“Get up there,” John said. “I’ll hold them off.”
“You first. You’re injured.”
“I’ve been bitten, Michael,” John said, exposing his ankle to the other man.
The rats marched closer.
“One of those little bastards got me in the cabin. You know what that means. You better get up there.”
Michael nodded, reached up for Burns’ extended hand, and the general hauled him upwards.
Overhead, something rumbled, and the boat listed more. The cabin was at a forty degree angle, and the band of survivors had to cling to the exhaust pipes to prevent themselves from falling onto the deck. Burns turned his eyes up to see the helicopter above them, flying in the dark.
“He’s here,” Burns shouted.
Dozens of rats scrambled on the deck as it tilted to a steeper incline. They slid across the wood, dropping into the river where they sank into the choppy water. They fell away from John, who held tightly to a door jam.
“Go,” he shouted to Michael. “You need to get your life back.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Michael called down to the deck.
The reporter raised his eyes to the top of the cabin, exposing the yellowing irises. As his mouth began to fill with newly formed teeth, he said, “You got these people out. Like you promised. You don’t need to run anymore.” He winced in pain when his knuckles started cracking and popping.
A rope ladder unfurled from the helicopter above them, dropping just out of reach of the group on the cabin’s roof. Nicole stretched out the axe and retrieved the rope by hooking the back of the axe head into the ladder. Pulling it toward them, she shouted for Sandy to go first.
The blond woman grabbed hold and ascended the wobbly rungs, not looking back at the swiftly sinking Marion M.
Michael said, “You next, Nicole. Get up there.”
“No, it should be you,” she argued.
“There’s no damn time. Now get up there and join Sandy.”
She looked at Michael’s face for a moment before climbing up after her girlfriend. She left the axe with Burns.
Sandy reached the cabin, where a young man and a middle-aged woman helped her climb aboard. They were dirty, covered in grime, and she realized they were survivors just like her. She wondered what atrocities they’d witnessed. They appeared to be determined, and they stuck their heads out the door as Nicole reached the top.
Burns turned to Michael and said, “Well, go on.”
Michael looked back at John and said, “Thank you.”
“What…for?” The reporter was struggling to retain his humanity, a losing battle as the beast took over.
“For giving me a life again,” Michael said, and he nodded.
John nodded back, then howled, an eerie half human half wolf sound that pierced the night.
Burns looked down at John with sad, knowing eyes.
“Aw, Christ, I’m sorry.”
“You get… up that… ladder,” John said, and the words were stiff, uncomfortable in his mouth.
So soon? He thought. Just a little more time.
“You got all this way…” Burns muttered, angry.
Michael ascended the ladder, hand over hand, not looking back at the thing that was trying to stand up on the tilting deck, the thing that had once been his friend. He didn’t look back even when he was seated in the whirlybird.
“I wish I could have saved you,” Burns said as he started to climb up to the helicopter.
John dropped to all fours, attempting to regain his balance on the listing boat. His fingernails expanded, grew into long, black talons.
“Me… too…”
With a final look at Burns and the hovering aircraft, he threw himself into the churning river. He sank beneath the waves and didn’t float to the surface even once.
Burns ascended the ladder and was helped into the helicopter by the young man and his mother. The general was shaken. Losing John at such a late stage was a discouragement beyond anything he’d ever felt. He slumped into a seat next to Nicole as the man and woman and Michael sat across from him.
“What happened?” Sandy asked, tears falling from her eyes. “Where’s John?”
“He was bitten,” Burns said.
Then, he felt the tears in his own eyes, felt the unfamiliar sting of crying and letting loose. He tried to stop them, tried to hide the emotions from his companions, but they forced their way out of the corners of his eyes. Soon, he was sobbing into Nicole’s shoulder as Sandy patted his back.
“I tried to save him,” he gasped. “Tried to save all of us.”
“You can’t rescue everyone,” Nicole said. “You’re not Superman.”
“You saved us,” Sandy said. “Many times over.”
He wiped at his eyes, clearing the damnable tears from his cheeks. He knew he had to regain his composure. He had to stifle this emotion down like all the others in his life. Finally, he sat up straight, his feelings tamped down somewhat.
When he got a decent look at the couple sitting across from him, he gasped. “You…” he stammered.
“Didn’t know if you’d recognize us,” the woman said. “It’s been a few years.”
From his pilot seat, Tommy Hemmer shouted, “Picked them up on the Brooklyn side.”
“Isn’t that where we’re going?”
“Not unless you wanna die like your buddy back there,” Hemmer said.
The young man turned to Sandy and introduced himself. “Hi. I’m Christian Wright, and this is my mom, Cathy.”
“We met you in Cincinnati,” Burns said. “After the first outbreak.”
“Well, this one’s a lot worse,” Christian explained. “Even the military’s pulled out.”
“We were visiting my mother in Queens when it all started. We made it to Brooklyn before the bridges were blown up.”
“So, we aren’t going to Brooklyn because…” Nicole started.
“The disease is there. It’s all around the city and spreading outwards while we speak,” Tommy Hemmer explained from the cockpit. “Mrs. Wright back there had an idea.”
“We find an island,” she said, leaning toward Burns, Nicole, and Sandy.
“Martha’s Vineyard should do nicely,” Tommy said. “No way onto it except by ferry or by air. We take out the ferry and we live there, safe and secure.”
“If you can call hiding out like that living,” Sandy said.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice anymore,” Hemmer replied. “What happened in Manhattan – that’s gonna happen all over the place. It’s already started in Brooklyn.”
“We barely made it out,” Cathy Wright said, clutching at her son’s hand. “Everything’s moving so fast. People were getting bitten and turning in a minute. Maybe even less.”
“It’s not really hiding,” Nicole told Sandy. “It’s more like regrouping, getting our bearings. We’ll lay low a while, see where the disease goes.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, sweetie. Laying low? Waiting out the battle?”
Nicole sighed and answered, “Maybe I’m sick and tired of all of this. Maybe I want some normal time like normal people. Maybe I want some time to be with you.”
Sandy grinned. “That’s the right answer,” she said.
Burns asked Hemmer, “Hey, Tommy, you got a cigar up there?”
Hemmer handed one back to him and said, “Grabbed a couple boxes. You know, just in case.”
Burns lit the cigar and inhaled deeply. He turned to Nicole and said, “You realize we’re AWOL. The Army might come looking for us.”
“Let them look,” she said. “We went AWOL when we entered Manhattan.”
“You saying the laws don’t apply anymore?” Michael asked.
Christian said, “We saw the military in Brooklyn. They were packing everything in and getting the hell out of Dodge. They were running pretty damn fast. Of course, there were a couple thousand werewolves in the streets by that point.”
“They coul
dn’t isolate the disease,” Cathy said. “It seemed pretty desperate.”
“There’ve been coded messages on the airwaves,” Hemmer said. “They aren’t flying around the city any longer, not bothering with piss-ant problems like us.”
“Martha’s Vineyard, huh?” Burns asked.
“Good a place as any, I guess,” Nicole answered.
Sandy nodded. “At least we’ll be safe there.”
“All right, then,” Hemmer said.
The helicopter flew through the night, farther and farther away from the burning, infected city. They almost didn’t see the jet that shot over them, hurtling toward New York.
“Aw Christ,” Burns shouted. “Everyone close and cover your eyes. Look away.”
Behind closed eyelids, they could still see the flash that lit up the darkness like daylight on the island of Manhattan.
When it finally grew darker, a wind buffeted their helicopter, but Hemmer maintained control.
“We far enough away?” Burns asked.
“Just barely,” the pilot answered. “We might all have some burns.”
“Oh my God,” Cathy Wright said, looking behind them. She clutched at her son, crying into his shoulder.
Burns tried to look away, but couldn’t.
Sandy put her head in her hands, and Nicole wrapped herself protectively around the sobbing woman.
Michael swallowed hard, couldn’t take his eyes from the terrible scene. He forced himself to look away eventually.
Behind them, above the island of Manhattan, the mushroom cloud rose into the night like a giant fist.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Matt Schwartz and Chrissy Brunner for helping me in my New York City research. You guys had to answer some crazy questions, and did so with knowledge and grace.
The author would like to admit to taking a few liberties with the geography of the great city of New York in the process of writing this novel. Sometimes, the truth gets sacrificed to the action scene muse.
If You Enjoyed…
If you enjoyed Primeval you may enjoy these books:
Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter by Brian P. Easton
Pavlov’s Dogs by D.L. Snell & Thom Brannan
The Infection by Craig DiLouie
Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder by Derek Gunn
Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) Page 31