Pete tried not to smirk. Unless I miss my guess, that’s the first time in the history of mankind such a sentence has been uttered.
He hadn’t known McFarlane long, but from the sound of the man’s voice, he was struggling not to laugh. “Be that as it may, Private, is zulu responding to “Mmmbop?” The nature of the noise is immaterial if it attracts the enemy to your position. Agent Guglik?”
“Zulu began heading north. When the music stopped and the engine noise trailed off, they came to a halt.”
“Lucas confirms,” added the drone operator after a moment. There was audible laughter in the background.
“Execute the mission, Marines.” McFarlane said with a growl. “And keep the channel clear.”
Pete’s earpiece fell silent, but the Marines in the interior of the Sea Hawk, to a man, were laughing or grinning over the entire chain of conversation. The only one who didn’t look like he was having a good time with it was Del Arroz. He favored the sergeant with a wink and observed, “Morale’s important, not going to lie. Let’s just nip the pranks in the bud, oorah?”
The Marine’s pallor improved somewhat. He swallowed and said, “Aye-aye, sir.”
Pete shifted his gaze as the copilot leaned around and flashed a full hand at him. He raised his voice. “Game faces, Marines. We’re five minutes out.”
Chapter 30
April 3, 2026
Lockheed Skunkworks
Z-Day + 3,089
After they’d moved the cars to reinforce the gate, they’d double-timed it back up to the roof. Despite the obvious noise they’d made in the process, there still weren’t any infected around. Charlie didn’t like it, and he didn’t trust it. He’d hit up McFarlane for clearance to scout the rest of the surrounding area, but the big Marine had turned him down. Which left Charlie with plenty of time for introspection, on top of feeling useless.
At least he’d helped ensure the building below them was clear. The bathroom had been a bust. The remains of the woman who’d locked the door lay curled in a fetal position on the floor, hands pressed against her stomach. She’d died uninfected, but if Charlie had to guess, he’d say she’d starved to death. Had she tried to make it out? Her choice of hiding place was luckier than the security guard’s, but it had been a death trap, nonetheless.
It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced unanswered questions, and he supposed as long as he kept going out, it wouldn’t be the last. He raised a hand to shield his eyes and tried to see if Agent Guglik was still in view. The area between the building where she’d set up her observation and the warehouse remained barren. He should have found the emptiness comforting, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
McFarlane noticed his study and commented, “She radioed a few minutes ago. She’s fine. Soon as we’re sure that the main horde from the mall is heading off to the north, I’ll order her back in.”
I suspect that it won’t be so much of an order as it is a request. Guglik didn’t strike him as the type to alter a path she’d taken by such little things as military authority. Swimming New York Harbor, after all. He changed the subject. “Any thoughts on why they concentrated in there?”
“Beats me. I just work here. We’ve seen it before. The big brains think it’s a method they’ve adopted to protect themselves from the elements.”
Charlie grunted. Vir had seen something similar in the medical supply warehouse near Cincinnati. There’d been the hidden swarm in the woods south of Hope, as well. It went without saying that when they collected in such large groups it was a bad sign.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said, stepping over to the section of the roof where Ross and Foraker had set up shop. The lieutenant leaned against a crate of ammunition with the brim of a baseball cap tucked down over his eyes while the chief paged through a tattered paperback. “Gentlemen.”
Ross tilted his cap back. “Howdy, Charlie.”
He squatted down in front of them. “A thought occurred to me. The fence goes down, we should be okay up here, for a while. But that office sucks.”
After the SEALs cleared the office and Charlie and Agent Guglik ensured the bathroom wasn’t a potential trouble spot, the four of them conducted a quick sweep of the warehouse. Moving through that dark, cavernous space had been the most nerve-racking experience of the mission because they didn’t dare shoot, lest they damage the experimental craft. The facility must have been having some sort of staff meeting on Z-Day, because the only zulu they found was a wasted-away specimen in a lab coat that had walked itself into the ground years ago. It hadn’t even had the energy to turn its head in their direction when Foraker walked up and heel-stomped its skull.
“Nothing gives me the willies these days as much as plate glass windows,” Ross agreed. “What’s your thought?”
“We don’t need access to anything on that end of the corridor, right? Let’s pull all the furniture out of the front office and stack it up in the hallway. Block the doors and then some. Maybe they can scratch their way through the drywall if they come at us that way, but it beats having an open lane into the stairway and the warehouse.”
“Man’s got a point, Mikey.”
“He does indeed,” Ross said. “And we’ll do it.” He tapped a finger to one ear and pointed off in the distance. “Cause here comes the labor we need to get it done.”
The first helicopter looped around the warehouse and came in from the east. As soon as its wheels brushed the surface of the roof, the side doors slid open and heavily-armed Marines leaped out to join the skeleton crew holding the roof. The sense of relief that washed over Charlie at their arrival was an odd one. Their strength was far from overwhelming, but it was as though they’d reached some critical mass. He hadn’t been alone before, but he was less alone now.
Pete managed the jump easily, though the big rifle he carried on his back and his prosthetics made it more awkward than the rest of the Marines. Charlie shook his head and wondered what Miles would say if he knew his uncle was leading the fight from the front, but the answer came to him just as quickly. He would have expected nothing less from the stubborn and irascible old fart.
The first helicopter pulled up and away from the roof, and the second one came in so close behind that for a moment he thought they might crash into one another. This time men and women in Navy uniforms poured out—the technical crew and engineers, Charlie guessed.
Ross trotted up to Pete. The two men conferred for a moment, then Pete straightened and bellowed. “Charlie and Delta teams, you’re with Lieutenant Ross. We need to secure the building. Everybody else, I want the belt-feds on the corners and firing positions spaced out between. Zulu comes knocking, we’re going to give `em hell to pay.”
As the crowd of Marines dissipated around him, Pete spotted Charlie. He jerked a thumb at the last chopper. “Head on out,” Pete barked. “They’ll take you back to the ship. You did your part, brother.”
Charlie cocked his head to one side. “Now what the hell do you think your nephew would say to me if I told him I left your old ass high and dry?”
“This ain’t home, Charlie. There’s liable to be a hell of a lot more coming over the wire here than we had to deal with.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t cut out on you then. Not doing it now.”
Pete growled in frustration. He turned and waved to the idling helicopter. “Fine. Stick close to me, but keep your eyes out on the perimeter.” He pushed a button on his load-bearing harness and said, “No returnees this trip. Refuel and arm up. By the time you get back we should have the first load ready for you.” Air rushed past them as the pilot increased the speed of the engine, and the helicopter pulled up and away. “I’d rather have them orbit for a bit, but we can’t risk the noise.”
“It’s too clear.” Charlie said. Pete raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll take it for what it’s worth, for the moment. But no way we let our guard down. Good idea with the furniture, downstairs. They rush us, that fence is coming down.�
�
Charlie shook his head and tried not to smile. “You’ve really become a Gloomy Gus, you know that?”
Pete slapped him on the back. “Somebody has to take up the slack in your absence, brother.”
April 3, 2026
Lockheed Skunkworks
Z-Day + 3,089
The distinct branches of the US military had achieved various levels of survival. The Navy, for understandable reasons, was the most intact, followed closely by the Air Force, at least until they ran out of fuel or parts for their planes. While the outbreak had whittled the Marines down to a severe extent, the scope of their losses paled in comparison to the regular Army and Reserve units.
But when you broke them out from their respective branches, the Naval Construction Battalion—‘Seabees’—and the Army Corps of Engineers were the hardest hit of all.
Which was why, despite assurances that the building was clear, Lieutenant Commander Rick Ferris checked every corner and under every desk for infected as he led his team deeper and deeper into the warehouse. Zulu had a tendency to pop up when you least expected him, in places that should have been empty.
Finally satisfied, he played his light over their objective.
“Intel was wrong,” commented Sergeant Jake Niles. “Must have been a Navy guy in charge.”
Most of the group chuckled. The unit had come together at the outset. At this point, they’d worked, built, and died alongside each other for years, but nothing put an end to inter-service rivalry. Though it’s a damn sight more good-natured than it used to be.
“Had to be,” he replied. “The Army Intelligence guys are still trying to figure out how to tie their boots.”
Ferris played the beam of his flashlight over the cargo containers. There were three full sets of the big, olive-drab shipping boxes. Each was conveniently labeled, confirming that the stored aircraft waited in stacked ‘sets’.
Instead of the fourth and final pair of shipping containers, an assembled Orca sat next to its brethren. The lift-bag was empty, folded into storage position, but the craft gleamed in the light.
“Test flight?” Niles wondered aloud.
“Yup,” Ferris agreed. He considered the creases in the bag and idly wondered how durable the fabric was. “I don’t think we can lift it out with the choppers. If there are any attachment points, they’re not labeled. We loop it around something and it tears loose, we’re liable to lose the helicopter.”
“Tends to make the pilots testy.”
“That it do.” He shifted the beam back over to the shipping containers. “If they were conducting test flights, where’s the gas?”
Niles scratched his chin, then tapped his radio. “Light check. We’re looking for gas cylinders. Should be on the outer walls.”
All around the warehouse, flashlight beams swept the walls and the storage racks spread throughout the cavernous space. “North wall, Niles. Labels indicate helium.”
“Find a gauge?”
“Looking.”
Ferris raised an eyebrow at the other man. “Think the seals will be good?”
“Don’t see why not, it’s a sealed environment. Narrow band of temperature fluctuation due to summer weather, low humidity atmosphere. We might get lucky.”
The call came back. “Call it three-quarters full. Looks like a thousand-gallon tank if not more.”
“Great,” Ferris replied. “What do you think? Think we can fill `er up, take it for a spin?”
“Cross that bridge when we come to it.”
One of the group called out from the other side of the warehouse. “Check this out!”
Ferris followed the waving flashlight over to the warehouse’s south wall. One of Niles’ men, a former civilian construction worker by the name of Harris, stood in front of a row of heavy cabinets.
“What you got, Bob?”
“Look here, Sarge! They’ve got a backup generator. At first, I didn’t pay it much mind, since we don’t have the fuel to spare, but I realized it’s got an LP connection. And it’s piped in, direct.”
Ferris found the pipe with the beam of his flashlight and followed it along the wall until he reached the corner. The cylinder there sat enclosed in a web of steel girders. A smile spread across his face as he found the blue, red, and yellow warning label on the side of the tank. Propane—no smoking.
He stepped closer to the tank, looking for a gauge. “What do you think our chances are, Jake? Did it run after the power went off, or are we lucky?”
“I ain’t taking any more bets. I still owe you from the Saint Lawrence job.”
“I forgot about that,” Ferris admitted. He flipped open the safety cover and tapped a finger on the gauge. The needle stayed in the green, and he grinned. “Good thing you didn’t take the bet.”
April 3, 2026
North of Palmdale, California
Z-Day + 3,089
They were only a couple of miles from Lockheed when the radio crackled in Olsen’s ear with a transmission from one of the drone operators.
“Bit of civilization up ahead. Starting to see some movement and activity in there. Recommend you go off-road to the northeast.”
“Now you tell me,” Olsen grumbled. He keyed his radio and settled for, “Copy that.” The ditch at the side of the road was too deep to navigate, so he had to keep going along the shoulder until there was a turn-off. There was a wreck on that road, too, of course, but he was able to scrape the DPV through. Zulus who’d spent the last eight years strapped into the seats of their cars stared after the buggy through dust-smeared windows.
“The worst part about this stupid-ass song,” Hansen yelled over the caterwauling of the unrelated Hanson Brothers, “is that it’s so damn catchy. I’m going to be singing this in my sleep tonight, damn it.”
Olsen pulled onto the scrub to the north of the side road and got them going relatively northeast based on the compass in the dash. And it was only close to relative— he had to steer in and around the bigger foliage, rocks, and whatever he found in the way. What I’d do for a good trail right now. Their speed, which hadn’t been much to brag about in the first place, slowed to a crawl.
He glanced over at Hansen. “Remember that next time you’re tempted to stick a flashbang in someone’s shit, then, huh?”
“Hey, you were right there with me, John.”
“I’m just saying, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. How was I supposed to know that Del had books in there?”
“I don’t know, open your fucking eyes and look?”
“I get it, I— Look out!”
Olsen’s eyes snapped forward, but by the time he recognized what Hansen was warning him about and shifted his foot to the brake, it was too late.
The narrow arroyo cut through the desert scrub at an angle headed northwest. Twenty yards to the left, it flattened out into land that would have been passable for the DPV. Olsen locked the brakes up, but the buggy skidded in the loose dirt at the edge of the ditch and went straight in.
He’d strapped in as a matter of course, but the impact drove his chin into his chest and snapped his teeth together over his bottom lip. The sudden pain brought tears to his eyes, and he reached up to his mouth with one hand even as he reached over to kill the DPV’s engine with the other. The first two fingers of his glove came back bloody, but they had more critical concerns at the moment.
“Kill it, kill it!” he snapped at Hansen, but the other man was already digging in the back for the stereo connections. The music cut off in the middle of an mmmbop and returned silence to the desert.
Olsen listened intently for a moment, then keyed his radio. “Icarus, Lucas, we ditched the vehicle. Music and engine are off, what’s zulu doing, over?”
He didn’t have to wait long. He guessed that Top was ready to spit nails back on the roof, but he let the drone operator take point. “Copy that, Private, they’re still heading your way.”
“Copy that, wait one.”
Hansen threw open the locking bar
on the roof hatch and crawled out. As soon as the opening was clear, Olsen followed him. He dropped down to the ground on the driver’s side of the DPV. The damn ditch was barely four feet wide, just enough that the zulu-catcher had plowed into the soft dirt on the opposite side and pitched the rear wheels into the air.
“Think we can get under it, maybe?” Hansen sounded dubious, and Olsen tended to agree with him. The rear-mounted engine made the buggy back-heavy. If it hadn’t tipped back without their weight in the crew compartment, the thing was liable to be well and truly stuck.
“Try it,” Olsen said. Each grabbed the bottom frame of the buggy and heaved. The front shifted a bit, but other than that the vehicle didn’t move. “See if we can push it back,” he suggested. Maybe get the point of the catcher out, it’ll rock back a bit.
A few sweat-inducing minutes later, they hadn’t budged the vehicle an inch. Olsen wiped the accumulation of blood on his chin off with the back of his glove and resisted the urge to start kicking rocks.
“Lucas, we’re going to need a recovery team to get this thing out. Zulu check.”
Pause. “Still coming your way. Sea Hawks have almost completed refueling operations. You’ll need to find high ground for evac. ETA, thirty minutes.”
“Let’s go, Erik.” Olsen pulled himself out of the arroyo. He stood on the opposite edge and turned slowly, willing for something high and solid to appear.
Metal clanked as Hansen threw back the DPV’s hatch. “One minute.”
“What are you doing?”
“Grabbing the 240, bro.”
“Leave it,” Olsen tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Even if we hump all the ammo, it isn’t enough.”
“You sure?”
“Move, damn it!” Olsen keyed his radio. “Lucas, I don’t see anything, need a little help.”
This time the delay was longer, as the drone operator presumably scanned the surrounding area. Don’t take too long, guys. Just on foot, here.
A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2) Page 32