Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

  The group froze. The sound of shuffling feet came from the direction of the storefront, and they swiveled their heads in its direction. There, silhouetted in the broken window, was the bloodied figure of a sprinter, staring at the group with wrathful, bloodshot eyes and wild, unkempt hair. It sucked in a quick breath.

  Anna’s eyes went wide. She knew what was coming next—the growl. The thing would roar, and every sprinter and shambler within earshot would come down on their heads.

  Before the roar could come out, however, Mason appeared behind the sprinter. He’d slung his MP-5 and drawn his combat knife. In one swift motion he slit the sprinter’s throat, and it gasped as blood burbled out through the cut. It slumped forward to its knees and collapsed face-first in the storefront, head and shoulders hanging out over the edge of the broken window. Mason stepped out of the storefront and knelt next to the dead sprinter, cleaning his knife on the corpse’s clothing before resheathing it.

  “Holy shit,” Matt stage-whispered. “You knew he was there?”

  “I suspected,” Mason said. “Let’s keep going.”

  The group crossed a four-way intersection. A heavy traffic collision had occurred there at some point. Empty cars were backed up half a block in each direction, and five vehicles were all piled into the center of the intersection, frames bent and windows shattered from running full-speed into one another. Mason glanced up at the dark traffic lights and wondered if the power had gone out and caused the accidents.

  When they reached the next block, Anna grew visibly excited. She pointed down the street, tapping Mason on the shoulder.

  “There it is!” she said. Her finger pointed out a squat brick structure that blended in perfectly with the industrial facilities around it. It stood only one story high and had few windows on the ground level. The front of the building was similarly spartan in its design: a pair of windows allowed a view of the street from within, and a pair of glass-faced double doors led the way in.

  As Mason turned his head to look at the building, he could have sworn he saw a flutter of movement on the rooftop. He narrowed his eyes and stared, standing in place. The rest of the group silently waited behind him for news.

  A pair of pigeons suddenly took off from the roof of the building, winging it deeper into the ruined city. Mason huffed a sigh. Nothing but birds. He waved the group onward. Only two more blocks to go.

  Trev was taking note of the buildings they passed. He was the last in the line of survivors, the rear guard, and he felt a combined sense of duty to keep an eye on their asses and a sense of curiosity about the environment they were embedding themselves in. The storefronts that ran opposite the industrial zones were widely varied in their offerings and many of them were dusty and boarded up. Trev wasn’t sure whether they’d closed their doors before the pandemic or after, only that they held nothing that would be of use. Two of the stores were consignment shops; Trev marked them down in his head as possibilities. After all, a person could only wear the same clothes so many times before they started to fall apart.

  When they reached the final block, Mason halted the party and waved his finger in a circle, beckoning them closer. He knelt on the pavement and the others followed suit, casting glances over their shoulders every now and then.

  “All right, listen up,” Mason said. “We don’t know what’s in that building now, but we’re going to assume it’s full of infected, so lock and load. When we get up from this huddle, we move straight for that building and we don’t stop for anything. We get inside, we clear the first room, and we lock it down. Once we’re safe in that room, we plan our next move. Roger?”

  “Got it,” Matt said.

  “I’m with you,” Trev replied.

  “All right,” Mason said, double-checking the safety on his MP-5 to make certain it was off. “Let’s roll.”

  The group sprung up from their huddle and darted out into the intersection—this one blessedly clear of traffic accidents and abandoned cars—and made a beeline for the building Anna had pointed out.

  They made it about halfway.

  A gutteral roar interrupted their run, and Mason and Trev cast about for the source of the noise. It could only have come from an infected. When they looked down the side street they were passing by, they spotted the source.

  A sprinter had been lounging in the shade provided by a shop’s stoop, and upon sighting the group of survivors, it had pulled itself to its feet and growled. When Mason and Trev spotted it, it was still standing in its shady spot, but it was staring directly at them, arms held out to its sides, fingers extended as though ready to claw its way through them.

  “Shit,” Mason murmured. He raised his MP-5, drawing a bead on the infected’s skull. He knew the gunshots would bring more infected running, but he didn’t see any other choice. Before he could fire, a hand reached out and lowered the barrel of the weapon. Mason looked over to see Trev.

  “I’ve got this,” Trev said, reaching down to his belt. He pulled free a simple baton, snapped it open, and waved the rest of the group on.

  “Whoa, whoa, you’re kidding me—” Mason started, eyes widening at the sight of Trev’s choice of weapons. Melee combat with the infected was, in essence, suicide—if one got blood on oneself or was so much as scratched in the fighting, that would spell the end of the combatant. Junko stopped Mason’s protests by placing herself between Mason and Trev.

  “Let him,” Juni said. “He’s done it this way before. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Even as Juni spoke, two more sprinters appeared in the roadway, jumping out of darkened doorways and running up out of cellars. Now Trev faced three infected, and still Juni kept Mason from involving himself.

  Trev looked over his shoulder at Mason.

  “Let me go, man,” he said. “I can take three demons. Hell, I can take five of the fuckers. Get everyone inside—I’ll do this my way. No noise, no more company.”

  Mason knew Trev was right: a single gunshot could have several city blocks’ worth of infected bearing down on them, ironically a much louder and better-suited call to dinner than the roar of the infected. Trev’s baton, on the other hand, was soundless. Secretly, he felt Trev was going to die in the process of letting the rest of the group get away.

  But if that’s how he wants to go out, Mason said to himself, who am I to stop him?

  “Move out!” Mason said, shoving Anna in the direction of the research facility. “Go, go, go!”

  “But we can’t just—” Anna protested, pointing in Trev’s direction.

  “Yes, we can!” Mason growled. “Go! Now!”

  The remaining four survivors ran straight for the facility doors, leaving Trev alone in the middle of the intersection, baton in one hand, the other balled into a white-knuckled fist at his side. He tapped the baton against his leg steadily, staring down the three infected.

  Trev glanced up at the sun. It had already begun to slide down toward the horizon. He’d missed high noon.

  Oh, well, Trev thought. Any time’s a good time for a showdown.

  “Well,” Trev said after a moment, raising his voice just loud enough for the infected to hear, “are you three just going to stand there, or are we going to dance?”

  It may have been Trev’s voice that jolted the infected into action, or perhaps it was some unspoken agreement between the three, but all of them broke out into a flat-out run toward Trev at that moment, arms flailing wildly. The distance between Trev and the infected closed rapidly.

  The entire time the infected were running at him Trev remained motionless, save for the metronome-like tapping of the baton against his leg.

  Then they were upon him, and the battle was joined.

  Mason and Matt were the first two to reach the main doors of the research facility. Mason fired off a quick prayer that they weren’t locked, and found his prayer answered when he pulled on the left-hand door and it swung open easily. Matt pulled open the right, ushering in Juni and Anna, who both entered with weapons at the ready
.

  Mason and Matt followed suit, allowing the doors to shut behind them.

  Mason readied his MP-5 and took in the room they found themselves in. It was a wide, open space; a reception area. A receptionist’s desk stood across the room, protected by thick safety glass, and a pair of steel doors directly in front of them led to the rest of the facility. These were the first things Mason noticed.

  The second thing Mason noticed was the furniture in the room, which had been dragged to either side of the main entrance and piled high to form a mish-mash pair of walls, hemming in the little group in the center of the room. Mason’s stomach did a flip-flop. It didn’t feel right.

  Anna didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. She was focused on the steel double doors and the tiny black card reader embedded in their center. The red light on the reader was out, as were the overhead lights. That was good. Security was down, which meant they’d be able to access the entire facility. She began to walk toward the double doors.

  Suddenly, the room became a flurry of activity. On either side of the group, from behind the furniture-walls, appeared men in urban camouflage, wearing balaclavas and wielding assault rifles. Four had popped up on either side of the group, and for a moment, all was chaos as threats, surprised curses and orders were shouted back and forth.

  “Drop the weapons!”

  “You’re surrounded and outgunned! Lay down arms!”

  “Where the fuck did these guys come from?” Matt blurted.

  “Weapons down! Down! Now!”

  The room slowly silented. The four survivors stood back-to-back in the center of the room, surrounded by the well-armed men. Mason calculated their odds of survival and swallowed. This was a perfectly executed ambush—these men had known they were coming.

  That meant Sawyer, which in turn meant laying down his weapon was as good as killing himself. Sawyer would see him executed if he was caught. At the same time, though, opening fire on these men in their current situation was as good as killing himself as well.

  “Mason?” came Anna’s voice from over Mason’s shoulder. “What are we doing?”

  Fingers tightened on triggers around the room, and for a moment the only sound was the clink and clatter of gear rustling on pistol belts.

  Mason frowned, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. All that traveling—only to be caught the moment they arrived.

  “Lay ’em down,” Mason softly said, lowering the barrel of his MP-5. He dropped it to the floor, and slowly unholstered his pistol, tossing it to the floor as well. Around him, his companions did the same, disarming themselves.

  “Hands up!” came a command from one of the masked, uniformed men.

  Three of the ambushers came out from behind their cover, approaching the survivors carefully, weapons still trained on their targets. They kicked the weapons away from the survivors, back toward the main entrance, and once they were satisfied, they backed away, lowering their own weapons.

  The steel double doors that led deeper into the facility burst open, and the small group of survivors spun around, half-expecting a new threat of some kind. Instead, framed in the doorway was a single man, dressed in nearly-identical fatigues as the ambushers. Instead of a balaclava, however, this man went bareheaded, and instead of wielding a rifle, he merely carried a pistol in a low-slung hip holster. He walked forward slowly, fixing Mason with a stare.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Mason said, eyeing the newcomer. “I didn’t think you’d stick with Sawyer after all this, Derrick.”

  Special Agent Derrick, NSA, quirked a grin at his former partner.

  “Sawyer’s working for the good of the country, buddy,” Derrick said. “He’s out to find a cure. That’s what we should all be after.”

  Mason chuckled. “That is what I’m after, Derrick. That’s why we’re here. To try to find a vaccine.”

  “Vaccine?” Derrick said, raising his eyebrows. “No, Mason, we want a cure. There are millions of people out there we can save. Think about it—no more of this killing, no more innocents dead—just hit them with a dart gun and inject them with a cure. Think of the lives we could save.”

  “You’re not going to find a cure,” Anna said, looking down at the floor.

  “The prodigal doctor speaks,” Derrick said, still grinning. He shifted his attention from Mason to Anna. “We’ve been after you a long, long time, doc. You know how many people have died trying to find you? You should have stayed put. We might’ve already had the cure if we’d had you working on our side all this time.”

  Anna shook her head. “You didn’t hear me. I said you’re not going to find a cure. You almost never find a cure for a virus. The best you can do is vaccinate the remaining population—”

  “Shut up,” Derrick said, his face reddening. “There is a cure. There has to be a cure. And you’re going to find it—once we get you back east. We haven’t just been bumbling around these past few months. We’ve got an entire hospital staff rounded up and ready to help you, Doctor.”

  “There isn’t a cure,” Anna said, dejected. “I don’t know how to convince you.”

  “You can’t, because you’re lying,” Derrick growled between clenched teeth. “I’ve heard it straight from other doctors, straight from our leaders—there’s a cure, and you’re a piece of the puzzle. You’re going back east with us, Doc.”

  “You’re the man with the gun,” Anna said, shaking her head.

  “That’s right, I am,” Derrick said, quirking another grin. “Foster!”

  One of the uniformed men snapped to attention. “Sir!”

  “Get Sawyer on SatCom.”

  The man nodded and jogged over to one of the piles of furniture, dragging out a large black duffel bag. He unzipped it, revealing a menagerie of odds and ends, the largest of which was a satellite phone. He pulled it free, set it on one of the room’s couches, and worked on establishing a line directly to Sawyer.

  “One minute, sir,” Foster said, fiddling with the phone.

  “Secure the prisoners,” Derrick said, nodding in the direction of Mason and the others.

  Two more uniformed men approached the group from behind, pulled zipties from their pistol belts and firmly tied the group’s hands behind their backs. The plastic zipties dug into Mason’s skin and hurt, but he pushed the pain to the back of his mind. If Derrick was calling Sawyer on a satellite phone, that meant that he still had a chance to get out of his current situation before he was shot as a traitor. He began wracking his brain for just such a way out.

  Next to him stood Matt, eyes silently roving from one guard to the next. The young man didn’t say a word and hadn’t protested when the men had ziptied his hands behind his back. Now that the guards had backed off, Matt moved his hands slowly, pulling free a tiny pocketknife that had been clipped to the back of his belt. He clicked it open and began to saw away at the ziptie. It was slow going, as he had next to no leverage, but he kept going, a steady back-and-forth.

  “Sawyer on line, sir,” Foster said, standing up from the satellite phone and handing the receiver to Derrick. The NSA agent stepped forward and accepted the receiver, holding it up to his ear.

  “Derrick here,” he said.

  The other end of the conversation was inaudible to the group, but Mason could guess what was being said.

  “Yes, sir,” Derrick said. “Flawless. They walked right into us.”

  A pause.

  “Give me a second, Sawyer,” Derrick said into the mouthpiece. He held the receiver down against his chest and surveyed the four captives. “Let’s see, now. You I know, Mason. And Doc, I recognize you, too. I don’t know these other two. Where’s Ortiz?”

  Mason scowled at Derrick and looked away.

  “You shot her,” Anna said, staring Derrick down. “Back on the highway a few days ago.”

  Derrick shook his head twice. “I didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “One of your men did.”

  “Ah,” Derrick said, nodding. “That explains i
t.”

  He picked the receiver back up.

  “Sawyer, I have Mason and Demilio here. They have two unknowns with them. Ortiz is dead; she didn’t make the journey,” Derrick said. He paused, listening to Sawyer’s response, and eyed Mason. “Well, at least he finished him off. One moment.”

  Derrick lowered the receiver again.

  “Mason, I have to tell you, Sawyer’s mighty pissed off about what you did to those men on the interstate, especially the one you worked over. He told me to tell you he’s going to take it out on your hide.”

  “Tell Sawyer I said ‘fuck you’ for me, Derrick,” Mason said, looking away.

  Derrick raised the receiver once more.

  “He said exactly what you said he’d say,” Derrick reported, then chuckled. “Roger. ETA?”

  A long pause as Derrick waited for his response. Mason was busily trying to piece together the conversation using just Derrick’s end of it with little success; as close as he could figure, Derrick was merely reporting the captures and setting up a meeting to pass them off.

  “That’s a hell of a long time, Sawyer,” Derrick said suddenly. “No, no, we can hold until then. We brought enough with us to last two weeks. The prisoners might not get much in the way of eats in that time, though.”

  Derrick grinned at something Sawyer said on the other end.

  “Not a problem at all. Half rations it is. As long as they’re in working order, right?” Derrick asked. “Roger that. Derrick out.”

  The NSA agent dropped the receiver into Foster’s hands and faced the captives.

  “All right, folks, listen up,” Derrick said. Everyone including the uniformed men perked up. “We’re going to dig in here for a little while and wait for Sawyer to come and take the Doc back east. We’ve got a nice set of windowless offices in the back we can use as cells in the meantime. Foster, Hurley, David—bring the prisoners with me. Jackson and Smith, stay here and guard the main entrance. You other three, get up on the roof and resume surveillance.”