"Gary, you alright?" BT was yelling as he did so.

Gary's retching was the only response.

The zombie's hand had gripped the bottom of Gary's boot and was pulling itself closer. Gary was cognizant of the approaching danger but was unable to respond.

"f.u.c.k, man!" BT said as he grabbed the back of the zombie's legs and was now pulling the zombie and Gary towards him.

Deneaux shot the zombie in the head point blank as BT pulled it free from the truck. Gary was staring at the whole exchange not really registering anything.

"He looks bit," Mrs. Deneaux said as she leveled the gun on Gary.

"He's not f.u.c.king bitten. Put the d.a.m.n gun down," BT told her. "Right, Gary?" BT asked.

Gary slightly shifted his gaze so he could look at BT.

"Come on, man," BT motioned. "You can sit up front with us."

"He's covered in vomit and brain, he stinks to high Heaven."

BT looked crossly at Mrs. Deneaux.

"Fine," she said, "but I'm smoking more."

"I wouldn't think that was even possible," BT answered. He extended his hand for Gary who slowly took it. "You alright?" BT asked again.

Gary got down off the truck; he walked a few feet away to the gra.s.sy median and deposited a little more stomach sauce. He vigorously wiped as much stain of humanity off himself as he could with the overgrown weeds, and when he felt somewhat decent, he climbed up into the cab without uttering so much as a word.

"I guess he's ready to go," Mrs. Deneaux said as she got in behind him.

BT looked once behind the truck and noticed the zombies were far behind but that they were still following.

A few more miles pa.s.sed underneath their tires.

"I miss you. Mike," BT said almost silently as they pa.s.sed out of North Carolina and into Virginia.

"Me too," Gary said even quieter. The first words he had uttered in an hour.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Mike Journal Entry 6 I honestly thought John was full of s.h.i.t, right until we pulled up to the gates of the munic.i.p.al airport. He made me take a right towards one of the smaller hangars; once we stopped, he grabbed the keys out of the ignition and walked over to the hangar where he opened up a door to the corrugated steel building.

It was darker inside, but the windows high up in the building let in sufficient light. There it was, a helicopter that wasn't much bigger than some of the ones I'd seen hobby enthusiasts remote pilot. John went over to it and began to lock the props in place-they had been folded in for storage.

"I'll be honest, John, this seemed like a much better idea when we were underground." I was having serious reservations. Here was a guy that said he couldn't get his s.h.i.t together enough to drive a van, but could apparently pilot a toy helicopter.

"It's perfectly safe," John told me as he almost took off the top of his head with the blade, by walking into it. "Help me wheel it out."

Me helping ended up, me doing, as he went over to the large hangar door and began to pull it open. It was surprisingly easy to move, but I don't know why I would be expecting anything else from a helicopter made from spare Erector Set parts. I pushed it some twenty feet away from the building thinking that was plenty of clearance, then I went another fifty.

"You see the checklist?" John asked me.

I shook my head.

"Doesn't matter," he told me as he climbed in.

"Trip, I beg to differ. They have those checklists for a reason, like for checking the fuel level or ice on the wings or s.h.i.t, man, like a bunch of other stuff." I was stalling, because all of a sudden, the tunnel looked welcoming. Well not really...but at this point it was like splitting very fine hairs.

"No time to go through the list anyway," John said as he powered the copter on. "Might want to duck and get in." The blades began to whir to life. He tapped lightly on his instrument panel. "Hey do you know what that one checks?" he asked.

"I have no f.u.c.king idea, Trip, except it looks like it's in the red." I had been in the middle of getting in and was now in the middle of getting out.

"I wouldn't," John said to me, never looking past his instruments.

"Huh?" I asked. I should have known better.

He pointed back and to the right of our present location, zombies were flooding in our direction.

"Oh s.h.i.t!" I said as I saw the swarm. "How long until we're airborne?"

"I don't know, man, I've never seen the reason to time it. Sure could go for a little Mary Jane."

"Task at hand first, buddy, task at hand," I said to him, trying to gauge how much time we had before we were engaged with the zombies. "More than half a minute?" I asked, trying to press him for information he didn't have.

"Time is just something the man made to keep us all in line," he said as he pressed more b.u.t.tons on his console.

"Trip, I understand your frustration with the mythical man."

"Oh, he isn't mythical."

"Okay, sorry, but we may need to ditch the copter."

"Almost there," he said.

"The zombies or being in the air?"

He didn't elaborate. I started to get back out.

"Where you going?" John asked.

I had sarcasm all lined up, but I knew John wouldn't catch it and I didn't have time for an explanation.

"Zombies, Trip, I have to slow them down."

"Whoa," he said as he looked back. "Where'd they come from?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him he was the one that had pointed them out to me.

"You should make them into mannequins."

"What?" I asked looking at the approaching horde and the blades that were lazily spinning, more from the breeze it appeared than any mechanical function.

"Like at the motel."

Why in the h.e.l.l was I having John the Tripper tell me how to get out of situations? This was like having a dog (not Henry) help me with algebra. (Who am I kidding? The dog could probably do it better.) I no sooner took my tin foil hat off, when my head was blinded with white noise to the point where I was placing my hands over my ears in a desperate attempt to keep the noise out. On the periphery of my vision I could hear John telling me to put the hat back on, but it wasn't registering as a cognitive thought. I was hearing the words, but could not a.s.sociate them with a meaning. I was falling out of the copter. John grabbed me and placed the hat back in place; blissful, beautiful silence filled the void of confusion. That was ultimately replaced with the slap of feet on pavement, and with that thought came the realization that we were still under attack. John was busy reaching over me and putting on the flight harness so that I wouldn't swoon out again.

The blades of the copter had picked up speed, we weren't moving yet, though. And the zombies were a football throw away and not an Eli Manning heaving toss it up type of pa.s.s, but more the workings of something I'd let loose. I undid my buckle.

"Where you going, man? We're almost up," John said.

"No time, my friend. I just want to say thank you."

John's eyebrows were pulled tight as he tried to figure out what I was talking about. The blades of the copter reached terminal velocity as the small craft bucked forward. "You should get in," he said as he placed his hand over the yolk.

I took one quick glance at the zombies, confident in the fact that we weren't going to make it and still I jumped in the craft, my weight pushing it back down. It made another hop when the lead zombie ran headfirst into the spinning blade-blood sprayed in a complete three-sixty around the craft as the zombie's force pushed us forward.

"How many more of those can we take?" I asked John as another zombie ran into the tail; the smaller rear rotor caught it underneath the chin and split its head in two from bottom to top. Why I felt the need to watch was beyond me. I hadn't thought that there was anything left on the planet which could gross me out. I was woefully wrong.

The copter was being pushed forward from the a.s.sault; 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. At 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 b.u.t.ter.

"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 us level even with our hitcher, but her added weight was keeping us dangerously close to terra firma. Actually, 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 pa.s.senger'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 caught 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 the hangar where the door was not-and I REPEAT not-open. We had lost a little of our hard fought alt.i.tude 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 pa.s.senger. It looked like it was going to be pretty close as to which part of the hangar was going to be our ultimate demise. The far side or the ceiling...I was actually rooting for the ceiling at least that way I wouldn't see it coming.

Then 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 d.a.m.n near c.r.a.pping my pants, then yes I had done one h.e.l.l of a job. "You should 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!"

"f.u.c.k 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 s.h.i.t?"

He was still looking over at me like I had lost my d.a.m.n mind. No wonder psychiatrists were batty as s.h.i.t. How could you not catch some crazy when you were around it all day?

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

"Your wife, Trip."

"Oh yeah," he 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 with the machine I was riding in. It 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 and devoid of all human activity...scratch that...all 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 east.

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 after the day we had been having-well 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 h.e.l.l) 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.

Then I looked over at my pilot.

I sat and looked at John's face for a while, worry which had not been there earlier (and Lord knows it should have been) was now creasing his forehead. I desperately wanted to tell him everything would be alright, but how the h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.t, 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 G.o.dzilla 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, Trip?" I asked, pointing to his instrument panel.

"Oil pressure," he 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," he 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 down at a steep angle. I was thinking we were already in crash mode as my b.a.l.l.s 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!" he shouted.