Thirteen miles due west brought them to the Mississippi River near Belle Chasse. Enormously wide even from 2500-feet, the great brown muddy river flowed on silently below them. Several ships and barges were stationary in the river, anchored either in midstream or along the side of the banks.
“Any of them look like they are moving?” Doug asked, his voice ringing tinny in her earphones. Even though she could not see the man as he was sitting directly behind her, she had no doubt for a second that he had ever stopped being there.
“No. No smoke, no movement,” she said, consulting the map before directing him low over the Belle Chasse Naval Air Station. She had been there only six months before on a training mission. She had hoped to see the beautiful Marine CH-53 helicopters there, parked like great green frogs amongst murderous looking the F-18 fighter-bombers of the River Rattlers. Her heart sunk when all they saw were sandbagged fighting positions, bodies, oddly jerking zombies, and three blackened and scorched airframes along the tarmac. The CH-53 would have been perfect, as she had flown the same basic aircraft for years in the Air Force before moving into CV-22s. If they had a working CH-53 it would be a game changer. Her heart sank to know they did not.
“Ok, here is our turn, head due north and use the river as your reference. Let’s go check out the Big Easy.”
“They call it Naw-lins.”
“No, they don’t. My ex-husband works at Tulane. Only people that grew up somewhere else and moved there later say Naw-lins,” she answered.
“Too bad we are late for Mardi Gras.”
As they crept into the city and bayou was replaced by urban sprawl, the pine trees faded to concrete. It was hard to tell New Orleans from the air. So much of it was still a decaying ghost town from Hurricane Katrina, that what would seem out of the ordinary anywhere else, did not stand out. For a half hour, they hung low over the crescent city, flying over giant hotels in the city center, the French Quarter, the Mandeville Docks, over Canal Street to the Garden District. It was on Canal Street that they saw the first water standing. In some places, all they saw was water along the streets up the rooftops of buildings below.
“It always was an engineering mistake to build a city here, I thought. It is in a geologic bowl surrounded by water on all sides. You have to pump it out every day. If the pumps stop, it just fills up. Friggin’ Atlantis on the bayou,” Doug said quietly as they passed over the city, passing judgment from 1500-feet.
“Did you notice there were few zombies and fewer bodies?” Reynolds asked him.
“Yeah, guess they sank. Probably giving the alligators hell.”
Just outside of New Orleans to the northeast, the city fell away to be replaced again by the ten thousand year old bayou that surrounded the river metropolis. As Reynolds looked down for geographical points of reference, she noticed that the swamp grass had changed from a green and brown color to a dull rusty ginger. On the right-hand side of the Depplin, the forest was lush and green, even in fall, due to the pines and evergreens. On the left hand side of the blimp, the forest was made up of the same trees, but it looked as if it had rusted away.
“I’ve never seen anything like that and I’ve flown over the woods on five different continents,” Reynolds said.
Doug was quiet for a minute before he spoke. “I’ve seen that once before. On a documentary about Chernobyl. The pine trees in the swamp around the reactor absorbed so much high-level radiation that they turned colors. They called it the Red Forest.”
Reynolds felt a chill. “Is there a nuclear plant around here?”
“Yes, in Taft.”
Reynolds checked her map; Taft was only ten miles behind them. “Ok, open the throttle up on the Geo and let’s keep putting space between ourselves and here.”
She examined their map as the came out over Lake Pontchartrain. “Okay, next turn, yaw the rudder to move us 45 degrees off of north and head north-north east. We should be passing into Mississippi.”
They moved in silence, letting New Orleans sink into their minds. It had been a city of a half-million, the jewel of the Gulf. Now it was submerged and there was no FEMA, no National Guard, just water, alligators, and what used to be was now hidden underneath the radioactive new swamp of Orleans Parish.
They were over the thick loblolly pines of southern Mississippi by 1030 and Reynolds turned to a Snickers bar to pass the time as mile after mile of nothing passed below them. Dark pine forests, alternating with the occasional ribbon of road and rural highway, and the occasional farm, moved under them in repetition.
For two hours, the view remained the same, as the sun grew high in the sky. Even though the sun’s heat and the warmth of the burners helped lower the ambient air temperature, it was still 3-degrees colder every 1000-feet they rose. That fact, coupled with the 40-mph wind chill of forward movement, was having an effect on Reynolds’ exposed skin. She wore NOMEX flight gloves but could barely feel her fingertips. Whenever she was not using them to update their location, she had them stuffed into the pockets of the borrowed leather jacket. Her face, exposed around the corners of her hose-less oxygen mask, had long since become too wind burned to be anything but numb and she tucked her chin down into the collar of the bomber jacket to help keep her neck warm.
“So, how long were you married?” Doug asked unexpectedly. Another invite for in-flight conversation of the worst sort.
“Long enough to have two girls and realize he is a total ass. Everything about that relationship was a mistake but them.”
“How old are they?”
“18 and 15.”
“Tough ages.”
“You aren’t kidding. They are good girls though.”
“Where are they?”
“With their father.”
Doug shut up and went back to playing with his ropes and levers.
««—»»
It was noon when Reynolds came over the microphone and ordered Doug to slow down so they could find Mississippi Highway 49 near the Brooklyn community among the deep pine forests. The four-lane highway popped up like an asphalt vein through the green heart of the countryside. It was the main north-south route from the Coast to Jackson in the center of the magnolia state. It was around the Brooklyn area that the largest military base within 500-miles of Gulf Shores was hidden.
The Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, or in alphabet soup parlance, the CSJFTC, covered more than 136,000 acres of property, or about 250 square miles. Officially a National Guard base, the center had been there since World War I and most of the National Guard units in the south spent their summer training there.
Stone had advised her that the communications overheard by the Fish Hawk in Mobile Bay had most likely come from there. He theorized that the base usually had a brigade pre-training there to go to Iraq or Afghanistan on deployment. A brigade could mean as many as 4,000 troops with tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, and everything else allocated to fight a modern war.
“Veer over there. That’s Shelby,” Reynolds said as the base loomed over the tops of the pines. It was located relatively in the middle of nowhere for the clear purpose of allowing tank drivers to maneuver their 70-ton armored beasts, and artillery gunners to get some firing practice, without disturbing the neighbors.
They passed low and slow over the huge base. Row after row of neat barracks buildings were laid out in grids below them. Drill fields, firing ranges, and motor pools stood ready to be used by unseen thousands of soldiers in training. Only the motor pools were empty, no soldiers could be seen, and the base was a ghost town. Reynolds’ heart rose again before plummeting to an even lower depth when she saw a half dozen pristine helicopters and transport planes arranged symmetrically on the parade field next to a cement building.
“We have aircraft below. Look!” Doug yelled excitedly.
Reynolds shook her head. “That giant helicopter there is a CH-54 Tarhe. The one next to it is an OH-6. They were withdrawn from service just after Vietnam.”
“So, let’s set
down and gas them up. You can fly one back and I will follow behind you in the Depplin. The coast looks clear enough.”
“Not gonna happen. This is the base museum. Those birds have had their wings clipped. The only way they are going to move is with a crane.”
Doug was quiet while he let it sink in. “Where do you think all the soldiers went?”
She shook her head again but did not answer. It was clear that the base had been evacuated. The fact that there were no signs of a battle meant the troops pulled out rather than fight for the installation. Railway lines led away from the base in all four cardinal directions, but it takes days to load an entire brigade onto trains and ship them somewhere. The fact that, other than the occasional truck or hummer parked here or there, there was not a single vehicle on the mega base spoke volumes about the completeness of the withdrawal.
“What next?” Doug asked.
“Twenty degrees off of compass almost due north. Go ahead and rise back to 2500, full throttle. We are burning daylight.”
Doug complied, pulling back on the lever that controlled the elevator and made the tip of the Depplin point to the sky as he increased the rpms on the Geo engine. A few more blasts on the burners kept the taco envelope rigid. As they moved north back along Highway 49, Reynolds had him veer over Interstate 59, which would take them exactly to their next destination at the center of the state in Meridian. Just as they popped over the interstate freeway, they saw the traffic below change from the occasional stalled car to a solid mass of green-grey military vehicles.
For nearly an hour, they passed over the graveyard of a thirty-mile long stalled convoy of hummers, tanks, and trucks wedged together bumper to bumper. Radiating out on both sides of the convoy was scorched earth and grass, drainage culverts full of bodies, and wandering infected. After having descended again to just under a thousand feet to get a closer look, Reynolds could see hundreds of bodies in civilian clothes intermingled with even more bodies wearing the same type of Army uniforms that Stone’s MPs wore in Gulf Shores. It was only occasionally that a staggering infected could be seen. Sadly, it was usually in uniform.
“Looks like one hell of a fight they put up,” Doug’s voice came through the headset over the engine and the wind.
“They bottle-necked and were a sitting duck. Probably should have just stayed back at the base instead of fighting their way through all of this interstate traffic. Must be three hundred vehicles down there.”
“Custer’s last stand type of stuff here.”
They moved on in silence for another hour along I-59 through the charred remnants of the industrial town of Laurel, over rotting acre after acre of chicken farms near Vossberg, and onward towards Meridian. There they saw the tops of oaks and popcorn trees whose yellow and red leaves broke up the green monotony of Southern Mississippi’s pine forests. Un-mowed fields of grass grew next to white-dotted cotton fields and high stalks of corn in the agricultural area. Without farmers to gather the crops, they grew fat and provided fodder for thousands of deer and other ruminant animals.
On the outskirts of Meridian, one of the largest cities in Mississippi was the target of the Depplin and her crew, Meridian Naval Air Station. It was used as a training base by the Navy and was also the home of a large wing of Air National Guard refueling aircraft. The 3-Blind-Mice had added it to the flight plan because whenever the bases on the coast would evacuate for a hurricane, they would often send their planes and personnel to Meridian to sit out the storm. It was possible that the base had been the destination of the now-annihilated battalions along I-59 from Camp Shelby.
Reynolds had refused to get her hopes up and she was repaid in kind. Row after row of colorful white and red navy Goshawk training planes sat picture perfect outside hangers that dated back to World War II. Pornographically, a mass of grey skinned infected numbering hundreds if not thousands had taken to attacking the aircraft and demolishing them with their own bloody hands. They crowded the cockpits, hung out of the engine intakes and stood on the wings like an army of ants consuming a squad of captured dragonflies.
“Well, Doug, I think we have seen all we need to here. Next turn, due east, let’s start heading back home.”
With that, she felt the wind buffet the Depplin as its pilot yawed the rudder and powered into a wide turn away from the Naval Air Station and back into Alabama.
— | — | —
CHAPTER 45
The end of Fort Morgan Road, Gulf Shores
November 13, 6:45 AM
Z+34
Billy walked along the bulkhead that kept his back yard from falling into Mobile Bay with two old five-gallon pickle buckets in each hand. These days, pickle buckets were becoming the all-purpose survival tool along the island. Between carrying water from working wells and faucets, to bathing, holding waste when plumbing had backed up, washing clothes and a dozen other tasks, they were indispensable. Even with the electricity flowing to the island from the offshore windmill, it was enough only to power part of the city itself, with none remaining for the 26-miles of lines outside of town.
One of Billy’s buckets was full, the other empty. The full one was the day’s laundry soaking. The empty one was for dinner.
He set down the full bucket to warm in the sun along the bulkhead and continued alone down its length. Facing the calm Mobile Bay, his backyard had a view across the still water for miles.
Sea smoke, the mist rising from the water because of the different temperatures of water and air, hung low over the bay. The mist settled on the water and obscured anything more than a mile off. For the whole time he had been there, he had rarely looked out over the Bay and not seen a boat. Now it was rare to see anything but the occasional seabird or rolling porpoise fin chasing baitfish in the shallows. All of the normal sounds that you take for granted, air conditioners, cars, etc. were suddenly gone. He had to admit; he did not mind the change too much.
As he walked, he reached down to the edge of the bulkhead and retrieved a blue nylon boat line from the water, letting it run through his hand as he moved. Every fifteen feet his hand caught a lead tied to the line that held a shower curtain ring with the head of a decapitated mullet impaled through the eye socket. Invariably each fish head would have a blue crab holding onto it for dear life. Too selfish to turn the head loose to save their own life, the crabs held on with their claws until Billy shook them into the bucket and threw the lead with the fish head still attached back into the Bay.
Cast netting for mullet for yesterday’s dinner left him a pile of mullet heads, so he found a use for them. He had learned the trick as a kid growing up in Pascagoula, selling the crabs to Bozo’s Seafood for a half-dollar a pop. After the end of his 400-feet of rope and the 25 leads that ran off it, he had 20 nice, fat crabs skittering around in the bottom of the half-full bucket.
The searchlight from the Coast Guard cutter a few hundred yards away sliced through the sea smoke and hit Billy’s eyes. To make no mistake that they were there, the foghorn sounded briefly, scattering a flock of terns parked in the high grass around the bulkhead.
“Dad, they are here,” Cat called from the back porch.
“Yeah, I guess today they are the Crab Cops.”
Billy sighed and picked up the bucket of crabs before walking back towards the house as slow as he could. Standing there on the porch was his daughter in a ratty pair of blue jeans and an old sweatshirt. Her hair was…crazy.
He passed her the bucket to which she only glanced in and rolled her eyes. “Hey, listen. I just wanted to tell you…”
Cat looked at him and her eyes welled up. She nodded her head. “I know,” she said as she hugged him.
“Where is your brother? He still asleep?” Billy asked as he wiped his fishy hands on a towel.
“He’s asleep on the couch. They got the blimp off this morning and he came back home and passed out,” she said and only just briefly hesitated before she asked, “Do we have to go to school today?”
Billy laughed as he walked
with her through the house. “No, I guess not, but definitely tomorrow. And don’t give Mack too much shit while I’m gone.”
“You going to check on mom while you are in Biloxi?” Cat asked as he kissed Wyatt on a grimy forehead.
Billy had not even thought of that. His ex-wife had never gotten along that well with him since the move and, other than on visitation hand-off, they rarely spoke. He did not know what to say, and if he did, how to even say it.
Cat shrugged, “It’s ok, don’t worry about it. I know its lame but I called her during the outbreak and left a goodbye message on her voicemail. I didn’t know if she got it or not.”
“I’m sorry, baby girl,” he said.
She pressed something into his hand and he looked at it. It was a locket her mother had given her years before and it contained a picture of the two of them, mother and daughter together. “Could you leave this there for her?” she asked.
Billy hugged her again and walked out the front door towards the ferry dock alone. He could see the blue uniformed coastguardsmen tying the bowlines of the cutter to the landing next to the Fooly Involved. Billy had moved his boat there from the marina to keep an eye on it. It had seemed a shame to let a 100-foot dock go to waste.
“Gonna leave without saying goodbye?” the redhead asked as he stepped onto the concrete landing. Mack sat on the fighting chair of the Fooly Involved, a blanket across her legs and a baseball cap pulled low over her head.
“I figured you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you. I left Cat some crabs for dinner.”
“That’s it? You left Cat some crabs for dinner and you are gone?”
He picked up the duffle bag he had on the deck of the Fooly Involved and shouldered the 80-cubic foot scuba tank. “Sorry, they are waiting,” Billy said, gesturing towards two Coasties walking up to them from the cutter.
Last Stand on Zombie Island Page 29