19 hours
Light wasn’t as sure about joining up with these Raiders as Fallon seemed to be, but he assumed it was only a temporary thing—mostly because it was T minus twenty hours until they nuked paradise and made it a parking lot. And he was sure about killing Infecteds. It wasn’t the same as giving an old lady on her deathbed a little nudge to help her cross over, but they were sick, and he was putting them out of their misery. With the government’s permission and their weapons, even. Being an angel of death was turning into a pretty plum gig.
So when he heard the alarm, he was as gung ho to man the place’s defenses as any of the Raiders whose home it actually was. The Sykos hadn’t been issued any gear yet, so once they were back downstairs, he grabbed a clip for his M249 off the long buffet table before the woman checking out weapons could do anything more than shout doubts about his paternity after him. Then he ran after Fallon and Lilith, who’d been “ladies first”ed and already had new ammo.
The Infecteds were attacking at the same entrance the Sykos had been brought in through. Even before he got there, though, Light could tell something was wrong. Instead of the calm confidence and efficiency that had marked the gate crew when the Sykos arrived, people were rushing around, seemingly aimlessly, their faces tight with worry.
“What’s going on?” he asked a blond man who was running back toward the building, maybe to get reinforcements, maybe to tell Reedley something they didn’t want broadcast over the regular channels.
“Red-eyes. With clubs, using cover. We need snipers.”
Well, that left him out. None of the Sykos were that good with a rifle, except for Antonetti, and Light sincerely doubted hell would give the Italian a furlough just to come back up here and kick some Infected ass.
Still, if it was moving, he could shoot and kill it. Might take a few shots, but it almost always did with Infecteds, so lack of skill wasn’t really a problem.
While Fallon and Lilith stopped to talk to one of Reedley’s lieutenants, Light found an unmanned spot at the wall of vehicles. He loaded the new magazine into place, then surveyed the landscape.
There was a mob of Infecteds coming toward the gate, but they weren’t moving en masse. The larger force held back—out of the range of most of the guns the defenders had, hence the need for snipers—but small groups moved forward, using almost anything for cover. Parked and abandoned cars, trees, saguaros, even low bushes. The Infecteds didn’t really seem to get the concept, though. They were like the kid who closes his eyes and thinks you can’t see him, or stands behind a flagpole and thinks the fact that the pole is between you and him means he’s hidden.
But they’d already demonstrated an ability to evolve, or learn, or something. They were loosely coordinated now, in a way they hadn’t been that first day in the ER. Methodically searching buildings, executing pincer maneuvers, using cover and tools.
And now weapons. Crude ones, to be sure—heavy tree branches, broken broom handles, a baseball bat. One even had a short flagpole, the black POW/MIA flag still attached. He was the first one Light took aim at.
His first shot went wide—through the white head on the flag, nowhere near the head he’d actually been aiming for. He corrected, and the next shot hit the roof of the car the flag bearer’s group of Infecteds was hiding behind. One more correction—and then another, because the Infected moved—and then he fired.
Neck shot. He fired again, took off the Infected’s left ear. The third shot was a direct hit, and for an instant, the POW/MIA flag was black, white, and red. And then it and the Infected disappeared behind the car and didn’t reappear.
“What are you doing?” one of the gate guards yelled at him.
“What you apparently won’t,” he replied without bothering to look at his questioner.
“You’re wasting ammunition! The snipers could have taken out five Red-eyes with as many shots as you took.”
“Snipers aren’t here, are they? And while you hold off, waiting for them, they”—he nodded toward the Infecteds—“are getting closer.” He moved the barrel of his machine gun a few inches to the left, and fired. The side of another Infected’s head exploded in a crimson shower. “Making sure they don’t keep doing that is worth a couple of extra bullets in my book.”
“He’s right.” Fallon’s voice was a welcome intrusion. He’d let the doctor talk sense into the guard while he kept sending the sick to their much-deserved rest. But before she could, another Klaxon sounded, at a slightly less annoying pitch than the last one. “What’s that?” Fallon asked.
“The east side. Infecteds are attacking there, too!”
This time Light did look at the gate guard, who’d gone white with fear. The gate guard looked back at him, seemed to take some strength from the Syko’s continued calm, and took a deep breath.
“Waste all the ammo you need to. Just take those bastards out!”
He turned and started giving orders to the others assembled, which now included all the Sykos aside from Light and Fallon, who were already at the wall.
“Attacking on two fronts at once?” Fallon asked, shaking her head worriedly. “This isn’t good.”
“None of it is,” Light replied with a shrug, “but it doesn’t change anything. Smart or dumb, we kill ’em if they get in our way.”
Fallon nodded.
“You’re right. Again.” Then she smiled. “Let’s do what the man said and take some of those bastards out.”
A third, different alarm sounded while the Sykos and the others at the gate played Shooting Gallery with the Infecteds, and Light glanced over at the gate guard, who’d taken up position next to him.
“Another front?”
The guard nodded, not taking his eyes off the scope of his rifle. On the other side of him, one of the much-vaunted snipers had arrived to bat cleanup. There were only a few Infecteds left now, at least at this gate, and it had become a matter of figuring out how to entice them out from behind their cover so fifty people could shoot at them at once. Light was surprised they hadn’t yet learned the concept of “retreat” from this battle, but he suspected the next batch would probably have it down pat.
The last Infected shifted out of the cover of another car. Light had taken the guard’s words to heart and shifted the weapon out of the single-shot mode. He fired a burst, and his rounds hit it first, followed by two dozen more. By the time the gunfire stopped, all that was left was what looked like dress blues, stuffed and flopped over the hood of the car. Everything else was shredded flesh and splattered blood. He turned to Fallon, whose own bullet had been one of the twenty-five, but who looked sick because of it. Whereas he felt nothing but satisfaction.
“You okay, Fallon?” he asked.
“Just thinking about Gino.”
Ah. Light had finally figured out that the object the Italian had given her before throwing himself into the volcano had been Paolo’s dog tags. The uniform had no doubt brought him to mind. He was the first Syko to be lost—though probably not the last—and Light figured Fallon must be taking it as a personal failure. She was the one who’d agreed to use him when she’d learned Paolo—her first choice—was dead. She probably felt guilty, and maybe sad, though seeing as the brain structure she shared with him tended to decrease—or obliterate—empathy, he wasn’t sure of anything beyond the failure bit. Brains were tricky things, after all.
“Who’s Gino?”
It was the gate guard. Fallon had been unconsciously touching the metal chain she wore around her neck—Paolo’s dog tags—as she spoke, but now she pulled her hand away, maybe a little too quickly.
“One of our guys. We lost him just before we met Kayleigh and Danny.”
The guard’s eyes lingered on Fallon’s neck so long, Light began to wonder if he had some sort of vampire fetish. Then he spoke.
“Reedley gave you guys a pass because you stole those uniforms, but that guy out there?” He indicated the dead Infected, who Light was sure now had been a Marine, probably home on leave, glad to be somewhere safe, never realizing he was in far more danger here than he’d ever been in over in the sandbox. “Reedley would have shot him first. He hates the government—is convinced that they’re the ones behind this apocalypse. So if he thought you guys were actually military—even just reservists—he’d wrap you all up and throw you out as bait for the Red-eyes.”
“We’re not,” Fallon said—too quickly again, in Light’s opinion. “What we said about the uniforms is the truth. We’re no more government agents than you are.”
The guard didn’t look entirely convinced, but he also didn’t look like he was about to tattle, so Light decided he could probably let the guy live. For now.
“For your sakes, I hope it is the truth. No skin off my back either way though I did have a sister in the Corps.”
“Did?” Fallon asked. “What happened to her?”
“Reedley.”
“Oh.”
“So if you were actually grunts, you’d probably want to take care to hide that fact. Just saying.”
“Understood,” Fallon said. “And I’m sorry about your sister.”
The guard shrugged, but Light noticed his eyes had gone hard, like frozen flint. “She pushed our grandmother down when we were running from some Red-eyes, before we got here. They stopped chasing us to eat her. Nana, I mean—the woman who gave up everything to raise us. So much for ‘honor, courage, commitment.’ ” His lips twisted, and he laughed bitterly. “Selfish bitch got what she deserved even if she was my sister. I only wish it would have lasted longer.”
One of Reedley’s lieutenants called him away then, and he nodded to Light and Fallon before he left. Fallon turned to look at Light.
“Warning, or threat?”
Light laughed.
“Fallon, we’re psychopaths. We face nothing but threats—you know that. They’re just a little more likely to actually kill us in the zone.”