The engines started, Rick thinking that they were a lot quieter than he would have believed. Rick and Dallas moved the dead Runner to the side, placing her hands on her chest.
“Where do we sit?” Anna asked. They all looked over the interior of the aircraft, but while it was huge inside, there were no seats of any kind. The only thing in the hold was the Jeep way up front. There weren’t even any pallets or straps for cargo.
The group moved forward, following where Jack had disappeared. Anna parted a curtain and they were met with a door. It opened when she tried it, a steep and narrow set of stairs leading up concealed behind. The top of the stairs opened into a large compartment that reminded Dallas of one of the jet liners he used to service when he was younger, although there were no windows.
“Holy crap, this thing is big,” Anna declared. “There’s gotta be a hundred seats in here!”
“Seventy-five, actually,” Jack said from behind them, “But you guys don’t want to sit in here. There’s a better set of seats, and two bunkrooms if you want to sleep while we fly. We also have two lavatories, one port,” he pointed to the left, “and one starboard. If you want to use a bunk, follow me.”
Anna had her eyes wide and her mouth agape. “Hells yes I want a bunk!”
“Follow me, milady.” Jack used another exaggerated hand flourish and spun on his heel. The group trailed him into a small area where he slid a pocket door open. Three fold-down bunks, already made, greeted them, and Anna gave Jack a big smile. She put her pack down and climbed into the lower bunk on one side.
“I will have the filet and a bottle of your best champagne.” She turned on her side, back to everyone. “Wake me when it’s ready. Medium-rare.”
“Three more bunks over here, fellas.”
The men glanced at Jack, then the bunks. “Now this here? This is a good idea,” Dallas told everyone and pointed to the lowest bunk. “I’m the biggest, I’ll take the bottom.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Jack interrupted. “You should be seated and strapped in when we take off.”
Anna gave a loud and obviously artificial snore. “Can’t hear you, I’m sleeping.”
“Should we wait until the dead move off?” Seyfert asked Jack.
“They know we’re in here,” interjected Dallas. “They ain’t never movin’ off.”
Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. When you got in the plane, we were kneeling. I’ll rise us up and we won’t even touch them much. The wheels will squish anything to pulp.” He looked around at the confused faces. “Don’t sweat the dead. They won’t stop us or alter our taxi or takeoff in any way.”
“Damn,” Jack blurted in awe. “It really is all gone. I mean, I knew it was all gone, but to see it…” The pilot let that last part hang as he continued to stare out the window of the cockpit. He had brought the aircraft down from an altitude of forty thousand feet and was now looking at what was left of Cleveland, Ohio. The smoke had long since dissipated, several of the large structures obviously having burned. At two thousand feet, Jack turned on the belly-cam of the giant plane and zoomed in. The monitor showed that the dead shuffled the streets, but not many of them. It looked as if most of the city had moved on, leaving stragglers to search for any prey foolish enough to remain. Nothing else stirred.
“Can you land this thing on that skinny a runway?” Seyfert asked from the co-pilot’s seat. A chart was spread out on the console between them. Jack tore his gaze from the monitor and regarded the map.
“We need both length and width,” he answered. “The average pilot would need 10,000 feet of runway, but I’m good, so I probably only will use about 7,500.” Jack traced his finger down the charted runway. He glanced at the SEAL. “That includes taxiing, chief.” He nodded to himself a few times then looked back at the monitor. “The width will be fine. Yeah, fine. They upgraded this runway from 6500 feet to almost 14000 feet two years ago.” He shook his head in awe again. “Man… Cleveland is just gone…”
“Everything is gone. That’s why we crossed the country, to help some people get it back.”
“Get what back?” Dallas asked with a yawn as he took a seat behind Seyfert.
“Everything,” the SEAL responded. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Bad dreams,” the Texan yawned. “Might as well tell ya now, Jersey: I’m takin’ off when we land.”
“Taking what off?”
“Me. I’m leavin’.”
Seyfert was stunned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Dallas yawned again. “Gonna go git Cap’n McInerney’s wife. She’s in Havre, Montana.”
Seyfert blinked. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Yup. Prolly why I’m goin’. Uhh… Jack? I was wonderin’ if I could steal your Jeep?”
Jack turned in his seat and glared at Dallas. “You want to take Willy?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, he’s all yours. I can fly great, but I can’t drive for shit.” Jack turned back around.
Dallas was a bit taken aback. “But I thought…”
“Skip it. Take Willy and be safe.”
***
Less than three hours after they had left Cape Cod, Jack’s voice came over an intercom in the bunk room. “Thank you for flying Jack’s Awesome Airlines. If you would kindly ensure your seat backs and tray tables are in their upright positions, we can begin our descent to Harstedt Airfield.”
Rick felt the plane bank a bit to the left and Dallas entered the room. The Texan collected Rick and Anna, the three of them moving to the VIP passenger area and taking some seats.
“Jack ‘n Seyfert checked the runway as best they could. Nuthin’ big to get in our way when we land.”
“And you’re really going to head to Montana?” Anna asked, putting emphasis on the state name.
Dallas smiled. “Yeah. Gonna find the cap’n’s wife.”
“I can’t come with you. I can’t protect you,” Rick said as if he were embarrassed.
“I know that, Hoss. I wouldn’t want ya to anyway. You get back ta Sam n’ your pa. You tell them I said I’ll see ‘em soon. An’ you,” Dallas pointed at Anna, “you find that Chris fella. I like him.”
“I will,” she answered. Tears filled her eyes and she looked away.
***
“We’ll check in every half hour and we’ll be back in four hours,” Seyfert told Jack. “It’s a quick jaunt to the site, we pick up our friend, and we’re back here. Button up if someone shows up with heavy weapons; make them blow this thing up before you open the door.”
“Ramp,” Jack corrected and swallowed hard. “Somebody might show up with heavy weapons?”
“No. Just don’t let anybody in but us. Here.” Seyfert threw Jack a deck of cards. “Four hours.”
The cargo hold of the C5 was so massive, Dallas was able to complete a three-point-turn with the Jeep inside. Jack lowered the ramp for them and the team drove out of the plane.
“Nice day,” Jack said aloud as he watched his four new friends drive away. He sighed as he closed up the back of the plane.
Towering stalks of corn sat a mere twenty feet off the road as they traveled in the Jeep. The fields stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, the road in front and behind disappearing into the stalks in the distance. It was sunny but Dallas had no sunglasses. The Jeep’s fold-down windscreen was extended, and the big Texan had to duck a bit as he drove to keep the wind out of his eyes. He squinted at a dead man as they passed him on the road. The thing immediately changed course to follow them. Several windmills stuck up from the fields, and Dallas took a side-road and headed toward them.
“Looks like the decay has slowed down,” Anna thought out loud.
Seyfert stared uneasily into the corn, remembering the last time he had to run through a field, the tall stalks hiding countless undead. “What do you mean?”
“The ones we saw in Boston were rotten to the core,” she answered, “but at that point, they should begin to com
e apart.” She furrowed her brow. “I would think that all these dead things would be rotten to the point of disintegration by now.”
Another creature stumbled out of the corn and began to plod after the Jeep.
Rick pointed at it as they drove past. “He didn’t look all that disintegrated.”
“That’s what I mean. I…”
Dallas stopped the Jeep in front of the facility they had been heading to. It had been a decommissioned nuclear launch facility, complete with two silos and a hardened underground bunker. The structure on top of the bunker; a tractor and large machine repair facility, had been where Rick and his group had staved off an undead attack of sizeable proportions. They had also left one of their own, Chris Rawding, here to help in getting the facility running again for a group of friendly bikers that were going to try to survive in the bunker.
The building was gone. One partial wall remained, but the rest of the structure had been destroyed. Seyfert hopped out of the Jeep with his rifle at the ready. He peered almost casually at the surrounding eight-foot vegetation then made his way to where the entrance hatch to the launch facility had been. Explosives had made short work of the top hatch. He knew that if he were to climb down the ladder, a secondary door would greet him. He also knew that nothing would be able to get through that secondary vault door. He shined his flashlight into the chamber below but was unable to discern anything.
Shouldering his rifle, he made to climb down the ladder.
“No,” Anna told him.
He glanced at her blankly.
“You still shouldn’t be climbing ladders. I’ll go.”
“I don’t think so,” he began. “If I can’t—”
She interrupted him, “You can’t.” She gently took his place and moved several steps down the ladder, but gasped and immediately shot back up. Two dead men appeared at the bottom of the shaft reaching up for the young medic.
She sat on the edge of the hole, staring back at them and shaking her head. “The door’s wide open. I couldn’t see anything else.”
Seyfert turned to survey the corn. “No Abrams, no soldiers, no motorcycles…” He let that hang for a moment. “Whatever happened here, we missed it.”
A dead man stepped from the stalks with a rasp. He was followed by two others, and more could be heard crashing through the fields. The four of them made to leave, Anna with tears in her eyes again, when they noticed a large rock that had no business being in a field in Nebraska. The rock was split in half, and a piece of plywood was wedged into the split, facing what was left of the building. Clearly printed in black spray paint on the wood were the words: See you at Sam’s place, Chris and Teems.
The entire group smiled, and they quickly moved back to the Jeep. Chris would meet them at Alcatraz.
***
The wind felt good as they drove back to the runway. They radioed to Jack, and he had the ramp lowering as they pulled up to the plane. They had to dispatch a dozen or so undead before they could access the plane, and Jack smiled when he saw his friends.
His smile vanished when he noticed they didn’t have a fifth person. “Where’s your buddy?”
“He wasn’t there,” Rick told Jack. “Hopefully, he’ll meet us in San Francisco.”
Rick’s group regarded Dallas. Anna was visibly shaken, and Rick was extremely unhappy. “Let the damn captain assemble another SEAL team to go get his wife. Dallas, this is crazy.”
Dallas shook his head. “Kevin wouldn’t send ‘em. He’d go hisself an’ prolly get killed doin’ it.”
“He’s right about that,” Seyfert agreed, pointing at the Texan. “McInerney wouldn’t send a team for personal reasons. You should still come back with us then I’ll come with you to find her.” The SEAL put his hand on Dallas’ shoulder. “You’re alone if you go now.”
“Been thinkin’ about a long drive, kids. This is the perfect time. Besides, I’m already halfway there. We go to San Francisco, and I gots to come all this way again.”
They discussed more on the dangers of the trip Dallas would take inside the plane, but in the end, the big Texan had made up his mind. He thanked Jack for all his help, including giving up the Jeep. Hugs and handshakes over, Dallas hopped in the Jeep and started it up. He waved once, stepped on the accelerator, and turned the vehicle northwest.
Rick wiped his right eye when the ramp began to close. He couldn’t help but believe he was leaving another friend behind.
Under Fillmore Street, San Francisco
Vanessa and Kyle held each other as the dead fought to get through the broken steel door. The rotten things jammed up in the partly open entry, getting stuck on each other, bits of them sloughing off on the doorframe. The shrieking of the Runner five feet away ended abruptly and both kids turned in its direction. The end of a katana disappeared back through the Runner’s face and the thing slumped to the ground, truly lifeless.
“You comin’?” Billy asked, leaning his sword against the sloped brick wall. He produced a jingly key ring in lieu of a weapon and slammed a large key into the lock on the grate. He pushed and the bars swung toward the youngsters. His eyes went wide and both kids sprinted for the open gate. A mass of rasping dead things flooded the culvert from the boiler room, one swiping at Kyle as he juked past the steel bars and leapt over the dead boy. Billy charged forward with both hands extended, his palms impacting one of the dead things in the chest. It flew back into its brethren and the living man pulled the grate closed on the dead. They crashed against the bars, dozens of arms stretching through as the Runner had from the other side.
“They’re…awful,” lamented Vanessa, staring at the things.
Billy and Kyle also gaped at the dead things. “Yeah. Yeah, they are,” the boy agreed.
“It isn’t their fault,” Billy told them. “But that doesn’t mean we should hang out with them either. Let’s try to get to the water.”
The three of them turned in unison and made for the far end of the culvert. Vanessa glanced over her shoulder to regard the things one more time. Pity overwhelmed revulsion as she strode from the tunnel into the star-strewn evening.
“Does this run?” Kyle asked in a whisper when they came across the black Escalade doing its best to block access to the tunnel. “Can we drive to the water?”
“It might still run,” Billy alleged back, “but the noise would call everything toward us and not just the dead.”
They climbed through the vehicle and Billy noticed a shoe and what looked like blood in the starlight. The Runner kid had been able to shimmy under the vehicle but lost some skin in the process. He hoisted both kids over the stains on the gravel and they moved on. When they were across the street, Billy glanced back toward the school and sighed. “That was prime real estate for a while.”
“How did they find us?” Kyle wondered aloud.
“Sometimes they just know. I have no idea how they do that. One minute they’re…”
Billy stopped talking and the kids instinctively knew to keep quiet as well. They hugged the wall of the building they were next to just as the first of many undead shuffled out of the alley they were about to enter. The dead weren’t silent, but most weren’t making the rasps, wet hacks, or moans they usually did. They streamed past the living by the dozen, heading toward the school. The infected were unaware a meal was mere feet away. Vanessa gently took Billy’s hand and nodded back behind them. The road behind was clear and the three slunk down the sidewalk hugging the storefronts. As they passed an abandoned 7-11, an arm shot through the broken front window and latched onto Vanessa’s long tresses. She shrieked and stepped right, grabbing her own hair to protect it. Kyle used a double-handed swing and in a flash of metallic green, a severed hand dangled from the girl’s hair. Billy stepped forward, punching the thing in the side of the head with his sapper gloves then stabbing it through the temple when it completed its stumble. Vanessa pulled the disembodied hand from her hair with a revolted whimper.
The horde renounced its silence. Hundreds
of them flowed toward Vanessa’s scream, their awful noises a herald. Dead things began to flood from the school as well, all toward Billy and the kids. Billy and Vanessa ran quickly with Kyle loping slightly behind. The girl noticed and she gave a slight pull to Billy’s hand. They had two hundred feet on the dead, but Kyle was fading. He grimaced and reached down to touch his ankle then pulled his hand away quickly. He could see Billy looking at him inquisitively through the darkness.
“Hurts, but I can make it.”
Billy nodded and they took off at a brisk pace again. A small group of infected lurched and stumbled from the road immediately to their front. Billy ran at them, bowling two of them over, but the other four instantly shuffled toward the kids. He gagged as he stood and tried to flick off the goo that now covered his chest and arms.
Kyle brought his paper-cutter blade down in an overhead swing and destroyed one of the things, but it twisted as it collapsed, pulling the boy down with it. Vanessa skirted around the reaching arms of three others. She ran up the road a bit and they followed her. Kyle was able to retrieve his weapon, but one of the things Billy had knocked down grabbed his ankle and he let out a quick shout of fear and pain. He chopped at the thing’s hand, severing it enough that it lost its grip. Billy sprinted for Vanessa and she skirted back around the reaching arms toward Billy and Kyle. Billy used his blade to relieve two of the creatures of their heads and a big smile creased his face.
“This is getting waaay easier!”
He brought the edge down quickly and a rotten arm hit the pavement with a wet thud. “Take this!” he blurted, handing Vanessa his sword. “Get on!” He showed his back to Kyle, who had no idea what Billy meant.
“Piggyback! You’re slowing us down!”
Kyle was tall but skinny. He crawled up onto Billy’s back and they all ran down the road. The screeching of brakes behind them meant that either help or danger was close. Not waiting to find out which it was, the three of them ducked into the open door of a movie theater.
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