The others behind him grunt impatiently. They want food, just like him. Where’s the food? Where’s the—
His head spins around at a sound carried on the shifting breeze. It’s faint, but unmistakable. Voices.
The others pinpoint the source of the noise before he does, and they’re already moving before Arnold sets off in a new direction. They all move north, more quickly now, towards a thick copse of trees.
People are somewhere on the other side. He’s just sure of it.
He’s excited.
΅
:::11:::
“OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP, that’s what they call it.” The sergeant shrugs his rifle to his shoulder and quickly vaults the low stone wall separating the park from Prospect Park West. I help Kate across and we jog to catch up with him. “Clean Sweep means we’re royally fucked. It means we’ve lost control of the situation, kid.”
“It’s Tom,” I say, scowling at him. “And this is Kate.”
“Well, I’m Sergeant Laurence,” he replies, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “and I’m positively thrilled to meet you. Now do you wanna stop and have a little tea party, or do you wanna shut the fuck up and let me explain?”
My fists ball up, but I manage to hold down my anger. “Fine. Go on.”
“That’s what I thought. OK, so we’ve got a pretty slim playbook for this kind of end of the world shit. We’re not geared up for homeland defense on this scale, so we don’t have many great options for a city like New York. Our first and best hope was to blow the bridges, and use our—”
“Operation Pied Piper,” Kate interrupts. “Yeah, we already heard about that.” Laurence gives her a surprised look. “We came in with a firefighter who was involved in the planning,” she explains. “He... he didn’t make it.”
“Right. OK, then you know Pied Piper was designed to cut off Manhattan and clear the city of hostiles. Maybe not completely, but enough to clear the way for ground forces and Operation Dragnet.”
“Dragnet?” I ask. I haven’t heard of that one.
“Sweep and clear. That was supposed to come next, once Pied Piper had taken out the bulk of the hostiles. Heavy ground forces would move south from the Bronx to secure and sanitize Manhattan one block at a time. Nothing fancy. Just slow, methodical work with well equipped and well armored infantry. Would have taken weeks for them to reach Battery Park, but it would have left the city intact and ready for reoccupation.” He stops beside a parked Escalade on the corner where 5th Street meets the park, looks around and nods, satisfied there are no hostiles nearby. “OK, we wait here,” he says, climbing up onto the hood for a better view of the street. “Sal will be along in five, then we get the fuck out of here.”
“So, Dragnet,” I say. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”
Laurence snorts. “Yeah, it was a good plan, and it might have worked if luck had gone our way.” He shakes his head and spits. “Whoever started this shit, they knew exactly how dumb we can be. See, all the scenarios we gamed out to retake the city, they were all based on the idea that the shit would start in one place. We thought they’d pick a crowded, central spot and infect hundreds of people at the same time. Thousands, maybe. Get a good swarm going.”
“They didn’t?” I ask, trying to hurry the story along.
“Uh uh. Now, I’m not far enough up the chain of command to know all the ins and outs, but I know a couple of guys in army intel who know the score. They said the NSA keeps constant surveillance on multiple key targets across the city. You know, Times Square, Central Park, most of the subway stations, that kind of thing. Since Bangkok they’ve been snooping on everything from police chatter to webcams to Instagram, watching out for anything that looks like an attack at those sites. They thought they could identify an outbreak within a few minutes and set things in motion before it had time to spread. They ran drills for this shit.”
I pull my cigarettes from my pocket and offer them around. Kate shakes her head, and Laurence pulls one from the pack without thanking me. He plucks my Zippo from my hand and cups it against the breeze, taking a long pull before continuing, the cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips as he speaks. “I’ve no idea if the fuckers who did this knew we were watching for it, but they decided to kick it all off where we didn’t have eyes. The first reports that came in were from places like, I don’t know, Hoboken. Red Hook. Astoria.” He blows out a cloud of smoke. “We were expecting it to start with a huge riot in Times Square, you know? Not with a couple of guys attacking a cab driver in Harlem at six on a Saturday morning. I don’t know Harlem well, but I’m guessing that’s not all that uncommon.”
I light my cigarette and take a drag. “So you mean we were taken by surprise?”
“Surprise? Shit, there’s an understatement. Forget five minutes, they didn’t figure out what was going on for fucking hours. By the time they managed to get Pied Piper in place the infection had already spread. It was in Manhattan, Brooklyn, fucking Jersey City. Everywhere, man. Game over. All Pied Piper did was save our asses. It cleared out most of Brooklyn, so we get to sit here on this nice quiet street and enjoy a smoke, but shit... these things are everywhere else, and they’re spreading further by the minute.”
I can feel an icy shard in my chest. It’s been there since I first heard the colonel on the radio, but now it’s grown so large it feels like it’s hard to breathe. I don’t want to ask the obvious question. I don’t really want to know the answer, but I know I have to.
“So... Operation Clean Sweep? That’s what I think it is, right? They’re gonna destroy Manhattan?”
Laurence nods. “Bingo, kid. Clean Sweep is the nuclear option.” He sees my shocked expression. “Not actual nuclear. We’re not dumb enough to nuke ourselves, it’s just an expression. Right now six B-2 bombers are on the way from Whiteman AFB in Missouri, loaded with a fuckton of the latest in thermobaric ordnance. Those are fuel-air bombs, kid. Nasty fuckers. 500 yard blast radius, massive damage. An hour from now they’ll raze the city to the ground and rip out the lungs of everyone from Yonkers to Newark. Trust me, we don’t want to be around when those bombers arrive.”
“Jesus,” I mutter. I’ve read about fuel-air bombs, and I know there are few worse ways to— “Wait, what? Newark to Yonkers?”
Laurence nods. “Of course. We have to stop these fuckers spreading, and they’re not just in Manhattan. We have to make sure we get every last one. I figure they’ll try to cover a ten mile radius, so long as they have enough firepower.”
“But what about everyone back in the park? We’re just gonna let them die?” I look over at Kate and see tears pricking her eyes. “There were kids back there, man.”
“Hey, get off my back!” Laurence snaps. “I’m not dropping the damned bombs, am I? I didn’t sign up for this shit. What do you want me to do, stick around and die with them out of solidarity? Sit in a nice little prayer circle and hope we fly right up to Heaven? Fuck that.”
“We could at least warn them. Jesus, at least we could give them a fighting chance to get out before the bombs hit. How can we just leave them?”
Laurence sneers. “You really don’t get it, do you? This is about survival of the species, boys and girls. This is it. If a few thousand uninfected have to die to make sure we hold that line it’s a small price to pay. Hey look, our chariot awaits.”
I follow Laurence’s pointed finger south, where an enormous armored vehicle decked out in desert camouflage turns from a side street onto Prospect Park West. It’s so wide it clips the wing mirrors of the parked cars, and I wince at the painful screech as its armored flank scrapes along the side of a panel truck sticking out too far into the road. The thing looks like a tank, apart from its eight huge wheels. As it draws closer I notice some kind of machine gun mounted to the roof.
“What the hell is that?” Kate asks, mouth agape.
Laurence slides down from the hood of the car. “That, my lady, is a Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle.” He turns to us with a broad grin on his fac
e. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
The Stryker pulls up alongside us, and Laurence pats its side as he steps to the back. “Hop in, kids,” he says, tugging open the rear hatch and climbing into the compartment. “For your safety please note the location of the emergency exits, which can be found here, here and here. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of around six feet, and our flight time today will be however the fuck long it takes to clear the blast radius of several dozen face melting thermobaric explosives. You stewardess will circulate the cabin shortly with a variety of refreshments, and the in-flight movie will be the laugh a minute Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day.”
Kate gratefully takes his hand and climbs into the rear compartment of the Stryker. I’m about to follow, but when I reach the door I freeze.
“This thing is... Jesus, Laurence, you could fit twenty people back here. And twenty more on the roof.”
Laurence sighs angrily. “What’s your point, kid?”
I step back from the vehicle and throw up my hands. “My point is that you could save three dozen of those poor bastards in the park. You don’t even have to warn them all. Just grab a handful from the edge of the field and sneak them out. We have to go back!”
Laurence pinches the bridge of his nose as if he’s coming down with a headache, and he squats down in the rear compartment to my head height. “Look, kid, I’ve done my two tours. See this leg?” He tugs up his right pant leg, and I’m shocked to see there’s nothing there but a carbotanium shaft surrounded by black, calf-shaped muscular mesh. “This country has already taken its pound of flesh, with fucking interest. I’ve given five years and a leg to the service, and now it’s time for Sergeant Laurence to get his dues, understand? I got my buddy, I got my Stryker, and I got my gun.”
I feel the hairs stand up on my arms as he looks down at his rifle. A grin spreads across his face, and when he looks back at me his eyes are ice cold. “See, I was gonna be a nice guy about this. I thought you two seemed like nice enough kids, and I decided to do one last good deed before the world goes completely to shit, but you just had to get on my last nerve, didn’t ya? You had to peck away and make old Sergeant Laurence feel like a bad guy just for looking out for himself.” He levels his M16 at my face. “Well, you just lost your ticket to the fun bus, son. Now why don’t you go ahead and take a few steps back?” I shuffle back, my eyes fixed on the barrel of the rifle pointing right at my eyes. “That’s right, a little further. There’s a good boy.”
My throat feels like it’s closed up with fear, but I manage to croak out a few words. “Kate, climb down.”
Kate starts to move behind Laurence, but he holds out a hand to stop her. “Ah ah ah, stay right there, missy. Sal, you got her?” he calls out, keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Uh huh, I got her,” comes a voice from the front of the vehicle. I look behind Laurence and see a young Hispanic guy in fatigues, leaning back from the driver’s seat with a pistol pointed towards Kate.
“Please, just let me go, OK?” Kate begs quietly, her voice quavering. “Just let me get out and you guys can leave. We won’t make any trouble.”
Laurence chuckles and shakes his head. “No, I think you’ll be better off with us,” he laughs. “I’m sure we can find some use for you.”
My hands bunch into fists, and my heart pounds deafeningly in my ears. I’ve never felt this kind of pure, cold hatred towards another human being before. I want to beat him in the face with the butt of his own gun until I feel it hit the back of his skull. I want to pin him down under the wheels of his Stryker and drive slowly forward, waiting for the weight to squeeze his guts from his mouth like toothpaste from a tube. I want to watch him burn.
“Let her go, Laurence,” I growl, my voice hoarse. “If you take her I’ll hunt you down, and my face will be the last you ever see.” Even I know how ridiculous my threat sounds, directed at a trained soldier pointing an M16 at my head from the back of his armored car. I’ve never felt more hatred, but I’ve also never felt weaker. I’ve never felt like such a worthless, powerless pussy, unable to so much as keep my girlfriend safe from harm. I feel like a little kid trying to stand up to a bully twice my size, jutting out my chin and puffing up my chest, knowing that the result will be a fist in the face and more humiliation.
Laurence bursts out laughing “Oh, you should see your face, kid,” he chuckles, reaching out for the door handle. “Red as a fucking beetroot.” He shakes his head and sighs happily. “Well, we gotta go, Liam Neeson. Enjoy the fireworks, y’hear?”
With that he starts to slam the door in my face, but through the gap I see Kate launch herself at the sergeant with murder in her eyes. The door swings back open as her head reaches the guy at stomach level, and the sergeant doubles over in pain as she winds him. I grab the door and climb up as the driver yells out, his pistol waving wildly. Kate scrambles up from the floor and kicks out at Laurence as I grab her and pull her back towards the hatch.
I don’t register the shot. I know it’s deafeningly loud in the enclosed space, but my ears just don’t pick up the sound. All I see is a quick muzzle flash that lights up the dim cab for a moment, then I feel myself pushed backwards as Laurence kicks out at Kate’s belly.
The two of us tumble out of the Stryker. I land first, cushioning Kate, and roll her off me onto the asphalt. The first thing I see is blood. Hers? Mine? I can’t tell. It all happened too quickly.
“Kate? Kate, get up!” I lift myself to my feet and try to pull her from the ground, but she’s limp in my hands. I tug again and her jacket falls open, exposing the white shirt beneath. A red patch spreads across her chest like a terrible Rorschach test. Her eyes are wide open, staring blankly at the sky. I stare at her lifeless body as a pool of blood gathers in the hollow of her throat and overflows, running in twin lines down both sides of her neck.
She’s gone.
I barely notice the engine of the Stryker roaring back to life, and before I can react the vehicle suddenly reverses at speed straight towards me. I barely have time to blink before the protruding running board hits me in the stomach, forcing me to double over in pain, bringing my head down just in time to connect with a dull thump against a Jerry can mounted to the back.
The lights go out. I don’t feel anything as my body is thrown back onto the road. I don’t feel my back as it scrapes along the ground, and I don’t feel my head thump against the asphalt. I feel nothing. I hear nothing. I see nothing. I don’t see the tires run over Kate’s lifeless body.
I don’t even hear the screams as they draw ever closer.
΅
:::12:::
FOR A MOMENT my world is nothing but a high pitched tone and a distant point of light.
Slowly, bit by bit, my glazed, unfocused eyes open on the gray sky above, the dark clouds pinpricked with flashes of colored light. My ears are ringing and I can hear each breath as a muffled roar in my head.
Suddenly the pain returns. Shocking. Sharp. I manage to turn my head before the vomit burns my throat, and I cough a spray of thin, milky puke across the black asphalt from the depths of my empty stomach.
The urge to sleep is almost overpowering. I’d like nothing more than to curl up on this asphalt bed and just take a moment to gather myself. Just a couple of minutes, I think, and then I’ll be ready to move again. It’s only the throbbing pain in the back of my head that keeps me from slipping away, an insistent jab of hot needles that forces my mind to wake. With a monumental effort I manage to raise myself onto my elbows, then force my body up into a seated position. I slump forward and puke again, this time between my legs. I cough again as it dribbles down my chin, spraying my pants and boots in clear vomit.
I reach gingerly to the back of my head, wincing at the sharp pain as I run my fingers through my hair. They come away bloody, but it’s not quite as bad as I feared. I can’t feel an open gash. Nothing that feels like it might need stitches. It just feels as if someone has taken a belt sander and gone to town on the back of my skull. The b
ack of my head feels like a piece of tenderized meat, and my vision blurs as I stare at my bloodied fingers.
Apart from the throbbing pain in my head I feel... numb. Like I’m trapped in a dream. Everything about this just feels like it can’t be real. I can’t have woken up this morning to find the city overrun by insane, murderous creatures. I can’t have beaten a man to death, and watched as another turned into one of those things. Most of all, I can’t have just watched my girlfriend—
Oh.
Kate.
I look over at the lifeless body ten feet ahead of me. There’s no question she’s gone. The vehicle crushed her. I don’t even want to look closer. I don’t want that to be my memory of her. Not as a crushed, broken rag doll splayed on the ground in the middle of the street. I turn away and blink tears from my eyes.
This can’t be real. It’s ridiculous. Any minute now I’ll wake up in my bed with Kate beside me, just another lazy Saturday with nothing to do but chill out in front of the TV and call in a pizza. It has to be a dream. Just relax, Tom. Maybe it’s OK to lay back down and just take a break for a little while. None of this is real. Why not just rest?
Moments later reality hits me like a hammer. A sound I’ve been hearing subconsciously since I hit the ground finally forces its way through to my waking mind, and it shocks me awake in an instant, like a torrent of ice cold water to the face.
Screaming.
Thousands of voices, all of them screaming.
΅
:::13:::
ARNOLD'S EXCITEMENT GROWS with each step. He can sense the mood in the group around him. They all sense it. They’re all moving more quickly, and they know they’re getting close to the food.
The first of the group finally crests a small rise, and Arnold know their search is over the moment he sees the first one break into a run. He’s lightning fast. Much faster than Arnold, struggling on his frustrating crumbled bony stump. He’s moving slowly now, the spur of bone digging deep into the soft soil with each step, giving him a pronounced limp as he moves eagerly forward.
Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 9
