'Til Death Do Us Part (36 page)

The copter was being
pushed forward from the assault;
blood and brain matter was falling like a soft rain all around us. If a zombie came from the side
,
I was fairly certain it would knock us over
.
A
t that point I was hoping for death by scalping. The bottom of my stomach dropped out as we briefly popped into the air. John was stirring the yolk like he was churning butter.

“
Hold on!
”
John whooped. He was laughing crazily.

I didn
’
t have time to stripe my pants as we once again popped up, this time a good five feet. But we had a stowaway and she was threatening to pull us back down to her brethren. John made the necessary correction to keep u
s level even with our hitcher, b
ut her added weight was keeping us dangerously close to terra firma.
A
ctually
,
now that I
’
m thinking about it
,
she was probably doing us a favor.

John had turned the helicopter around and we were now heading back towards the majority of zombies and the hangar. I was gripping my seat hard enough to make my hands hurt. John had tears running down his face he was laughing so hard. Our unwanted passenger
’
s feet were slamming off the faces and heads of
the zombies below us. I was involuntarily pulling my legs closer to my body
.
All
it would take would be a zombie with enough dexterity to reach up and grab our clinger and we would plummet like a kamikaze. John was just thinking this was the funniest thing since just about ever.

“
The hangar,
”
I said softly, pointing at the giant looming metallic structure.

“
That might be a problem,
”
John said
,
taking one of his hands off the controls to wipe his eyes. I was eyeing the stick
and
wondering when he would take the other hand off of it.

We went through the large hangar door, my breath cau
ght in my throat.
I was so scared
,
I was having trouble breathing. I was beginning to wonder if it was possible to choke on air. John was rapidly flying to the other end of th
e hangar where the door was not—and I REPEAT not—
open. W
e
had lost a little of our hard fought altitude and our zombie flight attendant got one of her feet caught up in what looked like arc welder cables, but I was too busy caressing my terror to take much notice. The nose of the copter dipped down and then shot forward and up as we lost our only other passenger.
It looked like it was going to be pretty close
as to
which part of the hangar was going to be our ultimate demis
e. The far side or the ceiling…
I was actually rooting for the ceiling at least that way I wouldn
’
t see it coming.

T
hen at the point where we couldn
’
t fit Calista Flockhart between our rotor and the wall we stopped. We were hovering perfectly still like the world
’
s biggest hummingbird.

“
Whoa you did awesome
,
man!
”
John said to me excitedly.

Well if he was talking about hyperventilating and damn near crapping my pants, then yes I had done one hell of a job.
“
You sho
uld probably get us out of here,
”
I said to him as I watched zombies start to come into the hangar and we were close enough to the wall
that
we would be peeling paint soon.

“
Right! Off to see the wizard!
”

“
Fuck I
’
d take flying monkeys right now.
”

“
Monkeys don
’
t fly
, man,
”
John said
,
looking over at me.

I waited until we were out of the hangar before I began to speak, I didn
’
t want him to have any huge revelations while we were confined like that.
“
You know
,
Wizard of Oz
, Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy all that shit?
”

He was still looking over at me
like I had lost my damn mind. No wonder psychiatrists were batty as shit. How could you not catch some crazy when you were around it all day?

“
All I know is that monkeys don
’
t fly,
”
h
e said as he set
his jaw. He looked like
I had just insulted his mother. T
he one thing I could be certain of
,
though
,
was that he
’
d forget soon enough.
“
So where we headed?
”
h
e asked after a few moments of silence.

“
Your wife
,
Trip.
”

“
Oh yeah,
”
h
e said as he brought his hand to his forehead.

We were a couple of hundred feet off the ground and I was not at all comfortable w
ith the machine I was riding in. I
t felt as safe as a flying blender. The view
,
however
,
gave me an appreciation of the new world we found ourselves in. The roads were deserted an
d devoid of all human activity…scratch that…
a
ll
forms of life. The zombies had proved that
,
in a bind
,
they will hunt down anything
,
and with the absence of food they would even go into a stasis.
We had long since got past the airport and I had to hope the
zombies had forgotten about us.
My
heart panged as I realized we were heading in a northerly route only with a slant to the
eas
t
.

I was
going to make it home.
I just didn
’
t know when and what was I going to tell my father about Gary. He had entrusted me with my brother
’
s safety and I had failed miserably, I could only hope that BT had picked up the torch I had dropped. Conversation was difficult over the chopping of the air
,
but af
ter the day we had been having—
w
ell at least that I was having—
I wasn
’
t sure how much if any
that
John remembered or what his particular
take
on it could be. For all I knew he probably thought this was a big amusement park ride.

“
How much longer?
”
I shouted. I was expecting the standard,
‘
time is the enemy of man
’
or
‘
til when?
’
or something equally as inane so
I
was surprised when he answered in all business tone.

“
We
’
ll be there before nightfall.
”

I hoped so, because now I had another huge fear, when the sun went down, there would be absolutely no manmade markers to help guide us in.

We flew in silence (conversational silence
,
the chopper was loud as hell)
for a few hours.
My
body ached to flush out the adrenaline high I had been on since this morning had started. The human body is not meant to be juiced up for that long. I had burned through vast stores of the drug and did not think I would be able to manufacture a new supply for quite some time
.

T
hen I looked over at my pilot.

I sat and looked at John
’
s face for a
while
, worry which h
ad not been there earlier (and L
ord knows it should have been) was now creasing his forehead. I desperately wanted to tell him everything would be alright
,
but how the hell would I know? I did it anyway because that
’
s what people do. We want to believe that everything is alright and maybe by voicing it, we hope to somehow influence the fates. But they don
’
t give a shit, the fates I mean. No matter what we want, what we hope, what we wish for
…
with one fell swoop
,
fate will come in and smash it like a man dressed in a Godzilla suit will do on a miniaturized city set.

“
You think?
”
John asked solemnly.

I had already tempted catastrophe once, I wouldn
’
t do it twice, I avoided answering.
“
What
’
s that blinking red light
,
T
rip?
”
I asked, pointing to his instrument panel.

“
Oil pressure,
”
h
e said as easily as if he was talking about the weather.

“
Is that important?
”
I asked, because it seemed important
,
but he
appeared
so completely
easy going about it.

“
Oh…extremely,
”
h
e answered without elaborating.

“
Trip, John, John the Tripper.
”

He finally looked over at me.

“
We
’
re not going to make it there any faster if we
’
re dead.
”

“
You think I should land?
”

“
You tell me.
”

And he did
,
by pitching the copter d
own at a steep angle.
I was thinking we were already in crash mode as my balls sought residency in my lower belly. An alarm over our head began to blare, either from our rapid descent or the oil pressure.

“
Wonder how long that thing has
been going off?
”
John asked as
he
toggled the switch back to
‘
silent
’
mode.
“
Coming in hot!
”
h
e shouted.

“
What the fuck does that mean?!
”

“
Hold on.
”

Like that needed to be voiced, might as well have said
‘
Evacuate your bladder now!
’
We were probably still a good thirty or forty
feet up when the blades seized.
One
second they were whirring along and the next it sounded like someone had thrown rocks inside a dryer
,
the
n
they just stopped, not even lazily spinning, just complete stoppage. We went from
‘
Coming in hot
’
to
‘
Sinking stone
’
in a matter of milli
seconds.
John was able to do some piloting magic to get us to coast a bit
,
it wasn
’
t much
,
but I think it was just enough. My spine felt like it compressed to half its length when we slammed into the ground. What air I had been holding onto because I couldn
’
t breathe was punched out of me from the impact. The undercarriage of the copter had completely caved in on itself. The glass bubble we were sitting in had shattered much like a car windshield.

T
hen we were airborne again as the chopper bounced, my guesstimate later would be somewhere in the eight or nine foot range
,
but I didn
’
t even realize it was happening at the time. Except for the list to my side, I almost stuck my hand out
to the side to brace for impact.
I
’
m glad I was too petrified to peel them away from my seat I would have shattered my arm in a dozen places.
The
glass shell completely dissolved as we again became earth bound. I was completely on my side strapped in to the seat
;
my face was mere inches from t
he grass.
An
ant carrying what looked like a cricket leg walked right under my watchful gaze. The only noise was the knocking of the cooling engine, the slamming of my blood through my arteries and John the Tripper moaning.