The Common Cold (Book 2): A Zombie Chronicle-Cabin Fever (9 page)

“Get upstairs, quickly!” Kimberley ordered. “Did they have
guns?”

“Not when I saw them.”

Just as the famous last words came out of the girl’s mouth
several shots were fired into the kitchen, shattering the windows and hitting
pots and pans which crashed noisily to the floor.

“Shit, they do now.” Kimberley ran to the rear bedroom
overlooking where the men must be and peered carefully down, ready to duck back
if seen. “Keep down,” she commanded. “This house is made of wood. You’ll get
hit if they fire up at us.”

Not needing to be told twice, Emily fell to the floor and
crawled into the doorway, imagining the thicker wood there would offer more
protection. It probably would; this was San Francisco and houses had strong
points built in offering protection in the event of earthquakes, and door
frames were natural ones.

Quietly opening a window as little as possible, Kim took aim
and fired, cordite filled smoke quickly blowing back into the room. A scream
and a look of success crossed Kim’s face as one of the remaining two caught the
bullet in the groin. Aiming at centre mass from that angle, the bullet’s
trajectory was a little uncertain - she had never practiced shooting downwards
- but where it hit made Kim understand the positive and warming effect of
poetic justice. He had been the one holding the gun and even in his extreme
pain, he refused to give it up to his partner in crime. Instead he curled up
and rocked back and forth on the ground, howling in pain. Blood was pouring
from the wound and it wouldn’t be long before he died.

“This should be interesting to watch,” Kimberley said to
herself.

“What will?” Emily had crawled her way over to the window.

“He’s going to die shortly. I want to see what his friend
does when he comes back to life.”

“He’ll escape,” Emily said nervously.

“No he won’t,”
Kim replied, firing
a second shot that tore through the second man’s thigh, dropping him to the
ground, next to his dying friend. They were screaming in stereo now.

“That’s horrible,” Emily
said,
no
real conviction in her words.

“Oh, God.
Look!” Kimberley pointed
into the distance across the open grass field. Dozens of reanimated people had
heard the commotion and were making their way across the grass towards the
house.

“Jesus!” Emily cried, cowering below the sill.

“Don’t worry, if we keep down and out of sight we should be
okay. If they don’t know we’re here, they won’t break in to find us.” I hope,
she added in her mind.

The man with the groin injury went quiet and lay still,
relaxed in death. His friend tried to back away from him, knowing what was
coming. He’d crawled about twenty yards, leaving a bloody trail in his wake
when his friend jerked upright, his face a mask of death. Kim gasped at the
speed at which the change took place. Less than two minutes, she estimated.
Then she realised, had this man even been infected? She had shot him, his
version of death not bite-oriented. Unless he had a wound she had been unaware
of. Oh, God, did that mean that when you die, you turn? Was it that definite?

Fascination kept her watching the outcome of the situation
below the window. Groin wound stood up somewhat awkwardly - no surprise there -
and fell/walked towards his retreating friend. His mate, seeing the intent of
the bloody thing making its way towards him put up a spurt of speed in a final
effort to delay the inevitable. After a minute or so he was captured and he
screamed in terror and pain as this creature began consuming him, pulling
strips of flesh from the already wounded leg. Kim could no longer watch the
terrible proceedings and sat down on the floor with her back to the wall.

Eventually she rallied and pulled the window closed, locking
it. Outside an ever-increasing crowd of infected people had begun to congregate.
A shiver of fear ran down her spine, and suddenly she remembered the advice BB
had given her.
Perfume and aftershave.

“Come with me,” she called to Emily as she made her way
crouching under the window level towards the bathroom. Collecting as many
bottles as she could find she pulled the girl into her bedroom. “Spray yourself
all over. My husband says they can’t detect you when you wear this stuff all
over. Be liberal with it.”

After a few minutes they began coughing as the air in the room
became cloying with the stench of too much scent. They fell out of the room
into the hallway and rolled around on the carpet, laughing uncontrollably. “I
don’t know what’s worse, perfume or them!” Kim said, wiping her eyes.

Emily was smiling at last, the perfume incident lowering her
stress a little.

“Of course,” Kim said, realising how she could make the
house more secure. “Stay here, out of sight. I have to do something.”

Before Emily could ask any questions, Kim dashed downstairs
and into the kitchen. There was glass all over the floor, pots and pans dented
and strewn around the room. Bullet holes decorated the once pristine kitchen
making Kim’s blood boil. This room had been her pride and joy and now it was
ruined. Realising how silly that emotion now was, she sighed in resignation.
Within a couple of days she would either be elsewhere with BB never to return,
or she would be dead; either way the kitchen was an irrelevance.

Keeping low she sprayed around the room, paying particular
attention to the holes in the glass, hoping to confuse those things outside and
cover any scent of live humans anywhere near the windows. This was their most
vulnerable point in the house now and to keep those things out as long as
possible was key to their survival. If they could stay invisible for a couple
of days BB was sure to get to them before they succumbed. I just want to see
you one more time, my love, she prayed silently, a single tear escaping her
eyes.

Peeping outside past the curtains she could see that there
was no way they could get past all these things now, they were effectively
trapped on an island in a sea of drooling and vacant faces.

*

On the long haul to San Francisco, BB had been flying for
coming up two hours now and had filled his time by playing with the FLIR,
spotting only the odd heat source, most of which had been large wildlife such
as deer and moose. For now at least the GPS was working and he had programmed
in the best route that would take him near the most fuel dumps. Flying low
meant that they hadn’t had to worry about headwinds although mountain flying
was probably more of a challenge overall. Keeping an eye on the clouds he
warned Zoë to keep her eyes open for the rotor type in particular. Describing
them as big wheels that forced you up on one side and down on the other, her
eyes widened at the thought. Up to now her helicopter experience had been
mostly in the lowlands of Iraq. Apparently if they were flying low and got on
the wrong side of one of these clouds, it was quite likely to force them into
the ground. With no obvious threats detectable on the FLIR, BB chose to gain some
altitude to ease the burden of low flying, something with which he had little
experience up to now; it was thoroughly exhausting.

“That must be Salt Lake City,” Zoë called, pointing to their
right. They were just flying to the south of Utah Lake and could see, further
to the north, the major city rising out of the valley at the foot of great
mountains. Beyond that they could just make out the Great Salt Lake. The city
had the same pall of smoke hanging over it from which Denver suffered, small
fires with intense orange and white glows at their centres punctuating the haze.

“No better than Denver,” was all BB could think of saying.

“It really is everywhere, isn’t it?”

BB looked at Zoë and saw her cheeks glistening with tears
and knew she needed a distraction.

“I think it’s about time you had a go at flying. Done any
before?”

“What? Me? No, I haven’t. I couldn’t do that.”

“Of course you can. Hell, if I can do it, any old fool can
do it. Not that you’re an old fool, of course."

He then proceeded to teach her the controls and gradually he
let her feel for herself what each one did. One of the benefits of this
particular helicopter was that it had an automatic flight control system
installed which made its stability excellent even with novices at the helm. It
had certainly lightened the load for BB, new as he was to this particular bird.
By the time he handed over control to her, all the while keeping his hands and
feet at the ready to intercede, they were well past the city and its
destruction. She had been flying in a straight line for about ten minutes when
he glanced at the fuel readings.

“Right, we need fuel,” he announced. “You seem to have a
good light hand on the controls, Zoë. Well done. I’ll take over now and take us
down. I have control.”

“You have the con, Mr Sulu,” she echoed. BB turned the
helicopter to the left and descended quickly and hugged the ground for about
five minutes before resuming their proper course.

“Why did you do that, BB?”

“Just in case someone was watching us, I didn’t want them to
see where we were going. We’ll be on the ground for about fifteen minutes at
least and I don’t want any surprises.”

“Damn, I’d have never thought of that.”

“I wouldn’t have either, Mike told me that trick.” Looking
at the GPS he could see a depot only two miles ahead. “Keep your eyes on the
FLIR screen; tell me if you see anything. I’ll have my eyes on where we’re
going.”

“Sure thing,” she replied.

BB had slowed down considerably now and looked hard in all
directions, looking for anything suspicious. All appeared to be well. Now he
could see a clearing in the middle of the forest. It was actually sited on the
edge of a cliff and was surrounded on the other three sides by dense woodland.

“See anything?” he asked.

“No. Wait, something moving, its shape looks like a deer.
Off to the north of the site.”

“Okay, we’re going in then.”

As he hovered overhead he dropped progressively lower until
they were within about fifty feet of the landing point. Four soldiers were
ambling around the site, oblivious to their arrival.

“Shit. Can you go back to the cabin and shoot them from
there? I don’t want to land with them just wandering around.”

Without another word, she disconnected the intercom cable
and nimbly stepped over the centre console. A moment later he heard her
reconnect and the starboard door open. “Can you bring us around so I can get
them all to starboard?”

“Sure.” With small movements the chopper swung around and
after a moment the soldiers began to drop inelegantly to the ground as each
shot hit home. With all four down, BB lined the aircraft up and landed next to
a bowser.

“I’ll keep the engines running. Go and tell me if there’s
fuel in it.”

Zoë ran across to the tanker and flipped a switch. A moment
later she gave him the thumbs up and he shut down the engines. BB leapt out and
with his pistol drawn ran across to Zoë. Standing still they listened to the
silence of the mountains. After the assault of the constant thrum of the
helicopter for the last two and a bit hours silence was a blessed relief to
their ears.

“Can you hear anything?” BB asked after a moment.

“Not sure, hang on.” She took off her helmet and cocked her
head to one side.
“Oh, God!”
Swinging around, she saw
half a dozen zombies running out from the undergrowth. They had obviously been
soldiers, probably the crew for this very station. All had
turned,
some from the original infection and others clearly as a result of bites, their
uniforms caked in blood and gore; all had grey, waxen faces but their vacant,
nacreous eyes still glowed with the desire to feed. BB raised his rifle and
between them they felled the soldiers quickly, although a couple had managed to
run to within fifteen feet of the bowser.

“God, some of those bastards
are
quick, aren’t they?” she asked rhetorically.

“They didn’t show up on the FLIR,” BB commented. Walking
over to one of them he checked to make sure it was dead and then touched its
face. “It’s like touching a fish, cold and a little slimy. Jeez.”

“Shall we get going? In case there are more around.”

“Yep.
Let’s do this.”

With practiced hands they refuelled as quickly as possible;
the large tanks took longer than they had anticipated but perhaps that was more
because they were constantly looking over their shoulders, not wanting to be
surprised again. Using aviation fuel Brad thoroughly washed the hand he used to
touch the dead man. “That’s better, they feel awful. I won’t be doing that
again anytime soon I can tell you.”

Zoë smiled as they got back into the ’copter. She remained
in the cabin, on guard with her rifle at the ready as BB prepped and started
the big engines. In a few minutes they were off and continuing their journey,
with Zoë back in the co-pilot seat.

“We should be able to get there and part way back before we
need to do that again,” he said smiling.

“The fewer times, the better, thanks BB.” Zoë’s heart had
still not slowed back to normal. One thing she really had trouble reconciling
in her mind was that she had shot people wearing the same uniform as her - a
new kind of friendly fire, she thought wryly.

“Right, where were we? Ah, yes, practice flying. Come on,
let me see you gain altitude and hold it steady. I have to make a phone call.”
His apparently casual attitude to her taking the controls gave her the
confidence needed and under his guidance they continued on their way.

*

BB had made great time to Sausalito and was overjoyed when
he could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance declaring their imminent
arrival, when he would at last see Kimberley again. He’d travelled halfway
around the world since this shit storm had started and now it appeared that finally
his wish would be granted.