by Ben Reeder
“Amy, sweetie, wake up,” I said gently. Her eyelids fluttered and finally opened as her head came up. From the way she was blinking and looking around, I could tell she was having trouble focusing.
“Dave?” she asked groggily. Her hand came up and fumbled for my shoulder.
“It’s okay, kiddo. We’re on the ground. Well, not exactly, but we’re safe for now.” I tried to be reassuring as I checked her a little more closely.
“Everything’s all blurry,” she murmured.
“You probably hit your head when we landed. I did the same thing. Just give it a few minutes, it’ll get better.” From behind me, I could hear the pilot and the lone conscious Marine talking quietly. I looked over my should in time to see the pilot shake his head and pull his hand away from the Marine with the leg wound.
“He must have bled out after we crashed,” he said. The other one nodded and crossed herself, then reached for the buckle on her harness. I turned back to Amy and undid her harness as well.
“Come on, sweetie,” I said as the straps came free. “Let’s get you out of this thing.” She leaned on my shoulder as I got her to her feet, and I helped her down to the roof. The pilot was also helping the wounded Marine down. Amy put her hand against the chopper’s hull to steady herself, and I reached back in for my cache tube then turned to the two Marines.
“We’ve got to get off this roof,” I said. The pilot was helping his wounded comrade pull her assault vest off, but he spared a second to give me glare as she sat on the edge of the rear deck.
“We’re about as safe here as we would be anywhere else, Mr. Stewart,” he said as he opened the first aid kit. “We’re on high ground, and this is a pretty defensible position. We’ve only got a couple more hours of sunlight left, so the best thing we can do is stay here until morning when we can get our bearings and make a plan.” He turned away and started inspecting the wounded Marine’s arm. Now that we weren’t being shot at or trying not to fall to our deaths, I was able to take in details. The female Marine had the two chevrons over crossed rifles of a corporal. Her name tag read Hernandez. The pilot had a subdued black bar on his rank tab, and Kaplan on the tape over his pocket.
“Lieutenant, most days I’d agree with you,” I said as I walked over to them. Hernandez winced as he poured the contents of a packet of Kwik-Clot over her wound. “But not today.”
“Listen, Mr. Stewart,” he said as he set the gauze wrap in Hernandez’ hand. He stood up and gave himself a few inches of vertical advantage on me before he went on. “We’re trained to handle situations like this. I know you’re scared right now, and I know this rooftop feels pretty exposed. From a civilian’s point of view, I can imagine how scary the situation must seem.” Behind him, Hernandez let out a little grunt that sounded like a laugh that had barely slipped under the wire. I took a deep breath and tried to reign my temper in, but somehow that seemed to make things worse.
“You’re…trained for things like this,” I said slowly. “When did the Marine Corps add zombie apocalypse to its leadership course curriculum? Because if they did, you sure as hell didn’t sign up for it! Look over there, lieutenant. Do you notice anything unusual about the dozens of reanimated dead people?” His head turned, then he turned back to me a couple of seconds later.
“Well, they’re dead again. Look, Mr. Stewart, you did a fantastic job keeping them away from the chopper, but that doesn’t’ change basic-”
“Scrubs, Kaplan! Scrubs and hospital gowns!” I cut him off. “We landed on top of a goddamn hospital.” His face went slack, and I watched the blood drain from his cheeks.
“Oh shit,” he breathed. “We’ve got to get the hell off this roof.” All I could do was nod. I went around to the other side of the chopper to find Armstrong, the only other Marine who hadn’t been hit when our bird had been strafed by a black chopper only minutes ago. His body was lying next to the chopper, his neck at an inherently unhealthy angle with a big chunk taken out of it. Stifling a curse, I turned him over and closed his staring eyes, then grabbed his dog tags. Next came the hard part: making sure he didn’t get back up again. Already I could see lines of black radiating from the gaping hole in his neck. My hands trembled as I drew the M9 from the holster on his vest and put the barrel under his chin. I paused for a second to say something, maybe apologize for what I was about to do, and his eyes opened. My finger tightened on the trigger by reflex.
“I’m okay,” I called out when I heard someone curse on the other side of the chopper. “Just making sure Armstrong didn’t get back up.” After a moment of debate, I started to pull his assault vest off as well. It had become an unsettling habit over the past few days, taking from the dead to serve the living. Only the vaguest hints of guilt were left by now, and those were buried under the promise I’d made to Maya to bring Amy home safe. If this was what I needed to do to get Amy to her, then I’d do it. By the time I had pulled everything useful off of PFC Armstrong’s body, Kaplan had the bandage on Hernandez’s arm, and she was shrugging back into her assault vest. He’d cut her left sleeve off to expose her arm, and a tan band of gauze circled her bicep about three inches above her elbow.
“But what’s the big deal about hospitals?” Amy was asking them.
“A lot of people who were infected went to the hospital at first,” Kaplan answered. “And when the stage one infected started attacking people, the only way to stop them was to kill them. In the early stages it took hours, sometimes longer for them to incubate to stage two and reanimate.” He tucked the first aid kit into a back pack and headed for the pilots’ compartment. “But by then, we’d locked most of the hospitals down. We thought we’d contained the worst of it by Saturday night.”
“After that, shit just went to hell all of the sudden,” Hernandez said. “We lost Washington, New York, and L.A. in just a few hours. Then they deployed us to the inprocessing centers, and we ended up trying to rescue as many civilians as we could. After that, it was pretty much ‘Shut up and gear up.’ Guess that was what? Three or four days ago?” Kaplan nodded as he shrugged into his own flight vest again. “Anyway, hospitals are bad news, girl. You got a whole lot of stage two infected wandering around in ‘em, and looks like some stage one, too. Lower levels are locked down or barricaded so they can’t get out. Thing is, I’ve seen ‘em do some weird things since all this started, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen ‘em up on a roof.”
“Yeah, we counted on that more than once,” Kaplan said as he pulled gear from behind his seat. “Seemed like most times infected would end up on the bottom floor unless they were chasing someone.”
“They were,” I said as I came around the chopper’s nose.
“What, chasing someone?” Amy asked. I nodded.
“I saw some bodies on the roof before I added to the collection. Makes me wonder who else has already been up here.”
“Does it matter?” Hernandez asked. She looked at the vest I had on and lowered her head, then crossed herself again.
“I don’t know. But I’d rather be sure it doesn’t.” She nodded at that and turned to Kaplan.
“Alright, people. Let’s get the chopper secured, gear up, and get ready to move out. Miss Weiss,” he turned to Amy, “I need you to keep an eye out for any infected while we work.” Amy nodded, then winced and repeated the gesture a little more slowly. Kaplan directed us in stripping out anything we could use, including the Blackhawk’s survival gear and weapons for all three adults. Once we had the gear out of the chopper, we turned to the grisly work of getting all he dead Marines’ dog tags and getting their bodies on board the chopper.
“Can your daughter use a handgun?” Hernandez asked me as we squatted next to the small pile of gear. I nodded and grabbed my cache tube.
“I taught her how to use my .45, but the recoil’s a little much for her just yet,” I said as I pulled my Ruger out of the tube. “She’s practiced with the 10/22 for a couple of years or so, though, and she’s pretty decent with my .22 revolver. I�
�d rather she use those.”
“You think she could handle a nine millimeter?” she asked while I unscrewed the top of the cache tube.
“Probably, but she’s never used an M9,” I said. I emptied the tube onto the rooftop and Hernandez let out a throaty laugh as the Colt, the revolver, and my Zombietools blades were laid out side by side with the rest of my survival gear.
“Shit, if I’d known you were gonna bring your own damn arsenal with you, I wouldn’t’ve bothered grabbing you a gun.” I checked the receiver on the Ruger, then grabbed the revolver and popped the cylinder out. Both guns were empty and clean. Truth was, I hadn’t expected anything less since I’d cleaned them both and unloaded them myself the night before we left Sherwood. But rule fifteen was an absolute: assume every gun is loaded, and don’t point any gun at something you want to keep, like people you wanted to keep around.
“Still gonna need one of those rifles,” I said as I thumbed .22 Velocitor rounds into the Ruger’s rotary box magazine. I loaded the first mag into the little rifle, then loaded the revolver before I called Amy over. She took the Ruger without a word, dropped the magazine out, looked it over then slid it back into place. Once the magazine release locked back into place, she pulled the receiver handle back to load a round into the chamber. While she didn’t speed through the process, she did it smoothly, without fumbling the rifle or hesitating. Once the rifle was taken care of, she checked to make sure the safety was on and slung it, and I handed her the revolver. Again, she ran through the basic steps, popping the cylinder out and back in, then giving it a quick once over before belting the holster on and tucking the gun away.
“Take these, too,” I told her. I held out two of the ZT Spikes in their leather sheath and my black survival bracelet. She nodded and tucked the knives away, then took the extra magazines and the box of .22 rounds I offered her.
“Rule eight,” we said in unison. She gave me a wan smile and headed back to the spot she’d picked out to watch from near the tail of the chopper.
“What’s rule eight?” Hernandez asked.
“Always carry a sharp knife,” I answered, and I grabbed the Tainto and slipped it onto my belt.
“What rule covers carrying a goddamn sword?” she asked when I picked up the Deuce II.
“Rule five: Always have a backup for everything. Swords never run out of ammo, they don’t jam, and they only have one moving part.” I slipped the sword across my back and felt my shoulders relax the second its three and a half pound weight settled between them. I had no idea why, but having that yard of steel close to hand made me feel better somehow. I had a dozen assault rifles to choose from, just as many pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammo, but none of that gave me the same comfort as one sword. Still, that one little bit of comfort was far from the strangest thing I’d seen in the past week.
“If you don’t mind,” Kaplan said as he walked up, “I’d prefer you take Armstrong’s M39 instead of one of the M16s.” He handed me a heavy canvas gun case and nodded at it. I set it down and unzipped it to reveal a heavily modified looking M14. “You’re already wearing his vest, so you’ve got the right ammo for it.” I picked up the gun and tested its weight. It felt heavier than the M14’s in the Land Master trucks Nate had provided, but it was also sporting a scope and a bipod. I checked it out and pulled the receiver handle back, then let it slide forward. The safety slipped to the semi-auto position with a flick of my finger, and it dry fired smoothly. I looked to the selector switch, then back at Kaplan.
“Don’t trust me with an automatic?” I asked drily.
“Nope,” he said seriously. “You’re a civilian. And no offense, I’ve seen you go full auto. You’re a goddamn menace. The M39 is an Enhanced Marksman’s Rifle, so if you can’t hit what you’re shooting at with it, you’re getting a slingshot and a handful of rocks.” He set an ammo case down next to the gun case and pulled two thermite grenades from his vest. “Get what you need packed up and ready. Then we need to figure out where the hell we’re going.”
“No argument here,” I said. “I want to take a look around myself. Something happened here, and I want to know what.”
“It’s called the end of the fucking world,” Hernandez grumbled. “It ain’t that hard to figure out.” Kaplan gestured for me to move, and I wasted no time in getting myself away. He squatted down next to her as I slung the rifle and walked over to the far side of the roof where Amy was looking out over the city. She had my survival bracelet in her hand, and she was looking down at the dogtag strapped to it. When I reached her side she put her arm around me and laid her head against my shoulder without a word.
“Are we gonna die?” she finally asked.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I said softly. “And I think I’m getting pretty good at the whole not dying thing. Porsche and I made it across Springfield, then I got away from the Army and walked home before I rode a bike out to Sherwood pretty much all by myself. Imagine what I can do with you and two Marines with me.” She looked up at me and gave me a tiny but genuine smile. “Besides, I promised your Mom I’d get you to her safe.”
“And Dad,” she said softly. “He told you to take care of me, too.” The image of Karl falling into the swarm of undead beneath the chopper flashed through my memory again, and I closed my eyes. Take care of my little girl. Those had been his last words to me before he’d thrown himself out of the Blackhawk to make sure we could escape.
“I will, sweetie,” I told her as I hugged her tight. I took the survival bracelet from her and snapped it around her wrist. “I’m your sword and your shield, your sentry and avenger. I’ll defend you with my life. I’ll never leave you behind, I’ll never falter, and I will not fail. I promise you that.” The words were adapted from the Airman’s Creed, and saying them felt right. Up to now, I’d promised everyone but Amy that I’d look after her. If anyone needed to hear that promise just then, it was her. Her arms tightened around me for a moment, then she pulled back and looked up at me with damp cheeks.
“You’re hired,” she said with a sniffle. “Just do me a favor?”
“Name it,” I told her.
“If…if we make it to Wyoming or wherever we’re going, will you marry Mom?” The question made my jaw drop, and no words would come out of my mouth. She pressed on before I could reboot my vocabulary. “Because this is kind of one of those intense bonding things people go through, so I’m probably gonna slip someday and call you Dad. And when I do that, I want it to be kinda legit, you know?”
“Okay,” I said. “When we get to Nate’s place, I’ll ask your Mom to marry me. But she might say no.” Amy shook her head and her nose crinkled up in a smirk. “Sure of that, are ya? So, deal is this. I made that bracelet in Iraq. I’m pretty attached to it. So, when we get to Wyoming, I want it back. Now, let’s go take a look around before you talk me into anything else.” She fell in step behind me as I started toward the structure across the roof from the chopper.
The crowd of dead and disabled zombies was halfway across the roof, but between them and the structure I had seen several bodies. When I got to the first one, I was faced with a blank eyed corpse on its back. A single bullet hole marred the dead man’s left cheek, but judging from the red stain beneath his deformed skull, the hole on the other side was a lot bigger. This was the closest look I’d gotten at any of the infected, and I found myself staring in spite of myself. Black veins stretched across his face and up his neck from under his maroon scrub top. His hands were also laced with black veins up to the forearm. Both eyes looked red and ruptured, and I couldn’t tell if that was from the bullet or from something else. But I could see the black tracing of the veins in the whites clearly enough.
“Truman Medical Center,” Amy read from beside me. She reached out and plucked the ID badge from his pocket. “Oh, damn.” She handed me the badge before she stood and turned away. Bill Skinner. Pediatrics. I laid it next to the body and touched Amy’s shoulder. She followed me, but her eyes went back to
Skinner’s body. Suddenly the infected were a little more human to her. I knew it was a disturbing revelation, but it also meant she was a decent human being. The next infected body had also taken a bullet to the face, this one through an eye. I stood and headed for the structure, noting several more infected sprawled on the roof top along the way. Every one of them had a round through the face or head. I saw blood on the roof and brass casings in a trail leading toward the building in front of me. When I got to the structure, several bodies were laid out in front of the open doorway, and I could see a pair of scrub covered legs sticking out of the door. When I peeked inside, I could see a fatigue clad body slumped against a closed door set in the far wall. Blood stained the side of his torso and his left leg, and I could see a couple of holes in the side of his assault vest. A black submachine gun with a thick barrel was slung across his chest, and he held a pistol I was familiar with in his left hand: a SOCOM with a Laser Aiming Module and a suppressor attached. I crossed the few steps to him and went to one knee beside him.
“Sir?” I said as I looked him over. If he was what I thought he was, the absolute last thing I needed to do was reach out and grab him unexpectedly. Under the black bowl helmet he wore, his brown hair was longer than military regs allowed, and he sported a beard. His chest didn’t move, so I finally put my hand to his left wrist. His skin was cool, and there was no pulse under my fingertips. I cursed and put my hand to his neck, but I found no dogtags.
“Who was he?” Amy asked from the door.
“Special forces of some kind,” I told her as I took the SOCOM and worked at getting the submachine gun free.