Whiskey Delta – Chapter 9

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

-Friedrich Neitzsche

The doors slammed repeatedly against their hinges. With every blow, the chain went taught and then relaxed, tight and limp. They could hear the sounds coming through, the terrible cry of an untold number of Whiskeys howling their blood-curdling roar.

Dezba tightened his hold on the M4′s handle and stretched his trigger finger. He thought back to the first briefing the Mage gave when he first took command of the Rattlesnakes. Fresh off the line from dealing with the First Wave, he knew the enemy and had seen them in action.

“Your average Whiskey doesn’t look too bright or threatening when it’s on its own or standing idle,” he said. “But when they get the smell of blood and start moving in packs, they can get some fierce and move really fast. Let em alone long enough, and they can move like water and swallow an entire neighborhood in seconds… Trust in your equipment, and the man next to you, and you will make it out alive.”

Dezba looked to his left. Jone’s weapon was trembling and he looked about ready to unload the entire thing at anything that moved. Typical FNG behavior, and it didn’t exactly inspire a lot of trust right now. Reaching out with his free hand, he steadied the weapon and looked Jones in the eye.

“You’re okay, Private. Just remember… you’re armed, they’re not.”

Jones nodded, but muttered something inaudible under his breath. From the way his lips moved, Dezba figured he was saying “the sound” over and over again.

“It’s just noise,” Dezba said. “That’s their bark, not their bite.” He turned away before uttering the rest. “Their bite is way fucking worse.”

To his right, Whitman appeared in better spirits. Hands tightly on the grips on his rifle, eyes fixed ahead and waiting for a target. Like Jones, he kept repeating the same thing under his breath.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on…”

Dezba chuckled. There was something he could count on; Whitman’s rampant, stupid blood lust.

“Come on, come on, come on, bring your ugly face to my gun and I’ll shoot if off for ya!”

Whatever juju that boy lived by, he hoped it lasted the rest of the day. He made a mental note to take it easier on him from now on. Redneck or not, it was nice to know he didn’t have to worry about him being at his side. He felt confident with Majorca and Mill guarding their flanks as well.

Now if only the LT and first would get their asses up here…

The doors thudded again, and this time they came apart a few inches. In the tiny space that formed between them, half a dozen dead eyes became visible and dozens of clawing fingers reached out to fill the gap. With each push, that space expanded just a little. The chain was still in place, but it was stretched taught and could go at any minute.

“Hold!” he yelled. Now was the perfect time to panic and do something stupid, like fire prematurely. Nothing worse than being short on ammo when the real charge came.

“Hold…”

The biggest slam yet came this time. The Whiskeys could see Dezba and his men on the other side now, smell their sweat and their stank. The allure of living flesh was irresistible to them. The sight of it just out of reach must have seemed like a taunting offering. And the way Dezba had pissed them off already… Hell, he could tell they were prepared to smash through anything to get at them now. He could see it in their faces. They were angry, they were desperate. They’d run headlong into shrapnel to gnaw at their bones!

“Hold…”

Any second now. The door was widening. More eyes, fingers, and even clawing limbs were pushing through now. The horrible roar reached a fevered pitch as the faces shoving through bore broken teeth and rotted tongues. The mouths were gaped open, reaching out to get them.

And then… the chain snapped.

It fell apart and to the sides as if in slow motion.

The first of the bodies fell forward into the room and flew straight at them. They took forever, each step an eternity as the screaming faces and claws reached out to get them. Dezba seemed to be moving in slow motion too. His own hands seemed to take untold centuries just to get to the trigger and in time for him to issue the order.

“Weapons Free!”

And just as quickly, everything moved fast again. Too fast to track. The rifle burst didn’t even seem to register in his mind, just the sight of the first one falling in his sights. Another one quickly filled it and he shot again, sending it to the ground next. More and more filled the aperature of his sights. All he could was  keep targeting and keep shooting .

One head, two heads. One down, two down. Onto the next. Fire, spot, fire, spot. Out. Reload. Cock. Resume.

To Dezba’s left, the reverberations of Jone’s shotgun thrummed in time with the pounding of his heart. Boom, boom, boom! When Jones stopped to reload, Dezba felt suddenly cold, like his heart had stopped. He looked to his right and saw Whitman still shooting, and felt some measure of warmth again.

Trust in the men next to you, the Mage said. Trust in their equipment as well.

Speaking of which, his weapon ran out and began clicking where it should have been firing. He drew his attention back to his sector, slammed a fresh mag in and kept up the fire.

Fire, spot, fire, spot. Drop one, drop two, drop three, count your rounds!

And then, the first mass of them was all gone. They could hear more noise coming as the stragglers caught up and began to push towards their position. He did a quick check of his magazines and issued some orders while there was still time.

“Mill, Majorca, cover! Whitman, Jones, ammo check!”

The two SAWs kept firing bursts at any stragglers who ran in while the the two privates flanking him checked their weapons to make sure their mags were full. Dezba knew he had thirteen more rounds still, which would stagger their reloads. That’d come in handy when Mill and Majorca needed to reload too. Their weapons packed a good two-hundred rounds, but took substantially longer to restock once they were out.

Whitman swapped out a fresh mag for his near-depleted one and gave him the thumbs up. Dezba looked over to see Jones sliding fresh cartridges in his gun, his fingers trembling. He nearly dropped one when the noise reentered the room and more dead eyes came upon them.

“Eyes up! More coming!”

And it began again, with more and more dead flesh pouring in. Already, a pile was forming in the center, moving bodies falling and laying on the tile. But fresh ones kept moving in to take their place, another head stepping up to fill the vacancy left by the last.

Dezba felt time slowing down again as he realized that they were keeping them contained. He, Jones and Whitman were stopping them dead, Majorca and Mill combing them from the sides. The monsters had nowhere to go but down as they caught it from all directions. Before long, the second wave began to thin out and it seemed clear there wouldn’t be a third. He could even hear himself yelling.

“Keep it up! Pour it on, men! Pour it on!”

Jones joined him. The kick of his gun and the way it kept sending the bastards to the floor was getting to him, the sheer power he held in his hands beating back the fear that had him in its grips a moment ago. He yelled senselessly, cursing and hollering every time a buckshot ripped through another one of the beasts.

Just about everyone was shouting now. Screaming at the bastards to die and be done with it. They seemed to be obliging too, the thinning numbers dying farther and farther from the center of the room.

And then, it was over. The last body fell and there were no more coming. Every gun went quiet and the smell of hot brass and GSR permeated. A new noise, a deafening din began to creep into the room then, something more powerful than all the shouts, wails and gunshots combined. Dezba almost laughed when he realized what it was.

Silence…

“Loudest noise in the whole damn world…” he remembered someone saying once. Somehow, it was the end of the carnage that sounded the loudest of all. An absence which was a more profound presence than all the chaos it replaced.

And there it was again. Slowly, it began to ebb, and the gentle noise of the world crept back in.

That’s when he heard the low moans.

“Shit, some of ‘em aint dead,” cried Jones.

Dezba heard the words and spotted the movement on the floor. There and across the room, he saw feet sliding, tongues lolling, and even some arms trying to crawl their way forward.

Shit, he thought. Shot to pieces, and those that could were still trying to find their way to something, to grab a hold of whatever flesh they could and bite it.They fought like fanatics, these things. Or perhaps like machines. Their programming unbreakable, even in the face of obliteration.

His eyes came to stare at the nearest one. It was looking at him now too. For the first time ever, he noticed that it had features beyond the horrific face and rotted skin. For starters, it had long, blonde hair and thin, frail-looking arms. Most of it’s lower body had been shot up, but it was still extending its arms out at him. He almost thought it was asking for help, until he saw the two rows of greying teeth snarling at him. He also saw the eyes, the milky, terrible, globes of eyes.

To his rear, Whitman emitted a shrill whistle to get his attention.

“Sarge? Bad time for that warrior shit, man. We still gotta finish em off!”

“‘Leave no Whiskey undead’, as the Mage says.”

It was Mill saying this as he fed a fresh ammo box into his SAW and strung the ammo. Dezba barely heard him over the sound in his ears. The tiny moaning, and the beating of his own heart. He was frozen otherwise, caught in those awful, milky globes. He moved forward, his feet moving him just shy of the creatures reach. From here, he could see right down into the maw of the creature as it tried to grab hold of him.

What was he seeing there? Was there even anything to see beyond the mad panic that animated these things? He saw what looked like pain, but was there anger too? Was that a face filled with hatred for the living, or torment over the prospect of being undead? Or was that just the look of a monster desperately hungry to feed? How could he even tell?

But then, what was the point of their little ‘ambush’ anyway, if all they wanted was living people to feed on? Why not simply take out the people waiting on the roof? Surely, no obstacle they put in place could keep these bastards at bay. Why go to all this trouble? The thoughts put a crinkle in his forehead which was beginning to give him a headache.

“Sarge?”

Dezba’s mind went clear. His hand whipped around in a blur, grabbing his sidearms from his hip and pointing it directly in the thing’s face. A hole exploded between it’s eyes a second later and the thing went limp. Three more blasts and every piece of moving flesh was stilled. Everyone in the room recoiled, then realized that he had placed three head shots in the space of just over a second.

The world began to creep back in on his senses, just in time for him to hear Whitman’s whistle of surprise.

“Shit, Sarge. We’re about to nominate you for the Congressional Medal of Ugly!”

First Squad erupted in hoots of laughter and elation. Everybody joined in, everybody except the Sarge…