Oh my God…It has no eyelids.
Even at that distance, he knew in the pit of his belly that the jagged thing sticking out of that creature’s face, below and between its unblinking, owl-like eyes, was its nose. Or rather, what was left of what had once been its nose. That, along with its eyelids, part of its forehead, and the fleshy part of both cheeks was simply gone, like a demon had attacked its face with a huge eraser and wiped it all away.
Gary swallowed hard and fought the wave of nausea that washed over him. That was no monster, that was a human being.
The horrors built on one another with every foot closer they grew. The lumpy, melted appearance—some of that was a jacket, melted just like a cigarette filter when one sprayed acetate on it, except that it seemed to have fused into the person’s flesh. But patches of it, where it had a mottled look instead of lumpy, had nothing to do with melted clothes fused into it. Those were splotches where its skin had melted off or rubbed away, somehow. What he’d first taken to be a draw string, he realized now, was in reality an exposed tendon.
The monster-man emitted a sound, a bubbling, gurgling noise loud enough for Gary to hear from twenty feet away over a Jeep engine’s roar, and raised one melted stump, once its hand, and the gurgling, wet groan in Gary’s ears became words that tumbled out over missing lips: “Help…me…”
Horror struck Gary like a hammer blow when, right before the Jeep struck, the melted-wax man reached for him with a melted-wax hand, clutching something. But a heartbeat later, the Jeep struck the thing that had once been a man, yet the impact didn’t even make the vehicle shudder. Splotch—the monster burst like a water balloon over the Jeep’s hood and windshield, completely blocking vision out. Instead of the road, there was only a greasy, globular gore decorating the windshield in bloody red and blackened clumps, like already-drying, dead blood.
The driver said nothing, and didn’t slow as he turned northward. He clung to the steering wheel, shoulders hunched forward, his knuckles turning white except when he reached down to flip on the windshield wipers.
The blades whined and struggled, but slowly made their way across the windshield.
Gary saw a metallic glint, amid the grime and gore, and leaned forward to peer at it, morbidly curious. Abruptly, bile shot up the back of his throat, for there on the windshield lay the thing the burst man had held just before his death.
It was a chocolate bar.
53
In town, the racket of combat continued. Nick paused, uncertain. They could use his help in there. But Gary…Whatever crimson explosion Nick had just watched through his rifle scope from where they’d stopped the vehicle, it hadn’t slowed Gary.
Nick had his rifle out, though. He focused on the second highest-ranked target in Clarks Crossing. He adjusted the dial, and Gary came into sharp focus. No ATVs were near Gary, as they’d veered away when he’d struck what had looked like a paint bomb of some sort.
Corey said, “Dad, we have to go.”
Nick didn’t respond. He brought the crosshairs over the back of Gary’s head. He breathed out halfway, then held it, and shifted his aim a millimeter to the right to account for the SUV’s increasing speed. He squeezed on the trigger, increasing pressure—
Bang. The rifle kicked hard, recoil driving the scope back into his cheek.
Nick shouted in surprise and grabbed his eye.
Gary!
He ignored the trickle of blood welling over on his cheek and brought the rifle back up. At first, he couldn’t find his target, and had to zoom out a bit to find his prey’s SUV. It was still moving. No, dammit, Gary couldn’t be allowed to escape. Nick couldn’t tell if he’d hit his target. If he had, Gary’s brains would be scattered across the windshield, but from his angle, all Nick could see was the vehicle careening carelessly forward, away, possibly toward escape.
He brought the rifle butt into himself more firmly, to get a more solid shoulder-weld than he’d had last time, but the SUV had angled away, and all Nick could see was the back windshield. It did have a bullet hole in it…He shifted down and to the left. The front passenger tire would do. It would have to.
He squeezed again, but this time, when the rifle bucked, he had a firm grip and avoided another scope-bite. The SUV veered right. Ahead of it, a derailed train lay on its side, maybe a quarter mile north of Burnsville. The SUV’s sudden course change looked to Nick almost like a giant magnet on the train had latched onto Gary’s SUV. The terrain was rough, and the SUV bounced left, then right, before hitting a little bluff where soil had washed out somehow. It looked wet, the SUV kicking up a great gout of mud as, hitting the bluff, it vaulted up into the air a good six feet. Its arc was taking it straight for a huge puddle just to one side of the train engine.
The SUV landed dead-center in the giant puddle, sending a wave of muddy liquid sploshing to every side. It lost all momentum. At first, it sat motionless in the puddle’s center, but a second later, Nick saw through his scope, the SUV tilted. The back-right wheel sank into the liquid, then the other rear wheel sank. Angled like the Titanic going down, the whole vehicle then sank into the morass, inch by inch. Nick kept his scope trained, waiting to see if Gary got out. If so, he wouldn’t get far…
But the door never opened. No one got out. It took a minute, but the SUV continued to sink.
Corey, behind Nick with his rifle out the side window, said, “How deep is that pond?”
Nick didn’t know. Where had it come from? He had no idea. But moments after Corey asked, the SUV settled again, dropping down until, at last, even the roof went under, and only the antenna stood above the surface. Then it, too, disappeared. It had been bent in an arc from the front of the roof to the back, rising several feet above the SUV itself.
Nick smiled. “At least eight feet.”
They stared at the puddle, each through their own scopes, for a long minute. At last, though, Nick brought his scope away from his face. “Come on. There’s a battle to win. We’ll get uphill and pretend to be Carlos Hathcock.”
“Who?” Corey brought his rifle down, too, and wore a confused look.
Nick shrugged. No time for history lessons about the Marine Corps’ greatest sniper. “Never mind. We’ll head northeast a bit and take to the trees.”
Before he could get situated, though, a pair of quad ATVs pulled up alongside them. A man climbed off and tucked his helmet under one arm, approaching the passenger-side window.
Nick rolled it down. “How’s the war?”
The man’s mouth pulled back on one side before he replied, “We’re holding. It’s like they don’t have anyone directing things past the unit level. We’re maneuvering around behind them. But we’re under orders from the mayor to get someone named Misty. That you, ma’am?” The man bent down far enough to look into the window.
Misty said, “Sure is. My daughter’s in there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She clapped Nick on the shoulder. “Look me up when this dust-up is done. Thanks for getting me, mister. I reckon you don’t know what a big thing you done, today, but I won’t ever forget it.”
He smiled but didn’t reply, and she quickly scrambled from the vehicle.
When the ATV pulled away, and its receding noise got to the point where Nick could hear himself think again, he glanced at Corey. “Let’s go, son.”
Corey nodded, eyes locked onto Burnsville beyond, his lips flatlined.
Back in the driver’s seat, Nick turned their vehicle back on, then found himself clenching his jaw. His boy had grown harder since the CMEs. No, he was no boy. Not anymore. Corey had become a man, one Nick was proud to call his son—but not one he could take credit for. He’d done his best, since the end of the world, at least, to be the father Corey needed him to be, but Nick was under no illusions about how well he’d done at it. Corey had become a fine young man in spite of his father, not because of him.
But Nick would never stop trying to be better today than he had been yesterday. Maybe, with time, he’d e
arn the son he’d been given…
They pulled away and drove toward the tree line. As they drove, the afterimage of Gary sinking replayed in Nick’s head, and a shudder ran through him. What a way to go. He couldn’t wait to tell Maggie all about his adventures with his son, though. He could see her smile in his mind’s eye, nodding as he praised Corey for saving his life, and pictured her hands on his shoulders, rubbing tension away as she agreed with him about Corey’s courage and quick thinking.
And then, he knew with a sudden finality, he would tell her how he felt. Gary was just the latest in a long line of proof that, in life, no one knew if they’d have tomorrow to tell people how they felt. He wouldn’t let the sun go down before he did what he should have done already.
When they got to the trees, he parked, and he and Corey climbed out.
Nick said, “Ammo check.”
Corey glanced at his belt pouch. “Fifty-seven.”
Nick nodded. He had more like fifty rounds left on him. Well, that was more than they’d need, he suspected. “Make them count, son. Hard to get more. Take your time, and give them hell.”
Over the next half hour, the two men grimly kept score as they took turns firing at targets that presented themselves, in the back at first, but by the end, more and more of Nick’s shots found targets that had turned to face toward him—away from Burnsville.
54
Deep in his bones, Danny felt like there was suddenly more sunlight. That was foolish, of course, since there had been no clouds in the sky to begin with. So, what was going on? He stopped firing—he didn’t see any targets anyway—and cocked his head, listening. The enemy was still shooting, but…were there fewer now?
Abruptly, he got the same sensation as when talking to someone and turning around only to find the other party had left. “Cease fire,” he shouted. A few more shots, but they petered out quickly. He listened in the new silence.
Silence?
He peered up over the counter, out the now-gone bay glass storefront window. Nothing. “Anyone see them?”
Silence.
A woman said, “Markham, go scout the drive-through over there.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the only one without a bullet in you,” she replied.
A young man, grumbling, moved to the door. He peered out, took a deep breath, and then bolted outside. Danny watched as he ran from tree to tree, making his way across the parking lot that spanned three little shopping complexes, heading toward a fast-food drive-through lane. Between the landscaping there and the cinderblock restaurant it belonged to, the attackers had been shooting from a well-protected area, but then, so had the team Danny had somehow managed to join.
Funny, he didn’t know any of their names, except maybe Markham as of a minute ago, but he felt a kind of kinship with them he hadn’t experienced before. He trusted each of them with his life, and he didn’t trust anyone. Ever. But they hadn’t run, they’d stayed and fought beside him, and he found himself hoping they felt the same about him. Weird.
Across the parking lot, their grudging scout turned around and…he started walking toward them. Out in the open. Danny looked through his scope, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the man was smiling. Grinning ear to ear, actually, and holding one thumb up. And as Markham crossed the distance, no one shot him in the back.
Danny found himself grinning at his new battle brothers and sisters. In the back of his mind, he hoped this wasn’t just a matter of the enemy regrouping, or that they’d found some undefended path into the town’s heart, but his bones told him that wasn’t the case. They’d been pushed back—they’d left.
And he was still alive. He couldn’t wait to tell Misty.
Kent held one arm entwined with Brooke’s as they walked to the car they would drive out in to meet with Abram. The Clarks Crossing posse was gone, but there might yet be stragglers, and one thing Kent knew from hard experience was that people carried insane grudges for their lost loved ones, even if those had died because they were doing something wrong. One man or woman with a deer-hunting rifle and a grudge could ruin his day.
Once inside the car, he started it, but let it idle. His thoughts raced, but it was hard to form a whole one well enough to say it aloud.
“What’s on yer mind, babe?” Brooke was looking at him intently, her feet up on the passenger seat, knees by her chin. “You got something on it, and don’t tell me you don’t.”
“Um.” He smiled for her benefit and tried to collect those scattered thoughts. “Just the list of things to do is long, the hours to do them in is short. How many of our crew did we lose today? I got to figure that out. I got to tell their families. I got to move people around so that what’s important still gets done. Then, we’re lookin’ at a lake of toxic waste. Will it get into the water? We don’t do no farming, so it ain’t the worst thing, but how big is that water thing in the ground?”
“The aquafer?”
“Sure. Yeah. Like, is that going to wreck the farms we rely on for food? Or will it give our baby three heads, when I knock you up?” He grinned. It was an ongoing joke between them.
She didn’t smile back. “No more jokes, Kent. After all this, I know what kind of daddy you’ll make. I want a baby. I don’t want it to have three heads, though.”
Wow. That was a bombshell. But could he be surprised? He’d grown up on the rough side of things, and knew from watching others that people tended to get pregnant real quick if they survived a drive-by, or if their man did.
More surprisingly, though, he found that it didn’t make him want to run away screaming. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. “Ain’t nothing in this world that would make me happier, babe.”
Which reminded him of one more problem. Most of their dead, and most of the Crossing people’s, they were men. Some women, too, but mostly men. Now, there were a lot more women than men. The last thing Burnsville needed at the moment was the kind of instability that could happen when there were a lot more women than men. Not every guy did right, not every woman, either. At least that wasn’t something he had to deal with immediately, though. Dealing with all their wounded would be his first priority…
“You want to come with me to the hospital, babe?” He looked into her eyes. “I need to go talk to the wounded. Some won’t make it the night, so they can’t wait. It’s my job to—”
She nodded and interrupted. “Yes. Let’s get moving, then. After, we still having dinner with my momma?”
He shifted into Drive and said, “You bet. I can’t wait. She might have some ideas that will help us both to deal with all this.”
That afternoon, Abram stood beside Nick, staring at the pond of toxic waste only a quarter of a mile outside Burnsville. His thoughts wandered. “What the hell is it?”
Nick stood with his arm around his son, Corey. Apparently, they’d grown closer over the last few days than Abram had ever seen them before. But it was Corey who answered, “Toxic waste. Says so on that tanker car. It looks like they were trying to drive the train into town with that, but they never had the chance.”
Abram’s mouth turned up at the corners. The young man had no idea how close it had actually been… “And you said Gary’s car went into that cesspool?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I didn’t see him get out, either. I might have shot him, before we took out a tire. Can’t be sure.”
Corey, chuckling, said, “And I’m sure not going in there to make sure. But you should have seen it, Abram. My dad was so calm, like he was just plinking tin cans out back or something. Bang, bang, splash.”
Abram found himself turning to look at the duo. Wow, they really had grown closer. That was the unmistakable ring of pride in the son’s voice. That was new.
Miranda—no, she went by Misty, now, Abram reminded himself—stood on his other side. She said, “Yeah, well, Nick was cool as a cucumber back at my house, too. I wouldn’t have been so calm, but I’ll tell you all about it later, Abram. If he’d been all nervou
s, though, I’d likely have done gone and shot him, when he showed up with a hostage. But it worked, so no harm, no foul. You got a good hand, there, Abram.”
Thup, thup, thup—faintly at first, then with increasing volume, a rhythmic mechanical noise echoed across the open terrain. At first, he struggled to identify the noise, but it was eerily familiar. Then it hit him. “Helicopters?”
Everyone began talking at once. Frank spotted them first. “Northwest, low, over the trees.”
Abram’s gaze shifted, and they were obvious once he looked in the right direction. Five dots, growing larger with each passing second. They weren’t black, though. They were green. Military green.
Owen, over to his right, said, “Should we run?”
“No point,” Kent said before Abram could. It was true, of course. Armed helicopters would take them out easily, even running, in open terrain.
The helos passed overhead, high enough that Abram couldn’t feel the wind of their rotors. They swept eastward, circled Burnsville, then came back around, coming to a stop a hundred yards from the train wreck. There, they hovered briefly before beginning to descend.
Abram said, “We may as well go see what they want.”
No one objected, so they walked toward the helos, and by the time they arrived on foot, the rotors had slowed almost to a halt. They were arrayed in a semi-circle, noses pointed outward, but a small group of Army troops had gathered on the side nearest Abram and his companions. At fifty yards, armed soldiers with weapons held at the low-ready approached.
One said, “Please lay down your arms. Then, come with us. Someone wants to talk to you.”
Misty said, “No one’s taking my gun.”
The soldier who’d spoken said, “Negative. We aren’t here to disarm you. But no one is approaching Major Benson while armed. Your weapons will be left where you lay them.”
EMP Crisis Series (Book 3): Instant Mayhem Page 40
