Breaking Danger (15 page)

She pushed away from him and looked up at his face. “They're here.”

He nodded grimly.

Sophie pushed a panic that was primordial, instinctive, away from her. She gathered calm around her as if it were her white lab coat. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath. She was a scientist, and had to function as one if they were going to get out of this alive. “Does your scanner have recording functions? Voice and video?”

Jon had stepped back, too, watching her carefully, taking his cues from her. “Yes,” he answered.

“Okay. When they hit Beach Street, I'm going to observe as much of the swarm as I can. So record the scene and record what I say, and we can analyze it all when we get to Haven. I don't think anyone else will have a trained eye on a swarm going by.”

He nodded. “Is there anything I can do to make us safe in here?”

“Well . . .” Sophie reasoned it out. “They are obviously not organized enough to pick locks, but they are strong and have the added strength of numbers. Few make it up stairs, but in case some do, spray more perfume around the door and erect a barricade.” She cocked her head, listening. “I think we have a few minutes still.”

Jon moved fast. In a few moments, he'd sprayed not only perfume but squeezed lemons around the door sill and crushed cloves of garlic. Then he'd easily moved her immensely heavy Italian
madia
against the door, then shoved her steel-reinforced Poltrona Frau sofa against it. He'd just slid the sofa tightly against the
madia
when the noise rose to an unbearable crescendo.

Sophie met his eyes. “They're here,” she whispered.

Mount Blue Haven

Elle turned away from the holographic monitor, unease in her heart. As always, Nick seemed to have a secret passageway into her thoughts. He held her shoulders in a hard grip.

“I know you're worried about your friend, and I won't bullshit you. They're in a dangerous position. But trust me when I say she's got the right guy at her side. If it can be done, Jon will get her out and bring her back to you.”

She tried a smile. “Back to us. You're going to love her.” She turned to everyone in the room. “Catherine, you're going to love her too. Mac . . . I guess the best I can say is that Mac won't eat her. Probably.”

Mac gave a low growl.

Nick's dark face was usually sober, serious, deep lines bracketing his mouth. He rarely smiled and the lines in his face reflected that. He didn't exactly smile, but his face lightened for a moment. “Mac's not that bad. I can't say his bark is worse than his bite because . . . well it's not. If you're on his bad side, you're toast. But we're on his good side. And of course if she becomes Catherine's friend, Mac will be putty in her hands, just as he is in yours.”

Elle pulled back, the idea so ludicrous it jolted her. She turned to the huge man by Catherine's side. He was by any measure a frightening-looking man. Tall, huge, badly scarred, always scowling. “Mac, are you putty in my hands?”

He gave another low growl, offset by his wife's light laugh. “Certainly.” She patted her husband's huge shoulder. “He's a real pussycat.”

Mac rolled his eyes, but his gaze softened when he looked down at his wife. Mac's devotion to Catherine was obvious to all, even in the short time Elle had been in Haven. She couldn't resist. “You mean if I asked him to bring me coffee, he would?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Mac began, then stopped when his wife elbowed him in the ribs. They were so encased with muscle, he probably didn't even feel it. “Yes,” he said through his teeth.

Nick gave a half smile. “Oh yeah. But don't get too cocky.”

It wasn't a laughing moment, but Elle gave a choked laugh. “No.” She shook her head. “I will definitely not get too cocky around Mac.”

“Okay.” Catherine clapped her hands. “Elle and I need to get back to the infirmary. Let us know when the raid team gets back with the last of the lab equipment, and we'll get set up for when Jon and Sophie make it back. General, how many more refugees will there be in the next twenty-four hours?”

“Just call me Snyder, ma'am,” the General said. “We're in contact with several more communities just in the last hour. We're setting up a priority list now, based on their supplies and ammo and the number of infected they're seeing. I reckon we'll have another two hundred today and maybe four hundred tomorrow.”

“General—Snyder.” Elle turned to the stocky former general. “Factor into your plans that we could ship cases of vaccine perhaps as soon as thirty-six hours from now. At some point, if we get enough of the population vaccinated and enough infected die, we might be able to turn the tide. And if we want to have some kind of basis for afterward, we need people protecting production plants and power plants and hospitals.”

At her words, the men in the room visibly relaxed for a moment. Clearly none of them had thought of an afterward, they were so busy dealing with the present and dangerous emergency.

“Good thinking, Dr. Connolly—”

“Dr. Ross,” Nick growled.

“Dr. Ross. Sorry.” Snyder ran a broad palm over the stubble on his head. “Not thinking straight. But it's great to know that some people are planning beyond the moment. I'll pass on the word, give people some hope. Because right now, it's not looking good.”

“No,” Elle said softly. It wasn't looking good. Pandora's box had been opened and monsters had come out. But there had been something hidden at the bottom of Pandora's box. Something wonderful.

Hope.

San Francisco

Beach Street

They came in a flood, a bubbling madhouse tide of humanity. At first only five or six infected came running and Sophie let out a pent-up breath. She'd been bracing herself . . .

And then they came, a solid phalanx of infected, obviously down from Jones, so many they erupted right into Beach and left toward Ghirardelli Square.

With a raised eyebrow at Jon, Sophie pushed the button that cracked the window open a little, just enough to stick her head out. She pulled her head back in immediately, terrified.

It was like a river in full spate, spilling over sidewalks, down every single road, rising on the backs of the fallen, some almost reaching the second floor. When the river of infected reached Beach, she closed the window back shut. With the window open, the noise level was almost unbearable, a booming screech that the ear couldn't correlate to human noise. It was more like a huge piece of broken machinery.

Even with the triple-glazed window shut, the noise level was as high as a rock concert, only there was no backbeat. There was no beat at all, nothing rational, just loud noise emanating from once human throats.

It was almost impossible for the human eye to even distinguish individual forms. The onslaught of bodies was intertwined, limbs thrashing in such an enclosed area that fists took out eyes, legs tripped up bodies as a matter of course. They came in thousands, maybe tens of thousands, so densely packed that the bodies bent inward the closed steel garage doors and the metal barricades of the tourist shops.

Men in suits, students in T-shirts, housewives, children, of all races. They all looked alike in a horrible way, all reduced to violent mindless beings. All with the same look on their blood-streaked faces. Eyes open so wide the whites were visible all around the irises, mouths open to emit those ululating howls, heads swiveling.

Sophie surreptitiously wiped damp hands on her yoga pants and asked, voice low, “Can you take a temperature reading on the scanner?”

She didn't dare look at Jon. She didn't want him to see the horror she felt. She had to keep some kind of detachment, she had to close down her heart, that part of her that couldn't bear to watch what was happening below.

“I can't read individual temperatures,” Jon answered. “But I have a general thermal reading of 102.5 degrees.”

“If that's the average, some will be over 104. That's not sustainable for long. The constitution of the infected has already been severely compromised.”

They both watched the violent scenes below, that dark mass of bodies swarming, killing, dying . . .

They would all die soon. It was just a question of whether they'd take the world down with them or whether something could be salvaged.

“Hand me your scanner, please.”

Jon handed it over silently. Sophie reached the menu that would show heart rates, but all she saw was a flow of three-digit numbers too fast to pinpoint any one number.

“I can't tell individual rates. There are too many of them. But they are all accelerated.” She handed it back. “Is the record function on?”

Jon held it up. “It is now.”

Sophie wiped her mind of everything but scientific detachment and spoke clearly, for the record. “We are observing what at a conservative guess is one thousand infected currently swarming the street, with more stretching all the way to the horizon. The overall count must be in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands.” She leaned a little forward to observe better. “All surface areas appear to be swarmed. They are not breaking into stores but rather the sheer number of them, pressing against both sides of the streets, is caving in the unprotected storefronts. They are pouring into every gap, every window, every open door, every alleyway. For the moment we see no signs of them making their way up to second stories, but the sheer weight of them might make that inevitable.”

Sophie pressed her lips together and looked up at Jon, then at her door. He nodded reassuringly. They'd made the best barricade they could. And her door had a titanium core. They were as protected as they could be.

Observe, Sophie!

A strong man in a track suit wrenched the arm of a young girl out of its socket and tore it off. Sophie jolted and felt Jon's strong hand on her shoulder. “Steady,” he whispered.

Yes, steady. They had to understand this to conquer it.

“There”—Sophie's mouth was completely dry and she had to lick her lips—“There is a strong tropism in action. The—ah, the infected battle violently with each other, but they are sticking close together.” She tried to study the faces running past. “I see definite signs of dehydration, whether because they have been running for hours or because they are unable to procure water for themselves is an open question. Turning on a tap or opening a bottle—it is unclear whether they retain the cognitive skills to do that. Or even the fine motor skills. I see no signs of organized behavior.”

The roar of the crowd was deafening. She hungered for her noise-canceling headset, but that would be merely cutting herself off from the world. That couldn't be allowed to happen, not when the world had suddenly turned so feral.

“I see—” she counted silently. “I see about one in twenty falling and disappearing in the crowd. Simply falling and being trodden over. If they were dying before, when they fall they are definitely dead. No one could survive the trampling in that crowd. I would estimate that soon more and more in the swarm will fall. When the swarm passes, the streets will be littered with the dead.”

She glanced up at Jon's grim face and he nodded. She knew he would factor that into his calculations for their escape.

The noise was deafening. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the booming sounds of raw, piercing screams. The sounds of humans gone utterly mad. Their blank, vicious bloodied faces was a sight taken from the depths of hell. No painter, not even Hieronymus Bosch, could have even imagined what she and Jon were seeing.

If there was a hell, this was it.

It was too much. A coldness descended upon her soul, as if the temperature of the world had suddenly dropped.

She was chilled down to her bones, a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air but the situation of the world. It froze her mind too. She looked up at Jon, opening her mouth then closing it again. She wanted to tell him she couldn't do this, couldn't observe this massive vision of hell any longer, but her lungs wouldn't fill with enough air to form the words. She could barely breathe.

Jon somehow understood. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. Oh God. Warmth. He was this huge column of warm muscle. She leaned into him, trying to absorb some of his heat, take it into herself.

“Come, Sophie. You're in shock.”

Jon led her into the bedroom and made her get under the covers. She could barely walk, had to think about putting one foot in front of the other. Had to actively try not to stumble.

She didn't have to think about not falling down, though. Jon had a big arm around her waist and she felt like she couldn't fall down. He wouldn't let her.

On the way to the bed, Jon grabbed a cashmere throw that was lying across her sofa and wrapped it around her. Once she was sitting in bed, covers up to her chin, the throw around her shoulders, she knew intellectually she shouldn't be feeling any cold, but she was. It was all-pervasive, muscle and bone deep. No amount of swaddling could dissipate it.

Jon disappeared. While he was gone, it was no-Jon time. Time that didn't matter, wasn't observable. She neither thought nor felt. It was like being in suspended animation. She couldn't even register the booming, crashing noises from outside. Her bedroom looked out over an internal courtyard so the noises came over the rooftops.

A huge boom sounded, not a human noise. Some explosion somewhere. These were all thoughts that drifted through her mind without her understanding them fully.

“Here.” Startled, she looked up. Jon had a steaming cup of something on one of her pretty flower-themed trays. “Drink it all down.”

He put his big hand under the cup when she picked it up. He'd been right to. She seemed to have lost all muscle strength. The cup bobbled in her hand and the hot liquid would have splashed on her, burned her, if he hadn't steadied it.