“Well, let’s do what we can, but don’t stick your neck out too far, Henry, okay?” Ellen asked as she put her hand on Henry’s shoulder.
“You know what dad always said,” Henry replied. “Plan plans, not results, We’ll do what we can and then do what we have to.”
“You’re sounding like your father more and more each day,” Ellen said.
The sound of more shots floated on the morning air, and they watched and waited, knowing that a dark army was on their way. It was all they could do. Hurry up and wait.
Chapter 50
Field Experiments
“Do you see him?” Garver said as he held the helicopter in a slow hover on the north side of the bridge.
“He went under the supports,” Jones replied. “I can’t spot him, and it looks like he’s gotten smart about not shooting at us. He has to know the muzzle flashes will give him away.”
“What if he’s got an RPG launcher locked in on us right now?” Garver asked as his eyes darted across the landscape under the bridge.
“Then you’d better be nimble, old man, or else we’re all dead,” Jones said.
Clayton yelled from the back of the helicopter, “Just find the fucker and kill his ass.”
Zombies flowed in and out of the bridge support pillars holding up the bridge. Shadows veiled most of what was underneath, making Jones and Garver’s job more challenging. Every few seconds, there was the hint of something, just a flash of movement, but it turned out to be another damned zombie.
Some of the zombies stayed under cover of the bridge, while some ventured out and looked up with rapturous expressions. The noise and motion of the helicopter captured them. It was their way.
“Move us to the right,” Jones said.
Garver navigated them to the right about seventy-five feet when bullets pinged off the front of the chopper. A spiderweb of cracks spread like chain lightning across the windshield.
Garver jerked them upward and away from the hail of bullets.
“Son of a bitch!” He shouted.
“Did you see where that came from?” Jones asked.
“From the left,” Garver said, “but I didn’t see where. It was a fucking hit and run. If that bastard gets lucky, he’ll knock us out of the sky.” He stopped and let out a rush of air. “I want to fire a rocket in there.”
“We only have a few left,” Jones said.
“If you’re waiting for a rainy day,” Garver said, “this is fucking it because it’s pouring.”
Del shouted from the back of the helicopter, “I’m with Garver. Fire off a couple of those babies.”
Jones turned to Garver, and it was obvious that he was mulling it over. His eyebrows went up, then they fell. “Fire one in there.”
Garver slowly pivoted the bird and grabbed a new control stick. His tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth as he worked the aim. It was like he was a surgeon looking for a place to make that first cut.
“Any day now,” Jones said.
Garver shot him a glance but quickly returned his attention to his aim. A second after that, he let loose with a rocket. It slammed into the space beneath the bridge, exploding in a fireball that filled the area with a fiery flash of orange and yellow. The sound of the impact rolled out from under the bridge, sending out a concussive force that shook the helicopter.
“Holeeee shit,” Clayton shouted. “Did you get that asshole?”
“There’s too much smoke to tell,” Jones said.
Billows of smoke rolled out from the support pillars, flowing along the ground and drifting upward. Burning zombies broke out of the smoke, stumbling, enveloped in flames. They stumbled along, heading for the water as if driven by some primal instinct. Two or three of them actually made it into the river, sending up waves of steam, then the current grabbed them and swept them away. The others collapsed into the dirt and continued to smolder with smoke wafting off of them. One crawled along for a few feet, then collapsed face-first onto the ground and didn’t move again.
“Take that, you son of a bitch,” Garver said in a loud whisper.
“We don’t know if we got him,” Jones said.
As if on cue, a rip of bullets struck the right side of the helicopter. Clayton jumped away from the open door and hit the floor as bullets slammed into the ceiling. They cascaded off the roof, sending a small shower of sparks into the interior of the chopper.
Garver once again yanked the stick to get out of the way of the bullets.
“Did someone see where that came from?” Jones shouted.
Del was on the other side of the helicopter. “No.”
Clayton said, “Shit, I was just trying to stay alive.”
Garver pivoted the chopper again, and Jones saw his hand was on the controls to launch another missile. “No, don’t do it. We may need those later,” Jones said.
“Again, with that,” Garver said.
“We could shoot all of them and not hit him,” Jones said. He glanced out the windshield for a long few moments, then said, “We need to try the gas.”
“You sure about that?” Garver said.
“We can’t burn through all our rockets,” Jones replied. “We may need those later.” He turned in his chair and looked back into the helicopter. “Are you ready with the gas, Del?”
Del held the sprayer wand and swallowed, “I guess so.”
“You gotta do better than guess,” Clayton growled out. “You fuck up with that thing, and we’re all dead.”
“I’m ready, I’m ready!” Del replied sharply, but nothing in his body language aligned with that. He put the sprayer wand down and picked up a biohazard helmet complete with a respirator, but knew if a whole dose blew back on him, he would probably be toast. Besides, it would probably take out Garver, and if that happened, that was the whole ball game.
Still, Del slipped the helmet on. After he fitted it on his head, he picked up the sprayer wand again but held it as far from his body as he could.
Clayton slowly drifted from his position opposite from Del and got in beside Jones. His eyes were wide, and he desperately wished he had some protective gear. When he glanced out of the side window, which gave him a perfect view back onto the hill that led to the Sanctum, he saw something that gave him pause. The zombies had stopped their march up the hill and looked to have even backed up toward the river.
“Hey, Sarge,” Clayton said. “The zombies on the other side of the river looked like they have stopped.”
“We can’t pay attention to that right now,” Jones said. “We have a job to do.” He turned his attention back to Garver. “You’re going to need to get in close to the bottom of the bridge. That old crop duster said the sprayer can only reach about seventy-five feet.”
“You know that will leave us a sitting duck for that thing with the machine gun, right?” Garver said.
“It’s not what you want you want to do,” Jones said, “It’s what needs done.”
“Do you have any more inspiring sayings from the 1890s you want to share with me?” Garver asked.
Jones let out a long breath of exasperation and said, “Just do it.”
Garver let out an audible grumble, grabbed the stick, and pushed the helicopter down toward the open mouth of the underbelly of the bridge. He felt conspicuously vulnerable as the pilot’s seat faced the opening. It didn’t help that Del was just a few feet behind him with a gas toxic enough to kill any human in a hundred-yard radius. And from what the scientist said, it wasn’t a pretty death.
“Steady,” Jones said. “Steady”
If the flight into position hadn’t been taking every ounce of his concentration, Garver would have told Jones to shut the hell up.
Attracted by the noise of the helicopter, zombies streamed out from the shadows of the bridge, and looked up expectantly as if the chopper were bearing gifts.
“Del, man, you know if that gas will drift back on us?” Clayton asked.
“Emmett said it wouldn’t, but he only did a few tes
ts in the lab,” Del said. “He wasn’t under a bridge in a helicopter with a stiff morning breeze coming out of the west.”
“You’re really inspiring me with confidence,” Clayton said.
“Garver, when I say go, you fly up and out,” Del said. “I’m going to give them the gas, and I want us to get the hell back from the bridge.
“You’ll get no arguments here,” Garver replied. “Just give the word.”
Sweat popped out on Del’s forehead, and his hands felt sweaty. In essence, the operation was simple. He aimed the sprayer wand and pressed the trigger. From what Emmett and the scientist said, the gas would come out in what was close to liquid spray, then it would vaporize. They didn’t quantify the time it would take for it to go from a liquid to a gas, but they said it would happen quickly. Del wished he had asked what quickly meant, but there was no time for that.
Of course, being killed from gas wasn’t the only way he could die. With the helicopter gently floating down and his door wide open, he was a clear target to the smart zombie the machine gun. The only thing he could do about that was to push that thought out of his mind. That didn’t give him a lot of comfort.
Garver had the helicopter about fifty feet off the ground when he gently guided it toward the opening under the bridge.
“Any closer, and I’ll clip the blades off the supports,” Garver said. “It’s now or never.”
That’s all Del needed to hear. “Get ready,” he said.
Chapter 51
Under the Bridge
I should shoot them again, Maxwell thought as he played with the trigger on his assault rifle. They were right there, floating in the sky, an easy target. Through the dust kicked up by their last rocket shot and the zombies trudging around, he still had a nearly direct shot at the helicopter.
But he knew if he shot again, his muzzle flash would tell them exactly where he was. Then they would open up with the guns. That or send in one of those rockets. The last one had come much too close. Even for someone half-dead, the thought of being killed that way nearly petrified him.
Since being brought back from death to live this half-life existence, he had only been truly frightened twice.
Once was when they were at the military base when some soldiers inside started lobbing mortars over the wall into the midst of their zombies. Zombies close to him. Feet away, in fact. He remembered the spray of blood and body parts splattering over him. The soldiers inside rained down mortars on him, and it seemed like a violent thunderstorm rushing in.
But he had survived because Lance and Grayson took care of the soldiers launching the mortar rounds. They sent their zombies in and wiped out all of them.
The other time was when Audrey got caught in a shootout with a cadre of police in a small city on the west side of Ohio. These guys were loaded for bear, wearing tactical gear, and bringing shotguns and automatic weapons to the fit. It was a small town, but they had been ready for war.
Lance and Grayson had played it fast and loose as this tiny little burg thinking it could just be rolled over. The police and the townspeople put up a ferocious fight. Lance had directed Audrey to take the lead because he thought the town would be a pushover.
The story turned much different. The streets and buildings were designed in such a way that Audrey got boxed in. The locals pinned Audrey down and took out over half of her zombies. A group of attackers ran along the rooftops, blasting shots downward. Audrey got hit more than once as she cowered behind a truck. It was only a matter of time before they ended up directly over her with the perfect shooting angle.
This was the time that Maxwell found the courage to risk his own half-life. He let out a primal roar as he rushed into a hail of bullets to rescue her. Two shots slammed into his torso, but he shook them off. All the while, the police rained bullets down onto Audrey’s position.
Maxwell burst onto the scene as more bullets whizzed by them. Zombies fell like weeds being mowed down by a weed whacker. Maxwell wrapped his arms around Audrey’s middle, and he carried her toward a storefront with a plate-glass window. It was go through the window or be mowed down in the street.
So, that’s what he did. He pushed Audrey’s body along as they raced toward the window. A bullet slammed into Maxwell’s back just as he hit the glass, propelling him forward. Glass shattered around them. The next thing he knew, they were tumbling across the floor into mannequins and clothing displays, sending them sprawling.
After he untangled himself from the clothing, he found himself looking down at Audrey, and she was looking back up at him. Despite their beaten and bloody appearances from crashing through the window, he knew he loved her. Loved her more than anything. It was just like when they had been fully alive before they had been bitten and then brought back into this half life.
This half-living had dulled those feelings as they had been covered by their hatred of the living. He knew this hatred had been born of the resentment that those fully alive humans were just that - alive, while they were forced into a half-life. That and the voice that spoke to them at night. He sometimes thought that when they had been transformed that it had opened them up to influence, but he shook off these thoughts. He and Audrey were truly one again.
It was at that moment that he knew he would give his life for Audrey. And he knew she would do the same for him. It was also when they pledged to leave Lance and Grayson.
As soon as the moment was right, but the moment always got pushed off. There was always one more town to wipe out. And the voice whittled away at them at night. It wore them down, and they stayed, but maybe it was because Lance and Grayson were just like them. That the only way for them to survive was for all of them to stick together.
But Maxwell had reached his limit. This city would be his last to conquer. Then he and Audrey would make their break. One last time and they would run. But he had to survive the attack by the helicopter, first.
He wondered how many more of those rockets they had? Maybe that last one was their only one, and they shot it off in a Hail Mary move?
The questions ate at his confidence. What if they had ten? Then they would surely take him out.
Still, his finger teased the trigger on his gun. The helicopter drifted gently down, making him think of a butterfly, only in truth, this insect was more like a wasp, ready to sting him. And its sting wasn’t a painful nuisance. It could obliterate him.
Still, he brought up his rifle and looked down the sights. The helicopter drifted down into the center of them, perpendicular to him. The side door was open, and a man was just inside. There was a large gray tank beside him, and he held a wand of some sort in his hand, sticking it outside the door.
Maxwell contemplated pulling the trigger, but the thought of giving up his position held him back. But a question bounced around his head. What the hell was in that tank?
Chapter 52
First Blood
Del depressed the trigger. A long, steady stream shot from the sprayer, disappearing into the darkness under the bridge. He decided it would be best to disperse the spray and waved the wand back and forth. By the time he moved the sprayer wand from right to left in a wide foot arc, the liquid had started to vaporize into a gas.
It was almost like a magic trick. The once liquid spray turned into a gas that quickly spread in the space under the bridge. After about five seconds, the gas cloud covered the zombies below and began to billow outward.
“GO!” Del shouted at the top of his lungs. “GO! GO!”
Del yanked the sprayer wand back in the window after shouting for Garver to get them away from the spreading gas.
Garver didn’t need any more encouragement and shot the helicopter upward and outward. Del lost his balance and flopped onto his back. Fortunately, his fingers were not on the sprayer wand’s trigger.
Clayton was more prepared but still had to hold on to one of the dangling handles inside the helicopter for support.
Garver had them at a thousand feet in less than four seconds. A
ll the while, Jones locked his eyes down below, watching the expanding greenish-gray cloud spread out from under the bridge. It drifted up and wrapped around the jagged edges of broken concrete, looking both innocent and threatening at the same time. How could a simple green cloud harm anyone or anything?
Their rapid rise took them away from a peak observation position, so Jones said, “Get us closer. We need to see if this shit works.”
“Well, if it does, then I don’t want to get closer,” Garver said. “Besides, the scientists said it will work. That doctor agreed.”
Jones turned to Garver and said, “But I have to confirm it. This isn’t a lab, and they only did a single test. If you’re worried, move us out and down. We need eyes on what is happening under that bridge.”
There was no ignoring a deep hesitancy on Garver’s part, but they had just taken an incredible risk. The only way it paid off was to take a look.
So, he let the helicopter slowly drift down as he pushed them a couple hundred feet further out from the bridge. He pivoted the bird in the air, pointing the craft straight on at the bridge, hovering at about a hundred feet.
“Del, stay ready,” Jones said. “We may need to make another run.”
Del did as he was told, but he was more than a little curious to see if the scientist’s experiment had worked.
What Clayton, Jones, and Garver saw out the front windshield was an expanding greenish gas cloud, wafting out from under the bridge. Garver held his hand tight on the stick, ready at a moment’s notice to jet the hell out of there. Fortunately, it looked as if the gas had some weight and density to it as it fell onto the ground, covering it like a blanket.
As for the effect on the zombies, it looked as their motions were jerkier than normal. They would make a stutter step forward, but then it looked as if the puppet master had suddenly jerked their strings, pulling them backward. They stumbled and flailed their arms in the air to maintain their balance.
Deep down, Jones desperately hoped they had found something that would take out the zombies. That had been the Holy Grail of the scientists back at the base and also around the world. If something other than a bullet to the brain could be used to take the undead bastards down, it could tip the scales in a game-changing way. Too bad, no scientist had discovered any agent, liquid, gas, or whatever that could be used to take out mass swaths of zombies at once. It was as if their physiology was utterly impervious to nerve agents that would kill a living, breathing human in seconds.
The Deadland Chronicles | Book 4 | Siege of the Dead: Page 23