The Remaining: Fractured (62 page)

Also where Lee had imprisoned Tomlin, less than a week prior.

Lee could see two bodies, several yards away from him, along the inside of the fence and to his left. They were down for the count. One was toppled neatly, probably in the middle of his patrol. The other looked like he’d made a run for it. Ultimately unsuccessful.

Past them, it was another twenty or so yards to the back of the Camp Ryder building—just a big square of windowless, doorless cement blocks. He eyed the top of the building, catching his breath, forcing himself to breathe through his nose as much as possible in an attempt to control his stammering heart. The top of the building looked clear. What he could see of the left side of the building looked clear.

“Nate!” Lee glanced across Devon’s back at the other man. “When we breach, you move to the right side of the building and lock down that corner, I’ll move to the left side, okay?”

“Gotcha.”

Lee checked Devon’s progress. The kid sweat, despite the cold air, breathing through an open mouth and baring his teeth, his already-pinkish cheeks flushed red. He trembled badly and at times it took him a few attempts just to get the mouth of the bolt cutters around a wire. He had only made four or five cuts so far—less than a third of the way down.

Lee grimaced, looked up at the building. Every second they were not in that building, the possibility that Jerry would pile up his men inside grew more and more likely. As soon as they figured out what the fuck was going on, that they were under attack, it would be the most commonsense, strategic response. And Lee would not make the mistake of assuming that Jerry was not intelligent enough to figure that out for himself.

“Devon,” Lee tried to sound calm about it, but failed. “I’m gonna need you to go a little faster than that.”

***

The room seemed frozen like it had been blasted with liquid nitrogen. Jerry stood completely erect, arms stiff at his sides, fingers splayed like he was caught in the action of grabbing something. The look on his face was one of dawning fear. The look of things slipping away, out of his control.

Angela sat there, head buzzing uncomfortably, reality still swaying through the distortions of trauma to her face and head. She watched Jerry’s face through her swollen eyes, and at first, she was terrified. The first shot had not even echoed before she could hear screaming, and then a second shot, and it was in that penultimate moment when the world outside of the Camp Ryder building abruptly turned into a warzone, that things changed for her.

Like he’d been hit with a cattle prod, Jerry suddenly lurched, jumped, scrambled to the office window that overlooked Camp Ryder. Kyle, who still stood there with his hands on Abby’s shoulder, holding her there just inside the door to the office, his feet began to move, unsure of what he should do—go or stay?

Jerry clutched the window sill and stared out, the daylight glowing in his wide-stretched eyes so that they seemed grotesquely large in his face. Angela could not see what he saw, but she just watched his face, felt like a block of ice in her gut was melting as she witnessed him grab his hair, his perfect white teeth seeming to glow as he grimaced.

This was no random smattering of gunfire. Angela was not stupid, and she had learned from Lee. She had learned by watching and by listening to him plan operation after operation, carried out in cities and towns and industrial and residential complexes around the Camp Ryder Hub. The first opening shots, the quick response like a sudden thunderstorm that comes upon you within minutes of a clear sky.

This was a coordinated attack.

This was Lee.

Jerry turned towards her, his expression souring.

Angela stared back at him, feeling hot and cold at once. Giddy, almost. She did not do it as a jab, or an insult, or as a way to enrage Jerry, but simply because she could not help herself: a small smile touched her swollen, broken lips. She’d read news stories about miners trapped under the surface of the earth after a cave in. Trapped there in the darkness with nothing but hope to get them through. And she thought that this must be what they felt like when they saw the first patch of daylight after a week of blackness, as the emergency crews rolled back the first stones, like opening a tomb.

Jerry stared at her, trembling. Though she couldn’t tell whether it was from rage or fear. Like a growling dog backed into a corner, simultaneously baring its teeth and tucking its tail to protect its genitals. Angela stared right back at him, her expression hardening.

He raised a hand, pointed a long, accusing finger at her. “You bitch!”

You bitch! You bitch!

She was suddenly in her back yard again, running from Tom, holding that aluminum bat up to ward him off as he staggered towards her, slobbering, sweating profusely, mind lost forever. She felt the fear, but she pushed it down and remembered where she was.

That was in the past. That was a weaker Angela. That was a jilted housewife just trying to survive. That was not the same person she was now. She would not feel terrified by Jerry anymore. She was done with fear for now. At some point, when you keep dissolving the same substance in water, it over-saturates and falls out. For her, fear had suddenly oversaturated in her mind, and fell out.

She could take no more of it.

There was nothing left for Jerry but contempt.

Jerry snatched his shotgun up, brandishing it wildly. “Who the fuck is that, Angela? Huh? That your friends trying to break into my camp? Is that them? Fucking tell me!”

Angela’s face gave nothing. It remained undisturbed by his outrage, as though she had suddenly transcended this situation, she was above it, untouchable. She just stared at him with that damaged face he’d given her, like she was throwing it right back at him.

“No, Jerry,” she said, quietly, so that he leaned forward unconsciously in an attempt to hear her. “It’s Lee. He’s coming for you.”

CHAPTER 40: COMPLICATIONS

“C’mon, Devon…” Lee flicked his gaze back and forth between the left corner of the Camp Ryder building, and the progress that Devon had made. He’d made ten cuts so far, almost halfway down. Lee knew that it had only been a minute or so since the first shots were fired, but it felt like time was dragging. He looked at the building again, wondering what Jerry was doing, what defenses was he setting up? Would they be barricaded inside the building? Would they have hostages?

Devon licked his lips. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

“You’re doing good,” Lee assured him.

Out beyond the Camp Ryder building the gunfight raged.

“Alright,” he said, pulling back a bit and turning to face Jacob. “Back yard looks clear for now, go run and get the others. By the time they get up here we should have this fence open for them.”

Jacob nodded and took off running. Lee watched him go, sprinting between trees, dodging low branches and jumping fallen logs. What a strange transformation the man had made, from a bookish scientist to someone who could move as fluidly through the woods as though he’d been hunting them his whole life. Lee was in the process of admiring this when Jacob stopped short, just before disappearing into the trees.

“The fuck is he doing?” Lee growled, impatiently.

Nate craned his head back to see. “What’s going on? What’s he doing?”

“He’s just stopped there!”

“Fucking go!” Nate yelled, but not quite loud enough for Jacob to have heard.

Though Jacob hadn’t heard him, it seemed that he reacted to it. As the words left Nate’s mouth, Jacob turned partially, looked back at them. Then he started running again, back towards Camp Ryder.

Lee didn’t question Jacob’s actions a second time. “Nate! Watch the fucking yard!”

Something was wrong.

Lee turned his back to the fence and raised his rifle, sighting over Jacob’s shoulder as the man ran back towards them. Abruptly, Jacob stopped at the base of a large tree and spun again, turning away. He pointed his rifle and began waving his hands, as though urging someone on. Lee scanned through the trees and quickly saw what Jacob saw, though it made no sense.

The entire entry element sprinted towards them in complete disarray.

For the briefest of moments, Lee allowed himself to believe that maybe nothing had gone wrong, maybe they were just running for the fence as instructed, and they were just a little scared of the gunfire going over their heads. But they kept looking behind them as they ran, twisting and firing wild shots into the woods. Jacob posted up on the tree and sighted his rifle, allowing the entire element to pass him by, providing cover for them.

They weren’t attacking. They were retreating.

This is bad
, Lee decided.

He tried to peer through the woods, but they were too thick, even in their leafless state, to see much farther than Jacob. But Lee watched the soldier-scientist tighten quite suddenly, and he began to fire. Puffs of gray smoke erupted from his barrel, his muzzle swinging in this direction and then that, not from the recoil.

Fast moving targets.

Oh shit…

Someone in the element began screaming as they came within a dozen yards of the fence: “Hunters! Hunters in the woods!”

Lee swore loudly. “Devon! I need that fucking fence open now!” he didn’t wait for a response. “Nate! Stay on that yard!” The element came abreast of Lee and he stepped forward, stood tall and pointed back in the direction they came. “Everyone fan out along the fence and face out! Do not fucking move until I tell you to move!”

Eventually the fence would be open, and the last thing they needed was a logjam at the opening, too many panicked people trying to get through and fucking up the works.

Jacob ran back to them at full speed, and Lee could now see what they’d been running from. The shapes moved quickly through the trees, flashing between them with inhuman speed. They didn’t climb the trees, but they reached out and grabbed the trunks to swing around them, making quick direction changes and giving them a strange, apish quality.

Everyone opened up at once, Jacob barely making it behind the line before the air was riddled with bullets. For no other reason than it scared the shit out of him, Devon began to scream, but he never stopped clipping the fence.

“Almost there! Almost there!”

Lee tried to target one of the infected as they hurtled towards them through the woods, but the direction changes were so rapid that it became impossible. Lee simply aimed in the general direction and fired as fast as he could, hoping to score a hit simply from the volume of lead he threw down range.

“Keep shooting! Keep shooting!”

The infected were close enough now that Lee could see them—lean, abnormally sinuous bodies. They did not have the same form of musculature as a normal, physically fit man. Compared to the rest of their bodies, their arms seemed lean and wiry. The bulk of their muscle seemed to be packed into their core and, oddly, their backs and shoulders, giving them a hunched appearance. Their necks seemed to have disappeared amid the veiny protuberance of their shoulders, and their jaws hung open loose as they ran, disturbingly wide on their otherwise human faces.

Lee managed to sync his rhythm with one as it dodged through the trees, screaming an unearthly ululation, and he fired once, managing to halt the thing in its tracks, and then put two more rounds into it as it hung in the air for a half second before collapsing to the ground.

The victory was a small one—there must have been a dozen more coming at them.

They needed to get in the fence.

“Done!” Devon yelled.

Lee slammed a fresh mag into his rifle and recharged it, then reached for the nearest person to him and slapped the man on the back. “Move!”

The man didn’t waste any time. He hauled out of position and dove through the opening in the fence, followed quickly by Devon, then Nate. Lee moved down the line, initiating people with a slap and a command to move. He kept looking up as he went, kept judging how close the infected were getting, and every time he did he felt his heart sink a little more.

We’re not gonna get everyone through
, he realized.

He stood tall, planted his feet. “Everyone go! Move!”

The remaining four people in the entry team made a mad rush for the opening in the fence. Lee didn’t watch them. He raised his rifle and began firing as he sidestepped towards the opening in the fence. “Jacob! Go!”

“I got it!” Jacob yelled back, standing maybe a yard or so in front of Lee. “Get in there!”

There was no time for argument. Lee turned for the hole in the fence. Jacob backpedaled as one of the infected took a giant leap and landed just in front of him. Jacob planted his muzzle right in the thing’s face and took it off with a double-tap.

Lee reached the fence just before Jacob did and he grabbed the man by the back of his collar, guiding him through. Jacob didn’t miss a beat, letting himself be guided through as he kept firing, firing, until his rifle went dry and they were suddenly on the other side of the fence.

Lee saw the bolt of Jacob’s rifle lock back and stopped where he was. Jacob went down to one knee to reload and Lee moved in close to him, putting his legs up against Jacob’s back so that he would know Lee was shooting right over his head and wouldn’t stand up into Lee’s lane of fire.

Lee could see one of the infected moving towards the cut in the fence, down on all fours like an animal but still moving fast. Lee put three into it and it kept coming, so he simply gave it everything he had left in his mag. The thing died, one hand outstretched through the opening in the fence.

With Lee’s own rifle empty, he glanced down and watched Jacob whip out a magazine—and then fumble it. He tried to catch it but it just bounced off of his fingers and tumbled into the dirt. Lee swore and reached for his second of four spare magazines. It was always bad when both shooters were empty at the same time. Bad for business.

Jacob bent forward to grab the magazine off the ground.

Lee pulled the mag from his pouch. The two of them racing to get their rifles back up.