by Ben Reeder
“Angel Flight, this is Warrior One!” I called over my radio. “Is precious cargo secured?” I heard something over my earpiece, but I couldn’t make it out over the noise. “Angel Seven, go!” I yelled. To my left and right, I could hear the rotor noise change as I dropped another tango, and as I turned left to put a round in the chest of the next tango, I saw two of the big ugly birds lift into the sky. I twisted to my right and pulled the trigger on one that was almost point blank on me as I registered the third bird bank to the north. With the tangos concentrating on me, the Angels would be able to get away clean. More tangos appeared in the light of the grenade, and I fired as fast as I could as I heard the last bird lift into the air behind me and turn. I dropped my empty mag and shoved another one into the well, then brought the rifle up on one coming in on my right. I had just enough time to understand that I wasn’t going to get my sights on her in time.
Tracer rounds tore through her in mid leap, tearing her body to shreds. I risked a glance over my shoulder to see Saunders on the M240 on the Chinook’s ramp. The pilot had turned the chopper a hundred eighty degrees, leaving the ramp facing me a few feet off the ground. The crew chief gestured for me to come on, and I didn’t hesitate. Tracer rounds zipped by on my left, then my right, then my right again, my left and then back to my right. The crew chief pointed both arms left, and I jinked that way. The M240 roared as I came within a few feet of it, and tracer rounds ripped through the space I’d been in a heartbeat before. Then I was throwing myself into the air. The ramp hit me in the gut hard as I landed, and the crew chief grabbed my arms to pull me the rest of the way in. Hot brass pelted me as Saunders fired at something right behind me, then we were in the air and climbing away from the school. I pulled myself to my feet and grabbed one of the handholds to keep myself from falling out of the bird as the crew chief handed me a pair of headphones.
“You’re the last team to evac,” I heard over the headphones. “You guys are going straight to the St Louis Safe Zone!” I nodded. The strap strained against my wrist as the chopper tilted, and we were flying over a broad, well lit street. Down below, I could see a blue truck heading east, with a familiar looking guy crouched in the back, rifle held like he knew how to use it.
“Good luck, office guy,” I said, feeling a strange sense of kinship with him. The chopper turned again, and the lights of Springfield receded beneath us. As we flew toward safety, I couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t where I belonged. Safety didn’t suit me, and I got the feeling that it was something office guy wasn’t good at either. My thoughts turned to my older sister Cheryl out in Nevada. She’d been a helo crew chief in Afghanistan with the 160th SOAR. I’d left a message for her two days before, but she’d never answered. If anyone didn’t do “safe” it was her. Where was she? Driving down some street in her truck? Or had she become one of the infected?
I dismissed the thought as we passed over the bright oasis of the university that had become the joint task force HQ. Something told me my sister wasn’t one of the ravenous ghouls. If anyone was going to survive this, it would be Cheryl. So I had to survive, too.
Zompoc Survivor:
Inferno
Acknowledgements
A lot of thank you’s accompany any book. No writer does it all on their own, especially not this one. This time out, I still owe a debt of thanks to some of the same good folks who made ZS: Exodus as good as it was.
As usual, no book of mine would ever be completed without my beloved, patient Randi. Without you, I might never have found my way to completing my first book. Now, four books later, you’re still at my side, and still the light of my life. I couldn’t ask for a better partner than you.
Linda Tooch, my chief editor, again thank you for a bang up job. ZS: Exodus still gets praise for the quality of the editing, and that is due to your hard work. Thank you for sticking with me on this one. Laura Davis, thank you for helping me remember to translate SCA jargon to plain English, and for providing me with a fresh perspective.
Seth Wilson, thank you for helping me get the details right on the SCA. Any mistakes are either mine or intentional for creative license…yeah, I meant to do that.
Special thanks go out to Jeff Claire from All Things Zombie and Danielle Pascale from the All Things Zombie Book Club for your support with Zompoc Survivor: Exodus and for beta reading Inferno for me. Without the constant support of the many awesome members of ATZ and ATZ’s Book Club, Exodus wouldn’t be the success it is now.
Finally, thank you Chuck Underhill for the last minute shortwave radio technical advice. And for that other thing. Keep going with that.
Dave’s Rules of Survival:
1. 98% of survival is mental. Attitude, knowledge and planning ahead will keep you alive when shit hits the fan.
2. Only 2% of survival is physical, but it’s an important 2%.
3. Rule of three: 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.
4. Plan ahead.
5. Always have a back up for everything. Have a Plan B, because Plan A almost never works.
6. Keep the basics for survival with you at all times.
7. Know your terrain.
8. Always carry a sharp knife.
9. Always know where the exits are and know how to get to them in a hurry and in the dark.
10. Always make sure you know where your clothes and your gear are, and be able to get to them in the dark.
11. Have at least two sources of light at all times.
12. Assume that people suck after shit hits the fan, and that they’re after your stuff.
13. Don’t be one of the people who suck after shit hits the fan.
14. Guns are not magic wands. If you point one at someone, don’t assume they’re going to automatically do what you tell them to. Be ready to pull the trigger if they don’t.
15. Assume every gun is loaded if you’re not in a fight. Don’t point a gun at anything you want to keep.
16. Don’t count on any gun you might pick up during a fight. There might be a very good reason it’s on the ground.
17. Never put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to pull it. Be sure of your target and what’s behind it if you do.
18. Know how shit works.
19. Never assume you know enough. Assume you always need to learn more.
20. If shit hasn’t hit the fan, it isn’t too late to prepare.
21. Always try your plan and gear out before you rely on it to keep you alive.
22. Watch out for your friends and family. No part of your survival prep is more important.
So let it be written…
Journal of Maya Weiss
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
My life just turned into a line from Bohemian Rhapsody. “Momma, just killed a man…” And that wasn’t the worst part of my day. You’d think that just waking up after the world turned into a Romero movie would be bad enough, but that was the one thing I WAS almost ready for. I mean, we practiced for it often enough. And I really hate zombie movies. No, the worst part of my day was watching the helicopter my daughter and my boyfriend were on go down over Kansas City. Dave asked me to make good on his promise and get Cassie and Bryce to Wyoming. He promised me he’d get Amy to Wyoming. Maybe he can; it would be the second time he pulled off the impossible lately.
The plane I was on didn’t fare much better. One of the engines had been shot up, and the pilot tried to land on I 70. I guess we were going to “land” no matter what, but they tried to make it as gentle as they could. We all got tossed around, but we only ended up with a couple of sprained wrists and some scrapes and bruises. Getting the trucks out was the hardest part, but it’s amazing how much a squad of Marines can do. They pushed the trucks off the plane and helped us get them off the palettes. We let Sherman and Leo out. Leo was a little miffed at me, I think. Sherman just decided to slobber all over me.
That was where things started to go wrong. Major Lynch took me to on
e side after I checked the trucks out and asked me what we planned to do. I told him we had a place to go, but not where. He didn’t ask me to tell him, but I could see he really wanted to. Then he asked me the question. Could we stay with the group for a while? Maybe I should have said no, but I couldn’t. When we went back to the rest of the group, he told everyone that he and his men were going to head back to Salina to find some vehicles and told everyone to stay in the plane.
An hour or so after they left, the trouble started. His name was Mitchell Hodges. Someone has to remember who he was. He came to me and told me he was taking the trucks. When I told him no, he asked me what was going to keep him from beating the shit out of me and taking them anyway. I was about to answer him when Porsche worked the pump on one of the shotguns and Sherman growled at him.
“That,” was all I could bring myself to say. He turned and walked away. I don’t know how, but I could tell he wasn’t done, and I put my hand on my pistol. I was right. He came at me and I shot him. “Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead.”
Chapter 1
At Hell’s Gate
~ It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.~ Virgil
I came to with the sound of gunshots and screaming in my ears. The world was a blur when I opened my eyes, but my hearing was still sharp enough to hear the tell-tale moans of infected and the sound of crazed laughter. Something moved to my right, and I swung at it. The back of my fist connected with whatever it was, and I tried to reach for it with my left hand. A band of fabric across my shoulder stopped me from moving more than a few inches, and I remembered I was strapped into a seat on a helicopter. I looked around, but my vision was still blurry. No movement on my left. Sound of something to my right. Without a thought, I reached out and grabbed at whatever was on my right. My hand fell on brittle, coarse hair; my fingers closed around it and I twisted. Something flopped on the Blackhawk’s rear deck, and chilled hands grasped at my forearms. My fuzzy vision showed me a straight line, dark on one side, light on the other. My arm straightened and I tried to line up whatever was in my hand with the border of light and shadow. The shock of impact against the door frame felt good, and the dull thud of the blow was almost musical. But it was missing something, something that my brain told me I just needed to hit a little harder to hear. So I did. The second hit didn’t get the job done, so I pulled my arm back a little further and slammed the thing’s skull forward again. The crack of bone brought a smile to my face, and I let go of the thing in my hand. There were other things I needed to break and kill.
The pop of gunfire behind me brought my thoughts into focus, and other sounds started to make it through the haze in my head. Gunfire, voices, the groan of metal, and a moan that wasn’t a zombie, all of them came clear at once. Across from me, I could see one of the Marines seated against the back of the compartment; she was turned in the seat, right hand on a bloody wound in the right leg of the Marine beside her, her left arm hanging bloody and limp at her side. On my left, Amy was slumped in her seat, and my heart froze in fear. The surviving pilot’s voice, the gunfire, the other Marine’s pleas to her squad mate, none of them mattered. I freed myself from the harness and dropped to one knee in front of Amy. Gently, I put my fingers under her nose and felt the slight flutter of air as she exhaled. Still breathing then. My vision seemed to be clearing slowly as I put my hand to her wrist and checked her pulse just to make sure. If she was still breathing, it made sense her heart was still beating, but I still had to check.
With Amy’s safety seen to, my brain shifted gears. She was okay for the moment, but I had to make sure she stayed that way. I looked out the right side of the Blackhawk’s door and saw a couple of the infected shambling across the gray surface we’d landed on. My brain replayed the last thing I remembered, the chopper not quite falling, not quite gliding toward the ground. Smoke all around us, parting at the last second to reveal a building beneath us. Then the chopper had tilted back for a moment before slamming forward hard. We were on top of a building, and there were infected on the roof. While one corner of my brain wondered why there were infected all the way up on the roof, the majority of my attention was on finding a weapon among the bodies on the blood slicked floor. I grabbed an M16 and hit the mag release. The black magazine dropped into my hand to reveal what looked like a full load. It certainly felt heavy enough. I popped it back in the well, pulled the charging handle and set the selector to single fire. I was ready to rock and roll.
“Armstrong, help me with Kale!” the wounded Marine called out as I brought the rifle up and took stock of the situation. Silence answered her. “Come on, Private! On your goddamn feet!”
“Bobcat, Talon three is down,” I heard the pilot calling out from the front. “The bird is grounded, casualties unknown. We’re under attack by infected.” Three pops came from up front. I put my sights on one of the infected and tried to keep the red dot centered in on its face when I pulled the trigger. The gun bucked against my shoulder, but the zombie’s head stayed intact. I fired twice more before I put a round through its left eye. I swung the gun to my right and found the other one. It went down on the second try, and I counted off five rounds. I glanced through the cockpit and saw several more coming toward us.
From the rear compartment I couldn’t get a good shot at them, so I hopped to the ground. The world tilted under my feet and I stumbled a couple of steps before I got my balance back. As close as these four were, it was easier to get a shot at their faces. It only took me ten shots to get four rounds into their skulls. A quick look at the far side of the chopper and to the rear showed me no infected, though the incessant moaning was still reaching my ears. I turned my head to follow the sound and nearly dropped the gun.
The building we’d landed on had another section butted up against it and a structure on the roof. It was hard to tell directions in the heavy smoke over the city, but the chopper’s nose was pointed diagonally across the roof, and the small structure was almost right in front of its nose on the opposite side. The infected I’d just shot had been near it. Off to my right across the roof was an unfinished looking section, and it was absolutely thick with infected, at least fifty if I had to guess. My slowly clearing vision also caught something else: several bodies between the unfinished section and the chopper. People I knew I hadn’t shot. The mysterious dead people could wait, though. I figured they’d stay dead for a little while longer, but unless I did something fast, odds were stacking up in favor of me being just as dead for just as long. Short of a bomb, there was no way I was going to kill that many infected with an assault rifle before they got to us. I couldn’t get that many rounds downrange in time.
An inhuman scream cut off my frantic search for options, and I looked back toward the unfinished section. Every one of the dead infected was looking my way now as another one, a ghoul in blue-green scrubs opened her mouth and let out another scream from the edge of the roof. The dead infected behind her started shuffling toward us like they had a purpose the second her voice ripped across my eardrums. The rifle was up to my shoulder before I could even think about it, and I put round after round into her torso. Her body jerked with the impact of each bullet, and I walked my rounds up her body until I was putting shots center mass. Finally, she fell to her knees, and I brought the red sight on her nose.
“Die, motherfucker,” I snarled as I pulled the trigger. The moment her head jerked back, the zombies stopped moving toward us for a moment, and I felt a brief sense of accomplishment. Then their collective gaze zeroed in on the chopper again, and desperation gave birth to a solution. What I needed was a way to put a lot of bullets into a lot of zombies in a very short time, and I had just the gun for that. I turned and staggered toward the chopper, hoping that at least one thing on the grounded aircraft still worked the way it was supposed to. I slid behind the minigun pointed it at the shuffling wall of doom and pulled both tr
iggers.
Nothing happened. I stifled a curse and tried to remember what the Marine had told me earlier. One trigger, then the other. Which one first? I tried the right trigger and again got a big dose of nothing when I pulled the left. I looked up as I let go of both triggers. The dead were halfway across the roof, and I pulled the left trigger. In front of me the gun’s barrels started spinning. My mouth twitched up on the right side as I squeezed the right trigger and sent fifty rounds a second downrange. Even though I couldn’t hear them hit over the roar of the minigun firing, I could see the bullets shredding flesh. I walked the first few hundred rounds at knee height, and turned fifty or so walking dead people into fifty plus crawling dead people. Once they were down I let up on the firing trigger and pointed it at one of the few that was still on its feet, a skinny corpse in a hospital gown. The tracers lanced out toward him and I put a stream of bullets through his spine before I turned it on the rest, letting the minigun burp a few more times until nothing stood in front of me. For good measure, I raked it back and forth across the crawlers, hoping to get a few head shots out of sheer volume. Body parts bounced and flew into the air as I raked the stream of bullets over the mass of zombies. Anything that raised its head got it blown off. Finally, all I heard was the sound of the barrels spinning and my own gasps. In front of me, some of the infected were still moving, but not nearly as fast.
The sound of buckles coming open hit my ears a split second before the pilot’s door opened and boots hit the rooftop. I let go of the minigun as the copilot came around the side with a pistol in one hand and a first aid kit in the other, gun up and looking for targets. My eyes went to the other side of the chopper, but there wasn’t much roof on that side, and no shambling cannibalistic dead people. I grabbed the M16 and took my time popping rounds into skulls until the magazine ran dry. The few that were left weren’t moving all that fast, and one was missing both arms. They could wait. A couple of steps got me to Amy. She was still breathing, and she let out a moan as I squatted in front of her.
