Ian spared a glance behind to see the Others were staying back but still following his group. He also noticed that they merely glazed over their dead compatriots as they passed; apparently, the two women were as inconsequential as their last rally at the court house. Ian couldn’t worry about them. He probably shouldn’t be worrying about Hansel and the blacksmiths, but they seemed like regular, hard-working people, and Ian couldn’t just feed them to the wolves. Plus, they would be needed with what was coming.
Ian was aware that he was making assumptions about the Others based upon rumor and a broken leg, but the smithies had been compliant, and now they carried Hansel instead of running off to save themselves. Ian just had to go by that. As for the Others, Ian wasn’t political. He thought it was bad for business to argue over politics. In his view, liberals were liberals, and conservatives were conservatives, and each had their points that made sense. Within each party there was a faction labeled stupid, and that is where the “others” fit in. They were aggressive, antagonistic, contradictory, and—above all else—just plain stupid.
The cat was starting to pick up its pace, barely slowing as it crossed intersections or adjoining hallways. They could hear the shrieks louder now, but they seemed to be holding their distance, almost as if the cat was pacing them.
Why am I following this stupid cat? Ian wondered. He didn’t know why, but it just felt right, and the cat was so confident; it seemed to know they wanted out of the building. He saw how the girl had followed the cat’s every move, and they had been wandering around infected for weeks. Ian’s own sense of direction had become so twisted around, he didn’t know which ways to turn to get to where their vehicle was parked.
Finally, they came to a closed door, where the cat sat down and waited. Ian stopped his group and crept forward. Then he slowly pushed down the steel crossbar that locked the maintenance door, opening it enough to see what was beyond.
A bright vertical flash of natural light broke into the hallway, causing the sun-starved group to gasp. Even with the door cracked slightly, he could hear the music from the giant speakers at Chase stadium blaring out every baseball song ever made at full volume. They were set on a continuous loop to attract the infected away from those who may be alive in buildings in other portions of downtown.
He saw bodies, standing bodies. The standing, swaying bodies of infected. Not a mass or a horde, but a few. They were all looking out the chained doors toward where the music blasted through the streets. One door was open, but the infected didn’t comprehend that they needed that portal to get out to the music that was enticing them, so they never moved toward it.
Ian turned back to the group and noticed the others were creeping in closer to hear what he had to say. “There are about eight or nine out in the lobby, all trying to get outside. There is one door that’s open, but they aren’t near it.”
“He says there is an open door that’s clear,” one of the Others said in a tone that made Ian grip his rifle a little more firmly. Ian looked to Tom and Armand and signaled that they should hold on tightly to their rifles. Armand pulled his to his chest, wrapping his left arm around it while Tom turned so he was facing the wall more than the open hallway. He knew they were going to break.
More whispered voices came from behind them, and the smiths seemed to naturally tighten their group around the injured Hansel. Ian didn’t know what had caused it… maybe it was the slight waft of crisp outside air that crept down the hallway or the slit of natural sunlight glancing off their faces so fleetingly, but the mood changed within the group of ten or so who had followed them.
“Only eight infected. We should be able to take care of eight of them.” The large man who spoke looked like he should be holding down the end of an ancient bar in Norway, with a huge wooden tanker in his hand. In reality, he was a frightened potter or bead worker who was willing to do anything to get out.
The group in the back looked at Ian as if he was the only obstacle between them and beloved freedom. He slowly shook his head and readied himself for the impact. There was a moment of silence when they stared at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move.
A loud slam from the direction they had come from was the first hammer blow on the ice. The ensuing screeches broke it the rest of the way. The infected were no longer behind a door and were right on their tail.
The Others broke, ignoring the guns and people as they pushed their way to the door. Ian didn’t have time to point or shoot since he was forced against the wall as they lumbered past and into the lobby. They started screaming immediately as they searched frantically for the rumored open door. Bodies were slammed into walls and people fell, until one shouted. “Here, I found the door!” the voice said before joining in on the screaming.
“This way,” Ian said, seeing that the cat had already started moving back down the hall. He was getting more nervous by the second, the penetrating music from outside being outdone by the approaching diseased.
The cat turned the corner in the opposite direction from where they had come and went down a set of wide stairs, with Ian now bringing up the rear. He still did not see the pursuing infected, although they sounded as if they were right on top of them.
They went down four sets of steps until they entered a subterranean level that could have been for parking access, or possibly just more rooms to hide in.
“Sylvie!” Emili shouted as her cat headed down a dark hallway. A placard next to the darkened tunnel read “Orchestra Hall.” Ian’s heart leapt. Their MRAP was just a block beyond that. He rushed to the front so he could use his tactical light to illuminate the hall in front of them.
There were bodies curled into decimated husks on the floor, but none of them moved. Either someone had been down there and shot them, or other infected had struck a vital organ while feeding. This, in turn, meant there was a possibility there were infected around or possibly more survivors, but by the number of infected within the buildings and those who were already dead, it was doubtful.
A rumbling sound, followed by the slap of meat-on-meat, caused Ian to spin with his gun raised. Three infected had fallen down the stairs in pursuit of the small group. Knowing their screams would attract more, he hurried to put rounds into flesh to silence them before they could alert their kin. Two more landed on top of the three he just put down but not before one of them managed to see him and screech in the excited, meat-sighted scream they possessed.
More fell on to the pile, and Ian started to back up, knowing it was too late; they were spotted. The stairway suddenly became a yawning maw vomiting bodies until at least a hundred lay in a pile at the base of the stairs. The bottom layers of bodies were crushed, but the top layers were up and moving almost instantly.
“Run!” Ian shouted, dropping all pretense of shooting.
Chapter Eight
Phoenix Arizona, May 2nd
“Armand! We need a place hide! Now!” Ian shouted as he raced to catch up with the front leader of the group. For a second, he thought he would make it, but then he heard the feet slapping on the ground right behind him.
Dammit, how can sick people run so fast? Ian thought as his legs pumped feverishly. He was no track star, but he wasn’t slow either, yet there were at least two almost on him. Jasper, who was at his side, suddenly wasn’t. Then Ian heard the fall of a body behind him. He looked at his group, which was only fifty feet ahead of him but moving slowly as they rounded a bend.
Tom looked back and his eyes grew with fear. “Ian!” he screamed and started to raise his rifle, which, in Ian’s opinion, was just as bad as the infected, seeing as how he was in the line of fire.
“No! Get to the truck and get them out of here, I’ll catch up!” Ian shouted. When Tom hesitated as if he was going to join him, Ian yelled, “Go!”
They disappeared around the bend just as Ian felt a hand hit his collar and start to slow him down. He stopped and dropped, shooting two as they passed by him and was up and running toward some stairs away fr
om the group. Another infected lunged toward him but was taken down from the side by Jasper, who was barking frantically before and after the takedown. Ian shot the infected then spied a sign that read STREET LEVEL, with a short staircase leading up and a closed elevator door next to it.
He didn’t have time to switch magazines, and he had lost count of rounds but knew he was running shy since he hadn’t changed out since the mission began. He let the weapon hang from the sling and pulled out the loud, unsuppressed forty-five, which he used to plug one of his pursuers in the head, dropping it instantly. This had the desired effect of getting their eyes off his group and onto him.
Maybe louder is better? Ian thought after noticing how quickly the 1911 had dropped the target. He fired four more rounds, which took down some of the infected that were chasing him; however, there were still more dragging themselves off the pile at the bottom of the staircase, drawn by the sounds of gunfire.
He hit the stairs at ninety miles an hour, stopping at the top to not only to make sure they followed but to take advantage of their inability to maneuver stairs properly. He emptied the last of his eight-round magazine into the stumbling mass that was trying to get up the stairs, dropping at least two. He switched magazines and put a fresh one into his rifle, knowing that getting stuck on a stair landing halfway up was not an ideal situation, and he had to keep moving. He started taking stairs two at a time, knowing stairs were not a strong point for the infected.
If this staircase was like the last one, he had four sections of twelve steps to make it to street level. It was after the third landing that he learned how tight the noose was getting.
He leaped over a rolling infected that had appeared above him and had lost its balance on the stairs before falling headlong toward him. Ian managed to shoot another that was coming down behind the roller and subsequently blocked his shot at the mass beyond him. He suddenly found himself in a slug fest, using butt and barrel to push the things past him as he struggled to the next level.
A teenager—he couldn’t say if it was male or female—launched at him, leading with its teeth. He fired three rounds as he brought his rifle up but only hit it in the knee with the last one before its jaw clamped upon the chest plate of his vest.
He tried to shove it off with a strong sweep of his left arm, but its hands were suddenly clutching him and its legs wrapping around his waist. It growled as it tugged on his chest plate and tore at his shoulders while its legs started to slip down and foul his own legs. He could hear the horde behind him as they struggled through the levels to get to him, and two more were now at the top of the stairs, coming down at him; in seconds he would be swarmed.
From his peripheral, he saw Jasper trip one up top, which was what he was trained to do. The problem was, the tripped infected was sliding right down into his legs, which were already messed up with the teenager clinging to him like a fly on a sticky strip. He felt his body start to fall backward, but in a moment of desperation, he threw himself forward and body-slammed the teenager into the man who was sliding toward him.
He didn’t know if it was possible to knock the wind out of the things, but the action caused the teenager to lose its grip on Ian. He slammed three hard-gloved fists into the face of the teenager until he could slip around and force through the last door up top and break out at street level, where over a thousand screamed in his face from less than a foot away.
He turned and ran down the glass wall toward the lobby, where the Others had pushed past his group to get away from those he had just sent to the truck. Getting outside here was not an option, as the infected on the other side of the glass were running step-by-step with him, and there were some on his side of the glass, just ahead of him. His only option was up. Movement ahead caught his eye, and he saw a body lying half in, half out of an elevator with the door trying to close on the prostrate figure.
Jasper was a trained security dog, and at just under two years old, he was shaping up to be one of the center’s most promising representatives. However, his next action was one of pure instinct as he embraced the ancient shepherd within him and nipped at Ian when he slowed by the elevators to move the body.
Good call, Ian thought as he suddenly had a visual picture of what getting caught in an elevator in a building full of infected would look like. He ran a little further and entered out into the vestibule where the Others had made their escape. Several infected were focused on the door that led to the outside, where there were more feeding on fresh corpses.
He knew it was only seconds before those would hear the horde that pursued him. He had no idea how many; it could be two, or it could be twenty, he didn’t know. He did know that it would be enough to call attention to him and that meant death from the hundreds who were just feet from blocking his way back to the door where the Others had come in and Ian’s group had abandoned for the tunnels.
There could be infected filling up the passage behind the door, but he didn’t have any options. Ian and Jasper sprinted to the door, causing a few at the feast to turn and screech upon seeing the man and canine. Sounds of pursuit from behind and the side were getting louder by the second, and he knew he only had one chance at this. If the handle was locked… he and his new dog were their next feast.
He grasped the knob and twisted, a flood of elation rushing through him. There were two infected behind the door, and he flung it wide, allowing them full access. They had been pressed against the door and practically fell into the room. He spun like his days in high school as a running back, hitting the closest infected across the back of the shoulders and knocking him directly into the path of his original pursuers.
As the far one stumbled past, Ian reached behind him, grabbed the knob, and pulled the door shut, the force of a roomful of bodies closing it with a slam that shook the wall. They turned and ran up the main hallway, down to the tunnel that led to the Orchestra Hall. Knowing it was still a mess down there, he followed their path back toward the room where they had met Hansel.
Ian heard screams behind him, but they were a couple hundred feet back, and Ian was moving at a nice clip… until he wasn’t.
Two infected responding to the screeching, ran into him full speed at an intersection with both parties no more surprised than the other. A second before impact, Ian lowered his shoulder and pushed forward, taking the two of them in T-bone fashion and driving them to the floor. He danced around swinging feet and clutching hands that pulled so that it took a forceful yank of his leg to pull away. They rolled on to their bellies then crawled to their feet, watching him and screeching. One round from the SCAR dropped the first, but the second round didn’t come.
“Ian, where are you?” Jose came over the com, and even in Ian’s frantic situation with an inoperable weapon and in a tight hallway with an infected bearing down on him, he thought he heard a diesel engine running hard.
He punched gloved fist into the infected’s forehead, sending it back a step. Its hands were outstretched and grabbing for his face and clothing, fingers just managing to get a slight grasp here and there. It was nothing that he couldn’t pull away from. He drew back and punched it again then kicked it in the knee, hoping to push it back further as he saw more entering the end of the hall. The knee broke and the infected fell into him, forcing Ian to slam the side of his rifle stock into its temple, sending it to the side. He stomped on its head once before running, without taking the time to see if it was ended completely or not.
Thankfully with the hair growing wild and dirty and all of them being emaciated and frenzied with rage Ian was having a hard time distinguishing the men from women, which eliminated any hesitation he might have derived from chauvinism. The age-old taboo of killing females was off the table, but of course he wasn’t going to be able to kill many with his gun on the fritz. He ran down another set of stairs, still hearing the relentless pursuit, and came to the hallway that led to the secure maintenance section, where Hansel and the blacksmiths had stayed for so long. A large infected person stood i
n the hallway, stopping him short. Ian had fifty feet to go before he could reach a relatively safe area, where he could get his rifle back into the game.
Well, fifty feet and over three hundred pounds of flesh that was now screeching as it lumbered toward him. Its heavy footfalls shook the wall, and Ian reassessed his quarry to be closer to four hundred pounds than three.
He had fought giant people before and knew the biggest mistake would be to try to take it low. Their legs are unstable, as they are supporting a large amount of weight, and when they fall, it is always right on top of you, smothering you and everything beneath it. Ian was strong and physically fit, but pushing four hundred pounds off of him while more infected came in from behind was not his idea of fun.
A black-and-tan streak told Ian that Jasper had danced around the two as they drew closer. Ian brought the butt of his rifle up and slammed it into the face of the behemoth, but it didn’t stop, or even slow, its momentum. Suddenly, it was pushing Ian backward and toward the others behind, whose screams were so loud he thought hands were going to grab him at any moment.
He let go of the rifle, entrusting it to his sling, and punched his gloved left fist into the side of the giant’s head to hold it at bay. His right hand fought with the flailing arm that tried to catch him as Ian attempted to slide by. It wasn’t that the infected was purposely moving to block him; the man was just too huge to allow another human to fit side-by-side in the small passage. Ian got the arm past him and started to use his heavy right hand to pommel the beast anywhere he could to push more of it around behind him.
Jasper danced and barked, looking for an opportunity, but Ian punched again and again until he got a leg free, and then he stomped down hard on the back of the infected’s leg, collapsing its knee. Jasper barked, frantic now, causing Ian to look up from where he had come to see five infected in the hall, raging toward him and screeching as blood ran down their tattered faces, bloody eyes wide with elation upon seeing their next meal.
For Which We Stand: Ian's road (A Five Roads To Texas Novel Book 3) Page 9
