Stage 3 (Book 3): Bravo

by Stark, Ken

  Alejandra didn't argue the point. She took her eyes off her blade long enough to shoot a glance at Hansen overseeing the last of the weapons assemblies, and Hansen happened to look over at just the same moment. The two shared a look that might have meant anything or nothing at all. Hansen looked away and Alejandra returned to her blade.

  “He's okay, I guess,” she admitted at last, but with the added caveat, “You know... for a gringo.”

  “Someone call for me?” Addison's big head suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. “I hear gringo, and I come running. Hey, by the way, Ally, where did you find the pudding? It's just that I searched the kitchen from top to bottom and I couldn't find...”

  Alejandra made a show of rolling her eyes and sighing heavily. She paused the whetstone long enough to take one last spoonful of pudding and slid the rest of it down the table.

  “Go ahead, vato,” she said, resuming her chore, “I'm about to burst anyway.”

  Addison reached for the can, but then he paused with his hand in midair, and one wary eye on Alejandra. When, and only when he was reasonably satisfied that it wasn't a trick and that she probably wasn't going to gut him like a deer, he snatched it up and eagerly dug in. With half of his face immediately covered in chocolate and his mouth filled to excess, he held the can out for Mason, but Mason graciously declined.

  “No thanks,” he said, noting Alejandra's playful smirk. “Apparently, I'm not worthy.”

  Sk8rBoy William and Richie happened to wander by just then, so Mason waited until they were gone. He had a quick, furtive look around to make sure no one was within earshot, before saying, “So, what do you guys really think? Is it doable?”

  “Si, doable,” Alejandra said, though she was not entirely convincing.

  “Things are only impossible until they're not,” Addison managed around a mouthful of chocolate. “Besides, it's not like we have a choice, right?”

  “Same two as always.”

  “Sure,” Alejandra said. “But in this case, only one of those is certain to end with everyone here dying a horrible, gruesome death. The other is only likely to end in everyone here dying a horrible, gruesome death.”

  “Comforting,” Mason harrumphed. His eye fell on Beverly standing at a window, looking out over the Quad, with her twelve-gauge security blanket cradled in her arms, and his gaze hardened.

  Addison followed his gaze as he shoveled in another mound of pudding. “She'll be fine, Mace. She's scared, is all.”

  “We're all scared,” Alejandra reminded him, holding up her machete to check the keenness of the edge.

  Addison dropped the spoon into the empty can and returned it to the table. “Not you, Ally. And certainly not Mace.”

  “Wanna bet?” they said together.

  Alejandra finally sheathed the blade and picked up her Tommy gun. “Vato, fear is what makes you run from a bear instead of standing your ground. You show me a man who has no fear, and I'll show you a man who wouldn't last two minutes in this... this locura.”

  “Exactly right,” Mason agreed wholeheartedly. “Fear is a superpower. It charges up the body and gives you that extra little edge. But if we succumb to that fear, we become a slave to it, and scared humans are capable of doing monumentally stupid things.”

  “And then they die,” Alejandra summed up, emotionlessly.

  “Or everyone dies,” Mason corrected her. “That's why I want you two to keep an eye on Beverly.”

  “Keep an eye on her?” Addison squawked. “Whaddya mean, like babysit?”

  Alejandra popped out the Tommy gun's magazine, checked that it was full, and slapped it back in place. “I'm no niñera, Mace. Maybe we should just lock her in a closet, huh? Or tie her to a chair.”

  Or maybe we should just shoot her...

  Mackenzie's haunting words came back in a rush, and with them came the realization that that was exactly what had been swimming around in the back of his mind since the words had first been spoken. Put an end to it. Finish her now. Remove the weakest link in the chain and make the whole stronger.

  But what then? Take out the next weakest link? And then the next? And then the next? Should he cleave his way all the way up the chain until only the strongest were left? But there would always be a weak link. Inez. Diego. Little freckle-faced Teddy. Addison. Christopher. Eventually, even the Latina spitfire. And once he'd single-handedly hacked his way through the only friends he would ever have, where would he stop? Becks? Sarah? Mack?

  “Never mind,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Chido,” Alejandra said as he left. “I already forgot.”

  Becks was off to one side, sharing a few last words with her father, and Sarah was on the other, doing the same with her daughter. So, Mason took the cowardly path and went straight down the middle to Inez and Christopher.

  Christopher had made some modifications to his hatchet, fitting a pair of boning knives opposite the blade, and another on the hilt for stabbing backward. Now, it had no grounds at all for being called merely a hatchet. With Christopher's lean muscles and quick reflexes behind it, it was a battle axe, pure and simple.

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “Not bad at all! Looks like you'll get them coming and going and everywhere in between.”

  “It's the in between that worries me,” Inez harrumphed. “Mace, I've been watching you make the rounds. If you don't mind me saying, you remind me a little of King Henry walking among his troops before the battle of Agincourt.”

  Inez. Sweet, loving Inez. As tacit mother of the group, it fell upon her to fret over every soul, and she did so with unwavering dedication. Still, she knew better than to ask what was worrying him. In fact, she probably knew it already. But sweet woman that she was, she was leaving the door open and letting him decide for himself whether to talk about it or not.

  “Not quite the same, Inez. I believe Henry was in disguise, and if I remember my Shakespeare correctly, everyone in that camp was pretty much certain that they were on the eve of their deaths.”

  “Then it's not the same at all,” Christopher said. “If anything, I'd say everyone here is raring to go!”

  Mason said nothing, but he couldn't hide his trepidation from Inez.

  “And maybe that's the problem,” she said. “Children, marching off to war with pretend glee.”

  “They aren't children...” Mason tried, and failed.

  “The hell they aren't! I don't care what Gary says or what you say or what these children themselves say. They are children, Mace.”

  “Every bit as young as your own child,” Mason reminded her.

  “Hey, I'm a whole year older than these kids!” Christopher protested.

  “Wow, a whole year,” Mason said, just under his breath.

  Inez stepped directly up to Mason and took both of his hands in hers. “Hank Mason, you are one of the finest men I have ever known.”

  Mason attempted a protest, but she instantly shut it down.

  “Now, hush. I know you have the devil on your shoulder, and the world has not been kind to you. I get that, believe you me. Christopher's father was the same way. He was bull-headed, opinionated, stubborn... Lord, that man was stubborn! Each and every one of God's creations has his or her own cross to bear, and it can be a woeful burden. My Barnabus spent his life standing toe-to-toe with the rest of the world, good and ready to give it the beat-down to end all beat-downs. But underneath all of that darkness and all of that pain, he had a heart of pure gold, just like you.”

  Not one to take a compliment easily, Mason retreated to his emotional failsafe. “Barnabus?” he quipped.

  Inez narrowed her gaze. “Something wrong with Barnabus?”

  He kissed her on the cheek and said, “No, not at all. And thank you. Hey, maybe you're on the right track, after all. Gold is a cold, inert metal, isn't it?”

  Just then, Mackenzie came running over, calling out, “Mace! Mace! Look! Sarah and I made it. Isn't it awesome?”

  Her
shadow was with her as always, so Mason greeted the big dog with a scratch between the ears, before he took the thing from Mackenzie. It looked like a mad jumble of belts and blades and strips of cloth, but he figured it out quickly enough.

  “Wow! You guys made this all on your own?”

  “Uh huh!” She beamed a smile. “It's awesome, right?”

  He tussled her mop of hair and smiled back, every bit as big. “Mack, this might be the most awesomest thing ever!”

  They shared the sweetest of fist-bumps. The girl went running back to Sarah, and Mason turned back to see Inez wearing a decidedly cocky grin.

  “You know another thing about gold, Mace?” She winked at him. “It melts pretty damn easy...”

  This time, he merely shrugged.

  He left Inez and her son to share a few final moments together, then he took one last good, long look at the troops. Sarah and Mack came to join him, then Alejandra and Addison, and as if an unspoken signal had rippled through the group, the rest of them began to gather around.

  William and Teddy had their crossbows slung over their shoulders, a makeshift quiver with thirty bolts apiece across their backs, and a gladius in hand. Diego had his slingshot tucked in his back pocket, a bulging fanny-pack around his waist, and a knife as long as his forearm stuck through a belt loop at his side. The others all had their SBDs, and Mason was glad to see that his own people had shared some of their firearms. Now, everyone either had a gun on their hip, a rifle across their back, or both. Only Beverly was without an SBD, so he did her the honor of handing her his own purloined carving knife, and made no comment at all about the whiff of scotch he detected when she mumbled a quick, “Thank you.”

  At last, he decided that they were all as ready as they would ever be. He retrieved his seven-foot length of rebar from the crook of the door and flung his knapsack over his back.

  He gave one last look to Sarah, and when she nodded, he passed it along to the group.

  “Alright, then. Like the man said, once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Now, let's get this shit done.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  It wasn't so much thinking inside the box so much as skirting the very edges of it. Diego had only been at Skyline for a semester, but his naturally inquisitive nature had taken him to every corner of the complex, and it was upon that unique perspective that all of their lives now depended.

  The area behind buildings five and six was a designated smoking area. So classified because it was far from any public entrances to either building. In fact, it was a tiny corner of the campus that few people would even notice as they drove past on College Drive, and those that did wouldn't have given it a second glance. It was primarily a handicapped parking area, with two ribbons of asphalt branching off from it, running right up to big overhead doors at the back of each building. These were their loading bays, noticed by few and ignored by all. But with this hidden little corner of Skyline lying a full seven feet below the Quad, and accessible from above only by a narrow set of stairs, the math was obvious. This was the place to make their move.

  Obvious, too, was the fact that they simply couldn't afford a replay of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Though the swarm in the Quad was essentially bottled up, they were hardly alone. The area around Skyline was quite literally crawling with the dead and the undead – untold hundreds well within earshot. If this was to be done at all, it had to be done with absolute stealth.

  Mason led ten shadowy figures down the stairs to the main floor, and there, they were able to see close-up what they had already seen from the windows above. The Quad was literally filled to bursting with alphas. Mason had hoped that at least some of the creatures would have descended into a vigil state by now. But with so many packed so closely together, altercations were inevitable, and the scent of fresh blood acted like chum in the water. Every one of those sightless bastards was agitated. On alert. Ready to charge after any sound, human or not – and rip it to shreds.

  One lone echo had somehow managed to weather the storm and was presently pressed up against a window at the far end of the hallway. But even as Mason watched, some random jingling of keys or coins in its pocket set two nearby alphas upon it. They lit into the creature with teeth and claws, and everyone on the opposite side of the glass had a completely unfettered view of the poor hapless thing being opened up like a can of tuna. But then, just as it began to sink from view, a third alpha joined in on the kill, and as Mason had feared all along, the wild thrashing of the three sent them off-balance and one of the creatures smashed headfirst into the window. The glass held at first, but then a single ray shot up from the bloody spider web in the center. Another crept slowly down to the bottom, until the whole thing suddenly gave way. The head came through, and everyone held their breath. But instead of the rest of the creature following and perhaps even starting a general invasion, it thankfully receded again as the creature was dragged off into the swarm.

  A severed ear and tuft of scalp plopped to the floor.

  Mason hurried everyone down one more flight to the basement.

  There were no windows down below, so several flashlights stabbed on and Diego took over the lead, following the map he'd scribbled in his head. They crept in absolute silence toward the northern end of the building, farthest away from the Quad, and soon came to the offices of the Public Safety Department. This was Skyline's campus security.

  Though only four officers strong, every one of the four had apparently done their duty right up to the end. According to Richie, one of the men had been torn apart while shepherding students to relative safety in those first few hours, and a second had been killed attempting to rescue a child from the clutches of an instructor turned feral. Both now had their place in the body wall. Mason himself had seen the shredded remains of a uniform on a slim female body heaved from the window of building six, so that left only one officer unaccounted for. Until now, that is. That fourth officer had apparently stayed behind to man the radio and telephone right up to the last minute, coordinating between his own officers, the SBPD, and whatever had been left of emergency services. Now, he was the sole occupant of the command center on the basement level, sealed into a glass-fronted office, with a Bluetooth earpiece still clipped to one ear and a uniform hanging loose on an emaciated body.

  A single scuff of someone's shoe was enough to awaken the thing from its vigil, and it suddenly flung itself at the glass with a savagery belying its frail appearance. Several SBDs came up, and Clancy bared his massive teeth.

  Even as the creature clawed furiously at the glass, Diego remained calm and pointed mutely to the latticework of metal wires buried deep within the glass. It was reinforced. A high-velocity bullet might be able to pierce it, but a raging alpha never would.

  The weapons were lowered, Mackenzie put a hand on Clancy's back to silence him, and Diego led them on. They passed through one last door at the rear of the office and found themselves in a large, empty space. A quick sweep of flashlights showed no one else present, so they all came together before a pleated metal wall on the far side of the room. But no, it wasn't a wall. It was a door. The big brother of every garage door in every home across the country. This was the loading bay, then.

  They were there.

  A regular-sized door sat a few feet away from the other – also metal, but with a tiny square of reinforced glass set into it at eye level. Alejandra stood on her tiptoes to have a peek, then she waved the rest of them in to take turns seeing what they were up against. Finally, Mason squeezed in beside Addison to have a look for himself.

  It was just like every loading bay he'd ever seen. Precisely as high above ground-level as the deck of a truck, with a narrow platform of concrete jutting out a few feet, and metal steps at one end for foot traffic. But beyond that slab of concrete and those metal steps was insanity itself.

  As Diego had described, there was the little handicapped parking lot, and just beyond, the loop road running east to west. On the far side of the road was a va
stly larger parking area to accommodate all of Skyline's students and staff, and past that was suburban Hell that sprawled on for mile after mile. And in all of that vast open space, not a single square yard of ground was unoccupied.

  There were hundreds upon hundreds of them, stretching all the way back as far as he could see. Besides a handful of cars abandoned on the road and in the parking lot, and one big old boat of a Pontiac with a handicapped sticker sitting dead center between buildings five and six, there was nothing else.

  No body wall.

  No car barrier.

  No buildings.

  Nothing to slow the fuckers down.

  Nothing at all.

  No one had dared utter so much as a whisper since abandoning Fireside. But Mason had no need of words to know what they were all thinking.

  It was suicide.

  Sheer, unthinking suicide.

  They would all be dead as soon as they opened that door.

  If they somehow managed to open the door and pile through without the slightest breath of sound, they would be dead as soon as their feet hit the pavement.

  If they somehow survived long enough to sneak a few steps into the swarm, they would be dead before they'd crossed a dozen feet.

  If by some miracle they weren't immediately torn to ribbons, they still wouldn’t be so lucky as to make it all the way to the other loading bay, nearly a hundred feet away.

  And even if they somehow accomplished that impossibility, they would then have to quickly and silently break through a door that was a carbon copy of this one – metal, with a little square of reinforced glass.

  It was ridiculous to even consider. Impossible, by anyone's measure. Mason would be throwing his life away on a ridiculous venture destined to fail before it had even begun. And with it, he'd be throwing away everyone else's life, too.