Wet Work: The Definitive Edition (28 page)

Closer still.

Nothing.

Beside him, Gifford lifted his pump-action shotgun from his lap.

Closer.

And then they saw the bloody arm lying beside the sand bags, the rest of the body concealed from sight.

Brion stepped on the gas, accelerating quickly to close the last thirty yards between them and the blockade.

Shotgun in hand, Gifford got out of the Subaru before he’d brought it to a complete stop.

“
Stay here,” Tranksen said to Ellen as Nick joined Gifford, .38 Special ready, the hammer cocked.

The soldier was dead, a hunting knife protruding from his ribs. Nick waved an all-clear to Brion and Ellen. Brion got out of the van.

Tranksen glanced at the body then focused his attention on the structure of the blockade.

“
Not as bad as it looked. No problem.”

The two buses were parked front-to-front with a car facing towards Arlington positioned behind each vehicle’s rear. From the approach road it had looked like the buses were wedged tight, the armored vehicle obscuring the car behind it, but all you had to do was push one of the cars out and roll on through.

Nick looked at Gifford, who was checking the driver’s seat of one of the buses.

“
Clean,” the pilot said.

Nick frowned.

“
It looks too simple. Figured the National Guard or the army had to have wired it to explode if anyone unauthorized tried to budge it,” Gifford explained.

Brion walked over to a red Honda Prelude on the right. He slipped inside and found the key in the ignition. He turned over the engine. It started immediately and he wound down the window, smiling.

“
Let’s get moving!” He put the car in gear.

The Prelude exploded.

WASHINGTON, D.C. SUBURBS

8:40 A.M.

The living were hiding on the second floor of Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital.

Corvino and the rest of the Food Detail knew they were there because of the freshly opened soup cans lying in a pile down the hallway from the maternity wing. There were other signs of habitation, too—a recently soiled blanket stinking of piss and blood, empty water bottles, a stack of torn magazines.

Having systematically searched every room on the floor, he saw two options: either the people who had sought shelter there had left within the last couple of hours or they were hunkered down in one of the rooms.

Corvino glanced down at the torn copy of
Sports Illustrated
. Bo Jackson’s face stared up at him from the floor, and he wondered absently if the sports celebrity was still alive somewhere.

Up ahead, Skolomowski stealthily approached the closed door as the other two members of the detail took up positions behind their leader, guns held ready. The last few days had proved that however much the cattle—as Hershman referred to them—were weak, confused, scared, they were usually armed, and no one was taking any chances. And even if the cattle weren’t armed, there was always the threat of the mindless crazies, those who had not successfully made the transition and who functioned on pure instinct, perpetually hungry. The crazies were the biggest threat because there were more of them than the cattle, and they fought without rhyme or reason, unable to distinguish dead flesh from living.

Skolomowski crept close to the door, signaling the others to get ready. Although Corvino had been designated Detail Commander, the Pole had made it clear he didn’t give a shit about orders. He was going to do things his way whether Corvino liked it or not.

“
That was then, this is now,” Skolomowski had stated to Corvino the first night he’d spent at the Farm. “The rules have changed. We can do what the fuck we like—if you’ve got the stomach for it.”

The last comment had been a dig at Corvino’s reluctance to eat flesh. Despite the incredible hunger which had torn at his insides for over twenty-four hours, he’d tried to resist giving into the craving for human meat. He’d finally broken down when Hershman and the others dined on a freshly killed woman Skolomowski and his Food Detail had hunted down that morning.

With one bite of plump thigh meat all rational arguments and moralistic pangs of self-disgust had melted away, and he’d gorged on the ripe, juicy flesh with the same passion as Lang, Skolomowski and Hershman.

There was no way around it. To survive, he had to eat. And if raw flesh was all their systems craved—all their mutated dead bodies could stomach—there was no choice. He was a survivor, and sometimes survival required desperate measures. But still, his conscience nagged him. The others had fully embraced their inhuman condition—the Pole in particular, who clearly reveled in his new found strength and seeming immortality. But deep inside Corvino the man he’d once been—the
human
side—despised what he had become.

Let the Pole feed his berserker rage. Corvino was past caring. All he wanted was to find his own peace. He knew he wasn’t going to last long in the New Order. What Skolomowski said was true—he didn’t have the stomach for it. Besides, the world they were fighting to regain control over was a vile hell beyond imagining. He wanted no part of it. But before he removed himself from the putrescent slime he needed to learn the truth.

His train of thought halted suddenly as Skolomowski kicked in the door and opened fire.

The burst of the M-16 ripped through the hallway, the volume increasing as McNally and Schultz leapt through the doorway behind the Pole, their guns blazing, a chorus of screams drowned out by the noise.

Corvino ran to the door.

The three men blasted the room apart, bullets tearing through the bodies of its occupants—four women, two children, three men—and Corvino grimaced as he saw a small boy and a girl who each looked about nine drop to the floor and die.

One of the men—a boy barely out of his teens—tried, his hands shaking, to point a handgun at Skolomowski as bullets threw him off balance.

McNally saw the gun coming up and twisted, firing away from the women. His aim found the young man, hurling the body against the wall.

The Pole bellowed with pleasure as he emptied his clip into the corpse of the nearest woman.

Corvino pulled back from the door, squeezing his eyes shut to blot out the image of the dead children.

He was a soldier. An assassin. He killed people for a living.

He killed people for a living
—there was so much irony in that line, it made his insides hurt, a painful, indigestible truth. He—a dead man—now killed the living to survive.

But he couldn’t justify the slaughter of innocent women and children—American women and children. Any innocent. In life he’d lived well off the deaths of others. In living death, he was feeding on the flesh of confused innocents trying to survive in the ruins of a world that had disintegrated into an infernal Disneyland for the Damned.

If he’d denied the reality of his corrupt, hollow existence in life, he could no longer do so in living death—

“
Corvino!” the Pole screamed. “Where the fuck are you?”

Corvino opened his eyes, twisting into the doorway, gun ready.

“
Have a present.” Skolomowski tossed a severed head towards the door.

The woman’s head bounced once, then rolled into the corner.

The Pole’s hands and arms were coated with gore, flecks of red dotting his face like chickenpox.

“
We’re done,” Skolomowski grinned. “Call the Bag Boys.”

McNally chuckled. “Get the grocery cart.”

Corvino ignored the Pole’s defiant smile, clicking on the walkie-talkie. “Alpha Two to Bag Detail, copy? Over.”

The radio crackled.

“
Bag Detail, over.”

“
Send them up. Second floor. Right wing. Nine bodies. Over.”

“
Copy. Over and out.”

He replaced the walkie-talkie in its belt pouch, meeting Skolomowski’s expression with indifference.

“
Get ready to move out. Third location in fifteen minutes.”

He turned and started to walk down the hallway towards the stairs.

It was time to end the charade.

He stopped at the window which looked down into the courtyard beneath, observing the Bag Boys—as Lang had so quaintly named them—removing body bags from the back of the transport vehicle.

Yes, as soon as he got off-duty he was going to find the truth. About Del Valle. About Panama. About himself.

And then he was going to pull down the house of cards.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

8:43 A.M.

Nick’s head hurt badly, his ears rushing like they were filled with roaring water as he tried to pull himself upright. He nearly made it to a sitting position, feeling the heat of burning metal around him.

He fell back on the tarmac, and—

“
Come on, answer me!”

(
go away
)

“
Come on, you shit, move!”

(
go away…
)

“
Let me be…”

The roaring water was draining from his ears.

He could hear sobbing.

Rough hands shook him.

“
Leave me alone,” he mumbled. A light slap across the face jarred the soft darkness.

“
Don’t give me that shit.
Come on!”

He opened his eyes and saw Gifford’s dirt-streaked face above him through his blurred vision.

The car had been booby-trapped. Brion had started the car and—

“
Brion?” He mumbled, trying to sit up.

“
Dead,” Gifford said, pulling Nick up.

He managed to sit, his eyesight returning to normal as the world stopped moving.

The top of the Prelude had been blown off, flames licking up at the blue smoke-stained sky. Then there was a smaller, secondary explosion like a giant breaking wind as the gas tank caught and the two men flinched as a hot shock wave of air buffeted them. Ellen screamed again. Chunks of flaming metal surrounded them like a field of campfires. Nick coughed, the acrid air choking his lungs.

Gifford struggled to stay on his feet, reaching out a hand to Nick. He took it, trying to stand, stumbling and nearly pulling the two of them over.

Take it easy. One step at a time.

He wobbled again.

Shit. Brion was dead.

THE ATLANTIC—THE JERSEY SHORE.

9:01 A.M.

Sandy decided to go below deck as the cabin cruiser picked up speed. It was growing windy. She was cold and her throat hurt.

She prayed she wasn’t getting sick. It would be so unfair to have escaped from New York and then to be ill.

Jared was in the wheelhouse watching Briggs steer the boat. He ignored her as she descended to the small galley below. Her nephew had withdrawn steadily since the night Dick had saved her. Jared no longer tried to cling to her during each waking moment.

“
Here, you take the wheel,” Briggs said to the boy.

John Briggs was tall, dignified, and in his early fifties. He had the calm manner of a man used to being in control and the energy of a man half his age.

Jared shook his head.

“
Look? See how easy it is?”

Briggs winked at Sandy, taking the boy’s hands, placing them on the wheel.

“
There. You’re the captain now.”

Jane, Briggs’s seventeen-year-old daughter, was cleaning the plates away.

“
There’s food on the stove.” She pointed to the saucepans.

“
No thanks. I’m going to lie down,” Sandy replied. She felt faint, and the thought of food turned her stomach.

“
You look flushed,” Jane remarked.

“
I feel cold.”

God, please don’t let me get sick
. Not now, she thought as she lay down on the small bunk in the room beyond the kitchenette.
Let Nick be safe. Let us be together.

Within seconds she was asleep.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9:10 A.M.

Nick’s ears were still aching from the explosion. Gifford appeared to be in good shape, but Ellen was hysterical.

“
Get a grip!” Gifford snapped. Ellen recoiled as if he’d slapped her.

“
Don’t, man. She’s in shock.”

Gifford sat down beside Nick. He’d tried to comfort the woman, but she’d shrugged him off. Now she was crouched on the curb, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, rocking back and forth, back and forth, sobbing.

The Prelude continued to burn.

“
What are we gonna do now?”

“
We continue,” Nick said flatly. “There’s nowhere to go but forward.”

He looked at the frozen expression on Gifford’s face. Frankie’s eyes seemed glazed, distant. Then Nick turned and saw the advancing soldiers. Six of them, all armed, had appeared as if from nowhere.

“
Shit!” Gifford spat.

“
On your feet,” the soldier in the lead ordered, pointing a .45 automatic at Nick’s head.

Ellen jerked at the sound of the voice and screamed.

One of the soldiers, a big, powerful bull with mean features framed by close-cropped blond hair, charged towards her. Ellen continued to scream, shuffling back like a crab, until she was trapped against the bridge wall. The man just laughed.

“
Cut it out, Skolomowski,” the first soldier said.

“
Fuck you,” the Pole shot back. He threw a smile at the other men. “Looks like we’ve got us a live one.” He unsheathed his sixteen-inch military blade, brandishing it at Ellen. Her yells dropped to a whimper.

“
I said, cut it out!” Corvino snarled.

“
That’s exactly what I plan to do,” the Pole leered, crouching down beside Ellen.