by Edgar, C. P.
He entered the PKI code from his phone, the drive was opened. Inside were various folders that he and Ed maintained. Some were records for the farm, while others were photos they maintained from times past.
David opened the folder titled “Barn Items” and inside saw a single document had been recently updated by Ed just hours ago. He opened it up and found that Ed had posted a message for him in the document. This is how they communicated when email wasn’t to be trusted.
“Hey bro. Found your girlfriend and she is safe. I have her in pocket and we are traveling back. I can’t talk direct. We are playing a game of Squanto right now. I need you to pick us up at Dulles tomorrow NLT 1445 and bring us back to the farmhouse. We will have luggage so meet us at carousel delta and the party will find you there so just sit tight. If you are not there by 1445 for whatever reasons we will see you at the farmhouse for the reunion. The rest of the helpers are coming too, but separately, and we will all be hanging out in the barn before we finish this game. Expect bad weather.”
David sat back and sighed, a smile on his face. Merissa is safe. However, Ed’s remarks regarding a game of Squanto was troubling and the reference to bad weather made David instantly tense. His smile melted into an amalgam of fearsome smirk and painful clench.
David and Ed had grown up in this forest. As boys, they set out on adventures at the break of dawn, only to return after the sun had fallen below the horizon. They had many games that they had conjured up during those beautiful years. They hunted dinosaurs, were archaeologists and tomb raiders, they made vast forest bunkers for Vietnam-era battles, they lived in tree houses built after they shipwrecked their pirate ships, they fought aliens from distant places.
They also played Squanto, which they had created like most of their imaginary games from a volume of work found on one of their father’s bookshelves. Squanto was a Native American living near the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts when the very first British settlers began making journeys across the Atlantic Ocean in search of the New World.
David remembered reading the book, it was old and bound tightly. Some of the words he didn’t much understand at the time, nor the impact of the events. He couldn’t recall the author nor did it matter. He remembered the story though of how Thomas Hunt had captured Squanto after hunting him down in the wilderness of the region, away from the shoreline, along with others from his Patuxet tribe.
Hunt had been hell bent on conquering the local tribesmen and women, sailing them back to England as treasure and proof of his conquest, to be sold as slaves. David remembered as a child that someone would play the role of Squanto, running from the ships set upon the shoreline while the other, usually Ed, would give chase with an imaginary party of British invaders.
David recalled, that when he was transformed into the role of Squanto, how so afraid of being captured he would become. He crawled through mud and hid in caves, all the while being pursued. The anticipation of capture so enthralling, so fearful. They would play this out until the character of Squanto was captured and imprisoned, the game only ending if Squanto could break free or dinner time arrived. We are being chased.
David jumped up and walked purposefully out of the house, and down the hill to the large barn structure. It was an A-frame styled wooden structure with a large double main door which hung on ironwork. The doors were designed to slide to either side as opposed to swinging open. They were also keenly secured and automated. To the right of these and around the corner was a man-sized entry door which wasn’t immediately visible if you were standing at the front of the barn or from the view from the main house. David walked up to this door and placed his finger into the slot above the deadbolt. Its biometric lock registered his identity against known profiles and clicked open.
David entered the barn and moved to the back, sliding past the vehicles sitting in the main bay. In the rear was a small set of steel stairs that rose up toward a metal cage. Inside the cage, David could see the weapon safes, the gear bags and Pelican cases along the far wall on the floor, the weapon cleaning station, and some other random things that it appeared Ed had dumped on the floor during his last visit.
David repeated the biometric access process unlocking the cage and entered, grabbing up a nearby rolling deployment bag. He moved swiftly to the weapon safes. He opened them and quickly produced two SIG Sauer M400 AR-15 pistols, and a handful of loaded 5.56mm 30-round magazines and placed them in the deployment bag. He moved to another cabinet and pulled a Springfield 1911 pistol for Ed in a Kydex holster and a stack of loaded .45 magazines bundled together by electrical tape.
On the bottom of the cabinet, David saw his Glock 19 was already in a concealable holster so he picked it up and tucked it into his pants. He grabbed three or four extra magazines and dumped them into a side pocket on the deployment bag. As he started to leave he decided at the last moment to grab two ceramic plate carriers just in case and a bag of communications gear. That should do it, he thought and closed the cage as he rolled the bag down the stairs.
Next to the cage, above a work station built into the back wall was a rack of keys. David grabbed the set he was looking for, walked over to the dark blue Land Rover Defender, and opened the back hatch throwing the gear inside. David knew from the mental math that he was already late in receiving the message, and it was going to be close trying to make it to the airport in time for their arrival.
I hope they are on that flight, he thought as he visualized holding Merissa in his arms again.
***
Flight # 237 Istanbul to Washington, D.C.
Miller jumped over the last two rows headlong just as the cord to the second life raft was pulled by Einberg. The sudden rush of the N2 aspirated inflation system overpowered the sounds of the screams nearby as the raft broke open from its folds and crashed open, filling all the available space in the midship galley.
"Nice work," he said looking up at Einberg from the floor with a smile. He was drenched in sweat from the fighting and blood was dripping from a cut above his left eyebrow he had suffered at some point. This time, as opposed to the first raft opened on the opposite side, the orange twin-tube rectangle opened with the passenger deck facing toward them. They finally had free access to the supply and survival compartment of the raft and its components.
Einberg was already working on the kit, trying to quickly get to the components. He found a raft knife in a scabbard and immediately passed it to Miller. Miller pulled the knife secretly hoping it was a normal knife, but satisfied nonetheless to find that it was a raft knife, with a dull blunted end as to not puncture the craft if it was afloat at sea.
The blade was sharp however, and for it to be useful, he would need to modify his killing technique to slicing. "Thanks bro," he said placing the knife back in the scabbard and hanging it around his neck by the lanyard.
The raft shuttered from the impact of infected passengers on the opposite side colliding against the new fortification. Screams began erupting as they tried and tried again to rip through, tear, and bite at the heavily coated nylon material.
Einberg found the raft repair kit and broke it open from its sealed bag. He emptied the contents on the floor and grabbed a utility knife from the pile of contents just narrowly beating out another set of hands grasping for the same knife. He stood with the knife in his hand and came eye to eye with a middle aged white man in a terrible maroon sweater vest.
Panic and fear had taken complete control over the features of the man's face. "Give me that knife!" he exclaimed. Einberg took a short step forward coming nose to nose with the man. "Calm the fuck down."
The man retreated, immediately backing up into a small group of survivors nearest the locked cockpit doors of the aircraft. Everyone had watched as Miller and Einberg had spent the last fifteen minutes or so moving from scream to scream. Killing the infected with their bare hands in most case, or in some instances using parts of the aircraft interior to aid in the killing.
It didn't take the surviving passenge
rs long, maybe just seconds, to understand what was going on and that these two men were heroically trying to slow the chaotic transformation of the passenger compartment. They never had time to question what was happening.
One moment the aircraft was quiet, and the next it was filled with screams, torrents of spurting blood, and vile smells. Miller had sprinted toward the first attack and he very nearly had been bitten by the fat man with the red handkerchief.
Miller hadn't planned on the man being so quick and agile when he pulled him off the flight attendant. The man had launched off her and somehow upended Miller and the two landed on the deck, in the aisle, with the fat man on top of Miller. Miller never hesitated and thrust his hips up violently catching the man off balance and swung his left leg around the man’s neck and hooked it into the crook of his right leg behind the knee. The man had reached out with his free hand which Miller had caught with both his hands and now controlled. The man was stuck in a leg triangle and although he snapped his jaws, ground his teeth, and spit, he couldn't maneuver enough to bite Miller. The saliva drooled down from the man's mouth and began pooling on Miller's chest as they both strained against the choke hold.
Miller saw new movement, beyond the fat man. The flight attendant was pushing herself up onto all fours. Miller was shocked that she wasn't dead. Most of her neck hung in tattered strings of flesh. Bubbles burst out with each of her breath and blood burst out with heaves of bile. There was no way she should have the strength to rise, but rise she did. She looked toward the two men on the ground and began slowly pulling herself toward Miller. He knew he had to get free and couldn't wait any longer for the choke to set in.
Miller pushed his thumbs into the eye sockets of the fat man expecting him to scream but no reaction occurred. He could feel the eyes give way as he continued to push, wrapping his hands around the sides of the man's head. Once he felt like he had complete control of him, he released his legs, thrust his hips once again and rolled the man over. Miller, now on top, pulled his right hand free from the gore of the man's face but keeping his head pinned to the deck with his left hand and jumped up to his feet.
The flight attendant was now behind him and close enough to reach out so Miller kicked her hard with a mule kick to her face and then blasted down with his right elbow onto the fat man's neck four times in rapid succession, caving it in after the third strike.
While he was doing this the flight attendant had managed to grab the leg of a young woman that had sat frozen in her seat and had bitten into her exposed calf. She turned within seconds and the cycle kept repeating, death after awful death. The pace of infection outpacing the efforts of both Miller and Einberg who had fought for the most part alone and unaware of the other. Instinctively they both knew to fall back toward the cockpit as the last resort and had literally run into each other at the midship galley.
It had been Einberg's idea to reach up into the overhead compartment to grab the portable life rafts and to deploy them as barricades. The first one they pulled was lodged perfectly, but this last one had formed both inside the galley and around the edge of the midship galley bulkhead into the rear passenger compartment. There was a nasty crease in the fabric of the raft around the edge.
Finally, some space between us. Miller counted seven surviving passengers on his side of the aircraft, and craning his neck counted another six on the opposite side. He smiled when he saw the young mother and her infant child among them, giving her a wink when she made eye contact with him. She didn't dare return the smile. She was fearfully staring at the raft on her side of the aircraft. The pounding from the other side echoing loudly with ever greater pace like a beating war drum building toward a climax.
"Miller, is it sealed?" Einberg asked as if right on cue with the subtle hissing emanating from the newly deployed raft.
"I think it's punctured bro."
"Where?"
"I can't see, I think on the opposite side," Miller yelled over his shoulder moving up to the edge and looking for any sign of the puncture. Someone infected on the other side slammed against the raft hard and it moved inward suddenly causing Miller to reflexively push it back in the opposite direction. A gap was forming at the top left corner where the bulkhead met the cabin ceiling.
Einberg ran up and pushed as well with his shoulder and was met with the crashing of a body on the opposite side of the fabric directly into his shoulder, chest, and the side of his head. For a moment, he was dazed, but shook it off and remained in place. He looked back and threw his utility knife to an older man standing next to the one wearing the maroon sweater vest. "Get on the other raft and kill anything that comes through!" Einberg called out as he threw the knife to the man. He continued yelling to the remaining group, "Get up here and help if you want to live!"
"How long do we have to hold off until we land?" Miller whispered.
"I don't know buddy. Time seems to have warped. I think we should be really fucking close,” Einberg said as another body tried to dislodge the raft from the other side. The twin air chambers were beginning to soften as the raft continued to slowly lose air from some unseen cut.
Einberg looked back and noted that none of the survivors had moved up to help them with the raft. They were frozen in place, and reminded him of sheep in a pen quietly waiting for the slaughterhouse to welcome them inside. He saw a skinny blonde male flight attendant cowering as far forward in the cabin as was humanly possible. Amazing.
"Hey flight attendant, pick up that fucking cockpit telephone and find out how long until we land," Einberg yelled pointing at the flight attendant. The man amazingly stood erect and pointed at himself as if to say, "Who me?"
"Yeah fucking you. Ask the fucking pilots when we are going to land. Do it now!"
The man grabbed the receiver and began talking into the handset.
Another large body crashed into the raft and against all efforts by Miller and Einberg the raft crashed inward on top of them. Miller couldn't tell how bad the breach was he just pushed up from his crouched position as hard as he could. He heard a scream that he wholly recognized but pushed it out of his mind as another body crashed into the raft. Miller used up his remaining strength to repel the force and keep his ground. Then more hands were pushing, and more still.
The other survivors had rushed forward and all of them were pushing now against the torrent of infected trying to invade their refuge. They must have sensed an opportunity because the grunts and screams from the rear of the aircraft were a thunderous chorus. Miller fell back as the others took his spot, exhausted and needing a moment to catch a break. He took a knee and took a couple deep breaths. Can't keep fighting for much longer at this pace.
Miller looked over his shoulder and saw Einberg sitting on his butt, similarly taking in some deep breaths. "You ok?" Miller knew the answer the moment he said it.
Einberg was holding his left arm tightly just below the elbow with such force that Miller could see the whites of his knuckles. The bite wasn't bleeding much but it was red around the edges already and the veins were turning a darkened shade. Einberg was trying to create a tourniquet by clamping down on his arm, preventing the infection from moving up his arm into the blood stream of his main organs.
"Take it off," Einberg said.
"What?"
"Take it off now!" he pleaded.
Miller was not going to debate with Einberg on the topic. He was a professional, a seasoned medic, and it was his arm. Miller pulled the knife sheath over his head, pulled the knife out with one arm and held the sheath out for Einberg to bite down on, which he did. He cut the lanyard off the sheath and tied a tautline hitch, then slipped it tightly on Einberg's arm just above where he was holding. He wrenched down with all his strength until Einberg screamed from behind the sheath, the self-tightening knot holding in place.
Miller caught Einberg with a quick stare. The two passed a silent, wordless message of respect that only they could possibly share as brothers in arms. Einberg mumbled "Do it."
&nbs
p; Miller quickly sliced through Einberg's muscle and tendon all the way around the arm in one continuous cut, straight to the bone. He made one additional pass all the way around the arm to make sure. Einberg was bolt erect from the pain but conscious and watching the surgery. He nodded with approval after Miller finished the second pass and braced for what he knew was going to be unimaginable pain.
Miller stood while holding Einberg's arm and hand forward of the trauma. He laid Einberg all the way onto his back in the aisle and then pulled his arm over his head. All the while the infected were crashing against the raft and the failing barrier, held back only by the efforts of the last remaining survivors.
Miller wedged Einberg's arm between an aisle seat and its armrest, his hand acting as an anchor. He placed his knee under the arm between the elbow and the incision. He looked at Einberg one last time to make sure he was ready but Einberg had his eyes closed now. He brought his arm up and hammered down with his closed fist directed on the exposed bone where he had cut through the flesh of the arm. The bone snapped on impact and the arm came free on the first try. Einberg bellowed with the pain, rolled over onto the missing arm, and going limp he passed out.
Miller was going to remove Einberg's detached arm from the seat but he never had time. A wiry teenage infected boy came crashing through the top of the raft, falling over the survivors as they fought to control the breach. Miller watched as the boy fell to the floor and landed on all fours like a cat. Then the shot rang out. Miller rolled onto Einberg as the flaming projectile shot passed him and the boy’s head continuing through the raft’s nylon material and disappearing into the rear of the aircraft. Miller heard it terminate into the tail section of the craft but there was no immediate response from the aircraft. Miller looked over his shoulder from his place huddled over Einberg. The man in the maroon sweater vest was holding a smoking flare gun that was still tethered to the raft's survival bag.