Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (24 page)

Then again, she was really only doing now exactly what she had done then: saving the most important man there, and fulfilling her duty as she understood it.

But this time it would be her who was left behind.

She rubbed her upper arms – all her limbs had grown cold, as her sympathetic nervous system pulled blood from her extremities. And her whole body felt heavy with the increase of adrenaline. None of this was likely to get any better.

Well
, she thought, catching Park’s eye across the open air, and nodding to him gravely.
No time like the present
.

She stood up tall and cupped her hands to her mouth.

“Hey you!” she shouted. The sudden, dramatic vocalization echoed through the dark cavernous space. “Yeah, you! The John Dillinger-lookin’ motherfucker!”

Now it was on.

* * *

The grenade wobbled, wobbled, wobbled across the deck… and came to rest directly beneath the starboard wing of the parked aircraft.

And also directly beneath
, Handon grimaced to note,
its goddamned starboard wingtip fuel tank.

Many of the sailors who had come forward again to try to help now clocked the new threat, and shouted warnings at the others, who turned and legged it toward safety.

But Handon didn’t leg it.

Instead, he uncoiled all the physical energy he had wound up during the second of the grenade’s roll. And he sprang forward – straight toward the plane, the pilot, the scientists, and also toward Drake, who was still holding his arm and looking dazed.

Glancing up as he rocketed off, Handon could see the Sikh doing pretty much exactly the same – he was also hurtling forward, and the two of them appeared to have the same target: the one of the three scientists who was still on his feet. Handon instantly tweaked his course, angling instead toward the one just getting up. He and the Sikh crossed each other in mid-sprint, like some kind of broken football play.

Handon’s mass and momentum tackled the wounded one out of his kneeling posture, and took both of them down and away from the plane, and the explosive that now sat under it. Handon landed on top of him, trying not to do so with his full weight, but mainly concerned with positioning his own body.

The Sikh’s run and leap took the standing scientist in nearly the opposite direction. And the pilot’s weight, piling into and landing on him, was equal to or greater than Handon’s.

At exactly the same instant, all four of them hit the deck hard, two by two…

And the grenade exploded.

* * *

What kind? What kind?

Sarah stood rooted to the spot atop her pile of crates. She was watching one lurching motion, and one motion blur. The lurching one was Dr. Park, as he broke cover and started hobbling across the stretch of open floor between him and the exit. To his credit, he hadn’t hesitated, moving out the second after Sarah shouted.

But he was also hurt, and tired, and scared, and had lost blood… and wasn’t exactly setting any land speed records. He ate up the feet of open deck at a rate Sarah found excruciating to watch. But only half of her was watching him.

The other half was watching, in utter helplessness, as the dead sailor crossed the open deck between it and her like a man with his ass on fire. When she shouted, it had turned instantly away from the spot on the wall that had so transfixed it, crouched down, issued a rageful hiss that only grew in volume – and then took off toward her at a wild sprint.

What kind?
she thought, looking behind her. There was still only open air behind her, just a drop to the deck, and absolutely nowhere to go. She turned to face forward again.

Its arms were pumping way out in front of it, its heels kicked out behind, and it looked pretty damned frantic and crazed to Sarah. But as frantic as the ones she’d seen in Michigan? She simply couldn’t tell. But she would know for sure in another half a second.

Because if this thing
was
a Foxtrot, it was simply going to reach a spot ten feet from her perch and then leap through the air, up onto the pile of pallets, and take her over and off it.

Sarah’s perception slowed and dilated time, in that crazy way the mind does in the middle of an unfolding disaster. And now she flashed back to the dusk-muted vision of those Foxtrots flying over her wire fence, and up onto the porch of her cabin, a few days and a thousand lifetimes ago. She remembered her and Handon trying to pick them off in mid-air. But she’d had her rifle then.

Now she was empty-handed – and also half-naked.

And in another quarter-second, this crazed, flesh-hungry biological impossibility was either going to leap up onto her box and commence tearing her to bits.

Or else it wasn’t.

But, either way… Park was going to have time to escape. He was wounded, and lurching, and moving not nearly fast enough to suit Sarah.

But he was almost there.

* * *

As Handon lay prone and tucked up and keeping his guy down underneath him, and as he felt the heat and overpressure of the grenade blast behind him, he had a second to relax and reflect.

So the problem with trying to hurl a grenade back is the exact same problem with throwing yourself on top of one to save your buddies: there is absolutely no way to tell how long the fuze on it is. And that’s even if you knew when the pin came out, the spoon popped, and the fuze started burning. Basically, a live grenade was a black box – one that was going to explode at some totally arbitrary and unknowable point in the future.

So given that, Handon – who’d had more than a few grenades chucked at him in his life – Handon’s preferred technique was to instantly dive away from the grenade, land flat on his face, get his thick bootsoles up facing toward the blast, press his legs tightly together (for obvious reasons) – and generally make himself as narrow as possible. More than once he’d suffered shrapnel wounds and burns to his legs and buttocks.

But it beat the hell out of getting blown up.

And it also sure as hell beat jumping on a live grenade to save your teammates – and then just lying there feeling stupid for the last five seconds of your life. And even
that
was better than picking it back up and attempting a baseball throw – and then having it go off right next to your big stupid head. Which, way up in the air and in the open like that, was also the place where it stood the best possible chance of killing or wounding your friends.

No, all things considered, it was much the best thing to leave a grenade where it fell, and get yourself the hell away from it and covered up as quickly as possible.

On this occasion, he had two people to cover up – himself and the wounded scientist. But when he heard the
krump
, and felt the heat and overpressure of the explosion, he knew they’d gotten far away enough, gotten tucked up enough, and mainly gotten lucky enough, that they were both more or less unhurt.

After the explosion settled, and as Handon turned his head to the side, opened his eyes, and scanned the environment, he saw two things. One was that Commander Drake hadn’t been as lucky. It looked to Handon like he’d clocked the grenade and tried to get clear – but hadn’t gotten clear enough. Now he was down on the deck and bleeding. And not just from his original arm wound.

Second, Handon saw the plane’s wing was on fire. The grenade had taken the wing tank up with it. But, as he had guessed, it hardly had any fuel left in it – mainly fumes.

But it was enough to set the plane alight.

And as Handon’s hearing started to dial back up, he ascertained a third change in their environment.

That big tractor was now rumbling across the flight deck, accelerating, and racing pretty much directly at them.

He gathered his strength to get up again – and to get the wounded scientist up and supported around the shoulders if possible. Or into a fireman’s carry if necessary.

But moving the hell out of there in any case.

* * *

The sprinting dead sailor didn’t slow its flat-out assault – in fact he seemed to coil up, somehow all the while sprinting forward, and Sarah waited and watched for the leap. Every cell in her body went cold in anticipation of it. But there was absolutely nothing she could do – just stand there and take it.

The leap didn’t come.

Instead, the hurtling dead body slammed into the crates beneath her, causing the whole pile to jerk, and her to bunch up her shoulders around her ears and involuntarily gasp out loud. She even slammed her eyes shut for a split second.

When she opened them again, the Romeo – for a runner it proved to be – was still only a few feet away. But it was down on the deck, waving its arms and tongue up toward her, making frantic hissing noises. Only just around the side from it, a couple of feet away and in plain view, were the lower boxes Sarah had used to climb up there. But of course this thing couldn’t plan ahead, or plan at all. It just kept reaching up toward her and hissing.

Not moving, Sarah raised her eyes – and saw Park reach the hatch. To his credit, he wasn’t looking back. And the runner stayed totally locked onto Sarah.

And then, from out of nowhere, the whole room bumped. It felt like a large person had kicked the ship, just one time. To Sarah, it sounded like a muted explosion, somewhere far away, and definitely far above them.

And the zombie heard it, too. It ceased its grasping up at Sarah, and almost seemed to take stock.

Oh, no
, Sarah thought.
Don’t… don’t turn around
.

She could see Park start to pull the hatch open.

And then, a few seconds later, another sound erupted. It was some kind of inexplicable, grinding, metallic scraping, and it came from up above them – on the port side. And then it descended, scratching and scraping the outside of the hull, all the way down.

The runner turned toward the noise.

Which also meant it turned toward Park.

And it took off again, at a dead run.

* * *

Fireman’s carry it was, then.

And as Handon got them both up and moving, the first thing he saw was his odd Sikh counterpart doing the same thing with the unhurt scientist – though he got the round-the-shoulders option.

Then straight ahead of them, toward the interior of the flight deck, Handon saw that Homer was in the same posture he himself had been in a few seconds ago – except with two little people under him, and his big arms and legs splayed out to cover up their little ones. (Obviously, pressing his legs together wasn’t going to come into it. He had more precious jewels to protect.)

When Handon had his scientist out to something like a safe distance, he laid him down, just as he heard a terrible crunching noise behind him. Rising and turning, he saw the big flight-deck tractor, being driven by two guys in fireproof red suits, crash into the side of the burning plane, just ahead of the wing.

And running in behind and alongside it was that goddamned maniac bearded pilot again. He’d also dropped his man off in a safe place – and now went leaping up into the cabin of the flaming aircraft, which was already being shoved across the few feet of flight deck that lay between it and the edge. About a second later he emerged with three objects: a white cardboard box, a big bulky rifle – and, sure enough, a big-ass no-shit scimitar in a jeweled scabbard.

And then, with a tremendous grinding noise, the tractor sent the plane tumbling unceremoniously over the edge of the deck. As its center of gravity finally took it over, Handon saw the most amazing thing, as if from within a dream. A brilliant white bird flapped in and settled down on the very tip of the vertical stabilizer at the rear of the plane. For almost a full second, staring on with his .45 still in his hand and his mouth slightly open, Handon thought it was a dove.

But as the flaming, 10,000-pound aircraft went tumbling over, scraping the side of the hull as it fell, and the white bird spread its wings and soared away again, Handon realized:

It was only a seagull.

But it meant they must be close to land.

Handon dropped the hammer on his pistol, then safetied and holstered it. And he looked around for how next to make himself useful. But the answer was right at his feet. The man he had saved needed first aid.

He wasn’t saved yet.

* * *

Sarah shouted once, loud. Then she stood rooted to the top of her box – just long enough to see the runner cover most of the distance back toward the hatch, straight toward Park.

He had reached the hatch, gotten it open, maneuvered himself through it – and was now trying to swing it closed. But his weakened and blood-slicked arms were fumbling it. And then when he heard Sarah’s shout of warning, he abandoned the effort and instead turned and took off, disappearing into the companionway beyond.

Sarah leapt off the crate and raced toward the hatch, watching as the runner, locked onto new prey, disappeared through it at a mad sprint. A half-second later, when she blasted through the hatch herself, into the better lighting of the short companionway beyond, she could see two things.

One, Park had just made the hatch at the other end, and was turning around to swing it closed.

Two, the runner was blasting at him at an insane pace – and looked like getting there before Park got the hatch closed.

Skidding to a stop, Sarah reached into her pocket, palmed the heavy screw she’d found, wound up, and gave it her best big-league fastball. She also screamed at the same time. But she damn well hoped her aim was good, because she wasn’t optimistic about the chances of her voice doing the job alone. Not with the thing in frenzy for Park.

Bullseye – she hit it dead between the shoulder blades. It jerked, skidded to a stop, turned around, crouched low, and hissed at her across the open air. The sound was pure malevolence.

But Sarah had already retreated back out of the corridor, and was swinging the hatch shut. It closed, and she dogged the latch then looked through the porthole glass. As the runner smashed into it, she could see down to where Park had done the same on the other end.