“No fucking way,” said Rose out loud, luckily the radio’s microphone wasn’t key’d.
“Orders Rose. We’re headed to HQ,” said York making a turn.
“Alright then, let me out,” said Rose matter-of-factly.
“What...?” York said surprised.
“Alphas have made it north almost to MGH, you heard the radio. I’m going there, I don’t care what the fuck our orders are.”
“Not happening,” York answered, returning her attention to the road and speeding up.
“Fuck you then, I’m jumping out. The woman I love works at that hospital and I’m not going to sit in HQ and wait for her to be killed. I’m getting there and I’m keeping her safe.”
“Look Rose,” said York, her expression softening. “I get it, but we can’t…”
“You can do what you want, but I signed up to keep Boston safe. There is no one in Boston I want to protect more than Jamie. If you think you are doing your job by just sitting and getting debriefed in a basement somewhere while real soldiers are fighting, then you’re more than welcome to follow orders, but not me.” Rose reached over and undid her seatbelt.
York sighed and shook her head. “It was a pretty fucking stupid order.” Speeding up that much more, York swerved back in the general direction of the hospital. “MGH, here we come.”
Chapter 15
Arriving at the hospital, Rose found it mostly deserted. There were a few soldiers about, but for the most part, everyone had either gone home or gone south to fight. Pulling up to the front door and jerking to a stop, Rose jumped out followed closely by York and her other two squadmates.
“Where is she?” asked York.
“CDC wing I think,” answered Rose as she made her way through the front doors.
“You two,” York called to the remaining squadmates. “I want you to protect the truck and this front entrance, we may need to leave here quickly.”
They saluted and secured their weapons, again readying themselves for battle. York caught up to Rose by the front desk.
“...Not authorized into that wing,” the guard at the desk was saying, but Rose was only half listening.
York, picking up on what was going on, jumped right in. “I am Sergeant York, Liberty Squad. I am commander of this unit and we need to get into that wing.”
“Liberty? Your unit was ordered to report for debrief. I’ve been monitoring the radio,” said the guard, her tone uncertain and fear etched on her face.
Seizing on the indecision, York pressed her. “We have new orders,” she said confidently. “We have been ordered by Dr Knight to report to the CDC wing and you are delaying us.”
That did the trick. The woman stood up a little straighter, clearly confident she was now doing the right thing. “Very well, proceed.” Pressing a button, Rose heard the lock on a nearby door pop open. Moving quickly, Rose and York rushed through the door and down several hallways, eventually coming to the CDC wing. Instead of the normal two guards, there was six, all deployed at different locations in the hall behind portable metal boxes being used as cover.
“Halt!” called one of the guards. “Identify yourselves!”
“Sergeant York and Corporal Rose, Liberty Squad. We have orders to report to the CDC wing here at the hospital,” York called back.
“Those orders haven’t been relayed…” the soldier had started, but Rose couldn’t hear the rest, her ears were filled with the sounds of yells and gunfire over the squad's radio frequency.
“Contact! Contact at the front of the hospital!” called York to the soldiers guarding the wing.
“Negative,” called the soldier. “I have no…” he trailed off as another man yelled over him.
“Large force!” the second man yelled. “Coming from the north...oh my God. Fifty plus Alphas, contacts all around MGH!”
“The south attack was a diversion,” said Rose to York. “They’re coming here, why?”
Shrugging, York called back to the men outside the CDC wing. “We have orders sir, can we work out the details later?”
There was a brief silence in the halls that was filled with the sounds of battle in her earbud. It didn’t sound like it was going well.
Finally, the first soldier called down the hall, “Move! Quickly!”
Without hesitating, Rose and York sprinted down the hallway and through the open doors of the CDC wing.
“Sergeant York!” called a voice in their ear. It was one of their squadmates, he sounded out of breath, a pained tone to his voice.
“Go ahead, this is York.”
“We’re overrun, I managed to get in the truck and retreat to a safe distance. Ma’am, they’re focused on the hospital, they didn’t even come after me. Everyone else is dead, they’re coming your way.”
“How many?” asked York somberly.
“Twenty or thirty? We took out a chunk with some ‘nades, but they just kept coming,” he answered, his voice sounding more and more strained.
“Alright, go get some medical attention, we’ll do what we can here,” answered York, moving back toward the entrance to the CDC wing.
Rose, however, hadn’t stopped, she was heading deeper into the wing, her focus on Jamie. As Rose passed the reception desk, her squadmate made one more transmission. “Ma’am? He’s here. Giant. He’s in the hospital.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sprinting down the hall, Rose threw open door after door finding empty room after empty room. Becoming more and more frustrated, the fear inside her was rising like a tide in a storm lapping over her levies, threatening to break open and bring on a flood of full-on panic.
Rounding a corner, Rose found herself in a secluded section of the wing but she was not alone. All the fear, all the dread seemed to drain from her almost immediately, there was Jamie. Standing with about ten soldiers, doctors and nurses, all heads turned to her as she rounded the corner.
“Rose!” called Jamie, running forward and hugging her. “When did you get here? You shouldn’t be here, they’re coming for the baby.”
So happy to have found Jamie, Rose almost missed what she was saying. “Wait, baby? What baby?”
“The baby we’re protecting. The baby that will be the savior of our race,” said a voice from behind Jamie. Rose recognized it right away. Dr Knight.
“Funny, I don’t recall ordering you here soldier,” Dr Knight said sarcastically and raising an eyebrow in her direction. “The more guns the better I suppose though.”
“Contact sir!” called a soldier behind Dr Knight. “Contact at the front of the wing. Dr Knight, move behind us and into the child’s room please.”
Nodding, Dr Knight moved toward the soldiers, followed by Jamie and then Rose. Once past the firing line, Dr Knight continued off into a nearby room at the end of the hall but Jamie stopped, as did Rose. “Jamie, you need to keep going, I’ll be out here, no one will get past us.”
Jamie didn’t look convinced. “Rose, I’m…” she started to protest, but stopped when a hand was laid on her shoulder. It was Dr Faraday.
“Jamie,” said the doctor. “We need to be with the child, there are only a few medical staff here and the child is the priority, I’m confident in Rose and the others.” Dr Faraday gave them a half-hearted smile, probably the best she could pull off, but it was enough. Jamie conceded. Kissing Rose on the cheek before leaving, she leaned in close. “Come back to me.”
Jamie turned and left, her eyes watery and bloodshot. Rose, doing her best to keep her emotions locked down, turned from Jamie and took a few deep breaths before finding an open spot on the firing line. The soldiers at the entrance to the wing had made contact and were checking in with frequent updates. They estimated about 30 Alphas. Rose could hear the constant gunfire and shouts of battle, cries of pain, orders of movement, all of it.
After what seemed like an eternity, the entranceway team reported in advising they’d made a sizable dent in the Alphas before falling back in the face of Giant. He’d finally made an appearance but seemed to
be hanging back ordering his vanguard forward at a heavy loss. However despite the losses, the Alphas continued to advance forward.
The gunfire, distant and hollow, kept getting closer and closer; Rose’s anticipation building the louder it became. Finally, the remains of the squad at the front of the wing, including York, quickly swung around the corner. The original force of seven had been reduced to four.
As they rounded the corner, York pulled something from one of her comrades vests and threw it in the direction they’d just come from. All four of the soldiers turned and sprinted for Rose’s position. Rose heard one of the men near her yell “Get down!” before a thunderous blast came from York’s direction, pitching all four soldiers forward. York and one other managed to keep their feet while the other two stumbled but quickly recovered, scrambling toward the firing line.
York dove in behind Rose and the other soldiers holding the firing line. “That was the last one,” York yelled to no one in particular. “Only guns from here on.”
There was a slight delay after the explosion, maybe Giant feared more grenades? But the delay was short-lived. The first cautious Alphas jumped around the corner, only to be quickly cut down by the soldiers. Their firing line and the corner seemed a perfect way to hold their position, it was almost like a shooting gallery as more Alphas rounded the corner and were killed. With their numbers quickly being reduced, it wouldn’t take long for Rose and the others to put down the remaining Alphas.
Giant seemed to realized this as well and the frequency of Alphas rounding the corner slowed and became more random. Rose thought she heard dull thuds coming from the distance, but with all the gunfire and orders being hollered about, she dismissed it.
Finally the drizzle of Alphas coming around the corner slowed to a stop. It’d been thirty seconds or more since the last Alpha had been killed and a pile of bodies littered the floor by the corner, partially obstructing their view. One of the soldiers near Rose, a gold star on each lapel, called to two soldiers near the rear of the firing line. “Go check the corner, lets see if they’ve retreated or are just cowering in the hall.” This got a few chuckles from nearby soldiers.
The two men, moving slowly and deliberately, traversed the no-man’s land between their firing line and the corner taking extra care, the closer their got. One man, acting as cover, stopped just shy of the corner while the other began to move in a semi-circle out from the wall giving himself a larger and larger view of the hallway beyond, rifle at the ready.
About three quarters of the way, the man stopped and bent his head to the side, lowering her rifle slowly. He did a few more quick peeks around the corner, turned and called back to the firing line. “All clear!” Lowering his rifle and joining his partner, they began to walk back to the firing line. Relief was plain on their faces and they both had a slight swagger to them as they walked back.
Just before crossing over the firing line, the wall next to the men exploded in a hail of plaster dust and drywall. Rose had no time to react as a deluge of bodies poured from the new hole. The two men, taken completely by surprise, were pinned to the ground and disappeared from view under the debris and press of infected bodies.
Recovering quickly, Rose, York and the remaining soldiers opened up on the mob, mowing down anything that might be moving, spraying them with bullets at almost point-blank range. “Hold your ground!” screamed the man with the starred lapel, he himself firing away, a pistol in each hand.
Rose was lost in a blur of blood and bullets. Shooting, more shooting, reloading, shooting and shooting more. Time seemed to slow down, everyone moving in slow motion, infected or otherwise. The Alpha body count was rising faster and faster the more that pressed through the hole, their bodies lining the floor and now starting to obstruct the hole in the wall they’d created. Rose was becoming more and more confident as time went on, as long as the bullets didn’t run out, they’d win this for sure. Then she heard it, the bellow she’d heard at Fenway, now enclosed in the hallway, it seemed like an earthquake.
The next thing Rose saw was not the cluster of Alphas being mowed down in front of her and her comrades, but instead the ceiling as she was thrown through the air before slamming against the opposite wall. Giant had burst through another section of wall right on top of their firing line, completely collapsing it.
Shaking her head and sitting up, Rose had a new perspective on the battle. Giant aside, it seemed all but over. Most of the Alphas were dead or dying, but so were most of the soldiers. Giant had made his way down the hallway eradicating the soldiers before, nimble as a cat, going toe-to-toe with the star-lapel’d soldier. Abandoning his exhausted pistols, the man had drawn two large knives, one in each hand, and was expertly dueling with the massive Alpha landing cut after cut while deftly avoiding Giant’s massive swings.
Turning her attention to the few remaining Alphas around them, Rose picked them off as she moved down the hall. Glancing to her side as she moved past the second hole, she spied York, her bloody body on the ground buried under a large pile of debris. Assuming she was dead, Rose moved past her but York coughed and groaned as she moved past. “Ah, fuck me,” she grunted. Her face was covered in blood, one eye clearly shredded from shrapnel.
“Stay down, I’ll be back for you when I can,” yelled Rose over the noise around them.
York gave a slight nod before collapsing back onto the debris pile she was buried in. Standing and moving, Rose aimed her rifle at Giant. Now adorned with several new gleaming slices on his arms, legs and chest, he didn’t seem to have lost a step. The man he was fighting however was fading. He’d lost one knife and was panting heavily.
Rose got off one shot which grazed Giants shoulder blades before she was tackled from the side. An Alpha female had rammed into Rose’s side sending her into the far wall leaving a large hole in the drywall. The female, knocked to the ground by her own attack, jumped up to charge Rose again. It was the female from the basement, the pregnant female. The bulge in her belly was still there and her C-section scar, stitches ripped, was bleeding freely. How the woman had made it there, Rose wasn’t sure, but she had more pressing matters at hand. Too close to get off a shot, Rose dodged to the right and smacked the female with the butt of her rifle sending her sprawling, but not before the female slashed her fingers across Rose’s mid-section, drawing blood almost immediately.
Spinning away and leveling her rifle at Giant’s last location, she found him gone. Scanning to the right she saw a large bloody hole in a window which she hoped had been made by him, but instead caught a glimpse of the massive man stomping into the far room at the end of the hall. Jamie.
Sprinting down the hall and throwing herself into the large room, Rose had to duck almost immediately to avoid gunshots. The remaining nurses along with Jamie, Dr Faraday and Dr Knight, all armed, were doing everything they could to stave off Giant. The large man was dancing around the room, but he’d lost some of the agility and speed she’d seen at Fenway Park. Regardless, he seemed almost super-human.
Dropping to a knee, Rose fired off several rounds at Giant who wasn’t expecting gunfire from behind. Rose was rewarded with a spray of blood from Giant’s right quadricep and he slowed significantly. However, he also turned his attention to Rose.
Roaring his ground-shaking bellow, he charged Rose who instinctively dove to the ground in an attempt to roll away. Giant stopped short, twisted in the air and threw an inaccurate punch which missed Rose’s face but connected with her left shoulder. Rose could hear something pop and she immediately lost all sensation in the arm. Grunting in pain, it was all she could do not give in to unconsciousness. Rolling away from Giant, she could hear more gunshots as the others continued to fire, the sounds now oddly distant.
Glancing up, Rose could see another Alpha had entered the room, the pregnant female. Ignoring Rose and Giant, the female charged the doctors and nurses. They all opened fire on the female, Jamie scoring several body shots the but the female still kept coming. Screaming a wild, high-pi
tched scream, she seemed to be making a beeline for a small covered bassinet in the back of the room hooked up to several computer screens. The baby.
Rolling onto her stomach and leaning to her left side, Rose, holding her rifle one handed, lined up her rifle to add to the firepower. Rose fired and caught the female in the calf which caused her to trip and stumble, but she continued forward, clawing at the ground. Rose leveled her rifle for another shot, but instead felt two large hands wrap around her left ankle. Looking down at her legs, she saw Giant, face bloody and twisted in anger. Rose was barely able to register what was happening before Giant began to spin taking Rose with him, flinging her across the room. Rose experienced a brief second of weightlessness before smashing into a wall near the entrance to the room. Stunned by the brutality of the throw and surprised she was still conscious, Rose watched in horror as Giant padded over to her, his bloody feet slapping on the ground, raised his meaty fists and began to pound away at her in her chest and abdomen.
Helpless, her rifle gone, Rose raised her right arm to block some of the blows but it was just knocked away so violently, it bent at the elbow the wrong way with a sickening crunch. As each blow rained down, Rose seemed to transcend pain, vaguely mindful of cracks and snaps in her chest with each blow; peripherally aware that she was still witnessing events around her. How was she still conscious? Is this what death was like? Painless but still consciously aware of what’s around you, unable to interact?
A loud boom drew Rose out of her reverie and back to the present, all the pain she’d been missing out on slammed back into her like a sledgehammer to the face. Despite the torturous amount of pain, Rose looked up at the towering figure above her...except he didn’t seem so towering anymore. Giant had been kneeling over her, but his body seemed to be wavering back and forth now, his head swaying as if he were moving to the beat of some song Rose couldn’t hear. In slow motion, Giant buckled and his body came crashing down next to Rose, what was left of his head coming to rest mere inches from her own. His head had been crudely halved. Most of his nose, right cheek, right eye and about half of the remaining head was gone, sheared off leaving dark blood, brain matter and skull fragments. The ooze from the remains of his head was creating a dark pool on the floor growing ever closer to Rose’s own head. Rose tried to move away from the approaching gore, but instead of movement, she was greeted with unimaginable pain. None of her limbs seemed to be responding, all she could do was moan as Giant’s blood, still warm, reached the side of her face and begin to surround her head.
Jordan Rose Duology (Book 2): Homecoming Page 19