Free Dead Life (Book 4) by D. Harrison Schleicher Page A

shoulder to get her attention and told her to hold her fire.
                  The backwash from the rotors combined with the slant of the roof was too much for them. They were too uncoordinated to do anything to try and adjust their balance. As soon as they gained the roof they stood and tumbled down; either falling back into the hole or off the side of the roof.  By now the man was to the ladder and was able to help the smaller of the two children to the ladder. John pulled the smaller girl to safety and the woman started up. We were occupied with getting the woman in the chopper when I looked down at the man and drew my pistol from my holster. He looked up at me with a frightened look on his face, thinking I was about to shoot him. I fired over his shoulder taking out the zombie that was about to grab him from behind. He glanced back, realizing what had just happened, and started up the ladder.
                  John and I each grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him in. The three of us fell back into the chopper and the Lieutenant took us up. We got to our feet and the man pointed a pistol in my face. I recognized it as mine. He must have grabbed it from my holster when we were on the floor of the chopper.
                  “What the hell is going on? We just saved your asses,” I yelled over the sound of the rotors.
                  “You're not killing my little girls,” he shouted back.
                  I looked at the woman and the two girls. She was sitting on the floor of the chopper holding both of the girls in her arms. I could now see where the girls arms were covered in gauze wrappings blood leaking through the bandages.
                  “They're burning up with fever,” I heard John say over my headset. “I felt the heat coming off of them when I pulled them in.”
                  “What's he saying,” the man yelled at me.
                  I motioned behind him to the headsets hanging on hooks beside his head. He reached over and grabbed one fighting to get it on with one hand while still holding the gun on me with the other.
                  “What the hell's going on back there?” Lieutenant Price's voice came over my headset.
                  “The two kids we brought on board are infected. Their dad has a gun and is going to shoot me if we try to kill the girls,” I answered.
                  “Does everybody have their ears on?” he asked.
                  “Yes, and he will too in a second.”
                  “Then get ready. Things are going to get shaky back there. Tell me when.”
                  With him holding a gun in my face there was nothing I could do to prepare myself for what was about to happen. Lily sat down and gripped the bench. The Sergeant reached out and braced himself on the wall.
                  Just as the man got the headset situated on his head I said, “Do it.”
                  The chopper banked hard to the right and the girls' father stumbled back towards the open door. As he went back his arms pinwheeled and the pistol discharged. I felt a round go past my ear as I also fell towards the open door. I grabbed one side of the doorway with both hands and as I was on my way out,  he grabbed the other side. He held on with one hand, still holding my pistol in the other, and yelled into the head phone for me to “tell him to stop.” He was in the process of bringing the gun to bear on me again when the chopper banked hard to the left. His free arm, the one that held the pistol, pinwheeled wildly as he tried to maintain his grip on the side of the chopper. The gun went off multiple times fortunately firing outside of the chopper this time.
                  As the chopper leveled out I was able to get my feet under me. This gave me the opportunity to free one hand from