“Never seen them do that before,” reverberates in the earphones.
“No one has. The seismic waves must screw with whatever lizard brain remains.” Travis prays that’s a satisfactory explanation. Now would not be the moment for his men to second-guess him. Truth—no one knows answers when it comes to the undead.
“Next stop, New Madrid. Twelve minutes, Sir.”
By air. A forty-mile driving stretch to avoid the natural bends in the river. Now it’s a lake. Treetops poke through the flooded area, along with a rooftop or a cell tower. Near the epicenter, the land has forever changed.
“Colonel!” Dallas, too excited to curb his loud voice in the speaker, splits all their eardrums.
A swatch of black earth has plowed across the landscape. The shuffling of millions of feet carved away the first few inches of plant life and soil. No saplings remain, nor evidence of trees, mashed down until only scattered twigs remained. Puddles of goop reflect the sun where a cadaver fell, trampled to syrup.
The constant thumping of the rotor blades hangs over Travis. After a bomb blast, even a nuclear one, some evidence of life remains. Piles of bricks. Burnt lumber. Bone. Those horrid shadows of human forms flash-burnt into the wall.
Someone dropped the blades of a snowplow and scraped away everything. Even after a forest fire, stumps remain.
Boards of a collapsed structure contain struggling undead determined to reach the epicenter. One cadaver tears free, leaving behind its legs and lower stomach contents. It claws at the dirt, dragging itself forward.
“Sir?”
The voice breaks Travis from his gaze. Undead scrabble over a hill. They ignore the thrumping of the Blackhawks.
“The ground must be rumbling.” The only explanation as to why they don’t turn and move toward the choppers.
“Ten miles out.”
The mass of what was once people reaches an impasse. Packed together, as if crammed into a subway car, millions of dead people lean toward a central point. They don’t claw or shove. They butt up against one another, leaving no space. As more arrive, they connect with the collective.
“Sir.”
Even through the earphones designed to protect human’s hearing from the deafening thrump of the helicopter blades, the low, rolling moan-howl permeates.
“Sir.”
Even when dictators marched children, linked arm in arm, across a mine field, they were never as tightly compact. These creatures become one flesh.
“Do we drop, Sir?”
“No. Our goal is maximum effectiveness.” A fire in the dead center will eliminate hundreds of thousands. They’ll keep moving toward the epicenter, despite the flames.
Nothing survived the quake, and the undead stand on rubble, creating an ocean of putrid flesh.
Travis recalls footage of people flooding the football fields after a victory and the way the mass of people flowed, filling the empty spaces as they hoisted the team upon their shoulders.
“Colonel, I’ve not had much interaction with vectors, but shouldn’t they be interested in the Blackhawks?”
“Noise of any kind.” Travis slips a palm-sized GPS from a pouch in his BDUs. “They must be engrossed in a greater distraction.”
Travis fiddles with the device. The digital landscape appears. Blue dots surround a red one. He waves his arm. “Swing us around.”
The chopper moves.
Travis holds up a finger, dropping it once the blue dot merges with the red.
“Drop it!”
The cable releases, and the cargo net containing barrels of napalm smash against the mass of undead.
The disruption causes them to pack tighter, many hugging the drums. They fill in the empty space, leaving no trace of the cargo net.
“Change of plans.”
“Trevors, Gruber. Circle out to a quarter mile from target. We’ll create a firebreak. They’ll march straight through the flames to reach the epicenter.” We should burn more this way. “Flarentine and Cashous, give me a half mile from target.”
“Colonel. The blast pattern…”
“We’re after the long burn. Remember, fighting Vectors is the new war. Our old tactics are ineffective. Adams and Davidson, give me three-fourths of a mile out. Drop your payload and head back to the barn.”
“Take us a mile out.”
The Blackhawk zips over the rot. Not one undead notices. They cram tighter to reach the epicenter.
Travis didn’t have time to learn the names of all the men on this mission, but he knew the chopper pilots. He distributes the rest of the Blackhawks in a circular pattern within a mile of the epicenter.
“Colonel?” Lt. Browns’s voice crackles in the earphones.
“They desire to be at the center mark. They’ll stumble through fire to reach it. We’ll burn more this way.” Justification. Now to get my command back to the carrier. “Lieutenant, take point. As you drop your payload, head back to the Memphis base for refuel.”
Travis waits for each blue dot to disappear from his GPS screen. “Maneuver us out of the blast radius.”
He flips the trigger guard. Travis activates the remote detonator. Pressing his finger against the metal stitch, he holds. They’re no longer people. God, please accept them into your house, for they know not what they do. He whispers into the mic, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, sayeth the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.”
A low, respectful chorus of Amens follows in his ears.
Travis flicks the button.
Within a tenth of a second, each hidden collection of drums erupts in a pillar of flames, raining down on the cadavers. All his training flows through his head. Water boils at one hundred degrees. The fire spreading across the vectors averages one thousand. They don’t experience pain or asphyxiation. In the two seconds after the blast, the liquid, a firestorm catches in the wind, jumping from cadaver to cadaver. They don’t flail around as a living person would, but the flames stick to the skin. As one falls in a charcoaled mass, more step into the flames and cook.
Whole sections of undead fall. More shuffle forward to fill the gaps—igniting. Radiant heat melts the sagging, rotten skin from the bone, exposing the tops of skulls.
If they were alive, they’d be fainting from dehydration and carbon monoxide poisoning. If they were alive, I’d be sick.
Plumes of thick, black smoke spread.
Travis wishes for wind, as it would feed the flames and increase the square yards of damage.
Cooked, rotten meat stink wafts into the chopper.
Fire opens gaps in the lines of undead. More slide forward.
No matter the damage, they all demand to be at the epicenter.
Two of the flame pyres join together
“Colonel, the smoke.”
Ash flickers in the air like upward shifting snowflakes.
“Bring us over the outer fire.” Travis snaps the GPS off. He tosses it into the lapping flames. “Dump your GPS.” Each man tosses a personal transmitter out the side doors.
Dallas removes the LoJack from the helicopter and dumps it.
“They might still follow us in sat photos.”
“They’ll do a flyby of the epicenter. By the time Lt. Browns reports us missing, we’ll be too far north to be detected.”
William Schlichter has a Bachelor of Science in Education emphasizing English from Southeast Missouri State and a Masters of Arts in Theater from Missouri State University. With seventeen years of teaching English/Speech/Theater, he has returned to making writing his priority. Recent successes with scriptwriting earned him third place in the 2013 Broadcast Education Association National Festival of Media Arts for writing a TV Spec Script episode of The Walking Dead.
His full-length feature script, Incinta, was an officially selected finalist in the 2014 New Orleans Horror Film Festival. Incinta received recognition again by being selected as a finalist at the 2015 Beverly Hills Film Festival for a full-
length feature. Incinta has advanced in several other script contests, including most recently being an Official Selected finalist in the 2016 Irvine Film Festival. His next life goal would be to see his film transferred from the pages to the screen.
Writing has always been his passion even through traveling, raising twin children, and educating teenagers. While he specializes in the phantasmagorical world of the undead and science fiction fantasy stories, William continues to teach acting, composition, and creative writing.
No Room In Hell (Book 3): Aftershocks Page 35
