“Now we’re fucked,” Keith announced, turning his head to look at Troy so he didn’t have to stare through the glare against the obscured front window. He blinked at his tears caused by the bright light, a surprised look on his face. “What the fuck?” He looked past Troy out the side window. An orange glow now mingled with the bright blue-white pouring through the front windshield from the helicopter’s belly searchlight.
Wendy spun around in time to witness a massive, undulating fireball billowing into the night sky, its yellow-orange fury expanding and growing by the second.
“Oh, shit,” Troy said and pulled Larissa from the dash, pushing her toward Wendy as he put his back to the door. “Get down!”
Wendy only had a second to realize what she was looking at before Troy put a hand on her head and pushed her toward the floor.
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The side window shattered, spitting hundreds of tiny shards of glass into the cab. With it came a hard compression of air that felt like being punched over her whole body by an enormous fist. Searing heat sapped the oxygen from the air. Wendy felt delirious and unsteady, as though the world were turning on its side. She knew she was screaming, but couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in her ears. The cab of the cement mixer moved beneath her, tilting away, throwing her into Troy and Larissa as the seatbelt around her waist cinched tight. The bright white beam in front of them veered away. Then the vehicle pitched with the shockwave of the blast, careening out of control and flopping onto its side with a hard whump that knocked the wind out of her.
The ringing in her ears became a high-pitched whine—a whistle like compressed air escaping a hose. A flash of bright white hit the front windshield again, its beam shooting past from the ceiling to the dash and blinking out. Kabooooommm! Another explosion thundered just outside the cab. A heatwave of fire and orange light slammed into the cab, jolting it hard, fracturing the front window into hundreds of starry crystals.
Wendy turned her head and held her arms up to protect herself as the wave of heat rolled past, rising quickly and sucking with it what little oxygen remained in the cramped space. She gasped, taking a quick, toxic breath before realizing there wasn’t any breathable air.
“Jesus—” Keith blurted, then coughed somewhere below her, gasping.
How did he get there? Below was a relative thing, though. The truck lay on its left side. She hung above him by her waist, still belted to the seat. Disoriented, she couldn’t find the latch, reaching to the wrong side before her brain reminded her how things worked. She wanted to breathe more than anything, but the smoky air in the cabin burned her lungs.
Another shockwave hit the truck, shaking everything. She put a hand on the dashboard. It wasn’t an explosion this time, but it had the same kind of impact. Icy chunks of snow pelted the vehicle like hail as a hard wind surged over them, racing back toward the zoo and the fiery cloud churning as it rose into the sky. Cold air swirled through the cabin and Wendy sucked in a big breath.
Breathable air!
“Troy,” she coughed, shoving him. He groaned. Thankfully he wasn’t dead, but his heavy body sagged against hers. She wasn’t sure if he was belted, or just wedged there.
Larissa had somehow become a crumpled ball at Wendy’s feet, stuck in the passenger foot well. Wendy didn’t want to move her legs, afraid Larissa might fall. She leaned forward and grabbed the girl by the neck of her jacket and gave her a tug. Larissa let out a whimper. Not dead, either.
Keith coughed again. He was on his back against the driver’s door, which was now the floor, his legs on the seat above him. “Ow,” he said sarcastically.
Thirty-Nine
Wendy reached over her head and switched the dome light one way, then the other. It gave off a slight, flickering glow, enough to see by. The faint orange of several fires in front of the truck glistened on the cracked windshield. Keith rolled to his side, groaned, and slowly rose to his feet using the ceiling of the cab for support.
He turned around, his face in front of Wendy’s, eye-to-eye with her except that she was sideways. For the first time, she thought she saw an honestly caring and nice man under the hard features and rotten smell of cigarettes. “You alright?”
Wendy nodded wearily.
“Yeah, me neither,” he said. Turning to face the front of the cab, he added, “Let’s get out of here.” He lifted his foot and kicked the windshield with the bottom of his boot again and again, making more star-patterned dents in the shatter-proof glass. It didn’t break.
“Seriously?” Keith gave the windshield another ineffectual kick. “Goddammit all.”
Wendy coughed into her elbow. “What now?”
“T,” Keith urged. He reached up past Wendy and swatted Troy on the arm. “Hey, you gotta get us out of here.”
Troy groaned. His head swung and wobbled, but he managed to look down at Keith. Under the dome light, Wendy could see several small lacerations and abrasions on his face in addition to the bruising and beating he had taken earlier. Blood trickled down his cheek.
“T, you gotta climb out of the cab,” Keith said, pointing above them. “Help us out.”
Troy swung his head up and looked to the sky. He held a thumb and fist up, mumbling something unintelligible.
“Wait,” Wendy said. “Is he alright? Troy, are you alright?”
Troy’s head lolled to the side, his eyes distant, staring through her more than at her. He shrugged and swung his head back to the task at hand. Fumbling with his seatbelt for a second, he managed to unclasp it. His body sank against hers. She steadied him with both hands as he reached up and grabbed the open window frame of the door. With a grunt, he hauled himself up, putting his boots on Wendy’s side for support like the rung of a ladder.
“Damn it,” Wendy said. She pushed his boot off her and tried to help lift him. His other boot kicked her in the back of the head. “Watch it.”
Troy fell out of the window and the door groaned under his weight. He immediately spun around and reached a hand down into the cab, mumbling incomprehensibly.
“What?” Wendy asked.
“The girl,” Keith said as he reached around the gear shifter to push on Larissa.
Wendy yanked on Larissa’s jacket, too, helping Keith dig the girl free of Wendy’s legs and the gear shifter. He pushed her up into Wendy’s lap and she lifted Larissa just high enough for Troy to get a grip on her jacket. He hauled Larissa up and through the window in one quick heave, the girl’s moaning protest quickly silenced as he pushed her out of the way.
“Now your turn,” Keith said.
Wendy put a hand on the dash to steady herself before pressing the seatbelt latch, but it didn’t let go. She pushed a few more times, then yanked on it.
“Here, let me—”
She slapped Keith’s hand. “I got it,” she said and put her feet down in the wheel well to lift her weight off the belt. It worked and the seatbelt snapped free. Keith put his hands against her hip to keep her from falling. She sighed, shaking her head slightly while standing on the gear shifter where it came up through the floor. She turned in her seat and grabbed Troy’s outstretched hand. With Troy’s help, she managed to climb up and out through the passenger window and into the night.
The cement mixer lay on its side where it came to a rest after toppling down a berm and into the open field. Just past it, the scattered wreckage and main fuselage of the helicopter smoldered. Off to her right, a rumbling, waning fireball rose into the sky over the zoo, lighting up the world around them in a meager orange glow, like a dying torch.
“Mother fucker,” Keith swore under his breath as his head peeked out of the window. He hauled himself up on top of the truck as Troy scooted himself to the edge, clumsily kicking Larissa on his way. The girl let out a loud moan of disapproval as she suddenly tried to roll away from him. Wendy dropped down on top of her to keep her from falling off the truck.
Troy mumbled something that sounded like “sorry” and “we gotta go”
at the same time. He waved for the others to follow, sliding off the side of the cement mixer to the ground. Keith slid Larissa from Wendy’s grip and lowered her over the side into Troy’s arms, then slid down to the ground himself. Wendy took a quick look around in the dying light, seeing nothing but open field in every direction, then followed them down.
Troy pointed in the direction they had been driving and mumbled again.
“Yeah, the plane’s the best bet,” Keith said, nodding.
Wendy coughed as a column of smoke from the helicopter wreckage turned in her direction. She waved a hand in front of her as though it would help. “Do you understand him?”
“No,” Keith replied, fishing out his pack of cigarettes from a jacket pocket. “But he’s making a lot of sense.”
Wendy shook her head and stepped next to Troy. He could hardly stand straight. Blood stained the right side of his head from just over his ear. Possibly a concussion, certainly some form of blunt force trauma. She wanted to pack snow on it, but knelt down to look at Larissa instead. The girl might be worse. She managed to get her to uncurl enough to look her over and press against her body in the vital areas. Each time she did, Larissa let out the same soft, irritated cry, but nothing that would indicate she felt any specific pain.
“Come on,” Keith said as he gave Wendy’s shoulder a tug. The smell of his cigarette wafted in the air. “We need to get moving before biters come wondering about the fire like a bunch of stupid moths.”
Troy bent down to take Larissa, cursing at a pain from somewhere. Keith stepped beside him and gave him a gentle shove. “I’ve got her. You take lead, mush mouth. I want to be able to keep my eye on you.”
Troy nodded and lurched ahead. At least he knew he was unstable.
“Hey,” Wendy said, scooping up a handful of snow. It was freezing against her fingers. Where the hell did my gloves go? She must have dropped them back at the Conservation Center when she helped Moby. She hoped he was alright. She hoped Troy was alright, too. “Put this against your head for now,” she said, pushing the snow into his hand. In the flickering light, she made out a wet spot on the side of his head where he must have been cut when the window blew out. “Right here,” she added, pointing at her own head.
Troy nodded and gently leaned his head against the snow, hissing at the sting.
Keith groaned while lifting Larissa onto his shoulder.
“Are you alright?” Wendy asked.
Keith took the cigarette from his lips and smiled. “Just old, darling,” he said with a wink and waved for them to get moving.
Forty
Troy took the lead, holding the snow against his head as he led them around the smoldering husk of the helicopter. The crash and subsequent explosion had blown the craft into several parts with the nose about ten feet away from the belly, and the tail scattered in bits and pieces all over the place. The fire still churned in the belly, making it impossible to go near—or even survive if anyone was in there.
Wendy rounded the front of the chopper to find the two pilots pinned in the cockpit by the windshield. Fiery heat coming off the side kept her at bay, but she couldn’t have helped them if it were clear. One was missing an arm, the other’s head was physically separated from his body by the front glass, the helmet still wedged in the ceiling with a trail of shimmering blood painting the glass.
Wendy looked away, sickened by the gruesome sight, and hurried to catch up with Troy. The waning light off the fires did little to help her see where he held his head, but there was a lot of swelling around his eyes and nose, more than was there earlier. Maybe he hit his head on the dashboard of the truck during the crash.
Troy noticed her staring at his face and said something that sounded like, “I’m fine.”
She didn’t know how. If it had been her, she knew she wouldn’t be walking at all. Her left leg hurt enough from where she hit the shifter when the vehicle fell on its side, and the cuts on her hands from all the broken glass stung like hot needles.
How they survived at all was a mystery. She looked back at the wreckage and the dark cloud of smoke climbing out of the zoo, wondering if anyone else survived. The enormous mushroom cloud’s bulb fanned out, billowing hundreds of feet into the night sky. Wendy thought of those old nineteen-sixties films about duck-and-cover and the Red Threat, explosions out at sea consuming massive ships, and all the test site footage with soldiers marching back into the blast. It felt surreal, mind-numbing in that same way her first really big emergency room experience had been.
She couldn’t even remember what the patient had been brought in for, but seeing the blood made her freeze. A knife in the shoulder, maybe, or the stomach. Nothing so gruesome that it should have shocked her, but life threatening enough that she questioned herself. Up until that moment, she always worked with another surgeon, even when she was lead.
But that day caught her off guard, and she stood in the middle of the room as others worked around her. The OR nurse, one of the veterans, stepped beside her to lean in and whisper something Wendy would never forget even if everything else vanished as a consequence of time. The nurse had said in a flat, detached tone, “At least act like you know what you’re doing.”
It struck her as hard as the day her sister nearly died at the quarry, but this time for a different reason. She hadn’t gone that far on her journey to fail the first time she was tested. Lives depended on her, lives she could save now that she had the training and skill. She didn’t have to stand uselessly behind the boy who had pulled Sarah from the lake, fixed to the spot by concrete fear and a realization that she may have just witnessed her sister’s last moments on this earth.
She hated both memories equally. They had a strong bond because of it, but unlike the day her sister nearly died, the day she stood in the OR, and the nurse whispered to her, she took action. She acted like the boy who saved Sarah and dove headlong into the fray.
Wendy watched the man that brave boy had become. Troy. Savior of both O’Farrell girls. “God,” she whispered. “I hope your friends got out—”
Troy sighed loudly.
“I don’t even know if you had family in there,” Wendy realized aloud. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he mumbled, or so she thought that’s what he said.
“You know, I went into medicine to help people. I can’t…this kind of thing…I….” She shook her head at the enormity of the situation, throwing her hands in the air out of frustration. Above, the massive cloud of smoke grew wider, threatening to plunge the world into an even darker oblivion.
She was about to say more, but Troy stopped in his tracks and Wendy looked at him expectantly. She wanted to tell him how helpless she felt at the quarry, and that his heroism inspired her, that he was the very reason she went into medicine. Troy looked at the blood-soaked snow in his hand before shaking it to the ground. He pointed down, waving. “More.”
Wendy nodded, obeying, reaching down to pick up another handful of snow. At least she could do something. She packed it into his hand and he put it against his lips and nose.
“Keep moving, you two,” Keith snarled behind them.
Troy started off again and Wendy stepped inline beside him. They trudged northward, away from the crash site and into the wide field, marching toward where the highway veered into the long wall of sparse trees. Larissa groaned loudly each time Keith stopped to jump her in the air so he could adjust her on his shoulder, but he didn’t put her down.
They marched across the snowy field with a slushing, crunching, uneven cadence, and with every step, Wendy expected something to emerge from the shadowy trees ahead. From time to time, she looked back at Keith to make sure he was alright. Aside from breathing hard, laboring to carry Larissa on his back and keep up with Troy, whose pace wasn’t slow by any measure, he seemed in good shape.
Far better than Troy. She wanted to stop and wrap something around his head, even if she had to rip her own shirt to do it, but he refused to slow or stop.
/> They made it to the tree line faster than she expected. The looming shadows made Wendy nervous.
“Do you think any zombies are in there?”
“Yup,” Keith said between breaths. He had carried Larissa nearly a quarter mile. She looked back at the road, but couldn’t see the wreckage in the dark anymore. The fires around it had gone out. The only orange glow that remained came from where the zoo had been. Fires rose from the buildings and trees surrounding the area, but the fireball had died out a while ago.
She stopped and felt the direction of the breeze. It was moving east, but they were moving northerly. “We need to get out of the area.”
“That’s the plan.”
“If there’s fallout from—”
“Stop talking and keep walking,” Keith said.
“Look, I don’t know if you know much about radioactive fallout, but—”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Stop yammering.”
Wendy’s eyes narrowed.
“This has been one fucked up day,” Keith went on, “and I don’t need more—”
A moan rose from somewhere inside the woods. Wendy sucked in her breath and turned to face the trees, expecting to see a wall of shambling figures coming out of the shadows. The shadows stood still, but moaning echoes of nearby replies came.
“Goddammit,” Keith growled.
Forty-One
Keith rolled Larissa off his back to put her down in the snow. The girl let out a complaining moan, quieter than those coming from the trees, but enough to worry Wendy.
Troy stopped and straightened, putting a hand on his lower back as he turned to regard them. He had a haggard appearance. He didn’t seem worried by the sound of zombies so near, but he looked tired, like he was ready to fall down and just give up.
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 17