by D. J. Molles
Then Lee stood up and turned away from LaRouche, leaving him sitting there at the base of the tree. He’d walked maybe three paces before he heard a nasty crunch behind him. He turned and looked and saw LaRouche, lying limp against the tree, blood pouring from his nose.
Morrow turned and jogged back up to Lee. “Didn’t want him shooting us in the back. He’ll wake up in a couple minutes. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Lee jogged a little closer to the edge of the woods and stopped, holding up a hand. Between the columns of tree trunks he could see the bright encampment that the Marines had made, worklights and headlights from the trucks shining on the artillery pieces, casting long, dusky shadows across the clearing. There were still a few people shooting, but it sounded like it was coming from the opposite end of the clearing. The last few, hard-charging Followers, trying to keep the faith while the rest of them ran.
The Black Hawk was circling the clearing at a slow, steady speed. At random intervals one or both of the door gunners were spitting out bullets at targets in the woods that only they could see. The door gunners had the same thermal hybrid night vision that Lee and the Delta men had. Lee and the three men with him had IR designators on their helmets and torsos so that the gunners could differentiate them from the enemy.
But the Marines wouldn’t be able to see that.
Lee shoved the headset of Delta’s squad comms off of one ear and brought his other radio handset up, transmitting to Tomlin over in Smithfield. “Hey, Brian, this is Lee, can you copy me?”
First he heard a horrible roaring noise, and then Tomlin’s voice, almost faintly: “Yeah, I got you five-by-five, but it’s a little fucking noisy over here.” Tomlin stopped transmitting, but not before Lee heard a rifle shot. Then Tomlin came back, sounding strained. “Lee, I’m not gonna lie to you, buddy, it’s gettin’ a little dicey over here. What’s it looking like on your end?”
Lee rubbed his hand over his face. Smelled dirt and gunsmoke clinging to his skin. “We’re working on it. I’m in the woods looking at the Marines right now. We’ve pushed the attack back. It was the Followers, if you can fucking believe that shit. I need you to get on the horn with Brinly and tell him we’re coming out of the woods. Don’t let his men shoot us down.”
“Okay, I copy you. I’ll tell them to hold their fire.”
Less than a minute passed before Lee could hear someone in the Marine camp shouting, “Cease fire! Cease fire!”
“He says you’re clear to come through,” Tomlin relayed after another few seconds.
Lee rose to his feet and jogged out of the woods. The Black Hawk had finished its last revolution and was coming into a hover and descending. Out of the shadows behind a cluster of Marine trucks, Lee could see First Sergeant Brinly’s form striding out to meet him. He extended his hand and Lee clasped it, the two sharing an oddly familial hug.
“What the hell?” Brinly said, still out of breath. “I had ’em right where I wanted ’em and you scared ’em off.”
Lee’s mind was so consumed with the clusterfuck of things happening that it took him a half second to realize that Brinly was joking. He recovered with a haggard smile. “I figured a Marine wouldn’t thank Army boys for saving his ass.”
“Seriously, though,” Brinly said, “I’m glad you guys came.”
Lee was already angling for the helicopter as it began to settle onto the ground. He gestured for Brinly to follow him. “That was the Followers, did you know that?”
Brinly nodded grimly. “Yeah, I figured it out.”
“How’s your situation? You still operational?”
“Yeah.” Brinly looked over his shoulder. “Got a few wounded. Three dead. But we can still fight. And we can still shoot them big guns.”
“Good, because we’re gonna need it. The plan actually worked.”
“You sound surprised.”
“If you had my luck, you would be, too.” Lee directed his attention forward and saw Carl slide out of the cabin of the Black Hawk as it touched the ground. Behind him, Mitch was helping Julia climb out.
“Lee!” Carl shouted, waving him on. “Let’s fucking go! We got maybe thirty minutes before we’re running on fucking fumes!”
Lee swore loudly. “That’s not enough time!”
“No shit,” Carl said, coming alongside Lee.
Lee faced him. “Carl, I can’t leave them on the fucking building.”
“You got some fuel hidden around here?”
Lee gathered a wad of spit in his mouth that tasted metallic and dirty. He spat it onto the ground at his feet. “We’re gonna have to play it by ear. By which I mean I fly out to pick up my people. And maybe we have to land this bird someplace else.”
“What?” Carl shook his head. “This is my only working chopper. I’m not landing it in a field somewhere and leaving it.”
“You can come back to it,” Lee said stubbornly. “I can’t leave my people on the building. I can’t do it. We have to pick them up. And if we stop fucking around and arguing about it, we might just have enough fuel to get there and back.”
“Not possible.”
“If you drop weight, you might make it. Drop the guns, drop the gear, and kick the copilot,” Lee said, firm to the point of insistence. “Just me and the pilot.”
“Fuck.” Carl turned away, and Lee could see the realization of facts coming over him: The time they were spending here arguing was only making the situation worse. The window was narrow, but if they took enough weight off the bird, then it was just inside the realm of possibility.
“Your men are needed here, anyway,” Lee said. “They need to watch the Marines’ backs to make sure those fuckers don’t try to push again.”
Carl whipped around suddenly. “Fine. Go. Get on with it.”
Lee didn’t wait for further approval. He turned to Mitch and Morrow and pointed at the Black Hawk’s cabin. “Help me dump everything. Guns, ammo, gear. If it’s not bolted down, dump it.” Lee stopped and turned, taking a moment to reach out and touch Julia’s arm. “You okay?”
She looked horrible and was being propped up by Mitch. But she nodded. “I’m fine, Lee. Go finish this. Harper would lose his shit if he saw you sitting around jaw-jacking with me when all of this was going on.” She smiled a wisp of a smile. “‘Shitfire,’ I think he’d say.”
Lee felt it in his throat and chest, the thick heaviness of loss. He turned away before Julia could make the cracks and fissures go deeper into him. He grabbed the radio handset and transmitted to Smithfield. “Tomlin, we’re on the way, buddy. You copy?”
On the northeastern side of the hospital, Tomlin was leaning out over the edge of the roof and firing down at the parking garage. The entrance was heavily barricaded, but it was the weak spot. Due to the construction of the parking garage, the infected would have to turn their backs on the hospital to rise to the next level, repeatedly running away, which was apparently counterintuitive to them. But though the infected didn’t seem like they were going to run the parking garage to get to the top, they seemed willing enough to climb it, and there were enough ledges and steel cables to serve as handholds. And they were starting to figure that out.
First one started to climb, but after Tomlin shot him down, another took his place, and then two more, and then three. Tomlin remained calm the first time, breathed deep the second and third time, but the fourth time, when three of the things lurched up and found impossible handholds and began to scale the sides of the parking garage, Tomlin could feel fear and dismay brewing up in his stomach and leaking through his system like radioactivity.
“They’re climbing the parking garage!” he screamed out behind him, trying to be heard over the din of the millions below them, but his own voice was barely audible, and certainly not to the others spread out across the roof, trying to tend to the four walls.
They can’t hear me. Do I run and shout it in their ears or stay here and focus on the task?
He heard an electronic buzzing next to his l
eft ear and realized it was the radio squawking at him, though he couldn’t hear the words. He leaned over the edge again. There were two of them now; one had dropped off or disappeared somewhere inside the parking garage. Tomlin forced air in and out of his lungs, no matter how badly his body wanted to seize up, and he fired, one, two, three, and took the two climbers down.
He leaned back in and grabbed the handset. He let his rifle hang on his chest and he pressed the radio to his ear with one hand, plugging his right ear with the other. “Lee, is that you? I can’t hear shit right now! Talk loud!”
Lee’s voice yelled into the mic, garbling the words, but at least they were loud enough. “Tomlin, we’re on the way right now. Are you holding out?”
Tomlin glanced over the edge again. There were four infected climbing now. And what about the backside of the parking garage? What about the two sides of the structure that he couldn’t see? Shit, shit, shit…“Lee, you need to hurry the fuck up! They’re climbing the parking garage right now! I don’t know how long we’re gonna be able to hold them off!”
“I copy, we’re goin’ as fast as we can.”
Tomlin dropped the handset, not worrying about reclipping it. He fired a volley of shots, clearing the wall below him of climbers, and then sprinted to Jared. He slapped the other man on the back and yelled at him. “They’re climbing the parking garage! Go to that side!”
Jared nodded and ran for the north wall.
Tomlin went to Joey and Brandy and relayed the same message.
Down below, the main entrance had been breached. Tomlin could see them pouring inside. But there was no way up except for the locked stairwell doors. And those would be tougher to breach. He hoped. Dear God, he hoped.
He went back to the northeastern wall. The other three were hanging over, firing faster now at the climbers.
“Choose your shots!” Tomlin yelled, sighting in his rifle on the torso of one as it managed to haul itself onto the second level. He fired once, toppling it back to earth. “Conserve your ammo!”
Lee, hurry your ass up…
TWENTY-THREE
ABSOLUTION
LAROUCHE WALKED THROUGH DARK woods, through blackness. There were dead men along the way. And the dying. The retreat had clustered around the southern side of the clearing, everyone trying to make it back to the staging point. Guns and ammo had been strewn along the way, along with bodies that had dropped and bled out, and some that were convinced they couldn’t go on.
They called out to him as he passed, but he ignored them.
He had dropped his rifle. It was heavy. But he kept his Beretta M9. The old piece-of-shit pistol. The one that he hated so much. The one that he’d used to murder Father Jim. He held it in his right hand, his strong hand, and with his left hand, he gripped the oozing hole on the right side of his body.
It was more than a flesh wound; he could tell. It was bleeding a lot. LaRouche ignored that, too, because it did him no good to dwell on it. No one would be able to put the blood back in him, and he had nothing that could stop the bleeding at this point but his own dirty fingers. And besides the bleeding, there were things that it had ruined inside of him. He could feel them, and the pain was excruciating with every step. The entry wound was just above his right buttock, and the exit was close to his navel. There were some important things between those two points, he was pretty sure.
But he was capable of walking. So he walked.
In the darkness, he heard his own name being called, and he finally stopped¸ because none of the other wounded had called to him by name. He turned to the sound of the voice and could just barely make out the shape of someone, huddled against a tree.
“Clyde?” LaRouche rasped.
The man extended a hand. “Help me.”
LaRouche went to him slowly. It was Clyde, as he’d thought. The man’s hand remained outstretched, but LaRouche stopped a few feet from him. Clyde had no weapon. His chest was a bib of blood that poured from bullet wounds to the chest and snot and spit that ran out of his nose and mouth.
Clyde coughed, retracting his hand to cover his mouth reflexively.
“This is kind of like how we met,” LaRouche observed quietly, speaking barely above a whisper. “But reversed. Now you’re huddled in the dark and it’s me who found you.”
Clyde regarded him with glistening eyes. “LaRouche… don’t…”
LaRouche sniffed. “What’d you think when you found me, Clyde? Who did you think that I was?”
“I thought you were a killer.”
“Yeah.” LaRouche shrugged painfully. “There’s some truth to that. But I wasn’t always this way, you know? I was a good person, once. I think. And you know what? It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, everyone still knows the difference between right and wrong.”
“LaRouche, would you shut the fuck up and help me?”
LaRouche watched his heavy breathing cloud the air in front of him. “What side do you think we’re on, Clyde? You really believe we’re in the right? Or is it just more convenient to trick ourselves? Because that’s what I think. I think we’re just real good at tricking ourselves.”
“I’m dying here.”
“Nah. You’re dead.” LaRouche looked away from him. “So am I. Just a matter of time. But I ain’t gonna help you live. I’ve got a bit of time left to do some right things. And letting you die, well that’s the first right thing I’ve done in a while.”
Clyde bared his bloody teeth. “LaRouche, you cock…”
LaRouche took another painful step, bending down and slipping the pistol into his pocket. Then he used both of his hands, one to clamp over Clyde’s mouth, and the other to pinch his nose closed. Clyde started to struggle, but he was farther gone than LaRouche had even realized. He was weak and fading fast, and his clawing hands couldn’t get LaRouche’s hands off of his face as the oxygen burned out in his lungs.
“You’re a rapist and a murderer. Everyone in this fucking gang of yours is another rapist and another murderer. And you encouraged them, you brought them up, you taught them everything they know. You deserve to die. I do, too, but I’ve got some shit to do before I go.” LaRouche leaned in further, putting his body weight into Clyde’s face.
Clyde’s eyes bulged wide and his struggling increased, but it still wasn’t strong enough.
LaRouche had nothing else to say to him. So he just held him there for another minute, until the movement stopped, and then he held it for another minute more, to make sure. With each passing second, the fire in his side and in his guts was growing, becoming unbearable. When he was sure that Clyde was dead, he released him, and then struggled back to his feet.
The pain roared through him, but seemed to abate when he was standing again. It felt better to be standing. He continued on through the forest, heading south, following the lines of retreat, back to the staging point.
The Black Hawk ripped over nothingness. Even the sky above had some ambient glow to it. But the earth below them was just solid black, until Lee pulled the NVG monocular over his eyes and it turned green again. Green, but at least he could see the trees blurring by underneath them, the streets extending out like pale veins across the countryside, the clusters of houses and buildings. Sparks of warmth bursting here and there in his vision, but he couldn’t tell what they were.
He pulled the NVGs off his eye and leaned up into the cockpit, where the pilot sat alone, steering the bird toward Smithfield. “How far out?” Lee asked, scanning the dials and trying to find which one showed their fuel. He’d been in plenty of Black Hawks in his time, but that didn’t mean he knew how to fly one.
“We got five minutes to the hospital and twenty minutes of fuel.”
“Fuck me,” Lee murmured. He stayed there, hanging over the pilot’s shoulder.
The pilot had a different pair of NVGs on than the rest of them. These were a full set of goggles. They provided better depth perception, a necessity for someone piloting a multi-million-dollar war machine in tight tolerances. T
he pilot leaned forward in his seat, looking like he was craning his neck.
Lee felt the helicopter rise. “You see something?”
“Yeah, I think I got eyes on that signal fire. Hold on…”
The helicopter ascended suddenly. Lee felt it pulling him down, and then it leveled off.
The pilot seemed to shrink back into his seat. “Holy fuck, man.”
“What?”
The pilot pointed straight ahead, his voice quiet with awe. “Look at this shit.”
Lee could see the twinkling of the signal fire far ahead of them, like a star below the blackness of the horizon. But everything else was just empty space. He flipped down the monocular again. The image that came through froze him solid. All that came out was a breathy, nonsensical syllable: “Ohhh…”
If he didn’t know what he was looking at, it might have seemed beautiful.
They were flying over something that Lee had never seen before. Directly below them there were countless pinpoints of light, little figures that looked like blobs of white and orange and yellow. But the closer he looked to Smithfield, the denser they became. And ahead of them, the town of Smithfield was a shimmering mass of heat signatures. Like a beating, throbbing heart, and all the roads leading into the town and branching out through its suburbs were burning arteries. In the center of it all, Lee could see the signal fire burning at the top of the Johnston Memorial Hospital. The rest of the town had caught fire. The heat signatures clustered around the hospital, so dense that they seemed like one undulating mass. Like the hospital was a fissure in the earth’s crust, and lava was boiling out. In yards and parks and forested areas, they twinkled like stars, but in the streets and open places the heat signatures were shoulder to shoulder and packed in tight. An ocean of them. A sea that had been set aflame.