by RW Krpoun
There was only one other infected, a male from the silhouette although that was a purely descriptive distinction; he was turning fast but I cleared the cut-down and flamed a load of rock salt into his face before he really got his feet set to charge.
Slotting a fresh round into the cut-down, I holstered it, listening hard, holding my breath. Nothing. The wad was in the muzzle of the 870, the wings outside the muzzle like a daisy in the morning. I plucked it free, caught the ejected hull for the drop pouch, reloaded, and listened again. The first shot had been virtually soundless, and the second not very loud-neither infected had gotten the warning cry out. I counted to twenty, but still no sound of an alarm.
Still undetected: good. I moved on down the hallway, more than a bit concerned about what just happened-those two had been moving. It was possible that they were returning from being drawn out by the fires, which was bad news, but it was also possible that they were patrolling, which was far worse.
Reaching the far corner I checked the long hallway: clear. Stage Five: choose final path. I decided to circle around, hit the furthest wall-section first, then the second, moving in the direction of my exit. Since I had been unobserved coming in, going out the same way made sense. Or so I hoped.
Avoid windows, step silently, avoid litter on the floor: a couple books, a coffee cup, a woman’s purse. Most doors were closed, nearly all were unlit; I passed one office lit by a single bank of overhead lights, the walls displaying anti-abuse and anti-firearms posters; I wondered if the corpse of a well-dressed woman crumpled in the corner regretted her choice about firearms, there at the end.
At the corner I bobbed out in a tactical fast scan. On the left an entrance to a stairwell with lights; a bit further down on the right were open double doors to the stacks. Between them was the mauled corpse of a black male in a janitor’s uniform, and the crumpled form of a student-infected, skull caved in from a solid hit with a monkey wrench. Both had been dead a couple days.
Look, listen, smell, although the latter was of limited use with the nearby corpses fouling the air. I thought I heard something from the stairwell and eased forward a step at a time. Halfway there I identified it: the deep, raspy breaths of an infected at rest. Two more steps and I was sure there was more than one. At the edge of the door frame I guessed six.
Wait, steady my breathing, listen. They were at the bottom of the stairs, not five feet away. Press a fingertip into the base of the last shell in the magazine; it slid in a half inch and stopped: good, full tube. Ease it back, finger on trigger, breathe.
I stepped around the corner, fired into the scabrous scalp of a older male infected dressed like a homeless wino, popped two students, and nailed a guy in grimy slacks and the remnants of a polo shirt. They had been sitting, legs flat, at the base of the stairs; head shots, no outcries.
Pumping the action one last time, I froze, listening hard, hearing only the rasp of twitching limbs and metal-plastic rattle of the last hull hitting the wall and then bouncing across the floor. Nothing. I thumbed four fresh shells into the tube, still listening; because of the low shot noise of the rock salt rounds I wasn’t wearing ear plugs. Dragging footsteps moved overhead a half dozen steps, then silence.
OK. The stairwell door was held open by a battered green metal pot housing a faded plastic flower arrangement: I carefully lifted it out of the way and rode the door closed. Pulling a coil of rope from my left thigh pocket, I tied one end securely to the fire exit bar on the door, and then ran it to the loop door handle on the nearest library door, drawing the bright yellow nylon cord tight until the library door extended into the hallway. Looping it through the handle several times and snuggling it up tight, I tied it off and cut it close to the knot, returning the excess to my pocket. That would not stop the infected if they were really determined, but it would certainly slow them down. I plastered the stairwell’s vertical window slit with bumper stickers and ducked under the rope into the stacks.
Crouching in the door way, I listened closely. Nothing. Count to twenty, listen, look, smell. Nothing.
Moving to the nearer display, I unhooked the velvet rope and unlocked the case front with a key drawn out on its steel line, letting it snap back as I swung open the case. Pulling a camera out of a pouch, I set the control knob and took ten careful pictures, did a fast review of the images, and tucked it back into the pouch. Producing a second camera, I repeated the procedure. Redundancy-I wasn’t coming back for a second try. Stage Six complete.
I moved across to the second case on the far side of the reading room, watching, listening, stepping quick but not too fast. Rope down, key out, inserted, turn, locking bar snaps up into disengaged, the case door sags open a quarter inch, and the howling cry thirty feet behind me made me jump so hard I twisted the key off in the lock.
Spinning I saw a young infected male dressed college emo style with a wild frizz of reddish hair rushing me, sounding the alarm; he must have been in the far corner, missed the shots in the stairwell, and either heard me as I moved through the reading room or saw me pass by.
I missed once and hit him three times, overkill, but I was badly startled and wanted to shut him up fast-no telling how many infected were within earshot. Dropping the 870 on its sling, I ripped out the first camera and cycled ten pics, hit the power button, and repeated in a less frenzied fashion with the second camera. A body hit the bound stairwell door around picture eight, and the door was rattling in earnest as I took picture number ten and hit the power button. Ted was going to have to work with what I had at this moment, assuming I could get it out of here.
Thumbing rounds into the 870, I headed for the stairwell I had taken to get here, heart thumping harder than my brisk limp warranted. This was the crisis time-I had to make it to the hallway fast. Not that the hallway was automatically safe, but it only had one outside exit, which was locked, and maybe one or two infected in the offices, probably none.
The clatter of footsteps echoed in the stairwell; having no choice, I climbed fast, tactical light on, twisting the radio knob on as I moved.
I reached the ground floor landing as they hit the mid-way landing between ground floor and the second floor, a half-dozen student infected. They were moving purposefully but not fast, and I saw them first; I nailed the first three before they really knew what was going on and got the next three with five shots.
“Point One! Point One!” I tried for force without excess volume as I darted across the lobby into the hallway; infected were coming from the opposite side and from outside as well. Were Jake and Key close? Were they still alive? I thumbed shells into the magazine with thumbs that felt unnaturally thick.
“On our way.” Jake sounded stressed, but that was his problem. I ripped the red plastic cover from a fire alarm and jerked the white metal level down so hard one side broke loose. A second later the alarms started to scream and brilliant strobes started flashing overhead. The mob trotting across the lobby skidded to a halt and milled, torn between targets. The noise meant my shotgun was completely drowned out-I hit the crowd with eight rounds and then withdrew down the hall, ducking into the first open doorway and killing the tactical light.
Laying the mirror on the floor on its side, I eased it around the doorframe with my toe and watched while I reloaded.Twice infected came into the entrance of the hallway, looked around, and wandered back off, badly distracted by the noise and the strobes. Finally a couple came down the hall, one, two, then a group. I had hoped for more delay, but thus it goes. I popped out and hit them with two shots, loaded a shell, two shots, and repeated, backing up a step with each single reload. As always, each falling body threw the formation into disorder and delay.
The fire alarms meant my shotgun was effectively soundless, and they severely inhibited the infecteds’ ability to raise the hue and cry. I managed to wipe out the initial group and back up, reloading, before another group caught on to what was happening, and the interval between the groups was enough to let me top off the 870.
Ba
ck to fire pump fire pump step thrust a shell into the tube, and fire pump fire pump. My shoulders hit the exterior door as I fired the last shell in the 870. Jerking the cut-down free of its holster, I was badly startled when the alarms died. Damn the high-tech heat sensors.
They still did not have their act immediately together because the strobes stayed on, giving me some distraction, but all good things must come to an end, and the fire-two-load-one strategy led inevitably to an empty chamber. Breathing a brief but sincere prayer, I spun the knob and leapt out the door, slamming it shut and thrusting the key into place after a millisecond’s agonized fumbling.
The locking bolt shooting home and the absence of clawing hands hitting me were two deeply appreciated mercies; I left the key in the lock, unclipping the wire holder from my vest as the knob rattled and hands banged against the narrow strip of glass. Bracing my feet against the bottom step with my back pressed firmly against the door, I thumbed shells into the cut-down, racked the action to load, added the final shell, and holstered it, following suit with the 870. So far, my little opened-top concrete coffin was infected-free; the door had been locked, and to date I had seen no indication that the infected could get around even basic locks except by sheer breakage.
Which, from the impacts rattling the door at my back, was definitely the interior group’s plan. How long it could withstand the abuse was an absorbing question that suddenly lost all interest as the throb of the truck’s engine preceded the vehicle sliding to a halt at the head of the steps. I made a rapid scramble up to the back doors and threw myself in as Key banged on the cab roof and Jake popped it into first.
Slamming the door with more gusto than needful, I slumped onto the bench seat, woodenly throwing the safety on the 870 and turning off the laser sight. The roof hatch crashing open nearly ruined my jeans, but it was only Key sliding down the ladder into the truck, pausing only to shoot the hatch’s bolt.
“You OK? How did it go?”
“I’m about five pounds lighter, and only about three pounds of it was shells,” I tried to grin but couldn’t. “Two books and both picture-sets. How was your end?”
“Clean sweep,” Key announced into the intercom. “Hairy,” she replied to me. “They are thick…like you wouldn’t imagine. We played cat and mouse, dropped all the bait, and still had to fire off both sets of extinguishers. It seemed like forever. I bet we got nearly two hundred shot or run over, and you couldn’t tell at the end that we did anything at all. I was using my SiG there at the last, fired off all my magazines for the Mini-14. We need a different plan for next time.”
“If there is a next time,” I dragged a soda from the cooler and then pushed the sweating plastic box over to Key with my foot. “Ted may have to find a new theory.”
Chapter Fourteen
After catching my breath I helped Key reload her magazines from boxed ammo. “Did the fires help?” I asked after a sudden flurry of hammering on the truck sides startled me-we had had another chokepoint ambush try and fail.
“Yeah-that’s how we knew how many there are-there’s more than I possibly imagined,” Key shook her head. “The Science lab building is really going up, complete loss. The other two lost about a floor each, but they weren’t spreading too bad. It looked like Woodstock out there-with a half-mile to build up speed I bet we couldn’t crash this truck through the crowd.” She shook her head.
“You guys did good, perfect job,” I handed her a loaded magazine and picked up another empty. “It went as smooth as we could have hoped.”
“How many were inside?”
I thought about that. “I got two I literally walked into, then four sitting in a stairwell, then the bastard who raised the alarm, lets see, six I zapped on the stairs, there were probably sixty or seventy coming through the lobby after that. I got maybe twenty, twenty-five of that bunch. Too many, that’s for sure. The fire alarm really helped.” I passed her the loaded magazine. “I better tell Ted.”
He picked up on the first ring. “Martin?”
“Yeah. We got the pictures, the primary book, and one secondary. We’ll send it to you as soon as we get back to base.”
“Excellent.”
“That’s the good news. The bad is that this is it-you better hope what you need is in what we’re sending you, because without substantial help there is no way we can pull off another operation like this one. The target was extremely favorable in layout, and we set fire to three buildings as a distraction, and it still came a lot closer than I am willing to risk again. The density of infected is too high to hit the other target.”
He was silent. “If you get more help?”
“Maybe, if we get enough. And I come up with a plan. Its gonna mean burning down more of the University if we try again.”
“I expect enrollments are going to be down for the next few semesters,” he observed dryly. “First things first-I’ll look over the material you’ve gotten. Perhaps it will suffice.”
“I hope so. I’ll look over the plans again, but I’m not seeing even a glimmer of a chance at this point.”
“I’ll call you later tonight to report on my findings.” He hung up. He was unhappy, and not sounding well at all, but that wasn’t my problem. I was going to have nightmares of that hallway, I was certain.
At the distributorship I handed over the cameras and books and told the duo to get the data sent to Ted ASAP. Scanning the books was going to be a lengthy chore, but at the moment it was our top priority. I told them to get it done and to take the rest of the day off; I was overdue for a rest and they were looking pretty worn as well.
I kept my mind in neutral as I drove across town, taking a mild pleasure in running over an infected at a chokepoint rush. Refuel, loop the neighborhood to look for signs of infected, all the usual SOP. My loot was small, ten five-pound sacks of rock salt, but frankly, I was too tired to worry about it. I stacked them into the back room and headed upstairs for a shower with only half water pressure.
It was close to fifteen hundred by the time I had cleaned weapons and gear, washed my clothes, and reorganized my load, so I stretched out on my sofa and took a nap.
On one hand I was wasting daylight, but getting the information to Ted took priority, and in any case I needed the rest-I had been running on the ragged edge of my capability for too long. My knee was hurting, my lower back was talking to me, and my upper body was reminding me that I hadn’t humped this much gear in a very long time. And the news about the rivers of infected had pulled the urgency out of rescue operations in any case: in a couple days those still alive could exfil on their own.
My knee woke me after about ninety minutes; other than the knee I felt a lot better. I popped a couple anti-inflammatory tabs and applied a heating wrap and hard brace, which seemed to help.
I still had over a hundred sixty rounds of salt on my gear so reloading wasn’t needful; I didn’t feel like checking the news or watching a show; sitting at the laptop I had set up on a card table I was struck by the idea to tell the story of Mick and Bob and post it on the Net, a tribute to some brave men.
A journal format was the best I could handle, not being a wordsmith other than writing reports, and I had been keeping a hard copy journal for some time as a hedge against mental isolation. I decided to start with the green briar to put things in context, then threw in some details of my background, and ended up writing out a description of what happened at the House. Writing it down brought the feelings flooding back, the guilt that I survived when better men died, the impossibility of dealing with the obligations of having your life saved by someone who lost theirs in the process, the pain of having led others to their deaths.
As I hammered the keys I saw it all unfold again, the white halls of the substation, the faces of my friends, the Crayola box, the tattoos on the lead killer…all of it.
Six billion people didn’t know what happened in that short interval in the House, and wouldn’t give a shit if you told them about it. Even those who did know moved on. Ex
cept me. I had…what? Gotten maudlin? Tried to dramatize the gun battle between police officers and criminals? There were nearly thirteen thousand names of peace officers on the wall in Washington-why were my team any more special than that long roster of those who faced their duty and paid the price? Who was I to bitch about surviving? Any one of those on that wall would gladly trade places. I lived-was I special, lucky, or just a statistical anomaly?
I wrapped up the description and logged out-too many questions I couldn’t answer, too many questions not worth thinking about. The unexamined life is easiest.
It occurred to me that if we hadn’t gone on that operation, I would almost certainly be dead now, killed or infected trying to hold things together before anyone realized what was going on. The news said a third of my agency was dead or infected, and that would be heavily represented amongst the line officers, Patrol and Tactical. I hadn’t thought about that before; hell, if my cell phone hadn’t been dead I would have been called out with the rest of the old and infirm.
Funny how things work. The odds are very good that either scenario would only have shortened my life by two weeks or so.
Standing up, I realized it was after twenty hundred-I had been at the computer for hours; whatever value this journal had as a testimonial or as a historical viewpoint of a major event paled compared to its use as a stress relief. Even my knee felt a little better after a stretch of inactivity and the heat pack.
Hungry, I made a hoagie-sized sandwich of hard salami, hickory smoked cheddar cheese, some sad lettuce, and liberal amounts of butter on a toasted half-loaf. I didn’t bother with the roof-I decided to give my knee a break from the ladder, and there wasn’t going to be anything worth seeing anyway.
I ate the sandwich with two cans of A&W crème soda sitting in my kitchen booth, Johnny Cash singing on the kitchen boom box about Sunday morning, ghost riders, and walking the line. He had a style that suited my mood, that was certain. I should have been planning, reviewing the paperwork, but instead I just ate my supper, the two cell phones on the table where someone would sit if anyone was having dinner with me. A couple Klondike bars for desert and a quick clean-up, and I eased down the stairs with a bottle of water and nothing particular in mind.