He stands up and gives me a tobacoo stained grin, he then gives me a sloppy salute and moves out to go gather his team.
“Hold on, I think I might have a better idea.” Winston says as he comes walking up with a shit eating grin.
I wave Greg back to the table and motion for Winston to take a seat as well. He is our tech guy and I have learned to listen carefully to any and all ideas he comes up with.
“Why walk when you can fly?” He asks with a smirk on his face.
For a second I have no idea what the hell he is talking about, but then I remember what is strapped down up on the roof top.
The late, mostly unlamented, Whiskey Dave’s ultra lite.
“Interesting idea, sadly Russ is in no shape to fly it right now.” I tell him with a small shrug.
“There isn’t much to flying them from what I have read and I bet that Russ could talk somebody through the basics. It is pretty much a straight shot there and back. Fly there, land, grab gear, take off again. Fully fueled up, you could at least bring back what we lost without overloading the ultra lite.” Winston tells me eagerly.
The idea has possibilities, not just for a needed supply run, but to get a aerial view of the area and see where the herds are holed up.
“Fuel supply?” I ask knowing that he has already checked into it and has the answer ready.
“We can fill the tank easily, that would get you there and back a few times, depending on how much weight you end up carrying. There is a limit to how much you can load, Russ would know what it is, I imagine.” Winston answers, I can hear the eagerness in his voice and I know that he is working himself up to volunteer for this mission.
Not going to happen.
He keeps the few gadgets and gizmos we have left running and is just about the only one with a clue of how the shortwave works, besides maybe Henry. Also, while he has been cleared for runs, I don’t send him out on many. There is a softness to him despite all that he has been through to be a survivor here amongst us. A softness I ignore for simple runs, but nothing is simple anymore now that we are at war.
“I will go boss, flying sounds way more fun than walking.” Greg says stuffing chewing tobacco into his mouth.
Despite being a bit of a jokester, Greg is a good solid soldier, I could send him. He knows how to fight and is quick witted under pressure. He also could be trusted to bring me back the right weapons and ammo, because the dude knows his guns.
But in the end, I know exactly who I am going to send on this particular errand.
“Thanks, both of you. I am pulling rank and sending myself on this errand. Winston get that bird ready, I am going to get flight instructions from a guy who almost crashed getting here and is probably wasted on pain killers.” I tell them both draining my awful cup of coffee and standing up.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Greg calls out brightly as I walk through the messhall heading for the infirmary.
Yeah, funny guy that Greg.
Chapter Fifteen
“You could train a monkey to fly the damn thing!”
That is what retired Army Colonel Russ Olsen told me when I asked him to talk me through how to fly the ultra lite.
Then he giggled like a schoolgirl, high as a kite on our limited supply of painkillers. He is still down for the count, recovering from his injuries and Viv is keeping the pain from some nasty burns at bay, with the happy pills.
I didn’t find the giggling all that fucking reassuring.
“This, may be a stupid idea.” Katrin tells me flatly as she helps me unstrap the little plane.
“More likely than not.” I tell her as I climb in and start the preflight checklist Russ babbled to me about.
“Don’t die! You die, they might put me in charge and nobody wants that.” She tells me with a dramatic shudder.
I start the engine, it sounds like a glorified lawnmower. I would have vastly preferred a louder more powerful sound. There is a helmet that I toss out, don’t need the extra weight and if I go down, I don’t think it is going to do much for me.
You could train a monkey to fly the damn thing.
Really kind of wish we had a spare monkey right about now, but we don’t, so I guess I will have to do.
“Do my best.” I shout at her as I feed more power to the throttle.
I take the bird straight up a couple of hundred feet and then jerkily turn and do a slow loop around our building to get a feel for the controls. I do another loop with slightly less white knuckles on the controls and spare some glances down to see what I can see.
Katrin is standing on the roof with the rocket launcher, I buzz her one more time and then head off towards my target.
That is the signal that she has been waiting for.
She fires two rockets in the opposite direction I am heading that slam into buildings a few blocks away. Those buildings erupt into fire balls and thick upward rising columns of black smoke.
Nice diversion, hope all the undead motherfuckers take the bait and head that way to see what all the fuss is about.
I go back to concentrating on keeping the ultra lite in the air and manage to keep it moving more or less in the right direction. It isn’t all that fast by aircraft standards, but it is a hell of a lot faster than walking.
A lone Jumper makes a try for me from a roof top, but doesn’t even come close before gravity takes over and it splatteres on the street below.
I give it the finger and manage to jostle the joystick so that I lurch suddenly to the left. It takes a few seconds of loud and varied cursing to correct my course again.
Soon I am coming up on the sporting goods store and I am relieved to see no zombie activity around it. I loop around it once looking for a decent place to land.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, Russ had told me and then giggled again.
Nice general policy, but I need to do a good enough job of landing so that I can take off again, hopefully with lots of shiny guns strapped on.
Otherwise, it is a long dangerous walk back and if I should actually make it back alive, it will be basically empty handed.
Yeah, that would suck.
I grit my teeth and begin my descent.
You could train a monkey to fly the damn thing.
I land hard enough to jar my kidneys into vocal protest, bounce up and land hard again, but I do land without damaging myself or the bird. Cutting the power, I draw a gun and step shakily out of the ultra lite.
My landing spot is a bare patch in otherwise rubble strewn pavement, maybe fifty feet from the entrance to the store.
For a second I just stand stock still and listen, then very slowly I start making my way towards the door. I stop to listen every few steps and look carefully around.
The door is wide open and I can’t honestly remember if we left it like that or not. We had other things on our minds at the time.
Like making it home alive.
Inside, things are much like we left them from our last run. I am running a mental list of what we need through my head as I walk in. Somebody was smart enough to leave behind a couple of extra duffle bags last time, so I throw them on a counter and start to fill them up.
Have to be careful not to get too greedy, the bird can only handle so much weight. Russ gave me his best guess as to how much and to be on the safe side I am going a little lighter than that. It is hard to leave good stuff behind, but hey, we can always come back.
If I don’t crash and burn on the way back that is.
Will do my humble best to avoid that.
Few rifles, couple of shotguns and a good dozen pistols go into the bags, as does assorted ammo and every piece of beef jerky that was left. I stick a few decent knives into my belt and fill my pockets with lighters and batteries.
I work as quickly and as quietly as possible, I am on my own here, if I get swarmed, it is going to be no fun at all to fight my way to the bird and take off somehow.
“Off we go then.” I tell myself jauntil
y as I pick up the first duffle bag and haul it out to the ultra lite.
I strap it down and take a good long look around. Not a damn thing is moving out here. Was hoping Katrin’s diversion would buy me some space to work in, but hadn’t thought it would work quite this well. Not even a Feeder to be seen. It feels really damn weird to be out here on my own like this, but the ultra lite is strictly a one person deal.
Even with no obvious threat, my senses are on high alert and I head back to the store cocked and locked and ready to blast anything that moves.
Hate it when things go this quiet, makes me feel like I am in my own personal horror flick and any second some nasty surprise is going to leap out at me like a cheap jump scare in a B movie.
I pick up the second bag and a wave of dizziness washes over me, the worst one so far. I drop the bag and struggle to stay on my feet.
The world goes from gray to black and I lose that struggle. The floor rushes up at me and smacks me hard.
Chapter Sixteen
When I come back to, I do so in a panic.
I snatch my gun off of the floor and lurch to my feet, trying to point it in every damn direction at once. My heart is pounding and my breath is coming in ragged pants. My shirt is soaked with sweat and my legs are trembling.
After a few seconds of nothing attacking me, I lean against a wall and start trying to take some breaths to calm my shit down. Slowly it begins to work.
I fainted, a truly bad move out here on my own with hungry zombies around here somewhere.
Shit.
Will have to talk to the doc when I get back, there has to be something she can do for me. I can’t lead my people into battle while having dizzy spells and trying like hell not to pass out.
Everyone is depending on me, can’t bitch out now.
Shakily, I grab the second bag and stagger out to the ultra lite. I tie the bag down on the opposite side from the first one.
It is a good haul, just hope I can fly this bird back with it. I pass out up in the air and I am coming down fast, hard and messy on the street.
I am getting ready to step into the ultra lite when a single zombie comes staggering around the corner.
Watching it come, I debate whether to shoot it or bash its head in. The quieter approach would be better of course, sometimes gun shots are like ringing the damn dinner bell and bringing more zombies down on you.
On the other hand, bashing it with my bat seems a little strenuous, considering I just passed out and all.
The zombie is a female, dressed in filthy tattered jeans and a black tshirt, that says something like Dragondyne Publishing on it. I notice the misshapen jaw and realize that it is a Singer.
I take out my gun and point it at the thing’s head.
Due to some hearing loss in one ear, I am immune to the strange hypnotic power that Singers have with their voice, but I don’t really feel like testing that particular theory at such close range.
The Singer stops lurching towards me and just stands there looking at me for a long moment.
Then it opens its mouth and instead of the weird warbling song that they use to lure you to your death, it manages to croak out a few words.
“Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children alone.”
“Fuck!” I scream and then I blow the foul things stinking head off, clean off, by firing most of a magazine into it.
Christ on a stick, the damn thing spoke!
Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
I climb into the ultra lite, break the world’s record for the shortest preflight check during a zombie apocalypse and fire the engine up.
Then I get my happy ass into the air and away from what just happened, whatever weird shit that might be.
The bird is sluggish with the extra weight of the guns and ammo, but I manage to get her up to a good altitude and point her in the right direction.
Still trying to wrap my head around the Singer speaking. Holy crap, the thing fucking spoke, which should be impossible in and of itself, never mind the weirdness of it quoting an old nursery rhyme.
The extra weight is making keeping my altitude up, out of the reach of Jumpers, a little tricky, but so far I am keeping her steady and slow towards home.
I check the fuel gauge and no worries there, even flying heavy, I should have more than enough fuel to make it back. The engine coughs a couple of times which freaks me out a little, but it keeps buzzing along sounding like a mosiquto on steroids.
I smell the trouble before I get close enough to see it.
Smoke.
Lots of smoke.
I come up on our building and a lump forms in my throat as my stomach does a slow sick roll.
“No.” I tell myself in a hushed voice.
Our building is on fire, flames pour out of the windows of the first two floors and thick black smoke billows out from everywhere.
More zombies than I have ever seen surround the building, hundreds, hell maybe thousands of them. Feeders, Jumpers, Screamers, Singers and Burners. They aren’t attacking yet, they are just milling around the outside watching the fire.
I can hear constant gunfire from the roof and other sniper stations as I get closer. Cursing, I push the bird as hard as I dare and we come towards the roof landing pad too fast.
Any landing you can walk away from, is a good landing.
The little plane bounces hard once and then once again before tipping over and sliding into the far wall. The rotors snap and the windshield shatters and I am tossed out and roll away from the crash.
The ultra lite is totaled, but I am pretty sure that falls firmly into the least of our problems list, for now.
“Report!” I shout out to whoever is up here as I struggle to stand up.
“Things are not good.” Katrin says as she walks by me to take a positon where she can fire down into the undead horde below.
I look at her in disbelief, our building is on fire and we are surrounded by an army of fucking zombies and her answer is, not good?
“No shit! What the hell happened?” Another roof guard runs by and tosses me a rifle as he goes. He also takes up a spot and begins firing into the horde, which at this point seems like firing into the ocean to stop the waves.
There are just too many of them and too few of us.
“Screamers rushed the door and melted it boss, and then a couple of Burners walked right the hell in and lit the place up. Then zombies came from every damn direction to surround us.” Greg tells me as he runs by and takes up his own position.
My head is spinning, the smoke stings my eyes and burns my throat as, I stand there trying to process everything. The moans and hoots of the zombies below and the constant gunfire are so loud that I can’t hear myself think.
I have failed us, we are all going to die.
The building is burning down around us, I can hear screams from the lower floors. My people are being burned alive and the only alternative is to flee the flames to be eaten alive outside. There is nowhere to run and too many of them to fight our way clear.
This is how it ends for us.
Abruptly the gunfire stops.
“Keep firing! Damn it, we take as many of them with us as we can!” I shout the order, but nobody answers it.
Because everyone is gone.
The roof top is empty, except for me.
I am alone.
Chapter Seventeen
I fall to my knees on the hard concrete of the rooftop. Without warning, a wave of nausesa hits me and I lean over and puke my guts out, until there is nothing left to bring up.
What the hell is happening to me.
“Still haven’t figured it out?” A familiar voice says from behind me, there is something sly and cruel worked into his voice, but I still recognize it.
“Henry?”
He stands over me. Looking down at me with a disappointed look on his pale face. Shaking his head slowly, he reaches a hand down to help me stand up.
“
Are you afraid Jake? I thought your daddy always told you that you weren’t smart enough to be afraid of anything.” His voice is mocking.
“Report! What the fuck is going on? Where did the roof top team go?” I demand as I slap his hand away.
“Shhh…listen, what do you hear?” He asks me as he makes a show of cupping the hand I slapped away to his ear.
I don’t hear anything.
No crackle of the flames, no screaming Narwhals, no moaning zombies. Nothing, only silence.
“I asked you a question Jake, what do you hear?” He asks me again as I lurch towards the edge of the roof.
I look down and all of the zombies are standing stock still looking up at me, all of them staring right at me, without making a sound.
Another wave of dizziness and nausea hits me as I stagger away from the bizarre scene below. Henry steps up and slaps me once, hard across the face.
“What do you hear?” He asks me again.
“Nothing!” I scream back at him.
Which suddenly isn’t true anymore, I can hear muffled indistinct voices talking all around me. The tones of their voices is urgent, but I can’t understand what they are saying. I can also hear some kind of mechanical wheezing and a series of beeping noises.
The sounds get louder and louder, until I am kneeling on the roof again with my hands over my ears.
Henry pulls me roughly to my feet again and gives a good shaking, holding me like I weigh nothing out in front of him.
“Figure it out damn it!” He screams into my face as he shakes me.
I punch at him weakly and he drops me back onto the roof where I curl up into a ball and start sobbing.
He stands over me glaring down at me, his arms at his sides with his hands tightly clenched into fists.
“Fine. We do it the hard way then.” He says as he reaches down and picks me up one handed and drags me to the edge of the roof.
The zombies stare silently back at us, standing perfectly still waiting for whatever is going to happen next.
“Do you still smell smoke Jake?” He asks me in a quiet intense voice as he gives me another little shake.
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 3): War Page 6
