by Dirk Patton
Irina pulled the scarf down and leaned forward, kissing him softly.
“Let’s go find my uncle,” she said when their lips parted.
19
“What the fuck is going on?” Lucas asked softly, staring in horror at the birds surrounding us.
“Virus jumped to other species a long time ago,” I said.
“But that lady scientist you had me talk to said it was killing everything. Not causing this!”
“Can’t explain it,” I said. “But I’ve seen pigs, bats and birds that have been infected. Maybe it will kill them, but until it does they’re in the same kind of rage as an infected human.”
“That’s how you knew. Why you believed her so quickly.”
I nodded and we were silent for a few minutes, staring at the infected seagulls. They had calmed to a degree, no longer slamming their bodies against the plane, but they were still trying to find a weak point where they could start tearing their way inside.
“Why aren’t they eating the dead seals?” he asked.
“Infected want fresh meat,” I said. “Live meat. Seems it’s more about the act of killing than it is eating. That’s just my observation, and it may be complete bullshit, but it’s what I think.”
“Well that’s fucking great,” he said after a few more minutes passed. “So, what now, Einstein? I can’t start the motor with them covering us like that. Air intake will clog in about two seconds, and might even damage the prop if it hit enough of them.”
“Working on it,” I said and he shot me a look.
“What the bloody hell does that mean?”
“Means I don’t know,” I said. “Infected don’t give up when they’ve got prey cornered. They don’t leave.”
“You could have told me this before we left…” He turned to me with concern etched on his face. “Could there be birds that will attack at my place?”
“Possible,” I said, feeling the same fear for the people we’d left behind. “Bats, too. Got any of those around here?”
“Aye,” he said, turning the plane’s power on and grabbing a microphone off the dash.
He spent the next twenty minutes trying to reach Ziggy, without any success. Changing channels, he broadcast a mayday call, repeatedly. Finally, I leaned forward and turned the power off.
“What the hell?” he asked, mike still held near his mouth.
“Signal isn’t getting out with us sitting on the ground,” I said. “Save the batteries.”
He glared at me, anger replacing his fear. I held his eyes until he took a deep breath and looked away. With slow, careful movements he returned the microphone to its hook.
“You’re right,” he said in a low voice.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a sat phone.”
“Yeah, I do. Back at home.”
He looked around at the dozens of beady red eyes that stared back at us through the windows.
“Okay, then. Did you tell anyone where we were going?”
“Yeah. Ziggy knows. Smyth, too.”
“Alright, so how long before they come looking for us?”
“Probably not until tomorrow, at the earliest,” he said. “Then it’s an eight-hour drive across the outback, and that’s if they go straight through as fast as they can on dirt roads. If they’re searching for us as they drive, they’ll be going slower. Stopping every few miles to look around with binoculars. Best case, someone might find us in two days, but probably much longer.”
“Won’t make it that long,” I said, earning a nod of agreement.
It was late in the day, but even with the sun approaching the western horizon, it was hot in the plane. The night wouldn’t be as bad, but when it came up tomorrow morning, we were going to start baking. Rachel and I had been in a very similar situation when we’d first met in Atlanta. Trapped in a vehicle in the hot summer sun, but all we’d had to do was find a way to start it.
“What about the Herky Bird?” I asked, meaning the C-130 Hercules I’d arrived in.
“Sure, there’s room for it to land here,” Lucas answered. “But then what? They’re trapped, too. Besides, unless you’ve got some kind of psychic connection back to home, how the hell are they going to know we’re in trouble?”
“Damn, but you’re a negative little whiny bitch,” I said, smiling so I didn’t get my teeth knocked out.
“My family. My kids. If they’re outside and one of these flocks shows up, they could be in trouble before they even know there’s a threat.” He pointed at the seagulls clustered on the windscreen. “Look at those fuckin’ beaks! Few hundred of those bastards would shred someone right down to the bone in nothing flat!”
I nodded, the smile gone from my face.
“Sorry,” I said.
Lucas didn’t say anything and we lapsed into silence, watching the infected birds watch us. The sun was setting and I hoped that with darkness, instinct would take over and the seagulls would leave to find a place to roost. But as night fell, they didn’t show any sign of abandoning their trapped prey.
As the evening wore on, Lucas tried the radio several more times, with the same results as earlier. While he was doing this, I began poking around the interior of the plane. Opening compartments. Looking under seats.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked, shutting the power off and plunging us back into darkness.
“Don’t know,” I said. “Just thought I’d see if there was anything we had that would give me an idea.”
“Well?”
“Nothing,” I said in a distracted voice, staring at the flare gun I’d found in an emergency kit.
“What?” he asked softly.
I didn’t answer right away, trying to turn my wild musings into a workable idea.
“Anyway to dump fuel without going outside?” I asked without looking up.
“Yeah. There’s a valve in the back in case the tank needs to be drained. You’re thinking a fire?”
I shook my head, then shrugged.
“Human infected react differently based on sex,” I said, turning the gun over and breaking it open to check the shell in the chamber. “Males will stand right there and burn to death. Females, some of them at least, respect fire and will avoid it.”
“What about birds?”
“No idea,” I said. “We got enough fuel to try, and make it home if it works?”
“Sure, but there’s a bigger problem,” Lucas said. “That fuel will dump onto the ground right under us. Once it’s lit, we’ve only got a few seconds before we have to move. This baby isn’t exactly fire proof. And the only way to move is to start the engines. If they’re still blanketing us like this, well…”
I nodded, liking the idea less than when I’d come up with it.
“Last resort,” I said.
“Kind of feels like we’re already there.”
“We’re okay for now,” I said. “Sun’s down, but we’ve gotta be out of here by morning.”
“Easy for you to say,” Lucas said, looking at me. “You don’t need to take a dump.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? What are you, like four years old? Hold it!”
Lucas grinned, leaned to the side and ripped an obnoxiously loud fart. It took about three seconds for the smell to hit me. Covering my nose and face, trying not to gag, I turned away as he broke into laughter. At the moment, it might be worth facing the flock of seagulls just to have some fresh air.
An hour, and several horrendous farts later, I was ready to start a fire in the plane just to escape his flatulence. Lucas was unapologetic, probably because I’d called him a four-year-old. In desperation, I took two rounds out of my pistol and shoved one up each nostril. It actually did help, the smell of oiled metal with a hint of burnt gunpowder masked the nauseating miasma coming from my friend. It also sent him into a laughing fit, which made him fart even more.
“Okay. Enough!” I said, fanning the air in front of my face. “I give. We’ve gotta try the fire. If I have to spend the entire night in
here with that smell, I’m going to shoot you.”
“Yeah, that’ll work,” Lucas sputtered. “No gas is going to escape if I’m dead!”
Despite our circumstances, I couldn’t help but laugh at the image he’d just conjured in my head. After a couple of minutes, we settled down.
“How long will we have once we start the fire?” I asked.
“Not long. Far less than a minute. Last thing we need is for it to spread to the tires and damage them. I’m also worried about the control surfaces on the tail.”
“So… thirty seconds?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Lucas said, shrugging doubtfully. “Never tried something this crazy. You think it will actually work?”
“Better than sitting here and dying of asphyxiation,” I said with a grin.
“Okay. I’ll dump a couple of gallons. Then one of us has got to stick his arm far enough out of a window to get the right angle to land the flare where it pools up.”
I looked at the mass of birds pressed against the windscreen. Their hooked beaks would shred the flesh from my arm in seconds, and there was the very real risk that I’d drop the flare gun when they attacked. There was a roll of duct tape under the seat and I picked it up, thought for a second, then looked at Lucas.
“What?”
“Give me your shirt,” I said.
“What the hell for?”
“It’s heavy canvas. Tough. I’m going to wrap it around my hand and arm, then cover it with duct tape. Should give me enough protection that I don’t drop the flare when they attack.”
I hooked a thumb at the seagulls. Lucas looked at them for a second, then quickly stripped his shirt off. With his help, I taped the gun into my hand, then pulled first one, then the other sleeve over my arm. Starting at my hand, Lucas began wrapping me like a mummy, working all the way to my shoulder. When he was done, I could barely bend my arm, but the makeshift armor should buy me enough time with the birds.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Remember, the fuel is going to be beneath the centerline of the plane, about two meters up from the tip of the tail.”
He climbed out of his seat and squeezed into the back, ripping another fart as he moved.
“Gotta be flammable as hell in here by now,” I said. “Sure hope we don’t blow ourselves up.”
Lucas shook his head and muttered to himself as he stretched out over the rear seat and opened an access hatch. He looked over his shoulder at me and I nodded that I was ready. With his hand on the valve, he took a breath, then paused and looked up at the plane’s ceiling. I did the same, hearing a buzzing that was steadily growing louder.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked, unable to see beyond the seagulls.
Lucas shook his head and kept looking up as the noise reached a crescendo. It was loud, even inside the plane, and sounded a bit like some kind of saw. The birds grew agitated, flapping their wings against the aircraft’s windows. Then, as quickly as they’d covered us, they departed.
Leaning forward, I could see the massive flock moving away in the moonlight, but couldn’t spot whatever was creating the noise. But that didn’t matter.
“We’re clear!” I shouted. “Get us out of here!”
Lucas slammed the access panel closed and scrambled over the seats. He didn’t waste any time, hitting the starters the instant he could reach the button. The engines whined to life and he didn’t give them even a second to warm up before shoving the throttles all the way forward.
They sputtered briefly, then roared to full power. I was thrown back in the seat as we lurched forward. I was looking for the seagulls as Lucas pulled on the yoke and got us into the air, but couldn’t spot them.
20
We climbed quickly over the vast Australian outback, which was completely dark. As I struggled to remove the duct tape that was binding my arm, Lucas tried the radio, finally succeeding in reaching Ziggy once we were at cruising altitude. In a panicked voice, he warned her to make sure everyone was inside and that all the doors and windows were closed. She surprised both of us when she handed the radio over to Commander Sherman.
“Got a call from a friend named Jessica,” he said, causing Lucas and me to exchange surprised glances. “She told me what was going on and that we’re not in any danger here. Said she’d be keeping an eye out and would call if anything changed.”
I wanted to ask questions, but we were on an unsecured radio frequency that anyone, including the Russians, could be monitoring. But I got the gist of the message. What I didn’t understand was how Jessica had managed to scare away the seagulls, but I could wait to find out until I had access to encrypted comms.
I could tell Lucas had a lot of questions, but he’d been around the block a few times and understood the necessity of not revealing too much information on an unsecured channel. With a sigh, he thanked Sherman and signed off.
“Bloody hell,” he breathed.
“My guardian angel,” I said, still tugging on the tough tape. “Remember the first time I called you? In the middle of the night? She was the one you talked to at first.”
“So, what’s the deal? How the fuck did she just save us?”
“Don’t know how she did it, yet, but she’s got control of some NSA surveillance satellites and it seems like she can pretty much see everything.”
I tore the last strip of tape free, then worked Lucas’s shirt off my arm.
“This is what it’s like in America?” he asked after several minutes.
“This? This was nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
He looked at me, his face appearing oddly distorted by the dim light from the instrument panel, but didn’t say anything else. We settled back into silence, each of us retreating into our own thoughts.
For a while, I marveled at the feeling of flying through space. Above, the sky was perfect, black velvet with millions of stars twinkling like scattered diamonds. The entire experience was awe inspiring.
“I’m starting to understand why you like flying,” I said, staring up at the Southern Cross.
“Nothing quite like it,” Lucas said. “Ever been on a ship in the middle of the ocean at night?”
“Couple of times,” I said. “But both were aircraft carriers and they were conducting flight operations. It was nothing like this.”
We fell silent, again, and ninety minutes later spotted Lucas’s homestead well before we were overhead. It was lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, brilliant electric lights starkly in contrast against the dark ground.
“What’s your power source?” I asked as we began to descend.
“Solar and a couple of generators,” he answered, peering out the side window at the lights below. “Lots of batteries, and they’re usually more than enough to get us through the night, unless we had a cloudy day. But those are rare out here. Ziggy must have fired up the generators. Looks like she’s got every light in the place burning.”
I could hear a degree of irritation in his voice, so I dropped the subject. He was probably worried about the fuel that was being consumed, and rightly so, but that was between him and his wife. The last thing I needed was to get caught up in an argument that had nothing to do with me.
Lucas descended at a steep angle, turning on bright landing lights and buzzing the length of the runway. It seemed as if we were flying low enough to skim the rough, red dirt.
“Checking for wildlife,” Lucas explained. “Two hundred pound roo can ruin your fucking night. Mate of mine, landing at night, hit one a few months ago. Didn’t survive the encounter.”
I grasped the grab bar tightly as he climbed steeply, banking hard to circle around and line up for a landing.
“Maybe we should check again,” I said, knuckles white as I held on for dear life.
“Maybe we should check for birds,” he said as the plane’s tires thumped onto the dirt.
Speed bled off quickly and he taxied at a sedate pace to the barn. The doors were still open and h
e steered us in, overhead lights coming on automatically. Engines shut down, I was happy to step out onto solid ground.
After helping spin the plane around so it was facing out, I just had time to get my hands up before Dog slammed into me. I guess I’d been gone too long for his liking. Some of Lucas’s dogs followed him into the hangar and started in our direction to see what was going on, but Dog faced them and rumbled a loud warning growl. They stopped in their tracks, then turned and raced off into the night.
Stepping into the open air, I caught the whiff of cooking meat and realized I was famished. Lucas and I both stood there for a few moments, looking up at the sky and scanning the horizon. Seeing nothing out of place, he closed the doors and climbed onto a battered ATV that was parked to the side of the hangar. He started the motor and looked at me expectantly. I glanced around, but there wasn’t another vehicle.
“You gettin’ on?” he asked. “It’s damn near a klick to the house.”
“Think I’ll walk,” I said, staring at the tiny rear seat that would push me forward until I was pressed against the part of his anatomy that was emitting all the foul odors.
“You really think I’d say anything about you riding bitch?” he asked with a grin.
I raised my middle finger and set off in the direction of the bright lights. The ATV’s motor revved, then Lucas shot past, leaving me walking in a cloud of powdery, red dust. Dog stayed at my side and I told him about what I’d been doing as we plodded along. He was a good listener.
It was a warm night after a hot day, and Ziggy had set up several long folding tables on a large patch of green grass that was what I’d call a back yard. Strings of light bulbs stretched from several tall poles to the side of the house, creating a party atmosphere. Farther out, brilliant floods were aimed towards the open desert, creating a perimeter of light around the entire area.
All of Lucas’s men, Nitro and his crew as well as the SEALs were seated around the tables, drinking beer. His older kids were running around, chasing each other and crawling under the tables. Ziggy, Little John on her hip, worked two massive charcoal grills, and whatever she was cooking smelled heavenly. Rachel walked out of the house, carrying a giant platter of raw meat. Music played from a boom box and voices were raised in conversation and laughter.
