Kate was crying now.
“Hey, asshole. I’m kind of on a clock here. Empty the pockets.”
Fred was holding a gun.
How remarkable. I should get it from him before he hurts himself. Where was his frying pan?
Her voice breaking, Kate spoke, weakly. “Mike?”
Here, sir! That was me!
Why didn’t I answer? My mouth wouldn’t listen to my brain. Or my brain wasn’t making sense. That was it; my mouth had it right, it was the brain that was off. I should try closing my eyes. I did.
I opened them again, and Fred was closer. But he was still holding a gun.
I cursed.
“I thought there was something unusual about you,” I heard Kate say, her voice small and distant. “But I couldn’t place it.” She sounded resigned. “You were very convincing.”
“Let’s just say that my employer provides excellent on the job training. Or I should say ex-employer; I’m freelance now, given the degeneration of society, collapse of civilization, hordes of the undead, and all that. Looks like you had kind of a rough time of it down there. Find what you were looking for, did you?”
It was definitely Fred talking.
“Why?” It was the one word-the only word-I could muster.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why you were kept drugged and secluded? Why rapists and serial killers were afforded more mental liberty than you were back at King’s Point? Since you got out, been having flashbacks, have you? Fuck, man, get with it! You can see this is a government deal; didn’t your internal conspiracy theorist come up with something?” He shook his head in disdain and amusement.
“You had seen and heard a little too much, if you get my drift. These fuckers,” he gestured around him, at the grounds we could see from our vantage point, “they came from somewhere. Here in fact. But you think our government wanted this kind of dirty laundry aired in public?”
“I was set up.” My head was clearing. My hand hurt like hell, but my mind was free of the blazing voices and the muddle of confounding disbelief. The pain in my hand reminded me of my fate. We didn’t have much time.
“Fuck an A, man. You were set up to go in, and you were screwed once you arrived. We had you on so many cocktails, if you had been in there much longer, you wouldn’t remember how to hold your dick when you piss, let alone that your wife was a living corpse when you got home. Best part is, even if you had, who would have believed you?” The bastard laughed.
“Didn’t you wonder how you got locked in back at the Point? Wake up!”
And I saw her again, one painful, last time. And I saw what she held in her hand. A syringe. A steel syringe. Filled with blue liquid. I unconsciously raised my hand, looking for the long gone pin prick in my hand that I had felt when she attacked me.
“But I digress,” he said, voice serious again. “Let’s see it, and maybe I let you guys live, such as it is.” He looked pointedly at the grounds, where hundreds of creatures swarmed over the dry grass. Their moans drifted on the cool air, the grunts and scratches from the door behind me lending the entire situation an air of surreal urgency.
I reached into my pocket, withdrawing a clip for my pistol, long forgotten in the passages below. Hiding it in my palm, hoping to buy just a little more time as I moved to the door, I gestured toward Fred, hoping he couldn’t sense my dissemblance.
“What, you just gonna take it and sell it? You’re going to abandon your nation, perhaps the world, for a few bucks to the highest bidder?”
“Come on, man,” he said, cocking his head incredulously. “This place is fucked! Hartliss and I heard it after we got the bird in the air again. Caught some com chatter from an AWAC plane off the New York coast. Midwest cities are falling every day, they’ve reached the West Coast, and the Florida line has been breached in too many holes to count. Reports of infection in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America. Even Britain and France. Time to cut our losses and move elsewhere. I’m thinking a nice little Caribbean island somewhere. They can’t swim, you know.”
At the mention of Canada, Kate groaned in pain; whether physical or emotional was another question.
Behind me, the door shook from the constant impacts of corpses against its frame, seeking to follow us onto our last refuge. My hand still rested on the cool steel of the door handle; I felt it vibrate in my ruined fingers. I could smell them through the thick steel; imagined or real, their putrescence was a vile intrusion into the clean, crisp air.
“I’m sorry you had to suffer so much for something I’ll profit from, but as they say in the biz, c’est la vie, right?” He seemed very amused at his reference to my line of work. Why did everyone find that so interesting and witty? Jackass.
He turned the gun on Kate, tilting his head and looking at me.
“Enough of this. You first, or her?” Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t far from the door, so I’d have to move quickly.
Not being left much of a choice, I took the only path left to me.
“Neither,” I said, and opened the door to hell.
Chapter 31
I rolled away from the door as it flew open. They poured from the opening as if someone had turned on a faucet. The wall next to me spit pieces of concrete and mortar as Fred fired at me in frustration, forced to move back by their sudden appearance. Because I had pulled the door open toward me, it proved an effective shield against their onslaught, directing them instead toward Fred, who fired at the flood of bodies in haste as he retreated, forced away from the door and the chopper, toward the low wall edging the roof.
The mass of creatures now separated us from Fred, who couldn’t get a clear shot at me, even as he saw me move toward Kate and start toward the helicopter. In front of us, Hartliss had struggled into a sitting position and his hand was now clutching his side. Having seen his movement from my position before opening the door I was banking on the chance that he was well enough to fly the helicopter off this roof. If not, we were in for a shit storm of hurt.
He had pushed himself back against the aluminum door of the cockpit, but couldn’t rise. Blood seeped through his blue uniform in copious amounts. He feebly motioned toward the chopper, even as Fred fired again toward the ghouls that still separated us from him. But he was moving parallel to the edge of the roof back toward the helicopter, and would soon have a clear shot at us as we neared the chopper. We needed to move faster, I thought, as I forced my tired legs to respond.
I moved forward as if in a dream. My feet moved but I didn’t seem to get any closer to the helicopter. Each step was agony, my legs screaming in exhaustion and my arms threatening to drop my burden. Gravel crunched under foot, and the moaning from behind us nipped at my heels like a pack of invisible, rabid wolves. Every second I moved, I anticipated the hungry bite of a zombie in my thigh, or the sharp, piercing pain of a bullet tearing through my back.
Fred was backing slowly toward the helicopter. He fired carefully, not sparing a glance away from the group of creatures still endlessly pouring from the staircase. Heads exploded in a carefully measured cadence, congealed blood becoming a misty haze through which other ghouls had to shuffle to thrust forward in hunger.
Despite his efforts, they continued to move forward. Faster than he could dispatch them, they shuffled forth. Slowly and steadily, they ate up the distance between the stairwell and the helicopter. Even in the fresh mountain air, the stench reached my nostrils as I covered the last few feet to Hartliss, the stinking reek of carrion and rotting matter almost knocking me to my knees.
I placed Kate in the passenger compartment and turned back to Hartliss. He smiled wanly as I helped him to stand and opened the door to the cockpit.
“Not much of a hero act, eh mate?” he said as I boosted him into the chair and he flipped switches, his blood making the controls slippery and uncooperative.
“Listen man, you get this bird in the air, and I’ll knight your ass myself.” Grabbing his pistol from the seat next to him, I went to shut the door.
“You’ll need a clip; the ponce tossed mine over the edge,” he said, eyes livid. “Got a spare in the back. Good luck.” Nodding, I slammed the door shut.
That, of all things, caught Fred’s attention.
He was only feet from the first wave of creatures, and had paused to reload even as he continued to back toward the vehicle. It was the pause in constant gunfire that alerted him to our location; possibly, he assumed we had been overcome by the door and didn’t realize we had evaded their grasping hands until he heard the commotion behind him. Possibly, his plan was to retreat to the chopper and fly himself out. Now, we had complicated the situation.
I reached into the cabin and grabbed a spare clip from a duffel bag strapped to the floor. Shoving the clip into the gun, I turned to Hartliss, who was igniting the engine. The blades started to turn slowly over my head, the air displaced by their motion driving away the putrid stench of the creatures.
“Get this thing in the air as soon as you can! Don’t wait for me. If I’m not on board when you’re good to go, get in the air!”
He nodded weakly, and turned to the dash, checking the gauges. I slammed the cargo bay door shut as a bullet hole appeared three inches from my right hand. Diving to the ground, I felt the hard stones cut my face and neck as I rolled toward the rear of the helicopter. I heard Fred’s voice. Hoping he hadn’t seen the pistol, I kept it out of sight behind me as I got to my feet.
“Give me the god damned vaccine, Mike! You can’t win. I’ll shoot your pilot right now, so help me! Give it to me now and we all leave. You don’t, and it’s just me!” He was shouting to be heard over the noise of the rotor blades, which were now ramping up to full speed. I moved out from behind the chopper, hands behind my head, hoping that he couldn’t see the pistol held low behind my neck. Zombies shuffled forward, not far from Fred, who was almost to the cockpit door.
“Now or never!” he shouted, and realizing how close Hartliss had come to getting the helicopter into the air, aimed his gun at the cockpit door. The rear of the aircraft lifted off the roof by inches and Fred jerked his head to the side, giving me the distraction I needed. I pulled Hartliss’s pistol from behind my head. The kick from the weapon jarred my injured hand and a lighting bolt of pain flashed up my arm.
Fred had caught my activity and had instinctively moved aside at the moment I fired, firing at me as he took my own shot in the shoulder instead of the chest.
His bullet took me in the right thigh, burning and tearing through cloth and flesh. I could feel the projectile lodge itself in my bone as I fell to the ground, crawling to the side instinctively as the tail of the helicopter rose into the air and swung about.
Small stones, kicked up by the rotors, flew into my face and hair and I closed my eyes against the debris momentarily. I opened them again as the tail swung out over the grounds and the helicopter lifted further into the air, and saw Fred rise to his feet slowly, closely pursued by the pack of creatures now further stimulated by the activity that had taken place. He stumbled forward and raised his gun.
I had no time to duck as the two, almost concurrent flashes of light from his muzzle left dizzying bright spots in my eyes. My shoulder and my injured arm exploded in agony, bullets tearing through the flesh of my bicep and my deltoid.
He continued forward, gun still trained on me but no more shots being fired. In the haze of pain it took me moments to realize his gun was empty. But still he came forward.
I lifted my own gun hand and moved to pull the trigger, noticing as I did so that Fred’s shot to my arm had caused me to drop the gun.
There was no time to pick it up as he barreled into me, forcing me back to the ground. Creatures moaned and shuffled forward, not twenty feet behind us as we rolled, punching and kicking, toward the cinder block raised edge of the building.
My arm and leg groaned in agony as I struggled to throw him from me and to reach the gun that I knew lay tantalizingly close. I landed a fist on his ear, causing him to howl in pain as his foot unwittingly kicked the gun closer to me. I twisted sharply, throwing him off balance, and he tumbled to my left. Lunging for the weapon, I felt the composite grip slide into my palm as the wind was driven out of my lungs by his tackling body. Keeping my grip on the pistol, I rolled with him further away from the approaching creatures, which were now ten feet closer and gaining quickly.
Without the benefit of the rotor blades, their stench again sought to rip my nose from my face and drive the smell of living death deep into my brain.
Realizing quickly that this altercation needed to end, I had a flash from “the scene”-the one that had made my career. The one that had made me; that had defined me in the eyes of so many. The one that had pushed me into the mold I now realized I would forever struggle to break.
He was on top of me, his hand on my throat, his other hand clutching my gun hand with tenacious strength. His face was contorted in pain and aggression, the eyes that had seemed so simple and unwitting before were now narrowed in a hateful fashion.
I had to remember that this wasn’t the man I thought it was. My memories of his awkward looks, those expressions that seemed ever so slightly out of place in his eyes, came back to me. My anger flared anew, enraged by the deception.
In a last desperate act, taking pages from a script that had been written and choreographed years before, I feigned a roll to the left, causing him to over adjust to his right. I brought my uninjured knee up quickly and solidly between his legs and simultaneously arched my back, causing his weakened shoulder to buckle under the new pressure. The hand on my gun arm faltered and I brought it around with all the strength that remained to me, cracking the grip against the side of his head.
He fell to the ground hard, kicking up pebbles and dirt as he rolled away towards the approaching creatures.
I didn’t waste any more time with him. I knew I didn’t have to.
I crawled to the edge of the roof as the creatures reached his barely moving form. At the first of their touch, he started groggily, bleeding head jerking up, realizing what had happened. Realizing that he was doomed.