The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (32 page)

The second truck kept coming, though for some reason it seemed much slower than the first. A uniformed man was swiveling around an MG welded in the truck bed and began opening up on the car Angie and Mackey were hiding behind, the
ping-ping-ping!
of rounds hitting the sedan’s other side like out-of-control pinball machines.

Danny was shouting, but his voice was lost in the continuous roar of Hanson’s M249, busy pouring everything at the approaching vehicle. The twin MGs going off at the same time—literally firing at one another—created the kind of strange cacophony of noise and rhythm that Keo had never seen replicated anywhere except on the battlefield.

“Keo!” someone shouted.

Keo looked back at Vince, staring at him. He didn’t have to hear what Vince was going to say next to know what he wanted.

“Stay where you are!” Keo shouted at him.

Vince gritted his teeth, but stayed put.

Now that the vehicle was closer—fifty meters and closing!—Keo saw why it wasn’t stopping: It had armor plates on its front grill and sides, and there might have been two
(two?)
slabs of glass over its front windshield. The tires were massive to accommodate the extra weight, which also explained why it was moving so damn slow.

But slow or not, the technical wasn’t going to stop because Hanson’s machine-gun rounds were landing but ricocheting off the metal plates. Danny had begun firing too, now that the enemy vehicle was closer, for all the good it did.

Keo was about to turn back to Vince and give him the okay to join the fray when a gust of wind slammed into him, and a split-second later the unstoppable enemy vehicle speeding toward them simply evaporated against a flood of 30mm rounds pouring down from the sky.

Then came the delayed
brooooooooooorrrrttttttttt!
as the A-10 swept past the parking lot and kept going, and Keo remembered Vince saying back in the helicopter as they were approaching the city,
“Jesus Christ, I’m glad those things are on our side.”

No shit, pal. No shit!

The devastated vehicle actually kept moving for a while on its oversize tires, even though there was absolutely nothing left of it but a carcass. Then it simply rolled to a stop. There were no signs of the driver or his mates, and Keo was glad he couldn’t see what had become of them.

He didn’t have a lot of time to process the destruction anyway, because he heard Vince shouting from behind him, “Incoming! We got more incoming!”

Keo turned around and cursed under his breath.

Collaborators. Two sets of them, converging on the south entrance from two separate directions.

He counted two—four—
six.

“Hanson!” Keo shouted. “Get your ass back into position!”

“Yeah, Hanson, move that sweet ass!” Danny chimed in.

Hanson was struggling to reload his machine gun when Keo called his name. The man grunted, snapped a new ammo box into place, then lifted the heavy weapon and jogged back to his old spot. Keo couldn’t fathom how he was carrying all that load and didn’t seem to be even breaking a sweat.

“James, Mackey!” Keo shouted.

Neither James nor Mackey needed Keo to say the rest. They stumbled to their feet and ran over, James leaning against the trunk of the Wrangler while Mackey joined Hanson at the sedan.

Behind him, Danny shouted, “Angie, Rhode Island—stay where you are!”

“It’s Delaware!” Delaware shouted.

“Close enough!” Danny said before running over to Keo’s position. “Any word from Willie Boy?”

Keo shook his head. “Not a peep.”

“That means they’re still on their way.”

“They’ve been on their way here for two days now.”

“Hey, you can’t rush Plan G. Didn’t anyone tell you that?” Danny slipped a new magazine into his carbine. “And to think, I almost missed out on this!”

“Lucky you!”

“I know, right? Good things really do happen to good people!”

Keo snorted, then turned around just as the collaborator trucks began pouring inside the parking lot. “Pick a target and keep shooting until they stop moving!”

“Brilliant strategy!” Danny laughed as he stood up and began shooting over the vehicles in their path. “George Not-So Patton this guy!”

Danny’s laughter was quickly drowned out by the
ping-ping-ping
of rounds hitting automobiles, interspersed with the
brap-brap-brap
of machine guns and the
pop-pop-pop
of carbines. Keo had been through plenty of battlefields, but he had to admit he’d never had to fight in a place congested with this many cars. Glass shattered all around them and he was pretty sure tanks were being punctured because he could suddenly smell gasoline over the still-lingering acrid stench of dead ghouls.

Keo darted over to Vince’s position and opened fire with the MP5SD, his suppressed gunfire comically quiet against all the clatter of unsuppressed weapons around him. If he had any ideas about getting a good chuckle out of that, though, the sight of six—five now, with one having just stopped, its windshield riddled with bullets and blood—collaborator trucks coming toward them ended that notion.

Then, without warning, four of the remaining five broke off from the main pathway, leaving just one to come straight up the middle at them. Two went east and two more went west, the drivers bent low over their steering wheels while the men in the back simultaneously hung on and fired their mounted MGs.

The continuous roar of small arms fire and light machine guns was dizzying, fraying Keo’s senses to the point where he couldn’t even feel the adrenaline that he knew must be surging through his veins right about now. It always happened during a stand-up gunfight, and this was as stand-up a gunfight as he’d ever been in.

Danny appeared next to him, his M4A1 clattering loudly, but he somehow managed to shout over it anyway: “Where the hell are those A-10s?”

“Maybe they’re out of bullets!” Keo shouted back.

“Hell of a time to be running out of bullets! Remind me to give them a stern talking to after this! Spankings may be in order, too!”

“You got it!”

Keo focused on a white GMC zig-zagging its way around the parking lot, squeezing between stalled cars when it could and slamming grill-first to move them when it couldn’t. He couldn’t see how many men were in the vehicle—not that it mattered, because the only one worth keeping an eye on was the uniformed guy behind the machine gun.

Finally
the GMC seemed to jerk off course about fifty meters from their position and buried its nose into the side of a gray Prius. It hadn’t stopped for more than a second before Vince stitched the side with 5.56 rounds. Keo couldn’t see the collaborator in the back or any of the ones in the front, so they were either dead or out of the fight. Either/or worked for him just fine.

Just as Keo was turning to pick up the remaining vehicle coming from the east side, it slammed on its brakes about sixty meters away and people lunged out of the truck. James had stopped firing to reload, and Keo stepped over next to him and emptied the rest of his magazine into the black Nissan with white stripes, but he had no clear target and was just wasting bullets. It was a good thing, he told himself, that he’d brought plenty this time.

He didn’t stop shooting until James had finished reloading and began firing to his left. Keo went down into a crouch and was reaching for a fresh magazine when a body to his right jerked and collapsed to the parking lot floor.

Vince!

Keo slung his submachine gun and hurried over. He leaned over the big man and was reaching for him when he saw Vince’s wide-open eyes staring up at the cloudless sky, a surprisingly small thin trail of blood trickling out of a hole in his forehead.

One down…

He glanced up at Danny, now crouched across the open space next to Hanson. Danny was reloading and watching Keo, who shook his head. Danny let out a silent sigh, then nodded to his left—Keo’s right.

Keo looked over at Mackey, on the ground next to the trunk of another vehicle that looked like it had been shredded by a few hundred rounds. The barrage had taken Mackey with it, blood pooling over his chest and under him.

Two down…

Keo stood up and snapped a quick look over the Wrangler: One of the collaborator trucks had been stopped by their weapons fire, but the other one, taking a cue from their comrades, had abandoned their bullet-riddled vehicle and taken cover behind the parked cars that dotted the lot about seventy meters away. They were now exchanging fire with Hanson, James, and Danny.

He ducked back down, bullets
zip-zip-zipping
over his head, and maneuvered over Vince’s body and was preparing to take over his SAW, still perched on the hood of the Wrangler, when the radio clipped to his hip squawked and a familiar voice said, just barely audible through the roar of gunfire, “Striker, come in. Striker, this is Willie Boy.”

Keo stayed down behind the hood and took out the radio, even as Blaine continued calling out through the two-way: “Can you hear me? Answer if you can hear me. Striker, Striker, this is Willie Boy, do you read—”

He keyed the radio and interrupted Blaine. “Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time.” Keo glanced over at Danny, who was watching him back and simultaneously reloading his rifle. “Took your sweet ass time,” Keo said into the radio. “We got tangos coming at us in waves over here. What’s your position?”

“We’re right below you,” Blaine said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

About fucking time.

“Coming to you!” he shouted.

Danny got up and streaked over, keeping low as bullets buzzed over his head. “Willie Boy?”

“They’re in position and waiting for us!” Keo shouted.

“About fucking time.”

“What I said.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?”

“Cover me!”

“Gee, I was just going to do my nails, but since you asked so nicely…” Danny stood up and resumed shooting, and somewhere between when he pulled the trigger and when he stopped firing, he managed to shout out, “Go! We’ll be right behind you once we take care of these pecker heads!”

“James, you’re with me!” Keo shouted, and darted across the open space.

James was immediately on his heels, both of them keeping low as they raced out of their area of operation and across the parking lot. Keo led him into the open, the strangling smell of vaporized ghouls getting thicker with every step closer to the rubble that used to be the HC Dome.

“Christ!” James shouted behind him, just as something
zipped!
over Keo’s head.

Too close!

They finally reached their objective while still far from the remains of the domed sports building: A manhole covering out in the open near the very end of the parking lot.

Keo snapped a quick look left, then right, just in case there were more collaborators trying to outflank them. As bad as having to survive a dozen technicals was, it could—and would—have been worse if they didn’t have the tanks and A-10s to lend a hand. A hell of a lot worse.

“This is it?” James asked, sliding to a stop next to him.

“This is it,” Keo said, and crouched on one side of the round metal object embedded in the concrete floor while James scooted over to the opposite side.

The young man looked across at him and swallowed.

“You okay?” Keo asked.

“No,” James said. “I should have stayed on the island with my wife.”

Keo had a humdinger of a retort, something even Danny would have been proud of, except before he could say it there was a thunderous
THOOM!
from behind him.

He glanced up just in time to see a fireball falling out of the sky in the distance.

S
ilver
.

There was silver everywhere.

If he remembered how to gag, he might have.

The ones that clung to his hips and stuck out from the gauntlets over his hands were the worst of them. But the silver in all the weapons around him was just as bad.

Silver.

So much silver.

He was grateful for the helmet, because it hid his discomfort. He pushed through it, flexing his fingers underneath the gloves, knowing that he would need them very soon. Not yet, but soon, because this was the end of the line. The tunnel continued and bent left, but he didn’t need to go left; he needed to go straight.

They came down the ladder one by one. Racing heartbeats and gasping breaths pounded in his ears, followed by gasps as the smell hit them. It was such a human response, and for a moment he was glad he was beyond all of it.

“Oh God,” the young blond who came down first said as he reached up to make sure the mask was still firmly placed over his mouth. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Not yet, kid,” Blaine said. “How bad is it up there?”

“It could be worse,” a familiar voice said as its owner skipped the remaining rungs and leaped down to the platform. “Make room, there’s more coming.”

“Sounds like you guys got a hell of a party going on up there,” Gaby said.

“A handful of technicals, but it could have been a lot worse.”

“Mercer’s army came through after all?”

“Looks like it. But our luck might have run out. I saw an aircraft go down. Not sure if it was our ride out of here or one of the Thunderbolts.”

“You’re fucking me,” Blaine said.

“Nope.”

“Well, shit.”

“Ditto,” the man said (What was his name? It was there, just underneath the surface—
There.
Keo. His name was Keo.
)
as he and the blond unslung their packs and pulled out night-vision goggles and snapped them on.

“You guys okay?” Gaby asked.

“We took some casualties,” Keo said, “but in one piece, for the most part.”

“We’ll wait for the others. Go ahead with Wi—Frank.”

Keo climbed off the platform and sighed when the sewage sloshed around his knees.

“I think I’m going to throw up again,” the blond said as he stepped down beside Keo.

“Keep it together,” Keo said before looking up the tunnel, allowing his artificial third eye to adjust to the darkness. “Long time no see.”

“Yes,” he said, grateful that the helmet obscured his voice and tamed the hiss.

“Nice outfit.”

“Danny.”

“Of course Danny.”

“That’s him?” the kid asked. No, not a kid. Just young.

“That’s him,” Keo said. “Frank, James. James, Frank. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to work so we can all get the hell out of this literal steaming pile of shit.”

Behind them, another figure climbed down onto the platform, the
clank-clank
of boots on the metal rungs even louder than the continued gunfire from above. Another familiar voice, urging the figure on, “Move faster, Hanson! Or do you want me to go down there and give you a hand, princess?”

“Hey, I’m going as fast as I can!” a gruff voice answered. “You try climbing with fifty pounds of gear!”

“Excuses, excuses!” the familiar voice said.

“I got you,” Blaine said, and helped the climber off the steps.

They made room for a woman. She was wounded, and he licked his lips at the taste of fresh blood in the air.

“You’re hurt,” Blaine said.

“I’ll live,” the woman said. “It’s just a scratch.”

“Looks like a hell of a lot more than a scratch to me. Can you walk?”

“She’s a big girl, she’ll be fine,” the familiar voice said, just before its owner landed on the platform.
Danny.
He pinched his nose and his voice was muffled when he said, “I’ve heard of being knee-deep in shit before, but this takes the cake.”

“Don’t mention cake,” Blaine said.

“Where’s Delaware?” the woman who wasn’t Gaby asked.

Danny shook his head.

“Shit,” the big man with the machine gun said.

Danny turned to Gaby. “Hey there, kid.”

“What are you doing here?” Gaby asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be back on the
Trident
,
safe and sound?”

“And what, miss all this fun?” He pulled his night-vision goggles out from his pack and slipped it on. The newcomers did the same. “Well, let’s get this show on the road. I got places to be and babies to watch being born.”

Danny hopped down the platform and walked over to where he stood with Keo. He couldn’t see the man’s lips behind the mask, but he assumed Danny was grinning at him.

“Nice, if I do say so myself,” Danny said. “I should open my own fashion line when this is all over.”

“This getup’s your handiwork, too?” Keo asked.

“Most of it. The ladies helped with the sewing and such. My hands are way too manly for that sort of stuff.”

“What about the guys chasing you?” Blaine asked as he and Gaby walked over to them, the other two newcomers following behind.

“I doubt they’ll come down after us,” Keo said. “It’d be almost suicide, and I don’t think they’re that stupid.”

“Someone’s being overly optimistic,” Danny said.

“But just in case, James and Angie, stay behind on the platform. Shoot anyone that tries to come down after us.”

“Go; we got this,” the woman said.

Danny walked over and nodded at him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Can’t let you hog all the glory,” Danny said. “Okay, Willie boy, it’s your show. Lead the way.”

All eyes turned to him, the faces he didn’t recognize staring the hardest.

“Let’s go,” he said, and turned back into the dark tunnel.

They moved silently, labored breathing pushing against their masks. Adrenaline coursed through their veins, increasing their already rapid heartbeats. Every one of their steps sounded like crashing ocean waves against his ears even through the thick wall of the helmet.

He knew exactly where to go because he had planned it to the exact step, and stopped when they came to the section of the wall where the tunnel curved left. There was nothing here to indicate that this section was anything special, but he knew better, because he could
feel
and
smell
and
hear
them on the other side.

“Here?” Keo asked.

He pointed.

“I’ll take it that’s a yes,” Danny said. He stepped forward and unslung his pack. “Just like old times, huh?”

“Not quite.”

“Close enough. So this is your big plan.”

He nodded.

“What’s the matter, sewer rat got your tongue?” Danny asked.

“Be careful,” he said.

“Aw, I didn’t think you still cared.” Danny glanced back at the others. “You boys might want to make some room. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and I’m definitely not paying for any missing eyes or ears.”

His nostrils twitched at the smell of plastic and chemicals as Danny brought out the pack’s true contents.

“I hope this tunnel was built to city specs,” Danny said as he began attaching the malleable material to the wall, creating an almost door-shape design above where the water ended. “Or, er, hopefully they didn’t. Whichever one keeps it from falling on our heads.”

“Don’t jinx it, man,” the big man said from the back.

“I’m just kidding, Hanson, relax. I know exactly what I’m doing.” Then, slightly under his breath, “Mostly.”

Behind him, Gaby and the others took a few tentative steps back. Their pulse accelerated further, the force of their breath against their masks increasing accordingly. Although it was cold, damp sweat covered their skin from head to toe and dripped
down to the filthy water around their knees.

As they watched Danny work, Gaby said, “This is it. The end of the line. I didn’t think we’d ever get here.”

“Didn’t think I’d ever be alive to see this, either,” the big man, Hanson, said. “That’s him? Frank?”

“That’s him.”

“What’s with the wardrobe?”

“Protection.”

“From what?”

“What’s on the other side of that wall.”

“What
is
on the other side of that wall?”

“Glory, boys,” Danny said, standing up. He looked back at them. “When I mentioned you should all take a few steps back, what I really meant was, keep going until I say stop.”

Tentative steps as they started backing up again. Danny followed, unfurling a bright yellow cord from a spool as he backpedaled.

“Is the tunnel going to hold?” Gaby asked.

“Should,” Danny said.

“Should?”

“There’s not enough C-4 to take out the whole place, just enough to punch a big hole in the wall for us to go through. So it
should
, theoretically, hold.”

Gaby sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Man, I don’t like the sound of that,” the young blond said.

When they had put enough room between them and the turn up ahead, Danny flashed them one last look and chuckled. “Remember, you guys volunteered for this.”

“We’re all going to fucking die down here,” Blaine said from somewhere in the back.

“That’s the spirit,” Danny said. Then, as the others lined up and hugged the wall behind him, Danny turned to him. “You sure about this?”

He nodded. “Do it.”

“I told you Carly’s pregnant?”

“I know.”

“Of course you do. We’re still thinking about a name. Got any suggestions?”

He shook his head.

“Still the chatterbox, I see,” Danny said. Then, holding the trigger in front of him, “All right. Enough of this awkward reunion. Fire in the—”

“Wait, you’re not going to count to three?” Keo asked.

“Three schmee,” Danny said, and there was a
click!
followed by a
BOOM!
as the tunnel shook around them.

Loose chunks of brick
plopped
into the water, and a thick mist like some kind of living thing extended out of the blast with rubbery fingers. He didn’t need the helmet or the clothing to protect him against the flood, but he wiped at the goggles as they appeared…a moving forest of black eyes and frail limbs.

Too many.

Had he miscalculated? Or had Mabry summoned more down here since the last time?

There were so many he could barely make out any spaces between their twisting and gyrating forms as they surged forward toward the opening where the wall used to be and through the hole.

It took him a second—maybe less—to make the decision.

There were too many—simply too many—and the others would never survive to reach the other side.

He stepped forward, alone, and into the spreading clouds.

* * *

H
e had removed
the helmet because it was too cumbersome and he didn’t need to conceal his identity anymore. He could move faster without it, and even though the extra weight was minimal, he needed everything he had—speed, strength, and agility—at their absolute fullest as he waded into the abyss.

There were a lot more of them than he had expected, that had survived the bombings, and they poured down the darkened hallway, so many that they were almost climbing on top of one another to reach him. He didn’t hesitate and stepped into them, the silver studs over his knuckles doing tremendous damage with every swing regardless of direction.

He punched through chests and heads and smashed bones, and this time they didn’t get back up when he felled one—two—a
hundred
of them. The silver was toxic to them and they collapsed, screaming in his mind, and somewhere, beyond, the blue eyes shouted through the hive,
“Stop him! Kill him! Don’t let him advance!”

But they couldn’t stop him. They never could before, and not now.

They flopped by the wayside, dying
(again)
as they fell, one by one by one. Soon, he began to smell the fear emanating from their pores, glimpse the horror on their faces and in their hollowed eyes as he continued cutting a swath through their numbers.

And yet they came, one after another after another, because they had no choice. This was what they did. They were the first line of defense.

Screams roared inside his mind, but he didn’t try to shut them out. There was no time—not even a second to waste on something so trivial.

“Stop him!”

And they kept coming, an endless surge of black eyes and limbs. The never-ending
clacking
of bones against the concrete floor as he smashed and tore and ripped through them two, three—
five
at a time. Still they came, pushing against his exterior, but doing almost no damage. He would have felt sorry for them if he could muster the emotion.

Behind him, shouting and gunfire echoed. Keo, Danny, Gaby, and the others. To help them would mean going back, and he couldn’t do that. He was too far in now that retreating would mean total and complete failure.

And he was close to the end. So, so close.

“Kill him!”

This wasn’t part of the plan, but it would have to be. Maybe he always knew it would be him alone at the very end, despite all his preparations. Despite his friends, despite Mercer’s tanks and planes. Who else could survive this? Who else could break through the onslaught of flesh and bone and teeth?