Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (18 page)

Behind her came more and more of the half-burned dead walkers, flooding into the stairwell and mounting the steps after us.

“Run!” I shouted, and pulled out my Walther.  I held my shaking hand over the rail and fired once, missing.  The ricochet sounded more frightening than the echo of the shot, and I was sure it would bounce from a block wall into my own skull.  Rather than fire again, I charged up the steps with Serena, Nelson, Weston and Rachel Reed.

We reached another landing.  “Keep going?” asked Nelson.  “Or try this floor?”

“Do they have exterior fire escapes on these buildings?” asked Weston.

“How the hell do we know?” asked Serena. “We’re not from around here.”

The noise from below grew louder – the sound of shuffling feet behind us, and to all of us that was the sound of death. 

“What about that WAT-5 shit?” asked Don Weston.  “Can’t we take that?”

“We’re already on it,” said Serena.  “It won’t work against them – not with the pregnant females around.  Don, what kind of hospital is this, anyway?”

“It’s a pretty popular women’s hospital,” he said.  “Good trauma center and the busiest maternity ward in Knoxville.  My boy was born here.”

I didn’t ask what had happened to his son, but what he had just said couldn’t be worse news. 

“That’s fucked, Don!” I said.  “I think when we filled you in we mentioned the pregnant female factor, right?”

“I didn’t tie it together,” he said.  “Sorry.  I don’t listen too well sometimes.  So my wife always told me.”

“Let’s go up,” said Rachel.  “If there’s a trauma center, I’m hoping there’s a surprise on the roof for us.”

“Like what?” I asked.  Then I knew.  “You fly helicopters?”

“It’s what I did in the Air Force.  Trained for it anyway.  Ended up mostly admin, but I was a hell of a pilot.”

“Then the roof it is,” I said.  “Everyone cross your fingers, but only if it doesn’t slow you down.” 

We ran.  There were eight stories all together, and when we reached the door marked roof, Weston got there first and pushed the mechanical bar.

It opened outward, and almost immediately, a rot-faced man in a button down short sleeved shirt smacked square into Don, who was still without a shirt.  The older man straight-armed the zombie in the face, and the creature went flat on its back.

“Move!” shouted Rachel, and ducked low between Nelson and me.  She pulled out the revolver and fired almost at the same time, capping the former Medevac pilot in-between the eyes.

I looked up and saw a pristine medical evacuation helicopter sitting squarely on the pad in the center of the massive roof.

“Nelson, pull that door closed, and hurry!” I shouted, and he did.

Weston held his right hand with his left, and I went to him immediately and took him by the wrist, pulling it toward me.  “Shit,” I said.  “Don.”

Serena looked at the situation and said, “This is a big roof.”  She pulled out her PPK.  “I’m going to walk the perimeter and make sure we’re alone up here now,” she said.

“Be careful,” I said, looking at Don’s hand and knowing what I was seeing was horrible news.  A tooth was embedded in the heel of his palm, and blood ran from the wound. 

“I was just tryin’ to push the big bastard away from me,” Weston said.  “Musta caught him in the mouth.”

“You gotta aim low, man,” I said.  Then: “Nelson, I hate to keep bossing you around, brother, but bring me urushiol.  I need the one you’ve been using and a full canister.”

“Not a problem, dude,” he said, already going for the requested items as he answered.  “It’s why I came.  I want to be a help.”

The canister Nelson had been using was in his backpack, which had been on his back, therefore was not left behind with the bikes.  He set his pack down and unzipped it, and quickly yanked out the cylinder.  “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“We need pure urushiol for Don’s hand, Nel,” I said.  “Unscrew the lid on that one slowly – let the pressure out.”

“Gotcha, dude,” he said.

I did the same with a full bottle.  “Okay, Nel.  Give me yours.”

Nelson handed it over and I slowly poured the contents of the full bottle into the three-quarter empty bottle.  This was a blend of oil and water, so it needed a good shaking to thoroughly mix.  There was a chance I could get enough pure oil out to kill any infection the rotter’s tooth may have introduced into Weston’s bloodstream.

As I had hoped, the water drained into the other canister, leaving almost pure oil behind.

He held his hand out to me, and the tooth was still stuck there.  “Crap,” I said.  “Don, can you get the tooth out?”

“I might look tough, but if I touch that mother-piece-of-shit, I’ll pass out, I swear.”

Rachel started running toward the chopper and shouted, “We should find what we need in there!  Hold on.”

She climbed inside and I saw two cushions fly out of the back.  Then she was out and running, a small, white box in her hands.  From the red cross on the outside of the container, I could see it was a small, portable first aid kit.

She dropped down beside us, unsnapped the latches and flipped the lid.  There were tweezers in a sterile package, and she tore it open with her teeth and reached up to take Weston’s hand.

“Grit your teeth, Don,” she said.  He did.  She unceremoniously jammed one side of the tweezers under the canine, and clamped it down.  She twisted it once, blood squirted out from the side, and she yanked it out. 

A shot rang out and I jumped up, searching the roof for Serena.  She appeared from around the air conditioning equipment.  “I’m okay!  We’re good now.  Just one.”

She came over and watched as Don’s blood poured from the newly released bite wound.

“Get some of that gauze, please Rachel,” I said.  Jesus, I was no damned doctor, but I actually felt like I knew what I was doing, I’d seen Hemp in action so many times. 

I realized as she gave me the gauze and I pressed it against the wound, that my heartbeat had settled down from the run up the stairwell.  Any other time in my life I could only imagine this kind of crap accelerating it, but
Dave Gammon was actually handling this shit right now.

I’d think about that later, because for now I had to focus.  I applied pressure to the wound for five hard seconds, then said, “Clean gauze, Rachel.”

She gave it to me, and I pressed it to his hand.  Then I positioned his injury right over the top of the urushiol canister’s mouth and pressed it down, upending the bottle.

“Shit!  That burns like a motherfucker!” shouted Weston.

“Good!” I said.  “If it hurts, it’s working.”

“That’s wives tale bullshit, and you know it,” said Weston.

“Yeah, but somebody somewhere said no pain no gain, and there had to be a reason.”

“My ass,” he said.

“Hang in there, Don,” I said.  “We’ll wrap it in a minute.”

Serena had gotten a bottle of drinking water out of Nelson’s backpack, and tipped it to Weston’s lips.  He drank as fast as he could swallow. 

“Hold that on there until it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I’m going to inspect that bird,” said Rachel.  “Nelson, would you help me get the body out of the copilot’s seat?”

Nelson hesitated for a brief second.  “What?”

“C’mon,” she said.  “It’s mostly bones now.”

Nelson looked at me, and I did pity him.  Talk about putting away your childish things.  Nelson was going to mature like no tomorrow during this journey – I just had a feeling.

I thought I should help.  “Serena, will you hold this bottle here?  Just keep it inverted.  Another couple of minutes and you can wrap it up.”

“I got it.  Go help them,” she said.

We jogged to the chopper and saw that a skeleton rotted in the passenger seat, dried chunks of the meat that could not be gnawed from the copilot’s bones, clinging to them in dark, dried knots.

Rachel reached inside and pulled out a box of nitrile gloves.  “Here.  Snap these on.”

We did.  It made pulling the human remains out as horrid as hell, but not nearly as horrid as it would have been had we been required to get it on our hands.  Pieces of his pants were matted to the seat cover, so in the end, we just snapped our gloves inside out and spread them over the seat.

“Hope the battery’s still got juice,” said Rachel.

“Is there a key for these things?” asked Nelson.

“It’s right there,” she said.  “They must have been taking off, because the back’s empty.  No patient.”

“So full tank?”

Rachel went around, opened the door and hopped into the pilot’s seat.  She was so small that she looked like a 12-year old sitting there.  She turned her freckled nose toward us.  “Say a little prayer for me,” she said, turning the key.

The control panel lit up and the gauges bounced once, then settled.  Except for the fuel gauge.  It settled at 4/4.

“Bastard’s full,” said Rachel.  “Glory, glory.”

“I like the way you talk,” said Nelson. 

“Why thank you, Nel.”

He just nodded and smiled.  “Will this carry all of us?”

“We should dump some of this equipment, but yes, easily.  Not sure of the range, but the lighter the better.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said.  “We lost all our food, but if you can fly this, it’s not going to be a hard trek to California.  We won’t need near as much, right?  We can take this all the way there?”

“I don’t see why not,” she said.  “But remember.  We haven’t actually started it yet.  There’s battery, but whether it’s enough is anyone’s guess.”

“Should I pray first?” I asked.

“Is that something you ordinarily do?”

I shook my head.  “No.”

“Then I will,” she said.  “I practice multiple times a day.  With Jess gone, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

Nelson looked confused.  “But how good?” he asked.  “Jess isn’t back, so why do you think God’s listening?”

Rachel smiled.  “I don’t know what’s happened to Jess, Nel.  It could be that God doesn’t want me to know.  I accept that.”

“That makes sense,” said Nelson.  “So what are you waiting for?”

“I’m gonna have to close my eyes for this prayer,” said Rachel.  “Ya’ll go get Don and Serena.”

*****

We helped Don to the chopper and sat him in the co-pilot’s seat beside Rachel and the three of us worked on removing excess weight, pre-approved by our pilot of course.  That included a rescue basket that could be snap-clipped to a hoist cable.  There was no easy way to dump the hoist and cable though, so that would stay.

Rachel seemed to know what wasn’t essential, but made some good suggestions as to some items we might want to keep in the event the landing did not go as smoothly as we hoped.  Oxygen tanks and other medical apparatus, for example.

“That’s good enough,” she said.  “It’ll carry up to nine passengers – we’re only doing what we’re doing so we squeeze better mileage out of it.  You guys put on those headsets right there so we can talk.”

“How are the prayers going, Rach?” asked Nelson, reaching for his headset and putting it on.

“We’ll see in a sec,” said Rachel.  “You guys strapped in?”

“Please start,” whispered Serena.  “Please, please start.”

I patted her knee and she smiled at me.  I could see in her stressed, brown eyes that she was nervous as hell.  I didn’t blame her for a second, but we had been through some pretty tough spots together and she always pulled through.

“We’re ready back here, Rachel,” I said.  “Fire it up.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” she said.  Rachel hit a switch and the rotor on top of the helicopter began to turn.  A sonic noise accompanied it as though a jet engine powered it.  I had no idea how one of these things worked; I was only relieved that Rachel seemed to.

I don’t know why, but my eyes went to the small tower in the center of the building, and at the moment I focused on it, the door burst open and rotters began to flood onto the roof.  Nobody else had noticed, because none of them had reacted yet.

“Rachel,” I said, keeping my voice calm.  “We’re now officially in a hurry,” I said.  “They’re here.”

She looked. “Shit,” she said.  She held a check list and was going through it as all good pilots did I assumed, but she would have to settle for mediocre pilot and get us the hell out of there.

“You set them on fire, you go up stairs … is there anything these jerks can’t get past?” said Nelson.

“With the pregnant females guiding them,” I said, “They push through their pain I guess.”

I knew it to be true, but it was illustrated for us again as the main group of diggers and rotters flooded through the door.  Alone, they wandered around with little focus.  In terrified amazement, we even watched two of them approach the edge of the building and topple over the low wall, falling to what must have been their final deaths.

But next, what I’d come to think of as the job foremen showed up, as politically incorrect as that term might be for the two, half-burned and pregnant females who stepped onto the roof from the stairwell.  I remembered their horrific faces from out in the street, but now, after the fire burned what clothing she had been wearing away, one of them was nude, her belly showing a pregnancy of seven months or more.