Still of Night (Dead of Night 3)

I did not see a single living person out there. Not one.

“Grenades,” I barked, and the three of us, Top, Bunny and me, began bombarding the throng.

We threw half a dozen grenades each. The blasts shook the world, deafened us, punched us over the hearts. Then we ran into the red-tinged smoke, skidding on blood, firing in all directions, killing anything that moved.

We slaughtered our way to the monster truck.

— 14 —

The keys were in the truck.

So was the driver. He had no arms, no face, no eyes, but he thrashed because he was belted in place. I put a shot through his temple and Torres popped the lock and pulled him down. I saw Bunny pick up the president and actually throw him in through the back door. There was a sharp cry of pain, but then Bunny shoved Chang up after him. I turned to yell at the two remaining Secret Service agents, but they were gone. I never saw them fall. They had simply been edited out of the world. Top crowded in behind the wheel. Doors slammed and hands began banging on the truck’s metal skin. The blows were weird. Hard, but also soft. Limp hands striking without skill, powered by raw need.

“Go, go, go,” I yelled, but he was already turning the key. The powerful engine roared to life and I nearly wept with relief when the little arrow on the fuel indicator swept up to full.

“Hold onto your dicks,” Top said and put the truck in gear.

The crowd, weakened and dismembered as it was, still wanted to keep us there. They had numbers and weight and they could not feel pain.

The truck was truly a monster. The over-built engine roared like a mad bull and the massive wheels turned. We braced ourselves for impact, but it wasn’t like that. Not at first.

No, the truck ground its way down the street. The tires were sixty-six inches high and forty-three inches wide, with deep tread. The massive weight of the vehicle and those brutal tires crushed the fragile bodies into pulp. I made the mistake of looking into the rearview mirror and saw that we were leaving a lumpy red road behind us. Nothing I’ve ever seen was as awful.

When I looked at Top, his face was set in immoveable stone and he looked ten years too old.

I pulled up a map program on the small tactical computer strapped to my wrist. It was a little over eighteen miles along Route 94 to 125 and then California 52 east to Gillespie Airport. We had five hours left.

It took us more than four hours to kill our way there.

Four long, goddamn hours. Night caught up with us. It kicked the sun off the edge of the world and tried to smother us with blackness. The lights of San Diego vanished behind us, curtained by smoke even before twilight burned off. The highway was packed, but the fucking truck was designed to crunch its way over everything. We did a lot of that, and it felt like the Mystery Bus was shaking itself to pieces. We saw plenty of fights that I wish we could have helped with. People still alive and trying to stay that way.

The mission, though, the response protocol—that mattered more than anyone or anything, but damn if it didn’t hurt to have to keep moving forward.

In the back, Bunny, Torres, Chang and the president clung to restraining straps and tried not to look at each other. Bunny reloaded all the weapons. We had two grenades left and five or six magazines for each gun.

We were still a mile away when we saw the base.

No, that’s wrong.

From a mile out we could see the flames.

— 15 —

Top circled around to Kenney Street, on the north side of the field, near the biggest runway. We idled on the road outside the gate, watching the big Jet Air Systems factory burn. The light from it painted the sides of Air Force One in Halloween colors. Shadow goblins seemed to caper along the curved sides of the big Boeing 747.

There was a very stout wall and heavy gate, which was closed and locked.

“Ram the gate,” said the president, but Top shook his head.

“Steel construction,” said Top. “We’d wreck this truck and not put a dent in it.”

There were a lot of infected wandering around the field, and signs of one hell of a battle. The National Guard had clearly been called in to protect the president’s plane. Maybe a hundred of them. A dozen of them were on the roof of the burning building. They were the only ones I could see.

On our side of the fence were maybe three hundred infected. They clawed and scratched and even tried to bite the big truck, as if they were hoping to eat their way to us.

We all watched the plane through binoculars.

“Door’s closed,” said Chang. “Lights are on inside.”