Gunfire was still cracking, in a different caliber this time.
When Handon broke through into the open area between crowd and plane, he could see two of the scientists already down on the deck, unmoving, and Drake clutching his right upper arm with his left hand, bent over and looking around on the deck around him, and seeming really pissed off. It looked to Handon like maybe he’d got his side arm clear – but had then been shot in the arm and dropped it.
But, mainly, he could the Sikh walking forward smoothly, weapon pushed out before him in a solid two-handed grip, and firing into the crowd. Handon’s .45 was already in his own hand, unsafetied, hammer back, and coming on line with that big puffy beard.
His finger squeezed, taking most of the slack out of the trigger.
He hesitated.
Dove and Grenade
JFK - Stores
Sarah bowed her head, and pressed her hands together – not in prayer, but in thought. She did feel as if she had much to atone for, getting Park into this shit situation in the first place. But she had to shove those thoughts aside. If there was going to be any time later for atonement, then she had be effective – now. She was going to have to operate their way out of there.
On her own.
Because waiting this thing out wasn’t working, and wasn’t going to. Calling for help was also a non-starter – making loud noises would have a definite tendency to be fatal. And those wall phones that seemed to dot the upper decks were nowhere to be seen down here. Maybe somebody would wander down eventually. But maybe they would just get themselves infected, and become another hazard Sarah and Park had to navigate. Maybe, together, they would all be the beginning of the outbreak that would take down the whole ship.
No, it was down to her.
She was beginning to formulate the outline of a plan – but it was still heavily dependent on what type of ex-human this damned thing turned out to be.
One of Sarah’s last lines of brainstorming involved simple distraction. She didn’t have to destroy the dead guy guarding their exit. She only had to get him the hell away from it, and only for a few seconds. Its type, and speed of movement, was still an issue. But less so if it was moving away from them, even if only temporarily.
Unfortunately, the same tidiness that made the place devoid of weapons also left her without many options for things to chuck, to try to generate some noise elsewhere. The best she could come up with was a heavy four-inch bolt she found lying on the deck in the shadows. While pretty much useless as a weapon, it would at least clunk and perhaps clatter if she hurled it. Then again, she didn’t know for sure if that would get its attention. Noise seemed to draw them. But, ultimately, it was prey they were after. A piece of metal hitting the deck might or might not sound like a live lunch.
She pocketed the bolt just in case.
And, finally, she considered the one noisemaker she had available to her that was guaranteed to raise the dead.
Her own voice.
She pulled Park’s head in tight again to hers, and started whispering urgently.
* * *
The Sikh was still triggering off rounds, and still walking forward smoothly, his expression focused but calm.
And as Handon looked on, he let off the pressure on his own trigger, though he kept his weapon trained on him – relieved that his instincts were spot-on.
Even if he hadn’t until then known why.
Because, as the sea of startled spectators flowed away, Handon could now see that the Sikh hadn’t been firing randomly into the crowd, as it had first appeared. And he almost certainly hadn’t shot the scientists who had gone down in that first hail of gunfire.
No, the one who had been firing randomly, or at least firing at the people getting off the plane, was actually now sprawled out on the flight deck, a pool of blood spreading out from underneath his body, an M9 service pistol lying out near his outstretched hand. He wore a Navy working uniform.
That was the shooter.
And, Handon instantly realized, some kind of assassin.
It was the Sikh who had seen this, reacted to the attack before anyone else, and fired to stop him.
He had efficiently and methodically put the shooter down.
* * *
Sarah pulled her head away from Park’s, just to look him up and down.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Got it?”
“Got it,” he whispered back, nodding tiredly.
He started to pull away, to move into position – but Sarah stopped him. Pulling him in close again, she started unbuttoning his shirt. She pulled it over his shoulders, then removed his left hand from the wound on his right forearm, and tied the shirt around it – tight. He now had both their shirts tied onto him.
And they were both topless. Plus cold.
He gave her a questioning look. She leaned in again and whispered, “You’re going to need to use your hand in a minute. And you might need both of them.”
She hesitated, before adding one last instruction. “If, for whatever reason, we get separated… you get yourself back to the lab. I’ll meet you there. And if things go worse than that… just start climbing, until you get to some part of the ship where there are people with guns.”
Park nodded. Sarah pulled away, to get in position herself. But this time it was Park who stopped her.
“I… I’m going to have enough time to make it there?”
“Absolutely.” She held his gaze, giving him her steeliest, most reassuring look.
“…And what about you? You’re going to make it, too?”
“Absolutely,” she said…
…Just as long as it’s not a Foxtrot.
She smiled at this unvoiced thought, and Park mistook the reason for it. She concluded with: “Don’t look back – okay?”
He nodded, she squeezed his arm, and they headed in opposite directions.
* * *
So the shooter was down. And the pilot of the Beechcraft had put him there. But were there other threats? Handon was far too experienced in close-quarters battle to assume the fight was over. Opponents rarely had the courtesy to “sound off” before beginning an engagement. And you always had to assume there was at least one more.
So he lowered his gun away from the pilot, who continued to advance, and turned and scanned around behind him – at the shifting throngs of alarmed sailors, down the flight deck, up at the rising shape of the island…
His next step was to move to the shooter and secure him. Because he also knew that down didn’t necessarily mean out. A wounded opponent could be just as dangerous – or even more so. And as he stepped toward the sprawled-out body, he saw something that caused a shout of warning to form in his throat – but the Sikh beat him to it. Again!
They had both seen the fallen man’s non-shooting hand, which was stretched out away from him on the deck, balled into a fist… but which now opened up, simultaneously revealing and releasing… a hand grenade.
The spoon popped audibly as he let it go and the explosive armed itself, and then commenced rolling and wobbling across the flight deck. Directly toward the plane.
And also directly toward the group of scientists. One was still standing, looking stunned but unhurt; one was prone on the deck, unmoving; and the third was down – but now hoisted himself up to his knees, looking dazed, bleeding but still alive.
None of them had yet clocked the grenade.
* * *
After maneuvering herself silently around to the right side of the maze of Stores, but still at the edge of the open area, Sarah picked out a pile of pallets that suited her and climbed to the top. Casting around, she could see she was a bit more than halfway between the middle, where they’d started, and the starboard-side bulkhead. That was probably about right.
She was also close enough to see Park peeking out of the rows of crates to the left or port side, about an equal distance from the middle. He was close enough for her to stay visual with him – but hopefully far enough away to keep the inc
onvenient dead guy from seeing him.
On the other hand, Sarah’s platform was only about eight feet off the ground. Which wasn’t necessarily going to be high enough to save her. But, then again, she didn’t have to save her. She only had to save Park.
Was character destiny? She didn’t know.
She only knew that this time, things would play out differently than they had at the cabin. She wasn’t going to get anybody else killed this time. And she wasn’t going to leave others behind, while she made her escape.
Then again, she was really only doing now exactly what she had done then: saving the most important man there, and fulfilling her duty as she understood it.
But this time it would be her who was left behind.
She rubbed her upper arms – all her limbs had grown cold, as her sympathetic nervous system pulled blood from her extremities. And her whole body felt heavy with the increase of adrenaline. None of this was likely to get any better.
Well, she thought, catching Park’s eye across the open air, and nodding to him gravely. No time like the present.
She stood up tall and cupped her hands to her mouth.
“Hey you!” she shouted. The sudden, dramatic vocalization echoed through the dark cavernous space. “Yeah, you! The John Dillinger-lookin’ motherfucker!”
Now it was on.
* * *
The grenade wobbled, wobbled, wobbled across the deck… and came to rest directly beneath the starboard wing of the parked aircraft.
And also directly beneath, Handon grimaced to note, its goddamned starboard wingtip fuel tank.
Many of the sailors who had come forward again to try to help now clocked the new threat, and shouted warnings at the others, who turned and legged it toward safety.
But Handon didn’t leg it.
Instead, he uncoiled all the physical energy he had wound up during the second of the grenade’s roll. And he sprang forward – straight toward the plane, the pilot, the scientists, and also toward Drake, who was still holding his arm and looking dazed.
Glancing up as he rocketed off, Handon could see the Sikh doing pretty much exactly the same – he was also hurtling forward, and the two of them appeared to have the same target: the one of the three scientists who was still on his feet. Handon instantly tweaked his course, angling instead toward the one just getting up. He and the Sikh crossed each other in mid-sprint, like some kind of broken football play.
Handon’s mass and momentum tackled the wounded one out of his kneeling posture, and took both of them down and away from the plane, and the explosive that now sat under it. Handon landed on top of him, trying not to do so with his full weight, but mainly concerned with positioning his own body.
The Sikh’s run and leap took the standing scientist in nearly the opposite direction. And the pilot’s weight, piling into and landing on him, was equal to or greater than Handon’s.
At exactly the same instant, all four of them hit the deck hard, two by two…
And the grenade exploded.
* * *
What kind? What kind?
Sarah stood rooted to the spot atop her pile of crates. She was watching one lurching motion, and one motion blur. The lurching one was Dr. Park, as he broke cover and started hobbling across the stretch of open floor between him and the exit. To his credit, he hadn’t hesitated, moving out the second after Sarah shouted.
But he was also hurt, and tired, and scared, and had lost blood… and wasn’t exactly setting any land speed records. He ate up the feet of open deck at a rate Sarah found excruciating to watch. But only half of her was watching him.
The other half was watching, in utter helplessness, as the dead sailor crossed the open deck between it and her like a man with his ass on fire. When she shouted, it had turned instantly away from the spot on the wall that had so transfixed it, crouched down, issued a rageful hiss that only grew in volume – and then took off toward her at a wild sprint.
What kind? she thought, looking behind her. There was still only open air behind her, just a drop to the deck, and absolutely nowhere to go. She turned to face forward again.
Its arms were pumping way out in front of it, its heels kicked out behind, and it looked pretty damned frantic and crazed to Sarah. But as frantic as the ones she’d seen in Michigan? She simply couldn’t tell. But she would know for sure in another half a second.
Because if this thing was a Foxtrot, it was simply going to reach a spot ten feet from her perch and then leap through the air, up onto the pile of pallets, and take her over and off it.
Sarah’s perception slowed and dilated time, in that crazy way the mind does in the middle of an unfolding disaster. And now she flashed back to the dusk-muted vision of those Foxtrots flying over her wire fence, and up onto the porch of her cabin, a few days and a thousand lifetimes ago. She remembered her and Handon trying to pick them off in mid-air. But she’d had her rifle then.
Now she was empty-handed – and also half-naked.
And in another quarter-second, this crazed, flesh-hungry biological impossibility was either going to leap up onto her box and commence tearing her to bits.
Or else it wasn’t.
But, either way… Park was going to have time to escape. He was wounded, and lurching, and moving not nearly fast enough to suit Sarah.
But he was almost there.
* * *
As Handon lay prone and tucked up and keeping his guy down underneath him, and as he felt the heat and overpressure of the grenade blast behind him, he had a second to relax and reflect.
So the problem with trying to hurl a grenade back is the exact same problem with throwing yourself on top of one to save your buddies: there is absolutely no way to tell how long the fuze on it is. And that’s even if you knew when the pin came out, the spoon popped, and the fuze started burning. Basically, a live grenade was a black box – one that was going to explode at some totally arbitrary and unknowable point in the future.
So given that, Handon – who’d had more than a few grenades chucked at him in his life – Handon’s preferred technique was to instantly dive away from the grenade, land flat on his face, get his thick bootsoles up facing toward the blast, press his legs tightly together (for obvious reasons) – and generally make himself as narrow as possible. More than once he’d suffered shrapnel wounds and burns to his legs and buttocks.
But it beat the hell out of getting blown up.
And it also sure as hell beat jumping on a live grenade to save your teammates – and then just lying there feeling stupid for the last five seconds of your life. And even that was better than picking it back up and attempting a baseball throw – and then having it go off right next to your big stupid head. Which, way up in the air and in the open like that, was also the place where it stood the best possible chance of killing or wounding your friends.
No, all things considered, it was much the best thing to leave a grenade where it fell, and get yourself the hell away from it and covered up as quickly as possible.
On this occasion, he had two people to cover up – himself and the wounded scientist. But when he heard the krump, and felt the heat and overpressure of the explosion, he knew they’d gotten far away enough, gotten tucked up enough, and mainly gotten lucky enough, that they were both more or less unhurt.
After the explosion settled, and as Handon turned his head to the side, opened his eyes, and scanned the environment, he saw two things. One was that Commander Drake hadn’t been as lucky. It looked to Handon like he’d clocked the grenade and tried to get clear – but hadn’t gotten clear enough. Now he was down on the deck and bleeding. And not just from his original arm wound.
Second, Handon saw the plane’s wing was on fire. The grenade had taken the wing tank up with it. But, as he had guessed, it hardly had any fuel left in it – mainly fumes.
But it was enough to set the plane alight.
And as Handon’s hearing started to dial back up, he ascertained a third change in their environment.
That big tractor was now rumbling across the flight deck, accelerating, and racing pretty much directly at them.
He gathered his strength to get up again – and to get the wounded scientist up and supported around the shoulders if possible. Or into a fireman’s carry if necessary.
But moving the hell out of there in any case.
* * *
The sprinting dead sailor didn’t slow its flat-out assault – in fact he seemed to coil up, somehow all the while sprinting forward, and Sarah waited and watched for the leap. Every cell in her body went cold in anticipation of it. But there was absolutely nothing she could do – just stand there and take it.
The leap didn’t come.
Instead, the hurtling dead body slammed into the crates beneath her, causing the whole pile to jerk, and her to bunch up her shoulders around her ears and involuntarily gasp out loud. She even slammed her eyes shut for a split second.
When she opened them again, the Romeo – for a runner it proved to be – was still only a few feet away. But it was down on the deck, waving its arms and tongue up toward her, making frantic hissing noises. Only just around the side from it, a couple of feet away and in plain view, were the lower boxes Sarah had used to climb up there. But of course this thing couldn’t plan ahead, or plan at all. It just kept reaching up toward her and hissing.
Not moving, Sarah raised her eyes – and saw Park reach the hatch. To his credit, he wasn’t looking back. And the runner stayed totally locked onto Sarah.
And then, from out of nowhere, the whole room bumped. It felt like a large person had kicked the ship, just one time. To Sarah, it sounded like a muted explosion, somewhere far away, and definitely far above them.
And the zombie heard it, too. It ceased its grasping up at Sarah, and almost seemed to take stock.
Oh, no, Sarah thought. Don’t… don’t turn around.
She could see Park start to pull the hatch open.
And then, a few seconds later, another sound erupted. It was some kind of inexplicable, grinding, metallic scraping, and it came from up above them – on the port side. And then it descended, scratching and scraping the outside of the hull, all the way down.
Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon Page 17
