“Do I need to tell you to be careful with that?” she asked him.
“Like I was with the knife?”
It did not seem to Jennifer he was careful at all with the knife, but his reckless, almost suicidal, attack on Tanner had saved her life, so she said, “Yeah, exactly like that.”
They started to go back the way the came, but the hallway was full of amblers, some of them on fire. One of the flaming ones stumbled into the curtains on one of the windows, catching them on fire.
“I don’t think we’re going this way,” Jennifer said as they watched the flames from the curtain start to catch the roof on fire.
Bo sliced his way through the nearest infected with the sword and grabbed the transponder. With it under his arm he said, “I’m pretty sure there was a stairway on the other side of the house.”
The three of them ran back through the kitchen and the dining room. They found themselves in another hallway. At the end was another set of stairs. They ran towards it but had to stop when a vampire rotter, his mouth full of blood stepped out of one of the rooms.
Jennifer emptied the pistol into it. Putting most of the bullets she had left into the things chest. It kept moving towards them despite have four big holes in its upper body.
The bullets may not have killed it, but they slowed it enough Bo could get a clean swing of the sword at its head. The sword split the rotters skull and it went down for good. He was stepping over it when he heard Gavin scream.
He turned to see another vampire rotter with the boy in its claw like hands. The massive jaw was open as it prepared to chomp on Gavin’s head. Instead of biting down though, the rotter stopped as the Carson’s other bodyguard grabbed it by the hair. He brought a combat knife much like Gavin’s around and jammed the blade into the rotters open mouth. He kept pulling back on the blade and it cut through the rotters flesh. The rotter dropped Gavin and reached back to try and stop the big man cutting into his jaw. The bodyguard kept pushing the blade through. When he reached the jaw bones he had to saw with the knife for a bit and the same for when he ran the blade into the rotter’s spine, but soon he was holding rotters head from his the top of its mouth up as the body dropped to the floor. After the body was down he tossed the head over his shoulder.
“I would have shot him, but I’m out of bullets,” He said like he was apologizing. He looked at Jennifer’s bloody shoulder and pointed at it with his knife, “Is she bit?”
“She can take it,” Bo said, “She has been bit before and survived.”
The big man nodded and said, “Sorry, I didn’t know.”
“No worries,” Bo said as the three of them turned and continued running for the stairs.
They reached the staircase at the end of the hall and made their way to the top floor. It was no surprise when they found the door locked.
Bo knocked on the door, saying, “Why not.”
After they went a minute without a response Carson’s bodyguard said, “Let me kick it in.”
Bo moved out of the big man’s way.
Before he could start kicking the door opened. They found themselves looking at the barrel of Donna’s gun.
The bodyguard raised his hands saying, “Don’t shoot.”
Donna lowered the gun and waved them in. Once they were all on the roof she shut the door behind them.
“Lucky for you Ben pointed out the infected don’t normally knock. I was about to fire a rocket.”
“How come those chopper blades aren’t spinning?” the bodyguard asked.
“Unless you know how to fly one this is the end of the line,” Donna told him.
“What do you mean?” Bo asked.
Donna pointed to the dead pilots.
“Do you know if they fueled them up?” the bodyguard asked.
“Yeah, they did but..”
“Somebody remove the tarp. Then pick one and climb inside.”
Ben ran to one the corner of the roof and cut the tarp loose while Bo hustled to the opposite corner and did the same. Katelin went to the other side and cut another corner loose.
Jennifer was going to go help but Donna seeing her bloody shoulder told her, “I’ll go. Help Gavin onto the chopper.”
“You can fly that thing?”Jennifer asked as she Gavin and the bodyguard headed for one of the choppers .
“Maybe. I was in chopper school back in my Navy days.”
“You were a Navy pilot?” she asked.
“No.”
“I thought you said you were in chopper school?”.
“I was. I just didn’t pass. I learned the basics though.”
“That’s better than any of us,” Bo said as he ran to join them. The camouflage tarp was blowing away in the wind. Bo turned to the others and said, “Everybody grab some gear and get aboard.”
“Don’t worry ma’am,” the bodyguard said to Donna as she approached the chopper , “I was good at take offs.”
“Call me Donna,” she told him.
“I’m Reg,” he said as they climbed inside.
“If you were good at take offs why did you fail?”
“Landings,” he said as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. He looked at the control panel and paused, “This one is set up different than the one I trained on.”
“Can you fly it?” Donna asked as she strapped herself into the seat next to him.
“If I can figure out how to turn it on.”
The door they had come through onto the roof through burst open as Reg was examining the control panel. A vampire rotter loped onto the roof followed by a steady stream of amblers.
Katelin leaned out the open door and fired with both Mac Tens putting the rotter down as she used the last of her bullets in both clips.
As she was slapping in fresh ammunition Ben asked, “Did anyone bring the rocket launcher?”
Donna had thrown it inside, Bo saw and handed it to Ben.
“Don’t fire that thing in here,” Donna shouted back.
Ben hopped out and moved so the backfire from the launcher would not hit the chopper and fired into the doorway. While there were still a few amblers on the roof no new ones would be coming through for a while.
He was feeling pretty good until he saw there was another door onto the roof, “We have anymore rockets?” he asked.
“Nope,” Katelin told him as the weight of the infected leaning on the last door knocked it down.
“Found it,” Reg said as he threw a series of switches. Nothing happened.
Ben climbed aboard, saying, “Can you do this or not?” as he closed the door.
“Yeah,” Reg told him as he flipped another series of switches. Again nothing happened.
“No better time than right now to prove it,” Ben said as the amblers spilling out onto the roof started moving their way.
“Shut up and let him think,” Donna said.
“I would have sworn I did it right,” Reg said as the first of the amblers reached the chopper.
“Well you didn’t,” Ben said, “Try something else.”
“I’m not just going to randomly turn things on and off and hope I get lucky.”
“Couldn’t be any worse than what you’re doing.”
Reg flipped another series of switches and the rotors began to spin.
“Hell yeah,” Reg said as the propellers began to pick up speed.
Reg grabbed the stick and the chopper began to rise. A few amblers held on, but not for long. As soon as they had enough altitude to clear the wall which hid the helipads he banked hard and sent amblers tumbling back to the roof of the burning building.
“So much for Cam Carson’s secure compound,” Ben said as they flew above the grounds, now thick with the infected, and watched Carson’s mansion burn.
“Carson was an asshole anyways,” Reg said, “I can’t believe I agreed to stay with him in the quarantine zone.”
“I’m glad you did,” Donna told him.
Reg shrugged, “Yeah, we’ll see if you still feel that
way after you experience one of my landings.”
“Speaking of landings,” Bo said, “Where are we going?”
Reg shrugged again and said, “East.”
“We have the transponder,” Bo said, “We can fly right out of the quarantine.”
“I vote for that,” Ben added.
“What about dad?” Katelin asked, “Ana and Clay are out there too.”
Reg looked at Donna, “If I say we should get out and worry about them later are you going to be angry?”
“He called so he’s alive. He went through a lot to save us. It doesn’t feel right to leave him.”
“Yeah, I have to say even though he seems like a sneaky bastard I don’t feel good about leaving Fan either,” Reggie said, “This thing is built to seat a few more. We could get them. We just need a place to meet where I have room to land. Assuming I can land this tin can.”
“So are you two seriously discussing not getting the fuck out of this shit?” Ben asked.
“It’s my dad and my friends,” Katelin said.
“Last I checked you didn’t like him much,” Ben said.
“He’s still my dad.”
Donna retrieved her phone. Vance had been trying to call since they lost the connection. It would be nearly impossible to hear each other over the noise of the chopper so she texted him.
“We have a helicopter and a transponder. Tell us your location.”
Vance texted back, “The I-5 around Mission Viejo. Is everyone okay?”
“Our people are.” She texted back.
Donna turned to Reg, “Assuming you can land would the I-5 work?”
“Give me three lanes of width and a lot length,” he said, “If I can’t get us down in that I won’t get us down anywhere.”
She texted, “Find three open lanes and we will come to get you.”
Vance texted back, “Consider it done.”
Chapter 33 - Interstate 5 - Mission Viejo, CA
There were not a lot of places with three clear lanes but they got lucky and came upon one fairly quickly.
While Vance was texting the location to Donna Fan got out and went to tell the others what was going on.
“So we are getting out?” Chase Jr. said.
Before anyone else could answer Dr. Talbot said, “No, not yet.”
“What do you mean?” Ana asked him.
“You let me live so I could do my part, a part which may solve this problem. To do my part we need to get something from the Southeastern checkpoint. Otherwise every awful thing I have done will have been for nothing.”
ROT Series (Book 4): The Savior Page 13