And the monsters? Wild dogs and the power of suggestion…something like that. There was a rational explanation for all of this. There had to be.
Yet, as he threaded his way through streets littered with debris, past overturned cars and one house after another that appeared to have been knocked flat with an army of bulldozers, he knew better.
This was the end of the world.
53
Rook aimed his Desert Eagle at the writhing mass of wendigos, but just as Knight had done, he withheld firing the weapon, not because of the very real possibility that a round from the .50 caliber pistol might punch right through one of the creatures and hit Bishop, but rather because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Bishop was kicking serious ass.
Rook would not have guessed a person could move so fast—and he had even seen her fight Queen once. Bishop was a blur of motion, launching kicks and punches that deflected snapping jaws and knocked the attacking creatures back before they could grasp hold with their freakishly long fingers.
Rook started at the noise of a rifle shot and whirled around, just as Knight fired a second time. The sniper was not targeting the creatures around Bishop, but rather picking off a fresh wave of the monsters coming across the bridge. The CheyTac thundered again and again, and with each report, a wendigo head split apart. Rook took aim with his Desert Eagle, but each time he was about to pull the trigger, his target was felled by one of Knight’s bullets.
He turned back to find Bishop, almost unrecognizable beneath a layer of gore. It was impossible to tell how much of it was hers. Probably not much, judging by the fact that she was still on her feet. She was surrounded by wendigos, but most of them were sprawled out around her, limbs bent at unnatural angles or torn off completely. Only two were still standing, still trying to succeed where their brethren had failed.
Quicker than his eye could follow, Bishop wrapped her arms around the neck of one creature and flipped herself up and over its shoulders, twisting savagely as she flew through the air. An instant later, the wendigo toppled forward, minus its head, which was still gripped in Bishop’s arms. The remaining creature struck at her like a biting viper, but Bishop thrust the severed head forward, jamming it into the wendigo’s gaping mouth with such force that the creature’s lower jaw broke away. She side-stepped, allowing its momentum to carry it past, and then she delivered a two-handed hammer blow to the base of the monster’s skull. Even from several yards away, Rook could hear the sound of bones breaking.
He whirled back around to help Knight, but there were no more wendigos left to kill.
“Well, shit,” he muttered. “What did I stay behind for?”
His quip failed to elicit even a glimmer of amusement from Knight, who was now staring desolately toward the parking lot. Bishop just stood there, breathing heavily, eyes darting to and fro, as if expecting another wave of creatures to appear at any moment, but otherwise unmoving. At her feet, partly covered by wendigo bodies, curled in a fetal ball, was the almost indistinguishable form of Anna Beck.
Knight took an uncertain step forward, then broke into a run. Rook holstered his pistol and sprinted to interpose himself. He put his hands on Knight’s shoulders. “Don’t.”
Knight tried to wrestle out of his grasp, but even in his rage and grief, he was no match for Rook’s strength. “Let go of me. I have to…”
“No, you don’t,” Rook said, firm but gentle. “You don’t need to see that, brother.”
Rook did not completely understand why Knight had been so reluctant to approach Beck earlier, but even absent the risk of infection, there was no way he was going to let Knight get close to Beck. Knight had been through too much, lost too much. His eye. His best friend, Erik Somers. His grandmother. Now his girlfriend.
Knight did not need to see what was left of her body.
“Bohze moi!”
Bishop’s sudden exclamation turned Rook’s head, distracting him just enough to allow Knight to slip free. As Rook spun around, making a futile grab for his friend’s arm, he saw the reason for her outburst.
Anna Beck was moving.
The apparent resurrection left Rook completely stunned. As Beck slowly uncurled, a low moan escaped her lips.
“Shit!” Rook gasped. He tried to recall what King had said about how people transformed into wendigos. Was it like the zombie virus in movies, dead people reanimating after they were bitten? He fumbled for his pistol, but before he could get it out, Bishop knelt and hugged Beck, and Beck, despite her injuries, returned the embrace.
Just as the adrenaline of the false alarm was starting to drain out of Rook’s extremities, Knight reached Beck’s side and threw his arms around her as well.
“Dae. Don’t.” Beck’s protest was weak, barely audible, and too late to matter. Knight hugged her close, as if afraid that she might evaporate if he let go.
Bishop pulled away abruptly and shot a nervous glance at Rook.
“Knight. Why don’t you move away from her for a minute?” Rook spoke in the low tone and calm manner usually reserved for negotiating with suicidal maniacs. “Let Bish and I have a look at her injuries?”
If Knight’s earlier fears proved true, if the medication he was taking to prevent his body from rejecting the ocular implant also left him vulnerable to the wendigo infection, how long before the first symptoms started to manifest? Would there be any warning at all? Rook gripped the Desert Eagle, ready to draw it at the first sign of a transformation.
Knight did not let go of Beck, did not even acknowledge Rook’s presence. Thirty seconds passed, a minute, and then Beck spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s okay.”
For a moment, Rook thought she was speaking to Knight, trying to convince him to let go, but then he realized that Beck was looking at him. Her face was taut, agonized, but she was lucid. “I think…we’re safe,” she continued, laboring over every word. “He isn’t…going to turn.”
“Are you sure?”
“It would have…happened…already.”
Rook let out his breath in a long sigh then closed the remaining distance and laid a firm hand on Knight’s shoulder. Knight met his gaze, tears streaming from his good eye, and Rook looked away, not so much embarrassed by the display of emotion as afraid that it might prove contagious. “Seriously, pal. Save it for later. We need to get your lady patched up.”
“And we need to go before more of those things show up,” Bishop said.
“After what you just did,” Rook said, with an approving nod, “that’s the last thing I’m worried about.”
Bishop shook her head. “I am not wanting to do that again.”
“Amen to that.”
Knight relaxed his fierce embrace, but only enough to allow Rook to begin treating Beck’s wounds. Her fetal curl had protected her vital organs and saved her life, but the wendigos had torn her exposed back to shreds. Rook winced when he saw the damage. “Great. Now that I really need her, Queen’s off running around with Mr. and Mrs. King.”
He dug into his assault pack and brought out a combat life-saver pack, which contained a variety of field dressings and three one-liter bags of saline solution. Although Queen was the designated medic, every member of the team was cross-trained in battlefield medical care, and carried a similar kit on every mission.
“This may sting,” he warned, as he used one of the bags to rinse away the blood, revealing several huge bite marks and large divots torn from her flesh. The damage was superficial but extensive. She flinched at the first touch of the solution, but then steeled herself and endured his ministrations without further reaction.
Rook was impressed. He had no idea how she was even conscious, much less able to talk. He covered the worst of her wounds with large field dressings. When he was done, she grasped his shoulder and used it to haul herself erect.
“I’m good,” she rasped. “Let’s go.”
Despite her strong resolve, Beck nearly collapsed when she tried to walk on her own. Rook swept her up i
n his arms, carrying her as he might a small child. “It’s okay. I got you.”
“You can’t…”
“There’s a car about half a mile from here. I can carry you that far.” When Beck offered no further protest, he started forward.
Bishop raced ahead, evidently making the unilateral decision to take point. After sluicing away the blood that coated her body, she looked almost human again. The wendigos had left their mark, with bite wounds on her arms and a nasty looking welt on one cheek, but she had fared considerably better than Beck.
Rook was surprised to see Bishop kneel down to retrieve his machine gun, draping its sling around her neck. The gun looked huge in her grasp, almost as long as she was tall. The muscles of her arms bulged under the heavy load, but her face betrayed none of the effort. “We need this, I think.”
Rook just stared in disbelief. Bishop, who had just ripped apart a half dozen wendigos with her bare hands, was now hefting the enormous 240B and ready for battle again. Beside him, Knight, as lethal with only one eye as he had been with two.
It was like having the old team together again.
As they passed the carcass of the enormous wendigo, Rook wondered aloud if there were others.
“First one like that I’ve seen,” Beck said. “But I think…they grow…after they eat.”
Rook wracked his brain for a witty reply, but the thought of what it was the wendigo had eaten to get that big robbed him of every last vestige of humor. Once past the bridge, they got their first look at the chaos the wendigo pack had left in its wake.
Smoke billowed from a score of fires scattered across the landscape. Houses had been cracked open like eggs, the broken pieces discarded with indifference. The giant had done that, Rook knew, ripping down the walls to get at the frightened people hiding within. Some had no doubt turned, adding to the growing army. The rest had been devoured.
“I think there must be more than one of the big guys,” Rook ventured.
“Given the amount of destruction,” Knight said. “I think you’re right.”
“Frickin’ wonderful. Well, they’re gone now. I say we get some wheels and head in any direction that is away from them.” He paused, trying to decide if what he had said made any sense, then shook his head and continued walking.
They had done okay so far, but he had no illusions about what would happen if they were attacked again. If there really were several of the jumbo-sized wendigos, and hundreds or possibly thousands of the regular ones, then beating them was a job for an entire army.
“Rook,” Bishop called out. “Someone is coming.”
Rook followed Bishop’s gaze and spotted a lone pickup rolling down the abandoned highway. “A concerned citizen. Perfect.”
“How do you know he’s concerned?”
“I’ll make sure of it.” He gently lowered Beck to the ground, then strode to the center line, and held up both hands in a slight variation of the universal symbol for stop—the difference being that each hand held one of his enormous Desert Eagle pistols.
The truck stopped a good fifty yards away, as if the driver was afraid to come any closer. Rook made a rolling gesture with the barrel of one pistol, and the truck grudgingly advanced until it was right in front of them. The driver rolled his window down and poked his head out.
There was undisguised wariness in the man’s expression. No surprise there. Rook’s own upbringing had taught him that rural folks, while hospitable, were naturally suspicious of outsiders, especially those who didn’t quite fit in. The four of them looked like refugees from some post-apocalyptic future, which actually wasn’t far from the truth.
The man studied them for a moment, noting the camouflage and heavy weaponry. “Army?”
“Something like that. We’re trying to get back to our unit. Think you could give us a ride?”
The man shrugged. “Why not? Hop in. You’ll have to roshambo for the front seat, though.”
Rook holstered the pistols and gave his friendliest smile. “Much appreciated.”
Knight and Bishop assisted Beck into the open bed, then climbed in with her. Since Knight was not about to leave Beck’s side, and Bishop’s Russian accent was a liability when it came to conversing with the locals, Rook got the dubious honor of sharing the cab with the driver.
“Which way?” the man asked.
There were two bridges across the Croatan Sound, one at the north end of the island, and another southwest of their present location. Both bridges would deliver them to the mainland near the town of Manns Harbor, but Rook was pretty sure that King and the others would have taken the southern route, away from the rolling wave of destruction that had begun in the north.
“Stick to the highway,” Rook told him. “Head south, and then across the bridge.”
The man nodded, and then put the truck in gear and started forward without comment, which struck Rook as a little off.
“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but how did you manage to survive…” Rook jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “All that?”
“Just lucky, I guess. Actually, I was inside and pretty much missed the whole thing. Heard lots of noise and figured it must be a tornado or something. When I finally came out, I saw…those things.”
Something about the explanation only made Rook more suspicious. After a disaster, the first thing people in rural communities did was check on their neighbors. They didn’t jump in the truck and run.
“Where are my manners?” Rook thrust out his hand. “I’m Stan.”
The abruptness of the gesture surprised the man, but he recovered quickly, clasping the proffered hand. “Folks call me Bulldog,” he said.
“And what folks would those be?” Rook said with a knowing smile. “Because you sure as hell aren’t from around here.”
54
King rested his SCAR on the door frame, scanning the roadside for any sign of current wendigo activity. There was plenty of evidence that they had been there. The highway they had walked down earlier was now strewn with wreckage from houses and shops that had been demolished. Trees and power lines had been knocked down like blades of grass trampled underfoot. Dodging the rubble had slowed them to a crawl. The scale of the destruction was far too great to be the work of just one monster wendigo, which meant that the thing with the snake tattoo was not the only example of its kind. The giants were something new, something outside his experience.
“Sara, that big one we fought. Have you seen others like it?”
Sara glanced in the rearview mirror, meeting his eyes. “In the hospital, one of them bit me.”
King drew in a sharp breath but withheld comment.
“Afterward, he—it—got bigger. I think feeding makes them grow.”
“You’re right. Feeding on human flesh does make them grow larger. Most of the ones we’ve encountered so far were victims of the tainted meat supply. They never would have willingly engaged in cannibalism, so the infection has driven them mad. It’s different for those who make the conscious decision to eat the flesh of another person.”
He realized that the others were staring at him in astonishment, and he looked away, returning his gaze to the landscape of destruction.
“Like the colonists,” Ellen said in a small voice. “The ones who were cursed.”
King nodded without looking at her.
“Well,” Sara said, “I suppose that repeated ingestion of…uh, could build up extreme levels of certain proteins in the body, which might result in a more dramatic presentation of the symptoms. Perhaps those… What should we call them? Alpha wendigos? Maybe they were living on Mr. Pig before this started.”
King suspected there might be a different explanation, but did not share. They had enough to worry about.
“Stop!” Queen shouted.
Sara hit the brakes. King turned and peered through the windshield. There were no wendigos but the road directly ahead of them was completely impassable, blocked by an unending string of cars that had been overturned and tossed arou
nd like toys. Some of the vehicles had been ripped apart, and were streaked with blood. A hundred yards further along, the line of cars followed the turn onto the bypass road that ran west toward the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge. In the distance, King could see clouds of smoke rising, and huge pieces of debris, even entire cars, hurled up into the air.
“I think we’ve caught up to them,” Queen said.
“Oh, my God,” Sara whispered. “This is my fault.”
The comment shocked King into silence.
Queen shook her head. “Unless you fed thousands of people tainted meat and then set the wendigo virus loose, I don’t think so.”
“Not that.” Sara pointed at the wreckage. “These people were trying to flee. I stopped them by ordering the quarantine. Now they’re trapped here, with nowhere to go. Those things are going to wipe them all out.”
King found his voice. “You’re wrong. You gave the order for everyone to stay inside, shelter in place.”
Judging by the level of destruction wrought upon the houses, it seemed unlikely that anyone who had followed Sara’s instructions would have fared much better, but she could not have known about the alpha wendigos. Sara was right about the fate facing those caught on the road, though. The trapped motorists were an all-you-can-eat buffet stretching out all the way across the bridge to the barricades erected on the far side.
He keyed his mic. “Blue, this is King.”
“Go.”
“You need to coordinate with the National Guard. Tell them to let people off the islands.”
“King, I don’t have that authority.”
“Then find someone who does. Tell them it’s Sara’s recommendation. The people who are caught at the roadblocks are not infected. They can’t spread this. We have to get them off the island.”
Queen cut in, speaking directly to King. “You do that, and you’ll be uncorking the bottle. Those things will have a straight shot to the mainland, and once they get there—”
“I know what will happen.” King left the mic open so Aleman could hear his answer. “How many of those people have eaten tainted meat? Ten percent? More? The longer we leave them out there, the bigger the wendigo army will get. Everyone on the road will be killed or turned. We can’t afford to let either one happen.”
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