Fall of Man | Book 3 | Firebase:

by Sisavath, Sam

  The result was decent, given the circumstances. At least he wasn’t bleeding all over the place. He was already feeling a little woozy, which told him he had been bleeding freely until now.

  He scrambled back to his feet, and Glock in hand, ran down the hallway.

  Cole took the corner with wild abandon, not giving a goddamn if another crazy was waiting for him.

  How many were left?

  One?

  Two?

  Ten?

  He’d lost count. Even the Voice had, because it didn’t pipe up.

  It didn’t matter. Ten or twenty, Cole would kill them all if they stood between him and the elevator. When he ran out of bullets, he’d use the knife. And when the knife dulled, he’d use his fist.

  One way or another, he was getting back aboveground.

  He was getting back to Emily.

  Cole went around bodies and blood when he could, jumped over them when he couldn’t. He was moving faster than he should be given his condition, but couldn’t stop or slow down. A pounding headache accompanied him all the way to the entry hallway, where he turned and—

  There. The elevator at the end.

  Cole kept expecting crazies to come out of every door and shadow, but they didn’t. It was just him. Maybe he’d killed all of them after all.

  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

  Oh, who gave a shit. There was the elevator.

  Get to the elevator!

  He slid to a stop.

  Blood on the floor. Fresh blood, too, that hadn’t been there before.

  He stared.

  Bloody bare footprints. A man’s. Cole could tell that much from the size and shape.

  He flexed the Glock in his hand and scanned the hallway.

  Empty, with just the elevator at the end.

  The elevator!

  He ran again, reaching the elevator quickly. Cole reached for the panel to slide it open and punch in the code that Sal had given him with her dying breath—

  He froze.

  The panel was already open, and instead of the OUT OF OPERATION in red letters he’d seen before, there was now the familiar green arrow. Someone had already pressed the call button and left a bloody fingerprint behind as proof. Someone who either knew Sal’s code or—

  No. It couldn’t have been that. Sal had only told Cole.

  So how…?

  “…I helped install the damn thing,” Sal had said by way of explaining how she knew so much about the facility’s operations.

  So who else knew as much as she did?

  The same person who had overridden her code and was in the elevator now, headed up to The Welcome Room.

  A number “7” appeared on the panel.

  Then: “6”

  “5”

  “4”

  “3”

  “2”

  “1…”

  Chapter 20. Emily

  The ping! of the elevator doors opening was loud. Surprisingly loud inside a warehouse that was, at that very moment, covered in the blood of the dead and the grunts and screams of the dying.

  And yet, Emily heard it as if it were a gong banging away to get her attention. Not that it needed to. She was already moving toward it even before the numbers stopped on “1” to signal that the elevator had arrived.

  She was halfway to the elevator when Greg shouted out her name from somewhere behind her. Or was it to the right of her? She couldn’t tell because she was concentrating so hard on the elevator as its doors slid open.

  Cole.

  It had to be Cole.

  Who else could it be?

  It had to be—

  —not Cole.

  It was a man—tall and lean, bloodied eyes peering out at her from underneath unkempt strands of dark hair—but it wasn’t her husband. He was nude from head to toe, deflated penis hanging between muscular legs. He was pale-skinned, or would have been obviously so if most of him wasn’t covered in layers of red film. Not all of it had dried. There was some still fresh and dripping from one elbow and calf as he strode out of the elevator.

  It wasn’t Cole, but not a total stranger, either.

  It was someone from her past.

  The smirk on his face gave it away. She would recognize it anywhere.

  “Anton?” she said.

  The name came out in an almost whisper, and she wasn’t sure if he could even hear her. She wasn’t sure if she had even said it out loud or if it was all in her head.

  Whether he heard or not, Anton did see her because he ran right for her. He was holding something in his left hand—because Anton was left-handed—and the long skinny metal glinted as it slipped into a ray of sunlight pouring down from the high windows around them.

  It was an ice pick—almost seven inches in length with half of that making up the stainless steel section. The end was wooden, and Anton gripped it with blood-smeared fingers as he charged.

  …as he charged…

  …right at her!

  She was stunned, unsure how to react. She’d expected the elevator doors to open and reveal Cole.

  But instead it was Anton.

  Anton…but not really Anton.

  “Emily, shoot him!” a voice shouted.

  Who was shouting at her?

  Who—

  Anton, charging.

  The grin on his face.

  The bloodlust in his eyes.

  He was going to kill her. He was going to end her the way Don Taylor had tried to do days earlier.

  Because this wasn’t Anton anymore. This was someone else.

  Something else.

  “Emily!”

  She lifted the Glock, but even as she did so she knew it was too late. She’d moved too close to the elevator and had hesitated for too long. Two seconds, tops. Maybe two and a half. Either way, it was one second too long because Anton was almost on top of her.

  The Anton she knew was never the most athletic of men. But then again, this wasn’t the Anton she knew. This was the infected version. One being driven by pure killer instinct, adrenaline flooding up and down his veins giving him the ability to do things—like move with speed and athleticism—that he normally wouldn’t have been able to.

  And she had hesitated.

  Too long.

  …too long…

  Something struck her from her blind spot and threw her sideways and to the floor.

  Anton?

  No, not Anton.

  Greg!

  She landed on her side, banging the radio clipped to her hip underneath her against the hard ground as the big contractor fell on top of her. Greg’s weight threatened to crush her like cinderblocks. Emily might have screamed from the pain—first from Greg’s tackle, then striking the unyielding warehouse floor—if she wasn’t so shocked at having been broadsided. She’d been expecting Anton to hit her—or, more precisely, for that ice pick of his—but the blow had come from her side instead of in front.

  Emily looked up and over at Anton as he stood not more than five feet away. He stared at her, seeming almost as surprised as she was that Greg had come out of nowhere to snatch her out of his range.

  For a heartbeat or two, she thought he might come after them to finish what he’d almost started, but instead he turned and fled.

  No, not fled.

  Anton ran toward a crazy in denim overalls and jumped on top of the much bigger man’s back and began plunging the ice pick into the side of his neck. Blood spurted, joining the pools that had already collected from one side of The Welcome Room’s length to the other.

  It was a bloodbath with bodies everywhere and the gray concrete turning red with free-flowing blood.

  “You okay? You okay?” Greg was asking her as he helped her up with his lone good arm.

  “Yes,” Emily said. Or grunted out. She hadn’t felt the pain earlier but couldn’t say the same now that the shock had worn off.

  She followed Anton with her eyes as the man she knew, that she once loved, moved on from the crazy in d
enim to run his ice pick into the back of a woman in black joggers that was in the process of trying to finish off another crazy she’d gotten on the floor. The woman howled in pain and tried to slash back at Anton with her machete, but he jumped back to dodge her. Then, that insane grin on his face, went back in for the kill.

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” Greg was saying.

  Emily tore her focus away from the gory scene. She didn’t want to see Anton like this. It’d been hard enough to watch Don Taylor and her other neighbors back at Arrow Bay running amok, but Anton…

  She used to love this man. Maybe she still did, if not in the same way she loved Cole. But Anton was a part of her life. He had been a big part of it years ago, but those feelings had lessened dramatically as her future with Cole took shape. Over the years, Anton had made contact, filling her in on the status of LARS as it went from a government-funded project to a civilian version. Through it all, she always knew he was only using the “updates” as a thinly veiled excuse to keep in touch with her.

  And here he was now, as naked as the day he was born, stabbing his ice pick so many times into the woman in black joggers’ neck that Emily was afraid the head might fall off. His penis, which, disgustingly, had started to become erect, swung wildly between his legs as he killed the woman. And through it all, that same twisted grin on Anton’s face remained, as if it were pasted on and not the result of anything remotely natural.

  “Emily!” Greg, shouting at her.

  She snapped out of it and turned to him. He was tugging at her arm, trying to get her to move.

  Why?

  Oh, right, because she was cemented in place.

  “Come on!” Greg shouted.

  She nodded and began moving. Only then did Greg let her arm go. The contractor took off, running back to where Tommy was standing, struggling to keep Stoner’s limp body upright. Apparently Greg had passed the ex-soldier off to him.

  Emily found the offices near the back, where the others were waiting inside the bigger of the two rooms. Bolton and Zoe were the only two outside, both of them holding pistols, though only the chopper pilot looked as if he knew what he was doing with one in his hands.

  Even as she followed Greg, who had grabbed Stoner from Tommy and tossed the man over his shoulder again, Emily thought, Where are we going? The office? And then what?

  And then what?

  The truth was, with the crazies now in the warehouse with them, there wasn’t any place that was safe. The offices would be a temporary sanctuary but wouldn’t last. There was only one door in and out, and the upper half was all glass. Once they barricaded themselves inside, there was no way to keep the crazies out.

  It was a bad move, and the tactician in her, that looked at every situation and evaluated each one as impersonal as possible, knew it.

  She stopped. “Greg!”

  The big man was in mid-stride when he glanced back. Tommy had already run forward and reached the office. Bolton was looking over at them, maybe wondering why she had stopped.

  “Not the office,” she said.

  “What?” Greg said. Confusion spread across his face. It was flustered and red, either from the heft of Stoner’s weight or the situation. Probably both in equal measures.

  “Not the—” she said when she felt the air shifting behind her.

  Greg shouted, “Watch out!”

  But he didn’t have to because she was already turning, the Glock swinging up.

  A man—barely a teenager—in Converse sneakers and torn jeans was running at her with a baseball bat. There was a knife sticking out of his back, and blood spurted from a gash in his neck and the right side of his cheek. He was leaving a jagged trail behind him as he ran, either oblivious to his wounds or—

  No, that was likely it. He just didn’t care about them, because he only had eyes for her.

  Ten yards…

  Nine…

  Eight…

  Emily shot him in the chest and the boy fell, the bat falling to the floor and clattering away. The bullet went through the crazy’s body—it was thin, barely developed—and streaked across the hallway and struck a wall all the way on the other side.

  She spun back to Greg. “Not the office.”

  “What?” Greg said. The confusion on his face only got wider.

  “Not the office. It’s a death trap.”

  She glanced around.

  Crazies to the left of her. Crazies to the right. Even more crazies in front.

  It was madness, and that was putting it mildly. She was looking at two, maybe three dozen infected still on their feet and trying to murder each another. Stoner’s people were all gone, except for Minor and Cameron. They stood near the office, rifles in hand, looking uncertain if they should pick off the crazies around them or try not to be noticed.

  Step one: Know your objective.

  Stay alive and keep everyone alive, too. Especially the baby inside her. She wasn’t too concerned about Stoner and his ex-soldiers, but the others were her responsibility. Hers and Cole’s. She was the reason they were here in the first place.

  Step two: Gather intel.

  They were fucked. FUBAR. The warehouse was overrun, and sooner or later the crazies would turn their attention to them. Right now they were busy killing one another, and as long as they found a victim, they didn’t care who it was.

  But that wouldn’t last. Eventually one or two—or more—of them would start searching for additional prey.

  And Cole. Goddammit, Cole. He was stuck ten floors down. That is, if Stoner wasn’t right and the love of her life wasn’t already dead. There was nothing she wanted more than to believe her husband was still alive and fighting his way up here. But Anton—there, raging against a big man in cowboy boots with his ice pick, near the parked semi—had beaten Cole up here.

  What did that mean? Was Cole dead? Was he hurt?

  She didn’t know. That was the problem. She didn’t know.

  But she knew one thing for certain: They were all dead if they stayed here.

  Step three: Formulate a plan.

  The helicopter. It was the only option. She hated it, but it was the right choice. Not the one she wanted—God, it wasn’t that by a few million miles—but it was the one she had to make.

  For her sake.

  For her baby’s.

  For everyone’s.

  She turned back to Greg, then Bolton. The pilot was still waiting outside the office with Zoe. Her eyes rested on Dante, in his wheelchair, peering over the windows inside the office back at her. Fiona and Savannah, and the girl Ashley, stood around him.

  Waiting.

  They were waiting for her to make a decision.

  To save them.

  She glanced back at the elevator.

  No Cole.

  Where was Cole?

  And finally, step four: Execute that plan.

  “The helicopter,” she said, running toward Greg.

  “What?” Greg said.

  “We’re leaving this place.”

  “What about Cole?”

  “We’re leaving!” She looked past Greg and at Bolton, and shouted, “Get everyone to the helicopter! We’re leaving! We’re leaving this place now!”

  Chapter 21. Cole

  The lights around him flickered once, twice…

  …then darkness.

  “You’re fucked.”

  I’m not fucked.

  “Yes, you are.”

  No, I’m not.

  “You’re arguing with yourself.”

  So why don’t you shut the hell up and let me work?

  The Voice laughed, but it faded quickly into the background as Cole concentrated on the pitch blackness around him.

  Pitch blackness, because he’d thrown away the Remington and the flashlight taped to the barrel. Now why the hell had he done that?

  He’d run out of shells, that’s why. It wasn’t that the shotgun was too heavy to carry with him even empty, but it would have just dragged him down. Maybe it wasn�
��t a 50-pound rucksack, but the extra weight was something he didn’t need or thought he could afford.

  “Regretting that now, aren’t you?” the Voice asked.

  The answer to that question was obvious.

  “It’s back in the hallway. You can still go and get it.”

  He could, but the problem was the lack of lights. To retrieve the flashlight, he’d have to move in the darkness.

  And that would expose him to an attack.

  “One left,” the Voice said. “Or two. Three? I don’t remember, either.”

  You’re not helping.

  “I disagree.”

  Cole grunted, switching the Glock from his right hand to his left while he temporarily wiped the wetness off the palm of his left hand. Wetness. Sweat and blood. The former was all his, but the latter was his and Sal’s.

  She was dead. Back there in the hallway, where he’d tossed the shotgun. He wished he could have said this was the first time he’d seen a woman get killed before his eyes, but it would have been a lie. War didn’t give a damn about gender. He’d found that out across multiple continents and during more firefights than he cared to remember.

  After the lights went out, the elevator had also stopped while it was on its way back down to him because he’d pressed the call button. The last time Cole looked at the panel, it had just switched from “5” to “6,” meaning the elevator was now probably stuck somewhere between those two floors. Without power to run the lights, there was also no power to run anything else, including the elevator that was going to take him back up to The Welcome Room and Emily.

  The worst part—and there were a lot of worst parts right now—was that Cole didn’t know what was happening up there. The last image of Emily was her inside one of the two offices with Greg, the contractor that had braved the first few days of this craziness with her. The not knowing drove Cole crazy.

  And now he was standing in the dark, waiting for the generators to kick back on.

  How long had it been? Five seconds? Ten? How long had it taken the lights to return the last two times they went off? About thirty seconds, maybe?

  Thirty seconds later, and he was still surrounded by darkness.

  Fuck.

  A minute later, and nothing had changed.