“Why?” Deacon said. “Why would anyone do something like this?”
“Sibling rivalry, like that kid said, if it’s really his uncle. Wants to fuck up his brother’s whole deal? Who knows?”
“We’ve had this footage for several days and we’re only seeing it now. Maybe it’s too much to expect our graveyard shift crew to watch all of the monitors, but we blew it.”
“Ah, you know how it is, chief. Two o’clock in the morning in South Haven? What the hell ever happens here? A whole bunch of nothing. Whoever we had on duty was probably catching up on sleep.”
They continued to watch the recording. After spending about ten minutes distributing eggs throughout the grass, the stranger returned to the bench and packed up his briefcase. Briefcase in hand, he walked to the south side of the town square and turned the corner.
“Now let’s see where he goes next,” Deacon said. “Maybe he gets in a vehicle and we can identify the tags.”
Jim brought up another view. The stranger walked at a brisk pace on the sidewalk along the south side of Main Street. There were no cars parked on the street at that hour.
He disappeared at the edge of the screen.
“Don’t lose him,” Deacon said.
“Relax, chief.” Jim tapped the keys.
They had the man on the next camera feed. He had left the commercial district and roamed into the residential area.
“What’s he doing?” Deacon asked.
“He’s got that canister out again,” Jim said. “He’s like a goddamn Johnny Appleseed, isn’t he?”
The stranger was distributing eggs into the lawns of the homes that he passed.
Deacon felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He sat against the edge of the desk.
“Busy as a bee,” Jim said. He brought up another camera, which continued to track the masked stranger performing his nighttime misdeeds. “I really think he spread those things through the entire community.”
They had assumed the town square was ground zero. As it turned out, the town square was merely a waystation for the infestation.
Deacon unclipped his two-way radio from his belt.
“I’ve got to tell Dr. Bailey about this,” he said. “This is a game changer. Everyone who lives here could be infected.”
Chapter 25
Hannah had failed.
She’d gathered her team in the conference room and announced the news her director had shared privately with her. Their investigation was being shut down, effectively immediately. The National Guard had mobilized at the South Haven perimeter, and an Army helicopter was being dispatched to the clubhouse to collect the members of her team.
None of her colleagues blamed her for the failure, but she blamed herself. They had found the root cause of the sickness, but had discovered no cure, no treatment that could be effectively deployed to help the community. In her opinion, that was failure. She was unable to help the people she had been sent to save.
She wasn’t accustomed to failure, in any form, certainly not in her professional life. This experience was going to haunt her for a long time.
After the meeting had broken up and her shell-shocked teammates began quickly packing up equipment, Emily approached her. A Latino man that Hannah hadn’t seen before hung at her side. Hannah questioned how he had gotten inside the clubhouse, but at that point the answer was moot.
“What about everyone who lives here?” Emily asked. “What happens to those of us who aren’t sick?”
Hannah blinked away tears. “I’m sorry. I did everything I could to help.”
“What about us?” Emily asked again, fire in her eyes.
“You’ll be left behind,” Hannah said and found it difficult to meet the young woman’s gaze. “No one will be permitted to leave. Beyond that, I really don’t know what’s going to happen, especially since . . .”
“Since what?” the Latino man asked. “My name’s, Alex, by the way.”
Nodding absently, Hannah dragged in a breath. “Deacon found evidence that the infestation was spread throughout the entire community, not only in the town square. He literally found video footage of someone distributing eggs.”
“Who?” Alex asked.
Hannah shrugged. “Still unknown.”
“I was sort of thinking that it had to be more broadly dispersed, too,” Emily said. “There are just so many people roaming around out there . . . they couldn’t have all been at the town square that night.”
“I disclosed it to my director as soon as Deacon told me,” Hannah said. “I don’t know if that was factored into their decision to shut us down—I think they were going to shut us down anyway. But it doesn’t bode well, Emily, I’ll be frank with you. I’m scared for all of you now.”
“You did what you could, right?” Emily offered a plaintive smile.
“Why can’t they airlift the healthy people out of here?” Alex asked. There was a red tint in his eyes, which Hannah guessed was from extreme stress. He looked furious, too.
“If it were up to me, I would,” Hannah said. “Logistically speaking, it’s probably not feasible. I’m sorry. It’s all out of my hands.”
Hannah turned away from them. She couldn’t stand seeing the hopelessness and fear in their eyes, and thinking that on some level, she was responsible.
She rejoined her team and assisted with packing their essential equipment—primarily, the electronics and blood and tissue samples—that they had been instructed to bring. Everything else, such as the gurneys and other lab items, were being left behind.
Their lone test subject, the solitary pianist, continued to work the keys in the ballroom. Her playing had become progressively worse, and was little better than a toddler’s aimless hammering of a toy piano.
She realized she still had the two-way radio Deacon had given her. She owed the man a good-bye, but she couldn’t bring herself to get in touch with him and tell him that they were being abandoned.
It would have been nice to get to know him better, she thought. C’est la vie.
She was about to track down Emily and hand over the radio to her, when she heard the familiar thumping of helicopter rotor blades outside. Her satellite phone chirped, and she answered it and spoke to a woman who tersely informed Hannah of what she already knew.
Their ride had arrived.
***
Hannah’s team hustled outside via the clubhouse’s front entrance and hurried into the vast parking lot. The nurse from the clinic, Jenn, rushed out there, too, though Hannah had promised a ride only to her team members. When Hannah called to her, the woman turned a vicious glare on her and gave her the middle finger.
Pulling her leather case over her shoulder, Hannah made her move to get out, too. Alex grabbed her arm.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“I have to.” Hannah shrugged off his hand. “This is my only chance to leave. I’m sorry.”
“Listen to me carefully, senora,” he said. “There’s a mob of sick people, they’re out there roaming through the neighborhood like some kind of herd. The helicopter is going to attract them.” He leveled his dark-eyed gaze on Hannah. “No one’s going to make it.”
A scream of terror tore Hannah’s attention away from him. Hannah looked out at the dimly-lit parking lot.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“They’re already here,” Emily said. She shrank away from the doorway.
The gigantic Black Hawk helicopter hovered about a hundred feet above the clubhouse grounds, blue marker beacon blinking, rotor blades spinning thunderously. The members of her team, hoping to evacuate, instead had been set upon on all sides by a rapidly growing crowd of infected residents, at least twenty of them, perhaps more. It was difficult to count them because their numbers grew by the second as they streamed into the area. The smart, dedicated people that she had been working with only a short while ago didn’t stand a chance. Screaming, fighting futilely, they folded underneath the savage, mindless attacks of the seething mob
.
Hannah’s knees felt watery. She was their leader, and this had happened on her watch. The sense of failure immobilized her.
The infected residents shouted and bayed at the helicopter. Someone clambered on top of a CDC van and flung a brick at the craft that fell far short of its target. Another person hurled a shoe.
Hannah’s sat phone buzzed in her hand, snapping her out of her daze. The same woman she had spoken to only a couple of minutes ago curtly informed her that unless the landing zone was cleared, they would be unable to extract anyone.
Hannah had failed her team, but she couldn’t fail the last couple of survivors counting on her.
“Give us a few minutes, please,” Hannah said, and turned to the others. “Can we try the roof?”
“Good idea,” Alex said. “There’s a maintenance room at the back of the building with a staircase that leads to the roof.” He spun on his heel.
“How do you know that?” Hannah asked, but she had started to follow them down the corridor.
“I’ve catered a few parties here,” Alex said. He added: “I have a frozen yogurt franchise on Main Street. Feels kind of like another life now.”
Hannah found it difficult to imagine the cool, steely-eyed Latino as the purveyor of frozen treats, and decided there was more to his background than he had let on. But he might be just the kind of person they needed in a situation like this one.
They reached the door to the maintenance room. Hannah tried to open it, but it was locked.
“Stand back, everyone,” Alex said. He had drawn a pistol. “May want to cover your ears.”
He fired at the lockset. Orange sparks flashed, and the gun’s report was like an explosion going off, making Hannah’s ears hurt. But the door creaked open. Alex stepped forward and pulled the door aside, gestured for the women to enter.
The maintenance room was a damp, grey chamber full of humming machines and exposed ductwork. A concrete staircase on the far end of the room ascended to a door clearly marked, “Rooftop Access – Authorized Personnel Only.”
That door was locked, too. Alex blasted open the lockset with his pistol.
“If you’re trying to earn yourself a ride out of here I think you’ve done that,” Hannah said to him. She glanced at Emily. “You, too, of course. I’ll gladly vouch for all of you.”
“Let’s just get there,” Alex said.
They hurried through the doorway. Beyond a small brick alcove, the shingles that served as roof of the building were slick with rain.
The Black Hawk hovered a short distance away. The rush of air created by the whirring rotor blades was like a hurricane.
Hannah clicked on her sat phone. She shouted into the speaker: “My team is on the roof!”
“Copy that, we’ll move into position,” the woman responded. “Stay clear until I give the order.”
Five more minutes, and we’re out of here, Hannah thought, clutching her bag against her. The past several hours in South Haven had been the equivalent of a bruising tour through Hell. She would never be the same after this; the faces of all those she had lost would haunt her dreams for years to come.
The Black Hawk drew closer. It was difficult to hear her own heartbeat over the chopping of the copter blades, but suddenly, Hannah thought she heard gunfire.
“Someone’s shooting at the helicopter!” Alex said.
Of course they are, Hannah thought, and couldn’t suppress a rueful smile. The frenzied were out of their minds, but some of them had firearms and other weapons and held no compunctions about using them.
Bluish sparks danced along the undercarriage of the helicopter.
“We’re coming under fire!” Hannah’s contact barked on the sat phone.
“Just get to us, please,” Hannah said. “We’re right here!”
Emily abruptly seized Hannah’s arm. She pointed ahead of them, at the edge of the roof, and shouted in Hannah’s ear. “Look.”
A young man clambered like a monkey onto the roof. He had a scruffy beard and was completely naked—except for the rifle he had strapped across his chest. He planted his feet on the shingles and swiveled around, hands on the gun, seeking a target. Their group was partially concealed within the alcove and escaped his view, but Hannah knew that wouldn’t last long.
Two more of the infected followed onto the roof, and Hannah figured there must have been a parked vehicle or other structure nearby that facilitated them reaching the top of the clubhouse. One man had a hunting knife clenched between his teeth. Another guy had a baseball bat, the meat of the bat broken off and the business end sharp as a hunting spear.
Moving like drones under the influence of a single hive mind, the frenzied trio began to roam across the roof. They moved slowly, their progress slowed by the tremendous rush of air currents the helicopter had created, but they were resolute, maniacally determined to find them.
Beside Hannah, Alex had drawn his pistol again, but he was the only one on their team who had a firearm or any sort of useful weapon.
Gunfire continued to hammer the helicopter. The copter bucked and swayed.
A tall, lumbering figure stepped around the corner of the alcove and seized Hannah by the throat.
Hannah was so shocked by her attacker’s sudden appearance that she didn’t even manage a scream before her air flow was cut off.
Both hands clamped around Hannah’s throat, the attacker lifted her off the ground. It was a woman. Damp, matted hair hung in her eyes, and she was naked from the waist down. She wore a soaked-through pink tank top that had a message stretched across her large breasts: Stop Staring.
The woman snarled and uttered something unintelligible, but it sounded like it included the word, bitch.
Gasping, Hannah dropped the sat phone and used both hands to try to break the woman’s grip, utilizing a technique she had learned from her self-defense training, but it was like trying to force apart a mechanically-powered steel vise. The attacker was supernaturally strong, rendering Hannah’s training useless.
This is it, Hannah thought, her vision getting blurry. She thought about her parents and how she wished she could have seen them one last time.
Alex stepped forward and calmly shot her attacker in the head. The woman’s hands fell away from Hannah, and her body collapsed like a robot’s that had its battery removed. Freed, Hannah dropped to the floor. Someone caught her before she slammed her head against the alcove’s brick wall.
“I’ve got you.” It was Emily. “Take your time. Breathe.”
Hannah sucked in short, painful breaths. She was dizzy, and her throat felt as if it were encircled with bands of fire. She was certain that the woman’s crushing chokehold had left behind bruises on her flesh.
But she was alive. Air had never tasted so delicious.
Gunfire rang out, dangerously close.
The trio of rooftop hunters had spotted them.
***
Alex was terrified, but he had never felt so alive.
During his time working with the cartel, he had sampled various drugs, both legal and illegal. His favorite had been amphetamines. When taking on major assignments, he would ingest a liberal dose and be wired for days, able to plow through the cartel’s dirty work at a breakneck pace.
He hadn’t so much as sipped an ounce of beer since he had left behind that sordid life, but at that moment on the roof, he felt amped up on powerful drugs. All of his senses approached a sort of hyper-realistic clarity. He was as focused as a laser beam.
He wanted to stay on the roof and try to knock down the trio of hunters with his Beretta, but logic prevailed. There was a time to fight, and a time to flee and regroup. He could easily blow through all of his remaining ammo on these guys, and the night was still young.
As he urged the women to flee back inside, he looked over his shoulder and saw more of the crazy bastards climbing onto the roof.
Two of them looked like Wayne, and the ex-soldier he had helped Wayne tie up and confine earlier. They both were a
rmed and utterly deranged.
So that’s what happened to those guys, Alex thought.
He realized they would never make it onto the helicopter. The chopper itself was under fire from the armed maniacs on the ground. The Army or whoever they were was going to say good riddance for this rescue mission and abandon them all to die in South Haven.
Dr. Bailey leaned against Emily as they charged down the staircase, back into the maintenance room. Alex brought up the rear. When they had all scrambled inside, Alex heaved the door shut behind them.
Closing the door wouldn’t do much good to slow their pursuers. In order to get onto the roof in the first place, Alex had destroyed the lockset.
He pounded down the stairs.
“I dropped the . . . sat phone up there,” Dr. Bailey said in a ragged voice. She coughed, one hand massaging her swollen throat, her eyes red with tears. “No other way to . . . get in touch with the . . . rescue crew.”
“Forget about it,” Alex said. “We can’t go back up there, and we’re not safe in here, either. They’re coming through that door any second. I saw more of them getting on the roof, too.”
“Okay,” Emily said. “Where can we go?”
Alex thought fast. “Follow me. Move quickly.”
He flung open the door to the maintenance room and rushed into the corridor beyond. The others followed on his heels.
Alex raced along the hallway, wet shoes clapping on tile. They were making a lot of noise, which bugged him, but at that point speed mattered more than stealth.
They reached the marble-floored lobby. Alex had a faint hope of escaping via the front entrance, but that idea was instantly dashed when he saw the maniacs had clustered around the doors and were pounding against the glass with their fists, weapons, and even their foreheads. The glass rattled in its frame, fissures spreading rapidly. Soon they would bust through.
“This way,” Alex said.
He raced to the arched doorway for the clubhouse bar-and-grill.
The oak-paneled dining room was steeped in shadows, the only light filtering inside from the lobby beyond. All of the cloth-covered tables were set with flatware, napkins, and glasses, and the barstools were arranged at the counter, ready for patrons that might never visit again.
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