“Who are you?” Kahn whispered. She replied by leaning to him and placing a small kiss on his face as she cradled it. He looked into her eyes as she pulled away and saw the crystalline structure of her iris glowing with emerald sparks, illuminating the blackness he’d always noticed before now. The thin flesh of her face stretched against her cheekbones and Kahn realized she was crying. She gave a weak, distorted smile and stepped away from the two men toward the Neighbors.
As she stepped slowly to the center of the roof, in the middle of the strip of pillars on either side, Llewelyn called for his grandkids. Deb had beckoned them to her pillar when she thought Jesse and Kahn were going to fight over Kahn’s decision to trade the missus. She spoke to them softly, passing along platitudes and her farewell before telling them to walk forward, into the center with the Burned Woman.
As they both reluctantly moved closer to their grandfather another gust of hot air blew across the roof, momentarily freezing everybody in place. Llewelyn stood, hand clenching the small object he threatened Kahn with earlier as he watched his family join the scarred woman in the center of the gravel platform. His guards stood behind separate pillars and the reverend was still on the ground behind. Kahn and Jesse were watching the parade of hostages as Deb crouched behind her stone column nearby. Daisy was still close to his grasp, and she watched Kahn as the three lives being traded for her own came closer.
A burst of white noise rang from the horizon. From behind the Grand Hyatt Hotel, near the base of the fallen Tower of the Americas, a Black Hawk helicopter leapt into view.
“Oh good,” Llewelyn cried. “My friends are here!”
Chapter 39
- Comrades
Comrades
Nobody seemed to move as they all watched the black chopper approach. It only took a matter of seconds before the wash from the rotors blew dirt and gravel into the onlookers. Llewelyn watched with a big smile as his comrades brought the helicopter to a full stop. The engines began to wind down as the side door slid open, revealing a man with a streak of gray in his hair. The man jumped from the aircraft and moved with grace toward the group.
The timing of the landing couldn’t have been worse for Kahn, Jesse, and Deb. Not only were Kahn and Jesse exposed in the middle of the roof, but the hostage exchange had frozen while the aircraft came in to land. Daisy was still standing only a few feet away from Llewelyn, looking over her shoulder at the man approaching from the chopper. Reverend Green hadn’t moved from his position on the ground, and only now was Kahn noticing the blood and swelling on the pastor’s face.
Bella and Jack, wide-eyed with fear, were huddling together just in front of the Burned Woman. Jack sobbed softly and his sister was attempting to hold him in place. Nobody, especially the children, knew what to make of the silver-haired stranger who joined them on the roof.
The sun and heat were unbearable now that they’d reached midday. The stranger’s lack of sweat stains on his shirt and well-groomed appearance gave Kahn the thought that the helicopter and its occupant was an illusion. Some summer mirage that was composed of Kahn’s past memories.
The helicopter that dropped leaflets on LOSTOP, along with breaching the perimeter to let the dead flood into the unprepared post.
The silver streak in the man’s hair. Kahn saw it flash as he dropped the box from the hovering helo. He saw Colonel Johns and First Sergeant Mac shielding their eyes as they watched the silver flash in the sunlight. As he tossed reanimated dead into the crowds of civilians and soldiers.
And here, this murderer was approaching the evil man that destroyed Kahn’s life. Here they were, together. Working together. Deb was right about power and the collusion between these two powerful groups, working together with other powerful, immoral men is the natural order of things.
We aren’t going to get out of here alive, Kahn’s mind sent forward to his consciousness. He tried to shut it up, but the thought persisted as they all stood petrified.
“Colonel Luca, it’s great to see you!” Llewelyn exclaimed, holding his arms in the air as if to embrace the humid air between himself and his comrade. “I’m having a little bit of trouble you can help with. You see, these people here are holding my p--”
Luca swiftly drew the semi-automatic pistol from the holster on his belt. Llewelyn’s smile dropped as his comrade raised the weapon to shoulder-height and fired. The old man jumped as the bullet whined past him and struck the guard in the throat. A spray of bright red blood burst from the broken jugular and painted the pillar he stood behind. The young sentry fell to the gravel, grasping at the wound and gurgling as his own lifeblood filled his lungs and slowly drowned him.
In the next instant, before anybody could react, Colonel Luca had spun the pistol to the second guard. The confused look on the second man’s face curled into a grimace as the next three shots penetrated his chest. He crumpled to his knees and fell forward, rifle tangled beneath the dead limbs, and his face slammed into the roof with a thump.
The sound of the body hitting the ground spurred the disparate groups on the roof into action. Jesse grabbed Kahn and dragged him behind the nearby stone structure. Daisy, the most exposed and nearest the dead guard, threw herself onto the ground as the Burned Woman flinched and turned back toward Kahn and Jesse. Her scarred face was a mask of horror and she scrambled to join the two men behind cover.
Deb screamed unintelligible instructions at the children but Bella led them into action. She grabbed her little brother and ran toward the shooter. Her tiny sneakers kicked up gravel as she sped forward trying to reach their grandfather. She hesitated when she came past the final pillar and saw the blood from the first guard’s grievous injury. He was making liquid choking sounds as he exsanguinated, but his eyes were still alive and wide with fear. Bella glanced at the dying man and took the last few careful steps to her grandfather.
It only took a few seconds after the second shooting for the kids to reach Llewelyn and Luca to close the gap to his former confederate, holding his pistol loosely at his side. Llewelyn, despite his swagger and confidence during the negotiation with Kahn, seemed to have lost all of his typical hubris. Eyes wide and jaw dropped, he almost seemed to shake in fear. Kahn, watching the confrontation from behind the farthest column, had never seen the man look so old. The wrinkles in his face and gray in his hair seemed to have come to the surface, shifting his appearance like a chameleon to suit the situation.
“Luca, my friend, what are you doing?” he asked. Almost automatically, he turned to grab the two kids now bunched at his legs. He took Jack from his sister’s arms and held the little boy at arm’s length toward the angry soldier. “Look, whatever happened, let’s talk about it. You can’t do anything with my grandkids here. Please, Luca, not in front of the kids. Let’s talk.”
The colonel’s hardened expression didn’t change as he stopped a few feet in front of the troubled Neighbor. His eyes flicked down to meet ten-year-old Bella’s brave stance. She wrapped her arms around Llewelyn’s waist, resting her hand on the man’s holstered revolver and casting an unbreaking stare toward Luca. Her brother squirmed in Llewelyn’s arms, and finally he pulled the little boy back to his shoulder. Jack encased his grandfather’s neck and pushed his face into the man’s neck.
Luca hesitated, dropping the pistol further to his hip as he looked at the human shields Llewelyn now held tightly. He replaced the pistol in its holster and sighed.
“I won’t kill you in front of the children, derʹmá. But your empire is over. You are coming with me.”
“Yes, okay. I’m sure we can discuss th--”
“Nothing to discuss,” Luca barked. He finally looked around at the rest of the occupants on the roof. The two guards lay still, the first finally quieting. Luca looked left and right from the fetal form of Reverend Green and Daisy kneeling nearby. “Are these the people you’re warring with? The ones who attacked my people?”
“I’m not warring with them, Dimitri,” he replied. “Just a simple misunderstanding
. Now that you’re here, we’ll deal with them together. They are the enemies trying to bring us down, trying to destroy the careful alliance we’ve crafted. There’s nothing wrong with getting along. They are ungrateful for everything I’ve done for this city.”
“Shut up,” Luca snapped. He didn’t care about the city or the Neighbors; this was about thriving in an undead nation. He looked again at the two hostages before quickly grabbing Daisy under her arm. She yelped in surprise and pain as the Russian hauled her to her feet. “This one, we keep.”
Jesse raised his rifle and Kahn grabbed the barrel in alarm, shaking his head. “You can’t, you might hit her.”
“If they put her in that helicopter, we’ll never see her again,” he replied, trying to wrestle the rifle’s control back from the desperate Assyrian. Neither noticed movement from the other hostage, who had been lying still and almost forgotten throughout the entire negotiation.
Reverend Green’s arm jerked, flicking his bound wrists against the stones that comprised the surface of the roof. Luca was struggling with Daisy, trying to bring his arm around her neck to immobilize her. Llewelyn watched, holding his two grandchildren. Neither noticed the dark skin of the reverend had begun to turn gray before the captive man’s eyes snapped open, locking upon Luca’s movement. The corpse dragged its knees under and sprang into a standing position. It held its zip-tied hands out and bellowed. Bella screamed and Llewelyn tried to throw her hand off his revolver to dispatch the creature.
Green grabbed Luca’s shirt and lunged to bite. Luca spun, pushing Daisy into the dead man and knocking both to the ground. The freshly dead biter wasn’t phased by the blow and quickly scrambled to reach living flesh. Daisy screamed and kicked at the corpse of the reverend as it moved toward her, wriggling like a snake on its belly. Luca grabbed the woman and dragged her away, leaving the reverend biting at the air and trying to get to its feet. Instead of drawing a weapon, Llewelyn ran behind the Russian toward the chopper as the engines kicked on and the rotors began to spin slowly in warm-up.
Several rifle shots whistled past the fleeing killers as Deb took aim. Kahn yelled across the roof for her to stop as Jesse joined in, firing several times at Colonel Luca. The bullets zipped past, almost striking the Black Hawk but missing the target.
The sound of the firing weapons served to distract the reverend’s corpse from continuing to chase its original mark. The creature came to its feet and began to quickly shuffle toward Deb’s pillar. The two shooters adjusted their aim and shot at the approaching biter, striking it in the chest several times. One shot took the pastor to the ground, breaking the zip ties holding its hands together. It hissed, looking to get back to its feet, and spotted the flowing robes of the Burned Woman hiding behind another of the stone columns. Reverend Green reached, half-crawling and snapping toward the scarred flesh of the missus.
With this adjustment in victim, Deb was able to take careful aim. She breathed out, trying to remember her time in the Air Force and qualifying on the range in basic training. She was an office worker, working in contracting and acquisition, and hadn’t carefully aimed a rifle for years since her original training. She lined the iron sights of the carbine up with the shambling reverend and exhaled, surprising herself when the gentle squeeze of the trigger fired the rifle. The reverend’s head exploded outward, throwing bits of brain and white flecks of skull onto the woman. Her robe was suddenly stained with hundreds of red droplets from the dead man. Kahn watched as the mouth of the reverend ground into the stones of the roof as the body slumped in its second death. The top half of the head was gone.
Jesse and Deb lost no time turning their attention to the far side of the roof as Kahn stumbled forward toward the Burned Woman. She lay back, holding her body up with her damaged hands as Kahn fell onto his knees next to her, finding her back and hips with his hands and trying to bring her forward. She pointed with the burned mass that was her left hand at the two young guards, now reanimated and stepping awkwardly into the center of the roof.
The whine of the Black Hawk’s engines suddenly accelerated, rising in pitch as the rotors gained lift. Kahn looked toward the aircraft and saw Llewelyn leaning out of the open door with the black object held out toward the building. As he watched, Kahn realized what the object was and why Llewelyn had brandished it like a weapon. Of course he would have prepared the ending in advance. They were leaving the Alamodome and the Neighbors didn’t leave anything to chance. He was the one who burned.
The roar of the explosion shattered all coherent thought from those stranded on the Alamodome’s roof.
Chapter 40
- Separate
Separate
One of the Neighbors had been a former Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal warrant officer. This former soldier brought sophistication to the way the Neighbors disposed of their former homes. He hadn’t been there when Llewelyn drenched their factory with gasoline, or before that when the Walmart they controlled was set fire, but he knew Llewelyn wanted to rid the world of the Alamodome once they were ready to move on. It was easy for the group to scavenge the large quantities of diesel fuel and fertilizer the EOD soldier requested. It was a little tougher to manage the chemistry necessary to manufacture the homemade ammonium nitrate/fuel oil composition in quantities enough to wrap the entire interior column structure of the building. The ANFO was less sophisticated than the bomb that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, but it served its purpose. The wireless detonator he had handed to Llewelyn would initiate the boosters, small construction explosives they’d found to ignite the ANFO bombs. The bombs left no question, Llewelyn would remain the one who burned. In explosive style this time.
Unfortunately, the warrant officer was the same unlucky Neighbor who was opening the cage to the supply area. He was now wandering hungrily at the base of the Alamodome. His reanimated corpse remembered nothing of the explosives he’d set on the front supports of the entry awning. As the first charges exploded, dropping the concrete and steel covering and cleverly blowing a twenty-foot tall opening in the front of the stadium, the soldier’s body was crushed with a hundred other undead. The remainder began to climb over the rubble and up the large stairwell to the interior of the stadium.
The first blast was designed to open large holes in the concrete exterior of the building to increase the effectiveness of the subsequent two rounds of explosives. The roof shook as walls cracked and fell on three sides of the iconic structure. Concrete rolled onto the collapsed highway to the west and crushed abandoned cars in the parking lot to the west. Dead monsters poured into the building.
Kahn gripped the Burned Woman as the floor seemed to turn to fluid beneath them. He heard Jesse and Deb screaming as the earth seemed to shake forever. After what seemed like minutes but, in reality, was only sixteen seconds, the surface settled. Kahn looked around in shock. Several of the standalone pillars had collapsed and there was a significant crack running diagonally toward where the chopper had left. Wash from the helo’s wind blew down on the stunned individuals and Kahn looked to the vehicle.
Llewelyn tossed the detonator and Kahn watched it tumble through the air and disappear into the cloud of gray dust rising from the bottom of the stadium. The kids were gripping each other tightly from one of the canvas seats just inside the Black Hawk’s interior. Luca was not visible but Kahn could see a pair of bluejeans on the opposite side of the helicopter’s belly. As the aircraft banked to the west, Kahn caught Daisy’s frightened expression just as Llewelyn slid the door shut, locking her from his view.
“Kahn! Get up!” Jesse hollered from behind the pillar closest to the hatch. His voice had more than a touch of panic and Kahn quickly got to his feet. He pulled at the robes of the Burned Woman, grabbing for her limbs and dragging her up to an awkward standing position. He attempted to walk, but his legs felt like jelly and the best he could do was stumble to the nearest column. The entire roof felt like the deck of a ship pitching on an angry ocean.
Gunshots b
arked into the humid atmosphere, sharp over the low rumble coming from the building below. Deb was firing upon one of the dead guards. The figure walked unsteadily toward the shooter, fresh blood covering his torso. It moved quickly, seemingly not as affected by the nauseating movement of the building under its feet. In moments it was upon Deb and Jesse was racing across the roof to help.
Kahn heard a growl and the second young sentry appeared around a block of fallen concrete. It also moved quickly, bumping into the broken pillar and oblivious to the black wounds in its torso. The guard’s rifle was still tangled between the creature’s arms and the M16’s sling and it flopped around in front of the legs, slowing it.
Pulling the Burned Woman, Kahn tried to stumble his way back toward the hatch. He had left his own weapon in the stairwell as they planned for the hostage swap. Wobbly legs weren’t helping and as he hobbled away he looked over at Jesse and Deb. They were fighting off the fiend hand-to-hand. As he left the stability of the final column Kahn saw Deb swing her hatchet and slice the ear off the corpse, sinking the blade into the creature’s shoulder. He took the last few steps to the hatch and dropped his burden, spinning to meet the dead guard just as the creature caught up.
Kahn grappled the body, holding the cloth of the corpse’s shirt as dead hands grabbed for him. He lost control, spinning with the biter toward the corner of the gravelly surface. The building rumbled and the surface made another stomach churning pitch. Teeth snapped as Kahn fought to remain upright as his heels caught the short edge of the cupola. He had found the corner of the flat surface on the top of the stadium, but the rest of the roof was a long smooth slope. He heaved, throwing the creature’s weight to the side as he brought his knee into the body. The rifle hanging spun, bringing the trapped arms just far enough from Kahn that he could shove the corpse with no resistance holding onto him. It tripped, growling, off the edge of the flat area and onto the sloped surface. Kahn fell to his hands and knees and watched it uselessly scramble for a handhold as it slid on the smooth, slippery covering. A final growl escaped from its lips as it tumbled over the edge.
Nation Undead (Book 2): Collusion Page 27