The Apocalypse Crusade 2 (35 page)

Thuy turned back to the group and tried to judge their weight. Unfortunately, Eng had taken all of the smallest people. Thuy was absolutely tiny, however the next smallest person left in the station was Courtney at a hundred and twenty pounds and then Stephanie at a hundred and twenty-seven. From there the weights began to shoot up. The remaining dispatchers ranged from plump to chubby, while the soldiers and troopers were all taller than average and broad in the shoulders. Deckard was the strongest of the men and Wilson the heaviest with his balloon of a gut. Even skinny Burke and lean Chuck Singleton were up over one-seventy.

She had twenty-two hundred pounds to work with. She calculated an average weight of one hundred and sixty pounds; that meant fourteen could go and five would die.

“I need your attention!” Thuy called out. When everyone looked over, she took a breath and said plainly: “There’s not enough room on the helicopter for everyone. Five of us will have to stay.” She meant to say more but her strength left her as almost everyone began to whisper and look around, each deathly afraid of being one of the five left behind. Only two of them remained silent.

Deckard stood like a statue, his eyes on Thuy; he was reading her just as she was reading him. He would stay and was pissed that she thought she would as well. The other person was Chuck who nodded and then raised his hand.

John Burke scowled and then looked pained and then scowled some more. “I would, but I got me a little girl I gots to find. Y’all understand, right.”

“I have a child, too,” one of the dispatcher’s declared, her face a vision of misery. There came a louder murmuring over this. Those without children started to become angry, thinking this was the one criterion that would keep a person safe.

Thuy raised her hand to quiet them. “Everyone shut up. I’m looking for volunteers. We have one in Mr. Singleton. I am another. And…”

“My ass you are,” Deckard snarled. He strode over to her and put her hand down, pinning it to her side. She didn’t try to stop him. He could have bent her into pretzel if he wished. “I will stay but you can’t,” he said. He turned to the others: “I need three more volunteers.”

“She just volunteered,” one of the troopers said. “You only need two.”

“She volunteered out of guilt,” Deckard said, sneering at the man, “Because she thinks she had something to do with this. But she didn’t do anything wrong, and if there’s anyone who can find a cure for this it will be her. She’s getting on that helicopter.”

“You can’t make me,” she said in a whisper.

His eyes blazed. “That may have been the only stupid thing I’ve ever heard you say.” He dug in his pockets and showed her the handcuffs he had taken off Anna. She started to splutter out a protest but before she could get a coherent word out she was cuffed with her hands in front of her. He then clamped a hand over her mouth. “Now I need three more volunteers.”

Stephanie Glowitz stepped forward. She took tiny steps to come to stand next to Deckard, Chuck said under his breath, “Oh damn.” He didn’t try to stop her, they both knew they were doomed. He took her hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“Two more,” Deckard said. “And you don’t have to worry about volunteering,” he said to the trooper who had made a fuss about Thuy not being allowed to volunteer. “I don’t need any cowards staying because I plan on making it out and I won’t have you dragging me down. Now, come on, two more.”

Max Fowler raised his hand and stepped over. Deckard clapped him hard on the back and Chuck gave him a nod. Stephanie couldn’t acknowledge him. She could do nothing but fall into Chuck’s chest. She was so afraid she didn’t know if she could stand. A part of her felt like fainting and she really wanted to. She wanted to black out and forget any of this was happening, but she fought against it. She knew Chuck would carry her if she fell and she wasn’t going to burden him with her weakness.

Now, heads hung low and people toed the floor, refusing to look up. An uncomfortable silence dipped over them that was broken only by the sound of the zombies reforming their ranks and heading toward the smell of fresh blood. “You have to take me,” Thuy said in a mumble. Deckard’s hand had never been hard on her lips, he loved them too much to bruise them.

“You know I can’t,” he whispered in her ear. “I mean that. You know me. You know my heart or at least I hope you do. I can’t watch you die, not when I can keep you safe so easily.”

He was right, she knew his heart and that was why she wanted to stay. Never in her life had she had such a connection. Who knew it could hurt so bad? “What happened to making it out?”

There had never much of a chance and now that Stephanie was with them it dropped even further, the cancer had made her frail and weak. To make matters worse, Dr. Wilson cleared his throat and raised his hand. “I’ll do it. If Thuy’s not going, somebody has to be the brains of the outfit.”

Deckard smiled at him but inwardly he felt his heart sink. He had been hoping for Fowler’s buddy Osgood to volunteer or at least one of the troopers. Now he had an over-weight fifty something who couldn’t shoot for shit, on his team.

“I guess this is it,” Deckard said. “Fowler and Chuck, make sure we each have one of the M16s and also plenty of ammo. I want to be re…”

Courtney interrupted him. “They’ll be here in three minutes.” Everyone glanced to the front where the first of the zombies were coming in through the shattered remnants of the main doors, sliding in the entrails of their brothers. Dozens more were behind these. Courtney flipped off her computer and then came up to Fowler with Sundance right at her hip as always. She gestured to the dog and asked: “Bring him back to me will you?” He nodded but his throat had seized up. They were twenty miles from the nearest border and still had no way to cross. It was pitch black outside where the dead always had the advantage over the living. Just then, he was scared of the dark like he hadn’t been since he was a child.

“Thanks.” Courtney looked like she wanted to say more but her lips trembled and she turned her face away.

Of the five who were to remain, Chuck was the least afraid, at least for himself. In truth, he was furious at how cowardly the other men had been. He was very near to cursing those leaving, but he feared Stephanie would see the anger as doubt that they wouldn’t be able to make it out of The Zone…and she would be right. There was no way. He didn’t even think they would make it to the woods and that meant he would have to kill her.

He knew how it would go: they would run outside and become surrounded by the monsters. They would fight until it became obvious they were just putting off the inevitable and then he would kill her with a shot to the back of the head and then he would kill himself just as he had been planning on for months now. Thinking about this, he felt the fury inside him flip on its tail and he was suddenly sad. “It’ll be ok,” he said to Stephanie. She was clinging to him, shaking all over.

The sound of rotors slapping the air came to them. Thuy turned to Deckard. She had to yell to be heard. “Uncuff me!”

“No,” he said. He fished out the key to the cuffs and tossed them to Burke. “Make sure she gets on that chopper. Throw her in if you have to.”

Burke advanced on Thuy and she screamed: “No! Get away from me, Burke.” She looked like a wild thing all of a sudden and he stepped back with his hands up. She then turned on Deckard and with that same wildness, snarled: “I love you. You know that, damn it. Now, promise me you’ll make it. Promise me!”

She wanted to be lied to, they both knew it.

“I promise.”

For some reason she laughed at this, but it was a broken sound because she also cried. “Will you kiss me, now?” She was afraid that she wouldn’t have time to be kissed good-bye if they waited even a minute. The rotors were louder and the miniguns had opened up, ripping the night with what seemed like one endless explosion, and the engines of the Blackhawk were a lion’s roar.

Deckard took her shoulders in his heavy hands and pulled her close. “It’ll be alright,” he lied again and then kissed her deeply. It was all warmth and softness until a hand grabbed Thuy and pulled. It was Burke. The Blackhawk was on the ground and the survivors were rushing out the door. She said something but the wind from the rotors tore the words away. He yelled: “I love you!” but Burke had turned her and was pulling her through the wrecked station where the howling of the machine drowned everything out.

And then she was gone.

Courtney Shaw had seen the kiss and, despite her fear and exhaustion, she had felt jealousy slip into her heart like an assassin’s dagger. When she had said goodbye to Max Fowler, she had wanted him to kiss her, only he was married. Though he hadn’t once mentioned his wife in the few hours they had together, she had seen the ring and she had seen how he had held himself in reserve around her out of loyalty to his wife.

She had wanted that kiss, not because she loved him, but because he was a man. A real man who had fought for her and beside her and he had volunteered to die so that others could live, so that she could live. She felt she owed him something, as if he deserved for someone to touch him one last time, to show they cared. To show that he wasn’t dying for a bunch of cowardly ingrates.

But those seconds had slipped away and then the chopper was there. Sundance had tried to come with her and had barked loud enough to be heard, but Max had a hold of him and she could only wave until she was at the side of the Blackhawk as the minigun deafened her. Hands pulled her up into it and she was crushed into the others, squished so she could barely see anything.

It seemed like only a second later that they lifted off. She tried to wave again but as she watched, the door from the office wing finally gave way and the horrible beasts flooded into the lobby, blocking out all sight of the five who had remained behind.

Next to her, Thuy saw this as well. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing could be heard and then her knees buckled and she would have fallen but some unknown soldier caught her. She cried, with her head hanging, looking like a porcelain doll that had been broken by sheer sadness.

The ride in the Blackhawk was cold and loud. The second day of the ordeal had become a memory at the stroke of midnight but no one knew and no one cared. The survivors took turns washing their shoes and lower legs in the bleach that some of the troopers had brought with them from the station. The rest was poured on the interior decking. Burke, who had washed Thuy’s feet, unlocked her and then tossed the cuffs away into the dark. Courtney saw him mouth:
I’m sorry
, but Thuy didn’t see.

Five minutes from the landing zone a whispering began—actually it was one person yelling into the ear of the person next to them, although when Courtney heard she had to have it repeated twice by Burke. She yelled back: “It’s a hot LZ? What’s that mean?”

It meant they were going to be landing in an area under attack. From the air it looked worse than at ground level. The undead were everywhere, surging across the fields and farms in numbers that were beyond belief.

“Don’t land here!” people started yelling. They pounded on the walls of the Blackhawk, but it was no use. The pilot paused over the hilltop to let his gunners burn away the last of their ammo and then he thumped down in the grass behind a line of trucks. Immediately, people were there pulling them off the chopper and stuffing weapons into their hands.

“To the front go! Go, go, go.”

“Where’s General Collins?” Courtney demanded of the man.

“At the front. Now go before it’s too late.” He pushed her in the direction of the hill’s edge.

With Thuy next to her looking grim but ridiculous, with an M16 in her hands, they went to the hill where men were firing at point blank range into the masses of undead. With little choice, the soldiers, the troopers, the dispatchers and the one remaining scientist hurried to take their places in the line. The effect was immediate. The black-eyed beasts were mowed down with little thought for aiming. For a few minutes, the zombies were halted as a wall of bodies was built up that had to be crawled over.

During that short breather, they were resupplied. While Thuy spent a moment figuring out how to work the rifle beyond the simplest: point and shoot, Courtney went in search of General Collins. She asked everyone: “Have you seen the General?”

Only a young woman, who was staggering with exhaustion and pulling a little red wagon, could answer. She pointed to a spot off to Thuy’s right. “He was right there, but I don’t know where he’s gone to now.”

The shooting started up again on the other side of the hill and the battle sounded fierce, but Courtney ignored it. She had a sinking feeling as she approached the piles of bodies where the girl had pointed. There were many of them contorted in death. They were all dark things, evil things. She couldn’t make out their faces until a plane flew overhead spitting flares out its port side. Under the blinking glare of the harsh light, she edged forward holding the M16 out in front of her, as though it were a spear instead of a gun.

She was ready to kill; a strange feeling.

But what was there was dying already. It was an old man. In his hand was a pistol and there was black blood sprayed across his neck and chin and the body of a soldier lying over his legs. Strangely, his eyes were still the purest blue. “Are you one of them?” she asked.

“I will be if you don’t kill me,” he said in a raspy voice. “Just pull the trigger, child.”

The voice was different, tired, weak, and close to death…or close to an eternal life as a vile creature. The words, however were his. “General Collins, is that you?”

“No,” he whispered, sudden tears coming out of his eyes. “Private Collins. I’ve demoted myself. I’ve…I’ve failed my men and my nation. Go on, please. Kill me. It’ll be for the best.”

Courtney shook her head, side to side, rapidly, her own tears forming. This wasn’t how she had expected to meet this man. She had thought they would share a beer one day and laugh at the craziness of the last couple of days. She dropped to her knees next to him. “I won’t do it, because you didn’t fail. The line has held, sir. It bent, but it didn’t…” She choked on her words.

“That’s nice of you to say, but I hear the truth. I hear the screams.” There were screams but suddenly they didn’t sound like they were of pain anymore. Courtney looked around, wondering what was going on and then she saw the fruition of her work in the sky. They had finally made it.

“You’re wrong, sir. You’ve won. Those are shouts of joy. Look, you asked for the cavalry and they’re here.” She pulled him to a sitting position so he could see the twinkling lights. Four abreast, in a long line they came flying out of the west. Courtney had known about the Apache gunships. She had begged and begged for them to hurry, not knowing if there would be anyone left alive when they finally showed.

As they watched, the Apaches came swooping in, their 30mm nose-mounted chain guns spitting death. Each flight engaged the zombies at treetop level, first with their chain guns and when those spun, smoking and empty, they unloaded their Hydra rockets into the masses. On the hill, the soldiers cheered and danced as the undead were torn apart by the explosions.

Among the Apaches came more Blackhawks loaded with men and equipment. They set down for seconds at a time and then were off again, their door gunners blasting away. It wasn’t as smooth an operation as it could have been and Courtney was thinking that she could now pull her girls back so they could do the job they were in no way trained to do and yet had done all day.

“We did it, Courtney,” Collins said, smiling, now.

She was surprised to be recognized. “How’d you know it was me?”

“Who else could’ve pulled this off?” He laughed, interspersed with a wet cough. It only lasted a few seconds before he sobered up. “Thank you for everything, but now...it’s time. I can feel it inside me. It’s hateful and evil.” She was about to ask:
Time for what?
when it dawned on her, he wanted her to kill him. Suddenly she remembered the gun she had laid down next to him.

“Maybe we can get a medic or a…”

“No, there’s no cure and I don’t want to become one of them. But if you can’t do it, I understand. Just find someone, please. The pain is…is bad.”

She reached for the gun, but now it grew heavy and she couldn’t lift it into position. Her hands and her heart were too weak to kill this man. “I don’t think I can…no, that’s not the truth. I don’t want to. I would never want to hurt you, ever.”

A shadow suddenly appeared over the two. It was a small shadow, the smallest on the hill. “I can do it,” Thuy said, a hard note to her voice. Her face, twisted with emotion was equally hard. “I’ll kill you, but only if you give the order to find Deckard and the rest of them. That’s the deal. If they live, you can die. All you have to…”

Courtney hopped up quick and pushed her back away from the general. “No!” she hissed in sudden savagery. “We won’t use him like that. Thuy, listen to me, I’ll do what I can for Deckard, but I won’t let him suffer any longer. If you won’t kill him then I will.”

Thuy was quiet for a moment and the hard look in her eyes faded. “You’re...you’re right. I’m sorry. I can do it. Maybe you should turn away, Ms Shaw.”

Courtney was about to when she remembered how she hadn’t kissed Fowler goodbye and how she had regretted it. “One second,” she said and then knelt again and laid her lips on Collins’ forehead and her tears dropped to mingle with his. “It’ll be okay,” she lied just like everyone else. And then stood.

She was twelve very long steps away when Thuy fired. The sound was a jolt even though she knew it was coming. She jumped and then whimpered and drew a sleeve across her eyes because they were wet and miserable. Men stared at her, which she found infuriating. “Margret! April!” she called to two of the closest dispatchers. “Go find the others. We have work to do.”