by Brian Parker
He left his unanswered questions, and the dead who prompted them, behind. About two hundred feet beyond the wreckage was the fence that ran around the airport. He jogged to it, bent over at the waist to take advantage of the tall grasses that’d grown through the chain link.
He’d arrived at the south end of the runway in a little less than an hour after he split up from the girls and Mark. Looking through the fence, he saw that the paved airstrip stretched out for thousands of feet, running north-south. From where he was, he could see the jets where they’d parked near the hangars. Beyond them, a larger cargo-type plane with propellers that looked similar to a C-130 was nestled close to the terminal. Other than determining for sure that they weren’t US planes, he was unable to tell anything about them from this distance. He was going to need to change his angle of sight or try to get closer so he could get details.
He glanced left and right. To the left, the fence continued westward for a couple hundred feet and then turned northward to run the length of the runway. To the right, it ran for about a hundred yards, then turned northeast, angling toward the terminal and the parking lot.
Jake decided to go right and slid along the fence toward the terminal. He had to watch the surrounding countryside for infected and inside the fence for whomever it was who’d landed. He knew the cargo planes could handle rough terrain airstrips, but not the jets. They would have required ground support to clear away debris on the runway and make sure there weren’t any infected inside the fence line. The ground crew also meant that they might have security patrolling the perimeter, so he’d need to be doubly cautious.
He was getting closer to where he could see something of what was going on around the terminal. The cockpits of both jets were open, their glass canopies angled up from the fuselage and reflecting the poor winter sun. Several figures ran from the terminal and Jake stopped. That’s it, the pilots are dead, he thought.
Then, the figures lifted ladders into place alongside the cockpit. The people he’d thought were infected surging forward to attack the pilots were actually ground crew. Confirming that there was a military presence just a few miles from the farm had been his primary reason for coming out to the airport. Now that he had his answer, he considered just leaving and returning to the farm to talk things over with Vern, but the old veteran would want more intel than what he’d already gathered.
The pilots climbed down and walked quickly to the terminal while the ground crew unreeled hoses for fuel and whatever else they did as they scurried around the aircraft. Jake watched the pilots intently until they disappeared inside and then the ground crew, trying to determine who they were and what they were doing here in Kansas. Besides what could only be described as tan skin, he couldn’t see well enough to determine much of anything. Snatches of conversation reached him, carried on the wind blowing from the north. It was definitely not English, though he had no idea what language it was.
He turned his attention to the jets. Like the conversation, he was convinced that they were not US aircraft. They were painted a mottled tan and green color, whereas the Air Force and Marines pretty much just used gray paint these days. Each plane had two vertical stabilizing fins set wide apart. They looked similar to the F-15s that he’d seen dropping ordnance around Fort Bliss, but there was something about them that made him think they weren’t the same type of aircraft.
There was a flag of some type, with three horizontal lines. He couldn’t make out the color of the top bar, but the middle was white and the bottom one was red. What he’d thought was a starburst decal on one of the vertical fins was actually a lion’s face and mane, painted in red. There was also a bullseye painted along the side, with presumably the same national flag colors since the red was in the middle, surrounded by a white circle, and… Is that green? he wondered as the sun peeked through the clouds above.
Jake stared hard and decided that it was a green ring around the bullseye. The colors were green, white, and red. He knew that was a clue that should trigger some sort of reaction from him, but it didn’t. He’d been a terrible Social Studies student in high school and hadn’t done much more than the required history and economics classes at West Point.
Damn, I was a shitty student, he mused.
The distant sounds of engines reached his ear. He cocked his head, trying to determine which way it was coming from. It was impossible to tell which direction the noise originated from. As he listened intently, he also heard the echoes of screaming: Inhuman, incoherent, rage-filled screams.
The infected had heard the jets landing, and now they were coming to destroy them.
I can’t believe that he sent me away like that, Sidney fumed. She’d risked her life—and Sally’s—to go after Jake that morning. Hell, if they hadn’t gone after him, he’d probably still be stuck inside the grocery store.
“Ugh,” she sighed aloud.
A hand fell onto her shoulder from behind. “Jake?” Sally asked.
“Yeah. He’s such an ass.”
“It isn’t gonna make things any easier,” Sally said, “but you’ve gotta tell him how you feel.”
Sidney stopped on the road, turning to the younger woman. “I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.
Sally harrumphed, then looked at Mark. “Oh, come on, Sidney. Everyone knows, even Carmen.”
“Knows what?” she asked, turning her head back toward the west in their direction of travel.
Sally cocked her hip and placed a hand on her side. “Are we really gonna do this? Everyone knows that you like Jake, but he’s with Carmen.”
The kid, Mark, threw up his hands. “Are you kidding me?” he whispered harshly. “Jake has two women in love with him?”
“You shut you goddamned mouth, kid,” Sidney said. “I don’t love that moron. I like him since he’s like the only guy around who hasn’t tried to kill me or rape me, but I sure as hell am not in love with him.”
“O…kay,” Mark replied. “That’s a kind of messed up way to look at life.”
“Nobody asked you about your opinion,” Sidney barked. “I mean, how old are you anyways, like twelve?”
“Fifteen,” he said, looking down and kicking at the asphalt.
“Fifteen? I was working forty hours a week and dating college guys by the time I was your age, so don’t try to tell me about your view of the world. Got it?”
He nodded and Sidney refocused on Sally. “I’m not going to tell him shit, and I’m not going to ruin my relationship with Carmen. She’s the best friend that I could have ever hoped for in this fucked up world.”
Sally locked eyes with her, not backing down. “I still think you should tell him how you feel.”
Sidney grimaced, then looked westward once more. “We need to get going if we want to make the turn before it gets dark and the infected start creeping around.”
The college girl pushed past her, leading the way toward the turnoff from the highway. “You know as well as I do that they don’t hunt very well at night. We’re in more danger right now than we would be in an hour.”
They walked along the highway, Sally leading, with Mark in the middle and Sidney bringing up the rear of their little group. She had a lot of stuff to work out, and inviting a man into her life was certainly not anywhere in her plans—even if she was attracted to Jake Murphy.
The turn to the Campbell farm came soon enough, thankfully, without seeing any infected along the highway. The number of creatures in the area had thinned to begin with, likely from starvation, but Sidney wondered if those jets flying all over the place had drawn more of them away. They were fairly stupid and easy to avoid once you figured out what triggered them, and noise definitely triggered them.
They’d gone less than twenty feet down the side road when Sally held up a hand, using the hand and arm signals that Jake had taught them to say “freeze” without speaking. Mark stopped alongside Sidney and she held a finger to her lips, telling him to be quiet.
Sally’s head tilted slightly as she str
ained to listen. Then Sidney heard it too, the rumble of engines coming from the west.
“Get down!” Sally hissed, pointing to the shallow ditch alongside the road. They dove to the ground and waited.
It wasn’t long before five large, eight-wheeled tan vehicles rumbled by, spaced about half a football field apart between the trucks. Each one bore a very large weapon of some type up top. Sidney glanced at Sally. “Are those ours?”
“I don’t know,” the younger woman admitted. “Maybe? I mean, they look kind of like what Jake has stowed away inside the barn, but I’m not sure. Don’t Army vehicles have a big white star on them or something?”
Sidney shrugged. She’d seen a few war movies, but didn’t remember anything about big white stars. She wished that she’d paid closer attention to the Army trucks and such when she was in the refugee camp, or even when she rode in one for several days as they fled Fort Bliss. The vehicles were big and tan, she didn’t think she’d ever have to try to distinguish between different kinds of Army trucks, so she didn’t commit the stuff to memory. If they were American vehicles, wouldn’t they have US flags painted on the side?
“Who cares that they aren’t American?” Mark asked. “I want to know why they didn’t stop to help us.”
“We’re hiding from them, kid,” Sidney replied. “We don’t know who they are, but I bet you that’s why there aren’t any infected out and about. They’re all chasing after those loud trucks and the jets.”
“So, what are we gonna do about it, then?” Mark pressed. “I mean, there are people in those trucks—non-infected people. Surely they want to help us, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Sally answered. “We had a run in with a couple of non-infected people a few months ago that almost cost me and my sister our lives. They killed my mom before Jake rescued us. I think we should go back to the farm like we told him we’d do. At the very least, we could tell my Grandpa and he can decide what to do about them.”
Sidney looked up the highway to where the trucks were still visible in the distance. “I think they’re going to the airport too.”
“So, what does that mean?” Mark asked, exhaustion becoming evident in his voice.
He needed sleep. They all needed sleep, Sidney decided. The stress was getting to them. The combination of their earlier firefight at the Walmart, traveling down the highway that they’d dubbed the Highway of Death after hearing one of Vern Campbell’s war stories about a bunch of trucks lined up on a road and destroyed by US airplanes, and the constant vigilance because of the threat of the infected was getting to them.
“I think it means we need to get back to the safety of the farm,” Sally said.
Sidney nodded. “I agree with you. There’s been a lot of activity around here in the past twenty-four hours—and I’m not sure that’s good. Until we can figure out what’s happening, it’s best to lay low and wait for Jake to come back with his report of what’s happening at the airport.”
“Uh, guys?” Mark’s voice trembled. “Are you any good with those rifles?”
Sidney looked beyond the other two toward where Mark pointed. Several infected, maybe as many as twenty, had appeared on the horizon from the direction that the trucks had come from. They were running, then walking, then running again.
“Dammit,” Sidney hissed. “They’re following the trucks, but they’ve lost sight of them, so they don’t know what to do.”
“If those trucks don’t start making a lot of noise, then probably half of those things are gonna turn up this road and end up at the farm,” Sally concluded.
It was true, Sidney thought. Now that the infected had lost sight of what they were chasing, they’d flow wherever the terrain allowed them to go with the least restrictions. Most of them would probably continue down the highway, but some of them might turn and head down the turn off toward the farm.
“We should kill them,” Sidney announced.
“Are you… Are you sure?” Sally asked.
“Yeah. If we want to keep the farm safe, then we need to take them out.”
Sally held up her hand, extending her fingers sideways like Jake had taught them to measure distance. “I think it’s about three hundred, three-fifty.”
Sidney mimicked the farm girl’s measurements. “Yeah, about that. I count twenty-three infected. Should we wait until they get closer or try to take them now?”
The younger girl looked up the road toward the farm, then rolled onto her side. She pulled several magazines from her pocket and tossed them on the snow beside her. “I can hit them from here,” she said, laying back on her stomach and bringing the suppressed rifle into her shoulder.
She didn’t wait for Sidney to respond before she began firing. “Uh, you missed,” Mark said after her first shot.
“Shut up. I was just getting my aim point,” Sally said, firing another round that found its mark in the stomach of an infected.
Sidney lined up the reticle center mass on an infected that was in the lead of the group. She began to apply pressure to the trigger, but stopped and adjusted her aim up several notches so that the crosshairs intersected above the creature’s head, and then she squeezed the trigger.
A bright red blossom of fluid appeared as her round punctured the infected’s jaw and punched through the back of its throat. “Good shot,” Sally commented, squeezing her trigger once more.
The infected fell one by one. The dumb beasts didn’t even realize that they were being murdered from afar.
12
* * *
NEAR LIBERAL, KANSAS
FEBRUARY 12TH
He could feel it moving inside of him, working its way through his veins to transform his body. Within the first two hours after the infected had vomited its filth onto him, he’d felt weak and tired, like he was coming down with the flu. Those feelings had since left him, leaving him with a numb sensation all over.
As he rode in the TC hatch of the Stryker, he contemplated his fate. It wasn’t often that a man knew with certainty when they would die. The feelings of foreboding before a so-called suicide mission may have been similar, but Jim had never experienced anything like that during all his years in the Army. He knew, with certainty now, that he would be dead soon. It wouldn’t be by his own hand, he could never do that. Instead, one of the soldiers in the vehicle below, or in one of the other trucks, would end his life with a bullet to the back of his head.
He’d had illusions of being immune at first, regardless of what he’d told Sergeant Turner. Every one of them had a shot at being immune, right? The government scientists who’d been working on a cure at the hospital were all dead. They’d died early on in the outbreak during some type of bizarre shootout between the Homeland guys and an unknown faction. Since then, the base only had normal MDs, doctors who were adept at patching up the wounded, but not at scientific research. All attempts to identify a cure—or what made people immune for that matter—were postponed indefinitely.
The infection moved through his body like a living thing. He could feel it, as if it were a worm, traveling the length of his veins and arteries, leaving a thickening substance in its wake. That was the strangest sensation out of all of them. Jim could feel his veins becoming harder, the infection coagulating the blood inside his body, hardening it against the damage that all infected were prone to receive over their remaining time on earth.
Jim Albrecht was becoming one of them.
He pushed the transmit button on his CVC helmet’s microphone. “Truck One, this is Ready Six,” he said, startled at how terrible his voice sounded over the integrated speakers. The taste of blood in his mouth caused him to wipe at his lips. His sleeve came away with a line of dark red. His gums were starting to bleed.
“This is Truck One,” the TC of the lead vehicle replied. Jim was having a hard time remembering the kid’s name.
“What’s…” He stopped. What was he going to ask again? He thought back to the events of earlier in the day when they’d raided the empty farmho
use and found evidence that the lieutenant had killed the monsters who’d lived there. The monsters were the two men, not the infected they’d tortured. When the trucks returned, to pick them up, two jets flew by less than a mile away. That’s right.
“What’s the ETA to the airport?” Jim asked. There was a pause as the man on the other end checked his computer-thing—Blue Force Tracker! Jim reminded himself, struggling to keep it together.
“Looks like about half a mile to the turn off that we identified, then another mile to the vehicle collection point.”
Jim nodded. They’d made a plan to turn off of the highway and send the lead truck forward to ensure the way was clear. Once he determined they weren’t walking into a trap or that the area wasn’t infested with the infected, the rest of the trucks would roll forward and they’d dismount. It was only about half a mile to the airport from the collection point.
He could feel himself slipping away. How long had it been since he’d become infected? Was it six hours now? He looked at the watch on his wrist. It was probably closer to seven.
“Uh… Truck One,” Jim said. “When you get to the turn, hold up for me. I’m coming with you.”
“Say again, Ready Six?”
“I’m altering the plan. I’m going to move forward with your elment—I mean element.” He’d begun screwing up words when spoken aloud too. Dammit.
“Roger, sir. We’re…ah, we’re at the turn now.”
Jim switched to the vehicle internal channel. He couldn’t remember the driver’s name. Damn. “Driver, pull up alongside Truck One and drop the ramp. Change of plans. I’m going with the lead vehicle.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver replied.
Jim didn’t bother to watch where the driver went as he felt the Stryker increase speed. Instead, he disconnected his CVC helmet from the communications system and began the process of crawling down through the cupola, made harder than usual due to his deteriorating health. The driver began lowering the ramp before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. Must want me out of his truck pretty bad, he chuckled to himself.