Nation’s C-130 touches down next, coming to a stop just a few yards behind the other. Since there still aren’t any packs of zeebs heading for them, Hunter drops the Harrier off to the side of the C-130s. He shuts down the engines and then pops the canopy. From behind the seat he takes out a fresh M4 he got from Jimmy before he left. Remembering Phoenix, he makes sure to take a couple of spare clips with him.
He’s unprepared for Nation to crush him in a bear hug. “Man, I never thought I’d see you again!” Nation says too loud for Hunter’s liking. “Let alone pulling my sorry ass out of the fire again.”
“You’re welcome,” Hunter wheezes.
“So, what’s the story with the new ride?”
“The old one got boosted in Phoenix. I left it in a hangar, but while I was out looking for supplies, someone took it. I think the same guys who hit Snowcap. They were flying Russian planes. You see anyone like that around?”
“Not with my own eyes. I’ve just heard ghost stories. No one knows where they come from or how many of them there are, but what I do know is they aren’t in it for profit. Not like me or other merchants.”
“They did something pretty odd: they stacked zeebs up and burned them. I found a pile in the mall and then they had some barricades in the city.”
“That’s weird. Seems like a waste of time.”
Hunter nods. “It seemed like we were the only ones left alive there, so why bother barricading the streets?”
“Maybe it’s an artistic statement.”
They don’t have any more time to discuss it as they reach the airport terminal. There’s a pack of zeebs still in ragged TSA uniforms. Hunter and Nation put them out of their misery. The machine gun fire might bring more, so they hurry to search the area for anything useful.
“What exactly are you planning to do here?” Hunter asks as they ransack a coffee shop.
“We’ve got a contact up at the top of the mountain. Sandia Crest I think it is. It’s not going to be a very fun drive up there. We’ve got to take a winding road up about four thousand feet to the top of the mountain. I’m sure you can imagine all the problems with that.”
“Sure. I could come along to back you up.”
“That would be great. That plane of yours can probably land in the parking lot. If things get too hot, that would give us a good exit strategy.”
“So I take it this contact isn’t all that friendly?”
“He was one of those survivalist types before things turned to shit. He decided to make base camp up there, figuring it’d be easy to defend.”
Hunter thinks of his time in the hunting lodge; its mountain location had made it easy for him to fend off the zeebs for two years. “Sounds like a good plan. What’s he want with you?”
“He’s going to give us some timber. We got a guy then in Las Cruces who’ll give us a few bags of silver for it. While we’re in the area, we can poke around, do a little foraging.”
They finish foraging through the terminal, coming back with only a couple of bottles of water and some stale candy bars. The crew of the other C-130 has the rear door open to bring down a half-ton truck with a flatbed trailer. “I’m really glad you came when you did,” Nation says. “Otherwise we might have lost this. You know how hard it is to get something like this these days?”
“Plus another crew.”
“That too,” Nation says. He pats the hood of the truck once it’s on the tarmac. “We’re going to take this beast all the way up that mountain tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we have to find somewhere to stay. You ever been to the Hilton?”
“No. I’ll meet you guys there,” Hunter says and then starts back for the Harrier.
***
The roof of the Hilton was flat enough and strong enough to hold the Harrier. He hopes that will keep it safe from any scavengers who might happen by. Though if any did find the Harrier, he doubts they would be able to fly it. More likely they’d end up crashing and burning on the sidewalk below.
He met Nation and his crews on the top floor, which they had already gone through to make sure there was no one else living or dead. Hunter hasn’t stayed in a penthouse suite before, which now he sees was unfortunate. The place has a living room, a kitchen, a bar that has been ransacked, a king-size bed in the bedroom, and a hot tub that would have been great when the place still had electricity; now it’s just a drowning hole for rats.
He has just dropped onto the bed to get some rest when there’s a tap on the door. He takes his pistol with him as he goes to see who’s there. He expects to find Nation, but instead it’s a woman with short black hair and a lot of freckles. She flashes a crooked smile to him. “Hi. I’m Phil’s co-pilot. My name’s Val. I just wanted to thank you for saving our butts—again.”
“You’re welcome, Val.”
She looks down at his bare chest and then smiles broader. “I thought maybe there was another way I could show my appreciation.”
Hunter’s face turns warm as he understands her meaning. “Are you sure that’s wise? If Phil finds out—”
“We’re not a couple,” she says with a huff. “God, that’d be like dating my brother.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right.” She has to get on her toes so she can kiss him and even then he has to lean down to allow her to reach his lips. Her kiss is a lot more forceful than Misuko’s, Casey’s, or even Tammy’s; he wonders how long it has been since Val has been with a man.
Though he had said goodbye to Tammy only that morning, he soon finds himself in bed with Val. It’s no surprise that her lovemaking is as forceful as her kissing. She claws at him with animal fury, her fingernails leaving marks that he’s sure will continue to show for days. When she comes, she shrieks like a jungle cat and then collapses next to him on the bed.
She runs a hand along his sweaty chest, tangling one finger in some of the golden hairs above his stomach. “So, did you like it?”
“It was really something.”
“How long until you’re ready to do it again?”
“I don’t think it will be that long,” he says. He feels a slight bit guilty for already fucking another woman, but then he and Tammy had never really been an item. He feels guiltier about again being disloyal to Casey—if she’s even still alive. Looking down at Val, he supposes part of the attraction is that if she grew her hair out and acted with a little more restraint, she would be almost a double of Casey.
“All right. I think I’m ready again.”
***
Hunter wakes up to find Val has already left. On yellowed hotel stationary, she left a note to say she had to go back to the airport to check on the plane. He shakes his head and then wads the note up. He doesn’t usually get abandoned in the morning; he’s usually the one who sneaks out on the woman.
He dons his flight suit and then gathers the rest of his supplies, including the M4. As he’s heading to the stairs to the roof, he has the misfortune of running into Captain Nation. The other pilot smiles knowingly. “So, how did it go with Val?”
“Did you send her to my room?”
“Oh, sure, I had to really twist her arm.” He laughs at his own joke and then claps Hunter on the arm. “She’s been talking about you ever since we met you at Snowcap Mountain. It was good to finally be able to shut her up about it.”
“I’m not sure how much she enjoyed it. She ducked out of here pretty early.”
“Maybe she got her expectations a little too high. You still going to watch our backs today?”
“Sure.”
“Good man. When we get to Las Cruces, I’ll cut you in for ten percent. Deal?”
“That’s fine,” Hunter says. He’s not sure if that’s a good deal or not, but he isn’t that concerned about money; he doesn’t really have room for much of it.
“All right, I’ll see you at the top.” Nation claps him on the arm again and then saunters towards the stairs going down.
Hunter goes up to the roof, relieved to find
the Harrier still there and seemingly untouched. He gives it a once-over just to make sure no one has been fooling with it. Not that he would suspect Nation or Val or any of the others of sabotaging his plane, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.
The Harrier comes to life with a low growl that makes him think of Val. He shakes his head and then runs through his preflight checklist. The Harrier smoothly shoots up into the air before he levels it off. Turning the plane about thirty degrees, he can see the top of Sandia Crest. From what Nation said it’s about ten thousand feet in elevation, which is more than a mile above the city itself.
Nation and his crew in the half-ton truck start to rumble towards I-40, which will take them to the exit for the mountain. They’re pretty easy to keep track of since the truck is large and pretty much the only thing moving. Its size and power make it loud enough to start drawing some attention. Hunter keys in the frequency for Nation’s radio. “You’ve got a pack incoming from the east. Looks like about fifty.”
“Think you can clear a path?”
“No sweat.” Hunter lowers the Harrier to only about fifty feet, placing himself between the zeebs and the truck. He triggers the cannon pods to let off a stream of shells. About half the zeebs go down in a heap. The others scramble over them, seemingly oblivious to the fate of their comrades. Hunter needs two more bursts to take the rest out. “All clear.”
The half-ton truck is heavy enough that it can grind its way over the fallen bodies before continuing on its way. Hunter follows them to the exit for Sandia Crest. After that the trees start to get too thick for him to follow. He skims along the tops of the trees, ready to chop them down with his cannons if it comes to that.
“How you doing down there?” he asks.
“We’re about halfway. Only a couple of them in the road. No problem,” Nation says.
The problem for Hunter is when he gets to the top of the mountain. Just as he crests the mountain, a gunshot rings out. It misses the canopy of the Harrier, but not by much. Hunter sees a Paul Bunyan-looking guy aiming a hunting rifle at him. He lifts the Harrier farther up to get out of range.
“You almost here? The natives are restless.”
“We ran into a little snag. The engine overheated about three-quarters up. We got to wait a bit for it to cool. Just sit tight.”
Hunter curses under his breath. He has plenty of fuel, but he doesn’t relish the idea of boring holes in the sky for an hour or more while Nation gets the truck moving again. The crazy bastard with the gun will just have to shoot him.
He brings the Harrier down as fast as he can onto the pavement of what used to be a parking lot. The heat and wind from the nozzles is enough to make the mountain man take a few steps back for cover. While dust swirls around the Harrier, Hunter pops the canopy. He climbs down and then puts his hands in the air.
“You want to shoot an unarmed man, go right ahead!” Hunter shouts to the mountain man.
“What you doing here?” the mountain man shouts back.
“I’m with Captain Phil Nation. The guy you’re selling lumber to?”
“Why should I believe that?”
“He’s down the road in a truck. You can go down there and see for yourself if you want.”
“I ain’t getting in that plane of yours.”
“That’s fine. There’s not room for you. And the trees are too thick anyway.”
“So what do you want?”
“Mostly I wanted to check out the situation here. What are you doing for security?”
“We got a fence to keep the undead out. And any strangers trying to come up the road. Didn’t plan for no one dropping in from the sky.”
“I had a place kind of like this. Up by Seattle. I was there for two years.” Hunter holds out a hand. “My name is Hunter Hawking. I used to be in the Air Force. Before everything went belly-up.”
The mountain man finally lowers his rifle. “I’m Nathaniel Stone. People used to call me Nate.”
“It’s good to meet you, Nate.”
“Sorry about the gun. Can’t be too careful with strangers.”
“Especially when they drop out of the sky.”
Nate nods and then says, “You want to go meet your friend, I got a truck.”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
The truck is a Chevy that’s probably older than Hunter. Despite the rust on the outside and the torn seats on the inside, the engine seems to work well enough. The Chevy chugs down the road, to a wooden gate made from some of the pine trees in the area. Hunter waits in the truck while Nate unlocks the gate and then swings it open. From what Hunter can tell, there’s a solid wall of earth and logs all the way around what used to be an observation center.
Hunter starts to wish he had brought a gun with him as the truck winds down the road, into a forest. He keeps an eye out for any zeebs that might be wandering around, or less friendly versions of Nate. “You get a lot of zeebs up here?” he asks.
“Not much anymore. Plenty of them when we first started. Lots of tourists who got caught up here. We took them out and then built the wall.”
“How many of you are there?”
“It’s four of us. Me, my wife, my son, and my brother-in-law. There was six of us when we started. I had to decapitate my sister when a fever killed her. Buried her behind the house. Her daughter died not long after that. She was just a wee thing, about three months old. We tried taking care of her, but one of the bastards caught her. Ed ain’t been right since it happened. Ed’s my brother-in-law. I’m not sure if you’ll be staying long enough to see him. He mostly keeps to himself these days. Takes a couple of weeks provisions and stays out in the woods.”
“I’m sorry,” Hunter says, though he knows it’s not sufficient.
“It ain’t your fault, soldier. You in the war?”
“Yes. I was stationed in Okinawa.”
“Shame we didn’t really get a chance to school them commie motherfuckers. Been waiting years for it to happen and when it does it’s too late.”
“Yes. Too late,” Hunter mumbles.
The truck rounds a curve and then Nate brings it to a stop in front of the idle half-ton truck. Nation and two of his crew are leaning against the truck, smoking cigarettes. Nation’s face brightens when Hunter and Nate get out of the truck.
“Hey, Nate. You ol’ son of a bitch. Looks like you already met my friend, Major Hawking.” Nation turns to Hunter. “Did he try to put a bullet in you?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t take it personally.”
“That’s right. You can’t be too careful these days,” Nation says. He gestures to the truck. “She should be ready to go in a few minutes. She’s just about cooled off. You guys see any zeebs on the way down?”
“Not a one,” Hunter says.
“Great. So, Nate, you got that lumber ready to go?”
“It’ll be ready when you are. You got what we ask for?”
“In the back. Ought to be enough to keep you occupied for a few months.”
Nate climbs up into the back of the truck. Hunter watches him open a cardboard box and then pull out a National Geographic. He turns to Nation to whisper, “You’re trading him lumber for magazines?”
“Books too. When they got here, all these guys had for entertainment were brochures and the text on the static displays. Even mountain folk get bored of staring at trees after a while.”
“I suppose so.” Hunter shakes his head. Sometimes this new world doesn’t make much sense to him.
***
There isn’t a crane on hand, so they have to load the logs onto the truck the old-fashioned way with pulleys and ropes. It’s grueling work, so they break into two teams, one going for a couple of logs and then the other relieving them and so on. Even then, Hunter’s entire body is one big ache by the time they have finished loading the truck.
“I don’t suppose we can trouble you to spend the night?” Nation asks. “I’d rather not try to take this down in the dark.”
“We got plenty of room
,” Nate says. He leads them into what had been a visitor’s center. Nate and his family had made improvements by fortifying the windows and doors to help keep out intruders. Hunter detects the familiar scent of squirrel cooking; it’s not a smell he has missed.
Nate’s wife is surprisingly delicate-looking, her limbs like twigs and her waist about the size of one of Hunter’s thighs. And yet he watches as she lifts a cast-iron pot filled with hot water and laundry. With apparent ease she carries it into another room.
“That’s Martha, my wife,” Nate says. “She isn’t big on entertaining. You all are welcome to make yourselves at home. Supper will be ready in a bit.”
“Hard to remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal,” Nation says. He leads Hunter and his crew over to the fireplace the family uses for their cooking—and laundry. The mountain air is cooler, especially since it’s starting to get dark. “This place is real cozy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. What about Val and the others with the planes?”
“They’ll be fine. They know how to take care of themselves. Course if you miss her, you can go back to the airport.”
“No thanks. I’m still recovering from last night.” He rubs some of the scratch marks beneath his flight suit.
“She’s a little hellcat, isn’t she?” Nation shakes his head. “I picked her up in Syracuse a few months after everything went tits-up. She had worn her last partner out; he took off one morning without her in the old 707 they were using. Didn’t leave a note or nothing, just skipped out on her.”
“Then how do you know why he left?”
“We met up with him in Billings. Pure coincidence. He’d gotten himself a new co-pilot by then. It was one hell of a reunion.” The others in his crew snicker; they had probably seen it for themselves.
“He make it out alive?”
“Yeah, but he probably wished he hadn’t. I guess the moral of the story is try to keep her happy. When they made up that saying, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ they had Val in mind.”
Army of the Damned (Sky Ghost #1) Page 12