by Joseph Coley
“Two minutes,” Ogre said as he keyed up the mic. Snow spattered the windshield. It was times like these that Ogre missed the Coast Guard choppers he’d piloted before. The Yankee was a fine piece of equipment, but no comparison to the Seahawk that had been his previous ride. After fifteen years in the service of the Coast Guard, Ogre was prepared for damn near anything. The equipment made the mission and the man, however. The Yankee was considerably smaller than what he'd used before. It was more agile and less bulky. He never regretted his decision to join up with Joe and the ZBRA team; he just wished that he'd had more to choose from as far as birds go.
Joe rapped on his own helmet and got the attention of the rest of his troupe. He held up two fingers and tapped his own M4. Each man gave thumbs up and checked their own weapon. A series of clacks sounded as bolts went forward. The noise went largely unnoticed as the steady whir of the chopper’s blades drowned out nearly all sound.
Ogre took the UH-1Y lower and began to size up their opponents. The armament that they had on board would take care of most of the zombies below, but there were more and more of the infected flowing into the city. Ogre banked and looked down off to his left and shook his head.
“We got a hell of a lot of dead fuckers down there. I’m gonna get us slowed down until we get a good sight on the outpost. My guess is that we follow all these assholes until we see what they are goin’ towards.” Ogre pulled back on the Yankee and slowed the chopper to a near hover.
The steady influx of undead became more agitated as the Yankee came into view of the outpost in Lexington. Scrawny, sinewy arms reached up to the chopper as it came to a hover. The Lexington outpost looked as if it could hold back an entire army of undead. The walls that made up the outskirts of the fortress were comprised of a mismatch of semi-trailers and train cars. Heavy and nearly immobile, the train cars looked as if they could easily sustain the push of undead.
The zombies that were making an assault on the structure were relentless. The stench of the undead was relentless as well. Joe got up, slid the door open on the Yankee, and got his first look at the teeming masses below. He pulled his balaclava over his mouth and tried to breathe through it.
“Good Lord! I never get used to that stank-ass smell!” Joe said, shaking his head.
Rick did the same with his balaclava, attempting to block out the violently offensive odor. “I’ve never seen that many together at once! How often do you guys have to take out this many of them?”
“More often than you’d think. Think of ‘em like a rolling snowball. Once one or two of ‘em start moving about, they run into others. After that they run into more and more until you end up with this,” Chris said as he pointed out the mass of disgusting, ravenous ghouls below them. “One turns into two, two turns into four, four turns into sixteen. You get the idea.” Chris grabbed the GAU-17/A Minigun on the starboard side of the helicopter and checked the weapon, spinning up the barrels to make sure it was ready.
Joe did the same on the other Minigun, the electric whir of barrels signifying that it was ready to fire. He swung the massive gun and eyed their targets.
Ogre brought the chopper down closer to the horde of zombies while he keyed the radio. He scanned all frequencies for the survivors at the outpost. As he fiddled with the radio and repeated his long-used hailing of “ZBRA Unit to any survivor at the outpost, we are currently engaging, please reply.” He scanned back and forth in front of him as well. He was briefly taken aback. There was normally some signs of life at an outpost; some had fires going, some would signal with smoke, and some even had enough electricity to use floodlights. What he noticed here was the absence of all those indicators. There were no suggestions that anyone was outside.
From what little information they had, there should have been at least three hundred people at the outpost. Even now as humanity had tried to rebuild, there still would not be many people inhabiting an outpost. Three hundred was considered large. In a small town of a thousand individuals, there would be less than twenty left. In a former city of two hundred thousand, you would be lucky to find two hundred.
“Something’s wrong here, boys. I'm not getting anything on the radio and there’s no home fires burnin’ down there. I say that we bug outta here before…” Ogre was cut off mid-sentence as he saw the first flash of light below.
“RPG!” Ogre screamed as he abruptly rotated the chopper one-hundred-eighty degrees, barely missing the rocket-propelled projectile.
The chopper rocked back and forth for a brief few seconds. Jamie, Rick, and Balboa were tossed forward, their weapons clattering against the metal floor. Joe and Chris kept their firm grips on the GAU-17/A Miniguns and managed to stay in the chopper, barely.
“What the hell was that?” Balboa hollered as he tried to right himself and grab his wayward M4 off the floor.
Small arms fire began to pelt the sides and underbody of the Yankee as it swayed back and forth. The telltale whistle of another RPG rocket got closer as it whizzed by the helicopter and flew less than fifty feet away from the Yankee.
Joe swung the Minigun back and forth quickly. “Where the hell are those coming from? Anybody got eyes on it?”
“Looks like top right, about one o’clock! Put some hurt on that area!” Ogre said as he stabilized the chopper and gave Chris’ side a clear field of fire.
“Ain’t gotta tell me twice!” Chris spun up the barrels on the Minigun and let rounds rip out. The intermittent brrrrrrp sound was deafening from the gun as it pelted a small three-story structure. Bits of brick and glass flew from the building as Chris continued to pulverize it with rounds.
“We need to get some space from here! Get us out of here, Ogre!” Joe screamed over the din of the engine and the rapid-fire Minigun.
Joe began firing the other Minigun as Ogre swung the chopper to the right. Joe’s side was now facing the target building. Chris ceased his fire on the structure and Joe picked up where he’d left off, obliterating the brick building and spraying the area around it with hot lead.
Ogre banked hard, put the nose of the chopper down, and started to pull away from the area. Joe pulled back on firing the GAU-17/A and was about to step back into the relative safety of the bird when he saw another flash of light, this one from a different angle.
And it looked like this one wasn’t going to miss.
“RPG! RPG! Ogre watch…”
The RPG round came flying from behind them, making a beeline towards the Yankee.
“OH SHIT!” Joe screamed as the rocket round clipped the tail rotor. The impact slammed the tail up and flung everyone forward, except Ogre. He tried to keep the chopper airborne as the rotor clanged around, damaged beyond repair. Smoke billowed from the rear of the chopper as during Ogre’s futile attempts to keep the back from spinning around. The tail section spewed forth hydraulic fluid.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Ogre cursed as he fought the stick back and forth, while at the same time manipulating the pedals of the bird. “It’s no good, boys! We’re goin’ down! Brace for impact!”
Jamie and Balboa had managed to pull themselves up and get back in their seats before the RPG round hit, while Rick had been watching over his father’s shoulder during the firefight. Rick had been thrown back, landing roughly on his shoulder, knocking the wind out of him and nearly knocking him out. Joe had managed to fall a little more gracefully, planting his ass firmly down on the hard metal flooring of the bird.
Chris was thrown off his perch on the Minigun as well. His feet came off the ground as the chopper pitched forward and he instinctively grabbed the Minigun to catch himself. The gun fought back, still hot from the tremendous amount of firing. That fact was not lost on Chris as the searing heat burned him on his hands and arms. The skin sizzled and ripped from his arms as he spun around and grabbed the barrel, desperate to hang on, his feet dangling over the abyss.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH FUUUUUUCK!” Chris screamed as the barrel seared his hands.
“Hang on, buddy!” Joe holle
red. He swiftly moved forward to aid his friend. Chris continued screaming as the world below him rocked back and forth, swinging and spinning out of control. Chris’ stomach lurched as the searing pain and the dizzying spectacle below made him nauseated. He looked up to see Joe coming towards him with an outstretched arm.
“Grab my hand!”
Chris tried moving his left hand away from the barrel, and in the process tore the skin from his hand. A sick handprint was left on the Minigun’s barrel as he tore it away. He screamed in pain as he desperately reached for Joe’s hand. He gripped the hot barrel with his right hand even tighter as he tried to reach out.
Joe got down on his stomach and grabbed Chris’ outstretched hand. The burnt skin had sloughed off and Joe found himself grabbing a slick, bloody appendage. Joe grabbed Chris’ arm with his other hand, letting go of what little grip he had on the chopper. He needed to save his friend, and he needed to do it quickly. He yanked Chris’ arm – hard. Chris hollered in pain from the burns on his hands and arms and now from the fact that his left shoulder was dislocated. Joe jerked him into the body of the chopper and instructed him to grab on to whatever he could.
Then Joe turned his attention to Rick. He grabbed him under the armpits and snatched him up, amazed at how light he felt. The adrenaline coursed through Joe’s veins, giving the impression of near-superhuman strength. Joe thought absently about how bad he was going to feel in the morning.
If we make it until morning. Another absent thought passed by.
Balboa and Jamie both sat on the same side of the bird and grabbed Rick as Joe helped him up. Rick was dazed, but managed to get his feet under him to get in the seat. Jamie and Balboa secured him as best they could as the chopper tilted back and forth. Ogre was not going to be able to save it, much to the dismay of the team.
The chopper’s tail rotor finally gave way and the Yankee continued its uncontrolled spin. Several rounds still pelted the chopper as it gyrated out of control, adding insult to injury. The UH-1Y flailed through the sky as the rest of the hydraulic fluid sprayed from the rear. Ogre had all but given up on the bird, and was desperately trying to brace himself for impact.
The ground came towards them closer and closer. The blur of a few trees and a former residential neighborhood came into view quickly. Joe braced himself and held onto Chris to keep him from being tossed from the chopper. It continued its death spin as the ground was now less than twenty feet away.
Joe thought that his life was supposed to flash before his eyes, but all he saw was a blur of buildings and trees as he closed his eyes and prayed that he would be able to open them again.
“Good luck, boys. God be with ya,” Ogre said to whoever could hear him as the chopper slammed into the middle of the street.
* * *
A weathered man in his mid-forties watched as his RPG hit the chopper square in the tail rotor. He dropped the RPG-7 launcher and turned to his cohorts; at least at the ones that were still alive after the miniguns had obliterated their diversion crew. He raised a crooked, dirty finger and pointed towards the smoke trail and the out-of-control helicopter.
“Go make sure those assholes are dead.”
CHAPTER 5
The radios were nearly silent as Curtis sat in front of them, constantly flipping back and forth between the different communications. He had never been the nervous type, but having to keep up with all of the random scrambling noise that came across the radio made him a little twitchy. Curtis was the only one of Joe’s crew that cared to drink coffee. He always had, even before he took over in commo. The MREs had plenty of coffee in them, but Curtis still insisted that they get some whenever they went out. The java fueled him.
Wagner had taken up a seat beside him and was staring at the different radios that Curtis was minding. There was a SINCGARS military radio, a CB radio, a HAM radio, VHF and UHF, and a barely running military computer that still received a signal on occasion. The military computer was running off a Milstar satellite that was good only for weather. It also gave limited heat signatures. It was used to keep track of the undead hot zones. Those zones were to be avoided at all costs.
Next to Wagner sat the prisoner from Lieutenant Wyatt’s militia. His name, come to find out, was Mike. Curtis could tell that Wagner had reservations about having to be near the man, but knew he wouldn’t let it bother him too much. Joe had tasked him with watching the prisoner while they were gone to Kentucky, and he’d do as he was told. Wagner had mentioned to Curtis that he didn't agree with their decision to get so close to what looked to be a major snowstorm, and Curtis had to admit he agreed with him.
Wagner shuffled in his seat as Curtis settled on the VHF radio. “Something wrong, Curtis?” he said as he leaned forward.
Curtis fiddled with the dials on the VHF and strained to hear. “I haven’t heard anything from the boys for almost twenty minutes now. That’s not like them. They usually at least give me a holler and let me know something.” Curtis looked behind him to an imaginary spot outside. “Maybe the antennas are overgrown again. We haven’t cleaned ‘em off this year yet. Do you mind goin’ up there and seein’ if you can get it cleared off? And take him with you. Y’all look like you could use some air.”
Wagner frowned. “I don’t wanna take this asshole out with me. I don’t really trust him to be honest, and I damn sure don’t want him backstabbin’ me.”
“Just go out and take a look and let me know if they’re clear. Take one of the handhelds and holler back at me once you do. There’s an M4 in the rack beside the door. Grab one just in case,” Curtis replied.
Wagner grumbled and waved for Mike to follow him. He grabbed an M4 and checked the magazine. There was a full clip and a round in the chamber. Wagner threw an ACU field jacket on and hesitantly tossed another to Mike. “Better throw this on. It’s cold as shit out there.”
Mike accepted the jacket and threw it over his shoulders. He followed Wagner out of the commo building and into the cold air. The snow was beginning to fall and the arctic cold air nipped at his face and hands. He pulled the flimsy hood of the field jacket over his head and stuffed his hands into the pockets. He greatly appreciated not having the zip-tie cuffs on him that Joe had bound him with prior to their trip to West Virginia. He meant no harm to Joe and his crew, but was having a difficult time showing them that he meant no ill feelings. On the contrary, he was trying to figure out how exactly to help, but again, it was no picnic convincing them.
Wagner walked ahead, rifle at low ready, and scanned the area. He didn't see anything, or hear much or anything – aside from his and Mike’s footsteps – and that bothered him more than the walk out. Normally when he was in Beckley, there were the sounds of the dead close by. Camp Dawson, however, was in the middle of scenic nowhere and had previously had the population to boot. Most of the undead had not migrated down from Morgantown, about twenty-five miles north of them. The dead tended to stay in packs, as did their human counterparts. There was always safety in numbers.
Wagner shook off his daydreams as he and Mike made their way to the antenna. As they neared the end of their trek, he could see it. There was nothing wrong with it. There was no overgrowth or anything obstructing the structure.
“Doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with it,” Mike said as they walked to the base of it.
“I know. Wonder what the problem is. Curtis seemed like he was a little distracted and I don’t think this was his first thought as to what was goin’ on. I think the boys might be in trouble,” Wagner replied.
Mike turned and started to walk back, and Wagner followed suit, their pace considerably quicker than before. Both men had a sinking feeling that there was something amiss. As they approached the commo building, their assumptions proved to be correct. Curtis was coming out of the building as they neared, his face grim.
“We got a big problem.”
* * *
“I got three boys headed out to the crash now,” said the weathered man. His scraggly beard brushe
d against the satellite phone as he talked. He hadn’t shaved in nearly three years, even after joining up with the Captain and his Peacemakers. He didn't see the relevance in the name of the group, but went along with it anyway. The Captain kept them supplied with food, water, and ammo. As long as he did then he could call them McDoober Shitstain Patrol for all he cared.
“Just make sure that those ZBRA assholes are dead, and then head back towards me in Virginia. Is the chopper still flyable?”
“Yessir, they didn't hit it, but we lost three men,” said Weathered Man.
“Acceptable losses. Did everything else work to plan?”
“Yessir, they fell for everything hook, line, and sinker,” the Weathered Man replied.
“Good. Captain out.”
CHAPTER 6
A strange combination of sounds, sights, smells, and feelings greeted Joe as he regained consciousness. He still felt like the chopper was crashing, even though he had been out for almost three minutes. In those three minutes, two of his people were killed, and he did not know it yet.
He could hear the moans of the undead, which gave him the most anxiety. Despite the wretched surroundings that he found himself stuck in, he realized that there was little time to dwell on them. He rolled around to his side and immediately realized that he was lying on the port side of the helicopter. As he blinked away blurriness that he soon realized was blood, he attempted to gain his bearings. He looked around the cabin, the tail of the chopper at his feet, and tried to figure out who was alive and who might not be.
“Guys … guys … hey … anybody alive?” Joe coughed out.
“Unnnnnh. What the hell? Dad? You okay?” Rick shot up quickly. A trail of blood that started from a gash in his scalp dripped down onto his right shoulder. He’d landed to Joe’s right and was the first of the crew to sit up. Rick swung his head around left and right, quickly realizing the same thing that Joe had.
