by Chris Lowry
He had his go bag ready, so sliding into the Kevlar vest and armor units would only take twenty minutes. He wanted to spend the rest of the time trying to find a map of where they were going.
4
Pam Ballantine opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She popped out of the bed, nearly collapsed on the floor and tried not to scream.
A strange looking man stood by the door and watched her.
“Where am I?” she croaked.
Her hands ran across the simple nightgown she wore and she realized she wasn’t wearing panties or a bra. It pissed her off.
“Who took my clothes?”
The man held up both hands in a universal sign of surrender.
“No one hurt you,” he explained. “No one touched you.”
“No one is going to hurt me,” she snarled. “Where are my clothes?”
Then she realized she was in the room alone. Simple, four white walls, no windows, just the wooden door, and the bed she had been on.
No closet to hide her clothes. No other doors to the room.
And none of the people who had been on the plane with her.
“I’ll have your clothes brought,” said her captor.
He reached behind him and pulled the door open to step through.
Pam watched him shut it, then padded across the cold tile floor in her bare feet and tried the knob.
It wasn’t locked.
She opened the door and peeked out.
The man was walking down a short corridor, past several other numbered doors just like hers.
Pam moved into the hallway and opened a second door.
One of the people from the plane was lying in the bed, wrists and feet tied to the metal posts with straps.
Who the hell had them?
She moved into the shadowy room and started untying the survivor.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’m going to help you get out of here.”
She couldn’t remember the woman’s name, and maybe hadn’t even been introduced to her.
The truth was she hadn’t been paying much attention to anyone on the plane, the novelty of flying out to Los Angeles occupied a big part of her mind.
She was focused on her father, the strings he pulled to get her out of New York and to him in LA.
She had worked through his connections in the City to help him on Council business and instead of giving her a seat representing NYC, he recalled her to him.
She remembered this woman was reading a book though, which in itself wasn’t a novelty, but it was a copy of a novel she had wanted to read before the fall.
Pam had made a note to ask about borrowing it when they landed, or finding a way to get it once they were settled into their west coast homes.
The woman grunted and strained at the straps.
It made it harder to untie the knots.
“Hold on,” Pam soothed her. “I’ll have you free in a minute.”
She finished the knot on her left wrist and reached across her for the right.
The woman grabbed the back of her hair and yanked Pam down.
She buried her face in her neck hard, and Pam squealed, struggling to get her hands where she could push off the bed.
The woman had something in her mouth, a ball gag or rubber ball and it ground into the flesh in Pam’s neck.
“Stop!” Pam shouted.
She finally smacked the woman with the heel of her palm, and when that didn’t work, slugged her with a closed fist.
The ball knocked loose from her mouth and bounced across the floor, but the woman let her go and Pam backed away.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she bit back a scream.
The woman had gone Z.
That’s why they strapped her to the bed, why they gagged her.
Now she was ripping at the restraint on her other arm, growling and moaning to reach Pam.
She got her arm free, couldn’t stand so dragged her torso out of the bed and onto the floor.
Her tied legs scraped the bed after her, bending at the unnatural angle until they both snapped with a loud crack.
Pam stifled another scream and ran through the doorway.
She bounced off the thick white uniform of her captor and fell back into the room.
This time, she didn’t try to stop the scream as the Z edged closer, dragging the bed with her.
A tall black man pushed past the white-haired man, pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster and shot the zombie.
The echo of the bullet off the wall receded, and all Pam could hear was the rushing beat of her heart in her ears.
The tall man holstered his pistol.
“Did she bite you?”
Pam shook her head.
“Are you bit?” he asked again.
“No,” she shuddered. “No, I’m not.”
She composed herself, taking a deep breath and pushed off the floor to stand in front of him.
“Why have you taken me prisoner?”
The black man snorted.
“Lady, this isn’t a prison. It’s a hospital. We saved your life. Twice.”
She stared at him as he let it sink in.
The white-haired man muttered in his shoulder and held out a sack of clothes.
“It looks like we’re going to save it again. Get dressed.”
5
Sharp had been out of a plane one hundred and thirty-seven times and hated every jump.
He hated all the old jokes about abandoning a perfectly good aircraft and never bought into the cult of thought about death from above.
He knew he was safe.
He knew the odds of landing well, and injury.
He also was particularly adept at jumping.
He didn’t like it.
The adrenaline rush was not his drug of choice.
He liked things calm, cool and steady.
And he would have preferred it if they were jumping in daylight into an area he was familiar with.
A night jump into hostile territory left him with an acid gurgle in his stomach.
Even after he exited the rear of the cargo plane, number three of twelve out the door in four seconds, and his chute popped, he studied the dark terrain below, trying to make out features, topography, any landmarks he could remember.
There were no lights below.
He had seen a picture of the United States taken from the International Space Station once, the East and West Coast lit up like Christmas trees, and only small splotches of light through the middle.
Now there was nothing in the zombie infested wasteland.
The streetlights were gone.
The porchlights were gone.
There was only darkness, and he had to rely on the glowing numbers on his altimeter to tell him to flare.
Then he could see a darker patch below and he could tell he was close.
He flared again, pulling on the cords attached to the sides of his chute that arrested his descent, and started running his feet.
He knew to hit and roll with it in the dark, and when he felt the ground under his feet, did just that.
The chute collapsed behind him and he was up, stripping out of the harness and checking his gear.
All good.
He clicked the safety off his rifle, adjusted the strap across his chest and listened for the sound of the other men landing.
George “Georgie” Pie stood up from his landing and clicked a red light over his head to signal the others to a rally point.
Sharp took off across the field toward the red light.
He heard the Z before he saw them.
Who knows what drew them to the field. A butterfly, a badger, or maybe just a plastic sack swishing in the wind.
No matter, it sounded like more than one so he froze, readied his weapon, and tried to triangulate on the sound.
He heard a canopy flutter above his head, and a pair of boots smacked him across the temple and knocked him flat.
Sharp fumbled to his knees, and heard
one of his men land in the small herd of Z. He couldn’t tell who.
The man screamed, a boyish yelp of pain and surprise and then it escalated into a high-pitched wail of agony.
Sharp lifted his rifle and opened fire.
Flames licked the end of his barrel as he sprayed the shadowy figures of the herd.
His men zeroed in on his position and added their bullets to his own.
It was over in seconds.
“Medic,” Sharp commanded and shuffled through the grass toward the decimated herd.
He listened to Doc fall in step behind him.
The man’s name was Rodriguez, but every medic in the Army was always called Doc.
Sharp tried to call him Bones once as a salute to Star Trek, but no one else in the squad was a sci fi fan, so he stuck with Doc.
The Z were dead. Most of them.
“Georgie, knife,” Sharp ordered.
Georgie slung his weapon and pulled a long black KBAR from a sheath on his vest. He dispatched the remaining zombies with swift thrusts into the head.
“Doc?”
Doc shook his head.
Sharp leaned down over his man, and ignored the hash of his legs below the knees and waist.
“Two Way,” he said.
One of the new guys, a National Guardsman who was their radio operator.
The man had taken friendly fire too, which was a kick in the nuts, but he was dead now. Nothing to be done.
Besides, the Z bite was fatal from the moment he landed.
Georgie kneeled to knife him.
“I got it,” said Sharp.
He did the hard part himself on this man.
“Damn it,” Georgie rolled the body over after
Sharp stabbed him.
He shined his flashlight onto the communications array strapped to the man’s back. It was shot all to hell.
“Salvaged?” Sharp asked.
Georgie shrugged and unfastened it.
The radio came off in three pieces.
“I’m no Com Tech,” said Georgie. “But I think it’s toast.”
Bear and Javi moved in closer.
“Bear thinks we can use the radio from the plane.”
Sharp nodded.
“Good thinking. Round ‘em up Sergeant.”
Georgie got the rest of the squad in line and Sharp moved them out in the direction of the road and where the plane was supposed to be.
6
Ballantine stood at the center of the communications station and glared.
He glared at the blinking lights, glared at the back of the communication tech’s heads, glared at the man in charge of the group.
The Com Techs could ignore him, but the supervisor shrank under his gaze and looked around for a way to escape.
The man sent up a silent prayer for one of the buttons to flash green, anything that he could use as an excuse to leave the room.
“They should have landed by now.”
The pilot updated them on when the squad had parachuted in three minutes ago.
Ballantine gave them extra time to land and assess, but now they were overdue for a check in.
The man next to him huffed.
It irritated the shit out of Ballantine.
“You just wasted a good team for one person.”
Ballantine ignored him.
“I voted against this. I told the Council that you were out of your mind. We don’t do rescue missions, not anymore.”
The man huffed again.
Ballantine looked at the stars on his chevrons and wondered how the hell the man had risen so far in rank without a spine.
“They had to dig pretty far down the fucking barrel to move you up, didn’t they General?”
“Excuse me?”
“I understand we are short manned, but Jesus, what were you before? In the accounting department?”
“I earned my rank,” the General puffed out his chest and shook the medals on his lapel.
“I bet you fucking did,” Ballantine said.
“I wouldn’t have ordered this to save one person.”
“It’s not one person, it’s- how many people are in the group?” he snarled at his assistant.
“Nine,” she whispered.
“Speak up damn it.”
“Nine,” she answered and if it wasn’t louder, it was an octave higher and he could make out the word.
“There you have it. See, we’re saving nine citizens.”
“You sent in my men to save nine people.”
“Don’t be ridiculous General. I sent in your men to save my daughter. I don’t give a fuck if they save anyone else.”
“One human life.”
Ballantine could see the man was going to be a problem.
He had enough problems. Maybe it was time to retire the General.
“We’ve already lost so many,” he said. “And this is my little girl.”
“On an unauthorized flight.”
“I authorized it.”
“DC didn’t. New York didn’t. What if one of them is infected.”
Ballantine walked away from the others and motioned the General to follow. He pitched his voice low so he couldn’t be overheard.
“We’re all infected General. If I killed you right now, you’d turn into a zombie and I’d slip this knife into your eyeball to pop your brain.”
He put a hand on the long slim knife he carried on his waist.
“I’d like to see you try.”
The Council chairman held up both hands.
“Did you think that was a threat?” he laughed.
The General flushed, a crimson stain creeping up from his neck to the tips of his ears.
“I don’t make threats General,” said Ballantine. “I take actions. While you were in some hut whining, and waiting for orders for the Pentagon, I sent crews into the desert to build our wall. I organized the police response. When the Governor called a committee meeting to wait it out, I called up the National Guard and saved millions of people. I am the reason you are standing in this room and not some walking dead piece of rotting shit.”
Ballantine leaned close and glared down at the gray-haired man in front of him.
“I made it happen. All of it. You know this. It’s information you’ve known for months. I don’t ever make threats. I solve problems.”
He bumped his forehead against the General’s and forced him to back up.
The headbutt was light, just strong enough to leave a small red mark on each of their skin where they made contact.
Ballantine waited, eyes flashing, daring the General to fight back.
He didn’t.
He bowed his head instead, a small nod of surrender.
“My men,” Ballantine seethed “Are out there rescuing my daughter. If I sent a fucking battalion to do it, you would follow the damn orders and thank me for it.”
The muscles in the General’s jaw clenched, but he nodded again.
“I’m glad we cleared that up.”
Ballantine walked back to the Comm monitors and watched.
“That’s all,” he said over his shoulder to the military man.
He didn’t turn around as the General slunk from the room.
“Mr. Ballantine?”
“What is it!” he snarled at Del.
“We’ve lost them.”
7
“Move! Move!”
“God damn Z everywhere!
He pulled the trigger on his rifle in short three round bursts.
“Single shot!” he screamed to his men.
They were limited on ammunition, so it wouldn’t do to blow all their wad in one firefight.