Wade pushed Fisher off him and looked back. The last few members of the squad unloaded everything they had before the infected swarmed over them. A grenade exploded in their midst, ripping through the crowd and covering them all in a pall of smoke.
The Klowns brayed like hyenas as they closed in with knives to collect their trophies.
THIRTY-SEVEN.
Muldoon radioed the convoy to halt. His squad piled out of the Humvees to clear the area. Lee was right; there were a lot of Klowns in the neighborhood, all heading to Hanscom. The squad went to guns on them. Muldoon called out the combat engineers.
This was a good place to break the road. On the right, the ground sloped past the guardrail through some trees to the Cambridge Reservoir; on the left, a patch of thick woods. And in between, six lanes of highway dotted with abandoned vehicles and wrecks. The job was to blow some massive craters all the way across. A piece of cake for the engineers.
They placed ten M180 cratering demolition kits at regular intervals on the north and southbound lanes of the road. More on the shoulders and median.
Each kit weighed a hundred pounds. A big rocket was mounted on a tripod and aimed at the ground. A second shaped charge was attached to one of the tripod legs.
A radio signal would trigger the rockets to fire and strike the shaped charges. The explosion of the shaped charge would rip a hole in the road about six feet deep. The rocket would then propel through the back blast into the hole and detonate at the bottom.
Then BOOM.
A crater ten to twenty feet across would appear, a massive trench across I-95 that would stop any vehicles.
Muldoon’s squad pulled security. They watched their sectors but frequently glanced at the engineers like excited children waiting for Christmas. The explosion was going to be a hell of a thing to see. The boys did love their toys.
The only problem was time. The whole thing was taking way too long. The engineers were bickering over proper placement of the demolition charges. Muldoon thought Lieutenant Donald would put an end to it. Instead, he took out a tape measure.
“Lieutenant!” Muldoon called. “We’re on the clock here.”
Donald frowned. “This has to be done properly, Sergeant.”
“We’re going to have company real, real soon.”
“My orders were to do it right.”
“Contact!” Ramirez said.
Muldoon grabbed the binoculars. “What you got?”
“A whole lot of Nasty Girls, Sergeant.”
He brought the view into focus. Visibility was poor. Smoke drifted like fog across the highway from fires burning on the other side of the reservoir. A column of vehicles and soldiers emerged from the haze. Humvees. Five-tons belching exhaust. Bands of infantry hoofing it.
No armor. Good.
Still, it was going to be a close thing.
He raised the binoculars again.
A swarm of Klowns emerged from the trees next to the highway. The usual freak show of ragged clothes, self-mutilations, homemade weapons, grisly trophies and naked captives on leashes. They raced across the southbound lanes toward the National Guard.
Come on! Muldoon wanted to scream at the Guard. They’re coming right at you!
They did nothing. They didn’t even appear to notice the Klowns.
Ramirez shook his head. “What the hell are they doing?”
You’re about to be attacked, you idiots! Fire! Fire!
The Klowns ran straight at the Guard and fell into step with the column.
Muldoon felt the blood drain from his face.
Aw, shit.
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Muldoon radioed to base and requested an airstrike. The Apaches were engaged in the west. They’d get there in thirty minutes. He didn’t have thirty minutes. He terminated contact and considered his options while his squad watched him anxiously.
Donald gave him a thumbs-up. “Good to go, Sergeant!”
Apparently, the engineer didn’t have a problem cutting corners when two companies of heavily armed, homicidal maniacs were rolling up the road.
“Hooah, sir,” Muldoon said.
They could blow the road and leave. Mission accomplished. The National Guard would be slowed, and the battalion could get out of Dodge. Then Lee would send a few whirlybirds to put the Klowns out of their misery with a little precision-guided whoopass.
Only that wouldn’t happen. Lee wouldn’t spend the fuel and ordnance. He’d be totally focused on getting the battalion to Fort Drum in one piece. And that would leave two companies of infected soldiers free to wreak havoc on what was left of the Greater Boston area. Muldoon couldn’t stomach that idea.
Brock had real problems on his hands. He wasn’t going to stop Tenth Mountain from leaving the state. He apparently didn’t have enough force available to even try. When the man threatened Lee, he’d been bluffing, hoping to deter him. As if anything deterred Lee.
It was all on Muldoon. He had nine shooters plus the engineers, three Humvees with two fifty-cals, a Mark 19 grenade launcher and some explosives. It was like a puzzle. The trick was making all the pieces fit so they added up to the annihilation of two hundred infected soldiers.
“What are we going to do, Sergeant?” Ramirez asked.
His little command could put a dent in the opposition force, sure, just before it got slaughtered. Those men down the road had all the weapons and training they had before the virus got them. They were organized. The Klowns were working together in large groups. They could maybe even strategize.
“Sergeant?”
There was one thing the Klowns didn’t have, which was any interest in force protection. They didn’t care if they were killed or if their unit was destroyed. All they cared about was getting to the party. That was what made them so tough, but also, under the right circumstances, weak.
He grinned. His men relaxed and grinned back.
Muldoon said, “We’re going to fuck them up.”
THIRTY-NINE.
They drove fast. Gray grit his teeth and yanked the wheel. The car wove through mobs of infected, past scenes of madness and savagery. The Klowns turned and acknowledged them with the delighted surprise of seeing old friends.
Wade looked behind them. The crazies chased them in a laughing stampede. Ahead, men on ladders were busy crucifying a cop to a telephone pole.
“Problem,” Gray said.
Rawlings glared at the back of his head as if looks could kill.
“Jesus Christ,” Fisher said. “What the hell now?”
“Gas,” Gray barked. “We’re on the reserve tank.”
“We’re not far from Hanscom,” Wade pointed out. “Maybe a mile.”
“Might as well be a hundred,” Fisher said.
The car sputtered.
Gray pounded the wheel. “End of the road.”
They were on a residential street lined with abandoned cars and broken glass. They got out and stared at the flood of laughing maniacs pouring up the road. Nobody gave the order. They knew what to do. They started firing.
The carbines threw rounds downrange into the mob. Crazies dropped and were trampled by their fellows. Gray’s grenade launcher thumped. The grenade burst in their midst, sending bodies flying through a cloud of smoke.
“Bounding!” Gray shouted and took off.
Fisher stopped firing. He looked down at his weapon and released the empty magazine. “Shit, I’m out!”