Chapter 18
Running again
'What's wrong with you?' Jack asked, only half sympathetic. Jace had started coughing and nothing could get him to stop. He drank as much water as he could take and even tried to eat some of the fresh snow. Sid, one of the men with Jack and the Army detail that had been part of the New York fight back, had even turned over his jacket to see if it was just the cold. But nothing seemed to be helping. All of the water he managed to take down he eventually spewed back. At least there was no question anymore.
'Nothing.' He lied, as soon as the violent cough drew back enough for him to be able to speak. 'Just a bad hot dog yesterday or something.' It felt weird to say yesterday. To think things seemed that much more normal such a short time ago. To think when they went to investigate that homicide, it was just another New York murder. And now this. The world had pretty much ended over night.
'Listen, Jace, we're out of here.' Jack knelt down to him, strangely not afraid of catching the flu. It was obvious what he was getting. It was clear to all four of them that he was getting sick. He might be dead in hours, even less. But Jack just didn't seem too upset by it.
'Don't you have to stay here with your detail?' Jace tried to stand, but the slightly colder air just a few feet above strangled the breath out of him again. Blood eventually started mixing with the water he continuously projectile vomited all over the side of the truck that they had been protecting.
'They're not our squad.' Jack said a little bit simply. 'We were only helping out. Must still be too soft.' Jace just shook his head. He didn't have the energy to try to figure out what his new friend was talking about. 'We went AWOL from Philly a few hours ago. Stole a news helicopter and just got out. You think it's bad here? Philly's worse. Trust me.' Jace was disgusted at the thought of running away. But he couldn't be too judgmental. There is no point in facing a certain death when they can be helpful somewhere else. He and Lizzie might well be dead if not for these three.
'So you're running again?' Jace finally made it, with nothing short of a gargantuan effort, to his full stretch. He held his chest and focused on every drawn out breath. Jack nodded.
'Don't know where. Just going to run.' He smiled, almost excited by the prospect. 'We'd take you with us. We really would.' It wasn't easy to be at peace with something like that. His own death. There was a part of him that just wanted to run from the truth. To pretend that he was just sick. That it was just a bad day or a dire hangover. But there was no point.
He had seen a thousand people contract the virus. He was just one more. They all followed the same pattern. Some got it faster than others, but it was pretty much always the same story. The same line of symptoms.
Jack smiled a half baked smile at Jace. He was a little cold. But maybe that was just his armor. Jace made light of things. Some people were aggressive, some were cold, others over compensated in other areas of life or were arrogant without cause. But everyone was scared. So everyone wore armor of some description.
He turned to Jake, the blonde haired and fresh faced soldier he was with. 'Mission still the same?' He asked, glanced back at Jace, and turned on his radio with a twist of the thumb. Good. Jace thought. At least they had working radios. He might be able to keep in touch with Lizzie for a while. Death was hard enough to face. But it would be even harder on his own.
'Yes sir.' Jake replied and took a map from his back pocket. They, all three of them, turned away from Jace and spread the map over the engine bay of the truck that they had been protecting. They were tracking something with their hands and fingers while mumbling to themselves. Jace made an on the spot decision. If they were running, even if it were for some higher purpose or not, he was going to at least help them to get there. That was all he could do. The last time his life might mean something.
'What is that mission Jack?' He spoke bravely, out of turn, and stood tall with his lean chest puffed out as far as he could manage. 'Let me help you.' Jack took pity on him. He was about to start the clich? discussion and suggest that a walking dead man might not be the best help he could muster. But he saved it. And saved him from it too.
'You will notice my detective friend, that the containment net of buildings that our inspired brick headed colleague from the armed forces came up, is missing one key element.' Jace, in fact, had seen it.
They had entered Hell's Kitchen by 9th Avenue. Buildings had fallen all around them except in one direction. West 56th Street. They were still exposed to attack from that direction, even though a quick glance confirmed that they were okay for the time being. No Robots were walking the streets, and if they had been, there were a ton of soldiers there to put them down. Soldiers in fact funneled in from that direction every few moments. Men and women of squads of no more than six a piece. They must have been the ones to have planted and detonated the explosives in those buildings that had fallen.
'Yeah.' Jace replied after already figuring out what was coming next.
'Well it's our turn now.' Jack folded the map, handed it to Sid, the younger of the two brothers, and strode confidently to the back of the truck. 'Our bird is parked very precisely,' he sniggered through those words for a reason that might become apparent later, 'on a sort of secure platform on a residential building, 330 56th Street. We need to plant a bomb, take off, and spark it. Fly away and leave all of these lovely people here, in "Fort New York".' Jace smiled, it was such a brave, over the top but at the same fantastic plan. He was jealous to say the least.
'Is that what they're calling it?' He laughed. He was dead. Done for. No point getting all upset by it. At least he could do this before he died and feel like his last hours meant something to someone.
'I hope so!' Jack laughed with him, scuffled his way into the truck and emerged some time later with enough C-4 and Semtext to put a hole in the Sun. 'Get this wired up, stuff it in some bags and let's go!' He started throwing it down to the three of them still on the floor, Jace, Jake and his young brother Sid. He was being very heavy handed, but it wasn't like it mattered.
'Show me?' Jace whispered to the younger brother. There was barely any telling them apart. They looked so fresh faced and young, younger perhaps than Jace, both had shaved blonde hair and the same eyes. Jake, the older one, did have small tattoo on his neck. That was all there was to tell them apart.
Sid showed him what he was doing with the wires and connectors. It looked pretty random, but one wire seemed to go into the top of the explosive charge, that looked like a clay brick wrapped in brown paper, and the other seemed to connect to a junction box of some kind. That in turn was wired into a detonator pack with a timer on it. It was pretty easy once they got going, though the three bags ended up weighing a ton each.
'Any chance of a radio boss?' Jace asked as confidently as he could. He didn't want to say it was because he wanted to get in touch with Lizzie. He was probably being silly, but he just thought these hard as nails Army grunts would laugh at him if he told them. Luckily, Jack didn't pry and just threw him one.
'Avoid channel three.' He jumped down after grabbing as much ammo as he could. He dished it around the four strong rag tag group of would be demolition experts. Jace had one clip where the others got two each. He wanted to protest, but he was just a cop after all. That was probably what Jack had thought when he handed them out. The truth was, that Jack would never say, when Jace went down ill, any ammo he had left on him would be a waste.
'There's some nut on channel three trying to say we're all being punished by a vengeful God, or because we accidentally increased our disease burden or something like that...' Jack stopped to look around his men. 'Are you boys waiting for a cuddle?' He said so sarcastically but so full of humor at the same time.
The two young lads jumped out of their socks. Army discipline was a hard thing to get rid of. Good thing no one told Jack. He took his bottle of Bourbon from under his belt and took a healthy swig before passing it to Jace. They had started half sprinting down the street in the direction of
the building they needed to destroy.
'Drink the rest.' Jack wasn't asking. He was ordering. Jace wasn't a drinker really. He could take it or leave it. He did enjoy the feeling, but a few bad experiences of his youth kept him off it for the most of the time. But what was there to worry about a few bad experiences in the middle of all of this? The biggest, worst experience of anyone's life. So he took it, and without thinking, threw the rest of the bottle down his throat.
The burning sensation was harsh but comforting, but he still struggled to keep it down. He held his breath while jogging to make sure it went all the way into his stomach. He couldn't even manage to say thank you, or anything else for that matter, for a few seconds.
He took the radio to call Lizzie. He didn't know if she would be listening or if she even had one of her own, but he had to try anyway.
'Lizzie, are you there?'
'Are you boys in position yet?' Her sweet voice almost brought a tear to his eye.
'So that's where you went? You're our fire support?'
'Yeah.' She laughed down the radio. 'I'm here with a sniper team. Got you covered.'
'Where from?'
'A few blocks away, we can see most of the building. That pilot you're with, he'll drop you off on his way out.' Poor Lizzie had no idea.
'Yeah... I'll see you soon.'
Zombie-dem Page 18
