by Hunter Shea
Meredith nudged his side and said, “Look, Gray, maybe we should—”
An incredibly loud, harsh gunshot crackled from the condo. He saw a burst of light illuminate the hall window on the side of the building. There were more shots, along with men screaming, others shouting orders that couldn’t be made out amid the cacophony.
Dalton’s fingers flexed on the handle of his gun.
The shooting stepped up its pace. Something shattered. It sounded like a wrecking ball swinging into the side of a wood-frame house. A man in one of the upper windows whipped his head around and howled. He leapt onto the windowsill, looking back one more time, and jumped. His arms spread out like featherless wings as he sailed free of the building, landing facedown on the concrete with a gut-churning wet smack.
Everyone was so busy looking at him that they didn’t notice the creature as it, too, jumped from the window, followed by another.
They touched down on the roof of a police car, crumpling it so it was level with the interior seats. Both bled copiously from various gaping bullet holes. They were massive, with faces like hairless, wild boars and the lithe bodies of great cats. Their lower tusks were painted scarlet. They sneered at the soldiers, police and firemen.
The nearest troops raised their rifles and fired. The creatures were too fast, springing from the demolished car and into the crowd. Men and women on the other side of the car went down. Bullets meant for the beasts found new, helpless targets.
“Hold your fire!” someone shouted, but no one was listening.
Because everyone in the near perimeter was armed and now in a panic, shots rang out from all directions as the beasts ran among them, taking chunks of flesh as they went.
“We have to move the hell out of here!” Dalton said. He knelt down, got Meredith in a fireman’s lift, and ran. “Cover us if you can.”
Holding on to her crutch with one hand, she guarded their back with the other.
Looking over the heads of the scrabbling crowd, he saw Captain Hammerlich standing atop an olive military jeep. His elbows were locked and gun drawn, fixing one of the rampaging beasts in his sight. The gun dropped from his hand. He never saw the second one as it high-jumped the hood and windshield, catching one of his arms in its bloody maw. Hammerlich delivered a savage punch to the side of its head but couldn’t break its grip.
Throwing a blur of rabbit punches, the captain looked to be getting the better of the creature. He might have gotten free—a temporary reprieve since he’d already received a fatal bite—if a trio of soldiers hadn’t opened fire on the jeep. The beast was fast as hell, exiting the jeep before the first bullet struck. Hammerlich wasn’t so lucky.
Dalton ran against the tide of humanity.
He had to pull to a stop outside a semicircle of soldiers and cops. They had cornered one of the beasts against the wall of the small bank next to the condo. Everyone opened fire at once. The creature twitched wildly. The shooting ceased. Dalton sidestepped a heavy drop of blood as it sailed over the head of the man in front of him.
They’re all infected now! We have to get away from them!
Outside the perimeter, it was a free-for-all. People ran back to their motels, cars and motorcycles until they had bottled up into a writhing mass along Main Street, barring Dalton’s way out should he get to an empty squad car.
“Dalton, duck!” Meredith shouted. He dropped to his knees, feeling the full weight of her. The remaining creature sailed over them, knifing into a soldier’s back. The soldier’s finger pulled back on his rifle’s trigger, unleashing a fresh hail of bullets on the crowd. Dalton watched the back of a man’s head explode. He wore a county cop uniform. His head disappeared in a spray of bone and crimson mist before Dalton could tell who he was.
The creature drove its sharp-pointed snout into the soldier’s skull, piercing it like a chisel. It whipped its head around, spraying anyone near with brain matter.
Its fierce, golden eyes locked on Dalton’s. He struggled to get back on his feet, his knees popping in protest.
Several shots zipped from different directions, grazing the savage blue beast.
It pawed at the ground, steadily advancing toward Dalton and Meredith, as if it somehow knew what they had done to its brethren on Plum Island.
Dalton steadied his grip on Meredith, refusing to break its gaze and appear weak.
He could feel Meredith’s chest and stomach expand against the back of his neck.
“Get ready,” he said.
Her arm tensed atop his shoulder.
With a low, rasping grumble, the creature sprang.
Tom and Jay unloaded the keg from the trunk of the car. They nestled it in a metal tub of ice, twisting it back and forth so the ice rose up along its sides.
“Maybe we should go back home,” Annie, Tom’s sometime girlfriend, pleaded for the fifth time in the past hour. Except for the car headlights centered on their HQ on Highland Beach, they were blanketed in complete darkness. The deafening roar of waves crashing on the rocks told them how close they were to the shoreline.
Her cousins, three blond hotties from North Carolina, gathered around Jason, who had lit up a blunt, happy to share.
Kara and her brother Woodie leaned against her Mazda, along with Skeets and Finn and a couple of their buddies who Tom knew casually, but not enough to remember their names. Greg had called earlier and said something bad was going down by his house, so there was no way he was going. He lived close to the center of town, the very area they avoided, taking back roads to the off-limits beach for their party.
A few of their other friends texted with similar excuses. That is, until he lost all service. The way Tom figured it, that would be more beer for them. He hadn’t been crazy about throwing a shindig on what everyone called Quicksand Beach, but now that they were here, he was happy he’d let Jay talk him into it.
He draped his arm around Annie. “We’re fine. Jay and I scouted out the area before we came, so we’re perfectly safe. I swear.”
A welcome cold wind blew off the Atlantic. Annie shivered against him.
“I’m not talking about the quicksand. I’m just getting a bad vibe. It feels like we’re not safe.”
Skeets blasted some Muse from his car stereo. He had a red cup of beer in one hand and a fat joint in the other. Tom filled a cup for Annie.
“I admit, there’s been some strangeness going around, but have a drink and forget it, at least for a few hours.”
She reluctantly took the cup and sipped at the beer. He powered his first cup down and filled it to the brim for another. Jason sauntered over, passing the joint to him. “See, brother, I told you I’d figure it out,” he said.
Seeing Annie’s troubled frown, Jason offered her a brand-new joint from his shirt pocket. “Just for you, babe. No sharesies.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Oh, so I don’t harsh your buzz?”
Jason smirked. “No, to thank you for having such beautiful cousins.” He winked at her and rejoined the blond trio.
Tom lit it up for her and several minutes later, felt her relax in his arms. The stars were out in force tonight. He realized how much he missed the smell of the sea. His dorm back in college smelled like dirty socks and molding cum most of the time.
“Hey, check this out, guys!” Jason announced, fumbling around the trunk.
“Jay, maybe you should hold off. No sense alerting everyone that we’re here,” Tom said.
“Screw that. Sometimes, a man’s gotta play with fire.”
He dumped a box of fireworks on the sand. Handing Roman candles to each of Annie’s cousins, he lit a punk, then the wicks. The three of them held the candles far from their bodies, shooting colored fireballs into the ocean waters where they were swallowed up by the bubbling surf.
Finn helped him steady a fat rocket launcher in the sand. As soon as it was lit, there was a loud burst. The sky erupted in glittering shades of red, white and blue. The tendrils of flame cascaded back to earth like dozens of flares.
>
“Holy crap, that was awesome!” Jason whooped. Everyone was clapping, even Annie.
As the dying flames met the shoreline, they illuminated a pack of—were they dogs?—as they emerged from the ocean.
“What?” Jason said, mostly to himself.
“Dude, I think you have a pack of strays that want to hang around for the show,” Skeets said, his wool hat pulled down to his eyebrows.
Jason grabbed a Roman candle, lit it and aimed the fireballs in the direction of the approaching animals.
The moment they saw what was coming, everyone roared with dread.
CHAPTER 35
Don Sorely watched the entire fiasco unfold on a row of monitors in the relative safety of the FEMA Winnebago. He and all the men seated at the control panels stared mutely, catching flies. Between the “war machines,” as they learned they’d been dubbed, and friendly fire, there must have been two dozen casualties.
War machines.
Those bastards couldn’t have picked a more appropriate name.
One of the SEALs had discovered the moniker engraved on a laboratory door. It must have been where the damn things were engineered. Don imagined it like a demonic car assembly line.
What bothered him most was the seemingly paltry response to the release of what could possibly be the most dangerous thing concocted by science for the military since the first atomic bomb. Was it truly an underestimation?
Or was this a live test? It made him sick to his soul to think his own people would use the situation out here as a testing ground. When you got lemons, make lemonade. That couldn’t be it.
No one was that twisted. Not in a democratic country. Right?
“Tell Team 6 to be prepared to move in and set up a faux triage unit. I want everyone in protective gear. They are to gather the dead and wounded under one umbrella and seal them in until I tell them what to do next.”
He knew the same feed, provided by Team 2 two blocks away from the condo, was being funneled to Director Bunker, as well as a host of higher-ups in the government, not excluding the President.
A lump of sickness that felt more like a nest of writhing, fiery snakes cramped his stomach. This was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Before he could hit the narrow bathroom, his phone started playing the theme to the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
“Sorely.”
“Sir, we think we found some intel.” The man on the line, Steven Dodson, had been sent with the Coast Guard and forty infantrymen to Plum Island to scour the labs for all the information they could find. The search for anyone living who might have known what happened turned up empty. Everyone in the know had been on that island when things shit the bed. They also combed over the wreck of the ferry at Orient Point. Someone had been on the island and escaped, but there was no way to find out who. Now all they had to go on were the files they left behind. And the creatures they created.
Dodson sounded out of breath, exhausted. “I was able to log into their mainframe and found a slew of files that had yet to be encrypted.”
“What’s the situation like there?”
“It’s a slaughterhouse. There are more of those things out here. The military lost seven men so far, but they also managed to destroy five of the war machines. They keep coming out of the woodwork.”
“Did you send all the files over?” He better have. Don didn’t want to have to sacrifice another team.
“Yes, and still downloading more. The war machines are more than just genetically engineered animals designed to kill everything they see. From what I’ve seen, they’re a combination of at least a dozen different species types. Initially, they were designed to test organ viability between species, which would have then led to a greater organ bank for humans. Once the military saw their potential as a way to sweep battlefields and cities without expending manpower, things took a turn.”
A muffled report of rapid gunfire sounded in the distance.
“What’s happening?” Don asked.
“Must be another war machine. I’m in a sealed room with three guards. I should be okay.” Should be. “Their breeding protocols changed to engineer animals concentrating on size, speed and intelligence. But that’s not the worst part. Each of them carries a disease called Marvola-6.”
“What the hell is Marvola-6?”
“A synthetic disease, a combination of several different animal disease strands. It’s one hundred percent lethal. Once you contract it, either through a bite or fluid transfer, it turns your inner organs into a furnace that burns you from the inside out.”
Another cramp knifed Sorely’s stomach, doubling him over. He stumbled onto the couch.
“What about an antidote? I know for a fact that the scientists out there didn’t work on anything unless they had one.”
There was a long, terrible pause.
Dodson replied in a whisper, “I haven’t seen anything. Either it’s in a file that I haven’t seen yet, or the cure was part of their next stage in development of the war machines. The creatures were conceived before the disease. I’m thinking that they needed to work on the actual creatures themselves to find a cure. Often, synthetic viral strains will change dramatically once they merge with living cells. Maybe they were working with the war machines on that phase when they broke free.”
Taking shallow breaths, Sorely asked, “Do we have all the Marvola-6 data?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get the CDC on it right away. You have five minutes to finish up there. I’m giving the order to burn the place to the ground.”
He disconnected the call before Steven could say anything else. That place was a hot zone, the worst he’d ever come across. It had to be obliterated.
His next call was to Dr. Ling. People were screaming in the background. She must be near the disaster at the condo.
“Can you and Dr. Greene get here fast?”
“We just managed to break free from the crowd,” she said, her voice up several octaves. “But we can’t get back to our car. It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Don’t worry about the car. Do you see a tan RV by the shops across the way?”
“Yes, we see it.”
“Go over there and tell them to take you to me. I have your disease.”
The moment the creature left its feet, Dalton tilted his body to the right, affording Meredith a head-on view. He ripped the Glock from his holster. Both guns erupted, a conjoined firing squad. The creature seemed to hit an invisible wall. It somersaulted backward. Its torso exploded as the rounds ripped it to shreds.
Spirals of foul-smelling smoke poured from the entry and exit wounds, as well as from the open seam that was its stomach. Several soldiers and one woman were covered in its viscera.
“Dammit,” Dalton hissed. No matter how hard he tried, someone always got hurt. It was as if these things were designed not only to test a man’s courage, but his will to press on despite constant defeat.
Meredith slapped him on the back. “You can put me down now.”
“Not yet.” The crowd was still in panic mode. For all everyone knew, another one of those things was still lurking about. Jostled left and right, nearly losing his footing several times, he carried Meredith past the town gazebo, across the lawn and to a safe, quiet area behind one of the coffee shops a block away. Once in the darkened alley, he slid her from his shoulders. His heart ran like a wild horse in his chest. He would have killed for a bottle of water and a cigarette.
They peered around the corner of the building, watching the madness unfold. Soldiers were attending to fallen comrades—there were bodies everywhere. People were on top of cars, stumbling over one another. Someone had been shoved through a plate glass window. Even if he could get to a squad car, there was no way of driving it out. The road was littered with the dead and dying. The last thing he wanted to do was get near anyone who was infected.
“It’s a damn nightmare,” Meredith said, massaging her ribs. “It’s like no one knew what th
e hell to expect. You’d think if the military and CDC and FEMA were called in, they would have a frigging clue.”
“I think they have a clue, just not the whole picture. With everything being so clandestine, I’m sure the left hand isn’t talking to the right.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We have to find everyone we can on the force, tell them what we’re dealing with. You saw what the military did back there. When they weren’t killing each other and everyone around them, they were getting the rest infected. The least we can do is get everyone local on the same page. If we’re lucky, we can take a few more of those things out in the process. The only problem is, how do we do that?”
“We’re screwed,” Meredith said, steadying herself against her crutch. “I don’t have a spare clip. Do you?”
Dalton drew in a great breath. “No.”
He ducked back around, looking up and down the street. There was a small, fifteen-room motel to their left. The lot was packed solid with cars. Everyone had retreated inside, watching through their blinds.
“Come with me,” he said, taking her hand. Once in the lot, he asked her, “Which one do you think we should use?”
“We are not stealing a car.”
“I agree. We just need to borrow one.”
“What are you going to do, knock on every door until you find the owner of the car you want?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t always a cop. I did my time as a misspent youth.”
He spotted a black SUV that was slightly smaller than a tank. All eyes in the motel rooms followed him. When Meredith caught up with him, he was scouring the garden that buffered the lot from the walkway. When he wrapped his hand around a brick, she protested.
“Dalton, the whole place is watching. What will they think when they see a cop break into a car?”
He held the brick in a high arc, ready to smash the driver’s-side window. A door above them flew open and a man came charging out. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Sir, we need your car. Ours is over there.” The man on the balcony looked over at the smoldering catastrophe by the condo and plaza. “If you toss me your keys, I won’t have to destroy your window and pull out the wiring to start her up. I promise you’ll be compensated.”
