by Nick Cole
WYRD BOOK 2.0
By
Nick Cole
Copyright © 2015 by Nick Cole
Chapter One
Braddock attached his static line to the wire that ran the length of the red-lit cargo bay. The rear ramp of the C-130 began to lower, exposing golden morning sunlight. Air rushed in to beat at digital cammo fatigues and rucksacks. It had been dark when the three military transports had lifted off from the base out in the depths of Death Valley. Braddock could now see the two trailing C-130’s that made up the rest of Task Force 19 behind them, one below and one above the open ramp door. He circled his hand once and the rest of his company stood and began to attach their static lines to the wire running the length of the interior. Each of the mercenaries had been highly trained before ever leaving the military for private contract work. They knew the drill.
Braddock checked his watch once more. Three minutes to oh-nine-hundred. 22 September. Below, out the ramp door and a couple of thousand feet down, herds of wandering dead mixed in and among the vast empty sprawl of southern California. The two trailing C-130’s, each slate gray, each marked with the Tarragon logo, adjusted their positions to jump altitude.
1500 feet.
Braddock thought of the... man... known as Mr. Steele. Of his face and what lay beneath it. After landing out in the nowhere end of Death Valley, after watching LA go up in a low-yield nuclear blast, they’d gotten out of the chopper in the middle of a dry and seemingly endless waste surrounding an old abandoned military base. The massive... man... machine-thing... that had taken out multiple hostiles from a moving helicopter atop the US Bank Tower had then purposefully strode off across the tarmac of the runway toward a lone air traffic control tower. After that, Braddock hadn’t seen Mr. Steele again. Instead he’d been greeted by 1st Sergeant Bannon and led to the company he would take charge of. Echo Company was made up of ex-soldiers who’d somehow disappeared down the rabbit hole that surrounded the mysterious Tarragon Corporation.
Now, back in the C-130 speeding above the ruins of Southern California, they were two minutes out from jumping on Task Force 19’s current objective, Iron Castle. The orders that came up on a secure new smartphone, issued to Braddock along with all the high-speed gear he could strap, all embossed in gray relief with the Tarragon Logo and the like of which Braddock had never seen before, were to secure a perimeter around objective Iron Castle and begin sweeping operations. All zombies and survivors were to be terminated.
Again Braddock remembered his Handler’s voice. What she’d said. In his mind he could still see the web address he’d found her at for their last conversation: dept19.net/doormouse
Did it still exist? Or had it been burned? She’d instructed him to do, “Whatever it takes.” After Operation Pitbull, the voice, the woman on the other side of the link, was probably the last surviving representative of government.
Do whatever it takes to stop whoever it is that’s destroying America, and the world.Those had been Braddock’s final orders. Do whatever it takes to stop Mr. Steele.
Yellow light.
Thirty seconds to Jump.
Braddock was running his hand across his gear when the C-130 just off the port wing exploded. A dark shape, an attack jet of some sort, raced away behind the flight of cargo planes and tore off into the foothills to the east. As it peeled away, Braddock tracked and identified it as an A-10 Warthog close air support aircraft. Already the burning wreckage of the breaking apart C-130 was raining down into the neighborhoods of Santa Ana just below. Far out behind them, Braddock could see the A-10 turning back toward the flight. He knew it was coming back for another pass, and he knew they were sitting ducks inside the slow and low C-130’s.
Nothing in the Op Order that had come in on the snazzy, new smartphone had said anything about expected resistance. The government had collapsed, and for all intents and purposes there were no active combat-ready units left in the American arsenal. A mile behind them, the Warthog leveled out and a second later launched an air-to-air missile that snaked toward them like a smoking sidewinder. Both C-130’s peeled away from each other, ejecting flares and chaff. Braddock and the rest of Echo Company were thrown against the interior of the fuselage.
The Captain of Braddock’s C-130 was screaming, “Scrub the mission” over the net. One of Braddock’s men, a guy who’d identified himself as Tim Ward back at the base in Death Valley, disconnected from the static line and ran for the open cargo ramp. There was a loud BANG. Metallic. Awful. But distant. Suddenly the C-130 pitched violently to starboard and Braddock could see the other bird on fire and nose diving straight into a small hill.
The disconnected soldier ran for the cargo ramp, and in that moment Braddock thought that wasn’t such a bad idea as he heard the A-10 whir-hum past the C-130 like a streak of whining death as it fired its chain gun into the fuselage. Large holes erupted across the top of the cabin, shooting sudden shafts of daylight down on bleeding and maimed men.
Then the lights went out. Braddock was blind.
Men all around him were screaming. Yelling. Braddock waved his hand in front of his face.
“I’m, blind!” screamed the desperate pilot over the open communications net. Braddock and everyone else could hear him ask the co-pilot, “Can you see anything!?!”
Braddock reached up and felt the static line. His fingers closed around the D-clip.
Time to jump, he thought to himself.
He felt the plane level out.
“Can anyone onboard see anything?” asked the pilot over the net, the terror barely contained within his voice. Braddock heard several men around him frantically admit that they too could not see as they swore and cursed.
“Must be some kind of weapon,” Braddock muttered and continued to wave his hand in front of his sightless eyes.
He waited for the A-10, for the demonic sound of it to come back, rushing at them again for one last final pass... and then blow them to bits. And when it didn’t, maybe, thought Braddock, maybe the A-10 pilot had gone blind too. Braddock let go of the static line.
Blind, in a wounded bird, jumping into the Zombocalypse would only take him away from his objective, even if it meant saving his own life.
Whatever it takes, he remembered her saying again. Whatever it took he would kill Mr. Steel.
A few minutes more of blindness and men were crying. One was screaming about Hell. The blindness... the darkness was so deep it felt real. Even to Braddock. Like it was a living thing that could be touched.
The pilot came over the net once again. His voice was now almost lunatic and his teeth chattered across and over each word. “I don’t know what’s going... on... but I’ve got us locked back into the... autopilot. We’re returning to base. M-mm-mission... scu-scrubbed.”
Braddock unhooked his static line and sat down. He thought about nothing. He tried to block out everything. The drone of the engines. The whistling air racing across the shot-to-shreds fuselage just beyond his head. Grown, hardened killers, sobbing like frightened children all around him. And even the nightmare underneath Mr. Steele’s face.
But he couldn’t forget that. Once you’d seen what lay underneath the face... you couldn’t forget it. Ever.
“Iron Castle” was scrubbed. For now.
Holiday, Frank, Ash, Ritter, Candace and Dante had each finally, feeling their way out to the street and calling for help, found each other.
They too were blind.
They knew they were now sitting in the middle of the street. They could feel the narrow hot road beneath them that ran through the close packed townhomes of the Vineyards.
&nbs
p; “What the hell is going on?” hissed Dante.
Of course Frank said he didn’t know, but urged them to remain calm nonetheless.
“I don’t even know who in the hell you are... and you’re telling me to be cool?” hissed Dante at Frank even louder.
“Maybe you nailed it on the head, big man,” said Ritter, his voice dry and husky in the morning heat they could feel rising on their faces. “Maybe this is hell. Maybe we didn’t make it out of that office building.”
Holiday said nothing. He could feel someone, maybe the woman known as Candace leaning against him. Touching him and jumping every time she’d get too close. Her skin was cold and thin. The darkness seemed to smother voices as everyone around him asked a question or argued with someone else. It felt to Holiday as though his face were hidden under a pillow. As though he were listening from behind a thick curtain to something not meant to be listened to. A feeling that felt familiar to him though he could never recall having actually listened to a conversation from behind a thick curtain. Or any curtain.
When the blindness, which is what Ash thought of it as, hit, she’d been checking the still unconscious kid. They told her his name was Skully. Now sitting in the street as the morning heat began to rise, her mind raced rapidly through medical conditions that could cause mass blindness. She kept coming back to stress.
“Least that weird wind stopped howling and stuff when it all started,” muttered Dante. “Thought it was like a tornado comin’.”
Ash had wandered out into the street, leaving the townhome they’d set up as an aid station, to look for help. When Ritter finally answered her calls she found out he too was blind. An hour later, all of them huddled together with no one really saying anything productive and Ritter and Dante working themselves up into a serious fight while all of them were just hoping it would end soon, Ash announced, “We’re suffering from a sort of group psychosis brought on by emotional stress.”
That stopped everyone.
“How so?” ventured Candace after a moment. “How could we all be suffering from the same thing?”
“Trauma,” stated Ash. But the statement came out like a guess. “After what’s happened... what we’ve all seen and been through... this must be some sort of mental breakdown. I mean...” her voice halted. Even she, after all she’d been through, all she’d seen, couldn’t believe she was about to say what she’d say next. “The dead. That thing in the fog...”
“What thing in the fog?” whispered Dante frantically, his voice low and serious. Ash continued, ignoring him.
“All of this might be just too much for the human mind to rationalize. It’s happened before. Like people seeing... an oasis that isn’t there when they’re dying of thirst.”
“Does that ever really happen?” asked Ritter. “I mean, movies yeah, but really? C’mon Doc, I ain’t buying that.”
“It does,” shouted Ash, sick of it all. Sick of the whole mess. “It does happen!” She took a shallow breath. Waved her hand in front of her face once more. “It does,” she whispered.
“Listen, all I’m saying is that this might be stress related, and if it is caused by stress, then the good news is it’s not physical. It’s not something... it’s not a permanent condition. If we can all just take a breath and relax, we might... see again.” Ash realized she was talking with her hands and that it didn’t matter because no one could see her doing it.
Everyone heard Dante suck in a lungful of air and then exhale like a cartoon bull might snort in anger just moments before charging Bugs Bunny the Matador.
“Nothin’!” he muttered.
“Give it a moment,” Ash said in her most soothing, I’m-a-doctor-and-I’m-here-to-help-you voice.
“Just relax.”
For a few minutes they sat there, in the middle of the street. Breathing slowly. Breathing deeply.
“What about the zombies?” asked Candace. “The dead. They could be...”
“Not helping,” interrupted Ash.
Silence.
Then Frank spoke. “Food.”
No one replied. But Frank knew they were listening.
“I have this one dish,” Frank continued. His baritone voice used to telling intimate stories, anecdotes, chit-chat between lounge standards like Summer Wind and I Left my Heart in San Francisco. “I have this one dish that used to always settle down my...”
He paused.
“It used to settle down someone I love very much. It’s my secret recipe. Probably the one...” he paused again, his voice catching in his throat. If they could’ve seen him, they’d have seen the tear that escaped one eye and ran away. Frank knew they couldn’t, and so he let it run as if that tear were something, or someone, that just needed to be let go of. Some poison that needed letting. He sighed and said, “It might just be the only thing I ever did right in my whole life.”
Silence.
A crow barked at something far off.
“Maybe,” muttered Frank.
“What’s the dish?” asked Ritter.
Frank came back from wherever, whenever, he was. “Pasta Aglio e Olio. It’s so simple anyone could make it, but when it’s done right... well, it heals a lot of things. Even broken hearts, maybe. Maybe.”
“How...” Candace paused. Swallowing. “How do you make it? “Pastaolio”,” she asked, mispronouncing the dish.
Frank sighed again. It was the sigh of someone lifting all the weight the world could possibly settle on one man, or woman, off themselves, one more time, again. “Pasta Aglio e Olio.” His voice softly sang the name like it was some love song they all once knew. “I haven’t made it in a long time. Probably only make it one more time in my life. Maybe.”
No one said anything.
“My dad was blind,” said Dante. “But he could fry up a chicken like nobody’s business.”
“My moms made Rice-a-Roni,” muttered Ritter. Then added, “When she felt like it.”
Holiday tried to remember something someone who’d loved him had cooked for him. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t remember the dish or the someone.
Silence.
“Pasta Aglio e Olio is the best,” continued Frank. “It’s real simple. It’s just cooked pasta, olive oil, good olive oil, red pepper flakes, fresh garlic, and chopped parsley.”
“Sounds boring,” announced Ritter.
“Yeah,” replied Frank. “It does, but you see that’s the thing, kid, it’s probably the most comforting dish you’ll ever have. You come home on a cold night in Chicago and make that, and whatever the world tried to do to you doesn’t matter so much. Hell even the... But I left one thing out.”
No one said anything.
“You see, the dish comes together all at once. The red pepper flakes, the garlic, the parsley, good olive oil, all of it goes in the pan at the last minute. You even turn off the heat after you put the pasta in. Then, and this is my secret and there are certain people from certain families of certain persuasions that if they knew this next step, they’d throw you out forever... well that’s not important, but this is my little secret. Parmesan. You grate up a nice amount of it and fold it into the hot pasta just after you add the rest of the ingredients. Then serve. Then, life... and all the madness, it ain’t so bad for just a little while.”
No one said anything.
The crow from down the street barked again and each of them thought of the dead. Each of them saw more of the dead at the gate to the complex. The flimsy mesh gate.
“They’re coming,” whispered Candace.
“No!” said Frank firmly. “They’re not coming. We’re safe. Pasta Aglio e Olio.”
Everyone waited.
“Pasta Aglio e Olio,” Frank whispered again to himself. Only those sitting near him could hear him barely whisper, “Make it all better.”
The darkness began to lift.
“I can
see something,” whispered Holiday.
Then...
“Hey... wait... me too,” said Ash. “I can see... something...”
The others waited. Dante grumbled that he still couldn’t see “nuthin’”.
“Open your eyes,” suggested Ritter sarcastically.
“My eyes are open!” shouted Dante. “And I can’t... wait a sec... I see shadows! I see shapes... like everything’s under water in a dark pool.”
“Pasta Aglio e Olio,” whispered Frank again.
An hour later, waiting, resting, listening to Frank again and again repeat the name of his secret dish, imagining what it would be like to taste good comfort food again, finally, the darkness was gone.
“That was something,” muttered Ritter as they all began to get up from the street. In the distance, the crow, watching from atop the light post, called again as though it were accusing them of something horrible, then it leapt into the air, beating its wings in a dry leathery flap as it climbed off and into the hot sun and murky haze.
Chapter Two
The work of castle-building began in earnest the next day. The day of blindness had come and gone. The night had passed and the fog that had come up in it, suddenly and from everywhere, was gone now, too.
The survivors knew that each day might be their last. Frank fed them. They locked themselves away at night, inside vacant townhomes along the street. Waiting until dawn. Most were asleep by the time the western sky surrendered to the blue of early evening.
Others watched the night throughout its length. Watched its clarity become obscured by the swirling mist rising. And in time, everything lay under a thick blanket of immense cottony quiet. Holiday stepped out onto his front steps, feeling the misty night and the garden cool on his sun-parched skin.
The foggy street and the orange light thrown from the streetlamps beckoned him into its undulating nothingness, promising him a drink, as much as he could drink, somewhere within its emptiness. He could walk away again, he thought to himself. He could walk away from Frank and Ash and the newcomers and never return.
