Jakarta Pandemic, The (58 page)

Manson came into view aiming a pump action shotgun at Alex’s crumpled figure. He held the shotgun in the crook of his right arm, with his left hand on the trigger. He appeared unable to raise the shotgun to his shoulder, and Alex saw why. Manson’s right arm was wrapped in a makeshift reddish-brown stained sling. Alex clawed at the snow behind his back with his right hand as Manson casually closed the distance, keeping the shotgun trained on him the whole way.

Alex knew he didn’t have much time left. He wasn’t sure how this man had survived last night’s ambush, but he couldn’t waste any time or mental energy trying to figure it out. His body surged with adrenaline, and he rolled over onto his back. He tried to move his left arm again, but only managed to shift it over his left leg.

Useless.

An incredible amount of pain surged through his left shoulder, radiating down his arm and into his chest. A quick glance down at his shoulder confirmed the devastation; he saw a flash of bone in the carnage.

He looked back at Manson, who grinned wickedly. He fumbled his right arm out further, digging randomly through the snow.

“You ain’t anywhere close. Your little pop gun’s by your feet. Nice one, too. I think I’ll add it to my collection,” Manson drawled.

The man walked up to Alex’s feet, and a wave of helplessness washed over him as the man towered over him. Alex focused on his cold, blue eyes, which betrayed nothing about Alex’s fate, though Alex had no delusions of being spared. He quickly scanned the man. He could see that Manson had taken a hit to his shoulder, probably shattering his clavicle, or more likely, passed right through.

Had to have passed through. He wouldn’t be here if it had burrowed into his chest.

“Wondering how I’m still around?” he asked and squatted in front of Alex.

Alex nodded once, his mental acuity fading as the pain in his shoulder spiked. He thought about the garage door and was thankful that he had forgotten to unlock the door handle from the inside.

It’ll slow him down a little. Kate can take care of the rest. I just need to buy her a little more time.

He tried to focus on the man aiming a shotgun at his head.

“Hurts like a bitch. Don’t it? Hurt like hell when I got hit last night, but I was a lucky son of a bitch. Bullet passed right through. In and out. Still dropped me like a fucking rock though. Once I got my senses, I crawled as far as I could into the Hayes’ yard before I heard you coming back to finish me off.

“You should’ve let your buddy put one in the back of my head. You were pretty much right though. I wasn’t going anywhere lying face down in the snow, and I sure as shit couldn’t have crawled back. But I got lucky again. My sister-in-law was hiding by the Hayes’ deck with a shotgun. She came looking for us when the shooting started. Of course, she had no idea that her husband’s brains were splattered on the side of that house just twenty feet away, or that you’d shot her son in cold blood. If she’d known that…who knows what might’ve happened? After you left, she dragged me all the way back to our house…”

“Not your house,” Alex grunted.

“It’s my house now,” he said and kicked Alex’s leg. “Anyway, my wife did a couple of years in the ER at Good Samaritan before the kids came along, and it came in real handy last night. It’s almost like I got a guardian angel keeping watch over me.” He sneered.

“Lucky me,” Alex said, and Manson responded by viciously kicking his left thigh.

“Kept my little nephew alive, too, though he’ll probably never be able to use his hand again. Skimmed one off his head, too. I knew you were all business, but I didn’t think you had it in you to blast away at kids.”

I should have gone over there and finished everyone off.

“What was that? Nothing? Well, we’re gonna need some serious medical supplies and plenty of food to recover,” he said and glanced in the direction of Alex’s house. “Shouldn’t be a problem now that we’ve found ourselves a new home.”

Alex looked at his house and winced in pain. He tried to say something, but the words faltered.

Manson glanced over at Todd’s slack body. “You did a good job on your friend Todd. I didn’t expect that at all. For a second, I thought this might not go my way after all. But…here we are, Alex. Ain’t so chatty now, are you? Don’t fade out on me!” he said and kicked one of Alex’s feet.

Alex struggled to talk. He was cold and starting to feel lightheaded. The pain in his shoulder was slowly subsiding, and he knew that neither of these developments was a good sign.

“Everyone knows. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you,” Alex said.

“Before what? The cops show up? Haven’t seen much of them lately, have you? Besides, you think they’ll put up much of a fight against that assault rifle you got locked up in there? Shit, by the time they show up for real, we’ll be long gone. Fact is, there’s a new sheriff on the block, and nobody’s gonna fuck with him.”

Todd stirred again. Without warning, Manson pointed the shotgun at Todd and fired. Alex heard the sickening wet sound of the shotgun pellets ripping into Todd and was jarred out of his haze.

Jesus Christ.

Manson pumped the shotgun, chambering another shell. An empty red shotgun casing flew out of the ejection port, and Alex heard it sizzle when it hit the snow.

“No need for him anymore,” Manson said and grinned. He kept the shotgun in his left hand, pointed at the ground. “I’m not seeing much need for you either, although I might need a little leverage to keep that wife of yours from blasting away at me.”

“Fuck you. Either way she’ll take your head off.”

“Don’t bet on it,” he said, flashing a sickly pleasant smile at the house. “Up on your feet, soldier. We have some work to do.”

“Marine,” Alex corrected.

“Whatever. Now get off the ground,” Manson ordered.

“No.”

“Get off the ground, or I’ll kill every last one of them. Or worse,” he said with a scowl.

“You’ll just have to take your chances against an assault rifle and my wife. Good luck. She wanted to kill all of you days ago,” Alex said dryly.

“Sounds like my kinda woman. Maybe we’ll spend some quality time together,” he whispered, and then screamed, “Now get the fuck up!”

Alex just stared at him.

“I’ll leave them all alone if you walk into that house with me. I don’t have a problem with them,” he said in a calmer voice.

He’s really worried about going in there alone.

“Just like you didn’t have a problem with the Hayes’ kids?” Alex asked, and Manson took another step toward him.

Manson flashed a wicked smile and relaxed his stance. “You and me ain’t that different…Alex. We’re both just doing whatever it takes to keep our people safe. I’ll kill every person on this block before I let my family suffer.”

“Looks like you’re off to a good start,” Alex muttered.

“What, you think you’re different? The only difference between you and me is that I don’t have the choice to sit around. I gotta hunt for my family. I’m a predator, Alex.”

“You should get your own Animal Planet show,” Alex said and quietly chuckled at his joke.

“Think about this, smart ass. How many people around here have you killed by doing nothing? You’re like those Germans that lived around the gas camps. Just ignored what was happening,” Manson said.

Alex shook his head in mock confusion.

“Time to get up. You tell them everything’ll work out just fine.”

“Can I get another one of your history lessons instead?” Alex asked.

“Look here, you little fuck, one way or the other the house is mine. We can do this the easy way, or the very, very hard way. I promise I’ll make it horrible for them,” Manson threatened.

“Good luck inside the house.”

“Fine.” Manson braced the shotgun in the crook of his right arm and swung it toward him. Alex turned his head slightly to the left and looked up at the nearest bedroom window.

Please don’t let them see this.

Mercifully, all he saw in the window was the muted reflection of a dull gray sky. Just as he started to turn his head to face his executioner, the bottom right pane of the window shattered, and the snow around Alex’s feet exploded. Supersonic cracks filled the air between the two men, and Alex felt a warm spray on his face as the deafening sound of rapid gunshots caught up with the bullets flying past them.

Manson plummeted to his left knee, just as a red mist exploded into the air behind his right shoulder. Several more bullets struck the snow between the two men, and Alex saw a massive red hole in the back of Manson’s left thigh.

Manson twisted on his knee toward the house and fired the shotgun, obliterating the top window pane. The ear-shattering drum of the assault rifle ceased, and Manson fired the shotgun again, scoring a direct hit on the bottom half of the window.

Alex tried to get up in the snow, desperate to reach his shotgun, which lay just a few feet away. He managed to struggle to his knees by the time Manson turned the shotgun back on him.

Almost did it.

He closed his eyes and heard the distinct snap of a single bullet passing within a few feet of his head. He opened his eyes and saw that Manson’s attention was drawn somewhere up and behind him. Manson fired the shotgun toward Ed’s house and struggled to chamber another shotgun shell. While fumbling with the shotgun, a small red hole appeared between the man’s eyes and snapped his head back, ejecting the camouflage hat and blood onto the snow behind him.

Manson grunted incoherently and dropped face first into the edge of a snow drift as the sound of a single gunshot echoed through the backyard.

“I don’t know how to eject the magazine!” he heard his son yell from the upstairs window.

“He’s dead. It’s over,” he yelled weakly up at the window.

Alex, still kneeling, felt lightheaded and gently lowered himself down onto his back. He looked up at the window and saw both Ryan and Kate peer down.

“Oh shit!” she yelled and disappeared.

“Yeah. I’m…I’m going to need some help,” he mumbled to himself and dropped his head all the way back onto the snow.

Alex heard snow crunching behind his head, from the direction of the Walkers’ yard and twisted his body to the right, writhing in the snow toward his shotgun.

“Alex! Alex! Take it easy. It’s me, Charlie,” he heard. He relaxed and twisted his head back around. The crunching got closer as Charlie bore down on him, holding an assault rifle similar to his own, and knelt in the snow by his head.

He heard someone else approaching from the direction of Ed’s house and tried to contort his body to get a better view.

“It’s just Ed. You need to lie still until we figure out what to do. You took a hit to your left shoulder,” Charlie said and slung the rifle over his shoulder.

A few seconds later, Ed arrived, holding a .22 caliber bolt action rifle in his right hand. He stood over Charlie, staring at Manson’s body first, then Todd’s.

“Did I hit him?” Ed asked in a daze.

“Right between the eyes. He was dead before I got around the corner. God, I wanted to kill that son-of-a-bitch myself. Nice shooting,” Charlie said.

“Jesus Christ. I actually hit him. I haven’t fired this thing in forever,” Ed said.

“Punched one right through his skull,” Charlie crowed.

“I used to shoot this with my dad every weekend,” Ed said, still staring at the bodies in disbelief.

“If I hadn’t put these goddamn gloves on, I would’ve been there to blast his head clearly off his shoulders,” Charlie said.

“I should’ve let you finish him off last night,” Alex whispered weakly.

Ed snapped out of it, kneeling next to Charlie to take a closer look at Alex’s wounds.

“We need to get you some help, buddy. I’m gonna load you up on a sled, and we’ll pull you over to that surgeon staying at the Carters’. You just hang in there. You’ve lost a little blood,” he said and dug his hands under Alex’s back.

He propped Alex’s torso up, applying direct pressure to the mangled shoulder. Alex winced and cried out. Charlie walked over to examine Todd’s body.

“Sorry, man. You’re bleeding, but not too badly. Nothing spurting. I just need to slow this down a little.”

“Make sure he’s dead,” Alex whispered again.

“Which one?” Ed asked.

“This guy’s definitely dead, but Todd’s still breathing. Barely. Want me to finish him off?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t care,” Ed said.

“No, leave him alone. We can’t orphan Jordan,” Alex said.

“What’s he rambling about?” Charlie asked, still pointing the gun at Todd’s head.

The garage door opened, and Kate spilled out, followed by Ryan. Both were still dressed in their pajamas. Ryan moved forward, pointing the AR-15 at Manson’s body and then shifting it to Todd’s. Kate ran up and grabbed Alex. Ryan followed her closely, standing vigilant guard with an empty rifle. Alex could see that he was disturbed by the grisly, blood-splattered mosaic in the snow.

“Careful! Careful! Where’s Emmy?” he asked Kate.

“She’s hiding in the closet with Max. She’s fine. We need to get you to a hospital immediately. I’ll start up the car,” Kate said.

“I have a better idea,” Ed said. “Let’s get him over to the Carters’. The young couple there…the guy’s a surgical fellow, or something like that. Grab as much medical stuff as you can, and meet me over there. I’ll drag him over on one of your sleds.”

“I don’t know. I think we need to get him to an ER.”

“The hospitals are slammed with the flu. He needs attention now. This guy can do what needs to be done right now, Kate, sew him up fast, and pump him up with meds. We can take him later if we need to.”

“All right. We have a makeshift surgical kit that might work. I’ll grab everything and meet you there. The sleds are on the wall in the garage.”

“Charlie, get the medical kit from Kate and run it over to the Carters’ house. Let the surgeon kid know what happened, and that we’ll be there with Alex in ten or twenty minutes,” Ed said, taking charge now.

“Got it,” Charlie said.

“You might want to leave that behind,” Ed said, glancing at Charlie’s rifle.