Slaughterhouse - 02
Page 20
“Muldoon… go to sleep, man.”
Rawlings looked at him blearily with bloodshot eyes. She was sitting across from him, her M4 between her legs. She’d been asleep when he’d last looked over at her and had been for a good hour. There was grime all across her face and her uniform, and she didn’t smell very good at the moment. None of them did. The Army wasn’t for body spray addicts—that was why God had created the Air Force. But Muldoon thought that if Rawlings ever had the opportunity to get cleaned up and get those busted teeth taken care of, she might rate a seven or so on the hotness scale.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m good to go,” Muldoon said, even though his eyes felt as if sandpaper was being dragged across them every time he blinked. He attributed that to the fact his sunglasses had wound up a combat casualty, and as such, the only shades left available to him were his goggles. And since they weren’t tinted, what was the point?
“Not worried about you, man. Just telling you to get some sleep,” Rawlings said.
“Like I said, I’m fine.”
Rawlings shrugged. “Hey, whatever.” She closed her eyes again and slumped back against the side rail.
“You handled yourself pretty well, Rawlings,” Muldoon said, after a long moment. “You sure busted some heads out there.”
Rawlings didn’t reply. Muldoon realized that she’d already fallen asleep.
“So, like, are you guys dating now?” Nutter asked. He was leaning against the front of the truck bed, eyes closed.
“What, you jealous or something, Colonel Nutter?”
“Hell no, Duke. I don’t fancy you one bit.”
Muldoon snorted and looked back at Rawlings. He really wondered what kind of woman she was, when she wasn’t trying to be a man and kill every Klown she saw.
He didn’t wonder for long. Sleep finally laid its claim, and deep blackness enveloped him like a mother coddling a favored child.
FORTY-TWO.
Liar.
Lee snapped awake. He was strapped into the front passenger seat of his Humvee. Beside him, no worse for wear, Murphy drove with his eyes glued to the rear end of the Humvee in front of them.
Lee blinked and looked into the back seat. Foster, smelling faintly of burn cream, slept in the left rear seat. He wore a fresh combat uniform because a good deal of his old one had been burned up during the holding mission against the Klown reinforcements at Drum. The young soldier hadn’t been badly hurt, but he hadn’t come through it without paying a price. No one knew how it had happened, but despite his MOPP mask, his right eyebrow had been singed off. So he always seemed to have a quizzical expression. Behind Lee’s seat sat a dour-faced first sergeant who went by Boats. He packed an interesting weapon, a pump-action shotgun backed up with an enormous kit of various ammunition and accessories. Lee and Boats hadn’t talked much since Turner had pulled Sienkiewicz and assigned Boats to the command Humvee, but Lee knew the man was disappointed not to have run into his ex at Fort Drum. Apparently, he had some special ammunition for her.
“Silver shot,” Boats had told him. “Supposed to be able to kill vampires.”
Liar.
Lee rubbed his eyes. Salvador’s final word was locked inside his noggin, nice and tight, like some sort of demonic ear bug. So instead of having something like the theme to I Dream of Jeannie stuck in his head, it was Salvador’s final assessment of Lee as an officer and a soldier. Lee couldn’t believe how much it stung, after everything he’d been through. To be denounced in such a way had a powerful effect, and it left Lee feeling as he had been cast adrift.
The Humvee slowed suddenly, jarring Lee out of his funk. He looked out through the windshield and saw the Humvee ahead was slowing as well.
The radio squawked. “Wizard Six, this is Wizard Five. Over.”
Lee reached for the radio handset as the soldiers in the rear stirred. “Wizard Five, Wizard Six. Go ahead. Over.”
“Six, this is Five,” Walker said. “We’re approaching the Pennsylvania Turnpike, so we’re halting as ordered. Over.”
Lee sat up straighter and took a good look outside. It was getting dark, and the convoy was on a three-lane road called the West Germantown Turnpike. A darkened sign for AMC Theatres stood on the next corner. Beyond that, a huge shopping mall loomed… or what was left of it.
Everything in the area had been pretty much destroyed, as if that part of Pennsylvania had traded places with London during the German Blitzkrieg attacks. When he and Walker had decided the place would be the battalion’s final rest stop before pressing on into Philadelphia, it had just been a spot on a map. No one could have guessed that it had become a deserted battlefield.
“Five, this is Six. Let’s not stop here,” Lee said into the radio. “Let’s keep moving toward Philly. You agree? Over.”
“Six, this is Wizard Five. I agree. We’re only about fourteen miles outside the city. Let’s keep moving. Over.”
“Wizard Five, this is Wizard Six. Let’s get it done. Over.”
FORTY-THREE.
Sneaking through the night like a long serpent gliding through tall grass, the 1st Battalion, 55th Infantry Regiment eased toward the city of Philadelphia through shattered, blackened neighborhoods that smelled of ash, death, and rot. Bodies had been piled high and burned, as if an orderly process was being applied to deter the spread of infectious diseases beyond the bug which turned normal human beings into cackling, bloodthirsty monstrosities. But there were signs that such things lurked nearby—a row of heads on stakes, each wearing ludicrous hats; disemboweled corpses strewn across the street; an entire family, each member with their throats cut, sitting at a dining table on the sidewalk, forks and knives in hand, as if waiting for some service; two naked male corpses, positioned so it appeared one was heaving into the other next to a handmade sign that read WELCOME TO PHILLY, THE SHITTY OF BROTHERLY LOVE.
It was a drive through Hell, and all the troops manned up in MOPP gear got their weapons squared away and ready. Nothing in the blackness of the Philadelphia suburbs seemed comforting or even easily recognizable. Whatever fantastic orgy of violence had torn through the area had essentially eradicated everything in its path.
The battalion turned onto North Broad Street. In the lee of the old, abandoned husk of the Divine Lorraine Hotel, the convoy finally rolled to a stop. Lightfighters and civilians alike peered into the darkness ahead, and in a land that looked as if it had been ravaged by Satan’s own army, something curious happened. Hope was born.
For in the near distance, behind enormous barricades topped with razor wire and adorned with fixed machinegun emplacements, the city of Philadelphia was awash in lights like a ship in the middle of a vast, black sea.
Surrounded by the pall of death, Philadelphia still lived.
Contents
Title Page
Disclaimer
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
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