World War Z(37)

We flipped our safeties off, sighted our targets, the order came to fire…I was a SAW 3 gunner, a light machine gun that you’re supposed to fire in short, controlled bursts about as long as it takes to say “Die motherfucker die.” The initial burst was too low. I caught one square in the chest. I watched him fly backward, hit the asphalt, then get right back up again as if nothing had happened. Dude…when they get back up…



[The cigarette has burned down to his fingers. He drops and crushes it without noticing.]



I did my best to control my fire, and my sphincter. “Just go for the head,” I kept telling myself. “Keep it together, just go for the head.” And all the time my SAW’s chattering “Die motherfucker die.”

We could have stopped them, we should have, one guy with a rifle, that’s all you need, right? Professional soldiers, trained marksmen…how could they get through? They still ask that, critics and armchair Pattons who weren’t there. You think it’s that simple? You think that after being “trained” to aim for the center mass your whole military career you can suddenly make an expert head shot every time? You think in that straitjacket and suffocation hood it’s easy to recharge a clip or clear a weapon jam? You think that after watching all the wonders of modern warfare fall flat on their high-tech hyper ass, that after already living through three months of the Great Panic and watching everything you knew as reality be eaten alive by an enemy that wasn’t even supposed to exist that you’re gonna keep a cool fucking head and a steady fucking trigger finger?



[He stabs that finger at me.]



Well, we did! We still managed to do our job and make Zack pay for every fuckin’ inch! Maybe if we’d had more men, more ammo, maybe if we’d just been allowed to focus on our job…



[His finger curls back into his fist.]



Land Warrior, high-tech, high-priced, high-profile netro-fucking-centric Land Warrior. To see what was in front of our face was bad enough, but spybird uplinks were also showing how truly large the horde was. We might be facing thousands, but behind them were millions! Remember, we were taking on the bulk of New York City’s infestation! This was only the head of one really long undead snake stretching all the way back to Times Fuckin’ Square! We didn’t need to see that. I didn’t need to know that! That little scared voice wasn’t so little anymore. “Oh shit, OH SHIT!” And suddenly it wasn’t in my head anymore. It was in my earpiece. Every time some jerkoff couldn’t control his mouth, Land Warrior made sure the rest of us heard it. “There’s too many!” “We gotta get the fuck outta here!” Someone from another platoon, I didn’t know his name, started hollering “I hit him in the head and he didn’t die! They don’t die when you shoot them in the head!” I’m sure he must have missed the brain, it can happen, a round just grazing the inside of the skull…maybe if he’d been calm and used his own brain, he would have realized that. Panic’s even more infectious than the Z Germ and the wonders of Land Warrior allowed that germ to become airborne. “What?” “They don’t die?” “Who said that?” “You shot it in the head?” “Holy crap! They’re indestructible!” All over the net you could hear this, browning shorts across the info superhighway.

“Everyone pipe down!” someone shouted. “Hold the line! Stay off the net!” an older voice, you could tell, but suddenly it was drowned out in this scream and suddenly my eyepiece, and I’m sure everyone else’s, was filled with the sight of blood spurting into a mouth of broken teeth. The sight was from a dude in the yard of a house behind the line. The owners must have left a few reanimated family members locked in when they bugged out. Maybe the shock from the explosions weakened the door or something, because they came bursting out, right into this poor bastard. His gun camera recorded the whole thing, fell right at the perfect angle. There were five of them, a man, a woman, three kids, they had him pinned on his back, the man was on his chest, the kids had him by the arms, trying to bite through his suit. The woman tore his mask off, you could see the terror in his face. I’ll never forget his shriek as she bit off his chin and lower lip. “They’re behind us!” someone was shouting. “They’re coming out of the houses! The line’s broken! They’re everywhere!” Suddenly the image went dark, cut off from an external source, and the voice, the older voice, was back again…“Stay off the net!” he ordered, trying real hard to control his voice and then the link went dead.