Slaughterhouse

THIRTY-SIX.

Onward, Christian soldiers.

Muldoon hunkered down in the darkness with the rest of the troops remaining under his command, a total of thirteen, including Lee’s personal footmen and the Nasty Girl, Rawlings. The soldiers had spread out in the trees, which provided substantial conceal-only cover that would prevent them from being easily seen but would do virtually nothing to shield them from being shot. Turner’s Humvees sat lights-out a couple of hundred feet behind them, hidden by the same trees. Despite his personal dislike for Turner, Muldoon was glad to have the old man around. Turner knew his way around a battlefield, and having him in charge of their heavy weapons made Muldoon feel a little better.

He heard the approaching Klowns ahead—cackling, hooting, and chanting some sort of incomprehensible bullshit that kind of resembled a cadence. For Muldoon, that last increased the pucker factor. If they were trying to sing cadence, there was a lot of military in the mix. Or maybe it was just his amped-up mind fucking with him while he lay beneath a huge, leafy canopy in the dark, waiting to die.

They had two remaining Claymores, which they’d placed well in advance of their position. The idea was to kill or maim a lot of the Klowns right off the bat then hit them with everything they had to fix them in position. Once that happened, Turner’s grenade units would open up with indirect fire, lobbing forty-millimeter rounds over the trees and into the middle of the Klown element while Thunder dropped some sixty-six-millimeter antipersonnel badness right on their heads, as well. And if that didn’t work, Turner’s machinegun units would unmask from the terrain and go to guns on the crazies with their fifties. There was no way they would be able to kill all of them—though it was technically possible, Muldoon was convinced they weren’t going to be that lucky—but they could keep them bottled up long enough for Mountaineer to be evacuated, and then maybe one of the lightfighter companies could roll up and put paid to the Klowns before the battalion hit the road.

The sounds of combat still rent the air as the battle for Hays Hall continued. Through his night vision goggles, Muldoon could see his troops in their fighting positions. Nutter was to his left, Rawlings to his right. Muldoon considered the irony of having a woman as his right-hand man. While he was far too young to be considered a Cold War relic, Muldoon had never much fancied women participating in combat, and he had certainly never expected to serve with any, especially not a National Guardsman. But he had to admit that she handled her small slice of warfare just as well as his men did, perhaps better. While the rest of the troops bitched about everything—soldiers loved to bellyache—he didn’t hear so much as a peep from her.

Finally, a woman who can keep her trap shut. Not that it means anything now.

He turned his attention back to the chuckling and shuffling Klowns as they headed toward them. He pulled the Claymore clacker closer.

Around him, the sounds of his troops shifting were barely audible as they prepared for the engagement. They hadn’t had much time to discuss tactics, other than him giving orders to maintain their firing lanes and not let up. In other words, “Let go, and let God.”

The Klowns advanced toward the trees the team hid in, on their way to 10^th Mountain Division Drive, where they expected to turn right and continue on to attack the battalion from the rear. There was no caution in their approach. They believed they were safe for the moment, and they were moving as quickly as they were able.

Muldoon let the first group get well inside the kill zone before he hit the M57’s trigger. The Claymores dutifully detonated simultaneously, and fifty Klowns dropped dead while another sixty or seventy staggered around or flopped about on the ground, direly wounded.

The element opened up. There was no bigger signal to pour it on than when Claymores went off fifty feet from your position, and their fires ripped through the next echelon of Infected. Bullets tore through uniforms and civilian clothing and garish body decorations to cleave open torsos and rupture organs. Of great effect were the two SAWs. They hammered at the Klowns relentlessly, slicing them down with an almost godlike accuracy, even as the targets ducked and tried to run.

Muldoon stopped firing for a moment to pull a grenade. “Frag out!” he shouted as he hurled it right in the middle of a clump of Klowns that were beginning to organize for a counterattack.

The explosion chopped them down in a heartbeat. Several writhed about on the ground, laughing their heads off as they tried to stanch the flow of blood from severed arms and legs. Several more grenades went off, sending bodies flying, a beautiful sight brought to Muldoon courtesy of the NVGs mounted to the front of his helmet.

“Thunder, Thunder, this is Crusher Three-One! Fire mission. Over,” Muldoon shouted into his radio over the noise of the rifle fire.

The term “fire mission” indicated that several rounds were to be fired, without any spotting rounds out to verify adjustment angles. That was another increase in the pucker factor. While Muldoon was well versed in the use of mortars, he had never ordered a fire mission without calling adjust fire. If he got the grid wrong in relation to the lightfighters slugging it out with the Klowns, it was going to be a very short fight.

“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. Fire Mission. Out.”

“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. Grid four five seven two eight seven. Enemy formation in the open. Direction twenty-four hundred, distance one hundred meters. Danger close. Over!”

“Crusher Three-One, Thunder has grid four five seven two eight seven. Enemy formation in the open. Direction twenty-four hundred, distance one hundred meters. Danger close. Out,” the mortar section leader responded.

“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. Fire when ready! Over!”

“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Fire when ready. Roger. Out.” A moment later: “Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Shot. Over.”

“Thunder, roger—shots out. Over.”

“Crusher Three-One, Thunder. Splash. Over.”

“Incoming rounds, five seconds!” Muldoon shouted. “Thunder, Crusher, splash. Over!”

It was more like three seconds later that the night lit up when three mortar rounds, less than a second apart, impacted the street in the rear of the Klown formation. Muldoon grimaced beneath his mask. He’d hoped they would have landed a little deeper inside the group, but the rounds still had a substantial effect on the Klowns. Dozens of them died immediately, and dozens more were taken out of the fight.

But the leading edge of the Klown reinforcements had zeroed on Muldoon’s element, and they charged now, running right into the men’s fires with a furious zeal that was astonishing to behold. Scores more died, laughing until their tickers stopped ticking and their brains shut down. But there were more behind them, many more, and they had weapons. Soon, enemy fire started slapping into tree trunks and blasting leaves off the forest floor right in front of Muldoon.

“Thunder, Crusher Three-One. If we can get you for another pass, adjust fire! Drop one hundred, fire for effect! Over!” The deal was that Thunder would give them one pass then resume supporting the fight at Hays Hall. Muldoon was playing his whiny-bitch card by asking for more rounds, but he didn’t care. If Thunder turned him down, he was just going to be dead a little sooner. He got back on his rifle and started returning fire.

“Reloading!” Rawlings shouted beside him.

“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. You owe me a case of Guinness for each round. Fire for effect, drop one hundred. Shots out. Over.”

Muldoon didn’t have time to reply. Three Klowns made it to the tree line and crashed through the foliage, firing assault rifles and aiming for the muzzle blasts of Muldoon’s men. He heard a tick as something slipped past his helmet, a graze so light that it didn’t even alter the angle of his NVGs, but a close call nevertheless. He raised his rifle and banged out eight shots. Two of the attackers stumbled and faltered, still wheezing with laughter that his rounds failed to stifle. The third kept coming. Muldoon had missed him entirely. He went down suddenly as Nutter ripped off a burst on full auto.

“Damn, Duke! You shoot like a school girl!” Nutter shouted.

“Crusher Three-One, this is Thunder. Splash. Over.”

“More incoming!” Muldoon yelled. One of the Klowns he had shot struggled back to his knees. He was a civilian, and Muldoon recognized him as one of the public works guys he had seen around the post, a former NCO who had retired and gotten a job driving snow plows during the winter and cutting grass in the summer. Muldoon shot him in the face, and the man fell over into the brush.

The three mortar rounds landed, much closer, and Muldoon swore as the shock waves tore through the trees, kicking up a storm of grit, leaves, branches, and bloody ribbons of flesh. Muldoon continued firing, even though his sight picture was mostly full of obscurants. He had no idea whether he was hitting anything or not, but the potential to at least wound a Klown or two was worth the time and effort. Behind him, he heard the Mk 19s opening up, and he hoped their grenades would traverse parabolas short enough to hold back the attackers but not so abbreviated as to start landing among the lightfighters in the trees.

He needn’t have worried. The explosions rippled outside the tree line, pretty much dead on target.

Fuckin’-A, Sergeant Major.

But as the dust cleared, Muldoon was monumentally disappointed to discover that neither the mortars nor the grenades had dissuaded the Klowns from surging into the trees.

Then, the mag in his rifle ran dry.