Pandemic (Craig DiLouie) by Craig Dilouie & Joe McKinney

Author:Craig Dilouie & Joe McKinney
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thriller
Publisher: The Retreat Series, LLC
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR.

AS THE LIGHT OF DAY FADED, the convoy of Humvees roared down the road, scattering rubbish. The streetlights were off. Rotting corpses swung from the poles in the mounting twilight. Feasting birds scattered at the approaching diesel roar.

Captain Lee had built a career on honesty. He held nothing back in his intelligence reports. When asked, he gave his opinions without the sugar coating. He didn’t believe in putting lipstick on pigs. He’d made captain because of it. He’d been held back from further promotion because of it.

He was going to tell Prince everything. He’d already submitted a report, but even that didn’t contain half of what he’d seen. He’d shared the facts, but he had to make the Colonel see the horror. Right now, First Battalion was scattered, ineffective and losing ground by the day. They needed to pull their forces back into a defensible position and build their operations from there. They could take the city back, block by block, using overwhelming force and killing the infected without mercy. The stakes involved survival of an entire city, and there wasn’t much time. The inmates were inches away from running the asylum and putting it to the torch.

As night fell, they approached the onramp that would take them onto Concord Turnpike. The road was supposed to be reserved to official traffic, but the police and their vehicles were gone, the rows of barriers smashed and flattened. The emptiness was unnerving. The silence made Lee think of Afghanistan. The calm between attacks.

Without being told, Murphy slowed the vehicle and cut the headlights. The men put on their night vision goggles, which rendered the dark landscape in a thousand shades of phosphorescent green. Nobody in sight. In the distance, headlights moved quickly along the turnpike, too fast for military. The vast fires of Boston glowed a brilliant green on the horizon. The Humvee’s tires thudded across the smashed barriers. Lee held his carbine propped in the open window. Foster swiveled the .50-cal in the gun turret, sweeping the area for threats.

Behind them, the other two Humvees did the same.

“Do you believe in prayer, Captain?” Murphy asked.

“Not really, Mike.”

“Could you try? I really don’t want to die here.”

“I believe in good planning, but that doesn’t work either. It’s all on us.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Really? We’ve gotten this far.”

They pulled onto the turnpike and took off their goggles. The headlights flashed on. After a mile, they passed the first flaming wreck on the side of the road. Still no visible threats.

“Your prayers seem to be working, Mike.”

Light flared in the side view mirrors.

“Way to jinx it, Captain,” Murphy said.

The headlights in their rear were approaching fast. Lee remembered the top speed of a Humvee was fifty-five miles an hour.

“We can’t outrun a civilian vehicle,” he said. “And we can’t shoot unless they’re hostile.”

“We won’t know they’re hostile until they’re right on top of us.”

“We should stop. Set up a defensive formation.”

“Fire some warning shots? If they don’t stop, we light them the fuck up.”

The light gleamed bright in the side views.

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