Then, coming up Riopelle from the direction of the river, a motorcycle. A squat one, American and loud, kicking up a low cloud of the still-falling dust. A man driving, someone behind him, someone small.
“Keep going,” Margaret whispered. “Don’t stop here, keep driving.”
The motorcycle stopped right in front of the hostage building.
Margaret tensed. She couldn’t let those people go inside. They got off the bike, and Margaret saw the small person was a little girl with curly hair.
Blond.
Chelsea Jewell.
And the man—Colonel Charlie Ogden in street clothes.
They ran into the building.
Margaret whipped behind the corner, out of sight.
Clarence was already coming back from the other side. He wore a wide smile, an expression of near disbelief.
She grabbed his arm. “I just saw Chelsea Jewell.”
His smile widened. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure! It’s her. Why are you smiling?”
He actually laughed. “I don’t know. Too much death, stress, something good finally happens, and now I can’t stop grinning. Go take a look—you won’t believe who’s coming this way.”
Margaret traded places with him. Still moving slowly, cautiously, she walked to the other side of the building and looked around the corner.
And understood Clarence’s joy.
Because she felt it, too.
Coming across an empty, abandoned city block, running through the settling dust, she saw Dew Phillips, Perry Dawsey and soldiers carrying machine guns.
THE CAVALRY
If you went back in time, say, six weeks, to a point when Margaret Montoya stood in an apartment parking lot in Ypsilanti, Michigan, scared for her life because a gigantic, burned and brutally wounded infected man named Perry Dawsey was trying to tear through her biohazard suit, his wild eyes staring, his spit and blood smearing her visor, his cracked lips screaming open that fucking door and let ’em in …if you could go back to that moment and tell her there would come a time where she would feel infinitely happy and relieved to see his face, she wouldn’t have believed you. You could have bet her on that. Bet her with the same bill that traded hands so frequently between Clarence and Amos.
And you’d have won twenty bucks.
Perry, Dew and maybe twenty-five heavily armed and grim-faced soldiers came running down Woodbridge Street. The cavalry to the rescue. The men fanned out, working like the fingers of a hand, some pointing guns across the street at the boarded-up windows of Chelsea’s building, some darting across that same street to the building next to hers, backs against brick walls, slowly inching to the corner, some continuing down the street, probably to surround the place. Dew and Perry ran right up to her.
“Margaret!” Perry said. “We got the gate. Are you okay?” He hugged her, suit and all, picking her right up off the ground.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She hugged him back. She couldn’t believe how good it was to see him.
Dew scooted to the corner, peeked around, then ducked back.
“Clarence said you saw Ogden?”
“And Chelsea Jewell,” Margaret said.
Perry’s smile faded. A look of hatred filled his eyes. Margaret instantly thought of the dead, angry stares of the infected victims she’d had on her autopsy table.
“And hostages,” Clarence said. “About fifteen of them. And at least three gunmen armed with body armor, M4s, sidearms and grenades. There could be more already inside.”
Dew looked Clarence up and down. “Human condom, eh?”
Clarence nodded at Margaret. “Blame her.”
“Hell, I wish I had one right about now,” Dew said. “Margaret, what happened with Sanchez? You figure this thing out yet?”
The sensation of relief vanished, replaced once again by feelings of failure.
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Try not to get infected, because there’s still no cure.”
Dew and Perry nodded.
“How about Gitsh and Marcus?” Dew asked. “Doctor Dan?”
Clarence shook his head.
“So we’ve got losses,” Dew said. “Let’s make them count. Clarence, take Margaret and go to the football field at Martin Luther King High School, about a mile up Jefferson, you can’t miss it. Murray dropped a Margo-Mobile there to set up an infection triage. There are also two Ospreys on the ground. If things turn dicey, you get her out of here.”
“I’m standing right here, Dew,” Margaret said. “Clarence isn’t my keeper.”
“Yes he is,” Dew said. “And he’s getting you out.”
“Have some of your men take her,” Clarence sad. “I’m staying to finish this.”
Why couldn’t Clarence just shut up and leave? Hadn’t he done his job? Hadn’t they sacrificed enough? She wanted out, and she wanted him with her.
“Otto, you will get the fuck out of here,” Dew said. “Your mission is to protect Margaret, and I want her gone.”
Clarence shook his head. “But Dew—”
“Shut your broken-toothed mouth. You’ve got your orders. Do you mind if we go ahead and save the fucking world? Perry, you go with them.”
Perry Dawsey actually laughed. A dark laugh, something he might have let slip back in a kitchen filled with three dead bodies.
“Fuck you, Dewie,” he said. “Chelsea and I need to talk.”
Dew turned to look at Perry, tilted his head up to make eye contact. Perry’s filthy blond hair hung in front of a face smeared with grime and reddish dust.
“You’ll go now, Dawsey, and that’s an order.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, old man?” Perry said. “I’m not a soldier, and your orders don’t mean dick to me. I’m getting that girl. The only way you can stop me is to shoot me, and this time I’ll shoot back. With your own gun.”
Perry raised his eyebrows and lifted a pistol, not pointing it at Dew, more of a show-and-tell gesture.
“Sir!” A big black man, almost as big as Perry, ran up to Dew. “Sir, someone is sticking a white flag out the front door.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dew said. “Let’s see if we can close this out. Nails, have half your men target the second-floor windows, the other half the ground floor. I don’t want to kill any hostages, but I’m not in the mood to be shot at, either.”
“Got it,” Nails said, then started barking orders. Margaret had never heard a human being that loud.
Dew looked at Perry again. “I suppose if I tell you to stay here, you’ll just ignore me?”
Perry nodded.
Dew sighed. “Fine, fuck it. Let’s go.”
Perry’s slow breaths steamed in the cold air, carried away by the breeze coming off the river. The helmet felt cold on his head, but his flak jacket trapped his body heat and made him sweat despite the freezing temperature. He gripped the .45 tightly and followed Dew around the corner. Dew carried an M4, barrel angled toward the ground. Jets still screamed overhead, their engine roars echoing across the cityscape. Far up ahead, the RenCen continued to burn like a tall, smoldering black torch, a column of greasy smoke angling up and trailing across downtown Detroit. Helicopters hovered all over the place, probably waiting for more of Ogden’s men to show themselves.