The Common Cold (Book 2): A Zombie Chronicle-Cabin Fever (4 page)

 
“When we’ve fixed the
chopper in the morning we can go take a look-see at what’s left. What do you
say?” BB asked. Rob suspected he knew now exactly how BB intended to get to his
wife in San Francisco.

“Sure, that would be just fine. Thanks, BB.” Cliff replied, trying
out Brad’s air force handle.

“And while you fix the whirlybird,” Tom added, “we can check
a few of the closer buildings to see if it’s reasonable to spread out a little.
I sure as hell never expected to sleep twenty odd people in my cabin.”

“We’re not all odd,” Mike replied, pretending offence. “Sure,
I’ll give you a hand, never been much use repairing the thing, I’m just the
chauffeur.”

Tom looked at his watch again. He looked tired. “Shall we
get some shuteye now? I think we’ll need all the rest we can get for what’s
coming.”

“Um, BB.
Can I speak to you alone
for a moment?” Danny asked.

“Sure, what is it?”

“Over here, if you please,” Danny replied walking away out
of earshot of the others. BB followed.

“And?” he asked impatiently. He looked exhausted.

“I’ve got something you might find of use, come with me.”
Without waiting for a reply Danny climbed into the truck he had been driving
and BB followed. He retrieved what looked like a black brick from a secure
compartment within the truck.

“I didn’t want everyone to know we have it unless we really
need it, but I kept the satellite phone from your plane.”

“What? Oh, man. That’s real great, Danny,” BB exclaimed
excitedly. “I can’t get a signal on my phone so I’ve no idea whether all lines
are dead or whether it’s just in this area. I hate remote places, they’re just
not civilised.” He pressed a few buttons and checked the charge. It still had a
sixty per cent charge and a full signal. Dialling his house he was met by an
unobtainable signal. “Shit!” he said in frustration. Quickly dialling his
wife’s cell phone his heart leapt as it began to ring. “Come on, come on,” he
mumbled impatiently. It was picked up at the other end.

“Hello?”

“Kim?” Brad began. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”

“Brad! Oh my God. I thought I’d never hear from you again.”
He could hear little sobs as she fought to stay in control of her emotions.
Brad wasn’t doing much better and was breathing deeply as well. Danny got out
of the cab to leave him in peace to make the call.

He wandered back to where the meeting had been held but only
Tom remained, the others had gone back into the warmth. “I take it you gave him
the sat phone from the plane?”

Danny nodded.

“Well done, I presume he’s gotten through?”

“Oh, yeah.
She’s in San Francisco,
isn’t she? How will he get to her?”

“You know he doesn’t fix helicopters for charity, don’t
you?” Tom smiled knowingly. “She’s a qualified doctor. If we can’t get support
from the others to go get her for the sake of the group, something would have
to be really wrong.”

“That’s cool. I suspected something like that. He’s
definitely going to have a spring in his step now.”

“All we have to do is convince the helo crew that there is
nothing to report back to and I’m sure they’ll be only too glad to help. They are
bound to have people they’ll want to get as well. The nice thing about where we
are right now is that there are quite a few cabins up here. I bet most of the
owners won’t be returning any time soon, if ever.”

“I can’t believe how few people, normal people, we’ve seen
since we landed. Apart from the shopping mall yesterday - we had to plough
through a huge mass of infected shoppers on our way past - we saw almost
no-one, not even all that many zombies. I have to wonder where they all are.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t start marching out of the cities
and into the mountains. This place would become interesting, to say the least.
The snow will come soon, and with luck that should prevent that sort of
migration. Then we just have to keep our food supplies up - I’m pretty happy
about having a helicopter at our disposal - it should make food searches safer
and quicker. Perhaps we can get hold of a second one if BB takes this one to
SF, if their co-pilot’s eyes mend properly we will have at least two further qualified
pilots at our disposal and I could come up to speed pretty quickly I reckon.”

“All this assumes BB can get it going again.”

“I think it won’t stand a chance against his iron will.
Anyway, he has a wife to collect so that’s his motivation to succeed.”

At that moment BB came over, a big grin on his face. He’d
left the sat phone in the cab’s secure compartment for safety.

“The cat that got the cream,” Tom said, slapping his mate on
the back.

“Yeah.
Thanks Danny, I appreciate
that. We’ve agreed some additional places she can go to, just in case it
becomes too hot for her at home. It’s fairly quiet at the moment; with a huge
traffic blockage on the Golden Gate, pretty much no-one’s getting near
Sausalito. With luck, in three days I’ll be with her and a week from now we’ll
be back here. Not that she’s too partial to cold. But she’s always got me to
keep her warm.”

“Ugh.
Enough, BB.
I was hoping to
grab a little more sleep, but now I have that image to contend with.”

“Well, you may as well stay up. Haven’t you noticed? The sky
is lighting up in the east,” the first officer pointed out. “I may as well get
started on the chopper.”

“Didn’t I tell you Danny?” Tom said, looking pleased. “The
horn dog has his motivation.”

BB feigned offence and walked over to the frost-covered
helicopter and peered in.

“Uh, guys. You might want to see this,” he called beckoning
them over. He wiped at a window and stood back as Tom and Danny looked inside.

“She’s dead, I presume?” Danny asked, trying to get a
clearer view.

“With that hole in her head it’d be hard to be anything
else,” BB commented.

“And no-one felt it reasonable to tell us about that?” Tom
asked rhetorically and walked over to the cabin. Peering in the front door he
caught sight of Mike Simms. “Captain, may I have a word, please?”

The captain looked up, catching the look in Tom’s eyes.
“Sure thing, Captain.”

Once outside, Tom walked him over to the helicopter.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Mike began. “She got out
of her straps and attacked Zoë. Cliff killed her ’
cos
he could see what she wanted to do. If he hadn’t we might have lost our Warrant
Officer.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this? This is my place and I
don’t want dead bodies littering it up. The kids here have seen enough shit in
the last couple of days without being confronted with this sort of thing.”

“Sure, maybe you’re right,” he agreed reluctantly, looking
down in embarrassment. “We were going to fly her body back down to Denver as
soon as we got the chopper fixed. Perhaps we ought to bury her up here instead.”

“I doubt you can do that, the ground will be too hard to dig
into. It’s frozen solid. I think flying her away would be the best option.”

“Sure, then that’s what we’ll do. If you can just keep the
kids away we’ll leave her there for now. It’s not like the sub-zero temperature
will give her a chance to defrost.”

Tom grimaced at the callousness of Mike’s response; maybe it
was just a defence mechanism. “Okay, thanks. BB wants to get started on fixing
the helo before the snow comes. You don’t want to be working outside when that
happens, which I reckon it could do any time now. Do you want to send the
sergeant out? Unless he wants some sleep, of course. He was on sentry duty
after all.”

“Gotcha, you bastard!”
BB
exclaimed. He stood up and arched backwards, recovering from the awkward
position he’d had to adopt to reach the fused wires he had just repaired.

“I’d ’a never guessed that was the problem,” Cliff said in
awe of this mere pilot. BB had made it look so easy, as if he’d been doing it
all his life.

“I spent huge numbers of hours working with the most amazing
engineer at my local airfield. My wife Kimberley,” he paused, thinking of her
smile, “
works
long hours as a resident at San
Francisco General in their trauma centre. So I’d spend hours with my other
wife, helicopters, at Marin County Airport. Actually airport is a pretty big
word for a dock for seaplanes and a helo pad. Anyway, as with all private
flying, it’s four hours
shootin
’ the breeze and one
hour in the air. I learned some pretty cool stuff from that old timer. One of
the things I learned is that anything made for the government will have faults
that will ultimately interfere with its specified function. In this case, at
the distance you were from the relatively small nuke those bastards dropped,
you should have been well-enough shielded not to be knocked out of the sky by
the EMP. And it seems you almost were.”

“Not sure what you mean, BB,” Cliff responded, enthralled by
what the flyer was saying.

“Well, the electromagnetic pulse from the nuke creates
charged surfaces wherever it hits. With electronics that’s dangerous,
especially if you rely on them to fly. In this case, it fried some unprotected
wiring down there,” he said pointing to where he had been working. “It didn’t
get you right away but finally broke when your captain landed the bird when you
checked out the emergency call. Perhaps it was the jolt from the landing, I
don’t know. Frankly, I’m not even sure if he’d have had enough control left to
do an auto-rotate with this problem so you’re doubly lucky, I’d say.”

At that moment Tom came over to the helicopter to see the
state of play. He’d heard BB waxing lyrical about the doom the helicopter crew
had almost certainly narrowly avoided. “Don’t believe everything this guy tells
ya,” he told Cliff while smiling at his favourite first officer.

“I reckon in this instance he isn’t bullshitting,” Cliff
argued. “I saw the damage to the wires. The engine just stopped dead and we’d
have gone down like a stone.”

“Yeah,” BB asserted his assessment of the situation. “There’s
a set of wires that splits out from the main loom that pass under the floor and
into the vertical riser there to the engine control system. My engineering
buddy told me that some of the wires there have been shown to be vulnerable to
EMP in the past but they should have been fixed. Looks like your maintenance
guys didn’t follow their ADs to the letter. Maybe they never thought you’d have
to resist EMP in the good
ol
’ US of A.”

“Let’s prep it to test your fix,” the sergeant suggested
enthusiastically.

“Captain Simms will be back shortly,” Tom said, “I’m sure
he’ll want to do the honours. He’s just accompanying some of the others to see
if some more of the cabins up here are habitable. We sure do need the space.”

As he spoke the investigating party turned the corner in the
distance, walking in the direction of the helicopter. They were bristling with
an assortment of weaponry. Danny and Rob were leading the group back, closely
followed by Mike and Chuck. Their faces were grim.

“You guys alright?” Tom asked when they came over.

“We had to do a little clearing of the way,” Rob replied
enigmatically. Tom noticed a slight red stain near the handle of the machete he
was carrying and caught the meaning of the words.

“Can we safely split the party across a couple more cabins?”
he asked anxiously.

“Yes, we can use the two nearest,” Chuck replied. “Because
they spend so much time empty the cabins are surprisingly well secured, so they
should be pretty safe from those
things
.
If we use two more huts and each hut has a walkie-talkie, we can stay in touch
to support each other. Of course we’ll need to post night watchmen in each.”

“Do we have walkie-talkies?” Cliff asked, surprised at the
suggestion.

“I think we have everything we need,” Chuck stated
matter-of-factly.
“At least for a week or so.”

“So we have a small buffer of supplies,” Tom agreed.
“Makes it even more important to get this beast off the ground.
Mike, it looks like BB has the problem solved but we won’t know for sure until
you start her up.”

“Really?
If you’ve fixed it BB, I’m
seriously impressed. We couldn’t find anything causing it so my hat’s off to
ya.”

*

Mike walked around to the starboard side and opened the
door. Climbing in, he looked around, checking the state of the cockpit.
Satisfied he called out. “Sergeant, let’s do a walk around and pre-flight.”

Getting out again he and Cliff walked around the aircraft
doing the checks and unsecured the blades, checking all hatches were closed and
locked into place. Cliff kept everyone clear of the aircraft as a satisfied Mike
climbed back in, while BB hauled himself into the co-pilot seat. Both donned
flight helmets. BB’s was a little loose for comfort as Bill
Mitchum’s
head was larger, but by adjusting the chin strap he held it firmly in place.

“Let’s do this,” Mike said. Pre-flight checks complete, he
flicked the master switch and the gyros spun up. “Well, that bodes well.”

BB smiled as the engine began its whine into action. The
blades began rotating and were soon up to speed. Pulling on the collective, Mike
allowed the chopper to lift a couple of feet off the ground. All needles were
in the green and so they rose higher. Making a slow circuit of the area to
check all the systems, he brought it back in to land and powered it down.

“Wow,” Mike said, smiling as he turned to BB. “I don’t know
what to say. Do you want a place on our crew?”

“I’d be honoured, Mike,” BB replied. “Why don’t we get the
rest of your crew and check out the town. I think you’ll find it pretty much
uninhabitable though. From what we saw when we drove from the airport, Denver
is ablaze and there didn’t seem to be a single uninfected person in sight.”

“I hope you’re wrong, buddy. I really hope there’s someone
to report too,” Mike finished, trying to sound optimistic. This appeared to be
personal deception, wishful thinking even, and on a massive scale. One of the
reasons Mike had done the small test flight was so that he could try the radio
from the air. Flicking through the main frequencies they hadn’t heard a single
voice on the airwaves other than their own. There had been nothing but static.
In fact, if BB wasn’t much mistaken, he was pretty sure he could smell the
burning city, the view across it from up there made hazy and impenetrable by smoke.

By now a crowd of the survivors had gathered, excited by the
resurrection of the helicopter; it seemed to offer so much to their morale at
this point. Cliff had done his job well and kept them safely clear of the
hurricane speed winds it generated. Mike beckoned him over.

“Get Zoë, we’re going to have a look-see, and bring Bill. If
we can, I’d like to get him some medical attention. We’ll also get some more
fuel while we’re down there, and see if we can report in.”

“Sure, Boss.
Back in a minute.”
With that he ran over to the Warrant Officer; she had been standing with the
others watching the test run, anticipating finally being able to get back to
work. “Come on, let’s arm up. We’re going to do a recon.”

Pleasure at getting back into the air and to her job showed
all over her face as she beamed a brilliant smile in reply. Running into the
cabin she returned with a holstered pistol and a couple of rifles, throwing one
to the sergeant. Her pockets bulged with ammo clips; Cliff had not taken his
pistol off since the engine had failed. Leading Bill Mitchum to the far side of
the chopper, she pulled the far waist door open, while making sure none of the
civvies saw the corpse lying there frozen and strapped to a stretcher.
Carefully she helped him aboard and secured him into a pull-down seat. Cliff
pulled the door closed as the engine spooled up again. In no time they were
airborne and on their way down the mountain towards Denver.

No-one spoke as they flew towards their previous reporting
point, staring at the massive column of smoke rising from the city. The fires had
diminished somewhat since yesterday but the horizon was still being punctuated
by an occasional orange firework display as yet another source of fuel ignited.
Looking down they saw no vehicular traffic at all and very little movement, the
vast open spaces interspersed with small clusters of awkwardly moving civilians
who ignored them as they flew overhead.

“They must be infected,” Cliff observed to no-one in
particular. No-one replied; they could see it too.

Before long they arrived at the makeshift site that had been
set up as the outbreak began. A couple of camouflaged green bowsers sat idly
off to one side with landing markers laid out next to them; this had been their
refuelling point for the action. Several bodies lay on the ground and a few
uniformed people wandered around aimlessly, seemingly oblivious of the
helicopter’s approach. Even from a few hundred feet it was obvious the site had
been compromised. There was also another Blackhawk parked near the bowsers.
Dust had settled covering the canopy and implying it had been stationary for a
good few hours and no-one was looking after it. It had stanchions protruding
from the upper levels on each side and torpedo-like tanks attached.

“With luck there should be fuel available still. We’ll set
down and switch off,” the Captain announced. “I want you, Zoë and Cliff, to set
up a perimeter and shoot anything that looks like
it’s
infected and heading our way. BB and I will refuel the chopper. We will be
vulnerable while we do this and I want to be back in the air before we attract
any real attention. From the fighting we saw yesterday, the fast ones are a
particular threat. Just keep your eyes peeled, guys. If in doubt, shoot.”

“Yes sir,” both replied and readied themselves to disembark.
Zoë shouted their plans to Bill who nodded meekly. She felt sorry for him; if
the world was going to shit, being blind was the last disability anyone would
want. Looking at the dead woman she made a mental note to drop the body off as
soon as they were refuelled and safe. A little less weight would mean they
would also burn less gas.

The helicopter made a slow circuit of the site looking for obvious
threats before they came in and set down next to a bowser. The engines faded to
silence, the hot metal clicking as it cooled. In the distance came another noise,
sounding for
all the
world like the moaning of a
thousand people. Warily Zoë and Cliff exited and jumped to the ground, guns
ready. Wearing their helmets and visors to protect their heads and faces they
adopted kneeling firing positions and swept the area for movement. After a
moment Cliff signalled and the two pilots descended and ran to the closest
bowser. BB began to roll out the fuel hose and yellow
earthing
wire while Mike fired up the diesel engine pump. It started first time.

By the time Mike returned to the helicopter BB had found the
starboard gravity feed port and taken off the cap.

“We have two tanks; one for each engine,” Mike commented. “We
can carry a hundred and eighty gallons.”

“That’s quite a load,” BB replied, adding the information to
his understanding of the aircraft. His experience was limited to smaller
civilian aircraft, none of which had anything like the capabilities of this
one. If it wasn’t for the urgent nagging at the back of his mind of the need to
get to his wife, he’d be having the time of his life.

“It’ll give us shy of two and a half hours flight before we
have to put down for more juice. With a lighter load it might give us even more.
I wouldn’t want to be flying more than two without a nearby destination for
fuel.”

“So two hours between fill-ups,” BB said, calculating how he
would get to Sausalito and his beautiful Kimberley. That was a thousand
nautical mile journey and with the range of these beasts of about three hundred
and twenty nautical miles it would require at least three stops each way for
refuelling. He would definitely need the help of the others. Waiting for the
fuel to load, he looked idly across to the other chopper and realised the two
torpedoes were actually external fuel tanks. His heart raced; they would make
his upcoming journey much more easily achievable. “Shouldn’t we check to see if
that chopper is airworthy? We can never have too few of them, especially if we
need to cannibalise for spares.”

“BB, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to make up
excuses; I know about your wife, Sandy told me.”

“I really need to get to her, you know. We may not have long
before she’s in real danger.”

“I get it. Look, I can refuel this bird on my own. You take Zoë
over with you; Cliff and I can secure this one. Check it out. You handled this
one pretty well before we landed so I’m sure you can handle that one, it’ll
just feel a little heavier,
that’s
all. When I’m done
I’ll come over and check her over too.” He turned to the Warrant Officer.
“Zoë.
Go with BB and check out that chopper, will you?”

“Sure Captain,” she replied standing up. “Come on BB, let’s
move.”

Together they trotted over to the abandoned helicopter. The
waist doors were closed but the starboard pilot’s door was ajar, swinging
slightly in the breeze. There was blood on the Perspex windows and some more on
the canopy. BB held his breath and raised his pistol to cover Zoë as she moved
to check out the cockpit. It was empty. Touching the blood it was found to be
tacky and probably a few hours old. Gesturing towards the rear of the fuselage,
they made their way to the waist doors. As Zoë came alongside a loud thwack made
them jump in surprise as a helmeted head connected with the window. The man
wearing it had blood all over his visor and so his face was hard to make out.
Mad, staring eyes could be seen, darting from side to side behind the now
rose-tinted visor and his teeth gnashed as if he was chewing on a toffee and
talking at the same time.