Operation Honshu Wolf Read Free

Infected mob watched Miller holster the Gallican in his inside-waistband holster, smooth out the lines of his jacket, and slip into the limousine’s driver-side door, Trix having already crawled into the back.
    Closing the door on the crowd and the blistering heat should have made the interior of the air-conditioned limousine into a blissful sanctuary. What Miller hadn’t counted on was Lester’s smell. He was almost as bad as Nick.
    And now, Lester was panicking.
    “Who are you?” he screamed in du Trieux’s face, before Morland yanked him back down to the seat. “ What are you?”
    Miller had heard about this. The Infected shared so many more cues of body language and scent that, to them, an uninfected human ceased to be entirely human. The uninfected belonged in the ‘uncanny valley’: mechanical dolls, unnatural homonculi. A mockery of what was familiar, and instinctively repulsive.
    Morland smothered Lester against the back seat with du Trieux’s help, while Miller leaned back and handed Trix her bagged syringe and phial.
    “I don’t like this! Who are you? Why aren’t I going home? I want to go home!”
    “We’re Schaeffer-Yeager’s bodyguards. We’re taking you home!” du Trieux snapped.
    “I don’t work for Schaeffer-Yeager, I work for BioGen—”
    “Schaeffer-Yeager International owns Biogen. We’re your friends, everything’s alright!”
    Miller settled himself into the driver’s seat, glanced once at the rear-view mirror, disengaged the automatic and steered the limousine around one of the mob members in the street. He tapped his earpiece. “Doyle. You good to get out on your own?”
    “ Should do. Although you should know: there are more running your way. ”
    “More?”
    “ I think the Infected called in for help. ”
    In the back seat, Lester stopped fighting for a moment, panting. “W-what’s that for?” he asked, pale and tense under Morland’s grip, staring at the syringe with dinner-plate eyes.
    “We’re giving you Firbenzol,” du Trieux snapped.
    Lester’s eyes widened. He knew the anti-parasitic drug by name, and he didn’t seem to want it, struggling to lash out at her from the midst of Morland’s bear-hug.
    Du Trieux quickly, and very professionally, drew a measure of the drug from the phial, gazing at the syringe contemplatively as she held it up and squeezed the air bubbles back into the phial. She gestured, and Morland pinned Lester tighter, prompting a strangled yelp from the man. Du Trieux jabbed the needle into the meat of his shoulder. Lester struggled, twisted—God knew how she did it, but du Trieux got the full dose into him and pulled the needle free without him snapping it off in his flesh.
    One of the mob, loping alongside the limousine, yelled as if they’d seen the syringe and didn’t like it any more than Lester did.
    He clawed at his shoulder as if du Trieux had injected him with acid, his eyes growing ever more droopy.
    Morland kept Lester down, pinning his arms to his chest. “Miller!”
    “I see them,” Miller replied, swinging the steering wheel round, guiding the limousine up onto the sidewalk, speeding up past a clump of the crowd emerging from a side street.
    Doyle was right. More and more of the Infected were coming out of alleyways and buildings—a brewing riot.
    Behind them, the mob was following in fits and starts, jogging, sprinting after them. Someone banged on the limo’s back end when Miller was forced to slow down and swerve around an idiot trying to catch all two tons of the limousine with his hands.
    “Dammit, Miller! They’re trying the doors!” Morland shouted.
    Miller angled for the last gap ahead he could see, and stomped on the pedal.
    Scarlet lights ignited, the car bawled, “ Emergency Stop! Alert. Emergenc— ”
    “Get the override,” du Trieux screamed. “Miller, override the safeties!”
    Miller already had. But even if the limo’s automatic braking system was disengaged, he wasn’t about to run over