Shit. Shit.
Shit.
I lanced out with precise streams of fire but couldn’t cut loose until we were ready to exit, and the relentless press of zombies intensified. Their moans filled the air, the song of the undead, punctuated by bursts from the MP10 and Jake’s pistol. Somewhere, a phone started to ring.
Rafe howled in pain. Zombies swarmed around him, biting and grabbing at him. He slammed another zombie into the wall so hard it crushed the drywall to dust. He drove his clawed fingertips into another zombie’s eye sockets and tore off its head like a ’roid-raging bodybuilder heaving a bowling ball out of its case. But another huge zombie grabbed his legs, and a half dozen clamped onto him like leeches, tearing at him, dragging him down. Rafe disappeared under a writhing wall of undead.
Time seemed to distort, and sound traveled up the register until it screamed in a high-pitched whine. My teeth clamped together so hard pain shot up my jaws. I had to check the urge to run to Rafe and start ripping zombies off him with my bare hands.
“Get behind me!” I stepped toward the approaching zombies with my arms at my side and my palms alight with flames that did not sear my skin.
Mai and Hanzo ran past me toward the reception area. Jake halted at my side with his automatic up and steadied in two hands. He shot round after round into the writhing ball of zombies piled on Rafe. Several zombies fell away, the tops of their heads blown off.
“I can’t get a barrier around him.” Jake ejected a spent clip and slapped in another. “Last one.”
“Get out!” I yelled. “I’m gonna burn it all!”
Jake didn’t move.
I killed the fire around my hands and shoved him toward the reception desks. If he stayed this close, he’d be burned. “Get to the Bradley. Make sure the rest of them get out.”
“I’m not leaving you.” He opened fire, punctuating his words with gunshots.
Goddammit. I had no more time to deal with Jake, but an idea exploded into my mind that might save him from ending up in the emergency ward with third-degree burns, or worse.
Glass shattered behind me, but I didn’t turn. I drew in all the power I could handle and focused my concentration down to a pinprick. The closest zombie—an old lady with pinkish hair and a tattered floral-print dress—had staggered within two meters. She opened her mouth and I saw she had no teeth, only grayish gums. Must have had dentures and lost them. Oh, the beautiful irony.
I summoned and dispersed an expanding flood of flammable vapor, buffeting it against the zombies. I waited until it suffused the entire center of the office with fuel, like a propane leak filling a room. Jake cursed beside me. I risked one last look at Rafe. He still struggled to fight his way free, but more zombies threw themselves on top of him.
“We’re clear,” Sarge said over the com. “Pull out, Captain.”
“Not without Rafe. Jake, put your barrier up.”
He lowered his pistol without question and thrust out his free hand. A shimmering barrier wall opened right in front of us.
I tapped my power and lit a spark. The world exploded into a red-white sun of fire and light with a colossal
WHUMP
that should’ve knocked me flat with its shock wave, but didn’t because of Jake’s barrier, though Jake stumbled backward and barely managed to keep from falling. Every zombie in the room and the hallway went flying, hurled away by the expanding shock wave, along with chairs and staplers and every manner of debris. All the windows blew out in one catastrophic crash of breaking glass. Burning papers blew around like fiery leaves in a windstorm.
The ceiling burned in a roiling corona of flame. The sprinkler system didn’t come on at all. The explosion had destroyed it. A deep roar filled my ears, a sound like a crowd screaming at a football stadium, and it took me a second to realize it was the raging voice of the fire, closer and louder than I’d ever heard it.
I dropped low and so did Jake, both of us pressing close to the ground. Flames spread everywhere. Burning ceiling panels started to fall. Thick, black and gray smoke filled the office, curling around the edges of the barrier. We began to cough, and I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. I crawled toward Rafe through the smoke, avoiding piles of burning wreckage. Rafe pushed himself up on all fours and looked at me. Burns covered his back and the side of his face where fire had seared away his fur, leaving pink, angry flesh. The zombies piled on top of him now lay in scattered drifts, some stirring with weak, convulsive movements, many of them burning.
Fatigue clutched at me, making my arms and legs feel leaden and unresponsive. I bared my teeth and kept my breaths shallow to avoid coughing as I crawled toward Rafe. The smoke was too thick. More of it swept in along the sides of Jake’s barrier. An old-style computer monitor exploded nearby with the sound of a firecracker shoved into a coffee can filled with glass.
Rafe dragged himself toward us through the gray and black haze. We finally reached him. This far into the inferno the air blazed like Hell on broil setting. My Kevlar armor smoked, my uniform felt like an electric burner pressed against my skin, and I was glad of my helmet. Pyromancy raised my skin’s resistance to fire, but my hair could still burn, and so could my clothing. Jake had it worse, but he said nothing and never fell behind or flinched back.
Jake and I grabbed Rafe at the same time. Together we dragged him away from the flames. Frantic moans echoed behind us in the smoke, and that goddamn phone still rang somewhere, punctuated by a strident, pulsing fire alarm.
Jake’s barrier dropped. I couldn’t stop coughing enough to ask why. The smoke enveloped us, disorienting me as I tried to lead us out. I coughed almost continually. I was damn near exhausted from the spell and from half-pulling, half-dragging Rafe along, though Jake supported most of his weight. Maybe standing in the middle of my biggest firestorm hadn’t been the best idea I’d ever had.
Panic had started to fill me like cold, black water when a massive, dark shape crashed through the window frame to my left with a loud, grinding crunch, causing the few remaining shards of glass to fall with a musical tinkle I heard even over the fire’s roar. It was our Bradley, less than ten feet away. It backed out, leaving a gaping wound where there’d once been wall and window frame. I dragged Rafe toward it.
“We’re coming out!” I shouted over the com. “Hold your fire!”
No replies. A strange buzzing came from my earpiece. Maybe my helmet had melted in the heat. I glanced at Jake and tapped my helmet near the ear. Jake repeated the call over his mike. I saw his lips moving, but I still couldn’t hear him over the radio.
We stumbled out the hole the Bradley had smashed. Nobody shot us, which would’ve been a particularly bad end to an already Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition day. My lungs filled with blessedly clean, blessedly smoke-free air. My armor and fatigues still smoked. Rafe reeked of burned wolf hair. Jake and I got his arms around our shoulders and carried him toward the Bradley, which was good, because I’d started to flag. My firebomb had tapped me out, not to mention our baby crawl through the smoky throat of an incinerator.
“Hanzo!” I yelled. “Rafe needs a medic
now
!”
Hanzo appeared beside me as if he’d materialized from the concrete. Maybe his ninja-medic skills were better than I’d appreciated, or the explosion, heat and smoke still had me loopy and disoriented. He took Rafe from me and, with Jake, hurried the injured werewolf up the Bradley’s ramp. They laid Rafe down and Hanzo began to work on him, his hands glowing blue with his healing aura as he moved them above the bites and the burns. I crossed my arms over my chest as waves of nausea swept through me. Those burns…
I’d
done that to Rafe. Me. I’d been desperate. I couldn’t think of any other choice that would force the zombies off our backs long enough to escape. Still…
Jake slipped an arm around me, and I let him do it. Streaks of ashes striped his jaw. He stank of smoke, but so did I, and right now I could not care less. I leaned against him. A dim part of me started to protest that I couldn’t appear weak in front of everybody, but I shut that voice down at once. It felt good having him hold me. I felt steadier with him near me. If anyone made any snide comments, I’d remind them I’d just walked out of the lower intestine of Hell, right before I punched them in the face.
Sarge stood atop the Bradley’s turret. He’d changed weapons and now held the ARC lightning rifle we’d played with on the shooting range. He sighted into the smoke billowing out of the gap smashed into the wall and the broken windows. The plant’s roof had caught fire. Flames had swallowed the entire front of the building.
“Let’s pull back, Captain,” Sarge said. I heard him with my ears, not my earpiece. I pulled off my helmet and almost laughed. I’d been right. The helmet was scorched and half-melted on one side, the headset destroyed. I flung it away.
“Move back a hundred feet,” I ordered. “Keep the guns on the front of the building. Shoot anything that comes out.”
The Bradley backed up, dragging the lowered ramp along the blacktop. Jake helped me follow along behind while Mai covered our retreat with her ferret army.
The chain gun started to spit rounds. I glanced back in time to see several burning zombies blown to shreds.
“We didn’t get the necromancer.” My words sounded ragged and hoarse. My throat burned, and every syllable rewarded me with pain. “That bastard got away.”
Jake glanced at me, his face grim. “He might’ve died in the fire.”
I didn’t answer. He’d escaped with the other guy I’d seen. I could
feel
it.
“We should disable the bus and the car we saw earlier—” The chain gun roared again and drowned out my voice. More burning zombies staggered out of the gap into our kill zone and were disintegrated by the Bradley’s main gun.
Jake leaned in close and yelled in my ear to be heard over the gunfire. “If you send the Bradley, the zombies might break through into the neighborhood.”
Dammit
. Keeping the undead from breaking loose and shambling amok was the highest priority now that we’d lost sight of the necromancer and since I’d neutralized the plant by converting it into an insurance adjustor’s nightmare. I would’ve sent Tiffany aloft to scout for the vehicles, but she was on guns now, and Hanzo had his hands full healing Rafe. The understaffed thing had circled back to bite us in the ass, big time. All of which meant if the necromancer made it to the vehicles at the back of the plant, he had free rein to escape, since he was safely out of our line of sight. “Shit.”
“We neutralized his manufacturing capacity.” Jake put a hand on my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel it because of my body armor. “We seriously degraded his zombie assets. Even if he survived, he won’t be able to start up again anytime soon.”
“For how long? He’ll go back to robbing banks for funds. People will still be in danger. Face it. We had our chance and lost it.”
Jake looked at me but didn’t reply.
A huge column of black smoke snaked up into the sky. Ashes drifted down in flurries like snow. The stink of smoke and a sickly sweet chemical reek filled the air. In the distance, police and fire truck sirens sang their warbling cry. Across the street, a few spectators milled around, taking pictures with cell-phone cameras and gaping at the fire.
“We better get the cops to seal the place off,” I said. “What about the fire department? They’re gonna want to fight the fire. It’s in their DNA.”
“We’ll let the place burn to the ground. CDC orders. Decontamination by incineration.”
I wiped a hand across my face. It came away sweaty and streaked with grime. I’m sure I smelled just as appealing. “Shit. What a clusterfuck.”
The chain gun roared again, followed by the ear-splitting crack of the ARC rifle as Sarge dropped zombies by exploding their heads with lightning bolts.
I leaned toward Jake, coming into kissing distance, and grabbed his helmet microphone. “Hey, Tiffany, how about using the goddamn machine gun instead of disintegrating zombies with the chain gun? Each of those chain-gun rounds cost more than Rafe’s weekly grocery bill.” Talk about overkill. Next she’d be dropping fuel-air explosives.
“Roger that, Captain, sorry,” Tiffany replied, sounding a trifle sheepish.
Cop cars started to arrive. I saw the first cop’s eyes bug out at the sight of the Bradley and the inferno which had once been a perfectly respectable manufacturing plant. The cop would probably need new jockey shorts.
“I’d better go take care of the official end,” Jake said. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
I moved away from him to prove it. My legs felt rubbery, my mouth tasted like I’d been licking the inside of a chimney for the last half an hour and I reeked of smoke. Oh, and my head pounded with a dull, monotonous thud. Other than that, it was just another great day in my blissful and serene existence. I should’ve been a Buddhist.
Jake watched me for a second longer, as if afraid I’d fall over as soon as he let me go. I concentrated on ignoring him. After a moment, he turned and hurried toward the cops with his pistol holstered and his ID out, shouting that this was a government operation and no one should interfere.
I went to check on Rafe. He’d changed back into human form and lay on the metal floor in the back of the Bradley. Hanzo crouched next to him, frowning in concentration as he patched Rafe up with his healing powers. I could feel the strong thrum of magic. Rafe grinned at me, still missing a patch of hair from his scalp, but the skin had healed clean. Thank God for werewolf genes and healer spells.