The Killing Floor (32 page)

Dr. Price

Travis catalogs his symptoms: shaking, loss of peripheral vision, lips tingling, heart racing and eyes and mouth feeling dry, which he knows is a result of stress inhibiting the lacrimal gland. Sergeant Rodriguez was right; when it comes to fight or flight, you may end up fighting your own body.

As they wait for the vehicle to approach the roadblocks, Travis remembers what he felt his first day at the White House, and the last, when he fled the building in a helicopter. That sense of history in the air. He glances at the men next to him. Their eyes are gleaming. They can feel it too. The Berlin Wall coming down. Fireballs erupting from the World Trade Center. The Screaming, the first days of the Wildfire epidemic. Fulcra around which history bends. The sense that after today, nothing will ever be the same. After today, everything, everywhere, will be different.

And now this. Bringing Ray Young to a special facility, where they will capture a pure sample of Wildfire and save the world.

He remembers Sandra Forbes swooning in the grip of the Secret Serviceman just before the man flung her into the crowd like so much garbage.
I’m sorry, Sandra. But I did it for this. I have a responsibility to the human race far greater than to any single individual.

He turns and studies Fielding’s profile. The man is grinning. He feels it too. For this one moment, these enemies are like brothers, united in common cause.

I owe you an apology as well
.

I’m sorry, Fielding, but you won’t be able to come with me for what I must do.

Anne

Anne stands hunched and gasping over the hot machine gun, her dead comrades crumpled at her feet. She and Marcus say nothing for several minutes, just watching the road. They are approaching another town. Anne tenses, but it appears to have been burned off the map. A charred ruin that smells like ash, utterly dead.

The bus jolts over a pothole and Marcus moans in pain.

Anne stares at him with growing horror. The large man hugs the steering wheel, gritting his teeth, his face pale and waxy. Marcus looks like a corpse.

Blood drips from his seat into a dark puddle on the floor.

“You stupid—” She drops the machine gun and hunts for the first aid kit. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” he manages. The simple act of speaking appears to give him pain. “Shot.”

“Stop the bus.”

“No.”

“Marcus.”

“Can’t. If I stop, don’t know if I could drive again.”

“Then don’t,” she says simply, surprising herself. “I’ll get you patched up, and then take you to Nightingale.”

“The mission. . .”

Anne shakes her head. “I don’t care. I can’t let you die.”

“Not up to you,” he says, his eyes a fiery blue in his pale face. “Saw what this guy can do. Understand now. Have to stop him.”

She chokes back a tear, conquering the urge to weep by sheer force of will. Crying is like death, a threshold. Once she starts, she knows, she may never stop.

“I don’t want you to do anything for me anymore.”

“It’s not about you, Anne. Always my choice.”

She probes him with her eyes, looking for the gunshot wound, and finds it in his hip—a small hole with charred edges, the surrounded area blackened with blood. Probably a ricochet, or one of the Infected shot him point blank from the hood. She checks for an exit wound but finds nothing. The bullet is lodged in his pelvic bone.

While Marcus focuses on the road, Anne uses her knife to widen the hole in his jeans, and studies the ragged, broken flesh around the wound. It is still bleeding, but the bullet missed the arteries. She opens a bottle of alcohol.

“This is going to hurt. Get ready.“

She pours the alcohol onto the wound, making Marcus gasp with agony. Anne marvels at his endurance. He has strength of a bull. She wipes away the fluids and pushes a bandage against it.

“I can put a dressing on it but the bullet is still in there. You need a doctor.”

“After,” he says.

“We could go to Nightingale, get you fixed, and then we could live there together, you and me,” she offers. “I could be your wife.”

Marcus does not speak for several moments. Anne studies his face hopefully. Finally, he shakes his head with a tight smile. “Now you ask. Too late for that.” He gestures to the bodies on the floor, the smile turning into a grimace. “Otherwise, they died for nothing. Besides, unless Ray dies, nowhere safe. Must give him mercy.”

“I don’t know if we can get him,” Anne says. “He’s too well protected.”

“Find a way. Always do. Ranger way.”

“We’re not real Rangers, Marcus. I’m just a—”

Anne pauses, surprised she cannot recall what she was before. Instead, she remembers the cries of children washing over her like waves from the distant burning ruin of Camp Defiance. In her mind’s eye, a military helicopter lunges into the sky, wobbling unsteadily, people tumbling out of the back and falling screaming to the ground.

“All right,” she says. “This time, I need you to get me close. We’ll wear gas masks. We’ll drive straight into him. I get out, I shoot him in the head. All or nothing. Then I get you to Nightingale.”

“Can get you close,” Marcus tells her. “Can do that.”

Anne runs her hand along his heavily muscled arm and wonders at the life they might have created together. She kisses it, tasting blood. Presses her scarred cheek against his bicep.

This is her way of saying goodbye.

“Look,” Marcus says. “The road.”

She stands, facing the wind rushing through the open windshield, and sees the billboard looming in a grassy field. The board is plastered with a wilting ad for a gun store and shooting range in the next town, five miles ahead. Morgantown.

The content of the ad barely registers with her. Someone has spray painted over it in bold black capitals:

DEFIANCE? FIND SOLDIERS IN MORGANTOWN

“I think things have just gotten more complicated,” she says.

Ray

The old truck lurches down the road, careening around abandoned wrecks, its driver feeling terrified and elated, still riding high on the adrenaline rush. The ferocity of Anne Leary’s pursuit makes Ray shiver even now.

She was one tough broad.
But I took care of that, yes sir
.
I got her, I’m sure of it. Her and her entire crew, all dead or infected now, and good goddamn f’ing riddance.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, honey.”

He glances right for a reaction but the seat next to him is empty. French, Anderson and Salazar are in the back, clinging to the sides of the truck, and Lola is dead, her brains splashed across a motel parking lot like so much litter.

Nothing ever works out the way you want it to
, he tells himself, filled with bitter anger.

Lola is dead, but the plan is the same: go to Washington and help to make things right again. The lump in his side purrs in response to this thought.
Yes, yes
, it says.
Find more people.

After driving through the burned-out husk of Horseneck, he saw the first billboard. He knew it was meant for him. Whatever doubts he had about trying to work out a deal were silenced by the apocalyptic horrors of Horseneck, which reminded him of the dead world of his fevered dream. Infection showed him that world as if it were an offering that would please him. To the bug, a dead world is beautiful. Lots of space for new life.

An epiphany makes him blink. The bug, he realizes, has no master plan other than to diversify and compete. Ray is not particularly special; he is just another mutation, an experiment, part of the Brood. Just like all the monsters. They are not things from another planet, recreated on Earth. They were specially created, like him, from genetic material the Brood found here. The Brood is not an alien race. It is life itself. A runaway program for building life.

You are my seed
, the bug hums happily against his ribs, as if they are on the same side.

“I’m your cure, asshole.”

He passes another billboard, this one reading: DEFIANCE GO TO MORGANTOWN.

A feeling of calm washes over him. Every time he drives past a message the military left for him, he feels a little more control slipping away. Soon, it will all be out of his hands. He knows in his gut they are here for him. They know who he is, and they have come for him.

As he drives along happily, he keeps checking his rear view, wondering if Anne Leary really did die. The woman is indestructible. He can feel her back there somewhere, hunting him with that look of fierce glee on her scarred face.

It was just blind luck that prevented her from killing me. Twice.

As terror seeps back into his consciousness, he wonders if the government is going to make an honest deal with him. Maybe the idea is to treat him real good until they don’t need him anymore, and then put him down like a dog. Dissect him and throw him out like garbage. Hell, maybe no lab is out there waiting for him, no salvation, no redemption. Maybe the soldiers are waiting for him up there in Morgantown with flamethrowers.

What an idiot I sure am. I was about to give myself up without making sure I get what I want. I can’t trust anyone.
Force is the one thing people respect. The only thing you know for sure is the sucker punch is coming. The only thing you can control is whether you are going to get it or give it.

He scans the forest on his left and sees nothing but trees in the gloom. Then he scans the grassy fields on his right, empty except for giant steel pylons carrying dead transmission lines.

Returning his attention to the road, Ray broadcasts:
I can sense you. I know you’re out there. Meet me in Morgantown, but do not show yourselves to the people there. Hide and wait. Hide and wait for me. I will be with you soon.

He hears them murmur across the ether. Not the garbled, agonized voices of the Infected, but the obscene babble of monsters, clicking and chewing and grinding teeth.

He grunts in surprise. He did not know he could control the monsters.

This is a whole new ballgame, folks.

NEXT TOWN STOP WALMART

He barks a harsh laugh.
What am I afraid of? I command MONSTERS.

The roadblocks appear at the outskirts of town. Ray taps the brake pad, downshifting, breathing fast and trying to ignore the sensation of falling in his gut. He becomes aware of a large military vehicle on his left and, in the distance, a Bradley like the one Sarge commanded. A big gas mask-wearing soldier with a flamethrower stands next to the Stryker. Ray waves at the man, who hesitates before waving back. Despite all of the anticipation, he is kind of surprised to see them here, just for him.

Straight ahead, another soldier in a gas mask stands with two men in biohazard suits holding plastic suitcases. This, he assumes, is the welcoming committee, rolling out the red carpet.

Cool Rod

Rod watches the truck stop and waits for the man to cut the engine, but he doesn’t; he lets it idle and even revs it once, as if having second thoughts. He studies the distant figure and decides this must be Ray Young. He raises his hands, showing he is unarmed, and waves his arms over his head.
Stop, stop. Kill the engine.

The beat-up pickup slowly turns and pulls into the parking lot of the office building across the street from the Walmart. The engine dies and Young steps down from the truck, slamming the creaky door. Rod gets his first good look at the man and feels like he already knows him. Dressed in a wrinkled black T-shirt, dirty jeans and, oddly, a brand new STEELERS ball cap pulled down low over a scowling unshaven face, Ray Young looks like any number of rednecks living around Dallas, where Rod grew up.

Young whistles and three men jump down from the truck bed dressed in bulletproof vests, T-shirts, jeans, cowboy boots. Empty holsters on their hips, guns in their hands. Rod watches them take up positions in a defensive formation around Young, acting like bodyguards.

Friends of his?

No, it looks like Sergeant Wilson was right. The man can control the Infected. Incredible.

Rod checks out the Bradley on his left. Sergeant Wilson watches the scene from the commander’s hatch, wearing a gas mask. His shooters are gone, dispersed into concealed positions. Wilson catches him watching and gestures as if to say:
It’s all yours, Sergeant.

“What’s your name, sir?” Rod calls out.

“I’m Ray Young?” the man answers tentatively, as if he’s not sure.

“Bingo,” Rod says to the scientist, who grins behind his faceplate. “You guys ready?”

Dr. Price gives him a thumbs up.

“We’re going to send our scientists over to talk with you,” Rod calls out again. “Is that okay, Mr. Young?”

The man shrugs. “I guess that’d be fine.”

“Do you need anything? Food, water, medical attention?”

Young snorts and spits onto the asphalt. “No, I’m good.”

“You’re on,
vatos
,” Rod tells Price and Fielding.

The two men approach the distant figures carefully, their spacesuits gleaming yellow in the bright sun. It’s hot as hell in the MOPP suit, but Rod is used to it.
So far, so good.
All they have to do is get Ray to put on the orange Racal suit and ditch his entourage, and they can pack him up and get him to the USAMRIID facilities at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

USAMRIID: the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, part of the Medical Research and Materiel Command, where the Army’s top disease experts are working around the clock on ways to fight the bug.

Rod watches the men talk and realizes he should have equipped them with radios and given one to Young.
It’s too late now.

Something is wrong. Young is shaking his head, chopping at the air with one of his hands for emphasis. Price waves his arms at Rod, and jogs back. Rod decides to take the risk of meeting him halfway. As they close the distance, he eyes the scientist’s bright yellow suit and wonders how hot it is with live spores.

“What’s the story, Doctor?” Rod asks him.

“He says he won’t come with us unless we can give him a guarantee about his safety.”

“Is he crazy? Does he understand why we’re actually here?”

“He’s concerned about later,” Price explains. “What if he turns out to be unhelpful in the fight against the Wildfire Agent? Or what if he
is
helpful, and we win the war, and now here’s this one guy who can bring Hell back? Either way, what happens to him?”

“Well shit, Doc, that is far above my pay grade,” Rod says. “I can’t give that type of guarantee. Not one that would mean anything to him, anyway. Didn’t anyone think of this kind of thing when the op was being planned?”

Price clears his throat, sounding like,
ahem
. “I was rushed into the field, Sergeant. I barely had enough time to collect the right equipment. I couldn’t think of everything.”

“All right, all right. Then I guess we’re going to have to negotiate something.” He makes a call on the radio to Tanner to meet him at the last checkpoint with the spare JTRS radio from the Stryker, and then hands his own radio to Price. “Give this headset to Mr. Young.”

“Will do.”

“But then take it right back the second we’re done with the conversation. We don’t want him hearing squad chatter. It’s bad enough I’m sharing our communications.”

“I understand.”

Shit, this is complicated
, Rod realizes, jogging back.

Soon he and Young are communicating on the radio while Price swabs down his and Fielding’s bio suits, hoping to capture spore samples.

“Mr. Young, I’m Sergeant Rodriguez, U.S. Army.”

Nice to meet you,
Young says.
Now listen. I want you to get on the phone to your people and tell them I ain’t going nowhere until I get some simple assurances.

“We can talk about that.”

Ain’t nothing to talk about. You must think I’m flat out batshit nuts to go anywhere with you without some type of guarantee about my safety. In fact, I’m plenty goddamn insulted you took all this effort to come on out here without it. Get on the phone with your people.

“Fine, Mr. Young,” Rod says. “But what type of guarantee would satisfy you?”

Young considers this. Rod watches him light a cigarette.

I want a letter from the President
, he says after a long pause.

Rod growls. He knows the man is scared and he can empathize with that, but this is ridiculous. “Do you want him to deliver it personally?”

No need to get smart. But now that you mention it, it should be on White House letterhead and I want a high-ranking officer to give it to me. I want to trust you people, but this is my life we’re talking about. You want it, you got to earn it. Get on the phone. I’ll wait.

“I cannot do what you are asking. The President doesn’t even know we’re here. By the time the message works its way up the chain of command. . . We’re talking a long time, Ray. My orders are to bring you in, or shoot you in the head. I suggest you come in.”

To his surprise, Young laughs. His guards raise their guns, covering Price and Fielding, who respond by raising their hands.

I wouldn’t threaten me, man. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.

“We basically have you surrounded with automatic weapons. If I give the order, it will take all of three seconds to turn you into Swiss cheese. Whether you have hostages doesn’t matter.”

Ray drops his smoke and grinds it into the road with his boot.

Even if you’re the hostage?

Rod frowns, but says nothing.

Look behind you, but don’t panic. Make no sudden moves, and you won’t get hurt.

Sergeant
, Davis cuts in. Christ
, Sergeant, they’re right behind you.

Rod wheels and stares in shock at the two monsters approaching with arms outstretched, tottering on spindly legs oddly articulated like a grasshopper’s. They’re like deformed albino children, mewing and flashing sharp little teeth.

He doesn’t care about the teeth. Instead, he stares in horror at the massive erect stingers swaying between their legs.

Cascading voices blast the radio channel.

Contact
, several men shout at once, calling in hoppers and requesting orders.

Ay, wey
, Sosa says quietly.

Oh shit is right
, Rod thinks. The hoppers are everywhere. Dozens of them. One has ventured close enough to sniff at his boots, its stinger buzzing. So far, nobody is shooting. He is amazed at his boys’ fire discipline.

“Easy, Hellraisers,” he says, aware Young can hear everything he is saying. “Nobody shoots unless I give the order. Understand?”

Sorry, Sergeant
, Arnold says from the roof of the Walmart.
I can’t cover the target and run the surveillance equipment, over.

“Get on the recon gear and tell me what you see,” Rod tells him. “We need to know what we’re up against.”

Can I torch them, Sargeant?
Sosa asks him.

“If you shoot, then people are going to die,” Rod says, hoping his voice is not as shaky as the rest of him is right now. “Mr. Young is just showing us he has big guns too.”

That’s right. Do I have your attention now?

“Roger that, Ray.”

Then get me my damn letter
, says Ray.

I see dozens of them, Three
, Arnold says.
At least a hundred. And more on the way, over.

“Roger that, Eyes. Out.”

He’s giving me no choice
, Rod realizes.
He knows I can’t deliver his letter. Even if I could, it would still be symbolic. The President wouldn’t have to honor it. This is all about Ray Young’s stupid redneck pride. So I’ll have to give the order to shoot, and then whoever can’t make it to the Stryker will die. We’re all going to die because this son of a bitch feels insulted.

Arnold:
Contact west, over
.

Rod presses the push to talk button. “What you got?”

Large vehicle approaching fast, over.

Rod can hear it already.

“Friend of yours, Mr. Young?”

I can’t believe it
, Young answers, sounding panicked.

“Mr. Young, if you want any of us to survive this fucked up situation, you’d better tell me right now what’s going on.”

It’s Anne Leary. She’s been hunting me since Defiance. She’s trying to kill me. If you want to make a deal, then I’m going to have to ask you and your guys to kill her, Sergeant.

Rod opens his mouth, closes it. He does not want to kill any American who is not infected.

He also has no choice.

“Hellraisers, I want you to smoke that vehicle and anyone in it. Weapons free.”