Monster Nation(54)

Motion on the edge of his vision startled him back to focus. More of them'how? How had the pathogen spread so quickly? Clark was sick of asking himself that question but he was constantly confronted with new variations on the theme. How did this start? What enemy, what nation, what terrorist faction would let this happen? He fired again and a naked woman spun off her feet and landed in a heap. He lined up his next shot and pierced her cranium.

He was putting them out of misery, he told himself. Yes, they were sick people. Yes, they were citizens of the United States. But if the pathogen spread this quickly there just weren't enough doctors to treat them all. Especially since half the doctors in the country were probably already infected themselves.

He had his orders, but never in his life had that been enough. He'd always wanted to know how things worked, and why.

'Chief, do you think we can just ram through this?' he asked, his voice low. He was allowed to ask his sergeant questions but it was better if the troops didn't hear.

Horrocks spat noisily. 'They'll get stuck in the wheels. We'll get bogged down and eventually we'll run out of ammo, sir.'

'I was afraid you'd say that. Open me up an escape corridor. We need to reinforce that Stryker group. Get the men on the truck, the, the men and the women.' He wasn't fresh. That was all. Normally he would never have made such a mistake but he had been too long without sleep or real food. 'Get the troops onboard, and clear me a path with the SAW, with the small arms, whatever we have.'

'Sir, yes, sir!' Horrocks shouted and made it happen. The SAW crew on the roof of the HEMTT opened up with an unholy rattle and the infected fell before the truck like corn at the harvest. The troops clinging to the sides and top of the vehicle slaughtered anything that tried to get into the gap the SAW made. The driver got them moving, both arms clutched around the steering wheel as the HEMTT drove up and over the pile of bodies and they popped through the crowd like a cork out of a champagne bottle. In under sixty seconds they were spinning out on a perfectly manicured golf course, fighting to keep traction.

The infected came at them from behind but Squad Three kept them at a distance with harassing fire. On the grass the driver opened up his throttle and they raced over and through bunkers and greens. Clark could see the Strykers up ahead. He counted three vehicles. There should have been five. One of the light urban warfare tanks looked badly damaged as well. They had been parked in a triangular formation that allowed the group to cover enemy action from any angle. The golf course around the armored vehicles was pockmarked with dark, smoking craters and Clark saw civilians, perhaps seventy-five of them and many badly wounded, huddled inside the loose perimeter. Added to the shell-shocked survivors in the back of the HEMTT that made nearly a hundred.

There had been two and a half million people in Denver, once.

One of the Strykers deployed a spread of grenades from a roof-mounted MK-19 and smoke and fire tore through a stand of trees, shattering the wood and sending clouds of leaves twirling down through the air. As they pulled up to the Stryker group Clark heard the vehicles' .50 caliber machine guns roaring in tight, controlled bursts, chopping down clusters of the infected as they emerged from the surrounding streets and buildings.

The comms specialist's phone chimed and she answered it, 'Copy that Buckley, we are five by five. Captain, sir, there's a helicopter coming in right now to upload these friendlies and they can take ours, too.'

'Alright, finally,' Clark said. Finally something would actually be finished. He squinted against the sun and saw an MH-53 Pave Low coming in just above the tree tops. At least something was going right. The Pave Low, a double-wide chopper studded with instrument and weapon pods, was the biggest rotor-wing aircraft the ANG possessed. It could carry the most survivors.

The Pave Low dropped its ungainly bulk onto a putting green and started loading civilians onboard. A copilot wearing a gold Second Lieutenant's bar dropped out of the crew hatch by the nose and came running up to throw Clark a salute.

'I admire your timing, airman,' Clark said, returning the salute. 'We just arrived here ourselves.'

'Sir, permission to inquire whether I am addressing Captain Bannerman Clark, sir?'

'Granted, and yes, you are. What's going on? Speak candidly, son, I don't have all day.'

'Sir, I have special orders for you, sir, straight from the Pentagon.' The Civilian, Clark thought. The man with the marshmallow peeps. What was he thinking, issuing orders to a military unit during combat operations? 'We're supposed to track you down and send you home. You should take your platoon and head somewhere fortified, they told us. Hunker down and wait for further instructions.'