Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  Cade couldn’t keep from smiling after hearing the last part of the conversation between Ari and the unnamed pilot who was flying the most important aircraft in the sky save the one that Cade was strapped into—the aircraft that was currently carrying enough JP8 to see everyone aboard both the Ghost Hawk and the Osprey home with some to spare.

  He cast a sidelong look at Gaines and noticed he was smiling as well. Then, without making eye contact, he looked away in order to take in the countryside below. He estimated the helo was now no more than five hundred feet from the deck. The descent had been so gradual and quiet that he hadn’t noticed the seventy-five hundred feet of altitude Ari had shaved off in just a matter of minutes.

  Cade rested his eyes as the Ghost Hawk droned on for another fifteen minutes, and when he opened them the Missouri River dominated the terrain and a small city was scrolling into view. He watched Jedi-One One’s shadow far off on the port side keeping pace as they paralleled a two-lane road that entered the city from the southwest.

  Aside from a few squat office-type buildings, and one massive domed structure he took to be the capitol building, most of Pierre consisted of tightly packed residential neighborhoods radiating from a central downtown core. Pretty unimpressive for a state capital, thought Cade. Strangely enough, the blacktop below wasn’t choked with cars or Zs like the highways near Colorado Springs and Denver had been after the outbreak.

  He searched his memory, trying to recall how many people lived in Pierre. Nothing. Though he had impressed himself by remembering that Pierre was the state capital, he didn’t know one other fact about the place.

  “How many people in Pierre?” he asked over the comms to no one in particular. He received a shrug from Hicks, whose eyes were hidden behind the smoked visor of his flight helmet.

  “No idea,” Tice replied as he snicked a Hubble-sized telephoto lens onto the black Nikon camera body. He put the gear bag aside and panned the camera around the cabin, nearly decapitating Lopez in the process.

  “There were less than twenty thousand before the event,” Durant answered.

  The city bumped up to the edge of rocky bluffs north of the Missouri River and was fairly flat, except for a few low rolling hills far away in the distance. Tice whirred away with his camera as the Ghost Hawk overshot the river and made landfall once again. Directly below the helo was a sizable National Guard presence complete with a dozen or so Humvees—half of them parked on a lonely bridge straddling the turbid brown water. Soldiers and citizens waved at them as Ari slowed the chopper and scribed a large arc in the sky overtop the aging iron bridge. With only two lanes, one going each way, the black span looked like it was built from an old discarded Erector Set.

  “Looks like there are quite a few survivors down there,” Cross noted. He stabbed a finger at the glass. “See the road-blocked streets? There... and there. Looks like the dead own a good chunk of downtown.”

  Durant’s voice crackled through the onboard comms. “Damn smart of them to keep the bridge clear as an egress route.”

  “Egress to where... the desert? The great wide open?” Lopez asked. “Can’t be much more than tumbleweeds and oil derricks out there.” Then his voice rose an octave. “Madre,” he said. “I see demonios... thousands of them.”

  Sure enough, pressed against the crude fortifications erected at the intersection of every street for five blocks on either side of the main road leading towards the bridge were too many walking dead to count, let alone guestimate.

  “We need to get these folks some help,” Gaines said, finally breaking his self-imposed silence. Then he quickly rattled off a series of orders. “Durant, see if you can get someone on the radio. Ari, take us as low as you can, and Tice, take some extreme close-up photos of the situation down there, then have Durant fire them off to Nash back at Schriever so she can light a fire under Whipper and have some ammo parachuted in to those fine Americans.”

  “Copy that,” Durant and Tice replied nearly in unison.

  “General, shall I deploy the mini-guns... and what exactly do you mean by low?” asked Ari, who, unless instructed to do otherwise, would have them riding the razor’s edge, skimming main street between store fronts while nearly getting paint from the yellow centerlines on the helo’s underbelly.

  “You know what I mean, Ari Silver,” Gaines replied testily. “I want a closer look. One hundred AGL should do the trick.”

  “Copy that,” said Ari sheepishly. “If I’m good... on the way home can I fly low and fast?”

  Shaking his head, Gaines said, “I will give it some thought. First we have to complete this mission.” You fly boys are all the same, is what he didn’t say.

  After a mental fist pump celebrating what hadn’t yet been fully decided, Ari nudged the stick to bring them within a hundred feet of the top segment of the bridge and the tan Humvees he presumed were protecting it.

  Durant switched over so that only the general and the aircrew were on the same channel. “I have a man says he’s Governor Boothe on another channel. Says they have been trying to hail us.”

  “Put them through shipwide,” Gaines said. “We’re all on the same team.”

  “Except Spooky and the President’s manservant,” Lopez mumbled to himself.

  Before engaging the survivors on the ground, Gaines looked across the cabin and shot the stocky Hispanic operator a healthy dose of the stink eye.

  Note taken, thought Lopez as he shifted his gaze forward towards the cockpit, where he could see between the pilots the areas of the city that were completely overrun by the Zs.

  “I have Governor Jensen Boothe on the open line,” Durant intoned.

  Gaines nodded to indicate that he could hear, then he keyed his mike. “I’m General Ronnie Gaines, USSOCOM—United States Special Operations Command—operating out of Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Who am I talking to?”

  “Jensen Boothe here, Sir. I’m South Dakota’s governor.”

  “Good to meet you, Boothe. Good to hear someone’s still keeping the peace down there. I see you’ve got the Guard deployed. That right?”

  “Yes Sir, but this is all that’s left of the Guard. Got a captain in command down here. The adjutant general went missing when Madison fell to the dead. Sioux Falls was silent by the first Sunday after the outbreak. And Fort Meade and Ellsworth Air Force Base also are not operational. The B-1 bombers all flew out of Ellsworth early on. Good thing... Rapid City is full of those things too.”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much left anywhere, Governor,” Gaines said. “I wish I had some good news for you.”

  “Two weeks and everything is gone. Just gone. We’re hungry down here, Sir,” Boothe said. Then, after a long silence. “Sir, are you there?”

  “I’m still here,” Gaines said. “I sympathize fully with you, Governor. D.C. pretty much fell apart on Z day. MacDill fell three days after. Bragg, Dix, Lejeune, Coronado... all gone. Can you put the captain on?”

  “Sure, he’s close by.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Rodriguez... Captain Rodriguez,” said the governor as a volley of automatic weapons fire filtered over the mike along with his words.

  “Captain Rodriguez here.”

  Gaines introduced himself in the same manner he had the governor. “What can I do for you right now, soldier?” he asked.

  “Sir, we need ammo and food... in that order. We’re holding them off but I don’t think we have long. I figure we have enough ammo to last half a day max, then we have to cut and run.”

  Gaines looked around the cabin at the ashen faces of his men. Cade nodded in sympathy. He had been in a similar situation with the survivors at the dam. Desantos had mentioned something about old folks leaping off of a multi-story building in order to escape the dead, and how the decision to mercy kill the lot of them had been one of the hardest decisions he’d ever had to make.

  Cade watched Gaines come to some kind of decision. His features changed. Softened.

&nbs
p; “Captain. I’m going to have a pallet of .223 ammo and some cases of rations airlifted to you before 1200 hours.”

  Cade looked at his Suunto wristwatch and did the math. A little over three hours.

  “Copy that,” said the captain. “I think we’ll be able to hold out. Thank you, General.”

  “We take care of our own, Captain. Now you take care of your men. Let me talk to the governor.”

  “Boothe here.”

  “Listen to that captain. I’m going to have some supplies dropped... listen to that young man and work with him. How many survivors do you have down there?” Gaines asked as he craned his neck to see the ground from the orbiting ship.

  “A couple of thousand. But we’re having nightly outbreaks... lose a hundred a night.”

  “I’m certain you’ll be OK,” said Gaines. “Clamp it down and work together.” He clicked over and spoke to Durant. “Get Whipper on the line and make it happen.”

  “Copy that,” replied Durant.

  “Let’s go Ari. Can we catch up with One-Two?”

  “Done,” Ari said.

  Cade leaned back once again and listened to the hum of the engines. Three hours, he thought to himself,

  and we’ll all be in Canada.

  Chapter 51

  Outbreak - Day 16

  Near Victor, Idaho

  Four miles and ten minutes after the trio left the farmhouse in the rearview, the white colonial with the gigantic red barn loomed on the horizon.

  Jenkins inclined his head towards the rolling green pastures and the buildings beyond. “Daymon, my man. You can thank the fine folks of Three Rivers Equestrian for the salve on your gut.”

  “Doesn’t look like they needed it anymore,” he said. “What’d they do? Take the horses with them?”

  “No they didn’t,” said Heidi slowly. She was in the back seat behind Jenkins. Her window was down and the incoming wind was whipping her blonde hair back into her face. “The fucking beasts got to them.”

  Jenkins let out a soul-shuddering moan that caused Daymon to jump from his seat. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Gimme the binoculars,” Jenkins demanded as he slipped the truck into park. “Now,” he barked without removing his eyes from the blurry red mounds dotting the rolling green expanse.

  Calm down, thought Daymon as he placed them into the driver’s upturned palm.

  Jenkins removed his glasses, set them on the dash and reluctantly pressed the binoculars to his face. “No, no, no. You dumbass, Charlie.”

  “So what,” said Daymon. “They’re fuckin’ horses.”

  “Those aren’t just any horses. Those are the ones I rescued,” Jenkins snapped. “Or what is left of them. Some fucking rescuer... I saved them from a slow death locked up in their stables. Let ‘em go into the pasture and then I left the gate wide open.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Charlie,” Heidi said. “You were jumped by a couple of those things. Weren’t you?”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “Let me see those,” Daymon said.

  Jenkins handed over the binoculars and donned his eyeglasses.

  After panning the pasture, Daymon said, “Listen up, Charlie. I think I have an idea that might help you feel better. We could drive up there and kill two birds with one stone.”

  Jenkins shot Daymon a skeptical look. “What are you getting at?”

  “I say we roll up there and siphon the tanks of those two cars. Nose around the house for some food, and then kill those rotten fuckers.” Daymon looked at Heidi, then shifted his gaze to Jenkins and continued where he had left off. “Horse meat? Really? Nobody eats effin horse meat.”

  “Those bastards will eat anything,” replied Jenkins as he urged the Tahoe forward.

  ***

  Daymon was able to siphon enough gas from the two compacts to top off the Tahoe’s tank. Then he performed a quick calculation in his head and decided that one more refill somewhere along the way would probably get them to the GPS coordinates Cade had given him.

  He stowed the hose and can and retrieved the crossbow and one of the AR-15s from the truck. He slung the rifle and started off towards the house on the knoll.

  On the porch, Heidi was holding an animated conversation with Jenkins. She had come a long way since he’d first laid eyes on her at the Teton Pass, thought Daymon. But she certainly had a long journey ahead of her. Scratch that, he thought. We have a long journey ahead of us, and he gathered that he owed it all to Charlie. Then out of the blue, a mischievous grin cracked his face.

  He retraced his steps to the truck and fetched the machete, then made his way back to the big white colonial, climbed the stairs, and joined Heidi and Jenkins on the wide wraparound porch.

  “Been inside yet?” Daymon inquired.

  “It’s locked,” said Heidi, referring to the wide oak door with the prominently displayed ‘closed’ sign.

  “First things first,” Daymon said as his smile returned.

  Jenkins eyed the weapons, then flicked his gaze to Daymon. “What’d you break those out for?”

  Still grinning, Daymon placed the machete on the railing nearest Jenkins, set the crossbow against the wall next to the front door, and shrugged the carbine from his shoulder.

  He received a perplexed look from Heidi, and one of resignation from Jenkins.

  “Choose your weapons,” he said.

  Saying nothing, the former police chief took the machete, clomped along the wooden porch and down the stairs while calling out a challenge to the feeding zombies. “Come and get me. Fresh meat over here... no fillers.”

  Daymon wrapped an arm around Heidi and they watched the zombies, one by one, rise from the shredded horse carcasses and stagger towards Jenkins. “Time for a shooting lesson,” he said with an added wink.

  “What do you recommend?” she asked.

  “Take the rifle. Low recoil... point and shoot.” He showed her the basics. Then hefted the crossbow and rested it over his shoulder.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, all of Jenkins’s hooting and hollering had drawn quite a crowd. Half a dozen bloody-faced shamblers clutched the stark white fence, leaving crimson smears everywhere their hands went.

  “This one is first,” Jenkins said, pointing the machete at the first turn with a sloppy mess of tangled entrails swinging from its maw.

  “That bushwhacker is very sharp. Be careful,” Daymon said.

  Jenkins set his jaw and raised the machete shoulder high.

  “Time for some PETA street justice,” Daymon said in a sing-song voice as he watched the machete trace a flat arc towards the zombie’s temple. Although Jenkins hadn’t put enough muscle behind the blow to cleave the thing’s skull in half, the finely honed blade still sliced through the corpse’s right orbit bone and became wedged in its ethmoid—the strip of bone separating the nasal cavity from the gray matter. With its brain now destroyed, the monster’s jaw released, letting the intestines plop to the grass.

  “Hell yeah. Feeling better?”

  “I’ll let you know in a minute,” Jenkins said. Then he walked down the fence line, leaving split skulls and crumpled flesh eaters along the way.

  “Save one for Heidi.”

  “There’ll be more,” Jenkins replied quietly as he buried the machete into the last creature’s skull. “There always are.”

  Mission accomplished, thought Daymon. Looks like the real Charlie is back.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, after the trio had gone through the two-story house room by room, they stood on the porch with nothing to show in the way of food and water except for two cans of something a vagrant wouldn’t eat and a glass jar of crap that a food drive would probably reject.

  “Dibs on the marinated artichoke hearts,” Daymon said, tossing the jar from one hand to the other. “That leaves sliced water chestnuts and”—he scrutinized the faded label of the third can—“lutefisk... what the hell is lutefisk?”

  �
��Cod, I think,” said Heidi.

  Jenkins hitched a thumb in his belt. “Left in a hurry, didn’t they.”

  “I think bolted is the word,” Daymon replied.

  “My appetite is returning and this stuff isn’t going to cut it. What are we going to eat?” Heidi gazed at Daymon waiting for a response.

  “The good news... we’ve got a full tank. And we’ve got a few waters left.” Daymon paused a beat and looked out over the pastures where what remained of the dead horses had already drawn a ravenous murder of crows. And as they fed and cawed and carried on, he added in a low reassuring voice, “Don’t worry hon, we’ll rustle up some food. Promise.”

  ***

  As Jenkins maneuvered the Tahoe along 33, he remained silent, focused inward deep in thought. The question that had been nagging him since leaving the Three Rivers Equestrian Center was why the last ones out hadn’t seen fit to let the horses go free. Then he reflected on the effect the monsters that used to be living, breathing citizens had on him. Young or old, male or female, even though they were infected by the Omega virus and were nothing but walking corpses, putting a bullet or a blade in them didn’t sit well with him. And then the realization that his loved ones were still out there somewhere—monsters wandering around in search of human flesh—came to the fore and hit him like a mule kick. He said a silent prayer that someone, some survivor like him or Daymon or Heidi would come into contact with them and ease their pain. He didn’t care how, so long as their suffering in this hell on earth ceased. Then he reflected back to the zombies he had just dispatched. How every one of them had had rough, cracked, and calloused hands, and wind-burned faces, indicative of a person who worked outside for a living—on a horse farm perhaps. Then he remembered the scuffed and worn cowboy boots one of them had been wearing and it clicked. Suddenly the anger and white hot rage that had pushed him over the edge and had driven him to hack the creatures to death morphed into a sense of serenity. His grip on the wheel lessened and his jaw relaxed. Yes, he thought, the folks at Three Rivers were undoubtedly horse lovers just like him. And, he guessed, they probably couldn’t bring themselves to put down people they knew—who had become infected—just to spare a few horses. He still had the horror of putting his own wife down indelibly etched in his memory. The fact that even in his frequent nightmares he could smell the coppery tang of her blood as he placed her cold corpse in the bathtub made the idea of hating a person who had been put in the same position seem utterly absurd to him.