He looked around for Kelly. She'd been knocked to the ground, but she, too, was getting up. Slowly, painfully. She propped herself up on a desk and stayed there, blinking at the floor.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Don't touch me,” she said. “I'm kind of dizzy.”
He couldn't see Brooks through the clouds of dust hanging in the room, but there was no time to check on him. He had to catch Anson before the man made it out of the building.
Jacob ran out of the room, looked left and then right. There were stairs at either end of the hall, and he couldn't see Anson to tell which way he'd gone. So he did something that had served him well in foot chases in the past. He closed his eyes and tried to remember exactly what had happened as Anson threw the grenade and turned to run.
Left, he thought.
He ran for the metal door that led to the stairwell and threw it open. It slammed against the wall as he charged through and rounded the first landing.
Anson was standing at the base of the stairs, a pistol in his hand.
Jacob put on the brakes and backed up behind the wall just as Anson started to fire. The
pop, pop, pop
of small arms fire echoed through the stairwell as a small section of the wall next to his head exploded.
Jacob stared at the holes in the wall and thought:
A gun. A real gun. Damn, this is going to suck.
He backed away from the corner and started to slowly move around it, leading with his gun, revealing a little bit of the stairwell at a time until he could see the base of the stairs.
Anson was gone. The stairs were empty.
Jacob had a choice. He could descend slowly, carefully, watching the opening at the foot of the stairs for some indication of what Anson was doing. The trouble was, that left him in a deadly funnel, a sitting duck as he slowly inched down the stairs. If Anson peeked into the stairwell and saw him framed there, nowhere to hide, nothing to use for cover, he could simply light him up. Throw enough rounds into a small space and you're bound to hit something. That's why they called it fish in a barrel.
Jacob's other choice was to rush headlong down the stairs, be reckless, take the fight to the attacker.
It really wasn't a choice at all.
As he ran down the stairs, he thought of what Kelly had said. The man with a hammer.
But sometimes the problem really was a nail, and it needed a hammer.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Anson just ahead of him. The man turned, startled. He clearly hadn't expected Jacob to rush him. He was standing in the middle of what must have been a break room for the flight squadrons who used to work out of this building. More pictures of men in strange uniforms decorated the walls. Outside the glass doors to Jacob's left was an outdoor kitchen, all rusted now and falling apart. There were couches and chairs in the center of the room, and to his right, a bar filled with dusty bottles.
Jacob took it all in at a glance, but the only thing that really mattered to him was Jordan Anson, turning to face him. Jacob threw his shoulder into the man's chest before he had a chance to fire and drove him back across the room.
The two men crashed into a glass trophy case standing at the far wall amid an explosion of glass. At some point in the charge and tackle, Jacob had lost his gun. He stood and looked for it, but didn't see it.
Anson didn't have his pistol, either.
There were trophies all over the place, though. Jacob scooped up one of them, some sleek-looking plane doing a barrel roll on a heavy wooden base. He swung it at Anson's head, connecting with his chin with a sharp
crack
.
For a moment, Anson seemed to sag into a heap.
Jacob raised the trophy over his head and was about to bring it down hard on Anson's head when the man suddenly shifted from under him. He reached into the folds of his body armor, came up with a combat knife, a mean-looking six-inch blade, and slashed at Jacob.
Jacob backed away, but he wasn't fast enough. The blade caught him across the chest, ripping a gash through his shirt and cutting a deep gouge in his skin. The cut didn't hurt at first, not until he backed away again and had a moment to realize how badly he'd been cut. Then the burning started, and it spread all the way to the bone.
Even though he'd been protected by his Kevlar armor, the back of Anson's neck and arms were dotted with blood and bits of broken glass. He didn't let it slow him down, though. He lashed out at Jacob again, forcing him back to the center of the room, and then crouched before him with the knife held in a fencer's grip, his free hand held back, close to his body, to protect the heart and liver.
The man had clearly been trained to fight with a knife.
There was a couch to his right. Jacob backed up again and skirted around the end of it, kicking at the corner so that the couch skidded between them.
Anson kicked the couch back at him, opening the gap again, and advanced, holding the knife out in front of him the whole time.
It was Anson's first real mistake.
Jacob had backed up against the end of the bar. As Anson advanced, Jacob hooked his foot around the base of the nearest bar stool. He kept his eyes on Anson's shoulders. Even a pro telegraphed their moves through their shoulders, and Anson was no exception. He gathered himself together, tensing, and then lunged.
Jacob was ready for it.
He kicked the bar stool toward Anson. It skidded across the floor and hit the man just below the knee with enough force to trip him up.
Anson's knife hand dipped low. His gaze dipped down. His free hand shot out for balance.
It was the break Jacob needed. He stepped forward and kicked at Anson's knife hand, connecting just below the wrist. The knife went flying and Anson pulled his hand back in surprise, even though the body armor shielded him from any serious injury.
But Anson wasn't out of the fight. He charged Jacob, tackling him to the ground and slamming him into the floor so hard it knocked the wind out of Jacob.
Jacob broke contact with him when they hit the ground and rolled away. Anson came up, scrambling to keep him from getting to his feet.
Jacob slapped at him as he rolled away, but Anson had the jump on him. He was able to kick Jacob's legs out from under him and push him facedown to the floor.
Anson held him there.
Jacob twisted as hard as he could and managed to roll out from under the man's weight. He landed on his knees at the edge of the bar. There was no way he could get to his feet before Anson. All he could do was brace for the impact.
Anson laid into him with his shoulder and sent him flying into the back of the bar. Something above him gave way, and a cascade of bottles rolled down on top of him and all around him, shattering everywhere. Anson had remained silent the entire fight, but he suddenly roared with anger and charged again. He swung at Jacob's face, telegraphing his move with his eyes. It was like he had suddenly lost the control and technique that had defined his fighting until that moment.
Jacob didn't question why. He raised his left leg and caught Anson in the chin as he tried to land his punch.
Anson grunted from the pain and sagged to his knees. Jacob jumped on him, and both men rolled across the broken glass and spilled alcohol, kicking and punching. Anson was fast with his hands, and Jacob took three hard jabs to the face as he rolled off him, but it gave him the opening he needed. Anson's crotch was wide open, and Jacob threw his knee as hard as he could into the man's balls.
Even with the protection of a hard plastic cup, Anson doubled over in pain.
Jacob reached out for the closest thing he could find, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and smashed it across Anson's face.
The bottle shattered, knocking Anson flat. He lay on his back, arms spread wide to the ceiling, a look of blind confusion on his face.
Jacob found himself holding the neck of the broken bottle. He rolled over and straddled Anson, his knees pinning Anson's arms to the floor.
Anson groaned at him, trying to speak.
“You know what,” Jacob said. “Fuck you. I hope this hurts.”
He brought the broken end of the bottle down on Anson's face as hard as he could. It got stuck there, and Jacob had to wrench it back and forth to pull it free. And when he finally got it free, he slammed it down again and again and again, spraying blood everywhere.
He drove the broken bottle into the man's face over and over until he could no longer swing his arms. When he was done, there was nothing left but a bloody hole where the man's face had been. Jordan's arms had long since ceased twitching. His body lay motionless, blood oozing into a puddle around his head.
Jacob climbed to his feet, all his bumps and bruises screaming at him.
He staggered around the room until he found Anson's pistol.
A real Colt 1911 A1.
One of the best damn weapons ever made.
Jacob had seen a few of them in his day, but most were tired old warriors, dented and rusted and only shadows of the firearm they had once been.
But not this one.
This one was pristine.
A subdued black barrel. Synthetic grips, not the walnut that most models had. Jacob wrapped his hand around the receiver and felt like a hammer had just been put in his hands.
Then he looked down at Jordan Anson.
And realized he was looking at a nail.
C
HAPTER
22
The fighting had drawn a crowd.
Jacob turned away from Jordan's corpse and found himself looking at hundreds of zombies, all of them beating against the glass that made up the outside wall. As they moved against each other, shuffled for position, lanes would occasionally open up between them. When that happened, he could see what had once been a fancy, built-in barbeque grill out on the patio. Looking back at the room he'd just wrecked in his fight with Jordan Anson, he couldn't help but think that the pilots who used to use this area as their rec room must have lived pretty good lives. Must have been fun racking up all these trophies, posing for all these pictures, cooking out on that grill, bellying up to the bar.
God, he had memories of outdoor cookouts.
But that was from another time.
With a heavy sigh, he turned back to Anson's body on the floor and forced himself to come back to the present. He had things to do, responsibilities, people who were counting on him. He knelt next to Anson's body and forced open his body armor. Inside, he found four more of the grenades that Anson had tried to kill him with. He also found three more magazines to go with the Colt 1911 A1 he'd found, and that was fucking sweet. Like Christmas when he was a kid.
The glass cracked behind him. Jacob twisted around, ready to fight if he had to, but the sliding glass doors hadn't given way yet.
They would soon, though. He knew that.
He started toward the stairs and was about to start back up to rejoin the others when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
He stopped and watched.
The zombies out beyond the barbeque grill were walking away.
Slowly, in groups of twos and threes, more and more zombies were walking away, all of them headed in the same direction. The only ones who remained were the ones looking right at him.
Curious, Jacob stepped off the stairs and went to the window.
The small section of the herd clustered there went wild, moaning loudly and banging on the glass, but Jacob ignored them. Out beyond the barbeque grill there was a road that led to the hangars. To his right, a good ways off, were the hulking forms of the aerofluyts. In between was a seething sea of faces and twitching bodies.
But he didn't see why the zombies were turning away.
At least not at first.
Then he heard a loud, grinding noise, like an engine straining against a heavy load.
The next instant, one of the armored personnel carriers lumbered into view. It stood nearly three times as high as the tallest zombie in the herd, and its ten massive wheels rolled over the dead like a juggernaut, smashing bodies flat. The zombies rushed to the vehicle and scrambled onto it. Those who couldn't climb on top of it were pulled under and smashed. Though it had to weigh forty-five hundred kilograms easy, the bodies were so thick in places that its engines strained to roll over them.
And then, to Jacob's surprise, the thing stopped.
It rolled over yet another mound of bodies, seemed to pause for a second, rocked in place as though finding its level, and then just stopped.
“What in the hell?” Jacob said.
For a moment, the vehicle, and everything around it, was still. And then the dead climbed their way back onto it and started clawing at the roof access.
“What the hell? Come on, move.”
He couldn't see what they were waiting for. It was Stu and Juliette inside that thing; he was sure of that. But they'd stopped a good hundred and fifty meters from the nearest entrance to the building. They weren't anywhere close.
Jacob ran up the stairs, back to the classroom. Dust still swirled in the air. Brooks was sitting in a chair, his face bleeding. Kelly was standing over him, tending to his injuries while Chelsea looked on, her face inscrutable. The girl had been through a lot, and it had filled her with hate. That hate was bleeding away now that she knew the truth about who was responsible for the things that had happened to them, but it hadn't gone away entirely. She still looked on Lester Brooks like he was something nasty she'd stepped in.
Jacob met Kelly's gaze and nodded.
Kelly nodded back.
That was good enough for him. He went to the side window and knocked it out with his elbow. With all the glass gone, he leaned his head out the window. The herd was so packed in he couldn't see the ground. The armored personnel carrier stood out like a rock in a stream. The zombies climbed all over it, but they couldn't find a way in.
And yet the thing still hadn't moved.
“What is it, Jacob?” Kelly asked.
He glanced over his shoulder. She'd left Brooks's side. The older man was holding a rag to the side of his bleeding head, but he looked like he'd be fine. “I think it's Stu and Juliette,” he said.
“What? They made it?”
“I'm not sure,” he said. “They're still kind of far away.”
She joined him at the window. “What are they waiting for?”
“I don't know,” he said. “I haven't seen any movement at all. They rolled to a stop there and haven't moved.”
“Do you think they're okay?”
He turned and gave her a look. “How in the hell would I know that?”
“Jacob, I don'tâOh my God! What happened to you?”
“I'm fine,” he said.
“But all that blood . . .”
“It's not mine,” he said. “Most of it, anyway.”
“What's going on there?” It was Brooks. He went to the next window and looked out. He blinked at the sunlight, and then frowned as he took in the scene. “Is that the APV Dr. Sayers's assistants went to fetch?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Where are they?”
“Probably still inside the vehicle,” Jacob said. “I watched them drive it to that spot and stop. Nothing's happened since.”
“You mean, they haven't come out yet?”
“Nope. Just sitting there.”
“You mean, you haven't talked to them yet?” He glared at Jacob, then seemed to see him for the first time. “What happened to you? Where's Jordan?”
“Well,” said Jacob, pointing to the blood on his clothes, “there's a little of him of here, and here, but most of him is spread out like jelly on toast on the floor downstairs.”
Brooks closed his eyes, clearly at war with himself over how to feel about Jordan's death, but when he opened his eyes again, he looked like a man who had resigned himself to eat a shit sandwich. “We have to start talking to them in the APV.”
“Yeah, that'd be nice,” Jacob said. “How do you propose we do that? Smoke signals?”
“No,” Brooks said. “There's a faster way. All the APVs have an onboard radio system that monitors the emergency channel. If their radio is on, they should hear me.” He pulled the collar loose on his body armor and worked a microphone up to his throat. “This is Dr. Lester Brooks. I'm looking at an APV approximately one hundred and fifty meters from the Squadron Command Headquarters Building. Is anyone monitoring this side?”
There was a pause, and then Stu's excited voice came over the radio. “Dr. Brooks! This is Dr. Stewart Huffman. My wife and I are here.”
“Excellent,” said Brooks. “Glad you guys made it.”
“Is everyone there okay?” Stu asked. “We saw the explosion.”
“There are four of us here,” Brooks said. “We're not injured. But we need you to bring the APV closer to the building. You're too far away for us to hook up with you.”
“Can't do it, Dr. Brooks. We're on backup solar power right now, and that just ran out. We have to wait for the batteries to recharge before we can go anywhere.”
Brooks frowned at that. “What happened to the morphic field generator?”
“My guess is it's functioning normally,” Stu said. “The trouble is, somebody removed the power cells.”
“Come again?”
“Yes, sir. We spent all of last night going from one aerofluyt to the next. Every single APV has been sabotaged.”
Brooks hit a button on his microphone and shook his head in frustration. “Jordan, you crazy bastard. What did you do?”
“What did he do?” Jacob asked. “What's going on?”
Brooks drew a deep breath and collected himself. “The APVs run off of a morphic field generator. It can run for decades, if it needs to, but only if it has a power cell to enable field generation. Apparently Jordan Anson removed those power cells in order to cut off your . . . well, our, escape.”
Jacob took a moment to let that sink in. “I just don't see how that is possible,” he said. “How would he know to do that?”
“That would be the easy part. Jordan was one of the smartest men I've ever known. It wouldn't surprise me if he anticipated other avenues of escape and blocked those, as well.”
“But how?” Jacob asked. “I mean, he had body armor on and everything, but there's no way he could have covered that much ground with all those zombies out there. Not unless there are tunnels leading out to the aerofluyts.”
“There aren't,” Brooks said. “And I thought this was part of your theory, Jacob. I'm sure he had help. His goon squads, I believe you called them.”
“Oh,” Jacob said.
“Yeah.” Brooks touched his microphone again. “Dr. Huffman, are you still monitoring this side?”
“Yes, sir,” came Stu's voice over the speaker on Brooks's microphone. “I'm here.”
“How much power do you have?”
“Uh, sir, we're dead in the water out here. We had to charge up the solar cells all morning and that only got us to thirty percent. That was barely enough to get us here.”
“Thirty percent was barely enough?”
“Sir, there's a lot of zombies out here. Driving through those crowds drains the power down fast. And they were never meant to power the drive system anyway, just the electrical systems.”
Brooks shook his head in frustration. “Okay, so you're at zero now?”
“Basically, yeah,” Stu said. “We're charging up again, but we won't have enough to go anywhere for another two hours at least.”
“Well, that limits our options considerably,” Brooks said. “Okay, I guess you'll just have to continue charging. When you've got enough power to link up with us, you can pull right up to the door for us.”
“Yes, sir,” Stu said. “I'm guessing, at this rate, we can power up enough to cover that distance in about twenty minutes. After that, though, we'll have to park and recharge for a good long time.”
“Acknowledged,” Brooks said.
“And so then what?” Kelly asked. “What do we do after the solar cells have recharged the batteries?”
“Well, we could run it until the batteries are depleted, wait for it to charge again, and then repeat. We do that until we clear the herd. The problem is, of course, that we'll only be able to charge in the daytime. That puts some real limits on our ability to cover ground quickly.”
“How long would it take to clear the herd doing that?”
“Who knows? A couple of weeks, maybe.”
“And there's not another way?”
“Not without that power cell,” Brooks said. “The APVs have three separate power systems, but the . . .”
He trailed off, lost in thought.
“Wait a second,” he said. He tapped his microphone again. “Dr. Huffman, why didn't you try fast-charging at the couplings aboard the aerofluyts?”
“We did, sir. We tried that, but the power's been cut to the aerofluyts. It was turned off at origination. We couldn't make it over there to see what exactly had happened, but it looks like it was just turned off.”
“To all three aerofluyts?”
“Yes, sir,” Stu said. “And that's not the worst of it, I'm afraid. When the power went out, all systems shut down, including the security systems. At first, when we realized the power cells were missing, we figured we might be able to take shelter in the aerofluyts, but with the security system down and all the doors open, I'm afraid all three have been overrun.”
“Damn,” Brooks said. He thanked Stu and disconnected his microphone. “Well,” he said to the others, “looks like we've only got the one option now. I guess we wait.”
“Uh, guys . . .”
It was Chelsea. Jacob had seen her walk out the door and glance up and down the hallway, but he thought she was merely being curious. He hadn't paid much attention to her because he was so focused on Brooks. But now the look on her face had him worried.
She came into the room, still looking back at the stairs where Jacob had chased Anson.
“Chelsea, what is it?” Jacob said.
“I think we've got trouble.”
Jacob pushed his way into the hallway. Downstairs, he could hear glass breaking. It didn't surprise him. He was actually kind of shocked they hadn't forced their way through already. “Okay,” he said to Brooks. “Can you call Stu back and tell him we're coming to him right now? Kelly, you and Chelsea ready to make a break for it?”
“What?” Kelly said. “We can't go out there. Jacob, look!”
“I know,” he said. “But we don't have any other choice.”
Brooks glanced out the window again at the horde gathering in the street. “Jacob, we need to come up with another solution. We'll never make it through that.”
“We'll make it,” Jacob said. He took the grenades he'd taken off Jordan Anson out of his pocket. “Your buddy had a pretty good stash of weapons on him. I got his pistol, too.”
Brooks stared at the metal cylinder, at war again with himself. He shook his head bitterly. “I understand why he would do this.”