I need that, that rationalization, if I was going to shoot them.
The girls had dumped their excess weaponry in a heap at the base of the statue of Gandhian irony I ignored for the moment. I’m not sure what if anything I was thinking except that I had better arm myself. The AK-47 I’d been issued back on the boat had a bent barrel, the result of my desperate use of the weapon as a pry bar back in the hospital. I needed a new weapon if I was going to fight.
I had never fired a gun before with the intent of harming anyone. I knew their specs and schematics and statistics by heart but I’d never fired so much as a pistol in a combat situation. I wasn’t even looking at the weapon I picked up. I knew in an abstract way that it was a Russian made anti-armor piece, an RPG-7V. I knew that I’d read its user manual before. I knew how to load a grenade in the front end of the barrel and how to hold its wooden heat guard on my shoulder. I knew which hand to put on which of its two grips. I knew enough to take the lens cap off the sighting mechanism and how to close one eye and look through the sight with the other. I lined up the crosshairs with the helmet of the nearest undead cop and pulled the trigger. I knew how to do that, even if I’d never intended to do so as long as I lived.
The dead men were twenty yards away.
A three-foot cone of sparks and fire jumped out the back of the tube and the grenade leapt away from me. There was no recoil at all. I let the now-empty tube fall away from my eye and watched the rocket-propelled grenade disappear at the tip of a column of white smoke. It moved so slowly, seeming to hang in the air. I watched fins pop out of its tail, saw it visibly stabilize itself in midair and correct its tumbling spin. I saw it touch the ground right in front of the leading dead man.
The briefest flash of searing white light got swallowed up instantly by a puff of grey mist that swelled up into an angry sphere of billowing smoke. Debris was everywhere, falling from the sky-broken chips of concrete, divots of grass, a severed hand that smacked dryly on my shoe. A lot less noise than I would have predicted. A hot breeze washed over us, ruffling the girls’ headscarves, making me blink away grit and dust. Everything went grey for a second as the expanding shockwave of smoke rolled over us.
The smoke cleared and I saw a three foot crater in the ground surrounded by mangled bodies, limbs torn away, exposed bones pointing accusingly up at the air. A couple of the former cops were still moving, twitching mostly but still hauling themselves toward us with fingers that bent all wrong. More of them lay motionless on the Square, victims of shrapnel and hydrostatic shock.
“Xariif,”Ayaan muttered. It meant “clever” and it was the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.
I slung the empty tube, still dribbling smoke from both ends, over my shoulder and waved for our scout to come join us. Time was still very much an issue. Once we had regrouped I lead the girls in a desperate run downFourteenth Street to the east-toward the Virgin Megastore there. The main entrance, a triangular shaped lobby of glass doors was locked up tight but that was a good thing since it would help keep out the dead. A second entrance near the store’s cafй opened when I yanked on the chrome handle of the door. I ushered the girls inside, telling them to fan out and secure the place.Gary brought up the end of the line. I held my arm across the opening before he could go in. We were spooked, tired, and still in a lot of danger. It wasn’t going to do much for morale if the girls had to watch Ifiyah die. I wanted to talk to him about what could be done and what our options might be.
“She doesn't have a chance, does she?” I tried, but he was ready for me.