“Oh my God,” was all she could say as it bore down on them.
In seconds the force diminished from tornado to gale force. Hayes was up.
“Run!”
The helicopter had righted itself and made as if it was going to land on the platform. She looked at the two smaller drone helicopters, and they had closed half the distance.
She ran.
She recognized the helicopter. It was the same one Hayes used to capture Grandma Marty, and later it was how he and Jane escaped Riverside. Hayes leaped into the open back door. The skids bounced up slightly, then came back down.
Hayes motioned for her to drop down, which she found odd, but his face was so uncharacteristically serious she did as he indicated. As she went down, he slid the door shut.
“Oh, shiitake!”
In one long second, a drone passed over her head, slammed into the almost-closed door of the helicopter, and shattered into tiny bits. Some of the debris bounced back at her, but the rotors tumbled with a good bit of the engine mechanism to the back of the bigger copter. Much of the rest of it deflected underneath.
The door slid back open while the pilot maneuvered to steady the helicopter.
Hayes was frantically motioning her to come to him.
A quick look behind. The other white drone was close, but still hovering.
On her feet, she felt the sting of something square in the middle of her back. It caused her to stumble the last few feet, but she caught herself on the side of the copter. Hayes reached down to pull her in.
“Quick!” he shouted.
Another sting in her back.
She got her foot in the cabin.
Sting. She'd been hit again. This one pierced her right butt cheek.
“Ow!”
The door slid shut, but the window was shattered, and the hole exposed her to further harassment from the drone. She and Hayes both fell to the floor.
“Go! We're in.”
The helicopter tilted to the right.
We made it.
“Hold on,” Hayes shouted. As if it needed to be said—
Something slammed into her door. A broken fan blade sailed above her head and shattered the far side window, but didn't break through. It and a mass of other debris came in through the left window and piled up on the far side floor.
They'd crashed the other drone into the helicopter.
She hugged the aluminum floor as the pilot made a best effort to get her to fall into every seat and door. When they finally steadied to an even flight path, she was up against the broken rotor blade. The smell of an electrical fire was strong in the compartment. Several components of the broken drone were smoldering, but not on fire.
A series of explosions rocked the aircraft. The pilot banked hard to the left, giving them all a view of the mansion exploding almost directly below. It was a big bomb—
Hans' mansion.
Hayes crawled to the front of the cabin, then tossed back a pair of headphones for her. She planted them on her head as her stomach lurched and she lifted off the floor—hovering for a fraction of a second. The pilot had dipped the aircraft. She slid forward as she returned to the floor, then clawed her way to a seat.
The wind blew through the broken door window, making the wind noise intolerable until she had the 'phones on.
“Vicky, you there?”
She put the boom mic in front of her mouth. “Don't call me Vicky,” she replied brusquely.
“You OK?”
“I'm alive.”
“Elsa sprung our trap! But we're being pursued by her drones. We have to stay low and fast to avoid them.”
She wasn't able to argue. Glued as she was to her seat, she could only see forward, into the cockpit. The pilot sat on the left—her red hair was bracketed by her headphones, and Hayes sat on the right. Each of them leaned with the changes in directions. Their flight path seemed random and unsteady, which was probably their intention.
“Are we going to find Liam?”
Jane turned back to her, though her mirrored sunglasses hid her expression. She wore a frown.
Hayes was the one to respond. “We have to get away for a while. I'm sorry. Those drones were suicidal for us. Elsa was suicidal for us.”
Silence for several seconds.
“Victoria. We have to find Grandma.” He handed back a heavy clipboard with a pen attached to a metal chain. “Please. Write it down. We'll take no chances of being overheard. Who knows what kind of listening equipment is on that broken drone.” He pointed to the pile of junk which had rolled all over the rear cabin floor.
She sat with the clipboard on her lap. Thinking.
“I made a promise to Liam that I wouldn't leave without telling him where I was going.” She spoke quietly, though it was picked up in the comm system.
She ran the numbers, as Liam often joked. Could she be put down somewhere, then sneak back into the camp? What if Liam never—
No! Liam is fine. Just like me.
Could they look for Liam from the helicopter? She admitted she had no idea where to start in the city. The only information she had was that he went to a railroad loading dock somewhere near downtown. That left a lot of ground to search.
All while drones attempted suicide by slamming into them.
“Victoria. I know how you feel. Trust me. But we have to clear this airspace. If they send a plane to fetch us, we'd have no chance. You have to give us a destination.” Jane's voice was soothing and made total sense.
I'm sorry Liam.
She judged that of all the bad options, Liam would want her to protect his Grandma above all else. Hayes had shown her clear proof he had a lead on the cure, and that it was all due to the blood he'd drawn from her. It stood to reason that the next step was to work with him get more samples humanely. Surely Grandma would cooperate if it was all explained to her by someone who had seen the results, so far.
Elsa was the x-factor. What if she told Hayes where to find Grandma, and Elsa followed them in? What if this was all an elaborate trap to get her to reveal her location? Hayes said he planned ahead, and that Elsa planned even further ahead than he did.
She was gripped by indecision.
“Please. I can't keep flying in circles.”
Do what Liam would do.
He would have some suitably crafty plan that would get her where she wanted to go, but wouldn't reveal the location of Grandma until she could be sure of their intentions. Somehow, he'd been able to protect the old woman through the Apocalypse, and now she had to do the same.
I'm not going to betray her. "Don't trust anyone," is what Liam would say.
With a long sigh, she picked up the pen and wrote her response.
She handed the board back to Hayes.
He turned back with a frown after looking at her answer but said nothing. He handed it to Jane.
The helicopter turned south.
Chapter 11: Warfighter
Nineteen days since the sirens.
John Jasper stood on the levee, engulfed in quiet admiration for the army of undead crawling, walking, and running toward humanity’s last refuge. Though Cairo, Illinois was far from the last human-occupied town in the dying world, it was his town. The men and women behind him had given him the keys to their fair village, with the simple caveat he must help them survive. They placed their trust in him, and this was the moment he decided he would do everything in his still-considerable power to save it.
Twenty-four hours ago he'd been stripped of his command and arrested by Elsa, then—though he didn't advertise it—he'd been beaten up by the skulking woman. He was tossed into a watery grave by her minions, but he clawed his way back to life, only to discover she'd taken his battalion to points unknown. Yesterday he spent his day organizing the civilians to defend their own town, but today he'd gotten lucky when some of his unit returned. However, they were pursued by the textbook definition of a horde. Now, standing there, he had a few final minutes to prepare.
As h
e’d done many times before, he studied the layout of the battlefield. Always searching for the advantage over an unpredictable enemy.
The town of Cairo sat on a wedge of land that looked like a long finger, pointing south. On the west, the Mississippi River streamed fast and wide. On the east, the mighty Ohio did the same. He could see both rivers from his position up on top of the east-west levee that was now the northernmost berm—a wedding band at the base of the finger—between the zombies and his people. Below the levee, to the north, was the massive public works effort the locals called “the ditch.” Elsa and her people had ordered the construction, and the result was an impressive water-filled obstacle that would be very difficult for the zombies to get across.
Looking back on those days, he recalled an innocent statement Elsa made about the construction that only now made sense.
“This ditch project ought to keep the locals too busy to revolt.”
It was the kind of thing a government employee might joke about, but it had kept the locals very busy—and tired—at the same time she was planning her own secretive projects. Even when she ordered him to put his military units outside the levees so as to not intimidate the locals, he didn’t see what she was really up to. She’d tricked him. Tricked the whole town.
Now most of his defensive units had been ordered to the north to support the Orwellian-named “Operation Renew America” convoy, while he was left with nothing.
I do have the rebels.
The irony stuck him, even in the face of such pressing danger, and he had to reconcile it all.
Elsa had been worried about rebellion for some reason. She put those men and women to work digging and toiling in the hot sun. They had no time to do much else. His military force was kept busy fighting off the odd zombie rush, or planning for the larger battle she assured him was coming. Then, it was her that ended up being the rebel. She left in the middle of the night with his troops, and the town became an open buffet for the zombies.
But some of his men came back. They disobeyed orders to return so he could command them. Was he the traitor? Were they? And, strangely, he didn’t know if Elsa was really a traitor. As a creature of the chain of command, he felt strongly there had to be someone left alive above them all. And if that person or persons had a grasp of the bigger picture, his actions could be hobbling that effort. Any general could appreciate that.
They shouldn’t have cut me out of the loop.
He turned to Colonel Vince Thompson as his anger flamed out. He had no time, once his mind was made up, to dwell on the past. “I need your tanks up on this levee, spaced out with a couple of hundred yards between the two. You don’t have to worry about return fire, so use the front of the levee to get the best angles. Sweep what you can out there,” he pointed to the arriving horde, “but try to focus on the thickest bunches. Our ammo isn’t endless.”
As he pointed to the eastern side of the levee, he gave instructions for the Bradley’s and the Humvees. His goal was to provide enough firepower along the levee that they could knock down the bulk of the zombies before they reached the ditch. He had no illusions about their fate if enough zombies stacked themselves into that waterway. It would take tens of thousands of bodies to fill it up, but there were many times that number advancing across the field. They were still pouring over the distant interstate.
Between his introspection and handing out orders, the fastest elements of the tide had crossed to about the midpoint of the field.
“Close the gate,” he shouted down to the team in charge of that. In moments, the heavy flood door began to creak its way across the tunnel and road into town. When sealed, they would be surrounded on all sides by a steep levee, and a moat. Essentially they’d become a medieval fortress town.
The modern steel of the Abrams and Bradley’s was welcome, but he feared the real battle would be won or lost by Chloe and her teams of spear-builders. Yesterday he’d tasked her with arming the citizens in any way they could, and it was decided that since guns were scarce in the town thanks to the former mayor, they would have to depend on spears and other hand-held weapons.
This is exactly like a medieval battle.
If they had more time, they could have killed deer for sinew and crafted bows from local trees. They could have fashioned stakes to skewer the approaching zombies. Maybe they’d have had time to build catapults. Then the similarities to those ancient battles would have been complete.
Even now a gaggle of teenaged boys traipsed across a field in the town, heading for him on the levee. They carried metal poles—Chloe had delivered for him.
He recognized the fear on their faces, even from such a distance.
It was the same fear he kept hidden from his own.
2
“How did it come to this? Why are they all coming here?” Tom—his longtime friend and aid—asked.
“Elsa said it was because of the rivers. They wandered out from Chicago and Indy, hit the rivers, and found their way here.”
“So are these from Chicago or Indianapolis?”
“Who knows. It doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”
The two Abrams tanks had come up the ramp and were in the process of getting into position on opposite ends of the levee. There was a lot of ground to cover—about a mile. He sent the two Bradley’s to the far end where the levee bowed north a little. They would fire their M242's almost sideways, along the frontage of the ditch. His hope was they would catch the zombies before they could fall into the waterway and clog it up.
That effort will fail.
For all his planning, he knew how it would end. That’s why he tried to stay in the moment. He wanted to do the best he could in the time he had.
“The Humvees will stay in the middle. I want them to spray that bridge over the ditch, Tom. Let them know.” The ditch started from an existing waterway which channeled water away from the levee frontage. It was now several times wider, and much deeper. He didn’t have the resources to blow the one stout bridge over it.
Tom, holding the radio, sent the message. The trucks had been waiting on the ramp up, and now sprang to action with their orders. When he was done, they both watched the dance.
“I wish I had air power. That’s one thing Elsa took from us that we can’t duplicate.”
“Maybe we should have tethered men in balloons out in that field. It would have distracted those things from coming here,” Tom said with a touch of regret.
“We could have used little blimps with fresh meat hanging from them, and walked those zombies right into the rivers. Tom, you’re a genius!” John replied, though he wasn’t serious. He didn’t have balloons, blimps, or bloody meat. But something that simple could have helped them.
Tom, rising to the challenge, continued. “We could have built more ditches. Maybe put some bungee sticks at the bottom. Or, maybe we dump glue out there, so they all get stuck. Or—”
“Glue?” John said thoughtfully.
“As if, huh?”
"Yeah," he said with distraction. He didn't want to fix himself and his people to this levee, or this town if he could help it.
He looked at the sky, then grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper. He scribbled something down, and handed it to Tom. The other man looked at it grimly, then pocketed it.
“Find me one of those and you’ll be the hero of Cairo.”
"You want me out of the battle?"
"I want you here, but need you there," he said while pointing at the paper. "I think that's where we're going to end up."
"I'll be as fast as I can." Tom smiled, then began his jog down the ramp, off the levee. Before he got too far he stopped and turned around. “Good luck, sir.” He snapped a salute, then kept going.
“Everyone has their mission,” he said quietly while looking at the creeping mass of death as it continued to slither across the miles of farmland to his north.
Men and women from the town streamed up the ramp, taking their place on top of the levee. Many were there to watc
h, he was disappointed to see, but he wouldn’t ask them to leave. Much like the early Civil War battle at Bull Run, the citizens had to see firsthand what this new type of warfare would entail. It would either send them screaming, or harden their souls so they could do what was needed to survive.
Others were there to fight. Some had guns. Too few. Many of the others carried shovels, hoes, and sharp sticks. One older black woman had a bright yellow broom handle that had a deadly point on one end. The broom’s bristles were still attached to the other.
The teens with the metal spears made it close to the top of the levee, though they stood on the backside, as if unwilling to face the menace they knew was over the top. So much like every young man in every war ever fought. They would fit into any of the eternal PowerPoint slideshows on morale and new recruits he’d endured over his career.
“You boys! Over here. Front and center.” Though he wasn’t dressed like a general, his voice carried the order and pulled them over to him.
When they were standing a few feet away, he saw their eyes were universally sucked out to sea, at the black tide seeping in. There wasn’t much he could say about that.
“I see you’ve got your spears. Did Miss Chloe make those for you?”
The three boys seemed to silently defer to each other for who would respond. Finally, a teen boy that could have been a football star in a past life began. “No, sir. Chloe has a team working with construction materials, but she insisted we all learn how to cut our own. We made these spears.”
His trust in Chloe was well placed.
“That’s excellent. After today, you will need to know those skills so you can take care of your own families. Your own towns. This is the JV match.”
The lie sailed off his tongue like the catapult he wished he had. He wanted them to feel confident heading into this fight, and parsing it in their own language seemed appropriate. The truth, in this instance, would only send them to an early grave. And then he’d have to put them down, too.
One of the other boys spoke up. Looking at the trio, they all could have been high school athletes. “A man showed us how to fight with this,” he held up his sharpened rebar spear, “so we can thrust it into the zombies' brains and yank it back out.”
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 162