Page 30 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

Jon gave her a slight push to get her started.

“I’ll follow you. Go!” They took off at a run down the slight grassy slope toward Jefferson and turned right.

The road paralleled the shore, at times open to the sea, at times closed because of the buildings.

They ran past the historical ships, the schooners and steam tugs.

One schooner had somehow become unmoored and was drifting out to sea.

Ahead, Jefferson street was dark. It wasn’t a residential area but some of the restaurants and tourist shops who had their own generators were lit.

The shops had all been ransacked. Not by looters but by the insane.

Hundreds of bodies littered the small narrow street, slowing them down. The row of shops ended and they had a view of open water. Water, freedom, safety.

The fishing boats were in the next open section. God, please let there be boats there! She was running flat out, breathing hard. She couldn’t hear Jon behind her but there was no doubt in her mind that he was there, keeping pace with her, watching her six.

Above the pounding of her heart was another noise rising slowly, steadily. It was too far away to make out exactly what it was but something in the noise was familiar…

“What’s that?” she gasped.

Jon moved up to her side, running stride easy. He wasn’t winded at all. He showed her the scanner which had been attached as a wrist unit. He tapped it and the top of the scanner glowed bright orange. Her head was still too dazed by the explosion to understand it.

“Fuck. The swarm,” he said. “It heard the explosion and it’s headed back.” He tapped again, then listened to something in his comms. “Roger that,” he said.

“What?” Sophie stumbled, nearly fell. But she couldn’t fall because Jon had put a strong arm around her. He lifted her off her feet and carried her at a flat out run, a faster pace than she could possibly have kept.

“The swarm is only a few minutes away, heading straight toward us. There better be boats there, otherwise we’ll just dive in and start swimming straight out and hope that you’re right that they can’t swim. Because if they can…”

He didn’t have to finish that sentence. If the infected could swim, she and Jon were dead.

The sound was a roar now, that same roar that had passed by under her window for hours. Infected screaming, howling, fighting, killing, dying. And the sound of thousands of running feet. Closer and closer…

“Put me down,” Sophie gasped. “I’ll keep up.” She hoped. Jon couldn’t carry her, carry the case and his gear and be ready to fight, all at the same time. He put her down and she ran faster than she had ever run in her life.

If there were boats they would be in the little commercial inlet where the next block of shops ended.

They pounded the sidewalk and reached the end of the row of shops and…

there they were! A number of boats, some ancient with flaking paint, some shiny and new, bobbing in the water.

Two steel ladders led down to the small concrete dock with the boats tied to stanchions.

The take off point for literally millions of tourists over the decades who wanted a trip around the beautiful bay.

It was no longer beautiful. The lights along the Golden Gate Bridge were dark. The bridge was barely visible as a structure against the smoky sky. A fire was raging out of control along the Marin Headlands. The city skyline was dark, as was Alcatraz.

Dark, all dark.

“Sophie!” Jon barked. “Faster!”

Oh God! The leading edge of the swarm was at Le Boudin, rippling down the street toward them, a solid wall of enraged humanity. Sophie picked up her pace, they rounded a corner and there they were.

Jon grabbed the handrails of the closest vertical steel ladder and descended without touching a stair. At the bottom he looked up. “Jump. I’ll catch you.”

Sophie looked to her right, at the crazed line of infected running full tilt, their screams echoing in her ears and didn’t think twice. She jumped.

Jon caught her deftly, swung with her in his arms and deposited her on the deck of the nearest fishing boat. It was old, dilapidated, The Summer of Love painted on her side.

“Checking fuel,” Jon shouted, “Get ready to jump to the next one.”

He did something to the engine and it sputtered to life, but he took one look at the fuel gauge, grabbed her hand and jumped to the next one, their boots thudding loudly on the deck.

Jon disappeared into the pilot’s cabin and a few seconds later there was the powerful roar of an engine and she could feel the shudder beneath her feet. “Fuel tank full!” Jon shouted from within the cabin. “Can you cast off?”

Yes, she could. She’d had a boyfriend who was a sailor and though she couldn’t sail herself she’d learned to make herself useful.

Sophie hurried to the bow, reaching over to grab the rope and screamed as a grimy hand caught hers.

She barely had time to hear the angry snarl of a non human voice when the man’s head exploded.

“Sophie! Get back!” Jon screamed.

She jumped back and tripped over a bucket.

Horribly, another man fell to the pier level.

And another. And suddenly the narrow ledge was full of infected, hands outstretched.

Up on the street level crazed, maddened faces snarling down at her, writhing to try to get down.

None of the infected could handle the ladder so they were simply throwing themselves over the railing down to the dock.

Some died in the fall but the dead bodies cushioned the next who threw themselves over, a writhing snarling mass of violence. The noise level was deafening.

She couldn’t get to the rope, the infected were scrambling to get to her, growling and grasping.

If she went for the rope, they’d grab her.

but they couldn’t leave without unmooring the boat.

The boat rocked as an infected tried to jump on, lost his footing and fell into the sea. He sank like a rock.

Jon revved the engine, ready to take off like a rocket if she could just get to where that damned rope anchored the boat.

But there was no way, the stanchion was now hidden in the boiling mass of the infected, the rope disappearing between the legs of a blood-covered man in a once-elegant suit, howling and snarling at her.

She was paralyzed, looked around for something, anything, that would allow her to cut the rope. It couldn’t be a knife because she couldn’t saw through the rope. It would take too long, they’d grab her. It had to be something like a hatchet…

The rope parted suddenly, as if an invisible hand had swung that hatchet, severing it in one blow. What happened? Then one monster’s head exploded, then another. She glanced back to see Jon aiming and shooting precisely with one hand, while starting to back the boat out of the tiny harbor.

A thud to her right and she screamed. An infected. A lithe young man, hands out in claws, inhuman sounds coming from his throat.

Jon blew the young man away, then another who’d jumped aboard.

A stream of infected jumped on the other boat then tried to jump to theirs, clearly unable to judge distances.

It was like a waterfall, a waterfall of humans pouring into the ocean.

But another young man, an athlete by his build, made a spectacular leap, catching on to the gunwale, starting to haul himself in, screaming all the while.

One well-aimed bullet and the screaming stopped and the man fell back, sinking in a pool of red.

They backed away quickly, beginning the turnaround to head out to the open sea when Jon took careful aim at the boat next to them.

“Cover your head!” he screamed and shot into the boat.

Immediately it exploded, fuel spilling over the infected, lighting the dark afternoon sky with a nightmarish view of burning infected, those right behind the columns of burning living flesh pushing them into the water to get a chance at them, and catching fire themselves.

Then Jon got the boat turned around completely and throttled the engine wide open. The prow lifted, they skirted the tourist boardwalk behind them and then they headed out to the open sea.

Sophie sat on the deck, exhausted, trembling, and watched the burning creatures until Jon turned a corner around a pier and they disappeared from sight.

The screams could still be heard though, becoming fainter and fainter as they headed northwest.

When she felt her legs could carry her, Sophie went into the pilot’s cabin and watched Jon pilot the boat.

His movements were fast, precise, the boat steady.

He clearly knew what he was doing. It was as if he sensed her presence by a change in the air molecules.

He turned, one hand on the wheel, one arm outstretched.

With a sob, Sophie stumbled to him, burying her face against his shoulder. He’d somehow had time to divest himself of the vaccine case and his backpack. They were stowed neatly in a corner.

Jon was headed for the Golden Gate Bridge and then the wide Pacific beyond it. To their left, the city burned. Columns of fire had merged and entire city blocks were aflame. Every once in a while a distant boom sounded.

A great city, brought to its knees.

Finally, finally, the huge empty horizon stretched in front of them. The ocean. Jon steered them north.

Neither spoke until the sounds of the dying city could no longer be heard.

“We made it,” Sophie whispered.

He kissed the top of her head, hugged her more tightly to him, steering one-handed.

“We made it.”