Slaughterhouse

THIRTY-THREE.

The night erupted once again as the mines on either side of the first truck exploded within microseconds of each other, blasting their payload of steel pellets outward like lethal, metallic fans. The Klowns jammed in tightly around the vehicles were instantly mowed down, no more capable of surviving the onslaught than a field of wheat could withstand an attack from a farmer’s combine harvester. Bright sparks erupted across the nearby vehicles. While the armored Humvees withstood the barrage of pellets, softer-skinned civilian vehicles were turned into something akin to Swiss cheese as the projectiles ripped right through them—and their occupants.

At a hundred feet out, Klowns continued to fall to the ground, their flesh shredded and bones shattered as the pellets did their nasty work. But farther out, the effects of the Claymore blasts were not as immediately lethal. The Infected still fell, perhaps mortally wounded, and writhed on the ground, twisting and laughing and shrieking in pain-fueled ardor.

The second truck released its payload of mines a moment after the first, and more overlapping cones of destruction blazed across the battlefield, ripping, tearing, maiming and killing. In less than two seconds, over two hundred Klowns had been slain, and in the seconds and minutes that followed, twice that number would also perish from the grievous wounds they had sustained from the mine blasts. For a moment, the two trucks were isolated from the rest of the Klowns, surrounded by a barrier of dead and twitching bodies.

“Up!” Muldoon shouted. “Get your MOPP on and fight!”

The soldiers pulled on their MOPP overgarments and face masks and got to their feet, leaning against the side rails of the truck as they raised their weapons. Rawlings did the same. She shouldered her M4 and opened up on one of the Klown-controlled Humvees, riddling it with fire. The attack was mostly ineffective. The uparmored vehicle’s plating and special glass panes turned her rounds, though the already-dead gunner in its open cupola shuddered and jerked from bullets passing through its mangled corpse. Then the Humvee transformed into a ball of expanding fire as it suddenly accelerated toward the container wall as if kicked by a giant. The vehicle slammed into the container and turned into a twisted hulk of burning metal. It took Rawlings a second to figure out what had happened. One of the soldiers in the second truck had hit the Humvee with an AT4, right in the ass, and the ensuing explosion drove it forward. From the rear of her truck, another AT4 roared, and a second Humvee exploded with such ferocity that it leaped into the air and came crashing down on its side.

Several hundred feet away, the Klown force that finally figured out that something was going on. They turned toward the two trucks as the vehicles came to a halt just before the container wall and, in the flickering firelight, Rawlings could see that they had no problems understanding what had just gone down.

The enemy was among them. Outside the walls. Fresh meat.

With a roar, they charged toward the two trucks.

The lightfighters responded with withering firepower from their assault rifles and SAWs, cutting down the first ranks of attackers. Those with M203 grenade launchers added more fire to the fight, and bright, sporadic explosions ripped through the Klown lines, tearing off limbs and rupturing bodies. More and more Infected fell writhing to the ground, howling and screaming with delight even as their blood gushed out of them. Rawlings leaned into her rifle, capping off round after round into the approaching mass of deranged humanity. Men and women fell—some dead, most not—but for all of those she removed from the fight, a hundred more took their place.

Thunder roared.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

Six explosions rent the night, back to back, sending bodies flying through the air as the mortar unit’s first rounds slammed into the Klown force, shredding flesh and shattering bone. The lightfighters cheered, emboldened by the sudden violence of the mortar attack, even as bits of debris and torn organic matter rained down on their heads. The Klowns cheered as well. Death was what they lived for, and pain was a welcome addition to their existence, even if it meant their demise was just around the corner.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

Another salvo of mortar rounds tore through the Klowns, bottling them up and delaying their approach because they had to pick their way across the limb-strewn landscape, slipping and sliding in the blood-wet earth. But still they came, inching their way closer and closer to the trucks, focused on getting to the soldiers and either killing them or infecting them.

A piss-filled balloon splattered against the truck’s bent side rail, and rancid urine splashed across Rawlings, dripping down her waterproof MOPP gear. She gained a new appreciation for the sight-restricting mask that prevented her from smelling the foul liquid as it pooled in the truck bed. She continued firing, draining one magazine then another. Expended cartridges, coupled with the slickness of the cooling urine in the truck, made maintaining solid footing difficult. Rawlings found herself slipping more often than not.

Atop the container wall, more soldiers moved behind the layers of concertina wire. They fired down into the crowd of Klowns and hurled fragmentation grenades into their midst.

Focused on getting to the trucks, the Klowns ignored them.

They were now less than a hundred meters away, too close for mortar engagement. It was up to the troops to hold them back.

Something streaked across the sky as another volley of mortar rounds slammed through the Klowns, and from the corner of her lens-shielded eye, Rawlings saw a TOW missile annihilate another Humvee that came barreling toward the trucks, the M2 fifty caliber machinegun in its cupola chattering. The Humvee’s speed prevented the gunner from hosing the trucks, and the resulting explosion removed it from the tactical picture.

“Dismount! Dismount!”

Rawlings recognized Harry Lee’s voice, and the colonel appeared on the ground in front them, waving the soldiers out of the truck while his driver opened up on the approaching Klowns with a pouch-fed M249 SAW. The soldier held the light machinegun low and ripped off several bursts before he dropped to the ground and deployed the weapon’s bipod before he resumed firing.

“Bound out!” Muldoon shouted. “Rawlings, you’re with me!”

“Roger that!” she replied.

The lightfighters began dismounting in pairs while the troops still on the truck kept pouring on suppressive fire. Rawlings saw that “suppressing” the Klowns was no easy task. They didn’t try to duck and avoid the incoming fire. Instead, they just kept coming until they were taken down. The SAW gunner on the deck was helping stem the tide, however. He was aiming low, taking their legs right out from under them.

The truck quickly emptied out.

Muldoon slapped Rawlings’s shoulder hard enough to rattle her teeth.

“Go!”

She turned and headed for the lowered tail gate, slipping on spent cartridges as she moved. A spray of bullets suddenly raked the truck, forcing her to duck.

Muldoon wasn’t having any of that. He pushed her forward roughly.

“Come on, Nasty Girl! The vehicles are becoming ballistics magnets! Move your ass!”

Rawlings half-fell, half-jumped out of the truck. She rolled across the ground as another Klown vehicle exploded, shorn in two by a TOW missile. More mortar rounds slashed into the attacking Klowns, causing disarray in the center of their formation. That didn’t stop several hundred of them from surging forward, shouting and jeering as they bore down on the lightfighters. Rawlings rolled onto her belly, checked her lane of fire, then added her own M4 to the mix, popping away at targets as quickly as possible. But the Klowns had the numbers, and despite the mortars, the rifle and machinegun fire, the twenty-millimeter cannons, and the flying grenades, they had the mass.

A raging firestorm erupted, and Rawlings thought someone had decided to have a New Year’s celebration early. Dozens—no, hundreds—of assault rifles and machine guns and grenade launchers opened up. Tracers ripped across the sky, slamming into the Klowns and blasting them backward as the rest of the battalion surged forward and joined the battle. The troops released fearsome battle cries. A score of Mk 19 grenade launchers blasted the advancing Klowns into obliteration, filling the air with whirling chunks of organic matter that trailed viscera and gore.

She checked left and right. There was movement on all sides of her position. Two light infantry companies had arrived, and brought all their toys to the fight.