Midnight (Adrian's Undead Diary)

by Chris Philbrook

  “Yeah. Once everyone else is out I’ll take care of him.” Nate swallowed hard.

  The plane made a sweeping turn and Kevin looked out one of the small port windows. He could see a lot of planes sitting on the runways and waiting areas. Airport gridlock. It looked to him like the airspace had been cleared for them to land. That or all flights had been flat out canceled. Either was equally plausible at the moment.

  Kevin returned his attention to Corey’s apparently dead body as the plane weaved around haphazardly parked jumbo jets and airliners. They were scattered everywhere. Kevin could see passengers inside the planes gawking out the windows, some angrily pointing their jet moving freely. Nate unbuckled his seatbelt and slid his Glock from the holster on his thigh. He rested it in his lap pointing at Corey.

  “Go. Get the Senator ready to move. I got this.”

  Kevin stood and patted his man on the shoulder. From his belt he pulled his team leader’s white baseball cap, and affixed it on his head. He always felt more professional with the hat on. It felt like wearing a bullet proof vest. The rest of his team were rising from their seats and readying their weapons, ensuring a round was in the chamber. The Senator was still in his seat, obeying the “remain buckled” sign lit on the front of the cabin. Kevin walked up to him and got his attention.

  “Senator, as soon as the plane stops and the door opens we are out. Our escorts should be arriving shortly after that via helicopter. You are to remain at my side, at all times. If someone looks at you funny, you tell me or my men, ok?” Kevin’s instructions were intense, and to the point. All the Senator could do was nod in response. Kyle, Kevin’s driver from earlier that day in Jerusalem was standing next to him. He was looking back at Corey’s dead body. After a moment he looked at Kevin and shook his head in disgust. Three men dead in one day. Worst case scenario for these men.

  The plane suddenly braked again, sending all the men forward into the luxurious seats. Nate yelped again as Corey’s body fell once more on his lap. Kevin started towards him to give him a hand when Nate yelled again, only this time it was in pain, not surprise. Kevin burst forward, drawing his own pistol.

  Nate was bringing the butt of his pistol down on the top of Corey’s head like a jackhammer. He repeatedly smashed the magazine into the back of his friend’s skull. Kevin got to the gap in the aisle and saw what was happening. Corey apparently had reanimated just as his head hit Nate’s lap, and he’s sank his teeth into the meaty portion of the thigh, right next to Nate’s groin. He was latched on and shaking like a shark, tearing the flesh inside the khaki pants savagely. Nate started screaming as the bloodstain quickly spread out from the destruction of his body.

  Instinctively Kevin dove across the seat he’d been sitting in earlier and lowered the pistol to the side of Corey’s head, right at the temple. He threw his weight into Nate’s sitting body to keep him pressed back against the seat, and pulled the trigger. The heavy pistol slug boomed out of the barrel loud enough to deafen the entire group of men and women in the plane. Corey’s skull blew apart all over Nate’s leg and the white plastic wall of the plane, obscuring the small oval window. His jaw finally let loose and Nate was free. Over his shoulder Kevin saw sunlight coming through the cabin door of the plane as it opened, and he hollered out to his team to move.

  “Get the fuck out NOW! MOVE!” He screamed as he got an arm under Nate’s. Corey’s body fell to the cabin floor, his open skull leaking brains into the plush carpet. Nate was bleeding out of his leg badly, and Kevin knew it was probably a severed femoral artery. An infected bite wouldn’t kill Nate, he’d bleed to death long before that. Nonetheless Kevin wanted to get his man out of the plane first, and say his goodbyes. He wouldn’t just abandon him to bleed out.

  Kevin got his dying teammate out the cabin door as fast as he could. As they cleared the interior of the plane all of Nate’s strength faded in an instant, and he tumbled out of Kevin’s grasp and impacted the tarmac facedown with a wet thud. Blood gushed from his groin and pant leg over the grey concrete as Kevin heard and felt the thumping of helicopter rotor blades nearby. His team was split between tasks as Kevin came down the steps to the ground. Some were pulling perimeter security, using their carbines to scan the area for threats. Some were watching the choppers come down, keeping the Senator close, and lastly, Kyle was rushing to the aid of the fallen Nate.

  “Noo!” Kevin had to yell to be heard over the helicopter rotors. The downdraft was whipping their clothes and hair all over the place as Kyle froze a few feet away from his dying teammate. He looked up, completely bewildered at the instruction his white capped team leader just gave him. He gave a confused shrug and mouthed the words “what the fuck dude?” at Kevin. Kevin’s slate smooth expression of anger told Kyle everything. Kyle took a step back from Nate’s prone body, and put his hand on the pistol at his hip.

  Before Kevin left the plane he poked his head back inside the cabin. The two pilots and the pretty staffer that’d woken him were convening just outside the cockpit door. He couldn’t hear their conversation, but they looked worried.

  “You coming?” He shouted over the increasingly deafening rotor noise. He saw the shadow of one of the choppers landing pass over the faces of the flight crew.

  The plane’s pilot shook his head no, and shouted back to Kevin, “We’re waiting here for other embassy staff to arrive. Then we’re headed somewhere else. Not sure yet.”

  He nodded, shook the pilots hand, and Kevin leapt from the steps on the plane door. As he landed on the tarmac he watched the two British Royal Marine fire teams hop from the doors of their twin Lynx Helicopters. The eight men fanned out and assumed cover positions quickly. Once the area was clear, the senior ranking Marine stood and approached the Senator just as Kevin reached his side.

  “Gentlemen, who is in charge here?” The Marine Sergeant shouted at the suit wearing Senator. The senator was about to puff himself up and answer him back when the Sergeant turned to Kevin. Henke looked deflated.

  “Kevin Whitten, WPG team leader. This is Senator Henke. We were under the instructions that you were to exfil us via helicopter to RAF Mildenhall for further evacuation?” The shouting was going to kill Kevin.

  “Aye mate. How many men do you have? This everyone?” The Sergeant extended his hand and Kevin took it. They shook briefly. He looked around and did a quick headcount.

  “Yeah, we lost two earlier today in Jerusalem, and we lost two more on the plane just a minute ago. This shit is horrible brother.” Kevin turned and pointed at the fallen body of Nate. Kevin’s face went white. One of the Royal Marines was attending to Nate’s body, and was launching himself away as Nate scratched at him, jaws snapping. Kevin drew his Glock and snapped off two fast rounds at Nate, hitting him squarely in the head. His body died again a final time, now oozing from the other end onto the tarmac.

  The British Marine scurried back ten feet and got to his feet. Kevin noticed he was covered in Nate’s blood. The Marine Sergeant stared at the destroyed body of the WPG security guard laying in front him. After a few second’s contemplation, he barked out movement orders, and everyone started moving into the Westfield Lynx Helicopters. Kevin went to Nate's body and stripped off the body armor and weapons quickly. It was callous, but could be crucial. Kyle stopped Kevin before they boarded their bird and handed him his personal vest and HK416C. Kevin thanked him over the roar of the rotor blades, and they got in the helicopter.

  *****

  The helicopter pushed away from the ground with an abrupt burst of power. Kevin got his gear on and sat down in a seat a Marine Corporal pointed at. Kevin noted it was the Marine that had gone to help Nate. He was still covered in Nate’s blood. Once Kevin was situated he checked the other occupants of the helicopter. With him were the two helicopter pilots and four Marines that made up the Royal Marine fire team. The Sergeant that led the Marines was in the other bird. Also with Kevin in this chopper was Senator Henke, his platinum blonde aide Anna, as well as Kevin’s man Kyle. The Lynx was
not a huge helicopter, and with that many armed passengers, they were almost at capacity.

  Right above the seat was a set of headphones with microphone attached, and he put them on over his white cap. Immediately Kevin heard all the chatter between the pilots. He did not like what he heard.

  “Roger that. We will head due east over the M4 before heading to Mildenhall,” the pilot’s voice was crisp and professional.

  Another voice, presumably an air traffic controller somewhere chimed in, “Immediately clear Heathrow airspace. Civilian authorities are saying there’s a significant amount of looting and rioting going on and we need to get those planes off the tarmac. We’ve gotten you clearance to go over the city, just stay below five hundred meters please.”

  Kevin watched the pilot react to the news that they were given clearance to fly that low over the city. Five hundred meters was exceedingly low in an urban environment. The pilot looked at his co-pilot with an expression of amazement. Quickly it changed to thrill as they realized they’d get to blitz through the city, “Roger that.”

  Kevin waited until the radio traffic went silent before he turned to make sure Henke was alright. He and his aide Anna were sitting on a bench seat and holding on to each other for dear life. Clearly they’d never had an experience like this before. Kevin thought it’d harden him up good and plenty if he ever wound up making a run at the White House. Trial by fire.

  “Who’s your suit?” The pilot asked Kevin over the chopper’s comms.

  Kevin snapped back to reality, “He’s a big wig Senator. Gotta get him home and into a secure facility before the world falls apart.”

  “Ha, before? Mate you need to look out a window. The world is falling apart right now. London is burning.”

  Kevin took a moment and turned to look out the helicopter’s door window. They were only maybe a thousand feet off the ground. Helicopter pilots frequently use landmarks to navigate when they are low to the ground, and immediately Kevin knew the pilot was following the M4 highway straight east towards downtown London. He guessed they were doing a hundred miles an hour based on how fast they were passing the enormous amount of traffic backed up on the motorway. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, Kevin saw the flashing lights of ambulances and police vehicles coming up from the streets. Scattered columns of smoke rose from building after building, almost as if the entire city of London had gone back to fireplaces and chimneys. He counted thirty fires at houses in less than a minute.

  Kevin watched a terrible car accident develop right below them on the highway. Somehow a pair of fast moving large vans had plowed into slowing traffic ahead of them. The first van collided with a nearly stopped car and launched into the air, corkscrewing multiple times before smashing roof side down into a series of smaller cars. The second van tried to stop, but when it braked the ass of the van kicked out, and it started to roll, throwing the driver out the window and fifty feet into the air like a ragdoll. The last thing Kevin saw before he lost visibility was the driver’s body smashing down into the windshield of another vehicle.

  All Kevin could think of was that there were at least two more dead bodies that were going to sit up and bite someone. In every conceivable direction chaos was spreading. He could see people smashing the windows of small business and pubs, trying to get in to either gather resources, or to loot. Police men and women chased after them, but on more than one occasion, Kevin saw a cop lying in the street, bleeding badly. Sometimes the criminals win.

  “See what I mean?” The pilot shook his head in disgust.

  The co-pilot spoke this time, “We’re going to slide north a bit, taking a route over Hyde Park. We aren’t clear to fly over Buckingham Palace. Once we’re over east London we’ll turn northeast a bit and head towards Suffolk, where Mildenhall is.”

  Kevin tried to remember the layout of London. It’d been a few years since he had spent time here. He looked forward out the cockpit window and saw the distinctive shape of Hyde Park ahead. The L shaped body of water in the center of the park called The Serpentine was almost world famous. He’d had an ice cream cone there once when he was on leave. He recalled amusingly they had strange looking black ducks in that pond. Just beyond Hyde Park to the east was Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen when she was in the city. Even from almost a mile away Kevin could see a tremendous police force arrayed around the palace. The back end of the Palace gardens was surrounded by an imposing twelve foot wall topped by spikes and barbed wire. Of course it was all cleverly covered by ivy and hedges, but make no mistake, the Palace could serve as a fortress.

  The massive plaza in front of the Palace was covered with men and women in the black uniforms of the London Police. Kevin could see dozens of the small white police cruisers arranged to form an impromptu wall, stopping all movement to and from the Palace in all possible directions. Portable steel fences had been dragged out to control foot traffic and create an even more impassable barrier.

  The helicopter banked slightly to the left, drifting them north so they would avoid flying over the Palace itself. On any day that’d get you shot down, and today there was even less sense in coming close to the Queen’s home. Kevin watched as a few of the Police opened fire with submachine guns on a crowd of unresponsive people heading towards the Palace. He had no idea if those people were dead or alive, but it didn’t matter. The Police had to protect the Queen and Palace one way or the other.

  Moments later Kevin saw the bright signs of Piccadilly Circus. He saw the traffic circle and the statue of Anteros. The TDK/Sanyo sign looked enormous as they flew over it, even at their insane flight speed. Kevin noticed melees all across the open expanse of the Circus. At this height and speed he couldn’t see whether or not the undead were the perpetrators, but he could see blood on the streets. Rivers of blood ran into the cracks of the old stones. The pilots were clearly getting a kick out of flying such an intense circuit through their capital. Even Kevin was getting a rush out of watching the streets and buildings whizz by below. The pilot made a slight bank again and brought the plane abruptly up a hundred feet in elevation to clear some taller structures ahead. Kevin could swear he was going out of his way to get Henke to puke everywhere, and couldn’t help but grin at the thought. Trial by fire, right?

  Unfortunately, hell broke loose. The corporal that had been sitting next to Kevin, the one covered in Nate’s blood, had been hiding an injury. Some of that blood belonged to the medic. Kevin’s sightseeing out the windows made him oblivious to the fact that the man had been bitten several times on the forearm. He’d gone to help the fallen American, and wound up getting a death sentence instead. He’d died on the seat right next to Kevin, and when the Lynx lurched upwards to gain altitude, he came back to life, and tumbled forward into the cockpit like an undead missile.

  He was death incarnate. Kevin did his best to yank the deceased Marine off the pilot, but once he’d bitten that pilot, the chopper began to plummet to the ground, going into a powerful tailspin. The growing centrifugal force pushed the zombie further and further away as gouts of blood sprayed the canopy window of the helicopter. Kevin could hear the pilot gurgling, trying and failing to breathe through a crushed larynx.

  As calmly as he could, the copilot spoke into his headset, “Mayday, mayday. Mayday, mayday.”

  Kevin watched the streets of the city of London loom into the cockpit window, a crowd of innocent bystanders filling his entire field of vision before he blacked out from the chopper’s impact.

  *****

  Everything hurt. Kevin’s eyes protested with a creak as he opened them. He regretted opening them immediately. He was lying on the ceiling of the Lynx helicopter. They were upside down. Smashed together in the back were the forms of the Senator and his aide, as well as Kyle, and three of the four Marines. He twisted himself painfully around and looked into the front of the helicopter. The pilot was dead, his body pulped head to toe when the military helicopter impacted the structure they were pressed against. The co-pilot was breathing
in raggedly, and Kevin could tell he wasn’t long for the world.

  Kevin checked his own body for injuries, and realized he was beaten to hell, but nothing appeared broken, pierced, or most importantly, bitten. His back felt like a cricket bat had been taken to it up and down it for hours. He got himself upright and started to carefully check on his passengers.

  Henke was in and out of consciousness, but alive. His aide Anna, the young blonde that served no apparent purpose other than to be pretty was hurt. Her foot had been caught in the seat somehow, and when the helicopter flipped over, her body had gone flying, but her foot stayed pretty immobile. Her ankle was nearly black from bruising, and her foot hung like a dead fish at the end of her calf. Once she came to she immediately started to hyperventilate, and Kevin had to soothe her.

  The three remaining Royal Marines were in various states of injury, but none seemed too far gone. Within a few minutes they had gotten each other up. Kevin saw that Kyle was now leaning up against the busted frame of the helicopter, and was looking at his hand. His left hand pinky finger was broken outwards to the side, and he had a shard of metal three inches long lodged in the center of his palm. His blood ran in slow rivulets down his arm as he looked at the mess. Kevin watched as Kyle gritted his teeth, and twisted the finger straight. His eyes boiled red and a tear slipped free, but he didn’t scream. Tough fella, Kevin thought.

  Once Kevin was sure Henke was alive and all set, he looked out the shattered door window of the Lynx. He’d been here before. They had crashed into Covent Garden Market.

  One of the young Marines gave the helicopter door a tremendous tug, and it ripped loose from the warped steel of the frame. The three Marines exited the helicopter and started to create a makeshift perimeter about five yards from the chopper. Despite being in downtown London, the market looked like portions of bombed out Baghdad Kevin had been to. Kevin got Henke to his feet and they exited the shaky chopper. The open door revealed a scene of epic carnage.