38 hours
“Where’s Elliott? What have you done to him?” Fallon demanded, stepping into the room.
“No hablo Inglés,” the Latina replied, gesturing helplessly with her left hand. Her right hand was behind an open case on the room’s desk. Fallon couldn’t see the contents from where she stood, but she imagined it included more torture implements.
“Bullshit. Elliott doesn’t speak Spanish, so if you were trying to question him, it would have had to have been in English. Try again, sweetheart.” As she spoke, Fallon pulled out her gun and started to raise it, but the other woman was faster, snatching a gun of her own out of the case and leveling it at Fallon’s head.
“Put your gun on the floor and kick it over here. Sweetheart,” the Latina said, her accent heavy, her r’s rolling like marbles across tile. Even so, her sarcasm came through loud and clear.
Fallon briefly considered refusing. If she gave up her weapon, there was nothing to stop the woman from killing her outright. She wasn’t so sure of her aim up close and personal like this, though. It was one thing shooting into a crowd of Infected—they were the proverbial fish in a barrel. Even for a definitional psychopath, it was an entirely different proposition to shoot at someone who you knew was human and who could shoot back at any second. She wondered how many people would still hunt for sport if the animals also had weapons. Not a lot, she imagined.
Even psychopaths prefer their victims to be helpless.
Fallon slowly bent to place the gun on the floor as instructed, her eyes never leaving the other woman. Once she’d released it, she straightened and used her foot to shove the weapon halfheartedly across the floor toward the Latina. It made it about two feet before friction from the carpet slowed it to a stop, in between the two women but closer to Fallon. The Latina frowned in annoyance.
“What do you know about Jameson? Why are you here looking for him?”
Fallon decided to use the same lie here as she had downstairs. After all, it had worked once. Maybe it would again.
“Elliott’s my husband. We’ve been separated, but our son was killed by one of those brain-eating . . . things, and now he’s all I have left. And I want him back.”
“What is the word you used? Ah, yes—‘bullshit.’ Jameson was not married. We did a thorough check on him.”
That was interesting. Apparently the Mexican version of Jessica Rabbit was not working alone.
“So why are you really here? Jealous lover? He owes you money? Perhaps you are la policía?”
Fallon laughed bitterly.
“I’d like to think a cop wouldn’t be so easily disarmed, wouldn’t you?” She knew the woman would pump her for information—maybe even torture Fallon like she had Elliott—and then kill her. Keeping the conversation going until she could get her own information and find a way out of this little predicament seemed like a good idea.
As did honesty.
“He’s my partner. He stole from me, and I want a piece of his hide.”
Well, partial honesty.
“It seems your Elliott is good at that. But what, exactly, did he take from you? Money? Or something else?”
Fallon knew the Latina was fishing, and the fact that she was focusing on “something else” gave her a pretty good idea what the other woman was hoping to catch.
She didn’t have the prototype. Which meant Jameson couldn’t be dead, because he was the only one who knew where it was.
“Tell me what you did with him, and I’ll tell you what he stole,” Fallon countered. If the woman couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell her where Jameson was, there was no reason to keep playing her game.
“Wrong answer,” the Latina said with a hard smile. And then she pulled the trigger.
The Infecteds had finished their deli meal and were on the move again. Light hung back but kept an eye on them, torn between being riveted by how they fed their terrible hunger and wanting to put an end to them. If he had known about the people hiding in the back room at the market in time to save them, he would have opened fire. Next time, he would be ready.
It didn’t take long for the next time to come around. The Infecteds were walking past a UPS delivery truck parked beside a curb. They seemed to hardly notice the truck, but then one of them stopped and climbed up onto the front bumper. He put his hands against the glass and peered through.
Although Light couldn’t see any communication taking place, the other two moved toward the rear of the truck. The first one got down from the bumper and went to the curbside door. He tried it but couldn’t get in. A concrete garbage bin with a removable steel top stood on the sidewalk nearby; the Infected hurried to it, snatched off the top, and returned to the truck. A few blows with the steel broke through the window, and the monster dropped his tool and reached through, opening the door from the inside.
Light readied the machine gun. If there were human beings in that truck, he would open fire before they were hurt.
Then everything happened so fast, it caught him off guard. The back doors flew open, and four people sprang out. One wore UPS brown. The Infecteds were ready, though. They caught two of the people—both women—immediately. The UPS driver made it a couple of steps, then tripped on the curb, and before he could get up, the Infected who had broken the window was on him. The fourth human, another man, sprinted away down the middle of the street.
Light opened up with the M249. He squeezed the trigger and held it down, firing an extended hail of steel-tipped rounds. The weapon had a serious recoil, but his targets weren’t far away, and he was able to maintain his aim well enough. The Infected wrestling with the UPS driver went down first, his arms flailing at the air until the bullets penetrated his skull. The other two fell more easily, first the other male, then the female, both of them jerking spasmodically as the heavy rounds tore into them. Brass clinked around Light’s boots, and the air filled with the biting scent of gun smoke.
When he was sure the Infecteds were finished, Light walked closer to their victims. He was too late for the first two, it turned out. The UPS driver still lived, but there were tooth marks on his face, where his cheek had been bitten into, and his neck showed multiple claw marks. He was alive but infected. Unless he had a psychopathic brain, he would become one of them.
And he was in incredible pain. He couldn’t speak, could only make pathetic, squeaking sounds. His left hand clutched weakly at the curb. His eyes were wide, panic-stricken.
Light laid his weapon down gently, placed his left hand across the man’s mouth, and with his right, pinched the driver’s nostrils closed.
It didn’t take long.