Part II: Crash Course

"Crashing will be the easiest thing they do today."

Chapter 17: The Alleys

Bill groggily opened his eyes as a flash of pain swept through his body. He groaned awkwardly and looked around to find himself lying amid a twisted shell of metal.

What the hell... Where am I?

He looked through a shattered windshield to see a grim concrete courtyard filled with wreckage and debris. Suddenly, with a shock, it all came rushing back to him. The battle on the rooftop of Mercy Hospital. The rescue. The pilot attacking Zoey. The helicopter crash...

"Shit!" Bill swore, tearing himself out of his seat.

Pain shot through his leg, but he dismissed it. It was not that bad, probably just a flesh wound. He was more concerned about the others. And if the engine had caught fire...

"Help..." a weak voice called feebly from the back compartment of the helicopter.

Bill entered and looked over to see Louis struggling in vain with his seatbelt. "Louis! Are you alright?"

The black man's face was covered in cuts and bleeding in several places. "I'm fine. My seatbelt's stuck though; do you still have that knife to cut through it?"

Bill ignored his request and went to check on the others. They were still unconscious in their seats, but luckily their seatbelts had remained intact during the crash. He stumbled over to Zoey and placed his index and middle fingers on her neck, whooshing in relief when he felt a pulse.

"Bill!" Louis exclaimed. "Get me outta this chair! We've gotta get out of the chopper before it blows!"

The war veteran quickly made sure that Francis still had a pulse, before coming over to Louis' seat and cutting him free. "You can relax. There's no fire; the helicopter isn't gonna explode. Now help me wake the others."

Louis still looked nervous as hell, but he complied with the older man's instructions, bending over Francis and shaking him by the shoulders. "Hey man! Wake up!"

Bill gingerly stepped over the mutilated body of the pilot, regretful of the untimely demise of the man who had saved them from certain death. How the hell did he get infected, anyway?

"Francis! Don't make me bitch-slap you! 'Cause I will!" Louis exclaimed from across the helicopter.

Bill made his way over to Zoey's limp form and firmly shook her. "Zoey! Zoey, wake up!" The girl's face was cut and scratched in several places, but her pulse was still strong. "Come on, kid!"

Her eyes fluttered open, a confused gaze flashing through them. Suddenly, they widened in panic as she sat bolt upright. "Shit! The helicopter – we crashed!"

"Calm down," Bill said grimly. "Yeah, we did. But I managed to stabilise the fall. Count yourself lucky – the crash was nowhere near as bad as it could have been."

Zoey looked over to see Louis bending over Francis, who was just beginning to stir. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Come on," Bill said, helping her out of her seat. "I don't know how long we've been unconscious, but it looks like it's moving into the late afternoon. We best be moving on."

She nodded glumly, looking down at the body of the pilot lying at her feet and feeling an intense pang of guilt and sorrow strike her heart. Barely an hour apart, two men had turned before her very eyes and she had been forced to kill them. She did not know how much more of this she could take.

Francis glowered angrily as he surveyed the grim, outer industrial district of Fairfield that they had landed in. "See? I told you. Helicopter crashed. We're not saved. We're all gonna die. Pay up."

"We'll be fine, Francis," Louis called out.

The biker turned toward him. "Hey, Louis! That fancy college of yours teach you how to fix a helicopter?"

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" the other man deadpanned.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Less talking, more scavenging," came Bill's sharp voice.

Francis sighed and walked over to the helicopter, retrieving his shotgun. He kicked the wreckage angrily, and then saw the body inside the wreckage.

"Hey, Zoey. Here's the pilot, in case you wanna shoot him again."

"He was infected, Francis," Zoey sighed irritably. She could not find the shotgun she had been using, and was now reduced to a single M1911 pistol. Wonderful. Her thoughts were interrupted by Bill cursing loudly nearby. "You okay, Bill?"

"My M-16... Fuckin' gone..."

"I lost my shotgun, too," the young woman grumbled. "They must have fallen from the helicopter during the crash."

Bill searched the area for silence in a moment, and then came over to her, handing over a discarded crowbar he had found lying around.

She looked at the blunt instrument in disbelief. "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

"Hit stuff?" he suggested simply, bending over and picking up a rusty metal pipe.

Louis loaded a fresh clip into his Uzi and sauntered over. "So, what's the plan, guys?" There was an awkward silence. "We do have a plan, right?"

"We march our sorry asses out of this Godforsaken city," the war veteran said sullenly. He strapped his newly-found metal pipe across his back, drew a pistol and then walked off, heading westward.

Zoey looked back at the crashed helicopter – their last hope – and choked back a torrent of foul language, before moving off after Bill. Louis sighed and followed them.

"Hey, Mr Positive!" Francis sneered as he fell in behind them. "Guess what? We just CRASHED! Got something positive to say about that?"

"We're walking away from it, aren't we?" he shot back over his shoulder.

There was a contemplative silence. "Yeah, alright... I'll give you that one."

The group drifted between the ugly concrete buildings that adorned the landscape. Burning drums, piles of rubble and dead bodies littered the ground, while discarded newspapers tumbled through the alleys on the wind.

"Man, what a shithole," Bill remarked.

"Well, we all know who to thank for bringin' us down here," Francis growled, glancing over his shoulder to shoot Zoey an angry glare. She scowled and looked away.

The ragtag little band made their way through the alleyways, saying very little to each other. Morale was at an all-time low. In a desperate attempt to lighten the mood, Zoey giggled nervously. She looked around to see the others staring at her as though she was crazy, and decided to speak up.

"Okay, here's an important safety tip for you; don't get into a helicopter with an infected pilot." She did not receive so much as a smile, and felt rather downcast.

Francis glowered angrily. "Well, the next time someone offers us a ride, don't shoot him."

"He was INFECTED, Francis!" she exclaimed.

At that moment, rain started to fall.

"Aw, you're fucking kidding me!" the stocky biker exclaimed. "You know what would make this day even better? Two more Hunters! Hell, why not make it three?"

"Be careful what you wish for," Louis muttered under his breath.

"In here!" Bill called, motioning them toward a decrepit old warehouse.

The main roller doors were closed, but a service door off to the side was slightly ajar, giving them access into the cavernous building. Rain pounded on the corrugated roof and doors, the patter of water echoing throughout the stacks. The survivors stood in the doorway, aiming their flashlights into the darkness, alert for danger. Fortunately, the place seemed quite empty.

"Hm, I guess we hole up here for the night?" Louis asked.

Bill nodded grimly, fishing around in his pockets for rations.

"It's gonna be hard to sleep with that racket," Louis said as the patter of water grew louder as the rain increased.

The older man grunted. "When I did my tours in Vietnam, the rain always came in at night. You find that the sound gets soothing after a while. It even helps you sleep." He dumped some packets of Mercy Hospital oatmeal on the floor. "We're gonna need some water to cook this stuff."

"You don't have any meat on you, do you?" Francis grumbled.

Bill shot him a withering look. "Go cut some off one of the bodies outside, if you're so desperate."

Zoey felt sick at the thought, and retched.

He looked at her concern. "You alright, kid?"

She gulped and gasped in some deep breaths. "Yeah, I'm fine... I'll go find us something to gather rainwater in..." With that, she wandered off into the stacks of shelves in search of a bucket.

"Stay close!" he called after her.

Ten minutes later, she had returned with a bucket brimming with rainwater. It seemed to be the one thing they had an abundance of. Bill was setting up a fire fed by newspaper on the floor near a front corner of the warehouse, while Francis was lounging around, being of no help whatsoever. Louis had done some searching of his own in the stacks and returned with three small bowls.

"Thanks for the water, kid," Bill said, mixing it in with the oatmeal and heating the mixture over the fire.

After a tasteless and unsatisfying dinner, the four of them sat around the dying fire. The newspaper burned too quickly for them to keep the fire going for long, and no one felt up to the task of going to look around for more tinder.

"Look what I found," Bill said presently, presenting a box full of empty beer bottles to the others.

"You plannin' on tradin' them in for ten cents each?" Francis remarked sarcastically.

"Better," the veteran replied, laying a dirty-looking rag next to the box. "We can use these to make Molotov cocktails."

"Sounds tasty."

He shot the biker an unfriendly glare as he produced a canteen bottle. "I took the liberty of siphoning some petrol from the helicopter when we crashed, instead of standing around, whining."

Francis did not bother to reply.

Louis, however, was excited with the idea. "Fire in a bottle? What's not to love about that?"

"I figure we can carry one each, maybe two in the case of Zoey and I, since we both only have pistols."

With that, he, Louis and Zoey undertook the mundane task of making Molotov cocktails. The young woman tore off a strip of rag and stuffed it deep into a petrol-filled bottle, being sure to pack it tight. She looked over at Francis to see him methodically inserting shells into his shotgun.

Slide. Click. Slide. Click.

"Aren't you going to make a Molotov for yourself?" she asked.

"Nope."

Slide. Click. Slide. Click.

"They'll come in handy," she persisted.

Francis gave off a heavy sigh, a clear indication for her to leave him alone. Zoey, however, had had enough.

"What's your problem?" she said angrily.

"You really have to ask?"

"Yeah. I really do."

Bill and Louis observed the tense exchange nervously.

"Alright, fine!" Francis growled, finally looking up at her. "We're stuck in the city, camping out in some shithole warehouse. We're running out of food, ammo and supplies, and now we have to resort to this – " he gestured angrily at the box of empty bottles, "– to survive! We're fucked, anyway you look at it."

"Now hang on a minute – " Bill began, but was cut off as Francis stood up menacingly.

"That helicopter was our one chance, Zoey, and you blew it out of the sky! This is all on your head!"

"That is totally unfair!" she exclaimed. "If I hadn't done something, that pilot would have killed us! And I'm not sure how many helicopters you've hotwired and stolen in your life, Francis, but I've never flown one before!"

The two glared at each other angrily, when a loud crash interrupted the heated argument. Everyone jumped in fright and looked over to see that the service door had come crashing open with the wind. Rain poured into the room through the opening, while a flash of lightning outside momentarily lit up the immediate interior of the building.

"It's okay, it was just the wind," Louis breathed.

However, before anyone could get up to close the door again, another flash of lightning momentarily lit up the whites of many pairs of eyes staring at them from the darkness of the warehouse around them.