“Then we can’t all storm the control tower with guns blazing. Face the facts, man. Half of us might end up shooting ourselves in the process. We’d be more danger to ourselves than to the terrorists or whatever they are.”
“He’s got a point,” said Halverson, inspecting a Heckler & Koch MP7, his weapon of choice. In close quarters the H&K MP7 was his preferred gun.
“Then let’s ask for volunteers,” said Rogers.
Halverson shrugged. “We might not get many people eager to confront terrorists.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. First we need to round up our two hundred passengers and see how many volunteers we can get.”
“Count me in,” said Ray, barreling into the room.
Rogers winked and slapped him on the back.
Ray grabbed a short-barreled M4 rifle. He started draping bandoliers of ammo over his shoulders.
“Jeez,” said Rogers. “Don’t overdo it, Ray.”
“We don’t know how many of them are up there,” said Ray. “You know what the Boy Scouts say. Be prepared. You can never have too much ammo, as far as I’m concerned.”
Rogers shook his head, smiling.
“Count me out,” said Gary. “I don’t know anything about guns, and the less I know the better.” He headed out of the ordnance room without taking a weapon.
“You may live to regret that,” said Rogers, culling a Glock 17 pistol from the assorted hardware.
Halverson backed up his choice of the MP7 submachine gun with a Sig Sauer P226 semiautomatic. He noticed pairs of night-vision goggles arrayed on one of the wooden shelves surrounding the room. He picked up a pair of the goggles to examine them. They were AN/PVS-7D generation-four-type night-vision devices, he noticed.
“These might come in handy,” he said, holding the goggles up for Rogers to eyeball.
“The last I heard they don’t work too well in smoke.”
“For that we would need thermal vision goggles.” Halverson scanned the room for more night-vision equipment, but came up empty.
“Whatever.”
“Suit yourself. It might be dark in that control tower without any power for lighting.”
“It ain’t exactly the Vegas strip in here,” grumbled Ray, groping for ammo on one of the shelves.
Halverson slung the hands-free night-vision goggles around his neck. He could use their leather head strap to attach them to his forehead when needed. The goggles themselves were lightweight, he noticed, weighing a little over a pound.
Halverson snared a leather bandolier crammed with forty-round magazine clips loaded with 4.6 x 30 mm rounds for his MP7.
“You’re as bad as Ray,” said Rogers. “How many terrorists do you expect to find up there? A frigging battalion?”
“You never can tell.”
Halverson ducked under the bandolier of ammo as he added it to his war chest, literally as well as figuratively.
“How many guns do you reckon we have here in this room?” asked Rogers.
Halverson ticked off a rough estimate scoping out the arms on the shelves. “I’d say about seventy-five, more or less.”
“And I’m taking one gun and at least one other for backup, like you. We ought to be able to secure the control tower with thirty or so men, don’t you think?”
Halverson snagged magazines of 9 mm Parabellum rounds for his Sig Sauer. “Probably.” He flung another leather bandolier of clips for his H&K MP7 over his shoulder. Now he had a bandolier over each shoulder. The Sig Sauer clips he jammed into his trouser pockets.
Rogers ogled Halverson. “OK, Rambo. You sure you’ve got enough?”
Halverson said nothing.
Tom strolled into the armory. “What is that gun?” he asked, eying Halverson’s MP7.
“It’s an MP7,” answered Halverson. “It’s a PDW.”
“A what?”
“A personal defense weapon.” Halverson remarked the puzzled expression on Tom’s face. “It means it fires bullets that can penetrate body armor.”
“I want one of those.”
“Help yourself.” Halverson gestured toward the shelf containing the remaining MP7s.
“Let’s get some more volunteers,” said Rogers.
At what sounded like a scream Halverson pricked up his ears. “What was that?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear a scream off in the distance, coming from the airstrip?”
Worry lines creased Rogers’s face. “We need to get our butts in gear.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Halverson and Rogers considered the passengers clustered in the concourse around one of the baggage carousels.
“How many passengers did you say we had?” asked Halverson.
“Over two hundred, according to the flight manifest,” answered Rogers.
“There can’t be more than a hundred in here, from where I’m standing.”
Rogers looked puzzled. He noticed the Hispanic stewardess Halverson had spoken to on the plane standing in the crowd. Rogers motioned to her with his arm.
“Rosie,” he said, “over here.”
Rosie acknowledged his gesture and angled up to him.
“Where are the rest of the passengers?” he asked.
She surveyed the restless crowd. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re still outside on the tarmac.”
An MP7 in his hand, Tom strolled up to Rogers. “Remember all those screams we heard on the airstrip? What if something happened to the missing passengers?”
That thought had crossed Halverson’s mind, too. From the apprehension twisting the other passengers’ faces, it was obvious to Halverson that he and Tom weren’t the only ones who shared that concern.
“Like what?” asked Rogers.
“Maybe they just got lost in the heavy smog,” said Rosie.
“Think of what you’re saying,” said Tom. He slung his MP7 over his shoulder. “Why would they scream if they just got lost?”
“They sounded like screams of pain,” said Halverson.
“So what are we dealing with here?” asked Rogers. “Were there terrorists lurking in the smog and ambushing the rest of the passengers on the tarmac? Then there are even more terrorists than we thought, and we could be walking into a trap. Is that what you’re saying?”
Grimacing, Tom removed his glasses with one hand and with his other rubbed his closed eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s all very confusing.”
“Regardless, the bottom line is we need people to secure the control tower.” Rogers turned to address the crowd. He raised his voice. “Do any of you have any experience with guns? We need volunteers to help us take back the control tower.”
Mildred stepped forward. “I volunteer.”
“Do you have experience handling guns?” Rogers asked with an equal mix of astonishment and incredulity.
“I keep a Smith & Wesson .38 in my house for self-protection. And I know how to use it.”
“You fool,” said Gary.
Mildred eyed him with contempt. “I’ve got a pair of balls on me. It’s not my fault you don’t.”
“I save them for the courtroom.”
“Double-talk,” scoffed Mildred. “Typical lawyer.”
A black man in his late twenties about five foot ten with a shiny bald head stepped forward. He was wearing baggy blue jeans and a T-shirt that wasn’t tucked in.
“I’m in,” he said.
“What’s your name?” asked Rogers.
“Foster.”
“For those of you who still don’t know, my name is Burt Rogers,” announced Rogers to the crowd. “I was your pilot.” He turned back to Foster. “Do you have experience firing guns?”
“I guess. I’m a marine stationed at Camp Pendleton.”
Rogers smiled. “Go to the head of the class, jarhead, and collect your weapons from the storeroom.”
Foster ambled toward the Homeland Security office.
Rogers addressed the cro
wd. “For those of you who want to volunteer, make your way to the Homeland Security office and arm yourselves.”
Murmurs rippled among the gaggle of passengers.
“We’re not a bunch of storm troopers,” said a man with a hatchet face. “Where are the security personnel? Fighting terrorists is their job.”
“That’s the problem,” said Rogers. “If you haven’t noticed, they’re not here.”
“I’m not afraid of any nutcase terrorists,” said a thirtysomething blonde woman and blazed a trail toward the storage room.
“That’s telling ’em, honey,” said Mildred, returning with a twelve gauge shotgun in her hands.
“I think you’re all crazy,” said Hatchet Face.
“Nobody’s forcing you to volunteer,” Rogers pointed out. “At this point we’re asking only for volunteers.”
“And what if you don’t get enough?” said Gary. “That’s what I want to know.”
“Me too,” said Hatchet Face. “Are you gonna impress the rest of us nonvolunteers?”
Waves of grumbling swept through the crowd.
“Who put you in charge, anyway, Rogers?” said Gary. “You nearly killed all of us in that crash landing of yours.”
“That’s enough,” said Halverson. “He knows his way around here better than anyone else.”
“Who are you? His stooge?”
Halverson eyeballed Gary. “I’m Chad.”
“Oh, Chad,” Gary mocked. “I didn’t realize it was you, Chad.”
“Anyone else who wants to volunteer, please come forward,” Rogers told the gathering. “The sooner we get all our volunteers together, the sooner we can decide our next move.”
“The sooner you can get us all killed,” said Gary. “I say we walk right out of here, get a bus or whatever, and drive like hell out of this place.”
Hatchet Face and a couple of other passengers in the crowd voiced their approval.
“You’re a big help, Gary,” said Halverson under his breath.
“We have to secure the area first,” said Rogers. “We don’t know what’s out there. If you haven’t noticed yet, something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Halverson twigged a fiftyish man with a shock of white hair raising his hand in the crowd.
“Yes?” said Rogers, nodding to the man.
“Could I say something?” asked the man.
Five foot eleven, with a plump stomach, he wore an unbuttoned black jacket, a red tie, and a button-down white cotton shirt. His face had a smooth, almost girlish complexion with cherublike cheeks.
“What’s your name?” asked Rogers.
“Reverend Jim McKay here.”
“Say your piece, Reverend Jim.”
“Let’s settle down before we storm the control tower armed to the teeth and start a ruckus.”
“The voice of reason,” said Gary. “Finally.”
“Let me make this clear,” said Rogers. “We’re not storming anything to start a ruckus. But if somebody else in that tower wants to start a ruckus, we’ll be glad to oblige them.”
“Right on!” said Mildred and brandished her shotgun. “We’re not taking any guff from terrorists.”
“We don’t even know if there are terrorists up there,” said Reverend Jim. “I’m just saying let’s not go in there half-cocked with murder on our minds and live to regret it.”
“We won’t be living at all if the terrorists attack us and we do nothing,” said Mildred.
“I’m starving,” said Gary. “Let’s get something to eat.”
A couple of passengers in the crowd clapped.
“Where’s a restaurant?” asked Hatchet Face.
“We’re not doing anything until we secure the area,” said Rogers.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Gary.
“What if we sit down to eat and we’re attacked by the terrorists?”
“What terrorists? You keep blathering about terrorists, but I don’t see any. Where are they?”
Rogers was losing his patience. “Can’t you see there’s something wrong here? Open your eyes, man. It’s not business as usual till we secure the area.”
“Let’s get moving,” said Halverson.
Rogers cut his eyes toward Halverson. “How many volunteers do we have so far?”
Halverson looked over his shoulder at the passengers and flight attendants bearing arms. “Looks like a couple dozen.”
“I was hoping for thirty. Do you think that’ll be enough?”
“Let’s do this.”
Rogers gestured for the twenty-odd ragtag band of volunteers to head out of the terminal toward the airstrip.
Remaining at the luggage carousel, Gary waved a sarcastic good-bye to them.
“Let’s make sure we save one bullet for Gary,” Tom told Halverson.
“Only one?” said Halverson.
Tom laughed. Then his face sank. “What are we getting ourselves into?”
CHAPTER SIX
Rogers led the volunteers back into the impenetrable smog. Halverson and Tom tagged behind him.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Tom asked Rogers. “This smog stuff is as bad as ever.”
“Don’t worry about it,” answered Rogers. He scrutinized a round object in his hand.
“What’s that?”
“A compass. I got it in the armory. We head northwest, we should hit the control tower.” Rogers craned his neck around to take in the squad on his heels. “Stay bunched together. I don’t want to lose any of you. Look alive.”
He strutted forward into the grey murk, a pistol in his hand.
“At least if we can’t see them, they can’t see us either,” said Tom.
“Whoever they are,” muttered Ray, stealing up to Tom’s side.
About ten minutes later, Rogers halted.
“What’s wrong?” asked Halverson.
“Nothing. I figure the tower should be directly ahead,” said Rogers.
Tom peered into the swirling haze. “I can’t see anything there. The last time we were near the tower we could see it. Remember?”
“How can I forget? We saw those poor people jumping from it.”
“This smog might be thicker now,” said Halverson.
“Yeah, that might explain it,” said Tom.
“Get your weapons ready,” said Rogers.
Ray already had his M4 out.
Halverson had his MP7 in his hand. Now he clutched it with two hands.
Tom shrugged his MP7’s strap off his shoulder. He scoped out Halverson to see how he was gripping the weapon. Then Tom did likewise.
The band moved forward en masse.
It wasn’t long before they discerned the control tower looming above them. As if on cue, a thirtysomething woman in a brown pantsuit crashed through the window on the twenty-second floor above them, screaming. Windmilling her arms she crashed onto the tarmac the better part of ten feet away from Rogers.
Rogers started. He swung his pistol toward the crumpled figure of the woman, not knowing what to expect.
Halverson registered the same stunned reaction as Rogers.
Tom winced at the broken and bloody figure of the dead woman. Her arms and legs pointed at angles not meant for the human body.
Then he looked up at the top of the tower. “How tall is that tower?”
“Almost three hundred feet high,” said Rogers.
“What the hell are they doing up there?”
“Let’s find out and waste those bastards!”
Rogers charged toward the tower.
Halverson could not blame him for being pissed off. He and the others bolted after Rogers.
Rogers grabbed the control tower’s plate-glass entrance door’s steel handle and yanked open the door.
Halverson noted that the door’s plate glass was shattered and spiderwebbed with shards of glass littering the floor, as if somebody had broken through the door earlier.
He and the passengers piled into the lobby after Roge
rs, trampling and crunching the broken glass fragments with their feet.
At least the smog wasn’t as dense in here, decided Halverson. He could see that the lobby, like the terminal they had just left, looked deserted.
“Where the hell are these creeps?” asked Tom, casing the empty lobby.
Guns at the ready, the passengers did likewise.
“They’ve got to be on the top floor in the air traffic control room,” said Rogers.
Halverson walked behind a metal desk. He flicked his eyes down near the kneehole. He grimaced at the grisly sight. A pool of blood was coagulating under the headless corpse of a man, it looked like to Halverson. He could not be sure. Not only was the head missing, but the chest had been savagely ripped apart, exposing the rib cage and mutilated segments of what was left of the victim’s lungs.
“Over here,” Halverson said.
Rogers and the others approached him.
“What’s up?” asked Rogers. His voice caught in his throat as he clapped eyes on the headless corpse at Halverson’s feet.
“Jeez!” said Tom.
Turning green he slewed away on his heel, clutched his mouth, and was sick on the spot.
“What kind of madmen would do something like this?” said Rogers.
“No wonder people are jumping out the windows,” said Ray, shaking his head at the decapitated corpse. “It looks like his flesh has been ripped clean off his body somehow.”
Indeed, Halverson could see shreds of skin intermingled with strips of clothing dangling from the body’s legs and arms.
Rogers sprang for the elevator door. He hammered its black plastic button with the heel of his fist. Impatiently, he watched the annunciator overhead. The floor numbers didn’t light up. The elevator remained silent.
“Figures,” he said.
“The stairwell’s over here,” said Halverson.
He belted toward the steel fire door that led to the stairs. He slammed into the metal crash bar with his left side and burst through the door into the stairwell. Rogers was on Halverson’s heels in no time and passed him in his haste to be the first one up the stairs.
Led by Rogers, the passengers ran up fifteen flights of steps.
Gasping, Rogers fetched up.
“What’s wrong?” asked Halverson, but he didn’t have to ask.
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 3