“That’s what I thought. You need us.” He winked. “So don’t forget it.”
“So how do we get out of this?” Pavel shot back, losing more of his calm.
In reply, someone started shooting. Sharpshooters on top of the barricade stood behind a flimsy rail, flanking some kind of big gun right in the middle. They’d chosen that moment to pick out targets from the crowd of misbehaving people—some very close to the truck.
“Get us out of here,” Pavel ordered.
“No shit,” Ilia replied.
He spun the wheel and the truck swung her to the other side of the long seat. She was a little more prepared this time, but still hit quite hard against the door.
The Rover screeched as it brushed against the most expensive car on the street.
Ilia laughed as they met eyes in the mirror. “Bill me!”
I will, she thought, knowing it was lame.
The police increased their rate of fire. She'd read about clashes with hooligans over the years. The youth of the city spent their time making out in parks and testing their young civic powers by staging stupid protests designed to get the police to come and break it up. Usually it was settled by pepper spray and truncheons.
Today seemed much different.
Ilia didn’t stop. He drove onto the wide sidewalk and stepped on the gas as he aimed for the thinnest part of the onrushing crowd. Liza thought for sure people would dive to avoid getting run over, but the opposite happened. The idiots surged toward the truck, as if anxious to be struck.
“What the …?” Ilia shouted as he braced himself against the steering wheel as the first few hit.
Liza grabbed a seat belt and made her best effort to secure it. She couldn't watch more than the initial two seconds of the impacts. The ruined bodies would fall beneath the truck, careen wildly back into the crowd, or they’d stand in place and wobble as if the tires squished their toes. Bloody hands soiled the side windows as they plowed ahead.
To her horror, the most frightening thing was that Ilia sounded scared.
4
“We’re not going to make it to the next corner,” Ilia shouted. The momentum of the truck was absorbed by the sheer size of the crowd. Because they refused to yield a centimeter, they just piled up in front of them.
A hand slammed against the front glass and cracked it.
“Dermo! This is no good.” He slammed on the brakes and had the Rover into reverse before it had come to a complete stop. He turned around in his seat and guided his path by looking out the rear window.
“Get your head down,” he ordered to her.
She leaned over, unwilling to unbuckle. The dermo had indeed hit the fan.
The truck bounced over the dead bodies they’d struck on the way. Ilia was able to keep them on a straight path as they tried to escape the crowd, though he cursed several times as the wheel seemed to slip in his hands. She finally let out her breath when he jammed the wheel hard right, the truck bounced off the curb and back onto the smooth street.
Ilia drove like he'd mastered the course in crowd evasion. He gunned the motor as they cleared the rioters and guided the truck in a wide arc. She braced herself as soon as it was apparent what he had in mind. The engine raced until he again slammed the brakes, they jumped another curb, and crashed into Constance’s boutique.
The truck slid as Ilia pumped the brakes one last time. She heard the distinct sound of coins exploding over the hard wooden floor. She imagined all the dirty rubles rolling around.
“Out,” Ilia commanded.
Pavel was through his door before she was able to sit up straight in her seat. She absently wondered how they moved as if time had no effect on them. They kept mostly calm while she fought back the vomit.
Liza was still lost when she was pulled from the truck. She’d wrapped her pants around her right hand, intent to put them on the first second she wasn't in fear for her life. She held them tight as Ilia righted her next to the door.
She jumped as the tailgate slammed. Pavel walked from the back of the truck carrying bags and guns. He’d removed his sport jacket—the standard attire of her minders—and had a large black gun nestled up under one arm, and a smaller black gun held under his other arm. He carried a third gun with both hands, looking like a character from one of those silly American action movies.
As best she could tell, Ilia only had one handgun. But he kept his sport jacket on.
Desperate to follow their lead, she asked in a not-so-sure voice, “Do I get a gun?”
“If we wanted to get shot, yes,” Ilia said with a chortle.
She leaned so she could see Pavel, but he was distracted with his gear.
“Follow us,” Ilia said in his command voice.
The two men moved in sync as they led her to the back of the store, through a dainty red curtain she’d never bothered to peek behind and up a flight of steps.
“When we get up top, get me linked with Omon, Pavel.”
“Da!” he replied breathlessly. Pavel bounded the stairs two at a time, but Ilia only made her do one at a time. She did her best to keep up. When she showed any sign of slowing he would tug her wrist without remorse. It was four flights of pain.
“Ouch,” she cried at one point, knowing it was pointless to voice the complaint.
They made it to the top landing when the bare bulb overhead flickered off and then back on. When the light returned, she noticed a small waste bin stuffed with an infinite number of cigarette butts. Pavel tried the door, then began to kick at it. He had to try several times and in the process the bin tipped over—washing them all in the stink of a dirty ashtray. Finally, he broke it open and tumbled through.
“Some mudak padlocked it,” he called back to Ilia. “But that didn't stop me.”
Ilia dragged her toward the light of the roof, but she yanked back with the first gunshot. He didn't let go.
Pavel had put the big gun onto the tar paper roof and had his small handgun pointed at the body of a young man lying twenty feet away in a growing pool of blood.
“Go!” Ilia released her arm and pushed her in the direction he wanted them to go. She forgot about the body as the pain of the stairs and running consumed her.
Pavel took the lead and jogged lengthwise down the row of buildings, leading them all not to the front of the store, but the end of the block nearest the police. They had to jump small gaps between sister buildings, but Liza had no problem clearing them, even without pants on. All the hours she had to spend in the gym to keep her shape and, hence, to keep her position as a wealthy man’s wife paid off. But her muscles stilled burned.
When they reached the last building she peeked over the small ledge to see the street below. Police were everywhere.
The forklift truck carrying the Omon riot wall had gotten about a quarter of the way down the block. She shifted so she could get a better view of where the two sides were bound to meet. It was going to be right at the lonely-looking gold car Yuri had given her for their third anniversary.
She turned to see what the men were doing.
Ilia had his hands up. Pavel was in the middle of raising his. Their guns were at their feet.
“Why are you holding up your hands?” she asked.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to hold guns near two hundred pissed-off riot police?” His attitude reminded her of any number of schoolteachers. Who could doubt something so obvious? How could you ask such a dumb question?
It didn’t help that he made perfect sense, but she had no gun to worry about.
When no one seemed inclined to shoot them, both men dropped their hands but kept them folded in front of them, so they could be seen. The shooters on top of the mobile wall were about five feet below their level, and moving to the right. Toward Constance's boutique.
They studied the scene for a minute, then Ilia ordered another move. “We’re going to walk along this edge until we’re back at the boutique. Go Pav.”
Pavel led with haste but kept his large g
un down low, out of sight of the police.
Why are we sticking around? She dare not ask as Ilia was in his zone.
Her bosses drove her where they wanted her to go. She had to obey.
The chess pieces headed toward each down on the street. The shooters on the moving wall served up a steady drum beat of death as runners got ahead of the main crowd and threw themselves at the police. The volume and intensity increased as they arrived over the boutique again. The door they’d come through remained half-open.
Below, the line of foot police had smartly moved aside so the riot wall could sweep the street in front of it. They’d formed up on the sidewalks, which were the only points of contact they’d have with the people approaching on the ground. Liza saw it as a big sandwich. The men on the sidewalks formed the two pieces of bread. The beefy middle was the twenty-foot moving wall.
I should be a LeMarque's having lunch right now, she thought with sadness.
The mobile wall stopped moving precisely where Ilia said it would. The giant forklift vehicle held the wall aloft for a final moment, then let it descend to the pavement. The metallic thud rattled the old building under her feet. Omon had picked their spot to meet the feral crowd.
“Ha! Look at that, bitch. Serves you right,” Ilia jeered.
In what had to be a deliberate act by the man operating the lift, he’d dropped the massive blockade right on top of her car, crushing it almost flat.
She sucked in her breath and prepared to scream every curse word she knew at the lift driver but stopped as she realized what was happening with the rioters.
5
The crowd was now a ball of chaos rolling with inevitability toward the blue line. The riot police fired their rifles into the leaders, but just as ramming them had the opposite effect from what she expected, the guns were doing little more than attracting more of the bloody crowd. They appeared as if they’d been in gunfights wherever they’d come from.
“What’s wrong with them?” she cried.
She shouted as the first rioters made it to the wall. “Turn around!”
There was no way to be heard.
“My god,” she said with sadness, hating what was about to happen.
The men on the wall fired straight down. Instead of single shots here and there, they switched to rapid fire. The intensity spiked as the people below withered under the barrage of bullets, as any normal person would.
But that didn’t stop them.
The boiling crowd caught up to the leaders and effectively smashed them against the wall. The riot took on a life of its own. The bright flashes and craning men on top of the barrier attracted the attention of every person who saw them. The hooligans at the front were crushed by those behind and soon the new stepped on the old. The surge became real and the wall didn’t seem so high.
Men behind the blockade worked with animation as they tried to secure some large metal feet attached to the tow vehicle. Its tires slowly skidded backward.
That's when the street lit up with flame.
Pavel and Ilia both cursed loudly and dropped to the roof. Liza backed away from the heat, too, but couldn't pull herself away completely. She was drawn to the horror. The big gun on top of the Omon riot wall wasn't a water cannon as she had imagined. It was something far more effective for this unruly crowd.
A long thin jet of fuel squirted far out into the crowd, then exploded in fire a second later.
Her hair blew back in the rush of hot air.
“Why is this happening? This shouldn't be happening. Not in the shopping district,” she added with no logic whatsoever. Her brain was mush as it watched people who looked just like her run toward the fire.
The men either didn't hear her, or didn't care. They stayed much lower than her.
Another burst of gas shot out when the first died down. Big sections of the riot turned into mosh pits of death as the burned people flailed on the ground—they were the only ones who seemed to stop in the face of resistance.
Meanwhile, the policemen on the sidewalks had their hands full. Though they weren’t getting the brunt of the attack, they were also being crushed as the crowd pushed into them. A few batons swung down, but the scrum enveloped the first line of police in seconds. There was only one way to blunt the tide—the rattle of gunfire echoed from down there, too.
The long bursts of the flame cannon sent partially burning bodies screaming in agony and frenzy toward the laughably frail shield lines at each end of the wall.
They’re insane.
The crowd was crazy for willingly engaging the police, but her real amazement was for the police. Why they stood there against such odds was as confusing to her as why Ilia had brought her to this exact spot.
The flesh and bone of the dead amassed as each body was knocked down by the guns, burned beyond recognition by the flames, or smashed to pulp by the crowd itself. It didn’t take but a minute before the wall appeared to be less than ten feet tall. Waves of burning people fell, only to have more trample their remains.
“Pavel,” Ilia said without emotion.
The younger man nodded. Somehow he knew what his boss wanted. She watched in wonder as he fiddled with the big gun and pulled a long chain of bullets from a discrete black courier bag he’d been carrying.
She crouched down next to him and forced a smile. “Do you carry anything else besides guns?”
Unlike Ilia’s, his eyes were bright and full of life. But his words belied that playfulness. “I also carry ammo.”
He grinned and pointed to the black bag.
“Did you know this would happen?” In all the years she’d been under their supervision, she’d only seen flashes of the handguns when they sat down to watch her at restaurants.
“This? No, you can’t plan for this. But Ilia,” he nodded to the other man, “has us carry all this gear no matter where we take you. He says you can never be too prepared. I guess he knew what he was talking about.”
He pulled a lever on the gun and the belt seemed to latch on. With apparent ease he tossed the long chain up onto his shoulder and smiled at her like he was about to pull a prank on a classmate. “Ready for something cool?”
Again, forcing her smile, she nodded.
Pavel got on one knee and set the barrel of the gun on the low wall at the edge of the roof. For a split second she thought he was going to shoot the police, but he angled the monstrosity down toward the crowd. He stood there for a few seconds, as if savoring the moment.
“Shoot them,” she yelled.
“Protecting peace,” he said to himself. Or maybe to his gun.
Pavel depressed the trigger and she jumped in response, even though the street was already a shooting gallery. She cupped her hands over her ears, but it merely took the edge off the jet engine-level of noise a few feet away.
The gun pounded and she wanted to run away but she forced herself to look below. Pavel had found the perfect angle to blast into the front line the attackers against the wall. Blood splashed from each individual strike and soon the wall was coated in blood and gore almost all the way to the top.
A few men on the wall's walkway turned to Pavel, leading her to think they were going to shoot him, but they turned back to their own gun work.
After twenty seconds, Ilia yelled for him to stop. Somehow Pavel heard the request.
“We’ve got to save some. This isn’t going to end well,” Ilia instructed with unnatural calm.
Pavel squatted to tend to his metal friend, but Ilia continued to observe the battle below. She looked to the police with the shields. Their line was being swallowed by the fringes of the larger creeping horde as it squirted its way through the gaps on each side of the steel wall. The crazies seeped into the voids left open as policemen fell.
She was no tactician, but she could see the whole sandwich was about to get eaten.
6
“Pants!” she exclaimed to herself.
While both men were distracted, she unwound the pants from her hand
and thrust her foot through the scrunched up leather pant leg. Whatever was coming her way, it suddenly seemed important she not be bare-bottomed when it arrived. Crouched there, the sounds of the battle seemed far away.
The chatter of guns had the fury of a cold thunderstorm. She imagined sideways rain and an ill wind blowing the suicidal people into the gaps on each side of the road. The police, she admitted, never had a chance.
The pants were stubborn around her thighs. Usually she could take her time and work them on properly, but the dirty roof, sweat of exertion, and unnerving gunfire demanded just the opposite.
With one resigned look down, she plopped her butt onto the roof so she could get a grip. When that didn’t speed things up she fell to her back and arched herself to get them over her waist. It was embarrassing but necessary.
Ilia caught sight of her and stopped whatever he’d been doing. She avoided his leering, soulless eyes.
I’m alone in my master suite. I’m alone in my master suite. I’m alone—
The mantra played over and over until she was on her feet doing the pants dance to get them to properly hug her hips. As she cinched the last button, she turned toward Ilia to attempt to project confidence that his peeping didn’t scare her—but he’d already turned back to the battle. The stubby gun in his hands reminded her that she was scared. Of the battle and those mentally deranged people, yes. But also, she couldn’t deny, of him.
Pavel was stuffing the shiny belt of ammo back into the black bag. He’d probably been watching her get dressed, too, but it didn’t bother her as much.
She put her hands on her hips in victory, like she’d shot the lion on safari. Pavel lifted his head just as something buzzed through her hair below her left ear. A distinct crack followed an instant later.
While she slapped at her neck, confused as to what happened, Pavel grabbed her wrist and pulled her down below the edge of the roof.
“What happened?” she tried to say. It came out as more of a puzzled whine.
Ilia screamed something and Pavel nodded behind her toward his partner. While she wallowed in doubt, the two soldiers got her on the move. Vaguely aware it was happening, she let herself be driven along the edge of the roof until they were far away from the police.
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 2