by Scott Sigler
The pilot looked down the road, to the approaching fire engine. Another monster there, rushing headlong toward the battered vehicle. The creature was too close to it: chain gun fire would also hit the truck.
The Apache pilot slowed to a stop and hovered, just thirty feet above the park.
“Wait for targets of opportunity,” he said. “Be careful, we can’t hit our people.”
“Affirmative,” the gunner said. “Should we elevate and hit that mob chasing them?”
“Negative,” the pilot said. “Those assholes are already taken care of.”
END OF THE LINE
Fire Engine 98 vibrated as if it was driving on an endless road of deep potholes. The motor finally died. The truck rumbled along on momentum alone.
Clarence heard the newly energized roar of the trailing mob — they saw their opportunity to finish the task.
He turned to look forward. Ahead, clouds of smoke floated up from shredded bodies and mangled motorcycles. A yellow-skinned behemoth rushed straight for them.
“Klimas, your knife!”
The SEAL offered it up handle-first. Clarence took it, saw that Klimas had a blood-covered hand pressed hard against the side of his neck.
“Tim! Help Klimas!”
Clarence felt the cabin shudder from impact, heard the crunch of breaking glass, the deep-throated growl of a monster and the scream of a man.
He slid up and onto the cabin’s roof, hands and legs spread wide to try to stay on the still-lurching vehicle. He slid forward across the slick, eight-foot-long, bullet-ridden surface.
Clarence looked up in time to see the engine bearing down on the motorcycles, the bodies and the sidewalk and park just beyond them. The truck ground over the obstacles, hitting so hard the cab bounced up, throwing him into the air. He came down hard, face smacking against the pockmarked metal. The knife flew from his hand.
The truck’s front end plowed into the snow and dirt and grass… the knife skittered across the roof… Clarence pushed forward. The knife slid off the cabin’s edge… Clarence reached out and down.
He caught it.
Half hanging over the roof, he looked into the cabin, saw a broad, yellowish back on top of concave spider-webbed glass, and the flailing, bloody hands of the man trapped beneath.
Fire Engine 98 finally rolled to a stop.
Clarence raised the Ka-Bar knife high. He plunged it down into the monster’s neck.
The thing barked out a noise of confusion, surprise and pain, a single syllable that could have been a question mark. It reared up hard and fast, its head crunching into the cabin roof right below Clarence’s waist, knocking Clarence up and forward and off — the frozen ground came up fast and smacked him in the face.
Cooper Mitchell had still been facing out the back of the truck and flipping off the horde when Engine 98 hit the motorcycles and the sidewalk curb. The truck had decelerated quite suddenly — Cooper had not. He’d flown across the truck’s bed, stopping only when his head smashed into the water cannon’s metal post.
Tim’s hands pressed on Klimas’s neck. To his right, Cooper rolled weakly, clutching the back of his head, face screwed up tight.
“Mitchell, get up,” Tim said. “The helicopters are here!”
Tim heard the roar of a crowd; he looked back — the horde was rushing in, weapons held high, blades glinting in the morning sun. Not even fifty meters away and closing fast.
He took his hands off Klimas’s neck, slid one arm under the man’s legs, the other behind his back. There wasn’t time to do things right. Tim pushed up as hard as he could, groaning with effort as he tried to lift the heavy man onto the equipment boxes and dump him over the edge.
THE GRIM REAPER
The horde closed in. They could see the red truck that they had chased across the city, now just fifty yards away. So close… so close. The humans had sprayed them with water. Such a strange thing to do, but the Chosen would dry out soon enough.
The Chosen knew the motorcycles had carried their emperor. As they ran, they shouted to each other, in shock, in sadness.
He’s dead!
The emperor got shot!
No way he lived through that!
Few of them had met the emperor, but they all remembered the emperor’s final order: kill Cooper Mitchell.
Forty yards…
They saw a small man push a bigger man over the edge of the truck. The bigger man fell hard to the ground below. The small man leaped over the side.
Thirty yards…
They saw another man stand up in the back of the truck, swaying, confused, his hands clutching the back of his head.
As a unit, they all recognized the man. They had all seen the pictures, and many of them had watched the video. It was him: Cooper Mitchell, public enemy number one.
The horde let out a unified roar. They had him now. They rushed down the street, so many of them that the humans didn’t stand a chance.
Twenty yards…
The AC-130 was too high up for the engines to be heard. So far away, in fact, that the horde didn’t even hear the plane’s guns go off.
The street transformed into a flashing hell as 1,800 rounds per minute of 25-millimeter high-explosive fire tore into bodies, vehicles and pavement.
The horde started to scatter even before the first 105-millimeter howitzer round landed right on the dividing line of North State Parkway, pulverizing bodies, knocking cars on their sides and rattling the snow off of bare branches.
Confusion reigned. People took cover in buildings or sprinted back down the street, moved anywhere but toward the fire truck. They didn’t know what was happening; they only knew they had to run and hide.
The emperor had ordered them to kill Cooper Mitchell, but he had given another order as well… the order to evacuate the city. The mob’s will broke. The survivors fled, heading for their assigned vehicles, for the cars and trucks and buses and motorcycles that would take them north, to Milwaukee, take them east, to Michigan City and South Bend, take them south to Springfield, Champaign and beyond.
The exodus began.
MONSTER
Clarence knew he had to move, but his ice-cold body wouldn’t react, wouldn’t obey.
He heard something big land next to him, something that was still making a squealing noise.
He also heard Margaret’s voice: Get up, baby… get up…
The fog cleared. Clarence reached out, use the shattered front of Engine 98 to help him rise.
In front of him, the muscle-monster did exactly the same thing.
Clarence stood just in front of the driver’s seat, the monster just in front of the passenger seat. The knife still stuck out of the creature’s neck. Jets of blood squirted out in red arcs that fell on the park’s white snow.
The monster reared up to its full height: eight feet tall and very pissed off. Yellow hands flexed into fists. Arms vibrated with fury, making the blood-streaked bone-blades shake and shimmer.
Clarence wanted to turn and run, but his body wouldn’t let him. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.
He was done for.
The creature brought its right fist back to its ear, aimed the bone-blade at Clarence’s chest.
I’m sorry, Margaret… I’m not going to make it…
A clink of metal on broken glass. Just inches from the monster’s left temple, the barrel of a Benelli shotgun slid across the bottom edge of the windshield housing.
The monster turned.
“FUUUUCK…” it had time to say, then the shotgun jumped and the monster’s face disappeared in a spray of blood and yellowish flesh. The creature fell to its back, twitching.
Through the windshield, Clarence saw the ashen face of Ramierez.
“Hooyah, motherfucker,” the SEAL said.
Clarence turned, letting the bullet-ridden truck carry his weight as he slid to the driver’s door. He opened it.
Bosh was slumped down in the seat, covered in his own blood. He was still blinkin
g, but not for long. The monster had torn his throat open. Clarence could see the front of Bosh’s vertebrae.
Clarence shut the door. Out in the park, he saw a Seahawk helicopter coming in fast, nose tilted up for a landing.
“Everybody out!” he screamed as he stumbled around to the other side. “Move, move! Get to the chopper!”
He opened the passenger door to see that Ramierez had passed out again, shotgun still clutched in his hands.
Clarence lifted Ramierez out of the truck and started toward the helicopter. To his right, Tim stumbled along, supporting the limping weight of Commander Klimas.
Just one man missing, the only man who really mattered.
Clarence stopped only long enough to shout over his shoulder.
“Cooper! Come on!”
GAME OVER
Cooper Mitchell’s head hurt, really, really bad.
He saw the horde scatter. Despite the pain, he felt elated. He’d won.
“Suck a bag of dicks, you fucking douchebags.”
He looked up to the sky, saw a slow-moving plane — just a dot, really, but whatever it was, it had ended the fight. Too bad it hadn’t arrived sooner; Roth might have made it.
Cooper had blood all over his hands. His blood, pouring out of a cut on the back of his head. He was probably going to throw up soon, thanks to the eye-narrowing throb going boom-boom-boom inside his skull.
He grabbed the water cannon’s post, used it to pull himself to his knees. He put his right hand down to press up, felt something smooth and hard beneath it — the fire axe.
His pistol was empty. For that matter, he didn’t even know where the thing was. He grabbed the axe handle, lifted it as he stood. His legs felt like rubber. He sat on the bullet-ridden metal box and slid his legs over the side. He dropped, almost fell when he landed.
His right hand held the axe handle. He pushed the top of the head against the ground, used the axe as a cane. There wasn’t one spot on his body that didn’t hurt.
The helicopter. Right there. He’d made it.
Cooper heard movement behind him. He turned sharply.
Not five feet away, slowing to a stop, was the Monster Formerly Known as Jeff, and hiding behind him, head not quite reaching Jeff’s massive shoulders, was Steve Stanton.
Steve looked terrified. His eyes darted everywhere, but always flicked back to Cooper.
Only a part of Cooper noticed this, because he couldn’t stop looking at Jeff — huge body, pale yellow skin gleaming from a sheen of sweat, mouth open, chest heaving slightly from exertion. So goddamn big. And those massive arms, the bone-blades jutting from the backs of his hands.
Jeff raised a hand to his head. His fingers flipped back imaginary hair.
“COOOOOOPEEEERRRRRR…”
“Hey, buddy,” Cooper said. He didn’t feel afraid this time, which made no sense at all — Jeff was a thing, a thing with fucking bone-swords for arms. And yet, Cooper had won. He couldn’t die now… it simply was not possible.
Steve pointed a shaking finger at Cooper. “Jeff, kill him! Skin him!”
The Monster Formerly Known as Jeff blinked slowly. He took a step forward.
Cooper held up his left hand, palm out: stop right there.
“It’s me, bro. It’s Coop. Don’t do this.”
Jeff lifted a gnarled, yellow foot to take another step forward, then put it back down. His face was distorted, misshapen into a mask of evil, but Cooper could still read his lifelong friend — Jeff didn’t want to attack.
Steve’s screech tore at the air. “Kill him! Kill that diseased motherfucker!”
The monster’s eyes flicked down to Cooper’s feet, focused on something there. Cooper looked down as well — the red axe blade, resting against the ground.
Jeff looked up again. His eyes filled with the anguish of a heart torn in two directions. He didn’t want to hurt Cooper, but he couldn’t hold himself back much longer.
For just a moment, the monster wasn’t a monster anymore. It was the boy Cooper had grown up with, the man he’d gone into business with. It was his lifelong friend, the person he loved more than anyone else in the world.
Jeff Brockman closed his eyes.
He let out a long, slow breath.
Cooper knew, instantly, that when Jeff opened those eyes again, he would give in to his nature; he would become the creature that Steve Stanton wanted him to be.
Cooper lifted the axe and stepped forward in the same motion. He swung it high and hard, brought it down with everything he had.
The red blade dug deep into Jeff’s head with a dull chonk.
The Monster Formerly Known as Jeff opened its eyes. He met Cooper’s gaze for two long seconds, then the eyelids sagged.
The massive body dropped straight down, like a yellow sack of boneless meat.
Jeff didn’t move. The axe handle stuck up at a shallow angle.
Steve Stanton stared. The expression on his face said it all: the dude knew he was fucked.
He turned to run, but Cooper dove at his legs. Steve hit the frozen ground face-first. He screamed for help, but there was no one left to help.
Cooper rolled him to his back and straddled his stomach. He slid his knees over Steve’s biceps, pinning the smaller man to the ground, a schoolyard bully about to inflict punishment on the class loser.
“This is all your fault,” Cooper said. “I don’t know how, or why, but I know it’s your fault.”
Steve stared up in pure terror, as if Cooper was ten times the monster Jeff had been.
And then Cooper remembered why.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “I make you assholes sick.”
Cooper reached to the back of his head, rubbed both hands hard against his torn scalp. It hurt, but he didn’t care. He brought his hands forward, held them palms out so Steve could see the blood.
“Your turn,” Cooper said.
Steve bucked and thrashed, but he couldn’t budge Cooper’s weight.
Cooper Mitchell pressed his bloody hands down on Steve Stanton’s screaming face. Cooper rubbed it around, rubbed it hard.
“That was for Sofia.”
He drove his thumb into Steve’s right cheek, three fingers into his left, and squeezed, forcing the man to open his mouth. Cooper shoved his bloody fingers inside, slid them across Steve’s tongue, jammed the fingertips inside Steve’s gums and slid them around real good.
“That was for Jeff.”
To finish it off, Cooper hawked the biggest loogie of his life, then spit it into Steve’s open mouth.
Steve froze. He stared up with the blank, disbelieving gaze of a man who has just received a death sentence. He moved his tongue around, trying to keep the loogie away from the back of his throat.
Cooper leaned close. “That was for me.”
Cooper reared back and punched Steve Stanton in the stomach.
Steve let out a slight wheeze. He gasped like a beached fish, trying and failing to draw a breath.
He swallowed.
Cooper stood, reached down and patted Steve’s cheek.
“And that? That one was for you, dickweed. Enjoy.”
Cooper looked around — there was no one left. All the Converted had faded away into the city.
He was alone.
He had won.
He turned toward the helicopter. Clarence was already in it, beckoning madly.
Time to go.
Epilogue
HEROES
It was finally over. All of it. Over forever.
Clarence, Tim Feely and Commander Paulius Klimas stood in the Oval Office, waiting for the president to arrive. Klimas was on crutches. He wore a neat, fresh bandage around his neck.
Tim was using a cane. The cane’s handle was a twisted coil of DNA — the same as Murray Longworth’s. Clarence wondered if that meant something.
Clarence had asked both Tim and Paulius to be there for this. Ramierez was still in the hospital, but at least he was out of the ICU. He was going to live
.
Clarence hadn’t asked Cooper Mitchell to come, because Cooper hadn’t known Margaret. Cooper had apparently moved to the Upper Peninsula, as far away from everyone and everything as he could get. That didn’t stop him from fielding offers to turn his story into a movie, however. LA had been hit hard, but the film industry didn’t miss a beat.
The Mitchell-Montoya plague, as the hydras were now known, had spread through the Midwest faster than anyone expected. Only two days after the Seahawk had carried the five survivors out of Lincoln Park, new batches made from Cooper’s blood had been crop-dusted across Manhattan, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Boston. Four days after, every major city had received multiple coatings.
Just one week after Margaret’s death, most of the Converted lay dead, their bodies waiting to be collected, carted away and burned.
The hydras didn’t seem to affect the yellow monsters, but that wasn’t as big of a problem as Clarence had feared. The monsters couldn’t blend in. When they were spotted it became an instant witch hunt. Special Forces handled the task if they were available, then cops, and if neither could get on the job, bands of armed citizens chased the creatures down.
Albertson had sent thousands of hydra doses to China, along with scientific advisors to help manage the massive effort of reaching the entire population. One Doctor Cheng, apparently, was part of that mission. Clarence hoped he enjoyed it.
America now focused her efforts on wiping out the Converted in Canada, Mexico and South America. Europe and Russia had already implemented their own hydra exposure campaigns, and were sending starter doses to Africa, Australia, India and all the corners of the earth.
For once, the human race unified in cause and spirit.
But it wasn’t all smiles and roses. The final death toll staggered the imagination. Some estimates were as high as one billion dead, although more conservative guesses placed it at “only” eight hundred million. It was the worst disaster in mankind’s history.
