He put a finger to his lips and drew his Smith & Wesson M&P 9. He was just about to change out the magazine when Lancaster said, “I can smell you.” Every inch of Read’s flesh tented up in goosebumps and the hair on the back of his neck lifted straight out. “I can smell you and that bitch. You did this to me.”
Something metal scraped on the linoleum out front. Read hoped it was a chair, but he feared that it wasn’t. Lancaster had a gun.
The same realization struck Emerald an instant later and Read’s shoulder was suddenly left cold as she pulled her bosom away and scrambled for the back door. Read tried to snatch her ankle, but she was too fast. Her panic had been escalating all morning and this was the final straw.
With a shriek, she burst from the backdoor. She fell straight down a set of three steps, landed in the dust and was up again in a flash. “It’s alive!” she screamed as she ran at the yellow tape and the newly strung barbed wire. Someone yelled for her to get back inside.
Another yelled for her to stop and still someone else yelled, “They’re running!” It was only Emerald running and she didn’t hear anything. Her mind was a complete blank, save for the overarching fear that controlled her. She hit the wire and tried to tear it out of her way barehanded. She was a big woman and the nearest five-foot steel spear that had been driven into the ground came right up with a single heave.
There were more screams and yells. It was all a mishmash of noise to Read, who had not even tried to stand. He watched Emerald in horror as she threw down the wire and tried to cross the yellow tape. There was no call to fire. It wasn’t needed. She was swept with bullets. In the first eight seconds, she was hit by no less than thirty rounds of all sorts of calibers. They staggered her, but she refused to fall. It took another twenty bullets before a huge 30-30 round cracked her frontal lobe and sprawled through her cranium, turning her brain to mush.
She fell in something of an oddly graceful pirouette, and as she spun, she was hit by another dozen bullets, and another dozen thumped into her when she finally face-planted in the dirt.
Someone bellowed for a cease-fire and, as the echoes of their gunfire rolled over the frightened little town, forty men stared at their handiwork: a bloody lump sprawled in the dirt that had once been a person. They waited behind their guns, ready to resume shooting if she so much as twitched. But she was no zombie. She had died as a woman without any sign of infection.
“Fuuuuck,” Lancaster said. He was clutching the diner’s bar to hold himself up. He felt angrily drunk, hellishly hungover, sick down into the pit of his stomach, and so furious that he thought he could rip the bar in half— all of these churned-up feelings were nothing compared to the evil hunger that was growing by the second.
It was a hunger to be clean again, but it was also a hunger for revenge and watching the chubby waitress get murdered Bonnie and Clyde style had brought a smile to his face.
“Did you see that?” he whispered to Sheriff Read. “That’s what they gonna do to you. They gonna shoot you like a dog.”
The man, if he was still even a man, which Read doubted, was correct. If he went out there for any reason, they would gun him down, no questions asked.
“Or…” Lancaster said, drawing the word out.
“Or what?” Read asked, pushing himself to his feet. As quietly as he could, he placed his M9 on the grill so he could re-tie the strip of cloth that had fallen from his face. His hands felt wooden, while his mind felt woolen, stuffed with the sound of all those gunshots. It had sounded like a battle, as if it had been two armies clashing instead of a lone, unarmed woman fleeing for her life.
When Lancaster didn’t answer right away, he asked again, “Or what?” It felt strange to be asking a zombie for answers, but just then nothing was right in Read’s world.
“It seems like you have three choices. Go out there and die. Stay where you are and eventually become like me. Or…” Again, he paused for effect and Read found himself leaning forward, waiting to hear his final choice. “You can come out here and finish what you started. Mano a mano. You and me. What do you say? Wanna dance?”
Read was slow to reply. The zombie had summed up his options succinctly. The level of fear demonstrated by those holding him captive in the diner would only mount as the day wore on. And if Read waited, eventually the zombie would try to come into the kitchen. Even if he managed to kill the zombie the disease had proven to be extra virulent and getting infected was almost a guarantee.
The choice Lancaster was offering was almost as bad: a gunfight in a narrow diner against an opponent who had already died once and who didn’t seem to feel pain or fear. This didn’t seem like a fight Read could win.
“Come on, chicken,” Lancaster sneered. “What do you have to lose?”
Read had everything to lose and only one thing to possibly gain: time. “And maybe a chance to put a bullet into my own head,” he whispered. Louder, he called out, “Step back from the door. In fact, go to your table. Put your gun on it and I’ll holster mine. That’ll make it fair.”
“If you want it fair you’d take off your vest. Do it or I’ll piss right under this fuckin’ door. I know you got towels and shit along the crack, but I got me a broom, and in the great battle of broom verse towel, the broom wins every time, fuck-face. So, take off the vest and throw it out first.”
“Shit!” Read hissed, wishing he hadn’t used the word fair. He took off the brown uniform shirt and gazed wistfully down at the scarred vest. It had saved his life and now he was giving it up. He muttered another curse and stripped it off. Without it he felt small and weak.
“It’s off, now move back. I want to hear you when you get to the table.”
“I’m already here.”
Taking a long knife, Read cut along the duct tape. He then yanked on the ends of the cloth around his face until his nose was bent sideways. “I’m coming out!” Cracking the door, he peeked down the length of the diner. Lancaster was sitting just as he had been when Read had walked into the diner hours before, only now there was a shiny silver pistol on the table in front of him. It sat inches from his right hand. His left hand was at his temple massaging it so fiercely that he was in danger of rubbing the flesh away from the bone.
Read tossed the vest onto the long counter, inadvertently knocking over a coffee mug which exploded on the old linoleum, causing Lancaster to wince.
“You did that on purpose,” Lancaster seethed, his hand inching toward the gun.
He hadn’t, but he wished he had. There had been a good second and a half when Read could have drawn his gun and fired. Now it was too late. He stood in the narrow lane between the counter and the crowded back wall—he was perfectly framed.
“You gonna do this sittin’ down?” Read hoped he’d stand up. If the half-man made the attempt, Read would draw on him. It was completely unfair. Then again, nothing about the situation was fair.
Lancaster had ideas of his own. “You think I should die like a man? It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?”
Read shrugged, mostly to loosen his shoulders. The muscles of his neck and shoulders were so stiff he didn’t know if they would actually move when it came time to fight. He could picture himself freezing in place when the time came. He had seen enough dash-cam footage to know that it happened more than anyone cared to admit.
“It’s never too late,” Read told him. “Do the right thing.”
Lancaster regarded Read with his black eyes. “And that is? Kill myself? Is that the right thing? Maybe you should kill yourself.”
“If I was in your position, I would,” he answered honestly. “Maybe it’s too late for you. Probably it is. Come on. Stand up. Let’s get this over with.” Read knew it wouldn’t be smart to draw the moment out any longer. His body felt like a spring; an old rusty, brittle spring.
“Okay,” Lancaster said and began to heave himself up. As he did, his right hand shot out and grabbed the pistol.
Read was already reaching for his own. In a surp
risingly fluid motion, the grip was in his hand and he was drawing the piece up from its holster. Unfortunately, the gun sat high on his hip, which didn’t lend itself to a quick draw. Worse for Read, he had to haul his elbow up to almost shoulder height to clear the weapon and when he did, he cracked the back of his arm on the shelf that held the coffee machine which had been left on all morning.
Scalding coffee splashed across his arm just as the front sight caught on the edge of his holster. The gun dropped from his fumbling hand. Read was quick and dropped along with the gun, going to one knee and almost catching it in midair. It clacked loudly on the linoleum a split second before Lancaster fired his weapon.
The air blazed an inch over Read’s head. Then the M9 was in his hand just as a bullet ripped through the meat of his right arm. The gun almost dropped from his hand a second time as his arm went limp and dangled uselessly from his shoulder.
He was in deep shit and knew it all too well. The narrow lane he was crouched in, seemed to channel every bullet right at him. He had to get out before Lancaster fired again. This was basically impossible as the half-man was already lining up another shot, a gleeful black grin on his face.
Read launched himself over the counter…mostly over the counter, that is. He landed on the far edge, a bullet missing the side of his head by millimeters. The high counter stools broke his fall somewhat. Four of these went over with him and he landed amidst a clatter of bouncing metal. He rolled left as a bullet tinged off one of the chairs.
Then he went back the way he had come as he realized his gun had fallen from his weak grasp. Left-handed, he grabbed it, flinched as sparks flew into his face from a bullet that scorched the linoleum and then fired at Lancaster with barely a nod towards actually aiming. Stretched out on the floor wasn’t a good position for shooting, especially as he couldn’t use his right arm for support. He couldn’t raise the gun above waist height and when he jerked the trigger, the first four bullets went into the cushion next to Lancaster.
“They’ll let anyone be a cop these days,” Lancaster laughed, firing his gun again and missing high this time. Now that he was out from behind the counter, Read had become a much more difficult target. The hated sun was bouncing off the metal chairs and burning right into his eyes.
Lancaster’s consecutive misses gave Read one second to pull himself together and with a grunt of pain, he rolled onto his right side and was able to aim the M9 down the length of his body, resting his left arm on his hip. With a stable platform, he was squeezed the trigger the way it was meant to be. His first shot hit Lancaster in the shoulder. His next two buried themselves in his chest without appearing to affect him in the least.
He adjusted slightly and punched Lancaster’s ticket with a beauty of a headshot. Lancaster’s head swung back, struck the cushion, rebounded, and then flopped forward to smash the table, leaving a black smear.
Read wilted onto the linoleum and after a few breaths, he felt tears come to his eyes. He laughed at them without understanding their nature. “Probably just blood loss.” There was blood everywhere: up the side of the door, on the ceiling, across the counter, and finally, where he lay in a puddle of red.
It took him three attempts to sit up and, once his head stopped spinning, his first thoughts were on his arm. The wound was a through and through and already the bleeding was slowing. “That’s good. Nothing big has been…” His words dried up as he realized that he’d been rolling around in the still tacky black blood that had come gushing out of the old lady he had shot earlier.
“No,” he whispered, lifting his good left hand and seeing what looked like smears of tar. It was only then that he realized the cloth around his face had slipped again. He went to tighten it, only one arm wasn’t working and the other was covered in diseased blood. Suddenly, his entire body began to feel itchy, as if the germs were the size of ants and were crawling all over him.
Dropping his gun, he went to the sink behind the counter and tried to wash one handed. It was impossible. He got his right arm clean enough; however, his left was dirty up to his bicep, where his shirt sleeve started. There was blood on that as well, and on his pants.
For just a few moments, he considered pulling off his clothes and trying to bathe in the dish sink. It was a stupid idea. If the back area wasn’t already contaminated, it would become so the moment he went back there.
“Besides, it’s already too late.” He figured that if the disease could get to a dead guy, he didn’t stand a chance. “There’s only one thing to do,” he whispered. Ten minutes later, with every ounce of oil he could find spread evenly throughout the diner, he lit a match and watched as the flame spread down the counter, poured down onto the floor and spread out.
In seconds, the heat was explosive. It baked into him, drying the blood even as it trickled from his wound. At first the heat was strangely comforting. It was right.
Then it hurt. It was time to be done.
Chapter 12
1-11:16 a.m.
New Rochelle, New York
“We have an in-bound Sentinel!” Colonel Taylor yelled over the room’s seemingly endless chatter. “Stop transmitting!”
Courtney Shaw, who had been monitoring five aviation frequencies at once, and was feeding misinformation to three different regimental commanders, simultaneously, didn’t understand Taylor. She covered her mic and turned to Major Justin Iler, the soldier closest to her and asked, “Did he say a sentinel? Isn’t that a guard or something?”
“Damn it,” General Axelrod groused, rubbing one of his large hands over his face. The liver-spots were just beginning to show on the back of them. “How far out?”
Taylor shrugged. “Five minutes maybe. It’s hard to tell. I picked up transmission from a Sentry over Harrisburg that was clearing a lane for an east-bound flight out of BFE. Someone asked him if it was for heavies and his answer was that it was for Hush-planes out of Creech Air Force Base.”
“What’s all that mean?” Courtney demanded, suddenly nervous because everyone else was suddenly nervous.
“It means we’re temporarily out of business,” Axelrod said. “The only spy planes flying out of Creech is the RQ-170 Sentinel. It’s a UAV, designed for stealth reconnaissance. It’s up there, but we’ll never know where exactly. Did we get any sort of heading from the AWAC?” Taylor shook his flat-topped head; Axelrod looked pained at the answer.
Boyish Major Clay Palmburg raised a soft hand. “It’s not all bad, sir. We know the point of origin, and we know that only the 30th and the 44the Recon Squadrons fly the Sentinel. We just have to work out their communication path. If they’re using JREAP-A protocols, we could saturate their network and gum everything up. In conjunction with that, we can hunt down where they refueled; it’ll likely be in line with their destination. It could be Boston.”
Major Iler didn’t look convinced. “That’ll only work if they are using a token passing protocol. You see, sir if they’re using what’s referred to as the half-duplex method, then there is a chance we might interfere, but if they…”
Axelrod, who didn’t give a damn about protocols of any sort, stopped him. “Major Palmburg, you try the protocol thing. Major Iler do something else but do something! Everyone else, if you’re not working on anything essential, shut down your computers.”
Special Agent Katherine Pennock didn’t look up from her computer. “I’m trying to hold off the NSA, the FBI and Army Cyber Command. If I can’t keep ahead of them, we all might as well go home.” There were at least a hundred different agents and officers searching through the mass of information that composed Link 16, the military’s tactical data link network. Anything out of the ordinary was either being investigated by dedicated tactical teams swooping down in Blackhawks or simply obliterated by cruise missiles.
After Katherine’s announcement, everyone else made claims that what they were doing was essential. All except Courtney Shaw. She was only saving lives by rerouting bombing runs, changing logistic paths to keep soldiers supplied, p
ulling reinforcements from less threatened areas, and sending them to places that were on the verge of being overrun—this was how Troy Ross was suddenly gifted with three platoons of Marines and was able to hold his section of the Black Blood Bog that had once been the Quinsigamond River.
Courtney took off her headset and shutdown her computer. It felt wrong. “So, does anyone need coffee?”
“Forget the coffee,” Axelrod growled. “Those Sentinels are a bitch. We need to shut down any and all electronics that aren’t being used. Also, we need to power down everything that’s drawing power. We need our footprint as small as possible. Start with Dr. Lee’s lab. And Courtney, you better hurry.”
The way he said it was terribly ominous and she scurried out of the room without looking back. The stairs were poorly lit and yet they were free from obstruction and she took them three at a time, just as her thirteen-year-old self would have. Of course, her thirteen-year-old self would have been blubbering as she went, afraid that she was already too late and that a missile was, even then, homing in on the building.
Courtney from a week ago might also have been blubbering wreck. A lot had changed in her world in a very short time. She raced down to the third floor and once there, began turning off lights as she charged for the labs.
“We gotta shut every…” She started to say only to be confronted by a roar from the next room. Through the glass, she could see a zombie—it flung itself at her. Just as her thirteen-year-old self would have, she leapt back and let out a screech. The beast was brought up short. Its wrists were cuffed to the metal support post of a huge, twelve-foot wide stainless-steel cabinet.
“Oh, my God! That’s Specialist Hoskins.”
Anna Holloway looked up from the computer she’d been staring at. “Yeah. Pretty crappy, right? The ‘Queen’ over there doesn’t want to mess up her findings by giving him any meds.”
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 16