Slaughterhouse

EIGHT.

The first full-on ambush occurred just after the convoy left the overpass to Interstate 495 in its dust.

Rawlings sensed it coming. She didn’t know how, but she did.

The terrain wasn’t exactly optimal for an attack as it was mostly flat, except for the rise to their right, where a road came within a hundred or so feet of Route 2. The eastbound lanes were a mess. There had been some sort of pileup involving a bus and a tractor-trailer, and traffic had come to a dead halt. People were everywhere on that side of the highway, watching the military convoy roll past, their faces filled with panic. Apaches wheeled overhead, ominous and threatening, their rotor beats slamming out Death’s own soundtrack. Someone in the truck had fired up a boom box. Its speakers pounded out Dope’s “Die Motherfucker, Die,” a true warrior’s anthem she had listened to countless times during her tour in Afghanistan. Even in her motor company, it had been the go-to song, despite the fact that the most hazardous things they had to deal with—aside from the generally ineffective insurgent attacks—were grimed-up oil filters, flat tires, and leaking fuel bladders. While other troops were out delivering the Taliban and AQ their orders of whamburgers and french cries, Rawlings and the rest of her compatriots were relatively safe, all things considered.

But the wrongness of the current situation was practically slapping her across the face. She was tense, coiled like a spring ready to unload, and she couldn’t figure out why. She shouldered her M4 and twisted around, aiming the weapon at the northbound lanes. She peered through the 4x optical sight mounted to the upper rail. None of the stranded motorists seemed to be laughing, and they looked normal enough—but she knew the crazies. They could playact for a while until the moment was right for the mask to come off and the laughter to begin.

“Shoot me. Shoot me now.”

I did, Wade, and now you’re dead. Shut the fuck up.

“You feel it too, huh?” Muldoon asked.

“Feel what?” Rawlings asked, still scanning the opposite side of the highway.

“Don’t go all belt-fed on us, Nasty Girl,” said one of the lightfighters on her side of the truck. “Belt-fed” in this circumstance meant the soldier thought Rawlings was getting too buggy, too excited beyond what the present situation merited.

“I’m not,” Rawlings replied. In the near distance, more smoke billowed. Then, something exploded, causing an angry mushroom cloud to appear. A gas station or something similar had just gone up. Pieces of fiery debris arced through the air, trailing smoke. The deep rumble hit her a moment later, causing a vague stirring in Rawlings’s gut. She turned and looked across the truck at Muldoon. The big NCO peered at her for a moment then pushed his sunglasses up on his broad nose.

“She’s on to something,” Muldoon said. “You guys need to suit up. Now.”

“Come on, Muldoon,” a bucktoothed soldier with a perpetual grin said. “You taking tactical cues from a weekend warrior, man?”

“Skeeter, you don’t gotta listen to me,” Muldoon said, reaching for his MOPP overgarment. “You were never worth a pile of shit, anyway.”

Behind him, people moved amid the trees. Rawlings brought up her M4, and Muldoon frowned at her for an instant before putting it together.

The soldier seated to Rawlings’s right saw it as well.

“Klowns to the right!” He raised his rifle just as a Molotov cocktail arced through the air.

Rawlings fired three rounds so quickly it sounded as if she were ripping off a burst on full auto. One of the figures among the trees faltered, then fell face-first to the ground. The area to the right of the column was slightly elevated, not by a lot, but enough to give the attackers a small tactical advantage. As Muldoon ripped off his sunglasses and pulled on his MOPP overgarment, several other troops began firing as well, sending dozens of rounds ripping through the trees, bushes, and infected that were moving toward them.

A Molotov cocktail struck the side of the Big Foot’s bed and shattered, spreading gasoline everywhere. Flames enveloped the last half of the truck, and men shrieked in fear and pain. The attackers were held at bay, not by the soldiers’ return fire, but by the chain link fence that separated the road from the turnpike. That gave the soldier manning the M240B machinegun atop the truck’s cab enough time to spin his weapon around and open up, slashing at the Klowns with a withering stream of bullets.

The Humvee behind the truck was hit with three Molotovs in rapid succession, turning it into a rolling funeral pyre covered by orange flame that danced in the sunlight. The soldier manning the machinegun in the vehicle’s cupola screamed so loudly that they heard him over the truck’s engine and the fusillade of gunfire. The Humvee accelerated suddenly, its driver probably blinded by flame and smoke. Just before it crashed into the back of their truck, it veered to the left and pulled out of the column’s formation. It slammed into a minivan in the next lane.

The pileup that occurred as a result was a horrendous cacophony of rending metal and screeching tires. While the military convoy had been sticking to the right lane and maintaining an even fifty miles an hour, the civilian traffic in the other travel lane was going much faster. Cars and trucks piled up on each other in explosions of glass and plastic and blaring horns. Rawlings saw luggage fly through the air, tumbling end over end, strewing clothing and personal items across the turnpike and the grass median that separated the eastbound lanes from the westbound.

At the end of her truck, a soldier was hitting the flames with a fire extinguisher that had been clamped to the side of the bed. Another soldier clad in full MOPP gear directed him, waving his arms and yelling, “I’m in charge!” through his facemask.

“Fucking lieutenant,” one of the soldiers near Rawlings said. “Guy just doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.”

Rawlings was about to ask him how he knew it was the lieutenant when something caught her attention—the throbbing wop-wop-wop-wop of approaching helicopters.

Hueys.

Which only the Massachusetts Army National Guard had.