“He’s right,” Jones said. “Get moving. You’re a thousand times better than Bradbury. You know how to dodge those things.”
“What if I can’t?” Garver said.
“You will because you have to,” Jones said. “These people need us, and we will do this.”
“What If I don’t?” Garver asked. “None of you know how to fly this thing.”
Jones reached down to his sidearm and patted it. “If you don’t fly this bird and do what I say, then we all go down together.”
“You’re serious?” Garver said.
“Deadly serious,” Jones said.
Del shouted from the back of the helicopter, “Hey, I see something. There’s a group of them down there. They’re all packed together. To the south. It could be one of the smart ones.”
Jones unsnapped the safety strap on his holster and said, “Fly this thing. Now.”
There was a metal behind his tone that convinced Garver completely that Jones would follow through.
“Okay, okay,” Garver said. “I’ll fly. I’ll fly.”
Jones clicked on his comm unit and said, “We’re headed that way.”
Garver grabbed the stick and tilted it. A moment later, the helicopter headed north.
Chapter 47
On the Far Side
Audrey heard the helicopter firing its guns in the distance, and she brought a hand to her chest. The echoing of the helicopter’s machine gun carried on the crisp, moist morning air.
“Maxwell,” she said. There was so much weight in the word. Maybe even hope, but mostly dread.
She doubted the whole plan, where she took her throng of undead and circled around the backside of the city. Lance called it ‘a flanking move,’ but she thought it was just macho bullshit. Like he was a little Hitler moving his pieces around the board, acting like a military maestro. It was a waste of time. They always took their enemies head-on, but Lance said this place was different.
When Audrey really thought about it, she strongly suspected that Lance meant to separate her from Maxwell. To come between them. Maybe he was pushing Maxwell into the danger zone, putting him at risk. She got no vibe from Lance that this was the case, but with Lance, there was no telling what he was thinking. He was opaque, but she didn’t put anything past him.
The city sat off in the distance with the sun reflecting off the windows of the buildings, looking like orange diamonds. It made her wonder what was so special about this place. It was just another city. They had decimated so many cities and towns in their march to the east. Why couldn’t they just forget this one and move on?
But she knew better. There was something about this city. The voice told them that they had to wipe these people out. They were dangerous, and that was the reason they had to have this elaborate battle plan. The one where she swept around the entire city in a wide arc. One that left her so far away that she had no idea what was happening with Maxwell.
The two of them should have broken off and gone on their own. Just get away from Lance and Grayson. Make a run for it.
But where would they go? This damnable ability, no curse, that attracted the undead would never let them be alone. The dead would follow them to the ends of the earth.
Where would they go? Where could they go? There was so little left to the earth, At least what it used to be. There was almost no one left alive. What did they have in common with the living, anyway? Nothing. They would never be normal again. They wouldn’t feel pain ever again. They didn’t fear death because they had been there and back.
But she knew this wasn’t true. At least, not wholly true. There was something in there that made them half-alive, too. Anything or anyone that was half-alive could be fully dead. That meant Maxwell could die.
This was it. That was what forced her hand. She had to do what she was told. For Maxwell. For the two of them but she knew there had to be a line in the sand. There had to be an end to the madness.
This would be the last time they would listen to the voice. This would be the last time they’d take directions from Lance. She and Maxwell would run. They would find a way. They may be half-dead, but they had a chance to be half-alive.
She would do this last thing, and she would find Maxwell, and they would get the hell away from Lance and his bullshit. They would ignore the voice no matter how much it spoke to them. Maybe they could get far enough away that the voice couldn’t be heard?
With Maxwell on the west side of the city, she had no other choice. She would do what Lance wanted. She would do what the voice told them. They would wipe out this city and kill everyone inside, and maybe then, they would be free.
One last time.
Chapter 48
Mortal Combat
Finding a smart zombie in a massive horde of the undead was like finding a needle in a haystack. The smart zombies didn’t look much different from the real deaders. From two hundred feet up in the air and moving along a decent clip, they all seemed to blend together, but there was one possible indicator that might give up a smart one. Something about the way they attracted the undead made the zombies congregate around them, and that’s what Del had spotted for a brief moment near what was left of the south bridge.
The problem was that the scenery changed each second as the mob of zombies moved along the landscape. This was a stationary puzzle, but one that was in constant motion, a collage of grays, blacks, and dark muddy colors.
“Where did you see it, Del?” Jones asked over the comms.
“Close to the bridge on the other side of the river,” Del replied.
Garver piloted the chopper in that direction, slowing to a speed just above hovering.
Unlike the horde they had seen cross the river, this set hadn’t waded into the water yet. They mobbed the shoreline as if they were real live humans but held back as if they thought there were sharks in the river.
“Why aren’t they crossing the river?” Garver asked over the comms.
“Zombies don’t like fast-moving water,” Jones said.
“That didn’t stop the others,” Garver said.
“They must be following one of the smart ones, and he hasn’t crossed yet,” Jones said. “Del, Clayton, do you see anything now?”
“Nothing but fucking normal deaders,” Clayton replied.
“I lost sight of the pack I saw on the flight up here,” Del said.
Jones looked back in the direction they had come, and he saw the zombies surging up the hill. The only blessing about the smart zombies is that they didn’t move much faster than regular, run of the mill zombies.
“Keep looking dammit,” Jones said.
“They’re heading up the hill,” Garver said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jones snapped back.
“But shouldn’t we be focusing on them?” Garver asked. “They are the most direct threat.
Jones batted around the idea of what was, indeed, the biggest threat. Certainly, it seemed evident that the closest danger was the most immediate one, but taking the horde heading up the hill left out an important consideration. There was the idea that the cumulative effect of the totality of both hordes making it to the walls of the Sanctum. If this second mass made it across the river, they might overwhelm the Sanctum's defenses.
“That horse had already left the barn,” Jones said. “You saw what happened when we did that run. For every dozen we killed, three dozen took its place. This group,” he pointed out the throng of zombies on the other side of the river near the south bridge. “They are on the other side of the river. That means the smart zombie leading them hasn’t made it. We kill the head, and the body won’t follow. That means a thousand less zombies they have to fight back on the walls.” With each word, Jones’ voice got a little louder.
“Okay, okay,” Garver said in a placating tone.
“They can’t get across that river,” Jones said. “We have to find that fucking smart zombie and do it now. Del, Clayton, let us know if you spot anything.”
The chances the Sanctum would hold against the horde was already across the river was not good. If this second group made it, then their chances dropped to next to nothing.
Jones took a long look back toward the campus, and the zombies were about to hit the athletic fields. Time was running out.
“Slow us down a little,” Jones said.
“That will leave us sitting up in the sky like a floating whale,” Garver said.
“Just do it!” Jones said.
Garver did as he was told even though it scared the utter living shit out of him. Standard operating procedure when flying over threats was to fly fast and fly low. They were low, but they were not fast. That made them sitting ducks, ready to be blasted out of the sky. To Garver, every second at this speed felt like they were in slow motion, and each second stretched out to an hour.
They were barely moving and instead drifted along in the air. Below them, the zombies looked up because the helicopter made so much noise. Things that made noise were fascinating because they could be about food.
“Anything?” Jones asked over the comms.
Clayton came back quickly with, “Nothing on this side.”
A few seconds later, Del said, “There’s a pretty packed together group along the shoreline where it juts out. It’s near the bridge. Maybe he’s in there.”
Jones’ eyes ran along the shoreline until it found the spot that Del had mentioned. And he was right. At that spot, the zombies churned around something in the midst.
“Get us there,” Jones said as he pointed toward the spot.
Garver was just glad to stop hovering in place and pushed the stick to navigate them toward where Jones was pointing. They were just about there when a series of bright flashes appeared in the center of the churning mass of undead. The next thing Jones and Garver knew was bullets peppering the front of the helicopter.
There was a zombie down in the middle of the scrum shooting at them with a machine gun. Only it wasn’t a run of the mill zombie. No, they didn’t use guns.
It was a smart one.
Totally out of instinct, Garver pulled back on the stick and then pushed down on the foot pedal to back the chopper to the right. The helicopter went from a snail-like pace to maximum acceleration. Bullets glanced off the back of the chopper.
“Son of a bitch!” Garver said.
Jones tried to crane his neck to get a view back from where the shots had come from, but Garver had taken them too far away. They were nearly half a mile from the bridge.
“Get us back there,” Jones said.
“Are you crazy?” Garver said. “That guy nearly shot us out of the sky.”
Jones slowly turned toward Garver and asked, “Did you run from the enemy in Afghanistan?”
“But that was war,” Garver said.
“And so this,” Jones shot back. “And in war, you have to engage the enemy.”
“If he hits us in a vulnerable spot, then we’re going down,” Garver said. “And if we survive the crash, then they’ll tear us apart.”
“Garver, I know you’re a good pilot,” Jones said. “It’s time you did your absolute best and keep us alive.”
Garver stared at Jones for several seconds, then blinked. “Okay.”
“Stay sharp, everyone,” Jones said. “You see that son of bitch, you smoke him.”
Garver took the helicopter in a long, looping arc in the sky and placed it on a glade path directed right at the bridge. He brought it in low and fast, whizzing along somewhere between 90 and 100 miles per hour.
A top-flight baseball player can get a fastball going that fast. A helicopter is a lot larger than a baseball, but a baseball doesn’t have twin machine guns and rockets. So, in the end, it sort of evened out.
As they approached the bridge, a spray of bullets shot out of a mass of undead that moved toward the bridge. Garver banked the helicopter in an effort to avoid the shots.
“Use your guns,” Jones growled out. “Engage him.
Against his better judgment, Garver turned back into the fire, but he picked up speed, pushing the bird to maximum velocity. As he did, pressed on the trigger for the twin guns.
This time it was the helicopter that spat out bullets. They came out fast and furious, tearing into the zombies on the ground and cutting them to pieces.
Garver had to pull out the last moment, or else they were going to collide with the bridge. The unexpected move pitched everyone backward in the helicopter.
“Heeeeeey!” Del screamed.
“Fuck me,” Clayton joined in.
The helicopter shot over the bridge with just a few feet to spare and continued heading south for a half of a mile before Garver turned them around in the sky. He was proud of his maneuver, and it had taken him back to some of his runs in the Korangal Valley back in Afghanistan when he was taking on the Taliban.
“Next time, let us know you pull of shit like that,” Del said. “Me and this contraption nearly went out the door.”
“Sorry,” was all that Garver said.
“Did we get him?” Clayton asked.
There was a long silence until Jones broke it and said, “The only way we’ll know is to fly back and take a look.”
Garver let out a long sigh and said, “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Chapter 49
From the Wall
“What do you see?” Lassiter asked.
Eli pressed the binoculars into his eyes so hard, it looked painful.
“The helicopter just blasted away at something on the other side of the river down near the south bridge,” he said.
They, along with a bunch of people, were fixated to the southwest, where the helicopter was engaged with an enemy on the ground. The distance and the bridge blocked the view, making it hard to see anything clearly. Collectively, they all hoped that the helicopter would take out all the smart zombies. They also conceded that it was probably a pipe dream. Still, they had to have some hope.
“Do you think they took out one of the smart ones?” Lassiter asked.
Eli dropped the binoculars from his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How the hell would I know?”
“Can’t we just call them?” Lassiter asked, gesturing toward the walkie-talkie on Eli’s belt.
“They probably won’t answer,” Eli said.
“Can you at least try?” Lassiter said, and he wasn’t begging or whining. He was annoyed. Eli seemed to have come incapable of communicating with Sergeant Jones and his soldiers after they blew up the bridges.
“Okay, okay,” Eli responded as he let out a long sigh. He relented and reached down to grab the walkie-talkie. Once he had it in hand, he brought to his mouth and pressed the talk button. “Sanctum to Air One. Sanctum to Air One. Come in.” He unclicked the talk button and waited. Ten seconds later, he tried to get through again. “Come in, Air one.” Another pause. “What the hell is going on down there?”
Eli shot Lassiter a hot glance and said, “See? They’re busy.” He clipped the walkie-talkie back on his belt. “We need to worry about what’s coming up the hill because a single chopper isn’t even going to make a dent in them.”
It was at that moment that Jo, Donovan, and Mason converged on Eli and Lassiter’s position.
“What did you learn?” Jo asked.
“You need to get back to where you were,” Eli said, waving a hand in the air to dismiss them.
“What did they say?” Donovan asked.
“Did you talk to Del?” Jo asked.
Eli said. “I called them, and they didn’t answer. Now, are you satisfied?” He shook his head in disgust. “We have a thousand zombies headed up that hill. Let Jones and his sky gang take care of themselves.”
Jo didn’t like his flippant reference but conceded he was right. Her concern was with Del. He was her wingman, and not having him by her side was hard to take. Plus, Sergeant Jones was up there. “Let us know if you talk to them,” Jo said.
“We’re not calling them b
ack,” Eli said. “We’re sort of busy here, and I’m sure they are. Get back to your positions. We’ll have our hands full soon enough.”
As she walked back to her spot on the wall, she felt many eyes following her. She felt very alone. Other than Donovan and Mason on the east wall, she was very much the outsider. A stranger in a strange land. And she missed Del.
Once she was back in position, she said a prayer for both of them and everyone onboard that helicopter. While she was at, she added everyone in the Sanctum to her list.
Molly stepped beside Henry and Ellen, and like everyone on the back wall, she looked to the west where all the firing was happening. The machine gun fire echoed in the moist air, sounding like the staccato beat of a snare drum, but with a sense of menace behind it.
“What the fuck is going on back there?” Molly asked.
Ellen winced at the girl’s coarseness, but it was mostly because Henry cared about her.
From fifty feet away, Bonds shouted, “The helicopter is firing at something down near the south bridge.”
Somebody else yelled, “Give’em hell.”
A few people let out war whoops, and more than a few others smiled.
“They don’t know what we’re in for, do they, mom?” Henry said.
“No, but we know.”
Molly wedged her way in between mother and son, then said, “A part of me wants to be with them up there on the east wall..”
“I, for one, am glad we’re back here,” Ellen said. “We’re away from that first wave.”
“Yeah,” Henry said, then looked at Molly. “Don’t you worry, they’ll get to us soon enough.”
“Won’t they just hit the front gate?” Molly asked.
Henry pursed his lips, then said, “There’s so many of them, they’ll probably wrap around the whole place.”
“I’m hoping they’re a little thinned out by the time they make their way around to us,” Ellen said.
“If things go well, then maybe,” Henry said, but there wasn’t much conviction in those words.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 22
