7 hours
Light’s ears were still ringing from the multiple blasts as he picked himself up off the pavement. Bits of flaming cloth and paper floated down through the air like a rain of fireflies. He grabbed the M4 that had skidded across the pavement when the concussive force of the Hellfire missiles striking their targets had lifted him and the other Sykos off the ground and thrown them a good ten feet.
He turned to look at those targets. Several gaping holes in the asphalt looked back at him, filled with what remained of a hundred or more Infecteds. Some of the body parts there and on the street were still aflame, adding to the surreal hellishness of the scene, and the stench was nearly overpowering. Other Infecteds, no longer whole but not quite dead, writhed around on the pavement, still moaning their eerie syllables.
“ . . . ane-j . . . ane-ja . . .”
God, were they calling for some sort of angel? What sort of post-Rapture apocalypse had he wandered into, anyway?
Then he smiled. If they were calling for him, a government-sponsored angel of death, he’d be more than happy to answer.
Houses on either side of the street were starting to burn, as were a few of the cars. Landscaping was catching fire, and the burning foliage only added to the dreamlike quality of the situation, as though he’d wandered into the nightmare of some unrepentant atheist on his deathbed, whose worst fear was that he’d been wrong the whole time.
The other Sykos were standing now, too, observing the aftermath of Book’s missile strike.
“Not bad shooting for a bookworm,” Light said, and Fallon chuckled.
Then the Infecteds who were still standing noticed them and started in their direction. More poured into the street behind those, too far back to have been injured by the missiles. Not the hundreds the Sykos were facing before, but still more than the four of them could handle.
“Here we go again,” Fallon said, looking around. They were almost back to the basin. She pointed at the house to the north. “We’re never going to get there using the street. Let’s see if they’re as good at chasing us when there are more obstacles in their way.”
“Parkour!” Lilith exclaimed excitedly, a little girl getting that coveted dollhouse at Christmas. Only in her case, Light decided, it had probably been a toy gun.
“Whatever it takes,” Fallon replied. “Let’s go!”
She sprinted toward the house she’d indicated—its roof was starting to smolder—and Light was right on her heels, with Lilith and Sansome on his. They darted in between the house and its neighbor, shoving through a gate to the backyard. As they ran through, he and Sansome paused to pull the black trash and blue recycling bins over to block the gate. It wouldn’t hold the Infecteds back for long, but every little bit helped.
They skirted the pool and reached the back wall, the ubiquitous cinder-block property divider that could be found everywhere in the Valley, like some sort of uniting force. Different races, different socioeconomic statuses, same walls. Light thought there was probably something profound about that, but right now all he cared about was scaling the damned thing.
Fallon bent and made a basket with her hands that Lilith stepped into. The girl scrambled up the wall, where she waited, grasping on to the overhanging branches of the neighbor’s orange tree. Sansome boosted Fallon up the same way, then did the same for Light, with the two women helping to pull him up.
Then it was Sansome’s turn. But even with the three other Sykos pulling from the top of the wall, they couldn’t get him up. As they were trying to figure out some way to lift him, a crash across the yard made them all look.
The Infecteds were at the gate, pushing their way through the bins.
“Shit!” Fallon said.
Light agreed, looking down into the next yard. Then he let go of Sansome’s arm and jumped down.
“What the hell are you doing?” Fallon’s voice was surprised and suspicious. She probably thought he was going to cut and run. She was partially right, though that running wouldn’t occur until a more auspicious opportunity presented itself.
He pulled out his knife and crossed over to a large sycamore tree that boasted a tire swing. He climbed up into the tree—a feat made easy by the board ladder nailed into its trunk, leading to a wooden platform from which a small hand dangled—and shimmied out onto the branch the swing was tied to. He cut the rope, put the knife in his teeth, and grabbed the branch, lowering himself until his arms were fully extended and he was hanging there like a piece of ripe fruit ready to be plucked. Then he let go of the branch, landing badly on his left ankle.
Dammit!
He could immediately tell it was a sprain, not a break, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Still, he powered through the pain, slicing the other end of the rope where it was attached to the tire, sticking the knife through a loop on his pants, then hurrying back to the tree where the others waited as fast as his injured ankle would allow.
“Here!”
He threw one end of the rope up, and Fallon caught it, immediately understanding his intent. She leaned over and tied it to the trunk of the orange tree, then pulled the other end up and flipped it over the wall so Sansome could use it to climb.
Light could hear the other man grunting and the women urging him on. He heard a small cry of pain, then Sansome was on top of the wall, and Fallon was pulling the rope up and over to their side. Sansome went down first, stepping away from the rope gingerly. Light saw a gash along the back of his right calf and realized one of the Infecteds must have tried to stab the big man.
Damn but those fuckers are getting smart, he thought as he moved over to examine Sansome’s wound. Lilith was on the ground now, and Fallon was just starting down the rope when a sharp crack echoed between the houses. Light looked up, expecting one of his companions to have fired on an Infected in this yard. Instead, Fallon climbed awkwardly down the rope, one hand clutched to the opposite forearm. She looked at the others grimly, showing her own wound.
“They have guns, and these ones know how to use them.”
“We’re fucked up the—” Lilith began, but Fallon cut her off.
“We are if we don’t keep moving. Come on.”
Light had determined that Sansome’s cut was mostly superficial and didn’t need treatment, but Fallon waved him away when he tried to examine her.
“Through-and-through. I’ll be fine.”
Light shrugged. No skin off his nose.
She started off toward the front of the house, dodging small cactuses and other overgrown pokey things Light couldn’t identify.
“The next house over backs up to the Sutter place,” she said, pointing to the left. She was headed to the right of the house, though, because that’s where the gate was. “If we can come in from the back, maybe we’ll have a better chance of getting close to the meteor.”
“Or getting killed faster,” Lilith said, but everyone ignored her this time.
As Fallon unlatched the gate and started to pull it open, several bloody hands reached through.
“Shit! Help me get this closed!”
Sansome and Light shoved their shoulders up against the gate so she could relatch it. Then Sansome boosted Lilith up so she could tell them how many were over there. A shot rang out, narrowly missing her head. When Sansome lowered her back to the ground, she was pale.
“That gate’s not going to hold. There’s easily a hundred of them, and more coming.”
“Climb the wall into the yard by the Sutter place?” Light asked.
Fallon nodded. “Let’s go.”
But when they turned back, they saw that the Infecteds on the other side of the wall they’d scaled had figured out how to get over it—from watching the Sykos do it?—and were starting to pour over the cinder-block divider.
“Plan B?” Light asked.
Fallon looked around, saw a door.
“The garage! If we can get in, maybe we can get a vehicle started and get out that way.”
She hurried over to it, tried the door.
Locked.
“Dammit!”
“Here, let me.”
It was the first thing Sansome had said in a while, and everyone looked at him questioningly. He motioned for Fallon to step aside.
“Give me a jolt with that ‘My-Ad’ thing.”
“What? I—”
Whatever Fallon had been going to say was drowned out by the sound of wood cracking. The gate was about to give.
Without another word, she pulled the device out, adjusted some setting or other, and zapped Sansome with it. He face got red, and he bared his teeth like a rabid honey badger. Then he turned to the door and rammed it as hard as he could with his shoulder.
Nothing.
Again, with a growl this time, denting the door.
A third time, with a primal scream, and the door flew off its hinges, striking the vehicle in the garage and bouncing off it to land at Sansome’s feet. Then he stepped aside and waved them in, a strained smile on his face. Light recognized that look—it was the expression you made when you really wanted to kill someone but couldn’t.
The vehicle was a white Cadillac Escalade, backed into the garage and big enough to hold all of them.
And to act as an Infected bulldozer.
“Keys?”
They look around for a key rack, but saw nothing.
Fallon looked at Sansome.
“Can you hotwire it?”
Sansome’s hands trembled uncontrollably, like a Parkinson’s patient’s. “I could’ve before, but not now. Your thing has me too juiced up.” Not just that, Light speculated. Multiple serious injuries to his face, then the accident, that slash in his calf—it’s a wonder the guy can still function at all.
Light walked over to the driver’s side door, intending to try to hotwire it himself. How hard could it be? And what other option did they have? He didn’t want to make his last stand with a rake and trowel.
The windows were tinted, so he was as surprised as anyone when he opened the door and a body and a gun tumbled out. A woman, dressed in an upscale business suit and wearing enough bling on her fingers to finance a small Central American country. With a hole in the center of her forehead.
“Well, that’s one way to go,” Light commented, reaching over her and quickly rummaging through the purse sitting on the passenger seat. He found the keys, turned around to display them triumphantly to the others. “Lilith! Behind you!”
An Infected was standing in the doorway—an old man with a long white beard, bad teeth, and an ancient revolver pointed straight at the girl.
Lilith reacted first, squeezing the trigger of her M4 and filling the old-timer full of holes. When he fell, another appeared behind him, and Lilith shot that one, too. Then they all piled into the Escalade, shutting and locking the doors as more Infecteds appeared in the doorway.
Light looked at Fallon, and she nodded. He started the SUV, put it in gear, and hit the gas—heading straight for the garage door.