The muzzle flashes blinded her as well. So when someone pushed her outside, she at first resisted. No! They’re going to get me!
But then she saw it was Becky, propelling her by the elbow as she fired her pistol into the crowd one-handed. Paula tripped over moving bodies at her feet. Her right flip-flop snapped off.
Larry lay at her feet. A woman crouched over him, having somehow thrust her hand inside his stomach, up to the wrist. Larry was still alive, but his face was white as fog.
Becky yanked her along hard enough that she nearly went down. Paula stumbled after her. A zombie pulled at the hem of her robe but let go when Becky brained it with her gun.
She ran for the lab, where the scientist held the door open for the group.
Paula said “thank you” as she ran past, but she didn’t think Lucy heard her. There were too many gunshots, too many screams.
Once inside, she turned to watch the rest of the group crowd in behind her.
Kelton stopped and looked back. “Larry!”
His partner was still alive. Paula could tell by the way Larry lay there. Another zombie had joined the first one in the treasure hunt in Larry’s abdomen, pulling out a worm of small intestine.
Kelton aimed his gun. “No!”
Paula reached for him as he took a step back outside.
Before Kelton could take another step, Larry raised his gun to his own head and fired.
***
Kelton closed the door again, slamming it in the face of a male zombie charging them.
Everyone regarded each other in silence. Remaining now were Paula, Kelton, Lucy Grimm, Chief Simpson, Becky, and the former van driver whose name Paula couldn’t remember. The muzzle flashes faded from her vision, making it easier to read their collective shock and disbelief.
Lucy placed a hand on Kelton’s shoulder.
He bowed his head. “Fucking Larry.”
Paula had an urge to say something nice about the two cops who’d died, like they were at a funeral. Maybe the police chief would do so now that they were inside and safe again.
But all he said was, “Let’s go.”
They headed back into the laboratory.
Lucy disappeared into Dr. Robertson’s office. Paula took off her remaining flip-flop and dropped it on a work table. She was about to turn away when Becky stopped her with a hand on her forearm.
Becky placed a handgun on the table. “Take it.”
Paula shook her head and covered her face. She wanted to find a corner of the room to hide in. Under a desk or inside a closet would be nice. Someplace where she could hibernate until this was over.
She began to do just that when Chief Simpson looked up from reloading his gun. “Oh, shit on a haystack.”
Paula followed his gaze to the interior hallway door, the one barred by a short file cabinet.
A zombie had pushed the door open far enough to squeeze his head inside. He stared at them silently, grinning with blackened teeth.
The chief raised his gun, but the zombie retracted his head into the hallway.
“Kelton, we better get a bigger—” the chief began, but then the door smashed inward under an onslaught of zombie bodies.
The file cabinet fell over with a crash. Zombies piled through the door. Two, three, four. They were all naked, with water dripping off their bodies—vastly different from the ones outside.
Lucy Grimm emerged from Dr. Robertson’s office. She waved a large key ring. “Follow me!” She ran back toward the hallway with the exterior door.
Paula hesitated, took a deep breath, and picked up the handgun. She hurried after the other woman.
In the hallway, Lucy used the keys to unlock another door. It led to a hallway with yet more doors. Lucy beckoned them in. “Come on!”
Gunshots rang out behind them. Paula looked to see the others bringing up the rear, aiming back the way they came.
Lucy led the way down the hallway. She came to a door with an overhead EXIT sign and opened it.
A half dozen zombies waited for them on the other side.
Paula raised the gun she was carrying in both hands. She squared her shoulders like Daddy taught her and fired at the chest of the nearest zombie. The creature’s mouth opened in a rictus before it fell on its face.
The police fired their shotguns, and the rest of the zombies went down.
“Beasted that!” the chief yelled, and then he gave a startling, crazed laugh.
More zombies were on their way across a broad parking lot lit only by moonlight. Paula couldn’t tell how many there were. They were like an approaching tide of shadows. More than the group had bullets for.
Kelton pointed to their left. “Sewer’s that way.”
They set off at a run. Paula didn’t have the benefit of the flip-flops anymore, but at that moment, she would have gladly sprinted across hot lava.
Chapter 16
STARK
Fate never knocks on your door politely. It barges in, grabs you by the throat, and drags you off.
Sergeant James Stark learned that the last time orders came down for this type of temporary duty. He’d been marching with his infantry unit in Iraq toward one of Saddam’s palaces. He didn’t even have time to say goodbye to his buddies before he was suddenly flown thirty clicks west in a chopper. When he landed, they teamed him with a bunch of soldiers he’d never met and called them all Squad X, probably somebody’s cheeky reference to the X-Files TV show. Then they ordered Squad X underground to battle the stuff of nightmares.
A bunch of them died. Others, like Stark, came away needing treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But he was denied help because that would have required he talk about what he experienced.
Instead, a general with eyes the color of a dog’s asshole cornered him. “Breathe a word about this to anyone, and you will disappear. Got it?”
He got it.
And after a long struggle with alcoholism, depression, and a failed marriage to a traditional Korean woman with whom the only thing he shared was skin color, he got over it.
Sudden and painful, at least the first part of it. So he shouldn’t be surprised it happened just as abruptly this time around.
Only a few hours ago, he’d been at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in the middle of an Army Reserve two-week annual training regimen. His commanding officer pulled him off a firing range and told him to report to the motor pool.
“For what?”
His C.O. shrugged. “TDY.” That stood for temporary duty. “They wouldn’t tell me. But ask the sergeant there for a phone number, and call it. Good luck.”
Bewildered, Sergeant Stark reported to the motor pool, which was a large garage stuffed with Humvees and trucks. The sergeant in charge gave him a phone number written on an index card. He directed him toward a grease-stained phone resting atop a palette of motor oil.
Stark dialed the number. He struggled to hear over someone using an air gun to screw lug nuts.
A man on the other end answered, “Sergeant Stark?”
Holy shit. He hadn’t heard that voice since Iraq, but he recognized it immediately. It belonged to the officer who’d told him he would disappear if he blabbed about Squad X.
“General Claiborne?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t say my name where others could overhear.”
Stark thought he would faint. He knelt next to the stack of motor oil and closed his eyes. He mashed the phone to his ear. “Yes, sir.”
“I need you to serve your country again, soldier. On Squad X.”
“But I am serving my country.”
“By doing what? Weekend warrior once a month?”
Stark answered with silence.
“Look, I’m not going to strong-arm you this time. I need a willing volunteer. The threat is just a couple hours from you. I want you to sign out a Humvee and a GPS and drive alone to the address I’ll give you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“It’s the same threat as last time. I’ll let you figure out the consequenc
es if you refuse.”
Stark wiped a hand across his eyes. It came away shaking and wet with tears. The consequences. He thought about his six-year-old daughter, Min, staying this week with his ex-wife. He thought about the possibility of Min stumbling around on necrotic legs, with eyes the color of milk.
“Okay. Tell me where to go.”
***
The location General Claiborne gave him was a crossroads just north of a shitwater Virginia river town called Nilbog. Stark drove down wooded country roads to reach it. He passed through a roadblock designed to keep out media and curiosity seekers. In the early evening, he arrived at a pasture lit by floodlights.
The Army National Guard had erected camouflaged tents on someone’s farm land and stuffed the area with enough equipment for a small war. He was amazed to see an M1 Abrams tank, its main gun pointed at a bridge. The Army had blocked the bridge with huge coils of razor wire. Flattened against sandbag walls, soldiers aimed automatic weapons at the other side.
As amazing as that sight was, however, the greater shock was to see General Claiborne himself. He waited for Stark by a tent.
After they saluted, Claiborne broke protocol by shaking his hand. That told him how serious this was.
“Your team’s inside, gearing up. You’ll recognize a few of them.”
Just fucking great. That meant the captain—or, as they’d called him Iraq, Cap.
“Oh, and sergeant, during this TDY, you are not a soldier in the U.S. Army.”
“Sir?”
“You’re a half-cocked Asian boy who’s joined up with a militia of rednecks to go kick yourself some zombie ass. The Army doesn’t know who the fuck you are.”
Stark blinked, and then he understood. The general was giving him his cover story in case they were ever captured by local law enforcement. Plausible deniability. Clandestine domestic operations didn’t fit neatly into the Army’s mission.
“What are our objectives, sir?”
“Same as last time. Threat neutralization, contagion containment, and, if you can, technology recovery. I’ll give you details once your squad’s assembled. Now go.”
***
Inside the tent, Stark encountered men he hadn’t seen in eight years. Aside from some nascent wrinkles around the eyes and slightly longer crew cuts, Horner, Lester, and Cap looked pretty much the same. Twitchy, stern, and—unlike him—one hundred percent Caucasian. There was also a new guy, a young soldier with dark hair and olive skin who didn’t look up from lacing his boots.
The Cap, who always went by his rank—Stark never learned his real name—slammed a footlocker shut and nodded at him. “’Sup.”
Stark tried to look nonchalant, although his stomach tightened into a little ball. “’Sup.” He nodded at the other men.
They all wore outdated woodland camos. The Army had switched to a pixelated pattern years ago. What the hell? But instead of asking why, Stark found an unused footlocker and opened it. Inside waited two sizes of woodland camouflage uniforms and a metal box labeled DEPOSIT ALL IDENTIFICATION HERE.
“It’s part of our cover story,” the Cap said, as if reading his mind. “We’re just militia assholes who buy all our shit from surplus stores.”
“That’s fine as long as we don’t have surplus weapons.”
Horner whipped off his camo baseball cap to reveal his red hair. He slapped the top of his head and made an ugly sound like he was a game show buzzer.
Stark stared at him. “You mean we do?”
“Let’s see. I saw an M-16, an AR-180…”
“Oh, shit.”
“A Czech Vz.58…”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep, and there’s only one of everything. So we’ll all have different weapons.”
Incredulous, Stark turned to the captain, who was sliding a combat knife into his belt. “You know that’s stupid, Cap. Not many of us will be able to swap ammo or parts if we have to. Can’t you say anything?”
Cap smiled. “You assume I’m your C.O.? That’s real nice.”
“Well, aren’t you? You’re the only officer here.” Stark pointed at the dark-haired new guy. “You. What’s your name?”
“Roy. And I’m just a private.”
Still grinning, Cap tried on a pair of combat goggles. “Relax, James. Don’t be a pussy. What is your real name, anyway?”
“James Stark is my real name.”
“Uh huh.”
“What, you assume Seomun Jin-Sang is my name just because I’m Korean? Fuck you.”
Cap laughed at him, which infuriated him more. “I’m headed outside to meet our new C.O. You dick weeds don’t forget to leave your dog tags in your trunk.”
***
Actually, Seomun Jin-Sang was his given name. But he wasn’t about to reveal that to some asshole who only went by “Cap” and nothing else. He legally changed it before entering boot camp a decade ago. Thought it would help him fit in.
Ha fucking ha.
Stark ground his teeth as he changed into the woodland camos. Into the metal box, he dropped his dog tags and wallet—and then on second thought withdrew his snapshot of Min from the wallet. He folded it into his breast pocket. He would keep his daughter with him no matter what they told him to do.
He found a helmet and strapped it on. He was apparently the only one on the squad opting for one and would probably be called a pussy again, but so what. If you were going into combat, you wore a brain bucket, period. He even found a pair of goggles like Cap’s. Judging by the gloopy shit covering Cap’s face after the last time they went through this, Cap obviously knew something everyone else didn’t.
Of course, that was an understatement. Cap was the only one who’d seen inside the alien ship in the desert.
The ship in Iraq was only traveling at a half mile per second when it hit the ground, but it formed a crater over a hundred feet across and forty feet deep. That was big enough to destabilize the brittle roof of an uncharted sink hole. The space ship fell into a black well nearly a half mile deep. It was a brilliant defensive move if that’s what the aliens intended, and Squad X believed they had. Since any bomb dropped into the hole exploded prematurely—the Army thought some type of force field was responsible—the soldiers had to descend into it the old-fashioned way: by rope.
This gave the aliens plenty of time to accomplish their mission. Broadcasting pulses of some exotic type of glowing blue radiation, they succeeded in the impossible: reanimating the dead. Recently deceased villagers from a nearby settlement rose from their graves, still wrapped in their white linen burial shrouds. They attacked warm bodies wherever they could find them. Whenever they killed soldiers, those men rose to walk as well, except this time they were deadlier: the zombies in Iraq knew how to shoot guns.
But this was only a diversion from the aliens’ true objective. A contingent of the Republican Guard had discovered an ancient alien artifact buried along the banks of the Euphrates River. Maybe it was a weapon or a communications device; no one ever figured it out. What was clear to the aliens, however, was that Saddam meant to use it somehow. Which made this conflict near the sink hole an exercise in supreme interstellar irony. If the Coalition forces had known what the aliens wanted, they might have helped them.
As it was, a half dozen aliens flew up out of the sink hole on leathery bat wings. This happened while Stark and twenty other Squad X members rappelled in. A few ETs paused long enough to attack the soldiers by severing their ropes with curved blades that popped out of their forearms.
Stark got a good look at them as he hung from his rope and fired his weapon. What caused him to scream wasn’t the aliens’ bodies, covered in black, scabrous shells. It wasn’t even their extra pair of hands, which emerged from their stomachs to grasp the sheer stone walls. It was the human faces they each wore like masks. They all wore the same face, that of a young white man with dark hair. Was it someone they saw from a TV transmission? Someone they’d met on a prior visit?
The squad members who r
eached the bottom alive found the ship to be a hunk of rock twenty feet across. No apparent way in or out of it. It stunk with a rotten egg smell so potent that Lester threw up. Cap, leading the squad, ordered them to attach explosives.
That was when the flying squadron of aliens returned. They floated down from above, their spiraling wings creating a kaleidoscope of light and shadow. Two of them carried the thing they’d gone to retrieve. Stark only caught a glimpse of a star-shaped hunk of crystal before the aliens took it into their ship. They passed through the stone exterior like it was water.
One of them seized the captain with its extra pair of hands. The red eyes in its human face locked with Stark’s. He could’ve sworn that when it opened its mouth, revealing double rows of sharp teeth, that it laughed at him. And then it pulled Cap inside the space ship.
“Stark!”
He snapped out of his reverie as Lester poked his head into the tent.
“What are you doing in here? Jacking off?”
Stark realized he was sitting alone. He hurried to strap his goggles onto his helmet and follow Lester outside. “Coming.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Find your weapon. The general’s gonna introduce our C.O.”
***
Stark didn’t like his options for weapons, but he settled on a Mossberg 500 Tactical Shotgun. If these were the same aliens as last time, then he expected more point-blank fighting, and a shotgun was perfect for that.
The captain had different ideas, but what those ideas were, Stark couldn’t fathom. As they stood in formation, Cap carried an Uzi. Even more confusing was the MK9 sound suppressor he’d attached to the barrel, which doubled the length of the submachine gun. What did he think he was going to do?
If General Claiborne cared about Cap’s choice of weapons, however, he didn’t appear to notice. He and a couple soldiers in combat gear faced Squad X in front of a trio of tan cargo trucks.
Joining the five members of the squad was an older man in woodland camos and hat. He had the sunken face of someone used to living in hot, arid climates. Stark remembered that look from Iraq. He didn’t wear any rank insignia—none of them did—but Stark sensed this man would be their commanding officer. Cap would’ve been the logical choice to lead, but maybe the Army didn’t entirely trust him after the last time.
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