Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “First off, south and west of here there are still large groups of Zs that splintered off from the Pueblo herd. And if you go the obvious overland route through Manitou Springs, then you’d no doubt have an uphill battle just trying to avoid tangling with them. Secondly, northwest of here there are bunches of Zs leftover from the Denver horde, many of them radioactive. They’ve been roaming the no man’s land between Springs and the Castle Rock craters since you Delta guys popped the nukes.”

  “I was told the 4th ID had a handle on the Zs,” said Cade, flashing Brook his open hand, a silent plea for five more minutes.

  “The ones from Pueblo for the most part. But it’ll be months before they clean up the hot ones. They spread out north and east. Just kept walking leaving trails of footprints in the fallout. Hope is that the cold weather will slow them down. You know that Fuentes fella ... before he was killed he put one of them in the walk-in freezer in the mess hall.”

  “And?”

  “It froze. Stopped moving ... until Fuentes thawed it out. Then ... business as usual.”

  Shaking his head, Cade said, “And the third thing going against me?”

  “Nash,” said Whipper with a certain twinkle in his eyes. “She’s not really against you though ... unless you decline her overture.”

  “Which is?”

  “She feels indebted to you, I would suppose. She ordered me to make sure you and your family get to Mack in one piece. Major Greg Beeson will be expecting you.”

  Smiling and shaking his head in disbelief, Cade heard Nash in his mind, the words spoken slowly and deliberately: Be careful what you wish for.

  “Shall I have my men secure the sling?”

  Eyes downcast and keeping his distance, Wilson filed by carrying a bat and a backpack. Apparently Brook had put two-and-two together and had gotten the show on the road. Another of Cade’s pet sayings. “Go ahead. Looks like the call has already been made by my better half.” He watched Sasha, loaded down with baggage, doddle along behind her brother and follow him up the Chinook’s ramp.

  “Done,” said Whipper, beaming after having just killed two birds with one stone. He began backing away, but before he was out of earshot Cade called out, “Who’s flying us there?”

  “Not to worry ... he’s a SOAR aviator. And I think he should be finishing up with the pre-flight on the other side of the helo. You should go on over and introduce yourself,” Whipper answered rather cryptically.

  Just then a fuel bowser, ungainly and heavy up top, rounded the far hangar and crossed the tarmac at a walking speed, its engine and overworked, whining transmission drowning out all other sound. It pulled a neat U-turn and parked between the Ford and the MH-47. Then a harsh squeal sounded from the fuel tanker as the driver applied the brakes and silenced the motor.

  Deciding not to get in the way of the refueling process, Cade put meeting the air crew on hold. Instead, he covered the short distance to the Cushman and sat down next to Brook.

  He told her everything Whipper had just told him, most of which she had already guessed. “A few minutes is all, and we’ll be airborne.”

  “That helicopter can pick up the truck?” asked Raven, a touch of amazement in her voice.

  “And then some,” answered Cade. “I’ve seen one like it carrying two Humvees.”

  Having ridden in a Humvee once or twice, the visual of two of them taking the place of the Ford made Raven’s eyes go wide.

  “How long will the flight take?” asked Wilson, who had just returned after stowing his gear in the aircraft.

  Cade guessed and said, “Two hours, tops.”

  “Anything you need me to do? I need something to take my mind off of Taryn.”

  “Care for a word of advice?” asked Cade.

  “Sure,” answered Wilson. “Can’t possibly make matters worse.”

  “Not so sure of that. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one. Just turned before the rest of America turned.”

  “She won’t be the last.”

  “Last?”

  “Last one to break your heart,” said Cade. He looked at the sun-painted peaks in the distance and then added in a near whisper, “I’d get used to it if I were you.”

  ***

  Ten minutes after it hooked up to the Chinook the fuel bowser pulled away, leaving Cade a clear view of the pilot; he already had his flight helmet on and was conversing with two men who looked to be the co-pilot and crew-chief. The three men were having an animated discussion, and by the time Cade approached to within earshot he recognized the very distinct voice of someone who he’d spent plenty of time with over the last week or so.

  “Ari Silver, I’m not getting in that bird with you,” said Cade jokingly.

  “Not you again,” Ari shot back over his shoulder. He had a few more words with his crew and then broke free from the pre-flight jaw session. “Nash didn’t tell you I’d be shuttling you to Mack?”

  “In hindsight, yes. But I failed to read between the lines.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yes, because you were pretty beat up yesterday. And no, because I went to bat for you ... twice. Once when I penned the watered-down after action report. Then when I had my exit interview with Freda Nash.”

  “Thanks. Means a lot,” said Ari.

  Arching a brow, Cade replied, “Even though you’re stuck flying a Shithook.”

  “I’m just grateful to be on the stick. Plus, there’s nothing for me to do here on the ground. Speaking of ground ... everything is onboard. Your monster truck is in the sling and ready to go.” He looked towards his crew who had been standing just out of earshot, spun his finger in a ragged circle and shouted, “We’re oscar mike in five.”

  “One question,” said Cade, leaning in close.

  Ari cocked his head but said nothing.

  “How are you feeling ... your arms and shoulders?”

  Ari smiled wide. He took a breath and said, “Couple of Ibuprofens and a deep tissue massage set me back on course. Besides, I’m flying, so everything is right with the world.”

  Everything? thought Cade “Honored to fly with you again,” he said.

  “Means a lot after all that’s happened. Put ‘er here.”

  They shook hands and Cade creaked away, leaving Ari to finish his pre-flight.

  Chapter 66

  Eden Compound

  With Daymon matching him stride for stride, Duncan trudged a beeline across the grassy clearing, his gaze locked firmly on the vague outline of the borrowed Black Hawk helicopter. With a large swath of dark woodland camouflage netting stretched across the rotors and covering the cockpit glass like a veil of mourning, the chopper looked more like a widow attending a funeral than the utilitarian work-horse helicopter he hoped to have airborne shortly.

  With help from Daymon who possessed a nearly ten-inch advantage in the reach department, they freed the helicopter from the fabric shroud. And as they dragged the netting a good distance away from the helicopter a stiff breeze kicked up, fluttering the fabric and prompting Duncan to add the mental note Slight breeze from the west to the flotsam and jetsam clouding his mind.

  “You get the left seat,” Duncan called out as he loped around the helo’s nose and began his cursory preflight inspection.

  “You’re flying ... right?” asked Daymon pensively.

  “Yes, Daymon. A helicopter is the opposite of a car, though. Pilot usually sits on the starboard side so he can see the tail rotor. The co-pilot sits on the left—”

  Thinking back to his previous ride in the very same helicopter suddenly jogged Daymon’s memory. “On the port side,” he replied, finishing Duncan’s thought. He popped his port side door open and clambered in, maneuvering his long legs around the stick before positioning his boots rather awkwardly into the footwell.

  “What are you ... part spider?” asked Duncan, looking up at the former BLM firefighter.

  Daymon made no reply. Merely flashed the old man a wan smile as he snugged the flight helmet o
ver his dreadlocks.

  Duncan smiled and continued his walk-around, taking in the condition of the helicopter’s fuselage. Considering the previous night’s rain, the amount of accumulated human detritus that remained was staggering. Bloody hand prints and slug-track-like streaks of unknown bodily fluids painted both of the helo’s flanks and clouded nearly every pane of aviation glass encircling its rounded-off nose. He wet a rag he’d found in the chopper with residual dew off the grass. Made a few passes over the cockpit windows. Next, he inspected the moving parts on the tail assembly. From flight school on up to his days flying slicks and Cobra gunships with the 1st Air Calvary in Vietnam, this had always been his least favorite part of flying. But thankfully he was spared the task of scaling the chopper after learning from the DHS manual that, unlike the venerable Huey, this Black Hawk didn’t have a Jesus bolt that needed checking prior to every flight. So instead of looking like a geriatric Spiderman, he eyeballed the drooping rotor blades from the ground. Finally, after determining that everything he knew enough to inspect prior to getting in the air appeared to be in working order, he opened the starboard side door and slipped behind the controls.

  “Kick the tires and light the fires?” said Daymon.

  Not in the mood for small talk, Duncan said nothing. He snugged on a pair of gloves left behind by the last aircrew, donned his helmet, and plugged his comms jack into the port.

  “That’s a line from Top Gun,” added Daymon sheepishly.

  After shrugging on the harness and snugging it tight, Duncan, who was growing more surly by the minute, finally answered, “Something like that.” Then his hands went to work flicking switches that brought various systems on line and set a good portion of the cockpit lights and dials glowing in soft reds and greens. Good to go, he thought. The hour plus he’d spent reading the manual earlier had paid off. He brought the APU on line, which in turn fired up the turbines. They howled to a crescendo and the four rotor blades above their heads spun up, fast becoming a blur of white and black. The second the rpms were sufficient for takeoff, Duncan pulled pitch and the chopper lifted gradually into the air and then pivoted on axis. “Hang on,” he said through clenched teeth as the nose dipped, the engine noise increased, and the clearing fell away below them.

  “How are the eyes?” asked Daymon.

  “Fine.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Find Logan and give him a piece of my mind for not checking in.”

  “You’re not his dad,” Daymon proffered as the horizon changed drastically and the g-forces from the abrupt maneuver to port pushed him against the seatback.

  Silence.

  “Do you know where your bro was going?”

  “Not necessarily. I’m operating on hearsay and innuendo and assumption here ... but it’s all I got. From what Logan told me earlier, the old guy’s place was rumored to be somewhere between Huntsville and Woodruff. That’s thirty-six miles as the crow flies ... much farther on the ground.” He paused for a spell as his hard-set eyes danced between the gauges and the gray stripe of road splitting the lush green canopy flicking by underneath them. He swiveled his head, then made the helicopter climb sharply before leveling it out and slowing considerably. “The compound is nearly smack dab between the two towns. Makes looking for them a little easier.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Less of a chance of the old guy setting up shop near Huntsville because that’s where he was renting his equipment from. Hell, if I was him I’d do the same thing ... throw anyone who was watching off the trail.”

  “So Woodruff is dead ahead?”

  “About thirteen miles, I gather. Figure I’ll just follow 39 and hope the cruiser shows itself.”

  Daymon nodded and continued scanning the road and forest to the right. “I see a little river down below. A few scattered groups of rotters as well.”

  “Probably traipsing back and forth between their old stomping grounds. I bet those things are thick down near Ogden on into Salt Lake.”

  “Like molasses,” answered Daymon. “Seen them with my own eyes. South Salt Lake blew my mind. Dead everywhere. Rotters and half-eaten corpses.”

  “Too far gone to reanimate?”

  Nodding, Daymon said, “And they were the lucky ones.”

  Turning the Black Hawk to port to follow a sweeping bend in the road brought a knuckle of red-hued earth jutting several hundred feet above the surrounding foothills into their path of flight. The high sun was flaring off of a substantial body of water that looked too symmetrical not to have been man-made.

  “What the heck is that?”

  “Let’s take a gander,” said Duncan as he increased altitude, bringing the rapidly-approaching top of the stunted peak directly into their line of sight. He was watching the Black Hawk’s shadow riding over the tree tops, dipping and falling between breaks in the canopy, when suddenly his eye was drawn to a dirt road winding like a sprung coil up the southeast side of the red peak.

  As the Black Hawk’s rate of approach quickly halved the distance, Duncan nudged the nose gently to port in preparation for a high speed flyover. He leveled the bird out and passed his gaze over what he guessed to be a mining operation, its water-filled quarry reflecting the handful of clouds scudding through the cobalt sky, and sitting in front of an L-shaped grouping of buildings shielded by a grove of dogwoods was the black and white Tahoe, unmistakable with its blue and red light bar and needle antennas.

  “That’s Jenkins’ ride,” observed Daymon. “And they left all four doors open. Which I think is kind of strange, ‘cause I can’t see any movement down there.”

  Saying nothing, Duncan slowed the chopper and scrutinized the rest of the hilltop operation. Blocking access to the only road coming into the place was a good-sized hurricane fence on wheels. It was topped off with a double wrap of concertina razor wire. With his eyes, Duncan followed the lone set of tire tracks as they passed underneath the fence, ran up to and ended with the inert Tahoe. To the right of the quartet of buildings was a second fence bordering a massive briar patch with numerous vehicles trapped in its thorny clutches. As they got to within fifty yards of the trio of rundown outbuildings, Duncan held the bird in an unsteady hover and spun the helo on axis to give Daymon an unobstructed view.

  “The biggest building looks like some kind of garage,” said Daymon, confirming what Duncan was already thinking. “Slide us closer. I think I see something in the shadows between the garage and those three sheds.”

  “What do you see?” asked Duncan, trying to squint the scene below into focus.

  Reverting back to the slang used by the soldiers at Schriever, Daymon replied, “Looks like a couple of dead Zs ... and someone took it to them pretty good.”

  “Setting her down in five.”

  The ground drew closer, the ripples in the puddles becoming white caps.

  “Four.”

  The smaller rocks and pebbles became airborne under the force of the rotor wash, sandblasting the Tahoe’s paint, making a mess of the interior on the driver’s side.

  “Three,” said Duncan, half-expecting a hail of lead to be thrown their way, his hand ready to pull pitch and get them away to safety if the need arose.

  The cyclonic wash emptied the nearby puddles of every drop of coppery-tinted water.

  “Two.”

  Finger off the trigger, Daymon crunched a round into his stubby combat shotgun. He patted his thigh, double-checking that the machete was strapped there, and then placed his free hand on the harness release.

  “One,” said Duncan as the big Black Hawk’s tires met terra firma and she bounced and crunched along the red dirt for a couple of feet before coming to a halt, the rotors still blurring the sky overhead. “I’m going to keep her running. I want you to stay here and be a lookout while I check out the big building.”

  Nodding an affirmative, Daymon twisted his torso around and plucked the binoculars from his bag on the floor.

  Leaving his flight helmet on, Duncan unp
lugged it from the jack and then exited the noisy machine. With no means of communicating with Daymon, he flashed a thumbs up, hustled around the helo’s nose, and made tracks for the abandoned Tahoe.

  Chapter 67

  Schriever AFB

  The Chinook’s interior was Spartan to say the least. Fold-up center-facing seats consisting of red nylon mesh pulled tightly over simple aluminum frames lined both sides of the fuselage. Though far from comfortable, Cade conceded, ninety minutes or so in the air and a slightly numb ass was a hell of a lot better than driving all day through a countryside teeming with roving groups of hungry dead.

  He noticed Raven fidgeting in her seat. Gave her a gentle nudge to get her attention, and when she looked up, he planted a kiss on her oversized flight helmet.

  The simple gesture prompted a toothy smile from the twelve-year-old. Already gone was the tight set of her jaw, thanks to a smooth-talking Ari who had taken her and Sasha around the outside of the hulking Chinook, pointing out all of the designed-in safety features. Then they received a grand tour of the flight deck, with Ari even allowing each of them to sit for a spell behind the controls. Then, pretending to be a male flight attendant, he had guided them to a pair of seats situated side-by-side, far enough away from the windows so they wouldn’t be able to see the true nature of Omega’s effect on the outside world—a brilliant move in Cade’s humble opinion. Finally, after playing the attendant role to the hilt, Ari switched back into pilot mode and elicited a few laughs from them with the promise that he would fly like a “grandma” all the way to their destination.

  Cade palmed Raven’s helmet, gently turned her head, looked deeply into her eyes and said quietly, “This trip will be just like the time you and me and Mom flew Portland to Seattle. We’ll go up and then we’ll be landing in Mack before the drink cart gets halfway down the aisle.”

  Hearing this, Sasha flashed Cade a conspiratorial smile that implied that she knew what he was up to but wouldn’t spill the beans.