“I’m sorry about your friends,” he says. “Truly, I am. But I...” Fletcher's voice falters and he turns and steps away again.
“Fuck these people,” I tell Hoff. “We don’t have time for this shit. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Blake says. He grabs my wrist as I try to walk away.
“Let go of me,” I growl.
“Tell us how we can help,” he says. He casts a stare at Fletcher who throws his arms up in a show of exasperation.
“Fine,” I tell Blake. “Follow me.”
Twenty-two
The rain begins to fall as we circle around the back of the airport through the trees. Hoff moves along beside me followed by Steven. A few yards back, Blake leads the others with Fletcher lagging at the rear. Lightning flashes and thunder rumbles and within a few minutes my boots are sinking deep in the mud. We reach a clearing and sprint across the grass until we reach the back of a pair of small hangars across from the main terminal. I peer around the front corner of the building and can hardly believe my eyes.
The dead have completely overrun the airport. A trio of pickup trucks form a barricade across the road between the hangars and the terminal. Corpses swarm the vehicles, tearing at the bodies of the men. I hear gunfire from within the terminal. We have to make a run for it before the dead lose interest in the trucks.
I point to a door across the terminal and then we take off across the slick pavement, splashing through puddles until we reach the door. The tall, black guy with the goatee reaches the door several seconds before me. He checks the door then holds it open for everyone to run inside. Just before I run into the dark building, I take a look at the trucks and see the dead staggering toward us.
The interior of the building is so dark that it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Rain pelts the corrugated roof and fills the building with a loud, steady noise. The smell of jet fuel hangs in the air. What I thought was the terminal was actually another long hangar. I can barely make out the shapes of small aircraft parked down the length of the building. There is no sign of Bishop or Lorento.
“Where the hell did the rest of them go?” Steven asks.
Suddenly daylight appears at far end of the building. It creeps across the floor as an access door lifts up toward the ceiling. Four pickup trucks are parked inside the hangar. There looks to be about a dozen people scrambling to get inside the vehicles. I try to spot Lorento among them, but I don’t see her.
“Let’s move,” Hoff whispers as he raises the rifle and presses forward along the row of planes. Fletcher leads the other group along the rear wall on the opposite side of the aircraft. The sound of the rain helps to cover the noise of our boots on the concrete floor. Before we get close enough to attack, one of the men near the trucks happens to turn his head in our direction.
“Bishop!” the man yells as he raises the rifle and opens fire on us.
I dive behind the landing gear of the nearest plane as the bullets fly and punch into the glass of the cockpit above me. Hoff crouches below the belly of another aircraft and fires a burst into the door of the lead truck as the driver starts the engine. The head of the driver snaps to the side, and blood splatters across the inside of the windshield. The vehicle surges forward suddenly and smashes into a metal support beam.
The gunshots are deafening inside the metal building. I glance around the landing gear and try to find a target but just fire a few rounds at the trucks blindly before ducking back to safety. I don’t have much ammunition left, and it feels like I’m just wasting it shooting like this.
I glance around the landing gear again and notice movement in the truck that crashed into the support beam. The driver side door swings open and then the body of the driver rolls out and falls to the ground. Lorento emerges behind him and collapses on the ground beside the truck. She gets to her feet and scurries toward our position.
I raise the rifle to provide some cover for her and fire a few rounds at Dom as she climbs into another one of the trucks. Dom spots Lorento escaping and raises a handgun and fires several shots in her direction. The bullets poke holes in the building behind Lorento as she crashes to the ground. I can’t be sure if Lorento was hit or if she was just trying to make herself a difficult target by diving to the floor. Dom flinches as I fire a short burst in her direction. She hits the gas and the truck tires squeal as the trio of pickups speed out of onto the wet apron outside.
“Run, you little bitches!” Fletcher yells as he fires at the retreating vehicles.
I get back to my feet and follow behind Hoff toward Lorento. A massive explosion outside shakes the building as I am about to ask if she is okay. She lifts her head up to look at me and I notice the black eye and fresh bruises around her neck. There is a trickle of blood on the floor beneath her.
“She got hit,” Hoff says. He quickly scans her body and locates a bullet wound near her thigh.
“I’m all right,” Lorento mumbles.
“Remember me?” The brunette woman appears at my side and kneels down beside Lorento.
“Danielle?” Lorento asks.
“Good to see you again,” the brunette says.
Lorento squints her eyes and looks around. Her eyes land on Fletcher and she smiles weakly. Danielle checks the wound quickly and takes out a bandana from her pocket. Lorento struggles to move, but Hoff places a hand on her shoulder to encourage her to stay still.
“You’re not bleeding much,” Danielle explains. She knots a tourniquet around the injured leg and looks up at Hoff. “She can’t walk like this, though.”
“I can walk,” Lorento insists. “Just help me up.”
Hoff shoulders his rifle and scoops her up and carries her over his shoulder.
“Put me down damn it,” Lorento complains but Hoff ignores her and carries her outside.
When I step out of the building, I see one of the trucks crashed into a tank of jet fuel beside the tarmac. Fletcher must have managed to tag the driver as they left the garage. I gaze out at the runway to watch the remaining pair of trucks drive away from the airport. All we can do is watch as they reach the end of the tarmac and pull into the grassy field. We were so close to taking Bishop out and ending this whole thing, but he slipped through our fingers. At least we got Lorento back alive. I guess that’s something.
“Quentin,” Blake says to the black guy. “Did you see who that was?”
“No way,” Quentin says. “Couldn’t be.”
“Dom?” asks Danielle.
“I’m pretty sure it was,” Blake says. He turns and looks at me. “You ever seen her before?”
“Who?” I ask.
“The blonde that was with Bishop.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “She’s been with him at least a couple weeks.”
“We need to move,” Hoff interjects. “Talk later.”
We head toward the back of the airport and cross a strip of grass into a cornfield. We make our way through the slop as the rain continues to pour down from the sky. When we reach the woods again, I pause and look over at the airport. A plume of smoke still billows up from the far side, and the dead continue to filter through the hangars. There is no chance of us going back out that way now. We will have to head back to the road through the golf course again.
We stop to pickup the others at the campground office. Stevie runs out the door when he spots us and races to his dad and gives him a hug. The shaggy dog trails behind him and circles around us excitedly wagging his tail. It makes me smile to finally see the kid with a look of excitement on his face again.
“Looks like somebody has a new friend,” I tell Steven. The dog pauses and looks up at me and I let him sniff my hand, then scratch at the fur on his head.
“His name is Stitch,” Stevie tells me. “But Val calls him Fleabag.”
"I'm more of a cat person," Val explains.
Stitch leads the way to the back of the campground where there are a couple of camouflaged tents set up behind some sparse bushes.
“College boy,” Fl
etcher says to the younger kid. He points a finger at the tents. “You and Nat start packing this shit up.”
The scrawny kid shoulders his rifle and rolls his eyes. The younger girl brushes the blonde bangs out of her face and grimaces as she bends down to yank a steak out of the mud.
“Looks like we’re not going to be able to drive out of here now,” Quentin says as he gazes back toward the road.
“Going to have to leave the trucks behind,” Blake agrees. “Too many of those things on the road. We’ll never make it through.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Fletcher says.
For a moment I wonder what they are talking about, then I turn around and notice Fletcher pulling a camouflage net away to reveal a pair of black pickups. From a distance I’d had no idea the vehicles were even there. No wonder Bishop never managed to locate them. These people are clever.
The truck beds are loaded with supplies, weapons, and ammunition. We can't possibly carry all of it, and it seems like such a shame to leave it all behind.
“You guys have any vehicles nearby?” Blake asks me.
“No,” I shake my head.
“Ain’t got shit,” Hoff adds. “Lost our vehicles, all our supplies, food, water, ammo.”
“People,” I add.
“Everything,” Hoff sighs. He sets Lorento down on the open rear gate of the truck.
“You should have listened to me before,” Fletcher says to Hoff. Fletcher spits on the ground and glances over at Lorento with a look of disgust.
“Are you trying to blame everything on me?” Lorento scoffs.
“You heard me right,” Fletcher says.
“Maybe if the helicopter had a full crew we never would have crashed in the first place,” Lorento hisses.
“Don’t you try to turn this on me,” Fletcher pokes a finger at Lorento.
“Maybe those soldiers would all still be alive if you just did your goddamn job,” Lorento continues.
“Fucking unbelievable,” Fletcher snaps. He tightens his hands into fists before burying them in his pants pockets.
“You two mind if we continue this discussion inside somewhere,” Hoff interrupts. “Those things will start wandering over here soon enough and I am getting pretty sick of standing around in the rain.”
Fletcher remains still for a few moments and gives Lorento a hard stare between the drops of water dripping from the brim of his cowboy hat. Lorento rolls her eyes and slides down from the back of the truck, wincing in pain as she puts weight on her leg again.
“Grab as much as you can carry,” Blake says. He reaches into the back of the truck and grabs a case of rations and dumps it in my arms. “We’ll head back to the golf course. Maybe we can wait this storm out in the clubhouse and come back for the trucks when those things clear out of here.”
Twenty-three
The nylon awning over the entrance to the golf course flutters in the heavy wind and sheets of rain that pour down in the grey afternoon. My clothes are soaking wet as we finally push through the glass door and step inside the lobby. I scan the darkened bar and the dining area to see if there are any threats. All I see are the white table clothes and table settings, and the rows of liquor bottles lined up behind the empty bar.
“Don’t worry,” Blake says. “If there was anything in here, Stitch would have sniffed it out already. Right boy?” He cocks his head down at the happy dog and shrugs the heavy pack from his shoulders. The dog shakes itself off and pants and wags its tail. Blake crouches down and pulls a piece of jerky from his pocket and lets the dog take it from his fingers.
Hoff moves passed me with Lorento’s arm draped over his shoulder. He helps her into the dining room and pulls out a chair for her to sit down. Danielle hurries over to the table and drops her pack and opens the flap to dig around for something inside.
“Is she a doctor?” I ask Blake.
“Well, sort of,” he smirks. “Almost, I guess. She knows what she is doing.”
I nod and a cold shiver runs down my spine. I wish I had something other than these wet clothes to wear. My body aches from pain and exhaustion and all I want to do is lay down and curl up in ball and cry myself to sleep.
“You guys look like you’ve been through hell,” Blake says.
“We have,” I tell him. “You have no idea.”
“I’ve been there before,” he says and puts a hand on my arm. “You’re okay now. Get something to eat and get warm and tell me all about it after you rest a bit.”
“Lorento can probably tell you more than I can,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says. “But I’m more likely to believe you.”
“Thanks,” I smile. He almost smiles back but just gestures to the boxes of rations and tells me to help myself. I watch as he moves across the room and talks quietly to Quentin, Nat and the kid they called College Boy. As much as they seem like good people and I want to trust them, it makes me nervous to be around so many strangers that we don’t know anything about. When this whole thing started, the only thing that scared me was corpses, but after the last couple days I am more afraid of people than ever before.
I carry the box across the lobby and find Midhun sitting on a bench near the front doors looking outside.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him.
His head turns in my direction, his smile returning. His eyes flick to the side to peek at Fletcher. He eyes our new friends in their military fatigues with some apparent apprehension. The soldier stares at him with only a mild interest. Midhun lowers his eyes, then leans closer to me.
“I am not sure I can go along with these people,” he whispers. “I am not a soldier.”
“You’re fine here,” I say. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, no, it is true,” Midhun says. “I do not belong.”
“Of course you do,” I insist.
Midhun cocks his head away from me and winces as though the notion was a source of heat he needed to back away from. He rests his wrists on his knees and stares at his fingers as he rubs the thumb of his right hand along the digits of his left slowly.
“You know we might not have survived at the airport if it wasn’t for you,” I tell him. “If you didn’t lead those things down the road and take out those guards—”
“You don’t see,” he interrupts me. “There is already blood on my hands. I do not want to add any more.”
“They are thieves and murderers,” I say. “They had it coming.”
“Maybe you are right,” Midhun shakes his head. “But I want no part of it.”
I sit there with my mouth open for a moment, not sure what to say. In the short time I’ve been around him, Midun has grown on me. Something about his presence and his stupid quotes help ground me when the whole world around me is going crazy. Maybe it’s just that I’ve already lost so many people recently, but I don’t want to see him go. I don’t care if he refuses to fight. Just because he isn’t violent, doesn’t mean he isn’t brave. In a way, that strong sense of morality makes me like him even more. Good people are getting harder and harder to find.
“Stay for me then,” I beg him. “I don’t care if you won’t fight. Help me keep Stevie safe. You can do that, right?”
Midhun sighs and tilts his head to see past me and eyes Stevie resting his head against my arm.
“I will,” Midhun says. “I would be a coward if I did not.”
“Good,” I smile.
Midhun returns the smile before he turns his head to the new faces across the lobby. The smile slips from his face and he lowers his gaze to stare at his fidgeting hands once again. I pry open the box of rations and glance at the labels. I spot a vegetarian lasagna and pull the package out of the box and hand it to Midhun. He squints his eyes to read the package in the dim light and then gives me a smile and heads to the dining area.
I carry the rest of the box over to a lounge where Val sits with her arm around Stevie while his dad digs through the contents of his Captain America backpack. The kid shivers in his wet clo
thes, his soaking wet hair clinging to his head. Steven pulls out a pair of ziplock bags with a dry change of clothes for his son inside.
“Got some food,” I tell them and set the box on the table.
“Looks delicious,” Steven smirks. He sets the bags of clothes down and begins to peel the wet shirt off Stevie.
“Better than nothing,” I shrug.
“I want a hamburger,” Stevie says. “And fries.”
“Sorry, kiddo,” I tell him. “No hamburgers. How about some mac and cheese?”
The boy’s eyes light up and he nods.
“My boys used to love mac and cheese, too,” I say as I pull the brown package out of the box and tear it open. “They would ask for it for lunch every day. I’d get so sick of eating it with them, but I miss it a lot right now.”
“That doesn’t look like the good kind,” Stevie frowns. His dad pulls the dry shirt over his head and Stevie pauses until his head comes out the top. “The good kind comes in blue boxes.”
“This kind comes with chili,” I tell him.
“Eww,” Stevie grimaces. “I don’t like chili.”
“And candy,” I say and hold up a bag of Skittles. “But only if you eat all the chili mac and cheese first. Deal?”
He nods and stands up and strips out of his jeans. He watches me as I take out a water bottle and begin to prepare the food.
“How’s the ankle, Val?” I ask.
“Sore as hell,” she says. “But I’ll live.”
“These people have a lot of supplies,” I say. “Maybe they have some kind of cold pack to keep the swelling down.”
“A couple aspirin would be great, too,” she says.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I tell her. “You just eat something.”
“I’m fine, too,” Steven says. “Thanks for asking, Scout.”
I glance up from the glass of lemonade I am making and roll my eyes.
“That’s unfortunate,” I tease him. “I had my hopes up.”
“Ouch,” Steven laughs.
“You should have learned by now not to mess with me when I’m tired.”
Rise of the Dead (Book 2): Return of the Dead Page 14