July 10th 9PM EST Overcast and Raining. The dark night took on a perilous gloom, awash by the constant rainfall from dark clouds above. Brief strokes of lightning lit up the puffy dark blanket, frequently echoing the shape and detail of the city below in shadow with its bright flashes.
Days 2,358 of Infection
Monty was a big boy. The cockpit of his "battleship" as he called it or "The Nook" as the others referred to it, had been augmented to sustain his girth. By no means obese, he was just a bit too large for a typical cockpit otherwise suited for a smaller, thinner pilot. His meaty hands gripped the controls of the vessel, antsy, and flexing his grimy grip on occasion as he navigated the modified chinook above the dead cityscape. A multitude of digital readouts told him a story. A story about the weather in AI generated depictions in holographic fields of view that varied in size and shape before him. The wind direction too, vectors of vehicular movement, of weapon direction and control, expressed as red reticles in fields on black, target shapes in thicker outlines of purple, which too gave detailed readouts of vehicular capability and anticipated combat movement. Bold and informative combat scanners relayed information to him from both near and far of friendly personnel versus enemies. The radar, a rounded red dome of a hemisphere set against a white inner background with black blinking dots and flowing yellow strategic lines, floated about six inches above the HUD platform at the front console which housed all of this advanced technology. Sure it was all stolen, but these were still the "good guys". Two blue dots about the size of dimes came into being on the farthest sector of the radar,at its effective border of influence. They were followed by a host of green dots, designated as hostels. Zombies, in this case and they were moving fast.
"We got incoming, Osiris. Sector Z1 southside."
"That's not what we planned, Monty." Osiris said.
"No, it isn't, but it's happening. Chang and Kim are on the move and heading to us. They should be here in ten mikes."
Monty's right hand came away from the controls and he waved it over the radar screen. Reacting to his gesture the holographic radar field flattened out, panning horizontally. He then tapped on the two blue dots which were now in a field of red lines dictating terrain on a black background. They relayed ground height, field orientation and obstacles.
"Computer, enhance friendly vector by sixty percent. Give me visual and audio if you can."
"…Anything for you Master." A soft synthesized female voice responded. The radar, now flat, projected this particular vector into another field in Monty's vision, the dash window of the cockpit. The red field based on a black background with red pixelated details expanded, zooming in on the blue dots until they were now blue figures running in a field of red buildings, cars and streets. The pixelated details were sophisticated enough to determine shape, size, all according to what its advanced sensors were viewing. One figure was just ahead of the other by a few paces. Behind them, were a stampede of green dots, which formed into green figures of the dead, rushing closer by the second.
"Agents Chang and Kim are closing in on the drop zone, but they are not alone. If Agents Chang and Kim do not receive cover fire, they will no doubt fall victim to the wave of infected that are giving pursuit…
…Suggested action: Have Agents designate Osiris, and House provide cover fire to eliminate active pursuits." Monty smiled, and petted the console, then transferred the message over the main com.
"You heard the lady Commander Osiris. Put some lead down range." His gravely, bass-tone voice came back heavily into the mic.
Seated next to Monty was Anthony, a young man barely out of his teens. Like Monty, he was dressed in a dark gray pilots jumpsuit, but he was able to zip his up. He maintained satellite control and operation observations from the twin copilot's bucket seat . It was like a mechanized version of a papasan chair, complete with a full interactive and responsive, audio and visual suite with easy controls. Technology of this sort, even years ago, was certainly decades ahead of its time. It just wasn't on the market yet, even for the military. Corporations had access to greater supply having very focused resources. The design was from the leading military based corporate leader, Mil-Tech.
Who knew where a group like this got their hands on it. Anthony rolled his eyes at the over enthusiastic voice responding to Monty's every command. The look on his face itself, was obscured behind a photoreceiving lense that displayed the actual footage of the ground teams progress in real time. "They need to ditch the roof plan and hit the school. Trust me, there's less infected there. A longer run maybe, but they'll lose the horde there and they can maneuver better on the way out."
"Mhm" Monty responded. He checked his own digital suite which the variety of information scrolls, tactical data and proposals, then checked over his shoulder down the hall past the double blast doors, to the Chinook's troop cell.The black clad behemoth standing just within the rear entry deck was Osiris, Operations lead for the away team. He stepped down the ramp, effortlessly departing from the moving craft and began taking long strides across the tarred rooftop in bounds no human being could muster.His heavy, durasteel reinforced boots dropped heavily into inches of rain that covered the roof, displacing huge waves of water. The rain was coming down steadily but it didn't seem to bother him, moving through the terrain with a dark stoicism.
With a wave of his hand he motioned for the second figure on the rooftop with him to join him, and pointed towards the edge of the rooftop. The second man was also large, but not as muscled. He moved a little slower but carried a swivel mount gatling gun. The multi-barrelled weapon moves smoothly along the gyroscopic mount at his belt line. As the two giants neared to loom over the edge, their weapons came to bear down on the hostiles on the ground below. Their massive silhouettes were outlined in a backdrop of brilliant white that pierced the dark sky. The spotlights from the hovering armored chinook drifting along the back edge of the building behind them now blasted everything on the rooftop with pure, white light.
"Fire on my mark, House. Concentrate your fire on the mass, I'll pick off the ones that manage to get close enough to take a bite out of our friendlies."
House chuckled, then activated the twin barrels of the steadied gatling gun. The weapon had length, and mounted beside the grip, was a flat black field which projected digital weapon information. The enemy count was in the hundred, but he didn't need the screen to know that. Smiling behind the ceramicsteel ballistic mask, House set his booted feet and the barrels began to spin. Osiris took aim, shouldering his rifle, and at the drop of his hand, the signal, they both began raining effective lead hell on the approaching mass. Multiple heads burst, exploding from the piercing heavy rounds, sending skull fragments and visceral matter everywhere. Many fell, dropping to the ground in a second death. When more bodies continued to appear throughout the disintegrating mass, surfacing for a moment to scream, to growl, to claw at the air in hungry search of flesh, they too were ripped apart by hot jacketed steel rounds.
On the street, Chang and Kim were hightailing it. They were beyond discreet at this point and even farther from any modicum of otherwise, very necessary strategic movement in this particularly dangerous environment. They'd completed their task and the flare which signaled their position was fading high above in the pitch black blanket of night, consumed by the clouds of night above. It was now, simply time to run.
"Pick it up Chang, move those little legs." Kim yelled back, nearly twenty feet ahead of Chang. Kim nimbly leapt over the hood of a police car and landed squarely. Her strong legs carried her a remarkable distance with ease. Turning she raised her Dragunov rifle and let off two shots into the mass of runners behind her. Preferring a lead runner who fell once the high caliber round collided with his skull, and in it's stumbling it took three more down who were close enough to get caught up in his tumble. Two more down.
Chang reached the same car and dove across it, tumbling into a roll and coming up into a sprint. Once his legs were in motion again, he cackled as he shot past Kim. He slowed his steps and spun, dropping to a knee and as he found cover at an upturned mail truck laying on its roof. The imprint of a delivery truck's front end destroyed the truck's side, responsible for knocking it over. The same delivery vehicle was front ending a bookstore front to the side of the street where it ended up. He took cover warning with a yell: "covering!" He then aimed past Kim and let off a bout of suppressive fire. The rounds nailed their intended targets. Slamming into the chests, shoulders, necks and even heads of the dead. A jaw was blasted apart, showering the ground in bloody teeth. A zombie turned, reaching for the air as another round tore through its throat, blasting the flesh free of the spine and taking more skin with it, leaving the flesh to hang in tatters behind the shoulders. Still it proceeded, its dead eyes focused with intent on the moving flesh ahead of it. The grimacing, slow shamble of another followed by twenty others at the front worked their way around the cars in grisly pursuit. It was dropped short of a honda civic's rear bumper from two well placed rifle rounds, and fell face first into the trunk, its head bouncing off of it violently, with a fleshy sound. The other beside it continued in its dreadful trek, stepped on the first's head, crushing what was left into the pavement. Targets that would not duck or dodge, but continue to press on into the fire, ignorant to the damage being done to their bodies. The rounds that missed, struck the rusted steel frames of the vehicles there, sparking up the night.
Kim naturally ducked low even though she didn't need to with her short stature. She quickened her steps as she moved towards Chang's position. Her B-line was only interrupted by a tire in the street which she strode over, and a longer leap taken to avoid the body laying a few feet from that. It was no surprise that even the still laying bodies in a street, could be the torpored dead. They would seem to animate and come to life as activity around it grew., but this one did not move. As she neared the burned husk of a once cream colored Cadillac opposite the mail truck, she dropped low into a knee slide like she was coming into home plate. The thin steel threaded fibers of her ghost suit snagged on something sharp on the ground as she came up to crouch behind the car. With a worried growl, she quickly spared a moment, to inspect the tear, with urgency. Any cuts out in the wastelands could be fatal, even the smallest nick if the introduction was right. Chang grimaced as he knew something was wrong,catching the motion, but maintained his fire.
"You good?" He called out.
"I don't know, we will see in a second". Kim cursed herself, inwardly then reloaded her rifle. "Reloading!" she yelled to Chang.
Infected bodies continued to fall to the street. The ones that didn't, continued to stumble past vehicles, street signs, staggering from the curb and storefronts out onto the streets. Their boney hands, flayed of skin and muscle reached out for something to gain hold of, something to rend the flesh of and consume. A fattened, slower moving zombie with a massive chunk of its bloated stomach missing, dropped entrails and corpse maggots from the wound as it moved along. Its wide mouth agape and devoid of a tongue gasped hungrily at the air. A sound of hunger in its dry rasp, anger in its beady eyes shadowed by a thick brow. A wound above its right eye left the space of its skull open for display there.
A combination of Chang's fire, and the more destructive support fire from above helped to mitigate even more of that. Plump and slow moving, the obese zombie danced in place for a moment, fighting the rounds impacting its fleshy body to continue moving forward. It eventually lost the battle with an arm shorn at the shoulder from a round, and then to the head as the bulbous skull exploded. Meaty chunks of gore sprayed the face of the zombie following behind it.Two robust looking infected neared the mail truck, stumbling with fattened hands and fingers outstretched like greedy children came dangerously close to the retreating pair. The massive round bald head of the first popped violently, raining brain debris all over the street and his companion. The second didn't get even a step closer, as what was left of its upper torso fell into the truck side smearing what remained of an exploded head and shoulder against the opulent vehicle.
"O did that shit on purpose. I swear the fucking guy is a psycho". Chang complained. "Tried to put that fuckers brains on me."
"I'd just as soon say thank you, Chang." Kim said as she stood up from behind the car and resumed firing. "Get those boots moving" she continued.
"Moving!" Chang uncoiled from the ground smoothly and turned to hustle towards the building. The rest of the street from there forward had become a graveyard of vehicles that would slow any aggressive movement down from the dead behind them drastically. He wound his way through the cars, one after another until the maze opened up again to clear the street at the next intersection. From above them, twin fire bursts lit up the rooftop like orange splotches against the pure white backdrop of halogen intensity coming from the chinook. Like righteous light from the heavens, which opened up its violent glory in that dark space above with two destructive angels waging hateful ballistic war on the dead. On the ground nearby him, shell casings rained down like a divine brass deliverance. He thought for a moment, that if it had been gold, he'd be rich. But such a thought seemed to be blasphemy with the baptism of fire these dead were on the receiving end of. He was the first to reach the door to the building.
In the recessed door frame he leaned against the wall and resumed his firing position, covering Kim.
"O is a god." Chang accessed a button alongside his rifle, and it ignited a digital "shield", a twin plane, shaped semi transparent window, illuminated over the centermost optic housing along the spine of his rifle. It read important combat data to him in a blue Mandarin font. How many of the dead were in range of his fire, accurate percentages were relayed to him as each dead stumbled staggered or crawled towards their position. Curious, he panned over Kim as she prepared herself to withdraw from her position and move. Her vital statistics read normal, as did her temperature. Which he sighed with relief to find. No sudden temperature rise on the pale outline of her body in fact it still read properly around 96 degrees. Though the ghost suit did its job of insulating that temperature to the rest of the world. There was no raised respiratory difficulty, and the lung's pattern readout on her bio inflated and deflated naturally albeit at a raised tempo due to the activity. Ultimately, there was no infection. In fact the stealth fibers on her ghost suit began to weave themselves together again where the tear from her slide across the asphalt proved dangerous.
"I gotta get me one of those." He whispered. Chang watched Kim's ass dance as she back-peddled from her position a few steps then turned to run towards him ending his brief show. She slung her rifle, needing two hands to brace herself on the hood of the first car amidst the sea of cars, vaulting into a defiant leap fueled by enhanced muscles, The acrobatic motion torqued into a parkour style leap onto the hood itself. Rather than weave between them all, she began a steady push from one to the other in as direct a line as she could, bounding quickly to cross the distance to her partner,car after car, hood to hood, and on to safety. To end the spectacle, she leaped again, twisting midair beautifully to land in a tuck and roll.
Chang yelled out to her "Fuckin show off!"
As they reached the doors and entered, Osiris and House continued to rain down fire at the slowing dead, before they backed away from the rooftop above after their combat HUDs confirmed the two were inside. They turned towards the roof access and on into the storage warehouse that would lead them to a descending stairwell..
"Swing the Nook around, Monty, I'm blowing the ground floor charges once Chang and Kim are clear. The residents are in the next wing of the building. We will need a better exit when we get them out." Osiris ordered.