He’d forgotten about the helo. Idiot, he chided himself, while saying aloud: “Go.”
“Will take station over the beach,” she said, her voice calm, but he could just hear the voice inside her head saying: Moron!
Get your shit together, Jones!
The convoy reached the burning hulk of what used to be the Nordstrom Alterations building, and stopped. Behind them lay utter carnage. Bodies, and parts of bodies lay heaped everywhere he looked. Some were more or less whole. Some were so crushed as to be unrecognizable. Only a few appeared to still be among the living, and the MG 240 on the bulldozer, and the M-4s on the fire truck and...did she really come to rescue us in a Duck Bus?...were chipping away at those with deadly fire. Beyond the convoy, past the parking lot to the east, the world - or, rather, their small, utterly terrifying slice of it - burned.
In front of them - and thus, in front of the building upon which Jonesy and the survivors now stood - was another story, entirely.
Story? Fuck story! It was a goddamned nightmare.
And he’d let it happen.
The Wallbanger roared past, and two more canisters of Napalm detonated with a nearly simultaneous WHUMP, WHUMP. The flames seemed to reach Cthulu-like tentacles toward the seaplane, as if trying to catch it before it got away.
“Holy shit,” he heard Glen Newby mutter through the comm unit. “Damn near got themselves that time.”
His statement, however, proved to be premature.
137
Seaplane Wallbanger
Over Honolulu, Hi
“Fuuuuuuck!” Jim shouted, as the plane lunged upward, sending he and Rees Erwin tumbling back toward the rear cargo compartment, from which white smoke had begun to billow. “What are you doing, you crazy bastard?”
If Walton gave an answer, Jim didn’t hear it above the stuttering roar of the engines as they strained to gain altitude. He heard a loud BANG, and the aircraft lurched to the right. The Wallbanger shuddered and vibrated, as if it were trying to shake itself apart, but slowly (if not steadily), the upward climb leveled off.
Jim pushed off the rear doorframe and ran forward into the cockpit, where Harvey, calmly as you please, was flying the airplane. “What the fuck just happened?” He demanded.
“Oh, yes. Sorry about that,” Walton replied. “But I do believe our tail has caught fire.” He said this as if discussing the weather. Jim wanted to throttle his scrawny neck. “Oh! And it appears our starboard engine may have caught fire, as well.”
Jim stared at the man in utter disbelief, his mouth moving, but no words coming out. Finally, he managed: “Land this fucking thing, you idiot!” He yelled.
“Right you are,” Harvey Walton replied.
138
USCGC Sassafras
ISC Sand Island, Hi
“Hello all you Yanks,” Harvey Walton’s voice came over the radio speaker in LT Amy Montrose’s ear. “It seems we’re having a bit of a problem.” His voice was laconic - almost sleepy - as if he were passing the time of day.
She and LCDR Steven Wheeler had been standing on the Sass Bridge doing fuck all since before the operation started. They were the only two people on board, all the others having departed to service, first, a variety of missions, and then, one particular mission, and through it all the only constant had been themselves. Montrose and Wheeler. Alone at last,,,
She looked at her Commanding Officer.
“Not good,” he said.
Understatement!
They couldn’t see the Mall of course, thanks to the visual intervention of the city of Honolulu, and they couldn’t join the civilians, and the one or two Coasties, who’d gone to the hatchery to get a better look, because doing so would have meant abandoning the Sass. They couldn’t do that, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which were the presence of Captain Gideon D. Hall, and the fact that responsibility for the ship rested squarely on the shoulders of Wheeler, her CO. She could have gone, she supposed, but leaving him alone just seemed wrong.
He’d been a bit...off...since the first helo went down, and, truth be told, it bothered her more than it should. He’d always been so confident, so steady, so quick-witted in reacting to any situation, even if the reaction, itself, was to pull something out of his ass. He seemed stymied now, unsure of himself, and hesitant to make any decision, and it made her heart ache to see him this way.
What was that about?
Why should her heart ache? Out of the vast list of possible responses to the situation, that one seemed so far down as to render it nonsensical, and yet, there it was: Number One, with a bullet.
Contemplation of this conundrum would have to wait, however, because now they could see the Wallbanger, as it rose into the air and banked eastward, toward Honolulu Harbor, trailing white smoke from its tail and black smoke one wing. They were on fire!
“It would be ever-so nice if some of you fine ladies and gentlemen could meet us near the Base with a bit of firefighting equipment,” the transplanted Englishman said, calm as a golf announcer.
Wheeler’s hand dropped to her shoulder. She turned to look at him, but he was directing his attention toward the Sass’s stern.
“What is it?” She asked.
“Sass Two and the Rapid Response Boat are all the way over by the Mall,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied, with no freaking idea where he was going with this.
“It would take too long for them to get in position to assist.”
“Yes,” she said again. “But who else is there?”
He looked at her. “There’s you,” he said, pointing toward the stern - or, more specifically, toward the two Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats moored there, at the corner created by the junction of the Small Boat Station pier, and the Buoy Tender pier, against which they were moored. “You can pilot one of those, can’t you?” He asked.
“Sure,” she replied. She had no actual idea whether she could or not, but that little nugget dropped so far down on her list, it might as well have not been there at all. And why would this be the case? Because of what I just saw in Wheeler’s eyes.
She would start one of those boats, cast off the lines, and navigate her way into the harbor to rendezvous with the seaplane and put out its burning tail and engine if it killed her. Why? Because suddenly, for whatever reason, LCDR Steven Wheeler was back.
She took off at a run.
139
The Duck Bus
Ala Moana Mall
“Are we just going to sit here waiting till our asses get eaten, or what?” Duke’s ever-so sardonic voice came across the airwaves.
Thick, white smoke, and with it, the smell of burning wood and...other things...wafted through the Duck Bus’s windows. Thinking of those other things might have made Molly gag, if not for the sheer redundancy of the experience. It was making a few of the others in her immediate charge look a little green, however, so Duke’s question was rising in importance.
Jonesy didn’t respond right away, giving rise to the one thing she couldn’t quite get used to in all this: the mixed feelings she had in regards to anything involving Socrates Jones. Either he wasn’t responding because he was otherwise occupied fighting for his life on the roof atop Neiman Marcus, or the latest turn of events - namely, the damage to Wallbanger - had him stumped, or the enormity of the total situation had finally overwhelmed him. Or, maybe, it was something else entirely different. Or maybe it was everything rolled into one, gigantic, shit-storm. In whichever case, her heart went out to him. She couldn’t control the response, couldn’t reign in her fears, couldn’t stop caring about the man.
And somewhere down inside her, beyond her mind - where the walls she’d built, and the barbed wire she’d placed around the alligator-filled moat surrounding her heart kept her safe from whatever she felt the need to be kept safe from, and all the way to the depths of her soul, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it to stop.
Jonesy’s voice finally came up on the comms net. “If you really want to,”
he began, “be my guest. But the rest of you stay focused. This ain’t done by a long shot.” Neither, it seemed was Jonesy.
“Break, break,” he said. “Assateague, I want heavy fire put on the west side. Rapid Response Boat, you cover the east side. Team Duck Bus and Team Zombie Crusher, you got the middle. Six-Five-Eight-Three, call your own ball. I want you wherever the heaviest concentration is. Does everybody understand?” A series of Team Designations, followed by Roger came over the net, as each unit signaled their readiness.
“Execute.”
140
M/V Point of Order
24.719233 N 176.027511 W
“Did you have fun?” Felix asked from behind Clara, nearly sending her into cardiac arrest. She’d just left the lounge, having finished her assigned duty with What’s-his-name, the pirate. The man now lay, sprawled and snoring, in the easy chair where she’d worked her oral magic - another satisfied customer. Felix, however, sounded anything but satisfied. He sounded...
“Are you jealous?” She replied, as her heart rate began to slow. She might have found the sentiment almost charming, if not for the simple fact she’d seen the reaction more times than she could count. For every violent thug, every Dirk Parker, every Blackjack Charlie, there was usually a Felix Hoffman, who’d come to the delusion that he was somehow special. Men could be such silly beasts. Still, she needed him on her side, if her planned revenge had any chance of succeeding. She laid a soft hand on his chest. “Don’t worry, sweety,” she said, in a soothing voice with a touch of sultry added for good measure. “He’s just an unfortunate necessity.”
“Unfortunate necessity,” he repeated, as if trying the words on for size.
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t think I actually enjoy being with him. The man’s a pig,” she added. “A violent pig.” She gave him her best wounded puppy dog smile. She swore she could actually see the drug-dealing scientist melt.
This was good. This was necessary.
Felix Hoffman was vital to her plan.
“Come on, baby,” she said, looping her arm around his elbow (and making sure to press her breast against his shoulder). “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
141
The New Rooftop
Ala Moana Mall
“Things are starting to get a little hot!” Glen Newby shouted.
“No, really?” Jonesy replied. A blind, deaf, dumb, and comatose person would be aware of it. The old rooftop, where the bodies of Pat Querec and Kyle Rogers and Ronny Wallace, along with a great many civilians, cooked in their final repose, was now fully engulfed in flames. Stinging clouds of white smoke crashed like slow waves rolling in their direction. It smelled like a mixture of wood-smoke, burning plastic, and barbecued pork.
“And the assholes are learning to climb!” Harold added his two cents at a dead run.
Sure as shit, a dozen or so zombies, all of them screaming, and two of them on fire, appeared out of the smoke, crawling over the lip of the new rooftop - their rooftop - and they weren’t being slow about it, at all. The civilian survivors, seeing this, added to the cacophony of screaming, and began shoving their way toward the side of the roof where the rescue was to take place.
The white ladder from the ladder truck, was just making its ponderous rise in their direction, and some of them clearly didn’t want to wait. One person (or a dozen) pushed another, who fell into another, and another, and the dominoes fell toward the inevitable: first one, then two, then three people who had survived weeks of being under siege in the wake of the apocalypse, who had lived through the panicked evacuation onto their new, supposedly safer, bastion, dropped screaming over the side of the building, and plummeted four stories to the ground below, where the zombies waited for their dinner.
“Move back, Goddamnit!” Jonesy shouted, but he might as well have been whistling Dixie, for all the good it did. Shoving Harold back the way he’d come, and propelling Gregg Riley in the same direction (toward the encroaching, climbing zombies), he yelled: “Kill those fuckers!” As he waded through the chaotic mass of shit-scared people, throwing them out of his way, and back away from the edge. “Stay back or die!” He warned, and this time it seemed to have an effect. The frantic shoving lessened - but did not stop.
“Jones!” Glen Newby called.
“I’m busy!” Jonesy replied, tossing an older woman into the arms of a clearly emaciated, though still much larger Samoan man, in a faded shirt, festooned with pineapples. “Take care of her!”
“Jones!” Newby repeated, this time louder, as if volume might change the circumstances.
“What?” He barked, the rage that had been so near the surface for so many weeks - since Lieutenant Commander Sparks stumbled, blood-covered, onto the Buoy Tender Pier on the day they bugged out of Honolulu - a nanosecond away from exploding.
“We’re about to get really fucking busy!”
Jonesy, in the process of flinging yet another civilian out of his way in an effort to reach the roof edge, paused in mid-fling, and turned in Newby’s direction. The Electronics Technician pointed toward the doghouse, where they’d welded the door shut against encroachment from the zombies in the Mall below. He didn’t see anything, at first, couldn’t tell why the man might be pointing so vehemently at the structure. Then he did.
The metal walls of the doghouse were shaking, violently, as if some gargantuan beast were trying to burst through. Or maybe not a beast, at all.
A chill coursed through his entire body, shoving the heat from the day and the stress, and the approaching flames aside like the civilians scrambling for the non-existent safety at the roof’s edge.
The zombies were about to break free.
142
The Ladder Truck
Ala Moana Mall
“Put the goddamned camera down and get up there!” Dave Ablitz shouted at Jim Westhoff, their token (and at the moment utterly useless) photojournalist, who’d been documenting the carnage.
“Oh!” Westhoff exclaimed, as if the idea that he should be doing something (or anything) other than taking pictures was a brand new concept.
Seaman Dixon Grimes was above him, climbing the still-moving ladder, getting into position to help the survivors evacuate the rooftop. Dave Ablitz was controlling the ladder. And Jim Westhoff? He was just standing there with a thumb up his ass, and his other hand wrapped around a video camera.
He’d become so used to his role, so used to being in the middle of the action, but not participating in it, that his natural response, when surrounded by bloodthirsty, utterly insane, screaming zombies, was to grab his camera. On the surface, this, itself, seemed - at best - foolish, and - at worst - batshit crazy. And it was. No doubt about it.
So, he picked up his M-4 and joined in the action.
The first zombie (he preferred the term asshole, though he generally didn’t use such language) he shot was a surprisingly spry remnant of what used to be quite an attractive woman. Of course now, her short-cut hair was in tangles, and had leaves and other debris far too disgusting to want to contemplate, her clothing (what remained of it) was filthy and tattered, and hung loosely over her petite frame, and her eyes held an eerie, maniacal quality that might have unnerved him, had it not been for the fact that as soon as he shot her (double-tap, center mass), two more zombies stepped over her body, and headed straight for him.
He kept firing.
143
Zombie Crusher
Ala Moana Mall
“Kill those fuckers!” Duke shouted, as the bulldozer lurched into motion. Sitting still had become problematic almost immediately. The zombies were like sand flies - really big, really deadly, really fucking insane sand flies - buzzing around, but manageable, as long as the vehicle, with its bulk and its blade and its treads kept moving. Stop, however, and they swarmed, which was why Scott Pruden had climbed atop the cab to blast away with the MG 240. Duke lurched the bulldozer back into motion, nearly knocking Scott off his perch. His life might have passed before his ey
es if he hadn’t been so damned busy.
His supply of ammunition was dwindling. Quickly. He still had an M-4, hanging from a hook on the side of the dozer’s cab, below him, and a nine millimeter pistol in a thigh holster, but the situation absolutely, unequivocally called for maximum firepower, so he hoped it would last just long enough to get Jurgen McAwesomeness’s happy ass away from Ala Moana Mall.
The noise started to get to him. It was constant, deafening (even with the helmet, communication earpiece, and noise-cancelling headphones) and it made his head thrum with each round fired, each explosion, each former human mowed down like the Zulus at Rorke’s Drift. The bodies lay everywhere he looked, piled in a haphazard conglomeration of arms and legs, heads and necks, torsos, blood, guts, and ghastly gore.
The zombies kept coming. Scott Pruden kept firing.
144
The Duck Bus
Ala Moana Mall
“We’re surrounded!” Seaman Apprentice Martin Tabinski shouted the obvious, as the Duck Bus rocked from side to side. They were, indeed, surrounded, by about thirty of the Pomona-crazed fiends, who were slamming the bus from both sides.
“Then open fire on them!” Molly shouted back. This, too, was obvious. Self-preservation alone should have told the kid to blast away at the infected assholes. Common sense dictated that since everyone else was firing through the windows of the bus, and killing infected assholes, then maybe he should, as well, but common sense had a nasty habit of failing to break through the wall of sheer terror, as each new experience in this never-ending nightmare, added to every other completely new and completely terrifying experience. The learning curve there, in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, was straight and tall as the Sears Tower, in Chicago. She’d been to the top of it once. It swayed in the wind - an altogether disconcerting sensation - but it was designed that way, designed to bend, rather than break from the strain of being a really tall building in a really windy city. The only way to survive this, the only way to turn the learning curve flat, was to do the same.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 25