“Kill them all!”
The air fills with the pop of weapons as the Infected clamber onto the snowplow and force their way into the bus.
“Whatever you think is best, Ray!” he screams. “Whatever you think is best!”
Anne
The bus slowly reverses while Anne tries to pull the machine gun from under Evan’s legs. The Infected shot him. The man shakes violently, bleeding out, his eyes glassy and unseeing. Behind him, Gary sits with his back against the pole, wincing and licking blood from his lips.
“I can feel it in my lung,” he says. He sounds like he is being strangled. “The bullet. It went through Evan and popped into my chest.”
“I’m sorry,” she tells him.
Thrashing in his final death throes, Evan knees Anne in the face and pain flares through the lines of her scars. Above her, Ramona screams and fires her automatic rifle on full auto at the Infected clambering onto the hood of the vehicle.
Anne frees the gun with a final jerk.
“This is your fault,” Gary says. “It’s all your fault.”
She looks up in time to see Ramona fire her last round and slam the butt of her rifle into a man’s face before the hands reach in and pull her out into the mob, which tears her apart. Blood splashes onto Marcus but he ignores it, gritting his teeth, firing a massive handgun into the snarling faces with one hand while steering with the other.
“I’m scared,” Gary says.
This is what you wanted, Anne’s mind whispers.
Your murdered your own children through your stupidity and arrogance and you can never be happy so you kill and kill and kill the Infected in the hopes one day your luck will run out and they will tear you to shreds and eat you like you deserve.
That day has finally come.
“It’s going to be okay,” she says.
Gary does not hear her. He stares into oblivion, his eyes blank, his face pale, his final expression one of pure terror.
Anne glances down at the machine gun in her hands and realizes she could just drop it. Dying would be that simple. She has already gotten enough people killed. Let Ray kill the world. What does she care?
Not yet. Soon, but not just yet.
They can have me, but only after a fight. They have to prove they are stronger. They have to earn it.
The will to survive floods her body with energy. She stands and levels the heavy weapon, putting her back against the pole for support and firing from the waist, holding the ammo belt with her other hand. The barrel lights up with muzzle flashes that fill the air with hot metal.
Anne screams with something like joy. This is how she wants to die.
The hot metal slugs punch through skulls and torsos, spraying brains and guts back into the crowd. Soon she can no longer see individuals, just torn and charred flesh and muscle and clothing, shattered bone, ripped organs and blood.
Then she no longer sees even this, struck by a vision of a single face, watching her without expression, as if lobotomized, a human face with an alien mind.
A human face constructed entirely of seething maggots.
No, not maggots. Monsters.
The face snarls with recognition and hatred before it explodes into millions of howling things hurtling into the void.
“I am Life,” it tells her. “I am Life and you are the enemy of life. You are Death.”
Empty shell casings clatter across the floor. She grunts, sweat pouring down her face. Her arm trembles with exhaustion from the constant recoil.
The bus continues to gain speed. The Infected fall behind, howling and waving their weapons and shooting their guns. Anne lunges and slams the M240 down onto hood, hugging the stock and resuming fire.
The Infected collapse in waves under the withering fire of the machine gun.
“Come on,” she screams, her body jerking from the recoil. “Come and get it!”
The bus steadily puts more distance between them and the Infected. The tracers arc and drop among the crowd, punching more bodies to the ground. The ammo belt runs out.
Marcus stops the bus, turns and finds another way out of town.
Ray fled during the attack. The pursuit is back on. And Anne has survived again.
As with every other time, she is almost disappointed.
Cool Rod
Sitting in the shade of the Stryker, Rod watches his squad tear the plastic wrapping off their MREs and sink their hands into the yellow pouches, producing brown packets containing entrees and seasonings and HOOAH! energy bars. They compare meals and barter like Wall Street traders. Sosa trades a cigarette for Lynch’s hot sauce. Tanner puts his chicken fajitas on the market, but gets no takers. He takes a long pull on a stray bottle of water they liberated from the Walmart’s shelves and passes it on. Lynch suggests lighting some C4 to cook their meals properly, but the air is so hot the others do not seem interested. Sosa, constipated from the steady diet of MREs, calls his a meal ready for enema, making them laugh.
Rod joins in the laughter, enjoying the banter during this rare calm while Davis stands twenty meters away with his rifle providing security and Arnold monitors the recon equipment on the Walmart roof. He tears open his own MRE and inspects his beef brisket with mild disdain. It is not his favorite, but he needs the twelve hundred calories.
Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers Eyes, over.
That’s Arnold calling in from the observation post. Rod places his meal on the ground between his feet and keys the push-to-talk button on his headset, chewing. “Hellraisers 3 here. Go ahead, Eyes, over.”
Contact to the west. A uniform victor, moving fast, over.
An unidentified vehicle, Rod understands. “You got eyes on it, over?”
Not yet, over.
“Let me know when you get eyes on it. Hellraisers 3, out.”
Roger, Three. Out.
The others wolf down their meals, knowing what is coming, but waiting until he gives the order.
“We’ve got a vehicle inbound,” he says. “You know what to do. Let’s get to it.”
The soldiers take final bites of food and slugs of juice and scramble to their feet, pocketing their energy bars and candy for later. They snatch up their weapons and run off. Lynch stays behind to help Sosa pull on his flamethrower harness.
“Corporal, when you’re done there, go tell spooky and the doc we’re expecting company,” Rod says.
“Aieeyah, Sergeant.”
“Hart, I need you on the fifty,” he shouts, banging his fist against the Stryker’s armor. The gunner appears in the cupola, gives him a thumbs up, and grabs hold of the mounted heavy machine gun, locking and loading it.
Checking his shotgun, Rod walks to the checkpoint they built using sawhorses and STOP signs, placed in layers running every twenty meters along the road up to the gas station. The theory is Typhoid Jody will either stop, or try to bypass or drive through the roadblock.
If he tries to bypass or drive through, he will slow down, and the Stryker’s fifty will make quick work of him. If he fails to cooperate, he is a dead man.
Rod’s body rebels, his heart racing and his breath becoming fast and shallow, but not from fear. No, he is simply excited. Can this really be it? Can this guy really offer a cure? If not a cure, maybe a vaccine, or even a weapon?
Is this the operation that ends the war and allows us to retake the country?