Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  “Chair Force,” an Army man nearby snorted, then turned and winked at them. Inter-service rivalry made the military world go ‘round.

  “Don’t worry, grunt,” Hickens said. “We’ll still give you a ride.”

  He was just finishing when Chris and Wade showed up. Chris looked like he was sleepwalking, but Wade was wide awake. The big man examined the communal shower with obvious distaste. Andrew understood his discomfort. As a badly out-of-shape civilian, Wade probably hadn’t stripped in front of other men since high school, if then.

  Back in their room, Andrew dug out a clean pair of skivvies from the ones he’d drawn upon arrival. He turned around and found a surprise. Hanging from the door was a brand new Nomex flight suit, complete with rank insignia and name patch.

  “Now where in the hell did they find that?” he wondered. He dressed and headed out, passing his two friends returning from the showers. Wade looked unhappy, but clean. He hoped no one had given the kid shit. He’d acquitted himself just fine and held up his end of the deal, despite his poor showing in rappelling. “Hurry up,” he reminded them. They nodded.

  Outside, the rain was still coming down, and the airfield was abuzz with activity. He found an overhang where he could watch without getting wet. Most of the huge piles of gear were gone as were many of the helicopters. He’d slept right through their leaving. Soldiers were loading the last of the gear into the Globemasters, the two remaining Ospreys, and the last of the choppers—six Apaches, an old Cobra gunship, and four Chinooks.

  “This is our moment of greatest risk, Lieutenant,” a voice said. Andrew glanced over and saw the general standing nearby, smoking a cigarette.

  “I thought the Army was non-smoking.”

  “I quit ten years ago,” the general said. “Started again yesterday. If a zombie is going to eat me, I figured, fuck it.”

  Andrew shrugged. He’d never picked up the habit. He didn’t smoke, dip, or drink coffee. He preferred tea. “We’ve had a Kiowa out almost constantly. An hour ago, it spotted another horde coming from the south, drawn by the activity.”

  “Austin?” Andrew wondered. The general nodded. “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve sent a third of our strength out on Chinooks, already.”

  “Do we have a destination?” Andrew asked.

  “Sort of.” Andrew looked at him pointedly. “Los Angeles.”

  “That doesn’t sound logical,” Andrew said. “Just the population…”

  “I know, that’s what I thought. But there are a lot of military bases there, and we’ve received intermittent shortwave traffic indicating LAX is still open, and planes are landing.”

  “Wow, that’s long odds.” Andrew did the math in his head. “Around a thousand nautical miles?”

  “More like 1,060 from here to LAX.”

  “What’s the range of the Chinook?”

  “1,261 miles.”

  “Oh,” Andrew said. “Planning to refuel en route?”

  “We pass within 50 miles of two big airports and a handful of municipal ones. They’re scouting as they go. Thanks to you guys getting the C-17s out, we have a few more options.”

  “The Globemasters have a lot more options,” Andrew said. “Hell, we could make Hawaii without a stretch. But we can’t get there without refueling the Chinooks…”

  “Yeah,” the General said. He didn’t need to state the rest. “The bigger problem is the Ospreys. They’re only good for a bit over a thousand miles. If we can’t refuel, we’ll have to land and abandon them.”

  “Any passengers?” Andrew asked.

  “Just gear,” General Rose said. “We have plenty of room for personnel on the Chinooks.”

  A bell sounded from the southern perimeter, followed by the unmistakable sound of a helicopter chain gun firing. Both men moved to that side and watched. A second later, a series of green parachute flares lit up the sky, followed shortly thereafter by a long series of thunderous explosions.

  “Claymores,” the general said and took one last, long drag from his cigarette before dropping it onto the dirty concrete sidewalk and crushing it out under his heel. “Time’s up. Get your crew to the transports.” The general’s aide ran up, and the two set off purposefully. Andrew never had a chance to ask how he was getting out.

  The base exploded into frantic activity. The defensive units initiated a controlled fallback, concentrating their coverage on key points as they moved toward the airfield. They loaded the last of the cargo onto the C-17s, and their crews ran toward them.

  Cobb came out of the temporary barracks with Kathy right behind him. She looked at the green flares falling slowly in the rain and turned to Andrew.

  “The base is going to fall,” he told her. “Get to C-17 44F,” he said and pointed to one of the towering plane’s tail where the marking was visible.

  “Where are you going?”

  “My men and I are tasked with the defense of that plane.” His squad of men came trotting up, loaded down with huge amounts of gear and ammo. They handed Cobb a similarly loaded pack and web harness.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Not this time,” he said. She started to protest, and he put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, you are damned good with a rifle. Keep the HK.” One of the operators handed him a rig with the HK91. Somewhere, they’d found some magazines for it, and they were all loaded with 7.62x54 military ball. “Help protect the civilians. The loadmaster is holding a seat in first class for you. Be there, be safe. I’ll make it on board, I promise.”

  She looked at him with wide eyes, but let him fit the battle rattle to her. The operators looked at her skeptically, but she pulled a magazine, checked the rifle, and fit the mag skillfully in, grabbing the forward-mounted charging handle to rack a round into the chamber. They looked at each other and smiled.

  “You fucking better make it,” she snapped, and she reached a hand behind his head and pulled him into a kiss. The operators hooted and hollered, and Cobb blushed.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” one of them said and winked, “we’ll bring the colonel back to you.”

  “Stow it,” Cobb ordered them, and they came to mock attention. “Get to the plane,” he told her. “I’ll see you shortly!” Before she had time to complain, he and his men raced off, leaving her alone.

  For a long moment she considered following him despite his admonitions. But then she noticed the huge group of civilians. They were just like her, but scared shitless. None of them had weapons, and they looked completely confused as dozens of military personnel ran by. They were like an island in a maelstrom.

  “Where are you supposed to go?” she asked one of the women. She held up a card that had a hand-printed 44F in black Sharpie. “Same as me,” Kathy said. The women looked confusedly at her military jumpsuit, lacking rank and patches, and the big black battle rifle she held cross-body.

  “Come on,” Kathy said, deciding. “Let’s get on the plane.”

  * * *

  Andrew climbed the crew ladder someone had towed to the airplane. It wasn’t for the C-17, so it was several feet too short, and he had to jump up to get inside. Chris followed easily, but they had to turn around and pull Wade up.

  Military command staff, doctors, and other specialists partly filled first class. At the rear, the bunks held people who were too injured to survive the trip to LAX on a helicopter. Nurses tended to them, securing IV bags and hooking up monitors to the on-board power.

  The plane’s APU was already running. That hadn’t been an option in the hangar, because no one had known the condition of the plane’s batteries.

  Wade dropped into the engineer’s seat and consulted the operations manual. After comparing some of the switches and controls, he began the pre-start sequence. As Andrew climbed into his pilot’s seat, he could see the engines already turning over and temperatures coming up. Wade had used the preheaters and saved him a couple of minutes of nursing them.

  “Good job on the prestart,” he told
Wade, who grinned and gave him a thumbs up. “Here we go.” The engines roared to life as he put his headset on. “Loadmaster, report?”

  “We’re about two-thirds loaded, captain,” came the immediate reply. Andrew heard the sound of hundreds of voices over the intercom.

  “Buzz me as soon as we’re clear!” Andrew said and clicked off.

  From their high perch, he had a clear view of the airfield defense and could see how desperate it was becoming. Several Apaches were making wild strafing runs along the perimeter, sometimes dangerously close to each other. Tracers lit up the gloom of the storm through the rain, like laser bolts in a sci-fi movie. He desperately wished he were in a ground attack fighter, or anything other than a big, fat, helpless transport waiting to meet his fate.

  The ground crew was almost finished loading the other C-17s. He could see they carried some military personnel, but mostly pallet after pallet of gear. The crew on 23 Papa was already raising its ramp, and the pilot started his taxi before the ramp was secure. One of the Apaches came in for a landing, crews racing to refuel it, while another desperately continued to fire into the screaming hordes coming from the south.

  It was inevitable that something would go wrong. Andrew looked up from checking the temperature on all four engines, just in time to see an Apache effect a tight turn at the far end of the runway, where it would rotate and climb away. Something happened, the turn became steadily tighter, until the helicopter was perpendicular to the ground, then it seemed to hold there for a long instant.

  “Oh no,” Andrew moaned as the chopper side-slipped to the ground and became a mushroom cloud of fire and debris. It landed squarely on the northern perimeter fence corner, obliterating a fifty-yard section of fence as it slammed into it and exploded. The titanic impact and explosion sent the ten-foot-tall concrete barriers flying. In moments, the infected began streaming in.

  It was good luck that the section hit wasn’t on the north side as they’d deployed most of the remaining troops there to defend against the huge influx from Austin. The firing towers, erected to defend the fence every two hundred meters, were all spared. Troops on those towers with M2 .50 caliber machine guns instantly began concentrating fire on the breach. From across the tarmac, a Stryker armored car raced toward the gap, spewing more .50 caliber rounds. As it stopped, a squad of gunners deployed a pair of M240 light machine guns.

  Transport 23 Papa finished its taxi, turned onto the main runway, and ran up its engines. The roar was clearly audible, even over the constant gunfire. C-17 41 India was closing its ramp and starting to move. Andrew could also see the last few Chinooks spin up their rotors. Explosions reverberated from the southern end as soldiers blew the last of the demolitions charges, and men ran for the Chinooks. The last stage of the evacuation was under way.

  “We need to move!” Andrew yelled over the PA as more explosions rocked the east and west perimeters.

  “Last in,” the loadmaster said. “Ramp coming up!”

  “Release brakes,” Andrew said, and Chris took care of it. He had a good, basic feel for some of the systems after their first adventure.

  “Brakes released,” Chris confirmed.

  “Ten percent power,” Andrew said, and felt Chris’s hand on his as they pushed the throttles forward. The big Pratt & Whitney turbines spun up, and the plane began to move.

  Outside, several of the Chinooks banked toward concentrations of soldiers on the field, who were manning the defenses to the last minute. They would evacuate those manning the gun towers directly onto the hovering Chinooks. Lightning played across the sky, and Andrew couldn’t imagine a more harrowing extraction. Rotary-wing pilots had a screw loose to start with, anyway.

  He used the foot pedals to steer them toward the taxiway and glanced up just as 23 Papa rotated and climbed ever so slowly into the sky. With a full load of fuel and maximum cargo, they’d used almost all of the runway’s 3,100 usable feet.

  “Shit, that was close,” he mumbled.

  “What was that?” Chris asked.

  “Nothing,” he replied, then changed channels. “41 India, note the rotation point for 23 Papa?”

  “I saw, 44 Foxtrot. Gonna give it a little more.”

  Andrew was turning onto the taxiway that ran adjacent to the runway, and he saw 41 India turn onto the runway. Unlike the previous pilot who throttled up and ran for it, this pilot used a trick the Globemaster was known for. He engaged the thrust reversers, and backed the huge plane all the way to the end of the runway.

  “Well done,” Andrew said with a nod. The other plane stopped, the crew stowed the thrust reversers, and the engines screamed as it roared down the runway. The pilot rotated with a good five hundred feet to spare.

  “Ground control calling,” Wade said. It was his job to monitor the channel. “Defenses have fallen on the south end.”

  They were taxiing to the south, and Andrew squinted through the plane’s powerful landing lights to see. A pair of Stryker armored cars raced toward the helipads. Several hundred yards away, he saw running figures. They weren’t in uniform.

  “Jesus God,” Chris said.

  “I only wish,” Andrew said. His hands itched to push the throttles further forward and speed their taxi, but he knew the plane was heavily loaded. A turn at too much speed could tip them over onto a wing. Then it would be game over.

  They reached the end of the taxiway, and he started his turn. The plane bumped slightly once, twice.

  “Was that what I think it was?” Wade gulped.

  “It wasn’t a turtle,” Chris told him, talking about the little concrete bumps on roads.

  The cockpit door opened, and Andrew glanced back to see General Rose. “Mind if I use the jump seat?”

  “You’re welcome to it, sir,” Andrew said. “Pardon me if I don’t get up and salute, we’re a little busy.” As they taxied onto the runway, dozens of half-naked people ran at them.

  “I can see that, son. Carry on. I just wanted to be here, one way or the other.” Andrew shrugged. It was the general’s prerogative.

  They lined up on the runway. Andrew called for the brakes, which Chris applied. Then, he reached for the throttles.

  “We’re not going to back up?” Chris asked. They could hear a distant thumping sound, and he could see the crazies on the ground through the low-set view window.

  “We don’t have time,” Andrew said, “too much risk of sucking one into an engine. Full throttle!”

  They pushed the four levers forward until they stopped. For the first time, they heard the deafening roar of the four turbofans at full power. The entire plane shook, and they heard frightened screams from the lower deck. Brakes squelched and bucked on the wet concrete. Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew caught a view from one of the rearward facing cameras. The powerful jet wash had sent hundreds of the crazy bastards flying, cartwheeling and spinning like leaves in the wind.

  Andrew watched the RPM indicators until they reached 70 percent. He didn’t dare let the power get any higher, or he would risk yawing them as he let the brakes go.

  “Release brakes,” he said.

  The C-17 didn’t exactly take off like a rocket—it weighed far too much fully loaded—but the acceleration was much more profound than that of the previous two planes. He knew many of the hundreds of people below weren’t seated, and they were probably now sliding around like loose cans in a car’s trunk. As he feared, the plane skewed slightly, and he corrected his lineup by steering the front wheel.

  Racing down the runway, he had a ringside view of the final evacuation. Chinooks hovered over several guard towers, dangerously low, back ramps down, with men making frantic, near suicidal, leaps as infected climbed the towers to get at them. One Chinook spun, almost losing control as the monsters got hold of its undercarriage. The pilot got the helicopter under control and it started to climb, shedding gesticulating bodies as it ascended.

  Two Chinooks landed on a taxiway as three Strykers skidded to a stop in the mud, their crews bai
ling out and rushing headlong up the ramps. Many of them fired over their shoulders as they ran. A dozen of the crazies ran inside one of the helicopters as it lifted off. Andrew swallowed, imagining the sudden, pitched battle inside. He offered a silent prayer for those men.

  At the end of the runway, near where the Apache had gone down, a lone Stryker sat. Its crew was laying down a withering hail of lead, but some of the infected were still getting past, through, and around their fire. Andrew saw four men on the ground, and one in a turret, his .50 caliber booming away at the infected.

  They were approaching the end of the runway as his airspeed climbed past 75 miles per hour. Andrew saw the flood of undead running onto the runway toward his racing plane, heedless of the danger. The plane’s wheels pulverized the first of the monsters. He cringed when he hit them, but he never even felt it. A half-million pounds of airplane, doing nearly 100 miles per hour, turned them to jelly on impact.

  Andrew checked the flaps, slapped their control a notch, said a silent prayer, and pulled back on the stick harder than he would have liked. The nose came up, and the plane bunny-hopped into the air. He gritted his teeth, waiting for the sickening sound of a tail strike that never came. The altimeter jumped about 100 feet, then the stall alarm screamed. He pushed the stick forward.

  Andrew expected to have to nose down to gain speed, but the C-17 leveled out and kept accelerating. The stall alarm went out, and the heads-up display showed him in level flight. He set the elevator at five degrees up, and they began to climb as he banked to the west. It took him a minute to find the ship-wide intercom.

  “This is Lieutenant Tobin, your pilot,” he said, hearing his own voice echoing from the first-class area just behind the flight deck. “We made it; we’re safe.” The entire plane reverberated with the cheers of over 500 souls.

  * * *

  Andrew felt safe for the first time in days. He was behind the stick of a powerful airplane, climbing past 25,000 feet, the insanity of the last few days miles below him. He might as well have been on another planet.