HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (11 page)

The woman fled through the playground. Tall and fair, she wore an officer’s uniform splattered with blood.

She sprinted toward the Marines. To her left rose the sheer face of the rock climbing wall. To her right churned chaotic water in a wave simulator.

She had no choice.

Her only option was an obstacle course of umbrellas and deck chairs and fountains and wading pools.

She leaped over a deck chair.

As her foot hit the deck, her pursuers hit the chair behind her.

They collided with the chair and crumpled into a pile of white rolling plastic and flailing limbs.

Someone threw a piece of glass. It flashed through the air and barely missed the fleeing woman’s head.

‘More,’ pointed Sergeant King, his voice a deep rumble.

Another mob emerged from the gardens beyond the putting green.

They spotted the Marines.

‘Fan out!’ ordered Coleman. ‘Take down anyone who attacks. Don’t let them get close!’

King and Forest reacted instantly. Without hesitation they dashed to intercept the people charging across the putting green.

Myers and Craigson ran toward the rock climbing wall.

The fleeing woman ran straight toward Coleman and Easterbrook.

She was flagging.

The two Marines side-stepped quickly apart, searching for clean shots.

Coleman pumped his XREP-M1.

The new less-lethal weapon had been designed for the military by TASER international. Coleman had never discharged the
Extreme Range Electric Projectile
at a person.

He targeted a man grabbing for the fleeing woman’s hair.

Crack!

The XREP-M1 didn’t recoil like a normal shotgun. The round only travelled at 300 meters per second, but when it hit, the electro-bolt delivered fifty thousand volts of electricity for fifteen seconds.

Coleman witnessed that effect now.

The man ran into an invisible brick wall. His body hit the deck and shook violently.

Shuck-shuck.

Coleman pumped his weapon, switched targets and fired again. A woman running with a long glass shard collapsed.

The tall female officer wearing the blood-splattered uniform suddenly changed directions.

What’s she doing?

She ran through the water park toward an ice cream kiosk.

‘No!’ Coleman yelled, seeing her plan. ‘This way!’

She’s trying to lock herself inside the kiosk. They’ll trap her in there. It’s suicide.

The woman kept running for the kiosk, and Coleman couldn’t do a thing about it.

Sergeant King and Corporal Forest dodged the hurled missiles.

A kitchen knife flew passed King and embedded point first into the wooden deck.

They’ve lost their minds
, thought King.

‘They’ve gone crazy!’ shouted Forest, glancing at the knife.

‘Some are armed,’ said King, raising his rifle. ‘Take them down first.’

The attacking mob looked like regular passengers and crew to King. They looked like everyday people.

Only their faces looked different.

Their expressions were livid. They looked absolutely livid with rage. Maniacal fury twisted their faces into a shared expression of pure hatred.

King began dropping hostiles with electro-bolts from his XREP-M1.

Forest did even better with his longer-ranged weapon.

None of their targets were rising, but it wasn’t deterring the rest.

‘What are they so angry about?’ shouted Forest.

They don’t seem human
, thought King.
They’re not acting like normal people at all. Not even normal rioters.

Normal people, even angry rioters, would pause in the face of two Marines firing into their ranks. At the very least they’d help fallen companions.

These people did none of that. They just charged forward fearlessly, leaping fallen bodies in their headlong rush to reach the Marines.

They just wanted to attack.

This must be the sickness
, realized King.
The healthy passengers aren’t rioting. It’s the sick ones. These are the sick people.

‘There’s too many,’ warned Forest. ‘We need to pull back!’

Too late
, thought King.
Here we go!

A man rushed at King with pruning shears. He was a crew member. He held the shears wide open as though trying to cut King in half.

King swung his XREP around.

He couldn’t miss at this range.

Click.

His weapon didn’t fire. King looked down and remembered that t
he XREP held fewer rounds than a normal tactical shotgun.

He needed to reload.

Oh, crap. Not right now!

The garden shears raced for his torso.

King lifted his rifle.

Clang!

King’s rifle stopped the blades, but not the large man’s momentum. He slammed straight into King.

King lost his footing.

As he fell, the shears’ blades slid up his rifle.

They slid straight toward King’s face.

When both men landed, those blades would shear off King’s face from chin to forehead.

King braced for impact.

As his back slammed down, King pushed upward with all his strength. The blades slid up his rifle and clipped his helmet, missing his nose by half an inch.

King struck the shears with his weapon stock.

The shears spun away.

As the man’s eyes followed the shears, King reversed directions with his weapon stock and slammed it down into the man’s nose.

The impact knocked the man right off King.

Springing to his feet, King slid two fresh cartridges into his XREP.

A woman swung a putting iron at his head. King jerked up his arm. The lightweight putting iron bent around his arm and flew from her grasp.

King aimed at her torso.

He pulled the trigger and saw the electro-bolt knock the woman backward off her feet. Before she landed, King reached for more ammunition.

He could only reload one cartridge this time.

These new weapons didn’t hold enough ammunition. Forest couldn’t hold back the hostiles either. Most of the hostiles had gone down, but now a man with a long gardening fork tried to impale Forest on its four metal spikes.

King could barely spare Forest a glance. Behind the woman with the putting iron came four people who must have raided a garden shed for weapons.

King had two shots.

Crack!
–
shuck-shuck
–
Crack!

A man with a steel rake and a woman with a wicked-looking pruning saw collapsed in twitching piles. A second woman tripped over their bodies. A gardening pick skittered from her hands across the deck.

The last man jumped over the still-twitching bodies and threw a short shovel like a javelin.

His aim was dead on.

Worse, King hadn’t expected it.

The shovel hit King clean in the chest. The tool couldn’t penetrate his body armor, but the impact knocked King off-balance precisely as the man lowered his head to charge.

Thuuump!

The man struck with the strength of someone twice his size. King stepped back to plant one boot and correct his balance.

His boot found nothing but open air.

Shit! I’m falling! Where’s the deck?

It certainly wasn’t behind him. All he saw was water. A torrent of white water!

The surf simulator!

He hadn’t realized he’d retreated this far.

Locked together, the men toppled into the water.

SPLASH!

King’s rifle tore from his grasp. The powerful current tossed the men downstream like a couple of dried leaves. Completely underwater, King felt his back sliding rapidly along the bottom of the pool.

Suddenly King was airborne.

The surf simulator spat them into the air and...

SPLASH!

...dumped them into a second pool.

As they hit the water, King kicked off the man. He glimpsed his rifle sliding along the bottom.

Quickly! Grab it!

King reached down, snatched up his rifle, and broke the surface at exactly the same time as the crazy psycho.

The man charged through the waist-deep water at King.

King looked down at the strange shape in his hand.

I didn’t pick up my rifle. I picked up the shovel!

Improvising, he
swung the shovel two-handed like a baseball bat.

The shovel was three feet long and felt perfect in his hands.

Clang!

The flat shovel blade impacted the man’s head so hard he landed half-in, half-out of the pool.