by Mark Tufo
Keying the mike, Cade replied, “About a mile ahead. There’s a helicopter blocking the road… and lots of undead between us and it.”
Duncan motioned for the radio. Harry handed it over.
“This is Duncan. If it still has electrical and fuel, I think I can fly that bird.”
Since there would be plenty of paper laying around if they all survived the day, Cade jokingly made Duncan an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“Roger that. I’ll pay you ten million dollars if you can fly us out of this predicament.”
“You got it big spender,” Duncan replied, knowing full well his chain was being yanked. He disappeared back into his truck, tromped the gas pedal and left black stripes on the sun-bleached gray asphalt as he hauled ass towards the helicopter.
They plowed over as many of the walking dead as they could on the way to the grounded helo.
Duncan had been mentally going through preflight checklists from decades ago. The helicopter sitting in front of them was a Utah Air National guard UH-60 Black Hawk. It appeared air worthy but the pilot was still strapped in, dead and slumped over the controls.
To Cade’s trained eye, judging by the different types of spent shell casings, it was apparent this ambush was orchestrated by the same group that killed Rawley, Leo and Sheila. The ambush victims’ bodies were placed in a row behind the burned out hulk of a Humvee. The naked corpses had high and tight haircuts, and all of the bodies still had dog tags around their necks as well. Two of the troops had been hit in the head by a large caliber weapon and had most likely died instantly. The other two men weren’t as lucky; they had been tortured. Their bodies were covered with purple welts and crisscrossed with deep cuts. Both soldiers had their necks cut ear to ear and one of the men had a large swastika gouged into his chest.
Peeling his eyes from the dead servicemen, he could feel the anger and hatred towards the despicable men that had committed these acts welling up in him. No sense living in the past. Those bastards already paid for this. Cade turned his attention to their escape.
“Well, can you fly this model?” he asked Duncan with a concerned look on his face.
“If it spools up, I can fly the bird. They all have the same controls, a collective/throttle, cyclic and anti-torque pedals. No problem,” Duncan said, sounding more confident than he really was.
Duncan left his pickup on the shoulder of the road and grabbed the shotgun and the backpack containing his few personal belongings. On the lookout for undead, he cautiously covered the distance to the helicopter. The road weary veteran heaved his pack into the crew compartment of the Black Hawk. With a heavy heart he looked at the man still strapped in the gurney. He had been dead for some time and was most likely the patient the medevac chopper had been summoned for in the first place. Duncan hauled his old frame up into the cramped confines of the Black Hawk. With Harry’s help they removed the gurney to free up room.
Duncan placed the corpse on the ground near the others. The fire in the distance loomed larger on the horizon and loud cries of the dead carried forth, riding the hot desert wind. Duncan returned to the grim task of removing the pilot’s body. After making sure that he was indeed dead, Duncan unbuckled his safety harness and gently, out of respect for the man in uniform, carried him to the roadside and lowered him to the ground next to the other dead soldiers. Duncan unclasped the chin strap and removed the flight helmet from the fallen aviator. He stood back a step and gave the slain men a final crisp salute. The dead that stay dead really are the fortunate ones. When will the madness end? he thought, shedding a rare tear. It was a very poignant moment for Harry and Cade who looked on from a distance.
Duncan worked to figure out the helicopter’s intricate avionics. The Hueys he used to fly in Viet Nam were like Model T’s compared to this UH-60.
Cade hastily assembled the sniper rifle and scanned the oncoming highway and surrounding woods. He searched for the source of the moans; they had been growing louder by the minute. A lone, partially clothed figure shuffled through the shimmering thermal distortion cast up from the hot blacktop. The female walker had a half limping, part shuffling gait, her bare breasts keeping cadence with her flopping head. She looked like a marshmallow left in the fire too long. Cade rested the cross hairs on the crispy critter’s brow; milky white eyes stared through what remained of the charred face. Slowly he pulled the trigger. The ghoul’s head split down the middle and like a cracked egg, her cooked brain slid out. At once another walker took her place.
Harry and Cade kept up their steady firing, thinning out the advancing undead.
Duncan swore as he scanned the multitude of switches which glowed in muted reds and greens. Thankfully the helicopter did have electrical power and the main fuel gauge registered one quarter of a full load. Duncan guessed they would have a hundred mile range, maybe two.
Harry fired the SKS at the army of undead. The familiar sound was reassuring to Cade’s ears, even if it was Harry wielding the weapon. Switching from the sniper rifle to his M4 allowed Cade a greater rate of fire. The undead were now piling up in a semi-circle flanking the helicopter. After an agonizingly long wait the turbine finally whined to life. Looking over his shoulder Cade saw the rotor blades spooling up and a grinning Duncan triumphantly flashing him a thumbs up.
Cade sprinted to the vehicles to begin transferring the guns and supplies. The distinctive sonic cracks from bullets whipping by his head got his undivided attention. Someone was shooting at them. Using his truck for cover, he looked through the windows in the direction he thought the fire had come from. There were several motorcycles and a bright yellow civilian Hummer2 closing on them from the west. The shooter was hanging out of the moving Hummer’s passenger window.
Cade slapped a fresh magazine in the carbine and aimed at the windshield of the Hummer. Two controlled bursts from the M4 spider webbed the glass on the driver’s side. This caused the big SUV to swerve and careen over three of the motorcycles, pulping the riders on the pavement, before rolling in a bright yellow blur of exploding glass and scraping metal.
The rest of the motorcycles stopped in the middle of the road; the riders dismounted and crouched behind their Harleys. The silhouette of a man shouldering a very long rifle presented itself in front of the setting sun. A hand grabbed Cade’s shoulder and pulled him towards the noisy Black Hawk. Cade spun and followed with only his M4 to show from his aborted trip to the vehicles. Harry turned about and hobbled to the big helicopter. Both men climbed aboard and strapped themselves into jump seats in the open passenger compartment.
The smell of the Black Hawk’s exhaust and the odor of the dead assailed their nostrils. Bullets were beginning to impact the fuselage, metallic pings sounding as Duncan twisted the throttle and applied full power. The Black Hawk bolted into the darkening cobalt sky at ten feet a second. Harry wasn’t used to the sensation of lift off. Feeling green and awash in nausea, he fired the last of his ammo at the ghouls. The ground rushed away, unfortunately the dead didn’t. One of the undead had gotten both hands wrapped around one of the wheel struts. Harry fired at the top of its head, causing the creature to lose purchase. He looked on with grim satisfaction as it freefell one hundred and twenty feet to earth, leaving a grimy crater in the desert soil.
Even though he knew they were at max range for the carbine, Cade continued firing at the bikers until his magazine was empty and the bolt locked open.
On the ground below Richard Ganz, leader of the Nomad Jesters, was on bent knee steadying the Barrett sniper rifle across the handlebars of his Harley. His target was the man piloting the helicopter. He smoothly increased tension on the trigger, the bullet left the muzzle at 2800 feet a second and passed harmlessly under the fuselage. Ganz chambered another round, steadied and took another shot. The result was the same; the helicopter was now too far away, even for the sniper rifle. Enraged, Ganz pulled his Desert Eagle Magnum from the leather holster on his hip and shot his newest prospect point blank in the head. The big biker’s temper was
legendary. He led the Jesters with an iron fist and was indiscriminate in who he killed before the breakdown of society. Now he had no one to answer to and his tantrums went unchecked.
The young prospect lay in the middle of the highway bleeding from the head and slowly turning pale. Ganz mounted his Harley, kick started it and headed away from the advancing ghouls. Left with little choice, the remnants of his gang followed.
Duncan threw the co-pilot’s helmet to Cade and pointed out the others hanging next to the medical litters. Cade plugged the flexible coiled wire into the comms jack on the bulkhead above him. Harry followed suit and plugged in after donning a helmet. Duncan’s voice came through loud and clear in both men’s helmets. “We were between the proverbial rock and a hard place back there. Thank God for Igor Sikorsky.”
“Did any of their gunfire damage the helo?” Cade asked.
“Doesn’t feel like it. Why? Are we leaking something I can’t see?”
“No, just checking. I felt bullets impacting as we lifted off.”
“I’ll watch the gauges closely. Cade, what do you know about these newfangled radios?” Duncan asked with a hint of exasperation showing in his voice.
Working the seatbelt buckles loose, Cade said “I’m going to unstrap and move into the copilot’s seat. Hold her level and steady.”
“I think it’s all coming back to me now. Kinda like riding a bicycle, you know.”
“What now guys?” Harry asked through the inflight communications.
Ignoring Harry, Duncan shouted “Hallelujah my fellow flying friends. I just realized what an ERFS is.”
“I’m sitting on pins and needles… enlighten us” Cade said.
“While I thought we had about two hundred miles of range, I was mistaken. When I flip this switch…” Duncan paused for effect.
“Just spit it out man,” Harry said sounding a little pissed off.
Duncan spoke. “Those stubby wings on the side of her usually hold guns and missiles, but this is a dust-off bird equipped with extra external fuel tanks. Voilà!” Duncan exclaimed as he flipped the switch labeled ERFS and added, “We now have an extremely extended range.”
The last two days were taking a toll on Harry. Being retired, he was used to not having to answer to anybody. Solitude was what he now craved. Where Harry came from, a sixty-five-year-old man was asked to share his wisdom. He hated being ignored and made to feel like he was six. Oh well, if they don’t value my wisdom, then screw the know-it-alls. His feelings were hurt so he clammed up for the rest of the flight.
Cade found his way into the co-pilot’s seat and was manipulating the knobs and buttons on the military radio. He looked like he knew what he was doing as he tried to pick up anyone that might be listening in on any of the usual emergency bands.
For five minutes they listened in as the former Delta Operator attempted to contact any available U.S. forces. He left the radio on the Military band reserved for aviation assets and then focused on programming waypoints into the navigation computer. Remembering how to use the nav gear came back a little slower than the comms gear.
“Where to boss?” the Viet Nam-era aviator asked.
“Follow the waypoints I just plotted on your HUD (heads up display) and we’ll be flying over…” he was about to say Boise until Duncan banked the Black Hawk and he actually saw what was left of the city. Boise resembled the old pictures he had seen depicting Japan after the firebombing campaigns of World War II.
The sky was filled up to their altitude with black feathery ashes and fires raged everywhere. The helicopter moved along at an altitude of five hundred feet. The multitudes of undead surging west were clearly visible to the naked eye. The three men were speechless as they flew over what was left of the Idaho Air National Guard base. Three helicopters were burned to the tarmac, fixed in place by melted tires; the skeletal remains of the titanium airframes resembled the tangled wreckage of the zeppelin Hindenburg. Quonset huts burned, the vehicles parked nearby further fueling the inferno. Airmen and women lay where they had fallen, some having been consumed by the shambling packs of ghouls. The few vehicles moving below were fleeing the conflagration in front of the walkers. The scope of the damage was unimaginable. The city now belonged to the dead.
Cade changed the waypoints in the flight computer. The new course would take them along the Wasatch mountain front. The towering crags ran north/south, flanking Salt Lake City, Utah.
“The 19th Special Forces Group is located in Draper, Utah. I set the waypoints to take us there. I know a few of the operators garrisoned at the base. At the very least we may be able to top off and continue onward.”
“If the base is still standing when we get there, I think it’s the end of the road for me, fellas,” the usually quiet Harry said over the intercom.
“I’m sure we can get you set up with supplies and transportation, if you really don’t want to stick around,” Cade said, without a trace of emotion. He had a hard and fast rule to not form emotional attachments to anyone but family. Kids were the one exception and he had felt the pain from it these last twenty-four hours. Leo and more so the younger Ike had really grown on him. There would be time to grieve later… there always was.
Cade hadn’t heard from his family for over two days now. He searched his pockets for his phone and remembered it and all of his gear, guns, ammo and food were abandoned with their vehicles outside of Boise. All he had was his M4 with one mag left, a Glock pistol, the clothes and combat gear he still wore as well as his helmet. It dawned on him his favorite Trailblazer ball cap was also in the Sequoia more than fifty miles away. He closed his eyes and visualized his wife’s and daughter’s faces in his mind. As darkness enveloped Idaho, the desert air whipping in the open troop compartment grew measurably colder. Despite the temperature change a warm feeling washed over Cade. There was a special bond that held his small family together, through overseas deployments and other unforeseen hardships; he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt they still lived.
Cade kept watch out of the co-pilot seat. He hadn’t seen this many stars since he was a member of Task Force-121. It had been a handpicked group of operators hunting for Osama Bin Laden in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. The high altitude and inhospitable terrain that they operated in left him with very few pleasant memories; the stars were one of them. He glanced into the mirror affixed above the cockpit glass. A breathtaking display of purple and magenta painted the sky behind them and reflected off of the Black Hawk’s windows. The sun was going down slowly, kicking and screaming as if it didn’t want to leave the living alone in the dark with the dead.
Looking groundward, it suddenly dawned on him there was an absence of light below and there were no moving vehicles. Mother Nature’s beautiful sky show belied the fact the world was ending, not with a bang, but a whimper. Cade thought, T.S. Eliot surely knew something we didn’t.
Duncan’s Southern drawl sounded in his ear and brought him back to reality.
“Look off to the right at 2 o’clock. Do you see it?”
“Yeah, it looks like a small sun,” was Cade’s reply.
Duncan banked the helo to the right and aimed the nose toward the brilliant lights.
Chapter 164
Day 2 - Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Carl narrowly escaped death, first from the fall and then at the hands of the United States Special Forces troops. Until today he had no idea the fear six machine gun muzzles could invoke in a man, especially if they all were pointed at him. The injuries to his face were superficial and his ankle had been reset and put in a walking cast. His next major hurdle was infection. The ghoul that clawed up his back had given him several different types of disease. He was mildly sedated and sleeping. Brook and Raven held a bedside vigil.
Outside the battle raged on. The steady small arms gunfire and the constant booming from the side-mounted 105mm Howitzer on the circling C-130 Spectre gunship both comforted and scared Brook at the same time. She was crossing a line that usually t
ook most soldiers a stint in boot camp, and at least a couple of firefights to even approach. Her senses were being fine-tuned and honed. Until now they were strictly tools of basic survival. Now she possessed a combination of aggression, assertiveness and self-preservation. Slowly the old Brook was being reforged and transformed. Gone was the survivor’s guilt. The time for surviving was now. Raven depended on her.
Their weapons were all confiscated and then the group was immediately escorted to the base’s medical facilities. A man in full combat gear walked them towards the middle of Fort Bragg. On the way he told them they needed a cursory exam to ensure nobody was seriously injured going over the wire.
Carl’s wounds were completely scrubbed, disinfected and bandaged. A big burly male nurse cleaned and sutured the lacerations on Brook’s arms and abdomen. The exams were thorough, any idiot would know they were being screened for infection and checked for bites, even though it wasn’t divulged to them. Dimitri was not talking and Brook guessed the little boy was suffering from PTSD. One of the doctors wheeled him to an infirmary elsewhere to be attended to. They were all going to be quarantined for twenty-four hours. Raven seemed depressed and was badly in need of some rest. Brook was just plain exhausted. Every nerve ending was shot. Brook took Raven’s hand and led her down the hall to the room that had been assigned to them.
Carl finally awoke and was reading a magazine. It was the last Newsweek ever; the cover read “Mad?? Disease.” It was the last post-outbreak edition to be distributed and the words said it all. The Omega virus caught the entire United States flat footed and on the ropes. In the end, no one had enough time or information to stop it from spreading. Unable to keep his eyes open, Carl put the magazine down, closed his eyes and let sleep take over again.
