“What? What the fuck do you think this is, an A-10?”
“Norton, just fucking do it.”
Norton pushed down on the control column, keeping an eye on the altitude tape on the main display. As soon as he passed through two hundred fifty feet, the system alerted with “Terrain! Pull up!” Norton ignored it, and he felt sweat break out across his brow. He pushed the jet lower, and the landscape seemed to rush past in a blur. He was traveling at over three hundred knots, faster than he’d ever flown at such a low altitude. A single misstep would result in his instant death amidst a booming fireball. But while horrifying, it was also exhilarating. So this is what a combat pilot feels like.
The jet roared over the zombie hordes at a hair under one hundred feet, racing alongside the wall. Once past the town limits, Norton climbed out and turned back. He dropped to a hundred feet again and duplicated the maneuver, but heading in the opposite direction. He flew back for another pass, then rudder-turned to the left, blasting out into the desert. During each pass, he saw the stinking corpses below were actually reaching for the little jet as it zipped past, as if they thought they might be able to pull it from the sky.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Norton said.
“I agree. Pretty good flying, Norton. I thought you were going to bury the nose in the dirt,” Lennon said.
“Wait until we try to land at Oxnard,” Norton said. “You might get to experience that.”
Lennon chuckled as Norton pulled the jet into a steady climb.
In the passenger compartment, one of the men called out, “Hey, this is really a nice little plane. I bet you get laid all the time when you take a girl out on a date in this thing. Right, Mr. Norton?”
“The only time your mother complained is when I left her at home and started flying your sister around,” Norton responded.
The other men in the back laughed, and even Lennon cracked a grin. Norton set climb power as he raised the jet’s nose. Even twenty thousand feet wasn’t far enough away from the stenches.
###
Victor Kuruk spent the next couple of hours speeding back and forth between engagement areas on his motorcycle, checking on the police under his command and trying his best to put forth a brave face for the people inside the walls. All the while, he ignored the calls over his radio for him to return to the police station and meet Corbett. Victor decided that could wait. Corbett really didn’t need him at the moment, but the people of Single Tree did.
There were several major incursions into the town, and while folks were fighting valiantly alongside Corbett’s men, they needed to see a familiar face. Victor’s people and the town had lived side by side for decades, and to the residents of Single Tree, Victor was one of their own. While normally, a member of the town’s political class, like the mayor, would do the job, Victor didn’t think Booker would be of much help. The town was close to unwinding, and the people needed to see the face of a warrior, not a politician.
But Victor didn’t feel much like a warrior at the moment. He was terrified, and the sounds of combat were jarring, threatening to overwhelm all his senses. The zombies poured over the walls like army ants and beelined for the defenders. Their outright disregard for personal safety was both a blessing, since they would walk right into choke points and fatal funnels without hesitation, and a curse because it was chilling to watch one allow itself to be mowed down then two more taking the place of it. Single Tree was truly an island surrounded by a sea of the dead, and the grim reality was there was no escape.
Victor knew he was staring down his last days on earth, but he rode his motorcycle from point to point, meeting with the people, exhorting them to give their best in defending the town. It didn’t matter if they were his native people or Anglos. At the end of the world, they were all one tribe, and they would have to fight as a tribe. Neighbors were as valuable as blood family, and Victor did what little he could to inspire them, to give hope, and to instill the will to fight, even though he knew it was all for nothing.
It was hardest when he came across the children. There were so many, and only a fraction of them could be saved, if any. He wasn’t an overly emotional man, but stoicism could only carry him so far. Victor didn’t interact with the kids any longer than necessary for fear he might explode into a torrent of tears.
Two officers had already been taken down by the horde. Another fifteen townspeople had been lost, either to the zombies or to accidents that occurred during panicked retreat. Victor regretted each death, even if it was someone he didn’t personally know, as it meant there was one less person to perhaps pick up the pieces and continue on, if the gods were to allow such a thing.
Civilization ends, Victor thought, out here in the desert below Mount Whitney.
Norton’s jet had roared off almost an hour ago after making several low passes over the zombie horde. It hadn’t helped much. While thousands of the dead had turned and tried to follow the plane, they eventually lost interest and returned to the town, lured back by the din of combat. Soon, the second line of defenses would be overrun, and the townspeople would have to fall back to the final ring of barriers. And once those were overrun, any survivors would need to seek shelter wherever they could. The school, the town hall, the police station, and the fire house had all been hastily fortified and stocked. A few hundred people might be able to hold out for a several weeks, trapped inside by the questing stenches as they roamed the town. Victor figured that would be his fate, huddled down in stinking darkness with several dozen people, waiting for the zombies to break in and finish them all. And if the dead didn’t manage to get in, then they would eventually starve to death.
But not Suzy.
After making one last stop at the eastern wall where the action wasn’t quite so frantic, Victor climbed back on his bike. He needed to make sure Suzy stayed with Corbett. The old man was her only ticket out of hell. Suzy was the youngest and brightest in Victor’s family, and while he’d never had children of his own, he had found all he needed in her. Whatever humanity might survive in the end wouldn’t be well served by him, but his niece was a perfect specimen of humanity—altruistic, realistic, and compassionate. If Victor had ever possessed any of those traits, he had lost them decades ago, chasing silly Hollywood dreams while playing the part of the red-skinned minstrel for the Tinseltown elite. He knew his place was with his people, and that meant staying in the desert. Actually, it means dying in the desert, he reminded himself.
He spotted Corbett outside the police station. He pulled over and lowered his bike’s kickstand.
“Vic! Where the hell have you been?” Corbett snapped.
“Did I miss something other than the zombies attacking the town?” Victor asked, dismounting. He peeled off his gloves, while looking up at Corbett, who stood by the door to the station house. The entrance was elevated a few feet, and Victor was kind of glad to only be the acting chief of police. Walking up and down those six steps several times a day made his knees ache.
“When I call you on the radio,” Corbett growled, “you fucking answer me.”
A bolt of dread uncoiled inside Victor’s chest. “Has something happened to Suzy?”
Corbett looked surprised. “What? No, no, nothing like that.”
A fresh volley of gunfire erupted nearby. The last fortification of HESCO barriers was only three or four hundred feet away, on the other side of Main Street. After that, several angled revetments would hopefully serve to channel the dead into the parking lot of Joseph’s Bi-Rite, the town’s biggest supermarket, which was only two blocks away and across the street. From where he stood, Victor could see dozens of people on its roof. The side streets leading past the supermarket had been blocked off with twenty-foot-tall concrete Alaska barriers. Corbett had brought five hundred of those, and they served as final redoubts around the high school, the elementary school, the fire station, and the town hall. By the time those had been hardened, there weren’t enough left to surround the police station. That had been further sec
ured with chain link fencing topped by razor wire. The fences were fronted by coils of tanglefoot wire, something that would cause human attackers to pause but that meant nothing to the dead.
Victor wearily mounted the steps. He felt filthy, covered with dust and burnt gunpowder. “So what is it that’s so important?” he asked.
Corbett opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, then shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to know where you were,” the old man said awkwardly.
Victor stopped halfway up the steps. He grinned up at Corbett. “Are you lonely, Barry?”
Corbett scowled. “Damn it. I need you to stay close. When it’s time for us to leave, we’ll need to get going right away!”
Victor snorted and continued walking up the steps. “There’s no need to delay anything on my account.”
“It’s not me who’s going to have the problem. It’s your niece.” Corbett pointed at the green metal door that led into the station house. “I won’t be able to budge her unless you’re coming, so do me a favor, and stay with me. I’d hate to have one of my men coldcock that little girl and drag her over to the airport trussed up like a pig.”
Victor mounted the concrete deck. “I wouldn’t advise anyone to try that. My niece knows how to defend herself.”
“Another reason you need to stay close,” Corbett said. His voice was getting ragged from having to shout over the thunder of gunfire. “Come on. Let’s get inside. I have lookouts posted.” He pointed at the armed sentries in the parking lot.
“Yes, let’s do that.”
It was a bit quieter in the station house. The only police officers present were Mike Hailey and John Lasher, the old cop who probably should have retired five years ago. The rest of the people were a mix of Corbett’s former Marines and some townspeople, such as Max and Roxanne Booker, Gemma Washington, Carl Bremer and Dud Stanley—the fire chief and assistant fire chief, respectively—and of course, Jock Sinclair and his camera. The town map that hung across the south wall had been marked up with a series of glyphs and some notes. Someone had hastily drawn a reasonable facsimile of the walls surrounding Single Tree. Most of them were covered with red crosshatches. He presumed that meant they had been overrun. Radios blared as defenders reported in, detailing the movements of the zombies that had broken through or over the first two series of walls.
“Hai’i!”
Victor turned and saw Suzy standing in the doorway to his office. Sweat had cut trails through the grime on her face. With that and the dust and soot that dappled her tribal police uniform, she looked like some sort of scrappy street urchin from Oliver Twist.
“Paha-’a,” he replied. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Corbett. “Speak English for the Anglos. Otherwise, they’ll think we’re going to try something.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Corbett said, pushing his way past the two of them. The tall old man settled down behind Chief Grady’s old desk, which Victor had been using as acting chief. Two radios sat on the desk, and Corbett’s LWRC rifle leaned against the file cabinet.
Victor pulled his own rifle off his shoulder. “Make yourself at home,” he said.
“Already did, thanks.” Corbett listened to some radio chatter from the line of HESCO barriers to the east. “Yeah, the HESCOs aren’t exactly doing much. I really should have brought more cement barriers in, if I could’ve found them.”
Suzy plopped down on the battered reddish-brown couch that face the desk.
Victor saw Hailey lurking in the hall. “Is there something you need, Officer Hailey?”
“Uh...” Hailey tried to look around the doorway at Suzy, but Victor didn’t move out of the way. “No, Chief, I’m good. I’m wondering if I might be better off being at one of the walls, though? Or maybe joining the fire team on the Bi-Rite?”
Suzy reached for her rifle. “I’ll go with—”
Victor raised his hand. “No one is going anywhere. Officer Hailey, just keep an eye out the windows and let me know if something looks like it’s about to go further sideways. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir,” Hailey said. He turned away from the office, obviously reluctant.
Victor eased himself down on the couch beside his niece. Corbett seemed engrossed in the radio traffic, and Victor noticed an eerie stereoscopic effect to the gunfire with the same shots coming over the radios and from outside. He looked over at Suzy, who smiled at him tiredly.
Victor switched to their native tongue and asked, “Do you love him?” He used the formal word for love, kamangande. In the Shoshone dialect, kamangande meant love from a woman to a man. The more common word, yoko, was of his niece’s generation, and it had multiple permutations, including the act of sex. He intended to ensure she knew which definition he meant.
Suzy peered at him, her head tilted to one side. “I want to give him my heart,” she said softly, “but I’m afraid.”
Victor knew her well, and he had anticipated the first part of her answer. She was not the type of girl to undertake a simple dalliance. However, the latter half made him uneasy. He took her hand. “Afraid of what?”
“Afraid he might die. Afraid we all might die.”
Victor found he had no encouraging words. He settled for gently squeezing her hand.
“Hailey will be fine, young miss,” Corbett said. “He’s going with you.”
Victor was surprised. “Don’t tell me you know our language?”
“No. I’m just old enough to be able to understand when things are trying to go unspoken,” Corbett said. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed either of you.”
“Taipo puhagande!” Suzy grinned.
Corbett frowned. “That one of your heathen curse words?”
“Not at all,” Victor replied. “She said you’re a white shaman.”
Corbett shook his head. “Okay.”
“What’s the latest from Norton and your team?” Victor asked.
“Nothing yet,” Corbett said. “We won’t be hearing from them until they get to Norton’s boat.”
“How much longer will that be?” Victor asked.
Corbett looked up at the clock on the wall. “It was thirty minutes ago.”
VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
The flight across southern California was routine, except for the nearly-silent radios. Norton tried to raise the area traffic control center but got nothing. Likewise, there was no communication with Oxnard, Camarillo, or Van Nuys airfield. He even made a call to Ontario International Airport, a larger facility near San Bernardino that old Jed Simpkiss had said was being taken over by the military, but it was also silent, and that worried Norton. At the speed his aircraft was traveling, a collision meant instant death. And from the contrails in the sky overhead, he knew they weren’t the only airplane plowing through the local airspace.
“Don’t sweat it, Norton,” Lennon said, shifting in the copilot’s seat. “No one’s going to be interested in us. And besides, zombies don’t fly jets.”
“As far as we know,” Norton said. “We saw them shooting guns, right?”
Lennon shrugged. “I have no information indicating they can operate something as complex as a jet aircraft. Though watching you, it does seem really simple.”
“Great, then you can handle the landing.”
Lennon indicated the autopilot display. “Seems like the plane can fly itself.”
“Oh, it’ll get us to the airport and descend to approach, but after that, it’s all on me. Unless you want to try your luck at it?”
Lennon snorted and shook his head. “No, thanks.”
The Phenom 100 cut a southwesterly approach across California at an average speed of four hundred sixty miles per hour. The trip took less than forty minutes because they didn’t have to deal with any of the usual traffic routings that could cause delays. As the jet drew nearer to Los Angeles, Norton saw what he thought was the haze of smog on the horizon, but it turned out to be smoke.
LA was on fire, and it wasn’t alone. While great swaths of the course were over mountains and
spots of desert, other areas were decently settled. Norton saw fire and destruction everywhere. The highways were full of motionless traffic, city streets were still and dead, and towns seemed as hospitable as old, abandoned crypts.
As the jet descended toward its initial waypoint and captured the approach altitude Norton had programmed into the flight management system, he took over. He set the radios to 134.95 and 257.9, the frequencies monitored by Oxnard tower. He tried to contact the airport over both channels and received nothing. The non-directional beacons were dark, but Norton had all the navigational data he needed to make a safe approach to the airfield. In addition, the local automatic terminal information service wasn’t broadcasting on its assigned frequency. That suggested that the facility was without power.
“So what’s the plan?” Lennon asked. “We going to fly straight in?”
“I don’t think so. I want to take a look at the runway first. If it’s blocked or unusable, we’ll need to figure out our next steps.”
Lennon leaned forward, looking out over the instrument panel. “Downward visibility kind of sucks in this thing.”
“We’ll make a pass parallel to the runway at about fifteen hundred feet. I’ll check it out from my side.”
“If it’s a no-go, then we need to get to the marina and set it down there.”
“Didn’t know you were in such a hurry to become a zombie, Lennon.”
“I’m not, but the clock is ticking.”
“I know, guy. I know.” Norton pulled back on the thrust levers, slowing the airplane to two hundred knots. That was still faster than FAA regulations allowed this close to an airfield, but he figured he wasn’t going to suffer any repercussions for such a transgression. Chances were high that the Federal Aviation Administration was dealing with more challenging items at the moment. He lined up on the same radial as the runway and slowly lowered the jet to just above fifteen hundred feet.
Ahead, the city of Oxnard seemed to be deserted. Farther out, columns of smoke rose lazily into the sky from the Navy base on the coast.
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