Pandemic Page 183

He slid up and onto the cabin’s roof, hands and legs spread wide to try to stay on the still-lurching vehicle. He slid forward across the slick, eight-foot-long, bullet-ridden surface.

Clarence looked up in time to see the engine bearing down on the motorcycles, the bodies and the sidewalk and park just beyond them. The truck ground over the obstacles, hitting so hard the cab bounced up, throwing him into the air. He came down hard, face smacking against the pockmarked metal. The knife flew from his hand.

The truck’s front end plowed into the snow and dirt and gra.s.s … the knife skittered across the roof … Clarence pushed forward. The knife slid off the cabin’s edge … Clarence reached out and down.

He caught it.

Half hanging over the roof, he looked into the cabin, saw a broad, yellowish back on top of concave spider-webbed gla.s.s, and the flailing, b.l.o.o.d.y hands of the man trapped beneath.

Fire Engine 98 finally rolled to a stop.

Clarence raised the Ka-Bar knife high. He plunged it down into the monster’s neck.

The thing barked out a noise of confusion, surprise and pain, a single syllable that could have been a question mark. It reared up hard and fast, its head crunching into the cabin roof right below Clarence’s waist, knocking Clarence up and forward and off — the frozen ground came up fast and smacked him in the face.

Cooper Mitch.e.l.l had still been facing out the back of the truck and flipping off the horde when Engine 98 hit the motorcycles and the sidewalk curb. The truck had decelerated quite suddenly — Cooper had not. He’d flown across the truck’s bed, stopping only when his head smashed into the water cannon’s metal post.

Tim’s hands pressed on Klimas’s neck. To his right, Cooper rolled weakly, clutching the back of his head, face screwed up tight.

“Mitch.e.l.l, get up,” Tim said. “The helicopters are here!”

Tim heard the roar of a crowd; he looked back — the horde was rus.h.i.+ng in, weapons held high, blades glinting in the morning sun. Not even fifty meters away and closing fast.

He took his hands off Klimas’s neck, slid one arm under the man’s legs, the other behind his back. There wasn’t time to do things right. Tim pushed up as hard as he could, groaning with effort as he tried to lift the heavy man onto the equipment boxes and dump him over the edge.

THE GRIM REAPER

The horde closed in. They could see the red truck that they had chased across the city, now just fifty yards away. So close … so close. The humans had sprayed them with water. Such a strange thing to do, but the Chosen would dry out soon enough.

The Chosen knew the motorcycles had carried their emperor. As they ran, they shouted to each other, in shock, in sadness.

He’s dead!

The emperor got shot!

No way he lived through that!

Few of them had met the emperor, but they all remembered the emperor’s final order: kill Cooper Mitch.e.l.l.

Forty yards …

They saw a small man push a bigger man over the edge of the truck. The bigger man fell hard to the ground below. The small man leaped over the side.

Thirty yards …

They saw another man stand up in the back of the truck, swaying, confused, his hands clutching the back of his head.

As a unit, they all recognized the man. They had all seen the pictures, and many of them had watched the video. It was him: Cooper Mitch.e.l.l, public enemy number one.

The horde let out a unified roar. They had him now. They rushed down the street, so many of them that the humans didn’t stand a chance.

Twenty yards …

The AC-130 was too high up for the engines to be heard. So far away, in fact, that the horde didn’t even hear the plane’s guns go off.

The street transformed into a flas.h.i.+ng h.e.l.l as 1,800 rounds per minute of 25-millimeter high-explosive fire tore into bodies, vehicles and pavement.

The horde started to scatter even before the first 105-millimeter howitzer round landed right on the dividing line of North State Parkway, pulverizing bodies, knocking cars on their sides and rattling the snow off of bare branches.

Confusion reigned. People took cover in buildings or sprinted back down the street, moved anywhere but toward the fire truck. They didn’t know what was happening; they only knew they had to run and hide.

The emperor had ordered them to kill Cooper Mitch.e.l.l, but he had given another order as well … the order to evacuate the city. The mob’s will broke. The survivors fled, heading for their a.s.signed vehicles, for the cars and trucks and buses and motorcycles that would take them north, to Milwaukee, take them east, to Michigan City and South Bend, take them south to Springfield, Champaign and beyond.

The exodus began.

MONSTER

Clarence knew he had to move, but his ice-cold body wouldn’t react, wouldn’t obey.

He heard something big land next to him, something that was still making a squealing noise.

He also heard Margaret’s voice: Get up, baby … get up …

The fog cleared. Clarence reached out, use the shattered front of Engine 98 to help him rise.

In front of him, the muscle-monster did exactly the same thing.

Clarence stood just in front of the driver’s seat, the monster just in front of the pa.s.senger seat. The knife still stuck out of the creature’s neck. Jets of blood squirted out in red arcs that fell on the park’s white snow.

The monster reared up to its full height: eight feet tall and very p.i.s.sed off. Yellow hands flexed into fists. Arms vibrated with fury, making the blood-streaked bone-blades shake and s.h.i.+mmer.

Clarence wanted to turn and run, but his body wouldn’t let him. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.