by Dirk Patton
“How about Jenny?” Strickland suddenly asked in a quiet voice.
“Do I look like a Jenny?”
“What’s wrong with Jenny?”
“Dumb blonde.”
“Hmmph.”
Another long stretch of silence.
“Jenna?”
“Shut up.”
More silence.
“Guinevere!”
“What?”
“That’s a beautiful name! And it’s the French version of Jennifer, I think.”
“Something is seriously fucking wrong with you, squid boy. I’m Mexican, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Yenifer?”
Martinez sighed dramatically, glad he couldn’t see the smile on her face. She knew part of the banter was just who he was, but she also recognized that he was using it to distract both of them from the stress of waiting to be attacked. But that didn’t get him a pass.
“What kind of name is Todd, anyway? Bet you never even had a girlfriend in high school with a name like that.”
“Nope,” Strickland said without missing a beat. “You were my first. I’m really honored that you were the one to make me a man, Yenifer.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why you were so clumsy that I had to take charge and get on top.”
“I was not clumsy.”
“Oh, yes you were, virgin boy. But that’s okay. You’ll learn.”
Strickland didn’t respond and she couldn’t tell if she’d finally scored a point or not.
“Hear that?” he asked after more than a minute had passed.
Martinez could tell by his tone that this wasn’t more banter.
“No. What do you hear?”
“Screaming. Females. Really faint, like they’re a long way off.”
After several more seconds, he rolled up onto his knees and cautiously worked his way to the mouth of the cave. Martinez followed, moving beside him when there was room. They stuck their heads out into the open air, checking the slope below them. It was empty of infected.
“Holy shit,” Strickland muttered and pointed at the distant beach.
Hundreds of females were attacking smaller figures, most no more than waist high to the adults. A few were trying to fight back while others were making a run for it, but the females were too strong and too fast.
Within minutes, the females completed the slaughter and the beach was littered with corpses. All the prey down, they fell on the bodies and began feeding.
“They were stalking the kids,” Martinez breathed as she stared in horror.
“Guess that’s why you never saw many,” Strickland said. “And we’d better go while they’re occupied.”
Martinez nodded after a moment and they quickly exited the cave and began climbing higher up the slope, away from the massacre they’d just witnessed.
45
As the sun continued to climb, the heat and humidity within the closed airplane cabin became oppressive. Rachel had made sure all the window shades were tightly closed, which had helped to a small degree, but they were in a metal tube baking in the desert as it approached midday. Without a cooling system, it was soon going to become outright dangerous.
Rachel had shed as much clothing as modesty allowed. Sweat slicked her skin and ran down her face in rivulets. She was no longer able to determine if John was running a fever simply by touch. Dog, unable to remove his dense layer of fur, lay at John’s side, panting like a freight train. Mavis, however, was taking it all in stride without any visible signs of distress.
“Getting close?” Rachel asked as she approached Joe.
He was still fully dressed and despite the soaring temperature, he looked cool and composed when he turned to face her.
“Another hour. Maybe ninety minutes.”
Rachel stared at him in dismay.
“Aren’t you hot?”
Joe shrugged.
“Heat doesn’t bother me. I feel it, and don’t like it, but my body handles it differently than people of European descent.”
“Thought you weren’t a geneticist,” Rachel grumped, dropping into a seat.
“Don’t have to be one to recognize the obvious,” he said. “I can’t deal with cold. It’s downright painful and nearly debilitating for me.”
Rachel wasn’t really paying attention and nodded absently. Joe watched her for a moment before leaning back to see Mavis.
“Same for her,” he said, nodding toward the girl when Rachel looked at him.
“Are you culturing enough virus?” she asked, not really interested in who wasn’t miserably hot and why.
Joe paused, giving her a look.
“We’ve got no choice. Right?” Rachel asked, looking for reassurance. “He’s going to die otherwise.”
They looked at each other for a long moment before Rachel turned her head toward John. She took a deep breath.
“You think I’m wrong?” Rachel asked after a long silence.
Joe hesitated, trying to decide whether to answer.
“If there was a chance to save my wife, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. No one I wouldn’t put second,” he said. “But if things went bad, I’d have to live with that decision. Can you?”
Rachel slowly nodded her head without taking her eyes off her husband. She unconsciously placed a hand on her stomach. Joe watched for another moment before returning his attention to the equipment. There was nothing for him to do other than wait, but he didn’t want to continue the current conversation.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked several minutes later.
“What?” Rachel asked, pulled out of her thoughts.
“The plan. John’s right. We can’t keep sitting in here. We’re out of water and it’s only getting hotter. Just because I don’t suffer like you do doesn’t mean I’m immune to the effects of heat.”
The expression on Rachel’s face told him she hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“Even if this works, it’s going to take time,” he said when she didn’t answer. “Time we don’t have. So, what the hell do we do?”
Rachel stared at him, mind churning for a solution. Tried to think like John, who always seemed to be able to come up with an idea that worked, no matter how farfetched it may have seemed at first. But, try as she might, there weren’t any solutions presenting themselves.
“Got to be some towns, or something, right?” Joe prompted. “Did you see anything when you were out?”
“Endless desert, and I walked probably five or six miles. Going to be hard enough to do that without water. Impossible with John unable to move.”
Joe sat and thought for a long moment before nodding to himself in decision.
“Pass me that vest,” he finally said.
“What?”
“I’m going to take a walk. See what I can find that will help us. Maybe go get that other Hummer that didn’t burn.”
“Are you crazy?” Rachel cried. “They’re right there. You’ll never make it!”
“You did,” Joe pointed out.
“I...” Rachel began, then paused in thought.
“What?” Joe asked, recognizing she’d just remembered something.
“I was there for a few minutes. Had time to check out the vehicles. Lost my temper and kicked one of them in frustration. Made a big racket. That’s when they came out of the sand and attacked. Maybe their hearing isn’t well developed yet?”
“Then I’ll be really quiet,” Joe said. “Injun. Remember? We’re the original American Ninjas.”
He tried a self-deprecating grin that didn’t work with his damaged face, but still drew a surprised snort of laughter from Rachel.
“What about the equipment?” she asked, picking up her vest and passing it to him.
“Got a timer set and it’ll ding when it’s done. Check this, right here.”
He pointed out a small, built-in monitor and Rachel leaned in for a look.
“I’ve already programme
d it to perform a testing sample and this will tell you if the viral concentration is high enough. If it’s not, give it another half-hour, like this.”
He showed her the controls and made her repeat his instructions so there was no misunderstanding. By this time, he had adjusted the vest to fit snugly on his larger frame and had the rifle slung.
“I’ll be back as fast as I can,” he said. “But don’t know how long that will be. No point in returning if I don’t have transportation or water.”
“I’m rethinking whether or not we want one of those Hummer’s for transportation,” Rachel said. “Not the way that other one got shot up.”
“We’ll take what we can get,” Joe said, moving to the door.
“Hold on,” she said with a hand on his arm, turning to the back of the cabin. “Dog! Go with him.”
Dog stared back at her, clearly understanding but not wanting to leave John. After a long hesitation, he snorted his displeasure and got to his feet, walking slowly to Joe’s side. Turning his head, he looked at John, ignoring the ear scratch Rachel was giving him.
Joe released the lock and stepped out onto the asphalt, Dog joining him. They headed east, following the same path Rachel had walked.
She held the door open for several minutes, watching them walk away as the worst of the fetid air from inside the plane vented. It was hot outside, heat rising off the baking blacktop, but it was dramatically cooler than inside the closed plane.
Once Joe and Dog disappeared over a distant rise, she leaned back into the cabin to check on John. Thoughts of what might be hiding in the surrounding desert made her turn back to the opening and pull the door shut. Tugging the locking lever into place, she sighed and went to Joe’s equipment to check on the time remaining.
“Hear that?”
Mavis’s call from the back of the plane drew her attention. Rachel hurried to the starboard side of the cabin. She couldn’t hear anything other than John’s labored breathing but wasn’t about to discount Mavis’s ears.
Moving to the port side, she raised another window shade and bent to peer out. Now she could hear the low rumble of an approaching engine. She shifted around, trying to get a better angle, but could only see a wing and the barren desert beyond.
“Sounds like a truck coming,” Mavis said, and Rachel caught her breath.
A Hummer? Joe hadn’t been gone long enough. The pilot coming back? The noise suddenly grew in volume, clearly audible within the plane’s cabin. A powerful sounding engine was loud for a moment, then a squeal of brakes and it settled into an idle.
“Uh oh,” Mavis said, staring out a window that was behind the plane’s wing.
Rachel rushed to her side and looked out. A school bus sat on the opposite lanes of the freeway, Yuma School District lettered on the side. The windows were tightly closed and dark tint to protect the occupants during the brutal summer months prevented her from seeing who was inside.
After a long moment, the doors at the front folded open and there was movement behind the wheel. Her blood ran cold when Viktoriya stepped out into the harsh sunlight. She saw Rachel’s face in the plane’s window and a self-satisfied smile spread across her face. Moving aside, she opened her mouth as if singing. A moment later, infected females surged out of the bus and quickly surrounded the aircraft.
46
“Open the door, Rachel!”
Viktoriya pounded on the side of the jet as she screamed. As strong as the virus had made her, she was unable to defeat the lock set into the exterior of the hatch. She’d opened the small cargo area she’d stowed away in previously, but despite her best efforts was unable to access the aircraft’s cabin.
“What do we do?” Mavis asked.
She sounded surprisingly calm. Calmer than Rachel felt.
“We wait,” Rachel finally responded. “Joe will be back. And the virus must almost be ready.”
“But it’s got to heal John first, right? How long is that going to take?”
“I don’t know, Mavis!” Rachel snapped.
As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted the tone she’d used and gathered the girl into her arms and apologized.
“Is John in there with you?” Viktoriya called, her voice taking on a taunting note. “How’s he feeling?”
Rachel could hear faint laughter. She clenched her jaw, forcing herself to remain silent. Responding would only encourage the crazy bitch.
“I want to kill her,” Mavis said in a perfectly flat voice.
Before the attacks that ended the world, Rachel would have been horrified that a girl Mavis’s age would say something like that. Now, it seemed perfectly normal. She didn’t bother reflecting on how things had changed.
“Me too,” she said.
They both jumped when the timer on Joe’s equipment suddenly dinged.
“Must be hot in there,” Viktoriya shouted.
Ignoring her, Rachel scrambled to the machine and peered at the small display. All of the parameters Joe had shown her were in the green. Holding her breath and ignoring Viktoriya’s shouts, she opened the chamber and lifted out a vial of clear liquid. A second vial, only partially full, remained.
“That’s it?” Mavis asked in a whisper.
Rachel nodded as she set it aside and pulled on a pair of puncture proof gloves. Protected, she inserted the vial into a specialized autoinjector that eliminated the need to transfer the contents. It would allow her to directly administer the viral serum without having to draw it out into a separate syringe.
“Open the goddamn door, NOW, or I’m going to make it hurt for a long time once I get you!” Viktoriya screamed.
Refusing to allow herself to be distracted, Rachel held the serum in both hands and carefully got to her feet. Mavis scrambled out of the way and she walked slowly to John. Kneeling at his side, she hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Mavis asked.
There was more thumping from the exterior of the plane as Viktoriya continued to try to find a way in.
“I don’t know the right way to deliver it,” Rachel said softly.
“What does that mean?”
“Means I don’t know if it should be IM or IV. Sorry. In a muscle or in a vein.”
Mavis looked at her and frowned.
“Just stick it in his arm, right?”
“Not that simple, honey,” Rachel said as she tried to decide.
“What are you doing?”
Rachel and Mavis looked around in fright when Viktoriya shouted, seemingly much closer than she had been. Mavis gasped and pointed when she spotted Viktoriya’s face pressed to one of the windows. The most recent thumping had been her climbing up onto the jet’s wing.
Rachel looked at her, then turned to John. Reaching down, she adjusted his arm slightly and pressed on the inside of his elbow. Not feeling a vein, she slapped the area sharply. When one rose slightly, she pressed on either side with her fingers to keep it from rolling away.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Viktoriya screamed.
Keeping her focus on John, Rachel used her teeth to remove the autoinjector’s safety cap.
“You fucking bitch!” Viktoriya shouted as the needle pierced John’s vein.
“She left,” Mavis said.
Rachel didn’t respond. Carefully, she depressed a button that allowed her to manually control the rate at which the autoinjector delivered its contents. There was a spring-operated function that was designed to quickly force the entire volume into a large muscle, but that would have ruptured a vein. The serum needed to go in slowly and she took nearly fifteen seconds emptying the vial into John’s arm.
“What now?” Mavis asked, holding John’s hand.
“We wait,” Rachel said. “I don’t---”
A sudden hard impact startled both of them and they looked at the window to see Viktoriya hammering on it with a rock. Within moments, an infected was at every window, following her example and hammering away with a stone. The multiple layers of clear polycarbonate from which they were co
nstructed was quickly damaged, but even with their enhanced strength, none of the females were able to more than mar the surface.
“I don’t think they can get through,” Rachel said, having to raise her voice to be heard over the incessant pounding.
“They couldn’t fit through even if they did break one,” Mavis shouted back.
Rachel realized she was right and was able to relax enough to turn her attention back to John. There was no detectable change, but she’d only administered the serum two minutes earlier.
The assault on the aircraft’s windows abruptly ceased, the sudden silence within the cabin unnerving. Rachel and Mavis shared a worried look and quickly moved to the closest window.
“Oh, shit,” Mavis muttered.
Under Viktoriya’s direction, the females were gathering armloads of dry scrub and piling it beneath the plane’s wing. When she saw Rachel’s face in the window, she held up and thumbed a disposable lighter. A flame sprang up, flickering in a breeze.
“Open the goddamn door, Rachel!” she shouted. “Open the door or so help me, I’ll burn you out.”
“Why? What do you want?” Rachel shouted back as fear coursed through her.
“Open up and I’ll let the girl live.”
“No!” Mavis said, grabbing Rachel’s arm. “She’ll kill you and John!”
Rachel nodded her head, clenching her fists in frustration. The pile of brush beneath the jet was growing rapidly and she had no doubt Viktoriya would follow through with her threat. But she didn’t believe her for one second. She wasn’t seeing any way out of this, and if there was even a small chance that Mavis could survive, she might consider sacrificing herself and John. She had no doubt John would if there was no option.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Rachel said, gathering Mavis into her arms. “I’m not letting her in.”
