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“STALEMATE,” REPORTED an Armed Response lieutenant named Singh to Agent Ramirez. “Bishop’s Z’s are down, and our guys can’t advance. Too much incoming fire, shields or not. We’ve got two dead and six wounded.”
The agent stood erect in the middle of a mainline bypass tunnel adjoining the Lake Street line, surrounded by crouching ART troops. Grime and filth covered the walls; he’d already brushed against one side and smudged the shoulder of his black hazmat suit with concrete dust. He wiped at the blemish while Singh whined about the resistance.
“Maybe your guys are too chickenshit to advance,” Ramirez said, “but the Z’s do not care. Send an agent back to bring Crenshaw and Rao forward. In the meantime, send a team to our right, down Canal, to find a clear route to the enemy’s flank. If we can turn the corner on them, we will hose them with Vx. Tell everyone to mask up too. If a stray round hits a tank, we need to be protected.”
Singh hesitated, his face twisted like that of a man who’d eaten a bug and didn’t care for the crunchy bits. “Agent Ramirez... are you sure?”
The Homeland agent felt his cheeks tightening to a death-mask. He touched the butt of the pistol strapped to his waist, and his voice chilled to a notch below frozen corpse. “Do I look indecisive to you?”
“Ah, nossir.”
“Why are you still standing in my way?”
Singh saluted and ran.
Ramirez scrubbed the grime on his shoulder. “Damn,” he muttered. “This will never come out. Should have told that idiot to bring a damp towel back with him.”
***
FRANKLIN ROGERS ABANDONED his easy chair and joined Lieutenant Claybaugh and 1st Platoon behind the sandbag barricade that blocked off LaRue at Hobb Street, on the north side of his headquarters building. Dixon trailed behind him, carrying a canvas tote bag.
The platoon laid down a steady stream of suppressing fire that utterly failed to suppress the undead enemy. Their rounds sparked and flared from the Revvies’ shields, which were now abraded to the point of being opaque. The approaching army of marching zombies closed to fifty meters.
“Lieutenant,” Rogers shouted over the din. “Hold your fire! You’re wasting ammo.”
“Yes, sir!” Claybaugh relayed his order, and the Cabrini fighters hunched behind the sandbags and reloaded. Rogers read a tremor of disquiet in their expressions—not fear, by any means, but a measure of concern that, if left unchecked, would spawn panic and poor judgment. Not only had these boys been untested in a straight-up fight, the enemy they faced couldn’t be killed or deterred by the soldiers’ most determined efforts. It was bound to be... discomfiting.
Rogers injected his voice with a buoyant inflection. “Men, you know what we have here?”
“Dead fuckers walking, sir?” suggested a private with a diamond nose clip.
Rogers chuckled. “Exactly. But besides that, the enemy is attempting to recreate the Han Dynasty’s mobile infantry square, a formation that was very effective two thousand years ago! Also popular during the Napoleonic Wars. How did the French defeat an infantry square, Lieutenant?”
“Uh, artillery?”
“That’s the best answer, but absent artillery, what other method was used?”
The lieutenant, clearly nonplussed at being quizzed on history during a full-scale assault, blinked and opened his mouth to answer. No sound came out. The stamp of marching feet crunched across the remaining few meters: the Revivant squads had reached the intersection and were crossing Hobb, a distance of under ten meters.
“Ahh, I don’t know, sir,” Claybaugh managed, darting a glance over the barricade. “Shouldn’t we be...”
“In a moment, Lieutenant. Dixon, hand out the toys.” Rogers paused while his aide opened his carry-all. “The answer, gentlemen, is twofold. One, the French would use charging cavalry to break the square.” The major’s lips skinned back in a hungry smile. “Then they’d get in close and cut the enemy to pieces. When I give the word, we’re going to chop these bastards down.”
“Sir?” The earnest Claybaugh fingered the bright steel blade of the hardware-store machete that he received from Dixon. His brows knitted in confusion.
Rogers touched his comm and said, “Now, Mr. Dupree.”
***
I SETTLED WITH MY BACK against a concrete wall. I had a good view north along the Canal Street tunnel. Most of the lights were out in this section. A rare bulb hung over the intersection, and a few more shone at random intervals. To the north, after the first ten meters, there was nothing but Dracula-loving darkness. The silence settled around me, disturbed only by the rare, distant clang or the closer drip of water plinking to the floor. I strained my hearing, hoping for the hum of an electric motor signaling John’s return. I had called him on the radio three or four times and got only static.
“Where are you, man?” My harsh whisper spooked me, coming out much louder in the confined space than I intended.
The cool air chilled my sweaty forehead. I leaned my head against the bricks and dampness seeped into my hair. I sniffed and daubed my runny nose with the back of my sleeve, something my mother used to get on me about. Gone seven years now, it was hard to remember her face, but that tone of voice she used when she caught me sopping up a runny nose with a sleeve... Man, you’d have thought the lottery board was coming by the house any minute to give out winning tickets, but only to the people with clean sleeves.
What would Mom think of me now? Would she be proud—
A metallic noise skritched from the depths of the tunnel, a miniscule shriek as tiny as a fairy’s death-cry. It unmistakably emanated from the dark hole to the north, in the direction of the federal troops. The bad guys, or at least the ones who wanted to kill me and make me a janitor, were coming my way. Unless John had somehow gotten ahead of me...? No, that didn’t make sense. The big man had the electric cart; he wouldn’t be sneaking back down the tunnel. He’d be tear-assing away at full hum, squashed into the driver’s seat like a bear in a kiddie car.
Where were the marines? They should have joined up with me by now. Gonzales knew I was the weakest link; she wouldn’t leave me to hang here alone. How far away could they be? I reached to tap my earbud and stopped myself a millimeter short of touching it. If I called them on the radio, it would give away my position.
I snaked across the concrete floor on my stomach, SMG60 cradled in front of me, cringing at the cold cement. My balls shrank up, trying to hide themselves somewhere safe and warm. I poked my weapon around the corner of the junction, pointed into the blackness. Since the opening was on my left, I had to expose more body than I wanted in order to see down the passageway.
A shoe scuffed.
Shit. What did the corporal say about the gun in my hands? Trigger, safety, something, something, IR-something else. I examined the weapon as if I’d never seen it before. Found the magazine release button again, by mistake. Caught the ejected mag before it hit the ground. Fumbled and clicked it back home. Where was the—? Ah. Safety, set it to Burst.
Now, look down the sight and depress the trigger a tiny bit and—Holy fucknoodles! I bit back a girly scream when the optics lit up with images of ghosts creeping toward me. Three figures, painted in multi-hued auras with assault weapons cupped against their shoulders, soft-footed from the northern end of Canal, hunched alongside the curved walls. Instinct—or paranoia—told me these weren’t my marine reinforcement.
Despite the chill, sweat ran down my face as I lined up the green dot on the closest agent.
***
AN ENGINE ROARED ON Hobb Street. Franklin Rogers switched his helmet HUD to a camera feed from a nearby balcony, giving him a bird’s eye view of the action. A diesel-powered dump truck powered in from the right, billowing black smoke from its exhaust. It jumped at every gear change, like an eager puppy. The Revivants, having piled into the intersection at LaRue and Hobb, were grouped tighter than a rack of tenpins at the Tri-County Bowling Lanes in DeKalb.
The RVTs, not being able to perceive or interpret the sounds of the oncoming vehicle, reacted slowly to the threat. Two of the rows had begun a ponderous turn to their left when the diesel’s squared-off nose smacked home. The grill slammed into the dead with a smattering of soggy thunks, cutting a swath through the shambling parade, crackling over bodies with its massive wheels until it cleared the intersection. Brakes locked, tires smoked, and the truck squalled to a stop. The driver revved the engine, ground the gears, and backed up, this time hitting the front ranks of the Revivant formation. More bodies staggered and fell, several crunched under the machine’s worn tires.
“That’s it, men,” Franklin roared. “Up close and personal! Get in tight so they can’t move.”
Howling, 1st Platoon leaped over the sandbags, Franklin in the middle of the scrum. His heart thudded in his chest like a battered war drum, and a familiar pain stitched his hip when he climbed the barrier. Old age sucked, to be sure. The kids flew past him, swinging their machetes in long, looping, vicious arcs that thudded into dead, nano-driven flesh. Magenta “blood” sprayed from the Revivants, who stumbled around in confused chaos.
The big diesel backed from the intersection and revved up for another forward run. It plowed through the remaining semi-organized mob of zombie soldiers on the far side of the intersection, slower this time, as the driver hadn’t had the chance to get up a head of steam. He stalled against a mound of bodies, downshifted and hit the accelerator. Black smoke poured out, and the dump truck ground up the ghastly hill.
The boys of 1st Platoon swarmed into battle as if the enemy were dummy targets on a training range. Blades glittered, and magenta nano-blood rained.
A Revivant stumbled close, and Rogers buried his machete in the thing’s neck, half-severing the head. It required two more swings to cut through the leathery tissue. Both parts of the dead—or dead again—body fell to the pavement, splashing Rogers’ boots with gore. The major stumbled back to catch his breath; those few swings had taken more out of him than he cared to admit.
Nothing like a hand-to-hand fight to get the blood pumping.
A fist of invisible force slugged him in the chest and blew Rogers backward. A splash of heat washed him from head to toe. The sound wave of a crushing explosion slapped his ears. The major bounced off the sandbags and fell on his face.
Wagging his head, ears ringing, Rogers forced himself to stay conscious, stay engaged. His helmet was gone. He tasted scorched fuel on the back of his tongue, and his sinuses burned with the stench of charred metal and rubber. Rogers’ vision swam. Blurry images became clearer—much too slowly. He blinked and focused, and fought his way to a standing position.
Flames engulfed the dump truck.
“What the hell?” he croaked.
One of his men, a skinny kid with fevered eyes, pawed at his arm and pointed. Over and over he shouted, “Tank! Tank! Tank!”
The major followed the kid’s finger, and his jaw clenched. At two hundred meters, a black armored vehicle with a short-barreled cannon rolled down LaRue on four oversized tires. Even as he watched, the gun belched smoke, and another shell whistled in.
***
THE THREE FIGURES SLINKING toward me weren’t marines—they couldn’t be—and yet I hesitated pulling the trigger. I held the green targeting dot on the first agent on my right. Why? He was closest. Tiny numbers in the sight read out the distance as sixty-three meters. Sixty-two... sixty-one.
Why hadn’t they seen me yet? Didn’t they have super sights like mine?
My damp cheek pressed into the SMG’s graphite stock, and I battled the sick panic in my gut. I wasn’t a soldier, or a warrior, or much of a fighter, for that matter. The only thing I could punch was a time clock. My singular experience firing a weapon had flopped bigger than the Broadway musical remake of Rambo.
Fifty-eight meters.
Cold soaked into my belly from the tunnel floor. Small tremors made my targeting dot dance against the backdrop of the oncoming agent. His rifle, held low, swung up toward his face. Assuming he had a thermal sight too, he’d spot me the instant he checked it. I’d be the quivering lump of queasy flesh huddled behind the shelter of the tunnel corner. Fifty-four... fifty-three.
The leader froze. He yelled, “Cont—”
—and I shot him. Flame burped from the SMG’s muzzle, a quick flicker that lit the passageway like a camera flash. The leader staggered and triggered his weapon high, stitching the ceiling with a long ripple of fire. Concrete shattered and dust billowed from the impact. He twisted and fell, wounded or dead, with his rifle clattering beside him.
The agent to the leader’s right dove to the ground while the trailing agent hugged the wall. Both leveled their weapons. I hesitated. Which one? My target dot waffled in the middle and settled on the one against the wall because he was a better target. Bullets whapped the air by my ear, and more chewed into the concrete near my nose. I snapped off a quick, shaky burst and rolled behind the wall.
With no need to stay quiet, I screamed into my comm. “Gonzales, I’m under fire! Send some reinforcements!”
Cement splattered as more rounds chipped the corner. I poked the SMG around the edge and fired blind, ripping off a couple of quick triple-shots before jerking it back.
“Romeo Actual to unknown speaker,” Gonzales’s voice blared in my ear. “Is that you, Warren?”
No, it’s fucking Santa Claus. “Yes, goddammit!”
“Position and situation, Warren. Report.”
“On the ground and scared shitless, Lieutenant.” I snapped off another blind shot to keep the Homeland guys from rushing me. “Ah, hold on. I’m, ah, I’m at the corner of Canal and Randolph. Three feds headed my way from the north on Canal. One may be down. I think I got one.”
“Hold position, Warren, help is on the way.”
“Aye, roger... whatever the fuck, just get here.”
A rectangular metal canister clinked past the tunnel mouth, bounced twice, and came to rest in the middle of the intersection. My many years of video game training kicked in. Flash-Bang!
I rolled away, screwed my eyes shut, and clapped my hands over my ears. The light from a thousand suns flared, and a sound wave kicked me in the head with the force of a diesel piston.