He glanced at his Suunto and saw that two long minutes had slipped into the past since the Black Hawk’s wheels hit the tarmac. The first minute was burned surviving the sneak attack by the lurker in the grass. Another one slipped by as he simultaneously checked the fuel level and watched Lev plug the hose into the chopper.
The next three minutes would prove to be a hairball wrapped inside of a shitstorm. While the fuel surged into the Black Hawk, he was on one knee firing and reloading, burning through three magazines in the process. Two minutes had passed and ninety rounds were down range by the time he looked away from the fallen corpses of fifty or sixty formerly fellow Americans and heard Duncan say over the comms, “Launching in one mike.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. Cade rose and trudged through the tall grass. He tapped Jamie’s shoulder and said, “We’re done here, now.” Unmoved, Jamie said nothing and continued firing. So, dodging hot spent brass, Cade walked behind her from right-to-left and tapped her other shoulder. Still no response. She kept on firing head high and the rotters kept crumpling in vertical heaps. One. Two. Then three in rapid succession. Covering his mic, Cade gripped her shoulder firmly and, bellowing near her ear, said, “Cease your firing ... now!”
Her body went rigid at his touch. Then a second later she raised the smoking carbine and flicked the selector to safe. Turning, she flashed him the look a kid gives a parent when he or she doesn’t want to leave someplace special like Disneyland or the Ringling Brothers Circus. Even before the exchange, Cade could tell by her body language and the imagined English she was putting on each shot that she was having a hell of a lot of fun killing them. To Jamie this was her E-Ticket and invitation to share the center ring with the lions all rolled up into one, and to Cade it was apparent that she was visualizing Ian Bishop’s face on every one of the rotters.
After dragging Jamie’s mind from the fray, Cade watched their six as he hustled alongside her on the way back to the Black Hawk where they met Daymon at the open door just as Lev had finished the hot refuel and was placing the nozzle on the tarmac.
Cade helped Jamie board ahead of Lev then backed up against the vibrating chopper’s warm fuselage. He let Daymon pass in front of him then sighted down the M4 and emptied the last eight rounds from the magazine into the nearest walking corpses before clambering aboard, slightly winded and stinking of gunpowder and death.
Daymon looped around in front of the cockpit and hauled open the port side door, passed the shotgun back to a waiting hand and leapt in. Wasting no time, he shrugged on his belt and plugged in his helmet. Finally, out of breath, he looked at Duncan and said, “The tail is clear. But you’ve only got about a ten-second buffer until the next wave.”
“Copy that,” said Duncan as the turbine whine reached a crescendo and the grass on the helo’s starboard side flattened into a large semicircle under the intense downdraft created by the four composite Nomex-and Kevlar-wrapped rotor blades.
Feeling the bird get light on the gear, Duncan pulled pitch and applied a little pedal, spinning them a few degrees left as the ground dropped away. Hovering there for a second, nose pointed due east, he surveyed the carnage that hadn’t been fully evident from his vantage point on the ground.
Crushing strange forms into the grass, dozens of bodies with limbs askew were arrayed like spokes on a wheel between the edge of the tarmac where the helo had initially set down and the fuel bowser roughly twenty yards to the south.
In smaller groups of twos and threes to packs numbering a dozen or more, the zombies kept coming in from the east where Duncan presumed there was another breach in the fence.
“Yep,” he said nudging the stick forward. “Good thing the bowser was already half empty. ‘Cause I don’t think anybody with a pulse will be setting down here again anytime soon.”
Cade removed his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow. Took off his clear ballistic glasses and gloves and then rubbed both eyes with the back of his hands.
“Here,” Jamie said. “Let me help you.” She reached across the cabin and raked her fingers through both sideburns.
Bits and pieces of flesh and bone rained to the cabin floor, the latter skittering away toward the starboard door as Duncan banked the helo in that direction.
Seeing the morning sun swing past the port windows, Cade sat back and thanked Jamie for saving his ass at the airport. He donned a flight helmet, secured the chin strap, then more to prove a point than chastise, asked her when she’d last disassembled and cleaned her carbine.
She shrugged, a blank look on her face.
He said, “The correct answer is: Immediately after I finished shooting it the last time.”
Across the cabin Lev nodded his approval.
Daymon piped in. He said, “That’s why I kind of like the bow and the blade. Little maintenance necessary.”
Lev smiled at that.
Both responses—verbal and visual—earned each of the meddlers a middle finger from Jamie.
Lost in thoughts of Raven and Brook, Cade pulled his rucksack near and rooted around and came out with a handful of shiny new 5.56 rounds. He asked Jamie for her empty mags and quickly reloaded her three and then the four he had emptied into the Zs. Finished, he snugged his four into their slots on his chest, Velcroed them in place and, with Jamie watching his every move, stuffed her mags into his cargo pockets.
“What the?” she mouthed.
Sitting back, he closed his eyes and said, “You’ll see.”
***
Forty-five minutes had gone by when Daymon said over the shipwide comms, “We’re almost to the waypoint coordinates.”
Looking out his starboard side glass, Lev saw nothing but reddish-orange earth, tumble weeds, and low scrub.
Jamie opened her eyes, lolled her head left and peered out the opposite side. There she saw much of the same rushing by her window until the helo neared the canyon rim and slowed considerably. Down below a river snaked north to south through a nameless burg. And in the slow-flowing water she saw scores of zombies sloshing around in the shallows, heads down and stalking fish, she presumed. Still more creatures were trapped in the brush at the river’s edge, their ashen limbs beating the water to a white froth. Abutting the river on both sides was a triangle of green hemmed in by cliffs on three sides: west, north, and east. On the periphery of town there were mostly single family homes on treed lots. The businesses she could make out were clustered on both sides of a two-block stretch in the center of town. For some reason most of the homes near the main thoroughfare through town looked like they had been imploded, with roofs mostly intact, but the walls reduced to splintered two by fours, dislodged siding and powdery scraps of fractured drywall.
As if frozen mid-scatter from something or somebody, a couple of dozen inert vehicles littered the narrow side streets. Some were opened up like sardine tins and others were burned to metal and sitting on warped rims. All of the cars and trucks and SUVs sported gaping holes in their upward-facing sheet metal and had been stopped dead in their tracks heading north, away from the distant Interstate.
West of the town center a giant U.S. flag flew over a steel frame building full of windows and ringed on three sides by empty parking spaces. On the street in front of the building with the flag that Jamie had pegged for the town’s post office, a handful of decaying bodies lay in death poses here and there, Rorschach-like lakes of blood dried to black ringing each and every one of them.
She imagined death coming from above and realized the destruction she was looking at was identical to what the rangers had wrought on Bishop’s men and his lakeside redoubt.
At the lake there had been smoking wreckage of fleeing SUVs with immolated bodies hanging from shattered windows and crispy getaway drivers with their hands still clutching what remained of the steering wheels. And like the destroyed houses here, dozens of camouflage-clad corpses had been sprawled outside of the two lakeside houses that had burned down around whoever had been stupid enough to mount a last stand from
within them. All together what she saw then and what she was looking at now left no doubt in her mind that highly trained soldiers did this too. In the next instant an icy chill traced her spine and she wondered how long she would last if she ever came up against a similar fighting force.
Just as the creatures below heard the helicopter and lifted their gaze skyward, Jamie shoved the what-ifs from her mind and directed her attention farther east where impressive rock formations running perpendicular to the Black Hawk’s flight path rose up hundreds of feet from the desert floor.
“Hate to have to raft that white water,” quipped Daymon.
Cade didn’t need to sneak a peek to know what the man was referring to. Everything had been imprinted indelibly during the thunder run down the Interstate weeks earlier. Combat had a way of doing that to him. And knowing firsthand from Beeson’s own generalized accounting of the operation that cleansed Green River of the two-legged vermin who had poked the hornets’ nest one time too many, he resumed his meditation. Unless his old mentor had softened with age or the SF soldiers under his command had for some reason pulled their punches—which based on previous experience, Cade deemed highly unlikely—everything he’d already imagined in his mind’s eye would correlate perfectly with what the others were seeing.
Certainly there had been no warning. No offer to surrender would have been extended. It just wasn’t Beeson’s style. He’d earned the reputation of being a straight shooter for two reasons. First, there was no marksman with a better record than him during that first war in the desert. And secondly, he didn’t pussyfoot around. Wrong him and he was shooting straight for the legs to make you beg for mercy or straight for the head to put you down for good. No winning of hearts and minds happened in Green River. Based on what Cade had seen, and Beeson had warned prior, the city was a cesspool before the failed attack on he and the Kids exposed the bandits’ real agenda. Therefore Beeson’s boys would have snuck in under cover of night and, through direct violence of action, and using night vision and silenced weapons to their advantage, sniped the sentries and patrols first before using standoff weapons to destroy any buildings deemed too dangerous to breach and/or clear on foot. No quarter would have been given and no stone left unturned. Lastly, before leaving in a flurry of beating rotor blades and roiling dust—exactly opposite a manner in which they’d arrived—for reasons both tactical and to send a message to anyone else who thought brutality and rape and stealing would be tolerated, the bodies would be allowed to lay where they fell for the buzzards and every single one of the bandit’s vehicles would be left sitting on rims with their tires slashed or burned to the ground. Definitely the tactic Cade would have employed if he were in charge. More dramatic than cleaning things up. Like a warning, but with a double exclamation mark.
But he hadn’t been in control of anything for quite some time. Hadn’t led men into harm’s way for nearly a month. Nor would he be in control of much more going forward.
Duncan’s low, drawn-out whistling jogged Cade’s mind to the present. Then the aviator commented about the shit show that had taken place on the ground below. Reiterating that he wouldn’t wish an ass whipping like that on his worst enemy.
Cade smiled but said nothing.
A tick later Duncan was business as usual and, in a skeptic’s voice, wondering aloud if the GPS coordinates Urch inputted were accurate. Then he said calmly, “Wheels down ... two minutes.”
Still preparing himself mentally for the next part of the mission, Cade said nothing.
Sounding equal measures confused and exasperated, Daymon said, “Two minutes?”
Hearing this, Cade opened his eyes and saw Lev unbuckling his harness and readying his tactical helmet. A half-beat later, on the other side of Lev, Jamie was out of her seatbelt and readying her ruck. On the latter half of the same heartbeat she was gripping her M4 two-handed and looking a question at Cade that said: What about my magazines?
Smiling at her and putting a hand up, like he expected order in the court, Cade said, “I hate to drop this on you, but—”
Interjecting, Daymon said, “There’s always a but with you, Sarge.”
Ignoring the barb, Cade continued, “I’m going solo from here on out. I hope I won’t be needing them ... but just in case ... they’re going with me.”
Obviously blindsided by the news, Jamie’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped. In the next beat, as the helicopter slowed, as if she’d embarrassed herself again, her mouth snapped shut and her jaw muscles bulged. After a second of looking like she was about to attack Cade, she crossed her arms and sat back hard in her seat without uttering another word.
Taking the revelation in stride, Lev placed his tactical helmet on the cabin floor and, looking at Cade, said, “I’ll help hold down the fort while you’re gone.” He handed over three of his own magazines. All full. Ninety rounds in total. “Just in case.”
Cade pocketed the mags. Then, with a modicum of regret for not coming clean earlier, he nodded toward the cockpit and mimed hoisting a flask to his lips. And to make himself crystal clear—while enduring a withering barrage of stink eye from Jamie—he covered Lev’s boom mic with one hand, pulled the earpiece away with the other, and whispered, “Watch the Old Man’s drinking. And keep an eye on the satellite phone for me, will you?”
Lev nodded. And though it was already an unspoken protocol among all of the Eden compound survivors to watch each other’s backs, he said, “I’ll look out for Brook and Raven.”
“Thanks,” said Cade. He thought: Brook can take of herself. And Raven’s getting there.
After a moment of silent introspection, he added, “Much appreciated.”
Unexpectedly Jamie clicked out of her harness and leaned forward, her face growing several shades of red. “I saved your ass,” she said, her voice rising an octave.
Cade said nothing. Gave his M4 a once over and patted the magazines on his chest, making sure the hook and loop was holding.
Speaking directly at Jamie, Daymon said, “I saved his ass too, once. And I’m as pissed off about being left out as you are. Truth is, though, I should be grateful for him putting the heat on Christian and Bishop. If he hadn’t I would have never seen Heidi again ... alive.”
“I saved his ass too,” said Duncan. “Welcome to the club, Jamie. It’ll pay off in spades. Dollars to doughnuts before all is said and done that humble fella sitting back there with you ... and, I’d like to note for the record, saying nothing to his own defense ... will one day save our asses ten times over. I’m already over the snub. Now quit yer grumbling so I can land this tub o' tin.”
A shroud of silence descended on the cabin.
Bleeding off airspeed, Duncan flared the Black Hawk and leveled off ten feet above the desert.
Cade removed the flight helmet and passed it to Lev. Then he pulled out a pen and quickly scribbled something akin to a small novel on the other half of the scrap of paper that the first set of GPS numbers were written on. Handed it forward to Daymon just as the Black Hawk touched terra firma and its heavy duty suspension swallowed up the uneven ground. Still saying nothing, Cade shouldered his ruck and donned his tactical helmet. M4 in one hand, he hauled open the starboard door, squinted against the gritty rotor driven blast, and leaped out.
Once his boots hit the ground, Cade turned and helped Lev close the door. Felt the latch catch and through the scuffed Plexiglas saw the younger man flashing him a textbook salute. Which he promptly reciprocated. Suddenly movement over Lev’s left shoulder caught Cade’s eye. Craning his neck, he noticed Daymon staring at him through the channel between the cockpit and crew cabin. His visor was up and, incredulous, he was shaking his head and mouthing the words: Thanks a lot.
“Sorry,” mouthed Cade, palms up and shrugging, the universal semaphore for it’s beyond my control. Without warning, the rotor revolutions increased rapidly until the disc was a blur and sand was once again abrading every square inch of his exposed skin. Imagining how bad Daymon must be feeling for once
again being excluded from the mission, and hearing in his head the verbal tantrum likely taking place inside the Black Hawk, Cade made a mental note to thank everyone later for working so well together as a team at the airport. And as he ducked away from the forty grit facial peel and subconsciously put a hand atop his helmet, it came to him that the right thing to do when next they spoke would be to make amends to not only Daymon, but all parties involved for him not being forthright from the start.
And then, to add insult to injury, he recalled telling Raven that withholding information is just the same as lying.
What’s good for the goose ... hypocrite.
In the Black Hawk, which was now a dozen feet off the desert floor, Jamie buckled in and promptly apologized for her outburst. Then, singling out Daymon, she said, “Want me to try and talk to Heidi when we get back?”
Daymon snapped the visor down, craned right and peered back into the cabin but said nothing.
“I’ve been where she was,” added Jamie. “I don’t know exactly what went on at the mansion, but I can guess. I’ll go slow.”
Behind the smoked visor Daymon’s eyes misted over. Nodding, he said, “At this point I’m open to anything.”
Perplexed, but not surprised that Cade had thrown them all a late-breaking curve ball, Duncan leveled the helo thirty feet above the rocky ground, looked at Daymon, and shrugged as if saying: Let’s make the best of this. As he spun the helicopter on a flat plane the better part of ninety degrees to the left, he caught a brief glimpse of Cade sitting near the canyon edge, left hand still raised against the blowing sand. Once the turn was complete and the juddering helo was pointing into the sun, Duncan pulled his visor down over his eyes and stole a last glance through the toe bubble at the lone operator who was now flashing a thumbs up.
Sure you’re good to go, thought Duncan. With the uncertainty of leaving Cade alone in the desert with little water and the hottest hours of the day ahead, he was hit with an intense and nearly overwhelming desire to extract the flask. Like energy coursing through a breaking wave, the urge grew and then ebbed but never fully dissipated. With his intellect losing the pitched battle in his head, he looked at Daymon and said, “Punch in the new waypoint.”
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 15
