Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer (10 page)

The tall glass wall on the front of the atrium gave us a slightly sterilized view of the world on the outside. It muffled the jagged edge of the wailing infected out there, and the tint on the glass hid the ash that tainted the air.

Four vehicles were visible on the lawn: two armored Humvees, an ambulance like the one that transported Murphy and me to the gym on the first night, and an un-armored Humvee for anyone with more stupid in his soul than me. Squeezing us all into the two armored Humvees and the ambulance would be tight, but the ambulance was vulnerable.

Dalhover quickly separated the people into vehicle-sized groups and told them to organize themselves fast. Better to pick a driver and call shotgun now, in the momentary safety of the atrium, rather than out in the trampled grass, running for our lives. The small delay caused by two people trying to get through the same door at the same time might get them both killed.

Dr. Evans, apparently evaluating the vehicles just as I was, asked me, “Is that ambulance safe?”

“Only if it sticks close behind a Humvee,” I answered. “On its own, the infected will destroy it. Remember, they can’t feel pain like you can, so beating a windshield with their fists until it shatters won’t bother them one bit. They’ll jump on a moving car without a thought as to whether they’ll get injured or killed. Once they get all jazzed into hysterics, unarmored vehicles can’t survive.”

“What else is out there that we can’t see from here? Should we skip it, then?”

“No,” I shook my head, “it’s one of the closest vehicles to the door. There probably aren’t more than three or four more armored Humvees out there. The only other one that I know of for sure is too far to get to safely. Tell you what: I can walk out first and grab the farthest one and bring it back over. But I’ll warn you before I start the engine. Once I do that, shit gets crazy faster than you can imagine.”

Dr. Evans thought for a second. “We’ll do that. Don’t start the engine until you see us run out the door. Then drive back over and pick up
who you can. I’ll ride in the ambulance with one of the soldiers driving.”

“No,” I didn’t agree at all. “You’re immune. You’re in charge. You need to be in a Humvee.”

“No, Zane. The biggest risk is in the ambulance. I won’t ask someone else to do it.”

Arguing was pointless.

“Be sure you have a weapon.”

“I want Dalhover with you in the lead vehicle.” Dr. Evans looked out across the grass as he talked. “You’ve been out there. You know what it’s like. The two of you leading works well. The ambulance will fall in right behind, with the other two Humvees in the rear.”

I followed Dr. Evans’ gaze out the window. As relatively calm as the lawn looked at that moment, it was deceptive.

“We may not be able to straighten that out until we get into east Austin, but that depends on how far they chase us, I guess,” I said. “Oh, and I’m taking Steph in my vehicle. I don’t care who else comes along.”

“That’s up to you. Dalhover will organize the rest.”

Down on the floor of the lobby, Grandma Baggins was still circling. Far behind us, in the other building, gunfire still echoed. At least a few of the soldiers were
back there paying for our escape with their lives.

I steeled my courage with their bravery and asked, “Would you let Dalhover get Steph and wait by the front door? I’ll pick them up there.  I’ll head down and get that Humvee. I’ll probably be in it and ready by the time you guys get downstairs. But make sure I’m in the driver’s seat before you come out. Oh, and one more thing: once you’re outside, you’ve got about thirty or forty seconds to get inside those vehicles, get ‘em buttoned up, and start moving. Shoot anything in your way or anything nearby. Shooting will draw about a
bazillion infected from the other side of the building, but if you’re not already in the vehicles and moving by the time they get here, it’ll be because you’re already dead.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Dr. Evans smiled wryly.

Good. At least he wasn’t humorless.

I ran down the stairs, stepping as quickly and as lightly as possible, so as not to announce my presence to any infected in the off-shooting halls. When I hit the terrazzo floor of the lobby, the bloody-mouthed little troll of a woman was gawking at me with irritation in her eyes. At full speed, I ran at her and slashed my machete through most of her fat neck.

Not looking to see the results of my work, I spotted movement to my left near an information desk. There were three Whites there, feeding on the body of a child. I got only the usual glances as each infected greedily pulled the corpse closer to themselves, trying to set their territory.

I slowed down only enough to make the turn toward them. They were surprised that I was suddenly on them.

My machete swung at the back of the head of the man nearest me, but he turned to look up at the last moment, causing my machete to glance off of his skull, taking hair and skin, but little bone. He fell, dazed. I swung again and slashed one across the face. She rolled onto her back, not moving.

The third pounced at me, and I barely got my machete up to defend myself. We both fell over. I landed on my back with her on top of me, my blade jammed into her chest. She struggled and spewed blood, but was dying.

The scalped one had regained his senses enough to grab my foot and pull. I kicked at him with my free foot while I struggled to get the dying woman off of me.

The infected guy crawled and clawed his way onto me and tried to bite my leg. My knee smashed a solid blow to his temple and his eyes rolled back in his head.

That gave me a chance to get the bloody woman off of me and to get to my knees. I punched the guy twice in the face while noticing how much he looked like Mark. That made it easier. I jumped to my feet and finished him with three crushing kicks between his crazy blue eyes.

The dying woman was on her back, struggling and gurgling for breath.

At least they weren’t kids.

I stepped on her chest to pry my blade out. I yanked several times. Again, the nicks in the blade were a problem. I’d need to find a replacement.

Finished with the three, I hurried back out into the center of the lobby. Dr. Evans was leaning over with wide eyes and a concerned face. Most of the group was already hurrying down the stairs.

Dripping in blood, again, thankfully none of it mine, I waved and ran through one of the wide rows of glass doors at the front of the lobby. Despite the circumstances, it felt better to be outside than in. The heat embraced me like an old friend and I ran toward a Humvee a full block away.

The sounds of the infected were all around, but there weren’t that many to be seen.

Something wasn’t right. Something really wasn’t right!

I looked left and right as I put distance between myself and the doors. The infected I passed looked me over, but made no aggressive moves. That would change soon enough.

I reached the Humvee. Its doors were closed and nothing was moving inside. I cupped my hands and looked in through the windows. No infected. No bodies and no blood. Empty and clean. It didn’t get any better than that.

I looked back toward the atrium doors. “Oh, shit!”

In my surprise, I’d said it too loud and caught the attention of a nearby White whose little goldfish brain connected the verbalization with the taste of food and rushed me. Unprepared for the attack, my machete caught him under the arm, almost too late but effective enough. His nearly amputated arm threw him off balance and he spun to the side with the momentum of it. My next blow cut a deep,
blood-spewing gash across his neck and he fell to the grass to bleed out under the cruel sun.

The infected I’d heard, but hadn’t seen when I ran out of the building, were squatted along the wall of the building on both sides of the door, sheltering themselves from the sun among the shrubs in a narrow band of shade. There were hundreds.

Dr. Evans and the hospital survivors were arrayed at the glass doors, ready to push. Neither group was aware of the other. People were about to die.

I raised a palm and exaggerated a motion for them to stay.

Smiles and up-pointed thumbs were the response.

Fuck!

Hands were on the doors, ready to push. Freedom for them was a door-glass thickness away. Anticipating escape, they were going to come out any second now.

I could think of one thing to do to avert disaster. I swung open the door of the Humvee, tossed my machete in, and raised my M-4. I looked left. I looked right. I had some space. I fired at the infected by the walls.

A thousand howls ripped the air and the squatting Whites moved as one, as though the hospital wall itself had jumped. The mass of them raced toward me as I emptied the magazine.

I jumped into the Humvee as the vanguard of the horde from the west side of the hospital rounded the corner, chasing a sound they’d heard and of which they were anxious to find the source. I scrambled over the
seats and set all of the combat locks. It wouldn’t do to have Smart Ones opening the doors while I was running for my life.

Back in the driver’s seat, I cranked the Humvee. Its engine rumbled to life. I floored it. The tires spun on the dry turf and sent dirt, grass, and dust into the air. If any infected had any doubt where their human morsel had gone, I’d erased that doubt for them. I steered straight for the infected mass rounding the corner and raced the engine.

The first infected I hit was obliterated by the bumper, and the next few died just as badly.

When the crowd grew thick, I angled to my right to stay out of the mob. I couldn’t let them bring me to a stop. Stopping was dying. The Humvee bounced over bodies, fallen barricades, and curbs. In a sea of screaming white faces and chomping jaws, I didn’t have a thought to spare for the survivors from the hospital. I’d done what I could. Survival had trumped philanthropy.

The Humvee slowed under the press of human flesh.

I wondered if I’d done too much.

The vehicle lurched as it slowed and the tires spun on wet flesh. Whites were all over the vehicle, pounding on the roof, bashing their fists at the glass.

The Humvee swayed. I was losing control to the weight of the flowing bodies.

If the Humvee stopped, it was over. The Whites wouldn’t leave and I wouldn’t be able to get out. The Humvee would run out of gas. The AC would go. I’d die of heat stroke before day’s end.

But I wasn’t angry, as was my habit.

Fright gave way to acceptance of the high likelihood that I’d pushed my luck one too many times.

The Humvee crept through the crush of bodies. I wrestled with the steering wheel, played with the gas, and fought for control. The infected screamed in frustration.

Inexplicably, the riot of bodies thinned on my right side, so I cut the steering wheel hard in that direction. I threw a prayer at the sky to aid in my escape. Who knew what might work?

With the diminished effects of the infected pushing on the right side, those on the left began to win the push-me-pull-you contest and the vehicle leaned hard to the right. I gunned the engine. The wheels alternately spun and caught, spun and moved, then miraculously caught and accelerated.

There were fewer Whites ahead than behind.

With the devil in my grin, I forgot the god of whom I’d just asked a favor and screamed in triumph. More bumps. More jerks. More Whites maimed under my wheels.

There was daylight ahead. I saw spots of clear turf in the gaps between the infected piled on the hood. At twenty miles per hour, I jerked hard to the left, then back to the right, trying to induce a rhythmic sway in the cumbersome vehicle. Four or five fell off, and I could see well enough around the remaining ones that I wouldn’t hit a tree.

The hospital was to my right, and when a determined woman fell off of the driver’s side door, I saw over the heads of the mob. Neither the ambulance nor the Humvees that the survivors had planned to take were there.

Something about the plan had worked.

I let myself feel good about that without spending a thought on how many had died in the run for the vehicles.

The Humvee bounced over a particularly large pile of infected bodies and dropped over a curb.  My tires were on asphalt. I turned hard to the right and hit thirty. The street ahead was relatively clear. I had to slalom through the haphazardly scattered cars, but that worked to my purposes anyway. I lost one or two of my riders with each sway to the left and right.

I caught a right-hand turn and thought I might roll the Humvee as I headed back toward downtown. A curbed median appeared in the road and instead of braking, I accelerated toward it. When the tires hit the curb, I bounced out of my seat and hit the roof of the Humvee, hearing the infected bounce and roll across the Humvee’s roof as I landed back in my seat.

“Sweet!”

I was on the wrong side of the road, but what difference did that make to anybody? I guessed that there were maybe three or four Whites still on the Humvee. Manageable.

I wondered how long the survivors would wait for me at the rally point, but that was a secondary concern to my other responsibilities. I’d left Russell in that house, and I needed to go get him. He wouldn’t survive on his own. I needed to get back to Murphy and Mandi. With what I now knew of the Smart Ones among the infected, they were in more danger than they knew.

I made a left turn and started my zigzag tactic through the square city blocks to work my way west.