“Shit,” Columbus swore through the intercom. “Caught a fan housing,” he said. “Ease up ten.”
So much for that idea, she thought.
It wasn’t a big roof, wasn’t a big warehouse, and why the designers found it necessary to cram so much shit up there was anybody’s guess. Still, the fact rankled. She hated leaving anybody behind.
“Glad it wasn’t one of us,” came the voice of the Marine staff sergeant through the radio.
The first thing they’d done was to drop a commco to them. It had actually been Jonesy’s idea. CWO2 Jones, she corrected herself. “Enough with this signaling crap,” he’d said. “We need to talk to them.” And so a radio had been dropped.
“Easy...easy,” Columbus said. “Hold that.”
Carrie risked a look at the scene, saw one Marine holding the edge of the pallet, as another released the hook. The pallet, balanced precariously atop a vent, tipped over and crashed, sending wrapped cases of bottled water cascading onto the Marine.
“Sorry about that,” Columbus said over the radio.
“No worries,” the staff sergeant replied. “We’re just glad to have a drink.”
“I’ll be sure and buy you something of a more alcoholic nature when we finally get around to rescuing you,” Carrie said, breaking into the conversation.
“Roger that,” came the reply. “Any idea when it might be?”
Before she could answer - as if there was an answer she could give beyond pure speculation - another voice boomed through her earphones.
“Hello all stations, hello all stations. This is the repeater at Ka’ala Mountain. We are back in business.”
85
The Rooftop
Ala Moana Mall
“I’m gonna check that door,” ASM2 Kyle Rogers, the Swimmer from the 6583, said, striding toward the doghouse structure, where the banging noises shooting a sting of dread through Greg Riley’s heart every time he heard them, sounded like a death knell. “There might be survivors in there.”
No, don’t, the thought screamed in his head, but didn’t make it past his lips. There might be something else in there.
The door, itself, seemed solid enough, from a hundred or so feet away. He hadn’t gone any closer. Neither had the survivors who remained well clear of it. But he knew...
Something inside him knew what lay behind that door, and knew it wasn’t survivors. He’d been ignoring it, pushing it aside so as not to dwell on the dangerous possibility, as if that would somehow make it all go away, and it hadn’t done one single, solitary bit of good.
“What the fuck is this?” Kyle said into the radio. His voice was steady, even, but quiet, as if he unconsciously understood stealth would be a good idea. “The door is nailed shut.” He reached out a hand.
“Don’t touch it!” One of the survivors - a woman, in a flower-print dress so dirty and so faded from long exposure to the tropical sun, the flowers might as well have been polka-dots - screamed. Dozens of heads turned in her direction, and took up the cry.
There came an especially loud BANG from the door, then silence, then a frantic, staccato drum beat, as if being played by a gang of crazed percussionists. And then the sound of the banging and of the screams went away in the roar of rotor wash, as the United States Coast Guard helicopter 6585 came in for a landing.
86
The Bridge
USCGC Sassafras
“Get those people back!” The voice of LCDR Randy Sagona shouted through the radio. Gone were the calm, steady tones LT Amy Montrose had grown used to hearing, over hundreds of hours listening to the man during Air Ops in Antarctica and beyond. Fear replaced them.
She pulled her shocked, staring eyes away from the radio, and glanced at BM3/OPS Rees Erwin, standing by the chart table, his purpose there forgotten, as he, too, looked with popping eyes from the radio, to her.
“What?” He said.
“Get them back!” Sagona said again, his shout almost - but not quite - turning into a scream.
Without looking, she reached out for the phone on the center console, only glancing at it long enough to press the necessary three digits. The call was answered, and without preamble or the basic military courtesy due the commanding officer of a ship, she said: “You need to come up here,” then dropped the instrument back into its cradle, without waiting for a reply.
Rees strode to the forward windows, grabbed two sets of binoculars, handed her one, and headed for the starboard bridge wing. She followed, as if in a daze.
In her three-and-a-half years in the Coast Guard since the Academy, she’d grown used to things not going as planned. Was it Patton, or Napoleon who said no plan survives contact with the enemy ? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter. In the Coast Guard, where they weren’t normally called into combat situations, the enemy had always been the x-factor. Not that stupid reality TV talent show/beauty contest - the real x-factor, the unknowns that, when combined with Murphy’s damned Law, could and would bite you in the ass every time. And because they happened all the time, she’d learned to take them in stride, to remain calm, to not take counsel of her fears. Wheeler had taught her that. So had Hall and a handful of other really good officers.
Jones, for example. She had yet to see him falter or overreact. Okay...There was the incident with Peavey when he “quit,” but that had been histrionics, specifically designed to demonstrate what a dumbass Peavey was. And it worked - after a fashion.
Sagona’s shouts weren’t histrionics. There was an edge of terror in his voice - a terror she now felt growing inside her. She raised the binoculars to her eyes and trained them to the southeast, hoping to see the Ala Moana Mall, but seeing the wrecked remnants of Honolulu, instead.
The interior door opened, and Wheeler strode in. His face seemed calm. She drew strength from it.
And then, as if that old bastard Murphy decided to remind them all of his ubiquitous presence, things got a whole lot worse.
87
Warehouse 14
Ford Island, Oahu
“Mayday! Mayday! May–“ Staff Sergeant McNaughton stared at the hand-held radio as the scream cut off in a squeal of feedback.
Himself, Lance Corporal Lanier, PFC Dittery, and Private Saperstein, all now sufficiently hydrated, thanks to the water drop, had been observing the helo maneuver itself into a hover over the NOAA building. Watching helo ops from a distance would have barely qualified as interesting, back before the plague, but after so many weeks of nothing but zombies and the slow decay of Ford Island, and what little they could see of the Naval facilities across the channel, and suddenly the black and international orange helicopter was as exciting as a good football game - with commentary, since they now had a working radio.
Until the Mayday...
“What the fuck?” Lanier swore, as if anybody could give him an answer. Then someone did.
“Helo down! Helo down!” Shouted another electronically modulated voice.
McNaughton had a momentary dizzying shift of perspective, as he stared at the helo hovering skillfully over the NOAA building, but heard the cries of Mayday, before he realized the call must be coming from the other aircraft. In the elation of finally seeing some progress toward eventual salvation, he’d forgotten there was a world outside of Ford Island - a world filled with all sorts of nasty surprises, one of which was clearly happening to the other helo.
“Eight-Five, Eight-Three, over,” came the female voice of their helo pilot. She sounded tense, but calm. Silence answered her. McNaughton watched as the helicopter, which had been lowering a cable toward the survivors on the NOAA rooftop, rose into the air.
“Must be trying to get a better look,” Saperstein stated the obvious.
“You think?” Dittery asked, giving the obligatory sarcastic reply.
“Eight-Five, Eight-Three,” the woman repeated, and once again received silence in answer.
“Break-break,” a male voice McNaughton had heard before, cut in. “Eight-Three, this is Sassafras, ov
er,” the man added, identifying himself to the Marine spectators.
“Must be shitting bricks,” Saperstein offered.
“Shut your pie holes,” McNaughton snapped. “The game is on.”
88
USS Arizona Memorial
Ford Island, Pearl Harbor
“Oh shit,” Jonesy said, looking at Molly with dread-filled eyes. He picked up the radio microphone.
“...Helo down!” the radio screamed. Jonesy thought it might be that kid from the Star, Greg Riley. “Zombies everywhere! Zombies everywhere!”
“Fuck this,” Jonesy said, keying the mic. “Eight-Three. Sass Two,” he said.
“Go,” LT Scoggins’ voice replied.
“Switch Two-One,” he said, switching channels, without waiting for an acknowledgment. He glanced at Molly. She nodded.
“Sass Two,” Scoggins, still sounding calm, and gaining instant respect, said.
“Break off, and come pick me up,” Jonesy said, in what was technically an order. He didn’t have the authority to give such an order, even with his new lofty promotion, but this was no time to mess around with military decorum.
“Roger that,” she replied, clearly agreeing.
“Break-break,” he said into the mic. “Sass, Sass Two.”
“Go, Sass Two,” Wheeler’s voice came over the airwaves.
“I need Harold, Newby...” He paused, thinking. “And Weaver. Have them meet me at the diamond, in full rig,” he said, then added. “Have them bring a two-forty, and as much ammo as they can carry.”
89
The Rooftop
Ala Moana Mall
“Move back!” Greg Riley screamed, realizing that losing it wouldn’t do anybody any good, then just as quickly not giving a rat’s ass. He hadn’t signed up for this shit. He was a navigator, not a Coast Guard Fucking Ninja. He stared, wide-eyed, at the scene before him and asked himself if that mattered. It did not.
Things had gone to Hell in a surreal heartbeat, as if seen through the haze of a person who’d just woken up, still drunk, after a rousing night at the bar, the monstrous hangover still somewhere off in the future. Everything seemed to lurch from slow motion, to three times normal speed, then back again, with sickening irregularity.
“Don’t touch that!” A woman had screamed, and it might as well have been an invitation. The pounding on the door had intensified to a staccato frenzy, as ASM2 Kyle Rogers at first just stood there, then slowly started to back away. He might have saved himself the effort.
The 6585 had just touched down, at the far end of the rooftop, when the door exploded outward, and what looked like all the zombies on the planet started pouring though. Three things happened in rapid succession: Rogers was standing one second, and knocked flat, ten feet away, with a steel door on his chest, the next; the crowd, which had been on edge to begin with, ran back, away from the door, as if Hell itself were chasing them - which it was; and the people nearest the just-landed helo rushed toward it in a mob. The result - so horrifying in its consequences - seemed pre-ordained.
Riley could see the faces of the pilot and copilot through the flared windshield, as well as that of the mechanic in the doorway. One moment, they were calm and professional, dispatching their duties with practiced precision; the next, their expressions were locked in a rictus of terror, as they were overrun.
The pilot - Sagona, Riley suddenly remembered, as the fact burst through the horrified fog in his brain - tried to pull back on the collective, tried to lift off and away from the charging, panicked, throng running at them, en mass. The whine of the aircraft engine turned into a scream, as the weight abruptly increased tenfold. Civilians were jammed into the doorway, with those unable to enter clinging to whatever they could grab: the knife edge at the bottom of the doorway, the struts of the wheels, the legs of the people hanging out of the cabin. It almost seemed to be working, almost looked as if they might pull it off and escape, unscathed, but then gravity took over.
The helo raised, wobbled, tilted, then canted left, as the rotors chewed up bodies and roof tar in a gout of sparks and blood and debris. It slammed sideways, twisting, as if a top in the hands of a giant, demented child. The tail rotor, at an extreme angle to the plane of the rooftop, swatted a crowd of refugees, like so many flies, turning them instantly into puree.
The nose, now hanging in the air, crashed into the edge of the roof, as the rotors once more bit into tar and concrete and flesh. There came a sickening crunch, as if that demented child had just squashed a can with its gigantic foot. Then the helo was gone - just gone.
And Greg Riley, a navigator who wanted to be anywhere but there, could once again hear the screams of the people, and the howling rage of the zombies.
90
The Baseball Diamond
ISC Sand Island, Oahu
“Fuck me sideways,” Harold F. Simmons, jr, said to no one and everyone, all at once. This was actually his second reaction. The first, had been the internal declaration: But I’m on sick call...
This was demonstrably true, as evidenced by the tape and bandages still holding his bruised ribs together, beneath his uniform and body armor. He hadn’t wanted to leave his rack to go provide security for the civilian refugees, as they came in on the two helos, but had he been given the choice? He had not. And while Duke hadn’t been the one to bring him the bad tidings of his new assignment, the specter of that preternaturally large and violent bosun had been behind the marginally apologetic Gary King when he’d popped his head into Harold’s stateroom door.
“Sorry, man,” the friendly cook had said, and it seemed as if he actually meant it. Not that his good intentions served any purpose, whatsoever, but the thought was nice.
And as duty went, it hadn’t been bad, after all. He’d spent most of the time lounging in the shade of a nice tree. Of course, every now and then he’d had to act professional and shit, for the civilians, but there were worse things, and he’d had worse duty. Some of the survivor chicks looked like they might be pretty hot, once they got themselves a shower and a change of clothes from the stinking garments they’d been wearing for God only knew how long. There could be possibilities...
For that matter, the two Coastie chicks - the Yeoman and that ultra-hot Deckie, with the big boobs that always seemed about to burst out of her uniform in a most delightful way - were even better possibilities, rules against fraternization notwithstanding. Who paid any attention to rules during a zombie apocalypse? And that Asian chick (married though she might be) with the dog... She had a really nice butt. She also seemed borderline insane, and was currently armed with a twelve gauge, so maybe not.
But what was this shit about full rig, machine guns and a whole bunch of ammo? Where had that come from?
He was on sick call, dammit! He’d been injured - dogpiled by a gang of demented motherfuckers who’d actually tried to eat his skinny ass! He should be back in bed, perhaps having one of the nicer refugees bring him bug juice and a blowjob in gratitude for being such a brave and fine example of Coast Guard manhood.
But no...
The Electronics Technician, Newby, came running around the corner, half dressed, half dragging the rest of his gear, an MG 240, and a green metal box of ammo. Harold swore, and went to help him.
91
Sass Two
Pearl Harbor, Oahu
“Sass, Sass Two, over,” Molly said into the radio, as she started the RHIB’s engine with a roar, moments after seeing Jonesy hoisted straight up and away from the Arizona Memorial.
“Switch Two-Two,” Wheeler’s voice replied.
She did as ordered and keyed the mic, as the boat shot across the channel, headed for the ocean. “R-T-B at this time,” she said into the radio, indicating that she was Returning To Base.
“Roger that,” Wheeler said. “We’re scraping together a second wave of fighters. You’ll take charge of them upon arrival.”
“Roger,” she replied, somewhat surprised, but not really. Since coming aboard, takin
g over as CO (and not cashiering her for her many transgressions), he’d impressed her as someone who - both - could take charge (which not all officers - Peavey, chief among them - could) and he had no trouble making a decision, and acting on that decision.
Having grown up in a Coast Guard family, hearing her Uncle John grumble about the people he worked for, then seeing it first hand at the Academy, and on the Healy, she’d learned that not all officers were created equal. They liked to give that impression at the Academy, drummed it into the cadet’s heads that they were, in fact, superior in all respects, but the reality had proven to be something quite different.
They’d indoctrinated the future officers into believing in their own superiority over the enlisted personnel. What a load of garbage that turned out to be. Just to look at the examples of her own Uncle, or Jim Barber, or Lane Keely, or Gus Perniola, proved the opposite. Then there was the crew of Sassafras - her crew - the seven-person core of survivors with whom she’d begun the process of rescuing their corner of this fallen world. The emotions - the pride and love and humility of the honor to have (however briefly) been their Commanding Officer - filled her with an indescribable something, a feeling so powerful, it might have overwhelmed her, if she weren’t otherwise too damned busy to spare the time.
Now some of them were in danger. Some of them might already be dead. She pushed at the already maxed-out throttle, begging for just a little more speed, as she headed into the ocean and back toward Honolulu Harbor.
92
The Boat Basin
Midway Atoll
“The Hell you say!” Samantha shouted, hearing the desperate edge of hysteria in her own voice.
“Young lady, I’m getting really tired of your language,” her father said, stepping closer to loom over her. She should be intimidated, should be almost afraid - and wasn’t that a nice kettle of really different fish?
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 16