Thunder and Ashes Page 3

  “Well, whoever was here last sure didn’t leave in a hurry,” Rebecca said, looking around the tower.

  Mbutu nodded in agreement. “They even took the time to cover the monitors.”

  “Too bad there’s no power,” Ron said.

  “There’s a great view up here,” Katie said, walking across the tower floor to stand next to a console. She leaned over the machine, peering out the wide glass windows. “Just the one runway. Frank wasn’t kidding when he said this was just a little regional airport, was he?”

  Mbutu and Ron were busy pawing through the drawers, hoping to find anything useful. Ron pocketed a lighter, but other than that, the pair came up empty.

  “Hey,” Katie said, still looking out the window. The others ignored her at first, content to continue searching. She glanced over her shoulder at them, frowned, and repeated herself. “Hey!”

  Rebecca looked over. “What?”

  “Someone’s out there,” Katie said, pointing.

  “It’s just Brewster and the others headed for the hangar,” Ron said, waving a hand in dismissal.

  “Really? Since when does Brewster wear overalls?” Katie asked, arching an eyebrow at Ron.

  Ron frowned, shoved the drawer he’d been searching through shut, and moved to stand next to Katie. He looked in the direction she was pointing. It was tough to see in the twilight, but there was definitely a figure across the runway, walking beside one of the hangars. Brewster, Denton, and the others were nowhere in sight.

  “Shambler,” Ron said, narrowing his eyes. “Gotta be.”

  Rebecca pulled a radio from the cargo pocket of her pants and clicked it on. “Brewster.”

  A moment passed, and no reply issued forth from the radio.

  Rebecca tried again. “Brewster. Pick up your damn radio.”

  Again, silence. She raised the radio to her lips to give it a third try when a static hiss cut the air and Brewster’s voice came through, slightly distorted.

  “What is it, over?”

  “Where are you? Are you in the hangars, yet?” Rebecca asked.

  A long moment passed without Brewster’s reply. Finally, the soldier’s voice came through again.

  “Say ‘over’ when you’re done, for fuck’s sake!” Brewster said. “And yes, we’re in the first hangar. Civvies left a plane here; we’re checking the tank, over.”

  “Brewster, you’ve got company outside the hangar. We see one—walking—could be a shambler. Could also be a friendly for all we can tell; it’s tough to make out from this far away, over,” Rebecca said, stressing the last word.

  “Well, all right, it’s about time we got a little action,” Brewster said. “We’ll deal with it. Out.”

  “Watch your asses,” Rebecca said. She didn’t bother with ‘over’, and clicked the radio off instead, dropping it back in her pocket.

  “Look, there they are!” Katie said from the window, pointing across the runway once more, only this time she was focused on a doorway in the side of the hangar that had just swung open. A pair of figures materialized out of the gloom, and even in the twilight the group in the tower could see they were holding weapons.

  They moved along the front of the hangar slowly, sidestepping, frosty and alert. The walking figure continued to meander along the side of the structure, coming closer to the front with every step it took.

  “They’re going to run right into one another,” Katie said, grimacing.

  “No way,” Ron said, shaking his head. “They’ll hear it before it’s on them. Won’t they?”

  Rebecca didn’t look so sure.

  Out in the cold, far below the group in the tower, maneuvered Krueger and Brewster, completely unaware that they were moving ever closer to the unidentified figure, just out of sight around the corner.

  Brewster blew out a slow breath, watched it swirl away into the night air, and moved a couple of steps closer to the corner of the hangar. His boots marked each step with a steady crunch-crunch-crunch on the still-frozen grass. Beside him was Krueger, scanning their sides and glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they weren’t being approached from behind.

  “Where is this guy?” Krueger whispered.

  “Becky just said he was outside the hangar,” Brewster replied, shrugging.

  “Well, that’s real goddamn helpful,” Krueger said. “If it was a sprinter it could have come at us from any direction.”

  “We don’t even know it’s infected for sure yet,” Brewster reminded him. “Let’s check our target before we fire.”

  “Right,” Krueger said, scoffing. “When was the last time we met someone new who didn’t try to eat us, huh?”

  “Hyattsburg,” Brewster said, approaching the corner with his rifle at the ready.

  “Yeah, and look what happened there,” Krueger grinned. “Damn near didn’t make it out alive—”

  “Shit!” Brewster shouted, backpedaling. Right in front of him, rounding the corner, came the shambler. Brewster’s feet got tangled up together and he stumbled, falling hard on his back and whoofing as his breath was knocked out of him.

  One thing the survivors had learned was that the infected came in widely varied packaging. Some of them were more or less in mint condition, having been infected ‘the old-fashioned way,’ through fluid exchanges, a badly-timed sneeze, and so on. Others were in less than ideal shape, having been infected via bites, scratches, blood spatter—these all bore their wounds even on through death. The truly horrifying ones wielded as powerful a psychological weapon as they did a biological one. More than once members of the group hadn’t been able to stand their ground against mobs of shamblers that were missing body parts, or were far enough along in decay to turn even the most hardened stomach.

  This shambler had definitely seen better days. Both of its eyes were missing. It didn’t appear to have lost them in a fight; instead, claw marks and stringy bits of ocular nerve still hanging from the sockets hinted at carrion birds having had a small feast at the shambler’s expense. Its death wound was a deep gash running along the top of its chest. Whatever had caused the wound had cut right through the infected’s mechanic’s coveralls. A bloodied bit of bandage wrapped around the shambler’s left forearm hinted at the wound that had infected him in the first place.

  Only a brace of feet from Brewster, and seemingly unhindered by its lack of eyes, the shambler reached out a hand to grab the soldier’s jacket.

  Krueger leapt forward and gave the shambler a buttstroke across the temple. The infected grunted. Its knees buckled, and it collapsed next to Brewster in the cold grass. The soldier rolled away from the shambler and came up with his back against the steel wall of the hangar.

  Krueger took a couple of steps back. The shambler was already slowly pulling itself up. Krueger flicked the safety of his rifle off, took aim, and put a round through the back of its skull. The shot echoed off the terminal and tower. The shambler collapsed face first in the grass, and didn’t move anymore.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a motherfucking cracker,” Brewster said, staring wide-eyed at the corpse. “That thing came right around the corner—it was right on me. Good thing I have cat-like reflexes.”

  Krueger smirked. “You tripped backwards over your own feet, dumbass.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still alive,” Brewster said, waving a chastising finger in Krueger’s face. “And that’s what counts.”

  “Brewster, you there, over?” the radio hissed.

  “That Sherman?” Krueger asked.

  “Shhh,” Brewster said, yanking his radio free from a pocket. “Yeah, Frank, we’re here, over.”

  “We heard a shot, over.”

  “Oh, yeah, yes, sir—came upon a shambler out here. No injuries, over.”

  “And the shambler?”

  “Dispatched, sir, with extreme prejudice, over,” Krueger interjected, grinning.

  “How do the hangars look, over?”

  “Well, we were just taking care of that when the infected came a-k
nockin’,” Brewster said. “But we might have some fuel out here, over.”

  “Excellent. Keep us posted. We’re just breaking into the terminal now, over.”

  “Roger. Good luck over there. Out.”

  Across the runway, Jack and Mitsui were finishing up their unconventional method of unlocking the front doors. Too solid and too thick to break down, and with no key in their possession, the two contractors had decided to get creative. They’d attached a chain to the door handles, and looped the other end through the trailer hitch on the back of the group’s pickup truck.

  “All right,” Jack said, testing the chain one final time to make certain it was secure. “Feels good. Okay, go! Go!”

  Mitsui, looking over his shoulder from the driver’s seat of the pickup, grinned and flashed Jack a thumb’s-up sign, then gunned the motor. The chain pulled taut and the doors shuddered, but held.

  “Damn,” Jack frowned. He motioned for Mitsui to ease off the gas. “Back her up, back her up. We’ll try again.”

  Sherman and Thomas stood off to one side, watching. Sherman had just finished his radio conversation with Brewster and now folded his arms across his chest, arching an eyebrow at the contractor’s efforts.

  “This isn’t exactly going to leave us with a secure place to sack out tonight,” Sherman said out of the side of his mouth to Thomas.

  “We still have the tower, sir. Probably our best bet, anyway. Good three-sixty-degree view up top, only one staircase—that’s where I’d want to bunk,” Thomas said.

  Sherman nodded silently by way of reply as Mitsui gunned the pickup’s motor a second time.

  This time, when the chain went taut the doors groaned and surrendered, popping free of their hinges.

  “That’s more like it!” Jack said, pumping an arm in the air.

  “Shh,” Sherman reminded him, resting a hand on the butt of his pistol. “We’ve already run up against one shambler here. Gotta assume there are more.”

  Jack grimaced, then nodded. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Sherman waved him off. “Let’s just see what we can see.”

  The group entered the terminal, looking left and right. There was a small gift shop, sporting advertisements for liquor and t-shirts on gaudy posters plastered to the windows, and a customer service desk butting up against the far wall. A message board hung on the same wall, covered in tacked-on pieces of paper and cardboard. There looked to be hundreds of them, written on whatever material the writers had been able to find. Some were scrawled on newspaper, others on sticky pads, and one or two were written directly on the puce-colored walls in thick permanent marker. Sherman wandered over and read some of the messages as the rest of the group spread out behind him and searched the area.

  Julie—waited until they were outside the gates and the rest of the planes had taken off. I am getting on the last one out. The pilot says we are going to Montana. Love you.

  Brian O’Daly was here 1/12/07, bound for Canada. Good luck and godspeed!

  Everyone else back home is dead but me. Hopefully I can find a way to get on one of these planes. If anyone who knows me reads this, I’m still alive as of January ninth.—D. Pulaski

  Sherman sighed, turned his back on the board, and headed over to the gift shop. Jack had already forced the door open with a crowbar and was busy sifting through the contents of the shelves inside, his flashlight casting just enough light to see by.

  “Anything?” Sherman called in the open door.

  “Eh?” Jack asked, his head poking up from behind a shelf. “Not really. Looks pretty well picked through. Whole rack of old magazines, though. I’m grabbing a few—been a while since I’ve had anything decent to read.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Sherman said. “No food at all?”

  “Well, there’s a few packs of chips and some crackers, but no, not really,” Jack said, holding up the items for Sherman to see.

  “Take ‘em. Food’s food. Never know, we might need it,” Sherman said.

  “You got it.”

  Jack unzipped his backpack, and Sherman heard the sound of crumpling packaging as the contractor stuffed it full of snack food.

  “Sir!”

  Thomas’s voice. Sherman turned and squinted into the darkness of the terminal. A flashlight clicked on several meters away, illuminating the old sergeant’s face. He’d been scouring the drawers and countertops at the customer service desk.

  “Flightplans and passenger manifests,” Thomas said, holding up a clipboard. “Out of date, but it gives us a tally on the number of planes that were here before the bugout.”

  “Brewster said on the radio that there was at least one plane left in the hangars. You showing that?” Sherman asked, walking over to look at the manifest.

  Thomas frowned, let his eyes play over the papers, then shook his head. “If it’s out there, it was supposed to have left.”

  Sherman dug his radio out again and called for Brewster. It took a moment, but the soldier responded.

  “Brewster, you said there was a plane in the hangars?” Sherman asked. “Over.”

  “That’s right, Sherm, dual prop, over.”

  “What’s the ID number on the side, over?”

  There was a moment of silence as the soldier looked for the markings.

  “Charlie-oscar-four-zero-seven-gulf, over,” Brewster read.

  Thomas looked back down at the sheet, scanned line-by-line with his index finger, and halted at the matching number.

  “Says here it was outbound to Montana, nine passengers and two crew,” Thomas read.

  “Brewster,” Sherman said, holding the radio up in front of his face, “be advised you may have an additional ten hostiles in the vicinity. Stay frosty, over.”

  “Ten?”

  “That’s what I said. Look, this terminal is empty. We’re coming over to back you up, out,” Sherman said.

  “Roger that, sir—out.”

  In the hangars, Brewster clipped his radio to his belt and grimaced.

  “Hey guys,” he called. “Guys!”

  “What?” Denton replied, coming around the front of the plane. “What did Sherman say?”

  “Where’s Krueger and Wilson?” Brewster asked, pushing past Denton and scanning the interior of the building for the other two soldiers. He shouldered his shotgun. “We could have company.”

  “Oh, damn, I hate it when we have company,” Denton said, jogging to catch up with Brewster. “They’re on the other side of the hangar sorting through the tool lockers, trying to find a hose to siphon the gas out of the plane with.”

  “Krueger! Wilson!” Brewster called out as Denton explained.

  “Yeah?” The reply came floating through the hangar, echoing slightly.

  “Get back over here! We need to sweep this place again,” Brewster said, shotgun at the ready. He looked left and right, but didn’t see anything moving.

  “Why? We already cleared it!” Wilson’s voice shouted back.

  “Sherman says he’s got ten civvies that should’ve been here unaccounted for!” Brewster yelled.

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, if there were infected in here, we’d’ve run across ‘em already!” Wilson replied.

  “Yeah? What about the one we capped outside?”

  “All right, all right, don’t get your panties all bunched up, we’re coming,” Wilson said. “Ooh, a hose!”

  Brewster sighed. Next to him, Denton rolled his eyes.

  “Just grab it and get over here,” Denton said.

  “Coming!”

  Krueger and Wilson rounded a line of luggage carriers, walking briskly. Wilson had a length of hose looped over his shoulder, and held up a battery-powered spotlight with his left hand, illuminating a wide swath of hangar floor in front of him. Krueger kept him covered with his .30–06.

  “All right, we’re here. What’s the trouble?” Wilson asked, shrugging at Brewster.

  “We don’t even know for sure there is any,” Brewster said, looking over his
shoulder. “Sherman just said there might be a few more infected around, that’s all. Man’s never lied to us before. Figured we better double-check things.”

  “Okay. Fair enough,” Wilson said. “Well, the tool locker and workshop area is totally clear, that’s for sure. We just came from there.”

  “I was just looking through the luggage in the back before you called,” Denton said, pointing to the rear of the hangar. “Nothing and no one there, either.”

  “Well, I was over by the plane. No one there, too,” Brewster said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the silhouette of the plane behind the group.

  “Maybe it was just the one guy outside,” Krueger said, frowning. “He was wearing mechanic’s clothes. Seemed like he belonged here. In life, I mean.”

  “So, false alarm, then?” Brewster asked.

  “Guess so,” Wilson replied. He held his spotlight up to his shoulder and panned it around the hangar. The beam passed over half-empty steel shelving units, more luggage carts, spare parts. He directed the beam up slightly. “Did anyone go in there?”

  Brewster, Krueger, and Denton turned to look at Wilson’s target.

  The beam was hovering over the airplane’s single hatch.

  For a moment, the small group was silent. Brewster looked left at Denton and right at Krueger, but both of them shook their heads.

  “Oh, goddammit,” Brewster said. “No, I guess not.”

  “Well, don’t you think we should check?” Wilson asked.

  “Fuck no,” Brewster protested. “First of all, there’s nothing in that plane that we can’t find lying around out here. Secondly, we don’t need to go into it to get to the fuel tanks. And thirdly, if it is full of fuckin’ infected, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one to climb up there and open the hatch. Any one of you sad motherfuckers volunteering?”

  Denton inched away from the soldier. Krueger and Wilson exchanged a glance, then fixed Brewster with a reluctant look.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Brewster said. “Let’s just leave ‘em in peace, what do you say?”