by Smith, S. L.
“I’m kinda doubting we’ll see people. Live people, either. You’d think if there were any survivors, they wouldn’t still be using ‘Legs’ over there as a doorstop.”
“Did you happen to notice if this building had antennas on top?” Isherwood asked.
“Nah, just a wind sock, maybe.” As Isherwood rummaged through desk drawers and cabinets behind him, Patrick stood looking out the windows at the back of the building. “That’s probably where we ought to be heading.”
“Yup,” Isherwood said, coming to stand beside Patrick. “That’ll be the place.” In the distance, somewhere at the center of the airstrip that ran the length of the fenced-in area, there was two-story building with an antenna tower array rising from it. “Place is probably too small for its own air traffic control tower.” Isherwood bent his head down to walk through what remained of the broken window.
“Dude,” Patrick said. “Let’s just drive over there.”
Isherwood laughed. “Oh, sure, get all sassy just because your idea’s clearly better.”
*****
“You sure you want to announce our arrival out here all out in the open?” Patrick asked from the passenger seat of the Jeep.
“Worried about a sniper?” Isherwood asked.
“Yeah, but I guess you’ll say, not much we can do about that.”
“If somebody was gonna do us like that, I’d think they’d already’ve done it. We were pretty much sitting ducks back at the gate. Besides, the ‘bad hombres’, if they’re here, seem to have a kidnapping M.O.”
“For women, maybe.”
“Okay, yeah, but even so, everybody’s worth more alive than dead these days.”
“Funny how things change,” Patrick said. “Okay, let ‘er rip. Guess it’s best not sneaking up on people these days, anyway.”
The last of Patrick’s words were drowned out as Isherwood laid on the Jeep’s horn. He honked in long blasts. Their group had taken to honking in short, staccato beats for emergencies, so any of their group within earshot would now that, at least for now, they were safe, as well as their location. Eventually, Isherwood thought, they’d need to develop their own distinctive beats – that, and have everybody learn Morse code or least put code cheat sheets with all the cars and radios.
Isherwood had parked the Jeep on the far side of the airstrip. From here, they had a clear view of all the buildings. They were still a couple hundred yards away from the building with the radio antennas. Even if there was a sniper, he’d have difficulty making a clean shot.
After a minute or so, a half dozen zombies had begun staggering toward them from the shadows of the empty buildings and flight hangars. There were a couple more outside the fence that had thrown their bodies against the chain-link fence.
“I got this,” Isherwood said, opening the driver’s door. Patrick likewise reached for his, the passenger, door handle. “Don’t …” Isherwood blurted out, and Patrick recoiled his hand as though he had touched something hot. Isherwood continued, “… get out of the vehicle from your side, if you can help it. You’ve got the main building out that way. There’s a direct line of fire, if you give it to ‘em. Just hunker down for a sec, okay?”
Patrick slouched down in his seat begrudgingly. “You really think there’s somebody out here?”
“Eh, you’re probably right,” he said, opening the back door to grab a rifle. He was in the habit of tucking his katana between the driver’s seat and the door, and he left the sword there for now. With a rifle in hand, he lowered himself to the concrete tarmac beside the Jeep. “But it’s been a bad day. I’m just not wanting to take any more chances. Turn this day into a disaster. Help me watch my six, will ya?”
Isherwood wasn’t sure if the .22LR rifle he’d grabbed would be enough to penetrate a skull, even a softened one, at this distance. He might need to let them get pretty close, he thought, within twenty or thirty yards. He felt pebbles of concrete rubbing against his shirtsleeves and pant legs as he stretched into a shooting position under the Jeep. He leaned his face across the rifle’s stock and was taking a moment to scan the place through his scope.
He tested his range on the nearest zombie, which was still a hundred yards off. He fired the rifle, which, though normally pretty quiet, echoed pretty loudly across the openness of the airstrip. The zeek was nearly completely bald, another workman or mechanic, with an impressive beard that only partially concealed a gaping hole where its carotid artery had been. There wasn’t much kick to the .22, so he was able to watch his bullet’s progress through the scope. He actually saw the flesh of the zombie’s bald pate crease as the bullet glanced off the forehead. The bone at the forehead was just too thick, Isherwood thought with irritation. He’d have to shoot through the eye socket to drop a zombie at this range, unless he wanted to waste .270 bullets and make a lot more noise.
It only took one more try for him to sink his shot, though he doubted the bullet would ever find a way out of the skull. It was enough, though. The bearded zombie staggered one more step forward, seemed to waver a moment, and then crumpled into an inanimate heap of denim.
As Isherwood waited for the rest of the approaching zombies to get within range, he scanned the buildings through his scope. Two long plane hangars stood at right angles to the airstrip on the near side of the tower. He could just see the back end of a plane sticking out between them. It looked like it had been taxing but never quite made it to its destination. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought he saw shadows moving within. He made a mental note of the hazard, and angled his rifle back toward the steadily advancing zombies.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: RIVER RATS
Justin and Chet had arrived only seconds after the little fishing boat’s motor had cranked up. There was still a puff of smoke hanging on the air. To Justin, it seemed like the boat was sitting in the middle of the river. There was just too much light reflecting off the water’s surface. There was no way to see through it to the rough timber mat pier below. Nevertheless, Chet was still charging toward the little boat. He looked like he was running across a pool of molten gold. Between blinks, Justin could just make out several, maybe three or four figures silhouetted in the boat.
Chet barely altered his course, even when someone inside the boat started shooting at him. It must have been pistol fire, because the aiming was poor, that or the shooter was likewise blinded by the setting sun. Justin didn’t yet have time to think about any of this as he dropped to a prone position, half-submerged in the water. He pointed his AR toward the boat and realized there was no way he would be able to return fire to the boat. He had no idea who or what he was shooting at. He sprayed the air above their heads with a quick barrage of bullets.
It did the trick. The kidnapper or kidnappers stopped firing. Instead, they angled the boat further into the river, cutting a forty-five degree angle into the current.
“Chet, get down,” Justin yelled. He cursed. Justin was certain that he wasn’t stopping until he was flinging his body into the river or getting sucked into the mud. “I’ve gotta shot at the motor if you just get DOWN!”
“’bout time,” Justin whispered as Chet suddenly disappeared from view. He had, as Justin expected, slipped off a timber mat. Justin knew the young man was about to be buried alive with a lungful of mud, but he had to take the shot while he had it. He took a split second to aim and squeezed off a few rounds at the spot where the water was churning up behind the boat. The first two thwacked into the water, but the last one twanged as it hit home. He couldn’t take the chance that he’d merely dented one of the motor’s propeller blades, so he squeezed off another volley of shots. He aimed just the slightest bit higher. He actually saw the plastic casing of the motor fly away from the back of the boat. There was a delayed and muffled explosion and the steady humming of the motor roared suddenly in protest before grinding to a halt.
Justin threw himself back to his feet in time to see Chet’s head slip below the water. He didn’t have time to watch the boat slowly and
awkwardly turn into the current and slip away downstream. Justin didn’t understand how Chet hadn’t slipped off the rickety boardwalk sooner. He fell hard once, soaking himself and filling the barrel of his gun with mud.
When he finally got to the place where Chet fell in, he was only able to find the spot because of the bubbles. He groped blindly through the water until his hand hit against something solid. He grabbed at it and pulled. His grip slipped once, but he rotated himself for better leverage and pulled once more. His muscles strained as he pulled harder and harder. The bit of Chet’s arm – God, he hoped it was Chet’s arm – came excruciatingly slow. Finally, his force overcame the mud’s suction and a torso slid out as though freshly born. The excised hands groped blindly along the submerged timber mat and even Justin’s face. Justin had just enough time for a wave of hot fear to pass over him, Could he have turned that fast?
In the time it took Justin to drag Chet’s body onto the timber raft beside him, the younger man hadn’t breathed once. Justin flipped him on his back. His head was covered in a thick coat of sticky mud. The water rose to the edges of his face. “Sit up, buddy,” Justin said, pulling him up by grabbing handfuls of the man’s shirt. Justin hit him hard against his back. Twin rivulets oozed from the corners of Chet’s mouth, but there were still no signs of life. Justin let the man splash back down into the water.
Justin angled the man’s head back and pinched his nose. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “You better not come back just to eat my face.” Justin bent over and pushed some air into the man’s mouth. He watched out of the corner of his eye to see if Chet’s chest would rise. It did, but not much. “Sit back up, buddy. Aw, Jeez, aw Jeeez.”
Justin not only slapped him across the back but tried hugging him from behind and pulling his guts up and into his lungs. Vomit and mud slopped into the water. “Excellent,” Justin winced and let the man fall back onto his back. He again shifted Chet’s head and pinched his nose. He pushed another shot of air into the man’s lungs. Chet’s chest moved, really moved, this time. Justin switched over to chest compressions.
“Crap,” he said. “How many times, how hard? Who remembers this stuff?” He winced again as a thought occurred to him. He started humming a song and pumping Chet’s chest with the melody. “Ah, ah, ah, ah … stayin’ alive. This really sucks. Ah, ah, ah, ah,” he continued.
He leaned back over Chet’s mouth, knowing, just knowing, that those mud and vomit-splattered teeth were about to rip off his lips. “The kiss of death, literally,” he grumbled as he again pushed air into the unconscious man’s chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, Justin saw the man’s chest lurch and convulse. He jerked his head away, but not in time. His mouth filled with the contents of the other man’s lungs and throat. Justin was still cursing and spitting it all out of his mouth, as the man rose to a sitting position behind him. “You better be alive, buddy, ‘cause I’m gonna kill’ya.”
After his tantrum, Justin had ended up with his back to Chet. He didn’t know what he was about to turn and see. Maybe the end of all things, he thought. If it came to that, he decided he’d just throw himself into the nearest mud hole.
Before he could even turn around, a hand was grabbing at his shoulder. “Where …?” He heard the thing behind him whisper. “Are they gone?”
“Yeah, they’re gone. And you just upchucked in my mouth. And, you’re welcome by the way.”
“Where?” Chet kept saying, as he tried getting up again. He was squinting upriver.
“Come on! I just saved your idiot life,” Justin fumed.
“Dude, gold star,” he said, coughing up another glob of mud. “Can you … still see them?”
“Yeah, yeah, maybe. The other way. They’re floating downstream. If we had a boat, we could just … sshhh, sshh, shhh.”
Chet looked around in fear and bewilderment. The sudden head movement caused him to collapse back onto the next timber mat and vomit some more.
“Shhh,” Justin snapped. He had stood up and was facing upriver. “Do you hear that? Something very bad is about to happen or very good.” The sound of a boat motor was growing. Another boat was coming down the river. It sounded as if it would appear around the river bend any moment. “Maybe, uh,” he said, dropping down to one knee and shouldering his AR. “Maybe you should hide or something.”
“Boat,” Chet choked, staggering back to his feet and struggling to find the next timber mat.
“Great, you came back to life as a pirate.”
*****
Isherwood found, as he had during previous encounters, that the .22 was really only good for headshots within fifty yards. That made it useful enough for most every situation. Once all the loose zombies had been eliminated coming from the buildings, he crawled around to the back of the Jeep. He got up on his knees and used the corner of the rear bumper as a rest. He tried aiming through the gaps of the chain-link fence, but he heard a couple bullets ping as they ricocheted off the fence. He would have just used his knife and stabbed at the zombies through the fence, but he was still avoiding being in the open.
“Now what?” Patrick asked when Isherwood slid back into the driver’s seat.
“Well,” Isherwood started. “I was hoping you’d’ve come up with something. Did you see any movement in the tower building?”
“Nah. I’ve been crouching down the whole time, mostly. Think I even nodded off.”
“Dreaming about those Langoliers, weren’t’ya? Hey, wasn’t that dude from Perfect Strangers in the movie?”
“You did see it,” Patrick swooned and then, just as quickly, deflated. “Movie sucked. Book was better. Always is.”
“I figured we’d just park behind one of the metal buildings and sprint through the open places,” Isherwood said, interrupting Patrick before he could get going on the subject and noting his friend’s use of ‘is’ instead of ‘was’. They had all developed ticks, Isherwood had noticed. There were certain subjects that most all of the survivors would linger over if given the chance. He thought it might be a good thing, though, maybe some kind of survival mechanism. It was like their brains were subconsciously switching to another reality, back to the way things had been. He guessed it had some kind of restorative effect, like daydreaming or even night-dreaming.
“Heck, let’s just drive right up to the place,” Patrick said.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Isherwood growled. “The whole reason we’re here and not there, why I shot those things on my belly under the car, et cetera, et cetera, is because this might all be a trap. Something’s obviously been drawing those things here. Something’s here.” Isherwood’s rant devolved into cursing.
Isherwood blinked suddenly like something had flown into his eye. He looked down at his hands to see them balled into fists. His fingernails were cutting into the flesh of his palms. He then looked at Patrick whose hand was on the air conditioner vent. He had angled it into Isherwood’s face. “Whoa,” Isherwood said, rubbing at the center of his forehead. “I sorta …”
“Blacked out for a second?” Patrick asked. “Yeah. It happens. You’re metabolizing trauma and stress. It’s like when you eat foreign food and your body reacts with a load of gas.”
Isherwood smiled. “I was just thinking about that. I guess we all have our ticks.”
“Ticks and the lyme disease to go with ‘em.”
“So, you wanna just drive right up, huh? I really never even thought about taking the direct approach.”
“It has its advantages. A. Less walking. B. We get to stay inside the vehicle longer. And the big one. Uh, C. We don’t surprise them or him. If we weren’t trying to keep radio silence for the other guys, we could just radio them.”
Isherwood was nodding appreciatively.
“Besides,” Patrick said. “I did see one thing while you were shooting. That.” Patrick pointed at the tower building.
“What?” Isherwood said leaning forward. “See what?”
“Look next to the w
ind sock.”
“What?” There was something there, but the wind had it and he couldn’t make it out. The setting sun was playing with all the shadows, too. “What is that? Some rope?”
“A noose.”
*****
Justin cursed. “Is that a boat or nuclear fusion sun bomb coming toward us? My retinas are on fire.” His finger twitched at the trigger. “Should I shoot? Just a quick spray to soften them up?”
“No,” Chet struggled to say. “No holes.”
They would later compare the shadowy figures in the approaching boat to Washington and his soldiers crossing the Delaware. “Need a ride?” Glenn called out.
“Y’all walking on water or something?” Micha called out, as Glenn set the motor to idle. They were still another twenty yards away.
“Pull up the motor, Eli,” Glenn said. “Can y’all get any closer? Or’s that it?” The boat had a flat bottom. Before Justin or Chet could answer, Micha and Eli began using paddles to pull the boat through the shallows.
“Stay where you are, catfish,” Glenn said. “We’re coming to you.”
“‘Catfish,’” Justin giggled to himself. “That’s gonna stick.”
“They’re headed downstream, right?” Glenn asked. “How long since they were here?”
“Maybe five minutes,” Justin answered. “But they’re not far. I blew up their motor. They’re just floating now. Wait, you already tracked them this far?”
“Sorta,” Glenn shrugged. He was watching as his boys pulled the boat through the shallows. He was wearing polarized sunglasses that took care of the glare from the setting sun. “When we figured out the car hadn’t doubled back, we bet on the river being their exit strategy? River rats, probably, prowling up and down the river. Their nest’ll be upriver, betcha anything.”