Empire's End

Thirty-Three / The Heavy Artillery

“Halstead! What’s your twenty? Is Voorhees with you?”

It was Casey. Halstead answered into her radio, “I’m downtown. Don’t know about Voorhees.”

“Gulager just called in from the east city limits. He was checking out reports of gunfire… there are rotters inside the walls. They’re on the streets, hundreds of them.”

Halstead looked up, her face pale. Tripper and Cam shook their heads in disbelief. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she breathed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“All right, relax.” Tripper pressed his fingers to his temples. “Think. Think. We gotta get to the storehouse, get the guns. Between us and the Army we can mow these fuckers down, right? Cam?”

She nodded, already heading for the door. “We’ll have to leave the blind guy here.”

“And Lily?”

“She comes with us,” Cam replied. To Halstead she said, “Find out what your S.P.O. wants.”

“What do you want me to do, sir?” Halstead said into the radio.

“This is the military’s problem. What we need to do is clear the streets of civilians… it’s all we can do. Make a quick sweep of downtown and then report back here. Watch yourself.”

“Yeah.” She clipped the radio to her belt and turned to the others. “Where’s the storehouse?”

“The basement of the soup kitchen,” said Tripper. All of the weapons and ammo he’d bartered for were down there, just waiting. He could tell Cam was itching to get her hands on some.

“Let’s go.”

“Cullen!” the radio squawked. “This is Briggs!”

The Senators were speeding down the road away from the airfield. Cullen’s aide passed him the radio, and he responded, “Major?”

“They’re pouring into Gaylen. City’s barricades crumbled like they were nothing I’ve lost maybe a third of my men. Where the hell is Gillies? I can’t raise him.”

“He’s dead,” Cullen said numbly.

“Dead?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Who’s the acting President?”

“I am.” Cullen fidgeted with his tie. Fuck Gillies for doing this to him! “We need to contain the threat, Major. Agreed?”

“Of course. I’m preparing to move my boys into the city.”

“No,” Cullen said. “Just raze it. Burn it to the ground.”

“What?”

“It’s the only way to prevent the spread of infection. No one enters, no one leaves. Just burn it all.”

“Cullen! You can’t be serious!”

“I’m dead fucking serious!” the Senator yelled. “I refuse to die like this! I may be stuck in this fucking hellhole but I’m not going to die like this. You burn Gaylen down! You shoot to kill if anyone tries to escape! Do you hear me, Major?”

There was no reply.

“He won’t do it,” Cullen grumbled. “Brian, radio the Chicago outpost. I’ll give them my orders. Tell them Major Briggs is no longer running this operation. I am.”

“Yes sir,” his aide said. Cullen settled back in his seat. He actually wasn’t too bad at this.

The rotters hadn’t reached downtown yet. Tripper, Cam and Halstead — Lily on her back — ran through the empty streets. It was seven in the morning.

A man exited one of the apartment buildings. “Get inside!” Tripper yelled. “Rotters!” The man shook his head at them and continued on his way.

Tripper fumbled for the keys to the soup kitchen. Bursting inside, he ran to the basement door, affixed with three locks. “There are others who can help us,” he was saying. “We’ve got to track them down.”

“How much time do you think we have?” Halstead said.

“We’ll make time,” said Cam.

They descended a dark flight of stairs into a musty cellar. Tripper lit a lantern and opened its shutters on the room.

High-powered rifles, automatics, and hand cannons were stacked along the back wall. Boxes and boxes of ammo were spread out by caliber. “We want to travel light,” Tripper said.

Cam grabbed a machine gun and started gathering magazines. “This’ll work. Ooh, and this.” She snatched a Colt Python from a rack and tucked it into her waistband.

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” Halstead said. She stood in the middle of the room and watched as the other two stocked up. “Believe it,’ Tripper said. “Get over here and arm yourself.”

Lily had been silent this whole time. She sat on the stairs with a weary look. “It’s gonna be okay,” Cam said.

“I don’t know,” Lily replied. “I wish my friend was here. Then we’d be okay.”

A distant scream caught everyone’s attention. It was a woman. Her screams drew nearer — then they stopped abruptly.

“They’re here,” Halstead gasped.

“Then we go it alone,” Cam muttered. “Ready?”

“We could stay down here, couldn’t we?” Halstead asked.

Cam scowled at her. “What happened to the fucking plan, Em? We’ve got to take these bastards out! Letting everyone die isn’t the plan! Now c’mon!” She took off up the stairs.

Halstead held her arms out to Lily. “C’mon. I want you to get back onto my back and hold on tight. Okay?”

Cam walked out into the street to find a trio of rotters ripping the slain woman’s skin off. The snow was stained red; steam rose from the corpse’s spurting guts.

“Hey mates,” Cam called. The fiends looked up.

She unleashed the machine gun. The rotters flew back as bullets ripped through their throats and faces. Skulls opened and vomited out foul matter. They landed on their backs, twitching but essentially immobilized.

“On your six!” Tripper cried.

Cam turned around and cut a rotter in half. It dropped, legless, into the snow and clawed toward her. Gunfire scissored it into half from crown to crotch.

“Where are we going?” Lily cried, clinging to Halstead’s neck.

“East!” Tripper said. He stepped into the middle of the street, an Uzi in each hand, and grinned at the oncoming dozens of undead. “Behind me, Halstead. Now watch this.”

He unloaded into the horde. Zombies spun and tumbled over one another. Heads exploded, leaving bodies to stagger aimlessly and finally sink into the snow.

“We’ll burn ‘em later.”

It was a different picture to the east. The rotters were running into tenements and knocking down door after door, falling upon helpless families.

Some of the living ran into the street and tried to make a break for it. They were brought down in seconds.

A lone rotter crouched over a dead child and pulled out handfuls of entrails, raising them to its lips.

Eviscerato brought his cane down on the rotter’s head, sending it sprawling.

Kill them all. Then eat.

P.O. Gulager huddled behind a dumpster in an alley and watched the carnage unfold. All he had was a fucking baton. How was he supposed to do anything?

But he had to do something. He was a cop.

So, with his heart in his throat, running on legs of rubber, he went into the street. A rotter leapt at him. He smashed its teeth in and threw it to the ground. “Fuck you!” he screamed. Another grabbed his shoulder from behind. He whirled and bashed its skull in. “Fuck you!”

A shadow fell across his vision. He turned. “Fuck—”

The lanky giant, with vines of bone that wove in and out of its gray flesh, reached out with stiff arms and hooked its fingers into Gulager’s clothing. He was lifted off the ground, toward the thing’s gaping maw.

The Petrified Man sank his teeth into Gulager’s face, slicing through his eyeball, splitting his cheek, and biting right through bone into his brain.

The rotter cast Gulager to the ground and left in search of its next victim.