by Sam Sisavath
“I want to be back at the hospital by nine,” Mike said. He looked over at Will. “When’s your next scheduled call with Song Island?”
“Ten,” Will said.
“Must be nice to have a woman waiting for you on an island. That sounds like the plot of a bad romance book.”
Will smiled. “There’s nothing bad about it.”
*
THEY HADN’T GONE more than half a block when they heard the first series of gunshots. The sound exploded across the city like a flash of lightning, one after another.
Instantly, Will knew they had come from the hospital.
Before Mike could say a word, Will was racing up the sidewalk, easily outpacing Mike’s people. He was one and a half blocks away from the hospital, listening to the low, rumbling booms of gunshots as if they were coming from right across the street. He knew it was just the stillness of the city. Sound traveled these days, and the hard, violent cracks of gunfire moved with startling intensity.
Will didn’t slow down until he was half a block from the hospital. He spotted movement along the rooftops. There had to be at least half a dozen figures, and there was something very wrong about their shapes…
He was jogging at a much slower pace as he approached the parking lot. He could hear Mike coming up behind him, gasping for breath. Will looked back, saw that Mike had dropped one of his gym bags. Even just hauling one bag, Mike still look badly winded. Will looked past Mike at Paul and Johnson, a good fifty meters behind them. They were also just clinging to one bag apiece now, and looked even more out of shape than Mike.
“How are you not breathing hard?” Mike gasped at him.
“I haven’t spent eleven months inside a hospital,” Will said.
They reached the end of the parking lot, keeping an eye on the cars in front of them and the rooftops of the hospital’s visible three towers on the other side. The figures he had spotted earlier seemed to have disappeared, and that set off alarm bells inside Will’s head.
But he couldn’t stop. Not now. Not with gunfire still echoing from inside the building.
Gaby…
Mercy Hospital was only ten floors, but it looked much bigger from ground level, though it could just be the building’s odd four-sided tower construction playing tricks with his eyes.
“Marauders?” Will asked.
“Maybe,” Mike said between breaths. “If it is, then it’ll be the first time. They’ve never been this bold before. Even if they waited for us to leave, they would have to know I’ve got more men up there.”
“But how did they get up there?”
“I haven’t a fucking clue,” Mike said.
They reached the edge of the parking lot and were slowing down even further, the ringing inside Will’s head increasing in volume.
The figures on the rooftop. Where did they go? Where—
He hadn’t finished his thought when he saw a head pop up from the north tower rooftop.
“Sniper!” Will shouted.
Mike darted left and Will darted right as a man, wearing a white Level B hazmat suit, stood up and opened fire down on them. Will slid behind a parked white Ford as the vehicle’s dust-covered windows shattered, the ping-ping-ping of bullets punching into doors. He kept low, taking into consideration the sniper’s high angle that gave the man maximum coverage of the area.
No, not sniper. Snipers.
There were more than one. He could tell that just from the torrent of bullets raining down on him and Mike. From the sounds of it, they were shooting on three-round bursts, which accounted for the continuous ping-ping-ping! all around him.
Will glanced over at Mike, who had his back against a black Mercedes, the vehicle’s windows shattered, glass fragments scattered on the parking lot around his boots. Mike’s eyes were locked on something in front of him, back toward the street.
Will followed Mike’s gaze over to Paul and Johnson, lying in the street, blood pooling around them. Johnson had fallen over his gym bag, while Paul was crumpled up like a marionette. Will couldn’t tell how they had been shot. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead.
Gaby…
“Mike!” Will shouted over the gunfire. “We can’t stay here!”
Mike looked back and nodded.
“Start running on three!” Will shouted. “One, two—three!”
Will spun around, slid the M4A1’s barrel over the hood of the Ford, and fired three quick rounds up at the roof. In the split second that he fired, he spotted five figures on the rooftop, all wearing Level B hazmat suits with gas masks clipped to their waists. Three of the collaborators scurried away from the rooftop edge on instinct, but the remaining two turned toward him and opened up.
Will fired off five more rounds, not expecting to hit anything, before turning and running.
Bullets zip-zip-zip! past his head and played havoc against the concrete around him. One came dangerously close to taking off his right ear.
Mike had stopped in the middle of the street and was firing up at the roof with his Sig Sauer 9mm. Will almost laughed, but of course he knew why Mike was using his handgun. It was either the Sig Sauer or the shotgun, and at this range, he might as well be throwing salt at the snipers. Not that the Sig Sauer came even remotely close. But of course, the idea wasn’t to hit anything on the rooftop, it was just to draw their fire away from Will.
“Go!” Will said just as he reached Mike.
Mike turned and ran, while Will stopped, spun around, and fired up at the rooftop again. He took a couple of chunks off the side of the north tower and sent another sniper scurrying for cover. The last man refused to budge, though, and continued firing down at him.
Ping-ping-ping! as bullets scraped the street dangerously close to his feet.
Will turned and ran, making a beeline for Mike, who was already hidden behind the side of a Starbucks across the street.
A bullet screamed as it tore through the gym bag slung over Will’s back. He waited to feel the pain, but there was none.
So he kept running, jogging across the street with his head kept low.
He slid behind the Starbucks, adrenaline pouring through him. He unslung the gym bag and saw a hole in one side and out the other. He opened it and took out one of the shoes he had picked up for Lara. The bullet had gone clean through it.
Mike was reloading his Sig Sauer next to him. “You think we got any of them?”
“No.”
“Figures.”
Gunfire and a half dozen rounds pelted the Starbucks, obliterating the front windows. A couple of bullets fell short and dug divots in the concrete sidewalk.
“Sorry about Paul and Johnson,” Will said.
Mike looked at the two bodies lying up the street. “Yeah. They were good men.”
Will looked past the parking lot and up at the hospital rooftop. The hazmat-clad figures were standing and one of them was peering through a riflescope down in his direction, but the man didn’t fire for some reason.
“Who the hell are those guys?” Mike asked. “What the hell were they wearing? Those looked like hazmat suits.”
“Level B hazmat suits, yeah.”
“Why the hell are they wearing those?”
“Remember those ghoul collaborators I told you about? That’s them.”
“Shit. How the fuck did they get up to the roof without my guys seeing them?”
“It’s your hospital, you tell me.” Will glanced at his watch. “And there’s no other way into the building?”
Mike shook his head. Will could see he was fighting back emotions, trying desperately to process the loss of Johnson and Paul, and the very real possibility of losing Mercy Hospital.
“If I knew of one, do you really think we’d be rappelling up and down the rooftop?” Mike said.
A rifle shot took a big slab out of the Starbucks wall in front of them.
Will peeked out from behind the building and saw figures emerging out of the hospital lobby. “We gotta go.”
Mike lo
oked out and saw the same thing. “Where?”
“This is your city, you tell me.”
Mike thought about it. “Come on,” he said, and hurried toward the back of the Starbucks.
Will glanced out from behind the wall one last time and saw white-suited men, gas masks tapping against their waists, moving across the parking lot toward them.
He pulled his head back and followed Mike.
Hold on, Gaby. Hold on…
*
THERE WERE FOUR of them, moving from building to building, employing something that could, from a distance, be mistaken for tactics. They advanced up the street with two up front and two bringing up the rear.
The gunfire from Mercy Hospital had stopped a while ago. That was the bad news. Silence meant the battle was over and that the hospital had fallen. However the attack had gone down, it was obvious now that the collaborators had taken the place by surprise and with overwhelming force. If they could afford to leave that many on the rooftop, there were probably more inside the tenth floor itself.
Will lifted the M4A1 a couple of inches as he heard the sounds of boots scraping against hot asphalt. They were surprisingly quiet for a bunch of a civilians. Of course, in the stillness of the city, even breathing was too loud.
The closest man was twenty meters away when Mike finally made his move. As planned, he popped up from behind a dumpster next to a McDonald’s and opened fire with the Sig Sauer. Will heard those same boots scrambling for cover, M4s firing back, and the clink-clink-clink of empty casings raining down on the street.
Will slipped out from behind the parked minivan and scanned the road. A figure in a hazmat suit made the mistake of running toward him for cover. Will came out from behind the vehicle, saw the man’s eyes go wide as he started to lift his rifle.
Will shot him in the right eye.
Even as the man was dropping, Will was already turning slightly to his right, aiming down the street.
The remaining three were too busy firing back at Mike to notice him. Which was the idea. One of the men was hiding in an alleyway between a Barnes & Noble bookstore and a Mexican restaurant, his white hazmat suit like a beacon against the darkened mouth of the alley. The other two were using a parked police car as cover, popping up one at a time to return fire. The dumpster up the street was pockmarked with bullets, but Mike had ducked behind the squat object to reload.
Will shot the man in the alleyway in the abdomen. The man seemed to grope for the bullet hole, stumbling out onto the sidewalk before falling on his stomach.
Will was already moving as the two remaining collaborators turned in his direction and returned fire. He darted back behind the minivan, heard windows breaking around him, the ping-ping-ping of bullets tearing into the parked vehicle on the other side. There was a loud popping noise next to him as the right rear tire was punctured.
Then Mike was shooting again, and immediately the gunfire directed at the minivan stopped as the men turned their attention back up the street.
Will laid down against the hot sidewalk and peered underneath the vehicle at the two men, thirty meters away, crouched behind the back bumper of the police car. One was reloading while the other was firing off one three-round burst after another.
Will took two quick steps backward and slid the M4A1 underneath the minivan. It was a tight fit, so he had to aim with the rifle lying on its side. Tricky.
His first shot hit the side of the squad car two meters from the head of the closest man. The man flinched, then scrambled to reload faster when he figured out where the bullet had come from.
Will moved the rifle a bit to the right and shot again, this time hitting the man in the chest. The man in the hazmat suit seemed surprised for the brief half-second he was still alive. Then he crumpled forward and lay still.
The last man got up and scrambled down the street. Will hurried back up to his feet and stepped forward, took aim at the running figure, and shot the man once in the thigh and watched him twist slightly, as if he had tripped on something, and fall to the street in a ball of tangled legs and arms.
Mike was already running toward them, never breaking stride even as he snatched up one of the fallen rifles from a dead body. The man in hazmat suit had managed to pull himself up to his feet and was dragging himself desperately down the street. Mike easily caught up to him and smashed the stock of the rifle into his back.
Will jogged over to the first man he had shot and picked up his rifle. He collected two spare magazines and a radio, then salvaged another carbine from another dead body before joining Mike, who stood over the last surviving collaborator.
The man lay bleeding and hyperventilating, eyes looking desperately up at an unsympathetic Mike. “Don’t kill me. Please, God, don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I didn’t want to do this. I swear to God, they made me do this.”
Then the man threw up.
*
ONE OF THE dead men was named Toby. It was the first name the voice on the other end of the radio Will had picked up said when he called over:
“Toby, give me a sitrep. Are they dead? What’s going on over there? Someone answer me, goddammit.”
“Who was that?” Will asked.
The collaborator wiped at strings of what looked like eggs and bread with the sleeve of his hazmat suit. The lower half of his face was covered with dry vomit. It smelled, and Will alternated between breathing through his nose and mouth. And he thought the dead ghouls were tough on the smell factories…
“Please, can I have some water?” the man asked. He looked on the verge of tears.
Mike shoved the barrel of his shotgun into the back of the man’s neck. “Answer the question.”
“Kellerson,” the man said. “His name’s Kellerson.”
“He’s in charge?” Will asked.
“Yeah.”
“How many of you are there?”
The man didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be counting. “Sixteen,” he said finally.
“Counting you and the other three on the streets?”
“Yeah.”
“So there are twelve left at the hospital,” Mike said.
“Yeah,” the man said.
“What’s your name?” Will asked.
“Jones,” the man said.
They were a block away from the ambush site, inside a Subway sandwich shop. The building was tiny and easy to miss, but it gave them a perfect view of the streets while staying out of sight. Jones sat in a booth, hands on the tabletop. Mike kept vigil behind the nervous man, while Will stood slightly to his right, so he could see the street at the same time.
“How did you get into the hospital?” Mike asked.
“We climbed up,” Jones said.
“How?”
“Through the ventilation shaft.”
“Bullshit. We checked. The shafts are too small for anything to climb through. Even those bloodsuckers.”
“No, not the main ventilation system,” Jones said. “There’s an older one that’s been out of service that Kellerson found on a blueprint of the place. It goes straight up along the north side, then loops around the roof. It comes out of a sealed grate in the rooftop stairwell. The guys who went up there had to remove the grate, but since there was no one inside the stairwell, I guess it wasn’t too hard. From there, they were supposed to open the other stairwell door and let the others in.”
Mike’s face had grown paler. The idea that he had missed something so vital, that had now come back to take the lives of his people, was playing havoc with his mind. Will felt sorry for the guy. Eleven months, and they hadn’t realized there wasn’t one, but two ventilation systems. Mike was the leader. What had just happened at the hospital, ultimately, was on him.
“What’s the plan?” Will asked Jones. “For the floor. Are they going to kill everyone?”
Jones didn’t look anxious to answer.
Mike shoved his shotgun against Jones’s neck again. “Answer the man.”
“Just the adu
lts,” Jones said. “They want the kids.”
“‘They’?” Mike asked, though Will thought the former officer already knew the answer before Jones even replied.
“Yeah, them,” Jones said. “Them.”
“Why do they want the kids?” Will asked.
“I don’t know.”
“For the blood?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What else would they want the kids for if not for their blood?”
Jones looked hesitant. “I heard stories…”
“Go on.”
“The creatures, they have a plan. It involves the kids. I don’t know any more than that. Just that they’re concentrating on the kids now, for some reason.”
“What about the adults?” Will asked.
“They’re too hard to control. The kids are…easier.”
Will glanced briefly at Mike, expecting him to pick up the interrogation, but Mike’s mind wasn’t there at the moment. It was up the street, back at the hospital.
“Where were you taking the kids?” Will asked Jones.
“I don’t know. That’s Kellerson’s job. He knows all the details.” Then he added, quickly, “I’m just a grunt, okay?”
“Are they on the tenth floor now? The bloodsuckers?”
“No, it’s still too bright. They don’t like to risk the sunlight, and the guys don’t like having them run around. It’s…creepy. They won’t flood the floor until nightfall. We were supposed to be gone by then.”
Mike glanced reflexively down at his watch. Will didn’t have to. It was noon outside. He had been fleeing the sun long enough that he could tell the hour from the feel of the warmth against his skin.
“What do you mean by ‘adults’?” Will asked.
“What?” Jones said, not comprehending.
“How old.”
“Over sixteen, I guess. Basically, anyone with a gun. They don’t want anyone who resists. They just want the kids.”
Gaby turned nineteen today. And she’s certainly as hell going to resist.
“Is it over?” Will asked. “Did you kill all the adults? I don’t hear anymore shooting.”
