Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  Three more houses to clear of the ones he knew were really dead. And nearly double that many that still had living dead inside. Then he’d be going home to see them. Two days at most, he hoped.

  The organic hum emanating from the feeding birds was reaching his ears over the V8’s soft throaty rumble. And as he left the road and wheeled north to the graveyard, the crows and ravens and buzzards took flight in a blast of black feather and murderous cries. Bracketed by the mature dogwoods planted decades ago on the west and east sides of the cemetery, the dark-feathered raptors all but blotted out the sky, dipping and diving over the sea of grave markers and putrefying flesh.

  Ignoring the aerial display, Jasper reversed until the rear bumper met resistance with flesh and bone. He hopped out, skirted the truck, and quickly dropped the tailgate with a clang. Oh to be young again, he thought as he pulled on rigor-stiffened limbs in order to move the Mathersons to their final resting place. The three kids were the easiest of the six to remove, and Grandma Matherson might as well have been a kid because her frail body matched the little ones’ weight. Dale and his wife Loraine were another story altogether. Both loved their food deep-fried and were easily north of two hundred and fifty pounds. Lugging their dead weight out of the Chevy nearly broke the volunteer undertaker’s back.

  He went around to the cab and punched open the glove box, retrieved his tattered King James edition and slammed the door. When he turned around, two of the walking corpses were within spitting distance. He reopened the door, clambered across the bench seat and clutched the scatter gun with one hand before popping out on the driver’s side. The fact that the rotting pair had been able to sneak up on him was supremely disconcerting. Maybe the things are learning, he thought as an involuntary shudder wracked his body at the prospect.

  He crunched a shell into the chamber and let the dead trudge closer. Thankfully he didn’t recognize either one of them. Probably from one of the big cities, thought Jasper. Lately, most of them were.

  He didn’t relish the idea of seeing another dead body with a face full of buck, but he was left with no other alternative. He brought the muzzle up and pulled the trigger. The discharge punched the stock into his shoulder but the damage to the shambling creature was far worse—fatal, in fact.

  The frail cadaver left the ground and flew backwards through the air a half dozen feet and came back down with a hollow thud. The gray matter that exited its skull travelled much further and painted the dry earth in a wide arc.

  Jasper followed the same routine and pulped the other walker’s face with a well-aimed shot.

  He shifted his gaze to where the gravel road made a T with the blacktop to town and noticed a half dozen more of the rotten beasts traipsing across the open flat land about a half mile to the south.

  Keeping one eye on the walking dead, Jasper read a passage from Genesis 3:19 for the unfortunate Matherson family. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

  He walked back to the truck, being careful to avoid the dusty clumps of brain. He slid behind the wheel and started the Chevy, cut a three-point turn and headed back towards town. He glanced down at the Bible and then at the shotgun next to it. My work today is not finished, he thought grimly. Next stop, the Valdezes’ casa de la muerte.

  Near Victor, Idaho

  Daymon’s jaw went slack and he slowly lowered the blade but kept it pressed flat against his right leg.

  “Come again?” he said, craning to see into the creature’s eyes.

  “Help me,” the thing rasped.

  “Oh, hell no,” Daymon said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m hearing shit.” He looked over the top of the Scout, drawing eye contact with Jenkins, then shifted his gaze to Heidi and said, “One of you tell me I’m just hearing shit.”

  As if in response to his question, the group of walking corpses started in with their own chorus of moans.

  Jenkins crabbed around the rear of Lu Lu with his pistol held in a two-handed grip, Heidi sticking to him closely.

  Turning its blood-streaked face away from Daymon and towards Jenkins and Heidi, it uttered the same two words: “Help me.”

  “You heard it,” Daymon spat as he backpedaled towards the Tahoe. “Help it. Put a bullet in its fuckin’ brain so we can get the hell out of here.”

  Jenkins slowly lowered his gun.

  Noticing this, Heidi stepped from behind Jenkins and angled for a better view. “That’s Tran.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Jenkins stated as he holstered his pistol. “Couldn’t see the resemblance at first cause of the goose egg and all the dried blood.”

  “He was the only one of them who was nice to me,” Heidi said. “Brought me wet wipes and warm washcloths after...” Her eyes turned glassy and tears welled up. “And when I came off the drugs he brought me food even though I said I didn’t want any.”

  Jenkins stepped closer to the man and called out his name. There was no response. Then he touched Tran’s shoulder. It was warm.

  Heidi had just turned to get Tran a water from the Tahoe when a single shot rang out. She shrieked and whipped her head around, glaring at Jenkins and thinking the worst.

  But his pistol was in its holster and he was hauling the bulky firefighting gear from the back of the Scout.

  More gunfire, controlled and steady, sounded from the opposite side of the Tahoe.

  Heidi crouched near the cruiser’s rear tire and gazed down the road where one by one the undead herd was being thinned out. Finally, when there was a lull in the shooting, she hollered at Daymon. “This one’s alive,” she said, looking for some recognition. What she saw instead was a look of confusion on her man’s face as he slapped home a fresh magazine. Then from behind she heard Jenkins tell her to get to the cruiser. She looked over and saw he was helping Tran to the vehicle.

  Dressed in Daymon’s old firefighting gear, the slight Asian man looked like a cross between one of the infected and a sad-looking scarecrow.

  “Saved the worst for last,” Daymon said as he charged a fresh round into the AR-15.

  Heidi put herself between Tran and Daymon.

  “No, not him,” said Daymon.

  Now Heidi wore the confused look.

  A wicked smile formed on Daymon’s face. With his off hand he corralled his dreads behind his ears. “I saved the Lucas bastard for you.”

  She looked beyond the rear of the Tahoe at the shambling giant. She regarded the pinkish half-moon where the blackened dermis was missing from its neck and looked into its milky eyes, then shook her head slowly. “No, let him rot.”

  That’s my girl, Daymon thought. He lowered the rifle and slid behind the wheel.

  Jenkins helped Tran into the back seat and clambered over him to take a spot behind Daymon.

  “Next stop, Eden,” Daymon said. Then he leaned forward in order to see around Heidi and stole one last look at Lu Lu.

  Chapter 53

  Outbreak - Day 16

  Southwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

  Give or take a tenth of a mile, Oil Can Five-Five was right where it was supposed to be.

  Apparently the GPS birds are still talking to each other, Ari thought to himself. He had a feeling that his days of flying without a modicum of worry, being able to rely upon the information being provided by these wonders of technology, were coming to a close. Was there anyone alive at Cape Canaveral? he wondered. Because sooner or later the satellites that nearly every piece of equipment in the United States arsenal relied on for navigation, communication, and targeting were destined to fail. Orbits decay, and without aerospace engineers to design and build new birds and the necessary heavy lift capabilities to throw them into orbit, the prospect of navigation by compass and sextant was very real and probably in his immediate future.

  “Jedi One-One coming to drink,” Ari said into the comms as he maneuvered his ship into the refueling tanke
r’s slipstream.

  “We’ve got you covered One-One. But that’ll be two beers for each of my crew,” the Herc pilot replied.

  “Roger that,” said Ari in an agreeable tone. “But if I’m buying you a beer, at least tell me your name.”

  “Lieutenant Dover,” the pilot replied. “Ben Dover.”

  “Well Lieut... should I call you Benjamin or Ben?” Ari asked without missing a beat. He then gazed to the left at Durant, and wide grins broke out behind their boom mikes.

  “Ben,” the pilot drawled matter-of-factly.

  Either the Herc driver had already heard his fill of wisecracks concerning his name, or he didn’t know the SOAR pilot’s reputation as a ball breaker. Probably a combination of both, thought Cade as he caught Gaines eye.

  Both men smiled.

  Covering his boom mike with a gloved hand, Cade leaned across the cabin. “Hey— Agent Cross... is Ripley this loose on Marine One’s comms when the boss is aboard?”

  Cross shook his head. Pantomimed zipping his lips and throwing away an imaginary key.

  “I heard that,” Ari shot back into the shipwide comms.

  Now, with a fully loaded fuel tank, the Ghost backed away from the refueling boom and climbed away to the port side of the Herc, where Ari flashed another thumbs up before reforming up next to the loudly droning Osprey.

  Cade watched as the last link to the Desantos era busied himself with his M4. Lopez checked the batteries in the laser pointer affixed above and behind the suppressor. Then he took a microfiber swab, and for the third time in as many hours meticulously cleaned the lenses of the Eotech optics mounted atop his weapon’s upper receiver. First he polished the flip-away 3x magnifier, a cylindrical scope about three inches in length which sat behind the square-topped holographic sight. Then he carefully wiped the imaginary accumulated dust from the latter, which had a floating red dot on the lens and was optimal for close quarters combat. The large lens, allowing for super-fast target acquisition, could be brought on target with just one or both eyes open—and whatever the operator trained that red dot on, his bullets were sure to strike. Ignoring the banter, Lopez seemed lost in his own world, no doubt perseverating over the multitudes of demonios he would soon be facing.

  The entire Delta team, including Tice, who was their honorary member, was equipped similarly with anti-ballistic body armor, tactical helmets, knee and elbow protection, and to guard against bites to the hands and fingers they all wore tactical gloves that were constructed of thick Nomex fabric complete with Carbontek molded knuckle caps.

  Each operator carried a suppressed M4 with identical optics, laser pointers and drop-down fore grips.

  Agent Cross had the ubiquitous Secret Service suppressed MP7 dangling under his arm, as well as a semi-automatic sidearm strapped to his right thigh.

  Suddenly Durant’s voice boomed over the comms. “Ten mikes out,” he said. “Once again good ol’ Nash has worked her magic. Heads up, I’m patching through a satellite feed.”

  “Real-time?” asked Gaines.

  “Roger that, Sir,” answered Durant flatly. “Wait one.” A half a minute passed and he added, “OK, it’s coming up on the cabin monitor.”

  The LCD flat-panel, which was inset into the Ghost Hawk’s aft-facing bulkhead, glowed blue for a few seconds before the real-time image being beamed down via one of the 50th Space Wing’s remaining Key Hole satellites splashed onto the screen. The billion dollar Air Force bird was currently parked in a geostationary orbit over downtown Winnipeg so that the KH-12’s powerful cameras were always trained on the Delta team’s target.

  As soon as the image hit the screen and the optics zoomed in closer, the resolution sharpened and the situation on the ground became crystal clear.

  Lopez whistled. Then he said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Looks like Custer’s last stand down there.”

  The static image they were looking at could only be described with two words: catastrophic failure. A dozen abandoned military vehicles were spread out around the eight-block perimeter just inside of the breached fence lines.

  Another dozen ringed the center plaza of the National Biological Laboratory’s campus. The facility was Canada’s answer to the United States’ CDC in Atlanta, and was equipped with laboratories ranging from biosafety level 2 on up to level 4, the highest, which were designed with multiple safeguards in order to contain the deadliest microbial killers known to man.

  Looking a little bigger than ants as seen from space, wandering Zs choked the streets across the entire city. The facility suddenly appeared closer as the camera zoomed in a few stops and more details emerged. Dozens of living dead moved about the manicured grounds inside the perimeter fencing. And sitting idle in the central plaza, a dozen APCs—low-slung six-wheeled armored personnel carriers with turret-mounted cannons—were also surrounded by wandering throngs of flesh eaters. Some kind of boxy tracked vehicle occupied a grassy knoll that rose between four reflecting pools containing brackish water and splayed-out bodies of what looked to be dead Canadian soldiers. That the track bristled with multiple whip-like antennas meant it was most likely the command vehicle in which the highest ranking officer would have overseen the ground operation.

  The desert tan APCs sat adjacent to sandbag emplacements, complete with heavy machine guns deployed facing outward with their lines of fire following the cement pathways that radiated away from the knoll, like spokes on a wagon wheel.

  Cross piped up, “How did Nash come to the conclusion there are still live bodies in the facility?”

  “Right here,” Gaines said. He leaned in and touched the display, pointing out a few small white squares hanging off the side of the third story of one of the glass and metal buildings. “You can’t see it so well here because of the angle, but in the footage Nash showed me you could clearly tell that these are sheets of some sort hanging from these windows. The messages on them were enough to make this mission more than just a shot in the dark... one of the messages read: ALIVE INSIDE. Another read: HELP US. That alone was enough to convince me.”

  “How do we know that those sheets didn’t go up there on Z day and the people lobbying for our help aren’t already dead and gone?”

  “Because,” Gaines said evenly, “the one with ALIVE INSIDE painted on it also had yesterday’s date on it.” He let the fact sink in for a beat.

  “Good enough for me,” Cross replied. “Still think we can go in through the roof?”

  Cade fielded the question. “The general and I went over that with Ari and Durant after the briefing. The Osprey is going to have to find a standoff location because that noisy beast will let every Z from BC to Quebec know that we’re here.”

  “And the team? How are we getting in?” Cross pressed.

  “Ari thinks he can infil and exfil from the roof provided there are no more than three survivors we have to transport... which I think is highly unlikely.”

  Gaines nodded in agreement.

  “If those are the parking lots for the building,” Tice said, alluding to the expanse of blacktop northeast of the plaza where the sun was dancing off of glass and sheet metal, “there had to be a lot of people inside there when the shit hit the fan.”

  Cade nodded but said nothing.

  “Five mikes,” Durant said over the intercom as he looked back and flashed an open hand for a visual cue.

  “As soon as I get eyes on the target I’ll know if I can put this bird down or not. Worst case scenario, you five have to work for it,” Ari said.

  “Four,” Gaines said calmly. “Captain Grayson is running the show. I’m going to be the eye in the sky.”

  “Copy that,” replied Cade.

  Cross leaned over, looked Cade in the eye. “Did you know about this, Captain?”

  “Not until two seconds ago.”

  “You’re OK with that?” said Cross through gritted teeth.

  “It’s my job to improvise. In fact, it’s something I learned from a man who is no longer with us.”

&
nbsp; Lopez performed a quick sign of the cross and pointed towards the helo’s roof and heaven beyond.

  After a few long moments of uneasy silence, during which time all eyes were riveted on Cade and the President’s man, Cross broke out in his big surfer boy smile. “Just busting your balls, Delta. I’ve got your back.”

  “I had no doubt about it,” replied Cade coolly. He looked toward the ground. It was rapidly approaching, and he could see a muddy body of water running serpentine through residential areas south and west of the downtown core where the target was located. Why anyone would build a level 4 facility in the middle of a city of roughly four hundred thousand was beyond his comprehension. Hell, he thought, a level 2 or 3 in the city was still asking for trouble.

  Cade felt the helo change course and track around to the east. The river below merged with another turbid vein of dirt-laden water. Then the five-story main building that housed the level 4 containment lab in its basement loomed through the portside glass.

  Major Ripley had already ruled the roof out as a landing zone for the Osprey due to the upthrust air-scrubbing apparatus and HVAC gear scattered about.

  Jedi One-One, however, needed a flat spot the size of a postage stamp compared to the other ship.

  “I was afraid of this, gentlemen,” said Ari over the comms.

  “What is it?” Gaines asked.

  “The rooftop to your target is not flat. It’s stepped and the terraces will get in the way of the rotor blades. And every edge where I’d usually rest a wheel to let you door kickers out is protected by concertina wire. Can’t risk getting the bird snagged.”

  “Fast rope it is,” said Cade, taking charge. “Let me help you, Hicks.”

  With Lopez and Cade pitching in, the two ropes, one port and one starboard, were attached, coiled, and ready to go.