Chapter 129
... then she was gone.
And he knew, with absolute certainty, that hed never get her back, not unless she wanted it to happen. She had become too powerful.
I lost her, Perry said. I lost Chelsea.
1:16 P.M.: Bravo Positions, Part Two
Margaret crouched at the base of a small abandoned building, watching dust roil through the air around her. A block away, the Globe building had just exploded and collapsed, sending a thick dust cloud rolling through the abandoned lots. She wondered if the cloud carried the contagionbut she and Clarence were safe in their suits. The sticky tape on her hands would keep the glove cuts sealed. A white-trash version of BSL-4 safety, but it worked nonetheless.
Clarence moved along the sidewalk. His right shoulder stayed close to the graffiti-covered brick wall, but he didnt touch itshe had warned him about sliding across anything, even leaning on things for cover should he wind up in a shoot-out. The tough hazmat suit could still tear if dragged across any jagged metal.
Helicopters soared overhead, guns fired, explosions made the ground vibratewar had come to Detroit.
Clarence peeked around the corner. He watched for a few seconds, then reached back and gently pulled her hand, urging her forward until she could see for herself. Down the block, on the other side of the intersection, stood yet another abandoned building. A corner unit, battered front door opening out at an angle toward the intersection of Franklin and Riopelle. Light gray, two stories, boarded-up windows; it looked like an old restaurant or bar, maybe a corner store from decades past when this area had more buildings than abandoned lots.
Thats where the gunmen took the hostages, he said.
Whats in there?
I dont know. If the gate is gone, Ogden has to know its over, that he lost. He filled the building with hostages so we cant drop a big f.u.c.king bomb on his a.s.s.
Or maybe theyre trying to convert those people? Infect them?
Maybe, Clarence said. Maybe some of them, but it makes more sense to have regular people as hostages. Otherwise they have no negotiating power.
What do we do now?
Weve got to get help. Listen, you watch where those soldiers went in, and dont move. Ogdens
Clarence slowly ducked away from the corner. Margaret knelt and watched. Every twenty seconds or so, a car drove through the settling dust, full of people hunting for a place to hide. When they saw her or Clarence, saw their biohazard suits, the cars instantly sped up to get away. The faces inside looked terrified, sh.e.l.l-shocked. Nothing she could do for these people, not without making a scene, making herself visible to the gunmen in the building across the street. She silently prayed that all the cars would just keep driving.
Then, coming up Riopelle from the direction of the river, a motorcycle. A squat one, American and loud, kicking up a low cloud of the still-falling dust. A man driving, someone behind him, someone small.
Keep going, Margaret whispered. Dont stop here, keep driving.
The motorcycle stopped right in front of the hostage building.
Margaret tensed. She couldnt let those people go inside. They got off the bike, and Margaret saw the small person was a little girl with curly hair.
Blond.
Chelsea Jewell.
And the manColonel Charlie Ogden in street clothes.
They ran into the building.
Margaret whipped behind the corner, out of sight.
Clarence was already coming back from the other side. He wore a wide smile, an expression of near disbelief.
She grabbed his arm. I just saw Chelsea Jewell.
His smile widened. Are you sure?
Yes, Im sure! Its her. Why are you smiling?
He actually laughed. I dont know. Too much death, stress, something good finally happens, and now I cant stop grinning. Go take a lookyou wont believe whos coming this way.
Margaret traded places with him. Still moving slowly, cautiously, she walked to the other side of the building and looked around the corner.
And understood Clarences joy.
Because she felt it, too.
Coming across an empty, abandoned city block, running through the settling dust, she saw Dew Phillips, Perry Dawsey and soldiers carrying machine guns.
THE CAVALRY
If you went back in time, say, six weeks, to a point when Margaret Montoya stood in an apartment parking lot in Ypsilanti, Michigan, scared for her life because a gigantic, burned and brutally wounded infected man named Perry Dawsey was trying to tear through her biohazard suit, his wild eyes staring, his spit and blood smearing her visor, his cracked lips screaming open that f.u.c.king door and let em in... if you could go back to that moment and tell her there would come a time where she would feel infinitely happy and relieved to see his face, she wouldnt have believed you. You could have bet her on that. Bet her with the same bill that traded hands so frequently between Clarence and Amos.
And youd have won twenty bucks.
Perry, Dew and maybe twenty-five heavily armed and grim-faced soldiers came running down Woodbridge Street. The cavalry to the rescue. The men fanned out, working like the fingers of a hand, some pointing guns across the street at the boarded-up windows of Chelseas building, some darting across that same street to the building next to hers, backs against brick walls, slowly inching to the corner, some continuing down the street, probably to surround the place. Dew and Perry ran right up to her.
Margaret! Perry said. We got the gate. Are you okay? He hugged her, suit and all, picking her right up off the ground.