He jerked slightly but didn’t go down.
And she hadn’t expected him to. All she’d really wanted—and achieved—was to slow him down.
Just slow him down.
She did that, and Anton wasted a second shaking off the blow. It was more than enough time for her to reach down and draw the Glock. She didn’t bother aiming it. She didn’t have to. Emily simply tilted it up slightly while it was still at her side, the magazine almost touching the floor, and pulled the trigger.
Bam!
Anton twisted as the bullet punched through his left shoulder and disappeared somewhere into the warehouse ceiling. Blood flicked from the wound—both the point of entry and exit—and some of it landed on her.
She fired again.
Bam!
And again.
Bam!
And again.
Bam!
Anton slumped sideways and off her. He landed almost gently against the hard warehouse ground, the ice pick rolling away from his outstretched arm. His face was partially turned, but the rest of him—including, for all she knew, that still-hard penis—was hidden underneath his motionless form.
Sorry, Anton.
Not that she really meant it. It’d been a long time since she felt anything for the man, and the fact he was about to end her life, forcing her to take his instead, made that “sorry” just a little bit more than a little disingenuous. Even if she had only thought it.
She was picking herself back up when she heard footsteps pounding against the floor, getting closer. Emily tightened her grip on the Glock and noticed right away that it was way too light, but was unable to reload in time.
She turned, still sitting on the floor, and lifted the handgun.
A figure wearing a gas mask, bright sunlight from the open side door behind him outlining his large form, was running toward her.
Who?
It didn’t take long for her to put two and two together. It was Greg. She recognized his clothing. The mask was either Stoner’s or one of his men, but she was guessing Stoner’s. Greg would have “borrowed” it from the unconscious man in order to return. She briefly wondered if Greg had abandoned the ex-soldier to come back for her, but it was a very fleeting thought. Greg was simply too good of a man to do something like that.
She sighed with relief, grateful to see him instead of another crazy. Greg reached her and stuck out his good arm—he had a Beretta pistol in his front waistband, his right arm still bandaged uselessly at his side—and pulled her up.
The former contractor flashed her a wry smile and said, his voice muffled by the mask’s breathing apparatus, “This is no time to be lying down on the job, woman.”
Emily almost laughed. “Don’t be a smartass.”
Greg might have chuckled as he pulled her all the way back up to her feet. He stared at Anton’s body. “Is he naked?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“Why’s he naked?”
“I don’t have any clue.”
“Crazy.” Then, quickly, “We gotta go. The others are already at the chopper.”
“Everyone?”
He nodded. “Except Minor.”
“What happened?”
“He didn’t make it.”
Emily didn’t ask him any more stupid questions. She unslung the pouch she was still carrying instead and took out the remaining canister. She didn’t bother looking for the one that had flown from her hand when Anton grabbed her.
“Go,” she said, and pulled the pin on the can, heard the hiss, then tossed it.
White smoke joined the already thick clouds swirling in front of them, reaching all the way up to the ceiling. She couldn’t make out the crazies, but she could detect some of them still moving around in there. Two, maybe three, were fighting the gas. It was going to be a losing battle for them.
The smoke was expanding but beginning to dissipate, much of it flooding out the gaping hole in the front of the warehouse while more exited through the opened high windows all around them. At the moment, Emily wasn’t sure if losing the gas to the outside world was a good thing or not.
But that wasn’t going to happen right away, because she could feel her skin tingling and her eyes starting to water as some of the smoke reached her.
“Let’s go,” she said to Greg and began moving toward the side door.
Emily took the opportunity to eject the magazine from the Glock and reload. She hated ditching however many rounds remained in the mag, but the alternative—emptying it, then having to then reload, possibly at a very inopportune time—was worse.
Greg was right behind her—
Lights flickered in the corner of her eyes.
She stopped and looked over.
The elevator.
Its panel was lit up again, signaling that it was moving. Ascending.
Someone was coming up.
Cole?
It had to be Cole this time. Who else could it be?
“Emily,” Greg said. He was out of breath. Or maybe that was just the result of speaking through the mask.
“The elevator,” she said.
Greg looked over. “What do we do?”
She looked back at him. “Keep going.”
“What?”
“Get back to the others.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Get the others out of here. The women. The kids.” She forced a smile. “They’re your responsibility now.”
She thought his face might have paled, but it was difficult to tell with the mask on. “Emily,” he said.
“Go.”
“But—”
“Go!” she shouted before turning and running toward the elevator.
It was still moving, ascending.
Cole.
It had to be Cole.
It just had to be.
She didn’t look back to check if Greg had done what she’d told him. She didn’t hear him, though, so she assumed he had.
Emily was almost at the elevator when it stopped and, after an excruciating few seconds, pinged.
Then the doors began to open…
Chapter 23. Cole
“Well, this is fucked.”
Okay. This time I have to agree with you.
“You mean you never agreed me with all the other times?”
What do you think?
“I’m hurt.”
Fuck off.
The Voice laughed as Cole stepped out of the elevator, the tactical knife clutched in one hand and the very-much-empty Glock taking up space in its holster on his right hip.
It was a mess.
No, that was an understatement.
It was a fucking mess.
“Sounds about right,” the Voice said.
The Welcome Room was filled with smoke composed of a variety of colors that were twisting and flowing, merging and forging into some kind of uber color that Cole didn’t have a name for. He glimpsed shadowy figures staggering around inside the clouds even as spontaneous funnels formed and spiraled toward the open high windows that surrounded the place, sucking the smoke—some kind of gas by the way his skin was tingling after exposure—into the world outside. Without the windows, the smoke might have lingered longer, but with so many avenues of escape—
“Cole!”
He looked down and toward the source of the voice.
Emily, running toward him.
She was all right.
Thank God she was all right.
She ran straight for him, and Cole met her halfway. It was like a scene from a bad romantic comedy starring America’s latest sweetheart and the most popular but unthreatening Hollywood hunk of the moment. None of it seemed very real, but Cole got over that and grabbed her in a tight bear hug to make sure that it was, in fact, real.
It was.
Thank God it was.
She felt good in his arms. Warm and natural and, most of all, alive. He barely felt the pain from his wounded left arm where Fred the Chef had shoved a knife through. Well, not
quite barely, but he gutted through it because he didn’t want to ruin the moment.
“Cole,” she whispered.
“Emily,” he whispered back.
“Awww, ain’t this sweet,” the Voice said.
Shut up. You’re ruining it.
Emily pulled back slightly and looked him up and down, before settling on his left arm and the bloody bundle. “Jesus. What happened?”
“Long story,” he said.
“Not that long,” the Voice said.
Long enough, Cole thought.
He said out loud, “You okay?”
She nodded. “You?”
“Peachy,” he said, even as he glimpsed a pair of figures emerging out of the thinning clouds.
Crazies. Three of them.
They came out from different parts of the smoke. There was nothing tactical about it, no coordination that he could see. Two of them were coughing, trying to stay on their feet as they stumbled forward, while a third seemed unaffected. Seemed at first, anyway, but he too began slowing down as he attempted to cross the distance between Cole and Emily and the constantly moving and shifting plumes of smoke.
Emily saw where he was looking and glanced over her shoulder before untangling herself from him.
“I’m out,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said.
Emily had a pistol in her hand, and she took aim and fired.
The nearest crazy did a header into the concrete floor, skidding for a few feet before lying still. She’d gotten him in the face.
The other two stopped and ran back into the smoke. Emily pointed her gun after them but didn’t fire.
She’s conserving ammo, Cole thought.
“Last mag?” he asked her.
She looked back at him and smiled. That was all the answer he needed.
Cole glanced around The Welcome Room. He could see more and more of it as the colorful smoke continued to filter out through the high windows. Not that that stopped him from coughing anyway. He’d been caught in smoke grenades before, but this was…different. He couldn’t place what kind of gas he was being hit with. It was both familiar and, at the same time, foreign.
He grabbed his shirt collar and pulled it up and over his mouth and nostrils. Emily did the same, the two of them fighting back coughing spurts. Cole spotted a naked body nearby, the man’s bare buttocks almost sticking off the ground as if he were trying to hump the hard floor.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“I shot him,” Emily said.
There was something on her face that told him there was more than that simple statement, and Cole waited for her to continue. But she didn’t.
Instead, she glanced past him at the elevator. “LARS?”
Cole shook his head. “It’s fucked.” Then, off her puzzled look, “It’s falling apart. Anton never finished what he started.”
Emily’s face paled, the disappointment flashing across her eyes in the next couple of seconds. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Goddammit.”
“I can’t help but notice everyone’s gone. Everyone alive, anyway.”
“I told them to get to the chopper.”
“That bad?”
She nodded. “Worse.”
“What can possibly be worse than this?” the Voice asked.
Apparently there was something worse than what he could see at the moment.
“We have to go,” Emily said.
Cole looked toward the side door. It was wide open, sunlight pouring through, but all he could see was a large figure in lime-green overalls, kneeling in front of it. For a moment, Cole had nightmarish flashbacks of Gargantuan, a crazy he’d had a hell of a time putting down back in the city when all of this started.
“The airfield?” he said.
“Yes,” Emily said, already turning toward the door. “I told Bolton and Greg to get the others out of here. Let’s hope they waited for us.”
“Let’s hope?” the Voice said. “Not exactly a vote of confidence, that.”
It’s good enough.
“You’re so biased.”
Damn right.
Emily headed for the door, and Cole followed. He continued coughing, and his shirt wasn’t doing a whole lot of good. Emily’s eyes were already watering, and he assumed his was, too.
“What the hell is this?” Cole asked.
“Experimental stuff the Army came up with,” Emily said.
Cole remembered seeing the men in BDUs that were inside the warehouse, but he couldn’t find them anywhere. He thought about asking Emily, but didn’t. This wasn’t the time, and if those men weren’t a danger anymore, then they didn’t matter. Given that Emily was up and moving, not to mention armed, then they clearly weren’t.
They moved past the dead crazy in lime-green overalls. Red eyes staring up at the ceiling dripped blood down his cheeks and to the floor. He wasn’t quite kneeling, but his head was dangling backward at an impossible angle, his neck awkwardly arched. The hole in his forehead probably had a little something to do with his odd pose.
“Now that’s gotta hurt,” the Voice said.
It probably did, if the man wasn’t already dead. All it would have taken was a slight nudge on either shoulder for him to topple to the warehouse floor.
Emily stopped suddenly, and Cole almost bumped into her. She was staring forward at the door as a large, shadowy figure filled up the open doorway from the other side. There was too much sun in the background, and Cole couldn’t make out the man’s face, but he seemed to be wearing some kind of gas mask.
“Greg,” Emily said.
Greg?
Ah. The contractor. What was he doing back here?
Greg hurried over to meet them halfway, snapping the gas mask off his face. He coughed a few times but quickly acclimated.
Much of the smoke was thinning quickly around them, flooding out the opened high windows and other avenues. There was still plenty left, but Cole didn’t feel like scratching the skin off his face like a few minutes earlier, which meant the effects were definitely lessening along with the smoke’s presence.
“What are you doing back here?” Emily asked Greg.
“Nice to see you again, too,” the big man said.
“You’re supposed to be at the airfield.”
“I was, then I came back.”
Emily shook her head, clearly frustrated. Cole smiled. He’d gotten that response from her more than a few times himself.
“Fine, let’s—” Emily was saying, when someone screamed.
No, not someone.
Someones.
Loud, piercing screams coming from the evaporating clouds behind them.
All three of them turned around.
Slowly, as if they were afraid to see what had caused the sounds.
“Run,” the Voice said.
What?
“You should run.”
Why?
“Trust me. Just run.”
Cole didn’t because Emily and Greg didn’t. Besides, why did he have to run away? He still had the knife, and Emily had her Glock. Greg, too, was armed with his own pistol that he pulled out of his waistband after dropping his mask to the floor.
There was still enough smoke that Cole couldn’t see everything in the warehouse with them, but enough had escaped that he could now make out the bodies that littered the place. Slowly, as if a foot at a time, the clouds began to part, revealing more and more…and more…
“Which part of run don’t you understand?” the Voice said.
Cole ignored it and focused on Emily’s presence instead. She was standing very close to him, with Greg on her other side. The contractor was holding a Beretta that Cole didn’t remember him having before. Cole wanted very badly to ask him to swap the pistol with his own useless Glock. He was pretty sure he could make much better use of the handgun than Greg.
But he only said, “We should go.”
Emily nodded. “Let’s go.”
They turned to do just that. Almost simultaneously, as if they understood the urgency to get the hell out of there before it was too late.
That was when they all saw it. Possibly at the same time, too.
A dog.
No, not a dog.
“That’s a wolf,” the Voice said. “That’s a fucking wolf!”
It was. A wolf, that is.
Gray and white fur all around, with a sharp snout at the front, ending with a button black nose. It let out a low growl as it bounded through the open side door and right at them.
“Greg!” Emily shouted.
She didn’t really have to, because Greg could see the wolf coming for him, too, but there was a big divide between seeing, understanding, and then doing something about it.
Because it was fast.
Jesus Christ, it was fast.
Luckily, Greg had the wherewithal to stick out his right hand, still wrapped in the sling, as the animal leapt through the air and clamped down on his arm with its mouth. Its eyes—blood-red, drops of still-red wetness coating its mane—zeroed in on Greg even as it bit down with bleach-white fangs that looked sharpened to incredibly fine points.
Greg went down, the wolf thrashing on top of him. The animal’s head jerked savagely right and left as it attempted to literally rip Greg’s arm off at the socket.
Emily didn’t give the animal the chance and quickly ran up and shot the wolf at almost point-blank range. It let out a yelp that was incongruent with its fierce appearance and flopped sideways, landing on the floor next to Greg with a soft and dull thump.
Cole rushed forward to help Greg up. The big man was a lot heavier than Cole thought as he pulled him back to his feet.
“You okay?” Cole asked.
“I think so,” Greg said. He looked down at his right arm. The animal’s teeth had gone through the bandages and drawn blood. Greg shook his head, looking more shocked than hurt by the wound. “Again?”
Cole almost laughed. Greg was referring to when he’d been attacked by infected dogs back at Arrow Bay a few days ago. That was the reason he was wearing the sling in the first place.
Emily was standing over the dead wolf, staring down at it.
“Emily,” Cole said.
She looked up and over at him, and opened her mouth—
But didn’t say anything.
Fall of Man | Book 3 | Firebase: Page 19