Ammo counters. Integrity seals. I was strong again. The Marines looked even younger and smaller as I gazed down at them. The tallest was three feet beneath me. “How long until we land?”
“Six minutes,” said Wallen. “We’re on final approach. Are you as badass as you look in that thing?” My grim smile was wasted on them. “So much more than you can guess. Ready, staff sergeant?”
“Born ready, ma’am.”
“Not, ma’am,” I said, and my voice growled over the speakers. “From here on in, it’s just Cerberus.” He nodded and gave an evil grin. “Let’s look alive, Marines,”
he bellowed. “We’re on the ground and fighting in five.” They leaped away and hid their nervousness with hollers and ammo checks. The Hercules shook as the landing gear hit the tarmac. Inertia yanked us all in two or three directions. The suit’s gyroscopic systems kicked in, made me a statue. I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders. Cerberus did the same on a much larger scale and half a dozen armor plates shifted across the suit’s back and shoulders. The ramp dropped with a whine of motors and a hiss of pistons. It wasn’t halfway down before we could see the dead things staggering across the runway toward our plane. I raised my arm and three hundred-ninety-five-thousand dollars worth of targeting software kicked in.
Crosshairs blossomed in my sight, ballistic information scrolled by in my peripheral vision, and the cannons thundered. Four exes exploded into dark
puddles before the ramp hit the tarmac. By technical definition, the Browning M2 was a massive, one hundred-forty-pound semi-automatic rifle, but it was hard to think of it as anything except a cannon. Normally they were mounted on Humvees, helicopters, or aircraft carriers. The Cerberus suit had one of them mounted on each arm, their barrels reaching a good foot past its three-fingered fists.
Twin ammo belts swung back to the file cabinet–sized hopper mounted on the armor’s back. They could fire nonstop for three and a half minutes, with an effective range just shy of two miles. I stomped down to solid ground flanked on either side by half a dozen Marines. Gunfire echoed across the landing strip and another ten exes fell. They were young and nervous, but they knew how to kill. I heard two screams as the dead fell on them. Having a three-hundred ton aircraft hit the ground a few feet away hadn’t stunned any of them. They were right on top of us. I moved out from under the plane’s tail. The suit identified dozens of targets. The cannons roared again and another handful of exes vanished in dark red clouds. Another scream came from behind us and I switched views inside the helmet. There were two or three exes crawling on the ground. The engines drowned out their chattering teeth. Their legs and spines had been crushed when the Hercules rolled over them during its landing, but that didn’t stop exes. One of them had Tran by the leg, gnawing through his camos and drawing blood. He beat its head in with his rifle stock and then fell over, clutching his calf and screaming. Netzley and Sibal stalked the other crawlers, and their skulls shattered with loud, harsh claps of gunfire. “Dose him,” shouted Wallen with a gesture at the wounded Marine. Carter ran forward and stabbed hypos into Tran one after another.
There was a common rumor massive doses of antibiotics could save you from the ex-virus. It wasn’t true. Officials have tried to stomp it out to conserve supplies. The ramp hissed closed and I targeted another four exes. Their heads popped into red mist. O’Neill was next to me, and the empty brass smacked against his shoulder and scorched his uniform. I glared down at Wallen. “This was the better landing zone?” He scowled back at me. “Yeah,” he barked. “What’s that tell you?” His rifle banged and a dead Mexican man flew back, arms flailing. “We’ve got radio,” shouted Wallen. “Survivors are in the main building.” He pointed across the tarmac, and a distant figure on a rooftop hopped and waved its arms. As I turned my head, the targeting software haloed several dozen exes between the runway and the building. “Watch your step,” I bellowed over the speaker. “Let me take point.” I pushed past them and grabbed the closest dead thing, crushing its skull in my fist. Not efficient, but it was the kind of morale boost they needed. I marched forward with the Marines flanking me. It took a month of fighting before officers realized the standard fire team didn’t serve much use against the exes. There were no grenade launchers or M240s here.
Just your basic M-16 for everyone, bayonets mounted, all set on single shot—-no bursts allowed. The walking dead continued to flail at us as we marched across the airfield. A quarter-mile to the south the armor magnified the remains of a chain link fence. It had been bent and twisted and pressed flat to the ground for a length of twenty yards, and dozens of exes were staggering through the opening every moment. No additional barriers or watchtowers.
The people hiding here had trusted a chain link fence with some barbed wire to protect them from hundreds, maybe thousands of massed undead. “The perimeter’s compromised,” I told Wallen. He gave a sharp nod. “We can’t stay here.” My cannons lined up and fired a few dozen rounds at the distant fence. I watched a line of headless exes drop. The next wave tripped over their bodies, and so did the next. It wasn’t much, but it was a space.
“Suggestions?”
“The main resistance is in Hollywood,” he said as we continued toward the terminal. “It’s eleven miles east-south-east of here. We hole up with these folks for a minute, get some transport together, and then get moving.” Wallen’s Marines cleared a path for us. By the time we’d reached the building they’d put down almost a hundred exes. We made it into the private terminal and I swore inside the armor. Not one defensive structure set up. These people hadn’t prepared for anything. I wondered how long they’d been here, or planned to be here? Once that fence went down they were exposed and defenseless. We could hear screams up ahead. And under the screams, hundreds of teeth clicking. There were over thirty bodies in the hall. Only a handful had been exes. A few dead things were gnawing on limbs and clawing their way into torsos. The Marines made short work of them. One of the younger ones, Mao, threw up. We passed a handful of offices before we entered the main section of the terminal. It was like the lobby of an office building. Maybe fifty people were scattered across the room as they tried to hold off twice as many exes. They were fighting with fire axes, shovels, and two-by-fours.