Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (25 page)

Ari came over the comms and said, “Seen enough, Lopez?”

Lopez said, “Affirmative. And much more than I wanted to.”

Ari asked, “Where do you want to infil your team?”

Lopez leaned against the port side glass. Spent a couple of
beats taking in the sight below.

Quietly, Cade said, “Want to use the Osprey as a diversion?”

Nodding, Lopez said, “Ari ... have Ripley move her Osprey to
the northeast corner and hover close to the deck and call out
Nadia
. If
there’s no response, have her pipe some
Wagner
or
Disturbed
outside to draw the dead to her position.

A wicked grin spreading on his face, Griffin said, “Or
Five
Finger Death Punch
... Jeremy Spencer’s drum work will flush ‘em out if the
hurricane from the Osprey doesn’t.” He racked a round into his M4, looked
around the cabin, and added, “Stay frosty. And I don’t want to hear anyone
calling for a
corpsman
. You hear?”

Cade smiled at that and said to Lopez, “After all we’ve
seen, I don’t think Nadia is here, living or dead. I think she made it to the
east bridge and saw that it was blown. She’s no dummy. That’s Nash’s kid we’re
talking about. So it might be smart to forgo searching the tents and drop in
near the command trucks and see if they left any intel behind. What do
you
think?”

Lopez covered his mic and said, “You’ve got a point about
Nadia using her smarts. But why would FEMA workers leave anything sensitive
like that behind?”

“Just doing Nash’s bidding. She has her reasons ... two
birds, one stone. That’s all. I assume like the guard dropping the Golden Gate
and the Bay Bridge that she figured FEMA blowing these was the same ... a last
resort action,” answered Cade. “No one’s getting their paychecks deposited on
Monday, that’s for sure. You think a civil servant is going to go above and
beyond with everyone around them turning? Would you lag behind and take the
time to deal with the minutiae?”

Lopez mouthed:
Good point
. He removed his hand from
his mic and looked at the monitor. He said, “Insert us near the command
trucks.”

“Roger that,” said Ari. “I’ve got the stick.”

Haynes said, “Copy that. Handing this black beauty back over
to you.”

“That’s
Elvira
to you, Haynes.”

Ignoring the banter, Lopez said, “Cade and I will clear the
trailers, south to north. Cross, you and Griff cover our flanks. Lasagna,
you’ve got our six while we’re inside the trailers. And watch those tents to
the east real close.”

Helmeted heads nodded and thumbs up were flashed.

Simultaneously Cade felt his stomach heading to his throat
and saw the ground rushing up. He chambered a round and, leaving his rifle
hot
,
said a silent prayer for Raven.

Forgoing Brook’s orders, Chief quickly checked the woman’s
exposed skin for any signs that she’d been bitten. Aside from a number of fresh
scratches and abrasions incurred during her scramble through the felled fir
trees the woman seemed healthy.

Chief and Tran walked her to the truck in silence. Tran
opened the rear passenger door for her and offered her a helping hand up.

The woman hesitated. Looked at Tran then Foley and finally
fixed her gaze on Chief and said, “You
are
good people ... aren’t you?”

“I do my best, lady,” answered Chief.

Glenda smiled and accepted Tran’s hand. She climbed up and
fell into the seat, obviously exhausted.

After loping around front and hauling his weary frame in and
slamming his door, Chief reached to the floorboards and grabbed the last of the
bottled waters. He passed it over his shoulder to Tran, looked sidelong at
Foley and said, “Home, James.”

As the big engine throbbed to life, Chief extracted his
radio and called ahead to Phillip with instructions to have the gate open in
two minutes
by any means necessary.

Foley jammed the shifter into
Drive
and pinned the
pedal. Hands on the wheel at the proper ten and two, he pronated his wrist and
glanced at the watch and saw that since Brook’s harried call a little less than
eight minutes had slipped away.
A well spent eight minutes
, he thought.
Because though he didn’t know a thing about their passenger, she was one of the
living and to boot she did have a good aura about her.

***

Five minutes after leaving the roadblock, and thirteen total
after receiving word of Raven’s injury, the black Chevy blazed past Phillip
near the hidden entrance on SR-89, juddered over a handful of Zs prostrate in
the road and, tires screeching, made the hard turn into the open gate.

Holding on for dear life, Glenda began second guessing this
lesser of two evils thing. “Who was that man with the gun and where are you
taking me?” she asked loudly enough to be heard over the thrumming tires and
gravel pinging off the undercarriage. “And why the hurry?” she added as an
afterthought.

Chief swiveled around and said, “We just got word that one
of our group was injured ... one of the kids.”

A kid
, thought Glenda. Suddenly she slumped back into
her seat. Stopped worrying about who these men were or what might happen. She
stopped worrying about anything and everything. It suited her best that way.

For a long minute the forest whipped by and scratched both
sides of the truck. Suddenly, as if they’d been shot out of a cannon, her field
of view opened up wide and she saw an ocean of tall grass capped by a vast
bluebird sky. Then she saw some younger people carrying guns and the truck she
was in slewed sideways and ground to a halt. She looked to her right and
noticed a number of SUVs and pickups, one of them much larger than the rest,
parked under cover of the trees near the clearing’s edge.

“Fourteen minutes and thirteen seconds,” said Foley. “A
little longer than the normal commute.”

“Good driving,” said Chief. “Now let’s see how we can help
Brook.” He opened his door and was hit by the instantly recognizable stink of
hot motor oil. Which momentarily overpowered the stench radiating from their
passenger then was gone with the restless afternoon breeze.

Remembering how on occasion Louie used to speed along the State
Route throwing the Austin Healy around some of those very same curves, Glenda
said, “Took more than fourteen minutes and thirteen seconds off this old girl’s
life. But I enjoyed every moment. Well ... maybe not the sounds of breaking
bones and stuff. Was running over those biters on the road really necessary?”

Foley said, “Couldn’t be helped, ma’am. Time was of the
essence.” He reached out his hand, which was covered in pitch and had abraded
knuckles the size of acorns. “James Foley. You can call me Jimmy. Or James. Or
Foley. Whatever floats your boat.”

She took his hand. Felt the hard-earned calluses scrape
against her palms, which were recently rubbed raw from the bicycle’s
unforgiving fifty-year-old plastic handgrips. “Glenda Gladson,” she said. “Pleased
to meet you. And thanks for saving my bacon back there.”

Shrugging away the accolades, Foley just smiled.

Chief introduced himself next.

“Just Chief ... really?” said Glenda, intrigued. “Of what
tribe?”

Remaining stoic, Chief said, “This is my tribe now. And
there are no chiefs here.”

“Workers among workers,” she said in a matronly tone. “I
like that. Now run along. You better see what your friend Brook needs.”

Chief looked at Foley, who apparently was reading his mind.

Foley said, “I’ll stay with Mrs. Gladson.” He patted his
thigh. “I’ve got a radio. Call me if you need anything.”

Chief nodded and started off towards the compound, carbine
in hand.

Glenda turned to Tran, who had just clicked out of his seat
belt. “Where did you boys get the
assault
weapons?”

Tran, being the lone pacifist of the group, shrugged and
looked the question at Foley. He opened the door and took his bag of mushrooms
and greens and left the two alone.

After Tran closed the door behind him and was on his way to
the compound, Foley hitched an elbow over the seatback and said, “They just
look
menacing. Most of them have less kick than a hunting rifle.” He pulled a
folding knife from his pocket. Thumbed the stud on the blade and it flicked
open and locked with an audible
snik
which was amplified to a menacing
level inside the truck.

Glenda frowned, trying to place the sound. Her eyes went
wide when she spotted the blade in Foley’s hand. In the next instant she was
pressing her back into her seat and stammering, “Wh ... wh ... what’s that
for?”

Foley’s brow furrowed. He looked her square in the face.
Noticed how it was lean and angular and traced with lines of age. Her thin lips
were chapped and pursed and quivering. There were dark bags under her green
eyes and up close he could tell the reason for her death-like pallor was a base
of oily makeup that was streaked in places yet still threw off an unusual
sheen. He smiled, hoping to put her at ease, and, pointing the knife tip at the
magazines on her forearms, said, “To cut those things off of you. What’d you
think ... I was getting ready to gut you?”

“After seeing what some of Huntsville’s more unsavory
citizens were capable of ... I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t my first
thought.”

“Put your arms up here ... please.”

Glenda draped both arms over the black leather seatbacks and
let her hands dangle limply.

Eyes focused on Glenda’s right arm, Foley said, “I have two
questions for you before I get started.”

“Go ahead,” she said, visibly relaxing. “I’ve got nothing to
hide.” A curious smile replaced her frown and she nodded her head, waiting.

Using the knife as a pointer, Foley tapped one of the
half-dozen yellow, jagged items protruding from the magazine. Speaking slowly,
he asked, “What - are - these?”

“Teeth.”

“I’m afraid to ask ... but I’m going to. How’d the
teeth
end up there?”

“Simple,” she said. “Fast Glenda. Slow biter.”

Nodding to show he understood, Foley said, “I’ve heard of
the
Irrational Enquirer
here. But what in the heck is a ...” he traced
the smaller magazine’s title with the knife tip “... Grapevine?”

“AA-approved literature.”

He visibly recoiled. Said, “
You
were an alcoholic and
had to go to AA?”

“Still am ... always will be. But I put the
plug in the
jug
years ago. And yes, James, at first I
had
to go to AA.”

Foley set the knife aside and rubbed his hands together.
They made a scraping sound and tiny flecks of dead dermis filled the air. He
leaned in and said, “I have someone I want you to meet. And I even think you’ll
like him. Or at the least he’ll grow on you over time. That’s my experience.”

“But?” said Glenda in the same matronly tone she’d used
before.

Foley wrestled with the question of how much he should
divulge to this stranger. His inner voice said:
Jimmy, she has a good aura.
And that broke the dam and he multitasked, cutting off the other magazines
while spilling the beans on Duncan’s worsening addiction to Old No. 7.

When he was finished, Glenda pulled up her sleeves and
rubbed her raw palms up and down her clammy damp forearms. Then she rubbed her
palms together and said, “We usually wait for the person to come to us. It’s
AA’s policy of attraction rather than promotion. Also we usually only work with
persons of the same sex.” She closed her eyes and kept them that way for a few
seconds. When she finally reopened them Foley saw a twinkle there and her face
had softened somewhat. She said, “
But
... seeing as how there are
probably damn fewer of us now thanks to the Omega thing, I don’t see how I
can’t in good conscience make an exception on both counts.”

Foley smiled and nudged the driver’s door open.

Glenda opened her own door and turned back and said, “Plus
... Lord knows Glenda Gladson loves a challenge.”

Before Foley could answer to that, the two-way radio in his
pocket vibrated.

Terminal Island

The numbers on Cade’s Suunto told him the Osprey had been
hovering over the northeast corner of the yard for five minutes. He imagined a
little Metallica blaring over the bird’s loudspeaker and in his mind’s eye saw
the chalk of Rangers sitting inside facing each other and itching to ‘
get
some
.’ But he hoped the search of the command vehicles wouldn’t devolve to
that. And seeing the dead responding to the diversion, trudging lockstep
towards the cacophony like so many army ants, gave him a feeling in his gut
that maybe Mister Murphy was busy whipping up a shitstorm on some other poor
individuals somewhere else in the Z-plagued nation.

The Ghost Hawk started a slow slide to the right and the
nose soon dipped and the rest of the craft followed.

Cross, Lasseigne, and Griff, busy securing their weapons,
dialing in their comms gear, and powering up their NVGs, paused for a tick and
nodded simultaneously.

Lopez grabbed a nylon gear bag and stuffed it in a cargo
pocket. Disregarding Cade’s theory of God’s involvement in this whole mess, he
signed a cross on his chest and squared up with the door, ready to be first on
the ground.

Cade watched the hovering Osprey slip from view and saw the
tents then FEMA trucks filling up the port side windows. Without warning, Ari banked
the craft hard left and brought them in fast from the south, flaring at the
last second as the mechanical clunk of landing gear locking into place vibrated
through the floor. In the next instant the crew chief had opened his port,
deployed the starboard minigun, and was scanning the ground for threats.

Haynes said, “Be advised. The LZ is cold.”

Ari said, “I concur.”

Haynes answered, “Touching down in three, two—”

‘One’
didn’t register in Cade’s ears. He was focused
intently on the thirty yards of shell-casing-littered asphalt between the helo
and the twin RVs at his twelve o’clock.

By the time Haynes’s count hit
‘One’
Lopez had
wrenched the cabin door back in its track and was in mid-air. A millisecond
later he was boots on the ground and moving forward in a combat crouch, weapon
at the low ready and totally oblivious of the brass rolling away from him in a
near perfect arc.

Semi-propelled by the rotor wash at his back, Cade leaped
out and hit the wall of carrion-infused air. It was thick and sweet in a
gut-churning way. Bent over at the waist, he moved ahead a few paces, took a
knee, and covered three points of the compass until he felt Cross tap his left
shoulder and, near simultaneously, Griffin do the same.

From his side vision Cade saw Lasseigne crab-walking towards
his position, weapon trained on the nearby tents and his head on a swivel. Then
the electric minigun’s barrel began spinning and its noisy whine registered
over the baffled rotors chopping the air overhead. He heard Lasseigne and the
two SEALS on his flanks indicate that they were “in place.” Which was his cue
to continue on to the command vehicle, following in Lopez’s footsteps.

Head swinging an arc left to right, like a Secret Service
man scanning a crowd, Cade saw the Osprey a half mile distant, its dual
spinning rotors producing a muted ripsaw buzz and holding the craft aloft
twenty or thirty feet from the deck. He then took into account the number of
dead streaming toward it from the tents erected on the premises and figured
there had to be more Zs lurking around somewhere.

Lopez arrived at the command vehicles and pressed his back
to the southernmost RV’s door. Tried the handle at once and found it unlocked.

Cade formed up a second later and saw Lopez nodding and
looking at the handle. He mouthed, “Unlocked,” and once Cade was ready, started
another countdown.

When Lopez’s count reached ‘one’ he flung the door wide.

Crouched six feet away with the silenced M4 tucked in tight,
Cade trained the Eotech optic’s holographic red pip on a spot in the darkened
doorway he imagined would be head-high on a person of average height.

They waited a full second but nothing dead or living exited
the trailer.

So Lopez said, “Going in.” He mounted the metal fold-down
steps one at a time, slowly, and leaned in, cutting the corner by degrees, M4
leading the way.

Cade watched Lopez hesitate momentarily. Then a bright cone
of light lanced from the tactical light affixed to the entry man’s carbine. The
light spill walked right as Lopez’s head and upper torso torqued in that
direction. Then the stocky Delta operator moved left and out of sight and the
doorway went dark again. A beat later Lopez reemerged and motioned for Cade to
join him.

The windowless RV was much more plush on the inside than
Cade would have guessed. In fact it was quite opulent, by cousin Eddie
Griswold’s standards. There were multiple flat panel monitors along the
driver’s side wall and six expensive-looking leather and fabric office chairs
fronting them. The floor covering was several notches in quality above the
usual AstroTurf-like carpet in most Winnebagos. The walls were a gray Formica,
or its modern equivalent, and placed at intervals underneath a real wood
counter running along the same wall as the monitors were three networked
computer towers.

Without a word, Lopez let his carbine dangle from its sling,
yanked the three black CPUs off of the shelf, opened them up and quickly
harvested their hard drives.

While Lopez was filling his nylon sack with computer
hardware and thumb drives, Cade poked his head out the door and looked right
and saw that a number of the dead had doubled back and were steadily cutting
the distance to the awaiting helicopter. A tick later, in his headset, Cade
heard Cross say “Engaging” and saw the first burst of gunfire lance from the
SEAL’s compact HK-MP7.

Ducking back inside, Cade heard a dry rasp and the rustling
of fabric against fabric emanating from behind a blackout curtain to his right.
Sliding the heavy hanging partition aside with the stubby suppressor revealed a
lone zombie belted in behind the steering wheel and disturbed the shiny black
carpet of flies feasting on it.

Cade let the curtain down and said, “Looks like someone left
their FEMA co-worker here to turn all by his lonesome.” He turned to Lopez and went
on, “Question is ... why didn’t you put it down?”

Lopez threw the half-full bag of computer parts over his
shoulder and replied, “It’s no threat to us.”

Cade said, “It’s a threat to the next person who stumbles
upon it.” He drew his Gerber and parted the curtain a foot or so, releasing a
buzzing squadron of tiny carrion feeders. He leaned between the heavily
upholstered captain’s style chairs, stared into the dead thing’s clouded eyes
and saw just hunger and want. Nothing to summon even an ounce of remorse for
what he was about to do. Sure the bloated corpse had once been human. Sure it
had suffered horribly on its first death judging by the hunk of meat missing
from its neck and the dozens of raised purple bite marks disfiguring both arms.
But the hissing thing was a threat nonetheless. So Cade put it to sleep,
burying the dagger into its temple all the way to the hilt.

“Clear,” called Cade with a trace of sarcasm in his voice, a
veil of flies dipping and diving around his head. “Please don’t let that happen
again.”

Forgoing the folding steps, and batting the insects away,
Lopez leaped to the ground and said over his shoulder, “You clear the next one
then.”

And that’s what Cade did. With brief volleys of suppressed
gunfire sounding behind them, the pair approached the task of entering the
second RV in reverse order from the first. Cade got the door while Lopez
covered the doorway. Cade counted down and flung the door open and instantly a
pair of zombies in FEMA hazmat suits stumbled out and into a lethal hail of
5.56 NATO hardball.

Cade brushed a quarter-sized scrap of hair-covered skull
from his shoulder, put his back to the cool aluminum skin and listened hard.

Nothing.

So wiping droplets of blood from his ballistic glasses with
a sleeve, Cade thumbed the switch activating his tactical light and mounted the
stairs. Once inside, he found the layout the same as the first. Same monitors
and chairs and flooring. Same trio of computers, and he had their hard drives
extricated in no time. As he rose from kneeling and turned towards the door,
two things happened. He heard Lopez say, “We gotta go.” Then a stream of hot
spent brass arced through the doorway and pinged noisily off the wall and
ceiling and struck him about the head and chest.

“Coming out,” he said into his boom mike. Then, with his
M4’s business end leading the way, he was out the door, down the steps, and
immediately saw Lopez in the midst of swapping magazines.

Cade looked over his left shoulder and, near the Ghost Hawk,
saw the other three members of his team tightened into a rough semicircle.
They were nearly back-to-back and throwing volumes of lead downrange into an
advancing horde numbering in the hundreds and inexplicably consisting of mostly
kids. Simultaneously Cade heard Lopez say “Mount up,” and the Osprey’s shadow
was darkening the ground around them all as it passed overhead trailing
hurricane force winds and dumping a waterfall’s worth of spent brass in its
wake.

Emptying a magazine, all thirty rounds, in controlled single
shots while
making them count
as he’d been taught in basic, Cade
followed Lopez, who was curling around behind the other shooters and tapping
each on the shoulder as he passed.

Doing the same, Cade hauled himself into the cabin and met
the door gunner’s gaze. His visor was up and there was a glimmer of primal fear
in his eyes. Then Cade noticed the big man’s gloved hands kneading the
minigun’s scuffed metal grips.

Finally Cross and Griffin were on the move with Lasseigne on
their six.

The three operators covered the distance in a loose knot,
firing as they moved. Brass was flying in glittering arcs and the soft pops of
skulls bursting could be heard over the soft rotor thrum.

As the smaller and therefore much faster members of the
undead noose closed around the operators, Lasseigne covered Cross and Griffin
while they broke for the open door and log rolled across the cabin floor to
safety.

After seeing the men leap inside and with only five feet to
go to the chopper, Lasseigne’s magazine ran dry and the bolt locked open. With
no time to access his chest rig and rip free a fresh magazine he instead
flipped the carbine around and backpedaled, all the while bashing zombie skulls
with the rifle’s buttstock. Teeth gnashed and gnarled fingers were tearing at
the lone operator’s uniform as he made it to the door. Prying a snarling Z’s
bony fingers from his forearm, he felt gloved hands grab him from behind and
suddenly he was light on his feet and in the next instant impacting the
chopper’s deck with a heavy wind-robbing
thud
.

Cade let go of Lasseigne’s left arm, leaned over top of the
shaken operator and, shutting out the rising crescendo of wails and moans,
slammed the cabin door closed.

“Bastards were waiting for us,” stammered the crew chief.
“They were in the tents. Didn’t come streaming out until you and Lopez were
inside the second RV.”

As the turbine roar increased, as if validating the crew
chief’s statement, a mad flurry of white palms hit the starboard fuselage.
Tinny-sounding pings were followed by the hair-raising peal of nails raking the
outer skin. Then a number of gaunt faces mashed against the Plexi, their rheumy
eyes regarding the soldiers inside hungrily.

Haynes was looking out the starboard side door glass. Calmly
he stated, “The Zs are going to get our tail rotor.”

Without thought behind his actions, Ari rotated Jedi One-One
to the right so her tail boom was sticking out over the seawall, nothing but
water below it.

Before Cade was back in his seat against the bulkhead two
things happened. Ari pulled pitch and the helo leapt from the blacktop, and a
loud tearing sound filled the cabin as the crew chief let loose with a
split-second burst from the minigun. Normally rated at six thousand rounds a
minute, the electric-assisted Gatling-style gun spit a hundred and sixty lethal
missiles in the fraction thereof. The rounds scythed into the Zs chest-high and
screamed out the other side and, still packing quite a kinetic punch, a number
of the bullets entered the RV’s gas tanks, touching off a huge fireball.

“That was close,” said Lopez as his stomach reeled from the
rapid launch and a flash of orange from outside lit up his face. “You could
have warned us sooner.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, friend,”
answered Ari, finessing the controls while applying enough power to get them
clear of the rising roiling cloud of black. “In all seriousness, you got the
same lead time ... neither me nor Haynes saw them initially. You have the
Osprey driver to thank. Ripley saw them streaming out of the tents and warned us
immediately. Then broke her own hover and her gunner started lighting them up.”

Watching some of the dead advancing dumbly for the dancing
flames while others had stopped in their tracks and were looking skyward got
Cade to wondering why their behaviors had become so varied and unpredictable
since Z-Day.

He processed that for a second and proffered, “It’s not the
first time she’s acted as savior. Remember Operation Slapshot ... all the dead
at the NBC?”

Nosing Jedi One-One north by east, Ari said, “Worst day of
my life. Thanks a lot, Wyatt. I had purged that from my memory.
Had
being the operative word.”

Cade said nothing. Watched the unintentional
self-immolations taking place on the ground until the forms might as well been
ants burning under a magnifying glass.

Cross said, “That was no easy day. I’m going to buy her two
drinks when we get back to Schriever.”