of you. You have guns, for Christ's sake. What are we going to do, go on the lam hauling our newborn daughter with us, dodging bullets?”
The agent bristled. “I have my orders, ma'am. We have confirmation the plane will be landing and beginning refuel in approximately half an hour. We'll be on our way when she touches down.”
It was closer to forty-five minutes before they left, and even then they had to redirect; an accident closed off the route they were going to take to the airport. The driver, unfamiliar with the city, relied on his GPS to direct them through their alternate route. After the thing told them to turn a few seconds late for the fourth time, he finally listened to Kell and Karen, who knew their way around the city quite well.
“Look, just take a left and we'll head down Auburn. I can get us to 71 from there,” Karen directed as Kell sat quietly, looking impassive but feeling amused at how his wife managed to overwhelm even government agents. None of them seemed willing to argue with her in the face of their own cluelessness.
“ We'll have to cross into Kentucky, of course. That's where the airport is, and 71 will take us there,” she repeated to their blank expressions. With an irritated grunt, the driver followed her instructions, and they were off.
It had been exactly sixty-four minutes since Maggie French fell.
In that time, the shambling corpse that had been Maggie had attacked three people. Those three worked their way toward larger gatherings, which were few and far between this early in the morning, but enough folk were out and about over the intervening time to create a fair amount of havoc.
Kell would have been interested to see the correlation between time of death and time of reanimation, if only in a horrified but morbidly fascinated sort of way. By the time the vehicle carrying him and his family came within three blocks of the outbreak, more than forty people were dead and better than half already risen. The police were on scene, but the callers, unable to deal with what they were witnessing, called it a riot.
Had the driver of the SUV carrying Kell and his family been aware of the activity in front of them, he could have easily avoided it. But the scanner he was supposed to be using was unplugged; in its place was the useless GPS. No one thought to call the riot in to the agents in the SUV, since back at the Sinclair building, no fatalities had been reported.
The driver saw the disturbance ahead, but was too distant to make out the details. He slowed to a crawl in an effort to avoid running into unknown danger, but that choice was double-edged. The driver kept a sharp eye down the road for the source of the commotion, which was mostly people running and a few fights, but that gave him tunnel vision.
An older model car slammed into the SUV from a side street, pushing it across all the way across the road and into parked vehicles.
Kell screamed as the door crumpled into him, smashing his arm and shoulder, pieces of window lacerating his face as the safety glass exploded across him. His right side was slammed into the baby seat, which in turn was pushed into Karen, who struck the passenger window with her head hard enough to break the glass.
Disoriented and dazed, it took Kell what felt like hours to get a grip on the situation. The first thing he did was check on Jennifer. His left arm was numb and flopping, but he ignored that and used his right to carefully undo his seat belt.
The baby was squalling, which was probably a good sign, and she didn't have any obvious injuries.
“She looks okay, Karen,” Kell said. There was no response.
He looked up at her and saw the splatter of blood across the crazed glass, her head still leaning against it, making the window bow outward under its weight. She was breathing but unconscious, and bleeding heavily from her scalp.
“Ugh, fuck,” the driver said. “You guys okay back there? What happened?”
“ T-boned,” Kell said.
The agent bristled. “I have my orders, ma'am. We have confirmation the plane will be landing and beginning refuel in approximately half an hour. We'll be on our way when she touches down.”
It was closer to forty-five minutes before they left, and even then they had to redirect; an accident closed off the route they were going to take to the airport. The driver, unfamiliar with the city, relied on his GPS to direct them through their alternate route. After the thing told them to turn a few seconds late for the fourth time, he finally listened to Kell and Karen, who knew their way around the city quite well.
“Look, just take a left and we'll head down Auburn. I can get us to 71 from there,” Karen directed as Kell sat quietly, looking impassive but feeling amused at how his wife managed to overwhelm even government agents. None of them seemed willing to argue with her in the face of their own cluelessness.
“ We'll have to cross into Kentucky, of course. That's where the airport is, and 71 will take us there,” she repeated to their blank expressions. With an irritated grunt, the driver followed her instructions, and they were off.
It had been exactly sixty-four minutes since Maggie French fell.
In that time, the shambling corpse that had been Maggie had attacked three people. Those three worked their way toward larger gatherings, which were few and far between this early in the morning, but enough folk were out and about over the intervening time to create a fair amount of havoc.
Kell would have been interested to see the correlation between time of death and time of reanimation, if only in a horrified but morbidly fascinated sort of way. By the time the vehicle carrying him and his family came within three blocks of the outbreak, more than forty people were dead and better than half already risen. The police were on scene, but the callers, unable to deal with what they were witnessing, called it a riot.
Had the driver of the SUV carrying Kell and his family been aware of the activity in front of them, he could have easily avoided it. But the scanner he was supposed to be using was unplugged; in its place was the useless GPS. No one thought to call the riot in to the agents in the SUV, since back at the Sinclair building, no fatalities had been reported.
The driver saw the disturbance ahead, but was too distant to make out the details. He slowed to a crawl in an effort to avoid running into unknown danger, but that choice was double-edged. The driver kept a sharp eye down the road for the source of the commotion, which was mostly people running and a few fights, but that gave him tunnel vision.
An older model car slammed into the SUV from a side street, pushing it across all the way across the road and into parked vehicles.
Kell screamed as the door crumpled into him, smashing his arm and shoulder, pieces of window lacerating his face as the safety glass exploded across him. His right side was slammed into the baby seat, which in turn was pushed into Karen, who struck the passenger window with her head hard enough to break the glass.
Disoriented and dazed, it took Kell what felt like hours to get a grip on the situation. The first thing he did was check on Jennifer. His left arm was numb and flopping, but he ignored that and used his right to carefully undo his seat belt.
The baby was squalling, which was probably a good sign, and she didn't have any obvious injuries.
“She looks okay, Karen,” Kell said. There was no response.
He looked up at her and saw the splatter of blood across the crazed glass, her head still leaning against it, making the window bow outward under its weight. She was breathing but unconscious, and bleeding heavily from her scalp.
“Ugh, fuck,” the driver said. “You guys okay back there? What happened?”
“ T-boned,” Kell said.
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