Rotter Apocalypse (23 page)

“You’re welcome for me coming to your defense.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

“You fucking well did. You’re just too stupid to realize it.”

Dravko felt the anger well up inside him. “How dare you talk to me that way?”

“I can talk to you any way I want. You’re no longer the Master. Vladimir is. And it’s because he’s rebuilding the coven, like the humans are trying to rebuild their society. What have you done? We’ve spent the past two weeks putting our lives on the line saving humans who we don’t even know, and who turned their backs on Robson after we saved them. Robson has done nothing for us. He keeps us around because we’re strong, and we bolster his numbers for whatever asinine adventure he decides to go on. All that’s over.” Tibor took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the anger had left his voice. “I don’t like terrorizing Robson, but I won’t let sentimentality get in the way. My loyalty is to our own kind. We need to rebuild our coven if we’re ever going to survive. Sadly, you’re not up to the task. Vladimir is. You’re my friend and always will be, and I want you to be a part of this. If you refuse….”

Dravko didn’t need his friend to finish the sentence.

Tibor placed a hand on Dravko’s shoulder. “What I said about the dogs is true. They’re the inferior species, and your sentimentality for them can’t stand in the way of the greater good. The sooner you accept that, the better off we’ll all be.”

Tibor entered the house, leaving Dravko alone. A sense of emasculation filled him, both by the dressing down from Vladimir and Tibor’s betrayal, and by his own inability to fight back. The reason he didn’t was because everything they had said was correct. As the Master following Elena’s death, he should have put the needs of the coven above his misguided loyalty. Tibor had been telling him that for weeks, and he had refused to listen. Not only had he lost the leadership to a vampire who Elena had banned from the coven, as well as the respect of Tibor, he had also lost his dignity. Despite all that, Dravko still felt that Robson deserved better than whatever Vladimir had planned for him. He couldn’t save the others. He might be able do something for Robson. Dravko felt he owed him that much. All he needed to do was find a way to help Robson without getting himself killed or banished in the process.

Denning felt a little more relaxed as he and Windows walked back to the house. Fewer zombies had appeared around the farm in the past twenty-four hours. Three had shambled out of the woods during the course of the previous day, and this morning only two roamed near the perimeter fence. That was the good news. The bad news was that when he and Windows checked the main road a few hours ago, it still flowed with a stream of the living dead. As long as the horde stayed to the main road, his farm and everyone in it should be safe.

Denning and Windows entered the kitchen through the back door, and he inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma of eggs and coffee. Miriam stood by the stove scrambling up breakfast while the three children sat around the table eating. “Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” said Windows, stepping over to the table to hug Cindy.

“You’re up early,” Denning remarked.

“The kids were up early wanting breakfast, so I thought I’d feed them. I’m cooking your plates now.”

“Great. I’m starving.” Denning stepped over to the coffeemaker and poured a mug.

“Making breakfast is the least I can do, especially since you’re the ones out there….” Miriam let her sentence trail off so as not to upset the children.

“Mom,” asked Cindy. “Can Rebecca and Philip help me feed the chickens and Walther?”

“I don’t know,” Windows said, glancing at Denning for guidance.

“I think it’ll be okay, as long as you stay quiet and keep close to Windows.”

A chorus of cheers rose from the table. Cindy jumped up. “Let’s go now. You guys will love Walther. He’s so cool.”

“Hang on,” laughed Denning. “Your mother hasn’t even had breakfast yet.”

“It’s okay,” said Windows. “I’m not hungry yet. Save me a plate and put it in the oven. And don’t drink all the coffee.”

“No promises there.”

Windows ushered the children outside. Once the chaos had settled, Denning took his mug of coffee and sat down at the table. A minute later, Miriam finished cooking the eggs, dished out the contents onto two plates, and brought one over to Denning, taking the chair opposite him.

“Thanks.” He scooped the first forkful into his mouth.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you. You saved my life. More importantly, you saved the lives of my children.” Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.

Denning didn’t know what else to do, so he kept on eating.

“I want to pull my own weight around here. And the same goes for Rebecca.”

“Cindy has that taken care of.” He pointed out the window to where the two girls raced across the backyard holding a container of food for the chickens, with Philip struggling to keep up.

“I’m glad they have someone to play with. You have no idea how lonely it was in that apartment.” Miriam became embarrassed. “Sorry. I forgot you were by yourself since the outbreak began. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“You weren’t being rude. I wanted it that way.”

“Can I sit some of the midnight watches and do the perimeter sweeps with you and Windows?”

“Are you up to it?”

“I’ll learn. It’s not right for me to let you two do all the dangerous stuff. I need to take on some of those chores as well.”

Denning thought about it as he finished his eggs. He wasn’t quite sure Miriam could handle cleaning out zombies along the fence, although he admired her willingness to learn rather than take the easy way out. It was a skill he could teach her easily enough. It would be useful to have someone else who could handle themselves in a crisis in case they did have a run in with a large number of the living dead.

“It’s a deal.” Denning placed his fork onto the empty plate and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You can sit the midnight to six shift tonight, and tomorrow morning we’ll do the perimeter check together.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you have to put a machete through a zombie’s head.” Denning stood up and brought his empty plate over to the sink. “If you want, once we’ve cleaned up, I’ll give you a tour of the farm.”

If Natalie had her choice, she’d rather be standing in the cupola of an Abrams than the open hatch of the Stryker because the former made her feel more secure. Since the tradeoff was dealing with only a few hundred rotters rather than a few hundred thousand, she could live with it.

The military had spent the last thirty-six hours conducting air sweeps of San Jose, using Apaches or napalm to eliminate major concentrations of rotters. A final air recon of the city at sunrise detected no large bodies of living dead, so they didn’t expect to encounter any surprises like Tango Alpha had two days ago. To be on the safe side, the three-pronged attack would proceed at the same pace. The main body would advance in a line abreast stretching from the southernmost tip of San Francisco Bay to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south, a front of almost ten miles. The mobile
recce units would remain behind and support them in their drive across the city rather than dash ahead like they had attempted the other day. With luck, they would reach their goal by sundown—the foothills of the Diablo Mountains ten miles to the east. On the opposite side of the range sat the less-populated suburban areas of the Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains and, beyond that range, the open desert of Nevada.

Reserve troops moved up to the Jersey barriers and began shooting the mass of rotters that had collected on the opposite side. Natalie glanced at her watch. 7:53. The unit would be moving out in less than ten minutes.

Ari and Doreen banged on the side of the recon vehicle.   

“Are you ready?” asked Doreen.

“I guess.” Natalie remembered the unpleasantness of her last mobile experience.

“You guess?” Ari chuckled. “You should be enjoying this.” 

“‘Enjoying’?” Doreen stared at her friend, incredulous. “Were you in the same recon vehicle as me two days ago?”

“Think of it this way. Right now we’re being chauffeured around the city like VIPs. Once we get to the Diablo Mountains, we’ll have to walk like everyone else. And that’s all uphill.”

Doreen held up her hand in mock exasperation. “Okay, okay. You win.”

Natalie had not seen her girls act like this since before Site R. At least now her Angels, or what was left of them, showed the same bravado they had in the past. It felt good to have them back.

Napier made his way down the line of troops, with Mesle in tow. “All right, people. Uncle Sam has arranged a nice little ride for you this morning. Thanks to our friends in the Air Force, this should be as easy as a stroll along the beach. So mount up and get ready to roll.”

Ari tapped the side of the Stryker and pointed to Natalie. “Good luck, boss.”

Natalie wished she hadn’t called her that. It reminded her of Robson.

Mesle led his squad inside the Stryker. Along the line, other squads loaded up into their recon vehicles. The troops who had been gunning down the rotters pulled the corpses out of the way while others used forklifts to move the Jersey barriers off of Route 101. Once the highway had been cleared, the ground troops moved forward and the line made its way through the surrounding neighborhoods. To the south, it detoured around Mineta San Jose International Airport where clean-up crews cleared out the mound of charred corpses along the scorched remains of the airport’s perimeter fence. An Apache flew by overhead and took up position a few miles ahead of the front, serving as their forward scout. Once the line had reached a point five hundred feet ahead of them, Tango Alpha moved forward, keeping pace with the ground troops. They passed through the previous day’s battleground, with the piles of slaughtered rotters along the route and the pools of crushed bodies and gore.

The line maintained its precision as it advanced. Occasionally, a lone rotter would emerge from a side street and would be put down with a well-placed shot to the head. The surge reached the intersection with Interstate 880 when a voice came across their CVC. Natalie recognized the call sign as belonging to their Apache escort.

“Tango Alpha Leader, Sierra Echo Three. I have engine failure and am going down. I can’t make it back to our own lines.”

“Sierra Echo Three, Tango Alpha Leader copies. Set her down in an open area and I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

The blare of the collision alarm came across the radio, drowning out the pilot’s voice. A metallic crash came through the headphones, and the radio went dead.

“Sierra Echo Three, Tango Alpha Leader. Are you all right?”

Silence.

“Tango Alpha Leader, Sierra Echo Four. Sierra Echo Three went down on the baseball field of a school near the foothills.”

“Is the crew alive?”

“Let me check.” A minute passed that seemed interminable before the pilot responded. “Tango Alpha Leader, Sierra Echo Four. Sierra Echo Three’s crew is alive, but the chopper went down hard and I think the pilot has a broken leg. The school is Piedmont Hills High, about six klicks northwest of your position. There are half a dozen revenants surrounding the chopper, with another twenty or so nearby. They’re too close for me to fire on. Can you send assistance?”

“Sierra Echo Four, copy that. Tango Delta Leader, dispatch two Bradleys and an AMEV to Sierra Echo Three’s location.”

“Tango Alpha Leader, Tango Delta Leader. Copy that.”

“Tango Alpha One, Tango Alpha Leader. Send a Stryker ahead to assist Sierra Echo Three.”

“Tango Alpha One copies.” The Stryker picked up speed and the line separated to let it through. Once safely beyond the troops, the driver accelerated. The recon vehicle raced pass Interstate 880. Natalie pulled out a street map of the area and compared it to their surroundings, trying to find the best path to the crash site.

Half a mile out from Interstate 860, the Stryker stopped.

“What’s going on?” Natalie asked without taking her eyes from the map.

“Up ahead of us. We can’t get through there,” said the driver.

Natalie glanced up. Abandoned vehicles blocked all lanes of traffic, including the breakdown lanes, part of the gridlock caused by congestion on Interstate 860. On the other side of Route 101 a single lane road merged on to and off the main freeway. “What about off to our left? There’s a road there that’s open.”

The driver turned and rolled over a broken section of freeway divider, bouncing over the crushed cement. Entering the exit lane, he maneuvered the Stryker around a burnt out ambulance and steered right onto Old Bayshore Highway. There were few vehicles or rotters on this road. The Stryker rushed through the commercial district, slowing down at the intersection with Oakland Road where a twelve-car accident narrowed the path. When Old Bayshore Highway ended at Berryessa Road, the driver steered left, floored the Stryker, and raced down the road.

Natalie studied the map, checking it with the street signs that raced by to get her bearings. After several minutes, she yelled, “Turn left here!”

Natalie folded the map. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

From inside the Stryker Mesle ordered, “Be ready to roll.”

Sierra Echo Four hovered above the rooftops on their left. The pilot had positioned his Apache over the school parking lot to draw the rotters away from the crash site. The stunt worked, because over a dozen of the living dead stood beneath the helicopter, frantically clutching skyward. Swinging left, the Stryker rolled over the chain link fence surrounding the compound, raced across the parking lot, and plowed through the pack of rotters.

The downed Apache sat at the far end of the school grounds in the middle of the track field. Other than some bent rotor blades, it looked to be in good condition. A dozen rotters swarmed the cockpit, scratching at the glass to get to the pilot and gunner. The Stryker raced across the football and baseball fields, Sierra Echo Four falling in behind to provide fire support. As they passed beyond the school building complex, Natalie spotted fifty rotters crossing the playing fields behind the facility, spread out so far that none of them posed an immediate threat.

“Tango Alpha One, Sierra Echo Four. I’ll take care of the revenants around the school. You guys retrieve Sierra Echo Three.”

“Tango Alpha One copies.”

The Stryker stopped one hundred feet from the downed Apache. Natalie and the others disembarked and rushed to the crash site. Intent on the food inside, none of the rotters around the helicopter heard them approach. The squad couldn’t shoot the living dead without risking a stray shot accidentally hitting the pilot, so Natalie removed her hunting knife from its sheath and approached a rotter in a crossing guard vest. When she got to within ten feet, one of the soldiers from the Stryker, Stephenson, raised his M-16A2 and fired off five rounds. The bullets whizzed inches by her head. Four of them slammed into the side of the Apache, three ricocheting off the metal and one fracturing the cockpit glass. The fifth thumped into the shoulder of the rotter in the crossing guard vest. Upon seeing them approach, it moaned and shambled toward them. The others around the Apache did the same.

Natalie had no time to switch weapons or fall back. Reaching out with her left hand, she clutched the rotter by its vest to keep it at a distance, plunged the hunting knife into its right eye, and twisted the blade. It convulsed once, went limp, and slumped to the ground. Another in Piedmont Hills High gym shorts and shirt came snarling at Natalie from the left, lunging for her outstretched arm. Before it could get to her, Ari ran up and struck it in the head with the stock of her M-16A2. The rotter swayed off balance for a moment and lunged again. Ari pummeled its head with the butt of her automatic weapon, churning its face into pulp until it eventually fell over backward. Even went it hit the ground, Ari kept up the assault until the rotter’s head erupted. Ari was so intent on that rotter that Natalie and Doreen had to take down three others which went after her.

Mesle had withdrawn his Glock 23 and shot through the forehead the remaining rotters on this side of the Apache. By now, the eight from the other side were coming around the helicopter. Stephenson fired off another four rounds that missed. Natalie and her Angels had done this numerous times and fell into their familiar pattern. They stood abreast, lined up their shots, and fired. Three rotters went down. They lined up and fired again, and three more went down. Natalie stood back and let Ari and Doreen take out the last two. With the threat gone, they rushed forward and opened up the cockpit to the Apache.

“About time you guys showed up,” the pilot said, forcing a grin through his pain.

Mesle remained all business. “Where are you hurt?”

“My left ankle’s broken.”

“An AMEV is the way.” Mesle tapped the gunner on the shoulder. “How are you doing?”

The gunner gestured toward the pile of corpses. “Fine now that those things are gone.”

“You ladies stay here and keep an eye on him,” Mesle said. “We made enough noise to attract every revenant in San Jose.”

“Copy that. What are you going to do?”

Mesle glared at Stephenson, who stood fifty feet away from the others and avoided eye contact. “I need to kick someone into shape.” He strode off purposefully.

Ari stepped up between Natalie and Doreen. “We made it.”

“Made what?” Doreen asked.

Ari pointed ahead of her. “We made it to the edge of the city.”

Natalie followed her gaze. During all the excitement, she hadn’t focused on her surroundings. A few hundred feet to the east stood the green foothills of the Diablo Mountains.