Stephen Knight - Slaughterhouse

Lee checked his watch. Two minutes had elapsed since his communication with Walker. Ahead, he could see the outer bands of the Klown force, a huge, ragtag collection of pulsing insanity armed with every weapon. Lee was thankful the Infected hadn’t taken over some heavy armor units. Those would be almost impossible to overcome with the forces presently under his direct command. But the Klowns did have vehicles, trucks, Humvees, and even construction equipment. The Infected were flailing against the outermost ring of the defenses that had been erected around Hays Hall. Shipping containers, tractor trailers, earth-filled HESCO and concrete jersey barriers topped with concertina wire—already decorated with dozens if not hundreds of Klown corpses—surrounded the two-story, metal-roofed brick building that housed the brains of the 10 thMountain Division (Light Infantry). The corpses that littered the grounds around the defensive perimeter numbered in the thousands. For headquarters guys, the surviving elements of the 10 thhad done an awesome job at keeping the goblins at bay.

Murphy slowed the truck as it started rolling over more bodies. The rig swayed from side to side like a powerless ocean liner drifting in a beam sea.

“Wizard, this is Six. Over.”

“Six, this is Wizard. Go ahead. Over.” Walker’s voice sounded high-pitched and strained.

“Wizard, Six. Did you pass on to Mountaineer that we’re rolling up Division Drive? Over.”

“Roger, Six. Mountaineer knows you’re close to making station. It’s all up to you now. Orders for us? Over.”

“Wizard, this is Six. Get the battalion in the fight. Start rolling. Six, out.” Lee had just finished the transmission when someone thumped on the door then clambered up onto the running board. A grizzled, blood-soaked face peered in through the window, blue eyes glittering brightly in the flickering light generated by fires and firearms. Lee started cackling and glanced at Murphy.

“Laugh,” he tittered as he cranked down the window.

Murphy started chuckling as well as he was able.

“Hey, fuckers, who are you?” the man on the running board shouted through hysterical laughter.

“We’re the fucking U.S. Army, asshole!” Lee said, laughing himself. “We got us some shit to bring to the party!”

“You know this place?” the man cackled.

“Fuck, yes! We’ll blow a hole right through the wall!”

The man laughed even harder, and Lee thought the guy was about to lose his grip on the window sill. He peered into the truck’s cab, looking at Lee’s filthy uniform. “Man, looks like you guys’ve been through some shit already. But where’s your junk? We all wear junk here, man!”

Lee had anticipated the question. Presuming “junk” meant the gruesome decorations of body parts most of the Klowns wore on their persons, he reached down to the floor. When he straightened, he was holding a severed hand he had cut from one of the corpses they had used to decorate the trucks.

“You need a helping hand, bro?” he asked, inserting more laughter. He was beginning to understand the insanity. If he had to keep laughing much longer, he might go crazy himself.

The other man laughed then fell away from the window as the truck lurched over a stack of bodies. The tires doubtless kicked up a fountain of gore as they spun for a moment before finding traction.

“Now this is one fucked-up mission, sir,” Murphy said, fighting with the wheel, a stupid grin frozen on his face.

“Just get us to the barrier, Mike,” Lee said. “Just a little farther, man.”

The world had slipped into total insanity.

Rawlings looked around as the truck rolled through the Klowns, giggling as much as she could beneath her armor. A necklace of twine bearing three rotting fingers encircled her neck, their stink lingering in her nostrils. The odor of decay overrode all the other smells—smoke, ash, exhaust, cordite from expended munitions. The only scent it couldn’t overpower was the reek of her own fear and that of the men in the truck with her as the vehicle rocked around like a ship foundering at sea.

All around them, thousands of Klowns swarmed, pealing in macabre delight as they hurled themselves against the remains of Fort Drum’s defenders, hooting and hollering in the night. Many of them were military, and despite the ravages of the Bug, they still operated in a coordinated fashion. The only reason their attacks weren’t successful was that someone in the headquarters building had seen fit to erect machinegun emplacements on the building’s roof and on the crude walls that surrounded it. The three twenty-millimeter antiaircraft guns roared as they flung thousands of rounds per minute downrange. The defense was incredibly effective. Bodies and parts of bodies lay all around the perimeter. The emplacements were hidden behind banks of sand bags and metal plating that defeated all but the most expert sniper fire. Just the same, Rawlings could see dead soldiers who had been gunned down during the pitched fighting.

Several Klowns tried to climb into the trucks. Muldoon and the others, laughing as maniacally as they could, pushed them off.

“Military only!” Muldoon would shout. “You ain’t a lightfighter, you ain’t shit!”

“I am military, you fuckin’ gorilla!” one NCO shouted back. In his old life, the soldier would have been a wizened, Yoda-like lightfighter. In the grips of madness, he was no more than a cackling lunatic.

“My ride, my rules, Master Sergeant!” Muldoon said, chuckling. Rawlings couldn’t see a good deal of his face behind his night vision goggles, but she was certain the mirth he feigned wasn’t mirrored in his eyes.

“Hey, fires are shifting!” Nutter tittered, grabbing onto the side rail as the truck lurched again.

Rawlings could barely hear him over the din of combat, but she saw the defenders had slewed most of their guns to the south and started hammering away at the combatants downrange, slashing through them with twenty-millimeter rounds and forty-millimeter grenades. The trucks had a fairly clear avenue of approach, and the chances of fratricide had just been markedly reduced.

The Klowns saw the shift, as well. They surged forward, jeering and rushing toward the container walls like some gigantic, single-celled organism. The trucks accelerated, racing them to the edge.

So did several Klown-driven Humvees.

“Okay, here we go!” Muldoon shouted. “Get ready, fuckers!”

Rawlings moved to the center of the truck’s bed with the rest of the soldiers. They crouched, steadying each other against the rig’s incessant swaying.

Turner saw the trucks begin their push through the Klowns from his position to the north. Sitting in an uparmored M1045 Humvee equipped with a TOW missile tube mounted in its cupola and two more in the back, Turner watched scene unfold through the TOW’s optical sight. Several Klown vehicles—mostly Humvees and trucks, along with a mix of battered civilian vehicles—surged toward the wall surrounding Hays Hall. A couple of those closed with the trucks and pulled alongside them, effectively cutting them out of Turner’s line of sight.

“Six, this is Seven,” he said into his radio headset’s boom microphone. “You’ll have to take care of the vehicles closest to you. We’ve got no sight picture. Over.”

“Roger, Seven,” came the terse reply.

“Wizard, this is Seven. Party in ten. Over.”

“Seven, this is Wizard. We’re in position. Break. Thunder, fire in ten. Over.”

“Wizard, this is Thunder. Rounds out in ten. Over.”

Turner turned and checked the second Humvee parked abreast of his. Boats was in the cupola, already leaning into the sight of his Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided missile system. Behind the Humvee, two soldiers stood with spare TOW tubes that contained one missile each. After each unit fired, the gunner would need seven to ten seconds to rearm. Ahead of each Humvee, more soldiers crouched down with their weapons out and ready, prepped to repel any reprisal the Klowns might launch when Turner’s element attacked.