by Lowry, Chris
“When did you learn to fly?”
He said his step-dad’s name.
I didn’t know the man could fly, but then again, I didn’t know too much about the man that raised my children.
I guess I trusted their mother enough to make a better choice than me.
If he could fly, he must have shown the Boy something.
Bem didn’t seem so confident.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she said.
Headlights on the road seemed to argue against her.
“Untie it,” he said.
I untied the tiedowns from the end of each wing, and moved the blocks from the wheels.
The Boy checked over the exterior of the plane, moving the wing flaps, the tail flaps. He moved inside and checked the gauges there too, though I couldn’t tell you what they meant.
“Keys!” he called through the window.
The headlights were moving through the trees, slowly, outlining them in long dark shadows as they searched for us.
I ran to a tiny little building next to a row of gas cans.
The door was locked.
I smashed the knob with the crusty shotgun and ripped it open.
A teenager sat inside crying.
He held out the keys on the end of his finger and sobbed.
“Don’t kill me.”
“Not today kid.”
I closed the door and ran back.
“Get in!”
The Boy took the key and started the engine.
I watched him play with the flaps, play with the yoke and steer us toward the runway as he throttled.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“About as much as you,” he grinned and shoved the us forward and raced down the runway.
Damn.
We were going to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The plane lifted off the runway as trucks raced down the field after us. I heard the popping sounds of guns, but the Boy arced us out over the River for two miles, then turned toward the East.
“Which way,” he said through the microphone headset.
“This is fine,” I told him. “Stay low so we can follow the Interstate.”
The plane was a four-seater designed for three. We were packed in tight, which was fine for now.
I tried to make headway with the gauges.
“Which one’s fuel?”
The Boy reached up and tapped. It was full.
I turned in the seat.
Bem didn’t have a headset on, just curled into a ball in the backseat, knees hugged to her chest.
I motioned her to lean closer so she could hear me over the roar of the engine.
“Are you okay?”
She shrugged.
“But I will be.”
I nodded and put my hand on her knee. She patted my bruised knuckles and I turned back to the front.
“We should just keep going west.”
“Not without her.”
“Dad, what do you think the chances of her making it are? I mean seriously?”
“You made it.”
“But we had help. And training. She’s just a kid.”
It was dangerous and stupid. We would be crossing across territory I had already trekked and I knew what we faced. Somewhere in there was a mad General who wanted me dead.
There were enemies created along the way. And a million more zombies trying to eat our brains.
I didn’t even know where she was, where she went. Or where to start.
Except I had seen a map.
There was another one.
It was at Fort Jasper, along with dozens of friends.
I could check in on them, pick up Anna and we could make our way East to search the tent cities and refugee camps. She was a smart kid, she could survive. If her mother had gotten out of the way.
“We’re going to Alabama,” I told them.
My daughter took it well. Stoic that one, and a bit too much like me. Except for the scars, though the wounds of growing up without a biological dad may have been hidden.
Her stepdad was a good man.
Or had been. They hadn’t said much about him, or their mom yet. I wasn’t going to ask. They would share when they needed to vent.
I leaned back in my seat and didn’t plan on closing my eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Boy nudged me awake.
“Birmingham,” he pointed to a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
“You sure?”
“Vicksburg, to Jackson, Jackson to Birmingham. We made the drive a couple of times with you.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and pointed North.
“We go til we hit I-22 and backtrack to Fort Jasper.”
He nodded.
It didn’t take long. A drive that lasted an hour in the car was only twenty minutes by crow flight.
We flew over Fort Jasper, or at least where I thought it was. Several miles from the Interstate that we were using as a landmark.
I checked the fuel gauge and tapped it with my finger.
The Boy nodded and keyed the microphone on his headset.
“Dad, I know how to fly.”
“You did a great job son. We made it.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to land.”
The majority of plane crashes happen on takeoff and landing. Don’t ask me how I know that. They are almost always pilot error. Again, don’t ask me how I know that.
“Do you land in the game?”
“Nah, it’s more fun to crash.”
Damn. I’ve got a pilot who crashed planes for fun.
My son, the VR expert.
I buckled up just in case.
THE END
Thank you for taking the time to read BATTLEFIELD Z – Mardi Gras Zombie. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated. Thank you. Chris.
BATTLEFIELD Z
BLUEGRASS ZOMBIE
Book 6
By
Chris Lowry
Copyright 2017 Grand Ozarks Media
Orlando FL
All Rights Reserved
Direct all inquiries to [email protected]
Get great tips on Twitter @Lowrychris
Visit www.ChrisLowrybooks.com
CHAPTER
Flying. I sat in the passenger seat and watched my son handle the controls of the tiny Cessna like he was a pro.
I suppose he was, though he had only played with a flight simulator on his computer.
But in a world where we had to escape using a plane, he became a pilot by default.
It’s not like I could do much, other than hold the yoke, and probably spiral us down to our death into the pine forests below.
They stretched out to the East as we pointed the nose of the plane toward Alabama and my friends at Fort Jasper.
I planned a quick stop there, and sending Byron and his boys out to find more jet fuel so we could keep hopping in the plane toward the East Coast and the refugee camps where my youngest was supposed to be.
The hunt for Bo Bistan, I joked with the Boy and Bem.
All nicknames for the kids, all variations of their names, just with the B from that song.
“Nick, Nick, Bo Bick, Banana Fana Fo Fick,” or however it went.
Playing around with them when they were younger, and a decade later, that’s all I called them.
“Dad,” the Boy nodded out of the side of the plane. “That it?”
We had used the Interstate as a guide as it cut across Mississippi and Alabama, and turned North on 22 when it cut through Birmingham.
We passed over the depot where we had established the camp, and the Boy circled looking for a landing strip.
“Interstate?” I yelled over the roar of the prop.
He nodded, and lined up on a straight section for a landing.
It was five or so miles away from the camp, but after hoofing hal
fway across the country, five miles would be an easy hour and half hike.
He leveled off the wings, brought the plane in low and then I noticed the sweat on his brow, dripping off the end of his nose and splotching onto his pants.
He was nervous.
They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one, and the Boy squelched onto the empty Interstate, screeching the tires as the plane bounced off the asphalt and slithered to a stop after four hundred yards.
He killed the engine and leaned back in the seat.
“Good work,” I told him.
“My first landing,” he wiped his forehead.
“Make it a little rougher next time,” Bem added from the backseat.
“I’ll probably get better with practice,” he said.
There was hope in his voice, and a little trepidation.
I didn’t blame him.
We were lucky.
I’d been up in a couple of Cessna’s with experienced flyboys. The takeoff and landings were the hard part.
We had a wide empty roadway that was mostly flat.
If we had to make due with a grass landing, or dodging stalled cars, the ending might have been different.
“Let’s move,” I told them as I climbed out.
Those five miles weren’t going to hike themselves.
CHAPTER TWO
“The gate’s open.”
“I see.”
“That’s not a good sign.”
I shot a glance at my daughter and saw the tight grin on her face. She was nervous and trying hard to mask it with a joke.
“Maybe they think we’re barbarians at the gate?” I suggested.
They didn’t laugh.
“No guards,” the Boy pointed to the corners of the wall.
He was right.
There should have been two people on the gate, if Brian had followed the instructions I left.
The compound itself, Fort Jasper, was at the end of a dirt road on the edge of a ridge. It was hard to approach in mass, and protected on the back side by a couple of thousand yards of sloping pine forest.
Even though we reinforced the gate, it should have been watched at all times, at least to warn the rest inside of what to expect.
The rolling fence was partially open. The tin walls weren’t peppered with bullet holes, so at least we had that. Whatever happened.
It was time to find out.
“Stay here,” I took a step forward and they both followed.
“We’re watching your back, Dad.”
My heart swelled with pride. I didn’t want to tell them it would be easier if I wasn’t watching out for them, in case there were Z inside. But if there were Zombies outside the walls, that would have me worried too.
Worry was a distraction we couldn’t afford.
Better to have them with me so I could keep them safe.
I nodded.
“Stay tight. Eyes up.”
They both bunched up on my shoulders, a pace back as we went through the gate.
The compound was empty.
I could tell by the sound, the noise, just that feeling from being inside a vast open space where the only thing you can hear is the wind.
No feeling of being watched.
No feeling of anyone around.
No zombies.
No Brian, Anna, Byron, Hannah, none of the boys.
“Where is everyone?” my Boy whispered.
I searched the walls for a sign.
There was no sign of a fight, no streaks of blood and body parts left that would have indicated a Z outbreak inside.
“It’s like they opened up the gate and walked out,” said Bem. “Maybe they didn’t expect you back.”
“They would have left a note,” I said and we headed for the giant building we used as a communal space.
CHAPTER THREE
If there is one thing my divorces taught me is that you can't rely on anyone.
Or anything.
The origin of the story is sad, or at least if I felt like throwing a pity party it would be.
When the second and I decided to split, she got to keep the money, the condo, the new car, and I got the POS sedan. It wasn't my first stint at being homeless, which I just called being between homes.
I would go to work in the morning, go to the gym for the evening, sit under a streetlight in the park to read until I was tired, then sleep in the backseat.
Then it was back to the gym in the morning for a workout and shower, over to work, and so on.
I had to do this for two months as I saved up meager pieces of my paycheck for a deposit on a new apartment.
It was more about timing than anything.
I'd get the deposit saved, and the soon to be ex would need something for my daughter.
I was a living embodiment of the working poor.
No one to help me.
I asked my Dad for some help at the time.
He said no.
No to moving in with him. No to a loan.
Then I found out he offered his spare bedroom to a guy he worked with who was down on his luck.
That was the lesson I needed to learn.
No one is going to help you.
The only person who can do anything for you, is you.
And I vowed then to become a guy who can help others when they asked.
Eventually I moved up at my job, I was paid more, had a place to live and went from sleeping in my car to a queen size bed. I kept moving up in title and income, but I never lost that lesson.
Self-reliance is the only thing that can carry you through sometimes.
No matter what lies you have to tell yourself to get up and keep fighting, it was always a matter of getting after it every day.
Someone told me they felt like they were going through hell because they scheduled their days too busy, had to do dishes after cooking dinner, and had a four thousand square foot house to clean.
I laughed and told them to keep on going.
I didn't share with them that I ate a pouch of tuna sitting on a park bench watching the moon rise over a lake before going to sleep in my car the night before.
Lesson learned.
I just didn't realize I was prepping for the Zombie apocalypse at the time.
"What are you thinking about?" the Boy asked.
I glanced over and saw his eyes shining in the firelight. Moist.
"You won't remember, but when you were a toddler, we did a lot of camping like this."
"Zombies outside the tent then?" he smirked and wiped the end of his nose with the back of his hand.
"There are always wolves out there. And bears. And skunks. But I was thinking about the last time I camped with
all three of you."
"I don't remember."
"We should have done it more. I was thinking about spending more time with you, how I wished I would have."
He adjusted the way he was sitting in the nest of blankets.
"I was thinking about mom," he said just above a whisper.
I almost asked what happened.
But Bem said his name.
Soft too, like a partially warning laced with regret.
"I miss her."
Bem sobbed into a blanket.
And I regretted feeling sorry for me.
Maybe that was one of the sources of my rage, maybe even the main source. Who was I to throw
a pity party for myself when there were other people out there suffering, kids who had it worse
than me.
Homeless? Sure, but I had a tin roof rusting over my head back then and food to eat.
There were dads who had to sleep on the ground.
Sad I didn't spend more time with my children?
My mom had died when I was twenty-one, so I had been alive longer without her than before.
That scar had healed, but it was fresh on Bem and the Boy.
Raw.
They needed to be protected, they needed routine and safety.
/>
I thought we might find it at Fort Jasper, but the empty rooms, the empty walls, the open gate
and everyone gone meant it wasn't here.
Even though we didn't know what happened, I needed to skip wondering about my little group
of survivors, and focus on the mission.
Get my youngest.
Get these kids someplace safe.
Keep them safe.
Let them heal.
Be the rock they could rely on always.
I rolled up onto my knees and crawled across our little campsite to plop down between them, then reached for both to drag them into an embrace.
They cried against my sides then, the Boy starting and Bem following.
Great heaving sobs that poured their grief, and despair and anger out onto me, dripping like tears across my shirt, soaking the layers.
I may have cried too. Sad for their loss, and sad for the loss of a woman I loved once.
And maybe for what I had lost again.
There was too much gone in this new world.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Someone's coming."
The Boy lifted his rifle and sighted on movement in the woods.
I moved away from the kids and out in the open from the shadows to be a target and draw focus on me.
"Stay back," I said out of the corner of my mouth.
"I got him Dad," the Boy said, a hint of exasperation coloring his voice.
I wondered for a second if he thought I was being too overprotective, then decided I didn't care.
Since I found them, we had been captured, chased, shot and left for Z food in the middle of a football field.
I didn't think I was bad luck for the kids, but the reason behind our string of bad situations was my fault.
It's not every day you get to piss off an insane militia man masquerading as a General, who declares a personal vendetta against you and chases you halfway across the country.
I was sure we had lost them by stealing an airplane from Vicksburg and flying East.
But if there was one thing I had learned in the zombie Armageddon was to always expect the unexpected.
