He shined his flashlight into the open rear of the chopper and was horrified at the scene the light revealed. The walls of the cargo compartment were covered in blood. Motionless bodies littered the interior. He could smell the blood, thick and coppery, mixed with the sickening stench of bile, the same haunting scent of a smoldering battlefield, an odor not easily forgotten by those who’d experienced the full brutality and violent aftermath of close combat. It was a smell he knew all too well, one he hoped he’d someday forget. “Is anyone alive?” he shouted, not expecting an answer.
He got none.
Garrett hurriedly checked each body for signs of life, knowing he was only going through the motions, but also knowing he couldn’t leave without making sure. He owed them at least that much.
All dead.
From the look of the injuries, he figured the Chinook had hit the ground extremely hard. He’d seen the aftermath of aircraft crashes before, but none had been quite this bad; a couple of the bodies were twisted and mangled, missing arms and legs. The human body was incredibly resilient, but typically didn’t fare too well when slammed into an immoveable object — like the ground. Inertia could be a real bitch when it came to flesh and bone.
Among the bloodied camouflage uniforms of the dead soldiers, he noticed civilian clothes. Kneeling to look closely at one of the civilian bodies, Garrett’s eyes clouded with recognition as he shone his light into a dead face. He knew this man, but would sadly never know his name. One of the team members from the C-130. He quickly accounted for three civilians, but there’d been five, hadn’t there? Yes, definitely five, including the brunette Marilyn Monroe. Carolyn, that was her name. Legs. Carolyn Ridenour. None of the bodies here were female, though. Another chopper, he hoped silently, she must’ve made it out on another chopper. The woman and her team didn’t need to be at the airport in the first place, as it turned out, and now three of them lay dead in a wrecked chopper. Crappy luck, that was.
He felt a pang of guilt for treating her so gruffly on the tarmac, but he let it go. He had to. She was probably dead, like the rest. Just like his soldiers. And there’d been hundreds of them, many of whom he knew. He didn’t know her from Eve. Never would.
Let it go.
Garrett stood and swung his light toward the cockpit. The entrance was too mangled to pass through, so he ran out the back of the Chinook and around to the front to check the flight crew. He discovered smashed cockpit windows and both pilots — obviously dead — hanging partway out of the twisted, crushed cockpit, along with, his light revealed, something else.
In an instant, he understood.
The horrific injuries he’d seen weren’t all caused by the crash.
They’d been killed by the hideous thing that now lay broken and twisted beside the dead flight crew. When he shined his flashlight across the creature’s mangled body, dead eyes glowed back at him as the beam entered through dilated pupils. Its mouth was wide, revealing rows of black, knife-edged teeth. A long, thin arm dangled at an odd angle in front of it, long claws spread wide, covered in bloody, dripping gore.
It was the same kind of beast he’d seen at the airport. The same kind he’d blasted from the Kiowa’s skid as they lifted off. A monster. Something that couldn’t possibly exist, yet it was there in front of him, as real as the ground beneath his boots, muted yellow discs staring at him. Mocking him.
Garrett shifted his light away from the thing’s body. He’d seen enough. There were no survivors here. Most of the passengers — and most likely the crew, he knew — had died before the crash, killed by the thing hanging out of the cockpit. He turned to run back to the Kiowa — and saw the mass of glowing eyes in the distance. Racing across the darkened fields. Thousands of them. Small, yellow lights, bouncing and weaving, heading his way. And fast.
He heard the Kiowa’s engine spooling up — the pilot had seen them, too. As Garrett watched the eyes bouncing in the darkness, he noticed something different. No chattering, no clicking sounds like he’d heard at the airport. The little bastards were moving quietly.
As he ran, Garrett judged the distance to the chopper. He knew he’d make it in time, but not by much. He fell to the ground, cursing himself for tripping over something in the dark. As he scrambled to his knees and spat dirt from his mouth, he knew now was definitely not the time to pull a goddamned Jamie Lee Curtis.
The eyes were close. So unbearably close.
He quickly got back to his feet and realized what he’d tripped over had felt soft. Like a body. He aimed his flashlight toward where he’d stumbled and saw the motionless body of Carolyn Ridenour, lying on her side. He knelt by her. “Ms. Ridenour? Carolyn!” He felt for her pulse… and found one. At least she’s still alive, he thought, and flung her over his shoulder.
As he ran toward the Kiowa, he heard a moaning, an eerie, low sound, barely audible over the sound of the Kiowa’s rotor noise. At first he thought it was Carolyn, but then he realized the sound was coming from a distance. From where he’d seen the things approaching.
The chattering and clicking suddenly erupted like thunder, and he knew he’d been spotted. He glanced over his shoulder, trying hard not to lose his balance as he ran with the added weight, and confirmed what he thought. They were coming right for him.
Garrett saw the Kiowa’s pilot reach over and open the right-hand cockpit door as they approached, frantically waving at him to hurry.
The noise behind him was getting louder. With each step, he could feel the ground vibrating beneath his feet.
He knew the things were right behind him.
He threw Carolyn’s body into his seat and climbed on top of her, cramming himself into the small cockpit just as the landing skids lifted off the ground. The chopper tilted forward as the rotor blades grabbed at the air, like spinning hands desperately grasping for purchase, and lifted off and away from the mass of creatures streaming toward them.
A set of long, sharp claws scraped the bottom of the Kiowa as it rose into the night sky, a thing barely missing a handhold as it leapt at the chopper.
Garrett held tightly to the unconscious woman huddled beneath his body.
He knew it had been close.
Too close.
As the thwap thwap thwap of the Kiowa receded into the distance, the chattering and clicking ceased. All that could be heard was the muffled thunder of thousands of ravenous beasts heading north across the farm fields of eastern Kansas.
The same sound could be heard from five other masses, as they raced across the trembling American heartland.
CHAPTER 22
The full evacuation of the Omaha area was under way, but it wasn’t going well. Traffic to the north on I-29 and west on I-80 was at a complete standstill — both highways were filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic as the city’s residents desperately attempted to flee what was approaching from the southeast. The situation only worsened as more and more people tried to take alternate routes out of the city, clogging the narrow roads and state highways with hundreds of vehicles.
People were panicky — they all knew what had happened in Kansas City. Cars full of families and whatever belongings they could grab lined the roads, each driver terrified they wouldn’t make it out in time. Some were still in their pajamas. Accidents were inevitable. From the air, an unbroken string of taillights stretched to the horizon.