“Next street is Newell!” Paul yelled. Glancing back over his shoulder, he added, “We gotta run faster!”
Daniel assumed he was nodding, but figured it would be hard to tell at that point with all the movement associated with their running. At the same time, he figured a response probably wasn’t necessary.
What was necessary was doing what Paul said: they needed to run faster.
They leaned into the turn, cutting the corner as closely as possible, taking advantage of the one thing they’d learned during the chase: every turn added a bit of distance between them and the infected. The uncoordinated way that the infected moved was as primitive as it was clumsy. Simple minded, they couldn’t figure out how to slow down before changing direction, resulting in them falling to the ground, creating obstacles for one another, causing even more of them to fall. Each time this happened, the mass converged on itself, falling into one another and fighting through each other, before managing to make it back to their feet and resuming the chase once more.
Daniel’s ears picked up the sounds of the infected tumbling and falling, then screaming at each other, as he continued running, finally seeing the short chain link fence that edged the fields up ahead.
Thank God.
“Can ... you … jump ... that?” Daniel asked between breaths, lifting his chin in the direction of the fence as he ran.
“I think so,” Paul replied.
“Alright!” Daniel said, stepping into the parking lot that led to the fence. Somehow, he found a little more speed and rushed forward towards the fence. Taking one final step, he pushed off with his right leg, lifting his left leg into the air, easily clearing the fence. Airborne, he saw the overgrown grass fields that led to the baseball diamonds ahead of him. Next to him, Paul was already landing on the grass, accelerating again as he rushed forward.
Daniel’s right foot caught the top edge of the fence, sending him flying forward. Extending his arms out in front of him instinctively, he twisted slightly in the air and allowed his right arm to relax as his palm hit the ground, leaning downward with his right shoulder, rolling with the momentum. He rolled on the ground twice, then scrambled to his feet and lunged forward, running once more.
Behind him, he heard the chain link of the fence rattle as the swarm of infected slammed into it and then into each other. Snarling and screaming, they fought against each other as they struggled to get over the fence.
Closer, he heard something wet slap onto the grass behind him and couldn’t resist a look.
A pool of blackish-red fluid coated the overgrown grass, barely three feet behind where he’d been a half-second ago.
‘Shit!’ he thought, forcing himself to run faster.
Seeing the dirt of the infield ahead, Paul glanced at both sides of the baseball diamond before cutting left towards the small gap in the fence that wound around and out onto the other side of the fence. He stood aside, letting Daniel go through, then followed him through the back and forth of the small walkway.
Emerging on the other side, Daniel rushed over to a metal trash can.
Seeing it was full of both trash and water from the recent rain, he cried out, “Give me a hand!”
The two of them moved the trash can to the opening and set it there then quickly squatted down and pushed it into the center of the narrow opening.
Breathing deeply, they backed away from their work as the infected rushed towards the baseball diamond. Scores more of them were still fighting their way over the fence, falling into the grass clumsily before rising to their feet and charging towards where Daniel and Paul were.
Glancing to his right, Daniel saw the lower portion of the fence extending outward from where it aligned with First Base.
Ready to run again, Paul started to move when Daniel reached out and grabbed him.
“Wait. Come on,” he said, moving away from that direction, towards the area behind home plate.
Curious, Paul followed him.
Daniel continued to move, drawing the crowd towards him, until he was directly behind home plate. Remembering how far one of them had spit the goo from its mouth, he backed away until he was against the shuttered snack bar that sat between the two large bleacher stands, nearly ten yards from the fence.
Solely focused on Daniel and Paul and lacking analytical skills, the creatures rushed straight into the fence, crashing into the chain link fence and the additional poles that reinforced this part of its length. Screaming in rage, they piled onto one another, seemingly convinced that those in front of them were the sole reason for their inability to get through.
Seeing a few of the infected wandering off to the sides of the baseball diamond, Daniel reached over and pulled the metal lid off a nearby trash can and began banging it against the cylinder.
The noise further enraged the infected that were crammed against the fence, causing them to claw at one another with even more intensity, but more importantly, it brought the stragglers into the mass of bodies.
Stopping, he looked at the crazed mob of infected people, feeling both terrified and sad. These had been people at one point.
A black man in a bus driver’s uniform.
An Asian woman in a business suit.
A Sikh man in a police officer’s uniform and a turban.
A Hispanic woman in hospital scrubs.
An elderly white woman with greyish-blue hair in a blue flowered dress.
The virus had infected people without discrimination, attacking people of all races, cultures, and occupations. As he watched, the first row of infected pressed against the fence fell under the crush of those behind them, disappearing from view as they were trampled.
“Dan?” Paul was at his side, pulling on his elbow.
“Yeah,” he replied, nodding. “Let’s go.”
Turning away, they saw another parking lot in front of them. Moving in a slow jog as they began to feel the tiredness they’d kept at bay for the last twenty-plus minutes, they cut across the parking lot, heading towards Middlefield Road, which they would use to head back to where the Serafina and the girls were.
CHAPTER NINETY
Redwood City, California
Steve Sommer, Hank Williams, and Randall Gaetz had been back on the road for barely ten minutes when they heard the massive explosion somewhere behind them. After dropping off Trent and Graham near the Dumbarton Bridge, they’d noticed the 101 highway was surprisingly clear of cars - likely done through the efforts of the U.S. Military in an effort to give travelers an easier path to the Protective Zone - so they brought the car back onto the highway and increased their speed, cruising north towards the next stop.
“The fuck was that?” Hank asked, turning in his seat to look behind them. In the distance, a huge cloud of dust was rising into the sky above the highway in the general direction of where they’d dropped off the two men.
“Probably some kind of booby trap,” Randall replied, looking through the rear window of the Mustang.
Without saying a word, Sommer pulled the steering wheel to the right, angling the car towards the upcoming exit.
“Gonna use surface streets again?” Hank asked, looking over at him.
“Yes,” Sommer replied, adding nothing more. They were so close, their objective nearly at hand. They couldn’t afford a mishap.
Though he’d originally intended to have Graham and Randall cover the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, he’d felt it was necessary to leave Graham with Trent at the smaller Dumbarton Bridge. Though he believed Trent was dedicated to the cause, he knew the man was more bluster than action, more bark than bite. Even worse, he had little to no confidence that the man wouldn’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Graham would keep the man in line.
Based on his knowledge of the area, the medical building he and Hank would wait on top of gave a clear view of the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, and he’d instructed Randall to fire a flare if saw any sign of the man who went by the title ‘Hermes’, the Mexican girl, or both.
&nbs
p; If that happened, he’d send Hank to back the man up. It wasn’t ideal, but he could stay behind and handle things by himself if he had to.
Pulling off the highway, he glanced in both directions before turning left onto Whipple Avenue heading back under the freeway and to the west. A half-mile later, he turned right on Industrial Avenue, heading north once more. The street was long and narrow, and, under normal circumstances, less preferable to the larger El Camino Real a half mile further to the west, but if someone (probably the damn Mexicans who were running a muck throughout the city) was setting booby traps, they’d target the larger streets before they got around to the smaller ones.
He drove the Mustang carefully, avoiding anything remotely unusual in the road, and even the smallest potholes. Even the delay of a flat tire was unacceptable. Lowering his window, he rested his arm on the door’s edge, trying to portray confidence regardless of the nervousness he felt in his gut.
The truth was, he was worried. Everything was coming to a head, and there would be only once chance to get it right. There was no way Hermes had beaten them this far north, so they had a chance to catch him before he got there.
If they were unsuccessful, everything, literally everything could be lost. The girl’s blood would be used to formulate a vaccine, which would be reproduced over and over as it was shared throughout the world. The White race, the chosen race, would be further watered down with inferior genetic compounds.
They could not fail.
He could not fail.
This was his mission, and it was far more important than anything he’d done in the Marine Corps.
Looking ahead, he saw the building he was looking for. Tall and modern, its numerous dust-covered windows still managed to reflect light in the mid-morning sun. Five stories in height, it was far shorter than anything further north, closer to San Francisco city limits, but its position was perfect for what he had planned.
Turning into the lot, he remained silent as he did one trip around the building, examining how many cars were in the parking lot. It would be easy to assume that numerous cars would be there, given that it was a medical facility and likely the first place people would go once they started to feel sick, but for whatever reason, that wasn’t the case. The parking lot was far from empty, but the eight vehicles there were trivial compared to the thirty-plus empty parking spots.
Bringing the car to a stop near the front of the building, he looked back at Randall.
“Need you to come with us while we clear the building before heading to the roof. Once we’re there, we’ll review the plan, then you can head to the bridge.”
Randall nodded. “You got it.” Grabbing his shotgun from the seat next to him, he opened his door and got out, watching the front of the building while Sommer and Williams grabbed their things from the trunk.
When they were ready, Randall looked at Sommer and asked, “Want me to go first?”
“Yeah,” Sommer replied, hefting his weapons onto his shoulder.
Nodding, the heavily muscled man turned and headed towards the front door of the facility. The sliding glass door was stuck open, its leading edge resting against the body of a middle-aged black woman in scrubs. Her neck had been twisted into an unnatural position, allowing her lifeless eyes to gaze at the ceiling while the front of her body rested on the ground.
Randall stepped over the woman and entered the building, aiming his gun left and right as he looked for signs of movement. Aside from the woman in the doorway, the waiting room and reception area was devoid of people. A thin layer of dust covered everything, and the smell of the woman’s decomposing body filled the space, even with the door propped open.
Moving past the reception area, Randall led them to one of the doors that opened into the back area where they treated patients. Though the door was locked, the vertical piece of glass that allowed the medical staff to see if anyone was on the other side before they opened the door had been broken, leaving an opening wide enough for him to reach through and press the latch that opened the door. The floor of the hallway beyond the door was covered in a long, wide streak of dried blood that extended from the entryway to an intersecting hallway and around the corner. Randall followed the streak, leading the men down the hallway until they reached another desk, where the actual nurses and healthcare workers documented their treatment efforts for the patients who visited.
At the corner, he turned left, leading them past the station and to a door marked ‘Stairwell’. The streak of blood broke to the left, away from the door, extending down the hallway further before disappearing into one of the rooms. Randall paused at the door, looking at Sommer. When Sommer’s eyes met his, he tapped his chest, then pointed towards the room.
Sommer nodded.
Randall walked slowly down the hallway, keeping his gun at the ready as he crept down the tiled floor. His head turned left and right as he checked every possible opening for signs of trouble. When he got to the room where the streak of blood led, he saw the door was open. He didn’t need to enter to see where the streak ended. He could see it there on the floor near the open door.
The top half of a man, from his waist to his head, was on the floor, arms extended in front of him. The man’s bottom half had been violently torn from him, leaving only flesh, exposed bone, and severed tendons at the place where his lower half should have been.
Had the man crawled all this way in this condition?
If so, why?
It made no sense.
Looking closer, he realized he’d been mistaken. There was a three-foot wide stain of dried blood where the man’s legs had been torn off.
Which meant he’d followed the stain in reverse. Backing out of the room, he walked quickly past where Sommer and Williams waited, saying nothing. He needed to make sure whatever had done this wasn’t going to sneak up behind them. They hadn’t heard or seen anything when they’d entered, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
He passed by the nurse’s station and had just turned down the hall that led back towards the door he’d opened when a door at the far end of the hallway burst open. Snarling sounds came from within the room the door led to, and a second later a short, squat Filipina rushed out of the room. The woman’s hair was a wild mess, and her light colored scrubs were torn and bloodied. She held a severed leg in her left hand, and even from where he stood, Randall was able to tell from the blood around the woman’s mouth and the chunks of flesh missing from the leg that she’d been feasting on it.
Turning suddenly towards him, the woman dropped the leg and let loose a high pitched, blood-curdling scream of rage. In an instant she was charging toward Randall, arms flying wildly as she rushed towards him.
Raising his shotgun, he waited for the woman to get closer as his mind asked a pointed question: how had this little, maybe 100 pound woman torn the legs off of an average-sized man?
The answer came a half-second later in the form of an enormous Black man emerging from the room the woman had come from. Without hesitation, the man threw aside the leg he’d been holding - one that had far less meat on it - and charged at Randall. His long strides allowed him to rush past the woman with ease, covering half the distance between the room and where Randall stood in less than two seconds.
Backing up Randall moved the shotgun’s aim from the small woman to the much larger man and muttered, “Fucking nigger,” as he pulled the trigger.
The blast caught the man in the chest and neck, knocking his upper body back as the hot metal ripped through flesh, bones, lungs, and sections of the man’s throat, sending a shower of blood into the air behind the man.
The man collapsed, falling to the tiled floor, but his momentum carried him forward, and he slid into Randall’s right leg, knocking him off balance. A half second later, the Filipina slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. The butt of the shotgun crashed into the tile, jarring it from his hands. It clattered along the tile as it slid away from his reach.
The woman’s hands were rele
ntless, a blur as they ripped at his leather jacket, trying to reach his skin as he struggled to get her off of him. Suddenly he felt a scratch near the back of his neck as she finally reached her objective, her nails digging deep into his flesh.
‘Shit!’ he thought to himself, trying to get his hands into position to hurl her off of him. She was a fast moving, frenzied blur of movement, and it was overwhelming, regardless of the size difference between the two of them.
The woman was thrown off by a swift kick to the ribs that sent her tumbling over and into the wall. Before she could recover, a gun fired, sending a bullet into her brain. She slumped down limply as life fled her body.
Sommer looked down at Randall, his face hard and emotionless. He pointed the gun at Randall’s face.
“She get you?”
Praying the scratch on the back of his neck wasn’t visible to the man, Randall shook his head. “No, thank God” he answered.
“We’ll wait and see,” Sommer replied, relaxing his gun. “Get up,” he ordered.
Randall scrambled to his feet as Hank walked over to the black man and put a bullet in the man’s head. Stepping towards the shotgun, Randall picked it up and turned around, only to find Sommer’s gun pointed at him again.
Sommer’s voice was cold. “Give it to me.”
“What?”
“Hand it over. You’re under evaluation. If you don’t turn, you’ll get it back before you head to the bridge.”
Nodding, Randall said, “Okay, makes sense,” as he passed the gun to the man.
Looking over at Hank, Sommer asked, “He dead?”
While Sommer’s head was turned, Randall pretended to adjust his jacket as he reached up and wiped at the deep scratch on his neck. His hand came away wet.
Shit.
Pulling the collar of his jacket up, he tried to act casual as he looked at the two men.
“Yeah,” Hank said, nodding. “Big fucker, though, ain’t he?”
“Yeah. ‘Cause they’re genetically made that way. Instead of brains, they got muscles. It’s why that one damn black female tennis player keeps winning. She’s got more muscles than the more graceful attractive white female players.”
Surviving Rage | Book 2 Page 61
