Chapter Eleven
The Fall of New York
Lizzie felt sorry for herself. She knew deep down that she had to snap out of it. She really admired General Logan and she had to admit to herself if nothing else that she was trying to impress him. It was like the real version of her was shouting, screaming at herself, at the top of her lungs to snap out of the silly little depressed state she had convinced herself to go into.
She had to shake it off but the stubborn need to not be the first to back down was strong. He had successfully navigated a few more stations in silence, crushed a few of the dead on his path too, but hadn’t looked away from the window in front. He hadn’t even met her eyes in the reflection.
‘Look.’ She started talking but forgot what to say.
‘Just relax kid.’ He interrupted, sensing her embarrassment, and made a move to solve it before it became an issue in their friendship. ‘I just don’t want you, or history after us, to record John as a monster if he does this. He is a good guy deep down. He just doesn’t see another way.’ He turned and smiled at her.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’ She pleaded and shook her head. He didn’t want to argue at all though.
‘You always work alone?’ He asked her out of the blue. He kept doing that. Darting the focus of a conversation away just when it was getting too intense for him. He had seen her photo on the fridge. Just her in uniform. Not even a K-9 unit for a friend.
‘I never had a partner no…’ She was going to continue.
‘Well you do now.’ He stated and turned around completely. ‘I live, you live. You die, I die.’ That felt good to hear. She welled up instantly. Never before had someone said something so committed to her. For Logan, well, he could forget a little more about the mistakes he had made in the past few weeks. The ones he could have saved and didn’t. The ones he didn’t try to save at all. If he could get her out. If he could make sure this young, spunky, city cop made it out safe he could bury his guilt under a long line of zombie corpses.
The route he had mapped out using the poster of metro stations on the wall would take them up and into the Bronx. That was where they needed to be. The containment wall that the Doctor had set up and had waiting for them was past that point at Valhalla. They needed to get there soon before General Cygan made good on his word and bombed the city into the last century!
The train wouldn’t take them the whole way. They would need to get off in an hour or so and switch to a car or a motorbike or something. There was a pretty defendable freeway that ran all the way from the Bronx into the suburb of Valhalla if memory served. That would be where they needed to head.
‘We need to switch trains soon. Or at least switch tracks.’ Logan announced to her. He was just guessing at that point. They had been quiet for a few minutes but it felt like the air had cleared and they were friends again. This one line would just eventually swing them back around to where they started.
‘Ok, do you have a plan?’ Lizzie asked and stood up to look at the chart on the wall. She had to pull herself up onto her tip toes and rest an arm on his shoulder to be able to see over him.
‘There.’ He showed her by pointing his finger and running it down the map along the train route. He was pointing at 5th avenue right by Central Park. That must have been where they needed to get off and get onto another line. He rubbed his hand sharply through his stubble in thought.
‘Maybe we should try a different approach.’ Logan turned back to her and stared into the distance over her shoulder.
‘Like what?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Do you see them as the train gets closer? The ones on the track? They look dormant until they hear the wheels on the track. Maybe that means they use the sense of hearing more than sight.’ He started scratching two fingers across his thickening white stubble.
‘You think we can just sneak by?’ She was a little reserved about doing something so daring and that showed in her voice.
Logan continued, ‘I don’t think we should get so close to them, for all I know they could smell us, but I think keeping quiet and moving slowly might keep us from getting into a fire fight. If we do that then we just get swarmed. For every bullet we shoot off, more come.’
‘I don’t know if I can do that.’ She was obviously nervous.
‘Just stay close and follow my lead. Keep a hand on my shoulder and just breathe when I do. We can do it I promise.’ He pushed the lever on the train console all the way back. It slowly slid to a halt just ahead of the station.
The place was still in darkness but their eyes had slowly accustomed to it. What light there was seemed stronger and where there was no clarity before now they could make out detail and shapes in the distance. There were at least four of the zombies shuffling around on the track ahead. Lizzie started to breathe deeply and made a few whimpering noises. She folded her lips into her mouth and shook her head from side to side. She trusted Logan though. Especially after what he said before. She trusted his judgment and trusted what he could do.
The train line was housed in a circular tunnel built out of brick. It was an old line so the walls were cracked and crumbled in some places. The stations opened up though. They were big hollows in the ground where the tunnels opened up into cavernous spaces where there were newsstands, hot dog carts and ticket offices.
Some of them were huge but this was one of the smaller and more boxy ones. That would make the job of sneaking in a little harder. Sometimes the lines merged and the tunnels converged from twos and threes. That was what they would find ahead.
The main lights had died some time ago. So far they had made it through using the strong headlights of the train but ahead they would have to rely on thin trickles of light slithering down from the emergency lights far above their heads. That pale artificial light was nigh useless but it would have to do.
He turned around and opened the door back into the passenger carriageway. The train lights had gone out now that the engine had been powered down. He took Lizzie by his left hand, leaving his right free just in case, and pressed the button for exit.
The doors slid open slowly to reveal a flat brick wall. They were still in the dark and cramped tunnel. It suddenly felt very claustrophobic and the sense that they were very vulnerable rose in their minds like a screaming zombie. He turned his head and nodded to Lizzie. She was scared but too tough to let it be too transparent.
He slid out first and flattened his body right against the wall. She joined him and followed him as he shimmied across the cold wall towards the station ahead. He kept his back flat and his movement quiet but rhythmic.
It only took a few steps before they were out in front of the train and heading for the station. A few emergency lights ahead flickered on and off. That cast the tunnel in an unsettling spasmodic and dim light. He took hold of her hand again and crouched down. Legs bent and back arched. Like an animal stalking its prey.
That right hand of his started stroking his gun again. She had noticed he did that when he was a little unsettled himself. She trusted her life to him and he trusted his to those powerful guns.
He turned back to Lizzie and let go of her hand. He needed to make sure there were no noises at all for the zombies to hear. He waved at her with his hand and placed it onto the cold wall at the side of the tunnel. He was telling her to use her hand as balance and walk along the polished clean silver metal rails. Between the rails it was only gravel and that would crunch under their boots.
She got it right away and demonstrated to be certain. He gave her the thumbs up and did the same. Step by step they balanced their weight against the wall and slid one foot in front of another along the polished and slippery metal. The tunnel opened up after not long and the true test was brought into view.
There were at least thirty of them, all stood on the platform. He was right though. About both things. They were dormant until aroused but it also looked like they were ghosts acting out the routines of their
former selves. They were all dressed ready for work, a craftsman, a few office workers, investment bankers, construction site managers.
All of them stood there swaying under their own weight staring at the empty platform and waiting for their long overdue train. There were only four of them on the track itself and they were all facing the other way. It looked like they had been pushed down in a rush or something. One of them stood tall on a broken ankle, the other had blood right down its white shirt, and the other two looked like train drivers waiting to start work.
There was just enough space to crawl behind the ones on the track and stay low enough to not get seen by the ones on the platform.
Logan held up his free hand and held it horizontal. He then lowered it across his eye line while facing Lizzie. She didn’t know his military hand-jargon but got the point. She had to keep low. Her breathing was becoming more erratic and she had started biting her lip. He winked at her. He would have liked to comfort her by saying that it would be ok but of course he couldn’t.
He sunk to the floor and took the lead again. He moved slowly and every inch he stepped was calculated. He made sure to keep glancing up to make sure he was still hidden by the four foot high concrete platform. One step, then another and another.
He could even hear them breathe above them. Perhaps they were smelling the air? Maybe they could sense the living were near. They couldn’t hear them or see them. If they got caught out here there would have way more than they could handle all at once. This needed to go right.
One of the ones on the track suddenly grunted and started to swivel on the spot. It had a hard hat on that had slipped below its vacant and distant milky eyes. Logan immediately stopped and drew his right hand gun.
He would have done it. He would have blown the monster’s brain right out the back of its skull if he needed to. Then he would have grabbed Lizzie by the hand and legged it before the ones above had the chance to figure it out. Luckily he didn’t need to.
It swayed around in a circle and fell to the floor backwards. It tripped on a wire or something. His back erupted with a crack and a crunch but no shriek of pain. They both breathed out slowly, relieved, and continued on slowly and softly.
They couldn’t afford to lose their nerve and rush the last few steps. A few minutes passed and they reached the next tunnel. Lizzie was going to speak but he put his hand right over her mouth.
There was one final zombie sniffing around in a doorway just up ahead. The door must have been a maintenance access point. It was pushed back from the wall of the tunnel in a little hollowed out section. The zombie was looking out into the tunnel. Logan could see that it had a radio in one hand. The workman dutifully had it grasped in his palm like he was waiting for his boss to call in his work schedule.
The knife would have to do the job. Logan unclipped his and hoped his aim would be true. He sneaked right along the wall with Lizzie in tow and his knife raised. He held it in a backhand grip.
Right in the throat! The blood ejected from the zombie’s jugular and it dropped to the floor in a dead heartbeat. Logan wiped the blade on the zombie workman’s overalls and put it back in his belt. In a few steps they were in the clear and could see a train over on another track. That must have been the one they needed.
‘There.’ Logan whispered. ‘Just a little more, ok?’ He took her by the hand and stepped slowly from track to track and made for the train in the distance. He vaulted over the centre divider in the two parallel tracks and helped her over too. He circled the train once with his gun drawn but there was nothing there.
They climbed in, unhooked the following trailers just like before, and locked themselves into the driver’s cabin. It was identical to the last one they were in. He looked over to Lizzie and started smiling.
‘That was…’ She started to talk but he just laughed at her.
‘What?’ She playfully shouted and backhand slapped his arm.
‘Its fun right?’ He pushed the lever to set the train in motion.
‘I don’t know if fun is a good word but, it was, exhilarating.’ She sighed and held her open palm against her forehead. ‘I’m sweating like a fat kid in Phs-ed!’ She laughed with him as the new train gathered speed. He stopped it from going too fast and just held it at a consistent speed.
Not slow enough that a zombie could catch them, but slow enough so they could stop in an emergency. Not too fast, but fast enough to make progress and fast enough to wipe out a stray zombie on the track.
‘What will we do when we get out of the city?’ She was perched on the driver seat, legs tucked up, with her arms folded over them. Now that the adrenaline settled and they had stopped moving, the cold was starting to burn again. The cabin had a heater linked directly to the engine but that did precious little to take the sting out of it.
‘Run away?’ She asked again since he didn’t answer at first.
‘Run where?’ He was slouched into the side of the cabin; arms folded, and never moved his eyes from the path ahead.
‘I… maybe there is a deserted island somewhere? Something in the Hudson River itself, or for that, get those army guys to give us a ride to Honolulu or a Greek island in the sun.’ She smiled at the prospect of getting warm.
‘Then what?’ He met her eyes just for a second. ‘Pull up a deck chair, mix ourselves a few tequila sunrise cocktails, and watch the world burn on the horizon?’ He could have sounded sarcastic but didn’t. He didn’t embezzle the idea either though. Lizzie tapped the back of her seat a few times with an open palm.
‘I bet no island is left undisturbed right?’ She thought about it but spoke out loud. ‘Everyone will have that idea.’ She smiled at herself and closed her weary eyes for a few seconds. Logan held his stern tone but friendly delivery.
‘Like rat’s running away from a sinking ship.’ That was a little cruel. That was the General Cygan in him coming out a little. After all, the ass hole had been Logan’s friend and mentor, there was bound to have been some effect.
‘So what then?’ She kept her eyes firmly shut.
‘We could run. We really could. I don’t think anyone would judge us if we did. But the truth is we shouldn’t. When you meet Abraham you will see what I mean. He makes everyone look like grade school science teachers. Over everyone else on the planet he has the best shot at figuring this out. All I can do is help him. The only way to even survive this war is by staying wherever the front line happens to be.’
‘Then I’ll be there too.’ She opened her eyes finally and yawned. They hadn’t even been up long. Maybe she hadn’t slept very well knowing her world was about to be flipped upside down.
‘Even if he is my friend, General Cygan needs to be stopped, that’s where I’ll be going next.’
‘Besides.’ She ignored his last comment and added. ‘I only drink scotch malt.’
‘Expensive girl. Is that why you don’t have a boyfriend?’ She didn’t bite even though she wanted to. ‘Get some sleep. I'll wake you up when we need to get off.’ She took that offer immediately and even managed to fall asleep on the spot still with her legs tucked up under her arms.
Cops, nurses, old General’s. They were all the same. They could sleep on command. Never knew where the next nap was coming from.
Logan navigated in silence through the maze of interconnecting subway tunnels. They needed to ride this train all the way out of Manhattan and get as far north as possible to the screening net. Lizzie just slept next to him on the chair.
There were less zombies each and every station they passed. He thought there might have been more of them. A lot more.
The snow had blocked most of the access steps to the subway. There mustn’t have been too many people in the tunnels, which meant the rest of the zombies must have been trapped either in the volumes of ice or the city above. No one had been riding the subway anyway. They were all locked away in their homes trying to survive the flu.
Hopefully the majority of them would
stay locked away. It was a sick thought. But Logan hoped that they had died behind locked doors and that’s where they would stay.
It was time to get off the train soon and he could only hope, for both their sakes, that there wasn’t an un-dead army waiting on the surface for them!
‘Lizzie, wake up.’ He said softly and rocked her gently by the shoulder. She awoke with a spasm and she reached for her gun immediately. That was probably how she had awoken for months.
‘Relax everything’s ok. But we need to get off here.’ Logan had already brought the train to a halt ahead of the next station. It looked similar to the last one they had been in. He halted the train in the tunnel and would try to repeat the same tactic of sneaking past.
‘Oh fuck. I feel like I haven’t slept at all.’ She uncurled herself and tried to stand but couldn’t for the cramps in her back and arms. She held her head in one hand and tried to massage her legs with the other.
‘Make sure you wake up properly.’ Logan was happy to wait for her. ‘We need to sneak past some more of them and get to the surface.’ She was visibly scared by the prospect but didn’t try to argue with him about it.
‘I’m ok. I’m ready to go.’ She stood up at once and shook herself until the blood came back to her tired and weakened muscles. Logan threw her a bottle from the bag they had been carrying around. The last of the supplies from her flat. She drank half and saved the other for him. He guzzled it quickly and tossed the bottle. He slung the bag back over his shoulder and reached for the door.
‘Ok, let’s do this.’ That was about as motivational as he could manage. The routine was the same as last time they had to sneak through a station. If there were too many of them in this one they might even have to abort and push on to the next or even pull back to the last.
This time they would have to get on the platform and sneak right past an unknown number of them and up through the snow and ice to street level. He led her, again by the hand, right through the dark tunnel and along the polished rail line to the platform itself. He had made a good call. There were only ten or maybe fifteen of the zombies in this station. He took one daring glance over the platform to confirm this.
From a distance the creatures just looked like normal people. Some of them had horrific injuries and were covered in their own blood but most seemed fine to the naked eye.
Were they really all dead? Only when you got close could you see their milky vacant eyes and see the paleness of their skin. Those creatures had no pulse and their veins were full of black coagulated and clotted blood. He needed to draw their gaze away so they could mount the platform unnoticed. He looked around for an idea. He only had the one emergency flare left and he might need that to signal to someone above on the surface.
They were still balanced on the silver track with their weight pressed against the concrete. They did that to avoid crunching on the gravel below. Maybe that would do it. He reached down and grabbed a fist full of stones from between the tracks. He carefully planned a trajectory and threw them down the line as far as he could without slipping.
They scattered on impact, some bounced off the wall with a dull crackle and others bounced off the metal with a chink, but it worked. There was an odd growl and a grunt or two. No shrieks though, like the ones back on the street before, or those first cases in England. They must only do that when they knew food was on the table. Logan raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to one side. Lizzie knew that meant they needed to go quick.
He vaulted first and waited just one second. If they looked back they would only see him. If they had then he would have ran in the opposite direction to try and let Lizzie get away. But they were fixated on those scattered noises so the coast remained clear. He reached down and pulled her up onto the platform next to him.
The stairs were dead ahead, cast in darkness, like the rest of the station. Only serviced by those dull and failing backup lights. He pulled her close and dashed around in an arc pattern around the unbeknown zombies. They vaulted the turnstiles at the very bottom of the stairs and crouched down to take every step one by one. Each step passed revealed a little more of what was ahead.
Just stale ceramic wall tiles so far. Then the odd flickering and irritating light overhead in the ceiling. But no zombies. As soon as he could see the way was clear he started to jog again. Lizzie kept looking back to find that the zombies back down on the platform hadn’t noticed them at all.
There was a body on the floor slumped against the wall. Not a zombie and not a man anymore either. He’d had his bowels ripped out and the creatures had fed on his insides, spilling his organs and blood all across the floor. That must have prevented his body from reanimating as one of them. Too much missing flesh maybe, Logan quietly guessed.
He had a uniform on and a badge too. He wore a black suit, one made out of thicker fabric than most, to reflect the sometimes manual handling nature of his work. He looked like an attendant at the subway station. Logan checked the stairs and platform behind one last time, and seeing that it was clear, started to rummage in the man’s blood soaked and frozen stiff pockets. There was a set of keys in there.
There was a metal shutter half closed ahead of them. He must have been trying to block himself in when he got attacked. They could really do with shutting it the whole way behind them.
‘Find the key that works in that thing.’ He handed Lizzie the full bunch and strode over to the wall. There was a fireman’s axe cased in glass that he wanted. He might need it to dig the snow out or as another silent killing tool.
‘Got it.’ She whispered back. The third or fourth key she tried was a perfect fit.
‘Test it.’ He mimicked turning a key in case she didn’t hear him. She turned it and the gate sprung into life with a sudden lurch. The noise was only brief and the creatures downstairs were none the wiser.
That was until he punched clean through the glass so that he could retrieve the axe. They started howling below and it was only a moment before the first one appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Seeing him, it shrieked and started frantically falling over the turnstiles as the rest followed. They fell clumsily over one another to get over the barrier and stumbled forward to the top.
‘Get out of there!’ Lizzie screamed as Logan calmly picked the glass away from the housing to get a hold of the axe. He started jogging as she turned the key. He crouched and ducked under the falling barrier as the first one came slamming into the metal. It was a chain link design so it could still get its arms through. It finally closed before they realized they could have crawled underneath.
Logan swung for the arms of that first one and chopped both clean off with one swing. Black blood and ooze sprayed out and continued like a river until it bled dry. Lizzie was panting for breath and just stared at him. She was annoyed that he had taken so long to get the axe and that he cut the arms off to messy up the place.
‘At least it’s sharp.’ He threw the axe up once and spun it in his hands. He had been right though. The entrance to the subway had iced right over with a million layers of thick snow. It was formed like a wall of ice directly in front of them.
‘Just start digging.’ She said and scowled at him. Logan just started laughing and took his first swing into the ice.
After smashing frantically for about ten minutes the first few layers of snow had successfully been removed. Logan sat down to catch his breath on the first of the now cleared steps. He sat there staring at the enraged zombies still trying to reach them. They were snarling and drooling all over the place.
Lizzie was starting to feel tired. She didn’t feel right at all inside and was suffering from a really odd sensation of intense fatigue. She had rested ok that previous night, quite content knowing Logan was sleeping in the other room to keep her safe, but it felt as though she hadn’t slept in weeks.
She sneezed once into her covered hands. There was a little blood. She wiped her hands quickly on her freezing cold trousers. Her breathing was gettin
g heavy but she managed to keep it under control with deep controlled exhales.
Being holed up inside for a few weeks at this point had done her no good. That’s what she put it all down to. Her muscles had deteriorated more than she had thought and the new demands of physical exertion was taking its toll. She decided to completely ignore it and carry on.
‘It feel’s weird.’ Lizzie said and stopped cutting through the snow with the axe and sat down right beside Logan.
‘What does?’ He asked and she started rummaging through the satchel bag. She was sure she had stuffed a few cereal bars in there before. Or some chocolate or something. Maybe a little food would sort her out.
‘Just the mix of emotions I guess.’ She announced cryptically and found what she had been looking for. Logan turned down her offer of a bite. He wasn’t hungry.
‘Like what?’ He asked.
‘I’m not as upset as I should be.’ She didn’t even try to sugar coat it. ‘I mean, these are people, or at least they were. Any number of times I might have been one of them and not just sat here with you.’ She tucked her legs up again to try to keep warm. Logan didn’t even think about his answer.
‘We lived in a faceless society.’ He said instantly. He had obviously been thinking about it too. ‘How many times did you used to walk to work and say “hi” to everyone along the way? People just became white noise in our own cluttered lives. These creatures, the zombies, they are as faceless as they were in life. At least to us.’
Logan gave his own bleak assessment as he locked eyes with one of them. It still just shrieked and moaned at him. It kept thrashing its arms though the grate and reaching frantically trying to get hold of them. Lizzie could not say she agreed.
‘I think it just makes me heartless.’ She said without sounding ashamed. ‘Even if you’re right and that’s why. Because we don’t see “faceless” faces as people anymore. I feel like that’s because I failed. To be a good person or a good cop.’ She rested her head gently on his shoulder. But he had become attached to his belief. It had been well formed in those weeks below the Alaskan snow.
He continued. ‘This plague is ravishing the whole surface of the Earth. There will be no recovering from it. But look at what has happened in the world recently. An economic downturn that lasted nearly a decade. Violence and unrest in the Middle East as they forged their own democracies. Egypt and Syria especially. The old world dictatorships were starting to fall and there was a sense of a coming battle of class as the gap between those with and those without widened. The so called lower classes would have risen eventually to overthrow the ruling elite to try and find a better system. A fairer one.’ He paused to look at her. He had clearly started a chain of thought off in her head. Her vacant stare and lack of reply confirmed it.
‘Maybe you feel lost in your own emotions because deep down you knew there needed to be a change. ’ He paused again to take a long gulp of fresh water. She still hadn’t replied.
‘The whole world was crying out for a change. Just nature beat them to it. So I guess it’s ok for you, or me, to not feel sadness looking at the zombies. They represent the world we secretly wanted to end anyway.’
He wasn’t exactly proud of his opinion. He felt no success in having it, at least in his own mind, all figured out. It was a cold assessment, one that somewhat contradicted the kind of deeply caring and trustworthy person he was, and wanted to remain. But it was one born out of logic and intelligence. He truly believed in what he said.
That the word, as it were, was overdue a grand overhaul. But he didn’t, and was careful to never, suggest he was glad about how it finally happened. He twisted the cap down on the bottle and placed it back in his bag. He went to stand but noticed her smiling in silence.
‘What is it?’ He asked.
‘Those are some funny beliefs for a General in the United States Air Force.’ She almost giggled but didn’t openly disagree or challenge his logic.
‘Retired.’ He reminded her and stood to take another bash at the ice wall. His hands were getting really cold by this point. He had put his gloves back on but that meant he had less grip on the axe.
Progress was slow. He hammered away at the ice as Lizzie used her bare hands to shovel to stubborn snow back behind them. It was so cold everywhere that it wouldn’t melt. It was like digging through rock and gravel. Finally the axe broke through the final layer and daylight oozed into the dark cavern that used to be a subway station.
Filled with a new wave of determination he bashed and bashed until there was enough space to crawl through. He took off those big thermal gloves so he could grip his gun better. He slid into the opening of the tunnel he had made. He squeezed his muscular frame through the tight space, scraped his leather jacket along the jagged icicles, and eased his way back out into the open air.
He took a good look around with both guns drawn. There were none of the un-dead immediately in view so he shuffled out and Lizzie followed. They emerged into the wide street, sheltered by only a few short buildings, but still utterly immersed in snow.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold.’ She puckered up and started flailing her arms around like a mad woman and blew warm air into her gripped palms to try and warm them up.
‘Here.’ Logan handed her his gloves and stuffed his hands into his pockets instead.
‘Thanks.’ She tried in vain to get them on but her hands were too shaken and icy cold. She had lost most of her movement. He helped her with them and started rubbing her shoulders vigorously.
‘Rub your chest, your hands will take care of themselves once you increase the circulation that way.’ He told her and started patting the tops of her shoulders.
‘Oh you would like that.’ That was brave. She blushed. He smiled but wasn’t thrown by it.
‘Either you’re too young or I’m too old. But thanks for that offer.’ He knew there was probably nothing behind that. Not even a glimmer of attraction that he could sense or lust either but it was funny and raised their spirits if not their body temperatures. He just kept smiling and enjoyed how embarrassed she had made herself. She tried to turn the path of conversation.
‘How old are you anyway?’ They had started walking but the cold was as bitter as death. It was important to get the blood pumping but not so much that they started to sweat. Sweating would just raise their body temperature too far and waste energy cooling back down again. A gentle but eager pace would do it. They still had to get out of the City soon.
‘I can’t even remember.’ He admitted and he wasn’t joking either.
‘Shut up!’ That seemed alien to her.
‘I’m serious. I stopped counting or even thinking about it a very long time ago.’
‘Then you must at least know what year you were born in.’ She kept pushing and wouldn’t just let it go.
‘I tell you what, if we make it out of here, to the end of whatever this brings us to, I’ll tell you.’ He promised her.
‘You have a deal.’ She smiled and punched him in the arm playfully.
He had forgotten all about his radio. It started crackling in his pocket as the signal broke through.
‘This is hummingbird do you read General Logan?’ The voice played out the same sentence over and over again. He stuffed his hand into his trouser pocket and retrieved the radio. He held the transmit button firmly with his cold and icy finger.
‘Affirmative. This is General Logan. Sorry for the delay.’ He spoke gently into the radio speaker and made sure to keep checking around for zombies.
The buildings had shortened and there were fewer high rises there. They had ridden the train all the way through the city and out to the outskirts. It was a disorientating place but it looked like they were somewhere north of the Bronx.
‘Good thing sir this was my last try.’ The friendly and trustworthy voice replied.
‘Any chance of getting that ride now?’ He glanced over to Lizzie, she had an obvious look of hope
in her eyes, a short helicopter ride out of the mess was much more appealing than a very long and cold walk.
‘Copy that General, do you have another signal flare?’
‘My last one.’
‘Give us five minutes. That’s zero five.’
‘Take your time kid I’m just starting to have fun.’ He joked and the controller didn’t reply. Radio discipline was obviously going out of the window very slowly.
It was getting dark. Being underground most of the day had altered their perception of time and they hadn’t noticed the day slip away. Cygan hadn’t launched yet. He had only given them half a day. Perhaps there was a chance he had reconsidered. Logan couldn’t help but hope but didn’t indulge Lizzie in it too.
The sun still hadn’t broken through the thick cloud that promised even more snow but the Earth was certainly sinking slowly into darkness. With this kind of cloud cover they could only hope for another half hour to an hour of light at best. Hopefully the mechanized Army unit had pulled back far enough to a safe distance and would be able to take them to Valhalla, where Abraham would be waiting for them at the screening net they had erected.
The cold was biting harder and faster as every second of daylight slipped away. If, for any reason, this helicopter ride failed, there was no way to survive the night. Not outside the comfort of Lizzie’s impressively fortified flat and not with the threat of a nuclear strike looming over their heads. They decided to stay put and wait for the helicopter. There was no point keeping moving and make it harder for them to be found.
‘They get more active at night.’ Lizzie looked visibly worried as the skies slowly darkened and the night settled in around them. ‘Did you not know that?’ She challenged his quizzical look.
‘Yes.’ How could he not? ‘Though I’ve never spent a full night in an infected area.’ He was busy counting his magazines and calculating in his head how many of them he could put down with what ammo he had.
‘There’s a lot more of them to get a lot more active here.’ She was looking up and down the street for any movement.
Logan had forgotten that she had a story too. There was no telling what she had done to survive and how she had made it up until the point they had met. He had not thought. For all he knew she might have just been the poor little damsel in distress, despite her abilities as a police officer, and he had swooped in to take her by the hand and save her life.
‘Just relax.’ He assured her but still drew both of his Desert Eagles. He almost lied to her and said that no matter what everything would be ok. He had said that to Jenny back in the library in England. It only took her a few hours after that to drop dead then rise again. That wasn’t going to happen to her.
‘They will be here soon and we can get out of here.’ He continued trying to calm her down.
She hadn’t drawn her weapon.
‘You’re out of ammo?’ He asked and glanced to her gun that she still had shoved down her trousers.
‘Yeah.’ She admitted sheepishly. ‘I only had one magazine in my house. It was supposed to be for burglars not zombies…’ That made sense. Why would she need ammo enough to take down a full city of people?
‘Here.’ He handed her one of his Desert Eagles but she nearly dropped it by the sheer weight of the thing. ‘Do not lose that.’ He ordered her with a heavy emphasis on the “not”. They were a trademark for him. Sort of a symbol of what he was and the kind of man he was.
She just nodded a few times and studied it to find her way around the gun. The safety, the weight, the load and round count. In the distance he could hear the soft whooping noise of the helicopter’s blades swing through the cold evening air. That would be like a dinner bell resounding through the empty echoing and cavernous city, drawing every hungered ravenous zombie for miles.
‘Thirty seconds out General, send up the flare.’ That was hummingbird coming in over the radio. He reached into his back pocket and hit the flare hard off the but of his gun to ignite it. It crackled into life and spewed red smoke and thrashing sparks all over the empty street.
‘I think I see one.’ Lizzie warned Logan as soon as she saw the first one stumble down the street ahead. They got faster when they had a purpose, something to chase, something to eat. The stumble evolved into a stagger and eventually into a clumsy run. They were still uncoordinated and hopeless at it but it was a run nonetheless. He fired one shot at a seemingly impossible distance. It went down and didn’t get back up again. He could have made that shot after all.
‘Make it fast hummingbird, Reggie just got wind of us.’ Logan shouted down the radio as the darkened sky erupted to the sound of a hundred howls. The helicopter was directly overhead in seconds and started its controlled descent. The zombies were closing in from both ends of the street but they were not the most troublesome!
The ones in the buildings to either side started throwing themselves right through the glass windows and down into the icy street below. Some of them still had night clothes on and some of them were dressed and ready for office work. Every other one would snap clean in half almost as they landed haphazard on the solid ice below. Some bent and twisted on impact but it didn’t stop them from coming. They dragged their broken and twisted bodies along the snow, snarling and drooling black ooze all over the place.
‘What are you waiting for?’ He yelled. ‘Start shooting!’ She opened fire, holding the heavy gun tightly with both hands. She adapted to it quickly and hit every single one of them clean between the eyes. She really was a sharpshooter.
Logan held his one handed and managed the same kill rate but they didn’t stop coming. They piled out of the windows and fell slamming down to the street below ready to attack. The air erupted to the sound of gunfire as the army guy’s opened fire from the back of the helicopter with automatic rifles. That hit them harder and many more fell. The iced street ran red and black with spilled blood.
‘We are not landing!’ The gunner in the back of the helicopter yelled at the top of his lungs over the punching sound of the rotating blades and continuous gunfire. ‘Get your asses over here, with respect, Sir!’ He was sarcastic as Hell but the General didn’t mind at all. He liked grunts with attitude. Much preferred them in fact to the suck up types.
‘Go!’ He yelled at Lizzie beside him who had lined up her next target. ‘I’ll keep you covered!’ He ordered her one last time as she blew another head off another zombie. She ducked quickly and threw herself into the open back helicopter.
One of the guy’s in there pulled her down to a seat and buckled the harness as fast as he could. The gunner then tapped the General on the shoulder to let him know it was clear. He then took over the line of fire to maintain a continuous bullet hail.
Logan jumped up into the seat and threw on his own harness. He then raised his gun one last time and fired one last shot to kill one last zombie that clawed at his feet.
The helicopter hovered tenuously over the snow and pulled back up into the air now that all passengers were aboard safely. One of the gunners handed out two sets of ear muffs that had microphones built into them. That would drown out the ambient noise but still allow them to talk to each other.
‘You like the ride?’ The pilot asked calmly. Lizzie hadn’t even noticed in the heat of battle.
‘Where did you steal this from, CNN?’ Logan joined in with the banter.
It was a civilian news helicopter. It still had the banner of whatever network it was from pasted to the side. Come to think of it, the mounted gun had been expertly grafted to whatever pivot point the camera would normally stand on, to give it the best arc of fire.
‘Yes Sir, just had to make a deal with the weather girl first.’ He joked. Dumb ass. Logan thought but didn’t say.
‘Thanks for the pickup.’ Lizzie shouted up. She felt so out of place. She was just a cop and felt that these tough as Hell army grunts wouldn’t like her.
‘No problem.’ That was the pilot again. ‘It looks like your emergenc
y broadcast worked General Logan. Look down below.’
They had flown a while now and were a good few miles from the site of their battle. Below was a caravan of refugees, a good mile long, all making their way down the freeway to the possible safety of the WDC containment net. Logan couldn’t make out any detail from that height and going that speed but there were a lot of people.
‘Are they protected?’ He asked the pilot, tearing his gaze away from the window and the long column of refugees all trudging through the snow.
‘Check that Sir, one tank and a rifle unit.’ He could just about see the tanks escort the groups of refugees from the front. In the crowds he could see the odd uniformed man with a powerful assault rifle at the ready.
‘Who do you take your orders from?’ Logan asked, remembering that they were technically still a military outfit, and that the last known surviving commander of the United States military was Lieutenant General John Cygan.
‘That would be you at this moment in time Sir.’ Neither of the two gunners were talking at all. They were just hanging out of the still open doors with their eyes peeled for walking dead on the horizon. ‘Cygan might have sent us here but I consider myself, at this point in my career, as entirely freelance.’ The pilot said cryptically. At least that meant no one there was a die-hard supporter of Cygan and his bull.
The sun had entirely set and the city was cast in darkness completely. Only the powerful lights on the helicopter, and similarly powerful ones mounted to the tank at the front of the refugee column, lit the way.
‘Drop the “Sir“.’ Logan eventually replied and slouched back into his horribly uncomfortable seat. ‘I’m retired.’ He asserted for the second time in just one day.
He leaned back in his seat with his hand over his mouth in a moment’s reflection. Abraham had only been able to make contact with this one last mechanized force in the known world. This was the last army left known to anyone and they had just placed him in charge. General Cygan might have had his command of a few scared people in the boarded up White House but Logan had these men pledge allegiance to him.
That was some weight to carry all at once. He thought about the rest of the world. He had been in New York, and therefore, out of the loop for quite some time. There was no telling just how hard the rest of the world had been hit, or even if anyone else was left alive in it.
He had to try again. He had to get a hold of Cygan and try one last time to change his mind.
“Cygan?”
“I copy Logan. I sure hope you made like a Coyote and ran like a teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert?”
“I’m clear of the kill zone. Hold off on the nuclear strike indefinitely Cygan. I have an unconfirmed number of refugees on route to the containment net for screening.”
“Damn it Logan I’m telling you half of those refugees will be infected anyway. Probably more.”
“Just cancel the strike and focus on saving lives! These are people we are talking about. The more people we save the better chance we have of having a tomorrow! There won’t be a world to save if you do this.”
“You won’t change my mind son.”
“This isn’t you trying to save the world anymore is it? This is scorched Earth! You think we can’t survive this and if there’s no place left for us then you would rather see the Earth burn than the monster’s walk all over it!”
“Would you rather I said different? Would you rather I sentenced the Earth to rot or set in on fire myself?”
“I’d rather you helped me save it. There is still time! We can do it together. We can stop this.”
“Forgive me my friend. And don’t judge me.”
Cygan cut the connection and Logan started slamming the radio against the wall of the helicopter in rage. The crew in the helicopter had heard the entire conversation and feared the worst. The pilot cranked it and the helicopter lurched forward on a tilted angle.
In only moments the sky ignited like the sun had risen in only a second. A thunderous roar erupted on the horizon with a tremendous explosion. The bass and tremble of it shredded their ears in a disorientating vibration. The wind whipped across the city behind and threw the helicopter forward. The alarm sounded but the pilot was good and brought the machine back into line with artistic control of the throttle and stick.
The mushroom cloud extended up into the dark sky and spewed up debris into the lower atmosphere of the Earth. Logan was angry as Hell. He had just about stopped short of crushing the radio before his sense came back to him.
Lizzie placed her hand gently on his knee. He wanted to throw her off in a rage but he looked up into her innocent face and tearful eyes and couldn’t do it. He just squeezed her hand in his. More to comfort her than himself.
He breathed hard and gritted his teeth. How many lives were just pointlessly extinguished? How many refugees that didn’t get far enough away? How many people holed up in the city too scared and too surrounded to try to make it out?
Cygan had to be stopped. Friend or not. But there had been something different about the way he had spoken on the radio though. He was angrier this time. More desperate. When Logan accused him of reaching for a ‘scorched Earth’ tactic he was just pulling at strings hoping that one of them would prompt an emotional response.
But maybe he had hit the nail on the head. Maybe Cygan had lost hope of saving the world and would rather see it burn by his own match than see it fall to the armies of the un-dead.