Reese shoved Marsh aside and sent him reeling into a nearby car. He bounced off it and collapsed to the street. Reese ignored him. He grabbed Manalo’s arm and pulled with all his might.
“Pull harder, they’ve got me!” Manalo said.
Reese tried, but he didn’t have enough strength. More hands reached for the Filipino sergeant. Reese redoubled his efforts. Another cop came to his aid, as did Reneee. Instead of pitching in to help pull Manalo free, she raised her rifle and started shooting stenches through their skulls. Bodies fell away, and Manalo popped free. A small child-zombie came with him, holding onto the collar of his shirt as it sank its teeth into the back of Manalo’s vest. Reese reached around, grabbed its neck, and ripped the diminutive stench away. It fell to the shoulder of the road with a hiss, beady eyes glaring at him.
“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here!” Manalo said. “The shooting’s going to bring them down on us like nobody’s business!”
“You bit?” Reese asked.
“Does it matter, Reese? Get going!”
Reese nodded and turned to leave. As he did, he noticed Marsh slowly clambering to his feet. He was bleeding from his head. Reese stepped back and grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.
“Come on, let’s go, Marsh!” He pushed the cop ahead of him, and Marsh stumbled past Reneee, who was still firing into the horde, buying them enough time to move past. Reese glanced at her as he slipped by. Her eyes were flat and expressionless now. All she could do was kill zombies. Reese was good with that.
“You didn’t have to body slam me,” Marsh whimpered as he walked unsteadily forward. It was like he was trying to break into a trot, but couldn’t quite make it happen.
“Marsh, move faster,” Reese said.
“I’m trying,” Marsh said.
Plosser took him by the arm. “I got him, he looks like he has a concussion,” the Guardsman said. “Grab onto my pack and hold on, Marsh. Don’t let go.”
“Okay.”
“Reneee, let’s go!” Reese yelled over his shoulder. He let Plosser take charge of Marsh, then got on his rifle. He drilled three stenches as they floundered through the bushes, moaning as if in desperation. Their fallen bodies served to break up the advance of their fellows, and Reneee sidled back toward him. She tried to shoot while moving, and wound up missing. Reese cringed inwardly at the wasted ammunition. Even though he had seen the immense ammo cache back at the island, every round they wasted now would be rounds they might miss later.
“Stop shooting and run, damn it!” he snapped.
Reneee did as he instructed, darting past him, her plump figure practically streaking through the brightening morning.
The cops dashed back the way they had come. Zombies were appearing everywhere now, tumbling down the bluffs, creeping down driveways, even pushing through the brush in the nature preserve to their left. Plosser had to drag Marsh with him, as the cop couldn’t seem to move fast enough to suit the tall Guardsman. By the time the group made it back to the inflatables, they had a horde of at least a hundred stenches on their trail. Some of the ghouls were in physically good shape and could move faster than the rest. Reese killed one, while Manalo dropped the other two. As they fought, Reese could see blood on the Filipino sergeant’s neck. He wondered if Manalo knew he was a walking dead man.
Getting the boats back into the surf was much more difficult than bringing them in. They had to contend with the endless waves, and the delay allowed the herd of stenches to creep that much closer. It seemed to take forever to get the small boats into the water and their engines started, and even then, it wasn’t over. One of the cops stumbled while high-stepping it through the surf, and he went down. The zombies converged on him instantly. While the rest of the cops opened up in a bid to save the man, they were either in the bouncing boats or had been trying to clamber aboard. Reese himself was in thigh-deep water, and the cold waves ruined his aim as they slammed into him from behind. He caught a glimpse of the downed cop’s pale, panicked face. Snot was streaming down his nose, and his eyes were wide with fear. Seawater rushed over him, and in that instant he tried to swim away, pushing off into the waves. One of the stenches caught his ankle and held on, and that was all it took. The ghouls tackled him like filthy linebackers, pinning him to the sandy floor of the surf line. There was no saving him.
An outboard engine roared, and one of the boats took off, its bow smashing through the waves. The cops in the second inflatable yelled for Reese to climb in as the rest of the horde oriented on him. They shot over his head, but Reese knew that wasn’t going to work. The inflatable made for a poor shooting platform. He tossed his rifle into the boat and grabbed onto the side.
“Go! Go!” he shouted.
The cop manning the outboard added some power, and the boat accelerated away, bouncing across the wave tops. Reese held on, and Reneee reached over and grabbed one of his wrists. Her grip was like iron. After the boat had moved deeper into the surf, it slowed, and the cops grabbed him and pulled him in. One of them was Manalo.
“You okay?” he asked Reese after they dragged him in and the boat resumed its journey.
“Yeah,” Reese said. He coughed, and salt water burned his throat.
“Thanks for saving me back there, man,” Manalo said.
Reese pointed at Manalo’s neck. “You’re bleeding.”
Manalo nodded slowly, but there was no emotion on his blunt, acne-scarred face. “Yeah, I know. It was the one that was hanging onto my back. It got a little chunk of me.”
Reese ducked his head and looked back at the shoreline of Hendry Beach. Ghouls were still streaming into the water, fighting against the waves as they tried to pursue the two inflatables. They had zero chance of catching them, but logic was lost on the dead. They simply pushed deeper and deeper into the surf until they disappeared beneath the waves.
SINGLE TREE, CALIFORNIA
Like everyone in Single Tree, Rod Cranston had been elated when the walls starting going up around the town, converting it into some sort of medieval fortress. He’d then become a bit depressed when said walls were extended to surround the airport. That meant he couldn’t stay at home, drinking Bud and whacking off to the monster porn he regularly read on his Kindle. Even as the world went to hell and flesh-eating zombies threatened to take over the globe, Cranston still had to go to work. Even though there wasn’t much to do, he still had to go somewhere and do something for people he didn’t particularly like, and that left him pissed off and edgy. The airport was pretty desolate, since there were no flights in and out. There wasn’t even regulatory paperwork to fill out any longer. As far as he knew, the FAA had ceased to exist, and while that was something Cranston personally viewed as a blessing—airport managers were the only people the FAA pissed off more than pilots—it made for some uninteresting times full of long hours of absolutely zero activity. He’d even accompanied Enrico around the airport a few times, checking the structures, the fuel supplies, the maintenance area where the contractors used to work. He’d finally given up on that on account that Cranston didn’t like walking all that much.
Corbett’s people would drop by and visit the airport on occasion, just checking around. They were principally interested in their boss’s shiny Gulfstream, but they also went through the motions of verifying the defenses were in place. A few shooters were on station as well, but they kept out of sight in Corbett’s custom-built hangar. Cranston wasn’t allowed to go in there unless someone escorted him, which was fine. He didn’t need to go poking his nose into things, so it was no bother.
Most of the time, Cranston just hung out in his office and read his Kindle. He’d even brought in some beer, since it was unlikely anyone was going to bust him for drinking on the job. He was smart enough to keep it hidden from Corbett’s goons, of course. Even if they didn’t report him, they’d likely confiscate it and drink it themselves.
When the zombies finally showed up and the shooting began, Cranston had been notified he and Enrico couldn�
��t leave the airport. At first, that didn’t bother him in the slightest; the zombies weren’t interested in the airfield, and going back to his small, weathered, two-bedroom shack meant he’d be closer to the action. So as much as he hated being on the job, being trapped in his house as a horde of flesh-eating corpses encircled it seemed a lot less inviting. But as the shooting continued, a sense of worry began to grow inside him. Every now and then, he’d hear distant explosions, deep thuds that meant nothing to him but served to amp up his nervousness considerably. To take the edge off, he drank beer. And sooner than he’d expected, it was gone. He’d drank it all up and pissed it all out.
“Hey, Rod, those Army guys are outside opening up one of the hangars.” Enrico stood in the doorway to Cranston’s office, looking in on him. His tanned face was worn with worry. Enrico didn’t like the sounds of violence any more than Cranston did.
“You mean Corbett’s hangar, right?”
“Nope. The executive hangar,” Enrico said. The executive hangar—or what they now referred to as “the old executive hangar” after Corbett had built his personal monstrosity out on the opposing apron—was where expensive airplanes were parked during special events, like the film festival the town put on every year. Right now, the only aircraft in it was Gary Norton’s little jet. Cranston frowned. Why would they be doing that?
He got up and walked past Enrico to the front of the office building. From there, he had a clear view of the hangar in question. Sure enough, the big bi-fold hangar door was open. And more interestingly, Corbett’s goons had hooked up the tow motor to the nose gear on Norton’s jet and had unchocked the tires. That puzzled Cranston.
“Why are they pulling out Norton’s jet?” he asked Enrico.
“Maybe Mister Norton’s leaving,” Enrico said.
That made Cranston’s blood boil. He’d never liked Gary Norton ever since they were kids in school. “The hell he is,” he muttered, his hands balling into fists.
The ride to the airport was in golf carts, of all things. Norton had a backpack in his lap, and his Heckler & Koch 416 rifle between his legs. He’d eschewed the new LWRC carbine for a weapon he knew fully, though he did wear Corbett’s gifted Smith & Wesson M&P45 pistol on his hip. The weapon was close enough in design and function to mirror his every day carry weapon, the Shield, which was in an appendix holster at his waist. Aside from the clothes on his back and the sunglasses on his nose, he carried nothing else. The golf cart was one of those four seater jobs with two up front facing forward while the two in back faced rearward. The cart was driven by none other than Walter Lennon, and two of his men sat in back with all the bags. The electric-powered vehicle was followed by another which carried only two men and the rest of the team’s gear. All of the men were silent as the two carts whirred down the walled path to the airport. So far, the sailing was smooth. The zombies were concentrating their attacks on the areas where they’d seen prey, and word was that the airport and the fortified approach to it were clear and secure. The golf carts weren’t entirely silent, but they moved fast enough and quietly enough to slip past the hordes outside the walls without capturing their interest. The sounds of combat slowly receded, but never disappeared. The battle for Single Tree was completely joined, and the townspeople and Corbett’s hired troops were giving the dead everything they could.
“Hey, how much does this gear you have weigh?” Norton asked.
“What?” Lennon said.
“I said, how much does it weigh?”
“What does that matter?”
Norton turned and looked at the wiry man beside him. “I guess you weren’t in aviation in the Corps, huh?”
“Mister Norton, I’m a little focused on what I’m doing right now,” Lennon snapped. “What do you need?”
“Just need to know how much the gear weighs,” Norton said. “I need it for weight and balance calculations. Unless you want to try and take off without them, though I hear people have run out of runway in times like that.”
“Maybe three hundred pounds total,” Lennon said. “Is that too much?”
“With six guys who weigh about two hundred pounds each? Yeah, you’ll need to leave about two hundred pounds behind. The jet was fully fueled when I arrived.”
“Maybe you should have mentioned that to us before we left,” Lennon said, his voice tight.
“Maybe you guys should have looped me into your plan before the zombies attacked,” Norton shot back.
“Can you empty fuel from your plane?”
“I can, but it’s going to take some time. And if we can’t land at Oxnard Airport, we’ll have to hunt around for an alternate.”
Lennon shook his head. “No alternates. We have transportation at Oxnard. It’s either land there, or land at the marina where your boat is.”
“Uh, there’s no landing strip there, Lennon. It’s a marina. It’s for boats, not airplanes.”
“Then I guess your plane won’t be the first to ditch in the Pacific today,” Lennon said. “Hope you can swim. How long to offload the fuel?”
“Depends. It would usually be offloaded into a fuel truck which would take a few minutes, but that’s going to mean engine noise.” Norton considered it for a moment. “Or, we could tow the airplane to another location and open the sumps. Not the most ecologically sound solution, but it would work. Would take thirty, forty minutes—I’d have to offload five hundred pounds, just to be safe.”
“That’s a long time. How much noise would the truck make?”
Norton shrugged. “It’s a diesel with a compressor on it, man.”
Lennon grunted. “Okay. We’ll figure out how to play it when we get there,” he said.
They crossed into the airport a few minutes later. The gunfire was still clearly audible from the airfield, but there were no signs of incursion Norton could see. The airfield itself was still secure. That wouldn’t last, of course. Once the Phenom’s engines started, the jet’s departure would hardly go unnoticed. He mentioned that to Lennon.
“We have a plan for that,” Lennon told him. “We’ll pour it on at the combat sites, and you will make a few low passes over the stenches. It might draw them off and make them forget all about the airport.”
“Pretty piss poor plan,” Norton said.
Lennon looked at him directly as he set the golf cart’s parking brake. “If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”
Norton didn’t.
“What the hell is going on?” Norton looked up as Rod Cranston approached them. Like usual, Cranston looked like he’d just rolled out of bed; his denim shirt was wrinkled, and his wiry red hair was sticking up all over his head. He looked like he’d been on a bender. Norton had heard the man liked his beer, and he had the belly for it. The airport’s only lineman, Enrico, followed him. He nodded to Norton and gave him a tight smile.
“Mister Norton’s flying out a team, but we need to get his aircraft defueled so we can carry our gear,” Lennon said. “Can this be done immediately?”
“Flying out to where?” Cranston demanded. He glared at Norton.
“It’s not your concern,” Lennon said. “Can the aircraft be defueled?”
“Well, sure, I can suck some out with the truck,” Enrico said. He turned and pointed at a fuel truck sitting next to Corbett’s hangar.
“I want to know where you’re going!” Cranston said, raising his voice.
“Would you keep your voice down, please,” Lennon told him.
“You’re about to light up a jet airplane, and you’re worried about me being quiet?” Cranston said.
Norton saw his jet sitting out in front of the hangar, still attached to the tow motor. “Lennon, you have this? I want to preflight.”
“Yes, go ahead,” Lennon said. “Mendoza, go with him.”
“Yes, sir,” said a short, stolid Latino man with a typical Marine Corps haircut.
“He’s not going anywhere until I get some answers,” Cranston said.
“Yes, he is.” Lennon took a step
forward and got right into Cranston’s face. “I don’t need a gun to kill you, sir. And if you don’t start doing what I ask, then I’ll do that. I have a family here, and their survival depends on Norton being able to get my team out of Single Tree. That’s all you need to know.”
Cranston started to protest, but thought better of it. He took a step back, glowering.
Norton didn’t stick around to see how things would end up. He grabbed his backpack and rifle, and walked briskly toward the waiting Phenom. The man Lennon called Mendoza followed him. Norton opened the airplane’s door, and the air stair descended on its struts. The handrails extended automatically. He climbed inside and stowed his backpack, then did a quick check of the instrument panel, ensuring all the switches were in the off position. He then headed back out and started the physical part of the preflight, starting with the nose gear and moving back from there. He removed the engine plugs and climbed up on the trailing edges of the wings and visually inspected the fan blades inside each engine. He checked the service bays and looked for any leaks or fittings that might need attention. The pitot tubes were clear, and the angle of attack sensors were in perfect condition; they moved easily when he touched them. There were no dings, dents, or scratches on the leading-edge surfaces of the wings, on the nose, or on the aircraft’s vertical and horizontal stabilizers, though they were so high up he couldn’t climb up and get a close look at them. All glass was clear and unscathed, and the tires were in good shape and properly inflated. The little jet was good to go, though he would still have to pull the locking pins on the landing gear. He wasn’t sure what the defueling situation would be, so if the airplane was going to be towed to another location, it was safer to leave them in place.
The Last Town (Book 6): Surviving the Dead Page 4
