First Dover had slowed and stopped the Hercules using the plane’s built-in ability to reverse its propellers without shutting down the turbines. Then, slowly but surely, he rotated the Herc clockwise in place one-hundred-eighty-degrees, until the nose was pointed east away from the low hanging sun.
***
Lying in the shadow of the starboard wing, Cade went through the four fundamentals of marksmanship taught to him by his good friend and mentor, Major Greg Beeson.
Steady position: He splayed out his right leg and pressed his knee into the soft shoulder. Check.
Proper aim: To compensate for the drop of the bullet as well as the Z’s lurching gait, he hovered the red pip a fist-width above the undead girl’s head. Check.
Breathing: Taking steady, shallow breaths, he established a cadence. Inhaled slowly one final time, and then exhaled proportionately with his finger tightening on the trigger. Check.
Trigger squeeze: He drew back the last few ounces of trigger pull. There was a minimal kick to his shoulder and a shallow report which was lost in the noise created by the nearby airplane. A tick later he witnessed a puff of white and a mist of pink spray from the Z’s shoulder area. Fail.
He glanced left and saw Jasper climbing the Hercules’ cargo ramp with the general’s limp body in his arms. Lopez rose up from the truck’s roof, threw down the M4, and helped Hicks climb down from the box-bed.
“Captain Grayson,” said Lopez. “Something’s not right with Hicks. I’m wondering if he got bit.”
Putting his eye to the optics, Cade repeated the Army’s four fundamentals of marksmanship while answering back to Lopez. “Ask Cross if he saw anything.”
“No time,” said Lopez. “Cross is inside the plane helping the loadmaster secure the bodies. Dover says he wants to be wheels up in one mike.”
“Roger that,” said Cade as the first of the summer camp Zs went down, its little head disintegrating in a haloed cloud of flesh, brain, and splintered skull. He shifted aim right and dropped two more little flesh-eaters, and then noticed a new contingent of adult-sized creatures making their way onto the far end of the interstate.
Cade bellowed in order to be heard over the Herc’s turboprops. “I need a sit rep from you, Lopez.”
A second later Lopez replied. “Jasper just finished transferring the bodies aboard. I’m going in to check on Hicks.”
“Listen,” Cade said. “Even if you don’t find any bites on Hicks, I want you to cuff him just to be on the safe side.”
“Roger that. Time’s running out, Captain. You need to get yourself aboard.”
Cade made no reply. He drew a bead on the closest of the fast little Zs and dropped it to the road. He shifted aim and snapped off a dozen shots, enjoying a less than fifty-percent success rate on the others.
Then two things caught his attention at once: in his side vision he saw a fresh corpse cresting the embankment on his right, and from out of nowhere, barely audible over Oil Can’s oppressive din, he heard an all-too-familiar sound. Craning his head all the way around, he ignored the fresh turn, looked over his right shoulder and saw the Chevy’s crumpled and gore-spattered bumper and grill complete with the stove bolt Chevy emblem dead center bearing down on him fast. He followed the truck with his eyes as it swerved around him, peppering his face with hot rubber and gravel, then continued on a diagonal tack, narrowly avoiding the Hercules’s outside starboard engine and deadly spinning prop. Then, at the last moment, when Cade was certain the truck was going to plunge over the embankment, whoever was driving course corrected and brought the rear-end back around, sending a rooster tail of dirt and gravel flying. There was an intermittent chirping from the tires as the truck drifted sideways, and finally a brief moment when the driver’s full profile was presented and Cade learned that Jasper was behind the wheel.
He watched the truck for a spell and then squeezed a few more shots at the advancing monsters, and when the count in his head reached twenty-eight he swung the M4 a ninety-degree arc, flipped the 3x magnifier away and settled the holographic pip on the fresh turn’s forehead.
For a brief second as the thing closed the distance, Cade second-guessed himself, wondering if he’d fouled up his count.
But thankfully his consternation was dispelled when the carbine responded to his trigger pulls and a pair of crimson holes appeared where the Zs eyes had been and the bolt locked open.
He threw the M4 aside, and as the dusty truck neared the far end of 90 near the burnt-out road block, Cade watched it swerve, double back, and drive back and forth from shoulder to shoulder across both lanes running down the remaining zombies.
“Brilliant move, Jasper,” he said to himself. “Going out heroically and on your own terms.”
But he wasn’t alone. Catching him by surprise, two pair of hands, each grabbing an arm, hauled him to his feet and Cross and Lopez hustled him towards the Hercules.
Once aboard, Cade collapsed into a seat on the starboard side, cinched himself in, and closed his eyes. He barely detected the hydraulic whine as the ramp was closing. The engines spooling up were a vague memory, but the smooth g-inducing take off and subsequent gut-pressing sixty-degree climb were lost, because instantly he’d succumbed to unconsciousness after what seemed like a full lifetime’s worth of running and gunning and adrenaline-fueled peaks and valleys all squeezed into a two-hour span.
Chapter 42
Schriever AFB
Overhead, fluorescents continued to serenade Brook with a steady, almost subliminal, hiss. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting on the thin carpet with her back to the paneled wall. No way of telling, since she’d gone off and left her watch on the nightstand back in Portland on that Saturday in July when the shit hit the fan, as Cade had been wont to say lately. What was supposed to have been a short visit with her parents in sunny Myrtle Beach had turned into a nightmare that she feared was about to get worse.
Scooting over a few inches, and risking a cauliflower ear if Tiny decided to leave his post, she pressed her head to the door and listened hard. No change. There was the same busy sound. The squelch of sturdy, military-soled footwear on carpet. The low murmur of concerned voices overridden occasionally by someone giving instruction. Issuing orders. But nothing new. Nothing suggesting Mister Murphy had hung up his spurs for the day after she’d learned Cade was still alive God knows how long ago. Minutes? An hour? Suddenly she wanted her watch. Then she could truly gauge how fast the odds were tipping in Murphy’s favor. Like watching sand work its way through an hourglass, but instead it’d be relayed to her by a series of cogs and gears seemingly working in unison against her family.
She scooted back to her post against the wall, adjacent from the carefully-posed head shot of Schriever’s base commander circa 1999. That had been a very good year. Newly married to a wonderful man. The love of her life. Pregnant, with a girl no less. A bit of information only she had been privy to up until Raven’s birth. Cade wanted it to be a surprise. Said he’d love the baby regardless—boy or girl, it didn’t matter. She had been so happy then.
A dull roar sounded from somewhere in the building, sending conditioned air through the vents overhead. The initial blast from above snatched her away from the swirling cauldron of emotions. Brought her back to the present. To face her problem head on. To face the people in the room and watch the rescue mission play out no matter the consequence.
She rose to standing and stood outside the door, one deep breath away from delivering a no-nonsense—let-me-the-eff-in—kind of knock, when an unfamiliar sound reverberated through the security door like a crashing breaker. The next thing Brook knew the door was open and a beaming Secret Service agent was ushering her inside.
Taken aback at first by the fact that Tiny was smiling, she was truly baffled when she noticed every person in the room was wearing a wide grin.
Maybe the Pueblo horde had been defeated?
But that supposition was squashed when she looked at monitor two and saw what looked like a w
ar being waged in downtown Springs.
As she took a few tentative steps into the room and worked her way into a position where she could easily see the other monitors, another raucous cheer cycled around the room.
Maybe the aircraft bringing the scientists to safety had landed?
She looked at monitor one on the left and saw that the black Osprey was in fact back at Schriever and on the ground, its massive rotors spinning slowly, little figures spilling from the rear ramp.
Good for them. Then, fearing the worst, she let her gaze wander to screen three, where at first due to the smaller scale what was happening on the interstate near Draper was nearly impossible to decipher.
“Brook.”
She looked around to see who was calling her name. A tick later the giddy Air Force personnel standing nearby quickly parted, and the equally diminutive Major Freda Nash appeared.
“They did it,” said the major, smiling broadly and raising her arms getting ready to initiate a hug.
But Brook wasn’t having it. She made a face and shook her head and said, “Who did what?”
“You weren’t watching?”
Shaking her head, Brook said, “No. I was outside in the hall.”
“Ari Silver, Cade, and two of his Delta team made it aboard the Hercules. Hell of a job on the pilot’s part. Come with me and I’ll fill you in.”
Ignoring the major who had already turned and was hustling over to where the President was surrounded by her detail, Colonel Shrill, and a gaggle of personnel in blue and gray tiger striped Air Force camos, Brook instead bolted for the back door. Call her callous, but at this point she didn’t want to know the details. That Cade was alive was all that mattered. With hot tears streaking her face, she hit the door running and retraced her steps to the rear entrance, where inexplicably Airman Davis was still waiting with the Cushman in the hot afternoon sun. She retrieved her M4 from the bushes where she’d left it and thanked Davis for waiting as she crowded in next to him. Then as an afterthought, she asked how long she’d kept him waiting.
“Not long,” he replied.
Whether he was being truthful or just diplomatic in his answer she hadn’t a clue. Time had a way of getting away from her. So she decided to collect Raven and get them both to the tarmac. She didn’t want to miss anything else today.
Especially not giving her man a proper welcoming home.
Chapter 43
I-25 Colorado, Springs
Sergeant First Class Larry Eckels and his men held the first two moats for a little over an hour.
After springing the trap and successfully negotiating the graded dirt road paralleling moats one through three, the two M-ATVs, call signs Jumper One-One and One-Two, positioned themselves on either side of the middle overpass where they joined a pair of Strykers and a trio of Bradley fighting vehicles.
There they waited until a couple thousand more dead entered the new “kill box” before opening fire. And while they waited, heavy metal music serenaded them from a Humvee rigged with loudspeakers situated on a side street a quarter mile to their six.
During the first engagement, the M-ATVs employed a talking machine gun tactic whereas each vehicle would take turns firing while the other reloaded thus giving their machine gun’s super-heated barrels time to cool down. The alternating crossing streams of fire, waist-high, pulverized the first echelon of dead with thousands of 7.62 rounds, effectively turning wave after wave of them into crawlers. Then, as Sergeant Eckels had predicted, the next surge of creatures helped to finish the job the 240s had started, crushing skulls and vertebra alike under the weight of their relentless advance.
Next, after the M-ATVs’ ran out of ammunition, the two Strykers—eight-wheeled tank-like armored vehicles outfitted with the Protector M151 Remote Weapon Station, which employed both the M2 Browning .50 caliber and an M240 machine gun—entered the battle. And in unison with the Strykers, the three M2 Bradleys brought their own M240 and 2,200 rounds of 7.62 mm into the fight. The result was devastating at first, because by the end of that first hour there were so many dead piling up that there was a clear and present danger the newly arriving Zs would disrupt the pre-positioned claymore mines and spill over the coiled concertina wire.
Since the objective was to keep the dead marching into the chute until they were decimated, Eckels had been forced to blow the claymores prematurely and start the diesel burning.
***
Now sitting in the idling M-ATV on the third overpass, he watched the Strykers and Bradleys continue to hammer away at the dead.
Several Black Hawk helicopters as well as a pair of Apache attack helicopters were taking turns orbiting over the horde, sending groundward steady streams of lead and cannon fire and further thinning their ranks.
Sergeant Eckels marveled at the drive the things exhibited. Hell, he thought. If Americans would have had half the tenacity when they were alive that they exhibited after turning, there would have been no way the country could have fallen as quickly as it did.
But what really got him was how the Zs kept trudging ahead even though they were ablaze. Finally being stilled only after all of their hair and skin and muscle was fully engaged and the resulting heat cooked their brains right inside their skulls.
As he watched they seemingly succumbed to the burning diesel. Just sort of bow down and sink in. No kicking and screaming. No fighting the licking flames. Total submission.
Suddenly, next to him, Huddie growled. A little tremor just to let his master know he was still there. Then the shepherd’s tail thumped the seat. An action that always garnered a good scratching between the ears.
“All elements, we’re oscar mike in two minutes,” Sergeant Eckels said into the comms as he reached back and delivered the desired attention. “Proceed to the final staging area.” He put the mike down and cast his gaze to the BFT display, and was pleased to see that the snaking red line had been nearly cut in half. Then, as the M-ATV began rolling and his driver maneuvered the vehicle between a Stryker and a pair of Bradleys, he keyed the mike, hailed Schriever and delivered a detailed situation report.
Chapter 44
Aboard Oil Can Five-Five
When Cade came to, he was disoriented and felt like his heart had transited his body and was now pounding away furiously deep inside his left ankle. Someone had removed his helmet and the comms along with it. The sweat matting his hair to his skull was drying and made his head cold. After a second it all came back to him, and he walked his gaze around the sparsely-appointed cylindrical cabin.
It was dim inside, and most of the team’s tactical gear had been flung and left where they’d fallen. He could see helmets, gloves, elbow and knee pads wherever his gaze fell. Ballistic vests and weapons were piled in a much neater manner near the plane’s cargo ramp. A few feet away, under an assortment of tarps used to cover cargo, were shapes he presumed were the bodies of Tice and Durant. There was also one corpse underneath an American flag. And judging by the bare foot peeking out at one end, Cade had no doubt that it was his old friend and teammate, General Ronnie “Ghost” Gaines.
He unclipped his safety belt, and under his own power trudged across the fuselage and sat down hard on the floor next the flag-draped body. He retrieved the thin box containing the Medal of Honor presented to him by the President. Opened the box and unfurled the ribbon attached to the polished pendant. He peeled back a corner of Old Glory and slipped the medal over the general’s head. Well deserved, my friend, crossed his mind as he rewrapped the flag.
Oblivious of the eyes on him, he shimmied a few feet aft, drawing the Gerber. Then, with a sawing motion, he methodically sliced through the laces of his left boot. Wincing from the pain, he peeled the size twelve off of his swollen-to-size-fourteen-foot and then slipped the newly-stretched-out boot back on Ronnie’s bare foot where it belonged.
He bowed his head and recited a few private words. For a minute or two he reflected on the mission as the plane droned on all around him, and when he finally looked u
p he realized that Ari, Cross, and Lopez had all been watching him. He looked around and then looked back and mouthed the words, “Where is Hicks?”
Cross pointed amidships in the general direction of the cockpit.
At that moment Cade noticed, though they were safely airborne and underway to Schriever, Lopez performing the sign of the cross. He looked left to where he thought Cross had pointed but didn’t see Hicks; only the crew chief and the pilots and flight engineer farther forward were immediately visible. That the fuselage was wide open with virtually nowhere to hide a grown man was momentarily lost on him. Call it battle fatigue or denial or a combination of both. No matter which, he still wasn’t following.
Until he realized that in addition to the general there were three separate, distinct shapes beneath the large olive tarp.
First Gaines and Tice. Then Durant. And now Hicks to cap off one hell of a bad day.
He made his way back to his seat. Strapped in and looked a question at Lopez.
Leaning in, Lopez said in his ear, “He got bit. Little teeth marks on his wrist.”
“Same as Desantos,” Cade said back. “Who put him down?”
With a tilt of his head, Lopez indicated Ari.
Cade shook his head and, thinking anything would be better than replaying the day’s events over and over all the way back to Schriever, closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.
Six Hours Later
Schriever AFB
“Is she asleep?”
“Like a rock. I wish you would have seen her riding that bike with Max herding her and the twins like they were his own personal herd of two legged sheep.”
“Sounds like our Bird got to be a kid today ... really sorry I missed it,” said Cade. “Where is the fuzz ball anyway?”
“Raven’s still calling those four bunks we pushed together Raven Island. Max has taken to sleeping on the bottom bunks ... guess that would make that Max’s Island.”
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 22