Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  Nash massaged her temples, then impatience got the better of her. “Has Jedi One-One checked in yet?” she asked for the second time in the last five minutes.

  “No, Ma’am,” said a baby-faced communications sergeant sitting off to the major’s right.

  “Keep trying,” barked Nash. “But do not lose contact with Major Ripley’s bird.”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  Fearing the worst, Nash kept her game face on. Keeping up the appearance on the outside was easy. Stilling the Mothra-sized butterflies in her gut was not. She placed her elbows on the podium and formed a steeple with her fingers. Staring out over her hard-working staff, she ran the many different scenarios through her head. After two or three minutes of this she’d boiled them down to three, and not one of them pointed to any kind of a good ending.

  West of the Rockies

  Bishop tossed the empty can aside and opened another, poured the entire five gallons from the plastic container into the generator’s oversized tank.

  Second chore of the day done—cutting a half a cord of firewood being the first—he walked around to the rear of the chalet-style house and sat down on his favorite chaise. With a world-class view spread out before him, he retrieved the sat-phone from the low cedar table, thumbed it on and checked the display. Three missed calls. Two were from Elvis. Recent. Annoying. The other was left two hours prior by Carson, his second-in-command. He scrolled down, ignoring the two messages from Elvis, and selected the one from Carson. But instead of listening to it he hit send, calling him back.

  Three rings later the connection was made and always businesslike his number two simply said, “Carson.”

  “Bishop here,” he said, sparing the formalities for face-to-face communications. “What kind of progress are you making?”

  “We loitered in Boise overnight.”

  Slightly taken aback, Bishop said, “In the city?”

  “No,” replied Carson. “It burned pretty hard. We’re at the Air National Guard base—”

  Bishop interrupted. “What’s the undead situation ... have you come across any of those large hordes?” he asked, running a shaky hand through his dark hair.

  “Boise is thick with them ... the fencing here is keeping them out, for now. Figure when we bug out, so will they.”

  Carson paused for a tick, trying to decide how to word the rest of his answer.

  “And?” said Bishop, sensing Carson had more to add.

  “We overflew a very large horde near the Tri-Cities in Washington. Nowhere safe to put down there.”

  There was another long silence and Bishop changed the subject. “Did you find any aircraft where you’re at?”

  “A couple of A-10 Thunderbolts in the middle of repairs. The few helos the Guard left behind are a total loss—”

  Bishop rose from the chaise and paced the lawn. “Fuel?”

  “All of the underground storage tanks were spared from the fires.”

  “Personnel?”

  “Aside from a few deadheads, the place was deserted when we landed."

  “And today?” asked Bishop.

  “Today we’ll recon Salt Lake and then we’ll square the box and head north to Ogden.”

  “How much more time do you need?”

  “A day or two. Then you’ll know exactly what we’re up against. Both the living and the dead.”

  “Carry on,” Bishop said. He stabbed a key ending the call, pocketed the phone, and walked down to the lake’s edge where he could see going up on the other side the first of many crosses he was having erected.

  The tithing had stopped coming in, yet he and his men continued to keep the place free from the roaming dead. He feared that if the locals continued to be ungrateful for all that he’d done for them in such a short span, then an example would have to be made of someone.

  Chapter 11

  Draper, South Dakota

  As the pain doubled down, harsh waves of nausea returned in direct proportion. Fighting the urge to puke, Cade bent over, bracing his palms on his knees, and took a number of rapid breaths, expelling each one more forcefully than the last until the pain ebbed and the blue tracers affecting his vision began to fade.

  He rose, shook his head vigorously, and with the monsters nearly on top of him informed the men in the helo, in rather optimistic fashion, that he was on the move.

  More as an afterthought, the word maybe, usually forbidden from the Delta warrior’s lexicon, stayed trapped in his head as he took the first tentative step. And as the seven crucial bones and the spiderweb of tendons and ligaments supporting them compressed under his full weight, the resulting pain was sharp and unyielding. Sweat beaded on his forehead, yet he willed himself to put one foot in front of the other. With more than a dozen Zs on his heels, he continued trudging forward; there was no need for him to check his six—it would only slow him down, he reasoned. Besides, in dribs and drabs, during brief lulls in the cacophony made by the feeding birds, he could hear his pursuers’ low-timbered moans interspersed with the sound their footfalls produced trampling the brittle grass. In a last-ditch effort to slow their pursuit, he zigzagged between a pair of waist-high tombstones, using them like static blockers in a high stakes game of graveyard football.

  At the midway point between the helicopter and the fence separating the church from the cemetery, Cade took a knee and leveled the MP7 at the ghouls. A thought suddenly occurred to him, and he tried to recall the exact wording on the warning stickers plastered all over the gas pumps back home. He knew that any kind of open flame was forbidden in their immediate vicinity. And if he remembered correctly, the warning stickers stated a safe distance, a radius measured in feet, inside of which an errant spark was likely to set off any lingering gas vapors and possibly produce a gigantic fireball.

  But his memory failed him. He had no idea how fast or how far from the source flammable fumes wafted, nor if there was some kind of half-life he should consider. He supposed every accelerant had its own properties, but the one he was dealing with was JP-8—a kerosene-based aviation fuel—highly flammable with its own unique properties that set it apart from the stuff that used to flow from gas pumps at stations on every other street corner in the United States before Omega culled the people and stilled their petrol-thirsty cars and SUVs.

  With that in mind, he said a silent prayer, snugged the carbine in, and tensed his finger against the trigger. The red holographic pip hovered on the kid’s face. Sunlight glinted from some kind of steel caps concealing an upper and lower picket of presumably rotted baby teeth—assaulted in life from too many sweets or merely bad genetics—whichever the culprit was, Cade had no idea. However, he was certain that he still hated nothing more than the idea of going to the dentist. And aside from the long dead politicians of the old world, the trying-to-converse-with-you-with-their-hands-in-your-mouth head drillers hovered somewhere around second or third on his list of people he would not miss.

  In the half of a heartbeat Cade used to steady his breathing and take up some trigger pull, he regarded the metalwork someone had performed on the kid in life. During the second half of the same heartbeat he decided the shiny beacons were a perfect target to aim for.

  The two rounds he squeezed off entered the creature’s parted mouth, and after contacting enamel and metal, the bullets tumbled upward and, with an audible pop that could be heard even over the avian din, created a horrific exit wound. The upper two-thirds of the undead kid’s skull spun through the air, an uneven wobbly arc of bone and fluttering hair followed by something resembling moldy cottage cheese—large curd.

  Save for the pint sized Z’s dome, there was no secondary explosion. Thankfully his prayer had been answered—he had in fact been a safe distance outside of the mysterious danger zone, and his teammates had not been instantly incinerated inside the earthbound helo.

  As the headshot body spun, its lifeless arms flailing like a rag doll, Cade snapped the barrel to the right by a degree and dinged the next two walkers with precise
head shots.

  A double tap. Two soft chugs from the suppressed sub gun. Eye and forehead on the first Z. An implosion and a black dimple, separated by only a millisecond—the former started its head spinning; the latter, centered equidistant between brow and hairline, lifted the geriatric off of the ground. The two nearly simultaneous impacts were followed at once by an aerated cloud of gray matter that drifted to the ground with a wet patter.

  Another perfect double tap. Temple and ear on the second creature as it cornered a large, cross-shaped tombstone. The damage escaped Cade’s notice because the creature had dropped quicker than his eye could track. Faster than gravity by itself could tug on a falling human body. Terminal velocity aided by two sizzling chunks of 4.6mm lead penetrators.

  But the aftermath was evident. Gelatinous chunks of brain painted the cross. Nothing survivable, Cade told himself as he left the rest of the shamblers to figure out how to move around the newly-fallen obstacles blocking their path.

  Without a backward glance, he navigated the last two rows of graves, finally emerging from between a pair of very large monuments to a couple of long dead people.

  The pink marble head stone on his left came up to just below his sternum. It was the perfect height to lean on, allowing him to take the weight from his bad ankle for a few precious seconds. He steadied his weapon, drew a bead on a female first turn, and double tapped her in the forehead. As the body collapsed, he unleashed a dozen rounds downrange, pausing slightly between every other pull of the trigger to acquire a new target. He fired until the bolt locked, and then with a fluidity gained from years of putting practice to work dumped the mag and inserted a fresh one containing the final thirty rounds for the MP7. By feel he charged the weapon, and then padded across the open ground. He entered the shadow cast by the towering church, crabbed sideways through the gate, and scooted under the ornate wrought iron archway.

  The patina of dirt and moss accumulated over decades of changing seasons had left the cemetery’s name—Saint something or other, which was spelled out in an arc of flowing script atop the gate— mostly unreadable to his military-trained eye. He had always been partial to the simple blocky font The Big Green Machine—the United States Army to the layperson—labeled everything with, and though he couldn’t tell whom the graveyard’s anonymous saintly namesake had been, he was one hundred and ten percent certain the man would be spinning over in his grave if he knew the undead were treading on this sacred ground.

  Dispelling the thoughts of who’s or what’s pertaining to the church’s history he turned left, hobbled a number of yards in shadow, made another left, and then shot a glance over his shoulder at the trailing creatures. The carrion bottleneck that formed as they tried forcing their way through the gate in unison would have been a funny sight if this were some stupid Super Bowl commercial or one of those horror comedies that popped up every so often at the local Cineplex, back when zombies were but figments of someone’s vivid imagination and made real by a few talented makeup artists. But this was no film shoot. There was no crew. No director. No sandwich wagon waiting to feed the extras. This was life and death, not only for him but also for the men in the Ghost Hawk, and he derived no pleasure from watching the clumsy creatures—wanting nothing more than to strip the flesh from his bones—struggling with the simplest of obstacles. In fact, he was grateful for the diversion that had allowed him to gain a few more precious feet of separation.

  Chapter 12

  Cade reached the southwest corner of the cemetery with the dead close behind and made a tactical decision. Before covering the open ground to Jasper’s dusty truck, once again he took a knee and emptied half of the little MP7’s final extended magazine into the staggering clutch. Putrid bodies thudded to the dirt as the initial fifteen rounds, rocketing at 2,400 feet per second, found undead flesh, bone, and brain. The next flurry of controlled head shots added more dead Zs to the trail of twisted corpses outside of the fence line. Three left, he thought to himself as he unclipped the smoking weapon and dropped it near his feet.

  Now free of the added weight of the MP7 he was able to move a little faster. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he cast a quick glance toward the helicopter. The simple fact that the perimeter around the downed craft was clear of walking dead told him his ruse had worked. He flicked his eyes back to the still-shambling cadavers and tore the Glock from his shoulder holster. Deciding he’d only use the unsuppressed pistol as a last resort, he held his fire and commenced a slow speed dash for the safety of the truck.

  After gingerly traversing the minefield strewn with sun ripened-bodies and bits and pieces of rotor blade and fuselage, he reached the pickup. Dizzy and winded and sweating profusely—but relieved his grueling ordeal was about to pay off—he grasped the handle, wrenched the door open, and flung his body headlong onto the sagging, burgundy vinyl bench seat. Without a backward glance he hinged up and slammed the thin-skinned door home, an action accomplished mere seconds before the ghouls made its acquaintance.

  Sharp reports of ashen palms slapping the window were followed instantly by a trio of sneering faces. Teeth clicking against glass, the insatiable Zs got an eyeful of the meat inside and instantly began to head-butt the driver’s side window. Cade couldn’t believe what he was seeing as the trio stepped back and flung themselves against the vehicle. Hollow thuds resounded as each new impact caused thick black fluid to flow from their pulped noses. Inexplicably they seemed to be cooperating, coordinating and delivering each blow simultaneously with a vigor that sent a chill up his spine. He thought back to the multitude of times he’d encountered the walking dead since Z Day and couldn’t remember having ever seen them exhibit such determined, purpose-driven behavior. Sure he’d seen them accidentally, through sheer numbers, blast through a plate glass window. He’d been in an old farmhouse when a large group of dead knocked a four-inch-thick oak door and its casing and door jamb asunder as if it were constructed of Styrofoam. From inside the Ghost Hawk in a steady hundred foot hover he’d witnessed a sight he’d never forget, as the Denver horde—which had been traveling down the freeway packed tightly several hundred thousand strong—tossed SUVs, passenger cars, and multi-ton fire trucks around like plastic toys. It had struck him at the time because of the way they moved, like army ants on a mission. And if they are becoming aware, he thought grimly, even one iota, and then start hunting in the kind of numbers that were present on I-25 that day—then the remaining pockets of humanity worldwide are fucked. As the dead banged against the window again and again, he asked himself a single question he hoped would never come true: Were they learning? As if his thoughts had been tapped, one of the ghouls stopped assaulting the glass and turned its milky eyes and undivided attention from him to something on the outside of the door. Blood turning to ice, Cade cast his gaze left and down and noted a subtle movement to the interior door handle. Just a halfhearted jiggle, but enough to nearly stop his heart. Then he heard a clicking noise identical to the sound the latch had made seconds ago when the door slammed shut behind him.

  He lashed out with his left elbow, popped the rounded locking knob down, and groped the steering column searching for the keys. Way to go Jasper, he thought, a thin smile curling his lip.

  Dangling from the ignition was a purple rabbit’s foot attached by a beaded chain to a small complement of silver keys—the most important of which was still in the ignition right where the man said it would be.

  “Let’s see if any of you have learned the fine art of the duck,” he said, turning the engine over. The engine roared to life and instantly the male first turn that had been worrying the door handle reacted by flinging its arms over the top of the cab. Perfect, thought Cade as he powered the window down a few fingers width and stuck the compact Glock’s business-end into the opening. “Who’s hungry?” he asked, chiding the flailing creature in a sing-song voice. It took a handful of seconds, but the time spent waiting and inhaling the eye-watering stench up close and personal paid off as the quick learner moved its
open maw near the flat black muzzle.

  Cade did two things at once: he plunged the pistol into the ghoul’s throat and then twisted his wrist clockwise in order to angle the barrel up so the discharged round had no chance of reaching the helicopter. He caressed the trigger twice and winced as the Z’s eyes momentarily bulged from their sockets, then retracted and followed the rest of the cranial contents out the gaping exit wound in the rear of its skull. Contained within the cab, the back-to-back reports were deafening. One of the spent shells struck the metal edge of the visor then ricocheted back across Cade’s face, grazing his nose before disappearing behind the bench seat. The other followed the curve of the windshield and disappeared down the window defroster. Ears ringing, he pulsed the window all the way down and with the Glock in a two-fisted grip moved the weapon’s muzzle to the left, firing several more shots into the remaining pair of creatures. Watching them fall, he powered the window shut, slammed the transmission into drive, and hauled the wheel hard to the right. Bouncing over arms and legs and small pieces of debris from the wreck, he worked at loading some G-forces to the tail end of the truck. Slowly but surely the stiffened bodies Jasper had been hauling made the inevitable slide from the truck’s bed onto terra firma. He flicked his gaze to the rearview and watched as the bodies of two full-sized adults and what had to be nearly half a dozen children-sized cadavers tumbled out and bounced and skidded, kicking up puffs of ochre dust in the process. Straightening the wheel, he said a prayer for the family and aimed the pickup for the opening in the nearby fence. Barely wide enough for one vehicle, the gravel access road splitting the graveyard in two stretched north nearly all the way to the church’s steps. If Cade had to venture a guess, the road had been used primarily to bring in occupied caskets and the digging equipment necessary to inter them.