“But…”
“Now, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
Pam dragged her daughter out of the building. They were alone. It was unnerving, and they started to walk toward the exit. They saw the crowd rapidly moving in the distance. Pam picked up speed.
“Mommy. What is that?” Tawny gasped.
Pam stopped. Her daughter was pointing up.
They approached the flamingo exhibit. A small rollercoaster rail hovered just twenty feet above them, covered with a flock of the pink birds.
“I didn’t know they could fly,” Tawny said. “Why are they doing that?”
“I don’t know,” Pam said.
“If they can fly, why don’t they just leave?”
The flamingo exhibit was an open pond enclosed by walls that kept people out, not the birds in.
“Don’t you remember? We asked their trainer that a few years ago. They’re just happy inside the pond. They get fed and there are no predators to make them want to leave, so they don’t fly away.”
“Oh. Then why are they up there now?”
The answer frightened Pam. If there was plenty of food, that left only one other explanation. They were afraid of something. And whatever it was, the birds didn’t want to be on the ground.
“Come on, Tawny. Let’s hurry.”
They started to run, but stopped quickly as the crowd in the distance began to surge back into the park. Pam froze as screams of terror echoed off the buildings. Within moments, the mass of people panicked and began running back at them.
“Mommy!” Tawny screamed.
Pam looked around and saw a building to their left. Café 64 looked like a good place to shelter. She pulled her daughter with her and entered the abandoned restaurant.
She knew how to protect her family. Her husband had drilled safety into her for the nearly twenty years they had been married. He called it “situational awareness”. She’d thought he was paranoid at first, but accepted his instructions. After all, one of the reasons she loved him was for his instinct to protect.
When he’d leave on an extended tour, she found herself using his knowledge to keep the two of them out of trouble. Observing their surroundings while walking to a parked car instead of texting or talking on the phone, had once kept them from running into a group of rough-looking thugs. She’d later found out that two other people had been beaten and robbed in that very area later that day. Another thing he’d taught her was to let the garage door close completely before shutting off the engine or unlocking the car door. It could keep a home invader from getting to her. Now the instinct to protect, and her husband’s training, kicked in.
She searched for a solid door. She needed something that could be locked from the inside and hold up to a determined assault. Crowds tended to become unified by a mob mentality. Regardless of the reason for the riot outside, she didn’t want to leave their safety to the throng’s good graces.
She ran to the back of the room and found the kitchen, but the doors couldn’t be locked.
“The bathrooms!” she cried. “Where are the bathrooms?”
“Over there!” Tawny yelled, pointing to the overhead placards.
“Come on!”
Just as she turned to run, a man burst through the front entrance and rushed to the back of the restaurant. He was a SeaWorld employee. The crowd was in a panic outside, and Pam could hear screams from the masses. But some of the cries didn’t sound human.
“The animals have escaped!” Tawny yelled as they both heard one particularly horrid screech. It sounded like a wild predator had gotten loose and was tearing through the crowd.
Pam pulled her daughter toward the bathroom doors but stopped when she heard the sound of gears and motors engaging in the wall.
She spun back and saw the windows and door disappearing as metal storm shutters began to descend.
The employee reappeared, holding a large butcher knife and panting as he yelled at the slow-moving barrier.
“Go fass!” he yelled with a heavy, Jamaican accent.
As the shutters slid to the halfway point, six more people ducked under the descending metal blinder.
A seventh person began crawling under the blind but suddenly screamed and was pulled back outside.
“Oh my God!” one of the new women yelled.
The park employee leapt forward and tried to pull her back into the restaurant, but recoiled as a deformed, claw-like set of fingers grabbed the bottom of the descending barrier. The gears began to grind, then a fail-safe kicked in and the movement stopped.
“Wah di rass!” he yelled. The tall man reared back with the knife and chopped three fingers from the hand.
Thick, chunky fluid squirted out of the stubs, and a horrific, bestial scream echoed off the metal door. The misshapen hand withdrew, and the barrier began to move down. It finally closed with a resounding thud as the deformed fingers continued to wriggle on the restaurant’s floor.
The big Jamaican stood over the digits he’d severed. Their writhing movement appeared coordinated, as if they were still attached to the hand. They spasmed in unison, grasping and twitching in a macabre dance.
“Dah Devil,” he hissed.
An older man stepped forward and squatted down. He produced a pen from his pocket and touched the wiggling index finger. It flexed and raked the plastic with its nail, leaving a deep gash.
He stepped back in amazement.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he stammered. “They shouldn’t react so violently. Maybe a quiver or twitch, but not like that.”
“Like you’ve seen chopped off fingers,” a second man said.
“Actually, I have. I was a corpsman in the Navy before going to medical school. I saw men lose their fingers twice. Never like this.”
“You a docta?” the Jamaican asked.
“Yeah, for almost thirty years.”
“Den, wat a guh dung di rupshan outta door?”
“I don’t understand.”
The man grunted and forced himself to slow down. “Yah, mahn. What tis out dere? What tis it?” he said, pointing outside.
“I don’t know. Maybe drugs? Bath salts can make a person crazy.”
“Nah, mahn. No drug makes dem all sick inna dem head. Deh is too many.”
The doctor stood quietly. For several moments, the room was still as the sounds of the dying crowd reverberated off the steel shutters.
“Maybe they were all drugged,” he said unconvincingly.
“Like terrorists did this?” the second man asked.
“I guess,” the doctor replied.
A loud bang! exploded from the entrance, followed by more and more hammering sounds. Whatever was out there, they were growing in size and really wanted inside.
“We have to get out of here!” one of the other survivors cried.
“No,” the doctor hissed. “You open the door and we’re all dead.”
“But…”
A primal scream roared from outside, followed by dozens of similar cries farther off. The pounding on the steel doors intensified and, occasionally, a loud bang could be heard as someone—or something—flung itself against the barrier.
Those inside shrank together. They huddled at the back of the restaurant, transfixed by the horror that was just beyond the inch-thick shutters. Minutes seemed like hours as death slashed and clawed at the metal barrier.
Tawny grasped Pam’s waist and quietly cried.
A particularly loud bang sounded, causing one of the other women to gasp. She was answered by several animalistic screams. The assault on the building intensified.
“Mommy. We need to hide,” Tawny said.
Pam turned and saw the women’s bathroom door and silently led them both inside. Two other women joined them. Pam twisted the lock. The cacophony of violence from outside diminished.
In the relative silence of the white-tiled room, Pam could hear the others breathing. Each had a distinctive sound with one woman gasping back her tears and the
other almost panting from fear. Tawny clutched her side, her head buried on her bosom.
They stood in the large room. Sinks were on one wall and toilets on the other. The place was relatively clean. The staff had done their end-of-day chores before the chaos outside had begun.
Pam pushed her daughter from her side and went to a stall. She came out with a handful of toilet seat covers and dumped them on the tile floor. Mother and daughter sat down on the paper, with their backs against the wall, and stared at the locked door. The other two were quick to follow suit.
“I’m Pam. This is my daughter Tawny.”
“My name’s Tracy,” the first woman said.
“I’m Barb,” the second added.
“What did you guys see out there?” Pam asked. “We didn’t see much. We just heard the screams, saw the crowds running this way and ran in here.”
“That’s all I saw too,” Barb said.
“They were monsters,” Tracy replied. “I saw one of them.”
“Monsters?” Pam said. “Come on. You need to relax.”
“No! I mean it! You saw that…hand. You saw the fingers. You saw the black chunks of blood on the floor. They’re monsters.”
Pam gave her an incredulous look.
Tracy shook her head and almost yelled. “I saw one of them jump on a young man’s back and bite him in the throat. I mean, really bite him. I saw the blood. It was…it was squirting out of him like a hose. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Tracy stopped and caught her breath. She gasped twice before continuing.
“I saw the thing that did it. It was human, but it wasn’t. Its face was deformed with black veins, and its mouth was covered with blood. It was eating the man’s flesh! It had horrible teeth, like a shark or some other God-awful creature. And its eyes were like a cat. Slits that glowed when it looked at you. It screamed. That horrible, terrible scream. It sounded like a wild beast, not a human being. It was a monster.”
“Mommy. I thought there were no monsters.”
Pam was about to reassure Tawny that monsters weren’t real, when a particularly loud roar came from outside. It was the collective sound of pain and hunger and anger, all balled up into one, primal group scream.
The women went quiet.
A few moments later, Pam broke the silence.
“I didn’t think they were real, either,” Pam gently replied. “I was wrong.”
Lost Valley
Present Day
Pam stopped speaking, her voice trailing off as she finished her story. The table remained respectfully silent. Each of them had enough experience with trauma to recognize the signs of a fresh wound reopening.
“Winston was a nice man,” Tawny finally said, breaking the cryptic silence.
“Who’s Winston?” Jennifer asked.
“He was the Jamaican employee who saved us,” Pam replied.
“Winston Edwards the Third!” Tawny said, smiling, before a darkness fell over her.
“We held out pretty well,” Pam interjected. “We didn’t dare leave the building. We were cooped up for months. They were always out there.”
“We had plenty to eat and enough bottled water for an army,” Barb whispered, adding to the story for the first time. “We even had electricity for over a week before it went dark.”
“We ate all the refrigerated food first,” Pam added. “Then it was snack food and boxes of rice and beans.”
“We had propane to cook with, up until about two months ago. After that, we ran out of options pretty quickly.”
“That’s when Winston left,” Tawny said. “He saw the food was almost gone. He went out to find more.” The young girl went quiet and stared out the window.
“He never returned,” Pam said quietly. “Not a peep from outside. No screams. No cries. No sounds. He just vanished.”
Tawny began to tear up. She leaned over and put her head on her mother’s shoulder. “I miss him.”
Pam kissed the young girl’s forehead and sighed.
“Winston kept us all from going crazy,” Pam began. “We’d be sitting in the dark at night, listening to the monsters roaming about. I was convinced we were going to go crazy.”
“But Mr. Edwards wouldn’t let us. Isn’t that right, Mom?”
“No, baby. He didn’t.”
“He told us stories!” Tawny said. “The ones he used to tell his younger sisters and brothers. He was the oldest of eleven kids. Isn’t that right, Mom?”
Pam smiled and nodded.
“My favorite was about the golden table. And the river Mumma.”
“That was a happy one, wasn’t it?” Pam replied.
“I didn’t think I’d like the ghost stories. But it made me forget about the crazies outside,” Tawny said wistfully. “He had a lot of ghost stories.”
“After he left,” Pam continued. “We waited a few weeks, then two more of us left. They disappeared as well. A couple days ago, the three of us tried to find help. That’s when the crazies caught us.”
Hope’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. It must have been horrible.”
“What happened to the rest of your friends?” Carver asked.
“They stayed behind,” Tawny said. “We were supposed to go back for them after we found more food.”
“I don’t understand. Weren’t you trying to escape?” Carver asked.
“Of course. But we needed food and medicine before getting away.”
“Let’s start over,” Shader said. “Just what were you guys planning?”
“After the last two people disappeared, we decided to all leave together. We hadn’t heard a peep for so long, we figured they’d just found a safe place.”
“So, there are three more of you left?” Carver asked.
“Yeah. Doc Miller, his wife, and a man named Dennis.”
“Why didn’t they come with you?”
“Dennis was sick. Blood infection. He was too weak to travel, and Doc said he needed antibiotics. He accidentally cut his foot. The next thing you know, his ankle was swollen, and you could see the infection moving up his leg. That’s why we needed medicine. After Dennis got better, we were going to leave as a group.”
“We could use a real doctor,” Chris Reedy said. “What kind of medicine did he practice?”
“He’s a general surgeon.”
“That’s very interesting,” Chris replied while nodding at Carver.
“You know, I’ve never seen the Penguin Encounter,” Shader added.
“What are you saying?” Pam asked, her eyes perking up.
“If I’m not mistaken, they’re suggesting a rescue mission,” Carver said. “And I must admit, it sounds like a really good idea.”
— 12 —
Seahawk One
Over Ramona, California
Carver
Thirty Minutes Before Dawn
“When you go in search of honey, you must expect to be stung by bees.”
― Joseph Joubert
Carver leaned back and stared out of the helicopter’s open cargo door.
The growing light from the east was breaking through the night, painting the high, wispy clouds a light pink and yellow in the otherwise inky sky. Below them, abandoned towns lay desolate. Nothing moved as the infection had quickly overrun the area, leaving only the dead and infected behind.
Carver looked out and above. Everly was in the Viper, providing firepower if they ran into any trouble. He rose and moved to the open door. Sergeant Potoski gripped the mounted machine gun and scanned the ground below. The giant New Yorker was the crew chief on the V-22 Osprey that had been used to evacuate survivors to Lost Valley. He was now the Seahawk’s door gunner. Carver patted him on the shoulder, letting the Marine know he had company. Carver leaned out and looked at the passing scenery.
Abandoned cars clogged the intersections of a once vibrant suburb. Several burned-out buildings and one gas station lay in ruins. As the morning light increased in intensity, he could
distinguish smaller objects.
Several skeletal corpses could be discerned, while at one intersection, a pack of dogs sprinted from one side of the road to the other. Carver didn’t know if they were infected at first, but a pack of Variants appeared a moment later in hot pursuit.
“Good luck with that,” Potoski chuckled over the craft’s radio headset, pointing at the infected hunters. “No way they’re fast enough to catch those dogs.”
Carver grunted. This was the fourth group of Variants they’d seen so far.
It was depressing to think that the creatures had survived this long. There were two possibilities. Either they didn’t need to feed as much as the intel people thought, or there were still uninfected providing a food source for the creatures.
Maybe it was both, he thought.
The Lost Valley survivors had kept their activity localized around just a few places. Air bases had given them access to Avgas and military supplies, while a wholesale food warehouse and a couple of commercial nurseries had been their sources for the rest of their needs. Twice, they’d ventured out to recover fuel tanker trucks. Those had been located in lightly populated areas, within an hour’s drive of the camp. No Variants nor survivors had been encountered on those drives.
The helicopter passed over Ramona as it followed Route 78 out of the mountains. SOP (standard operation procedure) dictated they travel along a highway or other easily accessible road in case there was a mechanical problem, forcing an overland rescue.
“We’ll be flying near Miramar, right?” Carver asked over the headset.
“Copy that, Red One. It’s ten minutes out and to port,” the pilot replied.
“Can you do a flyover? I’d like to see what the assets on the ground look like.”
“Copy that, Red One.”
The helicopter banked, shifting its flight slightly to the south. A few minutes later, Carver could see the giant Marine air base come into view. Not much had changed since their last and only visit five months earlier.
V-22B Ospreys were aligned in several rows, awaiting crews and pilots who had long-since died or turned. Several lines of attack helicopters, including a few of Everly’s Viper SuperCobras stood quietly on the tarmac. Their wings bristled with weapons and the sharp, angular lines of their long insect-like frames oozed with deadly intent.
Extinction Survival Series (Book 3): Cost of Survival Page 10
