Pandemic Page 179

“Good man,” Roth said. “Make them count. Doc, you remember what Ram told you?”

Feely nodded. “Single shots. Keep the stock tight to my shoulder, move the barrel where I move my eyes. Aim, then fire.”

Roth nodded. “Excellent. And how many rounds do you have?”

“Ten,” Feely said. “But I can’t … I’m no good in a fight. Ramierez showed me how to shoot, but I can’t.”

Roth shook his head. “Too late for that bulls.h.i.t, Doc. Commander Klimas told me what you did to save Cooper. You’re a born warrior. That’s what I need you to be for the next ten minutes, got it?”

A wide-eyed Feely nodded.

“Say it,” Roth said. “Say, I’m a warrior.”

“I’m …” Tim licked dry lips. “I’m a warrior.”

“Good. Just keep saying that, Doc.”

Cooper saw Feely mouthing the words, over and over.

The diesel’s roar kicked up in volume, bounced off building walls — the thing had just turned a corner. Cooper saw it, saw the sun glinting off moving chrome, off red and white paint.

Roth nodded. “Here we go.”

Cooper felt his heart hammering not just in his chest but in his head, his eyes, his entire body.

The diesel’s roar grew louder.

Just seconds now …

WELCOMING COMMITTEE

Through the store’s windows, Tim Feely watched the fire engine bear down on a charred, green Prius. A Converted stood behind the car, shooting a shotgun as fast as he could pump and pull the trigger. Tim didn’t know d.i.c.k about guns, but that wasn’t going to do a d.a.m.n thing. The man seemed to figure that out at the last second. He turned to run, but he’d waited too long — the truck smashed into the Prius, launching it three feet off the ground and spinning it like a cardboard coaster. The rear end hit the man and sent him flying, a rag doll that sailed through the air and hit the sidewalk in front of Barneys New York, splashing a spray of blood against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The truck was so close that Tim could see Bosh’s smiling face inside the cracked, blood-flecked, bullet-ridden windshield. The truck’s grille had once been polished chrome: now it was twisted and bent, with a severed right arm dangling from the left side. The obnoxiously huge front b.u.mper was scratched and dented, wet with blood, streaked with a dozen colors from its vehicular victims.

Bosh locked up the brakes. The wheels skidded through snow, kicking up sprays of dirty white. He swerved left as he entered the intersection, then curved sharply right. The truck slid to a stop, its left side just ten feet from store’s revolving front door.

Roth handed his rifle to Ramierez, who held it along with his shotgun. Roth scooped Ramierez up.

“Feely, Cooper, let’s move!”

Roth pushed through the rotating door. Cooper hobbled forward so fast he was in the next divider behind Roth.

Tim heard gunfire. His legs wouldn’t move. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t —

I am a warrior, I am a warrior.

The thought seemed to lift him and throw him at the still-spinning door. He hit it on the run, shoulder smacking against the gla.s.s. He stumbled out into the windblown chaos.

He faced the engine’s left side. So many bullet holes; how was the thing still running? Klimas stood in the truck’s bed, aiming his pistol and firing, making each shot count. Beyond the fire engine, maybe a block down Oak, Tim saw a wave of people and monsters closing in.

Cooper turned right, started firing.

Roth opened the rear pa.s.senger door and set Ramierez inside. He grabbed his big SCAR-FN rifle, leaving the wounded SEAL with the black shotgun.

Tim stumbled forward, looked left, right, looked across the street — they were coming from everywhere. Hatchlings, people with blades and guns and clubs.

He was going to die.

A woman sprinted toward him, the butcher knife in her hand raised high. Tim pulled the M4’s stock tight to his shoulder, just as Ramierez had told him to do.

He squeezed the trigger.

The recoil turned him a little: he hadn’t expected that much.

The woman fell to the ground, her hands clutching at her stomach.

A screaming teenage boy with a shotgun. The shotgun roared. Nothing hit Tim. The boy pumped in another round, but before he could shoot again Tim aimed and fired. The bullet slammed into the boy’s chest — he staggered back, dropped.

Klimas, screaming: “Get in! Get in!”

Cooper, running for the truck.

Roth, climbing into the back even as he fired short bursts down Oak at the onrushing horde.

A roar from Tim’s right: he turned to see a nightmare — a huge thing that had once been a woman. She wore the tattered remains of a blue-sequined evening dress. Yellow skin pockmarked with sores, too-wide neck, long, pointed shards of bone sticking out the back of her wrists like a pair of chipped white swords.

He couldn’t move. His body wouldn’t react.

The monster roared again … her bone-blades reached out for him.

Clarence Otto walked out of the store’s rotating door, his right arm level and steady, his pistol firing so fast, pop-pop-pop-pop. The woman-monster flinched, turned away. He fired three more times into her back. She dropped face-first onto the snow-covered street.

Clarence grabbed Tim’s shoulder.

“Move, dummy,” he said, and pushed him toward the truck.

Tim’s paralysis broke. He ran for the rear driver’s-side door.

A hatchling, crawling out from underneath the truck. Tim launched himself, raised both feet in the air and landed as hard as he could, smashing the pyramid body. Globs of purple guts splashed out against the trampled white snow.