The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(210)

“Hope it was quick,” said Bunny.

Slim glanced at him. “If they were in that lab then they were the bad guys.”

“Even so,” said Bunny.

We went into the foothills, onto some rocks that were cooler than the sands.

The other team called in. The Marine was on point. “Jukebox to Cowboy, be advised we have more bodies up here. Five DOA. Three men and two women. Third-degree burns, cuts and blunt force injuries. Looks like they might have walked out of the hot zone and died up here in the rocks.” He paused. “They’re a mess. Vultures and wild dogs been at them.”

“Verify that what you are seeing are animal bites,” I said.

There was a long pause.

And it got longer.

I keyed the radio. “Cowboy to Jukebox, copy?”

Two long damn seconds.

“Cowboy to Jukebox, do you copy?”

That’s when we heard the distant rattle of automatic gunfire. And the screams.

We ran.

“Night-vision!” I snapped, and we flipped the units into place as the black landscape suddenly transformed into a thousand shades of luminescent green. We were all carrying ALICE packs with about fifty pounds of gear—most of it stuff that’ll blow up, M4 combat rifles, AMT .22 caliber auto mags on our hips, and combat S.I. assault boots. It’s all heavy and it can slow you down…except when your own brothers in arms are under fire. Then it feels like wings that carry you over the ground at the speed of a racing tiger. That’s the illusion, and that’s how it felt as we tore up the slopes toward the path Second Squad had taken.

The gunfire was continuous.

As we hit the ridge, I signaled the others to get low and slow. Bunny came up beside me. “Those are M5s, boss.”

He was right. Our guns have their own distinctive sound, and it doesn’t sound much like the Kalashnikovs the Taliban favored.

The gunfire stopped abruptly.

We froze, letting the night tell us its story.

The last of the gunfire echoes bounced back to us from the distant peaks. I could hear loose rocks clattering down the slope, probably debris knocked loose by stray bullets. In the distance the wind was beginning to howl through some of the mountain passes.

I keyed the radio.

“Cowboy to Jukebox. Respond.”

Nothing.

We moved forward, moving as silently as trained men can do when any misstep could draw fire. The tone of the wind changed as we edged toward the rock wall that would spill us into the pass where Second Squad had gone. A heavier breeze, perhaps? Moving through one of the deeper canyons?

A month ago I’d have believed that. Too much has happened since.

I tapped Bunny and then used the hand signal to listen.

He heard the sound, then, and I could feel him stiffen beside me. He pulled Slim close and used two fingers to mime walking.

Slim had been fully briefed on the trip. He understood. The low sigh wasn’t the wind. It was the unendingly hungry moan of a walker.

I finger-counted down from three and we rounded the bend.

Jukebox had said that they’d found five bodies. Second Squad made eight.

As we rounded the wall we saw that the count was wrong. There weren’t eight people in the pass. There were fifteen. All of them were dead. Most of them moving.

Second Squad lay sprawled in the dust. The night-vision made it look like they were covered in black oil. Jukebox still held his M4, finger curled through the trigger guard, barrel smoking. A man dressed in a white lab coat knelt over him, head bowed as if weeping for the fallen soldier, but as we stepped into the pass the kneeling man raised his head and turned toward us. His mouth and cheeks glistened with black wetness and his eyes were lightless windows that looked into a world in which there was no thought, no emotion, no anything except hunger.

Spider and Zorro—the L.A. SWAT kid and the other Ranger—were almost invisible beneath the seething mass of bodies that crouched over them, tearing at clothing with wax-white fingers and at skin with gray teeth.

“Holy Mother of God,” whispered Slim.

“God’s not here,” I said as I put the pinpoint of the laser sight on the kneeling zombie. It was a stupid thing to say. Glib and macho. But I think it was also the truth.

The creature bared its teeth and hissed like a jungle cat. Then he lunged, pale fingers reaching for me.

I put the first round in his breastbone and that froze him in place for a fragment of a second, and then put the next round through his forehead. The impact snapped his neck, the round blew out the back of his skull, and the force flung him against the rock wall.

The other walkers surged up off the ground with awful cries that I will never be able to forget. Bunny, Slim and I stood our ground in a shooting line, and we chopped them back and down and dead. Dead for good and all. Painting the walls with the same dripping black. The narrow confines of the pass roared with thunder, the waves of echoes striking us in the chest, the ejected brass tinkling with improbable delicacy.

Then silence.

I looked down at the three men. They’d been part of Echo Team for a day. Less. They’d been briefed on the nature of the enemy. They were highly trained men, the best of the best. But really, what kind of training prepares you for this? The first time the DMS encountered the walkers they’d lost two whole teams. Twenty-four seasoned agents.

Even so, the deaths of these good, brave men was like a spear in my heart. It was hard to take a breath. I forced myself to be in the moment, and I slung my M4 and drew my .22 and shot each of the corpses in the head. To be sure. We carried the .22s because the low mass of the bullet will penetrate the skull but lacks the power to exit, and so the bullet bounces around inside the skull and tears the brain apart. Assassins use it, and so does anyone who has to deal with things like walkers.