7 Sykos

by Marsheila Rockwell

  The Infecteds were getting too close. There were thirty or more; it was hard to judge in the dark. Not so many they couldn’t fight, except that they were all a little woozy from the crash, and he had no idea what condition the guns were in. For the moment, running seemed like a good idea.

  ­“People!” he cried. “Run! Now!”

  Finally, the reality of their situation seemed to sink in. Lilith broke into a sprint. Sansome looked shaky but ready to go; he waited until Fallon took off, then followed, with Pybus after him. Light could have easily outpaced the older man but didn’t want to let him fall too far behind.

  Across the street was a cemetery, dotted with trees among the tombstones. A road cut through the center of it. “That’s the way we need to go!” Fallon shouted. Light was glad to see her coming back to herself. “Through there!”

  Light liked the idea. In the dark, between the trees and the headstones, maybe they could lose the Infecteds.

  The air was cooler in the cemetery and smelled like earth and pine trees. Grass and dirt didn’t hold in the heat like concrete and pavement did, and the trees helped shade the ground from the day’s sunlight. The Sykos were making good time, racing past the markers set flush with the ground and into a section where there were taller stones, even some obelisks and a handful of aboveground crypts. Fallon had led the team off the main road—­Light assumed because they were more visible there than they would be among the trees. They’d have to watch their step, though, or risk tripping over headstones and losing whatever advantage they gained.

  Then he looked back and saw that Pybus had slowed down. The old man was running with one hand clutching his side. A cramp, Light guessed. They couldn’t afford that. He stopped and started back toward Pybus, hoping he wouldn’t have to use a fireman’s carry to get them both to safety.

  “You okay, Caspar?” he called.

  Pybus nodded, but his face was twisted with pain. Before Light reached him, his legs gave out, and he tumbled to the grass.

  Light hurried to his side, looped an arm beneath his, and pulled him to his feet. With his free hand, he picked up Pybus’s M4. “We can’t waste any time,” he said. “They’re almost on us.”

  “Just go,” Pybus said. “I’m done.”

  “Don’t talk crazy. It’s just a cramp. You’re fine.” He started to run, helping Pybus, half carrying him. They were slower than Light by himself, by a wide margin. But it was progress, just the same.

  He couldn’t see the rest of the Sykos. Could they have gotten that far ahead? He kept plowing forward, scanning the darkness.

  A low whistle caught his attention, and he spotted Fallon waving at him from behind a big double crypt. He altered course and joined her and the others.

  “Is he okay?” Fallon asked.

  “He had a cramp, that’s all.”

  He released Pybus, and the man slumped to his knees. “No, I’m not. Guess I was hurt more in the crash than I thought.”

  Without the warmth of the man’s body against his, Light realized his side was hot and sticky. Had his flesh wound started bleeding again? He touched his shirt. No, way too much blood for that. He crouched beside Pybus, pulled the older man’s shirt aside.

  Blood bubbled from a gash at his ribs. He’d cut himself on something, maybe squeezing out of the truck. It was bad—­even in the dim moonlight that filtered through the trees, Light could tell that. He thought he could see muscle, maybe bone.

  “Oh, God!” Fallon said. “Can you do anything, Hank?”

  “If I had any supplies, maybe. As it is, not much. I can apply pressure, try to slow the bleeding. But that’ll take time we can’t afford.”

  “I told you,” Pybus said. He gritted his teeth, sucking air between them. “Should have left me back there.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” Fallon told him.

  “You have to. I can’t keep going. I’ll only slow you down.”

  “Caspar—­”

  He cut her off. “I never did you any good anyway. I can’t shoot straight. I can’t fight. I don’t know why you brought me in the first place.”

  “I didn’t know then that I’d be coming along,” Fallon said. “I wanted you to lead the team. I brought you for your head and your heart, Caspar. You reminded me that a psychopathic murderer was still a person, no matter what he’d done.”

  “Guys,” Lilith said. She was looking over the top of the crypt. “This is supersweet and all, but those fucks are getting too close. We have to move or get ready to rumble.”

  “There’s one last thing I can do for you, Fallon,” Pybus said. He put his hands on the crypt’s side, forced himself to his feet. “Let me do this.”

  “What?”

  He drew in a deep breath, let it out with a wince. “Goodbye, all. It’s been a pleasure.”

  Fallon started to reach for him, but he twisted out of her way and took off at a run, angling toward the Infecteds. As he ran, he shouted as loud as he could manage. “I’m the one you bastards want! Come and get me! My brain’s delicious! I should know!”

  When the Infecteds had locked onto him, he veered away. As he made the turn, his foot clipped one of the flat stones, and he went down. He made it to his hands and knees quicker than Light had thought he could, but then he stayed in that position. Light was afraid he’d already run out of steam.

  “Come on,” Fallon said. “If one’s paying attention to him, they all are. Let’s not waste the gift he’s given us. I don’t want to see this, anyway.”

  Light snatched up the M4 Pybus had left behind but hesitated for another moment, watching him. The old man turned his head their way, and there was a broad smile on his face. His glasses had fallen off, but he didn’t seem to notice. “This is Waylon!” he shouted. “Waylon Jennings himself! Or whatever’s left of him! I fell right on him! This was meant to be!”

  Fallon yanked on Light’s arm. “Hank!”

  “Okay,” Light said. Fallon was already sprinting toward the cemetery’s other end. Light followed.

  Behind him, he heard Pybus laughing as he started to run again. “You know what Waylon said! I ain’t living long like this! Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be zombies! Are you sure Hank done it this way? Come with me! What’ll you do when I’m gone?”

  Light wasn’t a big country music fan, but he recognized some of those as song titles, and figured they all were, or variations on them. Pybus was still hollering them into the night when Light couldn’t hear him anymore.

  Or if not, Light wanted to believe that he was.

  CHAPTER 46

  7 hours

  The Sykos were quiet after the cemetery, as though the loss of Pybus had taken something vital from the group that Warga’s and Antonetti’s deaths had not. She supposed it was somehow fitting that he, at least, had perished in a graveyard. She imagined him and Waylon jamming on a fluffy white cloud somewhere, and the thought made her smile.

  “Care to share with the class?” Light asked.

  They’d come out of the Mesa Cemetery, across from Hohokam Stadium, and Book had told them to bear right until they got back to the canal. It would lead them east, straight to the basin.

  There wasn’t a lot of cover in the end-­to-­end soccer fields they had to cross, so instead of walking by the canal, they took the road that led to the back parking lot of the stadium, where at least a row of planted trees would mask their movements—­to someone just glancing their way, not expecting to see ­people, they might just seem like slightly thicker trunks.

  Fallon nodded at the last few trees ahead.

  “Just glad we’re almost there, at the end of the road. Book thinks he can follow the meteor’s trail from where it landed in the basin, so we find it, evac out of here, and save the world. Seems worth smiling about to me.”

  The basin—­shaped like an upside-­down Arkansas—­was where Book had
told them it would be. They could see the small lake that covered half the detention-­basin floor as water from various inlets trickled in, and the impact crater where the meteor had hit and burrowed partially into the ground.

  “We’re here, Book,” she said. “Now what?” For a moment, Fallon despaired. What if he hadn’t been able to locate it? They’d come this far, overcoming impossible odds, with enough time to stop Robbins from nuking the city. They’d lost three members of the team, two of whom she’d come to consider friends. She’d gotten her prototype back, but everything else seemed to have been for nothing.

  “Hold on, let me cycle back through the satellite images. I meant to do it earlier, but things have been a little nuts.”

  “This is bullshit,” Lilith stated, as Fallon relayed Book’s words, and they waited for the analyst to tell them what had happened to their Holy Grail.

  “Straight up,” Sansome agreed.

  “I’ve got it,” Book said. “I switched to infrared and traced it through images from just after it crashed into the basin.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Fallon said. “But just tell me where it is!”

  “Right—­sorry. It looks like it was taken to a home belonging to the Sutter family, in that neighborhood to the northeast—­1322 North Wilbur. Follow Glencove east—­it’s the street that bounds the basin on the north—­make a left, and the Sutter place is just a few houses down. It’s on the west side of the road, that nondescript color I think they call ‘sand.’ Pretty generic, really, but the address is right over the garage doors, so you can’t miss it. You’re close, so leave the feed on unless there’s really an urgent reason why not. I want to be with you every step of the way.”

  “Got it. Any Infecteds around the neighborhood?” Fallon asked

  “There are . . . a lot.”

  “Really? Mister NSA Analyst can’t give us any better estimate than ‘a lot?’ ”

  “A helluva lot?”

  “Helluva lot. So much better.”

  “Just say a shit-­ton and be done with it,” Lilith interjected. “I’m ready for this to be finished. Even my prison cell is an improvement over fighting these things all the time, and running from them when we’re not fighting them. Let’s get it over with already.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Light replied, and Fallon couldn’t quite tell if he was mocking Lilith or not.

  “Okay, then. Let’s lock and load.” The words didn’t sound nearly as alien coming out of her mouth now as they would have at the start of this mission. Maybe she was taking to the role of military leader a little too well. Fallon was pretty sure that if she uttered the phrase “assholes and elbows,” she’d have to shoot herself.

  The other three Sykos complied. Fallon holstered her Glock and pulled the M4 off her shoulder. Lilith and Sansome did likewise, while Light hadn’t bothered to sling Pybus’s over his shoulder since he’d picked it up. He had it out and ready. They all made sure they had fresh clips, then looked at Fallon.

  “Once more into the breach?”

  Light nodded.

  “It’s a good day to die,” he said. “Well, for them to die, anyway.” His smile was feral.

  Fallon smiled back.

  Killing zombies makes strange bedfellows, I suppose.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They headed around the edge of the basin, none of them wanting to walk through the brackish water. They were immune to transmission via infected humans, but who knew about the source? Better to stay away from anything that might have touched it until they had no choice but to touch it themselves.

  They walked down the center of East Glencove, headed toward Wilbur. They paid particular attention to the spaces between parked cars and landscaping that could hide anyone bigger than a toddler. Fallon was sick and tired of being ambushed by these things. She was going to be ready for them this time.

  And then they rounded the corner and froze in their tracks.

  A sound had been growing, slowly impinging on Fallon’s consciousness, but once they stopped, it hit her full force. There was a mass of Infecteds in front of them, halfway down the street, in front of what she assumed was the Sutter place. Though “mass” didn’t begin to describe them. There were hundreds, packed around the house like red-­eyed sardines, far more than they’d seen in any one place before. And they seemed to be . . . chanting? Moaning? Like Tibetan monks with a bad stomachache. When had they learned to vocalize, to try to speak? Before or after they learned how to wield the guns some of them were carrying?

  “ . . . aye . . . aye . . . aye-­nnn . . . aye-­nnn . . .”

  “What the actual fuck?” Lilith exclaimed, and one of them heard. He turned, saw them.

  Then they all did.

  “Great job, Lilith,” Light muttered.

  “Shit. We can’t face that,” Fallon said, as the mob surged toward them, like one giant, amorphous creature with several hundred heads and twice that many legs. “Run!”

  They spun and retreated around the corner, laying down suppressing fire that took out several Infecteds on the leading edge of the tidal wave, then turning and hauling ass back toward the basin the minute they were out of the sight of the Infecteds.

  “Fallon, wait!”

  It was Book.

  “Are you kidding me?” she panted. “For what?”

  “You need to stop. I can’t get a fix with you moving like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can even the odds, maybe tilt them in your favor, but I need you to stand still and let them get close to you.”

  He needed what?

  She couldn’t do it. Stand there and let certain death creep up on her? No. She’d faced a lot of things in the course of this mission, but this was too much. She was too scared. She didn’t want to die.

  And then she remembered the device in her pocket. Elliott had said he’d tweaked it so it could ramp up psychopathic tendencies in addition to dampening them. Decrease empathy even further. Increase aggression.

  Increase fearlessness.

  Stopping short, she turned back toward Wilbur, just as the horde of Infected rounded the corner, still moaning, “ . . . ainn . . . ainnnn . . .”

  She pulled the MEIADD from her pocket, looked at it, intuited the changes Elliott must have made, and recalibrated it for superpsychopathy. Then she held it against her scalp, making sure all three contact points were touching, and pressed the button.

  It was like the electrical shock you might get from accidentally touching the metal prong of an appliance while it was still partially plugged in. And she could feel it working immediately, feel herself getting angrier, bloodthirstier, wanting to wipe every last one of those bastard Infecteds off the face of the earth, not caring if they might be able to be cured. She zapped herself again and felt all her fear melt away, replaced with a sense of invulnerability.

  As she did, she heard the sound of an approaching aircraft, instantly identifiable in the quiet sky. Smiling wildly, knowing Book’s reinforcements were on the way, she started back toward the Infecteds, firing her M4 into their leading edge. Light, who’d never needed his sense of fearlessness amplified, joined her. Then Sansome, on her other side, and finally, Lilith—­which surprised Fallon—­taking up a position on Light’s flank. Together, the Sykos advanced, tearing into the Infecteds with a deadly spray of lead.

  Then Book was yelling in her ear.

  “That’s good! Now, run! Run!”

  She responded to the urgency in his voice, repeating the command to the others even as she turned to follow it. The Sykos were a scant thirty feet away when the predator drone unleashed a hail of Hellfire missiles into the crowd behind them.

  CHAPTER 47

  7 hours

  Light’s ears were still ringing from the multiple blasts as he picked himself up off the pavement.
Bits of flaming cloth and paper floated down through the air like a rain of fireflies. He grabbed the M4 that had skidded across the pavement when the concussive force of the Hellfire missiles striking their targets had lifted him and the other Sykos off the ground and thrown them a good ten feet.

  He turned to look at those targets. Several gaping holes in the asphalt looked back at him, filled with what remained of a hundred or more Infecteds. Some of the body parts there and on the street were still aflame, adding to the surreal hellishness of the scene, and the stench was nearly overpowering. Other Infecteds, no longer whole but not quite dead, writhed around on the pavement, still moaning their eerie syllables.

  “ . . . ane-­j . . . ane-­ja . . .”

  God, were they calling for some sort of angel? What sort of post-­Rapture apocalypse had he wandered into, anyway?

  Then he smiled. If they were calling for him, a government-­sponsored angel of death, he’d be more than happy to answer.

  Houses on either side of the street were starting to burn, as were a few of the cars. Landscaping was catching fire, and the burning foliage only added to the dreamlike quality of the situation, as though he’d wandered into the nightmare of some unrepentant atheist on his deathbed, whose worst fear was that he’d been wrong the whole time.

  The other Sykos were standing now, too, observing the aftermath of Book’s missile strike.

  “Not bad shooting for a bookworm,” Light said, and Fallon chuckled.

  Then the Infecteds who were still standing noticed them and started in their direction. More poured into the street behind those, too far back to have been injured by the missiles. Not the hundreds the Sykos were facing before, but still more than the four of them could handle.

  “Here we go again,” Fallon said, looking around. They were almost back to the basin. She pointed at the house to the north. “We’re never going to get there using the street. Let’s see if they’re as good at chasing us when there are more obstacles in their way.”