“LOGAN!” Kaige could feel her arms growing weak as she struggled to keep the dead weight from dropping on top of her and taking a nice big bite out of her chest. Panting, she couldn’t reach for her bat without having the creature come crashing down on her.
Above her the zombie snarled, lunging for her face trying to break her hold and Kaige felt her arms nearly give but she locked her elbows. The slight movement caught its attention and Kaige foresaw the action taking place before it happened. If it couldn’t reach her throat, it could bite into the nearest body part available. Her arm.
“No!” Kaige screamed, the corpse released her jacket, no longer trying to pull her into its gaping maw and attacked her forearm. Its black teeth gnawing and tearing to get through the padded down of the jacket she had on.
“Somebody, please help me!” Kaige cried, but she didn’t know how far her cries for help went, who could hear her? But in those moments Kaige felt completely alone in the world. She was going to need to pull herself together enough to try to get the thing off her before it managed to get through the sleeve of her jacket and sink its teeth into her skin.
No sooner had the sickening thought come into her mind, a deafening shot pierced the bubble of her screams and cold, black, rotten blood sprayed through the air and rained down on the side of her face. The zombie stilled before toppling over and Kaige scrambled out from under its weight, tears of relief flooding her eyes.
Logan and Tom must have run and gotten a gun, that’s what took them so long to reach her, that must’ve been it.
“Kaige! KAIGE!” Tom and Logan ran, catching up to where she sat, half curled into the fetal position on the pavement and lifted her up to her feet amidst frantic screeching as she fought until she realized that it was the living and not the dead who were pulling on her.
The men were checking her wounds as Kaige struggled to understand what was happening around her, their axes laid on the ground, but the blast of gun fire was still ringing in her ears painfully so that the effect drowned out every other sound around her.
“Are you ok? Did it bite you?” Tom was pulling her jacket open, searching for blood, for an open wound somewhere on her body.
“Where did that thing come from?” Logan was wiping the black congealed blood off the side of her face with the sleeve of his jacket, Logan’s hazel eyes wide and fear stricken as they joined Tom’s searching for the smallest scratch that might infect her with the sickness that took the zombie now lying dead with the gunshot to the head when Kaige saw a familiar face come into view. But it wasn’t Megan or Tobey’s.
“Brian?” Kaige stared a second more, there was only one person in the world she knew who was built like that and he was coming down the hill now, he also had a rifle in his hands.
“Who?” Logan’s brows creased in confusion as he looked in the same direction as Kaige was, seeing the man swerve around one of the abandoned cars at a clipped jog, making his way over to them as Megan reached the gate, fumbling with the latch.
“KAIGE! Tom, is she okay, was she bitten?” Megan asked, running to the rest of the group her face ash white when she reached them and began to run her hands over Kaige’s body while the rest of them watched the darkly dressed figure as he came closer to them.
Brian Jones was an ex-marine who joined the employees of Changes Recover Center in the form of security, most people thought that he did all day was sit on his butt outside the elevators and watching the security cameras, but Kaige had always noticed that whenever she stepped outside to smoke, Brian left his desk and found a place to stand just outside the doors. He was one of those people who saw everything, and now he was walking towards them with a rucksack over one shoulder, the barrel of guns sticking out of the top.
“I hoped I might find someone here.” Brian began, reaching inside his jacket and from its depths Brian held out Tobey’s Tony. It was his stuffed Ironman doll that had been completely forgotten weeks ago when they left the office building. “Please, tell me you’ve got a kid with you.” Brian exhaled, looking at the four of them, the last ray of hope he had left in his body hinged on their answer.
“It’s my sons.” Tom answered, slowly reaching for the doll. “He’s inside.” The father added, turning as he smiled at his wife.
13.
“He’s alive?” Relief washed over Brian’s features. When he reached the office in search of survivors all he found were the remains of what the group had left behind, but then he saw the child’s toy and immediately remembered the last time he saw children. Those images vividly replaying in his memory.
Rolling the sleeve of his shirt back down, Brian watched the nurse toss the band-aid wrapping into the recycling bin.
“So, when will I get the results back from my blood test?” He asked. Since the incident pop up clinics opened all over the state while the mysterious deaths continued to spread all over the country as the medical field and the government scrambled to try to figure out what this was and how to stop it from spreading any further.
“You’ll receive an update from your healthcare portal in about three to four weeks if not longer. Normally it would only take a few days, but every lab in the state is backlogged with blood samples, they aren’t used to this kind of volume.” The nurse spoke. Brian noticed her name tag said Natalie Browning.
“What exactly are you looking for in my blood?” Brian asked her, getting to his feet. This clinic was working out of the space in the parking lot between the Kroger and the Target. People were milling in and out of tents with bottles of water and hats pulled down low over their eyes, trying to shield themselves from the sweltering midday heat.
“At this point, sir? We have no idea what we’re looking for. We’re hoping that the survivors have something in common that the,” Natalie paused, unable to bring herself to say the words. Tears began to fill her eyes, but the young nurse sniffed and blinked them back in order to remain professional. “Those that passed, but so far we haven’t found anything yet.”
“Did you lose anyone in the deaths?” Brian asked. So far, he couldn’t see any rhyme or reason behind all of the deaths, no one fit into any category.
“My dad. He just retired two weeks before it happened. It makes no sense; he was the healthiest person that I knew.” Natalie swallowed. “I’ve smoked a whole carton of cigarettes since I lost him. I quit a year ago after I couldn’t take him harping at me anymore, guess I’ll have to get back on the bandwagon soon.” She frowned.
Brian understood, they all had their own vices when it came to how they coped with the tragedy
“I’m sorry about your dad.” Brian said, looking at all the other people waiting in line at the tent, free nurses coming forward and taking clip boards from them before assigning them to another nurse to draw their blood. Each interaction taking place the same way that the last had right down to the questions about when they would get their results back and what they were looking for in their blood. Everyone wanted to know what was going on, and Brian had heard that they were having riots in Fayetteville. People were angry, they were hurt and scared. They wanted answers and they weren’t getting anything from their government officials except lip service. That wasn’t going to help the situation at all to brush people’s concerns off, one minute they were being told that it was a mass organization of terrorist using chemical warfare, but when the results from autopsies came back and the public heard that there was no evidence of chemicals in the victims lungs, they pointed their finger in the other direction stating that it was possible the water supply was poisoned when in reality they didn’t know what the hell was going on, but whatever this was, it had spread further every day since the first attack. And now they were testing all known survivors' blood looking for something that they wouldn’t even mention. People weren’t happy, and Brian didn’t like the look of the outcome if they didn’t start getting answers soon.
Placing his ball cap back on over his head Brian waited a moment longer as Natalie finished filling out his paper
work. Each person that had their blood drawn had to have a signed certificate of proof showing their name, date of birth, social security number and the date that their blood was drawn and the location. There were a bunch of other numbers on the certificate that was given to him though he hardly knew what they meant just like the numbers on a bar code, he was now in their system.
Armed soldiers and police surveyed the parking lot. Brian didn’t like this.
Since the attack, the government had seen fit to initiate martial law on the American public. Even after his last tour in Afghanistan when he lost his leg the image of soldiers walking around in front of children with loaded guns never set right with him. They might see it in movies or on the evening news but seeing it on a television screen and seeing it in real life were two different things. Children shouldn’t have been subjected to this.
Walking out of the tent, Brian passed a woman with a baby in her arms and couldn’t imagine that they were taking blood from infants, but the wailing of cries told him they were. Mothers and fathers were anxiously cooing trying to help soothe them. Whenever one child started to cry, that siren call of a wail seemed to set off a chain reaction amongst the little ones and that alone assured Brian that he never wanted to have children. He was happy being the fun uncle to his sister Bre’s kids because seeing them cry was hard enough. It was heart breaking knowing you brought them here, you were the one responsible for this pain and at the same time there was nothing you could do to get out of it.
Weaving away from the lines of people waiting, there were nurses walking around distributing more bottles of water and free hats for the people standing in the sun. At least they were working as fast as they could getting people in and out as quickly as possible and on with their day.
At first Brian had tried to schedule time at his doctor’s office to have his blood drawn, but they were booked solid. He wasn’t the only person who tried to take the easy route.
Shaking a cigarette from the soft pack in the pocket of his shirt he took his lighter out of his pocket and lit it quickly, taking a deep draw and pulling the smoke down into his lungs as he headed back to his truck, avoiding eye contact with the soldiers. One thing that was out of the norm for civilian life, especially in this scenario was that not once did Brian hear anyone complaining, no one spoke up, there was no rebel that finally spoke up from his murmuring curses beneath his breath and declared the workings of the establishment to be bullshit. Not with those soldiers around, the normal everyday workings of their lives were now in suspension. People barely left their houses, and in the last two days following the attack, there was a curfew in check for when you could and couldn’t be out on the street. Some had already attempted to test that authority and lost their lives for it.
Giving the handle of the truck door a yank Brian caught part of the radio transition and paused, tilting his head slightly. The click and the faint buzz of conversation coming from the other end of the radio while the soldiers stopped to look at each other for confirmation of what was being said.
“Say again?”
Brian was parked just a few feet away from one of the Kevlar vested soldiers, watching his expression twist in confusion.
“They’re coming— “But the speaker over the radio transmission didn’t finish as the channel went dead silent.
Over their heads the sounds of helicopters rising into the sky were heard, and several people, including Brian himself in the crowd turned their eyes to the heavens. It was a military chopper, circling the parking lot before it touched down, the propellers still spinning, blowing trash around the parking lot as people clustered closer together afraid of what was about to happen next. The first attack had instigated a strong military presence in their lives where there hadn’t been one before.
Behind the shopping center was the Baptist hospital concealed from the everyday life of the public by a thick hedge, but once you drove out of the parking lot and took a left there were signs everywhere directing you towards the hospital and emergency room entrances, along with a string of fast food restraints and borderline cheap motels, but that was also where all the bodies were taken. Only a few had been buried so far and that was because their families had been able to identify them within the first few hours, the remaining bodies were packed into the hospital morgue and on the grounds in air-conditioned tents waiting for family members to come claim the body.
Beyond the hedge, Brian heard the distinct sound of gunfire and screams as whatever was taking place outside their realm of sight was growing closer before men in Kevlar vests and helmets broke through the shrubs and bushes that separated the individual pieces of land, men and women running behind them. Brian noticed that the officers who were helping keep track of the civilian traffic in the parking lot were talking on their radios, calls coming in from the hospital with crazy reports that they didn’t quite believe until the first hoard broke through in pursuit of the soldiers and civilians running away.
Immediately the parking lot became mass chaos, people were running for their cars, others didn’t know what hit them until the bit of stray bullets that were sprayed through the crowd mowing them down, the living and the dead were of no importance, their orders were very clear, shoot anything that moves.
Brian ducked behind his truck, the voices all blending into the nightmares that haunted his dreams. Each recall of M-4 combat assault rifles blasting through his memory bank as the shells clinked onto the pavement. Sweat poured from his scalp and into his eyes as he turned, staying under the bed of his truck he snuck a look out at the rest of the parking lot. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him, even in his nightmares he never saw things like this and the bullets weren’t stopping them either.
As one soldier's gun jammed, the haggard looking man that stumbled up to him, grabbing him by the arms and bit down into his neck, his teeth slicing through his skin quickly and blood spurted out across the pavement, dropping as three more of them swarmed around the fresh kill while the boy managed one feeble scream for help as his comrades stood, stunned and kept firing trying to drive the zombies back from where they came.
To his right a police officer was discharging his firearm, stumbling back into his vehicle as five of them kept coming closer and closer. In the melee a woman was running with her child tucked under her arm trying to get to her car before the hoard got closer, she was wearing flip flops and the front of the rubber sole bent back causing her to stumble and fall and that was all that it took. Brian’s heart was slamming in his chest as one zombie caught her ankle, climbing on its hands and knees and bit into her leg, her screams ripping through the air melting into the chorus of others trying to get away. The little girl in her arms was screaming and squirming to get out from under her mother’s weight before another weight was added to it. One of the zombies, what used to be a fat elderly woman in a purple house coat with snap buttons dropped down onto her arthritis deformed knees and took the little girl’s chubby hand into hers and feasted on her arm like it was a turkey leg. Mother and child being devoured beneath the army of undead that continued to pour from the grounds of the hospital.
Backing into the side of his truck, someone grabbed him, and Brian turned, swinging his arm quickly, the movement was quick enough that it threw the zombie off balance and it fell. Yanking the truck door open, Brian dove inside as fast as he could, panicking as he felt inside of his jeans pockets for his keys before bringing the red Dodge Ram roaring to life. He couldn’t see a single person in the chaos except for the walking corpses, but he damn well knew he was going to take out as many of them as he could before they got to him. Brian couldn’t believe it. Sam was right, this whole time he was right. Brian just took them as the rambling of an old man, of course Sam never explicitly named zombies, but he always said that when shit went down, and it would, that Brian needed to be prepared so he could save his family. All Brian could think of was his sister and her kids at home. They’d had their blood tested the day before and he prayed to God that they hadn�
�t decided to leave the house for some reason.
Slamming his foot down on the gas pedal the Dodge leapt forward and slammed into the dead bodies roaming through the parking lot, spinning the wheel, the back end of the truck fishtailed and he had to jerk the wheel hard to right himself. From the back of the Kroger, he could see two people had climbed on top of the dumpster, trying to keep away from the hive of zombies that were all clustered around it, reaching, grabbing as the two girls screamed and kicked their legs trying to keep them at bay, but there was no help in sight.
Punching it, Brian hit sixty miles per hour, flying through the sea of bodies and watching them fly as his truck hit them, others climbing the hood and clawing their dead fingers at the glass trying to break through. He didn’t know how he was going to help them, but maybe if he could distract the dead long enough, they would be able to make a getaway. Cutting the steering wheel hard, Brian slung several of the zombies that were hanging on to the hood off, but a backwards glance in his rearview mirror told him that there was one trying to climb into the bed of his truck and Brian had no idea how to get it out. He was gaining on the dumpster and the two girls, but he couldn’t see any way of getting near it without potentially losing the zombie that was in the bed of his truck.
With the tension setting in his jaw, Brian pulled away, bringing the truck up to speed in the parking lot, mowing down every single one of those fucks in his way, the wheels bumping and gushing under the dead bodies as he turned his eyes back to the rearview mirror. The zombie was struggling, trying to get up to the back glass and he wasn’t sure just how well it would understand there was a plane of glass between them, it had to break the glass barrier between them. Stumbling, Brian took his chance and accelerated, spinning the wheel and watching as the dead man went toppling over the rail and out of the bed of the truck to the ground below. Slamming on the brakes, Brian looked ahead. The two girls were still on top of the dumpster, but it looked like the walking corpses were beginning to put two and two together. If he could get close enough, maybe they could jump into the back of the truck and he really hoped that worked.
Project Airborne Page 12
