minutes later Vlad heard him curse. “Kynnet, we got a problem.” Vlad enjoyed the nickname, had taught it to his new comrades, and someone had even painted it on his flight helmet. “This isn’t doing a damn bit of good. The freaks aren’t going down.”
“Are you even hitting them?” Conroy asked. “I can barely see them down there.”
“Yes, sir, but it just chews them up. A few fall, maybe one in ten, but the rest just keep coming.”
“Stay on it,” Vlad ordered.
“Roger that.”
Both pilot and co-pilot could see that the gunner was right; the automatic fire was having minimal effect. On the ground, the guardsmen were engaging “leakers” that had made it through the Blackhawk’s suppression fire. There were plenty of them, coming down side streets and across parking lots, piling up against the football field’s fence. The civilians drew closer to the trucks as the vastly outnumbered guardsmen fired at the fence. At the main gates, panic erupted.
The line to get in was five to six people wide, and nearly fifty yards long, creeping forward imperceptibly as refugees were slowly cleared to enter. One platoon of guardsmen was strung out along its length on both sides, looking outwards. When slouching corpses began coming through the cars in the lot and closing on the line, and as rifle shots started to light off like strings of firecrackers, the refugee mass began to scream and push forward.
When the first of the undead blundered into the line and took down an elderly man, all remaining order disintegrated. People began shoving each other out of the way, trampling those unfortunate enough to fall. Hands gouged at faces and fists were thrown, and the shrieks of frightened children in their parent’s arms added to the chorus of fear.
Vlad saw it happening and brought the Blackhawk into a low hover off to the left of the mob, while RJ poured fire into the shapes appearing out of the dusk. His bullets chopped into windshields, hoods, dead flesh and asphalt as he tried to keep the dead away from the line. Through the windscreen, Vlad saw a young officer waving his arms frantically as his men struggled to close the gates to the field.
“Call this in,” Vlad ordered, and Conroy started speaking to Lemoore.
The crowd surged against the closing gates, and farther back the line came apart as people realized their sanctuary was being cut off. They scattered and ran back into the neighborhood.
The dead pursued them.
“Weapon dry,” RJ shouted, unclipping from his safety line and scuttling across to the port weapon, clipping back in. Vlad twitched the cyclic, and the big bird slid sideways, over the heads of the crowd, putting RJ’s port gun in position. The gunner went to work, tracers flashing in undulating lines.
Out on the football field, truck engines fired and headlights came on as the big vehicles began to roll into a column, each packed beyond capacity with refugees. Many more tried to climb onto rear bumpers, hoods and grills, a few falling to be crushed beneath unstopping tires. The trucks grumbled towards the gates, where determined civilians who had succeeded in pushing their way in now scattered to avoid being run down. Guardsmen backed away from the perimeter, forming up around the moving vehicles.
“Groundhog-7, Ranch House.” The controller at NAS Lemoore spoke in Vladimir’s ear.
“Seven copies.”
“Groundhog, Echo transport is pulling out and will return to base in convoy.”
“Ranch House,” Vlad said, “we already reported that there are not enough trucks.”
“Affirmative, Groundhog. The rest will have to follow on foot. Echo Company will remain on the ground as security and walk them in. You will provide air cover as long as possible.”
Vlad shook his head. The trucks had a long run through Fresno and the surrounding open country before reaching the base. That would leave, what? About two hundred men? To protect a thousand civilians as they traveled on foot, through an overrun city, at night, with one ineffective Blackhawk above. Insanity. Vlad asked for Ranch House to repeat its orders, and got the same reply. He muttered something in Russian which his co-pilot and gunner couldn’t interpret but understood well enough.
“Confirm, Groundhog-7.”
“Da, da, Groundhog-7 confirms.” More Russian then, a hot string of it intended for the controller, who didn’t reply.
The trucks passed through the open gates and out into the parking lot, as people poured after them. Guardsmen paired up and stayed well out to the sides, as fearful of what the panicked crowd might do as they were of