Aftermath (32 page)

The first two narrowly passed by what remained of Trevor Schlitz’s cigarette, but the third found its mark, connecting with the bright red cherry at the tip of the cigarette. An almost-invisible blue flame erupted and spread, quickly consuming the entire writhing pool of snakes.

The first thing LaRouche noticed wasn’t heat or flame, but the
whoosh
sound behind him that grew rapidly and suddenly into a roar, like a jet taking off. Then there was the sensation of running against the wind at the same moment that LaRouche attempted to draw a deep breath and found the air in front of him devoid of oxygen.

Then came the searing heat, like a harsh slap on the back and he immediately felt hot and sunburned, like his skin was shrinking on his skull. The air was on fire, burning his face, burning his mouth, hot and dry on his tongue, and stinging in his lungs like he’d just inhaled pepper. He spluttered and coughed, and then fell to his hands and knees, scrambling forward a few feet and looking behind him.

A tower of flame rose above a fully engulfed pickup truck, red and menacing, thick tongues of it licking spastically and leaving behind black smoke. LaRouche stared in wonder at the giant fireball that swelled in the sky above the truck, turning black and obscure as it rose.

On hands and knees, the sergeant began scrambling for the ramp that led to the lower levels of the parking garage. In the wake of the lashing heat, his face felt cold and stiff. Eventually he got his feet under him and began running again. He felt a deep, black certainty coiling up in his stomach. The hospital and the adjoining parking garage were two of the tallest structures in the town. From that top level of the parking garage, LaRouche could see almost all of Smithfield.

And all he could think was,
now everyone in Smithfield can see us...

CHAPTER 18: UNWANTED ATTENTION

Lee heard the boom from inside.

He and Doc both stood extremely still, waiting for something that might explain the loud concussion that shook the floor under their feet. Out in the hall, beyond their locked door, there were a few cries of surprise. Then came urgent shouts and the sound of running feet.

“
What the fuck was that?” Doc’s voice was a whisper.

Lee tossed him a sharp look. “Some kind of explosion. Keep going, I’m almost out.”

Doc set back to picking and gnawing at the duct tape bindings. Lee could feel his teeth grabbing at the edges and tearing, layer by layer. Every time he heard that little popping noise as Doc’s teeth made it through another layer, he would strain against his bindings, hoping that it was weak enough now to break, but it hadn’t been yet. However, it was loose enough now that feeling was returning to his fingers, so that was at least something good.

Out in the hall, a door slammed.

The yelling and scrambling around seemed to quiet for a bit.

Another popping sound. Lee tested his bindings, felt some give.

“
Keep going. Almost there.” Lee began to sweat now, his jaw clenching and unclenching rapidly and his eyes fixated on the door. It was only a matter of time before someone came and checked on them. Because he knew that if he were in their shoes and heard an explosion, his first thought would be
prison break.

A moment later, there was another odd noise from outside, like a sudden rush of water. It lacked the harsh, jarring slap of the explosion a few moments earlier, but still rumbled the building like distant thunder.

“
What...?”

“
Keep going!” Lee snapped.

The sound of boots in the hallway. A flashlight flickered, strobing the space underneath the door with cool, white light. Lee felt another rip in the tape and pulled, groaning with the strain as he fought to pulls his hands free.

The door flew open and the light rushed in.

“
What are you doing?” someone demanded, though Lee could not see their face past the blinding flashlight. All he knew was that they were getting closer, stepping into the room to investigate. Now only a few short feet away from Lee. He saw the flicker of the flashlight on gunmetal, the faint outline of a pistol pointed at him.

Doc had stopped tearing at the tape, too afraid to continue, but Lee still strained hard. The man with the flashlight must have seen the effort in his features because he shook the flashlight at them.

“
I said, what are you doing?” He demanded again.

Lee girded himself up. He could feel the give in the tape and it was to the point of no return. He flipped the switch in his mind, shut off all that comfortable, moral code of humanity, so he was just a mean dog trapped in cage. He stared at the dark shadow of the man’s face and kept repeating in his mind,
I am going to kill this man. I am going to kill this man. I am going to kill this man...

The tape snapped.

Like a greyhound shooting out of a stable, Lee drove forward, dodging to his left as he grabbed the pistol with both hands and shoved it to the right. The flashlight dropped, the beam causing the shadows in the room to shift. In the ghostly light diffusing off the walls, Lee could see the man’s face, eyes wide with terror, lips spread apart, teeth gritting together.

Lee pulled the man close and put a knee in his gut, doubling him over. He felt the struggle for the pistol ease a bit as the man lost some of his strength and Lee hammered his fist twice into the man’s forearm, crunching the radial nerve and causing the man to cry out in pain and drop the weapon. Lee head-butted him sharply, felt the sting of the man’s teeth slicing into his scalp and heard the crack of the man’s nose breaking.

The ferocity of Lee’s attack had driven the man back so that Lee had him pinned against the wall. To their left, the door still hung wide open and Lee knew he had to end it quickly before someone showed up to help the man out. Lee had the initiative now and he didn’t want to lose it. He could feel the man struggling against him, trying to get off the wall, their hands and arms scrabbling back and forth blocking each other from grabbing any holds.

Lee reared back and punched the man in the throat.

His wide eyes closed to a squint and he made a choking noise. His hands flew up to his collapsed larynx and that was the last mistake he ever made. With both hands free, Lee drove his thumbs into the inner corner of the man’s eyes, felt them pop and give way under the intense pressure, felt the anatomy wriggling against his fingertips. Lee was instantly repulsed and fought the urge to simply jump back and begin wiping his hands off. He had to stuff that feeling down and force himself to curl his thumbs inward, hook the insides of the man’s head, and rip it out.

The man convulsed, twitched, then sank to the floor.

Shaking now, Lee flicked his wrists and felt something warm and wet leave the palms of his hands and splatter against the floor. He had no time to think about what he had done, to self-recriminate. Those were feelings that were saved for long, sleepless nights when faces swam up from the dark parts of your mind, like the depths giving up their dead.

Shoving it all aside, Lee bent down and snatched up the gun and the flashlight.

He put the beam of light on Doc’s face, found him staring slack-jawed at the dead body lying against the wall. Lee hated him in that instant, hated him for the look of shock and disgust on his face. “I’m not sticking my ass out for you,” Lee growled at him. “You want to escape, you keep up with me and don’t say a fucking word.”

Doc looked up at him and slowly sat back on his heels.

Lee shook his head. “Fine.”

He turned his back on him, and the last image he ever had of the man who had betrayed him was a stringy clump of hair, obscuring his face as he hung his head, too ashamed to even save himself.

Lee stuck the flashlight in his pocket and checked the pistol he’d picked up. It was some cheap and shitty make that Lee didn’t recognize, with a gaudy chrome plating, chambered for 9mm. It contained a single-stack magazine with eight rounds out of fifteen left, and one in the chamber. He took a quick moment to make sure the safety was off.

He moved to the right side of the open door and gained a good angle down the hallway. A few people were down at the end of the hall, with their faces pressed against a window, pointing at some spectacle that Lee couldn’t see. They didn’t look like they were with Milo, they just looked like regular people. Some of the Smithfield group of survivors, he thought. He forced himself to stay in that position, take a breath, and think about the layout of the hospital, and where he intended to go. Overall, he needed to get back to Camp Ryder, but he needed to break it down. Manageable portions. He needed to compartmentalize.

The first step: Get some time to think. He needed to leave the hospital room, because somebody would eventually come looking for the man he had just killed, and Lee didn’t want to be around when they did. He needed to find some dark corner where he could take the time to slow his mind down and think clearly about the next step, which was getting out of the hospital completely.

Lee looked down at himself to make sure he wasn’t covered in blood—it wasn’t bad—and jammed the pistol in his waistband. He figured if he just walked out casually and closed the door behind him, no one would really take notice of him. He was banking on the Smithfield folks avoiding contact with him, thinking he was one of Milo’s men.

He stepped out, pulling the door closed on his heels. He heard it latch and looked to his right, where the hallway led to the nurses’ station. He could see a few men there, and all of them were armed, but they did not appear to be looking his way. Their attention was instead focused on the door to the stairwell, which one of them was holding open. From inside the stairwell, Lee could hear shouts and grunts and expletives. Whatever was going on at the top of the stairwell, it wasn’t going well for them.

Lee turned away from them and started walking, fast but not too fast. If you moved too slow, it was obvious you were trying to appear casual. If you moved too fast, it looked like you were trying to escape. You had to just look like you had really important business to get to. Lee held that picture in his mind and tried to imitate it as best he could, but the fear of discovery kept banging at the back door of his mind, demanding attention.

He marched past the group at the window.

One of the men looked at him, but only briefly. Then he cast his eyes downward, as if he had made a mistake by looking at Lee and put his arm around a young woman standing next to him, as though Lee was going to snatch her away.

As he passed, Lee risked a glance out the window at what everyone was staring at. The window gave a good view of the western-facing side of the parking garage. Over the concrete wall he could see the tops of two pickup trucks, parked close to the building, one behind the other. The one in the back was a charred skeleton of a vehicle and it belched fire and black smoke. Lee realized his jaw was hanging open and snapped it closed. He kept walking.

His head buzzed with questions.

Who set the fire? Whose truck is that? It looks like a gasoline fire. That had to be a lot of gasoline. That was the rumble I felt inside the room—all that gas going up. Was that all Milo’s gas? Was somebody sabotaging Milo or was it just an accident? What are they struggling with in the stairwell?

The loop went on, dizzyingly.

Lee found a door and tried the handle. It was locked. He moved on.

More doors. Lee didn’t stop for each one, he tested the handles as he went by to see if any of them were unlocked. It seemed the people of Smithfield were as paranoid about Milo as Camp Ryder was. They were all buttoned up tight, waiting for him to leave.

Gotta find a room. Gotta find a room.

Finally, a handle gave and Lee slipped in, not even checking to see who was in the room. His instinct to hide was so strong that he didn’t even think about it until he closed the door behind him and realized he was in total darkness—this room didn’t even have the red emergency lights.

Plunged into total darkness, Lee felt the fear turn into a brief bout of panic and he fumbled quickly for his flashlight and flicked it on. The room leapt out of the darkness in stark relief. Buckets. Mops. Industrial cleaners and solvents. Spray bottles.

Janitor’s closet.

Lee put his back to the wall and let himself close his eyes and think.

Step two was getting out of the hospital. If he knew the hospital better he might know a good way out, but in his current situation, he only knew two: The stairwell to the parking garage, and the exits on the ground floor. Obviously, the stairwell to the parking garage was a no go. All of Milo’s men were jam packed in there and trying to get to the parking garage. Lee had faith in his abilities, but he also knew he wasn’t Superman.

Exiting by the ground floor might be safer, but presented its own set of problems. Thinking back to every hospital building he’d ever been in, Lee knew that most doors from the ground floor to the outside would be electronic, sliding glass doors so the sick and injured could get inside without too much trouble. Some of them would have key-card or code security locks, but Lee had to assume that even on the unsecured doors they would have dismantled the motion sensors to keep the doors from opening up to anything that wandered past. And usually they were constructed of bullet resistant and shatterproof glass, which meant he couldn’t shoot or bash his way through.