It was time to vacate the premises. I got to my feet and ran to the plane while Remo covered me. The rest of the infected were of the slower variety, so I made it with no issue. Kinga was on the ramp with his rifle and a frown when I got there, and he shook his head in disgust, turning his back on me and entering the aircraft. Remo jogged up the ramp as it was closing, taking a seat next to Richy and Chloe on the fold-out bench seats, checking their seatbelts.
“Buckle up,” he yelled to me over the prop noise.
Kinga returned to us from up forward, carrying four sets of headphones and wearing one. He passed them out to each of us, the kids too. Then he lit into me.
He pointed at me after he showed us how to switch on the headsets. “Next time you run off by yourself and the infected have you, I’m just going to watch. And for Christ’s sake, don’t turn off your fucking radio. Ever.” He strode down the cargo bay to the cockpit. I could feel his boots on the aluminum.
It was at that point, chastised by the MARSOC guy in front of the kids, that I realized I had royally screwed up. Guess I’m not as cool as I thought. Remo wouldn’t even look at me. Damn, what a douche. Me not him. I had wanted to leave a message with the MRAP, and had almost become a banquet. I should have taken one of the boys with me, or better yet, just left the truck where it was.
Cool to fool in under ten seconds.
We felt the plane lurch forward a little, then it began moving slowly. The nose turned to face a different direction, then we all heard the engines speed up.
I heard Tim’s tinny voice over the radio: “There are a few newcomers on the runway in front of us, and we seem to have gathered a bit of a crowd behind. We’re taking off in thirty seconds, so make sure your seatbacks and tray tables are in their upright positions.”
True to his word, the plane shot forward, jerking us a bit. It sped down the runway, and suddenly there was a small thump! followed by two more, then one more. In no time, we felt the ground disappear beneath us and we were airborne. The angle on this takeoff was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was crazy steep after such a quick departure, and I was a bit nervous after Tim had just told me the day before he was a newbie with this aircraft. The steepness continued for a solid two minutes, then Tim leveled us out. Kinga came back to speak with Remo, and I shamefacedly moved to the cockpit to talk with Tim.
I sat down in the right side seat. “Well, you got us in the air, buddy.”
“I did, yeah.” He sounded distant.
“Aren’t you happy? You’re flying this giant plane,” I looked around, “which we’re going to jump out of.”
He looked at me. “You’re a dumbass! We get this far and you go and try to get yourself killed.”
“You’re right.” I totally disarmed him. He had been expecting a fight. Knowing Tim, he had probably gone over fifty different conversations in his head, but he hadn’t accounted for instant acquiescence of dumbassery from me.
“Uh…yeah, so, quit being dumb and stay alive. We need you.”
“Aww shucks, buddy.” I punched him lightly in the arm. It was the lion-arm and he gave me death eyes while he rubbed his boo-boo. “Sorry.”
“Jackass.”
I smiled. “Jerk. At least it wasn’t my idea to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.”
He took in a huge breath of air and turned to face me again. “Yeah, about that. Remo says it’s a bad idea. He says the landing will be much harder than I thought, even in the water. He changed the plan.”
I was quizzical-nervous and he picked up on it. “So what’s the plan now, Captain Tim?”
“A water landing.”
“A water landing. You mean like, we land in the water?”
“Yes.”
“Dude! What the fuck? Your plan was great! What do those jarheads know anyway?”
He put his finger to his lips. Like they could hear me over the noise of the plane. “Remo said that a rapes? Tapes? extraction could kill us.”
“LAPES,” Kinga said over the radio. “Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System. LAPES. And we can hear everything you say. You’re on the radio, dickhead.”
“But I like LAPES!” I yelled into the radio. “LAPES sounds good. In fact, LAPES is now my favorite. Do you know why it’s my favorite? Because it doesn’t involve crashing a god damn airplane THAT I AM ON into the ocean!”
Tim coughed. “A crash would indicate the pilot isn’t in control. I will be performing a water landing.”
“Water landing,” Kinga repeated. “It’s our best option. We exfil through the top hatch and pop the rafts.”
It was my turn to repeat. “Pop the rafts. Pop the rafts! Do you have any idea how dumb that sounds? Pop the rafts?”
“Technical term. You don’t like it, stay in the plane.”
Holy shit, they were serious.
I stood up and looked back at Kinga with my hands out as if to ask WTF?
Kinga looked at the twins. “You kids OK with a water landing?”
Both kids gave a thumbs up.
Kinga looked at me. “Pussy.”
Chloe giggled and Richy smiled as they looked at me too.
Remo was asleep.
Splash
“Our economy speed is about three hundred forty knots,” Tim told me.
“Yeah, like I know what a damn knot is. Gimme that in miles per hour, Homie.”
“Just under four hundred. Three ninety I think.”
I blinked. “But if we were about twelve hundred miles away, and we’re going four hundred miles per hour…”
“Yeah,” Tim looked at me, “I know. We’ve been in the air a little more than two hours. We’ll be there in under an hour.”
I was both excited and terrified. Excited to see my friends, terrified to be an integral part of a plane crash. Hey, if I had survived all the shit I had survived, a plane crash would be cake, right? Besides, it was going to be a water landing, remember?
When we were sixty miles out, I made a phone call. OK, so it was a radio, but you get it.
“Atlantis, this is Hercules, come in?”
They came back immediately, and I almost cried. “Read you Hercules, this is Atlantis. What can we do for you?”
“Ted? Ted is that you?”
“Yeah,” the voice said, “who’s this?”
“I’ve been known by many names, Teddy. Last year you bastards on board all of those floating asylums were calling me Captain.”
“Cap? Holy shit! We thought you were…wait…what’s your best friend’s name?”
“You mean that friggin Sasquatch I call Ship? His name is Douche. Capital D if you please. I’ve got some new friends I want you to meet as well.”
Tim smiled from ear to ear, mirroring me.
I heard the tail end of Ted yelling for everybody to come into the radio room. “Got some people here that want to talk to you, buddy!”
The next guy to come on was Austin. “Afternoon, young fella. Heard you’ve been away.”
“Screw you, old man! You know you’ve missed me!”
I heard a young girl in the background yelling for you assholes to get out of the fukn way and for the second time in two minutes, I almost burst into tears.
“You!” she yelled into the mic. “You dick! We all thought you were being experimented on in some damn government lab.” She was crying, I could tell.
“Uhh…yeah, we’ll talk about that when I get there, kid. You OK?”
We continued talking for a while, and then I asked for Ship. Kat said he was OK, but unavailable. I had to admit, at least to my own dumb self, that I didn’t like the sound of that.
We got the MARSOC boys up front with us, and discussed the best way to crash a plane into the Gulf. It was decided that we would set her down three miles to the northwest, as there were no boats in the vicinity, and the sinking plane wouldn’t hit any of the suspension cables on any of the rigs from that far a distance out. Atlantis would have two rescue vessels and a full crew of scuba divers just in case.
In another ten minutes, I saw my home. It looked small. We circled once, and I saw a shit load of folks waving and yelling at us from the deck of the rig. It was heaven. I couldn’t stop smiling. Until Tim said it was time to buckle up. “We’ll be touching down in two minutes,” he said over the radio, “assume crash positions.”
Kinga had taken my place up front, and I was sitting on one of the folding lawn-chair style benches across from Remo and the kids. Remo took the toothpick out of his mouth and looked at it. “Last one.” He put it in one of the pockets on his load-bearing vest, and relaxed.
“Both vessels are in position, beginning our descent.”
I swallowed hard. I was really hoping there wouldn’t be a handful of zombies in a sunken plane at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a half hour. You know how when you’re on a plane and they tell you to put your head between your knees? There was none of that on this plane. We all had these X-style harnesses as seatbelts that came over our shoulders and met in the middle with a round buckle. Remo tightened it so much I could barely breathe.
The plane began to get lower and we slowed down. We could all feel it just like a jet liner. Unlike a jet liner, there wasn’t one friggin window to look out.
“Ten seconds! Nine…eight…”
We hit the water at two. To this day, I don’t know if Tim did that on purpose or if he just miscalculated his altitude. The ass of the plane hit, and the nose jolted down. Then there was a tremendous splash and our nose spun to the right a bit. I felt like I was going to tear in half for a couple of seconds and it was over. I looked at the kids and they were both smiling. Remo was already out of his harness and opening a small compartment near the exterior door by the cockpit. He pulled out a small, orange cylinder. “Let’s go.”
Let’s go? That’s all he had to say? The cockpit bulkhead door opened, and Kinga came out followed by Tim. Kinga was bleeding over his right eye.
I was still nervous, but I asked in the most uncaring way possible, “How long do we have before this thing sinks?”
Kinga wiped his eye with his forearm. “Three hours maybe?” He looked at Tim, who shrugged.
The sun streamed in when Remo opened the door. We all jostled for a glimpse, and it was beautiful outside. Winds looked light and variable with almost no chop to the water. I heard before I saw the first rigid inflatable boat come zipping around the nose of the plane. Two more showed up shortly after, and I looked down into the face of my friend Greg, who had a grin so wide on his face, he must have just eaten a fecal sandwich.
“Yup, you’re still ugly.”
His smile got so wide I thought his face would rip. “I lost the pool on you by a damn month,” he yelled. I realized I was mimicking his face-splitter.
“Pool?”
“Yeah, get in the damn boat and we’ll talk about it.”
Remo tossed our gear to a guy in BDU’s that I didn’t recognize, but he was with Greg, so he must have been a newbie. Our gear almost filled one of the boats, and it backed off when we were done with our assembly line. The kids went next and then the four of us.
A most manly hug from Greg ensued.
“I knew you were gay.” It was Tim! Tim had made a funny. I introduced him to Greg, also telling him I didn’t know the other guy, who was the boat driver. Sailor? Whatever.
He stuck his paw out and told us he was Ensign Caliber. Remo and Kinga were in a different boat, shaking hands with different guys I didn’t know.
“Where’s Ship?” I demanded, looking around. The motor on the inflatable roared its tiny roar, and we were heading back to the bigger boats. The Ensign wouldn’t look at me and Greg’s smile disappeared.
“You’ll have to talk to Austin or Captain Schumitz about him.”
Now I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t like that at all. No sir, not one bit.
“Greg, I’m asking you: Where the hell is my buddy?”
“I’m not supposed to—”
“Greg, I don’t give a fuck about supposed to! Is he alive? Is Ship alive?”
He looked me in the face and sighed. “I don’t know.”
Reunion. Well, Almost.
We arrived at the bigger of the two boats, the Iago, in just a few minutes. We unloaded our gear and our people, and we were all checked out by Doctor Dan. Nice guy. We were cleared of infection, but still escorted everywhere by armed folks. Greg stayed with us, and we were allowed to keep our weapons, even during the bite exam.
I was anxious to get back to Atlantis so I could ask Austin what all the secrecy surrounding Ship was. I was thinking (and saying quite loudly,) that he had better have a damn good reason why he wouldn’t allow anybody to talk about Ship. As it turns out, he did.
In forty five minutes, I was hugging Kat on the lower dock of the Atlantis. I asked her about Alvarez, and she said we should talk upstairs. She looked sad, and that scared the shit out of me. I was a little hurt that Austin and Donna, my lady friend, weren’t there to greet me on the dock, but when I got up on the main deck, it was busy up there.
All of us, the kids too, were escorted to Austin’s office, and I got a good look at the leader of Atlantis for the first time in a year. He looked rough. Haggard is the word. He was standing with a man I didn’t recognize. Average height and indeterminate age. Austin smiled at me from across the room and came almost running to me. He gave me a great bear hug that reminded me of everybody’s favorite hillbilly; Dallas. But where Dallas resembled a grizzly bear, Austin was thin, albeit tall.
“It’s really good to see you.”
“You too, buddy. Where’s Ship?”
Smile vanished. Look of sadness mixed with a little anger. Oh shit.
“Ship is on the Majestik Maersk with two squads of my men.”
While I tried to process that statement, I turned to look at the other guy in the room, who had spoken, my eyes, quite literally bugging out of my head. “What the fuck did you just say?” I stabbed a finger at him, but spoke to Austin, “What did he fukn say to me?” I was boiling with anger. Pissed. Livid, and if I had a damn thesaurus right now I would use every single word for mad that damn book would provide.
Austin raised his hands in supplication. “Hang on! We can explain.”
“Who’s he?” Again, I pointed at the new guy.
“I’m—”
“I wasn’t asking you!” I must admit, my voice had a hint of a scream to it, but I had my reasons, and I was about to lose my shit. Kat put her hand on my shoulder.
“This is Captain Schumitz of the USS Destroyer Stockdale,” Austin told me. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend who put my friend on board a floating fucking death trap, which, incidentally, should have been rammed right up Mexico’s ass by now.” I looked back at Austin. “Explain.”
“Ship volunteered!” Austin revealed quickly. “Survivors on the Majestik radioed a distress call. One of them made it to a radio, but he was bitten. There are a few people alive on the Majestik. Ship went to go assist in their rescue. He’s well-protected.”
“Austin, you weren’t on that tub. Trust me, there’s no such thing as well-protected. Where’s Alvarez?” I demanded looking around. “He shouldn’t have allowed this.” I looked at Kat and knew before Austin told me.
“He led the team.”
I shook my head. “Course he did. And I bet you needed an extra medic too, which is why my girl isn’t here.” I put my bag down and started to go through it, tossing some items I didn’t think I would need right on Austin’s office floor.
“Austin, Captain Schumitz, this is Tim, Kinga, Remo, Richy, and Chloe. Tim is a hero, Remo and Kinga are MARSOC, and the other two are the toughest kids on planet earth.” I looked at the kids and they were beaming. I glanced at Tim and he was too. “Find them rooms, or stick them in mine, assuming you haven’t given it away.”
“Listen, son,” began the captain.
“Nope. You listen shithead, I’m not your son, your soldier, or your friend. I just crossed the US of
fuk’n A to get back to my family, and I find out that three of the four of them are now in the worst place possible. You’re going to stand there and tell me it was to save some survivors, and I’m going to agree to disagree. I bet Bob did find some people, but I also know that they’re your second priority. There’s another objective that you didn’t tell half your team about, and that’s what’s going to get them killed.”
The captain looked at Austin, who was smiling. “Told you.”
Schumitz sighed. “There’s something on that boat we need.”
“Me too, and you sent them there.” I shouldered my pack, and noticed that Remo and Kinga were sorting through their packs as well. “Captain, I need six magazines for my HK, and another hundred rounds loose. I’ll also need four mags for my Sig.” I looked at Tim and the kids. “You’re staying here.” Remo and Kinga looked ready. “Captain, get these boys what they need. Their needs will be considerable.”
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Kat demanded. She already knew.
“I’m going to that ship to get…well… Ship.”
“Son, I’m sure they’re fine. Probably just a communications problem.”
“Yeah, the problem is that their communications are in the rotting stomachs of a bunch of zombies, just like most of your men. If you’re lucky, very, very lucky, then my friends are not. Please don’t call me son again. I liked my father. Are you going to give me the shit I asked for? Oh I will also need their position and a boat.”
“Boat won’t get there soon enough—”
I cut him off. “Then I’ll fucking swim.”
“—but we have a helicopter.”
“Even better. These two Jarheads have some info for you, Captain. As soon as it’s been transferred, I want to go.”
“You can have a team of—”
“Don’t want ‘em. You already sent two teams. Them,” I pointed at my MARSOC buddies, “and me. That’s it. Oh, and a pilot. That’s it. What is it you sent your men to die for?”
Schumitz honestly didn’t know what to make of me. I could see it on his face. “May we have the room gentlemen? Austin, please remain.”
The Zombie Theories (Book 2): Conspiracy Theory Page 23
