“Sure. What about New York City and all the rest? What will we have available for them?”
If he was going to be as “generous” as the President wanted, he wouldn’t have much left over. “Not a lot, I’m afraid. Maybe a single line of bombs to begin containment. But that’s just for now. We still have stockpiled nuclear weapons that are basically dismantled or retired and waiting to be reduced. It’ll take them a few months to be readied for actual use. Or they can be made into dirty bombs. That’ll take only a few hours.”
“Then do that. We’ll give the whole area a fine dusting. I want the bombs in the air as soon as possible. Take out those Ohio cities first. We have to stop the westward shift of the infection asap. Then do that band, that line. Start it in Baltimore, but make sure the wind is right. I don’t want any of that radioactive shit raining down on me. After that…”
He used his interactive map to make little arcs around New York City, Buffalo, and Detroit. “Save these cities. Hmm, and I guess Boston, but make it tight. Use this arc here. I-495. What do you think, Trista?”
That you’re an evil man. She couldn’t say this, although he was flippantly throwing the lives of millions of people away, many of whom could be saved with just a little more effort or forethought. He had also clearly chosen I-495 because it would put the entire Army of Southern New England within the blast zone. And the radiation belt would run right through Hagerstown, cutting off and trapping the entire 3rd ID, giving them the option of dying by radiation poisoning or by being torn apart by a zombie horde.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Trista gushed. “I’m just glad it will all be over soon.” He grinned and she grinned right back, amazed at how easily the lie had come. “You should come up with a catchy name for the radiation belt. Like the Freedom Line or something like that.”
“Maybe you could do that for me,” the President suggested, then his face fell. “Oh, that’s right. You’ll be too busy saving the less fortunate.” She gave him an honestly confused look and he said, “You know, Debbie and the kids.”
“Right. I completely forgot about them. I guess I was just too caught up with…” She swallowed the words that had almost shot out of her mouth: I was just too caught up with the idea of killing you. “With all of this,” she said, instead. “It’ll be a relief when the terror is over.”
Chapter 22
1-9:02 p.m.
New Rochelle, New York
Over the sound of the whirring machines, the hum of the centrifuges, and the ever-present scream of Specialist Hoskins, the sound of the child’s voice rang, sickly sweet, and totally evil, “Doctor Leeeeee?”
Thuy froze and closed her large, doe eyes. She even held her breath. It was Jaimee Lynn Burke hunting her. Somehow the little monster had gone from being a somewhat dull eight-year-old child, to a creature sitting high on the food chain. In fact, she was an apex predator. She was the hunter and Thuy was her prey.
“I cun smell you, Doctor Lee. I cun smell how y’all been washin’ with that pink soap stuff. It ain’t gonna work. I cun smell y’all’s blood right through it. Why don’t y’all come on out. I’s jus wanna talk.”
Jaimee Lynn’s stomach wouldn’t stop growling, making her a liar. Or at least a little bit of a liar. She did want to talk, just maybe after she ate off one of Dr. Lee’s legs. “I wanna know what y’all did with my daidy. I don’t smell him none. Where is he? Come on out and iffin’ y’all tell me, I promise that I won’t kill none of you.”
With her were five of her pack. They were slunk down behind the desks, their greedy black eyes sparkling like midnight diamonds as they crawled along. They were simpletons compared to Jaimee Lynn, but they were cunning, horrible simpletons and knew a lie when they heard it. Jaimee Lynn hadn’t said nothing about them killing the lady. One of them started to giggle and was kicked in the face by their leader.
“All y’all gotta do is tell me where he went. Hello? Doctor Lee?” A look of unrepentant fury swept over the girl before she forced the hideous black smile back into place. “Please, Doctor Lee. He’s all I got left.”
Jaimee Lynn sniffed suddenly, catching a stronger scent: the faint aroma of woman’s sweat; Doctor Lee’s sweat. It was coming from somewhere near the back of the long lab. Jaimee Lynn passed rows of work stations, following the smell until she came to a low series of cabinets under the last counter.
“Jus tell me where he went,” Jaimee Lynn said with growing excitement. No sound, but the smell was strong. Like a dog, she went from one cabinet to the next until she found the one. She snatched it open, saying, “I got…” Except for some science stuff that looked complicated and breakable, there was only a dirty shirt in the cabinet. She grabbed it and breathed in deeply.
It fueled her hunger and her rage. “Doctor Lee! I know y’alls here!” The scream echoed throughout the building, reaching all the way to the first floor.
Too late, Katherine Pennock realized the trap was sprung. “Come on,” she cried, and rushed towards the lobby. Anna paused for only a second, wondering if this was her chance to escape; there was no doubt in her head that she had to escape. A thump behind her told her this was not the right moment and it got her racing after the FBI agent all the while twisting her head around owl-like, looking behind her.
Shadows shifted, seeming to come alive. Anna let out a hissing cry, “Kat!” just as she ran into Katherine who had paused at the end of the cubicle maze. “They’re behind us!” Anna whispered.
Katherine didn’t believe it for a moment, and gave only a single glance past Anna before she charged on. “Ha!” she cried when she saw one of the children. In the dark it might have been a goblin or a hissing chimp. She shot it, her M4 sounding like a cannon in the quiet building. The zombie-child was flung back, flying over a desk, leaving a glistening smear across the top.
Instinctively, Katherine turned, knocked aside Anna, and saw another darting in at them from beneath one of the light cubicle walls that had fallen. She shot it and looked to pin it to the floor with the hot bullet. Another turn. Katherine was suddenly short of breath and was puffing behind her blue mask.
Anna’s hands were on her again. Katherine knocked them aside. Her adrenaline was pumping through her system and she was on a spring trigger, hyper-aware. A scraping sound to her right—the first little zombie she had shot had disappeared, leaving behind a greasy black trail. She turned back in time to see the second one she had shot slip back under the wall.
Once more, instinct kicked in and she wasted three bullets punching holes in the cubicle wall. She only had twenty-one rounds left. Dashing forward, she heaved the wall over. The zombie was gone.
“Son of a bitch!” Without worrying whether Anna would follow her, Katherine ran for the door that led to the central part of the lobby; it was partially blocked with furniture. “They were trying to trap us. Shit. Clear it. I’ll watch our back.”
Anna had followed, and now she reluctantly went about pulling aside the furniture. Even with gloves on, she didn’t want to touch a thing. And she was tired. Unlike Katherine who had been on the go for only thirty-six hours, Anna had been neck deep in the apocalypse for five days now. She was exhausted, and bruised, battered and broken; literally broken. Two of her fingers had been cruelly damaged from a fall and they still ached despite having been set and bandaged by an FBI medic.
On top of all of that, she wasn’t exactly motivated to save Dr. Lee and so, she cleared the door but slowly. When it was finally done, she didn’t volunteer to go through first.
“You are a piece of work,” Katherine said, pushing past her and heading for the stairs. The fall of her black boots echoed in the lobby.
A moment later, Anna joined her, a plan percolating in her mind. If they went upstairs, the zombie children would follow and when they did, she would slip away, head out the back door and get the hell out of there. It made no sense at all to stay now. If there had ever been a chance at a cure, it was gone now that Eng and Jaimee Lynn had found them.
&n
bsp; Up the stairs the two went, with Anna trailing a few steps down, listening intently for any sign that they were being followed. The door below had let out a pneumatic hiss when they had come through. The hiss had not repeated; they were alone.
At the third floor, Katherine cracked the door, just enough to look out; she wouldn’t commit, however. She was listening, trying to hear beyond Specialist Hoskins, who was screaming his black lungs out.
It was time to run, Anna decided. But why go empty-handed or unarmed? she asked herself. Katherine was giving her a perfect opportunity, Anna just wished she had kept a hold of her potted plant. The slim, silver letter opener was a stupid weapon, especially against a person in ballistic armor. Besides, she didn’t want to kill Katherine, she wanted to leave that to the zombie children.
Eating the FBI agent would be a fantastic distraction.
But how to accomplish this? Katherine was slightly taller, much stronger and trained to fight. She was armored and her heart was pumping. Going toe-to-toe with her would be idiotic, and Anna was no idiot. She was, however, a backstabbing bitch, although in this case, she wasn’t going to stab anyone. Katherine was leaning too close to the edge of the door frame.
Anna came up fast and silent. She slammed Katherine’s head into the side of the metal frame with an ugly thud. Anna tried to smash her a second time, but Katherine’s legs had already buckled and she collapsed, falling limply to the painted cement. Anna was on her in a second, punching her in the face and further knocking the back of her head into the floor until stars flashed across her vision.
“I said we should leave,” Anna whispered as she stripped Katherine of her pistol and rifle. “I told you. I warned you, and now look what’s happened.” She stood tall over the agent, appearing like some sort of yellow-haired titan from a blurry mythological past. She pulled out the letter opener and tossed it onto Katherine’s armored chest. “Good luck.”
Katherine could barely focus and the words had no meaning. They were a mumbled nothing compared to the pounding in her head. Then Anna yelled something that echoed in the stairwell as well as in Katherine’s head, before she turned and leapt down the stairs. “What?” Katherine muttered, trying to make sense of what had just happened. “We-we’re in here?” That’s what Anna had cried out, but who was she talking to? “An’ and w-why does my head hurt?” She thought her words sounded slushy as if it was impossible for words to be as unfocused as her vision.
With the world spinning and tilting up and down, she forced herself upright, putting her back to the wall. Far below her, the pneumatic serpentine hiss of the stairwell door shutting drifted up. “She ran away,” Katherine said, suddenly realizing what had happened to her. Quick righteous anger dispelled a good bit of the woolly fog that had filled most of her mind. “She left us. That fucking whore! I’ll…”
A small, but nasty, bloody-faced zombie interrupted her. It popped its brutally lumped head through the third-floor door and smiled wickedly at her, showing off rows of needle-sharp baby teeth.
“Holy crap!” she cried, feeling an electric shock of fear blast through her entire being. Just as the beast leapt full on her, its terrible little teeth digging for her throat, she spied the letter opener next to her leg. Her hand closed on it and in a silver flash she brought the dull blade around in a sharp, vicious arc, driving it into the creature’s neck so hard that the point protruded out the other side.
The force of the blow knocked the child to the side. Katherine scrambled up just as the door opened and three more of the monsters charged into the darkened stairwell. Had they been ordinary kids, she would have been able to bend them over her knee and given them something to think about. These were the furthest things from normal.
They were fearless and amazingly strong. Before she could even ready her mind for the insanity she faced, she was bowled over by the force of the three and sent falling backwards down the stairs. It was too soon after getting her head smashed and before she knew it, she couldn’t tell up from down. She was lucky that the zombies were in something of the same boat. Their brains were ineffectual to begin with, and they were equally slow at grasping where they were when they crashed into the landing at the bottom of the staircase.
Katherine recovered a hair quicker. She lashed out from her back with a kick that broke the nose and top row of teeth of one of the monsters. Next, she grabbed the second one and threw it face first into the wall, where it left a greasy black smear before it fell. She was reaching for the third when it bit down on her hip bone, just below the angle of her armor. It felt like a pitbull with iron teeth had chomped down on her. The pain was enough to make her scream.
Afraid that she was infected, she drove her elbow down with raging force, aiming for the thing’s temple. The angle was bad and she hit it at the top of its jaw, dislocating it. The relief from the pain was immediate. “Oh god!” she gasped as she shoved the little zombie away; it was trying to bite her again, but without a working jaw it wasn’t doing anything but pressing its face against her.
She was up in a flash, but fell again as the beast grabbed her ankle. “Get the fuck off of me!” With a yank, she pulled herself free, and was about to race down the stairs when the door to the second floor banged open below her.
“Anna?” Katherine called out, suddenly nervous.
“Nope. Guess again.”
There was no need to guess. It was Eng. He had come back from the dead.
2-9:14 p.m.
R & K Research Facility
A moment before she heard that single, hideous giggle, Thuy felt a prickle of fear. Something small triggered a warning inside her; perhaps it was a change in air pressure made by the opening of a door, or the tiny vibration of running feet coming up through the linoleum. Either way, she was tense and ready when she heard the giggle.
It was all the warning she needed. In a quick move, she yanked off the shirt she’d been wearing over a white cami for the past few days, chucked it into one of the cabinets beneath her work station and then ducked through the closest door seconds before Jaimee Lynn and her pack entered the lab.
The door had been her only choice, but she regretted it immediately. She was trapped in the lab’s dedicated cleanroom. Not only was the room relatively small, it was the least protected room in the building. The top half of the walls was glass. This also included the door which had no lock! To top it all off, she shared the room with a raging zombie.
Across from her was Specialist Hoskins, his eyes black as sin and dripping what looked like motor oil. His flesh was tinted grey all except the skin around his wrists, which were black and bleeding. He was cuffed to the vertical strut of a long, steel workstation that was bolted to the wall. In his madness, it looked as though he was about to tear his own hands off in order to get at her.
And if he did, what could she do about it? Save for her mask and gloves, Thuy was defenseless. She had no weapons and was completely untrained in any martial art. Even her brilliant mind was useless under the circumstances.
Her only option was to remain perfectly still, no matter what happened—no matter how close Jaimee Lynn came to finding her hiding place. Thuy crouched behind the door, wondering if she was strong enough to hold it closed against the combined strength of the children. They were small but hellishly strong.
The minutes dragged as Jaimee Lynn hunted her. There were moments of hope, such as when Katherine fired her M4 down on the first floor. The hope didn’t last and faded along with the smattering of gunshots.
Then Jaimee Lynn was just on the other side of the door. She stood tall enough to see into the room, and for some reason, her presence made Hoskins especially furious. The creature screamed as though he were trying to tear his own throat out and spit it onto the floor. He pulled against his cuffs with such strength that he yanked a few of the bolts out of the wall and the entire cabinet screeched toward Thuy, its metal legs grinding across the floor in a high squeal.
Thuy still refused to move. She closed her eyes and
listened to her heart race inside her, too afraid to even pray. Barehanded, she had no chance against the pack. Of course, she would fight back and run if she could, but she would lose one way or another. Infection was a guarantee and death through dismemberment very likely.
Dismemberment—was her sterile, clinical way of saying that she would be torn apart by the pack’s feral little teeth. Deckard would have laughed at the word. He would have scoffed and grinned that unbearably handsome grin of his and said something like, Maybe try a bigger a word; more letters might save you.
A fleeting smile lit up her face…then the door knob wiggled. They had found her at last. She decided that she would hold the door as long as she could and force them to come through the glass. Realistically, this might add all of a minute to her life. After all, the glass was germ-proof, not bullet-proof.
Thuy’s smile came back, warped now by a feeling of lunacy that made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. All that separated her from whatever doom was due her was a half-inch of brittle glass. It seemed about right, about par for the course her life had been taking.
A thump vibrated through the wall, making her jump. Another followed right after. Some of the smaller children couldn’t see inside and were jumping up to grab the sill, their mangled feet kicking the wall. Thuy could feel the eyes of the pack peering into the room and she shrank into herself, squeezing her knees to her chest. She was sure they would attack the glass any second. Hissed orders were given, followed by Jaimee Lynn saying, “Go get ‘em.”
This is it, Thuy thought and then shocked herself as she jumped up, ready to fight. But no one was ready to fight her. The pack of demon children were charging through the stairwell doorway and Thuy just caught a glimpse of a bloody-faced Katherine Pennock before the pack swarmed her and the door slammed shut.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 33