Zombie Killers (Book 8): Bad Company

by John F. Holmes

  An hour later, First Sergeant Jackson sat in front of me, leaning back on a picnic table, covered in blood, some of it his own from a bullet that had caught him in the finger. He cursed as Shona tied the bandage tighter. “Shut it, you big pussy,” she said to him, and sat down next to him. She pulled a bottle of something out of her pocket, took a swig, gasped, and handed it to him. He lifted it up and drained it, then handed her the empty one back.

  Brit was busy stitching up the cut above my eye, and I had a hell of a headache. She was alternating between kissing me and berating me for a fool. I kept one hand on her at all times, not wanting to let go.

  “I thought you were dead,” I said for the hundredth time. She snorted and pulled another stitch tight.

  “Not frigging likely,” she answered. “I’m better at this lone survivor shit than you are, and apparently you had Miss Hottie Pants over there to keep you company. Hold still.”

  “Nothing happened between us, I swear!” I answered vehemently.

  “Oh, I know. When she showed up here with Ziv, Elam, and that fucking pirate Boz, Ziv started babbling with glee about how he saw her kissing you through his NVGs. Apparently that made it OK for him to try it on me, so I slapped the shit out of him.”

  “She did, too!” laughed Boz, who had sat down on the other side of the table. “That’s one hell of a woman you got there, Nick.”

  “Don’t I know it. What happened to your hair?”

  “I cut it to get out of a Zs grip. And dyed it so I could pass as unremarked as possible. Now stop trying to change the subject.” She ripped open the sleeve of my shirt, and started probing harder than I thought was necessary at the graze on my shoulder.

  “ANYWAY, little Miss Hottie Pants begged forgiveness of me, told me it was all her, you were mister sweet and noble, blah blah blah bullshit.” Her one good eye blazed at me, and her mouth was set in a hard line.

  I swallowed and started to object, and she burst out laughing, then kissed me again. “Nick, you’re a damn fool, but a loyal one. I trust you, and believe you me, I know how a woman can be overcome with passion around you, Captain America.”

  “So you’re not mad?”

  “I was,” she answered, “but obviously, since I haven’t killed either of you yet, I’m over it.”

  “Does that mean I have a chance at a threes…OW!” she had jammed the probe deep into my wound, and fiery pain lanced through my shoulder.

  “Over your dead body, husband of mine,” she said sweetly. “Nope, no bullet in there. Yet.”

  Boz laughed uproariously, slapping the table. Jackson and Lowenstein looked over at us, then looked back and kept talking with each other.

  “Besides,” said Brit, “I think you’re old news now.”

  I sat there patiently while she bandaged me up, just feeling great to be alive and have my wife back. My thoughts were interrupted by one of the villagers, a teenager who looked barely old enough to shave, but carried his rifle like a veteran.

  “Colonel, Sir, he’s awake. Doc says come quick.” All of us except Boz started up and moved towards the village’s small clinic, where Captain Washburn lay dying.

  Doctor Lamare met us at the door, and shook his head. “He’s gone.”

  “Damn!” I muttered. I turned to his Senior NCO. “He was a good man, Top.”

  “You have no idea, Colonel.” He turned away, and Shona took him by the arm. The man looked like he had aged ten years in the last day.

  “He did have a message for you, Colonel,” said the Doctor. “The Captain said to tell you that he kept the faith, and thanks for trying to save his life.”

  I felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me, my good mood gone. Another good man, dead and gone.

  Brit brought me out of my musings. “What’s next, boss man?”

  “How about we figure out a way to go home?” I answered.

  “I already did,” she answered. “There will be a C-130 landing at an old airfield about ten clicks from here day after tomorrow, sometime after twelve. There’s a shortwave set in town, no juice, so I stole a bunch of batteries from the wrecked gangster trucks while you were going all gee golly at your apple pie welcome home the troops parade.”

  “You know, you’re the best.”

  “And don’t you ever forget it, buddy.” She stood up, patch back on her eye and shotgun over her back, and all was right with the world.

  No Sleep ‘til Brooklyn!

  Chapter 284

  “Manhattan Control this Valkyrie Six, I am a declaring an in-flight emergency. We’re going down, vicinity south end Central Park, over.”

  I leaned over and yelled at the crew chief, who was busy flipping switches and doing helicopter emergency shit. I was plugged into the intercom, but didn’t want to distract the pilots. “Ask them to set down on top of a building!”

  He ignored me and I gripped my seat belt tighter with my right hand. This is why I HATED flying. My left hand was being squeezed hard by Brit as smoke filled the cabin. On my right sat Boz, who had found, somewhere, a ratty green beret with his old unit flash, and next to him, Captain Shona Lowenstein. On her head, like the rest of us, she now wore the dark grey beret of the Irregular Scouts.

  Across from us, looking very nonchalant, as if he crashed in helicopters every day, was Sasha Zivcovic, the former Serb Special Forces Major who was now a civilian on our team. Between him and our sniper, Staff Sergeant Elam Yasser, sat two noobs, a civilian named Jesus Cabrejo who looked like he was twelve, and our new medic, Specialist Swan. The joke that Brit had cracked to me privately ran through my head as we lost altitude. “More like an ugly duckling than a swan.” She was too, but I liked her, because she knew her shit. The kid next to her looked like he was straight out of Central America and skinny as a toothpick. Him we had just picked up at Governors Island, after the emergency call brought us down from our farm. We had been back from Florida for little more than a month.

  “Of course you want me with you. I’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you,” he had said as I interviewed potential crew.

  I’m not going to lie, I was a bit impressed by his chutzpah. Behind me sat a group of hard ass killers, maybe the best scouts in the business, and he was going to save my life. “How’s that, do you figure?”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m looking at your homies there, and you’re all a bunch of white guys, except that Arab looking dude. That scary skinhead,” he pointed to Ziv, “is about the most Aryan Nation lookin mother*cker I ever seen.”

  “Go on.”

  “So, I think under New York State law, you’re require to have more minorities, or you don’t get no contracts.”

  I burst out laughing. At worst, the kid would be comic relief. He did look like he could handle himself, though, and we needed someone who was familiar with Post-Apocalypse New York City. Cabrejo told me he was twenty, and that for the last four years he had been working as a guide for the Rec & Tech crews on Staten Island.

  “Can you handle yourself in a fight? Scared of the undead?” I asked.

  “Only a fool ain’t,” he answered. The right answer.

  I handed over the standard contact, and told him to sign down the bottom. “One hundred New Dollars a day, full equipment load out, M-16 is all we have for you, all you can eat in MREs, and if you hit on any of the women on the team, well, you might regret it. Range time is at seventeen hundred hours this afternoon. Bird lifts at zero three tomorrow morning.”

  He signed, smiled and said, “Does that include that fine ass redhead there?”

  “Oh, my wife?”

  “Hmm, I think I’ll just shut up now.”

  “Good idea. Go over to the Central Issue Facility, get a uniform and the rest of your equipment, then go meet the team. Your job is to stick like glue to Doc. You cover her ass so she can do her job. You aren’t part of the team yet, you’re Doc’s bodyguard. No suppressor for your weapon available, so you only fire if we really get in the shit. Can you play by those rules?”
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br />   “I can do that. I spent a year with Rec & Tec just doing manual labor, with just a peashooter for defending myself.” He gathered up the paperwork and turned to go.

  “One last thing, Cabrejo. Be as funny and smart ass as your mouth can handle, but if you fuck up, I’ll shoot you dead on the spot. Got it?”

  “I got it,” he answered, looking serious. “Same rule as the street, boss.”

  “As long as we understand each other.”

  Now, as the bird started to vibrate with something coming apart in the engine, his eyes were enormous. Probably his first time ever flying, the poor bastard.

  “HANG ON, GOING IN!” yelled the crew chief, as we swerved around the spire of the Empire State Building. The Blackhawk swung crazily from side to side, the vibrations increasing, and the smoke getting worse.

  I thought we were going to die, honestly, but Colonel McHale managed to flare at the last second, and we grounded, hard enough to make my teeth bounce, on the roof of some building. Cabrejo unsnapped his seatbelt, and Ziv grabbed him by the harness and prevented him from running out of the cabin. The bird yawed, leaned, and tilted, and the rotors exploded as they hit the roof. Fragments went spinning through the air, and we skidded around as they destroyed themselves.

  We finally stopped with the tailboom hanging out into the void, the helo on its side, and all of us hanging sideways. Ziv let go of Cabrejo and he fell through the open cabin door to land with a thump on the building roof.

  “Everybody out!” yelled the crew chief, and we moved fast, but with no panic. Shona went first on our side, pulling herself up, then gave Red a hand. I unbuckled, slid down to the building roof under the helo, then boosted Brit up. Across from me the rest of the team was doing the same, until it was only myself and the crew chief. He was half in and half out of the cockpit, working with McHale to unbuckle the copilot. She was pretty obviously not going to make it, a piece of the rotor through her head.

  I grabbed the crew chief’s leg and told him to let her go. He looked back at me, shook his head and started pulling at her body again. McHale looked at me, then slapped the crew chief on the shoulder. “Bill, we gotta go!” he yelled as the wreckage shifted. There was a pretty rough wind this high up, fall weather bringing in colder air.

  ‘No way, Sir. I gotta get her out.”

  “Nick, come on!” shouted Brit. She and Red still lay on the side of the chopper, hands extended. I pulled out my knife and cut the straps that held down our extra ammo, started heaving the duffle bags up to Red, who tossed them onto the roof. I could hear the fire in the engine compartment pick up, and even more smoke came out. For a second I realized I had no idea how flammable Blackhawks were, and I didn’t want to find out.

  I placed my foot on a seat, raised my hands, and Brit and Red grabbed my arms, helping me out, so we all stood on the side of the overturned helo. Colonel Mchale squirmed out of the cockpit door a few seconds later, still arguing furiously with the crew chief, telling him that we would put the fire out and secure the bird, then get the co-pilot’s body out. I couldn’t hear his response, but McHale shouted at him. “That’s a goddamned order! Get out now, Chief!”

  At that moment, a furious gust of wind roared between the buildings, and I felt the wreck tip. Brit had already scrambled down, and Red was lowering himself by the landing gear. He let go just as the whole thing tilted, and I was trying to lower myself down, one hand on the edge of the frame work. For a second I felt myself start to go with it, so I shoved as hard as I could and landed on the roof, pain immediately shooting up from my good ankle.

  I looked back in time to see the last of the helo disappear over the edge, accompanied by a scream from the crew chief, a wailing “NOOOOO!” that faded out. A tremendous BOOM echoed around the concrete canyons a second later, and the whole building shook, to the sound of thousands of panes of glass breaking. An oily cloud of smoke lifted up past us and was blown away by the wind.

  Chapter 284

  “Give me an up!”

  The team had spread themselves out on the roof, taking what cover they could. Only Cabrejo and Swan still stood in the middle of the roof, obviously shaken by what happened.

  “You two,” Brit shouted next to me as we crouched behind the parapet, “get to some cover, now!”

  Cabrejo seemed to wake up, and he hustled Doc behind a large air conditioning unit.

  “One!” I shouted, echoed by Shona yelling “Two!” as my second in command. Boz answered “Three” from right next to me, followed by “Four” from SSG Yasser. A few seconds passed, waiting for Specialist Swan, then the civilians took up the count, Ziv with Six and Cabrejo with Seven.

  “Doc, you OK?” I called out.

  “Ah, yes, Yes Sir!” she answered back, a little shaken up.

  The reason everyone was under cover was that, in big cities like this, even on top of a high building, you were effectively exposed as if you were in the bottom of a canyon. Unless you were on top of the Freedom Tower, every rooftop in New York left you exposed to sniper fire. I was sure that the helo crash had attracted the attention of every looter, survivor, and undead within twenty blocks. I wanted us off the roof, fast, before dawn brought some light.

  “Ziv, let’s make us a hole. Skylight, southwest corner,” shouted Shona. He nodded and removed some det cord. Boz left my side to join them, since they acted as a fire team and would go in first. While they set the charge and hooked up the ropes, I turned to Colonel McHale.

  “You OK, Alex?”

  “Why the hell is it,” he asked, “that every time I fly over this damn city, I crash?”

  “I dunno,” said Brit, who owed him her life. “You’re not a bad pilot. Why did your crew chief stay in the bird? Your copilot was a goner.”

  McHale took a long drink of water from the bottle I handed him, wiped his soot stained face and said, “That was his wife. First time I ever flew with either of them.”

  “Damn,” Brit and I both said in unison, and we looked at each other. I guess I would have stayed too.

  “Yeah, well, now we gotta figure out a way to get back. There will probably be an SAR bird looking for us soon enough. I did get a message out.”

  Brit said nothing, merely dug into the spare ammo bag and handed him two grenades. McHale looked at them, a questioning look on his face.

  “We’ve a mission to finish, and the Museum is only thirty blocks north or so.”

  “FIFTEEN SECONDS!” yelled Shona, and we all scrambled to the far corner.

  “How much charge did you use?” I asked. Ziv gave me a thumbs up and said “P for Plenty!”

  The det cord went off with a muted WHOOMP! that shook the entire building, and a flash. In seemingly slow motion, the entire skylight shattered and disappeared, sending shards of glass and steel flying all over the roof and raining down on us.

  “Whoops,” muttered Ziv, as he, Boz and Shona scrambled over to the hole as soon as the dust settled. The ropes were tossed into the six foot wide hole, and Brit, Elam and I moved around the far side, trying to peer into the dust and darkness with our NVGs.

  I pulled out a flashbang and tossed it into the hole as the other three clipped onto the ropes. It went off with a CRACK and a blinding flash, and they jumped off the edge, pistols in one hand and rope in the other to control the fall. I heard a muted POP POP and then Boz called “ALL CLEAR!”

  “Ziv killed a couch!” laughed Boz. I heard some Serbian curse in answer.

  “OK, grab the extra ammo, let’s get off this roof. Don’t forget the ropes. Cabrejo you’re Colonel McHale’s bodyguard for the rest of this trip.”

  “I can handle myself!” he protested.

  “No offense, Colonel, in a pinch I can fly a helicopter, but that doesn’t really make it the best idea,” said Boz from below. “You’re just going to get in our way if you try to mix it up.”

  “He’s right. Just stand back, assist where you can, and try not to get bit.”

  We gathered up the two ropes and slung the thi
rd around a pipe sticking out of the roof, tossing both ends down so we could recover it.

  “On belay,” shouted Boz, as he and Ziv grabbed one end of the rope, and we each slid over the ragged edge and onto the debris below. Only ten feet or so, but you can break an ankle or leg from that height, especially with a pack, weapons, body armor and ammo on you. I probably weighed close to three hundred pounds with all the crap I was carrying.

  When the whole team was down, Elam last, I looked around the room. It was the living room of some really nice penthouse apartment, what I could see of it in the darkness.

  “Are we going to wait until light to clear the stairwell?” asked Shona.

  “We have to get out of here before the sun comes up, and into a different building, at least a couple blocks away,” answered Brit, “and the stairwell will be full of undead, or stacks of rotting bodies. That just seems to be the way.”

  “So how do we get down to street level?”

  “We rope down the elevator shafts,” I answered. “Fastest way, and Brit is right, we need to hustle out of here. How much rope do we have?”

  “Four hundred feet,” said Ziv.

  “Shit. Not good enough,” I said, looking over the edge of the building. Forty stories I figured. “Well, we’ll get as low as we can till we can hit the elevators. Figure the twentieth floor.”

  “So we have to use the stairs after all?” asked Shona.

  “It shouldn’t be too bad for that part. Mostly at the tops and bottoms,” answered Brit. “Why, are you scared?” Yep, there was a bit of bad blood there. Florida surely wasn’t forgotten.

  Shona, though, was trying her best. She had pissed Brit off by hitting on me, and she knew it. “I just don’t like tight spaces.”

  “Lay off, Brit. I mean it. Not the time or place.”

  “OK.” Just like that, flipping a switch. I swear, being a redhead AND surviving the apocalypse had sent her around the bend. Not far, but definitely around.