Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

The missile blasted away from under the Black Hawk’s stubby wing and struck the rocky ground near the bridge. The blast was immense, and when the rotor wash blew the smoke away, there was a crater in the trench wall. The bridge was still there, but all around it were charred ashes that were unrecognizable as ever having been human.

Then they saw a ripple of flashes by one of the hangars. At first Benny thought it was a string of firecrackers set off by the flames.

“Those are guns,” yelled Nix. “The soldiers are fighting back.”

Joe swung the Black Hawk toward the gunfire. Zoms chased the machine, and reapers on quads and on foot raced across the tarmac in the same direction. He fired one more missile at a crowd of mixed zoms and reapers and then flew straight through the fire and smoke.

The gunfire was coming from inside the hangar where they’d met Colonel Reid. There were bodies on the ground surrounded by the hunched figures of zoms who feasted on their victims. Benny could not tell if any of those bodies belonged to Riot or Eve. The dead poured into the hangar, and there were living reapers among them, shoving the zoms forward, herding them, driving them from kill to kill.

Joe dropped almost to the ground and flew the helicopter slowly and carefully in through the open hangar doors. The gunfire was concentrated in one corner, and Benny could see a knot of soldiers moving in a tight cluster, toward a door set in the back wall. Some of them fired at the advancing horde of zoms; others fired toward the door to clear it. But there was no doubt that some zoms and reapers had already passed through that doorway.

“They’re inside the complex,” said Joe. “That door leads to a tunnel that connects all of these buildings.”

McReady looked up, her face going paler still. “The equipment . . . the lab.”

“Chong!” cried Lilah.

The look on Joe’s face was as feral and cruel as any monster as he opened up with the chain guns. He turned the helicopter in a slow circle and maintained continuous fire, creating a kind of hell Benny had never seen before. One man and one machine turned the entire hangar into a slaughterhouse. Reapers and zombies flew apart. Others were punched backward into each other or against walls. Shell casings fell like rain. But then the guns clicked on empty, the rounds exhausted.

Joe landed the Black Hawk in a swirl of blood-tinged smoke.

The group of soldiers were at the door now. They gunned down the last of the reapers in their way and vanished inside the entrance to the tunnel.

And they slammed the door shut behind them.

76

“EVERYBODY OUT,” B

ELLOWED JOE AS he erupted from the pilot’s seat. “Now—now!”

They grabbed their weapons, but Lilah also scooped up two bags of the capsules. Benny saw this and grabbed a couple as well, shoving them into his backpack.

“You never know,” he said.

Joe snatched a machine gun from a rack and began stuffing extra magazines into his pockets. “Lilah, you’re with McReady. If you want your boyfriend back, kill anyone who even looks at her.”

Lilah bared her teeth.

“Nix, Benny, you two hold the line and watch my back. I have to get through that door, and it’s going to take a minute. If I don’t and things get weird, go back into the chopper and close the door. There are enough guns and ammo in there to stop an army.”

Then Joe clicked his tongue for Grimm, and as soon as the dog turned its massive armored head toward him, Joe quickly reached out and touched Nix on the shoulder.

“Family,” said Joe, and Grimm barked once in acknowledgment.

Joe touched Benny. “Family,” he said again.

Another bark.

“Protect,” said the ranger, and the dog gave a third deep-chested bark.

Joe rolled back the door of the Black Hawk and was firing before he even jumped out. That corner of the hangar was littered with the dead, but more were pouring into the hangar through the massive open doorway. There was a narrow slot, almost a cattle chute, formed by the wall and the helicopter, and this allowed only a couple of the dead to rush forward at a time.

Nix gave Benny a single brave smile. “Warrior smart,” she said.

“Warrior smart.”

And for no reason at all other than that the world was insane, they laughed.