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Combat Jump Part 5
Title: Combat Jump
Author: Slash Maraud
Rating: 18+
Disclaimer: None.
Summary: A short story that is within the Up From the Depths Universe. It takes place during the first week of the Zombie Infection. To get a chronological timeline to the Up From the Depths story, this event would have happened during the Claggett’s test of new deployment methods for SOF units. It does not contain any of the characters from UPFTD. There is some violence and language as expected in these circumstances.
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The thump of artillery and faint machine-gun rattling could be heard far to the south. An hour ago the heavy droning of transports had drowned out all other sounds.
When the last transport had moved out of earshot, the men of Tango 3 became aware of a new, very disturbing noise. The zombies were agitated. Loud moans rose from the street below. The men looked at each other with wide eyes.
Sikorski quickly stubbed out his cigarette, waving his hand to disperse the smoke. He listened as Bones wondered if the zips would settle down in awhile, then put a finger to his lips.
In a soft whisper he said, “No talking at all for ten minutes. No moving.” Sikorski gestured a flat line in the air.
Several minutes later, it was obvious the zombies were indeed reverting to their more passive nature of earlier. Glances over the side assured them the number of zombies could now be numbered in the dozens instead of the hundreds, and perhaps thousands from hours ago. Most of them had migrated toward the south. Tango 3 relaxed.
Two small clicks came from the radio. Tango 2 was preparing to send a message. Brooks turned up the volume ever so slightly.
“Ski, I think we’ve been compromised. Over.”
“Say again? What’s happening Benny? Over.”
Benny responded in a very small voice. All of Tango 3 was holding their collective breath for their friends.
“The zips got real worked up a bit ago, but no big deal. Then we heard a couple of gunshots a few floors beneath us, some hollering. Guess some humans are down there, or they were. Now zips are piling into the building like nobody’s business. They’re comin’ up. We can hear ‘em. Over.”
They all looked to the south, as if to see Tango 2’s building. It was just under a mile away and could not even be seen during daylight, but the men were purely following their empathy for Tango 2.
Sikorski somehow kept his voice low. “Benny, make a run for it! At least barricade the doors!”
“No place to go. We put some sand bags and Claymores in front of the roof doors, won’t hold that mob back. There are some more shots! The zips are just a couple floors underneath us now!” They knew Tango 2’s building was ten stories tall.
“Listen, Steve, I gotta go. Tell Jackie something good, I don’t know what. But don’t tell her about this.” Benny paused a couple seconds.
“You know, if I turn, I think I’ll find Oscar 10 and put a bite on his ass he’ll never forget! Good luck, fellows.” The radio clicked off.
They kept looking to the south. A minute passed. Then two almost simultaneous white flashes, followed by sharp bangs.
Tango 2’s claymore mines had detonated.
Crackling of long distance weapon fire was heard for a good twenty seconds. Then came a sight that signaled the end: the rising and falling of red tracer fire in a great arch.
The SAW gunner had just been lost.
Silence and blackness retuned to the night.
Lt. Chris Smith was almost giddy, and once again had to fight to keep a poker face. It didn’t help that his platoon of combat veterans were acting extremely relieved and happy. His entire platoon had landed almost perfectly within the DZ.
The men were to be given a little down time in a fallback position close to the front lines. This was behind a small cigar-shaped hill topped with concertina wire. The trench that had been formed in the creation of the hill was to the front of it. If the zombie hordes broke through, they would have much to traverse to reach Smith’s platoon. A large number of similar hills stretched from east to west at this point in Central Park.
Before too long, a captain came along, gathering up the platoon leaders. Chris turned responsibility over to his platoon sergeant and went with the captain, who had introduced himself as Kevin Ford.
Ford grouped them together. “I’m going to show you all around real quick. Tomorrow your platoons will spend time at the Death Valleys, we’ll start there.” As the officers walked, Ford talked. Chris noticed Ford kept his M-16 at the ready, never slung it on his shoulder. Chris did likewise.
“The zips react quickly to almost any sort of stimulus. Extremely aggressive, you already know this. Anyhow, if they can be stimulated, they can be over-stimulated. Ever heard of HIDA?”
Nobody responded, so Ford kept talking as he took long strides. “High Intensity Directional Acoustics. We can…”
A painful memory suddenly pierced Chris’ mind. “LRAD, Long Range Acoustical Device, that’s perfect! The baby-crying thing?”
“Very good, Lt. Einstein!” Ford said with a grin. “I wish we had more LRADs, but we have just enough to do the job. A sound is synthesized, using the crying of a baby tracked backwards, and some artificial sounds are blended with it.
Sounds stupid, but when you crank it up to 150 decibels, well, the zips get just a little controllable. At least, we can herd them to go where we want them to go and the sound doesn’t hurt the troops. Just whomever it’s pointed toward. Alive or undead, it will incapacitate, or at least drive them bananas.”
They were approaching a street blocked off by transit buses in a horseshoe shape. Two platoons were perched atop the buses, firing their rifles for all they were worth. Captain Ford walked up to a scaffold, turned to the platoon leaders.
“Put your earplugs in. Let’s look at a Death Valley.”
Chris scrambled up the scaffold. The sight, sounds and smells were overwhelming. Powerful floodlights lit up the killing ground before him. It was a stunning, sickening panorama. The undead were howling, mindless of their impending fate, howling nonetheless.
Forty riflemen were firing constantly, a head bursting with each shot. Still more zombies were pouring into the end of the street, advancing to their doom.
After several minutes, Ford gestured for them to go back down. “Let’s go this way, toward the HQ.” They strode quickly away. After a couple hundred meters, Ford stopped and directed them to look back at the Death Valley.
“In a little while we’ll cease rifle fire to dispose of dead zips. We use an LRAD to hold them back and a couple of 50 calibers to help. Remember to tell your gunners to aim low when taking on a large mass target. Chop the legs off and they’re a lot easier to deal with. A bus is moved out of the way and that jumbo bulldozer loads up the zips into those big dump trucks. They take ‘em to the docks and pass ‘em on to a garbage scow. Out to sea they go, fish food. We have five death valleys, which should do the trick. In a few days, maybe we’ll go on offense. Just better not run out of bullets.”
“Don’t let your men play games up there. I mean it. Some platoons have been caught playing a game called Double Tap, some making some kind of contests out of that… butchery. MPs are observing all the Death Valleys. General Miles has ordered any platoon not behaving in a “proper military fashion” to be sent on dock sweeps. That’s pretty hairy stuff. We lost almost a whole platoon yesterday on the East River.”
“But even worse is the Tango and Lima duties. Those are small teams that we transport to the northern half of the island, stick ‘em on top of a building. The Tangos were there for targeting purposes, I think only two out of ten are still with us. We just don’t have the resources to retrieve them since La Guardia is in doubt. They’re stuck up there, food on a platter. The Limas were listening posts; we just sent a few of them out. One actually was picked up, but they had had to shoot two of their own guys.”
“That reminds me. Dealing with bitten troopers is very distressing, here’s what is supposed…”
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Mar/24/2007, 6:12 am
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