About fifty yards north of her, a door swung open, and a mass of humanity poured out. A heavy stream of folks, mostly children, a few adults, escaping the fire. Many were crying, some of them uncontrollably. Rachel counted three women and two men shepherding the kids.
“This way, kids,” the younger woman snapped, guiding them toward the mountain. “Right now.”
A huge explosion rocked the valley, the world knocked off its axis before snapping back into place. Rachel turned in time to see a bloom of fire erupt from the opposite end of the chalet, chunks of concrete and glass spraying the ground. The first column of smoke now had an eager twin.
They had to get away from the building.
She sprinted toward the group, gesturing toward the woods as she drew closer.
“That way!” she yelled. “Into the tree line.”
The woman stopped and turned to face, sizing her up.
“You’re the granddaughter.”
“Rachel.”
“We tried putting out the fire, but the smoke got too thick.”
“What happened?”
“Not sure. We were in the classroom. Lot of dead back there. I don’t know where all the parents are.”
“Are these all the kids?”
“Most of them. I can’t be sure.”
The chatter of gunfire interrupted them.
“We need to move.”
Like a swarm of fish, they flowed along the edge of the building en masse. At the end, in groups of three and four, they raced up the hillside and into the woods, the snowpack thick around the base of the trees.
They came to a clearing, where Rachel stopped the group.
“What’s your name?” Rachel asked one of the women at the front.
“Iris.”
She was young, probably in her early twenties, rail thin, her skin as black as onyx, contrasting sharply against the white snow.
“Iris, can you get us a vehicle?”
The girl pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead, her jaw clenched.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “We don’t have that many.”
Rachel felt panic rising in her. She still had to get back to Will with the briefcase, and she was God knew how many miles away from the rally point. These people were in the biggest trouble of their lives and Rachel did not know what to do for them. She looked down at the faces of the children, standing in the cold, some of them not even wearing jackets.
Farther down the mountain was nothing but trouble. Cold, cold death.
Up top, there were supplies, weapons, vehicles.
The vaccine she’d hidden away.
If she were careful, if she were stealthy, she could exploit the gaps created by this sudden skirmish to her advantage. She swept her gaze over her the faces in this crowd, looking longingly up at her, feeling very much their tutelary. She had to trust they would do what she said. That she could leave them for a little while and not worry herself sick over two dozen small children.
“Wait here. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t wander off. I’ll be back soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“Get us a ride.”
38
Rachel followed her footsteps through the snow, the powder crunching under feet. Back at the tree line, she paused and spied on the battlefield. From here, removed from the core of battle, it looked like a video game, tiny characters moving back and forth on a pixelated backdrop. The gunfire continued, but it had a far-away quality to it.
She moved up a bit higher through the trees, which gave her a panoramic view of the huge compound. The main gate was smashed, the metal folded in over itself like some great being had punched it in the stomach. Two bodies lay prone in the snow, surrounded by reddish snow cones. Her gaze moved farther up toward the chalet. Parts of it were on fire, the blaze taking its time but moving steadily. Soon, the entire structure would be engulfed.
The firefight continued in earnest below. One group of attackers had taken cover behind the black SUVs, firing machine guns. Another paced their impromptu perimeter with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Still more prowled the grounds.
A whistling sound. She looked up in time to see another explosion, this one in the heart of the chalet building. This strike must have hit something load-bearing; the roof collapsed like a failed soufflé. Smoke and debris poured from the gash in the building as a section of the outer wall crumbled.
Just another day in the good ole U.S. of A.
She turned her sights on the area around and behind the chalet, where she saw more similarly dressed attackers combing the grounds. Dozens of bodies littered the grounds. These people had no chance. They were reaping what Gruber had sown. No matter now. She needed to get to one of those trucks and get her raggedy group of refugees down the mountain. She needed to get back to Will.
She pushed a bit farther up the mountain, her feet sinking into the snow. A large tree at the edge of the trail gave her decent cover, let her review her options. A straight line to the trucks wouldn’t work; she’d be too exposed, there were too many attackers. Her best bet would be to go back around the burning chalet, stay as close to the building as possible. The body of an attacker lay in the snow about midway from her current spot and the corner of the building; the muzzle of his gun was pinned under his body. A weapon.
It would take her a good thirty seconds to cover the distance, during which she would be completely exposed. At this point, there was nothing she could do but hope for the best. Maybe pray a little. She wondered where Gruber was, whether he was even still alive. A little part of her had expected a final showdown with him, because that’s how these things were supposed to go, right? She, her dad and Sarah had had one with Miles Chadwick and it had been a doozy. But that’s not the way life played out. Life was messy and twisty and not all the plot threads tied together. And so was death.
It scared her a little. Not that she might die. She’d long ago made her peace with that. But that she would die and Will would never know what happened to her. Her body would lie here in the snow, slowly decomposing until there was nothing left but the bones. Whenever she saw human remains, and man alive, had she seen a lot of them in the past thirteen years, it always made her sad to think that that had been it, that whatever that person had been had stopped forever.
She took a deep breath and bolted before she could change her mind. She flew across the snow like an arrow, her feet churning, kicking up clouds of in her wake. A few feet shy of the body, she slid low, coming to rest abreast of the dead woman’s body. The woman was on her stomach, her left arm reaching out over her head, her legs forever origamied into a runner’s pose. When Rachel saw the woman’s face, she gasped.
One of Priya’s.
Priya was here.
But how?
And where had Priya gotten all these people? When she’d left them, there were only about ten of them.
Did it matter? They were here.
Had she brought Will with them? Was he down there right now?
Sweetie, wait in the car, we gotta go kill everyone.
Quickly she searched the dead woman’s go-bag. Binoculars. Ammo. A grenade. After taking a moment to ensure she was still alone, she pressed the field glasses to her face and zeroed in on the main caravan of vehicles, four in all. Two more vehicles than she’d left behind at the lab. Where had they come from? The windows were lightly tinted, which partially obscured her view of the interior. Maybe a silhouette of a small figure in the back seat, maybe a trick of light and shadow. She zoomed out her view, focused now on finding Priya.
A slower sweep this time, moving from one vehicle to the next. Nothing. The attack was concentrated on the main chalet now, as they seemed hell-bent on turning the building into rubble. Despite being outnumbered, the group was still riding the element of surprise like a wave. But the tide appeared to be turning; perhaps Priya’s group had bitten off more than it could chew.
She stuffed the binoculars back in the bag and tucked the
submachine gun under her arm before continuing down the hill to the cover of the building. As she did so, she considered her best option to save Will. It was simple when you thought about it. She had to help Gruber’s people fight off this attack.
In the cover of the building, she paused to study her new weapon. It was an M4, not unlike the one her father had given her, passed on from Sarah Wells. Knowing she had the same weapon Sarah carried on her final mission made her feel better. Rachel had only spent a few minutes with the woman, right there at the end of her life, right before she had sacrificed herself for Adam and Rachel. Her father had loved her deeply, that much she could tell. And she had loved her father back. At a time when you saw what people were made of, what people were really made of, Sarah Wells had chosen to die for them.
A round of gunfire chipped away at the wall around the corner, breaking her out of her daydream, showering her face with bits of concrete dust. She steadied the gun and returned fire, hitting nothing, but tamping down the attack. The gunfire resumed, countered with another burst from her weapon. A flicker of movement to her left caught her eye. Two more shooters were approaching from the left, but she couldn’t tell if they’d spotted her. She fired again, missed again.
As she moved, she fired off a couple more bursts, painfully aware of her limited ammunition. There were two more clips she had taken from the bag, but that was it. And her problems were multiplying; the two new players drew closer. In the fog and smoke, she couldn’t make out if they were Gruber’s or Priya’s.
She fired.
The pair dropped to the ground and returned fire, pushing her back around the corner. A way out was what she needed, trouble closing in quickly around her. Both sides would be out to kill her. There was a door a few yards ahead of her, hanging slightly open. She flung the door open and ducked in.
Smoke curled along the baseboards, but it was still cool down here. She took a moment to soak her shirt in the snowmelt at the threshold before continuing down the hallway, trying to keep her bearings. Her destination would be the other side of the building; all she needed to do was keep a steady course.
The corridor here was wide, a bit smokier now. She pressed the wet shirt to her nose, the icy fabric a glorious relief from the smoke, and kept moving. Fifty yards deeper in, she came to an intersection, took in one branch, took in the other. She went left because it seemed too obvious to go right. Panic began stirring inside her; maybe not fully awake yet, but blinking the sleep out of its eyes.
The place was deserted, the fire pushing everyone outside. On her left was a control room, equipped with computer workstations, the wall adorned with maps of the surrounding area. She paused at the door, trying to think if there would be anything worth scavenging here. Her mind came up empty; she pressed onward.
Supply closets and storage rooms awaited her in this part of the chalet, but she passed those by as well. The smoke had thickened, but there were no signs of fire yet. Up next was a large kitchen, which did warrant a stop. She made a quick run, grabbing whatever food she could. Bread ends, a box of crackers, and a box of beef jerky went in her pack. She ate a piece of jerky as she made her way back out to the corridor and headed deeper into the chalet.
Smokier now, blacker and denser, rolling, twisting, almost alive, another entity in here with her now. She tied the wet shirt around the lower half her face. Memories of fire safety drills from elementary school came back to her, reminding her to stay low, so she got on her hands and knees.
This made for slow going, but it was worth it - the air was clearer down by the floor. Her skin grew warmer with every inch, sweat slicking her body in the rising warmth. She made another right turn, back toward the middle, hoping beyond hope the ceiling had not caved in.
A few more minutes of crawling brought her first taste of fire. The flames were inside the walls here, starting to push their way out like angry apparitions, licking at the ceiling, popping, cracking. In some places, the walls had disintegrated, replaced by ramparts of fire. There were a few bodies here. This was bad, this was very bad, but she kept on. It couldn’t be much farther to the main entrance.
The coughing started in earnest here, her makeshift breathing mask starting to fail under these deteriorating conditions. The first spasm was bad, her lungs straining, her eyes watering. She took a quick break to clear the irritants from her lungs, but a quick one because the air quality was only going to get worse.
After a few more yards, the corridor opened up onto a large reception area. A pile of rubble from the partially collapsed ceiling lay in the middle of the foyer, bisecting it into two equal sections. Above her, the sounds of cracking and warping as the guts of the building began to feel the burn.
Ahead of her was the main entrance. And ahead of her was her biggest problem. A curtain of fire ringed the doorway like a beaded curtain in a college freshman’s dorm room. It was lightly burning now, but there was no way to get through without exposing herself to the flames. Behind her, there was a huge crack and splintering as another part of the ceiling caved in. Immediately, the temperature jumped ten degrees, the heat searing her back now.
She draped the still damp shirt over her head and face and, without another thought in her head, bolted for the exit. She hit the door at full speed as the flames seemingly reached out to grab her, kissing and licking at her arms, the terrible heat eating away at her coat. Screaming, she fell through the doorway and into the outside, angling her body toward one of the large fake plants guarding the entryway.
As she crouched behind the heavy pot, which was almost as tall as she was, she winced in pain, careful not to cry out. She took in a couple deep breaths, the cold damp air soothing on her battered lungs. She used handfuls of snow to extinguish any hotspots on her clothing. While she caught her breath, she conducted a quick surveillance.
A long circular drive connected the main access road to the chalet’s entrance plaza, putting the caravan a good fifty yards away from her position. Priya no longer appeared to be focused on the chalet itself, given the extensive damage they had already inflicted. Running a mobile strike team in an operation this large, she would be concerned about supplies and ammunition.
Another sweep of the caravan with the binoculars. Once more, she focused on the second vehicle. Keeping her hands steady, she looked for any clue of the vehicle’s occupants. Perhaps a shimmer of movement. Maybe not. She was going to have to get closer.
The front lines of the battle had shifted to her right, Priya’s troops hunkered down behind the vehicles and a small outbuilding. Gruber’s army had the higher ground, using the fountains and a ski rental shop as its base of operations. There was about a hundred yards of open ground between them, a no man’s land laced with crossfire.
Staying low, she scurried across the driveway toward a support post and took cover again. Still a long way to go. The good news was that she didn’t have to worry about being too quiet. The gunbattle was deafening, a veritable shooting gallery, the report of dozens of automatic weapons echoing in the valley, bouncing off the mountains.
Another scan of her surroundings, checking in front and behind her, side to side. The chalet was really burning now, rapidly approaching a point of no return if it hadn’t hit it already. The next chunk of the route would be the most dangerous; she would be totally exposed to Gruber’s people, who would shoot her first and not bother asking any questions if they saw her. But the angle of her planned route gave her a bit of hope. To see her, they would have to turn their heads more than ninety degrees, and in their current situation, that would be unlikely.
She switched out the magazine for a fresh one, slamming it home as she ran. Her burned arms throbbed with pain as she ran, making it uncomfortable to even hold the weapon. Still, she held it fast as she neared the rear vehicle.
She came in at the right rear bumper of the trail vehicle, staying low, creeping along the edge of the car. Priya’s team had shifted a bit farther north, away from her. But they had concentrated the bulk of thei
r force at the lead and second vehicles, which would make approaching it very risky.
Now she was inching along, certain each step would be her last. The cacophony of the gunfire grew steadily as she moved, a terrible wave of sound crashing down on her until she could barely think. Her target was the rear passenger door of that second vehicle. What she would do when she got there remained a bit of mystery.
Improvisation! A programmer’s best friend!
Then she was there.
She crept along, passing the rear of the still-running vehicle, passing through a cloud of exhaust, a single whiff of which made her head a bit swimmy. She paused at the rear passenger door, contorting her body to peek through the window. Two of Priya’s soldiers were about twenty feet away from her, the driver-side doors open to give them cover and shield. Again, her position left her exposed, virtually a sitting duck for Gruber’s shooters.
Then an idea came to her.
Thinking back to her game with Will, she tapped rhythmically five times against the door and waited.
Tap, tap, tap-tap, tap
She steadied her gun, her finger snug on the trigger, ready to unload on any non-Will individuals who emerged from the car. Nothing.
She repeated the knock.
After an eternity, she got her answer.
Tap, TAP.
Will.
Gently, the latch released and the door swung open slowly. Her entire body froze, the moment stretching out forever, the laws of space and time no longer applicable here. Then a little hand wrapped around the doorframe, pulling its owner toward the opening. Then he was there, his face shaded by the edge of the door, the shadow of the front passenger seat.
They locked eyes, and she motioned for him to join her. He nodded his head, his eyes wide, his lips pulled tight. She smiled her biggest smile, trying to defuse his fears, hoping they covered the terror in her eyes. He extended a skinny leg and started to climb out before freezing in place.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 89