Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  Taking his time while Dover flew the Hercules in an ever tightening circle, Meredith trained his binoculars on the wreckage. Flames, orange and red, leapt high, licking at the nearby trees. Thick oily smoke tendrils coiled hundreds of feet heavenward. He panned the entire crash site, paying close attention to the surrounding fencing and the two groves of trees on either side. After a couple of minutes and three futile laps without seeing anything moving on the church grounds except for a couple of walking dead and a large flock of birds, he dropped the field glasses into his lap, looked over at Dover and shook his head.

  In response, Dover said, “Nothing?”

  “Someone has been depositing their dead down there, but I didn’t see anything to make me believe anyone walked away from that crash. No clothing. No discarded weapons.”

  “Gotta give them the benefit of the doubt,” said Dover. “I know Ari would us if the tables were turned.”

  “There were no survivors, Ben.”

  Dover said, “Second Lieutenant, we’re staying on station for five more minutes.”

  There was another long uneasy silence and then Meredith nodded his head in agreement.

  Dover brought his mike back on line and said, “Copy that. Oil Can Five-Five returning to base.” And then contradicting his last transmission, continued scribing a wide circle in the sky while keeping the white church with the rising steeple the center of attention.

  Chapter 16

  Draper, South Dakota

  “Take a right on 16 ... that’s the intersection dead ahead!” Jasper bellowed over the roar of the overworked engine and the constant din of flesh slapping the vehicle’s sides. “Then a few hundred feet and you’ll need to take the next left. County Road 13 shoots to the south under the Interstate.”

  Great number for an escape route, thought Cade. Lucky number thirteen.

  “There’s an exchange on the left goes up to the 90 that will take you east to Sioux Falls. You probably don’t want to go that way.”

  “From the exchange on 90, what major city lies to the west?” Cade asked as he jerked the wheel hard left in order to miss a lumbering three-hundred-pounds of undead American.

  To keep from banging into Ari, Jasper held the grab bar near his head in a white-knuckled death grip. “Rapid City,” he replied, looking past Ari to meet Cade’s eyes. “It’s about a hundred and fifty miles. But I heard it’s crawling with those things too.”

  Having only been through there as a kid while on a family driving trip to see Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, the pertinent details such as the city’s population and whatever intersecting thoroughfares that might run through the area was unknown to Cade. “How many people lived in Rapid City before the outbreaks, and which interstates connect with the 90?” he asked.

  Like a carnie guessing someone’s weight or a contestant on the Price is Right trying to decide how much a Caribbean cruise aboard the Pacific Princess might set him back, Jasper looked up and away, obviously concentrating very hard. “Give or take ... about seventy thousand souls,” he said. “I’m a country boy so we didn’t get down that way very often, so I can’t speak to which Interstates run south out of the city.”

  “And to the east?”

  “Sioux Falls,” replied Jasper. “But there are dozens of cities just like Draper between here and there. And the Missouri is that way. And a neighbor said the National Guard dropped the bridges to try and contain the outbreak. That’s why I said it’d be best you avoid that route.”

  “Ellsworth Air Force Base is just this side of Rapid City,” added Ari. “We might find another helicopter or a fixed wing there. There’s probably plenty of fuel as well. I think it’s worth a shot.”

  Tightening his hold on the grab bar as Cade swerved the truck around a couple of putrefied first turns, Jasper shook his head and said, “It’s twenty miles this side of Rapid City.”

  “Perfect.”

  “You don’t understand, Ari,” said Jasper. “That still leaves a hundred and thirty miles of I-90 for you to travel ... and the closer you get to the big city, the more of these things will be on the road. And all of the stalled cars too.”

  Not good, Cade thought as he fought with the truck’s mushy suspension to keep the rig on the road. Simultaneously he jinked left and right, dodging walking corpses, and tried to orient himself by picturing a virtual map of the United States in his mind. He put an imaginary pin in Pierre—the under-siege capitol they had overflown a couple of hours ago—the same city that had just received an airdrop of much needed supplies thanks to the highly motivated First Sergeant Whipper.

  Clipping the man on the chin, Cade thought to himself, was the best thing I’ve done in ages. It had felt good and just at the time, but thinking back on it, he supposed he’d been a bit out of line. Still, he wouldn’t take it back for anything. He could only hope the violently-delivered message would continue to pay off in the form of a multiple aircraft search party. Or at the very least, a tanker would be recalled to top off Jedi One-Two so Major Ripley could return and conduct a thorough search. Furthermore, he found comfort in knowing, with or without Whipper’s help, that the second Nash realized how much time had elapsed since Ari’s last radio communication, a search of some kind would be mounted—if one hadn’t been already.

  But for now, survival was a second-to-second, one move at a time affair. Continuing to map their current location in his head, he visualized the flight path that was supposed to have taken them south by west from Pierre directly over Draper and onward, overflying the bottom quarter of South Dakota and a good chunk of flat, treeless, Nebraska prairie before finally arriving at Colorado Springs which lay roughly four hundred miles southwest as the crow flies.

  Jasper’s confirmation that Sioux Falls was to the left and Rapid City was off to the right meant that there would be large numbers of dead trudging the 90 between the cities. Tens of thousands of them would be stretched out over a hundred miles in small groups and bigger herds, Cade guessed, but thankfully nothing comparable to the Denver mega-horde.

  What to do? he thought. Following the straight gray ribbon of highway for any duration would be risky, while sheltering in place awaiting rescue in the vicinity of the burning wreckage would be tantamount to him signing all of their death warrants.

  Then an alternative came to him. They would have to get from Draper, South Dakota to Colorado Springs the same way he got from Camp Williams to Hanna, Utah a few days after the outbreak—by following back roads, avoiding the dead at all costs, and relying on a whole lot of luck. Sure it would be risky—almost stupid, he supposed. To deviate from the area rescue craft would most likely overfly went against every shred of training he’d absorbed.

  “We’re going south. Cross country. Take back roads and resupply along the way.”

  “With all due respect, Captain,” Ari said. “We have got to stay near the crash site.”

  “We’ll be surrounded in minutes,” said Cade. “Hell, we’re damn near surrounded now.”

  Ari said, “You really think we can survive a five-hundred-mile hump through Indian country?” He removed his sidearm from the horizontal holster affixed to the front of his vest, ripped back the Velcro flap and removed the survival radio that Cross had returned to him before boarding the truck. He verified it was still on, and double checked to make sure it was tuned to the proper dust-off frequency. “This is Jedi One-One requesting dust-off at Draper, South Dakota. How copy?” He released the call button and waited. Nothing. He tried again and still received only static. “This thing is damaged. Probably made in China.”

  “South it is. Which way, Jasper?”

  “I still think Ellsworth is the answer,” pressed Ari.

  Shaking his head, Cade replied, “Too many dead between here and there.” Suddenly he eased off of the pedal. “Hang on,” he blurted a second before the rig passed over the raised railroad tracks that just happened to run parallel to the interstate. Hitting the crossing at the speed they were traveling launched the t
ruck, putting a few inches of daylight between its tires and the ground. Then, upon landing, the three men in the cab bounced into each other like ball bearings in a kinetic sculpture. The men in back, however—dead and alive alike—fared much worse, going weightless momentarily before coming back down with a series of hollow clunks followed by the discordant clatter of gunmetal and the shrill squeaking of springs that had lost their temper long ago. “Sorry,” Cade called out. “Saw it at the last moment. Couldn’t be helped.”

  Rubber squealed as he hauled the Chevy into a hard right turn, taking them onto a two-lane splitting the tracks and the 90. Gazing past Ari, Cade hitched a brow and looked a question at Jasper that said: Tell me where to turn next.

  “Next left is State Route 13 South,” Jasper announced. Then, as if he had mulled through their options utilizing the same thought process as the Delta operator, he told Cade in no uncertain terms to stay away from the 90 and continue driving straight.

  Hearing this, Ari shook his head but said nothing.

  With the low sun glancing off the dirty windshield making it difficult to see the road ahead, let alone the sign indicating where he needed to turn, Cade decided to roll down his window and stick his head into the slipstream.

  “Turn here,” hollered Jasper.

  The balding tires chirped trying to maintain their tenuous purchase as Cade pulled his head inside and guided the truck into a hard left at the intersection. He stole a look over his shoulder at the black smoke roiling from the burning wreckage and couldn’t help noticing the telltale flashes of rounds cooking off. From experience, he knew that lead cutting the air unexpectedly and indiscriminately was nearly always a losing proposition. No kind of place for anyone to be near, he thought.

  “We’re so fucked,” Ari bellowed. “If you do not turn onto the 90 here we are as good as dead.” And since he didn’t have a throat mike, and there was a great deal of competing ambient noise as well as a quarter-inch of rear window glass between the cab and the bed, his words, and the worry inflected in them, were lost on everyone save Jasper to his right and Cade to his left.

  Caught in a moment of indecision, Cade stood on the brakes and brought the truck to a jarring halt. Listening to the grating tick of a bad lifter, Cade cupped his chin with a gloved hand and tapped the fingers of his other hand on the steering wheel. He stroked his goatee and watched the dead amble around the arcing stretch of oil-stained blacktop leading up to the eastbound freeway. “You have fifteen seconds, Night Stalker. Sell the interstate option to me,” he said sharply.

  In the back, unaware why the truck had stopped so abruptly, Agent Cross got his feet underneath him and popped up to scan their surroundings. He placed the SCAR rifle he’d taken off of Gaines over the truck’s roof, flicked its selector to fire, and about shit himself when he saw the predicament they were in. Make up your mind, Delta, he thought to himself. To the left and right of the freeway underpass, dozens of walking dead were making their way from the elevated roadway via their respective off-ramps. Eastbound. Westbound. Do Not Enter. None of the signs meant a thing to the hungry Zs. They were fixated on two things: the sight and sound of the Ghost Hawk and its remaining ammunition firing off in the distance. And the new attraction —the decrepit, idling truck which was full of meat, obviously closer, and quickly becoming a much stronger draw. Then, without warning, rotten creatures began raining down around them from the overpass overhead.

  With his hands kneading the wheel at the proper ten-and-two, Cade closed his eyes and let his chin hit his chest. He remained that way for a handful of seconds, during which Ari and Jasper watched his head rock side-to-side. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that he was mentally working on some kind of equation in which life and death were more than just random variables. He was making some kind of decision, that much was clear.

  Too many deaths on my watch, Cade thought. Too many walking dead on the freeway to make it the logical escape route, and judging from the unmistakable sound of meat slamming to the roadway in front, the monsters must be hurling themselves off of the I-90. In his mind’s eye he relived the wave of Zs pouring from the shattered skywalk at the NML in Canada and the cacophony from hell that it had produced. He snapped his eyes open and was not surprised to see what his other senses had already confirmed. In addition to the falling forms and the broken shapes crawling and scrabbling and painting the gray road with crimson blood and who knows what else, there was a sizable contingent of Zs about to block their path ahead. Like a single cell organism, the river of flesh and bone marched the gently curving arc that would put them on a collision course with the idling truck.

  Agent Cross tapped the sheet metal over Cade’s head. “Better do something,” he said into the comms. “We’ve got Zs raining from above.” Then, trying hard to ignore the heavy thuds and rifle-shot-like cracks from flesh and bone impacting concrete, he looked beyond the heavy shadow cast by the overhead stretch of I-90 and spied two very large knots of walking dead filing off the other pair of freeway ramps. “I now have eyes on sixty-plus Zulus inbound from the south at twelve o’clock.”

  “Roger that,” Cade said back.

  “Permission to fire?” Lopez called out, as he had already followed Cross’s lead and had his M4 lined up, bracketing the northbound dead in his crosshairs.

  Cade’s terse reply, “Wait one,” sounded immediately in his ear bud. Nonplussed, Lopez hinged over and shot an impatient look through the truck’s rear window at the inside of the crowded cab where an animated discussion was currently underway. Then he shifted his gaze to Cross, who remained stoic and solely focused on the building mass of moaning walkers threatening to surround them. Disregarding the reek of death thick on the air and an overwhelming impulse to empty his carbine into the dead, Lopez performed the sign of the cross over his body armor and prayed for his acting commander to come to some kind of decision. He peered through his weapon’s optics and targeted a tottering female first turn, centering the floating red pip between its staring eyes. Better do something quick, Wyatt, he thought, taking up a few pounds of trigger pull.

  Suddenly the distinctive rapid clatter of a weapon’s bolt opening and closing, coupled with the telltale whispers of subsonic lead leaving a suppressor, drew their attention to the rear where Hicks was engaging a cluster of Zs that were danger close. The brassy tinkle of spent shells added to the lethal soundtrack as he steadily swept the beefy-looking barrel in a flat left to right arc. “Couldn’t wait, Captain,” Hicks stated over the comms as the constant accurate fire from the business end of his M4 created a slow motion aerial display of bone and brain. Simultaneously, smoke drifting from the carbine’s hot barrel, he slapped a new mag in the well, chambered a round, and called out, “I’ve got our six cleared ... for now.”

  In utter disbelief that they were sitting in an idling vehicle in the middle of the road with dead raining down a few yards in front and behind them, Ari finished explaining to Cade why they must back up and risk the westbound freeway and the large numbers of dead they were likely to encounter there.

  Cade nodded and yanked down on the shifter. “Hold on,” he ordered as the transmission caught and the truck lurched sharply in reverse, bouncing up and over half a dozen rotted bodies and grinding them into the street. He worked the gas, brake, and transmission in a finely-choreographed sequence to put the rig into a not-so-graceful low speed bootlegger’s reverse; when the truck finished the J turn and came to a complete stop, they found themselves facing the Z-choked westbound onramp.

  With a firm set to his jaw, Cade levered the transmission out of reverse and into drive. He looked his friend in the eye, paused a beat, and said, “Are you sure of this, Ari?”

  “Positive. Just get us past the Zs on the ramp and the rest will be manageable,” Ari said, displaying an air of confidence unbefitting a man who had just crashed a multi-million dollar top-secret helicopter, killing three in the process.

  “Roger that,” Cade said, while in his ear Lopez’s voice was urgi
ng him to drive.

  But before he could comply, a house-sized shadow flitted by, causing a good number of the monsters to look skyward, lose their already compromised balance, and fall to the roadway like dominos. A half second later the blue sky was blocked by a swiftly moving mass producing a deafening noise that was instantly recognizable to everyone but Jasper.

  Chapter 17

  Schriever AFB

  Grayson Billet

  Having just stepped out of the shower, dripping wet and naked, Brook heard the screech of rubber on asphalt and a tick later the telling cough and sputter of a Cushman’s engine dying to silence. She snatched a towel off the hook near her head, wrapped it around herself, and padded towards the window to see who had come calling. But before she could make two wet footprints across the floor, someone was banging loudly on the front door.

  “Give me a second,” she hollered.

  After returning recently from giving Wilson, Sasha, and Taryn a primer on firearm safety followed by a hands on, live fire introduction to her M4 and Raven’s Ruger 10-22, she had wanted nothing more than to lay on her cool bunk in the dark and await Cade’s return. Now, more than a little irritated, she donned a black tee shirt, stepped into a pair of Cade’s shorts that fell well below her knees, and wrapped the damp towel turban-like around her head. Tucking the loose end in, she crept to the door, peeled the heavy curtain aside, and peeked out. Airman Davis, she thought to herself. What the hell does he want? A millisecond after the question popped into her mind, an icy fist gut-punched her as she remembered Cade’s death letter. No, no, no, she chanted in her head. Suddenly she felt like she was on the summit of Mount Hood at 11,237 feet, in thin air, with someone sitting on her chest. Trying to head off the rising anxiety attack she bent at the waist and sought to relax her diaphragm. No help. “Raven,” she rasped. There was no answer. The girl had ridden her bike hard for the better part of an hour, making seventeen laps around the jogging track, which when added up amounted to four and one quarter miles. Raven was sound asleep and snoring atop the four bunk beds she called Raven Island.