Stephen Knight - Slaughterhouse

The field had been a killing zone. Thousands of corpses were scattered across the field, which measured at least a thousand feet across. Men and women of all ages and sizes. Animals moved through the abattoir, eating their fill of rotting meat.

As Lee led the troops to the field’s edge, the stench hit him almost like a physical blow. His gut churning, Lee stopped and took a knee, facing the field and examining it through his NVGs. Behind him, one of the troops vomited, and the retching sound attracted the attention of a group of raccoons feasting nearby. They turned their heads toward the noise for a moment then went back to their cold, fetid meal. In the middle of the field, a black bear prowled through the human refuse, its snout glistening in the augmented image presented by Lee’s goggles. The animal carried a man’s leg in its mouth. Flies buzzed everywhere.

Lee turned toward Muldoon, who squatted a few feet away. “Stay put,” he said, then got to his feet.

Muldoon rose as well. “Where you headed?”

Lee gestured at the field. “I just want to see who these people were.”

“What the fuck for, sir?”

“I want to know if they were the good guys, or the bad guys, Sergeant.”

Muldoon shook his head. “Gotta ask again, sir… what the fuck for?”

Lee stepped closer to him. “If these are our dependents, Sergeant, it might be worth knowing. Right?”

Muldoon didn’t respond.

Lee started into the bloody, stinking gloom, rifle shouldered. Someone moved in step to his left.

“You can’t go out here alone,” Rawlings said. Her face looked pale and drawn behind her goggles, and her lips were compressed into a tight line.

“Not going far,” Lee said.

“That’s totally cool by me, sir.”

Lee shrugged. “All right, Rawlings. Come on.” Despite his outward demeanor, Lee was glad the woman was with him.

He led the way into the zone of the dead, somehow managing to keep his gorge at bay. He studied the bodies as he walked. They’d been hit by heavy weapon fire, most likely indirect fires from the post’s artillery units, which hadn’t been deployed with the rest of the combat teams. That left more body parts as opposed to complete bodies, but when he finally came across a few whole people, he was able to easily discern who they had been. Even through the damage done by high explosives, Lee could see the wreaths of fingers, the ritual mutilations, and the wild-eyed expressions frozen on the fly-encrusted faces. They had been Klowns, cut down as they overran the perimeter fences, which meant they were coming in from the outside, from places like Carthage, Deferiet, and Great Bend. He was looking at the entire populations of those towns, cut down right there in that field.

He concluded that the divisional HQ must be under attack from thousands more from Watertown, not to mention the troops from Drum who had been infected and attacked from within. With most of the post’s combat power deployed elsewhere, the division’s headquarters staff, the military police, and non-deployed troops and civilian employees were all that was left to defend the headquarters, which wasn’t some fortified bunker, but a relatively plush office building. Despite how things were portrayed in Hollywood movies, Army bases weren’t really configured to defeat dedicated attacks, and not every headquarters element had a hardened bunker as a retreat sanctuary. That the 10 th’s headquarters element had survived as long as it had was nothing short of amazing.

So Lee was being cautious by not informing the 10 th’s deputy commanding general that the battalion had arrived. While all the evidence indicated that there was indeed a pitched firefight going on, Lee had no idea if Mountaineer Five was really in charge. He could have been a Klown, and the absence of Apaches indicated that the attack battalion had been wiped out. Lee had no intention of following in Fleischer’s footsteps.

“Hey, heads up,” Rawlings said, dropping to a crouch and raising her M4.

Lee turned and saw two figures bounding toward them, zipping around the piles of the dead and the scavenging wildlife. Lee recognized them almost immediately. The commanding general had two Italian greyhounds—small, fleet animals that he had taken with him everywhere on the base. Their names were Athena and Hera, and one was black and white, while the other was a bluish gray. As they ran, they yipped excitedly. Lee remembered them as being very social animals, the kind that loved to be around people. And presuming the small canines were immune to the Bug, he figured they were probably overjoyed to see normal people again.

Lee raised his rifle and squeezed off two shots, killing the dogs before they got within a hundred feet of him. The noise was loud, but likely blended in with the din of combat taking place only a few miles away.

Somewhere out in the field of the dead, a series of wet rattles could be heard. Someone was laughing while choking on their own blood.

“Gonna get you,” a voice said, between hitching breaths and hacking laughter. “Gonna get you so good…”

Lee heard movement from behind him and stepped to the side, bringing his rifle around. Rawlings did the same.

Muldoon held up his hands.

“I come in peace. Sir, did you just shoot General McLaren’s dogs ? Did they make a move, or was it, like, a cold-blooded kill?”

“They would’ve been running all around the place after us, Muldoon. You think some yipping dogs would improve our stealthy entry?”

Muldoon shrugged. He looked out over the field full of dead—and apparently a few not so dead—then turned back to Lee. “Get what you were looking for?”

“Yeah. They’re not ours. These are Klowns.” Lee tugged at the front of his harness, adjusting the set of his body armor. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got some territory to cover.”

The unit pushed through the post, paralleling the main roads and crossing them only when necessary. They stuck to the pools of darkness that punctuated the areas between buildings and avoided the glow of fires wherever possible. They came across bodies—lots of bodies. Almost all were Klowns, but they did find some of their own who had fallen as well. One group of soldiers had apparently fought it out until their revetted machinegun position was overrun, and the bodies had been mutilated and torn apart, their intestines strewn about like foul-smelling streamers. Lee also noticed their gear had been left pretty much untouched. The Klowns weren’t interested in armament. They were interested in blood.

Paralleling Tigris Valley Road until it met Restore Hope Avenue, Lee turned to the left, leading the unit through the open areas between Restore Hope and Oswego Avenue. Some scrub and overgrown weeds lined the road, nothing that provided a remarkable amount of cover, but they could potentially hunker down and avoid detection if a unit of crazies stumbled too close. There were some storage units to their right, dark and vacant, completely uninteresting to both Lee’s troops and the Klowns. The unit marched as fast as they were able, taking a knee when they had to rest and drink to replace the fluids they were sweating out in the humid night. The sounds of combat were much closer, and amidst the chattering, sporadic gunfire and occasional explosion, they could hear the titters and guffaws of the infected. Apparently, the Infected were still cheerfully throwing themselves into whatever crucible the remains of the military had left to repel them.

Major Walker’s voice came over Lee’s headset. “Six, this is Wizard.”

“Wizard. This is Six. Go. Over.” Lee kept his voice low and his eyes out.

“Six, Wizard. Hold your pos. You’ve got a group of vehicles headed your way. We watched them pull out of the Sustainment Brigade area at Euphrates, heading your way down Restore Hope. Don’t know their target yet. Over.”