by Brant, Jason
His head lolled on his shoulders.
“Lance?” Cass shook his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Tired,” Lance mumbled. “Damn tired.”
“Let him rest,” Liz said, glancing over her shoulder. “He’s been shot.”
“I know he’s been shot!” Cass balled her hand behind Liz’s seat.
The helicopter banked harder, moving to cut off their flight path. Even as Lance faded in and out, he could see that the chopper wasn’t moving fast enough to get in front of them. The little Cessna, though climbing, had a significant speed advantage.
“I think we’re good,” Paul shouted.
As they reached the same altitude as the helicopter, which was still a hundred yards away, the chopper leveled out and rotated so its doors faced them. A man sat behind the mounted gun, aiming at the plane.
“Shit! Hold on!” Paul leveled the plane out and rocked in his seat as if he could urge the engine to go faster. “Come on, baby.”
Fire belched from the mounted gun as the man shot at them.
Lance watched, transfixed, as holes punched into the wing of the Cessna. He tried to shout for the others to duck, but his eyes went out of focus. Everyone’s voices came from a great distance. The drone of the plane withered to a whisper.
“Damn! We’re hit!” Paul shouted.
The plane shook violently.
Lance slipped into darkness.
Chapter 34
It took all Brown’s willpower not to tear the map in half.
His frustration expanded with each passing mile.
They’d encountered multiple abandoned roadblocks. Twice, Eifort had to swing around and backtrack to a previous exit. Those little excursions cost precious time that they didn’t have.
The area north of Philadelphia was a complete disaster. Bridges and overpasses were gone, demolished by explosives.
Burned-out cars, tanks, and Humvees littered the highways. Bullet holes crisscrossed the streets and buildings in a mad tapestry of war. The demolished husks of homes stood in stark contrast to the clear blue sky. Entire neighborhoods had burned to the ground, leaving the ashes of a previous world to blow in the wind.
Brown had heard about the great battles the military waged against the infected in Philadelphia. After the fall of New York, the Army and Marines had fallen back to the sprawling City of Brotherly Love.
They dropped bombs and leveled city blocks, incinerated downtown and toppled Lincoln Financial Field. Brown had watched some of the carnage on the news before the power went out.
The shell of the once-great city was too hard to navigate. Daylight slid by as they drove past massive pileups and football field-sized craters.
They would have diverted south, going toward Atlantic City, except they’d made a promise to Cass. If they didn’t meet at the designated port, then they would never find each other again.
After all they’d been through, Brown couldn’t abandon her now.
The front end of their truck was crinkled and broken. Eifort had pushed their way past several more cars when they’d exited the turnpike, and their truck had paid the price. How much longer could it go?
They had the option of pulling into a wooded area and attempting to survive the night. A month ago, that might have worked, but now Brown doubted they would make it more than a few hours. The Vladdies wouldn’t be fooled by bulbs of garlic and fire anymore.
They had to make it to the ocean.
“Which exit?” Eifort asked.
Brown snapped out of his funk and looked at the map again. He’d stared at it for so long that his eyes wanted to cross each time he had to alter their route.
“Keep going until we hit Trenton. We’ll cut across on 195.”
“That’s the road that will take us the whole way to the shore?”
“God, I hope so. It should, unless we hit more of these damnable roadblocks.” Brown watched the sun approach the horizon through his window. “This is going to be close.”
Chapter 35
Lance’s head bobbed forward, his chin bouncing off his chest.
The pain that flared up brought him out of the darkness.
“Whazzit?” He blinked a few times, having to squint against the light shining through the windows.
Cass spoke in his ear. “We’re about to jump.”
Lance tried to turn around and face her, but his waist was attached to something, preventing him from rotating. “What? Where are we?”
“East of Philadelphia. Paul says we’re close to the water, but we can’t wait any longer to jump.”
“Why?” Lance looked to his left and saw Adam sitting by the door, his face so pale that Lance wondered if he had any blood in it at all. He had a parachute already strapped to his back, a duffel bag clipped to his belt.
“The helicopter shot the hell out of us. We got away, barely, but we took a ton of damage. We’ve made to the shore, but we were flying so slow that the engine keeps stalling. Paul says we’re at the end of the road.” Cass breathed quickly in his ear. He could feel her chest against his back, her heart racing madly.
Liz sat in the front seat, her parachute on already. She kept glancing at Lance and Cass. She said something to Lance, but the noise outside of the plane was too great for him to hear her.
Lance twisted his head around enough to see Cass. “How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.” She put her hand on his hip. “Liz told me that Paul doesn’t think you’ll make this jump, but I know better. Nothing can kill you, dumbass. You hear me? Nothing is going to stop us now.”
Lance opened his mouth, but Cass hushed him.
“Just listen to me. I have you strapped to me around the waist and at your shoulders. When the chute opens, it’s going to hurt. A lot. There isn’t much we can do about that. When we land, your leg is going to hurt even more. But I’ll need you to stay awake, OK? We’re going to be pressed for time as it is. We can’t be dragging you around.”
“I’ll do my best.” Lance wasn’t sure how he could promise to stay conscious, but he didn’t see much point in bickering just then. They were about to jump from an airplane while he had a bullet wound in his chest.
Paul turned back and frowned at them. “Ready?” he shouted.
“Fuck no!” Adam put his hand on the handle of the door. “This is so stupid!”
A clunking noise came from the engine, and the plane bucked.
“There she goes,” Paul said. “Time to go. Jump before we lose too much altitude. Those chutes aren’t worth shit under several hundred feet. Now, go!”
Adam shimmied closer to the door. The duffel bag full of Paul’s equipment dragged along the floor, slowing him down. He put both hands on the door handle and gave Lance a frightened, I-might-shit-myself look. “This is almost as scary as that time in the subway!” He yanked the door open.
Air rushed in, screaming through the cabin.
A blast of cold ran through Lance’s clothing. His hair, matted with sweat, blew up.
Adam stared at the open door for several seconds.
“Go!” Paul swung his legs around his seat and reached out to Liz.
The engine chuffed again and died. The propeller slowed.
Adam grabbed both sides of the doorway and heaved himself out. He screamed as he tumbled away.
“Don’t piss on me, dumbass,” Cass said in Lance’s ear.
“No promises.”
The front end of the plane angled down as they slid across the floor.
Liz and Paul attached themselves at the waist, facing each other, unlike Lance and Cass.
The wind by the door puffed Lance’s shirt out, making it flap against his chest and stomach.
“Ready?” Cass asked.
“Hell no, I’m not ready. Do you want to go on three, or—”
Cass yanked him through the door, and they were free falling. They tumbled end over end as the rush of the wind pulled their skin tight and whistled in their ears.
La
nce’s abdominals constricted with such force that his entire body locked up as if he’d become paralyzed. He couldn’t even scream.
And then something slammed against his shoulders and waist, making his head snap forward. Searing, blinding pain blossomed in his chest. He wanted to scream, puke, and pass out all at once.
His clenched abs released as their descent slowed.
The cool wind felt great on his burned limbs, at least.
“You still with me?” Cass hollered.
Lance gave her a thumbs up. Then he coughed up blood. It dribbled down his chin, staining his shirt.
“What is it?” Cass asked.
“My chest.” The words came out in a wet croak. “Hurts bad.”
“Stop being such a pussy—it’s just a bullet wound. We’ll have Brown fix you up tonight.”
Lance jerked his head around to give her a torrent of shit when he heard her laughing. “You’re such an ass.”
They glided above a residential area. Most of the homes were still intact, a sight that gave Lance a little added hope. Knowing that the infected hadn’t completely ravaged this part of the country pleased him. Seeing a slice of what America had once been dulled some of the ache in his chest.
Adam was a quarter of a mile behind them and a hundred yards closer to the ground.
Lance looked up, but couldn’t see Paul and Liz. The parachute blocked most of his visibility above them, so he tried not to be too concerned.
The plane dropped from the sky like a stone in front of them. It whistled as it fell, a sound that Lance had always thought hokey when it happened in movies.
It took close to half a minute before the Cessna crashed into a small condo building. The explosion echoed for miles, the only sound Lance could hear other than the light breeze and the squawking of birds flying by in an off-kilter formation.
They continued to drop, faster than Lance would have liked, toward a small, tightly packed community of ranch-style homes.
“Can you guide this thing?” Lance asked. He spit out a wad of blood, watching it lob toward the ground.
“You want me to steer us around? I’m just happy that I was able to pull the right cord. It’s not as if I took a class before jumping out of a crashing plane.”
“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”
“I learned how to be a smarmy ass from the best.” Cass wrapped her arms around his chest with a soft, tentative touch. Her head rested in the nook of his neck, her breath warming him.
Lance liked this new, softer Cassandra. Two months ago, she would have slapped him in the back of the head and called him a dumbass. Now, she gave him hugs and called him a dumbass. Baby steps, he thought with a bloody grin.
Was it the pregnancy that had changed her? Was it Lance? He guessed it was a combination of the two. Either way, he wanted nothing more than to protect her, to continue proving to her that not all men were assholes.
And yet, there they were, hanging in the air from a parachute as he coughed up blood and struggled to remain conscious. So much for being her protector.
He reached back and patted her leg as they coasted over an abandoned Wal-Mart. A wide, blackened hole punched through the center of the roof, revealing a crater in the floor below. The image shattered Lance’s idea of the coast being relatively untouched.
As they closed in on the ground, more details became clear.
Cars were overturned.
Homes scavenged for all of their goods.
Tunnels were gouged into lawns by the infected.
At least he could smell the ocean.
Adam crashed onto the roof of a home below them. He cried out as he tumbled down the shingles and fell into untrimmed hedges below. The parachute billowed around him, obscuring him from view.
“That didn’t look fun,” Lance said. “Let’s not do that.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Cass gave him a small squeeze before releasing him. “Lance, I—”
“I know. Me too.”
“Good.”
Even their tender moments were awkward. Neither of them were the best at articulating their feelings. Lance laughed, ignoring the pain that followed. More blood splashed onto his shirt.
“Don’t leave me again, OK?” Cass ruffled his hair. “I’m tired of having to rescue you all the time.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m the one who saved you this time. You were stranded in a nest by the man who tried to kill me. What the hell were you doing anyway? Why would you go down there?”
“We thought Colt had some kind of master plan for taking out the nest. He’d been planning it for days. When we got down there, all he did was plant a couple bags of explosives and scream for us to run.”
“But why were you down there at all?”
“I wanted to kill them all. I needed to get some payback because of what they’d done to you. Colt had told us that the Vladdies pulled you into one of the tunnels.”
The ground came at them too quickly. They glided above the center of a road, by no doing of their own, and followed it as they approached touchdown.
“Looks like a rough landing, dumbass. I’d offer to help catch most of the impact, but I don’t think my chicken legs could hold our weight.”
Lance grit his teeth when they were ten feet up. He raised his shot leg, hoping to minimize the impact. It didn’t work.
His heel caught the curb, jarring his entire body. The agony traveled from his leg to his chest, sending him into a new coughing fit. Each cough sent red spittle to the sidewalk.
He blacked out for a moment and came to with Cass kneeling over him. The sun was low behind her, obscuring her features in soft shadows.
“You still with me?” she asked.
“If not, then I’m staring an angel with a mohawk. A flattened, gnarly one. I guess that would mean I was in Hell, not Heaven. Damn.”
“We don’t have time for your not-so-funny jokes.” Cass grabbed his arm and helped him up. She had to lean back, almost to a comical angle, to offset his weight with her small frame. He was reminded of just how tiny she was.
“What?” Cass peered up at him. “You’re giving me a weird look.”
“I was just thinking about how small and weird looking you are.”
Cass grabbed the buckles attaching the parachute to her back and undid them. “Maybe you should check out a mirror before you start talking about how I look.”
As she worked at freeing herself, Lance staggered over to a Toyota RAV4. It was parked in the middle of a lawn, weeds growing up around the tires. All four doors stood ajar.
Dried pools of sticky, brown nastiness covered the backseats.
Lance bent over with a grunt and looked in the mirror.
Blood covered his lips and cheeks. A drop fell from his chin as he watched himself. His shirt had a large, wet patch of crimson on the front. Dark bags hung under his eyes.
The pale, thin creature inspecting him in the mirror was only vaguely recognizable.
“What are you talking about?” Lance asked. “I look sexy as hell. GQ called this morning.”
Cass ignored him as she shimmied the pack off.
Adam jogged into sight, working his way between two homes that were entirely too close together. Lance had never understood why people would spend half a million dollars on a house by the beach if you had to live within ten feet of your neighbor.
Then again, he had spent ten years living in a small apartment, so who was he to talk?
“Your landing looked rough,” Cass said as Adam approached.
“You saw that? I was hoping you’d missed it.”
“The way you bounced off the roof was my favorite part.” Lance started toward Cass when he paused and turned back to the Toyota. He looked inside and saw keys dangling from the ignition.
The car clicked when he tried to start it—dead battery.
Lance closed his eyes, licked his dry lips. His chest felt broken. He felt like Humpty Dumpty after he’d fallen off the wal
l.
“Where are we meeting everyone from the compound?” Adam asked.
Cass pointed in the opposite direction of the setting sun. “At the river in that direction. There is a big dock that can hold a couple of hundred boats. That’s where we’re meeting them.”
“How did you know about this place?” Lance asked. He leaned against the side of the vehicle, taking small sips of air.
“Eifort said she had family here once. An uncle with a boat who took her fishing.”
Lance looked at the sun. “I wonder if they’re having any more luck than we are?”
Tires squealed behind them. Lance turned to see a white utility van skid onto the road. It had a Moon decal on the side that read ‘Moon’s Plumbing’. Paul sat behind the wheel, Liz in the passenger seat.
The van accelerated toward them before screeching to a halt. The stench of burned rubber wafted in the air as Paul put his window down. “What are yinz waiting for? We’re running out of time to find a boat. What, you think we can just hotwire one? We gotta find one and pray the keys are nearby, for Christ’s sake.” He glanced over at Liz. “Well, maybe two of them; I’m getting tired of being involved in all of this garbage.”
How many times had Paul complained since Lance had woken up in the panic room? It seemed to be the man’s modus operandi. He and Liz were a hell of a match.
Lance’s girlfriend helped him climb into the seat behind his wife. He smiled at the oddity of the situation, even as the sun dangled precariously low in the sky.
Chapter 36
The first shriek came from somewhere off to the right.
Brown cut his eyes in that direction, but saw nothing. He pointed through the windshield. “Right there, take that one.”
Eifort downshifted and spun the wheel. The tires screeched in protest as they slid around the turn too quickly. The tank attached to their truck jerked around as it threatened to topple over and drag them all down.
How many people were stuffed in there? He didn’t know who had decided to come with them and who had decided to stay behind at the compound. There hadn’t been time for a headcount before they left.