After finishing the second packet, I regained the ability to actually pay attention to something besides my own hunger. My left hand was locked in a death-grip around my pants with its two bottles of brains. Good ole parasite survival instinct must’ve kicked in to grab them when the rescuer cut the jacket sleeve to free my dad. I unclenched my fingers and finally took a look around.
I didn’t know crap about helicopters, but this one looked military: utilitarian grey, with two seats for crew members up near the cabin; I was buckled into one of four fold-down seats at the back, though I didn’t remember any of that happening. My dad was in the seat right beside me. He had a blanket around him and held a towel to the back of his head. He met my eyes, gave me a tremulous smile. I did my best to return it. I didn’t know how much of my out-of-controlness he’d seen, but I sure as hell hoped not much. Thankfully, he’d been kinda out of it for the worst of the monster-mode. For that matter, so had I.
But I had been the monster for a while. If the helicopter hadn’t returned, would I have been able to control myself? Would I have killed and eaten my own father? A shiver wracked me. I knew the truth, and it was a punch in the gut.
I almost ate my dad. The memory went through me like a knife. The scent, the drive to do whatever I had to do to get those brains—my dad’s brains. No way could I have kept on living if I’d given in to the hunger and killed him. Or was suicide even an option? I had a feeling the survival responses of the parasite wouldn’t make it easy.
But I didn’t hurt him, I reminded myself. Yeah, the helicopter had returned in the nick of time, but I’d managed to hold on for those precious few minutes, even with a goddamn tree stuck through my back. Props to stubborn-bitch-willpower for saving the day.
I hugged the blanket around myself and accepted a third packet from the rescuer. Might as well eat their supply of brains instead of going into the two bottles in my pants, especially since I had no idea how long I’d need those bottles to last. Whoever these people were, they sure as hell knew how to deal with hungry zombies, right down to having chewy brain-cakes on hand to keep the hunger distracted.
Shifting, I moved to sit closer to my dad. The thwupping roar of the chopper made it impossible to have a conversation, but I mouthed You okay? and he nodded in response. He pulled the towel away from his head, looked at the blood staining it. Scowling, I turned his head so I could look at the wound. I saw his lips move, and I had no doubt he was cussing me, but he didn’t resist. To my relief it didn’t look too bad. Probably wouldn’t need stitches, but I still intended to get someone with actual medical training to look at it once we got wherever we were going.
I released his head, gave him a quick hug, then made a comical effort to get my wet pants back on. I gave up after half a minute of contortions and simply tied the legs around my waist, wrapped the blanket around me best I could, and sighed. Looked like I was getting rescued in my undies after all. Thank god I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a thong to bed.
My dad and I huddled close together for warmth and comfort as the helicopter circled the area. Two more times it descended to pluck people from the still-raging waters. The neighbors from across the street who’d called the cops on us more than once for domestic disputes. A single mom who lived nearby and her fourteen-year-old son who I suspected was responsible for the disappearance of tools from our shed. Petty neighborhood squabbles were forgotten as we helped each other get settled and offered comfort as we could.
Finally the pilot seemed to feel that either there were no others needing rescue, or there wasn’t enough room for more. The doors closed, and I felt us gain altitude. I wrapped an arm around my dad, shut my eyes, and tried not to think of this as the end of our world.
I opened my eyes when we touched down with little more than a light jostling. Whoever the pilot was, he was damn good. The engines wound down, and the silence when they stopped seemed unnatural after the din of before.
When the doors opened, our rescuers efficiently off-loaded us and passed us into the care of waiting emergency workers and Red Cross personnel. It took a few minutes for my surroundings to sink in, and then I registered that we were in a parking lot at Tucker Point High School. About twenty yards from the helicopter, several Red Cross vehicles clustered, one marked Disaster Relief. Tucker Point High was always used as a shelter during hurricanes, so it made sense for it to be used for this as well. A vague and misplaced worry wound through me about how the movie people would do their filming with flood victims sheltering here and getting in their way, but then I decided that the school was no doubt more than big enough to accommodate everyone, and I surely had more important things to worry about. But I didn’t want to worry about the more important things. Not yet.
I kept the blanket wrapped around my waist and an arm around my dad, demanded that someone check out his head and snarled that I was fine. No one seemed to take any offense, and I dimly realized that I probably had an eyes-wide-in-shock look about me.
After asking a few pointed questions, I managed to learn that, earlier in the morning, engineers attempted to partially open the spillway in order to carefully bleed-off the overflowing Kreeger River down Cole Bayou and, eventually, out into the swamp. That would have been fine and dandy and would have caused a few extra feet of water at the most, except that minutes after the first bay opened, the entire aged structure gave way. In one gigantic rush, pretty much all the excess water in the Kreeger River diverted down Cole Bayou. The Army Corps of Engineers was already at work, though the general consensus seemed to be that, at this point, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the river to drop below flood stage.
I hovered near my dad as a medic checked his head, and I listened to a relief worker comment in hushed tones about how the flooding had wiped out a small trailer park. I knew the place—a collection of six or seven trailers with almost exclusively elderly residents. I figured there had to be other casualties as well, but no one had any hard numbers. The only possible bright side was that the worst of the flooding had been on our side of the road since the bayou ran behind our property, which meant that, apart from the unfortunately located trailer park, probably less than a dozen houses had been affected. Moreover, at least half of those were fishing camps that weren’t usually occupied during the week.
“You don’t need stitches,” the medic told my dad, and I yanked my attention back to him. “You probably have a mild concussion, though,” he added.
“I ain’t goin’ to no fucking hospital,” Dad snarled before the medic could even get the suggestion out.
The young man flicked his eyes up to me. I gave him a very slight shrug and shake of my head to let him know that arguing would get him nowhere.
“All right,” he said to my dad. “But be sure to get as much rest as possible. And if you have any dizziness, headache, or blurred vision, let one of the volunteers know as soon as possible.”
Dad grumbled something that sounded like an “Okay,” and with that the medic moved on to treat the tool-stealing teen, who looked like a scared rabbit as he cradled his left arm to his chest.