Last Stand (The Survivalist Book 7) (26 page)

Carr double-checked the MP5.

“A soldier’s best friend, eh?” he said, patting the buttstock.

“Bowie here might beg to differ.”

“Speaking of which, are you sure your dog is up for this? Bowie seems like a bundle of hair and slobber to me.”

“Believe me, he’s got teeth too.”

Not appreciating that he was the topic of conversation, Bowie licked his nose as if he was trying to clean off a smear of peanut butter.

“If you say so,” Carr said with a chuckle.

“The first team consisted of five men. That’s too many for us to handle in any kind of fair fight. Our best bet is going to be to stay out of their way.”

“It won’t hurt my feelings to let them go about their mission while we disappear right under their noses.”

“The only rub is that we’re going to have to cross through two of the locations marked on the map.”

“If we hurry, maybe we can get through them before the Black Dogs arrive.”

“We can try.”

Mason led them through the dormitory, finally arriving at a door on the opposite wall. He dropped to one knee, inched it open, and peeked out. A long hallway led past a series of doors. Hallways were nearly indefensible, and thus, meant to be crossed as quickly as possible.

He pointed to a door about thirty feet ahead on the opposite side of the hall.

“That’s waypoint one. Unfortunately, it’s also the first of the two marked locations we have to pass through. Bounding overwatch, ready?”

Carr crouched as he prepared to dash across the hallway.

“Ready.”

“Go!” Mason said, swinging his rifle up to cover him.

General Carr rushed ahead, sweeping the hallway with his MP5. Mason waited until he was safely at the door, covering his advance, before stepping out. Not wanting to get caught in the open, he and Bowie hurried past Carr and pushed through the door.

It took Mason only an instant to realize they had just walked into the worst kind of trouble. A team of four Black Dogs had already arrived. One man stood near the center of the room with a second soldier balancing on his shoulders, his head and torso hidden in the ceiling’s airshaft. A third man was standing guard at the door on the opposite side of the room, and a fourth was literally close enough to reach out and touch.

Everyone moved at once. The soldier who was removing the air filter scrambled up into the ceiling, disappearing from sight. The guard closest to Mason swung his MP5 up, but by the time he had it on target, Bowie was on him. The giant dog bit into his left arm and flung him to the ground, sending the man’s rifle clattering away.

Mason swung his own rifle up, firing a quick three-round burst at the man standing guard at the opposite door. The first two rounds hit high on his vest, but the third opened the side of his head, splattering brains and blood onto the back wall.

General Carr also let loose, squeezing off a long uncontrolled burst at the man in the center of the room. Bullets walked their way up his legs, groin, chest, and neck. He stumbled back, fell to his knees, and toppled face-first to the floor.

As Bowie mauled the man on the ground, Mason turned his attention to the one who had disappeared. He knelt to lower his profile and clicked the selector switch over to single fire. Mentally roping off a large circle on the ceiling, he walked a sequence of ten shots in a star-like pattern around the air vent.

No one returned fire, nor were there any cries of pain.

He continued to study the ceiling. Without an indication of which way the ducting routed, the area was too large to effectively cover with a few scattered shots.

The man on the floor finally quieted, and Bowie shook him one final time before trudging over to Mason. Carr, too, had taken a knee and was busy watching the ceiling.

They waited a full minute. Then two. Then three. There was nothing. No crunching of metal ductwork, no clanking of gear.

“I think you got him,” Carr said, standing up.

A noise sounded from overhead. It wasn’t the soft puff heard in Hollywood movies but more like a heavy-duty stapler going off. The general fell back, clutching his chest.

Mason swung right, scattering another ten shots into that area of the ceiling. This time a man cried out, and a heavy thump sounded as he collapsed onto the ductwork. Bowie started to move forward, but Mason motioned for him to hold fast. Together, they watched as blood slowly dripped down through several holes in the ceiling.

Confident that the threat had been neutralized, Mason hurried over to General Carr. The bullet had struck directly above his heart but there was no blood seeping through. Mason slipped his hand in through the vest’s shoulder hole. The bullet hadn’t penetrated the plate.

The general’s eyes fluttered open.

“What happened?”

“You just won the lottery, that’s what.”

Carr slowly sat up and unstrapped the side of the vest. He reached inside and gingerly pressed against his chest.

Grimacing, he said, “It feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule.”

“Better than the alternative.” Mason stood up and looked around the room. Four more Black Dogs down. That made eleven dead or dying, and one wounded. It was a good start.

General Carr took a few deep breaths and got back to his feet, using the wall to steady himself.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I guess I’m out of practice.”

Mason slapped in a fresh magazine.

“You’re alive, and they’re not. That’s all that matters.”

“I see you were right.”

“About what?”

He nodded toward Bowie. The fur around the dog’s mouth was soaked in blood.

“Your dog does have teeth.”

“That he does.”

“And he didn’t wait for you to command him to attack. That’s a good fighting companion.”

“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again—Bowie’s as much human as he is canine.” Mason reached down and scrubbed his neck. “And that’s one reason I love him so much.”

The tip of Bowie’s huge tongue snaked in and out of his mouth as he relished in the attention.

“All right,” Mason said, straightening back up, “let’s bring the rest of them here.” He went to the door and glanced out into the hallway to make sure it was still clear.

It was.

He brought the radio to his mouth.

“Go one.”

A familiar voice echoed his command.

“Roger. Go one.” Thirty seconds later, Leila and the others appeared at the other end of the hallway.

Mason waved them on. “Come on!”

As they hurried into the room, everyone stared in shock at the bodies of the four dead soldiers.

“My Lord,” said Glass, “what happened here?”

“We walked in on them,” explained Carr.

“You weren’t hurt, were you?” Her eyes drifted to the small hole in the center of his vest.

“No,” he said, walking over to Jack. “But the soldiers were kind enough to answer Jack’s question.” He dropped the flattened slug into his lap.

Jack said nothing as he picked it up and rubbed the warm lead between his fingers.

Leila quickly scanned Mason’s vest. When she didn’t find a hole, she offered an approving smile.

“You were careful.”

“More like lucky.”

“My sister Roni used to say that luck is the gentle kiss of God, granted only to those who deserve it most.”

Mason put no weight in divine intervention, but he didn’t dare voice such doubt. If it helped Leila to believe that God was watching out for them, so be it. Who was he to say otherwise?

He met her smile with one of his own.

“Let’s just hope we continue to deserve it.”

Chapter 17  

Not surprisingly, Tanner and Samantha’s escorts confiscated his shotgun and her rifle. They made no effort, however, to strip them of their knives or the satchel of C4. The knives were understandable enough, as the blades were of little danger to a group so large. As for the explosives, Tanner suspected that the virus had left the infected with so little intelligence that they no longer even understood the threat. He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover a group of them chewing on a block of C4 like an oversized granola bar.

The group led them into a tunnel that branched off the main corridor and ended in an alcove the size of several city blocks. Ahead lay a huge tent city, row after row of identical white six-man shelters spread as far as the eye could see. Fires burned in garbage-filled barrels, small holes cut through their sides to keep the flames alive. Infected men, women, and children huddled around the barrels, holding makeshift skewers with rats the size of small dogs dangling off their ends. Many more carried buckets across the camp, water sloshing out with every step.

“It’s an underground city,” Samantha said, marveling at the sheer size of the spectacle.

“More like a refugee camp,” corrected Tanner.

“How many people do you think there are?”

“People? None.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did a quick estimate of the tents. There were between two and three hundred, as well as a dozen boxcars lined up along the walls with the words “U.S. Property” printed on their sides.

“A few thousand maybe.”

“Do you think this was an evacuation area for all the important people in the city?”

“Makes sense.”

Marlo began ushering them through the crowd. Some of the infected gnashed their teeth or struck their chests with open hands, like tribal warriors challenging outsiders. Others stood dumbfounded, watching as the intruders slowly progressed through their midst. None, however, made any move to stop them.

It took nearly ten minutes to navigate the crowd before finally arriving at the rear of the enormous alcove. Dozens of tents had been unfolded and stitched together to act as a makeshift citadel. Two infected men stood in front of the oversized structure, naked from the waist up. Each carried a heavy board with nails protruding from the end. Thick cords of muscle and oversized joints made them look more like ancient troglodytes than modern humans.

Marlo turned to Tanner. “If you try to hurt Mother, they’ll kill you and your girl.”

He eyed the two men. Based on their size and the heavy sticks in their hands, they certainly seemed up to the task.

“Understood.”

“Wait here while I speak with Mother.”

Marlo pushed her way through the flap and disappeared, leaving Tanner and Samantha surrounded by the mob of infected men and women. The crowd eyed them with as much distrust as the Lilliputians had Gulliver.

“They’re not very friendly, are they?” she whispered.

“I don’t know about that. No one’s tried to eat us yet.”

“Hey look,” she said, nodding. “Babies.”

Tanner glanced over to see a line of women holding babies wrapped in dingy strips of cloth. Based on the size of the bundles, the infants couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old.

“Do you think their babies are infected too?”

“Don’t know. Some infections pass to babies, others don’t.”

“But if the babies aren’t infected, wouldn’t they want to kill them?”

“Be thankful for the little things.”

She nodded. “Right.”

The flap of the tent flipped open, and Marlo’s head popped out.

“Come. Mother will see you.”

With a hand resting firmly on Tanner’s shoulders, the two troglodytes shepherded him and Samantha into the tent. The men crowded in so closely that he could feel the heat of their rank breaths on the back of his neck. As soon as they entered, the smell of sour milk washed over them like the pungent pheromones of a herd of dairy cows. Tanner and Samantha were accustomed to strange and often foul odors, but this one was particularly ripe. What they saw in the center of the tent, however, was so utterly unbelievable that neither of them even so much as noticed the stench.

Mother lay before them, sprawled out on a thick pile of blankets with two more troglodytes standing beside her. Her eyes were black and her skin blistered, like many of the infected, but she had mutated in an almost unimaginable way. She had grown as big as Jabba the Hutt, easily eight feet tall and nearly that in width. She lay naked except for a large sheet draped across her groin. Her upper body had developed six flabby breasts, and a newborn baby nursed from each. The babies rested comfortably on folds of fat, sucking the teats while sleeping against her flaccid body.