Breathless - Swarm Book 2: (An Epic Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller), page 14
Standing in the middle of the groups so they could all hear him, he projected his voice. “As we’re going to be locked in here for an unknown amount of time, I’ve decided that we need to conserve our resources. Some of you won’t be happy, because after calculating the ratio of food to people in this building, we’ll all be going on a diet.”
Grumbles rolled through the group in a wave. Nothing he didn’t expect and couldn’t handle for a day or two. He’d dealt with worse when they were all eating as much as they wanted from home and still complaining about the jobs. “So for tonight’s dinner, we have tap water, and half a peanut butter sandwich.” The room exploded and several longshoremen stormed the crates.
Nicholas raised his voice above the din. “Some of us need more than that.”
Émile put his hands in the air for attention and the room quieted down. “I know it’s not fair, nor is it something we can keep up forever. But, with the diminishing supply, we need to think of everyone at this moment and tighten our belts. If some of you ate what you normally did, the entire contents of the break room would be gone tonight.” At that there was dead silence, so much so that the engineer and the railway workers’ whispers were clear to everyone in the building. They were beyond “unhappy.” They were outright pissed. “Give me a couple of days, just until I know it’s safe. Then we can all go out to a buffet or something.” The crowd gathered and murmured their agreement as they formed a line at the food cart.
Twice Émile had to remove an extra piece of bread from the hands of those who complained the most. When the crowd diminished and it was just Mary and David left, he set them up with three half sandwiches. “For the sick.” He rolled the cart inside the break room and counted the slices of bread. Someone hadn’t taken their portion and was going to be very hungry the next morning. Whoever it was, they’d made their choice. He stashed the food and locked the break room door.
He nodded as he walked the building’s perimeter one last time to check the locks, acknowledging his good work, and then finding his own spot to roll up in. It was a skill, falling asleep under pressure. Other men might be haunted by their decisions or second-guessing what was to come, but when Émile Harris decided to switch his brain off, it obliged him every time. He drifted to sleep with the peals of thunder and pounding rain in the background.
Émile snapped his eyes open. He was being shaken. The glow of his phone read oh-three-hundred. Someone had a death wish for waking him at this ungodly hour. He rolled over, his nose bumping into bare feet with painted toenails.
“Émile, you’re needed, now.” Mary’s eyes were red and puffy, her movements agitated. It was obvious something was wrong. But she was the Unsinkable Molly Brown type of person. Whatever was happening, it had to be bad.
He untangled himself from the warmth of the blanket and groaned as his shoulder and hip throbbed. Concrete didn’t make a good bed. He stumbled around obstacles as she led him to the medical tent. He slipped through the parted opening and clamped his nose shut with two fingers. “Where the hell did you find smelling salts?”
Mary shushed him with one finger over her mouth and pointed down. Brandy lay still, her skin taught and pale. David was waving a small bottle underneath her nose and the reek of ammonia filtered through his very pores. Émile deflated and leaned against the bed. He’d forgotten to check on her. “What happened?”
David put the rubber stopper into the mouth of the bottle and popped it closed. “Mary stumbled over her on the way to the bathroom. Tried to apologize, but she didn’t respond. We brought her here.” He placed the smelling salts into the first aid box and snapped the lid shut.
“Shh, I’m trying to concentrate.” Mary shifted two fingers a little higher on Brandy’s wrist. She tried three other positions before looking at David. “I can’t find a pulse.”
David stooped down in the light, traced the faint outline of the patient’s jugular, and placed his fingers on the carotid artery. He pressed a little harder, indenting her skin. “She’s dead.”
Mary clasped a hand over her mouth and sank to the floor. Around Brandy’s neck hung a rose gold octagon with a caduceus highlighted in red. David flipped the medallion over. “She’s a diabetic.”
Émile took the medallion and lifted it higher into the light. “I don’t understand…”
David fixed him with a stony stare. “She didn’t eat. I saw her sitting against one of the crates. She never moved.”
Émile re-examined the necklace. He should’ve known Brandy wasn’t in the food line, but he was consumed with making sure each person only took what they were supposed to.
Mary stopped sobbing and caressed Brandy’s long, dark hair. “She was such a gentle soul. Always willing to help anyone who needed it.”
Émile stumbled out of the tent and leaned his back against the wall. Tears of shame cascaded down his cheeks in the darkness. He couldn’t tell Mary and David he’d seen Brandy in such a bad state. He couldn’t tell anyone. She’d been in shock for several hours—not some ordinary shock, frickin’ diabetic shock—and that he’d forgotten to check on her.
Another person was dead. And this time it was, without question, his fault.
Chapter 14
JEREMY CURTIS. YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
The helicopter’s blades chopped through the yellow-brown wall of smoke, sending it swirling around the granite dome that was their safe haven. Most of the crowd gathered on Half Dome cheered, Brandon included. Jeremy rubbed his stinging eyes and coughed as a hot gust wafted over him.
The helicopter circled yet again, angling for the best landing spot.
Jeremy chivvied the Mother Hen—who turned out to be a ‘Sheila,’—forward. She’d recovered from her fall and, with Jeremy’s help, made it up the cables to safety, where she’d been reunited with her chicks. They clucked around her, applying salve and picking bits of dirt out of her wounds. She was in good hands.
Sheila coughed into her sleeve and slid her hand around her kid’s shoulders. “Can’t thank you enough, Jeremy. Without you we’d have been thrown to the lions.”
What Jeremy wanted to say, but wouldn’t in front of the children, was, ‘It’s not over. Not by a long shot.’ He tousled the little boy’s hair. “If we keep our heads, we’re all going to be evacuated.”
The copter hovered like a giant raptor, and then eased onto the flat rock on the peak. Forty or more people crowded and jostled for position.
Nash bulldozed through the crowd toward the waiting chopper, giving anyone who dared say anything a death stare that made them instantly back down.
Jeremy squared up, his hackles bristling. “What now?”
Brandon flushed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t throw a wobbly. Not now. Not when his plan is working.”
Nash jogged around a bigger, fitter man who stood directly in his path and kept going.
“I told you he’d try to get out of here first.”
“You’re so cynical, Jeremy.” Brandon’s jeer cut him to the bone. “He’s going to make sure his girlfriend gets on first since she’s injured.”
Tosh was getting to the front as a result of Nash’s maneuverings, but her injury was minor. There was no way a twisted ankle should take precedence over the little kids, older hikers, and people with more serious injuries or health issues.
“You stay here and look after Sheila.” Jeremy broke the front line and stopped, with maybe half a dozen bystanders between himself and Nash. He crossed his arms and waited. A single pilot pushed an orange storage container—the kind you load up with beer and burgers when you go camping, but twice as large—to the open helicopter door, hopped out, then dissolved into a coughing spasm.
“I’ve got your back!” Nash shouted, raising a hand and jogging forward.
“I’m right behind you,” Jeremy shouted, and Nash looked over his shoulder, his happy-to-help mask slipping momentarily into a scowl.
Still sputtering a bit from his coughing fit, the pilot patted the storage container. “Food. Water. Couple of backpacks. You fellas mind getting this down for me?” He wore a khaki uniform with a helicopter patch on the left shoulder. He coughed again into the crook of his arm, and when he pulled his arm away, there were flecks of blood on the inside of his elbow. “This smoke. It’s something else, isn’t it?”
“If you need to rest”—Jeremy grabbed one of the white, plastic handles and hefted the container closer to the edge of the chopper door—“I’m sure we can wait a few minutes.”
“I’m good. Just need help offloading this…”
Jeremy and Nash heaved the box off the bird and marched it to a clearing. Nash waved Max over to their position. “Guard it. Don’t let anyone else touch it. If we don’t get a ride on the first evac…” He tapped the side of his nose; code for ‘you know what I mean.’ In one clever move, he’d effectively taken control of the supplies.
“All right, ladies and gents.” The pilot was overcome with a coughing spasm again. Something wasn’t right with the man. His skin was red, blotchy, and peeling. His face was puffy, and he kept hacking blood onto his sleeve. He still wore his helmet, but a line of blood slowly crept down from under his earlobe, disappearing under his collar. “We’ve all had a long day, but it’s not over yet. I can only fit six people at a time in the helo, so I’ll be taking those needing immediate medical attention first.”
“Sir,” Nash said, stepping up to the pilot. “My girlfriend has a twisted ankle, and it looks pretty bad. She has a clotting condition. If the bone is broken, she could bleed to death.”
“Liar.” Jeremy had never been surer of anything in his life.
Tosh’s hand was over her mouth, her cheeks bright red. Yep, Nash was lying.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” the pilot asked.
“Oh, no!” A woman with short, curly hair plastered to her head with sweat stepped ahead of Nash. “He just got up here.”
“Were you one of the freaks throwing boulders? Do you know how many people died?” Nash swung around, screaming in the pilot’s face. “They’re murderers. She’s a murdering—”
She cut him off. “I didn’t throw anything. I would never—”
The crowd swayed and surged, a murmur of protest rising on the hot wind. Who did what when and why was jumbled in a torrent of accusations and recriminations.
Jeremy turned his attention to the pilot. “We have no idea who threw what. Boulders were thrown, and people di—”
The pilot coughed and held up a hand stilling the crowd in an instant. “We can work out the specifics later. We want to get everyone evacuated so we need to move fast. We lost two pilots today that I know of, and another yesterday.” He turned back to the crowd. “I’m leaving behind some supplies. Don’t waste them. It will be a while before I can get all of you out of here. I need six passengers. Injured or ill only.”
Plastered Curls scowled. “Six at a time? That’s going to take forever!”
A middle-aged woman raised her hand. “I’m asthmatic.” She was one of Nash’s people. Jeremy had seen her using her inhaler on the hike up. At least someone was telling the truth.
Plastered Curls elbowed her aside and stepped forward. “Take me! I have migraines. I feel one coming on right now!”
As more people shouted their ailments, Jeremy slipped back into the crowd and tugged on Brandon’s arm. “This could get ugly, but I don’t see a ton of injured people up here. You’re young. He might take you if we can get you to the front.”
Brandon snorted. “I’m young? What about him?” He pointed at a child, no more than five or six, hand gripped on the back of his dad’s T-shirt, sobbing into his teddy. The dad, much to Jeremy’s dismay, didn’t even look down at his kid. Like everyone else, he was elbowing for position. Ironic, then, that his T-shirt sported a #1 DAD! logo.
The pilot backed up, coughing, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. He didn’t try to cover his cough, and droplets of blood spattered a woman on the face and neck. She screamed and stumbled backward, falling as she tried frantically to wipe her face with her sleeve.
The pilot fell to his knees, eyes rolling back, his body jerking violently. Red-tinged froth foamed at his lips and rolled down his chin. He jerked again, and plunged onto the rock. His head hit hard, making an awful sound like a watermelon dropped from a height, bouncing on impact and hitting again. That was the last movement his body made. Blood seeped from under him, following the cracks in the rock, creating tiny rivers of red. In the collective silence that followed, Jeremy couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse.
“Is he… dead?” Tosh finally asked, breaking the uneasy quiet, her voice carrying easily though she’d kept it low.
Nash scowled. “He was the only way out of here!”
Brandon’s face was ashen. “What now?” He looked to Nash rather than Jeremy, but Nash was busy dragging the plastic container he and Jeremy had offloaded from the chopper farther away from the crowd.
Jeremy stepped up. Someone had to take control. Might as well be him. “We’ll wait for the fires to die down.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to list the options and ‘waiting’ was at the top of his list. “And then we’ll hike back to Curry Village tomorrow when the smoke clears.”
A man’s voice came from the edge of the crowd, but Jeremy couldn’t see who spoke. “I’m not staying that long! We don’t have enough food and water, and what if that pilot was contagious? I can fly that thing. I took lessons.” The older man who’d come up the mountain to renew his marriage vows stepped forward. “Come on, Marj.”
“Mike… you took one lesson.” Marj pulled away from her man, but her feet skidded across the rock and she almost tripped. “You can’t fly that thing.”
The crowd wasn’t on Marj’s side. People stepped over the dead pilot in their rush to get to Mike.
“What about taking the sick first?” The asthmatic shook her inhaler and sucked down a squirt of medicine. It probably wasn’t for show, but it didn’t hurt her chances.
Mike smiled and waved her forward. “I don’t want any line hoppers or liars, but if you’re compromised and the smoke is making things worse, come on down.”
“I know I said you should go, but…” Jeremy held Brandon back. “He clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Make your mind up, Dad.” Phew, the sarcasm when he said the word ‘Dad.’ You could have cut it with a knife and buttered an entire loaf of bread. “What’s it to be? Escape and live or stay and burn to death?”
“I will tackle you myself if you try to board that helicopter, Brandon.” He used a voice he didn’t know he had—one his own father had used on him many times. The you’re-about-to-be-in-a-world-of-trouble voice.
“Fine,” Brandon said, jerking his arm from Jeremy’s grasp.
The crowd had quickly separated after New-Pilot Mike’s proclamation. Half were doing exactly what Jeremy and Brandon were doing, hanging back and watching, while twenty others scrambled to find a place on the six-passenger rescue helicopter. Mike and Marj were at the chopper door, asking questions, taking names.
A man limped past, bending, peering, searching between legs. “Paul? he shouted. The back of his white shirt read in big letters: #1 Dad. “Have you seen a boy about this tall?” He held his hand up to just a little higher than his hip.
Jeremy frowned. “He was here. Just a minute ago. With you…”
The man shook his head and moved back into the thick of the crowd. “Paul?!”
“That’s it, folks.” Mike shooed the crowd away from the chopper. “We’ll come back as fast as we can. No one wants to preserve life more than me.”
There were grumbles of protest as Mike helped the asthmatic to her seat. Jeremy didn’t know who’d made the cut or why, but Mike had wrangled a fractious crowd—who, less than half an hour earlier, had been willing to kill each other—to order, so he was happy to wait his turn.
Marj reared up on her tiptoes and whispered in her husband’s ear. Mike’s mouth fell open. “You can’t.”
“I’ll keep the peace. Wait for the next run.”
“I’m not going without you.”
A wave of goosebumps ran up Jeremy’s arms. Talk about losing face. If he was understanding the situation, Marj was telling her not-quite-pilot husband that she wasn’t going on the chopper with him. He crept closer to eavesdrop.
Marj dashed a tear away and turned her back on the crowd.
Mike hung his head. “I’m begging you, Marj. The smoke’s to our east. The wind’s not dying down. If we don’t go now, there’s no saying we’ll get another chance.” And with that one sentence, all the peacekeeping was undone.
The ‘want to leave’ contingent surged the bird, throwing punches and grabbing hair and shirts and anything that could be used to pull someone away from a seat.
Marj stumbled out of the fray and took herself to one side, gently sobbing.
The helicopter’s engine roared to life and the blades spun, slowly at first, quickly gaining speed. Dust swirled over the crowd and Jeremy blinked his eyes against the grit. Slowly, the chopper lifted off the ground. For a split second it seemed as if Mike had really managed it, but then the helicopter teetered. Shouts and screams rose—from the crowd, from inside the copter—as the machine’s blades tipped dangerously close to several bystanders. The engine roared again, but instead of climbing higher, the helicopter clattered back to the rock.
A man was hanging onto the open door of the helicopter. He had the same #1 DAD! T-shirt as the frantic father who’d just passed them.
“They’re going to get themselves killed.” Max stepped forward.
“Daddy!” A little boy with a tear-streaked face darted out of the crowd, moving through the line of desperate people still pushing toward the helicopter.
