If the second wave didn’t work, Steve’s only option was to launch the third wave. That wave was supposed to be his containment wave, the troops that would kill anyone — Converted included — that came out of the hotel.
He didn’t have time to think it through. The humans could send more helicopters at any moment, and his people had used up most of the Stingers.
The humans were running out of ammo, but so were the Chosen Ones.
He raised the binoculars. “General Brownstone, launch wave two.”
A MAN’S WORD…
Paulius ejected a spent magazine, popped in a fresh one. The enemy had fallen back, but they were still firing. He’d found new cover behind a white delivery truck. Bullets smacked into the metal body so fast it sounded like an off-rhythm drummer experimenting with a new song.
One Ranger lay dying to his left. Another to his right was already gone, or he would have screamed from the flames that engulfed his chest and arm.
An explosion came from the towering hotel above and behind him. Paulius looked up to see a cloud of thin smoke billowing from the fifth floor, window shards tumbling down to the street below. He saw a second explosion — a there-and-gone fireball blowing out a cloud of spinning glass, shredded insulation and torn metal.
He thumbed his SEAL channel.
“Overwatch, displace, rockets targeting fifth floor!”
Another explosion hit the hotel, farther to the right; three smoldering holes gaped wide, making the building look like a tree chopped at the base that might topple over and crash into the street.
The interior perimeter suddenly lit up with hard-hitting snap explosions that cast out waves of dirt and snow. Paulius threw himself face-first to the pavement — there wasn’t much one could do against a grenade volley but lie low and pray.
A machine gun barked. A man shouting “Here they come again!” drew Paulius’s attention back to the street.
He stayed on his belly, aimed his M4 under the truck, found his first targets: a pair of kids — kids, dammit — sprinting forward, each holding a kitchen knife. He took them out, two shots for the first, three for the second.
And then, Paulius saw something that his eyes couldn’t immediately process: a taxi, sliding sideways toward the perimeter, toward him, smashing bodies aside, tires pushing up little waves of red slush. There was something behind that car.
Something big.
“All units, concentrate fire on that taxi!”
The taxi’s doors blossomed with new holes as Rangers and SEALs alike focused their fire, but the vehicle was moving too fast — it was too late to stop it.
Paulius dove away from the delivery truck a moment before the cab crashed in. The truck toppled, smashed down on its right side. A Ranger who had been using the truck for cover didn’t make it clear; the heavy vehicle crushed his left foot, trapping him.
Klimas rolled to his feet, came up ready to fire — and for the first time in his military career, he froze.
A monster. Eight feet tall, shoulders and chest rippling with thick coils of muscle. Molotov firelight played off wet, dark-yellow skin. Open sores dotted the body, some trailing visible rivulets of pus. The wide neck supported a huge, heavy-jawed head topped with spotty patches of tight, curly black hair. The face seemed toylike compared to the oversized body. Its mouth was full of long, thick teeth that could easily rip flesh from bones.
And sticking up from behind each clenched fist, a long, jagged, pointed arc of bone.
The trapped Ranger rolled to his back, stared up at the monstrosity only a foot away. The Ranger screamed.
The yellowish beast raised a bare foot, drove it down into the Ranger’s stomach. The soldier’s screaming stopped. His hands weakly gripped the long leg, then his fingers slid away and his arms fell limply to the wet pavement.
The monster leaned down and roared.
Klimas heard the telltale thoop of a grenade launcher. An explosion knocked the massive creature back, splashing his bloody entrails in a long streak across the white top of the overturned truck.
Gunfire brought Paulius out of it, gunfire aimed at him — a man and a woman sprinting around the delivery truck, the man firing a rifle, the screaming woman aiming a shotgun.
In less than a second, Klimas hit them each twice. The man dropped hard. The woman landed face-first and slid across the packed snow. Klimas fired twice more, aiming for her head, but his shots hit her back instead. As she slid, she raised the shotgun one-handed, screamed “asshole!” and fired.
He felt the blast smack into the left side of his chest and belly, felt a dozen needles dig deep as some of them found ways around the gaps in his body armor.
She slid to a stop. He put a bullet in her head, then looked up.
A dozen more hostiles poured in around the truck. Two of them tackled a fleeing Ranger. Another Ranger lay on the ground, screaming obscenities at the three people on top of him, one biting his face, another stabbing a knife into his right thigh over and over again. And just beyond the truck, Paulius saw two more of the yellow monsters rushing in fast.
His position was being overrun.
I promised Feely I’d get him out, and if I don’t save him and Mitchell, then all this is for nothing.
Paulius turned and ran, tossing a flash-bang behind him. Up ahead, smoke billowed out of the hotel’s entrance.
“All exterior SEALs, fall back to the hotel! Our mission is to get the civilians to safety. Someone find me another way out of that building!”
EVERYONE LOVES A PARADE
Steve Stanton really, really wanted to ride on Jeff’s back, like Hannibal riding an elephant into battle, but that was a bad idea; there were probably still a few human snipers left in the Park Tower.
So instead of riding in glory, the emperor of Chicago walked toward the hotel. He walked slowly, and far back from the still-advancing second wave. Steve stayed a few steps behind Jeff so the bull’s wide body would block any stray fire.
Hundreds of bodies lined the streets, victims of mines, snipers and grenades. Where dying flames didn’t burn, the pavement ran red with blood.
As Steve advanced, his third wave came out of hiding. They slid out of cars, stepped out of doorways, all carrying weapons that had yet to be fired. They walked toward the hotel. There were thousands of them, so many and so thick it looked like a well-organized parade.
The third wave included most of the Converted who had been soldiers in their former lives. Each of them managed ten civilians. The soldiers communicated via hand signals, runners, cell phones, and most also had some form of radio or walkie-talkie that the scavengers had found in electronics, toy and sporting goods stores. Where the first wave had been cannon fodder, as had most of the second, the third wave was an organized combat force.
General Brownstone had gone up ahead to get a closer look. She jogged back toward him.
“General, have we entered the hotel yet?”
“No, Emperor,” she said. “The human perimeter is collapsing and the building is on fire, but there is still resistance. Shouldn’t be long now. The third wave is already setting up the containment ring — nothing is going to get out of that hotel alive.”
Containment. That was the key. They’d kill Cooper Mitchell, then kill his killers and — God willing — forever wipe out his horrid disease.