by Mark Wandrey
At last, they were behind him again and he raced towards the A320. He had a half a minute so he pulled the M-16 across his lap and hit the magazine release. The empty steel twenty-round magazine clattered to the metal floor and he fished into his pouch for another as he took his foot off the gas. Smacking the bottom of the mag, he popped the bolt release with his palm and felt the bolt slap home. “Okay he said, hitting the brakes as he came around the A320 to where he’d seen the people inside.
He was only a few yards away this time. They must have heard his engine approaching because as he came around they were jumping up and down, yelling and waving. He slowed but didn’t stop. The dozen crazies there turned as he approached, realizing that new prey was at hand. Andrew rolled down the window. “Go to the slide on the other side!” he yelled. “Be fast, we won’t have long!” He thought he saw one of them nod as he stomped the accelerator and went around the tail of the plane, just underneath and to the rearmost slide. He brought the truck to a stop and jumped out, weapon at port arms and ready.
The dozen crazies who’d been by the slide came towards him. But Andrew noticed they all seemed slower than the others. Many had blood on limbs, or they limped, or some other problem. He shouldered the rifle and fired. Five quick shots and three of them were down.
“What do we do?” yelled a voice from above.
Andrew looked up and saw a woman, one of the ones from the other side, standing in front of the slide. Several more men and women were behind her.
“Jump!” he said and fired twice more. Two went down, but weren’t dead.
“But there are more of them coming!” she complained and pointed. Andrew craned his neck. The crowd that had chased him to the hangar were returning. Fast.
“I know, damn it! I don’t have enough bullets to get them all. Get down here, I have a plan!”
“But…”
“Just fucking do it!” he roared, firing the rifle out. He dropped the mag and slid in another, releasing the bolt and firing right away. He could feel the heat of the barrel through the old style non-ventilated foregrip. He looked up and she was just standing there, afraid and uncertain. “I want to help, but if you don’t come down, I’m going to leave!”
Andrew resumed firing. Half way through the magazine he saw the big yellow emergency slide rock and a man came shooting down. He heaved a sigh of relief as another followed almost immediately.
“What do you want me to do?” the man asked from behind. Andrew could hear the shaking in his voice.
“Can you shoot a gun?”
“Sure.”
“In my pack, there’s several pistols, take one!”
He could feel the pack unzipped on his back and the man rummaging through it. The pack got a few pounds lighter. “Got it!”
“Good!” Andrew fired out the magazine. Nine of them were down. The last three were only a few feet away. They weren’t walking very well, but they were coming at them with wild-eyed intent. “Shoot those fuckers!”
There was no hesitation in the guy. Andrew heard the action being racked, saw the gun pushed out in a modified Weaver stance, the safety swept off, and he opened fire. Boom, boom, boom. The last three went down in the time it took Andrew to reload the M-16. He turned and looked at the guy in surprise.
“Chris Tucker,” the man said, nodding and winking at Andrew, “two time three-gun national champion.”
“Finally some good luck,” Andrew said as he turned to check on the hoard. They were about two hundred yards away and closing fast. “There are extra mags back there!”
“I grabbed two,” Chris said. “I’ll get a belt later.”
Andrew nodded, not knowing if Chris saw it or not. “Everyone down?” he asked, glancing next to him and by the bottom of the slide. He was shocked to see what looked like a dozen people waiting. He was momentarily taken aback. Mostly because he was pretty sure the fire truck didn’t have room for that many people.
“We’re gonna be in the shit in a minute!” Chris warned.
“Everyone in the truck!” Andrew yelled to the crowd. They milled. “NOW!” he yelled and brought the M-16 to his shoulder. They moved.
Andrew and Chris engaged the approaching mob, Andrew from a standing position, Chris dropping to one knee and firing slow and methodically. They were about a hundred yards away when he glanced over and saw everyone was in the truck. The dual back seats accommodated most of them, but there were three men in the back with the firefighting gear. It was almost completely exposed. “Arm yourselves up there!” he yelled at them. One man looked confused, probably didn’t speak English, but the other grabbed an axe and checked the heft. The other glanced at him, nodded, and began looking over the equipment.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Chris said and ran for the passenger door.
Andrew was just feeling glad the somewhat panicked passengers had left the front seat empty for him and Chris when he heard a voice yell from above. “I’m scared!” He looked up and gawked at a middle-aged woman in a business suit just standing in the doorway. “Can you get the airline people to help me?”
“Jesus Christ lady, jump!” Andrew blurted.
“Jump? Don’t be stupid! Do you know what this suit costs?”
Andrew glanced down the runway. Seventy-five yards away hundreds of screaming crazies were bearing down on them. He took a step towards the slide.
“You help her, we all die,” Chris said, matter-of-factly.
Andrew gawked and looked back at him, his eyes wide and breathing hard. He was half a second from telling him to take the truck and go. Then he realized if he did, none of them might survive.
“Hurry!” someone yelled from the truck.
Andrew took one last look at the lady in the door to the plane. She looked out at the approaching mob screaming their rage and sprinting towards them with an almost detached curiosity. “Damn it!” he yelled and followed Chris.
The firetruck’s engine roared as he spun away in a squeal of tires and diesel smoke. Either through a cruel twist of fate or just bad luck he could see the woman clearly in the rearview mirror, watching them go with confusion as the wave of insane flesh eaters crashed into the ramp and started clawing their way up towards her. He pulled his eyes away from the tableau with some effort to concentrate on the tarmac ahead.
Behind him the ravening freaks split up, about a quarter went for the plane with the wide eyed woman in her expensive suit standing at the top of the evacuation slide, the rest continued to pursue Andrew and his survivors in the firetruck.
He kept watching the crowd following them. They had to slow down eventually, right? They’d been chasing him back and forth across the airport for a half an hour, many of them sprinting the entire fucking time!
Andrew drove the firetruck around the backside of the same hangar he’d been around only a few minutes ago, but this time he turned hard and inside. The wheels made a loud squeal as the truck came to a sliding stop.
“Out!” he yelled, “Help me with the doors!” Andrew ran, betting his and everyone else’s lives that the doors weren’t electrical. He spared just enough of a glance over his shoulder to see Chris running for the other door with two men following him. There was one man behind him as well. He reached the inside edge of the door and heaved, grunting with the effort. In a panic, it didn’t move. “Come on,” he growled and put his back into it. The man who’d followed him joined in and they both yelled in their efforts. The door gave a squeal and moved an inch. On the other side the door Chris was wrangling was moving rapidly toward the center without resistance.
“Come on, damn you,” he growled. It moved another inch and stopped. His left stump screamed from the force he was putting against it through the prosthetic. He ignored it. The sounds of a hundred voices growling and screaming were getting closer. He heard the door on the other end hit its stop just as the first crazy careened around the corner of the hangar and raced past the door without looking in.
Andrew almost laughed as he c
ontinued to push. Maybe they should have just left the doors alone and hid? Two more raced past and it was then the door groaned loudly and started to slide closed. The next group of several skidded to a stop, turning to face the survivors in the hangar. One of the women by the truck screamed and started running in the other direction. Several more followed her and the group of crazies raced into the hangar after them.
Andrew gave the door one huge final heave, sending the massive steel thing racing towards its counterpart. A half dozen more of the insane people raced through just before they crashed together with an echoing BOOM! And then they rebounded open several feet.
Chris stepped away from his side of the door, drawing the M9 pistol. “Push it back closed!” he yelled to the two who’d helped him as he opened fire. He fired with the same measured pace. Shoot, confirm the hit, shift, and fire again. Every shot dropped a target with a headshot. Six men racing towards those retreating away from the firetruck fell like ducks in a row.
“Push it in,” Andrew urged the one man helping him, “and hold it!”
He turned without seeing if the man did what he’d told him to, swinging the M-16 off its sling and to his shoulder. The doors started to go back together and stopped as a half dozen men and women, eyes wide, screaming incomprehensibly were wedged into the doors. First one then more fell through, clawing to get at the fresh meat inside.
Andrew flipped the selector from safe to semi-auto and squeezed the trigger. The round punched the breastbone of a big beefy man wearing a Pittsburg Steelers shirt. He jerked and fell face first, nose splattering blood on the concrete. Another shot, this one to the neck of a woman, bare to the waist. Blood fountained and she screamed a gurgling scream. He shot her again. She fell and more pushed through. We’re losing the doors, he thought.
“Move!” someone yelled behind him. Andrew responded to the authority of the voice without knowing who it was or why. He rolled to the left, rifle tucked into his abdomen, and came up on his knees as Chris roared past, four other men with him all holding one of the big reinforced ladders between them, all running abreast. They crashed into the crazies bunched up in the door with a crash, pushing them all back until the ladder smashed against the door.
Andrew ran up and slid like a runner going into second base, leading with his titanium left. The impact jammed his stump, making him cry out in pain. But the hit pushed the bodies back out and as he scrambled back, the door rumbled closed with an echoing clang.
Chapter 19
Sunday, April 22
Evening
She knew she was in trouble. Kathy stopped the bike a few minutes ago and spent valuable time going through every one of the gas cans, holding up as precious dribbles of gas flowed into the nearly empty tank. She guessed she’d gotten a pint, tops. The cans made a pile by the trailer. The only things left in it were the gun and ammo. She couldn’t bring herself to abandon it. She’d packed her camera gear and backpack onto the rear cargo deck of the ATV, saving as much space as she could. She kept a single gas can against the possibility of finding fuel.
The last of the sun’s red rays were dancing across the western horizon when she heard it. A snuffling sound, like an animal following a scent trail. She guessed a coyote or a dog. She’d seen coyotes a couple times. “Hya!” she yelled, “get out of here!”
“Graaaah!” came the reply and the man rushed headlong from the underbrush.
“Holy shit!” Kathy screamed and backpedaled, right into the ATV and backwards over the seat. Her shoulder hit the foot peg on the far side the spikey steel peg cutting into the soft flesh and an instant later her head smashed into the baked, hard packed ground. She bit her tongue and saw stars even though the sky was still too light.
Kathy lay there, momentarily stunned and not quite remembering how she ended up laying on her back next to the ATV, its muffler making pinging sounds as the metal cooled. From somewhere nearby she heard the sounds of grunts and things being moved. Was someone digging through her stuff? The unmistakable bonging sound of empty gas cans bouncing off each other. Fabric being torn, and sniffing, grunting sounds. She reached a hand a hand back and felt a knot on the back of her head, then around to her shoulder. It came away wet with blood. An involuntary groan escaped her lips and the others sounds went away.
“Fuck,” she said under her breath and instantly the sounds of shuffling footsteps coming towards her. She spun up to her hands and knees, moving away from the sound and around the bike. As soon as she cleared the front tires she stopped. More shuffling, sniffing sounds. It was coming from right about where she’d been lying. The blood, she thought, it can smell the blood. Then she mentally snorted. That had been a man and people can’t sniff out blood like some kind of animal. She lowered herself closer to the ground and looked between the front wheels and the frame.
He was on all fours, just like she was, nose to the ground sniffing a dark patch that had to be where her cut shoulder had bled into the dirt. He was about thirty, thin with dark curly hair and completely naked except for a pair of work boots. She would have laughed in any other situation, thinking of some of the ludicrous gay porn she’d seen. Then she saw his penis dangling and felt a jolt of fear. She realized she was more afraid of being raped than eaten alive. You need to get your priorities straight, she thought. He looked up from the blood, drool running down his chin, and elevated his upper torso, though stayed on his knees. Blood stained his jaw and neck almost black, splatters of it going all the way down to his thick pubes. In a flash his head dropped and he looked right at her through the gap, face turning to a feral snarl and hand shooting through.
Kathy jerked back a split second ahead of the grasping hand. She heard his flesh sizzle as it pushed up against the muffler. He didn’t pull back, instead he tried to climb under, twisting and running the red hot muffler along her upper arm and shoulder like a branding iron. She heard the squealing sounds as the meat was cooked and the smell of it wafted to her, making her retch. She did the only thing she could think of, she turned and ran.
She got about ten steps before she realized he was right behind her. She tried to zig-zag and instantly knew it was no good. She turned to face her attacker just in time to have him slam into her, hands clawing, teeth snapping.
I’m going to die, she realized as he bore her to the ground in a dusty heap. They rolled and she somehow ended up on top. She felt his groin under one leg and weekend self-defense classes returned in a rash. She pulled the knee back and rammed it into his testicles with all the force she could manage. He gave a little grunt and grabbed at her face. She pile-drove his nuts a second time and he got a handful of her hair and pulled her head towards his mouth.
“Fucker!” she screamed and pulled away, hair tearing. She screamed in pain. His hands were grabbing at her neck. Kathy rolled away, desperately trying to get to her feet. Breath coming out in gasps and little panic-filled whimpers. This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t going to get killed by a cannibalistic Mexican in the middle of the desert! She was a reporter. This kind of thing happened to other people, damn it!
His hand shot out and she felt something grab at her ankle. She tried to stutter step but her other foot caught on a root and she went sprawling again, face first this time. She tasted dirt and blood as her chin ground into the rock hard desert soil. He landed on her from behind, most of his weight crashing down on her hips and shoving her pelvic bone against the ground. She felt something hard press there into her groin and wondered dimly what it was. His hands grabbed her shoulders and she felt teeth on her back. She threw an elbow back and it contacted the side of his head. Then she felt the telltale hardness of an erection against her ass and the panic reached a whole new level. He was going to eat her and fuck her.
He was partially thrown off and she rolled in the other direction. When she came up on hands and knees she saw what had been biting into her groin. The blued shape of a revolver was lying there, dislodged from where she’d had it in her waistband. The crazy jumped at her the same
time as she dove for the gun. He went over her head as she scrambled for the weapon and tried to roll away. He landed on her legs and bit ineffectively at her boots. She kicked and felt teeth give with a satisfying crunch.
She rolled again, ending up on her butt with him on all fours spinning to face her. She raised the gun, and just like her father taught her, lined up the front post with the back. It was like shooting those silly zombie targets at the range. One was a zombie cheerleader, another a zombie chef with a human hand instead of a cleaver. Only that wasn’t paper snarling at her with jagged broken teeth. The post on the center of the nose she pulled the trigger with a smooth motion.
Even out doors in the desert the report made her jump as the gun boomed. The recoil of the little Smith & Wesson was deceptive. She remembered the first time she’d fired it, marveling even then how something so small could kick so hard! A tiny hole appeared just under the man’s left eye, the hydrostatic shock blew the eye out of the socket and the hollow point expanded, sending most of his brains and a significant portion of the back of his skull flying out into the desert sands. He dropped like a felled tree, one foot twitching spasmodically.
“Holy fucking shit,” she gasped, almost dropping the gun. She’d just murdered someone in cold blood. “Holyfuckingshit!” she screamed to the desert, “what is going on?!”
Voices. Inhuman, barking chuffing voices, answered from all around her. Her eyes wide as dinner plates she stood and spun around. Ten, twenty of them, maybe more. She saw the first one, a woman, half naked, crouched by a saguaro cactus watching her with dead eyes.
Kathy turned and ran from the scene of death. She ran as fast as she ever ran in her life. The desert was alive with sounds now, all around her and all closing fast. Is this how a deer feels, she wondered, knowing the hunters are out there?
She didn’t mount the bike so much as vault onto it. The seat, though padded, smashed her girly parts painfully as she landed. Kathy didn’t give it a second thought. She ridden the bike long enough that her fingers worked almost automatically. Turn on the key, flip the kill switch to start, right foot flicking the shifter lever up into neutral, left thumb stabbing the starter. The engine whirled, coughed, but didn’t start. She’d meant to shake out the filter but hadn’t had time. “No,” she moaned and hit it again.
