“Hicks, cease fire. Just let her go. Booth keep your mouth shut. I don’t want another word about this. Hicks contact Comet One and give them a sitrep. Booth, take point in front of Watson and Lepski. Hicks you walk drag. We need to move on our primary now.”
Adam takes Trish’s hand and pulls her to her feet. They both crouch, still holding hands, dreading whatever Jacobs and his men will do next.
“Adam, what are you doing?” asks a soft bewildered voice. Must be Kathy.
She feels Adam’s fingers tighten on hers. Kathy is standing, looking down at them. A hand is at her throat, near her mouth. No question she is pretty, even in the shadowed room she can see it. Nice hair, too. “Oh, I see how it is. This must be Eve, right? You left me alone for a little tramp in tight shorts.”
Trish speaks up. “My name’s Trish.”
“Kathy please keep it down,” Adam asks, voice pitched low. “It’s not like that.”
“No? Then tell me how it is then.”
Adam stands, takes a step toward Kathy. For the moment, Trish stays where she is. Adam’s reply is sharp. “No, now is not a good time Kathy. I’m trying to tell you something else.”
“Oh,” says Kathy, voice breaking a little. “I’m sorry, what is it?”
“Bad guys are outside.”
Kathy reaches toward the window, as if to touch her reflection. “They look okay to me. Just soldiers with guns.” She throws a contemptuous look toward Trish. “And none of them look like her.”
“My name’s Trish.”
The woman stares at her, ignoring her hand. “I heard you the first time, bitch.”
Trish shakes her head. I had a feeling.
239
Kathy storms toward the stairs. Adam seems paralyzed. The poor guy is horrified.
They can hear her unlock the front door. Kathy opens it and steps outside, waving. “Hey! Hey, I need help!” She actually walks ten feet toward the soldiers, far enough where she and Mills can see her.
The soldier known as Jacobs doesn’t even hesitate, just levels his gun on her and squeezes the trigger. The bullets hose right through her with occasional flashes of tracer rounds. One punches right through her forehead and lays her out flat on her back on the front stoop.
“At least she won’t be getting back up,” Trish murmurs.
“Goddamn you’re cold,” Adam says, eyes blazing anger.
She fights down an angry retort, making herself take a deep breath first. Don’t take it personally, Trish. He’s just lost all chance of explanation or apology to her, and that might be tough to live with.
“In my line of work sometimes you have to be,” she replies. “I don’t depend on the kindness of others.”
Outside, she hears the Jacobs guy ask, “Was that the one that got away?”
BODIES ARE EVERYWHERE, but there is no movement. A gentle little breeze blows over him. The moon is full and riding high.
Must have been out, but not for long.
There is the hazy memory of someone crashing into him. The woman! The killer! He opens his eyes, realizing the backpack is propping him up in a sitting position.
Somebody has turned the volume down but he can hear crackling flames, gunfire and moaning. Probably just means he’s been deafened.
He draws a shuddering breath, coughs on the smell of blood and scorched flesh. A body is lying across his legs, a swatch of bone-white skull visible through long matted hair. His gaze trails away to his own body, shirt ripped open to the navel, covered in filth, but his chest is still rising and falling.
240
What if everyone else is dead? All the people I just rescued and everyone at the Pier? What will I do?
Go down to the sea. See if the boat’s still there. One step at a time. First you must stand up.
Something has just clamped onto his thighs. Sudden terror surges through him and he attempts to jerk his legs free and stand up. The woman lying in his lap is looking up at him. Her crazed eyes are turned upward reflecting moonlight like lamps through the mask of blood covering her face.
Where is the M-16? No time to look. His fingers fumble at his waist, prying at the holster flap. Meanwhile the woman is pulling herself up his body, holding him tight in a grotesque parody of lovemaking. The gun comes free, and he remembers that there is a round in the chamber. Just aim and squeeze the trigger.
Why hasn’t she bit me yet?
He hesitates, takes a closer look at her face. It isn’t the same woman!
Maybe that look on her face isn’t what he thinks. He drops the gun, reaches down and grasps beneath each arm and halls her up to him.
“Shaunna?” he says.
“Good memory. I wondered if I’d see you again.”
He slides his hands around to hug her.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
She smiles, closing her eyes. “I knew you were a good guy.”
“Don’t go.”
No answer. But is that a faint little smile on her lips?
“Stay with me!” he shouts, frantic now. He carefully slides from under her and rises to his knees. He pulls her shirt to the side and presses his ear to her chest.
241
HE RESTS HIS GUN HAND ON HIS THIGH and raises the walkie-talkie to his ear. “What was that you said, Mitch?”
The reply is crystal clear and loud: “No tengo amigos.”
“What the hell does that mean?” asks Anton.
“Somebody just told him that they don’t have any friends,” says Amy. Dodd can feel the blood drain from his face. “What are you telling
me, you bastard?”
“That van is pulling out of the garage,” says Anton. “There’s another
one outside also. Still some zombies alive too.”
“We found Carlos and he told me what you did,” says Mitch. “You
left him to die in the cruiser.”
Dodd shouts out, a raucous cry of rage, and lifts the gun. Mitch is
leaving him here to die. There is a familiar flick noise followed by a
click. An ASP? What the hell? Sudden terrible pain radiates from his
arm and he drops the gun.
That little weasel—Blake—has an ASP in one hand and his gun in
the other. The gun is pointed at him. He has time to shout, “You broke
my arm!”
Anton yells and crashes his wheelchair into him from the other
direction. The pain is so intense from his arm that he is fading out, even
as he and Anton slam into and around various obstacles. The door is
open to the hallway. Many hands grab him and shove him through it.
People yelling at him seemingly from all sides.
“Grab some ass out there, why don’t you tough guy!”
“How tough are you now?!”
He sprawls on his back, crying uncontrollably as the door closes.
They’ve locked me out! What’ll I do?
For a long time, he just lays there, processing nothing, aware only
of the pain.
242
SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE CAR. Now that it’s parked he notices a wisp of steam rising from the hood. Must’ve damaged the radiator running over a curb or something. The last half hour was both one of the most maddening and most exhilarating times of his life: A torturous, on the edge ride across lawns, through hedges and squeezing by piles of wrecked or abandoned vehicles.
Keller shuts his door carefully and comes around the car to stand next to Talaski. The cruiser is parked in the parking lot of Tropicana Field. On the edge of the parking lot is a deep ditch, spanned by a couple of foot bridges, then the three one-way lanes of 1st Avenue South and finally the Police Station.
“We can’t count on this car to get away in, I guess,” says Keller. “No, it doesn’t look like it.”
Keller is quiet, and Talaski knows how tired he must be. Neither
one of them has slept in a long time. Talaski has the advantage of bein
g accustomed to it. Three days or so without sleep is common for him. “How many of them do you think there are? Still walking around I mean.” Talaski asks, and doesn’t have to point. Both of them are looking at the back side of the St. Pete Police Headquarters. Flames from a burning warehouse and several wrecked vehicles illuminate hundreds of corpses littering the street. Quite a few zombies are still standing, most of them around two large garage doors.
“Fifty maybe?” says Keller in a monotone voice. “Looks like they’re all on the other side of the ditch. Someone’s opening that parking garage door. Look!”
Talaski squints. The door is opening. “What the hell? That’s a van.” The van comes up and turns right fast, headlights spearing several of the walking dead just before striking them and running them down. The van appears to lose traction on the wet, bloody ground and begins to slide toward the ditch. The driver just manages to regain control and runs over the curb and several more zombies before settling onto the center of the road.
243
Hard on the heels of the first van comes a second, this one a bit slower and more controlled. It too turns right, runs over a few more bodies and heads west toward Sixteenth Street.
“What the hell was all that about?” murmurs Keller.
“Be nice to know, but somehow I doubt it was Debbie or anybody upstairs.”
HE WAKES CHOKING on a mouthful of salt water. His upper body is laying face down, sprawled halfway across a piece of wreckage and his lower body is underwater. He is still dressed, even down to his shoes and the weight of his .357 still under his arm in a holster. There isn’t much to see nearby, just fires burning on the waterfront several hundred feet away. Everything else is hidden by darkness. He can hear people screaming or calling for help, but none seem to be close.
I wonder why I’m still alive? What are the odds? What about the others? The explosion was huge.
He rubs a hand over his head. What little hair still there is brittle, apparently scorched, and flakes away at his touch. The rest of his head has a sunburned feeling and he’s pretty sure that the combination of that and exhaustion is making him loggy.
The sound of a boat engine going very slow carries to him and he notices someone with a flashlight, apparently in the prow of a boat. The boat slows and he watches as two children are dragged aboard. Might be Lionel’s kids. Hope so. The wife must not have made it. Too bad; she seemed like a good woman.
He is exhausted. No energy to save himself if he wanted to. What are the odds I ended up here on this wreckage? I should be dead.
244
HE WAS LOOKING when the hovering helicopter launched a missile at the large yacht. The missile flew straight at the ship and struck it with a furious explosion that lit the whole Vinoy Basin. Everything stopped for a moment as pieces of the large yacht flew everywhere.
The helicopters disappeared soon after.
Several minutes went by before the old white man took their boat out from beneath the Pier. Now the boat is moving very slowly and Bronte is standing up front, bracing himself while looking around with the flashlight, trying to find survivors. All Daric can see are dead people.
The boat steers closer to the burning yacht and Bronte yells something.
Daric stands up from his seat back by the motors. Janicea tries to grab his arm to keep him next to her, but he jerks free. Tracks is standing also as the boat slows even more and steers just to the side of two small figures in the water.
Kids. Like me!
Well, white kids anyway.
Tracks leans far out, and scoops both of them up, yelling “Got them!”
He sets both of them down and Janicea brushes past saying, “I’ll see if there’s any towels.”
The boy might be two years older than Daric, and the girl looks about a year younger. Both are bedraggled and half-drowned. Neither of them stands for long and are soon sitting on the seats at the rear of the boat. Janicea comes back with towels. There isn’t enough room in the back of the boat for all of them, so Daric stands by the door to the pilot house.
“I see another one, Tracks!” yells Bronte. “Do you see him over there Ozzie?”
Ozzie is the old guy. Oswald Hazard. Strange name for a strange guy. Still Daric likes him. What would have happened if he wasn’t down there?
245
“I see him Bronte. I’ll get us right alongside. Tracks may need some help with him.”
Daric looks. The guy is big. Maybe as big as Tracks. He’s lying on some wreckage. “He looks dead, Tracks.”
“No, he still breathing. See?”
“Yes. Still. The guy looks as big as a house. You might not even be able to get him into boat.”
“I get him in boy,” says Tracks, grinning down at him. The engine noise trails off and the boat nudges against the wreckage. Tracks leans over the rail, reaching out with his hands. “Sir, Sir!”
The man stirs, rolls over and takes a hold of his outstretched hands. He’s an old man, big but old.
“Chief Hadley?” says Tracks.
The half-lidded eyes open and the man’s slack, weary features are somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “That you Alan?”
“Yeah Chief, it’s me. Take my hands now and hold on tight. Let me do the work.”
“Good to see you my boy.”
Tracks takes a deep breath. The big bicep muscles in both his arms flex and for a moment his breathing quickens and he lifts the other man from the water with a convulsive shrug and a heave. Water cascades into the boat and some hits Daric across the legs. The other man comes up, out and over the rail.
Tracks stays bent over, and he appears to be looking the man over.
“You hurt Chief?”
“Don’t think so. Just very tired. You still watching—”
“Just relax Chief. Janicea getting towels.”
The enormous white man closes his eyes. Daric steps a little closer. “He’s got a gun, Tracks,” he says, pointing at the holster under the man’s arm.
“He the PoPo Chief, Daric. Get Bronte.”
“He didn’t call you Tracks. He called you ‘Alan.’ Why is that Tracks?”
Tracks turns toward him. All the high points of his face and the bare skin of his shaved head gleam faintly in the moonlight. There is something strange about the look on his face. Daric can’t quite figure it out. “Don’t ask boy. Just get Bronte.”
“Yes sir.” He backs away, and Janicea steps past him.
Alan is a strange name, even stranger than Tracks. Maybe the Police Chief is sick. “Bronte! Tracks needs you! Bronte—”
246
“I hear you, Daric,” says Bronte, stepping carefully around the cabin and coming his way. He puts a hand on Daric’s shoulder as they both head for the back of the boat.
The back of the boat is crowded now. Too many people. “Daric, I want you to take the other two kids down into the cabin. One of us will be down to check on you in a while. Right now the adults need to talk.”
“Yes sir,” Daric answers and waits for the other two kids to follow him. The little freckle-faced girl follows with no problem, but the boy is slow to get up and he takes his time.
Daric sits on one of the bunks while they take the other. “I don’t need to sleep right now, if you want this bunk,” he says to the little girl. She starts to shake her head, but her brother interrupts her. “Listen boy. I need to find my mom and dad. There’s no time to talk.”
“My parents are dead too,” Daric says. The ‘boy’ hurts, but he won’t show it. I know how to handle bullies. Not sure about racists though. What if these kids are racists?
The girl is looking at him with a sad expression. She turns toward her brother and says, “Mom told you to be nice to people, Frank. Don’t call him boy.”
“Shut up, Beth,” Frank says.
Beth ignores him. “I heard them call you Daric. I’m Beth and this is my brother Frank. I’m sorry to hear about your parents.”
“I told you to shut up Beth,” Frank
says with a snarl. His face, especially his cheeks, are red with anger and he’s breathing hard.
“Just leave your sister alone, Frank, and I’ll shut up,” Daric snaps right back, dropping to his feet. Guess I’m about to find out how crazy this kid is.
247
FACE MERELY INCHES FROM HERS, he hisses, “No matter how you look at that, that was really a shitty remark. I’d ask what’s wrong with you, but I don’t want to know.” He can feel the anger freezing his face into a mask, some sort of rictus of hate.
Her face is equally savage, but she keeps her voice to a whisper, also. “Hate me if you want but I didn’t pull the trigger. She judged both of us and practically committed suicide.”
Her eyes lock with his and don’t flinch away. First his friends, then Natalie and Sam. Now Kathy. All dead, and nothing he can do about it. All that’s left now is a woman he’s barely met, knows nothing about. All that is sure is mutual attraction or desperation. Even now, just looking at her, his blood is racing, his thoughts a jumble.
“I’m going after them. Guess this is goodbye.”
She hesitates only a moment. “I’m coming with you.”
They both leave the house by the front door and jog across the street.
Mills places his back against the liquor store wall and looks around the corner. The five men are just ahead, each one at least twenty feet apart. One of them is in the middle of the road, dashing toward the far side. Suddenly a van rockets around the corner, fishtailing briefly as its headlights pin the guy almost in place. Some instinct appears to galvanize him as he begins to sprint with three lanes still to go. Incredibly the van follows him, speeding up and hits him at about forty miles an hour.
The leader Jacobs screams, “Kill them!”
Gunfire erupts from four different locations and converges on the fleeing van. The bullets literally riddle it with holes before it can make it a half block away. Trailing smoke, it drifts out of control across two lanes and crashes into the back of a big SUV. No one gets out.
Dead Tide Page 28