Gunfire exploded. Bright muzzle flashes silhouetted Hunter for a hot moment of terror before his body fell onto the floor in the foyer.
A wave of panic and dread washed over Carter. He was the last man left.
Everything had gone terribly wrong.
He could just walk away. All he had to do was turn around and walk back to the Honda. He could be home again in less than ten minutes. No one would even know. Not at first, anyway.
The coup would fail if he did that. His friends, and Steele’s guards, would have died for no reason. The mayor would go on a rampage. He’d find out who did this and kill them.
Carter had to go inside and finish this.
Hunter had a radio clipped to his belt. Carter could call the others if he could grab it, but he couldn’t get to it without being shot. He wished he had a flashbang.
He did have fifteen rounds in his magazine, though, along with a spare.
Carter fired through the walls three times on each side of the door and bolted into the house, straight through the foyer and the living room and into the kitchen.
Guard number four waited in the kitchen, crouched on the floor next to the prone bodies of Angstrom and Stafford. He waited blind and fired blind. Carter put him down with two rounds in the chest.
Blood was everywhere. The kitchen stank of gunpowder and wet copper. Carter’s ears wouldn’t stop ringing.
He could clearly see guard number four’s face. The man was a stranger. Carter had seen him around town a couple of times, but he did not know his name. He breathed deeply and thanked God for it. He might be able to live with himself.
He hadn’t checked the identity of the dead guard on the porch and wasn’t going to.
Steele and his wife were probably still in the house, either down the hallway or upstairs. Carter guessed they were upstairs, but he had to check the main floor first. If he was wrong, they could bolt outside as soon as he reached the second floor.
He only had a few rounds left in his magazine, so he swapped in the fresh one and crept down the hallway, making as little noise as possible. The floor was carpeted, but the subflooring creaked under his weight.
Carter’s whole body shook. Every time he’d played this scenario out in his mind, he imagined himself with three other people inside the house. He never visualized himself pulling the trigger and putting the mayor down. Somebody else always did it. He thought he’d only have to kill one guard, and that shared guilt and shared blame would lighten the burden.
But he’d shot two guards, not one, and he was about to face the mayor and his family alone. The filthy deed was on him now. He was about to shoot a man in front of his wife and his child. He prayed that Nadia wouldn’t come at him with a gun in her hand. Carter wouldn’t be able to shoot her. No, Carter would let Steele’s wife take him down if it came to that. She was entirely innocent and she’d be defending her home and her family.
He reached the first door in the downstairs hallway. He crouched low and opened the door into a bathroom. No one was inside.
The next room was a spare bedroom. He didn’t stand up until he was certain that it too was clear.
Every room downstairs was clear, so he crept up the stairs, sticking to the edge of each step near the railing to minimize the creaking of wood beneath his boots. The first two rooms were empty. The third room—the master bedroom—stopped him cold.
The bed was covered in a dark liquid. More spilled onto the floor and some spattered the far wall opposite the doorway. It looked like blood, but Carter’s night vision dissolved all color into shades of green and black.
He made a quick check of the closet and master bath, then fished his house keys out of his pocket. He had a mini LED light on his key ring with a bulb the size of a BB.
Carter switched off his night vision, shined the tiny light at the bed and covered his mouth with a trembling hand.
The bed was covered in dried blood. The floor and the far wall were covered in dried blood.
Someone had been brutally killed here.
Someone else had gotten to Steele’s family first.
Carter was supposed to be the bringer of death in that house.
He’d killed the guards for nothing. They weren’t guarding the mayor. The mayor was already dead. They were guarding a crime scene.
He felt strangely detached, like he was watching himself from a distance. He wasn’t really a murderer. He was not even there. The sun would come up tomorrow and he’d find himself in his bed, innocent of the terrible things he’d imagined in a nightmare.
He slapped his face as hard as he could. Slapped himself back to reality. He was actually doing this. He had to get out of that house.
And it was time to break radio silence.
Carter switched his night vision on again, returned to the main floor and retrieved the radio from Hunter’s body near the front door. He saw no one outside on the street.
He radioed Elias and identified himself.
“The hell’s going on over there?” Elias said.
“I’ve got three men down and Steele isn’t here, over,” Carter said.
Silence on the other end.
“There’s blood all over the master bedroom. Somebody else got here first. Over.”
“Stay right there,” Elias said. He sounded pissed. “I’m coming to you. Over.”
Carter sat on the front porch and waited.
What a long and strange journey his life had been. When he’d moved from Oakland to Wyoming, he wanted beauty, contentment and tranquility during the final quarter of his life. He’d found it, too, for a while anyway, but there he was, at the scene of mass murder. He didn’t want to stay in Lander anymore. He could never show his face in town again after what he’d just done even if nobody but Elias’ crew knew that he did it.
Carter would tell Elias that he was out. If Elias wanted to take down anyone else, he’d have to do it without Carter.
Headlights lit up the street like it was daylight.
That was fast, Carter thought. He didn’t expect Elias to drive, but the man did sound pissed off on the radio.
An SUV screeched to a halt in the middle of the street.
Carter froze in fear. Elias and his men had night vision. They didn’t need headlights. These were Steele’s men.
Four doors opened. Powerful flashlight beams searched the night and found Carter’s face.
“Freeze!”
He was blinded. He put up his hands.
And everything went black.
29
Dr. Frank Nash was up late listening to one of his favorite recordings, Jacqueline du Pré’s “Elgar Cello Concerto” conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, when the power in Lander went out. Right away he grabbed a flashlight off the top of his refrigerator and hopped into his Volvo. He had enough gas in the tank for several emergency trips as long as he didn’t leave town, and if a power outage at the hospital didn’t count as an emergency, nothing did.
Like most medical facilities, Lander Regional Hospital had a backup generator. It was driven by a diesel-fueled internal combustion engine like you’d find under the hood of a car. The automatic transfer switch should have flipped the instant the grid went offline, but Nash had to check to be sure.
It wasn’t strictly his job. Joe Rayes was the maintenance man, but Nash hadn’t seen him around for a while. Everyone at the hospital was on reduced hours. Lander Regional no longer functioned as a regional hospital since most of the region was dead. There just wasn’t as much work as there used to be.
Nash could see okay with his Volvo’s headlights, but his home town felt like an upside-down version of Lander in absolute darkness. With no porch lights, no street lights, and no other headlights, the place looked depopulated.
He flipped on his high beams and felt more at ease.
The hospital’s emergency backup system didn’t send power to every light in the building. Most of the interior and exterior lights remained off. The facility created a very low light fo
otprint even at night, so the headlights from Nash’s Volvo whited out what little light the hospital still emitted until he was practically at the front door.
The generator was working, so everything should be fine. The fuel wouldn’t need to be refilled for another eight hours, and there should be enough backup diesel behind the building to keep it going for a full 72 hours.
Under normal conditions, 72 hours of backup power was plenty. Lander had never lost power for 24 consecutive hours, at least not while Nash lived there. Under normal conditions, on the remote chance that it would take longer to get the grid back up and running, there’d be more than enough time to evacuate patients who needed monitors and oxygen pumps to one of the larger hospitals in Cheyenne or Casper.
These were not normal conditions. There were no functioning facilities in Cheyenne or Casper.
Lander Regional Hospital would still have its 72 hours, though, unless the fuel had been looted.
That was a distinct possibility. Steele had a crew that went out to the surrounding towns and cities in trucks to bring more, but they’d run out eventually. Even the large storage tanks in Cheyenne would go dry eventually. Stealing the hospital’s generator fuel would be the mother of all jerk moves, but worse things had happened in Lander during the last couple of months, much of it directed by the mayor’s office.
Nash pulled his Volvo all the way up to the Emergency Room entrance at the hospital’s main door and saw two of Steele’s security men out front carrying rifles. He killed his lights and powered down his window as they approached. They recognized him and relaxed. “Evening, gentlemen. I’m just here to check on the generator.”
They both nodded. “Seems to be working fine,” said the first. Nash didn’t know the man’s name.
The second man gazed into the darkness beyond the hospital as if he were contemplating what mysterious force had just darkened his town.
Nash got out of the car walked around to the back of the building and checked the generator. All the fuel cans were still there, and they were all full, but Nash still felt unsettled. He knew it was only a matter of time before the grid failed permanently and the hospital burned through its fuel in three days or less. Even if the electricity did not fail again, they were going to run out of medicine. They’d run out of antibiotics and insulin. They’d run out of everything. Even if the infection itself could be cured, Lander’s life expectancy was hurtling toward a death plunge.
That death plunge could be imminent. Nash chose not to think about it most of the time, but now wasn’t most of the time.
He decided to go inside and check on his patients before returning home to bed. None were on oxygen pumps, but they still needed to know the hospital had three days of backup power.
The maintenance entrance behind the building was locked, so he headed back around toward the front. As he rounded the first corner he heard the distinct sound of gunfire across town.
He froze. Lander was pitch black in that direction. Nash stood in perhaps the only bubble of light in all of Wyoming.
Nash’s neck tingled as more gunfire cracked across the night sky. It sounded slightly different from the first shots, like it had been fired from another weapon.
One of two things were happening. There was a fire fight somewhere or an infected person somewhere. What were the odds that an infected person showed up in the middle of the night—for the first time in more than a full day—right at the moment the power went out?
Someone had shut off the power on purpose, and whoever did it was shooting at somebody. Shooting at who?
The mayor.
No one would sabotage the power plant and then shoot at the neighbors.
He heard more gunshots, clearly from the direction of Steele’s house.
It was a coup.
A thrill passed through Nash when he realized someone was trying to take the sonofabitch out.
The mayor wasn’t home, though. He’d run off to his cabin out in the desert. Nash was one of the very few people who knew that.
Still, the air crackled with possibility. Steele would survive the night, no doubt, but he might not survive what else was coming.
He bolted through an unlocked side door into the hospital. Only the emergency lights were still on, providing just enough ambience so that doctors could find their patients and everyone else could find the exits.
Nash took the first flight of stairs and rounded the corner to Annie’s room. Both guards outside her door looked alarmed. One held a squawking radio in his hand.
“What’s going on?” Nash said.
“Bad shit’s going down.” It was Anthony. The man who’d helped Nash handle an infected Fred Walsh a couple of days earlier.
“Is it the mayor?” Nash said.
Anthony nodded. “Reports of gunfire at the house.” He had a genuine look of fright on his face. He’d put it together too. It wasn’t a coincidence that the power was out at the same time.
“What about his guards?” Nash said.
“I can’t reach any of them,” Anthony said.
“Go!” Nash said. “Hurry. I’ll take care of Annie.”
Anthony and the other man—Nash was pretty sure his name was Evin—looked at each other.
“I got this,” Nash said and patted Anthony’s arm. “She’s in good hands.”
Their boots squeaked on the floor as they ran.
Annie was awake in her room, but barely, and still too weak from blood loss to sit up.
She opened her eyes halfway. “Wha’s going on, doc?”
“I’m getting you out of here.”
Her eyes opened the rest of the way. “Really?” She did not sound excited. She sounded frightened.
“Come on.” He held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her up. “I’m taking you to my house.”
“Why’s it so dark?”
“Can you walk?”
“If you help me.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and let her lean into him as she walked.
“Did the guards say there’s gunfire at the mayor’s house?” she said.
He nodded. “Come on.” They moved half speed at best down the stairs to the front lobby. Nash’s car was parked right outside. The two security men he’d seen guarding the front of the building were gone. Perhaps they’d left with Anthony and Evin.
“Whoa,” Annie said when she saw that everything beyond the hospital was utterly dark. She found a little energy then. Nash knew fear was the source of that energy.
He helped her into the passenger seat, hopped into his side and drove out of the lot. He wanted to get clear of the hospital as quickly as possible in case someone came running after him and Annie, but nobody came after them.
He slowed after a couple of blocks. He could see well enough with the high beams on, but Lander was frightening in full darkness. Nash imagined monsters with sharp teeth and claws in every direction beyond the bubble of light his Volvo created.
Normally he took 2nd Street back into town. That would bring him close to Steele’s house, so he turned on Buena Vista instead toward the McDonalds and made a left onto Main.
Four men stood in the road up ahead, right in the middle of Main a block from City Hall. They carried rifles. They weren’t wearing fatigues like most of Steele’s militia, and it looked like they were wearing night vision goggles. They covered their eyes. Nash’s headlights were blinding them. He slowed almost to a stop.
One of the men pulled the goggles off his face and pointed his rifle at Nash’s windshield.
Nash knew the man. Elias Sark. Nash was treating him for high blood pressure. Was he part of this thing?
Nash rolled down the window. “Elias! It’s me. Frank Nash.”
Elias lowered his rifle and shielded his eyes from the headlights. “Doctor?”
“What’s going on out here?”
“Go home. Get off the street. And kill those high beams. Just use the parking lights.”
Sark was definitely part of this, wha
tever this was.
Nash switched off his headlights and left the parking lights on. He could still see okay for a short distance. Sark dropped his hand from his eyes.
“What’s going on, Elias?”
“Go home! It’s not safe out here. Go.” He waved Nash on again.
“Okay, okay,” Nash said and held his hands up above the steering wheel in a sort of surrender. He didn’t recognize the others with their goggles on, but he thought one of them might be Earl Flanders, another of Nash’s patients who worked at the utility company.
Elias slapped the top of the Volvo twice. Nash inched past Elias and continued down Main.
“Who are those men?” Annie said.
Nash didn’t want to get into it. “Don’t worry. They don’t know anything about you. Let’s keep it that way.”
That was definitely Earl Flanders back there. He was probably the guy who’d just killed the power.
Nash needed to make a left a few blocks ahead on 9th, but a large vehicle whipped onto Main and hauled ass straight toward Nash with its high beams on.
Nash couldn’t see anything but the brights in his eyes.
He felt adrenaline rising, made a quick right on 3rd, turned on his own headlights and hit the gas. Gunfire erupted behind him.
Annie moaned.
Nash made a left to get off 3rd in case somebody decided to follow him and heard a horrendous crash of twisting metal followed by screams and more gunfire.
Annie gripped the armrest in terror. Nash felt an overwhelming rush of exhilaration and fear.
His hometown had turned into a war zone. This, he thought, is what it used to feel like to live in Iraq.
Nothing would ever be the same again, especially not if Earl Flanders—the electrical utility employee—had just gotten himself killed back at that intersection.
He gunned the engine, made another left and crossed Main with the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
He was on his own side of town now, but he was also near Steele’s house.
“What on earth is happening, doc?” Annie said.
Nash realized she knew absolutely nothing about Lander’s politics. She’d hardly seen anything in Lander except the hospital, she’d hardly talked to anybody except Nash and Nash hadn’t told her a thing.
Resurrection (Book 2): Into the Wasteland Page 27
