The man stared hard at the screen and then swallowed.
“They do.”
“Are we good?” Jackson nodded toward the screen.
Craig and Christy looked on with wide eyes. They were huddled together on the hard metal bench.
“Oh, we’re good.” The guy smiled.
He moved toward the door opposite the machine gun and looked outside.
“Don’t be scared, kids.” He smiled at Christy and Craig. “Come here, bud. I’ll show you something that will make you feel better.”
Craig had been slumped against the wall. He stared into space like she hadn’t heard the man.
“Here you go.” The older man smiled and produced one of those juice boxes with the little plastic straw glued to the side. It was all I could do not to leap across the tiny space and tear it out of his hand.
Craig made a little noise and slipped off the bench.
I slid my backpack off and pushed it into a corner and got a glance at our rescuer’s boots. Instead of military issue he was wearing something out of a cowboy movie. Were those snakeskin boots? Talk about an action hero come to life.
Joel had lost his assault rifle in the excitement and looked like his best friend had died. Glad that wasn’t true, since I was probably the closest thing to a best friend he’d ever had.
“So who are you?” I asked over the loud thumping of the rotor blades.
The smell of gas and oil filled the cabin but it was whisked away in a blast as air as the man that had rescued us slid the door open.
“Hey man, that’s loud.”
The guy didn’t say a word. He grabbed Craig by the back of the neck, and pulled him all the way off the bench. He looked at the guy in silent shock, but his silence turned into a scream as the man threw Craig out of the doorway.
“The fuck!” Joel Kelly came off the seat just as I tried to stand. He reached for a non-existent side arm. I went for my bag because I was going to haul out eight pounds of metal and bush his fucking head in!
The machine gunner pulled her gun but Joel did some Marine shit. He swiped her arm up and locked his hand over hers. She didn’t sit around for that and fought back.
Christy hauled off and threw a poorly aimed punch but the guy slid aside and knocked the girl to the hard floor.
“Knock it off back there!” The pilot turned his head to shout at us.
I ripped my wrench free of the backpack but there was no room to swing it in the tiny cabin.
Roz stared on in shock and then covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
The guy who had just tossed Craig to his death pulled out a huge gun and pointed it at my head. My resolve deflated, as did my grip on the wrench. The fight went out of me. I was done. The days of running and hiding piled on top of the escape, combined with Craig’s sudden death nearly made me pass out.
“Stop this!” the guy yelled. “Stop it now or there’s gonna be a lot more blood.”
“Ouch, bastard!” the gunner said.
“Sails! Enough!” the man with the huge gun pointed at me said.
Joel Kelly managed to get the gun away from the gunner, Sails, and none to gently. He got a look at the big barrel pointed my way and he relaxed his grip on the woman and lowered the gun.
She must not have taken too kindly to Joel’s rough handling because she slapped him.
“He’s trying to help. You don’t know what’s going on here, asshole,” she said and rubbed her wrist.
“What about what’s going on here? He just tossed a teenage boy out the goddamn door. That’s what’s going on here. I don’t know how you people are used to dealing with civilians but you don’t just kill them.”
“You don’t? Is that right, son? How many have you killed since this all began?”
“I killed Z’s. The dead. I didn’t kill innocent people.”
He kept the gun pointed at my head but turned the box to face us and lifted the lid. A laptop screen was set into a hard foam backing. The screen had an image of the inside of an eyeball. I’d seen something like this when I got my eyes checked a few years ago.
“What the fuck are we looking at?” Joel rubbed his face where the gunner had smacked him.
“This is your friend that I just tossed. See the dark spots? Those are dead cells. A lot of dead cells. In a few more days or maybe hours — hell, could be minutes, he would have turned. You want a Z in here? You wanna be stuck with a monster in this tiny little box? No you do not.”
“Craig was fine!” Christy went crazy.
She lashed out and caught the guy across the nose with the back of her fist. It wasn’t a great shot, but it got the job done. The man fell back and a shot rang out in the cabin. I sucked in a breath expecting a bullet to be lodged in me, but it wasn’t. The shot went high and punched through the canopy.
The man pushed Christy against the wall hard, and she collapsed like a sack of potatoes.
Joel wanted to go nuts; I saw it in his eyes and the way his fists clenched on the bench seat. The gunner ripped her gun tight then put it to Joel’s head.
“Listen to him. He knows what he’s talking about.”
Something coughed and the helicopter shuddered. A light flashed in my periphery and then alarms sounded. I didn’t need to, but I followed everyone’s eyes to the top of the chopper where a hole whistled air. What were the chances?
“Oh shit!” Sails said.
The pilot punched buttons and swore. Our ride swayed one way and then the other. I got slammed against the door and then went flat so it wouldn’t happen again. When the chopper tilted to the side I got a look at a huge stadium filled with white tents. Figures moved around the location, but from their wobbling, I assumed none of them were alive. I wasn’t sure, but thought it was probably the old Balboa stadium.
Joel held on for dear life as the chopper went into a slow spin.
The pilot did something because we managed to straighten out for all of two seconds before our craft hit the ground. Hard.
I was lifted into the air and smashed into the deck. Breath left my body and I had a hell of a time getting it back.
The gunner had been smashed against the side of the craft and lolled in Joel’s lap. The man who’d saved us seemed to be the only one unharmed. He grabbed Christy’s form and ripped the door open. The pilot swore, hit some buttons and then ditched.
“This way!” The guy yelled to us as he kept his hold on Christy.
I struggled to my knees while Joel got Sails out of the door. The pilots fell out one after another and then they were on our feet.
I snatched up my backpack and hit the ground right behind them, staggering on my already aching ankle.
No time to rest. No time to worry about the pain shooting up my leg in waves.
“There. It’s not far!” The guy picked up Christy and shrugged him over his shoulder. He pointed at a fence
Joel smacked Sails, none too gently. She stirred, looked at him and snarled. Jeez. She looked like one of them for a second. Girl would be cute if she wasn’t pointing guns and hitting people.
On the run again? That could mean only one thing.
I looked back and there they were.
There were at least fifty of them. Maybe more. Howling, screaming, and moaning, they walked, crawled, and dragged body parts. They were covered in blood and filth. They were the worst of the worst and they all wanted us.
Not only that, but two shufflers came at us.
I had a vague sense of where we were in relation to the base and San Diego itself, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the huge buildings ahead of us were part of the naval medical center. There was a bunch of activity around it as military trucks, transports, and gun-toting HUMVEEs moved around the perimeter of a huge metal fence.