by Chesla, Gary
Mike tapped on the window and looked in through the window.
“Daddy, let us out!” Jamie said, her voice muffled behind the closed window.
“Tell Mommy to unlock the door,” Mike smiled.
Click, Click.
“I forgot I had the keys,” Linda said as she hopped out of the car. “What did you find inside the house? Can we stay here?”
“Come take a look,” Mike replied. “We found a welcome letter. It turns out the place is a rental and I guess the people renting it never made it here. I think you will like it.”
“Is there a TV?” Jamie asked.
“No, no TV,” Mike replied. “But there is a big comfortable bed.”
“I’ll wait out here while you take Linda through the house,” Tony said. “I want to get a look at this place from the outside.”
“OK, thanks,” Mike replied.
“Now when we go through the house, be careful and stay alert. Tony and I checked the house twice, but we can’t be too careful,” Mike said as they walked into the house.
Mike gave Linda a quick tour of the house, then went outside to help Tony.
“What do you think?” Mike asked when he caught up to Tony.
“I found a few footprints out in front of the house, so we should keep alert,” Tony said. “I couldn’t tell how fresh they were. They were probably from a few days back, but we should keep our eyes open all the same.
Other than that, the place seems solid enough to keep out a mob of zombies for a few days if need be. I also found a shed at the side of the house. I broke the lock and looked inside. There were some tools inside we could use.”
“That’s good,” Mike replied. “It sounds like we might finally be able to get some sleep tonight.”
“It would be nice,” Tony said. “Help me with these shutters, then we can take the tools inside before it gets dark. Once we get the doors secured, I am going to go get some sleep.”
When Mike and Tony finished with the shutters, they started to carry the tools and boards from the shed, inside the house.
When they walked inside the house, Mike stopped and smelled the air.
“What’s that smell?” Mike asked.
Tony smelled the air too.
“It’s macaroni,” Jamie yelled. “Mommy’s cooking dinner.”
Linda smiled, “I found some pasta in the cupboards. The water doesn’t work, so I took a panful of water out of the back of the toilet. I figured since I was going to boil the water, it should be OK.”
“As long as it was from the back of the toilet and not from the bowl,” Tony laughed.
“I don’t care where it is from,” Mike grinned, “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten for three days.”
“George ate,” Jamie said. “He ate crickets in the attic.”
“How many did you eat?” Mike asked.
“Yuck!” Jamie replied. “I don’t eat bugs.”
“Let’s stop talking about bugs,” Linda said as she set the pan of macaroni on the table. “This isn’t much, but I’m sure it is more than any of us has had in while.”
After they ate, they all went upstairs and went to bed.
“This is the first time in five days that I’ve been able to sleep in a bed,” Linda said. “It’s also the first time I haven’t been scared to death.
It was nice to have a half normal day again.”
Mike’s snoring was the only response Linda received.
She smiled in the darkness, put her arm over Mike’s chest, closed her eyes and feel sound asleep.
Chapter 32
Late Tuesday, May 11th, Fallon Naval Air Base, Nevada
“It sounds like the Seahawks are back,” Chervy said. “Let’s head on over to the runway.”
Petty Officer Chervanak took one last look at the monitoring station, the room where he had spent so much time over the last few days.
The dark monitors around the room seemed to foretell the future the base would soon be facing.
The room brought back both pleasant memories and memories of the nightmare they were facing and how it had all started.
It was a room he would never forget for as long as he lived.
What he had seen in this room would give him nightmares for the rest of his life.
Chervy knew if he didn’t get moving, it would be a short memory.
As Rogers opened the door, Chervy blew out the lantern they had been using for light since the emergency generator broke down.
“Let’s get the hell out of here, Rogers,” Chervy said.
“I’m going to miss this place,” Rogers said.
“If we don’t get on that helicopter,” Chervy replied, “I don’t think you will feel that way for much longer.”
Chervy and Rogers stepped outside and closed the door behind them as the sound of grenades exploding filled the air.
Smoke and bright flashes lit up the sky on the western side of the base.
“Shit, I didn’t think the infected would get here this soon,” Chervy said, “This is going to be close.”
“I’m glad we are getting out of here,” Rogers said. “But to tell you the truth, I feel like hell about leaving all those other guys behind. Do you think any of them will make it?”
“I don’t know,” Chervy replied. “I feel like hell too, but keep telling yourself we are leaving for a reason. Our new assignment is to help the Doc find a solution to this infection. If that doesn’t work out, our job will be to help the Doc help mankind survive. It’s important and if someone has to do it, I’m just glad it is us.”
“I’m just glad the others aren’t out here watching us go out and get on that helicopter,” Rogers replied as they ran across the base. “It would be hard to live with myself after something like that.”
“Get that shit out of your mind,” Chervy said. “We still have a job to do and I expect you to do it. If we’re lucky, there will be plenty of time to think about this later.”
“I’ll try Cherv,” Rogers answered.
The explosions continued as the sounds of gunfire, now closer to the base, began echoing off the buildings around Chervy and Rogers.
Chervy and Rogers ran past the last building that stood between them and the helicopter, which was now sitting about four hundred feet from them out on the corner of the runway.
A tanker truck was pumping fuel into the helicopter as Doc, Davis and a few other men stood by watching.
Chervy and Rogers put their hands on their hats to hold them in place as they approached the helicopter’s rotating blades.
“Hey Cherv,” Doc yelled over the sounds of the helicopter’s engine. “I was beginning to think you decided not to go with us.”
“How much longer before we’re fueled up?” Chervy asked.
“The crew chief says about another five minutes,” Doc replied.
“Hopefully we have enough time,” Chervy yelled, “All hell is starting to break loose.”
The men all looked up as the second Seahawk approached the runway and landed two hundred feet to the right of where the first helicopter was being refueled.
When the other helicopter landed, the crew chief walked over and talked to the pump operator, then gave the signal to shut down and move the tanker to the other helicopter.
The crew chief walked over and talked to the pilot for a second, then ran over to the second helicopter, where the tanker was getting set up to begin refueling that aircraft.
The pilot walked over to the doctor and spoke with him for a minute, then ran over and climbed into the Seahawk.
The Doc looked towards Chervy and the men and waved for everyone to gather around him.
“The crew chief hasn’t filled up the barrels for our extra fuel yet, but he suggested we all get aboard and get prepared to leave. He is going over to fuel up the other Seahawk first, so if there isn’t enough time, that at least both helicopters can take off,” Doc said.
“He said if time allows, he’ll give us the extra fuel, but if he do
esn’t have time, we have to leave with what we have.”
“Why wouldn’t he have time?” Rogers asked.
“The first defensive line has been overrun by the infected,” Doc yelled back. “The second line has orders to fall back behind the trenches on the other side of the runway in five minutes. Gentlemen, get aboard now.”
The men began to board the helicopter.
Chervy stood by the door and helped pull the men and their equipment up into the helicopter.
When the men waiting to get on the helicopter were half on board, Chervy looked up when motion near the hangars caught his eye.
When Chervy saw what was happening, he almost began to panic.
Men were running from the hangars, behind them were thousands of staggering bodies.
Chervy got the doctor’s attention and pointed back towards the hangars.
“Get the men on board now,” Doc said. “Anyone not on board by the time I reach the cockpit will be looking for another ride.”
The Doc turned and headed up to see the pilot.
“Help me get these men on board now!” yelled Chervy.
Two other men crowded around the door and began pulling the other men up through the door.
The last man had barely crawled into the cargo bay, when the sound of the turbojet engine beginning to roar drowned out all the other sounds around the men.
The dust and sand from around the helicopter filled the air as the helicopter began to rise up off the runway.
As the helicopter slowly rose up over the base, Chervy was able to see the entire base below.
The large horde coming from the west, was swarming over the western half the base.
The men that had been assigned to hold the position around the hangars, were now running for their lives.
Men were fighting to get into the second Seahawk that was still in the process of being refueled.
It was a scene of total chaos.
The infected were coming towards the second Seahawk as the men struggled to get on board.
Chervy watched as the infected swarmed around the fuel tanker, knocking the hose from the Seahawk’s fuel intake nozzle.
“Come on, get out of there,” Chervy said to himself, urging the helicopter to get off the ground before it was too late.
The helicopter began to rise up off the runway, with men hanging out the door and many others clinging to the choppers landing gear.
Chervy watched in horror as something ignited the fuel that had been spraying across the runway from the dislodged fuel line.
The tanker exploded, sending flames shooting into the air for two hundred feet in every direction.
When Chervy located the second Seahawk, flames were coming from the open door of the cargo bay.
The Seahawk hung in the air for a few seconds, then began to fall back towards the runway below.
The helicopter exploded upon contact with the runway, sending another fireball into the sky over the runway.
Chervy noticed that Doc was standing behind him, watching everything that had happened on the ground below.
He and Doc watched together, what would be the last memory they would have of their base.
It would be a scene that would haunt them until their last day on earth.
The base below was now totally covered by staggering bodies, except for one area of the runway.
The area of the runway that was now engulfed in flames and rising pillars of black smoke.
Burning bodies staggered through the flames until they finally fell to the ground and continued to burn until there was nothing left to burn.
Doc moved over and slid the door closed. The pillars of dark smoke in the sky over the base faded from view as the Seahawk turned and began its journey to Granite Mountain.
Chervy dropped down on the floor of the cargo bay, next to Doc.
“My God, that was horrible,” Chervy said. “I still can’t believe everything that has happened. I can understand a lot of what has happened over the last week, but I’m still struggling to understand how those dead infected bodies could overrun our base and do what we just saw. All the high-tech weapons we had and we couldn’t keep them from overrunning us.”
“It wasn’t as simple as that,” Doc replied. “In a way, the infected were much more high-tech than we were. The virus they carried was far and above anything we could understand, let alone defend against.
Then on the other hand, our mind set that our high-tech weapons would save us actually worked against us, keeping us from considering other ways to defend ourselves that might have been more effective.”
“I can understand what you are saying about the virus being too high-tech for us to understand, but we had some really sophisticated weaponry at Fallon. How do you mean relying on those weapons worked against us?”
“I believe you would agree that a machine gun is a powerful weapon,” Doc said.
“I would agree with that,” Chervy replied.
“I believe you would also say that wasps are nasty insects, but nowhere near as lethal as a machine gun,” Doc said again.
“Of course,” Chervy replied again.
“If I gave you a machine gun and put you in a closed room with ten thousand pissed off wasps,” Doc asked. “I left the door closed for thirty minutes and went and had a coffee.
When I came back and opened the door, would you still be alive?”
“Probably not,” Chervy answered.
“As powerful as a machine gun is, it would be the wrong weapon in that situation,” Doc said. “A simple, harmless fine net would have saved your life. Just about everything we had on base, as dangerous as they would be to humans, were little more than an annoyance to the infected. Simply put, we had the wrong weapons for the enemy we were facing. Combined with what we didn’t know about the virus the infected carried, we were basically defenseless from the start but we didn’t know it.
The virus spread so fast, we didn’t have time to realize what we were facing until it was too late.”
“Then what’s the answer Doc?” Chervy asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the high-tech answer that I’m sure you are looking for. I don’t know if I will ever have that,” Doc replied. “All I have is a low-tech hunch that we have to find a way to outlive the infected. If given the time, I might be able to understand what the virus is and how it works, but in the short run, that won’t help us.”
“After what we’ve seen, do you really think it’s possible for anyone to outlive the infected?” Chervy asked.
“I’m sure there will be pockets of humanity that will outlast the infected,” Doc replied. “But in the big picture, it’s not the infected I’m worried about.”
“After what just happened, I find that hard to understand,” Chervy said. “If the infected don’t worry you, what the hell does?”
“The virus that causes the infection,” Doc replied. “I assume that the bodies of the infected have a limited lifespan before they begin to fall apart and can no longer function. The infected should not be a threat for much longer. The life span of the virus is what concerns me. As long as the virus itself is active in the air and soil around us, we will never be safe from the possibility of becoming infected.”
Chervy sighed, “There just doesn’t seem to be an end to this.”
“Everything has an end point,” Doc replied.
“Unfortunately, the only end point I can see is ours,” Chervy replied.
“We’ve all been under a lot of stress,” Doc said. “If we are going to have a chance, I think we should try to get some rest. For the next hour or so, there isn’t anything we can do here, so why don’t you try and get some rest. When we arrive at Granite Mountain, we will have a lot of work to do.”
Chervy looked around the cargo bay.
Besides the doctor and Davis, there were six other men scattered around the cargo bay.
Four other men were to have gone with them, but with the confusion back at the base, C
hervy didn’t know what had happened that they didn’t make it to the helicopter.
He tried to push the last images of the base out of his mind and focus on the fact that he was still alive.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the side of the cargo bay.
Chervy’s eyes shot open as the sounds of the infected moaning echoed in his head.
“How long am I going to have these nightmares?” Chervy asked himself.
But as he opened his eyes, the moaning didn’t stop, instead there seemed to be people running around in the helicopter, shouting at each other.
Chervy looked up.
On his left, the Doc and five men were pressing themselves against the side of the cargo bay.
On his right were two men wrestling on the floor, a mere two feet from his legs.
One of the two men was frantically struggling with and biting the other man.
“Chervanak,” the doctor yelled.
Chervy looked over at the doctor, feeling like he was having an out of body experience.
He was still half asleep and wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real or not.
He tried to focus on what the doctor was saying.
“Chervy, open the cargo bay door,” Doc yelled.
Chervanak staggered to his feet, looked at the two men that were struggling on the floor, then grabbed the handle of the door and began to slide the door open.
The wind began to rush through the cargo bay.
Chervy hung onto the door handle to keep from being sucked out of the helicopter.
When the man that was being bitten and attacked on the floor saw the door being opened, he began to roll towards the open door.
He wrapped his arms around his attacker.
The two men began to roll closer to the door, leaving a bloody trail on the floor behind them.