At last the road emerged from the trees onto a broad, gentle slope where the forest had been cut back some distance from a high fence-line. More signs warned people to slow down and report to the gatehouse, that this was restricted, government property and trespassers would face the most serious of consequences. Up at the gate they could see a small cluster of people standing near a yellow bus and a delivery van.
Marcus stopped a distance away and was about to warn Devon to stay put, but by then the boy had spotted his mother and sister in the crowd and was out and running before the dying truck even stopped moving.
“Mom!” He raced to her and started to cry as he reached her. Kylie started crying too and joined them as Patricia Fox held her children fiercely with one good arm. Agent Handelman parked the truck near the other vehicles and approached. The First Lady looked at him over her son’s shoulder, tears filling her eyes.
Thank you, she mouthed to him silently. Oh, thank you.
They stayed that way for a while until Patricia reluctantly released them, and then there were the questions about what had happened, what each of them had gone through. Marcus stood close by, hearing the fates of Dancer and Design’s protective details. The subject quickly turned to Garrison Fox, and Patricia looked hopefully to the Secret Service agent, but there was nothing he could tell her.
Marcus moved to the bearded man and they stood together surveying the gate. He wasn’t happy about all these armed civilians being around his (now) three protectees, but after what he’d seen coming up the mountain he suspected they’d need all the firepower they could get. Devon Fox joined them a moment later.
“Could we cut our way through?” the bearded man asked. “Are there tools in your truck?”
“Maybe,” said Marcus. “But that’s probably high carbon steel. Bolt cutters might not work. And even if we could cut a gap big enough for one of us to slip through and get to the controls, it would leave the fence compromised. They’d figure it out and get through.” No one asked which they he meant.
“Is that worse than staying out here?”
The agent shook his head and looked back at the road coming out of the forest. “No it isn’t.”
At the first mention of tools, Devon had gone to the truck and searched through the storage boxes. He found plenty of landscaping and hand tools, but no bolt cutters. He returned with a heavy pair of wire cutters.
Handelman shook his head. “No way they’ll get through those links.”
Devon looked up. “I was thinking about using it on the razor wire. We can climb the fence, snip it and go over. It would only take one person to do it.”
The agent nodded slowly and held out a hand. Devon saw how pale his bodyguard still looked. “I got this,” he said, and before the agent or anyone else could stop him, he shoved the wire cutters in a pocket and leaped onto the concrete fence base, hooking his fingers through the links and shoving the toes of his shoes into the openings, moving upward.
“Get down here now!” Marcus yelled. His mother, sister and some of the others were yelling too. Devon ignored them. He was young, athletic and the word impossible had yet to enter his life’s vocabulary. In less than a minute he was at the top, hanging on by three points and gripping the cutters.
“Watch the tension,” Marcus warned, and then Devon snipped the flat steel ribbon of coiled razor wire. There was a metallic twang and a hiss as sections of the high-tension wire snapped back in either direction. Devon felt a half-second of pressure on the cheekbone beneath his right eye, followed by sharp pain from the horizontal slash the steel ribbon had cut across his face. He gritted his teeth to hold back a cry – it really hurt! – then scrambled through the new gap in the wire, over the top and down the other side, dropping the last five feet.
Marcus glared at him through the links, color darkening his face. “I’m going to kick your ass, kid.”
“You can do it later,” Devon said, wiping at the blood and wincing. He moved to the guardhouse, opening the door and flinging it wide as he leaped back. A uniformed MP with silver eyes burst through the opening, snarling and looking around, spotting Devon.
Rapid shots from a Sig-Saur and a burst from an assault rifle cut the MP down before it could take a step toward the boy.
Standing beside the Secret Service agent, both their weapons thrust through the chain link, the bearded man muttered to the agent, “I’m gonna help you kick his ass.”
Devon Fox peeked into the guardhouse, announced that it was empty and went in. Minutes later there was a hum of hydraulics and electric motors, the steel bollards retracted into the concrete pad and the gate rolled open. Marcus joined his principle in the guardhouse, and within minutes the school bus and the florist’s van came through. As soon as they cleared the opening the gate closed and the bollards rose once more to their upright position.
Marcus gave Devon a brief hug and a frustrated sigh. “You did good. I’m still going to kick your ass.”
Devon grinned. He had buckled on the dead MP’s pistol belt, and Marcus had no objection. They climbed aboard the little bus (where another scolding was waiting for the fifteen-year-old from his mother) and the bearded man climbed behind the wheel. Then they were moving up a steep road they all hoped would lead them to safety at last.
-41-
FEATHER MOUNTAIN
Western Pennsylvania – October 29
There were seven of them; four from the bunker staff, one from Rowe’s team, the Army surgeon and Sergeant Stipling. The sergeant was on point, gripping the nine-millimeter pistol. The surgeon had told the others that they were heading to medical for testing, on the general’s orders. He was himself a colonel, and good soldiers that they were they came along without question. Now Stipling led them through the cold, echoing passages bored through the mountain.
The group moved wordlessly, instinctively softening their footsteps to reduce noise. They’d all been told what was out there. It was only because of their silence that they were able to hear it, a distant, ghostly laughter reverberating off the rock. It was the sound of madness, and of promised horror.
Sgt. Stipling didn’t like the idea of all of them crammed into a single elevator, so when they reached the chamber where the bank of steel doors was set in one wall he chose the stairs instead. He eased open the door and checked the cement stairwell up and down. It was quiet.
“Up to level one,” he told the group, motioning them in. “Stop at the door. Don’t go through it until I get there.”
The soldiers moved past and descended, most of them nervous and wishing they’d been picked to go with the general to the armory. The mountain was no longer a place to walk around unarmed.
The sergeant counted them off as they passed, then looked around sharply. One missing. It was the other comm tech from Rowe’s team. She’d been last in line. Stipling peered back up the corridor from which they’d come. It was empty, a long tunnel of light and shadow.
A giggle echoed down the passage. Stipling went into the stairwell and closed the door behind him, wishing it had a lock.
Medical was a short distance from the upper level door, down a wide stone passage, and the group reached it without incident. When they arrived however, they found the outermost door standing open, a red smear on its edge as if grabbed by a bloody hand, and a trail of gore leading from the smooth, stone floor of the passageway across the white tiles of the examination room.
Sgt. Stipling had everyone spread out to check the suite of rooms; patient exam cubicles, a small surgery, radiology, a tiny office next to a supply closet and two rooms of beds for patients, one for standard medical cases and one for quarantine. He had told Rowe’s surgeon that the mountain had a full-time medic (one of those missing) but that there was no on-site physician. Military doctors would make scheduled visits to the facility, and anything the medic couldn’t handle was driven to the small clinic in Custer City when necessary.
The surgeon had nodded. It had been the Feather Mountain medic he’d left here
with their bitten female soldier who had been medicated and left to rest. There had been no answer to the repeated calls to medical, and when Rowe’s combat medic went to check on them, he hadn’t come back.
The gore trail – Stipling believed it was coming out, not in, though he couldn’t say why - was streaked across the floor from beyond the open door to the patient ward. Standing behind the sergeant, the Army surgeon suddenly went cold. That was where his patient was. The two men looked in, and the surgeon immediately turned away with a choking sound. The room was destroyed; beds were tipped over, an IV tree was on the floor in the puddle of a popped fluids bag, and then there was the blood. So much of it. It spattered the walls and white sheets like a crime scene, and a wide pool of it was on the floor around the bed where the patient hung halfway off the mattress.
What was left of her.
Stipling blinked. He’d served in Afghanistan, and had seen men die, but he’d forgotten just how much blood a human body could hold. There wasn’t much remaining to this body. It had been mostly devoured.
The sergeant closed the door as the rest of the group reported that the medical suite was clear. He handed his pistol to one of them and posted the sentry near the outer door, then went to the doctor who was a few yards away, bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing deeply.
He laughed weakly. “I see blood all the time,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Not like that, Colonel,” Stipling said. “It’s okay.”
The doctor shook his head. “She was my responsibility. My fault. I should have…”
“Colonel,” the sergeant said firmly, gripping the surgeon’s arm. “We have to get this done.”
The doctor nodded, straightened and let out a long, shaky sigh. Then he went to work. Within an hour, which was free of disruption from the hallway, all of the Feather Mountain team members had been tested for the active strain of Trident, and the results were in. During that time, Stipling noted that the door to the quarantine ward was fitted with a lock, and hunted down the keys.
Looking pale, the doctor took the sergeant aside and spoke quietly, listing who was fully infected. Then he looked at the man and said, “As for you…”
Before he could finish, the sergeant retrieved his pistol from the door sentry (that man was one of the infected not yet come to term) and held out the pistol butt-first along with the keys. “I’m not that lucky.”
The surgeon looked startled. “No! You’re clear.”
Stipling’s face darkened. “This isn’t a fucking game show reveal, Colonel.” The other man looked at the floor and shook his head. The NCO looked at his fellow soldiers, thinking it would have been easier to be one of those locked away instead of being the one who had to turn the key. Stipling gestured for Rowe’s infected comms tech and three of the four Feather mountain staffers, to move into the quarantine ward. That left only one soldier with the physician.
“We have to place you in a secure area for now,” the sergeant told them, gripping the pistol tightly but keeping it low at his side. Would they go?
“For how long?” one of them asked, a computer tech Stipling had known and worked with for two years. A friend.
“As quick as I can make it, John,” he lied. “I’ll be back for you.” And he knew that wasn’t a lie.
The yet-to-turn soldiers hesitated for only a moment, then filed into the quarantine ward as they’d been ordered. Stipling turned the key with a sharp click. “Let’s get back to comms,” he told the colonel, not looking back at the faces peering through the glass.
As a general officer, he hadn’t had cause to fear for his life in a long time, but here in these echoing tunnels he felt the familiar and unwelcome sensation wrapping itself around him once more like the cold blanket of a drowning victim lying in a coroner’s van. Joshua Rowe had been in hot spots around the world, had been under fire and even found himself on the run with an armed enemy hunting him. That had been Fallujah. And even then, the enemy would have killed him at a distance if it could. He had never been stalked by something that wanted to get close enough to use its teeth. Until now.
The journey from the communication center to the armory would take them two levels down and about a quarter mile over. Under normal conditions it would be about a fifteen minute journey. But Rowe and his IT tech-turned-infantryman were moving slowly, pistols extended, every shadow and sound a potential threat.
“When they come, they’ll come fast,” the general had said to the young soldier. “You’ll have only a couple of seconds before they’re on you, so hit your target.”
The tech looked less than confident.
Now he was leading five yards ahead of the general, edging up to the entrance of a domed chamber that contained the central elevator banks, the same one Stipling and his group had encountered not too much earlier. As on the upper level, this room had several bulletin boards on the walls, a pair of golf carts plugged into charging stations and a Plexiglas-covered map of the entire installation. The tech pushed the button to summon an elevator car, then stood watch as the general checked the map to verify their position and the route that remained ahead of them.
Unless something had gone terribly wrong with Sgt. Stipling and the doctor, Rowe knew how many unfriendlies were out there, even if he couldn’t say exactly where they were. By his calculations there were ten of the infected unaccounted-for and running loose in the complex, a mix of his team and the Feather Mountain staff. He would have to find them and kill them.
They found him first.
The attack came from the sides, a woman and a man, both in uniform and running from a pair of tunnels on opposite sides of the chamber. Their uniforms were ripped and the woman’s face was mauled, her right ear dangling on a flap of skin. The man hit the IT tech before he could bring his pistol to bear, and the woman came in low at the general, screeching and aiming for his waist.
Rowe shot the woman down, three in the chest and one in the forehead, dropping her close enough to touch his boots.
The tech died screaming under the teeth and hands of Feather Mountain’s former captain. The infected officer tore a piece of flesh loose and looked up to see the muzzle of Rowe’s pistol, just in time to be executed at point blank range.
The general swore, then collected dog tags from all three just as the elevator arrived. Chuckling came from another tunnel and he hurried inside, stabbing the Sub-3 button until the doors closed. As he was hanging the dog tags around his neck he realized he’d left the second pistol on the floor of the upper chamber, and cursed. But a single handgun wouldn’t matter. If he didn’t make it to the armory, Feather Mountain would be lost. Assuming he was able to clear the complex of the infected and not be killed by the next ones he encountered.
Sub-Level Three looked much like the others, especially the elevator chamber with its bulletin boards, golf carts and parked bicycles. A sign in red letters directed him toward the armory, and he advanced down the corridor with his nine-millimeter extended at arm’s length, feeling his heart slamming in his chest. One of the fluorescents up ahead was flickering, deepening the shadows and making them dance.
Rowe suddenly slipped, caught himself from falling and looked down.
He had stepped in blood, a wide pool of it on the polished stone floor, speckled with pieces of flesh and clumps of hair. He stepped to the side, looked around and then froze as he suddenly realized something.
The armory would be secured, just as it would in any military facility.
Rowe didn’t have access. The Feather Mountain captain would have a pass-card or know the code, and he was dead on an upper floor, put down by Rowe himself.
Stupid! He made a fist, wanting to hit something. He would have to go back up to check the body. Assuming there was a card to find and not a memorized code he would never obtain. He walked to the next corner and turned right, following another armory sign. He would check first to see if it was a keypad or a card reader so he’d know what to look for.
&
nbsp; The armory door was standing ajar, prevented from automatically closing by the body of one of the soldiers originally sent down here with the captain. The dead man had been mutilated and partially consumed, the space around him looking like the floor of a stockyard slaughterhouse.
The general went in, reaching blindly through the darkness until he found the lights, tensing as he snapped them on. Nothing came at him in the sudden glare, and Rowe saw racks of combat gear, weapons and ammunition. Five minutes later he was wearing body armor, an ammo vest with pouches full of magazines, a combat knife and several grenades; illumination, concussion and frag. He gripped an M4 assault rifle to which he’d snapped in the bayonet, and a second pistol was shoved in his belt. With a deep breath he headed back into the corridor.
He pulled the dog tags off the dead man at the door and hung them with the three already around his neck. It was time to add more to the collection.
Rowe moved back toward the elevator chamber and disappeared from sight.
Muzzle flashes and the echo of gunfire came from there moments later.
Donny was reminded of mowing a lawn, the methodical pattern of moving up and down in lines. His camo trousers were soaked and his boots glistened with blood as he went, stabbing downward or pulling the trigger, systematically working across a field of bodies. Some were trying to rise, others made it to their feet and came at him. Donny cut them all down, and as he finished he was confident that none would be trying to get up a third time.
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