Scott Sigler - Contagious

Sunlight. She came out the far side of the underpass before she even knew that it was Clarence who’d pulled her along.

“Margaret, come on !”

Breath locked in her throat; she stumbled, then regained her feet and ran. That put the sound of gunfire behind her.

In front of her, below the next underpass, two cars. A compact and a convertible. Just people looking for a place to hide, probably, but apparently Clarence didn’t want to find out for sure.

“This way!” he yelled, then he turned right and started sprint-climbing up the steep, tree-spotted, snowy-dirt slope. Margaret followed, arms pulling, legs pumping, heart hammering.

A hissing sound from behind.

Then a shattering roar.

She looked back—a ball of fire and smoke billowed out from the underpass, so thick she couldn’t even see the MargoMobiles.

A hand on her ass, pushing her.

“Move!” Daniel said. “They’ve got fucking rockets!”

She scrambled up the hill, knees grinding into the dirt and rocks until she remembered the hazmat suit, and then she ran on feet and hands only. Sharp bits poked through the PVC into her palms and fingers, but she could tape those later. They reached the black fence on top of the incline. Her gloved fingers clawed at the rubber-coated chain-link, and she swung over the top before she even knew what she was doing.

More gunshots from behind. Things whizzing past her head.

Daniel crying out.

Margaret pushed off the fence and hit the ground hard. She stood and looked around. White building, Ford dealership. Behind her, the fence, behind that… Daniel, rolling limply back down the incline.

Clarence’s hard grip on her wrist again. “Move!”

They ran away from the dealership and into an eight-lane road choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. No buildings on the other side of the street—an empty lot to the left and a parking lot to the right. Some people were looking out of their car windows, but most had heard the explosion or seen the rising smoke and were already abandoning their vehicles, sprinting for cover anywhere they could find it.

Margaret finally regained her balance and yanked her hand away from Clarence.

“Just go. I’ll keep up. What about Gitsh and Marcus?”

“Dead,” Clarence said. “And Dan took a round in the head. He’s gone.”

They skirted cars and ran into the half-empty parking lot ringed with trees growing up through the asphalt. On the far side, they hopped a smaller fence and found themselves on a cobblestone street, old bricks bumping under the soles of their thick biohazard boots. Two blocks straight ahead, across yet more tree-dotted, wreckage-strewn vacant lots, she saw an abandoned three-story brick building. Faded white letters on faded blue paint at the top of the building spelled out GLOBE TRADING COMPANY. She started toward it, then stopped when Clarence again grabbed her.

“No, don’t,” he said. “Look at the bottom there, by the corner.”

She did and saw two men in army uniforms running out of the building. A second later, two more.

“They have men stationed in there,” Clarence said. “That’s their fucking headquarters for all we know. We gotta get out of here. Come on!”

People ran in all directions. It wasn’t the screaming sprint of a monster movie, but rather silent running, people moving fast in a half-crouch, looking every which way for the next threat. Margaret and Clarence must have appeared to be such a threat, because one glance at them sent people running the opposite way.

Margaret and Clarence ran left down the old brick road, putting the abandoned lot and the Globe building beyond it on their right. She heard gunfire behind her again—the men who’d killed Gitsh, Marcus, and Dr. Dan, they were giving chase. Shit-shit- shit, was this how her life would end? A bullet in the back?

The road changed from bumpy brick to bumpy pavement. On their right a red brick building, one story, loading-dock doors open. Clarence aimed for it.

Margaret was already exhausted. “Where are we going ?”

“Away from the bullets.” Clarence stopped at the loading dock, lifted her by her waist and set her on the ledge, then hopped up behind her.

“Just run, Margo. We have to find a place to hide or we’re dead.”

The convoy roared down I-75. Three Humvees, followed by two M939 five-ton troop trucks, followed by two more Humvees. With that much heavy vehicle ripping along at ninety miles an hour, cars just got the hell out of the left lane and let the convoy roar by. Farmland spread out on either side, snow covering the broken remnants of last year’s crops. Beyond the fields, rows of trees, at least a quarter mile from the highway. Beautiful scenery.

Corporal Cope rode in the third Hummer, feeling his connection with God. Soon they would see the glorious gateway and, God willing, would be there when the angels came through.

God, it seemed, was not willing.

The lead Humvee suddenly morphed from a hardy piece of military gear into an orange blossom of fire, spewing bits of metal and body parts all over the highway. The explosion engulfed a slow-moving VW Beetle in the right lane, and sent part of a rear axle through the windshield of the Ford Explorer directly behind it.

The second Humvee swerved to the right, around both the suddenly tumbling Explorer and the newly burning Beetle. The Hummer driver showed amazing reaction time, but at ninety miles an hour the heavy vehicle quickly lost traction. Its rear end fishtailed, making it almost perpendicular with the road when the wheels dug in and it flipped violently, barrel-rolling into the ditch. Cope saw a freeze-frame image of a man thrown free, already missing an arm and part of a leg.

Cope’s driver swerved into the left shoulder, past the still-moving, burning wreck of the lead Hummer. If this had been Iraq, with insurgent-launched rockets raining down from rooftops, hitting the gas would have been the right thing to do. But this wasn’t Iraq, and here hitting the gas just made Cope’s Hummer the lead vehicle—the primary target.

“Stop this thing!” Cope shouted at his driver. “We’re sitting ducks!”

The Hummer’s brakes hit hard, throwing Cope forward.

“Go-go-go!” Cope screamed. “Get to cover!”

He jumped out the passenger door and started sprinting. He looked up at the sky to see what was killing his people. Apache Longbow attack helicopters. Compact, dark shapes, like flying tanks with that signature radar dome sticking up above the blurring rotor blades.

He was in some deep shit.

As he ran off the pavement and onto the right shoulder, he looked back to his Hummer. Private Bates hadn’t jumped out. Instead, Bates had turned the M249 turret, trying to return fire. The man didn’t even have time to pull the trigger before a Hellfire missile slammed home. The Hummer erupted in a semi-trailer-size fireball. The blast threw Cope into the ditch on the side of the road. He hit hard, but adrenaline drove him on—he scrambled to his feet and up the five-foot-high slope of the ditch’s far side.

In front of him, a snow-covered cornfield, irregular white spotted with knee-high, rotting-yellow stalks. At least a hundred yards to the trees.

Cope snapped another quick look around him. A few soldiers were sprinting across the fields, headed for the woods. On the road behind him, tall black columns of smoke rose into the air. Five Hummers, two trucks, all destroyed. Looked more like the road to Baghdad than a Michigan highway.

All this open space. If the Apaches’ pilots couldn’t see him in the afternoon sun, they’d just lock on with infrared targeting—a soldier’s body heat stood out clearly against frozen ground.