“We won’t make it,” Anna told them, listening to the noise. “Seyfert can’t run.”
“I can run fine.” The SEAL was about to continue, but the din outside grew and the group could hear the shuffling trudge of the dead as they rounded the corner of the building. Four of them ducked down, but Jack remained standing, staring at his new friends. Anna motioned for him to duck down.
“Oh!” he whispered and sat cross-legged on the carpet of the doctor’s office. He gave a big smile and a double-thumbs up.
Rick and Dallas stole a quick questioning glance.
“Remind you of anyone?” Dallas whispered.
Rick nodded. “Billy.”
The Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, Fillmore Street, San Francisco
“Billy.”
The young girl tried to rouse her sleeping friend with another shake of his shoulder. “Billy!” She traced her finger in a line down the scar on his face. She shook him again and he opened his eyes. He smiled at her through the early evening gloom and she smiled back.
“What time is it?” he asked groggily.
She looked at her wrist then back at him. She had no watch. “Hair past a freckle?”
Billy broke into a second smile, a toothy thing that was as catching as the plague. “Vanessa, the fact that you can keep your sense of humor through all of this means that you and I can be best buddies.” He looked around. “Where’s Kyle?”
“He snuck out and went to the store on the corner.”
Billy sat bolt upright, grabbing his rifle. Before he could do anything else, Vanessa covered her mouth and began to giggle. “Just kidding! He had to pee and went to the bathroom down the hall.”
Billy’s mouth was wide open in the shape of an O. He closed it with an audible pop, making Vanessa giggle more. He raged in mock anger, “Oh, you will pay for that one, young lady! How’s his ankle?”
“It’s better,” a voice from the doorway told them. “I can put weight on it, but it hurts.”
“Seriously, don’t wander off, okay? Not everything is covered like these.” Billy pointed to the windows in the classroom. They were blocked by multiple layers of shades and drapes. “If you walk around with that lantern at night, they’ll see you. I’ve got all the entrances blocked, but I’m not here every day, and something might sneak in. We go everywhere together.”
Kyle gave a curt nod. “Got it.”
Billy pointed to the boy’s ankle. “Can you run?”
“Nope! But I’m skinny. You can carry me.”
Billy gave a sideways glance to Vanessa, who was still giggling. “You two! Should have left you out there. You would probably have eaten all the zombies!”
Kyle hobbled over to them. “I think I can run.” He sat down on one of the bunk beds across from Billy. Vanessa sat on the edge of Billy’s bed.
“Let me see it,” Billy demanded.
Kyle stripped off his shoe and sock with a grimace. Billy checked the windows then snapped on a small battery-operated camping lantern. He moved to the edge of the bed next to Vanessa and motioned with his hand for Kyle to extend his foot for inspection. A purple bruise was evident on the outside of the boy’s right foot. The injury was swollen, but not such that it interfered with him wearing a shoe. Billy held the foot by the heel and gently touched the ankle.
“Hurt?”
“Nah, it’s not terrible.”
“We’re going to wait until tomorrow before we go. If the swelling goes down a bit more, it will be easier to walk.”
“Awww…we wanted to go tonight,” the girl pouted.
“Better to rest it. If we have to move quickly, it will be easier with another day’s rest.”
There were several board games on the big air conditioner/heater under the window and the kids picked Clue. It was full dark before Billy looked up from behind his cards and declared, “I have solved this murderous crime.” Both kids looked at him expectantly and he raised one eyebrow. “It was Kyle in San Francisco, with the zombie!”
Kyle rolled his eyes but smiled. Vanessa looked from Kyle to Billy and back. Billy reached for the little envelope in the center of the board, but Vanessa put her hand on his. “You have to…”
A horrendous crash from the lower level of the school filled the three of them with dread. They grabbed their bags and weapons; Kyle now had the green-handled blade from a paper cutter and Vanessa wielded a broken wooden flagpole fashioned into a wicked spear. Billy stood and hurried to the window. “Douse the light,” he told the kids. When the room was dark, he moved the shades aside and peeked into the night.
Hundreds of shadowy figures moved in the darkness below them. The moonlight revealed a steady stream of forms shuffling across the blacktop of the school playground.
“Oh.”
“What is it?” Kyle demanded, fear spreading across his face.
“Rejoice, children! School’s out!” He helped Kyle stand and both kids were already wearing their backpacks. “Nobody talks from here out, okay? Just follow me.” They nodded and he held up one finger. “Two seconds,” he whispered and stuck his head out the door. He looked both ways then indicated the kids should follow him. They filed out of the classroom and made for the stairs. They could hear the dead now, on the floor below them stumbling into desks and knocking things over. The noises they made also filtered up through the stairwell. Billy stole a furtive glimpse over the stairway railing then hurriedly told the kids to run with his hand.
They ran.
The classrooms whipped by as their sneakers slapped the tiles. A group of construction- paper dinosaurs, forever attached to a cork board in the hallway, flapped in the breeze they made as they ran past. They made the far stairway just as several dead made the top of the first set of stairs sixty feet back. Billy and the kids had made it onto the steps before the dead had seen them, but the lower floor was still crawling with the things. Hopefully, they hadn’t made it to this stairwell yet.
Nine steps down and the group stood on the landing. Billy nodded and the three of them rushed down the last nine steps. He glanced back at the kids then yanked the windowless door open. A dead man stood immediately outside the door with his hand in place to push on it. Billy wasted no time in smashing the thing across the face with the butt of his rifle. The creature went down hard and he finished it off with two more thumps.
Two more were at this end of the hall, but the gloomy far end was jam-packed with dead faces. They all turned in the direction of the commotion and decided to give chase. Billy rammed the butt of his M4 into the face of another of the things, but the third growled and lunged for Vanessa. She sidestepped and the thing smashed into the door frame then fell to its hands and knees. Kyle brought his blade down on the thing’s neck and it bit deeply into the spine. The creature started to shake in some type of convulsion, but Billy and the kids decided not to hang around to see if the job was finished.
Slapping feet behind them screamed a warning, Billy spinning to face this new threat. A barefoot woman sprinted at them, her eyes crimson orbs of hate. Billy brought his rifle up to double tap the Runner, but the weapon was empty after one round. The round took the thing in the left shoulder and it clutched at the wound with its right hand, letting out a small scream. It continued its dash toward the uninfected and before Billy could reload, it was on him, shrieking.
Billy jammed the rifle between him and the infected, pushing the upper receiver of the weapon into its face. The thing bit down on the plastic of the barrel shroud and Billy pushed for all he was worth. Two teeth flew, but the momentum of the woman carried both of them to the ground. Billy kept the weapon between them, the woman screeching and clawing at his face and stomach. So intent was the creature on ripping into a human being that it didn’t consider trying to go around the rifle, but kept trying to go through it.
Kyle raised his paper-cutter blade, but Vanessa was faster with her spear. She thrust it into the side of the woman, who screamed in a different tone. The thing bucked to the side, away fro
m the spear point, but the damage was done. The broken flagpole had penetrated deep into the side of the creature and when the thing turned its head toward Vanessa, the young girl growled at the Runner and shoved the spear deeper. Billy took that moment to swing the rifle into the thing’s jaw, sending it sprawling to the left. Vanessa extricated the spear and the creature howled anew. On all fours, bleeding from its face and the gaping hole between its ribs, it still lunged for the girl. The ferocity of Vanessa stunned Billy when she thrust the spear into the Runner’s eye. It collapsed and convulsed as had its dead cousin moments before. Vanessa pulled the spear out of the thing’s face and pointed the spear down the hall.
Billy and Kyle noticed that the small horde had grown and the narrow school hallway was filled wall-to-wall with walking corpses. During the fight with the Runner, the dead had quartered the distance to the living.
“They’re coming!” Kyle proclaimed.
Vanessa gripped her spear with both hands, the dripping end aimed toward the wall of undead. “Let them come.”
Billy grabbed both kids by an arm and shot toward the infected. “That’s a big no-can-do, kiddo.”
“Why are we running at the things that want to eat us?” Kyle demanded in a tone full of terror and incredulity.
“We need to make that door before they do and they’re almost there!” He chin-wagged at the door to the basement, but the kids didn’t see it, they just ran with him.
The vanguard of the dead would reach the entrance at the same time the humans would. “Get downstairs and out through the car!”
“Then what?”
“Run!”
Billy let go of the kids, turned his rifle lengthwise across himself, and plowed into the front ranks of the horde. He moved in about four feet before the sheer mass of the bodies stopped him. Kyle yanked the door open, Vanessa scooting through and he following. They tried to pull the door closed, but two of the things had skirted Billy and gone for the kids. Rotten hands latched onto the door and pulled backward as Kyle pulled toward himself. He was pulled off balance for a moment and the door swung open to reveal the horror in the corridor. Kyle swung his blade and Vanessa stabbed forward with her spear. Kyle took off several fingers of a reaching hand. Vanessa missed her target and the spear penetrated the upper chest of a younger dead man with no nose or upper lip. The thing grabbed her weapon and she couldn’t pull it back to her. Realizing the futility of the situation, she let the thing have the spear and grabbed Kyle by the wrist. They fled down the stairs, the dead following. The two of them passed a set of ancient boilers, stepped on a welcome mat, and were soon up against a rusty steel door. Vanessa turned the lock and the kids darted in, Vanessa slamming the door behind them.
They stopped to catch their breath for a moment, the safety of the door giving them brief peace of mind. A thud sounded on the steel, then several more. Soon, the pounding was so frequent it sounded like there were a hundred of the things on the other side of the door. Vanessa raised her eyes to view the dust that rained down inside the brick culvert they were in.
“They…they’ll never get through that door,” Kyle croaked breathlessly.
Vanessa grabbed him again and the two of them moved down the egg-shaped tunnel until they reached a floor-to-ceiling grate reminiscent of an ancient portcullis. She pushed on it but it wouldn’t budge. She grabbed the bars and shook them. “Locked!”
Kyle grabbed the bars and soon both kids were shaking for all they were worth. A figure appeared through the grate at the far end of the tunnel. It ran toward them, both kids let go and took a step back. The figure impacted the barrier with a bone-jarring crash and began to shriek, reaching between the bars to claw at the kids. They backed up appropriately, out of the thing’s reach. It had been a boy about their age. The creature wore naught but a pair of cut-off jeans, it’s feet a bloody mess and missing several toenails. Deep furrows across its face and neck bled freely as it stretched and strained to rend and tear uninfected flesh. The beast howled its fury, banging its claws and fists against the steel. A tooth broke and fell to the brick floor when it bit one of the metal cross members of the grate.
Vanessa covered her mouth and nose with both hands and sobbed, staring at the infected boy. “I can’t be one of them,” she cried. “I can’t!”
Kyle grabbed her and they held each other. “I won’t let those things get my sister,” he assured her through hot tears. “I’ll take care of it.”
She looked at him. “I’m not your sister.”
“Yes, you are,” he told her as the door to the boiler room broke open behind them.
Otis Air National Guard Base, Cape Cod
A large gray aircraft sat undisturbed on a long runway, its nose facing west. A hundred yards behind the plane, lying flat on their stomachs in the high, untended grass, five people regarded the rear of the big jet.
“Holy crap, that’s huge.”
Jack glanced at Anna. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” She glared at him and he tipped her an exaggerated wink. She rolled her eyes.
“Is that as big as a Hercules?” asked Dallas.
Jack harrumphed. “Take the wings off and you could stick C-130 inside my plane. That big bitch will hold six Greyhound buses two by two and side by side. She carries fifty thousand gallons of stabilized fuel and she’s ready to go.”
“It’s right there.” Dallas pointed at the massive C5 Galaxy transport plane. “It’s three hunnert feet away. Let’s just run for it.”
Seyfert chin-wagged toward the west. The group of infected that had passed by them when they were hiding in the medical center had wandered off and were now meandering toward the center of the runway a thousand or so feet away. There were hundreds of them, all dead ones. They didn’t seem to have any particular direction in mind, and just abled in several at once.
“Problem,” Jack objected. “It takes some time to raise the ramp. Do you think they can get to the rear of the plane before that six minutes is up? Two yellow handles right inside the ramp. One of you will need to push a red button then pull the handle back. Don’t push it forward, pull it back. I know, it’s weird.”
“Where are you going to be?” Rick demanded, brows furrowed.
“Pilot?” Jack reminded Rick. “I’m going to be in the cockpit getting that big, beautiful bitch started. Lucky I closed the nose on the fourth of July,” he added to himself.
Seyfert swiveled his binoculars from the horde to the back of the plane. “Looks clear.”
Jack shrugged. “It probably is. I leave the ramp open because they normally don’t enter the plane.” He shrugged again. “Nothing in there for them. Well, until now.”
“So can we—?” began Anna, but Jack cut her off.
“But…as soon as you touch the ramp release buttons, a really loud alarm is going to sound. It’s like, really loud. Any of you good at math? If you know how fast they are,” he indicated the large crowd of dead, “then you can figure out how long it will take them to get to the ramp. If it’s more than six minutes, then we’re good. If it’s less, then it’s less good.”
Seyfert rubbed his side. “We go now. The ramp will be partially closed before they can get to it. Anything that gains access gets a bullet.”
Jack held up his right index finger. “Do not shoot my plane. I just washed it.”
Seyfert and Dallas glanced at each other. The SEAL sighed and stood.
“Now,” he commanded and motioned them forward. He led at a jog, the others with him. They made the ramp with no indications the dead had seen them, the noises the horde made unchanged. Jack and Seyfert rushed up the aluminum, Seyfert noticing an old, olive-drab army Jeep strapped to the far end of the plane near the front of the aircraft.
“It looks like a warehouse in here,” Anna thought.
“This is Willy,” Jack told them using a hand flourish toward the Jeep. “Willy is mine and we will discuss fares for rides later. You,” he pointed toward Anna, “red button. When the alarm sounds, push the handle.”
<
br /> Anna’s eyes grew wide. “You said to pull the handle before!”
“Oh yeah. Right. Ramp’s coming up, pull the handle.”
“Now?”
Jack shrugged at her yet again. “Whenever.”
“On three?” Anna asked the Texan. He nodded and she counted down. She pushed the button and what sounded like a backup alarm on a huge truck sounded. Jack ran forward and through a small door up front.
The alarm was loud. Very loud.
Seyfert and Rick took firing stances at the pivot area of the ramp. True to Jack’s word, the aluminum was painfully slow to rise.
“They’re coming,” came over a PA system into the cargo hold of the plane. Anna strained her neck forward to look to the right of the closing door. She could hear the sounds of the agitated dead over the alarm now, those sounds increasing in volume each second. Several dead people’s heads came into view on the left side of the plane. Anna could see them through the ever decreasing, sideways V-shaped opening to her left. The ramp was two-thirds closed, no dead thing having the agility to gain access, but two of the creatures reached their arms in at Anna anyway. The dead arms were pushed out of the way by the closing ramp.
Another set of hands grasped the edge of the rising metal, but this time, a right leg swung up over and onto the ramp. The thing pulled itself up and glared at the people from all fours. It used to be a woman, and it stood on unsteady feet, snarling. The Runner glowered at Anna and received two bullets to the chest from Rick and Seyfert. The creature fell back then began to slide down the center of the ramp into the plane, leaving a streak of red behind it. The thing weakly lifted its chin to glare at Rick then began to crawl toward him. He finished it with two kicks from his boot then put his blade through its right eye. The ramp closed successfully, the group of friends giving a collected sigh of relief.
“Please tell me you didn’t put holes in my plane!”
The four friends looked up at the ceiling of the cargo hold as if they could see Jack through the PA speakers.
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