Scott Sigler - Pandemic

He felt blood pouring down.

Fifteen meters back, Roth managed to get to his knees before the horde descended upon him. A muscle-monster drove a bone-blade straight into his back. Paulius heard Roth’s final scream, then the man vanished beneath a swinging flurry of knives, axes and lead pipes.

The water cannon’s powerful stream slowed — what had been a steady, straight blast now curved down, the landing spot quickly growing closer as the pressure faded.

“Shit,” Clarence said. “We’re empty.”

The truck suddenly started to wobble left and right, wobble hard .

Paulius heard another new noise. Over the grinding engine, over the sound of metal scraping pavement, and over the ravaged vehicle’s broken rattle each time it hit a bump, he could just make out the thumpa-thumpa of rotor blades.

And also, something else…

The roar of motorcycles.

Steve Stanton’s biker gang rolled to a stop at the T-intersection of North Avenue and North State Parkway. The park — flat and green, dotted with snow-covered, leafless trees — lay behind them. The wind had finally died down. It was turning into a beautiful day.

There were five motorcycles now: the four he’d started with, plus one man who’d brought a Stinger missile from downtown.

One block south on North Parkway, a shattered fire engine shivered its way toward them. How was that thing even moving? The windshield had so many splintered holes it looked white rather than clear. Torn metal lined the bottom where a bumper had once been. No grille, just a squarish, black hole with an oddly bent dead man jammed into it.

The thing wobbled, left-right, left-right. Shredded tires flapped visibly.

Steve pointed at one of his bulls.

“You, go kill the driver.”

The yellow-skinned beauty didn’t ask questions, it just sprinted down the street on impossibly thick legs.

Steve looked at the others. He made a cutting motion at his throat.

“Kill the bikes,” he said. “Get that Stinger ready. Let’s finish this thing.”

The bulls did as they were told.

When the last motorcycle’s gurgle died away, Steve heard something else.

He turned to look back.

Since his conversion, he hadn’t felt fear. Not once. That emotion swept over him now — not even fifty meters away he saw a helicopter coming in just over the park’s sparse trees. He thought back to that girl in his office, the one who said the helicopters she saw “looked mean.” Now Steve understood what she meant.

“Well, shit,” he said, then he felt strong hands wrap around his waist and roughly pull him to the right.

The Apache pilot made a judgment call. Those were monsters standing at the park’s edge… genuine, straight-from-a-nightmare monsters . They were the bad guys. Ergo, anyone standing side by side with monsters was a bad guy as well.

Five men, five motorcycles, four monsters.

“Light ’em up,” he told his gunner.

From inside the helicopter, the Apache’s M230 chain gun sounded like a staccato, three-second roll on a toy snare drum.

Thirty-millimeter rounds tore into flesh, metal, grass and concrete, kicking up chunks of dirt, puffs of blood and flashing clouds of smoke. All targets dropped. The pilot saw a monster running right, carrying a small man in his arms. The pilot started to call out the target, but one of the fallen men rose to his knees, struggled to bring a long tube up on his shoulder.

“SAM,” the pilot said.

Another three-second drum roll answered.

The man didn’t drop so much as he disintegrated .

“SAM neutralized,” the pilot said. “New target running right, get him.”

“Tracking,” the gunner said, but it was too late — the monster dove through the window of a gothic, white-stone apartment building.

The pilot looked down the road, to the approaching fire engine. Another monster there, rushing headlong toward the battered vehicle. The creature was too close to it: chain gun fire would also hit the truck.

The Apache pilot slowed to a stop and hovered, just thirty feet above the park.

“Wait for targets of opportunity,” he said. “Be careful, we can’t hit our people.”

“Affirmative,” the gunner said. “Should we elevate and hit that mob chasing them?”

“Negative,” the pilot said. “Those assholes are already taken care of.”

Fire Engine 98 vibrated as if it was driving on an endless road of deep potholes. The motor finally died. The truck rumbled along on momentum alone.

Clarence heard the newly energized roar of the trailing mob — they saw their opportunity to finish the task.

He turned to look forward. Ahead, clouds of smoke floated up from shredded bodies and mangled motorcycles. A yellow-skinned behemoth rushed straight for them.

“Klimas, your knife!”

The SEAL offered it up handle-first. Clarence took it, saw that Klimas had a blood-covered hand pressed hard against the side of his neck.

“Tim! Help Klimas!”

Clarence felt the cabin shudder from impact, heard the crunch of breaking glass, the deep-throated growl of a monster and the scream of a man.

He slid up and onto the cabin’s roof, hands and legs spread wide to try to stay on the still-lurching vehicle. He slid forward across the slick, eight-foot-long, bullet-ridden surface.

Clarence looked up in time to see the engine bearing down on the motorcycles, the bodies and the sidewalk and park just beyond them. The truck ground over the obstacles, hitting so hard the cab bounced up, throwing him into the air. He came down hard, face smacking against the pockmarked metal. The knife flew from his hand.

The truck’s front end plowed into the snow and dirt and grass… the knife skittered across the roof… Clarence pushed forward. The knife slid off the cabin’s edge… Clarence reached out and down.

He caught it.

Half hanging over the roof, he looked into the cabin, saw a broad, yellowish back on top of concave spider-webbed glass, and the flailing, bloody hands of the man trapped beneath.

Fire Engine 98 finally rolled to a stop.

Clarence raised the Ka-Bar knife high. He plunged it down into the monster’s neck.

The thing barked out a noise of confusion, surprise and pain, a single syllable that could have been a question mark. It reared up hard and fast, its head crunching into the cabin roof right below Clarence’s waist, knocking Clarence up and forward and off — the frozen ground came up fast and smacked him in the face.

Cooper Mitchell had stillbeen facing out the back of the truck and flipping off the horde when Engine 98 hit the motorcycles and the sidewalk curb. The truck had decelerated quite suddenly — Cooper had not. He’d flown across the truck’s bed, stopping only when his head smashed into the water cannon’s metal post.

Tim’s hands pressed onKlimas’s neck. To his right, Cooper rolled weakly, clutching the back of his head, face screwed up tight.

“Mitchell, get up ,” Tim said. “The helicopters are here!”

Tim heard the roar of a crowd; he looked back — the horde was rushing in, weapons held high, blades glinting in the morning sun. Not even fifty meters away and closing fast.

He took his hands off Klimas’s neck, slid one arm under the man’s legs, the other behind his back. There wasn’t time to do things right. Tim pushed up as hard as he could, groaning with effort as he tried to lift the heavy man onto the equipment boxes and dump him over the edge.

The horde closed in. They could see the red truck that they had chased across the city, now just fifty yards away. So close… so close . The humans had sprayed them with water. Such a strange thing to do, but the Chosen would dry out soon enough.