CHAPTER THIRTY
Hauling down the street, more people came at Brad. Luckily, they were all slow as molasses and easy to dodge. One woman got a hold on his wrist and he twisted out of her grasp, her Blue Root controller vibing as it brushed against his skin.
“Brad, they don’t even see me at all. What the hell?” Danny caught up and shoved people away from Brad as he darted through the crowd.
“I think it’s the Blue Root.” Brad ducked a man’s flailing arms. “This is a problem.”
“Is this what you meant about them being dangerous?”
“Yeah. This is a big problem.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Huge problem. Monumental problem. Duh!” Danny shouted, “Is there anyone else on the planet who’s not using a Blue Root?”
They looked at each other. They both knew who to call.
Brad whipped out his cell and immediately dialed Mike. “Hey man, every Blue Root-using person as far as my eye can see is trying to attack me. They crashed my FMC 429 already and Danny’s swatting them away like flies. We’re headed to the airpad. It’s gonna take forever on foot especially with every Blue Root zombie trying to stop me. I need to cash in another favor. Where do Rose’s students live? Can she get a hold of them and help lose these damn weirdos? They’re weak. Too much sex, I guess. Anyone without a Blue Root on can hold them off.”
Mike’s voice was muffled for a moment before he spoke. “The helicopter is ready to fly. I just asked Rose about the kids. They live all over the city. She’s contacting them now. Someone’s bound to have a parents’ car who won’t even know it’s gone.”
“Thanks man. I’m still on the main drag, but at least I’m moving.”
“So, there’s, like, zombies chasing you, huh? That sounds pretty cool.”
Of course Mike would think it was cool, but darn-it-all, this was not cool. It was very far from cool. “I’m living a vid and my only weapon is Danny. How would you feel?” Smacking another man out of his way, Brad glanced toward his best friend. This was a nightmare. Someone would smack him hard enough and he’d wake up feeling stupid but having a great silly dream story to tell. But how real was the drool coming from the Blue Root zombies’ mouths? It felt awfully wet.
“I’ll check in with you later. Thanks.” Brad terminated his call and focused on moving forward.
The sea of people erupted with movement. Danny threw punches left and right, but Brad couldn’t make his way through. Every time a person grabbed at him, Brad cringed. Some people smelled like they hadn’t showered in days, maybe weeks. The crowd’s density increased, impeding Brad’s progress. He’d taken maybe five steps in the past minute. There had to be an easier way. But how does one escape from this many zombies?
If they’d had their wits about them, surely Brad would be in worse shape. The people wall kept closing in. He could hardly see over their heads anymore. Zombies climbed on top of zombies. Everyone wanted a piece of him. Was he some kind of new-fangled celebrity? He wanted to scream, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. There wasn’t anyone paying enough attention to help. Except Danny, who steamrollered a few people, clearing another few paces for Brad.
Up ahead, a boy with a green mohawk craned his head like he was looking for something or someone. Brad raised his hand. “Are you one of Rose Moffat’s students? I’m the guy she was talking about.”
Sure enough, the kid joined up with Danny as they all plowed through the mass of euphoric zombies. Oh thank goodness help had arrived!
“This is cool!” The boy fell into the ranks and then pulled out his cell phone.
Brad really didn’t care who the kid was calling as long as he was helping. More people were coming around corners, too. Was the entire city out to get him?
A horn honked and the boy raised his arm. “Right here!” He tugged Brad’s arm. “My friend got his mom’s car. Let’s go. He said everyone at Rose’s school is gonna come out. This is great! Just like a horror vid! Yeah!”
Three more scrappy boys and a couple girls with a lot of facial piercings joined the brouhaha and helped hack a path through the crowd. None of the zombies were actually getting hurt. They were easy to overpower.
Danny even managed to pull controllers off of a few people. Not everyone wore them where they could be seen. But as soon as skin contact was broken, people stopped and looked around as though they weren’t sure what was going on.
“Hey kid, thanks. You got more friends with cars? We’ll need them. Tell them we’re going to the airpad and to block off as many cross streets as they can along the way.” Brad jumped into the back seat of the FMC 289 as Danny swatted more zombie hands away.
The boy hopped into his buddy’s car after swishing a zombie backward. “By the way, I’m Eddie and that’s Alex driving.”
Brad finally caught his breath enough to chuckle. “Good to meet you guys. I’m Brad and this is Danny. You’ll probably make it onto the news if I can get where I need to go and figure out what I’m supposed to do about all these crazy people once I get there.”
Alex expertly swerved around the remaining zombies running toward the car. “This is cool!”
Brad cringed. If he heard that phrase one more time, he swore he was going to retch.
Once again, cars closed in around Brad. “They’re gonna ram–” He looked into the car next to him and saw a girl with purple hair driving it. “Never mind. You guys have it together, don’t you?”
Eddie and Alex just laughed and shook their heads. Eddie put a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “I don’t know why grown-ups always think me and my friends are troublemakers. We just hate school. Duh. Teach us something fun for once and maybe we’d start liking it.”
Brad stared at the seat in front of him and shook his head. What if there were a million more helicopters in the air? What if they knocked his out of the sky? What if he couldn’t land in Florida?
Then he’d never see Jeuley again.
And from the current view through the window, the whole world was in deep trouble as well.
But getting to Jeuley was all that really mattered. His precious FMC 429 was smashed to pieces and he wasn’t fazed. All he wanted was Jeuley. All he needed was Jeuley. If she were with him, she’d know how make everything work. Jeuley had become his answer to his life’s questions. And as long as he could make it through all of the Blue Root mire, he’d have her back in his arms.
And that fueled his fire. He looked back out the window again and his mind began working double time. Ordal Laverock might be a genius, but Brad was outsmarting the man so far. This battle of the brains was not going to be easy, but it wasn’t impossible to win.
He’d already survived the first trial: taking off his Blue Root. Ordal may be in control of the world’s Blue Root users, but he didn’t know what Brad was planning. He had no way of knowing.
Never underestimate the power of orgasmic suggestions. Just before climax, people would do or say anything to be allowed their release. That explained all the euphoric grins and why the people were moving slowly. They didn’t want to lose the feeling by moving too much. What more could Ordal Laverock possibly have up his sleeve? Brad shuddered to think about the horrors he could meet once Jeuley was in his reach.
Eddie, Alex and Danny had kept themselves occupied talking about cars. The airpad finally came into view. And there was a helicopter behind fencing. It was the only helicopter. It had to be the one Mike scored.
Pulling right up to the fence, Alex shot a glance back at Brad. “I believe we’re here. I think Jennifer’s got the rest of the zombie-mobiles held off for now, but you better run before the ones on foot catch up.”
Danny gave the guys hi-fives. “You guys kick ass and if we get on the news, I’ll make sure I say you guys helped.”
“Thanks a million.” Brad looked each boy straight in the eye. “You guys are great. I owe you big time.”
“GO!” Both boys shouted and Brad took the hint. He hurled himself as high up the fence as he could go, then began the climb. Twenty feet wasn’t a distance he could just whiz on up. Especially with all the zombies trying to get him to fall.
Climbing back down was horrid. The fence was shaking. Danny tried to step on fingers and toes to clear the path, but it wasn’t always that simple. Brad jumped down at about the halfway mark. Both he and Danny tore off toward the helicopter.
Sure enough, the doors were unlocked. Everything seemed ready to go.
“You still think you can fly this thing?” Brad sat down and fastened the safety restraint before looking around.
While knobs, buttons, needles, sliders, levers and keypads weren’t completely foreign to him, the make of this particular helicopter was beyond merely foreign. It looked pieced together from several models. The outside looked like your average everyday copter, but inside, someone had gutted it and installed whatever they felt like installing. All of the monitors and backlighting were functional, but not exactly confidence inspiring.
“What…the…hell?”
And Danny saying that after strapping into the pilot seat was even less confidence inspiring.
Brad was willing to spend the whole trip with his eyes clamped shut and pretend he was somewhere other than in a helicopter just to get to Jeuley and hopefully end all of this insanity, but when Danny sounds worried, there’s no reason not to lose all grip of reality. Especially when reality was already flailing out of control into weirdness faster than Brad could wrap his mind around.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Danny, don’t you even tell me you can’t fly this thing.”
“No, I can fly it, but there’s a saying coming to mind.”
“A saying? There are zombies chasing me and you’re thinking of sayings rather than flying this thing?”
“You can’t polish a turd.”
“What?”
“Mike scored us a piece of shit, Brad. This helicopter is a pile of dung. A real bona fide hunk of guano.”
“But will it get us there?”
“Oh yeah. No problem.”
Brad waited for Danny to rephrase, but there was only silence. Okay, maybe this wasn’t as bad as it looked. “Then, can we get going now?”
Danny surveyed the cockpit, then with a big sigh, reached out and pressed a button. The blades spun up to speed, but there was an awful lot of vibration. It felt like one was a different weight from the rest. Danny started laughing.
“No, don’t you do that, man. No laughing. This is our only shot. The damn zombies are coming to get me.”
“You’re gonna have to figure out the nav system, then because I can’t geek like you do.” Danny pointed toward a huge section of keypads and monitors. “It’ll ask a bunch of questions about where we’re going. Just see what it says.”
Trying to steady his hands, Brad tapped what appeared to be the power control button. Each of the five monitors blinked and came alive with questions. Luckily, four were slave to the fifth. Brad set to work on both asking and telling it his destination. The information he’d gotten from Jeuley’s BlueCentric email coupled with what he gleaned from his Blue Root controller had given him coordinates, but when he looked on a map, there was nothing but water at those coordinates.
As Danny got the so-called turd into the air, the nav system displayed every available detail about their whereabouts. It knew where they came from, where they were going and where they were currently. Aerial views blipped and flickered from screen to screen.
Brad gazed at the fourth screen. Miles away from any land, there was a tiny box in the water…with another helicopter on it. The coordinates had been correct, but he’d been looking for something a whole lot bigger. Maybe with one tree perhaps. Not just a box on a tiny bit of land.
He suddenly felt a whole lot better about the trip. As long as he didn’t look out the window, he’d be fine. “Hey, if you see any other copters coming for us, don’t tell me, just get away from them, okay? I don’t wanna know.”
“Well, we’ll be up for a very long time. The nav system locked my course to whatever you typed in. Everything’s good as long as there aren’t enforcers or anybody else.”
Danny paused for a second. Long enough for Brad to look over at him as he cocked his head to the side with a bewildered expression on his face and then reached out for a lever. “Holy shit! Mike didn’t say anything, but I think he’s one of the people who shat this thing together.” He pulled the lever and the copter shook again before climbing like a rocket. “WaaaaHooo! I take everything I said about this pile of crap back. Every last word of it. Do you know what we’re sitting in?”
Brad swallowed hard while trying to slow his breathing. “No and I don’t care. Just get me there.”
“We are sitting in a modified–and full custom on top of that–heliflyer.”
While there was a ton of elation in Danny’s voice, Brad was really wishing there was a way to get to Florida and out of the air faster. “And that means?”
“That means we’ll be in Florida in a couple of hours.”
