The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) (20 page)

The GPS began to beep rapidly as they closed on the bunker. The white smudge Anna had taken for the antennae tower soon loomed up over the interwoven branches, crisp and sharply defined now.

"Four autocannons," Peters radioed from the second Humvee in the convoy, coming at it from an angle of one hundred and twenty degrees to the right. His voice was a bark that barely registered above the cough and bristle of the vineyard coming apart beneath their wheels. "Just like Salle's."

"Any electrical signal rising off them?" Anna called to Jake in back.

"None clear," he answered, listening intently through a handheld microwave dish pointed through the windshield. "Just a low buzzing."

"Is that caused by the shield?"

"It's not the same frequency as ours, but I think so."

This was essential information; one of the theories they'd been batting around for shutting the demons down without first hacking into the bunkers. Each demon had a different shutdown code on the hydrogen line; that seemed clear since only the button inside each bunker was capable of shutting them down. The working theory was that those shutdown codes could be tied to the frequency of the shield. It was possible. It was just one of the projects Lucas had volunteered for, claiming success in it meant they wouldn't have to infect the bunkers at all, to get at the off buttons.

"Keep that in mind," Anna said, "now all stop and everyone ready."

She hit the brakes hard and the Humvee skidded to a bumpy, sliding stop some two hundred yards from the gun turret, lodged in the middle of a thicket of cascading vines. Ropey tendrils with thick fleshy green leaves pressed up against the window. The engine roared down, leaving briefly the roar of two other vehicles nearby cutting out too, followed by silence and the ticking of the engine.

"Ollie," Anna called.

"Roger that," he answered, and somewhere one hundred and twenty degrees to the left he pushed open the ceiling hatch in his Humvee with the laser-targeter on his shoulder. He'd remained the best shot with heavy weaponry ever since he took out a demon on the run as it bore down on Amo near Albuquerque.

"I think it's about to-" Jake said, then the air was split by a cacophonous-

RATATATATATATATAT

"Hoods up!" Anna shouted into the radio, and pushed the spring to raise the reinforced-armor front hood, blocking the windshield.

A grunt came through the radio, followed by an, "Oh shit!" and a thud from Ollie.

RATATATATATATATAT

"All four cannons are firing!" Ollie shouted. "One almost took my goddamn head off."

RATATATAT THUMP THUMP RATATATAT

Armor piercing rounds strafed the front of Anna's Humvee, plowing into the hood plating and shaking the whole vehicle as the autocannon fixed its targeting, digging at the hood like a ballistic woodpecker, every shot of the dozen fired per second hitting dead on, too fast to distinguish.

THUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMP

The stink of burnt paint and atomized metal filled the inside of the cab, everything vibrated and Anna could barely hear herself shouting into the radio.

"Did you get a read, Ollie?"

"Maybe!" he shouted back.

"So light it up."

"Aye aye!" Feargal shouted from his Humvee in back, well out of range. "Loading, programming, firing."

There was no sound of the artillery load ejecting or whining by overhead, as there was no sound other than the endless THUUUUUUUUUUUUMP of the autocannons drilling into their armor, but some ten seconds later there was an almighty-

BANG

Which didn't stop the pummeling of the power drill on the hood plate, but did lessen the noise some.

"Ours has gone down!" Wanda shouted from her Humvee, one hundred twenty degrees to Anna's right.

"Hit it with everything you've got," Anna shouted. "Feargal, again! And Jake?"

"I'm on radar," Jake called back, "like we thought, they've launched. I'm reading three drones in the air already circling for height."

"Feargal?"

There was another BANG and the THUUUUUUMP of the autocannon against Anna's front hood faded to nothing.

"Switching over to ground-to-air," he answered. "Targeting the lead drone now. Damn, they're so damn small."

"Ollie can you target them with the laser?"

RATATATATATAT THUMP

"We're under fire again," Ollie called back. "The thing's revolved, it's got us pinned down with one of the reverse heads."

"Wanda!"

"On it."

This time Anna heard the whoosh of the rocket shoot out of the tube through the radio, followed by an answering BANG that didn't diminish the RATATATAT THUMP.

"It's revolved on us too," Wanda called. "Two heads still up, I missed."

Anna cursed.

"I've got a drone in sights, maybe," Feargal called. "Shall I take it or the autocannon?"

"Take it, I'll deal with the cannon."

"Roger that."

Anna reached back and Jake put an RPG in her hand. "Three in the belt, one in the tube," he said, before turning back to his radar screen, beeping still and feeding live information to Feargal.

Anna snagged the RPG and kicked open the side door, snapping a vine and squeezing out of the gap. Outside the noise of shells firing and hitting solid metal plate to left and right felt like the total chaos of being inside a hurricane. The two remaining autocannons were pinning down the two other Humvees, steadily boring through their armored hoods. Only she was free to move, but if the cannons were to strafe over and just one slug hit her?

Hydrostatic shock would kill her in seconds, yanking the blood from her body and out through the wound, even if the wound was not itself fatal.

No time like the present. She kicked her foot onto the ladder on the Humvee's flank and yelled into the radio mounted on her shoulder.

"Humvees advance!"

Wanda and Peters rogered back, and Anna pointed at Jake through the window as he lurched forward to drive the engine on. It coughed back to life and began to roll forwards.

Anna clung on to the side. Everywhere was the RATATATATAT. A brief foray cut over toward her Humvee, slugs THUMPed off the front screen, and she barely swung round to the back and into shelter in time, clinging to the Humvee's back rail.

RATATATATATATATATAT

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Ollie and Wanda were pinned down, and they were the best shots. Only Ollie could hit the mark at two hundred yards. But at one hundred?

Anna counted and waited as the Humvee forced a path through the vineyard. Peeking over the top she saw the autocannon tip, where the four guns were sheltered by four leaf-like hoods, revolving to keep fire on all three Humvees.

RATATATATATAT

THUMP

RATATATATATAT

They were all pinned down. The guns were working in concert, aiming to hold them there long enough for the drones to cycle up, so they could rain chaos from on high. There was no more time.

"Feargal, come on!" she shouted, then yanked on the railing and vaulted herself bodily up to the Humvee roof. Instantly the battlefield transformed, and she saw the muzzle flashes of the two dazzling autocannon, saw the two other Humvees, now each blazing under heavy fire like a welder's torch.

She set her feet as the Humvee rumbled on, raised the RPG to her shoulder, and sighted down the tube. Was it one hundred yards yet? The gun turret revolved and to her right and left the autocannons strafed over, cutting lines through the vine foliage.

RATATATATATATAT

She pulled the trigger.

WHOOSH went the rocket. The Humvee trundled on as if in slow motion.

RATATATATATAT

THUMP

A slug chewed into the Humvee roof by her foot, sending out flecks of metal that scored her calf.

THUMP went another, spraying her face with heat and tiny paint particles, then

BOOM

The head of the gun turret burst in a blazing red and orange fireball. The roar of incoming bullets stopped at once, followed by a host of firecracker explosions as the munitions in the autocannon train down the turret shot off like popcorn.

In the sky overhead, as if mirroring the explosions on earth, another explosion bloomed like a second sun. Peering against the sun, as the Humvee rolled on toward the concrete block, Anna tracked the missile's smoke trail back to Feargal kneeling atop his Humvee.

"Hell yeah!" Jake called through the radio. "Did you see that?"

"Two more, Feargal!" Anna called back. Her legs trembled. She stared up at the sky, but the drones were too small and too high already.

A second fireball burst, smaller and higher, from which the sound was a muted BANG. Anna watched for the third.

"Almost," Feargal said.

"Get it."

"Sending you the telemetry," said Ollie, kneeling now on his roof too and aiming the laser-targeter.

"Got it," Feargal said, and out shot another missile on a string of black smoke. They all watched it jet up into the bright sky, until-

BANG

A third fire mushroomed, the highest of all.

Cheers broke out across the assault squad. Anna let the RPG tube slide to clink against the Humvee's roof, and took a deep breath of cold and cordite smoke.

Phase one complete.

13. HYDROGEN LINE

Anna stood with Feargal, Wanda and Ollie atop the concrete block, looking up at the blackened pole of the gun turret. The hooded 'leaves' had fallen away now and lay on the rich brown loam below, leaving the warped barrels of the autocannons exposed to the sky, like stunted branches.

Julio had seen this same sight, she wondered. He'd taken out the Maine gun turret and the drones alone. Now she was here, facing the same decision. She wanted to talk to Ravi about it, not because he'd understand but because he'd listen. But Ravi wasn't here.

She looked out.

Jake was out there now with Lucas, surveying the vineyard. They didn't know where the bunker access points were, not with any more precision than the general radar sweep had given them from above, so they were mapping it now with the hydrogen line scanner.

Feargal held his rifle across his chest, alert and on watch. Wanda and Ollie too. Peters and Macy were taking care of logistics; bringing the Humvees up into a protective circle round the block, getting out the cook fires and heating up some rations.

They had less than a day now before the demon from this bunker came back, along with any friends it had managed to convert. In addition, at any minute the manhole to the bunker could pop open and people could emerge in shielded suits, shooting first and asking questions later.

"I'm going up," she said.

Feargal frowned. "Up where?"

Anna pointed, then laid her hands on the gun turret. It was much wider around than the mast of her catamaran, but irregular joints in the pole provided handholds enough for her to climb.

"Are you sure-?" Ollie began, always cautious, but by that point Anna was already climbing. She dug her fingertips in, balanced on her toes, and ascended. Soon she was above head height, and already the metal was growing warmer to the touch as she closed on where the rocket had blasted it.

At the top sixty-odd feet high, she hooked an elbow around one of the thick, twisted autocannon barrels and rested her feet in an alcove dug into the metal.

Apparently these turrets were designed to go up and down. It was how they got the demon out; she'd learned that from diagrams in the Maine Command. She tried to imagine the people in their bunker somewhere nearby, underground. They wouldn't know what she was doing now, with all their cameras and drones knocked out. Probably they were desperate. They wouldn't know the ocean were coming. They only knew their demon was coming to save them.

Anna sighed. They had to be scared, deep down in their nest. They would have seen her plane above, and they'd just experienced their two main lines of defense destroyed in less than a minute. If that didn't put them in the mood to talk, she didn't know what would. She hadn't wanted to talk, hadn't wanted to give them that much chance, but Amo's orders had been clear, and Lucas' logic was undeniable.

The Bordeaux countryside was beautiful from up here, out of the lingering fog of gunpowder and powdered metal. The heavy scent of rotting grapes filled the air, enough to make her feel drowsy and a little drunk. Vineyards stretched away in all directions; gnarly brown boughs slathered with verdant green foliage and clumps of budding spring grapes. The sun was falling, though the air felt balmy on her skin.

"Anna, I'm reading something," Jake came through on the radio.

It startled her from a daze. That was a mistake. Falling from this high would kill her, without a doubt. She'd learned better on her long months at sea, but those lessons had since been eclipsed by other concerns.

She rubbed her eyes awake. "Go on," she said, scanning the fields below to find some sign of them.

"Is that you on the gun turret?"

He sounded incredulous. She smiled. Ah, Jake; she loved him like a slightly mad older brother. She'd always regretted not being able to protect him better. He'd recovered from his concussion in the plane crash five months ago, but he wasn't exactly the same. He stammered at times, and odd tics occasionally worked their way round his face, like hesitant butterflies looking for a place to land.

"I'm up here, yeah. What did you find?"

"It was Lucas. He thinks he's found the demon's corridor. The signal's faint, we think because the demon's gone and the shield's off, but there's a residual charge still. We can go in and talk to the cameras."

Anna cursed softly. They'd planned that little message thoroughly between them. "You're supposed to be looking for the Habitat."

The walkie rustled. Changing hands.

"We need to talk to them," Lucas said. "We agreed that with Amo. We've secured the area, so we should talk to them, and there are cameras and audio down there, we know that."

Anna gritted her teeth. Yes, she'd agreed. It hadn't made her trust Lucas, but she couldn't deny the benefits his knowledge had brought them. It had been his idea to retrofit the Maine bunker shield mechanism into a kind of X-ray scanner. None of them understood how the hydrogen line worked, not even after reading all the data in the Command bunker, as it was some highly specific combination of deep physics with genetics, but Lucas at least grasped the outline.