Meeting Wilson’s gaze, Taryn reached across the table and took his hand in hers. Instantly his face flushed hot, the visible cues to her effect on him concealed beneath his already sunburned dermis. Then his heart started hammering, wanting to leap from his chest. He was certain she could hear its telltale thumping in the nearly empty mess hall. “I’m OK,” she said with a quick smile. “And I think it’s so sweet that you’re concerned about me.”
“What did they do to welcome you aboard?” asked Raven, shattering the Harlequin moment.
Conscious of the fact that Brook was staring in her direction, Taryn released Wilson’s hand, sat back and crafted her answer carefully. “A thorough strip search followed by a thousand and one questions,” she said slowly. “And then they asked me a hundred more questions about someone I didn’t know. At first I thought they were believing the stories in the tabloids and were searching for the real Elvis.” She winked at Wilson, throwing more fuel on the twenty-year-old’s smoldering desire. “I almost told them he was cashiering at the K-Mart in Denver but thought better of it—because my captors had guns.”
Taking this literally, Raven said, “Twelve hours straight of nothing but listening to someone like my dad talking about old music. No thanks.” Then she realized which Elvis her new friend was referring to, went silent, and returned her attention to the food on the plate in front of her.
The flock of newcomers, trays filled with something brown concocted with unknown ingredients into something barely edible, filtered past and commandeered a number of tables nearby.
Brook regarded the people with a look filled more with pity than fear. Still, she nudged her tray toward the center of the table and retrieved the battle-scarred M4 carbine from the shiny linoleum floor.
Earlier in the day she and Raven had passed by another contingent of refugees from Pueblo. The group, numbering somewhere north of twenty, had been standing in the beating sun near the parade grounds, their thousand-yard stares fixed on the red-faced airman who was busily pointing to the areas where they were welcome while issuing stern warnings and singling out the places that were verboten—completely off limits to civilians.
To Brook, the whole affair smacked more of a prison induction than the assimilation of American citizens—survivors of what might be mankind’s extinction level event—onto an air base just outside the new capitol of the United States of America. Thanks Elvis, she’d thought at the time. Just like Bin Laden had been to America before the raid in Pakistan—Elvis was to Schriever now. He was the new boogeyman. Gone, but not really gone. Kids whispered his name without a clue as to who the man was, what he looked like, or who his namesake had been. The perception of safety afforded by the high fences and armed men and women of Schriever had been shattered by the attacks that had taken place on the base during the past week, and short of the public execution of the man who some people feared still lurked in the shadows, this palpable sense of vulnerability would continue to be the new normal.
Hopefully, she thought, Robert Christian’s execution—supposedly set to take place the next morning—would satisfy the need for revenge openly called for by the handful of outbreak survivors. Surely, Brook thought. Absent the real perpetrator of the attack—cutting off the head of the snake would be better than nothing.
Beginning the day before, scores of injured and badly-burned civilian refugees had begun arriving from the south, fleeing the dead by car, bus, and pretty much anything with wheels ahead of raging fires that she had overheard one shell-shocked man describe as a great conflagration.
Most of the survivors, because of infection, injury, or a combination of both, were still in quarantine and might never make it out alive. Explaining to Raven why and where all of them came from had been a little difficult. On the one hand she hadn’t wanted to sugarcoat their new reality with half-truths or generalities. But if the twelve-year-old was going to be a hardy survivor going forward, downplaying even the smallest detail would only prove to leave her at a disadvantage—especially if she faced something similar in the future. So Brook used their flight from Fort Bragg as an example; however, she did downplay the numbers significantly since she had been told the ferocity of the undead attacks on the living during their diaspora from Pueblo would alarm even the most seasoned combat veteran. Just last night at dinner she’d overheard an older officer likening the scene on Interstate 25 to the aptly-named Highway of Death between Kuwait and Basra on which thousands of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard had been savaged by the full might of the United States Air Force, Marine, and Naval airpower.
Apparently several thousand survivors had been holed up and hunkered down, scattered throughout Pueblo, probably cut off from the outside world and hoping to wait Omega out, Brook explained. Until finally the raging fires and advancing dead had literally eaten their way north, consuming buildings and flesh alike. The ones arriving now, she warned Raven, were the first of many. What she didn’t say was that she had overheard the same officer mention that tens of thousands of walking dead were shambling north towards Colorado Springs in hot pursuit of the survivors. Raven would find out the hard-to-swallow facts soon enough. Hell, thought Brook. Mother and daughter might just find themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder picking off the dead from within the same guard tower—a family affair indeed. She shuddered at the thought.
“Finish up, Raven,” Brook said, chair legs screeching as she rose and policed up her trash. “You kids still want to learn to shoot?” she asked, her gaze lingering mostly on Wilson.
Raven was up first, obviously eager to resume her studies. “Can we bring Max?” she asked excitedly, referring to the stray Australian Shepherd she had adopted the day before.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” replied Brook. “He can’t stay in the barracks all day.” Besides, she thought to herself. If Cade was going to allow the dog to come along with them to Eden, then it would be nice to know how the stray reacted to prolonged gunfire.
“Yippee,” cried Raven. “Can I ride my bike?”
“Yes you may.”
On the way out the door Sasha sidled next to Raven and whispered in her ear. “Can I get a turn on your bike?”
Grinning ear to ear, Raven answered, “You can go first. On one condition.”
“What is it?” Sasha replied, trapping a strand of red curls behind her ear.
“You have to agree to let my mom show you how to shoot my rifle. It’s little ...”
Rolling her eyes, Sasha said, “I’m not afraid. It’s just we’re not really a gun family.”
“You’ll have to learn to be comfortable around them if you and Wilson want to go to Eden with us.”
Listening in, Brook slowed her pace and corrected her daughter. “Sasha, as far as I’m concerned, you and Wilson and Taryn are welcome regardless. I think what Raven is trying to convey is that Cade would probably be more comfortable with the idea of you coming along if at least one of you knew a little about firearms. At least the safety part.”
Throwing her hat in the ring, Taryn blurted, “Count me in.” Then as the group exited the mess and stood outside awash in sunlight, the dominos began to fall.
“Me too,” added Wilson, even though the awful memory of the shotgun-blasted arm gripping his red locks instantly sprang to mind.
“If they all go first ... I’ll give it a shot,” Sasha added quietly, pun not intended.
“We’re off then,” Raven said, tapping her newfound friend on the elbow. “You can ride my bike for as long as you want.”
Chapter 5
Draper, South Dakota
“Now we are surrounded,” whispered Jasper. “You sure I can’t pop a few of them from up top? It’s only a little .22.”
“Positive,” said Ari. “JP-8 is very flammable. We’ll go up like a Viking funeral pyre if you do.”
“Surrounded by demonios?” Lopez rasped. He cracked his neck and then rubbed his neck and shoulders. His back throbbed where the vertebra had been compacted during the jarring
impact and subsequent rapid deceleration. Like he’d just awoken from a nightmare, he surveyed the damaged cabin with a worried look on his face. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from what he guessed was a minor concussion, and asked Cross in a near whisper, “Where did we go down?”
“Somewhere in the middle of nowhere South Dakota,” answered Cross as he unbuckled the stocky operator and helped him down to the floor.
Lopez unclipped his M4, set it aside, and covered his face with gloved hands. “Tice, Durant, and Gaines ... all dead,” he said quietly. “Where’d that guy say Tice’s body ended up?”
“Outside somewhere,” Cross replied. “Somehow he got thrown out when we went down.”
After scrutinizing the seat where Tice had been sitting, Lopez pointed to the harness and said, “Looks normal to me. Nothing torn... clasps look OK.”
“Freak accident... just like the bird strike,” replied Cross shaking his head. “Murphy’s got our number today—”
“We ... are ... hosed,” Ari called back matter-of-factly. “There are at least a dozen Zs up here ... and Durant’s just turned.”
“Can any of them reach you?” Cade asked.
“Negative ... I’m about a foot above their reach,” replied Ari. “But Goddamn they stink.”
Welcome to our world, thought Cade as he swiped his fingers down Gaines’ face, closing his staring eyes forever.
Hoping to hear a different opinion than the one already voiced by Cade and Cross, Hicks said to Ari, “How long before Ripley misses us and turns her Osprey around?”
Ari shouted back, “She has a big jump on us. So I don’t expect her to give us a second thought before she gets the scientists back to Schriever ...”
Hicks removed his helmet, hung it by its strap on the mini-gun grip. “Fuck,” he spat, obviously disgusted by the predicament they were in.
“Shouldn’t a crash beacon have been activated or something?” inquired Cross.
“Should have,” Ari called back. “But did it? That’s the million dollar question. I have no way of telling because my electrical is dead. We can only hope that if a signal went out, there was a satellite up there to bounce it back to Schriever.” But after witnessing the Chinese satellite destroy the ISS at the pre-mission briefing, and then subsequently learning that Major Nash’s fleet of spy satellites had suffered losses due to similar attacks—Ari was very reluctant to pin his hopes on a hope filled assumption.
As if he knew what was going through Ari’s mind, Cade piped up, “Me and Cross are of the same mind back here. Ripley can’t come back until she’s over the wire and wheels down and her customers have been delivered safely.”
“I concur,” said Cross. “Not to cast blame on Ari or Durant or the general for allowing it, but the fact that we deviated from the flight path on that low level shakeout means we cannot wait in place ...”
“He’s right,” said Cade, locking eyes with Lopez, who was the last living member of Desantos’ original Delta Unit. “More Zs will show up if we loiter here. And when enough of them gather they’ll start to climb over each other. Eventually the tenacious bastards will get in here. And when they do, I intend on being someplace else.”
Cross shifted his gaze upward, looking beyond Jasper who was still prostrate near the tear in the starboard fuselage. He regarded the birds swirling like a black tornado overhead and then leaned back against one of the helicopter’s internal support members and met the Delta operator’s gaze. “So, Captain Grayson—tell me—what’s your plan?”
Cade waited a beat before answering, and when he finally did, he had to raise his voice to compete with the unsettling sound of bone and nail grating on the metal behind his head. He went over his plan in detail and then asked the survivors to take inventory of their ammo. All combined, for the M4 carbines they had just shy of three hundred rounds of 5.56 hardball loaded into ten magazines. Each man also had his own personal sidearm with at least two full magazines for each. Lastly, the lone wolf of the team, Secret Service Special Agent Adam Cross, had two extended thirty-round magazines fully loaded with 4.6x30mm cartridges that were unique to his suppressed HK MP7 auto pistol.
“I’m going to need your weapon, Agent Cross,” Cade said quietly. He knew the stubby carbine like the back of his hand, and had used one like it on hostage rescue missions when CQC—close quarters combat—was imminent, and necessitated a quick takedown of multiple targets in confined spaces. He figured its compact size would be perfect for the looming task, allowing him to move freely between the headstones. It made no difference that there were only two magazines left for the weapon. Because if the sixty rounds they held wasn’t sufficient to get him to the truck in one piece, then he had no business calling himself a member of Delta.
Without a word, Cross shrugged off the MP7 and handed it over, dangling it by its single-point sling. He removed the spare mag from his now empty MOLLE gear and passed it over as well.
“One more thing,” said Cade, looking up through the starboard doorway at the rectangle of blue South Dakota sky. “I’ll need a leg up.”
Quick to comply, Lopez laced his fingers like a stirrup and braced his shoulder against the seat, ready to accept Cade’s full body weight.
But before Cade stepped up, he called forward to Ari, “You better play possum until I get back or this thing might backfire on all of us.”
Hearing every word Cade had said, Ari made no reply. He’d been thinking ahead, and already his eyes were shut and his breathing slowed—all in an attempt to fool his undead co-pilot into thinking he was already dead.
Chapter 6
The dead were congregated mostly near the helo’s nose when Cade emerged from the gash in the fuselage where the impact with hard Dakota soil had sheared off the sliding door and a portion of surrounding airframe along with it. He looked closely at the brown sod and scraps of decayed flesh clinging to the jagged edges near where Hicks had been sitting, marveling at the fact the crew chief was still among the living, while Gaines, who had been on the port side opposite the damage, was the one who was dead. He also found it strange how the man on the proverbial white horse had chosen to take Tice’s life while sparing the two operators who had been strapped in on either side of him. Even after having served in multiple combat zones and surviving many firefights in which others around him had not, it still never ceased to amaze the Delta operator how unpredictable the hand of fate could be when it came to dealing out the death card.
With the black composite skin radiating warmth through his gloved hands, Cade crawled aft along the fuselage. Pausing next to the angular engine nacelle, he came up on one knee and swept his gaze in a wide arc until he picked out Tice’s still form lying exactly where Jasper had said it would be. Twisted up next to the fence a number of yards off of the ship’s nose, arms and legs jutting at unnatural angles, the camouflage-clad body looked more like a kid’s discarded G.I. Joe doll than the affable warrior who, for the better part of a week, had been a recipient of the Delta team’s hazing.
Cade said a prayer for Tice and tore his eyes from the surreal sight—from the shell of the man he’d just been talking and joking with minutes ago. He regarded the ancient cemetery, most of which remained pristine save for the dark furrow the helicopter had made when it went down. Fifty yards beyond the initial point of impact, which had to be a football field’s length from where the helo came to rest, was a sizeable white church that he guessed had been standing sentinel over the deceased of its congregation for the last hundred years.
He turned and gazed past the clutch of dead gathered around the nose of the helicopter, judging the distance to Jasper’s truck to be about seventy-five yards, most of which was hardscrabble earth patrolled by shambling Zs drawn in as a result of the crash. Then he looked at the grass between where he stood and Tice’s body, judging it to be no less than twenty feet. He shifted his gaze to the fence line off of his right shoulder and placed his money on seventy yards—just a few shy of the truck. Lastly, he ti
cked off the twenty-two rows of graves stretching away from the crash south to north and then added up the columns running west to east. Making a quick calculation, he realized that interred within the four sagging runs of fence were at least two hundred and twenty of Draper’s past residents, each of who had been memorialized by small squares of marble, pointed monoliths, and dozens of chest-high slabs of natural stone hewn into all manner of shapes: crosses, round tops, pillars, cherubs, and the occasional Star of David. Scattered randomly among the carved tributes to lives past were dozens upon dozens of dead bodies, the majority of which had already turned and thankfully now bore gunshot wounds from having already been put down.
After taking into account the number of flesh-eaters between him and the truck, and the fact that the helicopter sat on fuel-soaked ground, he came to the conclusion that there was no easy answer. And as he knelt atop the aircraft calculating his odds of survival if he made a dash for the truck, the solution came to him. As usual, the answer wasn’t exactly what he wanted it to be. He knew in order to make a clean break while luring as many of the dead away from the wreck as possible, he would have to take the long route north towards the church, and then double back outside the fence to the waiting set of wheels—all the while with only a couple or three dozen hungry Zs giving chase.
One step at a time, Grayson, he reminded himself. Then one of Mike’s favorite phrases—of which there were many—popped into his head. The first step is always the hardest, the hard-charging Delta commander usually said prior to going down-range. And in the teams, that first step was making certain all of the available info was known up front and then running the mission over and over until each team member could execute his job flawlessly—but also could step in and execute any one of his teammates’ jobs if the need arose.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 3
