Thunder and Ashes

by Z. A. Recht

The third skipped off the top of the desk and embedded itself in Mason’s shoulder just as he came in for his landing. He grunted as he felt the round strike home, and clasped a hand to the wound. Blood oozed out from between his fingers.

  Derrick pulled himself to his feet and raised his pistol, moving around the desk to get a better view of his target—but Mason was gone. For a split second, Derrick wondered where his opponent had vanished to, then got his answer as Mason appeared on the opposite end of the desk. He’d rolled underneath it and come up on the other side.

  The two combatants froze in place a moment. Derrick had his pistol pointed directly at Mason’s chest, with his back to the shattered window. Mason, unarmed, stood a brace of feet from Derrick, one hand still clasped over his bullet wound.

  “Round one went to me,” Derrick said, “and it looks like round two is going to be a K.O.”

  Derrick tightened his finger’s grip on the trigger.

  At the same moment Mason lashed out with a desperate kick, shoving Derrick backwards. Derrick’s shot went off just as Mason’s boot connected with his chest.

  Both agents fell backwards. Mason had felt the punch of the second bullet striking home, and he wondered for a moment if it was a fatal hit. He lay on the office floor, staring up at the ceiling. He tried to draw breath and found it hard, as if something heavy were standing on his chest. He figured the bullet had pierced a lung.

  Then Mason heard wry chuckling coming from the other side of the office, and he managed to raise his head just enough to see Derrick.

  The NSA agent was still standing, but it wasn’t because he chose to. Mason’s kick had driven him back against the windowframe, and Derrick was now looking down at a large shard of glass protruding from his chest. He was pinned to the window.

  “I’m sure . . . it’s not as bad . . . as it looks,” Mason wheezed, coughing. He felt a bit of froth and blood on his lips and knew then for certain that he had a punctured lung on his hands.

  Derrick didn’t respond. His free hand reached up and touched the large glass shard, coated in his own blood.

  “Didn’t think . . . I’d go like this,” Derrick said, letting out a long sigh. His eyes slowly closed, and his head slumped down to rest on his chest.

  The pistol slid from Derrick’s lifeless hand and clattered to the floor.

  Mason stared at the corpse of his former partner for a moment, and then remembered his own predicament. He coughed again, and more blood trickled out of his mouth. He knew he had a matter of minutes to get help—otherwise, he’d be joining Derrick in death.

  Slowly, inch by inch, he began to drag himself toward the hallway.

  Juni and Matt faced off with the two guards who held Anna. They were in a kind of stalemate. The guards were backing up, heading deeper into the facility, and Matt and Juni were following cautiously. Matt still had his rifle trained on the man holding Anna, but the guards were loathe to open fire. Both sides were worried about hitting Anna in a crossfire.

  “Just let her go, man,” Matt said. “We don’t have a fight with you. You’re free to go. Just leave us the doc.”

  “Can’t do that,” responded one of the guards. “We have our orders.”

  “Yeah, ‘I had orders,’ I’ve heard that before,” Matt said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Let’s just all calm down, and try to be reasonable about this,” Juni said, holding up her hands in a placating manner. “I’m sure there’s a way we can work this out without—”

  Suddenly a gunshot rang out in the hallway. Both guards jumped, but the shot hadn’t come from Matt.

  It had come from the guard Matt had knocked out and left for dead in the corridor. The man had recovered, drawn his backup weapon, and fired.

  Matt blinked, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He wavered on his feet and looked down at his chest. Blood ran down the outside of his clothing, soaking it and dripping to the floor. The bullet had hit him center mass.

  “Shit,” he murmured.

  The assault rifle fell from Matt’s nerveless hands and clattered to the floor. Matt was right behind it: he dropped to his knees, looked up at Juni with surprise and regret etched on his face, and then pitched forward, laying motionless.

  “Matt!” Juni yelled, dropping to his side. She turned him over, but his eyes were already glazed over and lifeless. The shot had pierced his heart. Juni nearly sobbed. Matt had been part of her group since nearly the beginning of the pandemic.

  Suddenly the sound of rounds being chambered drew her attention, and she looked up. The guard that had shot Matt had recovered his assault rifle, and all three of the uniformed men were pointing their weapons at her.

  “Up,” said the one holding Anna. He gestured with his pistol to enunciate his words. “Up. Get up.”

  Juni slowly rose to her feet, hands held in the air.

  “Re-tie her,” said the one holding Anna.

  The guard that had shot Matt pulled Juni’s arms behind her back and secured her with another zip-tie. The three guards and their two prisoners picked up the pace, hustling Juni and Anna off to a deeper section of the facility.

  Up on the rooftop, the three guards Derrick had sent were busily setting up their rifles on the edge of the roof, taking aim at the shamblers below. They’d heard the gunshots coming from the entryway beneath them, and had guessed those had been the beacon for the infected now making their way closer and closer.

  “There weren’t this many to deal with when we came through,” muttered one of the guards as he opened fire on the shamblers below, dropping one with a neat head shot.

  “Yeah, well, we were a lot more quiet about it,” said the second.

  “Jackson and Smith must have a lot of company at the front door to be firing like that,” said the third, referring to the two guards in the entryway. “Derrick said no unnecessary shots.”

  “I’d call these shots necessary,” said the first, firing again and dropping another shambler.

  “No argument here, buddy. If those things get inside . . .”

  Suddenly the three uniformed men heard the sound of an engine revving. They looked up, startled, and saw in the distance a camouflage-painted vehicle heading toward the facility, moving straight down the center of the street.

  “What the hell?” asked one.

  “Looks like Army,” said the second, grinning. “We got that backup we called for after all!”

  Behind the large assault vehicle came a second, similarly painted truck, this one armor-reinforced. Gunfire was erupting from both of the vehicles, and they left behind a trail of shambler corpses in their wake as they approached.

  The first man narrowed his eyes, squinting at the vehicles. The lead truck had just popped open a rooftop hatch, and a man wearing a BDU top but a civilian cover appeared, grasping the handgrip of an M-249 on a tripod.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, studying them intently. “Those aren’t Army!”

  He swung his rifle around, taking aim at the man on the turret.

  “What if they’re friendlies?” asked the second.

  “You remember what Derrick said: shoot first, questions later,” said the first, and took a shot at the turret operator.

  The bullet spanged off the top of the vehicle, leaving a nasty dent, and immediately drew the attention of the man on the machine gun. He swiveled the barrel in their direction.

  The three rooftop guards dove for cover as a virtual hailstorm of bullets rained down around them, kicking up chunks of rooftop and zipping past their ears. After a moment, the gunfire shifted, and one of the guards had the tenacity to raise his head above the roof’s ledge. The turret gunner had shifted his attention to the shamblers, and was busy mowing them down.

  Automatic fire tore into the infected, and brackish blood sprayed across the street as the stumbling corpses jerked and spasmed before falling. The truck was clearing a path to the research facility.

  The first of the guards on the rooftop decided to try his luck one more time. He rose up from be
hind the ledge and took careful aim at the gunner on the turret. He didn’t pay any attention to the pickup following closely behind it, and didn’t notice the barrel of a rifle pointed out of a firing slit in his direction.

  Before the guard could squeeze the trigger, a single shot rang out and he fell back onto the roof. A bullet had caught him just above the eye. The two remaining guards had the good sense to stay down as the vehicles neared the entrance, crushing the bodies of infected beneath their tires as they rumbled along.

  In the entryway, Trev felt like he was swiftly running out of time. The two guards he’d surprised had opened fire on him, and he’d returned the favor. The problem was both parties were behind good cover and Trev didn’t have infinite ammunition: in fact, all he’d carried with him were two spare magazines for the pistol, plus the one in the pistol itself, and his rifle. His rifle was already empty, and he was down to his last magazine for his pistol. He had no intention of engaging the guards with his baton; that would be suicide.

  As he traded a few more rounds with the guards, he heard the sound of the vehicles outside. He wondered for a moment whether he was about to be flanked, gunned down by enemy reinforcements. He dismissed the thought. If that were the case, he was done for and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  Trev risked a glance outside and saw a large utility truck, running full-bore, slam into a group of shamblers that were closing in on the facility’s entrance. A cow-catcher, welded onto the front of the vehicle, threw most of them out of the way. A pair were caught up underneath the catcher, and even inside Trev could hear the crunch of bone and flesh as the truck’s tires ran them over. Their mangled bodies tumbled out from beneath the vehicle’s rear and rolled to a stop in bloodied heaps in the middle of the road.

  The truck slammed on its brakes and squealed to a stop. Trev heard more than saw the vehicle shift gears into reverse.

  Jackson and Smith, Trev’s two foes, seemed as surprised by the arrival of the vehicle as he was, but they quickly recovered and opened up on Trev’s makeshift bunker with their rifles, sending couch stuffing and plastic shards flying. Trev ducked down lower and hoped one of the rounds wouldn’t find him.

  The truck’s tires squealed again as it backed up straight into the entryway, effectively blocking the main doors. Another vehicle, a pickup truck, came screaming by on the road, shots ringing out from the bed as it passed. What few shamblers remained on the streets were being dropped one after the other. Whoever the new arrivals were, they knew how to deal with the demons.

  The back doors of the utility truck were flung open and several men in mixed civilian and military garb jumped out, throwing open the facility’s doors and entering with weapons at the ready. Jackson and Smith turned their attention from Trev to the newcomers, opening fire on them as they entered the room.

  The response from the newcomers was immediate. Two dropped to the ground into a prone position, returning fire. The other two moved to either side, firing shots from upheld pistols.

  Jackson and Smith, caught by surprise and in the open, were cut down in the hail of gunfire. Smith took a round to the chest and was flung backwards onto the floor. Jackson was stitched by several rounds, and he crumpled against a wall, sliding slowly down to the floor and leaving a trail of smeared blood behind himself.

  In the ensuing silence, the four newcomers held their position, watching the bodies of Jackson and Smith for any movement.

  Trev decided to take that moment to stand up from behind his bunker.

  Instantly, the four newcomers swiveled in his direction, weapons leveled.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Trev yelled, holding his hands and pistol up above his head. “Friendly! I think! Who the hell are you guys?”

  “Who the hell are you?” came the reply.

  “Trevor Westscott. I’m here with Mason and Demilio—and you are . . . ?”

  “Denton,” was the response. “You said Demilio? The doctor?”

  “That’s the one,” Trev said, wiping sweat from his forehead as he surveyed the bodies of Jackson and Smith. “You are the guys she was trying to meet?”

  “That’s us,” Denton replied. “What’s with the hostile fire? We figured we’d be coming into an infected zone but we weren’t counting on the bad guys with guns.”

  “I honestly have no idea,” Trev admitted, shaking his head. “I stayed outside to deal with a few infected, and when I came in these two bastards were waiting for me. I don’t know where everyone else went. I guess they took them back through there.”

  Trev pointed at the double doors that Jackson and Smith had been guarding.

  “All right,” Denton said, nodding. “So we’re not out of the woods yet. We’ve got the main doors blocked. One moment.”

  Denton plucked a radio from a pocket and clicked the handset.

  “Ghost Three to Ghost Lead, come in, over,” he said.

  “Ghost Lead to Ghost Three, go ahead, over,” came the reponse, crackling slightly.

  “Sherman, we’ve got problems. There are hostiles in the facility; apparently, they’ve got your doctor friend held prisoner. Let’s get everyone in here and make sure this place is secured, over.”

  “Roger,” came the reply. “We’re coming back. Out.”

  The pickup truck squealed to a stop alongside the utility truck, blocking off a set of windows. The back of the pickup popped open and another small group of survivors jumped out, all armed. They made their way to the utility truck, entered it through the passenger door, and one by one appeared through the rear doors of the vehicle and entered the facility.

  “Everyone,” Denton said, waving a hand in Trev’s direction. “This is Trevor. He’s on our side. Trevor, this is our group.”

  A few waves and nods completed the ad hoc introductions.

  “All right, what’s our situation?” said a late middle-aged man dropping out of the rear of the utility truck. “Give me a full SitRep.”

  Another older man, dressed in full Army uniform save for a simple baseball cap on his head, turned toward the speaker.

  “Sir, we’re all operational. Brewster’s still manning the .249 and covering the entrance. The trucks should keep out any unwanted visitors.”

  “Trevor says that these shooters were sent by some guy named Sawyer,” Denton added, gesturing at the corpses of Jackson and Smith. “He says there are probably more, and that the doc we’re here to find is probably being held deeper in the facility.”

  “There are definitely more,” chimed in another man.

  “Explain, Krueger,” said the late-middle aged man.

  “Well, General, I popped one of them on the rooftop after he tried to take a potshot at Brewster. There are probably a couple more still on the rooftop and I’d bet a few more in the facility somewhere—probably right with the doc, keeping an eye on her.”

  “All right,” said the General, nodding and folding his arms. “Thomas, take Jack, Denton and Mitsui and secure the ground level. Find Anna and bring her back here safe and sound. If anyone fires on you, kill them. Get them to surrender if you can.”

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas growled.

  “Krueger!” said the General. Krueger snapped to attention.

  “Sir!”

  “Take Rebecca, Trev here, and Mbutu and head up to the roof. Get rid of those guards, then hook back up with Thomas and help him finish securing the facility. We’re finally here, gentlemen and ladies! Let’s make it ours!”

  The men in the room moved out with a purpose, slamming open the double doors and heading deeper into the facility with the practiced ease of seasoned survivors. Their weapons were all held at the ready and they moved professionally, at a half-crouch, checking each corner before taking it and covering one another with overlapping lines of fire.

  Thomas and Krueger’s groups split off from one another when Krueger located the stairwell that led to the roof. He nodded at Thomas—a quick gesture meant as a good-luck wish—and took off at a jog up the stairs, followed c
losely by Rebecca, Mbutu, and Trev.

  After Krueger’s footsteps had faded, Thomas continued to lead his miniature squad deeper into the facility. He came to a four-way intersection and stopped, gesturing for everyone to take cover.

  As Denton squatted with his back to a wall, Thomas advanced on the object of his attention: a corpse in the middle of the hallway.

  Matt’s body had been left where it had fallen. Thomas checked it over, noted the civilian clothing and the lack of a weapon as well as the cut zipties lying near the young man’s body.

  “We’ve got a dead prisoner here,” Thomas called over his shoulder. “Let’s get a move on—don’t want the same thing to happen to the doc.”

  Luckily for Thomas, someone had gotten close to the corpse and had stepped in the pool of blood that had spread out from the young man’s torso. A few bloody footprints led off down a side corridor, telling Thomas exactly which direction the guards had taken their prisoners.

  “This way,” Thomas ordered, pointing off down the hall. “Go slow. Check your targets and your corners. And from here on, silence.”

  Denton and Jack nodded in reply. Jack turned to face Mitsui and passed the message along by holding a finger up to his lips. Mitsui nodded, a look of grim determination on his face.

  The four turned down the side corridor and advanced, vanishing around a corner. They knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up with the prisoners—and their guards.

  The moment they vanished around the corner, Mason’s hand appeared in the doorway of the office where he’d fought Derrick. He pulled himself forward another couple of feet, succeeding in getting his head and shoulders into the hallway. He saw Matt’s body and gritted his teeth, both against the pain of his wounds and the pain of seeing another comrade lost.

  He thought he’d heard voices in the hall a moment before, but it was empty now, save for Matt’s corpse. Maybe he was starting to hallucinate or go into shock.

  Can’t let either of those things happen or I’m a goner, Mason thought.

  Mason coughed again, blood flecking his lips. He didn’t have much longer.