HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (21 page)

‘Swipe the card from the bottom to the top!’

Myers swiped the card upward through the reader.

Green light.

Click.

Craigson heard the door unlock.

At the same time, he felt the floor vibrating under his boots.

‘She’s coming!’ he yelled.

Myers hauled open the door.

Craigson glanced back.

The woman rammed through everything in her path. She collided with two greeting card stands. Hundreds of cards flew off the falling racks.

Craigson couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She looked like a human wrecking ball.

‘Come on!’

Myers grabbed Craigson’s body armor.

As Myers hauled on Craigson, Craigson pulled the door handle...

...SLAM!

Both Marines fell as the woman’s speeding body struck the door.

CRAAAASH!

Craigson scrambled back, expecting the door to collapse. And not just the door. The entire door frame and surrounding walls groaned in protest. For the moment the door was holding.

‘We’re in the service corridors,’ puffed Myers.

Craigson listened for the woman.

What will she do now?

CRAAAASH!

She launched herself at the door again. Craigson heard the door frame crack. Plaster dust fell from the corridor ceiling.

‘We
really
pissed her off,’ said Craigson, gaining his feet.

Myers nodded. ‘That is one...big...momma. I don’t want to meet her again. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Hurry!’ bellowed Sergeant King. ‘Go! Go!’

The deck had descended into complete chaos.

King and Forest pushed forward one lifeboat at a time.

Once a lifeboat filled with healthy people, they launched it and progressed to the next one.

 King counted every descending lifeboat as a major victory.

They were sour victories though. King had hoped that combat would be the one place his mind could be at ease. The one place where he could stop thinking about Marlin J.

But it was the opposite.

He kept expecting to hear Marlin’s voice come over his radio.

He expected to turn and see Marlin watching his back or making a joke.

He found himself looking for Marlin instinctively.

But Marlin wasn’t there.

He would never be there again.

Marlin was gone, but King couldn’t let it go. He’d tried. He’d tried hard. He’d listened to everything the counselor said. He listened to everything the Captain said.

But the moment King saw Marlin’s daughter, Emerald, it felt as though his best friend, his brother, had died yesterday.

It wouldn’t rest inside him.

It festered.

Every day he woke as angry as the day Marlin had died. And it was affecting him. It was affecting him in ways that Marlin wouldn’t have wanted. King knew that. All he could do was keep going.

Like right now.

He pushed aside thoughts of Marlin and focused on his orders.

Your orders are to help people
, King told himself.
Your orders are to get these lifeboats away.

At least he was doing that.

All the boats they launched weren’t full, but they didn’t need to be. With half the ship having completely lost their minds, there were plenty of empty seats available.

King heard Forest begin firing again.

The Marines weren’t fighting alone though. The healthy passengers who’d made it this far were survivors. They fought ferociously. Many had moved beyond fear and looked absolutely furious. They attacked the hostiles head-on to reach the lifeboats.

Bloody hand-to-hand fighting spread right along the deck. In the chaos, King could only identify the healthy passengers by their bright yellow life vests.

The life vests were serving double duty today. The vests also acted as simple body armor. King witnessed several killing blows stopped by the vests.

No one held back.

King spotted an elderly woman helping to pin a hostile passenger down while another passenger stomped on their attacker’s throat.

King reloaded his XREP as the lifeboat lowered to the water.

Only one to go.

King and Forest ran toward the last boat.

On this section of deck, only one more lifeboat needed to be launched. For the passengers who’d reached this deck, the lifeboat offered their last chance to escape.

The healthy passengers surged toward the boat.

The hostiles pursued them.

In seconds the adjacent deck became a riotous epicenter of violence. The healthy passengers tried to board the lifeboat. The sick passengers tried to stop them. No one could board the boat in the mayhem. Everyone was fighting for his life.

King spotted another group of people in life vests appear at the rally point beyond the conflict. The newcomers carried makeshift weapons.

Forest yelled at the new arrivals, ‘This is your last chance. Don’t let these crazy bastards stop you!’

An army of yellow-jacketed passengers surged from the hallway. The newcomers launched themselves at the hostile force.

Can the lifeboat hold this many people?
thought King.

‘The door isn’t open!’ yelled Forest, pointing at the lifeboat.

King peered through the crowd. Forest was right. The lifeboat’s door had swung shut. Passengers were wrestling right up against it.

‘I’ll open it!’ roared King.

‘Wait!’ shouted Forest.

Until now, he and Forest had stayed together, rapidly dropping hostiles with weapon fire. Right along the deck they had turned the tide of conflict in the healthy passengers’ favor.

But this tactic only worked from the edge of the conflict. Not when surrounded.

‘There’s no time,’ King shouted back. ‘We need that door open!’

Forest nodded and lifted his rifle. ‘I’ll cover you as long as I can.’

King watched the mayhem for an opportunity.

The combatants moved like turbulent water. Like a sea of insanity he needed to swim across. Fighting people crammed the deck from wall to railing. People fell over each other in the turmoil.

King needed a gap.

Make your own gap.

He pumped his rifle and fired three times, opening a hole in the crowd. Before his hostile targets even landed, King leaped over them.

He landed and charged.

Momentum mattered most.

Crack! Crack!

Two hostiles in King’s path dropped as Forest sent non-lethal rounds slamming into their chests.

King struck out left and right with his rifle, delivering crippling blows to hostiles.

Keep moving
.
Don’t stop
.

A man in the crowd locked his eyes on King.

Nothing remotely human resided in those eyes any longer.

They only knew violence.

He rushed at King.

Dressed in a checked orange shirt and cream chinos, the man looked like a retired school teacher on vacation. His fuzzy gray hair stood up wildly as he swung a camera tripod at King. The missing camera probably lay wedged in some poor soul’s skull.

THUD!

King’s electro-bolt struck home. A triangle of bright blue electricity arced between the man’s chest, his arms and his tripod. Shaking from head to toe, still clenching the tripod above his head, he toppled forward like a statue.

King spotted the lifeboat door.

He saw why it was shut.

Four people had
managed to get on board and shut the door against the hostiles. They couldn’t open the door again because of the two hostiles hacking wildly through the window with metal weapons.

One wore filthy blue overalls like a ship’s mechanic or engineer. He swung a huge wrench. Dressed all in black lycra, the other hostile looked like a personal trainer. She kept bashing the door with a solid metal dumbbell.

King aimed at the man swinging the wrench.

BOOM!

The electro-dart struck the man between his shoulder blades. Blue sparks leaped between his wrench and the lifeboat as he collapsed.

The woman spun and hurled her metal dumbbell at King.

King fired.

They both hit.

The woman contorted as fifty-thousand volts punished her body.

Had King not turned his face away, the speeding chunk of solid metal would have shattered his jaw, fractured his cheek bone, collapsed his right eye-socket and broken his nose.

Instead, King absorbed the sledgehammer-like blow through his helmet. Without a helmet, the shards of his crushed skull would have lacerated his brain.
With
a helmet, the impact blinded him in a red explosion of shock and pain. His mind teetered on the edge of consciousness. He felt disconnected from his body as his brain decided whether to reboot or shut down.

It rebooted.

Everything came back into focus. He remembered his original intention and staggered toward the lifeboat door.