Gravewalkers: Dying Time by Richard T. Schrader Read Free Book Online

will be
our finest hour!”
    “ He has gone mad,
marshal,” one of the recon soldiers told Critias as if that was not
already apparent to everyone who had heard the order.
    The soldier’s words were
not wasted because from them Critias knew what had to be done.
“This is Marshal Captain Critias,” he radioed on the general
distress channel, “by the authority of Grand Marshal Wayne, I am
calling an immediate emergency evacuation of the Chicago
reclamation center. Any aircraft hearing this will come down and
support the evacuation. There are a million infected assaulting our
broken perimeter. I authorize you to engage in close air support
and give them everything you have. Combat teams will execute an
orderly fighting withdraw to the center complex. I order all
officers to shoot deserters on sight; the transports need time to
arrive so if you just run we all die!” With the message sent, he
transmitted a signal to his ship to autopilot to his
position.
    Two tanks that escorted six
dozers drove into the front lines then unleashed their awesome guns
into the ghoul horde. Explosions hurled infected flesh into the sky
to rain down in wet chunks and still it was only the weakest
crippled ghouls that took the punishment. The main army of fully
capable runners had yet to arrive and when they did, they would
leap and sprint like the Olympic athletes they could run down and
eat.
    Critias and his team could
shoot straight down the wall and not fail to hit some snarling
aggressor. The situation teetered on the final edge and when it
toppled, things were going to be so bad that a full-on panicked
rout of defenders would be unavoidable.
    “ This is Marshal Erik of
the Gunship Predator,” reported a voice on the radio.
    “ Bring the thunder, Erik,”
Critias radioed him. “Take the paint off the tanks; we’re in
trouble down here!”
    “ Roger that, Critias,”
Erik replied. “I’ll be knocking on your door in thirty
seconds.”
    The dedicated fire-support
gunship flew at street level down the main roadway that was wide
enough to accommodate it. All six of the ship’s rotary cannons
sprayed ballistic tungsten slugs into the infected army that filled
the thoroughfare wall to wall. Door gunners on each side of the
ship swung their swivel-cannons to slash lines of slaughter that
just as quickly vanished in the press of the flood. As the ship
passed where the outer wall had fallen, a string of dropped bombs
annihilated the attackers and covered the tanks in their liquefied
filth.
    Critias’ ship came down on
autopilot to hover next to him and the men under his command. He
transmitted a signal to open the door and then waved for the
soldiers to jump aboard.
    So many ghouls charged into
their quarter of the city that their screams were louder than the
guns that ripped them apart. Explosions and bullets shredded ten
thousand of the attackers into slop. The infectious filth
splattered every surface and dripped from the plastic suits that
protected the personnel. Not even the blasted meat was really dead
or any less infective. In time, the bits of tissue would find their
way into the soil or the water of the sewers to contaminate the
environment indefinitely as if it wasn’t so already.
    Critias leaped into his
ship in time to escape the infected that came after them along the
top of the wall while down below runners inundated the breach then
spread out like angry hornets to pursue the tactically retreating
defenders by sprinted leaps.
    As Critias took the pilot’s
seat, Daniels asked, “How about we knock some buildings down to
make a kind of firebreak? This noise is calling in every infected
in the city and the transport isn’t even here yet.”
    Critias replied, “A gunship
doesn’t pack the kind of firepower to cut a building in half.” He
piloted away from the wall then repositioned to fire his cannons
into the breach to stem the flow of ghouls.
    “ We know these buildings,
marshal,” Daniels told Critias with