The Remnants (The End is Nigh Book 2) by Joe Stone

Author:Joe Stone [Stone, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-20T23:00:00+00:00

Part II

Malcolm

Major Malcolm Newhouse watched the spinning rotors of the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and was struck with a prescient understanding that this would be the bird’s final flight. He would have dismissed this grim idea as mere pre-mission jitters had it not been for the sour feeling in his gut. What had started as a feeling of complete emptiness—as if the ravioli MRE he’d consumed only hours earlier had been a figment of his imagination—had transitioned into a steadily increasing burn as something like battery acid flooded his insides and sizzled against the lining of his stomach. He had learned not to ignore such intuitions—had learned through hard lessons that usually involved someone dying, in fact—but there were no alternatives here. The base was lost; the helo was their only escape.

The howls of the damned were not so far off now, sounding more angry and bloodthirsty than their standard fare. Malcolm supposed that was to be expected after the last operation his crew had flown.

They had come upon a heavy cluster of the enemy fifteen miles north of here. A group of somewhere between fifty and eighty of the bastards had been laying siege to a grocery store, one of those obnoxiously trendy chains that catered to yuppies with dreams of living forever off of organic avocados and grass-fed beef. Everything but the damn roof had been constructed of glass, giving the place a look that was undeniably chic but altogether useless when it came to defensive fortifications. That anyone had been dimwitted enough to take refuge in the store did not shock Malcolm. He had long ago given up trying to understand the civilian mindset.

They had hovered low in the helicopter, circling the structure in a slow strafe while unloading the 7.62mm machine gun into the raving lunatics below. Most of them had already gained entry into the store by then, and after a few short bursts of gunfire from inside—far too few to signify any appreciable damage had been done—the crazies had exited. The sudden disinterest for what was inside told Malcolm all he needed to know about the sorry saps within: they were now ordering from that great gluten-free menu in the sky.

With the enemy gathering into a tight and furious crowd in the parking lot, and with the fear of civilian casualties no longer an issue, Malcolm had ordered the launch of two Hellfire missiles. The ordnance accomplished what small-arms fire could not, obliterating most of the crowd and scattering the rest into charred pieces.

While it was true the possessed could not be eliminated without seriously damaging their eyes (even headshots caused only temporary dead-like effects, Malcolm had learned at the expense of more than a few of his men), they could not regenerate limbs. Several of them still squirmed and thrashed in the battered parking lot, shrieking their strange curses and glaring up at the helicopter with frustrated hatred, but they would find retribution difficult without their arms and legs.

The strike had been a

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