LZR-1143: Redemption (11 page)

We were only hundreds of feet from the surface now, and I watched in horror as multi-story buildings flashed by the window, seemingly only an arm’s length away. My breath caught in my lungs and I gulped air as I fought the urge to panic.

I had a right.

We were in a torn up metal tube hurtling to the ground at breakneck speed into a war zone full of zombies.

Easy on the judgment.

The frame of the massive plane groaned in protest, and it finally succumbed. Overtaken by the sudden catastrophe of circumstance, the massive whale of the sky shuddered once, and died.

And when it died, it simply fell from the air onto what had once been the thriving, commercial center of Boise, Idaho.

The ground fell from beneath us all, and the world went dark.

The last thing I felt was Kate’s hand slipping out of my own.

FIFTEEN

Someone was playing the drums on the inside of my head.

Someone was pounding a mallet against my brain.

Someone was going to get a foot in their ass.

I couldn’t control my eyes. I tried to open them, to focus, but I couldn’t. It was all black.

Then, it was all shades of gray and white, flaring in my eyes like someone was whipping a flashlight in front of me in the pitch black. I groaned.

Or someone else did.

My arm throbbed slowly, and I tried to move my head. Beside me, a heavy weight leaned in, pushing me down, and against a restraint of some sort. I was canted to my left, and something was digging in to my side.

It was the moan that did it.

It was the ungodly, empty, soulless moan that I knew so well.

The hunger and the rage and the unknowing evil.

Stuff like that has a tendency to bring a man out of a sound sleep.

My eyes opened painfully, first in a narrow horizontal line, then as the light invaded my skull like a worm burrowing into a piece of rotten fruit, they widened slowly.

Wires and tangled pieces of metal hung from a ceiling that had remained remarkably intact. A slow vibrating roar still permeated the enclosed space, and the source of the moan from farther forward in the cabin was not immediately apparent. I lifted my head slowly, truly feeling the sharp pain in my left arm for the first time, and grinding my teeth against a more severe pain in my head. Holding my head back against the seat, I forced my neck to rotate, looking at Kate for the first time. Her head lay resting against my shoulder, eyes closed.

A thin stream of blood trailed from her nose, and dripped slowly from her upper lip onto my shirt.

“Kate,” I said softly, surprised by the low volume of my own voice.

Behind me, I heard a rustling movement, and I turned to see Ky struggling to move under a large crate of supplies.

“Kate,” I said again, this time shaking her lightly.

Still nothing.

I cursed, suddenly angry.

Lifting my arms to my chest, I searched for the release latch on my harness and forced my fingers to operate the small button. It wouldn’t operate. It was bent or mangled somehow. In a surge of energy and anger, I pulled the thick nylon sharply, and it detached suddenly from the metal snaps. I fell forward, out of my chair and against the console across the small aisle. The floor was still vibrating, as if the plane was still flying, and I couldn’t see what was causing it.

Ky muttered something weakly, and I rose up, fighting to keep my vision clear through the blinding pain, and blinking to clear the blood from my eyes. I wiped the thick mask of crimson from my face and flung the blood away, seeing it splatter against the floor as I stepped forward. Beside Ky, a miraculously unharmed Romeo—a testament to the dog’s resilience and obscene flexibility—struggled against his own harness, whimpering softly as he tried to get to Ky.

Angrily, I pushed through the pain and grabbed the handle on one side of the crate and pulled up, sending the large box to the rear of the plane, which was now a jumbled mass of metal and insulation. The remains of the large Howitzer lay sadly unused, but protruding like a light post out of the skin of the aircraft.

“Help me with Kate,” I said, ripping the harness from Ky and Romeo and checking the young woman quickly for damage.

“No headache or pain in your ribs or anything, right?” I asked, putting my hand to my head.

“No, nothing like that,” she said, voice shaking. “But you look like crap in a bag, man. You okay?”

“Yeah, just sugar and peaches, kid.” I nodded toward Kate.

“Try to get her to wake up before we undo the harness. I need to check something.”

She nodded and climbed over the remains of an avionics console into the small area where Kate lay, still unconscious.

I followed the moans.

Granger’s corpse had been thrown forward, and lay looking oddly peaceful against the door into the flight deck. His face had taken on the contorted, pressed look of the newly undead, and his eyes had taken on the hunger. Merely feet away, Rhodes’ body lay unmoving, his legs within feet of Granger’s lifeless arms—arms that were twitching with desire.

But they weren’t going anywhere.

He had been impaled by the large barrel of the 40mm cannon, somehow thrown free of its housing and twisted into a large metal spear, which pinned the lifeless but still active Granger against the interior wall.

His eyes tracked my movement as I struggled forward in the destroyed, confined space. He moaned louder, and I stared at the man’s face, wondering what remained. What thoughts, what memories.

Did he know who I was, and ignore it? Did some part of him have to watch what he did, and recoil at the horror of what he had become? Of what he wanted to do.

The handle of the machete was hard and substantial, and I relished the cold reality of it as it rested in my palm. Blood trickled from the creature’s throat, not yet congealed with death. Behind me, I heard Ky and Kate stirring and a low, human moan from what must be Rhodes somewhere in the wreckage.

It was a quick cut, and I grit my teeth against the memory of the person within the thing. The door behind it was jammed shut, and I knocked on it twice with the butt of the machete. There was some sort of movement, but it was slow and no voices rose up, asking for help or crying in pain.

“Colonel,” I tried hopefully over the comm system, but only static greeted my attempt.

“McKnight, they’re dead,” said Rhodes’ voice, a raspy baritone in my ear.

Outside the plane, the whine of something mechanical increased in volume, and the floor of the airplane shook again.

“We don’t know that,” I said weakly, staring at the door.

“We’ll check from outside,” he said calmly. “We need to get out of this thing. It’s a beacon for any of those shits outside, and the militia is damn sure on its way here.” He had found his suppressed carbine, and was sighting down the barrel to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. Behind him, Kate was standing, hand to her head.

“Where’s the kid?” she asked, voice soft.

I pointed at a pile of twisted metal and the remains of the bulkhead wall. A large console of computer equipment lay in a pile, blood spattered against the floor and ceiling, where the young man had been crushed by the weight of the material. His feet were slowly grinding against the floor, and one hand was visible, protruding from underneath a keyboard like a cruel joke.

The fingers curled and uncurled repeatedly, as if grasping an invisible rod.

“Okay,” she turned away, hand to her head. “Let’s go.”

Rhodes and I nodded to one another and moved to the large hatch on the side of the cabin. Pulling away a cluster of detached seats, and pushing away a box of equipment, I reached for the large red handle, and heaved up. The door released suddenly, falling inward toward me, and I threw it past, where it clattered against the far wall and obscured the body of the unfortunate Granger.

Romeo darted for the darkened doorway, sprinting for freedom into the roadway outside. Rhodes followed, then Kate and Ky. I glanced around the cabin once more, and jumped out into the night.

The plane had come to rest at an angle to the buildings on either side of the main street, and was a pile of twisted metal and flame. Puddles of burning fuel and oil were scattered across the narrow space, and the right wing was nowhere to be seen. The nose had been slammed back into the cockpit, and the roof of the plane was compressed by a piece of the building next to it that had fallen as the plane had slammed into the face of the structure. The noise from inside the cabin was much louder here, and I saw the source, turning toward the left wing, where the propeller closest to the fuselage was still spinning.

It throttled up, then down, up, then down, repeatedly.

It was very, very loud.

“Rhodes, you have any idea on our location?”

He squinted into the dark, and swiveled his large bearded head.

“More or less. We’re definitely outside the perimeter of the train station, but we circled back around before we came down, so we should be within five blocks or so of the main engagement. If we go around, we can avoid the firefight.”

I checked my watch, shaking my head.

We only had one way out of this town, now, and it was the train. We had about forty-five minutes before it left.

“Major Gaffney, this is Iron Eagle, do you copy?”

Static.

Rhodes cursed and brought his weapon to firing position. The soft whisper of his firing was an accompaniment as I tried again.

“Major Gaffney, this is Iron Eagle, we are down, but have four survivors. We are en route to your location. Do you copy? Over.”

Kate was raising her gun as well, and we all backed away from the wreckage quickly as a group of zeds appeared from behind the wall of a nearby alley. In the background, the engine throttled up and back down again, an obscenely loud message to the undead.

“The next building over, go. The window in front is already out. We’ll go through to the back.” Rhodes’ voice was tight, and his weapon was whispering as we walked.

I gave up on the transmitter and watched another group of more than fifty zeds come funneling into view from behind a totaled ambulance crushed against a traffic barrier behind the crashed plane. They were moving at an angle, trying to edge around the damaged wing with the erratic propeller.

I had an idea.

“Rhodes, get Kate and Ky into that building. I’ll take these guys.”

He shot me a look, and then nodded once, stowing his weapon and sprinting forward to help them move quickly, Kate still stumbling against Ky.

In a different world, I would be worried.

In a different world, I would not be staying to fight.

But in a different world, I would not be who I was now.

My pulse started to pound, and I changed the magazine in the shotgun, handling the replacement ammunition with extreme care. The blade of the bayonet gleamed in the firelight, as if it knew it would soon see action.

There was only one way past the wreckage of the plane. Over the wingtip that was lodged in the closest building, and past the engine whose propeller was still spinning. Past the wing that was leaking jet fuel into small puddles.

Past the pissed off movie star with incendiary rounds in his shotgun, and a really bad headache.

The first creature reached me as the bulk of the group was clamoring over the wreckage. The blade caught the woman in the chin, and lodged in the flesh under her jaw, ripping the bottom half of her face cleanly from her skull.

That was just disgusting.

I cursed at the mistake, and reversed the blow, taking off the top of her skull, and kicking the body to the side as it fell.

“Nice haircut, lady,” I spat.

Ha. Oh my, I was witty.

A pair of zombies followed her, and I decided to create another obstacle for the others to trip on. I took their legs out from the knees, feeling the vibrations shudder through the barrel of the gun and up into the stock. They flopped comically on the ground, but I ignored their hands as I dispensed with the fun of the blade and moved to the satisfaction of the gun.

The group had reached critical mass, and was starting to bunch at the angled tip of the wing, where the opening was too narrow to afford much purchase for their shuffling, clumsy feet. They pressed against one another as they locked eyes on a morsel of food—food that had likely become very scarce of late.

I waited, as the two creatures I had cut down squirmed in front of me, impeding their cohort behind them.

I waited, as they pressed forward and stumbled.

I backed up, and raised my weapon.

I smiled, then I pulled the trigger.

The incendiary explosive rounds tore into the rotting, pulpy mass like they were made of play dough. They flew into each other as the fury of the weapon was released, each small metal round igniting with a flaming burst, tearing limbs and heads from torsos, and the group of creatures into a cluster of confused and aimless, bloody death.

They still poured into the narrow space, but they were beginning to slow as the flames jumped from body to body, and I poured more death into the crowd. Behind the wing, more were flooding into the street, eagerly pushing closer.

I backed up once again as the engine on the wing throttled up once more and my ear bud crackled.

“You’ve got company on your six. Time to leave.”

Kate’s voice was oddly comforting, and I smiled one more time.

In one of my early movies, I had been in a scene that had seemed absurd until the apocalypse. It had involved a plane, a crazy Nazi, and an illegal bird.

No shit. I swear it was a real movie.

Listen, I got paid, that’s all that mattered.

But the Nazi got it really bad in the end—I mean, they always did, right? The really bad ones had to go in a really bad way. That was how movies became satisfying. That’s why you put up with the bullshit. So you could see the ultimate triumph of the righteous over the wicked.

The Nazi got it bad when he was pushed into a spinning propeller. It wasn’t a good way to die. Luckily for them, these guys were already dead, right?

My smile plastered to my face, I turned my gun away from the horde of creatures that were now amassed in a flaming, meandering crowd of rot.

Away from them, and toward the shaft that connected the rapidly spinning propeller to the engine.

I pulled the trigger.

The shaft shattered under the onslaught of the explosive rounds and the propeller dropped to the ground, blades digging into the broken concrete and finding traction as the massive, exploding fixture spun toward the cluster of creatures as they tried to move forward toward me.

Blades whirled into the crowd of flesh and scattered bodies and body parts. The propeller spun slightly as it hit the number of massed corpses, and started to fall horizontal, still spinning. The blades took the new angle, and started cutting the creatures in half horizontally, as they shambled in vain, trying to move forward, always forward, despite the oncoming peril.