“Yeah, we need to pick up that young fella. He was pretty handy.”
“Agreed, Hillbilly,” Rick said with a yawn. “If this big plane is still where it’s supposed to be and we can fly it home, we might want to pick up Teems and his bikers as well.”
Seyfert rubbed his side and grimaced. “They won’t come. They’re a nomadic group. The thought of settling down scares them.”
The group talked quietly until nightfall. With no cloud cover, they would be able to see by moonlight, but also be seen. Rick looked at his watch: 9:26 PM. He stood and the others did as well.
Seyfert could see Anna’s questioning gaze in the gloom. “I’m fine.”
She pulled her stethoscope and listened to his breath sounds. “Actually, you sound great. If you need us to stop, tell us and we’ll rest.” She knew he would die first, but felt she should tell him anyway.
They slipped from the odd-colored house, making their way overland toward the Air Force base. The trees were thick, the canopy such that the moon was powerless to penetrate it. Hand signals were difficult to see, so when Rick threw his fist up, Dallas crashed right into him. The big man twisted his ankle and let out a hiss as he fell into the brush, thorns scratching his face. Hands seized him from the right and a different kind of hiss emanated from the darkness. The Texan was about to lash out when the hands let him go and everyone heard a body collapse onto the forest floor.
“It almost bit you, Dallas!” Seyfert whispered, wiping his knife on the grass.
Dallas hung his head for the briefest of moments. “Yeah, it sure ‘nuff did.” He sighed. “Thanks, Jersey.”
Sounds of the dead came drifting through the evening, getting louder by the second. The collapsing infected had alerted its brothers to a meal with just a hiss and short rasp.
The bushes to the left of them rustled and two dead people emerged, looking in all directions. Focused on the two to the left, nobody saw the one behind until it came crashing through the fallen leaves and was in amongst them. Anna shoved her blade into its eye and it took a backward step before it did a half-turn and flopped to the ground.
The other two moved forward, both growling in anticipation of dinner. Dallas’ rebar ended the shorter of the two with a meaty thud, but the second was grappling with Rick in an instant. It leaned in to bite him and he pushed its mouth as far from him as he could. The duo was spinning and lurching, making the dead man a difficult target for the humans to destroy. Rick gave a mighty shove and the creature stumbled. It turned its focus to Dallas and the Texan added another kill to his tally.
The sounds of a large group of infected behind and to the left was getting louder and the four friends ran through the brush as soundlessly as possible. They hadn’t made a hundred feet when Seyfert began to wheeze.
Dozens of feet crashed through the foliage behind them, the things definitely chasing them now. The horrible noises the creatures make flooded the evening and reverberated through the trees. The friends ran.
Bursting through the brush into a clearing, Dallas and Rick saw that Seyfert was fading. They each grabbed an arm, all four of them pushing toward the far side of the small glade. They weren’t halfway across before twenty creatures plowed into the clearing, falling over each other.
A structure loomed in front of Rick as he and Dallas dragged their injured buddy. It was a house, mostly burned. Several undead, also burned and trapped inside, began to growl and roar at Rick’s group through a broken window as they passed. Crispy arms crackled as they reached through the shattered glass.
A guttural scream rent the night, followed by another. The hunting calls of Runners.
The team were suddenly on a small beach, a body of water in front of them. “We goin’ in circles?” Dallas lamented.
“No, this is fresh water!” Rick huffed. “It must be a pond!”
Anna pointed. “I can see the other side,” she stage yelled.
The dead erupted through the trees behind them hot on their heels. The moonlight, no longer stopped by the trees, illuminated more infected coming from both the left and the right.
“C’mon!” Rick started into the water, Dallas assisting in carrying Seyfert. Anna followed and soon they were shoulder-deep in the water. The dead had stopped at the bank of the pond, some splashing forward, but only ankle-deep.
Midway across the refreshing pool, Anna had to swim, but Dallas and Rick were still able to float their friend between them. The moonlight gleamed off the water behind them and showed the dead moving in both directions to circumvent the small body of water.
Anna made the far bank first, assisting her friend out of the water. With a little breathing room, the dripping group began to move as quickly as possible, using the moon as a guide to the east.
They crossed a small road, moved back into the trees, and back out again in a few hundred feet. A larger structure materialized in front of them and they made a run for it. Crossing a short parking lot, the group stormed up a short set of steps, the terrifying noises of a horde of dead crashing through the woods behind them.
Dallas pulled the handles on the front doors of the structure, but they were chained closed. A broken window, ten or so feet to the left of the doors and chest height from the ground, beckoned. Rick sprinted back down the stairs and over to the rectangular hole. Dallas followed him and gave him a ten-finger assist. Rick flashed his light inside then scuttled up the side of the building and into the room. Dallas heard Rick utter a quick “Jesus!” but in an instant, Rick was frantically waving his compatriots to the window.
“Room is secure!”
The other three made it to the window, Dallas boosting Seyfert using the same method he employed with Rick. Anna went next followed by Dallas and none too soon.
The throaty hacks and wheezes of several dozen undead were soon passing right outside the window. The survivors hunkered down, huddling together and listening to the mass of rot pass by not five feet from them. It took an hour for the things to move on, indicating there had been a few hundred, not just a few dozen.
Seyfert telescoped an inspection mirror and tried to see outside the building, but it was still too dark. The SEAL rested on his back. “Wake me if anything interesting happens,” he whispered.
“Don’t get freaked out by the skeleton,” Rick whispered. “It’s over there in the corner.” He pointed, but his friends could barely see him.
Several hours passed, the group listening to Seyfert’s even breathing as he slept. The first light of dawn peeked over the trees and the room began to brighten.
“I need to pee,” announced Anna. She moved to one end of the room and did her business. “Jesus!” she exclaimed a bit loudly.
“Told you there was a skeleton,” Rick chided when she returned to the group.
“Yeah, but you didn’t say it was standing the fuck up! I almost had a heart attack!”
Seyfert was awake instantly, the three of them staring at her. Her eyes got big for a moment as she had some sort of epiphany. She used the improving light to examine their surroundings.
The skeleton was in a frame and stood in the corner. Charts and graphs were on the walls and several green file holders sat discarded on one of the desks. Anna began to breathe heavily and she opened one of the folders. She put it down slowly.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, nonono.”
“What?” demanded the SEAL. “What is it?”
“This is a doctor’s office!” she declared. Seeing the blank stares of her friends, she added to her comment, “We’re in a damn hospital!”
“That’s bad…” Seyfert let that hang.
The worst places to be during the initial outbreak of the plague were hospitals. Dozens, possibly hundreds of people, all having been attacked by infected and all seeking a doctor’s help, flooded hospitals. The structures were quickly overcrowded and when the infected began to die and subsequently turn, the buildings were overrun in mere hours.
The group waited until morning, not wanting
to go rummaging through a hospital in the dark. Dim light filtered in through the windows as Dallas gently opened the door to the office they were in. He looked both ways down a short hall then shrugged at his friends.
“Nuthin.”
The four of them filed out of the room and made a left. The dim light of their surroundings was in contrast to a brightness at the end of the hall. Seyfert peeked around the corner with his inspection mirror, surprise all over his face.
“Huh.” He moved around the corner, his friends following.
The entire front of the structure was gone. A plane had careened off the runway and taken off the northern wall. A small fire had destroyed a few of the offices, but most looked intact other than missing one wall. Anna looked up and could see into the offices of the two floors above her. No bodies or ambulatory dead seemed to be in the area.
Seyfert thumbed at a white door in the blue wall. A sign next to the door indicated it was a stairwell.
“We’ll get better recon from an elevated position,” the SEAL told them.
They cautiously entered the stairwell and followed the steps to the third floor. Another door led to the roof and Seyfert had to pick the lock for access. A few minutes later and the four of them were staring down at a sign across the parking lot which read, Camp Edwards Medical Center.
A lone zombie shambled down the street and was out of sight through the trees in a few seconds.
Rick pointed. “Look there,” he said aloud.
The group saw he was indicating the end of a runway. At the other end, gleaming brightly in the morning sun, sat a gigantic plane nose toward the west.
“We made it. Now all we have to do is find a—”
“Look there!” Seyfert pointed as well. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more dark figures shuffled across the overgrown fields a few hundred meters to the west of the runway. They were moving away from the tarmac and consequently away from the living.
Dallas let loose with a big sigh. “The doc an’ his guys weren’t kiddin’ when they said there was dead here.”
Rick and Seyfert were looking through binoculars and Dallas had his palm over his eyes, shielding them from the sun as he squinted at the swarm.
All three of them turned when Anna uttered an “Uhhh…” She pointed to a shorter building about fifty yards to the north. On the roof of that building, a man reclined in a lawn chair. Wearing nothing but shorts, his legs splayed out in front of him, he held up a reflective fan high on his chest to catch the rays of the sun. The man tapped his foot and bobbed his chin as if an unseen band played for him alone.
Dallas blinked and continued to squint, “Is… Izzat guy alive?”
Rick, gazing at the man through binoculars, answered the question with a question. “Have you seen any infected who sunbathe? Oh shit…” If it were possible for Rick to look harder through the binoculars, he did.
“I see it too,” Seyfert added.
Behind the sunbather, a figure appeared in the doorway to the roof. The figure was gray in color and possessed a single arm, the other ending in a yellow nub at the shoulder. It started toward the seated man.
“Jesus,” Rick breathed, “he doesn’t hear it!”
Seyfert was incredulous. “Because the idiot is wearing headphones!”
Rick let the binoculars dangle from the lanyard around his neck. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and aimed for the thing’s head.
Seyfert glanced at the horde two hundred meters from their position. “You shoot that thing and we’re all dead.”
“I don’t shoot and he’s dead!”
“I like us better! Rick, don’t shoot.”
Rick wavered. He had been cop a lifetime ago in another world. It was his duty to protect this man. But if he pulled the trigger, he would never see Sam again. The end of his rifle dipped, but only for a moment. He brought it back up quickly. “Sorry.”
The trigger on his rifle remained forward and he removed his finger from it. A light flickered across the man’s closed eyes, cutting through the reflection of his tanning apparatus. Rick looked right, then left, and saw Anna with a signal mirror. She caught the sunlight and wiggled the mirror, focusing the reflection on the man’s eyes.
The guy blinked in discomfort, putting a palm over his eyes and searching for the source of flickering light through a squint. He shot upright when he saw four people leaning over the roof of the medical center frantically waving at him and pointing. He pulled earbuds from his ears and lackadaisically spun to face the threat crunching on the gravel rooftop behind him. He folded his arms and the thing shambled right past him, looking across at Rick’s group, its one arm outstretched. It slogged to the edge of the building and toppled over the side.
Dallas pointed, “Did that—?”
“Yeah,” Rick answered.
“And did he—?”
Rick cut in again, “Yeah.”
The sun worshipper waved then held up his index finger indicating the group should hang on for a second. He put a shirt on, pointed at himself then at the group. Seyfert held up a radio and pointed to it, but the guy nodded in the negative, pointed at himself, then at Seyfert. The SEAL nodded and motioned the man over. The guy nodded and, leaving his tanning equipment behind, ran for the door.
“Rick, cover the building. Anna and Dallas, with me.” Seyfert led them back down into the hospital and to the room they had initially entered.
Rick saw the man leave his building. He ran in a pair of sandals toward the medical center. Rick lost sight of the man when the guy ran under the overhang to the front doors, but then he backed out and looked up at Rick questioningly. The doors were chained. Rick pointed toward the side and the guy waved and started off in that direction. No one else came out on the roof or left the structure the man had been in. Rick scanned, but all the windows seemed devoid of people, living or dead, as well.
“Up here,” Seyfert told the man as he ran right past the window. The guy searched for the voice, giving a gigantic smile when he saw the living people above him. He reached for a hand up, Dallas helping him into the building. The man, smelling of suntan lotion, stood in the room and smiled again. He raised his hands but kept his smile and completed a small circle so the three people in front of him could see he was unarmed. Anna and Seyfert had their rifles trained on him, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“You are a very large specimen,” the man said quite loudly, nodding toward Dallas.
“Keep your voice down!” The SEAL glanced over his shoulder at the frosted glass door.
“No worries, this building is cleared. I took care of it when I looted this place for food. Who are you guys?”
“Who are you?”
“Me? I’m John, but everybody calls me Jack. Or they did, before they all died. I used to be an Air National Guard pilot stationed at Camp Edwards, before. Can I put my hands down?”
“Not yet. Anna, search him.”
She glanced sideways at her friend. “Do you want a full cavity search? He’s in shorts and a tank top.”
Ever so slowly, the man lowered his hands then pulled up his shirt, turning another circle. He began to unbutton his pants when Dallas stepped forward. “Whoa! Hang on there, pard.” He patted the man down, but the only thing in the pockets of his shorts was a key ring.
Seyfert lowered his rifle and Anna followed suit. “What are you doing here, Jack?”
“Told you, I’m a pilot. My plane is at the end of runway 9/27. Kind of hard to miss. Big silver thing.”
“No, why are you still here? Why haven’t you left?”
“Where am I gonna go? I’m waiting for the other group from…from a secure facility north of here.”
“That’s us,” Dallas told him.
“Uhh…while I appreciate you being not dead and let me tell you, you’re the first uninfected I’ve seen in a long while, you don’t look like the folks I’m supposed to transport. Annnd you’re a tad late. What happened?”
Seyfert peeked out the window. “The
zombie apocalypse.”
“Yeah, but what about after the apocalypse.”
“More apocalypse. Nobody else is coming from Vantel.”
Jack raised his eyebrows then sighed. “Didn’t think so.” He squinted in confusion. “Then what are you doing here?”
“We need your plane.”
“Okay.”
Seyfert glared at the man. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Jack answered. “What am I supposed to do, say no? I ran out of ammo six months ago and you folks are covered in guns. The armory is empty. Besides, this place is boring as hell.”
The door opened and Rick entered the room. “I don’t know why, but that swarm is headed this way.”
“Yeah, they do that.” Jack stuck his hand out to Rick. “Jack.”
Rick squinted at Seyfert, who nodded. Rick shook his hand. “Rick.”
“What do you mean, they do that?” the SEAL questioned. “And why didn’t the one on the roof attack you?”
“That herd of dead folks passes through here every few days. They’ll move off in a bit. One of them probably saw a bird or something. I don’t know why the slow ones don’t try to eat me. But the fast ones…”
Rick sighed. “We’ve seen it before. What’s the plan?”
Seyfert pointed. “Jack here is going to grab his stuff and we’re getting on his plane.”
“Stuff’s already on the Galaxy,” Jack told them. “We just need to get in and go. She’s fueled and ready. Did a pre-flight check last night and every night before that since I realized the dead don’t want me. The fuel has an additive that we got from Vantel before the plague. Should stay good for another couple of years. At least I hope so,” he added. “Just one small problem.”
“What?” asked Dallas.
Jack put a finger to his ear and everyone listened. The sounds of the dead reached them. The horde was loud as it came close to the building. Jack raised his eyebrows. “Wait it out or run for the plane?”
Run_Book 3_Long Road Home Page 23
