CHAPTER 30

Hassle and the rest of the bridge crew silently watched as the soldier was hauled from the tow truck. He disappeared from view, and neither the FLIR systems nor the night vision binoculars had enough fidelity to show every detail of his demise, but everyone on the deck knew what was happening. They heard it all on the radio.

The man was torn apart and devoured.

“Dear sweet Jesus,” Sullivan said, his voice barely a whisper as he watched the FLIR display. Hassle could only nod. There simply wasn’t anything that could be said.

“The van is moving again, sir,” the port lookout reported. Even though the young guardsman saw everything through his night vision binoculars, his voice was flat and neutral. Solid stuff, this one.

Hassle tore his eyes away from the screen. “Weaps, let’s light those things up and try to clear a path for those people.”

“Aye, sir.” The weapons officer spoke into the intercom and ordered all weapons to prepare to fire. Hassle turned to the communications engineer.

“Comms, contact the LEDET and tell them we’re going to fire on the zombies. They’re to keep their heads down and wait until we let up before they proceed to the shoreline.”

“Contact LEDET and inform them we’re going weapons hot and hold their pos until we let up. Aye aye, sir.”

“All weapons ready, sir,” the weapons officer said.

“Fire for effect,” Hassle ordered.

A moment later, the night was further torn asunder as the Escanaba’s firepower joined that of the artillery barrage to the north.

###

The van approached the intersection of East 80th Street and East End Avenue. It was choked with traffic, just like all the other intersections had been. As the van rolled on, McDaniels tried to think of a good tactical plan. How would they get through the intersection with the van?

The answer was not comforting. We don’t.

“Terminator, this is Escanaba. We’re firing on targets now, over.”

A bright, sparking explosion from up ahead momentarily overwhelmed McDaniels’ night vision goggles. It did the same for Finelly, who swore under his breath and slowed the van slightly. Any zombies in the area turned toward the raucous din. The explosion’s flash lit their slack faces and made their dull, stupid, lifeless eyes gleam for an instant. As McDaniels’ NVGs cleared, he saw fainter, but more constant flashes from the Coast Guard cutter holding station in the middle of the East River. Muzzle flashes, and big ones, too. Then another sparking explosion blossomed into being at the very end of the street. Zombies were framed against the sudden illumination. Hundreds of them.

“Major, we’re not going to be able to make it across that intersection in this thing,” Finelly said, pointing out the obvious for everyone.

“I know that,” McDaniels said. He scanned the street ahead, from left to right. It was—had been—a very tony residential area, with high-end apartment buildings lining both sides of the street. Scaffolding covered the majority of the left side of the street, as the facades on a block of buildings had been receiving face lifts before the zombie terror struck. The right side was clear, unobstructed.

“But it doesn’t really matter.” Safire’s voice sounded weary. “Right across East End Avenue, there’s a dead end, which we have to deal with whether the intersection is clear or not. Then we have to cross the East River Drive. There’s at least a ten foot drop off separating the south- and northbound lanes. And then, we would have to get across the northbound lanes and wait to be picked up by the Coast Guard.”

“Doesn’t sound like you have much faith, doctor,” McDaniels said.

Safire had nothing to say.

McDaniels pointed out the windshield. “Finelly, I want you to coast to a stop right there, where that mailbox is… see it?”

“I see it,” the big soldier said.

“Rittenour, how are you doing back there?” McDaniels asked.

“Feeling kind of out of it, major. And this bite is really bugging the hell out of me.”

“One more run, and then we’re out of here. Finelly, how’s the leg?”

Finelly shrugged as he guided the van toward the left curb. “It hurts, but I’m not staying here, sir.”

“Very well. All right folks, we’re going to have to make the last 400 feet or so on foot, which means we run like hell. Everyone gets a partner: Safire, you’re with me. Regina, you’re with Finelly. Earl, you’re with Rittenour. Zoe, First Sergeant Gartrell will take care of you.”

“I want to stay with my daddy,” Zoe said quietly, her voice small and childlike.

“He won’t be far from you, hon. We’ll make sure nothing happens to either of you, all right?” That was a total lie. McDaniels knew that if the shit has going to hit the fan any harder than it already had, then he would heft Wolf Safire over one shoulder and run straight for the river. They were out of time, and the mission had to be completed. Had to be.

“Anyone have any issues with their assignments? Shooters, are you ready? I want smoke dropped behind us the second we stop and dismount. Everyone stay with their partner, and we move together, shooters on the outside, civilians on the inside. Civilians, grab on to our belts. Shooters, leave everything that you can’t use in a fight. If we can’t make it to the boat, we’re not going to need it anyway.”

There was a muted chorus of hooahs from the soldiers, and McDaniels heard Gartrell and Rittenour shrug out of their heavy packs. Gartrell tapped him on the shoulder with something hard, metallic. McDaniels turned, and saw three magazines of nine millimeter in his hand.

“They were Derwitz’s,” he said. “You’d better take them. Also have some more pistol ammo for you as well.” Gartrell handed over another three magazines, and McDaniels pocketed them.

The van glided to a halt, and Finelly slammed it into gear.

“Let’s go,” McDaniels said, and he snapped the door open and jumped out into the night.

The rain had stopped completely some time ago, and now the wind was abating. Overhead, the clouds thinned, and McDaniels saw the spectral halo of the moon. He reached behind him and yanked open the van’s side door. Gartrell emerged, and behind him, Wolf Safire regarded the dark street beyond with blinking eyes. McDaniels reached in and grabbed his arm as Finelly hobbled around the van’s battered and bloodied grille. Safire stepped out into the night, his head snapping this way and that like a bird’s. Nearby zombies shuffled along, their attention focused mostly on the ship in the river as it fired on the shoreline. That wouldn’t last for long, McDaniels knew. He was eager to get going, but he waited for Regina to get situated with Finelly and Zoe to be parted from her father by Gartrell. Everyone worked silently. No words were spoken. It didn’t take very long for the group to get organized. McDaniels nodded once and led them toward the sidewalk that was covered by the scaffolding and blue-painted plywood. It was quite dark under the scaffolding’s cover, and he intended to use the darkness to their advantage.

As he walked, he contacted the Escanaba and informed the Coast Guardsman on the other side what the plan was.

“Got that, major. The captain says he’ll halt the attack the second you give the word.”

“Roger that. Six out.” Behind him, Safire shuffled along, his fingers wrapped around McDaniels’ belt. McDaniels panned his head from left to right and back again at regular intervals, as the NVGs had only a 40 degree field of view. This was the only way to avoid developing tunnel vision and remain aware of what was going on around them in the big picture.

As McDaniels led Safire toward the corner of 80th and East End, a zed shuffled around the corner and moved toward them. Through his goggles, McDaniels saw the ghoul was unaware of their approach; its face registered none of the usual excitement they exhibited whenever the opportunity to feed presented itself, and its eyes were mostly fixed on a point somewhere in infinity. It tottered toward them, dragging one foot behind the other, its jeans and denim shirt speckled with black droplets. Blood. McDaniels took a deep breath and raised his rifle to his shoulder. Not for the first time, he wished the suppressor at the end of the MP5’s barrel worked exactly like they were supposed to in the movies: a gentle spitting sound, and then the zombie would simply collapse into a heap. None of the other ghouls surrounding them would ever know a thing. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way.

More ghouls milled about in the street, slowly walking toward the pyrotechnics caused by the Escanaba’s barrage. McDaniels quietly spoke into his headset’s boom microphone.

“Escanaba, Terminator Six… I need you to start hitting the intersection with your big guns, can you do that? We’re about twenty meters west of it, over.”

“Terminator, Escanaba. We can shift fires that way, but we need to reposition the boat. In the meantime, you’d better fall back, over.”

“No time, Escanaba.” The zombie approaching the group stopped suddenly. It moaned and shambled toward them as quickly as its stiff legs could carry it. Other stenches in the street turned toward the sound, their interest obviously piqued. Behind him, McDaniels heard the rest of the soldiers raise their weapons and prepare to engage. Safire’s grip tightened on McDaniels’ belt.

“We need that to happen right now, Escanaba, or we’re dead. Six out.” McDaniels raised his MP5 and sighted on the zed hurrying toward him. It moaned again, its hands outstretched, fingers wiggling as it groped about in the darkness, searching for the human it knew was nearby.

Crack! The zombie’s head exploded when McDaniels fired. It collapsed to the sidewalk, twitched once, then lay still.

That was all it took. The rest of the ghouls surged toward the group, moaning and shrieking like banshees.

“Fight’s on!” Gartrell said, and the roar of his AA-12 drowned out the ululations of the dead.

###

“Conn, let us drift backwards about fifty yards so the 76 can service the targets!” Hassle ordered.

“Aye sir!” said the helmsman, and he dropped the Escanaba’s big diesel engines into idle. The current did its job, and the 270-foot cutter lazily drifted out of its station keeping position, gently rolling from side to side despite the stabilizer fins that were supposed to keep the vessel steady even in heavy seas.

“Weaps, let us know when you can put steel on target,” Hassle said. “And notify the gunners that the .50 should maintain its firing pattern!” he added when the big machinegun on the port side of the ship fell silent, likely in response to the vessel’s sudden relocation. The command was given, and the .50 started up again, firing into the night, raking across the zeds standing along the shoreline. The .50 caliber rounds made short work of the targets, blasting them into chunks of disassociated necrotic flesh.

“Ready for firing!” weaps reported.

“You’re clear to fire. Do it!” Hassle said as the Escanaba’s engines growled back to life, holding the vessel steady in its new position.

###

“This isn’t my idea of a hot date!” Gartrell said as he blazed away at the approaching mass of ghouls, dropping them to the street as quickly as the AA-12 could fire. The other soldiers poured it on, hitting zombies in the head, adding their again lifeless bodies to the pile that grew around the group.

“Continue the advance!” McDaniels said. “We can’t get trapped here. Form up on me!” As he spoke, McDaniels moved, blasting a path through the zombies that approached him on the sidewalk. Safire moved with him, whimpering beneath the gunshots and the cries of the dead, his hand clenched around McDaniels’ belt. Gartrell and Rittenour stayed on the outside, blazing away at the zeds that approached them from the street, dropping them as quickly as possible. Finelly played rear guard, using his own MP5 to secure the rear. He stumbled over the corpses left lying on the sidewalk, and narrowly avoided the clutches of a ghoul that managed to get past Gartrell and Rittenour. He shot it in the face at point-blank range, blasting skull and dead brain matter all over the blue scaffolding.

Then the night was torn apart by the first of the Escanaba’s 76 millimeter rounds.

The intersection lit up as the high explosive round slammed into it at a slant, decimating the cars and trucks there as it essentially vaporized the zombies standing nearby. The shock wave of concussive force radiated outward at speeds over 200 miles an hour, carrying with it shards of glass and chunks of metal. Flames blossomed into existence as fuel tanks exploded; the fires hungrily consumed everything it could, gasoline, rubber tires, vehicle upholstery, anything that would support fire. Even the zeds themselves turned into walking funeral pyres, thrashing about before the flames consumed so much of their tissue that they could no longer move. Thick, black smoke roiled into the sky. Then another round hit. And another. And another. Shock waves raced through the intersection, intensifying as they were channeled up the streets, carrying with them a fusillade of shrapnel. Safire went down with a cry, pulling McDaniels with him. McDaniels hit the sidewalk hard, but maintained enough presence of mind to keep firing at the approaching zombies as they themselves stumbled and fell from the force of the attack. In the intersection, more cars exploded, and anti-theft alarms wailed. Another round hit, and the windows of every building facing the intersection finally shattered, stressed beyond their limits. Window unit air conditioners fell into the street, and one crashed through the plywood roof of the sidewalk scaffolding, crushing a zombie’s skull in the process. Dozens of ghouls still shambled about in the street, their primitive minds overwhelmed by the fury of the attack, blinded by the bright flames and the thick, acrid smoke. The soldiers concentrated their fire on them, dropping them one by one by one.

Until finally, the immediate vicinity was secured. For the moment.

“Escanaba, Terminator Six! Check your fire, check your fire!” McDaniels shouted into the radio.

“Roger, Terminator Six—fire mission cancelled, over.”

“Daddy?” Behind McDaniels, Regina Safire’s voice was barely audible over the crackle of raging fire and the moaning of distant zombies. Farther away, the .50 caliber machinegun on the Escanaba continued to chatter. McDaniels pulled himself into a kneeling position and took the opportunity to recharge his weapon. More muted clicks and snaps told him the rest of the soldiers were doing the same.

“Daddy!” Regina said again, her voice building into a ragged shriek.

McDaniels turned. Wolf Safire lay on his back just behind him, his face paler than usual, his eyes unfocused and glassy. Clearly visible in the glow of the firelight, a dark stain spread across the front of his white shirt. It grew larger and larger with each second. McDaniels gasped. A long shard of glass protruded from Safire’s chest, right where his heart would be.

No, no, no, no, no—

“Regina.” Safire’s voice was muted, barely audible. “My little Reggie-girl…”

Regina threw herself to the sidewalk beside her father’s prone form, already going to work. “Don’t move, Daddy. Don’t move. I need to look at this.” As she gently pulled open Safire’s shirt, she looked up at McDaniels. “Help me, God damn it!”

Gartrell finished reloading his AA-12, and he looked down at Safire quickly. “Fuck,” he muttered, then went back to work. Rittenour joined him a moment later.

McDaniels knelt beside Regina, weapon still in hand as tendrils of smoke drifted over them. He was no doctor, but he had seen his share of battlefield injuries, and this one looked serious. As Regina pulled the blood-soaked shirt away from her father’s chest, he saw more blood pump up from around the large splinter of glass in Safire’s chest. That his heart had been pierced was beyond questioning. Regina wept as she tried to wipe away the blood with her sleeve.

“McDaniels.” Safire’s voice was soft and dry but still audible, his words perfectly enunciated. “McDaniels, my daughter…”

“We’ll get her out,” McDaniels said. “And you too.”

“My jacket pocket. It’s in my pocket. Hurry.”

McDaniels reached past Regina and searched the man’s jacket. He found the pocket and reached inside. He pulled out a thick, silver IronKey thumb drive, and held it up to where Safire could see it.

“This?”

Safire nodded slightly. “I lied. All the data… it’s on that. Password protected. It’s ‘Regina Marie 1971’. That’s the password.”

“Regina Marie 1971. Your daughter’s birth date?”

“Yes.”

Gunfire rang out, and Gartrell said, “More zeds inbound, major. We’ve got to get moving.”

McDaniels pocketed the thumb drive and reached for Safire. “Come on, doctor. Let’s get you out of here.”

Safire slapped his hand away with surprising strength, then turned toward Regina. “My Reggie-girl… you always stood by me.”

Regina cried openly now, still wiping at the blood on his chest. The flow had diminished remarkably in just the last few seconds. It was clear to McDaniels that his heart was giving out.

“Daddy,” she said, her voice full of emotion.

Safire’s fingers touched her cheek. “My little Reggie-girl… how I lo—”

His hand fell away, and the light left Wolf Safire’s eyes for good.

Regina wailed. Earl sidled over and put his arm around her, tears brimming in his own eyes.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” he said. He reached out and put his other arm around Zoe. The young girl was crying too.

“Major!” Gartrell’s voice was sharp and hard-edged even above the gunfire. McDaniels nodded and grabbed a hold of Regina’s jacket as he hauled her to her feet.

“We have to go! Let’s get moving!” He pulled Regina down the sidewalk, but she screamed and fought against him.

“No! No! We can’t leave him to become one of them!” she cried.

McDaniels dropped a naked, singed zombie that advanced toward them, its flesh burned almost black by one of the car fires. It fell to the street, wisps of smoke rising from its seared flesh.

“Come on!” he said, pulling harder.

Regina ripped his hand off her jacket and reached for his belt. Before he could stop her, she pulled his pistol from its holster and whirled back to face her father’s corpse. Holding the weapon in trembling hands, she clicked off the safety as Earl pulled Zoe away, her face against his chest. Regina pointed the pistol at her father’s body.

“Oh Daddy,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

She pulled the trigger, and the pistol bucked in her hands. A single round, right through Safire’s forehead.

“Damn, if we’d known you could shoot we would have given you a gun earlier,” Gartrell said. “Better let her keep it, major. And let’s get the hell out of here!”

McDaniels grabbed Regina’s arm and pulled her after him. “Okay, he’s gone. Let’s go. Hurry!”

He led them down the sidewalk, dropping any zeds that got in their way. Gartrell moved out into the street, extending their perimeter, and waited until the zombies were close enough to ensure they got head shots. McDaniels led them into the inferno of the intersection and picked his way through the morass of burning automobiles and trucks, coughing as the acrid smoke seared his throat and nostrils. A zombie wearing a fireman’s uniform lurched toward them, half its face a scorched mass of smoking flesh. Regina fired at it, hit it in the neck, driving it back a step. Her second shot hit it right below its one remaining eye, and it collapsed against the hood of a crumpled taxi.

Suddenly, a group of zombies stepped around an overturned mail truck and surged toward the group, right behind Rittenour. He shouted warning and went to guns on them, but he was too late. Though one, then two zombies fell to the street, the rest hit him like linebackers for the Green Bay Packers and slammed him up against another car. He screamed as their teeth found his flesh.

“Get away from me!” he screamed to the others as Finelly backtracked, firing on the zeds. “Get away from me! Grenade!” McDaniels saw the grenade in Rittenour’s hands, and he knew what was about to happen.

“Finelly, run! Run!” he said, obeying his own command as he reached back and dragged Regina with him. Gartrell pushed Earl and Zoe before him as Rittenour pulled the pin and dropped the grenade to the ground between his feet. Finelly hobbled away as fast as his injured leg would allow, a keening cry escaping from his lips. Rittenour collapsed, either by purpose or from the mass of ghouls, to fall across the grenade. It went off with a thunderclap, obliterating him and sending several tattered corpses cartwheeling through the air.

McDaniels kept pressing forward, ignoring the scalding heat of a nearby car fire that left him feeling baked. The heat and brilliant light overwhelmed his goggles, so he flipped them up on their mount. Just in time—separating itself from the inferno, a flaming zombie staggered toward him, too close for him to turn his MP5 on it. He lashed out with his left hand and punched it in its blackened face, driving it back a few steps until it tripped over a twisted bumper lying in the street. He ignored it as it slowly thrashed about and hurried across the shattered intersection.

Ahead, 80th Street came to an end, as proclaimed by a pair of twisted, bent signs that read DEAD END. The trees on the corner were awash with flame, their trunks cracking and splitting with firecracker-like snaps and pops. At the end of the street was an iron security fence, more decorative than anything else that served to separate the street from the southbound lanes of the FDR. Beyond it, floating in the black waters of the East River, was the darkened silhouette of the USCGC Escanaba. Light flared from a point on its side as the .50 continuously fired at the mass of zombies that had been drawn to the shoreline. They stood three deep, despite the withering firepower being leveled against them.

This just gets better and better.

McDaniels glanced over his shoulder to make sure the rest of the team was with him, then flipped his goggles back over his eyes. “I’ll go down first. Gartrell, you and Finelly help the others. The southbound lanes look clear.” Without waiting for a response, McDaniels hauled himself over the fence and dropped down onto the bed of a pickup truck right below. The abandoned vehicle bounced on its shock absorbers, and for a split instant, McDaniels was afraid he would fall out of it. He regained his balance and looked around the vicinity, his MP5 in both hands. There were no zeds in the immediate area. Across the three lanes of dead traffic, the street seemed to disappear on the other side of the concrete guard rail. He knew the ten foot drop Safire had mentioned lay on the other side.

The truck bounced again as Regina Safire jumped into it and fell face first. She lost her grip on the pistol, and it clattered across the pickup’s metal bed. Earl was next, landing on his ass right beside her. He jumped to his feet and extended his arms upward, waiting for Finelly to help Zoe over the fence.

McDaniels jumped out of the truck. “Get up, Regina,” he said, raising his voice over the gunfire and the flames above. “I need you down here.” She reclaimed the pistol and eased herself out of the pickup truck as Zoe fell into her father’s arms with a small shriek. Both of them fell into the bed, and Gartrell jumped into it.

“Let’s go, Sergeant Finelly!” he said, landing on his feet like a cat.

Finelly lifted his injured leg over the twisted iron fence, wincing at the pain. His wound was bleeding again, McDaniels noticed as he scanned left and right, waiting for the first zed to appear. And there they were… shuffling out from under an overpass several hundred feet to the north. In the glow of the fires above, they could clearly see the band of humans, and they accelerated toward them as fast as they could manage.

Finelly shrieked suddenly as five zombies attacked him from behind, pulling him away from the fence. Both Gartrell and McDaniels fired at them, but they were too late. Finelly was pulled away out of sight, but they heard his screams and one frantic burst of full automatic fire that ended almost as quickly as it had started.

“Run!” Gartrell pulled Earl to his feet. “Run now!”

Earl grabbed Zoe and flung both of them out of the pickup truck, with Gartrell right behind. And not a moment too soon; a literal wave of deadheads poured over the fence, collapsing into the pickup’s bed like a grisly tsunami, moaning and writhing. Those below were crushed within seconds as the pile grew and grew. McDaniels pushed Regina ahead of him, then did the same with Earl and Zoe.

“Run down in that direction—we’ll have to go down to where we can cross over into the northbound lanes!” he said, pointing south. There, the sloping southbound lane met the northbound where the ground leveled out, separated from each other by a thick concrete guardrail that was less than four feet high. As they passed him, he pulled his last smoke grenade and tossed it behind him in an attempt to obscure their retreat. Gartrell backed toward him, firing his AA-12 at the zeds in the pickup. As the smoker went off, Gartrell pulled a fragmentation grenade and tossed it into the pickup, then joined McDaniels. The two men sprinted down the lane, pushing past abandoned cars. Some of them were still running. The frag grenade went off in a fiery flash, its retort muted by the scores of bodies that surrounded it. Shrapnel whirled through the area, bouncing off cars, shattering glass, and mutilating bodies that felt no pain.

“Escanaba, Terminator Six! We’re running south to where we can cross over to the northbound lanes—concentrate your fires there! Give us a path!”

“Terminator, Escanaba—we’re on it, you might want to hold up for as long as you can. Cover your ears, rounds out!” As the Coast Guardsman spoke, the 76 millimeter gun on the ship’s foredeck spoke once again. Microseconds later, the powerful explosions ripped through the area in blossoming flashes of light and smoke. McDaniels and his group were pelted with all manner of debris, concrete, metal, plastic, pieces of deboned ghouls.

“Let me past! Let me past!” Gartrell shouted as he shoved his way past McDaniels. Behind, the first of the zombies stepped through the smoke screen. McDaniels fired two shots, dropping one. The zeds behind stepped over the body, stumbling and fumbling as they moaned, but still they came, ignoring the powerful explosions that ripped the night asunder on the other side of the retaining wall. Ahead, a ghoul suddenly appeared, right before Regina. She cried and stopped short, raising her pistol. She fired and missed. She fired again, but hit the zombie in the chest, which did nothing to deter it. As it advanced upon her, she raised the weapon higher, focusing on its head. But then Earl plowed into her from behind, and both of them went down. Zoe shrieked when she saw the zombie step toward them, its jaws spread wide. Its head disappeared in a pulpy flash of expanding tissue and fragmented bone as Gartrell fired a single shot over Zoe’s head. He then pushed past the shrieking girl and leaped over Earl and Regina as they thrashed about on the roadway between the stalled cars.

“Get up! Get up!” McDaniels shouted to them. He turned and fired at the zombies behind them, dropping more ghouls this time as they emerged from the smoke. Earl and Regina got to their feet.

“Escanaba, Terminator—we’re almost at the crossing point!” Ahead, Gartrell was already nearing where the lanes came together. “Cease fire with the big guns now, over!”

The 76 millimeter gun stopped firing a moment later, and the .50 caliber resumed, sounding tinny and ineffectual when compared to the ferocious roar of its bigger shipmate. Gartrell crossed over to the guard rail, then stopped short for a moment before shouldering his AA-12 and firing for all he was worth.

“Wait there! Wait there!” he shouted. As he fired, he backpedaled and reached into one of the cargo pockets on his BDU trousers. As a wave of walking dead suddenly crested the guard rail, he pulled out a long cylinder from the pocket. Running southbound now, away from McDaniels and the rest of the group, he jumped onto a car and fiddled with the cylinder. A bright purple-white flame sprang into existence. Gartrell had lit a flare.

Earl gave voice to the question McDaniels was asking himself. “What the fuck is that crazy man doing?”

He’s leading them away from us, McDaniels thought.

“Come on, you dead motherfuckers!” Gartrell screamed, waving the flare over his head. “Come on!” He then set off to the south, bounding from car to car, pausing only momentarily to stop and shoot at the zombies closest to him.

“Gartrell!” McDaniels said over the radio. “Gartrell!”

“You’re clear to cross now—get to it, it’s not going to last! Find out where my family is, and make sure they’re all right!” Gartrell responded, his voice breathless and rushed in McDaniels’ headphone.

 “Gartrell, you’re committing suicide!”

“Things weren’t exactly going my way before, major. You might want to take advantage of this and get your ass to the boat with that damned thumb drive.” Gartrell paused to fire once again, then resumed running, the flare clearly illuminating him. “Besides, you always thought I was a pain in the ass anyway. If the meek are going to inherit this place, at least one of them has to live, and that’s you!”

“Gartrell… Dave. Dave, thank you. Thank you.”

“Just find my family, make sure they’re safe,” Gartrell said. “Terminator Five, out.” Gartrell continued running, yelling and firing as he went, drawing the zeds away even as the Escanaba continued firing, picking them off one by one.

“Hole up somewhere!” McDaniels said. “We’ll come back for you, Gartrell!” He raised the sat phone to his ear. “Escanaba, we’re coming across now! Send the boats in, and don’t fire on us!” He switched on the infrared strobe clipped to his body armor, and it flashed brightly in his NVGs. “I’m illuminated with an IR strobe, over!”

“Terminator, Escanaba… roger that last, you are illuminated, over.”

McDaniels grabbed Zoe and pushed her into Earl’s arms, then shoved his way past them and Regina. He led them to where Gartrell had attracted the attention of the zeds, and leaned over the concrete guardrail. There was massive decimation on the other side, where the 76 millimeter rounds had done their job. Cars and trucks and buses were aflame, with great columns of fire reaching a hundred feet into the sky. Here and there, stupefied zeds tottered about. Some were smoldering, others were half blown to pieces; the .50 cal. on the Escanaba continued to chatter, raking the remaining zeds with tight, controlled bursts. Just the same, some rounds went wild, slamming into the concrete retaining wall.

“Let’s go!” McDaniels led the group across the lanes to the south of the conflagration, staying clear of the engagement area. A zombie rose up from between two cars, and he gunned it down. Another appeared, this one much smaller, a girl in a frayed, blood splattered dress, clutching a headless teddy bear to its dead chest. Regina made a strangled sound in her throat as the small ghoul rushed toward them, moaning in hunger. McDaniels shot it through the head, straight and true.

“Hurry!” he urged them as he headed across the FDR. Another cement guardrail was ahead. McDaniels leaned across it, looking to the left and the right. A small group of zombies moved toward him from the south. McDaniels raised his rifle, but he needn’t have bothered. Several muzzle flashes from across the water sent rounds that ripped through them, eventually bringing them down.

“Terminator! Over here!” came a voice.

McDaniels looked over and saw a small, rigid hull inflatable with a single outboard engine approaching the shoreline. Several armed Coast Guardsmen sat in it, all wearing night vision goggles. A stocky Guardsman with an M16 waved at him from the bow, holding an IR chem stick. McDaniels hopped over the guard rail and reached back for Zoe. Earl lifted her over the guard rail and handed her to him, then helped Regina crawl over. Behind him, a mass of ghouls boiled over the guard rail separating the north and southbound lanes.

“Holy shit, this again?” he muttered before flinging himself over the edge of guard rail, landing beside his daughter.

McDaniels charged toward the metal fence separating the shore from the river. “Come on, Coast Guard! We’re next on the menu here!” Regina, Earl, and Zoe joined him at the fence. The river was perhaps five feet below.

“Don’t jump in the water!” the Coast Guardsman said. “Zombies!” He pointed to a corpse floating nearby, slowly paddling its way toward where McDaniels and the others waited.

“Good God, when will this be over,” Regina moaned.

The Coast Guardsman in the bow of the boat shouldered his M16 and fired a burst at the zombie. Though his aim was imperfect, at least one of the bullets struck the ghoul in the head, and it slowly sank beneath the dark water.

“Uh major…” Earl looked behind them. McDaniels turned and saw the first of what seemed to be a hundred zeds crossing the FDR, stumbling toward the other guard rail. It was the only thing that separated them from their hopeful next meal.

“Coast Guard, let’s get a move on, we have about a hundred friends named zed showing up for dinner!” he shouted as the boat drew nearer.

“Keep your shirt on, Army,” the Guardsman in the bow said. The boat stopped right below them, and McDaniels stepped away from the guard rail. He peppered the advancing ghouls with fire from his MP5.

“Earl, help the ladies into the boat, but be quick about it!”

Earl was already in the process of handing off Zoe. Regina turned and fired her pistol at the zombies, then vaulted over the railing and into the waiting boat. The .50 caliber aboard the Escanaba spoke, and several of the ghouls were blasted into pieces as the heavy rounds passed through them like exploding missiles. It didn’t faze those who were not hit. The zombies made it to the guard rail and crawled over it, moaning, eyes flat and soulless in the firelight.

“Major!” Regina shouted.

McDaniels vaulted over the fence and crashed into the boat.

“Pull away!” the Guardsman in the bow yelled as he and another Guardsman pushed the boat away from the cement breakwater. Just in time; the zombies swarmed over the fence and plunged into the dark water, landing only a foot or two from the small vessel. A moment later, and the Coast Guard would have had a lot more company in the boat.

The Rigid Hull Inflatable’s outboard engine roared, and the boat turned toward the waiting Escanaba.