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Maybe.
Maybe.
We flew into the night, knowing that no matter where we went or what happened, this was the world now.
And it wasn’t our world anymore.
— 17 —
NOW
You can’t outfly an electromagnetic pulse.
We tried.
We saw the flash over San Diego and we poured it on.
By then Air Force One was well out of range, flying at thirty thousand feet, punching along at five hundred miles an hour. We opened the throttle to the never-exceed speed of two-hundred and twenty-two miles per hour, but we flew low over the landscape.
The EMP rode the shockwaves and chased us like a pack of dogs. It killed the bird. Killed the avionics, the motors. Everything. The rotors stopped turning with anything except wind friction.
And we fell.
Fell.
All the way down.
Maybe if we’d been luckier the crash would have killed the three of us. But, we haven’t been lucky in a long time.
I stood there, watching the bird burn. Watching the sky burn. Feeling the blood run in lines down my face, my chest, my arms. Listening to the howling wind. Listening to the hungry moans.
Top and Bunny were hurt.
We all were. Hurt. Not dead.
I slapped a fresh magazine into my Beretta and raised it as the first of the shambling figures broke through the wall of smoke.
Not dead yet. Not them. Not dead like they’re supposed to be. And we were still alive, too. Death sang its mournful, tuneless songs in the moans of the things that came to us. Death sang, but we did not know the songs, did not know those lyrics. Not yet.
Not goddamn yet.
We raised our guns at the unstoppable wave of death.
“Well,” I said, “fuck it.”
Top and Bunny laughed. Actually laughed. So did I.
We fired.
PART TWO
FAT GIRL WITH A KNIFE
JONATHAN MABERRY
DURING THE OUTBREAK
— 1 —
