But then a burst of movement in the nearby trees, a flash of luminescent eyes in the falling light told him the battle was far from over. He fired a full magazine into the woods, saw nothing go down, and then wondered if he’d really seen anything at all.
He was so very tired, and when he rubbed his eyes he smeared pink and gray across his face.
The executive jet with Air Force markings was now parked on the ramp near the C-130, its passengers and crew trotting toward him. The pilot wore captain’s bars on a white shirt speckled with dried blood, and the others were all in civilian clothes, probably diplomats or ranking government officials, Donny couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He didn’t recognize any of them. Then one of the older men introduced himself and waited expectantly as if the young lieutenant should know who he was and react accordingly, but Donny only shrugged. The name meant nothing.
One of the civilians was a woman with two children, ages five and six. She said she was the British Ambassador to the United States, and Donny allowed a small smile. Her accent gave her away. The smile vanished when he saw how the children were clinging to their mother, and how she was trying to put on a brave face.
A fighter jet made a low, screaming pass over the field, and everyone flinched and ducked except for Donny. He didn’t have that kind of energy to waste. He watched the aircraft – a new F-35 Lightning – bank and circle for an approach.
“Everyone here is cleared for Bank Vault,” the older man said. Apparently he was in charge. Or had placed himself there.
Donny nodded and pointed past the cinderblock house, beyond the killing field. “Follow that road until you reach the bunker.”
The older man’s eyes went wide. “Alone? Where’s the security force?”
Now Donny thought he did recognize him, a jackass senior senator from someplace he couldn’t remember, a man who spent a lot of time in front of the cameras and always seemed to be tangled up in one scandal or another involving women or misappropriation of funds. Donny was too tired to curl his lip.
“I’m it.” Then he added, “sir.” He looked at the pilot. “Take a weapon and some magazines, captain. The infected are in the woods, and they move fast.”
The pilot gripped the younger officer’s shoulder as he went by. “I’ll get them there, Lieutenant. Watch your ass.”
Then they were heading up the hill, the Air Force captain leading the way with an M4 he’d taken from the dead. Donny turned back to watch the fighter jet land, and once it was parked on the ramp he wandered slowly toward it across the tarmac, eyes constantly sweeping the airfield and trees, never forgetting to check his six. The pilot jumped down from the cockpit and met him in the center of the runway.
Donny was surprised to see it was a woman, shorter than him with a nine-millimeter in a shoulder holster worn over her flight suit and a name tag that said Forrester. She was about his age, and strikingly attractive. The call-sign stenciled across her flight helmet said Bright Eyes, but although dark and beautiful, they didn’t look particularly bright to Donny. They looked tired like his own.
He saw the silver bar of a first lieutenant on her collar and pointed toward the departing group. “The bunker is that way, ma’am.”
“You can save the ma’am, soldier,” she said. “What bunker?”
Donny didn’t understand. “Don’t you know where you are?”
Bright Eyes shrugged. “I was out of gas and you had a clear runway. Works for me.” Then she stared past him at the field of the dead. “Your work?”
“Some of it.”
The female fighter jock looked him up and down, seeing his blood-slicked boots and bayonet, the face in need of a shave. She smiled, and Donny realized she had just checked him out the same way he and other young lieutenants appraised the ladies in the officer’s club.
“Combat infantry,” Lt. Forrester said, nodding and still smiling. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
Donny couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him or flirting, but he decided he liked it. “There’s a secure bunker in the mountain,” he said, “a place for the brass to shelter and run the government. If you follow that group you’ll find it.”
“Why are you still out here?” she asked.
“I have to keep the airfield secure.”
“By yourself? Nice job, tough guy, and thanks. It would have sucked to try to set my bitch down on a runway covered in cannibals.”
Donny didn’t know what to say, but he knew he liked looking at her eyes. They did seem bright, after all.
“I’ll hang out here with you,” Bright Eyes said. “Keep an eye on my plane and keep away from politicians and senior officers. That okay with you?”
Hell yes! He shrugged like it didn’t matter one way or the other.
And then in the distance off to the left they heard the long, rapid blasts of a car horn. “The gate’s that way,” Donny said. “It’s not far, come on.”
The two lieutenants took off at a run.
-42-
DEVIL DOG
Custer City, Pennsylvania – October 29
He approached from the south, moving north up Route 219. Since entering Pennsylvania there had been no more roadblocks or encounters with madmen and automatic weapons, but also very few refugees, at least that he could see, and that didn’t bode well for the state of his nation. Those he came upon scattered when they saw the Humvee, and Garrison couldn’t help but wonder at what terrible experiences they’d had to make them run from a military vehicle and choose to take their chances on foot with the infected. He saw several car accidents and abandoned vehicles, none with living people around, and the overall feeling was that his species had simply been swept away.
The infected ruled now, and they were everywhere. Garrison had crushed more than a few with the grille of the Hummer when they’d been in the road, and he’d felt no remorse. The President no longer thought of them as innocent Americans brought down by sickness. They were now a hostile, occupying force, enemies that were systematically exterminating the citizens he was sworn to protect.
He would have shared his feelings with David King, but the Secret Service agent who had rescued him from a burning limousine and gotten him out of Cleveland had died almost an hour ago. Now he was cold and silent, his body strapped into the rear seat. Garrison didn’t have the heart to put him out on the road, where he would be nothing more than meat for the infected. The man deserved better than that, and Garrison had promised they would go to Feather Mountain together.
The Custer Army Depot was off to the right now, located at the south end of the small town, and Garrison was able to get a good look at it from the road. The base was a sprawling area behind a perimeter fence, a maze of warehouses and paved streets that stored two divisions worth of combat equipment; tanks, fighting vehicles, trucks, artillery and the munitions needed to support it all. A long, nearby airstrip had been built to allow the massive C-5 Galaxies to fly in and ferry equipment out to any combat zone in the world, and right now three of the gigantic planes were parked at intervals along the runway, hinged noses raised and rear ramps lowered to either take on cargo or disgorge troops. A fourth C-5 was a blackened, burned-out hulk at the distant end of the runway.
Even from the road Garrison could see people down there, but the way they moved instantly told the President that the base was in enemy hands. The soldiers and airmen loping through the streets and fields around the airstrip were on a different mission now, and some of them either heard or saw Garrison’s Hummer because they seemed to instinctively turn and move in his direction, despite the distance.
As he passed the turn-off that lead to the gates of the Army depot, Garrison saw that at least part of a mechanized column had started its roll-out to reinforce Feather Mountain. It hadn’t made it very far. Now combat vehicles sat at odd angles on and off the road, and it was clear that there had been fighting. Vehicles had been raked by heavy machinegun fire, a few completely destroyed by tank cannons, and the bodies of uniformed soldiers
littered the ground. Black clouds of crows wheeled above them and hopped along the ground, picking at the dead.
But some of those soldiers were up and moving.
Garrison used the shoulder and even drove off-road to get around the shattered column.
There were a few more vehicles to avoid before he reached the mountain road that would take him to Bank Vault, and the climb up through the forest didn’t take long. A handful of infected soldiers ran at the Humvee, and there was an occasional glimpse of movement out in the trees, but otherwise the road was clear.
As he emerged from the pine forest and onto the slope leading to the perimeter fence and gate, Garrison saw why the road had been so empty.
The infected were already here.
Garrison slowed the Hummer and stared, a sudden hopelessness tightening in his chest. A single look estimated several hundred, probably more. Most were in Army camo and battle gear, but there were civilians mixed in as well. The infected were spread out across the gate and down the fence-line in both directions (even a handful on the inside of the fence) but none were attempting to climb it. That suggested that the virus might have erased that level of intelligence, or possibly eliminated the kind of organized motor skills required for such a task. Most of them were violently shaking the fence, however. Testing for weak points or out of simple frustration? Perhaps more intelligence left than Garrison had presumed.
He stopped fifty yards from the fence, and as the infected noticed the movement and engine noise they started to turn. Then POTUS noticed the lone vehicle abandoned nearby at the edge of the road, a dark green maintenance truck so beaten up and covered with gore that it looked like one of those possessed cars from a horror movie. He saw the emblem on the driver’s door.
The Harrison School – Maintenance Department.
It took a moment to process, and Garrison found himself staring at the familiar seal, the approaching mob momentarily forgotten.
Devon.
He made it here.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. Had his son managed to make it all the way here from Vermont only to be pulled from the truck and devoured? A choking sob caught in his throat. Was he one of the creatures that were even now running toward the Humvee, all memories of his father replaced by the need to kill and feed?
He’d never answers these questions sitting here like a dumb animal waiting to be slaughtered. He leaned on the horn, giving it several blasts. Someone might still be monitoring the gate. Maybe he could get their attention. Then he grabbed the duffel of Secret Service weapons and ammo, Agent King’s P90 and his own assault rifle. After that he scrambled up onto the roof of the vehicle and dropped the duffel at his feet. David King had warned him not to dishonor the sacrifice made by so many to ensure he reached safety, and the infected stood between him and keeping his promise. He’d have to clear them out if he was to have any chance of even entering the Feather Mountain installation.
If nothing else, he would die standing up, and that mattered to a Marine.
As he brought the M4 assault rifle to his shoulder and thumbed the selector switch to single fire, he thought about the horde rushing toward him, specifically about those in civilian clothes. If Devon was among them, could he do it? He didn’t think so.
With his feet in a wide stance atop the Humvee, the President of the United States started firing and dropping targets. Targets in body armor drew aimed head shots, and those without such protection caught rounds center mass. He swung left, right and forward, hitting those at the leading edge of the mob. Bodies crumpled on every side, immediately trampled by their uncaring, ravenous brethren running behind. Garrison Fox was an expert marksman in an elevated firing position, but he was a lone rifle, and a turn in any direction allowed those on the opposite side to get closer. Every precious second spent changing magazines allowed them all to get closer.
Thirty yards.
Twenty.
Even as he kept up a withering pace of fire, his brain did the math. He would run out of ammo, not be able to reload quickly enough or the infected would reach him too fast on too many sides.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Intellectually, Donny Knapp had always understood why, during officer training and infantry school, they had been made to go on seemingly endless runs in full combat gear; body armor, helmet, full pack and a full load of ammunition plus weapon, between forty and sixty pounds depending upon the mercy level of their instructors. It was exhausting and he’d hated it. Now the conditioning was paying off as he pounded down the hillside at a full run, the smaller and less-encumbered female fighter pilot nicknamed Bright Eyes racing to keep up. If his memory of the base drawing was correct, they were headed for the installation’s front gate.
The sound of the car horn had been almost immediately followed by constant gunfire.
“I only hear one rifle!” Lt. Forrester shouted from behind him.
In training, Donny had initially found it difficult to run and breathe at the same time, much less speak, but the cadence they had sung helped with both, and the task was much easier now. “Pick up the pace, Lieutenant!” he called back, increasing speed.
It wasn’t that far from the airfield, the slope dotted with clumps of pines sweeping down toward a long perimeter fence, a paved road angling from the left toward the gate. Donny figured that would lead back to the base buildings and then the bunker entrance. He saw the concrete and blue glass guardhouse ahead. Another paved road ran parallel to the fence on this side, probably the patrol route for the base MPs. One of their vehicles, a Hummer with military police markings and a red and blue rooftop light bar, was parked behind the guardhouse.
Infected soldiers were shaking the fence from this side, a handful of uniformed men and women, most wearing MP armbands. On the other side, a mob was swarming another Humvee while a man in a Windbreaker stood atop it, firing in all directions.
Lt. Knapp and the F-35 pilot engaged.
They stopped running, getting close behind the MPs at the fence, and opened up with the assault rifle and nine-millimeter pistol. Bodies fell, and those that didn’t immediately go down turned to attack the prey that had suddenly appeared at their backs. They didn’t make it far, and Donny slapped in a fresh magazine as the pilot finished off the last one with her sidearm.
“Advance,” Donny called, moving up to the fence. Bright Eyes took a position to his left, reloading her pistol. She only carried one spare magazine, but she’d seen that all the fallen MPs were armed, and knew how she’d reload next.
Donny attacked the mob around the Humvee from the rear, firing his assault rifle into the crowd, bullets punching through necks and arms and the backs of helmets, blowing out knees and shattering the bases of spines. The pilot’s pistol cracked as she engaged her own targets, but even though the crowd was thinning, its progress slowed as bodies had to be stumbled over, the forward edge of the mob had reached and was encircling the Humvee.
Donny cursed and dropped an empty magazine.
Bright Eyes cried out as an MP sat up, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down.
Donny spun toward her just as a silver-eyed MP rushed around from behind the guardhouse and slammed into the infantry lieutenant from his blind side. They went down in a flurry of clawing hands, thrown blows and snapping teeth as not far away Bright Eyes let out a piercing cry.
The M4 was empty, and so were the pouches of his combat harness. There were more magazines in the duffel bag at his feet, but the infected were climbing onto the Hummer from all sides now, and Garrison knew that in the time it would take to dig out a mag and reload, they would be on him.
Instead he used the empty weapon as a club, smashing it into snarling faces and knocking bodies off the sides. When one of the creatures grabbed the M4 and tore it from his hands, Garrison kicked the thing in the chest, sending it backward into the mob, then gripped Agent King’s P90 and swung it up and around on its nylon strap.
BBBUURRRPPP…..BBUURRRP…BBUURRRP…
Garrison cleared the hood of snarling figures, then swept the SMG down the right side of the Humvee and across the rear deck.
BBUURRRP…BBURRP…
Bodies fell away. Something grabbed his right ankle from behind, and then there was a flare of sharp pain as teeth sank into the flesh there. Garrison cried out and pivoted at the hips, ramming the stubby barrel of the P90 into the top of a civilian’s head, blowing infected brains across the faces of the horde with a short burst. The hand and teeth released as the limp body slid off the roof and into the crowd.
More were climbing onto the hood, creatures that were once human but now existed as drooling, slavering things, and Garrison ran a burst across them, dropping some but not all. Howls and the slap of hands on metal came from behind him.
King said fifty rounds in the P90 mag. How many-?
CLICK
The SMG was empty. Its spare magazines were in the pouches of King’s ammo vest, which was lying on the floor of the back seat with the bloody gauze and bandage packaging. They might as well be on the moon. He let the P90 drop on its sling and pulled his handgun, turning in a circle and blasting at faces only a couple of feet away. Despite his constant firing, a crowd still surged around the Hummer, far more than fifteen rounds of nine-millimeter could handle. Hands clutched at him from all sides, and the President spun and fired, punched and kicked. When the slide locked back empty he pistol-whipped a face with silver eyes and reached for the combat knife strapped upside-down to his ammo pouches, tearing the blade free.
“Motherfuckers!” Garrison cried, teeth bared as he attacked with the only weapon he had left.
Teeth tore through his uniform and bit deeply into his left bicep. Donny’s scream wasn’t of pain but of fury. He’d lost his grip on his rifle, and when the MP’s mouth came snapping in he tried to hold the creature off bare-handed. Grayish saliva trailed across his cheek as he got his palms on the sides of the MP’s head, let out an animal cry and thumbed out both of its silver eyes.
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