The Apocalypse

Chapter 15

Eric

New York City



The chopper banked over the Hudson River and Eric puked into the water rushing below. It was his second time. Some of the soldiers with him chuckled, though they were grey in the face themselves. For them it wasn't from airsickness.

Normal combat was a strain on the human psyche, fighting the undead, however took a toll that couldn't be measured. Hearing the thump of bullets striking a man and seeing him keep coming on and on had turned these soldiers old before their time. Still they were trained and experienced, and they handled their weapons with a sureness that Eric Reidy found comforting. His own ability was in such doubt that he wasn't allowed his ammunition until they landed. They were afraid he would set his pistol off by accident and kill the chopper.

The Blackhawk already seemed to have something wrong with it. It flared up and down, while at times it flew sideways and always Eric clung to the harness, that barely kept him inside, with a desperation that had his muscles vibrating.

Finally the lieutenant in charge of the operation, a tall black man with sad eyes, spoke into his headset, “Thunderbolt, cut the nap of the earth shit. No one's got missile lock on you. All you're doing is making the Doc queasy and it isn't pretty.”

For Eric, queasy had been thirty minutes before at lift off...he was well past queasy. Thankfully the helicopter's flight path flattened and they made straight for mid-town Manhattan.

“One more time,” Lieutenant Mathers yelled above the noise of the wind and the engine. “Since we can't rappel down or fast-rope, we're going to land across the street from the hotel on another building. If for some reason we get turned around it's just to the east. East, you hear me? Across a two-lane road with, like hedges and shit running between. If you cross a street that doesn't have hedges you're on the wrong street and you're f*cked, ok?”

The men nodded and one shook Eric's shoulder and said, “Thanks Doc. I hate rappelling. Getting from point A to point B by the quickest route is such a drag, right?”

Knowing he was being made fun of didn't help his nausea. And it wasn't his fault that he had never learned to rappel out of a hovering Blackhawk. Still, as one of the boys, Eric gave the soldier a thin smile anyways.

“Zip it, Slim,” the lieutenant warned. “The mission is what it is. We cross the street and go up to room 4312 and yes that's the 43rd floor.”

“Shit,” the M60 gunner swore. His was the heaviest weapon and everyone knew it would be a bitch to climb that many stairs toting a machine gun.

“We'll make sure the Doc, helps you out, Smitty,” Mathers said. “He's travelling pretty light, he can carry some ammo. So we hit the room, get whatever we can lay our hands on and get out. If there are stiffs we go down the east side stairwell and if we have to loop around a couple of blocks we do it. Remember that firing our weapons is the last thing we want to do.”

Just then the chopper banked around the Empire State Building and the site of it stopped all conversation. One full side of sky-scraper was blackened and crumbling, while a grey smoke drifted up out of it making it look like a spent birthday candle. And then they were past the horrible sight and flying over a city of the dead.


Too quickly for Eric's liking the chopper slowed and the men tensed. Eric was beyond tense. He actually thought that he would soil himself right there in the chopper, and then the nose of the craft flared up slightly and with a gentle thump they landed.

“Go!” Slim ordered from behind Eric, who hadn't moved as had everyone else. With shaking hands he unbuckled his harness and then was out in the cold, as air pushed down at him from the churning blades above. They hustled to a roof access point and discovered it locked. A soldier with the name of Baer took a heavy sledge to the door and almost dashed in Eric's face as he brought it back. Slim grabbed him from behind and pulled him away just in time.

“Stand back, damn it,” Mathers yelled, unnecessarily—Eric was now a dozen feet away with Slim holding his pack as though he were holding a dog's leash. Like everyone else, the lieutenant was keyed up and the stress was on his brown face twisting it into angry lines.

The door took forever to come open and each strike was like ringing a dinner bell. “Hey, can I have my ammo?” Eric asked suddenly, remembering that he was basically unarmed without his bullets.

Mathers paused, trying to think of a reason not to give up the ammo, but then as the door opened and the first of the zombies came hurrying forward ready to eat, the officer handed over three thin magazines for his M9 Beretta.

Baer dispatched the first stiff using the sledgehammer, while the other men took out the remaining zombies with fixed bayonets. There were only four of the beasts and this seemed to bode well for their mission.

There were seven soldiers total—a number that did not include Eric of course—and they walked and fought as a team, talking among themselves in code or in plain English, depending. It didn't take long for Eric to realize that when they spoke of baggage they meant himself.

It couldn't be more true. They passed him from man to man, pushing or pulling as needed to get him out of the way. This wasn't bad in the dark of the stairs, because the flicking flashlights only added to his fright and he was happy to know the men were right there. However when they were still twenty stories up and they found the stairwell crammed with groaning bodies of the undead coming up to get them it was not at all good to be passed to the back of the line.

With the flashlights all pointed forward as the men ran back up the stairs, Eric was in a panic. He could hear the beasts coming fast, and unlike himself, who was breathing in a horrendous panic the zombies were quiet save for the low groans that came closer and closer in the dark as they went up four flights of stairs to the next level.

The soldiers took the first door they came upon and when it opened there was a cry from above and then firing. Something fell into Eric, clawing at his suit. At first he thought it was Slim, hit by friendly fire, but then as a beam of light swept him he saw it was a zombie; what once had been a bike messenger. The creature had been right next to him on the stairs with only the dark saving him! And there were more zombies just behind him.

Eric pointed his gun at the nearest grey-faced beast and clicked on an empty chamber—although he had sunk the clip into the butt of the weapon he hadn't known to chamber a round. Hands reached for him and he could feel them on his suit and then there were explosions of light and the closest zombies fell back shedding blood and brain.

Slim had him by the pack once again and screamed something that didn't register on Eric who felt partially deaf and totally mentally paralyzed. He still couldn't get over the fact that there had been a zombie right next to him for two flights of stairs!

They passed through to the next floor and ran on as a red headed soldier began barricading the door behind. “Leave it!” Mathers ordered. Eric didn't turn to see if the man had obeyed. He ran with everyone else, though as unencumbered as he was he gradually pulled ahead and wondered why they weren't sprinting at top speed. In his mind they should've jettisoned all the bulky weapons and ammo, but he wasn't thinking straight. His thoughts were on the Blackhawk and not on the mission.

The men were more focused.

Their running was not a panicked sprint but a jog designed to eat up the distance between them and their objective without leaving them exhausted. They crossed all the way through the building, found the far staircase and began to descend once again with Eric in tow. This stairwell had but a single confused zombie trapped within it. They found it at the bottom and killed it quickly. And then the squad was in an open lobby where the floor was of crushed glass and the zombies wandered blankly not yet aware of them. They could see the Waldorf sitting just across the street.

“Looks like we just have to make a run for it,” Mathers said. He took the sledgehammer to use as a weapon as well as to open doors. Then he unslung a belt of ammunition that Baer had been running with strung around his neck and put it on Eric's shoulders.

“That's better,” Baer remarked.

Eric didn't think so. The bullets were heavy and swung awkwardly; they did remind him of something. Just as the men were about to take off in a sprint he said, “Wait! My gun doesn't work.” He held it out and Slim took all of four seconds to see the problem.

“You gotta jack the slide, a*shole,” he said. Though he had cursed it was not out of contempt. All of them called each other such affectionate names. “Or when you run dry, stick a new mag in here and then press this gizmo on the side. You'll be good to go.”

“Now unless Doc needs help working his f*cking zipper, it's time to go,” Mathers announced. Without looking back, the squad ran onto the streets of New York where the stiffs woke to their presence before they got five feet. A Private First Class named Heddles, pointed dead ahead where the hotel seemed suddenly more like a theater letting out the 2pm matinee. Dozens of the dead came flooding down from the lobby.

“Side door!” Mathers yelled, though he only did so out of excitement. The city of the dead was eerily silent and the words echoed, strangely, and in its way it was worse than the zombies.

As one, the squad turned and sped to the right and this was only a little better. All along the block, out of every window and door, came zombies alerted in some unfathomable fashion to the presence of running meat. With their last resort upon them so soon the men in front cleared the sidewalk of the dead with a rattle of small arms fire that must have alerted half the city to their position.

And if that didn't do it, Slim yelled, “Grenade at our six!” A second later an explosion shook the very air and made Eric's lungs spasm. When he looked back he saw the city street littered with body part and sprayed with blood. Yet still the mangled corpses crawled or dragged themselves on, only to be trampled by more of their brothers and sisters.

Mathers swung into a side entrance to the hotel, running past stiffs that were just becoming aware; these closed in fast and Eric shot his first. It was the strangest feeling. After all the gunfire and the explosion he thought that his gun would be equally loud and that its kick would tear the gun from his sweating hand. Instead he barely felt the thing jump beneath his finger, and if there was a noise he didn't hear.

He shot a second and then a third and then Heddles grabbed him by the neck just as they gained the stairwell. “Aim for the f*cking head! You're just wasting ammo.”

“Right. Sorry,” Eric said.

“Don't be sorry, Doc,” Heddles replied. “Just aim for the head. You're doing good.” The words cheered him for the briefest moment and then a second grenade went off behind them, the vibrations of it running along the railing beneath his hand. “A little f*cking warning next time!” Heddles cried.


“Stop your bitchin,” Mathers said. “Just watch our six and don't let the Doc get killed. Not until we get to that room.”

“Was that a joke?” Eric asked, breathlessly. He was a doughy man who had in the past used his position to dine out far too regularly; and now he was feeling the effects.

“Yeah, don't get your panties in a bunch,” Slim said over his shoulder. “And keep up. We got another thirty-five stories to go.”

Thankfully the zombies had been stymied by the shut door below so that the squad was free to toil upwards unmolested. At the thirtieth floor Eric thought he would black out and just sat rubbing his legs until the lieutenant called a general halt.

“This is stupid,” another PFC said. “We shouldn't be resting. You know the stiffs aren't.”

Baer punched him in the arm sharply, while Slim chucked a bottle cap at him. Even Mathers didn't agree. “We need to be fresh as we can be. Let's get those mags topped off while we rest.”

They sat for ten minutes before they pushed on again. Up and up, all the way to the 43rd floor and then they rested again. With a deep breath, Mathers cracked the stairway door, only to shut it right away.

“We got stiffs. Smitty clear em' out.”

The M60 gunner went to the door and let his weapon do its horrendous work and while the butchery went on Eric sank back clutching his ears against the noise. He wasn't the only one; each bullet seemed like a pickaxe sinking into his ear canal. Then the firing ceased except as an echo in his head and the soldiers moved out, walking crouched with their bodies held tight and their guns facing outward, covering every door. Eric went in the middle of the pack and was glad for it.

“Here we are,” Lieutenant Mathers said, gripping the sledge in both hands. “Get my back, Heddles.” Two swings of the hammer and the door fell in. A zombie was right there and the ginger soldier shot it through the face.

“Is that your guy?” Slim asked. It was a joke that Eric didn't get until he saw the state of the man's face. There hadn't been much of it left even before the bullet had shattered it.

Still it wasn't Yuri. “No, this guy is too fat. My guy was a rail. Can I get one of the soldiers to check his pockets? We need to collect everything.”

“What everything?” Mathers asked with an edge to his voice. He raised his hands at the empty room. It was beautifully appointed; plush in every way, but clearly empty save for one raw smelling corpse.

“Mother f*cker,” Heddles griped opening up the closets and the drawers and finding nothing. Not even a stray sock. “We came all this way for one worthless zombie? What a f*cking waste of time. And now we got to fight our way out again. Damn it!”

“It's not a complete waste,” Slim said, kneeling down in front of the mini-fridge. “We got a stocked bar. Warm beer is better than no beer. Can we, Sir?”

“Drink up,” Mathers replied. “Two drinks maximum. Doc you can watch the f*cking door.”

A soldier tossed Eric a cell phone and said, “It's as dead as this mission.” He then held up a driver's license. “Barry Ciccereli from Jersey City. There ain't no luggage here; probably coming to get in a quickie before the apocalypse hit. What an idiot.”

Eric took the license and went to the door to look out as the soldiers drank. He didn't want to drink. He wanted to go back to the CDC, put on his lab coat and look important until the real scientists found a cure, or a vaccine, or a way to kill the monsters from afar. What he didn't want to do is go back down into those streets.

The squad sat about and drank, though they weren't in the least as relaxed and composed as they tried to pass themselves off as. They knew as well as Eric that going out was going to be far worse than coming in.

“We'll take the north exit onto 51st street,” Mathers told them, sipping at a tiny bottle of Jack and making a face with each sip. “A left will lead us to Park Ave and right across the street is where we want to go. The only problem is I'm not sure how to get to that exit.”

This didn't sit well with the men, however no one knew any better than the lieutenant so when they had finished their drinks, the squad stood, checked their weapons and went back into the hall. Mathers lead them to the next corridor and tried the first staircase he came to. It was filled with stiffs. They went back to the one they had ascended and took it forty-one stories down to the second level.

“This should get us to the lobby,” he explained, taking a moment to wipe the sweat from his face. “If anything happens, head north and find any way out. Remember, speed is our best defense.”

The door did lead to a concourse that was open enough to suggest that they could wind their way through restaurants and bars and little shops to the other side of the building. At first the way seemed promising, however their obvious humanity soon attracted the wrong attention. Stiffs, some still in a state of undress, as if they has just been trying on new clothes came at them so that the squad had to sprint away.

This only drew more eyes and so within a minute the lieutenant had to fire his pistol twice to clear the way in front and then the day descended into mayhem and screams. Zombies came at a shambling run from every direction.

“Keep your three clear,” Slim advised. “I've got your six.”

“What three?” Eric cried. He shot at a zombie's head, missed and shot a second time. This one hit and the beast collapsed down onto a gilded French chaise as if it had just had a very long day at the office and wanted to take a load off.

“Yes. That's your three,” Slim yelled over the sound of the guns banging away. “You got your right. Smitty has your left, you see?”

“Keep my...” Eric shot another stiff, this one through the neck, though it seemed to do the trick. “...My three clear.”

If it was only so easy. They came to a lounge spread across two levels and everywhere there were tables overturned and chairs knocked askance. And of course the place was thick with zombies. Heddles just in front of Eric went down under a mass of them as his weapon took the wrong moment to jam. As the soldier went mad in fear, kicking and screaming at the stiffs, Eric shot two of them, but then his trigger bit on nothing. The scientist clawed at his pocket, desperate to get a new a magazine out, only before he could the stiffs were all over Heddles.

The man screamed for help in a terrified voice, however his squad mates were fighting six separate battles and Eric only had the single pistol that he couldn't quite get working. His fumbling fingers did not possess the muscle memory of a real infantryman and he had to flee with the pistol in one hand and the magazine in the other, while Heddles screamed in such a way as to nearly crack Eric's mind.

He wasn't the only one who fled, four others took to their heels with him and since Smitty and his M60 were nowhere to be seen, Eric threw off the bulky run of bullets that hung, chaffing from his neck. He did this while in a full sprint. There was no choice but to run. To stand and fight meant to stand and die.

Slim took the lead, running and shooting. Eric, in the back, fought against his gun until he finally got the clip in place and then when he pressed the little “gizmo” and the bolt slid in place, he felt the greatest relief.

“Grenade!” one of the men called and a mere second later an explosion blasted a gaping hole in the hordes to their right. Slim rushed through it only to have a grey arm reach out and grab the strap of his M16. The soldier yanked on it, desperate, but the zombie was too strong. Another soldier paused long enough to fire twice at the beast, only to be tackled from the side.


Eric ran by shooting his weapon haphazardly in the direction of the soldier, hoping to hit enough of the converging horde to give the man a moment to get to his feet. It didn't work. It turned into a dog pile and there was no helping the man—Eric could see that he was already bit in at least five places. Still, with Heddles' dead screams running through his mind, Eric didn't think he could run away a second time and leave a man down, but then there was a wumping explosion right before his eyes and pieces of human and zombie went everywhere.

The soldier had blown himself up and by the act caused a suspension of the horrible battle as the remaining zombies paused long enough to ascertain who was human and who wasn't. It gave Slim enough time to rush back and grab Eric. Of the other soldier there was nothing to be seen; it was just the two of them.

“Come on! Now!” Slim cried as Eric looked around in a daze. “Make for the lobby.”

They leapt the low hedges marking the middle of Park Avenue and then fought their way into the lobby with guns blazing. Eric found that a shot to the center of a zombie's chest would slow it considerably or even knock it down, and just then that was good enough for the moment. Their accuracy or their luck allowed them to gain the lobby and then the dark stairs beyond.

Then came a desperate fight to shut the door against the rushing zombies. It was a fight that they began to slowly lose as scabby arms kept the door from shutting. Slim was the stronger of the two and he threw his back against the door, saying, “Go on. I'll hold them off.”

Now Eric was torn between fears: death here with Slim, or death alone in the dark stairs as the stiffs caught up with him. “Like hell,” he said, getting an idea. He grabbed a grenade from the soldier's belt, pulled the reluctant pin and tossed in through the crack of the door. Eric expected to be blown off his feet by the explosion, but he barely felt more than a vibration as dozens of zombies absorbed the brunt of the blast.

“Thanks,” Slim said, once he cleared the door and shut it firmly. The soldier then began to shake and this turned into a crying fit that Eric pretended not to notice. He wanted to cry as well. The mission he had fought to arrange had done little besides add misery to the world.