Minotaur
Page 14
Looking up at the train now he saw the anxious faces of commuters and tourists staring down at him. He gave them a cheery wave to put them at ease and then turned to signal to his men. There were two doors on the train car, one at either end. He had four men—one to take the door, one to provide cover. Simplicity itself. He dropped his hand and the men hit the doors running, the pneumatic locks hissing open for them. The metal side of the train pinged in the morning sun. Through the windows Charles watched his men take up stations inside the train, covering each other just like they’d been trained.
There were a couple of screams and some angry shouts, but nothing Charles wasn’t expecting. Civilians started pouring out of the train car in a nearly orderly fashion. About as orderly as you could expect from citizens with no military discipline or training. Charles shouted for them to head as quickly as possible to the safety of a big box hardware store a hundred yards behind him, and they did as they were told.
“Lieutenant, sir, we have him,” one of his squad called. The voice in his ear sounded pumped up and excited. “He’s just sitting there, looks like he might be asleep.”
Talk about your lucky breaks. “Well, whatever you do,” Charles said, “don’t be rude and wake him up. Are the civilians clear?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” another of the squad called.
“I’m coming up. Just keep your eyes open.”
Charles got one foot up on the door platform and grabbed a safety rail. He let his carbine swing across the front of his chest as he hauled himself up into the airlock-like compartment between train cars. The door that lead into the car proper was activated by a slap plate. He reached down to activate it.
Hell broke out before the door even had a chance to slide open.
“Sir, he’s moving—” someone shouted.
“—does not appear to be armed, repeat, I see no weapons—”
“What the hell? What the hell did he just—”
The door in front of Charles slid open and he looked into a scene of utter chaos. A man with a scraggly beard had picked up one of Charles’s men, and as Charles watched, the target threw the soldier into one of his squad mates, sending them both sprawling over the rows of seats. A third squad member came at the target with his carbine up and ready to fire.
The target reached forward, grabbed the soldier’s arm, and twisted it around like he was trying to break a green branch off a tree.
Charles heard a series of pops like muffled gunfire, but he knew what they actually were—the sounds of the soldier’s bones snapping, one by one. A second later the soldier started screaming. He dropped to the floor, down for the count.
Charles started to rush forward, to come to the defense of his men, but he nearly tripped over what he thought was luggage that had fallen into the aisle.
It wasn’t luggage. It was his fourth squad member. Looking down, Charles saw the man was still alive but broken like a porcelain doll. His mask was gone, and his face was obscured by blood.
Lieutenant Charles looked up at the man who had neutralized his entire squad and for a moment—a split second—he stopped and stared, because he couldn’t do anything else. The man’s eyes. There was something wrong with the man’s eyes. They were solid black, from side to side. Charles thought for a moment he was looking into empty eye sockets. But no—no—he could see them shining—
He didn’t waste any more time. He brought his carbine up and started firing in tight, controlled three-shot bursts. Just like he’d been trained. Charles had spent enough time on the firing range—and in real life, live fire operations—to know how to shoot, and how to hit what he aimed at.
Human targets, though, couldn’t move as fast as the thing in front of him. It got one foot up on the armrest of a train seat, then the other was on the headrest. Charles tried to track the thing but he couldn’t—it moved too fast as it crammed itself into the overhead luggage rack and wriggled toward him like a worm.
Suddenly it was above him, at head height, and its hands were reaching down for him. Charles tried to bring his weapon up, putting every ounce of speed he had into reacquiring his target.
The thing was faster. Its hands tore away Charles’s mask, and then its thumbs went for his eyes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Wellington was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where George Romero shot his classic zombie films. The acclaimed author is most famous for his online serialized zombie novels, the “Monster Island” trilogy, then published by Thunder’s Mouth Press. In 2006 he began serializing “Thirteen Bullets,” a vampire novel, at www.thirteenbullets.com. He lives in New York City. His first Jim Chapel novel, Chimera, will be out August 2013.
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By David Wellington
Minotaur
Coming Soon
Chimera
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Chimera copyright © 2013 by David Wellington.
MINOTAUR. Copyright © 2013 by David Wellington. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MAY 2013 ISBN: 9780062266590
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