The Burning Men: A Nathaniel Cade Story by Christopher Farnsworth Read Free Book Online

he replied: “I heard what you said. I was ignoring you.”
    The man reddened, but kept his temper. “If there’s a threat like you say, we need to get the locals involved, set up a perimeter, control the access points. Just for starters.”
    Zach sighed. The guy needed it spelled out for him, and Cade wasn’t going to do it.
    “We don’t have time,” Zach said. “They’re on their way already. We set up checkpoints, they’ll panic, and then they’ll trigger before we can get to them. If we tell the local authorities, they’ll start evacuating the airport, and that will cause a panic, and our guys will see that and trigger before we can stop them. And a lot of people die, either way.”
    The ERT leader wasn’t mollified. “You should at least let me put my men into position.”
    “We can’t risk our guys seeing your men in body armor and freaking out. Trust me. Cade is the only one who can move fast enough.”
    “My men are pretty fast.”
    Zach was losing patience. “Really? Can they set up a sniper position in less than 30 seconds after we find one of these guys? Can they run at 75 miles per hour? Can they move faster than a literal goddamn speeding bullet?”
    The ERT commander didn’t respond.
    “Language,” Cade said, again without looking away.
    “Sorry,” Zach said to Cade. To the ERT leader, he said, “This is our best shot. Cade can pick them out of the crowd and put them down before they blow. It’s our only shot of avoiding another massacre.”
    The ERT leader nodded. Zach tried to look confident. But he couldn’t help but notice the time. They were getting into the heavy-traffic hours for the airport: all the morning flights, everyone trying to arrive early and get a jump on their day. The screens were packed with people, and more kept showing up.
    Worse, the sun was rising.
    Cade wouldn’t burst into flame in daylight. That was just in the movies. Instead, he got slower. He got sick. He got tired. He could operate inside, out of direct sunlight, but like every other airport, Logan was filled with floor-to-ceiling windows that let the sun shine in. Right now, there was patchy fog keeping the morning dim and gray. Thank God for New England weather in the fall. Zach hoped it would stick around.
    Minutes ticked by. The images strobed across the screens. Zach was beginning to get a migraine. He thought he saw the same people over and over. Every second, he expected to hear an explosion from one of the places where they couldn’t cast their net.
    Then Cade froze. His hands moved over the controls. Every screen filled with the same image.
    It was Tyson Novak. He’d shaved off his scruffy beard and was wearing sunglasses, but Zach was certain this was the same kid from the Facebook photos. More importantly, so was Cade.
    “Get ready to move,” the ERT commander said into his radio.
    “No,” Cade snapped, and the man actually recoiled.
    “I have this,” Cade said, more quietly. “Your men can’t stop him. I can.”
    “I heard what you said. But we can help — ”
    Cade gave the man his full attention. “I will handle it,” he said, biting off each word. The ERT commander, wisely, stepped back.
    But Zach put a hand on Cade’s arm, very carefully. “You sure? The sun is coming up.”
    Cade looked down at Zach’s hand. Zach removed it, but didn’t get out of the vampire’s path.
    “No one else dies because of these men,” Cade said. “No one.”
    Zach felt a flash of anger. “You’re aware that they burst into flame? You do remember that you’re not fireproof, right?”
    “I stopped one before.”
    “At night. In daylight, you might — ”
    “Be a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest?”
    Zach nearly guffawed. Cade’s brain included over a century of slang, but never the knowledge of when it was appropriate. “Something like that.”
    “I promise you, Zach: he will never see me coming.”
    “What about Adam Thompson?”
    “We have to deal with the threat we can