Helping carry the gravely wounded engineer to the rear door of the fire truck, no one spoke. Ethan and David only watched the captain and firefighter for signals on what they needed. They helped set the limp body in and slammed the door. The firefighter circled the rig as the captain moved to the driver’s door. Before stepping inside, he turned to Ethan and David. “Boys, this thing is bad, I mean real bad. Get to your loved ones and find somewhere to hide, at least for a few days.”
David nodded. “Where are you taking him?”
Shutting the driver’s door and lowering the window, the captain said, “To the hospital, and after that the boys and I are going to take a wide run around town, just to make sure everyone who is able gets to somewhere safe.”
“The hospital? But is he even going to make it—”
Starting the engine, the captain looked out to the horizon. “We’ve got to get out ahead of this thing. We’ve seen reports from other cities that this virus or whatever it is actually began yesterday, and some even the day before. Those places are no longer around. Their communications are dead and the streets are filled with people eating each other. That will be this place in a matter of hours. Get somewhere safe, and do it soon.”
Ethan motioned toward the east end of town. “The firehouse, can’t we all hole up there?”
Pulling away from the sidewalk, the captain shook his head. “It’s already gone. Those things came through nearly an hour ago. Tore the damn garage doors right off their tracks. Once we make our last sweep, we’re heading to higher ground, maybe drive into the city.”
“But—”
“You boys should be fine. You have weapons—don’t be afraid to use them.”
David watched as the red behemoth moved out into the street and turned right a quarter mile up. He grabbed Ethan by the jacket, and looked him in the eyes. “Thank you.”
“What?”
“For pulling me away, before I grabbed him. You’re right.”
“I am?”
David nodded. “Yeah, those things. I don’t know. I mean. I mean you know, my head is still spinning, but, yeah. We have to listen to what Captain Faust said. We have to go get Carly right now and get the hell out of here. If we wait until tomorrow, it may be too late.”
“We?”
“Yes we, what else are you going to do? You heard him, we need to go.”
Turning away from his friend and starting back toward their truck, Ethan said, “How do we know he’s telling the truth about how widespread this is, or that any of what you saw online was the truth? We don’t, all we have to go on is the word of a man who just lost one of his own.”
Stepping up his pace, David moved ahead of his friend and stopped. “Listen, I’m going to get Carly, and you’re coming along. I don’t really care what you want and I’m not asking for permission. Get in the truck. Once we find a safe place to ride this out, you’re free to do whatever you want. I’m your best friend and I’ll be damned if I let this thing take either of us down.”
Ethan sat quiet for a moment, looking at David but also looking through him. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “Okay, but there are two things we’re doing before we leave.”
“What’s that?”
“We make sure Shannon is okay and go back to my apartment.”
“For what?”
“I need to find out what Emma wanted last night. I’m now guessing it had nothing to do with work. I’ll grab my phone and charge it as we drive.”
Nodding, David held out his hand. “Sure thing, but this time I’m driving.”
Ethan handed over the keys, moved to the passenger door and before stepping inside, checked his weapon. David did the same and made a mental note of the two additional magazines he left in the center console.
A hollow thud from the rear of the armored vehicle caused both men to step back. Yelling over the top of the truck Ethan pulled out his weapon and started to expand his radius around the back of the truck. “David, what the hell was that?”
Quickly opening the driver’s door and climbing in, David turned over the engine before calling back to his friend. “I don’t know, just get in. Let’s go.”
Ethan took two small steps toward the rear and stopped. Another jarring blow against their vehicle and another. He moved another few feet out and back as the offending party came into view. Six unmistakably devastated individuals, each more grotesquely malformed than the next.
The first three men had collectively, less than fifty percent of their faces still intact. From the chest down, they appeared somewhat normal, except for the bright red smattering that covered most of their shirts and pants. Any of the three could have been his next door neighbor, although today, Ethan wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup.
Two smaller females were also part of the grisly collection, and appeared to have been gutted from sternum to navel. As they marched toward Ethan, what remained of their internal organs spilled out over their belts and dropped onto the street with each step forward.
The last member of the group, a heavyset gentleman, was most certainly an out-of-towner and was here specifically for the chili-fest. He wasn’t nearly as disfigured as the others; his only distinguishing mark was the massive hole in his neck and the ensuing blood that flowed from his carotid. That and the ‘
Kiss the Cook
’ apron offered Ethan a completely different reason to want to shoot him first.
Turning their attention away from the truck, the group eyed Ethan as he took another step forward and raised his weapon. “Back, all of you. Step back from the vehicle or I will shoot.”
His door now shut and waiting for his friend to join him in the cab, David only heard Ethan’s last four words. With the truck still running and in park, he shook his head, stepped out and moved around the front.
Spotting Ethan dead ahead and with the gang of six approaching from the rear of the truck, David’s line of sight was blocked. He moved quickly around to the left in an attempt to get a better vantage, but was still left without an opening. “Ethan, shoot them.”
Turning to David and then back to the group, Ethan fired off three rounds, although only two found their intended targets. The first took down the man in the apron, striking him just above the right knee and throwing him instantly to the ground.
The next round tore into the shoulder of the unidentifiable man just behind the first. A mess of tattered cotton and large chunks of flesh winged off the women behind him. Off balance, the wounded man tripped over his own feet and took two of the others with him in the process.
With the last two now only feet away, Ethan took a small step back and again leveled his pistol. Squeezing off a single shot, he flinched as the head of the bigger of the two men exploded, sending the body instantly to the asphalt.
As he calculated how the next few seconds would play out, Ethan cut his eyes to the left and looked for an opening. Time slowed as the last assailant, moving more quickly than he expected, lunged forward and slammed face-first into his chest.
His elbows made contact with the unforgiving roadway first, taking the full weight of both bodies and sending shockwaves up through Ethan’s arms. His upper back touched down next, followed almost immediately by his head.
Sliding backward as the distressed individual clawed at his stomach, Ethan felt an all-too-familiar stitch. Originating deep within his right shoulder, it had been more than a decade since the last occurrence. Even though today’s events forced an extra swell of adrenaline through every fragment of his six-foot, two-inch frame, he knew two things.
His shoulder joint had once again become separated, and there was nothing he could do with one hand that would keep the animal at his waist from ripping him apart.
She had questions, but at present there were things much more pressing than the exact details of how this all happened. Griffin grabbed the two lifeless men by the ankles and dragged them the short distance through the smooth snow, to the edge of the two-hundred foot descent.
Cora held both weapons and stayed at his side, watching their backs and scanning the slope above. “Why are you—”
“Hold on, let me do this first.”
Checking the contour of the land below, Griffin charted the most likely route the bus driver’s body would take as it plummeted down the steep ridge. Both flanks of the hillside seemed to funnel into one another, leaving only a few places where the bodies would come to rest at the completion of their unnatural journey.
Glancing back into the driving storm, Griffin paused and closed his eyes. “They’re coming this way.”
Tilting her head to the side and mimicking his movement, Cora said, “Who, who is coming?”
Sliding the bus driver’s body to the edge, Griffin gave it a final shove and then watched as it began to cartwheel head over heels down the quiet snow-crusted embankment. “More like these guys. I’m guessing that your bus was carrying something other than guards and men in biohazard suits.”
“Then let’s go. Why are we wasting our time with this?”
Before sending Joe off to meet the bus driver, Griffin removed the man’s jacket and slipped it over his damn near frost-bitten arms. “We are going. I’m just not going to make it easy for whoever is following us, you know, to actually follow us.”
Cora looked down at the dried blood covering her hands. “Okay?”
Pushing the second body over the edge, Griffin watched as it covered nearly the same path as the first, but gained speed much more rapidly due to the extreme size difference. “Wow.”
Looking back once more, Cora squinted. Attempting to focus through the falling snow and between the densely spaced spruces, she waited as her eyes adjusted to the varying highs and lows. “I don’t get it, how do you know that anyone is even following—”
“They’re here.” Griffin said, moving away from the edge. “We have to go.”
Stepping quickly to Cora, he placed his hands on her shoulders and squatted behind a large spruce. “We’ve got maybe a twenty second lead on them, but they know that we’re here.”
Eyeing his weapon and then her own, Cora said, “We have the advantage, why are
we
running from
them
?”
Griffin turned toward the now undeniable footfalls, coming from just beyond the treeline. “Because, I’m freezing. Because we have to get off this mountain in the next hour. But mostly because I still have no idea what the hell is going on, and whoever or whatever is following us doesn’t seem to care.”
Two silhouetted figures appeared not more than thirty yards away. They hadn’t yet spotted the pair as Griffin pulled Cora into him. He spoke quietly into her ear and pointed to the open range to their right. “That’s our only way down. You ready?”
“I don’t know if—”
“There isn’t time. I’d rather lose them than confront them. We can stop and talk about this once we’re far enough away.” Still standing in the shadows afforded them by the large spruce, Griffin stood and pulled Cora up by the jacket. “Let’s go.”
She followed him as the number of those in close pursuit increased to four and by the time they reached the open space, six. Although they moved at a slightly reduced tempo, the deep base of white powder blurred the advantage as Griffin struggled to keep up with his more agile counterpart.
Aided by the gradual slope, Cora ran out ahead. She focused on her breathing and tried to forget what this race meant. She wanted to block out the bus and what happened to her friend. She wanted to go back, to just wake up and have it all be a bad dream. She was running from something she didn’t understand, but knew she needed to.
Breaking out from the trees and in full view, Griffin motioned toward the southern edge. “That’s where we need to get to. It drops off over there and I don’t think they’ll be able to follow.”
Nodding, Cora cursed into the falling snow. Her feet were two frozen slabs of concrete she wrestled to pull in and out of the snow. Not completely numb, the searing pain of a hundred thousand needles was running a close second to the inferno that now raged through both of her thighs. Each and every step tested her desire to continue forward.
Forty yards from the next grouping of trees and the air in her lungs began to thin. Her racing heart begged for mercy and the stitch in her side forced Cora to momentarily slow her pace. Turning to see the four disheveled women and two men closing the distance, she called to Griffin. “Where?”
Now alongside and matching her speed, he pointed with the nine millimeter still in his right hand. “The two trees right in the middle, get there first and I’ll be right behind.”
Reaching the rutted landscape near the outer rim of the open expanse, Cora pushed to stay ahead. She stepped lightly across the iced-over rocky terrain shadowed by the massive row of spruce. Consciously placing each stride in line with the one before and keeping her weight evenly distributed, Cora focused on the gap between the two trees. “Be careful, the ice.”
Coming in less than a second behind Cora, Griffin only understood her warning as he began to slide. His right foot glided out from under him as he reached for the tree to his left. And crashing into her from behind, the disparity in their weight pushed Cora past the first row of trees and off the jagged ledge.
As she shot past the serrated edge of the hillside, the near vertical drop afforded her a brief moment to realize her new predicament. Large flat rock surrounded by loose shale and peppered with not nearly enough foliage to grant her a reprieve from injury, Cora clenched her teeth and braced for impact.
Her left foot contacted the ground first. Again propelled forward, Cora’s knees slammed against the unforgiving rock face, sending her onto her stomach. Fighting to bring her arms up around her face, she skidded headfirst into a barren shrub the size of a small oven.
As she plowed through the dried out branches, her jacket took much of the initial damage. Flat on her back, shards of black nylon and puffed white feathers slowly floated back to earth as her pulse echoed against her inner ear.
“GRIFFIN.” Collecting herself and waiting for him to answer, Cora rubbed her hands along her face and neck. Nothing noteworthy. Taking a deep breath in through her nose and attempting to roll onto her stomach, a searing blowtorch exploded from the tender skin just above her hip.
Instinctively grabbing at the half-inch thick branch penetrating her left side, Cora gagged. Drawing back her blood-soaked left hand, she took another deep breath and nearly lost consciousness. Lifting her head, she could see that the opposite end of the limb was still securely attached to the desolate shrub that enveloped her.
Her heart rate beginning to climb yet again, and Cora cried out. They were only four words, yet nearly impossible to voice. “Griffin, I need help.”
She waited, but there was still no response.