Paul was given a reprieve from the crash and the dead, but now he wondered if it would have been better if he had died in the crash—not just die—but to have been totally vaporized, because he definitely didn’t want to come back as one of them. His current situation was worse than he could have ever imagined and he had no idea what he could possibly do to survive this.
His life literally hung in the balance.
He couldn’t think, but he knew he was going to die, that he could think about because it was inevitable. The second he fell would be the moment of his death. Paul looked around for an answer to his precarious situation, but there was nothing. He checked his seatbelt to make sure it wasn’t damaged from the crash and it looked intact. If he had to wait them out, his only hope was that his belt wouldn’t give way and—the gun—he spotted the air marshal’s handgun wedged in between his seat and the fuselage. That’s where it went. He tried to grab it, but it was locked in there. He pushed his fingers in until he was able to get his hand around the gun’s grip and then pulled as hard as he could. The tip of the gun was pinched tight. He yanked it with everything he had and the gun popped out. It came out so abruptly that he lost his hold and it dropped, until he snatched it out of the air, saving it by his fingertips.
He had the gun, but now what? It probably only had a little over—Christ, he didn’t know anything about guns—so he had no idea how many bullets it had. He tried to remember how many shots the air marshal fired? Two? Three? He wasn’t sure.
The cut on his forehead still bled, but it had slowed down some. The dead reaching up for him desperately tried to lap up the drippings, Paul didn’t notice, he was busy examining the handgun, looking for the button to release the magazine so he could see how many bullets remained. He found what he thought was the button; he placed his finger on it and got ready to catch the magazine when he ejected it, but he didn’t do it because he realized that if he ejected the magazine and dropped it, that would be the end of it.
He pointed the gun down at the dead, he would just shoot them all, but as he looked at them, he knew there were too many—maybe forty of them now. He didn’t know anything about guns, but he knew there was no way this gun had forty bullets in it. He needed to keep a level head and that’s when the dangling head on the dead body seated next to him tore free and fell. The severed head hit the head of one of the savages, bounced off and rolled out of the wreckage. Half of them scampered after it and began fighting over it.
He had an idea.
Paul put the handgun in one of his Velcro pockets and turned to the headless passenger. He needed to hurry with his plan—he was becoming lightheaded from being upside-down. He hoped that once he got on the ground his legs would work, since his seatbelt was cutting off their circulation. He reached for the cadaver’s belt to unbuckle it, but couldn’t due to the pressure from the weight of the body. He pushed his fingers around the release buckle as far as he could and then pulled very hard—the buckle came free in a snap—and the body immediately plunged down as deadweight, so quickly that it crashed into Paul’s arm and dislocated his shoulder. He cried out in pain, but only briefly as he concentrated on the result of his effort—the body fell on top of the horde and they attacked it whole dead-heartedly—it floundered on top of them like leaves on water and the body floated out of the torn fuselage. All of the undead went with it as they tackled it to the ground and began savage fights for the flesh.
They had left Paul alone.
This was his only chance.
He grabbed his seatbelt release and pulled,
“bloody hell,”
it was stuck. Paul couldn’t use his other hand so he jerked the buckle again and again until it finally snapped free. He fell and hit the ground hard, right on his dislocated shoulder. The impact actually knocked it back in place. He groaned in pain, but had no time to waste as a few of the undead heard his fall and were coming back to investigate. Paul was flat on his face. He glanced behind and saw the ones coming for him. He looked for a way out and saw a hole ahead; he crawled as fast as he could to get to the jagged hole in the fuselage. Four of the stenches were almost on top of him as he reached the escape and crawled through, but one of them grabbed his leg and tried to bite him.
Paul couldn’t turn around because the thing had a strong hold of his leg and it couldn’t bite his leg because Paul jerked it back and forth to avoid being bit. Luckily, for Paul, the hole wasn’t big enough for the other corpses to get at him, he only had to deal with the one as he kicked it in the face repeatedly with his other foot—the thing wouldn’t let go. Part of his pant leg began to tear from the thing’s hands. If it got to his skin he was a goner for sure. He kicked it in the face again, but it still wouldn’t let go.
Paul looked at his surroundings—other cannibals roamed everywhere. Stuck facedown like this, he was an easy target but, fortunately for him, none of them had noticed him yet.
His pant leg tore even more.
The gun!
Paul had forgotten about it. He pulled it from his pocket and tried to take aim at the creature’s face, but it was proving difficult from his twisted position and the fact that he was constantly being pulled on. He had to act quickly—the beast was tearing his pant leg open—he felt its nails brush against his calve, but his skin wasn’t broken. He took aim as best he could; it was wobbling from the struggle. Paul needed to act so he pulled the trigger. The weapon discharged loudly and jerked in his hand. Paul thought he missed, but the stench dropped dead with a bullet hole in the bridge of its nose. He wasted no time and crawled free, getting up as fast as he could because two walkers and a crawler were drawn to the gunshot.
Paul shot the closest walker and then hopped over a crawler to get away. He hobbled from weakness, but he would have to get over it quickly as he got a good look at the scene of death that played out all around him. He saw mass destruction from the plane crash, fires burning out of control, and dozens of the undead scattered everywhere attacking anyone they could. Police and fire department crews were baffled as to why they were being attacked, and they tried to defend themselves the best they could in this blood and fire coated madness—Paul wasn’t going to get any help from these people so he needed to leave.
He needed to get to Katie.
Paul had no siblings and his parents passed a few years back. He had friends, good ones, but none of them mattered more than her right now.
She and their unborn child were all that mattered.
He needed to find her.
Cautiously, as fast as he could, Paul ran down the street, away from the crash and the airport; he knew where he was and exactly where he wanted to go. Gunshots cracked over the screams of people being attacked and the shrieks of the dead. Paul couldn’t tell where they came from, he was too busy running through a gauntlet, but he quickly realized it was
him
doing the shooting. Two dead fast movers had charged at him and he shot them both in the head at pointblank range; one so close that the gun discharge blinded him for a split-second and after the slide jerked in his hand, his vision returned for him to see the bright muzzle flash silhouetted in blood and brain matter.
He pushed on through the obstacle course of cannibals, running through clouds of smoke and splashes of screams and growls for flesh. Paul made it through the thickest of the mayhem and ran faster when he saw a police car ahead of him. The lone cop fended off the attacking corpses with his baton, he had no firearm. It was a British law he must have hated right about now. The cop bashed skulls, some went down, and others got back up to have another go at him. He bashed them again until they didn’t get back up. “Send an armed response unit, damnit! Now, right now!” he shouted into his radio microphone.
He beat another one over the head, but didn’t see the one behind him approach. It grabbed hold of him by the shoulders and bit into his neck.
“Fucking bastard!” he yelled in pain.
He spun round and instead of bashing the creature with the baton—he rammed it into the thing’s eye. It stuck inside its skull and the cop rotated the baton and scrambled its brains. The thing dropped and the cop tried to pull out his baton, but it was stuck so he abandoned it and got back in his car.
“Hey! Wait! Wait!” Paul shouted.
The cop saw Paul and to him, he looked like a crazed man covered in blood coming after him—the cop didn’t hesitate to leave. The police car sped off from the crash site.
“Goddamnit!” Paul cursed.
He had to keep running.
In the midst of the dead and the dying that were all around him.
He had no choice but to keep running.
She was only a few miles from here.
Katie was within his reach.
If he could only make it there.
Paul ran and left death in his wake…
Nevertheless, death wasn’t staying still…
DAY 202:
DISCOVERY and ESCAPE
JOHN KEPT STARING AT THE CARS BELOW THAT WERE COVERED IN THE BLANKET OF NIGHT. Something brewed in his mind and, as much as he wanted to forget about his terse thoughts, they lingered. They festered and spawned into something completely different, until what he had was a spear that stabbed at him—
And made him take action.
He turned abruptly and headed back the way he came, back down to the first floor.
Lauren was in the cafeteria when she heard John’s hurried steps from the stairwell, she readied her weapon in case it wasn’t him, but it was the face she wanted to see that came out of the door. She could see that something was wrong. “What it is?” she asked.
“Where’s Ceraulo’s keys?”
“Why?”
“Where are they?” John insisted.
“I have them.”
He held out his hand sternly and Lauren dug the keys out of her pocket and gave them to him. “What’s going on, John?”
He didn’t answer as he headed toward the north wing with purpose.
She followed…
John was in the corridor of the high-risk ward and walked before the holding cell where they had put Ceraulo. The good doctor sat there as if he expected him. The smirk on his face was creepy to the point of manifesting itself into something that John could feel in the air.
“Hi, John,” Ceraulo said through a row of white teeth.
John didn’t say anything as he studied him.
“You two kids out for a late night canoodle?” Ceraulo said as Lauren walked up.
“I’m gonna ask you something, Ceraulo, and I’d like you to be honest with me,” John said.
“Sure, John, anything for you,” he answered with a stupid grin.
“You’re a psychiatrist, right?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, then where did you go to school?”
Ceraulo’s grin went flat.
“No? That’s a hard one, I bet. How about this one—which one of the cars in the employee parking lot is yours?” John said.
“The truck,” Ceraulo said dryly, his attitude suddenly changed.
“’The truck?’ Which one? There’s two.”
“The blue one, that’s mine.”
“The blue truck? So if I go out to that truck right now and get the registration, it’ll have your name on it, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
John turned to leave to do just that, but Ceraulo stopped him—
“It’s my friend’s truck.”
“What’s his name?”
Ceraulo didn’t answer.
“Show me your ID?” John asked.
“I lost my wallet.”
John said nothing in return as he looked at Ceraulo hard and—a moment later that seemed like forever—
“Treachery,” John said and walked away to the patient cellblock.
“I don’t like you, John,” Ceraulo said under his insane breath.
Lauren said nothing as she followed John.
“Catch ya later, sweet cheeks,” Ceraulo grated.
Lauren spun and snapped her .45 pistol right in Ceraulo’s face. “Not unless I catch you first, fucker!”
Ceraulo wasn’t impressed, “Oooh, all that pent-up hatred would make for one helluva prom night with you, huh, princess?”
Lauren shot knives at him and left.
After unlocking the security doors, John was inside the cellblock and the patients slowly stirred into a rage inside their cells. Most exploded into the stir-crazy things they were and many of the cell doors were assaulted so hard they rattled like the drum set of a rock band. John stepped in the detritus of the mushy floor and looked at all the cells—he walked to the first cell and banged on it, rousing the occupant even more. He walked down the first row of cells, banging on each door with his closed fist to make sure that every one of them was awake. After that, he paid a visit to the other side and banged on all of those cells, too.
“What’re you doing?” Lauren asked.
John didn’t answer as he stood there in the middle of the cellblock and looked at the living orchestra that he created, and then something caught his eye—
Many of the cells in the back were silent.
Even though John knew that Ceraulo said there were forty-seven patients in these cells and there were seventy cells altogether, he looked at some of the quiet cells. It wasn’t the fact they were silent that caught his attention—it was the trails of crud at the cell doors—John flashed his light on one door, the old, dried stream of crap wasn’t as thick as the cells with living patients in them. He walked over to that cell and kicked at the crusted gunk at the door’s bottom; it broke in dusty brown sections like an ice sheet at the tip of an icebreaker.