DUSK 2
Catherine wasn’t sure if she
stumbled into Lou or his soldier until she heard Lou’s voice a few steps away.
“I just can’t get rid of you.”
Light from the stairwell seeped into
the crawlspace through opening, but it didn’t reach very far. Though the shadows hid Lou’s face, Catherine
assumed his expression held sheer disapproval.
“Just stay behind us and point that
gun at the ground. I don’t want you
pulling any bullets out of me that you
put in. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Just a week ago, Catherine wouldn’t
have followed someone into a situation like this. She’d have left the soldier business up to
Frank, Sam, Scott, or even her husband but times had changed. She had to see justice served not only for
her husband, but everyone killed in the attack.
They’d appointed her as their leader and Catherine did not believe that
she could serve them if she couldn’t accomplish this one task. As their leader, she had to be the one to see
Olmstead captured or killed.
Hearing moans outside of the building,
they hurried to the other side of the space where Lou worked on a combination
lock on a metal door.
“They’re right outside now.”
Lou pulled the door opened and
motioned for the other soldier and Catherine to walk through. He followed them, closing the door behind
them. Catherine doubted that many of the
undead would get into the crawl space, and the door looked sturdy. She wondered how they would get back to the
surface.
She followed the other two men down
a stair case, which led into a dimly lit basement. Though each man was equipped with a flash
light, they didn’t dare use them in case they weren’t alone. Instead they stalked slowly through the
darkness, allowing their eyes to adjust.
After a search of the room left them
confident there were no attackers in hiding, they opened an unlocked metal door
and moved into a service tunnel.
*
Sergeant Fredrickson ordered the
jeeps to maneuver around the edge of the mob, hoping to round them back to the
gap in the wall. He wasn’t optimistic,
but the machine guns were nearly dry and he wondered if they had enough
ammunition in their rifles. As they
maneuvered by some of the populated buildings, several snipers fired on the
undead. Some of the less seasoned gunmen
fired too close to the jeeps. Others
were too eager, wasting ammunition, not taking the time to line up their shots. Even so, he’d take all the help he could get.
Behind a line of one story storage
units, the Sergeant spotted four more jeeps approaching. Mindful of the gunfire, they approached from
outside of the Sergeant’s unit’s line of fire.
When they got closer, he could see bullet holes in some of the
vehicles. One of them was missing a
windshield. The numbers of troops inside
were uneven. Usually for an attack
maneuver, there were three or four men per jeep. He spotted one jeep with two men, two with
three troops, and one with five. They
looked like they’d gotten away from a skirmish pretty fast. He wondered which side they’d been on.
Remaining perpendicular to the other
jeeps, the newcomers lined up in front of the storage units and opened
fire. The undead were fifty yards away,
leaving plenty of time before they had to regroup.
The undead approached for a few minutes, and then the two
groups of jeeps moved away, falling back behind another row of buildings. The jeep with a missing windshield broke away
from the others and headed towards the Sergeant. In response, Fredrickson instructed his driver
to move further back from the fray. As
they moved closer, he recognized the men in the jeep. One of them was Jim Summers, an internal
security agent. His job was to control
crowds and identify potential threats.
He didn’t have a military rank and wasn’t supposed to be leading an
attack.
“Summers, what in the hell is going on?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Summers said.
*
“We have to seal the hole in the
wall.”
The undead had done their job. There were enough of them in the compound and
they were spread out enough to keep the guards occupied for hours. There’d been enough confusion for Sanchez and
a small unit to get inside of headquarters after flushing Olmstead out of the
nest. Now it was time for damage
control.
“How much ammunition do your men
have?”
“The 50
“We’ll be alright. I need you to send one of your jeeps back to
the motor pool and have them return with two troop transports. The largest ones they can find.”
“Since when do you give me orders
anyway?”
“Desperate times, my friend.”
With that, the two jeeps rejoined
their units. Summers lined what had used
to be an old man up in his sights. Its
pants were missing and the rags of a button up shirt hung from its
shoulders. The rags were soaked with so
much dried blood that he couldn’t tell what color they’d once been. The man looked like he’d died from a shotgun
blast to the abdomen. Before pulling the
trigger, he wondered what the old man’s story was.
*
They’d been in the tunnel for almost
an hour when they first heard the moans.
Lou wondered how many of the undead were down in the dark with them and
how they got there. He remembered
hearing a story about homeless people forming societies underground. Many, he’d heard lived their whole lives
without seeing the sun.
Potentially hundreds of the undead
could have been down there with them.
There had been maintenance workers who were down there on a regular
basis. And maybe in the early panic,
people had fled to what they though was a safe place only to face other dangers. However, Lou had personally helped clear out
those tunnels. He’d patrolled them years
ago when he’d guarded the compound and he hadn’t heard stories of the undead
down there in years. Yet here they were.
“You sent Jack and Ted down here?”
Catherine asked. The anger in her voice
made Lou flinch.
“There was no other choice. It’s no more dangerous down here than out
there.”
She was about to say something else
when Lou shoved a hand to her mouth.
“Please. I have to listen.”
Both Sanchez and his soldier had
turned on their flashlights. Without
them, they’d have had no way to see down there, but they’d be easy targets if
Olmstead spotted the beams first. He
decided that with the undead down there, the old man wasn’t likely to set up an
ambush. Instead he was probably trying
to find another safe way to the surface and an escort out of the base.
“I think I know where they’re
heading,” Lou said and turned right at the next tunnel.
*
As the undead pounded on the main
building, the snipers picked them off as fast as they could. Though the moans overpowered the rifle
reports, the undead mob seemed to be growing in slower numbers. Many of the soldiers who’d have been
exchanging gunfire with each other now intermingled, not sure who was on which
side of the skirmish and not caring.
Two soldiers on the second floor
tossed Molotov cocktails outside of their windows. They tossed them every few minutes in an
attempt to keep the undead away from the opened doorway. Though the upper floors were secured,
exterminating the undead inside would be more dangerous and laborious than
putting them down in the open.
Luckily, the armory in the main
building was better stocked than anywhere else in the compound and had been
designed to withstand such an attack. The
soldiers could hold out inside of the base for days if they needed to.
*
Shortly after they discovered their
ride missing, Olmstead and Buckingham moved back into the tunnels. Though there were bound to be mobs of the
undead outside, they weren’t Olmstead’s only concern. If the enemy had known about their escape
plan, then there might be an ambush waiting for them on the surface. Their only option was to move back to the compound
and assume someone was hunting them below.
Without the artificial light, they’d
be blind. Trained to keep his commander
out of danger, Buckingham had turned on his flashlight and told Olmstead not to
activate his. They’d decided to take a
roundabout way back to the compound to reduce the odds of running into a
hunting party. As they walked through
sewer tunnels that hadn’t been explored in over twenty years, they decided to
be extra cautious. They moved slower,
taking more care with the sound of their footsteps.
Unconcerned with a hunting party,
they worried about hibernating undead.
When they’d first build satellite compounds, they’d exterminated the
undead inside of the tunnels within a two mile radius of the compound and along
designated escape routes. In the years
that this compound had been occupied, they hadn’t encountered any ghouls in the
tunnels, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. The first rule of survival was to assume the
worst. To allow optimism was to let your
guard down.
After walking for what seamed like
hours, the two men decided to take a break.
Without a word, they shared a canteen.
To save power, they’d turned off the flashlight, figuring they’d hear
the stumbling, moaning corpses before they’d need to see them.
They were right.
*
It took less than twenty minutes for
the men to return with two troop transports and reinforcements. The transports were loaded with twenty more
troops each, with men already firing through the side slots. As the transports slammed through the crowd, Fredrickson
and Summers ordered their men to fall in line behind the trucks.
With the machine guns dry, the men
only fired rifles while some of the others tossed fire bombs at dense portions
of the crowds, hoping to scatter them.
The tactic worked. With the extra
muscle in front, they were able to find the position in the wall where the
Sergeant had spoken with one of the sentries.
They were there as surveillance more than muscle so they hadn’t been
equipped with more than fifty to a hundred rounds in each tower. They also lacked any sort of heavy firepower
or explosives so after only a few minutes all they could do was watch as their
compound was invaded.
Both of the tower guards cheered and
waved as convoy advanced.
The transport trucks immediately
parked along the hole in the wall, one behind the other so the mass of corpses
couldn’t tumble one of them over. The
men inside of the transports kept firing while the jeeps went after the
stragglers. With the hole closed, it was
time to go hunting.
*
When gunshots sounded, Lou signaled
for the others to be quiet and follow him.
For all he knew, both Olmstead and a mob of zombies could be around the
corner. Readying their rifles, the three
slowly approached the commotion. A few
minutes later, they caught a glimpse of a flashlight beam. Lou and his soldier quickly killed theirs,
hoping to maintain the element of surprise.
The light swayed back and forth
across the intersecting tunnel. Someone
shouted and there were more shots. They
seemed to be firing in both directions and more concerned with the undead than
the possibility of ambush. He held his
position. Neither the undead or Olmstead
were in sight.
The undead moans echoed eerily
through the tunnels, but weren’t deafening.
There were less than a hundred of them, but that was still too many for
comfort. If he wasn’t careful during a
retreat, Lou could easily lead his group into a dead end.
“Hurry,” someone shouted. This time, Lou recognized Buckingham’s voice.
The flashlight beam shined across
the tunnel as the burley soldier appeared in the hallway. Before Olmstead popped into view, the light
swung at Lou’s face leaving him no choice but to open fire. Buckingham pivoted at the bullet slammed
through his shoulder. He cried out and
grabbed Olmstead, shoving him down the other end of the hallway.
Without protest, the old man ran.
In the commotion, Buckingham had
dropped his flashlight. The beam
illuminated his legs as he moved into a shooting stance. Lou and the soldier scattered and ducked,
making as small of targets as they could.
Following their example, Catherine hugged the ground.
Two shots whizzed by before the dead
were on Buckingham. He cried out as one
of them bit into his shoulder. Shadows
danced around the tunnel walls as rotting feet collided with the flashlight,
sending it skidding and spinning around the floor.
By the time Buckingham stopped
screaming, the undead seemed to stop coming from the left. None of them poured into the tunnel after the
live prey so Lou assumed they were temporarily distracted by their meal.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “We don’t have much time.”
Without waiting for their answers,
Lou dashed through the tunnel and past the grotesque dog pile. When no hands grasped at him, Lou looked back
in time to see Catherine and the soldier follow.
The there was a flash at the end of
the tunnel as Olmstead fired on his pursuers.
Backlit by the downed flashlight, they made excellent targets. Again, they scrambled to the ground and
walls. Lou managed to squeeze off two
shots, which chipped the brick wall. He
hoped pellets or mortar sprayed Olmstead in the face.
Just as Lou was about to get up to
continue his pursuit two more shots sounded.
With the feasting undead just behind them, Lou realized that Olmstead
had no reason to give up his position.
Soon they’d be forced to move away from the undead, putting themselves
in an excellent position for getting shot.
“Do you still have one of those
grenades?” Lou shouted.
The soldier shook his head. He figured as much, but he’d made sure to
shout the question loud enough for Olmstead to hear.
“Fuck it.”
Lou winded his arm back and hurled
his flashlight towards Olmstead’s position.
Before the handheld lamp could smash against the wall, Lou charged. When he reached the intersection, Lou lunged
forward and somersaulted, stopping himself in a kneeling position. Before trying to aim or getting a fix on
Olmstead’s position, Lou opened fire.
The muzzle flash revealed the old man’s attempt to raise his rifle. He only got it halfway up before the shots
knocked him back.
Lou wasn’t sure how many times he
pulled the trigger before he realized the rifle was empty. Slinging the rifle from his shoulder, Lou ran
forward and pulled out his sidearm. By the
time he reached Olmstead’s body Lou could hear shots from Catherine and the
soldier’s position.
With his flashlight shattered
several steps behind him, Lou needed to light a match to see the corpse. As soon as the dim light flickered, Lou used
his free hand to aim the pistol at Olmstead’s face and pulled the trigger.
“What’s the escape plan?” the
soldier shouted as the flashlight beam shined at Lou’s feet.
“I think I know a way around
them. Let’s just hope we don’t surface
the middle of a swarm.”