King caught up to her. “What is it?”
“This place. It’s…” She turned to him. “When I got to the hospital, there was something, a smell I think, that was like biting on tin foil. It set my teeth on edge. I noticed it in the patient rooms and whenever there were wendigos around.”
King was immediately wary. “Are you sensing it now?”
“No. Just the opposite. Whatever is here is like… I guess I’d compare it to putting cortisone cream on a mosquito bite. Instant relief. It’s soothing. And it’s stronger in there. In the woods.”
King sniffed the air, which was redolent with organic smells—the sweet aroma of flowers and the sulfite smell of decay—but he found nothing to correspond to what Sara was describing.
“All right, let’s do a little trailblazing.” He drew his Ka-Bar knife and started hacking through the tangle. The seven-inch long blade, once standard issue for the US Marine Corp, lacked the chopping heft of a machete but it was adequate to the job of sawing through vines and small branches. Queen came forward and joined the effort, but the four-inch blade of her SOG Ops combat knife was even less effective for the task.
“Careful what you touch,” he cautioned. “There are a lot of poisonous plants out here. Sumac, poison ivy, stinging nettles.”
“Creepy crawlies, too,” Queen said. She showed the others the back of her hand, which was almost completely covered by something brown, fuzzy and eight-legged.
Ellen let out a yelp of surprise and drew back. “How can you do that?”
“It’s easy. Here, give it a try?” She extended her hand toward Ellen, but the movement startled the spider, causing it to dart up Queen’s arm to disappear over her shoulder.
Ellen shuddered. “What if it had bitten you?”
“I think it did,” Queen said, inspecting the back of her hand where a faint red bump was starting to rise. “But it’s no big deal. That was a wolf spider. Their venom isn’t dangerous to humans.”
“Even so, I could never let a spider crawl on me like that.”
Queen shrugged and resumed hacking. “It’s all in your head. I used to be terrified of spiders. Actually, I was pretty terrified of everything. I got over it.”
“How?”
“Immersion therapy. When you tackle the source of your fear head on, you just kind of burn out the part of your brain that was afraid.”
Sara suddenly grabbed Queen’s hand. Queen stiffened defensively, and King started toward them, ready to interpose himself and save Sara from a reflexive and possibly violent reaction. Queen, however, did not move. She merely regarded Sara with an irritated frown. King was amazed at her restraint, but Sara noticed none of it. She was staring intently at the red spot on Queen’s hand.
“That bite. It’s—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by a loud, deep boom—not thunder but an explosion. “That was the bridge,” King said.
“Does that mean everyone got away?” Ellen asked. “Those things are trapped?”
As if in answer to her question, Aleman’s voice sounded in King’s ear. “King, the soldiers at the bridge are going nuts. It sounds like some of those things made it across. Do you copy? They’ve reached the mainland.”
King turned to Sara and spoke in an urgent tone. “Take Ellen back to the boat. Take it back out into open water, and stay away from shore.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I can.”
60
Rook had less than a second to make the decision and no time at all to second-guess or worry about the consequences. The choice was between getting killed when the alpha crashed down on top of them, or risking a similar fate by trying to get out of the way. Because there was marginally more uncertainty in the latter course of action, he threw his arms wide, sweeping the others into his embrace, and leaped from the bed.
They hit the pavement at almost the exact same instant that the alpha wendigo landed on the truck.
As soon as he made his jump, Rook let go of Bishop, Knight and Beck, propelling them away from him so he would not crush them on impact. He tried to tuck and roll, just as he had when making the parachute landing in the soccer field. But the leftover momentum from the truck’s acceleration shredded his clothes and the skin underneath, as he rolled over and over on the ground. Being pummeled relentlessly over every square inch of his body, drove him to the edge of consciousness.
He was only peripherally aware of the alpha landing in the bed, its weight driving the undercarriage of the pickup down into the pavement with a shriek of friction and a flurry of sparks. The sudden deceleration pitched the creature headlong, but it caught hold of the cab, and then both the creature and the vehicle were turning in crazy circles.
Get up! Move!
The world spun around him, but through the fog of pain and vertigo, he realized that he was no longer moving. He struggled to rise, managed to push himself up to hands and knees and saw at least a dozen wendigos racing up the road, heading toward him. Closer still, the alpha he had crippled was advancing, crawling as fast as a person could walk.
Bishop lay nearby, fighting the after-effects of the desperate leap from the truck. Further away, Knight and Beck lay unmoving, sprawled out like offerings to the devouring monsters.
“Move!” The word came out in a gasp, and suddenly he could breathe again. He lurched upright and spied one of his Desert Eagles close by. He staggered toward it and bent to retrieve it. Only then did he realize that its twin was still clenched in his right hand.
The solid hunk of metal in his hand filled him with a sense of purpose. Muscle memory took over. He took a steady firing position, and with both arms extended, took aim and began shooting.
The Desert Eagles thundered in his hands, first the right, then the left, like a well-oiled engine of destruction. The .50 caliber rounds tore into the charging wendigos, knocking them down like targets in a penny arcade shooting gallery, scattering shattered torsos and headless carcasses. He got off six shots in total before the pistol in his right hand went silent. Two more and then the left was out as well. Eight shots, eight dead wendigos.
But they were still coming. A trio who had survived Rook’s counterattack overtook the injured alpha and moved relentlessly toward Knight and Beck. Frantic, Rook buttoned out the spent magazines and was reaching for replacements, when he saw a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye.
Before he could react, the blur resolved into the compact form of Bishop, back on her feet and running to intercept the wendigos. She threw herself at them like a wrecking ball, bowling them over with a full body slam. Even as she hit them, she succeeded in hooking one creature’s neck in the crook of her elbow, and pulled herself in tight around its deformed head. Her weight bore it to the ground, the impact crushing its spindly bones.
Rook got one of the pistols loaded and immediately resumed firing, taking out several more wendigos that were rushing up to reinforce the attack, while Bishop, moving with an unrestrained fury to match the primal hunger of her foes, tore the remaining monsters apart before they could reach Knight and Beck.
For a moment, Rook almost believed they would survive the onslaught. Then he felt a tremor rippling the ground underfoot and heard a savage roar from behind. He whirled around just as the alpha—the one that had demolished the truck—reached out and caught him.
61
Queen pulled her hand from Sara’s grasp and started after King. She had no clue how the two of them were supposed to stop the wendigo invasion, but who else was there? The rest of the team had gone silent. The barricade was down, the National Guard soldiers manning it evidently overrun. If there was a cure to be found in the refuge, it would come too late to make a difference.
She stopped.
The cure, or wendigo repellent, or whatever it was Sara was trying to find, might be humanity’s only hope if she and King failed. She ripped off her headset and took the radio unit from her belt, then backtracked to where Sara and Ellen stood, pa
ralyzed by inertia. Queen pressed the radio into Sara’s hands. “Take this. You can use it to talk to Lewis. Organize whatever has to happen next.”
Sara nodded dumbly. Queen led the two women back along the trail they had just blazed, and then pointed to the boat. “Get going.”
She didn’t dare wait for an acknowledgement. King was already gone, a good half-minute ahead of her, pounding down the dirt road that led, Queen presumed, to the highway and an army of wendigos.
As she sprinted to catch him, the spider bite on her hand began itching furiously. She wasn’t worried about the venom. Unlike black widows and other dangerous arachnids, the poison of the wolf spider was neither systemic nor neurotoxic, and caused only mild local skin irritation. Of course, the prescribed treatment for a bite did not include running a thousand yard dash in full combat gear, and the harder she ran, the more intense the sensation became.
She ignored it, locking the discomfort away in the same part of her brain where she had once buried her fear of all crawling creatures. She had overcome her phobias the same way she had overcome all her weaknesses, by turning them upside down, transforming fear into conviction, pain into resolve.
Over the pounding of her own feet and the rush of blood in her ears, she could just make out the pop of distant gunfire. The reports were not as loud as the earlier explosion, the shooting probably several miles away, but there was no question that the battle was being fought on the mainland. It was their worst-case scenario. The wendigos had not been contained. They would have to be hunted down and eradicated, and if even a single one survived…
She spied King, a hundred feet away, and she managed to pour on a little more speed, quickly catching up to him. The dense forest to either side was cut through with drainage channels and a few side roads, but there was little sign of immediate human activity until they rounded a gentle bend in the road and caught sight of the highway.
The pavement was a clogged artery of cars, all fleeing the destruction of Roanoke Island. Although it was a two-lane road, the drivers had managed to create two additional lanes of traffic, so that the cars were running four abreast, although the cars in the outer lanes were rolling with their wheels on the grassy shoulder. The congestion arose from the fact that the road eventually led to a narrow bridge across the Alligator River.
King took one look at the gridlock and then angled to the east, running along the roadside, against the flow of the exodus. In just a few minutes, they came to the tail end of the traffic jam, but King kept going.
“They’ll have to…come through here,” he said. It took a couple breaths to get it out, but he did not break stride. “There’s no other way out of here.”
“What about through the forest?”
He glanced at her. “Would you go that way?”
She glanced at the densely packed woods and the tangled understory. She shook her head.
“We better hope they don’t,” King continued. “If they go in there, we’ll never be able to run them down.”
“You’re optimistic,” she muttered. “I’ll give you that.”
“What?”
“I hope you have some kind of plan.”
“These things can die,” he said, shouldering his SCAR. “So, we kill them before they kill us.”
His confidence did not allay her concerns. It was not fear for her own safety. The possibility of getting killed was an occupational hazard with which she had long ago come to terms. She was worried about what would happen after. After they failed, after they ran out of bullets, after the wendigos tore them apart and there was no one left to stop the infection from spreading. Nevertheless, she brought her own weapon to the high ready and charged ahead, prepared to meet the advance head on.
Smoke and the sulfur smell of burnt gunpowder stung her nose. Directly ahead, the road was lined with dark green military vehicles—Humvees and five-ton trucks—but there was no sign of the soldiers who had driven them.
King motioned for her to get down, and together they low-crawled forward until they could make out movement near some of the trucks: wendigos feasting on the bodies of the fallen. Queen saw tattered remnants of clothing still clinging to some of the creatures, and recognized the familiar green and white universal camouflage pattern of the Army Combat Uniform—standard issue for the National Guard.
These wendigos were fellow soldiers…or had been just a few minutes ago.
Something big was moving behind the trucks. It was bigger than the largest vehicle but it was made of flesh and blood, and as it slouched down the road, she saw that beneath a coating of blood and grime, its skin was mottled with an elaborate faded pattern that looked like green and red scales.
“That’s Beltran,” King whispered.
Queen studied the approaching alpha. There was not a trace of recognizable humanity in the creature’s deformed body.
“That tattoo,” King went on. “He thinks he’s Huitzilopochtli.”
Queen aimed her rifle at the creature’s head but did not fire. She had seen how ineffective bullets were at stopping the alphas. It had taken their combined firepower to kill the one at the Festival Park, and this one looked even bigger.
Beside her, King also took aim. “Wait for it,” he advised. “Let him get close, then concentrate your fire center mass.”
The advice was sound. The alphas’ skulls were like armor plate, but the hunched over posture made a clean shot to the torso impossible. To kill it, they would have to practically be standing within reach of its grasping arms.
Despite the fact that the Beltran-thing was moving at, what for it was probably just a walking pace, it closed the distance in seconds. Queen took a breath and held it, waiting for the moment when its oblong head would turn toward them, but if it noticed them, it paid no heed. Instead, it continued ambling down the road.
“Damn it,” Queen whispered when it was past. She kept her weapon trained on its tattooed back, but she knew the chances of a killing shot were slim. Even if she did score a lucky hit, the noise would bring the rest of the wendigos running. We’re fucked no matter what we do. The realization brought clarity. “Desperado.”
King glanced at her sidelong. “Maximum damage before we go down?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Not really.” He keyed his transmitter. “Blue, this is King. We’re going to try to take out this alpha. It’s Beltran.”
Queen couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but it wasn’t difficult to fill in the gaps. “He’s the biggest threat, but even if we succeed, there’s no way we’ll be able to kill them all. You’ll need to send in the cavalry. Air power. Troops in MOPP gear. But you have to contain this.” A pause. “Thanks. King, out.”
In the brief time it took for him to send the message, Beltran had nearly vanished in the distance. Even at a full sprint, they would be hard pressed to catch him, but King evidently had no intention of giving chase on foot. “We need to get one of those trucks. There’s a fifty on that five-ton.”
Queen picked out the truck he was referring to—a large six-wheeled transport with an M2 machine gun mounted on the roof turret. If anything could take down the alpha in short order, it was that combination of heavy machinery and firepower, but the vicinity was crawling with wendigos. “There’s no way we’ll make it through that. I’ll draw them off. You get the truck and go after Beltran.”
“Absolutely not. It will take both of us. One to drive, one to shoot.”
“You’ll have to figure it out,” Queen replied. “A diversion is the best chance you’ve got of making it to the truck alive. Get ready.”
She started to rise but he grabbed her shoulder. “Then I’ll do it. You go after Beltran. That’s an order.”
She returned a grim smile. “Rules of chess. The king has to survive.”
Before he could say another word, she wrenched out of his grasp and bolted to her feet, running out into the center of the highway. She took aim at a group of wendigos and fired off a pair of s
hots. One of the creatures went down. The rest looked up in hungry unison. Pale faces began to appear from the gaps between the parked vehicles, dozens of them.
Damn, there’s a lot of them, Queen thought. The soldiers of the North Carolina National Guard had, it seemed, developed a fatal fondness for Mr. Pig.
“That’s right, bitches,” she shouted. “Fresh meat, right here.”
She fired into their midst again, then spun on her heel and took off running. That they would eventually catch her was a foregone conclusion. The only thing that mattered was drawing them away long enough for King to reach the trucks. She was a fast runner, but with their abnormally long legs, the wendigos were faster. She counted to ten, then twisted around and triggered a burst in hopes of buying a few more seconds.
She fired before her brain received any feedback from her eyes, but the rounds found a target. It was impossible to miss. A wendigo, maybe ten yards behind her, went down, tripping up those behind him, but it hardly mattered. The entire road was a wall of spindly limbs and misshapen bodies, poised to sweep over her.
She veered off the road and headed for the trees, wondering if she had bought King enough time to reach the truck. Instead of trying to blaze a path through the underbrush, she whirled around and started firing. The trees at her back kept the creatures from surrounding her, and the lead spewing from the muzzle of her SCAR kept the front-runners at bay.
She felled several with point blank shots, twisting back and forth, practically jamming the muzzle into the gaping mouths of wendigos as they tried to strike at her like vipers. When the last round was fired, she swung the smoking weapon back and forth like a scythe, batting away reaching hands and jabbing at the demonic faces that seemed to be everywhere. Then the rifle was ripped from her grasp.
She whipped her knife from its sheath, driving it into another of the creatures, but as it fell, it took the blade with it. Surrounded, Queen raised her fists, the only weapon she had left.
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