He placed his hand on the knob and was about to turn it and see if it was unlocked when he felt tension and snapped his hand fully closed around it.
They were trying the doors to see if any were unlocked as he had.
“It’s locked,” the Third voice said.
“Are you sure?” The First voice asked.
“Yes. I’m pretty damn sure I know how to tell if a door is unlocked or not,” the Third voice stated in defense. “What if the flight crew from that aircraft we heard earlier is in one of these damn hangers? What then?”
“I don’t know,” the First voice replied.
“Jesus Christ, you don’t know?” The Third voice said almost breaking the whisper rule. “These guys could have automatic weapons, and if that’s the case, then we might as well have squirt guns, because it’s going to go straight to hell the moment they see us.”
Man one quickly hissed. “Will you shut up, no it’s not.”
“He’s got a point, man.” The Second man stated. “We have a hunting rifle, a twenty-two pistol, and a damn knife. What good is that against machine guns and a dozen or so soldiers?”
Johnny felt the fear rising in his stomach. He held the door locked with his left hand and the revolver in his right, giving him no time to react if someone were to enter through the rear of the hanger. He was in a really bad spot, but could do nothing about it. They didn’t know he was so close to them, yet still he was at their mercy.
“What about a backdoor?” Man Two asked. “There has to be another way in these damn things other than out here in the open?”
Johnny felt he had at least one of them zeroed in and if he shot that would be one less person to deal with. The other two, and the possibles that could be already at the backdoor, kept him from pulling the trigger though.
“No, it’s too close to the highway and if someone were to drive by they would see us,” Man One replied.
“And standing out here with our pants around our ankles is not a good idea either,” Man Two commented snidely.
Johnny felt the tension on the door knob release, although he kept his own tension on it in case they tried once more. The door was narrow and if they were to somehow get it open, they would be in a single file line to get in and he could start shooting. The odds of him missing several targets at such a short distance was low and quickly diminishing their numbers meant greater safety for him and Kember. Plus the heavy round of the 357 magnum was sure to be a crowd stopper, especially with them in a single file line coming through the door. One bullet could easily enter one target, exit and enter another, which meant he might not have to fire more than two rounds at most. That gave him a slight sense of relief.
The shadows at the bottom of the large door became active and Johnny watched them, one by one, start to glide away. He followed with the gun until he caught something out of the corner of his eye and shifted his head swiftly in its direction to see Kember standing near the bottom part of the stairs holding a juice box. She watched him closely as she sipped the juice through the narrow straw, just standing there.
He shot his gaze back to the gap at the floor and could still see the shadows moving slowly from left to right. If Kember made even the slightest sound, they could hear her and would know for certain there were others within the hanger. He placed a finger to his lips hoping she would somehow understand what he meant, but fearing the obvious at the same time.
A rumble of low thunder cut across the sky as she dropped her juice box, startled by the abrupt noise, and it hit the stairs and tumbled downward in sync with the ambient storm noises, coming to rest on the slick concrete floor just seconds before the noise dissipated.
Had they heard it?
Johnny’s mind questioned.
Lightning cast the midnight hours into sudden and brilliant daylight, leapt across the sky in a very erratic pattern, and then simply disappeared taking the white hot illusion of day with it. More thunder followed. Kember was on the move. Fear plastered her face and she was headed straight for Johnny. He was positive at any moment she would cry out and he would have to start shooting, forcing more traumas upon her.
Two of the shadows continued as one of them, the rear man stopped. Johnny grasp the revolver with both hands, readying himself for the massive recoil that would surely come at any moment.
“Hold up,” the Last man said quickly.
“What are you doing?” Man one asked.
The Last Man stood there in silence for a few harrowing seconds, his eyes searching the area as if he were looking for something in particular.
“What?” man one asked once more, the anger in his voice was becoming evident.
In a whisper that made it hard for One and Two to hear legibly, he answered. “I thought I heard something.”
Johnny shot his eyes back to Kember to see she was no longer on the stairs, but what was now making her way toward the chopper. Her curly blonde hair bounced as she lumbered quickly forward, a toddler smile crested upon her face to which at any moment she could laugh out loud or giggle. They would then know the hanger was occupied and if there were more than three of them, then they would initiate an attack. What use would a two year old little girl serve a small band of evil men? None, unless they were a bunch of perverted nutjobs like that professor at the school had been.
Humanity, even at its darkest, back when the world was as right as could be, always had its shortcomings. However, laws were what governed us and kept those sick bastards out of the light of day. All that was gone now. There was no one to enforce such laws. No one to oversee the punishment for those caught performing such crude acts upon the innocence of others. There was no one to keep the boogeymen from coming out at night.
All it would take was the single, purely innocent laugh of a little girl to send them all straight to the never-ending flames of hell in the blink of an eye.
Johnny knew she would make noise. She was a two year old after all. It’s what they did unless they were sleeping.
“Are you sure this time?” Man one asked.
“Yes, I’m sure,” the Last Man said. “I know what a fucking noise is.”
“Where did it come from?” Man one asked further.
There was a brief and excruciating moment of silence that Johnny could feel running down his spine like razor blades, cutting deep into his soft flesh, tearing and cutting its way into him until he thought he could take no more and would simply drop dead. The foreign voices stopped the unrelenting pain as quickly as the silence had started it.
“I’m not sure,” the Last Man stated. “It had to be close by though.”
“Which direction did it come from?”
The Last Man wasn’t sure of that question, as it had happened so fast he never really got a chance to register where it had come from, only that it had been close. He shrugged his shoulders and Man One shook his head with an angered look held upon his face.
“There’s a million other things out here with us,” he stated coldly. “It could have been a small animal and it could have come from anywhere. We don’t have time for this shit, now come on before we are spotted by more of those things.”
Johnny watched the third shadow catch up to the other two and slowly they slipped away. He looked to see Kember trying to climb into the chopper and he moved over to her, lifted her into the pilot seat and placed the revolver back in his waist. That had been too close for comfort and he could have easily taken it out on the toddler, but it wasn’t her fault. None of this was. She wasn’t the one that had thrust the world into hell any more than she had control over what survivors chose to do when they encountered others. She was pure innocence and as her father would have done, he’d die to ensure that she survived. Her smile and undying wonder of the world around her gave him hope. It had become his driving force, and that made her powerful.
He watched with a smile forming as she pushed and yanked on the flight stick, intrigued that the device in her hand would always go back to a neutral position each time she let go. She yank it hard toward her and let go, watching it return to its normal position as she laughed.
“You may be the death of me someday… but I give you my word that no one will ever hurt you. No one!” He told her.
She looked at Johnny and made a funny face before trying to peer into the rear of the aircraft, glanced from left to right, and then returned her gaze to Johnny. “Daddy?” She said and pulled her arms up, as though she didn’t know where he was and wanted him to help her find him.
“He’s not here, baby girl…” His words swiftly died away as he didn’t know how to tell her what had happened. He didn’t know how to make a toddler understand anything, let alone something as massive as this. It would be years before she could grasp something as serious as what took place at the school complex, and even then, if they survived that long, he still wasn’t sure he could tell her. How would he tell a Kember that her daddy had died making sure they could escape unharmed?
That wouldn’t be easy.
The rain started to fall heavier and with daylight just around the corner, Johnny thought it best to try and get some sleep while they could. He checked both the front and rear door of the hanger and made sure they were both locked tightly before picking Kember up and heading up into the lounge area. They lay there together listening to the rain while Kember played with a small doll, quickly losing interest and being actively sought after by sleep. Johnny followed soon after her, but knew he wouldn’t sleep as well as he could. There were still three threats that he knew about in the vicinity, which made resting more difficult, and then there were the thoughts of Brandon and the sacrifice he had made to save them both.
How am I going to raise this little girl and give her the best life possible?
He thought as he lay there beside her watching her sleep peacefully. That would be something that followed him from that day forward. She frightened Johnny more than those things did, as he was used to taking care of himself. Now he had a child that need constant input and round the clock care.
Sleep was not going to find him tonight.
The three strangers had taken up residency in the lounge area at the base of the air traffic tower unaware that they were in such close proximity to other survivors. They made themselves at home by robbing the small fridge of any drinks and food they could find. Set up their beds on a few couches and even moved a television from the next room into their own. They lie there enjoying the things they had found, flipping through the channels in hopes of finding something to watch, but all their efforts were in vain. There had been nothing on to watch for days, as our preparedness for something of this proportion and so wide scale had taken us by surprise. Radio and television stations were offline and for the most part, the only real reason we still had electricity was because several of the men that maintained these sights had boarded themselves in and were stuck there.
Their sacrifices had given the rest of us a sliver of hope, and if it wasn’t hope, then at least we had air conditioning and fridges to keep what little amount of supplies we had scrounged good for twice as long as they would have lasted without the power. Even in the midst of hell on earth, we were still granted a few of the comforts to push forward and hope for a better tomorrow. But not all of us were content with just surviving and being thankful for where we were… there were large numbers that wanted more and would take what they wanted with force and a smile. The end of the world hadn’t brought us closer together as many would like to have thought. If anything, it had pushed us all past our breaking points and the true colors we hid from the rest of the world were set loose.
And the world had always been full of bad people. Now there were even more and they understood what needed to be done in order to live another day. Less people meant more supplies for them – a logic that could neither be swayed nor reasoned with.
I lay there in the wardrobe listening to the falling rain and looking at several pictures I had pulled from my wallet. A nearby street lamp gave just enough light for me to make out the faces in the pictures and I rubbed my thumb over them, as if by some weird chance I would get the ability to feel their faces once more. It was brutal and I had no idea why I kept torturing myself like that, but it beat my mind openly thinking about them and what had happened to them, so in essence, just looking at and remembering them was far better than thinking about and knowing the truth, I guessed.
I needed to sleep. I was tired as hell, although every time I tried to close my eyes and fall asleep, I would hear something and quickly open them expecting to see the Guards standing over me, or worse, the undead shuffling in after me. Fear was the only emotion that had remained and it was powerful. No factor in being all alone and knowing there is no one to come and save you if you screwed up, and then on top of that, imagine what it would be like knowing everyone you had ever loved was either dead or now actively seeking you out behind lifeless eyes.
The wardrobe I had turned into a bed had been pulled from the far wall and toppled over. The doors were open and swung outward, yet could be pulled shut in a moment’s notice if I heard a distinct sound of danger closing in on me. I had showered the bedroom with papers, clothes, bed linins, and anything else I could locate in order to make the toppled wardrobe not seem so obvious if an unsuspecting visitor chose to climb the stairs and pilfer around the house I was using as a hideout.