Operation Honshu Wolf Read Free Page A

children. Miller wrenched the wheel to the side, teeth gritted, and slowed to avoid running headlong into a wall. The second he was clear, he started pumping on the pedal as if the electric vehicle still had gas to be metered out, staring at the filthy people climbing over the limousine’s hood. A little boy clambered up the car, stamping on the limousine’s armoured roof with hollow thuds, while a teenager started pounding on the windshield with a brick.
    He nudged a woman out of the way with the limousine’s fender, rolling the wheel side to side, but the mass of humanity was too thick. Eventually the pounding fists ceased sliding past, and they all but held the limo in place. Each time he punched the accelerator, the car nudged forward, and then the crowd physically pushed it back.
    Their screams were strangely hollow, distant through the armour.
    “They can’t get in, can they?” Morland asked, nervous.
    “I don’t think so.”
    Du Trieux finished trussing up Lester’s limp arms behind him with a set of zip-tie cuffs, started on his legs.
    The crowd parted briefly, and Miller tried to push the mob aside, only for the windshield to be covered in beating hands, hammering fists of all colours... an elderly gentleman helped hoist up a stop sign torn physically out of the ground, two younger people taking the post and stabbing the jagged end into the windshield like workers with shovels.
    The windshield glass’s upper laminate layer spiderwebbed, and began to chip away.
    Miller floored the manual-drive pedal again, again, but the vehicle wouldn’t move, grimacing Infected pushing at the back when he tried reversing it. The mob literally pulled the limousine deeper inside itself, the wheels scraping sideways with a hellish rubber-on-concrete growl.
    They couldn’t escape.
    The steady schunk of the stop sign into the windshield was joined by the shriek of metal as someone took a pry-bar to one of the limo’s door seams, and over it all, Lester mewling for help in a drugged haze.
    Miller flipped open his phone’s casing, told it to dial work, and pulled his Gallican back out, setting the handgun on his lap.
    “Miller?”
    “Cobalt-1, this is Cobalt-2.” Miller flattened the drive pedal again, and the crowd lunged, pushing the car sideways until the wheels thudded against the curb. “An Infected riot’s brewing. The limo can’t move and they’re trying to get in.”
    “ Fuck. ” Brandon Lewis, head of Cobalt-1, had been resolving to quit swearing for years. Today clearly wasn’t the day, though. “ Motherfucking son of a bitch, Miller. This is not what I need to hear. How many are there? ”
    It was as easy as putting on the camera and holding the phone against the side-window. Miller got it up just in time for someone to smash a divot out of the armoured glass. Faintly, Miller heard a rising chant of “Kill the poisoners!”
    “Lots.” Miller cleared his throat, bringing the phone back to his ear. “We need help. Immediate help. Tear gas, riot squad, whatever’s left of the NYPD, I don’t care, Lewis. Get us out of here.”
    “ I don’t think there’s anything of the NYPD left .” Lewis hesitated. “ I’ll get Bob Harris on the horn. We’ll bring in Bayonet if we need to. ”
    “Roger that,” Miller murmured, wiping his face.
    Miller silently watched one of the mob bring up a shotgun and unload it at him, point blank. The buckshot rebounded back at the shooter off the glass, where the pellets hadn’t embedded in the chipped upper laminate, causing screams and howls and blood to cover the windshield.
    Miller’s phone rang. Robert Harris, head of site, personnel, and executive security for Schaeffer-Yeager International, was on the other end of the line. “ You have Allen? ”
    “Yeah. He’s been infected like we thought.” Miller risked a glance back, wincing at the distant crunch of glass behind him. They were almost halfway through the rear window’s two-inch laminate.
    “ You have