The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) (24 page)

           
“Just
a minute.”

           
“Come
on, man, you’re black, you should be able to outrun me!”

           
“Fuck
you.”

           
“I’m
not leaving without you, get up!”

           
“You
can’t leave without me, you don’t know how to fly the black bird,” Hayward
smiled.

           
“Exactly,
now come on!”

           
“Bullshit,
I know damn well that you can fly a helicopter.”

           
“I
can’t, Hayward, now please, get up.”

           
About
a dozen floors down, they heard the crash of the door being busted in by the stenches,
they were in the stairwell and coming up after them.

           
Fast…

           
John
sat down next to his friend. “If you wanna quit, man, then we will. We can just
sit here until the rest of the party gets here.” John told him calmly.

           
Hayward
thought for a moment as he listened to the dead that were ascending. “Fuck
that, let’s go!” he said and got up.

           
They
pushed on and ran up the stairs as fast as they could…

           
A
dozen floors later, they reached the roof access door and the dead were only a
couple floors below them. They entered and sunlight poured down the single flight
of stairs that led to the roof and they closed the door behind them. Hayward
took some duct tape out from his pack and tore off a one-foot piece; he looked
for something else on his person but didn’t find it.

           
“John,
gimme a grenade.”

           
John
tossed him one.

           
Hayward
pulled the grenade’s pin and then placed the explosive against the door seam
with the detonation lever facing in, and then he taped the grenade in place.
Once it was secure, they both ran up.

           
The
Black Hawk was waiting for them, but it wasn’t alone—several of the
building tenants were standing around the helicopter, they watched someone in
the pilot’s seat as he tried to start the machine, but it was dead. The older
man and the woman that John and Hayward talked to in the parking structure were
there, too; the other three people were new. The younger man with the revolver
was the one in the helicopter trying to start it. The older man saw John and
Hayward coming. “Rick?” the old man said to the wannabe pilot.

           
He
was unaware of the two soldiers that approached. “Gimme a moment, I almost have
it figured out,” he answered with his head ducked under the instrument panel.

           
John
pointed his rifle at the tenants and they quietly stepped away from the
chopper.

           
Hayward
stepped up to the pilot. “Looking for these?”

           
The
man sat up to see Hayward holding the instrument panel’s missing fuses and
pointing his weapon at him. “Get out of my helicopter.”

           
“Look,
man, we’re sorry, but you left us no choice,” Rick said while holding his hands
up.

           
Hayward
opened the pilot’s door. “I said, get out.”

           
He
got out, Hayward pushed him back with the others, and John kept an eye on them while
Hayward got into the chopper. He reinserted the fuses, powered up the
instrument panel, and started the engines—the blades began to slowly turn
as the engines spooled up.

           
“You’re
not just gonna leave us here to die, are you?” the older tenant said to John.

           
“Why
not? You left us down there to die!” Hayward answered.

           
“We
didn’t mean to!” the woman said.

           
“Sure
you didn’t,” Hayward said bitterly.

           
The
engines were at full power, and the rotor blades spun at a blur with a loud
buzz
sound.

           
“John,
let’s go!” Hayward yelled.

           
But
he didn’t get in. Instead, he walked up to Hayward at the pilot’s door window.

           
“What’re
you doing, man? Get in!” Hayward told him.

           
“We
can’t leave them here like this,” John said.

           
“Yes
we can!” Hayward shouted. “In case you’ve forgotten, they left us to die!”

           
“I
know, but I don’t want to stoop to their level.”

           
“John,
we don’t enough fuel to be righteous! With just you and me, we have about
twenty minutes of fuel left. If we take all of them, then we have about five!
Do you understand?”

           
At
that moment, an explosion went off in the roof door stairwell—

           
The
dead were in…

           
“Yeah,
I do understand, we can drop them off at another building,” he said to Hayward
and turned to the tenants. “Come on, get in, hurry!”

           
The
scared tenants got in the chopper, just as dozens of the dead appeared at the
top of the stairs and charged at them. After the people were aboard, John
climbed in and Hayward lifted the aircraft off the helipad. They moved away and
many of the corpses followed them off the roof and plunged forty stories down.

           
The
helicopter flew to the next structure and Hayward landed on a shorter office
building, the landing wheels touched down and Hayward turned to the tenants
with his machine gun.

           
“Get
out!” he shouted over the noise of the chopper blades.

           
“Please,
don’t leave us here!” the old man begged.

           
“Get
the fuck out, now!” Hayward repeated.

           
The
tenants looked at John, but he realized the truth of their fuel situation and
that he may have put his life and Hayward’s at risk for some people that didn’t
deserve it.

           
“Get
out,” John said as he raised his rifle at them.

           
The
all got out and then Hayward took off, the tenants covered their faces and eyes
from the dust storm that blew around them, except the older woman. She stood
there with her hair whipping in the wind as she looked up at John with squinted
eyes and reached out to him with both arms.

           
She
said something, but John couldn’t hear her over the helicopter. He didn’t need
to, he understood the one word that she said as they lifted away:

           
“Please!”

           
The
helicopter left, and John watched as the people stood on the roof without
knowing what to do and then it didn’t matter anymore—the roof door busted
open and dozens of the undead rushed and fanned out like talons to attack them.
Rick tried to use his revolver to defend his group, but his little gun was
nothing against them, and they overpowered him. They tore into his flesh, and
then they attacked the rest of them; there was no escape, except for the old
woman. Before they got to her, she walked to the edge of the roof and jumped to
her death.

           
Hayward
glanced back and saw their fate. “Fuck’em!” he said bitterly. “They tried to
kill us, so fuck’em.”

           
John
looked away and sat next to Hayward quietly.

           
“Down
the coast, right, John?”

           
He
didn’t answer.

           
“John?”

           
“Yeah,
whatever.”

           
“Yeah,
whatever? Which way should I go, man?”

           
John
was upset. “Does it matter, Hayward? The whole fucking world is dead, and
they’re not gonna stop until they kill us!”

           
“Be
that as it may, I still wanna live. I’m still gonna fight, so which way, goddamnit?”

           
“Yeah,
down the coast, as far away from here as possible.”

           
“That’s
not gonna be very far, anyway.” Hayward answered.

           
John
didn’t say anything.

           
The
helicopter headed south and John looked at the sun shimmering off the distant
ocean, lost in his thoughts…

           
Please!

           
Bear
was at the back gate of the hospital and had just finished rigging it with
plastic explosives; he attached six different packages at the four corners of
the gate and two in the center.

           
He
looked at his handiwork. “Ka-boom,” he said aloud.

           
“How’s
that coming, Commander?” Ardent said to him while he worked on the boat motor.

           
“I’m
done, and it’s looking good, sir.”

           
“Good,
I need you back on the motor detail.”

           
“On
my way,” Bear said and gathered up his equipment, including the remote
detonator for the gate.

           
As
Bear walked over to Ardent—he thought he heard something beyond the
hospital walls, something besides the constant noise of the wandering
dead—he paid attention but didn’t hear anything else, so he dismissed it.
Then he heard it again and this time, he knew what it was—

           
A
helicopter.

           
Ardent
heard it, too. Distant, but it was definitely a helicopter.

           
They
looked toward the sky, but they couldn’t see anything. They heard the
helicopter’s blades
chop
the air, but
the echoes in the sky and off the buildings made it difficult to pinpoint it.

           
Bear
pointed toward the front of the hospital. “I think it’s coming from the north.”

           
Both
of them headed toward the front…

           
Hayward
was staring at a particular light in his instrument panel—

           
The
low fuel indicator light.

           
It
was very bright and an audible alarm wailed with it.

           
“How
long we got?” John asked.

           
“Not
long, minutes,” Hayward answered.

           
And
then another alarm went off.

           
“Now
what?” John asked.

           
His
answer came in the form of a
sputter
as one of the helicopter’s two engines began to moan and die from fuel loss.

           
“We’ve
lost one of the engines,” Hayward stated. “We have to land.”

           
“Where?”
John asked. “Everything’s gutted down there.”

           
“I
don’t know, but we need to do it soon.”

           
“Over
there!” John said and pointed to a group of buildings that were about five
miles away.

           
One
of the buildings was the hospital…

           
“Over
there!” Anthony said as he pointed in the sky.

           
Everyone
was out in the front courtyard of the hospital and they looked in the sky for
the source of the helicopter noise. They looked where Anthony pointed and they
saw it—

           
The
black speck of the helicopter a couple miles out.

           
And
heading in their direction…

           
“I
don’t know if we can make it there,” Hayward said.

           
“We
have to try, Hayward, if we land in this area, we’ll be out in the open. We
need to find some kind of cover.”

           
“Okay,
say a prayer.”

           
“Try
to land on the tallest building, the one that looks like a hospital.”

           
Hayward
looked at his instruments. “Pray for a miracle.”