by Mark Wandrey
“Drop the ship and run,” he said.
“No!” Jeremiah snapped. “We need the ship.”
“We need to live more,” West said. The other men looked down the hill, panic growing on their faces. West had just got the magazine reloaded when nearby another gun started sounding. He glanced over and was surprised to see Alison shooting with a compact semi-auto handgun. She saw him and shrugged.
“After the ISS, I decided I didn’t want to be helpless.”
“Works for me,” he said and began firing as well.
The combination of two guns working the crowd helped. Alison was a pretty good shot too, and quickly caught onto the tactic of aiming low on the lead group to trip them up. She shot out her first magazine and fished one out of a pocket on her vest while West fired the last three rounds in his.
“Last magazine,” he said as he reloaded.
“Me too,” she said.
West checked the team’s progress. They’d abandoned Jeremiah’s help and were manhandling it between the three remaining. The helicopter was a few feet away and they were grunting in effort to lift it high enough to fit into the big central bay. The infected were only 10 yards down the hill. West gritted his teeth and slowly walked toward the first helicopter as he fired. We’re not going to make it, he thought.
“I’m out!” Alison yelled as her gun locked up.
“RUN!” he yelled as the first of the infected broached the top of the hill. He shot the woman in the face and she fell back, knocking the next two spinning back down the hill. A huge man vaulted over her falling body and West shot him through the hip. The man landed and screamed in rage and pain as his leg folded under him, bone shattering and part of his femur jutting out of his abdomen, taking intestines with it.
The blades on the helicopter with the salvaged ship and crew were beginning to spin up. West tried not to think about the fact that his own bird was just sitting there with the engine stopped, and only the generator running. How long to get the blades spun up? Too long. Then he heard the engine on his whine to life. He shot two more infected who were leaping at him as he backpedaled. He tripped on a bush and almost fell over the other side of the hill. He barely caught himself. Another raced at him, eyes wide in insane hunger, teeth bloody, mouth open and reaching. He rammed his gun out, smashing teeth on the man, and pulled the trigger. The back of his head exploded, and he fell away. West’s gun locked empty as still another reached for him.
Boom, a gun report came from near the helicopters and the top of the man’s head exploded. West turned and saw Patty in a classic Weaver stance, gun in both hands, legs apart, leaning slightly forward. She fired again and an infected crashed to the ground at his heels.
“Get to the chopper!” Patty cried. West ran, the enormity of the situation all but overwhelming him. She abandoned her stance and moved sideways, firing as she went. Alison and Jeremiah were already onboard the bird, and the big doors were sliding closed. Free of their load, the two other men also carrying fired at the infected, though none with the skill Patty was showing.
West slid into the seat and slammed the door, latching it. He saw she’d come over and started the turbine in his bird, locking the run control down and setting the throttle. It had been a hell of a gamble, he thought. Another twenty seconds, and it probably would have lifted off, whether he was aboard or not.
“Holy shit!” Alison cried as a pair of infected slammed into the metal rear sliding door with bone crushing force. Blood splattered across the plexiglass window, which developed a huge crack. Three more smashed into the side.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” Jeremiah said from the copilot seat. His eyes were as big as dinner plates, his veins standing out on his neck, and spittle flying from his lips as he yelled.
West took a precious second to scan the instruments, though he knew it made little difference. If anything was wrong, they were dead; however, he needed enough RPMs to get off the ground. He judged there were sufficient ones, pulled up on the collective, pushed forward on the cyclic, and the helicopter lifted off the dirt road and began to accelerate away. When it did, it took a half dozen infected with it.
“Oh shit,” West said as the helicopter began to tilt to one side, climbing unsteadily for a second, then stopping. He gave it more collective and pulled hard on the cyclic, trying to level them out. An alarm started to buzz, and he looked up. “RPM” was glowing yellow, meaning the rotors were losing speed. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said as they started to go down again, and the pitch of the engine rose to an angry scream. The entire top of the hill was alive with infected now. Dozens. Tens of dozens swarmed like angry army ants. He looked around and made a snap decision. He pushed the cyclic forward, and the helicopter went over the edge of the hill and began to fall. Jeremiah screamed like a little girl.
West was dimly aware of Patty screaming instructions at him, the sound distant and muffled from the headset still hanging on the peg over his head. He didn’t even think about reaching for it. That wasn’t an option. Several of his unwanted passengers fell away, spinning and pin wheeling away over the cliff.
The helicopter plummeted over the side, accelerating downward and turning toward the left. West ground his teeth together as he pulled on the cyclic to level them. The ground was only a couple hundred feet below. The right-side plexiglass window exploded inward as a pair of infected smashed it at the same time.
“West!” Alison screamed as they tried to climb through.
“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” he growled, and gave the pedals full left. The tail rotor acted as a counter to the natural rotation induced by the spinning rotor blades. The pedals controlled the pitch of the tail rotor, and enabled a helicopter to yaw left and right, even when just hovering. West’s action spun the craft like a top.
The crazy spin generated so much centrifugal force that everyone was thrown against the outer bulkheads. Alison, who’d been cringing backward to avoid the infected trying to climb through and reach her, was flung face first into the aft of the two door windows, which exploded outward. If she hadn’t been in a sitting position, she would have been launched out like a missile. As it was, she was knocked unconscious, her body above the hips dangling out the hole left by the exploded window. The remaining infected hung on for another second, then were flung away.
West wrenched the craft back under control. He yanked in enough collective to be sure they didn’t smack into a hill and noticed the entire helicopter had an unnerving vibration that hadn’t been there before. “Oh, that’s not good,” he said aloud, then turned and began climbing. The stick seemed slow to respond, and he had to use twice as much pressure on the pedals as before. That vibration was in the pedals as well. “Oh, what did I do to this crate,” he said through gritted teeth. Patty’s voice was still yelling on the headphones, which he finally answered.
“Are you okay?” she called.
“I’m fine,” he said, “though I’m shocked we’re still alive!”
“Me too,” she agreed, “I don’t know if I could’ve pulled that off, and I have three thousand hours in these. It looked like something from the movies. A miracle.” He finished climbing to her altitude and they circled the hilltop as he examined his instruments and alarms. Nothing appeared serious enough to warrant immediate concern. He glanced over and saw Osborne was unconscious. It looked like he’d smashed his head on the side of the door. He’d have quite the bruise when he woke up. Outside, Patty had orbited to his passenger side, inspecting for damage.
“You have a passenger half out the back door,” she said. He looked over his shoulder and saw Alison, still hanging half out the door. It didn’t look comfortable, or safe. “She’s bleeding from the head.”
“The boss is out too,” West said. “We need to set down for a minute.” They’d just passed over the southern edge of the island, so Patty led him into a sweeping bank to the left.
“There’s a place down there,” she said, “seven o’clock. Looks like a wastew
ater treatment plant, or sand and gravel? Right on the beach.”
After the reception they’d gotten near Avalon, West decided to carefully check the area before landing. He was out of ammo, and Alison was as well (and unconscious). He had no idea how many rounds the other armed men might have. They certainly were in no shape for another fight. As Patty was the better pilot, she flew down to a hundred feet above the ocean, where she hovered next to the buildings.
The water was whipped up and sand from the beach blew into the air as they both watched the buildings for signs of life. Back at the ball park, then the hill top, the infected flocked to the sound of the helicopters. This time, nothing moved.
“I think you’re good for a quick landing,” she said. “Use that big open space next to the water, but off the sand. I’ll land on the road, so if anyone comes down they’ll go for us first.” He agreed that was a good idea, since her helicopter still had all its windows.
Patty put her bird down a little before he did as an extra precaution. When there was still no response, West came in over the water, flared, and set down without a hop this time.
“You’re getting better at this,” Patty said. He wasn’t sure if he agreed.
“Keep a lookout,” he said, “while I sort this out?”
“Will do,” she agreed.
West rolled the throttles to idle, then locked them. He flipped the radio to PA and carefully climbed out of his seat and into the back. Leaving the bird running was insane, but what wasn’t right now? There was blood, hair, and bits of skin all over the front window, the ones the infected broke. The fragments of the rear window had blood on them as well, and he immediately feared Alison had torn her face off when she’d been launched through it. His first look at her seemed to confirm the worst. Her head and face were a mask of blood and matted hair.
“Oh, shit girl,” he said and gently pulled her in through the hole so as not to make it any worse. Plexiglass wasn’t as sharp as regular glass, but you could still cut yourself on it. He expected to find her skin hanging in tatters. It wasn’t. There was lots of blood, some still dripping, but no signs of ripped skin. He went to their supplies and found a canteen. They’d filled it from the ship’s supply of steam boiled water, as instructed by the researcher on the oil rig. Using it, he washed her face with a quarter of the canteen. No blood flooded back over pale white skin. “Thank God,” he said.
“West!” Patty’s voice bellowed over the PA. “Head’s up, inbound.” There was an increase in pitch from the other helicopter, which was lifting smoothly into the air. West gently lifted Alison onto a seat and buckled her in before looking again. A group of infected were standing under the other helicopter, which was hovering just a few feet above their heads. As he gave Alison’s belts a tug, one of them looked his way, realized what it was seeing, and ran toward him.
“Time to go,” West said and quickly slid into the pilot’s seat. As soon as his hands touched the controls he increased the throttle. The engine roared back to life, and he spent a second struggling with his seatbelt while the RPMs came up. Finally, with the throttles all the way open and his belt on, West did a quick visual on the gauges before easing up on the collective.
He’d hurt the bird, probably badly, he guessed. Every bit of his meager helicopter training said you never took off in a compromised bird. Never, ever, ever. But the training didn’t cover cannibal zombies running at you. He silently prayed as the shimmy came back, then the Jet Ranger began to climb. The lead infected made a mad jump at his skids, but they were already a dozen feet up and climbing. Soon, they were just dots in the chin-bubble as he turned south west.
He slipped the headphones back on and switched from PA. “Let’s go home,” he said. “This bird is not in good shape, Alison needs medical assistance, and Jeremiah is out too.” The two helicopters came around and headed southwest.
* * *
Just West of San Diego, CA
“Never liked these fucking things!” Vice Admiral Lance Tomlinson snarled over the headset he was wearing. Seated in the rear observation seat of the MV-22 Osprey, he looked as annoyed as he sounded.
“The Osprey’s a fine bird, Admiral!” Marine Colonel Tad Alinsky said with a grin. “Besides, we’ve only got two Seahawks. We’re using them to move hardware. There are twenty of the Ospreys, so that’s what we use.” The admiral grunted. “The Army is out of this op?”
“Too many factors against them,” the admiral said, shaking his head. “Rose did a hell of a job getting what he did out of Hood when it fell. He has elements of the 1st and 3rd Cav, as well as some people from the sustainment command. Probably better than eight thousand men in and around Hood when the shit hit the fan, and he got less than 500 combat troops out.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine the Army fared well at all nationally. Landlocked, nowhere to go, sometimes right next to major population centers. Anyway, Rose is trying to organize, but Army on a float? We’re also critically short in the ability to put anyone ashore as it is. I’m afraid they’ll just get in the way of rapid deployment.”
“I can only imagine,” Alinsky said. Marines spent a lot of time on the water. “We’d just moved aboard the Essex a week before the first outbreaks. We got orders to anchor offshore and await developments when comms failed.”
“You’re not sure about the Atlantic Command?” The admiral asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, either.
“No sir,” Alinsky said. “I know the Commandant was in talks with the Joint Chiefs as everything started falling apart. I’d like to ask POTUS, but I wasn’t allowed to bring it up.” Tomlinson nodded in agreement. That meeting had been terse, to say the least. There were a half-dozen marine amphibious assault ships based out of Norfolk, along with more naval assets. They could possibly be doing so much to save people, help hold the wall while the scientists worked.
“San Diego coming up below,” the pilot called. The admiral and the colonel both moved to the side door. The Osprey’s huge three-bladed props were all the way forward, a blur to the left as the men looked down. San Diego was a beautiful coastal town of a million and a half; it had numerous beautiful bridges and many districts along hills overlooking the sea. Flying 5,000 feet above the city now reminded the admiral of the time he’d flown over Lebanon after six weeks of fighting had recently finished.
“How many people could we rescue if we weren’t doing this?” Tomlinson wondered aloud.
“Some, at least,” Alinsky replied. “We had an apartment complex a mile from here firing flares to get the attention of a crew just two hours ago.” The admiral ground his teeth as he looked at the war-ravaged city below. A thousand fires burned. Most were just curls of smoke, but others were infernos. A pair of high-rise offices downtown blazed like torches, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air. That fire couldn’t have started back when everything started falling apart. “I try not to think of the rest of the country.”
“That doctor has to find a cure,” Tomlinson said, though he didn’t believe it even as he said it. They’d all listened to Dr. Breda. She didn’t think there was a cure possible. That was one of the most depressing things he’d heard since the news that Pearl was going to fall.
The Osprey angled to starboard, leaving downtown behind. The Naval Base came into view and Tomlinson’s jaw set. More fires burned there. He’d already seen the images from a high-altitude flyover by an F-18 mounting a SHARP multi-function reconnaissance pod yesterday. Two destroyers and a cruiser were partially sunk in the south bay. The fires on the Boxer had long burned out. The Roosevelt looked untouched. He’d like to land a team on her and had made a note to himself to see to it after this operation.
They passed nearby the Coronado Bridge and over the Tidelands Park. The remains of thousands of multi-colored tents lay in the park, covering almost all the grass. Two big white tents with FEMA on them were partially collapsed. With the military SATCOM and civilian internet down, they’d been unable to find out anything about the FEMA presence there.
From a mile up, Tomlinson could still see people moving around the camp and streets. They looked like little lines of ants following the roads choked with abandoned vehicles or swarming over yards.
The next half-mile was a densely packed example of the American Dream, a thousand or so very expensive houses with a scattering of small- to medium-sized apartment buildings, mini malls, schools, and everything else civilians needed to be happy. Official population was 20,000, but how many of them were hunkered down, and how many ready to attack?
They passed over a golf course and then the outer perimeter of Naval Air Station North Island, AKA NASNI, and Naval Base Coronado. Tomlinson had served there several times over his career, the longest for three years back in the late 90s when he was captain of DDG-59, USS Russel, his last pre-carrier command. It was the largest complex of military bases in the western United States, and it was home to dozens of ships and squadrons. It was vital to their plan.
“This place is fucking huge,” Colonel Alinsky said, taking in the hook-shaped island through the other window. “We’re sure the other options aren’t a go?”
“Recon confirms,” Tomlinson said. “Catalina is only 3,000 feet, and on a fucking mountain top. San Clemente Auxiliary has at least a dozen jumbo jets parked on it. One of them parked in the middle of the others at high speed. It would take a week and heavy equipment to make it ready. San Nicolas is similar; only three planes there, but two of them had managed to have a head-on collision in the middle of the only runway. The third one looks like it tried to land in a fog a day later and just added to the pileup. Either way, there isn’t any heavy equipment on the island, so it’s just as bad as San Clemente.” He shrugged. “NASNI has the advantage of only two approaches. One is a bridge and naturally limited, the other is narrow and controllable.”
