Pavlov's Dogs (16 page)

As they reloaded, Ken looked around. Hardly anyone else on the rooftop had a weapon of any sort. He frowned, looking back at the doorway full of dead men.

How?

With a snarl, he drew his large .44 Ruger and took a Weaver stance, his left hand supporting the right. Smoothly, he pulled the trigger and the five-inch barrel belched fire.

A look of satisfaction passed over his face. The time he’d spent on the range had paid off.

Ken fired the gun several more times, rewarded by a dropping corpse with every squeeze of the trigger. Dimly, he was aware of another man rushing forward, clenching a snub-nose .38 in his fist. Ken turned to look, and as he did, the man tripped, shooting himself in the hip.

The Dogs began firing again, and the man who’d shot himself writhed on the rooftop, swinging the gun around aimlessly.

“Oh, Jesus!” Ken yelled, and the injured man pulled the trigger on the Police Special. The bullet smashed into the radio. There was a burst of electricity, and then smoke.

“Shit!” Ken ran over and kicked the small pistol out of the man’s hand.

A woman’s screams turned him around. The dead had advanced from the doorway, even through the Dogs’ withering hail of gunfire. And now the dead were stalking the survivors. The closest one was almost on top of Kelly, who was still screaming. Ken took careful aim, but the dead thing was too close to the girl.

Glancing around, he saw a pile of scaffolding pipes stacked against the air-conditioning unit. He levered one up with his foot, grabbed it, and then took off running.

With a leap, he brought the pipe back and down, impacting the zombie’s head and snapping its neck. The cadaver fell, and Ken grabbed the girl’s shoulders.

“Are you okay?”

Kelly nodded, fast.

“Good. Here.” Handing her the pipe, Ken turned to see the rest of the survivors fighting off the zombies with whatever they could find, be it rocks or pipes or their own bare hands.

At the doorway, an extremely fat woman waddled up in a floral-print muumuu, her gargantuan arms out in front of her, dark coils dragging on the ground between her feet. Landis and Dunne cut her down.

The Dogs burned through another magazine each, and Ken covered them while they reloaded. As he fired, he stooped to pick up the fallen man’s .38 Special. A quick glance at the idiot’s still form was enough to tell he would no longer need it.

Zombies continued to pour through the doorway, and yet Dunne visibly calmed. He dropped to one knee and took single shots. His accuracy increased, and a grim smile formed on his lips.

Landis followed suit, and the two Dogs thinned the ranks of the dead much faster. Ken continued shooting the .44, wondering just what the hell they were going to do. An idea clicked in his head as the hammer of his revolver fell on an empty cylinder.

He ran to the ledge on the north side of the building.

Ah, there you are.

When they had taken North Regional as their refuge, Ken had noticed a window-washing basket parked at the fourth floor, right in front of a large hole in the glass.

“Dunne! Can either of you hold these things off by yourself? I need one of you to help.”

Landis and Dunne looked at each other. Dunne jerked his head back, and Landis nodded and jogged over to the ledge. He looked down and back up at Ken.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What? It’s only twenty feet, max. Don’t tell me you’ve never... weren’t you military?”

Looking down over the edge, Landis gulped. “Heights.”

“Whatever,” Ken said, and vaulted over the low wall of the rooftop.

He hooted once on the way down, and then slammed into the basket, making it rock alarmingly and bang against the side of the building. Ken got up and turned to the window, where shards of glass still lined the frame.

He looked up. “While you’re waiting, could you drop me one of those pipes?”

Landis grimaced and then ran to the AC unit and back. He leaned over the side and held out the pipe. “Hurry up. Once I make up my mind to go ahead and jump, I don’t need an excuse to stop.”

He let the pipe go and Ken caught it. With an explosive exhale, he swung the weapon, clearing the frame of glass, showering the concrete below with a hail of shards.

“Here I come!” Landis shouted from above, and Ken dove into the building as the Dog hurtled from the roof. He landed in the basket, and it let out a bang and a groan as one side of it dipped, making the whole thing tilt at a crazy angle.

Before Ken could move to help, the Dog was airborne again, tucking into a ball and rolling into the office with him. He came to a stop at Ken’s feet and glared up.

“Never again.”

“Wuss. Come on!”

They went through the fire door into the stairwell and went careening down the stairs. Landis caught up on the way down, leaping several steps at a time.

“Hah!” Ken laughed. “
Now
he wants to jump!”

“You going to tell me what the hell we’re doing, Boy Scout?”

“
Eagle
Scout,” Ken said. “And I should have never told anyone that.” He gestured down the hallway. “Building’s got two stairwells. First thing we’re going to do is blockade the clear one, just in case.”

On the second floor, they burst out of the stairwell and ran down the hallway a few feet. “This won’t take both of us,” Ken said, slightly short of breath. “I set it up so any single person could trigger it.”

Landis assumed he was talking about some sort of trap. “So why am I with you? If you made me jump off the roof just so you could show off...”

Ken stopped running and leaned over, hands on his knees. “No,” he said, panting. “Yank that cord.”

Shrugging, the Dog walked over and pulled the cable. A terrific crash came from within the stairwell. He nodded. “Very nice. What did you do for a living, Boy Scout?”

“Construction. Now come on, we’ve got to get to the bottom floor, get the rest of these things out of the building. It looks like there aren’t too many more outside.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “That way is easier down the stairs, but a pain in the ass to get through the blockade. This way is hard going down, since that’s where all the dead folks are. Which one you want?”

Landis popped his neck. “I’ll take the hard way.”

Ken smiled. “Good. See you in the lobby, yeah?” He put out his fist and the Theta Dog bumped it.

Taking a series of quick breaths, Landis rolled his shoulders and gripped his gun tighter. “Here we go.”

He slammed the door open and knocked one of the zombies back. Raising the gun, he popped off several rounds, dropping the dead men in the stairwell above him. The moaning and gunshots in the stairwell echoed and mingled to create a new sound altogether, and Landis wondered for a moment whether he had chosen the wrong door.

’

Ken raced down the other stairwell, hoping his installation in the lobby would work out like he had envisioned.

He got to the bottom of the stairs and opened the door. Holstering his gun, he kicked at the shims holding the barricade together, freeing a pair of mop handles. He threw these aside and then pressed his back against the wall, putting one foot on the couch, which sat to the right. With everything he had, he
pushed
.

The barricade wobbled, and he hooted, dropping to both feet and throwing his shoulder against the couch. With a grinding sound, the barricade of furniture and office gear came down with a crash. Ken leapt over it and ran to the bend in the hallway. Closing his eyes and offering a quick prayer, he grabbed both the big .44 and the .38, then peeked around the corner.

Zombies milled in the lobby. Now that they had nowhere to go, they stood there, and Ken knew they would continue to stand there until either something outside drew their attention, or they were killed.

“Come on, Landis,” he whispered. “Please make it. Please, please, please.”

The sound of gunfire came from the other side of the building. Single shots, and then someone was yelling, nonstop and loudly. There was a loud bang as the stairwell door was flung open; the gunshots and yelling got louder.

Ken came around the corner, guns up and firing.

The zombies in the lobby turned back and forth between Dog and man, confused as to which one they should go after first. They were mowed down like wheat before the guns of the defenders.

Landis and Ken stood in the room, looking down at the bodies.

“It worked,” Ken said.

The Dog shot him a look, then burst out laughing.

’

“Does it hurt?” Landis asked, spraying a bite mark on Dunne’s shoulder with antiseptic.

“Yeah. Burns. Even more with that shit, thanks.”

Ken turned from supervising the rebuilding of the barricade and walked over to the Dogs. “What happened?”

Dunne grimaced. “I was doing fine on the roof. The dead shits in the stairwell were starting to wear thin, so I got up and walked the last of them down. Then the idiot who shot the radio got up and followed me, I guess.”

Cursing, Ken turned away. “I should have put one in his head.”

“Yes, you should have,” Landis said. “Fucking Eagle Scout, indeed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think he would... do you hear that?”

Everyone quieted; the working party and the Dogs all hushed, and when they did, they heard it too.

Moaning.

“Shit,” Ken said. “All the shooting must have drawn their attention. Do you think you guys could hold them off? Hey, are you listening to me?”

The Dogs sat with vacant expressions on their faces. Unmoving, unresponsive.

“Dunne? Hey. Landis? Hey, Earth to Landis!” Ken turned back to the work party. “What are you waiting for? Get moving!”

The workers scurried back to the barricade, setting it up with a new sense of urgency. Ken jogged to the door and looked down the street. More of them were coming. A lot more. He looked back at the Dogs, who had finally stood up.

“Thank you,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do... hey, where are you two going?”

As one, Dunne and Landis had turned and started marching quickstep away from Ken. They reached the door and turned away from the approaching zombie horde, breaking into matching clumsy jogs as soon as they were outside.

“Hey!” Ken shouted. “What the hell?!”

CRISPIN HIT THE ENTER KEY and let out a long, slow breath. “It’s done,” he said. “Alpha McLoughlin’s team has gotten the order to stop. They’re now waiting for Dunne and Landis, who are on their way. Then the entire party will return to the marina. What the hell is wrong with you? Both of you. All those people.”

Donovan chewed the end of his thumb. He’d been watching Crispin work, trying to follow the code and syntax of the Command language, but it was like trying to learn French by watching somebody sign it. After it was up once, it was gone. The strings of code disappeared every time Crispin hit ENTER.

The neurotech finally let go of his thumb and pointed it at the director. “One of those Dogs was bitten.”

Crispin grimaced. “Theta Dunne, yes. First time. We don’t even know how the virus will interact with the Dog’s biology, and—”

“Dispatch him.”

“What?! Do you realize what we’re up against here? If anything, we need Dunne back here as soon as possible. No, sir. I am
not
going to sacrifice—”

Theta Kaiser was there before the director could finish, snapping his sharp teeth in the man’s face. Crispin got a close-up of Kaiser’s canines, and some of the rebellion went out of him. A small part of him wondered at Kaiser’s savagery. He had always been the hardest Dog to control.

Donovan stood at the panel, stroking its brushed aluminum surface. “I assume this system has some sort of termination sequence? I bet it does. How would you do it, Doctor? What kind of man are you, really? Would you constrict a blood vessel in the brain? Or would you use something more exothermic? You can tell me.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Just between you and me. You seem like the kind of man who always has insurance policies.”

Crispin didn’t answer, but his skin flushed even more, and his pupils retracted to pinpoints; Donovan had his answer. He could, if the need arose, dispatch a single Dog. He nodded, happy again and smiling.

“What a very well-engineered system. I congratulate you. If this weren’t a super-secret installation and, you know, if the dead hadn’t eaten the academy, you might well have won the Nobel Prize.” He waved his hands at the world around them. “Instead we have this. How unfortunate. And now, as to our equally
unfortunate
Theta Dunne: dispatch him.”

Eyes taking on a sheen, Crispin began typing again, wishing he had listened to his intuition. He hadn’t liked Donovan from the start. He’d been right not to.

Perched over his shoulder like a vulture, Donovan tried to follow the string of commands, but the algorithms were beyond him. Accepting that as a fact for now, he moved to the right and watched the touchscreen. It was split, Dunne on one side, Landis on the other. They walked together through the ruins of downtown.