Aftermath (38 page)

Five more were coming out of the western stairwell, and another staggered out from the hallway where the man in the black shirt had gone quiet, a stringy piece of flesh hanging from its chin. It tottered around like it was drunk until the other five raced past it, and then it turned and followed suit, like any good herd animal.

Lee let out burst after burst, but they were fast, and they were getting closer. The last one collapsed nearly at his feet, causing him to jump back and let out a yelp as his mind prepared for the filthy thing to sink its teeth into his leg. It raised its head, still alive, and reached out in a slow, deliberate grab for Lee’s feet and Lee lost his cool for just a moment. He held the trigger down, the hallway flashing bright like a strobe as each of the bullets did their damage and left a mess of broken floor tiles and gore.

More were coming from the western stairwell, and more were coming out of the hallway, no longer interested in the fresh kill. The eastern hallway, now abandoned and unwatched, screamed for his attention. He knew how these things liked to attack from both sides.

He backed up so that his feet were just inches from the drop off of the elevator shaft and he could cover both corners. His mouth felt full of sand, his rapid breathing like a harsh desert wind, sucking all the moisture out of him. His pulse stretched the arteries in his neck, almost painfully. In the back of his mind he registered tunnel vision setting in, and he forced himself to scan back and forth, back and forth. His whole world became the gun-site of the M249 with a background of the right corner, and then the left corner. Right corner. Left corner.

They came from the western hall first, running like they knew exactly where he was. There was no hesitation as they turned the corner and were instantly upon him. He couldn’t back up—all he could do was fight. They screeched and he screamed back and held that trigger down like you’re not supposed to do, but they were so close to him now that it really didn’t matter.

The air in the hallway seemed to dim with a thin pink mist erupting out of dark, polluted flesh and Lee closed his mouth and held his breath, though his body ached for more oxygen. Vaguely, he registered the sound of his radio squawking and could hear people at the bottom of the elevator shaft calling his name.

Three more infected from the western hallway, and one from the eastern hallway.

Even as they rounded the corner, only twenty feet away from him on either side, he knew he wouldn’t be able to continue this fight. He was only delaying the inevitable.

He swept the hallway with another gale of chattering machine gun fire, hoping to stall the encroaching infected for just a beat. Still holding the M249 with his right hand, he used his left to wrap the rope around his forearm twice and gripped it hard in his left hand. He knew this was going to hurt, but he didn’t have the time to formulate a better plan, and any plan is better than no plan at all.

With the rope in hand, he leapt backwards.

The last clear image he saw was two hands reaching out for his face, long dirty fingernails and skin caked with unimaginable grime. And then he was falling into that dark abyss and he could feel the acceleration of his own body through the air and it felt similar to a combat jump: dark and noisy and terrifying.

Then the slack on the rope ran out.

The cord went tight, ripping and sliding across the flesh of his left arm. He felt explosions in his joints, first his wrist, then his elbow, and the burning sensation was so intense in the palm of his hand and in the coil around his forearm that it nearly masked the tearing of his ligaments. He felt like he fell forever, building up heat as he went, like a meteor breaking the atmosphere and he was convinced his arm was catching fire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a grip on the rope tight enough to stop his body from plummeting to the ground, and towards the end, the burning was so hot, he almost didn’t care.

He didn’t feel it when he hit the ground.

CHAPTER 22: FIGHT

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

This is a concept drilled into any soldier, from day one as a recruit. It is reinforced mentally and physically, officially and unofficially, through indoctrination and through the military subculture. Nothing you do as a recruit is right, even if you’re right. The instructors are always striving to achieve the sensation of failure, because it is imminent and inevitable that every soldier, every warrior will someday find themselves in a position where even their best efforts were not enough, and the greatest plan in the world still didn’t work out. That failure can bring out two things in a man: forfeit or fight.

A normal man forfeits, where a warrior fights.

The psychological evaluation for candidates of Project Hometown placed heavy focus on that very concept. They recognized that there would be no leadership, that the entire command structure would be eliminated, that the coordinators would be operating in a vacuum. So they set out to find the warriors, the ones that just keep fighting because there’s a fight to be fought. The ones that won’t ever forfeit. The ones that are too fucking stubborn to know when they’ve been defeated. Because it is not the measure of a warrior whether their plan goes off without a hitch, but how they react when that plan inevitably fails. Because the real plan for victory isn’t what you put down on paper, its the heart of the man that you put in the fight.

So when consciousness suddenly returned to Lee’s mind, he fought. Through the agonizing pain in his left arm, through the throbbing in his freshly broken tailbone, and the inability to catch a full breath through his three cracked ribs, he found himself batting away LaRouche’s hands as though the sergeant were an infected, and then punched him square in the face.

“
Fuck!” LaRouche bent backwards, warding off Lee’s next blow and covering his broken nose with his other hand. Lee seemed to recover his senses, realizing he was not being attacked, and stopped trying to beat the snot out of LaRouche. “Fuckin’-A, Captain...”

Lee tried to say his name, but it came out jumbled. “Laharoof?”

And then he rolled onto his hands and knees and discovered all his new injuries as each movement brought out the pain in different places. They all jostled for attention and became just a white noise of pain, almost making it easier to ignore.

“
You’re hurt, you need to stay down.” It was Julia speaking now.

“
No...” Lee forced one foot to the ground, and then lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Fi...fine...I’m fine.”

The radio was still going off in his back pocket. It was a small miracle that it had even survived the fall. Lee tried to grab it, and found his left hand somewhat uncooperative, so he tried his right hand and succeeded, though twisting his torso sent waves of sharp pain through his ribs. Harper spoke frantically on the radio, trying to raise him.

Lee keyed up. “Lee here.” He blinked rapidly to clear spots from his vision as unconsciousness tried to mount a comeback. Above them the elevator shaft rose up to a small square of light. That was the opening Lee had just jumped from. Crowded around that opening, the dark shapes of the infected were screaming at them in frustration, but they did not make the jump themselves. “Harper, where are you?”

“
Where the fuck are
you
?” Came the panicked reply. “I’ve been trying to...fuck! Forget it!” Harper took an audible breath. In the background, a roaring engine, but no gunfire. “We got plenty of attention when we rolled up to the hospital. We turned and ran, and almost all of them followed. But we lost ‘em, so we’re swinging back around. Where are you?”

Lee managed to pull intelligent thought from the fog hanging around his brain. “Harper, we’re gonna be on the backside of the hospital. The north side. But listen...” Lee turned and looked into the maintenance tunnel, lit only by the glow of a few flashlights interspersed throughout the group. It illuminated enough of them for Lee to make a quick headcount. “Shit...I got about thirty survivors. All you got is the pickup.”

“
Well, God’s on our side, brother!”

Lee looked at the radio, not comprehending. “Yeah, that’s nice, Harper. How are we gonna move these people?”

“
You remember Father Jim?”

Hope swept the fog right out of his mind. He found himself smiling tentatively. “Yeah. What about him?”

“
I’ll explain later. We’re coming back up on the hospital, near those big white tents. Where are you?”

“
I’m gonna hand you to Sergeant LaRouche, so he can guide you in.” Lee shoved the radio into LaRouche’s hands.

Still stifling blood flow from his nose, LaRouche took the radio and spoke with urgency. “When you get inside the barricade, go to the left of the parking garage, all the way around to the back of the hospital. You’ll see a bunch of utility boxes and a brown door marked MAINTENANCE. We’re right on the other side of that door. Just tell us when you’re here and we’ll make a run for it.”

“
Okay, just hang on for a second.”

Lee pointed everyone forward. “Get up on that exit, folks!”

The group turned obediently and with tense silence, moved to the door. The maintenance tunnel was not long, but it was tight, so two people could barely walk abreast of each other. Both sides were crammed with panels and power boxes and other things Lee couldn’t even name. Over their heads ran a snake-like jumble of pipes and cables. As the group moved down the tunnel, Lee stooped to grab the M249 off the ground and it felt like every muscle and joint in his body was broken.

As they reached the door, LaRouche called out from behind them all. “Don’t open the door yet. Wait for our ride to get here.”

Lee regarded the sergeant’s broken nose with a remorseful look. “Sorry about your nose.”

LaRouche waved him off. “Five second rule. No worries.”

Lee almost smiled, remembering life in the barracks where pranks were common, and often involved rudely waking someone from sleep. If you woke someone up and they beat your ass, you couldn’t complain about it, because the rule stated that they weren’t responsible for anything they did within five seconds after waking up.

Lee’s mind turned back to the situation at hand and he found himself wondering what the hell Harper and Father Jim had managed to bring that would help them get all the survivors out. And where had Father Jim even come from? Harper had gone back to Camp Ryder. Had Father Jim beat them there? And then Lee thought, Harper didn’t even have time to get back to Camp Ryder...

Harper’s voice sparked with static: “Okay. We see the door. We’re outside. We got company, so let’s haul ass.”

“
Move!” Lee shouted to the group.

The door flew open. Coming from the dark tunnel, even the waning daylight, diffused by cloud cover, seemed blinding. Lee’s excitement and hope was replaced by dread as he heard the sound the survivors made as they broke out of the door and found themselves in daylight. All heads seemed to instantly look to their right and there was screaming and pointing and everyone started running much faster.

Spurred on, Lee tried to move through the crowd but found his tailbone and left leg sending electric shocks of pain up his spine with each step. His teeth were set in a rictus grin and he could feel the sweat going cold on his brow. He broke from the tunnel and spun to the right.

About a hundred yards out from them, a group of about twenty infected had taken notice of them and were coming in fast. Lee took a knee, almost passing out with the agony of the movement, but forced himself to steady his aim. One quick pull—five rounds down range—and two creatures fell. Another pull, another target down. But they were fanning out, making it difficult for Lee’s bursts to catch more than one target at a time, as though they knew that bunching together made them more vulnerable to machine gun fire.

They can’t think
, Lee had to remind himself. The logical part of their brain was gone, eaten through to nothing. Anything that looked like reasoning was either a coincidence, or some random firing of left-over synapses.

Right?

He kept firing, picking his targets as they drew closer and closer and he kept pulling that trigger every time the sights lined up. Someone was yelling his name from behind him when finally the M249 ran out of ammunition and became a twenty-pound paperweight. Lee decided to drop the gun in the very spot that it ran dry.

There were still about ten infected running for him.

Maybe less, maybe more.

Things were getting a bit hazy now.

He turned and noticed the world having to take a second to catch up with him. When he had focused and was hobbling as fast as his damaged body could handle, the vision of the road cleared and he saw the most unlikely of vehicles sitting in the roadway, with Harper hanging out of the open door and waving at him like a madman.

Somewhere, they had picked up an activity bus.

It was a big white machine, not quite the size of the huge yellow school buses, but with plenty of room for all of the survivors if they crammed in tight. On the side of it, underneath the bank of windows, Lee could read in big blue letters,
First Baptist Church
and almost laughed at the strange coincidence of it all. Where the hell did they get that thing?

Idling in front of the church bus was the Dodge Ram 2500, its bed still packed full of supplies and it didn’t look like a single package or pail had been touched. In the driver’s seat of the pickup truck, Miller was beside himself with the desire to leave the area and looked like he might peel out at any second.