Survivors

by Z. A. Recht

  Brewster looked at him for a moment longer. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  On the other end of the alley, Denton and Allen were running at a crouch toward the Dumpster. “Brewster, what the fuck was that? Over.”

  “Keep back,” Brewster said. “That, photog, was a Squad Automatic Weapon, and they nailed Jack pretty good. They might think I’m dead, so stay back. They come to investigate, our eye in the sky will let us know. Krueger? Over.”

  “Loud and clear,” Krueger said. “Keep an eye on your six, Denton. There might be another squad coming from that way. Over.”

  In the Dumpster, Brewster lay on the waste and watched the blood leak out of Jack Welder. Once the heart stopped, the blood slowed way down. Brewster shifted some, scooting his hips away from Jack’s body, his eyes never leaving Jack’s face.

  While Krueger was watching for movement out there, Brewster was waiting for movement in here. He gripped his automatic and breathed.

  “Why don’t I have a knife? Even Denton carries a knife. So why don’t I?” He sighed. “Mental note: get a knife.”

  Jack’s head moved.

  Behind Denton and Allen, something else moved. Another squad of four were gathered in the shadows.

  “Tangos downrange,” said one of them, a redhead named MacCleary. He sat out in front of the group, his M4A1 rifle aimed in the survivors’ general direction. He drummed his fingers on the M203 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel. “Take ’em out?”

  Reynolds, the team leader, held up a hand in response. “Not with that. Not until we know where the rest of them are. You saw what happened to Blue Squad.”

  Mac, shifting in his uniform, was clearly unhappy with this decision.

  “I say we take ’em out, bro. Then we find the rest of them and wipe ’em up.”

  Reynolds blew a breath out his nose. “Stand down, MacCleary. Birds are inbound. We should just mark their location and stand back.”

  Mac slumped over his rifle. “Fuckin’ airdales get all the fun.”

  True to his word, the sounds of the chopper got louder and louder. Reynolds turned to Kelley, frowning at the man’s three-day growth of beard. “I thought I told you to shave that.”

  Kelley sneered. Dee, the fourth man, copied him.

  “Whatever. Get on the horn, give the chopper pilot what he needs to know.”

  A single pop came from the interior of the Dumpster and the survivors frowned.

  “Christ in Heaven,” Denton said in a whisper. “Jack must have turned.”

  “I hate this waiting,” Allen said. “I mean, why can’t we go back—”

  He was cut off by the roar of a helicopter as it sped by overhead.

  “Fuckin’ gunship,” Allen said, shifting his grip on the MP-5 he still carried. “Did you see that? Where in the hell did they get—”

  The helicopter zipped by again.

  “This block isn’t that interesting,” Allen said. “I know, I’ve seen interesting architecture. This”—he shook his head—“ain’t it.”

  Denton held out his hand. His keen photographer’s eye had noticed something on the second chopper flyby.

  “That wasn’t the same helicopter.”

  “What?” Allen asked, and the helicopter came into view four blocks away, turning and racing over the rooftops.

  “Ah, shit,” Allen said, and the forward gun roared to life. Allen and Denton scrambled for cover, but the choppers were Apaches, and the three hundred rounds per minute of high-explosive, dual-purpose shells were making short work of all surrounding masonry and structures. Denton fell as a fragment of shrapnel zipped across the back of his knee without slowing down. He screamed for a couple of seconds, until the track of devastation laid down by the chopper’s gun silenced him.

  The helicopter was past and gone. Before it could come around for another strafing run, Allen bolted down the alley, back the way he’d come.

  As he ran by, Reynolds again restrained Mac from firing.

  “Look where he’s going. He’ll lead us right to the rest of them,” he said, chiding Mac, a pastime he was rapidly becoming tired of.

  The double doors to BL2 and BL3 opened slowly and Thomas came out at a fast duckwalk. Seeing the hallway clear, he waved Sherman and Stiles through. Then he stopped Rebecca.

  “You, go back to the Doc,” he said. “Let her know what’s happening.”

  He turned away and hurried with Sherman and a loaded-down Stiles along the corridor toward the bypassed safety checkpoint. Rebecca eyed the load that Stiles carried and made a decision.

  “In case you need to come back,” she whispered to him, propping open the double door with a clipboard from the wall outside BL3.

  “Tell me where you got these from, again?” Stiles whispered to Thomas as they approached the first checkpoint. The sergeant major shot Stiles a glance that shut him up.

  Something occurred to Thomas, then, and he stopped his forward advance. Instead, he turned to the recovery room, where Mason and Harris were bunked.

  With a quick movement, he opened the door and covered the room. Less than a second passed, and he was on his way back to the checkpoint. Thomas answered the question in Sherman’s eyes by drawing a line across his throat.

  At the door, Sherman waved Thomas on, looking more tired than he had in quite a long time. Part of him was glad that the men weren’t there to see him this way; he felt every one of his years on his back, on his neck, weighing him down and making him drag.

  Thomas motioned for Stiles to wait, and he passed through the checkpoint silently, an armed phantom. Several long moments passed before Thomas returned, waving the general and private through.

  “Armed men in the front. A lot of them. We should go around.”

  “To where?” Stiles asked.

  “The back,” Sherman answered. “The truck still there?”

  A gleam came into Thomas’s eye. “You bet it is, sir.”

  Sherman nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

  Thomas took point and Stiles followed, leaving Sherman to watch the rear. They reached the back of the Fac in a short time, and parked there was the truck they’d gotten from Jose the mechanic in Abraham. The SAW-249 was still mounted to the top of the truck, and Stiles whistled when he saw it.

  Sherman put his finger up.

  “Anyone else hear a helicopter?”

  As quickly and silently as he could, Stone made his way to the front doors of the Fac, M-16 in hand and a pipe wrench in the carpenter loop on his pants. The doors weren’t as impregnable as they looked, Hal had told him, and if he undid the three center bolts on each door, the crossbar inside would drop.

  “Well,” Hal had waffled. “It should drop.”

  That would make quite a clatter, Stone knew, so after that he could be in the spotlight and under fire. But, according to what Jenkins had said, the men inside were scattered through the first level with a minimal guard near the front.

  If he got through all right, it would be room-to-room fighting. The mercenary side of Stone told him that this would be an ideal time to beat feet, just like Jenkins and the man he’d shot . . . the rest of Stone, however, was against that notion.

  No, he thought. I traded up when I left Lexington. I traded up in quality, and I’m going to live to the ideal.

  Looking around, Stone took the wrench to the door and began working the bolts loose.

  Inside the Fac, in a darkened room across from Mason’s, Sawyer and one of his men watched as Thomas, Sherman, and Stiles exited the hallway. As the protected double door was propped open, an evil grin crossed Sawyer’s face, momentarily replacing the pain.

  He tapped the soldier on the knee—his name was Stephens—and pointed. “We go through there.”

  In the street, Allen ran. Brewster snagged his collar as he ran by the basement walk-down and yanked his drinking buddy back.

  “Gunship,” Allen wheezed.

  “Yeah, I heard,” Brewster said. “Denton?”

  Allen shook his
head.

  Brewster looked around, taking in the expectant faces of Mbutu and Mitsui, then Allen. They were all looking at him.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  “Brewster,” Mbutu Ngasy said, “you are all that’s left of the military command. I understand why you turned to Denton when the decision had to be made to search or not, but your crutch is gone, now.”

  “My crutch is dead,” Brewster said, looking into the darkened sky. “These streets are going to be crawling with infected. Apaches. Snipers. And who knows how many men are inside the Fac.” He sat on the stone steps and rubbed his mouth. “What a fucking day for a field promotion.”

  The helicopters made another pass over the street. As the sound of the rotors faded, another sound took over.

  “Hey, Brewster was right,” Allen said. “Crawling with infected.”

  Unlimbering a mirror from his pack, Brewster held it up over the end of the steps. Twenty or more carriers were stumbling and shuffling down the streets, converging on their alleyway. A minute passed.

  “All right,” he said. “They’re just milling around right now, but sooner or later they’re going to come this way. There are too many for them not to. We need to find a way inside . . .”

  “Right this way,” Allen said. Brewster turned to see Mitsui holding a door open and waving them all in.

  “What?”

  Allen shrugged. “Right, ask me like I speak fucking Japanese. Get inside, will you?”

  The group of four hustled in, Allen closing the door behind them.

  A flashlight cut a swath through the darkness, checking the four corners of the basement apartment they were in. Brewster fumbled in his pack.

  “What now?” Allen asked.

  Brewster gave him a grimace. “I feel like Chuck Heston. Hold on.”

  From his pack, Brewster pulled out a hand-drawn map and unfolded it. He laid it out on the back of a couch and smoothed it with his hand. “Okay, okay, we are . . . here. Right. Okay. I think we’re good. Krueger cleared this building last month.”

  “You think it’s still clear?” Allen asked.

  Mitsui sniffed.

  “You think shamblers can pick locks?” Brewster shot back.

  Allen put up his hands and walked to the street-level window.

  “Sure are a lot of them. I bet they don’t have a permit . . . whoops.”

  Three heads turned to Allen.

  “What does this mean, when you say ‘whoops’?” Mbutu Ngasy asked.

  Allen dropped the small drape and turned, putting his back against the wall.

  “Douse the flash,” he said, his eyes wide. “Or, don’t. I don’t know, which will bring more attention? There are people out there.”

  Brewster killed the flashlight and walked to the window. “Yeah, two dozen or more. Except they’re all dead already.”

  “No, I mean people. I think we found the other squad.”

  Brewster peeked out. He strained his eyes until he saw movement. “There they are. Quiet bunch. The carriers aren’t even looking at them.”

  “That is a nice trick,” Mbutu said.

  With a tilt of his head, Brewster said, “Yep. Let’s ruin it. Get ready to run.”

  “Run where?” Allen asked, his pitch raising several notes.

  Brewster shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Whichever way these guys run? Wait until the deadasses take off after them, then go the other direction.”

  Allen stared at Brewster. “That’s your plan?”

  One corner of Brewster’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah.”

  He held the flashlight out until it was more or less where he’d seen movement in the dark, then turned it on and waved it back and forth quickly, making a strobe of the area.

  One or two of the dead turned to look, but they kept on.

  “Brilliant,” Allen said.

  “Just wait for it. Okay. Mitsui, take my shotgun and put a round in the middle.”

  Quickly, the contractor took Brewster’s long gun and racked it once. He waited until Brewster had a finger in his ear, then pulled the trigger, blowing the window and curtain out into the street.

  “Duck!”

  Return fire came almost immediately, and the group could hear Brewster laughing over the ruckus.

  And then they could hear the moans over that.

  Up on his feet, Brewster ran to the door, cracking it open. “They went thataway,” he said, pointing to the right. “So we go thataway. Come on. Back to the Fac.”

  Omaha, NE

  1 July 2007

  2034 hrs_

  DOWN IN BL4, REBECCA was helping Doc Demilio out of her Chemturion suit.

  “They went off and I haven’t heard anything since, but I don’t want to just sit down here and wait.”

  Anna nodded. “I know what you mean. We should go up and see what else Thomas has in his armory.” She put down the Chemturion suit and worked her way into a set of coveralls. “I won’t be able to work, knowing that there’s something going on, anyway. Come on. We should grab a radio, too, so at least we can listen in.”

  Opening the security checkpoint for BL4, Doc Demilio found herself looking at the wrong end of an M4A1 rifle, held by a stranger in urban camouflage.

  “Hello, Doctor,” said a voice from slightly lower, and Anna looked down to see Agent Sawyer slumped down against the wall, holding a blood-soaked bandage against his hip. “This has been some time coming, I think. But I’m so glad to see you again.”

  The Doctor put her hands up. Rebecca, unseen behind her, drifted backward into the dress-out area, looking around for a place to hide among the racks of suits and trolleys, the latter still piled high with medical supplies from the previous couple of scavenging runs.

  “Sawyer,” Anna said. “You don’t look so hot.”

  The agent barked out a laugh. “Well, you should see the other guy. Come on, help me up. Just don’t try anything stupid, or my man here will ventilate a nonessential part of you.”

  Gingerly, Anna Demilio walked over to the downed agent and stooped to help him up. He was heavy, but he helped with his good leg enough for her to do it. He began shuffling her toward the door she’d just stepped through.

  “All right. Now, we grab your cure and head for the hills. We have a ride to catch back to Mount Weather.”

  The Doctor stopped the slow shuffle and looked at Sawyer with incredulity.

  “The . . . the cure? You came here and did . . . well, whatever it was you did for the cure? Jesus Christ, you’re a monster. A deluded monster.”

  Sawyer’s face lost some of its good cheer. “Fuck you, Doc. That cure is the result of research conducted under the authority of and bankrolled by your government, and you will—”

  He was cut off by the sudden peal of laughter from the Doctor’s mouth.

  “I can’t believe you people. Before yesterday, there was no cure. And the only reason we might have one today is all blind fucking luck.” She laughed more, harder, and Sawyer’s face reddened.

  His man, on the other hand, paled a bit.

  “What are you talking about?” he yelled, pressing in on the Doctor with his rifle raised. “Intel was that you’d developed a cure and ran with it. That’s what . . .” The rifle swayed a bit to a point between the Doctor’s face and Sawyer’s. “That’s what he said.”

  Krueger was having his own bad day.

  After taking out the last of the guerrillas that were plaguing Brewster and Company, a shot panged off the side of the handrail at the top of his watchtower. He rolled back smoothly, putting the thick metal walkway and empty drums between him and the countersniper.

  This, he thought, this is what it’s all about.

  From his pocket, Krueger took a small green memo book and flipped to a blank page. Withdrawing a Skilcraft pen from a pocket on his sleeve, he turned to where the round had struck.

  For a moment, he just looked, then started sketching. As he was drawing, a second round popped through an empty drum and care
ened off the wall of the tower above his head.

  “Thank you,” he said, finishing one sketch and starting on another. He lifted up to eye the hole in the drum . . . and the entrance hole.

  “Thank you very much.”

  Relying on his memory, he went through possible nests in the area surrounding the Fac that would provide a clear shot to his spot on the grain silo. There weren’t many. As he looked out, he crossed two off his mental list right off the bat; he could see them from where he was lying. Given the angle of the hole, those were off the list.

  He began scooting his way down the walkway, dragging himself around the side of the tower to the ladder on the other side. The helicopters had, by this time, started their strafing runs, but as long as he was pinned down, there was nothing Krueger could do for his teammates.

  Finally making it to where he thought he’d be safe from the countersniper, Krueger got to his feet and ran to the next ladder.

  “Checkpoint four. All clear,” said the man with the radio. The next thing to pass through his throat was four inches of steel.

  Stone eased through the unlocked and unguarded BL1 doorway, M-16 at the ready. He’d avoided most of the men stationed on the ground level of the Fac; not out of fear, but because he knew he would be no help to the Doctor if he was dead. And this direction was the way he’d need to go, according to Hal. There were three men who had died on his blade, and he kept one ear out for their discovery.

  He kicked a spent shell as he passed the room where they’d searched earlier, where the prisoners were, and they started with a horrible racket.

  “We’re in here!” one of them yelled, pounding on the door with the flat of his hand. “Hey! Hey! We’re with you guys! We came with Derrick! Let us out!”

  Stone put his back to the door and looked up and down the corridor. He kicked back once, and the pounding stopped immediately.

  “Just keep it down for now,” he said. “There are more of these bastards skulking around. I’ll be back to let you out after I clear this level.”