by Alan Janney
A dark FBI Black Hawk came thundering over the school. The rotor wash whipped down onto the parking lot, flinging pebbles and litter in all directions. I was sick of helicopters, but this one looked super cool. And fast. And dangerous.
“Sexy ride,” Samantha called.
“Only the best.”
The landing gear touched down, the gunner-door slid back, and we leapt in. The deck under us lurched as the chopper took off again. There was barely room to stand in the crowded passenger bay. Six men in tactical gear stared at us. Their severity and black face paint was uniform.
“Head-set, gimme a head-set!” Gear shouted. Thick headphones with attached mics were pressed into our hands. Through the open gunner-doors I could see that our chopper was banking up and over neighborhoods; fires and emergency lights were visible in the distance. Our chopper fell into place behind another Black Hawk, flying in formation.
“Welcome aboard the FBI’s eleven million dollar taxi service!” Isaac’s voice came over the headsets, and from the cockpit he gave us a thumbs-up. “Gentlemen, meet the Outlaw!”
“Thanks for the lift! Get us as close to East Compton as you can,” I called.
“You’re positive about the Chemist sighting?”
I said, “Multiple confirmations.”
“I will absolutely be court-martialed for breaking orders, but maybe they’ll let me keep the Chemist’s head for a wall-mount. New heading, south southwest!”
“Roger that! Tally-ho, and rock and roll!”
“You boys, you HRT?” Samantha yelled at the men through her mic. They all nodded with a jerk of their chin. These men were soldiers in the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, the best of the best.
The guy directly in front of us smiled and said, “Yes ma’am.”
“Listen up, HRT! Your weapons will only knock small chunks out of the Infected. If you can even hit them, which you can’t.” Her voice was rattling our eardrums, but at least she had their attention. “You want to drop an Infected? Take them on as a team, take cover, lob multiple grenades from multiple directions, and then use your assault rifles!”
“Three minutes out! Target is hot!” Isaac Anderson called. Additional radio traffic was bleeding through the headset. Authorities reported that the petrol plant in Paramount was a total loss. That didn’t sound good. And the Bellflower police were screaming for reinforcements. Havoc had broken suddenly, and police, military and emergency responders were all reeling.
“No offense, pretty girl,” one of the guys grinned, “but what the hell is an Infected? And who are you?”
“I’m your best chance at getting out alive!” she yelled back over the noise. Before he could move, she snatched his nose and held on. He bellowed in anger but couldn’t push her off. His friends were caught between amusement and outrage. “And the Outlaw is my best chance! Stick with him. You want to know what an Infected is? It’s a demon. Like me. Like the Chemist. And we’re going demon hunting!”
“We’ve hunted worse.”
“No, soldier. You haven’t. The Middle East is nothing compared to what you’re about to see. If two of you make it out, it’ll be a miracle.”
That gave them pause. We bounced in silence for several minutes, other than the radio chatter and engine roar. Something about Samantha’s demeanor and electric confidence was arresting. We were all under her spell and we believed her implicitly.
“Incoming!” Anderson cried. The Black Hawk in front of us shattered, taking a direct hit from an unexpected surface-to-air missile. Our aircraft banked hard to avoid the bright ball of fire, and all eight of us in the passenger-bay were thrown to the side. The superheated air slammed into our rotors, thrusting us upwards. “Damn it! Hold on back there!”
“Where the hell they get SAMs?!”
“Get us out of the sky, Anderson!” I shouted. Through the wide doorway we saw the remains of the ruined Black Hawk crash between the Long Beach Freeway and the Los Angeles River. “He’ll have more rockets!”
“Coming in hard! Prepare to jump!”
We banked again and the scene below unfolded. We were above Compton. In the distance, the bridges had been overrun by a sea of humanity heading east into Paramount, the section of Los Angeles directly adjacent. Houses were burning. Businesses were burning. Cars were burning. Sporadic gunfire sparkled, probably between Chemist gunmen and retreating law enforcement. This part of the city had transformed into a war zone, pure and simple.
Below us, lights began winking, short pops and flashes. It was gunfire.
“They’re shooting at us,” I observed, brilliantly.
“Mobs do stupid stuff when they’re angry and scared.” Samantha was beside me, holding on to the handle above the door. “Anderson, put us down!”
I squinted and focused on the group of muzzle flashes. A dozen gunmen firing wildly into the sky. Maybe it was my Infected eyes, but I could inspect the crowd easily despite the distance, and make out clear details. One of the gunners was reloading…something…a rocket! His last shot hadn’t missed…
“We don’t have time to land,” I said, disentangling my wrist from the handhold. “See you down there.”
“What?? No!”
I jumped into the night. The cord yanked the headphones off my ears immediately and I began plummeting. The helicopter was…a hundred feet in the air? Maybe less? The sky was loud and angry, threatening to rip off my mask, and the neighborhood below was expanding, enlarging. I became immediately disoriented and my eyes stung. I got my fingers around the parachute cord…but…wouldn’t this be faster if I didn’t use the chute? Bullets were perforating my airspace, and I didn’t want to be a floating duck. Maybe I should wait until…too late!!
I made a small crater on impact, the blacktop buckling slightly under my feet. But that’s the only thing that broke. I experienced no pain. In fact, I felt otherworldly good. On fire.
The gunmen stared at the sky, laughing; they hadn’t seen me land. I took them apart, attacking from behind. Their guns made handy clubs and projectiles. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Disabling them was cathartic, a release of steam. One by one they fell without sound until I stood alone. They wore red bandanas over their noses and mouths. Ugh. Hate that; makes me look bad. I stepped over the bodies, bending their weapons to render them useless, and I scanned the skies. The Black Hawk had passed out of my line-of-sight, but I could hear it nearby.
“Yo! That was crazy, man!”
I whirled around. A couple of kids were watching me from the sidewalk, recording me with their phones. They looked young, maybe nine years old.
“Yo, dooo! Yo, man! Yo, you the Outlaw, man?”
“Go home, kids! Get inside and stay there,” I ordered. They didn’t obey. They gaped at their phone screens, with cameras aimed at me. It was a little awkward. “Where is everyone?” I asked. I was in the middle of an empty street full of squat stucco houses with threadbare yards.
The bigger boy said, “Everyone gone, Outlaw.”
“Yeah, or hiding.”
“Or hiding, you know? In the shelters.”
I nodded. “Those guys with guns and rockets weren’t gone.”
“The Father’s got guards everywhere, man.”
“The Father,” I grunted under my breath. “He’s got more guards? Around?”
The bigger boy grinned and said, “Yo, for real, are you the Outlaw?”
I jogged to them, primarily to get out of the street, out of sight. They cautiously backed away, the bigger boy shielding his friend. This brief lull in pandemonium, after the chaos I’d seen from the helicopter, felt dreamlike. The eye of the storm.
“I am the Outlaw. And I need your help.”
“We get money if we see you.”
“You get money?”
He nodded and said, “A reward. From the guards, you know? We get money to snitch.” Neither of them wore shirts, but they had thin chains around their necks and new sneakers on their feet. The bigger boy was black and the smaller Latino. Their faces he
ld no timidity, no fear, only the defiance of the oppressed.
I asked, “Gonna snitch on me?”
“Nah man,” he smiled. “Bout tired of the Father. Bout tired of canned peaches.”
I asked, “Are you two buddies?”
“Brothers from other mothers, Outlaw. Brothers stick together, brothers survive.”
I held out my fist and they bumped it. “You two are awesome. I’m from Los Angeles too. That makes you my brothers.”
“You just killed Javy, my real brother.”
“Oh,” I winced. “Was he one of those guys with a gun? He’s not dead.”
“S’okay,” he smiled big. “Javy a jerk, most times.”
“Can you tell me where the Chemist’s guards are?”
“You in the Ways, Outlaw,” he said and he pointed his finger at me like a gun. “The guards usually at Camino.”
“The Ways?” I asked, making mental notes.
“You on 67th Way. One block over, 68th Way. We call it the Ways.”
“Gotcha. What’s Camino?”
“Camino about seven blocks down the street. We always steer clear, because of guards.”
A loud burst of gunfire, fast like firecrackers, came echoing through the neighborhood. Then the hiss of another rocket, followed by an awful crash. The sky to the south flared red. The Black Hawk! Samantha…
“Back inside, guys, now! Go to the shelters!” I shouted, and I chased the sounds of gunfire south, darting between houses and leaping over iron fences. I was in a maze of stucco walls and barking dogs. Another hiss, another detonation, and I corrected my course. The sound faded from my eardrums, and I no longer heard the percussive chatter of helicopter blades.
Puck called. I answered, and we yelled at each other simultaneously.
“Puck, Shooter’s chopper is down!”
“Outlaw, turn right on Artesia! Gear is surrounded!”
“What?” I shouted.
Samantha interrupted our incoherence and screamed in my ear, “Outlaw, get your ass over here NOW! Don’t you EVER jump out of a helicopter again!”
“You’re alive!”
“And pissed!” she snarled.
“Outlaw, dead ahead is Artesia, a main thoroughfare. Careful, it’s crawling with gunmen. The FBI’s helicopter emergency-landed on Starr King School, directly to the west. Errrr, to your…right.”
“We’re surrounded. And bombarded with rockets. These HRT guys won’t last long. Move those feet!” Even as she spoke, I heard another explosion. I heard it with my naked ear and through the headset. I was close.
I exited the Ways, egressing directly onto Artesia Boulevard. The scene at the school could have been straight from a horror movie set. Power lines were down and sparking on the pavement. Traffic lights flashed yellow. Two cars were engulfed in flames, providing flickering, eerie, angry illumination for the nightmare. The helicopter smoldered from the roof of the two-story school, and embattled FBI agents returned fire from hidden prone positions. Dozens of masked gunmen hid behind cars and buildings, taking potshots in relative safety. Gear and Anderson were surrounded and outnumbered four-to-one, at least.
Puck wondered in my ear, “Where are all these guys coming from?”
“Rumor is they’ve got a hideout nearby. Someplace called Camino,” I said. I found a guy peeking at the school from a discount storefront. I shoved his face hard into the bricks, and he dropped quietly. I bent his pistol.
“Camino? Camino…camino…” His keyboard clicked while I approached the battle.
“Gear!” I shouted in alarm. “Guy reloading a rocket behind the Honda, in the intersection. Cover me.”
“Negative,” she snapped. “That’ll put you in the crossfire. I got him.”
She fired her heavy rifle five times, loud booms that rattled windows. The five rounds smashed straight through the vehicle’s fiberglass, turning the rocketeer into pulp. My stomach lurched.
“Bingo. Camino College,” Puck said. “Three blocks west of your position. Must have been repurposed as a barracks? You are deep in enemy territory.”
“Gear, here’s what we’re going to do.” I was eyeballing the noose of gunmen slowly tightening around Samantha’s position. Soon there’d be hostiles both inside and out of that school, with more rockets deteriorating the roof. “I’m going to sprint around that school as fast as I can. Let them see me. They’ll shoot at me. They’ll miss. You guys shoot them. It’s basic, but it should work.”
“Negative, hate that plan.”
“Tough. I’m going. Just don’t miss.”
“I. Don’t. Miss.”
I ran down the street, towards the school, picking up speed. Time was relative, and it slowed as I accelerated. At top speed, I circled the school five times in less than a minute. Cries and gunfire followed me around the building, but I couldn’t be caught. I altered my path as I went, the world a dizzy blur, hitting gunmen with a busted two-by-four when they were too slow to duck. I never broke stride.
“Don’t shoot them in the head!”
“Shut up, Outlaw,” she growled underneath the roar of her cannon. “Can’t believe this is working.”
Puck laughed. “This is hilarious.”
I finished by doing something ill-advised. Gunfire was coming from inside a yellow school bus under a low hanging tree. On my last revolution, I grabbed a live power line and tossed it onto the bus. The electricity made contact with the bus’s metal shell, and the connection was bright and violent and terrible. I felt the shock from five feet away, and the men inside screamed.
Stumbling, I fell and rolled twenty feet before slamming into the school. My head was spinning.
“What was that?!”
“A bad idea,” I moaned.
“Terrible idea! Electricity can kill an Infected!”
I laid down, panting, my face in the mulch of a flower bed, the planet rotating around my head. “That was awful. I hope it didn’t kill them.”
“We’re coming down,” she crackled in my ear. “No visual on active hostiles.”
“My plan worked,” I said weakly.
“It wouldn’t have if any Infected had been here. You’re too valuable to be a decoy, or a target.”
“Speaking of Infected,” Puck interrupted, “I have updates.”
“Go ahead.”
“Walter and Carla have been sighted in Paramount, miles from your position.”
“What are they doing?”
“Terrorizing the National Guard in a similar fashion to what you just did. And one more update. You are half a mile from the confirmed Chemist location.”
That perked me up. I was hungry for that man’s destruction, one way or another. “If we get him, the whole bad dream goes away.”
“That’s what Carter just said. Almost word for word.”
I regained my feet as Gear appeared. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder, a pistol gripped in both fists, her eyes everywhere. Anderson trailed, walking with a limp, a phone to his ear.
“We’re on our own,” he said, covering the receiver with his free hand. “Every agency is over-taxed. No free resources. We’re being overrun across the board.”
“Good,” Samantha growled. “No offense, FBI, but extra men only slow us down. I already feel like I’m babysitting.”
Anderson was unnerved by her low opinion of his elite combat team. That was obvious. Being belittled by a young woman wasn’t an everyday occurrence. He addressed me, “I’ve got two wounded men up there.”
“We’re moving out,” I said. “We’ll draw the fire away from them. Trust me. They’ll be safer than you are.”
His eyes bored into me, and he said, “I’m a believer, Outlaw. That was some other-level stuff you just did.”
“Night’s not over. Let’s move.”
He took a deep breath and said, “We’re with you.” Anderson made an unspoken transfer of power to Samantha and me. He was in over his head and he knew it.
I put a hand to my ear. “Puck, where to?
”
Anderson caught his breath. “PuckDaddy,” he said softly. “I knew it.”
Samantha and I both listened to Puck’s instructions. “Keep going on Artesia. Three blocks away. I googled Camino. It’s a big campus, multi-building. Too big to thoroughly investigate. But maybe you’ll get lucky.”
Our team proceeded down a side street, paralleling the bigger and more exposed Artesia Boulevard, carefully scouting and inch-worming forward. There were enemies ahead; we caught flashes of activity, only brief glimpses. Other than that, we could have been on the moon. All the remaining civilians inside Compton were hidden and silent.
“I won’t be much help,” Puck said. “I’m fighting hundreds of users for satellite data, and I’m the only one that wants Compton feed. The eyes of the world have shifted to Paramount tonight. Captain FBI is right; there’s no help coming soon.”
“What’s Carter’s location?”
“Carter’s a maniac. He’s barreling down Walnut Street from the west in a big dump truck. You’ll hear him before you see him.”
Samantha shook her head. “He’s trying to goad the Chemist into showing himself.”
Another block and the Camino Community College came into view. Our hearts sank. It was an enormous labyrinth of buildings plunged into darkness. A city within a city, a deathtrap with far too many black windows.
“Christ,” Anderson said. We huddled a block away, staring at the imposing fortress. “He’s in there?”
Samantha snapped open her tactical scope and began scanning the campus. I could see movement with my naked eye. Behind the windows. On the roofs. Running through the quads and along the sidewalks. Everywhere.
“He’s in there,” I said. I was furious all of a sudden, angered at his close proximity and his cowardly defenses. “I can smell him.”
“I think I can too,” Samantha said. Her voice was hesitant and curious. Maybe even frightened. “It smells like…”
“Like blood.”
She nodded. I’d never seen her confidence shaken before. That scared me more than the forbidding campus. “Yes. Blood. And something else.
“Yeah, I smell it too. Something…I don’t know. It smells wrong. Evil.”