Sever, p.26
Sever, page 26
That’s why she was on the runway now. The terminal looked to be intact, inviting her to the safety of the building. Her chest had finally stopped heaving, so it was time to go before they caught up to her again. The terminal was only about half a mile away, she should be able to make it in less than ten minutes and then secure the doors against the dead. There would be plenty of food at the restaurants for one person, she could ride this thing out at the airport, maybe even put up a sign on the roof so the military would know that she was in there and could get rescued. The more she thought about it, the better the idea of staying in one place for as long as possible sounded.
She flexed her butt muscles to help push off the vehicle’s wreckage and started her slow jog/walk combo that she’d been forced to use since those two traitors had drained all of her energy. The runway leading to the terminal was littered with the wreckage of planes, emergency vehicles, pieces of the fence line that had once surrounded the entire place and chunks of concrete from God only knew where. If they ever wanted to make this airport useable for airplanes again it would take a Herculean effort to clear away the damage that the Army had caused.
The slow shuffling sound of the feet behind her increased as the zombies saw her emerge from behind the truck. Their near silence was unnerving. If they’d have moaned like they did in the movies, that would have been better than the silent pursuit, only betrayed by the sound of their feet on the pavement or when they ran into something that made noise. At least then, she could focus her energies on wishing that they’d shut up.
She turned to see how far behind the group was and stumbled. She caught herself with her hands before her face hit the ground and pushed herself back upright with considerable effort. Katie brought her hands up close to her face to examine where the concrete had scraped up both of her palms and thin streams of blood were already beginning to peak out of the abrasions.
She squeezed her hands painfully to stop the bleeding and cursed Maria and Shawn once again as she gently dabbed the blood against her pant legs. They hadn’t let her sleep yesterday and she was exhausted because they left her on this side of the river. She’d been running all night. Yeah, once I’m rescued from the terminal, I’ll expose those two frauds who masqueraded as helpful people. They used me as bait to get away. She’d make sure that they got what was coming to them.
The anger allowed her to continue forward. When she’d fallen, the creatures had been less than a hundred feet behind her and they were much closer now. She’d have to step it up a little to add distance between her and the main part of the group. The first zombie was less than two car-lengths away and it was time for her to get going.
Katie forced her abused body to begin moving once more and gradually increased her speed until she was jogging tiredly toward the terminal. The rough, heavy slapping of her feet on the runway sounded impossibly loud in comparison to the scrape and shuffle of the zombies behind her. The irregular sound of her footfalls would bring more of them her way, but she knew it would be alright once she got inside the terminal. It was just a little farther, and then she’d be safe. There’d be plenty of food to replenish her depleted energy stores.
Katie finally made it to the building as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon and she staggered to a ragged halt in front of a metal door marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY” in big, bold letters. She assumed that the door led into the baggage area as an easy way for baggage handlers and airport workers to move between the building and the areas where the planes parked. She decided to give the door a try, hoping to be lucky enough that it would be unlocked. Once she got inside, she’d be safe and could rest. The door handle twisted easily in her hand and she pulled the door toward her. Thankfully, the employees hadn’t locked the place up tight when they’d abandoned it. She stepped inside and gagged. The baggage area smelled like rotten meat.
“What the?” she muttered before using her jacket to cover her mouth. All the food in the powerless refrigerators must have spoiled and now the place just reeked like nasty week-old carryout. It would take a little getting used to, but at least she was safe. Plus, hopefully the smell wasn’t bad up in the passenger waiting area where there was more open space for it to dissipate, she reasoned with herself. Banging on the door that she’d just came through reminded the girl to lock the doors and then she groped her way blindly in the dark toward the light of the staircase leading to the upper level.
Scraping noises in the darkness reminded her of the sounds that the zombies outside made as they walked. Stop that, she chided herself. Her mind was obviously playing tricks on her. She was safe inside the terminal. The doors had been closed so there was no way one of those things was in here with her.
Regardless of her logic, she increased her pace toward the stairwell. She’d feel much better up in the light. Her shin slammed into something hard and metal causing her to shout out in pain. She trailed her hand downward to make out the seat of one of the heavy bench chairs that was in the baggage claim waiting area. There was also a huge lump already forming on her shin where she’d hit the damn thing.
Several more shuffling sounds came from the darkness and she began to get worried that maybe she wasn’t alone in here. Heedless of the tripping hazards, she started to run toward the beckoning light. She ran headlong into something soft and fell hard onto her rear end. The smell of rotten meat was overpowering now and she had to use her hand to wipe away some type of nasty, wet substance from the side of her face. It stung the open abrasions on her hand and made her whimper in pain once more.
The shuffling noises intensified and then something rubbed roughly against her back. She caught her breath and held as still as possible. A zombie had just walked right into her and then careened off to go wherever its feet took it. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!
Katie stayed as still as she could manage, but it was maddening to think that one of those things was in here with her in the darkness. How had it gotten in the building? Finally, the sound of the feet faded as the creature made its way toward the banging of its brethren on the employee door. She jumped to her feet and started to run. She’d get up the stairs and then find someplace to hide; those assholes had said something about the zombies not being able to climb stairs. She’d be safe in the terminal above.
The girl’s movement was all that the zombies in the baggage waiting area needed to hone in on their prey. They began to close in on her from all sides, attempting to surround her before she made it to the escalator. Katie screamed in panic at the sudden cacophony of noise that the creatures made as they rushed toward her, bumping into benches and overturning trashcans in their haste to reach her.
She sprinted blindly toward the safety of the stairs. If she could only make the stairs, then she’d be alright. As she neared the opening, the complete blackness gave way to the gloom of the early morning’s light streaming down through the opening in the ceiling where the escalators once ran twenty-four hours a day. She could barely discern the distinctly human shapes of the creatures as they emerged from the darkness and zeroed in on her.
One of them reached out from beside her, its hands materializing from the shadows to clutch at her arm. Another shriek from the frightened girl and she juked to the side like she was a running back on the football field. The hands that almost grasped her fell back into dim obscurity while others reached out for her.
Katie twisted and turned to avoid the creatures and the scattered detritus of the baggage claim area. She ran like a woman possessed, her life depended on it. The zombies were too slow to stop her and she remained a half step ahead of each of them as they individually attempted to grab her. Fleetingly, Katie’s mind thanked God that the things were too stupid to work together and often thwarted each other’s attempts to reach her by knocking one another away in their haste.
She burst into the illuminated stairwell and took the stairs two at a time until she was several feet above the outstretched arms of the horde below. Katie sat heavily on an escalator step and sucked in ragged gasps of air. She’d made it! Even though Maria had tried to kill her by wearing her out, she’d dug deep inside, found the strength to surge ahead of the zombies, and reached the safety of the stairs.
They reached for her from below and their arms slapped against the glass sides of the escalator walls beside her. Bloody and smeared handprints quickly obscured her view to the sides and she looked to the base of the stairs where several of the creatures had fallen and couldn’t coordinate their movements enough to pull themselves up over the steps to reach her.
Katie sighed loudly. She couldn’t stay in the airport. She’d thought that the airport would be her refuge, but with the creatures infesting the area below, she couldn’t stay here. After she caught her breath and got some food, she’d exit at the street level and begin making her way to someplace else. Her mind caught on the thought that the zombies that had been following her from the river were now stuck outside on the runway level and that there was a building between her and the group. She was going to get a fresh start on her escape—except for being dog-tired from all the running.
She didn’t hear the creatures shuffling to the glass railing above her on the terminal level as she stared at the shifting mass below her. She wondered how the zombies had gotten in the airport and if everywhere that she tried to hide would have the same problem. Something made the hair on the back of her neck stand up a split second before she heard the noises above her. The girl twisted her head around just in time to see several creatures fall down the escalator toward her.
Her screams of panic and then pain fell dully on their ears as their rotting fingers tore her to shreds. They ripped muscle from bone, plucked out her eyes and ripped away the soft tissue of her ears, nose and lips. One of her arms was wrenched from its shoulder socket and twisted violently back and forth. The ragged bones inside cut through muscle and tendon until her arm tore completely away from her torso. The creatures’ anger at being trapped was so great that when they were done, there was little that remained recognizable about young Katie’s body.
*****
01 November, 0923 hrs local
Wreckage of the Washington Monument
Washington, Dead City
Kestrel examined his handiwork. Over the course of the night and again in the early morning he’d killed over a thousand zombies. He’d blasted through more than 1,500 rounds and each of those correlated directly to a dead creature lying on the National Mall. He’d gotten so tired of just shooting them in the head that he’d fallen asleep overnight and then woke up to begin the killing again in the morning.
As he thought about all the zombies that lay dead before him, he knew that they were guarding something in one of the buildings. He’d faced little to no resistance during most of the trip into the city from The Wall. Once he got here, the things had been so thick on the Mall that he couldn’t even see the far side down by the base of Capitol Hill. Now he could see statues on the fountain clearly when the fog cooperated.
While he stood at the remaining side of the Washington Monument and watched the few lingering creatures weave their way in and around their dead companions, he wondered if the Type One knew that its army had been decimated. Did it maintain that level of contact with them or had it given them a task and forgotten about them? Last spring, the FBI had used sound buoys to draw most of the creatures away from the National Mall so they could land their helicopters for the move over to the Archives. It didn’t seem to notice back then that the creatures had left their posts, so he thought that the Type One was used to complete and utter obedience so it didn’t require constant check-ups of the Type Twos. Or maybe it was too busy managing the fight to kick humanity’s ass.
Thinking of the mission to secure the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights made him think of Allyson. The thoughts came unbidden. He didn’t want to think about her, it was just too painful and distracting. He adjusted his body position to sit down along the inside wall underneath the observation window to rest his back while he thought about her. He’d tried to move on from Allyson’s memory by being with Rachel, but the truth was that there simply was no comparison. Rachel had been an amazing woman in her own rights and possibly one of the nicest people that he’d ever met, but he’d never fully given himself over to her like she had to him—because of his feelings for Allyson.
Kestrel knew that he was hung up irrationally on the dead woman. That’s why he’d readily accepted the opportunity to take the one-way trip into the city to search for the Type One. His mind had clutched at any excuse to remain relevant after he’d lost the second woman in his life who really meant anything to him. He was comfortable facing his own death, he just wanted it to be on his own terms, like Allyson’s death had been when she’d died during an operation, doing what she loved. He didn’t want his death to be like Rachel’s, who’d died just because she wanted to dangle her feet off the pier into the ocean and had been at the wrong place at the right time.
He didn’t want that, he wanted to go out fighting. In retrospect, that was likely why he’d been successful as an operator. He’d never backed down from a challenge and after his mandatory retirement, he continued to challenge his body every day. He was a fighter. Coming into the city to kill the Type One was a fight, he wasn’t quitting on life. He was taking the lifelong desire to fight into the harshest environment imaginable. This was to be the challenge that he’d sought his entire life.
His resolve hardened once again and he pushed the thoughts of Allyson and Rachel from his mind. Thinking about them—and the man he had started to become while he was with them—wouldn’t be helpful to his mission. He had one final operation to go on to save his nation. No one else in the president’s administration or in the military seemed to understand that you had to go after the head of the threat; simply cutting off the arms and legs wouldn’t stop the zombies. He smirked, that statement could be taken both literally and figuratively.
He’d been a counterterrorism expert for his entire adult life; he knew how these things worked. In the most basic sense, the zombie threat could be dealt with in the same way that the Agency dealt with terrorist networks. Killing the lackeys and foot soldiers—in this case, the zombie horde that had swept across the entire northeast—was important to protect the population. However, if you wanted to eliminate the problem, you had to find out who the leaders of the terrorist organization were and put them out of action.
That was what he was going to do today. He was going to cut off the head of the zombie hierarchy. Once that was gone, it would be up to the Army to destroy the zombie horde rampaging across the United States. They’d be able to do that once he’d eliminated the Type One.
Kestrel picked up another cardboard box and tore it open to begin reloading all of his magazines. It was something that he’d done more times than he wanted to count as he examined the thick carpet of brown paper littering the stairwell. After this reload it would be different, though. The time for sniping from a distance was over; now it was time for the wetwork. It was time to take the fight inside.
*****
01 November, 1014 hrs local
MacDonald Family Farm
Emporia, Virginia
Nicholas MacDonald changed his mind. He used to think that he hated all the people that constantly streamed through his tiny hometown at the crossroads of Interstate 95 and US Route 58. The endless north-south grind of the interstate combined with all the motorcycle traffic and on the state road to create the perfect storm of travelers taking up every pump at the gas stations and every seat at the restaurants in town. The two roads dumped their visitors into his town year-round and he’d been fed up with it.
Now, however, Nick’s hometown looked almost deserted—hell, it was deserted and the idea that everyone was gone frightened him more than he cared to admit. None of the restaurants were open because of the evacuation and the one gas station that remained open charged ten bucks a gallon for gas to take advantage of the people trying to escape the approaching zombie horde that had swept through Richmond a couple of days before and were moving southward toward Emporia.
He’d decided to stay. He wasn’t quite complete with his fall harvest yet and that equated to a lot of money sitting on the ground at his farm. During the warm months, he grew corn and soybeans, but he also had a large patch of land—35 acres—devoted to crops that he planted in July and August for a late fall harvest to keep the income flowing later into the year. Right now he had turnips, kale and broccoli that were just about ready to harvest and he’d be damned if he was going to lose that profit. They’d be able to withstand a light frost, but if he dithered around and waited too long, a killing frost would ruin his crop and set him back quite a bit.
So Nick had stayed while his neighbors left. He’d even agreed to feed and water his neighbor Jim’s small herd of beef cattle since he’d taken off with his family for the alleged safety of the Appalachian Defensive Line. Nick shook his head as he surveyed the emptiness of Emporia and thought about all those people who must be there at the defenses. He’d seen lots of movies about diseases and quarantines so he could imagine the mass hysteria as people lined up at the gates—or whatever the government had set up—to get into the safe zone west of the mountains. The sheer number of people in such a small area drew the zombies toward them, which was more dangerous than staying put in Emporia.
He’d come into town to get some gas for the farm so he could finish his chores. Both the tractor and the flatbed needed fuel, but seeing the outright price gouging that the corporate gas station charged had made him see red. He’d talked to the manager—the only employee left at the store—about it, but the man hadn’t budged. The manager was some corporate jerk-off from out of town, not a real local. He’d told Nick that if he were going to risk his life to provide gasoline to the residents of Emporia, then he’d make sure that he got paid well for doing it.
