by Z. A. Recht
With a scream, he turned himself over, yanking the pistol from his belt. Unceremoniously, it was kicked from his hand, and he looked up into the barrel of a SIG P226.
“Hello, Mason,” Sawyer said. “Wow,” he continued from behind his gun. “You look like shit. I’m trying to be real about things here. Facing you like this kind of takes some of the wind out of my sails. I just want you to know that.”
Mason grit his teeth and tried not to scream as he sat up. “Get fucked, Sawyer. You always were an asshole.”
“I was, I was,” Sawyer said with a self-deprecating nod of the head. “On the other hand—” He fired a shot into Mason’s left leg. “I don’t have a limp.”
Biting back the scream that was building in his chest, Mason refused to give in.
“Ooh, tough. Listen, I don’t have time to do you like you did Waters. You remember Desmond Waters? You left him on the side of the road like so much meat. So.” He fired another shot, this one into Mason’s right leg. Then another, hitting him high on the left side of his chest.
“I’ll be back for the rest after we have the Doctor. Rest up, Greg. I promise I won’t kill you until we’re on the way out.” Sawyer’s face split in a wide grin. “Wouldn’t want you to die without knowing your complete failure.”
Coke and Charlie sat in the cab of the dump truck and debated what they should do next.
The pair had followed Sawyer’s column of vehicles all the way from Abraham to Omaha, hanging back far enough that they wouldn’t be noticed. Now that the sun was setting, they knew something was going to happen, and soon, but they didn’t know what.
“I say, we take the truck in and dump the load. Then we get the hell out of Dodge until the smoke settles,” Coke said. He cleaned the bill of his hat again as he spoke. Ever since he went out among the dead to get it back, he’d constantly wiped it clean, as if he could still smell the stench of the infected in the fabric.
“I dunno,” Charlie said. “I mean, Herman’s in there with them, right? We don’t wanna get him, do we?”
Coke folded his arms. “Been thinking about that. You know what our lives have been ever since we signed up with that motherfucker?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Shit, Charlie. Our lives have been shit. If any of us had any fucking brains, we’d have ditched his ass after those Army dudes blew our base.”
Charlie sat behind the wheel, silent. Coke sat and waited.
“Well,” Charlie finally said, “if we’re going to take off, I guess there’s no need to keep a whole buncha dead fucks in the back, right? Why not just dump them here?”
Coke smiled. “Because I don’t like Sawyer, either. Head into town, and let’s get this shit over with.”
At the same time, in the Fac, Patton watched Lutz pace back and forth in the entry area. He could tell that the man was agitated, and Jenkins wasn’t much better. He kept looking at the corpse of the Asian girl draped over the couch and wincing. Lutz noticed this and it was on.
“What the fuck is your deal, man?” Herman asked. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for this skank.”
Jenkins shook his head. “That’s not it. I . . . man, when we were running girls through our place, it didn’t bother me none. I don’t give a shit, you know that. But this one.” He shook his head some more. “Man, those fuckers that blew up our place, they’re coming back here. They know her! Don’t you think they’re going to be pissed?”
Lutz threw back his head and laughed.
“Pissed? They’re gonna be fucking dead, Jenkins. You saw what this crew can do back in Abraham. Those Army boys won’t know what hit ’em. Hey!” Lutz shouted to the soldiers down the hallway. “Either of you know which way the pisser is?”
As he stalked off to find a place to go, Patton sidled up next to Jenkins and nudged him.
“I think you’re right. We need to find a way out of here.”
Denton picked up all the chatter between Krueger and Brewster.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Are we under attack?”
Allen checked his MP-5. “I knew I should have called in sick.”
“Brewster, what’s your situation. Uh, over?”
Ewan Brewster’s strained voice came back over the radio quickly. “What do you think it is? We’re running from some shamblers, and there’s someone out there that was shooting at us. Over!”
“Denton, take cover.” Krueger’s voice came next. “Keep still when you find some. With the sun going down, the carriers are up and about. Over.”
“And the shooters? Over.”
Mbutu, Allen, Trev, and Denton stood staring at the radio for about a minute. It was a very long minute.
“Negative. No more contact, but keep your heads low. Let me know when you’ve found something. Over.”
“Will do. Out.”
Clipping the radio to his belt, Denton turned to his small group. “All right. I think we should hit one of these apartment buildings. Uh, that one, over there,” he said, pointing across the street. “Krueger and I cleared it two weeks ago. Come on.”
As the group jogged across the street, all of their heads were on swivels, looking around the rooftops for signs of a shooter. As they neared the entrance to the building, Mbutu Ngasy slowed to a walk, then held up his hand.
“I believe we should attempt to meet with Brewster. If they are set upon by the infected . . .”
“Demons,” Trev whispered, and Allen looked at him sideways.
“It’s just the three of them, right,” Denton said. “Damn it. It had to be today, when I was in charge.” He sat on the curb and held his head in his hands for a moment, tapping his pistol against his ear. “Fuck it. Let’s go and find them.”
He unclipped his radio and said into it, “Brewster, copy?”
The sound of gunshots came to them from blocks away. “Argh! What the fuck do you want? Over!”
“What’s your cross street? We’re coming to you. Over.”
“Negative,” Krueger broke in. “Negative. Hostiles approaching on your six, Brewster.”
“The plan was three blocks over, right?” Allen said. “That puts them that way. Let’s just go.”
Denton looked to where Allen pointed in the dying light of the day and saw a shambler stumbling down the street away from them.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s us. Let’s go.”
Four blocks away, Brewster was spinning on his heels and looking behind the group, trying to see what the fuck Krueger was talking about. “Where?” he shouted, snapping his shotgun up. Mitsui backed into him.
“Oh, come on!” Brewster yelled.
“The carriers,” Jack the Welder said, his voice carefully controlled. “They’re still coming.”
“Take them out,” Brewster said. “You and Mitsui. I’ll deal with whatever else’s coming up.”
Quickly, Brewster ran laterally and dove behind a car as Jack and Mitsui opened fire on the slowly advancing gang of infected. He lay on the asphalt and looked under the cars; he saw boots. Not shuffling, not tottering, but standing very still.
“Gotcha.”
Two, four, six, eight, ten feet. Five people.
Come on, Brewster thought. You can take on five guys, right? You were going to be an Army Ranger, for chrissakes. Pick up your balls and go, already!
With a scream, Brewster got up and ran down the sidewalk to the spot where the owners of the feet were and began firing. The scream and his sudden appearance took the men by surprise, and two of them were mowed down before any of them got to move. The other three recovered quickly and moved into the street, away from Brewster.
Firing rapidly, they drove him back. He dove to the concrete behind a car and fired under it, the scattering buckshot hitting at least one of them. At that point, the top of the first man’s head disappeared, as if a small mine had been set off in his brain.
“I love you, Krueger,” Brewster yelled.
Jack the Welder and Mitsui opened fire on the last remaining man
and he jerked with the impact of multiple shots before falling dead to the street.
Brewster stood and marched over to the one he’d hit in the foot, who was writhing in pain on the street. He jacked a spent shell out of his shotgun and put the end of the hot barrel against the man’s cheek.
“How many more?”
The man, even in his pain, was defiant. “Fuck you, jackal. Die screaming.”
“You first,” Brewster said, and pulled the trigger.
“Jesus Christ,” Jack said, and Mitsui nodded his head fast. “Now we’ve got to fight the living and the dead? This is getting ridi—”
A clawing hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. Brewster and Mitsui turned to see most of a corpse hanging off Jack’s arm, clambering up his side to get to the exposed flesh of his neck.
“Get it off! Get it off!”
Brewster dropped his shotgun and drew a pistol. “Quit moving,” he said in a calm he did not feel.
“You stand still!” Jack yelled, turning in place and hammering at the carrier. “Get! It! Off!”
A black streak flew at Jack from the side street and collided neatly with the infected’s forehead. Jarred, it let go of the welder and fell back to the asphalt. Mitsui stepped forward and stomped on the thing’s back, holding it down, and shot it, black bile and brains splattering the street.
Calmly, as if he were walking in on a picnic, Trev came into view and went for his ASP. He picked it up and tossed a salute to Jack, who returned it with a great big smile.
“Gang’s all here,” Brewster said, picking up his shotgun. “I thought you were headed for cover, Denton?”
“Right. And Jack here was headed for chow town. So what’s there to complain about?”
Holding up his hands in a placating gesture, Brewster shook his head. “Nothing, not a thing.” He picked up his radio. “How about you, Annie Oakley? See anything else? Over.”
“Don’t call me that. All clear. Over.”
Mbutu Ngasy looked about the intersection. “We should return to the Fac,” he said, a queer set to his lips. “This is wrong.” The big Mombasan turned in place, scanning the streets. “There are more headed this way.”
“Well, after all that racket, what did you expect?” Allen asked. “We need to hightail it.”
Denton nodded. “We do. All right. Brewster, Trev, you take the rear. Mbutu, I want you and your sixth sense up in front. Allen, Jack, Mitsui, and me in the middle. Let’s go!”
They started off, and Trev spared a backward glance at the dead men in the street. “Should have left one of them,” he said. “Mason would have been able to make him talk, find out just what the hell this is.”
“What the hell is this?” Sawyer asked. He and six of his men stood outside the thick double doors that led to BL2. Before even coming here, Sawyer had been given the six-digit code to open the door, but it just wasn’t working.
“What the hell is this?” he repeated, growing more and more agitated. “Why isn’t the code working?”
His men just looked at him, blank.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. We need to get topside where I can use the satlink. Fuck!”
Turning on his heel, the agent went back the way he’d come, his men following behind. “Hold on,” he said, turning. “Two of you stay behind. Anyone comes out of that door that isn’t Dr. Demilio, you kill them.”
He continued on. He turned back.
“First, you extract the new code from them. Then you kill them. Am I clear?”
“Crystal, sir,” said one of the soldiers, who then shot Sawyer the finger when he turned away. “Jag off.”
“Pick it up. You four get topside. Get on the horn, get me someone that can crack that code,” Sawyer said. “Pull in everyone that’s on the perimeter. If any of those shitheads out there make it back here, we want them to come in without any worries. Maybe one of them knows the code.” He started away at a jog toward the infirmary.
When he got there, Mason was more or less where he’d left him.
“Bad news, Mason,” Sawyer said as he walked into the room. He crouched where the ex-NSA agent had fallen and ran his index finger through some of the man’s blood. “I can’t get into the other biosafety labs. So that means I have some spare time on my hands while we cook up something that will get us through.”
Mason, his back against the wall and his hands palm-up in his lap, just grunted, his eyes rolling to where Sawyer crouched.
“I was thinking, maybe one of your new friends out there knows the code? Has to be one of them. I mean, the first safety checkpoint was disabled. Hmm. I just hope we haven’t killed him. Or her.” Sawyer stuck his tongue out at Mason. “Oh, I hope it’s a her. The boys are getting restless. Probably shouldn’t have let them shoot the skinny slant at the door, huh?”
A twitch began in Mason’s cheek as he stared daggers at Sawyer. “You. Special place. In. Hell.”
Sawyer’s eyebrows went up. “For me? No, no. You have a frozen lake in your future, Mason, down in the Ninth Circle. That’s where the traitors end up. When you took off with the Doctor and her cure, you—”
“No. Cure.”
“There is a cure!” Sawyer raged. “There is a cure, and she’s going to give it to us,” he said, more in control of himself. “And I don’t give a damn about you, or this sorry bunch of losers you’ve aligned yourself with.”
Mason started a grunting, growling sound. After a moment, Sawyer realized it was laughter.
“No. Cure. No. Cu—”
Sawyer’s face a snarl, he dashed across the room and gripped Mason’s neck with both hands. He bashed the injured man’s head against the wall once, twice, three times before he caught control again.
“Idiot,” Mason whispered, and a gunshot went off.
Sawyer looked down to see a smoking pistol, his smoking pistol, in Mason’s right hand, and he felt the ache begin.
Mason laughed again.
The group was only three blocks from the Fac when it happened. Mbutu led the group at a fast lope, Allen and Denton on his heels, Jack and Mitsui behind them, with Trev and Brewster bringing up the rear, as Denton had outlined.
“Almost there,” Denton said, trying to urge the tall African to greater speed.
“It will be there no matter how quickly we go, my friend,” Mbutu said. “Haste makes waste, in the words of one of your great American . . . do you hear that?”
He stopped running and held up his hand, signaling for silence. The group stopped and looked around. Allen cocked his head to the side.
“Sounds like . . . what, a truck backing up? Beep, beep.”
Beep, beep, beep.
There was the unmistakable sound of hydraulics lifting a truck bed, and then the sound of things hitting the pavement.
“It’s this way,” Trev said. “Me and Brewster will check it out. That all right with you?”
Denton stuck out his chin. “Be careful,” he said.
Trev started up a side street at a brisk jog, Brewster two steps behind and shaking his head. “I know that I say this all the time, but I have a feeling about this. Why you and me? We’re the ones that are always—”
The howl of a sprinter filled the twilight air.
“Demons!” Trev snapped, picking up his pace.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Trev. Trev!”
Seeing that the other man wasn’t slowing, Brewster ran faster to catch his partner. “Trev, hold on a goddamn minute, will you?”
Around the corner ahead of them stumbled a shambler. Upon seeing the running men, it let out a low moan that grew in intensity. Seconds later, it was joined by three sprinters, then three more. They screeched at the sight of Trev and Brewster and started running, arms outstretched in front of them and jaws snapping.
“Holy fuck!”
Trev knew that six sprinters were too many for him, even in all his righteous fury. But with Brewster at his side . . . he turned to say as much to Ewan Brewster, but the man wasn’t there.
<
br /> He was five feet away and backpedaling. “Come on, Trev! What the fuck?”
His face a thundercloud, Trev turned to run and got three steps before his foot sank into a large crack in the street. He went down cursing and landed badly, cracking his jaw against the asphalt. Blood spurted from his mouth along with a small part of his tongue. Knowing the dead were moments behind him, he dragged himself up and started to run, but at his first step, his body betrayed him.
He went down again, pain shooting up his leg from a badly twisted ankle and knee.
“Brewster,” he said, and the sprinters pounced.
Screaming, Brewster drew his pistol and put a shot in each of the ragged figures that were grabbing at Trev. Those two went down as a third launched itself, a feverish and dying panther on the hunt. It landed on Trev as the man was trying to disentangle himself from the fresh corpses, and the carrier sank its teeth into the back of his neck.
“Trev!”
Dropping his pistol, Brewster grabbed his own ASP from his belt and snapped it out, running forward. With a leap and a yell, he swung the baton in a low arc, taking the infected in the side of the head, caving in the orbital bone and jarring the slavering lips from Trev’s flesh.
He kicked the carrier back and laid into it, beating it around the head and shoulders with the baton.
“Others,” Trev said, and Brewster turned with his shotgun, pumping out shells as fast as he could. Blood sprayed from new wounds as he sent shot after shot down the street into the carriers. He walked over and, almost as an afterthought, put a shot into the head of the shambler that had spotted them first.
“I got ’em, man,” he said. “We’ve got to get you—”
He was interrupted by a gunshot.
Brewster turned back and saw Trev lying still in the street, the back of his head gone and the pistol still in his mouth.
“Yeah,” Brewster said, suddenly more tired than he’d been in a long, long while. “That’s about right.” He stared at Trev’s body for a moment, then ambled forward. Bending down, he picked the ASP out of the dead man’s pocket and looked at it. He collapsed his own baton and walked over to where he’d dropped the pistol and picked it up, too.
