by Dirk Patton
“Rachel barely escaped from a group of them, but I haven’t personally seen them. She was freaked out.”
“Me, too,” Martinez said, shuddering for emphasis. “And the females are killing and eating them.”
When she realized I was staring at her, she looked my way and nodded.
“Okay,” I said, shaking off the terrifying images that were playing in my head. “Later. Right now, let’s focus on the task at hand.”
“How you wanna do this? They’re too close to the transport for the minigun. One stray round and that thing’s toast.”
“You know the drill,” I said. “Distract and kill.”
She nodded and pointed at what resembled a video game console controller. When I activated it, a small screen came to life displaying the aiming reticle for the belly-mounted minigun. I experimented with swinging the weapon around until I felt comfortable with the controls.
“Vance,” I called over the radio. “We’re going to draw them away and put them down. I’ll let you know when you’re clear for engine start.”
“Copy,” he answered, all business.
Martinez transitioned the Osprey into vertical flight mode and buzzed over the transport and its swarm of females. Leaning forward, I could see all of them looking up, mouths open in screams. At first a trickle of runners began to follow as Martinez flew sideways down the runway, mere feet off the ground. Quickly, others joined in the pursuit.
We covered a hundred yards and I didn’t have to tell her to slip backwards and pull them in a new direction. This allowed me to line up the weapon on the infected without the transport being downrange. I watched them charge after us for a few seconds as I aligned the crosshairs, then I pressed the fire control for less than two seconds.
A little less than a hundred rounds were spat out, the minigun creating a buzzing vibration I could feel in the airframe. The rounds shredded the leading rank of the females, their shattered bodies falling to the pavement. Most of the bullets passed through and injured those behind them, but not severely enough.
I kept firing. Short, controlled bursts intended to conserve ammo while still getting the job done. Bodies were torn apart and within less than a minute the tarmac was littered with corpses and there were no females still pursuing.
“Let’s check the transport,” I said, but Martinez was already gaining altitude for a thermal scan.
“Ten, maybe, didn’t take the bait,” she said when we spotted a handful of figures who hadn’t chased us. “Want me to try and draw them off?”
“Give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, I’ll send your boyfriend out to mop them up.”
Martinez hesitated for a beat and I could tell she was looking at me, but she stayed on task and didn’t say anything. Tried twice to entice the females to come after us, but for whatever reason, the bitches didn’t want to leave the transport.
“Sit tight,” I called to Vance over the radio. “You got a few groupies hanging around. Gonna have to land and deal with them.”
I pulled my headset off before I heard his reply and climbed out of the seat. Moving into the back, I settled a loaded vest on my upper body and slung a new, suppressed rifle. The Osprey had apparently been last used by a special operations team and the gear had come from one of the lockers.
“Gonzales and Strickland,” I barked and they jumped to their feet. “Got approximately ten infected females sticking close to the transport. We’re going to clear them out and secure the area. Watch your firing lanes and do NOT put a round into that aircraft. Don’t even risk it. Clear?”
When they both acknowledged they understood, I moved to the closed rear ramp. Rachel was holding Mavis tightly as they watched us prepare to exit the aircraft. I smiled at them as I held a tethered headset to my ear so I could communicate with the cockpit.
“We’re ready,” I said into the microphone. “Back in the air as soon as we’re clear.”
“Watch your ass, sir,” Martinez responded. “And watch the Chief’s ass, too. I’d like to get my hands on it again, someday.”
She started laughing and I sighed as I returned the headset to its hook. I hit the button to lower the ramp as we descended, Gonzales and Strickland following me out onto it. When we were still several feet off the ground, I leapt off the edge and moved quickly away to give them room.
Martinez let the Osprey’s tires bounce once on the tarmac then quickly gained altitude. The pair of SEALs knew the drill and had jumped off the ramp at the right instant. With them flanking and slightly behind me, we advanced on the transport at a trot.
The females saw us coming and even through the noisy aircraft hadn’t been able to entice them, the sight of three big, tasty meals coming toward them was too much to resist. Abandoning the transport, they charged with screams that I swear had notes of delight and anticipation in them.
I changed directions, trying the same tactic Martinez had used so the big plane wasn’t downrange, but it’s a whole lot easier in a fast and maneuverable aircraft. No matter how I shifted, I wasn’t comfortable sending any rounds. I didn’t know much of anything about hypersonic flight, but I did know that any damage to the exterior skin could result in catastrophic things happening at nine times the speed of sound. Oh well, there’s more than one way to kill an infected.
“Go to knives,” I called as I let my rifle hang and drew a blade.
I didn’t bother to check on the reaction of the two SEALs. I wasn’t worried about it. There were a total of eleven females closing swiftly on us and I knew I could take all of them by myself if necessary. But it wasn’t.
Gonzales and Strickland moved to stand on either side of me, leaving plenty of room to fight. The three of us put all the infected down in fifteen seconds. Cleaning and sheathing his knife, Strickland drew a pistol and made certain they were down permanently. Okay, maybe I was starting to like the guy.
Looking up at the hovering Osprey, I signaled to Martinez. She orbited the area twice, scanning with thermal for any new threats that might have been attracted by all the noise, then touched down well clear of all the corpses.
I turned when a high-pitched whine started from the transport. Vance was starting the engines. They spooled up quickly and he turned the big plane, lining up for takeoff before coming to a full stop and lowering the ramp in back.
“You two, on security,” I said to Strickland and Gonzales.
They both nodded and spread apart, raising the rifles to scan the surrounding area. I ran to the idling Osprey and up the ramp. Rachel and Mavis stood, watching me. I opened a locker and grabbed two body bags, then ran back out into the night.
I’d spotted Lucas and Chapman on the tarmac, surprised that neither had been fed on by the females. Stretching out the body bags next to each, I paused and looked down at Lucas. I missed him, but somehow drew comfort from having seen him being warmly accepted into what Mavis had called the next world. I didn’t know if it was heaven or Valhalla or purgatory or what, but I knew he was there.
“You okay?” Rachel asked.
She and Mavis had followed. I nodded without answering and bent to load Lucas’s remains into a body bag. I lifted his shoulders, intending to roll him in, but Mavis hurried to the other end and lifted his feet to help. For a beat I was surprised, then realized the virus was already strengthening her small frame.
With both bags zipped tightly, I carried and loaded them one at a time into the transport. When I came back down the ramp, Rachel was waiting for me, the thick file on the virus resistant wheat in her hands. She’d decided that our unborn children would be safer if she was in Hawaii, not joining an assault on the Russians.
I reached for her and she put her arms around my neck, crushing herself against me.
“What do I tell Ziggy?” she asked.
“The truth,” I said. “He gave his life saving others. We all would have died.”
“I wish you could be there to help me tell her.”
“Me, too,” I said, kissing her.
&n
bsp; After a long moment, she stepped away, wiping tears from her cheeks. I turned to Mavis, but she shook her head.
“I’m staying with you.”
“That’s a bad idea,” I said, shaking my head.
“I don’t die,” she said firmly. “You know that. You saw me. You saw who I will be. And you need me, you just don’t know it, yet.”
“Yes, I do need you. I need you safe.”
“Honey...” Rachel began, but Mavis interrupted her.
“Mom, I’m sorry. He needs me more than you do right now.”
“What are you talking about?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know why, I just know he does,” she said, then ran forward and threw her arms around Rachel.
They held each other, Rachel looking at me in confusion. Inside, the domesticated, logical me screamed that Mavis needed to get on that plane. But the part that had experienced having my soul outside my body and a trip to Baralku understood that I should listen and trust her.
“Ready?”
I looked around to find Vance standing behind us. I nodded, then moved to wrap Rachel and Mavis in an embrace and spoke quietly in Rachel’s ear. Finally, she nodded and stepped clear, sniffing back tears as she turned and rushed up the ramp. Vance watched her, then glanced at Mavis before looking at me inquisitively.
“She’s staying with me,” I said, stepping close to him and nodding in the direction Rachel had just gone. “Take care of her.”
He frowned but didn’t say anything. Just stuck his hand out. I gripped it tightly for a moment then turned and headed for the Osprey with Mavis in tow.
60
Joe lay on top of a rocky ridge, Dog panting softly beside him. After driving out into the desert to evade the infected children, he’d hidden the Hummer in a deep wash before the patrolling helicopter spotted it. They’d climbed up into the rocks and spent the day watching for infected and Russians.
Not often, but frequently enough to keep them from leaving, Joe heard the heavy beat of a helicopter rotor. Sometimes it was so distant as to be right at the threshold of hearing, but there were times they were nearly overflown. He’d gotten a good look at the massive aircraft but didn’t know enough to identify the type. All he knew for sure was that an American Humvee had already been shot to hell and he didn’t want to meet the same fate.
It was dark now, but the moon had risen to cast a ghostly, pale light across the desert. In the distance, the freeway was a dark line cutting across the lighter colored sand and he could see small figures walking on the pavement.
As the sun had set, he’d been shocked when children began appearing. At first it was only a handful, but as twilight deepened into night their numbers grew. Hundreds, then thousands of them emerged from the soft sand that bordered both sides of the Interstate highway. He was too far away to tell if there was any sort of communication occurring between them, but as each one rose to their feet, they moved onto the smooth asphalt and began walking east.
“What the hell are they doing?” Joe mumbled softly.
Dog looked at him questioningly, then went back to watching the infected after he got an ear scratch.
Another hour passed, the children still streaming east. Trying to count would have been futile, but Joe estimated he had personally seen at least ten thousand. His only knowledge of the area was what he’d picked up from John when he was trying to determine where they were, but he was reasonably sure they were heading for Phoenix. And he didn’t buy the possibility that their destination was a coincidence. But he couldn’t begin to even fathom a guess as to why.
Joe suddenly tilted his head toward the sky, listening. He’d just realized that he hadn’t heard a helicopter since before it had gotten dark. Had he grown so accustomed to the sound during the afternoon that he no longer noticed it, or had the Russians found a different area to patrol?
Listening intently, he heard nothing other than Dog’s soft panting. The wind was calm and the children were too far away for him to hear them moving. The environment was completely devoid of sound. As he lay there considering what to do, a series of sonic booms from the west rolled across the silent landscape. He knew the sounds were being made by a military jet but didn’t realize he was hearing the hypersonic transport as it accelerated away from Yuma.
“Let’s go, Dog,” he said after another half hour of listening and hearing nothing.
They picked their way through the rocks, Joe being extra cautious to not dislodge a stone that would make a clatter and alert the infected to their presence. Reaching the base of the ridge, he froze when Dog growled deep in his chest, the rumble seeming loud in the quiet darkness.
Bringing the rifle up, he scanned in the direction Dog was intently looking but failed to see any sign of a threat. Patience was one of the lessons Joe had learned at an early age, accompanying his father and older brothers on hunting trips.
Unlike kids who’d grown up in cities and hunted for sport, they would track game on the reservation for the sole purpose of putting food on the table. Getting impatient or making a mistake didn’t just mean a missed opportunity for a shot, it meant they went hungry.
Now, that patience and being attuned to the environment paid off. Joe picked up on the musky scent before he could spot the infected who were stalking him. He looked at the wash where the Humvee was parked and, in a flash, knew they’d never make it to the safety of the big vehicle. Softly calling Dog, he turned and raced back to the top of the ridge.
Settling behind a large rock, he was able to see a small group of children moving silently toward the bottom of the ridge. There were no more than ten, but that didn’t lessen the threat. Five hundred yards in the opposite direction were thousands that would respond instantly to the first scream or rifle shot.
Blinking rapidly in sudden realization, Joe looked at the suppressor screwed onto the muzzle of the weapon. Would it attenuate the sound enough that the infected on the freeway wouldn’t hear it? He checked the approaching group, dismayed to see they were still on a direct course for his hiding place, and decided he had to take the risk. Once they began climbing, they’d be in the rocks and make for very difficult targets.
Dog was still growling a warning, standing close to his side. Joe briefly placed a hand on his head, silencing him but not relieving the tension he could feel in his body. Pulling the rifle tight to his shoulder, he disengaged the safety with his thumb and selected his first target. Before he could apply pressure to the trigger, there was a flash of motion in the scope and the child disappeared.
Raising his head to look over the weapon, he watched as a large hunting pack of females tore into the group of children. Without a sound, they raced in and slashed throats to silence all the children before falling on them and using their teeth to tear off chunks of flesh. Joe quickly wrapped his arm around Dog, afraid another growl would give them away.
Looking over his shoulder to check on the children walking on the freeway, his blood ran cold. Hundreds were sprinting directly for his position. He didn’t see any way they could be aware of the slaughter that had just occurred on the back side of the ridge. It had been almost silent, only the faint sound of fast footfalls in the sand and the equally soft ripping of flesh.
Dog twitched gently and he realized the children had smelled the adults. They were downwind and instead of fleeing, were responding in more than sufficient numbers to overwhelm the much larger females.
Trapped, he had a bird’s eye view of the carnage when the large group of kids arrived. The main body had split as it reached the base of the ridge, circling and attacking from two directions at once. A cacophony of screams from both groups rent the night as the children used their fangs to rip into the adults. Dozens, perhaps a hundred were killed by the females in the first minute of the fight, then sheer numbers carried the day for the kids.
The females were inundated by small bodies, each of them sinking their teeth into a vital area. Hamstrings were torn out, eliminating the adults’ speed advantage.
Lower arms snapped from the pressure of bites. Abdomens were rent open, and finally, as the females weakened and slowed, throats were slashed open.
When the last female fell, all the children stopped moving. They stood and stared at the dead, then lowered themselves to a seat on the sand. With none of the frantic fury of an adult infected, they began tearing pieces of flesh from each corpse. Each morsel was completely consumed before any child reached out for more.
Joe stared in equal parts awe and revulsion as the kids dined, presumably on what could well be some of their mothers.
“Oh, fuck me,” Joe breathed.
61
“Go that way!”
Martinez and I turned in surprise when Mavis suddenly burst into the cockpit and shouted. She was pointing several degrees to the right of our current course for the Phoenix area and was genuinely distressed.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“Dog’s in trouble! Hurry!”
Martinez shot her a glance then looked at me. It wasn’t that long ago that I would have dismissed Mavis’s claim without a second thought, but a lot of things had happened to open my eyes. While I’m not sure I believed in all the mystical mumbo jumbo, I’d witnessed and experienced a few too many events that I couldn’t explain.
“Do it,” I said, then twisted in the seat to face Mavis.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know,” Mavis said. “I can just feel it. He’s scared!”
I blinked in surprise.
“Dog? Scared?”
“He gets scared,” Mavis said defensively. “Just like you do, only neither of you show it.”
Martinez was casting quick glances at us and I could tell she was worried about Mavis. But to her credit, she had already changed course and increased speed.
“How far, honey?” she asked.
Mavis hesitated before shaking her head.
“I don’t know. Not close, but not far, either.”
Less than five minutes later, Martinez and I both leaned forward for a closer look at a thermal imaging screen set in to the instrument panel. At the far edge of detection, directly ahead, we could see a large blob of white which represented a heat source. She tried adjusting the resolution, but we were unable to make out any details.