Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (29 page)

Cade bellowed in order to be heard over the Herc’s
turboprops. “I need a sit rep from you, Lopez.”

A second later Lopez replied. “Jasper just finished
transferring the bodies aboard. I’m going in to check on Hicks.”

“Listen,” Cade said. “Even if you don’t find any bites on
Hicks, I want you to cuff him just to be on the safe side.”

“Roger that. Time’s running out, Captain. You need to get
yourself aboard.”

Cade made no reply. He drew a bead on the closest of the
fast little Zs and dropped it to the road. He shifted aim and snapped off a
dozen shots, enjoying a less than fifty-percent success rate on the others.

Then two things caught his attention at once: in his side
vision he saw a fresh corpse cresting the embankment on his right, and from out
of nowhere, barely audible over Oil Can’s oppressive din, he heard an
all-too-familiar sound. Craning his head all the way around, he ignored the
fresh turn, looked over his right shoulder and saw the Chevy’s crumpled and
gore-spattered bumper and grill complete with the stove bolt Chevy emblem dead center
bearing down on him fast. He followed the truck with his eyes as it swerved
around him, peppering his face with hot rubber and gravel, then continued on a
diagonal tack, narrowly avoiding the Hercules’s outside starboard engine and
deadly spinning prop. Then, at the last moment, when Cade was certain the truck
was going to plunge over the embankment, whoever was driving course corrected
and brought the rear-end back around, sending a rooster tail of dirt and gravel
flying. There was an intermittent chirping from the tires as the truck drifted
sideways, and finally a brief moment when the driver’s full profile was
presented and Cade learned that Jasper was behind the wheel.

 He watched the truck for a spell and then squeezed a few
more shots at the advancing monsters, and when the count in his head reached
twenty-eight he swung the M4 a ninety-degree arc, flipped the 3x magnifier away
and settled the holographic pip on the fresh turn’s forehead.

For a brief second as the thing closed the distance, Cade second-guessed
himself, wondering if he’d fouled up his count.

But thankfully his consternation was dispelled when the
carbine responded to his trigger pulls and a pair of crimson holes appeared
where the Zs eyes had been and the bolt locked open.

He threw the M4 aside, and as the dusty truck neared the far
end of 90 near the burnt-out road block, Cade watched it swerve, double back,
and drive back and forth from shoulder to shoulder across both lanes running
down the remaining zombies.

“Brilliant move, Jasper,” he said to himself. “Going out
heroically and on your own terms.”

But he wasn’t alone. Catching him by surprise, two pair of
hands, each grabbing an arm, hauled him to his feet and Cross and Lopez hustled
him towards the Hercules.

Once aboard, Cade collapsed into a seat on the starboard
side, cinched himself in, and closed his eyes. He barely detected the hydraulic
whine as the ramp was closing. The engines spooling up were a vague memory, but
the smooth g-inducing take off and subsequent gut-pressing sixty-degree climb
were lost, because instantly he’d succumbed to unconsciousness after what
seemed like a full lifetime’s worth of running and gunning and
adrenaline-fueled peaks and valleys all squeezed into a two-hour span.

Schriever AFB

Overhead, fluorescents continued to serenade Brook with a
steady, almost subliminal, hiss. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting on
the thin carpet with her back to the paneled wall. No way of telling, since
she’d gone off and left her watch on the nightstand back in Portland on that
Saturday in July when the shit hit the fan, as Cade had been wont to say
lately. What was supposed to have been a short visit with her parents in sunny
Myrtle Beach had turned into a nightmare that she feared was about to get
worse.

Scooting over a few inches, and risking a cauliflower ear if
Tiny decided to leave his post, she pressed her head to the door and listened
hard. No change. There was the same busy sound. The squelch of sturdy,
military-soled footwear on carpet. The low murmur of concerned voices
overridden occasionally by someone giving instruction. Issuing orders. But
nothing new. Nothing suggesting Mister Murphy had hung up his spurs for the day
after she’d learned Cade was still alive God knows how long ago. Minutes? An
hour? Suddenly she wanted her watch. Then she could truly gauge how fast the
odds were tipping in Murphy’s favor. Like watching sand work its way through an
hourglass, but instead it’d be relayed to her by a series of cogs and gears
seemingly working in unison against her family.

She scooted back to her post against the wall, adjacent from
the carefully-posed head shot of Schriever’s base commander circa 1999. That
had been a very good year. Newly married to a wonderful man. The love of her
life. Pregnant, with a girl no less. A bit of information only she had been
privy to up until Raven’s birth. Cade wanted it to be a surprise. Said he’d
love the baby regardless—boy or girl, it didn’t matter. She had been so happy
then.

A dull roar sounded from somewhere in the building, sending
conditioned air through the vents overhead. The initial blast from above
snatched her away from the swirling cauldron of emotions. Brought her back to
the present. To face her problem head on. To face the people in the room and
watch the rescue mission play out no matter the consequence.

She rose to standing and stood outside the door, one deep
breath away from delivering a no-nonsense—let-me-the-eff-in—kind of knock, when
an unfamiliar sound reverberated through the security door like a crashing
breaker. The next thing Brook knew the door was open and a beaming Secret
Service agent was ushering her inside.

Taken aback at first by the fact that Tiny was smiling, she
was truly baffled when she noticed every person in the room was wearing a wide
grin.

Maybe the Pueblo horde had been defeated?

But that supposition was squashed when she looked at monitor
two and saw what looked like a war being waged in downtown Springs.

As she took a few tentative steps into the room and worked
her way into a position where she could easily see the other monitors, another
raucous cheer cycled around the room.

Maybe the aircraft bringing the scientists to safety had
landed?

She looked at monitor one on the left and saw that the black
Osprey was in fact back at Schriever and on the ground, its massive rotors
spinning slowly, little figures spilling from the rear ramp.

Good for them. Then, fearing the worst, she let her gaze
wander to screen three, where at first due to the smaller scale what was happening
on the interstate near Draper was nearly impossible to decipher.

“Brook.”

She looked around to see who was calling her name. A tick
later the giddy Air Force personnel standing nearby quickly parted, and the
equally diminutive Major Freda Nash appeared.

“They did it,” said the major, smiling broadly and raising
her arms getting ready to initiate a hug.

But Brook wasn’t having it. She made a face and shook her
head and said, “Who did what?”

“You weren’t watching?”

Shaking her head, Brook said, “No. I was outside in the
hall.”

“Ari Silver, Cade, and two of his Delta team made it aboard
the Hercules. Hell of a job on the pilot’s part. Come with me and I’ll fill you
in.”

Ignoring the major who had already turned and was hustling
over to where the President was surrounded by her detail, Colonel Shrill, and a
gaggle of personnel in blue and gray tiger striped Air Force camos, Brook
instead bolted for the back door. Call her callous, but at this point she
didn’t want to know the details. That Cade was alive was all that mattered.
With hot tears streaking her face, she hit the door running and retraced her
steps to the rear entrance, where inexplicably Airman Davis was still waiting
with the Cushman in the hot afternoon sun. She retrieved her M4 from the bushes
where she’d left it and thanked Davis for waiting as she crowded in next to
him. Then as an afterthought, she asked how long she’d kept him waiting.

“Not long,” he replied.

Whether he was being truthful or just diplomatic in his
answer she hadn’t a clue. Time had a way of getting away from her. So she
decided to collect Raven and get them both to the tarmac. She didn’t want to
miss anything else today.

Especially not giving her man a proper welcoming home.

I-25 Colorado, Springs

Sergeant First Class Larry Eckels and his men held the first
two moats for a little over an hour.

After springing the trap and successfully negotiating the
graded dirt road paralleling moats one through three, the two M-ATVs, call
signs Jumper One-One and One-Two, positioned themselves on either side of the
middle overpass where they joined a pair of Strykers and a trio of Bradley
fighting vehicles.

There they waited until a couple thousand more dead entered
the new “kill box” before opening fire. And while they waited, heavy metal
music serenaded them from a Humvee rigged with loudspeakers situated on a side
street a quarter mile to their six.

During the first engagement, the M-ATVs employed a
talking
machine gun tactic
whereas each vehicle would take turns firing while the
other reloaded thus giving their machine gun’s super-heated barrels time to
cool down. The alternating crossing streams of fire, waist-high, pulverized the
first echelon of dead with thousands of 7.62 rounds, effectively turning wave
after wave of them into crawlers. Then, as Sergeant Eckels had predicted, the
next surge of creatures helped to finish the job the 240s had started, crushing
skulls and vertebra alike under the weight of their relentless advance.

Next, after the M-ATVs’ ran out of ammunition, the two
Strykers—eight-wheeled tank-like armored vehicles outfitted with the Protector
M151 Remote Weapon Station, which employed both the M2 Browning .50 caliber and
an M240 machine gun—entered the battle. And in unison with the Strykers, the three
M2 Bradleys brought their own M240 and 2,200 rounds of 7.62 mm into the fight.
The result was devastating at first, because by the end of that first hour
there were so many dead piling up that there was a clear and present danger the
newly arriving Zs would disrupt the pre-positioned claymore mines and spill
over the coiled concertina wire.

Since the objective was to keep the dead marching into the
chute until they were decimated, Eckels had been forced to blow the claymores
prematurely and start the diesel burning.

***

Now sitting in the idling M-ATV on the third overpass, he
watched the Strykers and Bradleys continue to hammer away at the dead.

Several Black Hawk helicopters as well as a pair of Apache
attack helicopters were taking turns orbiting over the horde, sending
groundward steady streams of lead and cannon fire and further thinning their
ranks.

Sergeant Eckels marveled at the drive the things exhibited.
Hell, he thought. If Americans would have had half the tenacity when they were
alive that they exhibited after turning, there would have been no way the
country could have fallen as quickly as it did.

But what really got him was how the Zs kept trudging ahead
even though they were ablaze. Finally being stilled only after all of their
hair and skin and muscle was fully engaged and the resulting heat cooked their
brains right inside their skulls.

As he watched they seemingly succumbed to the burning
diesel. Just sort of bow down and sink in. No kicking and screaming. No
fighting the licking flames. Total submission.

Suddenly, next to him, Huddie growled. A little tremor just
to let his master know he was still there. Then the shepherd’s tail thumped the
seat. An action that always garnered a good scratching between the ears.

“All elements, we’re oscar mike in two minutes,” Sergeant
Eckels said into the comms as he reached back and delivered the desired
attention. “Proceed to the final staging area.” He put the mike down and cast
his gaze to the BFT display, and was pleased to see that the snaking red line
had been nearly cut in half. Then, as the M-ATV began rolling and his driver
maneuvered the vehicle between a Stryker and a pair of Bradleys, he keyed the
mike, hailed Schriever and delivered a detailed situation report.

Aboard Oil Can Five-Five

When Cade came to, he was disoriented and felt like his
heart had transited his body and was now pounding away furiously deep inside
his left ankle. Someone had removed his helmet and the comms along with it. The
sweat matting his hair to his skull was drying and made his head cold. After a
second it all came back to him, and he walked his gaze around the
sparsely-appointed cylindrical cabin.

It was dim inside, and most of the team’s tactical gear had
been flung and left where they’d fallen. He could see helmets, gloves, elbow
and knee pads wherever his gaze fell. Ballistic vests and weapons were piled in
a much neater manner near the plane’s cargo ramp. A few feet away, under an
assortment of tarps used to cover cargo, were shapes he presumed were the
bodies of Tice and Durant. There was also one corpse underneath an American
flag. And judging by the bare foot peeking out at one end, Cade had no doubt
that it was his old friend and teammate, General Ronnie “Ghost” Gaines.

He unclipped his safety belt, and under his own power
trudged across the fuselage and sat down hard on the floor next the flag-draped
body. He retrieved the thin box containing the Medal of Honor presented to him
by the President. Opened the box and unfurled the ribbon attached to the
polished pendant. He peeled back a corner of Old Glory and slipped the medal
over the general’s head.
Well deserved, my friend
, crossed his mind as
he rewrapped the flag.