by C. E. Martin
But they still couldn't stay outside for long.
"What do you suggest?" Shane hissed. He kept glancing at the large airport terminal nearby. With its walls and doors they could hide behind.
"I think we should go around," Kenji said, glancing at his watch. "Circle the airfield."
"And what, hide in the grass?" Ben asked. He was a nervous man, with beady eyes and thin, greasy hair that hung down over his face. Despite his prowess with a knife, he was afraid of the reanimated. Very afraid of them.
"Trust me," Kenji said. "There's more of those things inside."
"Risers?" Ben asked, mockingly. "How can you know that?'
Carol moved over, crouching low behind the cars in the parking lot they were all using for cover. "He's always right, Ben, you know that."
Carol was a couple years older than Kenji, with short blond hair and sad brown eyes. She'd lost her husband and her daughter early during the plague. It had forced her to be more assertive. Now she was a strong woman who reminded Kenji a lot of his own mother.
"Look," Kenji said, again checking his watch. "We just need to circle around and wait another twenty minutes."
"What if your vision is wrong this time?" Ben demanded. "I'm freezing my ass off out here. There's food and water and shelt-"
"Shh," Shane said, holding up a hand. It went against everything his gut was telling him, but he trusted Kenji. "We do what the kid says. He hasn't let us down yet."
Carol and Kenji nodded and quickly informed the others. They were a rag tag band of survivors—David, the old man who like so many others now found himself a widower. Lisa and her son Chris, friends of Shane before the world went to hell. Earl, the bullet-necked black man built like a linebacker but as gentle a giant as one would ever meet. Eight lost souls, traveling together, trying desperately to get out of the Contaminated Zone before they too succumbed to the plague turning so many millions into walking corpses.
The group kept crouched low, hiding behind parked cars, working their way through the parking lot of the small airport. They circled around, steering well clear of the main terminal building. They kept the fence surrounding the airport between them and the many hangars and warehouses to either side of the terminal building. Eventually, they reached wide, grassy plains.
Shane used a wire cutter to sever the few strands of barbed wire between them and the runway.
"Risers!" Earl whispered. He was looking out, over the runway, toward the airport terminal, through a pair of binoculars.
Shane took the binoculars and looked through them. There were dozens of the monsters, just standing there, waiting.
"He was right," he said, passing the binoculars to Ben.
"Now what?" Ben said after quickly looking for himself. "We have no cover here—sun'll be up in a few hours. What do we do?"
Kenji was about to speak when he heard something. He looked up, the others doing the same. Far overhead, barely standing out against the night sky, a plane of some kind was passing over.
Kenji checked his watch. It was them.
"Just watch," he said.
Shapes came down out of the dark sky—the four skydivers Kenji had seen the last time he made it this far. As before, they cut away from their parachutes well before they hit the ground. Carol hissed between her teeth, expecting them to crash painfully against the pavement.
Instead, the soldiers landed almost gracefully, then unlimbered their machineguns and began methodically firing.
This time the battle progressed differently. The risers that had chased Kenji and his friends inside the terminal his last time through here, were this time still outside. They quickly swarmed the soldiers, despite the precise fire of the machineguns.
But again, the soldiers would not be moved. Risers began to fly this way and that, propelled away from the soldiers with great force. Many landed on broken legs and couldn't move. Others bounced when they hit the ground, already dead from the brute strength the soldiers had unleashed against them.
Where before the soldiers had used mainly gunfire to stop their undead enemies, this time they used crushing, super-human strength. The battle raged for several minutes, Kenji's astonished friends taking turns to watch through the binoculars.
When it was finally over, Kenji stood up. "See, I told you."
He was nearly bowled over by the gust of wind thrown down by a huge military transport plane passing overhead. The plane touched down on the long runway running parallel to the terminal. It was a four-engined, propeller-driven C-130 transport.
As Kenji and his friends watched, the plane slowed then turned and taxied over to the opposite side of the airport. Turning slowly around, it lowered a ramp toward a small hangar nearby.
"Look! Another one!" Chris yelled, pointing up.
Sure enough, barely visible in the dark sky overhead, the survivors saw another four-engined plane circling the airport, only a thousand feet up. It was all black like the plane that had landed.
"You people!" a voice rang out.
The group all nearly jumped out of their skins and turned toward the voice. It was one of the soldiers. He had sprinted right to their location, despite the long grass they had been hiding in.
"We're human!" Shane said, raising his hands, and his shotgun, over his head. "We have women and children."
"Don't just stand there, let's shake a leg, people!" The soldier said, motioning.
Kenji and the others nodded and jogged toward the soldier, then past him, headed out on the runway. They could see the other soldiers, standing around, spaced out, waiting for further attack.
Overhead, the second aircraft began to emit a horrendous sound. Streams of white-hot fire poured from two locations on the side of the aircraft as it circled. Kenji realized it was minigun fire, directed at targets on the ground. Some risers must still be lurking in the shadows between other hangars.
The survivors ran down the runway, toward the C-130, the strange soldier all in black running behind them. As they passed each of the other soldiers, they fell into step with the group.
At last, they all reached the C-130, its engines still going, a small team of soldiers at the rear, weapons ready.
"On board, let's go," an Air Force crewmember shouted.
Kenji was astonished to see other survivors onboard the plane—still taking their seats. He realized they had been hiding in the nearby hangar the plane had parked by. They must have been the ones broadcasting for help. And the Air Force had come.
The four skydiving soldiers were last to board the plane, which began to roll back down the runway. The plane's jumpsuited crew made sure everyone was strapped into the uncomfortable canvas-strap seats set up down either side of the plane.
Once he was strapped in, Kenji watched the four soldiers all in black huddle at the rear of the plane. They seemed somehow different from everyone else. They moved differently. Each wore black fatigues and heavy combat vests. Their heads were covered in black smocks, half their faces concealed by oversized tactical goggles. What little of their face did show was covered in gray and black streaks. They carried heavy machine guns and large box-sized pouches of spare ammo on their belts.
The C-130 was in the air fairly quickly, then finally leveled out. The crew unbuckled and began to check on their passengers. Kenji got himself loose and stood up.
"Whoa," one of the soldiers all in black said, holding up a hand. "Stay put, sir. Medic needs to check you out."
Ken turned and saw that an Air Force medic was going slowly down the line of passengers, shining a purple light in each of their eyes briefly. A blacklight flashlight.
"I'm not infected," Kenji said.
"We have to check, sir," the soldier said.
Even in the dim light inside the plane, Kenji noticed something odd. Inside the soldier's mouth was not pink. No white teeth flashed when his lips parted. The inside of his mouth was all gray—like the paint smeared on his face.
Kenji stepped closer.
"Sir," the soldier
said, stepping closer as well. "Please take your seat."
Kenji's eyes went wide. He could now see that the soldier didn't have gray and black paint on his face. He just had black paint. His skin was itself gray in color, textured like rough concrete. His lips, his teeth, even his tongue were made of the same material.
The soldier was a man made of living stone.
***
Once everyone had been verified as not infected, they were all given water and military rations. An Air Force crewman had explained they were being flown to a staging area where they'd be quarantined for 24 hours, then moved to the Western Evacuation Zone, on the Baja Peninsula of California.
Kenji had taken his seat as he'd been told, but continued to watch the strange stone soldiers during the flight. He had never seen anything like them—not even in the comic books he had read growing up. There had been many wondrous people in the 1970s and 1980s, showing off supernatural abilities to the public back then. But most were psychics, like Kenji.
At last, he decided he had to know more. He had to know if this was still a vision, or if this time he had actually made a difference and gotten his friends to safety.
Kenji put down his meal and approached the soldiers. They sat in the rear of the plane, by themselves, carefully reloading the ammunition boxes they carried and cleaning their rifles.
"Excuse me," Kenji said hesitantly.
"Please take your seat, sir," the lead soldier said. Kenji noticed he had a dark nametag sewn over the right breast of his combat vest. It read ATLAS.
"Uh, Mr. Atlas," Kenji started.
"Sir, you need to rest. We're almost to the staging area."
"I was just wondering... You're a parahuman, right?" It was a technical term Kenji had hated hearing when he'd learned he was one himself.
"Nah, what gave it away?" another soldier, his nametag reading simply JOHNSON, chimed in.
Atlas glared at the soldier, and he looked down sheepishly. "We are not at liberty to discuss that subject, sir."
"Uh, do you have anything I can read?" Kenji asked.
"Sir?" Atlas asked, perplexed.
"I need something to read—it's very important."
Another soldier, STEVENS, opened a velcro pouch on his vest and pulled out a small book. "Here."
Kenji started to reach for the book, then saw it was a small Gideon Bible. "No—I've read that before."
"You can never read it too many times," Atlas responded.
"No, I need something I've never read before," Kenji said, chewing his lip nervously.
"Here," Johnson said, pulling a magazine from a pouch on his vest. It was crumpled up, but basically intact.
Kenji reluctantly took the magazine. Unrolling it, he was relieved to see it was a car magazine. He opened the pages, and his brief smile turned into a frown. The pages were all blank.
"What's wrong, you don't like cars?" Johnson asked, taking the magazine back when Kenji handed it to him.
"No. I'm just disappointed I haven't woke up yet."
CHAPTER FOUR
The flight to the staging area was indeed a short one. The crew informed them they were now in the Texas panhandle. The staging area was itself a former civilian airport for small aircraft. Since the outbreak, the military had surrounded it with chain link fencing, guard towers and tanks. Military aircraft and small commuter planes were flying in and out of the area constantly, as well as helicopters.
Once they landed, Kenji could see the area had been turned into a makeshift refugee camp. Military tents were erected in neat, orderly rows, and hundreds, maybe thousands of people milled about—a mix of military forces and civilians.
Once Kenji and the other survivors exited the C-130, they were marched to a row of medical tents, where again they were checked for signs of infection. Their blood was also taken, run through a small handheld unit that pricked their fingers.
"I'm not diabetic," Kenji said to the doctor checking his blood, when the small device flashed a green light.
"Okay," the doctor said. He pulled a red bracelet from his pocket and motioned for Kenji to raise his arm.
"What's wrong? Is he infected?" Carol asked beside Kenji.
"No," the doctor said. "He's special."
"He sure is," Carol said, looping an arm through Ken's. "He's a hero. He saved all of us."
"Oh?" the doctor asked, pausing. "How so?"
"He's a psychic," Carol said, smiling proudly.
The doctor seemed disappointed. "Oh. That's nice."
Then he moved on to the next survivor in line.
"Sir, you need to come with me," a soldier said, motioning to Kenji.
"We're together," Carol said, indicating herself, Kenji and the others.
"You can come with him, ma'am," the soldier said. "The others will have to stay."
"Where are we going?" Kenji asked, a little worried. He didn't like the red bracelet on his arm. It didn't mean he was special—it meant he was different. And he'd never liked being different.
"You need to wait with the others like you, sir."
Carol started to say something, but Kenji patted her hand. "It's okay. I'll be fine." He tried to pull free of the blonde, but she wouldn't let go.
Carol looked to Shane and Ben in line after her. "I'm going to make sure Kenji's okay, guys."
"Okay," Shane said indifferently.
"Take care of yourself, kid," Ben said. It was the nicest thing Kenji had heard him say since they met a week ago.
The soldier led Kenji and Carol through the tent city erected within the large, square staging area, finally stopping at a tent not far from the runway.
Kenji thanked the soldier and went inside. A half a dozen other people were already there, each with red armbands around their wrists.
"Great. Another one," a young teenage boy said. "You got any super powers, Mr. Sulu?"
"Uh, no," Kenji said.
"His name is Kenji," Carol said angrily.
"Why don't you have an armband?" an overweight man in his forties with thinning hair asked. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with one finger. "This tent is for Specials only."
"We're together," Kenji said.
"Oh, I see," the teen said. He stood up and walked toward the couple. He looked Carol up and down.
"So you get to keep your lady—is that it?"
"No, I mean-" Kenji wasn't sure what to say.
The teen opened his mouth to say something, but the sound of warning klaxons filled the air. This was followed by distant machinegun fire, then explosions.
"They're here!" the middle-aged man said, panicking. He bolted out of the tent, past Kenji and Carol.
"Shit, man! We've got to get to the runway!' the teen said. He snatched up a backpack from a nearby cot and ran out the open flap of the tent. The others in the tent were quickly gathering their things as well.
The machinegun fire and explosions were louder now. Closer.
"What's going on Kenji? What's happening?" Carol asked. She was scared and gripped Kenji's arm tightly.
"I don't know." Kenji turned and led Carol out of the tent. "C'mon! Let's get to the runway."
He didn't really care if he made it. He just wanted to see what was happening. So he could do better the next time.
Once outside, they saw smoke rising in the morning rays of the sun. The eastern side of the staging area, right where the tent city was located, was a battlefield now. People were running in a panic, away from the fenceline not so far away. Machinegun fire and explosions kept erupting.
A soldier pushed past Kenji and Carol, headed toward the fenceline and the sounds of battle. "Get to the runway!" he yelled, glancing back over his shoulder at them.
A dark form leapt out from around the corner of a tent and tackled the soldier, knocking him to the ground.
It was a riser. The creature quickly pinned the soldier down, arms pressing his rifle against his chest. It lunged in and bit the man right on his nose. Cartilage crack loudly and blood erupted as
the soldier screamed in agony.
Kenji pulled free of Carol and looked around for something, anything. "Go! Get to the runway!"
Carol nodded, in shock, and took off running. She was swept up in the crowd of panicking people stampeding away.
Kenji kicked at the riser as it took another bite out of the struggling soldier's face—his cheek this time. The soldier's face was a torn, bloody mess but he was still fighting, frantically trying to get free.
Another form slammed into Kenji from behind, knocking him off his feet. He landed on his side and felt his ribs break under the impact. He struggled to get back up, but the riser on top of him was clawing at him, keeping him down.
He felt teeth trying to bit through his denim jacket as he struggled to get free. The denim held, but the riser was too strong. Kenji wouldn't escape. Once more, he was about to die.
CHAPTER FIVE
OUTBREAK, DAY 14 (5th Attempt)
Kenji took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He hoped this would work. Unbuckling, he stood and walked over toward the four stone soldiers seated in the back of the plane.
"Sir, please return to your seat," Atlas directed.
"I need to talk to you," Kenji said.
"We'll be at the staging area in a short time, sir. Please take your seat."
"Look, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I'm a psychic."
"So?" Johnson said, looking up from his rifle. He had just opened the top cover of the machinegun and was inspecting the weapon for grit and dirt.
"You can report that to the doctors at the staging area," Atlas said. "Now please, we're only thirty minutes out."
"We can't land!" Kenji blurted out. Every time he'd ever tried to warn the authorities about anything, he'd gotten the same skepticism.
"Why not?"
"The base we're headed to—it's going to be attacked," Kenji said. He checked his watch. "In one hour and forty-three minutes."
Johnson laughed. "What, you can see the future?"
"That’s what psychic means," Kenji responded, more than a little angry.