Race the Dead (Book 1): The Last Flag

by Cavanagh, Wren

  They burst from the lab, three Turned remained outside, Emma and Theo were offense and defense line for the team. Theo sunk his ax in the head of a man dressed up like he had been an orderly; he kicked the nearest man in the chest and sent him stumbling backward as he fought to wrest the ax free of the skull. Emma leapt forward, slammed the claw of the crowbar on the crown of the tottering man. It did damage but not enough, he kept moving toward her, she hit him again and again until he was forever dead. By then Theo had freed his weapon and had rushed to her aid. He quickly dispatched the third man and after that it was a sprint for the roof.

  The entrance to the roof was a frame less internal stairwell enclosure; created with single glazed panel glass partitions, its swinging doors, likewise were integrated glass. The long stainless steel handles; were chained and padlocked shut. Without stopping or missing a step Theo attacked the padlock and chain while Emma targeted the hinges. In less than five minutes, one of the swinging doors crashed to the ground and they rushed to the rooftop, to another glass enclosure that allowed them a full view of the roof. The last door they met, no one had taken the time or bother to lock.

  The flagpole was in the middle of the helicopter landing area.

  “There it is, the last flag.” Emma walked to it and cut it free. “ We are done.” The backpack tied to the pole only carried one item. A smartphone.

  “Aren’t you watching? Don’t you all see that we're finally on the damn roof?” She yelled into the wind, as she turned on the phone and called the only stored number. “Tom?”

  “Emma, the helicopters are on the way.”

  “Great, the sooner the better,” she said, and terminated the call. She turned to the others. “Helicopters on the way people.”

  “Think I can hear them.”

  “No, that’s your teeth chattering. You're getting hypothermic.”

  Theo was hugging himself, stomping and shuffling his feet. “Yeah, I'm already all that, but no way I'm stepping back in there. Not when we're almost out of here. And when the helicopter gets here those things will be joining us.”

  Emma grabbed her backpack and dug out a Mylar emergency blanket from it, unfolded it, and wrapped it around his shoulders, before passing him two small heating packets for his hands. “I'm sorry for going off on you, that was unfair and horrible of me. It was wrong and I shouldn’t have done that. I hope you can accept my apology and forgive me.”

  Theo met her eyes, took his time to consider it, and shrugged. Nonchalant on the outside, but confused on the inside. Nobody had ever asked for his forgiveness before, he thought. Never forgiven anybody before either, he didn’t know what to say, it took him a while to get it out. “Okay...ha...hmmm, forgive you.”

  Emma smiled with relief, she put her arms around him and drew him close. “Thank you, Theo. You have no idea how much better that makes me feel.”

  “S’okay. Not giving you any of my money though. Just so you know.”

  “No worries. We get out alive, there’ll be plenty to go around.”

  The small group remained on the roof, bitterly counting the minutes until two small, dark gnats in the horizon turned into helicopters that quickly and noisily reached the roof.

  The production’s Bell was chaperoned by a bigger tough looking, drab green Army Sikorsky Pave Hawk. The army helicopter landed first, and once on the roof its side door slid open and three armed soldiers jumped out and sprinted toward them. The senior man, a staff sergeant whose name tag said Miller, gave everyone a perfunctory salute before singling Anjali out, with care he took her by the arm and began to guide her toward the Sikorsky.

  “Dr. Aluri, you're coming with us.”

  “No, them?” She shook her head and pulled back, confused.

  “It’s okay, the other helicopter is here for them.” He reassured her with a smile, “We’ll all fly back together but they go on their own helicopter. They are Hollywood stars, okay?”

  Emma stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder, and firmly pushed her on. A quick look toward the access door told her that the dead had made it to the entrance and the swinging door. “They are here! Go — we’ll see you later.”

  Miller followed her gaze, saw the first Turned push through the roof door, and he bodily picked up Anjali and ran to the helicopter as the other two soldiers held their ground and carefully took out the Turned that poured onto the rooftop. Once he got the doctor buckled in, they joined them in the Pave Hawk, and the metal beast lifted off and remained hovering nearby. The Bell 429 came in and touched down on the roof under the protective fire of the soldiers aloft. The three survivors sprinted to the Bell, hunched over, fearful, not taking salvation for granted, even when it looked at hand.

  The co-pilot held the door open hurried them in, all along he looked terrified as the dead shambled, staggered, and lurched forward. Once everyone was in, he slammed the door and screamed at the pilot to LIFT OFF. He kept yelling it until they are well above the crowd, only once they were safely in the air, did he seem to calm down a bit.

  “Christ, people, that was terrifying. Buckle in,” he said, his voice angry and short. His naked fear embarrassed him and he was unhappy to be there. The hospital was at least two miles away before he allowed himself to calm down and grabbed a bag near the pilot’s seat.

  “Welcome, people! You're finally heading home, hey, we got you some hot chocolate.”

  “I got some whiskey in there, too!” The pilot hollered from the front.

  “Sweet!” Theo replied enthusiastically as he grabbed the empty cup and shook it back and forth to hurry the man along in pouring the drink.

  The co-pilot served chocolate until all three of them were holding hot steaming cups like their life depended on it.

  “You're on the way home!” He yelled over the noise of the rotors, and leaned in to confer with the pilot before returning to them. “Official welcome in fifteen minutes, give or take. The weather is shitty, as you should know — We can get you puke bags if you need ‘em.”

  The Bell flew on against the thin, cold air, against gravity and the wild swirling mix of falling rain and falling snow. The three survivors sat mute in their seats, each lost in his or her own fears, each believing that they wouldn’t be safe until they were on the ground, and miles and days away from Prideful. Emma thought of Lew, her eyes stung and hurt and she felt her face begin to crumble. Embarrassed, she lifted her hands to hide her grief and clamped her lips between her teeth, fighting to hold back tears.

  Ross turned the camera toward the cockpit; he’d had enough of prying. Under a wild filter of snow and rain, he saw the lights of the production camp in the distance. It looked far larger than when he left, and he guessed the military presence caused its growth. Theo unbuckled, got up, and went to sit down next to Emma and buckled back up into the new seat before he put his arm around her shoulders.

  The Pilot turned and yelled with a smile on his face, “We are home safe people!” Except for the screaming, that was the last anyone heard from him.

  A blast of wind that easily exceeded 80 MPH slammed into the Bell broadside and swept it into the path of the Pave Hawk flying by their side. The Army pilots watched in horror as the tail of the Bell headed straight for them, the blades on the tail rotor sheared through the Sikorsky’s cockpit window like a giant buzz saw. In seconds, the swirling blades make a meaty mess of the army pilots, and both helicopters spun wildly, then crushed straight to the ground.

  The screams of the passengers were inaudible behind the violent and irregular symphony of breaking metal and glass.

  Like hell...

  Asphalt and snow.

  Burning rubber, metal, and oil.

  On the drenched cold ground, blood as dark as oil in the waning light.

  The wet asphalt glittered like a field of diamonds unearthed from melted snow as dancing lig
hts from the fires reflected on its hard, irregular surface. Emma’s ears rung and buzzed, she shook as much from the adrenaline and fear as from the cold. Numbed and confused, she stared at the dancing yellow and orange reflections, not sure right away as to what, why or where. It took her a few heartbeats to process her new reality, she was suspended above the ground, staring straight down at it. Then she remembered that they were supposed to have arrived. If so, this was the worst landing ever.

  “Arrived, my ass,” she muttered feebly and snorted out a brief bark of derisive laughter. “Help! Hey, help!” She yelled.

  “God, shut up! Please shut up!” It was Theo, he gasped out with effort as the seat belt pushed into him and made it hard to breath. He was almost upside down, and struggled to get free. “Please be quiet.”

  “We're not there,” Emma said, as she struggled against the restrains that were cutting into her.

  “No kidding.” He choked out while he tried to wriggle loose.

  “Hold on—I can help.” Emma grabbed a small pocket knife from her shoulder pocket, and sawed through his seatbelt.

  Theo fell to the ground, scrambled to all fours, then stood up on unsteady legs and grabbed one of her ankles. “Put your feet on my shoulders and push off…lift the weight off the belt.”

  Emma did as he said and cut off her seat belt. He held onto her as she dropped, and while they stumbled together they didn’t fall. The Bell had broken in two large, smoking halves, the front section having fared far worse than the rear. It lay forty feet away, having come to rest nose-down, partially embedded in the side of a large military trailer truck.

  Emma staggered to it and looked in. “Oh, Jesus...”

  The abandoned truck had been rough storage. One of many in the street; the Army had filled it with the returned dead, drove it in town, and left. They had abandoned their cargo with the hope the turned would rot or eat each other to the bones. Neither had happened yet, the trailer’s current inhabitants were now eating their way free through the exit created by the helicopter cockpit. Emma had no idea how much time had passed since they crashed, but the bodies of pilot and co-pilot were nearly skeletonized. The returned in the truck had eaten well and were now emerging from the cockpit into the street.

  She darted back to the crushed tail section and found their weapons. “Oh fuck, we gotta go. We gotta run!”

  Theo nodded as he stared as the first of the turned from the truck stumbled through the cockpit and gracelessly fell face first into the street.

  “Ross — where is Ross?” Emma grabbed his arm and shook him. “Head in the game Theo! I need you here!”

  They heard Ross then, once they listened; over the noise of the fires and the ringing in their ears he was easy enough to find. He had been part of the background noise all along and his shrill agonized screams from half a block away guided them to him. His seat had broken loose from the helicopter, crashed to the ground, and broke into bits with the man still belted into it.

  “Jesus Christ.” Emma knelt by the cameraman and cut the safety belt. From the waist down, his body was bent at an absurd angle. Paraplegic, if lucky, she thought. And from the waist up she could only imagine the re-constructive surgery he’d need. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him now. “You are still alive, hang in there Ross, we’ll get you out. Help me Theo.”

  Together they pulled him free, as they tried to determine a safe direction to head toward. Theo felt a soft touch at the nape of his neck, and snapped around to find himself face to face with a withered woman.

  Fucking meth addict, God, it’s Meth Head Annie back from the dead, his brain yelled at him. Annie had been one of the few women in his life who had asked him to call her “mom” as he passed through one foster home after another. The image had been dormant for years, but his neurons retrieved it in the blink of an eye. And in that short blink, the woman who looked like Meth Head Annie opened wide her gray maw and leaned in for a taste, but she never got to clamp down. Before Theo had even a chance to react, a gunshot cracked in the dark, and the woman fell backward into the snow.

  Two soldiers had survived the crash and were now running toward them: Miller who had taken hold of Anjali on the hospital roof and a younger man who looked barely older than Theo. Neither had gotten away unscathed but both were vertical and walking.

  “Follow us — we're getting out,” the sergeant shouted, looking at Ross. “If you can get him up and carry him, we'll try to get him out, too.”

  “Dr. Aluri?” Emma asked.

  “Didn’t make it.”

  There was nothing else to be said, without a word they grabbed the cameraman who let out an anguished scream. They wrapped his arms over their shoulders, and began walking as fast as they could. The soldiers led them past the flame-lit wreck as more Turned poured out of the trailer and headed for them. But they weren’t alone, all the dead bodies in hearing and seeing range, attracted by the noise and commotion, had decided to join the party.

  “The fence is right there,” Theo yelled. “Right there!”

  Emma could see it too; it was close, so close. Two blocks away, she also saw that scores of the Turned have beaten them to it. They weren’t going to get through it here.

  “Not gonna happen, Head over there!” Miller pointed at an industrial building, Kazmarek rentals.

  The building was a 1950s relic, but it must have done good business prior to the evacuation, and it stood solid but it had large windows, and wide open garage bays. But the main office next to the garage bays was a one floor structure.

  “Run for it. We need to get on that roof.”

  The place was big, almost entirely fenced in, once they got in front of the office entrance the soldiers used a dumpster by its side and climbed onto the roof before they reached down for Ross and pulled the injured man to safety, and then helping up Emma and Theo. Once up it was easy work to jump to the next level of the building. The larger higher roof that covered the rest of the business.

  While the two men produced flares, lit them, and tossed them in a circle around the group the snow stopped falling. They all looked at the sky with relief, Theo let out a happy whoop and Emma clapped.

  “Finally,” Emma shouted, but a minute later something cold and stinging hit her cheeks.

  Theo held out his hand and looked at the coating of ice that had begun to cover it. “Freezing rain. Fuck.”

  “It just gets better and better.” Emma’s shoulders slumped, and she shook her head, incredulous.

  The radio in the sergeant’s hand crackled, and he held it up to his ear briefly. “Okay, we have to wait here. They're sending a helicopter,” he announced.

  “Yeah, sweet. Just make it one of those that don’t crash this time.”

  “Your helicopter crashed into ours, sarcastic little shit!” the younger soldier retorted, angry and anxious.

  “If I had fucking helicopter, I wouldn’t be here! Bigger shit!” Theo snapped back, ready for a fight.

  “Chill out everyone, and save your energy to stay alive. Jonas, check the garage roof. What’s your name? Theo, right? Chill, Theo, and I’ll get you that non-crashing helicopter.”

  “Well, good,” he mumbled and turned to look for Emma. He found her kneeling at the cameraman’s side, holding his hand. Ross was conscious but barely lucid. His breathing was tight and shallow and tears of pain streaked his face etching clean streams and clean pools from the blood and dirt. The man was in agony, his legs rested at odd angles, and Theo saw dark blood seep from the seat and crotch of his pants. It darkened the fabric but added shades of pink and red to the snow and ice beneath.

  “How soon are we going to see that helicopter?” She turned and yelled.

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes,” Miller yelled back, then looked at the cameraman grimaced and shook his head.