“I think they’re a big help,” Samantha said, waving at and greeting every staring Uninfected she passed. “They’re a lot better workers than Infecteds. You tell them what to do, and it gets done. I was out at the pits where they’re filling sandbags, and they’d run out of bags. The infected workers and foremen were just standing around in the hot sun, but an uninfected man came up and said they could cut up the canvas from the awnings of the stores at a nearby shopping center. I put him in charge, and an hour later they were filling these colorful, peach-striped sandbags. I think they’re great, the Uninfecteds. Hi!” she said to a woman.
The woman whisked two small children across the street to the opposite sidewalk.
Chapter 21
BRISTOL, TENNESSEE
Infection Date 84, 0700 GMT (3:00 a.m. Local)
Rick Townsend returned to the claustrophobic utility room in the basement of the high school with deep concern etched on his face. “Is there a problem?” Noah’s sister Isabel asked. “Is the helicopter still coming?”
“Yes, and yes. The Black Hawk is still coming, but the situation up there has gone from bad to worse. Everybody should get up and get packed.”
That stirred the Miller family and Margus into action.
“What’s it like up there?” Noah asked as he stuffed the pockets of his backpack with the gear he had removed during their week-long stay in the besieged town.
“Falling apart. There are outbreaks all across town, and every E-2 out there is firing at shapes and shadows. We need to decide whether to stay down here, where it’s safer, or move over to the LZ, where it’s not, before all the lines collapse.”
“What do you think we should do?” Isabel asked. It annoyed Noah that she so totally relied on whatever her boyfriend thought.
Townsend filled his lungs deeply. “It’s a close call. But….”
When he didn’t finish his comment, Natalie asked, “But what?”
“When things go, they go fast. Right now, most everybody’s still following orders and holding positions, but they’re watching for signs. There won’t be any orders to abandon ship, but in the end, it’ll be every man for himself. I vote we go now, and defend that LZ…in case we’re the only ones left to defend it.”
Without any debate, it was decided. They would go, because Townsend said.
The lights flickered at the sound of a loud explosion outside, which Noah felt through his feet. Wide eyes flitted up, or toward the open doorway, or at each other. Another explosion plunged the room into total darkness. There were curses and confusion from the corridor outside. Rick flicked on his flashlight just before Noah found his own by feel.
“I don’t fuckin’ know!” a soldier shouted from the hallway. “I ain’t heard from the CO since yesterday! And the first sergeant didn’t come around this mornin’.”
The flashlights panned wildly as backpacks were hoisted onto shoulders with grunts. Noah’s family searched nooks and crannies for forgotten gear and checked each other out like at the beginning of a morning’s march on the road.
“Everyone ready?” Noah said.
“Anyone need to go potty?” Natalie asked.
“Natalie,” Noah said, “I don’t think—”
Townsend interrupted. “Good idea. No telling when we get our next biological break.” But no one needed to go. They all marched out of the utility room and labored toward the stairs under heavy loads.
“You leavin’ too?” one of the soldiers at the door asked Townsend. Noah couldn’t hear the Marine officer’s reply, but by the time Noah passed the two Guardsmen were in a heated argument. “They ain’t gonna tell us shit! It don’t happen like that. Try and get ’em on the radio. Try. Ain’t nobody answerin’.”
Outside, the night alit with flashes marking front lines that seemed close in all directions. The Infecteds that pressed in on the beleaguered town were either crazy, or starving, or semi-organized killing parties, and therefore in every case homicidal. Thick curtains of smoke, visible in each roaring explosion, formed the eye wall of their Pandoravirus disaster. Noah had to walk briskly to keep up. Townsend was in a hurry. The only sounds were the guns and explosions mere hundreds of yards away and their boots crunching through debris in between. A second story window shattered—a stray round or shrapnel?—and rained glass near a ducking Chloe. Noah was too tense to rebuke her for her subsequent cursing.
He couldn’t even see Townsend and Isabel at the head of their column. Natalie was hunched over and aiming her rifle at every dark hiding place they passed. Chloe’s head turned left, right, left, right, and she too stooped low. Behind Noah, Jake seemed alert and Margus walked backwards bringing up the rear.
A civilian couple carrying a toddler raced along the sidewalk from one doorway to the next on the opposite side of the street. “You’re going the wrong way!” the mother holding the child called out to them before making the next dash into the shadows.
Noah picked up his pace, passing Chloe and joining Natalie. “Did you hear them?” Noah whispered. “That woman said we’re going the wrong way.”
“Rick knows what he’s doing,” was Natalie’s curt and irritating reply. The sights they passed were randomly illuminated by the booming main guns of tanks. Gone was all concern about collateral damage or noncombatant casualties. Noah and Natalie’s rifles found possible targets everywhere. A shattered glass door to a hair salon. An overturned portable generator.
Noah jogged ahead to find their new leader. He was out of breath when he pulled even with Rick and Isabel. “That woman back there,” Noah said, panting, “said we were headed…the wrong way. There must be…trouble ahead.”
“Yeah?” came Townsend’s reply from behind glowing night vision goggle lenses. “There’s trouble in every direction.” He slowed at an intersection long enough to look both ways. Not for traffic, but for jumpy, trigger-happy troops or coiled and crazed Infecteds.
Noah followed him across the street. “Do you know what we’re heading into?”
“No. But I know where that Black Hawk is supposed to pick us up.”
On the far side of the intersection, Noah waited until Isabel arrived. Both ducked as a thunderous boom rattled the few remaining intact windows. “This is insane!”
“Just do what Rick says,” Isabel replied, entrusting blind faith in the Marine.
At the next intersection, Townsend stopped to talk to two helmeted, prone men. Noah kept going, intending to join them, but Isabel grabbed his arm. “What? I don’t even get to listen?”
“Jesus, Noah. Let Rick do his job.”
Townsend might be responsible for Isabel, but Noah was responsible for his family. It wasn’t an obligation he was willing to delegate. He joined the kneeling Marine beside two soldiers, one of whom was saying, “…about an hour ago. Since then, we’ve had no contact with anybody beyond this point, sir.”
Townsend turned to Noah. “The LZ is two blocks past this line, which might be the last one that’s intact.”
“Can you radio the crew? Give them new coordinates?”
Townsend shook his head. “Nope. I’ve got their frequency, but no luck so far. The only contact I’ve had is via sat phone with Fort Campbell, where the Black Hawk took off a while ago in the middle of a shitstorm. Now, I can’t even raise Fort Campbell.”
“Do you know it’s still coming?” In the darkness, Noah could discern no reply.
“What’s up?” Isabel asked, joining them.
Townsend said, “We’re gonna have to go out there and secure the LZ ourselves.”
“Okay,” she said in what Noah thought was naïveté. “Let’s do it.”
“Can’t we get some help?” Noah said, turning to look at the dark, prone forms of the nearby soldiers. If they heard his request, they ignored it.
“You’re not gonna fuckin’ shoot us, are you?” Townsend said to the Guardsmen.
“No, sir,” came one soldier’s reply. It somehow seemed inadequate.
“Get on the radio and pass the word that we’re heading out,” Townsend ordered.
“Sir, it’s just me and my fire team, plus those two cops across the road. Five of us. That’s the only contact I’ve got. As a matter of fact, if you’d give us the order to pull back from here, that’d be good enough for me.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Townsend said. “If you see a Black Hawk take off from that grocery store parking lot down the street, you’ve got my permission to pull back. We came from the high school. That’s where I’d head.”
“Yessir! Thank you, sir.”
“But if you don’t see it in about fifteen minutes or so, we’re comin’ back this way and I expect to see you here. Don’t bug out till we’re airborne or back inside, got it?”
“Yes, sir. Good luck, sir.”
Townsend crossed the next street. As Isabel followed, Noah heard, “Lucky bastards,” from one of the soldiers, and, “Maybe,” from the other.
Noah caught up with Townsend and Isabel at the edge of a low wall beside a dark parking lot, which was filled with debris. The lampposts were all lying flat on the ground, having been cut at about waist level. Broken wooden pallets, crates smashed open, and plastic wrap and Styrofoam peanuts were all that remained of the airlifted supplies that had once been flown into the impromptu heliport.
Chloe, Jake, and Margus finally gathered around them.
“This is a free fire zone,” Townsend informed them all. “Anything you see—anyone—is a threat. If they make a move toward you, or they’re armed, drop ’em. Don’t worry about any niceties like challenges or warning shots. First shot center mass. Got it?”
Noah’s children both nodded. Townsend rose to head into the parking lot, but Isabel stopped him. “Look!” Three people ran out through the blackened doorway of the grocery store. They didn’t seem to be together, but they ran toward where Noah and the others lay on the street. Townsend, who wore night vision goggles, stared down the barrel of his carbine.
Bam! One of the three people fell. Bam-bam-bam-bam! The other two fell.
Townsend looked around. He hadn’t fired his weapon. The shooters had been Chloe and Natalie. Their three targets lay still. “All right,” Townsend said. “Let’s go.”
They crossed the parking lot. Townsend steered them clear of spots littered with discarded and bloody bandages, IV drip bags and hoses, dark stained swabs, and other refuse from first aid that might, now, harbor viral contaminants. He placed each member of their group behind whatever cover was available roughly in a broad circle around the cleared landing zone. Jake lay behind an overturned gurney. Townsend stacked a few crates around where Natalie settled. Chloe’s position was beside the broad cylindrical concrete base of a severed lamppost. Margus covered the open doorways and shattered windows of the grocery store from behind some shopping carts. Isabel was put next to a car resting on its rims. And Noah got a position with nothing but the concrete curb for protection. He guarded against intruders from the street from beside his bulky backpack.
Not seconds after Noah settled into place and raised his rifle, a man rounded the building along the street ahead. He was ranting and throwing his arms in the air as if explaining something to someone seen only by him. “Back! Run back! He said it. They said. Stay back! Back, back-back-back!”
He was demented. Insane. Rick was thirty yards away.
“Dad!” Chloe called to him.
The crazy man heard her. “What? Who’s there? Who, who-who-who!” He headed for Noah’s daughter, lurching one way, then the other. The demons in his damaged head spoke through him. “Come out, come out, little girl, wherever you are!”
The man stopped and stood straight up as if for a better view. Bam. At first Noah assumed he must have missed. The man jumped on hearing the shot, but just stood there. Noah lined up a second shot, but his target dropped to one knee and both hands, tried to rise, and rolled onto his back. “Been shot. Shot. Been shot,” he muttered until falling quiet.
Bam! Bam-bam! Margus shot another two people exiting the grocery store. The woman screamed in agony…uninfected. “Oh! Jared? God! Ow!” Bam! That shot ended it.
Natalie, Chloe, and Jake all began firing. Noah could see multiple dark forms emerging from an alleyway beside the store but couldn’t get a clear enough aim to help.
“Noah!” came Townsend’s shout as he raised his own carbine to his shoulder. Flame shot from its muzzle.
Noah turned. A half dozen people were rushing straight toward him and growling or groaning in the way of Infecteds. He fired twice but missed. They didn’t scatter or take cover even when Townsend’s shots struck home and felled members of their group.
At fifteen yards—close enough for Noah to see the fixed grimace, bared teeth, and wide eyes of the berserk gray haired woman—his third shot struck home. The woman’s steady snarling rose an octave before being choked off like a dog’s growl by a brief yelp. A young boy of ten or so raced past her. Bam. Noah couldn’t miss him at point-blank range.
There was a loud pop. The parking lot bloomed with orange light and filled with a hissing sound, followed by two more pops and hisses as the flares Townsend tossed illuminated the helicopter’s landing zone. But the sky was silent save the ever present roar of fighting that rose intermittently and ferociously from every direction.
“Let us in!” shouted four people—three adults and a child—from the street.
“No! Stay back!” Noah shouted. The people ignored him. “Last warning!”
Bam! Townsend shot one of the adults. The others gathered around the wailing wounded man, shouting at him to, “Hold on! Stay with me! We’ll get you help!”
Another much larger crowd appeared on the street. “Townsend!” Noah shouted. The shouts from the three surviving Uninfecteds nearer them were much louder. Noah fired at the multitude of targets, as did Townsend and the others. The three unwounded Uninfecteds began firing, too, but their shrieks pierced the night and what little remained of Noah’s failing composure as the Infecteds bludgeoned, stabbed, and tore the life from them.
But for their pause to rip apart the hapless Uninfecteds, whom they must have been chasing, they would have immediately overrun Noah’s position. Noah and Townsend fired repeatedly at their stationary targets, who presented themselves mainly as dark profiles against backlighting from flames down the street. Bam-bam-bam. The flickering light from the flares was now dying. Bam! Noah shot an Infected who raised one of the dead Uninfected’s rifles. Townsend added more illumination with a pop, pop, pop, which lit the masks of rage that were the Infecteds’ faces. They didn’t bite their victims on the ground beneath them—bam—but they looked feral enough to bite as they flailed at the bodies with wild abandon. A man raised what looked like a table leg over his head. Bam. Noah dropped him. A woman came back up with a hand full of torn clothing. Bam.
From behind that group of murderers came a much larger mob. “Townseeeend!” Noah shouted, rising up to kneel on the pavement for a better shot. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Half his shots struck home. Only those stopped the Infecteds. The rest raced straight for him undeterred. There were too many, too fast, too unafraid. This was the end.
Explosions forced Noah flat to the ground. Townsend was firing grenades from the launcher underneath his carbine’s barrel. The grenades hit a wall next to the parking lot. An abandoned bus on the street. A tree, whose upper half collapsed straight to the grassy median beneath it. Each burst of a rifle grenade felled several Infecteds, often causing Noah to reacquire new targets. But still they came. Twenty yards. Fifteen yards. Too many. It was no use. He pulled the pistol from its holster and raised its muzzle to his mouth.
“Noah!” Natalie cried.
The sky shrieked like the howl from an otherworldly alien weapon. The parking lot was lit by fire and erupted in geys
ers of pavement shot skyward in long strings that passed within yards of where he lay, shredding the onrushing attackers as Noah cringed and curled in a fetal ball. A helicopter orbited the blazing scene. The multiple barrels of a gun in its door spun and spewed flame six feet from their muzzles.
Noah raised his rifle again. Infected attackers disappeared limb by limb. Heads exploded. Shoulders were sheared from torsos. Pumping thighs left their knees behind. Bodies spun, and twisted, and contorted not from pain but from the sheer violence of the metal rain that minced their flesh, cracked their bones, and pummeled the earth around them.
“Mount up!” Townsend shouted as the helicopter’s gun fell silent and the aircraft almost crash landed in the parking lot. All the accumulated trash left the ground at once and swirled in an eddy rising into the orange light of the flares and fires like the rapture. “Leave them!” Townsend shouted at Isabel and Natalie as they dragged their huge packs across the pavement toward the Black Hawk, which had huge bomb-looking tanks slung under each of its stubby winglets.
Noah looked down at his pack. Everything he owned in the world, from toothbrush to bars of gold, was in it.
“Now, Noah!” Townsend shouted at him.
Noah left his pack and raced toward the helicopter, whose helmeted crewman was waving vigorously for everyone to hurry. Noah had to squint against the dust as he entered the fury of the downdraft. The pilot was keeping the rotors churning at high speed.
His outstretched hand collided blindly with the fuselage. The crewman grabbed Noah’s rifle so Noah could climb aboard. But Noah was aghast when the man simply tossed the rifle to the ground outside. Natalie tugged on Noah to pull him further inside. Townsend threw his own carbine out the door. The aircraft lurched skyward. Not one of them had a pack or a rifle. Before the door closed, at Townsend’s urging they stripped off their webbing, ammo pouches, dump pouches half filled with mostly empty mags, belts, holsters, body armor, and helmets, and tossed them all out. The door gunner pulled his multibarreled weapon from its mount and heaved it into the black night air. Two large metal ammo boxes followed, then two other crates laden with indeterminate contents.
Resistance: Pandora, Book 3 Page 14
