“You won’t get far with that little peashooter,” he says, nodding to the holstered M9. “I’ve seen some of them keep going with three 9 mil rounds in their skulls. We’ll have to get you something a little more Texan if you’re gonna come with us.”
Lewis frowns, confused. “Come with you?”
The man smiles, slips two fingers between his lips and lets out a piercing whistle. Almost immediately a man decked out in dark camo and greasepaint emerges from the undergrowth by the side of the road, only becoming visible when he steps out from the long grass. He slings a sniper rifle over his shoulder and begins to trot down towards them.
The man turns away from Lewis and begins to walk back to the Stryker. “Kid, I need men, and you just got conscripted. Vamanos.” He takes a few more steps then turns back when he doesn’t hear Lewis move. He looks around at the highway, darkening already as the sun drops beneath the horizon, and shrugs. “Unless you feel like taking your chances out here? Your call.”
Lewis hesitates for a moment. He doesn’t want to do anything that would delay his mission, but it looks like he doesn’t have much of a choice. Alone on foot at night he stands little chance of survival. Besides, the guy is still holding his backpack, and without that he can’t go on.
He takes a deep breath and steps towards the Stryker.
΅
:::3:::
A SHRILL RINGING fills my ears, moving from one side to the other and back again as the pain blossoms in my red, quickly swelling cheek.
“Why the fuck did you hit me?” I demand, glaring up at Vee as I lift myself awkwardly up on my elbows from the oil-stained concrete floor where I landed hard just a moment ago.
Vee meets my glare and sends it back with twice the anger, then reaches down and snatches the pistol from my hand. “To save you from getting yourself killed, Tom.” She waves the gun. “You’re empty. What were you gonna do, storm in there and kill them all with hurtful insults?”
I sit silently for a moment, probing my mouth with the tip of my tongue. I can taste the sharp, coppery edge of blood, and I’d swear my teeth aren’t supposed to wiggle like this as I press my tongue against them. “I was... I just wanted to...” I close my mouth when I realize there’s no way to end the sentence without sounding like a fucking idiot.
Vee’s absolutely right. I don’t know what I was planning to do. The moment I recognized Sergeant Laurence all that mattered to me was making him not be alive any more. I didn’t care how. All I knew was that I needed to get back to the hotel and end the fucker, and putting a bullet in Bishop to save him from the infected had been the last straw. I just grabbed my Beretta and started marching towards the door, and that’s when Vee decided she needed to put my ass on the floor.
If I’d been thinking clearly I would have realized how ridiculously dumb my ‘plan’ sounded. A clueless kid with a useless gun running through a crowd of infected to hunt down a trained, well armed soldier who’d proved many times over that he wouldn’t hesitate for a second before putting a bullet in me? It was an insane idea. I’d be lucky to make it to the front door of the hotel, never mind all the way to Laurence.
“Sorry,” I mumble, lifting myself from the ground and wiping the greasy dust from my pants. “Thanks. I, ummm... thanks. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Vee reaches down to Warren’s duffel, finds a fresh clip in an outer pocket and slides it into place before handing the Beretta back to me. “We’re in this together, OK? I want to kill that slimy bastard just as much as you, but if we try to do it without first engaging our brains we’ll all end up dead, and he wins. Understand?”
I nod. “Yeah, I understand. So... what now?”
Echoing off the concrete walls of the garage Warren’s voice booms out angrily. “If you ladies are done bickering you might remember I got shot a few minutes ago, and these holes tend to leak. Vee, do you have any... ummm, you know...” He looks like he’s beginning to blush, and he drops his voice. “Sanitary products?”
Vee’s expression stays blank for a moment before she catches on. “You mean tampons? Jesus, Warren, you’re not buying weed in the back of a bar, you can call them what they are.” Warren’s cheeks flush a deeper shade of red. “Yeah, I have tampons.” She reaches into her breast pocket and pulls out a couple. “What is it with you guys? One mention of a woman’s menstrual cycle and you all turn into shy school boys. Here.”
Warren catches the plastic wrapped plugs, then reaches into his pack and pulls out a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. “You know the old joke,” he mumbles, trying to cover his embarrassment. “I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.” He unscrews the alcohol and holds it above the entry wound in his calf, but hesitates before pouring.
Vee shakes her head, crouches down and grabs the bottle from his hand. “Grow up, you big baby. On three.” Warren nods and braces himself, but Vee immediately pours the alcohol on the wound without counting.
“Jesus!” Warren hisses through clenched teeth. “You said on three, damn it!”
Vee ignores him and continues to irrigate the wound until the blood has cleared, then snatches a tampon from Warren’s hand. She tears the plastic wrapping away with her teeth and gently pushes it into the wound until it’s firmly plugged, and ignores his protests as she repeats the process for the exit wound at the back. “Tom, pass me the gauze from Warren’s bag.” She points to the duffel and impatiently snaps her bloody fingers as I search through the random crap until I find the small green first aid kit pouch. Eventually I find a roll of bandages and a few sterilized cotton pads, and Vee wraps the leg in just a few moments.
“Looks to have missed everything important, you lucky bastard,” she says, standing and taking Warren by the hand. “Just a scratch, really. Let’s see if you can put some weight on it.”
I rush forward and help Warren climb to his feet, his back pressed against the side of a car, until he’s finally standing and gingerly testing his weight on the leg. He winces. “I won’t be running any marathons any time soon, but I should be OK to walk.” He takes a few short steps, his teeth clenching as if he’s being tased with every step, but he stays on his feet.
“We have a few morphine syrettes if you need them,” I say, rifling through the first aid kit.
Warren shakes his head. “Not a good idea if we want to get out of here alive. You don’t need to be carrying my stoned ass through the streets. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” He forces a smile, but it’s clear he’s in the kind of pain that would leave me a weeping wreck.
For a moment I can’t help but feel an almost overwhelming sense of self pity. I hate to admit it, but out of the three of us it’s painfully clear I’m by far the least well equipped to survive this. I feel like the guy called in to make up the numbers on a softball team when one of the players with actual talent can’t make it. Warren can bravely shake off a hole in his leg and Vee can patch it up like a pro, and meanwhile I’m the jackass who can’t think straight and tries to storm off without ammo. Why am I even here? I’m not helping. I couldn’t save Kate, and I couldn’t save Bishop. If I’m not careful I’ll get these two killed as well. I have to do better. I have to be better.
“We need to leave.” I mutter the words quietly, reluctantly. The last thing I want to do is allow Laurence to take another breath, but I can’t ask these two to follow me on a suicide mission. “There’s no way we can take out Laurence. Not with Warren’s leg and my shitty aim. We gotta just suck it up and survive.”
Warren nods eagerly. “He’s right, I’m no good to fight right now. If I go limping in there like this I’ll be dead before we get through the lobby.”
Vee looks unsure. She clenches her fists as she thinks. I know she wants to kill the guy just as much as I do, but finally she seems to allow common sense to overcome her lust for revenge. “OK,” she sighs. “We can come back when we’re better prepared.” She grabs Warren’s bag and begins to angrily shove our dwindling supplies back inside, and Warren slo
wly leans over and picks up his gun. “Tom, can you go see if you can find us an old model car? It’s a long shot, but if there’s something more than twenty years old here I might be able to hot wire it.”
“Sure,” I reply, looking around without much optimism. The garage seems to be packed to the rafters with new SUVs, a few Teslas and a bunch of high priced European models, Mercs and BMWs. Not exactly the kind of place I’d expect to find a shitty old beater without all the electronic gadgetry that stops people from just splicing the ignition wires and firing up the engine, but I’ll look all the same. Who knows, there might be a few classics parked up somewhere. I walk quickly down the row, raising myself up on my toes to get a better view across the level.
I’m maybe fifty yards away when I hear the shot.
From the corner of my eye I see the figure appear at the top of the concrete ramp from the next level down. He comes up running, and he seems surprised to see me standing there just a few car lengths away. As another figure follows behind him he reaches for his holster and clumsily tugs out his pistol, and by the time he gets off a shot I’ve darted to the cover of an enormous black SUV. In my panic my ears barely register the sound of the shot, but I feel the glass from the shattered side window come raining down over me like hail. The next shot hits the Prius parked beside me, kicking up a spark as it punches a tiny hole through the fender.
My hands are shaking so much I can barely hold my own Beretta. I fumble to disengage the safety, and I cast my eyes around desperately for an escape route. I’m maybe twenty cars south of Warren and Vee, but between here and there is a hell of a lot of open space. I could try to crawl beneath the cars but I figure that would make me an easy target for anyone who–
Fuck.
I swear I feel the bullet pass by me as I quickly sidestep behind the relative safety of the tire. The shooter was thinking just a few moments behind me, and if I hadn’t stepped to the side I’d have a bullet in my leg just like Warren right now. Another shot comes, and this one buries itself in the tire wall and sends the SUV tilting to the side as it quickly deflates.
“Vee!” I yell out, as if she and Warren aren’t already aware of the gunshots echoing across the garage. “Fucking help me!”
Just moments later I see movement in their direction. Vee flits across the gap between the cars, Warren’s rifle slung over her shoulder, and rolls to the ground just an instant before a hail of gunfire peppers the concrete where she was just standing. From here I can see her recover from the roll and wedge herself between a car and the outer wall of the garage, but there’s no way she can be of much help from where she is. She could never get the long rifle into position before the attackers aimed their pistols.
“Drop your weapons!” The voice booms out from just a few cars away. “You! Guy behind the car! Put that pistol on the ground and kick it out towards me. Lady! Toss out the rifle!”
I cling onto the gun for dear life, but in the distance I see Vee slump her shoulders, turn in her tight space and slide the rifle out into the open. I can’t believe she’d give up so easy, but I can only assume Warren still has a pistol and a plan.
“Don’t make me come back there, boy,” the man growls in my direction. “It won’t end well for you if you’re looking for a gunfight. Why don’t you follow your girlfriend’s good example and toss that thing out to me?”
The gun doesn’t want to leave my hand. Without any input from my brain my fingers clutch tightly to the grip, but I know I can’t take out two guys. Hell, I’d probably struggle to manage one from this position. Against all my instincts I force myself to relax my grip and slide the Beretta across the asphalt and away from the car.
I hear footsteps approaching. I feel my heart thumping in my chest, five beats for each step, until the figure appears around the front of the car.
He’s just a little guy. Receding hairline. Thick glasses. A bit of a paunch beneath his dirty plaid shirt. He looks like someone’s dad. If this was a regular day I’d pass him in the street without a second glance, but right now he has his gun trained on me, and there’s a darkness in his eyes that tells me he’s waited his entire life for the opportunity to feel this kind of control over another person. Something that tells me he’s just begging for an excuse to pull the trigger.
“Stand up.” He spits out the order bluntly, knowing I’m completely at his mercy, and there’s a faint flicker of a sadistic smile on his face as I slowly comply. I can tell he’s enjoying this, just as he’d enjoy a hunt. He enjoys the power he has over me, and the fear in my eyes as he twitches his trigger finger suggestively.
“Go get the girl,” he calls over my shoulder, and I hear the shuffling of feet behind me. “We’re gonna take her back to the Chief and have a little fun. And hey,” he adds as an afterthought, “don’t fuck up her face. Gotta keep her pretty.”
“What are you gonna do with this one?” the man behind me asks.
I hold my breath for a moment as the man before me waves his pistol slowly up and down. Eventually he speaks. “Just another mouth to feed.” Without any warning he lifts his gun to my chest and squeezes the trigger. I flinch as I hear the shot.
The man looks down in silent shock at the red patch spreading across the chest of his plaid shirt. His hand loosens from the gun, and it slips from his fingers as a second shot hits the exact same spot and sends him slumping to a heap on the floor.
“Turn around.” I barely hear the voice behind me. My ears are ringing from the shots at close quarters, and I’m surprised to still be breathing. I look down at myself, half expecting to see my own little patch of blood, but I seem to be unharmed.
“I said turn around,” the man orders once again, and this time it filters through to my conscious mind. I force my legs to obey and slowly swing around to face him. He stands just a few yards from me, his gun raised and still smoking from the shots. He’s dressed in worn fatigues, and over his face he wears a black ski mask. “You want a cigarette?” he asks, reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a crumpled pack of Marlboros. “This is your brand, right?”
I frown, confused. What the fuck? “How do you know?”
The man takes a step forward and holds the pack closer, and I nervously slip one from the pack. He lowers his gun, and as he reaches up to pull off the mask I break into a broad smile.
“I figure I owe you a few packs by now, right?”
΅
:::4:::
PRIVATE LEWIS RHODES beams from ear to ear as he crouches over Warren, rewrapping his leg after a much more thorough cleaning than he and Vee had given it. He explains that he’d been training as a field medic when New York fell. In fact, so had most of the guards at Camp One.
“I’m glad I can tick you off my list, Tom,” he says, cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips as he speaks. “Those names were weighing pretty damned heavy on me after I left. I figured you’d all be dead by now.” He takes a drag and blows a cloud of smoke to the ceiling. “What about everyone else? Bishop? The guys in the other cabins? Did anyone else get out?”
His smile slowly fades as I describe what happened over the last couple of days. Warren and Vee’s attack on the camp. The doors unlocking. The infected running loose, attacking the survivors. Finding the mass grave in the darkness. Everything up until Bishop’s death, when a tear rolls down Lewis’ cheek as I point to the gap in the wall just a dozen or so cars away. He quietly stands and walks to the edge, looking down at Bishop’s body. I don’t join him. I can’t face seeing my friend like that again.
After a few minutes Lewis returns with pink, bloodshot eyes, slumps to the ground and explains how he came to be here. How he fled from the camp shortly after Edgar was killed, and how he was ambushed by the Chief in his Stryker. He tells us that he was brought back to the community and ordered to work guard duty twelve hours each day in return for safety and a few warm meals. He insists that he hated being there, that he knew that the Chief was an evil son of a bitch, and he felt terrible for what was happ
ening to the women in the compound. Vee tenses up as he describes the floor they’re confined to, and that they’re forced to ‘work’ for their keep. He doesn’t describe the work they’re doing, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess.
“Why didn’t you just run?” demands Vee. “In fact,” her voice turns angry now, “why the fuck didn’t you try to do something for those poor women?”
Lewis sighs sadly. “I’m sorry. Believe me, I am. I’d love to set them free, but it’s more complicated than that.” He looks over at me. “Tom, you remember the bodies you found at Camp One? Did you notice they were all wearing surgical gowns?” I nod. I’ll never forget that image. “That wasn’t just a refugee camp, Tom. You guys were being used for medical trials. The doctors were trying to develop a vaccine. They wanted to stop this thing before it spread to the rest of the country. That’s why–”
“That’s bullshit,” Vee interjects angrily. “You weren’t developing a vaccine, you were using them to grow more fucking Cordyceps. Believe me, we’ve heard all about the attacks on the cities. We know exactly what you people did.”
Lewis shakes his head firmly. “No! That wasn’t... I mean, yeah, they were doing that too. I’m not gonna pretend there wasn’t some bad shit going on there, and I hate that I worked for those bastards, but there were some good people there too. They were trying to fix this thing and save everyone.” He looks away from Vee and drops his gaze to the ground. “They just couldn’t make enough of the cure in time.”
Warren lifts his head. “What do you mean, cure?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Lewis replies. “They succeeded. There’s a vaccine. We could inoculate everyone left in the country, then all we’d have to do is wait for the infected to die off. That’s why I left the camp in the end. One of the doctors knew about the... you know, the other plan. She knew the President wanted to attack someone, and she needed me to get the vaccine out to try to stop it. I was trying to get it to a CDC lab near Vegas when I was caught by the Chief. That’s why I’m still here. That’s why I couldn’t free those women, and I couldn’t run away. The Chief has the vaccine locked up in that damned truck of his. I’ve been waiting for the chance to get back in there and save it before I run.”
Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 27
