People were cooking their scant meals in the street because their homes had been destroyed, bombed into dust by the Americans and their allies. The people would stop and stare as the Americans, in their Hummers and Abrams M1 tanks, rolled past. The soldiers were not to blame. They had been told they were liberators, freeing Kuwait and the world from Hussein’s evil regime. Neither were these civilians to blame for what their country’s leader did, yet here they were, homeless, hopeless, watching as Marlon and his squad rolled past.
Just as it was back then, the air was mixed with black smoke; it rose from the carcass of the helicopter burning on the tarmac in front of him. Though the metal was blackening quickly, Marlon could still make out the Channel 17 logo on the chopper’s door. He shook his head. They had been ordered out of the area several times. Many times, in fact.
Marlon himself had come on the radio and told the pilots exactly what would happen if they did not leave the airspace. In the end, they shot it down. Inside the chopper there was a pilot, a cameraperson, and a reporter. They were all cooked now, of course, all barbecued to a crisp, and melted into the vinyl seats where they had been sitting.
The chopper never saw the lethal shot coming. Marlon radioed the base for a Cobra to fly in out of Pensacola. It was a tough call, but they all were now. The chopper was a security risk, and the director made it clear that nothing that transpired at the airport could be publicized.
The Cobra attack helicopter came in fast and high from the northwest. It rocketed over the sky at 100 mph and fired a single hellfire missile down into the news chopper. The explosive stuck on top of the rotor assembly; it was a perfect shot. The smaller Bell News chopper exploded into a ball of flames and dropped straight from the sky. No one on the ground was injured.
Marlon had to contain the situation. There was still a small crowd of people gathered at the base of the 747 on the tarmac, about a quarter mile distance from him. He had three men watching the anxious passengers. He was trying like hell to get them out of here. The first thing he had done when they pushed off the plane was to force them to douse themselves with insect repellent. Now he just wanted the people out of here. He still hadn’t received any type of instructions on what to do with them.
Marlon plucked the radio off his belt and spoke into it.
“John, can you head up to the roof of the terminal building with your rifle? I need long distance eyes up top; I don’t want to get surprised by a news van with a telephoto lens rolling up.”
An affirmative response came and Marlon knew that agent Joel Sytsma would be ascending to the roof of the building with his sniper rifle. The man was an excellent sharpshooter, but not terribly sociable. After the incident in front of the building, he couldn’t allow the media anywhere near.
The multitude of dead bodies would not look good on the evening news. Another tough call. They were all difficult calls. Marlon lost two men standing watch in front of the airport when the mass of people tried to push through. They had trampled two agents to death. I had no other choice. He still didn’t feel good about the order, but he told the four men he had left in the building to open fire.
Marlon had hoped the avalanche of crazed people would stop when the gunfire started, but they only became more frantic to enter the airport. They kept pushing madly right up until they encountered a bullet. Every one of them. Marlon’s stomach turned and he knew it was not just the medicine he was taking that was making him feel sick. Even if he survived this, he knew he would never be right with himself again.
Out of the sky came a loud roaring and Marlon observed a huge black shape emerge from the clouds, diving down at the airport. He nodded to himself. Quite punctual. The C130 was carrying the anti-parasitics the city so desperately needed, along with one hundred National Guardsmen. The giant plane thundered overhead and headed toward the outer runways, where Marlon saw its landing gear descend. Good, they needed the meds, and the manpower. His phone rang and he looked down at the small screen of his smartphone. It was someone important. He raised the phone to his ear.
“Grey,” he said. Then he listened for a full two minutes. “Excellent, I’m glad to hear it. I will get them out of here right away. Yes, thank you.” He hung up the phone and a faint smile graced his lips. About damn time we get them out of here. Marlon picked up his radio.
“Get the passengers back on board immediately. Yes, instruct the pilot to fly them to Mobile Regional Airport in Alabama; authorities there are expecting them.”
A crackled response came back to him. He nodded absentmindedly. “Yes, take off immediately. Are they fully fueled? Good. No, they’ll be treated when they land. Their chances of exposure out here are pretty minimal, but they still have to be treated with precautionary meds, then thirty days in an isolation unit.”
As he talked on the radio to his men out on the runway, Marlon walked along the perimeter of the airport. He had just passed a dark-colored, moveable jetway when a voice startled him.
“Where are you sending them?” The voice was young and female, but bristling.
Marlon turned and was surprised to see three armed young people. They had snuck up on him from behind the jetway. Somehow, they had gotten past the front sentries.
The girl who spoke was cradling an AR-15 rifle. Seeing the firearms, Marlon instinctively reached for his own pistol, tucked into a shoulder holster. As soon as he moved, though, the girl, who had brown hair in a tight ponytail, raised the rifle up to her shoulder and brought the rifle to bear on him.
“We saw what you did to all those innocent people out front,” the other female said. “Kala won’t hesitate for a moment to shoot you.”
The girl had darkly tanned skin and hair that was as black as night. She would have been beautiful, Marlon thought, if she weren’t sick. It was obvious from the unhealthy pallor of her skin and the beads of sweat that rolled off of her, that she was very ill. Marlon saw the heavy white gauze that was now a dark red, wrapped around her calf. He said nothing.
“I won’t hesitate for a moment, now answer the question.”
When Marlon still did not speak, the girl named Kala repeated the question, “Where are you sending that plane?”
Marlon noticed that the tall Cuban boy stayed behind the two girls and wondered why. Coward? Meanwhile, the little brown-haired girl confronting him now seemed full of venom and her eyes were studying him in a way that made him uncomfortable. He concluded that she was experienced with her weapon and would indeed use it if he provoked her. So, he decided to play along for a moment.
“I’m sending them to an airport in Alabama. They will be detained there until they can be treated with preventative medication.”
“My parents are on that plane,” the black-haired girl said.
Marlon said nothing.
“I need to see them.”
“I cannot allow that.”
“You can and you will!” the girl said, a touch of panic in her voice.
“I cannot and I will not. Not only are those people departing immediately,” he nodded his head in the plane’s direction, where the last passengers were being ushered back onto the big 747, “but you are obviously sick. You can’t go near them.”
“I am not sick.”
“You are. You have been infected, probably from a bite. Your friend here knows it,” he said, nodding at Kala. “We never publicized that the parasite travels through human saliva as well, but it does. You’re feverish, uncomfortable, irritable. Your sense of balance is just a bit off and you can’t seem to get cool.”
Marlon took a small step towards the black-haired girl and she moved back a little. “That’s because the parasites are in your brain now. I can’t let you go near that plane because those people are most likely not infected. You’ll contaminate them if I let you out there, and when you go mad, you’ll kill them all.”
Marlon turned to Kala and the tall boy. The girl named Kala had not lowered her weapon, and Marlon noticed that as he approached her, she slid her finger from outside the trigger guard to the inside. He held up his hands in front of him to show her he wasn’t threatening them. “The medicine just arrived on that big military transport. Along with a lot of soldiers.”
The girl glanced at the boy then returned her stare to him.
“It is not too late for you and the boy, you can still get treatment. This one is too far-gone, though. She’ll kill you both, soon, if she gets the chance.”
Kala was looking uncomfortable but did not budge.
“The best thing you can do now it to put down your weapons. We’ll take her to a secure room and try to make her as comfortable as possible, before … ”
“Before what?” the girl with the dark hair cried. “Before I turn into one of them? Before you kill me?”
Marlon fixed her with a stare that held no emotions at all. It was cold and unyielding, just like him. Finally, he said, “Yes. I am sorry you will not be able to say goodbye to your parents.”
The black-haired girl rapidly backed up several paces, shaking her head. “No, no that can’t be it,” she said, real fear in her voice now.
“Abbie,” Kala started.
“What Kala, what does your big brain have to say about this? Is he wrong? About me?”
Kala didn’t answer, she just looked at her friend. Her mouth opened and tried to move, to form words, but nothing came out.
Marlon watched the dark-haired girl as she started to go into a panic. She, too, held a rifle and was swinging it back and forth in jerky arcs. He could see that the safety was still engaged, so he wasn’t concerned. He was slowly moving one hand to his belt.
He wasn’t foolish, he wouldn’t make a grab for his gun, not with the pony-tailed girl still threatening him. He was reaching for his walkie-talkie. The girl looked at the tall boy who shook his head and offered up a useless shrug of his shoulders.
“I have to see my parents,” the girl said in a high-pitched tone. She was verging on hysterics.
Marlon shook his head, “Just wave to them from here.”
The girl threw back her head and let out a howl. Then she dropped the rifle and turned away, toward the plane. She’s going to bolt. The girl with the ponytail followed her with her gaze. Marlon unsnapped the radio from his belt, and before Kala could return her attention to him, he had depressed the button. “Sniper, sniper! Female target, black hair, white shorts. She is infected! Behind the terminal building, green light, green-!”
“Shit!” the ponytailed girl screamed, and swung the butt of her rifle at him. It caught him in the jaw and he went down hard. Not out, not all the way, but on the ground. He could still see when the black-haired girl began to run, just as he knew she would, right toward the plane. The radio dropped beside him and shattered.
Chapter 31
Abbie was hot all over. She felt like her blood was being heated to boiling from the inside. She heard the FBI agent’s words and felt something snap inside her. She was so overcome with emotions that she felt like vomiting. Anger was coursing through her, but sadness also. She was filled with a deep grief - for her sister, for Kala’s family, for her parents, and lastly, for herself. She felt the weight of those emotions crushing her insides and she had to escape them. So she ran.
She dropped the heavy black AR-15 on the ground in front of Adrian, spun around toward the plane and took off. Her parents were there, they were not far at all, only four or five hundred yards.
The first steps were the worst. Abbie’s leg exploded in pain but she swallowed that down, along with the rest of the hurt she was feeling. In three seconds she was moving fast. She looked around her and saw a man a hundred yards away start running at her. He didn’t have a chance. She was too damn fast. Five hundred yards was a thirty second run for Abbie. Thirty seconds and I’ll be with my family again. Mamma will fix this. Papa will protect me.
She picked up speed, racing over the tarmac at seventeen miles per hour. She could have competed in college. The black, hot asphalt blurred under her feet. Her breathing was hard and sharp. She could have tried out for the Olympics, might have even made the team. The plane was close now. Far behind her, she heard a scream. She thought it might have been Kala. She couldn’t tell, though, her head was all muddy now, clouded by the intense heat she felt.
She could not focus well; her mind seemed loud with the noise of her tormented thoughts. She tried to run harder, but her legs felt disassociated from her body. She could barely make out a large, blurry, white, form. The plane, she had made it. Mamma, Papa! I’m right here! She covered the distance faster than she’d ever run before.
With the ground still flying beneath her, Abbie tried to cry out to her parents. All that escaped her lips was a garbled howl, like a long bark. She could almost reach the plane. She flew faster over the tarmac, topping out at 27 feet per second. Almost a world record. She was reaching a hand out for the long white blob when a loud crack rang through the air.
The sound chased her down, faster than she could ever run. Then, the heat in her body suddenly disappeared. A 7.62 mm NATO round pierced the back of her skull, blew through her cerebellum, and tore through her frontal lobe before exiting through her nasal bone. Instantly, a third eye appeared between her two natural ones. The bullet then dropped to the ground, spent. Abbie’s legs, moving as fast as any human alive, took one final step after the bullet passed through her brain, and then she dove straight down into the ground.
The plane passed by her without slowing, and its passengers were never told about the young Puerto Rican woman who had lost her life trying to reach them.
Kala watched as her friend’s head snapped unnaturally back, then forward. She watched her plunge into a dark pool of liquid out on the runway. Kala let out an almost inhuman scream and dropped down to her knees. As she fell, wailing in agony, she brought the rifle to her shoulder. She fired five rounds madly into the air above the airport’s roof, where the sniper had taken his shot.
The man, a veteran shooter, rolled quickly and easily out of the way. Then Kala focused on Marlon, who was trying to regain his footing. She rocketed to her feet and ran over to him. She kicked him in the head, sending him back to the ground, then brought up the AR and smashed its barrel against his temple.
“You bastard!” she screamed at him, “she was my friend! The only friend I had left!”
Kala jammed the muzzle hard into his skin and could smell his skin burning under the hot muzzle. Her finger squeezed the trigger, hard, then harder; her eyes were narrowed on his, which showed no emotion. He stared her down; he understood what she had to do. Then her finger relaxed on the trigger. She let out her breath, then took another. At last, Kala released all the pressure from the trigger.
“You bastard,” she repeated. He was, but she would not kill him. Abbie was sick and Kala knew it. She knew what had to be done. In a way, the agent had saved her from having to do it herself. Kala stepped back a little, taking the pressure of the gun’s barrel off the man’s head.
She was about to lower the rifle when a crack filled the air. Simultaneously, a hot sting blasted through her clavicle and burst through her chest, only millimeters above her heart. The bullet then tore out through the back of her ribs. Kala’s whole body jerked. Her muscles involuntarily stiffened as a spasm rocked through her.
Her finger jerked against the AR-15’s seven-pound trigger, and the hammer went crashing into the firing pin. The pin struck the back of the .30 caliber bullet and sent it hurtling down the barrel.
He never even saw the muzzle flash. Marlon’s head exploded as the hollow point round flattened out and shattered within his skull. The bullet’s kinetic energy forced his gray matter in every direction – out of his skull. Kala’s face was plastered with brains as sh
e fell backwards to the ground.
She heard Adrian drop his shotgun and scream, “I’m unarmed, don’t shoot me!” and then darkness overtook her.
Chapter 32
Kala leaned back against the cool wall of the cavern. It was a hard story to tell – her story. She felt like she had been down here with these kids, she considered them her kids, for days. Many of them knew bits and pieces of her story already. Some of them had stories, equally horrible, of their own.
”Did you almost die? What happened after they shot you?” the voice that spoke was gravelly, but not with age. The boy had been plagued by recurring bronchitis for months and months. The mold that grew in the cave kept him sick. Still, he had a pleasant demeanor.
“I can vaguely remember being carried roughly off the tarmac and thrown in a mechanical hangar. The pain from the gunshot was like an ever-blossoming rose of fire in my chest. It paled in comparison to the pain and overwhelming hurt I felt when I watched my Lukie die, or when I had to kill my father. Then my only friend, my last piece of family left in the world, was gunned down right in front of me, by the same man who had nearly put a bullet through my heart. The physical pain was bad, yes, but I still think the emotional pain was worse.”
“After they threw me in the hangar building, I blacked out and didn’t wake up again for three days. I was in a hospital room, of sorts. It had all of the right equipment, and men and women in scrubs, but the floor was concrete and the walls were bright steel instead of hospital white. We were in a makeshift hospital, a field hospital. I lay still for quite some time after I came to, listening to the people around me. Through what must have been a thin roof, I could hear the drone of planes overhead, all around, almost constantly. I peeked out and saw that the ceiling was draped with mosquito netting.”
Pathosis (A Dark Evolution Book 1) Page 24