Monster Nation(49)

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.





Monster Nation





Chapter Fifteen


There are too many of them, Archie. No, I don't mean' there are more of them than we thought, than our, our models showed. I'm talking about your computer model, the one you' it's like they're multiplying, reproducing but' Yeah. That's exactly what I mean. It's time for Warlock Green to come out of the closet. [Telephone conversation between the Adjutant General of the Colorado National Guard and an undisclosed second party, 4/4/05]

A hazy cobweb of vapor trails filled the big sky over Cherry Creek, left behind by planes and helicopters full of refugees headed in every possible direction. The aircraft were all gone but they left their tracks behind.

There were more infected coming up Third Avenue from the country club. Maybe two dozen. Clark gestured for the nearest squad to handle them, then spun around when someone behind him shouted 'Target spotted, in that window!'

'Somebody kill that motherf*cker for me already!' Horrocks screamed, his eyes huge and white. A squad of soldiers carrying M4s broke off to assault the entrance to a copy shop with wide windows overlooking Fillmore Street. A young man in a blue apron was in there pressed up against the glass, his hands white blobs against the window, the muscles of his face completely slack. Like something stuck to the wall of an aquarium. One of his cheeks was dark with torn skin and dried blood.

Clark backed up against the side of the HEMTT and reloaded his sidearm. It had been a long, haunting night and it just kept getting worse. He thought about countermanding the order'the infected boy wasn't a danger to anybody stuck inside that store. It would demoralize the troops though to leave even one of the cannibals standing.

Keeping morale alive was pretty much all Clark could hope to accomplish. For every one of the infected they cut down ten more seemed to appear out of thin air. They were making no progress at all toward their stated objectives.

'Come on, come on, let's not lose the operational tempo here,' Horrocks insisted.

The soldiers were still crisp, still professional. Maybe it was only Clark who was wilting after a night of violence and cold food and no sleep. They kicked the boy away from the window and butchered him and were back to the HEMTT inside of sixty seconds. On the roof of the big truck a crew-served M249 kept them covered the whole time.

The HEMTT was full of scared survivors, people they'd picked up along the way. Every time one of the troops discharged a weapon a collective moan of shock billowed out of the back. The sound got on Clark's nerves'he felt guilty enough already, he didn't need the infernal howling of the survivors to remind him he was slaughtering innocent civilians.

'Comms,' Clark called out and a specialist with a satellite cell phone came duck-walking up to him. Keeping low, just like she'd been trained'it made it less easy for a sniper to hit her. Nobody was shooting at them in Denver but she'd had proper cover procedure drilled into her so hard it stuck. She knelt down by the side of the truck with Clark and threw him a salute. 'What do we have?' he asked. 'Did you get through to the Adjutant General?'