by A. M. Geever
“Me too, Kendall,” Rocco said.
Kendall nodded, the owl blink going ninety miles per hour, still looking taken aback by their vociferous agreement. Much as she hated to admit it, Rocco was right. She still felt perfectly justified in her loathing for Victor up to the point of him asking her to not hate him so publicly. His being a helicopter pilot had gone a fair way toward, if not changing her mind, at least changing her opinion of his usefulness. Not just for herself, but for LO. She’d asked around a little. Some people seemed to be coming around to him, more were reserving judgment. When she’d said something neutral about him to Noelle, she had looked so hopeful it actually hurt. Even Miranda wasn’t vindictive enough to want to squash Noelle’s hope for a chance at a future she wanted. Victor did seem to treat her like a queen, much as it killed Miranda to admit it. Failing an actionable offense on Victor’s part that proved his treachery, she was going to have to adjust her attitude. She just hadn’t gotten as far as actually doing it.
“Thank you, Kendall,” she said again. “I really appreciate the offer, but if you ask, Rocco will never let me live it down.”
“Damn right,” Rocco said.
Kendall looked apologetic when he said, “He has to get it running first.”
“Yeah,” Miranda said, as she tried, and failed, to temper the hope that fluttered in her chest.
She’d run a few miles along the dome’s outer corridor, followed by a solid hour of weights in the gym. When that hadn’t been enough to help her shake off the anxious energy that wrapped around her like a soupy fog, she decided to drink. It was only lunchtime, but what the hell. That had never stopped her before.
Even though she was day drinking now, she’d been drinking less—a lot less—since she’d told Rocco everything and he’d treated her not with the condemnation she’d expected, but compassion. She’d been sleeping better, too, better than she had in months. Admitting to herself how she felt about losing Tadpole, how she felt about Mario and how horribly their relationship had ended, seemed to be what the dreams had wanted. She still woke up anxious sometimes, with her heart pounding, but she rarely remembered what those dreams were about.
She topped up her glass, then set the bottle on the coffee table. The living area of their dome felt huge and empty, which only made her anxious impatience worse. If Victor and Sean couldn’t get the helicopter flying, she was going to have a nervous breakdown.
“Want company?”
Miranda looked up. Alec’s bedroom door was open. He was walking toward her while he toweled off his head, wearing jeans slung low on his hips and nothing else. His muscled abs, and chest and shoulders—she was a sucker for a good set of shoulders—were still glistening in spots his towel had missed. It wasn’t like she was going to sleep with him again, but he could at least take pity on her and put on a shirt.
“Sure. I’m one step short of drinking alone in the dark. Even I know that’s bad.”
Alec chuckled, then went to get a glass. A minute later he was settled on the couch beside her, smacking his lips.
“Rich people really lived in a different world,” he said. “I never drank wine like this before zombies.”
“You’re not kidding. Secret bunkers and helicopters…my family didn’t come close.”
“You did all right, lass,” Alec said. “You’re still here.”
He was right about the wine—a chewy, heavy red that slid over her tongue like silk. “If they don’t get that helicopter flying soon, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“So you’re definitely going home?”
“If Victor will do it.”
The tension in her shoulders ratcheted up a notch. She was dying to get home. If they couldn’t fly and get there quickly, she was still going, but she knew in her gut it would be too late.
“So tell me about your man,” Alec said.
“My man?” At Alec’s ‘come on’ expression, a sudden self-consciousness made her stomach tight. “Oh. You mean Mario?”
Alec nodded. “Anyone who’s got you tied up in this many knots is either brilliant or an arsehole.”
Miranda laughed, which caused wine to go up her nose. “Don’t do that,” she sputtered, looking down at her wine-stained shirt.
Alec merely grinned his sly grin.
She said, “Well…okay. He’s—”
Heavy footsteps pounded outside the door to their dome. Sean tumbled through the door a moment later, his face flushed and his eyes sparkling with a manic glee.
“He did it,” Sean said. “Victor got the helicopter started.”
Then he disappeared as if he’d never been there. Miranda stared at where he’d been for a moment, then said to Alec, “Did he just say—?”
“Yeah,” Alec said. He took her hand and gave it a tug. “Come on.”
27
“You’re not going, Tucci,” Rocco said, shouting to be heard.
She’d thought the hangar was spacious before, but with the blast doors open and flooded with weak October sunlight, it felt massive. On the ledge outside the open hangar doors, the rotors of the helicopter were a spinning, semi-translucent blur. Victor sat in the pilot’s seat; between the white helmet and his mirrored sunglasses, his expression was unreadable.
Rocco’s hand thumped on her shoulder and twirled her around.
“You’ve been drinking, for Christ’s sake!”
Despite the truth of his statement, it had been one glass of wine. She knew she’d be fine. She shouted over the roar of the rotors. “Do you trust him to come back? Because I don’t.”
Rocco’s exasperation was plain. He leaned closer to her ear. “Exactly what do you think you can do? If he wants to fly off, you can’t stop him!”
She looked into Rocco’s brown eyes. She’d never noticed how warm they were—how caring—until the night she’d broken down and told him everything. Now she didn’t know how she’d missed it.
“See you later.”
Phineas waved as she walked through the blast doors. Alec waited on the helipad. He gave her the sharp edge of a grin when he leaned in close.
“Good luck.”
She nodded, glad that he was here to see her off. Now that she was doing it, she was nervous. She took the few steps to the cockpit, pausing before stepping inside. You’ve got this, she told herself.
Victor looked up and pointed to the helmet on her seat. She picked it up, surprised at the weight, and slipped it on as she sat down. She adjusted the chin strap. It was still a little big. Then Victor’s voice buzzed in her ears.
“You don’t need to do this,” Victor said, his voice tinny through the headset. “I’m not gonna fly off and leave you guys.”
“That’s what Rocco thinks,” she replied.
Victor’s mouth twisted to the side, then he shook his head. “Fasten your harness. And be quiet. It’s been a while… I need to concentrate.”
Miranda gave him a thumbs-up, then looked forward. Her heart thumped in her chest. She’d never flown in a helicopter before, and despite her bravado, was kind of freaked out. This thing had been mothballed for a decade, and now she was going to fly off in it with a guy she wouldn’t trust to tell her sunshine was warm. Rocco was right that she wouldn’t be able to do anything if Victor decided to fly off to only God knew where. She could pull her gun on him, but she couldn’t shoot him unless she wanted to die in a crash. Even she didn’t have that much of a death wish.
The vibration of the helicopter penetrated her bones, and even with the noise-canceling headsets, was noisy as hell. The vibration intensified, the whine and roar of the rotors growing louder. And then…a feeling of weightlessness, as if her seat had been welded tight to the Earth and then broke free. They rose into the air with a light rocking motion that was unlike flying in a plane, rising above the forest ceiling and into the gray sky above. Below her, the vista of trees and mountain, of buildings in the distance too far away to look neglected, opened wide. She inhaled sharply, overwhelmed by the vantage point, by a view tha
t had once been commonplace from aircraft and ski lifts and skyscrapers. They soared through the air, gravity’s hold loosened by human ingenuity.
They banked left with a swoop, and Miranda’s stomach lurched. “Oh no.”
“You okay?”
She looked at Victor. He looked straight ahead, glancing at the seemingly endless dials on the dashboard. “It’s a little swoopy.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t get motion sick, do you?”
“Kinda,” she said, a sinking feeling that the helicopter played no part of hitting her in the stomach.
Victor’s large arm pointed across her. “Airsick bags.” He paused, then said, “I have to put this thing through its paces. You might get sick.”
She whimpered, the sound lost in the drone of the rotors. People make their own hell, she thought, and she was no exception.
She tried to distract herself with the view as they flew north. She’d assumed they would fly west, over Portland, but they hugged the spine of the Cascade Range. Victor barely spoke, and when he did, it was to himself as the helicopter swooped right and left, up and down. He even turned it three hundred sixty degrees in place. He checked dials and readouts and at one point, tapped on the glass over one of them, which sent a jolt of anxiety through her. She thought they only did that kind of thing in movies.
Victor’s voice crackled through the headset. “That’s Mount Saint Helens to the northeast.”
She followed the line of his pointing finger, hoping her quick compliance would return his hand back to flying the helicopter. The flattened, almost horizontal summit of Mount Saint Helens stood in contrast to the pointed peak of Mount Hood, a reminder of the violent eruption that had blown off the top of the volcano. She looked straight ahead again. It wasn’t quite as bad as looking sideways, which caused an unpleasant constriction in the back of her throat.
A few minutes later, a break in the clouds to her left revealed the blunted peak of Mount Rainier. Its white shroud of snow melted into the dark blues and greens of the forest on its lower slopes. Miranda had seen it countless times since she used to visit Portland as a child, but never from this vantage point. Even on a day like this, when the gray of late autumn dampened the light, it filled her with awe.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Sure is,” Victor said.
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, and didn’t say anything in reply. They flew north for about ten minutes more, then the helicopter banked east—but not sharply.
“Are we going back?”
“Yeah. Got what I needed.”
When he didn’t say more, she said, “So it’s working okay?”
“It’ll do.”
Her spirits soared, like the non-nauseous birds of prey she had tried to picture herself as. “Is it good for long distances?”
“Should be.”
“And we’re going back to the bunker now, right?”
“Just like I said.” He glanced at her, grinning, then his gaze stayed on her. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his lips compressed into a frown. “Are you okay?”
She was so relieved, giddy even, that the helicopter was working—and that he seemed to be keeping his word. She was also immersed in the struggle to not throw up, so for a moment his question didn’t register.
“Pretty green,” she said, seeing no point in lying.
“Sorry about that. I had to make sure—”
“It’s fine,” she said, cutting him off. Needing to concentrate on his voice made the nausea worse. Ahead of them to the south, the colors of Mount Hood seemed smudged by the veil of clouds that had drifted across it.
Victor said, “No more fancy stuff. You’ll be on the ground before you know it.”
“Thank God.”
He laughed. She struggled to tease out the tone of his voice and was startled when she realized it was sympathy. Even more surprising, it made her dislike him a tiny bit less, which made her uncomfortable. She knew she had to adjust her attitude about him, but she hadn’t considered that she might actually be wrong. Maybe he really did want to make a fresh start. Maybe he hadn’t always been a creep. Or maybe this generous impulse on her part was due to the lack of swooping and dipping.
The ground beneath them sped past, and soon they were following the line of the Columbia River. Even though conifer trees were more predominant in Oregon, there were a lot of deciduous trees, too. Miranda admired the yellows and reds of their turning leaves. Mount Hood grew larger, and she tried to figure out how far up the mountain the bunker was.
“How are you going to find the helipad again?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. She had no idea where it was, or how one navigated in a helicopter.
He must have heard the concern in her voice, for he said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got the coord—” He stopped talking, then said, “On the ground ahead, your one o’clock. Doesn’t look good.”
Where Victor had indicated, the land nudged the river into a northward bend. The bend was over a mile long before the river wound south again, with a ragged-edged sandy beach between the water and the forest. The beach was deep, a quarter mile in some places, the trees held in abeyance by the inhospitable sand. Hundreds of zombies spilled out from the trees, tumbling onto the beach, already halfway to the river. A group of people—twenty, maybe more—huddled on the sandy riverbank.
The helicopter began to descend.
“What are you doing?”
“Landing,” Victor said, as if it were self-evident. “We have to get them.”
On the beach, some of the trapped people had formed a fan-shaped perimeter around the rest of their group, the fighters, the strongest of them, attempting to defend the rest in a doomed last stand.
She knew they had to help, but she could see it playing out in her mind’s eye like a movie—too many people rushing them, climbing on board, weighing them down. Zombies latching on to the skids as they tried to lift off, the added weight tipping them sideways. Rotors chopping into the sand before smashing, jagged pieces of the blades hurtling across the beach. The moans and snarls and hisses as the undead overwhelmed them. If the helicopter didn’t crash, they might get away. They might reach the river and swim to safety, like the people down there should be doing. But they might not, and then she’d never get home. She’d never see Mario again, never make things right. Never know what happened to Father Walter and Doug and the rest of her friends. Never coax Kendall out of his bunker and into the world. Never know if the Portland vaccine would end the ruthless reign of the Council.
“We can’t risk the helicopter,” she said.
“There are people down there,” Victor said, sounding aghast at her unstated suggestion that they leave the people stranded below to their fate.
“What if there’s too many and we can’t lift off?”
“You do what I say when we land,” Victor said. Even through the mild distortion of the headset, his tone brooked no argument. “Now shut up.”
She bit her lip to keep from saying something stupid. She knew he was right, and she knew that if he listened to her, she’d hate herself for it. But the idea of it ending here, with all the damage she’d done never healed, was almost too much to bear. She was ashamed of how much she wanted to keep going, to turn away rather than risk it.
The people on the beach had noticed them. Those near the water’s edge jumped up and down, waving their arms frantically. Some of those on the firing line did, too, but more stayed facing the horde. They flew low over the river now, and Miranda thought Victor would go straight for the people. Instead, they dropped even lower and flew to the zombies.
Zombies didn’t have good balance at the best of times. But now, with the rotor wash pounding down, they toppled like pieces of straw. They banked left, making another pass. As they flew by, she saw some of the people on the beach had been knocked down, too. They made a final pass, but this time they didn’t overshoot the huddled group waiting for them. Slowly, the helicopter descended. Even though most of the
m were struggling on the ground to get back to their feet, Miranda’s breath caught in her throat when she saw how close the leading edge of the horde was. She could distinguish faces as the zombies crawled and lurched to their feet.
When the skids hit the ground, Victor started flipping switches. Then he leaped from his seat, shouting for her to follow. She scrambled after him, not taking her helmet off since Victor hadn’t taken off his. He stood at the side door just behind the cockpit. He had opened a box near the top of the mounted gun in the door and was feeding a bandolier of .50 caliber shells into it. He pointed at the tail of the helicopter.
“We can’t open the ramp because of the rear gun.” She nodded. The gun in the center at the back of the helicopter was huge. He pointed at the door almost directly across from them. “Open that door and get them inside.”
He slammed the lid on the gun shut and got behind it. It erupted in a staccato barrage of gunfire. The bullets blew off legs, vaporized heads, cut down swaths of the coming horde, many with enough damage that they couldn’t get up. They still dragged or rolled, writhing toward the noise of the helicopter. And still, behind them, the endless waves of zombies spilled out from the trees, but now the horde’s attention was on the roar of the helicopter. A primal jolt of fear ripped through Miranda’s core as they turned and adjusted course, almost as one organism.
She tore herself away and opened the door, struggling with the handle for what felt like a year. She shoved the door open, thinking she was ready for the rotor wash as she jumped out, but it pushed her hard against the body of the helicopter. She bent her knees, steadying herself. Sand and grit pinged off her helmet and visor. The people were already running toward the helicopter, dragging others along. Their hair swirled wildly, eyes squinted almost shut.
“Jesus,” she gasped.
The ones who’d been behind the line of defenders were mostly children. The older children ran alongside the adults. She didn’t need to encourage anyone inside, though she boosted many of them up. She took children from the adults carrying them and shoved them through the door while the adults ran back to help others. She scanned the beach but the last person, a dirty, bedraggled woman, was beside her.