Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home

by Chesser, Shawn

  “Copy that,” Ari responded. In the next beat, the Ghost Hawk was changing direction. Over the ensuing two seconds, the mansion swung out of sight and the hillside filled up the cockpit glass.

  Five seconds after leaving the mansion and grounds behind them, Ari had flared the near-silent Ghost Hawk and adopted a steady hover a dozen yards above the snaking drive.

  The moment the helo leveled off, Skip started the starboard-side door powering back in its channels. Before the door had hit the stops, cool air thick with the stink of carrion and tinged by burned jet fuel was assaulting the cabin.

  Showing no fear, Skip leaned partway out into space, his nylon safety strap stretched tight and the down blast whipping at his uniform. As the helicopter spun on its axis, with the mansion coming into view through the open starboard-side door, Skip tossed the armed device into the inky darkness.

  The lifelike wail of a dying woman was blasting from the Screamer before it hit the ground.

  While Ari had been working the Ghost Hawk into position for Skip to do his thing, Haynes was busy reacquiring the Zs with the FLIR pod.

  With the wails from the Screamer rising above the decibel levels produced by the hovering helo, Haynes said, “Tracking the tangos.”

  Cade watched the whole thing play out on the flat-panel screen. In the middle distance, down the hill, rendered in shades of green and black, the zombies came to a lurching halt. As the raggedy first turns jostled against each other to get turned around, heads panned and mouths formed silent Os. Cade heard the hisses and moans in his head as the Zs turned clumsily and began a steady uphill march, toward the source of the screams.

  Ari said, “Fish on! Good job, Skip.” Hailing the other two ships in the flight by their unique call signs, he instructed them to orbit out of sight until the dead located the diversionary device.

  Hearing the warrant officer piloting the Stealth Chinook—Jedi One-Two—come back with an “Affirmative,” Ari nosed his bird around to the west and bled altitude to treetop level.

  With the Screamer doing its thing, Ari looped them around the estate. As he was putting the mansion between Jedi One-One, the pilot aboard the Comanche—Jedi One-Three—came on the net to confirm that the Zs were still tracking the device.

  Holding One-One in a hover below the crest of the hill south of the mansion, Ari said, “Now we wait, gentlemen.”

  During the initial low-level pass, Cade had spotted broken-out glass and obvious signs of smoke damage around the museum’s many south-facing windows. Addressing Ari, he asked: “Any idea who burned the place?”

  “Negative,” answered Ari. “Intel says it was looted early on. How it got this way is anyone’s guess.”

  Cade said, “I saw the bowser. Where’s our ground personnel?”

  Ari said, “Just hailed them. No answer so far.”

  Cade asked, “Did you pick up any movement during the pass?”

  “Negative,” Ari answered. “Skip?”

  “Negative,” said the crew chief.

  “Haynes,” Ari said, “switch to thermal.”

  “Going to thermal.” Manipulating the FLIR pod, Haynes zoomed in on the mansion’s northwest corner. Once the image steadied and the multi-wheeled, tarp-covered fuel bowser was framed fully on the screen, it was clear there were no human-shaped hot spots presenting in the vicinity.

  Cade said, “Contact the TOC, see what they know.”

  Ari said, “Wait one.”

  Thirty seconds crawled by.

  The thermal image remained unchanged, just the bowser backstopped by the mansion. Engine putting off no more heat than the rest of the vehicle, the bowser was but a dark silhouette against a much larger and equally dark silhouette.

  Ari came back on over the shared comms. “The team answered last check-in ninety minutes ago.” He paused and fixed Cade with a hard stare. “Unless they show their faces soon, we are on our own.”

  Shaking his helmeted head, Cade thought, Eff you, Murphy. Before he could respond to Ari, the Comanche pilot was back on the net with news that the Zs were clear of the grounds and almost to the diversionary device.

  Ari ordered One-Two to refuel first. As the Chinook pilot confirmed and began to roll in, Ari said, “One-Three, One-One. You belly up next. We’ll assume overwatch for you while you’re wheels down.”

  “One-One, One-Three. Solid copy. We’ll repay the favor when you’re wheels down.”

  Once Ari finished his reply and had signed off, Cade covered his mike and walked his gaze about the cabin. Raising his voice to be heard over the turbine noise, he said, “Anyone want to volunteer to assist Skip with the hot refuel?”

  Watching Jedi One-Two settle on the concrete parking pad beside the bowser, Griff said, “I’m game. Someone else has to wash the windows, though. I’m no good with a squeegee.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes after arriving at the FARP, Jedi One-One’s turn at the bowser came.

  As Cade watched the Comanche rise from the parking pad and its wheels tuck back up into its sleek fuselage, he felt the Ghost Hawk under him go nose down and bank hard to port.

  “Wheels down in ten,” Ari said over the shipwide comms. “I got good news and bad news. Which do you boys want to hear first?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he made an executive decision, saying, “OK … good news first. There will be enough JP left for us.” He paused only long enough to again meet Cade’s gaze. “Bad news is, Mister Murphy is cornholing us for the second time today. Lock and load boys, all the refueling activity has drawn the Zs away from Skip’s toy.”

  Cade saw the bad news confirmed on the monitor. Sure enough, the entire herd was turned around and staggering down the narrow drive leading to the mansion. Wasting no time, he ordered Nat and Cross to exfil ahead of Skip and Griff once the helo was wheels down. They were to take up positions a dozen yards from the door, one at each end of the bird—their sole job while Skip worked the controls on the bowser and Griff connected the fuel hose would be to protect the helo and make dead certain nothing got near the tail rotor. For if the whirring blades suffered any damage, One-One would likely be grounded. And should that happen, only way out was an emergency extraction aboard an already crowded Jedi One-Two and a very uncomfortable ride from there on out.

  Cade followed up his instructions by saying that he would trail the refueling team out the door and take up a position equidistant to the helo and bowser. His job would be to cover Skip and Griff while they worked on refueling their ride.

  Ten seconds after the Comanche rocketed skyward from the rectangle of white cement barely a dozen yards west of the fuel bowser, Jedi One-One’s wheels were fully deployed and the matte-black helo was taking the prototype gunship’s place.

  The troop compartment door hit the stops as One-One’s wheels made contact with terra firma. In rushed air thick with the damp-earth smell of decaying vegetation and the ever-present nose of burning jet fuel.

  Leading the Pale Riders out the door, Skip hit the ground running. Head down, muscled arms and legs pumping, Griff stuck like glue to the crew chief.

  When the rest of the team’s boots hit the ground, they were all business. There was no cracking wise, no ball breaking, and no wasted movement as they took up their assigned positions.

  Chapter 56

  Five minutes into the hot refuel, it was crystal clear to Cade that, once again, Mister Murphy was not going to cooperate. The evidence came to him in the form of an ominous report from Jedi One-Three, circling high above the operation.

  Over his headset, Cade heard: “Anvil Actual, this is One-Three overwatch.” The pilot didn’t wait for confirmation the team leader on the ground copied his transmission. Instead, he went on, saying: “Be advised, I have eyes on multiple ambulatory dead closing on you from the west. Apologies for the short notice. The bastards didn’t show up on my initial thermal sweep.”

  Cupping his boom mike, Cade said, “One-Three, Anvil Actual. Good copy. How long do we have until contact? How many bodie
s do you have eyes on?”

  “They’re danger close. I count twenty. I repeat: two … zero … tangos are just now emerging from the vineyard. They’re funneling through the two rows nearest your position.”

  Though he knew the term “danger close” was never used loosely by aviators, he asked, “Can you put some ordnance on them?”

  Negative,” said the Comanche pilot. “Not with the hot refuel still underway.”

  “Copy that,” Cade replied. “Anvil Actual, out.”

  No way he could allow this new development to affect the refueling. If they were to abort now, there was no guarantee command back at Peterson could get another tanker out to them before they went bingo on fuel. Then there were the logistics of keeping the other two birds in the flight airborne.

  It was crystal clear to Cade that any way he gamed it, it was imperative that they finish what they started. Taking the bull by the horns, he got on the comms and ordered Nat to shift his focus to protecting the refueling team. Looking to Griff, he motioned the SEAL to the northwest corner of the building and told him in no uncertain terms that the Zs were not to advance past his position.

  Hoping he hadn’t just spread his team too thin, Cade ducked his head and hustled around the Ghost Hawk’s angular snout. Along the way he met Ari’s gaze. The aviator was not his usual jovial self. In fact, there was worry in his eyes.

  As Cade proceeded to the helo’s port side, he saw Haynes in the left seat. Mouth moving a mile a minute, the big man was pointing over his left shoulder.

  Over the comms, Cade heard: “Zeds at my eight o’clock!” In the usually jovial man’s voice were equal parts fear and incredulity. Where the Zs were coming from was anyone’s guess.

  Going to one knee twenty feet from the port-side cockpit door, with the tips of the whirring rotor blades but a shiny black blur overhead, Cade shouldered his M4 and sighted on the first of the Zs beginning to spill from the overgrown vineyard’s gloomy depths.

  Framing the twisted face of a female Z with the EOTech optic atop his rifle, Cade settled the red reticle between its eyes and pressed the trigger two times.

  The shell casings flying from the rifle’s ejection port were batted down by the rotor wash and sent skittering across the cement drive.

  As the face-shot Z toppled forward, Cade targeted the one next in line and delivered another lethal double-tap dead-center on its forehead. Having been practicing the Mozambique Drill the day before, it was all Cade could do to keep from putting two in the third creature’s chest and one in the middle of its pallid face. Reminding himself to save that technique for the enemy Chicoms, he pumped a pair of rounds between its dull eyes.

  Seeing the third corpse slump atop the pair of twice-dead Zs at the mouth of the right-side row of vines, Cade tracked his muzzle left, to the pair of zombies struggling to break free of the clutching vines the next row over.

  The Z in the lead was short and heavily tanned. Most of the middle-aged man’s clothing had deteriorated to rags, leaving not much to the imagination. A wound stretched from ear to ear under its chin. It was bloodless and rippled like gills on a fish as the Z staggered into the open. To Cade it appeared as if someone had opened the guy’s neck with a straight razor. The lack of blood on the sagging jeans and tattered polo-style shirt suggested he was already one of them when suffering the injury. The missing craters of flesh peppering its Popeye-like forearms, each ringed by raised, ragged flesh, all but confirmed Cade’s theory.

  As a long, drawn-out moan rumbled from within its barrel chest, Cade overlaid the red pip on its nose and pressed the trigger two times.

  The first hurtling hunk of lead punched out its left eye. The second 5.56 hardball round hit just to the right of the first, causing a flap of pale skin to peel back, most of the left ear with it.

  When the Z fell to its knees, its upper torso got caught up in the wire strung between support posts. A final moan was just crossing its lips when three more shamblers emerged from the gloom.

  The first of the trio, a boy of about six when he joined the ranks of the dead, was stopped in its tracks by the gnarled roots and vines crowding in on the kneeling corpse. Since turning, the four-footer had accumulated a bird’s nest of twigs in its curly mop of brown hair. With every labored step the Z took to break free of the grabby vines, the multitude of gunshot wounds stitching its torso opened and closed like so many tiny, purple-lipped mouths.

  Maggots no bigger than a grain of rice wriggled from the pulsating wounds and spread out across the Z’s narrow, bony chest.

  That the Z was a kid didn’t register on Cade’s give-a-shit radar. He was a threat to mission continuity and had to be dealt with.

  Cade’s M4 barked twice. The pair of bullets, traveling at roughly 3,000-feet-per-second, split the undead boy’s skull like an overripe cantaloupe. The kinetic energy behind the one-two punch lifted him off his feet, sending a moist cloud of maggots, confetti-like, into the air. As the ruptured head continued on the backward trajectory—trailing large chunks of brain tissue, flecked bone, and encompassed by a halo of brackish blood—the already compromised abdomen wall tore from navel to sternum, releasing a torrent of maggot-infested entrails.

  The Zs following the twice-dead boy out of the vineyard’s dark maw shook the vertical two-by-twos keeping the rows straight. As a result, the kneeling corpse was shaken loose and fell atop the boy.

  The dam broken, Zs spilled forth, trampling the pair of corpses into the soft soil as they tumbled out of the vineyard in twos and threes.

  Bodies fell left and right. Arms and legs windmilled limply.

  This was the epitome of a target-rich environment.

  Cade continued firing his weapon until its mag was empty and the bolt locked open.

  Like lemmings over a ledge, the Zs kept coming.

  Transitioning from rifle to pistol, Cade let the M4 fall on its single-point sling and dragged the Glock from its holster.

  There was no time for a press check. He aimed and began to burn through the fifteen-round magazine.

  The third Z to fall victim to a pair of 9mm rounds fired from Cade’s Glock was still on its way to the ground when a barrage of gunfire from Cade’s right cut into the female first turn following it.

  Knowing that at least one of his team members had joined the fight, Cade emptied the last of the Glock’s magazine into the dark void behind the face-shot female Z. As he dumped the spent mag and jammed a fresh one into the mag well, he cast a quick side-eyed glance to his right.

  Spotting Griff standing a dozen feet away, MP7 shouldered and in the middle of a tactical reload of his own, Cade bellowed, “You got a SITREP for me, Griff?”

  Griff responded, telling Cade the bird was refueled and Cross and Nat had their hands full with the other herd.

  “I think we’re getting to the end here,” Cade responded.

  Griff said nothing. His rifle was already doing the talking for him.

  In just a matter of seconds, coinciding with Cade shooting his third magazine dry and the Glock’s slide locking open, he and Nat were encircled by three dozen twice-dead corpses. The ground all around the pair of Pale Riders was littered with spent brass, rotting gray matter, and pooling, brackish blood. Leaves ripped from the vines by the rotor wash dotted the glossy black puddles.

  Having just reloaded and thumbed the Glock’s slide forward, his attention focused solely on the rows of vines to his fore, Cade heard Ari come on over the net and order everyone to disengage and ready for launch.

  Turning toward the Ghost Hawk, Cade saw Skip manning the port minigun and the door to the crew chief’s left beginning to slide open. As he started to sprint toward their ride, Nat and Cross could be seen piling in the starboard-side door.

  Both Cade and Griff ducked their heads and did the same, through the port-side door, their weapons clattering on the cabin floor as gloved hands grabbed hold and hauled them aboard.

  Already light on its landing gear, the turbine transitioning from a docile whin
e to a banshee-like howl, the Ghost Hawk shuddered once then climbed swiftly away from the blood-soaked parking pad.

  “Did we acquire any unwanted passengers?” Ari asked over the shipwide comms.

  Cross peered out the open door. “Negative. All clear to starboard.”

  Looking groundward, past the minigun’s protruding barrel, Skip said, “Port-side all clear.”

  Fighting the loading G forces, Griff rose to his knees, grabbed hold of the nearby bulkhead, then slid his backside onto his seat. After strapping himself in, he bellowed “Go to Hell, Murphy!” and flipped both middle fingers at the scene falling away below the helo.

  Flat on his back, chest rising and falling as he greedily gulped much needed oxygen, all Cade was thinking about was his daughter and the poor advice he imparted upon leaving.

  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

  Chapter 57

  Raven had retrieved the Schwinn from the bushes where she’d stashed it earlier. She rode around the Antlers’ east side, continued a block north on South Cascade, then circled back to the west on Kiowa Street.

  Pedaling the beach cruiser down the center of Kiowa, she passed by the Penrose Library, a multi-story stone and brick structure that reminded her a lot of the sturdy old Pioneer courthouse in downtown Portland. Across the street from the library was St. Mary’s Cathedral—a hundred-and-twenty-year-old church designed in the Gothic Revival style. With multiple spires and lots of stained-glass windows, at night it looked to Raven more like a Transylvanian castle than a place where one worshiped God.

  A run of thirty or so stairs rose from the street to an ornate stone landing fronting a pair of massive oak doors. Standing sentinel above the covered entry was a near life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary. With a demure look on her alabaster face and outstretched arms, it seemed to Raven that the statue was offering her absolution for—or maybe even embracing—what she was about to do.