After travelling a dozen yards moving at a school-zone clip, Cade had an idea. He pulled in tight next to a white panel van that had taken quite a beating. The rear bumper was hanging precariously, and the three corners he could see were battered and rounded off, presumably from striking metal and meat alike during a mad dash from Sioux Falls. Crimson hand prints marked every square inch of the Euro-styled van, and as he stopped alongside, the distinct smell of sun-baked carrion wafted from the passenger window. Cade looked left at the swollen inanimate corpse. Feasting on a gray hunk of rotting tongue, flies darted in and out of its drooping mouth. What’s your story, he thought, as the sweet treat hinged forward and bumped against the inner door, sending a buzzing black and green cloud into the air.
Ignoring the nearby creature and its vain attempts to get a hand on him, Cade said, “Cross, get up on the van and tell me what you see.”
Instantly the gunfire from the bed diminished and the truck lurched upward on its springs, relieved of a portion of its burdensome load as Cross launched his two hundred and fifty pound frame at the panel truck, made a handhold out of the sleek black rail atop it, and easily scrabbled aboard.
A few seconds elapsed before Cross said, “Wait one. Adjusting optics.”
Then there was another long moment during which no words were exchanged and everyone seemed to be holding their breath. The only sounds, dry hisses of the dead and a rhythmic coughing coming from the truck’s bed as Hicks and Lopez pumped 5.56 rounds from their M4 carbines into the dead.
Finally Cross relayed in detail what he was seeing.
To Cade, none of it sounded good.
Chapter 22
Schriever AFB
Catching Airman Davis unaware, Brook hopped from the Cushman before it had come to a complete stop. Without a backwards glance, and fully expecting an admonishment from the uptight driver, she set her jaw and squared her shoulders to lend the impression that she knew exactly where she was going as she strode towards the rear entrance to the wide, low-slung building.
Built of cinder and glass and finished in a dull battleship gray, the fifties-era structure housed all of the different elements comprising the 50th Space Wing, including the bustling TOC which was her ultimate destination.
Having already been warned that President Valerie Clay would be in attendance, as would her protection detail, Brook left her M4 behind a withered bush and shouldered her way through the door without regard to who or what stood in her way.
The door swung shut behind her, closing with a soft squelch. She paused for a moment to get her bearings, listening hard for any sounds she imagined might be associated with a command center: barked orders, the bustle of bodies in close proximity to one another, perhaps fingers tapping out commands on computer keyboards. Nothing. The only noise evident as she stood stock-still was the muted hiss of overhead fluorescents and the nearly subliminal whoosh of conditioned air transiting conduits hidden behind the ceiling’s drop down tiles. And overriding the building’s mechanical noises was the steady cadence of her beating heart. She let her gaze follow the hall off to the left and then she took in the nearly identical view to the right. The floors were covered with a battleship-gray, institutional-type low wear carpeting— easy on the feet but not on the eyes—and breaking up the linear flow of the wood paneled walls, photos of men and women looking important in blue uniforms were affixed at regular intervals. She ignored their squared-away plastic smiles as she filed past, instead focusing all of her attention on finding signage that would point her to the top secret satellite command center.
After a winding and fruitless search of the left half of the building, and finding absolutely nothing, she went back the way she had come. The entry door passed by on her right, and she padded down the narrow corridor experiencing a niggling sense of déjà vu. Minus the low-hanging pipes and wires snaking overhead, this part of the building reminded her of the interior of a submarine she’d once toured. Wondering why she hadn’t come across any Air Force personnel or a submariner or two, she walked a straight line past a handful of closed doors and came to another ‘T’ where another decision loomed. Left or right? she asked herself.
To the left was more of the same: dark wood, gray flooring, and harsh lighting. To the right, past a stainless wall-mounted drinking fountain, the hallway doubled in width and continued on for another twenty or thirty feet before ending at a sturdy-looking door of brushed metal with no visible handle or hinges. Affixed to the door at eye level was a sign that said Authorized Personnel Only, and coming from the other side were subdued voices engaged in serious-sounding conversation. Gotta be here, Brook thought as she ignored the sign and leaned against it, leading with her shoulder. Locked.
She stood there for a moment wondering what could be so important for Nash to summon her to the back door of the TOC a number of hours prior to Cade’s supposed return. Maybe the Delta team was coming back empty handed. Perhaps Nash wanted to put her off balance in order to try and convince her to allow Cade to go on another mission. She would be in a foreign environment—not necessarily hostile—but still staffed by Nash’s people which would surely lend the major the upper hand in any kind of negotiations. Stick to your guns, she told herself. Then she came up with a couple of mental bullet points to use if she was in fact ambushed: You can’t be swayed this time because your debt to Nash and Shrill has already been paid in full—twice. President Clay is a person, nothing less, nothing more. With the fear of finding out Cade’s fate pulling her from the door like some kind of invisible tractor beam, and her newfound ‘moxie,’ something her mother had called the rare commodity a female needed to survive in a man’s world urging her to confront that fear, she deliberated for a second outside the door.
And as she worked the pro and con columns in her head, she remembered her mom speaking highly of the women pilots who flew the newly-built fighters from the assembly lines near Boeing Field in Washington State to their respective jumping-off airbases during World War 2. According to Mom, those women had ‘moxie.’ Mom had always used her mother as an example of a courageous woman blessed with the very same trait. Gloria had been one of the famous women known collectively as Rosie the Riveter. They were the women who dropped everything: kids, husbands, a teacher’s job in Grandma’s case, in order to assist the war efforts by helping to build the Liberty Ships in the Van Port shipyards.
Brook smiled at the good memories she had of her mom, the woman who had been her best friend in life. Then, dredging up enough courage to confront Nash and possibly the President in front of a room filled with Air Force personnel and Secret Service agents, she closed her fist and pounded resolutely against the door.
A second later it was opened by an unsmiling man whose eyes were hidden behind wraparound glasses with lenses that appeared honed from obsidian and reflected a half-dozen moving images from the flat panel screens scattered about the room. At six-and-a-half feet tall and easily north of two seventy-five—except for catching a casual glance at one of the athletes in a WWF match on television—this wall of flesh was undeniably the biggest man Brook had ever seen. And as a nurse who’d had to transfer many a patient bigger than her from one bed to another, she possessed an uncanny knack for guessing, rather accurately, these kinds of attributes. There was no doubt in her mind that if this were a hospital setting and he one of those patients, two or three burly orderlies wouldn’t be able to budge him.
For a few long seconds he didn’t move or react to her presence in any way. He just filled the doorway like some kind of bouncer at a Manhattan nightclub. Resisting the urge to knee the Golem in the nuts and scream I’m on the VIP list, Brook instead, in as nice and cordial of a tone as she could muster considering the circumstances, demanded to speak to Major Freda Nash.
With no visible display of emotion, the stony-faced mountain bent his elbow and said a few hushed words into a microphone secreted somewhere in his sleeve. He went silent for a tick and then nodded, listening to a string of orders coming throug
h his earpiece, Brook supposed. She craned her head to see around the barrel-chested specimen and noticed a somber-looking affair. Heads were bowed. A few people were fixed intently on something taking place on the monitors on the room’s far wall. Most everyone had lines of worry etched on their stark features. With goose bumps forming on her arms, and half expecting a funeral hymn to emanate from the speakers inset in the drop down ceiling, she turned back to face the agent.
“Identification,” the Golem finally said in a voice with a deeper register than Colonel Shrill and James Earl Jones combined.
Brook made no reply. Clearly agitated, she shook her head in an exaggerated manner.
“Name?”
“Brooklyn Grayson,” she said, peering defiantly into the eyes she couldn’t see but knew were there, somewhere, sizing her up from behind the dark lenses.
Upon hearing her name, the man’s head tilted down a degree, and he looked at her through the paper-thin sliver between the top rim of his shades and the chiseled ridge of his Cro-Magnon-like brow.
Noticing some kind of recognition and perhaps a split second of deliberation betrayed by a subtle squinting of his eyes, Brook held his gaze and the thin thread of hope that she wouldn’t have to go the knee-to-the-groin route to get past him.
After what seemed like half a lifetime, the Secret Service agent seemed to have made his decision, and shifting his weight nearly imperceptibly from one foot to the other, he pivoted with an ease that belied his size and waved her on by.
He recognized my name, Brook noted as she side-stepped into the dimly lit space. Or most likely the latter half I took from Cade thirteen years ago, she conceded, as a cold chill of anticipation traced her spine.
Chapter 23
Nash watched Brook as she entered the room. As the woman stood near the outermost ring of desks, seemingly on the edge of commitment, Nash tried to read the petite woman’s body language.
But there were no dead giveaways. No tells as to the woman’s demeanor. She appeared calm and relaxed. Nash expected nothing less. So she stepped from behind the lectern where she had been watching the action on the trio of screens. Moving with no sense of urgency, the equally petite major navigated the pair of stairs, sidestepped a tangle of wires, and moved slowly in Brook’s direction.
After taking a few tentative steps into the busy TOC, Brook stopped and made a calculated decision to go nowhere near the President and force the major to come to her. Keep her on the defensive, she thought.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, Nash had wound her way between the desks and was standing a foot away, hand extended, expecting a reciprocal handshake.
Fighting an almost irresistible urge to plant an elbow on the woman’s chin, Brook ignored the overture and said icily, “Why am I here?”
A noticeable shudder rocked Nash. She let her arm fall to her side and said quietly, “Because I didn’t want you to hear secondhand through the base grapevine what I’m about to tell you. That’s why I had Davis bring you here.” Visibly shaken, Nash steadied herself on the chair back in front of her, swallowed hard, and went on. “The helicopter that General Gaines, your husband, and six other men were aboard has gone missing.”
Brook’s face blanched. She shook her head side-to-side. “What do you mean, missing. As in misplaced ... or did it crash?”
Save the steady percussion of fingers working keyboards and the soft chirp from the hard drives inside the multitude of computers, the room was suddenly a vacuum of sound.
Time seemed to stand still for Brook. Her attention was drawn to one screen in particular. A grainy, moving image featuring a rising column of thick black smoke was bracketed in the center, and whatever was filming it seemed to be creeping closer ever so slowly.
“There has been no distress signal as of yet, and up until a couple of minutes ago we have had no visual confirmation of wreckage on the ground.”
“What the hell is that,” blurted Brook, pointing a finger at the large center screen.
“The pilot on station thinks it’s a burning house. Says he’s seen more than he can count. I’ve got hope,” Nash lied. “If anyone can bring the team home in one piece once they’re wheels up, it’s Ari Silver.”
“What if they crashed?” blurted Brook.
“I’m not going to go there,” said Nash as the lies piled up.
“So if that’s not a crash site. And those aren’t rotor blades, and that black ‘T’ there isn’t the tail section, then that ...” she pointed to the huge flat panel on the right near where the President stood rooted, staring intently, following the action. “Then that isn’t another mega horde approaching from somewhere that looks eerily similar to the desert and clogged freeway system south of Springs.” Putting one hand on her hip, she turned and stared daggers at the major.
Nash remained silent.
“Looks like Clay gives more of a shit about whatever she’s watching than the burning house that you’ve apparently already ruled out as my husband and his team’s final resting place.”
Still, Nash didn’t reply. She looked away and seemed to be trying to get the attention of a woman airman sitting behind a trio of smaller computer screens.
“No answer? Cat got your tongue?”
Clearing her throat, Nash turned back towards Brook, inclined her head and removed her cover, placing it atop a desk cluttered by laminated topographical maps and grease pencils every color of the rainbow.
Sensing the scrutiny leveled at her, Brook moved her gaze from the President and the pressing situation on the monitor and locked eyes with Nash. It was instantly apparent to her that the major was thinking of a way to deliver a pertinent piece of information diplomatically so as to avoid releasing the tension bubbling just below the surface that Brook had so far successfully held in check. In fact, the major seemed to be concentrating so hard on conjuring up the right combination of words that Brook could almost hear the sound of eggshells being crushed underfoot.
“OK,” Nash said. “That is the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that carried Gaines and Cade and the rest of the team. This is satellite footage from a couple of minutes ago. There was a refueling tanker in the area with eyes on. After a couple of passes with no sign of life on the ground, I recalled them.”
“You what,” spat Brook, veins bulging in her neck.
“Listen ... I made a call.”
“A call? You need to send that plane back. Send another helicopter. Do something—”
“I need to focus on recovering Jedi One-Two and the scientists aboard,” Nash said coolly.
Steadying herself on the desk to her right, Brook seemed to shrink. Her shoulders hunched and she let out a low moan. Her worst fear had apparently became real. Now she and Annie had everything in common. Both widows. Both solo moms in a terrifying new world. Nash’s words yanked her from the what ifs swirling through her mind and back to the room and the present.
“There was not a distress call when it went down, and we’ve received no communication from the ground.”
On the monitor, there were licks of fire and the cherry-red skeleton of the helicopter glowed hot.
“How can you be certain they’re all dead? That Cade is dead?” Brook said, her voice rising and cracking as she averted her eyes from the apparent funeral pyre.
The President turned at the sound of Brook’s outburst, while at the same time, rising from his seat, Shrill grabbed his cover and took a step in Nash’s direction. But she waved him off with a casual flick of the wrist that was lost on everyone save Brook and the colonel.
Clenching her fists tightly, creating red half-moons on her palms where her trimmed nails met flesh, Brook said under her breath, “You’re going to need Shrill to save your ass if you don’t tell me the truth. And I want to know everything. We should probably sit down, don’t you think?”
Nash made no reply.
Just then a female captain sitting nearby whipped around, hand cupping her boom mike, and said excitedly, “Oil Can stayed on stat
ion—”
“What?” replied Nash.
“Oil Can has a visual on a vehicle moving on the ground. They have made contact over air-to-ground radio frequency.”
“Is it the general and his team?”
“Roger that, Major.”
A ripple of excitement jumped from person to person making the rounds of the room.
Nash removed her cover. Plopped it on the desk before her. “Bring the satellite feed up on three. Cycle it back five minutes if you will.”
“Roger that,” replied the captain.
“I’m sorry Brook,” said Nash. “We’ve all been under so much pressure the last twenty-four ...”
Making no reply, Brook stalked closer to the wall of monitors.
“Wait one ... The feed is compiling and coming up on three,” said the captain, tapping out the correct combination of keystrokes to make it happen. She rose and delivered the headset to Nash.
Then, several separate yet wholly connected events happened simultaneously. Monitor three to the right of President Clay flicked to life and displayed in full color HD a moving vehicle that, from the satellite’s orbit, looked like a toy Hot Wheel creeping along a strip of highway amid a converging crowd of zombies. Closer still, cutting the airspace over the recorded scene, and appearing twenty times larger than the pick-up, was some kind of slow-moving airplane. Gray and wide-bodied, with a bulbous nose and a tail Shamu would be proud of. Brook knew instantly that it was most likely the same plane she had witnessed take off from Schriever’s westernmost airstrip prior to Cade’s departure earlier in the morning.
Monitor two on the wall in the center position suddenly came alive with movement as the camera broadcasting the scene in black and white panned and zoomed in. Now the marching Zs were more defined. That they were washed by sunlight from the right, which cast long shadows away, led Brook to believe that the lens was pointed south, thus confirming her hunch that the horde was marching lockstep from Pueblo. To Brook it was obvious the footage was being shot from something hovering at a distance. A helicopter was her best guess. Why the event was being monitored didn’t fully dawn on her until the pair of rockets lanced from the aircraft, their white contrails and shimmering heat signature momentarily obscuring the camera as they streaked towards the creatures on the ground.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 12
