The Americans are inside. Good. Let’s kill them.
That was the conversation, or near enough.
The wife screamed and clutched her chest. She struggled to her feet while her husband tried to hold her down. She shook him free and yelled something Mason didn’t catch before dashing into the kitchen.
“What the hell are you doing?” Miro shouted. “Get down!”
Mason ran into the kitchen and saw the woman digging through a deep drawer on the far side.
Miro had his sidearm drawn and pointed at her. “I said get on the ground!”
“Lower your weapon, Corporal Pike!” Mason shouted.
He didn’t. “She’s digging for a weapon! Get on the fucking ground or I will shoot you!”
More gunfire blasted through the front door from the hallway. The muj knew they had the right door now. The husband shouted something. The wife frantically shoveled through the drawer. She latched onto something and whirled around with something black in her hand.
BANG. BANG.
Smoke wafted from the muzzle of Miro’s M9.
The woman collapsed with two holes in her chest. The black thing in her hands tumbled to the ground.
“Goddamnit, Corporal!” Mason said as he wrenched the pistol out of Miro’s hand.
The husband appeared around the corner. He stared at his wife and then at Mason holding the smoking gun.
“Nalasif! Nalasif! No!”
He sobbed and screamed at the same time. He rushed to his wife’s side and set the girl on the floor next to her. The girl dipped a finger in the blood pooling beside her mother.
The enraged man picked up the thing she’d dropped and showed it to them while screaming wildly.
A small black, zipped bag.
He yanked open the zipper and pulled out a bottle of prescription medication.
“Heart! Heart!” he shouted. He lunged forward and began beating on Mason’s chest armor.
Jesus.
Miro had just killed a woman for trying to get her medication. But Mason couldn’t jump his shit about it, no matter how messed up the situation was because they’d both heard countless accounts of Marines that had been killed by someone who claimed to be an innocent civilian.
Fallujah was a fucked up place to be. That was all there was to it.
The husband climbed Mason like a tree as he beat his fists and clawed at him.
The shock kept Mason from responding. Or maybe it was the horror. He blocked the ineffectual swings with one arm while his mind reeled. The horror of busting into this man’s life and killing his wife a few minutes later. And all the while claiming to be the good guys and being there to help the very people whose lives they had just destroyed.
Mason shoved the man aside and stooped to check on his wife. She was dead.
The report of AK-47s turning the front door into toothpicks went quiet and the voices of their pursuers came through loud and clear.
“Sarge, we have to get outta here!”
Miro pulled him to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” Mason said to the raving husband. “I’m so sorry.”
The daughter’s hands were covered with her mother’s blood. She’d streaked it across her own face. She grabbed a golden pendant hanging from her mother’s neck. It looked like a bird symbol of some kind. She sobbed while pulling on the pendant as if that might make her mother wake up.
The husband lunged forward and wrapped his hands around Mason’s throat. His nails dug furrows into Mason’s skin.
Mason’s black revery snapped.
The shit was fucked. So you dealt with it.
He slammed a fist into the man’s stomach, doubling him over. The clenched fingers hooked on the chain of his dog tags and it snapped as the man fell away.
Mason’s dog tags slipped out and fell to the floor as Miro dragged him toward the open doorway at the back of the kitchen. Their flashlights bobbed and weaved as they sprinted through a plain back room with only a bed and another door. They smashed through that door and entered a small open air courtyard.
The voices behind grew louder. The enemy rushing through the small home.
Mason ran to the perimeter wall abutting the alley. Miro clasped his hands together and Mason stepped into the offered foothold. The adrenalized Texan nearly threw him over the seven foot wall. He managed to grab hold of the edge and fall down the other side. Miro was up and over an instant later.
They scanned the alley in both directions and saw no immediate threats.
“I thought she was getting a weapon, Sarge,” Miro said as his voice cracked with emotion. “I swear I did.”
“I know you did. I know.”
Mason didn’t want to think about it anymore. Right now or ever. Besides, they didn’t have the luxury of contemplation. Their survival required immediate action.
Mason looked down the dark alley to the south. It ended about a block down. It was too dark to tell for sure, but they had to be getting close to Phase Line Fran.
A humvee screeched to a stop on the street beyond. A mounted spotlight on the roof bathed them in light, nearly blinding them as well. A soldier in the turret pointed his fifty cal down the alley, above their heads.
“That’s our ride!” Mason shouted as Miro wrapped an arm around him, and they sprinted as fast as their damaged bodies allowed. They made it halfway when the fifty cal opened up.
Withering fire sliced through the air just above their heads. Tracer rounds snapped by like lasers. The concussion of the passing rounds slapped them from above.
Sporadic return fire chipped off the walls nearby as they ran for it. They were running through a meat grinder. Weapons designed to chew up flesh and spit it out.
Mason knew they were dead. Continuing to run was merely a mechanical performance until the curtain came down.
The door to the humvee flew open and they piled in as the turret-mounted gun continued to vaporize everything and everyone unlucky enough to be in its field of fire.
Miro slammed the door shut and the vehicle jerked forward.
The marine in the turret dropped down and stared at them both with wide eyes. “Sergeant West, third squad?”
Mason slumped into the seat and nodded with what little energy remained in his body.
“Shit, bro! We thought we’d lost you guys!”
Mason closed his eyes and tried not to see the images forming in his mind.
Of the other men of third squad that were gone.
Of the woman with holes in her chest.
Of Lopes.
Mason had made it out alive, but he’d never felt more lost.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The Present Day
Downtown Los Angeles, California
MASON guided the personal aerial transport through the open expanse. The Milagro building lay a half mile straight ahead. The rush of air from the twin turbines rumbled in his chest. Wind whipped through his hair. A twisting plume of smoke curled up from the street below. He followed it to the source and saw a few deltas climbing around a downed chopper.
No.
No. No. No.
The fuselage lay on its side. Gouged tracks in the street showed where the rotor had chewed down to nubs. The tail lay a hundred feet behind the cabin.
Judging by the devastation below, the odds of survival weren’t something he wanted to consider. Even if there were just bodies below, he was damn sure not going to let his family be…
No.
Not going to happen.
He eased back the throttle and guided PAT down towards what he knew might be the final seconds of his life. Knowing it, and accepting it. If Theresa and Beth were gone, he had no reason to live.
He’d aim the transport directly at the aft gas tanks. The darker patch of concrete underneath showed that at least one of the tanks had likely been punctured.
Shit.
One of the tanks had likely been punctured.
He was so busy visualizing how he was going to go out in a
glorious fireball that he hadn’t considered if they were still alive and trapped inside. If that gas caught, they’d be burned alive.
Mason yanked back on the throttle and PAT dropped toward the street below. At fifty feet to go, he slammed the throttle forward. The turbines screamed and the hull shook so hard it nearly tore apart. The transport clawed for lift even as inertia continued pulling it lower.
He stared down gritting his teeth, waiting for the bone-crunching impact to shove his pelvis up through his ribcage.
The deltas shrieked up at him like a god descending from Olympus. Terror and wonder gleamed in their eyes. They backed away, wary of getting too close.
The twisted wreck below rushed up in a blur.
He’d overreacted. The emotional response coupled with the unfamiliarity with the operational parameters of the transport combined to cause disaster. Like many catastrophic accidents, seemingly small mistakes could combine to cause unthinkable disaster.
The transport’s skids crashed into the passenger cockpit door. Metal screeched against metal. Glass fragments exploded out tearing into the flesh of the nearest delta. Its screams were lost to the groaning of metal stretched beyond its tensile strength.
And then he was in the air again.
The harness straps viciously cut into his thighs as the vehicle lifted into the air. It half-bounced, half-accelerated off the crash site. The cartilage between his vertebrae flattened like jello discs smashed in a concrete accordion.
The impact jarred his hands off the control joysticks. With no direct input, PAT leveled itself out ten feet above the wreck.
Mason looked down into the crashed chopper and saw two bodies. The pilot and one of the operators in black tactical gear. He eased PAT lower and found no one else.
So everyone but these two unlucky bastards survived the crash. The survivors must’ve headed for Milagro Tower. He scanned down the street and saw another pocket of deltas, less than a dozen, gathered in the center of the street. They were bunched up around something.
They were feeding.
But on what?
Or who?
Mason worked the controls and left the chopper behind. He swooped down on the pack ahead. Some of the more timid ones scrambled away to safety, while others ignored his approach completely. At the center of their activity lay two bodies in black tactical gear.
The rear guard had been overrun. Which meant nobody was left to protect the others.
He spotted a smaller knot of deltas further on. Their filthy bodies packed so tight at the center that Mason couldn’t make out the victim.
Please, God.
Please.
Mason hit the throttle. He bumped the nav joystick forward dipping the front lower. PAT flew in hard and fast. The landing skids tore into them, carving a channel through their ranks. The vehicle canted over forty-five degrees as their limbs and heads smacked off the skids.
The pack consciousness shifted. The feeding frenzy died and they turned as one to consider the new threat. Hands grasped for the skids. Several got a grip and dragged PAT, and Mason, lower.
Mason stomped on the fingers curled around the skids. Deltas howled in pain as his boots crushed slender bones. He broke free and lifted a few feet above their heads.
Numerous dead and partially dismembered deltas surrounded a body at the center. Despite its mutilated state, he recognized the beard and lanky frame.
Ahmed.
An M4 rifle and an empty magazine lay on the pavement next to him. Evidence of shrapnel hits radiated from his position. A fragmentation grenade.
He must’ve sacrificed himself to give the others a chance.
Mason stared at Ahmed’s shredded corpse and closed his eyes. As sorry as he was for the man, he couldn’t help but register elation that it hadn’t been Theresa or Beth.
He lifted into the air and left the gruesome scene behind. Looking ahead, he saw a group of deltas disappear inside the tall, white cylindrical tower.
He prayed to any god that would listen that his daughter and wife were still alive.
And would remain so.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Skimming above the ground, Mason searched for signs that his family had come this way. He saw nothing but the occasional body of a dead delta that had likely been shot. So much death. So much darkness. All because of some virus.
The final days of news media coverage ran stories speculating that the virus had been manufactured. What if it was true?
Technology had taken mankind to unimaginable heights. Could it be that it also brought them to such depths? Irony was a concept only an advanced brain could appreciate. Appreciate was perhaps not quite the right word.
Would modern man die off leaving the deltas to scratch their way back to civilization or, perhaps more likely, to surrender to oblivion?
Mason cut off the morose ponderings as he neared the tower. Melancholic contemplation wasn’t going to do shit to help his family.
Several deltas emerged from the building’s entrance. They glared up at him some fifty feet above their heads. A few more joined them.
He wasn’t going to get inside on the ground floor. Which left only one other option. He pushed the throttle forward and the transport climbed higher. Office windows slid by in a blur as he picked up speed. The roofs of surrounding buildings appeared as he neared the top.
A gust of wind hit him from behind. PAT careened toward the face of the building. Mason jerked the nav joystick back and the machine slid to a stop two feet from a huge glass window. At this close distance, the interior revealed itself. An expanse of tightly packed cubicles. Empty aisles carved channels through the ordered hive. The quintessential model of corporate productivity. But all the worker bees were gone. Surprisingly, there were no signs of the devastation that had claimed the city. Neat stacks of papers lay on desks. White boards hung on cubicle walls held grand schematics that no longer mattered.
On the desk nearest to the window, small framed pictures of loved ones sat in a neat row next to a dark flatscreen. Whoever once gazed upon those pictures to marshall the grit needed to grind out another day in the matrix was now long gone.
In all likelihood, the ones in the pictures were as well.
Mason backed away from the vertical surface and continued his ascent. Another minute and he crested the edge of the roof. A large circular helipad occupied the center. Maybe a hundred feet in diameter. In the center of it was a painted red circle with the number twelve inside. This must’ve been the chopper’s intended destination.
Before it crashed and became a delta magnet.
A lower deck shaped like a twenty pointed star surrounded the helipad. It extended beyond the helipad on all sides, likely to catch anyone that got blown off before they pitched over the actual edge and fell a thousand feet to a conclusive end below.
Mason rose above the helipad and then slid over to line up in the center of the circle. Hovering above the painted number, he eased back on the power. A gust hammered him from the side. PAT glided toward the edge as Mason brought it down hard. The skids bounced a few times and then ground to a stop.
Los Angeles extended in all directions. He punched through the screen to initiate the shutdown sequence. The turbines spun down as Mason released the latches on the harness. He stepped down and stumbled forward, finding the solidity of the surface unfamiliar.
Another gust of wind whipped across the roof and he braced against it. It wasn’t like a hurricane about to toss him off the top like a coconut from a palm tree, but it was still damn unsettling.
He climbed down the ladder at the east edge of the helipad onto the larger deck below. As he stepped off the final rung, muffled voices echoed through the door to his right. He couldn’t make out the words above the whistling wind.
Mason posted up on the side of the door and waited.
The handle rattled but the door stayed closed. It rattled again. The door itself shook as whoever was inside tried to batter it down.
�
�Get that goddamn thing open!”
Mason recognized the voice. Anton’s. The bastard that had taken his family and left him to die.
A shot fired and the lock blew outward.
Mason hugged the wall waiting for the door to open.
Another shot and then a body rammed the door open. A large figure in a dark suit fell forward.
Mason tackled him to the ground before he had a chance to recover. He caught the guy in the temple with a vicious elbow. A 1911 pistol clattered away and Mason dove for it. He recovered it and had the sites aligned and his finger inside the trigger guard even before the suit managed to lift his head. A part of his brain registered the unique filigree design along the chromed slide. A yellow rose of Texas. There was only one person in the world that carried a Dan Wesson ECO 1911 .45 with a filigreed yellow rose of Texas along the slide.
The face that looked up at him was no surprise.
“Sarge? I thought you were dead!”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Two more figures stumbled through the open door and Mason pivoted to line up the front site on the second one. Anton Reshenko. A man with a pot belly that extended further than his time left on earth.
Mason shoved him up against the wall and dug the muzzle of the pistol into his fleshy throat.
The bastard’s eyes opened wide in a most gratifying way. He knew this was it. Good. Mason cocked the hammer and grinned wickedly when Anton flinched at the clicking sound.
“Where is my family?” Mason shouted in his face.
“Please don’t hurt my papa,” Iridia cried out.
Miro picked himself up and pulled Iridia away from the confrontation. He knew Mason well enough to see the danger. “Sarge! Don’t do it!”
Mason dug the muzzle up under Anton’s jawbone. The dirtbag groaned in pain. Lucky for him all his suffering would soon be over. The brain can’t process input when it’s painting a wall in a splatter pattern. “Stay out of this, Miro!”
Iridia struggled to break free but Miro’s bulky six-six frame held her fast. “Don’t hurt him!” she screamed.
The Last Peak (Book 2): The Darwin Collapse Page 30
