by Bryan James
He had always wanted to fly one of these beasts.
It was the first time I had thought about him since New York, and I tried to push past it, but the airplane brought it all back. His love of flying, his rough divorce. The fact that he got motion sick but he loved flying too much to quit.
I harbored no illusions. I had little hope that he was alive. We were separated by more than just thousands of miles now.
We were separated by worlds.
The pilots had shut the door to the flight deck after we took off, and I looked through the small window before knocking. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a massive storm system boiled to our right. Rain slashed against the windshield in sporadic sheets, and heavy cloud cover obscured the landscape below.
I knocked lightly, and the co-pilot gestured curtly. I opened the door and found a seat in the flight engineer’s chair. The co-pilot turned to me and I saw the lieutenant colonel silver oak leafs on his uniform before I saw his name: Crawford.
“Colonel,” I nodded, extending my hand. He took it, and nodded once. “Thanks for the pick up.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, and the pilot turned once, nodding quickly before turning back to wrestling the yoke.
“How are we doing?” I asked, looking out the window at the storm. “I heard we need a port in the storm.”
He gestured at one of a million dials and readouts. “We are at about twenty percent right now. Way too little to get to Seattle from here. We are aiming for Ellsworth in South Dakota, but it’s going to be a race. Our range is about twenty-five hundred miles, and we took off slightly over half full. But if we have to keep fighting this weather, it’s not going to happen.”
“Where are we now?”
He pointed at the GPS computer, which meant nothing to me, as it appeared to be only a green screen with numbers and lines.
“About a hundred miles past Chicago, give or take. But we don’t have weather information coming in, as all the sat links have been disabled. It’s old-school cross-country flight,” interjected the pilot, a full bird colonel who was still staring out the front windshield.
“Is Ellsworth secure?”
“It was the last time we checked. We’ve made a few of these runs, at least as far as San Diego. We’re doing cluster extermination, mopping up after the napalm and incendiary with some high yield explosive rounds. We stopped at Ellsworth a week ago for fuel. They’re remote enough that they haven’t been attacked in force yet. They’re pulling the same trick as the Western Army in Seattle, stacking old shipping containers to make a perimeter, and using drones for decoys.”
“Do we have an ETA?”
He shook his head. “No, largely because we don’t know what the weather is going to do. But one way or another, we’ll be on the ground in about three hours. Get some sack time. You’re going to need it.”
I nodded once and back out of the door, recognizing the dismissal. Kate was talking softly to Watts, and I passed without speaking. Ky and Romeo were already asleep, and I begrudgingly took the last seat, next to Rhodes. He could fight, but he wasn’t the most engaging conversationalist.
He was slowly putting rounds into his magazine and, meticulous in his work. I was reminded by this activity to clean my own weapon, and rooted through my pack until I found a rag. I was pulling the last of the dried blood off the blade of the bayonet axe as I heard his voice rumble in his chest.
“You seen a lot of those things, huh?”
Stopping momentarily, I looked up, surprised.
“Yeah, it seems like all I have seen lately is those things. You?”
He shrugged. “Saw ‘em on the ground in Kabul. Then some when we landed in Dover. No heavy engagement. Run and gun stuff.” His voice trailed off. “You say there might be a cure for this thing? A vaccine or something?”
“That’s what they tell me. I was bitten, and here I am. A little sun shy, and a tad stronger than I was before. But they’re onto something. That’s why we’re going out. Did you get the vaccine?”
He shook his head.
“I hadn’t had time to engage with those things close enough when we got our only shipment, then I saw some action, and they transferred me to the Pentagon, but our op got moved up, so I missed out.” His tone was uncaring, as if he didn’t see how the vaccine could help him.
Then I understood.
“Where’s your family?” I asked softly, seeing the wedding ring for the first time, rubbed with black oil paint to dull the shine.
He didn’t respond, just slammed the magazine into the carbine and leaned it back against the wall. His eyes closed, and he took the cord of a music player from his pocket, plugging the buds into his ears and ignoring me.
Two dismissals in almost as many minutes. I must be just wonderful company.
I stared out the window across the narrow fuselage, and marveled at how the world looked so quiet from this height. Everything could be normal, from here.
But it wasn’t. I knew better.
It never would be again.
NINE
“I must have dozed off, and I awoke with a start as the plane lost altitude in a sudden lurch. Next to me, Rhodes had moved and Kate was sitting upright, alert and staring toward the flight deck.
“Problem?” I asked, a little groggily.
“We’re trying to land in Sioux Falls, in Iowa,” she said, standing up carefully with a hand on the wall. “The weather kept pushing us South, and then we caught a headwind. We don’t have the gas for Ellsworth, so we’re landing at the quietest town in the area.”
I looked at Ky, who was counting the bolts in her satchel, as Romeo snacked on a piece of cracker from an MRE.
Good thing one of us could eat the crap out of those things.
Rhodes was sitting next to Granger at a bank of computer monitors set into the left hand side of the narrow fuselage. The array showed a variety of angles from high definition cameras and even one that seemed to be from a satellite feed. We were circling a medium sized city, engines droning slowly with a steady thrum. In the monitors, we could see small numbers of shambling forms amidst a wreckage of cars and burning buildings. A small number of streets in the center of the city had been haphazardly blocked off with debris and parked cars, but the barricades had fallen, leaving a trail of wreckage, and bodies.
“Looks active down there,” I said, staring at the monitor.
“It’s quieter than the other options in the area, and we’re restricted by the length of the runway. Anyway, we’ve got no choice. We’ll be on the ground in ten minutes, no matter what.”
“Granger, we’ve got multiple contacts on the ground, lots of traffic near the boulevard outside the air strip. Can you facilitate?” The pilot’s voice was calm, despite the buffeting winds.
“Yes, sir,” said the airman, and he started toward the large guns.
“You need a hand?” asked Rhodes, appearing from the front of the plane.
“You got any time in one of these?”
“Ten hours on some black ops stuff in Kandahar. I know how to put the bang bang in the barrel—that enough?”
“That’ll do, pig,” said Granger with a tight smile. “That’ll do.”
He jumped to the 25mm gun and motioned to Rhodes, who joined him and they started talking and gesturing quickly. Granger soon moved to the 40mm and started working.
I stared at the screen, watching the heavy activity outside the main terminal and the access road feeding into the airport grounds. A large field bordered the strip on one side of the runway, corn tall and thick. No movement appeared in the scopes on that side.
“Give me a ready time, Granger,” the pilot sent.
“One mike, sir,” Granger answered quickly.
“Okay, coming on station in thirty. Be ready.”
“Copy.”
The plane banked sharply to the left, descending slightly and adjusting angles and altitude, finally coming to a thirty-degree bank on a steady line.
“Weap
ons hot,” said the pilot, and Granger acknowledged.
“Weapons hot.”
The minigun started to speak, and below, the zombies heard.
Kate and I clustered around the screens, watching the tracer rounds plow into the large groups of creatures, all clustered together in small herds. The rounds marched into the rotting dead, spreading limbs and carnage across the streets and buildings of the formerly quiet city.
“Coming around for the forty, copy Granger?”
“Yes sir, switching to Bofors.”
He moved quickly as the plane banked sharply once more, adjusting angle and attitude.
“Hey, let me watch,” said Ky, pushing between us.
Kate threw her a look and moved over begrudgingly.
She looked at me and I shrugged.
The plane shuddered briefly as three shells left the barrel in quick succession. A large mass of the huddled dead was pressing against the fence line of the airstrip, possibly somehow sensing our intent, hearing the spinning blades.
The 40mm incendiaries disabused them of their ambition.
Flames blossomed silently on the green-tinged screen, and bodies were incinerated and thrown into the air as the explosive rounds tore into the pavement, sending debris and concrete into the assembled creatures.
The operation was repeated several times until the dead below were immobile, and there were more still bodies than moving.
“Okay, let’s pack it up, folks,” said the colonel, bringing the plane around to an approach vector. Rhodes and Granger stowed the weapons, and we sat down in the jump seats near the back.
“I didn’t think anything could fire anything that big that fast,” said Ky, pulling the harness tight.
“That’s what – ”
“Mike!”
Fine.
Buzz kill.
“What? What is that? Where you going to say that ‘she said’ thing again? What is it, some old joke from your dinosaur-riding era? I’m gonna figure it out.” Ky was irritated, and I laughed.
So there was a way to get to her.
Fancy that.
I smiled at Kate as the plane started to descend. Out the side window, as we banked one more time, I could see the remains of the entire airport below. One runway was clear, but for a still-burning carcass of a large jet at the very end of the strip. The other runway was strewn with the pieces of what looked like two airplanes that had hit one another—likely as one took off or landed, based on the spread of the debris.
The cornfield to one side of the main runway extended for more than a mile, and the terminal still stood, despite the explosive rounds and destruction we had just visited on the area. Rows of cars and trucks still stood parked near the terminal, and several planes were still standing at the end of the jet ways, as if waiting patiently to take in passengers.
“You doing okay?” I asked Kate, who was quiet next to me.
“I guess,” she said softly, “but that kid is going to have trouble,” she said.
“He wasn’t ready for what he saw. He had heard about it, but… It’s going to mess him up real bad. And we’re just taking him further into the mess.”
That was for sure.
We seemed to be quite adept at pulling the eject lever on frying pan and landing our happy tails in the fire.
“He awake, or still catatonic?”
“He’s conscious,” she said in a doubtful tone. “But he’s asking for his mother.”
Frowning, I watched as the plane dropped down again, fields of corn alternating with suburban businesses and warehouses along a railway line. Then we were over the last set of power lines and an interstate.
With every foot we dropped in elevation, the destruction and the state of the changed planet became clearer. Bodies. Fires. Smoke. Destruction.
The engines slowed and then roared once with a flare as the wheels tore into the cement with a loud screech, and the nose of the plane bumped gently down. We slowed quickly, and taxied closer to a large hangar, sitting alone on the side of the runway.
A large American flag still flew from a flagpole near the cavernous building, and a flag directly below that indicated that the area was for the Iowa Air National Guard.
“Get ready to disembark,” said the co-pilot, even as the door to the flight deck opened, and we could see out the front windshield as the plane slowed and turned around ponderously until we were facing back toward the runway.
“Fuel hookups are near the entrance,” said Granger. “Once we’re latched on, it should take about fifteen minutes to get the gas we need. I need someone to help with the fueling hose, and I’ll handle the hook up. After that, we need to wait.” He grimaced, and he looked at Rhodes and the two of us standing there with our guns in hand.
“Oh, and one more thing. A stray bullet could be a very bad thing, here. So you’re going to really want to watch where you shoot.”
Shit.
Right.
Who didn’t like engaging zombies around jet fuel.
Bully for us.
Granger released the latch on the front left door and it lowered slowly. I adjusted my balaclava and made sure my sunshades were in place. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and the sun was high in the sky. Worst time for us light averse to be out tanning our hides.
Kate followed me down the ramp, and Rhodes sprinted alongside Granger toward the hose assembly. I took a position near the tail of the plane, which was facing the cornfield, perpendicular to the runway. I scanned the horizon, squinting under my sunglasses and despite the cloud cover overhead. In the distance, the telltale gray smudge in the air indicated approaching heavy rain.
From the terminal, far in the distance, I saw our first visitor. Several more followed slowly. Then a steady stream, all pouring from the jet ways and the open doors in the terminal.
Shit.
We had taken out the herds outside, but there had been more inside the terminal.
I made note of the distance in my head, and pressed the transmit button.
“Colonel, we have company at the main terminal. About seven minutes out, give or take.”
A pause, then, “We see them, copy that. Granger, you copy?”
“Yes, sir,” he grunted, and I spared a glance behind me as Granger and Rhodes were wrestling the hose across the pavement to lock it with the airplane’s receiving station.
Ky and Romeo appeared on the tarmac next to me, her look slightly worried.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, glancing down at her and then back up to the perimeter.
“Romeo was whining. I thought he had to pee.”
“Get it over with and then back on board,” I said, squinting in the sunlight.
“He didn’t have to. He’s just staring over there.”
I expected her to point at the terminal, where hundreds of creatures were slowly shambling forward. In my ear, the pilot’s voice was scratchy.
“Granger, we have positive flow. Estimate about six minutes. Good pressure.”
“Copy that.”
I looked down, and saw Ky’s finger, pointing toward the empty field beyond the runway.
“Hey Kate, keep an eye peeled. Dog’s acting funny,” I said.
“Copy,” she said briefly, and I watched as the approaching herd shambled forward.
The sporadic sound of gunfire split the air from a distance, and I scanned the area, looking for signs of movement. Humanity was abroad somewhere, and I knew that airplanes were a hot commodity.
I brought my eyes back to the runway, and stared into the field of corn. It reminded me of my younger days, when I had gone to visit relatives in the Midwest. My cousins took me into their cornfields, and we would wander around for hours in the maze of tall, thick vegetation. It had been awesome. And a little scary. You couldn’t see more than five feet in front of you in fields like that.
A soft breeze touched the corn in several places, and I came back to the present, scanning the field again.
Somethi
ng was off. My spider sense was tingling—and not in the good way.
“Ky,” I said softly. “Where’s Romeo?”
“Right here,” she said. “Why?”
As if on cue, I heard the dog begin to growl, a deep throated rumble that began in the chest.
The corn moved again in the breeze.
Then I realized the problem.
There was no wind.
“I think we’ve got company,” I whispered. “Granger, how you doing?”
“Four minutes,” he said. “You got something?”
As he finished speaking, I saw the thick corn part in multiple spots, bodies falling forward onto the longer grass on the edge of the airfield.
They were close. Much closer than those approaching from the terminal.
“We have about a minute,” I said, pushing Ky and Romeo behind me.
“Get inside,” I yelled, and she sprinted. “Kate, we have more than a hundred back here.
“Colonel?” I asked. “How we doing?”
“We’re good, Granger disconnect the hose,” said the pilot as he began to increase the power to the engines.
“Rhodes, back to the plane, now! I’ll cover.”
They were within fifty feet, now, and covering the first runway, the one with the crushed and mangled planes at the end.
If they came across and blocked the second runway, we didn’t have a way out.
Granger was already on board, and he pulled Kate up as the plane was turning to take-off position. I sprinted to the open hatch, sparing one more look for the approaching creatures. To my right, hundreds of creatures were pouring from the terminal, and were nearing our position. From the left, the cornfield continued to disgorge its horrible denizens. The plane had to move forward, between them.
As I fell forward into the cabin, the plane slowed abruptly as we pointed our nose toward the escape vector, keeping the left side pointed toward the field. Suddenly, I heard a loud whirring noise.
The massive 105mm Howitzer cannon was moving.
“Colonel, taking a shot,” said Granger, and I slammed the hatch shut behind me.
“Take it,” said the pilot, as the engines spooled up and we rocketed forward. A heavy blast echoed in the small cabin as Rhodes shot forward to help Granger reload. To the left of the plane, through the small window next to the cannon, a cloud of orange flame and dirt sprayed into the air, along with bodies and body parts.