Free Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness by JT Sawyer

the tailgate. She made out the
voices of two men, one of whom was clearly the leader based upon his
reprimanding tone.
    “You can depart now—bring the video
footage you’ve recorded. I have all the intel I need from our little
experiment. The rest will be obtained from the personnel we’ve captured. Leave
the others from Lewis to the zombies.” The gruff voice went silent and static
ensued.
    Carlie placed the radio down and tapped on
her ear-mic, connecting to Fort Lewis. “This is Gray Wolf, do you copy? I need
a fix on the remaining spotters, over.”
    A few seconds later, a woman responded and
she read off the coordinates that Carlie requested. Carlie relayed them to
Brinkman, who had repositioned the mortar. He dialed in the bearing and then
delivered a round into the dense treeline a quarter-mile to the east.
    Brinkman adjusted the mortar to the second
location and released a round, lighting up a small cluster of spruce trees to
the west. She tucked the radio in her coat pocket and then rummaged through the
interior of the truck. Not finding anything of significance, she moved back
towards the others.
    Eliza pointed to the half-empty box of 120mm
rounds. “We’ve got eight more left.”
    Carlie scanned the cluster of buildings in
relation to the zombies then glanced back at the treeline. “Take out the
remaining spotters and then punch a hole through the center of the undead.
That’ll give us a route to get this truck up to the medical clinic. From there,
we’ll have to hold the fort until the helos arrive.”
    Eliza and Carlie began grabbing the
weapons and magazines from the foxhole and jamming everything in the truck. They
only stopped to cover their ears upon hearing Brinkman’s announcements for a
new round being launched. With the last mortars pummeling the zombies, Carlie
fired up the engine and motioned to Brinkman to get in. The three of them sped
down the narrow road through the pines and entered the meadow, slicing through
the center of the fractured horde enroute to the main compound a half-mile
away. She and the other occupants were flung from side to side from the
undercurrent of shattered corpses under the tires, making it feel like they
were driving over a boulder field in the desert.
    The last portion of the undead horde was
still intact, at least forty bodies thick and representing the last barrier
between them and the medical clinic ahead. “I need you to take out a few creatures
at twelve o’clock or this is gonna be a shorter ride than expected.”
    With the truck slowing slightly, Eliza and
Brinkman poked out of the windows on either side and began sniping zombies twenty
yards ahead. For every one they hit, they missed two more because of the bumpy
conditions. As the vehicle progressed, the windshield was smeared with an
amalgam of blood, snow, and viscera. Carlie had to hunch forward to see through
the thick film, slamming into the occasional freak that managed to squeegee
into her path.
    “They’re starting to close in from the
sides,” yelled Eliza, who had just emptied her second magazine.
    “Copy that—almost there,” said Carlie.
“Fifty meters.”
    Carlie tapped on her ear-mic. “Shark Tank,
this is Hammerhead Two, we are inbound to Hammerhead One. We are under heavy
attack. This is going to be a hot extract.”
    She didn’t wait for confirmation from the
helo and grabbed Eliza’s belt, yanking her into the cab, then yelled back at
Brinkman, “I’m slamming this right into the lobby. Brace for impact.”
    The cluster of intact zombies at the front
of the horde had turned like a school of barracuda and arrowed towards the
truck, led in part by two fast-moving mutants.
    Carlie shuddered upon seeing the creamy-faced
mutants and swung the vehicle to the right slightly, clipping the first one in
the waist and hearing it crunch beneath the tires. The second one blurred past
her into the crowd as the front end of the F-150 crashed through the glass and
structural supports