by Alan Janney
“We can’t go in,” she sighed irritably. We fell back, further into the shadows, and squatted in a tight cluster.
Anderson nodded. “I agree. We have no support and no evacuation. Fortunately the Compton border isn’t far. We can hoof it out.” There were quiet murmurs of assent from his squad.
Samantha got behind her scope again, squinting and scanning, and said, “I see Infected. I’ve got a bad feeling we grossly underestimated his numbers.”
I said, “It’s a trap.”
“Clearly a trap,” she nodded. Puck remained silent. His neck wasn’t on the line.
“He knows we’re here.” My own words gave me goosebumps. He knew. Somehow, he knew that we were here. That I was here.
She shifted uneasily. “I think you’re right, but how the hell is that possible?”
“It’d be suicide to go in there,” I said.
She glanced at me. I grinned.
“You’re going in anyway,” she glared. “Aren’t you.”
“Yes I am.”
Chapter Twelve
Sunday, August 30. 2018
The sounds started softly, just one or two cries, and then swelled. The eerie hoots coming out of the college campus grew louder and louder until our skin crawled. I felt like I was in a jungle, surrounded by howler monkeys.
“The hell is that?!” Anderson asked.
“A challenge.”
“Puck, can you light that place up? Turn on the power?”
“Negative. Power grid failed in that area. Even the mighty PuckDaddy is helpless. Your trek into hell will happen in total darkness.”
I stared at Samantha in disbelief. She returned the look. “Jeez, Puck. Take it easy on the theatrics.”
“Whatever, dummy. Shut up. I’m very anxious. You’re a moron if you enter that hole of death.”
The screams were fading, and I said, “The Chemist is in there, Puck. I can tell. This is the closest we’ve been in six months. We can’t just let him go.”
“This is absurd,” Puck grumbled, keys clicking. “I’m going to push maps of the campus onto your phones, including Captain FBI’s.”
“Hey, Puck,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “Did you find my dad?” Samantha glanced up.
“Lost the signal. Last I checked, he was someplace called Paramount Park.”
Samantha asked, “Is that near Walter and Carla?”
“Well…kinda…” he said hesitantly. “Less than a mile. Those two are giving the police fits!”
“Okay,” I said, squeezing the ball of metal in my hand so hard it might have left impressions. “Okay. We need to do this fast.”
Anderson spoke up, “Outlaw, I’ve risked my career for this. I want to put a bullet in the Chemist’s ear as much as anyone. But storming this place will be a tactical nightmare. None of us will come out.”
“Shooter only needs one shot,” I said, indicating Samantha, trying to protect her anonymity if I hadn’t blown it yet. “And then we bail. And to be honest, I think you guys should wait here.”
“This is America, Outlaw. We don’t run. If you’re going in, I’m going in. Seems like a good day to die.” The hardened veterans behind him grunted agreement. Maniacs. “What are we up against? Any ideas?”
“Most of the hostiles will be standard thugs,” Gear said. She was pushing thick bullets into magazines. Guns are awful; each of those bullets would result in a life taken messily. “But they’re hopped up on the Chemist’s super drug. No fear, no pain. Intimidation tactics won’t work. Suppressing fire won’t work. We need head shots. Or several in the torso. We go in, we go in shooting to kill.”
“Or knock them out,” I suggested.
“That works for you,” Samantha snapped. “Not us.”
Isaac Anderson asked me, “Where’s your gun?”
“Don’t have one. Couldn’t hit anything anyway.”
Samantha continued, “Anderson, if you boys encounter Infected, throw grenades and run. Do not engage. Retreat or hunker down and wait for us. You need monsters to fight these monsters.”
“Roger.” His hands were shaking, and he was sweating. He was about to speak when we heard distant gunfire. We scanned the campus but saw no flashes. It wasn’t close.
Puck came through our earpieces. “That’s Carter, with Russia and Croc. They’ve engaged hostiles. You’re near the southeast corner of the campus, and they are at the northwest, exactly opposite.”
“Perfect,” I said, standing. “Time to go.”
The FBI boys lowered night-vision goggles and switched safeties off their assault rifles. They looked cooler than me. I needed a weapon.
Puck crackled, “Tell Captain FBI I’m calling him. I want to be in his ear too.”
Isaac Anderson’s phone lit up with an incoming call. He glanced at the unknown number.
I said, “Answer it and put it through to your bluetooth headset. That’s PuckDaddy. He wants to communicate with your squad.”
“How does he have my number?”
“Don’t ask questions. He’s probably got nude photos of you too.”
“What? Why would he have-”
I interrupted him. “Here’s the plan. I’m going in and draw their fire. Anyone that shoots at me, you drop them.”
“No. Hell no. You’re awful at plans,” Samantha snapped. She raised her voice. “Listen up. We’re going straight in from Cummings Avenue. Make for that gymnasium. This campus runs north and south, so we’ll regroup there and push north. We have friendlies that need help. Anderson, you got a sniper on your team? Put him on the gym roof. We have one goal, gentlemen. Extermination. This place is infested. Let’s clean it out. And if we’re lucky, we’ll bag the most destructive person on earth in the process. Anderson, keep on the horn, try and get us air support and an evac. Outlaw, that building directly ahead? Get on top of it. You’ll be building hopping, our eye in the sky, eliminating hostiles as you go. We run into any Infected, you and I handle them. Any questions? Good. Let’s move.”
The campus grass was long, and the blades hissed as I sprinted across. My blood was pumping adrenaline into muscles, and I leapt easily onto the roof of the Math/Science building. Behind me, somewhere in the darkness, gunfire erupted, shattering bricks near my feet. Samantha and the Hostage Rescue Team returned fire. There were two sentries on the roof with me, and neither could see me well. I dropped the first with a steel ball thrown over a hundred miles per hour. His skull fractured, but he’d survive. The next guy ducked.
He ducked?!
I breathed, “He’s Infected.”
“What? Who is?” in my ear.
He was big. Taller and broader than me. We met in the middle of the roof, near ventilation pipes.
“Listen to me,” I hissed. He swung and missed. “Listen, I’m here to help!” He missed again. He was newly Infected, like a 16-year old driving a car too fast. He over corrected and stumbled and basically didn’t know what to do with all his strength. “We’re both Infected, listen to me!” I caught his fist and held it. His head was shaved and he glared at me, breathing so hard spittle came out of his mouth. “Listen, you big oaf. We were born the same, you and I. I know what you’ve been through. Let me help you.”
“Wasn’t born,” he snarled, and he pushed me away so hard I stumbled. He was fierce and quick, I had to give him that. “I am Twice Chosen.”
“Alright big guy, I’m out of time. And I don’t know what Twice Chosen means anyway. Come with me, and I’ll get you out.”
“Outlaw, quit playing!” the voice in my ear rang. “No time!”
The bald kid advanced, rage making his muscles quake. It was like he couldn’t even hear me. Or he’d been brainwashed. That was a scary thought. Time to quit goofing off. I planted my foot in his chest and kicked him hard enough to propel him off the roof. Samantha shot him three times before he hit the ground.
She was staying with Anderson and his squad. They’d been spotted and were taking heavy fire, ducked behind trucks in the parking l
ot. She rose, her gun shattered the night three times, and she dropped out of sight again. The glass below my feet exploded and someone fell out of it, already dead. But there were too many windows, too many hiding spots, too much gunfire.
She screamed, “This isn’t working! I’m going mobile.”
“Shooter, there’s a squad pinning you down. They’re underneath the trees, between my building and the gym,” I said, risking a glance over the side. “I’m going to land on them, and you’ll be free to roam. Understood?”
“Waiting on you, hotshot.”
“On my way,” I said, and I fell on the gunners from above. They’d been peering around a cluster of palm trees. I clunked their heads together. It was over so fast I had time to witness Shooter spin away from her shelter.
This was the first time I’d seen Samantha Gear truly use her terrifying gift. She spun away from the truck, both pistols out front, each roving independently and firing at targets in her peripheral vision. She dealt death, violent and efficient. As soon as the clips emptied she dropped the weapons, retrieved two more from her belt, and continued the murderous onslaught. She was a thunderstorm bursting with continual lightning. She didn’t miss, demolishing targets I never saw. A shocking number of bodies rained from rooftops and windows, landing on the ground like drumbeats. This was her Infected curse in full-effect.
She came to a stop at my tree, ramming new clips into her smoking pistols.
“Ready?” she asked.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” I took deep breaths to steady my stomach, and I refused to look at the piles of ruined people behind us.
To our north, two massive structures loomed, the Student Resource Center and the Theater. Between them, out of the gloom, came a blur. Two blurs, on second glance, moving like Olympic sprinters.
“Look out!” I cried. I shoved Samantha and fell back. The tree between us exploded from twin shotgun blasts, bark flying like confetti. One of the new attackers, a girl, got close enough to kick me. Hard. Really hard. I hit the ground and kept rolling, shotgun concussions churning up the ground between us.
Anderson and his team came swooping across the grass, guns blazing. The two blurs were too quick to be hit, but they were forced to fall back. They retreated into the murky night. They were fast. I never saw their faces.
“Okay,” Anderson said, taking up a position behind a palm tree. His squad found positions at the gym. “I get it now. They move like ghosts. Too fast for us to aim. Were those two Infected?”
“Yes,” Samantha said, shooting me a concerned look. “New ones. All speed, no aim.”
“How many Infected are there?”
Puck said in our ears, “That’s the million dollar question, dummy.” The northern sounds of sporadic gunfire continued. Carter was evidently still alive and causing mayhem.
Anderson split his remaining four-person team. Two on top of the gym, two on top of the Resource Center.
“Shoot anything that moves,” he ordered. “Stay alive. If either the Outlaw or the girl comes back, follow them out. I’ll be dead by then.”
We all laughed. But it was probably true.
The three of us pushed north silently through the campus. I hated it. I wanted to be on the roofs. But Isaac and Samantha couldn’t jump or move like me. All the plants were overgrown. Samantha glared at every possible hiding spot but held her fire. Our opposition had mysteriously disappeared. We heard shots behind us, a brief volley from the FBI team. We moved forward until we came to an impassable barrier: a large, wide-open grassy quad. No cover, completely exposed.
I was losing heart. The Chemist could be hidden in any of these buildings. Or maybe he’d fled the scene by now. “We can’t cross,” I said. “Let’s go around.”
Anderson said, “Absolutely.”
Samantha grabbed my vest as I was about to head westward. She put her finger to her lips and pulled me into the grass near the abandoned campus police department. Anderson followed silently. She holstered her pistols and unslung the assault rifle.
A silhouette was pacing the rooftop across the quad. I checked my map. The sentry was on top of the bookstore. Samantha took careful aim.
“Infected,” she said.
Anderson whispered, “How can you tell?”
“I can always spot Infected. The posture, the swept shoulders, the arrogance. Prepare to move.” She took a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flashed with a roar, and the silhouette dropped. We bolted.
As we did, a new sound caught our ears. Laughter.
The Chemist.
He was cackling.
The disease flared inside me like fever.
His voice floated towards us from everywhere. “Would that be the lovely Shooter I hear?”
“Damn damn damn,” she hissed as we skirted backwards into some scrub bushes.
“Christ, that’s him?” Anderson hissed. “Shouting at us?”
“You may have noticed that my Chosen have ceased their aggressions,” the Chemist said, his voice amplified by the unnaturally quiet night. Where was he?! “You are granted safe passage. I give my word. It is time for Marc Antony and I to parlay.”
“Marc Anthony?” She frowned. “Who is Marc Anthony?”
“A Roman general. Didn’t you ever read Shakespeare? Right now he’s referring to me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Can you smell him? I can. Blood and…and something else.”
“Yes. He’s pungent.”
Captain FBI looked askance at us, and he sniffed the air unsuccessfully. He shrugged.
“Okay. Let’s go,” I said.
“Go where?”
I grinned. “Go meet him.”
Anderson’s eyes bulged. “Is that a joke?”
“No. He promised.”
“What?? He’s a madman!”
“He’s also polite. He wouldn’t lie and kill us,” I said. “Well, at least not immediately. He’ll talk a lot first.”
“This is insanity,” Samantha snarled. “We walked into his trap. And now we’re going to meet him, voluntarily. I hate hate hate this.”
“This is our chance, Shooter. We waited months.” She rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger a long time and then said, “Okay, I’m going to the top of the bookstore. You distract him, I’ll blow his head off, and then we can all three die.”
“So I’m the bait?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds good.”
PuckDaddy groaned. So did Captain FBI.
Samantha said, “I hate this. Please don’t die. Let’s go.”
“Hang on,” I said. I pulled out my phone.
I love you, Katie Lopez.
I pressed Send, stowed the phone, and nodded to them. “Ready.”
We jogged across the quad, ghosts in our own graveyard. Samantha and Anderson angled away, towards the bookstore. The Chemist had advanced hearing, so he probably heard my heart pounding as I approached.
I found him in the thin, grassy quad between the long writing and math buildings. The buildings were parallel and evenly spaced, and he sat between them on a mountain of…something. His chair was resting four feet off the ground, sunk into what looked like two tons of cocaine. A pair of torches was burning on either side of him.
“You need a weapon, my son.” He was changed. During our previous encounter, the Chemist had been haughty and exuberant, full of both life and death. Now he appeared weak and emaciated. His voice lacked vigor. He still had long silver hair, and the heavy staff rested across his knees. “We all do. Even you.”
I indicated the surrounding college. “This has been your home the past six months? Probably the only place we didn’t look.”
He smiled, good-naturedly. “I am flattered. But this is not my home. Think of it as my…” He waved his hand in the air as he searched for the right word. “…my office.”
“Making your super drug?”
“Among other things.”
“Are you sitting o
n top of a hill of that stuff?”
“Yes. There is no charge for my stimulant. Free to all.”
“I’m here to kill you.”
“I know that, young man. That’s why you need a weapon. You won’t be able to with your bare hands. Your heart is too good. Too pure. Taking a life is messy. You haven’t the stomach.”
“We’ll see,” I said, shifting uneasily. But he was right. I couldn’t. I needed Samantha to do it. Where was she?
“Besides, even in my weakened state I’m still a match for you. Capable of brief violence.” He chuckled. “But I have other plans for you, Antony. I’m so very glad you see me as Brutus, the noblest Roman of them all.”
“Brutus lost that war.”
“Yes. Well. We’re in the business of re-writing history, aren’t we.”
“Your story has already been written. And you lose.”
He arched an amused brow. “How did you find me tonight? To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t ready yet.”
“Ready for what?”
“I’m going to wound you. Grievously, I am afraid. And then I’m going to remake you.”
The stirring air brought wafts of blood to my nostrils. I knew we temporarily stood in the center of a storm about to break. “Sounds like a party. But first, tell me. Why are you here? Why did you need Compton?”
“I told you before, dear boy. Because of you. When you revealed our existence to the newspaper, you accelerated everything. But I thrive on chaos. I couldn’t leave yet, so I just…annexed what I needed.”
“What do you need?”
“Time. Resources. You.”
“Resources for what?”
“Them,” he said, and he indicated the sky with his index finger. I glanced up. The rooftops of the surrounding buildings were lined with dark silhouettes blocking out the stars. There were dozens of silent and nearly invisible watchers. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. So many.
“Infected?”
He replied, “Chosen. Twice Chosen, more accurately. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. Come with me and I’ll introduce you to the wonders of gene therapy.”
“Gene therapy?” I didn’t understand. None of this made sense. He looked like an empty Capri Sun pouch, sucked dry.