9.0 - Sanctum (6 page)

I closed the door behind me.  I carefully avoided the sheet metal leaning against the wall, scooted around a rail, and gripped the I-beam edges.  I put one foot against the beam and stepped off the balcony.  The gloves took all the heat from the friction and protected my hands as I slid down.  My boots hit the ground softly enough.  I peeled off the gloves and tossed them back up to the balcony and crossed the shop to a door that I guessed would lead me into the hangar's main bay.

Luckily, the double doors both had windows that gave me a view of most of the hangar.  All I saw were helicopters—six of them—all in some state of disassembly, caught mid-repair when the world changed.  No Whites, though.  That long helix I'd spotted must have kept going on by.  Neither did I see any of the Survivor Army knuckleheads—in fact, none alive since the battle a few days ago.  I pushed through the swinging doors, silent and slow, then stopped to listen.  I heard nothing but wind blowing through the open hangar door and swirling through metal joists high overhead.

I worked my way along the wall, keeping an eye out for anything that might be of use to me, mostly an M-16 or M-4, any military rifle that might have been dropped by somebody on their way to becoming dinner for a gang of hungry Whites.  Unfortunately, the only guns I saw were those mounted in the door gunner positions on the helicopters—powerful and badass, the machine guns action movie heroes carry into the climax to shoot all the bad guys.  Too unwieldy for me to remove and tote around.

When I reached the front of the hangar, I peaked out at the tarmac.  More helicopters.  One had crashed and burned, leaving a black skeleton of aluminum and a broad, burnt smudge on the sandy-gray concrete.  The remains of plenty of corpses lay everywhere I looked, scattered bones and tattered remnants of the clothes they'd been wearing when their god had called them home.

Knowing the direction Murphy had gone when he’d left the night before, I decided to move toward the next Black Hawk hangar to my right in the half-mile long row.  As soon as I turned to jog in that direction I spotted movement and froze.  I dropped to a knee and pressed against the hangar’s door.

A helicopter was lying at an angle with broken rotor blades.  It had landed hard.  The concrete all around it was scarred with huge scrapes and spilled petroleum.  Murphy stepped out from behind it, waved at me, and I saw his grin.

I didn’t know whether to smile or curse.

Murphy took a long scan across the empty spaces.  Satisfied himself about the safety, and jogged toward me.

I slipped back inside the hangar and waited in the shadows, out of sight of any hidden Whites or Survivor Army assholes that might be lurking.

After a minute or two, Murphy rounded the corner into the hanger and stopped next to me.  “Dude.”

"Dude?” I shook my head with my mouth hanging open in dramatic offense.  It was a look my mother had used on me a thousand times when I'd come home late.  I just didn't realize in that moment I was channeling the Harpy.  "You disappear all night long.  I think you're dead somewhere, and all I get is a ‘dude'?"

Murphy laughed and slapped my shoulder.  Then he hushed and looked around.

“It’s cool,” I told him.  “This place is empty.”

Murphy walked deeper into the hanger. 

I followed, taking a last look outside.  “What happened?”

"I think I need to make up some dramatic shit, or you're gonna act like a bitch about it."

“Whatever.”

“No, seriously.”

I stopped by one of the partially disassembled helicopters and positioned myself to see anything that might come through the open hangar doors.  Murphy watched the doors to the shop and other storerooms at the back.  I said, “I’m cool.  I’m just tired and grouchy.  I need to get on a regular sleep schedule.”

“I think maybe we need to make coffee a priority on our scrounge list.”

I rolled my eyes.  “What happened? Why didn’t you come back? Did you run into trouble?”

“After I snuck out last night I went down to the far end of the row of hangars,” Murphy pointed, “thinking if that dude was—”  Murphy cut himself off and looked around.  “Where’s that dude?”

“In a storeroom over there.”  I nodded toward the back of the hangar.

“Why’d you come over here?”

“Long story.  Tell me what happened.”

"Like I said,” Murphy pointed again, "I was coming around way down by the other end and, well, there's nothing to tell.  I was sneaking along, doing my thing.  Lots of bodies down there, by the way.  I was trying not to step in anything when I noticed a bunch of Whites coming in my direction.  They didn't act like they saw me, being so dark and all, so I hid in a helicopter.  I wasn't in the mood for running and shooting and shit so I thought I'd give them a little bit and after they passed by I'd go about my business."

“But?” I asked.

“They hung around and started scavenging the dead up there.  You know those kind of Whites that’ll eat any dead guy.”

I nodded.  “And?”

"Well I ended up sitting in that helicopter a long time, and I got comfortable.  And like you said, neither of us have been getting enough sleep lately."

“You dozed off?”

Murphy’s expression turned sheepish.  “Woke up a little while ago, just in time to see those Whites run off.”

He was probably talking about the same band I’d seen spiral by when I was looking out the window from Martin’s room a while ago.

“So what’s the deal with that dude?” Murphy asked.

“Martin.  He’s up there in his hideout.  It’s a storeroom above one of the machine shops just like he said.  Looks like only he’s been up there.  You know, one bed.  Some supplies.  Everything he’s told me checked out.”

“He could still be lying.”

“He’s got a gun.”

"He picked one up when you guys were coming over here?” Murphy asked, "With his hands tied?"

“I untied his hands.”  It was my turn to look sheepish.  “He had it hidden under his mattress.”

“He drew it on you?”

“He was acting squirrelly when he sat down on his bed.  I figured he had something.”

“What’d you do?”

“I told him to pull it out.  I pretty much trusted him by then, well you know, as much as I’m going to trust anybody like that, and I told him to take out his gun if he wanted to.”

“You two must have buddied right up overnight.”

“I had to smack him a time or two,” I admitted.

“A time or two?” Murphy laughed.  “What’s
that
mean?”

“It’s a long story but he kinda got free and tried to wrestle my machete away.”

Murphy laughed some more.  “And you trusted him with the gun?” His face changed.  He was suspicious.  “You’re fuckin’ with me, right?”

“No.”  I felt embarrassed over the choice.

“You’re an idiot sometimes.”

“It worked out,” I countered.

"A
lucky
idiot."

Yeah, lucky me.  I knew I’d taken a big risk, a stupid risk, but it was my risk to take.

“What’s the plan now?” Murphy patted a big palm on the drab green side of a Black Hawk.  “Can Martin really fly one of these?”

I started walking toward the storeroom.  “Seems like you’re already thinking the same thing I’m thinking.”

"To fly one of these to College Station instead of driving.”  Murphy put an arm around my shoulder and jostled me.  "Because I've heard that driving can be dangerous these days."

“Yeah.  That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

Among other things, Fort Hood had been a stockpile of the Army’s tried and true tools for killing folks on an industrial scale, a temple to our culture’s conceit as to how effectively we figured we could slaughter all comers.  Unfortunately, the enemy that showed up, a virus and the people it twisted to its purpose, wasn’t on the list of foes the army had prepared for.  Still, it was hard not to fall under the infatuating spell of all that firepower, even with the evidence of its failure spread nearly everywhere I looked, the bodies of the dead.  Now Fort Hood was an Easter egg hunt and the prizes hidden in the carnage were weapons and ammunition.

Aside from being crusted in the blood of the last person to pull the trigger, most of the M4s we found looked damn near worn out.  Murphy assured me that wasn’t uncommon.  The taxpaying public liked the Army to get their money’s worth out of the weapons they bought.  I found a set of night vision goggles, military boots, camouflage pants, and a shirt that fit.  All were gory, but cleanliness wasn’t the showstopper while shopping for a new wardrobe.  Finding garments that hadn’t been ripped off the previous owner’s body was the trick.

I found a serviceable pistol with enough magazines to make me feel well-armed.  Well, that along with my knife and indispensible machete.  Better yet, I discovered that rummaging through the remnants of the dead, I came across hand grenades, one here, a couple there.  They totaled several dozen by the time I stopped searching.  Not all for just me, of course, they were good additions to our arsenal.

We spent two days loading a Black Hawk helicopter Martin selected for our trip.  We topped off the fuel, scrounged what little food could be found, loaded up our weapons, and gathered ammunition for the door guns on the helicopter.  Murphy was loaded up with everything he needed, and Martin, who we were building a trust for by then, was armed as well.

Martin told us that the Black Hawk had a payload of a couple thousand pounds so we had plenty of weight to spare if we wanted to continue loading.  Neither Murphy or me wanted to.  We’d been in Fort Hood long enough.  It was time to move on.  We had enough extra that our new employers in College Station would be grateful.  When we needed more, we could come back.

All we had to do after that was to wait for morning to leave.  The flight to College Station would take maybe an hour.  I wanted a full day just in case we needed it.  I’d been around the block enough times to know that every plan, no matter how simple, goes to shit when Whites get involved.

The next day, the early morning air was chilly but tolerable as Martin piloted the helicopter into the air.  I sat in the gunner seat behind the pilot’s seat, looking through an open window.  Murphy was behind me at the machine gun on the other side.  We all wore helmets and were able to communicate over the Black Hawk’s intercom.

We were a hundred feet off the tarmac with Whites coming out of their nighttime hiding places to gawk or run toward us.  Murphy said, “Okay, now I believe Martin.”

“What?” Martin asked over the intercom.

“That you can really fly this thing.”

Martin laughed.

I didn’t say anything.  I still had my doubts but was willing to make the bet.  Few things were certain anymore.

Martin announced, “The air seems stable this morning.”  As we passed over the hangar we’d spent the previous few nights in, he added, “We should have a smooth ride.”  We started west, climbing as we went. 

We flew over the field where the Whites and the Survivor Army clashed.  Below, along the streets, naked ones came out to watch us fly over.  Some made the choice to chase.  Their sad little brains just couldn’t extrapolate the logical conclusion that we were too far away and moving too fast.  They saw us, they thought they could catch us.

Through the decay they ran.

Houses had burned, leaving surrounding yards and neighboring properties blackened.  Trash blew across streets and open fields.  Bodies, when they could be identified, or at least those smudges they left, discolorations, shredded clothes, and scattered bones were just about everywhere.  On the two-lane country roads between the subdivisions and through the farms leading out into the country, cars littered the shoulders and roads, some alone, some stalled in convoys—crooked, metallic caterpillars.  The contents of suitcases and provisions were scattered across the asphalt and into the ditches.  Spreading out from the vehicles, like poisonous clumps of pollen, lay the smudges and bones, often close, sometimes forty, fifty, a hundred feet away. 

For the people trying to get out of Killeen, driving to escape failed.  Running to get away from cars jammed on the road failed them.  Fighting the infected with whatever they’d had on their person failed too. 

Futile struggle and death.

By the time we were over Stillhouse Hollow Lake, we were high enough that the coming extinction of humankind wasn't so obvious.  I spotted the Bell County Expo center looking much smaller from up in the sky than I expected it to be.  Interstate 35 slipped behind us, and then we were over farm country.

The morning landscape was peaceful.  A fog filled the creek beds and low valleys in white—sometimes thick white, sometimes just a gossamer haze over the fields with cattle grazing, oblivious.  In places, all I saw were treetops and roofs floating on clouds that hid the earth below. 

Heading southeast, we paralleled the road Murphy and I had led the naked horde down on our way to Fort Hood.  It was dotted with the houses we’d burned, and the ground all along it was scarred by the destructive passage of tens of thousands of naked Whites.

We didn't have a plan in the detailed sense for what lay ahead.  We were going to fly over College Station and hope that showing up in a helicopter didn't spark an incident.  The Survivor Army had given a lot of people in Texas good reason to greet them with bullets instead of talk.  We needed to find a safe place to land—no Whites nearby, and none close enough to draw in.  Of course, I suggested landing the Black Hawk on a roof on campus, but Martin told me the helicopter had an empty weight of five tons and a loaded weight twice that.  Martin explained to me that he didn't want to die caving in a roof.

Not hard to understand.