Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

“We’re going to have company real, real soon.”

“My orders were to do it right .”

“Contact!” Ramirez said.

Muldoon grabbed the binoculars. “What you got?”

“A whole lot of Nasty Girls, Sergeant.”

He brought the view into focus. Visibility was poor. Smoke drifted like fog across the highway from fires burning on the other side of the reservoir. A column of vehicles and soldiers emerged from the haze. Humvees. Five-tons belching exhaust. Bands of infantry hoofing it.

No armor. Good.

Still, it was going to be a close thing.

He raised the binoculars again.

A swarm of Klowns emerged from the trees next to the highway. The usual freak show of ragged clothes, self-mutilations, homemade weapons, grisly trophies and naked captives on leashes. They raced across the southbound lanes toward the National Guard.

Come on! Muldoon wanted to scream at the Guard. They’re coming right at you!

They did nothing. They didn’t even appear to notice the Klowns.

Ramirez shook his head. “What the hell are they doing?”

You’re about to be attacked, you idiots! Fire! Fire!

The Klowns ran straight at the Guard and fell into step with the column.

Muldoon felt the blood drain from his face.

Aw, shit.

Muldoon radioed to base and requested an airstrike. The Apaches were engaged in the west. They’d get there in thirty minutes. He didn’t have thirty minutes. He terminated contact and considered his options while his squad watched him anxiously.

Donald gave him a thumbs-up. “Good to go, Sergeant!”

Apparently, the engineer didn’t have a problem cutting corners when two companies of heavily armed, homicidal maniacs were rolling up the road.

“Hooah, sir,” Muldoon said.

They could blow the road and leave. Mission accomplished. The National Guard would be slowed, and the battalion could get out of Dodge. Then Lee would send a few whirlybirds to put the Klowns out of their misery with a little precision-guided whoopass.

Only that wouldn’t happen. Lee wouldn’t spend the fuel and ordnance. He’d be totally focused on getting the battalion to Fort Drum in one piece. And that would leave two companies of infected soldiers free to wreak havoc on what was left of the Greater Boston area. Muldoon couldn’t stomach that idea.

Brock had real problems on his hands. He wasn’t going to stop Tenth Mountain from leaving the state. He apparently didn’t have enough force available to even try. When the man threatened Lee, he’d been bluffing, hoping to deter him. As if anything deterred Lee.

It was all on Muldoon. He had nine shooters plus the engineers, three Humvees with two fifty-cals, a Mark 19 grenade launcher and some explosives. It was like a puzzle. The trick was making all the pieces fit so they added up to the annihilation of two hundred infected soldiers.

“What are we going to do, Sergeant?” Ramirez asked.

His little command could put a dent in the opposition force, sure, just before it got slaughtered. Those men down the road had all the weapons and training they had before the virus got them. They were organized. The Klowns were working together in large groups. They could maybe even strategize.

“Sergeant?”

There was one thing the Klowns didn’t have, which was any interest in force protection. They didn’t care if they were killed or if their unit was destroyed. All they cared about was getting to the party. That was what made them so tough, but also, under the right circumstances, weak.

He grinned. His men relaxed and grinned back.

Muldoon said, “We’re going to fuck them up.”

They drove fast. Gray grit his teeth and yanked the wheel. The car wove through mobs of infected, past scenes of madness and savagery. The Klowns turned and acknowledged them with the delighted surprise of seeing old friends.

Wade looked behind them. The crazies chased them in a laughing stampede. Ahead, men on ladders were busy crucifying a cop to a telephone pole.

“Problem,” Gray said.

Rawlings glared at the back of his head as if looks could kill.

“Jesus Christ,” Fisher said. “What the hell now?”

“Gas,” Gray barked. “We’re on the reserve tank.”

“We’re not far from Hanscom,” Wade pointed out. “Maybe a mile.”

“Might as well be a hundred,” Fisher said.

The car sputtered.

Gray pounded the wheel. “End of the road.”

They were on a residential street lined with abandoned cars and broken glass. They got out and stared at the flood of laughing maniacs pouring up the road. Nobody gave the order. They knew what to do. They started firing.

The carbines threw rounds downrange into the mob. Crazies dropped and were trampled by their fellows. Gray’s grenade launcher thumped. The grenade burst in their midst, sending bodies flying through a cloud of smoke.

“Bounding!” Gray shouted and took off.

Fisher stopped firing. He looked down at his weapon and released the empty magazine. “Shit, I’m out!”

“Move!” Wade shouted.

“Bounding!” Fisher ran.

The mob was getting closer by the second.

Rawlings shoved him. “Go! I’ll cover forward!”

No time to argue. He went, hobbling as fast as his ankle would take him.

Gray and Fisher had stopped behind an SUV lying on its side in a pile of glass in the middle of the street. Wade turned. He didn’t see Rawlings.

Gray pumped another grenade into his launcher and fired. “Come on, Wade!”

“I don’t see her!” Then he heard it—gunfire from one of the buildings. Rawlings was leading them off.

Fisher was already running. Gray tossed a smoke grenade onto the street. He grabbed the back of Wade’s blouse and pulled him along.

They stopped after a hundred meters, gasping for air, and looked behind them. None of the Klowns had followed them through the smoke.

“I don’t see Rawlings,” Wade said. He wanted to scream it.

Thunder rumbled ahead of them, the steady boom of gunfire. Hanscom.

“Let’s stay focused here,” Gray said. “We’re not home yet.”

“Fuck you!” Wade shouted. “You killed her. Just like you killed the others.”

Gray spit on the ground. “I didn’t kill anybody, and you know it.”

“If you’d listened to her, we might be out of this already.”

“She wasn’t one of us, Wade.”

Wade glared at him. He’d never wanted to kill anybody so badly in his life.

“Hey, guys!” Fisher called from ahead. He whooped. “Check it out!”

Gray turned and walked off. Wade limped after him. At the top of the rise, they saw Hanscom.

Hundreds of infected ran through the smoke surrounding the compound walls. Machine guns hammered from sandbag positions. In the guard towers, the Mark 19s thumped. Across the Hescos, the lightfighters propped their weapons and kept the fire hot.

“How do we get back to base?” Gray asked. “What do you think?”

Wade laughed. “I think it’s beautiful.”

Gray turned and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

Wade smiled.

The Klown army ambled down the road. They grinned like wolves, hunting, always hunting. They saw the flare pop in the murky sky. They drooled at the sight.

Bullets pinged off the road. Men tumbled laughing to the ground. The infected looked around and saw the Humvee on the road, its fifty-cal rocking. Tracer rounds flashed in their eyes. The Humvee pulled a U-turn and sped off down the highway. The Klowns gave chase. The vehicles pulled ahead of the infantry, who jogged along, grinning at the prospect of fresh meat.