NationStates Jolt Archive

A flight of eleven Apache attack helicopters flew low over the Zowali countryside, their rotors silent in the night purely by design. Strapped to the wings of the Apaches in between pods of 2.75 inch rockets were four soldiers, two per wing, each one dressed in a dark green flight suit and hard body armor, with pouches carrying combat essential items from magazines to fragmentation grenades. Strapped tightly to their chests were silenced AK-109 carbines, weapons chambered in 9x39mm in order to be more easily sound suppressed. A helmet and bio-mask combination topped off the imposing outfit. The Apaches flew due east, towards the burning remnants of the once-fine city of Jericho.

Richard Jameson crept down an alley, beat up bolt-action rifle in hand, glancing left and right with a paranoid fervor. All through the city were the echoes of hungry moans, as flesh-eating ghouls stumbled up and down the streets, searching for the few remaining survivors.
Part of Rich was pissed, because they’d been left to die in this festering pit of hell. Not only that, but they’d been used as a goddamn tourist attraction! Every day choppers flew over or armored cars drove through, just so that people could look at the zombies, the Solanum-infected bodies and mayhap get a glance of a survivor being chased by the ghouls. The sick morbidity of it pissed him off the most.
Rich was thinking these thoughts and darting from shadow to shadow when he ran into a particularly thick piece of shade; bumping off the rotting flesh, he jerked back in revulsion as the ghoul turned and moaned, reaching for him. The shot from his rifle tore its head to pieces, but the report of the weapon was answered by thousands of moans rising to the night sky. Rich cursed and cycled the weapon, ejecting the spent casing and chambering a new round.

Lieutenant Matthew “Nine-Inch” Nelson scanned the city below with the NV/IR filters built into his bio-masks goggles, looking for a hotspot of live human activity that they could avoid; they’d rather set the choppers down away from live humans, because live humans attracted dead ones, and dead ones would be hard to land in. As he was scanning, he saw a single red figure below moving frantically way from a grey, shapeless blob that could have only been a zombie hoard; activating his comm. unit, he got the attention of the pilot of his Apache.
“Lieutenant Jackson, take us low in over that figure. Have Alpha Three and Alpha Four provide close air support while you drop us off; we’ll escort that survivor to safety.”
“You think that’s a good idea, Lieutenant? I don’t want them all over the bottom of my ship.” Lieutenant Jackson’s voice crackled in Nelson’s ear.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your ship right now, Jackson. I do, however, care about that man on the ground. If we don’t get down there, he’s a fuckin’ gonner. So what say you fly low, drop us off, and leave the zombies to Alpha Three and Four?”
“Understood, Nine-Inch. It’s your operation.” Jackson then switched to Alpha Three and Four’s frequencies, giving them their instructions. Once he received confirmation, he broke off from the flight pattern and swung in low over the intersection that the little red infrared figure was crossing. Coming to a hover, he lowered the chopper nearly to the ground and gave Nelson the green light.

Jameson was running for his life through dark alleyways, the moaning rising all around him now. That damn shot woke up the whole city, and there were undead groans echoing down every otherwise-deserted street. He sprinted into an intersection and then stopped dead; to all sides was an advancing mob of zombies, their grey, rotting flesh giving off a stench that raised the bile in his throat. Taking a deep breath, and squared his feet and took aim with his rifle. Finger squeezing the trigger, he was about to loose another shot when dust swirled up from the street around him and a peculiar wind started pushing down on him. Somewhere above him, flames stabbed out into the darkness and thunder rolled across the city as tracers pierced the night and the 20mm rounds from the Apache’s main gun lanced into the crowds of zombies, scattering flesh every which way.

Jameson looked on in awe at this, and didn’t even notice the chopper that came in behind him. Suddenly, two frightening figures in bio-masks and combat gear grabbed him by the arms.
“Let’s go boy, quit your gawking. We’re getting you out of here.” With that, the soldier started strapping Jameson into the harness dangling from the Apache’s wing, then he climbed up himself and hung on as the gunship lifted off again, this time to look for a place to permanently set down.

“KNIFE, secure the building’s first floor, RAIDER, you’ve got the second. HAMMER and MAVERICK will be searching the city. I need RAIDER to man an operating base on the roof.” Nelson shouted orders over the rush of the downdraft from eleven helicopters, and received confirmation from forty three soldiers. KNIFE, HAMMER, and MAVERICK then moved quickly down through the building from their rooftop landing zone, clearing each room they came across. Fortunately, there was no enemy contact, save one instance when a ghoul stumbled from a fourth floor bathroom. One silenced shot to the head scattered his rotting brain all over the ceramic tile, and the group moved on.

Upon reaching the first floor, KNIFE moved out to secure it while HAMMER and MAVERICK exited silently and started moving on foot towards the first objective: a parking garage with survivors trapped on the top floor. Upon reaching the indicated parking garage, the two squads found that at least two of the garage's four levels were filled with the undead; their incessant moaning echoed from the open sides of the building, and occasional shots could be heard from the topmost floor.

"MAVERICK, this is HAMMER. I need you to move out and secure the Northwestern corner from the outside. I'll take my squad in through there, then use the stairway to reach the survivors on top." Nelson spoke softly into the built-in mike in his mask.

"KNIFE, this is MAVERICK. I copy, securing now." Moments later:
"Corner secure. KNIFE, go ahead."

"Understood. We'll be back down for you ASAP." With that, all eleven soldiers of team HAMMER moved in towards the northwest corner, a couple exchanging nods with the men from MAVERICK. Then they were inside, amidst a light crowd of stinking bodies: the majority of the ghouls in the garage were on the second floor, beating themselves against the barricades of cars. The few that got in HAMMER's way were gunned down, the silenced weapons emitting only a sharp metallic sound, quiet, in comparison, to the moans emanating from the floor above. Upon reaching the door to the stairwell, Nelson had his engineer "unlock" the door as quietly as possible, then seal it as best they could while the rest of the squad moved up the stairs, boots clicking on the concrete.