One Crazy Pilot (Apocalypse Paused Book 7) Read online

  “While I’m still fucking alive would be much appreciated,” he rasped between coughing fits.

  Smoke slowly filled the cab.

  Ava went to him. “Hold still,’ she said, as much to her own trembling hands as to her boss.

  He screamed and struggled against his restraints. “What the fuck are you doing?” His eyes were wide—shocked, perhaps, at the blood on her hands.

  Ava couldn’t say anything. Her terror had rendered her incapable of speech. She had to get out of there and she had to stop shaking. A slow, deep breath enabled her to put the metal blade to the harness. She cut him free with a little effort and he tumbled to the floor and struck his head hard enough to draw blood.

  “God damn it, Ava. A warning would’ve been nice.”

  She tried to ignore him. “Come on, we have to cut Mr. Dervin and Mr. Billings free.”

  “There’s no time!” he responded and headed for the exit.

  Ava wanted to follow. It was hard to breathe and the heat would soon overwhelm her, but she couldn’t leave the men without at least checking their vitals. She went to Mr. Dervin.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Bradley yelled at her through the smoke.

  She felt for Dervin’s pulse. It was there but she didn’t know if she was thankful or terrified. They really didn’t have much time. She tugged at the buckle on his harness with trembling hands. Thankfully, it wasn’t broken and Dervin fell when she pressed the release. He groaned, obviously conscious, thank God. “Mr. Dervin, come on. We have to get out of here,” Ava said, her voice barely a whisper.

  He nodded as she directed him toward the gaping hole on the side of the helicopter. He stumbled out and Ava turned to help Billings.

  To her surprise, her boss was already with him and his hands groped at the man’s jacket.

  “We’ll get clear!” Ava said and ran out of the helicopter. She stumbled through a tangle of low brush and her calves protested as thorns drew thin lines of blood from her unprotected skin. “Are you hurt?” she asked when she caught up to Dervin.

  “My leg—”

  “Lean on me and try not to put any weight on it.”

  He grunted an acknowledgment and leaned into her. They stumbled through the brush and toward the tall trees, away from the burning helicopter. Ava tried to look for the poisonous plants that had been detailed in the documents, but she was too shaken to be sure of what anything was.

  Once they were perhaps fifty feet away, she helped him lean against a tree—one of the few not wrapped in vines. He grunted in pain. Something was wrong with his ankle but hopefully, not a break. She didn’t relish the thought that she might have to splint it. A glance at the helicopter confirmed that Bradley still wasn’t out.

  “Mr. Bradley!” Ava yelled and tried to run back toward the wreckage through the path she’d made. He would need help with Billings.

  Before she had made it ten feet, another explosion rocked the helicopter, this one louder. Flames licked up the side of the craft, but Mr. Bradley stepped out of the smoke.

  He made it three steps before he collapsed in a fit of coughing. Ava ran to him, rolled him onto his back, and pulled him clear of the burning aircraft. It wasn’t easy with the plant cover. By the time she had covered the fifty feet to Dervin, her back ached and her legs protested from being poked and scraped too many times to count. She wished she had the documents to try to identify them. Right now, her brain was so unsettled, she didn’t think she could tell an apple from an orange.

  Bradley came to and Ava helped him to his feet and brushed soot and plant debris from his suit. He always valued his appearance.

  “Where’s Mr. Billings?” she asked.

  “I checked his heart. He was dead.” There was something in his tone that she didn’t want to recognize. She could almost hear him saying the same thing to his boss about a failed project he’d never thought had had a chance. Rather than explore it, she nodded and turned away from her boss. Poor Mr. Billings.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Bradley asked.

  “Mr. Dervin is hurt. I need to check his leg. It might be broken.”

  “Just who the fuck do you think you are? Clara Barton?”

  For a second, Ava didn’t know what to say. Clara Barton had founded the American Red Cross and was one of her personal heroes. Had he remembered that from her cover letter? She looked at him but when she saw only scorn in his eyes, dropped her gaze. “I…no sir. Not anymore. I merely want to make sure he’s all right. Have you seen Mr. Chandler?”

  Her boss sneered at her. He obviously thought she was giving him an order, something she would never dare, but he yelled for the man all the same.

  Ava went to the other man and checked his ankle. It was swollen but not excessively, so it most likely wasn’t broken.

  “I’ll strap this and give you some aspirin. That should help with the swelling. You’ll be fine.”

  Dervin nodded and chewed his gum like there was no tomorrow. His eyes were wide and his skin clammy. He was in shock.

  “Chandler! Chandler, where the fuck are you?” Bradley yelled again and again.

  “Mr. Bradley, sir, maybe we shouldn’t be so loud. Those locusts might hear us,” Ava suggested.

  The man turned to her and clenched his fists. “The fuck they will. If they didn’t hear the helicopter crash, they won’t hear us.”

  “They might be waiting to see if there are survivors,” she said meekly. It sounded foolish as soon as she said it.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re bugs, not a pack of wolves. We’ll be fine. Chandler! Chandler! Where the fuck is that guy?”

  Something rustled beyond the tree line.

  “What the fuck was that?” he asked and his voice dropped to a whisper.

  “It’s probably Mr. Chandler,” Ava said and tried to peer into the gloom of the jungle but with little success. “He’s probably setting up a perimeter.”

  It wasn’t the soldier.

  A hideous creature emerged from the darkness of the jungle. It had six legs, a pair of glassy wings—although one was obviously broken—and a mouth with too many moving parts. It was a locust, Ava knew, an injured one but dangerous all the same. Its legs moved in horrible synchrony, a wind-up toy of nightmare.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” Bradley took a step back.

  “It’s a locust,” she responded around the terror that rose in her throat and threatened to choke her.

  “Like the ones that crashed the helicopter.”

  She nodded but she was behind him so he didn’t see her. While she knew she should have said something, her throat made speech impossible.

  “Well, what do we do about it?”

  The monster worked its mandibles and made a horrible clicking sound, then jumped toward him. The way it moved was sickening. Ava didn’t really go in for conspiracies, but her mind constantly repeated the same word again and again. Alien, alien, alien, alien! There was something about the way it used its body like it was masquerading as a giant insect—like some horrible energy inside that wanted them dead even though it was injured. It marched forward on broken legs.

  “I said what the fuck do we do about it?” Her boss’s words were almost a whisper and barely intelligible.

  Ava understood. She was terrified and although she tried to go—to move, to run—she couldn’t. Quite literally, she was petrified and frozen in fear. And this was only one of the insects. How many had crashed the helicopter? A dozen? A hundred? The edges of her vision went black until all she could see was the horrible creature. She was having a panic attack—she had done well enough in medical school to know that—and yet there wasn’t anything she could do about it. In all honesty, she couldn’t even breathe. They had survived a crash only to be eaten by the bug that had caused it.

  Something burst from behind the helicopter. Another locust? No—a man. But not the soldier with the gun. The pilot? Manny, Ava’s terrified brain told her. He wielded not a weapon but a fire extinguisher.


  “That’s the funny thing about you cheap pricks. You didn’t pay full fare, but you always ask for extra snacks.” Manny pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and hosed the creature down with white foam.

  The clicking stopped, thank God, and the locust, obviously annoyed, turned toward its attacker. It jumped, but its injuries and the foam covering its body threw off its trajectory and it landed to the side of its target.

  Manny struck it once on the head, hard. The creature stumbled. The huge eyes remained motionless and instead, it worked its antennae for a moment before it sprang at its adversary.

  It landed on his chest with enough force to knock him over and make him drop the fire extinguisher. Before the man landed, he shoved the locust up over his head and past him. It sprawled on its back and struggled to right itself. Ava wondered if an uninjured insect would have been as slow.

  The pilot wasted no time. He snatched the fire extinguisher up and lunged for the injured bug. This time, he struck it in the face, right between its eyes and hard enough to crack its shell. White goo sprayed out. Ava screamed but Manny only laughed.

  The locust tried to attack him again but he anticipated its attack. He squatted and launched upward to rocket the fire extinguisher into the creature’s underside. More white goo sprayed everywhere and the man laughed harder.

  The locust shuddered but tried to attack once more.

  Manny proceeded to beat it to death and didn’t stop until he was covered in goo and there was a dent in the bottom of his makeshift weapon. Even then, the corpse continued to twitch and he added a few more blows. “It reminds me of the time I single-handedly exterminated a barn full of tarantulas using nothing but the door from a microwave.”

  He looked at them and wiped the insect’s ichor from his smiling face. Ava could hardly believe it, but there it was. This man who’d beaten some mutant bug more horrifying than anything she had ever seen before was smiling.

  “Welcome to the Zoo, mates,” he said and walked toward them with his slime-covered hand extended for a handshake. “Careful, now. She bites back.”

  Chapter Two

  Ava didn’t know if she was more frightened of her boss or the man who walked toward them covered in locust guts. At least Manny was still smiling. Bradley’s face was a bright red that teetered on the verge of purple. The veins on his neck bulged and she quietly thought to herself that he looked like a purple sweet potato. She tried not to giggle at the thought. Clearly, she was still in shock.

  She looked around the clearing to remind herself where they were. The Zoo, a jungle in the middle of the desert. The thought sobered her. They should be surrounded by sand dunes and desiccated plants. Instead, tall trees with broad leaves towered over them, already pushing into the tiny clearing the helicopter had forcefully created in the strange ecosystem. Except the helicopter couldn’t have made this clearing. There weren’t any of the big trees there. Did that mean Manny had chosen this spot to land despite being under attack by the locusts?

  “You could’ve killed us,” Bradley said. “Playing around with a fire extinguisher when we were saving your passengers. It’s a fucking disgrace.”

  The pilot’s grin grew ever more lopsided. “Didn’t Bob Dylan say only dumbasses rush in where angels fear to boogie?”

  That seemed to suck the words right out of Bradley’s mouth. He stood there, chewing at the air. Ava had only seen him that mad once before when she’d made the mistake of delivering coffee with regular milk instead of skim. She’d had to wear low-cut blouses for a week to get him to forget about it. Manny wouldn’t be able to use the same tactic.

  “Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Chandler said and stepped from the jungle with his assault rifle held before him, its barrel aimed at the ground.

  “And where the fuck were you?” Bradley howled as he turned on the soldier, seemingly oblivious to the weapon.

  “Setting up a perimeter,” the man replied calmly. Compared to Bradley’s shouting and Manny’s apparent glee, Chandler seemed as calm as a boulder. He tilted his head slightly to the right, which made his shoulders flex visibly, even under his bulky camouflage. That Bradley could yell at someone who was armed and obviously dangerous was why Ava—and everyone else who worked under him—obeyed when he spoke.

  To her, the soldier’s sudden appearance served as a reminder that they really were in what counted as an alien habitat. She had scanned the dense plant growth all around them. Choking vines and thorny bushes sprouted leaves that seemed to twitch whether or not a wind blew. The thick trunks of trees that should’ve taken decades to grow had, in mere months, created a suffocating canopy that obscured everything but the tiny clearing around the helicopter. She’d looked for locusts, for a way out—for anything—yet she hadn’t seen Chandler until he’d stepped clear of the jungle’s shadows.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Were you listening to us? Are you trying to fuck her?” Bradley gestured at Ava. When Chandler didn’t immediately reply, he continued. “We could’ve used some support instead of relying on the man who lands a helicopter like a fucking albatross.”

  Dervin laughed but didn’t even manage a “good one, sir.” Ava knew the aspirin had yet to kick in.

  “You know, I don’t recall where I learned to land. It definitely wasn’t an albatross, though.” Manny scratched his stubbly chin thoughtfully.

  “We’re not supposed to be in this far,” Chandler said. Like his movements, his words were terse and efficient. Ava was grateful he’d survived the crash. He provided a welcome calm compared to her boss.

  “That’s what she said,” Dervin wheezed and looked at Bradley for approval. He earned only a scowl.

  “Obviously, our fucking pilot—Jack Mann, the lawsuit will be sure to say—overshot our mark,” Bradley said.

  Chandler looked at Ava and raised an eyebrow. Did he think the same thing?

  “I’m…that is, sir, I’m not so sure,” Ava began hesitantly and tried to force the words out. “It looked like some of the trees were growing. I know it sounds crazy, but Mr. Chandler, you had said we had just passed Wall Two. The reports didn’t indicate that the Zoo was this far out.”

  Her boss smiled viciously. “The only wood that was growing was mine when you pressed your boobs in my face to get a better look.” He made air quotes around the last three words while he looked around at the other men and pointedly avoided her eyes.

  Dervin grinned and nodded, although he mostly looked terrified like a dog in a new house, still unsure of who the alpha male was.

  Chandler said nothing and only scanned the perimeter. If anything, his jaw seemed tighter than usual, but he certainly didn’t come to Ava’s defense.

  “A weebill!” Manny said, snapped his fingers, and pointed at Bradley’s crotch.

  “What did you say to me?” her boss asked and foolishly, looked down as if Manny had pointed at a soup stain on his pants.

  “Your funny little joke reminded me where I learned to land. A weebill. The smallest bird in Australia. It has the tiniest, palest li’l pink bill you’ve ever seen!” He continued to point at Bradley and grinned from ear to ear. “One used to join me for breakfast each morning and that’s where I learned my landing technique. The little guy used to try to fly off with grapefruits before it learned it wasn’t man enough to handle all that. It’s an extremely tiny creature but has a loud voice, though. No one would ever feel threatened by a weebill, not once they know what it is, that’s for sure, mate.”

  For a moment, no one said anything. Ava tried to hold back the smile that teased at her lips. Had Manny intentionally insulted Bradley? That was the first time Ava had ever seen anyone insult the man. He seemed to think along the same lines and was more purple now, although he no longer yelled. His face grew brighter and brighter and the veins on his neck bulged more and more. Ava couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

  That broke the moment.

  “Look what you’ve done, you buffoon. You pushed her off the edge,�
�� Bradley said and walked closer to Manny, although he stopped out of arm’s reach. “We’re not here to talk about birds, you freak. We’re here because you flew too far and crashed. This is a lawyer’s wet dream, by the way.”

  “Do you know a lot about those?” Manny cut in, still smiling.

  Ava actually guffawed at that.

  Her boss turned to her and raised an eyebrow. It was not a pleasant expression. “Now, I propose we take a vote. We have two options. One, we can let Jack Mann—a fucking bird watcher apparently—keep doing his down-under stand-up routine or, number two, we can have Mr. Chandler, our military-fucking-escort, lead us out of this shithole that Jack got us into.”

  “Do either of you guys know which way is out of here?” Dervin asked as he pushed himself up, although he still used the tree for support.

  “Shut the fuck up, Dervin. You’re obviously in shock,” Bradley said without even a glance at the wounded man, who wilted visibly against the tree.

  But Dervin had a point, Ava thought. She stepped forward and cleared her throat “Mr. Chandler, you haven’t been here before, right? Maybe Mr. Mann knows—”

  “Let the grownups talk, honey,” her boss snapped at Ava. “You’re obviously delirious. Too much smoke, probably, not to mention being scared by those fucking grasshoppers—”

  “Locusts,” Chandler said.

  “Whatever. Look, we vote. Who wants to follow Chandler out of here?” Bradley raised his hand and looked at Chandler, who nodded once. “That’s two votes for getting the fuck moving. Now, who wants to go with Jack Mann, the moron who got us into this mess?”

  Ava looked at Dervin but he only grinned. She didn’t raise her hand either. She wanted to, though—Manny had defeated that locust—but he didn’t have a gun. Bradley was probably right. It was better to stick with the military escort.

  Bradley let his smile go into a full sneer. “I see you’re not even voting for yourself.”