Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  Wishing his cardio was a little better, Cade broke into a sprint, quickly closed the distance, and fired twice into the back of the first ghoul’s head. He kept moving silently and double tapped walker number two at the mid-point of the bridge. Taking a knee, he turned and waited for the rest to form up. As he watched the three operators hustling the survivors towards him, Lopez suddenly stopped in place, raised his M4 and began shooting at the undead herd flowing up the nearby escalator. When all of the survivors reached his position, the woman named Mary broke ranks and stepped to him in a huff. “How the hell do you think we are all going to get out of here?” she barked. “Megan and Pete are dead back there. Shot up by your guys,” she added, palming away some newly formed tears.

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Cade replied quietly. “They got bit and those are the new rules. You worked with the Omega virus. You should know the score by now.”

  Mary harrumphed and crossed her arms.

  A few seconds passed and Cade pointed skyward at the approaching Osprey. Then the glass above their heads flexed and began vibrating under the buffeting rotor wash as the craft cut a lazy circle overhead. “That, lady, is how you are getting out of here,” he stated. “Time to go,” he called to the Delta team. “Our chariots await.”

  Cade called Lopez off, and when he returned to the group Cade led them to the east end of the sky bridge and stopped in front of the elevator doors. He punched the down arrow and nothing happened. He turned towards Cross, arched an eyebrow, and shrugged his shoulders. “Worth a try,” he said.

  They located the stairwell just around the corner from the dead elevator. Tice moved forward and scoped the door. “Clear,” he called out.

  It took Cade almost a minute to open the locked door using the lock gun while Tice continued watching the LCD screen. “Still clear,” he added.

  Suddenly memories of Maddox, Desantos, and a host of other dead and gone shooters Cade had served with flooded his head. Not only did he miss Darwin’s skills as a lock pick, he also missed the camaraderie and the operator’s ability to always have the right quip or observation in the chamber and ready to go. Cade also lamented the fact that since that day in Grand Junction he hadn’t been able to properly mourn the man’s death. Something I’ll need to tackle back home, he thought.

  Tice retracted the flexible shaft and Cade eased the door open. Light streaming from the skylights above made their NVGs unnecessary.

  Sweeping the Glock in order to cover the stairs to his right, Cade entered the stairwell and padded down them two at a time. Light on the balls of his feet, he cut the corner to his left in a combat crouch, keeping his elbows in and the polymer pistol at the ready. Clear. He silently motioned the others forward and covertly peered through the two-foot-square window inset into the metal door.

  The east parking lot spread out before him. There was a large contingent of dead ambling among the abandoned cars baking in the high noon sun. He returned his gaze to the faces of the civilians packed on the rise above him and quickly laid out the rest of his plan. And when he had finished, the skeptical looks the survivors shot his way didn’t surprise him in the least. Hell, he expected nothing less. After all, he and his team were for all intents and purposes kidnapping these folks from a friendly sovereign nation. That they had yet to put up any kind of a fight, let alone a full-on mutiny, had Cade scratching his head.

  Tice craned his neck to get a look through the window. “How many out there, Captain?”

  “A few dozen... or more,” replied Cade. “Pinche demonios,” added Lopez as he made the sign of the cross.

  “At least you’re not humping the Alpha right now,” Cade said, flashing a rare grin.

  In fact, it was the first emotion Lopez had seen the man exhibit since they’d left Schriever. A good omen, he thought to himself.

  “Come in One-Two... this is Anvil Actual. I am in the stairwell at the east end of the sky bridge. I need you to lay down some fire in the parking lot ASAP.”

  “Copy that,” said Ripley all business-like. “Rolling in.”

  The skylights above vibrated as an ominous shadow momentarily blocked the incoming light. Cade holstered the Glock and readied his M4. He peered out the window just in time to witness every one of the Zs stop in unison, turn their pallid faces skyward and fix their milky eyes on the noisy Osprey. As he watched it enter the airspace overhead, slowly the big propellers became rotors, and Jedi One-Two’s forward momentum all but ceased. Then all at once, the dual nacelles finished rotating up and locked into the upright position, the black aircraft assumed a wavering hover, and the rear ramp motored down, exposing a chalk of eager Rangers and the crew chief behind a heavy machine gun.

  Suddenly a buzzsaw-like sound filled the air as the remotely operated mini-gun on the craft’s belly began belching hot lead into the seemingly hypnotized Zs. And a heartbeat later, the crew chief manning the M2 Browning on the tail ramp began hammering away at the undead below.

  Using the cacophony created by the massive rotors stirring the air and the gunfire lancing down from the hovering craft as a diversion, Cade made his move. He hit the push bar and peeled left while keeping close to the wall, and at the next corner he curled left again with Lopez and Tice close on his heels. The trio ran under the sky bridge and moved single file along a sidewalk on the left that ran between a ten-foot-tall chain link fence to the left and a row of twenty-foot-tall trees, spaced roughly twenty feet apart, paralleling the road on their right. Cade stopped at the first of the six trees preventing the Osprey from setting down. While he coiled the self-adhesive breaching charge—a flexible type of explosive sprouting a length of det cord attached to an electrical firing device—around the tree’s thigh-sized trunk, he noticed the other two operators split up, and each of them moved towards a tree across the narrow drive. He waited a few moments until both men were finished setting their charges. “Good to go?” he said into the comms.

  With clackers in hand and a good standoff distance between them and the charges they had rigged, Tice and Lopez flashed Cade a thumbs up from across the street.

  “Fire in the hole,” Cade called out as he turned his face away from the impending blast and worked his clacker.

  The three nearly simultaneous explosions resulted in a brief cloud of white smoke followed by all three trees lying down as if a giant invisible scythe had ripped through them.

  “Holy weed-whacker Batman,” said Ari as he tore his eyes from the destruction being wrought on the dead by the Osprey and watched the three trees nearest the sky bridge topple over in unison. Piloting the Ghost in a tight orbit above the Osprey, Ari watched Jedi One-Two circle the parking lot, hosing down wandering Zs while destroying a large number of cars in the process.

  From the port side of the Ghost Hawk, Gaines spotted a legion of zombies streaming in from the plaza to the northwest. “Heads up Anvil,” said Gaines. “You have Zs moving in on your six from the northwest. How copy?”

  “Roger that, General,” said Cade as he readied another tree for demo. “Should have the LZ prepped in two mikes.”

  “Make it quick, Grayson. You’re in clear and present danger of being overrun.”

  Cade said nothing. When he’d finished wrapping the next tree, he glanced over his shoulder to the area under the sky bridge where a number of Zs staggered rigidly from the lawn onto the entry drive. Then he checked to make sure the other operators were finished setting their final charges. “Lopez... Tice... you ready?” he inquired over the comms.

  Voices crackled in Cade’s ear bud as the operators called back, indicating that they were good to go.

  Clacker in hand, Cade backed away from the tree, and shifted his gaze between the diminishing amount of real estate separating him and his teammates from the advancing crowd of flesh eaters. “Fire in the hole,” he exclaimed as he squeezed the clacker, sending electrical current into the det-cord leader.

  Another series of explosions rumbled and echoed off of the metal and glass building, and the trees
hinged to the ground in different directions. Cade watched as his tree canted over, hit the barbed wire atop the fence, and then rolled off without causing any noticeable damage. Satisfied with the newly created LZ, he adjusted his M4 so that it dangled behind his back and clambered over the splintered trunk, then crossed the sidewalk and the buffer of dried grass between it and the fence and fished out his last breaching charge. He adhered a three-foot length of the tape vertically, rolled out a dozen feet of leader and attached the clacker. When he fired the charge, the explosion ripped through the galvanized steel wire and left a smoking gash just big enough to admit a person.

  Cade gave his handiwork a cursory glance, and though not as dramatic as falling a tree, he deemed the result acceptable.

  Next, he called up Jedi One-Two and requested an immediate exfil for the nineteen survivors. Then he called to Agent Cross, who was presumably still sheltered in place with them in the sky bridge stairwell.

  Cross acknowledged the call and listened as Cade brought him up to speed. Then he sprang into action, jammed the push bar and held the door wide with one hand and brandished his MP7 with the other. “Go, go, go,” he bellowed at the survivors, and fired his machine pistol one-handed, stitching a decomposing first turn from sternum to forehead.

  He looked over his shoulder, and when everyone was accounted for he lined up the three scientists on his six and set off at a slow jog inside the fence line.

  Pushed along by fear and confusion, the scientists and civilians followed closely in his wake. As soon as Cross arrived at the breach in the fence, he helped Cade peel it back and hold it open while all nineteen Canadians filed through.

  The guns on the Osprey went silent and the craft broke orbit and descended rapidly; in a matter of seconds it was wheels down and the Rangers were charging down the rear ramp.

  Cowering amongst the fallen trees, the Canadians kept their heads bowed to protect against the flying debris whipped up by the whirring rotors.

  Working against the clock, Cade first ushered the scientists into the yawning rear opening of the Osprey, making sure they were belted in securely. Then he waved the remaining survivors inside and passed them off to One-Two’s strapping African American crew chief, who in turn showed them to the side-facing jump seats.

  Cade raced down the ramp, and was pleased to see that while he had been in the aircraft the newly-arrived Rangers seemed to have slowed the advance of the burgeoning ranks of the dead. Staccato bursts of fire rippled along the phalanx of shooters as they fired and reloaded. Two Rangers from the 75th had taken up positions on either side of the road and, using the splintered tree trunks for support, were busily raking their SAWs—squad automatic weapons—across the Zs with deadly precision.

  The turbine whine elevated as the dual thirty-eight-foot diameter rotor blades increased in speed, and Ripley’s voice crackled over the comms. “Wheels up in one mike,” she said.

  Cade hustled over to the young Ranger master sergeant and motioned for him to have his men fall back to the Osprey. Then he got ahold of Ari in the circling Ghost Hawk and requested an emergency exfil.

  He flicked his gaze up to the sky bridge where more Zs had amassed. They were now three deep and stretching from one end to the other. An icy ball formed in his gut as he watched the ashen-skinned monsters press against the aquamarine-hued glass, causing it to flex and bow in places. He feared that if Ripley didn’t clear the LZ and make room for Jedi One-One quickly, his team would be facing a veritable waterfall of flesh eaters.

  “Waiting,” said Ari impatiently over the comms. Then Gaines’s voice came onto the net over the SOAR pilot’s, and with language unbecoming a general he urged the Marine major to get her bird into the air.

  Sensing the Osprey lifting into the air behind him, Cade braced the M4 on a fallen tree, flicked the 3x magnifier up, and began picking off zombies. The rotor wash blasted his back with stinging debris and sent the piles of spent brass around his feet sliding away across the blacktop as One-Two thundered away to the south. Soon the rotor noise gave way to the eerie wails of the dead commingled with the reassuring sharp reports of steady gun fire. Cade looked over his shoulder to see the black craft bank and make a sweeping turn that once again brought it on station over the parking lot, where Ripley commenced a hover and the machine guns once again opened up into the dead below.

  Tice, who was a few feet from Cross and shoulder-to-shoulder with Lopez, watched as Cade pulled a canister from a pocket and tossed it in the center of the drive near the mishmash of branches and fallen Zs. A soft pop sounded and smoke billowed out thick and purple, snaking into the air like something alive.

  Cross changed magazines as he backed away from the moaning Zs and towards the drifting smoke. In his side vision he could see that Lopez and Tice took a cue from him and were also backpedaling in the same general direction.

  Cade’s voice crackled in the Delta team’s ear buds just as the sonic reverberation of the Ghost’s baffled rotor blades thumped deep in their chests. “Exfil in minus one mike,” he stated calmly.

  Suddenly a sharp sound, like a berg calving from a glacier, cracked off the building to the left. Then, like a wave breaking left to right over a reef, a cascade of sparkling glass and putrid corpses poured from the sky bridge.

  Cade’s stomach clenched as the heavy impacts of flesh and bone against the roadway vibrated through his boots.

  The Ghost Hawk came in hot from the north and buzzed the top of the sky bridge with just inches to spare. Through the cockpit glass, Ari’s grin was evident under his smoked visor, and Cade could see the hard set to Durant’s jaw as the craft slid overhead, blocking out the sun.

  Big black wheels emerged from the helo’s belly and shells began to rain from Hicks’s buzzing mini-gun as Ari presented the ship’s starboard side towards the Zs. At the last second he flared and set the Ghost Hawk down softly in the same spot the Osprey had occupied seconds before.

  Firing as he went, Tice broke from cover and made a beeline through the flapping branches. He emptied the mag and then let his smoking carbine dangle as he accepted a hand from Gaines and scrambled into the helicopter.

  Cade watched in disbelief as an overwhelming number of Zs recovered from their thirty-foot fall, regained their footing, and plowed ahead oblivious of the drifts of glass crunching underfoot.

  Screaming, “Go, go, go,” Cade stood fully upright and targeted the nearest of the snarling creatures. He fired round after round, sweeping the M4 in a deadly arc from left to right.

  Simultaneously Cross and Lopez emptied their weapons, bowed their heads under the whirring blades and leapt to the safety of the waiting craft.

  “Three in,” Gaines called out.

  Hearing this, Cade lowered the M4’s smoking barrel and turned and bolted for the Ghost Hawk, which was now in a hover with the wheels already retracted into the fuselage.

  Although eager to pull pitch and get clear of the compromised LZ, Ari held the Ghost rock steady three feet off the deck. He silently rooted for Cade as the Delta operator hurdled the crossed tree trunks while twisting and contorting his body in order to keep away from the flesh eaters’ outstretched fingers.

  As Cade neared the hovering helo, everything around him seemed to slow, and he could see a determined look on Hicks’s face as the crew chief fired the clattering mini-gun into the dead. And as he lunged to grip Gaines’s offered hand, he could feel intense heat searing his face and hear wet slaps as the streaking bullets found flesh behind him.

  His boots left the ground and his body rose with the helicopter. Then, it felt like someone was sitting on his chest as the G-forces pressed him to the deck. He could tell that someone had a hold of one leg while Gaines maintained a firm grip on his gloved hand. The ground spiraled in his vision as the helo banked again and his organs returned to their normal accommodations. Finally someone helped pull him completely inside the helo and a gloved hand pulled the door shut in front of his face, mercifully blotting out the horrors he had just le
ft behind.

  Ari’s voice crackled in his ear. “Close call, amigo.”

  Seeing as how his life had just flashed in front of his eyes, that was definitely the last thing Cade needed to hear. All the years in combat and the firefights he’d survived had never prepared him for something like this. As he’d struggled through the obstacle course of fallen trees, he’d seen Raven’s face in his mind’s eye, clear as day, and in it she’d been pleading with him to come home. Then, inexplicably he’d been standing in front of Mike’s grave with Brook at his side—and he could have sworn the old warhorse had been there in the flesh trying to offer up advice or a warning, like some kind of Obi Wan Kenobi trick. Then the vision morphed and he’d found himself staring down at the scene, and Brook and Raven were all alone graveside; it had seemed so real in that millisecond flash that he’d thought he had died and they were mourning for him.

  Pretty strange how a mainline surge of adrenaline affects the human brain , he thought to himself as he closed his eyes, hoping that the hypnotic swishing noise from the rotors would somehow drive the unsettling visions from his mind.

  Chapter 65

  Outbreak - Day 16

  Schriever AFB

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Security Pod

  He was awakened by someone clutching a substantial handful of his silver mane and jerking his head from the table with all of the ferocity of a professional wrestler.

  Before he could see his assailant, a thin tablet computer was cast on the table near his manacled wrists. The person standing in the shadows behind him activated the device, then swiped an icon that started a video running. After a few seconds a voice began narrating what he was seeing.

  The first clip was taken in night vision mode which rendered everything in shades of green. It ran for four minutes and documented a group of men with high tech weaponry as they flowed silent and effortlessly through a nicely appointed mansion.