As they approached the airfield, Hunter made one pass above it to make sure the airstrip was safe and to see if the base was occupied. In order to maneuver the craft around and to get ready for the landing, he had to shut off the sound dampening device so he had extra power. Aware that the sound of the engine could attract any unwanted attention, slab or human, he checked the surrounding area. And once satisfied that it looked safe, he put the plane into a dive straight to the runway. As soon as the plane hit the hard dirt landing strip, he shut the engine off and guided it towards a large camouflaged fuel tank disguised as an oak tree.
Once the plane came to a complete stop, Morgan and Trip jumped out of their doors with rifles and bags in hand, and ran towards a small innocuous shed across from the landing strip, and quickly disappeared inside. Hunter moved to the tank and produced a hose to fill the plane while Hope took up a defensive position, keeping an eye and an ear out for any sign of trouble.
As Hope kept watch, she noticed for the first time in a while that she felt she was finally in control of her destiny. Not that it was always a bad thing, but her whole life she had been under the watchful eye of her parents, and more recently David. That day, though, she was making the decisions on her own; and it felt good.
Chapter 16
As Hope kept watch, she looked at the very unsuspicious airfield around her. If she stumbled onto this property, it would look like an abandoned airfield with a rusted-out tool shed. She knew better, though. If she had learned anything over the last month with Benjy, it was that he always had a secret. The shed wasn’t that big, so it shouldn’t be taking Morgan and Trip so long in there, unless there was more to the shed than on the surface.
She then looked over to Hunter who appeared to be pumping gas out of an oak tree. Hunter looked up at Hope and yelled, “Two more minutes. Go get them and tell them to come on.” Then he went back to cranking the hand pump for the fuel.
Hope sprinted over to the tool shed and found Morgan coming out of a hole in the ground with two large duffle bags over her shoulders. She bent down and helped her up through the floor hatch and then looked down into the tunnel for Trip. “Where’s Trip?” she asked. “Hunter said it’s time to go.”
“In the very back, getting the last of the supplies,” Morgan said as she took off running to the plane with the bags.
Hope went down into the much less grand tunnel than she was used to seeing back at Benjy’s camp. She noticed very plain concrete walls and no electricity in the moldy smelling tunnel. If it wasn’t for the three oil lamps lit up, she wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. She yelled out for Trip as she poked her head into a couple of small empty rooms. She then heard Trip call out to her, and she took off running to the last room in the hall. As she entered, she found Trip trying to lift an overstuffed large duffle bag onto his shoulder.
“Here, let me have that. How much stuff did you get?” Hope took one hand and flung the bag into place on her back, and then with the other, she pushed Trip towards the door. “Damn, this thing is as big as you. Now let’s go; Hunter is almost done.”
Trip stumbled down the hallway trying to keep ahead of the much longer legs of Hope right behind him. “Sorry, I got everything I could get. Figured since we are cleaning it out for good, might as well get it all.”
They arrived at the opening to the tool shed and looked out to find Morgan waving frantically at them to hurry up, and Hunter already climbing into the pilot’s seat. They both took off into a sprint towards the plane until Hope caught a glimpse of something at the end of the runway.
As she stopped and looked, she saw a woman running out at the end of the runway with two younger girls in tow behind her. They were all waving their hands in the air and screaming to them. However, with the sound of the plane cranking up the sounds fell on deaf ears, but the message was still understood.
Hope turned and looked at her companions who were waiting for her to hurry up and showed no hint they were eager to hear what the woman wanted. She made a split-second decision that they were right and she had to worry about all of them first. So, she turned her back on the approaching woman and ran to the plane. She quickly deposited the bag of supplies and her rifle onto the rear row of seats in the plane and jumped into the co-pilot’s seat.
Hunter gave her a look like It’s about time, before he pulled back on the throttle and started to taxi onto the runway. He aimed the plane in the direction of the woman and released the brake, starting the acceleration. “She better move.”
Hope thought about closing her eyes as they passed the woman, but she knew she had to witness the weight of her decision. The woman moved out of the way of the plane as it ran by her, giving Hope a close look at the faces of the two girls following her. She noticed they couldn’t be more than twelve and fourteen, and they looked completely terrified. As she started to win the battle with her conscience, she saw what the woman was running from.
A group of about ten slabs exited the trees at the end of the runway and were making a beeline straight towards the woman. The slabs look rough and were all showing excessive decomposition, but they remained on her trail. The bad part about slabs was that no matter how fast or slow they were, they never ran out of juice, but eventually their prey did. She looked over at Hunter who was paying no attention to anything but the speed of the plane. So Hope did the unthinkable. She leaned over and grabbed the throttle and rammed it forward, killing almost all of their momentum.
“What the hell, girl? You better have a good reason for doing that ’cause we can’t get back up to speed without turning around.”
Hope turned around and looked at Morgan. “Give me your gun.”
Morgan had a bad feeling she knew what Hope was up to, but handed her the rifle in her lap, anyway. Hope chambered a round and proceeded to open the door of the plane as Hunter was turning it around to make another pass for takeoff.
“I will leave your sorry ass if you don’t get back in here right now,” Hunter yelled out at Hope.
“No, you won’t,” Hope answered as she jumped out of the plane and started to take aim at the approaching slabs.
The first couple of shots missed their marks, but Hope quickly settled down and dropped five slabs. All but two of the slabs had taken notice of her and changed course to come after her, instead. She checked the rifle and found only two more rounds left. She fired both of them and dropped only one more slab, leaving the last two for her knife.
The closer the slabs came, the faster they seemed to get, until in a matter of seconds they were on top of her. However, she was waiting with her trusty Ka-Bar out and ready to attack. With a quick thrust, she rammed it into the first one’s eye, and shoved it all the way through, coming out the rear of its skull. As she tried to pull the knife out, she was slammed to the ground by the second slab.
The first thing she noticed was the stench of rotting meat, the second was the creature’s snapping jaws as it tried to bite into her. She struggled to keep its teeth away from her, but the creature was thrashing about so bad she couldn’t get a grip on it. After a few seconds of struggling, she finally grabbed a hold of one of its arms and used her strength to throw it off of her. As she stood, she realized she was still holding the arm of the creature in her hands. The slab rolled a few feet away, but quickly regained its bearings and resumed the attack on Hope, not even aware that it was down one limb.
Hope tossed the arm to the side, braced herself for the slab’s next attack, and deflected its advance by using some of the Judo her sister had taught her. But that only bought her a few seconds, though, as the slab spun and charged again. This time Hope was able to toss the creature much farther away, allowing her to finally retrieve the knife stuck in the first slab. As she withdrew the knife, she lunged at the slab still trying to get itself up off the ground and dispatched it to join its friend in the afterlife.
She pulled the knife out of the slab’s head and stabbed it into the ground a couple of times to clean the body fluids and br
ain matter off of it. As she did, she heard a gunshot ring out in the direction of the woman and two children behind her. She looked over and found Morgan and Hunter standing in the middle of the airstrip, aiming at the two slabs that continued their pursuit of the strangers. After a couple more missed shots, Hope checked to make sure the rest of the field was secure, and once satisfied, started to sprint towards the helpless strangers.
It only took Hope a few seconds to clear the hundred yards separating her and the attacking slabs. The speed she moved at would’ve made a professional athlete envious, and it caught Hope off guard with how fast she arrived at the slabs. So much so, she couldn’t slow down in time, and she ran straight into the pair of them, taking them to the ground, tumbling with her on top. Hope recovered fast and quickly used her knife to kill both of the slabs with stabs to the head. The trio that Hope just saved immediately fell to the ground, exhausted and weeping at their harrowing escape from the slabs.
Hope slowly walked over to the woman and helped her to her feet.
“Thank you, thank you,” the woman said over and over as she held on tightly to what Hope assumed were her daughters.
“It’s safe now. Come over here to the plane and let me give you some water,” Hope said as she guided the woman across the field and past Hunter and Morgan who had finally made their way over to them.
As Hope gave the woman and the girls some water, Hunter pulled her away and started to yell. “What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve gotten us all killed.”
“I’m not going to become a heartless bastard like you. I couldn’t leave these people to die. My conscience is not ready for that kind of weight,” Hope said as she tried to turn and walk back over to the strangers.
“Not so fast. What’s your plan now? Huh? We can’t take them with us. There isn’t enough room in the plane. And even if there was, we can’t have them with us on the mission; they would just be a liability. Whatever you decide to do, though, make it fast. There’s no telling what we attracted with all those gunshots.” Hunter moved past Hope and back into the pilot’s seat.
Hope turned and saw Trip and Morgan talking to the woman and giving the little girls some more water. She didn’t think that far out, but she had to come up with something that would justify her decision. After thinking for a few moments, she walked over to the woman and pulled her away from the children, ensuring them that Trip could probably find some kind of goodies in his duffle bag in the plane.
As Hope got her to a safe enough distance from the ears of the kids, she started talking. “Listen, we are going to have to leave you behind. We don’t have the room and where we are going is dangerous. We will leave some supplies and weapons behind with you. Inside that shed over there is a secret hideout underground that you can hide in. When we get done with our mission, we will swing back and pick you up.”
“You can’t leave us. We risked everything to come to you. When my husband heard your plane, he said this was our one way out of here. He sent us to stop you from leaving so we could get away from here. You have to help us.”
“I’m sorry, but that is the best we can do right now. We have to get moving. So, come with me, and I will get you set up until we return.” Hope started to walk over to the plane until she realized that the woman was not coming with her. Instead, she was looking out into the tree line and moving her mouth as if she were saying something to someone else. “Wait a minute. You said your husband heard our plane. Where is he?”
Just as the words left her mouth, she heard a gunshot ring out from the tree line, but couldn’t tell exactly where it came from. Then she heard a scream from behind her. As she turned, she found Trip struggling with one of the girls, and that he had a small knife stuck in his thigh. Hope looked over at the woman, who was motioning with her hand sliding across her throat, giving the throat slitting motion to the mysterious shooter in the woods. A second shot rang out, and Hope felt the wake of the bullet as it whizzed past her head, narrowly missing.
Trip threw the little girl away from him and instinctively yanked the small knife out of his leg before yelling at Morgan to “Watch out.”
Morgan turned just in time from seeing where the shooting was coming from to find the older of the two girls lunging at her with a small knife pulled out from somewhere hidden on her body. She turned just in time to avoid being stabbed and clobbered the young teenager with a right hook that knocked her out on the first punch. After kicking the knife away, she turned to see Hope now running in a zigzag pattern as more shots rang out from the woods. She then caught a flash from the barrel of the gunman and leaned into the plane, grabbing her own gun.
“Keep him distracted,” Morgan yelled out to the scrambling Hope.
Hope caught on to what Morgan was up to and ran away from the plane to give her time to aim.
Morgan waited for one more shot to make sure she had the right spot, and as soon as the flash from the gun went off, she zeroed in and fired. She kept an eye on the spot for a few more seconds, and then she saw the rifle slowly slide into view from the shadows and fall to the ground. “C’mon, I got him.”
The two women grabbed the limping Trip and threw him into the plane before jumping in themselves. They kept an eye and a gun pointed at the woman standing over the knocked-out girl on the ground while trying to get buckled in. Hunter didn’t even give them the chance before he engaged the throttle and raced toward the other end of the runway.
Hope stared out the window in dismay at the scene that had just taken place in front of her. Her dad had warned her several times to be wary of strangers, but she never understood why. She always thought it was him being overprotective, but she had just learned the hard truth. It was the way the world had become. She turned to look over at Hunter, who was obviously stewing over what had just went down and was doing his best to keep his mouth shut. She turned to check on Trip and found Morgan wrapping his leg up with the first-aid kit she had pulled out from under the seat. “Is he okay?” she asked as she felt the plane start to take off.
“Yeah. It’s not very deep and didn’t hit anything important,” Morgan answered as Trip gave a thumbs up to Hope.
“Look outside the window,” Hunter yelled out as they were clearing the tops of the trees at the end of the runway.
Hope looked out and saw hundreds of slabs coming through the woods converging on the airstrip. “Looks like we attracted a few,” she said as she looked back at the woman on the runway who was starting to get a glimpse of what was coming for them. “Should’ve taken my offer.”
Hope turned and looked at Hunter, but before she could open her mouth, he spoke up first. “No. Don’t say anything. I know why you did what you did, but that doesn’t matter. This world had gone crazy. We can’t do the things we could do before all this. You need to get a grip on your emotions or they are going to get someone killed.”
Hope let his words sink in as she leaned back and pondered them for a while.
Chapter 17
Kane watched as the plane with Heng’s consorts took off before he climbed back into the limousine. He told the driver to take a long way back to give him some time to clear his head. The car pulled away, and Kane drifted off to thoughts of another era….
It was almost summertime in France, 1789, and Kane was sitting in the Estates-General in Paris, listening to arguments about an uprising by the people and how they needed to act on it immediately. He had listened to the arguments for several hours, and it wasn’t looking like there would be a consensus on the issue anytime soon. He was there, originally, on that day not to act, but to simply witness the spectacle. He had long wanted to partake in the politics of the world, but had found them quite tedious to deal with.
However, after recently having a secret sit down with a large contingent of peasants at the center of the movement against the current monarchy, he decided he wanted to play a little game. He knew already that the people were not going to back down from what they wanted, and that was nothing less than
a complete overhaul of the current system and a new constitution for themselves, and they were willing to fight to the death if necessary to get it. After listening to the talk throughout the night, he knew that the people currently in charge were afraid to not give in to the demands of the people, so he decided to see if he could stoke the fires a little.
He stood up from the back in the shadows and cleared his throat, loudly getting the attention of everyone in the parliament. The man who currently had the floor recognized him immediately and ceded control of the floor to Kane. As he strolled through the room to the speaking platform, the chamber silenced for the first time, and the only sound was the slapping of his shoes on the floor as he walked. Upon arriving in the center of the room, he spoke for the first time.
“Gentlemen, I have listened long to your debates tonight, and have weighed all that has been said. We must not give into the demands of the peasants, for that would send the message that we are afraid. Instead, we must crush any and all resistance to the rule of aristocracy, if we are to maintain the rightful balance in our system. We are their betters, and to show any wavering of our position will only empower them to continue to push for more. Starve them as you would a dog that disobeys you, and they will learn their place. Beat them as you would an errant child, and they will remember their place. Before long, they will come to realize the error of their ways and the balance will be maintained. I say these things as only I can, from experience, so that we can keep the scales of balance righted.”
As he finished, Kane simply turned around and exited the room, leaving them to ponder the message just delivered. As he entered the hallways of the Estates-General, he found a familiar face standing at the door listening in on his speech.
“Awfully inflammatory words, if you were to ask me,” Benedictus said as he greeted Kane with an embrace.
Juggernaut (Humanity's Hope Book 2) Page 8
