“I won’t do anything,” Annie whispered and glanced at Roy. He was standing there with his feet apart and wielding his blade like he couldn’t wait to start chopping heads. “None of us can be out here unarmed.”
Hughes scrutinized Roy. The guy had a gun as well as a sword. Hughes went ahead and handed one of the crowbars to Annie, then popped open the Suburban’s hatch and fished around in the back for Lucas’s lockpicks.
Annie kept her distance from Roy and scanned the area with her night vision. The building in front of her was a one-story bank branch. Beyond it, a wasteland of parking surrounded the husk of a grocery store.
The suburbs seemed a bit darker than when she had been there earlier. The moon was higher up in the sky yet more fully obscured by clouds than before. The only way to be sure she and her friends were sufficiently cloaked in darkness, though, was to take off her night vision and see what everyone and everything else would see.
She removed her monocle, and the world seemed to tilt sideways. She couldn’t see anything at all except a black horizon, a faint gray slab of pavement below, another gauzy haze of gray up above, and purple plasmatic afterimages. She couldn’t make out the bank building, the grocery store, the vehicles, or even her friends. The darkness hid them completely. No one and nothing would be able to see them. As long as they kept quiet, they were not even there.
A pack of infected was somewhere in the area, though. A whole gaggle of them had been right there in the road less than an hour earlier, forcing Parker to drive around them through the bank’s parking lot. Annie wouldn’t have noticed the armored car otherwise. Which meant she was standing outside in the one part of suburban Atlanta she knew for a fact wasn’t safe.
Annie didn’t see or hear anything or anyone moving, but she could faintly hear the roar of the horde now in the distance. The sound was barely there, little more than a tiny disturbance in the atmosphere, and she hadn’t even noticed it at first, but it was unmistakable now that she knew what it was.
She heard nothing at all in the immediate area except Hughes rummaging around in the Suburban. There was nothing else to hear in an ocean of parking. There were no leaves to rustle, no twigs to snap underfoot. An infected ambling slowly along wouldn’t make much, if any, sound unless it dragged its feet.
Parker sidled up to Roy. Annie kept her distance. In the absolute stillness, she could hear them perfectly.
“New plan,” Parker whispered to Roy. “Thinking of setting an apartment tower in Buckhead on fire.”
Roy snapped his head back.
“Draw them away from the walls,” Parker said.
Roy paused a moment, then grinned. “I like it.” Annie bet he did. “Just need a couple of gas cans.”
“Then we’re going to paint over the windows and drive one mile an hour,” Parker said. “Those things won’t know we’re inside.”
Roy pursed his lips.
Hughes eased shut the Suburban’s hatch door. “Got ‘em,” he whispered and waved the set of lockpicks in his hand.
“You know what to do with those?” Roy whispered.
“Sort of,” Hughes said. “Might take me a while.”
“Give them to me,” Roy said.
“You some kind of expert?” Hughes said.
“I’ve done it before,” Roy said.
“You picked an armored car?”
“Picked a regular car. Picked a couple of trucks.”
“Fine,” Hughes said and handed over the lockpicks.
“You all will have to watch my back while I work,” Roy said.
“I’ll watch the front,” Hughes said. “Parker, stand behind me. Annie, you stand at the rear of the car.”
Annie sighed. Roy was safe for the time being. She hated that Hughes kept finding uses for him.
She moved into position while Roy fiddled with the lockpicks. She imagined riding in the back of the armored car with him, his rank smell cloying at her, his weapons in reach, thoughts of murder and rape poisoning his mind, and a feeling of hope in his belly that he might soon be cured so he could keep on raping and killing indefinitely.
She kept her eyes on her sector, toward the street and away from the bank. Roy made a lot of noise fussing with the lockpicks: metal sliding and scraping against metal punctuated with his own huffs and grunts. The sound really carried, surely to the grocery store and beyond. She didn’t see anything moving or stirring, though, as if she and her companions had all of suburban Atlanta to themselves.
She considered sneaking around and whacking Roy in the back of the head with her crowbar. The night monocle blocked his peripheral vision. He would not see her coming, nor would he hear her if she stepped quietly.
Roy paused a moment in his work, and then Annie heard a thunk.
“Got it,” Roy said and opened the door.
Annie only now realized she’d been partially holding her breath.
“Nice job,” Parker whispered. “Will those work on the ignition?”
“Sure, they will,” Roy said and climbed inside the armored car.
Annie gripped her crowbar with both hands. If she didn’t move against him soon, she’d have to get in the back with him. But she’d have to wait for him to get the engine started first.
After Roy jiggered the lockpicks for a few more minutes, the green night-vision landscape exploded with bright white light. Annie yanked the monocle off her face, wondering for a moment if it had shorted out, then saw with her naked eyes what had happened: the armored car’s headlights were on.
“Shit,” Roy said and grunted.
Annie heard a snap and a clink. Darkness returned to the world.
“The hell was that?” Parker said.
“Headlights came on,” Hughes said. They must have blinded him since he was standing right in front of the car.
“Lockpicks work,” Roy said. “I only turned the ignition halfway, but some asshole left the light switch in the on position.”
At least no car alarm had gone off.
“Maybe they come on automatically,” Parker said.
“Shh,” Annie said. “Just find the switch so they stay off.”
“Hang on,” Roy said. “Found it.” Annie heard a faint flick. “They’re off now. I think.”
“We need to load up before you turn the ignition again,” Parker said. “In case the lights come on again.”
Hughes nodded.
“Not yet,” Annie said. “Shh.”
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
The headlights had only been on for a couple of seconds, but they had provided a momentary beacon for any and every infected in every direction. Roy may as well have fired up a searchlight onto the clouds announcing prey in the parking lot.
Annie heard nothing but blood rushing in her ears.
“I think we’re okay,” Parker whispered.
“Let’s just wait here a minute,” Annie said.
They waited and listened.
Annie didn’t expect to hear much. The infected would be drawn to the light if they saw it, but they wouldn’t know it meant prey unless they actually saw her and her friends. That hadn’t happened, but it didn’t mean Roy hadn’t inadvertently baited a trap. Yet nothing seemed to be coming. No movement registered in the glowing, green suburban expanse.
“Let’s load up our stuff,” Hughes whispered.
He got into the car, climbed over the front seats into the back, and opened the rear swinging doors from the inside.
The car’s cargo hold was spacious and empty, but there was nowhere to sit. It was built for transporting money and valuables, not people. Either Hughes or Parker would drive—most likely Hughes. Which meant that either Annie or Parker would end up riding in back. Whoever it was could sit on one of the boxes from the back of the Suburban. It would be fine, especially since the plan was to drive through the horde slower than walking speed.
“One of us is going to have to ride back there,” she said, not realizing she gave the game away until after she’d said
it.
“One of us?” Roy said.
Shit, she thought.
“You planning on sitting on my lap in the front, darlin’?” He was barely fifteen feet in front her with a sword in his hands, but he had a cocksure grin on his face and leered at her like he was toying with a child or even a kitten.
Until now, Annie had suppressed her shadow self so completely that she had almost forgotten it existed. Yet it had always been there, buried deep within, an integral part of her being even before the virus unlocked it. This was the region of her mind and body programmed to strangle a cougar, to snap the jaw of an attack dog, to gouge out the eyes of a rapist, to shoot a home intruder through the center of mass.
To cave in the skull of a serial killer using a crowbar.
It took less than two seconds for a human being to lunge fifteen feet, and it could take more than that for the human mind to register that another person was lunging if it wasn’t expected. And for Roy, it wasn’t expected. He did not know that she knew the truth about him. And he failed to understand what it meant that she’d been infected, that’d she’d pursued prey with the relentless rage of a hungry hungry predator, that she’d been in beast mode for days, and that neither her mind nor her body would ever forget how to get there.
Annie took the first of three long strides from the balls of both feet, an apex predator launching from its hind legs forward and up, the crowbar behind her like an extension of her own arm and primed for the widest arc and maximal scything power.
Hughes took a step back and away, registering what was happening before Roy did. Hughes must have known an attack was imminent the instant she’d said one of us will have to ride in the back. Her meaning must have been obvious to him and to Parker: only one person would have to ride in the back because Roy would be dead.
Three things happened during Annie’s second and faster long stride toward Roy. First, his face changed, his smirk vanishing as his head tilted slightly to the side like that of a confounded dog. Second, Parker took his own startled step back. Third, Annie twisted her arm so that the hand gripping her weapon was now facing upward, allowing the crowbar to extend even farther backward for the greatest possible reach.
Three more things happened as Annie completed her third and final stride toward her enemy: she bared her teeth like a wolf; she used her core, shoulder, and arm muscles to deliver a catastrophic blow with her weapon; and Roy flinched, leaned back, and raised his sword—awkwardly but instinctively—and parried what otherwise would have been a cataclysmic impact to his face that would have instantly killed him.
Metal struck metal. Annie’s swing was much stronger than Roy’s. He barely managed to deflect it; the power of her blow forced Roy’s sword so far back that he nearly slit his own throat with it. He gasped. Annie grunted like a bear. Someone—either Parker or Hughes—grabbed her from behind and pulled her back and away.
“Jesus Christ!” Roy shouted. No attempt at all to be quiet.
“You sonofabitch!” she shouted and struggled against whoever restrained her.
“Annie!” Parker’s voice, right there in her ear. “Stop it!” He managed to wrench the crowbar out of her hand without loosening his grip on her.
Hughes placed himself squarely between her and Roy.
“He’s not coming with us!” she shouted.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Roy said. “It was a joke. Jesus Christ.”
She twisted in an attempt to free herself from Parker’s restraint. “He’s not coming with us,” she said, more quietly this time and a lot more confidently than anyone should have expected. It was not an opinion or wish on her part. It was a fact, stated coldly. She couldn’t break free from Parker’s grip—he was easily three times stronger—so she couldn’t kill Roy herself right then and there, but she didn’t have to. She could doom him with five words: we know what you did.
She need only speak, and Parker and Hughes would dispatch Roy at once. They wouldn’t have any choice. Because Roy wouldn’t cooperate anymore if he knew that his secret was no longer secret. In an instant he’d know he had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
“We’re all on the same side here,” Roy said. “We’re all human.”
A scream rang out across the empty lot and echoed off the front of the grocery store. It came from a medium distance away, two or three suburban blocks perhaps, followed by a pregnant silence.
The war between Annie and Roy vaporized. She stopped struggling against Parker, and Parker responded by relaxing his grip. Hughes and Roy turned together toward the sound as if their bodies were controlled by the same mind. All held perfectly still.
Annie spotted the infected at the far edge of her night vision’s range, a couple of football fields away and well beyond the grocery store. As many as ten slinked blindly toward the bank in the darkness. She had a hard time convincing herself that they couldn’t see her. She saw them perfectly, after all, and she was standing right out in the open. The rational part of her mind understood how night vision worked, but the primitive threat-detection system in her brainstem shouted, if you can see a predator, it can see you, and it flooded her body with cortisol and adrenaline. The infected were effectively eyeless, though, and she knew that, so she inhaled and exhaled as slowly as she could.
Those things could not mount a formidable offense as long as nobody turned the headlights back on. They could be neutralized cleanly and stealthily in the darkness.
Annie was unarmed, though. Parker still had her weapon.
“Give me my crowbar,” she whispered.
“Shh,” Parker whispered.
Hughes and Roy nodded at each other and stepped forward together toward the infected, Roy with his sword out in front of him and Hughes with his crowbar at his side.
“Let them handle it,” Parker said.
Annie struggled against Parker for a moment, not in a serious attempt to break free but as a silent protest. Roy was making himself useful again while she stood around like a post.
Roy and Hughes moved toward the infected, smoothly, quietly, deliberately. Annie couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear the approaching infected either, even though they were coming straight toward her without even attempting to be quiet. Night vision was truly a super weapon. Annie marveled that she and her friends hadn’t made better use of it until now.
The approaching infected did not run. They must have been too far away to be entirely sure what they’d heard and didn’t know they’d find prey once they got where they were going. All they knew was that they’d heard something coming from a general direction.
The gap between Hughes, Roy, and the infected narrowed as they converged near the center of the grocery store’s parking lot. The infected were far enough that they posed no threat whatsoever to Annie but close enough now that she could count them. There were exactly nine ambling and shuffling along, and they were spaced far enough apart that they didn’t quite constitute a pack. They were more of a scattered line, queueing up like sheep to get their idiot throats slit one at a time.
Hughes raised a hand and signaled for Roy to stop and let the infected close the distance under their own steam. He stepped a healthy distance from Roy and stood there, crowbar in hand, cocked and ready to swing like a crocodile beneath the water, its eyes peeking just over the surface and waiting for its prey to swim toward its mouth.
When the first of nine stepped into killing range, Hughes swung his crowbar with the power of a bodybuilder at bat over the home plate, all but removing the infected’s head from its neck. The blow sounded like a pumpkin falling from the top of a parking garage and splatting onto the pavement below. Annie had heard this sound so many times that it no longer sickened her, but in a world gone utterly quiet, it sounded louder than it usually did.
The eight remaining infected screamed at the same time and charged. They did it blindly and stupidly but with a startling ferociousness. Hughes and Roy both took a step back.
Roy slashed one across the midsection
with his sword. Hughes caved in another’s skull. Hughes had barely a second to take a breath before striking the next one, and Roy seemed to relish stabbing a fourth in the face.
There was a slight delay before the final four reached the killing ground. Roy and Hughes stretched out the delay a little bit longer by taking a few more steps backward to give themselves another moment to breathe, to recover their balance, and to regain their bearings before for the next and last onslaught. An unnecessary response, and a disastrous one. Without peripheral vision, they botched it and crashed into each other.
Something happened to Hughes. He keeled over, as if someone or something had blinded him. It took Annie a moment to figure out had happened: Hughes’s collision with Roy must have knocked off his night vision. He was only out of commission for a couple of seconds, but that was enough.
Roy sliced the first of the four remaining infected across the throat with a savage right-to-left swipe, flipped the sword around, then slashed the next one’s face on the backswing. The third ran straight into Hughes and knocked him to the ground. Annie couldn’t tell from a distance whether Hughes had enough time to reattach the monocle to his face, but it didn’t matter. He was a football field away with a rabid infected on top of him, and not even Roy, who was standing right there, had enough time to stop what came next.
Hughes raised his hands to protect his face, and the infected bit one of his fingers. Roy ran his sword through its head and finished off the last one with an impalement strike through its chest, but he was too late.
Hughes had already been bit. He screamed twice, first from the pain and the shock and again when Roy—out of nowhere—sliced off Hughes’s arm between the wrist and the elbow.
18
Roy stood like an executioner over a screaming and now-mutilated Hughes, his head high, his shoulders back, and blood dripping from his sword. Before Parker could fully process what had just happened—had the fucker actually cut off Hughes’s arm?—Annie charged into the grocery store’s parking lot like a berserker. Parker ran after her faster and harder than he’d ever run in his life.
Resurrection (Book 3): The Last City Page 20