…during the escape…
Cole ran faster, the SIG Sauer in one hand, the thought, “It’s not Zoe. It can’t be Zoe. She wouldn’t do this,” flashing across his mind.
“Why can’t it be her?” the Voice asked.
It’s not her.
“Why not?”
It’s not her.
“When did we end up in Egypt?”
Egypt? Cole thought, even as he made up half the distance between him and the open hangar door.
“Yeah, ’cause you’re spending an awful lot of time in the river Nile these days, chum.”
Cole might have snickered. He wasn’t sure. He was breathing too hard, every stride shooting pain through his joints.
Pain. Shit. The meds were starting to wear off.
Shadows, as crazies ran past the still-moving APC and into the warehouse. Two of them. One on each side of the retreating vehicle. They ignored it (“Smart fuckers. They know they can’t do anything to stop it,” the Voice said.) and came right for Cole.
He slid to a stop and immediately backed up, even as the truck drove off, its engines roaring in the formerly quiet night. It was possibly the only loud, inhuman noise in the entire city at that very second.
“Heads up,” the Voice said.
I see them.
“Not the ones in front of us. The ones behind us.”
Oh, fuck me, Cole thought as he turned, just in time to see two crazies bounding down the stairs from the second floor. He wasn’t entirely sure if they were chasing one another or just trying to be the first to reach him.
Not that it mattered, of course. One crazy was the same as two, or three…
…or four…
The SIG Sauer bucked in his hand as he moved, shooting one, then the another.
But they kept coming anyway. Through the open door on the first floor and from the rooftop access on the second.
“Well, this didn’t go as planned,” the Voice said, even as it laughed.
Not that Cole could hear it, because his eardrums were filled with screams and gunfire and his own ragged breathing.
He kept moving, and shooting.
Then he was punching and kicking.
The clinking of empty shell casings ricocheting off the warehouse floor.
Screams from crazies as they hacked at one another.
Out of bullets. He switched to the rifle.
Not just shooting now, but swinging the AR like a club.
And yet they kept coming…
…and coming…
Then, seemingly from another planet, the very distinctive sound of the APC’s engine in the distance, piercing through the cacophony of death and blood and screams in his immediate surroundings to reach his ears. It was getting farther away. Fading…
…fading…
Fall of Man | Book 4 | The Tide Page 19