Chapter 15 - The Seven Seconds

They reached the airport on the last fuel vapors. Heero braked sharply, tilting the motorcycle sideways so violently that Relena almost slipped from the seat to the ground. At the end of the road they came from, behind the overturned cars and the remains of street blocks, he saw a few silhouettes of infected, who were still chasing them.

"Do you see them?" Relena asked, but he just grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the ruined airport buildings.

The airport's plate practically ceased to exist. There were wrecks of planes and helicopters everywhere, protruding from the craters of bombs that fell here twenty years ago. Heero jumped over the metal fence, then helped Relena pass. They ran into one of the first buildings that once served as terminals, and Heero shut the doors behind them.

"Upstairs," he ordered, pointing at the escalator that was still standing. The moment they ran on the first floor, the first infected started storming the door from the outside.

"O my God!" Relena gasped in terror as they reached the crown of the stairs. Heero felt her hand tucking at his shirt. "Heero, there are spores here!"

She was right; right behind a corner, Heero noticed a Cordyceps flower. "Get on your mask, now!" he ordered, but Relena was already doing that. He followed her suit, and pushed her further forward, into the air filled with yellow dust, following her each step. "Run, Relena."

The walls of the empty terminal trembled with a roar, which heralded that the infected finally got inside. A terrifying howl echoed through the dark corridors; then the sound changed into the patter of feet that scattered across the ground floor of the terminal. The clump of feet triggered new waves of spores out in the air. As Heero and Relena ran behind the security gates, the pursuit sound faded slightly. Heero grabbed Relena's arm and stopped her, then lowered her to her knees.

"Now quiet," he whispered through his mask. "If we will be quiet, we will get through the building to the other side."

Relena gasped loudly, looking at him with large, terrified eyes. She was breathing too loudly and too quickly as if her heart would leap from her chest. Or as if she was about to suffocate in her mask. Heero grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Relena, breathe," he instructed her, hearing his voice muffled by the mask. He shook her slightly by her shoulders to catch her full attention. "Inhale and exhale. Slowly! You have to calm your breath, or you'll suffocate yourself!"

To his relief, she listened to his instructions, and she slowly sucked air into her lungs and let it out as if she was doing this for the first time in her life. Her mask was letting out a characteristic, hissing sound at every breath she took. After a moment, she nodded to him to acknowledge that she was all right.

"Now," Heero whispered, hearing the helpless roar of the infected spread across the ground floor. "You must be noiseless. I don't know if there are more of them inside already." He was about to turn around and move on when he remembered something. "Give me your gun."

Relena looked at him in surprise through the glass of her mask, then handed him her weapon. Heero checked the magazine - it was loaded.

"Atta girl," he praised her, handing her the weapon back. "Now follow me. Remember about breathing. And stay close."

"I will, Heero," she answered him, her voice finally even.

The terminal they ran into was in a rather good condition. It wasn't entirely destroyed, but there were traces of people leaving it in a great rush. Nevertheless, the building was taken by a virus that had been growing here for twenty years. Which also meant that there were probably other infected people here.

Heero noticed the first Clicker in the central alley of the duty-free zone. It moved chaotically, apparently already recording strange sounds from below caused by the hordes of Runners running in here. Heero and Relena passed him through the sprawling exhibitions of nearby shops. But the closer they were approaching the gates, the more Clickers came across. Heero focused all his senses on such a strategic choice of a path between them to pass unnoticed. The surrounding Clickers were standing or walking in circles, throwing their arms around in torment. The room was full of the bodies of other infected, now developing a stalk-like fungal projection on them. It was dark, and spores entirely polluted the air. They had to move very slowly because of the rustling rubble on the floor under their feet. Heero chose a path under the walls, as it was the farthest from the Clickers, but this path implied that they had to cross over bodies of other infected and very close to the Cordyceps ominous flowers.

When they walked around the whole hall, the howls of the infected from the terminal started getting louder. At this noise, all Clickers began moving in the direction of the sound, trying to echolocate its source. That way, they moved away from Heero and Relena's position. Heero looked over his shoulder at Relena; she sent him a relieved look. When the Clickers moved away, Heero slowly got on his feet, helping Relena stand.

They took the staircase down. The lower, the denser the air was turning, due to the spores. Heero took out his flashbulb and illuminated the corridors in front of them. They noticed big posters on the wall with merry inscriptions like 'Have a nice flight' and the advertisements of some airlines. The smiles of the people on the signs were nearly entirely covered by the sprouting stalks of the Cordyceps fungus. When the corridor split in two, Heero froze for a moment, unsure which way to choose. Both seemed dark and endless, but the one on the left seemed passable, as there was air coming from this direction, making the spores flow in the other direction. Then Heero also noticed a nearly faded inscription on the wall saying 'to the bus terminal.'

"This way," he whispered silently through the gas mask to Relena. "We have to move faster. This is the last stage, and we'll be outside."

Relena nodded and followed him through the darkness. They went straight for another couple of minutes until they reached a room with closed glass doors, which mysteriously survived the bombing. The door was closed with a metal chain. Due to the density of spores, the glass was covered with them and practically impermeable to light, but from behind the door came a soft, steady hum of rain pitchforks.

Heero walked over and tried to untie the chain, but it didn't dodge. "Of course. It's locked," he muttered through the mask. Then he looked around for something to break the chain. He directed his steps towards the neighboring room, once occupied by security.

"Heero."

He looked over his shoulder at Relena. She was standing in the middle of the room, her hands clenched at her chest, holding a gun.

"I don't like it here," she whispered, her voice distorted by the mask's filter.

"Wait here," Heero ordered as he turned his steps towards the second room. They had to act instead of worry; everything could be ruined in seconds.

When he later recalled the course of events, he couldn't understand what had gone wrong. He probably had done everything right. He had made no mistake. But what Duo had said to him was true.

All it took was seven seconds.

Right from the threshold of the room, a shrill scream lifted all the hair on Heero's neck, but it was too late and too improvise to dodge. The Runner already ran into him, ramming and pushing him sideways. At the last moment, Heero raised his elbow in a gesture of defense, blocking it around the mutant's neck. His jaw clenched several times in the air, spraying around his stinking saliva.

One.

The glass of the large window shattered under the impact of Heero's and the Runner's bodies, as they both fell to the ground outside the building. It seemed to Heero that somewhere in the loud crash of broken glass, he could hear Relena calling his name. Or maybe it just seemed to him. Heero felt shards of glass cut into his back and left arm. The monster's jaws were closing closer and closer to his throat, just above him.

Two.

The Runner moved his jaw away from his neck for a moment to inflict a fast, sharp blow with both hands on Heero's head. Heero had the impression that his skull cracked, the image before his eyes darkened, at first for a short moment, then the black curtain fell for a much longer instant.

Three.

Heero cursed in his mind, trying to stay conscious, although he couldn't hear anything because of the thunder of his blood pulsating in his temples. Protecting himself from the Runner with his left arm, he reached for the knife, but his body didn't follow his commands as quickly as he wanted. And the teeth were closer to his throat with each passing second.

Four.

The Runner's forehead exploded with blood from a massive gunshot wound as a bullet shot through it somewhere from behind. The mutant's body flexed and fell on top of Heero. Shaking himself from the blackout, Heero lifted himself on his shoulders, pushing away a stinking corpse. He looked up. Relena stood in the window through which he had fallen out, still holding her gun.

Five.

"Heero, are you okay?" her worried, but muffled voice finally reached to Heero. He could hear her through the rumbling of his pulse. He touched his temple feeling something hot and wet, attaching to his fingers. Then he looked up at Relena. It surprised him to notice that the darkness that had just blocked his vision, suddenly reappeared right behind Relena's silhouette.

Then that darkness let out a roar and lifted its claws just above Relena's head.

Six.

He screamed as loudly as he could. One word. Her name.

All blackouts disappeared, and all his visual acuity accumulated on her initially surprised and then terrified eyes when she fell to the ground under the infected's blow.

Out of Heero's sight.

Seven.

.

.

.

TBC