Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [72]
Shaking his head, L.J. realized this wasn’t a Hitchcock flick, it was a fucking biblical plague.
He also saw that what they’d hit was a telephone pole that had smashed the grille. This bus wasn’t goin’ nowhere.
And then Claire’s beautiful voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Carlos, get that truck here, we have to evac the bus!”
“You got it,” Carlos said.
About fucking time. L.J. heard a squeal of brakes from behind the bus and saw the news truck screech to a halt behind the bus. Two seconds later, the 8x8 backed through a fence and came roaring in. That would’ve made L.J. laugh if he was somewhere else, ’cause Carlos was always showing off like he had some shit to prove or something.
Jason climbed up to where the flame thrower was mounted on the 8x8, but then the crazy crows nailed his ass. L.J. winced, even as Kenny didn’t waste no time in taking his place, while Monique opened the gas taps.
Kenny covered Carlos with the flame thrower after he ran out of the 8x8 with a twelve-gauge in his hand. Mikey threw open the back of the news truck. “The children!” he shouted. “Get them over here!”
Joel and Cliff opened the bus’s back door and started shepherding the kids out. With Carlos’s shotgun, Kenny’s flame thrower, and Richard on the machine gun in the back of the 8x8, they kept the birds off the kids while they ran out to the news truck. Gonna be cramped as shit in there, but it beats getting eaten alive by crazy crows. They’d already lost Jason and Jared. L.J. was fucked if he was gonna let no birds take nobody else.
He’d die first. Fuck that, he was dead already. Everyone else deserved a shot to live.
Claire showed up out of nowhere and helped the kids get to Peter-Michael, Dorian, and Erica, who were with Mikey in the news truck. Crows was dropping like flies, but they kept fucking coming.
Hearing a scream, L.J. looked up to see Richard get taken out by about thirty crows.
Fuck!
The scream lasted only a few seconds. That made it worse.
L.J. swore he wasn’t going to let nobody else die. He grabbed the last kid—little Evin, who was petrified, the poor little kid was so fucked up by all this—and carried him out.
Just as he stepped down from the back of the bus, he turned around to see Otto, Dillon, and Betty holding the windshield back. Freddie and Blair were lying dead on the floor. Fuck, L.J. hadn’t even noticed them dying.
“Betty!” he cried out.
She hesitated.
From next to her, Otto said, “Go—get out of here.” On the other side of her, Dillon just nodded.
Betty started to object, but Otto, who was bleeding from the head now, yelled, “Go!”
L.J. could see Betty gritting her teeth. Shit, L.J. was doing the same damn thing. He’d just sworn nobody else would die, and now Otto and Dillon were sacrificin’ their asses.
Betty was running to the back just as the windshield started to give.
Then she stopped.
What the fuck?
She got down on her knees and started reaching under a seat.
Fuck—there was another kid.
The windshield collapsed, and L.J. lost sight of Otto and Dillon.
Two more to add to L.J.’s list of people who shouldn’t have died while he kept on living.
“Get out of there!” he cried to Betty, but she was still reaching under the seat, even with crazy crows pecking at her.
Finally, Sebastian, who was always tugging on L.J.’s beard, climbed out.
“Come on, with me!” Betty screamed, ignoring the crows flying all around her.
Cradling Sebastian to her, she ran to the back, crows ripping her apart, pecking at her great hair and her pretty face, and there was blood fucking everywhere.
“Come on! Hurry!” L.J. yelled. L.J.’s heart sank as she handed Sebastian over, and then she slammed the back door shut.
“Go,” she said as she closed it.
“No!”
Tears streaming down into his beard, he picked up Sebastian and ran to the news truck.
Sebastian started pulling on L.J.’s beard.
As soon as he jumped into the crowded rear of the news truck, Carlos yelled “Go!”
The door slammed shut into L.J.’s face, and he wished the fucking virus would take