The Zone (37 page)

“OK, up the pressure two and lock it,” Strad instructed Doc. “Tannin needs more of a kick.”

The yellow dust cloud rolled across the floury grocery parking lot, settling on a clutter of abandoned luggage next to two mini-vans whose doors stood ajar, the scene of an infected over-run.

Chuck was holding up his phone, one of those high-tech wonder gadgets that had more applications  than NASA and more processing power than the Space Shuttle ever did, and Phil was tapping a computer pad’s screen. “What are you guys doing?”

“Streaming real-time video to the site,” Chuck grunted sourly-his habitual grin
was gone along with his friend. “That way people can see our progress. I’m adding a voice-over and Phil is backing it up with text. The truth is out here, dude.”

“OK.” Couldn’t hurt.

“I think we’ve got it ready,” Strad came up, absently wiping a wrench off on his jeans leg. “We ought to try it in an ambush using the crossbow, cannons, and your spike strips,” he raised his voice to be heard over the compressor’s sudden popping
hisssss
. “There’s an intersection that’s clear over by the Evergreen Shopping Center that should do-we were prepping it for one of our jobs when you called us.”

“Sounds good to me. We might want to figure a back-up plan in case this stuff doesn’t work.”

“Guns should be fine-there’s not a lot of infected around there-mostly a business area. There’s a small bunch at a cluttered intersection down the way-we’ll aggro them with the cart and bring them in.”

“Aggro?”

Strad grinned mirthlessly. “Rile ‘em up.”

“OK, this is a wrap, people,” Chuck was speaking into the camera. “We’re moving to the ambush site. Somebody cue the extras.”

Chapter Sixteen

The ambush scene was not anything like what my training said an ambush should be, but I had been trained to kill Humans, not infected. Unlike Remote Control Halo, the Hamsters had been focused on anti-infected operations, and they had developed a simple yet effective method: they prepped both sides of a roadway and then led a mob of infected into the kill zone. This time instead of cars loaded with explosives they were simply mounting the ‘dust cannon
s’ and associated equipment on the curbs and laid out my tannin-coated boards across the road with a gap for the ‘aggro team’.

Doc and Phil were tasked with driving the cart, which was one of those gas-powered utility carts you see grounds-keepers and ranchers using, with a strap-iron and chain link cage protecting the occupants. Strobe lights and ‘boom boxes’ attached to the mesh served as bait. The rest of us just climbed atop the Hamsters’ bus with the cannon controls and waited. Chuck amused himself by adding a sports play-by-play dialogue as the action developed-there was a harder tone in his voice than usual, which suggested to me that he was coping with the loss of his friend with a ‘business as usual’ front. I knew how he felt.

Doc kept the cart just feet ahead of the front-runners of the pack of infected, maybe thirty or so in the main body and a dozen stragglers who did not have full mobility.

The cart expertly wove between the sheets of plywood; the flanking infected hit them seconds later, and while s
everal had footgear sufficient to protect them, most did not. The effects were gratifying: after a good flesh puncture they staggered a half dozen strides and dropped, twitching, eventually lying still.

“Well, tannin seems to work, although either its slow or the spikes aren’t the most effective way to go,” I commented to Strad.

“Yeah.” He leveled a scoped crossbow and squeezed off a shot. The bolt transfixed a husky infected wearing a reflective vest with the City Street and Bridge logo on the breast, who promptly dropped as if poleaxed.

“
Sonuvabitch
!” I was impressed despite myself. “Try one lower and offset just to be sure you didn’t get the spine by accident.

Grunting at the effort to recock the weapon, Strad nodded. His next shot caught an infected
in a convenience store clerk’s smock just above the pelvis and definitely offset away from the spine, and she went down just as fast.

“Not bad,” I nodded. “A spear or machete would work fine, coated with this stuff.”

“Its still not a big deal,” Strad observed. “I bet you only get one before the coating is gone, two at most. If the cannons don’t work it won’t be even as good as the rock salt.”

“We’ll know in a second.” I gripped the levers to the discharge controls as the cart careened towards the line of spray paint that marked what we figured was the ‘blast zone’. If our estimates were correct, the cart would not be within the dust cloud once it was past that line. Just in case, both occupants were wearing filtered dust masks and goggles.

All three cannons belched out their clouds on cue, although we had not estimated the size quite correctly and the cart came away with a fine yellow dust coating it and the occupants.

The same could not be said for the infected
, who reacted as if it were a cloud of nerve agent. They collapsed, thrashing and clawing as if drowning, and twitched to immobility in a few seconds. The main body was mowed down en masse, and half the stragglers entered the rapidly-settling dust cloud in time to get a fatal dose.

“Now
that
was impressive” Chuck observed, reflexively keeping his phone’s camera oriented.

Strad grunted in agreement, raising his crossbow to drop one of the surviving stragglers. I unlimbered my 870 and waited for them to get into range. That
was
impressive, even if it was only useful for close-in defense. Maybe some sort of system could be rigged like we had the fire extinguishers set up, to keep them off vehicles. I doubted it was a war-winning weapon in and of itself, but crop-dusting systems could probably be modified to put some hurt on large groups. It was definitely going to be a couple percentage points in our favor in the great survival equation.

“We should do another test,” Doc advised after reviewing the video Chuck had posted on the site. “Make sure people understand that its real and how it works.”

“I’m game,” I shrugged. “But the spike strips aren’t worth doing again. The cloud is a much more effective method.”

“We’ve got the projectile weapon aspect nailed as well,” Phillip agreed. “But a step-by-step of the cannons from set-up to ambush would be good.”

“OK. Where should we do it?”

The place we chose was an intersection near a couple old strip malls; a semi roll-over had closed one entire side from curb to curb, which would make channeling the infected much easier. We paced off and marked a bigger kill zone and positioned the cannons further apart to get better mileage out of the powder, or so we hoped.

And by ‘we’ I meant ‘they’- while the Hamsters went about prepping the cannon and checking over the draw-cart, I walked a bit to the side to get away from the hissing air compressor and called Ted.

When he answered he sounded like a man on his deathbed. “It works, doc. You get the powder airborne and it acts like a nerve agent. Likewise for a puncture wound. I’m not sure how much help it will be, but it definitely will make a difference to some.”

“Good.” There was profound relief in his voice. “I am forwarding a report to the government, several agencies. I had the bulk of it written, so all that remained was to add the supporting facts and details.”

“Its already on the Net-the group I’m with is posting video of our tests,” I glanced over at the Hamsters. “In fact, I think this one is going out live.”

“Success.” There was a weary satisfaction in his voice. “We have done well.”

“Yeah.” I tried to think of something to say. “You were right all along.”

“So it would seem.” I could hear the pride. “Martin, I doubt we shall speak again, so I must say that however radically different we are in outlook, I admire your courage.”

“You’re not short in that regard, either, doc.” I wanted to ask him if anyone could get him out of his bolt hole, but decided it was pointless. He had made that choice already. “Go with God, doc.”

It was strange to have just made what would very likely be the last contact I would ever have with a man I had never really met but who had gotten me to take more risks than anyone else in my life. He was dying half a continent away, lashing out against the virus with what were likely to be his last hours. Part of me wished I had treated him better, but it was too late now.

The semi and trailer on its side were a wall to the north, which I was facing; to my left a half-block away were the Hamster bus and my truck, to my right the Hamsters were setting up their cannons and aggro cart.  Chuck was busy recording the whole thing, ‘streaming’, he called it.

Movement to my left caught my eye: a small, radio-controlled model helicopter, perhaps three feet long from stem to stern smoothly negotiated a turn around the far end of the semi’s trailer, the west end of the wall. It took a moment to realize that a jointed length of one-inch PVC suspended below the toy aircraft had a box attached with yellow wire ties, and then the reflection of the flash revealed that it was not a box, but a strobe light, probably a emergency beacon like they use for sea rescue or lost hikers. 

The sight of the little chopper was so surreal that the significance of its appearance and its flashing payload eluded me until the first of a mob of infected rounded the trailer in pursuit, as I had established myself some time past, of movement and bright lights.

For a split-second I stared, trying to grasp the chain of events as the lead infected, a burly black male wearing a ruined sports coat and slacks, gave their wailing battle cry and lurched up to speed, a solid mass of his fellows hard on his heels.

We were on foot with restricted movement and separated from our vehicles-it was amazing how swiftly that summation came home like a blade of ice being shoved down the length of my spine. I yelled a heartfelt “Oh,
shit
!” and unlimbered the 870.

Such was my shock that my first shot went wild; my second dropped sports coat, and my third was fired into the group at large as I hobbled at best speed for the trailer. On the ground I was dead meat, no doubt about it, so I dropped the shotgun onto its assault sling and high-stepped up onto the top of a set of the trailer’s tires, now helpfully horizontal.

I was stepping up onto a spring mount and scrabbling for a handhold when fingers clamped around my calf and pawed at my legs, and I knew I was dead. After all I had been through up to this point I was going to get dragged off the trailer and torn apart like a Christmas goose. A wave of despair fell on me like a shroud and I hauled upwards while kicking blindly with my free leg.

Then the air was hazed with the acrid taste of tannin, and the hands fell away. Cursing and gasping, I heaved myself up, raking the filthy under-belly of the trailer until my boots caught a projection and I was able to drag myself up to a higher hand hold and then another until I finally half-scrambled, half-jumped up onto the top of the trailer, which was actually its side.

Badly shaken and breathing hard I levered myself to my feet, shotgun at the ready. It was Phillip who saved me, I could see now: apparently he had rushed the crowd with a bucket of tannin. It had given both me and the Hamsters time to react, but he hadn’t been able to get enough into the air to fully break the mob, and had gone down under a thrashing mound of bodies. I blasted the remainder of the 870’s rounds into the pile atop him out of a sense of obligation, but it was too late for him.

Chuck was down as well, tackled as he tried to get a weapon into play-apparently his concentration on the streaming had made him slower to react. Doc was backing towards the cart and blazing away into the crowd with a pistol as Strad heaved the cannon around.

I was firing the cut-down as Doc dove into the cart and fired it up; Strad fired the cannon and the crowd sweeping in melted away under its dusty embrace. I reloaded while the tannin powder did its work, seeing no sense in wasting ammunition. When the dust settled I shot down the few stragglers while Strad, a bucket of tannin in each hand, headed for the cart.

“What the
hell
was that?” Strad demanded, red faced and furious. After a careful wait, I had climbed down and rejoined them at our vehicles. Neither Chuck nor Phillip had survived their attacks.

“That was someone deliberately leading a mob straight into us,” I couldn’t stay still-the icy blade down my back wouldn’t thaw. I kept sweeping the surrounding building fronts and roof-tops, turning and checking behind me, nerves jangling like the fire alarms in the University.

“The Net,” Doc observed sadly.

“Huh? Yeah,” I nodded slowly. “Chuck had us on line…they were watching.” I thought about that.

“What a messed up day,” Strad snarled to the world at large.

“Yeah,” I nodded again, thinking hard. “Look, stay off the Net, and I mean completely. Let them think we’re dead. I’ll get back with you guys tomorrow, let you know what I can find out.”

“You know who did this?” Doc cocked an eyebrow.

“No, but I think I might have a place to start. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.”