He hit the roof access doorway right behind Kelly. Night had fallen since they'd been in Miriam's office, and the hot, dry desert air hit his throat like an electrical shock.
Ahead of him was the shuttle Dr. Brooks and his team had flown in on.
The zombies had been gaining on them while they were on the stairs, and now they flooded through the doorway. With his hands behind his back, Jacob was almost defenseless. He met the first zombie through the door with a hard kick to the chest, knocking it down, but he was unable to twist and dodge the one right behind it. The zombie lunged and managed to wrap its fingers into Jacob's shirt. Jacob backpedaled as fast as he could, twisting one way and then the other in an attempt to shake the zombie loose, but it didn't work. The thing held tight, even though it lost its balance and sank to its knees.
The weight pulled Jacob down and he felt himself losing the struggle to stay upright. He knew if he fell he'd die right there. They would swarm him and devour him in seconds.
The zombie was struggling, trying to pull Jacob toward its reeking mouth. Jacob did the only thing he could and head-butted the zombie, knocking it backward hard enough to dislodge its fingers from his shirt.
The zombie fell into the wall at the edge of the roof, and Jacob ran at him. He lowered his shoulder and hit the zombie square in the chest, knocking him back again so that the dead man went over the side, tumbling to his second death.
Three more, then eight more, then fifteen came surging through the door.
He started to backpedal again, only this time it wasn't a zombie that slowed him down. Lester Brooks was right behind him. He grabbed Jacob by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way. Then he stepped into the spot where Jacob had just stood, leveled his pistol at the crowd of snarling dead surging out of the doorway, and started firing.
The three closest to him sank silently to the ground, their heads ruptured by the compressed air and leaking down their backs. Brooks ignored them. More were coming up the stairs every second.
Jacob had been taught to shoot a handgun with two hands. Feet together, shoulder-width apart, both hands on the weapon straight out in front the chest, so that the body formed a triangle.
But Brooks fired one-handed. He had his shoulders bladed toward the onrushing zombies, weapon in the right hand, extended toward the target.
Jacob had been taught that the accuracy of a two-handed stance was far better than that of a single-handed stance, and he'd known older shooters back in Arbella who insisted on using just one hand. They never shot as well as those who used the two-handed Weaver stance, like Jacob.
Brooks didn't seem to have any trouble with accuracy, though. He scored one head shot after another, and didn't miss once.
“Get to the shuttle!” Brooks said to him. “Move. I'll cover you.”
Jacob didn't have to be told twice. He ran for the shuttle. It was a hulking aircraft shaped like a wedge, with thick, stubby wings sloping off the aircraft's spine like a man's shoulders. Underneath each wing was a fat, roaring engine, and even as he sprinted for the open doorway near the front of the shuttle, Jacob got the sense that this airship, even more so than the freighter upon which he'd hitched a ride earlier that day, was built for power and speed. The doorway that led inside was standing open. Kelly and Chelsea had just slipped inside. Jordan Anson was in the doorway, waving at Lester Brooks to hurry.
Jacob stopped in the doorway long enough to watch Brooks drop four more zombies. Then the older man turned and ran for the shuttle.
Jacob hustled inside. There was very little light, but enough that he could see Kelly strapping herself into a couch along the far wall.
“Jacob,” she called out. “Over here!”
He dropped onto the couch beside her and she helped him get strapped in.
Brooks scrambled aboard a moment later, and in the seconds it took for the door to draw up and close, Jacob saw the roof filling with the undead.
They ran at the shuttle and tried to climb its hull, looking for a way in. Through the small port windows above the couch on the opposite wall, Jacob could see dead men and women beating against the hull.
“Got everybody,” Brooks yelled toward the front of the shuttle.
The pilot, the only one of the goon squad to survive the retreat to the roof, gave Brooks a big thumbs-up. Then he turned to the controls and powered up the shuttle's massive engines. The shuttle's engines strained loudly as it fought to gain the air, but the zombies piling on made the craft rock and shudder. Whether to try to shake off the zombies, or simply to regain control of the rising aircraft, Jacob couldn't tell, but the pilot rotated the shuttle, swinging one wing over the edge of the roof.
Jacob found himself looking out the window, six stories down, with zombies slipping off the craft and tumbling to the street far below. A terrible sense of vertigo overwhelmed him, and all he wanted to do was shrink into himself and hold on for dear life.
The next instant the aircraft rotated back the other way, carrying them over the roof. The view was no better there. Hundreds of zombies crowded the roof, all of them rushing toward the shuttle. As Jacob watched, the huge engine on the opposite wing swept through the crowd. It swept through the zombie masses like a giant maw, scooping up bodies until the sheer mass of the dead clogged the engine. It shuddered and smoked, coughing so violently that it shook the aircraft.
The next instant, it exploded. The window Jacob had been looking through disappeared in a fireball, and when the flames cleared, nothing was left but a hole in the side of the ship and tangled, smoking metal.
Beyond, burnt and broken bodies littered the rooftop. A few were still moving, even as their hair and clothes were engulfed in fire.
From the front of the aircraft, Jacob heard Brooks yelling at the pilot. “Put us back down on the roof!”
“I can't,” the pilot screamed. “I can't stop the rotation.”
The spinning craft rocked again over the side of the roof, and Jacob felt his stomach rise into his throat.
“We're going over!” Kelly screamed. “Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
Jacob could see the ground rushing up at them through the hole in the fuselage. But the craft continued to spin. Things were happening so fast he could barely process it all. The view outside the hole turned to brick and cement as they spun into the side of the building, smashing into it with so much force it took his breath away.
Amid the screams of the passengers, the aircraft continued to spiral down to the ground, hitting hard as it slid across the street in a chorus of shrieking and moaning metal.
The whole world seemed to roll. Jacob felt like a piece of driftwood caught in the waves, completely out of control, unable to hold on to anything.
He was jerked so violently against his restraints that he blacked out.
When he came to, dizzy and disoriented, he was choking on smoke.
From somewhere, an angry Klaxon whined.
C
HAPTER
13
Kelly was gone. During the crash, a huge strut had collapsed and impaled itself through the seat where Kelly had been just moments before. Jacob couldn't hold back the panic.
“Kelly?” Jacob said. He tried to see through the smoke, but it was too thick. He could barely breathe. He hacked and coughed as his eyes filled with burning tears. “Kelly? Where are you?”
“Jacob, here!”
“Where are you? I can't see you.”
Suddenly she was there, stepping out of the smoke, ducking under the strut that would have killed her had she still been in her seat. “I'm here,” she said. “Are you okay? Is anything broken?”
“I don't know. I can't feel my arms.”
“Damn,” she said. “It's those cuffs they put you in.” She looked to the front of the shuttle, where the smoke was starting to clear. The front of the ship looked to have taken most of the hit of the impact. There was little ahead of them but twisted metal and the broken body of the pilot leaning out of his seat.
Kelly took a few steps that way.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
“Stay still.”
Jacob shook against his restraints. “Is that a joke?”
“I'm going to try to get you out of those cuffs.”
She pulled her way through the wreckage, toward the pilot. She pushed his body out of the chair and ran her hands over his gun belt. A moment later she held up a silver disk about the size of a coin.
“Got it!” she said.
“Get his gun, too.”
“Oh, right.”
Kelly turned the pilot's corpse over and wrestled with the built-in retention safeties in the holster, but eventually managed to pull the weapon. She held it up for Jacob to see.
“Kelly! Heads up!”
She glanced down at the pilot's corpse. The man's face had been burned away. There was smoke coming from under his helmet. But he was still moving. He pulled himself from the chair and somehow got to his feet. His head rocked back and lolled on his shoulders. But then he saw Kelly and he staggered toward her.
“Shoot him!” Jacob yelled.
Kelly was terrified. She backed away from the dead pilot, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Kelly, shoot him!”
She raised the gun in both hands, just like she'd been taught, and fired.
The shot was low.
It hit the man in the chest and exploded harmlessly off his body armor.
The zombie didn't even notice the shot. He staggered forward again, hands outstretched and grabbing for her.
“Kelly, shoot him in the head!”
“I'm trying,” she said.
The zombie fell forward, its mangled hands falling on her shoulders.
Kelly screamed and fell back, but the touch of those dead hands on her skin clicked something inside her. She steadied herself, aimed the pistol at the man's chin, the only part visible through his cracked helmet, and shot him.
The resulting blast tore the man's neck in two, and his helmeted head slid off his body and clanked to the floor.
“I did it!” she said.
“Yes, you did. Now get me out of these cuffs.”
She made her way back to him, undid his harness, and then pushed him forward so she could see his hands. “I don't know what this stuff is,” she said. “It looks like wax, or melted plastic.”
“Just get it off me.”
“Okay, okay.”
Kelly took the metal disk from her pocket and leaned over Jacob's back.
“Stop!” Brooks yelled from the other side of the shuttle. He'd been caught up in the explosion that damaged that side of the shuttle, and was trapped beneath a tangle of wires and metal pipes. But he was pulling himself loose, bit by bit. “Don't you touch him. That man is under arrest.”
He got an arm free and pulled his pistol. He pointed it right at Kelly's head.
“I mean it. Do not release him.”
Kelly stared at the pistol, but she didn't flinch. “You're not going to shoot me,” she said. “And there are zombies closing in on us. I will not leave him defenseless.”
The next thing Jacob knew, she'd leaned over his back and touched the metal disk to the handcuffs. In seconds, they turned to a warm liquid and ran off his skin, leaving his hands free to move. He stood up, rubbing his wrists.
“Stop where you're at!” Brooks said. He turned his pistol to cover Jacob.
Jacob took the pistol from Kelly and slid it into the back of his pants. Then he reached down and grabbed a flat piece of sheet metal that the explosion had ripped from the wall. He held it up in front of him and rushed toward Brooks.
Brooks popped off three rounds, but they didn't penetrate the sheet metal. They just exploded harmlessly off of it.
Jacob pressed the sheet metal into Brooks's face, pinning him and his weapon hand against the debris. He reached around the sheet metal shield and found Brooks's gun. He twisted it and bent the man's hand backward until Brooks couldn't hold it anymore and released the weapon.
Jacob got back to his feet and held up the weapon for Brooks to see. “You won't be needing this anymore.”
Only then did Jacob throw away the sheet metal.
“You've got him,” Chelsea said. She and her aunt and Stu and Juliette came forward from the rear of the aircraft. They were covered in dust, and Stu's forehead had a nasty cut on it. Seven or eight stitches easy to put that together, Jacob thought.
Chelsea gave Jacob a shove.
“What are you waiting for?” she said. “Kill the son of a bitch.”
“Jacob, no!” Miriam shouted. “For God's sake, no.”
“Relax,” Jacob said. “I'm not going to be killing anybody.” He motioned to Stu and Juliette. “Can you two help him out of there, please?”
“I won't be anybody's hostage,” Brooks said. “If that's what you have in mind, you can just kill me now, because if not, I'll kill you as soon as I can.”
“You know,” Jacob said, “for a doctor you're pretty fucking stupid. I'm not interested in hostages. I'm interested in getting out of here.”
“Then give me back my weapon.”
“That's not gonna happen, either,” Jacob said. “You've already shown me you can't be trusted.”
“I thought you said I wasn't a hostage.”
“You're not.”
Jacob walked to the jagged hole in the side of the aircraft. It was big enough they could all just walk right out into the El Paso night. The streetlights were on. In their glow, Jacob could see hundreds of bodies scattered around the wreckage. A man nearest them was missing everything from his waist up. Still another was as crispy and black as a burned sheet of paper. But farther off, in the distance, he could see thicker crowds of zombies gathering, coming closer. He gauged their rate of progress down the street and figured he and the others had a minute, maybe forty-five seconds, before things got hot again. Jacob got Brooks's attention and nodded toward the oncoming ground.
“You're not a hostage,” Jacob said, turning back to Brooks. “You're free to go. In fact, I recommend you go that way.”
Brooks just stared at him.
“Wait a minute,” Kelly said. “Where's his friend, the white guy with the attitude?”
“I think he's dead,” Stu said. “Right after the crash, I saw him outside on the road. A zombie was trying to dig into his body armor.”
“Okay,” Jacob said. “So where do we go from here? We're about to have a whole lot of company. Miriam, can you get us out here?”
The older woman nodded. “I think so. There's a machine shop not far from here. If we can get there, we can take a tunnel over to the armory.”
“That's no good,” Jacob said. “The tunnels are compromised.”
“Not this one,” Miriam answered. “It's a dedicated tunnel, dating back to when the U.S. military ran this place. It connects the machine shop to the armory without any other access points.”
“And what's in the armory?”
“We need a way out of here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“We store the armored personnel carriers that go into the aerofluyts there. If we can make it to one of those, we drive our way out of here.”
“She's right,” Brooks said. “We could do that.”
“Okay,” Jacob said. “Alright, that sounds good. Which way do we go to get to this machine shop?”
Miriam ducked under the tangled debris hanging from the ceiling and looked out to the street. “Oh my,” she said. “They're so close.” She pointed toward the front of the aircraft. “It's that way, about four blocks.”
“Alright, then,” Jacob said. He looked around the wreckage. “Everybody ready to move?”
The others nodded.
“Okay, then. Let's do this.”