Pandemic(45)
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.”
THIRTY-NINE.
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.