Shatterbones

by Robert Brown

  “Be thankful we aren’t trying to take you to Portland International,” the driver offers. “The area around major airports will have the most concentrated crash sites. Everett, we’ll be there soon, you should start to fill them in.”

  Nodding silently at the suggestion, he scans out the windows in all directions before beginning.

  “We have a pilot and a group of armed DHS officers waiting on you with a small government jet. We need to get you to the Salem Airport and then to a secure facility in the capital where you will ride out this storm with other officials.

  “When we spoke with the pilot before leaving your house, he said things weren’t that bad at the airport, but he could hear approaching gunfire in the distance, so we might have to jump out and run to the plane. If we have to run, our people will be firing their weapons in our direction, but they will be shooting at targets behind us. DO NOT FREEZE! These mutants are fast, and if you stop, you will probably die. Got it?”

  Greg and Evelyn both nod. Greg was in the military, but never faced any actual combat. He understands first hand from speaking with those that had been in various battles, how terrifying the first firefight can be. People like him, civilians, often freeze when bullets start flying around them instead of moving to safety.

  “I’m going to drive us in fast and stop as close to the plane as I can without blocking the wings so we shouldn’t have to go too far. Just keep your eyes on the door of the plane and run at it. No matter what you hear, keep running and get in that plane.”

  “What if they aren’t there anymore?”

  “They wouldn’t leave without you.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What if they’ve been killed?”

  “Then we’ll do our best to get you to Salem by car.”

  The guarded entry to the private plane hangars is abandoned as they drive through the already-broken gate. On the other side of the car, a small plane lands on the shorter runway.

  “At least we know planes can still fly if that one is coming in safely.”

  “There’s one of them to the left, sir!”

  Two people are next to a building. One man is hunched over the body of the other in what appears to be an effort to resuscitate at first. As they continue by, the kneeling Samaritan lifts its head and turns its gaze to their vehicle showing a bloody face from its attack on the victim it captured.

  “Our plane should be on the ready lane just opposite this hangar. Get set to make a run for it.”

  Rounding the building, the plane is exactly where they hoped it would be. The men guarding it are in place and ready for Representative Cavanaugh’s arrival. The mutated children are there as well; two of them, hopping between the armed men firing at them. The bullets fly as they attempt to stop their continuing attack.

  Of the nine men guarding the plane, two are on the ground. One lying still in a twisted heap and the other struggling to crawl away, pulling his legs behind him. The mutants seem to be toying with the men like cats. Landing next to one, grabbing and quickly tossing them five or ten feet and jumping away before they can be shot by the other men.

  When the SUV pulls up, the driver and Agent Everett step out with their guns firing before their feet hit the ground. What looked like wild shots all missing the mutants as they drove up was actually multiple direct hits to their bodies that weren’t doing much to slow them down.

  “Run to the plane!” Everett yells while grabbing Evelyn out of the SUV.

  Evelyn bolts for the door of the plane and watches a man raise his gun to her face as she approaches.

  Keep running. Don’t stop. She tells herself as she moves directly toward the flashes of the firing weapon. A mutant leaps over her and lands by the man making the shots, grabbing him and tossing his body away. The man’s back hits the plane’s wing, and his brief silence of shock is ended when he hits the pavement and starts screaming in pain. The mutated attacker spins his gaze to Evelyn but then leaps to the source of the next set of bullets that hit it in the chest.

  Evelyn trips over the final step and falls into the plane and screams in terror when a body lands on top of her, sure it is the mutant that eyed her seconds earlier. Instead, she is pulled up by her husband who fell in after her and landed on her back.

  “Go, go, go!” a man in the cabin yells to the front of the plane and the engines pitch grows higher as the plane begins to roll. “You need to get out of the doorway,” the man yells while roughly pulling and then shoving the two away from the entrance.

  Two men jump into the plane followed by a mutant that lands in the doorway as well. The smaller doorway frame forces the mutant to stand still long enough for the men inside to make several shots directly to the mutants head, causing it to fall back out.

  “Did you kill it?” Greg asks.

  “No, it’s just running away.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to survive this if bullets to the head don’t even work?”

  The man turns to look at Greg and shakes his head with an expression of defeat before returning his gun’s aim to the doorway at the arrival of a new shadow. Lead agent Everett made it and smiles at them from the doorway as the jet continues its taxiing to the runway.

  “The two that hit us are down, but there is another heading our way. Everyone get in position to take my place when my gun is empty.”

  “Try to shoot it in the head! It makes them run away.”

  Yelling back into the cabin to express his frustration he says, “I have been trying to shoot them in the head.”

  The pilot makes a sudden turn with the plane, throwing everyone off balance. Everett regains his footing and turns back to the doors opening but too late to stop a mutant from landing on the door frame and grabbing him by the head. With a quick yank and twist, Everett’s body is pulled out the opening and thrown to the rear of the plane. His right leg gets sucked into one of the small jets on the back of the Beechcraft Hawker. Bullets fly from the other officers in the cabin, but the damage is done. Everett is gone, and the plane won’t fly. The mutant falls out of the door with multiple hits to the head and runs away from the craft.

  “There’s a plane that just landed on the runway. If they have any fuel left, that’s the only way we’ll get out of here,” the pilot calls back to the others as he stops the jet.

  “Are there any more guns on this plane? I don’t think my wife or I will last out there without one.”

  Opening up a locker on the back wall, there are a few handguns and some short barreled AR-15’s. The officer pulls the charging handle on each rifle as he hands one each to Greg, Evelyn, and the pilot.

  “I’ve already switched them to fire on the dial here. Don’t switch them to full-auto, you won’t hit anything and will just waste your ammo. Here’s a Glock for each of you and extra magazines for the guns. The same rules apply as before. Once we get out that door, make a straight run for the other plane and don’t stop to shoot unless you have to.”

  The remaining DHS officers climb out of the jet first. Two run toward the taxiing plane heading toward them on the runway and the other runs to the motionless body of agent Everett. Greg jumps down next and helps Evelyn hop down to the pavement. The extra weight and bulk of her pregnant belly already made this morning a difficult one, having to all out run nearly a hundred yards to an approaching aircraft will push her to the limit of her physical condition.

  On their run to the new plane, a few gunshots erupt from behind them, and they know another mutant is on its way. The two DHS officers at the second plane are waving at them and readying their weapons but not firing often, so the threat must not be that close yet. The pilot has passed them during the run and is in the lead but can’t help himself and turns his head to look at the threat behind them while running along. His turning head throws him off balance and causes him to fall, painfully cracking his head on the ground while Greg and Evelyn pass him by.

  They have twenty yards to go, and the kneeling men start shooting at the unseen approaching danger.
Greg is right behind Evelyn. The fear inside him is urging him to bypass his wife and make it to the plane in front of her, but he holds the apprehension at bay and awaits the inevitable impact of the creature hitting him from behind.

  Greg watches the direction of the firearms aim in front of him shift closer and closer to his own body, signaling the fast approach of the demon running behind him. With a shadow over his head, he watches with dread that the creature chose to attack Evelyn first. Does it know I won’t leave her behind or is it just attempting to block our escape to the plane? he thinks as he watches his wife impact hard with the ground before her. It struggles to gain its balance while standing on Evelyn’s back and turning to reach for Greg. Greg jumps to the side trying to clear the reaching arms of this pale muscular man while also allowing the men in front of them a clearer shot at the creature. Greg also needs to get a better angle for himself to start firing on the beast without sending his bullets into the plane they need to escape.

  The firing men are able to plant several bullets into the head of the creature, causing it to leap off and away from Evelyn. This time, the monster wasn’t as lucky as the others had been. The bullets are doing more damage, and it collapses and starts twitching on the ground fifteen feet away. The DHS officers continue firing bullets into the mutant’s body and yell for the others to get on the plane. Greg helps his wife as she struggles against pain to get up.

  Her face is bloodied from the impact with the ground, but it is her stomach she is cradling with her arms and she doubles over in pain when she tries to walk. Greg lifts her up and carries her to the plane.

  “Greg, something’s wrong. I think I hurt the baby,” she cries before passing out.

  In the current lull, one of the DHS agents is running to the pilot that fell down behind them. He was attacked by the mutant while on the ground and is pulling himself along to reach the plane as well. It appears the mutant broke the pilot’s leg instead of killing him, perhaps to keep him from getting away.

  A loud bellowing yell coming from the airport hangers makes them all turn around to see one of the behemoth creatures that attacked their SUVs in the drive to the airport has arrived and is heading toward them.

  “Get on the plane now!” Greg yells to the DHS men still on the ground.

  A yellow airport fire engine races around one of the far buildings and heads full speed at the hulking monster running toward the plane. The driver of the truck starts honking the horn and turns on the sirens, getting the creatures attention. As the monstrous beast begins turning its body to look at the noisy vehicle, the truck crashes into it. The front of the truck is totaled on impact, but the creature is destroyed as well. Its limp body bursts open and splays out on the runway when it impacts the ground.

  The driver climbs out through the partially collapsed windscreen now absent all glass and begins running toward the plane as well.

  “Will this plane be able to carry everyone out there?” one of the men asks the pilot.

  “She’s made to carry six passengers with a bunch of luggage so we should be fine. I was only coming to Eugene for a quick meeting and was going to head back home tonight so I don’t have any luggage in the hold.

  “What the hell is going on out there? The people in the towers have been so busy dealing with all of the planes falling out of the skies, no one has had time to tell me anything.”

  “This blue light is making children mutate. They are growing to adult size, their skin bleaches white, and they are incredibly fast and strong. Look, as soon as that firefighter gets on board, you get us out of here. You can’t wait for anyone else or we’ll lose our only way to escape.”

  “I’m ready to take off as soon as he’s aboard. I saw your group get attacked by those naked men, you say were teenagers, but what the hell was that thing the fire truck hit?”

  “I don’t know. Two of them attacked us on the road while getting here. They were just as big as that one, but I have no clue what they are or what they used to be.”

  “What the hell is Washington going to do about this? Are they sending help to Oregon?”

  “This thing is worldwide, not just in Oregon.”

  “Well, the president has to do something about it!”

  “Mister, we were ordered to gather every living member of the government and take them to safe locations. The president is dead.”

  The final member of the Eugene exodus climbs on board, and the pilot takes the plane down the runway and up into the air before any other threats appear on the ground around them.

  Chapter Five

  Flight Time

  Oregon

  The passengers on the plane express the fragility of the human condition and the destructive power of war and conflict. There is blood on the seats and smeared across one of the windows. Two of the men look shell-shocked and are staring wide-eyed, silently into some image only they can see. The injured pilot and Evelyn are both moaning and crying from their own severe levels of pain and sadness. Only the new pilot, Greg, and the firefighter have retained their senses to some degree, but it is largely for the benefit of the others in their care that they haven’t succumbed to their own version of stress-related shock.

  The pilot from the DHS jet is having his leg wrapped by the firefighter. Greg thought the pilot had his leg broken by the mutant when he was attacked, but apparently he was shot in the leg by one of the DHS officers as they attempted to shoot the mutant that was attacking him. His leg is in fact broken, but the cause is the bullet that hit the bone and shattered it.

  Unable to stop the flow of blood, the firefighter had to resort to the less desirable act of drawing a belt in a tight tourniquet above the wound to end the blood loss. Most likely the pilot will lose his leg when they make it to a hospital, if they can make it to a hospital in time. His blood loss has slowed, but not completely stopped so he may not live to make it to safety.

  The firefighter’s own arm was cut when the behemoth creature crashed into the fire truck. It is a painful wound and a deep gash, but manageable in terms of injury. He rips a piece from his T-shirt and has Greg help him wrap it around the wound to stop the blood and keep it from tearing open more until it can receive stitches.

  The most difficult and troubling aspect of the injuries and pain in the plane’s cabin are those of Evelyn. She is having severe abdominal pain and has started bleeding vaginally. Her sobbing tears are interrupted for just a moment when she turns to her husband and again says, “I think I lost the baby.”

  Time would tell if the injuries from her fall and getting slammed to the ground by the mutant have caused her pregnancy to be aborted or if the bleeding is caused by some other equally serious or deadly internal injury. Greg does his best to clean the blood from Evelyn’s injured face with a strip of shirt and water from a bottle. She has a small split on her forehead and has a broken nose.

  Making it to the safety of the secure location is the key to survival. If the whole world has become this nightmare of destruction, there is little chance for any healthy and robust individual surviving for more than a few days if things don’t change. If everything remains as it is right now, those with injuries as minor as a cut could die from infection without having free access to the medicines modern society has come to rely on. The concerns of their future and safety are playing on the mind of the pilot flying them to some unknown land of safety.

  “You say there is a secure location you’re taking those two people,” the pilot calls back from behind the yoke.

  He is met with an acknowledging look from one of the DHS officers, but not a reply.

  “Hey man, focus, I asked you a question. You said you’re taking that man and woman to a secure location in Salem, right?”

  Shaking his head to remove the cobwebs of thought he was lost in, the man fully returns to the present. “Yeah… Yes. He is Representative Cavanaugh, and she is his wife. We are supposed to make sure all government personnel are taken to secure locations to ensure the survival of the gover
nment in some form.”

  “And you know the location of this secure facility?”

  “Yes, both of us do,” he says nudging the other officer who nods his head in reply to the bump.

  “I agreed to fly you out to Salem and that’s where we’re headed, but what guarantee do I have, do the firefighter and I have, that we’ll be let into this secure location if we get you there?”

  “There’s no guarantee I could give you. I don’t even know if Frank or I will be allowed in once we arrive. They could very easily send us out to try and get someone else and prevent any non-essential personnel from coming in.

  “There is a chance that a skilled pilot and trained firefighter with EMT classification would be welcomed in any shelter, however.” Looking back to the pale and passed out form of the DHS pilot, the man comments, “I don’t think our current pilot is going to make it based on our flight time and his condition so his misfortune is a possible benefit to you.”

  Looking from the still body of the injured pilot to the firefighter, he asks “What is your name, G.I. Joe?”

  “Just Ronald.”

  “Just Ronald? What was that crazy thing you did with your firetruck?”

  “I’m Ronald Fulton. Everyone in my group was killed or dragged away by those jumping psychos you say are mutants. Me and Kenny made it out of the hangar on the truck you saw me driving, but Kenny was pulled off before I came around the building. We were just trying to make it to this plane like you were. When I saw that giant blob looking thing, I knew the plane wouldn’t make it anywhere if that monster was still running around so I stepped on the gas and hoped for the best. I didn’t have time to think it through, I just did what I had to, to make sure I could get out of there.”

  “Well, Ronald, I’m Craig Miller and this is agent Frank Barlow. We’re DHS if you haven’t already gathered. I’m sure there is a new shortage of any people with medical training with the current level of destruction. You might be able to walk into the shelter and become king.”