It took him twenty minutes to work his way to the closest HVAC unit. By this time, the helicopter was nearly loaded with supplies taken from the store below. Sitting in the open doorway of the chopper, with his feet dangling from the side, was a little boy not much into his single digits. He was throwing pebbles at a can. His hair was so blonde that it nearly looked transparent. He was humming a song that Berkley found familiar.
“The lone sentry,” Berkley whispered. He noticed that there were no adults around. “Like taking candy from a — No! — like taking the candy and the baby,” he whispered.
Berkley stopped a few feet on the other side of the unit when he saw a head come up through the hatch in the roof. The dark hair and uniform were unmistakable. The Colonel scurried back behind the air conditioner as he watched the traitor, Michael Simpson carrying supplies. The soldier loaded them into the aircraft. The boy giggled when Simpson picked him up and put him on his shoulders.
“Are you the pilot of this craft, son?” Simpson asked the boy in an official voice.
“Yup,” the boy giggled. “Goin’ to fly us to the moon. No dead people up there, jus’ stinky cheese.”
“Who told you there was stinky cheese on the moon?” Simpson asked, smiling.
“Jack,” the boy said and then held his arms out like wings of an airplane. Simpson walked around in circles while the child made airplane noises with his lips, peppering the young soldier in spittle.
“Enough of this,” Berkley whispered and began to step out, but was once again chased back into hiding as a third person came up through the hatch.
“Put the child down! Now!” It was Denise. She was shouldering an AR-15 and the look in her eye said that she was not joking. Simpson lifted the kid over his head and placed him gingerly on the roof as if he was the most fragile thing in the world.
“Hey,” Simpson offered raising his hands. “I was just playing.”
“You stay away from the children. You stay away from me. You stay away from Carol. You . . . stay . . . away!” Denise turned her frantic eye on Charlie and said to the boy, “You don’t want to play with him. He’s a bad man. Do you understand?”
“What’s going on here?” Jack asked as he stepped on the roof, the rest of the group following closely. They were all carrying bags, boxes, and piles of clothes.
Without lowering her weapon, Denise said, “I came through the hatch and caught this man touching Charlie.”
“What?” Carol said and waved Charlie over to her.
“You make it sound—,” Simpson began.
“Shut up! You just shut up! I should have killed you like the other monsters who take pleasure in hurting women! In fact, I should drop you right where you stand!” Spittle ran down the corner of her mouth. The rifle in her hands rose level with her eye and she sighted on the center of his chest. Tears blurred her vision and rolled down her cheeks. She applied pressure to the trigger.
“Denise?” She heard Jack’s voice, but she didn’t move. “Denise, let me have the weapon, please.” His voice was soft and yet authoritive. Jack was the only man she trusted. He saved her from certain death and then carried her to safety when she was naked and vulnerable. She owed him her life.
She lowered her weapon, but didn’t surrender it. Instead, she stepped to the rear of the chopper and tried to get some measure of control over her emotions. She never took her eyes off Simpson.
Jack watched her move and then turned to look at the group. Carol was weeping silently, again. Steven and Sheri had their heads bowed looking sideway at each other while Charlie stood right up against Sheri’s side holding her jacket. It was evident the boy didn’t know what was going on.
“Mike, I’m going to need for you to give her a wide birth as she deals with some issues. Denise,” Jack softened his voice even more. “Mike is not your enemy. Give him a chance, huh?” Jack looked at the loaded chopper and asked, “You ready to get us out of here?”
Denise nodded and headed around the side of the helicopter brushing the hair from her mouth. Jack tossed Mike his AK-47 and the young soldier looked questioningly at Jack. Jack needed the group to see him trusting the young man, even if there were occasional doubts that traced a path through the bramble that was his own mind. Mike handled it as he was trained to do. He checked the barrel and action for obstructions, made sure a round was in the chamber, snapped the safety and threw the weapon strap over his shoulder.
Shrugging off the moment’s tension, Jack fastened a belt around his waist from which hung two long machetes in sheaths that dangled down the outside of his thighs and then tied the straps at the bottom of each sheath around his leg to prevent them from moving. He checked the pistols in the shoulder holsters to make sure they were unobstructed and then nodded to the chopper.
* * *
Berkley swore as he watched the last two men climb aboard the loaded aircraft. The spinning rotors swirled debris his direction and he was forced to cover his face. He looked to the small pistol in his hands. It wouldn’t be enough to hijack his chopper back. The damnable group was armed to the teeth with enough munitions to equip a small rebellion. It galled him to hear the aircraft lift off and pull away from the roof. He was so close! In his frustration, he had to resist the urge to shoot his only rounds at the chopper anyway.
Standing up from his hiding place, he walked over to where the chopper had been parked. He watched it bank left and move toward the City Mall, some quarter of a mile in the distance. At his feet was the aluminum can the boy had been using for target practice. The Colonel reared back and kicked it with enough force that he nearly fell. The can spun off toward the other side of the roof. It landed next to an abandoned Barrett M108 sniper rifle.
Trotting over, he found the weapon loaded and ready to fire. It had nearly put an end to him. From where he stood, he could see the corpses of Primrose and Zeek lying underneath several zombies that had stopped for a brief snack. He could see the path he’d taken across the parking lot and the blue and yellow booth in which he knew a certain teenage girl was bound and gagged and lying on the floor in her underwear.
Determination etched Colonel Berkley’s face as he spun on his heels, carrying the weapon, and ran for the other side of the roof facing the City Mall. The helicopter was nearly over the mall parking lot. As he settled the weapon on the roof ledge, he briefly noted the sheer numbers of dead that swarmed around the mall.
They were packed in so tight in some places that many couldn’t do anything more than sigh and moan, sometimes waving their arms in the air.
Berkley sighted through the scope. The image of the helicopter leapt up to meet him. He centered the cross hairs on the tail rotor and then adjusted the scope two clicks up. Releasing his breath slowly, he gently squeezed the trigger. When the weapon discharged, he watched with a giddy sense of pleasure as half the tail rotor came off when the bullet severed it. The piece was flung out into the air. The .50 caliber projectile continued past the tail and penetrated the left jet-turbine motor causing black smoke to billow from its interior.
Berkley lifted his face from the scope and watched the craft begin to spin counter-clockwise. Without a tail rotor, it would be impossible to control the direction of flight. The best pilot in the world couldn’t prevent this crash. The chopper wobbled heavily as it spun and Berkley had to give the pilot credit for how she handled it. It finally tilted wrong and crashed, landing violently on its side.
He saw the crash before he heard it. The rotors hit first. The blades immediately sparked and then snapped in pieces. The centrifugal force turned them into shrapnel that mowed hundreds of the dead like lawn mower blades. There was a brief explosion as the right turbine caught fire as coal-black smoke billowed from the left. The craft slid several dozen yards before it squealed to a full stop.
Berkley sighted through the scope once again to get a closer look at the wreckage. From his elevated position, he could see the debris from the crash covered a sizable area. He’d witnessed many crashing helicop
ters in his day and this one was up there with the best of them. Now, if only it would explode, he thought to himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
D enise had no idea what went wrong. She heard metal squealing and felt something different in how her feet worked the pedals on the floor. Something was wrong with the tail rotors. They were no longer responding properly. In her peripheral, she could see Jack turning her way as he realized that the tail of the aircraft was swinging to the right.
“We’re in trouble!” she yelled. “Make sure everyone is fastened in tight! This could go badly!”
Jack could see concern in her eyes, but her voice was firm and in control. Warning alarms sounded throughout the cockpit accompanied by flashing LED’s and switches. She began flicking switches and pressing buttons as she worked the yoke. The world outside the chopper was beginning to whirl and wobble around so that he had to stop looking out the window for fear of getting sick. The centrifugal force within the chopper was beginning to pull at him as he turned in the co-pilot’s seat to make sure everyone was safely fastened to the benches. Mike had his arm protectively around Carol who was leaning the other direction trying to squeeze her three kids together in her arms. Steven was too terrified to rebel at the prospect of his mother touching him. It took some effort for Jack to make his head turn back. The centrifugal force was steadily increasing the faster the aircraft spun until all he could manage was to close his eyes and wait.
Behind him, the children began screaming. Denise tried to yell something that no one understood. Jack could feel his heartbeat in his face and tried to raise his hand to no avail. It was too heavy to lift from his lap. When he opened his lead-filled eyelids, he saw the world outside turn sideways as the ground came up to meet them.
The next thing he remembered was waking up in a haze of smoke and sparking wires that hung from the ceiling like cobwebs. There was an overwhelming scent of jet fuel that hung in the air and coated the back of his throat making every breath taste vile. Denise was unconscious in the pilot’s seat. She was bleeding heavily from one of her ears.
Jack unsnapped his harness and immediately dropped on his face. Further back, Jack heard a sniffle. He raised his chin and found himself staring into the eyes of little Charlie Mason. Somehow, during the crash, the kid managed to fall out of his harness and was just now waking up to a world of smoky chaos. His mother and siblings were unconscious and had remained strapped to the bench. Black smudges that might actually be bruises stood out on the child’s face. His panicked eyes watered and he sniffed again as he looked at his sister. She looked like she was sleeping. The sliding door just above Charlie was open slightly allowing a measure of light into the dark interior.
It took a moment for that truth to settle in Jack’s mind. It was the middle of the day, so why would the interior of the chopper be so dark? The sunlight through the cracked windows was being obscured by something. Jack turned his head. Dozens of hungry, grey-eyed faces were pressed against the windows of the cockpit. Goose flesh prickled him from his head to his toes. They had crashed into the parking lot where he had previously seen so many zombies that they barely had room to stand.
“Oh, God! No! Jack!” Steven cried.
Jack turned to find Steven awake. His eyes were wide with panic and he was pointing at his brother frantically. Moving in through the door were several grey-skinned hands. Charlie was oblivious to the danger. He looked back and forth between Steven and Jack. Steven yelled and Jack scurried, trying to get to his hands and knees but kept slipping on the debris under him. Before Jack found solid footing, the five-year old was snatched out of the helicopter and could be heard screaming in the distance as he was carried away.
“No!” Jack bellowed. It took him a moment to work his way to the door and found it blocked by dozens of reaching arms and grasping hands. Images of young boy danced in his head: the way he held to his sister or smiled even when things were going bad. Charlie had come to represent the future for Jack. He was hope personified. Jack screamed, feeling his mouth go dry. A fiery sensation danced across his shoulders and lit up his senses. “I’ll give you something to eat!” he said and fumbled to draw his pistols.
The gunfire deafened him as he pulled the triggers, firing out through the open door until the weapons were empty. He lifted himself through the doorway as several of the creatures fell away no longer moving, then slid off the helicopter, feeling his boots touch the pavement. They had killed Charlie. The thought left him feeling cold — dangerously cold.
From the sheaths at his side, Jack withdrew the machetes he’d been carrying. The two-foot blades were thick and razor-sharp. He stood staring at the ground feeling foreign hands crawling over his body. The zombies grasped and pulled at him. Somewhere attached to those hands were teeth that wanted to taste his flesh. The things wanted to hurt those he had chosen to protect with his life. They took little Charlie. Well, they could have his life, too. They could have it right now, but they would pay to get it.
With a flash of his blades, all the hands that had been groping him were severed at their forearms. Forearms would not be the only things to be severed this day, however.
* * *
Berkley hung around to see who might have survived the crash. The chopper didn’t explode, but there was still a chance he might get to see its inhabitants pulled from the crash and devoured by the hundreds of zombies now converging on the wreckage.
“You smell the blood, don’t you?” he said, speaking to the dead encircling the craft a quarter of a mile away. “Yes, you do.”
The commotion on the right side of the downed chopper made Berkley put the scope back to his eye. He could hear gunfire erupting from the crash site. They were fighting for the dear little lives, he told himself and smiled. He could see the muzzles of two long pistols sticking out through the side door and zombies falling to the ground all around it. He knew that there was no way they had enough ammunition to fight their way out of that mess. All they would manage to do was extend the inevitable. What they needed to do was use some of that ammunition on themselves.
“What’s this?” Berkley said with surprise and readjusted his position while still looking through the scope. The man who had killed Lieutenant Nathan Samuels stepped out from the chopper and stood within arm’s reach of over two dozen zombies. He simply stood there staring at the ground. He had the look of a man who’d given up. “There you go, Bub. Suicide is an honorable alternative to being a conscious buffet,” Berkley said and chuckled at his cleverness. “This should be good.”
The smile slowly oozed from the Colonel’s face as the man outside the chopper swirled into action. The skill at which this man slew the zombies bordered on epic. The blades in his hands were a blur of concentrated motion. He spun, jumped, hacked and slashed with such fluid grace that the green little fellow deep down inside Berkley began to rise in his consciousness. It had been years since he’d felt anything other than contempt for other’s ability to fight and the more he beheld this man’s skill the more he realized that he no longer wanted this man to die in a mall parking lot having been eaten by zombies.
Colonel Berkley slowly came to realize that he wanted — No! — he needed to face this man in mortal combat. This man could have been a Spartan warrior standing in the mountain pass of Thermopylae facing thousands of Persian warriors as they threw themselves against the most lethal blades of ancient Greece. Bodies fell like grass before the sickle. Pulling the action back on the rifle, he cursed. He was out of ammunition. He looked back toward the far side of the roof where he had found the rifle. There was nothing there except empty shell casings scattered about the roof edge. The Spartan was on his own and Berkley was in his corner — for now.
The dead were beginning to heap around the man like sandbags. At one point, Berkley lost sight of him behind a particularly tall pile of bodies. The undead began to have difficulty climbing the outside of the growing mound. They were looking for a way over it only to meet with sheer blades in the hands
of the most proficient killer Berkley had ever seen. Even the fast violent zombies were no match for him. The man was an artist in the way he shifted and danced about the field. He moved as if he was in search of something or someone. He circled the crash site, moving in wider circles slaying everything. Occasionally, the man’s voice was carried by the wind up the hill to Berkley and it sounded as if he was bellowing the name, “CHARLIE!”
It was a half an hour later when Berkley was forced to set the rifle down and turn his back to the scene in the distance. The man did what Berkley had thought impossible . . . and it was marvelous.
* * *
Jack rocked backward on his heels in fatigue. In the back of his consciousness, he heard sounds and words, but they were having difficulty registering as anything relative to his present state of mind. For some reason he was standing alone, surrounded by piles and piles of corpses. Nothing in his immediate vicinity was moving. In the distance, he could see more zombies heading his way. The grim resolve welled in his stomach again and he started to move in their direction when something grabbed his arm violently. He spun to face his adversary, swinging his deadly blades. Recognition stayed his hands at the last moment. It was Denise.
Seeing the look in his eyes, she fell backward on the pavement and then tried to crab-walk backwards out of Jack’s reach. Her terror instantly drew him to the present. He was here to protect her, not scare her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Jack?” she said. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm? Oh, umm — no, I’m not.” He turned his face away, looking at the next wave of zombies coming his way. Is Charlie in there?
“Jack, we’ve got to move. Jack!” Denise said, standing up. She grabbed his arm again. “Jack, you can’t leave us sitting here.” Her voice was pleading.
Dead World: Hero Page 27
