“Margaret! Put it down!”
Tim saw her face change, instantly morphing from a hateful, snarling-eyed visage to a soft expression of love and concern — like someone had flipped a switch.
“Clarence,” she said, “Tim is lying to you. I’m not infected, he is. Kill him before he kills us.”
The heavy stairwell door slammed open. Klimas came through, his weapon up and aimed at Margaret in a fraction of a second.
“Otto,” he said. “You got this?”
“I do,” Clarence said.
Clarence’s aim didn’t waver. Neither did Margaret’s.
Klimas turned, opened the stairwell door a few inches and fired into the lobby. He yanked a grenade out of his webbing, pulled the pin, underhand-tossed it through the small gap, then slammed the metal door shut.
Tim heard the grenade explode, heard men and women screaming in agony.
An army of psychos and monsters were closing in from behind. An armed and infected Margaret Montoya blocked the only escape. If Clarence Otto didn’t shoot his wife, Tim was going to die one way or the other.
SHARPSHOOTER
Cooper Mitch.e.l.l was standing right there. Right there. Margaret had checked her suit, it was safe, had to be safe, the Antichrist was just a half-flight down and she couldn’t die not now, not now, not when her people were coming.
Clarence stood in front of Tim, who stood in front of Cooper Mitch.e.l.l. The look in Clarence’s eyes: pained, yet committed to doing his job. He wanted to believe she wasn’t infected.
“Margaret,” he said. “Put it down.”
Why hadn’t she just fired right away? She’d frozen, surprised by Tim, shocked to see her target right in front of her. She’d missed her chance.
“Clarence, listen to me,” she said. “Honey, Tim is one of them. Why do you think he told everyone I was inf—”
A crack sound echoed through the stairwell as something slammed into her hand. Her pistol clattered against the wall, then hit the concrete floor. She took a step back, looked at her hand … blood, spurting all over her CRBN suit … her index finger … gone.
She staggered, slumped down the wall.
But he didn’t shoot, I was looking right at him …
Clarence ran up the stairs toward her. Down by the landing door, she saw Klimas, his rifle pointed at her.
A curl of smoke drifted up from the barrel.
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Clarence grabbed Margaret’s pistol to secure the weapon, but there was no need — Klimas’s single round had blown the trigger clean off, snapped the guard into two jagged metal pieces.
He grabbed his wife by the shoulders, righted her.
“Margaret! Are you okay?”
A stupid thing to say. Her finger was gone She was bleeding all over the landing.
He heard voices, both in his headset and from the people around him. He heard Klimas urging Tim and Cooper up the stairs, telling them to head to the eighth floor, heard feet hitting concrete.
Margaret looked stunned. Blood spurted from her finger stump. Clarence holstered his weapon, knelt before her and grabbed her right wrist.
“Hold on, baby, this is gonna hurt.”
He squeezed down on the stump. Direct pressure. He had to stop the bleeding.
A man ran past behind him, then another.
Margaret looked at him. No sense of pain in her eyes, just a dull shock. Shock … and hate.
“Otto, get out of the way.”
The voice of Commander Klimas.
Clarence turned quickly, keeping his body in front of his wife.
The SEAL commander had his weapon pointed slightly off to the right so it wasn’t aimed directly at Clarence’s chest.
“Otto, get out of my way.”
Clarence held up his hands. “Please, don’t do this.”
She couldn’t be infected. It just wasn’t possible. She was the mother of his child.
Klimas stepped to his left, trying to find a shot. Clarence lunged right, cutting off any angle.
Clarence didn’t even see the rifle b.u.t.t come up before it slammed into his chin — not hard enough to do serious damage, but hard enough to knock him aside.
The rifle b.u.t.t snapped back to Klimas’s shoulder, the barrel aimed at Margaret’s face.
Tim Feely screamed down from a half-flight up. “No! We need her alive. Trust me on that.”
Clarence again put himself between Klimas and Margaret.
The SEAL’s lip curled up in frustration. He lowered the barrel.
“You better be right, Tim,” he said. “f.u.c.k. Let’s move.”
Something big slammed into the stairwell door, hard enough to bend it inward.
Klimas turned, fired three shots through the metal door. He reached behind his back, then tossed two things onto the concrete landing next to Clarence.
“Look at her magazine,” Klimas said. “If there’s only one round gone, that’s the bullet she used to kill Bogdana. Then the decision is yours. We’re going to the eighth floor where there’s a way out. We’re not waiting for you.”
Klimas sprinted up the steps.
Clarence looked at what the SEAL had dropped — two zip strips, one grenade.
He felt hands fumbling for his weapon.
He turned instantly and did something he had never thought himself capable of doing: he hit Margaret.
A short left to the jaw, snapping her head back. She let out a moan, sagged weakly.
Bullets tore through the dented metal door, kicking up puff-spots of concrete when they sparked off the cinder-block walls.