9.0 - Sanctum (7 page)

When the Texas A&M campus came into view, Martin turned the helicopter in a wide, clockwise circle so we could get a look at what we were getting ourselves into.  I got out of my seat and stepped carefully through the narrow space in front of a forward-facing row of jump seats across the helicopter’s main bay.  I looked over Murphy’s shoulder, out the window.  Murphy had both hands on his machine gun, ready to fire.  Everything new required caution.  That’s just the way the world worked.

“What do you think?” Martin asked over the intercom.

“Looks like every place else,” Murphy answered.

“We’re about fifteen hundred feet,” said Martin.  “You want me to take it down some?”

“Yeah.”  I didn’t think we were going to see anything we needed from so high.

As we descended, the world below clarified into shit again.  Disappointment festered through hopes I hadn’t realized I’d been fostering until they started to fracture.  When Fritz talked about what his group had done in College Station I’d created a picture in my mind, unrealistic for sure, an idyllic oasis, a remnant of the old world surrounded by a tall-enough, tough-enough barrier to keep the grotesque savagery of the new world out.

And why the fuck does it hurt when hopes shatter? Isn’t the world full of enough pain over real things, like when our loved ones die?

All I saw was the evidence of death, and it was depressing.  It gave the impression that nothing below was alive except for the Whites who moved in their helices and gangs.  Some hunted individually and in small groups with no organization.  They all looked up, though, when they heard the sound of the Black Hawk.  Though it wasn’t likely any of them had heard the sound of an engine or seen a moving vehicle on the ground or in the air for months, their snail brains still remembered the smorgasbord from those first days and weeks, when cars were everywhere, full of fleeing food.  In those days, a White barely needed to do anything to feed except wait by a road for a car to come to a stop.  Then it was only a matter of breaking the glass or taking advantage of humans’ bad choices to get out of their cars.

As Martin drew the Black Hawk into tighter circles around the campus, Murphy pointed and said, “You see what I’m seeing?”

“Yeah.” 

The density of remains got thicker and thicker near the western corner of the campus, and the flowery pattern of death seemed to be centered on a cluster of buildings.

Martin's voice crackled over the intercom.  "Tell me where to go, fellas."

Murphy pointed to the carnage around the buildings at the western corner of the campus.  “If they’re here, that’s got to be where.”

“Can we go lower?” I asked into the intercom.

“We can go all the way down to the ground,” Martin laughed.

Rolling my eyes for no one to see, I said, “You
know
what I mean.”

“Somewhat.”  He asked, “How low do you want to go?”

“Low enough to tell what kind of cars are parked down there?”

Martin laughed.

Murphy turned and looked at me.

I pointed at the ground.  “If the Mustang is down there, then we’re in the right place.  Right?”

Martin said, “I could drop down to about five hundred feet.”

Murphy turned back to his window and resituated himself in front of his machine gun.

I put a hand on a bulkhead and leaned forward.

“You’re crowding me, man.”  Murphy shouldered me over a bit.  “Why don’t you go back to your side?”

“Everything is on this side of the helicopter.”

Martin said, “The copilot seat is empty.”

I leaned away from Murphy and seated myself in one of the four jump seats facing forward.  Looking to my right gave me a view out the same side of the aircraft as Murphy.  It also left me feeling unnerved to have floor to ceiling open doorways to my left and right, because of the angle of the Black Hawk, one showing nothing but sky and the other ground.  It didn’t help that Martin was descending, leaving my feet feeling a little light, with a little less friction under my soles than I preferred.

I grabbed the frame of the jump seat tightly as I watched the ground.

Martin turned the Black Hawk into a tighter circle and the helicopter banked more steeply. 

With growing worry that I’d slip right out the side, I’d have gotten myself strapped in, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go of anything.  “This is more exhilarating than I thought it would be.”

Murphy chuckled, telling Martin, "He's afraid he's going to fall out."

Martin laughed and angled the helicopter into another steeply banking turn.

“Asshole!”  I yelled.  “Why don’t you just hover?”

Martin leveled out and straightened it up again.  “Sorry.  Couldn’t help myself.”

“I think I see it,” said Murphy.

“It?” Martin asked.

“The car.  The Mustang,” Murphy clarified.  “Look, Zed.  Down there by the four-story building.”

I scanned below.  “The one with the solar panels all over the roof?”

"Yeah, back at the corner in the parking lot.  By that loading dock.  I think it's attached to a cable.  I think they're charging it."

“That your Mustang?” Martin asked as he found a spot in the air to hold the Black Hawk steady for a moment.

“Black with green stripes,” Murphy confirmed.

“You see the roof of the building?” I asked.

“The solar panels are all fucked up,” said Murphy.

“Look again.”

“Oh.”

"Oh, what?” Martin asked.

“Whites,” I told him.  “On the roof.”

“Take us in closer,” I ordered.  With Whites on the building that I assumed Grace, Jazz, Fritz, and Gabe were in, I felt guilt.  Grace and Jazz wouldn’t have come to College Station if they’d never met me and Murphy.  Fritz and Gabe would have anyway.  Now they were all down there somewhere, in trouble, or dead.  I forgot about my fear of slipping out the side of the helicopter, got to my feet, and took a few steps over to lean into the cockpit.

As I moved behind him, Murphy said, “Hold on there, cowboy.”  He was probably guessing I had bad ideas in mind.

I patted Martin on the arm, careful not to touch any of the knobs and dials on the wide console between the pilot and copilot seats.  “Get us down close.  I want to see inside the windows.”

Shaking his head, Martin said, “So things here aren’t what those guys said they would be.”

“Things go to shit,” I told him.  “You know that.”

“What’s the plan?” he asked.  “What are we looking for?”

“Our friends.”  I straightened up and turned to look over Murphy’s shoulder out the window.

Over the intercom, Murphy muttered, “Null Spot rides again.”

At a hundred feet off the ground and just thirty or forty feet higher than the top of the building with the solar panels, Martin piloted the Black Hawk in a tight, slow circle around the building, giving us views of all sides.  The Whites on top of the roof crowded the edges, following us around, trying to reach toward the sky and grab across an impossible distance, yelling their frustration through angry faces and bared teeth.  More and more came out of the stairway and onto the roof. 

I struggled to get the microphone on my headset positioned.  “Lower,” I told Martin.

“No.”

“What? Take us closer.”  I let my anger over Martin’s response show.

“No,” he replied.  “Too many hazards flying that low with so many buildings around.”

I started to say something and Murphy elbowed me hard in the ribs as he covered the mic with his other hand.  “Chill, dude.  Let Martin do his job.  He’s the pilot.  All you know about flying in helicopters is what you learned playing video games.”

Murphy was right.  I tried not to sulk. 

“You can see all you need to see from here,” Martin added.

I scanned the grounds as we circled.  Naked Whites were all over the place, coming out of buildings, out from behind bushes, out of broken-down cars.  The loud whup-whup-whup of the rotors was getting the attention of every White around the campus.  “You think that’s the naked horde, some of the ones who disappeared from Fort Hood?”

“That’s not the whole horde, or at least all that’s left of it, but there’s a lot of them down there.”  Murphy pointed at a lawn in the direction of the campus center.  Several hundred naked Whites were running in our direction.

“Why’d they come back here?” I asked, as much of myself as anyone.

“They scattered in every direction after the battle,” said Murphy.

A mob of Whites was starting to run a circle on the ground to match the one we were making in the air.  On brown grass between the buildings in every direction, Whites wound their way toward us.

All around the base of the building, I noticed fortifications.  The building across the street, the Veterinary Sciences Building—it said so on a big sign—was similarly fortified.  Several nearby structures also showed signs of fortification, though to a lesser degree.  In and amongst the buildings were strewn the remains, both old and fresh bodies.  These had to be the buildings where Fritz’s people had built their home and from where they protected the sequestered scientists who were working to bring hope back to the world.

And now Whites were everywhere, and I couldn’t help but conclude that had I not led the naked horde into battle with the Survivor Army, had I not assassinated their leadership, then maybe the horde would have kept heading north toward Dallas and hiked themselves onto my list of yesterday’s problems.  Instead, the horde had dispersed, and thousands of them were down below on the campus with plenty of Smart Ones among them.  And they’d done what they were best at doing, they’d found the normal humans, and they’d overwhelmed their defenses.

Over the noise of the helicopter’s rotors, the Harpy’s voice cackled as she insisted that it was my fault.

Not true.

But enough of it was.

Through my desire to get revenge, I’d inadvertently killed mankind’s only hope, their only chance at a vaccine.  As I ruminated myself into guilty despair, a rational thought in my head told me that these couldn’t be the only scientists the whole world over who’d survived and were working on a vaccine, but the irrational part won out.  I knew about the ones who’d been working in the buildings below.  I didn’t know about any others.

Murphy bumped me again and pointed down at the building.  I looked just in time to see a dark glass curtain wall panel shattering and falling away.  The classroom behind the falling glass held people—normal people—waving to get our attention.

I said, “They need our help.”

Murphy groaned.

It was time for commands.  “Martin,” I called into the intercom, “take us down, level with the roof.”  I patted Murphy on the shoulder.  “Ok, machine gun boy.  Kill ‘em all.”

Murphy turned to look at me.  “I can clear the roof from up here.  What’s your plan?”

I leaned out the side window to get a full look at the situation.  “I don’t know how desperate those people are, but they broke out that window knowing the noise will give every White inside a woody, not to mention the ones running across the grass.  Those people are desperate.”

“Murphy?” Martin asked. 

“I don’t know about this,” said Murphy.

“Look,” I told them, “I’ve been down this road before, at the hospital, we don’t have time to dick around.  Either we get down there and we do it now, or we bail out on these people.  And Murphy,” I pointed, “those might be our friends in that classroom.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Murphy shot back into his mic.  He huffed and yelled over the noise.  “As usual, this is stupid.”

I grinned.  “When has that stopped me?”

“If you’re going in,” said Murphy, “I am too.”

“No way,” I told him.

“Just so you guys know,” Martin interrupted, “we can stay here for an hour, maybe two if we want to push our luck.  But if we go much longer than that, we won’t make it back to Fort Hood.”

“Can’t we just set down by a convenience store and gas up?” I asked, urgency rushing my words.

“No,” said Martin.  “She’ll run on diesel, but we’ll only get about four hours of flight time.  After that, we’re done.  We’ll have to get another Black Hawk.  Regular diesel gums things up.”

“Take us down then,” I ordered again.  “Murphy, you clear the guys off the roof.  I’ll get a couple of rifles, a load of ammo, and as many grenades as I can carry.  I’ll hop off on the roof, run down the stairs, liberally applying my grenades to clear my way.  I need to get down two floors and possibly down a hallway.  If things look too hairy, I’ll turn around and come back to the helicopter.”

“No you won’t,” said Murphy.

“No, I won’t.  You know me too well.”  I patted Murphy’s machine gun.  “I need you here.  This is a lot of firepower.  This will make it work.”

“It won’t do you any good inside the building.”

“I don’t plan to be in there long.”

“Every White in a mile is already comin’ this way.”  Murphy looked at me expecting that argument to sway me.

It didn’t.

Shaking his head, Murphy spoke into the intercom.  “Martin, take us down.”  He looked at me.  “Gear up, buddy, in two minutes, every White on that roof will be dead.  And I’ll probably fuck up most of those homemade solar panel arrays, so don’t cut yourself.”

Martin orbited the building just above the level of the roof.  At that range, the Whites didn’t have a chance.  Murphy opened fire and slaughtered them.  For my part, I had as many full magazines stuffed into my tactical vest as I could fit.  I had an M4 on a strap over my shoulder, my machete in a sheath, a pistol in my holster, a dozen hand grenades tucked in wherever I could put them, and another loaded M4 in my hands.  I wasn’t worried about my aim.  I figured I’d be close enough to anything I was shooting at to be deadly.

As soon as the last of the Whites on the roof fell, Murphy shouted, “Now or never.”

Martin swung the Black Hawk over the roof, came down close, and held it steady.  Murphy nodded at me, but his face was wrinkled with worry.

“Don’t worry mom,” I stretched a big smile.  “I’ll be right back.”  I jumped out of the helicopter and landed on the roof, running toward the stairwell as soon as my boots touched down.