We flanked the door and Top pulled out a little handheld dentist’s mirror and angled it under the door, slowly turning it left and right. Inside there was a whole row of big blue cases. Not a surprise but it didn’t exactly make me want to do the Snoopy dance. From what I remembered of the building schematics this had to be the main production floor, but the row of cases blocked all but a narrow strip; and in the center of the row stood a guard. He had his back to us and he was craning to look through a slender gap between two of the cases. We heard more of the moaning and now we could orient sound with location. Something was happening on the far side of the cases, on the big production floor. The guard was eager to see it. So was I.
I holstered my pistol and drew my knife. I held a finger to my lips then touched my chest. The others nodded. Bunny and Top curled their fingers under the flaps of the door. At my nod they pulled the flaps open as quickly as silence would allow, and I moved into the room fast and hard. I reached around and clamped my left palm over the guard’s mouth and used my thumb and the edge of my index finger to pinch his nose shut; at the same time I kicked him in the back of the knee with one foot and as he suddenly fell back against me I cut his throat from ear to ear, taking the carotids, the jugular, and the windpipe in one deep sweep. I pulled him back and pushed him into a forward crouch so that his nodding head would prevent the spray of arterial blood. He was dead before he knew he was in threat and it hadn’t made a sound. Bunny and Skip took the body and eased it down as I straightened. I wiped the blade and sheathed it, drew my pistol and thumbed off the safety.
There were four cases in the row and they completely blocked the door and hid us from whoever else was in the room. I took the dentist’s mirror from Top and checked around both ends of the row. On our right I could see down a corridor formed by a second row of cases that were lined up at a right angle to the first set and a row of laboratory tables cluttered with equipment. There was one guard standing in the gap between the two sets of cases, and near him were six men in stained white lab coats. Everyone was looking through the gap into the center of the main room.
I faded back and used the mirror to peer around the left end of our row. Two guards stood shoulder to shoulder about twenty feet away, also looking toward the center of the room, but this time I could see what they were looking at. What I saw froze the blood in my veins to black ice.
The room was large, as big as a school auditorium, with a high ceiling set with grime-covered louvered windows. Against the far wall was a third row of blue cases, and against the left wall were more lab tables. Scattered throughout the room were at least a dozen armed guards, all of them with automatic weapons; and maybe four more men in lab coats. But in the far left corner was a big cage made from industrial-grade chicken wire and steel pipes. Ten of the blue cases stood with their doors wide open, and three guards were using electric cattle prods to drive a snarling, staggering line of walkers toward the cage.
The cage was packed, wall to wall, with children.
Chapter Forty-Two
Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:26 P.M.
THE CHILDREN WERE huddled into a pack inside the cage, their eyes wide, their mouths trembling. I could see some of them weeping but they made no sound, though whether it was terror of the walkers or threats from the guards that stilled their tongues I couldn’t tell.
I pulled back and handed the mirror to the others, making them each take a fast look.
I mouthed the words “we need prisoners,” but I don’t know if any of them were able to process the thought. Top, the only man among us who had kids of his own, had the most murderous expression I’d ever seen on a human face.
I held up three fingers and everyone got set, Ollie and Skip on the left flank, Bunny and Top with me. I counted down fast.
“Go!” I snarled, and we rushed into the room.
Chapter Forty-Three
Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:27 P.M.
BUNNY OPENED UP with the shotgun on the two closest guards, blasting them into red tangles of flailing limbs; Top shot two of the lab techs and then turned his fire on the cluster of guards. I could hear shots and screams as Ollie and Skip tore into the guards on the far side. I raced straight forward, gun up and out, and shot the guard standing by the door to the cage. It was a long shot; bad aim could kill one of the kids, but I had no choice. The walkers were yards away. My shot took the guard in the mouth and he rebounded off the chicken wire and fell, his fingers still curled around the latch. As he fell the door swung open.
The guards with the cattle prods turned toward us. Two of them tossed down their prods and fumbled for their guns. I shot one twice in the chest but even as I was swinging my barrel toward the other the nearest walker leaped at him and buried its teeth in his throat. They fell together in a thrashing heap. I shot the remaining guard who was caught in a moment of bad choice: drop the prod and grab his gun or fend off the walkers. My bullet knocked him into the arms of a walker. The creature, a middle-aged Asian man in a track suit, bore him down and began savaging him. I shot the walker in the back of the head.
A man rushed at me from my right and I turned to see that there had been at least eight more guards on the other side of the first row of blue cases. They opened up with AK-47s and I had to dive for cover behind one of the lab tables. I dropped, rolled, and came up by the far corner and emptied my magazine into them, dropping two. As I ejected the mag and slapped another in, Top Sims caught them from an oblique angle, chopping down three of them with bursts from his MP5. Skip Tyler opened up from the other side and the guards tried to fight their way out of a crossfire.
Behind me there was a huge shriek of noise and I spun to see the children surge through the open door of the cage. Three walkers lunged at them and that fast I was up and running, shooting above the heads of the children, trying to make head shots while dodging incoming fire. The children were hysterical and in their panic they flooded across the entire production floor. The gunfire from Echo Team faltered as the children surged around the lab techs and guards, trying to flee the walkers, looking for any way out and finding only guns and teeth and terror.
One of the lab techs whipped back one flap of his white shirt-jacket and pulled a Sig Sauer and shot a ten- year-old girl in the chest.
“Fuck prisoners!” I heard someone snarl and the tech died in a hail of bullets. The voice I’d heard had been my own, the bullets mine and Top’s.
A guard brought an Uzi up and tried to shoot me even though there was a line of children between us. I shot him through the eye.
“Run!” I yelled to the kids. “Go that way!” I pointed toward the door, even tried to shove some of the kids that way, but their terror was too deep, too complete.
“Behind you!” I heard Bunny roar, and I crouched and spun to see a walker-a hulking brute in a football jersey-lunge at me, his mouth already smeared with blood. He was coming so fast that I knew that a head shot wouldn’t stop him, so I drove into him with a sliding side kick to the thigh that jerked him to a stop, and as I pivoted off the kick I brought the gun up under his chin and blew off the top of his head. As he fell backward another walker leaped over him. This one was a young woman in what had once been a very expensive tailored suit. I shot her in the throat but the bullet tore only flesh and the slide locked back on my gun. There was no time to reload as she slammed into me; so I pivoted to let her mass whip around and past me. Her fingers never managed to grab me and she flew off and slid ten feet along the floor. With a human being the shock and impact of the fall would have given me a few seconds to reload; but the walker came right off the floor and dove at my legs, trying to bury her teeth in my flesh. With my left hand I drew my knife and drove the blade down as hard as I could in the back of her skull, right above the collar. The furious tension was instantly gone and she dropped to the ground, a piece of my pant leg caught between her teeth.
Top Sims came from my left and stood cover while I reloaded, dropping a lab tech and a walker by the time I had the new mag in and the slide released.
There was a bull roar and we pivoted to see Bunny being rushed by three walkers. There were a half dozen kids huddled behind him and his shotgun was empty. He slammed the folding stock of the shotgun across the face
