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after what I’ve been through the past eleven months. It feels like my first night of boot camp. I’m out of my environment, a little scared, and have no idea what’s going to happen next.

6
Hotel 23—Task Force Phoenix
    “Hurry up, Doc!” one of the men screamed out from the darkness.
    “This little plasma ain’t as speedy as the cart; I’m going as fast as I can.”
    “They are on us, man . . . Get the door open or we’re screwed! I can see them in my gogs. They look pretty bad.”
    “You ain’t helpin’, man. Focus up.”
    Doc concentrated through the eye shielding on the white-hot starburst of the plasma torch. He traced the previous weld, slowly cutting through. He heard the undead footsteps and groans behind him while he worked, but would not pause. Either he was getting through the heavy access door or he would be stopped by the cold claws of the undead, ripping him off the entrance. The creatures approached, drawn by the bright light and noise from the cutting torch and the action of the suppressed carbines.
    Excitedly, Billy called out over the firefight in progress, “Doc, hurry. I’m serious. I can smell their breath!”
    “Dude, I’m moving. Just a few mikes,” Doc responded.
    “No time. Disco, frag ’em!” Billy hissed.
    Disco pulled a grenade from his vest, yanked the pin, and tossed it out into the growing mass of creatures that approached.
    “Frag!” Disco yelled as the grenade rolled to a stop under the canopy of walking undead corpses.
    All four men hit the ground. Seconds ticked like minutes before the blast rocked the immediate area, scattering bits of rotting meat and bone everywhere. The blast took out a large number of the undead, or at least rendered them immobile.
    Hawse went to town with his suppressed carbine, blasting atthe stragglers. He screamed at Disco, “You’re on laundry detail, asshole!”
    “What?” Disco responded, pulling a foam earplug from his right ear.
    Hawse kept firing and lecturing, “Jesus, man, toss those things. You’re gonna get bitten on the ass and won’t even hear it coming.”
    “Whatever, man. You know what happened here. When the sun comes up you might be able to see the rest of it sticking out of the ground,” Disco responded.
    The undead flowed through the tree line from the woods beyond, drawn to the explosion. Wouldn’t be long before the team would be beyond the help of a hundred frag grenades—minutes at best.
    Doc and the rest had been briefed before the jump. Some time before they arrived, a large, javelin-shaped device, designed to generate devastating barrage noise, had been dropped on this facility. The remnants of the intelligence community concluded that the weapon had been designed to sterilize the area of all life by attracting a mega-swarm of undead by blasting intense omni-directional noise. It was known only by its codename given in a classified intelligence report—Project Hurricane. It took a flight of A-10 Thunderbolts and their 30mm guns to disable the device.
    Doc listened to Disco and Hawse banter back and forth as he continued to inch through the welds on the thick steel door that led inside. Disco and Hawse continued to talk shit to each other, taking shots in between, giving themselves enough time to think of better insults. It was all show, Doc knew. The men were actually terrified.
    “Halfway there,” Doc said to himself out loud.
    He called out to Billy Boy, craning his neck over his left shoulder, “Billy, just to be sure, intel did say that it is empty inside, right?”
    Billy replied while he scanned the area for leakers—undead that made it past the defensive line. “Yeah, the marines cleared it before welding the door shut. Nothing inside but maybe a few dead rats and some cockroaches.”
    “Roger.”
    Doc thought about undead rats for a second and dismissed theidea as nonsense. They’d be too slow anyway, unless  . . . Better not to think about it. He concentrated again on the