“When I meet him,” said Top, “I’m hoping he’ll be in my crosshairs.”
“With you on that.”
There was another burst of static and then a desperate voice said, “Cowboy? Cowboy, are you there?”
It was the Kid and we were back online.
“I’m here, Kid. Where are you?”
“I’m in the House of Screams.”
“Say again?”
“The conditioning lab. Red district. Look at the floor. Follow the red line. It ends right outside where I am. I had to run and then they tried to grab me, but I got away. I-”
Whatever else he was going to say was suddenly drowned out by the roar of gunfire and the sound of a lot of people screaming. Then nothing.
“Kid! SAM…!”
But I was talking to a dead mike.
The red lines on the floor stretched out in front of us.
We ran.
Chapter Eighty-Five
The Hive
Sunday, August 29, 3:55 P.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 5 minutes E.S.T.
We crashed through another set of double doors that opened on an atrium that was thick with exotic plants and trees in ceramic pots. The plant leaves, the pots, and the floor were all splattered with blood. The floor was littered with shell casings. There were bodies everywhere. The dead were all strangely similar: short, muscular, red-haired, and dressed in cotton trousers and tank tops. None of the dead had weapons on or near them. From what I could see in the split second I had to take in details was that the entry wounds were on their backs as if they’d been gunned down while fleeing.
The atrium was crowded with people. Scores of the red-haired people were fighting to get through an open doorway into a room labeled: “Barracks 3.” A dozen guards stood in a rough firing line, blasting away at the fleeing, screaming people. One guard stood apart. He was a big man with a buzz cut and an evil grin. He was wrestling with a teenage boy who had to be SAM. The Kid was screaming and kicking at the big guy but for all his fury wasn’t doing the guard a lot of harm. The guard even looked amused.
SAM broke free and dug something out of his pocket-a black rock the size of an egg-and then leaped with a howl and tried to smash the guard’s skull with it. The guard swatted SAM out of the air like a bug.
All of this happened in a split second as we pelted across the atrium. Somehow through the gunfire and screams the guards must have heard us. They turned and began swinging their weapons toward us.
“Take them!” I yelled. Easier said than done. With the red-haired people on the far side and the Kid in front, a gun battle was iffy, and we were right on top of them. So we crashed right into them and it was an instant melee.
Bunny hit the line from an angle and it was like a wrecking ball hitting a line of statues. The impact knocked guards into one another, and that probably saved all our lives because suddenly everybody was in one another’s way. Top and I both capped a couple of the guards with short-range shots and then we were up close and personal. Top clocked one guard across the jaw with his M4 and spun off of that to ram the barrel into someone else’s throat.
I went for SAM, but the boy was once more grappling with the big guard. Another guard stepped up and put his rifle to his shoulder. If I’d been five feet farther back it would have been a smart move for him, but I was way too close. I grabbed his rifle and thrust the barrel toward the ceiling and pistol-whipped him across the throat, then gave him a front kick that knocked him down. The guard next to him swung his rifle at me and knocked my pistol out of my hand and damn near broke my wrist. I pivoted and broke his knee with a side-thrust kick, and as he sagged to the ground I chopped him across the throat with the edge of my other hand.
Bunny tore a rifle from one guard’s hand and threw it away, then grabbed the guy by the back of the hair so he could hold his head steady while he landed three very fast hammer blows to the nose. The man was a sack of loose bones, so Bunny picked him up and slammed him sideways into the chests of two other men. Bunny’s strategy was to keep destablizing the line. It was something we’d worked on in training. He was enormously strong and fast and he had a lot of years in judo, so he knew about overbalancing. Top, on the other hand, was lethal at close and medium range and his hands and feet lashed out with minimum effort and maximum efficiency. Top had done karate since he was a kid, and none of it was tournament stuff. No jump-spinning double Ninja death kicks. He broke bones and gouged eyes and crushed windpipes.
One of the guards came at me with a six-and-a-half-inch Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife. I took it away from him and then gave it back; he fell back with the blade buried in his soft palate.
SAM screamed in rage and pain as the big guard grabbed him by the hair and punched him in the face. The Kid’s nose exploded in blood and his knees buckled. He would have fallen if not for the massive fist knotted in his black hair, but even so the Kid tried to swing that stone again. Kid really had spunk.
There was one more guard between me and the big guy and I wasn’t in the mood to dance, so I grabbed the punch he was trying to throw and broke his arm, stamped on his foot, and then gave him a rising knee kick to the crotch that went deep enough to break his pelvis. He fell screaming to the floor and I closed on the big guy.
The guard saw me coming and swung the boy around to use him as a shield, locking a huge arm around SAM’s throat.
“I’ll pop his bleeding head off,” the man said with a thick Australian accent.
I pulled my Rapid Response knife and clicked it into place.
“Let him go or I’ll put you in the dirt,” I said.
Around me Echo Team was tearing the last of his men to pieces.
The guard-his name tag identified him as Carteret-lifted SAM off the ground so that he was a better shield. The boy’s face was going from rage red to air-starved purple.
“Killing the Kid’s not going to make the day end better for you, sport,” I said. “He’s the only coin you have left to spend.”
“Fuck you!”
I was about to rush him when SAM, oxygen starved and battered as he was, swung both feet toward me and then bent his legs and swung them back and up so that both of his heels slammed into the man’s groin. The guard’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates and he let out a whistling shriek. I grabbed SAM by the front of the shirt and pulled him free.
The guard staggered back. I put him on the deck with an overhand right that knocked him cold.
I spun back to the fight, but there was no fight. Bunny and Top stood in combat crouches, both of them bruised and breathing heavy, but none of the guards were able to answer muster. Most never would.
SAM took a staggering step toward me. The lower half of his face was bright with his own gore and he hocked up a clot of blood and snot and spit it into Carteret’s face.
It was a strange moment. Even with all of the vicious combat and murder around me, that act seemed to possess more real hatred than anything else that had happened here today. The boy was panting and crying.
“SAM-?” I asked.
He nodded. “Are you… Cowboy?”
“At your service.”
The Kid pawed tears from his eyes with bloody fists and then turned toward the open door through which the last of the red-haired people had fled.
“We have to save them…,” he said thickly.
“Are there more guards?”
The Kid shook his head. “I don’t know… but I heard the tiger-hounds roaring earlier.”
“So, that’s what they’re called,” said Bunny. “We put two of them down.”
