by Bryan James
The fingers curled and uncurled repeatedly, as if grasping an invisible rod.
“Okay,” she turned away, hand to her head. “Let’s go.”
Rhodes and I nodded to one another and moved to the large hatch on the side of the cabin. Pulling away a cluster of detached seats, and pushing away a box of equipment, I reached for the large red handle, and heaved up. The door released suddenly, falling inward toward me, and I threw it past, where it clattered against the far wall and obscured the body of the unfortunate Granger.
Romeo darted for the darkened doorway, sprinting for freedom into the roadway outside. Rhodes followed, then Kate and Ky. I glanced around the cabin once more, and jumped out into the night.
The plane had come to rest at an angle to the buildings on either side of the main street, and was a pile of twisted metal and flame. Puddles of burning fuel and oil were scattered across the narrow space, and the right wing was nowhere to be seen. The nose had been slammed back into the cockpit, and the roof of the plane was compressed by a piece of the building next to it that had fallen as the plane had slammed into the face of the structure. The noise from inside the cabin was much louder here, and I saw the source, turning toward the left wing, where the propeller closest to the fuselage was still spinning.
It throttled up, then down, up, then down, repeatedly.
It was very, very loud.
“Rhodes, you have any idea on our location?”
He squinted into the dark, and swiveled his large bearded head.
“More or less. We’re definitely outside the perimeter of the train station, but we circled back around before we came down, so we should be within five blocks or so of the main engagement. If we go around, we can avoid the firefight.”
I checked my watch, shaking my head.
We only had one way out of this town, now, and it was the train. We had about forty-five minutes before it left.
“Major Gaffney, this is Iron Eagle, do you copy?”
Static.
Rhodes cursed and brought his weapon to firing position. The soft whisper of his firing was an accompaniment as I tried again.
“Major Gaffney, this is Iron Eagle, we are down, but have four survivors. We are en route to your location. Do you copy? Over.”
Kate was raising her gun as well, and we all backed away from the wreckage quickly as a group of zeds appeared from behind the wall of a nearby alley. In the background, the engine throttled up and back down again, an obscenely loud message to the undead.
“The next building over, go. The window in front is already out. We’ll go through to the back.” Rhodes’ voice was tight, and his weapon was whispering as we walked.
I gave up on the transmitter and watched another group of more than fifty zeds come funneling into view from behind a totaled ambulance crushed against a traffic barrier behind the crashed plane. They were moving at an angle, trying to edge around the damaged wing with the erratic propeller.
I had an idea.
“Rhodes, get Kate and Ky into that building. I’ll take these guys.”
He shot me a look, and then nodded once, stowing his weapon and sprinting forward to help them move quickly, Kate still stumbling against Ky.
In a different world, I would be worried.
In a different world, I would not be staying to fight.
But in a different world, I would not be who I was now.
My pulse started to pound, and I changed the magazine in the shotgun, handling the replacement ammunition with extreme care. The blade of the bayonet gleamed in the firelight, as if it knew it would soon see action.
There was only one way past the wreckage of the plane. Over the wingtip that was lodged in the closest building, and past the engine whose propeller was still spinning. Past the wing that was leaking jet fuel into small puddles.
Past the pissed off movie star with incendiary rounds in his shotgun, and a really bad headache.
The first creature reached me as the bulk of the group was clamoring over the wreckage. The blade caught the woman in the chin, and lodged in the flesh under her jaw, ripping the bottom half of her face cleanly from her skull.
That was just disgusting.
I cursed at the mistake, and reversed the blow, taking off the top of her skull, and kicking the body to the side as it fell.
“Nice haircut, lady,” I spat.
Ha. Oh my, I was witty.
A pair of zombies followed her, and I decided to create another obstacle for the others to trip on. I took their legs out from the knees, feeling the vibrations shudder through the barrel of the gun and up into the stock. They flopped comically on the ground, but I ignored their hands as I dispensed with the fun of the blade and moved to the satisfaction of the gun.
The group had reached critical mass, and was starting to bunch at the angled tip of the wing, where the opening was too narrow to afford much purchase for their shuffling, clumsy feet. They pressed against one another as they locked eyes on a morsel of food—food that had likely become very scarce of late.
I waited, as the two creatures I had cut down squirmed in front of me, impeding their cohort behind them.
I waited, as they pressed forward and stumbled.
I backed up, and raised my weapon.
I smiled, then I pulled the trigger.
The incendiary explosive rounds tore into the rotting, pulpy mass like they were made of play dough. They flew into each other as the fury of the weapon was released, each small metal round igniting with a flaming burst, tearing limbs and heads from torsos, and the group of creatures into a cluster of confused and aimless, bloody death.
They still poured into the narrow space, but they were beginning to slow as the flames jumped from body to body, and I poured more death into the crowd. Behind the wing, more were flooding into the street, eagerly pushing closer.
I backed up once again as the engine on the wing throttled up once more and my ear bud crackled.
“You’ve got company on your six. Time to leave.”
Kate’s voice was oddly comforting, and I smiled one more time.
In one of my early movies, I had been in a scene that had seemed absurd until the apocalypse. It had involved a plane, a crazy Nazi, and an illegal bird.
No shit. I swear it was a real movie.
Listen, I got paid, that’s all that mattered.
But the Nazi got it really bad in the end—I mean, they always did, right? The really bad ones had to go in a really bad way. That was how movies became satisfying. That’s why you put up with the bullshit. So you could see the ultimate triumph of the righteous over the wicked.
The Nazi got it bad when he was pushed into a spinning propeller. It wasn’t a good way to die. Luckily for them, these guys were already dead, right?
My smile plastered to my face, I turned my gun away from the horde of creatures that were now amassed in a flaming, meandering crowd of rot.
Away from them, and toward the shaft that connected the rapidly spinning propeller to the engine.
I pulled the trigger.
The shaft shattered under the onslaught of the explosive rounds and the propeller dropped to the ground, blades digging into the broken concrete and finding traction as the massive, exploding fixture spun toward the cluster of creatures as they tried to move forward toward me.
Blades whirled into the crowd of flesh and scattered bodies and body parts. The propeller spun slightly as it hit the number of massed corpses, and started to fall horizontal, still spinning. The blades took the new angle, and started cutting the creatures in half horizontally, as they shambled in vain, trying to move forward, always forward, despite the oncoming peril.
Behind me, I saw the movement that Kate had warned of, and I pulled the shotgun from my shoulder reluctantly, watching the end of my handiwork. In a final moment of calm meditation, I reached into my concealed cargo pocket for a small, contained charge grenade. Pulling the pin and pressing the actuator, I tossed it gently into a small puddle under th
e destroyed wing, and turned away.
I even whistled softly to myself as I gently extended the middle finger of my left hand, holding it up to the wreckage as I walked into the next building, where the others waited.
“What were you doing?” Kate was annoyed, and her eyes flashed to the street.
“One.” I grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her inside.
“What?”
“Two.” I pulled Ky and Rhodes out of the lobby of the abandoned apartment building, and through the hallway to a windowless dark corridor near the back.
“Why are you counting, you demented freak?” Ky’s voice was curious, while also abusive. Great qualities.
“Three.” I smiled once and extended my arms out straight, palms to the floor, gesturing slowly to the ground. Confused, they complied.
The explosion started small, with a sputtering blast like that of a small firecracker.
Then it got serious.
The walls shook and the ceiling near the front door fell to the ground. Chunks of concrete sprayed into the lobby and shot past the window. The secondary and tertiary explosions of the cars near the crashed plane punctuated the sound of glass shattering and falling to the street from several stories high.
On the street outside, nothing moved. Dust was in the air, and flames reflected in the haze, making visibility nearly opaque.
Next to me on the floor, Rhodes lifted his head, spitting dust out of his mouth and wiping it out of his beard.
“Nice,” he said simply, and smiled.
SIXTEEN
The dust and debris worked like a smoke grenade that covered the entire block. We left the building from the rear door, which emptied into an alleyway. My head no longer hurt, and I knew that it was our special condition that allowed this. I just wished I could slow my racing heartbeat long enough to be thankful for the gift.
The alleyway was packed with garbage and sewage, and I glanced up once expecting to see survivors peering from an upper floor. But I knew that they had long since left—many of them probably with the remnants of the Western Army at the station.
We stopped at the entrance to the narrow street, between a fence on one side and the apartment building on the other. The cross street was cloudy with dust, and nothing moved. Rhodes gestured silently forward, and we bolted across the dusty street, dodging a pile of zeds on the corner, the smell of rot and decay sickly, their headless corpses simply left to rot where they had been piled.
The next alley led between two commercial buildings, and at the end of the short road, the dust was clearing. A large cross street intersected our alley, and we emerged across the littered street from a department store. Scraps of paper and trash littered the sidewalk. The doors were chained shut, and the glass intact. No other streets intersected this one for several blocks in either direction.
“It’s a goddamned mall,” said Rhodes, looking at the sign hanging from above the store’s facade.
Kate looked up and shrugged.
“I could use a new pair of shoes.”
I looked down both directions of the street, noting the shadows of movement far in the distance that neither Rhodes nor Ky could see. We had to go straight through if we were going to make our train. We didn’t have time to go around.
“Yeah, well, honey… I think it’s time I bought you something pretty.”
A small charge from Rhodes’ pack took the chain from the door, and a smoke grenade lobbed into the street concealed the door. The shatterproof doors remained intact, and I pulled them closed behind us, using plastic zip ties to keep them shut, hoping the smoke grenade would cover our tracks.
The lights were out inside, but dim red emergency lighting still glowed faintly around the doorways. Clothing hung neatly from the shining, skeletal racks and the heavy, choking scent of perfume was thick in the musty air. I snorted in disgust, and I watched as Romeo padded off into the darkness, turning a corner near the handbags and watches.
“I could use a new watch,” said Ky, reaching a hand into a display of high end, designer jewelry with some sort of fancy French name on them.
Rhodes grabbed her hand suddenly, simply standing there, immobile. Ky squirmed once, not understanding. Then, the head rose up from the floor where the zombie had been laying, immobile. One whispered shot from his suppressed carbine put it down, and he released her hand.
“Thanks,” she muttered, rubbing her arm.
He stared at her, then reached down into the display and grabbed a watch encrusted in diamonds and gold.
“This one,” he said, and walked away, toward the doorway into the mall.
“Stay alert,” I said as we moved through the eerily deserted and oddly quiet menswear section. A large picture of a particularly douchey looking jackass peered at me over a display of tank tops on hangars.
“Coulda been you,” said Kate from behind me, and I groaned.
“I never did those types of ads,” I said defensively.
“Yeah, I know. Just the ones that involve you and a woman in a bikini with billowy curtains in the background, and a strong male voice speaking French doing the voiceover.”
Shit. She had seen the cologne commercial.
That was manly, damn it.
That chick was in a bikini, for Christ’s sake.
And I looked really good in a black silk robe.
But I didn’t think those arguments would work.
“Yeah, well. I… it… shut up.”
Slick.
“Witty, McKnight. Really.” Her voice was amused.
“Got movement in the atrium,” said Rhodes over the comms.
He was leaning over the railing outside the interior entrance to the department store from the main mall. The stores inside lined the walls, all facing the center of a circular atrium with skylights on the ceiling. A now-dead garden was at the very bottom, two stories down, surrounding a murky pool of water that had been a fountain.
“Multiple bodies,” he said softly as I joined him near the metal rail. He was staring hard into the darkness, and I noted that he didn’t have night vision with him. It must have been in the plane.
If he had, he would have realized that he was understating things slightly.
The entire bottom floor of the atrium was swarming with the undead. There were hundreds of them milling around, slowly knocking against one another, bumping into glass store fronts and against the small wall that separated the garden from the walkway. A large doorway with sliding glass doors was located at the end of the slightly oval shaped bottom floor, and it was clearly shut. The lines of a parking lot were barely visible beyond.
“What’s the plan?” asked Kate, taking in the situation, and looking around apprehensively.
There were no exits on this level, but I saw a faintly glowing red sign on the next level down. The power was out, so we had to take the single, large main stairway down to the next floor. But there was nothing that kept them from coming up as we went down.
Between our location and the stairway fifty yards away, we were covered by the three-foot cement wall. We weren’t visible from below. When we reached the marble stairway, though, nothing would hide us from them.
“Someone is going to need to distract them,” I started to say, getting ready to volunteer for the job. But then, Romeo solved our problem.
His snarling and barking from inside the department store echoed into the atrium, and we stared, helpless, as the entire group from the bottom floor looked up, almost as one entity.
Romeo came bounding out of the department store, turning as he reached us, snarling again. Ky backed away, scared. She couldn’t see what was inside.
I could.
“Run,” I said softly to Rhodes, and Kate was already grabbing Ky and pushing her toward the stairs.
Hundreds of undead were streaming through the menswear section toward the atrium. There had to have been a main stairwell or escalator inside that we had missed.
I fired into the crowd, explosive rounds cuttin
g into the front ranks. They fell hard, bodies demolished as the rest trampled them from behind. We backed up as we fired, as a group of teenagers, oddly grouped together, surged forward, skater shoes and ratty t-shirts soaked in blood, teeth askew and hair matted with gore.
Beside me, Rhodes froze. The quiet sputtering of his weapon stopped, and he stared at the teens.
I turned to him, yelling.
“Keep firing, man! We need to keep these things back!”
But he was locked up, his weapon still held in front of him, loaded and ready, but mute.
“God damn it,” I muttered, slinging my gun and grabbing him by the chest, shoving him in front of me toward the stairs. He shuffled forward, eyes wide and staring.
“Down!” I yelled, pushing him and drawing my machete with the other hand.
Below us, the flood of creatures from the first floor were halfway to the second, while Kate and Ky followed Romeo off the stairs and into the promenade on the second floor.
Rhodes stumbled, falling on the landing below and grabbing his leg. I spun into the first rank of creatures, taking the teenagers with a forehand blow. A head spun into the air as I lashed my leg forward, pushing one back with a booted foot and grabbing the next closest by the throat. I reached to the back of the neck and found the spine, then lifted the body up and threw it into the crowd, locking several more to the ground and slowing those in the rear.
The blade whirled in the air, and I slashed and moved, trying to create a distraction that slowed their advance.
Below, Rhodes stumbled to his feet and down the last few stairs, following Kate and Ky.
As I moved forward to follow, I realized too late: the first of the creatures from below had reached the second floor.
I was cut off.
SEVENTEEN
They pressed in, violent and close. I had only seconds before I would be overwhelmed by more than a hundred of them, and I had no illusions about the effectiveness of my magical condition if a hundred hungry ghouls had me pinned in a small space.