Chapter 2

Outbreak - Day 5

Shriever AFB

Colorado Springs, Colorado

 

“Bring more ammo!” Brook screamed without looking away from the stumbling ghoul bracketed in the scope’s crosshairs. She smoothly pulled the trigger; the rifle bucked and the top third of the zombie’s head evaporated in a luminous green cloud of bone and brain matter. The advancing corpse was cold; the superheated bullet warmed the detritus making it resemble a gory aurora borealis through the thermal scope.

A sidelong glance confirmed her worst fear. The gunfire from within the base was nothing but a siren song for the dead. Although it appeared the entire population of Colorado Springs was at the gate, the truth was the men and women of the United States military were presently taking the war to the enemy in and around the city.

***

Parker Bluff, Subdivision. Colorado Springs.

Lawson tested the door knob. Sure enough, it was locked. He looked at his superior. Captain Ronnie Gaines was in his mid forties and stood head and shoulders above most of the men he commanded. He was of African American descent and dark as night. His clean shaven pate and muscular build made him the center of attention wherever he went. Good attention or bad, he always took it in stride. One smile could charm the ladies or disarm the men; he was an equal opportunity killer.

Gaines was a member of the 10th Special Forces Group out of nearby Fort Carson and he was a decorated combat veteran of both wars in the Middle East and Operation Desert Storm.

The locked doors usually hid bad things behind them. The question was how many bad things?

Lawson rapped sharply. The other four men stayed abreast of the door, two per side, and waited the customary thirty seconds.

“No one home,” Lawson said, a little too early as something heavy impacted the door from within. The moaning soon commenced; it was nearly always the same, a low pitched plaintive sound that caused grown men to get the chills. So much for hoping the house was empty.

They always followed the same protocol. The entry man would pop the door with the twelve pound Thundersledge and then stand back. Rarely did it take much more than the hammer. Occasionally one of the operators would be forced to blow the lock with a shotgun.

Lawson was six foot tall, although he was thin; his body was ripped with corded muscles. His pale complexion and wiry frame earned him the nickname Icky from his peers. It was short for Ichabod, as in Ichabod Crane, the timid character from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Ick was calm on the exterior; in battle he was anything but timid.

“Pop the door, Ick.”

The sledge traced a well practiced tight arc, a perfect one timer. The door buckled as the hammer forced the trim on the inside to pop off, rendering the deadbolt useless. What followed was a little humorous, but deadly serious. A hefty female zombie who had been the source of the moaning became wedged between the ruined door and the jamb.

The trapped undead woman had been cooking in the one story ranch house for days. She was morbidly obese, pasty white and bloated like a beached whale carcass. The last shirt that she put on while still alive was stained with days old dried blood and other not so dry bodily fluids. She had probably been some soldier or airman’s wife enjoying her weekend when the Omega virus stormed across the nation.

Gaines bellowed, “Clear!”

Icky stepped aside to allow the other two operators a clear field of fire. The three round burst from Gaines’ silenced SCAR assault rifle pulped the walker’s face. Her body performed a clumsy pirouette and crashed across the entryway to the house.

Sergeant Dale Williams stood back from the door, silenced SCAR at the ready, waiting for more zombies to appear. After a few seconds Captain Gaines stepped over the corpse and began clearing the interior of the house.

“Clear,” was repeated after each room was checked for threats and deemed to be empty. With practiced precision the four man team swarmed the house from top to bottom.

“What does this remind you of, gentlemen?” Gaines said, subtly reminding his men to stay frosty.

“Fallujah, sir.”

“Ding. X gets a square. Good job Ick.”

Williams dragged the corpse down the stairs and deposited it on the brown lawn.

Gaines pulled the door shut and marked it with a big chalk X and the numeral one. He had taken this right out of the hurricane Katrina playbook. The X meant the house was clear and the circled out one denoted the now deceased occupant.

Scenes like this played out all across the city as the Special Forces soldiers from Fort Carson prepared Colorado Springs to become the new capital of the United States.