ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (21 page)

Several hundred yards west of Stump Town Aviation a man in a
rumpled white shirt removed a navy blue ball cap, ran a hand through his
thinning gray hair, and raised a pair of high-dollar binoculars to his eyes.
Nose crinkling from the stench of coffee and cigarettes tainting his own
breath, he trained the Steiners at a downward angle and panned them
left-to-right in tiny slices until he found what he was looking for. Hangars 1,
2, and 3 were big enough to house the largest commercial planes able to utilize
the single strip, and stood out like sore thumbs on the northeast corner of the
tiny airport.

“Two men just left the truck,” he called over his shoulder,
addressing a man with an equally disheveled appearance.

“What do you want me to do about it, Tony? If I go down
there, I’m leaving for good.”

“You can’t leave,” Tony called across the room. “What if
they reopen us for military ops. Especially if PDX sees an outbreak of … what’s
it called?”

Lloyd said, “Those inbound Chinooks … the pilots were
chattering big time on the military band. Heard them calling it
Omega
.”

“Like the watch?”

“No,
Tony
. Like the last letter in the Greek
alphabet. As in our ass is grass. This is the end, man. And I only say that
because the CDC or Joint Chiefs of Staff or President Odero … whoever usually
attributes pandemics to some mutated strain of flu with a bunch of letters and
numbers attached to it simply decided to cease that bullshit and call this what
it is. At least behind the scenes, they are. No use in sugarcoating it for the
ones actively dealing with it face-to-face.”

Tony grunted. He didn’t really want to hear any more of
Lloyd’s conspiracy talk. He had already endured round-the-clock chirping about
it since all air travel was shut down. His nerves were shot. So he scooped up
his smokes.
Fuck the FAA rules
, he thought, rattling a cigarette from a
pack. Without a second thought for the ramifications, he struck a match and lit
the Camel. After inhaling greedily, he changed the subject. With little puffs
of smoke coming from his nostrils in accordance with each spoken word, he said,
“They’re in.”

“They trip the alarm?”

The overhead lights in the control tower flickered, but
stayed on.

Tony watched his bank of computer monitors do the same. When
he was confident they weren’t going to go offline, he turned to Lloyd and said,
“Nope.”

Lloyd pushed off the low shelf on the tower’s west side and,
once momentum was lost, finished the trip Flintstone-style with a couple of
pulls on the carpet using his feet. Sliding in on the rolling chair a scant few
inches from Tony, he helped himself to the Steiners. “Probably should finish
that smoke outside.”

You should probably fuck right off,” Tony growled, lips
curling over his teeth. He held his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart.
“I’m this close to resigning. I’m
over
this waiting for word from up on
high crap.” Grumbling under his breath, he tossed the newly lit cigarette into
a half-full cup of coffee. As the cigarette hissed out he stood up and began to
pace along the length of the outwardly canted easterly facing windows.

Unfazed, Lloyd leaned forward through the residual curl of
smoke and trained the binoculars on the trio of hangars. He scrutinized the old
pick-up, thinking for a second he’d seen it before. Quickly dismissing the
notion, he walked the Steiners along the length of the metal buildings, starting
at the door on Hangar 3 and finishing at the far corner of Hangar 1, where he
caught a glimpse of dark blue followed instantly by a split-second glint of sun
on polished metal.
A uniform
, he thought. There and gone. Like a wraith.
Or a figment of his imagination. As tired as he was, he needed a second opinion
to be sure. So he swiveled around to face his partner. “Is Javier still here?”

“No,” replied Tony, still pacing. “Grant relieved him this
morning.”

“Grant? He hasn’t called in a change of shift sit-rep yet.”

“This isn’t a
normal
change of shift,” Tony
countered. “Besides, he’s still low man on the pole. With all that’s going on,
probably just slipped his mind.”

“Well speak of the devil. He
just
showed his face
down there by Hangar 1,” Lloyd said, propping his elbows on the counter to
steady the shaky image. “And our bud, Rick … he isn’t looking too hot.”

“Let me see.” Tony hustled over and commandeered his
binoculars. He trained them on the new rent-a-cop entrusted with patrolling the
transient parking lots and commercial endeavors of the airport. Which had to
suffice, since the contingent of Port of Portland Police that left in a hurry
yesterday afternoon had not returned, and probably never would. “He looks like
one of those things they’re showing on the cable news networks.”

The lights flickered again and the computers began making
out-of-place grinding sounds.

Lloyd unclipped the two-way radio from his belt. He thumbed
the Talk key and called out the new guy’s name repeatedly.

Through the binoculars, Tony watched the figure several
hundred yards distant stagger and pirouette clumsily as if he had come to work
severely inebriated. “Looks like he hears you calling his name—” he began.

“But he has no idea where my voice is coming from,” Lloyd
finished in a low voice. “I think he has the Omega. You better call and warn
those guys in Stump Town that they have company.”

Tony handed off the binoculars and pulled the landline phone
to the front of the counter. Snatched the handset from the cradle. “Just so you
know, Lloyd. This is my last official duty as a P-O-P employee.” With the dial
tone wailing in his ear, he punched in the four-digit extension and waited for
the connection to be made.

Lloyd trained the Steiners at where Officer Rick Grant was
stopped in his tracks, arms hanging limply at his sides, his nose pressed to
the south-facing metal doors fronting Hangar 1. He didn’t quite know what to
make of the man’s erratic behavior. He said, “Any luck getting ahold of our
visitors?”

“Negative,” answered Tony. “It just keeps ringing.”

“Sucks for them,” Lloyd said as he shifted the binoculars
right by a degree. “’Cause it looks like the new guy has company … a couple of
dumbass mechanics are walking
across
the runway.”

“Does it look like they’ve got the Omega, too?”

“Yep,” Lloyd answered, putting the binoculars down as the
lights flickered for a third time. And the third time was the charm. At least
if you were Amish and all the austere trappings of the Stone Age was what you
preferred. Because this time the lights didn’t recover. Nor did the monitors
used to track air traffic. Of which there had been none to track for a long
while. A drawn-out whirring noise came next as the computer hard drives on the
desks in the center of the room spooled down. Instinctively, he glanced at the
lights inset into the dropdown ceiling. An
oh shit
expression settled on
his face. Grabbing his coat, he said, “If you’re leaving, then so am I.”

Wearing a grim expression, Tony gently replaced the handset
in the cradle. Then, eschewing his Port of Portland ball cap and windbreaker,
he fished the keys for his Tacoma pick-up from his desk drawer, rose, and
struck out ahead of Lloyd to the nearby elevator.

***

With a tiny bit of trepidation creeping in, Duncan turned
the knob and swung the door inward.

“Add one more charge to that laundry list.”

“Guilty,” Duncan said with a raspy chuckle as he entered the
small office. It had been remodeled since he’d last set foot in it. The walls
were recently painted a shade of tan that complimented the dark laminate wood
flooring—also newly laid. The air inside was like that of a newly built
home—fresh paint and adhesives, but tinged with the smell of settled dust
cooking on hardworking electrical components. To the right of the door, awash
in bars of light infiltrating the horizontal blinds on the adjacent window, was
an IKEA-style prefab desk wrapped in a bleached-wood veneer. Parked in the
desk’s kneehole was a mesh-backed office chair. On the desk was a mini tower
computer, printer/fax/copier unit, and a wide flat screen monitor with the word
DELL stamped on its vertical back. Flanking the monitor, which stood sentry
over an aviation-themed desk blotter, were all of the accoutrements necessary
for one secretary to keep a small branch of a bigger business on an even keel:
stapler, electric pencil sharpener, Far Side desk calendar still showing
Friday’s date, and an industrial-sized coffee mug—also aviation-themed—filled
to brimming with complimentary Stump Town Aviation ballpoint pens.
Free
advertising
, thought Duncan as his eyes were drawn to a shelf behind the
desk. Arranged there side-by-side at eye-level on the six-foot-long slab of
dust-free lightly-smoked glass was a scale model representing the new
helicopters Hillary had said Darren had gone off to take possession of. Great
marketing on the part of Valhalla. Done deal as soon as Darren opened the box.
On account of the company logo painted on its sides, no doubt. Almost like
taking one out for a test flight without having to leave Oregon.

A dozen feet left of the desk was a third door. A sign
affixed eye-level on the outside of the door read: UNISEX BATHROOM. Below the
OHSA-approved labeling was a warning: PLEASE LOCK THE DOOR UPON ENTERING.

As if reading his friend’s mind, Charlie said, “Let’s just
say there’s a chopper beyond that”—he gestured at the windowless steel door to
his left—“and you get it fueled up, moved outside, and the blade thingies
spinning … how far will it take us? Surely not all the way to Salt Lake City.”

“Where we’re going is outside of Salt Lake. But you’re
right. Anything rotor-wing Stump Town owns that would get us all the way there
is either already leased out or in a hangar down at PDX or operating out of
Hillsboro.” Startling them both while sending golden dust motes scudding
through the sun’s rays, a fan inside the desktop computer suddenly whirred to
life.

Wearing a nervous look, Charlie said, “Can’t exactly stop at
any old gas station. You just going to put us down on the Interstate when the
tank goes dry?”

“Yeah. I figure I’ll leave it on 84 somewhere with an IOU to
cover the hours and fuel stuck under one of the wipers. Then we can get some
wheels with a working A/C and take turns driving the rest of the way.”

Charlie said, “I was joking,” and shuddered.

“So was I,” Duncan said, trying his best to ignore symptoms
to a virus he knew could go one of two ways. Either Charlie was going to need
some chicken soup and bed rest in the near future. Or, and Duncan’s jaw took a
hard set as he thought it: he was on his way to being one of
them
.
Praying for the former, he crossed the room diagonally right-to-left toward the
door accessing the hangar.

Charlie called after him, “What do we do when she gets low
on fuel?”

Without looking, Duncan answered over his shoulder, “Almost
any little airstrip will do. We find one and land near their fuel bowser and
top her off. But let’s clear the first few hurdles first.”

Charlie had followed his friend across the office and formed
up next to him just as the door was swinging inward on well-oiled hinges. Now
he was peering into the gloomy interior over the taller man’s shoulder. For a
second he felt normal—the hot and cold flashes nonexistent. In that moment of
pure Zen, he discerned a change in the air at the jamb. Unlike the air inside
the stuffy office, the light draft here was cool and dry on his sweaty face.
Instead of the vinyl and wood aroma of new office furniture, the hangar smelled
of metal and heat-stressed engine lubricants. There was also an odor he
couldn’t quite peg—like gasoline, but with an underlying tinge of kerosene.

Suddenly, making them both jump, the phone on the desk awoke
with an electronic warble. Like a modern ringtone you might hear coming from a
young person’s smartphone, the eerily soothing sound went on.

“I’m not going to get it,” Duncan said. “I don’t work here
anymore.”

Charlie merely shook his head side-to-side.
Vintage
Duncan.

So with the phone still calling out for attention, he
followed Duncan into the massive hangar and paused shoulder-to-shoulder on the
concrete pad staring into the darkness. As the seconds ticked by, two things
happened. First, the phone in the office went silent. Then, as their eyes
adjusted to the new environment, the hulking silhouette in the center of their
field of vision slowly began to resemble a helicopter. The long black boom out
back stretched away from them to the hangar’s far left corner. One stubby wing
sliced horizontally into the darkness from the near side of the tail. The black
rotor blades were at rest perpendicular to the shiny green fuselage, sagging
near both ends, the painted yellow tip nearest them not too far from the tops
of their heads.

Duncan said, “She’s a Bell 212. A newer incarnation of the
UH-1H Iroquois … workhorse of the Vietnam War.” He felt around the door jamb to
his left, found the metal box protruding from the wall there, and flicked the
first switch his fingers brushed. Nothing happened. He threw five more into the
On
position. Still nothing. So he craned around and peered into the
office and noted that the DELL monitor no longer had a screensaver caroming
randomly around its face. It was as dark as the voluminous space at his back.

Charlie was about to recommend they open the large bay doors
to shed some light on the subject when an invisible hand grabbed his guts in an
iron grip. Clutching his stomach one-handed and groaning softly, he backpedaled
into the office on his way to the toilet.

“Go ahead without me,” he called out, still bent at the
waist and grabbing blindly for the doorknob at his back. “This is going to take
a while.”

“You need some toilet paper … just holler?” Duncan laughed
inwardly at the absurdity of a lack of asswipe being an issue, considering all
that had happened.

Charlie didn’t reply.

From the direction of the office Duncan heard a door creak
open, then close with a hollow clunk a second later. He swung his head around
and found himself gazing up into the midnight black void.
What a great place
for a couple dozen skylights
. Shaking his head, he set course for the
vertical sliver of light peeking between the hangar doors. With the power out,
he figured he would muscle them apart far enough to give him adequate light to
see what kind of attention the bird needed to get her off the ground.

Moving at a snail’s pace, he crossed the hangar in a partial
crouch, one hand probing the air below his knees just in case something was
waiting to trip him up or, worse, put a knot or two on his shins. Save for the
kind a dentist was capable of inflicting, no pain was worse in Duncan’s humble opinion.

Reaching the hangar doors, shins intact, he learned the
light was infiltrating between the center two of four steel-clad leaves
spanning the full width of the hangar. Each rectangular section looked to be
roughly twenty feet wide by fifteen tall. Definitely difficult to open without
the powered assist—especially solo. So he fumbled his way in the dark to his
left. Twenty paces in, he found the lever to disconnect the motor from the
pulley system so the doors could move freely. Following the wall by touch, it
took only a few seconds to get there, throw the lever, and return.

Feeling the heat radiating off of the metal panel near his
face, he took a deep breath and, with the word
manually
echoing in his
head, gripped the inside flange of one panel and put his back into the effort.

Legs pistoning and boots clomping loudly on the slick floor,
he got the panel rolling while at his back an inches-wide bar of light was
splitting the hangar in two. Feeling the momentum building, he turned his head
away from the hot panel, gritted his teeth, and gave one more big push.

Out of the corner of his left eye, Duncan saw the shaft of
light widening little by little.
Almost there
. He swung his gaze to the
floor near his feet, concentrating hard on each labored step, and consequently
did not see the man in uniform until he was being sent sprawling face to the
floor like the final pin in a 7-10 split.

Wind stolen from the hard blind-side tackle to the smooth
concrete, Duncan wheezed, “What’s your problem,
asshole
?”

There was no immediate reply. He only heard the rustling of
stiff nylon and what he thought to be shoe soles scuffing the ground behind
him. And strangely, there was no ragged breathing or groans accompanying his
own noisy attempt at getting his lungs working properly again.

Wondering how someone big enough to put that kind of a
quarterback sack on him could do so without taking licks of his own, Duncan
spun around on his stomach and got his first look at the form lying face down
on the floor an arm’s reach away. Dressed in the uniform of a low-on-the-pole
security guard—navy blue windbreaker, like-colored slacks complete with a light
blue stripe, wide leather belt holding every law enforcement tool save the
gun—the man who had fallen through the door was now moving his arms and legs
listlessly. If Duncan didn’t know any better, he would have thought the fella
was doing the breast stroke, with the foot-wide splash of sunlight painting the
hangar floor taking the place of the swimming pool lane.

Then, in the next second, the rent-a-cop abruptly stopped
swimming
.

Still trying to wrap his mind around the strange behavior,
Duncan rose to his hands and knees. And as if he was watching a mirror image of
himself, the man next to him rose to
his
hands and knees, every movement
economical and deliberate.

Just as Duncan was going to deliver another verbal barrage,
the true nature of his predicament came to light—literally—when the man’s head
panned his way, allowing the light spill to fully illuminate his narrow, ashen
face.

“Charlie,” Duncan bellowed, his hand reaching for the pistol
on his hip. “Little help here.” Truth be told, this was the most scared he had
been in his entire adult life. Crashing a chopper in the jungle—which he had
done more than once—was a distant second. The wet growl coming from the guard’s
mouth stood his neck-hair on end and made him pucker up down south.

The .45 cleared leather and, in one practiced movement,
Duncan thumbed back the hammer and brought the pistol to bear. Aiming
cross-body while holding most of his weight off the ground with one
outstretched arm was not an easy feat. Feeling the guard’s listless stare
ripping the meat from his bones, disconcerting to say the least. So he pushed
the notion that the infected man was someone’s son, husband, or even dad from
his mind, said a silent prayer of forgiveness, and squeezed off a single shot.

The boom was deafening in the semi-enclosed building. And
his aim was way off. Instead of punching a fist-sized hole in the man’s ribcage
near his heart as aimed, the speeding hunk of lead first hit his outstretched
right arm an inch north of the elbow, snapped the supporting muscle, numerous
connective tendons, and splintered all three long bones there into dozens of
razor-sharp shards. Consequently, as the report crashed around in the dark, the
guy spilled back to the cement floor for an encore face-plant that sent a
handful of broken teeth skittering off into the gloom.

Though there was a harsh ringing in his ears, in his mind
Duncan heard Charlie’s disembodied voice saying, “
Remember the rules
.”

There was a spatter of blood glistening shiny and black on
the cement, but none pumping from the catastrophic wound caused by the hurtling
lead.

Duncan got to his knees.

Remember the rules
.

Inexplicably, the mortally wounded man began struggling.
Smearing blood in arcs with his scrabbling fingers. Splintered bones made a
clicking noise as it struggled to push up onto its hands and knees.

Duncan brought his left leg up and planted his boot on the
floor. Arms outstretched, the 1911 held two-fisted, he centered the sights
between brow and nose on the thing’s face, where lips curled and teeth were
clicking madly, and squeezed off two more ear-splitting shots.

The thing’s head from the nose up dissolved in a pink spray,
and the wet guttural growl issuing forth from its chest ceased instantly.

For the third time in a handful of seconds the infected
security guard met the floor face first. Only this time there was no fight left
in him, and not much of a face left to plant.

***

If Lloyd had stayed in the control tower for a few more
seconds, the backup generator would have spooled up fully, the lights would
have flickered to life, and the computers would have whirred back online.
Consequently, as things returned to normal, he would have felt obligated to
stay. Then, curiosity would have gotten the better of him and he would have
resumed watching Grant through the binoculars.

In that alternate universe, he would have seen the doors to
Hangar 1 part and the new guy pitch forward face first into the dark chasm as
if a rug had been pulled from under him. Next, from what could only be
construed as the resulting flash from a single gunshot, he would have seen the
black slit light up with the colors of the sun for a split second. Silenced by
multi-paned glass and insulation designed to keep aircraft engine noises at
bay, the .45’s booming report would have been lost to him inside the tower.
Moreover, had he not been descending the stairway behind Tony, he would have
witnessed Grant’s legs from the knees down disappearing slowly into the
building’s vertical maw until the scuffed tan work boots cleared the threshold
between the poured-concrete pad inside and sun-baked tarmac outside.

But he hadn’t. He and Tony had committed to a hastily hatched
plan of escape. And by the time Duncan was closing the hangar doors, both men
were blocks away and nosing their vehicles onto Interstate 84, Lloyd driving
east towards his home near Hood River, and Tony speeding west and hoping to get
home, scoop up his family, and meet up at Lloyd’s rural abode within the hour
in order to ride this wretched Omega thing out.

***

Fearing that more infected would be drawn in by the trio of
gunshots, Duncan rose to his feet and staggered off toward the parted doors.
Staying at what he estimated to be an arms-reach back from the opening, he
flattened his body against the warm metal, swept the .45 up in front of him for
good measure, and eyeballed the tarmac and runway all the way west to the
control tower.

Clear.

So he crossed the light spill and performed the same
cautious maneuver, peering towards the east end of the runway.

Also clear.

He slipped the pistol home in its holster, drew in a deep
cleansing breath, and stalked into the gloom to search the many drawers and
cubbies underneath the workbenches for a working flashlight.

Duncan was three paces from the guard’s corpse when the
overhead lights snapped on with a hiss. Momentarily blinded, he stopped in his
tracks, drew the pistol, and pressed it against his thigh. A half-beat later,
from the direction of the office, he heard door hinges creaking.

“That you, Charlie?”

There was no answer. All he heard was the throb of V-twin
engines filtering in through the open hangar doors behind him. They were
somewhere southwest of the airport, presumably on the Interstate, and drawing
near.

Blue tracers finally fading from his eyes, he saw Charlie
emerge through the side door, sit down hard on the step, and issue a pained
grunt. “You bag another one?”

“Yep,” Duncan replied, walking his gaze down the
helicopter’s port side.

“Are
you
flying east or driving?”

Ignoring Charlie’s verbal slip-up, Duncan said, “You were
right. We should have gassed up the Dodge earlier.”

“Driving then, huh,” Charlie said. He suddenly listed to his
right and had to grab onto the door jamb to keep from keeling over.

After one more quick glance off his right shoulder, Duncan
nodded. “We have no choice, Charlie. This bird’s turbine is disassembled. Looks
like she’s in the middle of a routine overhaul being undertaken with no sense
of urgency. Makes sense with Darren away buying new birds.”

While emitting a drawn-out phlegm-addled noise, Charlie
hinged forward. Finished clearing his throat, he spit a wad on the concrete
floor and said, “Better find some gas for the Dodge then.”

After doing a double-take at the open hangar doors, Duncan
took the .45 from his hip, approached Charlie as fast as his sore legs could
propel him, and handed him the black pistol—butt first. He nodded over his
shoulder. “I’m in no shape to close that thing manually all by myself. You look
like you’re in no position to lend a hand. And I don’t want to waste the time
it would take to figure out how to get that pulley system back up and running
…”