21 hours
Light sped north up Country Club Drive, then took a right on Southern, ignoring the traffic signal and the camera that snapped a picture of what was left of his back license plate for running a red. He didn’t get far down Southern, though, because just past the Fiesta Village Mobile Home Park, a red Dodge Charger, an Xterra, and a couple of landscaping trucks were blocking the road.
But it wasn’t like on the freeway, where the cars had been abandoned where they were—crashed or parked—as drivers fled, or tried to. These vehicles didn’t look like they’d just randomly stopped. They looked like they’d been pushed into place to form an impassable wall.
“It’s a trap!” Antonetti muttered. When Fallon looked at him, he shrugged. “Sorry. Star Wars fan. Couldn’t resist.”
“Geek or not, he’s right,” Light said. “Something’s off. I’m turning around.”
He slowed, then braked. He cranked the wheel hard to the left and moved his foot from the brake to the gas pedal. The truck made a clumsy U-turn, and they were facing back the way they’d come, looking at what should have been an empty street.
Except it wasn’t.
Of course it isn’t, he thought.
Infecteds filled the road in front of them, more than they’d ever seen in one place before. Light tried to do a quick count and gave up at forty. There were easily three times that number of Infecteds, pouring in from the trailer park to the south and the residential area to the north.
“This isn’t good,” Fallon said in her new role as Captain Obvious. “First the building-to-building searches, now a serious ambush.” She shook her head. “This is much more elaborate than the one with a handful of burning cars. They’re getting smarter.”
“Well, last I checked, being smart didn’t make you invulnerable to Detroit steel. Hold on!”
He threw the truck in reverse and backed up toward the blockade, where even more Infecteds were gathering. When he’d gone as far back as he could without running into the rapidly advancing wall of virus-tainted flesh, he put the truck back in drive and gunned it.
The UPS truck lurched forward, gaining speed. It wasn’t a brown bullet—it was too beat-up for that—but it was as fast as the ambulance he’d used to plow down Infected a bare handful of days ago. Remembering that drive, Light couldn’t suppress a grin.
“That’s right, you bastards. Come to papa.”
Spurred on by Light’s lead foot, the truck slammed into the wave of Infecteds, a rectangular metal-and-rubber cutter trying to climb to the crest before being swamped. Light shot out of his window with one hand and steered with the other. Fallon and Antonetti fired out the other side, and the others waited anxiously in the back for their turn to shoot, holding on for dear life.
They almost made it.
The problem was, the Infecteds were ten deep. And even as they plowed a path through the first three rows with little resistance, there were just too many. By the fourth row, bodies were starting to pile up under the wheels, and the truck was beginning to slow. By the fifth, the Infecteds were reaching in to the front of the truck, hands grasping air, but sometimes hair or clothing or skin that was subsequently ripped away with a curse. By the sixth, the truck was so bogged down that the Infecteds were starting to climb on the roof. By the seventh, the Sykos knew it was time to bail.
“We have to get out of here!” Fallon shouted. Light could barely hear her over the sound of gunfire ringing in his ears, but he was pretty sure it was yet again something blatantly apparent. Warga and a still-bleeding Sansome were crowding up behind them now, also shooting. Light was momentarily amazed at the man’s ability to keep going despite his injuries; it was almost like Sansome was an Infected himself, except he preferred heads over their contents. Still, it was an unsettling thought, and Light quickly pushed it away, replacing it with another equally amazing one—somehow none of the Sykos had been a victim of friendly fire yet—Warga’s little through-and-through notwithstanding.
“My door or yours?”
“Mine!” Fallon yelled, elbowing an Infected that had gotten through their barrage of bullets square in the face.
“Count of three?”
“Okay!”
“One, two . . .”
“Three!”
Fallon and Antonetti jumped out into the buffer zone created by their suppressing fire, parting so Warga and Sansome could come out next, then Lilith and Pybus. Light was the last to leave. With no one else shooting out his side of the truck now, the buffer zone on that side was much smaller, and Infecteds were encroaching closer by the second. He didn’t want to turn his back on them, so he eased himself backward out of the truck, still firing at the Infecteds as they started to crawl in from the other side.
The nearest one was a red-haired woman in a low-cut blouse, breasts straining against the thin material as she reached for him. Under other circumstances, Light might have found her sexy. Then again, under other circumstances, her face wouldn’t be as red as her hair, her breath wouldn’t stink of brains, and her crimson eyes wouldn’t be weeping blood.
Light aimed his barrel right in the middle of that sanguine gaze and pulled the trigger. Her face exploded in a shower of blood and bone. Light closed his eyes briefly against the barrage, and when he opened them, another Infected was about to take her place.
Time to go.
He blew this one’s head off, too, then turned and hopped out of the truck.
“Let’s move!”
They had three more rows to fight through until they were in the clear, and the Infecteds near the roadblock were almost on them. The Sykos formed up in a circle, backs to its interior, a moving ring of death. They pushed unevenly toward the west, back toward Country Club Drive, gaining a few feet at a time, until finally Lilith and Pybus broke through.
As they turned and started picking off the Infecteds still plaguing the others, Sansome and Warga made it out. Light was next, leaving only Fallon and Antonetti still surrounded.
But the Infecteds coming from the east had arrived, and the two Sykos were quickly cut off from the rest. Without a word that Light could hear, they moved together so they were back-to-back. They were still making progress toward the open road and freedom, but it was halting and slow and becoming ever slower.
“I’m going back,” Light said before he could think too closely about it. “Cover me.”
Trusting the others to do as he said, Light started blazing a trail of gunfire toward the trapped duo. He was coming in at an angle, so that his shots and those of the other Sykos wouldn’t inadvertently hit Fallon or Antonetti. The suppressing fire created a little bubble around him as he moved, and soon his small circle of safety merged with Fallon and Antonetti’s slightly larger one.
“This way! Come on!”
Fallon shook her head.
“We’ll never make it! You go, take the others and get out of here. Gino and I will hold them off as long as we can.”
“They won’t follow me,” Light said, knowing it was true. “It’s you or no one, Fallon.”
“He’s right,” Antonetti yelled, his voice hoarse with the effort to be heard over the cacophony of gunfire and the subvocal moaning and animal sounds of the Infecteds. The gunpowder and smoke were so thick that he sneezed before continuing, allowing an Infected to dart inside his reach and leave a Wolverine-style claw mark down his arm. The young Italian grabbed the Infected, pulled her close, rammed his pistol against her head, and fired. He shoved her corpse back into the crowd of Infecteds before continuing.
“Get out of here, Doc. Without you, the mission fails.”
“Then we all need to get out!”
Antonetti shook his head even though she couldn’t see him.
“Not happening, Doc. You and Light go. I’ll keep these fuckers busy. Show ’em how shootin’s really done.”
The good doctor looked like she was about to argue, but Light grabbed her arm.
“Now, Fallon.”
After a moment of hesitation, she nodded.
“Good luck, Gino. And thank you.”
The Syko handed her something Light couldn’t see but didn’t reply. He moved forward into the fray, toward the truck, yelling something in Italian that Light was pretty sure was a particularly vile insult.
Fallon slipped whatever he had given her into one of the many pockets their uniforms sported, then Light and Fallon went in the other direction, working their way back to where the other Sykos’ gunfire gave them a wide enough berth to run out of the crowd and into the open street.
They continued to fire into the swarm of Infecteds as they backed away, but fewer and fewer paid attention as Antonetti’s screams drew them like moths to a Roman candle.
Light had no idea how accurate that simile was as Antonetti somehow got a final burst of shots off. The next thing the Sykos knew, a concussive wave threw them all to the ground as the UPS truck exploded in a ball of fire.
“Damn,” Warga muttered, as they all scrambled back to their feet.
They watched the fire in silence for a moment, each of them, perhaps, saying goodbye in their own way to the first Syko to fall.
Then Fallon spoke.
“Let’s not waste his sacrifice. We need to go.”
They needed no further urging to turn and follow her north into a copse of trees separating the residential neighborhood from the commercial area.
Light was the last to disappear into the foliage, and he couldn’t resist a look back.
The Infecteds seemed to have forgotten their existence—those that hadn’t been killed in the blast or weren’t stumbling around like living torches just milled aimlessly, as if the destruction of the truck and the loss of their prey left them without purpose.
As he watched the truck burning, Light’s eyes narrowed.
“Fucking copycat,” he said with grudging admiration, and spat on the ground, the only benediction he was willing to give the other man. Then he turned his back on Antonetti’s pyre and slipped into the green.