At twenty-five meters, the heat was almost blistering, and Gartrell found himself taking brief, shallow breaths. The smoke was thick and cloying, and visibility was diminishing. On his back, Jaden was wracked by a coughing fit.
At ten meters from the subway entrance, Gartrell’s uniform felt like it was on fire and that his skin was burning beneath it. Something wet and hot landed on him, and he realized it was Jolie, showering her son with the contents of another bottle of water. The liquid sizzled when it hit the scorching hot pavement. The asphalt was already melting in places, and Gartrell hopped onto the concrete sidewalk as he bolted for the stairs leading into the subway station. Behind him, he heard the Apache’s chaingun open up again, barely audible above the roar of the flames. The air was toxic, and it burned Gartrell’s throat and made his eyes sting and water. The green paint on the metal barrier surrounding the stairs leading to the underground subway was melting. Jaden’s screams were lost in the unholy cacophony of hell as Gartrell made it to the stairs and stumbled down them. Halfway down, he realized it wasn’t Jaden who was screaming. It was Gartrell himself.
Below, the darkness was cooler, inviting. Gartrell plunged into it, grateful for the sudden change in temperature that seemed to be almost wintery compared to the hell above. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back as Jolie staggered down the steps. She had lost the shotgun, and her hair was smoldering. She coughed and retched, almost doubled over. Her footing was unsure, and she slowed as she entered the darkness, gasping for breath.
And then Jaden screamed. Gartrell sensed movement in the blackness behind him, and he cursed himself for forgetting where he was, what he was doing, what the real threat was. He snapped his night vision goggles down over his eyes and turned, his right hand already closing around the AA-12’s pistol-grip, his index finger sliding onto the trigger. The NVGs exited their standby mode and powered up, and what had been pure, unbroken blackness to his unaided vision came alive in ghostly green hues.
To the zombies, Gartrell and Jaden were presented as silhouettes against the light filtering down the stairway from above, and they launched themselves forward like cheetahs sprinting after their prey. The first was so close to Gartrell that it almost grabbed him before the first blast from the AA-12 blew it back, ripping through its chest and decimating a cardiopulmonary system it no longer needed. His second shot beheaded it, and he did the same to the next four ghouls as they surged toward him. It was over within seconds, and Gartrell crept over the now-motionless corpses and approached the trio of turnstiles and a larger exit designed for use by the disabled. He started to reach for the latter’s push-bar release, but then he noticed the alarm system on the door; he had no doubt it was battery-powered, and the last thing he wanted was for an alarm to start shrieking in the darkness.
He stepped back from the door and reached into one of the pockets on his body armor. He found an infrared chemlight and bent it in the center. It made a snapping sound, and through the NVGs, it was as if someone had just turned on a floodlight. Gartrell hurled the inch-and-a-half device into the subway tunnel. The additional illumination made the NVGs even more effective, as they could read into the lower levels of the infrared bandwidth. The tunnel seemed clear, but a scuffling sound caught his attention, and he looked to his right, to the north. Zeds leapt off the opposing platform and shuffled across the southbound tunnel, attracted by the brief, one-sided firefight. They stumbled about in the darkness, and without the light pouring from the stairwell behind him, they were completely blind.
“Dave.” Jolie coughed and spat. Gartrell turned to her, and she pointed up the stairway with her revolver, which she held in both hands. “They’re coming.” A trail of blood ran down one side of her face, and he figured something had sliced open her scalp, probably a piece of shrapnel. He moved grabbed her arm without even bothering to raise his NVGs and glance upward. He knew the zeds would follow them down, despite the raging inferno that blazed away over their heads.
“Zombies in the tunnel, but they can’t see us. Stay quiet, and let me lead you. We have to hop over some turnstiles, and then we’re going to walk up the platform to the right. You understand me?”
“Yes. Jaden’s so scared-”
“So am I. Do as I tell you. You go first, then turn and help me and Jaden across.” He led her to the turnstiles and helped her climb over one. She was unsteady, and her movements were furtive, unsure. He wanted to yell at her, but he didn’t dare, not with the zeds so close. They were already zeroing in on their position, and their moans echoed in the empty subway tunnel. Jolie looked about wildly, but in the inky blackness she could see nothing. Gartrell slapped her shoulder as he heaved himself over the turnstile, and she grabbed his arm and helped him across. It was tough going, especially while carrying all manner of weapons and with a forty-pound kid strapped to his back, but Gartrell made it.
And just in time, for the first of the ghouls made it to their platform and hoisted itself onto it. A single shot from Gartrell’s AA-12 sent its headless body flying back onto the northbound tracks. That only served to attract the rest of the zeds in the tunnel, and they rushed toward their position. Gartrell grabbed Jolie’s arm and pulled her after him, hurrying down the platform. As he did, he spoke quietly into his headset’s boom microphone.
“Summit Six, Terminator. We’re in the tunnel-we made it. Hats off to the aviators, they got us through, over.”
The response from the 2/87th’s commander was broken up by static, and Gartrell had to concentrate to make out the words. “Terminator, Summit. Your transmission is breaking up, we can barely get you. Confirm you’re in the tunnels, over.”
“Summit, Terminator is in the tunnel, over.”
The response was awash with static and an oscillating tone. They were already too far underground for the radio to work properly. Jaden moaned, and the ghouls behind the group caught the sound and stumbled after them. One of stenches fell right off the edge of the platform and slammed onto the tracks with enough force to break bones, but it struggled back to its feet and continued on, dragging one leg behind it. Gartrell led Jolie to the end of the platform, where a small gate bearing a DO NOT ENTER sign blocked off a maintenance ladder. He brought Jolie to a halt and pushed her against the wall.
“Stand right there. I’m going to have to thin out the herd a bit,” he said.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Don’t worry. I can. We’re good, we’ve got about”-he looked over his shoulder at the oncoming zombies-“six or seven stenches to deal with, then we’re going to go down a ladder and head up the tunnel. Stay cool, Jolie. We’re getting through this.”
“Trying,” she said. But the expression on her face said it all. She was already past her limit, and the only thing that kept her running was force of will and the love for her son.
“Stay right here,” Gartrell told her. He did a quick visual reconnoiter of the area, and saw no zeds in the area other than those to their south. He stepped away from Jolie and walked back the way they came; this way, when the zeds keyed in on the AA-12’s muzzle flashes, they wouldn’t threaten Jolie directly.
The zombies groped their way down the platform, moaning, hissing, their dead eyes rolling in their dry sockets as they struggled to separate shapes from the blanket of darkness that enshrouded them. Overhead, Gartrell heard the rotor beats of the Apaches fading into the distance. Their job done, the attack helicopters were retreating, probably to rearm, refuel, and repeat their attacks elsewhere.
He waited for the zeds to close on his position. Before he opened up, he checked over his shoulder to make sure Jolie was still secure; she was. He raised the AA-12 to his shoulder, sighted on the closest zed, and fired. It collapsed to the platform twenty feet from him. Jaden screamed at the sudden sound and struggled mightily, and his movements were so severe this time that Gartrell’s second shot missed the next zed entirely. That gave it enough time to charge forward with a surprising burst of speed, and Gartrell dropped it when it was only four feet away. The rest of the stenches roared and hurried toward him as if of one, hands outstretched, jaws spread wide. It took all of Gartrell’s discipline not to mash the AA-12’s trigger down and rock and roll on full auto as he backpedaled, Jaden’s screams in his ears as he fired again and again and again. Spent 12 gauge shotgun shells flew out of the weapon’s ejector port and rolled across the platform floor as Gartrell faded back, leaving a trail of still corpses in his wake. When he was done, he had laid waste to seven zeds.
Across the tracks, more commotion from the other platform. And back at the turnstiles, a few more zeds that had survived the inferno overhead managed to make it to the platform. Gartrell counted at least twenty, maybe
