Chapter Fourteen
The I-25 Corridor is completely backed up, all the way to the Tech Center, it looks like there was a multi-car pileup somewhere down there—please, once again we have to urge everyone not to try to get out of the city by car, it will only increase the chaos. [Traffic Report from Denver’s 7, Special Emergency Bulletin 4/4/05]
A spill of them came up the bed of the Platte, maybe two or maybe three dozen, their feet splashing wildly in the muddy water. Among the dead Clark saw a couple of orange jumpsuits—those would be the original infected prisoners of Florence—but also one or two Battle Dress Uniforms. Military personnel. He raised his pistol but didn’t shoot.
Behind him the platoon sergeant howled at the troops. Chief Horrocks waved his arms like a demon as he urged his soldiers on. “Put your fucking back into that, Mendelsohn! Get some of that 550 cord down here, we need to secure this end.”
Clark lined up his weapon with the forehead of the leading assailant. A woman in a waitress uniform with a nametag that read KRISTI. Her face wide and open and blank. It would take a lot, a complete shift in perspective, to pull the trigger. It had to happen, and soon.
“Come on, come on, you all get lazy since we came home? You been sitting around watchin’ cable, eating Burger King every day? It’s MREs on the menu tonight unless we stop this thing here and now!”
Clark knew better than that. The infected had not stayed together as a unified force against which he could run flanking maneuvers and surgical strikes. They had spread out, thousands of them heading in thousands of directions and everywhere they infected the civilians they found. In a few hours there would be more infected than healthy in Denver. This was a holding action, a way to buy time until the relocation buses were out in convoy, headed for safer climes. Clark lowered his weapon.
“Now now now go go go, move it, move it,” Horrocks boomed and finally, yes—the two lengths of orange detainment netting lifted like the sails of a day-glo ship. They snagged a few of the infected, their clumsy hands snarled up in the plastic but the rest just surged forward, trying to get through the gauntlet the soldiers had erected. They were being funneled straight toward Clark and the ten best shots of the platoon.
Clark raised his weapon again, sighted. Kristi, the waitress... the infected person in the front lifted one hand toward him and she stumbled, going down to her knees in the muddy water.
“We’re a go, sir,” Horrocks bellowed, not ten feet away. “Firing on your order.” The sergeant knew better than to question Clark’s hesitation in shooting but Clark could feel it, a hot, hard stare boring into his back. If he didn’t shoot now he could never ask the men and women of the platoon to follow his orders. If he didn’t fire he would be in direct contradiction of the AG’s standing instruction to shoot on sight.
He lined up the end of his firearm with the woman’s forehead. She was no more than fifteen yards away. She was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister maybe. There were people who loved her and wanted her to recover from this.
“FIGMO,” Clark said. Language unbecoming of the officer’s corps, something he hadn’t said since his time in Vietnam.
Fuck it, got my orders.
“Fire at will,” he said. He squeezed the trigger and the flesh of the woman’s forehead erupted, fragments of bone exploding from her temple. To Clark’s left the marksmen opened up with a sustained volley, the noise rolling around the front range of the mountains, it sounded like to Clark, and echoing on forever.
The President has been moved to a safe location, where he will remain until this is all over. Thank you, that’s all. [White House Press Briefing, 4/4/05]
She heard gravel squealing under Charles’s sneakers, knew he was racing to help her. She started to turn around, to tell him to stop. She didn’t need his help—the dead man wouldn’t attack her, not one of his own kind.
She knew she wouldn’t get the warning out in time.
Charles spun in the gravel beside Nilla even as she reached to push him back. He had his arms twisted around for a nasty punch right to the dead man’s genitals. It connected with a sound like a side of beef being dropped from a height.
The armless dead man didn’t even flinch. Instead he put one bare foot up on the side of the truck and propelled himself into space. Nilla dodged to one side but he wasn’t aiming for her.
“Get him off, get this fucker off me!” Charles wailed as the dead man collided with him, knocking him flat to the road. Nilla grabbed at the dead man’s matted hair to yank his head back and keep him from getting his teeth into Charles’ neck. “Get him off!” Charles screamed again, but Nilla couldn’t hold the dead man, his hair was too greasy and even when she dug her fingers in it just came out with a noise like a zipper opening up. “Get him off!” Charles begged as the teeth sank deep into the fleshy part of his throat. Blood spilled out onto the roadway like a bucket of water being upturned.
Nilla kicked the dead man as hard as she could in the cheek, in the ear, in the eye. She fell down to her knees and pulled with both hands on his vest, on the nubs of bone at the ends of his shoulders. “You don’t want him,” she protested, trying to haul him off of Charles bodily. “You want me,” but she knew it wasn’t true.
“Get him off,” Charles sobbed. “Get… him… off, please.”
Nilla got her shoulder into the narrow gap between the dead man’s chest and Charles’ back and heaved, pushed and pushed, tried to brace her feet against the asphalt for leverage. The armless corpse shifted but not enough—his teeth were chewing at Charles’ skin, digging in deep. Nilla grunted and heaved one last time with all her strength and somehow dislodged the ghoul. She wasted no time yanking Charles up to his feet. With her shoulder in his armpit she hurried him back toward the Toyota. Behind them the corpse staggered up to its knees.
“Just a little further,” Nilla told Charles, her arms around his waist. He clamped both hands against his throat. His legs shook violently and she dragged him for a second until he could get under his own power again. “Just get to the car,” she told him. They were barely moving forward, inching along, Nilla’s slight frame no good at carrying Charles’ weight.
The dead man got one foot up and started rising, only to lose his balance and tumble backwards. Nilla’s mind surged with hope. Just a little further. Just a little…
Charles’ hand fell away from his neck and a pencil-thin jet of blood shot out ahead of him. He wheezed and choked and Nilla shoved one of her own hands against his wound. Her hand was soaked with blood instantly. It started to run down her forearm, into her shirt sleeve.
The corpse rolled back against the pickup truck and levered himself upward on its bumper. This time he ended up on his feet. He began staggering toward them. They had a head start but the dead man stumbled forward faster than Nilla’s dragging pace.
Nilla looked forward again—and nearly collided with the Toyota as it came screeching up to her. In the driver’s seat Shar looked stunned, paralyzed, her fingers white on the wheel, her face narrow and wrinkled with fear.
Behind them the corpse had nearly closed the gap. In a few seconds he would be on them. Nilla let Charles fall across the side of the car and wrenched open the back door. She pushed him inside and jumped in on top of him. She grabbed a bundle of fast food restaurant napkins off the floor of the car—they were filthy and probably covered in germs but it didn’t matter—and stuffed them into the crook of Charles’ neck. She yanked the door closed behind her.
The dead man stumbled up to the side of the car and lurched forward, his face slamming against the window only inches from Nilla’s nose. She fell backwards in terror as the corpse stumbled back for another strike.
“Shar!” Nilla screamed. “Shar! Drive!”
The teenaged girl threw the car into drive just as the armless guy slapped his face against the window a second time. Glass erupted into the car in a green cascade, tiny cubes of safety glass spilling down across Nilla and Charles, bouncing off the car’s upholstery. Nilla spun around as the car lurched forward and saw the corpse standing in the road, his face a blurred distortion of human features. As the car raced away from him he stumbled after it, unable to stop coming for them even though it was hopeless—he would never catch them now.
