Thunder and Ashes Page 6

  “Bad news it is,” Mason said. He let the binoculars drop to hang from his neck. The three were sitting in a park on a hillside, overlooking the town of Point Pleasant on the border of West Virginia. They’d made good time in a month, first clearing the suburbs of Washington, D.C., then the rural communities of Maryland, and finally the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. They were nearing the plains, heading due west, when they’d lost their car in an accident. They’d been walking for the past week. Supplies were running dangerously low, and they were all sorely in need of a rest.

  Mason’s black and gray urban camoflague was ripped and torn at the knees and elbows, and mud smears marred the pattern. He’d appropriated street hockey pads in one of the smaller towns and strapped them on, but they were already dinged up. He wore a simple baseball cap on his head, and a black rucksack on his back. A submachine gun was strapped across his shoulders and a Beretta rode comfortably against his thigh. He leaned back against a maple tree and sighed.

  “Bad news is there’s only one way out of this town, and that’s across a bridge,” he said, pointing straight ahead. “It looks pretty well jammed up with abandoned cars and debris, so it could be a little treacherous.”

  “And the other bad news?” Anna asked. Of the three, she still looked the most presentable. Somehow along the way she’d continually managed to find clean t-shirts to wear, and refused to share her secret with her two companions. Julie and Mason suspected she was sneaking off in the night to loot stores as they passed through towns, but if she was, she kept it to herself.

  “I think we’ll have to cross the bridge,” Mason said. “We’re a good three, four miles from that river and I can see without the binoculars that it’s trying to jump its banks. Spring thaw. Current’ll be fast and dangerous. No way we’re swimming it, and unless we find a boat with a working engine, we’ll have to take the bridge.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Julie said, stretching her legs. “Maybe we’ll find a working car somewhere down there.”

  “One can hope,” Anna agreed.

  “I’m more worried about food, personally,” Mason said, looking over his shoulder at the women. “In case you’ve forgotten, we ran out yesterday. I can live with walking. I can’t live without food.”

  “Well, we picked a decent place to run out,” Anna said, gesturing at the town below them. “There has to be something down there.”

  “Yeah,” Mason scoffed. “Carriers, most likely.”

  “Now’s the best time to go through,” Anna continued. “It’s just past midday, we’ve got a good five hours of daylight left, and the infected seem to prefer darkness. If we’re quiet and careful, we should make it through all right.”

  Mason considered this a moment, then nodded. “Okay. I’m up for it. Julie?”

  “No time like the present,” she said, groaning as she climbed to her feet. “I would kill for a cup of coffee and some Tylenol.”

  “You may yet have the chance,” Mason said. “Onward and downward!”

  The trio kept to the streets, walking steadily downhill toward the river. Mason led the way. He unslung his MP-5, a compact but powerful nine-millimeter sub machinegun, and held it at the ready, scanning the side streets, alleys, and doorways for any signs of movement.

  “Oh, look, a Bennigan’s,” Julie said, pointing. “Wish they were open. I could use a burger.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Mason said. “And keep it quiet.”

  “Sorry,” Julie added, a bit sheepishly.

  More than once Mason stopped the group, holding up a closed fist and staring off at seemingly innocent buildings, or empty parking lots. Anna and Julie knew better. Mason wasn’t the type to halt them over nothing; invariably, he would alter their course slightly after each stop, putting a few damaged, abandoned vehicles between them and the offending building, or taking them down a side street instead of continuing on course. He never offered an explanation as to what spooked him, and neither woman asked.

  After nearly an hour of walking, the terrain began to level out, and the sound of the rushing river grew louder. Mason began to pay attention to street signs, and after spotting one that seemed particularly interesting to him, he halted the group again, knelt, pulled out an atlas from his rucksack, and checked their position within the town.

  “Nearly there now,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Four more blocks.”

  “Please let there be a car we can hotwire on the bridge, please, oh, please God,” Julie said.

  “Quiet!”

  “Sorry.”

  They rounded the final corner and the bridge came into sight. Cars were backed up on both sides of it for blocks in either direction. Mason halted the group again, scowling at the congestion. Vehicles of every make and model, most with luggage strapped to the roofs or spilling out the back windows, littered the road. Several were left with their doors hanging open, and suitcases lay upended on the pavement, evidence of the panicked flight of the occupants.

  “See any you could hotwire again, Mason?” Julie asked hopefully.

  Mason shook his head slowly. “Maybe that Festiva over there, but the door’s open. The battery’s probably dead. Besides, look at it—it’s blocked in on all sides. We’d never get it free, even if it did start.”

  “Oh, damn,” Julie moaned, stomping her foot. “And we haven’t even seen anyplace to find food—unless you count the Bennigan’s, but you weren’t having that, were you?”

  “I hate chains,” Mason said, shaking his head. “Besides, all the food in there would have spoiled by now.”

  “Let’s just cross the bridge and get back on the road,” Anna said. “We’ll find something.”

  “I’m with you,” Mason agreed.

  He jumped up onto the hood of a sedan, looking to hop from roof to roof to make the crossing easier.

  Instead, he froze in place, staring across the bridge with a clenched jaw, looking very much like a lifelike statue. He narrowed his eyes.

  “What?” Anna asked, looking back and forth between Mason and the bridge. When Mason didn’t reply, she repeated her query. Mason stared straight ahead, not bothering to answer. “What is it, already?”

  Suddenly, Mason leapt off the side of the sedan, falling into a crouch. He gestured for the two women to do likewise.

  “Get down, get down!” he called out.

  They hastened to comply, crouching with their backs against the side of the car.

  “What is it? You’ve got my heart going a mile a minute,” Julie protested.

  Mason’s voice was grating, just barely above a growl. “It’s Sawyer.”

  “What?” Julie asked. “Where?”

  She poked her head up above the car’s engine block and peered across the bridge. Mason grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her back down with a yelp.

  “Hey!” she said, slapping his hand away.

  “What do you want to do, get yourself shot?” Mason asked angrily. “He’s watching the bridge.”

  “How do you know that?” Anna asked, pistol drawn.

  “I saw the reflection of the sun off a scope when I jumped on the car,” Mason explained. “They’re on the hillside across the river, watching the bridge.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Anna said, arching an eyebrow. “I repeat: how do you know that’s Sawyer and not just something randomly reflecting the light?”

  Mason frowned at her. “Have I ever led you wrong before? All right, look: it’s too convenient. First, this is a perfect ambush site, a bottleneck. Second, he’s right where I’d be if I was the one setting the ambush. And finally, it’s been two weeks since we’ve run across him and his posse, which makes us overdue for another encounter. I’ve actually been wondering these past couple of days when or if we were going to bump into him again.”

  Sawyer had been a thorn in the trio’s side since before they’d left Washington. He was a dyed-in-the-wool All-American who, like Mason had, worked for the National Security Agency. His last assignment had been to in
terrogate Anna Demilio and provide his superiors with information about the Morningstar strain in order for them to better combat the virus. His methods had been brutal, and his personality suggested someone who was willing to do just about anything to get the job done, up to and including murder. When Mason had helped Anna and Julie escape the NSA facility, Sawyer had followed, intent on recapturing his charges and bringing Mason to justice—albeit his own, twisted form of justice.

  “Oh, damn it,” Anna said, sighing. “I thought we’d lost him back in Maryland.”

  “Apparently not,” Mason replied. “I’m beginning to think Sawyer knows where we’re going.”

  Julie scoffed, shaking her head. “How could he possibly know that?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me,” Mason said, looking pointedly at Julie. “The only place our destination was written down—at least to my knowledge—was on that computer you accessed in the safe-house back in D.C.”

  “It took me an hour to get into that system and I knew what I was looking for,” Julie protested. “There’s no way he—oh.”

  “Oh?” Anna asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Oh,” Julie repeated. “I may have left the system on when we had to run out in that big hurry.”

  “Great,” Anna said, rolling her eyes. “Now we can’t lose the bastard. He knows where we’re headed, so he can just keep leapfrogging ahead of us any time we get away from him and set an ambush. We’re dead.”

  “Not necessarily,” Mason said, considering the situation. “He’s waiting for us right now. He thinks we’ll definitely try to cross that bridge to keep heading west. After all, it’s the only one for miles and miles in either direction, so it’s a pretty reasonable deduction. But if we slip past without him realizing it—”

  “—he’ll just keep waiting for us,” Julie finished, grinning. “He’ll never realize we’ve moved on.”

  “Ah, well, let’s not go too far,” Mason admonished. “Eventually he’ll realize we gave him the slip, and he’ll pick up and come after us again. That, or he’ll think we bought the farm somewhere and give up, but I wouldn’t want to assume that. Sawyer’s far too obtuse to let this little grudge of his go that easily. He’ll want bodies. Proof.”

  “There’s a pleasant thought,” Anna said, imagining a triumphant Sawyer standing over their corpses.

  “This guy is a major league asshole,” Julie said. “This is, what, the third time he’s caught up with us? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? I mean, the world’s falling to shit, the dead are walking, and this guy wants to arrest us? It’s pretty sad, if you ask me.”

  “It’s not sad to him,” Mason said. “Besides, I’m starting to get the vibe that this isn’t just a grudge. Sawyer may be an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole. He isn’t the kind of person to throw his life away just to get even with someone. I’m betting he has orders.”

  “Orders?” Julie asked. “From who?”

  “From a higher-up. Brass. You don’t honestly think Morningstar wiped out everyone but us and Sawyer, do you?”

  “I agree with Mason,” Anna said, nodding slowly. “I’m betting there are some pretty powerful people still out there calling the shots, and there have to be just as many not-so-powerful people willing to have their strings pulled.”

  “Like Sawyer,” Mason said.

  “Like Sawyer,” Anna agreed. “And as much as I hate to say this, his orders probably have a lot to do with me.”

  “Little narcissism for breakfast, Colonel?” Julie said, grinning.

  “Seriously,” Anna said. “I wasn’t the only doctor researching Morningstar before the pandemic, but I was the most knowledgeable. That’s no conceit. I studied my ass off. I already told you how those interrogation sessions of his went back in the District. Not a question about you, Julie, and not a question about why we leaked that intel. It was Morningstar. Day after day, it was Morningstar. ‘Will this work?’ ‘Will that work?’ ‘Do we have a snowball’s chance in hell if we try this, or that?’ They were using me to fight the virus.”

  Mason nodded in agreement. “That’s true. Sawyer kept you to himself, wouldn’t let Derrick or me near you after the initial questioning. We thought maybe he was gunning for a promotion, keeping us out of the loop and all, but it’s just as likely he was getting orders from higher-up.”

  “Okay, okay,” Julie surrendered, holding up her hands. “I get it. So what are we going to do?”

  “Well,” Mason said, sighing heavily and letting a frown crease his features, “We can’t cross the bridge.”

  “No shit,” Julie remarked.

  Mason shot her an annoyed glance before continuing. “We go with Plan B. We give him the slip. We’ll have to find another bridge, or a working boat, and get across the river. If it was midsummer, I’d say we could swim it, but right now that’s damn near impossible. River’s way too high and running way too fast for that. We’d be drowned or swept downstream before we made it halfway across.”

  “South,” Anna said, pointing. “We head south. The river cuts east just a couple miles north. We’d end up doubling back on our own trail if we went that way.”

  Mason considered this a moment, then nodded. “All right. South it is. Let’s go.”

  He rose into a crouch and took off at a jog, still heading toward the water, but at an angle that would take him away from the bridge and toward the river’s banks. He made sure to keep buildings and trees between him and the spot on the hillside where he’d seen the glint of sunlight on glass. When the road ended near the river, he slid on his backside down the steep grassy slope, stopping himself neatly at the bottom and turning to make sure the two women followed successfully.

  A few industrial buildings littered the riverbanks, prefabricated sheetmetal structures that were eaten through in a few places by rust. Mason was inwardly pleased by these new surroundings. They would provide plenty of cover for the trio as they moved away from Sawyer’s planned ambush site. Materials—rolls of rusted steel, rebar, small mountains of sand and gravel—were stacked nearly in rows between the buildings, affording even more cover. Mason led the women across an unpaved parking lot and along the side of one of the longer warehouses, moving at a dogtrot.

  When Mason came to the first doorway, a wide two-story cutaway large enough for construction machinery to pass through unhindered, he skidded to a stop, pressed his back against the wall, and knelt down. He leaned out fractionally from his cover, just enough to peer into the building with one eye. Left, right, up, down—he scanned the interior for hostiles. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he leaned back, nodded his approval to Anna and Julie, then resumed his dogtrot.

  They had made it a little more than halfway through the industrial park when Mason slowed to a walk, furrowing his brow.

  “What is it?” Anna asked.

  “Hold up,” Mason said, drawing to a stop. Anna halted, and Julie, who had been looking over her shoulder to make certain the group wasn’t being followed, had to skid in the gravel to keep from plowing Anna and Mason over. “I could have sworn I heard something.”

  “What was it?” Anna whispered.

  “Footstep, I thought,” Mason said, voice just as low. “On gravel.”

  The trio stood in place on the side of the building a moment longer, Mason tilting his head to the side to hear better. Sure enough, the crunch of a booted foot on gravel came to their ears, distant and indistinct. It was either coming from a long way off, or someone nearby was taking pains to remain as quiet as they were. With the metal walls of the warehouses all around them, it was tough to get a fix on the direction the sound was coming from.

  “Stay close,” Mason said, and carefully thumbed the safety on his MP-5 from “safe” to “semi.” He stalked slowly along the outside of the warehouse, peering down the barrel of his weapon. Anna was right behind him, pistol drawn and held at the ready. Julie brought up the rear, casting nervous glances behind herself.

  They reached the corner of the building, and Mas
on brought them to a halt once again. He seemed undecided, eyes flicking between the ground at the building’s edge and the corner of the structure itself. Anna could see his jaw clenching and unclenching.

  “Just do it,” she whispered.

  That seemed to do the trick.

  Mason gritted his teeth and swung out from the wall, rounding the corner in a flash and holding his MP-5 in front of him. Anna and Julie were right behind him.

  They found themselves staring down the barrels of rifles.

  Suddenly, everything was a blur of movement and shouted commands.

  “Freeze!”

  “Drop your weapons! Drop your weapons!”

  “Do it now!”

  “Get on the ground! Move!”

  Anna, Mason, and Julie had rounded the corner and come face-to-face with another group of survivors, also numbering three. All were armed, and all were just as startled as the trio to suddenly be facing live opposition. Neither side showed any intention of lowering their weapons, and after the shouted threats had died down, the six survivors realized they were stuck in a Mexican standoff.

  Mason narrowed his eyes at the leader of the opposing group, a tall, thin man with shoulder-length hair and the beginnings of a beard. “We don’t want any trouble, chief. Just lower your rifles. We’ll do the same, then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Fuck you,” said the scraggly man. “You lower your weapons first, then we’ll lower ours.”

  “Not going to happen,” Mason said.

  One of the other two newcomers, a young man wearing a hooded sweatshirt, twitched his aim fractionally to draw a bead on Mason’s head in silent response. Anna and Julie replied with adjusted aims of their own.

  “All right, all right, let’s everyone just relax,” the scraggly man said. “Matt, ease up on that trigger finger. Ease up!”

  The young man in the sweatshirt looked anxious, but his index finger slowly lifted off the trigger.

  “Okay,” the scraggly man said, sounding relieved. “I’m going to lower my rifle now. Think you can manage doing the same?”

  “I think so,” Mason replied, easing off his own grip on the MP-5’s trigger.