by Mark Tufo
Sheila looked over her shoulder. “Wait. Alic is still out there.”
He shook his head. “No time.”
Sheila tensed. “But—”
“You know how many of those things were on your tail? Move it!”
Sheila bit back any further complaint. Instead, she gave a tight nod and pressed her girls forward. “We’re almost there, sweeties.”
He yanked the door shut behind them and then followed.
“Shouldn’t we brace something against it?” Sheila asked.
“Wouldn’t do any good. Besides, the bastards seem to prefer climbing walls over taking stairs.”
“Oh.”
They ran up the stairs where the sounds of gunfire became louder and louder.
On the roof, she found one soldier on his stomach, firing down to the street below. A second soldier stood nearby, covering the first.
“Reloading,” the first said.
“I’m in.” The second soldier dropped to a knee and began firing.
Sheila clutched her daughters to her and stood with them against the wall that led to the stairwell After a minute, the gunfire stopped.
“Looks like they’re bugging out.”
“Until they get bored again, anyway,” the second answered.
Sheila cupped Jenny’s face. “How are you doing?”
Her younger daughter was still panting, her face flush. Her bottom lip quivered. “I want to go home.” Then, she burst out sobbing.
“Oh, sweetie.” Sheila hugged her, realizing just how strong her little girls had been so far. “I know you do. We will as soon as we can. First, we get to have a sleepover in the tunnels. It’ll be fun.”
Jenny sniffled. “No, it won’t.”
Sheila tucked a tuft of loose hair behind Jenny’s ear before turning to Tasha. Her older daughter had dark circles under her eyes, and her rosy cheeks glistened with sweat. Even so, there was a quiet strength in her eyes—she had the same resolute gaze as her father. She winced. “My ears still hurt,” she said sheepishly as if she felt bad complaining about something.
Sheila gently checked Tasha’s ears before hugging her. “You just have to hang in there for a little bit longer, sweetie.”
“Are any of you injured? Bit? Scratched? Cut?”
Sheila turned her attention to find the soldier who’d led them up the stairs standing near them. She shook her head. “We’re okay.”
Sheila looked over to the two soldiers who were surveying the street below.
“How about Alic? She’s still down there,” Sheila called out. “Do you see her?”
One of the soldiers spoke without turning her way. “She’s not coming.”
Sheila heaved and nearly threw up. She slid down the wall to sit on the roof. Alic had to have known that to remain out there was suicide, that she’d been lying when she’d said, “I’ll catch up.”
Sheila knew that what Alic had done hadn’t been for Sheila’s benefit. It’d been the same reason Alic had put her own safety at risk to distribute flyers. She’d always been the one to help new families acclimate to military life, and she’d been the one in on domestic disputes and such. Alic had just kept doing what she’d always done, and it’d gotten her killed.
Sheila felt anger that Alic had stayed behind to hold off the Variants, but the truth was that if Alic hadn’t been foolishly valiant, Sheila, Tasha, and Jenny would all be dead right now. Alic McGregor had given her life to save them.
“The base is crawling with the suck-faces now,” the other soldier said. “Wherever they slinked off to after the killer rain, they’re back. And, they brought friends.”
One of the soldiers near the roof edge came walking over. He reached into his Velcro pocket and pulled out a candy bar. He broke the candy bar in half and held it out between the girls. “I only have one, so you’ll have to share it.”
Both girls eyed it hungrily. Jenny reached out, but Tasha slapped her hand away. “Ow!”
“We don’t take things from strangers,” Tasha said.
“Is that right?” the man said. He held out an open hand. “Well, I’m Jinx. It’s nice to meet you.”
Tasha shot a pleading glance to her mother, who smiled and nodded. She shook his hand first, then Jenny did. When he held out the candy bar halves again, the girls ripped the candy from Jinx’s hands in a flash and tore into them like the rabid children they were.
Sheila forced herself back to her feet, and she shook Jinx’s hand. “I’m Sheila Horn. These are my daughters, Tasha and Jenny. I can’t thank you enough for the help back there.”
Jinx’s brows furrowed. “Horn, as in Big Horn’s wife?”
She nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned. We’ve been on several missions with Big Horn and Team Ghost before,” the other soldier at the rooftop waved, taking a toothpick out of his mouth. “I’m Chow. Jinx and I are with Team Titanium. That guy that brought you up is Rosie from the 802nd.”
The third soldier shook her hand. “The name’s Collin Rosenstein.”
“But, we just call him Rosie,” Jinx said.
“Stay frosty,” Chow said. “I see movement. Get back into position and keep your eyes and ears open.”
“On my way,” Rosie said and headed back down the stairs.
Jinx began to patrol the other three lines of the roof.
As the soldiers maintained the perimeter, Sheila pulled out the Colt she’d taken from Jenny. She’d seen Parker handle that gun at least a hundred times. It was an antique, a gift from his grandfather. She remembered watching how lovingly he’d clean the gun and the pride in his eyes when he’d shown it to her the first time.
God, how she wished Parker were here right now.
Except he wasn’t here. All she had of him was a heavy, oversized pistol that was empty. She should’ve left it behind, but somehow it felt like the last physical tether she had to Parker.
Chow whistled. “Now, that’s a pretty hand cannon.”
Sheila looked up to see Chow eying the Colt as he walked the roofline.
“It’s Parker’s,” she said and slid the gun back through her belt loop. “But it’s empty.”
“Contact.” Jinx motioned, breaking into their conversation. “Looks like our ugly friends are coming from the south this time.” He lifted his rifle and fired off a series of shots.
Chow ran over to Jinx and joined in.
Sheila’s daughters clung to their mother as the gunfire echoed around them. Jenny clapped her hands over her ears.
“I’m out!” Jinx called out. “Reloading.”
More gunfire erupted downstairs. Sheila jumped to her feet and pulled her daughters away from the doorway.
Jinx frowned and turned to the closed door. He tapped Chow’s shoulder and make a quick hand signal before running over to the stairwell. “Stay here,” he ordered before opening the door and heading into the unknown battle taking place beneath them.
She searched the roof to find a better place for her and her girls. Several feet away, the building’s air conditioning unit stood on metal legs that held it about a foot above the surface. She pressed her daughters toward it. “I want you to tuck in under that, okay? Supergirl!”
Neither girl hesitated. Jenny rolled under the unit first, followed by Tasha. Sheila made eye contact with each fearful girl before she herself sat down in front of them as a last line of defense.
She clasped her hands together. Please, God. Don’t let them find my little girls.
Jinx quit firing. He walked the roofline before turning to face her.
Sheila took a deep breath. “Are they gone?”
“For now,” he said. “But, they’ll be back. They always come back.”
“Like a bad girlfriend,” Chow added.
Sheila snapped to see the other soldier emerge from the stairwell. “Thank God you’re okay.” Her relief disappeared when she realized Chow was carrying Rosie.
“The bastards came at us from two directions this time,” Chow said as
he helped Rosie down.
Sheila ran over. Rosie’s face was wrenched in pain. He held a hand against his neck, and red blood flowed between his fingers.
Her eyebrows tightened. “Oh, Rosie.”
“Those things are fast,” Rosie gritted out.
Jinx pulled out a first aid kit and knelt beside Rosie.
Chow grimaced. “They’re toying with us. Every time, they come at us from a different angle, making us burn through our ammo. If these guys played chess,” he looked down shook his head, “they’d have us at one move short of checkmate right now.”
“We’ve got to get off this roof,” Jinx said. “We’re sitting ducks up here. We know it and they know it.”
He patched Rosie’s neck, and the wounded man hissed. “How about you treat me to dinner before you start on the rough play?”
Jinx smirked and slapped Rosie’s knee. “You’re lucky. It’s just a scratch.”
Rosie’s expression fell, and he pointed to his neck. “You know damn well what it is.”
Jinx’s lips thinned. He glanced at Chow, whose expression was unreadable to Sheila.
Jinx shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe the pixie dust they dropped changed things, and they’re no longer infectious.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Rosie said, not sounding like he believed the words.
Sheila forced a placating smile and squeezed Rosie’s hand, and the rooftop fell into a silent routine of patrol, wait, shoot, and repeat.
“Hang in there,” she told her daughters as she cupped both their cheeks. “We’ll be to the tunnels soon.”
“Promise?” Jenny said.
Sheila smiled and ran her fingers over her chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Pinky swear?” Tasha asked.
Sheila held out her pinky and her daughter latched on to it.
“Now, get some sleep.”
She dusted off her pants, walked over, and checked on Rosie to find him sleeping fitfully. His face was a sheen of sweat and his eyebrows tight as though he was fighting through a nightmare. She rubbed his arm, and his features calmed. She stood and walked over to where Jinx stood, patrolling the east and north sides of the rooftop.
“How’s he doing?” he asked when she approached.
“How do you think? He’s infected, and he knows it.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be short. It’s just—”
“I get it. You’re a civvie and not used to all this.” He chuckled and motioned around them. “Shit, I’ve made it through five tours, and this scares the living crap out of me.”
He watched her for a moment. “I’ll tell you what you can do. We have a few C-RATS stashed over there. How about you fix us up some dinner?”
She guffawed.
“What?”
She started to walk to where he pointed. “If you knew me, you’d know better than to ask me to cook anything.”
He shrugged. “They’re C-RATS. They can’t get any worse.”
She smirked. “I bet they can.”
A few minutes later, everyone ate while Tasha and Jenny slept soundly. Chow and Jinx continued to pace the roof edges, taking brief pauses to shovel bites of their prepared meals into their mouths.
“I never thought it was possible for C-RATS to be made worse, but you have a gift,” Jinx said. “What made you think it would be a good idea to mix lasagna with stroganoff?”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Sheila leaned back. “So, what’s the plan for getting off this roof?”
Chow’s response was a blank stare.
She pursed her lips together. “Don’t tell me that Team Titanium can’t come up with a plan for getting to the tunnels. I can practically see them from here.”
“We have plans,” Jinx said. “Plan A is to hold position until rescue arrives.”
“The problem with Plan A is that we can’t raise anyone on the radios.”
Sheila’s brow rose. “What about Plan B?”
Jinx swallowed. “We have a Plan B, but it didn’t quite pan out as expected the first time we tried it.”
“Jinx…” Chow cautioned.
“You were Plan B,” Rosie said from behind her.
She turned. “What do you mean?”
When neither man spoke, Rosie continued. “Come on guys, don’t want to own up to your own plan now?”
Chow sighed. “The Variants are watching the roof like a bull after a red flag, so we can’t make a move without them on our backs. There’s not enough of them down there for a frontal assault, so we’ve been biding our time.”
“Yet,” Jinx added. “There’s not enough of them yet, but that’s changing. They’re forming into packs. There are more of them every time they attack. It’s just a matter of time which runs out first—our ammo or them. We’re down to four ammo clips, so the odds aren’t in our favor.”
“We have to leave the roof,” Chow said. “Without reinforcements, we need a diversion to do that.”
“Plan B,” Rosie said.
“Unfortunately, there seems to be only one thing that draws their attention away from us.”
Sheila’s lips parted. The single word came out a whisper. “People.”
Jinx winced. “Yeah.”
Her jaw tightened as she connected the dots. “My girls and I were your Plan B.”
Chow held up his hand. “The plan sounded better in concept than it worked in execution. We had no idea a couple of women and two little girls would come running down that street. We were banking on it being some asshole from ISIS to be strolling by.”
Her fists clenched. “I can’t believe you were using people as sacrificial lambs.”
“Listen,” Jinx held up his hand. “We could’ve made it, but we stayed behind to help you.”
“You intended to leave us to get torn apart,” she said.
“But we didn’t,” Chow countered. “Plan B had some flaws to it. We realize that now.”
“Tell me you didn’t do the same thing with your friend Alic back there,” Jinx said. “Tell me you didn’t use her as a diversion for you to escape.”
Sheila’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. In spite of her anger, she clamped her jaw shut rather than snapping back with a sharp retort. They were right. She knew it and they knew it, and shame filled her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she shot Jinx a scathing look. “Alic volunteered. It was her choice. She sacrificed herself for my girls. She’s a hero, and I won’t tarnish that by calling her a diversion. Not now, not ever.”
Jinx watched for her a moment, then gave a tight nod.
She cocked her head. “So, Plan B is waiting for a diversion. Our lives are depending on luck?”
Chow’s lips thinned, and he glanced over Sheila’s shoulder. She turned to find Rosie watching them all intently. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration—though it could’ve also been in pain—and after a moment, his entire body seemed to relax.
“What the hell,” he said, sounding utterly defeated. “Looks like you guys got yourselves a diversion.”
— 9 —
Sheila glanced at Jinx, whose face bore a hard expression, but said nothing. She looked across the roof to see that Chow also stood still, his gaze fully on Rosie.
Her jaw slackened. “Rosie. You can’t—”
Rosie cut her off with a wave of his hand. “We all know the situation. We need a diversion, and we’re fresh out of grenades. We’re not going to make it through the night up here. Either way, I’m not going to make it through the night.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “Someone may pass through. We can get you help.”
He shook his head and winced at the movement. “I can feel it. It’s the virus. I can feel it eating through my blood like termites. I’m already seeing things that I know aren’t real. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able hold it off. I’m running out of time. I can help you get off this roof and to tunnels.”
“We’re all running out of time,” Jinx s
aid, the words barely above a whisper.
She swallowed, finding wise words impossible. Instead, she turned to her sleeping daughters. Even with dirt smudges on their faces and their clothes wrinkled, they looked innocent, even peaceful, in their slumber. So help her, God, she’d do anything for them.
Her nails dug into her palms. She hated that her heart had leapt the instant Rosie volunteered. She hated that she found hope when another person would have to die. When she turned back to Rosie, she said the only thing she could. “Thank you.”
His features softened. “I want to do it.”
Chow broke the silence. “It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. You’d better wake your girls.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sheila hugged Rosie and watched as Chow helped him down the stairs. She followed with her girls behind her and Jinx covering their backs.
We’re going to die.
She hated the thought that was on auto-play in her mind, threatening to freeze up her muscles.
Shut up, shut up, shut up, she scolded herself.
Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Chow released Rosie. “Run like a bat out of hell for the HEMTT in the alley behind the medical center. It wasn’t blocked in when we left it, and it’s ready to go. You get in there, and you drive. As fast and hard as you can. Plow through the suck-faces.”
Rosie gave no sign of hearing him.
Chow patted the wounded man’s soldier. “You can do this.”
Rosie cocked his head slightly but then didn’t look back. Instead, he clenched his rifle and took a tentative step forward, then another. Sheila imagined the soldier was fighting against every survival instinct in his body.
Chow turned to them. “Ready?”
Sheila swallowed and nodded.
We’re going to die.
Chow motioned for Tasha. She walked over and he picked her up, and Jinx picked up Jenny. Sheila felt helpless, carrying nothing while the soldiers were carrying both her girls and their rifles. A few minutes earlier, the three men had pooled their ammo, which gave a full clip to Jinx and Chow each and one and a half clips to Rosie. She hated to admit that she was disappointed that Jinx and Chow hadn’t kept more ammo for themselves.
