Skye put the rifle to her shoulder, switched off the safety, and jogged into the night.
FIFTEEN
Fresno
Air Lieutenant Vladimir Yurish was lean and tall, almost too tall to be a helicopter pilot, even in the Russian Federation. He kept his knobby head shaved bald, and with his flattened nose, broad lips, and protruding ears, he looked like something from a medieval fairy tale. Something that lived under a bridge. His colleagues back home affectionately called him the Troll.
It had never bothered him and hadn’t kept Anya from loving him as a husband for fifteen years. Their three-year-old, Lita, had often taken his face in her small hands and said, “handsome,” then kissed him on the forehead. Both were gone now, lost in an automobile accident four years ago, during a simple trip to buy groceries. It still hurt, and he thought about them every day. Seeing what the world had become, however, made him quietly grateful that they had not lived. Losing them was devastating, but he couldn’t imagine the pain of knowing they had turned into what was down there.
No, the Troll would never be one of the handsome faces on the recruiting posters. He was, however, an exceptional pilot, and that was why he was here in the United States. The Federation was purchasing a hundred UH-60A Black Hawks, and Lt. Yurish and several others had been sent here to qualify as instructors for the new machines.
He liked the Black Hawk, liked the high quality with which it was manufactured and the relative ease of maintenance (at least compared to Russian birds). He liked the United States even more: its prosperity and opportunity, the friendly people and smiling faces, the availability of anything a person could ever want. A week ago if someone had told him he would be flying over a U.S. city with a door gunner firing down into crowds of Americans, he would have said they were drunk or insane. But then, the shapes down there weren’t really Americans anymore, were they?
“Lieutenant, orbit right, got a cluster at three o’clock.” The door gunner’s voice came through the intercom.
“Copy,” Vlad said. He worked the antitorque pedals and the cyclic between his knees and moved the helicopter into a slow orbit to the right. The machine gun mounted in the open right door chattered. Sixty-four feet long and seven feet wide, five tons unloaded, the Sikorsky UH-60 could carry eleven troops with full gear (more if it had to) while blasting along at 183 miles per hour, and had a ceiling of nineteen thousand feet. It was a comfortable aircraft to fly, but despite the relaxed look on Vlad’s unfortunately shaped face, it—like all helicopters—required constant control and correction, especially during combat operations. No one was shooting at him, but he was flying low over an urban area, and a mistake could put him and his crew on the ground in seconds. He had no desire to be down there.
“Get some, fuckers,” his gunner said, letting off short bursts.
Vlad’s co-pilot, an American (Vlad was the only Russian), looked out the right window and said, “There’s more up the block, RJ. Coming around that school bus.”
Between bursts the gunner grunted, “Got it.”
Groundhog-7, the call sign for Vlad’s Black Hawk, was circling Thomas Jefferson High School in the suburbs of Fresno, the streets and buildings passing one hundred feet beneath them. A late-summer evening was coming on, the sky a riot of streaking pink clouds and skies fading through blue into navy and purple, a ten-knot wind coming in from the distant Pacific. Vlad held a steady orbit as his gunner—he had only one, who shifted back and forth between the port and starboard weapons as needed—provided cover for the operation below. Groundhog-7 was the only bird assigned, the only one that could be spared. They actually had more aircraft than pilots, which was why Air Lieutenant Yurish had been given command of this ship.
“RJ,” the co-pilot said, a second lieutenant named Conroy, “you missed all the freaks and just lit up the bus.”
“It ain’t as easy as it looks,” RJ replied.
The co-pilot snorted. “Hell, didn’t you play video games?”
“You’re welcome to pop back here and take over the trigger, el-tee. I’ll sit up front and help the Mad Russian fly this pig.”
“Nyet!” Vladimir barked. “This is complex machinery and it requires more than a grammar school education, RJ. Lieutenant Conroy has already discovered this, much to his dismay.”
“Copy that,” RJ said, laughing. Conroy grinned as Vlad watched his instruments and kept the bird in a perfect, lazy right-hand circle. The fenced football field of Thomas Jefferson was being used as a refugee collection point, and a single company of National Guardsmen was trying to maintain its perimeter, handle the civilians at the gate, and protect the growing line of them stretching out well into the high school’s parking lot. It was a slow process, made so because every refugee had to be checked for bites before being allowed to enter. Those bitten were escorted off by MPs, and Vlad tried not to speculate on what happened to them. It was necessary, though. The same type of operation had been tried up and down the coast, and failure to check for bites, letting the infected inside the perimeter, had ended in disaster.
“Got a side street with lots of targets,” RJ called.
Vlad slowed and hovered for a moment while the gunner chopped into them, then resumed his orbit.
Trucks waited in a row on the fifty-yard line, and they would serve as transportation to get the refugees to Lemoore. Naval Air Station Lemoore was a much more secure facility, Vlad’s assigned base since the crisis began, and could handle the mass of fleeing civilians. At least it would put more secure fencing between them and the freaks, as the Americans had taken to calling them. The problem below was immediately obvious. A thousand people wandered and waited on the football field, with close to a thousand more lined up at the gates. There were only twenty trucks.
RJ was switching out ammo boxes in the back, and Conroy was on the radio relaying the status of the operation back to base. As twilight fell and a deepening gloom descended over the streets, the only way to distinguish live refugees from the dead was the speed of their movement. The National Guard had erected generator-powered lights on the field—the only source of illumination in this part of blacked-out Fresno—and loudspeakers blared a repeating message that all civilians should immediately make their way to the high school. It was working to some extent, as fleeing people raced through the streets from all directions, almost exclusively on foot since the roads were blocked by fields of abandoned cars. The problem was that the dead were drawn not only to the running figures, but to the sound of the loudspeakers as well.
The gunner’s M240 woke up as he unleashed long lines of tracer ammo down into the gloom. Several minutes later Vlad heard him curse. “Troll, we got a problem,” the gunner said. Vlad enjoyed the nickname, had taught it to his new comrades, and someone had even painted it on his flight helmet. “This isn’t doing a damn bit of good. The freaks aren’t going down.”
“Are you even hitting them?” Conroy asked. “I can barely see them down there.”
“Yes, sir, but it just chews them up. A few fall, maybe one in ten, but the rest just keep coming. It’s almost impossible to make a head shot.”
“Stay on it,” Vlad ordered.
“Roger that.”
Both pilot and co-pilot could see that the gunner was right; the automatic fire was having minimal effect. On the ground, the guardsmen were engaging “leakers” that had made it through the Black Hawk’s suppression fire. There were plenty of them, coming down side streets and across parking lots, piling up against the football field’s fence. The civilians drew closer to the trucks as the vastly outnumbered guardsmen fired at the fence. At the main gates, panic erupted.
The line to get in was five to six people wide and nearly fifty yards long, creeping forward imperceptibly as refugees were slowly cleared to enter. One platoon of guardsmen was strung out along its length on both sides, looking outward. When slouching corpses began coming through the cars in the lot and closing on the line as rifle shots started to light off like strings of firecracke
rs, the refugee mass began to scream and push forward.
When the first of the undead blundered into the line and took down an elderly man, all remaining order disintegrated. People began shoving each other out of the way, trampling those unfortunate enough to fall. Hands gouged at faces and fists were thrown, and the shrieks of frightened children in their parents’ arms added to the chorus of fear.
Vlad saw it happening and brought the Black Hawk into a low hover off to the left of the mob, while RJ poured fire into the shapes appearing out of the dusk. His bullets chopped into windshields, hoods, dead flesh, and asphalt as he tried to keep the dead away from the line. Through the windscreen, Vlad saw a young officer waving his arms frantically as his men struggled to close the gates to the field.
“Call this in,” Vlad ordered, and Conroy started speaking to Lemoore.
The crowd surged against the closing gates, and farther back the line came apart as people realized their sanctuary was being cut off. They scattered and ran back into the neighborhood.
The dead pursued them.
“Weapon dry,” RJ shouted, unclipping from his safety line and scuttling across to the M240 in the port opening, clipping back in. Vlad twitched the cyclic, and the big bird slid sideways, over the heads of the crowd, putting RJ’s gun in position. The gunner went to work, tracers flashing in undulating lines.
Out on the football field, truck engines fired and headlights came on as the big vehicles began to roll into a column, each packed beyond capacity with refugees. Many more tried to climb onto rear bumpers, hoods, and grilles, a few falling to be crushed beneath unstopping tires. The trucks grumbled toward the gates, where determined civilians who had succeeded in pushing their way in now scattered to avoid being run down. Guardsmen backed away from the perimeter, forming up around the moving vehicles.
“Groundhog-Seven, Ranch House,” the controller at NAS Lemoore said in Vladimir’s earpiece.
“Seven copies,” Vlad responded.
“Groundhog, Echo transport is pulling out and will return to base in convoy.”
“Ranch House,” Vlad said, “we have already reported that there are not enough trucks.”
“Affirmative, Groundhog. The rest will have to follow on foot. Echo Company will remain on the ground as security and walk them in. You will provide air cover as long as possible.”
Vlad shook his head. The trucks had a long run through Fresno and the surrounding open country before reaching the base. That would leave, what? About two hundred men? To protect a thousand civilians as they traveled on foot, through an overrun city, at night, with one ineffective Black Hawk above. Insanity. Vlad asked for Ranch House to repeat its orders, and got the same reply. He muttered something in Russian that his co-pilot and gunner couldn’t interpret but understood well enough.
“Confirm, Groundhog-Seven.”
“Da, da, Groundhog-Seven confirms.” More Russian then, a hot string of it intended for the controller, who didn’t reply.
The trucks passed through the open gates and out into the parking lot, as people poured after them. Guardsmen paired up and stayed well out to the sides, as fearful of what the panicked crowd might do as they were of the dead, and within minutes they were engaging targets with their rifles. The trucks picked up speed, and as their taillights vanished into the neighborhood, leaving the refugees on foot behind, a cry of despair went up that briefly drowned out the moans of the dead.
Vlad stayed overhead, RJ doing his best to chop away at stiff shapes limping toward the flow of people. Scattered riflemen fought desperate battles on all sides, quickly depleting their ammo as the huge group moved slowly, the dead coming at them from all sides, snatching victims and dragging them into the shadows.
An hour later RJ reported that both his weapons were dry, and the gauges up front showed that the Black Hawk’s gas tank was soon to be in the same condition. Vlad informed Ranch House that he was bingo fuel, and base ordered him home. He did as ordered. He would not be allowed to refuel and go back out.
Back at Lemoore, Vlad sat on a crate near the main gates, chain-smoking and waiting. Sixteen of the twenty trucks arrived four hours after leaving the football field, the drivers staring out their windshields with haunted eyes. The thousand refugees traveling on foot and the company of men assigned to guard them didn’t show up until two days later.
When they did, they were dull-eyed corpses rattling the fence.
SIXTEEN
San Francisco Bay
The great ship turned and put the vast Pacific to her stern, making her way toward the mouth of the bay. The helmsman didn’t need landmarks; the complex navigational gear knew where it was going, but they were overdue to meet up with a tug to guide them and a harbor pilot to safely take them into the bay. The absence of lights on the Golden Gate Bridge was an unusual sight. Fires burned there instead, lines of stopped cars lighting off one by one as gas tanks exploded. It was surreal, but few aboard were in a position to notice.
Lieutenant (junior grade) Doug Mosey stood with a radio microphone in his hand, calling the hangar deck, the last place the XO had reported his position. There was no answer. Throughout the bridge, enlisted men and women tried to remain calm at their stations and weren’t doing a very good job of it. They took their cues from the only officer on deck, a twenty-seven-year-old JG left to conn the greatest warship in the world, a job for which he had not yet passed qualifications.
“Lieutenant,” called a petty officer wearing a headset, “combat reported in the aft machine shops, and in starboard enlisted berthing.”
Mosey nodded and ran a hand over his dry lips. Combat had been reported in so many areas of the ship, and these were just the latest. Many sections did not respond to requests for situation reports and hadn’t been heard from after their first, frantic calls. Several times the petty officer reported hearing gunfire in the background, indicating the presence of a security team, but most of the time there had just been screaming.
As the USS Nimitz approached the bridge—a San Francisco icon—the navigation computer automatically relinquished control to manual conning, assuming, as it had been programmed to do, that a qualified harbor pilot who knew the bay was aboard. A young woman in khaki, a quartermaster second class or QM-2, reported the change. Mosey didn’t acknowledge her, so she repeated it. The officer was staring out the bridge windows. Tiny, flaming objects were falling from the Golden Gate and vanishing into the dark waters below.
“Lieutenant,” she said firmly, “we are on manual navigation and the helm is awaiting orders.”
“Slow to one-third,” he said. “Maintain present course.”
The bridge crew glanced at each other.
“Try CINCPAC again,” Mosey said. The last order from Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, had been for Nimitz to steam into San Francisco Bay and drop anchor, in order to provide assistance to both civilian and military authorities attempting to control an unspecified “civil uprising.” There had been no further orders, and Nimitz had not been able to reach them since.
After a couple of minutes, “CINCPAC does not respond, Lieutenant.”
Of course. No one was responding. And now the ship that had been sent to provide protection was in need of rescue. Mosey looked out the bridge wing down onto the massive deck, lit by whatever landing and work lights they had been able to switch on. In the light and shadow he saw two men in purple refueling shirts—“grapes,” they were called—running past the number one catapult, a crowd of sailors limping after them.
Nimitz began to pass beneath the Golden Gate. A pair of flaming bodies dropped out of the sky and slammed onto the deck. After a moment, one of them began to drag itself away.
Coming back from a Far East tour, Nimitz had first stopped in Hawaii for two days before heading east, and then up the West Coast. Her support ships dispersed, and the air group had flown off to their home port in Seattle, leaving the cavernlike hangar deck empty of aircraft except for the ship’s helos.
“Combat reported
in the reactor spaces,” said the petty officer.
Mosey spun to look at him. “Did you hear any weapons fire?”
“Negative, sir.” The young man swallowed hard. “Only . . . only moaning.”
Midway up the California coast, things had gotten strange and then quickly stepped over the line into madness. It had been those SEALs they brought on board. A lone helo carrying a team of special operators had flown in from Los Angeles, reporting casualties on board. The eight men had been mixing it up in some kind of “civil disturbance” and were pretty badly torn up, having to be taken off the helo on litters and whisked down to the medical facilities. Mosey heard scuttlebutt about bite wounds, of all things.
The attacks started in sick bay, and then spread. Within an hour, what looked like a full-blown mutiny was under way. A mutiny? On an aircraft carrier? Ridiculous. But in the midst of it the admiral had been killed, the captain went missing and was presumed dead, and the executive officer had taken command of the ship.
“Sir,” said the quartermaster, “the nav gear indicates we need to come right.” She was nervous. None of them had ever entered San Francisco’s waters before—there hadn’t been an active naval base here for many years—and this was unknown territory. The regulations required that a knowledgeable harbor pilot take command of the bridge to guide them in. They should have remained offshore until one arrived.
More bodies were slamming onto the deck from the bridge above, several of them burning. Most started moving again after impact, and Mosey couldn’t take his eyes away from the sight. There was no sign of the grapes who had been chased across the deck a moment ago.
“Lieutenant, we need to reduce speed and come right.”
Mosey rubbed at his lips again, still staring out the window. The fighting was everywhere, seemingly in every compartment, and cries for help choked the intercom, frightened voices shouting over each other. The XO had put Mosey, the only officer around, in command and left to lead a large security detail in an attempt to retake the ship. That had been two hours ago, and it was twenty minutes since he had last called in.
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