by Mark Clodi
“And me. Don't forget about me bleeding to death here.” said Chen from one side.
“Oh, you haven't passed out yet? Okay. Then you too.” said Bill with a grin.
At that moment the edge of the dust twirled around in a miniature cyclone and then the helicopter burst forth into the sunny afternoon. Max raised the flare pistol and fired into the air, then reloaded and fired again at a slightly different angle. The helicopter had been moving off to the right, but changed course slowly and flew towards them. There were guns mounted in open doorways on both sides of the aircraft, each was manned and pointing towards them as they waited on the pier. Slowly the helicopter stopped and hovered about thirty feet off of the ground, then is slowly began to sink until the skids rested on the pier between where Max was standing and the car. Javier and Ruben hopped out of the boats they had been in and formed up with the others into a little group.
A tall black man climbed out of the helicopter and strode confidently towards them.
“Max. Bill. Everyone. I told you to stay with the train.”
“Good to see you too Commander.” muttered Ruben under his breath. Javier heard him, but it was doubtful anyone else had due to the noise from the helicopter, which had not been shut down.
“Draper. How did your mission go?” asked Max bitterly over the noise.
“I am here, so are you, so don't look so angry or I might not offer you a lift out.” shouted Draper.
“That bird looks pretty full already.” Ruben yelled from behind Bill. “Think we can squeeze in there?”
“Yes, I think you can. Let's get your people boarded sergeant.”
As they helped Stewart and Chen along Draper leaned over and yelled into Max's ear. “Did you get the target?”
“The sniper did, I saw the guy shot right in front of me. Bill and I had him cornered behind a statue, but the sniper had a clear shot at him. There was another one too, a woman, but she didn't get finished off, she only got hit in the neck. Last I saw her, she was twitching.”
“You didn't kill it too?”
“Colonel, we were headed that way when bombs started dropping on us, they blew up the sniper's building and huge chunks of that were falling like rain all around us. We ran and were lucky to get away, we had better luck than the sniper anyway, he probably died when his building collapsed.”
"Probably. We went back and looked for her. The sniper was a woman, a specialist by the name of Kimberly Tania Tucker. Her partner was Randall Steven Goodcrest, we tried to locate them, but the area was too saturated with dust and rubble for us to see anything. My understanding is Randall may have died from an infected wound earlier, because Specialist Tucker called in the artillery strikes."
"On herself?"
Draper looked back at the dust cloud, then nodded once and swung his hand towards the helicopter, "Let's get out of here."
Once Max was strapped in Draper put on a pair of earphones and the helicopter took off and flew out over the lake. Max and the others didn't have headphones and talking above the noise was more trouble than it was worth. Bill's grin and the way he kept slapping Max on the shoulder conveyed enough information to the other man that he was thrilled that they had made it. Looking behind them Max saw that the dust was slowly drifting away, revealing the broken bones of the dead city.
“Now what?” he thought, “This isn't over, there is still someone out there who sent these zombies to Chicago. Dr Sentry, if Red was telling the truth anyway. Someone has to deal with them. Someone like me. Florida. How do I get there from here?”
Epilogue
The streets around the Art Institute were silent and still, it was dark with a partially cloudy sky allowing almost full moon to shed a watery light onto the dust covered rubble. The electricity had gone out in the entire city, leaving it as black as the rest of the world during the night now. The dust was a thick carpet, approaching six inches deep in some spots, it muffled the occasional piece of falling concrete. There were no zombies in the streets anymore, just corpses of those unlucky enough to be hit in the head by falling debris or from the many pieces of shrapnel let loose from the exploding artillery shells.
Quietly, almost gently, a chunk of stone shifted on the ground and then rolled a few feet to settle into a dusty valley. The single movement was followed by another, then yet another still as the pieces of the Art Center shifted and writhed, pushed up from below. Springing from the dirt, like a plant growing frantically fast a pale, bloody hand thrust upward into the moonlight.
Author's Note
This book took me a bit longer to write than I had expected, I started it on March 13th 2009 and finished it on July 27th, 2010, although the bulk of the writing was finished on April 13th. Editing, a bit of re-writing and some tweaking of the various time/logic details seemed to take me forever this time around. I had fun writing this book and I suppose if I ever "Don't have fun" I won't write anymore. I already have a few chapters of TZC3 written and hope to make better time finishing the last book in the trilogy than I did writing TZC2. I am very grateful to the many fans who have taken time to write and to the people on Amazon who have left comments, thank you guys! There are a couple of people in particular who I need to thank; Mike Keleman deserves a major thank you and kudos for his help in reading, highlighting errors and urging me to put in more sex and fight scenes with every email. He co-authored the first book with me and he may climb back in the saddle for a future work. I also want to thank Jessie Masoner! You've been with me from the beginning and I really appreciate your help and comments along the way. I can't count the number of times when your kind words have encouraged me and I am grateful for them.
I have taken extra time to sort through 'Discovery' and weed out the spelling and grammar issues, I do not think I have gotten them all, but I feel I did a much better job this time around than with any of my previous books. Progress is always good on the editing/grammar front.
Where do I go from here? Book 3, of course, but I also have a few other items on the agenda. First I will probably write a short story called, "Whatever Happened in Nebraska?" detailing the fight between Red and Ramey, it grew a little long and seemed to pull too much of the focus away from Max and his crew so I left it on the cutting room floor for this book, but I want to re-write it and give it the attention it deserves. Plus I love the idea of writing about Jimbo and Veronica... While I was editing this book I continued to write and I have a couple of stories in dire need of completion ('The First Zombie' and another called 'Contender') I will get those finished up and move to the heart of TZC3 in the fall.
My personal life hasn't changed much, I still live in Iowa, I still work as a computer programmer with aspirations of 'writing' someday and I still have a large family that lives with me and keeps me on my toes, even when I would rather relax. Every Saturday night you can still find me on the ramshackle 'Man' deck behind my house where I go to grill ribs and drink beer (or rum) while I listen to the radio to people who really know how to tell stories.
Don't be a zombie, do good things!
Mark Clodi
July 28th, 2010