65 Below (38 page)

A high-pitched scream erupted from the bottom of the stairs. The shrill noise was so loud and severe that it made the ieutenant’s ears rattle and his heart leap inside his chest. Shin turned and pointed his pistol to the source of the sound, but saw no one. He stepped out of the light of the truck and moved toward the staircase. In the doorway at the bottom of the stairs stood the source of the noise that threatened to pierce his eardrums.

A girl, maybe twelve years old, stood in front of her father. She wore a white flannel nightgown that reached to her ankles. Her hair was tied in long pigtails that reached to the middle of her back. She stared at the bloody heap of her father's contorted body, face-down at the bottom of the stairs. Shin stared in confusion.

“Drop the weapon! Drop it now!” A loud male voice demanded from behind him.

In an instant reaction, Shin spun and grabbed the pre-teen with his left hand and held her tightly against himself as he turned to the source of the voice.

“Back off, cop!” he demanded. “I will kill the girl!”

“Let her go, you son of bitch!” came the growling reply.

“Go to hell!” Shin lifted the terrified little girl higher. He held her up as a shield and fired three rounds at the voice. He could not see the man in the darkness, but heard the sound of his boots as he jumped aside.

Shin ran toward the front door of the house, carrying the terrified little girl. He kicked the wooden door open, smashing its bolt and catch through the wooden frame. The North Korean ran to the patrol car that was still running in the driveway. A shot zipped past his head that caused him to duck, more out of surprise than fear.

“I said, drop your weapons or I will kill you!” shouted the man from the house.

Shin turned. “Don’t make me kill the girl!”

He made out the form of the man silhouetted on the porch in the glow of the truck’s headlights that still shone from inside the house. He turned, girl raised high to protect himself, and fired at the figure in front of him.

Two shots exploded in the darkness then the slide stayed open. He had emptied his pistol. There was one spare magazine in his coat pocket. He started to reach for it, but realized that he could not load the spare magazine without releasing the hostage.

“
Drop
the girl!” shouted the deep, strong voice. “Enough is enough! There’s no need to die here tonight.”

Shin mentally ran through his options. The mission would not be able to proceed—at least, not without drastic measures.

He reached into his chest pocket. With a flick of his finger and thumb, he opened the plastic case, reached in, and pulled out one of the vials. He pressed it against the girl’s forehead.

“If you take one step toward me,” his voice came out in a low, rumbling growl, “I will smash this against the girl’s head and we will all die the most agonizing death you can imagine!”

The girl started her high-pitched, nearly supersonic screaming anew.

1. Chapter 46
   

Farmhouse

Sunshine Cutoff

20 December

06:18 Hours

Marcus stood like a statue on the porch of the wrecked house. Terror contorted the little girl’s face. The eerie glow of lights from inside the house and from the trooper vehicles gave the scene a dreamlike feeling. He had lived this nightmare before. A desperate terrorist with a terrified hostage was a situation that almost never ended well.

The last remaining North Korean commando held the poor child up with his left arm, gripping her tightly across the chest. Against her head, Shin’s bloody, mangled right hand held the vial of deadly poison.

He had been so far ahead of the rest of the chase that Marcus didn’t think the other patrol cars would find them for some time yet. Johnson stood his ground, pistol raised, aimed at Shin’s head. The guy was wavering on his feet. He couldn’t get a clean headshot without hitting the girl or the vial. The police car’s headlights cast long, dark shadows onto the snow as the North Korean soldier limped back, the vial of death pressed into the girl’s sweating temple. Her screaming had stopped. The wretched creature breathed in shaky, sobbing whimpers.

The air lay frigidly cold. Steam poured from around the truck in the open hole in the house. Every breath sent up a white mist that hung in the air like a wispy fog around their heads.

Shin reached the side door of the car but couldn’t open it. Not enough hands. He would have to either lower the vial or put down the girl. He looked back and forth between the door and Marcus, then quickly reached for the door with the hand that held the vial.

In a sudden flurry of movement, the girl completely freaked out. She kicked and screamed so violently that the North Korean soldier nearly dropped her. He tried to raise the vial toward her head again. Before he got close, she kicked back with her feet. Her heel smashed his damaged knee. The dead, frost-bitten flesh, already torn wide open by the boot of the lady trooper, peeled completely from the joint. Shin lurched back in pain as the bones of his right knee twisted. The ligaments audibly snapped under the strain. The sudden disconnect sent him to the ground. Searing pain flashed like a bolt of lightning through his entire body.

Shin still clung to the girl as she spastically flung her arms and kicked like a berserker, mind lost in the midst of the fight. The child repeatedly slammed her head into his nose until it was completely flat. Blood poured like a river over his lips and dripped off his chin. Shin held her with his right forearm, the vial still in his fingers’ grasp.

He reached around with his left hand to restrain her head. She opened her mouth wide to scream again and found his hand on her face. The girl clamped down with her teeth. A chunk of flesh below his thumb came off in her mouth. Shin threw her clear as he screamed in pain. His left thumb, nearly severed, dangled by a few sinewy strands.

The girl scurried away through the snow toward the house. A smear of blood spread around her mouth like a horror-movie lunatic.

Marcus lunged toward the North Korean commando, pistol raised to the man’s chest. He pulled the trigger. The pistol responded with a dull click. The weapon was loaded—there was a round in the chamber—but something blocked the firing pin. Marcus yanked the receiver and let it slam forward to clear the jam. When he squeezed the trigger, again there was only a click. Moving from cold to heat to cold again, condensed moisture had frozen in the weapon. The firing pin was blocked.

Lieutenant attempted to stand, but crumpled as soon as he put weight on his leg.

Marcus rushed him. He swung the pistol down like a club. The North Korean caught Johnson’s hand as it descended and let out a yelp as the force hit his severed thumb. He drove the vial up to smash it on Marcus. Johnson feinted right, avoiding the vial.

Lieutenant Shin suddenly retracted his arm and smashed the vial on his own forehead. It shattered. Bits of glass and the thick, yellow liquid showered outward.

Marcus leaped off the man and rolled through the snow. He jumped to his feet and tore off his coat. Then he reached up to his chin, pulled the balaclava out and away from his skin, and off his face. He took care not to let the outer surface touch his skin. As fast as his arms could move, he stripped down to his long underwear and T-shirt.

The North Korean commando screamed in agony then screams abruptly fell silent. Marcus looked over and saw what was left of him lying in a moist, foaming heap on the snow. The upper half of the body boiled with the seething reaction. It was soon reduced to an unrecognizable mass of shining orange foam and blackened, distorted flesh. Marcus stood transfixed as the process continued to spread through the rest of Shin’s body.

“Get out of the snow!” a voice shouted.

The sound shook him from his daze. Lonnie shouted again from the porch.

“Get out of the snow! Hurry, Marcus! It spreads through water!”

Marcus looked down. A slowly growing redness spread across the snow from Shin’s body. Marcus ran toward the house. The pile of his clothes he left on the ground steamed and burned as the TZE dissolved the material to allow a pathway for the bacteria to find flesh.

In four long strides, he crossed the snow-covered yard and leaped onto the porch. The girl clung to Lonnie, her body still shaking like a leaf. The three of them moved into the house. Marcus found a kitchen towel, wetted it and gave it to Lonnie. She wiped at the blood from the sobbing girl’s face with a kitchen towel. Lonnie looked like she had been through hell. A deep, red gouge creased the flesh above her left ear. Half-dried blood caked her cheek and neck and soaked into her clothes. Her skin was pale, almost translucent.

Waves of dizziness floated over her, but she kept herself steady. She tried to take a deep breath, but her badly bruised ribs would not allow it.

She radioed a warning for others not to come into the area of snow infected with the bacteria. Bio technicians would come in first.

“Is anyone else in the house?” Marcus asked the girl. Her pigtails quivered from the trembling.

“Just my daddy and me.” She sobbed and raised her hands toward Marcus in a pleading gesture. “Mommy went to Anchorage and won’t be back till tomorrow.”

“The dad!” Marcus repeated, remembering the shots he’d heard as he entered the house. He ran to the next room. The girl’s father lay in on the floor near the bottom of the stairs. Marcus felt the man’s neck for a pulse.

“He’s still alive!”

Marcus turned the man over and laid him flat on the floor. Gurgling air bubbled in and out of a punctured lung. Marcus ran his hands over the man’s body, inspecting the wounds. The shots had entered his right lung and shoulder. Marcus pressed his hand over the chest wound as Lonnie brought a medical aid bag from the truck in the living room.

They bandaged his wounds, sealing the punctured lung with the airtight plastic wrapper of the bandage. Marcus laid him on his right side to keep the blood from flowing into his left lung. Lonnie radioed for an ambulance for both the man and girl.

A rumble of a large diesel engine erupted behind the house. Marcus envisioned the North Korean’s decomposed body charging the house with a bulldozer. As the sound moved around toward the front of the house, he grabbed the man’s hunting rifle and ran outside. toward

Marcus raised the rifle at toward the massive machine. The dozer lowered its blade to the ground and pushed the deep snow to one side, making a clear path from the road to the front porch. Marcus lowered the rifle as the driver came into view.

“Wazzy?” Marcus shouted.

“S’up, Mojo?” Wasner smiled in response, “I started out in the Seabees, you know? There’s an ambulance waiting for the hurt guy and the kid—I’m just making a path away from the nasty stuff so they can get in. The bio team assured me that the nasties are spreading slowly because of the temperature, so we’re probably safe, but have to hurry.”

He drove the dozer away. Seconds later, a large blue ambulance backed to the porch. Paramedics jumped from the rear doors and ran inside. They wasted no time lifting the father onto a gurney and wheeling him into the back of the ambulance. They stabilized him for transport, setting up IV’s and oxygen.

One of the female EMT’s found the girl’s coat and shoes. She helped her into the ambulance with her father, cleaning more blood from the child with a wet sanitary wipe.

One of the medic’s looked at Lonnie. “Ma’am, you need to go to the hospital.”

“I’m alright,” replied Lonnie.

“No, you’re not.” He said. “I’ve got another ambulance on the way. I’ll wait back until it arrives.”

The door at the rear of the ambulance closed with a loud click, and the large, blocky vehicle took off toward the highway, where a med-evac helicopter waited to rush the man to the hospital in Anchorage.

Marcus watched as the ambulance pulled away. He felt Lonnie put her hand on his shoulder. She let out a long sigh, then leaned into him. Marcus turned toward her. She collapsed into his arms, and kept falling.

1. Chapter 47
   

Providence Hospital

Anchorage, Alaska

December 20th

22:00 Hours

A warm, yellow light glowed from the corner of the room. Beneath the lamp, in an institutional-quality red cloth chair, Marcus Johnson sat quietly. He stared at the soft lines of Lonnie’s face, as she lay unconscious in the hospital bed. An IV bag hung from a metal hook above the head of the bed, gradually releasing a flow of life-sustaining liquid into her body.

When they had arrived at the Sisters of Providence hospital in Anchorage early that morning, her bruised face was as pale as the sheets on which she now lay. Her vital signs were erratic. Her pulse, blood pressure, and breathing had been going from fast and furious one minute to slow and relaxed the next.

The door opened as the hands of the clock moved to 10 pm. A thin, dark-skinned man in a white lab coat entered.

Marcus started to rise from the chair, slowed by exhaustion.

“Sit down, Mr. Johnson. You need to get some rest as well, or you will wind up as a patient yourself.”

Doctor Ravi Patel spoke with a strong, but understandable, Pakistani accent that fit his physical features. He strolled over to the bed on which Lonnie lay, picked up the chart, and looked at the numbers the floor nurse had been updating every half hour.

“Well, my friend,” the physician started, “she certainly is a strong woman. I do not understand how she survived, with all that happened to her.” He tapped an index finger on the chart. The pen rattled against the metal surface.

“The bullet graze on the left side of her skull was deep, but did not break bone. That, of course, is not the only wound. She has multiple contusions on the front back and side of the head, two broken fingers, a badly sprained ankle, a bruised shoulder, and four cracked ribs from the gunshot impacts. She is lucky she was wearing a bulletproof vest. Even with that, I am truly surprised she survived the blunt trauma of the bullets with only cracked ribs. When I was doing my residency in Atlanta, I saw two police officers die from similar gunshot wounds, in spite of the vest. The impacts had bruised their hearts irreparably.