Zournal (Book 6): The Final Countdown

by R. S. Merritt

  I chose to ignore him as I climbed up the ladder and settled in with the rest of them. Walker had wandered off as well and now he came back carrying a box of MREs. He tossed six of them up in the back of the truck and we all started dividing them based on what each of us liked to eat. There is a surprising variety of food to be found in the military issued meals ready to eat packages. It was also surprising how the different items all seem to taste the same.

  I opened up a pack of crackers and used them to scoop out the chili and beans package I had picked. I looked over at Ann. She might as well have been the Majors daughter. Her outfit looked like she had just picked it up from the mall. Everything on her matched. Her hair looked great. It really kind of pissed me off. What the hell where these people doing focusing on things like remembering to use conditioner when we were all constantly five minutes from death? It was ridiculous.

  “What’s the matter?” Ann was looking over at me. My face must have reflected my anger at her for having such perfect hair.

  Realizing there was no way to explain what I had been thinking of, I chose to go with repeating the conversation I had with Abraham. Everyone agreed the idea to lift the trailer had been inspired but that it was probably too tricky to pull off. Everyone also agreed killing every Zombie in the area wasn’t going to work out. This time it was Ann who had the light bulb pop up over her head.

  “We might not be able to do something crazy like lift the trailer up in the air but what if they hooked it up to the two helicopters and drug the trailer behind them? We should be able to drag something. Assuming we don’t build up enough Zombie bodies in front of it to keep it from moving.”

  That idea sounded good to us. We tossed it around some and came up with different scenarios. We decided they’d have to send in some of the Seals to rig up the ropes at night, when the Zombies were not as alert. Once the rigs were ready, the helicopters would touch down and have approximately five seconds to get them attached and get themselves back in the air before being overwhelmed by Zombies. Unless we cut loose with every bullet anyone had on them at that exact second to distract and kill Zombies so the Seals could get the ropes hooked up to the Chinooks and the Chinooks could get back in the air before they got overwhelmed. Someone would have to detach the remains of the truck from the trailer as well. We figured that might require a blow torch or some other explosive.

  Walker wandered back over to see how we were doing and we told him the plan we had come up with. By the time we got to the cutting part he was getting pretty excited. He said we may just be able to dump a bunch of acid on it and when they started tugging on the trailer it would fall apart. We started going over some more of the details and he told us to hang on a second and he left. He came back with Wilson who listened to our idea with interest as well then went and got the Captain.

  The Captain listened to our idea with interest and asked a lot of insightful questions and made some suggestions himself. He asked more about the land there and obstructions and the density of Zombies at night opposed to day. After we had gone through it all he stood there with his head in his hands for a minute then smiled at us.

  “Well. So much for Annapolis training and decades of secret ops. Your plan is way better than what we were coming up with. Don’t get me wrong. All kinds of shit could go wrong with yours but as of now we’re officially on plan Ann. Who I understand is dating Steve.”

  “Actually.” Ann spoke up. “He still hasn’t pulled off a first date. I still love him though. Especially his sparkly backpack. Now, when do put this plan in motion?”

  The Captain said we were going to put it in operation right away. Which turned out to be military and government speak for about an hour from then. A troop transport showed up while we were all sitting around. The Captain and those guys were working through the details on the plan. They’d brought all kinds of crap with them in the helicopter including tons of rope and even a barrel of the acid. They also had crate upon crate of ammo. The troop transport pulled in and we all went over the plan together.

  Come night time a handful of the Seals would take the monster truck and insert as close as they could to the wrecked trailer. They’d work their way on foot to it carrying the rope and acid. Once there, they’d hook everything up and dump the acid on the connection between the trailer and the truck. Once they had rigged the rope and had everything ready they’d click the radio to signal us to move in. The bulk of the Seals would squeeze into the troop transport with the boxes of ammo and setup on the buildings overlooking the field. As soon as the helicopters swooped in they’d be in charge of blasting away and causing as much confusion as possible. They were rigging explosives to go off to distract the Zombies as well and get them away from the trailer.

  With all this going on the rest of us would land in the helicopters and the Seals would work on tying the trailer to the helicopters. Once secured, we would take off. The huge helicopters would go in separate directions at first and create a ‘V’ shape to drag the trailer. We were leaving it up to the pilots to work out how that would work out best. Once we were moving the Seals in the buildings would go back to the transport and drive it a few miles away. We’d meet them at that rendezvous and unload the girls and weapons and transfer everything to the helicopters and the troop transport and head back towards the base.

  Our plans normally could be conveyed in like two sentences and still get all fucked up. I didn’t give this one much of a chance. Whatever, it got us moving and made everybody happy so full speed ahead. It was time to go rescue Catori’s sister and Marg’s daughter and keep our promises. I was acutely aware I’d sworn to die with them if I couldn’t get them out and I fully intended to do that if I had to.

  I also really wanted to nuke the Koreans.

  Entry 3: No Battle Plan Survives First Contact

  The transport and the monster truck left around seven to get into position. We had Zombies starting to show up in larger and larger numbers at the parking lot we were hanging out in. The Captain had a few Seals up on the roofs sniping away as the Zombies wandered in. Of course, every time they fired a shot that just attracted more Zombies. It didn’t matter a whole lot since the plan was for us to be out of here in about three hours anyway. Hanging out in the dark wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun as the Zombies kept streaming in our direction.

  I got off the moldy couch in the front lobby of the building we were sitting in and walked over to where the helicopters were. I wanted to let the Captain know my opinion of us hanging out in this parking lot another few hours. I found him sitting on the floor of the helicopter. He was going over maps with Wilson and a couple of other officers. I coughed. They all looked over at me, expectantly.

  “Hey. We were just talking and with all the noise we made landing and the sniper fire we’re bound to have a lot of Zombies headed our way. Instead of trying to protect this spot could we lift off and fly out into the middle of the desert while we wait for them to get the trailers all rigged up?”

  Abraham said that sounded like a good idea to him and no one else had a problem with it so about ten minutes later we were all airborne. Daisy was flipping out but I refused to let Ann drug her again. I figured drugging Daisy would somehow wind up with me having to carry her, again. I’d spent way too much time lately lugging around that dog. I really hoped she didn’t take a dump in the helicopter. I didn’t think our current companions would be too thrilled if that happened although Daisy had definitely taken on a kind of sacred mascot status with the Seals so maybe that would keep them from chunking her out the open bay window.

  We set down after flying for less than ten minutes. That was enough time to put us out in the middle of nowhere. Sentries were set and we all sat back down to wait. An hour later, I was waiting for Daisy to sniff every rock in the desert to decide the exact one she wanted to piss on when we got the message it was time to go. I gave it a few more seconds and luckily Daisy discovered the perfect spot. I turned around and saw the whole Seal team basically s
taring out at me waiting for the dog to get done. I picked her up and carried her back to the helicopter to speed up the process of throwing her in. I only got a little bit of pee on me so I counted it a win.

  A minute later we were airborne, again. At this point, the connection between the truck and the trailer should be covered in acid to weaken it so it would be fragile enough to break easy. The Seals should have the ropes tightened around the trailer to allow it to be drug along between the two giant helicopters we were in. Each helicopter had the power to actually lift the entire trailer off the ground and carry it somewhere but we thought dragging it would be safer. We didn’t have the right equipment to fasten the ropes on safely enough to risk flying even if we had wanted to try it that way. It occurred to me now, that we could have just lifted it a few feet off the ground and there would not have been much more risk than we were going to have by dragging it. Too late now.

  As we started getting close, stuff started getting blown up. The idea was to attract the Zombies to all different corners of the base to thin out the number we had to deal with while trying to get the helicopters hooked up to the trailers. We were going to land these noisy ass helicopters in the middle of thousands of Zombies and try to tie a giant weight to the bottom of it then drag it back down the road. Why had no one called out this plan as being insanely suicidal? No time to change course now. We were going to get one shot at this so we might as well give it a hundred percent. If motion was life out here then another lesson I had learned was that doing something half ass was also a good way to end up dead.

  Whole ass it was then. The Seals had attached the fifty caliber machine guns everywhere they had a mount for one. I didn’t know if they had done some work on this one or they were always designed to be this flexible but we’d be able to put out fire to cover most of our perimeter. Seals had a portable fifty they were setting up to cover the portions in front of us. Everyone had a shitload of ammo. It wouldn’t be enough to mow down the thousands of Zombies out here but all we needed to do was hold them at bay long enough to hook up the ropes and get rolling.

  We came in low and dark. The Seals on the trailer were signaling to the pilots with infrared lights to show them where to land. It sounded like giant waves crashing on the beach when we started flying over the thousands of Zombies. They were all up on their feet and screaming out their frustration. They knew the loud flying machine had normal humans in it and they wanted to rip us apart. We were going to give them their chance.

  We started swooping in to land. The gunners started going crazy trying to kill enough Zombies to make it possible for the pilots to set the big birds down. We landed and Ann, Ginny, Reeves and I all took up our spots by the open bays to help pick off any Zombie who made it through the line. We were flooding the area around us with the chopper lights now that we had landed. This was making us a giant beacon for the Zombies in the neighborhood but not a lot to do about it. We were already a giant beacon due to the noise we were making anyway.

  I looked out my window and saw the wall of Zombies that were attacking that the gunners were working to keep off us. I started lining up shots for any Zombies that made it through the hole. There were guys running around on the outside of the helicopter as well. I assumed those were the crazy Seals who had come in and prepped the trailers to be tied to the bottom of the helicopters. I almost shot one of them when he popped up in front of me out of nowhere. Crazy bastard gave me a big grin and a thumb up before disappearing back under the chopper.

  If I didn’t already have permanent hearing damage this was going to take care of that. Multiple fifty caliber machine guns going like crazy. Shit exploding all around us. Zombies screaming their heads off. Me yelling and shooting as fast as I could. Chopper blades whirring above us. The lights were eerie. We were in a nightmare. If a single thing went wrong we’d all die. A single barrel melting down at the wrong time on us would kill us. It was like trying to punch a waterfall to death.

  A bunch of Seals jumped on board and we started jolting our way up into the air. Everyone kept focused and kept shooting. Aiming was less of a requirement since it was pretty much impossible to miss at this point. I was just reloading and blasting away into the screaming mass of seething Zombie flesh below. The gunner had me move out of the way so he could swap out his smoking barrel with a fresh one. We were shooting so many rounds so fast that we were literally melting the barrels of these guns.

  I turned and looked out the window behind me that Ann had been covering with the gunner over there. I saw that helicopter jerking up into the air as well. Something was wrong with it though. As if reading my mind, searchlights from the helicopter we were in started shining on the other helicopter. It was about eighty yards off so it was hard to make out what was going on but it looked like they had gotten overrun. Zombies were in the back of the helicopter and there were no flashes from the barrel of the guns. All it took was one gun jamming and we would have been in the same place as they were.

  We hovered for a minute and I saw that we were letting the other copter try pulling the trailer first. The Captain must have given the order based on that trailer having fewer resources left alive on it. Being military pilots they knew what the deal was and accepted with grace. They had actually volunteered for this mission and come up with the idea of them trying out the dangerous maneuver first. They started moving forward.

  The ropes tightened underneath them. Trailing in a rapidly straightening line down to the trailer below. The trailer with our dead friend’s sisters and daughters in it. I was hoping the Seals who had been responsible for rigging the ropes had found a way to let the girls know what was going on. Otherwise, this could be a really horrifying experience for them. If he’d let them know they also would have had the chance to try and square everything away so they wouldn’t be crushed by tumbling nuclear suitcases or anything.

  We all watched as the helicopter bounced backwards in the air when it reached the point it should have been towing the trailer at. I couldn’t see the trailer below us but I hoped they had yanked hard enough to break the connection between the trailer and the truck. Hopefully, the acid would do its job and weaken that link enough for it to break. The helicopter moved forward again and this time it looked like it was actually moving forward. Albeit it was bouncing around a lot. Our pilot started moving us forward to assist in the dragging operation.

  Our plan had not taken into account all of the light poles and other things the tow ropes would need to navigate. The pilots had brought it up but we had been pretty confident the road itself did not have any power poles on it. Looking now, we could see that the road had multiple power poles on it. With multiple wires going between them. I guess we’d all just filtered those out when we had proposed our plan. I’m sure the pilots had probably figured we just didn’t remember they were there. Hopefully they had a plan to get around our little memory lapse.

  The plan turned out to be trying to go real fast and see if they could just rip the poles and wires out of the way. I admired their guts but was wishing they’d put a little more thought into it. Or, maybe I was the one who needed just shut up and sit there. I’d never flown anything outside of my neighbor’s drone. Which I crashed. After he told me it was the idiot proof one that self-corrected to cover your mistakes. I quickly proved I was somewhere below the idiot level by not just crashing it but crashing it into the road behind a car that backed out over it. Take that idiot proof! Luckily the apocalypse had come along since I had nowhere near the money to pay him back.

  The other helicopter was pulling on the rope and we were starting to move forward. It hit the first pole and tried speeding up to get the rope past the wires going over the middle of the street. We watched as the helicopter started doing some crazy aerobatics before finally smashing into the ground. It had crashed hard enough to crack open the door to the cockpit and as we hovered over with searchlights shining down on the cockpit below we watched the pilots get ripped apart by the Zombies who streamed in on them. The pi
lots did not fight back or anything. I fervently hoped that they had both been unconscious the entire time they were being eaten alive.

  Their sacrifice had ripped out the wire so now we would be able to fly down the middle of the street unimpeded. At least until we ran into the next wire that went across the street. The helicopter felt different as we took on the full weight of dragging the trailer down the road. The engines were straining and the entire vehicle was vibrating. I could only imagine the trailer itself was probably covered in Zombies. The other problem was going to be that we weren’t moving fast enough to really make a ton of headway on the Zombies. They were going to continue after us no matter what. We were only moving forward at a few miles per hour at this point.

  I had no idea if we may speed up or not at some point but figured the pilots were going as fast as they thought they could without losing the trailer.

  The helicopter stopped and hovered for a minute.

  We started rising straight into the air. The pilots must be making the call that dragging it wasn’t going to work.

  Entry 4: If at First You Don’t Succeed

  Everything was happening directly beneath us so we couldn’t see crap. Looking down out of the open gun bays we could just see a vast carpet of illuminated Zombie faces staring up at us and screaming. The noise hit us like physical waves. Knocking us around in the air and threatening to break our sanity. We could only guess at what was going on by the way the helicopter was getting jerked in different directions. I motioned to Ann that I’d be right back and I started squeezing my way through the long cargo hold to the front of the helicopter where Wilson and the other officers had been stationed.