all the fighting going on all around them. The tank crewman, who introduced himself as a PFC Reinman, was manning the machinegun as Taine poked his electric gun through the firing loophole.

The din of city fighting echoed outside in the distance. Every now and then, artillery explosions would sound from the distant Marine artillery and armored units pummeling frontline enemy positions. The Marines had developed a tactic in which special weapons platoons would pummel enemy positions along the line of advance, and teams of combat engineers backed by a phalanx of armor and infantry would drive the creatures from hiding as the infantry fell upon them.

Despite this, the soldiers of the 144th Australian regiment, the unit closest to the Marine axis of advance, the enemy continued assaulting their positions at all hours of the day.

Taine crouched behind a wall, peering out at the ruins, watching for approaching creatures. Already several bodies littered the approach between him and the water fountain on the intersection. The bodies were covered over by a thin blanket of newly fallen snow, blurring their outlines. Taine saw the flash of a starburst shell fired from a rear battery. Taine yelled into the cellar for the men to wake up as gunfire echoed up and down the line. A soldier took post at the machinegun as a line of zombies, slashers and shriekers attacked the 144th's section of the front. Taine fired his electric gun in short bursts of fatal electricity that killed or severely injured any creature they hit, but they kept coming, several making it under the torrent of fire from the machinegun. Taine zapped one zombie and it kept coming, it's flesh singed by the electrical blast. He pulled out his pistol he had salvaged from a casualty a long time ago upon realizing his energy pack was nearly depleted and fired a round through the zombie's head. Firing his pistol until the clip went empty, he dug through an ammo pouch hanging by his side, pulling free another energy pack. By now, several zombies had come through one of the firing loopholes and the men below the staircase were fighting hand to hand to keep them out.

A blast from below caught their attention, and from the tunnel six Marine combat engineers joined them. Using electric guns, flamethrowers, pistols, knives and fists, the combat engineers managed to drive the zombies out of the basement.

The tunnels were a tenuous link between the forward Marine elements and the beleaguered 7th Army. Several of them had been blasted under the buildings or into the sewer system as a means of transporting supplies and reinforcements as well as evacuating wounded soldiers from crude field hospitals where Army doctors did their best to save them.

One combat engineer from the 29th Marine Combat Engineering regiment described a typical field hospital, converted from a promenade in what was once a large shopping mall, "Here you see doctors and orderlies racing about between cots and sometimes even shelves on walls attempting to treat wounded soldiers. There are too many for them to treat each one effectively, and more often than not, one in three manages to survive. You see all manner of wounds among the soldiers; everything from cuts and punctures wounds to lacerated limbs. One sees bodies of the deceased stacked like cargo to the far end of the room. Some of the soldiers scream without letup, others just sit or lie about listlessly. The smell is rancid, reeking of gangrene and decay."

Both the Marine and Army units they supported best loved the combat engineers. Their tasks were typically the most hazardous as they were tasked with driving out the remaining opposition from the cracked shells of buildings after artillery, armor, and mortars had pummeled the buildings, often with infantry behind them.



An eighteen-year-old PFC Henry Saundby, of the 29th Combat Engineers was on one such mission. The Marines were firing artillery rounds into the wrecked remains of an office building, as the tanks added their .75- millimeter shells and .50 caliber machineguns into the mix. Then the mortars started lobbing shells into the building. Then the call for the combat engineers came in.

Saundby checked the charge on his electric gun, a weapon specialized for close in fighting as the two flamethrower specialists moved in on point, throwing grenades into rooms and blasting fire down passageways, immolating several creatures.

Saundby threw a satchel charge up a stairwell and it exploded into a flash, killing several zombies. The flamethrowers fired next, spreading arcs of flame into the building, which had been used as a command post by the 11th Armored Division before it had been overrun. Flames licked up long dead bodies, gas which had been building up inside them ignited in blue puffs. It was a horrific sight that the baby faced Saundby would never forget.

A slasher came charging at them just as Staff Sergeant Flint yelled, "Clear."

Saundby put a fatal charge through the slasher, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he shook violently. The Marines had taken this building with no casualties. But the fighting in the city was far from over.

________________________________________________________________________

Back at the undersea habitat, Victor Garibaldi crept silently on tiptoes through the zombie-infested corridors to the enlisted barracks. He opened his locker, pulling out a small backpack, two boxes of ammunition and both his pistol and his three clips. He loaded one clip, holstered the .45 and shouldered the pack as he made his way towards the armory. He grabbed a bandolier off one of the racks and placed several more spare clips into his pack. He decided to sit back and plan first as to his next step. Now that he was better armed, escaping from the undersea habitat seemed the best option.

To be continued.