Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) (6 page)

“That there’s fuel here, probably more than we’d get at the airfield. There’s weapons, too,” he added rapping his knuckles against the case.

Helena glanced down and then jumped up. “Explosives! You’re sitting on a crate of explosives!”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like a dangerous thing to do these days.”

“What’s wrong? Are you wondering how you’ll find Farley?”

“No. Not quite. So we drive to the airfield, but then what? I’d hoped that I could enlist the military personnel there into helping find this base that Powell used, but is that realistic? Yesterday, we managed to drive for less than an hour before being forced to abandon the vehicle. Why should today or tomorrow be any different? I had half an idea that one of those planes might spot their base from the air, but how? What exactly would I be looking for? We’ve spent the better part of a week driving and walking in Pennsylvania, and we know we can’t be more than a hundred miles from where Powell came from, but we’ve not found him. Realistically, are we going to? And what if Powell came from an airstrip? What if the reason he drove that BearCat to abduct Ayers, and to the motel, was because that was the only vehicle by the landing pad? Farley might have been there, but what if he’s gone?”

“Okay.” She sat down again. “So what are the alternatives? Go back to that town, try to get them to help?”

“I don’t know. Farley has to be stopped. Did I do all I could to stop him? No, that’s the truth, and this is the result. We’re dying. The nation, the world, our species. Person by person, day by day, we’re using up the supplies that are left. Soon they’ll be gone, and soon after that, so will we.”

“Self-pity’s a luxury we don’t have time for,” she said. “If you want to hold yourself responsible for the outbreak, and for the cabal, fine. It doesn’t change what happened, or where we are. None of us get the future we want, but the one in front of us is a choice between giving up or going on, just as it’s always been. But the choice immediately in front of us is to continue to the airfield, or go back to that town and tell them that whoever was here last night has gone. Personally, I’d say the airfield because it’s odd that those people didn’t know that the military had left this place.”

“Maybe they did, and just wanted to push the problem further down the road.”

“Right, so you’re voting for the airfield, too? Good. Even if the planes are gone, maybe there’s some other people, or at least a proper bed and some decent food. We can get a few hours’ rest and—” She stopped.

Tom had heard it, too. He stood. The sound came from the nearest tent at the base of the off-ramp. The flaps were closed, though he now wondered if sealed would be a more accurate description. The walls bulged as if someone was trying to push through them. He raised the rifle. The canvas undulated as the bulge moved toward the doors.

“Shout something,” he said. “We need to know it’s undead.”

“Hello!” Helena called. The material tore with a rip that seemed louder than her uncertain yell. A head appeared. Even from that distance, Tom knew it was dead. Tattered skin hung from ragged muscle on a face missing nose, lips, and cheeks. He fired. The shot set off a cacophony as birds erupted from nearby trees. Beating wings drowned out the sound of the tent collapsing as the twice-dead creature disappeared from view.

“Ugh!” Helena shuddered. “Feel better? Because I don’t.” She picked up the fuel can. “And I won’t until we’re at least a hundred miles from—”

The sound came again. It was the same as before; the whispering of cloth, the expulsion of rank air from dead lungs, the snapping of metal supports as the tents collapsed. And it was tents, plural. Unlike before, this wasn’t just one solitary creature. The sound came from every tent as hundreds of undead limbs pushed and tore their way out into the daylight. Tom shifted the rifle from target to target, but there were too many.

“We need to go,” he said, but Helena was already halfway toward the row of vehicles. Tom backed away, unable to tear his eyes from the zombies bursting from the collapsing tents. Some wore uniforms, but most didn’t. The young, the old, men, women, and children, they turned their sightless toward him.

“No keys! No keys! No keys!” Helena yelled. The words cut through the horror. He turned and ran. She was dashing between the vehicles, trying car doors, peering at the ignition on the motorbikes.

“This one,” she said. Gasoline spilled around its tires as she sloshed fuel into a bike’s tank.

“Slow down. We’ve got time,” Tom said, forcing calm into his voice. “There are too many to fight, but they move slow.”

She gritted her teeth, but poured more slowly, until the fuel can was empty. “Now can we go?”

He climbed on behind her. “Drive slowly,” he said. “We can lure the zombies away from that town.”

Even as he said it, he knew how futile it was. They might draw some of the zombies away, but not all, and there had to be thousands in those tents. If the people in that town legitimately believed that a military evacuation center existed five miles from them, then someone would come and look. They would drive to the highway, see the zombies, and drive back. The zombies would follow. Luring a few away was a gesture, and nothing more, yet it was all they could do.

After a mile, Helena began to ease the throttle. The bike sped up. Tom didn’t stop her.

Chapter 4 - Airlift

Mifflin County, Pennsylvania

They were only a few miles from the airfield when they ran out of fuel. Tom knew it was only a few miles by the twin-engine jet that soared up into the sky at the same time as the motorbike’s engine died. Tom squinted at the plane as it banked to the west. He’d seen that make of aircraft at a dozen regional airports over the years, but couldn’t even guess at its capacity. All that mattered now was that it was lost to the skies.

“Looks like we’ve missed our flight,” Helena said, giving the throttle another twist.

Tom climbed off the bike and gave the tires a vindictive kick. “At least it’s not far to the airfield. Julio said he’d leave some fuel for us, and he’s a stubbornly reliable man.”

“But we can’t rest there,” she said. As one, they both found themselves looking back the way they’d come.

The road was deserted, but they’d passed a small pack of the undead barely ten miles before. Those lumpen creatures had been squatting motionless outside a burned-out store. He could only guess at what had once been sold there, but the zombies had been woken by the sound of the motorbike’s passing. The sound of the jet engines would be another siren, luring them in this direction.

“The airfield can’t be far,” Tom said, unslinging his rifle. He started walking.

Another plane emerged above the trees. This was a prop that fought valiantly to get into the sky. It jerked up, and dropped down, disappearing behind a clump of red pines. Tom expected an explosion, but instead the plane reared up, clearing the trees. He raised a hand in greeting as it buzzed a wide circle, coming close to where they stood. The wings didn’t waggle, so perhaps the pilot hadn’t seen them. Or perhaps it was too great an effort keeping the cumbersome craft in the air to waste time on such niceties.

“Where are the fighter planes?” Helena asked, when the plane was nothing but a swiftly receding speck.

“Already gone, or being saved for last,” he said. “There’s only one very short runway.”

“But if the planes are still taking off, then there are people still at the airfield, right?”

He didn’t reply, but started walking more quickly. Soon, they were both jogging along the road. The jog had almost turned into a run when a background sound resolved into gunfire.

The airfield was attached to a farm. If flying was Julio’s passion, farming was his tradition. Circumstance might prevent him from ever returning to his ancestral home, but the small farm allowed him to stay spiritually connected to the soil. Not quite a ranch, yet too well managed to be called a hobby, it occupied fifty acres north of the airfield. The livestock were gone.

Another overloaded plane staggered into the sky.

They jogged past the fields. The stubby control tower got larger far too slowly. Ahead lay a barn that dwarfed the single-level house. With his family thinking him dead, Julio had always said it was larger than he needed. Beyond the house was the double-height chain-link fence separating the airfield from the farm. Access to the airfield was through a gate two hundred yards further down the road. Barrels, tables, and other easily moved furniture added weight to the trucks parked in front of it. Compared to the barricade at the town they’d seen earlier that day, it was truly a flimsy construct. It could have been made of cement and steel and it wouldn’t have mattered. The chain-link fence was broken in three places that he could see. No doubt it was breached in other places currently out of sight.

“Cars or trucks,” Helena said. “Must have driven right through the fence, trying to get to the airfield.”

The zombies had followed. There were some on the road, heading in the direction of the breached fence. The gunfire spoke of more creatures already inside. The fusillade was continuous; however, the volume of fire was slackening.

“There’s a dozen zombies outside the front gate,” Helena said.

“No vehicles in the farmhouse,” Tom said. “Might be some on the airfield.”

There was a sound of an explosion. A grenade, he thought.

“What about those trucks by the gate?” Helena suggested. “They might work.”

“Assuming they weren’t disabled in an attempt to make the barricade more formidable.” But they weren’t going to get on the airfield, and there was nothing for them the way they’d come. “No, there are no good choices. Let’s try for those trucks.”

His feet were reluctant to run. They seemed to understand what his brain refused to accept: it was futile. There were over a dozen zombies by the gate, and four more on the road between them and it. At any moment the gunfire could stop as the last remaining people at the airfield boarded a plane. The zombies would follow the sound of its engine, traipsing back out onto the road, and so right into Helena and him. There truly were no other choices. He slung the rifle and pulled out the machete, his eyes never leaving the nearest zombie on the road.

“This reminds me of a story,” he said.

“What?” Helena asked.

The zombie was only forty yards away. Dressed more smartly than most undead he’d seen, it looked as if its left leg was injured. With each faltering step, it seemed like it would topple, yet it remained upright, dragging its wounded limb behind it.

“A story,” Tom said, hefting the machete. It had been a noticeable weight on his belt, getting more burdensome with each step. Now it seemed flimsy and inadequate, but a shot might attract the attention of the zombies further down the road. “It was something Vice President Carpenter told me about the time when he was a general, working as a peacekeeper.”

“This isn’t the time, Tom,” Helena said.

“The punch line,” Tom said, “is that when there are no good choices left, you keep on going as hard and fast as you can.”

General Carpenter’s story had involved an armored convoy, ambushed by a rebellious faction that refused to obey a cease-fire. They’d been on a road that ran through a valley. Armed with decades-old equipment, the rebels wouldn’t have stood a chance against the American convoy in a stand-up fight, but they had been dug in on the high ground. The convoy had got through. The other punch line, the one that had come a long silence later, was illustrated with three photographs. They’d showed the bullet holes and shrapnel scars on the vehicles. On the back of each picture, the general had written the names of the dead. The vehicles had been retrofitted, reinforced against an EMP at the expense of armor that would protect from small arms and IEDs. The story had been told as a way for the general to illustrate that if he was to join the ticket, he wanted structural reform of military procurement. That part of the story, Tom kept to himself.

He raised the machete, focusing on what he would have to do. Swing up, swing down, move on to the next. The zombie’s head bobbed with each limping step, twisting its face in a macabre mockery of human exertion. Its hair was matted with mud and worse. Its chest was stained dark, but there were flecks of white paint on its once-polished shoes.

There was the buzzing whine of an engine. The zombie jerked upright. Its arms flew up and almost around in a circle as it turned its head toward the airfield. The engine-whine grew louder. Tom spared a quick glance. He couldn’t see the plane, but he could see a score of the undead lurching between the buildings that shielded the runway from view. The whine turned to a roar, and Tom turned back to the zombie in front. Suddenly, there was a massive explosion. He staggered sideways. Flames licked upward from the airfield, along with a dense, choking cloud.

Helena grabbed his arm, pulling him upright. “The fuel store,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question, nor a statement, but she needed to say no more.

“The gunfire,” he replied. It had all but stopped. Though he couldn’t see the runway, he knew it must now be strewn with rubble. Whatever fighter jets or other aircraft remained, even if they remained undamaged, none would take off from here. The trucks by the gate took on a new meaning. They represented escape not just for him, but for whoever was left alive inside. A scarce resource they might now have to fight over.

With the sound of plinking, cracking metal to their left, they ran on. The limping zombie had been knocked from its feet by the blast. Its arms flailed as they drew near. Tom kicked its hands clear. There wasn’t time to kill it. The zombies further down the road had seen him and Helena, and were drifting toward them. The nearest was only ten feet away. Still running, he raised the machete, swinging it down on the zombie’s skull. The force of the blow split bone and brought Tom to a staggering halt. The blade was stuck. He stamped down on the creature to free it. There was a shot. A zombie fifteen feet from him spun backward. Helena stood, legs braced, carefully aiming. She fired again. The zombie collapsed, but Tom saw what she hadn’t. Inside the chain-link fence, shadowy figures staggered through the smoke.

“Move!” he yelled. The zombie she’d shot was back on its feet, brown-red gore dripping from the wound in its shoulder. He ran forward, hacking the machete into its leg. It sliced through muscle. He drew the blade back as the zombie fell, and swung it down onto its head.

Helena fired again, a head shot that meant only the zombies by the gates, and those staggering across the airfield, were left.

“Only?” he muttered, hooking the machete back onto his belt. He unslung the rifle.

“The road beyond the trucks looks clear,” he said as Helena drew level. He aimed. Fired. Aimed. Fired, and with each shot he took a step toward the zombies. Helena was firing, too. Part of him wanted to tell her to save her ammunition. A larger part wanted to tell her to run, to save herself, but distance didn’t offer salvation, not here, not now. Alone, together, on foot or on wheels, nowhere was safe.

When the magazine was empty, there were only two zombies left. He reloaded, but slung the rifle. He had two magazines left, and they would need those if they were to see the sunset. Before he could draw the machete, Helena fired, unloading her pistol into the nearest. At least one of the half-dozen shots hit its skull, but that left the last creature. With no mud stains, or rips in its clothing, and no obvious wounds or bandages, it was only its slack-skinned rictus that showed it was dead. Tom hacked through its clawing hands. He kicked out at its knee. It staggered. He swung down, the blade smashing through its temple. It fell, taking the machete with it. He gave a tug, but it was stuck fast. Before he could pull it out, he saw the trucks, and realized what a fool’s refuge it was.

The air had been let out of the tires. Cement had been poured on a mess of wood and metal in front of the vehicles. There was no escape there.

“One magazine left,” Helena said.

“We need to keep walking,” he said, gesturing down the road. “There’s too many zombies here to look for any supplies Julio’s left. We have to keep moving.”

“Yeah. Keep moving. Always moving. Wait, do you hear that?”

It was an engine, coming from inside the pall of choking fumes. It wasn’t a plane, but something far larger than a pickup. A fire truck appeared out of the smoke, heading straight for them. The padlock went flying, and the gate burst apart as the vehicle slammed into it the barricade. Tom leaped aside, but the truck had slowed. There was a grinding of gears, a scraping of metal, a spinning of wheels. The barricade didn’t move.

“That way!” Helena yelled at the driver, pointing toward the nearest breach in the chain-link fence. “The fence is broken! Twenty-five yards. Drive that way.”

The woman behind the wheel nodded. The truck reversed. Helena started to move. Tom grabbed her arm.

“Wait. Wait to see which way it goes.” It might head for a different breach, and that truck represented the only way they were going to escape. The truck sped backward. There was a trio of dull, meaty thuds as it hit unseen ambulatory death, and then it changed direction.

“Come on!” Tom yelled, running along the fence, parallel to the truck.

They reached the breach, but eight zombies had got there first. They were staggering out from the airfield, toward the road. He raised the rifle, firing without aiming, downing four before the truck appeared out of the smoke. It smashed into the remaining creatures, dragging them beneath its wheels. The truck swerved onto the road, and almost into the ditch on the other side. There was a hiss of brakes, a roar from the engine, and it drove off.

“It didn’t stop,” Helena hissed.

The truck had crushed the legs of one of the zombies, but the creature wasn’t dead. It raised an arm. Tom fired a quick shot into its head.

“It didn’t—” Helena began. “It did! It’s stopped.”

They ran.

They undead were tumbling out of the airfield, through the now-broken gate, and out of the gaps in the fence. Some wore uniforms, some didn’t, and many looked recently alive.

Helena reached the truck first. Tom had only one foot on the running board and one hand on the guide-bar before the truck started moving again, accelerating away from the airfield.