Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  TMI—too much information— thought Wilson as he struggled to believe that Brook would even consider leaving her daughter alone for a few minutes, let alone overnight, considering the dead gathered outside of the wire and the other dangers—real or imagined—still lurking inside the base. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he took a deep breath, hid his fomenting disgust, and instead began to calculate the odds of him surviving a night of Monopoly against three members of the opposite sex.

  But in the time it took him to exhale the breath, he read the worry on her face and realized that she merely wanted to protect Raven from seeing or hearing something she wasn’t prepared to deal with, not unload her in order to have a night alone with Captain America. “What’s going on?” he asked, concern showing in his voice.

  She made no reply.

  Then he noticed something about her body language that set an alarm off in his head. It seemed like she was carrying an invisible baby grand piano on her back. Her shoulders sagged and the way she was sinking in the office chair was totally unlike her. He’d seen her in action, and in his book the lady was no slouch—literally and figuratively. Thinking the worst, he finally asked, “Is Cade OK?”

  Brook hitched her brow and tilted her head towards Sasha in the same manner that she had with Raven a moment ago.

  Wilson said, “Sasha ... can you give me and Brook a second alone?” And though it was worded as a question with an option, it had been delivered more like a parental order, leaving no room for discussion.

  “Do I have to?” she asked. Then, after shifting her gaze from Wilson to Brook and receiving only a cold stare from the visitor, she pushed her chair from the table and stormed away in a huff, mumbling something about her and Wilson being equals now that their mom wasn’t here and how she better not be asked to babysit someone else’s kid.

  Brook watched Sasha leave and then said, “The only thing I can tell you is that Cade went out on a mission and hasn’t returned yet.”

  “I gathered as much since we didn’t leave for Utah today.” He paused, waiting for an answer. When none came, he asked, “So why do you need us to watch Raven?”

  One hand knuckling out a slow cadence on the tabletop and the other clutching Cade’s death letter in her pocket, Brook replied, “They sent a man to get me. He said I was needed in the communications room ... wouldn’t elaborate.”

  “Who is they?”

  “Major Nash. She’s the lady we gave the thumb drive to.”

  Not good, thought Wilson. The fact that Cade had so abruptly changed his plans meant that the mission had something to do with the information contained on the thumb drive. That Brook couldn’t divulge what kind of mission and was now being summoned in for a face-to-face with the crotchety major told him more than he needed or wanted to know. So he said nothing. Just looked at her face, hoping she’d crack a smile and say everything was going to be alright, and that they were still leaving the dismal base in the morning. But she didn’t, and judging by her deepening worry lines, he surmised she’d already arrived at the same conclusion he had. He said, “We’ll entertain her then. And try our best to keep her occupied and her mind off the fact that you’re both gone.”

  “She’s gotten used to her dad being gone. But once the allure of the iPhone wears off and it sinks in that she’s really alone, she’ll probably get fidgety. If I don’t return she might not fall asleep right away. She’ll talk your ears off instead of closing her eyes if you let her. But she’s a resilient kid ... she’ll be OK.”

  No shit, thought Wilson. Resilient doesn’t even begin to cover it. Hardened. Calloused maybe. He could probably go on and list a half-dozen other adjectives usually associated with steely-eyed-shooters in the old Westerns—because when it came to blasting the dead, the stoic four-footer made him look like a pussy and Sasha seem like an emotional infant. “Take as long as you need,” he said. “And I hope Nash has nothing but good news for you.” You dumbass, Wilson, he thought to himself, knowing full well from what he’d seen in the movies and on television that nothing good was ever attributed to a somber-looking man in uniform coming to an Army wife’s door. “What I meant ...”

  “Save it,” said Brook. “You’ll only succeed in digging the hole deeper. If I don’t come back tonight, there are some MREs and a change of clothes in her bag.”

  “MREs? We’ll take Raven to the mess hall in an hour or so.”

  “I don’t want her going outside. Period.”

  “I’ll bring something back then.”

  Fixing her gaze on Wilson, Brook said, “After I leave I don’t want you to open the door for anything or anyone. I don’t care if it’s Shrill, Nash, or President Clay herself.” There was a moment of silence. “The door remains locked. Is that clear?”

  Staring into the woman’s determined eyes reminded him of the time not long ago when he had found himself peering into the gaping muzzle of an automatic rifle in the hot confines of a U-Haul’s cab. This time the stare was just as icy, but thankfully the M4 didn’t factor into the equation. “She’ll be in good hands,” Wilson said. “I promise.”

  “Mom!” yelled Raven as she fumbled to remove the ear buds that were still pumping some kind of bass heavy track which Brook could hear from roughly thirty feet away. “Can I hang out with Taryn and Sasha for a while?”

  “It’s OK with us,” said Taryn. “Right Sasha?”

  “Should be fun,” countered Sasha meekly.

  “Sounds like a plan. Sweetie,” Brook called back. “Come give Mom a hug and a kiss before she leaves.” She turned her head and palmed a couple of tears away, and then received her not-so-little-girl with open arms. Embracing Raven tightly, Brook rested her chin on the top of her head and slowly drew her girl’s silky pigtails through her fingers. “We need to get this hair trimmed,” she said absentmindedly as tears welled up fat in the corners of her eyes. She stood up and turned away before the wet trails on her tanned cheekbones gave her away.

  From his seat at the game table, Wilson got misty-eyed watching the two share words which were drowned out by the conditioned air buffeting his back. And speaking from experience, having grown up without a father, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t more than a little worried for the both of them. In fact things would probably never be the same once they were reunited. Because his gut was telling him that the news Brook was about to hear was going to affect Raven—resilience not withstanding—much harder than anyone could imagine.

  Chapter 21

  Draper, South Dakota

  SR 13-I 90 Juncture

  “What the heck was that?” said Jasper.

  Eyes tracking the glorious sight across the sky, and hearing Lopez in his ear bud thanking God for their apparent about-face in fortune, Cade answered, “That, my friend, is our ride home.”

  Craning his neck in order to follow the source of the shadow that had just moments ago blotted out the sun, Jasper asked another question that Cade was already contemplating. “Where is a plane that big going to land around here?”

  “You would be surprised,” came Ari’s unsolicited reply as the airplane’s retreating engine noise was supplanted by the snarls and hisses of the dead and an out-of-place whine coming from poorly-meshing synchros in the transmission just inches below his ass.

  Saying nothing, Cade pinned the accelerator to the floor and put the two wheels on Jasper’s side parallel to the rumble strips on the right shoulder. There was no guardrail on the onramp, only a gently sloping once-manicured expanse of long-dormant grass running the entire length of the incline that fed into the two westbound lanes. In his side vision he saw the parchment-colored swath of grass and the ragtag groups of dead flash by. He flicked his gaze to the airplane, which had climbed to a point where it was seemingly suspended, like one of the many plastic scale models that had once been thumbtacked to the ceiling of his childhood room back in Portland. Only this was no model, and the props were spinning, clawing the air, trailing zephyrs of pewter gray exhaust, a testament to how
hard the four engines were working. Then it nosed up as the pilot made a subtle course correction to the south, further showing off the top of its fuselage, a gray blue ‘T’ silhouetted against the sun.

  For a split second Cade worried that the dust- and grime-coated Chevy had gotten lost in the ground clutter, and perhaps they hadn’t been spotted. He thought he might have screwed the pooch. Loitering in the lip of shadow thrown by the overpass had been foolish and, however improbable the case may be, might have occurred at the exact moment that the minuscule patch of ground had received its split second’s worth of scrutiny from the search and rescue plane. However, that notion quickly passed, giving way to a more plausible explanation—perhaps the pilot, co-pilot, and the other half of the four-man crew had been fixated on the burning helo northeast of them and the KC-130 that was supposed to be their salvation was now returning to Schriever.

  Pushing all of those negative thoughts from his mind, Cade kept his attention locked on the gray ribbon of oil-stained cement four or five car lengths ahead and plotted a course that would deliver them onto the 90 without getting their ride high-centered on a mound of squirming corpses. And while his concentration was focused on steering clear of the groping claw-like hands of the dead, Mister Murphy was working the bellows, heating and folding the metal, fashioning a very big monkey wrench to throw into the Delta operator’s plans. “Shoot me a path through these things,” he bellowed, even as the report of silenced machine guns and the tinkling of brass skittering across the roadway reached his ears.

  One hand working the wheel, he punched the window down and went for the Glock suspended under his arm. The polymer pistol slipped from the holster fast and easy, and once comfortably in his left hand, he stuck the muzzle past the side mirror, drew a bead, and tracked a pair of recently turned Zs—one male and one female. Barking twice, the semi-auto pistol delivered a lethal one-two punch, cratering the male’s face. As the creature pirouetted into the truck’s path, Cade shifted aim by a degree and eased back on the accelerator. The Glock bucked twice more, sending a lead double-tap careening towards the female Z’s face. Snapping the pallid Z’s head back like a Mike Tyson uppercut, the first round struck the strip of skin just below its upturned nose and spread a rose-tinted haze containing splintered teeth and pulped flesh into the air. A fraction of a second later the rotten corpse’s clouded eyes disappeared, punched through the back of its head as the second 9 mm Parabellum entered on an upward trajectory directly between them. At last, the combined kinetic energy from both slugs threw the lifeless corpse into a backward half gainer. In all, less than two seconds had elapsed, and as dumb luck would have it, both Zs smacked the concrete less than a yard apart, succumbed to the combined effects of gravity and the engineered cant of the onramp, and rolled into the path of the Chevy’s left front wheel. Pulling his arm back into the truck, Cade set the smoking Glock on his lap and grimaced as a pair of muffled pops reverberated through the floor pan as both of the Zs’ skulls lost the battle with the steel-belted radials.

  Close to retching, Jasper motored his window down and brought his pistol to bear on the pale creatures scrabbling through the expanse of knee length grass to his right.

  “Make ‘em count,” Ari called out, trying to cover his ears. But thanks to the ongoing numbness because of the cinched-down harness, lifting his arms up even an inch was a monumental task. So, myth or not, in an effort to protect his hearing against the dueling reports to his left and right, more necessary at this point than combating the stench of death enveloping them all, he opened his mouth to equalize the pressure in his ears. Bullshit, he thought, as a stabbing pain settled behind his eyes and a shrill buzz akin to overhead high voltage wires on steroids blared inside of his skull. Whoever had fed him that line of crap—probably some artillery officer bragging over beers—deserved to be punched in the mouth. So he sat there, hands in his lap, and split his attention between watching the big undertaker to his right deal out second death and keeping a watchful eye out for additional rescue aircraft he hoped had been dispatched. And as he hoped and prayed for Jedi One-Two to materialize on the horizon, he tried hard to remember how much landing strip a fuel-laden Hercules needed to land. He knew from running joint operations with the Air Force Army and Marines that the durable aircraft could land most anywhere, on roads, unimproved grass, or dirt airstrips. He also knew its four engines were designed with counter-rotating props which provided a considerable amount of reverse thrust. Enough to begin slowing it down immediately after its wheels hit the ground.

  “You think she’s going to be able to land on the interstate?” Cade asked, casting a quick glance at Ari.

  “If we clear a spot for them,” answered Ari, thinking to himself how eerie it was to have Cade reading his mind at nearly every turn. “Road’s pretty choked,” he added. “It’s gonna take some work.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “I couldn’t scratch my balls even if I wanted to,” said Ari, both arms still numbed out of commission from hanging inside the helo like a meat piñata for the dead.

  “We better get to it then,” said Cade, downshifting in order to power through a phalanx of ambling Zs. “Whatever you do, Jasper. Make sure when you pop them they fall away from the truck’s path.” Then, practicing what he preached, Cade retrieved the Glock from the seat. Swerving right, he squeezed off half a dozen rounds, dropping four of the dead that were doing their best to get in front of the truck. Finally seeing a sliver of daylight, he nosed the truck through and flicked his gaze south of west, where far off in the distance he recognized the unmistakable form of the Hercules crossing the sun on a wide banking turn.

  “They’re coming back,” said Cade into the comms.

  ***

  Onboard the Hercules, Dover thumbed through his mission briefing paperwork and found the communications page that listed all of the call signs and the frequencies the different packages were broadcasting on. He located the frequency the Delta team had used to communicate with the Jedi flight and amongst themselves while they were on the ground at the NML. “Meredith, take this.” He handed the clipboard to his co-pilot. “Since you’re not getting a copy on the dust-off frequency, why don’t you try and hail them on their RF comms.”

  ***

  Cade had one eye on the approaching plane and was sighting down the Glock with the other, when a voice with a slight southern drawl utilizing a calm, business-like syntax said in his earpiece, “Oil Can Five-Five here. Anvil Actual, is that you in the civilian vehicle at my eleven o’clock ... how copy?”

  Containing his enthusiasm, Cade answered back, “Anvil Actual ... I have a solid copy. And it’s very nice to hear your voice.”

  “Well it just so happens to be your lucky day, Anvil,” replied the pilot. “Because you, my friend who has already been written off as dead by the brass, are the very lucky recipient of one off the record and highly insubordinate final pass.”

  “Roger that, Oil Can. We’ll be sure to keep this off the record. And rest assured if I have to go outside the wire for it—you’ll be getting more than the case of beer Ari already promised you—” Cade ceased talking mid-thought and jerked the wheel hard left to avoid a pair of Zs making one of their patented slow speed lunges into the path of the creeping pick-up.

  “That was close,” said Jasper, flinching away from the window. Then he asked Ari with a quizzical look on his face, “Who is he talking to?”

  “His imaginary friend ... talks to him all of the time,” answered Ari in his best deadpan. “He hears voices as well. And sees dead people.” Ari wanted to make the universal finger-circling-the-ear gesture implying Cade was cuckoo, but didn’t want to bring on another wave of nausea by trying to move his arms. So he said, “Jasper ... I’m fucking with you.”

  To which Jasper said nothing. Instead the undertaker powered his window up and stared straight through the windshield.

  Searching for a suitable stretch of road or tract of land for the plane to land, Cade looked over his sho
ulder at I-90 stretching off to the east. No good. It was choked with walking corpses and vehicles. Too many to navigate in this ride. And switching vehicles wasn’t an option. He glanced in the rearview at Cross, who was kneeling on one knee, swaying to and fro like he was in a tiny skiff fighting rough seas. The Secret Service man had one hand wedged under the lip on the passenger side of the bed and the SCAR carbine gripped tightly in the other, pulling it taught against its sling in order to steady the front heavy weapon. Hicks was switching magazines while Lopez was opposite Cross—a near mirror image—his suppressed M4 held steady, squeezing off snap shots at the creatures within reaching distance.

  With the merge to the 90 at the top of the ramp getting closer one hard-fought uphill yard at a time, Cade pushed off against the sagging springs and craned to see what lay ahead before committing fully.

  “This is Oil Can Five-five,” said Dover in Cade’s ear bud. “We didn’t pick up a distress signal on the dust-off frequency. Is your transponder activated?”

  “It wasn’t at first ... but that’s a long story,” Cade said back. “It is activated now.”

  After fiddling with the radio’s switches for a second, Ari said, “It’s powered on and looks to be transmitting normally.” Then, after inspecting the stocky antenna and noticing a fair amount of abnormal play at its base, he finally conceded that it had probably been broken either in the crash or when he had unclasped his harness and hinged forward into the choppers mangled HUD—heads up display.

  “No matter,” Dover said back. “Let’s put our heads together and think of a way to get you all aboard.”

  Already several steps ahead in his mind, Cade nosed the pick-up onto the 90 and felt his heart skip a beat when the entire picture unfolded. As far as he could see, cars, trucks, and SUVs were spread out at intervals resembling some kind of a static Indy 500 staggered start. Dotting the lanes every hundred yards or so were vehicles piled high with worldly belongings, some of them occupied with moving, festering corpses.