Bleeders by Max Boone Page B

a mess of glass and metal followed by excited shouts.
    "What the fuck was that," I asked. Outside, the soldiers' radios started going off. Someone was shouting for backup, and they weren't using professional language to do it. Without skipping a beat the soldiers ran off in a hurry to help their friends in need.
    "I think you got your distraction," Alison said. I peeked out the door and saw the tail end of the group of soldiers disappearing around the bend and out of sight. We couldn't have planned it better if we tried.
    "I still like the fireworks idea better," I mumbled.
    With Jeremiah's arm over my shoulder we made a break for the vehicles. On the way we decided the humvee was our best choice, since the cabin was enclosed to protect us from Bleeders yet it was, you know...more sensible than a tank. Not that I wouldn't love driving a tank down Grand Concourse, but we didn't have time to figure out how to start it let alone operate it.
    I threw open the rear passenger-side door and helped Jeremiah up into the back of the humvee. It wasn't a traditional backseat at all, more of a hard, open space perfect for grunt storage. Alison jumped behind the wheel and looked back at us from the massive driver's seat with its giant stick-shift and mounted laptop.
    "You're driving," I asked, admittedly surprised.
    "Is that a problem?" She looked ready to engage in one of those battle-of-the-sexes arguments that always go so well.
    "Actually it's better for me, my license is suspended." I finished loading up Jeremiah, shut the door behind me and was about to hop into the front when something against the seat caught my attention. "Check it out," I said as I crouch-walked into the passenger seat. Alison looked over at the black assault rifle clutched in my hands.
    "Do you know how to use that thing," she asked with raised eyebrows.
    "I was about to ask you the same thing." I motioned to the steering wheel.
    "If you've driven one minivan, you've driven them all," she said, turning the ignition and firing up the beastly engine. She engaged the clutch and put it into first gear, pulling away from the line of vehicles with a roar of gasoline and rubber.
    As she drove around the stadium toward the exit, I casually inspected the weapon. I made it look like I was checking it over but the truth was I was getting used to the thing, figuring out where everything was on the rifle. I had gone to a range a few times back in college with a gun-loving buddy of mine, but with nothing above a few handguns. My experience with assault rifles started and ended with Playstation. My best guess, based solely on videogames, it was an M16.
    "Look," Alison said, drawing my attention up from the weapon. Twenty or thirty soldiers were lined up in front of the building with their weapons aimed and ready. Gate Four, where we'd been marched through hours earlier, was alive with motion on the inside. Through the glass doors it looked like game day, but we all knew there was no game today.
    "Bleeders," I said.
    The crash we heard must have been the blockades giving. They were able to hold up to a few people pushing and pulling on them, but once the stadium was filled with Bleeders their strength became too much.
    The doors bulged outward from the weight of the crowd pushing on them from the other side. Alison stopped the humvee, all of us drawn into the insane sight of the screaming faces pressed against the glass. With night outside and the lights on inside, we could see their faces clearly. Blood dripped from their eyes and mouths and down the doors.
    "There it goes."
    The glass cracked and then the first door gave. I'd never seen anything like it. It was like a dam burst as the Bleeders flooded through the broken door, then a second door and a third. Some of them fell but the others stampeded right over them, crushing skulls and snapping spines under uncaring feet.
    The soldiers held their ground. They shouted orders and fired on the crowd. For a second it felt wrong-