London Burns Read online

  The tall lady saw her mangled foot at the end of her calf and her breathing became ragged and imprecise. She pleaded to Kevin and Henke to help her, to give her something for the pain, but they didn’t. Henke had nothing to give and Kevin simply wouldn’t give her anything. You didn’t give pain meds quickly in combat. The relief could trigger a drop in blood pressure that could kill.

  Judging by what was happening outside the crashed helicopter the hurt people aboard the downed bird would absolutely be in combat within minutes, if not less. Hundreds were outside the helicopter injured or dead in the neighborhood they had come to ground in. The crash had caused tremendous damage, and judging by the bodies outside, numerous deaths. Some of the bodies were beyond death, in the day’s new form of existence.

  Hal watched in the distance of the outdoor London market they had nearly all died at and watched as the already-dead feasted on the warm flesh of the dying. He could hear the screams of his countrymen and the distant, shrill sounds of death and suffering made him shudder. He wanted to help; he needed to help but he knew he couldn’t. Mission first. Hal’s rifle hung on his chest, still attached by the sling. He felt relief, and readied his weapon.

  One of his brothers wrenched the sliding door of the Lynx sideways, and the real world outside came in. The smell of burning fuel, soot and scorched flesh poured in and ran up Hal’s nose. His nasal passages itched and burned, rebelling against the horrors his nostrils had been exposed to. The sounds grew as well; the formerly muffled screams were now loud and invasive, real and un-ignorable in a way that would scar all of them forever, should they survive the day.

  Hal went into the breach with his friends once more and exited the chopper. He went again to one knee on the hard stone half a dozen paces from the flipped helicopter and assessed the situation through the 4x SUSAT optic attached to the top of his rifle. He flicked the safety to a more dangerous position.

  The day’s sun descended at a slower rate than the death happening below it. The men had somehow lost half an hour’s time, maybe more when they crashed. Golden rays of ignorant light beamed between buildings and the cloud above were picking up edges of purple and pink as the first stages of sunset arrived. Earth and Sun did their thing above regardless of mankind’s struggles below. And struggle they did.

  Hundreds of men and women—many dragging children and elderly along roughly—ran and screamed as the dead tore through them. The crash of the helicopter had killed or maimed dozens in the time the passengers sat unconscious, protected by the same hull of the vehicle that killed so many on impact. A score of bodies were littered still around them. People killed by debris, the helicopter’s impact, or internal injuries who had yet to reanimate. Hal felt like he sat in the middle of a minefield.

  The crash victims who were shopping innocuously at London’s busy Covent Garden Market were now taking up arms, fists and teeth against their shocked fellow shoppers. A horrified Harold Parker watched as three girls no older than year ten or eleven in school took a mother carrying an infant down to the hard stone of the courtyard only fifty meters distant. A smear of blood appeared on the smooth stones where the infant’s head would’ve come into contact with the ground. He watched as they clubbed the mother with their fists and then crouched low to bite and tear into her soft flesh.

  Hal put the tip of his SUSAT optic prong on the body of one of the teens and rested his finger on the trigger.

  He couldn’t shoot. He simply couldn’t. He hadn’t been cleared to fire and even if he had, he couldn’t imagine killing a teenager, even one who was dead-not-dead. Kevin hollered. Hal didn’t hear who he spoke to, but he knew it wasn’t to him. Somehow his brain knew.

  “Marines on the ground you are clear to fire to protect yourselves or your charges,” Sergeant Beck said in their ears. He rode in the chopper hovering in the air above. “Operational command on the ground is Corporal Parker. Listen to the man named Whitten if needed, Hal. God’s speed.”

  “Roger,” Hal said back to his sergeant. “You heard Beck, boys. Fire at anyone presenting danger. May God sort us out.” A few rifle shots popped in response, then built to a steady vibration of constant fire. There were too many dangerous people to shoot in too little time. Hal found his strength of will and pulled the trigger on his rifle. He watched as one of the teenage girls atop the mother took his round in the chest and toppled over. He fired again at another girl before his brain could tell his fingers to stop.

  The American leading the security team yelled. “Alrighty, we’re following the bird to an exfil site. They are gonna put down on the Strand, 500 feet south that way!”

  Hal didn’t need to tell his Marines what to do. He and his two warrior-brothers stood and began to circle the wreck, heading the group south towards the main thoroughfare of London. They stepped over and around dead bodies and upended curb stones.

  “Move, move! They’re coming back!” Kevin yelled.

  Hal looked down and saw the bodies that had been still were now moving. Their arms regained awkward movement, slowly spinning up like someone awakening after a long and deep slumber. Their eyes opened, ripened like a corpse filled with maggots and leeched of their life, love and color. The gray and yellow orbs spun, sunken in sockets, finding purpose; life to pursue and life to kill. The bloodied dead began to sit up and reach out for the Marines and men and woman they sought to protect. The three Marines formed a rough triangle shape around them as they moved.

  Hal led the Senator and his aide away with his Marines as the gunfire began. His rifle bucked against his shoulder as he put accurate rounds into the chests of people who started their day with a plan that didn’t include being perforated by 5.56mm NATO rounds. Hal’s unit members joined him and within a moment the civilian contractors joined in as well. Above in the Lynx that didn’t crash Harold could hear the pops of quieter rifle fire as his fellows supported the best they could. He envied their elevated firing position.

  Hal put another round into a woman’s chest as he walked slowly and watched with amused horror as she stumbled, gathered herself, and pushed forward. Near to her was woman with stellar brown hair over fair skin who sat up, dead as could be. She looked mannequin perfect if you could ignore the hole in her neck where her throat should’ve been. The contractor Kevin aimed carefully as he reached Hal’s side and pulled his trigger, popping the woman’s head and dropping her body back to the hard stone. She no longer looked perfect.

  “Hit the head. Only head shots,” he said with practiced calm before firing at a different dead person approaching.

  Just like the movies, then. Hal knew his men were putting rounds into the chests of dangerous people, not their heads. They trained to shoot center mass, to shoot at the chest and belly. It would require an adjustment on their part…

  “Head shots only men, destroy the brain!” Hall hollered to his men. They made the adjustment he expected them to and rounds began their march towards faces and foreheads. The much smaller target the skull presented meant more misses, but it also meant more kills once the rounds found their homes. The slower gait of the dead gave the men a spare second to aim, so long as they kept their distance. Proximity removed safety.

  To keep distance they had to move.

  Kevin scooped up the senator and his aide and helped them along, firing his rifle with the stock fully collapsed in one hand like a pistol. Somehow they man fired accurately, and in the corner of Hal’s eye he saw every threat that came towards the politician and his limping secretary get dropped.

  With Hal in the lead, they rounded the final corner to head directly south on a downhill street towards the Strand. Shoulder to shoulder a hundred wide and a hundred deep he saw the listless shuffle of more dead. The main thoroughfare of the city had already been filled with an army of the fallen. He hadn’t expected a wall of the dead and he had no distance, and no time to aim.

  Zombies didn’t need to aim. They had only to grab and bite, to tackle and chew. Proximity removed danger.

  Hal w
ent down to the pavement stones on his back with the press of at least three or four bloody dead on him. He flailed hard with elbows, gloved fists, his helmet, knees and boots. Everything he had became a weapon. His rifle’s hard stock smacked into the jaw of a twenty-something man who wore broken glasses. The blow jarred the spectacles off the man’s face and dislocated his lower jaw nearly 90 degrees. Hal heard Kevin’s weapon spray on full-auto from just a few meters away. He heard the hard smacks of rounds hitting the cement or stone above at head height. The high pitched vibrations of a skipped rounds singing through the air came soon after. He heard and felt bodies fall at his feet and the ground around him; Kevin wouldn’t risk firing into the group on top of Hal, but he killed all those who tried to join.

  Adrenaline surged and took over. Hal see-sawed his rifle back and forth across his chest as he felt the sudden ache of teeth sinking into his arm near the left wrist. A young man of Indian descent kneeled at his side and had his lips pressed against Harold’s sleeve and the flesh beneath it. The teen snarled silently and ground his teeth into Hal’s arm. Saliva stained the fabric. Pain flared and Hal caught a breath in his chest. He ripped his sleeve free of the teenager’s mouth, taking a few teeth in the process and he slammed the stock of his rifle into the bridge of the man’s nose. The blow tipped him backwards and sent him away. A return swing of his arm sent the barrel of his weapon into the eye socket of woman who wore a dress that probably cost a month of his military salary. She went down in a bloody heap and just like that he had space to move.

  Hal somehow used one leg and an arm to roll backwards from flat, performing the world’s least attractive somersault in the midst of several undead attempting to murder him. He pushed up to a kneeling position and moving from left to right he snapped off three rounds into the hungry faces of the people who’d just tried to kill him. Surrounding them were a pile dead bodies dropped by Kevin.

  Hal stood and looked at his arm, pulling up the sleeve. His brown skin had the half-moon impressions of teeth dug in but no blood. His sleeve and quick thinking had saved his arm and subsequently, his life. He laughed at Kevin and the contractor shot again. Hal’s Marine unit moved on, the near death experience already being chalked up as something to drink heavily over later.

  As the group made their way down the hill towards the street where the chopper above could land and spirit them away they fired every few seconds. The crash of gunfire deafened but it gave them what they needed to survive; space. Men would fire their guns until the bolts locked back and with deft, practiced hands they would remove their spent magazine and slap a new one home. The lull caused by their brief moment of reloading couldn’t be perceived by sound alone. So many weapons kept firing there wasn’t any sense of quiet.

  Ten yards turned into twenty, and with each killed zombie—its head blown apart by a 5.56mm round—they came closer to an exit from the city and the million undead in it that had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Guys, we need to move faster, we’re not gonna make it shooting this much. We’ve got to run,” Kevin the contractor said. He had his rifle moved to the side and had switched to his Glock handgun. He snapped off a few carefully aimed rounds and went to the side of the senator and the hobbling woman. She had kept herself together admirably despite every reason not to. Kevin hoisted her up with his left arm and tossed her over his shoulder in a carry reminiscent of a fireman exiting a burning building.

  Hal was only a few feet away and he gave hand signals to his teammates to pick up the pace. A quick feel of his magazine pouches told him the contractor’s assertion to move faster was spot-on. He’d already pissed through five of his eight magazines and at the rate they were still firing, they’d be out before they hit the end of the street and the chopper that hoped to land there.

  As they moved, Hal heard Kevin call to the helicopter above for assistance.

  “Fitz you gotta clear the way for us, we’re almost dry on ammo down here,” the man said using the microphones attached to his throat.

  Hal walked at the tip of the group as they moved further downhill towards the Strand. The few cars still in the center of the city buzzed by, speeding without regard for any life save their own. He heard gunfire erupt from the sky above as his fellow unit members and the few contractors in the helicopter began to rain fire down on the undead they approached. Their inaccurate fire took longer to have an impact on the dead, but with the burden of killing spread the ground team’s ammunition for the closest threats was protected. Hal dealt with the hungry attackers approaching with extreme prejudice.

  As the men firing above grew accustomed to firing from the moving helicopter their shots became more accurate. Instead of four or five shots to a dead body it became three, then two and sometimes one. The rain of bullets toppled and crushed the wall of undead moving up the hill towards them with such rapidity the bodies were stacking up, and would soon become too high to walk over.

  They ran.

  One Marine without ammunition used his rifle like a battleaxe, smashing the stock into anything that got close to him. He sent one middle aged man wearing a David Bowie t-shirt straight through the heavy glass of a storefront. He might not be dead, but he wouldn’t be stopping them from boarding the helicopter. Hal wondered if Bowie would be able to get on his spaceship in time to escape this mess and go home.

  When they reached the end of the side street the chopper zoomed ahead and lowered itself between the brick buildings that framed the sidewalks. The cars passing had evaporated and somehow the Marines and the contractors had cleared out enough space that they could run to the helicopter and board before the undead could reach them. Their journey had come to an end.

  As Hal approached the helicopter door opened and his fellow countrymen exited. They formed a perimeter around the helicopter and ushered the Americans into their transport. It seemed like the moment they took up firing positions the undead multiplied. Their gunfire grew and grew in volume until they drowned out the already loud rotors of the Lynx. The situation worsened by the second.

  “Oi! Take me!” A bloodied and angry man screamed from the distance. One of Hal’s friends—Danny, it looked like—took aim on the man and shot out his thigh with his rifle. The man went down as if he’d been walloped with a sledge at the knee. He cried out in pain and clutched at his ruined leg, framing the trench in his leg with his fingers and swearing a litany of curses. The undead on his heels collapsed on top of him, buying the Marines and their charges a few extra seconds from the danger in that direction.

  The closest Marine to Hal tossed him a fresh magazine. He caught it in his offhand and slipped it into the first empty magazine pouch on his vest. He watched as Kevin placed the woman inside the helicopter and helped the senator aboard.

  Hal caught the eye of Sergeant Beck. Beck had been aboard the helicopter that stayed aloft, and he’d been one of the guns providing fire support. Right now he stood from his shooting position and gave several of the Marines quick hand signals. He walked up to Hal as the Americans piled into the Lynx’s rear passenger compartment. Beck grabbed Hal’s vest at the shoulder and dragged him towards the helicopter. Right outside the door he yanked Hal closer, and spoke in his ear.

  “Hal, you go with the Yanks. Keep the package safe. We’ll catch up. You try and get to your mum. Fuck the leave,” Beck said.

  “Wilco sir, thank you,” Hal said with a nod, and leapt into the back of the helicopter.

  Sergeant Beck tripped the transmitter switch on his microphone. “Go ahead on, boys. We’ll make our way back to Buckingham Palace and reinforce them. You’re heavy enough. God’s speed.”

  “Roger that. Good luck, Beck,” the pilot returned. A moment later the helicopter’s engines roared, sending the downdraft out in a wash of trash and dirt. A few seconds later the wheels of the helo left the London street and the weight of the Lynx lifted carefully into the air. The liftoff was a storm of power under the control of the pilot. Beck didn’t watch as it departed above and beyond for the Mild
enhall air base.

  “Boys, our job is done here. Let’s move west to the palace. They could use us. And if they can’t, we can certainly use that gate.”

  - Part Two -

  For Queen and Country, but Mostly the Guy Next to Me

  Sergeant Beck had his hands full. He’d sent his best man with the yanks on the Lynx to accompany them to the airbase they were supposed to go to. The decision cost him a shooter, but he knew Hal would make good decisions, and lead them to their next stop at Mildenhall. He hoped that sending the man away wouldn’t cost the rest of the unit their lives as they made their way to Buckingham Palace.

  Beck ran west down the center of the wide street, his rifle at the ready with the five men he needed to lead to safety at his back. He heard the loud snaps of sporadic weapons fire in the city as they ran. His own men shot at threats that had to be dealt with, adding to the mess. Those they could run past, they did. Ammunition was in too short a supply to shoot all the dead that London presented them with.

  “Charlie Charlie, this is Echo Bravo One. Radio check, over,” Beck said, sparing breath to speak as he ran.

  Several seconds later he received a response. “Echo Bravo One this is Tango Charlie Forty. I read you three by four, over.”

  Three by four told Beck their radio signal wasn’t the strongest. He looked at the tall brick buildings and the steel and concrete towers of the city and cursed at them. They ate up the power and clarity of his communications.

  “We are Oscar Mike to the palace. Package is enroute on one helo, one Marine as escort. Other vehicle is disabled at Covent Garden Market. We have multiple KIAs. Bodies in place. ETA thirty minutes. Over.”

  Beck heard the radio operator stammer. “Roger Echo Bravo One. We have no air assets to retask to support you. Can you supply a sitrep on the city conditions? Over.”