by Stark, Ken
Alejandra calmly stepped up to face the advancing swarm, machete sheathed and Tommy gun settled into her shoulder, then Christopher joined her on one side with his AK and Addison on the other with his Bushmaster. When Beverly arrived with her shotgun, the stage was set.
On an unspoken signal, the foursome opened up, and while Christopher and Addison took precisely-aimed shots at individual heads in the crowd and Beverly's scattergun wreaked a havoc all of its own, Alejandra simply mowed the creatures down like wheat. Like a tiny female version of a ‘30s era gangster, she stood her ground and sprayed the swarm with a hail of bullets, but there was nothing haphazard about it. Where another might have shot wildly and hoped that the awesome power of the weapon would do all of the work, Alejandra kept her eyes on the sights and made every one of those .45 calibre slugs count. She quickly emptied the fifty round magazine, then she calmly exchanged new for old and tore into them again. The swarm was forced to stumble awkwardly over so many of the dead and dying, and the bodies piled up like driftwood.
As soon as the barrage of gunfire erupted, Mason ran for the door, clubbing one more alpha into the ground and shouldering another into the side of the building hard enough to have it slump to its knees at the trailing end of a streak of gore. The creature tried to struggle back to its feet, but then the back of its head suddenly exploded in a puff of red, and Mason cast a quick look over his shoulder to see Hansen coming at a run, firing Sarah's howitzer from the hip.
Becks was right behind her father and trying to keep up, but she was in a battle of her own. She was running at one alpha with another on her tail, and Mason's heart skipped a beat when he saw her stumble. But the stumble was a feint, and when the two creatures came crashing together where she had just been, she drove her heel into the solar plexus of one while simultaneously thrusting her javelin through the eye of the other. As one alpha gasped for breath and the other spasmed on the ground, she yanked the weapon free and plunged it into two exposed throats, silencing them both.
Mason flung the door open, then he and Hansen took to each side of it, shouting back to the troops, “This way! Now! Move!”
In prearranged order, Teddy, Diego, and William came running for the open door with Richie and Donn covering their flanks. Richie made more than a few alphas pay for getting too close, with a bat to the head, but Donn simply outdid himself. He raged against one alpha after another, and by the time the younger three had crossed the threshold, the war-scythe was literally running wet with gore. He and Richie followed the others in, then the defenders started falling back in turn, closing the circle tighter and tighter. Inez went next, then Beverly, then Becks came close enough for Hansen to grab her by the arm and shove her in. Then, he stepped up to the firing line and emptied clip after clip after clip to cover the retreat.
Christopher went next, Addison piled in after him, and with the end so near, Sarah finally signaled to Mack and Clancy to get inside, before she jumped through after them.
Now, the only ones left outside were Mace, Hansen, and little Alejandra, still tearing the swarm apart, piece by bloody piece. At last, Hansen grabbed Alejandra by the collar and dragged her kicking and screaming away from the carnage, and Mace was alone once again. He took three mighty swings and caved in three more skulls, then he spun on his heel and all but hurled himself through the door.
Barely had he cleared the threshold before Hansen threw himself into the door to slam it closed, and there followed several anxious minutes where the outcome of the world's deadliest shoving match remained undecided.
The swarm crushed in on one side of the door, and Hansen, Mason, and Addison threw everything they had at the other. They forced it back, inch by inch, and at last there was the subtle shnick! of a lock clicking into place. Everyone crumpled to the floor to pant away their exhaustion.
“We made it,” Becks said.
“Ev... Everyone?” Mason managed between furious gulps of air.
“Everyone, Mace,” Addison panted. “I counted. All present and accounted for.”
Well, halle-fuckin'-lujah...
CHAPTER XIV
When they could move at last, fifteen beaten and battered souls dragged themselves upstairs and took over the Fireside restaurant. While some collapsed exhausted into one of the many overstuffed chairs or long couches, others made straight for the kitchen to see what it had to offer. One sniff at the walk-in refrigerator kept them all at arm's length, but they found enough canned and packaged goods left behind to feed an army.
On Hansen's orders, the bodies of the dead were carted upstairs and dropped one by one from a window. Over a ton of biomass rained down onto the swarm, and it ended with Mason taking sole custody of a tiny, hollowed-out body and sparing it just an extra fraction of a second before heaving it out with the rest of dead. Once that gruesome task was done, a kind of normalcy descended over the place. Bellies were filled, thirsts were slaked, and when it was discovered that several toilets on the main floor still held water in the tank, few in the group declined the opportunity to avail themselves of an actual working toilet. It was an hour of revelry and a waste of potable water like the world had never seen before. But it was hard-won and well-deserved. Mason didn't raise a word of objection. In fact, when it was his turn to squander his three gallons of water, he did so without a second thought, and even grabbed a magazine from the bookstore on his way down to keep him company. Twenty luxurious minutes later, he stepped out of the men's room to find Sarah coming down the hall with a smirk on her lips.
“Omni? Really? I had you pegged more as a Sports Illustrated guy.”
“Only the Swimsuit edition. Hey, it says in here that Elon Musk believes we're living in a simulation. Think there's a chance he'd spring for the 'no living dead' upgrade?”
“Doubt it. Fucker probably hopped the last rocket to Mars. But listen... I couldn't find JAMA in the book store, but I did find this.” She held up a magazine, keeping her place with a thumb stuck between the pages. “It was tucked all the way to the back of a bottom shelf behind Crocheting Monthly.”
“Is it the right one?”
“It is. And it tells quite the story.”
“About the virus?”
“Yup! Well, maybe. I'd need to see the actual JAMA report to know for sure, but I can see why Jim thought there might be a connection.”
Mason looked at the cover. Science Life, it read in bold script. Beneath that, a woman in a white doctor's coat, posing before an array of lab equipment that would have made Dr. Frankenstein weep. She was pretty. Asian. Mid-forties, probably. Big dark eyes, high cheekbones and thick, pert lips that would have looked better in a smile than in the staid, expressionless set of an academic.
“Hardly the face of evil.”
“Hardly,” Sarah agreed, and Mason thought he saw just a glimmer of remembered pain wash through her eyes as she regarded the woman's Asian features. “Apparently, Professor Chan was one of the world's leading oncologists. I'd never heard of her, but it says here that she and her team were on their way to developing a new method of fighting cancer.”
“Cancer? What does a cure for cancer have to do with the end of civilization as we know it?”
“I'm not sure, but it seems that there was a viral component to her research.”
“A virus? To fight cancer? Sarah, I'm no doctor, but is that even possible?”
“It doesn't seem likely,” she shrugged, “but using mold to fight infections didn't seem likely until Alexander Fleming left a window open.”
“Okay, so what of it? You already knew it was a virus, so how does that help? Do you think you can beat it, now that you know what it is?”
She dashed his hopes before they could form.
“Sorry, Mace. Not a chance. This is just a magazine article, not a scientific paper. It doesn't even identify the particular strain of virus, let alone how it might've been used in the research.”
“So, how do you know it has anything at all to do with... well, anything?”
She flipped the magazine open to the saved page. “Because I haven't told you the most interesting part. Listen, these are Chan's own words. 'It shouldn't have worked, but it did. After years of trial and error and more disappointment than I could have imagined, we had finally done the impossible. It was only a single organism, but with the successful bonding of the tech, I knew in that very moment that the future of modern medicine had been changed forever.'”
Mason stared blankly down at her.
“Uh, Sarah? I know you think you're making a point, but you're really not. Care to dumb that down for me? Like, way down?”
She gave him a smile that would have melted any man's heart.
“The operative word here is 'tech,' Mace.”
Again, the blank stare, but before Sarah could utter another word, Teddy came bounding down the hall, nearly breathless.
“Mister Mason?” she panted. “Uhh... Sir? Sarah? You guys'd better come quick...”
Fearing the worst, Mason grabbed his weapon from where he'd left it leaning against the wall, and he and Sarah charged after her. But when the girl ought to have led them downstairs to repel an invasion, she turned and ran upstairs, her ponytail bouncing every step of the way. Once they reached the top, Mason could see the reason for her concern, but it was hardly the stuff of nightmares. Sarah sheathed her kukri, Mason deposited his rebar against the doorframe, and they both stood there, dumbfounded.
Alejandra and Hansen were standing nose to nose, or as close as Alejandra could reach, surrounded on all sides by the others. Hansen was as red as a beet, and though she was outmatched by a foot and a half and a hundred-odd pounds, Alejandra looked like she was itching for a fight. Thankfully, there was nothing as foolhardy as a raised voice among them, but this was clearly no friendly meeting of minds.
“What the hell...?” Mason cursed just loudly enough to get everyone's attention. “Can't a guy even take a shit without you two coming to blows?”
“This tamarindo is more gallina than man.” Alejandra glared at Hansen, spitting the words up at him. “He thinks we should stay here and sit on our hands. Maybe he expects Prince Charming to come and save the damsel in distress, huh?”
“All I said is maybe we should wait a day or two!” Hansen towered over the girl, returning every bit of the glare and more.
Becks was at her father's side with her hand on his arm, pleading, “Daddy, please!” But when she tried to pull him away from the stand-off, he rudely ripped his arm away and snorted down at Alejandra, “If you were a man, peleonera, I'd knock you on your ass.”
“Go for it,” the girl hissed.
For a long, pregnant moment, it looked like Hansen might do just that. His fists clenched and unclenched, his muscles tensed, and a vein on the side of his neck pulsed red with every beat of his heart.
Addison was at Alejandra's side, and though he knew better than to come between a bear and a jaguar about to throw down, he hushed in her ear, “He's not worth it, Ally.” Then, he looked to Hansen and cautioned him, “She'll whoop your ass, dude...”
Finally, Sarah stepped between the two, shoving them both apart.
“Seriously, this is what we're doing now? Jesus Christ, it's like high school all over again! For all we know, we might be the last human beings on the face of the Earth, and you two want to get into a pissing contest? Christ!”
“She started it,” Hansen snarled down at Alejandra.
“No, you did,” she said, sending every bit of his snarl back up at him. “You started it by opening your big fat boca! We go when Mace says we go. Not one second before, and not one second after. Got it?”
“Oh, I get it, alright, peleonera. El jefe habla, saltas. He speaks, you jump.” He looked past her to Mason. “So, is that it, tough guy? You call this shit a democracy right up until you tell everyone exactly what to do?”
“That's not─” Mason tried, but Alejandra cut him off with a growl.
“Damn straight, pendejo. That man says jump, I jump, because I know he has a good reason for me to jump. And if you were half as smart as you think you are, you'd jump too.”
“Hey, if you want to follow the great Hank Mason through the gates of Hell, that's fine by me. Chido, peleonera. But I'm not about to put my life in the hands of that... that jackass!”
His voice became a roar with that last, and though he immediately clamped his mouth shut, it was already too late. A general howl rose up from outside, and with it came a renewed pounding and clawing against the walls.
Sarah turned a weather eye to the stairs, then she swung back and focused all of her fury on Hansen.
“Make no mistake about it, Hansen. Yes, every single one of us would follow that jackass through the gates of Hell. Absolutely and without a second thought. But that's not the way it works.” Hansen was about to respond, but Sarah shut him down. “I know, I know... here's the part where I say that we wouldn't have gotten this far without Mace, and you say that he's the reason we're in this predicament in the first place. Then I remind you that we'd already be fifty miles away if you hadn't sent out the SWAT team after us. Then, I get so pissed off that I knee you in the balls. But what it really boils down to is this... For whatever reason, you can't stand Hank Mason. And that's it. Now granted, the man is a little rough around the edges...”
“A little,” Addison laughed to himself.
“...but just so you know where we all stand, Detective Sergeant, every one of us owes that jackass. He saved my little girl's life, then against all odds, he saved mine.”
“And mine,” Christopher threw in.
“And mine,” Inez echoed.
“And mine,” Beverly said, albeit with a quiver in her voice.
Addison put a thumb to his chest and declared, “And mine,” then Alejandra growled up at Hansen with her own, “And mine, gallina.” This time, the man let the insult slide.
“And though he had every reason not to,” Sarah went on, “that jackass then came all the way down here just on the slim chance that he might be able to save the woman who ruined his life. So, you should thank whatever god you believe in that that jackass was ever born, Hansen, because he probably just saved your fat wrinkled ass, too!”
“Well, I wouldn't say she ruined...” Mason started to say, but that was as far as he got.
Sarah dabbed a finger into Hansen's chest. “Every single motherfucking one of us would be dead if it wasn't for Hank Mason, and that includes you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you'd be dead all the same.”
Now, Hansen responded, and he did so in a subdued roar.
“Now see here, little lady...”
Sarah's face blanched, and she came so close to Hansen that their noses nearly touched. “Call me 'little lady' again, ass-hat. I fucking dare you...”
“Good Christ!” Becks grabbed her father by the arm again, and this time she didn't let go. “Don't you see it, Daddy? Doesn't everyone? Hey, Sarah, you want to know why Mace and my father are always at each other's throats? Why they absolutely can't stand one another? It's because they're both smart and they're both strong and they're both as stubborn as a God damn mule! Jesus, Daddy, don't you get it? You and Mace are exactly the same! And I'm not talking flip sides of the same coin, either. No, no, no. You two are the same side of the same damn coin! My God, how blind must I have been? Three billion men on the planet, and I picked the one man who was a carbon copy of my father. My father! Jesus, how screwed up is that?”
In the supremely uncomfortable silence that followed, Hansen and Mason locked eyes for a moment, then they looked awkwardly away and let their gazes drift anywhere but directly at one another.
“It actually makes a lot of sense,” Christopher hushed to Addison. “You know, in a creepy Freudian kind of way...”
“I totally saw it from a mile away,” Addison hushed back.
Becks took her father's hands in hers, and with the sweetest of smiles, she told him what Mason would've ripped his own heart out to hear just a few short weeks ago.<
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“I love you, Daddy,” she said. “You know I do. But know this, too... From now on, wherever Mace goes, I go.”
“What?” Hansen squawked. “You finally dumped that asshole to the curb after two years of his bullshit, and now you'll stick with that very same asshole over your own father?”
Becks looked at Mason and then at Sarah, and then her eyes drifted down to the little girl with a tiny arm thrown over Clancy's back, and she spared her the sweetest of smiles. She turned back to her father then, and with what Mason could only imagine as a witch's brew of emotions boiling away just beneath the surface, Becks remained Becks. Brave, resolute, and with a heart of pure gold fixed firmly to her sleeve. She skewered Hansen to the spot with her big dark eyes, and one corner of her mouth turned up in a sly grin.
“In a fucking heartbeat.”
As Hansen's mouth gaped wordlessly open and closed like a dying fish, Alejandra delivered the killing blow.
“A blind man could see this place couldn't last, tamarindo,” she jeered. “So what kind of man does that make you, huh?”
“Of course it couldn't last!” Hansen roared in a sudden blast of fury, heedless of the renewed howling from all around. “I'm not an idiot! I knew from the second we drove in here that this place was going down. But what was I going to do? Head for the hills, same as everyone else? Take my little girl and my bottled water and my can of beans, and run? Is that what I should've done, peleonera? Should I have turned my back on sixty-plus frightened children and left them all here to die?”
With that, all of the fight seemed to drain out of him all at once. He gave Mason one last glance out of the corner of his eye, then he stepped away from the others and lowered himself into one of the overstuffed chairs. Becks took the chair immediately adjacent and reached across the divide to take his hand.
