There was an immediate cacophony of small arms fire as the team fired in several directions. The smell of cordite, sweat, and body odor took on a life of its own. The entire team felt the sounds and concussion of the minor battle. Shaw was relentless on his M48 as he was mowing down legs, torsos, and faces.
Three men wearing maintenance overalls came charging at the team from around a full baggage cart. There was hate on their faces, and rage reddened their eyes. The inhumane scream coming out of their mouth made the hair on the back of their necks stand up.
Shaw let loose with a couple of three-round bursts; the first took out the pelvis of the black guy in front. It cut him in half and separated his torso from his legs. The momentum kept the upper half of his body moving forward. Intestines were flapping after his torso like flags whipping in the wind. His body rolled head over torso across the concrete. The man’s intestines were wrapping around as he flipped. When he finally stopped, they wrapped him up like a present.
Priest chuckled, “Don’t open until Christmas!” Shaw cackled at that.
Priest’s weapon took out the worker on the right. One round ripped through his throat, taking out most of it. Without enough to hold the head up, the infected looked like a bobblehead as it flapped around on just the spine. His second-round entered through the infected left cheek and removed most of the back of his skull when exiting.
Shaw made quick work of the third infected as he raked the burst across the infected face at eye level. He cut the top of the infected head clean off, and it hit the deck like a bag of wet cement. Brain matter and blood shot out of his mutilated head and across the tarmac when he hit.
Abarra and Myles were directly opposite in the circle. They had two infected coming in their direction. One was a runner, and the other was missing part of its right leg from the ankle, and its right foot was missing. The runner was 50 yards away when Abarra sent three rounds vertically, starting at his sternum and ending at his forehead. That dropped the infected, which slid on the asphalt for a few feet.
Myles launched a 40mm grenade from his M203. Foomp! The grenade hit a couple of yards behind the infected, which shredded its torso, and the concussion took it off its feet. It did not get back up. “WHOO, suck on that!” Myles yelled.
“Our nuts will dangle in the stewpot unless we get some help over here,” Neville shouted.
“We do not put our testicles in our pots, or our bowls for that matter. Does everyone in the US do that?” Shin inquired.
“It means we will be in a world a shit if we don’t get help.” A horde of about fifteen was running toward Neville and Shin’s position.
“Rotate over and collapse the gaps,” Webb barked. Webb, Doc, and Abarra moved closer to Neville’s position, squeezing the gap in the circle to help with preventing the position from being overrun. All others spanned out to cover more of the circle’s circumference.
“Jesus, Mother Mary, and Joseph. We’ve got a shitload of these things over here,” Doc remarked.
“Shut up and take these things out,” Abarra snapped. They all kept sending rounds downrange.
“Reloading,” yelled Webb. He backed off the line to reload. A scream from his right startled him, and he looked up just in time to see a teenage girl missing half her left shoulder jumping at him. Webb didn’t have time before she launched herself on top of him. He hit the ground with her on top of him, knocking all the air out of his lungs. “Shit!” he howled. “Get this bitch off me!”
Her left arm was virtually useless, but she was incredibly strong and renewed her effort to rip and bite his face off. She kept fighting, but Webb could hold her off with one hand while grabbing her left wrist and the other around her throat. As she struggled against his defenses, Webb dropped his hand off her wrist and reached to his thigh to pull his Glock. Just as he reached the butt of his pistol, the screaming and struggling stopped. She slumped over and rolled off to the left. Webb looked over at her and watched as Shin pulled his combat knife out of her temple.
“You ok, sir?”
“Yeah, thanks, Shin. That was a wild ride.” Shin reached his hand out and helped Webb up to his feet. “How many more infected are….” Webb trailed off. All the rest of the horde were lying across the tarmac, dead.
Webb snapped out of his reverie, “Ok, we are completely exposed out here. We need to find Dr. Costa, if she was still alive. Thoughts?”
“We need to split the team in half and conduct two searches for her. Comms are out, but our squad comms are still operational,” Priest spoke.
“Sounds good. Doc, Abarra, Miles, and I will search in the terminal. Priest, you take Shaw, Neville, and Shin. You guys search the flight line and maintenance buildings. Once we locate her, we rally back here, and we will call in our exfil. We still have comms to the bird,” Webb added.
“How long do we look for her?” Shaw asked.
“As long as it takes. She is our only mission right now. Unless this whole airport becomes completely overrun, we stay until we locate her,” Webb answered.
“Copy, Sir.”
Webb looked at all of his Team, “Ok, move out.”
CHAPTER 7
Team Priest–Tarmac and Maintenance Buildings
The team moved behind one of the maintenance buildings for cover.
Priest turned to Shin, “Give me the landscape.”
Shin pulled out his range scope and moved to the edge of the building to get a lay of the land. “There are three mid-size hangers to the right. One contains a plane. The other two are empty. I see no movement in any of the three. To the left, there are two small maintenance sheds, which seem to be closed. About 50 yards from these are four utility garages for the support vehicles. There seems to be no movement…. wait a minute. There is movement near one building. I see 1, 2, 3… 5 men and 1 woman. They look to be click clicks. The woman is not one of them.”