“You’ve been a very naughty girl,” he stated, leering at her breasts.
She spun to head farther up the stairs and paused. Realizing that he knew this place, including the layout of the stairs and catwalks, he would most certainly catch her. Knowing she really didn’t have any other choice, she turned back to him and smiled.
“Well, good-looking, are you going to give me a spanking?”
His eyes lit up like he’d just won the lottery. “Oh, hell yes!”
As his foot touched the bottom stair, a shriek erupted as though from a demon that had just received its wings in hell. The noise coursed through the vast underground complex. The man’s smile slipped, as he was blindsided by a coworker, still wearing his hard hat.
Lisa watched in shock. To her, it looked as if the attacker’s jaw literally unhinged as he bit into the man’s neck. She could hear the sound of flesh ripping through screams of pain as a huge chunk of flesh was torn away, spraying blood everywhere, some even splashing on Lisa’s face. The feel of the warm liquid hitting her cheeks and forehead shook her from her paralysis. Without another thought, she turned and raced down the stairs, taking two at a time. She ran as if the devil himself was at her heels, which she thought might actually be the case.
Barely slowing to plow through the doors, she found herself at the bottom of an outdoor set of concrete steps ascending toward the back of the terminal building. Pausing only for the briefest of seconds, she ran up the stairs almost faster than she’d descended. At the top was a landscaped berm that led down over an embankment. She pushed her way through the hedges and ran sideways down the hill. Arriving at the bottom, she looked to her left.
That way leads back to the runways, she thought, turning to the right and jogging toward the next line of trees.
Emerging on the other side of the trees, she came face-to-face with a chain-link fence. To the right was the front of the terminal, and the left led away from the airport. Shrinking back into the tree line to stay out of sight, she fished out her phone. She was surprised she’d managed to hold on to it after her fall and subsequent sprint… and doubly so that it was still working. She speed-dialed her dad.
*****
Max spent a half hour trying to climb the damn ten-foot chain-link fence. Finally flopping to the ground on the other side with multiple lacerations, his phone started ringing. Retrieving it, he saw that it was Lisa.
“Lisa, where are you? Are you okay?” he asked, answering.
There was no reply. She’d hung up the phone.
She hung up the phone! Why would she hang up?
Max couldn’t believe she would hang up on him like that.
She has to be under some kind of duress.
He rolled over onto his hands and knees, using the fence to get to his feet. Frantic with worry, he turned. Lisa was running straight at him from fifteen feet away. She launched herself into his arms and started to cry.
“I got you, baby! I got you! It’s going to be okay,” Max said, holding her tight while his own tears started to form.
They held each other for minutes before releasing.
“Dad, you look like shit. Are you okay?” Lisa said, examining him.
“I may live, but that’s up for debate at the moment,” Max replied.
With a couple of shoves against his old ass, Max made it back over the fence. Lisa followed, scaling it quickly. She landed on her feet next to him as he sat gasping for air and inspecting his newest wounds.
“You know, sweetie, you could have shown up twenty minutes ago and saved us both a whole lot of pain and discomfort.”
She laughed and helped him up. They made their way back through the culvert and managed to reach the Land Rover.
Max started the vehicle, pulled onto the interstate, and accelerated. Pulling his cell phone out, he tried Ryan again. The phone rang twice and then went to a fast busy signal. Trying again, he received a recorded message that informed him all circuits were busy. He put the phone down and listened as Lisa filled him in on the details of her ordeal. As she talked, he interrupted with disbelief to ask about the guy going after his friend.
“Dad, I am so not making this up!” she said, frustration edging into her voice.
“Okay, okay. Let’s just find a hotel in the city and bunk down for the night. I’m too tired to try and get to the island tonight.”
They found a Residence Inn and pulled in around 9:45. Checking in, the manager told them to go to their rooms and lock themselves in, informing them that they were the last people he would allow to get a room tonight. Max and Lisa stared at him with some confusion.
“Haven’t you been watching the news?” the manager asked.
Both shook their heads.
Arriving at their room, they immediately turned on the TV and started watching the news. The reports were startling. The world seemed as though it was coming apart at the seams. The president had declared martial law and ordered all civilians to remain in their homes until told otherwise. The reports were coming in from every corner of the globe; the flu vaccinations were turning people into crazed killers. Quarantine centers had been set up; they failed. Communication systems were failing due to a lack of workers to manipulate the routing and rerouting of signals. All sorts of infrastructure were seeing similar conditions. At ten minutes after ten, the TV went blank.
Max couldn’t sleep. Lisa said she had a headache and went to lie down. He heard the screams first, then the god-awful shrieks; about ten minutes after Lisa had gone into the other room. He turned off all the lights and drew the blackout curtains. Their room was on the second floor overlooking the parking lot. Opening the drapes just enough to see outside, he watched people being chased down under the streetlights for a couple of hours. Unable to believe what he was witnessing, and not wanting to see any more, he made himself a stiff drink and sat. With drink in hand, he stared at the wall in the darkness and listened to the world crumbling outside.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke with a start. Something, or someone, was banging into the walls of the building. The tremors were faint, but they were there. He looked out of the window and saw hundreds of people running back and forth between the buildings. As he watched, one person ran at full speed into the side of the complex their room was in. Bam! No sooner had he felt the vibration from the impact another would repeat the procedure.
The phones didn’t work, the TV didn’t work, but he still hadn’t tried his laptop. Plugging in his air card, he couldn’t find a signal. He tried the hotel’s wireless network: no luck. Max was finally able to get onto the Internet after hooking into the hotel’s Ethernet. He looked at his watch; it was 2:45 a.m. Opening his e-mail, he saw a message from Ryan. He opened it, read it, and replied that they would meet at Sarah’s place tomorrow. He was moving the cursor to the send button when the connection dropped.
*****
Ryan 5:52 A.M.
Cathlamet Ferry
Puget Sound, Washington
I woke up to what felt like a car wreck. There wasn’t even time to process that I’d passed out before my head banged into a steel bulkhead. My shoulder then smacked into a girder, and I reached up and grabbed it to stabilize myself as I felt the ferry shudder and buck. After a moment, the shifting and crashing stopped. I felt my head and my hand came away sticky.
I must have split my noggin.
Then, remembering the encounter I’d had with the freak in uniform, I shuddered and felt nauseous. I leaned back against the bulkhead to take stock of my injuries. Probing, I couldn’t find a wound on my head, and although I took a pretty good shot to the shoulder, I didn’t think I’d broken anything. The blood must have been from the Zeke last night.
Zeke. Yeah, that’s a good name for them. Not “zombies” like Romero’s, but something fast and vicious.
The ferry took another jolt and I grabbed the stanchion next to me. The ferry had either run aground or into another vessel. I rose shakily. Finding my hammer, I cavalierly opene
d the hatch. I’d had it with this shit; I was either going to make it or I wasn’t. I was not going to just sit around waiting to die of thirst in a locked room.
Stepping out, I’d to shield my eyes from the glare of the brightly shining sun. I looked around the car deck. The vehicles were jammed together like a pileup on the interstate. There wasn’t any sign of the freaks, looks like my brain is stuck with freaks, but I wasn’t about to let my guard down. Holding the hammer, I cautiously made my way to the bow.
The ferry was wedged up against a pier that looked abandoned. The Humvee that I was headed to last night when I was so rudely interrupted by its occupant was sitting with its nose through the big steel chains blocking the vehicle exit lane. I opened the door, ready to bash anything that jumped out.
The driver was in similar shape as the not-so-fat-anymore lady upstairs. The stench was worse than a dead whore in a Mexican brothel. I stepped back and looked in the cab from a greater distance. It wasn’t much better, but at least I was able to keep from gagging. I walked around to the back of the Humvee and opened it up.
Halle-frickin-lujah!
I stared at the most beautiful thing I’d seen since I left West-By-God-Virginia: a case of M4A1 carbines, four cases of MREs, and a box of 24 grenades. These guys must have been taking supplies from the armory in Seattle to a deployed unit on Whidbey when all this came down. After more searching and gagging, I came across a box of utility vests and six bags of loaded magazines for the M4A1s. The M4s were straight-up basic carbines. There weren’t any fancy scopes or stocks, just Plain Jane killing tools with standard sights. I checked the magazines to find that although the rifles were not special, the ammo was definitely high-quality 62-grain ballistic-tipped 5.56 rounds. I pulled an M4 out of the crate, cleared it, and dry-fired. These were virgin rifles, never deployed nor assigned. I was having difficulty not crying like a two-year-old on Christmas morning. I also found the driver’s vest stuffed behind his seat. It had four M9 magazines in it.
Shit! He had a 9mm pistol on him, and I have to find it.
I dug around behind his seat, dry heaving the entire time.
It’s not here. Damn, I guess I have to search him.
I tried to be respectful, but my eyes were watering and snot was running from my nose. My stomach was already sore from heaving so much. Then I saw the M9, down on the floor in an inch of coagulated blood and chunks of flesh.
“I’m sorry, buddy, but I need this more than you do. Thank you for your service, and God rest your soul.”
Those were the first words I’d spoken aloud since this all began. My voice sounded harsh and brittle, uncaring; but honestly, I was deeply grateful to this young man who had given his life in the course of his duty.
I retrieved my backpack from the trunk of the rental car and charged my cell phone from the laptop. It was probably a moot point, but I had pictures on that phone that I didn’t want to give up. There still wasn’t any service, and I didn’t think AT&T would be coming back anytime soon.
I crammed as many MREs into the backpack as I could after tossing the laptop and all its accessories back in the trunk. Even if there was some chance I might be able to use it again, it was just shit taking up room. Right now I needed food, water, and ammunition. I had a one-liter water bottle in my pack, and I knew that water was number one on the list of things I had to find. I thought about going back to get the bleach, but the mere thought of facing the unknown darkness made me forget that idea as quickly as it formed.
Finding an old, rusty ladder that I could reach on the pier, I climbed up with a great amount of huffing and puffing. I was tired and sore and hurt in places I didn’t even know existed, but there was no rest in sight. I had to find some transportation; I had to get to Sarah’s house.
It was eleven o’clock before I found a vehicle with the keys in it. As an added bonus, it had nearly a full tank of fuel. On the downside, the previous owner had expired behind the wheel. The mess he left me was disgusting, but I dragged him out and cleaned off the seat as best as I could. I found a blanket in the back and used it to cover what I couldn’t clean. Contrary to the story about Los Angeles I’d read on the Internet last night, the roads were fairly clear. I didn’t have a clue as to why, but I wasn’t about to complain.
The car was a Chevy Malibu with a built-in GPS navigation system. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but after typing in my niece’s address, it came right up with a route. As it turned out, the ferry had beached just north of Edmonds. The pier was no longer in use; there wasn’t even an access road. I’d had to climb a fence, cross two railroad tracks, and climb another fence before I’d arrived at the parking lot. A sign identified the place as Haines Wharf Park.
The GPS indicated that it was only half an hour to Woodinville, where I hoped to find Max, Lisa, and Sarah’s family. The trip was uneventful and enlightening. The only places with any congestion appeared to be off-ramps leading to hospitals. Once I hit the 405, I could maintain about thirty miles per hour through the mess. Slowing to miss a few abandoned crashes and several bodies cost me some time, but I pulled up to the house just after noon. The garage door was open and there was a single SUV parked in the driveway.
Looks like Max didn’t get my message, I thought, pulling in. I sat in the car, hoping someone would come out of the house to greet me. After ten minutes with no sign of life, I got out of the car. The entire neighborhood seemed abandoned. I saw the curtains in the front window of the house move.
Did I just see that or am I losing it? I thought, as the front door opened and Max stuck his head out.
“Hey, little brother!”
I ran around the car and bolted for him. I was never so glad to see anyone in my entire life, and I planned to bear hug him.
“Whoa man, hold up,” he said, holding up both arms, palms facing me.
I skidded to a stop. “Why? What’s wrong?” I asked, confused.
Still holding up his arms, he said, “Sarah left a note. Tim and Peter died two days ago. Sarah and the other three kids left the same day and went to Meg’s.”
Then he hung his head. “Lisa is sick, man. She looks real bad… I don’t know.”
His shoulders shook as he stood sobbing. I walked up and grabbed him into that bear hug. He tried to pull away, but he was in no shape to rebuff the support I offered.
He whispered, “I don’t think she’s going to make it, Ryan, and I don’t know if I want to.”
Just then, a C130 roared overhead. I ran back into the yard, waving my arms. There was no use shouting, as I knew from my time as an air crewman. On a Coast Guard C130, you couldn’t hear the person next to you, let alone someone fifteen hundred feet below. The aircraft didn’t turn or acknowledge that it had seen me. I turned around and walked back to the house. Max said that I shouldn’t be there, that I would be exposed to the flu if I came in.
I chuckled and put my arm around his shoulder. “Max, as you always say, ‘in for a dollar… in for dime.’”
*****
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“Family Reunion” takes the short story here and follows the Brant family further into the Apocalypse.
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