The Remaining: Trust: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page B

controlled.
    Abe could feel his heart starting to hammer. Up ahead, the scene came out of the smoky haze like a camera lens focusing. The big, open, dusty space below them was the train yard, with all its long lines of dilapidated trains just sitting, waiting to be loaded and dispersed across the Union-Pacific Railway. Bisecting the rail yard were two bridges, each with two lanes of the highway—north- and southbound lanes. He could see the cluster of mismatched army-green and desert-tan vehicles stranded in the middle of the southbound bridge and the dots of men scrambling for cover around them. In the rail yard, he could see the trilevel building, and just beyond that, he could see what he thought was the brownstone and the red brick buildings to the north.
    Abe swallowed, controlled his breathing.
    The two Blackhawks banked to the right, then back to the left, flying low. Abe watched the small green figure of the door gunner swing his M240 up and around toward the trilevel building and suddenly the muzzle was spitting yellow. Gouts of smoke flowed from the machine, the tracers lancing out and pounding the top floor of the building, obliterating glass and turning the walls to dust and chunks of concrete.
    Copperhead-Two-Five went nose down and sped off as Two-One came in behind it, and then repeated the treatment.
    The Little Bird banked, and Abe was stuck to the outboard bench only by centrifugal force. He watched the world pitch up toward him until he was almost staring directly at the ground, and then it fell away just as rapidly, and Abe was staring at sky. It was a dizzying transition, but then they leveled out and the trilevel building was directly in front of them.
    Abe felt the lanyard being removed from him. He felt momentarily vulnerable. Forced himself to unhook his legs from under the outboard bench. Why did he want to ride the Little Bird again?
    Better view of the battlefield.
    He spun on the bench so he was facing out. He leaned over and unclipped the lanyard from the soldier next to him. Both rifles came up, already looking for targets. Going to windows and doorways and any open space or shadow that might hold a threat. Below them, the white roof of the trilevel building grew until it dominated their vision. Abe could feel them slowing for their touch-and-go.
    Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
    Stay calm and controlled.
    Take it to ’em.
    For a split second, just before the helicopter touched the roof, it rotated just far enough for Abe to see the bridge on the other side of the railway. And the base of it, on the southern side, clustered with cars and completely barricaded. But the cars seemed to squirm like something alive, and Abe didn’t realize what he was looking at until he was sliding off the outboard bench.
    There must be hundreds of them…
    His feet hit the ground.
    Just before he ripped off the headset, Abe heard the pilot of Copperhead-One-Three say, “Boots down.”

THREE
    Infected.
    Abe came down in a half crouch. The roar of the rotors kicked up and Copperhead-One-Three lifted off away from them. Abe’s gut immediately twisted up inside of him. There had to be at least a hundred of them—maybe more. And they were moving fast, the frontrunners already hurdling over the gridlock of vehicles at the south end of the bridge. And Tyler and his group were too busy keeping their heads down to notice them coming.
    How long? Abe tried to calculate, tried to register how quickly the infected were moving and how much distance they had to cover. It’s a long bridge. But at a dead sprint? Maybe a few minutes max.
    Abe scanned the rooftop, urgency punching through his practiced calm. He needed to find a way down into the building, to stop the threat so that Fargo Group could defend itself. And he had very limited time to do it in.
    Each of the three levels had its own roof, like a set of tiers, and in the far corner Abe could see a ladder that led to the next tier down. It was the only access point he