by R. J. Spears
“Sir, it is against my better judgment, but I will attempt to fly lower,” Peake responded, but he kept his altitude the same and barely looked below. It was with this small act of defiance that said he was done with this asshole. It was only a matter of time before he made an excuse to exit stage right.
“Just do it!” Kilgore shouted.
Peake continued flying along and saw a hill just ahead covered with thick woods and green trees. It seemed to be the tallest one around and not one he would like to climb on foot. A two-lane road ribboned its way among the trees and climbed up the hill. Several abandoned cars littered the twisty road, but he saw nothing moving, dead or alive.
He came to a decision point; continue on this fool’s errand or make a break for it. He went with the latter.
“Apache 2 to base,” he spoke into his headset.
Kilgore came back in a flash, “Do you see them?”
“Negative, base,” Peake replied. “I’m getting a shimmy in my back rotor. I’m aborting the mission and returning to Wright-Pat.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Kilgore bellowed.
“Sir, we only have two choppers. We can’t afford to lose one. I can be at Wright-Pat, and they can take a look at it, then be back here in no time.”
“I’m ordering you to continue the search!”
“Sir, please accept my sincere apology,” Peake said, but there was nothing sincere about his apology, “but I’m taking this bird in to get it repair. I’m not going down looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Samuels moved two steps away from Kilgore sensing the oncoming eruption. Kilgore shot out of his seat and stood at the table, his jaw moving, but no words came out. This insubordination was just too much. Samuels could see the cords in Kilgore’s neck, tensed as tight as steel cables.
“You are disobeying a direct order, Airman Peake,” Kilgore shouted finding his words again. “I will see you court-martialed if you continue on this path.”
“With all due respect, sir, I’m doing what I think is best for the mission and the service,” Peake responded, feeling a juxtaposition of anxiety and relief. Things had been spiraling the drain with Kilgore. He saw it and so did some of the other men. He guessed the old man had finally cracked under the pressure.
He pulled the control stick to the left, and the helicopter broke from its northward course and headed west. His thoughts drifted about what was next. Return to the base at Wright Patterson or just go on the run? If he went to the base, Kilgore would eventually return there and then there would be hell to pay. Better to take the chopper on the run. His uncle had a small cabin nestled in the woods of northeast Indiana. He pictured it in his mind and saw a perfect place to land right next to the pond. He just hoped he had enough fuel to make it.
“This is your last warning, Peake! You will complete this mission, or….”
Or what, Peake thought? Or you’ll confine me to quarters like you did with a relatively sane Sergeant Jones? Beat me unconscious like you did with Hilden?
“PEAKE!” Kilgore shouted so loudly that it seems as if his eyes might pop out of his skull.
Peake reached down to his console and switched off his communications and continued to fly westward, awash in a deep sense of relief. Maybe he wouldn’t even go to the Wright-Patterson Airbase. Maybe he would just fly until he got close to running out of fuel, and then set his bird down and walk away. Maybe? That cabin in the woods was looking good right about then.
Kilgore jumped from in front of the communication equipment over to the monitors, pushing the soldier at that station out of the way, nearly causing him to topple over.
“Where the hell is he?” he asked the young soldier who had been watching the monitors until then. He was a husky guy with a thick head of dark curly hair, and his name was Cantwell.
“Cantwell, where is he?” Kilgore asked.
Cantwell, nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, pointed a nervous hand at one of the larger monitors.
“What am I looking at?” Kilgore bellowed. In his current manic state, all he saw was yellow lines, a field of dots, some moving, some not. It was a jumble that his superheated mind couldn’t make sense of.
“There, sir,” Cantwell said, putting his finger close to the screen, pointing at a small dot floating to the left.
“That son of the bitch is heading west, isn’t he?” Kilgore asked.
Afraid to answer, but also afraid not to, Cantwell said, “Yes, sir.”
“Peake, you have one more chance to turn around, or so help me, I will see you executed as a traitor!.”
Samuels found some small morsel of courage inside himself and stepped up to the communication equipment and said, “Colonel, he’s turned off his comms.”
Kilgore reached out, grabbed the table with the monitors on it, roaring like a wounded animal as he did so. He yanked it upward, flipping the table over, spilling the monitors and all the other equipment onto the floor. Pieces of plastic and metal broke away from the monitors and skittered across the floor like frightened insects.
Cantwell jumped out of his chair and took two stumbling steps backward. “Holy shit,” he said under his breath.
Kilgore breathed in and out, in and out, in large explosive breaths, his shoulders heaving up and down with each breath like an angry bull. Neither Samuels nor Cantwell moved, fearing they would be the next thing to be tossed across the floor.
It took nearly a minute, but Kilgore’s breathing slowed back into a normal rhythm, and his shoulders fell slack. Without saying a word, he slid one step back over to the table with the communications equipment and pressed a button, then said, “Apache 1, what is your progress?”
Airman Daniel Moore had heard the entire exchange between Peake and Colonel Kilgore. It had been a nervous couple of minutes. Peake was a buddy, and they had flown in tandem missions nearly a hundred times. He trusted Peake, but Kilgore was in command, even if he was a little crazy.
Moore pressed his comm-button and spoke, “I’ve just crested a rather tall hill. There’s a gradual descent and, in the distance, I see some structures. There must a hundred or so homes packed together on one side of the road and sixty on the other. They are in two tight groups. I think they might be mobile homes. I see some movement down there. It could be zombies, but I will check it out and report in.”
“You do that,” Kilgore said with no emotion.
Chapter 24
Speed Bump
The sound of the chopper blades beating in the distance changed in pitch and in volume and I just knew they were about to come over the hill we had traversed less than twenty minutes ago. The hill that just about killed me. The problem was that I also knew they could get over that hill a lot of faster than we ever did. Frighteningly fast. All of the others knew it, too, and looked back at the top of the tall hill, transfixed by impending doom, it seemed.
To the east of us was a large open abandoned farm field, spreading for a mile or longer along the road. The field, once full of six-foot tall corn stalks, was now corrupted by patchy spots of scrubby weeds and knee-high grass. To the southwest lay the swath of rusted out and weather-beaten mobile homes. Some were packed up tightly together while weeds grew up between them in the wider openings.
Did I also mention that shambling among the mobile homes were a dozen or so zombies? Oh yeah, they were there for sure.
The sound of the helicopters got closer by the second, and I knew I had to get us off that road, but I also felt I was in a damned if I do, damned if I don’t scenario. We could head into the field and lay down, hoping the helicopter would fly over us. That was risky, but so was heading into a small group of zombies.
For some reason, a story I had been forced to read in high school (highly touted by my cranky and spinster English teacher) came to mind at that very moment. It was the Lady or the Tiger where a man was forced to pick from the choice of two different doors. Behind one was a ravishing beauty. Behind the other was a ravenous tiger. It seemed so a
ppropriate for our circumstance only our choices were the zombies or the death-dealing chopper. So, there was really no prize behind either of the doors we had to choose from.
I weighed our options and decided to go with the devil I knew.
“Get your bikes off the road and lay them in the grass,” I yelled, but they all still stood in the road, as if the sound of the helicopter was really the neighborhood ice cream truck ready to come deliver cool and delicious treats. “Do it NOW!”
That got them moving and as I pushed my bike off the road towards the mobile homes. And the zombies. Yeah, I hadn’t forgotten about them. As soon as I got in the tall grass, I dropped my bike, hoping it would be concealed.
“We’re going to hide in there,” I said pointing toward the mobile homes.
This wasn’t a mobile home park where people lived. Instead, it looked like a place where mobile homes came to die. The elephant graveyard of mobile homes.
They were jammed together tightly with little space in-between. I couldn’t figure out what they were all doing there, but I certainly didn’t have time for a historical forensic investigation.
“Joel, there are zombies in there,” Kara said as she dropped her bike down in the tall grass next to mine.
“I know, babe, but you’re going to have to trust me on this,” I said. “We need to hide in among those homes and, yes, those undead bastards.”
“Can’t we make a run for it?” Naveen said.
“We’d never out run that chopper,” I said. “No more time to debate this. We need to move.”
The rest of the group dropped their bikes, and we all started toward the mobile homes.
As we moved, I said, “No shooting, unless you absolutely have to. The chopper might spot that. Get out your hand-to-hand weapons.”
Donovan had been very generous with supplying weapons, both of the bullet dealing kind and the quiet kind. He even took suggestions. Kara had a long piece of metal pipe with the end wrapped in thick duct tape. I’m not sure why she wouldn’t just go with a bat like me, but the carpenter gets to pick his own tools, right? Brother Ed had a medium sized hand ax. It seemed a good fit for his personality. Jason carried a mattock. The wooden handle made it light enough for him to be effective without tiring him out. Naveen had an extra-long claw hammer, but I hoped it didn’t come down to her using it. Pre-teens shouldn’t have to kill zombies with hand-to-hand weapons, but it was a cruel world where the dead walk and the living ran for their lives.
I, of course, had my bat. My trusty and effective, death-dealing companion.
We ran like our lives depended on it -- because, well, they did. The uneven ground made it challenging, but we all stayed upright and moving. The sound of the helicopter increased in volume, announcing its imminent arrival and I could imagine it appearing over the hill and letting loose a dizzying volley of bullets at any second. Nothing motivates you to run like the possibility of being shredded by .30 caliber bullets. I had witnessed what it could do to a truck and could only imagine what it could do to human flesh. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Two rusted out mobile homes sat outside the larger mass of them and were closer to the road. They didn’t look in very good shape. I hoped they were the model units for potential customers.
“Forget these two,” I yelled as we came upon them. “Get to the others.”
We sprinted past the two mobile homes. They were mottled with rust spots, and vandals had done a job on the windows. Some artistics types had used their talents to scrawl a variety of curse words on the flaking paint. Ahhh, the graffiti F-word never seemed to grow old.
I shouted back to my crew and said, “Drop your packs under the first one of these pieces of shit.” I followed my advice and slid off my backpack as we ran, making sure I grabbed one handgun for close-up work just in case and my baseball bat for doing that quietly. As soon as we made it to the first home, I rolled my pack underneath it and heard the others do the same. I didn’t look back to check because this was an eyes forward operation and I had to trust them to do what I told them.
The mass of mobile homes were packed tightly together, making it challenging to decide where to wedge ourselves in. Of course, I also knew that any place I ran into wide enough for people was wide enough for zombies.
I aimed for the first broad opening and, dammit, I hate being right. Just as I turned into the gap, an undead bastard lunged out at me. In life, he had been a rail-thin old man wearing some sort of a suit. He was probably someone’s grandfather, but that was moot. He was undead, and he was in our way. Plus, he wanted to eat us.
At that very instant, the rhythmic sound of the blades and engine of the helicopter increased audibly, telling me that the chopper had crossed over the top of the hill. The only thing keeping us out of view now were the mobile homes. I was certain, at that point, that if it flew overhead, we would be dead meat because we were still too exposed.
I watched the zombie’s hands coming for my face but knew there was no turning back. I pushed my bat out in front of me, using it as a battering ram, shoving the head of the bat right into the zombie’s sternum. The impact was jarring and I heard something crack inside the zombie’s chest. It’s arms flew up, and it toppled over. I jumped into the air, bringing my feet up, and then unloaded them downward in a spring-like motion. Both of my boots connected with the thing’s head and that was all she wrote. The thing’s skull didn’t crumple like an eggshell but collapsed in on itself like a rotten watermelon. The squishing noise would have made me vomit if I hadn’t been so concerned about being torn to bits by a flying death machine.
“Gross,” Kara said as she slid into the gap with Naveen in hand. “Don’t look,” she said to Naveen, but it was too late. Naveen had seen some pretty ugly things on her own as she ran from a horde of zombies before she came into our lives, but I don’t know if she had ever seen it this up and close and personal. She looked a little green, but, like a trooper, she nuzzled up to Kara and kept her eyes up.
“Where’s Brother Ed and Jason?” I asked.
Kara whipped her head around and said, “They were right behind me.”
She started to push Naveen aside to step back out past the mobile homes, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“We can’t go back out there,” I said, pointing up to the sky.
The roar of the helicopter was getting closer to us, and I was ready for its shadow to pass over us at any second.
“They’ll be fine,” I said, hoping that was true and tugged her back into the maze of broken and uneven corridors made by the rusted out and dilapidated mobile homes. We had to be careful with each step we took, not only because of the undead roaming among the pathways, but jagged and rusty pieces of metal stuck out from oblique angles like broken knife blades. You’d think we’d overlook that, but, in truth, there was no urgent care or ERs to go to, and an infection could be fatal.
Still, threats were taken on a first come, first serve basis. First, was the helicopter. Second, was the zombies. Third, was the rusty metal.
The helicopter made a hell of a racket as it raced towards us covering the moans and groans of the zombies inside our little maze of rust and decaying metal, leaving me at a deficit as we ventured forward. Each step we made as we walked deeper into the maze of homes felt dangerous, the beating sound of its rotors bouncing off the metal like kettle drums.
I imagined a large countdown clock in my head, ticking down the seconds as the helicopter approached. A palpable tension rose inside me, waiting for the helicopter to whoosh overhead, then to see us and swoop back to open up with its guns. My ever so active mind conjured up the sound of the bullets ripping through the metal of the mobile homes, shredding them like a lawn mower tears through grass. I saw Kara take a hit, then Naveen, and then my imagination gave me a snapshot of the bullets smashing into me, feeling like hot swords. My last sight would be the two people I love the most on the world being killed.
Thanks, imagination. Whose side are you on anyway?
I was in the lead and stepped up to the back corner of one of the mobile homes when an older female zombie stepped into the gap, blocking our progress. She was a plus size woman wearing a dark colored dress with large white polka dots on it. The dress was torn in several places exposing most of a darkly stained bra. The things you have to see in a zombie apocalypse like the undead and an old woman’s bra. Will the horrors never cease?
I weighed the chance that a shot would be detected by the chopper, but decided to play it safe and stuck with my bat. I pushed Kara back and advanced on the zombie.
Just as I pulled the bat back over my head, the helicopter noise passed by us overhead, sounding like it was off to our right. I wanted nothing more than to rush back to the opening we had entered to take a look, but I had more pressing matters like a zombie shambling toward me.
One of my dad’s pet phrases, when I was a kid was -- first things first. It was time to make that motto operational.
The zombie closed the gap and I waited, timing my blow, feeling the tension in the muscles in my arms pulsing. It took a step and then another, its arms outstretched as if coming in for a polite embrace like my grandmother used to give on Sunday’s after church. I knew better. This undead thing wasn’t going to give me a love peck on the cheek. It was going to eat my cheek and the rest of my face.
I brought the bat forward and down, cracking grandma zombie’s skull as hard as I had ever hit a baseball. It wasn’t quite a home run but would have been at least a triple.
The zombie went down without making another noise.
The helicopter receded in the distance, but a few seconds later, it sounded like it was getting closer to us. I could only guess that it was sweeping the area in some sort of search pattern which meant that we weren’t in the clear.
