Skipper looked away from the window. He said, “Captain Grayson, you know about the Kansas mega horde?”
“I saw footage of it,” Cade conceded. “I can appreciate the desire to create as much inside-the-wire real estate as possible.” Always the realist, he shook his head and added, “Whether it’s going to stand up to the sheer size of that horde of migrating corpses—Schriever included—only time will tell.”
Atop some of the downtown buildings Cade could make out forms milling about. Collars were turned up against the coming chill, and the unmistakable silhouettes of the long guns they carried told him they were providing overwatch should the Zs somehow breach the walls or, God forbid, an outbreak occur inside the wire. From the way they carried themselves, moving about beside the low parapets instead of staying in place, conserving their energy and letting their eyes and high-powered optics do the leg work, he was near certain civilians were still shouldering a good deal of the security load. It struck him as a kind of neighborhood watch on steroids. Better than nothing, he mused. Lord knew the soldiers were stretched thin executing President Clay’s bold new plan of which he was sure to learn more about within the hour. Maybe more than he wanted to know. Because if she was sending him and the team to the place he was thinking, it was more than likely they’d be right in the middle of the biggest pincer movement ever attempted by any standing army. Between the proverbial rock and a hard place, with the “rock” being the reconstituted combined forces of the United States and the “hard place” a mega horde consisting of twice the number of Zs that had marched out of Denver.
Finally, as the Ghost Hawk pulled out of orbit and set off east again, towards Schriever less than twenty miles distant, Cross addressed the elephant in the room. Looking directly at Cade, he said, “If Lopez is suffering from what I think he is—”
“I’m not dead yet,” Lopez interrupted. “So don’t talk about me in my presence as if I am.”
Cade smiled.
“Forgive me,” Cross said, addressing Lopez directly. “If for some reason you’re not mission capable, who’s running this op?”
Grimacing, Lopez gestured toward Cade.
Cade leaned back and rested his helmet on the bulkhead. He studied the panels and conduits snaking overhead.
“OK,” Cross said, agreeably, staring at Cade now. “If Wyatt is taking point … which I’m totally onboard with”—he shifted his gaze to Lopez—“who’s going to take your place?”
“Axelrod,” Lopez answered.
“Sure would make the long flight more enjoyable,” Ari interjected over the comms. “Plus … he has a good outlook on life.”
“Axe is a pain in the ass,” Skipper said. “And I have a hard time understanding him.”
“Cause you’re half hillbilly,” said Haynes ahead of a loud cackle.
Intrigued, Cade took his eyes off the cabin ceiling and slowly settled his gaze on Lopez, who was again doubled over and wheezing softly. “So we have Griffin, who’s as solid as they come,” he said. “Besides Doctor Silence here needing a Queen’s English Rosetta Stone to understand Axelrod, what’s wrong with the guy?”
Skipper didn’t humor Cade with a response. He kept staring out the port side, his eyes flitting over the ground below as the helo banked to port and began to slow.
Lopez shook his head while holding up one vertical finger.
Taking the gesture as a sign Lopez needed a second to compose himself, Cade posed the same question to Cross, minus the Rosetta Stone quip.
Cross said, “There’s nothing wrong with Axe. And I understand him just fine. Just the usual lift for elevator. Lorry for truck. Bonnet for hood—”
Cade said, “I get the picture. The man’s capabilities?”
“I’ve run a handful of ops with him over the last couple of weeks. Mostly setting out seismic sensors and the like,” Cross said. “Oh … there was a snatch and grab, too.”
Cade looked a question at the blond operator.
“A couple of guys who were loyal to Robert Christian,” he answered. “Someone at Schriever scanning the shortwave bands picked them up. After figuring out they weren’t who they said they were, we went in and rolled them up. Dumbasses thought they could hide in Vail … right under our noses. We discovered some documents suggesting more of Christian and Bishop’s gang survived the fall of Jackson.”
If Cade was concerned about the revelation, he didn’t let on. Remaining stone-faced, he asked, “What about Axe?”
“He’s not one of us,” Cross divulged. “He’s SAS. Axelrod was on a training swap at Bragg when Omega broke.”
“And that’s a problem, why?” Cade said.
“I’ll vouch for him,” Lopez said.
“That’s good enough for me, then,” Cade replied. “But you better not be tapping out yet, Lopez. Don’t you want to see what the docs have to say?”
Lopez shook his head. Sweat beads rolled off his brow, down his nose and cheeks. After swaying there for a tick they fell to his uniform blouse and cascaded from the semi-waterproof camouflage fabric. “I’ve taken a bullet and kept on going,” he said. “This is different. I feel like I’ve got an alien spawn clawing its way outta me.”
Not liking what he was hearing, Cade turned his head and stared at the large hangars and dozens of aircraft parked along the flight line southwest of Schriever proper.
Chapter 32
Daymon had received the call on the CB while sitting by himself in the cab of his Chevy. As Brook asked him to check in on the Thagons, he watched the rest of the group conversing in the parking lot as they waited for Max to do his business in the tall grass alongside the body shop.
Once Brook was finished with her update, Daymon filled her in on their findings, leaving out how close they’d actually come to losing Wilson and Taryn. However, as he talked up his idea of pushing farther north tomorrow to pay Bear Lake a visit, he noticed that Oliver had somehow disengaged from the discussion and was partially hidden from view by the Raptor, clouds of blue-gray smoke rising intermittently.
“Pushing north kind of depends upon what you find at the farm,” Brook replied. “Sounds like we’re dealing with some breathers who don’t play nice and have no desire to share what’s still out there.”
“We’re dealing with something evil here,” Daymon reiterated, visions of the crucified in Jackson worming their way back into his skull.
“How about we talk it over at dinner tonight? Take a vote … is that acceptable?”
Daymon said nothing.
“You there?” Brook asked and turned her back to Heidi, whose expression had gone through so many changes in a minute’s time that it was creeping her out.
Finally, Daymon said, “Yeah, I’m still here, Brook.” There was another short pause. “You know the weather window is closing. We can’t let a couple of close calls scare us from what we need to do to get through winter. I’m sure Cade would be thinking like I am if he were there.”
“I get that,” Brook said. Then, parroting Cade, she added, “Let’s wargame it thoroughly first. That’s what Cade would recommend if he were here.”
“Touché,” Daymon said. “We’ll roll by the farm and check on them. Since they know Taryn and Wilson, I figure I’ll let them run point. Me … I’d probably just scare them.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Daymon. I don’t think everyone sees you as you see yourself.” Cringing inwardly and pissed at herself for not employing the filter between her brain and mouth, she turned slowly to gauge Heidi’s response.
Daymon made no immediate reply. And thankfully, when Brook’s gaze landed on Heidi the younger woman was nodding enthusiastically and flashing both thumbs up.
Brook bugged her eyes and jabbed a thumb of her own at the CCTV monitor.
Message received, Heidi turned her attention back to her main task.
“Did I succeed in driving you away this time?”
“I’m still here,” he said. “Just watching Oliver get high, that’s all.”
“High?”
“Hitting the weed. Boy’s on edge … like his shoes have eggshells for soles.”
“Oh,” Brook exclaimed. “Is he driving?”
Daymon chuckled. “Not today.”
“See you in a bit, then,” Brook said. “I’ll try the Thagons on the sat-phone. If I don’t call you back you can assume I didn’t raise them and proceed as planned.”
“Copy that,” Daymon replied. “And Brook …”
“Yes?”
“Remember the definition of assume?”
Despite the pain behind her eyes and stiffness in her right arm, Brook smiled and keyed the Talk button one last time. “Touché,” she said and set the CB aside.
Following through with her promises, Brook called the Thagons and let the ring tone drone on for a few seconds. Nothing. Crestfallen and fearing the worst, she ended the call. Before placing the phone on the shelf, she jacked the ringer volume all the way up and set the phone in front of the monitor. A very effective way of telling Heidi to stay vigilant, without having to engage the woman.
Chapter 33
After skirting the airspace over downtown Springs, Ari steered the Ghost Hawk wide right to make an approach to Schriever from the south. Flying low and slow, the black helo crossed the fence line over the corner of Schriever where Mike Desantos was buried, her angular nose aimed for the painted tarmac near the southernmost hangar of a long row of identical gray structures.
Referring to the dozen or so football-field-sized rectangles of freshly disturbed desert they had overflown moments before crossing the wire, Cade asked, “Those mass graves back there … were those full of dead Zs from the Springs cleanup or was I looking at the final resting spot of the casualties from the Pueblo migration?”
Cross arched a brow and said, “How’d you—”
Interrupting, Ari looked over his shoulder and said, “That’s classified, Wyatt. The whole debacle just goes to show that even presidents are not immune to the law of unintended consequences.”
Cross reached over and tapped Cade’s shoulder. Covering his boom mic, he asked, “How’d you hear about it?”
Also covering his mic, Cade said, “Saw it on a video Nash sent me. All those survivors caught outside the wall … how many? And why no intel? Someone should have known they were coming toward Springs with ten thousand ravenous Zs hot on their heels.”
“That was before we started the sensor program,” Cross said. “After the close call with the Denver horde, President Clay earmarked all available resources to the building of the wall. I see it as her version of the space race, only with vastly different ramifications if her promised three-week completion fell short. Hell, Cade, the speech she gave rallied troops and civilians alike.”
“How long did it take?”
“With the help of the 4th Infantry Division, Eckels and his men worked around the clock and got the job done in eighteen days.”
“Impressive,” Cade said, his tone softening. “Eckels is the first lieutenant who stopped the first wave of Zs coming up from Pueblo, correct?”
Cross nodded. “Bottom line, what happened outside the wall that day couldn’t be helped.” He went quiet and looked out the window at the freshly paved apron flashing by.
Having been listening to the conversation, Skipper caught Cade’s eye and nodded agreeably. Then the familiar sound of the landing gear motoring down interrupted the solemn moment.
Once the gear locked into place, Cross reestablished eye contact with Cade and finished answering the question. “Had President Clay known ahead of time, she still wouldn’t have had the engineers breach the south wall. It was either six hundred deaths on her conscience, or, if she made the call to breach the wall to let them inside … maybe thousands.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, grimacing at the images on the footage he’d seen. Which was the same four-minute clip Cade had alluded to. In his mind’s eye he saw the shooters on the wall euthanizing American citizens by the scores. He remembered vividly the licks of orange flame lancing the still dawn air. Twenty-eight 10th Group shooters following inexplicable orders, thirteen of them now dead by suicide. He could almost hear the screams of the people as they fought off the dead and tried in vain to scrabble up the rough concrete walls. Finally, firm in the belief that his old boss had done the right thing, he added, “Clay’s call was the right call. Those graves you saw contain only the remains of the horde. The Pueblo dead are buried in the Garden of the Gods in view of the tallest spires. We just skirted the park’s south end. You would have been able to see it clearly on your—”
“I saw it,” Cade said as the helo settled onto the apron with a slight jounce. “That place is almost as fitting a final resting place as Mike’s.” He deftly removed his safety harness and crossed the cabin to the window next to the stowed starboard-side minigun. Peering out, he locked his gaze on the battered yellow door at the bottom right corner of the closest hangar—roughly seventy-five yards distant. From past experience, Cade knew that the man responsible for every aviation asset on base, First Sergeant Whipper, called the cramped room behind that yellow door his office. And damn if that yellow door didn’t fly open and a short man in coveralls—full head of wispy white hair blown about by the rotor wash—didn’t charge across the tarmac before Ari’d even had a chance to power down the helo’s turbines.
Then, from around the right side of the hangar where the humongous tracked doors were opened wide, a Humvee painted desert tan and configured as an ambulance cut the corner at speed and accelerated, its low, rectangular snout aimed straight for the Ghost Hawk.
Skipper hauled open the starboard door, letting the fifty degree outside air in.
As Cade helped Cross get Lopez turned around toward the starboard-side door, he stole another glance and watched the Humvee, lights ablaze, quickly overtake Whipper and skid to a complete stop just outside of the helo’s rotor cone.
Perched atop the squat vehicle was a box-shaped cab over-shell, the ubiquitous red cross on white background painted on its slab sides. In unison with the Ghost Hawk’s side door opening, both of the ambulance’s doors flew open and out jumped two airmen wearing camouflage ABUs. One of them lugging a bulky box, the airmen broke into a sprint and reached the open door ahead of Sergeant Whipper.
With a brisk wind biting his exposed skin, Cade helped Lopez to his back on the floor and gave his good friend a fist bump. “I’ll drop by the infirmary after I jaw with Nash.”
Cade saw Lopez’s smile morph to a grimace as the airmen brushed him aside as if he didn’t exist. Then, as he spoke to Cross about Lopez’s symptoms, the airman removed the Hispanic operator’s MOLLE gear and peeled off his Crye shirt.
“Hey amigo,” Lopez said, wincing as the airman pressed the stethoscope to his exposed chest. “Give the pretty lady a sloppy wet kiss for me.”
“Roger that,” Cade said. He looked at Cross and nodded toward the approaching Cushman. “You coming?”
The rotors overhead had slowed to a crawl, the turbine noise and steady thwop silenced. “Go,” Lopez insisted. “If the demonios ain’t got me yet … my own pinche appendix isn’t going to do me in.”
Cross grabbed his MP7 and rucksack. “Suit yourself, Lowrider. Better not be expecting flowers.”
“A tee shirt from a D.C. gift shop will do,” he said with a soft chuckle. “Now go. That’s an order.”
“You heard the man,” Cade said as he hopped aboard the Cushman driven by an airman he knew all too well. “Time waits for no man.”
“Who said that?” Cross asked, tossing his gear into the back of the modified golf cart.
“I did,” Cade said, putting his gear in atop Cross’s. “Actually, I’m just parroting what my wife liked to say to my daughter on school days.”
“To the TOC?” Airman Davis asked.
“Major Nash’s office for me,” Cade replied. “I’ll ride to the TOC with her from there.”
Turning up his collar against the chill, Cross said, “Mess hall for me
. Has the food gotten any better here?”
“You’d be amazed,” Davis replied, giving the Cushman pedal. “A lot of things have changed around here.”
And as if to punctuate the younger man’s statement, a quartet of slate gray A-10 Thunderbolts crossed Schriever proper from the east. The heavily armored ground attack jets banked hard to the south, showing off their dual, rear-mounted turbofans and long, narrow wings.
Things sure have, thought Cade as the vehicle picked up speed.
Chapter 34
The feeder road between State Route 16 and the Thagon home seemed more rutted than before. There were exposed rocks and deep muddy channels that kept grabbing the Raptor’s oversized off-road tires. If Taryn had to make a guess, her money would be on the couple having been visited by not one—but an army of vehicles. As she turned the corner where before there had been a rusted old piece of farm equipment, the truck’s forward progress was impeded by a twenty-foot-wide channel running diagonally across the muddy drive.
Taryn brought the pickup to a halt with the front wheels perched on the leading edge of the foot-deep washout.
“What do you want to do?” Wilson asked.
“Assess the situation from here, I guess.”
She peered over the wheel at the house and barn. The former was two stories. The paint was white and weathered. An immense wraparound porch ambled away to the left and right from the centrally located front door. The screen door was closed and the wooden door behind it appeared intact. A couple dozen yards off the Raptor’s passenger side the red barn loomed, its doors still secured with the same padlock and chain that Ray had employed to incarcerate them while Brook had played emissary inside the house.
Wilson removed his floppy hat and ruffled his rowdy shock of hair. “I don’t see anything moving.”
“Neither do I,” Taryn said quietly. “Not from here.”
Just then Daymon hailed them from the road. “I can see you. Why’d you stop?”
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 19