Chapter 49 - Bird In The Hand

We were both up shortly after dawn the next morning, which I supposed was becoming the new normal. Now that there were no more alarm clocks, something had to wake us up, and there were a shortage of roosters in downtown Burlington. The sun seemed to be doing the job just fine, though.

“Where are we going from here?” Kara asked over breakfast.

I broke out my map and spread it on the table so the close-up of the city was visible. “Well, we’re not far from the airport. We follow Kirby Road, and it’ll bring us directly to the fence line that surrounds the runways. From there we bust through the fence and cross the runway area. With any luck there’s a nice, well-organized Air Guard base on the far side.”

“And if you’re wrong? If there’s no one there?”

I shrugged. “Then we figure something else out. I don’t have next moves beyond that. I’ll probably help you get back to Alfred and then start walking home to where my parents live.”

“Well, that one’s not an option for me,” Kara replied. “I’m from New Jersey. Long hike.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied. “That has to suck, not knowing what’s going on with your friends, family…”

“Yeah, more than a bit. I don’t dwell on it, though. How about you?”

“I grew up like a hundred miles northeast of here. Still a long trip, but not impossible. I doubt most of Alfred’s people would make it that far, though.”

She didn’t argue with me about that. Both of us had similar ideas about the folks holed up with Alfred, refusing to get out into the world.

“Have you considered not bringing along all of the undead when we go there?” Kara asked.

I shook my head. “No, I hadn’t. I figured we might need them if we run into anything nasty along the way. You think I should?”

Kara shrugged. “Hard to say. They’re dead bodies. Some folks might be a little iffy about folks controlling dead humans in battle. It has a sort of evil vibe to it, y’know?”

I considered it, then shook my head. “I don’t think that’s the best plan. We run into trouble on the way there and we could die without them. I don’t want to give up one of our main combat advantages unless I absolutely have to. Make when we get closer, I can leave them somewhere while I go inside. But I’d rather make the trip with them.”

“Makes sense. We’ll play it by ear,” Kara replied.

We set out, using a similar marching order to the night before. It was only a short walk up to Kirby Road, but from there it was about two thirds of a mile to the fence. We passed a long string of houses as we went along. Like the others in the area, these all looked abandoned. Whoever had lived there had either moved on or was hiding themselves well.

Not that I blamed them. If a bunch of undead came walking past my house, marching down the middle of the street, I might stay hidden, too.

Things were quiet, for which I was grateful. We’d been running into more monsters, and now some of them like that spider were tier three. A tier three creature was as dangerous as two tier two monsters, as we’d learned. Harder to kill, easier to die from. The trend was becoming obvious to me: as time went on, the monsters were growing stronger. Whether that was the existing monsters ranking up somehow, or new ones appearing, I wasn’t sure yet. The increased threat level was clear, though.

The houses dried up, leaving the sides of the road dominated by a handful of trees and openings. We were almost to the fence when I heard humans screams from somewhere ahead.

Both of us froze for a moment, waiting and unsure. But the second scream rang out, echoing down the road, and I growled something vulgar, then ordered my undead to march forward at a quicker pace.

“What are we doing?” Kara asked.

“Someone’s in trouble,” I replied. “We’re saving them.”

“Okay, we can do that.” She already had her bow out and nocked an arrow to the string.

We rounded a corner and came face to face with a mess.

About a dozen people stood in the road, trying vainly to defend themselves against half as many monstrous attackers. The humans looked exhausted. Most of them carried backpacks or other large bags. A third of them were young kids, hunkered down between grownup legs as they tried to stay away from the attackers. It was the kids screaming.

The attackers were something new. I’d never seen anything like them. Each was humanoid, with two legs—but they also had two arms and two wings! They wore light leather armor, and everywhere the armor didn’t cover was feathered. Their faces looked a lot like a regular bird’s head, white and grey. I stared, surprised—they looked like humanoid pigeons more than anything else, and I wanted to start chuckling at the sight.

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But each of the pigeon-people carried a nasty looking spear, and as I watched one of them stabbed at a human. The man blocked the spear with the weapon he carried, sending the point skittering against the pavement, but he’d barely avoided being gutted. These people were in a lot of trouble, and they needed help.

Fortunately, help was here.

My front line rushed in, weapons at the ready. The bird people saw the attack coming and took to the air to avoid them, though. I hit the nearest with a Drain Life spell, killing it in an instant. That felt like a good start to the fighting. Kara nailed another with an arrow, but it failed to take him down. Wounded, he flew higher, dodging to avoid further arrows.

Their victims had figured out help was there, and were doing their best to add what skills they had to the mix. A flash of light shot from one man’s hand, lashing out and striking one of the bird-people. It was a wound, not a kill—but I finished that one off as soon as my Drain came off cooldown.

Losing two out of six of their party seemed like it was more than the birds wanted to deal with. They made squawking noises at us and then flew away south, heading toward the main airport terminal. In the distance I spotted other flying things circling the taller buildings of the terminal. More of these bird-people? I hoped not, but I had a feeling that’s exactly what they were.

I stepped forward through my undead ranks, heading toward the people they’d been attacking. “Folks, they might come back with allies at any moment. We should get you all moving. Where were you headed? We can help you get there.”

“Across the runways,” one man said. “Couple of days ago a team came through telling everyone that the Air Force had a base there somewhere, and were taking people in. Do you know anything about that?”

“I don’t know anything for sure, but I think it’s true,” I replied. “We can get you there, but we really need to move.”

“Aren’t those more monsters?” a woman asked, pointing at my undead.

“Yeah, but these ones are on our side,” I replied. “They’ll help protect us while we get where we’re going.”

They seemed to believe me, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure what I could have done if they’d decided we were more bad guys. Leave them, I suppose. I couldn’t help people who didn’t want to be helped. But these people had just seem us rush in to defend them, which probably helped a lot in the trust department.

We pressed on, quickly making the fence. It was a very sturdy chain-link with razor wire along the top. I was wondering how we were going to make a hole in it for everyone to get through, but one of the men we were escorting stepped up as soon as we got there. He grabbed half the chain link in each hand and then pulled, ripping a person-sized gap in the thing.

“Nice job!” I told him. “Strength crystal?”

“Tier two,” he replied, clearly proud of himself. “Got them from some goblins the other day. That’s what finally decided us on going for it. It just wasn’t safe at home anymore, not with more monsters popping up all the time.”

“Well, you made that a lot easier,” I said. “Let’s get everyone through now, though.”

I pondered what Kara had said about my undead. It sounded like the Air Guard was over there, which was good. I wasn’t sure how they would react to a bunch of undead coming at them across the runways, but I was equally loathe to leave them behind. If those birds hit us while we were out in the open, we might need all the help we could get. Especially from my archers. I decided to bring them. Better safe than sorry.

As we came through the fence, the tang of smoke hit my nostrils. It wasn’t hard to see where it came from. There were two smoking wrecks of planes in the middle of the tarmac. One was completely annihilated; it looked like the pilots had been trying to land it without power, and it just hit too hard, breaking up and exploding. There wasn’t much left of that one. The second plane had maybe been trying to take off when the Event hit. It must have gotten a bit off the ground, then lost power. It had also caught fire sometime in the days since, but the wreck was nowhere near as bad.

The thought of all the people who’d been in the air when the Event hit came rushing back to me, and I paused, just staring. How many people died in those first few minutes? How many more in the days that had passed since?

How many of us would still be here in a month? Or a year?

I shook the melancholy thoughts off. I could brood another time, because I needed my wits about me for this next part.

It was clear even from across the open space of the runways that the base was active. Smoke rose from a few places, but they were thin, controlled columns of smoke, not the remnants of burned buildings or planes. The same sort of fence that we’d just passed surrounded the Guard base too, but it had been heavily reinforced. Plates of metal were attached to the chain link, giving it more support and cover for people behind it. Guard posts were placed here and there along the walls, and all of them looked occupied.

Whoever was over there saw us as soon as we crossed the first taxiway. Kara spotted the movement first. “We’re about to have company, I think. The guards on those towers spotted us. I think they called an alert, because I see troops forming up over by those gates.”

I looked where she pointed, but all I could see were some vague signs of movement. We pressed on. Meeting these folks was the goal, after all. If they came to see us partway, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Probably, anyway—we were still hoping these were the good guys, and some Colonel hadn’t gone all power mad, taking the place over as his personal fief.

Hey, it happens in movies! It could happen here, too.

We were at the last taxiway before they rushed out to meet us. I had my undead back up behind me, so our refugees and their kids were out front where the Guardsmen could easily see them. Kids were a lot less likely to get us in trouble than skeletons, I figured.

Nonetheless, as soon as they were within bow range, they stopped. There were ten people there, a mix of men and woman, all in uniform with what looked like armor strapped on over it. Half of them had bows. The other half had some sort of magic crackling at their fingertips. I hesitated, halfway wanting to call up my own magic, just in case… But I held off, still hoping these would be friendlies.

“Drop your weapons! Drop all weapons and make no sudden moves, no spellcasting!” one of the Guardsmen called out.

I glanced at Kara, who shrugged and set her bow down. “We came here to talk. Let’s talk.”

I set down my shield and the heavy kitchen blade I’d snagged, hoping we were making the right call.