Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (28 page)

“Help’s on the way, Lopez,” said Cade. Then he nudged Ari
lightly, looked past him, and addressed Jasper directly. “Ari, cut Jasper
loose.”

After a triple take Ari flicked open his multi-tool and cut
the undertaker’s bonds.

Cade leaned across Ari. He looked Jasper in the eye and
said, “Ari, I need you and Jasper to get out and help them in this vehicle.
Throw them in if you have to ... you OK with that, Jasper?”

Nodding an affirmative, Jasper popped his door open, and
with a burst of speed that belied his size, leapt out and was helping Lopez
manhandle Cross into the back before Ari had gotten his legs untangled from the
transmission hump.

“Forget about it,” said Cade, placing his arm across Ari’s
chest. “That was a test. I needed to know if we could count on him to help move
the bodies up the Herc’s ramp when the time comes.”

“By the looks of it I think he’s passed with flying colors,”
Ari said as he watched the undertaker help Lopez into the back by physically
lifting the operator over the tailgate.

OK. Now get your ass inside here
, thought Cade as he
watched Lopez helping Hicks to find a place to sit that would be safer than the
raised wheel well. Finally, after a couple of the longest seconds of Cade’s
life, he saw Jasper’s fingers curl around the grab handle. Simultaneously, he
goosed the throttle and hauled the steering wheel left, a move that rolled the
truck hard to the passenger side on its tired springs.

Feeling the truck lurch and sensing the loading g-forces,
Ari made a grab for the loose fabric of the undertaker’s sweat stained shirt.

With one leg in the footwell and only half a butt cheek on
the bench seat, Jasper snared Ari’s extended hand, and after a hair-raising
couple of seconds with the ground rushing beyond the open door pulled himself
fully into the cab, crowded Ari, and slammed the door shut.

“Good work getting my men in back, Mister Literal,” said
Cade, ignoring the fact he’d almost turned Jasper into street pizza.

Jasper made a face. Opened his mouth but said nothing.

Cade used the opening. Flicking his eyes from the road ahead
and the Hercules’ reflection in the rearview, he said, “I owe you one for that.
But we’re not out of the woods yet. Cross ... he looks like he’s firing on half
a cylinder. Hicks is damn near catatonic. And—”

“I get it,” said Jasper, his voice cracking slightly.
“Whatever you need from me here on out, just ask.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Ari, earning an elbow shot from
Cade to his already more-than-tender ribcage.

Deviating from his course by a degree, Cade urged the truck
to the right, sideswiped a trio of zombies and wiped them clean off the
interstate. “I hate to impose,” said Cade. “But I’m going to need your help
transferring our fallen teammates to the airplane after it lands. Just be a
little more gentle with them than you were with Lopez and Cross. Can I count on
you for that?”

“Yes,” said Jasper softly. “I’m sorry I lost it back there.
That was the largest group of those things that I’d seen in one place, at one
time, and that close. One of those things is bad enough ... especially when
it’s a family member. But back there, right then, seeing all those dead kids
showed me the enormity of this great die-off. I thought I saw
my
kids
back there ... it was all in my head. I know that now.”

“Understandable,” Cade replied as he eased off the gas.
“You’ve been burying Draper all by yourself for the last two weeks. I’ve buried
a few myself. Same thing probably happened to Hicks. He just lost his good
friend Durant ... ” Cade nodded towards the corpses arranged in the box-bed.

Jasper made no reply.

Once again Cade’s ear bud crackled to life. “Ten seconds,” a
disembodied voice said with all the emotion of someone calling out bingo
numbers.

This prompted Cade to crane his head out the window. He saw
the Hercules clear the immolated tractor-trailer with only inches to spare, and
just before its landing gear contacted the ground he caught a flash of the
child zombies’ upturned white faces tracking it as it buzzed over their heads.

Eyeing the breakdown lane, Cade kept the pedal floored. He
watched the needle creep past
thirty
then on to
forty
and then
risked another look over his shoulder.

“Wheels down,” Dover said in his ear, confirming what he was
witnessing. Blasted by the turbulence following the settling aircraft, several
of the tiny flesh-eaters toppled and rolled, white dust devils spinning in
their wake. For some reason the channel remained open and he heard someone in
the cockpit say, “Reversing thrust.” Then he heard nothing but the cacophonous
roar of Oil Can’s four humongous Rolls Royce engines rising to a crescendo as
it rolled up on their six. He stole a glance at Cross and read his lips; the
man was urging him to drive faster with a few eff bombs inserted between the
pertinent words. He regarded Lopez and it came as no surprise to see the
operator performing the sign of the cross over his chest. Hicks, however, had
slumped over and was laying prone, head resting on the general’s exposed
entrails, staring wide-eyed at the sky.

Then Oil Can’s engine noise changed pitch and the roar
escalated to a sonic tempest he guessed was somewhere in the decibel range of a
category five tornado. “Come on girl,” he said under his breath. “Don’t die on
me now.” No sooner had the words passed his lips than the instrument panel lit
up with small instantly recognizable symbols that basically screamed out, “
Too
late for oil, kiss your engine goodbye.”

He pulled far off the interstate and jammed the Chevy to a
stop. It listed to the passenger side as the shoulder settled under its weight.
“Time to make a stand, boys,” he said, killing the engine.

But it didn’t want to die. The motor, as if demonically
possessed, kept up a knocking sound for a beat and then finally seized up,
belching blue-gray smoke, smelling like pit row at the Indy 500. Issuing a
series of orders over the comms, Cade holstered his compact Glock and reached
behind him to accept the M4 Lopez was passing through the rear slider.

With the Zs less than thirty feet away, Lopez grabbed
another carbine and checked the mag.
Empty.
He reached beneath Tice’s
corpse and stripped the last two magazines from the dead man’s chest rig.
Dropped the empty from his M4 and seated a fully-loaded thirty-round mag into
the well. In one fluid movement he charged the weapon, flicked the selector to
single shot, and spiraled into a combat crouch. Weathered paint cracking under
his weight, he rested both elbow pads on the sheet metal roof and made a
conscious effort to calm his breathing. Snugging the carbine in tight, he said
to himself, “Make them count,
pinche
.” He hovered the red holographic
pip on the closest walker and his senses went into what he liked to call
quicksand
mode
. At once his vision sharpened and he became acutely aware of every
sound around him. First he heard the truck’s passenger door creak open, then
the scuffle of boots on pavement. A second later he saw and heard the driver’s
side swing open. And to the front the sounds the dead were making got
exponentially louder, giving the Hercules running up on their six a run for its
money.

***

Cade shouldered the door open, twisted his upper body, and
wrapped both hands around the grab bar near his head. Then, with the steady
reports of Lopez’s silenced weapon reassuring in his ears, and the spent brass
pinging off the hood and roadway, he tightened his grip and lifted his weight
from the seat. Being careful not to bang his foot into the doorframe, he angled
the bulky size twelve around, swung his good leg after, and pulled himself to a
standing position.

Testing his ankle’s ability to support his full weight, he
let go completely, wavered but didn’t fall. Next, with one hand on the door, he
tested his full weight. The pain came on sudden and fierce. Pulsed up his leg,
transited his ribcage, rattling his senses. Like he’d broken an age-old
cardinal sin and stuck a fork in a toaster, the jolt attacked his central
nervous system and was gone.

Hanging his head and taking slow, shallow breaths, he
steeled himself for the test to come. Then, gripping the box-bed, he took three
consecutive steps. Sweat beading on his forehead, he stopped near the rear
wheel. He took in a lungful of rank air, pivoted on his right heel and
immediately embarked on the three-step return trip. He certainly wouldn’t be
dancing anytime soon. But he was fairly confident if need be he could make it
from the Chevy to the rescue bird unaided.

While he’d been testing his ankle, the Hercules had slowed
considerably and was within a hundred yards, nose wheel rolling along the
dashed yellow lines off to their left, its huge six-bladed propellers whirling
so fast an optical illusion was created making them seem to bend and warp like
something from Dr. Seuss’s imagination.

He received a tap on the shoulder and turned to see Ari and
Jasper standing behind Cross, his black uniform now a light shade of ochre. The
special agent bent low and yelled to be heard over the airplane’s engines.
“We’re going to have to clear the road.” He pointed beyond the airplane which
had pulled to a complete stop fifty yards to the fore and was just beginning to
turn in place. “One of those kids gets chewed up by a prop and we might not
make it home.”

Cade glanced at the M4 on the seat next to him and shook his
head at Cross while putting his palm up silently, indicating it was his problem
to solve.

“I can take care of it for you, Captain,” pressed Cross, his
mouth an inch from Cade’s ear.

Shaking his head side-to-side, eyes boring into Cross’s,
Cade mouthed, “I can’t hear a thing.” He cast his eyes to the fallen Zs
littering the road in front of the pick-up. He watched Lopez swap mags and
continue firing, then mouthed, “I’ll take care of the little ones.” Then he
nodded and motioned Cross and Jasper towards the box-bed as the airplane’s
rounded wingtip scythed the air overhead.

Jasper acted first. Reaching into the box-bed, he wormed his
arms under General Gaines and cradled the corpse close to his chest.

Using the M4 as a crutch, Cade limped away from the truck,
hoping to find a spot with a clear line of sight towards the end of the
makeshift runway. Finally, after laboring twenty feet along the shoulder, he
found an acceptable location and took a knee. He swiveled his head, checking
for stray Zs, and found only half a dozen in his vicinity. But they were thirty
yards away, below his position, on the feeder road and probably wouldn’t pose a
problem. Wishing he had a spotter whom could watch his back, he drew the
Glock—which held only one round—and placed it on the warm blacktop to his
right. It would have to be his backup plan if the Zs caught hold of him. Next,
he ripped his final magazine filled with thirty rounds of 5.56 hardball ammo
from his chest rig, slapped it in the M4, and went flat to his stomach. He
shifted around a little trying to get as comfortable as a guy with a pair of
composite propellers slicing the air a handful of feet above his head could
hope to get. Finding little comfort in the spot he’d chosen, he flipped the 3x
magnifier in front of the holographic sight and searched for targets.

Turning the KC-130 around in such tight confines took equal
measures of skill and patience, and a couple of extra pairs of eyeballs
watching out for anything that could snag a propeller, or wing pylon, or any
one of the number of pieces of equipment mounted on the outside of the
aircraft’s fuselage.

First Dover had slowed and stopped the Hercules using the
plane’s built-in ability to reverse its propellers without shutting down the
turbines. Then, slowly but surely, he rotated the Herc clockwise in place
one-hundred-eighty-degrees, until the nose was pointed east away from the low
hanging sun.

***

Lying in the shadow of the starboard wing, Cade went through
the four fundamentals of marksmanship taught to him by his good friend and
mentor, Major Greg Beeson.

Steady position
: He splayed out his right leg and
pressed his knee into the soft shoulder.
Check
.

Proper aim:
To compensate for the drop of the bullet
as well as the Z’s lurching gait, he hovered the red pip a fist-width above the
undead girl’s head.
Check.

Breathing
: Taking steady, shallow breaths, he
established a cadence. Inhaled slowly one final time, and then exhaled
proportionately with his finger tightening on the trigger.
Check.

Trigger squeeze:
He drew back the last few ounces of
trigger pull. There was a minimal kick to his shoulder and a shallow report
which was lost in the noise created by the nearby airplane. A tick later he
witnessed a puff of white and a mist of pink spray from the Z’s shoulder area.
Fail.

He glanced left and saw Jasper climbing the Hercules’ cargo
ramp with the general’s limp body in his arms. Lopez rose up from the truck’s
roof, threw down the M4, and helped Hicks climb down from the box-bed.

“Captain Grayson,” said Lopez. “Something’s not right with
Hicks. I’m wondering if he got bit.”

Putting his eye to the optics, Cade repeated the Army’s four
fundamentals of marksmanship while answering back to Lopez. “Ask Cross if he
saw anything.”

“No time,” said Lopez. “Cross is inside the plane helping
the loadmaster secure the bodies. Dover says he wants to be wheels up in one
mike.”

“Roger that,” said Cade as the first of the summer camp Zs
went down, its little head disintegrating in a haloed cloud of flesh, brain,
and splintered skull. He shifted aim right and dropped two more little flesh-eaters,
and then noticed a new contingent of adult-sized creatures making their way
onto the far end of the interstate.