2045 hours
By now, everybody was sick of the mess on the road. Kim vomited into a gutter. Chavez dried his tears. Boehm took the time to light a cigarette, and took one puff before tossing it into another gutter. Thompson covered the left side of the T-junction, unable to stare at the blood and gore. Johnston played with his carbine a little, something usually found in Hollywood. Anderson read some data from his PDA, probably the information he recovered. I changed the magazine on my carbine, and transferred some bullets from a spacer clip into the one in my M4A1, not an easy task with fingerless gloves. By the time I was done, my fingers were sore.
Anderson toyed around with his PDA for a few seconds before closing it and placing it in his leg pouch. A quick glance at his non-regulation holster revealed that it was custom-built to accept an extremely large pistol with a telescopic sight. Only one pistol could possibly fit that category: a Desert Eagle, custom fitted with a 2-4x telescopic sight and extended barrel.
The Desert Eagle, developed by Magnum Research Inc. and produced by Israeli Military Industries, deserves the dubious honor of being the largest and heaviest handgun ever built in modern times. It has an unconventional look, largely because of the fact that it is produced differently from most handguns: the slide does not cover the barrel; the latter is covered by a single machined piece of metal. Judging by its size, Anderson's model was chambered for the .50 Action Express round, the largest, most powerful pistol round ever produced. The fact that the pistol was originally meant for target/sport shooting failed to discourage Hollywood from using it, or Anderson, for that matter.
"All right, people, five minutes is up. Form up and go. Our next objective is to clear out the area of Raccoon City starting from here to the extract zone. Rules of engagement are still in force," Anderson shouted. The last part meant that if we saw a zombie/monster, we were allowed to blow it away. Human beings were exempt from this order, assuming that they weren't zombies.
I took point, of course. Being point man being the man who leads the way. Coincidentally, he's the man who usually gets shot first in lieu of a better target.
We headed down the right turn of the T-junction, based on Anderson's instructions, keeping to the sidewalks. Nothing stirred from the dead night as we walked, weapons up and covering the area. My carbine trembled in anticipation, not knowing when it would be called upon. Hopefully never, but never is a long time. My trigger finger stayed on the magazine well, ready to return to the trigger at a moment's notice.
We weren't really walking per se: we were crouched into a position about half our height while moving to present a smaller target while maintaining speed. Only problem was; that tactic only works in urban warfare, where enemies are armed with firearms. Nobody ever said anything about enemies who use their body parts instead.
The cool night air was still, undisturbed by the events of the past few days. A few rats scurried around near my boot when we paused to allow the machinegunners to catch up. I scanned the streets, watching and waiting as we moved. Nothing.
A lone moan, uttered by a zombie, came from a three-storey building fifteen meters in front of me. In the distance, there was a regular metallic pounding, as though someone was banging on something made of metal. The road split into another T-junction.
"What the hell's that?" Thompson muttered.
"'That' being?" Boehm answered.
"That banging noise."
"…I don't know, and I intend to find out."
"You crazy, man?" A note of fear tinged his voice.
Fear is never an option. Fear is the mind-killer. It is the little death that will allow other means of death. Boehm, Chan, and I had undergone…special…training in this field, but Thompson was a mere Marine…chances are very high that he had not.
"Pipe down," Anderson whispered over the mike. "Stone, check it out. Chan, Kim, cover him. Rest of you, stay alert."
The two men came up to me.
"Pete, delta formation?" Chan asked.
That meant that each of us take a point of a triangle, the original delta. The whole idea was to maintain the ability to concentrate at least two-thirds of the team's firepower on any one side while maintaining flexibility. However, four men were always preferable to three.
"Okay…I think we might need another man," I answered.
"Yeah…" Kim replied.
"Sir, this is Stone. We need another man for backup," I said over the mike.
"Roger. Johnston, you're up."
Johnston ran up to me.
"Diamond formation. I'll take point. Once we're at the T-junction, we split. Rich, stay with me. Tom, John, stick together and cover our six. If it's a confirmed enemy, kill it. Any objections?" I whispered.
A diamond formation meant that from above, each man in the team takes up each point of a diamond. The idea behind this formation was the same as that of the delta formation. Of course, like all team formations, if any one man fails in his duty, the formation becomes useless.
The men shook their heads. Half a minute later, we were in position, and set off. Raising the carbine, I pointed it at the door, but didn't peer through the Aimpoint reflex sight. That cuts down on peripheral vision.
We half-jogged, half-sprinted, to the intersection, waiting for combat. Upon arrival at the threshold of the junction, Kim and Johnston split away, and headed for the opposite side of the street. All this while, the banging became more regular, more insistent. The stench of death warned us all of the zombies nearby. Chan and I crept forward, weapons up. I turned right, and saw what the banging was all about.
The police had erected several barricades across the length of the street in an effort to contain the zombies' advance. Predictably, the zombies were attempting to break the barricades down to cross. The blue-painted mobile metal walls were the only things standing between us and an almost unstoppable tide of zombies. Judging by the way they were sagging, we didn't have much time before—
A long groan sounded from the building. I turned in time to see Chan cut a zombie down. It was standing at the suddenly open doorway. I turned to him. We nodded.
Running forward, I kept my gun on the doorway as Chan watched our back. When we arrived at the house, I looked through the window next to the door, seeing dark nothingness as my M4A1's muzzle covered the room beyond the window. Activating my night vision goggles; the world became a field of shades of green, revealing two standing man-like shapes in the middle of the room I was looking into. They lurched towards me. Adrenalin rushed through my veins, making time slow down.
I aimed the carbine at the closer of the two zombies and pulled the trigger. It staggered backwards, spraying liquid from its head, and fell. Swiveling right, I aligned the barrel with the second zombie's head and cracked off a three-round burst that opened the zombie's head up, spraying blood and gore around the room. Time returned to normal.
I looked around. Nothing. Recharging the carbine, I turned to the radio mike.
"LT, Stone. There appears to be hostile activity within the house. Requesting permission to clear it."
"Roger, stand by. Move on my mark. Men, move up and secure the T-junction."
I raised the NVGs. They reduce peripheral vision and visual clarity, something I needed on the somewhat-lit city street. The pounding became louder, faster, as though the zombies beyond had found a weak spot. I turned to the rest of the men, seeing them race up the street. For God's sake, hurry up!
Thompson crossed the threshold, and arrived in the middle of the T-junction, the last man among the rest of the mercenary teams. The men moved into position, covering both sides of the street and the windows of the house.
Anderson ordered, "Okay m—"
The barricades collapsed, a metallic crash accompanying their descent. To me, it was the sound of death. The zombies let out animal groans and moans, eager to feast on us. I turned to face the barricades, seeing too many gray-skinned zombies to count.
The mercenaries opened up, spraying automatic fire into the mass. I placed the stock of the carbine well into my shoulder, digging it firmly into the hollow of my shoulder. I picked a target, and blew its head off with a three-round burst. The zombie next to it received the same dose of lead before someone else's burst chopped it in half.
The front line of zombies received the machinegunners' full attention. They went down in a long, loud burst of gunfire and gore, falling where they stood. The 5.56x45mm NATO round was meant to tear into and explode out of bodies with devastating results…on living flesh, within 150 yards. For the zombies, unless they had their spines broken, or their heads shot off, that meant nothing. About one thirds of the original front line were dead. The rest picked themselves up from the ground and marched towards us, ignoring their wounds. I gunned down a pair of wounded zombies, knowing the futility of the current situation. The others opened fire, attempting to stem a tide with shovels.
"Fall back down the road!" Anderson ordered.
We needed no encouragement. Like before, we turned and ran, with the machinegunners and grenadiers giving us covering fire. Explosions and long, chattering bursts filled the night air as we ran.
Being point man also means being the first to turn tail and run. It felt like abandoning my duty, but I still had a job to do. I ran down the street, seeing the architecture shift. Now, there were hotels and cafés up the street. They were no less hostile than the buildings we had gone through.
There was a hotel at the far end of the street, before it became another T-junction. Based on earlier reports, the left side of the junction had been barricaded by the police. The hotel's lights were still on, giving an illusion of hope in a city replete with hopelessness.
"Make for the hotel! We can escape through the back door!" Anderson ordered.
Assuming that there was a back door to begin with.
The gunfire and explosions died away as we approached the hotel, still being chased by the monsters. Its lights beckoned in the distance, almost fading away in a never-ending road. Einstein was right. Time is relative to the observer. He forgot to include distance as well. The road stretched on to infinity, an impossible goal. Abandoned cars lined the street, their owners dead, dying, or soon to die.
A window in a building up ahead shattered, and two creatures jumped out of the hole produced before climbing up the walls. The streetlights illuminated them perfectly. They resembled the four-legged creature we had encountered earlier, possibly siblings. No matter. Time slowed down once more, almost as though allowing me to aim.
I didn't, after a fashion. Raising my carbine, I fired a long burst at them while running. The bullets dug into concrete and flesh, spraying green fluid and dust. A stream of empties were spat out of the M4A1's ejection port as the monsters screamed. One of them fell to the road, its legs kicking out in its death throes. The other one continued for a foot or two before another mercenary's burst knocked it off and down to its death.
There was a car in the middle of the street, the driver's side door open. Judging by the rubber marks, it had swerved to avoid something and had spun ninety degrees or so. A dried blood trail leading from the driver's seat told the tale of its owner. We ran around it, not caring to use it. Yet.
We made it, after a fashion. The run was a little under a mile, about one-fifths of the distance I run every day. I was fresher than most of the others when I arrived. I glanced at the hotel.
It was six stories high, designed to look like another apartment block. Neon lights above the entrance read 'Peace Hotel', an odd name in a city of war. The doors appeared to be built of unusually thick glass, but rifle bullets would shatter them easily. Beyond the doors was the lighted lobby of the hotel, empty of zombies. The familiar stench of death hung in the air like an old friend and enemy combined.
Running over to the T-junction, I looked down the right side of the street.
Shit.
There was another army of zombies heading down the street, consuming all in its path. A dead mercenary, slumped over against a wall, was being eaten by several of them. A couple more settled on the corpses—at least, they looked like corpses—of some dogs on the street. This group had to be larger than the one we were fleeing from, and that one was too large for us to kill.
Soft, insistent pounding resounded from behind. Turning around, I saw two large police barricades stretching across the road, both of which were being hammered against on the other side.
History repeats itself only when people fail to learn from their mistakes. By sticking to wide, open streets, Anderson was constantly exposing us to this sort of danger, and now, we were cornered. Asshole.
"What's that?" Boehm called from behind.
"Incoming zombies on the right turn, and some more are going to break through on the left."
"Shit."
"Aren't we all in it?"
Chan, followed by Anderson and Thompson caught up soon after. Bravo-1 was about a hundred feet away, covering our back. The car was too far away to be of any use; a bullet fired from there would do virtually no damage to the zombies. Shooting at close ranges is the only way to kill them with our weaponry.
"Get the doors open," Anderson ordered.
"Sir, there're some more zombies coming down the street on the right of this junction, and more of them are trying to break through the police barricade on the left," I said.
"What d'you mean?"
"See for yourself."
Anderson did what I did, and turned back, his face grim.
"Stone, breach the doors. Rest of you, cover this road!" he shouted, before turning back and firing off several bursts from his carbine.
Rushing over to the glass doors, I grabbed the metal handles on both doors and pulled. Nothing. A push yielded the same results. Locked. Looking around, I saw the lock. It was mounted on the bottom of the doors, bolting them to the floor.
"Peter Stone, whatever you're doing, make it fast. The zombies are coming this way," Kim reported over the radio.
I raised my carbine, placing the stock under my armpit and pointing it at the door on the left. Squeezing the trigger, I moved the M4A1 about as it roared, spewing out bullets and brass from the appropriate orifices. It moved high and to the right, forcing me to shift it back to the door I was aiming at.
The carbine clicked on empty. For all the damage I had done, the doors hadn't yielded. They had absorbed every bullet in my magazine and remained intact. The bullets remained lodged in the material, useless. The fucking doors weren't ordinary glass; they were bullet-fucking-proof.
That was all right.
"What the hell was that?" Anderson shouted, turning to face me.
"The doors are locked, and they're bulletproof!"
"Shit!"
"I think Chan's M203 grenades will work!"
"Worth a shot. Chan!"
"Sir?"
"Got any more M203 HE (High Explosive) grenades left?"
HE was a misnomer. It was developed to blow up soft-skinned vehicles, notably trucks and jeeps. The ones we were using were prototypes developed for the US Army.
"Yup."
"Okay, use them against the glass doors. Stone, get clear!"
I looked around, seeing a car across the street. Running over to it, I leapt over the hood and crouched behind the engine block, the only part of a car that could theoretically stop a high-velocity rifle round.
A second later, there was a bright flash that lit the area, accompanied by a deep bass boom and shattering of glass. My ears rang again as I looked back at the hotel. The doors had been blown apart, glass shards decorating the interior of the lobby. So had the windows, succumbing to overpressure. The Peace Hotel's locked doors had succumbed to modern tools of war.
"Go, go, go!" Anderson shouted, running over to the entrance of the hotel.
"Incoming!" Bravo-1 shouted.
"What the hell!" I muttered, turning to face them. A rocket was coming our way.
I dove forward, going prone and turning my helmet to face the rocket, following my training. The others did the same.
An explosion echoed throughout the street, throwing out debris and glass shards. They were as lethal as shrapnel to unprotected flesh. A pair of objects lodged themselves into the back of my PASGT (Personal Armor System, Ground Troop) vest. Feeling around with my left hand, I removed two hot glass fragments from the Kevlar fabric before turning around.
The front of the hotel had virtually collapsed. A large, gaping crater had replaced the area above the doors. Fallen debris covered the front of the hotel, blocking off all access to it. The remaining windows had shattered and fallen, along with the façade.
I glanced around. Thompson was on his stomach, staring at me. A chunk of concrete missed Boehm's head by an inch or so. He stood up, unperturbed. Chan was watching our rear when the rocket hit, and was flung forwards for a foot or so, but was all right. Anderson was…gone…
I inspected the debris, and saw a rifle barrel sticking out of it, marking a grave.
Fuck it.
Turning back, I saw the other mercs run towards us, making their way behind the stopped car.
"What happened?" Kim asked from the right side of the trunk, turning to face me.
"A rocket hit the hotel. Anderson's down."
"I'm not going to mourn that asshole's death."
That was the last thing he would say. A long burst of machinegun fire roared through the night, sounding very much like an M240. A round or two took off the top of Kim's exposed head, showering the road with blood, brains and bone. He fell over.
Johnston was standing next to Kim. The car's glass windshield shattered, allowing bullets to slam into Johnston. He stood, transfixed for a second, as round after round slammed into his body. He collapsed after taking several rounds to the chest, and throat. He went down gurgling, air forcing its way through his torn throat and blood creating that horrific sound.
"All, this is Chavez. Kim and Johnston are down!" he reported over the radio.
I didn't freeze, couldn't afford to. Fear leads to death. "Take cover!" I shouted, running to the trunk of the car I was using for cover. Bullets whizzed by me as I moved, cracking windows and digging into walls. I saw a bright muzzle flash in the distance, moving and sending bullet after bullet into the area. The zombies went down like wheat succumbing to a scythe of hot lead.
"Pat! Take out the MG'er!" I yelled.
There was no way the machinegunner would be friendly. Judging by what he/she/it did, it didn't care whether we lived or died, and that made he/she/it hostile.
The sniper crawled up, over to the car in the street. Chavez was using the engine block as cover, probably the only reason why he was still alive. I looked at the shooter again. All I could make out was a shadow about eight feet high, firing a long machinegun. The streetlights around it had failed.
Meanwhile, Chan and Thompson were having problems on their end. They had moved around the corner, towards the zombies coming on our right flank, and started shooting at them. The sounds of gunfire moved steadily closer towards us, a nonverbal progress report. Rather, the lack of it.
"Hurry up!" I shouted at Boehm.
"Relax, man. You're too tense, you know?" he replied, placing the bipod of his rifle on the remains of the car engine block.
A metallic crash echoed throughout the area, coming from the left turn. The barricades had collapsed. Thompson reported that fact a second later. The machinegun spoke again, sending rounds down at us.
Boehm's M24 roared, sending a single hand-loaded .308 Winchester/7.62 mm NATO round towards his target. The muzzle flash angled itself upwards, and disappeared.
"Target down, center head. It's carrying the M240 Umbrella modified."
What the hell?
The M240 machinegun was developed by FN of Belgium as a support weapon on the platoon/company level. Unlike its predecessor, the M60, it worked. Umbrella took that design one step further by adding an extra-large muzzle brake to reduce recoil, a specially thickened barrel to cut down on overheating during sustained fire, and a large backpack full of ammunition that was connected to the weapon by a plastic chute. It contained a total of four thousand 7.62x51 mm rounds in total. However, the firearm was too heavy for troops to carry, and it was extremely difficult to reload the backpack, especially in combat. The idea was supposed to have been scrapped.
How the fuck did the gunner get its hands on that!
"Everybody, this is Stone. I'm taking charge. First, we regroup at the stopped car, and take what ammo we can. Then, we run down this street, and duck into one of the side streets. We'll decide what to do after we lose them," I said into the radio mike.
"Roger," everybody replied.
Running over to the mercs, I rummaged through the corpses. I came away with four spacer clips a box of machinegun ammo, and six fragmentary grenades. When the others arrived, I handed out the ammunition and grenades. I retrieved their dog tags as well.
"Okay, go!" I shouted.
Picking ourselves up, we rushed down the streets, leaving the corpses behind. We avoided the corpses on the street and the zombies behind, concentrating only on survival. We kept on running, boots splashing puddles of blood and gore.
I was the first the reach the machinegunner, spread-eagled against the floor, surrounded by a virtual flood of brass casings.
What the hell?
It couldn't be human. It had smooth, pale skin, almost albino, in fact. Its eyes were unnaturally large, almost like a cat's. There was a single, smoking hole in between its eyes, courtesy of Boehm. Its mouth was sealed into a robotic, almost menacing grimace. It had no hair to speak of. A pool of blood gathered around the back of its head.
It was dressed in a long, flowing black coat, still gripping the modified M240 in its gloved right hand and wearing its ammunition backpack. Its left hand was clad in a black leather glove, like its right. A discarded rocket launcher lay next to it. Judging by the design, it was a LAW (Light Antitank Weapon), meant for antitank purposes. The coat covered its legs, and it was wearing custom-ordered black leather shoes. I was right on its size. It really was eight foot tall. Damn…where the hell did this come from? How the hell did it get its hands on hardware like that? How the hell did it even know how to use them!
I ran down the street, followed by the others, the zombies hot on our trail. There had to be a side street, an alley, whatever, down the road, somewhere we could duck into and lose the zombies.
I hope.
Author's Note: I'm back, and have somewhat recovered from my writer's block. The beginning of this chapter may not make sense, unless you've read the previous chapter, updated fairly recently. In case you're wondering, no, the eight-foot tall monster ISN'T Nemesis.