The Pandemic Sequence (Book 3): The Tilian Cure (24 page)

When he threw back his head and roared into the surrounding flames, Michelle’s mind cycled through pages of memory. She had seen him before, in a glass cage in the facility beneath Guantanamo Bay. But now, the features ignited other images of that same night. She and Erik had escaped, joined with Andrew and Mike… and sought shelter at Tumelo Sardina’s home. The pictures in the home. Tumelo’s children. His son Rodolfo. Tumi had told her Rodolfo had been one of the first to fall victim to the Tilian Virus.

Seven years later, that same son stood inside the burning hulk of the National Council, the pack leader of the monstruos infectados. He screamed in victory at the next stage of his evolution. Michelle’s heart ached for Tumelo and his wife. They would never recover if they ever learned what their last surviving child had become.

Ending his primal, thunderous bellow, the Til—Rodolfo—lowered his eyes back to Michelle. His lips peeled back from jagged, chipped teeth and spoke. “MINE.” Body lowering into a lunging crouch, he poised to pounce on its victim. She fumbled at her side, seeking another firearm. Her shaking hands struggled to pull the weapon from its holster. Looking at the Til, she readied herself for the crush of its weight, the piercing of her skin by its teeth.

A single shot punctuated the slow-motion silence. The front of the infected’s head erupted as a bullet tore through brain and skull. After the lifeless form crumpled, Michelle saw Matt steadying himself against the wall, pistol in hand. He stumbled over to her and dropped unceremoniously to her side, before wrapping one arm around her shoulders, and helping her from the floor. Though each breath was a battle, her lungs were now steadily infusing her body with oxygen.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, okay?” Matt smiled weakly as they helped each other stand. Michelle gingerly stepped over the body of the Til leader. They can never know, her thoughts repeated. Their son died seven years ago.

Matt led them a few staggering steps to the first window. Shattering it with three shots, he helped Michelle onto the grass outside the building. “Boat,” she wheezed and flinched in pain from speaking.

“We need to rest first,” Matt countered.

“No… time… boat,” she told him with as much force as she could muster. Had he decided to disagree, Michelle knew she was unable to walk the short distance to the pier unaided, let alone reach Gitmo. Instead, Matt brushed the hair from the side of her face, and smiled.

Some minutes later, Michelle eased herself into a thick cushioned seat on the port side of a well-maintained speedboat. With most eyes and attention directed at the collapsing National Council building, they had encountered no one, human or Til, as they hobbled towards the pier.

She felt guilty not being able to assist Matt in readying for their departure. When she expressed her regret, he laughed and replied teasingly. “Even if you could move, you wouldn’t know what you were doing anyway.”

After a short while, he untethered the craft from the dock and eased the boat into deeper waters. Michelle stared briefly at the red glow of the massive inferno. It pained her to estimate how many books, paintings, and other works of art were now forever lost. In times like this, any piece of civilization lost is worth mourning, she thought sadly before her eyes drifted closed.

“Nice work,” Paul said to him, as he stepped from the van. Mike gave a wry smile once his feet returned to steady ground. Though the journey had been brief, the van’s driver managed to find every crevasse and indentation along the field. While he had clung to the dashboard in front of the passenger seat, Mike had prayed desperately for the vehicle to remain upright.

“Who taught these kids how to drive?” he asked with rhetorical sarcasm. Paul laughed at the comment and then ordered the archers to prepare for their second defense. “What’s with the tanks?” Mike inquired. The pounding of the Bradleys’ shelling echoed in the valley, but all sight of the attack vehicles was blocked by the Til army.

“Don’t know,” Paul replied. “She must’ve seen an opening. Either way, we have our own troubles to deal with.” Mike easily saw the worried agitation on the other man’s face.

He turned towards the field where the wave of Tils was near to crashing upon the shore of the pike line. Men with heavy artillery stood several feet back from the front, firing their weapons into the approaching rush. Once again, archers and gasoline blasted from their battlements and ignited the Tils. For every infected that fell to the barrage, twenty more broke forward to replace it.

“Don’t worry about head and chest shots!” Mike called out to the men nearest him. “Take out legs. The fires will do the rest!”

The enemies’ numbers were simply too great for the defenders to prevent the advance. Before long, burnings figures crashed into the pikes, which shuddered with strain. Sharpened spears and jagged pieces of metal ripped into the skin of the infected, pinning them upright like lifeless mannequins.

A young girl ran toward Paul, breathing heavy with exertion, and pointing back from where she came, shouting, “Sir, the Tils are breaking through the line!” He caught the look of despair which flashed across the Horde leader’s face. Neither man expected the camp to be breached so early in the battle.

“Go,” Mike told him. “We’ll hold the line here.” Paul selected a dozen men to follow, Derrick among them, and raced along the line towards the breach.

Assessing the strength of the defenses before him, Mike grabbed the arm of a passing man and instructed him to order the archers to fall back. The pike line was already collapsing in sections, the gaps temporarily filled with infected corpses. It would not be long before the entirety of the crude structure succumbed to the avalanche of Tils. A macabre wall of the dead was steadily forming, but the enemy continued to climb over their fallen.

“They’re through! They’re through!” Mike spun left to the direction of the cry. Several yards of the front had finally toppled, bodies rolling to the ground off the heap of carnage. Tils streamed through the opening, heedless of the bullets that tore through their flesh.

“Move the line back to the tents! Steady to the tents!” Mike shouted. Couriers, young men and women he had not noticed standing by him and awaiting orders, immediately broke off and traced the length of the front and carried his instructions. Rising from their positions, the defenders moved slowly in reverse. Each backwards step bringing them closer to the camp proper. On his periphery, Mike discerned the distant lights of the motorcycle cavalry approaching the enemies’ eastern flank. Even attacking the Tils from front and rear, Mike questioned how long the Horde could withstand the overwhelming force.

With backs directly in front of the first of the camp’s tents, the line reformed and continued to rain bullets upon the Tils. Thankfully not standing on ceremony, the men operating the gas pumps resumed their saturation.

“Ready grenades!” Mike, voice growing hoarse, tried to call above the violent din. The camp boasted several cases of grenades, but once distributed among the front line defenders, most men only carried two apiece. He disdained employing them so early, but he wanted to delay further retreat as long as possible. It will be even more chaotic fighting among the tents, he reasoned.

“Release!” In approximate uniformity, defenders reared their arms back and pitched the incendiaries into the seething mass. Mike felt the ground tremble at his feet as a series of explosions bombarded earth and infected alike. For several seconds, the blasts continued spreading along east and west until a quarter-mile long line of heavy smoke lifted into the air.

A reprieve of stillness was soon interrupted as the next wave of Tils emerged from the haze. “Fire at will!” Mike commanded. Gazelle stood silent guard at his feet as he thought: How many thousands, tens of thousands, have we killed already… and it’s barely a dent in their number?

Lisa abandoned the vision blocks. The sight all around was identical. Thousands of Tils in all directions, some falling to the Bradley’s steady fire, but the vast majority racing ever forward toward the Horde camp. She did not regret the decision to move into the enemy body. Both chain and machine guns had already either killed or incapacitated innumerable Tils. Not to mention how many we’ve rolled over, she thought.

“Ma’am, we’re running low on ammo,” the gunner advised.

“Use it up, then we’ll launch the missiles,” she directed. “After that, we just keep plowing over the bastards.”

The tank’s driver, Hal Pulkowitz, laughed as he replied. “Copy that! Turn this baby into a Til lawn mower.”

As much as she appreciated the man’s spirit, Lisa worried how well the camp’s defense would measure once the heavy fire power of the two tanks was completely expended. Paul still had the Stryker vehicles—two anti-tank versions and a mobile gun system among them—which would serve as the final heavy defense of the Horde. After that, the defenders would be forced to rely on whatever machine guns and other personal firearms they possessed.

“We’re out,” the gunner announced.

Lisa moved over to him and coordinated the direction for the missile fire. Before all vision was obscured, she had glimpsed the caravan of motorcycles approaching the rear of the enemy formation. “Let’s keep it towards the center,” she cautioned.

“All right. Raising the launcher.” A series of small warning tones and flashing red lights followed the gunner’s actions.

“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know… I can’t raise the launcher. Something is blocking it,” he told her with a panicked voice.

Lisa moved to one of the vision blocks, but strained to see the stowed launcher along the tank’s right side. Tils had swarmed over the body of the Bradley. Which means there’s an infected blocking the launcher, she cursed to herself.

“Give it some speed, Hal. Let’s see if we can shake off our passengers.” The tank rolled forward, steadily gaining speed. While powerful, the lumbering machine had a top speed near forty miles per hour and Lisa knew the Tils could potentially cling tightly to the moving vehicle. “Okay, rotate the turret.” She waited as the gunner pivoted the turret fully in both directions. “Try the launcher.”

Lisa did not need wait for verbal confirmation once she heard the same electronic malfunction warnings. Unslinging her 9mm from the holster on her thigh, she chambered a round.

“What are you doing?” Hal asked, continuing to direct the tank’s forward progression.

“I’m going up,” she answered him.

“Um, is that a good idea?”

With her hand on the handle of the hatch lid, Lisa retorted. “Definitely not.”

Before the lid was even fully clear, two Tils observed the unexpected movement and lunged wildly. Recklessness caused one to lose her grip on the tank and she fell from view, while the other quickly met his fate with a round from Lisa’s sidearm.

Twisting her view to the left, she discovered the cause for the launcher malfunction. The body of a dead infected had lodged itself between the launcher and the tank’s body. There’s no way I’m going to be able to remove it without dropping my guard. Formulating an alternative, her thoughts were interrupted by three Tils that were steadily climbing up from the rear. Turning the gun towards them, Lisa delivered single killing shots to each of them.

Returning to the interior of the tank, she realized the only option to remove the Til body from the launcher was to push through the melee and off the main battlefield.

“Hal, take us out to the east flank,” she directed the driver. “Keep the speed low and watch your twelve. Erik and the other bikers are out there and we don’t want to roll over any friendlies.”

Damn, Lisa swore. Six missiles to fire and we have to leave the fight!

The boat’s steady breaking through the waves provided a pleasant rhythm that kept Michelle asleep for over half the journey across the night-darkened waters. Matt would certainly have let her sleep longer, but a soon forgotten nightmare had roused her. Now that the adrenaline had faded, she winced at the pain and soreness that encompassed her face. While nothing felt broken, every inch of jaw, cheek, and brow ached with swollen bruising. She thought it impossible that only a day or two earlier she had been driving along the disused roads of Louisiana.

She eased herself from the cushioned seat and stood next to Matt at the boat’s controls. Between the wind and the roar of the craft’s twin outboard engines, conversation was immensely difficult. He mouthed unintelligible words to her, and she smiled in response. The smile, of course, only tore the recently scabbed split in her lower lip. Her flinch of pain brought a similar motion from Matt along with a silent, lip-read “Sorry.”

As their destination neared, he slowed the boat to a muted crawl. Michelle looked out across the water to find a bright glow emanating from the military base. “Least the power’s still on,” Matt commented as he navigated the steadily shallowing waters.

“Yeah, but who’s home? Tils, Duncan’s men, or both?”

With well-practiced precision, Matt brought the bow of the boat softly onto the sandy shore. The surrounding area was eerily quiet, not even the sounds of nocturnal birds or other wildlife punctuated the darkness. A crisp moon shone in an unmarred sky, the smoke from the burning city in the west failing to stretch across the many miles to the base.