Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile

by J. L. Bourne

  Now, the debris that I thought would not be a factor suddenly became a big one. I tapped the good brake while applying opposite rudder to straighten my yaw, each time kissing the grass on the right side of the highway. I stopped barely short of the debris that would have resulted in a likely fatal crash. The obstruction and mess blocking my roll fifty meters in the distance was nothing more than another blast hole, a green army truck and collapsed overpass. I doubted that two overpasses would coincidentally collapse like that. They were likely a result of professional demolition. I barely had enough room to turn the aircraft around and get it set up for takeoff. That is, if I made it back. I shut the engine down, taking special care to keep an eye on the small numbers approaching as I readied my pack for the expedition.

  I reached into the backseat of the aircraft and pulled out my carbine and magazines. I stuffed the extra magazines in my pack and put the other four “go-to” mags in easily accessible pockets. My sidearm was already at my side. I placed four bottles of water and two MRE packages in the pack also. I had no idea how long they had been surviving on the tower or if they had been without water for very long.

  I shut the aircraft door and turned around, shock-startled by the snarling, decomposing face of one of the creatures. I struck it in the temple with the butt of my rifle and kicked it hard in the knee, bringing it to the ground. That one wasn’t worth the bullet or the byproduct of the loud rifle report. It didn’t move again as I walked away from the aircraft.

  I walked perpendicular to the interstate into the woods. I would shadow the road from here, safer from their ever-searching, always vigilant gaze. I could see them through the trees intermittently as I passed. They seemed confused, knowing something of interest was near, but unsure how to benefit from it. It was hot and humid but I kept on; my soul had no choice. I finally made it to the point where the first demolitions had occurred. I hadn’t noticed the undead soldier on my first flyover, as he was in my blind spot on the other side of the truck when I made the pass. It wasn’t difficult to tell what happened to him. The back of his green coat was shut in the driver’s-side door, prohibiting movement. His coat was zipped up to his chest and he was wearing a Kevlar helmet strapped to his chin. He was missing large chunks of flesh and muscle from his shoulder and neck. It was apparent that he had rushed out of the truck only to shut his coat in the door, inviting catastrophe. I suppose the Darwin award had a winner for this month.

  No point in letting him see me, as he would only pound on the truck like a drum and invite more creatures. I needed to leave him just as he was. Part of me wanted to put him out of his misery, as he was a fellow military man. I quietly walked around to the passenger side of the large truck and had a look inside. Sitting in the seat was an M-9 pistol. The window was rolled up and the door was locked on my side. I only had my rifle and pistol and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the survivors to have a weapon for the rescue operation. I changed my mind and made the decision to kill the soldier as a trade for the pistol. I stepped down off the running board of the truck and walked to the rear. It was a transport truck with a canvas-covered wagon-type bed. I peered into the bed. I could see nothing of use in the back of the truck—just wooden crates full of God knows what. Probably explosives. That wasn’t my field of expertise.

  I picked up a large chunk of leftover interstate and tossed it on the concrete near the creature’s feet to make it look the other way as I advanced. It worked. I quickly approached the thing and shoved the muzzle of my weapon underneath the helmet, getting around the Kevlar protecting its head. I squeezed off one round. The creature went limp and just hung there until I opened the door. I checked its pockets. Nothing of value. I took the M-9 and left the scene.

  I didn’t have much time to figure out a way to get them off the water tower. We needed to be out of here before sundown. Neutralizing the creatures was not an option. I had the advantage of a brain and firepower, but there were just too many of them. I needed another way. It seemed the only option was to run up to them and start screaming or shooting, drawing them from the tower, which was similar to the way I extracted the Grisham family. That was also too dangerous, as I did not have a working car to lead them away. More lack of planning. I had planned only to land at Lake Charles, make contact and possibly transport survivors to Hotel 23. I didn’t plan for another ridiculous rescue effort.

  The water tower was in view. I could see one of them on the catwalk. I tried to wave my arms and signal but there was no response. It almost made me second-guess myself. I wondered if I had gone through this trouble only to be saving two corpses. It was then that my efforts were reaffirmed. I could see a small male figure urinating off the edge of the railing onto the corpses below. Although I could not see the corpses through the undergrowth, I knew what the boy was doing. He was mischievously aiming for their heads.

  I briefly chuckled to myself and got back to business. The water tower was only about ten meters from the airport perimeter fence. The top of the fence was not barbed and I could easily climb over it, so I jogged to a section out of view of the creatures and did just that. As soon as I hit the ground I started running toward the hangar. I saw a row of electric-powered luggage carts plugged into a charging bank behind the hangar. I slowly moved over to them. I had no idea how long the power had been out in this area so I didn’t know if they would still operate. I unlatched one of them and pulled it out to the side of the hangar so that I could get a good look at it. I had drawn a curious corpse on the other side of the fence. It must have seen me jump over.

  There were no keys for the small luggage cars, I suppose to avoid foreign object debris (FOD) damage to the aircraft engines in the event the keys were dropped on the taxiway. I turned the switch to the on position, sat down and pressed the accelerator. The electric engine jolted over but the cart did not move. I tried another. There were several, all in a row behind the building. On the third cart, I was successful. It hummed to life and I immediately hopped on and drove toward the broken section of the fence near the water tower. I stopped on the center of the runway and got out, leaving the luggage cart on. I shouldered my rifle and began shooting at the base of the tower, taking down as many as I could before every undead eye in a two-mile radius looked my way.

  I kept firing until the mass of them started pouring out of the opening in the fence, arms outstretched and wanting me. I waited until they were fifty meters distant before I got back into the cart and drove away, drawing the undead away from the tower. As I sped down the runway I reloaded my magazine. I couldn’t tell but if I were to guess I would say there were at least two to three hundred of them behind me.

  I was at the end of the runway. I got out and started shooting at them again. They were about three hundred yards away at this point. I had some time. I killed the ones near me that were already inside the airport perimeter first. Then I started selectively picking off the large crowd, aiming for the ones most distant first. That would buy me more time before they caught up to me when I made my transition back to the tower.

  They were now at one hundred yards. There were so many flies buzzing around the mass it was sickening. I could easily hear the flies’ collective buzz over their moans. I would have to say that the worst thing about them is their dried, decomposing faces. Their lips locked in a permanent snarl with bony hands reaching for purchase. It was time to roll. I jumped back in the cart and circled around the mass and put the accelerator to the floor. This thing had limitations on its speed for safety. I was only going ten or fifteen miles per hour at best. As I neared the tower I screamed for them to get ready. I couldn’t tell if they heard me or not. The bulk of the creatures were almost one thousand yards away. We had time, but I still had to take care of the dozen or so that had remained at the base of the tower. The battery in the cart was beginning to show signs of drain.

  I was at the break in the fence. The foliage was restricting my view and I had no way of knowing exactly what was hiding inside. I opened fire on what I thought
was a head. I gave up on this tactic and carefully walked into the undergrowth under the tower. The ones that were left behind were probably deaf, as they were in advanced stages of decomposition. They probably didn’t even hear my gunfire. Many of them had only one eye, or none at all. They were easy targets. It was not long before the base of the tower was secure. I called up to the survivors to get down as fast as they could.

  I heard a woman’s commanding voice say, “Danny, do as the man says.”

  Then the boy replied nervously, “Yes, Granny.”

  The boy went first. He was about twelve years old with brown hair and dark brown eyes with a light complexion. Then came the female. She looked to be in her late fifties or even early sixties. She had red curly hair and was slightly overweight. They were both on the ground holding what few belongings they had, looking to me for answers. My confidence seemed to drain along with the golf cart battery after seeing so many of the creatures. I mustered up what acting ability I had (Abraham Lincoln in kindergarten) and feigned confidence, telling them to follow me. Before we left I took a zip tie out of my pack and went over to the luggage cart.

  They were closer now, about six hundred yards, and closing fast. I climbed into the luggage cart and put it into reverse. A loud warning beep sounded. I zip-tied the pedal down so that it would go until it hit something or the battery was completely depleted. I jumped out and rolled to avoid injury as the cart drove off, beeping loudly, in the direction of the undead mass. We headed back to the aircraft the same way I had come in, taking special care to remain undetected as we clumsily traipsed through the foliage parallel to Interstate 10. I could hear loud moans coming from behind us from the direction of the airport. We were upwind from them. No doubt they could somehow smell us, even though I admit I never bothered to examine one closely enough to see if it even breathed.

  As we journeyed through the woods in the general direction of the aircraft, I handed the woman the M-9 that I had stolen from the army transport truck earlier. She told me that her name was Dean and that this was her grandson, Danny. I shook both of their hands and pulled out the yellow handwritten note that I had found hidden in the fuel truck at Hobby Airport.

  The woman looked at the note. Her bloodshot eyes began to tear up and she stopped for a moment, looking into my eyes. She reached out her arms and hugged me while she cried. My first thought was that Mr. Davis was a close friend and family member of hers and that the note had somehow surfaced painful recent memories of his untimely demise.

  “I know you are unhappy, but we have to keep moving. There are many of those creatures around. The golf cart won’t fool them for long,” I told her.

  She insisted that she needed a minute or two to get her bearings. What could I say? If my mother ever found out I had disrespected my elder I’d get my ass kicked.

  I asked the woman what had happened to Mr. Davis and his family.

  She replied, “Danny and I are the Davis family. I left the note at Hobby Regional last month, right before we flew here.”

  Puzzled and feeling the ever-so-slight sting of sexism in the back of my mind, I humbly inquired who flew the plane.

  She smiled and for a brief second looked a little younger and said, “I did. I am a certified pilot, or used to be, when being a certified pilot meant something.”

  Holding back my look of jackassery, I scanned the area for any threat and continued talking to the woman named Dean. Danny sat on the ground in front of her feet, his small head scanning all around for threats.

  I felt peaceful as I spoke to this woman, almost as if she was the last grandmother left on the planet and I wanted to hear her stories.

  . . . Now wasn’t the time.

  My main reason for stopping was to give them an emotional rest from what had just happened at the water tower. Although the woman was more than capable of handling herself, she was still an older woman and I felt that they had needed this brief break in the action. The woman called Dean showed obvious signs of malnutrition. Loose skin hung from her arms and legs as a testament to her love for her grandson. Danny didn’t look great, either, but I could tell that food had been given up for his survival.

  With guilt and a little sorrow in my voice, I made the suggestion that we keep moving and get to the aircraft as soon as possible. It would be very difficult to find the fuel truck at Hobby if we were forced to fly at night. As we walked, I tried to keep Dean’s mind off today’s events by quietly asking her why she learned to fly. She was eager and happy to talk about it. As she whispered, I kept glancing past her face into the breaks in the trees that intermittently revealed the interstate. From time to time during our move to the plane I saw them.

  She quietly spoke as she walked of how she was a retired pilot, formerly of the New Orleans Fire Department, and how she missed flying and helping people in need. She also mentioned her age in the conversation, saying that she had retired ten years ago when she had turned fifty-five. I couldn’t believe that the woman had survived as long in this, keeping this young boy alive. I was truly in awe and fully respected this woman’s will to survive.

  There were a few creatures up the interstate toward the airfield between the aircraft and our group. The moans of the dead were almost to the point of imagination at this distance. I told Dean how I had lost my left wheel brake in the landing and said that I hoped we wouldn’t have to abort takeoff because there would be a nice, big, green army truck waiting for us at the end of this strip of interstate. She didn’t seem to worry and never questioned where my piloting skills came from. She just seemed thankful to be alive. After arriving at the aircraft, I opened the door and almost caught myself shielding Danny’s eyes from the corpse I had killed near the aircraft earlier. What was the point? The boy had probably pissed on more of the undead than I had ever seen.

  After inspecting the aircraft and strapping in we started the takeoff checklist. Both Dean and I put on the internal communications headsets and she helped me run the checklist, as she had over two hundred hours in this particular model aircraft, much more than I had. The engine started with no problem. I gave the aircraft power and began my forward roll. There was no use testing the brakes. The area was clear; I kept my roll to fifty knots. A single corpse was approaching the concrete of the interstate from the grassy median separating I-10 east and west. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.

  I then felt the yoke controls of the aircraft being pulled back to me. Dean’s voice over the internal communications said, “We can make this climb.” I couldn’t believe it. This climb was even steeper than the time John and I had to fly out of the dirt track back before San Antonio was rocked off the map by nukes. It was not the engines that pushed me back into my seat. It was gravity. We had missed the corpse and taken off nearly a thousand feet before I would have. I had to buck up and admit to myself she was better at flying this plane than I was.

  As we passed the truck, crater and collapsed overpass, the airport once again came into sight. Out of pure curiosity I asked Dean to take us over the airfield. As we flew over I could see them huddled around the electric cart at the opposite end of the airfield. It was wedged into the fence and I assume was still beeping, because the corpses were quite interested in it, trying to rip it apart. Maybe it was the smell, maybe the noise, maybe both.

  She asked where we were headed. I told her to fly us to her fuel truck. She did.

  Curious how she came to be on top of the water tower, I began asking some questions now that we were safely in the air. They landed at Lake Charles on the night of May 14. She didn’t go into detail, but her hands started to shake on the controls as she spoke of how she had to leave the aircraft running and both she and Danny had to run as fast as they could to the tower to avoid being eaten by them. All they had on the tower was what they could carry in one trip. I asked why she just didn’t escape in the aircraft. She answered my question with another by saying, “Didn’t you see all the bodies lying around the aircraft near the propeller when you flew over?�
�� I could see that she was uncomfortable talking about it.

  She told of how she used her sleeping blanket to get water for the both of them. She had climbed up to the top of the tower from the catwalk on the side at day six, one day after they had run out of their rationed potable water. Somehow, she unscrewed the plug on the top of the tower that was commonly used to test the water inside the tank. Using the blanket, she dipped it down into the tank and was able to get it submerged approximately six inches into the tank without dropping it in. She and Danny had lived off “freshly squeezed Louisiana blanket water” for nearly a month while enduring the endless moans of the dead below. She cried again when she spoke of this.

  Over Hobby, we were in need of fuel. We might have been able to make it back to Hotel 23 on fumes, but I didn’t think it necessary to take the risk. I knew the fuel truck worked, I had used it recently and I knew it had plenty of fuel. The sun was approaching the western horizon as we circled Hobby to take a look. There were undead on the roof adjacent to the shattered terminal window and I did see a few of them on the ground below the roof. Some of them had rendered themselves immobile from the fall. Kinetics is a bitch.

  I landed the aircraft and taxied it dangerously close to the fuel truck and told Dean to stay inside. She didn’t like this idea and wanted to help, but I could see in her eyes that she knew I was right. She wasn’t one hundred percent after starving, baking and freezing for a month on that tower, which is why, despite her high flight hours, I kept my hands on or near the controls the entire time she flew. She may have been a better stick, but she was worn down to the wire.