Halverson lifted the black plastic handset. He put it to his ear. No dial tone. The receiver to his ear, he pulled down on the handset’s metal cradle on the phone several times. Still silence. It wasn’t looking good, he decided. In any case, he fished quarters out of his trouser pocket. He slotted a quarter. Still no dial tone. He put in a dollar’s worth of quarters and punched out 4-1-1 for information to find out the UCLA hospital’s phone number.
He slammed the handset down in its cradle so hard it bounced out and dangled from its metal wire, swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
“What’s up?” called out Tom, watching him from the concourse.
“Nothing. The landlines don’t work either.”
Halverson hurried over to Tom, which wasn’t easy with all the hardware dangling from Halverson’s neck and shoulders.
“The telephone poles must’ve burned down in the fires,” said Tom.
Halverson and Tom strode after Rogers and the rest of the group.
“Does it get any worse than this?” Tom went on.
“We’ll find out.”
Halverson wondered where Lemans and his acolytes had gotten to. There was no sign of them nearby.
A shot rang out up ahead.
Halverson and Tom broke into a run.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A commotion seemed to be emanating from one of the nearby terminals at the airport, Halverson decided. As yet he could not discern any disturbance.
He heard another shot. And another.
Halverson found himself sprinting with Tom toward Terminal Six on his left. They broke away from the main concourse, ran up a flight of steps, past the airport security checkpoints, and into a corridor leading to the terminal. They passed bookshops, gift shops, and cafés that flanked them on either side.
He caught sight of Rogers and his party jogging toward the terminal’s gates.
A scene of ghastly carnage unfolded in front of Halverson as he ran up to Rogers’s side.
Dead, mutilated bodies sprawled in unnatural positions on the vinyl and metal chairs that clustered in front of the first gate that Halverson encountered on his right. Rivers of blood streaked the chairs and floors.
Somehow, Halverson decided, the ghouls had gained access to this terminal from the airstrip.
“How did the ghouls get in here?” he asked, taking in the shambles before him.
“Maybe they commandeered a Jetway and climbed it into one of the gates,” said Rogers.
“They could have come in from the road in front of the airport for all we know,” said Ray, his Sig Sauer P226 in his hand.
Farther into the terminal, ghouls were swarming over Lemans and his party. Gunshots rent the air.
Halverson wanted to help him, but it would have to wait. Scores of zombies were immediately ahead of Halverson feeding on their victims, tearing arms out of their sockets and feasting on the flesh like they were eating drumsticks.
One fat black ghoul still wearing a plastic yellow hard hat was trying to gorge itself on a Chinese woman’s stomach. The woman was splayed out on a chair, her stomach already torn open to reveal her intestines. The hard hat’s rim kept getting in the ghoul’s way as the ghoul moved its mouth toward the woman and tried to chew on her intestines. Frustrated, the ghoul could not understand why it could not bite the gleaming, coiled entrails.
Halverson could not get a clean shot at the fat ghoul’s head thanks to the hard hat. Nevertheless, Halverson fired a burst into the hat. Bullets riddled the plastic, penetrating it with their armor-piercing capability. The hat flew off the ghoul’s large head, landed on its curved top on the floor with a clatter, and, twirling, skidded along for what seemed like ten seconds, before coming to a halt.
Hatless, the ghoul could now reach the Chinese woman’s intestines that nestled in her stomach before him. Its close-cropped head was bleeding, but apparently none of the deflected rounds had penetrated its brain, decided Halverson. The ghoul tucked into the fresh, hot bowels with relish biting into the topmost intestine with feverish abandon.
Halverson emptied another burst into the crown of the ghoul’s head. The ghoul fell dead, its face buried in the woman’s blood-soaked, gaping stomach wound, a segment of steaming gut clenched in its cold, dead teeth.
Halverson and Rogers mowed down ghouls right and left with their smoking MP7s. Halverson was eager to dispatch these creatures so he could aid Lemans and his ill-fated band that were being besieged up ahead by another horde of ungainly, ravenous creatures.
To Halverson it looked like a good half of Lemans’s followers had been wiped out already by the ghouls.
“Is this madness really happening?” asked Tom, his voice breaking up.
Halverson said nothing. He ejected a spent clip from his MP7. He reloaded.
“We need to save the idiot Lemans,” said Rogers.
“Why?” said Tom.
Rogers gave Tom a look. It didn’t last long.
Rogers had to blow away an eight-year-old ghoul in fluorescent lime short pants that was climbing over a chair back trying to get at him. The creature screwed up its moth-eaten child’s face and clawed the air. When Rogers’s rounds hit home, the ghoul somersaulted backward off the chair. The creature’s bullet-shattered head crumped against the floor.
“We can’t waste any more time here,” said Rogers. “We have to get over to Lemans’s group and get them out of here. There could be more of those things behind us. We can’t secure this area. We have to get out.”
“This place is an ambush waiting to happen,” said Halverson. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear. “We still have a way out.”
Rogers advanced on the zombies that were converging on Lemans and his band.
Halverson followed. He made out Reverend Jim. The reverend looked awestruck at the mayhem encompassing him. A slender brunette in her twenties was standing in a pink A-line miniskirt beside him.
“Who’s that woman beside Reverend Jim?” asked Halverson.
“That’s his daughter Tanya,” said Tom.
“How do you know?”
“She’s about the only one I noticed on the plane.” Tom winked salaciously at Halverson.
A crippled ghoul with long ginger curly hair was crawling on its belly on the floor and dragging its lame legs toward Rogers with one hand. Its other hand was groping forward toward Rogers. Rogers promptly shot the wretched creature in its snarling face.
Lemans and his group were clustered in front of a Starbuck’s restaurant, fending off the ghouls. The restaurant was trashed. Tables and chairs were overturned. Danish, pastries, and rolls had been knocked off the counter onto the floor.
Lemans had managed to find food, decided Halverson, for all the good it had done him. Now he was surrounded by ghouls who wanted to make a meal of him.
Gary was shoveling an entire croissant into his mouth at the Starbuck’s counter. Lemans was standing beside him, examining a cinnamon bun. Driven by hunger, the two men seemed oblivious to the danger surrounding them. Either that or they foolishly thought they were untouchable, decided Halverson.
Halverson watched a redheaded ghoul in its late twenties stagger toward Lemans and Gary. Paying no heed to the female ghoul behind him, Gary shoved another croissant into his mouth.
Lemans, however, picked up on the approaching ghoul. Halverson could not believe what Lemans did next. Halverson thought his eyes must be deceiving him.
Gary was stuffing another croissant into his mouth. He wolfed the pastry down, smacking his blubbery lips.
Lemans shoved Gary in front of him toward the ghoul that was stumbling toward the both of them. It was no mean feat. Gary must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, decided Halverson.
The ghoul shambled toward Gary, its gaping mouth dripping fresh blood. The creature’s gnarled face sneered at him.
Thanks to Lemans’s push, Gary dropped another croissant that he was guiding to his mouth. Outraged at Lemans’s actions, Gary glowered at
Lemans. Gary had no idea that the zombie was closing in on him from behind, Halverson could see.
Worried that the zombie might still get him, Lemans shoved Gary again at the creature. On account of his immense girth, Gary didn’t give up much ground, but he did take a few steps backward toward the attacking zombie.
Oblivious to the creature behind him, Gary bugged out his eyes at Lemans.
“What the fuck are you doing!” cried Gary.
“Doesn’t that idiot realize he’s in danger?” Halverson asked Rogers.
Rogers raised his MP7 to his shoulder to take a shot at the redheaded ghoul. He lowered his weapon, shaking his head. “I can’t get a clear shot.”
“Gary!” Halverson hollered.
The creature was all but upon Gary. Gary was looking the other way and staring daggers at Lemans.
Lemans dashed away from Gary.
“What the hell?” said Gary, watching Lemans.
The creature seized the unsuspecting Gary’s arm, raised it to her mouth, and bit a chunk out of Gary’s jacket sleeve and forearm.
Gary screamed. He had no idea what was happening.
The creature yanked Gary’s arm out of his socket. Blood jetted out of Gary’s shoulder, spraying the creature’s grimacing face. The creature lapped up the blood and savored it with a moan of what must have been pleasure, decided Halverson.
Gary passed out from the sudden loss of blood. His bulky body fell back against the counter then slid down the counter’s mahogany side to the floor.
The redheaded ghoul pounced on his throat and ripped it out with her broken, jagged teeth. Blood fountained from Gary’s throat and drenched the ghoul’s head.
Meanwhile, Lemans had got ahold of a gun, Halverson could see.
Acting like a hero, Lemans advanced on the ghoul. Lemans strutted up to it and blasted its head with his pistol.
Even in death, the creature refused to release the bloody clump of Gary’s throat that dangled from its mouth.
“A day late and a dollar short,” muttered Rogers.
Halverson’s judgment wasn’t so generous. “That son of a bitch Lemans.”
“Yeah. Whatever you do, don’t turn your back on that guy.”
“We ought to whack him, for all the good he’s doing us,” Halverson said under his breath.
Rogers sniggered at the thought. “We got other problems to deal with at the moment.”
“No kidding.”
Halverson watched the nightmare playing out in front of them.
Ten feet away from Lemans, Reverend Jim was addressing the ghouls, it seemed to Halverson. Jim’s daughter Tanya was trying to pull him away from the creatures, to no avail.
“Repent, sinners!” Reverend Jim told the ghouls advancing on him and Lemans.
Lemans commenced firing his pistol at the creatures. “Stand back,” he told Reverend Jim.
A Bible in his hand, Reverend Jim kept preaching to the zombies. “The Lord is smiting us with the plague because of our sins. We must repent. Jesus gave His life for us because of our sins. He carried His cross for us that we might be saved by the Lord. But we continue to sin! And the Lord is not happy.”
“Keep away from those things, Daddy!” cried Tanya.
Reverend Jim’s blue eyes glowed with zeal as he continued to preach to the advancing zombies. “We are one. We are of the same flesh and blood. We are all the children of the Lord! Let’s live in peace together. We mean you no harm. Let it not be that Jesus died in vain for us. He bled and suffered on the cross for all of us.”
Reverend Jim raised his Bible in front of him and shook it in the air above his head.
“Reverend,” Rogers called out, “there’s times to pray and times to fight. This time we fight! Those things could care less what you’re saying. Watch out!”
Reverend Jim refused to retreat. He stood his ground and clutched his Bible to his chest.
“I preach the word of God,” he intoned. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—”
A swarthy ghoul in an airport security guard’s uniform lurched toward Reverend Jim. The ghoul had a bullet head, stood about five six, and wore round wire-rimmed spectacles. Jim held his ground, his eyes luminous with the fervor of his religious zeal. The creature grabbed Reverend Jim in a bear hug and buried its broken yellow teeth into Jim’s neck.
Tanya shrieked. Her hands shot up to her face and cradled it.
Blood from the jugular vein in Reverend Jim’s neck jetted five feet in the air. He screamed. The ghoul’s teeth ripped out a chunk of ragged, bloody flesh from Reverend Jim’s throat. More blood gushed out of his throat. Moaning with pleasure, the ghoul munched on its prize clump of living flesh.
Rogers cursed. Unable to get a clear shot at the ghoul because of its embrace on Reverend Jim, Rogers pelted toward them.
Driven into a feeding frenzy by the sight of fresh, spurting blood, other zombies were massing and closing in, tightening their circle around the besieged passengers. If the zombies could have moved any faster, they would have, it was plain to see. They were overcome with bloodlust. Halverson dashed up to Rogers’s side and provided him with cover fire. Halverson blasted the creatures with his MP7 set on full auto.
Careful not to touch the creature attacking Reverend Jim, Rogers stepped up behind it, put the muzzle of his MP7 to the creature’s temple, and squeezed off two single shots. The creature slid down the length of Reverend Jim’s body into a motionless heap at Jim’s feet.
Reverend Jim’s knees buckled. Blood was gushing out of his throat.
Rogers was in the motion of bending down to stanch Reverend Jim’s wound when Halverson snatched Rogers’s arm and hoisted him back.
“He’ll bleed to death,” Rogers protested.
“He’s infected,” said Halverson, firing his submachine gun at the approaching creatures. “He’s got the plague. We’ve got to get out of here. He’ll turn into one of them.”
“How do you know? How can you be sure?”
“Remember Albert at the baggage carousel? Once those things bite you, you’re infected.”
“But what if he isn’t infected?”
“We don’t have time to argue,” said Halverson, blasting a ghoul in a yellow dress that came close to taking a bite out of Rogers’s shoulder.
“We can’t just leave him!” cried Tanya.
Her eyes riveted on her father whose bloody body was sprawled on the floor, she broke down and cried.
“He’s still alive,” she said.
Tom ran up to her and tried to console her. “We can’t stay here any longer.”
A knot of ghouls was stumbling toward them from the direction of the entrance to the Jetway past a desk used by flight personnel for assigning boarding passes.
“Don’t look now,” said Halverson. “Here come reinforcements for their side.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A twentysomething girl with shoulder-length dyed blonde hair with the dark roots showing for about two inches above her scalp came at Halverson. She had a tanned complexion with a prominent toucanlike nose that seemed to dominate her narrow face. She wore a crumpled grey linen skirt and a white button-down blouse. She looked to Halverson like an office clerk or a CPA.
It was a close-in fight. Halverson knocked the ghoul’s clawing hand away from him with his MP7’s muzzle.
The ghoul had a particularly ugly sneer on its narrow lips.
A swath of bullets from Halverson’s MP7 scythed through the ghoul’s neck and decapitated the ghoul. The head landed on its nose and bounced three times before rolling to a halt on the carpet.
The ghoul’s body collapsed. It landed in an awkward heap on another body sprawled beside its feet.
The head meanwhile, Halverson could see, started trundling toward him. It brought up so that it now faced him. Its once-brown eyes that now had a milky film over them were now locked on his face. They blinked at him. The head opened its jaws. It looked like it was fixing to
roll toward him.
Disgusted, he unleashed another burst into the scowling face and obliterated the head’s brains.
He was glad he had never known this woman when she was alive.
Rogers still wanted to help Reverend Jim.
“I can’t just leave Reverend Jim to those things,” Rogers told Halverson.
“You can’t leave him,” echoed Tanya, trembling. “He’ll die if we leave him.”
“That thing bit him,” said Halverson. “He has the plague now. He’s as good as dead.”
“But what if you’re wrong?” said Rogers. “I can’t have that man’s death on my conscience.”
“We’re all gonna be dead if we stay here any longer. There are too many of them. We’ve got to go.”
“You can go if you want to, but I’m taking him with us.”
Rogers withdrew a handkerchief from his rear trouser pocket. He offered the handkerchief to Reverend Jim, who was groaning on the floor.
“Hold that to your neck to stanch the wound,” said Rogers.
Feebly, Reverend Jim accepted the handkerchief. He pressed it to his shredded, bleeding neck.
Rogers leaned over to lift him.
Halverson shook his head at what he believed to be Rogers’s gallant but foolhardy gesture. But Halverson wasn’t about to abandon Rogers. Halverson blew away another ghoul’s head. Against his better judgment, Halverson helped Rogers lift Reverend Jim to his feet.
Rogers glanced at Halverson when he saw Halverson helping him. A trace of a smile flashed over Rogers’s face.
Halverson and Rogers each lifted one of Reverend Jim’s arms and draped it over their necks then proceeded to haul Reverend Jim away.
“Fall back!” Rogers hollered to the other passengers. “Fall back!”
Tom, Ray, and Rosie laid down cover fire for Halverson and Rogers as the latter two bore Reverend Jim out of the terminal and back toward the interior of the airport. Mildred came up with her shotgun to add firepower to Tom, Ray, and Rosie.
“Shit,” said Halverson, looking ahead.
“What?” said Rogers.
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