The Killing Floor Read online

  “Remember the rules of engagement,” Ford grates in his gravelly voice. “Yes, we’re in someone’s house here. Specifically, our house. There may be Americans in there. But the ROE is clear: Shoot on sight any individual who’s got the bug. Shoot to kill. If somebody runs at you, assume he’s got the bug. You take no chances. Worry about staying alive now and your conscience later.”

  “Roger that,” the men respond.

  Ford is good people, Rod knows. As the platoon sergeant, he will take good care of Pierce. The Lieutenant is in good hands. He’ll be all right.

  “Then get your men ready,” Pierce tells them. “We step off in five.”

  ♦

  The sergeants tell the Hellraisers to form up in ranger file. The squads stack behind them, waiting for the order to advance. Captain Mack growls at First Sergeant Vinson to put the church music out of its misery, and Mozart’s ethereal “Ave Verum Corpus” abruptly dies. In the ensuring vacuum, the distant gunfire presses in a little closer. The music lingers in Rod’s mind, comforting and pure, and he finds himself humming it. One of the flamethrower units sprays a jet of fire onto the pile of burning corpses, setting them ablaze and filling the air with a nauseatingly sweet, rotten, beefy stench Rod can almost taste.

  “Flashlights on, weapons hot,” he tells his squad, giving them a quick once over to make sure they’re ready to go. The boys stare back at him with wild eyes.

  Pierce gives the order to step off and leads the platoon into the hotel. The anxious looks transform into professional frowns as the training takes over. Leading his squad, Rod raises his AA12 automatic shotgun with its attached SureFire flashlight and blinks in the gloom. The lobby is massive. After weeks of neglect, it smells like an old couch. Beams of white light play in the corners; that’s First Platoon doing their jobs. Someone shouts that he found a body. The boys sneeze on dust in the air. They sweep their sectors with their weapons without breaking stride, boots stomping on clothes and hairdryers and books that spill like entrails from discarded luggage. Rod aims his flashlight over his head and watches the beam sparkle along a dead chandelier.

  A rifle discharges in the manager’s office with a loud bang.

  “Lord, please don’t let it be jumpers,” Corporal Lynch hisses.

  First Platoon’s got this, Hellraisers, Pierce’s voice buzzes in his headset. Keep moving, out.

  The stairwell door opens ahead of them. Boots thunder on the metal steps. That would be Jake Morrow’s squad, Rod knows. After them, Joe Navarro, then him, then Headquarters and Weapons.

  Rod leads his shooters onto the stairs with weapons cocked and locked and night vision goggles on. The stairwell has no windows and is pitch black. Their flashlights flicker across cinderblocks and handrails coated in generations of paint now rendered in their grainy, monocular vision as shades of green. The boys cut off their muttered prayers and bitching as they enter the danger zone, breathing through their noses.

  Above, a door bangs open. Rod’s radio fills with chatter as Sergeant Morrow narrates what he sees and his progress toward achieving his objective.

  Nobody here. Smells like sour milk, though. Stay frosty. Out, here.

  Third Squad enters the elevator lobby and pauses in the hallway beyond. They made it to their objective without incident. Now all they have to do is sweep twenty-five rooms and a vending area, without getting mauled and bitten, to earn their pay for the day. Behind them, Headquarters and Weapons enter the elevator lobby and set up the machine guns.

  “It’s time to earn our money, vatos,” Rod says. He orders Corporal Davis to take Fireteam A and clear the rooms on the other side of the hall, and then gathers Fireteam B in front of a nondescript hotel door reading 6101.

  “U.S. Army!” he calls out. “If you are inside this room, get down on the floor now.”

  Silence.

  “You’re up, Sosa,” he says.

  The giant soldier grins and steps forward with the handheld battering ram. He takes pride in being the big kid, the bully. The fireteam makes way for him.

  “Wilco, Sarge,” he says.

  He rears back and swings the ram into the door, which bangs open. The fireteam rushes past, weapons leveled and sweeping the room. Tanner breaks left and Arnold breaks right, circling back to Rod, who provides overwatch at the door. Lynch checks the bathroom.

  “Clear,” the boys sound off.

  “Clear,” says Lynch.

  Rod scans the room again. An open suitcase lies on the unmade bed, half packed with wrinkled clothes. He joins Lynch, who shines his flashlight at the bathroom mirror. Someone wrote a message in red lipstick.

  Sorry Sean I had to leave to find Liz

  The sink is filled with bloody bandages.

  The corporal shakes his head. “Like one big haunted house, Sergeant. I wonder what their story was.”

  Rod barely hears him. The lipstick reminds him of Gabriela.

  The hopelessness of their mission feels like a sudden weight on his chest. The country is huge. How many miles, how many rooms, how many bullets until he reaches his family?

  “Holy shit,” one of the boys says back in the room.

  Rod and Lynch rejoin the fireteam grouped around the window, and raise their night vision goggles. Someone pulled back the curtain, filling the room with bright gray light. From this high up looking northwest, Arlington sprawls before them behind a veil of smoke. Gunships buzz over the distant buildings, covering the combat engineers. Several circle a distant point, dropping Hellfire missiles before veering away. The boom reaches their ears and shakes the window for a fraction of a second just before a fireball blooms over the spot, dissipating in a mushroom cloud.

  “It almost feels like we’re winning,” Arnold says over the grinding thunder.

  “Winning?” Sosa snorts. “Shit, man, this is easy. The Infected don’t shoot back, right?”

  Jake Morrow reports to the Lieutenant that he has reached his objective. The constant chatter on the radio reminds Rod they have a job to do.

  “All right. Enough sightseeing. Let’s get back to work.”

  They have twenty-three more rooms to go.

  Davis calls out from the hallway: “Contact!”

  “Coming out!” Rod calls back, and rushes outside in time to see a man approaching them from the other end of the corridor. The flashlight beams converge on his face and chest.

  “Sergeant, we got a civilian,” Davis tells him.

  “Stop where you are, sir,” Lynch orders.

  The man obeys, sniffing the air, his fists clenched against his chest.

  “Some of these doors must be open,” the corporal says. “He was in one of the rooms.”

  “Does he have the bug, Sergeant?” says Tanner.

  Rod shrugs. He believes the man has the bug, but such speculation is pointless. The rules of engagement are clear. “If he makes a run at us, he does.”

  As if hearing an invitation, the man sprints at them, growling on the exhales, closing the distance. A wave of nauseating sour stench precedes him.

  “Stop where you are, sir!” Davis shouts as the soldiers aim their weapons, waiting for the order to fire.

  “Sergeant?”

  The man rushes at them, his pale face shining in the glare of the flashlights, teeth gleaming, feet pounding the floor.

  Rod doesn’t want to shoot.

  He also cannot order his boys to do something he wouldn’t.

  “What do we do, Sergeant?”

  Rod raises his shotgun and growls back at the Infected.

  “Fuck you, Jody,” he says, and squeezes the trigger.

  ♦

  The man’s chest explodes with a burst of smoke as the high-velocity buckshot rips through his body, filling the air with a bloody mist. His legs give out, sending him careening into the wall, where he leaves a long smear of blood and bits of flesh.

  Pierce’s voice buzzes in his ear, urgent.

  Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers 6. Sitrep, over?

  Rod re
alizes he was not breathing. He takes a long, shuddering breath.

  Repeat, Hellraisers 3. What’s your sitrep? How copy?

  Rod looks at the grinning corpse smoking on the carpeted floor at the end of a long trail of blood and guts and feels nothing but horror at himself.

  The boys are laughing like crazy people.

  “What the hell?” he says with disgust. “This man is dead.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” says Tanner, coughing into his fist.

  “Get your shit together,” Rod snarls. He keys the push-to-talk button on his headset and reports in. “Hellraisers 6, Hellraisers 3. We engaged and eliminated one hostile, over.”

  “Not just any hostile,” Sosa says, setting the boys off again.

  Hellraisers 3, that’s a solid copy. Stay in touch, out.

  “Roger, sir,” Rod says, glaring at his squad. “Out.”

  “Sergeant,” Lynch explains, “you called him Jody just before you fired.”

  Rod grunts in surprise. “I did?”

  In Army folklore, Jody is the sweet, sensitive civilian man who screws your girlfriend or wife while you’re away fighting for your country. You spend months getting shot at in some bombed-out shithole where even the sand hates you, and then one day a Dear John letter comes from your old lady telling you how Jody was there for her while you were away. How his poetry speaks to her. How things sort of just happened. How she wants the uncomplicated life Jody offers.

  Everyone in the Army, from the lowliest private to the Chief of Staff, hates Jody’s guts. If Rod wanted to demonize the enemy and help his boys find humor in the horror, he couldn’t do any better.

  “Well, then I guess he had it coming,” he says, sending the squad into hysterics.

  Everyone is looking at the corpse. None see their sergeant wincing, blinking tears.

  This isn’t war. It’s murder. Genocide. And Rod is no longer a soldier. He’s an exterminator.

  I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sorry I had to end your life, whoever you are. Please consider it a mercy and recommend me to God as a friend.

  God, karma, whoever is out there, he prays, at the end of this I will answer for anything I’ve done. Do not punish my family for my actions, for they are innocent.

  Amen.

  “Ice cold, Sergeant,” says Sosa, glancing at Rod with new respect.

  Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers 6.

  “Hellraisers 3. Go ahead, Hellraisers 6.”

  We got people in the elevator, over.

  While the Lieutenant talks, Rod hears a metallic boom in the background. Someone is pounding his fists against the elevator doors, trying to get their attention, wanting out.

  “Copy that, Hellraisers 6,” Rod says. “Are they infected, over?”

  No way to know until we get them out of the elevator, over.

  “Hellraisers 6, do you need assistance, over?”

  We could use you pulling security in the hallway, Hellraisers 3. Stay close, over.

  “Roger, Hellraisers 6. Hellraisers 3, out.”

  More hurry up and wait. They’ll have to finish clearing the rooms later.

  Rod leads Third Squad back toward the elevator lobby. Turning the corner, he sees Weapons Squad prying open the elevator doors while the Headquarters guys cover them with their rifles. He wonders how long those people have been trapped inside the elevator. Infected or not, they will be too weak to stand up.

  Refugees are going to defeat the invasion, Rod believes. Thousands of people are still alive in Arlington alone, he is sure of it, barricaded in basements and other safe places. Hundreds have already reached the airport. They need food, water, shelter, medical care. Many of them are so psychologically damaged they present a danger to themselves and others.

  The worst part is the military took their guns. Never did this country need a draft more than it does now, but the government has not yet done this. Many of the refugees are willing to fight alongside the Army, but they are not allowed, not even as mules, not even behind the lines. So they sit around and drain resources the military needs to win this war. It’s a giant waste, and just thinking about it makes the old rage boil inside him.

  A strange smell—a dry, antiseptic scent, like rubbing alcohol—strikes his nose, making him cough. He keys his headset in alarm. “Hellraisers 6, this is Hellraisers 3, how copy, over?”

  Hellraisers 3, Hellraisers 6. We almost got it open. Wait, out—

  The elevator lobby fills with the crash of gunfire and strobing muzzle flashes.

  ♦

  The firing stops, replaced by screams.

  “Move, move!” Rod roars, surging forward with his automatic shotgun up and leveled.

  The lobby fills with chittering black creatures swarming over the bodies of the soldiers. They look like giant flies, their backs covered in greasy mesh wings, their limbs sharp edged and hairy, their eyes massive and pure white, their bodies ranging size from as small as a dog to as big as a cow. They smell like rubbing alcohol. One of them hunches over Sergeant Ford, its multiple limbs folding the man into a box shape, ripping flesh and bone like cardboard.

  Ford screams in agony.

  “Jesus Christ,” Arnold says.

  “Don’t shoot!” Rod says. “That’s our people in there.”

  “What do we do, Sergeant?”

  “Follow me!”

  They’re going to have to kill these things at close quarters.

  A voice calls from the elevator lobby: “Fire!”

  “We’re coming to get you, sir!” Rod says as he rushes forward.

  “That’s an order!” Pierce shrieks. “We’re done!”

  The squad hesitates in the corridor with gasps of revulsion and dread. Rod realizes he is alone.

  Pierce is still screaming: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  The words turn into a long keening wail. In front of Rod, the thing that folded Sergeant Ford into a neat box is now spinning him while shooting a stream of viscous webbing around the body. Another of the things picks up the shrieking radio operator, expertly lops the AN/PRC-119 radio off of his back, and then hacks off his limbs, chirping musically while it works. Its glistening wings tremble, making an oily, leathery flapping sound that gives Rod the skin-crawling sensation of cockroaches on his body.

  He fires the AA12, which discharges with a deafening boom. The thing cocooning Ford explodes in a spectacular splash of carapace and white slime. He fires again, blasting another of the things into wet pieces.

  Navarro’s voice buzzes in his ear: Hellraisers 6, this is Hellraisers 3.

  “Lieutenant!” he cries, ejecting the smoking twelve-gauge casing and chambering another round. The men in the elevator lobby have stopped screaming. The buglike things continue their grisly work on the bodies, ignoring Rod, their bulbous white eyes inscrutable and seemingly blind.

  Rod turns and sees his squad flinching away from the sight.

  “Fire your goddamn weapons!”

  Hellraisers 6, how copy?

  More of the things pour from the blackness of the elevator shaft and swarm across the ceiling and walls and floor in a single chittering mass, their wings trembling.

  chk-chk-chk-chk-chk

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” one of the soldiers shouts.

  Rod flicks the selector switch on his thunder gun to auto and rains buckshot into the things, splattering them. He backpedals quickly, reloading, as the squad opens up, screaming their heads off. The monsters fly apart under the storm of shot.

  For every creature they kill, another takes its place.

  Any Hellraisers unit, this is Hellraisers 1. Identify source of gunfire, over?

  Rod shouts into his headset, “All Hellraisers, all Hellraisers, this is Three. Six is down. We are engaged at the elevator lobby. Request assistance, over.”

  The voices of the other sergeants crash in his ear, talking over each other.

  Copy that. On the way, Hellraisers 3, out.

  Hang on, Rod. Wait one, out.


  The wall next to them begins to crumble. Through the hole they hear the buzzing of wings.

  “Fall back, fall back!”

  The squad turns and sprints down the hallway, their boots slamming the carpet, surrounded by an omnipresent scratching sound.

  The walls are dissolving.

  Rod pauses to fire his shotgun. The gunstock hums against his shoulder. Shell casings fly into the air. The bloated black bodies explode under the fusillade.

  The gun clicks empty.

  chk-chk-chk-chk-chk

  “Go, Sergeant!” Sosa roars, shouldering his SAW and opening fire. The tracers arc down the hall into the thickly massed creatures, splattering dozens of them.

  Bits of dust and paint sparkle in the air around him, almost beautiful as seen through his night vision goggles.

  Rod grabs the man’s collar and pulls hard as the ceiling collapses under the weight of a pile of the things, landing on the floor with a thud. The bodies explode on impact, spilling guts and organs across the carpet.

  Davis and Lynch wave the men through, shoot into the swarm and then run after the squad.

  Rod sees lights flickering ahead and calls out, “Third Squad here!”

  The squads almost collide at the corner. It’s Navarro and his shooters, wide eyed and gasping.

  “Where’s Jake?”

  “Don’t know,” Navarro tells him. “What the hell did you guys do? I’m being chased by giant flies, for Chrissakes.”

  “No time,” Rod says. “They’re right behind us too.”

  “If they are, we’re trapped.”

  “Then we make our stand here. See to your men. We got your back.”

  Navarro nods, paling. “Good luck, Rod.”

  Rod hears muffled gunfire erupt on another floor of the hotel. Whatever Lieutenant Pierce unleashed is spreading through the building. With just seconds to act, he points and calls out names, positioning his two grenadiers against the walls and the SAW gunners next to them, where their overlapping cones of fire will cover the hallway with minimal shifting fire. Two riflemen kneel in the middle with Rod and his shotgun, while the other two stand behind them.

  The swarm is nearly upon them when Rod gives the order to fire.

  He shoulders his shotgun and squeezes the trigger, the gun booming in his hands. The grenadiers shoot their thumpers, sending multiple projectile rounds deep into the elevator lobby. The SAW gunners, lying on the floor, fire hundreds of rounds, tracers zipping downrange in blurred streams. The riflemen fire in an endless series of metallic bursts.