LaRouche growled unpleasantly at them and touched the back of his arm, felt the raw exit wound there, fire at the touch of his fingertips. He winced. "It's f.u.c.kin' fine. Through and through. Just need a...need a f.u.c.kin' tourniquet or somethin'."

One shot.

Only one.

GO BACK OR DIE.

"f.u.c.k!" LaRouche yelled at the windshield. "Motherf.u.c.ker! Turn this s.h.i.t around, Wilson!"

The man behind the wheel looked at him like he was insane.

LaRouche closed his eyes, trying to level himself off. "They weren't shooting at us. They were shooting at Nick. I was just in the f.u.c.kin' way. Now turn this s.h.i.t around and let's take it to that motherf.u.c.ker!"

Wilson didn't directly disobey, but he tiptoed around it. "Fine. Can we park and patch your arm up first? Or do you just want to bleed out?"

"This ain't gonna bleed me out," LaRouche muttered without conviction.

Wilson was already stopping on the shoulder. They were around the bend, and maybe a half mile down the road-out of sight and hopefully out of range. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the radio up as he pulled the truck out of gear and engaged the emergency brake. "Everyone hold up here. Hold up here."

Brake lights winked on.

LaRouche watched them. Strange that they hadn't thought to shut those off. Always being in the lead Humvee, he hadn't really noticed or thought about it. Wilson was talking, so he turned his face that way.

"What do you need me to do?" Wilson asked.

LaRouche's prior service had sent him through the Combat Lifesaver course-just the basics of wound treatment for when there was no medic nearby. But the knowledge he did have made him the most medically-qualified person in the group, so he had to fix himself. Or direct the others.

LaRouche tossed his head back. "Get my pack." Then he started shucking off gear.

Wilson slid out of his seat and ran to the back.

Jim was there. "What do you need? How can I help?"

LaRouche gave him a sidelong glance as he spilled his chest rig onto the floor between his feet and started stripping off the jacket and his microfleece. "Just find me something...like a pen or a pencil...or a hard stick."

Jim was out the door, almost immediately rummaging through the woodline in search of the requested item.

LaRouche got his top layer of clothes off-just a b.l.o.o.d.y old t-shirt now that stank of old sweat and fresh body odor. He could see the wound clearly now. A nice, swollen hole that poked up out of his flesh and spewed red like a little science-fair volcano. Right in the center of his bicep. The exit was a little more ragged. He grit his teeth and winced, trying to straighten his arm so he could see the back of it, along his triceps-every movement became excruciating. A wider hole, but not by much. Bits of deep-red muscle tissue protruded.

"Oh, this is gonna suck," LaRouche muttered to himself. "This is gonna f.u.c.kin' suck."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Joel ducking his pale head down out of the turret and watching with a pinched expression of discomfort and sympathy.

LaRouche took a couple quick breathes to steel himself and then forced his arm to work back and forth. It obeyed, stiffly and painfully. But it did. That was good. That meant the bullet hadn't broken his bone, just pa.s.sed through flesh. Flesh could be fixed easily. Couple st.i.tches. Couple bandages. Some wound irrigation and a little bit of antibiotics. He'd be okay.

Hopefully gangrene wouldn't set in.

Hopefully there wasn't any permanent nerve damage.

Hopefully his limb would continue to be useable.

He felt sick.

Wilson appeared in the doorway of the Humvee with LaRouche's pack. By then, a few people had exited their vehicles and crowded the front of the Humvee, curious. LaRouche didn't yell at them but he stared at them like they were idiots, hoping that it would be enough to get them to go away.

"What do you need outta the pack?" Wilson asked.

LaRouche looked at the wound again. St.i.tches and irrigation and all that bulls.h.i.t would have to wait for later. He needed a quick fix now. "Middle section," he instructed. "Grab me four of those rolled bandages and unwrap one of 'em."

Wilson ripped open the middle section, started yanking out little clear packages containing white rolls of bandage. "These right here?"

"Yeah..."

Jim opened the pa.s.senger door, held up a stick thin enough to be used, but about two feet too long. "Is this good?"

LaRouche choked on a crazy, frustrated laugh. "Break it down for me, buddy. Need it to be like four inches."

"Oh." Jim swiftly snapped the stick into a smaller section.

Wilson held out the unwrapped bandage. "What now?"

"Here." LaRouche grabbed it, put one end in his teeth, let it unroll, then started wrapping it tightly around his arm, a few inches above the wound. He let the end of the bandage fall out of his mouth. "Alright, help me tie this s.h.i.t."

A simple double knot, fumbled through with too many fingers involved.

"Stick," LaRouche held out his hand, and Jim placed it in his palm. He slipped it under the bandage, then used it as a lever to tighten the cloth band around his arm until he could feel it constricting his blood-flow. Just two rotations, and then he stuck the tip of the stick through the double knot to hold it tight.

"Alright," he pointed to the three unwrapped bandages. "Two of those."

As he waited, he watched the blood flow begin to staunch. Slowing to just a slight welling and then trickling over, the drops all following the same path down to the point of his elbow, and then dripping off onto the radio console.

Wilson held up the two bandage rolls.

"Keep 'em rolled up like that," LaRouche pointed to the entry and exit wounds. "Put one on each hole and hold 'em tight." Then he pushed his head back against the seat and grit his teeth because he knew how this was going to feel. And it did. Felt every bit as bad as he thought it would.

Deep breath.

"Okay," LaRouche said shakily. He grabbed the last bandage and began wrapping it around the other two to hold them in place. Tight enough that it was almost painful. He tied it off, then started pulling his b.l.o.o.d.y clothes back on. "Alright, I'm good."

Wilson and Jim looked at each other.

"Sarge," Wilson glanced out the windshield at the onlookers, beginning to talk amongst themselves in concerned tones. "They captured Nick. And I think they tortured him. We need to a.s.sume that they know exactly where we're going, what our numbers are, and what our firepower is."

LaRouche bit his lower lip. "You think we should go back?"

Wilson shrugged. "I think we should take a minute and think."

LaRouche b.u.t.toned his jacket and pulled the chest rig back over his shoulders, moving a little gingerly. "Yeah, we're always taking a minute to f.u.c.king think. Always standing around discussing s.h.i.t in a committee. And we've managed to take four days to cover miles we could have covered in two."

"Because we're being cautious."

"Yeah," LaRouche almost sounded like he hadn't heard him. He pulled the map out of his pocket and looked at it. He'd folded it earlier so that he didn't have to lay the entire thing out to see where they were at. He pointed to a position on the map. "We're here, about three miles out from the bridge. I think it's a safe a.s.sumption that it's The Followers we're dealing with here. And for the record, Wilson, I think you're right. I know you're right. At least about what happened to Nick."

LaRouche looked up at Wilson to his left, and Jim to his right. His two advisors. Also, the two guys that seemed constantly at odds with him. "One shot, guys. One f.u.c.king shot, when they had all of us dead to rights. You know what that means?"

Blank stares.

"It means there was one motherf.u.c.ker out there with a rifle. And his job wasn't to ambush us. His job was to kill Nick. After he'd delivered his message. Telling us to 'go back or die'." He put the map away. "You don't make f.u.c.king threats like that if you have a superior fighting position. If they were confident that they could take us out, they would have just ambushed us and been done with it."

"You don't know that," Wilson said heavily.

"No, I don't. As of right now, none of us know anything. We don't even know if it was The Followers that did it, but we can make a reasonable f.u.c.king a.s.sumption, can't we? And I'm reasonably a.s.suming that if you have a superior force, you plan an ambush and you take out the target. You don't pre-warn the target that you might be waiting for them."

Wilson's jaw worked, but he didn't respond.

Jim looked lost, out of his depth.

"We're gonna go back," LaRouche said with finality. "We're gonna punch out ahead of the convoy, recon the bridge and see what's waiting for us. We're gonna roll fast and make hard targets of ourselves. If we make contact, we're gonna throw a monumental f.u.c.king amount of lead at them while you turn this s.h.i.t around and boogie back. Then we'll regroup and figure out how we're gonna take that bridge." LaRouche s.n.a.t.c.hed his rifle up off the ground. "But I ain't p.u.s.s.y footin' around this s.h.i.t any more. They wanna f.u.c.kin' fight, they got one."

Wilson made a harsh noise through his teeth. "Aight. Let's do it then."

LaRouche slid out of his seat so he could speak to the people standing around the Humvee. He held up a single finger. "I need one person to ride back left in my truck. We're gonna go ahead and scout the bridge. Probably gonna take some fire."

Two of the guys stepped forward quickly, but one didn't wait for the other to yield the way. He had a look in his eyes that said he wanted to hurt something and he didn't wait for LaRouche's approval, just grabbed the door behind Wilson's driver's seat and yanked it open. It was Dorian. A middle-aged guy with nearly black hair that shot out messily in all directions. He had dark eyes and dark skin, looked vaguely of Mediterranean descent. He sat down in the seat and met LaRouche's gaze.

LaRouche knew everyone in his crew by their first names but he really only dealt closely with Wilson and Jim. He did observe things, however, and he knew that Dorian had been close to Nick, even before they left Camp Ryder. Dorian also had a wife that he'd left back there, and the two families were often seen eating and working together.

Dorian didn't explain himself, and he didn't need to.

LaRouche nodded once. "Alright then."

Wilson shut his door with a slam. Windows dropped. Rifle barrels protruded. Joel's feet kept fidgeting all over the radio console, now the dirt from his boots mixing with LaRouche's blood into a black paste. The Humvee cut a wide U-turn and faced back towards the bridge and started rolling at a steady 45 miles per hour.

"We're only a few miles out," LaRouche yelled above the window. "Don't hold back on that trigger. You see anything that doesn't have its hands in the air you blow its f.u.c.kin' brains out. We make contact, don't stop firing until we're out of sight."

"Roger."

"Got it."

"Yup."

They trundled onto the shoulder and around the two cars parked in the middle of the road, all eyes fixated on the woods, looking for that muzzle flash, but none came. Wilson took the truck back up to speed and before LaRouche really had time to think about it, really had time to consider what he was doing, what he was getting himself and his guys into, they made the left-hand turn onto Highway 45, onto the long, straight mile of road between them and the Roanoke River.

CHAPTER 30: CONSEQUENCES.

A few old houses. Field fencing. Mostly woods, trampled through by pasturing cows that had long since wandered off or died or been eaten by the infected. LaRouche watched them slip by, wanted to reach out and grab these things. He couldn't explain the feeling. Only that he wanted to be able to stop what he was doing. Walk in the trees. Dodge fresh manure from well-fed livestock. No fear of infected. No fear of nearby enemies.

A smattering of buildings up ahead. An intersection with stoplights drooping dark and tired on the wires. Most of the buildings were indistinguishable, except for a small trailer park to the left, all the mobile homes still standing oddly pristine.

LaRouche grit his teeth and narrowed his world down. No big picture. No thoughts of his family, or how things had been before. No thoughts of dreams lost and unattainable. Just here. Just now. The present. His job.

He blew out slowly and when he opened his eyes they were pa.s.sing over a bridge. He caught the green sign at the edge of the abutment just before they rode out over the water. A smallish tributary.

"Is this it?" Jim asked warily.

LaRouche shook his head. "No. Roanoke River is straight ahead."

An auto salvage lot with rusted cars on their right.

What had to be the tiniest airfield he'd ever seen on the left.

A few sandy-looking driveways that led off to G.o.d-knew where.

Up ahead, the road curved left just slightly.

"Alright," LaRouche hugged his weapon tighter. "This is it. Be ready."

They went into the curve, everyone leaning to the outside, holding their breath and waiting for what was on the other side. The road straightened. Sunlight flashed across two windshields-then a third. Three vehicles facing them at the foot of the bridge. Behind them, the bridge rose over the Roanoke River in a pale hump. Dark figures scrambling behind the vehicles, standing behind doors, pointing things at them.

"Hit 'em, Joel!" LaRouche shouted.

The Humvee rattled, the M2 jackhammering away over their heads and LaRouche could see the bright streaks of the tracers rocketing away from them and seeming to slow to a glide the further away they got. The first few went low, sending up clouds of concrete, but Joel righted his aim and the next grouping punched holes across the center vehicle in the barricade. The figures using it for cover dove out of the way. One of them seemed to break apart as he leapt.

LaRouche brought his rifle up, started firing to the left side of the column, trying to aim as best he could, but more concerned with laying down fire.

"Turn it around!" LaRouche yelled over the fusillade.

Wilson didn't hesitate. He yanked the steering wheel to the left.

The barricade rippled with muzzle flashes. Bullets meant for them.

The windshield spiderwebed, then shattered. Someone cried out and the M2 suddenly stopped firing.

LaRouche spun into the backseat, about to ask who was. .h.i.t, but a squirt of blood struck him in the face, followed by another almost immediately after. LaRouche reared back, saw Joel's leg with the hole directly in the center of it, the pant legs soaking through with amazing speed and the arterial force of the blood shooting out in high-pressure spurts.

Joel screamed, thrashed. "Oh my G.o.d oh my G.o.d oh my G.o.d..."

LaRouche put a hand in front of his face to block the spray and then jammed it out so that his palm was pressed to Joel's leg and he could feel the hot liquid pulsing against his own skin. "Somebody plug that s.h.i.t up!" he yelled, as Jim began pulling Joel out of the turret.

Dorian's face was like cut steel. He glanced at Joel's leg, like it was a minor annoyance, and then climbed over the man's body to take the turret. LaRouche watched Dorian grab the gun and rip it with surprising speed into a rear-facing position, opening up on the barricaded position as they fled. And he didn't know whether Dorian's reaction to Joel's wound impressed him or concerned him.

Like all that mattered in the world was the chance to put a bullet in one more of those f.u.c.kers.