C
HAPTER
24
Stu threw a lever and the suit slid out on rails and slowly rotated around. It was split down the back, with buckles on either side of the seam.
“There's really no easy way to get in,” Stu said. “Some go the headfirst route, others go feetfirst. It's your choice.”
“Which way do you go?”
“Feetfirst. That way you can point your toes and see where you're putting them.”
“Makes sense.”
Jacob put a hand on the suit's shoulder and slid his right foot down the suit's pant leg.
“Use the bar,” Stu said.
“What?”
Stu patted the metal bar that ran behind the helmet. “It's meant as an assist so you can put both feet down there at the same time. It's easier if you just jump in that way.”
“Ah.” Jacob grabbed hold of the bar, and, sure enough, he was able to point his toes down the pant legs and slide right in. “Cool,” he said.
“Jacob, I'm not sure about this.” It was Kelly. She and Chelsea had gone to the top of the stairs to watch him suit up. “Is this really the best thing we can do?”
“Kelly, I don't want to go a week without food. Do you?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I just think this is . . . Jacob, this is crazy.”
“Hey,” he said. “It's me.”
“I know. That's what scares me.”
For a moment, his smile wavered. He wanted to say, “Yeah, me, too.” Instead, something from deep inside him spoke up. “Kiss me,” he said.
“What?”
He couldn't believe he'd said it, either, but it was out there now. “You heard me. Last chance forever.”
She didn't smile, but she grabbed hold of the balance bar above him and leaned in for a kiss. He felt her lips touch his, and he suddenly knew what he wanted. Her lips tasted like ash, but she tasted so good. He grabbed her hair and kissed her hard, so roughly it made her gasp. For a moment, she seemed on the verge of pulling back, but then she softened to his kiss.
When he released her, she slowly stood back up and opened her eyes. She was still chalky white from all the ash, but she looked different.
“I'll come back,” he said. “I promise.”
She nodded. “I'll see you at the
Einstein
.”
“You can count on it.” He glanced over at Stu. “Okay, what's next?”
“Arch your back. Put your arms through the holes first, then your head through there, at the back of the shoulders. We'll buckle you up once you're inside.”
Jacob did as Stu told him. He slid into the armholes and let his fingers sort themselves out into the finger holes on the gloves. That done, he worked his head up into the helmet and twisted and twitched until he felt comfortably seated.
“Good?” Stu asked. His voice sounded tinny and far away.
“Yeah,” Jacob said, almost yelling it. “Seal me up.”
He'd had to keep his shoulders loose to reach the fingertips of the gloves while the back of the suit was open, but as soon as Stu and Juliette closed it up, he felt everything tighten up around him.
Looking out the faceplate was strange. From the outside, it had a shiny copper color, but it was as clear as window glass from the inside.
Then Stu got in front of him and waved in his face. “There's a red button in front of your chin. Lean forward and tap that with your chin.”
Jacob did, and the suit lit up instantly. Digital displays lit up all over the inside of the faceplate. “Whoa!” he said.
“Pretty cool, right?” It took Jacob a second to realize it, but Stu was speaking in a normal voice again, no yelling.
“I can hear you now,” Jacob said.
“Yep, I can hear you, too. See those displays in there? Those are suit diagnostics, your basic health screen, and I think this model has sensors to indicate movement in your area.”
“Not this model,” Juliette said. “This is one of the A2000s. Sensors weren't integrated until the A2400 series.”
“Oh, right,” Stu said. “Sorry, no sensors. No weapons, either.”
“No weapons? Are you kidding?”
“Unfortunately not. But these early suits had a few tricks of their own. See that nozzle on top of your right wrist?”
Jacob raised his right arm, and was surprised as the mechanical assist kicked in.
“Yeah, that'll take a bit to get used to,” Stu said. “The suit will amplify any movement you make. That's why you don't need weapons, really. When you get too close to a zombie just hit them. The mechanical assist will give you enough power to probably knock their heads off.”
Jacob nodded, a futile gesture as they couldn't see him inside the helmet. “You were saying about this nozzle.”
“Oh yeah. These early suits were developed as riot control gear. That nozzle fires a foam that hardens on contact. Spray it at a zombie's legs and it'll be like you threw a lasso at them. Just go easy on it, though. I don't think it carries very much.”
“Right,” Jacob said. “So, am I ready to go?”
“Yep, let me check something real quick.” He ran to the top of the stairs and did something with one of the computers. “Okay,” he called down. “Got it. The suit transmits all your vital signs here, and I've just locked your mic open. We'll be able to monitor your life signs continuously, and if you need anything, all you have to do is speak. We're listening.”
“Alright, get me out of this cradle so I can go.”
Stu hit another lever and it dropped Jacob to the deck. “That way,” he said, and pointed Jacob to a large side panel in the wall. “I'll drop the door, but there's going to be zombies all over the place. Get through the door as soon as you can so we can close it back up.”
“Got it.”
“Jacob,” Kelly said. He turned awkwardly in her direction. “You be careful.”
She rose up on her toes and kissed the faceplate.
“I will,” he said.
“You ready?” Stu said.
Jacob raised his fists and shook them.
“Okay, here goes.”
The side panel heaved open. Sunlight flooded into the darkened hold of the APV, but Jacob's faceplate adjusted to the glare and made it so he didn't even have to squint. “Nice,” he muttered. But he had to get right back on the clock because as soon as the door tilted far enough to create an opening, arms started reaching through the cracks on either side.
“Hit them hard and see if you can push them back,” Stu said.
The next instant, that's exactly what Jacob did. The door tilted all the way open and he rushed the crowd waiting there. With his arms spread wide he scooped up four on each side and heaved them forward, even as he ran over another one.
“Close it,” he said.
The door rose back into place quickly, but not before a zombie managed to wedge itself into the crack. Jacob circled back around, his movements stiff and awkward, yet he could feel the tremendous force tied up in every step, every swing of his arms. He grabbed the zombie by its hair and pulled back and down. He'd only intended to pull the thing out of the way of the door, but the mechanical assist snapped the thing's neck. The body fell out of the way, mouth opening and closing as its white eyes locked on Jacob, the head bent all the way back.
“Damn,” Jacob said.
He turned toward the main hangar installation and started walking.
Right away a crowd of zombies gathered around him. Pushing the crowd back from the door had given him a false sense of security, and he reached his arms out to do it again.
It was a mistake, and he knew it right away.
His suit was incredibly powerful, but they were many, and their combined weight pushed him back against the hull of the APV so hard and so suddenly that it knocked the wind out of him.
They clawed at his faceplate and pulled at his armor, but they couldn't penetrate. He rooted his legs and found the mechanical assist there enough to make sure he didn't fall to the ground.
“Push them out of the way one at a time,” Stu said. “That's the suit's advantage.”
“Got it,” Jacob said.
He stopped trying to swing his arms like clubs, and instead stuck his gloved hand in the mouth of the nearest zombie and ripped its face in two. Then he shoved that one to the side and started grabbing more zombies. Stu was right. When he focused on them one at a time, the zombies went flying around like birds.
Soon, he was moving again.
The surrounding herd was starting to notice him, and more and more zombies veered his way, but that was okay. He developed a rhythm. As soon as one got too close, he'd grab it, any part of it, and pull down as hard as he could. A few tries and he started to get the hang of bringing the whole zombie down without severing the thing's limbs, but even with practice that still happened. A few of the zombies were so badly decayed it couldn't be helped.
And so he plodded onward, pulling down any zombie that got too close, a juggernaut in the land of the dead.
C
HAPTER
25
Jacob hadn't been able to see much except the roofline of the main hangar from the Squadron Training Center Building. But now that he was less than a hundred meters away, he could see all of it. It was really just a big empty barn, open on one side, large enough to house the giant Airbuses of the Old World's military. There was a smaller building off to the right side of it, but it looked like a rusting hulk. He could see leaning walls of corrugated tin forming wide corridors through the open ground floor of the building, but the whole thing looked shoddy and in ill repair.
He turned to the right and saw three aerofluyts in the distance. They were huge and graceful, like skyscrapers turned on their side, and it was hard to believe that something so majestic could be made impotent by a power source so grungy-looking.
It didn't help that there were zombies crawling all over everything.
“This place is a wreck,” he said.
“Budget cuts,” Stu answered back. “I'll be sure and tell Councilman Brooks when he comes to what you think of our accommodations.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. “You do that.”
“How you doing?”
A zombie got too close and Jacob grabbed the dead woman's face like he was palming a basketball and threw her to the ground, breaking her back. She lay doubled over, hands groping in the air for a piece of him.
Jacob took a few steps away from her, just so he didn't have to watch.
“I'm doing alright,” he said. “No complaints. Now, tell me what I'm looking for.”
“Okay, there should be a smaller building to one side of the hangar. Do you see that?”
“The one that looks like it's about to fall over?”
“That's the one,” Stu said. “Now, the main floor of that building is made up of mostly access corridors for stuff that needs to go out to aerofluyt yards. There are stairs at different points on the ground floor. You'll need to take any one of them up to the fourth floor. That's the very top. That's where you'll find the flight controller's crow's nest. The main control switch for the entire flight line is there. Get there and I'll walk you through the process to reengage the flight line's power supply.”
“Roger that,” Jacob said.
He walked toward the hangar, slamming zombies out of the way as he plodded forward. When he reached the base of the building, he found himself facing half a dozen different corridors. There were no signs, no indications of which way to go.
“Shit,” he said.
“What is it?” Stu said. He sounded worried.
“Nothing's wrong,” Jacob answered. “But this is going to take some time.”
There were zombies in every corridor, so it wasn't a matter of choosing the path of least resistance. It was all going to be difficult. Instead, he thought back to what Stu had said, that all these corridors were meant as access points to various parts of the flight line. The building above him seemed cobbled together through simple expediency, with little to no attention whatsoever given to aesthetics. And if the main point of the building was to give the flight line commander a clear view of the flight line, it stood to reason there would be a stairwell on the side of the building that faced the aerofluyts, so that the flight line commander could get to his post as quickly as possible.
So Jacob walked around the perimeter of the building until he came to the flight line side, and sure enough, there was a rickety-looking metal staircase leading up to the fourth floor.
For a moment, Jacob wondered if it could hold his weight. It looked awfully flimsy. But he really didn't have any other choice, and he knew it. Though he hated heights, he was going to have to climb.
As he was thinking, he felt hands fall on his back. He'd really almost stopped caring about the zombies, because even when they managed to grab him, like this one had, the suit allowed him to throw them off with ease. And, of course, he didn't have to worry about them clawing their way through the armor.
He handled this zombie the same way he'd handled the many others that had put their hands on him. He spun around sharply, so suddenly that the zombie didn't have a chance to let go, and sent the thing sprawling in the dirt. This zombie was no exception. Jacob turned quickly, and the thing tumbled into the wall, landing in a rumpled pile of twisted arms and legs against the base of the wall.
Jacob was about to turn back to the unpleasant task of climbing the decayed staircase when he stopped.
Something was glittering in the sunlight about sixty meters away, on the back side of the hangar, though what exactly it was he couldn't say because most of it was hidden from view by a small shed. He advanced on the shed, stopping every few meters to scan his surroundings. North of the hangar, out beyond the shed, there was nothing but open desert.
Desert and zombies as far as the eye could see.
But as he rounded the corner of the shed, he saw one of the oddest things he'd ever laid eyes on. “What the hell?”
“What is it?” Stu said.
“I don't know. Looks like the cars we saw all over Galveston.”
“What?”
“Temple, I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. What kind of vehicle? Do you mean an electric car?”
“I guess. Doesn't exactly look like the cars I saw back in Temple. Looks more like a miniature version of the APV you guys are in. Looks like it has a little two-wheeled trailer behind it, too.”
“Jacob, I . . .”
“Stand by,” Jacob said. “Let me check this thing out.”
He walked around the vehicle, taking note of all the dents and bloodstains and bits of scalp and bone stuck in its edges. All the damage looked fresh; no rust; nothing wiped away. Jacob went back to the trailer and tried to work the handle. It wouldn't budge, so, figuring it was locked, he used the suit's mechanically assisted strength to pull the lid off the thing.
“Whoa!” he said.
“What is it?” Stu asked. “Come on, Jacob, talk to me. Tell me what you're looking at.”
“Those power cells you were telling me about, what do they look like?”
“Power cells? For the APVs?”
“Yeah.”
“They're about a third of meter long, maybe about as big around as your thigh.”
“Are the ends bright red, and maybe look like they're wet?”
“Yes!” Stu said.
Jacob looked at the stash of twelve cylinders in front of him and thought they looked an awful lot like the capsules he remembered seeing in the tubes at the ruins of drive-through banks back in his salvage team days. Each one was mounted in a special cradle with a switch labeled L
OCK
/R
ELEASE
next to each one.
Jacob hit one of the release buttons and the metal arms that held one of the cells in its cradle sighed open.
He picked it up, but even with the mechanical assists of his suit, the cell felt incredibly heavy. He turned it over and tried to read the yellow label on the outside of the thing, but the letters were too small.
“So I think I found those cells,” he said.
There was a long silence on the other end before Stu finally answered. “Jacob,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Listenâavoid handling those things, okay? They are highly explosive.”
“Uh, like how explosive?”
“One of those things will level a good part of this base. Probably half of the city.”
“So, don't pick it up?”
“No. Don't do that.”
“Okay. Uh, what if I already did?”
“You have . . . you have one of the cells?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit,” said Stu. “Okay, um, okay. Just stay there. We will come to you, okay?”
“How long's that gonna take? I thought you were going to need all day to charge.”
“Yeah, damn it. Jacob, I don't know what to tell you. You're basically holding the equivalent of an atomic bomb in your hands. If that thing gets punctured . . . you'd need to be underground to survive the blast.”
“Okay, so don't puncture it. Got it.”
“Listen, it's going to take us a full day at least to get to you. Can you secure that thing back where you found it? Maybe we can come to you.”
“Okay, I'll try.”
Jacob turned the cell in the same direction he remembered it being when he pulled it out of the case and was about to lower it back down when he saw a group of zombies staggering across through the tall grass, their hands up in the familiar groping gesture of zombies reaching for a meal.
They only did that when a living person was present.
Jacob looked down and realized that he'd missed the big white elephant in the room. If this car was here, if the power cells were here, it had to be because Jordan Anson's henchmen were still here.
And the zombies were, as usual, a good indication of where they were.
“Stand by,” Jacob said into his mic. “I may need to come up with another solution.”
“What?” Stu said. “Jacob, talk to me. What's going on?”
But Jacob said nothing. He moved as quickly as the suit would allow, each foot feeling incredibly heavy, yet striking the earth with terrible power. This was what Frankenstein's creature must have felt with each step, Jacob thought. Such force, such ponderous, yet controlled force.
He made his way around the side of the flight line commander's building, toward the buildings south of the hangar, when he heard the sound of fully automatic gunfire.
He'd fired many such weapons himself. He knew the sound. And he knew the range such weapons had. Turning and looking back, he saw a large cluster of zombies closing in on the far side of the building, exactly where he'd been. He hadn't made it that far, maybe fifty or sixty meters. He still had five hundred meters to go at least before he reached the Squadron Training Center Building, where he and the others had taken shelter before. And the other structures were even farther away than that.
He saw the next few moments play out in slow motion in his mind. Anson had no doubt hired whoever was shooting those weapons. That meant they were pros. Mercenaries. They would return to their vehicle and see that it had been broken into. They would figure, rightly, that Jacob or one of the others was here, and that they had taken one of the power cells. They would figure that same person would make a break for it, and they knew that the APV was back around the Squadron Training Center. They would logically turn south toward that building and, because the suit compromised speed for power, they'd see Jacob plodding along out in the middle of nowhere, no cover, no place to hide. And, of course, their weapons would have no trouble taking him down at that distance. He really would be a sitting duck.
He heard the clatter of gunfire once again and knew what he had to do. He had to get to cover, and the only cover anywhere around here was back in the direction from which he'd come.
There was a shallow drainage ditch not far from him. He put the power cell down in it, and then ran for the hangar.
Or, rather, he tried to run. The suit wouldn't let him. The best he could manage was a hurried walk, each step pounding the earth with a mechanical-sounding
clank clank clank
.
By the time he reached the hangar, there were zombies everywhere.
Jacob knocked one down as he made his way to the structure. There were more up ahead, but they turned away from Jacob and started down one of the corridors. They were met with gunfire.
And then, just as Jacob reached the edge of the flight line commander's building, he saw two figures in black battle suits emerge from one of the corridors. Jacob realized in an instant that he was outgunned. Both figures had large rotary mini guns mounted on their arms, and while they still moved with the same plodding motion he managed in his suit, they were noticeably faster.
They saw him at the same time he saw them. One of the figures raised his mini gun and began to fire just as Jacob ducked into one of the corridors.
Jacob wasn't fast enough, though. A round caught the shoulder of his suit and penetrated the armor. He felt the round bite into his arm as he spun out of the way, but the damage was done. Jacob fell back against one of the corrugated tin walls and knew that the left arm of his suit was filling up with blood.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” he said.
“Jacob!” It was Stu's voice, frantic with alarm. “What is it? Talk to me. I'm showing your suit's been ruptured. Pulse is climbing.”
“Radio silence,” Jacob said through clenched teeth. “Be quiet for a bit.”
Jacob tried to move his left arm, but the gunshot wound had penetrated deep. Jacob could feel the suit closing around the wound, forming a tourniquet and cutting off the pain. He couldn't move his arm.
He groaned to himself, and then made his way down the corridor.
He reached a crossroads. A zombie was standing in the corridor to his left, uncertain of where to go. The way in front of him and to his right was wide open. He could go right, he figured, and end up underneath the rickety staircase that led up to the crow's nest, but he'd have nowhere to go from there.
No, he had to take the fight to the enemy.
He had no weapons, and he couldn't move his left arm, but he had to attack. He knew no other way.
He turned left, toward the zombie.
Jacob figured the only reason it couldn't figure out which way to go was because it had multiple targets to choose from. He could have crushed the zombie with a single blow, but instead he grabbed it by the gray remnant of its shirt and pushed it toward the next intersection.
One of the men in the black battle suits was standing there, trying to decide which way to go. Jacob pushed the zombie into the man and moved to the other side of the corridor, so he could get his right hand into the fight.