‘Crap,’ Jim muttered to himself, reaching for his Leatherman.
Tom’s jaw clenched and he gripped the M16 tighter.
Annette visibly shook with fear, but she kept herself under control.
‘Breathe,’ Jim whispered to her. ‘Relax.’
Which of course was ridiculous with two gunmen bearing down on them just a few feet away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Eva and Marcus were crouched at opposite ends of the serving counter. From Eva’s position on the left edge, she could see around to the door that led into the kitchen; the tin of beans had come to a stop.
She just knew there was someone in there. The atmosphere had shifted in some subtle, indefinable way. Marcus was some thirty feet away at the other end. If Eva craned back she could just about see his head poking out of the side, his eyes focused on the door between the cafeteria and the boardroom. She gave him a nod to confirm that they had all the areas covered, though she hated the idea of keeping her back to the boardroom.
In the force, she had had to learn to trust her partner, so now she pictured Marcus as a cop in uniform, backing her up with years of training and practice under his belt. She turned her attention back to the kitchen, pistol in hand, a round in the chamber.
From the boardroom, Eva heard a muffled voice say, ‘Yeah, it’s under control. They’re not getting away now. I’m about to finish it.’
There was no reply. Must be on a radio, Eva thought, which indicated that there were more people around than she had thought. She glanced over to Marcus and pointed to her ear. Marcus nodded, confirming he had heard the voice too.
She let out a quiet sigh and tried to ease the discomfort in her legs as she knelt with her back to the counter. Her muscles were starting to cramp, a spreading heat turning the fibres into hard, painful knots.
The door to the boardroom opened, and then closed a second later. Footsteps squeaked on the vinyl floor. Eva stole a quick glance around the edge of the counter and saw a tall male in filthy grey coveralls – like the ones worn by the man Annette had shot. Like the woman they had killed, he too carried an M16. He was too far away for Eva to tell if he was infected or not. Given that he wasn’t in a HAZMAT suit, she had to assume he was.
The man scanned the room, using the barrel of the rifle as a kind of pointer. First he looked to his right, towards Marcus’s end, and then slowly swept back towards Eva. She realised she was staring and quickly moved her head back behind the counter before she was spotted.
As she did so, her quadriceps burned with cramp. Her left leg jerked in a spasm, kicking a previously unseen piece of cutlery across the floor. It clanked with a metallic ring against a table as she scrambled back to a crouching position. She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable moment of being found out, but a few seconds passed, and the man continued his scanning, having obviously not heard the chink of cutlery.
She swore to herself, gritted her teeth against the cramp in her thigh, and moved across the galley behind the counter and towards the kitchen. Once inside, she glanced around quickly, holding her pistol raised from a kneeling position, still certain that someone was in here, but it was completely silent and she saw no sign of movement.
She smelled tobacco smoke faintly in the air, but couldn’t remember if that had always been there. In tense situations, she had often found her senses heightened, alerting her to sights, smells, and sounds she would not have noticed otherwise. Satisfied there was no immediate danger here, she crawled around the open kitchen door so she was completely out of view of the rifle-wielding guy in the cafeteria.
Through the crack in the door where the hinges met the frame, she could just about make out the man kneeling and scanning around. Then he stood, grunted, and headed straight for the kitchen.
Eva stood up, put her weight on her good leg, and waited for the man to come into view. She would have to aim around the open door to get the shot, but it was better than being a sitting duck.
The man entered the kitchen. There was just an inch of wood between them now. She considered shooting through the door, but didn’t want to risk it. The rifle was far more powerful and she didn’t want to waste precious rounds.
She backed away a step so she could safely raise her arms.
The barrel of the rifle extended beyond the door, and kept growing as the man slowly entered. Now Eva could see his shoulder, then his torso and leg. Up close, she could see he had the telltale red sores around his eyes. He breathed out that fetid stench that even managed to penetrate through Eva’s mask.
She had a decent target. She raised the pistol, blinked a drop of sweat from her eye.
A hand from behind her flashed out and grabbed her wrist, pulling it down.
Eva struggled against it, but she wasn’t strong enough. Another hand wrapped around her mouth. She was lifted up off the floor an inch and was pulled back into the dark recesses of the kitchen, and then around a large floor-to-ceiling freezer.
Eva bit down on the fingers, but the grip held. A muffled voice in her ear said, ‘Be quiet. There’s another one of them just outside.’
From her new position she had an angle past the freezers, through the door, and into the cafeteria. The voice was right! Stalking through the cafeteria was another rifle-wielding figure in the familiar suit. This one was heading towards Marcus, who was crouched in a booth.
‘I’m a friend,’ the voice said.
Given her position, she had no other choice but to trust him.
They watched the rifleman come farther in, round a large freestanding oven in the centre of the room, and turn his back to the freezer. When he got close enough, the grip on Eva’s wrist relaxed and before she even had time to react, her ‘friend’ had stripped her of the pistol, shoved her aside, and struck the back of the second man’s neck with it.
The friend was wearing a HAZMAT suit, visor up. He put the rifleman into a chokehold and quietly slid him back into the shadows behind the large freezer. He yanked his arm to the side, snapping the neck with a sickening wet cracking sound. The body went limp. The man in the suit quietly laid it down before spinning towards the door, raising the pistol and firing twice.
Eva saw the second figure in the cafeteria lurch wildly to the side, the blood spraying from the two rounds in his shoulder.
Marcus must have been watching every move. He leapt up from the booth, grabbed the rifle from the other infected man’s outstretched arm, and rammed the butt into the man’s face, shattering his nose.
The body crashed to the floor.
Marcus kept smashing the butt into the man’s head until it was quite clear that he would never move again. Marcus then turned towards the kitchen, raised the rifle, and snarled at Eva’s so-called friend, ‘Put the fucking pistol down before you’re next.’
Eva saw an expression on Marcus’s face she’d never seen before, and guessed this was the gangland version of him, the one who did what was necessary. All the rumours about his violent, ruthless side suddenly didn’t seem so spurious now.
But before Eva could tell him to calm down, the ‘friend’ darted behind her. He put one arm around her neck and pressed the pistol against her temple. ‘You first,’ the man growled.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They had no way out, with two men coming down either side of the row. It would only be a matter of seconds before they were found.
Tom, with the rifle in hand, leaned close to Jim and Annette and whispered, ‘You two make a run for the door. I’ll cover you. We don’t have any time.’
Annette turned pale at the thought. Jim didn’t much like it either. The two armed men were less than twenty feet away. They’d be shot point-blank.
‘Go!’ Tom insisted.
Jim removed the Leatherman tool from his pocket and flipped out the serrated blade attachment. He tensed his body, ready to launch out from behind the shelf unit. If he could take one of them off guard and give Tom a shot, they might be able to get Annette out safely, leaving them two on one.
‘Right there, Cal!’ a voice shouted.
Jim froze for a second, pressing his back against the shelf.
Tom wasted no time opening fire – and neither did the other two men.
The explosion of rifle and pistol fire so close to him made Jim wince. He gripped the blade tighter and moved his body around so that he covered Annette, who was crouched into a ball. Tom leaned around the edge of the shelf unit, took a shot, and then ducked back behind.
A burst of semi-auto rifle fire exploded a few inches to Jim’s left, blowing out wooden shelf fragments.
Annette let out a scream as one of the bullets struck her pack of supplies. Jim held her tighter and inched away from the now-destroyed wooden panel.
When the rifle fire stopped, Tom thrust his arm around the unit and fired twice without looking. The first shot was greeted with a high-pitched yell, the second a grunt. There was the sound of a clattering rifle and the thump of a body hitting the floor.
‘Cal?’ the voice to Jim’s left yelled. There was the sound of running footsteps going back down the aisle, away from Jim and the others. Jim pictured the man going around the other side to see what had happened to his friend.
‘You motherfuckers!’ the voice screamed before another burst of rifle fire exploded to the right. Tom flew back, dropping his gun. The figure turned the corner. His face was contorted into a mask of rage and hate – and covered in red, ugly sores. He fired again at Tom, striking him in the chest.
Jim screamed, ‘No!’ He dove for the rifle, but the other man kicked it behind him and then kicked Jim in the face, sending him sprawling onto his back, next to Tom.
‘Say your prayers, bitch,’ the man said, aiming the rifle at Annette.
Jim clenched his jaw against the blinding pain in his face and dove for the rifle again. His shoulder crashed into the man’s knees, making him fire above Annette’s head.
With the gunman unbalanced, Jim pushed him to the side, grabbed the rifle, flipped over, and fired the remaining rounds of the magazine – three shots – into the man’s lower back. Spent, he dropped the gun and flopped back to the floor, his head spinning with dizziness. His vision blurred and he felt like he was going to throw up. Annette managed to slip to the side before the man collapsed forward onto his knees. Blood dripped to the floor and he eventually slumped onto his face. His back continued to rise and fall, and there was a slight gurgling sound in his chest.
‘Tom!’ Jim said, trying to get Annette’s attention. ‘Check Tom.’
Annette hunched over Tom, her lips moving, saying something Jim couldn’t hear. She checked his neck, his wrist, then opened his navy sweater. A few seconds went by, and then Annette sat back on her feet and her head dropped to her chest.
Eventually, after what seemed like an impossibly long stretch of time, she turned to Jim and just shook her head. Tears dripped down her cheeks.
Jim closed his eyes and let the pain in his head continue to bite. He ignored it, feeling numb from his toes to the top of his scalp. They got Tom.
Tom was dead.
It didn’t seem real. It seemed like a mistake. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go down, he thought. Tom was the hero; he was the guy who had saved Jim and got him back to the flotilla in time to stop Stanic. Tom was the guy who’d got the computers working so they could decrypt the information and find this place.
He should have succeeded.
That’s how it works, damn it!
Annette sobbed and placed a hand on Tom’s still chest.
Jim stared on in disbelief. For a moment, he thought perhaps Annette was mistaken. But no, she wouldn’t make that sort of mistake; she’d seen enough death in her time on the flotilla. They all had.
Which made it even more galling that the gunman who had shot Tom was still breathing, despite Jim having put three rounds into his back. The indignation burned in Jim’s guts. He forced himself up, ignoring the flares of light in his vision and the piercing agony in his head, and, clutching his knife, staggered to the man and stood over him. He bent down and grabbed the man by the hair, jerking his head up, exposing his neck.
‘Please . . .’ the man begged, blood bubbling from his lips.
Annette stood up, rushed over to Jim, and placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder, but he just shrugged her off and leaned in closer to the man.
‘Who the fuck are you people?’ Jim asked. ‘What do you want?’
The man coughed out a phlegmy clot of blood. ‘Go to hell.’
‘I’m sure I will some day,’ Jim said. ‘But you’ll be there sooner if you don’t answer my questions.’ Jim brought the serrated blade to the man’s neck and pressed it until it broke the skin. The man tried to squirm from his grip, but Jim pulled back harder on the man’s hair until the bones in his neck clicked under the pressure.
‘Who are you?’ Jim bellowed.
‘Ahh . . . Ahh . . . Twen . . .’
The man’s body lost all tension. A dark stream of blood dripped slowly from his lips.
But Jim didn’t stop. He continued to shake the man, screaming the same questions over and over. ‘Who are you? What is this place? What happened?’
He received no answer.
The man was gone.
‘It’s over,’ Annette said, gently placing her palm on Jim’s arm. ‘Let it go.’
This time, Jim didn’t shrug her off. He let go of the man’s head. It thumped to the floor with a wet thud. Jim stood up and reached out for Annette; the dizziness overwhelmed him, stealing his balance. Annette supported his weight and helped him step away from the bodies and the damage.
When they got to a clear area of the stockroom, Annette helped Jim to sit down with his back against a wall. She sat next to him, her arm around his shoulders, and cried.
Jim let his breathing return to normal before he turned to face her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. She simply nodded and buried her head in the crook of his arm. He pulled her into a hug.
The two of them continued to embrace, clinging to each other as the adrenalin and fear-energy subsided into grief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Having a pistol pressed into the side of her head was not the most desirable experience Eva had ever had, but it wasn’t the first time.
‘We really don’t need to do this,’ Eva said. ‘It seems clear we have a common enemy.’ The pressure around her neck eased, the man seemingly reacting to her words.
He breathed heavily and remained still. She guessed he was thinking about the situation. This was good. If you could get a perp out of their reactionary mindset and get them reflecting, then rational actions usually took over.
‘Who are you?’ Marcus asked, without lowering the rifle.
Eva doubted he would be able to hit the man from his position twenty or so feet away without first hitting her. She suspected the man knew this. His voice sounded confident when he replied with, ‘US Fleet Admiral Marvin Johnson . . . or, I guess, former Fleet Admiral, now that there is no US to speak of.’
Marcus lowered the rifle an inch at the same time that he raised an eyebrow. ‘You in charge around here, then?’
‘Not quite,’ the Admiral said. ‘It’s . . . a difficult situation right now, a situation your arrival has greatly complicated. Listen, I’m on your side – we’ve been watching you. We saw you bury Julianne – the woman who met you at the airlock. I can explain more, but we have to move quickly. More of that lot are swarming the base.’
He removed his arm from around Eva’s neck. She spun to face him. He held the pistol away from her.
He was a tall man, standing at least half a foot above Eva. That must have put him at 6’3” or 6’4”. He was dark-skinned with deep pockmarks on his cheeks – no sign of infection, though. A thin dusting of grey-white hair covered the sides of his head. In front of his penetrating hazel-brown eyes, a pair of broken wire-rimmed glasses sat unconvincingly on a wide nose.
He noticed her looking at him closely and smiled, showing a healthy grille of cream
-white teeth. It was a genuine smile, she decided.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m not a carrier – unlike those out there.’
‘You mean the infection?’ Marcus asked.
‘Yeah. You’ve seen what it does to people – the guy who attacked you lot when you first arrived – that’s what we’ve been dealing with for the last few years. Every month, there’d be another case within the remaining A20.’
‘A20?’ Eva asked.
‘Allied Twenty,’ he replied, then rubbed a hand across his chin, the palm scratching against two-day-old stubble, the sound of dry leaves blown across concrete. ‘The ones not wearing suits are all part of A20 – and all carriers. The A20 was the group President Gracefield set up before the drowning. It was just supposed to be a trade agreement with twenty allied countries. Their main aim was to counteract the economic – and possibly military – might of a China–Russia duopoly.’
Marcus moved closer until he stood against the counter. He had lowered his weapon, easing the tension in the room. ‘So why is the fleet admiral not in with this allied group? Do something they didn’t like?’
Marvin let out a cold, cynical laugh. ‘Yeah, something like that. Let’s just say that when the world drowned, I no longer agreed with Gracefield’s increasingly polarising ideas. I couldn’t stand by and watch him continue his descent into madness—’ He broke off in mid-sentence. ‘We can have a history lesson later. We can’t stand around here for long, while the others are swarming the place.’
‘How many are there?’ Eva said.
‘At last count, we identified thirty-three of the forty-eight left behind. Nine of those were with me – sadly, that number has diminished of late.’
‘So how many actually came here?’ Marcus asked.
Marvin sighed. ‘About a hundred and fifty. Gracefield picked one hundred lucky, and non-infected, souls to leave.’
From behind Marvin a screech sounded. He twisted round, then returned to face Eva and Marcus. ‘Just stay calm. These two aren’t with A20 either.’
Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2) Page 15