Daniels poked his head from behind the mound of stuff he was carrying. “I could have worked a lot better there than wedged behind some seats with my eardrums popping out of my skull.”
The pilot rolled his eyes, walked down the stairs and patted the first soldier on the back. “They’re all yours.”
“You might want to stick close to us, Lieutenant,” the soldier warned. “Class Twos are in the airport.”
“After flying all the way from Chicago with that little jerk, I’ll take my chances.”
Daniels was escorted down the stairs by the soldier who’d gone up into the jet, along with two other IRD troops. Sally brought up the rear carrying several small cases that were either hanging from her shoulders or gripped in her hands. “Most of the work is done. There’s just a few finishing touches, which we can get to on the way over. Is there enough room for him to work?”
“Should be,” one of the escorts replied. He addressed her fondly while completely ignoring the Nymar’s never-ending flow of gripes. Apparently it was a trick that everyone on that jet had learned, because none of them seemed anxious to acknowledge Daniels whatsoever.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, Daniels looked up at the soldiers and let out a weary breath. “Where do we go from here?”
“You hear all that shooting and howling?”
Daniels listened for a second before nodding.
“That’s where we’re headed.”
“Her too?” the Nymar asked while glancing back at Sally.
Upon hearing that, the soldiers who had previously been annoyed with Daniels took notice of him again. One was a tall man with thick, angular features and skin the color of burnt clay. The only patch he wore other than the IRD insignia was a faded sampling from an older uniform that read OURAY. “We’ll look after her,” he said.
“I was told on the way over that this city is just about overrun. Can you keep her safe here?”
“If worse comes to worse, we’ll pack her up and fly her to the nearest Green Zone. Those places are the closest thing to safe that this country has anymore.”
“Not just this country,” Daniels sighed. Reluctantly, he nodded. Sally placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. “Might as well go with them, sweetie,” he said. “You’ll be better off than being with me.”
“If I could help you, I would,” she said while framing his face in her hands. “And if I could take you with me, I would too.”
“You can still take me with you,” Daniels told her. “Just knock out these armed men and hijack that plane.”
“Sorry, but I just can’t stand the thought of flying again with you right now.”
Daniels’s laugh was strained beneath the weight of all the stuff he was carrying. He was relieved when the soldiers from the firing line came along to take some of the heavier cases from him and carry them to the waiting Humvee. “I didn’t go through this much to be with you just to let you go now,” he said. “Just keep safe and I’ll see you again real soon.”
Ouray escorted Daniels to the Humvee. The Nymar didn’t look back until he was inside the vehicle, but it was too late. Sally was already up the stairs and being locked behind the door while an old man in a jumpsuit scrambled to refuel the jet.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“What the hell does that thing want?” Adderson asked after emptying an entire magazine into a pair of Half Breeds that had charged at him without batting an eye at the dozens of other rounds thumping into their bodies.
Cole and Paige stood with their backs to a semi trailer that had probably been sitting in the parking lot behind the large store since before the Breaking Moon. The posts propping it up were rusted and caked in dirt. Cole knew as much because he’d spent the first twenty minutes after his arrival huddled beneath the trailer, looking out from behind those metal supports. Even as he inched away from cover, his foot remained in place, as if his ankle was attached to that post. “Doesn’t matter what he wants.”
“I thought you guys knew these things. Talked to them.”
There were two other soldiers posted near the trailer with Adderson and the Skinners. Both of them turned to look at Cole and Paige.
“This one doesn’t want to talk and he doesn’t want to deal,” Cole said. “Do you really need me to tell you that?”
“What about the one in Kansas City?” Adderson asked. “Didn’t you get some help taking that thing down?”
Paige fired the last of the rounds from her Beretta, holstered it, then drew her sickles. “We won’t be getting that kind of help here. What’s with you, anyway? You were never interested in doing much of anything other than shooting these things before. Now you want to ask about getting help from Mongrels?”
Pointing his assault rifle’s muzzle downward, Adderson said, “If siding with Class Threes is what it’ll take to clear this city, then that’s what we’ve got to do. Once this place goes down, there won’t be much incentive to keep the higher ups from lighting up the rest of the cities that are being overrun.”
“How much of the country is overrun?” Cole asked.
“Whatever you’ve heard on the news, times that by five.”
“We stopped watching that crap.”
“Let’s just say it’s bad,” Adderson told him. “Even by our standards. Most recent estimates put the danger zones at sixty-five percent of the populated areas.”
“Jesus,” Paige breathed. “Is that this state or the whole country?”
“That’s worldwide. U.S. figures are even worse. Some countries don’t acknowledge being attacked by these things, but satellite imagery has been modified to pick up on the shifters’ heat signature. They’re everywhere. Something’s been spreading this infection or whatever the hell it is even faster over the last two days. Whatever you were looking for, I hope you found it, because if this city falls, we might as well find a bunker and take our chances with whatever my bosses in DC decide to drop on us in the next air strike. All I can tell you is it won’t be the little fireworks the Air Force has been flying in so far.”
Cole gripped his spear and looked down at his coat. Over the last several minutes the Full Blood hide had taken a beating from Half Breeds and stray gunfire alike. Now that there were no more Snapper rounds or Blood Blade ammo flying around, he could run wherever he pleased as the IRD soldiers fired around him. Unfortunately, they’d barely made a dent in the packs that had converged on the parking lot to encircle the perch Esteban had chosen.
The Full Blood paced on top of the wide roof of a big name discount electronics store. Cole’s former life flickered in his mind as he recalled a few late night openings he’d gone to in stores just like that one when new games or consoles were released. In those years, smelling plastic wrap was more than enough to get his blood flowing. Now there were other ways to do that job. A small trickle of it seeped between his fingers as he drove the thorns of the spear’s handle deeper into his palms. “Has Daniels arrived yet?”
“Landed about half an hour ago,” Adderson said. “Troops met his plane and are en route to us now.”
“Is he alone?” Paige asked.
“Negative. There was a woman with him, just like you said. Sent one of my best assault teams to his apartment. They reported the place was torn to shit and damn near empty. Nymar had been crawling inside and outside the entire building, tore apart most of the apartments, even killed some of the civilians living there. Most of the stuff you requested was either destroyed or missing, but the team found Daniels and the woman dug in good and tight inside a fortified closet. Hell of a good design as far as panic rooms go. Even Ouray was about to write them off before the door was popped open from the inside.”
“Did he bring what he needed to bring?” Cole asked.