“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Stop,” she said. “Set me down.”
“We’re not putting you down,” Dave said. With a final grunt, he pushed and she rose, her thigh clearing the top of the shaft, and she was freed.
Moving her out of the pilot seat, and out of the cockpit, with me stepping onto and over the co-pilot seat and center console, we set her down. I looked up. Allison and Charlene were watching us. They had their gear gathered by the door, ready to run.
“I need something to tie off the thigh,” I said, and moved beside Palmeri. She took my hand and squeezed it hard. “We’re going to stop the bleeding and then hobble our asses to somewhere safe.”
“Just go,” she said.
Charlene pulled the knife from the sheath on her hip and tore at the tarp she had bundled up. She cut a long piece out of it and gave it to me. “I’m going to need a stick or something,” I said.
Everyone searched the plane as I wrapped the piece of tarp around her thigh and began twisting it tighter and tighter in place. We were going to have to make a tourniquet. No EMS would be responding, and I didn’t know how else to stop the bleeding.
She was bleeding a lot. It wasn’t spurting, but it was pouring and pooling around my knees. “A stick!” I said.
I removed my knife. I fit it between the ends of the tarp and used it to twist the tourniquet as tight as possible. I held it in place. If I removed my hand from the knife, the pressure would loosen and the blood would continue to flow from her. For now, it seemed to have stopped. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
Palmeri’s lips mostly trembled, as if tremendous amounts of strength was needed to attempt a smile. “This isn’t going to work. If there are fast ones out there, and there are bound to be fast ones, I am either going to slow you down, or risk getting all of us caught. I won’t have that on my head, I won’t.”
“We’re not leaving you,” I said.
“Dad,” Charlene said.
I looked up. She waved me over. She and Allison were squatting, looking out the hole in the side of the plane. “Hold this,” I said, and placed Palmeri’s hand on my knife. “We’re not done talking about this, you got it?”
She nodded. “Got it.”
I stood up and Dave and I walked toward my daughter. “What is it?”
“Looks like a building over there just off the road. It doesn’t look that far. I think we can make it.”
Allison was nodding. “Looks like a school.”
A school would mean a nurse’s office, cafeteria and bathrooms. “I like it. Dave?”
“Best plan we’ve got. You and I can carry Palmeri. Allison and Charlene can cover us,” he said.
“If the doors are locked?” Charlene said.
“Worry about that when we get there,” I said, and shrugged. “Let’s leave those things here. Just take our weapons. If it is a school, we’ll have more supplies, better supplies in there.”
“We really only found the tarp.”
“Perfect, leave it,” I said. “Okay, let’s get Palmeri.”
I went back to her. She’d removed the knife, the makeshift bandage, and lost so much blood that the color had drained from her face and lips. She looked pasty white, and blue. Again, she tried to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, and held out her hand.
We laced fingers. “What were you thinking?”
“You guys have to get out of here, get out of this plane,” she said, and then her body spasmed with a series shivers.
I re-wrapped the bandage around her thigh.
Palmeri put a hand on mine, and shook her head. “It’s too…it’s too…”
There was nothing else. Her eyes and mouth stayed open. Vacantly, she stared at me. More ghosts to haunt my nightmares. I lowered my head and rested my forehead against her hand, our fingers still laced together.
“Chase,” Dave said. “Chase.”
I pulled away, released her hand and retrieved my knife. “Okay, we’re moving. Ready?”
# # #
I stepped off the plane first and looked left and right, holding my sword in both hands. Those things might have been holed up in the woods, but with Palmeri’s scream, hell, with the plane crashing out of the sky, they had to be beyond curious and ready to investigate. I didn’t see anything. Not a single zombie anywhere. Once I felt confident there wasn’t any immediate danger, I turned and held out a hand and assisted my girlfriend and daughter. Next, and lastly, I helped Dave out of the plane. I wasn’t sure if he would accept my hand, but he did. He took it.
“What have we got?” Allison stood beside me, her sidearm gripped tightly in hands with arms extended. “The woods are to the left and behind us, and the school, if that’s what it is, is to the right, that way.”
I saw two signs in the bit of moonlight that challenged the surrounding darkness. We had landed on RT 68, New Castle Rd. “It’s Butler High School,” I said. “That was a good call, Charlene.”
We stayed low. “Move together,” Dave said.
“You take point,” I said. “I’ll bring up the back end. Let’s stay close, clustered, okay?”
Dave nodded.
“Freeze! Hands up.”
I had to look around. I wasn’t sure where the voice came from, but I froze. “Stop everyone,” I said, hoping it came out in a whisper. “Dave? You see--”
“No talking!”
“We are no danger to anyone here. We’re just making our way through,” I said. It wasn’t zombies in the woods. It was people. Fucking people. We’d rushed to free Palmeri exposing whatever main artery had been severed and she’d bled to death when maybe we didn’t have to.
“All four of you are armed like you’re dangerous!”
“They are not getting our weapons.” Despite the fading light, I saw Dave grind his teeth.
“I said no talking!”
“Why don’t you show yourselves,” I said, still unable to pinpoint where the voice came from. I didn’t think it was to the left or the right, but neither did it seem to be from in front of us, either. “I’m telling you, we do not want any problems. To be honest, food, water, maybe bathrooms is what we’re looking for and then we are on our way. That’s it. That’s all we want.”
“And what will you do to get food and water?”
“What will we do? We’ll look for it. We’ll keep moving until we come across it,” I said.
“You’ll keep moving.”
“That’s what I said.” I think it came from the woods, now to our right, where we thought the zombies had been. It was no wonder they hadn’t just attacked us when we crash landed, or when I was underneath the plane trying to free Palmeri. It wasn’t like the zombies I’d witnessed learning, they weren’t being cautious. It hadn’t been zombies at all.
“You’ll keep moving now.”
I lowered my head. “Look, man, we’re hungry, tired and we need water. You go your way, we’ll go ours.”
“It’s not going to work like that. You’re going to start walking now, walking west on this road, and we’re going to watch you until we can’t see you anymore, or until we get tired of following you. Understand?”
We’re going to watch you? That is what he said.
“Chase?” It was Dave.
There was no need for a pissing match. I had no idea how many “we” equaled, but I knew my “we” was just the four of us, and one of my four was fourteen years old. I gave some vigorous head nods, knowing full well they could see us. I’d wager some rifles held us in crosshairs. That wasn’t a farfetched assumption. “Fine. You want us to just keep walking, we’ll just keep walking. Appreciate the Pennsylvania hospitality. I’ll be sure to tell friends and family to stop by if they’re ever in your back-ass, redneck part of the woods.”
“Daddy!” Charlene hushed me. She was right. There was no need to tempt this group of strangers. We knew nothing about them. Getting to walk was better than getting killed.
“Sorry,” I said, whispering. “I’l
l take point. Stay close.”
I led them. We took several steps away from the plane. The progress was slow. I wasn’t about to start running. Part of me hoped to catch sight of them, or of at least one person watching us. I wasn’t going to do anything about it if I saw them, but I just wanted to see them. I didn’t like the bully-tactics, however, I did understand them. What was becoming par for the course was protect your own. The guy talking to me could be some guy just like me, with a girlfriend and kids and some friends, and he didn’t know us, didn’t trust us. He didn’t have a reason to trust us. I think given the same set of circumstances--some plane falls out of the sky during a zombie apocalypse, and a small band of heavily armed people emerge--I’d send them walking, too. I know I would.
“How far we going to walk?” Dave said.
“Until we’re sure they’re not following us,” I said.
“And then what?”
“We find a place to hole up for the night. And in the morning, we keep walking,” I said.
“Somewhere with food and water,” Charlene said.
“Ideally,” I said.
That was when the screaming started; screaming and shots fired.
Chapter Twelve
“They’re in trouble,” Allison said. It was a needless statement. We all knew it. Maybe because we kept walking, she felt like it needed to be said.
“We’re not stopping.” I looked back, toward the sound of gunshots, toward the sound of screaming. The moon was out. I still could not see a thing beyond a few yards. Not even shadows. It was just darkness from where we had come. “The things must have come out of the woods. Was more than just those people back there.”
“We’re not going to help them?” Allison said. She spoke in a whisper. I heard the tug in her words. She wanted us to stop.
“They weren’t going to help us,” Charlene said. “They kicked us out, made us leave.”
They weren’t going to help us.
She was right, of course. We just wanted somewhere safe to rest. Food. Something to drink. They weren’t going to help us. “Wait,” I said.
“What?” Dave said.
I had to think about the future. There was no guarantee one way or the other about anything, except I knew if we were to survive as a civilization, as fucking humans, even if they weren’t going to help us… Did we want to be like that? Did we…did I want my daughter to be like them, pushing people away, not afraid to help, but unwilling to do so?
She’d be safer, yes, but she’d be alone. I wasn’t always going to be here; wasn’t always going to be around. It was parenting. My job wasn’t done. She was tough. She’d proved as much. She could handle weapons, and heartache and adaption. Where was the compassion and empathy going to come from, if not from me?
God, my thoughts made me nauseated. Mushy, and fucking flowery, but I was right. I knew I was. I knew we needed to do this. We had to make a difference. “We’re going back.”
“What?” Charlene said.
“What if that was us. What if we were the ones back there fighting off those things. Wouldn’t we want, wouldn’t we pray for help?”
“We might,” Charlene said. “But we wouldn’t expect it from a group of people we’d just chased off, that we’d just threatened.”
“Exactly. That’s why we’re doing it, going back.”
Allison pursed her lips and nodded.
“Dave?” I said.
“I’m with you. Have been since the beginning. If I wasn’t, I’d just tell you to go fuck yourself.”
I laughed. “I know that you would.”
We weren’t going to be heroes about it, though. I told everyone, as always, to stay close. We went in packed tight and staying in the center of the road. Each of us had weapons drawn. Dave and Allison had their side arms out, Charlene and I had our swords.
We’d walked further than I’d thought. I was just starting to make out the shape of the airplane in the road. I saw the white flash of rifles being fired off toward the right, toward the high school, and pointed. We didn’t want to get caught in crossfire, or accidentally mistaken for zombies. That really hadn’t been something I’d thought of, not until now, anyway.
And then I saw them. Just beyond the plane, on the grass by the front of the school. The band that had forced us away was huddled together, not unlike us. They were taking shots down the road, east.
“We’re here to help,” I said, loudly. I wanted them to know they had actual people behind them, and that we were not sneaking up on them.
A man spun around, rifle aimed at us. “Who’s here to help?”
“Gene!” It was a woman.
Gene turned back to face the zombies and fired.
“They’re getting closer,” a man said. “There might be too many of them!”
“There are,” a different woman said.
Dave ran forward, knelt beside the group and fired off six shots. I had no idea how he’d improved his aim in days, but he had. Four of the six shots were head shots, and those hit, fell and stayed down.
Allison joined them, firing round after round.
I looked at Charlene. I knew she knew what I was thinking. The guns were great, especially for hitting targets further away. All the ammo being spent had to force people to realize that once it was gone, it was gone. You might carry extra bullets or magazines, but how long would they last? A few extra days? Weeks? And you might find more, but the question didn’t change. How long until your guns were useless? The answer was simple, if vague. Eventually.
A zombie got close, on the right, and Charlene walked toward it. She held her sword in both hands, blade pointed at the moonlit sky. She resembled a ballplayer in the batter’s box. I almost yelled for her to stop, to let me handle it, but was startled when Dave shouted my name.
Two creatures were close to me, so close, so silent that Dave couldn’t get off a shot. The tip of my blade had been pointing at the grass. I brought sword up and swung right to left in a single fluid motion. Passing through an arm and ribs and the other arm did little to detract from the impact of the swing. I felt the impact in my hands. The sharpness of the blade and the power behind the swing cut the first and closest in two. The top half of the body slid off from the lower, it made a thwash sound as it hit cold grass. The arm stumps raised and reached, and its head still had the sense to gnash teeth as if it were moments from a meal, instead of seconds from me driving the blade through its temple with a fisted plunge.
I heard a gunshot and thought I heard a single bullet whiz by my head. Allison’s target had been the second zombie. Like Dave, she’d improved. The female monster collapsed, thick black blood oozing from an entry wound above the decaying left eyeball.
I’d missed Charlene’s kill. The creature’s head was chunked open like a pie wedge had been cut from the skull. She had blood spray on her clothing and skin.
“Is there someplace safe we can run to?” I said.
“The school, we should get back inside the school,” Gene said. He waved at everyone.
We followed close behind Gene and his group. I stayed in back and kept checking over my shoulder. Seemed like mostly slow moving zombies, thankfully. Didn’t make them any less dangerous. In large numbers, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and that was where having swords and machetes sucked. It was one thing to fight off a handful of creatures with steel, but the idea of killing an circling mass and surviving with just a sword was unlikely.
Our entire group moved like a snake, one behind the other, not toward the school’s front entrance, but around to the side of the building. We didn’t stop there either. There were no doors, but many of the windows were boarded up, suggesting this might be the group’s safe haven. I did not see any doorway into the school though.
We reached, not the back, but another corner of the high school building, I knew we’d put some considerable distance between us and the zombies. So much so, I’d stopped checking over my shoulder every other second. By the three large green dumpsters, I
saw a door.
Gene jingled a set of keys. It was a big ring, one a janitor might carry. The woman who always seemed by his side urged him on with her hands going up and down. “Hurry, Gene. Hurry, please.”
“Gene,” one of the other guys said and kept looking from Gene to the corner. If zombies rounded it, we’d be trapped in this nook, this alcove area.
I took a quick inventory. There were seven of them; three men and four women. We didn’t have long. The zombies after us might be moving slowly, but they were walking toward us. “Gene,” I said.
Gene inserted a key. I heard the lock springs click, disengage. He pulled open the door. “Inside, everyone!” Again, he waved us forward with a hand, and through the threshold into the school before closing and locking the door behind us.
“Get them to the cafeteria,” Gene said. “Hurry.”
We followed them down dark hallways lit only by a red glow from generator powered electricity. We made a series of lefts and rights. The group we followed didn’t move slowly, or cautiously. My guess was that the school was secure, and had already been checked for the creatures. That, or we were going about this race for the cafeteria all wrong and walking decay could be waiting for us behind every corner.
It took mere minutes, two tops, before we reached the cafeteria. The outside walls were made of glass or Plexiglas so anyone in the hallway could see who was inside the cafeteria. We entered between standing open double doors. The walls inside looked as if they had been painted by student artists. Clouds with planes, rainbows, a sun, and a pot of gold. The back wall, however, was an American flag.
I could not help but think about the mess we’d gotten ourselves into with the Terrigino Brothers. We’d looked to them for help. They looked at our women as a way of re-populating the planet.
Just where the fuck were we?
Chapter Thirteen
Butler County High School -- 2321 hours
“Sit,” Gene said. No one moved. We’d fought a common enemy, but that didn’t make us friends. My group and I had returned to help after hearing gunshots and screaming, but the tension between the twelve of us was thick, almost visible. “Sit, please!”
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