Spooky returned with the food.
“How do you think they connected you with Markis?” Skull asked Zeke.
“Good intel work. Assemble a database of all his associates. Cross match with things like, ‘Did he treat them in the field?’ ‘Are they at home or out of town?’ Stuff like that.”
“I hate intel pukes,” Skull growled.
“Only when they’re on the other side.”
“I hate them all.”
Zeke exchanged silent looks with Larry. He shrugged.
“Let’s focus on our five-meter targets, shall we? We make a sweep of my neighborhood. Locate the surveillance. Make a plan. Ready?”
Affirmative grunts and sounds.
They drove into Fayetteville. Zeke led them to an unused corner of a large, well-lit gas station. “This is our ORP. Make your sweep, maintain commo, meet here.”
The SUVs split up, approaching Zeke’s suburban middle-class home from two different directions. They quartered and searched the blocks, looking for vehicles with the telltale signs of a surveillance team: being parked on the street, not in a driveway; extra antennas; roomy models, like vans or big SUVs; too-black windows; sitting heavy and low on their suspensions; magnetic business logos, the kind that can be slapped on and peeled off easily. There were many clues if one knew what to look for.
It didn’t take long. Skull spotted them first, and called on the tactical net. “I got a cable service truck on your street. Old van, new paint, UHF and satellite antenna, barrier between the driving and cargo compartment. Parked between houses.”
“That’s probably it. No cable technicians working this time of night.”
“Do they ever work?”
“Ha ha. We going in light or heavy?”
“No way to sneak up on them. If you want them deactivated, we have to do it heavy.”
“Understood. Rally now at the ORP.” They met back at the gas station.
Zeke said, “We need a shock truck. Spooky?”
“If we can find it, I can steal it.”
“Okay, spread out, report when we got one.”
It took them twenty-five minutes to locate a suitable truck, a flatbed two-ton. Spooky had it gone in sixty seconds. Skull drove. They talked over their plan of attack on the way.
Zeke and Larry pulled up at the end of the alley that ran behind his house. “In position.”
“Roger. Commencing shock run.”
Skull put the truck into gear, coming around the corner nose-on the surveillance van. At the same time Spooky drove the Cherokee around the opposite corner, slowly, focusing the watchers’ attention on him as they looked out the back window.
The shock truck was going forty when its heavy steel bumper smashed into the nose of the van. Impact drove the vehicle several car-lengths down the street, coming to rest on its side.
Spooky pulled up in the Cherokee. He and Skull jumped out of their vehicles, charging the van. Through the shattered back window they could see broken electronics and camera equipment, and two men lying amid the wreckage, moving weakly. The shock had jumbled them like mice in a paint shaker, and the smell of leaking gasoline wafted through the mess.
Spooky stepped through the opening and pistol-whipped each in turn, ensuring unconsciousness. Then he pulled out the syringe Zeke had given him and pumped half of the contents into each. “Get them out, Skull.”
“We should let ‘em burn,” he grumbled, reaching in to drag the men out with Spooky’s help, tossing them roughly onto the closest suburban lawn. He keyed his mike. “Van and team out of commission and infected. We’re extracting; people are already coming out of their houses.” Skull popped a smoke grenade and tossed it into the van. The flaming smoke mix soon ignited the dripping gasoline and the vehicle caught fire with a whoosh. By that time they were around the block and heading toward the ORP.
Zeke and Larry had already pulled through the alley up to his house’s back gate, blasting twice on the horn. Zeke exited, fastening the barrier out of the way, and then bolted inside. A moment later he ran out, carrying a skeletal boy wrapped in a blanket. Larry held the door open. Right behind him followed an athletic woman of about forty and a girl of eight.
“Hi, Cass. Hi, Millie,” Larry rumbled.
“Hi, Mister Larry!” piped the girl.
Cassandra nodded to Larry, handing him a suitcase.
Headlights appeared and the roaring of an engine sounded at the end of the alley, accelerated toward them. Cass shoved Millie into the Land Rover, while Larry reached for his shotgun under the seat.
Muzzle flashes sparkled from both sides of the oncoming vehicle, and Larry’s twelve-gauge roared over and over. Zeke hunched over Ricky, shielding him with his body, while Cassandra drew a pistol from the small of her back, taking cover behind the door to return a rapid hail of bullets.
The headlights wobbled, then skewed leftward as the oncoming vehicle bucked and rolled down the alley with a grinding crash of metal. Cassandra reloaded while Larry ran at the smoking wreck of a Suburban. He looked inside, seeing two men unconscious. He reached in, taking their guns and tossing them into a nearby garbage can, then knelt down among the wreckage.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said aloud to himself, then bit them each in turn. “Feel like a freakin’ vampire.” He returned to the Land Rover.
Larry was almost there when he heard an anguished sob, choked off, then a high keening. He leaped forward, shotgun searching for a target, but there wasn’t anything to shoot.
Cassandra knelt over Zeke, who lay stretched out on the ground. Millie stood there wailing, her small hands tangled in her hair, pulling. Larry pushed her gently aside, confident the Eden Plague would make it all right.
Not this time.
Zeke’s eyes stared sightless at the glowing suburban sky. Blood and brains leaked from the hole in his head. Cassandra stroked his face, crooning, “No, no, no…”
Larry cursed, a string of bitter vulgarities. “Come on, Cass, he’s gone. He’s gone. More might be on the way, we have to get going, we have to break contact.”
Cassandra growled with frustration, muttering under her breath, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch! Help me get him in. We’re not leaving him.”
Together they rolled Zeke in a blanket, then manhandled his body into the back of the SUV. Larry drove them away from the scene as rapidly as he could without attracting attention.
“What was that?” asked Spooky over the radio.
“They got Zeke. Lucky head shot. He’s gone,” Larry answered miserably.
Silence. Then, “Shit.”
“Meet at the ORP. We still have to get Zeke’s mom.”
“What?” asked Cassandra. “Why? She’s in a facility. What can we do?” Her face was a frozen mask of iron control.
“Because we can cure her Alzheimer’s, we think. It’s a new thing. But if we cure her we have to take her with us because if they find out we did, they will turn her into a guinea pig in a lab somewhere.”
Cassandra digested this as they met at the ORP. “All right, I’ll tell you where to go. Do you think they’ll be watching her?”
“We have to hope not. They can’t be everywhere.”
Twenty minutes later they pulled into a complex labeled “Green Pastures Managed Care Home.” They took her out the back way in a wheelchair, dodging a sleepy staff, and got her into the vehicle.
The return trip to the bunker was a smooth surreal nightmare. Ten bags of truck stop ice packed Zeke’s body in the back of the Cherokee. Larry drove the Land Rover, silent, bleak. Zeke’s mother Beulah sat buckled into the front seat, humming softly to herself for a while before falling asleep. Cassandra sobbed from time to time, an arm around each of her children in the back seat. Millie slept most of the way, which was a relief; it wasn’t real to her.
About two hours out, Ricky spoke up. “I’m hungry, mama.” He reached up to grasp her arm.
“Ricky!” She took his hand in hers, feeling the strength of his grip.