Slaughterhouse

FOURTEEN.

Worcester, Massachusetts was a college town, home to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, the University of Massachusetts’s Medical School, and Assumption College, among others. With a population of just under two hundred thousand, the city was the second largest in all of New England, second only to Boston. The bucolic area served as the last stop before a traveler entered the western suburbs of the Boston metropolitan area, and it was also known for its legacy of arts, liberal politics, suburban lifestyle, and fairly well-established regional airport.

Like so many other places in New England, Worcester was in the process of being bludgeoned to death. The city’s short skyline was already blackened and battered from fires that had gone unchecked, and the occasional siren could be heard over volleys of gunshots. Surrounding the city center, residential communities still smoldered, belching columns of gray-black smoke into the air. On the far eastern side of the city, the forest surrounding the Worcester State Hospital was on fire, producing a pall of dirty smoke that hung over the airport like a gauzy veil.

The airport was important to the battalion and its attached units. It had been officially shut down for some time, closed to all air traffic, commercial and private. But several dozen people were on the property, either caught in transit when their aircraft had been grounded or simply seeking some measure of safety. A single JetBlue Airbus A319 sat on the ramp outside one of the two active jetports that had, until recently, still been in use. Almost all of the general aviation aircraft were gone, and the only planes left were an old, battered Cessna 172 and a shiny Beechcraft Baron. The two aircraft were parked right next to each other, which left the majority of the general aviation ramp area available for the cav unit to set up around the four UH-60M Black Hawks they supported.

First Lieutenant Carl Dekker had arranged the cav unit’s four Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles—MRAPs—in a protective formation around the ramp area, their fifty caliber machineguns oriented outward. In addition, they arranged the four airport snow plows into a formation that would funnel ground traffic headed for the ad hoc assembly area into a narrow kill zone attended by two MRAPs and four of his dismounted cavalrymen.

Dekker also had a bit of a bonus to fall back on. While his command was detached from the rest of the battalion, he had been bequeathed eleven airmen and NCOs from Hanscom Air Force Base. Those men made up the remainder of Hanscom’s Internal Security Response Team, the unit that provided security for the base and responded to any physical threats. Dekker and his troops were good at that sort of thing, but he had to grudgingly confess that the ISRT was better. For that reason, he had put them between the cavalry platoon and the passenger terminal, where an attack was most likely. The only thing keeping the people in there from walking out onto the taxiway were locked doors, and while that would be a sufficient deterrent for families who were stranded but still sane, the second the Bug took hold and a bunch of Klowns came into being, that deterrent would quickly fail. So it would be up to the ISRT and its batch of M4s, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, and shotguns to keep the goblins at bay until the cavalry platoon could get spooled up and stage a more lethal response. Dekker and his men had been spared a great deal of gratuitous contact with the Klowns, but they all knew what the Infected were capable of. The people they had been no longer existed. Only crazed, howling demons occupied their skins, demons who wanted nothing more than to spread the infection or, more likely, to tear a man’s skin from his bones and piss on his internal organs.

Dekker would run over them with the MRAPs.

But part of Dekker’s job was protecting the UH-60 Black Hawks. These provided tactical transport for the battalion, as well as logistical replenishment operations. When Wizard Six had chopped the cavalry unit away from their normal armed reconnaissance mission and had them secure the airport, he had put the troops of Nomad Platoon in charge of some very strategic assets. Normally, that wouldn’t have been tough duty. The aircraft would be stored in secured hangars and brought out only when they had a mission, but the hangars at Worcester Regional Airport were not exactly hardened, and they had no means to ensure entire structures could remain protected from assault. A second option would have been for the aircraft to be placed inside hardened revetments, surrounded by sand bags, HESCO containers, or other obstacles that would serve to protect them from indirect fire, thereby keeping them more or less out of harm’s way. The only thing they had that could even begin to serve as revetment material was several dozen water-filled plastic jersey barriers. The gaily-colored obstacles were hardly bulletproof and were maybe high enough to keep a raging dachshund at bay, but they weighed over a thousand pounds each. That meant they might protect the helicopters from vehicle-born attacks, in turn giving the Black Hawk drivers enough time to get the hell out of Dodge before everything rolled tits up and called it a day. The Air Force guys had used forklifts to move them into position, and they had even angled them a bit to make another choke point in case of attack. That had been nice of them.

The aviation crews had also manned up and were standing security with the rest of the cavalry team. While not as versed in the arcane art of ground combat as the cav and zoomies, they had at least gone through basic infantry training and presumably knew which end of an assault rifle to point at the enemy. Each aircraft had a crew of four: two pilots, one crew chief, and one gunner. That gave Dekker enough of a tactical footprint to make him feel comfortable, even though there were too many faces to put inside the MRAPs if they had to bug out. So some of the snow plows would be coming along for the ride, and with their big blades, they’d be pretty unstoppable, at least from the front.

Another bonus was that the Black Hawks had better communication gear. The cavalry’s radios were pretty much useless so far from the battalion, but the aviators remained in contact with the other air units. That lone pipeline kept everyone who wore a uniform at Worcester at least marginally up to date on current events. They knew the battalion’s convoy had already been attacked twice, and they knew the scouts were coming in to refuel. The airport still had power and a good amount of aviation fuel, which the aviators had already tapped. They’d topped off their Black Hawks then filled up four five-hundred-gallon blivets, inflatable doughnut-shaped bladders that would be slung out by the Black Hawks when the time came to close up shop and retrograde. Two thousand gallons of jet engine fuel sounded like a lot to Dekker, but the captain in charge of the aviation element had informed him that each Black Hawk had a fuel capacity of 360 gallons, and the Apaches could slug down 375 gallons in less than three hours. Suddenly, the blivets didn’t seem like much of a plus.

When the first of the small OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters buzzed in, Dekker and the rest of the cavalry platoon straightened up and stood overwatch. The Black Hawk crew chiefs handled the refueling operation, apparently not a duty they had practiced to perfection as it took almost twenty minutes to get the two armed scout helicopters topped off. This gave the Kiowa Warrior crews time to hit the latrine in a nearby hangar and conduct their own defueling missions Since they could only go one at a time—the Kiowa Warriors were left running as part of the “hot refuel” plan, so one pilot had to stay with the aircraft while the other took a piss—the refueling delay was a boon for them. By the time the Kiowa Warrior pilots had finished their breaks, the aircraft were ready to go. Exchanging salutes with the ground crew, the aircrews pulled pitch, broke deck, and headed out.

Dekker looked through the windows of the passenger terminal. The people inside watched the helicopters come and go with an expression of relief. Obviously, they thought the appearance of the small gunships meant that the Army was coming—and in force.

Dekker considered telling them they had it wrong, that the Army—or what passed for it, anyway—was actually bugging out, and if they were smart, they would do the same. He passed on that, of course. He didn’t want any of his command coming into contact with the civilians. He didn’t know if any of them were infected, and even though the Klowns were crazy, they were crafty.

“Hey Nomad, this is Catfish. Over.”

Catfish was the captain in charge of the Black Hawk element.

Dekker adjusted the boom microphone on his radio headset, even though it was already perfectly positioned.

“Catfish, this is Nomad. Go ahead. Over.”

“Nomad, Catfish. Just got a pulse from the battalion. We have red air inbound. Flight of four Guard UH-1 Iroquois helicopters. Over.”

Dekker felt a little queasy. The designation “red air” meant hostile aircraft, and hostile aircraft were a ground pounder’s worst nightmare. “Uh, roger that, Catfish. If they’re Guard, maybe they have the same idea as we do. Drop in and fill up. Over.”

“Negative, Nomad. Another Huey element attacked the column. This is the real deal. Over.”

Oh, fuck. “Roger that, Catfish. Stand by. Break. Sniper, this is Nomad. Over.”

“Go for Sniper. Over,” the senior Air Force ISRT NCO said. Dekker could see the man in his machinegun position a hundred plus meters away. The weapon was oriented on the closest exit from the passenger terminal but could be rotated to cover half the airfield, if required.

“Sniper, Nomad. We’ve got red air inbound. Prepare for contact. Over.”

“Roger that, Nomad. What’s the drill? Over.”

“Stand by, Sniper. Break. Catfish, this is Nomad. Over.”

“Nomad, go for Catfish. Over.”

“Catfish, Nomad. Any orders from battalion? Over.”

“Nomad, we’ve asked. It’ll take a bit for Wizard’s direction to be relayed to us. Our guys are kind of busy right now. Uh…hold one.” The radio went silent.

There was gunfire in the distance, and a roaring motor that drew near, then faded away. Dekker examined the perimeter fence and saw nothing—no movement, no figures trying to climb over, not even a dog taking a piss.

“Nomad, this is Catfish. Report from the scout element that just refueled. Red air is a flight of four UH-1 Victor Hueys loaded with troops and weapons on hard points. Five miles and closing from the east, radial zero-eight-zero, moving at about a hundred knots. Contact in about two minutes. Still no report from Wizard or Tomcat. We have another flight of two scouts inbound, six minutes out. Two Apaches inbound as well, seven minutes out. Over.”

“Ah, roger all, Catfish. Your birds are ready to go? Over.” Dekker knew that the four UH-60s had already been preflighted then left in isolation, so no one but aircrew could board them. This way, the Black Hawks were as ready as they could be to take off on short notice. Dekker figured two minutes was probably too short, but what the hell, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

“Roger, Nomad, aircraft are ready to go. Over.”

“Catfish, get your troops out of here. We need to make sure your aircraft are safe, so get out of here. Over.”

“Nomad, this is Catfish. We haven’t received orders from Wizard yet. Over.”

“Understood, Catfish. This is my call. Save your birds. Over.”

No sooner had he given the order than he heard a turbine engine start spooling up. The captain in charge of the aviation element wasn’t going to try and dicker. The site commander had given him an order, and he was going to obey it.

“Nomad, this is Catfish. We’ll do our best. We’ll stay local. We might be able to provide some supporting fires. Listen, once the fur ball starts, you can expect every Klown in the area to want to get in on the action. Over.”

Another turbine wailed into life. Dekker looked over at the helicopter assembly area. The main rotors on two Black Hawks were already starting to turn.

“Roger that, Catfish. Feel free to skip your hover checks. We won’t tell anyone. Over.”

“You the man, Nomad.”

Another Black Hawk started cranking up. Dekker glanced back at the passenger terminal. Several people stood behind the pane glass that overlooked the jet-way apron—scruffy, unshaven men in cargo shorts and T-shirts, women in rumpled sundresses holding tote bags and dog-eared paperback books, kids with toys or comic books. The kids looked out at the helicopters and the soldiers with excitement lighting up their faces. For them, the whole thing was fun. The adults looked a little less enthused.

They saw the Army was bugging out.

Dekker wanted to help them, but there was nothing he could do. He had less than twenty-five men available since the aviation crews were pulling pitch. He didn’t know exactly how many troops a Huey could carry, but he presumed as many as a Black Hawk, which meant his elements would soon be in contact with airmobile Klowns who had numerical superiority.

His platoon had its orders. They were to secure the airport and safeguard the aviation fuel pond, and until Wizard passed on a new fragmentary order, that was what they would do. Dekker was only a first lieutenant, but the tall young officer from Denton, Texas wasn’t dumb. He wouldn’t try to maintain control over a lost objective, but he would maneuver his fires and kill as many Klowns as possible before he broke position and rolled out.

And he might be able to give the civilians watching him a bit more time.