Still of Night Read online

  The trick for a barrier like this is that we wanted to blow the lock without destroying the function of the gate.

  “Half of one’ll do her, boss,” suggested Bunny, and he immediately began cutting one to fit. “But that’s only half the problem. We got to close the gate and hold it long enough for the plane to take off. Once we blow the lock that means physically closing and holding the gate.”

  “Once the Mystery Bus is inside we can close the gate and back the truck up to hold it,” Top suggested.

  “That’s good,” said Bunny, “but someone’s still going to have to place the charge, open the gate, and close it after the truck’s inside.”

  “That’s a suicide mission,” said Chang, appalled.

  “It’s your goddamn duty,” snarled the president.

  “Mr. President,” said Chang, her face draining of blood, “maybe there’s another way.”

  “I got it,” said Bunny and we all looked at him. “I’m the biggest, the strongest, and I have Honey Boom-Boom. We all know I have the best chance.”

  Top’s hands tightened so hard on the steering wheel that the leather creaked. He wanted to tell him not to volunteer, to find some other way, but he knew—as we all knew—that Bunny was right.

  “I’ll do the gate,” said Torres quickly.

  Bunny shook his head. “Don’t even try.”

  “She volunteered,” said the president. “Let her do it. We are running out of time here. Do something, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Okay,” I said, “Torres, you place the charge. Bunny and I will provide cover. Top, you’re at the wheel, and Chang, you stay at the door to this bus. We go out, get it done, and everybody gets back inside. Hooah?”

  “Hooah,” said Top and Bunny.

  “Not sure what that means,” said Torres with a brave smile, “but hooah.”

  Chang said it, too, and the president rolled his eyes.

  — 16 —

  Top began moving the Mystery Bus forward. We tried to tune out the sound of bones snapping under the tires.

  I scouted around inside the bus and found two six-packs of beer, grinning as I handed one to Bunny.

  “Seriously?” groused the president. “Beer? Now?”

  I ignored him. Bunny and I quickly wrapped blaster plasters around as many beers as we could, sealing them with the adhesives. When Torres realized what we were doing, she said, “Coooool.” Dragging it out.

  “Got to throw them pretty far,” cautioned Top.

  “That’s my job,” I said. “I taught my nephew how to pitch a fastball that would make you cry.”

  I went to the back of the bus. “Chang, I need you to open the rear window when I tell you. Do it fast and then cover me. I’m going to try and get some of the infected to pull back.”

  She nodded. The windows were part of the old bus shell built on top of the truck. It had pinch-clips to lower the windows.

  “Now,” I said, and she dropped the window. We were too high for anyone walking to reach us, but some of the nimbler infected had climbed onto the structure.

  “I’ll clear it,” she barked as she drew her weapon, aimed with two hands, and fired five spaced shots. Three head shots, two kills. It was enough. I hurled the plaster-wrapped beer through the open window and Top immediately stepped on the gas. Chang jerked the window up, but then I hooked an arm around her and pulled her down as the blaster plaster detonated.

  I’d used a quarter of a sheet, but it was enough to shatter all of the windows in the back of the bus.

  “Oh . . . fuck,” I said. “Step on it, Top.”

  Chang rose up and began firing, but the lurch of the truck made her stumble and two shots went into the roof. She corrected and fired at a white face that filled the rear window. It burst apart and as it fell I yelled, “Frag out!” and threw another bomb.

  The force flung bodies everywhere, but the noise was louder than what the truck was making and the fire drew the eyes of the infected. A third of the crowd turned toward the detonation point.

  I threw another. And another. With each explosion more of them hurried toward the noise. I saw dozens of them on fire, stumbling into each other, spreading the blaze.

  “Coming up on the gate,” yelled Top. “Get ready.”

  “On deck,” said Bunny.

  I wheeled and hurried over to the side door, where Bunny and Torres crouched, ready to go. I slapped the big man on the shoulder.

  “I saved a couple of cold ones for when you two get back,” I said.

  Bunny’s grin was a familiar one, the kind I’d seen him wear on battlefields when the shit was raining down. He was in that zone now, past ordinary fear, operating on the highest level of combat awareness. Torres, on the other hand, looked terrified beyond speaking. Her face was slick with sweat and there was a fever brightness in her eyes.

  “You’re a cop,” I told her. “Remember your training. Do your job and trust Bunny to watch your back. You’ve earned enough combat points to make you a full-fledged badass, Torres. You can do this.”

  “Thank you, s-sir,” she said, tripping over the last word.

  “Enough with the pep talks,” yapped the president. “Tick-goddamn-tock.”

  I gave Torres’ arm a squeeze, nodded to Bunny, and then opened the door.

  The truck was still rolling. I drew my Beretta and shot four infected in the head. Dropped all four.

  “Go!”

  Bunny was out first, firing his shotgun before he even landed on the ground. He blasted six rounds and then reached up, took hold of Torres and pulled her down like she weighed nothing. He brought his gun up and fired. I crouched in the doorway and fired. Top rolled to within inches of the door, stopped, then opened his window and fired.

  Chang was behind us, killing anything that tried to crawl in through the shattered windows. Thunder deafened us all. I took my last fragmentation grenade, leaned out the door and threw it in as high an arc as I could over the crowd. It dropped to about chin level before it exploded, killing at least a dozen of the monsters and drawing every single dead eye.

  Torres stuck the blaster-plaster around the lock and then they began running toward the door. They were both shooting; Top and I gave them cover, but something went wrong almost at once. I don’t know if Torres accidentally pulled the detonator cord or if maybe somehow it malfunctioned, but the plaster exploded too soon.

  Torres and Bunny were plucked off the ground and flung like ragdolls. The blast blew out the windshield, but Top threw an arm across his face in time. When I looked, I saw the gate swing inward, but no sign of Torres or Bunny.

  Through the ringing in my ears I heard Bunny bellow out her name and then everything was drowned in continuous gunfire from his shotgun. Three seconds later Torres came flying in through the door. She was alive, but badly hurt. Bleeding. Screaming. I dragged her inside and then gave Bunny cover fire as he scrambled up. His body armor glistened with red.

  The gate stood ajar. Top stomped on the gas and the bus slammed into the barrier, knocking it all the way open. He rolled inside and before he stopped the bus, I was out, down on the ground, running to grab the gate. Bunny, dazed and bleeding, knelt in the doorway and offered cover fire. Even so, I had to slam the gate on a half dozen infected. Their sheer weight stopped me there, and more of the dead were coming. Then I heard the beep-beep-beep as Top backed the Mystery Bus toward me. I threw myself sideways just in time. The gate opened inward two feet and then it hit the bumper. Top kept backing up until the gate was closed.

  I staggered to the doorway. “Get out!” I screeched.

  Top and Chang helped the president down through the front passenger door. Bunny handed Torres down to me, and then he climbed down. Half his body armor was gone, torn away by the force of the blast, and there were burns on his chest, left shoulder and face. Half his hair had been melted away. Still, he fired the big shotgun one-handed, which would have put most people on their asses. With his other hand he supported Torres, who was barely able to walk. Sh
e was flash-burned, too, but her right hand was mangled. Two fingers were missing and the wound did not look like it had been caused by shrapnel. Bunny briefly met my eyes.

  “It happened while she was setting the charge,” he said loud enough for only me to hear. “She reached through to wrap it around one of the bars. There was one of those things inside.”

  Already I could see that beneath the soot and burns Torres was going pale. Her eyes danced with pain and fear. Bloody tears leaked from her eyes. She knew.

  We ran.

  The door to the plane was open and a flight officer and two Secret Service agents were there. The agents spotted us and ran down the stairs, MP5 machine guns in their hands. They raced over to meet Chang and the president. In a tight cluster, we fought our way to the plane.

  As we ran, I saw that on the other side of the burning factory were two National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. One was burning, one wasn’t, and its propellers were turning slowly, engine on.

  Maybe the soldiers on the roof could use it to get out. Not my immediate problem.

  Ten feet from the stairs Torres fell. She took a last staggering step and then went down. I waved Chang and the other agents on. Top and Bunny stood guard while I knelt by the wounded cop.

  Except she wasn’t a cop anymore. Everything that had been Officer Torres was gone. Her eyes stared up at nothing and her last breath rattled out between slack lips.

  “Cap’n . . . ” said Top. “We have to leave her.”

  It hurt to do it, but that’s what we did.

  We ran up the stairs and into Air Force One. I found the president hunkered down at a small desk in his private office, and an aide was helping him open a small leather case and he was speaking on a tan-yellow satellite phone. He had Chang and the two other agents with him, all of them armed.

  “Sir,” I said urgently, “do you have the response protocol? Can you stop the plague?”

  He looked up at me with a triumphant smile as he lowered the phone. “I just did.”

  “What is it? A counter-agent or . . . ”

  My words trailed off as I realized what that leather case was. My mouth went totally dry.

  “I just spoke with the Secretary of Defense,” he said in a weirdly calm voice. “I confirmed the gold codes, Captain.”

  The gold codes.

  Good god.

  The protocol is complex and yet frighteningly simple. The leather case contained a secure device that allowed him to input a set of codes. It nominally follows the two-man rule, but the Secretary of Defense can’t really act without those codes from the president. Once they were given, once an agreed protocol was initiated, the machinery would move with terrifying swiftness and efficiency.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I demanded, and the Secret Service agents moved to get up in my face. I ignored them. “What are your targets, for Christ’s sake? We aren’t at war with a foreign power.”

  “We are at war, Captain. The cities are falling. New York, D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles . . . ” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “All of them are overrun. The only chance we have is to remove those centers of congestion and limit the spread of the infection to the suburbs and rural areas. People are already being told to evacuate.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “It’s done,” said the president. “We’re going to take back this great nation. We will make it ours again.”

  I knew those words. They were trademarks from his campaign speeches. Make it Ours Again had been his platform.

  “You’re going to drop nukes on the major U.S. cities? What about fallout? What about living people trapped in the blast areas?”

  “There is always collateral damage in war.”

  I don’t know that I have ever heard that phrase used with less humanity or more coldness. The engine whine of the plane was increasing.

  “You need to stop this while you can,” I begged. “It’s going to make it worse. You’re killing us all.”

  I looked from him to Chang. Her eyes were bright with shock, but she had her Glock in her hand and she stood by the madman with the nuclear football. The other agents had their barrels half-raised and their eyes were hard as flint.

  “Captain,” said the president, “someone needs to move the stair car away from the door so we can take off.”

  “Make the call, you motherfucker,” I growled, and now the barrels were pointing at my face. Top and Bunny had their guns up, too, but I knew it was too late. The codes had been given, the machinery was running.

  “Get off my airplane,” said the president. “That’s an order.”

  “There are more of them coming,” yelled the pilot. “We need to clear the runway.”

  “Cap’n,” said Top, “this is done.” When I still did not move, he took my arm. “We can take the Black Hawk.”

  He pulled me back and I let him.

  At the doorway to the office I stopped, though, and pointed a finger at the president. “God damn you to hell.”

  His smile was small and sad. “We’re already in hell, Captain.”

  I turned and left. At the top of the stairs I jerked to a stop. Torres was crawling up toward us. Her eyes were completely empty and her lips curled back from white teeth. Bunny made a small, heartbroken sound and raised his gun.

  “No,” I said and ran down to the dead cop. She snapped at me, but my Kevlar pads were still in place. I pulled her up and drag-carried her into the plane and shoved her into one of the seats reserved for the press. The pilot frowned at me.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Spin this thing up. We’ll move the stairs.”

  He gave me an uncertain nod and went into the cockpit and closed the door.

  Then I whirled and ran, pulled the outer door shut and ran down to where Top and Bunny were positioning themselves at the base of the stair car.

  We moved it away, then ran for the Black Hawk, killing whoever and whatever was in our way. We got in, got it started, got it in the air.

  Top flew. He opened up with chain guns and cleared the runway, then banked away as Air Force One lifted into the air.

  Neither Bunny nor Top asked me why I’d done what I’d done. They understood. Top nodded and Bunny put his hand on my shoulder. The fuel gauge said we had enough gas to go maybe a thousand miles. We’d have to refuel somewhere. Top had family in Georgia. Bunny’s folks were on vacation in St. Thomas. My family was in Maryland, hopefully at my uncle’s old farm in Robinwood, far away from the cities.

  When the nukes dropped there would be EMPs, so maybe they would kill our electronics and drop us all down to the ground. Maybe we’d been the timetable. Maybe the generals would mutiny and refuse to follow orders.

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  We flew into the night, knowing that no matter where we went or what happened, this was the world now.

  And it wasn’t our world anymore.

  — 17 —

  NOW

  You can’t outfly an electromagnetic pulse.

  We tried.

  We saw the flash over San Diego and we poured it on.

  By then Air Force One was well out of range, flying at thirty thousand feet, punching along at five hundred miles an hour. We opened the throttle to the never-exceed speed of two-hundred and twenty-two miles per hour, but we flew low over the landscape.

  The EMP rode the shockwaves and chased us like a pack of dogs. It killed the bird. Killed the avionics, the motors. Everything. The rotors stopped turning with anything except wind friction.

  And we fell.

  Fell.

  All the way down.

  Maybe if we’d been luckier the crash would have killed the three of us. But, we haven’t been lucky in a long time.

  I stood there, watching the bird burn. Watching the sky burn. Feeling the blood run in lines down my face, my chest, my arms. Listening to the howling wind. Listening to the hungry moans.

  Top and Bunny were hurt.
We all were. Hurt. Not dead.

  I slapped a fresh magazine into my Beretta and raised it as the first of the shambling figures broke through the wall of smoke.

  Not dead yet. Not them. Not dead like they’re supposed to be. And we were still alive, too. Death sang its mournful, tuneless songs in the moans of the things that came to us. Death sang, but we did not know the songs, did not know those lyrics. Not yet.

  Not goddamn yet.

  We raised our guns at the unstoppable wave of death.

  “Well,” I said, “fuck it.”

  Top and Bunny laughed. Actually laughed. So did I.

  We fired.

  PART TWO

  FAT GIRL WITH A KNIFE

  JONATHAN MABERRY

  DURING THE OUTBREAK

  — 1 —

  Dahlia had a pretty name, but she knew she wasn’t pretty.

  Kind of a thing with the girls in her family. None of the Allgood girls were making magazine covers.

  Her oldest sister, Rose, was one of those college teacher types. Tall, thin, meatless, kind of gray-looking, with too much nose, no chin at all, and eyes that looked perpetually disappointed. She taught art history, so there was that. No one she taught would ever get a job in that field. There probably weren’t jobs in that field. When was there ever a want-ad for art historian?

  The sister between Rose and her was named Violet. She was the family rebel. Skinny because that’s what drugs do; but not skinny in any way that made her look good. Best thing you could say about how she looked was that she looked dangerous. Skinny like a knife blade. Cold as one too. And her moods and actions tended to leave blood on the walls. Her track record with “choices” left her parents bleeding year after year. Violet was in Detroit now. Out of rehab again. No one expected it to stick.