Seven, eight.
The grenade exploded. A blazing automobile door sailed high overhead and crashed down out of sight beyond Danny’s position. She blinked as the explosion drove a wave of hot, gritty air into her face. The MRAP rocked back on its wheels, then lurched down again. Cars burst into flame; gasoline tanks ruptured and blew. Black, greasy smoke coiled into the light of the newly risen sun, which was burning a bright crescent into the eastern horizon of rooftops.
One of the undead hunters stumbled out of the smoke, flames clambering over its ragged flesh. It stumbled, sought balance against a car, then continued. Eventually the thing fell down, and struggled, and lay still.
Danny drove the Humvee along the obstacle course of the freeway, away from San Francisco. She bulled the heavy truck through the smaller vehicles. This wasn’t detail work. She simply had to make some distance. The military Hummers were equipped with an on-off switch, not keys, so it had been the work of a few seconds to get the machine running and maneuver her way into the maze of motionless vehicles.
All along her route she saw the hunting undead: dozens of them at first, then hundreds, then thousands of these alert, swift-moving zeros, all swarming in the direction of the city and its stench of living things.
The sun was not long up in the sky when she saw another phenomenon that made her pull up onto an overpass raised on concrete pillars high in the air.
Half Moon Bay Road
, the sign said. She stopped the Humvee. She was fairly safe inside the vehicle, which had a fully enclosed cab, but it was extremely dangerous to be out in the open. There was a backpack on the floor of the passenger side. Danny found a couple of vacuum-packed meals in there, a copy of
Car and Driver
, two clips of 9mm ammunition, and a pair of compact binoculars.
Danny checked her position carefully before she emerged, the overpass giving her a commanding view of several miles of road in both directions. She climbed up on the roof, carefully because her legs were weak as a newborn foal’s, and sighted through the binoculars.
Danny didn’t know exactly where she was. The road was on high ground. Downhill from the freeway were master-planned subdivisions, identical houses on streets that branched into ever-smaller streets, like limbs on a tree. Beyond that was the bay. On the other side was a long, narrow reservoir fringed with trees. It butted up against forested hills. Danny had seen something happening out among the houses that made her wonder. She saw it for mile after mile, and still couldn’t comprehend it. So now she searched the distant streets with the binoculars.
They
were there.
The figures she discerned were tiny, this far away, but she could see they were upright, human—the undead. In some places there were one or two of them; in other places, hundreds had gathered.
They were all facing north.
All
of them. Danny sought out the nearest streets, not far from her elevated position, and there were more of them there. She feathered the focus ring and now she could see the faces of the nearest ones. They were chomping. Or rather, they were clacking their jaws. They looked like wooden puppets, nutcrackers, mouths snapping open and shut. Now she thought she could even hear the sound, which she had originally believed to be the rustling of grass. It was the snapping of hundreds of thousands of hungry teeth. All biting at the air, all facing north, all aimed toward the city.
Since the incident that morning, Murdo was never without a pistol in his hand. Discipline with his men had broken down completely by midday. They were arguing among themselves. There was a fistfight between Ace and Parker, Ace accusing Parker of siding with the slain woman because she was “half coon.”
Murdo brooded alone in the control tower for several hours. The civilians were rounded up and locked down in the dining room, with guards on every exit. It was Reese and Boudreau who carried Cammy out of the ladies’ room, wrapped in a plastic dropcloth, her bloodless, yellow-gray feet protruding from the polyethylene. Maria demanded to know what they were going to do with her.
“She’s dead,” Boudreau replied, as if Maria was suggesting necrophilia. They wrestled the bound corpse across the parking lot, threading between their hulking vehicles. Estevez unlocked the gates and they carried Cammy’s body away out into the scrubland. Both men came running back into the compound within a minute and a half, reporting to their compatriots before Reese trotted up into the conning tower to inform Murdo.
None of the civilians could see what the fuss was about, but the normally macho men were clearly shaken. The dining room was on the runway side of the building; none of the windows looked out on the front gates. As it was, the civilians didn’t have long to wait before the news reached them. Estevez climbed into the M1117 ASV and manned the gun turret and when Murdo came down out of the tower, he shouted, “Zeros!” and pointed out into the desert.
There were gunshots. Several of the survivors got down on the floor. Pfeiffer posted a lookout by the window.
“They’re shooting outside the fence,” she said.
Minutes later, the mercenaries came back in, this time with Murdo among them, chest out, head thrown back. They had their old swagger back, as if they’d been out hunting bear.
“You’ll be glad to know,” Murdo said, in a too-loud, expansive voice, “We took care of about ten zeros that were on their way here for the free buffet.” He looked around at the civilians as if he expected them to thank him. He met the hostile eyes and took a step backward, then drew himself up to his modest full height.
“Let’s all try to remember that we had an accident here. An unfortunate accident. But now we saved all your lives. We did it without hesitation, we did it without making any demands out of you people. We did our duty as sworn contractors to the United States government, if any. I didn’t come back in here expecting to be hailed as a conquering hero. But I do expect you people to show some fucking
respect
for the men who just saved your
asses
.”
By the end of his speech his face was red and he had his head thrust forward again in that characteristic, belligerent posture that was his natural stance. Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Linda Maas, who seemed to have found some inner fire, stood up and raised her hand. Without waiting to be acknowledged by Murdo, she said, “Were they attracted by the smell of fresh meat? Was it the body out there? You creeps didn’t even bury her, did you.”
“We didn’t have
time
,” Reese shouted, at the top of his lungs. His hand rose up to rest on the pommel of his automatic. Murdo stepped in front of Reese with his back to the civilians.
“You listen here,” Murdo said to Reese, but for the general audience. “These people are spoiled, soft, and ungrateful: Civilians are like that everywhere in the world. They don’t know the cost in blood, sweat, and tears it takes to bring peace to a troubled land, you hear me?” By now Murdo was inches from Reese, looking up into the taller man’s face with glittering, bloodshot eyes. “Now you and me, we get no respect. We’re not Army. We’re not Marines or Air Force or Navy.”
Murdo stepped back so he could take in all his men with an encompassing look, warming to his speech. He placed his hand on Reese’s arm and squeezed.
“Hell, we’re not even National Guard.” This got a laugh out of the mercenaries. Murdo continued, on a roll now.
“We’re plain old Americans, except we have a
code
. A code of discipline and loyalty and duty. In all this excitement, hell, we made mistakes. Freedom isn’t free. But”—here he thrust a blunt finger heavenward—“the highest authority will forgive us what happens on the bloody fields of war, because it’s not the dead that mourn, it’s the living. Let’s remember that. We mourn the dead. Fuck if I’m not mourning the dead right now, right here in my heart. And I will kill the first cocksucker says otherwise.”
“So, what happens now?” Amy asked. This speech of his was leading somewhere.
Murdo ground a fist into his other hand. “I’ll tell you what happens now. We’re pulling out,” he announced. “Too many zeros. This is no longer a secure location.”
The sun was setting behind a mass of thick, shapeless cloud low on the horizon. The sky was shot through with faded purple and scratches of bright orange as the light drowned and the world fell into darkness. Supplies had been hurried into the vehicles over the course of the afternoon, with most of the edible stuff going into the ASV and the back of a Humvee controlled by the Hawkstone men; as a concession, some food was left in the RV so the civilians could eat on the road. Toilet paper, batteries, and the first-aid materials—whatever occurred to people—were piled up around Patrick’s bed in the motor home.
The urgency of the situation wasn’t clear to anybody but Murdo. Amy thought he must be going stir-crazy, and this was his way of dealing with it. There were undead out there in growing numbers, but she thought the living were safer at the airfield, at least until morning; who knew what would happen out there in the dark? But she kept her own counsel and did what she was told to do, like everyone else.
Once the vehicles were loaded to Murdo’s satisfaction, the survivors were marched double-time to the White Whale. Murdo ordered them to halt at the door. “You and you,” he said, indicating Reese and Estevez, “throw the fag out. Put him over there.”
Amy surprised herself by shouting, as loudly as she could, “No! He’s not even conscious!”
Murdo turned to her with his eyes strangely blank. “I don’t give a sideways fuck what he is, I’m not having another wounded on this bus. Jones is all we can handle. Reese, Estevez, do it.”
“At least,” Amy said, her voice quaking, “bring him inside the building.”
Reese and Estevez muscled the unconscious body into the terminal. They were going to dump Patrick on the floor a foot inside the front door, but Amy barked, “Upstairs,” and rather than argue, they carried him up the steps and tossed him on a bed in the men’s dormitory. Amy tried to arrange Patrick’s limbs in a restful pose, then threw a blanket over him.
“Okay,” Reese said, when Amy didn’t move from Patrick’s bedside. “Let’s go.”
“What the fuck, man,” Estevez said, looking to Reese. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Let’s go,” Reese repeated, to Amy.
“Come on, man. We ain’t got a whole shitload of time.” Estevez slapped Reese on the arm.
Reese turned on Estevez. “She’s the fuckin’ doctor, man. We gotta take the doctor with us. She don’t need to stay here nursing Boy George.”
Amy had an inspiration, beautiful in its simplicity.
“I’m not a doctor,” she said. “I’m a veterinarian.”
That
got them.
“Bullshit,” Estevez said. “You sewed up Jones.”
“Same as a dog, except taller,” Amy said.
“Serious?” Reese asked.
“I’m a horse doctor,” Amy said. The men looked confused. Reese pointed in the direction of the parking lot.
“Go tell Murdo,” he said to Estevez. “Maybe she ain’t shit.”
She was an
animal
doctor, nothing more.
Murdo was embarrassed, and that made him angry. The refugees in the motor home had gotten a huge laugh out of it. Murdo couldn’t believe they were laughing at
him
, of all people, who held their lives in his hand. Like that cocksucker who threw the shoes at the president a while back and everybody thought he was a hero. So what if Jones got doctored by an animal expert? It was all meat, right? But Murdo still felt the blush flaring away in his face. Maybe he should shoot the bitch, teach them a lesson. But he had a feeling if there was one more act of violence like that, these people would no longer come along easily.
“Tell you what,” Murdo said to Estevez. “We’re gonna leave her here like she wants. But on our way out, we’re gonna chain the gates to the ASV, rip ’em off the hinges, and drag ’em a mile down the road. Then let’s see if the lady veterinarian thinks it’s so funny when all the zeros come pouring in looking for chow. What do you say?”
“I say hells to the yeah,” Estevez replied.
So the engines were fired up on the M1117 Armored Security Vehicle and the two Humvees. Ace piloted one of the Humvees around in a broad circle until it was up behind the White Whale, which was the only civilian vehicle they were taking. Reese got back in beside Molini in the cab of the motor home. Murdo was in the ASV, because he was the boss. Parker was at the controls. Jones was laid out in the back of the second Humvee. It took Flamingo five minutes to get down the terminal stairs, his testicles were so sore.
Boudreau shot a couple of nearby zeros, unlocked the big gates, and swung them open. He had thirty feet of chain ready to attach the gates to the ASV, when the time came. The next nearest undead were probably five minutes out in the desert, maybe less. The convoy was ready to go, as soon as Flamingo quit fucking around: He was trying to urinate against the side of Hangar 1.
“What the fuck, asshole,” Murdo said, climbing down out of the ASV.
“I can’t piss,” Flamingo said. “It feels like I got to go but I can’t. She busted my dick.”
“You got ten seconds to stow your junk, Flamingo. Then we roll.”
The night was swallowing up the world, cold and dark. There was a wind rising. Murdo thought he could hear the moaning of the zeros out there in the dark, barren country. Then he thought he could hear an engine. Murdo turned to face the road, and Boudreau was watching, as well. There were headlights bouncing along out there in the distance. Coming down the road for the airfield. The vehicle couldn’t have been headed anywhere else because there was nowhere else.
Moments later, they watched a grime-coated Candyapple Red 1968 Mustang roll to a stop a hundred feet from the gates.
Danny’s ass was sore. So was everything else. But she was relieved to be back on the road to Boscombe Field. The return trip to the Mustang had been problem-free, but she was troubled by the thought of what was happening back in San Francisco. They might not have attacked yet, but those zeros with their canine intelligence and their silent, crouching stealth were going to overrun the defenses. There was no question. The urban core was surrounded by a perimeter of wire and rubble and cars. This barricade was designed to keep out rotting, two-legged things as stupid and single-minded as sharks. These new ones were cunning.