Pandemic

THIRTY-SIX.

Wade awoke from a long, dreamless sleep with a start. He raised his head from Rawlings’s shoulder. She stirred.

“Rise and shine,” Gray said as he kicked the men awake.

The soldier had taken off his helmet and blouse and wore his tactical vest over his T-shirt. He had large stains around his armpits. He grinned under mirrored sunglasses, chewing gum. He looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune.

The asshole’s starting to enjoy this, Wade thought. Thinks it’s fun.

“On your feet, lovebirds. It’s oh-dawn hundred.”

Sunlight streamed through the closed blinds. The room was hot. Wade felt like crap. But he’d slept the whole night, from dusk to dawn, perhaps for the first time in weeks.

The classroom had a whiteboard and little desks. Books and art supplies filled the shelves. Posters hung on the yellow walls. School was out. He wondered if kids would ever go to school here again.

Rawlings gave him a bleary smile. “’Morning, Private Wade.”

He gave her hand one last squeeze and let go. “Thanks.”

“You should know I don’t let every guy I meet sleep on my shoulder.”

He smiled at her. “I got your back today, Sergeant.”

“Eat up,” Gray said. “We got a long day. Get your calories.”

A soldier burned up to six thousand calories a day in a combat zone. The Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, provided twelve hundred calories. They’d have to eat every chance they got. The men tore into the pouches and ate their breakfast cold. Gray turned to Wade with a big, satisfied smile.

What does he think, I’d tell the men NOT to eat? Wade was already tired of the pissing contest. If Gray wanted to be in charge, so be it.

Then he realized Gray wasn’t looking at him. As far as Gray was concerned, the pissing contest was over. He was looking at Rawlings. The soldier licked his lips. He had a thing for her, then. Love or lust, it didn’t matter. Gray was going to be a problem.

The men hauled themselves to their feet and checked their gear. They cleaned and reloaded their weapons and counted magazines.

“Let’s move,” Gray said. “We’ll stay on this side of the highway. Check out some houses and see if we can find a few working vehicles. Get the fuck out of here.”

The squad geared up and filed out the window. They moved quietly through the residential neighborhood, flashing hand signals to communicate where they were going and what they saw. Wade limped after them with Rawlings, refusing her help. He had to pull his own weight.

They found plenty of abandoned vehicles, but none of them would run. Even the vehicles still drivable and that had keys in the ignition had been drained of gas by scavengers.

The houses turned into low-rise apartment buildings with retail stores on the bottom floors. The squad filed down the middle of the street, weapons ready, faces pale and drawn. Dead bodies drew clouds of flies. Loose litter fluttered in the breeze. Most of the houses had Xs painted on the doors; the area had been ordered evacuated by the government. Graffiti invited them into some buildings and warned them out of others. The air smelled of smoke.

Wade and Rawlings exchanged a glance. They were going to die there, and they knew it.

The Klowns had disappeared, but they were still here. They’d gone somewhere to sleep. The sun was rising. Soon, they would wake up and come out to play.

Fisher and Brown fell out of formation and waited for Wade and Rawlings to catch up.

“He’s looking for a fight,” Fisher said. “He’s going to get us killed.”

“Dude thinks he’s Lord Humungous,” Brown added.

Wade caught up to Gray. “We should find somewhere to hole up until it gets dark.”

“Get back in line, Wade.”

“At least get out of the middle of the street. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

Gray glared at him and spit his gum onto the road. “All right.” He signaled the squad to get onto the sidewalk and keep moving.

Wade grunted with each step. They were going to need to find some vehicles soon. He doubted he’d be able to walk all the way to Hanscom.

Brown said, “We can’t shoot our way there. I got just one mag, that’s it.”

“We should break off on our own,” Fisher said. “What do you think, Sergeant?”

She said, “I think all options are on the table at this point.”

Wade opened his hand. Stop. He tapped the guy in front of him and repeated the gesture. The soldier passed the message up the line to Gray, who turned with a frown.

Wade cupped his hand to his ear. I hear something. Waved his hand to the ground. Get down. A listening halt.

The squad crouched behind the line of cars parked against the curb.

Gray looked at Wade and mouthed, What the fuck?

Then they all heard it—a distant rattle growing louder by the second.

Wade fixed his bayonet to the end of his carbine. A vehicle rolled up the road, scattering trash. The shiny BMW convertible was driven by a middle-aged couple wearing black sunglasses and smiling as if out for a pleasant Sunday drive in the city. The man wore a brown suit and tie, the woman a polka-dot dress.

The rattling sound was chains. The car was dragging dozens of bodies shredded into hamburger over miles of road. The stench of death struck the soldiers as the vehicle passed.

The car came to a halt. The V8 engine roared. The couple’s heads swiveled toward the squad’s position.

The man grinned and said, “I smell lunch.”

Gray popped up and opened fire. The Klowns jerked as blood sprayed across the windshield. They slumped in a smoking mess.

Gray turned to the squad and patted his weapon. “I’m sick of this shit. No more skulking—” He stopped and gaped up at the buildings across the street.

Wade followed his gaze. Dozens of grinning faces looked back at him from the windows.

Gray sighted on one of them. “Contact.”

Wade barely heard him over the tramp of feet on asphalt coming from all directions.

“What are we going to do?” Rawlings asked.

Wade looked at her. “We’re going to get that vehicle.”

A body landed heavily on the car in front of them, setting off its alarms.

“Christ!” Fisher screamed.

“Contact!” Gray repeated.

A few shots. Seconds later, the scattered gunfire turned into a steady roar.

The Klowns came up the street. They poured out of every building and rained from the windows like human missiles. One ran up to Wade’s group and emptied a handgun. Wright flopped backward onto the sidewalk, shot through the face. Wade returned fire, the rounds thudding into the Klown and making him do a jig before collapsing. Young propped his SAW against the hood and started hammering anything that moved.

Gray dumped a grenade into the entrance of the building on the other side of the street. It detonated with a BOOM, vomiting smoke and burning bits of wood onto the street.

Gray pumped his fist. “Booyah!”

“Fuck!” Brown sat on the ground with an arrow through his shoulder.

“Man down!” Fisher cried.

Another body fell from the sky onto Young, knocking him down. The SAW slid off the hood. A moment later, a man popped up with it and opened fire at the squad.

Three soldiers were thrown through the plate glass window behind them.

Wade sighted on the Klown, but his gun jammed. Rawlings fired, and the man dropped. Wade spared a quick look around while he cleared the two rounds stuck in the firing chamber. The street was filled with laughing maniacs falling under a rain of hot metal. Klowns in the store behind them hacked at the wounded soldiers with hatchets and machetes. Gray was shooting grenades down the street as fast as he could load them. Half the squad was out of action. The rest fired at close range or were locked in hand-to-hand combat. A Molotov cocktail burst in their midst, catching Steele’s legs on fire. If they didn’t move, they were going to die.

Brown was laughing as he tried to stand. “It hurts soooo good!”

“To the car!” Wade shouted. “Get to the car!”

Rawlings led the way, spearing Klowns with her bayonet. Fisher picked up Brown’s carbine and fired wildly. Wade hobbled after them, dropping Klowns with aimed fire.

Gray was already at the car. He yanked out the bodies and dumped them onto the sidewalk. He got in. “Hurry up!”

Wade, Rawlings and Fisher leaped inside as Gray stomped the gas pedal. The car lurched into the crowd, slamming into Klowns and hurling them down the street. A woman tumbled over the vehicle and crashed onto the road behind them.

Wade pushed Fisher off him and looked back. The last few members of the squad unloaded everything they had before the infected swarmed over them. A grenade exploded in their midst, ripping through the crowd and covering them all in a pall of smoke.

The Klowns brayed like hyenas as they closed in with knives to collect their trophies.