by Z. A. Recht
“Of course. I’m the fuckup, right Trev? And you’re the avenging hand of God. But you’re the one lying dead in the street. How is that fair?”
He looked up into the sky.
“How is that fucking fair?”
Sawyer was dragging himself away from the chortling, dying ex-agent. He had to move himself with only one hand, as the other hand was occupied, applying direct pressure to his middle. He’d been wearing his body armor, but by luck or on purpose, Mason had shot him in the pelvis, on the right side.
At first he’d tried to stand and get away, but he couldn’t take the weight anymore.
Trailing blood behind him, he cursed a blue streak as he dragged himself toward the stairs.
“Radio!” he yelled. “Goddamn radio!”
A pair of soldiers came down the stairs at his cry. “What was that, sir? It sounded like you said—”
“Radio, motherfucker!” Sawyer screamed, and upon seeing him, they ran forward.
One of the men took his walkie-talkie off his belt and Sawyer lunged up and snatched it out of his hand. “Finnegan! Finn, this is Sawyer. Argh, Finn!”
“Go ahead, lead.”
“Send a medic down. Radio the team at Offutt, tell them to get ready to come in hot.”
“Sir, the targets haven’t yet—”
“I don’t give a fuck, Finn! No more cat and fucking mouse games. Safeties off. Tell your men. Turn it up, Finn. And where’s my goddamn medic?”
“Yes, sir. Over and out.”
Sawyer threw down the radio and turned back to the room he’d crawled out of. “You hear that, Mason? Your friends are dead, they just don’t know it yet. You, too. We’re out of here, and then we’re going to pull this place down around your ears!”
As he yelled, one of the soldiers walked over to the room, weapon at the ready.
“I said, do you hear me, Mason?”
The soldier looked back.
“I think he’s dead, sir.”
Sawyer spit. “Wonderful. Where’s the goddamn medic?”
Patton leaned over to Jenkins as the pair of soldiers they were supposed to stay with jogged off at a radio summons from Sawyer.
“Now would be a good time to hoof it,” he said.
Jenkins’s head came up and haunted eyes found Patton’s. “What about Lutz?”
Patton winked. “If Lutz is too busy taking a shit to save his own skin, then I say we leave him to it. Come on.”
The men stood and opened the metal-covered double doors at the entrance of the Fac. Patton stuck his head out and looked around. “It looks clear,” he said. “We’ll snag one of their jeeps, see how many miles we can put between us and this place before the fireworks really get started. If we’re lucky, whatever goes down here will draw every deadass in town and we can scrounge up a safe place to spend the night.”
Jenkins, smiling for the first time in what felt like days, followed Patton’s lead through the yard in front of the Fac. “Goddamn, it feels good just to be out of there. It feels like I can breathe, you know what I mean?”
“Oh, I know,” Patton said.
Across the yard, Stone stepped out of the radio shack for a breath of fresh air and saw the ex-raiders leaving the Fac. He didn’t recognize them, and even though he wasn’t clear on what everyone’s name was, he knew their faces . . . these men did not belong. So how did they get in? He crouched low and stuck his head back into the shack.
“Hal,” he said. “Two unknowns exiting the Fac. Might be more inside. Better radio the search teams and let them know.”
Hal Dorne dropped the resistor he was chewing on and swiveled to grab for a handheld. “What are you going to do?”
Stone’s face set itself. “I’m going to introduce myself.”
Patton and Jenkins were two feet from the gate to the Fac yard when the yelling started behind them. Lutz came out of the front doors at a quick jog.
“Just where in the fuck do you two think you’re going?”
“Oh, fuck, oh, Jesus,” Jenkins said, eyes widening.
“We’re out of here, Herman,” Patton said. “You think you know what’s coming, but I think you’re wrong. You’re also an asshole, and we are not sticking around.”
“I say you’re getting your asses back in there, and—”
A man materialized up out of the dirt, holding an M-16 on them. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. “So, seeing as we’re strangers, how about we get off on the right foot and you put your guns down?”
Jenkins began to sob. “I knew it. I knew it. Ain’t nothin’ ever good of following Herman goddamn Lutz.” He dropped his gun and put his hands on top of his head.
Patton eyed the man with the M-16. After a moment, he put his hands out, but he didn’t drop his gun.
“Listen,” he said. “We don’t have anything to do with what’s going on here, okay? We were coerced—”
“And armed,” the man said. His eyes twitched narrow for a second. “Where’s the girl that was on the door?”
A sob hitched in Jenkins’s throat and Patton wilted just a little, and that was all the answer Stone needed. He raised his rifle and put a three-round burst into Patton’s chest. As he turned to Jenkins, that man collapsed, screaming how it wasn’t his fault. Lutz just stood there, dumbfounded.
Stone jammed the barrel against the man’s head, and Jenkins found himself retching at the scent of cordite.
“You two come with me,” Stone said, “and you might get to keep your skins.”
“. . . and Stone went off to investigate, over,” Hal said.
“This is bad,” Denton said. “That means they’re inside the Fac.”
He’d called a halt after Brewster came back without Trev and they took cover in the shadow of an empty shop. The radio call came shortly after.
“Well, that’s perfect,” Brewster said. “The sun is going down, we got drawn out like perfect suckers, and now we’re locked out of our own fucking stronghold.” He put his hands over his eyes. “I just want this day to end. Please, God,” he said, and looked up into the darkening sky, “give me somebody to shoot.”
A moment passed. Two.
“Fine,” Brewster said. “I just thought I’d ask.”
The sound of running footsteps came to them. Denton looked out and saw two men in urban camouflage carrying a body board between them, and they were hotfooting it toward the Fac.
“I believe in the power of prayer,” he said.
“Fuck, yeah,” Brewster said, and he took off running after the men.
They were double-timing it, but Brewster caught up quickly and snapped out his ASP. With a deft movement, he swung it out and took the rear man’s left knee out. He fell and clutched his leg, dropping his end of the body board and forcing the man in front to stumble and fall, as well.
Not waiting for either of them to get their bearings, Brewster shot the front man from a foot away with the shotgun, then turned back and cracked the rear man across the face with the butt of it.
He fell back, the fight gone out of him with his front teeth. Brewster dipped and grabbed the camouflaged man and dragged him into the shadows where the rest of his group waited.
While everyone watched, Brewster collapsed his baton and forced it sideways across the man’s upper lip. He pressed down hard and the man jerked, screaming. A quick glance at his uniform shirt gave Brewster his name.
“All right, Kent. This is how we’re going to play the game. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to give me answers. Otherwise . . .” He chopped the side of the baton, which was still against Kent’s upper lip, and the man let out another strangled yell.
Mbutu stepped forward. “Ewan, we cannot—”
“You shut the fuck up and keep back,” Brewster snapped. His eyes were red-rimmed and crazy. “Those first shots we heard? Who do you think that was for, man? The only one left topside was Juni!”
“Holy shit,” Jack whispered, and Mitsui sagged against the wall.
“That’s right,” Brewster said. “So no more Fun-and-Games Brewster.”
Turning back to the man on the ground, he smiled. His face felt to him like a rictus, a death mask that might never come off.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Stone’s three-round burst came to them from up the street.
Inside the Fac, Sherman, Stiles, and the others were taking off their Chemturion suits. The Doctor was still in the lab, as she had other tests to run and a plan to lay out. The last thing she’d said to Sherman as they left was “We don’t need volunteers for human trials just yet, but see if we can find out some blood types all the same.”
The words and responsibilities echoed in Frank Sherman’s head as he stripped out of the containment suit. He ignored the excited chatter from around him, focusing on the serum instead.
Thomas, who had been in a good mood all evening, was smiling. He even managed a chuckle now and again, which was for him the equivalent of bouncing off the walls without a shirt and screaming.
“I can’t believe she did it,” Stiles was saying as they headed out into the hallway. “It’s like something in a dream, you know? After all this time—”
“Wait,” Rebecca said.
“Huh? Wait, what?”
She drew closer to the safety checkpoint at the other end of the hallway. Stiffening, she turned back. “The coded entryway, it’s blinking red.”
Thomas’s head twitched just a hair.
“So what does that mean?” Stiles asked.
The sergeant major spoke. “It means someone’s been trying to get in.”
Rebecca nodded her head. “Yeah. And they didn’t know the code, or . . .”
“Or they’d be in,” Thomas finished for her. “What do you think, sir? Sherman?”
Sherman caught up to the group and took in the worried looks on their faces. “What?”
“There’s been an infiltration attempt, sir,” Thomas said, instantly snapping out of his earlier mood. “We don’t know who, but if it’s the NSA people that Mason warned us about, it could be trouble.”
“Or it could be Brewster on another bender, trying to show BL4 off for Allen,” Sherman said. “Still, if it was insurgents, and they made it past everyone upstairs, we’d be better served to operate as if it is the NSA. Ideas, Thomas?”
Thomas cocked his head toward the BL2 lab. “In there, sir. That’s where I keep Plan B.”
He turned that way and the small group followed.
“When Mitsui killed the first checkpoint box and changed the codes for the others, I had him open up this lab for me,” Thomas said as he worked the door controls. “I know that everyone gets tired of the old sergeant major and his paranoia, so I didn’t say anything about this, but . . .”
The door opened on a miniature survivalist hidey-hole. Along one wall were several stacked footlockers, the one on the end and topmost open to reveal water purification tablets and distilling equipment. The footlocker next to it was lined with road flares and tools. On the opposite side of the room, sitting on nails that had been driven into the wall, were several spots for firearms. Two Kalashnikovs were on either end, facing in and bracketing a mishmash of automatic pistols and revolvers of several different makes.
Sherman turned to Thomas, a look of surprise on his face.
“Before you ask, scavenging runs,” Thomas said. “Every place we went into almost, there was a handgun somewhere on the premises. There are more out there, too. Odd calibers that I didn’t think I’d find ammo for. But the stuff that was common, I brought back.”
He walked to the wall and pulled down a pair of Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistols. Handing one to Sherman, Thomas gave him a small smile.
“Thirteen in the clip, one in the chamber. Locked and loaded, sir.”
Sherman looked at the pistol. “Don’t call me that. I’m retired, remember?”
“And I’m going to keep calling you sir, sir.”
Thomas also took from the wall one AK-74 and a spare banana clip.
“Hey,” Stiles said. “You got something for me?”
Stone sat with Hal and kept his M-16 on Lutz and Jenkins.
“Lutz,” Hal said. “Now, why does that name sound familiar?”
Herman Lutz stuck his chin out. “Lots of my kinfolk around these parts.” He shrugged his shoulders, trying to get more comfortable. Stone had tied his and Jenkins’s hands behind them with many turns of copper wire, from wrist to above the elbow. “This sure is a good cinch you got on me, boy.”
Stone spit between Lutz’s feet. “Lots of practice with the crew I used to run with.”
“Yeah?” Herman asked. “What happened to them?”
With a shadow of a grin, Stone nodded his head out to the street. “This group you done went and pissed off? They killed them. Shot a bunch of them up and let a whole mess of deadasses into their compound.”
Jenkins swallowed audibly.
“Don’t you say a fuckin’ word,” Lutz spat at him. “You hear me? They don’t know nothin’.”
Hal shook his head. “You shot the right one, Stone,” he said. “That one’s gonna tell us everything, but only because the stupid one told us there’s stuff to tell us. Amazing who makes it through the end of the world.”
Standing with a hard set to his face, Stone grunted. “You said it. Come with me, Blubber Boy. We’re going to have a question-and-answer session.”
With a sob, Jenkins got to his feet and followed Stone deeper into the radio shack.
Hal turned back to the radio. “Denton, come in, over.”
Blocks away, Denton raised the handheld to his face. “This is Denton, over.”
“We got somebody. Stone is asking him questions. Any luck on your end? Over.”
“Pity that fucker,” Allen said.
“Brewster is ah, questioning a medic. It doesn’t look good, Hal. Over.”
Krueger’s voice broke in. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense, you fuckers. Over.”
“Right, sorry. Sawyer is in the Fac, along with anywhere from eight to twenty-four men. The medic isn’t sure about troop deployment. Over.”
“Maybe he’s lying. Over,” said Krueger.
Denton paled a little, thinking about Brewster’s deftness with the baton. “No, he’s telling the truth. Trust me.” He patted his pockets and cursed. “No fucking cigarettes. Anyway,” he keyed the radio again. “There’s a detachment coming from Offutt AFB, but the medic didn’t know what they were bringing. Over.”
There was a moment of silence, and they all heard it at once. A low thrumming, a quick pulse of chopping air.
“I bet I can guess,” Krueger said. “Out.”
Camouflaged bodies moved closer to the Fac. The units moved well, acting as teams, tested in the field and unified. Twelve men moved in concert, headed for the area the medics were last seen jogging through in response to a call from their leader.
A moment of respite while they paused behind cover.
“What do you think got ’em?” asked one grunt, the name Summers stitched over his pocket. His squad leader (Winter, proving that the armed forces still had a sense of humor) turned back and grimaced.
“Better hope it was shamblers. Or something.”
The third man, Reed, pursed his lips and blew. “What? You afraid of these guys playing army?”
Winter stared at Reed until the cocky look left his face.
“Not afraid, but if what half of RumInt says is true, these boys are part of a group that fought all the way from Suez to here. You think about that, if you’re equipped for it.”
The fourth squaddie, Page, nodded. “I heard that. And they got an ex-NSA guy with them, too. Bad dude; he cut up one of Sawyer’s men pretty bad a couple months back.”
“Right,” Summers said. “Hoping for shamblers, roger, wilco.”
“Whatever,” Reed said. He double-checked his weapon again, though.
The squad moved out, its movements mirrored by two others, separated by
a block in either direction.
Winter held up a fist and the squad stopped. He pointed at a Dump-ster blocking most of an alleyway entrance and signaled for his men to approach with caution.
They moved in, quietly. Directing each other with subtle motions that an outsider might miss, they arranged themselves around the entrance to the alley.
His back to the Dumpster, Winter held up four fingers. One at a time, he started bring them down.
Three.
Two.
One.
His head lurched as his throat spurted blood from both sides at once, the splat against the green metal of the Dumpster followed immediately by a flat crack of a rifle report.
Brewster and Jack popped up from the Dumpster as if they were on springs, guns out and firing. The squad went down with hardly a defensive move.
“Thanks for that, Krueger,” Brewster said into his radio. “Hard to believe that went down so easy. Over.”
The monster roar of an SAW interrupted Krueger’s reply, and Jack the Welder went down, his torso a mess of red jelly and white bone flecks. Brewster dove into the Dumpster with him, yelling.
“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit,” he breathed. “Come on, already!”
Jack, realizing how bad his wounds were, began a soft and breathy laugh.
“What?” Brewster said. “What’s fucking funny about this?”
Jack spat, trying to clear the blood from his mouth so he could talk. “If you get out of here, Brewster, you tell ’em; my name is Welder.”
The situation momentarily forgotten, Brewster blinked. “What?”
“I’m not Jack the Welder. ’S my name. My ex told me . . . it’d help me out. Save on business card costs.” He laughed, blood gurgling up through a wound in his neck and from his lips. Abruptly, the laughter stopped.
So did Jack.
