Nodding in agreement, Jasper flashed the inconsolable pilot an empathetic look, and once again performed the sign of the cross.
Apparently resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, Ari composed himself and reached down near his feet, manipulating something there. He hinged back up, swiveled his head left and yelled back into the cabin, “I took care of our leaking fuel problem.”
Not gonna help us much now, Jasper thought to himself, looking at an ever-widening moat of fuel and other viscous fluids forming around the aircraft. He backed up a step and shifted his gaze to the right, spotting the body of a man lying several yards away. The prostrate form was wedged up against the iron fence surrounding the cemetery, but didn’t look to be in an advanced state of decay like the infected citizens of Draper that Jasper had been depositing here for days. This one looked newly dead and was wearing some kind of tan fatigues that rendered him nearly invisible amongst the sun-scorched grass. And if it hadn’t have been for the wide-open staring eyes, which were now merely black dots sunken into a slack ashen face, he would have missed seeing it entirely.
Projecting his voice into the fuselage through cupped hands, Jasper called out, “We’ve got more pressing problems out here.”
“What kind of problems?” the man asked from deep within the wreck.
“Your friend Ari here says he stopped the leak, but I’m afraid there’s still a fairly deep pool of gas that’s formed up around the helicopter.” He went silent for a second, took a deep breath. Then, wishing he’d lugged the shotgun along, added, “Also ... there are more than twenty of those dead things heading our way, and no doubt more following behind them. I reckon that’s way more than I can handle by myself ... with only my pistol and a machete.”
“How far away are the Zs?” croaked Ari, trying to crane his head around.
“Quarter mile ... give or take. I figure we’ve got two ... three minutes tops to get you two out of there and get around to my truck. But there’s also something else you need to know.”
There was a short silence, after which the voice inside the fuselage said, “Spit it out.”
“There’s a dead man out here ... and he’s wearing the same camouflage get up as you. Anybody missing from inside there?”
There was another short silence.
Finally the man inside the helicopter replied, “My name is Cade. And I need you to forget about everything out there for now. I have plenty of problems of my own and I need your help inside here. Right now I’ve got a man trying to bleed out on me and three more who are either unconscious or dead ... hard to tell ‘cause they’re wearing body armor and helmets.”
After casting one last furtive glance at the approaching pack of dead, Jasper walked his gaze over the jagged metal edges still dripping with the zombie’s blood. Then, noting wisps of acrid smoke wafting from the rear half of the wreckage, he said, “How do you expect me to get inside there?”
“Improvise,” Cade said sharply.
Chapter 3
Utilizing the titanium frame like the rungs of a ladder, Jasper scaled the listing helicopter. When he reached the top—which was really the helicopter’s right side—he saw a gaping hole where some kind of a sliding door had once been. He ducked under a drooping slab of rotor blade, lay flat on his stomach on the warm black fuselage, and stared down into the crumpled crew compartment. Instantly he was hit full in the face with the reek of fear-laced sweat and the metallic tang of spilt blood.
Arms blood-slickened and fighting a losing battle to hold Ronnie Gaines’ guts in, Cade looked up at the man whom so far he’d only seen reflected in miniature scale on Ari’s smoked visor. “Jasper, I need you to jump on in here and start seeing to them,” he said, gesturing with a nod of his helmet towards the limp forms strapped in across the way. “Check for a pulse, and if you don’t find one right away, move on to the next person.”
Jump? Yeah right, thought Jasper. I’m forty-five going on sixty. Gingerly he scrabbled over the edge, placed his feet on the frame of the shattered flat-panel display mounted to the fore bulkhead, and then reached for the neck of the closest of the three still strapped-in bodies. The second his fingers grazed the man’s carotid, a gloved hand shot upward and grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip. Then the soldier—who was clad head-to-toe in black body armor and matching helmet—opened his eyes and whispered two words: “What happened?”
Good question, thought Jasper as he pulled free from the man’s clutch, and with a flick of the eyes deferred the question to the man calling himself Cade.
“I’m certain I heard Durant say “Bird strike” and the cockpit went black just before the helo went lawn dart on us,” replied Cade. “None of that matters now. How are you doing, Cross?”
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” the man responded. “Probably gonna have some serious whiplash. Maybe gonna need a massage when we get back to Schriever.”
With a dog-like tilt to his head, Jasper followed the conversation.
“We’ve got to make it out of here alive first,” intoned Cade. He ripped another trauma bandage from its packaging, tossed the blood-soaked one aside, and pressed the fresh item into Gaines’s abdomen, eliciting a groan from the ashen general. “Cross, my hands are full here ... you’re going to have to triage Lopez and Hicks.”
“Copy that,” answered Cross as he gripped the airframe above his head and released the harness that had most likely saved his life. Holding all of his weight with his upper body, he ducked his head around a dangling wiring harness and lowered himself down, careful not to step on Cade or the general. Carefully, he placed the sole of one boot on the hand grip of the port side mini-gun, and then toed the other securely into some nylon webbing hanging off the aft bulkhead. Then he wrestled his gloves off, reached up and grabbed Sergeant Hicks’ wrist. He worked his fingers under the glove and detected a very strong pulse there. He let go of Hicks’ arm, and then, like some kind of aerial contortionist, or an astronaut in space, performed a slow motion pirouette. Now in a position where he could reach Lopez, he grabbed a handful of webbing to steady himself, lifted the operator’s limp arm and wormed two fingers under his glove and blindly felt his wrist in search of a radial pulse. Nothing. The operator’s skin was cool and slick to the touch.
With a sick feeling washing over him, Cross released the dead man’s arm and let gravity take it. As he watched it fall away, a flash of purple showed between the man’s camouflage sleeve and his tan tactical glove. Then a conversation he’d had with Lopez prior to boarding the Ghost Hawk at Schriever came rushing back. He remembered the stocky operator saying that since the CDC mission during which Desantos ordered him to carry the decaying Alpha specimen up thirteen flights of stairs, he always wore at least two pair of surgical latex gloves underneath his tactical gloves. Protects against the demonio blood, Lopez said as he snapped them on. So Cross reached over and checked the man’s carotid and felt a strong pulse there. “These two are alive,” he said, looking about the cabin, “but where the hell is Tice ... anyone see the Spook?”
“Could be the body I saw out there—near the fence,” Jasper said to Cross. “I’m certain that he’s dead. He was pale as a ghost and his eyes were stuck wide open.”
“Dead? Are you certain?” asked Cross incredulously while holding the compress to the general’s abdomen with one hand.
“Positive,” the undertaker replied from his perch atop the wreck. “He’s all contorted and hasn’t moved a muscle since I first saw him.”
“What happened?” asked Lopez groggily.
“Multiple bird strikes,” answered Cross.
Hicks was stirring now. He shook his head side to side and instinctively ran his hands over his extremities, checking his bones and joints for fractures.
Hicks looked over at Cade. “How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Just a few minutes, I think,” replied Cade.
“Did Ari and Durant make it?” Hicks pressed.
“Duran
t bought it,” answered Cade. “Ari’s lapsing in and out of consciousness.”
“Fire?”
“Not yet,” said Cade. “Ari took measures.”
Hicks inched up his visor. “Radios?”
“I’m sure the shipboard comms are down,” Cade said. “I already tried the general’s sat-phone ... it won’t power on. And mine’s in my ruck ... if we can locate it in all this mess.”
Trying to take this all in, Hicks closed his eyes for a beat. When he reopened them he popped his harness, bent down and shimmied past the debris and into the cockpit.
Cade called out, reminding the crew chief to steer clear of Durant. Then he checked Gaines’s pulse again. It was very weak and fading. Gently he eased up on the compress. He dug around in the medical bag and brought out a syringe filled with morphine, and set it aside. “I need another bandage,” he grunted as he reapplied pressure to the grievous wound.
A few seconds after Hicks disappeared into the cockpit he slithered back out, clutching Ari’s emergency radio. He powered it on and started sending a silent distress signal which would be picked up by either an overhead satellite, nearby aircraft—or hopefully a combination of both. Then he tried to hail Jedi One-Two on the emergency dust-off band. Nothing. “Looks like there’ll be no dust-off bird for the general,” he said, slumping against the bulkhead.
“No dust-off,” Lopez added morosely.
Cross ripped open another clean compress and pressed it next to the one Cade was holding. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If I know President Clay like I think I do ... we’re secondary. She’ll push for the scientists’ safe return before diverting any assets to look for us.”
“As will Nash and Shrill. They have to. The anti-serum is more important than any one man. That means we’re on our own for now, boys,” Cade replied. Then he went on and filled the operators in on all that they had missed while unconscious.
“Mierda,” said Lopez. “Tice is dead?”
Cade looked down and bobbed his head. He unsheathed his Gerber and, with short precise strokes, sliced through the first half dozen laces on his left boot which was still inextricably wedged under the general’s extremely mangled seat frame. He gazed up at Jasper, who, from where he sat, had a clean view into the cockpit and the cabin. “How’s Durant now?” he asked through clenched teeth as he twisted and pulled on his leg until finally it corkscrewed free.
Jasper disappeared for a second and then returned and said, “He’s in-between.”
“Do you mean he’s dead but hasn’t reanimated yet?”
“That’s my opinion,” answered Jasper.
Adjusting his grip on the blood-soaked plug of gauze, Cross said, “Gaines is slipping away now too.”
“Shit ... shit, shit,” chanted Ari from the right seat. “If Durant turns I need to be the one who puts him down. I promised him as much.”
“Ari, pull it together,” barked Cade. “Save the worrying for later. That is an order.”
Ari muttered, “All my fault ... it was all my fault. Durant and now the general.” He uttered a flurry of expletives, unplugged his flight helmet, and fast-balled it through the cockpit glass. It bounced a few times and then, without warning, the sky went dark. All eyes looked skyward as the beating of feathered wings announced the return of the raptors responsible for downing the Ghost Hawk. After squawking ardent displeasure at having their mealtime disrupted, some of the birds lit on the downed chopper while the majority sank their talons into the town folks from Draper and resumed picking away at their festering corpses.
“Didn’t take them long,” said Lopez. “Pinche mirlos.”
Returning his attention to Gaines, Cade checked his friend’s neck for a pulse. Nothing. Then he grasped the general’s forearm, ruffled up his ACU sleeve, and searched his broad wrist for a radial pulse. Still nothing. He looked around the cabin, met everyone’s gaze for a tick, and then said quietly, “Gaines is gone.”
Cross removed his hands from the wound below the general’s body armor and immediately a loop of pinkish intestine wormed out, followed by a torrent of crimson blood which only lasted until the dead man’s blood pressure fully ebbed—a couple of seconds at most.
Wasting no time, Cade unlaced Gaines’s left boot which had to be two or maybe even three sizes too big for him. He worked it off and slid his foot inside, where he could feel his size-nine swimming inside. He cinched the desert-tan boot tightly, looped the laces around twice above his swollen ankle, and then tucked the extra deep down inside. He wiggled his toes and realized that he would—literally and figuratively—never fill the general’s boots. Good to go.
Jasper banged his palm on the fuselage, getting everyone’s attention. “The dead are here,” he said in a funereal voice. “And we’re nearly surrounded.”
Looking up at the undertaker, Cade said, “I need you inside here and everyone needs to remain quiet and out of sight.”
Feeling a bit like a Jack in the Box, Jasper lowered himself back into the crowded crew compartment where, standing upright looked to be a difficult endeavor under normal circumstances, let alone with the floor nearly vertical, while rubbing elbows with four fully outfitted soldiers.
Cade adjusted the tiny voice-activated throat mike, powered it on, and said “Mike check.”
“Good copy,” replied Cross.
The other two men made eye contact, nodded silent affirmatives of their own.
After tightening his MOLLE gear, Cade cycled a round into the M4. He felt blindly for the reassuring outline of his Gerber combat dagger, then patted the holstered Glock 17 riding low on his left thigh—both automatic rituals he’d performed a million times before going down range. He looked at the men who were leaning and sitting on any flat surface available. Lopez, who was now fully conscious, was wedged tight into a nook worn smooth from seeing its fair share of combat boots.
Brandishing the compact MP7, Agent Cross stood next to Hicks, both of their helmets close to brushing the starboard mini-gun. The President’s man appeared confident, albeit a little jittery—no doubt itching to get out into the open and get some. Hicks was his usual stoic self—red-rimmed eyes staring out from under the flight helmet’s retracted visor.
Cade set his gaze on Ronnie’s body. Inexplicably, the general’s eyes were now open, and his skin had gone ashen—a dingy gray pallor—like a chalkboard in need of a thorough cleaning. His face was waxen and had started to slacken, the flagging skin forming jowls beside his dangling chin straps. Cade looked away and muttered a few choice expletives under his breath. This unfortunate event is going to do a number on Ari, he thought to himself. First a murder of birds had ruined their day, and now he could hear the Zs’ raspy hissing rising above the steady thrum of beating wings cutting the air. A couple of beats later, he opened his eyes as the hungry throng began raking their nails along the craft’s outer skin, sending spine-tingling scratching noises echoing through the cabin.
Chapter 4
Schriever AFB
Colorado Springs, Colorado
All conversation in the mess hall ceased as a group of outsiders, undoubtedly just released from quarantine, filed in ahead of their handlers—a pair of stern-faced soldiers who had been given the unenviable task of chaperoning the haggard civilians about the base. They passed out aluminum trays to the men and women who were standing in a ragged line, fidgeting and casting furtive glances about the dining area. Bathed in the blue-tinged light thrown from humming overhead tubes, the avocado-green institutional-style chairs and faux wood grain on the table tops lent the Schriever mess hall all of the charm of an inner-city hospital cafeteria.
With the late night chow line attack fresh on her mind, Sasha cast a worried look at the forming queue and sank into the molded plastic seat. She tore her gaze away momentarily and hissed under her breath at Wilson, who was busily shoveling gravy-soaked bread into his maw. She repeated his name three times, and when he finally acknowledged her she added a rapidly recurring nod that looked more like so
me kind of spasmodic episode than a gesture imploring her brother to take in the unsettling sight.
Pretending for a moment that he hadn’t seen her unwitting Arnold Horshack impersonation, he finished chewing the mouthful of food and then nonchalantly looked over his shoulder at the newcomers. “So what Sash,” he replied, shooting her a quizzical look. “Not long ago that was us.”
“You think they’re infected?” she whispered without taking her wide-eyed gaze from them.
“Every single one of them are. I’m sure of it,” said Taryn, causing Sasha to visibly shudder. The tanned and toned brunette had been standing and watching the procession from a blind spot directly behind the redheaded siblings. She winked across the table at Raven while avoiding eye contact with Brook, who didn’t seem to be onboard with the juvenile behavior. Then she leaned in between Sasha and Wilson, her long black hair brushing across both of their backs and added, “I’m sorry Sasha. I was just pulling your chain since your brother here won’t reciprocate. What’s that phrase that I’m searching for?”
“I’m sure it will come to you,” said Sasha, straightening up in her seat.
“What goes around comes around,” Taryn said, adding a wan smile.
“So there’s no chance of one of them turning?” asked Sasha, ignoring the earlier comment and casting a skeptical look over her shoulder.
“None,” answered Taryn. “If those people received half of the welcome aboard treatment I did, there’s a good chance they might be brainwashed ... but surely they are not infected.” She skirted the table and placed her tray next to Raven’s, and as a smitten Wilson stared across the table at her, trapped her hair at the nape of her neck with both hands and deftly secured it into a snakelike ponytail with half a dozen black hair ties.
“What exactly do you mean by brainwashed?” Wilson asked, as feelings of insecurity and inadequacy bubbled to the surface. Maybe she had been brainwashed, his magical magnifying mind needled as the molehill grew exponentially into a monument to worry and despair.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 2
