SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (7 page)

He drove through it at a crawl, head on a swivel as he looked for any signs of life. The whole place looked about as empty as the rest of the state, and that was saying something. He pulled to a stop outside the local headquarters, putting the Chevy in park, and just sat there for several long minutes as he looked around.

Damn, this is spooky.

Leland finally shook himself free of the feeling and swung the door open, planting one solid work boot on the half-frozen ground as he got out. He paused for a brief moment, then reached back into the truck for his hat and his shotgun, putting the first on his head and racking a shell into the chamber of the second before walking up to the door and pushing it open.

“Hello?” he called out. “It’s Sheriff Leland! Anyone in here?”

The “office” was a glorified mobile home, fifty-odd feet long and fifteen wide, so it only took him a couple minutes to survey it. Finding no one, he stepped outside again and took a long look around.

Well, if there’s no one in the office, I’ll go where I should have gone in the first place
, he decided, turning and walking toward the massive machine shops.

If anyone was around, this is where he’d be. The machine shops were easily the largest buildings in the area, probably for a thousand miles or more. Without them, there wouldn’t be much work done in the fields. There was always someone working on some piece of gear or another that needed fixing yesterday.

He trudged through the slushy muck, cursing the unseasonable warmth that had brought on the latest thaw, and made his way over to the huge metal buildings. The big sliding doors were shut, so he went over to the side door and tested the handle as he leaned close and peered through the glass inset.

Not seeing anything, Leland pulled open the door and stepped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, but it was pretty clear that the cavernous interior was empty. There weren’t even any trucks in sight, and now a definite chill was running down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the temperature.

“Barrow Sheriff’s Department!” he called, debating whether he should stop carrying his shotgun like a club and start looking at the world over its iron sights. He didn’t want to freak anyone out, but he was well on his way to becoming freaked out himself, and for his money, that was becoming a fair sight more important than some roughneck’s feelings.

Leland stepped back outside, eyes flicking to the darkening sky. He had another half hour, maybe, before the sun set. In no time, the long night would be upon them. It would put an end to the damned thaws at least. In the short term, however, he’d soon be hunting around this blasted place with a flashlight in one hand and his shotgun in the other.

And if that isn’t a recipe for an accident of epic proportions, I don’t know what is.

“Is anyone there?!” he called out again as he approached the second machine shop, whose doors were also closed.
What the hell is going on here?

He hammered on the side door with his free hand, then wrenched it open. As he took a step inside, the air from within struck him, warm and filled with a cloying smell that made his stomach churn. Leland held back the urge to retch, to spill his last meal over the slush and ice and mud, and reflexively shifted his grip on the shotgun as he brought the weapon up.

It was a smell he knew.

The air inside smelled of death.

Not much blood, but he could smell the distinctive odor of recent decomposition. Leland braced his shotgun on his arm as he reached around to see if he could locate a light switch by the door. The interior of the building was dark, even more so than the falling twilight outside, and he couldn’t make out anything but a few large shadows.

“Barrow PD!” he called, eyes searching the darkness as his hand felt along the wall. “Is anyone here? Announce yourself!”

He found the switch, finally, and flipped the industrial lever up. The power snapped on audibly as the lights began to emit a low glow, bathing the building in an orange shade. He squinted, barely distinguishing forms in the shadows, people moving.

“I’m Sheriff Leland Griffin,” he said. “Is everyone all right in here?”

The lights made another snapping noise, half of them flickering out just as Leland caught a hint of motion in the corner of his eye and turned his head to the left. He screamed in shock, and then horror, as a figure descended on him suddenly and locked its jaws around his left forearm, biting down hard enough that he felt the bone crunch.

The pain was unreal, and Leland reacted automatically by trying to rip his arm free, only to realize that his attacker was holding on like a pit bull. He used the shotgun like a club, beating the man about the face and head but not wanting to resort to deadly force.

“Let go, you crazy bastard!” he yelled, still beating the man with the weapon.

With a final wrench, one that triggered a near sickening agony from his arm, Leland pulled himself loose and fell back and away from his attacker. He stared in horrified shock at his attacker as the lights snapped back to full brightness.

It was a man, or maybe it used to be—Leland didn’t know if he’d still call it human, as badly torn up as it seemed to be. Pustules had formed on the creature’s face, and the skin seemed to be flapping away from the bone in places as it bared its teeth at him and snarled.

“Jesus,” he swore, unable to quite help himself. “You look like hell, son.”

The thing, man, whatever it was standing there in front of him didn’t seem impressed with his concern, however, and it look another step in his direction. Leland shifted the shotgun so that it was pointed right at the man’s chest and shook his head.

“Don’t do it, son,” he said. “I’m not keen on blowing you away, but you ain’t taking another bite out of me.”

The big bore of the pump twelve-gauge didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent, unfortunately, as the figure continued to step closer, his proximity making Leland’s heart race. He took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to gag as the smell of rot overwhelmed him again.

“I am an officer of the law! Stop walking toward me or I will fire!” Leland practically chanted as he stepped back.

Part of him wanted nothing more than to drop the hammer on the bastard who’d just taken a chunk out of him, but he let himself sink into the rote responses he’d learned a long time ago, in what seemed like a different life. None of it mattered, though—the man kept stumbling in his direction with the clear intent to continue the attack, and when Leland felt a rail pressing into his back he pursed his lips and shook his head as his intellect tried to deny what his body was already doing.

The shotgun roared, a full load of double-aught buck slamming into the man’s chest at point-blank range. The man barely even stumbled—he certainly didn’t fly backward like in the movies—and despite his apparent lack of balance, he didn’t fall. Leland’s eyes widened as the man reached out for him, stepping right into arm’s reach, his curled fingers actually grabbing the sheriff’s shoulder and throat.

Leland lifted the barrel of the Remington, resting it on his attacker’s clavicle so that it was pointed directly at the underside of his jaw, and squeezed the trigger a second time. The resulting explosion of blood, gore, bone, and brain fragments spattered across the curved wall of the machine shop like modern art while some blew back and sprayed across the near shell-shocked sheriff’s face and chest.

This time the man went down in a slump, right at Leland’s feet. A moment passed, one heartbeat and then two, and Leland slowly came to his senses again. He looked up from the source of the wet spatter covering his face and neck only to see dozens of eyes staring back at him from faces just like the one he’d blown to bits.

The machine shop was filled with them.

What in the Lord’s last lament is going on here?

He stared at them as they stared back, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. It was something out of a horror movie, not real life. They couldn’t be what they looked like—dead folk didn’t walk. The flesh looked like it was rotting, practically falling away from the bone in places, but still he couldn’t process it.

Finally, after the long silence, he locked onto the one idea that made some modicum of sense.

Poor bastards must have been exposed to some bad radiation. That’s the only thing that might do this and leave them walking for a time.

That sickening thought did little to ease his mind, however, as Leland lowered his weapon and began pawing the blood and gore from his face.

“Goddamn it! What the hell did you lot get exposed to? Is it safe in here?” he muttered, still trying to clean himself off.

No one spoke to him as he backed toward the door in an effort to put some distance between himself and the contamination that had to be filling the shop. He held up his hand as calmingly as he could, his strained brain missing the fact that he was the only one in the place who was panicking.

“Just remain where you are, and I’ll radio for help from town,” he said as he continued to edge himself backward.

“No,” said a dry and rasping yet distinctly female voice as a hand clamped onto his shoulder like iron. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Leland half turned, screamed again as he wondered how many more shocks he could take.
How did she get behind me?

The woman at least looked marginally better than the rest, but her skin was still leathery dry, and it was pulled back on her face like she was the victim of a botched facelift. Her teeth were yellow and aged behind the rictus of her lips, looking like they’d been exposed to air for years. It made a bizarre bit of sense to him, however, as he didn’t suppose she could close her mouth with her skin pulled back so tightly.

He tried to wrest himself from her, but the iron grip just tightened, and he found that he couldn’t move at all. She looked from him to the corpse on the floor, one thin dark eyebrow lifting almost casually before she shook her head.

“Idiot. Couldn’t control the hunger.”

Leland blinked, finally taking in her accent. She wasn’t from Barrow, that was for sure, but in all fairness, there weren’t many who were. Still, he’d heard all sorts of accents over the years, from all places on the map, and hers wasn’t one he knew. It sounded foreign, ancient even, and it was the oddest he’d heard before.

He was still puzzling it out, trying to ignore the throbbing and stabbing pain from his left arm, when the woman turned her dark eyes on him with a casual, almost indifferent air.

“I do not know if you will be of any use, but waste not, want not, as the saying goes,” she told him, confusing Leland even more. “You took one of mine, so you will replace him.”

“What the fuck?…”

She seemed to smile wider, her lips pulling impossibly far back from her teeth in such a way that, for all his confusion, Leland was completely confident in saying that she meant to do him some serious harm. He tried to pull away as she leaned in closer to him, the putrid air from her mouth bathing his face. Her breath was…indescribable. He could smell some kind of mouthwash, peppermint unless he was gravely mistaken, but beneath it the smell of death was still present.

The mixture turned his stomach even more than the pervasive smell of rot and decay alone.

“God, lady, what the hell have you been eating?” He gagged.

She chuckled darkly at him. “It’s funny you should ask—I was just starting to feel a little peckish. Shall I show you what I like to eat?”

“I’ll pass,” he said, twisting his grip on the shotgun so that it was jammed in between them. “Let me go, lady, or—”

“Or what?” she snarled, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun with her free hand.

Fuck this.

Leland squeezed the trigger.

The Remington roared, blowing the woman’s leg out from under her. In that instant, as she was torn away from him and driven to the ground by shock and gravity, Leland found himself fascinated by the expression of sheer
annoyance
on the woman’s leathery face. He twisted, tearing himself loose, and threw the door open so he could stumble out into the cold fresh air of the darkening night.

Behind him he could hear her swearing, her voice disturbingly free of any sound of pain.

“Get him!”

He didn’t turn around as he staggered over to his Tahoe, slamming his injured arm into the side of the truck hard enough to draw a whimper from his throat. He tried to grab the door handle with his left hand, fumbling against the pain, but couldn’t get his fingers to curl around the handle.

“Fuck!” he swore, slamming the shotgun down on the roof of the Tahoe so he could yank at the door with his good right hand.

He could hear the sound of slush being kicked around behind him, but didn’t look back. He dropped into the driver’s seat, pulling the shotgun in after him, and wrenched the door shut, his injured arm screaming at him the whole time.

Leland swore near constantly, fumbling with his key as a body hit the door, hammering at the window with bare fists. He didn’t know how the window was holding, but as the Tahoe roared to life he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for small miracles before gunning the engine and dropping it into drive, the gas pedal already heading for the floor.

The wheels spun for traction against the slush and ice, but then the studs hit the gravel underneath, and the Tahoe lurched forward. He felt, more than heard, a thump as the vehicle struck something, or rather someone. He was headed in the wrong direction, however, and he had to spin around when he reached a fence at the far side of the compound.

They were all out of the machine shop by then, and he was both shocked and dismayed by their sheer numbers.

God, there’s got to be dozens of them.

They were arrayed out in front of him like a human barricade, or a
nearly
human barricade. His mind rebelled as he sat there in his Tahoe, staring at them. He couldn’t believe he was seeing what he was seeing.

All the figures were milling about, seemingly without purpose—other, that is, than a few who were stumbling along in his general direction. They looked sick, frankly. Deathly ill or, more honestly, like the walking dead. He couldn’t help but think of all the damned zombie movies he’d seen over the years, and the throb from his arm hurt all the more.