by Jones, K. J.
Through the N-ears, a voice said, “All wall snipers, stand by.”
Pez gave a worried look at Darsi.
6.
Chris walked outside again. He could hear the zoms screeching and hollering louder.
“Why they riled?”
No one answered him. Soldiers were too busy rushing towards a gate. A beep, beep, beep of a truck reversing. He walked a few paces to see its cause. The water cannon truck reversing to the back gate, Northeast Route 760, and aiming itself.
“That ain’t good.”
He decided his best place would be as close to the weapons as possible, particularly the SAW he had cleaned and lovingly stroked.
7.
Angela kept Nia close as their turn came. Through the doors and out of the hangar, the sunlight blinding. The relatively fresh air was nice, though, it choked with fumes from the planes.
“Where are we going?” Nia asked.
They followed the crowd directed towards the west.
8.
The voice in their ears called for specific sniper teams to reinforce at the west wall, which was on the other side of the I-77 runway. Pez and Darsi were not on any of the teams summonsed. They waited at their post near the Southwest Route 760 gate.
“Wonder what’s going on?” Pez asked.
“I got a feeling.”
“Aw, no. I hate it when you say you got a feeling, Darse.”
“It ain’t good.”
“When is it ever?”
9.
Two huge airplanes were parked on the I-77 highway.
“There’s a sight you don’t see every day,” said old Monty. He favored a leg, showing arthritis and the uncomfortable cot had gotten to him.
“We’re almost there, baby,” Angela said to Nia.
“I see this, Mother.”
A relieved, if not excited, vibe among the passengers-to-be, except for Nia, who kept looking back in the hopes Building B would come out and catch up.
Rolling stairs maneuvered into place at the first plane. Once the hatch opened and they were waved up, people took the stairs fast, a spring in their step and urgency to get out of the base as quickly as possible.
Yet, soldiers began moving towards the wall beyond it. Humvees charged up the sides of the Interstate and across the lanes.
“What’s going on?” Nia asked.
“I just need to get you on the plane. I’ll come back for Jayce then.” Angela squished into the people in front of her, trying to make people go faster. She raised her volume, “I just need to get my young child on that plane.”
10.
“Something’s up.” Pez leaned down to watch the zoms moving towards the west. “This ain’t right.”
“Oh, God,” Darsi said. “They’re heading to the west wall.”
“Where the planes just went?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the civilians are?”
“Yeah.”
Pez crossed himself, holding his rifle in his left hand as he did so.
* * *
In hangar Building B, they heard the PA, “All base, code yellow.”
The soldiers up front yelled, “Everyone be quiet!”
“Everyone quiet. That code means go quiet.”
Muttering among the crowd.
Peter looked back at the emergency exit door, noting all the people and their luggage that could get in their way. His boys and he had on their leather ZBDUs, at his instruction. He held his cane.
* * *
“What the fuck is a code yellow?” Mackey asked. They heard it from the outdoor PA.
“Means quiet, so shut up,” a flight crewman soldier said.
“Quiet, why?”
“It happens. Everything is okay.”
Mackey didn’t believe him. “Why ain’t we leaving?”
“Waiting for the order to take off. Maybe for some more people.”
“Uh-huh. Can’t you at least close the dang door then?”
* * *
Guns fired along the wall. The truck with the water cannon went off, spraying a powerful torrent.
Instead of hurrying up, the crowd in front of Angela slowed to rubberneck.
“C’mon, y’all,” she yelled. “Get to the plane!”
“Mama, we need to get outta here. There’s no cover.”
“No, no. I’m getting you out of this place.”
“Don’t be hardheaded right now, Mother. Things are wrong. And we’re standing on a damn highway. There’s nothing but weeds around us and we got no weapons.”
“Excuse me.” Angela began pushing through. “I have a small child. She needs to get on that plane. Excuse me, please.”
A vice-grip hand pulled Nia’s.
“No, Mother.”
Nia resisted, trying to pull the other way.
“Monty, don’t be an old fool. Come with me.”
“Monty, help me.” Nia reached out for his hand.
* * *
“What’s happening?” Matt stood outside of medical.
A nurse he knew responded, “The west wall, the I-77 wall, is distressing from the sick.”
“It’s breaking apart?”
“The whole panel.”
“Aw shit.”
The thing he feared since their arrival on the base was happening.
* * *
Nia saw the wall panel fall inward. People screamed at witnessing it. She gasped then increased her pull against Angela’s grip to flee in the opposite direction.
Snipers dove off of the falling wall. Some were caught and fell with it, squashing them to death immediately. Soldiers opened fire. Machine gun rapid fired everywhere. The water cannon truck blasted as the zoms charged in. The torrent shot their bodies backward and into head-over-heels tumbles.
Only for those zoms taken down to be replaced by ten more. They ran over the grounded panel. An unaccountable number in a zom horde funneled through behind the first wave.
The civilians screamed in terror. Men, women, and children broke into panicked runs. A mass of stampeding people, knocking each other down and running over the downed victims.
People swarmed the plane stairs, pushing at each other until they grew bottlenecked. Soldiers pushed the stairs away from the plane as the portal door swung closed. People fell off the top of the moving stairs, slamming onto the highway asphalt. A man held onto the plane’s sealed door frame.
The planes moved, their big wheels turning. Engines roared to a deafening level. The zoms turned like a flock of flying birds, right towards the sound of the jet engines … and the people.
* * *
A male voice on the PA stated, “Breach. Breach. Breach.”
Everyone stood up from their cots in hangar Building B.
A gruff, older male voice came through the PA, “Red alert! All hands to battle stations. We’re in a red alert.” Probably the CO of the base.
“Sul?” Jayce asked.
“Stay close to me,” Peter barked.
The boys moved to him.
“Drop the bags. They’re useless. Break the cots. Use any metal you can get off them, as sharp as you can.”
Jayce and Tyler went to the nearest, stripped the bedroll, and stomped on the frame.
“Stop that,” a soldier yelled. “You boys, stop that.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Peter yelled at the soldier, his voice husky and loud. “You’ve lost control.” He pointed in the direction of the sounds. “We all told you people!”
“We have the situation under control.”
“You do not,” the broken-wrist woman of the Jersey crew yelled from the other side of the hangar cot rows. “Get your head outta your ass.”
The Zoners throughout the hangar turned on the soldier. He gulped and backed up.
Peter noted the black patches were nowhere around. Only a couple of regular soldiers remained, who were now heavily outnumbered by Zoners.
The remainder of the Jersey crew pushed to the front of the hangar.
“You unl
ock those doors over there for us to leave,” Broken-Wrist ordered the soldiers. “Y’all, grab up your cots. We gonna use them as shields.”
Skinny Jersey Crew girl clapped her hands. “Stop staring and get to it, now! The Zs coming.”
* * *
Phebe and Emily stood up in their stockade cell at hearing the code red from the outside PA speakers.
“Can we get one of these cots apart?” Emily asked.
“I think we have to figure out how.”
The male PA voice said, “Breach, northwest gate. Breach, northwest gate.”
“That’s another place than the first alerts.”
“Let’s do this fast,” said Phebe.
* * *
They came for weapons distribution. Chris helped himself. Kevin Alden got on the line as if he was assigned to, and upon his making it forward, Chris handed him a loaded SAW as well.
“What about me?” a soldier asked.
“What about you?” said Chris, leaving his self-assigned post. To Kevin, “Let’s roll, Nazi.”
They grabbed cans of extra ammo chains and slipped past the soldiers who were supposed to be there.
“The Humvee parking this way,” Chris said.
“What about your people?”
“How am I gotta help ‘em this way? My superhero running speed. They all the way the fuck over there. Follow, Nazi, or shut the fuck up.”
“Alright, Sergeant.”
“Do both, actually.”
“Doing both, Sergeant.” Kevin laughed. Chris’s version of the Army seemed to appeal to him.
“Let’s do what we do best.”
Chris broke into a jog towards the Humvee parking lot he had scoped out the other day.
Kevin caught up to him. “You mean, fuck up shit?”
“Hell’s yeah.”
Chapter Three
1.
“Why are they leaving?” Angela screamed over the noises.
“Mama, let’s go.” Nia pulled at her mother’s arm. “Gotta run now, Mother. Now.! Mother!”
Zoms swarmed detainees. The usual attacks, but these seemed jacked up worse than usual. The zoms were too excited. And too many adult males in the lead. Most wear disheveled military fatigues.
The moving planes. Jet engines engaging for runway take-off blasted people and zoms behind them, throwing them and stripping off their clothes and skin.
Among the panicked crowd, the majority ran for the buildings, back where they came. Advancement of running adult male zoms made obvious from how the crowd parted, like dolphins moving through a school of baitfish. Fighting hand-to-hand. People used luggage to batter and block the zoms.
Building B escaped through doors. Many carried emptied cot frames. Others used their luggage as swinging weapons. Screams doubled. They ran towards the heavily reinforced gates separating the civilian detainee area from the rest of the base. Nia recognized several people. The Jersey crew girls. Igloo Man. But not her people.
Nia, Angela, and Monty sprinted as fast as they could towards the interior gate. Building B was already there and climbing up towards the razor wire. No one unlocked the gate for them.
Arms pumping, chests out, fast shallow breaths as their leg muscles burned. Monty fell. Angela skidded to turn and help him.
“Take the child and run.”
“Angela!” Nia yelled in desperation. “Move it, soldier!”
Angela’s feet moved.
Zoms closed in. Monty disappeared among them. His screams undiscernible through all the rest of the noises.
Nia and Angela held hands as they ran hard towards the crowded chain-link fence. Animal survival instinct terror propelled them the fastest than either had ever sprinted.
“Open this motherfucking gate,” a Jersey crew girl yelled.
“You are going to Hell,” another, the skinny girl, screamed hysterically. “Going to Hell!”
The guards only aimed their weapons through the fence from the other side.
German shepherds barked widely. They yanked at their leashes and threw themselves up in the air to gain freedom from their master’s hands.
“We gotta go,” one dog handler said. “They’re coming.” He turned and ran with his dog.
The other dog handlers followed the advisement of their canines and ran too.
But the gate remained locked. Building B violently shook the fence to pull it apart with brute force.
2.
Pez and Darsi on the wall saw the first 747 rise up, but something was wrong with the way it moved. A wing engine burst into flames. The plane dropped to the right and slammed into the ground. A great fireball rose.
“Holy shit,” Pez yelled.
He looked at Darsi in shock, then remembered to cross himself. People must have died in that explosion.
Darsi stared at the smoke plume in the distance, mouth agape in shock.
3.
The second plane’s engines sucked people into it, blowing up the engines, followed by igniting fuel-filled wings. Explosions knocked everyone forward. People and the zoms dropped to the ground from the release of heated gasses. Zoms got up first.
Further away, zoms ran while consumed by fire.
“Mama, up.” Nia pulled at her mother’s hand to get her to her feet. “We go through Building B. Our people are there.”
As soon as the zoms behind them were up, they ran forward at all moving targets.
“Crap. C’mon, Mother.”
“Go without me. Save yourself.”
Nia could barely hear Angela over all the noises.
“It’s too late, Mama.” Nia looked her mother in the eyes. “I love you. You are a good mother. And a good friend.”
“What?” Angela, on her feet, turned around. Seeing the situation, she crushed Nia to her. “I love you, baby. Don’t look.”
“Grandmama awaits,” Nia whispered. “And Daddy.”
“To Jesus.”
They held each other tightly.
The Jersey crew girls screamed in excruciating pain. Broken-Wrist swung her cast at zoms, her face distorted in tears and terror. Igloo Man went down.
Nia closed her eyes, holding her mother.
“Daddy,” Nia whispered. “Make it not hurt.”
Nie heard Angela scream and felt her abruptly yanked from her arms. Opening her eyes, stars infiltrated the horrific blurred sights. A point on the side of Nia’s skull hurt. An abrupt excruciating pain in her neck.
Peace drowned out the screams. A beautiful bright light, as bright as the sun but it didn’t hurt Nia’s eyes.
4.
“We gotta do something.” Jayce wailed. “They’re out there. My family.”
“Keep busting these up,” said Tyler. “We need some kind of weapons, brother.”
“My family is out there.”
The sounds grew closer. Most of Building B had stormed the front doors.
The map slipped to Peter by Matt told the front was a dead end. Out the back was the only way.
“Miss Glenda,” said Peter. “Time to get up. They’ll be here soon.”
“I’m not going, baby-blue. But you go and get these boys outta this terrible place. Take this for me.”
Miss Glenda reached out her hand. Peter took it. Her rosary-bead-like necklace. “Think of me.”
“No, no,” Peter pleaded. “Come on. I can get you out.”
“I will slow you down. You got these boys and a baby on the way. Focus on them, not an old woman. I’ll do what I can to block them and give you a moment to get out. Can’t guarantee more than a moment, though, mind.”
“No. I can –”
“Shush. You ain’t gonna rescue me. Not without endangering them. The first thing you need to learn as a parent is the children come first. You do whatever you need to do for them. They need you. You are all they got in this whole wide world.”
“But … you’ll die here.”
“I’m ready, baby-blue. I’m right with my Jesus. I’m tired of running around crazy. You
go and you give that new baby a kiss for old Miss Glenda.”
“Sully, we’re ready,” yelled Tyler.
“God bless you, baby-blue.”
“May God bless and keep you, Miss Glenda.”
“Go.”
Chapter Four
1.
The helicopter lifted off with the door still open. Soldiers ran at the opening for escape. The zoms infiltrated the helicopter pad area and ran towards them.
Mackey backed away.
“Get the fuck off,” the flight crew soldier yelled at the panicking soldiers. He tried to knock them away from the door. The helicopter couldn’t handle this during takeoff. Too many people were getting on board.
The helicopter lifted, despite the door was still open. The weight of the people on one side tilted the floor. A panicked soldier grabbed Karen’s leg.
She screamed and slid, hands grasping for anything. “Get off!”
The helicopter ascended high above the base. The soldier hanging off of Karen’s leg dangled in midair. Others hung onto the skid gears.
“Help!” Karen screamed. Her nails scratched along the floor as his weight dragged her out.
Mackey shoved people out of his way to get to Karen. The guy a few short of a sixpack grabbed Karen by the back and threw her out.
“No!” Mackey screamed and lunged for Karen’s hand.
Too late. Karen went out and down and disappeared into the little buildings below.
“Motherfucker!” Mackey roared.
He grabbed the guy and hurled him out the opening. The guy flew horizontally for a moment, terror on his screaming face. He then dropped.
“Good riddance, motherfucker. She was good people.”
Mackey sat down on the seats, not caring about the rest of them struggling and all their problems.
2.
Control over the base was lost. Soldiers ran hither and thither, not knowing what to do with themselves. The first experience was always the most shocking.
“Get outta here, Gleason,” the doctor said. “They’ll code red this base. It’s gonna be nuked. Get your people and get outta here.”
This was Matt’s last conversation with anyone before he set off. The stockade meant going towards the zoms. Everyone else ran the opposite way. He had no idea where Chris was, but the girls wouldn’t be able to get out of their cells.
