Of Sudden Origin - Part 4 The Crucible

by Harwood, C. Chase

  “Ditto.”

  Their bird was all gassed up. With forced looks of determination, they buckled in and wound up for another day of near impossible odds.

  At 3:00 A.M. the Fiends at the kitchen door had stopped their assault. Even an infected human needs its sleep. The refugees inside got two hours of respite, only to be jolted awake again at five when the battering began with renewed vigor.

  They forced themselves to choke down an early breakfast and went over their limited options.

  Susan began with, “Every day that we stay in here is another day that we aren’t able to work on a cure.”

  “That’s a helpful thought, Susan,” said Decker with deep sarcasm.

  “Mr. Decker, you best even your tone.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” he shot back with exhaustion.

  She chose to ignore this and looked pointedly at Nikki and Jon. “We have one advantage. You two are immune and therefore might be able to create a diversion, draw the infected in one direction, while we go the other.”

  Jon said, “It’s still a long way to Canada.”

  Susan turned to the rest, “Any other ideas?”

  The group was silent until the unmistakable sound of splitting wood filled the room. They all looked at the blocked door. The sound got louder as the wood was broken to pieces. Suddenly a hand appeared through the gap between the steel prep table and the doorframe.

  Aaron fell back into a corner, “Oh my God, they’re through!”

  Jon pulled his sword, stepped around the piled appliances and slashed at the hand. The fingers fell to the floor like tree trimmings. A scream of anguish came from the other side of the barrier as the rest of the hand was withdrawn. Everyone else pulled their swords.

  Suddenly, the prep table jolted back an inch. “Come on everyone,” yelled Jon, “Push back!”

  They did so with all they had, closing the gap again and keeping pressure on the kitchen equipment. There was a slam as though a Fiend had hit it with a running start and the table moved back another inch only to be shoved back by the group.

  Tran stated the obvious that they could keep doing this forever and was answered by Aaron who screamed, “I told you we should have gotten the walk-in ready.”

  “And what? It’s not like we can lock it from the inside,” shot Decker.

  “We tie it shut.”

  “We’ll still die of asphyxiation. Moron.”

  “Better than getting eaten alive.”

  Decker looked at the fridge, “He makes a good point.”

  There was another jolt and they shoved back again.

  Christy said, “What if they’re all in there? You know, the other side of this barricade? We haven’t heard a single bang on the back door. What if it’s wide open out there, and we make a run for it?”

  “To where?” asked Nikki.

  “The only place they can’t seem to go very far, the water. I saw a rowboat tied near the dam. If we can make it there…”

  Jon said, “Its maybe a quarter mile back up the road. That’s a long run in the open. Especially with the kids.”

  The infected heaved again on the other side of the barrier.

  Nikki said, “I think Christy’s got the only idea.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The End

  Before the hopelessness of their situation had set in, they had pre-loaded fresh backpacks with food and medical gear. The hard drives and samples were still in their cases. The group grimly strapped the packs on. Amanda and Teddy would carry nothing.

  With his sword drawn, Jon cracked the back door and peered outside. Dawn had barely arrived. A thick cloud cover diffused the light into shades of gray. The only sign of infected was three dead by the wall that Nikki had shot from the roof. He opened the door a bit more and stuck his head all the way outside. As they kept their weight against the kitchen equipment, the refugees watched him with growing anxiety, their packs on, their muscles tensed to run.

  The playing fields were empty so Jon stepped all the way outside. Not a Fiend in sight. He could hear their continued barrage echoing from within the building.The way for now, looked clear. He poked his head back inside. “Okay.”

  The group single-filed it out the door as quickly and quietly as they could. Jon took the point with Nikki in the rear. Without a word, they shuffled past the cafeteria and angled toward the road. They were spotted almost immediately.

  Nikki looked back and saw Fiends pouring out of the windows. “Run!” She turned, dropped to one knee and shot three with the SCAR’s last bullets, then tossed the gun and pulled her sword, running to catch up with the others.

  Steven and the kids were falling behind and she caught up with them first. She bent down in front of Amanda. “On my back, now!”

  The little girl jumped and clung to Nikki's neck as they picked up speed again. The road seemed to last forever until finally the house by the dam came into view. A bird’s-eye-view showed a huge mass of Fiends slowly catching up with them. They ran past the house and angled toward the dam. Aaron dropped his pack and burst ahead. Jon and Steven lifted Teddy off the ground and ran with the boy between them. Aaron disappeared over the top of the earthen wall that made up the bulk of the dam and then they heard him yell “FUCK!”

  They all caught up and saw Aaron below with a hopeless look on his face. The beached rowboat had a huge hole in its floor. It was little more than a rotting hulk.

  Nikki looked behind them and shoved people toward the water. “Go! Out! Out in the water!” Everyone jumped into the lake and began swimming away from the dam. The Fiends poured over the top and crashed into the water as well. The group shrugged off their packs and swam for their lives. Nikki and Jon stopped in waist-high water and turned to face the onslaught with their swords. They slashed and cut, hacked and punched, managing to slow the Fiend momentum. Seeing others slashed down, the infected tried to give wide berth to the two blade holders while becoming enraged as their prey were quickly swimming out of range.

  The infant Other watched all of this with childish pleasure. It could feel all of the heartbeats of what it now felt to be extensions of its own self, its children, and reveled in the sensation of one of those heartbeats suddenly coming to a stop, the victim of one of the Fresh One’s blades. It stretched its long hocked lower limbs and directed its mother to step forward. The infant would enter the minds of the Fresh Ones and make them stop, make them come to it so that all of the Others could feast.

  The Other who hated the infant with every cell in its body, watched the female leader step forward while holding Its nemesis tight. Both of them were distracted. It could smell its chance.

  A helicopter’s thumping blades echoed faintly across the water and then the sound grew louder until it eclipsed the shouts and growls of the Fiends.

  Storm and McNeil had followed the Canada Road south directly toward Moscow. What they saw at the dam sent their hearts to pounding.

  “Holy shit! Look at those people!” Kelly put her binoculars to her eyes. “If it’s them, there’s more than just the scientists.”

  Sam swung the AStar off the line of the road and aimed straight for the dam. “Kel, grab the shotgun and open the side door.”

  Kelly unbuckled herself and climbed into the rear. “I count ten healthy.”

  The AStar could only hold six, including the two of them, maybe seven with one kid. Both women thought, how are we going to deal with that?

  Sam put the bird into a hover while Kelly slid open the door, cocked and shouldered the shotgun, and fired over and over into the crowd of Fiends. Sam brought the helicopter lower, hovering inches above the water and then slowly side slipped until she was close to the group that was swimming.

  The group was collectively stunned at this last-second rescue, and watched in wonder as the helicopter lowered itself toward them. Nikki was the only one who knew the truth of the situation. That it would be only a partial rescue. It was obvious to her that the
helicopter couldn’t take them all.

  The infant Other put its great muddy brown eyes on the fleeing Fresh Ones and gathered as many of them into its mind as it could.

  A collective buzzing entered the refugee’s heads. Those that weren’t looking toward shore saw their comrades do so and followed their gaze. Upon seeing the infant, they were also sucked into its mental grasp. Nikki felt a sense of calm take over her whole being. She could smell the comfort of mother’s milk and she was faintly aware of her heart rate falling. This was true for all of them. A part of Nikki knew exactly what was going on. She’d been in this place before – the memory of it faint, familiar, water all around, a foreboding presence, doom. She knew it meant the death of her, but there was nothing to be done. There was only the entity that filled her mind and the smell of the mother’s milk.

  The people in the deeper water found it difficult to swim and they turned as one back to shore. Even Sam and Kelly were mesmerized; Sam keeping the bird mindlessly steady while Kelly laid down her gun and simply stared. The Fiends stopped attacking, instead, slowly waded back toward the shore, inviting their feast to come join them on dry land.

  That’s when It, the tormented Other, the Other that had been treated like a plaything for the amusement of the little one with big ears and eyes, the sharp pointy teeth - that’s when It felt the hold of the little fucker let go – just enough, just enough to raise its blade… The tormented Fiend hacked down on its insufferable nemesis with fiendish glee, plunging the butcher’s knife into the mother for good measure….

  The spell was gone. Friend and foe looked upon each other with startled recognition. The Fiend nearest Nikki lunged forward, tackling her into the water. Jon, who had only just snapped out of it enough to remember he was holding a sword, was also tackled. Suddenly they were engulfed in a melee of punches, kicks, head-butts and bites. The only thing they could do was to try to swim down, but the water was too shallow for escape. Robert Tran stepped in, swinging his sword with furious intent. “NO YOU FUCKING DON’T!” He brought the legendary sharpness of the Japanese blade across one screaming Fiend’s face, rendering its lower jaw to flapping skin and teeth. He hacked at the monsters with only one thought in mind – these people are not going to die!

  Kelly yelled out, “Are you the CDC folks!” The swimmers nodded affirmative as they dog-paddled. She went with cold logic and continued, “One kid can come! Then four of you!”

  The swimmers pushed Amanda onto the hovering landing skid and she quickly climbed aboard, turned and screamed with her arms out, “Daddy!”

  Kelly held the girl, “Four more. Only four!”

  Steven held on to Teddy and they looked at each other with understanding. They would sacrifice themselves for the baby girl.

  Aaron, who didn’t give a single thought to another scenario, jumped aboard next.

  Decker looked at his two female companions and said, “Go!”

  Susan said, “We should both stay. Nikki is the priority.”

  “Get on the fucking helicopter, Susan!”

  She looked at the others holding back the horde with their swords, closed her eyes for a moment, then gave him a kiss on the cheek and followed Christy onboard. Decker shoved the pack with the hard drives into Susan’s hands.

  Kelly yelled, “One more!”

  Decker looked at Steven who nodded with a smile and they shoved Teddy on board.

  The boy screamed and reached out to his dad while Kelly held him to her chest. She yelled, “We’ll be back as soon as we can!”

  Sam pulled on the collective and the helicopter rose back up. With a twist of the cyclic, the bird banked away from the battle below.

  Nikki had broken free, gasped for air, then hacked at the Fiends above Jon until he too got his head back above water. He took in a huge lungful of air and then screamed out a bellow of rage, lacerating anything in front of him with the saber. Nikki and Tran continued to hack and stab as they all back pedaled into deeper water, finally freeing themselves enough to swim away and move out with Decker and Steven.

  Nikki said, “Robert, are you bit?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “No blood in the mouth? No bloody water?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  Jon said, “Well I’m fucking bit and I can’t swim with this fucking leather on and this fucking sword.”

  They paused and dog-paddled as they dropped their weapons and struggled out of their jackets. Jon had a nasty bite on his forearm and his head bandage had come off revealing the red bite-shaped wound. The Fiends watched from the shore to see which way they would go. There weren’t a lot of options. The lake had no islands. The right shore hugged the Canada Road. The left shore hugged the burned forest. The group slowly swam north, trying to conserve their energy. To their frustration, the infected split their forces, with half walking up the road and the other half crossing the dam to follow them from the other side.

  After fifteen minutes of hopeless swimming, Jon and Nikki had somewhat separated themselves from Decker, Tran and Steven.

  Jon said, “I think we’re finally done.” He got closer to her, getting her attention, then nodded at the Fiends on the shore.

  She said, “It doesn’t look good.”

  “Thank you anyway.”

  “For what?”

  “Saving my life for a few more hours. Keeping me human. Besides, I’d rather drown with you than shoot my brains out.”

  “That might be the craziest statement I’ve ever heard. What a world we’ve found ourselves in.”

  “How did you figure you were immune?”

  “When you kissed that cut on my finger a few days ago, I was afraid for you… Infected blood... I swallowed a lot in that river. I couldn’t admit it to myself. I’m so sorry.”

  “No reason to be.”

  “I almost didn’t. Something in me didn’t want to own up to it. That I’d gotten sick, that I had gotten the disease.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to admit it either.”

  The effort to swim was becoming exhausting. Their breath was getting labored and it was becoming a struggle to keep even their mouths above water. They swam for a while, just breathing through their noses.

  She finally spoke again. “Before he died, Ben said I was an Archangel.”

  “Ben was a fundamentalist wacko.”

  “That’s true, but it doesn’t negate that something special happened to me, and because of that, to you too.”

  “That’s true, it doesn’t. I’m cold. Aren’t you cold? This water’s fucking freezing.”

  “Yes, but listen. What if we have a higher purpose? You know because of this?”

  He looked around them and nodded at the teeming shore, “I think our purpose now, is to finally be done, Nik.”

  “No. I don’t believe that. All of this didn’t happen so we could drown.”

  “So you’re getting religion on me, now?”

  She slowed her swimming and looked at him square in the eyes. “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone, not even my own parents.”

  He looked at her with curious anticipation.

  Her words came from someplace deep, had to break through a lifetime of fear, finally coming out strong, and full of courage. “Jon… I love you.”

  He was taken aback. Hadn’t expected this. He glanced at the three other swimmers.They seemed to be in a world apart. His mind swayed with this knowledge and he almost forgot how to dog paddle. Then he smiled. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But when you left me for dead, you were so… mean to me…”

  “It hurt too much to be any other way.”

  He tried to look deeply in her eyes, preparing himself to say the words back.

  She laughed at him, pushing him away. “Stop. Don’t even think of saying it back with that goofy grin on your face.”

  “What grin?”

  “Just… keep it to yourself. When you
’re ready, maybe you’ll say it. Not like this. Not now.” She smiled and gave him a quick kiss.

  “Well shoot. Now I don’t know what to say.”

  She looked at the sky and then briefly closed her eyes. “Say you want to live.”

  “I do. I very much want to live.”

  Just then, Storm and McNeil’s AStar swooped around a hilltop and down over the lake.

  “And so you will.”

  They watched the logo-splattered chopper come down into a hover. The three men behind them let out loud whoops of joy, waving and splashing each other in celebration.

  Jon pulled Nikki to him and gave her a quick deep kiss. Then he looked into her eyes, and with deep sincerity, said, “I love you too.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

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