Page 29 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sophie had never seen anyone move the way Jon did. Cautious, careful, each move pondered. But fast . He ran in small precise steps designed to keep his gun level.

First he peeked out in the corridor when he opened her apartment door. He pulled his head back, said, “Don’t look around, keep focused on moving forward,” and with a gentle push ushered her out the door.

It was clear what he meant. The hall way—her very nice hallway with the Italian wall sconces in her very nice building—was littered with corpses, the walls blood-stained.

She did as he said. She watched her feet, kept her focus ahead and moved as quickly and quietly as she could.

They passed the elevator bay, but he’d told her elevators were traps and anyway they didn’t know if they were working or not.

They headed for the staircase. Just before the hall turned into the stairwell Jon stopped her with a light touch to her arm. She froze.

He cracked the stairwell door open a fraction of an inch, pulled out a flexible tube from his wrist scanner and bent it so he could look around the corner and down the stairwell without being seen.

Clear.

They made it down the stairs quietly, Jon managing to cover their backs as well.

They quietly exited the building into the alleyway and made their way along the wall toward Beach. Which was covered in bodies.

Right then, right there, Sophie resolved to survive the dash to the helicopter, to arrive in this Haven, manufacture as much vaccine as their lab could and stop this thing. Save as many people as possible. She would not allow this abomination to continue.

Jon checked the flexible tube, checking all of Beach from the safety of the alleyway.

“All clear,” he said to her in a soft, low voice that was perfectly comprehensible but wouldn’t carry more than a foot. He tapped something and said, in that low, calm voice, “Moving out.” He listened for a second, then said, “Roger that.”

He checked the street again, checked the scanner. “Ok. Now’s the time. We should be at the rappelling rope in about three minutes. Go.”

She went, as fast as she could. She didn’t look back because Jon was there and she didn’t look left or right because she trusted him to keep an eye out.

To have keen situational awareness. Her job was to get herself as quickly as she could to the Ghirardelli building and she put everything she had into it.

Though it was only mid-afternoon, it was dark.

The many fires had cast a pall of smoke, drowning out the light of the sun.

Still, there was enough light for her to see the shapes on the ground.

She jumped over the bodies when she could, ran around them when she couldn’t, trying as hard as possible to maintain a straight line for the Ghirardelli building.

The air was thick with acrid smoke and something that she just knew was the smell of mass violence.

Blood, burning bodies. Bodies that had voided at death.

Somewhere behind them, the swarm was moving away but the noise they made was still audible.

Fading, inchoate screams and yells. The sound of thousands and thousands of pounding feet. The sound of madness.

Sophie couldn’t run fast enough in the opposite direction.

The end of Beach Street. In the middle of the intersection a pile of clothes stirred, a bloody head lifted, a hand reached out…

Jon stunned him without breaking his stride.

“Look ahead, Sophie!” he yelled and she realized she’d looked back at what was now a corpse.

She was flagging a bit, not used to flat out runs, but he gave no sign of that even though he carried over sixty pounds on his back.

No doubt he could run faster than this but he was keeping pace with her, watching her ‘six’ as he called it.

To the right was the grassy swathe that ran down to the water and up ahead—oh God!

There it was! Up ahead was the dark shadow of the Ghirardelli building.

No lights there. If there was a backup generator it was gone.

No matter, the huge mass was a dark blot against the sky, unmistakeable.

And close, so close. She angled upward toward the left front corner and could sense Jon right behind her, though he made no sound.

How could he do that? She could hear her own boots pounding the pavement, her breath soughing in and out of her lungs from the run, but Jon was utterly silent.

The building was like some medieval castle looming up in the sky and she was going to scale its walls. It seemed impossible but?—

A hot wind picked her up and blew her away.

Lifted her straight up and back several feet, dumping her on her back.

It took away sight and sound and feeling.

Somehow, she was on her back, numb, deaf, hurting.

The wind scoured her skin. A flash of light so bright it blinded her had erupted suddenly, like a volcano.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. It was raining…

bricks? Stones, hard objects. As if from a great distance, she brought her arm up to shield her face.

Something grabbed her arm, pulled her sharply to the right and her back scraped across the uneven surface. It hurt.

Something huge, metallic, long and wide like a giant metal finger, hit exactly where she’d been a second before, bounced and came to rest a few feet away.

Nothing made sense. A face was over hers, mouth open. Someone shaking her arm, hard.

“—blew up!” The person screamed. Jon. “We’ve got to get out of here! We’re exposed!”

Her hearing was slowly coming back, but she couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. She lifted her torso, something had been digging into her back, a huge brick. Her back ached. She blinked slowly. “What?”

It felt like her brain was made of molasses and her muscles had suddenly turned to water. She’d been pulled to her feet but could barely stand. Jon was beside her, screaming at her. She shook her head again, sharply, trying to clear it. Nothing made sense.

And then, suddenly, it did. Everything came back into focus.

The infected, Jon, the Ghirardelli building which was…

gone. Where before there had been a massive building blotting out the sky there was now a smoking hole in the ground, flames licking up, lighting up the nightmare scene of dead bodies and destruction.

Someone was shaking her. Jon. “Are you okay?” he asked urgently.

Was she?

Sophie stiffened her knees, tested her balance. Her ears still rang, she was seeing double. “What—what happened?”

His face was tight, grim. “The Ghirardelli just blew. Probably gas mains. But it’s taken out our ride. That piece of metal that almost skewered you was a rotor blade. Sophie, we’ve got to go. Now. That blast will attract the infected. It’s possible the swarm will move back our way.”

“Where?” She looked around and all she saw were streets full of dead people and crashed cars. No way out. “Where can we go?”

Jon indicated the Bay with his head. “Aim for the Marina, grab a boat out of here, sail up the coast. There’s no way we can get out in a vehicle from here, the bridges are gone and all the roads are clogged with abandoned cars anyway.

If we go on foot we wouldn’t last half an hour and even if we could walk, we need to go north not south. We still need to cross water.”

She knew that and was ashamed of herself for not remembering. Parts of her brain were still fuzzy, but she’d better unfuzz herself fast. She tried to concentrate on the waterfront, picture it in her head.

“Okay, only not the Marina. There aren’t always boats moored there and the causeway would be a trap if any infected got onto it. Let’s get to Fisherman’s Wharf. There are always fishing boats and tour boats.”

His face was grim. “You don’t think the boats might be all gone? People getting out while they could?”

“Some might still be there.” She tried to focus through the ringing in her ears.

The infection had come so very fast. People had instinctively tried to get out of town in their cars.

Most of the fishermen and tour boat operators who owned their boats lived out of town, the real estate nearby was way too expensive for anyone to live here.

There was a real chance that a few boats were still there. “Do you know how to operate one?”

“Of course,” Jon said impatiently.

“Then we should try Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“If there’s nothing there, if the boats are all gone, there’s no Plan B,” Jon said, voice low, face tight.

“No, there isn’t. Unless we dive into the water and swim along the wharf. I don’t think they can swim. That would require too much coordination.”

“Okay.” Jon looked around carefully, at the smoking ruins, the dead bodies, the crashed cars. “We’re going to make a run for Fisherman’s Wharf. Is the case waterproof?”

Sophie spared a glance at the weight and bulk of what Jon carried.

If they had to dive into the ocean, he’d be weighed down by the ballast on his back.

She nodded, hoping desperately it never came to that.

“Waterproof, shockproof. You probably couldn’t blow it up.

Can you stay afloat with that thing on your back? ”

He nodded, checked his scanner. “Let’s go then. Same rules. You take the lead if the way is clear and because you know the neighborhood better than I do. If there’s trouble, stay behind me. So let’s go steal a boat.”

His face was lit by the fires still burning from the explosion, turning his face light gold and picking out the gold in his hair.

He looked like a fierce Viking god, face taut, ice blue eyes cold and aware.

Suddenly, the ice in his eyes melted and he leaned down and gave her a kiss.

It reassured her, warmed her. “Just you and me, babe.”

That’s right. They were in terrible trouble, but they were together. They’d live or die together.