The Failed Coward Page 19

  “GO! GO! GO!” Kevin waved his men forward, and they stacked up without a thought, and entered the dark innards of the building through the drifting cloud of explosive residue.

  Each man was a professional warrior. For a week prior to today the team had done late night exercises near the airfield as bombers and fighters took off to do their carpet bombing runs of English cities. Kevin had laid out a grid on the tarmac that matched the walls and doors of the halls, and over and over they visualized each and every potential threat, and came up with a plan to deal with it. They committed the layout of the building to memory. They could do this with their eyes closed. To them, this was just another spray painted grid on the tarmac.

  With a lot of special effects for show, mind you.

  The grizzled veteran with the brand new handlebar mustache was on point, and Kevin heard his M4 start barking immediately. Kevin had hoped the halls would be clear of the undead, but by the sounds of Fit’z immediate rate of fire, his hopes were illusory.

  Kevin was in the center of the stack with Quan ahead of him, and Kyle to his rear. Once inside the foyer the wide staircase was straight ahead, and to their left. They moved immediately up the steps with Fitz laying out a steady stream of shots heading upward every second or so. It was hard to see in the dark inside the building, but after a moment or two, Kevin’s eyes adjusted.

  Dead bodies were everywhere. Some had clearly died within the past month, but others were still coming to a rest with punctured skulls from Kevin and now Quan’s rifles. Even under his helmet and through his earpiece the two guns firing were deafening. The men were stepping on top of the bodies before long, feet slipping to and fro on the loose flesh of the deceased. They'd all be covered in gore within minutes.

  “Good to go in there? Hearing very heavy fire out here.” Kevin heard Jaden, team leader of the PJs ask out over the radio.

  One hand holding his M4 at the hip, Kevin thumbed the throat mic, “Good to go. We are currently experiencing a target rich environment.”

  “Awww shit Kevin I’m jealous. There’s nothing good to shoot out here yet,” Jaden sulked.

  Just as Jaden finished speaking Kevin saw a zombie round the corner of the stairwell directly behind where Fitz was. Kevin’s friend was facing down the hall in the opposite direction firing with Quan, and without a moment’s hesitation, Kevin fired from the hip and hit the zombie in the throat, sending it stumbling backwards. A spray of grey and brown fluids covered the wall behind the creature. He shouldered his rifle like a professional and put a second round through its forehead, dropping it for good. After a heavy burst of fire on the second floor landing, Fitz looked back at the body, and nodded with a wink to Kevin. Kevin blew him a kiss, and they pushed further up the stairs to their destination on the third floor.

  Kyle and Kevin slowed the pace as they ascended the stairs behind Quan and Fitz. Zombies were shuffling down the hallway of the second floor as they left the landing, and neither man wanted any surprises later when they came back down the steps. A few seconds of accurate gunfire changed that worry, and all that remained were oozing bodies piled knee high in the hall. The two men sprinted up the steps to catch up to the leaders. Fitz and Quan didn’t leave breadcrumbs behind to mark their trail. Kyle and Kevin needed only to look for freshly killed zombies.

  The two men in the lead had stopped at the top of the hall’s edge, peering around the corner after dropping everything moving that shouldn’t have been.

  Over his shoulder Fitz spoke to Kevin, “Hall’s all clear Kevin. They’re four doors down on the right.” He nodded down the right hallway towards the flat Alan’s family lived in. Kevin stepped up to the top of the stairs and motioned for them to keep moving in that direction. Fitz took two steps down the hall when one of the doors to their left suddenly swung inward, and a living man stepped out, bloodied and wide eyed like a lunatic. He held a massive cricket bat in his right hand as he stepped into the passage, seemingly challenging them to pass. Kevin’s first thought was of the old Aussie movie Mad Max.

  “Warden Protective Group, drop the bat now!” Fitz hollered to the man. The manic bastard kept creeping forward, slowing inching the bat upwards, becoming more of a threat. The look in his eyes was that of confusion and fear, with growing rage.

  “DROP IT NOW!” “RUSE THE BAT!” “STOP!” Each man hollered out their own command, but nothing had an effect. Eventually the man’s slow movements turned into a spasm of aggression, and he launched his wiry frame forward, raising the bat over his shoulder to hit Fitz atop the skull.

  Nearly twenty years of experience kicked in for the team, and with one simultaneous action, each man fired a double tap into the chest and head of the man. Rather than exploding into Fitz with the cricket bat his body took a sad forward motion, plunging and face planting into the hallway, dead as a man could be. His shattered skull issued far too much blood onto the tiled floor, and the men stepped over his carcass, moving towards the flat that contained Becky and little Shelby.

  As agreed, the mother and daughter would remain inside until the men knocked for them. Fitz reached the door and the men broke up into pairs of two on each side. Kevin was the first to rap his old Nomex glove covered knuckles on the door. Internally he remarked how sturdy the door felt, and how thankful he was of old European buildings.

  From the other side of the sturdy door the men heard Becky’s lightly accented voice over the ringing in their ears. “Kevin, Fitz? Is it you? God I hope so.”

  The men exchanged a smirk, and Kevin replied to her, “It’s us Becky, we need to move fast, open up.” No sooner had Kevin finished speaking the door swung inward, and the tiny frame of Becky Masters appeared. Becky was no bigger than a short minute, barely scraping the roof of five feet. She had her dark, unwashed hair pulled back in a pony tail, and her skin was pale. She looked thin and scared to Kevin, and that bothered him deeply. Alan had married a woman harder than he was, and to see her in this state was unsettling. Kevin worked up the best smile he could manage for her.

  She clutched onto him immediately and they exchanged a long, genuine hug. She wiped a smear of blood off his face and gave him a wet kiss on the cheek. She released him and wiped a tear off her own. Becky smiled warmly at the other men, and gave them quick hugs. From behind her Kevin watched the little angel Shelby wander up to her mom, looking at the big scary men with amazingly wide, innocent brown eyes behind well trimmed bangs. Kevin’s heart didn’t know whether to feel sorrow for the little girl, or joy for finally having reached her. He managed to fight back the hitching in his breathing to smile at her. It’d been a long time since he saw the brown haired little girl. Alan’s pride and joy, the tiny center of his friend’s life.

  Becky scooped her up, and kissed her on the cheek just as wetly as she’d kissed Kevin. “Daddy’s friends are here to sweep us away like a couple princesses from the castle. How brilliant?” She strode with purpose back into the small flat and pointed at two bags sitting in the middle of the floor. As they’d agreed on, everything going with the women had to fit in two bags that could be carried on the back, or by a single hand. Quan scooped up the largest duffel bag, olive drab and clearly a leftover from a military surplus store, and flung it across his back over the bag he was already wearing. Kevin snagged the large hiking backpack and slung it quickly on his back, snapping the waist strap closed and drawing the nylon band tight across his vest.

  Becky licked her lips nervously and locked gazes with Kevin. No words were spoken. Nothing had to be said. You didn’t say goodbye to a place, only to people. With that, they reformed their stack with the daughter being held by the mother in the center, and they pushed back out into the hallway. As they left the tiny flat, the rate of fire down in the street noticeably picked up.

  Kevin thumbed the mic to speak to the two teams, “Okay down there? We’re on our way down with the principals.” They walked with purpose towards the stairs, descending them at a controlled but rapid pace.

  Jaden responded, “J
ust starting to get fun down here. Our environment is now an embarrassment of riches. We are no longer jealous of your previous good fortune inside.” Kevin could barely make out his false smarmy tone over the gunfire. Kevin grinned as Fitz’s gun spoke up ahead of him, dropping more undead in the stairwell below.

  “Seriously though, faster would be better Kevin, those breaching charges were like the fucking dinner call. I think all these dead assholes thought it was happy hour at a pub over here. We’re engaging heavy.” The slight alarm in Jaden’s tone did not go unnoticed by Kevin and company. Fitz and Quan started leaping the stairs two at a time to get further ahead of Shelby and Becky, and Kevin immediately moved in front of them so they were sandwiched between he and Kyle.

  Kevin peered over the railing just in time to see Quan and Fitz opening up on the opening door of a flat. Three zombies, clearly a mother, father, and small son had somehow opened the door and were grasping at the operators as they approached. The combined men’s fire sent the dead to where they belonged, and they walked past the crumpling corpses mechanically and professionally.

  Seconds later Kevin’s team reached the blasted open front entrance of the apartment building. They waited for the entire breaching team to gather, and for Kevin to call out their exit. “Six friendlies coming out the front. Roll this red carpet up and let’s get the fuck out.”

  “Hoo-ahh Kev,” was Jaden’s response.

  Kevin got Becky and little Shelby into the back of the lead humvee with Fitz and Quan. Kyle and Kevin supported with fire at the suddenly overwhelming mass of undead approaching them from both directions of the street. Down both avenues of the narrow street there were hundreds of the dead, pushing forward with silent ferocity. The dead collapsed on them like the rise of a vile tide.

  Kevin circled the back of the truck, snapped off a few rounds, and got in the passenger side. Kyle threw the big sand colored beast in gear, and they lurched forward, smashing into the approaching mob of undead.

  “Everybody hold on!” Kevin yelled out, and everyone grabbed on to whatever they could find. The truck smashed the bodies of the dead to the street, and drove over them like wretched, gory speed bumps. The heavy humvee slammed back and forth violently, sending the passengers to and fro, nearly launching the little girl out of her mother’s arms. Her cries of fear were piercing. Quan put his palm firmly on her back, holding her steady in Becky’s arms, and quickly she simmered down, desperately clutching her mother.

  A hundred yards and a turn onto a different street opened up the road for them, and they looped around to head south, back to Mildenhall. The humvee’s bumper tagged a walking zombie almost out of spite, and two trucks accelerated away.

  With that they left a city teeming with the dead. The bombers would come soon enough, Kevin hoped as they picked up speed.

  *****

  “YOU STUPID COCKSUCKER! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? WAIT, I KNOW, I KNOW. YOU WEREN’T THINKING AT ALL! BUNCH A GODDAMN COWBOYS!” General Reeves was fuming down at Kevin’s cot, with Kevin laying in it, trying to rest. The men had returned just a few hours ago from their drive to Manchester. A full’s day drive in both directions through hell had left the men drained, and Reeves couldn’t have given less of a shit.

  Kevin opened his eyes and looked up at the balding, diminutive paper shuffler from his cot in the office or classroom they had kidnapped to be their barracks. Ultimately Reeves was a good man, and a good general, and he hadn’t deserved the raw deal Kevin and his friends had handed him by stealing the trucks, and borrowing a few of his operators. Tough shit Kevin thought. Not like things were normal anymore. He heard the rumbling of another bomber taking off outside. Kevin secretly hoped that aircraft was headed to Manchester to bomb the living piss out of it. How much further from normal could you get than a nation’s bombers leaving to bomb its own cities?

  “Look Reeves, I said I was sorry, no one got hurt, we rescued some civilians, and we all smell like fucking roses now. Dig the sand outta your fucking vagina and get over it.” Kevin’s tone was flat and disinterested. There was no sense in getting angry over this.

  “Talk to me like that again you asshole. I fucking dare you!” Reeves stabbed a finger down at Kevin. Reeves looked silly wearing his fatigues and a full IOTV kit inside the office building. Was he afraid one of the fucking zombies was going to shoot him right here in the middle of the child care building? Maybe it was smart after all, Kevin mused. He was thinking of shooting Reeves.

  “Sir I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience our operation caused for you and the base. If you’d like, I can take my team immediately and leave with one of your birds if you prefer. After all, we’ve got that nice Senator fellow stored away in the officer’s barracks with you guys, and he’s supposed to get stateside pronto. No time like the present after all.”

  Reeves hated Senator Henke with a passion. All day, every day Henke was underfoot trying to tell him how to run the base, or pleading with Reeves to free up a plane to bring him back to the United States, but under Presidential order, every man, woman and plane at Mildenhall was dedicated to the European theater of this... war.

  Immediately after they had arrived from Heathrow airport Mildenhall launched into a fervor of activity. 24 hours a day aircraft launched from the base to move troops, supplies, or drop bombs. England hadn’t seen this kind of military activity since the days of World War II and the invasion of mainland Europe. Every military base in England had been fortified with Hesco barriers, Jersey barriers, and hastily rigged reinforcements to their chain link fencing. Guard towers were built where there were none, and floodlights were put up to aid the guards pulling security when they had to thin the advances of the seemingly unending horde of undead. Each base was an island of relative safety.

  Kevin’s original mission was to escort the Senator back to the US once they arrived at Mildenhall back in late June, but Reeves cock blocked their exit waving the Presidential order, and after waiting for a few days hoping he’d free up a bird for them, the mysterious man at the Department of State that had been controlling the game from behind the scenes told them not to rush back anyway.

  Kevin’s mind drifted back to that conversation as Reeve’s continued to rip into him.

  Lancaster, the gravel voiced DOS man had answered the phone and patiently listened to Kevin rail on about how fucked up the situation in Mildenhall was. Once Kevin had gotten the entire bitch session out of him, Lancaster clucked his tongue as he often did, and added his two cents.

  “Kevin, don’t sweat it son.”

  Kevin had been shocked at that statement. Up until that moment every time they had talked about it, getting Henke back to the States safe and secure it was a national security priority. And with one sentence, Lancaster had shat right in the middle of that bowl of cornflakes.

  “What?” Kevin had asked.

  “It’s a fucking mess here Whitten. Even if you had a clean bird, there aren’t that many places to put you down safely here anyway. Airspace is still being controlled by NORAD or whoever, and the communications disconnect between the left hand and the right hand of agencies is bad enough to not risk anything with you and Henke. Plus the roads are a goddamn mess with accidents and those things running all over the place. DC is like Mogadishu for Christ’s sake. You’re just as safe there in England as you’d be anywhere here. Sit tight, be safe, and be thankful you’re not anywhere we’re planning on bombing soon.”

  That was all before the bombings in England had begun. Hearing the B word from Lancaster made Kevin’s mouth go dry. “Bombings? What’re you talking about?”

  “The President has given the green light to start dropping conventional ordnance on cities that are deemed ‘irrevocably overrun’ by the dead.” Lancaster’s voice had no hint of the deep, smoker’s voice he normally had. It was soft, reflective and sad instead.

  Kevin had no response for almost a minute, “Where are they bombing first?”

  “Some of the largest cities have been written o
ff. Any large area that’s geographically flat in terms of structures is high on the list. Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis, places like that. They’re starting east and heading west for the most part. Urban sprawl is a bad place to be right now.”

  Kevin was from Boston. His mother still lived in Southie, right near Logan Airport. The sounds of transatlantic planes landing used to lull him to sleep at night. To this day he slept better around airfields and noisy places.

  “Fuck my life man. That’s messed up. There’s no other solution?” Kevin had sat down holding the satellite phone on the floor in the hallway of the base command to talk.

  “I haven’t seen the whole briefing. I know from the reports I’ve seen there are a lot of areas that are just utterly overrun with the dead bastards. For example, yesterday we received a report that an airliner refusing to turn around on the west coast near Seattle was downed by Civil Defense jets, and the fucking thing went down smack on top of the dome there, where they had a big shelter set up. Killed just about every last person there, and now the reports are saying the rest of the city has gone to shit. They’re saying the Seahawks might have to skip a season or two. Been hearing other stories from all over like that too. I guess Boston got it real bad due to all the hospitals and schools there. China, Libya, Russia, and a few other countries have already started dropping bombs on their own soil. No one has gone nuclear yet, thank God. Real shit show.”

  Kevin had swallowed the rising bile in his throat. The rest of the conversation that day didn’t matter. Not anymore, he thought. They’d been discarded. Henke was reasonably safe, Kevin and the remnants of his team were reasonably safe, and the only way home would’ve been fraught with danger. For all intents and purposes, Lancaster had considered their loose end tied up.