by Addison Gunn
He wasn’t sure if that was meant as a compliment. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“Depends,” she said. “Why are you here?”
Miller shifted on his feet and felt his left hip pop. “Well, I’m not here under the command of the United States Army,” he said. “Are you?”
“Definitely not.”
“We have that in common, at least.”
Samantha ventured a look at the research building to her right, Miller’s left. “Is what you’re after in there?”
He fidgeted with the M27 in his hands, then nearly cursed himself when she grinned at him again.
“I propose a deal, then,” she said.
“I don’t see how this is going to work if we both want to leave with the same thing.”
“You needn’t worry. Our interests lie with the anti-fungal solution,” she said quickly. “Only.”
“I’m here for both.”
She considered this, her dark eyes darting back and forth as if she were calculating equations in her head. “If we work together, you can have the cure. I’m assuming you’re here because you don’t want the President to destroy it?”
“You’re not here to make sure he does?”
She pursed her lips before speaking. “No. It would seem we have no choice but to work together. Besides, there’s a hundred of us, and only five of you. Seems a prudent choice, don’t you think?”
“We didn’t come alone,” he said. “But seeing as how I don’t want to start a firefight in this alley and draw the Army’s attention—I’m willing to work out a deal.”
Sam nodded. “We get the anti-fungal. You get the anti-parasitic.”
Miller bit the inside of his cheek and tasted blood. “Agreed.”
Sam’s face brightened. She absently scratched at her shoulder. “Then let’s get moving.”
Miller tapped the com in his ear. “We’re going in together.”
“Of course,” Doyle said, standing from his position in the enclave and resting his rifle on his shoulder. “What could possibly go wrong?”
A shot rang out and a bullet whizzed by Miller’s face. He spun in position and dropped to his knee, his rifle aimed straight at Sam’s head. When another shot spun past Sam, causing her to crouch down, he realized it wasn’t the Infected who had fired. The shot had come from behind her.
A patrol had found them. There were only three or four soldiers, but they’d positioned themselves behind pillars of cement and were shooting through the Infected troop, straight at Cobalt.
Miller’s team dispersed, leaving the exposed enclave and taking up positions around the alleyway. Du Trieux took down the soldier on the far right with a well-positioned shot to the face. Sam—hiding behind a pylon to Miller’s left—aimed with her hunting rifle and took out another soldier with a single round to the chest. Afterwards, her Infected minions twisted and mowed down the other two guards in a barrage of bullets.
For a moment, Miller watched in awe. This wasn’t right. After another second, the echo from the gunfire died in the alleyway, and he realized the change. These Infected had killed other Infected. How was that even possible?
“Binh! Through the barrier!” Sam bellowed, tossing the Korean boy a tool from her pocket.
Samantha’s Infected made quick work of the barricades and barbed wire. Equipped with a handful of wire-cutters, the group methodically passed down the tools, unwound the wire, then moved forward to the next barrier with meticulous precision.
At the center of it all, Samantha barked orders and occasionally pressed her palm onto someone’s shoulder. When she did so, it seemed to create a burst of energy. They snapped to attention, moved faster, sharper than before.
The alleyway was cleared within minutes—just in time for another handful of soldiers to arrive and open fire. Behind them, an MGS Stryker rolled down the jagged boulevard, turret turning in their direction with a grind.
“Get inside!” Miller shouted.
“Go!” Samantha reiterated, and the herd of Infected scrambled in unison toward the chained double doors. Using their bare hands and the bolt cutters, the mob ripped the corrugated steel covering the entry, then bust into the building like a wave.
The Stryker’s turret came to a grating halt and fired once into the mess of pylons and barricades. An explosion of fire and shrapnel rippled across the back of the crowd. Some of the Infected found cover, or rushed into the door, spilling over the top of their comrades. Others whipped around and ran toward the vehicle as if to swarm it. The Stryker discharged another canister—a M1040 antipersonnel round, by the looks of it—and blew them away before they even got close.
Cobalt moved into action. Behind Miller, Morland shouldered his MK1 grenade launcher and sent a round straight onto the top of the Stryker’s hull. A plume of fire and metal shards burst from the vehicle, momentarily disabling the turret.
With the main gun out of the equation, the Infected in the alley surged forward and swarmed the vehicle, ripping open the top hatch and shooting the soldiers in their seats. Cobalt shot down the foot soldiers surrounding the vehicle, clearing the alleyway.
It wouldn’t be long before the next wave approached and flagged Miller’s team. “Go!”
Sam turned and shouted at Miller. “Quickly!”
The rest of the Infected and Cobalt piled into the research building, then dragged the barricades and pylons in behind them to block the door.
Inside the building was an open foyer, littered with trash. The white linoleum floor was gray with grime and dirt. The walls, white and sterile in their prime, were covered with fungal blooms.
The Infected circled the room, as if unsure where to go, and uncertain how to act. The walls outside rattled with the impact of the newly arrived Army reinforcements.
“Miller!” du Trieux barked, pointing.
There were three hallways off the foyer. The one on the right was barricaded with pylons and barbed wire all the way down the hall as far as the eye could see, until it abruptly cut to the left. The hall in the center went straight back and sat wide open, unencumbered by debris and suspiciously inviting. The passageway on the left sat stacked floor-to-ceiling with abandoned office furniture, allowing a narrow, twisting route through the obstacles. The fluorescent ceiling lights blinked an eerie strobe effect down the corridors, making it hard to focus.
“Door number one, two, or three?” Samantha asked, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
“Obviously not the middle,” Doyle said.
In the center hallway, just past the threshold, a single dented soda can sat on the floor. An Infected, a woman with a single-shot hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, reached down and gripped the can.
Miller raised his hand in the air. “Don’t!”
Too late. As the woman lifted the can, there was a snap of a pressure-release explosive device.
On instinct, Miller jumped on top of Samantha as an explosive charge shot fire and shrapnel across the room, peppering the walls with shards and rubble.
The Infected nearest the woman went flying through the air in a wave of fire, knocking others back and down like bowling pins. A surge of heat filled the air from ground to ceiling, warming Miller’s back. Beneath him, Samantha shrieked.
When the dust settled, all eyes opened and turned to where the woman had once stood, now reduced to a smear of blood and a charred oval on the floor. Bodies were strewn around the area, missing limbs and heads, showing cavernous torso wounds. At the sight of the carnage, the remaining Infected scattered.
They scrambled around the foyer and into the hallways, and discovered to Miller’s horror that the whole space was trapped; the piles of trash and wrecked furniture were riddled with pressure-release mines. The Infected set off two, three more blasts in their frenzy, with more deaths each time.
They fled, flailing, in all directions: down each hallway, back out the main door, and crowding around Samantha like drones to a queen.
“Wait!” Miller shoute
d after them. “Stop!”
It was futile.
The panicked whimpering echoed down the three corridors, along with another string of explosive blasts.
“The whole place is rigged!” Hsiung said.
“Get down!” Sam shouted, grabbing the front of Miller’s combat vest and yanking him back to the floor.
“Stop running!” Hsiung bellowed. “Hold still!”
“These prats are going to get us killed!” Morland shouted. He looked up from his crouched position beside the door then immediately hit the floor again when another blast blew from down the right hallway.
“Pull your people back!” Miller said.
“Let them go.” Sam lay underneath him on her back, her palms still gripping his combat vest. “Follow behind them. They’ll clear the way.”
Miller was too shocked to reply.
Sam moved out from underneath him and signalled to the rest of the Infected in the foyer. There were only about three dozen of them left. Lining them up around the building entry, she waved her hand at Miller. “Go. We’ve got your back.”
Du Trieux raised an eyebrow, but Miller didn’t hesitate. He moved to the far right hallway and grabbed at the first pylon to inch the battered, smoldering thing out of his way.
“You,” Sam said to a group of her followers, “surround them.” Shots peppered the entry from outside and struck the wall behind them. One Infected was hit and went down. Samantha didn’t even flinch. “Get them through,” she told them.
Like clockwork, ten Infected stepped forward. Using their wire cutters, working together without talking, they cut back the pylons and wires blocking the right hallway and pushed the debris to the side for easier passage, allowing Cobalt a clear path.
Miller watched them work with stunned awe and horror, then urged his team into the hall behind them.
He shouted back to Sam. “What about you?”
She shot another round out the entry door at the approaching soldiers and yelled back, “I know what I’m doing! Go. We’ll hold them here. Come back for me after you’ve gotten the formulas.”
He stared at her in dumb silence.
“Promise you’ll come back for me!”
The words came out without a thought. “Yes, of course.”
She turned back toward the action, dug into her pocket and loaded another round into the rifle’s chamber. “Hurry!”
Miller turned from her and followed the hallway back. After rounding the bend, the corridor shifted from offices to lecture halls and classrooms.
The sounds of battle, outside and in, reverberated off the walls and made Miller’s ears ache. His team shared nervous looks, then looked to the Infected in front of them, then frowned at Miller.
He didn’t disagree. This could possibly be the worst idea he’d had yet.
33
SHOTS FLEW THROUGH the battered doorway with alarming regularity, narrowly missing Sam and her remaining followers time and time again. She’d positioned herself between Binh and a woman named Stephanie, both returning fire from behind a barbwire-wrapped pylon just inside the entrance.
The attacking soldiers, in spite of their training, seemed unwilling to commit to an assault. Whether it was because the Infected soldiers didn’t truly want to kill Samantha or her commune, or if they were just unsure of the situation, wasn’t clear. As the bullets flew and minutes ticked by, the soldiers outside fell back, resorting to half-heartedly firing at the entry. It was just enough to keep Sam and the others in position, but not to particularly threaten them.
She became increasingly suspicious. Clearly, they had superior firepower and more men. What on earth were they waiting for?
Perhaps they were waiting for another of those tank trucks? Surely, a blast from that thing would rip the research building and their pathetic barricade wide open. It wouldn’t take much.
One of Alex’s cronies had had a grenade launcher. Certainly, in the whole of the Infected United States Army, they had one of those, too? But where were they? Where was the tear gas, the artillery fire, the machine guns? It didn’t make sense.
The answer to her question was soon answered. The ground rumbled under her feet and the walls of the foyer shook.
“Earthquake!” some idiot shouted.
Dust cascaded from the ceiling. Whole fungal blooms separated from the walls, hitting the floor with a wet noise.
Sam peered out from behind her pylon and squinted through the narrow gap, and cursed under her breath.
They hadn’t been waiting for the tank truck to blast the door open, they’d been waiting for an actual tank. The thing was mammoth. Painted in a splotchy mess of desert tan and olive green, it trundled down Rutland Avenue, crushing everything in its path.
They weren’t going to blast the door open. They were going to blow the whole building open.
“Pull back!” Sam shouted.
Running toward the right hall, Sam stopped short of the archway and urged the others to follow. Charred pylons and bodies littered the corridor. Finally satisfied that enough of her crew were behind her, she took the corridor at a full sprint down. Zigzagging her way around the obstructions, ducking and jumping wires, she turned the corner to the left and stopped short, allowing her comrades to gather behind her before shouting, “Build a wall!”
The Infected worked in groups of five, pulling back the pylons from the hallway to create a makeshift barricade.
With an audible crack and a colossal boom, the tank fired. Wind, smoke, fire and shattered masonry burst through the foyer and spread across the first floor of the facility. The very ground vibrated.
Crouched behind their barricade, Sam and the Infected were showered with drywall, ceiling panels and light fixtures. Live wires broke free from their conduits and splayed across the hallway, sparking and shocking people at random. Air ducts running along the ceiling cracked and broke, spilling clumps of dust and asbestos onto their heads. Someone screamed.
Sam dusted herself off and reloaded her rifle, fighting to keep her head clear. The fear in the air was palpable, gumming up her thoughts. It was hard not to lose her mind with all that internal chatter.
Bullets followed the burst. Sam risked a glance around the corner and spotted approaching foot soldiers. She dared not return fire for fear of exposing herself.
Binh peered up from his tucked posture with wide and glassy eyes. “They’re coming!”
“What do we do?” someone else bellowed.
Stuck between snapping a sarcastic reply, fleeing, and staying to hold back the horde for Alex’s sake, Sam pressed the butt of her rifle against her shoulder and urged others to reload.
“When they come around the corner, shoot them down!” she instructed.
The Infected followed suit. What choice did they have? She was pulsing so much energy at them that they couldn’t resist. Sam felt the weight of their terror, but they were no match for her. She pushed a pang of guilt down and took up position at the forefront of the barricade.
The first soldiers came down the hall and rounded the corner in a two-by-two formation. Sam, Binh and the others opened fire, and the soldiers were ploughed down in a barrage of bullets.
One man, wounded but still alive, got off one round in their direction, missing entirely, before Binh pulled an automatic pistol and shot twice into the soldier’s chest.
Sam pulled back from the barrier and reloaded her rifle, a line of Infected behind her stepping forward. As the second team of soldiers came, then the third and fourth, the Infected rotated back and forth, firing, and reloading; they cut down the troops with efficiency and limited casualties.
Sam was just thinking they might pull this off when a grenade rolled around the corner with a clunk and landed in the pile of dead soldiers.
“Gren—!”
She never finished the sentence.
The pile of bodies helped some to stifle the blast: blood splatter, body parts, shrapnel, and unspent ammunition burst directly in front of the pylons.
Those who had been directly behind the pylons didn’t fare as well. Some had been blown clean back, burnt or shredded beyond hope. The survivors cowered behind the pylons, ignoring the next team who had rounded the bend in the blast’s wake.
Bullets riddled the hallway, dropping at least four of the Infected fast. It took several seconds for the next line to load, take position and return fire—and by then, much damage had been done.
Sam reloaded yet again, cringing at the lightness of her pocket. She’d have to ransack the pockets and bodies of the dead before too long—but first, she had to get rid of the three remaining Army troops at the end of the hall.
She took up position beside Binh at the pylons, and they took aim and fired upon the three soldiers. Two of the GIs were hunkered behind the bodies of their fallen—the other one twisted around the corner to take another shot.
Sam took out one of the soldiers behind the bodies, as Stephanie beside her took out the other. The woman standing at the bend went down with multiple shots to the torso.
A sinking feeling twisted Sam’s gut when no new soldiers came around the bend. Usually, as one line fell, the Army sent another to immediately take its place. Now, half a minute passed without anything. The Army was brewing something—and if Sam had learned anything in the last ten minutes, it was that good things did not come to those who waited.
Her answer came in the form of a fully armored, fireproofed soldier wearing a flame-thrower on his back.
“Get back!” Binh bellowed.
The line behind Sam scattered like roaches caught in the light. People dove, leapt, ran, and outright screamed as a stream of burning gas shot straight over the pylon barrier where Sam and Binh crouched and set the hallway ablaze.