Then, in the next second, the rent-a-cop abruptly stopped swimming.
Still trying to wrap his mind around the strange behavior, Duncan rose to his hands and knees. And as if he was watching a mirror image of himself, the man next to him rose to his hands and knees, every movement economical and deliberate.
Just as Duncan was going to deliver another verbal barrage, the true nature of his predicament came to light—literally—when the man’s head panned his way, allowing the light spill to fully illuminate his narrow, ashen face.
“Charlie,” Duncan bellowed, his hand reaching for the pistol on his hip. “Little help here.” Truth be told, this was the most scared he had been in his entire adult life. Crashing a chopper in the jungle—which he had done more than once—was a distant second. The wet growl coming from the guard’s mouth stood his neck-hair on end and made him pucker up down south.
The .45 cleared leather and, in one practiced movement, Duncan thumbed back the hammer and brought the pistol to bear. Aiming cross-body while holding most of his weight off the ground with one outstretched arm was not an easy feat. Feeling the guard’s listless stare ripping the meat from his bones, disconcerting to say the least. So he pushed the notion that the infected man was someone’s son, husband, or even dad from his mind, said a silent prayer of forgiveness, and squeezed off a single shot.
The boom was deafening in the semi-enclosed building. And his aim was way off. Instead of punching a fist-sized hole in the man’s ribcage near his heart as aimed, the speeding hunk of lead first hit his outstretched right arm an inch north of the elbow, snapped the supporting muscle, numerous connective tendons, and splintered all three long bones there into dozens of razor-sharp shards. Consequently, as the report crashed around in the dark, the guy spilled back to the cement floor for an encore face-plant that sent a handful of broken teeth skittering off into the gloom.
Though there was a harsh ringing in his ears, in his mind Duncan heard Charlie’s disembodied voice saying, “Remember the rules.”
There was a spatter of blood glistening shiny and black on the cement, but none pumping from the catastrophic wound caused by the hurtling lead.
Duncan got to his knees.
Remember the rules.
Inexplicably, the mortally wounded man began struggling. Smearing blood in arcs with his scrabbling fingers. Splintered bones made a clicking noise as it struggled to push up onto its hands and knees.
Duncan brought his left leg up and planted his boot on the floor. Arms outstretched, the 1911 held two-fisted, he centered the sights between brow and nose on the thing’s face, where lips curled and teeth were clicking madly, and squeezed off two more ear-splitting shots.
The thing’s head from the nose up dissolved in a pink spray, and the wet guttural growl issuing forth from its chest ceased instantly.
For the third time in a handful of seconds the infected security guard met the floor face first. Only this time there was no fight left in him, and not much of a face left to plant.
***
If Lloyd had stayed in the control tower for a few more seconds, the backup generator would have spooled up fully, the lights would have flickered to life, and the computers would have whirred back online. Consequently, as things returned to normal, he would have felt obligated to stay. Then, curiosity would have gotten the better of him and he would have resumed watching Grant through the binoculars.
In that alternate universe, he would have seen the doors to Hangar 1 part and the new guy pitch forward face first into the dark chasm as if a rug had been pulled from under him. Next, from what could only be construed as the resulting flash from a single gunshot, he would have seen the black slit light up with the colors of the sun for a split second. Silenced by multi-paned glass and insulation designed to keep aircraft engine noises at bay, the .45’s booming report would have been lost to him inside the tower. Moreover, had he not been descending the stairway behind Tony, he would have witnessed Grant’s legs from the knees down disappearing slowly into the building’s vertical maw until the scuffed tan work boots cleared the threshold between the poured-concrete pad inside and sun-baked tarmac outside.
But he hadn’t. He and Tony had committed to a hastily hatched plan of escape. And by the time Duncan was closing the hangar doors, both men were blocks away and nosing their vehicles onto Interstate 84, Lloyd driving east towards his home near Hood River, and Tony speeding west and hoping to get home, scoop up his family, and meet up at Lloyd’s rural abode within the hour in order to ride this wretched Omega thing out.
***
Fearing that more infected would be drawn in by the trio of gunshots, Duncan rose to his feet and staggered off toward the parted doors. Staying at what he estimated to be an arms-reach back from the opening, he flattened his body against the warm metal, swept the .45 up in front of him for good measure, and eyeballed the tarmac and runway all the way west to the control tower.
Clear.
So he crossed the light spill and performed the same cautious maneuver, peering towards the east end of the runway.
Also clear.
He slipped the pistol home in its holster, drew in a deep cleansing breath, and stalked into the gloom to search the many drawers and cubbies underneath the workbenches for a working flashlight.
Duncan was three paces from the guard’s corpse when the overhead lights snapped on with a hiss. Momentarily blinded, he stopped in his tracks, drew the pistol, and pressed it against his thigh. A half-beat later, from the direction of the office, he heard door hinges creaking.
“That you, Charlie?”
There was no answer. All he heard was the throb of V-twin engines filtering in through the open hangar doors behind him. They were somewhere southwest of the airport, presumably on the Interstate, and drawing near.
Blue tracers finally fading from his eyes, he saw Charlie emerge through the side door, sit down hard on the step, and issue a pained grunt. “You bag another one?”
“Yep,” Duncan replied, walking his gaze down the helicopter’s port side.
“Are you flying east or driving?”
Ignoring Charlie’s verbal slip-up, Duncan said, “You were right. We should have gassed up the Dodge earlier.”
“Driving then, huh,” Charlie said. He suddenly listed to his right and had to grab onto the door jamb to keep from keeling over.
After one more quick glance off his right shoulder, Duncan nodded. “We have no choice, Charlie. This bird’s turbine is disassembled. Looks like she’s in the middle of a routine overhaul being undertaken with no sense of urgency. Makes sense with Darren away buying new birds.”
While emitting a drawn-out phlegm-addled noise, Charlie hinged forward. Finished clearing his throat, he spit a wad on the concrete floor and said, “Better find some gas for the Dodge then.”
After doing a double-take at the open hangar doors, Duncan took the .45 from his hip, approached Charlie as fast as his sore legs could propel him, and handed him the black pistol—butt first. He nodded over his shoulder. “I’m in no shape to close that thing manually all by myself. You look like you’re in no position to lend a hand. And I don’t want to waste the time it would take to figure out how to get that pulley system back up and running …”
Understanding exactly where Duncan was going with this, Charlie interrupted. “Go,” he said, “top the tank off while there’s still electricity going to the pumps.”
Nodding again, Duncan said, “Promise me that if more like that guy comes through those doors, you let ‘em get close and then follow your precious rules to the letter.”
Charlie agreed, the word “promise” sounding more like a grunt than a two-syllable word.
After delivering a reassuring squeeze to his friend’s shoulder, Duncan edged past him and went straight to the desk, where he allotted himself ten seconds to rifle through the drawers in search of keys to the pumps.
Coming up empty, he left the office through the door they had come in through and lock
ed it behind him.
He loped to the Dodge, got in and got it started. Staying on the airport property, he wheeled the rig around the northeast corner of Hangar 1, where he used his access card at another security gate to enter the airport proper. Once on the tarmac, he steered straight for the bank of red pumps standing all alone on the airport’s southeast corner underneath a lean-to-style roof. He parked broadside to the fueling station and hopped out, electronic keycard in hand.
***
Ten minutes after leaving Charlie all alone in the hangar, the truck’s tanks were topped and Duncan was wheeling his rig back toward the trio of hangars to scoop his friend up.
Lady Luck is not only back, he thought with a grin. The old gal is riding shotgun. The keycard that had first gained him access to the transient area, then the airport tarmac, and miraculously was still recognized by the pump, had just gotten him back through both of the rolling security gates—the latter of which he stopped from closing fully with the front third of his Dodge.
After having to open the hangar doors manually when the power failed the first time, the last thing he wanted to have to do should it fail again was open this one manually. So leaving the truck behind with the gate wedged against the right front fender, he half-sprinted, half-loped across the parking lot toward Stump Town Aviation East.
Chapter 39
The door to the office was still locked when Duncan came to a halt in front of it. Breathing hard, he banged on the door and fished in his pockets for the keys. Feeling the familiar silky fur of the rabbit’s foot, he hauled them out and found the one stamped DO NOT DUPLICATE. So as not to catch a slug from his own pistol, he banged again and called his friend’s name to announce he was coming in. There was no response. In his mind’s eye he saw Charlie on his back in the office doorway, eyes wide and lifeless and fixed on the steel rafters. Yellow bile and chunks of last night’s meal—a food-poisoning death sentence—trickled from the corners of his mouth.
Duncan quickly dismissed that nonsense. Food poisoning didn’t kill that quickly. Then, like a Mike Tyson gut punch, all of the clues he had been trying his best to ignore fell into place like so many puzzle pieces, and there was no denying the root of Charlie’s illness. Still coming to grips with that sudden epiphany, a second and more terrifying vision usurped the first. He saw Charlie upright and wavering in place. Only his face didn’t wear an expectant look. Instead, it was the same expressionless and ashen piece of work that the cyclist and streetwalker and security guard all had worn. And in his imagination, Charlie was waiting on the other side of the door to make a meal out of him.
In his head he heard Charlie saying in his reedy voice: The doctor said they do not act like us. They’re not able to reason. Or plan. Or scheme. They only want to feed. And one bite is fatal.
Duncan was partially on board with that. But still, the river of denial ran deep. He hadn’t seen his friend get bitten. Furthermore, Charlie, one of the most honest men Duncan had ever known, had not mentioned getting bit. So a two plus two equation this was not. Suddenly the thought dawned on him that if Charlie was one of them, he would have already reacted to the shouts. Dead weight would be hitting the door furiously. Rattling it in its hinges behind mindless attempts to get at him through the closed door.
To eat him.
But there was nothing to indicate those worst-case scenarios had come to fruition. Feeling a sense of relief wash over him, he worked the key in the lock and turned the knob, every muscle in his body tensing.
The door swung inward as quietly as before.
The stench of gun smoke hit him full on. As he dragged a sleeve across his brow, he saw the blue Mariners cap on the floor. Then the desk was revealed right to left by degrees. Tiny slices of the whole-picture pie. First he saw the Far Side desk calendar, a new date now showing on it. Then came the back of the monitor and the big bold self-advertisement stamped on its case. Drawn to something out of place on the wall behind the desk, his eyes flicked from the word DELL to the scale model aircraft and awards lining the built-in shelving behind the desk.
Some small bits of something gray and shiny clung to the rotors of the Bell 429. Crimson spatter painted the plaques acknowledging Darren and Stump Town for their Ongoing Excellence In Commercial Aviation and apparently coming in Tops In Customer Satisfaction 2010.
Why those things stood out in the snapshot in time baffled Duncan as the door made its steady march to the stop. Halfway through the one-eighty arc it was cutting across the tile entry, Duncan’s worst fear was instantly nullified. His friend was not one of the undead things. However, Charlie was dead. That much was clear. And he had done it the right way. Muzzle clamped between the teeth that were no longer fixed in his misshapen head. The blood and brains that weren’t dripping from the drop-down ceiling and bric-a-brac jamming the shelves were oozing out onto the blotter, where his upper body and what was left of his head had come to rest.
Inexplicably the .45 was still clutched in Charlie’s right hand, which to Duncan’s amazement had ended up on the desk, barrel aimed at the gaping hole in his head, as if ready to deliver a second round if the first hadn’t been sufficient.
Gravity and relaxing muscles were to blame. Of that Duncan had no doubt. Like Tilly, Charlie was one of the lucky ones. But how he had become infected was the question nagging at Duncan.
“What’d you go and do, Charlie?” he cried out, his breath coming in gasps.
Stepping over a saucer-sized chunk of cranium, he eased around to the corpse’s right side. Swiping away an errant tear, he angled in closer and tilted his head so he was looking at the items on the desk through the lower halves of his bifocals.
On the near corner of the desk was a sheet torn from the desktop calendar. Sitting on the sheet, about the size of a Tic-Tac, was a yellowish-white sliver of something he didn’t recognize at first. He walked his gaze over the pale hand and gore-slickened .45 and settled it on a message written in Charlie’s hand.
Standing there breathing in hot air heavy with the metallic tang of freshly spilt blood and the gut-churning stench from Charlie’s loosened bowels, he read the message aloud, softly, in a voice full of defeat: “I’m sorry I had to do this to you, Duncan. The kid who saved my butt by the apartments, he also accidentally killed me. A piece of tooth from the guy he put down got me. Once again, I’m sorry, Old Man. I thought it was just a scratch and a bruise. I didn’t know the truth until I got a look at the back of my arm in the bathroom mirror. Go on and find Logan. Please forgive me. You must leave me here. Do not bother burying me.”
The last two sentences were bold, written over so many times the paper was scored through. And to make his desire crystal clear, Charlie had finished each of those sentences with a flurry of exclamation marks.
After wiping his eyes dry and drawing a deep breath through his mouth, Duncan moved closer, still being careful to not come into contact with the blood and gore. He pinched the right sleeve of Charlie’s tee shirt between thumb and forefinger and hitched it up a few inches. As a result, Charlie’s limp hand slipped away from the .45, his fingers drawing a bloody rainbow on the desk blotter.
Sure enough, on the back of his dead friend’s right arm was an angry red gash welling up dead center in the purple bruise caused, presumably, from the butt delivered by the infected thing’s crushed head. There was no way to be sure. All he knew was Charlie was dead and thankfully hadn’t come back hungry for flesh. With fresh tears welling in his eyes, Duncan plucked a monogrammed pen from the coffee cup, tore two sheets from the desk calendar, and scribbled two messages in his hard-to-read chicken scratch.
On the first he wrote: Darren, I am truly sorry for leaving your place in disarray. The security guard attacked me first. My friend, Charlie … that’s pretty evident. Please know that I am not running from the law. I just feel the need to immediately distance myself from the infection and the big city. If you make it back here and find this note, it must mean that the National Guard has gotten things under contro
l. Also know that I’m done burning bridges. I put twenty gallons on your port account with my old keycard. I will return from Utah as soon as possible and avail myself to answer any questions the authorities may have. Sincerely, D.W.
On the second sheet he wrote: CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER!! Then he took a length of clear tape from the dispenser on the desk and affixed it to the top of the sheet.
The first note he left on a clean spot on the blotter along with the key stamped DO NOT DUPLICATE. He fished the wad of bills from his pocket. Peeled three twenties from the Keno winnings and left them partially covering the key and note.
As part of the crime scene, he figured the .45 needed to stay. The shotgun would have to suffice, for now.
“Bye, friend,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose to staunch the tears. “You followed the rules, Charlie. You did what you had to do. Nobody has to know you died by your own hand. That … I’ll take to the grave with me. I’ll see you on the other side, brother.”
Duncan grabbed his NRA bag full of clothes off the floor, retrieved his shotgun from where he’d propped it next to the desk and then turned to leave. However, when he spun around he noticed the miniature fridge tucked away in the corner. Wrapped in a woodgrain vinyl skin, it blended in with the wall paneling and was nearly lost in the shadow below the window.
He worked his way around front of the desk, went to one knee before the two-foot-tall cube, and gripped the top of the door, which was cool to the touch and vibrating softly from internal mechanicals at work.
Expecting to find only conditioned air inside, he yanked open the door and hinged over to peer inside. In addition to cool air—which felt wonderful as it hit his flushed face—he found the entire fridge loaded with cans and bottles, all lined up neatly and facing him.
ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 22
