It took Tevy a second to remember that Novak was Milan’s last name. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Getting out was tricky, taking a path he knew under the street, squeezing past a cave-in and up into a wreck of a building on the other side of Kensie that had taken hits from the artillery. Gunfire from the Mart erupted before he’d even reached the Kensie Street Bridge. Luckily, no one was guarding it, so he got onto the highway, running with all he had left, north to Armitage where he found the huge squat plane, its four big propeller engines idle. It was massive compared to the Cessna.
“My God, young man,” Milan said when he came down the stairs from the plane, wiping grease from his hands on a cloth. “You look absolutely like death that has been warmed over.”
Tevy breathlessly explained that they needed to leave after dark.
“Impossible,” said Milan. “How would we land?”
“Martin Morley is already half-way to Duluth. He’ll fix it. We’re in radio contact.”
Tevy gratefully accepted a bottle of water, which he drank in gulps. He looked south back down the highway, summoning the energy for one last run before he must sleep.
“There isn’t any way you could taxi this thing closer to us is there?” he asked.
Milan shook his head. “It took us months to get all the overhead signs and lamp posts down to make this our runway.” He waved vaguely south. “From here on down there is much in the way, and the road curves and dips. Sorry young man. You can tell Joyce I will wait until midnight, but after that I’m supposed to be landing at Malmstrom. They think I’ve already left, and I’m very sure that they will be sending people to find out why I’m not doing my job. I’m not waiting around to answer. Webb thinks I’m in his damn army. He would shoot me as a deserter pretty damn quick.”
“We’ll be here. I promise.”
Tevy ran back down the highway as the sun sank below the horizon, sweat pouring from his body, his vision blurring and his heart racing. When he got to the Kensie Street Bridge he could see in the last of twilight that there would be no going back across. Red-shirted men with guns guarded the far side.
Fortunately, their backs were to him, as the guards were clearly intent on preventing people from leaving Chicago. Tevy slipped into the river, grateful of the cool despite the stink of algae, holding his Glock and his shotgun over his head and awkwardly swimming across on his back, using his feet for propulsion. He scrambled up through the brush and climbed out using the railway bridge—stuck permanently up and waiting for gravity and rust to bring it down—as cover. He slipped over the loading docks into the burnt wreck of the Chicago Sun-Times building. The sign high above had survived the fire, although he and Elliot put a few bullet holes in the ‘C’ when they were still pre-teens.
The report of distant gunfire spurred Tevy to run through the building, following paths he knew that led over and around the hills of fallen drywall and desks and other debris, even squeezing under a collapsed floor to get him into the Illinois Institute of Art. This building suffered even more in the fire, and the ceiling had caved in, but Tevy knew a way up a pile of moldering drywall and a sloping roofing girder that allowed him to clamber up and swing onto the pedestrian bridge. This ran over top of Orleans Street and into the second floor of the Mart. As he had hoped, no one from either side guarded it, because no one knew that the bridge didn’t dead end at the wreck of the institute.
From the bridge Tevy’s worst fears were confirmed. The gunfire did come from inside the Mart. Joyce was at again war. This time with Bobs.
Thirty-One - Last Stand at the Merchandise Mart
Tevy crossed the bridge in the dark and felt his way into the Mart. Muzzle flashes guided him down a corridor to the far side. The battle was taking place in the stairwell, or perhaps several stairwells. He found Emile pressed to the wall on one side. His face cut and bleeding, his eyes fierce as he screamed and turned to fire downstairs. A Red Shirt tried to climb over a pile of desks in the stairwell. The man fell to Emile’s fire and slipped back down the pile to land beside another corpse. A static road flare burned on the step near the pile, giving a red hue to the white walls.
“How the hell did you get back in here?” shouted Emile. “I thought they owned the first floor.”
“I came across the bridge over Orleans.”
“Quick, go to the north stair and tell Joyce.” He fired down the stairs to keep the enemy from rushing. “These guys are almost as bad as rippers. Bobs told them she’d kill them all if they don’t get us. Hurry. I’m running low on ammo, and I’m too old and drunk for knife work.”
Tevy hurried back up the stairs and into the corridor, but there wasn’t even a bit of light from outside. It was full night. He ran with one hand on the wall, tripping over debris twice, slamming his knees onto tiled floor. More gunfire sent light flashing out a doorway and made the last hundred yards easier.
Joyce and Kayla hunkered behind a heavy granite-topped desk turned on its side. They took turns firing over top and down the stairwell, which was also blocked with a pile of chairs, filing cabinets, and tables.
“Emile wants me to tell you about a way out,” he shouted over the gunfire.
Joyce turned sharply. “How the hell did you get back in?”
Tevy explained his route.
“Okay. Go around to all the stairs and let everyone know. In five minutes we all pull back into this hallway and we’ll retreat that way. Will they be able to shoot at us in the river?”
“If they know we’re there. I’m hoping we can get through before they know.”
“I don’t like it, but I guess we don’t have much choice. Go.”
He spared a glance for Kayla, but she was deep in her job, firing only when a target appeared, ducking when fired upon. Tevy had to resist the urge to drag her out of there and take her somewhere safe. He knew she would never forgive him if he did.
Emile took the news with relief, but he was bloodier. Tevy didn’t have time to do anything about it. He had just reached the next stairwell when shouting ended all gunfire. Tevy put his head carefully around the doorjamb to find Jeff and Elliot standing with their backs to the wall and their weapons pointing for the ceiling, not aimed.
He was about to ask what the hell was going on when a desk below shifted and Bertrand Allan emerged from the pile of office equipment that blocked the stairway, squeezing though a gap in the computers and filing cabinets and chairs as if being born. He stood and brushed himself off, apparently unaware that he was bleeding from a bullet hole in his shoulder.
Jeff spoke first. “Bert, good to see you dude, but you’ve looked better.”
“No one is coming up this stair.” Bert noticed Tevy. “Radu didn’t make it. I’m sorry. I think he was happy to go for a good cause.”
Tevy wanted to grieve, but he had learned from Mabruke’s talks that Elliot and Jeff must have denser souls because of Radu’s death. This was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“We’re going to pull out,” Tevy said. He explained as quickly as he could and rushed off to find the fourth stairwell.
They all pulled into the corridor, including about forty people who had still been evacuating from the ground floor. Emile dropped some flares at the east end nearest those stairwells so that they could see any Red Shirts that dared to come up. But Emile didn’t join them at a hastily improvised barricade of desks and a countertop ripped from a store. Instead, he slumped against a wall and slid down. Tevy ran back for him and discovered that Emile was beyond help. His breathing had stopped, and the hole in his gut explained the blood.
He closed Emile’s eyes, took his rifle, and fled the body of the man who, since Tevy was ten, had been his father. A new rage rose up, not for the rippers that had ended the world, but for the Redemption Brigade. Tevy was no longer afraid to kill humans. He vowed revenge.
*
Kayla had never been so relieved to see anyone in her life when Tevy shouted into the stairwell, but she couldn’t spare him a mome
nt of attention. Another one of the red-shirted bastards was trying to get around the corner to throw a grenade. The last one had detonated a full flight down when it rebounded off the wall and landed at the feet of the thrower. Luck wasn’t likely to help a second time.
She fired at the Red Shirt, and he spun away, falling before he could throw. Shouts of “grenade!” from below gave her just enough time to drop the Uzi and plug her ears, crouching down. The blast dazzled her eyes, but it exploded so far down the stairs that it hurt the Red Shirts rather than her. She made a note that grenades work better when lobbing them down stairs rather than up.
Joyce pulled them back a few minutes later, and when they got to the barricade and found Allan had joined them, Kayla was hopeful that they would escape. But then things started to go wrong. First Emile died, and she had to run after Tevy and scream, “Leave him, damn it!”
Tevy ran back to join her at the barricade. Joyce sent Tevy to show others the way out, and Allan stayed with them. A man rushed into the hallway, firing his shotgun wildly as he crossed into a store with broken glass windows. Kayla tracked him even as he vanished into the dark and she fired. In the flash she saw him for a second, still running but with a surprised look on his face. She was pretty sure that she had scored a hit.
“I can’t believe Bobs thinks she’ll get away with this,” Kayla shouted as she crouched behind a desk, painfully aware that bullets could pass through the steel and wood with ease. “You guys are heroes, and people will be pissed.”
Joyce shook her head. “I think she’s just lost it.”
Bertrand spoke, his voice gentle but raised to be heard over the gunfire.
“I should’ve told you, but if I did, I knew you’d risk everything to kill Bobs.”
Even though he was talking to Joyce, Kayla looked over, because she sensed something big. She remembered to watch the corridor, but she continued to listen carefully.
“Told me what?” Joyce’s voice had hardened.
“I didn’t choose to attack Vlad the Scourge in the Battle of the Mountain on my own. I mean, I guess I could have waited for you guys to rescue me. I don’t know, it’s all a haze.”
“What did Bobs do?”
“She locked me in there with him. Told me if I came out, Terry would shoot me. Told me I was her martyr.”
“For fuck’s sake, Bert, you should’ve told me this! I’d never have come down here.”
“Yes, you would have, only you would have come here to kill Bobs.”
“Okay, you’re totally fucking right. I would have.”
“Chicago needed her, Joyce. She’s the Ruthless General. Only she could stand against the rippers and Vlad Who Bleeds. Only she could pull all the loyalist humans together into a single effort. I didn’t want you to come down, remember? Christ, I didn’t want to be near her. You’re wrong, though.” Kayla glanced from the corridor, worried because the Red Shirts appeared to have stalled, which meant they were planning something new. She discovered that Allan was now addressing her. “They’ll kill all of you and say you died in a battle with the last of the rippers. Tomorrow you’ll all be on your way to sainthood in the new Chicago Catholic Church.”
Tevy, Jeff and Elliot rushed up from behind.
“We’re all set,” said Jeff. “We’ve got almost everybody across the bridge and heading for the river. He’s right. It’s our only hope of slipping away.”
Allan drew his shotgun from the holster at his hip. “I’ll hold their attention here. You go. I’ll make my own way to St. John’s later.”
Kayla knew a moment of hope. Of course, Allan would be nearly impossible to kill. They would get away. She and Tevy would make a life at St. John’s. Margaret would grow up, and Bobs would never be able to touch them.
The grenade was too far away to kill, the concussion hardly ruffling their hair, but its light dazzled their night-adjusted eyes. By the time Kayla could focus, over a dozen men rushed into the corridor, running criss-cross back and forth from doorway to shop window to doorway, shooting all the time.
A bullet tore away a chunk of Kayla’s ear, but she put the pain away for later, firing and firing, trying to stay with a target as it crossed the hall and not get distracted by one crossing the other way. She needed to change mags when they were only a few body lengths away, but the attackers were down to three, and before she could find another clip in her vest pocket, they were dead. The rush had been stopped.
Kayla risked a look to see if everyone was okay.
Joyce lay back in Jeff’s arms, a red hole in her leg, the blood spreading rapidly on the floor. Her face was white with shock. Allan crouched beside her, holding her hand. Tevy sat with an open mouth. Amanda ran up the corridor from the escape route, coming back to help them retreat.
A grenade flashed. Kayla didn’t even have to look up to know what was happening: a second rush, even bigger than the first. That’s what she would do. Right on the heels of the first, not giving her enemy a chance to reload, knowing they were looking to their wounded. The way they all looked at Joyce. Now they would all die.
Except that Kayla was there and knew what to do, because she was the Angry Captain—the soul that understood close combat, could delegate troops to their roles without concern about whether they were friends or lovers. The universe slowed for her as she computed. Joyce had always said that Bertrand Allan was a bullet. He didn’t understand the big picture, but point him in the right direction and pull the trigger and he would do epic damage.
Tevy hosted the same soul as Allan.
Kayla’s soul went into a cold state. There were only assets, not people.
She pointed down the hall toward the enemy that she knew without looking poured from the stairwell. She shouted for all she was worth.
“Bert, Tevy! GO!”
*
Tevy heard Kayla yell “GO” and he lunged up and over the barricade like a horse that has heard the gun at a race. It wasn’t till he landed on the far side of a desk that he even understood why she had shouted that order.
Red Shirts charged through the door of the stairwell, firing down the hall so frequently that the muzzle flashes weren’t even strobe. The light was continuous. Tevy had two shots left, and the first one went through a man’s eye, blowing pinkish-white brains out the back of his head. The second shot went wide, and he threw his Winchester at this man.
Allan crossed in front of him, tossing Tevy his shotgun in the process. It was identical to Tevy’s and it fit into his hands as seamlessly as if it were his own gun, only it was fully loaded. Tevy had to lunge to the left to get a clear shot past Allan at another man, but before he could pull the trigger a red hole appeared in the man’s forehead.
Pick another target and fire. Make every shot count. Allan crossed in front again and Tevy now understood that the man was trying to protect him, to draw the fire. They raged down the hall, Allan with his Glock and Tevy with the shotgun. Some of the Red Shirts tried to push back into the stairwell, to run from the unexpected fury of their assault. They collided with others and gave Tevy two more easy targets, hitting one man in the side and another in the head, dropping them both with no hope of survival, stopping them dead. They weren’t rippers. There were no parasites in their blood to save them.
Now there was a full on retreat down the stairs, and Tevy pushed against Allan, trying to beat him through the doorway. A grenade landed at their feet and Tevy kicked it, sending it bouncing down the stairs with just enough time to dodge away from the fire door. The blast dazzled Tevy and ended the Red Shirt assault.
They stood side by side at the top of the stairs, not far from the body of Emile.
“Come on!” shouted Tevy down the stairs, taunting his enemy.
“WIMPS!” shouted Allan.
They both heaved for breath, and Tevy marveled that a ripper could be winded. That was important to know. They grinned at one another for a moment and simultaneously remembered Joyce. They ran back for the barricade.
*
Kayla dropped the mag from her Uzi right after she ordered Tevy and Allan to their deaths and slammed in the fresh mag. She had just enough time to sight a man who would surely kill Tevy. She put a bullet through the Red Shirt’s head.
Tevy and Allan were as awesome as Joyce would have predicted. They raged down the hall like a tsunami sweeping all before them. Kayla fired again and again, always going after the ones closest to Tevy. It wasn’t just that he was her lover. Allan was a ripper and could take a lot without dying. After the grenade detonated, when the crisis was over, she remembered Joyce.
Kayla turned to her, still clinical, still the Angry Captain. The bullet had passed through the bone of the thigh, and Joyce was hiding the intense pain admirably, although she vomited suddenly. But Kayla thought of the description of the escape route: across a bridge, climb down a girder, work through the piles of debris of a burned-out building, swim across the river and climb out. Run a couple of miles up a highway. And Joyce would die anyway. There were no ambulances, trauma units, anti-biotics, or even hospitals. Still, they had people who could carry her. Maybe an amputation on the plane could save her.
Joyce tied a tourniquet around her own leg with Jeff’s help. She used a ruler to tightened the cord, the sling from her Uzi, and then bound around it to keep it in place. It would mean the death of her leg, but it would keep her from bleeding to death in minutes. She looked up at Kayla as she finished. “Get them out of here.”
“What?”
Joyce spoke in short sentences, the pain raising a sweat on her forehead and making her as pale as a ripper. “I’m finished. I’ll just slow you down. Get them out of here now and save Margaret. They would have shot us all in the river anyway if they had figured out we were gone, or they’d have chased us up the highway in their trucks. This way I can hold their attention here until you’re all across. After that carnage,” she said, nodding toward Tevy and Allan as they ran back, “they’ll be afraid to attack. I can buy you maybe an hour. Go!”
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 32
