Carlie Simmons (Book 5): One Final Mission (12 page)

Chapter 32

The two motorcycles sped along the dim
passage, running parallel to a narrow set of railway tracks that had been
formerly used by maintenance workers. Amy was driving the lead bike while
Carlie was clutching Amy’s back. Hadley manned the rear one with Matias behind
him. Carlie’s heart was racing faster than the RPMs of the machine beneath her
after dwelling on the sweet sound of Shane’s voice a few minutes earlier, as
fleeting as it was.
I knew he made it!
The headlights shone off the
filthy walls, some covered in dried blood splotches, the only new graffiti of
the subterranean world. As the motorcycles crunched over bone fragments and
mandibles, they rounded the last bend in the tunnel and saw four zombies
milling ahead near a small hand-operated railcar before some steps. Amy sped up
and rammed the rebar skewers into the first one which stood out from the
others. The beast was run through but continued flailing its arms at her while
its entrails spilled onto the tire.

She came to an abrupt halt before the
remaining three and then hopped off the bike with her machete while Carlie did
the same. Amy sliced through the skull of a dainty creature clad in shredded
coveralls, the spray from its head resembling a mist of pink champagne in the
glow of the headlight. Carlie whacked the other zombie straight through the
neck, sending its head rolling into the oncoming path of Hadley’s bike. The navigator
stopped while Matias steadied the rig. Hadley ran his fixed blade into the
lower jaw of the last zombie, its tip piercing the base of the brain and
causing it to collapse at his feet.

Carlie and the others stood with their
blades ready while sweeping along the stairs and the corner behind them.

“Where did these things come from?” said
Hadley.

“Maybe some stragglers from the service
workers trapped down here,” said Amy. She picked up Carlie’s pack off the
handlebars of the bike and slung it over her shoulder.

Carlie had resheathed her blade and was
studying the crude map from earlier. “This is the end of the line, it seems. From
here, we go up and enter an administrative building and then the hospital
should only be a few blocks away.”

“Will we have time to stop for some sushi?”
whispered Matias, trying not to chuckle.

Carlie moved up alongside him and wrapped
her good arm around him. “You gonna be up for some runnin’ and gunnin’ again,
mi amigo?”

“My two favorite things in life.”

“Carlie, why don’t you let me and Hadley
scout the area up top first.”

She nodded in approval to Amy then helped
Matias over to the wall where they both slid down to rest. The other two
stalked up the stairs and slowly entered the lobby above.

“Looks like you’re gonna have another cool
tattoo,” said Matias, pointing to her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’d like to put an end to that
habit.”

“Hey, can I ask you something seeing as
how we cripples are just hanging out for a bit?”

“Anytime—you know that.”

“You and my boy Shane doin’ OK? I noticed
you two barely looked at each other on the flight over.”

Carlie blew a strand of blond hair off her
nose then lowered her chin. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I’ve known him a long time and he still
walks with the same swagger he had when I first met him—the guy who’s used to
getting what he wants.” He looked up at her with a slight smile. “Only now he
has everything he’s ever wanted from a woman and he’s worried he might lose it
all—lose you. I don’t think he knows how to do well at the ordinary, everyday
stuff, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know. Hell, I’m not always
sure I can hack living with a routine and four walls around me.”

“He didn’t tell you about this mission
before the briefing, did he?”

Carlie opened her mouth to speak but was
interrupted by Matias. “I saw your face before—and after you walked into the
meeting.” Matias tucked his thumb under his rifle strap and looked ahead at the
gray tunnel for a long minute. “I say we crucify that squid’s ass when we see
him.”

Carlie chortled and tried to contain her
laughter, pressing her mouth into her elbow while Matias wheezed out a pathetic
chuckle in between wincing.

“You can be in line right behind me,” she
said, helping him to his feet as Amy and Hadley returned from the lobby.

“You’re not gonna believe what’s out
there,” said Amy.

Chapter 33

Once they had passed through the empty
sub-levels in the hospital, Shane led them up the stairwell to the fourth
floor. He could see the characteristic blood spray on the walls from the action
of Shiro’s sword during previous visits, as if a water balloon filled with red
dye had been flung against the surface.  

“One thing I noticed is that you don’t
seem to have any fast-moving mutants mixed into the crowds on the street—you
ever run across those?” said Eliza to Shiro, who looked puzzled.

“Only goryo—enough of them to worry
about.”

“How many blades have you gone through?”
said Jared.

Shiro tilted his head up and darted his
eyes around, contemplating the question. “Don’t remember.” He held up his
sword, letting his headlamp glint off the edge. “This weapon is a good friend.
Most blades will last for four hundred goryo.”

Jared’s eyes went wide.

“But metal pipe not as messy,” said Yoshi
with a grin as he tapped his jacket by his side, revealing the thunk of a solid
object. Naoki and Yamiko, who understood English better than they spoke it, muttered
in agreement and brandished their soiled weapons with pride.

“Damn, you folks put me to shame—the only
time I get my machete in hand is when my rifle’s done coughin’ up bullets,”
Jared replied. He leaned over Eliza’s shoulder while whispering, “Any money
these guys have seen
Sister Streetfighter
.”

Eliza shook her head in disgust. “Don’t
even mention that or they’ll run you through.”

Shane motioned for them to stop and turn
off their headlamps. He cracked open the fire exit door on the fourth floor,
the sunlight filtering in through side rooms revealing his targets. Shane
raised four fingers up on his left hand. Jared and Eliza pressed past the
others and moved up alongside their leader. Shane gave them knowing looks as
they both positioned themselves on one knee beside each other with their
suppressed rifles in low-ready. Shane swung open the door as the three of them
delivered precision rounds into the unaware creatures. Their corpulent figures
collapsed instantly and the three shooters swept into the hallway and began
firing rounds into the zombies in the nearest rooms, whose doors were open. It
was a tightly orchestrated movement, rushing into the entrances, dispatching
their targets, and bolting down the hallway to the next room.

Shane wasn’t sure exactly where the device
was located as Duncan’s intel had only revealed it was somewhere on this floor.
Behind them, Shiro and his team kept an eye on the stairwell, their spear guns
poised downward.

With the replacement of his second rifle
magazine, Shane yelled, “Clear,” and the shooting ceased. He stuck his head out
from the last doorway on the right and motioned for Shiro to lock the exit door
and rejoin them.

Shane stepped back into the spacious room,
over the decrepit body of an orderly still clad in his hospital scrubs. There
was hardly anything left of the diminutive creature but tendons and strands of
raw muscle, and the round that pierced the skull hadn’t left much that
resembled a head. Shane slung his rifle while the others moved inside behind
him. He went to the window and ripped down the shades, the late afternoon
sunlight pouring into every nook around him.

“Is it just me or does anyone else think
this teal green color on the walls was a bad choice?” said Jared.

Shane ignored the snarky comment and
proceeded to the far corner where the device from Duncan’s slideshow was
located. “Alright, let’s get to work,” said Shane, removing a multitool from
his vest pocket along with a set of Allen wrenches. “We need to get these two vaccine
recombinators out and the rest of the portable attachments then get the hell
over to the sub.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Eliza, who
knelt down on the other side of the device and mimicked Shane’s movements in
removing the external paneling of the cylindrical device.

Jared was peering out the window at the
streets below and saw the black current of undead moving along three major
streets towards the hospital. “Hey, those zombies—goryo—whatever—they’re moving
this way.” His mouth went dry as he tried to force out the words. “They’re
gonna converge into one group of tens of thousands if they keep at it.”

Shiro moved beside Jared. “They must have
picked up someone’s scent or some noise.”

“What—these things have x-ray powers now?”
said Jared.

“It must be something down below on the
streets.”

Shiro glanced at the grenades dangling off
of Jared’s vest. “Come with me. Perhaps we can slow them down.” He turned and
ran to the wall cabinets, rummaging through the contents until he found a roll
of surgical tape. “Grab as many fire extinguishers as you can find and meet me
on the roof.”

A few minutes later Shiro, Jared, and
Yoshi were atop the asphalt surface under open skies, each with an armload of
red canisters. Shiro trotted to the edge on the east side and glanced over. He
took the fire extinguishers and taped them in bundles of three. “I need your
grenades,” he said to Jared. Shiro lifted the first cluster and shoved a
grenade into the sticky tangle of tape and removed the pin. Then he raised it
up with both hands and tossed it below onto a tipped-over bus near the first
intersection to the left. “Do the same with other bundles for the other two
streets. That will create a temporary wall of flame and distract the goryo.”

Jared and Yoshi raced to the other sides
of the building and delivered their crimson devices onto nearby vehicles. Mushroom
clouds erupted on three sides of the hospital, temporarily halting the advance
of the flesh-eating current below.

Chapter 34

Carlie followed Amy back up the steps in
the tunnel and into the lobby. Hadley was squatting behind a counter, his
service pistol in hand. As Carlie moved up alongside him, she peered around the
edge at the street. Or where she thought the street should be. It was obscured
by a horde of undead so massive it blocked out most of the sunlight trying to
stab its way through the windows. Strangely, there were hardly any of the usual
guttural moans she was used to but instead the sandpaper-esque grating of feet
being endlessly dragged along the pavement as the river of zombies shuffled
along the surface. Her eyes widened at the serpent-like movement of rotting
arms, decaying legs, and fractured torsos ambling as one unit in their movement
north. She held her breath and felt like the shock of the plane crash was
ratcheted down on the terror scale compared to this sight.

My God
—
how do you even fight something
like that?
She slunk back behind the counter, resting against the faux-wooden
surface while trying to think of a way to reach the hospital.

“It’s two blocks from here, right?” said
Amy.

Carlie nodded, trying to calm herself and
wondering if Shane would be there.

“There’s an alley behind this building
that doesn’t seem to have any creatures in it. What if we head out that way?”

Carlie looked over Amy’s shoulder at the
route. “Probably our only option—let’s move.”

They secreted themselves along the far
wall, ducking low to use the L-shaped counter for cover until they were at the
rear exit. Carlie unlocked the deadbolt, noticing the single imprint of a
bloodstained hand on the green surface of the door. She opened it and crept
into the alley followed by the others. Craning her head in either direction,
Carlie saw that the immediate area was clear but the fences on either end were
clogged with more creatures. A second later, she heard an explosion in the
distance followed by two more and several plumes of smoke rising upward. “Damn,
that’s gotta be a sign that Shane’s back in the fight—he always did love
blowin’ shit up.”

The zombies to her right began moving away.
Five minutes later, the rotters had disappeared and she and her band of weary
fighters trotted to the end of the alley, studying the route ahead.

Chapter 35

“I see it,” shouted Nora, who was standing
on the roof peering through binoculars at the edge of Osaka Bay. Tyler was
swaddled in a cloth hammock around her back, looking over her shoulder. Arisu,
the nurse, who was preparing her shoulder bag, ran over, squinting into the
setting sun and staring in wonder at the leviathan that had just emerged.

“What Shane said is true,” Nora said. “We
are really going to be free of this prison.”

Nora panned the binoculars to the left,
scanning the tunnel exits around the subway for several miles. She was
searching for any signs of Shiro even though he had told her not to wait once
the
Olympia
arrived.

“We need to go—what if the American and
the others are already on board?” said Arisu.

“Shiro wouldn’t leave without us and I’m
not leaving without him.”

Arisu emitted a wicked chuckle. “Shiro’s
fate rests in this city. He is chained to this place with his ancient
philosophy.”

“He’ll make it out. He’ll be there.”

“Crazy woman—how long have you lived
amongst us and you still know so little about the Japanese soul.”

“At least Shiro has a soul. It’s yours I’m
worried about,” said Nora, lowering the binoculars and retreating to the
stairwell. Once below, she gathered a small fannypack of provisions and went to
the lobby where Haru and Daichu were waiting.

“It’s not yet dark,” said Haru, who was
holding his only hand on the knob of the door that led out to the boats. “The
sun will be setting soon and we can leave then.”

“We must go now while we have light for
them to see us by,” said Arisu.

“Alright, but stay close together,” said
Nora, who moved up to the entrance. She re-checked the lashing on her chest
that secured the cloth around Tyler then she readied the two metal pipes in
either hand.

She swung open the door and bolted towards
the small dock, sixty feet away. Nora glanced nervously over her shoulder at
the road behind her to check on the security of the school bus blockade.
No
goryo
—
blessed be Ameratsu.
As she turned to step up to the jetboat,
her face became frostbitten at the sight of six creatures pulling themselves up
along the edge of the dock.
They must have floated over from the airfield.
She saw more bloated bodies adrift in the waters around them. Nora rushed
forward to greet the first one with a bludgeon to the right temple. The gangly
beast’s skull crumpled easily under the weight of the pipe.

“Get the boat started,” she yelled behind
her to Arisu, who had hopped on board. Nora met another one rushing forward, its
face resembling a burnt walnut. She spun and smacked it hard in the jaw,
unhinging the lower mandible which got crushed under its own decrepit foot. She
finished it off with an overhead blow to the cranium then kicked it back into
the other creatures clamoring for her. Though her actual combat experience with
the goryo had been more limited than the others due to her maternal duties,
Nora’s months of grueling training under Shiro had paid off once more.

Haru, the old cook, rushed up flailing a
short sword in his lone hand. He removed the head of a goryo closing in on Nora
but failed to see the thin creature that had just climbed up behind him. It
lunged for his shoulder and bit down hard on the soft flesh above his clavicle.
He shrieked, falling sideways into the water as four other prune-faced goryo
gnawed at his extremities. Nora yelled and reached out for him but he was
dragged under in a gurgling cacophony. Daichu, who had been battling two
creatures nearest the dock entrance, sprinted up to her side. “We have to go—now!”
With the engines roaring, Arisu flung the anchoring rope off the boat and
yelled at the others to hop in.

As the jetboat blazed away from the dock,
Nora dropped the soiled pipes on the deck and glanced around at Tyler, who had
cried in her ear during the entire ordeal. “It’s OK, my sweet son,” she said,
unwrapping the boy and pulling him into her bosom. She held him tight, trying
not to weep and upset him further as she glanced back at the place where Haru
had disappeared.

Nora moved alongside Arisu, who was
gripping the steering wheel with both hands as the wind wrestled her raven hair
from its bun. “Hey, you’re alright for an eccentric Japanese woman.”

Arisu gave her a sideways glance, managing
to push out a faint sneer from the corner of her mouth. “If Shiro does make it
out of this, he would kill me for leaving you behind.”

Nora raised an eyebrow and clenched her
jaw. “Always driven by duty, even now.” She shook her head. “Yeah, I love you
too.”

The jetboat hummed along the choppy waves
until they were within a hundred yards of the submarine while Nora continued
her furtive glances at the distant subway exits.