by Nick Cole
His teeth had ceased chattering. His jaw was locked shut. Every bone was nothing more than a frozen iron pole.
There was no voice in his head. No hectoring old sergeant in his mind, like on the hill above the office park when he’d made that dash, that charge to help Ritter and Dante, Candace and Skully.
No voice.
Just a smothering eternal silence vast beyond measure. A frozen plain of nothingness. And in the middle of it...
A tiny flame that wanted to live.
Holiday pushed his hand out and away and touched the oblong door. That was all he had. It had taken everything that was left within him.
The door slithered open and he stumbled, falling through it.
Chapter Forty-Five
At thirty thousand descending to ten for final approach into China Lake, Frank’s hands are trembling. The giant 747 feels like it’s floating to the left, but Frank is doing everything the government pilot on the secure channel from Department 19 is telling him to do. Jordana sits behind him. She’s trying to keep pressure on her wound with one hand.
Her other, broken, hand is useless. The PPK she found behind a seat is lying in her lap. In case there are any other passenger assassins still on board.
The Mean Stewardess is dead. She was filled with enough neurotoxin from Jordana’s hairpins to kill two elephants. They have no idea where the bomb is or what arms it. They’re hoping the crash was the trigger mechanism.
Now, if they crash into the massive prehistoric dry lake bed that is the Air Force’s super-secret desert testing grounds within the Mojave, well... there’s nothing to destroy out here.
Just everyone on the plane. Including them.
At ten thousand, the voice on the radio tells Frank to dial back the throttles and lower the nose slowly until the climb indicator reaches a certain mark below the horizon.
At five thousand, he feels Jordana lay her head on his shoulder. He can feel her tears soaking through his shirt. That’s when the unseen pilot on the other end tells Frank to drop the throttles back and bring in the flaps.
The instructions are clear and concise, the voice dry and matter of fact. No hope. Just calm assurance that every switch toggle and lever is where it’s needed. Frank finds these things and executes the commands as he is told to.
“By the numbers,” says the unseen pilot.
By the numbers, thinks Frank, and remembers Marine Basic and another life that’s less than a decade gone. He was just a kid then. He can’t see himself getting any older than he is today. As though this is the assigned limit to his life.
That’s because you’re about to die all over the desert floor.
He pushes that thought away and reaches back to touch Jordana’s hair and think of Marie.
At two thousand, they throw out the landing gear.
At one thousand, the pilot tells Frank to stand on the rudder lightly and push forward and to the right on the yoke.
There’s a sudden crosswind skirling across the hot white sands of the lonely desert. The vast burning dry lake bed stretches away like the lifeless surface of an alien world.
This is where nothing lives, he thinks, as the pilot tells him to back off the throttle even more.
They are going too slow, it feels as though at any moment they’ll just fall, smashing into the earth. Scattering everywhere. Gone forever.
Will Marie come see this place some day? The place where her parents died. He wonders this, and doesn’t push the thought away because maybe it’s one of his last and he deserves it, so he spends it on her. He sees her, still little, or maybe even a young woman in a pretty dress carrying flowers. Wearing a sunhat. Her tiny hand, the one he has held, shielding her eyes as she tries to see where they died so long ago. The people who loved her more than life.
The ground is suddenly racing up at them.
“Hold it right there,” orders the dry voice of the pilot in his headphones.
Frank holds as the ground rapidly approaches. He can see the shadow of the giant aircraft just outside the window.
“Pull the power all the way back, Frank! Now!” orders the pilot.
“Get your feet off the rudder,” he orders Frank a second later.
In the last few feet, the 747 which has been falling crabwise to the ground, shifts awkwardly and straightens out.
“Now....”
The ground is just feet away.
Did we put the landing gear down, wonders Frank.
“Pull back slowly to the count of ten.”
Frank begins to pull back and the world feels as though it’s fallen onto a cloud. A hundred feet later, pulling back, the plane settles onto the dry hardpan of the dead desert lake and rolls to a stop hundreds of feet later.
Frank breathes finally and realizes he’s been holding his breath. And that Jordana has remained on his shoulder with her head touching his, her tears soaking his shirt.
“I love you,” she whispers. “No matter what comes next... I love you.”
Emergency vehicles are streaking across the salt flats toward them as though some horrible tragedy has begun. They are small, silent and... distant.
***
It is later, and the military is attempting to take control as bewildered passengers are herded like prisoners toward buses. As demolition squads swarm the plane. As Mr. White approaches Jordana and Frank. Without any words, they follow him to a waiting helicopter that looks so much like all the others swarming the stranded giant aircraft in the sea of white hot dust.
Moments later, they are strapped in and airborne and away from that place. And Frank knows this must be before the military can figure out who is who. This is too deep. Even for the CIA.
Somewhere in the chopper headed to Los Angeles and the private jet that will take them back to Europe, and of course by tramp fishing boat back to the island, somewhere in between, Jordana leans in close, talking in his ear.
She is bloodstained.
He is beaten and bruised.
They look like they’ve been whipped, drug through the dirt and whipped again for good measure. But they are alive.
She whispers, “When we get back... I want you to go.”
She slowly pulls back to watch his reaction.
There is none.
She leans in again.
“I love you. But I love her more. And...”
Tears are streaming down her perfect face, creating tracks in the dried dust and makeup. Though she is not fully sobbing, the tears are falling from her huge eyes as though they cannot be stopped. As though they cannot help themselves.
Frank feels part of himself dying.
“Because, my love, because we came so close to leaving her all alone this time. And what would Andrea do with her? Make her...”
Frank’s limbs are made of concrete. As is his dying heart. He knows he is crashing from the adrenaline spike. But it’s more than that. So much more. Or less. The loss of something. That is less.
“... make her like... me,” finishes Jordana, weeping.
She waits, silently challenging Frank to disagree, but he is unable to speak. She shakes her head and breaks down, collapsing into him. Sobbing now.
Mr. White, across from them, stares out at the dry Southern California wastelands below. The rotor wash from the helicopter’s blades beat at their clothes and hair.
“No, no, no, no, no...” sobs Jordana.
And Frank holds on as best he can, though he is dying inside because everything she says is true.
“Take her away and save her,” Jordana weeps. “Save our little girl... if you love me. If you truly love me. Save her from this because someday we’ll die out here and she’ll be left all alone. Please! Please! Please save her...” she’s hysterical now. Verging on it. Falling off of sanity. And Frank crushes her into him, knowing it’s the last time ever.<
br />
“If you love me... please... then leave.”
And Frank stares ahead into nothing because nothing is how he feels. How it all feels.
And that little girl in the bed between them, just before sleep and the dreams that make you wonder what is real and what is not, looks up and tells Frank...
“I’m happy, Daddy.”
And Frank nods. He will.
***
Back on the wall at the gate, endless zombies are climbing upward after them. The top of the metal containers getting slick with blood and gore, Frank heaves the axe down once more and cuts a shrieking zombie’s arm off.
He was aiming for the head.
It tumbles into the dead flesh below.
“I remember,” he thinks, and targets another crawler crawling over corpses to get at him and all the ones he loves. Wondering how much further he can go. How much longer he’ll last. How much loss can one man take in a lifetime?
How much?
“I remember.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Braddock watched the security checkpoint recede in the rearview mirror of the big fuel hauler. He shifted up through the gears to get up to speed. Already, the zekes were returning to the overrun checkpoint, the last of Task Force 19 holding the dried blood-covered barricades, clogged with piles of corpses from the weeks before.
It was like defending a slaughterhouse.
It was like the Alamo happened. And then started again a few hours later.
They’d cleared the barricade. The last of the National Guard had died probably just under an hour ago while the convoy had been running through the streets of the no-name town. And the zekes had moved on, probably chasing the noise of the convoy as it echoed and rebounded across the vast urban emptiness.
It didn’t take long to get the fuel haulers operational once they’d retaken the outpost. The giant vehicles were loaded with civilian gas.
Braddock had just been about to assign Brees as the driver of the other massive fuel hauler, when Steele flatly stated he’d be following in the second vehicle.
The giant fuel transports looked like some sci-fi survival ark from a movie made about the post-apocalyptic future, back when that had been all the rage toward the end of the Cold War. Massive tires taller than a man. Long flat hexagonal hulls. The vehicles couldn’t be stopped by much, especially not the zekes. They had heavy-duty transmissions and powerful engines. They could grind through anything at almost any grade. An army couldn’t move without fuel, and these were designed to get that fuel to wherever the combat units needed it, regardless of the terrain in between.
There was a good chance these beasts were getting through even if no one else did. Except there wasn’t room for more than four per cab.
And they needed everyone to defend the outpost until they ignited the temporary highway through a sea of dead people just to get to the toll road. So it was Braddock and Steele who’d thread the zeke-infested gauntlet and blow everything in between to high heaven... and hopefully there’d be a brief corridor for everyone to get through.
That’s why he wants to drive the second one, thought Braddock as they collected all the explosives. Grenades. C4. Det cord. Steele wants to make sure he gets through.
This unit.
Braddock took one of the shotguns from the MRAP. The ones fitted with the long fat silencers. Then he transferred the rest of his gear.
He told Gautreaux to take charge of everyone.
“Eh, mon Cap-i-tan? Me?”
“You’re in command. Get them to safety even if we don’t make it. After that... not my problem anymore.”
“Why me, Cap-i-tan?” said the lanky ex-legionnaire, as he took a cigarette out of his mouth and studied it. The one he’d lit and smoked like it was the last one ever. Probably was. “Y’know... what everyone says about me,” said Gautreaux. “Kicked out of the legion for being crazy and all. Eh?”
“I know it’s not true.”
Guatreaux’s mouth fell open.
“And if it is...” continued Braddock. “Well then, that’s probably what these people need in the next few hours. Someone crazy enough to get them out of this. Copy?”
Gautreaux seemed to think about this. Then shrugged his shoulders as if seeing the fatal logic. Or the wisdom. Or just accepting another order as yet one more before his inevitable and violent death.
“Yeah, Cap-i-tan. Copy that.”
Then he smiled and turned back to the barricades, yelling at someone to conserve their ammo. A civilian. They were on the walls too. The zekes were already at the smashed barricades.
There aren’t any more civilians, Darling. We’re all in this together. Everyone’s a soldier now. Everyone’s a casualty.
Now, with the lead hauler plowing through zekes and pushing cars aside, leaving the surrounded outpost to hold out for an hour or so, Braddock concentrated on a path through the press of gray dead flesh homing in on his hauler like deranged guided missiles. Along the way he tossed out the explosives, ignoring the screaming, raving hordes throwing themselves off the tops of vehicles at the hauler. Or lunging into its path only to disappear beneath the cracked windshield and no doubt be crushed under the massive tires below.
The sky boiled darkly in the west as though something knew, knew all along, that all roads must lead under its path. That there is a reckoning ahead along this road. And there it will wait for things to reach a conclusion.
Something not of this particular world.
The Ancient Hunter.
And...
The Sisters.
Ahead, a massive semi had jackknifed across lanes during the madness of the evacuations weeks ago. There were only a few more miles to go until the haulers reached the toll road. The map indicated a long curve through a low-lying swamp. The highway “S” turned through this area, then continued into Orange County. Halfway along the “S” turn, a toll road leapt up away, climbing into high hills to the south. Here the toll road cut through wilderness and arrived in a place called Viejo Verde, just uphill of the plain where Objective Iron Castle waited. Once they reached the toll road, because of its uphill nature, they were most likely in the clear.
Zekes didn’t do hills.
And what about the Ancient Hunter?
Not on your radar ‘till it shows, thought Braddock as he ground through a sea of zombies pressing inward toward the lumbering fuel hauler from hundreds of yards out.
Braddock steered the hauler around the far end of a semi, crushing more zekes stumbling toward him, and tossed out C4 at various vehicles.
Then he switched on the pumps. A moment later so did Steele.
Behind each hauler, fuel began to spray across the surrounding stalled vehicles and zekes along the highway.
This...
This was the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. And Braddock knew that now. High Altitude low opening jumps. Underwater demolition training. In the soup on full auto with tangos everywhere in some country the news didn’t care about anymore. There was skill. Skill against all that other stuff. Tech. Intel. Skill. Overwhelming firepower against that thing some called luck. Or chance. Or randomness. Or a number being up.
But here. Driving a tanker hauling thousands of gallons of highly flammable fuel that’s jetting out over abandoned vehicles loaded with fuel themselves while tossing explosives out the window...
...C4 thrown against a civilian fuel hauler stranded in a long line of cars.
... det cord drizzled out along that same line of cars farther down the way. A few grenades with pins still attached tossed through open windows, or to the ground to roll under all those cars and gray scabby feet heedless of their fragmentary and explosive nature.
This was the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. Forget that time he carried a dirty nuke through the corpse-swollen streets of LA. Two weeks ago.
One spark now.
One stray spark and it was all over. And there was nothing he could do about it. Probably wouldn’t even know.
Hopefully.
Flames would follow the back trail right to all the fuel he was sitting in front of.
They topped the rise and the hauler being driven by Steele pulled alongside. Below, the wide valley in which wetlands surrounded the highway, six lanes on each side running west and east. In the distance, the toll road cut away and launched over the main freeway via a tall overpass that climbed into the hills to the southwest.
Twenty-three thousand zekes seemed immobile and yet constantly undulating like sea grass in the windless horse latitudes of the Atlantic.
There was no other way than straight through them.
No side roads.
No other routes.
The wetlands would only suck the fuel haulers in and under. And there were thousands of zekes wallowing and forever stuck there too. The steep hills on the other side of the road were almost vertical alongside the highway.
Braddock nodded at Steele and sent a massive blast of the vehicle’s horn thundering out over the thronging dead. That was the prearranged signal. Two blasts. Then they’d abandon Braddock’s vehicle and demo it from a safe distance. Next, a wall of flame would erupt for seven miles, setting off explosives and detonating other vehicles while the zekes were consumed by flames.
Braddock pressed the accelerator and the big beast lurched forward, heading down the grade toward the swelling crowd already lurching toward them. Behind him he could hear the pump laboring to distribute fuel in giant mechanical ka-chunks as it sprayed out over the swelling corpse crowd.
In the first half-mile, Braddock estimated he must’ve crushed three hundred once-people. At all sides of the vehicle, a sea of them spread away in every direction.
Every face.
Every person.
Every dead thing.
Gathered and gathering inward on him and Steele.
A full mile with another to go, and the massive fuel hauler started to slow. Sheer numbers were preventing its passage. He added more power, shifted down into the lower gears and felt the wheels slip, on bodies, innumerable bodies no doubt, and finally push grudgingly forward.