“And what happens when the wendigos hit the barricade? You think those weekend warriors have a prayer of stopping them?”
“No,” King admitted. “That’s going to be our job. But we need to find a way off this island.”
“It is an island.” Ellen’s voice was timid, as if she expected her idea to be dismissed out of hand. “We could take a boat.”
King could have kicked himself. “Ellen, your ancestor would be proud. Where can we find one?”
The compliment had the desired effect. Ellen sat up a little straighter. “There are several marinas on Shallowbag Bay. We just passed it.”
King consulted his mental map of the island. Shallowbag Bay was on the eastern shore of the island. To get to the mainland, they would have to take a circuitous route, but that would still be faster, and presumably safer, than trying to run the gauntlet on the highway.
Sara turned the Nissan around and headed back up the road half a mile, until she saw a parking lot with a low wooden sign pointing the way to the docks. King understood now why he had not noticed it earlier. Like everything else alongside the highway, the marina building, along with several boats that had been parked out in front of trailers, was now almost unrecognizable. But as Sara steered down the narrow lane that fronted the pier, the damage was less pronounced, and the boats in the water appeared to be unscathed.
They got out and ran down to the deserted dock. King picked out a twenty-three foot long Super Air Nautique G-23 ski boat, which according to the sandwich board sign located nearby, was available for rental use on an hourly or daily basis. The boat’s operator, however, was nowhere to be found. King climbed aboard and was helping Sara and Ellen do the same when Queen called out. “King! We’ve got company.”
King followed her gaze and spotted a small pack of wendigos, coming from the direction of the highway. Queen took aim but King forestalled her. “Get the boat started. I’ve got this.”
He readied his rifle but did not fire. If there were more wendigos in the neighborhood, the shots would bring them running. Instead, as soon as Queen was aboard, he freed the mooring rope from the cleat and shoved off from the pier. The boat seemed rooted in place by inertia, drifting sluggishly away from the dock. One foot. Two. The wendigos were moving a lot faster than the boat.
The engine turned over with a cough and Queen gave a shout of triumph. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
King felt the shift in his center of gravity as the screws started turning under the hull. A froth of white rose up behind the craft, but as it started to pull away, the lead wendigo reached the dock and leaped into the air.
King fired, a point blank burst that struck the wendigo in the torso. The impact was just enough to alter the trajectory of the creature’s jump, so instead of landing squarely on the stern seats, it dropped with a splash a few feet behind the churning wake.
The other creatures were undeterred by the demise of the frontrunner. They ran to the edge at full tilt and hurled themselves out into space. King fired again, hitting one and missing the others, but ultimately it did not matter. The boat had finally picked up some speed. All the wendigos fell short, splashing into the water and disappearing. Several more followed, throwing themselves lemming-like from the pier.
King watched the spot where the wendigos had gone in, waiting to see if they would break the surface, swimming after the fleeing boat, but there was no sign of the creatures. No desperate thrashing, no bobbing to the surface for desperate gasps of breath. The wendigos, creatures of lean muscle and dense bone, had sunk to the bottom of the bay like stones.
King keyed his mic again. “Blue. How are we doing on clearing those roads?”
“Admiral Ward is making it happen. He said ‘please’ with extreme prejudice. I think it’s going to happen, but it sounds like it’s already complete pandemonium on those bridges.”
King’s estimation of Ward went up a notch. “Tell the National Guard that as soon as they get the civilians safely evacuated, they need to blow up all the bridges leading out of the infected area.”
“Blow up the bridges,” Aleman repeated, a hint of skepticism in his tone. “I’m sure that will go over well.”
“Trust me on this. Wendigos can’t swim. They’ll be trapped on the islands, unable to spread the infection.”
“I’ll pass it along. No promises. Can I tell them that you’ve got a plan?”
King glanced over at Sara, who was watching him intently. “Tell them I’m working on it.”
55
Parrish felt a wave of numbness shoot through his extremities at the accusation. Was it even an accusation at all? His passenger’s smile seemed sincere enough, but Parrish could sense that there was a lot more going on behind it.
The people were military. He could tell that from the Scorpion W2 multicam Army Combat Uniforms they wore—soon to be general issue for all US Army troops, and already fielded to certain elite units. The blond man’s rowdy hair and goatee also marked him as a member of an elite service—Special Forces, maybe even a Delta team—and that meant he was smarter than the average bear. Despite the Hollywood stereotype of Green Berets and Navy SEALs as muscle-bound testosterone addicts, the selection process for special operations relied far more on mental acuity than physical ability.
There was something else about the man, a nagging suspicion that he had seen him before. Maybe they had crossed paths when Parrish had been a CID investigator. Regardless, he was certain the man in the passenger’s seat—Stan—was testing him, and if he lied and was caught, he would be in for a world of hurt.
“Is it that obvious?” Parrish said with a laugh. “You’re right. In fact, I’m not even sure where I am. I was on a plane that made an unscheduled landing at the airport just north of here. I know that this is Dare County, North Carolina, but beyond that I’m completely lost.”
Had he said too much? Given the circumstances, there was no upside to making up a bullshit story, and filling the expectant silence would alleviate suspicion and give him time to come up with something more substantial that did not incriminate him.
Stan nodded. “The airspace over the island is restricted. You took quite a chance landing here.”
“You’re telling me. It wasn’t my idea. I was just along for the ride.”
“Whose idea was it?”
I think you already know the answer to that question, Parrish thought. This will blow your mind. He met Stan’s stare and held it. “A man named Hector Beltran. He’s a Mexican crime lord. I’m DEA. Been working undercover to infiltrate the El Sol cartel. Ever heard of them?”
Stan gave a noncommittal shrug.
Parrish took a breath. He was committed to the narrative now but he had to be careful about not trying to sell it too hard. “Those guys are into some really weird shit. Human sacrifices, cannibalism.” He shook his head in disgust. Stan remained silent. Time to change the subject. “Hey, do you know what’s going on here? I mean…those things? What the hell are they?”
“There’s been a disease outbreak,” Stan revealed. “Some kind of rage virus, like in the movies.”
Parrish did not have to fabricate his response to that. “Bullshit. I saw those things. That’s not some rage virus. Those things weren’t…” He trailed off. They were human. As much as he wanted to deny it, he had seen it with his own eyes. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road and looked the soldier in the eyes. “Beltran and his men. They changed. I saw it happen.”
There was a glimmer of curiosity in Stan’s blue eyes. “Tell me.”
“Beltran insisted on landing the plane here. He knew it was closed, but he made the pilot land anyway. I think he knew about…about your ‘rage virus.’ After we landed, he went outside and a bunch of those creatures showed up. He called them windigos. It’s an old Indian word. American Indian, not India Indian. Anyway, I thought the windigos were going to rip them to shreds, but Beltran and his men fought them off. Killed a few even.”
Parrish found himself
breathing faster as he relived the horror of what he had seen. Concealing his true identity and purpose was now the last thing on his mind. “And then it happened. They started changing.” He shook his head. It sounded so crazy. Maybe his imagination had gotten carried away.
“Go on,” Stan prompted.
“It was like something in a movie. Like when people change into werewolves. They got big. I mean huge. Big enough to do all this.” He gestured at the landscape of destruction. “So I’m not buying that this is just some rage virus.”
Stan nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds like this Beltran guy wanted to get infected.”
“I think that’s exactly what he wanted. He’s crazy. I mean absolutely psycho. He thinks he’s some kind of Aztec god.” Another piece of the puzzle clicked, and Parrish snapped his fingers. “I think he might be responsible for all of this. He kept talking about ‘planting a seed.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but maybe he put this disease out there, and was just waiting for something like this to happen so he could have his chance to become one of those things.”
“You said Beltran and his men. How many? How many of these mega wendigos are there?”
“Five. Beltran and four others.”
“We waxed one, so that means four left.”
“You killed one?” Parrish was impressed.
Stan nodded. “Yep. And now we’re going after the others.”
56
As she guided the ski-boat across the placid surface of the Roanoke Sound, Queen listened intently to the conversation taking place just a short distance away. She was bursting with questions. What had happened after she had left with the others? Was Bishop okay? Knight?
She had been relieved to hear Rook’s voice come over the radio net, but instead of checking in and reporting their status, he was broadcasting a conversation with someone who called himself ‘Bulldog.’
The transmission had started just a few seconds after King had ended his call to Lewis Aleman, picking up in mid-sentence, as if Rook had suddenly realized that the rest of the team needed to hear Bulldog’s story. King had prompted Rook to ask a few specific questions toward the end. The PNR 500 radios allowed for two-way conversations, just like a telephone, so Rook did not have to release his transmit button to receive. Mostly, King and Queen just listened.
It had been Rook’s idea to go after the remaining alphas.
“I would strongly advise you to find a boat and get off the island,” King interjected.
“We killed one, we can kill the rest.” Rook seemed to be speaking to Bulldog, but he was clearly replying to King’s suggestion. “If we can draw them away from the populated areas, it will give more people a chance to escape.”
“He’s right,” Queen said, despite her misgivings. Rook was not the kind of man to run from a fight, especially when there were innocent lives at stake. “The regular wendigos aren’t strong enough to break into houses or tear open cars. If Rook can draw the alphas away, those people on the bridge will have a fighting chance.”
King’s eyes reflected her own apprehension, but he nodded. “Rook, hit and run. Get them to follow you to the east side of the island, then get a boat and move offshore. The wendigos can’t swim. You might be able to lure some of them into the water and drown them.”
“We’ll lure them into the water and drown them,” Rook echoed. “Just like the Pied Piper.”
“The Pied Piper wasn’t dealing with rats the size of school buses,” Queen said into her microphone. “Be careful.”
“After all,” Rook continued. “There’s five of us, counting you, Bulldog, and only four more of them.”
Five? Had they all made it out? Even Anna Beck?
“Do what you can,” King said. “But don’t take any unnecessary chances. You’re no good to anyone dead.”
“No guts, no glory,” Rook said, as if trying to give Bulldog a pep talk, and then with a rasp of static, the transmission ended.
Queen glanced back at King, who shook his head in response to her unasked question. “We’ve got to reach the refuge. Rook knows what he’s doing.”
“What if there’s nothing at the refuge?” she countered. “It’s been centuries since anyone lived there. We don’t know what to look for, and probably won’t know if we find it.”
“We’ll find it,” Sara said in a calm voice.
Queen stared at her. The CDC investigator had not overheard the conversation, so she could only guess at the subtext of the exchange between King and Queen. Sara Fogg had earned their trust, though. Her expertise had been invaluable in saving the world from the Brugada outbreak six years earlier. If Sara promised a cure, Queen had no doubt that she would deliver.
But how long would that take? Hours? Years?
She turned her eyes forward, keeping the boat parallel to the island shore. The boat skimmed across the water, leaving a broad V-shaped wake that would have been perfect for wakeboarding. The pitometer on the dash panel put their speed at just over forty miles per hour, and in no time at all they were rounding the north end of the island. To the south, a low bridge extended out from the island and across the water, all the way to the faintly visible irregularity that was the mainland a few miles to the west. This was the old original bridge to Manns Harbor on the mainland, a two-lane, two-and-a-half-mile-long affair that looked like it should have been demolished decades ago. Although the bridge was still a mile away, Queen could see the cars, hundreds of them, lined up bumper-to-bumper, not moving an inch. She craned her head around, gazing back at the island, where columns of smoke were rising to mark the destructive rampage of the alpha wendigos along the approach to the newer bridge.
“Looks like the roads are still blocked.”
“Not much more we can do about that,” King said as he settled into the seat next to her and activated the onboard GPS. “Sara, where exactly is this refuge?”
Sara turned to Ellen. “You know better than I do.”
Grateful for a chance to contribute, Ellen leaned forward and pointed to a spot about a mile south of where the highway crossed the peninsula and then continued across the Alligator River. “Buffalo City was right there. This is Mill Tail Creek.” She traced the course of a narrow stream that ran from the Alligator River, east into the middle of the refuge, broadening out just below the old Buffalo City site.
“We can take the boat up the creek,” King declared. He plotted the distance, roughly twenty-five miles from their current position, around the top of the peninsula and then down the Alligator River. “We should be able to make it in about forty minutes.”
Queen regarded him with a solemn look. “Forty minutes is a lifetime,” she said. “Especially for those people trapped on the island.”
King had no answer for that.
57
Asya tied off the length of wire and then raced back to the waiting pickup. “Done,” she told Rook.
“All right. Get on the gun. We’re probably going to have to do some shooting even if this works.”
She nodded and climbed into the bed of the truck and braced the 240B on the tailgate. Knight was also watching the road through the scope of his CheyTac. Beck was huddled in a corner, trying not to aggravate her injuries with unnecessary movement, but she still had Bishop’s SCAR at the low ready, just in case.
They had not seen a wendigo since leaving the park, but the evidence of the creatures’ unrelenting push toward the mainland was writ large across the sky in black clouds of smoke.
“Let’s do this,” Rook shouted, and then he fired his pistol twice into the air.
The noise rolled across the flat landscape and died away, returning them to the eerie quiet, where the only sound for miles around was the distant symphony of tearing metal and crunching fiberglass.
“Bishop?”
Asya heard Knight’s voice, but did not look away from the machine gun’s iron sights. “What?”
“Thank you.”
His gratitude brought an unexpected lump of emotion in her throat. “
Is just what we do, no?”
“No,” Knight said. His tone was soft but solemn. “That was something else.”
Asya didn’t know what to say, so she just shrugged.
Knight was not finished. “Do you remember yesterday, when I told you no one expects you to be what Erik was?”
She remembered the conversation well, but…had it only been one day? It felt like a lifetime. “I remember.”
“I didn’t give you nearly enough credit. You are Bishop.”
A smile crept across her face. Yes, I am Bishop.
“Here they come!”
Knight’s shout snapped her out of the self-congratulatory moment. She peered down the road, but it was several seconds before she spotted the first wendigo, a moving figure that looked no bigger than her pinkie finger. Knight’s rifle cracked loudly beside her. A moment later, the lone figure fell back, but several more moved up behind it, undeterred by the other’s fate.
“Bishop,” Rook shouted. “Give them a taste.”
She pulled the trigger and felt the 240 buck against her shoulder. The report was so loud, she couldn’t hear the noise of spent brass and separated links rattling onto the bed liner. Three red tracer rounds arced out across the open road, marking the trajectory of the rest of the burst, and at least some of the bullets found their targets.
The pickup lurched into motion and rolled away from the battle, heading back toward the devastated town center. As it pulled away, she saw that the small group of wendigos was now a rolling wave of pale gangly bodies, sprinting forward almost as fast as the truck was moving. There was no sign of an alpha wendigo. Evidently it would take more than a few pot shots to lure them away from their single-minded push to the mainland, but this was a war where victory required absolute annihilation of the enemy. She triggered several more bursts, just to keep them interested, and then she looked away as the first of the creatures reached the spot where they had parked only a few moments before.
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