Breaking Danger

by Lisa Marie Rice

  His scanner let out a high-toned beep.

  The fifteen-minute mark.

  They had to hurry.

  He stood and jumped to see how tightly the case was secured. It didn’t budge. Bless the U.S. military for having thought up Dynapack. The case weighed about forty pounds. In training they’d marched for fifty miles humping double that. No problem.

  He went down on one knee again.

  “Add my backpack to that.” She lifted the backpack over the case. His backpack straps were also made of Dynapack so she just lifted the straps over his shoulders. He shrugged, settling the backpack in place. He was at around sixty pounds. No problem. But he had to leave his body armor behind.

  His scanner let out a high-toned beep.

  The ten-minute mark.

  “Okay. Pack a small backpack if you want, some personal items, girl stuff, whatever. We’re heading straight for Haven and there’s everything you could need there but—I have to tell you Sophie, you might never come back here again. So if there are some family mementos, whatever, you’ve got a minute to put it together. One. And dress warmly.”

  “Right,” she said and disappeared into the bedroom. Exactly one minute later she came back out with a long lightweight Nomex coat over her clothes. Gloves and a watch cap. She had a smallish backpack with her.

  He looked her over carefully. “Tuck your hair completely into the cap. You don’t want someone to catch you by the hair.” She obeyed immediately, watching him for more instructions.

  She looked as ready as she’d ever be.

  They were at the door and he pulled his stunner. He also had his Glock 92, which would stop a rhino in full-attack mode.

  “Is there a side entrance to the building?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “The back stairwell exits onto an alleyway.”

  “Okay. This is how it’s going to work. If the road ahead is clear, you go first and I’ll watch your six.”

  “Six?”

  “Your back.” She nodded. “If we’re attacked, I’ll take point and you stay behind me, just as close as you can. Is that clear?”

  She nodded again.

  “Say it.”

  It was a principle for people who could find themselves in stressful situations. Pilots repeated verbally every single order. So did warriors going into battle.

  “When there are no infected in sight, I am ahead of you. If there are infected, I stay close behind you.”

  He nodded. “I rappelled down from the roof. I left two ropes, both with an automatic hoist system and handholds at the bottom. I don’t think the infected have the kind of intelligence that can recognize a rope.”

  “No, they don’t,” she confirmed.

  “That’s what I thought. Because if we’re being chased there’s no question of going up the central steps and climbing up until we get to the roof of the Ghirardelli Building. We’d be chased and caught. They’re fast. So we’ll outwit them. The two ropes are on the west wall, close to the front left corner. Repeat that.”

  “Two rappelling ropes, west wall, near front left corner. They have a hoist function.”

  “If I don’t make it—” She opened her mouth and he lay his forefinger across those soft lips. “If I don’t make it,” he said firmly, “try to get the case off me then get to the ropes. If it’s impossible to get the case, just head for the wall. You geeks are smart. The men up at Haven could try to capture an infected for you. And then you could—I don’t know, isolate the virus, make the vaccine. You can do that, right?”

  “In theory,” she said. “But it would take weeks.”

  “But you could do it.”

  She nodded.

  Okay, if something happened to him, the state of California would just continue going to hell for an extra couple of weeks.

  “So make it to the wall, grab the handle of one of the ropes and activate the hoist. That’s the green button you’ll find to the side. Press it and it will immediately start pulling you up. Get to the helo and activate the distress signal. That’s a big red button smack above the pilot’s seat on the starboard side. It sets off an alarm at Haven. As soon as Haven gets an active helo going, they’ll come get you. It might take a day or two or maybe more, but you should be safe up on the roof. There’s a first-aid kit if you are wounded. There’s also water and energy bars. Just wait, Sophie, don’t move. They’ll come for you. Repeat that.”

  She made her voice an even monotone. “If you die, I proceed to the Ghirardelli Building. If I manage to get the case off you, I carry it. If not, I abandon it. There are two ropes hanging from the building. I grab the handle of one, press the green button and rise to the roof. Press the distress button and wait.”

  “Okay then. So—”

  “Listen!” she said urgently.

  “What?”

  “The noise is almost gone.”

  Damn. Unforgivable. He’d been so wrapped up in making Sophie realize she had to get her gorgeous ass to safety even if he was down, he hadn’t kept up situational awareness. It was true. He checked the scanner. The huge swarm had passed. There were only stragglers, and behind the stragglers, nothing. He tapped the screen, zoomed out. Once the stragglers had passed, there was no thermal footprint of infected for a radius of well over 500 meters. It was their best shot.

  He touched his comms. “Ryan, heading out with Dr. Daniels. See you at the homestead.”

  It was Nick who answered. “Bring her home, Jon, or Elle will never speak to me again.”

  “Roger that.”

  He touched Sophie, looked deeply into her eyes. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she answered and he could tell she was.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 8

  Sophie had never seen anyone move the way Jon did. Cautious, careful, each move pondered. But fast. He ran in small precise steps designed to keep his gun level.

  First he peeked out in the corridor when he opened her apartment door. He pulled his head back, said, “Don’t look around, keep focused on moving forward,” and with a gentle push ushered her out the door.

  It was clear what he meant. The hallway—her very nice hallway with the Italian wall sconces in her very nice building—was littered with corpses, the walls bloodstained.

  She did as he said. She watched her feet, kept her focus ahead and moved as quickly and quietly as she could. They passed the elevator bay, but he’d told her elevators were traps, and anyway they didn’t know if they were working or not. They headed for the staircase. Jon stopped her with a light touch to her arm. She froze.

  He cracked the stairwell door open a fraction of an inch, pulled out a flexible tube from his wrist scanner, and bent it so he could look around the corner and down the stairwell without being seen.

  Clear.

  They made it down the stairs quietly, Jon managing to cover their backs as well.

  They quietly exited the building into the alleyway and made their way along the wall toward Beach. Which was covered in bodies.

  Right then, right there, Sophie resolved to survive the dash to the helicopter, to arrive in this Haven, manufacture as much vaccine as their lab could, and stop this thing. Save as many people as possible. She would not allow this abomination to continue.

  Jon checked the flexible tube, checking all of Beach from the safety of the alleyway.

  “All clear,” he said to her in a soft, low voice that was perfectly comprehensible but wouldn’t carry more than a foot. He tapped something and said in that low, calm voice, “Moving out.” He listened for a second, then said, “Roger that.”

  He checked the street again, checked the scanner. “Okay. Now’s the time. We should be at the rappelling rope in about four minutes. Go.”

  She went, as fast as she could. She didn’t look back because Jon was there and she didn’t look left or right because she trusted him to keep an eye out. To have keen situational awareness. Her job was to get herself as quickly as she could to the Ghirardelli Building, and she put e
verything she had into it.

  Though it was late afternoon, it was dark. The many fires had cast a pall of smoke, drowning out the light of the sun. Still, there was enough light for her to see the shapes on the ground. She jumped over the bodies when she could, ran around them when she couldn’t, trying as hard as possible to maintain a straight line for the Ghirardelli Building.

  The air was thick with acrid smoke and something that she just knew was the smell of mass violence. Blood, burning bodies. Bodies that had voided at death. Somewhere behind them the swarm was moving away, but the noise they made was still audible. Fading inchoate screams and yells. The sound of thousands and thousands of pounding feet. The sound of madness.

  Sophie couldn’t run fast enough in the opposite direction.

  The end of Beach Street. In the middle of the intersection, a pile of clothes stirred, a bloody head lifted, a hand reached out . . .

  Jon stunned him without breaking his stride. “Look ahead, Sophie!” he yelled and she realized she’d looked back at what was now a corpse. She was flagging a bit, not used to flat out runs, but he gave no sign of that even though he carried over sixty pounds on his back. No doubt he could run faster than this but he was keeping pace with her, watching her “six” as he called it.

  To the right was the grassy swathe that ran down to the water and up ahead—Oh God! There it was! Up ahead was the dark shadow of the Ghirardelli Building. No lights there. If there was a backup generator it was gone. No matter, the huge mass was a dark blot against the sky, unmistakable. And close, so close. She angled upward toward the left front corner and could sense Jon right behind her, though he made no sound.

  How could he do that? She could hear her own boots pounding the pavement, her breath soughing in and out of her lungs from the run, but Jon was utterly silent.

  The building was like some medieval castle looming up in the sky, and she was going to scale its walls. It seemed impossible but—

  A hot wind picked her up and blew her away. Lifted her straight up and back several feet, dumping her on her back. It took away sight and sound and feeling. Somehow, she was on her back, numb, deaf, hurting. The wind scoured her skin. A flash of light so bright it blinded her had erupted suddenly, like a volcano. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. It was raining . . . bricks? Stones, hard objects. As if from a great distance, she brought her arm up to shield her face. Something grabbed her arm, pulled her sharply to the right and her back scraped across the uneven surface. It hurt.

  Something huge, metallic, long and wide like a giant metal finger, hit exactly where she’d been a second before, bounced and came to rest a few feet away.

  Nothing made sense. A face was over hers, mouth open. Someone shaking her arm, hard.

  “-—blew up!” the person screamed. Jon. “We’ve got to get out of here! We’re exposed!”

  Her hearing was slowly coming back, but she couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. She lifted her torso, something had been digging into her back, a huge brick. Her back ached. She blinked slowly. “What?”

  It felt like her brain was made of molasses and her muscles had suddenly turned to water. She’d been pulled to her feet but could barely stand. Jon was beside her, screaming at her. She shook her head again, sharply, trying to clear it. Nothing made sense.

  And then, suddenly, it did. Everything came back into focus. The infected, Jon, the Ghirardelli Building, which was . . . gone. Where before there had been a massive building blotting out the sky, there was now a smoking hole in the ground, flames licking up, lighting up the nightmare scene of dead bodies and destruction.

  Someone was shaking her. Jon. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently.

  Was she?

  Sophie stiffened her knees, tested her balance. Her ears still rang, she was seeing double. “What—what happened?”

  His face was tight, grim. “The Ghirardelli just blew. Probably gas mains. But it’s taken out our ride. That piece of metal that almost skewered you was a rotor blade. Sophie, we’ve got to go. Now. That blast will attract the infected. It’s possible the swarm will move back our way.”

  “Where?” She looked around and all she saw was streets full of dead people and crashed cars. No way out. “Where can we go?”

  Jon indicated the Bay with his head. “Aim for the municipal pier, grab a boat out of here, sail up the coast. There’s no way we can get out in a vehicle from here, the bridges are gone and all the roads are clogged with abandoned cars, anyway. If we go on foot we wouldn’t last half an hour; and even if we could walk, we need to go north not south. We still need to cross water.”

  She knew that and was ashamed of herself for not remembering. Parts of her brain were still fuzzy, but she’d better unfuzz herself fast. She tried to concentrate on the waterfront, picture it in her head.

  “Okay, only not the pier. There aren’t always boats moored there, and the causeway would be a trap if any infected got on to it. Let’s get to Fisherman’s Wharf. There are always fishing boats and tour boats.”

  His face was grim. “You don’t think the boats might be all gone? People getting out while they could?”

  “Some might still be there.” She tried to focus through the ringing in her ears. The infection had come so very fast. People had instinctively tried to get out of town in their cars. Most of the fishermen and tour-boat operators who owned their boats lived out of town, the real estate nearby was way too expensive for anyone to live here. There was a real chance that a few boats were still there. “Do you know how to operate one?”

  “Of course,” Jon said impatiently.

  “Then we should try Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “If there’s nothing there, if the boats are all gone, there’s no Plan B,” Jon said, voice low, face tight.

  “No, there isn’t. Unless we dive into the water and swim along the wharf. I don’t think they can swim. That would require too much coordination.”

  “Okay.” Jon looked around carefully, at the smoking ruins, the dead bodies, the crashed cars. “We’re going to make a run for Fisherman’s Wharf. Is the case waterproof?”

  Sophie spared a glance at the weight and bulk of what Jon carried. If they had to dive into the ocean, he’d be weighed down by the ballast on his back. She nodded, hoping desperately it never came to that. “Waterproof, shockproof. You probably couldn’t blow it up. Can you stay afloat with that thing on your back?”

  He nodded, checked his scanner. “Let’s go, then. Same rules. You take the lead if the way is clear and because you know the neighborhood better than I do. If there’s trouble, stay behind me. So let’s go steal a boat.”

  His face was lit by the fires still burning from the explosion, turning his face light gold and picking out the gold in his hair. He looked like a fierce Viking god, face taut, ice blue eyes cold and aware. Suddenly, the ice in his eyes melted and he leaned down and gave her a kiss. It reassured her, warmed her. “Just you and me, babe.”

  That’s right. They were in terrible trouble, but they were together. They’d live or die together.

  Jon gave her a slight push to get her started. “I’ll follow you. Go!” They took off at a run down the slight grassy slope toward Jefferson and turned right. The road paralleled the shore, at times open to the sea, at times closed because of the buildings. They ran past the historical ships, the schooners and steam tugs. One schooner had somehow become unmoored and was drifting out to sea. Ahead, Jefferson Street was dark. It wasn’t a residential area but some of the restaurants and tourist shops that had their own generators were lit. The shops had all been ransacked. Not by looters but by the insane.

  Hundreds of bodies littered the small narrow street, slowing them down. The row of shops ended and they had a view of open water. Water, freedom, safety.

  The fishing boats were in the next open section. God, please let there be boats there! She was running flat out, breathing hard. She couldn’t hear Jon behind her, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was there, keeping pa
ce with her, watching her six.

  Above the pounding of her heart was another noise rising slowly, steadily. It was too far away to make out exactly what it was but something in the noise was familiar . . .

  “What’s that?” she gasped.

  Jon moved up to her side, running stride easy. He wasn’t winded at all. He showed her the scanner, which had been attached as a wrist unit. He tapped it and the top of the scanner glowed bright orange. Her head was still too dazed by the explosion to understand it.

  “Fuck. The swarm,” he said. “It heard the explosion and it’s headed back.” He tapped again, then listened to something in his comms. “Roger that,” he said.

  “What?” Sophie stumbled, nearly fell. But she couldn’t fall because Jon had put a strong arm around her. He lifted her off her feet and carried her at a flat-out run, a faster pace than she could possibly have kept.

  “The swarm is only a few minutes away, heading straight toward us. There better be boats there, otherwise we’ll just dive in and start swimming straight out and hope that you’re right that they can’t swim. Because if they can . . .”

  He didn’t have to finish that sentence. If the infected could swim, she and Jon were dead.

  The sound was a roar now, that same roar that had passed by under her window for hours. Infected screaming, howling, fighting, killing, dying. And the sound of thousands of running feet. Closer and closer . . .

  “Put me down,” Sophie gasped. “I’ll keep up.” She hoped. Jon couldn’t carry her, carry the case and his gear, and be ready to fight all at the same time. He put her down and she ran faster than she had ever run in her life.

  If there were boats, they would be in the little commercial inlet where the next block of shops ended. They pounded the sidewalk and reached the end of the row of shops and . . . there they were! A number of boats, some ancient with flaking paint, some shiny and new, bobbing in the water. Two steel ladders led down to the small concrete dock with the boats tied to stanchions. The takeoff point for literally millions of tourists over the decades who wanted a trip around the beautiful bay.