What in the hell is she talking about? Can she read minds? How did she know that’s what I was thinking? Did we talk about this already and I just forgot?
“You heard me and Leesh talking?”
“What? No, just now, when you were fighting them. You were kinda talking, maybe to yourself, I don’t know, but I could hear you. We all could. Max and Marty looked at each other and said god I love that kid. That’s when we all ran to help you and Felecia.”
“That was out loud?” Shit, I’m really starting to lose it here. “I thought I was only thinking it,” I gasp. “I said all that?”
“I don’t know, it was kinda choppy, random, not like sentences. It’s okay, I think we’re all thinking it. Don’t worry, you just need water and rest. You’re gonna be okay,” she yells, progressively getting louder. Why the hell is she yelling? I’m right here. She says something else but I can’t hear her over the sound of…
The helicopter! The propellers are moving! She got it, Maxwell got it going! The blades are spinning. That’s not the wind hitting me in the face, blowing beads of sweat from my forehead, it’s our medevac chopper.
Me and Sami both let out a howling laugh when we realize what’s going on, our eyes misting up as we let go of the pilot’s ankles. Doesn’t matter, we don’t need him anymore, she got the helicopter started.
The hoots and hollers coming from this hospital roof must sound like New Years Eve in Times Square. Felecia drops to her knees, hands held above her head as we run over, tackling her in a group hug. I can’t hear them laughing over the sound of the blades spinning but I can feel it through their heaving bodies.
Marty kicks a wayward head off the rooftop, raising his arms like he just scored the game winning goal at Wembley. He points one finger in our direction, one towards Maxwell in the chopper, before clapping as if we can hear him over the sweetest sound on earth.
I wipe tears from my eyes as we get to our feet, the girls doing the same. We can be as emotional as we damn well please. We did it. I can see Maxwell smiling brighter than I’ve ever seen, it looks good on her, on my friend. Happiness suits us well.
“Lady luck is finally on our side,” Max shouts as we board the chopper. “We got a fast one baby! The fastest! Everyone grab a headset. We’re outta this bitch!”
CHAPTER 27
“Last year,” Sami says, staring out the window between bites, “I did a project about light pollution. All the maps I saw of California, none of them looked like this.”
“Half the state’s gotta be dark by now.” It’s the first time Maxwell’s spoken in a while, too focused on not falling from the sky and killing us all.
She’s been sweating since we left the roof and it has nothing to do with the temperature in here, which is actually quite comfortable. I can see the trepidation in her every move but she’s doing a good job hiding it, I think more so from herself than us. If she pretends she knows what she’s doing, maybe her mind will eventually believe it.
With the storm system heading east, we figured it’d be best to hug the coast. The rough weather wasn’t the only reason we came this way. If we followed the same flight path as the helicopter we should be on right now, there’s a good chance we’d encounter them. And they have guns on their aircraft, we have medical supplies. Not exactly a fair fight.
“The boys’ll be fine, right?” Max asks, or tries to reassure herself, not exactly positive. “I just don’t feel right leaving them. Not in that world down there, regardless of what they think they want.”
“They’re gonna be better off here than they would across the pond,” Marty says emphatically, and he’s right, I know he is. “If what you’re telling us is accurate, neither of them are in the headspace to live that kind of life. What worries me is, are they gonna regret it in another couple months, when they’ve had their fill of this lifestyle? Any idea what the good old US of A is planning, they tell you what’s in store for this infested piece of property?”
“I don’t think they know right now. When it all started, it was all defend our country by any means necessary. Two days later, they’re bailing on it. When they announced the evacuation, they planned on keeping some outposts, mostly on the east coast. By last night, they were already abandoning them. That was maybe twelve hours later. This whole continent’s gonna be a wasteland within a couple days. There was talk of nuking it, but that would only affect those in the immediate blast zone. Temporary solution, if that.”
“I’m never gonna see Mom and Erica again, am I?” Sami asks wistfully, her face glued to the window. “Do you think we’ll ever get to come back home?”
“I don’t know Squirt.” Maxwell shakes her head, not taking her eyes off the control panel. “If saltwater prevents it, maybe they can use that to make some sort of cure. But if they start procreating…”
“Procreating?” she repeats, pulling herself from the window.
“Aw shit,” Max grumbles. “I never thought I’d be giving the talk. You see, it’s like, when a man and a woman–”
“I know what procreate means.”
“Oh thank god.”
“I mean, they do that?”
“They do. And I highly doubt they use protection. When you get to the age where you start, you know, you make sure you always–”
“If you keep talking, I’m taking my headset off so I can’t hear you. I will sing if I have to, loudly, and believe me, you do not want to hear that. I sound like a pack of feral cats, my sister says so.”
“Fine, fine, alright, just, always use protection. Okay I’m done. Hey, can you check on them, make sure they’re still alive.”
Me and Felecia. Understandable, we’re pretty much comatose down here, slumped against the wall, her head on my shoulder, my head resting against hers. I’m not asleep though, I can hear everything. Well, sort of, I kinda drift in and out but I catch the gist of it.
“I’m awake,” I whisper, before Sami can poke me again.
Felecia darts upright, reaching for her sword, heart pounding before realizing where she is. She must have nodded off at some point after dessert, Butterfingers have never tasted so good.
“Ooopsie,” she mumbles, rubbing her hand against my shoulder as if I can feel it beneath my bulletproof vest.
“Ewww,” Sami giggles, covering her eyes. Okay, now I get it with kissing, or even Maxwell’s pathetic attempt at the sex talk, but all Felecia’s doing is rubbing my arm. “That is so gross.”
“Shhh, is not,” Felecia scolds, smacking Sami away. “It’s not what you think it is. There must be a leak or something.”
“A leak?” Maxwell shouts from the cockpit. “Shit, where? What color? Is it oil? Oh my god we better not have a break in the fuel line.”
“It’s not oil,” Sami assures her, “it’s drool. A big old puddle of it, all over Noah’s shoulder. She hasn’t even realized there’s a strand still attached to her face.”
“Is not,” Felecia shouts, wiping the string of saliva from her cheek with a guilty pout.
“Oh fuck me.” Uh oh, what is Maxwell grumbling about? Oh fuck me is never what you want to hear coming from a helicopter cockpit.
Please tell me Norwood has somehow magically appeared and she’s telling him what she secretly wants him to do to her, that is the only scenario where that phrase would be appropriate. Unless Marty’s about to get lucky.
“We’re coming up on LA,” he groans. “It’s only gonna get worse from here on out. Guys, we’re out of fuckin’ airports.”
Silence. No one knows how to respond. If we’re coming up on Los Angeles, I must have slept longer than I thought. I wonder how many times we’ve tried to land that I don’t know about. Judging by the grave look on their faces, this certainly isn’t the first. Shit, I know what the oh fuck me was about, we’re out of fuel.
“We need somewhere to land, and we need it now.”
“We’re gonna fall outta the sky, aren’t we?” Sami cries, her lower lip trembling.
“No, that’s
not the way helicopters are designed. I can get us down, even out of fuel, but if we land in the middle of something like that, we’re gonna wish we hadn’t.”
The runway looks like it’s alive. Like it’s a living, breathing creature. And in a way, it is.
They function as one, all after the same thing. They don’t fight each other for it or squawk and try to scare the others away like seagulls. They just attack, and eat. And there are so many of them I can’t see the lines on the runway, if there are indeed lines on the runway. The only reason I know it’s an airport, other than them saying it is, is by the lights. Which means there’s still power here.
“We could drop some bombs,” Marty says, reaching back to poke through the duffle bag. “Clear a place to land. Try not to hit the fuel pumps.”
“There’s too many.” I peer out the front windshield to get a feel for our surroundings but all I can make out are random spatterings of lights. “They’ll swarm us from all sides, no way will be able to gas up in time. Stupid question?”
“My favorite kind,” Maxwell shouts back, clearly beginning to panic.
“What kind of fuel does this take? Like, could a regular old gas station do the trick?”
All eyes turn to Maxwell, like puppies hoping for food.
“I mean, in theory, I guess. Possibly. It’d have to be diesel. I’ve heard of guys doing it before. It won’t get us as far but, I don’t know, it could work. As the crow flies, we’re only about 250 miles from Yuma, and right now, we’re the crow. It’ll be close but we might make it. Problem is, everything’s gonna be overrun. Where are we gonna find a gas station we can actually get to? Look, I don’t mean to alarm anyone but this low fuel light has been on for a really long time.”
“What the fuck was that?” Sami shouts, bracing herself against the window. “Why are we shaking?”
“God dammit! Because we just lost an engine. We don’t have a choice, we’re landing right here whether we like it or not.”
“Grenade launcher?” Marty asks, pulling it from the bag as we rock back and forth. “Do we try to clear a path?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Maxwell’s hitting so many buttons on the control panel, I’m convinced she has no clue what she’s pressing, it’s like me playing an arcade game. See a button, tap it, hope for the best.
“Are we too close? Will the blast affect us?”
She looks at him, ready to burst into tears, and shakes her head, shrugging. I doubt a trained, seasoned veteran pilot would be as calm as she’s been in a situation like this, and she’s not even a pilot. Super soldier, yes, but not a pilot.
“Open the door,” he commands, biting his lip, hoping he’s making the right decision. “We got no choice. We gotta blow as many of them to hell as humanly possible before we touch down.”
Marty slides the door open, letting in a gust of wind that damn near knocks me over. We’re a lot closer to the ground than I thought, it’s hard to tell in the dark. And there are a lot more hungry tarmac dwellers than I’d anticipated. Not too pleased with either revelation.
There was a plane crash. Now that we’re close enough, I can see it. End of the runway, those are the remains of a jet. Jets? There’s definitely two of them, their cabins burnt to a crisp. That’s why there’s so many bodies down there. They must have crashed, probably trying to leave when this all started. These things smelled the blood and stormed the downed aircraft.
Our only hope is refueling and taking off before they get to us. Where the hell are the gas pumps? This would be a lot easier if we weren’t spiraling downward with a couple hundred hungry hippos anxiously awaiting our arrival.
Marty lets off grenade after grenade, aiming every which way. There’s pockets of them in all directions. Each blast sends my heart scurrying into my throat as fireballs light up the ground below us. I swear I can feel the heat from the explosions.
It’s empty. He let off all six shots, desecrating the runway. Pockets of fire surround the holes he blew in the tarmac…
As the burning bodies crawl out of them. They’re emerging from the craters he just left, demons dragging themselves out of the depths of hell.
It didn’t work. All it did was turn our airstrip into an apocalyptic battlefield with fire-breathing inhabitants.
And we’re headed straight for them.
CHAPTER 28
“Son of a bitch,” Marty screams, slamming his fist off his knee repeatedly. “It had to work. It fucking had to. We got no other options here. They’re swarming us before we hit the god damn pavement.”
He’s right. They’ll be grabbing for our landing gear before we’ve even touched down. We’re rested but I don’t see that making a whole hell of a lot of difference right now. Not when they’re coming from every angle. We’re in the middle of the runway, nowhere to hide.
Wait. “Maxwell, bring us down on the other side of the fence!”
“What?”
“Off the runway! Left, go left! Do not put us on that runway!”
“Aaargh!” She lets out a roar, jamming the lever stick thingy all the way to the side as we make our rapid descent. “Come on! Come on, you can do this!”
I’m not sure if she’s yelling at herself or the helicopter that might be half rocket ship because my god is this thing fast. If only it had some missiles on its wings like Norwood’s GI Joe vehicles. His dad felt they were the only acceptable toys for a boy to play with. Wrestling figures, gay. Power Rangers in their skintight suits, gay. Superheroes, yeah, their suits are even tighter. Real men play with guns. He would’ve been so pissed if he knew about our intricate storylines and love interests. Not to mention their internal struggles with whether or not war was indeed the answer.
The sound of metal on metal overshadows Maxwell’s panicked yelp as we slam into the side of a small drainage ditch. The landing skids nicked the top of the fence but we made it over. We’re not on the runway!
The nose collides with the hillside, chunks of dirt and grass spitting into the air. The blades must be skimming the ground, tearing it up as the rotors slow to a halt. The landing may not have been the most graceful but all things considered, I’d say Max did one hell of a job.
“You,” Felecia squeals in a winded exhale, pointing both index fingers at our hero, “are the fucking man! I don’t care how spectacular those tits you keep hidden under there are, you are the man Maxwell.”
“Care to uh, share with the rest of the class?” Marty asks, gripping the railing beside the door for dear life. “You holding out on us?”
“Oh my god,” she sighs, a high pitched wheeze that sounds more like a whistle than a sentence. “Did I do it? Are we down? If you’re gonna touch them, now’s probably the time. I think my hands are stuck to the lever.”
Felecia shrugs and leans over the cockpit, planting a good five second kiss on Maxwell’s lips. I can’t quite make out where her hands are from this angle but I have a feeling I know where they are. How could you not love this girl?
“You did it,” she whispers. “We’re on the ground.”
Maxwell giggles in shock, prying her fingers, one by one, from the lever. “I think your peepee club just got its newest recruit.”
“Honored to have you,” Felecia laughs, taking off Maxwell’s headset in order to kiss the top of her head. “You did it. Marty, how’s it looking outside?”
“Well, bright side, the fence is working, it’s holding them back. Downside, propeller’s stuck in the dirt, and I’m pretty sure the tail’s broken. We ain’t flying outta here on this.”
“Fuck,” Max grunts, exhaling deep enough to fog up the window. “So, what do we do now?”
Her question is punctuated by twenty more corpses slamming into the chain link fence that surrounds the runway. Most of them aren’t smart enough, or able bodied enough, to climb, and the ones that are, get tangled in the lines of barbed wire that adorn the top. But more are coming, racing across the airstrip, freshly burnt bodies from Marty’s grenades mingling with t
he old burn victims from the plane crash. It’s only a matter of time before they break through.
“I mean,” Marty shrugs, “we’re already at an airport. Might as well get another chopper, right? We just made it down half the friggin’ state in a few hours. All things considered, Yuma ain’t far. At this rate, there’s no way they’re beating us down there.”
“You think we can keep them distracted, try to draw the others here?” I hop out of the chopper, landing in the soggy stream of mud slowly running through the drainage ditch. “Some of us stay here, the others go find a helicopter?”
Felecia grabs the duffle bag once her feet are firmly planted in the dirty trickle. “Marty, can you stay here with Sami?”
“Not happening, no.” Maxwell’s wiping nervous sweat from her brow, still shaken, muscles so tense they’re quivering. “You two are staying right here. You’re not in any condition to be doing this.”
“We’re rested,” I say, coming to Felecia’s defense. “We’ve been doing nothing but resting for hours now.”
“Guys!” Sami screams. “I don’t think there’s time, look.”
The fence is shaking uncontrollably as more infects crash into it, crawling over the ones that are already there. They must be three high by now, but it’s hard to tell with all their crispy limbs melting and breaking off in the pig pile. The posts aren’t gonna hold!
Over the sound of the raucous crowd, I can hear the snap. The chains are starting to break. The fence is meant to keep out individuals, animals, not massive crowds of bloodthirsty savages addicted to human, desperate for their next fix.
Nobody needs to yell run, we just do it.
The time spent resting on the medevac has reinvigorated me. Don’t get me wrong, running hurts every muscle in my body, and some of my bones too. But after a few painful strides, once I find my rhythm, this isn’t so bad.
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 17