Waiting for the inevitable pain took two seconds before he realized it wasn’t coming. The thing had two arms, but one was duct-taped to its side, the fingers on the other were taped together, and it had half a roll of tape around its mouth. Rick easily pushed away from the dead man and stood, his boot on the guy’s chest. One round spread the back of the man’s head on the carpet.
Dallas arrived a second later. “We gotta go back! They’re comin!” He looked past Rick and noticed the passengers coming for them. “Christ!”
Dallas turned and ran back the way he came. “C’mon!” The shotgun boomed again. Rick followed him. He fired toward the front of the plane again. “Cover, Hoss!” He slung his shotgun and turned a handle on the wall, opening a door which let in the bright sunlight. Dallas squinted before reaching up and smashing his hand against the wall. He did it a second time, then yelled, “Shit! It ain’t workin’!”
He pushed the door all the way open so that it banged against the fuselage of the aircraft, then smacked his hand on the wall again, “Goddammit!” Rick began firing toward the rear of the plane.
“Rick, we gotta jump!” Rick backed up, and between shots, looked down to the tarmac.
“Fuck that.”
“You got a better plan?”
“Yeah, anything that doesn’t include jumping twenty feet to an asphalt runway! Where’s the damn emergency slide thingie?” Rick fired as he spoke: Pap! Pap pap pap!
The dead were starting to get close, twenty feet from Rick’s side, and ten from Dallas’. The stink off the things was incredible, and Dallas began to gag.
“It won’t deploy, I dunno why!”
Rick fired twice more and looked at the bulkhead of the plane, running his finger across the pictograph of how to deploy the slide as he read it.
Dallas fired two booming shots into the small crowd in front of him, destroying a granny zombie and a dead hippie. He then fired the shotgun at the door, and there was a whoosh as the escape slide speedily filled with compressed air. The slide was fully extended in less than five seconds, but that was long enough for the dead to reach Dallas. His weapon clicked empty, and he pulled his rebar club to go hand to hand with two creatures. A sideways whack to the head of a blue-faced pastor sent the creature sprawling, but the two things behind the priest reached past him and grabbed Dallas by the shirt. Dallas was shrieking four letter curses when he was grabbed by the waist from behind and thrown unceremoniously from the plane.
Rick, Dallas, and two monsters tumbled down the inflated silver escape ramp all the way to the tarmac. Rick was able to extricate himself immediately, but Dallas had two zombies on him. The big man was using his rebar to keep them at bay. Rick raised his rifle, but a shot rang out before he was able, and dropped one of the dead men. Dallas jammed the pointed end of his rebar up under the second thing’s chin and kept going until the metal would go no farther.
Androwski was at the top of the mobile stairs, aiming at the escape hatch. “Get to the LAV!” Less than two seconds later, dead began to spill down the ramp. Rick and Dallas sprinted toward the vehicle and Androwski ran down the steps. “Stark! Stark, exfil!”
The turret on the LAV spun toward the plane, and machine gun fire belched from the gunner’s position as Seyfert let loose on the growing group from the aircraft.
All three men made it to the LAV quickly and gained entry. “Why the fuck didn’t you answer your radios?” Androwski demanded as the hatch closed.
Rick checked his radio and noticed that the ear bud cord had been ripped from the receiver. He held it up for Androwski to see. Dallas checked his radio and it seemed to be fine. “Didn’t hear ya.”
“LAV One to Lone Wolf, come in,” Androwski shouted into the com unit, “Lone Wolf, come in! Do you copy? Over.”
Cole’s deep voice came over the radio, “One this is Two, SITREP?”
“Objective secured, but Actual is unaccounted for. How’s our boy?”
“Bad. Still unconscious, breathing ragged. You’re gonna need to hurry back.”
Androwski clicked the mic off. “Shit!” His eyes glazed over while he thought.
Seyfert poked his head down from the gunner’s emplacement. “Limas are almost on us.”
Androwski looked up. “Boone can take care of himself. We need to get the meds back to Martinez before he kicks it.” He looked at Rick as he spoke into the radio, “Lone Wolf, this is LAV One, if able to receive but not transmit: One is bugging out to accomplish primary objective. One will return in two hours to retrieve Lone Wolf. Sit tight, out.”
Seyfert looked at Stark with raised eyes while Androwski pinched his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Go, Stark.”
The thumps of dead fists rang through the armored vehicle as Stark shifted into gear.
11
“Cole, do you copy? Cole, we’re almost there, how’s our man? Fucking radios are for shit.” Androwski raged as he slammed the radio into his hip. “First order of business when the world gets back together is to find the dickweed responsible for these radios and string him up!”
The return trip to the other LAV only took half an hour. There were three zombies stumbling around outside when they arrived. Seyfert took them out with single shots from his suppressed sidearm. “Clear!”
The back of LAV One opened and the team got out. Androwski was fuming. “Cole! Cole, open up, we’ve got some meds for Martinez! Stark, try the comms in the LAV.”
“Nothing, sir,” replied Stark after a few seconds. “He’s not responding.”
Androwski rapped his fist on the hull. “Cole! If you’re sleeping in there I will kick your ass, I shit you not!” The SEAL walked around to the front of the vehicle, swearing. The blast shields were open over the windows, and he climbed on the nose of the LAV. Putting his hand up to the red window to shield his eyes from the sun, he peered in but couldn’t see anything. He rapped on the window and still there was nothing.
“I need to get in there, Stark.” The man’s voice was past angry, there was now a tinge of worry. “How do we open her up?”
“Can’t. The vehicle is specifically designed to repel invaders. Without somebody inside, or an access code that’s on the manual, which is also inside, we aren’t getting in.”
“Fuck! Are you telling me that if the driver goes outside to take a piss and shuts the hatch behind him, he can’t get in without the code?”
“Roger.”
“So how…” Androwski thought he saw a shadow move behind the armored red glass. Again he put his hand above his eyes and pressed his face to the window. Cole’s face slammed against the other side. Thick fluid splashed the pane from the inside as Cole attempted to bite through it. Androwski pulled his face away fast, but not before he saw the malice in his teammate’s dead eyes.
He hopped off the vehicle and walked directly to Rick. “They’re dead,” was the only thing he could think to say. Rick ran around the front of the LAV, and following Androwski’s example, peered in the window.
Sighing, he got down from the LAV and walked back to the group. Androwski was on the radio asking Stark how they could blow their way in to retrieve the ammo for the other LAV.
“Not advisable. We don’t have any cutting tools, and if we did it would take a while. We could try the Bushmaster, but it would probably put holes in the armor before it blew the door off. One stray round could cook off the ammo and then twenty millimeter rounds would be firing in all directions.”
“What about the C-4?”
“It’s in LAV Two, and I don’t know what would happen if a Bushmaster round hit that.”
“I have a brick,” Seyfert interjected. When he noticed everyone looking at him, he went on the defensive. “What? One brick of C-4 and some det-cord is worth having on you on missions like this. I got it from Benotti before he…”
“Alright. Seyfert, shape-charge the bottom hydraulics and the top lock. Let’s pop this bitch open. Stark, man the LMG and check our six while we’re busy. Everyone else keep watchin
g for stray Limas, we’ll let you know when we’re gonna blow this.”
It only took three minutes or so for Seyfert to wire up the explosives. He molded some into the small crevice between the hatch and the hull on the back of the vehicle, and some on the hydraulic pin catch on the bottom of the door. One more larger amount on the locking mechanism at the top, and he thumbs-up signaled to Androwski he was ready. Two suppressed shots hissed out on the left side of the street they were on.
“Contact left,” Chris told them. “They’re down… I mean, clear.”
Androwski pinched his throat mic. “Everybody on me.” When the rest of the team minus Stark, who was manning the LMG, showed up, Androwski told them to get in the LAV. “We’ll blow it from fifty meters back.” The team complied and soon they were backing up.
Seyfert pulled what looked like a small hand-held radio from his tactical vest. He looked at Androwski. “Boom?”
“Boom.”
Seyfert flicked a red safety switch up and moved a silver toggle switch down. A loud popping sound came from outside, and Androwski called to Stark to open the door of LAV One. The team got out and examined LAV Two. The rear hatch was bent and burned and hanging from one hydraulic piston, but what really drew their attention was the occupants that slowly stumbled from the rear of the vehicle.
Martinez came out first. The front of his T-shirt was stained crimson, as was his bandaged arm. His face and neck were a dingy gray, and his eyes were blood red. Cole followed and he looked worse. There were huge chunks missing from the meat of his neck, and the right side of his face had been savaged. Everyone raised their weapons, but Androwski and Rick stepped forward. The live men looked at each other, nodded and then raised their rifles. Two quick reports followed, and the dead men collapsed.
The rest of the team walked up to their dead friends. “Martinez must have died on the bench and then attacked Cole,” Seyfert said. “See? He’s not bitten but Cole is. We didn’t know how bad off he really was, but who dies from a damn broken arm?”
Rick got down on one knee. “Sorry Pabs. Nobody deserves this.” Rick closed his friend’s eyes with a gloved hand. He stood again. “We need to bury them.”
Androwski looked at his shoes, “Rick, Boone might not have that kind of time. We need to hump the ammo from Two to One, and get back there for him. We can move them,” he indicated the dead men, “to the side of the road and cover them, then we can come back.”
“We did that damn plane fer nothin’, Boone is by hisself too,” Dallas said under his breath.
Rick nodded in the negative. “We did it for our friend, and I wouldn’t do it any different for any of us. Boone wouldn’t have it any other way either.”
“Yer right on that, Hoss. Let’s go git ‘that tough bastid.”
“Lieutenant,” a deep voice came over the radio, “I’ve got movement in the woods on the thermals. My door is open and I’m lonely.”
“Roger that, Stark. Everybody saddle up.”
Rick, Dallas, Androwski and Seyfert dragged their fallen comrades to the side of the road, and then helped the others wordlessly carry the extra ammo back to the undamaged LAV. Rick made sure to take Martinez’s SR25 and all its ammo as well. “What about the other guns on LAV Two?” asked Chris. “Shouldn’t we take them?”
The Bushmaster is too big,” Androwski told him. “We could strap the barrel to the outside of this rig though, and we’ll definitely come back for the LMG. Let’s roll, Stark.”
“Solid copy, Lieutenant.”
The light-armored vehicle rumbled back toward the airport.
12
“Jesus, look at them all.” Anna was looking at monitor that was displaying thermal optics. “There must be two thousand, where did they all come from?”
“How do we find him in alla that?” Dallas demanded waving his hand at the screen.
Androwski was leaning over and looking into the monitor as well. “Lone Wolf, do you copy? Lone Wolf, this is Wanderer, are you receiving? Lone Wolf, if unable to speak, squelch twice, over.”
There was no response, just dead air. The population of undead at the airport had grown substantially. The team couldn’t figure out why though, as there were no living people in the area that they could see, and the dead weren’t attacking any fortifications of any kind, they were just milling about. Androwski began to check his weapons.
Rick put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. “Andy, we have no illusions about who’s in charge, but you cannot go out there. You can’t.”
“Boone wouldn’t leave anyone behind, and I mean to find him.”
“We can look, but not outside this vehicle. Do you think Boone would want you to die looking for him?”
“Rick, I’m a SEAL. We don’t leave people behind.”
“I understand, but don’t you think that the mission is more important? A possible cure for this plague? If you get killed, that’s one more trained person that can’t help us get where we need to be.”
“Rick’s right, Andy,” added Seyfert. “You go out there and you’re just gonna get dead. And Boone will have your ass if you go looking for him with no recon.”
Androwski glared at Seyfert. “So we leave him? We just leave Boone? Is that it?”
“No, we recon and give him some time to get to us.”
Stark interrupted from up front, “Well whatever we’re gonna do, we gotta do it now.”
All eyes went to the monitors. The horde had noticed them and was on slow approach. Two were sprinting toward their position, only a few hundred meters away.
“Stark, zoom in, how many are coming after us?”
“Looks like all of ‘em, Chief, they look damn hungry too.”
“Fine then,” began Androwski. “We let them come. We’ll back away when they get to a hundred meters out. When they close the gap again, we back away again until we’re a mile off, then we boogie around or through them back to the airport and look for Boone from the LAV.” He looked at Seyfert. “Sey, take out the runners with the short gun.”
“Roger that, sir, good call.”
“Lone Wolf, this is Wanderer, if you can receive but not transmit, we’re backing up to draw the Limas out. Stay put and we’ll be back for you in thirty mikes.”
The undead presence at this particular airport, with the only nearby city a smoldering ruin, was extremely large. The runways were also intact, and considering the military had destroyed most of the highways and byways in this area, this was an anomaly. Androwski surmised that the runways were not destroyed in case the US armed forces needed a place to land and refuel in this part of the country. This might also account for the large numbers of zombies in the area. The uninfected were trapped with no way to escape when the undead hordes reached their doors. The only thing left for the creatures to do was to search for food in the immediate area, or move on. Apparently they hadn’t reached the moving on stage yet.
Doing some quick math in his head, Stark calculated that there were approximately three thousand undead marching in their direction.
“Can’t we just run ‘em over?” Dallas asked.
“I don’t know,” Stark told him. “Enough of them might get stuck in the wheels and gum up the works. Then we would stop moving. I don’t want to stop moving.”
Dallas harrumphed, “Me neither. You keep drivin’, Stark ole buddy. I’ma shut up now.”
It took longer than thirty minutes to lure the undead from the tarmac and into a nearby field. Almost an hour after the LAV had begun tactically withdrawing, Stark threw the vehicle into high gear and skirted the swarm heading east back to airport. Not wanting to miss a canned dinner, the mass of bodies began following immediately. The team would have less than an hour to collect Boone before the undead arrived on their heels.
The vast majority of the former humans had followed the vehicle, but some strays remained at the airport. Rick, Seyfert, and Androwski used the sniper rifles to cull the herd, and then the search began in earnest.
“W
e can’t go in the larger buildings,” advised Androwski, “but we can run around and look in the windows, and look in those hangars.” He thumbed at two large hangars on the east side of the facility. “God help me, but we need to split up. We’ll cover twice as much ground twice as fast. Dallas and Anna, you go with Seyfert and check out those outbuildings. Don’t go inside! Rick and Chris, you’re with me.”
“Where are we going?” asked Chris nervously.
“To check out those hangars on the east side. That’s the direction Boone was heading when we separated. Stick together, nobody leaves a twenty-foot circle from the others in your squad, and don’t engage unless absolutely necessary, just run. I want everybody back here in thirty mikes regardless. Constant contact, zero chatter. Stark remain on station unless we call. Any questions?”
There were none.
“Thirty mikes, no more, or I assume you’re in some shit and we come looking for you. Radio check.”
Everyone said Check into their throat microphones. Androwski nodded and began jogging away, Chris and Rick following. They skirted a hissing thing on the ground with broken legs in a runway worker’s uniform and made it to the first hangar. The massive aluminum doors were spread open, and the sun was glinting off of the tinted glass windscreen of a private jet.
There was a small parts loft above a work area in the back of the hangar. Metal stairs on the left side ran up to the loft, and the four large windows were all broken out of the workshop. Androwski was moving forward slowly, taking in everything as he progressed. Rick had their rear, with Chris in the center.
“Androwski, can you fly—”
The SEAL’s left fist flew into the air, and Chris silenced himself instantly, falling to a crouched position. Something was moving in the workshop. Androwski signaled the men to follow him towards the back of the hangar and they did so with great stealth. Rick caught up to the other two and put his hand on the SEAL’s shoulder. Rick indicated the oval windows on the port side of the plane. One of them was covered in streaks of gore from the inside. Androwski pointed two fingers at his eyes, then Rick, then at the plane. Rick nodded understanding and slung his M4. He drew his suppressed sidearm, sighting at the door to the aircraft.
Run (Book 2): The Crossing Page 8
