The sound of a mob drew David’s attention away from Chang. A sizable group approached from the direction of NevoTech. That was all he could ascertain standing exposed on the highway. They didn’t have time for this. His son didn’t have time for this.
“Are we free to go?” said David. “Things are about to unravel here.”
“As long you understand Chang is coming with us,” said Rich.
“I didn’t think that was up for debate,” said David. “Considering I have a gun pointed at my head.”
“It isn’t,” said Rich. “And you have two guns pointed at your head.”
“Then that’s that,” said David. “Dr. Chang, good luck to you. I’d like to say more, but—”
A gunshot echoed across the highway, followed by yelling in the distance.
“There’s that,” said David. “And the arm clamped over your mouth.”
Rich muttered something, and the operative lowered the arm, still keeping Chang restrained.
“Thank you,” said Chang. “All of you. I hope our paths cross again, under better circumstances.”
“Keep us in mind when you win the Nobel Prize for Medicine,” said Larsen. “I expect an invitation.”
“We’re counting on you to make the people responsible for all of this to pay,” said David before nodding at Rich. “I suppose that applies to you, too.”
“We’re all on the same team,” said Rich. “Even though it may not feel like it right now.”
The operative standing next to Rich stepped forward. “I’ll stay. Get them back onto the campus safely. Why not? We might need someone on the inside at NevoTech if there’s a link to this mess.”
“We don’t want him,” said David.
“Yes, we do,” said Larsen. “We can use the help.”
“He’s yours,” said Rich. “Keep them out of trouble, Scott.”
“I’ll try,” said the operative. “Let’s go.”
What the hell just happened here? He glanced between Rich and Scott, shaking his head.
“Don’t look so confused. I told you we’re on the same team,” said Rich, motioning to the remaining two operatives, who started in the opposite direction with Chang. “Stay safe.”
“You too,” mumbled David before triggering his radio. “Gary? What are we looking at?”
“Pretty busy on East Street,” said Hoenig.
“What are you seeing to the southwest?” said David.
“Hold on,” said Hoenig.
“What are we doing?” said Larsen.
“East Street is busy,” said David. “Checking for an alternate route.”
His earpiece crackled. “Not looking good. You’ve attracted a serious following from the other side of the campus.”
“Then we’re slugging it out on East Street,” said David. “Have your crew follow us along the fence with the ladders. We’ll look for a break in the action to climb over.”
“Sending all available shooters to the southeast corner of the campus,” said Hoenig. “And I’m switching everyone over to this channel, with instructions to follow your orders.”
“We’re on our way,” said David, patting Larsen on the shoulder. “Same place we came over.”
“This should be fun,” said Larsen. “Scott and I will take the lead. You coordinate with Hoenig and watch the flanks.”
David grabbed his son. “I want you behind Jack and Emma, guarding the rear. If you see something on one of the flanks, call it out. If I don’t respond, shoot it.”
“Understood,” said his son, nodding emphatically.
He leaned closer and whispered so the Harpers couldn’t hear, “If things go completely to shit, you get right by my side,” said David, hugging his son with one arm. He could feel Joshua’s slim body shaking under his embrace.
As they started up the embankment, several figures broke out of the bushes to their right, running toward the airplane. Another group appeared about a hundred feet to their left, with the same apparent goal. Even in the complete darkness, the shiny white aircraft sat transposed against the dark highway, drawing them in like a beacon, while David’s group moved undetected up the short rise.
When they reached the top, a small group of crazies piled through the scrub less than twenty feet from David’s right. Three bright green beams reached out and connected with the closest targets, waiting to see if they continued down the embankment. All but one kept going; a man dressed in boxer shorts and a dark stained polo shirt cocked his head in their direction.
Scott’s rifle clicked once, the man dropping in a heap where he stood. The operative’s rifle was ridiculously quiet, the wet crack of the bullet snapping through the crazy’s skull almost sounded louder than the gunshot. David immediately backtracked and checked on the infected that had piled through. The gunshot had gone unnoticed. Four figures scurried down the embankment toward the plane, joining another dozen or so that had just arrived from the overpass area. Across the interstate, David caught a glimpse of the team escorting Dr. Chang to safety. Despite the anger still fresh in his mind, he wished them well. Maybe Chang was better off in their hands.
He nodded at Larsen, and the group started toward the NevoTech campus, their trip immediately halted by a short burst of gunfire nearby. The gunfire didn’t sound random. Larsen and Scott edged forward in the bushes, the Harpers staying in place with Joshua. David listened to the bushes intently for any sign of immediate trouble. Sensing none, he contacted Hoenig.
“Gary, we just heard automatic gunfire. Sounded like it came from where we’re headed.”
“One of the security guards got spooked when a crazy hit the fence,” said Hoenig. “You better hurry up. The streets are getting very busy. Wait any longer and they will be impassible.”
Another staccato burst of gunfire shattered the night.
“Dammit, Gary,” whispered David. “They need to get that shit under control.”
“David, this is Fitz. Things are heating up at the fence. If you get here now, I can blast a path for you to the closest gate.”
David really didn’t like the sound of that. A dozen rifles blazing indiscriminately would draw every crazy in a one-mile radius to NevoTech. If they didn’t get to the gate quickly, no amount of firepower would be enough.
“Dad,” whispered his son.
“What?” he said, slightly annoyed by the interruption.
“We have a problem,” said Joshua, his rifle aimed back toward the top of the embankment.
Larsen reacted immediately, sprinting in the direction Joshua’s rifle was pointed. Holy shit. The gunfire had drawn them all back up the embankment! A head appeared over the top of the rise, instantly snapping backward from a bullet fired by Larsen. The ex-SEAL fired two more times before nearly screaming at David.
“Get in line with me!” he yelled. “Scott, you hold the other side. Joshua, protect the Harpers.”
David rushed into a position several feet to Larsen’s left, at the edge of the embankment, pausing for a moment at the sheer insanity of what they faced. At least two dozen figures pressed up the rise, some fewer than twenty feet away. Only half were currently headed on a collision course with David’s group, but that was about to change. They had no choice but to start clearing the hill. He triggered his rifle’s green targeting beam and started firing.
Shifting their beams from target to target, they took down the closest threats, giving themselves some breathing room from the inevitable rush. The suppressed gunfire had drawn the rest in their direction.
“I got the left side!” yelled David, changing rifle magazines.
“Hurry up,” said Larsen, already firing.
David knocked the crazies down in short order, none of them coming within twenty feet of their position. One bullet center mass. Move to the next target if they fell. This wasn’t about killing them. It was all about stopping them. Buying time. A few still writhed in pain on the hill, bleeding out on the grass, but he didn’t bother with a second shot. They were out of the
equation for now. He couldn’t believe he was thinking like this. Like the whole thing was a calculation. Was that how Larsen did it? How he seemed so disconnected from the killing?
“Let’s go,” said Larsen, tapping his shoulder. “Nice shooting.”
Nice shooting. That was something you said about a tight center-of-paper target pattern at the range. He couldn’t wait to get out of this hell. More importantly, to get Joshua out before the madness and fear consumed them both. Unfortunately, something told him they had a lot more humanity to burn through before either of them could escape.
Chapter 47
Ragan walked cautiously through the silent apartment, noting the dead CHASE team member heaped on the floor in front of a bullet-stitched glass slider. The monochromatic green image presented by her night-vision goggles made it difficult to assess exactly what had happened inside the room. All she knew for sure at this point was that someone had really wanted to get inside Chang’s apartment. The door had been breached with explosives. Not exactly a subtle job either. The charge had blasted half of the door away.
She approached the body, finally making sense of the blood-spray pattern. He’d been shot from outside the apartment. The contents of his skull had been blasted deeper into the space.
“Gunfire came from the inside,” said McDermott.
“Blood pattern says the opposite,” said Ragan.
“There should be bullet holes in the walls behind us. I think the shell casings in the hallway were from bullets fired into the apartment,” said McDermott.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Ragan, puzzling over the two sets of contradictory data.
McDermott settled in next to her. “Damn. That’s Stansfield. You’re right. He was hit through the balcony slider.”
“Single shot through the left temple,” she said. “He was on Ochoa’s team.”
“Where’s the rest of them?” said McDermott.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Ragan before breaking off into the hallway next to the living area.
She passed an empty bathroom and a sparsely furnished office before reaching the master bedroom, where more of the story unfolded. The left half of the wide balcony slider had been shattered; large chunks of glass littered the hardwood floor and cement balcony beneath its frame. Dozens of shell casings lay scattered on the floor between the inner bedroom wall and the king-size bed. Someone had fired at least a full magazine through the slider. Possibly more. She didn’t see any obvious holes in the wall where the bullets had been fired. Panic fire? She activated her radio.
“I think they had a sniper out there,” said Ragan, quickly moving back into the hallway.
“Might still be around,” said McDermott.
None of this added up. Larsen’s team goes MIA. Now she finds a member of Ochoa’s team killed by a sniper bullet?
“I’m starting not to care,” said Ragan.
“Rags,” said Boyd through her headset. “I hear that plane again. It’s close. Getting louder.”
“Are you sure it’s a plane?”
Boyd was hidden in the lobby, three floors below, making sure no unwanted visitors showed up.
“I grew up next to a two-hangar airfield,” said Boyd. “I know an airplane when I hear one. Sounded like it was trying to take off. Now it’s taxiing. Cessna, if I had to guess. Single propeller.”
She could hear the buzzing, but it didn’t register as anything but ambient noise to her.
“Can you tell what direction?” said Ragan. “How far?”
“Less than a mile,” said Boyd. “I can’t tell you what direction. The sound is bouncing off the buildings.”
“I don’t remember an airfield on the map,” said Ragan.
“You thinking about hitching a ride?”
“More like hijacking,” said McDermott over the net.
“I wouldn’t turn down a ride if one was available,” said Ragan. “Whatever happened here is finished. Chang is long gone, if he ever showed up in the first place. Control had to know this. At the very least, they knew something went down here—and they let us walk right into it. No warning. No nothing.”
“When’s the last time they asked for an update?” said McDermott.
“They haven’t asked since we hid in the ambulance,” said Ragan.
“And they know exactly where we are right now,” said McDermott.
“Yep,” she said, walking into the room with McDermott. “Still not a peep.”
“I think they’re done with us,” said McDermott.
“The feeling is mutual,” said Ragan, removing the CTAB and placing it on the kitchen table. “Boyd, do you think they could have landed the plane on one of the highways?”
“They’d need a long stretch of flat, straight interstate.”
Ragan activated the map feature on the CTAB and zoomed in on their position. McDermott moved to the door to watch over the apartment. She quickly found two possibilities. Both nearby. Using a feature built into the map, she measured the two stretches of road.
“I assume a mile is long enough?” said Ragan.
“More than enough,” said Boyd. “Easy takeoff. Even easier landing.”
“One of the choices is the same north-south stretch of Interstate 65 that we just walked,” said Ragan. “Part of it was clear before we hit the traffic jam.”
“Not enough to take off. Maybe to land,” said Boyd. “Maybe.”
“The other is an east-west stretch of Interstate 75, about three-quarters of a mile southwest of here,” said Ragan.
“My money is on that one,” said McDermott. “The traffic jam we hit was caused by a pileup well before the 65-75 interchange. It’s possible that the east-west highway is clear like the rest of the highway system.”
“Let’s find that airplane,” said Ragan.
“We might have a problem with that,” said Boyd.
“What? Is it gone?” said Ragan. “I don’t hear it anymore.”
“I think they shut down the motor.”
“I’m sure we can convince them to restart it,” she said.
“I don’t know. I think they shut it down because we’re not the only ones trying to find it,” said Boyd. “The streets are coming alive.”
“We’ll be right down,” she said, grabbing the CTAB.
McDermott put a hand over the device, keeping her from lifting it off the table.
“I think you should leave that here,” he said. “Control might take a sudden interest in us if we go off-script.”
She nodded, letting go of the CTAB. “You’re right. I just hope you looked at the map longer than I did.”
“We head west until we hit East Street,” said McDermott. “Then straight south until we hit the interstate. Easy enough. If the plane doesn’t pan out, we just hike back to 65 and follow it south until we hit a quarantine line. Talk our way through. It’ll suck, but everything will get sorted.”
“Control really wanted us to avoid the quarantine line getting in here,” said Ragan.
“Because they knew the military would have stopped us,” said McDermott. “And for good reason. This place is dead.”
“Let’s go,” she said before heading for the door.
A short burst of automatic gunfire cut through the night. Military? She hoped so. Riding out of here in an armored HUMVEE beat flying out in a beat-up Cessna. Either way, they needed to get moving immediately. They’d caught a break when the power grid failed. Leveraging their latest generation night-vision gear, they were able to move through the scattered pockets of people undetected.
Gunfire was sure to draw more people onto the streets, and the last thing she wanted was to get caught up in a mob of crazies—in the dark. Night vision had its limitations, and so did her team, especially with their ammunition supply running low.
Chapter 48
Larsen’s injured leg throbbed as they ran for the fence. He suspected that some of the stitches had popped when they jumped down from the ladder. It had bothe
red him on the way to Chang’s airplane, but he’d pushed it out of his mind, knowing he was minutes away from either escaping the quarantine zone or blowing up over an Indiana cornfield. Both with the same result. He wouldn’t have to worry about his leg. Now that he was back in the thick of this nightmare—he was about ten steps away from hobbling.
He scanned the street running along NevoTech’s back fence, finding it empty in both directions. They had emerged on the road about thirty feet from the southeast corner, where they had originally climbed over. All of the noise and commotion seemed focused in that direction.
“I don’t see why they don’t throw the ladders over right here!” said Larsen. “East Street sounds a little busy.”
A hand gripped his shoulder and turned him around to face the long stretch of empty street he had just checked. Dark figures scrambled out of the bushes along the road, stretching all the way to the western side of the NevoTech campus.
“This keeps getting better,” said Larsen, returning his focus to East Street.
“Just wait,” said David before speaking quietly into his headset.
A long volley of semiautomatic fire shattered the night, causing Larsen to crouch.
“Let’s go!” said David. “They’re clearing a path.”
Scott reached the corner fence support and peeked around the other side, up East Street.
“It’s clear!” yelled the operative before disappearing around the brick column.
Larsen followed close behind, finding the street littered with bodies. To his left, on the other side of the fence, members of the NevoTech security team moved back and forth, reforming their firing line. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the Harpers followed a few steps behind him. He moved to the right side of the sidewalk and made room for them.
“Get in closer,” he said, and the Harpers filled the gap next to him.
Gunfire erupted from the fence line twenty feet in front of them, lasting far longer than necessary to stop a group of three crazies that had appeared between two of the houses on the opposite side of East Street. Scott could have taken them down with three quiet shots.
KILL BOX: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller (The Zulu Virus Chronicles Book 2) Page 24
