Survivors (46 page)

In the Dumpster, Brewster lay on the waste and watched the blood leak out of Jack Welder. Once the heart stopped, the blood slowed way down. Brewster shifted some, scooting his hips away from Jack’s body, his eyes never leaving Jack’s face.

While Krueger was watching for movement out there, Brewster was waiting for movement in here. He gripped his automatic and breathed.

“Why don’t I have a knife? Even Denton carries a knife. So why don’t I?” He sighed. “Mental note: get a knife.”

Jack’s head moved.

Behind Denton and Allen, something else moved. Another squad of four were gathered in the shadows.

“Tangos downrange,” said one of them, a redhead named MacCleary. He sat out in front of the group, his M4A1 rifle aimed in the survivors’ general direction. He drummed his fingers on the M203 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel. “Take ’em out?”

Reynolds, the team leader, held up a hand in response. “Not with that. Not until we know where the rest of them are. You saw what happened to Blue Squad.”

Mac, shifting in his uniform, was clearly unhappy with this decision.

“I say we take ’em out, bro. Then we find the rest of them and wipe ’em up.”

Reynolds blew a breath out his nose. “Stand down, MacCleary. Birds are inbound. We should just mark their location and stand back.”

Mac slumped over his rifle. “Fuckin’ airdales get all the fun.”

True to his word, the sounds of the chopper got louder and louder. Reynolds turned to Kelley, frowning at the man’s three-day growth of beard. “I thought I told you to shave that.”

Kelley sneered. Dee, the fourth man, copied him.

“Whatever. Get on the horn, give the chopper pilot what he needs to know.”

A single
pop
came from the interior of the Dumpster and the survivors frowned.

“Christ in Heaven,” Denton said in a whisper. “Jack must have turned.”

“I hate this waiting,” Allen said. “I mean, why can’t we go back—”

He was cut off by the roar of a helicopter as it sped by overhead.

“Fuckin’ gunship,” Allen said, shifting his grip on the MP-5 he still carried. “Did you see that? Where in the hell did they get—”

The helicopter zipped by again.

“This block isn’t that interesting,” Allen said. “I know, I’ve seen interesting architecture. This”—he shook his head—“ain’t it.”

Denton held out his hand. His keen photographer’s eye had noticed something on the second chopper flyby.

“That wasn’t the same helicopter.”

“What?” Allen asked, and the helicopter came into view four blocks away, turning and racing over the rooftops.

“Ah, shit,” Allen said, and the forward gun roared to life. Allen and Denton scrambled for cover, but the choppers were Apaches, and the three hundred rounds per minute of high-explosive, dual-purpose shells were making short work of all surrounding masonry and structures. Denton fell as a fragment of shrapnel zipped across the back of his knee without slowing down. He screamed for a couple of seconds, until the track of devastation laid down by the chopper’s gun silenced him.

The helicopter was past and gone. Before it could come around for another strafing run, Allen bolted down the alley, back the way he’d come.

As he ran by, Reynolds again restrained Mac from firing.

“Look where he’s going. He’ll lead us right to the rest of them,” he said, chiding Mac, a pastime he was rapidly becoming tired of.

The double doors to BL2 and BL3 opened slowly and Thomas came out at a fast duckwalk. Seeing the hallway clear, he waved Sherman and Stiles through. Then he stopped Rebecca.

“You, go back to the Doc,” he said. “Let her know what’s happening.”

He turned away and hurried with Sherman and a loaded-down Stiles along the corridor toward the bypassed safety checkpoint. Rebecca eyed the load that Stiles carried and made a decision.

“In case you need to come back,” she whispered to him, propping open the double door with a clipboard from the wall outside BL3.

“Tell me where you got these from, again?” Stiles whispered to Thomas as they approached the first checkpoint. The sergeant major shot Stiles a glance that shut him up.

Something occurred to Thomas, then, and he stopped his forward advance. Instead, he turned to the recovery room, where Mason and Harris were bunked.

With a quick movement, he opened the door and covered the room. Less than a second passed, and he was on his way back to the checkpoint. Thomas answered the question in Sherman’s eyes by drawing a line across his throat.

At the door, Sherman waved Thomas on, looking more tired than he had in quite a long time. Part of him was glad that the men weren’t there to see him this way; he felt every one of his years on his back, on his neck, weighing him down and making him drag.

Thomas motioned for Stiles to wait, and he passed through the checkpoint silently, an armed phantom. Several long moments passed before Thomas returned, waving the general and private through.

“Armed men in the front. A lot of them. We should go around.”

“To where?” Stiles asked.

“The back,” Sherman answered. “The truck still there?”

A gleam came into Thomas’s eye. “You bet it is, sir.”

Sherman nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

Thomas took point and Stiles followed, leaving Sherman to watch the rear. They reached the back of the Fac in a short time, and parked there was the truck they’d gotten from Jose the mechanic in Abraham. The SAW-249 was still mounted to the top of the truck, and Stiles whistled when he saw it.

Sherman put his finger up.

“Anyone else hear a helicopter?”

As quickly and silently as he could, Stone made his way to the front doors of the Fac, M-16 in hand and a pipe wrench in the carpenter loop on his pants. The doors weren’t as impregnable as they looked, Hal had told him, and if he undid the three center bolts on each door, the crossbar inside would drop.

“Well,” Hal had waffled. “It
should
drop.”

That would make quite a clatter, Stone knew, so after that he could be in the spotlight and under fire. But, according to what Jenkins had said, the men inside were scattered through the first level with a minimal guard near the front.

If he got through all right, it would be room-to-room fighting. The mercenary side of Stone told him that this would be an ideal time to beat feet, just like Jenkins and the man he’d shot . . . the rest of Stone, however, was against that notion.

No, he thought. I traded up when I left Lexington. I traded up in quality, and I’m going to live to the ideal.

Looking around, Stone took the wrench to the door and began working the bolts loose.

Inside the Fac, in a darkened room across from Mason’s, Sawyer and one of his men watched as Thomas, Sherman, and Stiles exited the hallway. As the protected double door was propped open, an evil grin crossed Sawyer’s face, momentarily replacing the pain.

He tapped the soldier on the knee—his name was Stephens—and pointed. “We go through there.”

In the street, Allen ran. Brewster snagged his collar as he ran by the basement walk-down and yanked his drinking buddy back.

“Gunship,” Allen wheezed.

“Yeah, I heard,” Brewster said. “Denton?”

Allen shook his head.

Brewster looked around, taking in the expectant faces of Mbutu and Mitsui, then Allen. They were all looking at him.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

“Brewster,” Mbutu Ngasy said, “you are all that’s left of the military command. I understand why you turned to Denton when the decision had to be made to search or not, but your crutch is gone, now.”

“My crutch is dead,” Brewster said, looking into the darkened sky. “These streets are going to be crawling with infected. Apaches. Snipers. And who knows how many men are inside the Fac.” He sat on the stone steps and rubbed his mouth. “What a fucking day for a field promotion.”

The helicopters made another pass over the street. As the sound of the rotors faded, another sound took over.

“Hey, Brewster was right,” Allen said. “Crawling with infected.”

Unlimbering a mirror from his pack, Brewster held it up over the end of the steps. Twenty or more carriers were stumbling and shuffling down the streets, converging on their alleyway. A minute passed.