Malinda floored it past the handful of stopped cars in the oncoming lane as the cop screamed out in pain. Several car doors opened as the civilian onlookers got out to either help, or to get a better look.
“That just fucking happened. That just fucking happened.”
She drove in silence–both hands grasping the steering wheel, speedometer pegged at 70–for several minutes. Each car that passed her heading towards the accident, shooting, and bucket of crap triggered a wave of guilt in her. She should be stopping them. Telling them to turn around. Telling them what was ahead.
“They’d never believe me. Or maybe they would, today,” Malinda said over the droning doom and gloom of the radio station. She changed the channel to one that had an easier to listen to morning show.
Above and ahead, through a break in the tree cover over the road she saw the golden false-sun of her father’s balloon. It steamed eastward towards the small city of Westfield ahead at a remarkable pace.
“Thirty miles an hour, easily. Wow. They’re in a bad wind. How the hell is Dad going to land that thing? I saw the rip line break… He’d need a gun to pop the canvas and make a large enough hole.”
Her phone rang.
“Ah!” she barked out in surprise. She’d forgotten about her phone. The walkie had been her only lifeline. She snatched the flip phone up and saw the caller was her dad. “Daddy! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. How are you? Tell me you’re alright.”
He sounded off. Tired.
“I’m okay. Stuff is going down though. I just passed a car accident and watched someone bite a trapped driver and a cop. One of the cops shot at the zombie, Dad. This is really happening.”
“My God, that’s crazy. Are you safe? You’re not hurt are you? Tell me you’re getting the Hell away from that,” her dad blurted.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll have bad dreams the rest of my life, but whatever.”
“Okay, good. Dreams we can deal with. I’m glad you’re safe. Let’s look at the bright side; now we know what we have to do. No need to wonder if it’s true or not.”
“Yeah, super liberating.”
“Bad news often is. I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Hey that bitten dude… how’s he doing?”
“Well,” her dad said, his voice dropping an octave or two, “he’s not feeling well.”
“Throw him overboard. As soon as you are over an open space where you won’t hit anybody, you push him out,” Malinda said, feeling some panic creep up her spine. She squirmed in her seat, feeling the anxiety eat her up.
“Malinda, I can’t do that. That’s cruel. I promised I’d take care of them when they got on board this balloon.”
“Wait until he’s dead, Dad. Jesus. I’m not condoning throwing a live dude out. But look, he will become a zombie, and it’s gonna happen real soon. If you get bit, or that girl gets bitten, it’s over for all of you. Toss him, land the Golden Nugget, and let’s head home.”
“I hear you.”
“Dad you have to land that balloon. Mom is in fucking Ireland, and if you get hurt or die, I won’t have anyone. All of my friends are out of town.”
Her dad didn’t say anything for almost a minute.
“You could find Patty, from the bank. You liked her daughter, Abby. Remember them?”
“Dad, stop.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m aiming for the farm just to the north of town. The one with the big chicken coops, just north of the development. I forget the name of the road.”
“I know the one. Mom used to take me there for corn and eggs during the summer. The McDowell farm. The mom is super sweet.”
“Yeah that one. The farmer always wears a Navy hat.”
“Yep.”
“Good,” Tim said. “We’ll be there in… ten minutes at most. We’re in a brisk wind and I can’t get above it or below it. If I were a suspicious man, I’d say a conspiracy to head us east was afoot.”
“Dad. Dad, I’m serious. You need to throw him overboard,” Malinda pleaded with her father.
“I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”
Malinda ended the phone call no longer feeling guilty.
Now she was mad, and afraid. Mad that her dad wasn’t listening to her, and afraid of what would happen if he didn’t.
She floored the gas pedal and sped towards downtown Westfield and the side streets that would take her to the farm her father was going to land at.
Going. To. Land. At.
- Part Seven -
That Man is Not Sleeping
Tim watched the sitting Julie as she stroked the forehead and cheek of the laying Lucas. Julie was strong; she wasn’t crying, and she was in control. Tim felt proud of her, and he wasn’t sure why. Lucas on the other hand… wasn’t doing well at all.
He lay still; so still Tim was sure he was dead but fear stopped him from asking Julie to check. Lucas’ skin had taken on a sunken color, yellowed like old paper but dark and bluish gray in the deepening folds of flesh. His lips were turning a deeper shade of purple by the minute and Lucas hadn’t opened his bright blue eyes since Tim came-to after splitting his head open.
Malinda was right.
The bitten man was going to die in the next few minutes, if he wasn’t dead already.
Malinda said she’d seen a dead person get up and bite someone. With her own eyes, right below where Tim, his balloon, and his passengers flew.
Tim was pretty sure Lucas was about to do the same thing, and his available selection of bite victims was slim 3,000 feet up in the air, dangling beneath a giant canvas bag of hot air. A commercial for Shark Week jumped into the foreground of his mind and he shunted it away.
He had to do something. He had to make a plan. A plan he could live with after the balloon landed. He looked around at the limited supplies he had in the basket and saw a way out.
“Julie.”
She looked up from Lucas’ suffering. “Yeah?”
“Malinda said she saw a car accident. Saw a dead person get up and bite a cop.”
“What? When?” Julie shook her head slow, as if Tim was pulling one over on her.
“Just now,” Tim said, and then pointed at the ground below, “down there.”
“She’s seeing things.”
“She saw a cop shoot a zombie. Malinda isn’t the type to make stuff up like that, especially when her dad is in a balloon that just busted a landing.”
“She’s crazy. I’m sorry, but she’s crazy.”
“She’s 20, of course she’s crazy. But she’s telling the truth. And at the bare minimum, Julie, for the safety of this aircraft, I have to operate like she’s telling me the complete truth. There’s nothing to be lost in listening to her.”
Julie’s face contorted into defiance–nearly rage–after Tim spoke.
“You want to kill him, don’t you? Shoot him in the head? No fucking way. Uh-uh. You’ll have to shoot me first, Tim,” she said, and balled up her fists.
“I just want to tie him up,” Tim said, keeping his voice calm. “We can use the drop line right there. No gun play, not that I have one on the balloon anyway. All I want us to do is tie his arms to his sides so he can still breathe easily, and we don’t have to worry about him becoming aggressive. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
Her rage abated and her cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry. I just…”
“Don’t worry. Don’t say a thing about it. I’d be just like you if our roles were reversed. Will you help me tie him up? Snug but not painful?” Tim’s memory slid around to when Malinda was a little kid, and he had to talk slowly, and kindly to get her to do even the most basic things. Things like not throwing a fork at their beagle, or not climbing through the rails at the top of the steps.
“Yeah, that’s okay. He’ll be able to breathe? Will I still be able to hold him?”
“Let’s do it in a way he can breathe, and you can still hold and comfort him. Remember though; if all this is true, he might bite, so you need
to be in a position to avoid his mouth, if he tries.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll sit behind him. Hand me the rope,” she extended an open palm to Tim.
He checked their altitude, forward path, and speed then bent over to scoop up the yellow rope he’d eyeballed earlier. The thin nylon was spooled in the corner, one end fastened to the basket with a steel ring and the other tied to a bag of sand that they could use to land. Toss the bag, the rope drops, someone on the ground grabs the rope, and helps pull/guide them to ground.
Worked great.
The frayed red rope of the rip line sat on the floor beside it. That hadn’t worked so great.
Tim slipped his small Buck knife from the sheath on his belt and flipped the blade open. Still as sharp as the day he bought it, he knelt, looped the rope and cut near the basket, and did the same near the bag. He folded the knife closed and put it back in the sheath on his belt. Restraints in hand, he pivoted in the small space and faced the couple.
“You look scared,” Tim said. “Don’t be. We will have this done in a minute, and he’ll understand. It’s for his benefit as well as ours.”
“I know,” she said, and took a deep breath. “Where do we start?”
“Um, I think we tie his left wrist off, then wrap it around him a few times snug, but not too tight. Sound good?”
She nodded.
Tim reached down and slipped the end of the rope around the limp wrist of the unconscious man. He tied a slipknot with his eyes locked on the shallow rise and fall of Lucas’ chest. That done, he paused and reassessed Julie. She was disconcerted, running her fingers through her fiancé’s sweat-soaked hair, but okay.
“Let’s sit him up so we can wrap the rope around his midsection.”
“Okay,” she replied.
Between the two of them they lifted the man’s torso upright and leaned his shoulder against the side of the basket. Julie put her palms against her boyfriend’s back and held him upright as Tim looped one circle, then two, then three more around Lucas. His head lolled around back and forth as the basket swung in the air, and as the two adults moved his body to make the process easier. Tim kept his eyes fixed on the chest at first, but couldn’t see the man breathing, so he switched his focus to the man’s face.
Lucas had opened his eyes.
When Lucas boarded the balloon, he had sparkling blue eyes. Eyes like the waters of the Caribbean, eyes as bright as crystals in the sun. Eyes that Julie had fallen in love with.
They were still blue, but the sparkle was gone. They’d become hazy, covered with a drained cataract-caul that made them eerie and dull. The blue-gray pupils swung towards Tim and locked onto him. His soul had vacated the body, and something else had taken its place.
“Julie…”
Lucas’ face twisted into a snarl and he threw his body at Tim.
A few years prior, Tim might’ve had the agility to get out of the way, but the onset of arthritis in his body, the loose ropes around Lucas, and the small space colluded against him. He landed on his ass, but his escape was incomplete.
Lucas’ face and the teeth within crossed the foot between the two of them and bit. Tim felt the horrid burning of the jaws clenching just below his knee, straight through the jeans he wore.
Julie screamed as Tim put an awkward roundhouse punch into the side of Lucas’ head. The blow freed the jaw somewhat, but the man chomped down again and got a better hold on the firm flesh of the joint. The pain was tremendous, and Tim punched again.
He rabbit-punched over and over, pummeling his attacker’s face, ruining his nose and cheeks, splitting the skin over the cheekbone and eyebrow as his own knuckles bruised, cracked, and bled. No matter how many times Tim punched, Lucas kept biting, kept his alligator-grip and kept pushing for a deeper, bloodier wound.
“Julie, grab my knife!” Tim begged as he rolled over to expose the sheath and the blade within. “He won’t let go!”
Without a word the woman went to Tim’s side and grabbed the folding knife. As slow as a stale August wind she picked at the back of the blade until she pried it open, and it locked.
“What do you want to do with it?” She asked him, half in a scream.
Tim abandoned the 5th round of the prize fight on Lucas’ face and snatched the knife from her. The razor-sharp blade sliced his palm wide open as he grabbed it, but he had it. With both hands he spun it, gripped it, and slammed the five-inch blade into the side of Lucas’ head just behind the end of the left jawbone.
The piercing blow didn’t kill Lucas, but it did jam his jaw open long enough for Tim to push away. He lost the handle of the knife in the process, but he was away, and crawled on his ass–unable to stand–until he was in the corner of the basket furthest away from the monster.
“Jesus, Tim! You stabbed him! Lucas, no!” Julie pleaded and dropped down to help Lucas. The flailing maniac loosened the already failing ropes with each jerk and tug, and as she went to pull the knife out of his neck, one of his arms came free.
Wild, and unplanned, the sallow man threw a half-open fist into Julie’s face.
She was already off-balance and the blow sent her careening into the opposite side of the basket. Had she been standing all the way she’d have stood a chance of going overboard, but instead she bounced her head off the hard side of the passenger compartment, ringing her bell again from the other side.
She’d have had a better chance of living had she gone over the side and fallen into the streets of Westfield below. She’d at least have found peace.
Lucas grabbed at the fair t-shirt she wore and yanked her stunned body closer to his maw. Tim scrambled to reverse his polarity and get closer–to help–but his ruined knee screamed in pain and he gassed out halfway. He watched as Lucas tore into Julie’s arm near the end of her sleeve and seized onto her skin and muscle with the same terrifying resolve.
The pain made her lucid.
She fought like Tim had. She punched with her free hand as hard as she could, she pushed away–shoved away–but still, Lucas kept on. He gnashed his teeth, pulping her tender skin and muscle until blood poured down to the increasingly blood-filled space.
Tim fought through the pain and crawled over to the struggle. He knew pulling Lucas off of her would cause more damage, so instead he went for his Buck knife. His blood slicked, palm-slashed hand found the antler inlaid handle and he tugged the knife out of the dead man’s neck. He felt the blade skip against the broken bone of the jaw.
Invigorated somehow, Lucas let go of Julie and went back to trying to maul Tim.
As Lucas lunged forward, mouth agape, teeth bared like a wolf about to kill, Tim pointed the tip of the knife forward and lunged too. The thick blade popped Lucas’ left eye like a fat, hot grape and pierced the thin skull behind. The tip found the soft brain inside and Lucas’ forward momentum disappeared. His other eye opened wide, almost in shock, and Tim used his other hand to grab Lucas by the nape of the neck.
“Screw you,” Tim said, and pushed the blade forward with all his might while pulling the man’s head toward him. Tim felt the crunch of more bone breaking and the knife slid deeper into the bite victim’s head. His one remaining eye rolled upward, disappearing behind a flickering lid.
Lucas twitched, then went limp, and fell to the floor, as still as a dead man ought to be.
Tim looked over at Julie as blood ran from her savaged arm. He closed his eyes, and built the strength to look at his knee.
- Part Eight -
Shut Up With That
Julie’s life faded away faster than Tim could’ve imagined. Her head bobbed up and down, and her eyes refused to focus, no matter how much he yelled at her to cover the wound on her arm.
“No… fucking tourniquet!” Tim barked at himself as he tore apart his first aid kit. Why would he need a tourniquet in a hot air balloon? If he needed a tourniquet, he would’ve certainly needed an ambulance, as they would’ve just crashed.
It didn’t matter. Lucas was laying an arm away with Tim’s knife
buried to the hilt in his eye, and Julie spurted a steady stream of blood out of her arm where Lucas had gone to town. The damage was amazing. Entire chunks of flesh gone, muscles severed, veins laid out to the open air, and apparently… one severed artery.
Tim gave up hope when her chin hit her new fair t-shirt and didn’t rise again. A moment later, the pulsing stream of blood escaping her arm slowed, then stopped gushing. Lucas had killed the woman he’d just brought home to his family. Tim turned his attention to his knee as images of her arm danced across the insides of his eyelids.
He undid his belt and laid back on the floor of the basket as best he could. There wasn’t much room with the two corpses. Using his good leg he propped his ass up and pulled his blood soaked pants down, letting slip multiple groans of pain at the mauled joint. He got his pants around his ankles, and looked at his bitten knee.
Bruising. Horrid, dark circles, crescents and ovals marred his hairy kneecap and shin, but no blood came from his body. All the blood he’d seen on his leg must’ve come from Lucas or Julie. He’d been bitten, but his skin hadn’t broken.
“Oh thank God,” Tim said with a sigh. “Holy shit.” He put his head against the floor of the basket and closed his eyes. He had about two seconds of peace before the sensation of the basket swaying beneath the balloon made him realize he had no idea where they were, how high they were, or where they were going.
With a grunt he got to his feet and assessed the world below. High enough, still fast, and now over the downtown area of Westfield. He looked below and saw a high school with several National Guard humvees in the parking lot. Soldiers armed with what looked like their own personal weapons were posting guard, directing traffic, and attempting to be professional. A hundred cars flooded the streets and pavement surrounding the school. Families streamed out of their abandoned automobiles to head towards the armed soldiers. The men and women in uniform seemed to be making a small bit of order. Of course their presence confirmed Malinda’s assertions of the chaos that spilled out across the land below. Tim sighed.
An Ill Wind: Tales from the world of Adrian's Undead Diary Volume Five Page 4