A Time to Die

by Mark Wandrey

  “What brought you down?”

  “One of the men that jumped aboard,” he said. “He was sick. Bitten, I think. We never found out. He went crazy, went for the pilot. Another guy, opened up with his carbine. Stupid. He got the crazy one, and half the instruments. The pilot was fucked up, but still managed to get us down. Mostly.”

  He sat still for long minutes, just breathing and sighing once in a while. Beginning to put it together, Kathy spoke up. “How much morphine did you have me give you?”

  “Enough,” he breathed, sounding hoarse.”

  “I wish I could do more.”

  “You can get out of here before those things get here,” he said and nodded his head to the east. She could see the dust cloud again. And was that rumbling? “There’s a crate, it says M-241 on it. It’s a machine gun.”

  “I don’t know anything about guns,” she said.

  “Don’t matter, you’ll figure it out or someone else will. There are other units out here.” He took a shuddering breath and closed his eye. “Take some of the ammo, as much as that bike will haul. It says 5.56mm on the cans. There are a few other boxes. Take them too.”

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said as he lay back and sighed again, struggling to take a breath with lungs paralyzed by the overdose of painkiller.

  “Eddy,” he managed at last, then was silent.

  She did all she could and sat with him for another few minutes, his chest intermittently rising and falling. Then it fell, and didn’t rise again. He was gone.

  Kathy touched him on his face, lightly at first, then with more assurance. She probed his wound and there was no response. It was her turn to sigh as she got to her feet. She closed up the box of medical supplies and carried it to her ATV trailer, then went to where she’d found it among the other things the man, Eddy, had gotten out of the burning chopper. Things he’d lost his life to rescue.

  The metallic cans with handles had different numbers on them. One said ‘7.62’ and several more were marked ‘50 Caliber’. She moved those aside then found a pair that said ‘5.56mm’ just like he had said they would. They weighed about thirty pounds each and she put them to one side. Then there were several long crates. One was huge and said ‘Javelin’; she ignored that. Another said ‘M4’; she ignored that too. On the last one was printed ‘M-241’ along with lots of other terms she didn’t understand. The crate was nearly three feet long and weighed at least fifty pounds.

  She loaded the ammo cans with no difficulty. The box with the gun was another matter. She got it to the trailer but couldn’t lift it in. Eventually she managed to get one end up and half lifted, half tipped it into the trailer. Almost half a foot stuck out the back, but it was the best she could do. It was a considerable load for the little sheet metal trailer but there was still a little room so she grabbed another random crate without even looking at what it said and wedged it in.

  Before she started up again Kathy opened the seat and removed her improvised air filter. The scarf was almost completely clogged with dust so she shook it out as best she could before stuffing it back in. When the bike started, it ran a little better. She glanced back at Eddy’s body, lying there forlorn next to the remains of the chopper that had brought him there. Then she headed north.

  * * *

  The teeth bit down and tore into Andrew’s leg as he desperately tried to pull it away from the former doctor. His attacker got a better grip and tore into his leg again, and this time he heard the sound he’d been expecting. The sound of teeth shattering on titanium.

  The pistol came out of the holster finally and Andrew brought it on line, sweeping the barrel onto target and stroking the trigger twice. At nearly point blank the gun blast was intense, and almost tore the doctor’s head off. The corpse rocked back and fell away. Andrew finally extracted his leg and then rolled himself and the ladder, freeing his other leg. He flexed the wrist and found it sore, but not broken. He got to his feet, gun in hand, and looked up at a snarl. Twenty feet up the pretty flight attendant didn’t look as pretty, her face covered in bloody gore and bits of meat on her uniform.

  He sighed, knowing that no one was alive up there. He recalled how the girl had a bite on her arm when he first found himself in the compartment. Holstering the Beretta he pivoted the M-16 up, flicked off the safety and shot her through the head with a single round. With a spray of blood and brain matter she fell backwards into the compartment.

  Andrew slung the rifle and turned back to the firetruck and noted he had company. Coming down the runway were dozens of people. “Someone finally noticed a badly landed jet?” he wondered aloud. As he could see them better through the blowing smoke, his interest began to turn to concern. Why no rescue trucks? Not even cars? These people were all on foot. And they weren’t coming in any sort of organized way, it was a mob. A mob. “Oh shit.”

  The nearest was less than a hundred yards away and he was wishing for a scope of some kind on the M-16. Unfortunately, it was the old style handle iron sights. At seventy-five yards he could see the blood stains on the clothes of the first people. They were a mixture of uniforms, street clothes, and business suits. And they all ran with their arms out towards him. “Time to go,” he said and ran to the firetruck. He tossed the rifle into the passenger seat and fired up the powerful diesel.

  He accelerated laterally, giving the engine even more gas as the horde began to turn in masse to cut him off. He could hear them, howling and gnashing their teeth even over the roar of the engine. “Jesus!” he cried out as he began to realize his estimate was way off. There was well over two hundred of them!

  The truck leaped of the edge of the tarmac and onto the soft grass, fishtailing some so he backed off on the accelerator. He was doing almost fifty as he estimated the distance to the rapidly closing perimeter fence and the huge crowd pursuing him. He wasn’t going to be able to beat them to the fence.

  Andrew was under no illusion of what a human body could do to a car, even one as big and heavily built as the fire truck. A year ago in Texas he’d pulled over to help a trucker who’d hit a springbuck. He’d been going just over seventy when he hit the animal which weighed no more than seventy-five pounds. The animal’s body was wedged against the engine block having penetrated the chrome grill, radiator, and fan. Andrew was looking at hundreds of people, most over two hundred lbs. And if he slowed he risked getting swarmed. He knew it took far less than a couple dozen to flip even a big truck.

  He hit the brakes, cut hard to the right and gave it some gas. The truck turned and spun into a power slide, sending great gouts of grass and dirt into the air and heading back the way he came. He angled to the left, cutting around the back of the A380’s tilting wreck. He passed the tail doing over sixty miles per hour and angled back up the field. Luckily his ploy worked. Apparently whatever had affected all those people had also worked on their brains’ ability to act logically. He hadn’t looked forward to being forced to run down people. A lifetime of driving cars taught exactly the opposite.

  Even with his creative reversal, several of the rear in the group were still fast enough to make him swerve around them. One actually dove at the speeding firetruck, a scream on his bloody lips that Andrew would always remember just before his head hit the heavy steel reinforced rearview mirror on the passenger side with a SPRANG! Hair, bones, brains and teeth splattered off the side window and he felt several other impacts farther back as he cleared the crowd, steered back onto the much easier-to-navigate tarmac then accelerated up to a hundred miles per hour. He tried to forget the scene he’d just witnessed by enjoying the acceleration of the big machine.

  He was halfway down the runway before he realized he didn’t actually have a plan. Sure, he had a big truck with a nearly full tank of diesel. He had a rifle and a bunch of magazines, not to mention three pistols and even more magazines. But he was more than a hundred miles from the US border, and apparently the area was overrun with plague zombies, or whatever the fuck you called these crazy people. He swe
rved around a straggler who screamed and made a leap at his truck. The beast possessed such a low center of gravity the tires didn’t even squelch. He shelved any ideas for the moment and concentrated on driving towards the terminal. At least there might be more options there.

  The one thing his show at the end of the runway had done was clear out the crowds around the terminal. There were maybe a dozen or so scattered in the area. As soon as the firetruck roared into view they all turned and sprinted towards him. Andrew brought the truck to a stop on the taxiway just off the intersection of the airports two main runways. To one side were a dozen huge hangars for airline maintenance, to the other the terminal building. Further down, opposite where he’d left the stricken A380 and close to the last of the hangars, he could see two other jumbo jets parked. One was a 747, and the other an A320. He realized they must be the two that had followed him down to Monterrey and instantly turned towards them. There would be strength in numbers.

  As he got closer he could see several things. First was that the other pilots had done a much better job of landing their craft. That wouldn’t be any mean feat, since hours earlier was the first time he’d landed anything longer than a jet fighter. The other fact was that both planes had all their emergency ramps down. And the final thing was that under both planes were hundreds more crazies. “Son of a bitch,” he cursed and braked to a stop maybe 200 yards away.

  He could see that there was big fight going on under one of the inflatable ramps that now hung limply from its mountings while dozens of insane ex-passengers all fought to try and figure out how to climb up again. An impossible feat, of course. In the doorway he could see several more figures, no doubt trying to figure out how to get down and join the party.

  Hundreds of eyes turned at his appearance, regarding him as the entire crowd drew silent. Andrew felt a shiver go up their spine, the way they acted reminded him of those damn dinosaur movies when the meat-eaters spotted lunch. A collective roar went up and they came at him in a tidal rush.

  Andrew reached down and put the truck back in gear, his mind racing as he searched it for options. As he turned away he noticed the ones in the door of the A320 again. They weren’t reaching towards him like the others. They were waving!

  He spun the wheel and tore off towards the nearest hangar, the last in the line and farthest from the terminal. Hundreds of bloodthirsty creeps were in hot pursuit. He glanced at his gas to be safe. It hadn’t moved and he drew some solace from that. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if the firetruck suddenly developed engine troubles or the tank gauge was broken. He could scream just thinking about it.

  Once he’d opened up another hundred yards and was only about fifty from the hangar, he turned hard right and stopped, hopping out with the M-16. He flopped over the hood, using the hot metal as a gun rest and drew a sight picture on the leaders. He had an idea.

  They were fast. Frighteningly fast. Inhumanly fast! The first pair looked to be fit, maybe even runners by profession or hobby. But they seemed to be going faster than normal. He clamped down on the impulse to jump back into the truck and drive screaming into the hills. Instead he calmed his breathing, exhaled slower, flicked the safety off and fired in the same smooth motion.

  The range was about a hundred and fifty yards. A bit long for iron sights and the round winged off the tarmac just behind the runner in a puff of chips and sparks. The runner took no notice of it and he didn’t waste time to see if he’d scored a hit on another crazy farther behind. He took an eye off and noted the elevation wheel. Three clicks and he rechecked his target. Bang! He could clearly see the round pass through the guy’s white polo shirt. He stumbled and fell, turning it into a roll and was instantly was back on his feet, but not nearly as fast. Even from almost a hundred yards Andrew could see the blood spreading on the white shirt. The facial expression was unchanged. Targeted rage. Determination.

  “Fuck me,” Andrew said, his eyes wide and breathing fast. He fired again. Miss. Again. Hit, this time right in the center of the chest.

  The runner stumbled, his look changing finally to confusion. Not pain, as if it couldn’t figure out what happened. Then he just stopped, took one more hesitant step as blood pumped energetically out of the chest wound, and he fell face first onto the concrete.

  Andrew instantly turned to the second leader. A woman. He swallowed. She was a dark skinned Latina beauty, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that was partly undone. Remnants of tasteful makeup were still visible under the blood and gore on her face. The look was the same. He pulled the trigger.

  She was only about fifty yards away. This was a range he was used to, and he compensated for the excessive elevation he’d entered moments ago to avoid having to lose the time. The shot entered just below her nose, nearly making the top of her head explode. The beauty was gone, replaced with a bloody pulp as she crumpled into a bumping, sliding, rolling heap of dead flesh.

  The next ones reached the body of the first man and didn’t slow a beat. “Come on,” he urged out loud, “you’re fucking zombies, stop for a God damn snack!” He raised the gun. The second group, about ten strong, surged past the woman’s still twitching body, taking no notice whatsoever. “Fuck!” he cried out, thumb flipping the selector to full auto, he held the trigger and worked it over the group.

  His survival course instructors, Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces, all warned their students against the use of full auto. Modern Army M4 carbines didn’t even have a full auto selector anymore, replaced in favor of a three-shot burst feature. Full auto wasted ammo and served no purpose. Andrew’s training was completely forgotten in the moment as fear overwhelmed him. He worked the gun side to side, ears ringing from the sharp muzzle reports. “Die, won’t you just fucking die!?”

  He’d already fired seven shots before opening up on auto. The rifle went through the last thirteen rounds in a second and a half, the bolt locking open. For his thirteen rounds, three of the ten were down, wounded or dead.

  Andrew stared at the gun in confusion for a moment as the survivors bore down on him. The seconds seemed to stretch out as he pulled the trigger again and nothing happened. “The gun is empty,” a voice said calmly in the back of his mind, so calmly that he almost jumped. He pulled it off his shoulder and rotated it, showing the open cylinder. He was about to hit the mag release when he realized he’d never get the new one in before they were on him.

  He threw the gun into the truck and dove in after it, arm pulling the door closed behind him as the first of them slammed into the side of the truck with enough force to rock it violently toward the driver’s side. A pair of men, both in nice business suits, rushed around the front as he slammed the selector in drive and stomped on the gas pedal. The engine roared like a gored bull and surged forward, up, and over the two men. They showed no signs of surprise, pain, or anything like that as their heads disappeared over the heavy metal guard. They only looked at him with dark need. Need for his life.

  The firetruck rode up on one of them, surprising him on how a human body could lift such a heavy vehicle. A part of his mind had just expected it to squish the man flat. In fact, as the rear wheel rode up, it started to spin. Andrew looked in the mirror to see the big wide firetruck tires throwing a rooster tail of blood at least twenty feet into the air. He felt the bile rising in his throat for the second time in as many hours.

  At least a dozen crazies crashed into the back of the vehicle in one long series of thumps. The impacts were hard enough to actually lift him off the squished corpse and propel him forward with enough force to bounce his head off the seat back.

  The fire truck’s tires squealed and smoked as they bit into blacktop once more and he accelerated, leaving the crowd of blood thirsty creatures in his wake. Andrew drove all the way around the last hangar, slowing as he took the corner to look back. The vast majority of the crowd was howling and pursuing him. Good, he thought as he spun the wheel and passed behind the hangar. The rear of the hangar was only meant as an area where
planes could be moved around or temporarily stored. The doors were usually kept closed. Because the runway side was closed he’d expected this side to be closed as well, so he was surprised when he found the doors wide open. What he saw inside surprised and excited him even more.

  “Okay,” Andrew said, his jaw setting in determination as he rounded the far corner and turned back towards the runway. He was craning his neck to look back at the A320 so he didn’t see the trio of crazies that rounded the corner of the hangar right in front of him until a split second before he hit them.

  “Shit!” he cried and hit the brakes just as the first one was slammed by the firetruck’s heavy duty steel bumper. Metal crumpled, flesh was torn and bone pulverized as he hit the guy at just over fifty miles per hour. Andrew saw the bumper guard bent frighteningly from the hit, until the blood from the victim sprayed back to splash the windshield, so he didn’t even see the other two.

  The first hit rocked him forward, his chest slamming painfully into the steering wheel. He felt popping ribs and bit his lip. The second two just jammed him into the wheel twice more, like a jackhammer on his already tortured ribs. The big diesel engine didn’t even sputter. Andrew looked for the windshield wiper control, taking a moment to find it. Everything was inconveniently in Spanish. He flicked it on and felt his stomach stir again as the blades swished back and forth in the gore. He ran the washer fluid, revealing that one of the hit and runs was on the hood, still very much alive and reaching for him. Several more of the smarter ones, those like the ones on his hood who’d realized he was circling the hangar and cutting across the front to head him off, careened off the side of the firetrucks. One threw a hand out and caught his driver’s door for a second until Andrew heard a tearing sound, then he was gone. “God,” he said and ground his jaw.