by Duncan, Ian
Emily stared blankly at the flashlight beam as she shuffled along, almost catatonic, and Cole did his best to steer them to the far side of the roof, away from the row of air handlers, the last of which, he knew, bore Miguel’s sprouted body like a human sacrifice splayed atop an altar. Cole wondered if some instinct, some last vestige of Miguel’s rational mind had driven him as far from the other survivors as possible before he succumbed to the Cord’s demands.
They kept to the front wall, the gray metal backsides of various retail signs rising above the storefront facades, where the parapet wall had been built higher to support a network of braces and girders. They had to step over zip-tied bundles of electrical and communications cables that crisscrossed the rooftop like vines. They passed another rooftop hatch and tried lifting it, but it was apparently locked securely from the inside. They moved on. At one point Cole was sure he heard the faint sound of bees far above them, but he neither turned the flashlight beam up to look or said anything to the others about it.
“I have to defeat that armored vehicle,” Cole said, a while later. The words were barely audible—or so he thought—intended more for himself than anyone else.
Cole didn’t realize Brandon had heard him until he grunted and replied, “It’s just a car.”
“Just an unstoppable car,” Cole retorted, somewhat irritated that Brandon could so casually shrug off his armored nemesis.
“Maybe so,” Brandon said, his voice shaking from the impact of every hop, “but being unstoppable doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can’t see where you’re going.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cole said, huffing sweat off the tip of his nose.
“I did a stint in the Peace Corps in Bosnia,” Brandon said, wincing when his foot dragged the roof. “Shows you how old I am. We used to ride around in an older version of the MRAP. Not so much for IEDs as harassing fire.”
Brandon stopped to catch his breath, impossible to continue while expending the effort to talk. He bent to massage his leg and then straightened, reaching for Cole’s shoulder to continue. “Some of the locals found out they could fill balloons with paint and glitter and sometimes glue. They’d drop them on our windshield from the rooftops as we passed.”
“Glitter?” Cole said.
“It refracts in the sunlight,” Brandon explained. “Trust me, it works. Windshield wipers don’t just wipe away paint and glue. And we couldn’t get out of the vehicle to clean it because we were taking rocks and bricks from the rooftops, too. Finally we had to put a guy in the turret just to yell to go left or right or to stop, and he wound up taking a cinder block to the helmet. Nearly killed him.”
Cole thought about it for a long minute as they struggled on. “I want those people dead more than anything.”
“I know you do,” Brandon said, falling silent for a moment before adding, “The other thing insurgents used to do is they would sneak into our motor pool and spray foam insulation into our vehicles’ snorkels. If an engine can’t breathe, it can’t run.”
“This is Red Dawn type stuff,” Cole said, almost grinning.
“Damn right,” Brandon said, his eyes shining. “That’s how you have to think. Wolverines.”
Cole nodded. “Wolverines.”
They came, at last, to the end of the rooftop, the furthest corner from the hatch where they’d started. Cole lowered Brandon to a sitting position. Emily stood by, her eyes glazed and her hands slowly rubbing her belly.
“You okay, Em?” Cole held the flashlight beam on her feet.
She seemed to snap out of her reverie at the nickname, her eyes focusing on Cole, an almost severe beauty, he decided, in her pale eyes. “My husband used to call me that,” she said.
Cole couldn’t tell if the intensity in her eyes was an interest in him or merely a pain he had summoned. He ran his hand through his hair, lingering at the back of his head. “I’m sorry.”
Emily only smiled as though she had seen something in him she liked, though Cole couldn’t imagine what it was. “It’s not so bad,” she said, gazing into the distance.
Cole watched her for a moment, afraid he might be losing her, afraid that the far-off reverie she’d fallen into might be the early stages of shock, and that another traumatic encounter, one more onrush of coughers or another shooting might drive her even further toward an unresponsive state. It had happened before.
Cole went to the corner of the parapet wall and leaned over, the heel of his hand pressing into the rough edge of the cinder block. He shone the flashlight beam to the ground. At least a thirty foot drop to the pavement. He hadn’t seen a single ladder or fire escape of any kind mounted to the building. He looked out over the parking lot. Even in that dim light he could make out a half-dozen cars, some of them parked neatly between the lines, others at odd angles that suggested sudden abandonment. No Cord zombies. No armored vehicle. For now, at least, even the drone was nowhere in sight, but Cole knew better than to hope Walsh and his crew had given up and moved on. More than likely it only meant they were up to no good.
“Alright,” Cole said quietly. “How are we going to get down from here?” No ladders. No trees close to the building. No way he could take them back through the hatch. He turned and looked across the rooftop, thinking differently now, thinking about scaling. Rappelling. Lowering. Rope. Cords. The electrical cords.
“Hold on, I’ve got an idea,” he said to Emily and Brandon. He jogged a half football field back to the bundles of cables they’d stepped over. He knelt beside the first major bundle he came to, what appeared to be five coaxial lines zip tied together like an unbraided rope, running perhaps twenty feet from the locked rooftop hatch to the parapet wall, and then along the base of the wall for another sixty or seventy feet before it terminated in a small satellite dish. Cole lifted the bundle and found that it moved easily, with the weight and rigidity of a muscular snake, neither fixed to the roof or attached to the wall.
Cole slipped out of his backpack long enough to rummage through it and find a folding multi-plier tool. He opened the jaws of the pliers wide and used the built-in wirecutter to more or less massacre the hard plastic sheathing of the first wire, where it ran into a PVC pipe that goosenecked to keep the rain out before it penetrated the roof. He continued gnawing at the wire until he saw the bright copper conductor inside it. He half-expected to feel a tingle or slight shock when he severed it completely, but none came. Either the power was out or it was an extremely low voltage system. He attacked the remaining cords one at a time, and once they were done, repeated the process at the satellite dish until he had freed a cable perhaps one hundred feet long and hopefully—hopefully—strong enough to support the weight of an adult human.
Thirty-Six
SAM PEERED through a pair of sophisticated optics cowitnessed on the top rail of the M170. One was a hybrid thermal and nightvision scope, the other a rangefinding computer that did the job of a spotter and made the necessary adjustments to windage and elevation automatically. It didn’t quite reduce long-range marksmanship to the level of a videogame, but in the hands of a SEAL trained as a sniper it was damn close.
Sam had the intersection in view when a pair of black Suburbans appeared, driving less than fifty feet apart at speed. This was their convoy.
“Target acquired. Permission to engage,” Sam said, already following the lead truck’s front tire with the scope’s reticle.
“Fire for effect,” came Trubilinski’s voice.
The big rifle recoiled with irresistible force, pushing Sam’s shoulder back, the action cycling and an empty shell nearly as big as a carrot landing on the roof behind him. An instant later, the front tire of the lead Suburban exploded like a popped balloon.
Sam recovered his sight picture quickly, panning the crosshairs back to the hood of the second Suburban and firing two more rounds in succession, as quickly as he could keep the rifle on target. No sooner had he
fired the second round to the engine block than the Excursion and the H3 careened out of shadowed side streets and rammed the vehicle, barely a second apart, the Excursion striking the front from one side and the H3 plowing into the rear from the other.
Sam zoomed out enough to see the entire vehicle, ready to snap the glowing red crosshairs onto any available target. The first Suburban had accelerated to escape but was obviously steering with difficulty, the flopping of the dead tire on the roadway audible even at that distance.
The doors on the H3 flew open as the Excursion pulled away and accelerated.
“I’m going after the lead,” said Trubilinski.
The exchange of small arms fire echoed off the buildings. Sam saw the Suburban’s tinted windows dissolve and continuous fireballs blazing from automatic weapons within. The muzzle flashes made easy targets for the M170.
On the ground, Wes and Cuban took up positions behind two wrecked cars, unleashing a relentless crossfire with their SAWs, cutting the suburban to shreds. One by one, the muzzle flashes were extinguished. Sam held his fire. He still heard gunfire, but realized, finally, that it was coming from somewhere else nearby. The intersection fell quiet and a haze of gunsmoke hung over the ruin of the Suburban.
“I’m hit,” came a calm voice over the coms.
“Who’s hit?” Sam shouted, turning the rifle scope to see. He saw Cuban running toward Wes’s position.
“I have the lead car pinned,” interrupted Trubilinski’s voice. “Requesting backup.”
“It’s Wes,” Cuban said a moment later. “One in the vest and one through the leg.”
Sam could see their conjoined shape limping back to the H3. “I’m coming down!” he yelled. He left the M170 in place, snatched up his lighter M4, and ran for the stairs.
“We’re on our way, General,” Cuban said, the sound of his engine revving over the coms.
Sam burst from the brownstone’s front door, double-timed it down the steps, and sprinted toward the collection of taillights he could see in the distance. The lightweight hiking boots he wore pounded the pavement, his breath heavy in the respirator, and the shapes of the two assault vehicles pinning the lead vehicle gradually clarifying from the surrounding darkness. White light flashed in the interior of the Suburban. Not muzzle flashes, Sam realized. A flashlight. He had heard confused voices shouting over the coms but none of it had made any sense.
“Approaching on foot!” Sam shouted.
“Friendly coming in!” Wes repeated. He met Sam on the perimeter, one hundred feet from the vehicles.
Sam grabbed his shoulder. “How bad are you hit?”
“It’s a million-dollar wound, don’t worry about it. I just had to call it out.”
“What’s the situation?” Sam turned toward the conflagration of vehicles.
Wes limped along behind him. “We’ve got the principal. She’s pretty shaken up. The driver’s dead. The general shot him before we got here.”
Cuban’s low voice came over the coms. “I’m doing my thing with the luggage. The general’s got the girl. I think you’re going to want to see this one.”
Sam emerged between the H3 and the Excursion to see an attractive blonde draped over the crumpled body of the driver, her voluminous hair falling around the dead man’s face like some attempt at a barrier for privacy.
She was weeping and Trubilinski stood over her with the MP5, his bald head shining in the headlights and his square face perfectly impassive. “Where is the money?” he said flatly.
In reply, the actress emitted a long and hysterical utterance, garbled and profane, strands of her hair blowing upward in the expectoration, the only part of which Sam could make out was, “You fucking bastards!”
Sam couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but it was actually her hysteria that was familiar; he’d seen her play a similar role in a movie once, though as a brunette.
“We’re done here,” Cuban said from inside the Suburban. His voice sounded tired.
Sam glanced at the bare aluminum rim of the Suburban’s front wheel, and the crushed body panels where Trubilinski had rammed it until it veered into a storefront and imbedded its front bumper in a stucco wall.
“How sure are we this thing will even run?” he questioned.
“He’s got a point,” Cuban agreed.
“Leave her the Hummer,” Trubilinski said in a low voice once he’d stepped away from the principal. “Make sure the keys are in it. Transfer any gear you need. We’ll make a show of getting Wes loaded into the Excursion. Make it look like we’re escaping with a skeleton crew.”
Wes lay on the pavement and let Sam and Cuban carry him, arms dangling, past the principal, around to the rear of the Excursion while Trubilinski opened the doors. Sam transferred several Pelican cases and bags from the H3, pulling his mask away from his face and yelling for effect, “We’ve got a man down! Let’s go!”
The genuine actress was still crying over the body of the driver when the fake brigands pulled away.
“What did we take from her?” Sam said, sounding almost philosophical.
Cuban held up a diamond ring between his thumb and forefinger. “Traded this for some spores. Nice stone. Couple of carats.”
Sam shook his head. He ripped open Wes’s bloody pant leg and dumped a packet of Quick-Clot onto the oozing hole there.
Trubilinski glanced at Sam in the rearview mirror. He had retained his place behind the wheel and piloted the Excursion through the dark and littered streets as sedately as a Sunday driver. “She’ll snap out of it,” he said, “once the coughers arrive.”
Thirty-Seven
EMILY HELD THE FLASHLIGHT and Brandon watched while Cole doubled the end of the severed coaxial cable back on itself and tied a pair of big square knots in the insulated wire, making loops and tugging on them to test their strength. He lowered the end of the cable over the parapet wall, hand over hand, bouncing down the wall, until the looped end brushed the ground. He played out the remaining cable along the rooftop, running it around a big PVC vent pipe and then back toward the parapet wall, where he circled it three times around an air handler and did his best to work the stiff cable into a double hitch knot. He pulled the looped end back up and held it out for Emily and Brandon to see.
“Here’s our harness,” Cole said. “Two of the loops go around your legs, like this—” here he stepped into the loops and pulled them up to his crotch. “And then you just slide your arms through the other two.”
“Then what?” said Emily, sounding uneasy.
“Then you just hold on, and I use the friction of the cable passing around that pipe to lower you down, one at a time.”
“How will you get down, though?” Brandon said.
“I’ll just sort of shimmy down, I reckon, hand over hand.”
Neither of them looked convinced. “Look,” Cole said, “it’ll work fine, it’s just important that the process goes smoothly and quickly so no one’s left down there very long on the ground by themselves.”
Brandon struggled to his feet from the corner where he’d been propped up. “I’ll go first,” he volunteered.
“Alright,” Cole said. “I’ll send the rifle down with you. You can cover us until I get down.”
Brandon had already begun wriggling into the makeshift harness. “It’ll just take me a minute to get out of this thing with my leg.”
Cole nodded. “Just keep that rifle ready and keep your head on a swivel. It’ll be dawn soon and visibility will improve—for better and for worse.”
“I got you,” Brandon said.
Cole looked at Emily. “You’ve still got your pistol, right?”
She opened her jacket and patted the Sig Sauer in its Kydex holster.
“Alright, let’s do this thing.”
“Wait,” Emily said, her voice resonating inside the mask. “That’s it? What about
when we’re all down there? Then what do we do? Where will we go?”
“I’m thinking one of those abandoned cars down there might have the keys in it and a full tank of gas,” Cole said.
Emily followed his gaze over the parapet wall to the dim parking lot below, and to the dark expanse beyond it, quiet for now, but where, they both knew, a gang of looters or a hoard of coughers or the armored vehicle itself might appear at any moment.
“Mightn’t it make more sense, then, Cole, for you to go first,” she said, “and, you know, do some reconnaissance, before we all go down?”
Cole considered it. He had to admit she had a point. Going down alone would relieve him of the nightmare of guarding a pregnant woman and a man with a broken leg while he scouted for an escape vehicle. Once he found a car—if he found a car—he could drive it over to the building and they could load Brandon into it without him having to limp across the entire parking lot.
“I think it’s solid,” Cole said. “You good with that, Brandon?”
“Makes sense to me.”
The horizon to the east had already grown considerably brighter, or Cole’s optimism was beginning to skew his view of reality. He tossed the looped end of the cable over the parapet wall again and played out the remaining length of it until it touched the ground and the slack was pulled out of the cable, taut around the vent pipes and secured to the air handlers. He made note of these mechanical details as a way of reassuring himself before he climbed atop the narrow ledge of the parapet wall and spat on his hands, rubbing them together until his palms were tacky and good for gripping.
Emily handed him his AR, and he checked the safety and clipped a carabineer through the front post sight and let it hang from his backpack. He still had the Glock 19 in his chest rig if things got out of control on the ground before he could even get situated. He spat on his hands again. Ordinarily, he would have been confident of his hand strength, particularly on a cable so thick and easy to grasp, but the extra weight in gear and weapons he was carrying and his overall state of exhaustion was enough to give him pause. He hoped he had some adrenaline left in his body. Of course, even if he did get down successfully and find a car, he’d still have to climb back up to lower Brandon and Emily, and then climb down again. This was going to be a bitch.