Then a third. A fourth. More prisoners poured out of the visitor entrance, heading in all directions. It was almost like the bugs crawling out from the guard’s collar, using their overwhelming numbers to escape. The prisoners, like the bugs, flinched at the sudden sun and heat but kept running.
Gunfire erupted around the small plaza in a sudden storm. The prisoners were literally blown apart, their heads folding messily into themselves, causing the sudden lurching expressions of astonishment, as their lungs popped and their legs split open horizontally across the kneecap. At twenty to thirty yards, it wasn’t a challenge; it was more like shooting fish in a barrel.
The three machine gunners on the Strykers took that as a cue and unloaded on the buses. The ridiculously heavy bullets smashed through the windows, the side of the bus, through the seats, through the prisoners closest to the side, then more seats and the second set of prisoners across the aisle. Collisions with the seats and some of the major ligaments changed the original trajectory of the bullets, but they continued on, into the seats across the bus, smashing through more prisoners and seats, and out through the other side. They killed everyone onboard, including the drivers. The feather-like remnants of the newspapers floated serenely around the steering wheels and corpses.
When the third prisoner had bolted from the entrance, Ed and Sam dove to the side, rolling into shelter behind the north pillar. Gunfire came from Van Buren, then the deep, booming crackling from the Strykers’ .50 caliber guns opened up from the west, on Clark. They crouched, heads down, elbows up, arms wrapped over their heads to protect themselves from the exploding glass wall that encased the first floor.
The gunfire trickled away as the flood of prisoners slowed and stopped. Several unnaturally quiet seconds ticked past. The soldiers started reloading. Then, new gunshots, somehow different. Ed risked a glance at the shattered remains of the first floor. More men were now fleeing the prison, both prisoners and guards, but this second wave was armed. That was why the gunfire sounded different—it was coming from behind Ed and Sam.
The soldiers fell back into defensive positions and resumed shooting. The prisoners and guards dropped to the sidewalk and wriggled up behind the piles of corpses, using the bodies for cover. They stuck their shotguns and handguns over all the dead flesh and fired blindly.
Ed saw one soldier fall from the El tracks and land like a bag of loose laundry, sprawling over a low sandbag wall. But that was the only soldier he witnessed get hit. A few shotguns, with shortened barrels for close-range defense, and a handful of Smith and Wessons were no match against thirty or forty state-of-the-art fully automatic assault rifles, and the slaughter continued.
However, the prison had the advantage of a seemingly endless supply of prisoners and even a couple of guards. Whenever one of them went down, someone behind them would pick up the fallen weapon and continue shooting. They kept coming, streaming out of the MCC.
At first, Ed couldn’t figure out why the prisoners would face almost certain death, running face-first into a blizzard of bullets. Then he remembered the bug crawling across the first guard’s face and realized the bugs must be infesting the prison, and they were driving the prisoners out of the prison, despite the gunfire.
He tapped Sam on the shoulder, and nodded toward the shattered buses. They needed to take advantage of the new distraction and at least get clear of the damn cross fire. They scuttled across the sidewalk on the Clark Street side, keeping the buses between them and those .50 caliber machine guns. They rolled through the shattered glass in the gutter and scooted under the middle bus. Gunshots continued to pop and crackle around them.
Ed fought to control his breathing, to slow his heart. His ears rang from all the shooting. His eyes watered from the stinging smoke and glass. The air smelled of harsh gunpowder and metallic taste of blood.
“When these boys finish cutting down the prisoners, they’re gonna come looking for us, you know that, right?” Sam asked, half-whispering, half-yelling into Ed’s ear to be heard.
Ed nodded. Still, he hesitated, watching the prisoners struggle forward, only to be blown apart. He hated to cut and run, leaving the inmates to their doom, but there was nothing the detectives could do. If the bugs had gotten into the prison, then the prisoners were as good as dead anyway.
“Any suggestions?”
Sam twisted around, getting a fix on the Strykers. “We try to just walk out of here, they’re just gonna shoot us in the back and forget about it.”
Ed nodded. He knew better than to think the soldiers were on their side.
Sam asked, “How bad you want to get out of here?”
Ed thought about Carolina and her son. “Bad enough to shoot my way out if that’s what it takes.”
Sam grinned. “Atta boy. You remember that.” He crawled to the other side of the bus and surveyed the street. He called back to Ed, “Gimme thirty seconds, then come around to the other side of that tank down there or whatever the fuck they call it.” He pointed at the Stryker farthest south on Clark.
Ed gave him the thumbs-up. Sam rolled out, got to his feet, and scrambled across to the far side of Clark. Ed took one last look back at the prison, noting how the shooting was slowing down. There weren’t many prisoners left to fire back. He tried to ignore the shards of safety glass strewn across the asphalt as he used his elbows to pull himself along under the bus to the back.
He scurried across the gap to the third bus in the line and dove underneath it as well. He crawled the length of that bus, then figured at least thirty seconds had passed. He rose stiffly, knees cracking like frozen power lines in a high wind, and peered back at the plaza.
The soldiers were moving in now, finishing off the last of the prisoners. At least two or three guards had seen the writing on the wall, and while they couldn’t go back upstairs, they weren’t in any rush to stick their heads outside and get their brains blown out, so they’d holed up inside, behind the visitor desk. They’d pop up once in a while and fire a volley through the shattered glass, just to make the soldiers keep their distance.
Ed knew the attempt was futile, and those guards were finished. It was just a matter of time. He tried not to think about the poor bastards stuck inside the lobby, still shooting it out with the soldiers, and hurried over to the last Stryker. Like he had promised Sam, his only responsibility now was to get out of the city alive. He ducked down under the nose to avoid being detected by the periscope and the driver’s video image sensor.
The guy on top running the .50 caliber was too preoccupied with punching holes the size of softballs in the concrete above the guards inside to keep an eye on anything closer. Ed didn’t think the soldier had enough of an angle to see where the guards were hiding, and seemed to be blasting away for the hell of it.
The unholy volume of the machine gun made it hard to think, so Ed just kept his head down and hustled around to the other side of the vehicle. The shock waves from each shell pummeled him with invisible fists and made him dizzy. He didn’t even hear the shot from a handgun, only saw that suddenly the machine gunner stopped and slumped to the side. Blood poured out of his mouth and nose.
The rear door flopped open, and two soldiers jumped out, guns ready. They spotted Ed immediately. One of them screamed, “Freeze!”
The other one said, “Shoot him. Shoot the fucker.”
Ed didn’t even have time to raise his arms before Sam somehow materialized behind the soldiers. Two shots, so close together they sounded almost like one solid report. Blood spattered across Ed’s sport coat. Both soldiers collapsed.
Sam slipped his pistol back into his holster and rolled the closest soldier over. “You take that one. Hurry.” He felt around for the Velcro straps that protected the zipper. “We got a minute, maybe two tops, before they figure out they’ve lost these guys.”