Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (28 page)

“Stay together, no more than ten feet apart if you can help it. If the wooden men try to go around either end of our line, the shotgunners on our flanks will deal with them. If they try to go through you or grab the door, just hold them off long enough for one of the shotgunners behind you to stick his gun through the window and shoot them. Don’t do anything else. As long as the thing has its hands on the door, it’s stuck with you and isn’t attacking the rest of the group. And be careful, don’t let them reach through the window and tear you up, push them back with the bottom of the door. Got it?” They nodded. “Anyone want out? Those things are fast and dangerous and they’re going to be right up in our faces. Nobody will hold it against you if you don’t want to take ’em on.”

The guy in the camo hat pointed at the group gathered next to the hospital. “Mister, you see that woman over there? In the white shirt with the little girl on her hip? That’s my family. I don’t give two shits what those things are, they’re not getting through. I’ll tear their fucking heads off with my bare hands if I have to.”

The bearded man nodded. “Fuckin’ A.”

I was starting to understand what Leon meant when he said that this was the last place on earth he’d pick to invade. “Alright. I know there aren’t enough of you to cover the group once we have a parking lot behind us as well as in front, so I’m going to be taking doors as we move so that we can get a second group together to bring up the rear. Don’t worry about it, just focus on sticking together and keep moving.”

I turned to the group of shotgunners behind me. There were eight of them, five men and three women. I talked fast and started pointing, we were running out of time.

“You two, stick to the right side of the guys with the doors. You two stick to the left. Your job is to take out anything that tries to go around the ends. Go for the legs if you can. It doesn’t matter if it’s still alive if it can’t catch us. Everyone else fan out behind the line, and for God’s sake, don’t shoot unless the end of your gun is in front of the doors. Stick the barrels through the windows or between the doors, but do not shoot unless the tip is outside the line. Understood?”

More nods. “Okay, everybody form up in front of the big group, we’re leaving.”

They ran in a ragged line toward Emily’s group, exchanging nervous glances and bumping into each other.

Christ. There was no way this was going to work. Out in the parking lot the wooden men were moving in closer to the hospital, but keeping just out of effective shotgun range. Most cars had a creature crouched behind or on top of it.

I limped to the now doorless Honda. “Anne and Chuck, take Jamal’s guys and get close to the defensive line. You’re floaters. Just watch for bad guys and do what you have to. Go.”

Anne gave me a quick hug, tight and fierce, and then left with the others. I moved around to the far side of the Honda and put both hands under the chassis. Bracing my good leg, I rolled it over, towards the front of the ER. It didn’t seem any lighter without the doors, unfortunately.

Leon saw me coming and waved the man holding the car door away, taking his place. I rolled the car over two more times. Leon jumped out of the way at the last second and the car tipped over against the front of the ER, pinning the car door in place.

I hoped it would give us enough time to get away, but already I could hear furious gnawing all the way to the top of the hospital doors. The Scavengers must have been piled up to the ceiling in there. The thought made me shudder.

Leon and I headed towards the group and I shouted, “Let’s go! Start moving! Walk fast, people.” Then more quietly I said to Leon, “Help Emily keep those people together, okay? No runners.”

“Got it.”

Over a hundred frightened people, young and old, healthy and wounded, armed and helpless, headed for the storm shelter and safety.

I wondered how many we would leave lying on the ground behind us by the time we got there.

46

W
e were an old stag surrounded by wolves. Emily’s group of survivors made us slow and vulnerable, dragging and stumbling fearfully across the pavement. The line of shield bearers and shotgunners shifted back and forth in front like a once magnificent rack of antlers bobbing uncertainly in a pitiful defense against the pack. The wolves around us were keen and unworried.

The wooden men gathered in groups around the cars, no longer bothering to hide behind them, most standing on hoods and rooftops, leering at us with their fixed, idiot grins.

Some of them had taken trophies from their kills, inserting dead, cloudy eyes into the hollow sockets on their wooden faces. The effect was horrifying.

I heard Chuck’s voice up front. “In the camo hat, move left, you’re too far out. Don’t get ahead of the line.”

The group was flowing past me like a stream around a rock as I broke a car window and unlocked the door. A burly man in a tie and slacks trotted over to me through the crowd.

“Emily told me I was up next.”

Trust Emily to keep one step ahead. I pulled open the door and lifted Hunger. It stretched out long and thin, its weird alien intelligence grasping my intent as I struck. The bottom of the door sagged to the ground, but I hadn’t cut all the way through. I had to give it another swing to finish the job. The door fell forward with a clunk and the man grabbed it and ran. Chuck’s voice guided him into the line.

I opened the rear door. In the back seat of the car was a crumpled up McDonald’s bag. The car smelled like grease and ketchup. Inside the bag was a half-eaten burger, crushed inside of a wadded up wrapper. I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth and sighed in pleasure as I chewed, sucking on the cold juices that ran down my throat.

“Sir? Mrs. Emily sent me over for a door.”

I looked up to see a heavyset man in a Panther’s jacket staring at me with revulsion in his eyes. Paper shreds were all around me. When had I torn the bag apart? Hell, when had I gotten in the back seat?

I got out and hacked the door off. We didn’t look at each other, he just picked it up and left.

The last two doors were quick. Emily’s volunteers took them away as soon as I could cut them free. The group was moving past now, so I hurried as much as I was able and rejoined the front rank. Even though I tried not to, I glanced into every car I passed.

“Chuck,” I called. “Split ’em up. We need two groups now.”

He jogged over and tapped men on the shoulder, then led them to the rear. Four shield bearers and four shotgunners, leaving five bearers in the front and four gunners, plus Leon and Anne. It was as good as it was going to get.

As I expected, the wooden men let us get to the middle of the lot, exposed on all sides, before they started hitting us.

One of them darted out from behind a minivan as we passed, aiming for the gap between the two lines of shield bearers, long fingers and arms outspread. People screamed and Emily’s group convulsed as some people tried to get away from the edge and some tried to get to the outside to protect them.

Unfortunately for the creature, Anne was the nearest shotgunner. She opened up with a controlled burst from the drum-fed, full-auto .410. She fired three rounds, but only needed the first. The hundred-and-nine grain lead slug blew the attacker’s shoulder apart, getting the knot in the process and throwing spinning fragments in all directions. The next two shots simply tore the rest of the arm off. The creature went limp in mid-stride and skidded face-down across the concrete, coming to a stop ten feet from the group.

A cheer went up, and somebody shot a round into the air. Chuck settled them down. “Okay, that’s enough. It was just one, and we have a long way to go. Let’s pick up the pace.”

The next attack came from all sides. Nearly twenty wooden men charged in near silence, only the clacking of their feet against the concrete making sound. The quiet lasted until the shotgunners opened up in a deafening volley.

Most of the shots struck home. If nothing else, these folks knew how to handle their firearms. Unfortunately, few of the hits were disabling. Only one creature was put down by hitting the knot, and three more had a leg destroyed, limiting their mobility. The rest simply shrugged off the hail of buckshot and kept moving.

I heard the distinctive chatter of Anne’s .410 and saw several of the attackers drop. She was in the middle of Emily’s group, standing on top of a car. The people surrounding her clamped their hands over their ears as she fired calmly over the heads of the defensive line, the barrel of her weapon snapping from target to target.

She was magnificent, like some vengeful goddess from ancient mythology. The wind whipped her dark red hair into a streaming banner as she rained destruction down on the wooden men from on high, shattering their limbs and driving them to the ground.

With her support, the shield bearers were able to check the advance of the remaining creatures until their shotgunners could put them down. None of the attackers made it past the defensive line.

The last few wooden men retreated, diving for cover behind cars in an attempt to preserve their numbers. I looked around for Prime, as I doubted that was something the creatures had decided to do on their own.

Chuck bellowed over the crowd, “Go! Go! We’re close, keep going!”

Emily sent a fresh man to replace an injured shield bearer, his face torn open by an attack through the open hole where the window had been. There were other injuries, but no other debilitating ones.

“Abe!” Anne shouted. I looked to where she was pointing and saw that the Scavengers had chewed through the plywood covering the ER doors and were now pouring out of the entrance in a thick stream. The scuttling mass covered the cars closest to the ER in a boiling carpet that was advancing on us nearly as fast as a man could run.

But we were close. No more than fifty yards separated us from the shelter. One good push would see us there before the swarm could reach us.

“Time to run!” I shouted. “Chuck and Leon, help the wounded! Shield line, pull in close! Get your asses in gear!”

We bolted. Emily’s group began to stretch out, the young and the healthy quickly outpacing the rest. To their credit, the shield bearers did a decent job keeping spread out down the line, but there weren’t really enough to do the job with the group strung out the way it was.

I had expected the wooden men to give chase, but of course, they were guided by Prime, who had Leon’s tactical skills.

They raced for the shelter.

By the time we arrived, we were facing two dozen wooden men massed behind a line of parked cars in front of the physical therapy building. The Scavengers were now halfway across the parking lot. All the wooden men had to do was keep us out of the building until the rapidly approaching wave of grasping feet and severing jaws reached us and we’d be ground up between the two groups.

Chuck massed the shield bearers up front and led the group to the side of the entrance so the shotgunners could fire behind the creature’s makeshift barricade, into the space between the parked cars and the entrance to the building.

Deprived of cover, the wooden men charged.

It was chaos. Seconds after the attack began, we had our first breach.

Two shield bearers went down under a pile of wooden men and the shotgunners were unable to fire on them for fear of hitting the men underneath. One wooden man leapt over them and went for the main body of the group.

I was too far away to stop it. My injured leg had prevented me from keeping up with the group as they ran for the building, so even now I was just reaching them.

Chuck and Leon had joined the general melee and were desperately trying to keep the few remaining shield bearers standing. I doubted they even knew that the line had been breached.

Emily’s group had turned into a panicked mob, people shoving and trampling each other in an attempt to get away. A small boy no older than three or four was thrown to the ground in the path of the charging wooden man, small hands slapping the rough concrete as he fell.

And then Anne was there. Her shotgun was useless now that our own people were in the line of fire on the other side of the wooden man. The weapon had been a lifeline and a shield, just like her pistol, protecting her from the horrors of this new world. And now she couldn’t depend on it, even as she came face to face with one of the wooden men. I expected her to freeze. There was no way I could reach her in time to save her.