Toxic (57 page)

“Elaine...”

Where was the nurse? Had he arrived too late?

With the Kalashnikov swung over his neck and the metal sheet held in both his hands, he changed plans. Moving around anywhere in the war zone implied taking a risk, which was even higher because of the presence of aliens and infected searching for fresh flesh, which could appear at any moment. He heard a banging noise on his right. Two young men were shooting at the sky from a position surrounded by piled up sandbags. The young man leaned on the rampart of bullets filled with sand. The colonel ran and jumped on them. He appeared in the middle of the nest.

“Elaine!” he yelled. “Where is Elaine?”

The man looked at him with the eyes of an enlightened man touched by murderous madness.

“This is the last judgment, buddy! We’re all staying here!”

He yelled with anger and pressed the trigger of his fifty-caliber machine gun. The racket of the gun put an end to their discussion. Masters swung over to the other side of the wall of bags and walked, his back hunched, towards a crane. The construction machine would make a good observation post which was probably not booby-trapped and out of the reach of the drones. When he got there, there were already two people there, cuddled against one another, near one of the caterpillar wheels. A young, curly-haired blond man pointed his gun at him.

“Don’t shoot. I’m with Dan.”

The barrel lowered immediately. At his side, the woman shook, beset by madness, her horrified gaze fixed towards the pit which he had heard about only a few moments earlier. Masters approached them.

“Elaine! I’m looking for Elaine! Where is she?”

The man shrugged. His neighbor reacted to the nurse’s name.

“She fell. I... I pushed her. She fell into the pit with the voracious.”

Sobs punctuated confused words. The soldier wanted to take her by the arms, but the blond that looked like a champion surfer objected.

“She was in the pit, man. She went through hell.”

If that was supposed to be an explanation, he didn’t get it. Masters had a confused look, which he regretted right away. “The pit?”

He understood his mistake. Too late.

“You’re not with Dan,” confirmed the individual, who was clearly trying to protect his friend or wife. “Who are you?”

She was the last person to have seen Elaine.

“I don’t belong to your clan, that’s true, but I know Dan, Hans, Pete and the others.”

He only remembered those three names, and that was enough to sow the seeds of doubt. The barrel lowered a few centimeters. Masters jumped and hit his arm. The shot hit the ground. After having grabbed him around the waist, he gave him a violent whack with his elbow. He felt a bone break. The man, who was quite beefy, didn’t benefit from his height and weight advantage. One sweep at his supporting leg sent him falling to the floor. Masters recovered the pistol.

“I need to talk to the woman.”

She shriveled up against the crane’s wheel.

“I pushed her...” she repeated. “It’s my fault, my fault.”

On his knees beside her and all the while keeping the surfer in his field of vision, he tried to dig out the details. Without success. Visibly closed up in her own world, she spat out incoherent thoughts about wolves and monsters.

“The monsters took her. They took her away.”

All of a sudden, he saw the young man move back, a horrified look on his face. Masters turned around. Without thinking, he opened fire on the infected creature leaning over him. Probably without wanting to, this guy had just saved his life. Other creatures were moving towards him. He ripped the woman out of her trance and pushed her to help her climb up the crane. He then climbed up himself. One first kick broke the jaw of a zombie which swayed but stayed upright. The second sent it flying back against the one behind it. He aimed at the forehead of its neighbor and then pressed the trigger. Very quickly, the machine was surrounded by the horde. The duo took refuge on top of the engine hood. The surfer with whom he had just fought had already fled.

The grunts, the smell and the putrid wave was closing in on them from all sides. He took the hands of the disoriented woman wondering if he could reason with her.

“I’m Masters.”

“I’m... Marie.”

“OK. You were with Elaine in the pit?”

She nodded.

“Who brought her there?”

Her arm shaking, she pointed to a place about a hundred meters away. When Masters turned to look in that direction, he froze. A colossus of metal was decimating the infected in giant twirls with a sort of machete with a shining blade. The cauterized entrails and vaporized hemoglobin formed a reddish cloud around him.

“The aliens?”

The backside of the crane was shaking with impacts. Masters grabbed Marie to protect her from the jolts. They lay flat on the hood. He turned his head in the direction of the shots. The volleys weren’t coming from the armored titans. He recognized Dan and the blond. The leader of the band was shooting at them from a lucky hideout made of wavy metal sheets. The colonel stayed still, praying that he wouldn’t be hit. Several living dead, hit by the bullets, collapsed at the foot of the crane. Projectiles ricocheted off of the yellow frame. The deluge was interrupted when an explosion close by projected a cascade of debris which fell like a curtain, blocking the visibility of the shooters. The soldier straightened up.

“Listen to me. We’re going to get out of here.”

The idea was repulsive to Marie, who tried to break away.

“We won’t have another chance,” he added.

Standing up on the hood of the motor, the marine threw the assault rifle over his shoulder and sprayed the L-Ds, which were falling down like marionettes without strings. Masters jumped off and continued to kill those which were lagging behind a little further along.

“Marie! Come with me! Now’s the time!”

Terrified, she refused to come down and abandon her perch. She shook her head. He yelled at her to come down once again. When she decided, a drone appeared almost directly above them. Reflexively, Masters threw himself to the side. A blue glow appeared at the base of Marie’s neck and she collapsed on top of the crane’s controls. The colonel rolled over a carpet of corpses. The smell of rotten flesh made his stomach churn. He got back up and fled, his hand over his mouth, towards a line of sheds against which he leaned to regain his thoughts and breath.

The shooting had reduced in intensity. The explosions were becoming fewer, a sign that less and less fighters were still on their feet. The conclusion of the battle was approaching and he hadn’t found Elaine. What credit should he accord to that completely delusional woman?

“War is a fucking haze,” he mumbled to himself. That description seemed to apply to the present situation. Several options presented themselves to him now that the battle was coming to an end. He didn’t think for long and once he was ready, he ran in the direction of the exterior fence of the camp with a simple plan in mind: to get a hold of a vehicle and free his friends.

He easily reached the edge of the undergrowth where they had left the pickup on the way there. When he emerged from the cover of the bushes, an L-D jumped onto the hood. Masters grabbed a hold of the steering wheel and pushed down the gas pedal. Hundreds of infected had appeared in the middle of the battle. Many of them would end up torn to pieces or beheaded, but a significant portion of them were wandering around the surrounding area. And that without counting those which had come from further away, attracted by the racket, he realized, noticing several shadows wobbling towards the farm. It was best to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

First of all, he had to deal with the four men who were watching over the group. For sure, those men had guns without knowing how to use them too well, but one versus four was still a very one-sided fight.

He parked the pickup on the low side of the street with the intention of making the rest of the journey on foot. The amount of underbrush and swamps offered natural hiding sports for a discrete approach, given that he didn’t run into a zombie or an alligator. The reptiles were proliferating now that their main predator had left an empty place at the top of the food chain. The heat didn’t help during the slow march across the swamps. His feet sunk down into waterlogged moss. He was sweating profusely. His moist skin was a treat for clouds of mosquitoes. The soldier nonetheless had come a good part of the way without running into any bad luck.

He spotted an excellent viewpoint towards which he headed. He gauged the severity of the situation with one quick glance. Two men were pointing their guns at Bruce. Alva was lying on the ground not far away. It was impossible to tell if she was still alive. What had happened? Whatever it was, he understood that he didn’t have the time to devise a strategy.

“Shit!” he swore quietly.

He heard Bruce screaming. “You’re nothing but a bunch of pieces of shit!” the biologist spat.

The men were hesitating to execute him, keeping him in their sight.

Once of the four soldiers was walking around, his hands clutching his crotch. He recognized the one called Hans. He was shouting out insults and shot a kick at Alva’s side, which made her grunt. Masters made a quick decision, the type which he had already taken during the battle, assuming all of the consequences, whether good or bad.

He armed the AK.

The first bullet hit the back of the head of one of the guards who was threatening the biologist. His stooge turned in the direction of the origin of the shot, only to receive in turn a bullet which went through his carotid artery and took out half of his neck. He swayed backwards with his finger on the trigger. The shot flew up into the air. The colonel abandoned his position. The two others were spraying the place where he had been the moment before, which gave him an additional moment to rest, the time to surprise them from the other side. He came out of the undergrowth and hit Hans at point blank range with a bullet that went through his back.  His neighbor turned around. As a diversion, the marine threw him his gun and then rolled in the grass. The individual, in a panic and confused, missed his shot. Masters knocked out his leg, but unluckily, the fighter fell with all his weight on top of the colonel’s arm. The pain made him grimace. His adversary managed to get up and recover his M16. He didn’t have the chance to get his revenge.

Bruce, who had just gotten loose from his bonds, knocked him down and ran towards Alva. Masters dragged himself until he could sit with his back against the wheel of the 4x4. They had just escaped. They had all come a long way, he realized. The young guy had saved his skin. Once again.

“Another shitty day,” he muttered, watching Bruce.

The singer spat blood upon leaning to the side with the help of the biologist. She seemed more shocked than hurt, which relieved him. He moved his hurt arm over his thigh. He couldn’t drive in this state. However, they didn’t have a choice or the time. He ordered Bruce to free Alison and Dewei and then to leave without waiting. In a few minutes, they were on their way, on board the pickup with Bruce starting away quickly.

“Elaine?” he asked once they were on their way.

Masters told them about his failure. His companions observed him in a depressed silence. Except Dewei. The autistic boy handed him a piece of paper.

“Was the alien that took her wearing red armor?”

“I have no fucking idea. I wasn’t even there. All that I saw was a whip crossing through the middle of chaos.”

He turned towards Alva, who had bandaged his arm with a scarf which she happened to have.

“What happened?”

“That Hans guy wanted a blow job.”

“The one that was talking about a threesome?”

“Yeah. I gave him the special of the moment.”

The singer made a biting motion with her teeth. The colonel imagined what had followed without trouble.

“And now?” Bruce asked.

“For the time being, you go straight, and we’ll try to put as much distance as possible between us and that shit hole.”

“And Hector?”

“How can he find us? He never hid his desire to go back to his homeland. Now, he has the chance. We should leave without him.”

Alva looked away. Masters discerned an approving look on the face of the biologist, who, despite everything, resisted commenting.

To the north, an orange glow marked the location of the combat which had probably caused the fire coloring the night sky. The noise of weapons and explosions faded out over the minutes. The victors were flying above the tropical forest, he noticed, the binoculars stuck to his eyes. Hector counted several drones and two large ships with bulbous shapes. The third one had disappeared to the east.

On the barge, he didn’t see any signs of activity, not even a light or a shadow. Hector decided to stay in front of the pier until the morning in case his friends came back, without really believing it. The barely stored ballasts allowed the semi-sum to maintain a very low position on the sea of oil and to remain practically invisible from dry land.

The lights of a vehicle appeared a little before dawn. The trafficker, lying along the cockpit, rolled onto his stomach and grabbed the binoculars, excited at the idea that he was mistaken about the fate of the members of the group.

His hopes were quickly chilled.

The pickup stopped just before the access ramp to the barge. An imposing man with the look of a Canadian lumberjack got out first, followed by another, smaller man, dressed in a sort of tunic with a hood. Two people jumped from the rear bed. They pushed aside the doors of a warehouse used for fishing boat maintenance. They came out with boxes of material. The colossus opened one up and showed the others a weapon, which he threw to the individual in the monk’s habit. The latter took off his hood, revealing almost white hair.

The loading of their pickup lasted almost fifteen minutes. Then, the soldiers who had appeared from nowhere got back on board and left.