The female Rabid hits the window hard, head first; she then bounces straight back onto the office floor behind her, and doesn’t move. I would like to say that it was expected she wouldn't break through the hard glass, but there is now a large crack in the window where she hit with what must have been a terrific force.
“I thought she was coming through for a second then!” Alice exclaims.
“You’re not the only one,” Dan agrees.
“We need to wrap this up and get going, get back to the others,” I tell the two of them.
“Where are we going and what others?” Alice asks.
“I’ll tell you on the way, Alice. Right now, let’s finish checking the rest of this building, as best we can from out here. We need to carry on upwards.”
“Fuck me!” Dan shouts and jolts back on the Lynx’s stick.
The helicopter tilts sharply back, its rotors lifting and pushing us off and away from the building. The sudden tipping catches Alice unawares and she is sent staggering quickly back, just too late in her attempt to grab onto the cockpit wall. Her speed backwards increases as the Lynx continues to tilt, she is out of control and in danger of slamming into the back of the hold.
Then I see what forced Dan into his emergency action; above us, about six or seven floors up, one of the windows of the building has been smashed through, glass raining down towards us. The beams from the Lynx’s spotlights hit the glass as we tilt and as the glass falls, causing it to twinkle and shine like rain falling past a street lamp.
In the middle of this raining glass, a Rabid also plunges down at us, looking straight at us with its piercing eyes, face twisted in rage and its arms outstretched in its freefall. Its fingers, like claws, are ready to grab hold, to grab onto the Lynx.
As we tilt farther back, the Lynx’s rotors labour hard and send a massive downdraft against the building, making the windows rattle in their frames but it pushes us off farther away from the building.
The Rabid and glass just miss hitting the rotors, but they are on course to hit the front of the cockpit. That is until the force of the downdraft from the rotors catapults them sideways, sending them crashing into the side of the building. The Rabid disappears from view behind the Lynx’s floor as it continues to fall, and we continue to tilt.
Dan gains distance away from the building before levelling the Lynx off. We have gained height and are now about level with the smashed window where Rabids are gathered around the new open hole in the glass wall of the building.
“Alice, are you injured?” I shout as I spin around in my seat to look down into the hold.
“No.” Alice sounds slightly winded, half bent over as if catching her breath. “Josh grabbed me as I fell and managed to slow me down.”
Josh is half kneeling and half standing with one knee on his seat and one foot on the floor, one of his hands is latched onto the back of the seat and his body is side on to me. He obviously had to lean right over using the seat to stabilise himself in order to grab Alice. Tim, who is seated next to Josh and must have been in Josh’s way, is still out of it, head back, oblivious to all the commotion.
Josh is shaking his other arm in the air, indicating that he has injured it in helping Alice. He isn’t wearing his headphones as I told him to, so I have to shout to him.
“Josh, are you injured?”
He looks toward me and mouths no, but I can see he is.
“Put your headphones on!” I shout at him again.
Josh sits back down on his seat still shaking his arm off, he does, however, reach with his other arm for some headphones.
“I’m alright, Dad, just pulled a muscle or two in my arm. Luckily, it’s only my left one.”
“Okay, good, as long as it’s only your left,” I joke.
“What happened?”
“Oh, you know, just a flying Rabid nearly hitting us,” I joke again, but nobody laughs.
“A Rabid?” Josh questions.
“I’ll explain,” Alice says as she gingerly goes to take a seat.
“You sure you’re alright, Alice?”
“Yes, just a bit winded. I’ll be okay in a minute. I think it’s best if I stay in my seat though.”
“Agreed,” I tell her.
I straighten back up in my seat, looking back over at the building and towards the open hole where a window used to be. Rabids fill the open space, arms outstretched towards us in the air, mouths opening wide and then closing as they call out. More still are gathered either side of the broken window. They claw at the glass with their fingers as if they want to somehow get to us.
Dan’s voice comes through my headphones. “These things have no fear. Did you see the look on that one’s face as it fell? It only had one thing on its mind and that was attacking us, even when it was falling from a skyscraper?”
“I know,” is all I can answer to him now.
Karen and Jim could well be amongst this horde of creatures baying for our blood, across from us now. Maybe I can see them now, but simply don’t recognise them and if they are not here, if they are still hiding in some small dark corner of that building, there is no way we can get to them. They are trapped in there. Either way, I can’t see a way out for them and there is nothing we
