Jurassic Dead (22 page)

42.

The air grew darker, thicker, and more sulfurous as the motorcycle rolled onto the airstrip. The airplane was at the other end, and Alex strained to see what kind it was as he coaxed every last bit of speed from the bike. He needed it, because the
T. rex
ran surprisingly fast for such a large animal, its hind legs making short, quick, bird-like steps as its head remained level.

Although the outsized lizard was fast, it was not as fast as the Honda, and by the time Alex and Veronica were halfway down the runway to the plane, Alex was pleased to see that the
T. rex
had fallen behind. Perhaps it was like a cheetah and could only sprint for a short time, or maybe its cadre of zombie parasites was weighing it down or causing too much damage. Whatever the case, Alex rejoiced over the fact that he would have a little time to fire up the plane without the dinosaur breathing down his neck—or attacking it and destroying their one chance at escaping this island.

Just then, something more dramatic took their attention away.

“Alex, look!” Veronica pointed behind them, but not at the dinosaur, which still pedaled its legs down the runway after them.

The volcano’s top frothed with orange. They heard a deep rumbling, and without warning, an explosive geyser of red-orange magma blew from the volcano’s center.

“There we go,” Veronica said. “Eruption!”

“The failsafe,” Alex added with some satisfaction as he drove the bike faster toward the plane. It was fine with him if this whole goddamn place went up in flames forever. He felt like he had nothing anymore. Everything he had thought he stood for in the past was wrong, he now realized. Dead wrong. He flashed on his friend Tony, the first to die in this mess. On his father. On all those people who came here simply to work... But he, of all people, at least had a chance to escape with his life, and with Veronica. Almost as if she could read his thoughts, he felt her hands squeeze him, and not because she was about to fall off the bike. An unspoken signal, to which he responded by leaning back into her, relishing in the touch as if to say,
under other circumstances—once we’re free of this—maybe there’s something for us, something, someone we can each cling to.

Then the airplane loomed before them, a Cessna Citation.
Yes,
he thought.
I can fly this...if it works. If it’s fueled...if, if if...
He tried to shut off the worrying part of his brain so he could focus. The
T. rex
was still coming for them, and the volcano was erupting, and even with the lead they’d gained they needed maybe three or four minutes to get that plane moving.

Probably not enough time
, the nagging voice told him. He glanced right and left off the runway. The terrain on either side was wholly unsuitable for takeoff. That meant that should the
T. rex
charge at them during the takeoff attempt—and based on its behavior so far,
why the hell wouldn’t it
?—he would have very little room to maneuver around it. Simply leaving the runway was not going to be an option. Rugged, uneven terrain on one side and a field of jagged volcanic rocks on the other.
That dinosaur might just plow right into us before we go airborne; it’d be like running head on into a 18-wheeler.

This small airplane was it, he reminded himself as he skidded to a stop next to the Citation. There were no other aircraft, no ships, boats, nothing. If they were going to escape this island, this was it, or wait it out for DeKirk and find a way to overpower his goons and… But he couldn’t even think of any way that could come out in their favor.

God help them if he couldn’t get this airplane started. Even without the
T. rex,
the idea of trying to survive here indefinitely with that horde of zombies...

“Alex!” Veronica’s voice snapped him out of it just as they neared the plane. They ditched the bike, letting it fall to the ground as they ran across the hot dirt toward the pilot side of the plane. Alex threw open the door to the cockpit and Veronica jumped in and slid across to the co-pilot chair before Alex leapt in. She kept her voice calm so as not to distract him from his task of starting the plane.

“Not to state the obvious, but get this thing in the air!”

Alex didn’t look up from the control panel as his eyes did a quick scan of the instruments. Veronica watched him, concerned that he wouldn’t be able to start it. “You know how to fly one of these, right?”

“Slightly different model than the one I learned on, but yeah, I got this.” He took a deep breath, studying the controls before starting up. “Okay, this is your captain speaking. Fasten your seatbelts. We hope you enjoyed your stay on Fucked Up Island. Next stop, Anywhere But Here.” His hands flew over the controls, pushing buttons and throwing switches.

She released a smile at last, one that quickly faded as she hastily clicked the lap belt into place, while glancing over their shoulder at the dinosaur barreling headlong down the runway.

The engine rumbled to life, vibrating the seats beneath them as the propeller started to turn. Alex patted the dashboard. “That’s it, baby. We can do this!”

He gripped the steering column and eyeballed the runway. He would need to taxi the aircraft to the left in order to have the proper approach. Farther down in the takeoff zone, the
T. rex
ran slightly left of center. One of the zombies fell out of a laceration in the carnivore’s neck, only to be trampled underfoot by the storming beast, but Alex didn’t allow himself to reflect on it for even a split second. As soon as the aircraft began to move, his brain locked on to the set of pre-flight activities he’d been trained on. He sought them out now, focused on them like a kid with a security blanket, to the exclusion of everything happening around him, including the
T. rex
, including the volcano spewing molten fire, threatening to flood the island.

He spun the plane into position and throttled up, starting the aircraft rolling down the runway. Veronica gripped one of the hand holds, or “oh shit handles” as he recalled one of his instructors joking long ago. Then he heard her voice, and what she said cut through everything.

“Alex! Shit, lava’s spilling onto the airstrip!”

He lifted his eyes from the controls for that, and halfway down the strip, past the
T. rex
, which had thankfully slowed to eat another zombie it had shaken loose during its run, and he saw the dull glow of orange laced with black, oozing onto the runway from the left side, the rocky side. It coincided with right about where his wheels-up point should be, but he was all too aware that should even one of his wheels come into contact with the molten sludge for even a split second at near-takeoff speeds, the plane would spin out of control and wreck on the ground.

The whine of the engine increased in pitch and volume, causing the
T. rex
to pick up speed. A membranous sac of entrails dangled from its clenched teeth and flopped up and down as it bounded toward them. Alex eased the plane to the left side of the runway as it picked up speed. Closer to the rushing lava, but a little further from the
T. rex
. The aircraft began to rattle and he knew take-off velocity was approaching.

A bright splash of lava distracted his eyes as the magma flow was forced over the shallow lip of the airstrip by the vast volume pushing behind it. The Tyrannosaur broke into a trot, aiming straight for the Cessna. It canted to the right and its right leg splashed into a pocket of yellowish lava, splattering a shower of molten rock across its already shredded hide. Even above the roar of the plane’s engine, Alex heard the scream of the creature as it reared in place and leaned backwards, zombies careening from its back. One of them fell into the advancing lava sheet by the side of the runway, dissolving its body while its head, propped up on the lip of the airstrip, was spared, the jaws working of their own accord as the brain waited to burn, watching the
T. rex
go bounding off again.

It came right for them, charging head-on like challenging a rival in a game of chicken.

“Fly Alex, fly!” Veronica white-knuckled the oh-shit handle. “Now!” She shrieked as the airplane went aloft but then came back down, bouncing down the runway on the very edge of take-off velocity, the wings wavering each time it went airborne again. A zombie wearing a tattered soldier’s uniform, automatic rifle still dangling unused over its raw, red shoulder, stumbled across the runway, directly in the path of the plane.

The Cessna took another hop and Alex flicked his hand out for the switch to retract the landing gear. He punched it without taking his eyes off the runway, hands immediately back to controlling the wheel. They felt a thud as the bottom of the left tire rolled over the zombie’s head, breaking its neck so that the former human hung there for a moment with its head dangling at a sickening angle, before crumpling to the lava-streaked runway.

For one terrifying second, Alex felt the aircraft dip, as though it was going to bounce off the runway yet again—right into the
T. rex
. He pulled back on the stick and the nose of the little Cessna pointed skyward...

...and stayed that way. The scarred, bloody head of the
Tyrannosaurus rex
filled the windscreen as Alex yanked the stick all the way back. Veronica threw her arm across her face. The dinosaur snout barely passed below the plane and Alex looked out the pilot-side window in time to see the beast toss its head back and forth, roaring in rage. Its tail swiped the ground like a meaty windshield wiper, flinging gobs of lava this way and that, searing the faces and bodies of the zombies, which now regrouped on the ground to attack it.

It roared again, and again, even as it failed to move anymore, as waves of lava rolled over its feet, consuming its legs and still rising. It bellowed and shrieked, less from pain than from utter denial of its prey. It roared until it finally lost all balance and toppled forward—face-first into the searing liquid, where it thrashed and chomped and bit without purchase into the implacably searing foe. Finally, its flesh and bone melted away, its eyes exploded, and its brain burst into flames and it rolled sideways, the rest of its bulk consumed by an even stronger adversary.

#

Ahead, the volcano continued to erupt, with geysers of magma spewing from deep within the Earth to wash down the steep cone and over the island, drowning it in fire, challenging it to begin life anew.

A little voice in Alex’s head told him to beware of stalling, and he leveled the plane out, passing above and to the right of the volcano to avoid the tricky updrafts he knew would be waiting above the open cone. Little meteors of shooting magma traced by the windscreen as the Cessna bolted across the sky.

Then they were past the active volcano, looking at the strip of beach up ahead and the great blue ocean beyond. Veronica let her arm drop from her face and looked out the passenger window behind them, then over at Alex, whose slate gray eyes she could now see held a wisdom born of experience that hadn’t been there when she had first met him.

“Was that close? That was close, wasn’t it?”

He reached over and took her hand.

“Nice flying. I think you’ll make a better pilot than a forklift driver.”

“Thanks. I think you’ll make a better secret agent than you will a doctor.” She poked him playfully in the ribs, laughing more out of the sheer joy of being alive than the joke.

“So where to, Mr. Pilot?”

“Like I said, it’s a non-stop flight to Anywhere But Here. Fuel tank’s full.”

Veronica leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek, then brought her lips close to his ear. “When can you engage the auto-pilot?”

43.

South Pacific airspace

The sleek Learjet 35 hurtled south, its crew of four transporting only one passenger. That client also happened to be the owner of the aircraft, Melvin DeKirk, who reclined in a leather couch in the plush cabin, partitioned off for privacy. He wore a pressed dark suit and a power red tie, sharp Italian loafers on his feet, crossed in front of him. A table made from a slab of old growth redwood supported a silver bucket filled with ice, a rare bottle of French champagne and a satellite-connected laptop computer. DeKirk looked up from the current issue of
Fortune,
where his grinning face was on the cover, to see an icon blinking on the laptop screen.

His lips tugged downward at the corners as he recognized the program—an automated application that was set to notify him of any problems on his island facility. He dropped the magazine and dragged the laptop closer to him, opening the software. Multiple warnings and critical messages awaited him:
Working threshold temperature exceeded here, minimum air pressure not met there, multiple fire alarms triggered, perimeter security breach alarms...
The place was falling apart. Then, with a start, he clicked on a blinking red bomb icon. The screen refreshed and a new window displayed a message: SELF_DESTRUCT _STATUS=ACTIVATED. 

Wow! So that old crap worked after all these years!
DeKirk stroked his chin in thought.
They really knew how to design shit back in those days.

DeKirk pressed the call button for his flight attendant. In less than thirty seconds, an attractive brunette slid the partition aside and stepped into the cabin, all smiles, asking politely what she could do to make his flight more enjoyable.

He eyed the champagne with distaste. “I won’t be needing this after all. Get me something stronger, say a whiskey on the rocks?”

She told him she’d be right back.

“One more thing.”

She looked back at him expectantly.

“Tell the pilot I wish to change our destination. We won’t be going to the island.”

“Very well, sir. What shall I give the captain as our new destination?”

DeKirk shrugged. “Honolulu for now. We’ll figure it out from there.”

“Excellent, sir. I’ll let him know immediately. Aloha!” She smiled at him again before leaving in a whirl of legs and perfume.

DeKirk’s laptop made some more noise. He shut down the Adranos facility program, but even after that he could still hear something. Incoming Skype call. He checked the caller ID and then accepted the call. The harried face of his Security Chief for the Antarctica site filled the screen—a very hairy face with a gray beard and long white hair drooping over his forehead.
What is it with these cold weather roughneck types and beards
? DeKirk wondered.

“Strasser, fill me in.”

“Mr. DeKirk, sir, good news!”

“Perfect timing, Strasser. Just what I’m in need of hearing.” DeKirk waited, glancing to the cabin, hoping for the return of the attendant and his drink.
Well, what is it you idiot?
He drummed his fingers on the two thousand year old wood.

Recognizing that silence was his prompt, Strasser went ahead. “Sir, we have more specimens. Here, take a look...” He tapped some buttons and then the video changed to a split view, with Strasser taking up half the screen and the other half showing a live feed of the drill site.

DeKirk was looking deep into the excavation pit. It looked like a war zone down there, with the Russian crew and plenty of his own crew, all zombies, tooling around aimlessly, attacking one another, the drill apparatus mostly in disarray.

“Bear with me, sir, going lower...”

DeKirk watched as the camera descended rapidly—mounted on a cable system that was being controlled remotely by Strasser—deep into the pit from which the
T. rex
had been raised. DeKirk leaned in closer to his screen. The ice was almost crystal clear down here, and he found he could see individual forms in the layers of frozen fresh water. Some were just beneath the surface, like more of the Cryos he could see, and—was that another
T. rex?

DeKirk beamed, his hand groping for the call button again. This was fantastic! More specimens, and they looked to be in even better condition than the first batch. DeKirk licked his lips at the thought of it, ignoring whatever the hell his guard dog was blathering on about now... and then the flight attendant was back.

She started to set the whiskey on the table but he held up a hand. “Turns out I’d like that champagne after all.” Her face registered confusion for a second, but she got over it quickly. “Absolutely. Right away, sir.” She bounded off with the untouched whiskey.

DeKirk sat entranced by his computer. On screen, a zombified pterodactyl broke free of a thin sheet of ice, shook its wings, stretched and took flight, spiraling up toward the top of the pit. DeKirk beamed at this, his mind burning with possibilities, thinking about the research Xander had completed, and was now DeKirk’s property, thinking about failsafes and virus modification, about immortality and power, and about a future of his own making.

Below the first winged reptile, others emerged, blinking yellow, primordial eyes.

DeKirk watched, enthralled as they took flight and followed the leader to the surface.

END

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