Slaughterhouse

THIRTEEN.

Rawlings realized the shit had just hit the fan when the fuel bladder landed on the back of the ravaged M925. Several men lay there, wounded by weapons fire. A group of soldiers, both in and out of MOPP gear, tended to them while others tried to repel the incoming UH-1. On the opposite side of the highway, a second helicopter had just gone down in a flurry of slashing rotors that decimated a good chunk of the sparse forest there. Pale smoke rose from the crash site. Rawlings doubted anyone was going to walk away from that one.

When gunfire erupted from the truck, her dread was confirmed. The fuel bladder hadn’t been filled with aviation fuel. It had contained contaminants that carried the Bug. On impact, the bladder broke, splashing the substance all over everyone in the area.

The Bug was ruthlessly efficient, blessed with a replication rate that was beyond impressive. As soon as it hit a mucus membrane, it went into action, replicating ferociously, penetrating the bloodstream and spreading through the body within seconds. From there, the Bug hijacked the human nervous system like the most capable terrorist ever known. The infected soldiers went to work right away, trying to either kill or infect those who hadn’t succumbed.

The MOPP gear intended to protect from immediate infection worked against those who wore it by reducing fields of vision, smothering hearing capabilities, and impeding movement. The newly-risen Klowns were able to strike before the protected soldiers could adapt to the situation, either by killing them outright or by tearing off their masks and overgarments, which exposed them to the putrid contaminants speckling the truck bed.

Adding to the confusion was the orbiting Huey that continued to fire at those soldiers not in the truck. The remaining uninfected lightfighters were forced to either find cover or return fire.

“Keep firing!” Rawlings yelled.

She was fifty feet from the truck’s tailgate. She had been tossed into the meadow with several other soldiers when the vehicle crashed through the guardrail and rolled down the incline on the other side. She’d lost her M4 and had spent several seconds combing the tall weeds for it. By the time she found it, the UH-1 was almost overhead. The gunners had missed her, but a limping soldier ten feet away had taken a round that had passed through his helmet and into his skull without even slowing. On balance, Rawlings thought he’d been lucky.

The fighting in the truck stopped as the UH-1 wheeled away, trailing smoke. It continued down the highway, its occupants tossing out more fuel bladders and other containers at the open trucks despite the fusillade of small arms fire directed at it. Rawlings turned back to the truck and saw several soldiers arming themselves. Some stopped to smear the blood of the fallen onto their uniforms, cackling as they did so.

“The truck!” she yelled at the soldiers closest to her. “The troops in the truck—they’re Klowns!”

The firing began anew but from the truck outward. One of the soldiers near Rawlings grunted and staggered backward as several rounds struck him. Rawlings had no idea if the body armor saved his life or not as she crouched in the weeds, reducing her silhouette as much as possible. She had no armor, no real protective gear of any kind. She had even lost her cap in the tumble from the truck. The weeds provided conceal-only cover that was marginal, at best. Added to that, she was caught between two soldiers and the Klowns on the truck as they duked it out with assault rifles. She needed to keep her head down and find some substantial cover, and fast.

A Humvee pulled up to the side of the road, just before the twisted gap in the guardrail. She was disappointed that the vehicle didn’t have any mounted weapons, but when its doors opened, a few armed lightfighters stepped out and took up defensive positions. They wore MOPP gear, and they had their weapons oriented toward the truck.

That’s as good as it’s gonna get, girl.

Rawlings started crawling toward the Humvee. One of the soldiers dived to the ground, doing a virtual face-plant on the shoulder of the road as a salvo of bullets struck the vehicle, ricocheting off and leaving its armor pockmarked. The second soldier on that side knelt and ripped off an entire magazine on full automatic, hosing the truck with thirty rounds of 5.56-millimeter ball ammunition. For his efforts, the Klowns concentrated their fire on him, dropping him.

Rawlings kept crawling. Even though it had been hit, the Humvee was still drivable, and she wanted to get some armor around her. The gunfire in the meadow continued, and over the uproar, she could hear the Klowns cackling with wild glee.

She came across the body of the soldier who had been killed in the strafing run. Flies were already buzzing around the corpse. Rawlings took a moment to roll the soldier over onto his back. His face was misshapen, courtesy of the bullet that had passed through his skull and exited out his chin, tearing away half his jaw. One eye peered at her sightlessly. Metal winked from inside the remains of the soldier’s mouth—a dental implant exposed when the crown affixed to its abutment had been shorn off, an expensive piece of hardware that probably cost more than the lightfighter’s M4. Rawlings ignored the gore and went for the soldier’s tactical harness, intending to liberate some ammunition.

She spotted two M67 fragmentation grenades clipped to the front of the harness.

Behind her, the Klowns were starting to dismount, howling and jeering as they fired into the weeds.

Rawlings grabbed one of the grenades, cupped it in her right hand, and squeezed the safety lever. Rolling to her feet, she held the explosive waist-high and gripped the pin with the fingers of her left hand. Unlike how it was done in the movies, she didn’t pull the pin—she pulled the grenade away from it, ensuring she didn’t lose her grip on the safety lever. With the pin ripped out, she rose, spreading her feet to adopt the throwing stance she hadn’t had to assume since basic training. Her back was to the Humvee, and she wondered what the soldiers there would think when she suddenly popped up in their firing lane.

Dear God, please don’t let them shoot me in the back.

One of the Klowns saw her and leered, bringing up his assault rifle. She recognized the goofy platoon commander who had kept repeating, “I’m in charge!” like a healing mantra.

“Gonna fuck you up the ass, bitch!” he shouted.

Rawlings hurled the grenade. “Frag out!” She leaped across the dead soldier’s body and dropped to the ground behind it, using the torso for cover. Rounds ripped past her, tearing the tops off the weeds as Rawlings tried to flatten her body. One of the uninfected soldiers near her ripped off a burst on full automatic then lunged toward her, covering her body with his own and smothering her beneath his weight.

The grenade went off with an ear-splitting roar that left Rawlings half deaf. The soldier on top of her jerked then lay still. A queer silence descended on the meadow, broken only by a muted buzz that filled Rawlings’s ears. Then she heard the distant patter of debris raining down all around her, followed by more firing. Someone was shouting orders, and Rawlings believed it was that giant of a man, Muldoon. The firing rang out in stark, staccato bursts that seemed to come from everywhere, punctuated by the shouts of men in battle against cackling lunatics, a nightmarish orchestra playing over a bed of basso rotor beats.

Get in the fight, or get to the Humvee, she told herself.

“Hey, get off me,” she yelled to the soldier on top of her.

He didn’t move, so she gathered her arms beneath her and literally did a pushup against his dead weight. He rolled onto his side, his eyes open and staring. He was a skinny black kid, maybe no more than nineteen years old, his face smooth and devoid of age lines. Written in neat block letters in black pen across a band around his helmet was the name KEALTY. Rawlings put a finger against his jugular. He had no pulse. She inspected him for injuries and found a small dark slit on the back of his neck. A grenade fragment had hit him, flying benignly right over her and severing his spinal cord before tearing through other structures in his body. He had died instantly, since the expression on his face didn’t show even a hint of surprise.

“Rawlings! Get on your feet!”

Rawlings looked up and saw Muldoon striding toward her like some avenging angel. Beside him, Nutter struggled to keep up. Several more soldiers fanned out behind them, weapons out, scanning for a threat. Beyond, the M925A1 was on fire. Bodies lay everywhere. One soldier in a tattered uniform was still moving near the flaming wreckage. He wore a MOPP overgarment, but no facemask. He was horribly burned, and he shuddered as he coughed.

No. He wasn’t coughing. He was laughing.

Muldoon followed her gaze and saw the soldier. He stopped, raised his rifle, and put one round through the Klown’s forehead. The infected soldier dropped and moved no more.

Muldoon turned back to her, and without his sunglasses, she saw his eyes were a clear blue.

“I said get on your feet!”

“This man’s hurt,” Rawlings said, putting a hand on Kealty’s motionless shoulder.

Muldoon looked down at the soldier with a blank expression then at the body of the other soldier Rawlings had been hiding behind. “That man is dead, Rawlings,” he said, his voice a little kinder. “They’re both dead. Now, unless you’re injured, you need to get up. That Huey is coming back.” As he spoke, the pounding beat of the UH-1 swelled. “Nutter, get Kealty and Sollinger’s tags.”

“Roger that,” Nutter said, stepping forward.

Rawlings hauled herself to her feet. She felt a little lightheaded and realized she had to go to the bathroom something fierce. She looked around for her rifle, found it, and picked it up.

“Chopper’s gonna be on top of us in just a minute!” one of the soldiers said.

From somewhere downrange, more gunfire rang out as another pitched battle was fought. Rawlings figured the bullet-ridden helicopter had dropped another payload of contaminated waste on a Bigfoot, and the infected troops were going at it with the rest.

Muldoon turned and watched the helicopter sprint toward them, still trailing smoke from its big turbine engine. Rawlings thought his expression was almost welcoming. Muldoon apparently wanted combat. “Spread out and get ready to hose it with everything you’ve got—”

Behind the helicopter, a thin trail of gray smoke snaked into the sky. The line rose into the air then swerved, tracking left then right before zooming toward the UH-1. A missile.

“Uh, fuck this, Duke. We’d better get the hell out of here,” Nutter said.

“Beat feet!” Muldoon shouted.

He grabbed Rawlings with his left hand and yanked her after him as the helicopter bore down on their position, unaware that death was right behind it and moving at better than Mach one. Rawlings looked over her shoulder as she ran. The leering gunner leaned out of the Huey’s open cargo door, machinegun at the ready.

Then, the helicopter’s nose dropped as an explosion blossomed right behind it. The aircraft lurched across the sky as if it had been kicked in the ass by some unseen giant. The Huey’s big rotors flexed, slicing through its tail boom. The aircraft tumbled end over end, tearing itself to bits as it heeled hard to the left and crashed into the meadow well short of the burning Bigfoot. Another explosion, another mushroom cloud of smoke.

Rawlings was almost unimpressed. She’d seen more than her share of explosions. The soldiers stopped running, even though two more Stinger missiles raced past overhead. Rawlings turned and followed their progress. The second UH-1 that was harassing the rear of the column pivoted and tried to get away, but it was torn asunder by twin explosions that detonated like muted thunder. The flaming wreckage spiraled to the ground, and a moment later, another cloud of smoke leaped into the sky from behind the tree line.

“Huh. Was wondering what happened to the Apaches,” Muldoon said. “Guess they didn’t want to risk a blue-on-blue.”

“Faggot rotorheads, they’re coming back now,” Nutter said. He spit into the weeds. True enough, the gunships were closing back with the column, flying in pairs. “God damn pussies. We need real men in this fight, not aviation wimps!” He then turned and vomited into the weeds, swearing in between heaves.

Muldoon snorted. “Tough it out, Colonel.”

Three soldiers in MOPP gear approached, cautiously moving toward them from the road. It was the crew from the Humvee Rawlings had tried to get to earlier.

“Hey, is that Kung Fu Charlie?” one of Muldoon’s guys asked.

“Yeah,” Muldoon said. “Which means one of those guys is probably the XO.”

“Walker’s out here?” another asked. “Color me impressed.”

The three soldiers stopped short, weapons held at low ready. “Are any of you infected?” one of them shouted.

“We sure are,” Muldoon called in response. “Rawlings gave all of us the clap.”

“We’re not infected!” Rawlings yelled. She turned to Muldoon and glared up at him. “Totally not smart, asshole.”

Muldoon smiled back. “That’s how I roll. Deal with it.”

The three soldiers slowly picked their way toward them, and Rawlings saw that one of them was in fact Major Walker, the battalion XO. Walker looked around the area, taking in the entire tableau. The Bigfoot still burned, emitting foul-smelling clouds of black smoke. In addition, the breeze carried the sickly sweet smell of burning meat as the corpses in the back of the truck were burnt to a crisp. On the road, another Humvee backed down the highway, coming to a halt in front of the first. The vehicle was outfitted with an enclosed cupola that housed an M2 machinegun. Four soldiers stepped out of it, and one of them started jogged forward.

“How many wounded do you have?” Walker shouted through his mask.

Muldoon looked around. Bodies lay everywhere. “Not many, I think.”

A soldier bearing master sergeant stripes on his uniform stepped forward and stared right into Muldoon’s face. “Why don’t you pull your thumb out of your ass and do a count, Muldoon?”

Muldoon stared back, seemingly unaffected by the senior NCO’s demeanor. “Have a good time hiding behind the Humvee, Zhu?”

“What did you say?”

“I said faggots lose their hearing early,” Muldoon said, louder.

“Muldoon!”

A shorter man with broad shoulders and a barrel chest headed straight toward Muldoon. He wasn’t wearing any MOPP gear, and his face was all sharp angles. His eyes were hard as he locked his gaze on Muldoon, and his bearing told Rawlings that the newcomer was a hundred-percent hard core. The other soldiers stepped aside for him, even Major Walker. While everyone else was sweating in the heat and humidity, the man’s face didn’t show even a hint of perspiration, as if the heat was as unlikely to touch him as the rest of the soldiers before him.

“Well, if it isn’t Sergeant Major Turner,” Muldoon said. “Stepped out from behind your desk for a walk on the wild side, huh?”

“Master Sergeant Zhu gave you some guidance on what you’re supposed to be doing right now,” Turner said, his voice barely more than a rough growl. He walked right up to Muldoon and stopped inches away. “You aren’t doing it. Why the fuck is that? This isn’t some God damn Commie labor union, this is the United States Army. Start taking care of your troops, or my size-thirteen boot will have a date with your ass!”

“Threatening me, Sergeant Major?” Muldoon asked, sounding completely unintimidated.

Turner leaned in even closer until he was nearly within kissing range. “Boy, the fact that you are not checking for wounded tells me you are a shit excuse for a soldier. You’re chicken shit, Muldoon. Chicken shit.”

Muldoon didn’t like that, and his face clouded with rage. “You just made a mistake, Sergeant Major—”

“Take a swing,” Turner said, not moving a muscle. “I dare you, sweetheart. Take a swing, and make it count—”

“Stop it!” Walker shouted. He stepped forward and put a hand on Muldoon’s thick arm. “Sergeant Muldoon, step back and start checking for wounded! We need to get back on the road. Sergeant Major, do we have transportation coming for the rest of these soldiers?”

Neither Muldoon nor Turner responded for a long moment, choosing instead to glare at each other balefully. The animosity between the two men was almost palpable, and Rawlings wondered why an E-5 like Muldoon was challenging a full-on battalion command sergeant major. She’d never seen such a thing during her time in the Guard. A soldier didn’t step on a senior NCO’s air hose like that and expect to survive the encounter.

“Swing away, Muldoon,” Turner said finally, “or start acting like a soldier. Your call.”

Muldoon held his position for another moment, then suddenly reached up and stroked his chin. Turner didn’t flinch by even a millimeter, despite the fact that Muldoon had actively made it seem as though he was about to strike. Walker reacted by starting to reach for Muldoon’s arm again, but he canceled the move at the last second.

“Let’s get to it,” Muldoon said to the soldiers behind him. “Nutter, you done puking yet?”

“I was just moving on to shitting my pants,” Nutter said, wide-eyed.

“Do it later. Let’s see if we have any live ones.”

“Great idea,” Turner said. He turned to the master sergeant. “Zhu, go with them. The rest of you, secure the area. We need to get back on the road.” He glanced over at Rawlings. “You know how to use that weapon, girl?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” she said. “I most certainly do.”