“He’s okay,” Jenna said. “At least physically.”
Terrence stood next to her. His face was pinched and contorted in pain. Glenn gave him an emergency shot of painkillers. He poured the contents of his water bottle over the acid burns and applied a cooling antiseptic gel.
“You okay, brother?” Dom asked.
Terrence managed to nod. “I’ll...I’ll get through it.”
“Everybody else ready to get moving?”
The others nodded. Dom looked through to the fifth car. The broken bodies of Skulls covered the floor and were draped over the seats. “Then let’s get going. We don’t have time to waste.”
He kicked the corpses out of the way to clear a path for the others. Once he reached the rear doors of the fifth car, he was met with the same dark goo that had covered the first set. He didn’t dare touch it. Judging by its consistency, the liquid was more of the acidic bile the Droolers spit.
Reaching behind his pack, he took out a spare water bottle and washed the acid away. The clean spot let him see through the window and beyond the fifth car. The sight sent a wave of relief through him.
There was just a dark, empty tunnel. And unless he was mistaken, Dom thought there just might be a light at the end of it.
-19-
Kent Island, Maryland
Stars sparkled in the almost cloudless sky. They were brighter than Midshipman Rachel Kaufman had ever seen. The outbreak had ruined civilization as she knew it, taking with it the light pollution that had once prevented such a brilliant view.
But the beauty of the galaxy was hardly at the forefront of her mind.
She climbed over a wall of sandbags and past a line of empty cars. Moonlight streamed over the bridge. The pavement was littered with the bodies of Skulls, broken and surrounded by pools of fresh blood. The corpses were the aftermath of yet another battle she and Kent Island’s Defensive Forces had won. The KIDF had originally been organized by a police sergeant during the early days of the Oni Agent outbreak. Sergeant Joseph Reinhart’s quick thinking had preserved Kent Island’s safety along with thousands of people living on Maryland’s largest island.
Only the US 50 bridge led to the island. With the western side already blown out by an air force strike, the KIDF had set up a defensive wall and rotating watches to patrol the east side. But each battle against the Skulls left piles of bodies. If they allowed them to continue stacking up, then the creatures could more easily climb over the defensive barriers.
Rachel had barely survived the Naval Academy when she had led her fellow midshipmen in the defense of civilians sheltering there. Since then, she’d served multiple shifts at the defensive wall here with other KIDF members. She’d brought down her fair share of Skulls. But her least favorite part of surviving the apocalypse was the cleanup.
“Help me with this one,” she said to Rory Booker, another midshipman from the Academy.
The first-year scuttled over. His boyish face turned a pale shade of green. “They smell awful.”
“Then hold your breath,” Rachel said as she wrapped her gloved fingers around the wrist of a Skull.
Rory lifted its ankles, and they dragged the creature to a pickup and hoisted it into the truck’s bed. Other KIDF members loaded up more corpses until the bed was full. The truck drove its load to the dump point. The process would repeat itself all night until the bodies were all piled together at the far end of the bridge. There, a few KIDF members would set the corpses on fire and let the flames devour the Oni Agent-riddled bodies.
“Why can’t we just toss ‘em over the side?” Rory asked.
“Are you kidding? This close to the island?” Rachel huffed. “That’s the last thing we need. Some little kid on a beach scratches himself on one and turns into a Skull. Yeah, that’d be great.”
Rachel and Rory hefted another body into the idling truck. After they threw the body in, Rory wiped a streak of sweat from his forehead. “I’d rather be shooting them than carrying them.”
“You got that right.” Rachel adjusted the strap on her MP5 and slung it around her back again. She hadn’t let the weapon out of her sight since the Naval Academy. It had served her well, and she was proud to defend the survivors on Kent Island with it. But she wondered how long the island really could hold out against the Skull attacks. This had been the third swarm since she’d arrived here.
She rested for a second near another corpse and shone her flashlight beam on the monster’s face. The creature’s mouth hung open, revealing its jagged teeth and gray tongue. Its eyes were mottled with crimson. A couple of ragged strips of fabric stuck to the armor plates and spikes poking out from its joints. There was no way to tell who this Skull had been in its prior life. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” she asked, carefully positioning her grip around the Skull’s thin, bony wrists.
“What?”
“Just...this could have been us. We could have turned, and no one would have recognized us.”
“I doubt there’s anyone left to recognize us.” Rory tightened his fingers around the Skull’s ankles and stood. “My parents are probably gone. The only friends I had were at the Academy and...”
“Yeah, sorry,” Rachel said. “This all just sucks. Just really fucking sucks.”
Rory forced a laugh. “Fuck these Skulls.”
They heaved the body onto the waiting pickup and walked back to grab another body. This one still wore the utility belt of a police officer.
“Score,” Rachel said, kneeling next to the body. She pulled the 9mm handgun from the officer’s holster and slid it into her waistband.
“God, we could’ve used another one of those.”
“The pistol?” Rachel asked.
“No.” Rory shook his head. “A police officer. Someone who could help defend this damn place.”
Rachel was about to agree when the distant sound of helicopter blades interrupted her. She squinted into the darkness, trying to see where the chopper was coming from.
“You think that’s the Hunters?” Rory asked.
“I thought they were headed to Boston,” Rachel said. “Wouldn’t be back so soon, would they?”
The thump of the blades drew nearer. There wasn’t just one chopper. The silhouettes of several approaching aircraft were barely visible against the starlit sky.
Rory dropped the legs of the Skull. “Whoa, you think we’re actually getting some kind of reinforcements?”
“Don’t know,” Rachel said, letting go of the Skull’s wrists. “Maybe they’re coming for us. General Kinsey ordered a tactical retreat to DC and the Pentagon. Captain Holland told me before he headed out.”
“Shit. I hope they don’t think we’re deserters.”
Spotlights burst from the helicopters, waving around the ramp leading from the bridge to Kent Island. The lights settled on an open parking lot belonging to a kitschy tourist motel that had been turned into a shelter. People swarmed under the lights, looking up at the choppers.
The aircraft descended, and the people in the parking lot ran back to the sidewalk. Rachel counted four Black Hawks and two Apache escorts.
“Looks like the Army,” she said.
“Should we check it out?” Rory asked hesitantly.
Rachel understood his reluctance. If the Army decided to treat them as deserters, she figured getting court-martialed during the apocalypse wouldn’t end well for either of them. But then again, where the hell was she going to hide from them on an island? There was only so long they could play hide-and-seek.
She cursed inwardly. Maybe they should have played it smart when they first arrived on the island. They could have pretended to be civilians like everyone else. But it was too late for “what ifs.” And besides, she could never live with herself knowing she took the coward’s way out of anything.
“Let’s go see what they want.” Rachel marched down the ramp; Rory followed at her heels.
When they reached the str
eet, they walked straight between the bare-branched trees toward the parking lot with the now-idling choppers. A pair of high-intensity beams swiveled directly at them, blinding her. She shielded her eyes with her hand.
“State your name!” a loud voice bellowed.
“Midshipman First Class Rachel Kaufman,” she said.
“Midshipman First Class Rory Booker.” Rory’s voice cracked when he said it.
“From the Naval Academy?”
“Yes, sir!” they both replied.
Rachel tried to peer between her fingers, but the light still shone in her face. She took a step forward. The sound of firearms being adjusted and aimed met her ears.
“Stay right there. Drop your weapons.”
Rachel unslung her MP5 and placed it on the ground. She pulled out the 9mm she’d scavenged and dropped it next to the submachine gun. Rory laid his rifle next to her weapons. She could hear his heavy breathing, and her own heart hammered.
Before she could ask any questions, the heavy thud of boots against asphalt sounded all around her. Hands grabbed her roughly and pulled her arms behind her back. Cold metal cuffs clicked around her wrists, and a black sack was thrown over her head. Muffled, urgent voices called from all directions as she was shoved forward.
Someone yanked her aboard one of the waiting choppers and pushed her into a seat. She felt someone else fall into the seat next to her.
“Rory?” she whispered.
“Quiet!” another voice boomed.
Her wrists burned against the tight cuffs. She strained to adjust her aching limbs while someone tightened a safety harness around her. She waited like that for maybe sixty minutes. Others were secured into the neighboring seats, but Rachel didn’t dare ask any more questions. She bided her time, listening and waiting, and tried not to think about the fate that awaited them all at the end of this journey.
-20-
Meredith crept through the open window and lowered herself to the marble floor of the museum. She crouched behind a display case with oversized models of viruses and bacterium and idly wondered if any of them looked like the Oni Agent. It was amazing—and terrifying—that something so small could have the power to destroy the world as they knew it.
Andris slunk through next and joined her. “We need to get through that, huh?”
He nodded to indicate the Skulls prowling the catwalks and balconies of the museum. All floors overlooked the central atrium. Low glass walls and metal handrails lined each level to prevent visitors from falling. Meredith glanced at her smartwatch’s map and pointed at a glass wall on the opposite side of the atrium.
“Past that exhibit there’s a staircase that’ll take us to the roof.”
“We’re going to have to be very quiet to get past these bastards,” Andris said. “Probably need to kill a few along the way.”
“No worries,” Meredith said, patting her knife sheath. “I was in the CIA. Quiet is what I do.”
Andris’s face scrunched up. “But that was many years ago you were a field operative, no?”
“Need me to prove I still got it?” She moved silently from behind the staircase toward a Skull in the middle of their path. She wrapped a hand around the Skull’s mouth and pressed her blade through the bottom of its fleshy chin. The monster thrashed against her grip until she plunged the knife deep enough to pierce the roof of its mouth and stab into its brain stem. Blood dripped from the wounds as she gently lowered the body to the floor. Turning back to Andris, she raised an eyebrow and beckoned him over.
“Ah, okay,” Andris said in his lilting accent. “You have proved you still have it.”
The dark humor did nothing to lighten Meredith’s mood. She led him painfully slowly past mannequins dressed in various forms of scientific garb: white lab coats, biohazard suits, climbing gear for field biologists scaling the expansive trees of rain forests. Past the faux scientists, another two Skulls lurked. Meredith used two fingers to indicate her eyes then pointed to the creatures roaming between the legs of a giant grasshopper. She shot a few hand signals commanding Andris take the left while she took the right. He motioned to his suppressed SCAR-H.
Shaking her head, Meredith took her knife out again. The suppressed muzzles might make their gunfire quieter, but in the confined quarters of the museum, the shots would be amplified enough to attract the attention of the other monsters in the wing.
With her fingers, she counted down: Three. Two. One. They dashed toward the Skulls. Meredith was on the first before the monster could so much as twitch a talon. Her blade found its target, and the Skull fell backward into her arms. She laid it on the floor and let it bleed out. She turned to Andris. He had his hand clamped over the mouth of the other Skull but hadn’t worked his blade in fast enough. It flailed and swiped at the air. Andris kept himself at the Skull’s back, preventing the monster from impaling him with its scythe-like claws.
But Meredith saw the panicked look on his face. He was losing his grip on the creature. The Skull slammed its feet against one of the spiny legs of the giant grasshopper. They both slammed into a display case full of pinned butterflies. Glass shattered and pinged against the marble floor. A low growl sounded from a neighboring exhibit, and Meredith heard the telltale click of claws against tile.
Meredith and Andris didn’t have much time. She sprinted at the thrashing pair and brought her blade down into the Skull’s eye socket. She leaned on the knife as hot blood poured out. When the Skull went still, Andris pushed the corpse off and stood, leveling his rifle.
She rushed to the door where she heard the next Skull coming from. The creature emerged from the shadows and pounced. It shrieked before Meredith could reach it. She landed a kick that knocked the Skull’s claws away inches from slicing into her flesh. A second kick sent the monster crashing into the wall, and then she threw her blade. The knife whistled through the air and impaled itself in the center of the creature’s face, buried up to the hilt. When the creature slumped, Meredith dashed toward it and retrieved the knife. She flicked the blood off and looked for her next target.
More low growls echoed throughout the atrium. The Skull’s haunting wails filled the cavernous space, and it was difficult to tell where they were coming from.
“Come on!” Meredith said in a low voice.
She led Andris through an exhibit showing the various stages of chocolate production. Meredith briefly wondered if she’d ever taste chocolate again; in this insane new world, a Hershey’s bar seemed like an unimaginable luxury. They ran into another room depicting various marsupials. Between a kangaroo and a wallaby, another Skull reared back. Its nose scrunched in a snarl, and its gray lips curled back, baring a set of cracked and serrated teeth. Andris ran at the Skull and lashed out with his knife. He knocked the monster, bleeding and dying, into a wombat. The Skull groaned. It crashed into the floor, and its limbs twitched. Andris pulled his blade out, and it finally went still.
She hid behind a doorway before moving on. Andris went flat against the wall beside her. Several howling Skulls ran down the catwalk to where Andris’s first target had fallen into the glass.
Meredith ran down the catwalk in the opposite direction, toward the massive glass wall. Andris fell in behind her. A half-dozen more Skulls clambered up the frozen escalators to join the growing mob of creatures in the exhibit with the grasshopper.
Renee’s voice came over the comm link. “Meredith, Andris. You’ve got ten minutes. Do you copy?”
“Copy,” Meredith said in a hushed voice. “We’re almost there.”
More Skulls skittered up the escalators, climbing over each other. A Skull came bounding past their position. It stopped in its tracks when it spotted Meredith and Andris. She lunged. Her knife flashed before her. The Skull let out a gargling cry, blood bubbling from its mouth. Already, more Skulls were coming, drawn by the sound.
“Shit,” Meredith said. “Run!”
They sprinted into The Wonders of Math exhibit. That had always been her favorite subject in school,
and she hoped that it would treat them well now. Winding between display cases, Meredith moved toward the back wall. Frenzied howls and wails chased after them, and the clatter of claws against the floor sounded more loudly than before. Meredith reached a door labeled Employees Only. She tried the handle, but the door was locked.
“They’re gaining!” Andris shouldered his rifle and took aim. Rounds lanced into the nearest creature, and it hit the floor with a thud, knocking over a glass display case on its way down. More Skulls plowed through the wreckage. They shattered displays and trampled each other, grinding abacuses and graphing calculators beneath their taloned feet. Andris continued to fire, and the monsters roared back, throwing themselves into his wall of lead.
Meredith slammed the butt of her rifle against the handle. The stock glanced off. She hit it again and again. “Goddammit!”
“You fire. I will take care of the door!”
Andris switched positions with her. Dozens of the creatures were piling up behind the glass wall, climbing over each other to reach the math room. Meredith fired a spray of bullets into the closest Skulls, knocking them backward. Several of the rounds pierced the glass, and fracture lines began to spread across its surface. Frenzied Skulls fought one another to be the first to reach the fresh meat, and they threw themselves against the cracked glass.
Once that wall gave way, the monsters would flood the room.
“There, almost set!” Andris said, putting a small detonator on the C4 he’d molded along the door handle. “Back up!”
Meredith fired on another pouncing Skull, and they positioned themselves away from the door, behind a toppled display case.
“Fire in the hole!” Andris said.
The small explosion blew out the handle, and the door swung open. At the same time, the glass wall finally came down. It wouldn’t be long—perhaps only seconds—before the creatures were on them. She couldn’t let them stop her from helping Dom’s evac from the T station.
Meredith stopped firing her rifle, pulled open the side door to the grenade launcher under its barrel, and loaded in a grenade case.
The Tide (Book 3): Salvage Page 14
