by Joe McKinney
Chelsea spun around, suddenly full of fury. “But we have to go there. Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t,” Jacob said.
“My family is there.”
He pointed at the monitors. “Am I talking to a wall here? Chelsea, look at that. I see rivers of dead people. You tell me there could be a hundred million more on the way. I can’t even imagine what that looks like, and you expect me to just dive on in because your family is there? No thanks. I’ve done my share of stupid things, but that is not going to be one of them.”
Chelsea looked at Kelly, hoping for some kind of support.
“Chelsea,” Kelly said, shrugging her shoulders helplessly, “I really don’t—”
“But we have to get there. My aunt Miriam, she’s the only one who can help us.”
“She can’t be the only one,” Jacob said. “I mean, look at all these news feeds. Can’t we just send a bunch of copies of your father’s notes to these people and let them spread the word?”
“That wouldn’t work.”
“How do you know that? These people could clear your father’s name with a single broadcast.”
“Yeah, maybe, if it ever got to them. But it wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You really don’t understand how this works, do you?”
“How what works?”
Chelsea pointed at the screens. “This. The political part of this. Every station you see here, every broadcast, Lester Brooks controls them all. He sets the tone. He’s the one who decides what the public hears.”
“One man?” Jacob said. “Chelsea, I’m sorry, but that’s kind of paranoid.”
“But he does,” Chelsea said. She was yelling loud enough to attract the attention of some of the others standing around them, and seeing that quieted her down. She waited until the people in the crowd went back to their own business before speaking again. “You have to understand,” she said, “in the span of a few months, he managed to turn my father into the biggest villain Temple has known since the initial outbreak. My father used to be a great man, but Lester Brooks has turned him into a monster. Ask anyone in this place, they’ll tell you exactly what Lester Brooks has guided them to say.”
Jacob could only shake his head. But he couldn’t drop the point, either. “I think that’s ridiculous, Chelsea. One man can control an entire world’s worth of information. Do you really believe that?”
She smiled, like he’d fallen into some kind of trap. “What I think is that it’s proof my father was right about the morphic field generators. They really are turning us into sheep. Don’t you see? He was right.”
“Chelsea, are you listening to yourself? Do you realize how para—”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand, then nodded at something over Jacob’s shoulder. “We’re out of time,” she said. “Look.”
Jacob turned. He scanned the crowd, and saw two men standing on the edge of the crowd, slowly and deliberately looking at everyone there. He saw two more pairs waiting at the side doors, and another standing near the bottom of the escalators that led up to the monorail trains.
“I have to get my father’s notebooks,” Chelsea said.
“And then what?” Jacob asked.
She pointed down a hallway behind the escalators. “Down there,” she said. “We can find transport down there.”
“But you just said all flights were cancelled.”
“All manned flights, yeah, but not routine cargo deliveries. Those are unmanned freighters.”
“I still don’t think this is—”
“Would you just go, please? They’re coming this way.”
She was right. One of the men over by the main entrance was looking right at them. He touched his neck and started to talk, but Jacob couldn’t read his lips.
He didn’t have to, though.
It was obvious enough the man was calling them in. They had to move.
“How will we know what we’re looking for?” Jacob asked.
“You’ll know.”
“And you? How will we find you?”
“I’ll find you,” she said.
With that she ducked into the crowd and silently slipped away. She was a small girl, just barely over five feet tall and hardly ninety pounds. She was gone in the blink of an eye.
“Jacob, what do we do?”
“We can’t stay here. Those guys want her for the notebooks, but we’re not worth anything to them. They’ll kill us.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I don’t want to be here.”
“Me, either.” He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from there. He glanced back and saw the men moving toward them at a trot, pushing people out of the way as they forced their way through the crowd.
They slipped around the escalators and fell in with the crowd moving toward the main passenger terminals.
He pulled her close and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Duck out here.”
They turned into the empty hallway Chelsea had pointed out to them, but a fat man in blue robes was trying to get around them, and they nearly knocked him over.
“Hey,” he said.
Jacob tried to guide Kelly farther down the hall, but the man was angry. He raised his voice. “Hey, you there.”
Jacob looked back at the man. He was short and round, his skin a deep coffee color. His robes sparkled in the daylight. He wasn’t going to move on, and meanwhile the men hunting them were getting closer.
He grabbed Kelly, spun her around, and pushed her up against the wall. Before she could say a word in protest, he pressed his lips to hers in a rough, clumsy kiss he tried to make look real.
She pushed against him, not returning the kiss at all, but it must have looked real enough, for the fat man stuck two fingers in the air at them and walked off.
Jacob released Kelly from the kiss.
He watched the man in the blue robes walk away, and then turned back to Kelly. He was about to tell her they had to start searching the corridor when she kicked his shin.
“Hey,” he said.
“Don’t you ever do that again.”
“I was . . . I was just trying . . .”
“I don’t care,” she said, anger flashing in her eyes. “Don’t you ever . . . Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
“Alright,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”
She pushed him away and smoothed out her blouse. She pushed the hair back from her forehead and gathered herself together. “Fine,” she said.
He took a step back, and in that moment he realized that she hadn’t had the luxury of a disconnect the way he had. He’d had two long stretches of unconsciousness. But Kelly, she’d been awake the whole time. She’d lived first with Barry’s death, and then with Nick’s. She’d had lots of time to sit and stew in the misery and heartache of losing loved ones. His pain was still to come. But hers was an open wound, inflamed and burning, and raw.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Just shut up,” she said. She grunted. “Oh shit.”
Jacob looked up. Two of the men he’d seen following them were coming down the hallway. Both had weapons drawn.
One of the men, dressed in a white tunic and brown pants, raised a pistol at Jacob’s face and gave it a flick, motioning Jacob down a side passageway. “Down there,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” Jacob said.
“Move,” the man said.
“Kiss my ass,” Jacob said.
The man rushed forward, his partner coming around him with his pistol raised. The first man shoved Jacob in the chest hard enough to send him crashing into the wall. Before Jacob could recover, the man got in close, dug his fingers into Jacob’s underarm, and pushed him deeper into the corridor. He was trying to push Jacob around the corner, out of sight of the crowd. As soon as Jacob realized what the man was doing, he fell backward, sending his attacker off balance.
The man stumbled forward, and when his pistol dipped, Jacob chopped down on the man’s wrist.
The man tried to reach for it, but got Jacob’s knee to his nose instead. The blow landed perfectly. The man stumbled backward on uncertain feet, his eyes staring at nothing as he fell over. He lay there, unable to stand, twisting from side to side like a man too fat to pull himself to his feet.
Jacob rushed forward, grabbed the fallen man’s pistol, and fired it at the man’s chest.
Again, there was no sound. The weapon kicked in his hand, but it didn’t let loose the familiar bark of a pistol. He did see the round leave the barrel, though. It was just a flash, but Jacob saw it smack into the man’s chest and explode.
The man was dead the next instant, his chest suddenly nothing but an empty hole, like the belly of a canoe. Bits of blood and bone went everywhere. It splashed onto Jacob’s face and clothes, spattering him in gore.
Jacob turned toward the main hallway, but he was too late. The second man was already there, his pistol raised at Jacob’s forehead. “Stop right there,” the man said. “Drop the pistol.”
Jacob hesitated. With one flick of the wrist he could bring his weapon to bear on the man. If he combined that with a jump to the left, he stood a chance of getting off a shot first.
“Don’t do it,” the man said, as though reading Jacob’s mind. “These things don’t cauterize. Even a glancing blow would cause you to bleed out. Get down on the ground. Let’s go, facedown.”
Jacob tossed his weapon to the floor. “Yeah, okay,” he said.
He went to one knee. The man held the pistol in his right hand. With his left he reached into a back pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs.
“Hands behind your back,” he said.
“Okay,” Jacob said. “Okay, just don’t shoot.”
Jacob bent his other leg as though to go to the ground, but instead planted it in a sprinter’s ready position and then bum-rushed the man. He managed to get under the man’s gun hand just as he discharged the weapon. Distantly, Jacob heard it smack against the wall and explode harmlessly with a muffled pop.
He tried to lift the man off the ground and throw him onto his back, but the man recovered in time and threw his weight backward, landing with his feet spread wide apart. He raised the weapon toward Jacob, but he wasn’t fast enough. Jacob was already throwing a chop down on the man’s wrist, a blow that knocked the weapon to the ground at Kelly’s feet.
Jacob rushed forward again, trying the same flying tackle, but the other man was ready for it. He elbowed Jacob in the back and caused him to collapse.
Jacob fell to his knees, the wind knocked out of him.
The other man lost no time at all. He grabbed Jacob by the shoulders and threw him onto his back. Then he climbed on top of Jacob, his knees holding Jacob’s arms down as he began to throw punches at Jacob’s face.
The man clearly knew how to work a speed bag. The punches came that fast, and every single blow felt like a cinder block crashing into Jacob’s face. He raised a hand to block the punches, but the other man knocked it away and kept on pounding on his face. And somewhere during the pounding Jacob stopped feeling the blows. His mind went off its rails and he started to sink into unconsciousness.
Jacob didn’t see the round hit the side of the man’s head. He was too punch-drunk for that. One minute, he was looking up through a bloody screen at a steady roll of punches, and the next he was looking at a headless corpse, the man’s fists going slack.
The man rolled off of him, landing in a clumsy heap on the floor. Through a haze of blood, Jacob looked up to see Kelly holding one of the pistols with both hands.
She was shaking.
“Jacob?” she said.
He groaned. He lifted a hand to her, but it fell to the floor. He couldn’t stand up. His head was reeling, his vision blurry.
She tossed the pistol aside and knelt down next to him.
“No,” he said. “Keep the pistol.”
“Jacob, I hate guns. I can’t.”
“Might need it,” he said.
“Jacob? Jacob, stay with me.”
“I’m okay,” he said. He tried to stand, but his arms felt like dead weight and he couldn’t even feel his legs.
“Let me help you,” Kelly said. She ducked under his arm, and somehow managed to lift him. “Jacob, can you put any weight on your feet? I can’t carry you like this.”
“Trying,” he said.
She stiffened. “Oh crap. Somebody’s coming.”
Right on cue, he heard the sound of running footfalls coming from around the corner.
“Gun,” he said. “Get your . . . gun up.”
“Jacob, I can’t do that again.”
In his mind he formed the words: Just do it. Don’t think. Just pull the trigger. But he couldn’t speak the words. His mouth was a mealy mess, and he was still zoning in and out of consciousness. It took all the strength he had just to stand.
“They’re coming,” Kelly said.
“Shoot.”
But it was Chelsea who came around the corner, the notebooks tucked under her arms like a student bringing home a satchel of books. She let out a whimper of surprise when she saw the gun pointed at her face.
Kelly lowered her weapon. “Oh God.”
Only then did Chelsea seem to notice the bodies on the floor, the blood spattered all over the ceiling, all over the walls, all over Jacob’s face.
“What happened?” she said.
Jacob and Kelly said nothing. They just looked at each other, both of them still in shock.
“Are you guys okay?”
Kelly nodded. “You said you knew how to get us out of here.”
Chelsea pointed toward the nose of a blocky-looking freighter visible through the main corridor’s windows.
“That way,” she said. “That’s our ticket right there.”
CHAPTER 7
Flying wasn’t that bad, Jacob decided. Takeoff had been a little rough. The freighter had climbed to altitude in a rush that had pressed him against the wall and set his heart racing. He hadn’t been able to clear his ears. Chelsea showed them how to hold their nose and blow, forcing their ears to pop, but Jacob couldn’t do it. He’d taken a pretty hard beating back at Scholes Field that had left his eyes almost completely swollen shut, his mouth a pulpy, bloody mess, and his nose filled with drying blood. It was probably broken. It hurt like it was broken. Still, despite his discomfort, the flight hadn’t been that bad. At least his nerves had settled to the point he didn’t need to vomit.
But going down was bad.
Really bad.
First, the quiet was broken with an alarm, three short bursts from a siren, and before Jacob had a chance to ask what it was, the bottom dropped out from under him. His stomach rose into his throat. He groped at the walls, at the floor, desperate for something to hold on to, but there was nothing.
“What’s happening?” he said. He heard the fear rising in his voice, but he couldn’t hold it in check.
Kelly grabbed his hand.
He squeezed back.
The two of them huddled together, their backs pressed flat against the wall, both too scared to breathe.
“Chelsea, what’s happening?” Jacob said again. His voice was cracking, but he was past caring.
“Settle down,” Chelsea said, sounding thoroughly bored. “We’re on final approach. We’ll be landing inside of a minute.”
Kelly squeezed Jacob’s hand hard, but when he looked at her, she wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at anything. She had her head back, eyes shut tight. He couldn’t tell if she was trembling, or if she was just being jostled by the buffeting of the aircraft. But he was trembling. No doubt about that.
Kelly and Chelsea had been forced to carry him in order to get him onboard. He’d barely been conscious. They’d led him down into the freighter’s hold and propped him up against the wall, in the corner. Kelly sat down next to him, but Chelsea had positioned herself several feet away from them, near the stairs. At first Jacob
thought it was because she didn’t want to answer any more of their questions, but he could see plain enough why she’d done it now. She was holding on to the railings, nice and secure, not getting jostled around at all, like she knew this would happen.
“Is it always like this?” Jacob asked.
“Is what always like this?”
“Landing.”
“No,” Chelsea said. “This is supposed to be an unmanned freighter. If there were people onboard, the aircraft would be coming down in a soft landing. But, right now, with El Paso on lockdown, they don’t have the time for soft landings. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
“Great,” he said. He glanced again at Kelly, her breaths coming fast and shallow, eyes still shut tight, and squeezed her hand.
The aircraft shuddered. There hadn’t been any sound through most of the flight. He’d heard a low muffled roar as they took off, but that had faded into the background once they made altitude. Now he was hearing it again, only this time, there was a high-pitched whining sound behind the roar.
“What is that?”
“The morphic field reactor,” Chelsea said. “Would you please relax? We’re fine. We’re almost on the ground.”
The aircraft shook again, and then went still. No falling, no sense of movement. The freighter hung in the air, then gently touched down with a soft bump.
Chelsea jumped to her feet. “See? What’d I tell you? Nothing to it.”
She started to climb the stairs toward the exit.
“Hey,” Kelly said. She stood up, balanced on unsteady legs. “Where are you going?”
“To find my aunt Miriam.”
“Just like that?” Kelly asked. “We’re just going to walk right out of here and head to your Aunt Miriam’s place?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Why . . . ?” Kelly glanced at Jacob incredulously. “Chelsea, are you serious? This city is on lockdown. How are we supposed to walk across a city on lockdown? Especially when we’re about to be overrun by the biggest herd of zombies on the planet?”
“We’re not going to be walking through the city. I told you, we’ll take the tunnels.”