Breaking Danger (20 page)

Sophie couldn't run fast enough in the opposite direction.

The end of Beach Street. In the middle of the intersection, a pile of clothes stirred, a bloody head lifted, a hand reached out . . .

Jon stunned him without breaking his stride. “Look ahead, Sophie!” he yelled and she realized she'd looked back at what was now a corpse. She was flagging a bit, not used to flat out runs, but he gave no sign of that even though he carried over sixty pounds on his back. No doubt he could run faster than this but he was keeping pace with her, watching her “six” as he called it.

To the right was the grassy swathe that ran down to the water and up ahead
—Oh God!
There it was! Up ahead was the dark shadow of the Ghirardelli Building. No lights there. If there was a backup generator it was gone. No matter, the huge mass was a dark blot against the sky, unmistakable. And close, so close. She angled upward toward the left front corner and could sense Jon right behind her, though he made no sound.

How could he do that? She could hear her own boots pounding the pavement, her breath soughing in and out of her lungs from the run, but Jon was utterly silent.

The building was like some medieval castle looming up in the sky, and she was going to scale its walls. It seemed impossible but—

A hot wind picked her up and blew her away. Lifted her straight up and back several feet, dumping her on her back. It took away sight and sound and feeling. Somehow, she was on her back, numb, deaf, hurting. The wind scoured her skin. A flash of light so bright it blinded her had erupted suddenly, like a volcano. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move. It was raining . . . bricks? Stones, hard objects. As if from a great distance, she brought her arm up to shield her face. Something grabbed her arm, pulled her sharply to the right and her back scraped across the uneven surface. It hurt.

Something huge, metallic, long and wide like a giant metal finger, hit exactly where she'd been a second before, bounced and came to rest a few feet away.

Nothing made sense. A face was over hers, mouth open. Someone shaking her arm, hard.

“-—blew up!” the person screamed. Jon. “We've got to get out of here! We're exposed!”

Her hearing was slowly coming back, but she couldn't make sense of what he was saying. She lifted her torso, something had been digging into her back, a huge brick. Her back ached. She blinked slowly. “What?”

It felt like her brain was made of molasses and her muscles had suddenly turned to water. She'd been pulled to her feet but could barely stand. Jon was beside her, screaming at her. She shook her head again, sharply, trying to clear it. Nothing made sense.

And then, suddenly, it did. Everything came back into focus. The infected, Jon, the Ghirardelli Building, which was . . . gone. Where before there had been a massive building blotting out the sky, there was now a smoking hole in the ground, flames licking up, lighting up the nightmare scene of dead bodies and destruction.

Someone was shaking her. Jon. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently.

Was she?

Sophie stiffened her knees, tested her balance. Her ears still rang, she was seeing double. “What—what happened?”

His face was tight, grim. “The Ghirardelli just blew. Probably gas mains. But it's taken out our ride. That piece of metal that almost skewered you was a rotor blade. Sophie, we've got to go. Now. That blast will attract the infected. It's possible the swarm will move back our way.”

“Where?” She looked around and all she saw was streets full of dead people and crashed cars. No way out. “Where can we go?”

Jon indicated the Bay with his head. “Aim for the municipal pier, grab a boat out of here, sail up the coast. There's no way we can get out in a vehicle from here, the bridges are gone and all the roads are clogged with abandoned cars, anyway. If we go on foot we wouldn't last half an hour; and even if we could walk, we need to go north not south. We still need to cross water.”

She knew that and was ashamed of herself for not remembering. Parts of her brain were still fuzzy, but she'd better unfuzz herself fast. She tried to concentrate on the waterfront, picture it in her head.

“Okay, only not the pier. There aren't always boats moored there, and the causeway would be a trap if any infected got on to it. Let's get to Fisherman's Wharf. There are always fishing boats and tour boats.”

His face was grim. “You don't think the boats might be all gone? People getting out while they could?”

“Some might still be there.” She tried to focus through the ringing in her ears. The infection had come so very fast. People had instinctively tried to get out of town in their cars. Most of the fishermen and tour-boat operators who owned their boats lived out of town, the real estate nearby was way too expensive for anyone to live here. There was a real chance that a few boats were still there. “Do you know how to operate one?”

“Of course,” Jon said impatiently.

“Then we should try Fisherman's Wharf.”

“If there's nothing there, if the boats are all gone, there's no Plan B,” Jon said, voice low, face tight.

“No, there isn't. Unless we dive into the water and swim along the wharf. I don't think they can swim. That would require too much coordination.”

“Okay.” Jon looked around carefully, at the smoking ruins, the dead bodies, the crashed cars. “We're going to make a run for Fisherman's Wharf. Is the case waterproof?”

Sophie spared a glance at the weight and bulk of what Jon carried. If they had to dive into the ocean, he'd be weighed down by the ballast on his back. She nodded, hoping desperately it never came to that. “Waterproof, shockproof. You probably couldn't blow it up. Can you stay afloat with that thing on your back?”

He nodded, checked his scanner. “Let's go, then. Same rules. You take the lead if the way is clear and because you know the neighborhood better than I do. If there's trouble, stay behind me. So let's go steal a boat.”

His face was lit by the fires still burning from the explosion, turning his face light gold and picking out the gold in his hair. He looked like a fierce Viking god, face taut, ice blue eyes cold and aware. Suddenly, the ice in his eyes melted and he leaned down and gave her a kiss. It reassured her, warmed her. “Just you and me, babe.”

That's right. They were in terrible trouble, but they were together. They'd live or die together.

Jon gave her a slight push to get her started. “I'll follow you. Go!” They took off at a run down the slight grassy slope toward Jefferson and turned right. The road paralleled the shore, at times open to the sea, at times closed because of the buildings. They ran past the historical ships, the schooners and steam tugs. One schooner had somehow become unmoored and was drifting out to sea. Ahead, Jefferson Street was dark. It wasn't a residential area but some of the restaurants and tourist shops that had their own generators were lit. The shops had all been ransacked. Not by looters but by the insane.

Hundreds of bodies littered the small narrow street, slowing them down. The row of shops ended and they had a view of open water. Water, freedom, safety.

The fishing boats were in the next open section. God, please let there be boats there! She was running flat out, breathing hard. She couldn't hear Jon behind her, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was there, keeping pace with her, watching her six.

Above the pounding of her heart was another noise rising slowly, steadily. It was too far away to make out exactly what it was but something in the noise was familiar . . .

“What's that?” she gasped.

Jon moved up to her side, running stride easy. He wasn't winded at all. He showed her the scanner, which had been attached as a wrist unit. He tapped it and the top of the scanner glowed bright orange. Her head was still too dazed by the explosion to understand it.

“Fuck. The swarm,” he said. “It heard the explosion and it's headed back.” He tapped again, then listened to something in his comms. “Roger that,” he said.

“What?” Sophie stumbled, nearly fell. But she couldn't fall because Jon had put a strong arm around her. He lifted her off her feet and carried her at a flat-out run, a faster pace than she could possibly have kept.

“The swarm is only a few minutes away, heading straight toward us. There better be boats there, otherwise we'll just dive in and start swimming straight out and hope that you're right that they can't swim. Because if they can . . .”

He didn't have to finish that sentence. If the infected could swim, she and Jon were dead.

The sound was a roar now, that same roar that had passed by under her window for hours. Infected screaming, howling, fighting, killing, dying. And the sound of thousands of running feet. Closer and closer . . .

“Put me down,” Sophie gasped. “I'll keep up.” She hoped. Jon couldn't carry her, carry the case and his gear, and be ready to fight all at the same time. He put her down and she ran faster than she had ever run in her life.

If there were boats, they would be in the little commercial inlet where the next block of shops ended. They pounded the sidewalk and reached the end of the row of shops and . . . there they were! A number of boats, some ancient with flaking paint, some shiny and new, bobbing in the water. Two steel ladders led down to the small concrete dock with the boats tied to stanchions. The takeoff point for literally millions of tourists over the decades who wanted a trip around the beautiful bay.

It was no longer beautiful. The lights along the Golden Gate Bridge were dark. The bridge was barely visible as a structure against the smoky sky. A fire was raging out of control along the Marin Headlands. The city skyline was dark, as was Alcatraz.

Dark, all dark.

“Sophie!” Jon barked. “Faster!”

Oh God! The leading edge of the swarm was at Bistro Boudin, rippling down the street toward them, a solid wall of enraged humanity.

Jon grabbed the handrails of the closest vertical steel ladder and descended without touching a stair. At the bottom he looked up. “Jump. I'll catch you.”

Sophie looked to her right, at the crazed line of infected running full tilt, their screams echoing in her ears and didn't think twice. She jumped.

Jon caught her deftly, swung with her in his arms, and deposited her on the deck of the nearest fishing boat. It was old, dilapidated.
The Summer of Love
painted on her side.

“Checking fuel,” Jon shouted. “Get ready to jump to the next one.”

He did something to the engine and it sputtered to life, but he took one look at the fuel gauge, grabbed her hand, and jumped to the next one, their boots thudding loudly on the deck.

Jon disappeared into the pilot's cabin and a few seconds later there was the powerful roar of an engine; she could feel the shudder beneath her feet. “Fuel tank full!” Jon shouted from within the cabin. “Can you cast off?”

Yes, she could. She'd had a boyfriend who was a sailor, and though she couldn't sail herself, she'd learned to make herself useful. Sophie hurried to the bow, reaching over to grab the rope and screamed as a grimy hand caught hers. She barely had time to hear the angry snarl of a nonhuman voice when the man's head exploded.

“Sophie! Get back!” Jon screamed.

She jumped back and tripped over a bucket. Horribly, another man fell to the dock level from above. And another. And suddenly the narrow ledge was full of infected, hands outstretched. Up on the street level, crazed, maddened faces were snarling down at her, writhing to try to get down. None of the infected could handle the ladder so they were simply throwing themselves over the railing down to the dock. Some died in the fall, but the dead bodies cushioned the next who threw themselves over. A writhing snarling mass of violence. The noise level was deafening.

She couldn't get to the rope, the infected were scrambling to get to her, growling and grasping. If she went for the rope, they'd grab her. but they couldn't leave without unmooring the boat. The boat rocked as an infected tried to jump on, lost his footing and fell into the sea. He sank like a rock.

Jon revved the engine, ready to take off like a rocket if she could just get to where that damned rope anchored the boat. But there was no way. The stanchion was now hidden in the boiling mass of the infected, the rope disappearing between the legs of a blood-covered man in a once-elegant suit howling and snarling at her.

She was paralyzed, looked around for something, anything, that would allow her to cut the rope. It couldn't be a knife because she couldn't saw through the rope. It would take too long, they'd grab her. It had to be something like a hatchet . . .

The rope parted suddenly, as if an invisible hand had swung that hatchet, severing it in one blow. What happened? Then one monster's head exploded, then another. She glanced back to see Jon aiming and shooting precisely with one hand, while starting to back the boat out of the tiny harbor.

A thud to her right and she screamed. An infected. A lithe young man, hands out in claws, inhuman sounds coming from his throat.

Jon blew the young man away, then another who'd jumped aboard. A stream of infected jumped on the other boat then tried to jump to theirs, clearly unable to judge distances. It was like a waterfall, a waterfall of humans pouring into the ocean. But another young man, an athlete by his build, made a spectacular leap, catching onto the gunwale, starting to haul himself in, screaming all the while.

One well-aimed bullet, the screaming stopped, and the man fell back, sinking into a pool of red.

They backed away quickly, beginning the turnaround to head out to the open sea, when Jon took careful aim at the boat next to them. “Cover your head!” he screamed and shot into the boat. Immediately it exploded, fuel spilling over the infected, lighting the dark afternoon sky with a nightmarish view of burning infected, those right behind the columns of burning, living flesh pushing them into the water to get a chance at killing her and Jon and catching fire themselves.