Monster Island(95)

“Oh man that was too good,” Gary laughed as I clutched the bandage to my neck. “Do you get it now, Dekalb? The human race is over and you living guys came in last place! You can’t compete, man. You don’t even qualify.”

I lurched to my feet, one hand on the rough brick wall to steady myself. I got a pretty bad head rush just standing up. A definite bad sign. I walked over to the tub and stepped down onto the cracked floor.

“You can’t destroy me, *. You can shoot me in the head and you can burn me to the ground but it doesn’t matter. I can repair myself-rebuild myself!” Gary’s mutilated head rocked against the bricks as he spoke. “I’m invincible!” I kicked at his neck until his head came away from his body and rolled away on the floor.

I wasn’t quite done. It took me a while to find the pumphouse again but it was necessary. I needed a bag and I needed to make sure the VX cylinders weren’t going to go off on their own. In the fading light of the glowsticks I peeled the plastic explosives off of the canisters. I disassembled the detonator and broke the parts, scattering them around the room. I buried the cylinders under some loose bricks. There wasn’t much else I could do-you can’t just dump nerve agents into the sewer system or throw them in a landfill but at least this way no wandering dead guy would unleash the chemical weapons by accident.

There was another weapon of mass destruction to consider. I didn’t like it but I would have to take it with me. I emptied out one of the heavy packs that Jack and I had brought to the fortress and stuffed Gary’s head inside. I believed him when he said he could eventually regenerate himself, that he could survive anything. I could crush the head to a fine paste but even that might not be enough-he had after all survived being shot in the brain. By keeping the head with me I knew I would be able to kill him again if he came back. As many times as it took.

Jack’s Glock 9 mm went into my pocket. It wasn’t much but it was a weapon and obscenely enough its presence made me feel safe. That was something I needed. My injuries made me feel like any second I might just collapse.

By the time I was ready to leave the fortress my breathing had become labored and my vision was shot. When I staggered out into the daylight I was momentarily blinded. What I finally saw cheered me up a lot. An orange and white blur hovering in the air. Coast Guard colors-that would be Kreutzer. Oh, thank God. He had come. I had half expected him to take the Chinook to Canada Something yellow hung beneath the helicopter but I couldn’t quite focus enough to make it out.

By the time I reached the lawn between the houses Marisol already had the survivors lining up to get onboard the chopper. Rotorwash from the Chinook cleared the blur out of my eyes and I saw the look on her face. It was one of total disbelief-and hope. I’d never seen her look like that before.

I ran to the hole in the wall and saw thousands of dead men just outside, impatient in their lust for food, being held back by six mummies. Just six. The Egyptians had their arms linked where they stood side by side in the gap, their backs to me. The collective weight of hundreds of dead men and women pressed against them but they held fast, kicking back those who tried to climb between their legs. I saw the female mummy, the one I’d spoken to, headbutt a dead boy and send him flying.

Out there in the midst of the dead, though-one of them stood head and shoulders above the rest. Literally. There was a giant there making his way toward the line of mummies. He batted the other ghouls away from him like flies as he approached. Whether the mummies could stand against his onslaught was still an open question.

Enough-I didn’t have any time left to worry. That line would hold. It had to. I turned around and saw the helicopter with clear vision as it made its descent. The yellow blur beneath it turned out to be a school bus attached to the Chinook’s undercarriage by three steel cables. Kreutzer put the bus down gently-well, it rocked badly as its tires popped one by one, but at least it didn’t turn over-and then dropped in for a landing twenty feet to the right, the cables draped along the ground. He popped the ramp at the rear of the chopper and living people stormed onboard, Marisol screaming at them to keep the line orderly and neat. “Women and children first!” she screamed, “and no f*cking shoving!” Other people clambered into the bus through the back emergency door. The line of survivors waiting to get seats never seemed to end but without really thinking about what I was doing I found myself bringing up the tail of the line, calling out to Marisol to see if she’d done a head count.

“That’s all of them,” she screamed back over the noise of the helicopter. “Every last one!”