Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  Andrew stared at the gun in confusion as the survivors bore down on him. The seconds seemed to stretch out as he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. “The gun is empty,” said a calm voice in the back of his mind; it was so calm, he almost jumped. He pulled the gun off his shoulder and rotated it, revealing the open cylinder. He was about to hit the mag release, when he realized he’d never get the new one in before they were on him.

  He threw the gun into the truck, and dove in after it, pulling the door closed behind him as the first crazy slammed into the side of the truck with enough force to rock it violently. A pair of men, both in nice business suits, rushed around the front as Andrew slammed it into gear, and stomped on the gas pedal. The engine roared like a gored bull and surged forward, up and over the two men. They showed no signs of surprise, pain, or any other normal human response as their heads disappeared under the heavy metal guard. They looked at him with a dark need for his life.

  He drove the fire truck over one of them, surprised at how a human body could support such a heavy vehicle. A part of his mind had expected the truck to squish the man flat. As the rear wheel rode up, it started to spin. Andrew looked in the mirror to see the truck’s tires throwing a rooster tail of blood at least 20 feet into the air. He felt the bile rising in his throat for the second time in as many hours.

  At least a dozen crazies crashed into the back of the vehicle in one long series of thumps. The impacts were hard enough to lift the truck off the squished corpse and propel him forward with enough force for his head to bounce off the seat back.

  The fire truck’s tires squealed and smoked as they bit into the blacktop, leaving the crowd of bloodthirsty creatures in his wake. Andrew drove all the way around the last hangar, slowing as he took the corner to look back. Most of the crowd was howling and pursuing him. Good, he thought as he spun the wheel and passed behind the hangar. The rear of the hangar was meant as an area where maintenance could move planes around or temporarily store them. They usually kept the doors closed, and because they’d closed the runway-side doors, he expected those on this side to be closed as well, but he was surprised to find the doors wide open. What he saw inside surprised and excited him even more. A plan formed, even if it was a crazy one.

  “Okay,” Andrew said, setting his jaw in determination as he rounded the far corner and turned toward the runway. He craned his neck to look back at the A320, so he didn’t see the trio of crazies that rounded the corner right in front of him, until a split second before he hit them.

  “Shit!” he cried, and hit the brakes, just as the first one slammed into the fire truck’s heavy-duty steel bumper. Metal crumpled, flesh tore, and bone pulverized as he hit the guy at 50 miles per hour. The blood from the victim sprayed back to splash the windshield. He didn’t see the other two.

  The first hit had rocked him forward and slammed his chest painfully into the steering wheel. He’d been in too much of a hurry to bother with the seat belt, and now he regretted it. Hitting the other two zombies had jammed him into the wheel twice more, and it felt like a jackhammer on his already tortured ribs. The big diesel engine didn’t even sputter. Andrew took a moment to find the windshield wiper control. Everything was inconveniently in Spanish. He flicked it on and felt his stomach stir again as the blades swished back and forth in the gore. He sprayed washer fluid, and as the windshield cleared, he saw several of the smarter ones had realized he was circling the hangar and had cut across the front to head him off. They bounced off the side of the truck. One threw a hand out and caught his driver’s door for a second. Andrew heard a tearing sound, then he was gone. “God,” he said, clenching his jaw.

  At last, they were behind him again, and he raced toward the plane where he’d seen people waving. He had a half a minute, so he pulled the M16 across his lap and hit the magazine release. The empty, steel 20-round magazine clattered to the metal floor, and he fished in his pouch for another as he took his foot off the gas. Smacking the bottom of the mag, he popped the bolt release with his palm and felt the bolt slap home. He reached around and flipped the safety back on. “Okay,” he said, hitting the brakes as he came around to the people.

  He was only a few yards away this time. They must have heard him approaching, because as he came around, he found them jumping up and down, yelling and waving. He slowed, but didn’t stop. A dozen crazies turned as he approached, realizing new prey was at hand. Andrew rolled down the window. “Go to the slide on the other side!” he yelled. “Be fast, we won’t have long!” He thought he saw one of them nod as he stomped the accelerator and drove around the tail of the plane, just underneath and to the side of the rearmost slide. He stopped the truck and jumped out, weapon at port arms and ready.

  The crazies by the slide came toward him. Andrew noticed they seemed slower than the others. Many had blood on their limbs, limped, or had other problems. He shouldered the rifle, flicked the selector to single shot, and fired. Five quick shots, and three of them went down.

  “What do we do?” yelled a voice from above.

  Andrew looked up and saw a woman standing in front of the slide. Several more men and women were behind her.

  “Jump!” he said and fired twice more. Two went down, but weren’t dead.

  “But, there are more of them coming!” she complained, and pointed. Andrew craned his neck. The crowd that had chased him to the hangar was returning, quickly.

  “I know, damn it! I don’t have enough bullets to get them all. Get down here, I have a plan!”

  “But…”

  “Just fucking do it!” he roared, emptying the rifle. He dropped the mag and slid in another, released the bolt, and fired right away. He could feel the heat of the barrel through the old-style, non-ventilated foregrip. He looked up and saw her standing there, afraid and uncertain. “I want to help, but if you don’t come down, I’m going to leave!”

  Andrew resumed firing. Halfway through the magazine, he saw the big yellow emergency slide rock, and a man came racing down. He heaved a sigh of relief as another followed almost immediately.

  “What do you want me to do?” the man asked from behind. Andrew could hear the shaking in his voice.

  “Can you shoot a gun?”

  “Sure.”

  “There are several pistols in my pack. Take one!”

  He could feel the man unzip the pack on his back and rummage through it. The pack got a few pounds lighter. “Got it!”

  “Good!” Andrew fired out the magazine. Nine of them were down. The last three were only a few feet away. They weren’t walking very well, but they were coming at them with wild-eyed intent. “Shoot those fuckers!”

  The guy didn’t hesitate. Andrew heard him rack the action, and saw him push the gun out in a modified Weaver stance, sweep the safety off, and open fire. Boom, boom, boom. The last three went down in the time it took Andrew to reload the M16. He turned and looked at the guy in surprise.

  “Chris Brown,” the man said, nodding and winking at Andrew, “two time three-gun national champion.”

  “Finally, some good luck,” Andrew said as he turned to check on the horde. They were 200 yards away and closing fast. “There are extra mags back there!”

  “I grabbed two,” Chris said. “I’ll get a belt later.”

  Andrew nodded, not knowing if Chris saw the crowd. “Everyone down?” he asked, glancing at the bottom of the slide. It shocked him to see what looked like a dozen people waiting, mostly because he was pretty sure the fire truck didn’t have room for that many people.

  “We’re gonna be in the shit in a minute!” Chris warned.

  “Everyone in the truck!” Andrew yelled to the crowd. They milled. “NOW!” he yelled and brought the M16 to his shoulder. They moved.

  Andrew and Chris engaged the approaching mob, Andrew from a standing position, Chris dropping to one knee, both firing slowly and methodically. The horde was about 100 yards away when he glanced over and saw everyone was in the truck. The dual back seats accommodated most of them,
but there were three men in the rear with the firefighting gear, which was almost completely exposed. “Arm yourselves up there!” he yelled at them. One man looked confused; he probably didn’t speak English. Another grabbed an axe and checked the heft. The third man glanced at him, nodded, and began looking over the equipment.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Chris said as he ran for the passenger door.

  Andrew was glad the somewhat panicked passengers had left the front seats empty for Chris and him, but then he heard a voice yell from above, “I’m scared!” He looked up and gawked at a middle-aged woman in a business suit, standing in the doorway. “Can you get the airline people to help me?”

  “Jesus Christ, lady, jump!” Andrew blurted.

  “Jump? Don’t be stupid! Do you know what this suit cost? It’s Versace!”

  Andrew glanced down the runway. Seventy-five yards away, hundreds of screaming crazies were bearing down on them. He took a step toward the slide.

  “You help her, we all die,” Chris said, his eyes wide in terror.

  Andrew looked back at him, breathing hard. He was half a second from telling Chris to take the truck and go. Then he realized if he did, none of them might survive.

  “Hurry!” someone yelled from the truck.

  Andrew took one last look at the lady in the door to the plane. She looked at the approaching mob that was screaming with rage and sprinting toward them, with an almost detached curiosity. “Damn it!” he yelled, and followed Chris into the truck.

  The fire truck’s engine roared as he spun away in a squeal of tires and diesel smoke. Either through a cruel twist of fate or plain bad luck, he could see the woman clearly in the rearview mirror, confusedly watching them go as the wave of insane flesh eaters crashed into the ramp and started clawing their way up toward her. He pulled his eyes away to concentrate on the tarmac ahead. He’d just left a woman behind for the horde to eat alive.

  Behind him, the ravening freaks split up. About a quarter went after the wide-eyed woman in her expensive suit, standing at the top of the evacuation slide; the rest continued to pursue Andrew and the survivors in the fire truck.

  He kept watching the crowd following them. They had to slow down eventually, right? They’d been chasing him back and forth across the airport for half an hour, with many of them sprinting the entire fucking time!

  Andrew drove the fire truck around the backside of the same hangar he’d been around only a few minutes ago, but this time he turned hard and drove inside. The wheels squealed loudly as the truck came to a sliding stop.

  “Out!” he yelled, “Help me with the doors!” Andrew ran, betting his own and everyone else’s lives the doors weren’t electrical. He spared a glance over his shoulder to see Chris running for the other door, with two men following him. There was one man behind him as well. He reached the inside edge of the door and heaved, grunting with the effort. It didn’t move. “Come on,” he growled and put his back into it. The man who’d followed him joined in, and they both yelled with their efforts. The door squealed and moved an inch. On the other side, the door Chris wrangled moved rapidly toward the center without resistance.

  “Come on, damn you,” he growled. It moved another inch and stopped. His left stump screamed from the force he was putting on his prosthetic. He ignored it. The sound of 100 growling and screaming voices was getting closer. He heard the door on the other side hit its stop, just as the first crazy careened around the corner of the hangar and raced past the door without looking in.

  Andrew almost laughed as he continued to push. Maybe they should have left the doors alone and hidden. Two more raced past, and it was then that the door groaned loudly and started to slide closed. The next group skidded to a stop, turning to face the survivors in the hangar. One of the women by the truck screamed and started running in the opposite direction. Several followed her, and the group of crazies raced into the hangar after them.

  Andrew gave the door one huge final heave, sending the massive steel thing sliding noisily toward its counterpart. A half dozen of the insane people raced through just before they crashed together with an echoing BOOM, then rebounded open several feet.

  Chris stepped away from his side of the door, drawing the M9 pistol. “Push it back closed!” he yelled to the two who’d helped him as he opened fire. He shot with the same measured pace. Shoot, confirm the hit, shift, and fire again. He dropped each of his targets with a headshot. Six crazies, racing after the retreating survivors, fell like ducks in a row.

  “Push it in,” Andrew urged the man helping him, “and hold it!”

  He turned without looking to see if the man did what he’d told him to, swinging the M16 off its sling, to his shoulder. The doors started to slide back together, but stopped as a half dozen men and women, eyes wide and screaming incomprehensibly, became wedged between them. First one, then more fell through, clawing to get at the fresh meat inside.

  Andrew flipped the M16’s selector from safe to semi-auto and squeezed the trigger. The round punched through the breastbone of a big beefy man wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt. He jerked and fell face first, nose splattering blood on the concrete. Another shot hit the neck of a woman who was bare to the waist. Blood fountained, and she screamed. He shot her again. She fell as more pushed through. We’re losing the doors, he thought.

  “Move!” someone yelled behind him. Andrew responded to the authority of the voice without knowing who it was or why he was yelling. He rolled to the left, rifle tucked into his abdomen, and came up on his knees as Chris and four men roared past, holding one of the big, reinforced ladders between them. They crashed into the crazies bunched up in the door, pushing them back until the ladder smashed against the door.

  Andrew ran and slid like a runner going into second base, leading with his titanium leg. The impact jammed his stump, making him cry out in pain. But the hit pushed the bodies out, and as he scrambled back, the door rumbled closed with an echoing clang.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 19

  Sunday, April 22, Evening

  Kathy knew she was in trouble. She had spent valuable time going through all the gas cans, holding them up as precious dribbles flowed into the ATV’s nearly-empty tank. She’d probably gotten a pint, tops. She stacked the cans in a pile by the trailer; the only things left in it were the gun and ammo. She couldn’t bring herself to totally abandon them, so she kept a single gas can in case she found fuel.

  The last of the sun’s red rays were dancing across the western horizon when she heard it. A snuffling sound, like an animal following a scent. She guessed it was a coyote or a dog. “Hiya!” she yelled, “get out of here!”

  “Graaaah!” came the reply, and a man rushed headlong from the underbrush.

  “Holy shit!” Kathy screamed, backpedaling into the ATV, and falling backwards over the seat. Her shoulder hit the foot peg on the far side, the spikey steel peg cutting into her soft flesh, and an instant later her head smashed into the baked, hard-packed ground. She bit her tongue and saw stars, even though the sun was still up.

  Kathy lay there, momentarily stunned, not quite remembering how she’d ended up on her back next to the ATV, its muffler making pinging sounds as the metal cooled. From somewhere nearby she heard grunts and stuff moving. Was someone digging through her stuff? The unmistakable sounds of empty gas cans bouncing off each other, of fabric being torn, and of sniffing and grunting reached her ears. She reached up and felt a knot on the back of her head. Then she reached around to her shoulder, and it came away wet with blood. An involuntary groan escaped her lips, and the other sounds went away.

  “Fuck,” she said under her breath as she heard shuffling footsteps coming toward her. She spun up to her hands and knees, and moved to the front of the bike. Shuffling and sniffing sounds were coming from right about where she’d been lying. The blood, she thought; it can smell the blood. She lowered herself closer to the ground, and looked between the front wheels and the frame.

  He was
on all fours, just like she was, with his nose to the ground, sniffing a dark patch that had to be where her cut shoulder had bled into the dirt. He was about 30, thin with dark curly hair, and completely naked except for a pair of work boots. She would have laughed in any other situation. Then she saw his penis dangling, and felt a jolt of fear. She realized she was more worried he would rape her than that he would eat her alive, and she shook her head. You need to get your priorities straight, she thought. He looked up from the blood, drool running down his chin, and elevated his upper torso, though he stayed on his knees. Blood stained his jaw and neck almost black, splatters of it going all the way down to his stomach. In a flash, his head dropped, and he looked right at her through the gap, his face turning to a feral snarl and his hand shooting through the gap.

  Kathy jerked back a split second ahead of the grasping hand. She heard his flesh sizzle as it pushed up against the muffler. He didn’t pull back. Instead, he twisted and tried to climb under, running the red-hot muffler along his upper arm and shoulder like a branding iron. She heard squealing as his flesh cooked, and the smell of it wafted to her, making her retch. She did the only thing she could think of; she turned and ran.

  She got about 10 steps before she realized he was right behind her. She tried to zig-zag, and instantly knew it was no good. She turned to face her attacker, just as he slammed into her, hands clawing, teeth snapping.

  I’m going to die, she realized as he bore her to the ground in a dusty heap. They rolled, and she somehow ended up on top. She felt his groin under one leg, and the lessons she learned in her weekend self-defense classes returned with a rage. She pulled her knee back and rammed it into his testicles with all the force she could manage. He grunted and grabbed at her face. She pile-drove his nuts a second time, but he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head toward his mouth.