A Time to Die (42 page)

Andrew slipped off his pack just as Chris said he was out. He handed the other man two of the four extra magazines, and put the other two in his belt. He didn’t bother shouldering the pack again. This was it. If that helicopter wasn’t coming to rescue them, they would die in a few minutes. He looked up and saw Wade had walked most of the way to the top of the stairs on their tank. The man held the gun in both hands, arms extended. He was visibly shaking in fear and Andrew dearly prayed they didn’t get rushed from that direction.

Then he had no more time to worry about that. Two of the creatures were climbing over the bodies blocking the bridge that was his responsibility. He raised the weapon into a weaver stance and fired twice, his gun coming up empty.

So it went for an indeterminate period of time. He picked his targets carefully, making a conscious decision to spend each and every round instead of just jerking the trigger in response to a threat. His magazine ran empty again and he mechanically switched out his last reload.

Five, six, seven rounds gone. His mind was acutely aware of how many bullets remained in a way that he’d never been aware of anything else in his entire life. Ten, eleven…and a deafening roar made him look up as an Army UH-60 Blackhawk pounded overhead no more than fifty feet up. Powerful searchlights blinded him as they passed over, moving back and forth to assess the situation.

The pilot banked into an incredibly aggressive turn. The rotor wash hit Andrew like a flyswatter, nearly blowing him off his feet. The door gunner unleashed a long, sustained burst of 7.62mm machinegun fire. The dozen creatures that had been scrambling across the catwalk were torn into bloody rags. Rounds whanged against the top of the tank throwing wild sparks into the near darkness.

The metal catwalk separated with an ear splitting grinding sound and careened towards the ground. The helicopter went into a hover and the other door gunner opened up on the other catwalk, the one Chris had been watching. It was shattered in the same way and split in two, both halves fell away and crashed against the sides of the tank with incredible booming reports.

The helicopter effected an almost leisurely 360° turn, the M240 roaring intermittently, and it lowered down until it’s almost insect-like landing gear were only inches off the tank top. Andrew ran over to find a Lieutenant-Colonel in a new uniform, safety harness hooked to a mounting point, leaning out and yelling to him.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Tobey Pendleton,” the soldier said, “get your people aboard, LT!”

“Sir!” Andrew barked. Two men jumped down from either side. The helicopter rocked only slightly from the sudden weight change and Andrew admired his stick. Soldiers with tricked out M-4 carbines and wearing full battle rattle over well-worn UCP camo instantly took a knee and had weapons up, scanning in all directions through their advanced ACOG holographic sights.

Andrew looked through the open double doors of the Blackhawk, its deck about a foot below his eye level, and could see a pair of soldiers grunting as they boosted Wade up into the helicopter. Tears of relief were running down his face. When they weren’t enough, the gunner moved from his station to help from the inside. Andrew did a double take as a female civilian in jeans, a t-shirt, and a light fatigue jacket moved to take the gun. She changed aim and let out a couple bursts with the weapon as an infected reached the roof and moved towards them.

Andrew turned and yelled to Chris.

“Come on, let’s go!”

The other man came up, half jogging half stumbling. The M-9 pistol in his hand was locked open, empty. Andrew none-too-gently pushed the marksman toward another pair of waiting hands in the chopper. The much lighter Chris was carried up inside with little fanfare.

“Please board, sir,” one of the operators kneeling on the tank roof asked.

“I’m last off, Sergeant,” Andrew said, noting the man’s rank.

“Sir…”

“That’s an order, Mister. Move it!”

The man didn’t try to argue. He and his buddy spun and mounted the helicopter in fluid motions, jumping up to the boarding steps, catching handholds and swinging themselves in. Andrew was half a second behind, though not as practiced by far. He’d only been in a Blackhawk a handful of times, and had never boarded one that was hovering a foot off the ground.

The instant his head cleared the door the roar of the engine intensified and they gained altitude. Someone passed him a headset that he quickly donned.

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant,” the lieutenant-colonel said.

“Thanks, Colonel,” Andrew replied and snapped a quick salute which the officer returned.

“I’m hoping you’re the pilot of that AC-130 which did a combat run on some zombies outside a farmhouse about forty miles southwestof here earlier today?”

Was that only this morning, Andrew wondered. It felt like days ago. He almost shook his head in the negative, then realized how many other AC-130s had done CAS missions against zombie hoards outside farm houses that day?

“That must have been me,” he agreed.

“Excellent. Are you a transport stick? Ever flown a C-17?”

“Sir, I’d never flown a C-130 until today. I’m an F-35 pilot, but I have qualifications on F-18 and F-117 as well.”

“That’s too bad. You think you can wrangle a C-17?”

“Well, I suspect I’m going to need to, or you wouldn’t be asking, sir.”

“You are correct in that,” Tobey said.

Andrew gestured with his head to the civilian woman who’d manned the M-240 earlier. She looked familiar, somehow.

“Who’s that?” Andrew asked.

“Long story,” the colonel responded. The woman had a tiny, sophisticated digital camera and was recording as they flew. He definitely wanted to know more about this strangely familiar female who rode with operators.

Outside the Blackhawk was almost a hundred feet over the tanks now. Andrew could see there was a line of six of them, and all around them crawled with zombies like angry insects. All but the one they’d just taken off from had roofs completely covered in them as well. Many had lines falling off the side as they tried to reach out towards the helicopter that was circling the entire structure now.

“Oh fuck,” Andrew said at the spectacle. Then he addressed the colonel again. “Sir, do you have missiles?”

“We have two 2.75-inch rocket pods and a pair of Hellfires.”

“Do me a favor?” The colonel nodded and Andrew gestured with his head towards the tank he’d just taken off from.

Tobey considered the vista outside for a minute then changed channels and talked to the helicopter pilot. In a minute the craft began to climb and angled away. Andrew waited as they got about a mile of distance and the chopper then cut a hard banking turn. Its nose dipped towards the tank farm and there was a loud “WOOSH!” sound and a blur as a missile left the exterior pod.

Andrew leaned out a bit and just caught the streak of the Hellfire missile as it angled downwards, and into the side of the middle tank. Nothing happened for a second, then the ordinance detonated. The eighteen pounds of metal augmented charge, or MAC, went off inside the tank that was only about one quarter full of crude oil, setting off the fumes. The tank seemed to bulge ludicrously for an instant before exploding into a brilliant ball of fire and debris.

Flying pieces of burning steel perforated the two adjacent tanks that likewise exploded. In a matter of seconds, all six tanks were towering columns of fire. Andrew could clearly see many thousands of tiny burning figures flying, flailing, and running into the desert. The tanks sent up six columns of dark smoke into the early evening gloom, a funeral pyre for the dead.

The helicopter was buffeted slightly by the blasts as the shockwaves passed by. After a half a minute of watching his handiwork, the pilot spun them around and they headed northeast, towards Fort Hood.

Chapter 26

Tuesday, April 24

Evening

The 250-mile flight took the Blackhawk more than one and a half hours at 180 miles per hour. The pilot climbed to around 5,000 feet by Andrew’s estimates. They were temporarily back in sunlight, though the expanses of southern Texas spread out below them were wrapped in darkness. Here and there a light was visible, though to the west where Laredo should have been there was no sign of that town.

As they flew, Andrew got a situation report from the colonel on Fort Hood. The two men spent a few minutes saying how they’d got to where they were. Andrew left out the part about how he’d been in custody being transported back to stand trial, and Tobey left out the fact that until a few hours ago he’d been retired and having an affair with the reporter, Kathy Clifford.

By then they’d come about a hundred milesnorth and the weather was deteriorating. The sun finished falling below the western horizon and the skies were dark and angry to the north. Finally, Andrew got around to asking about the rest of the country.

“How widespread is this?” he asked Tobey over the headset. “Is the military containing it? The CDC?”

“As far as I know there is no longer a country,” Tobey said. Andrew stared at him in horror. “General Rose, in command at Hood, said they’ve completely lost all contact with the national command authority. We still have direct radio coms with a few other bases, but that is becoming sporadic.”

“It’s that bad?” Andrew asked.

“As bad as you can imagine,” Tobey said, then thought of something. “General Rose mentioned just before we lifted off that they’ve been unable to raise any Marine units. That in itself isn’t strange, there are so many fewer Marine bases. But an Air Force general friend of his said he’d seen a formation of Marine transport planes fly into Patrick AFB early this morning. They left a few hours later and headed southwest.”

“Southwest?” Andrew wondered aloud. “Sounds like Boca Chica. What the fuck are the Marines up to?” Tobey just shrugged.

“Colonel Pendleton?” the pilot called over the headsets.

“Go,” Tobey said.

“Sir, we’ve got major weather between us and Hood. It could get bad, you want I should go around?”

“No,” Tobey said. Outside rain had started to hit the helicopter and was being blown into the passenger compartment. The gunners both started to retract the arms their machineguns were mounted on. “Keep us on course, we need to get back to Hood as fast as possible.”

“Yes sir. I recommend everyone gets ready for some chop.”

Andrew didn’t have to be told twice. He found some seating space and grabbed one of the hold straps. A minute later the ride began to get progressively bumpier. The colonel sat down and the woman sat next to him. It wasn’t obvious to everyone but Andrew saw her shaking as the helicopter began to ‘elevator’ as they called it, from the turbulence. The colonel reached out and took her hand, giving it a squeeze and she gave him a half smile.

Chris sat next to Wade, both lost in thought as they grimly held on during the wild ride. Andrew had thought Wade was asleep until he saw the man reach out with his left hand to grab another of the ride straps and grip it with white knuckled intensity.

They flew on in total darkness, passing over the western edge of San Antonio. A sprawling city of one and a half million people it should have lit up the night from a hundred miles away. It was quite visible, but not because of electric lights. A thousand fires raged below as San Antonio blazed. The rain was at times torrential, and it showed no signs of affecting any change in the fires down there. Andrew guessed they were fueled by gasoline, or maybe chemicals. They were too high to see any people below, though they did see sparkles of light from time to time that reminded him far too much of ground fire he’d seen directed at his F-35 during bombing runs in the sandbox. It was like the colonel had said, everything was falling apart.

“What do you think the General’s plan is?” he asked Tobey.

“Frankly I don’t know,” Tobey admitted. “But we can’t stay there much longer. The perimeter is only being held through sheer firepower. If it falls, everyone is dead.”

“Maybe we should head for Boca Chica?”

“Worth a thought,” Tobey said. “Mention it to the General when we land.”

Eventually they started descending. The weather hadn’t cleared but the rain was less intense. They could see a line of thunderstorms to their west and Tobey hoped they weren’t heading their way.

As the helicopter dropped lower the base began to appear through the forward windscreen. Unlike San Antonio, the base was at least partially lit with electric lights. That only made sense since all military bases had at least some emergency generator capacity. As they passed over the central part of Fort Hood’s structures. Andrew could see a number of them were ablaze, and others had thousands of creatures around them. They stood about in the rain, many looking up and reaching as the helicopter roared overhead. Like the ones in Mexico and South Texas, many were at least partially naked. Far too many wore the remains of military uniforms.

The helicopter began a turn and Andrew saw the airfield. Just as the colonel had described he saw the quickly improvised defenses. Lines of soldiers and Humvees, guns flashing from time to time. And huge stacks of bodies against the barricades.

“It’s getting worse,” Tobey said and pointed.

At one place about a hundred metersof the gate leading from the airfield to base operations, the bodies were stacked so high against the fence that the creatures had started to get over the top. The fence had bent partially inward. As they went over an old M1 Grizzly engineering vehicle was using its plow to shove the entire meaty mess backwards, fence and all. After it retracted men with a crane worked quickly to lower ten-foot concrete barriers off a flatbed truck and link them together to close the breech. Soldiers fired from the top of the Grizzly and one even rode the top of the first barrier, holding on with one arm and shooting a machinegun with the other like a comic book hero.

“How long is the ammo going to hold out?” Andrew wondered.

“The general emptied a couple bunkers before they bugged out to the airfield,” the pilot chimed in. “The problem isn’t the bullets, it’s the guns. Even a Ma-deuce can’t shoot indefinitely without overheating.”

The Blackhawk finished its turn and lined up on one of the dozens of helipads, windshield wipers working furiously against the downpour. Andrew noted that most of them were occupied with a combination of Blackhawks, Chinooks, and a pair of V-22 Ospreys. He had to wonder why the Army had any Ospreys, an airframe only used by the Air Force and Marines. Then he remembered there were a few C-17s there as well.

The pilot flared and set them down on the pad with minimal jarring, locking the brakes and cutting the engines. All the operators piled out immediately followed by the colonel. None of them took the least notice to the buckets of water pouring from the sky as Tobey took a second to shake hands with each of them, sure they would be working together in the future.

“Thanks again for the rescue,” Andrew said after Tobey had finished with the other men.

“Least I can do after you pulled my bacon from the fryer at that farmhouse.” He gestured towards a waiting Humvee. His ‘civilian companion’ was already heading that way. Chris and Wade stood next to the Blackhawk whose blades were slowing steadily. A ground crew was already approaching with fuel and munitions.

“What about my friends?” Andrew asked. He shook his head spraying water from his hair, wishing he was wearing a hat.

“Civilians? There’s a hangar over that way. They’re welcome to wait there.”

“These two are a little better than the average civilians. I think they’ve both proved themselves after surviving that.”

Tobey considered the two men. One was around fifty and balding, a slight paunch showing. He had an M-16 slung in a competent manner. The other was maybe twenty-five and had a lot more than just a paunch. Tobey doubted the kid had ever set foot on a treadmill in his life. By his dress and demeanor, he pegged him as a video gamer, or IT geek. Yet he had an M-9 pistol in his belt and had survived along with the others, making it through untold thousands of crazed zombies to survive until they were extracted.

“Okay,” Tobey relented. Together they rode the short distance to the airfield operations building. General Rose had taken it over as his command center.

As they drove the short distance Andrew took in the operation. The immense amounts of equipment on pallets. All the helicopters were being loaded with equipment or configured for passengers. They were preparing to evacuate in short order.

Tobey led them inside the building and into what had been a conference room. The table was gone and a temporary command center was there, including a wall of portable coms gear and a huge dry erase board with a map of the US drawn on it. Someone had marked all the major cities. Andrew could see that most of them had once had green or yellow circles, but now all were crossed out with red. Then he noticed LA was still yellow, and Key West had a big question mark. Other boards had long lists of supplies someone had prioritized. Yet another listed names with some sort of ID code next to each.

“General Rose, this is Lieutenant Andrew Tobin, US Air Force.”

Andrew came to attention and saluted. The General looked to be in his sixties but fit as a teenager. Tall and with close cut black hair, he looked up from his field desk and eyed the new arrival for a second before tossing back a quick salute.

“You would have done us a good turn if you’d got that gunship here in one piece,” the General grumbled.

“Sorry sir, it barely made that one pass to save the Colonel here.”

The General huffed and dismissed the issue with a wave of his hand. “The Colonel radioed that you aren’t qualified for the C-17.”

“No sir, I’m not. But I just landed an Airbus A380 a few days ago and managed it without killing everyone aboard.”

“What happened to the passengers?”

“The whole plane was overrun with those creatures,” Andre explained. “I rescued these two men from another plane in Monterrey along with a dozen others. We’re all that survived when the gunship went down.”

“Well, regardless, glad to have you. I can’t order Air Force personnel to assist, but since I have contact with zero Air Force units, I’m asking for your help.” Andrew nodded his assent. “Excellent. You make a total of three pilots I have willing to stick a heavy transport. One’s qualified on the C-130…”

“Wish he’d been with me in Monterrey,” Andrew laughed. The general grunted and went on.

“And the other flew the C-5 Galaxy back in the ‘90s. He was here in Hood visiting his son, who’s in my command.”

“That looks like your transport commander,” Andrew said.

“Agreed. He’s in the operations ready room next door along with the other pilot. Get together with them and go over the literature we have on the Globemasters we have. I’m working on a way to get to them through that collection of Mad Max rejects out there.”

“More like Dawn of the Living Dead,” Wade said quietly, but the general heard and gave him a withering glare that made the gamer take a step back and examine the floor.

“What about copilots?” Andrew asked.

“We have a couple extra junior helo pilots with some stick time in fixed wing. About the best we can do,” the general explained.

“I’ll take Chris here, then. He’s worked with me and I trust him. And Wade can handle the engineering board. He’s a computer geek, so he’ll learn quickly.” The general made a dismissive gesture.

“Fine by me, dismissed.” Andrew tossed him a salute and left with his two friends.

“So was he worth the trip?” Rose asked Tobey.

“I hope so,” Tobey replied and then shrugged. “The man seems pretty unkillable, if you ask me. You weren’t there when he swept in and started gunning those zombies. I’ve seen more than a few gunship runs in my day. For a guy who’d never flown an AC-135, he did a fantastic job.”

“Yeah, then he crashed the damn thing and killed most of his crew.”

“He said they were down an engine before even taking off. That bird had major maintenance issues, by the sound of it,” Tobey suggested. “I’d say he saved some of his crew, instead of killing most of them. Remember, they were all civilians and probably weren’t even properly strapped in. He just figured he was flying up here to a base, and hadn’t planned to go into combat.”

“Well,” the General said and looked at the board with all the names, “he’s all we got to fly that third transport.” Tobey glanced at the board. The huge list of names had lines drawn at various places. The lines indicated cut-off for transport capabilities. There was a red line about one-third of the way down. All those below that line could not be evacuated if the C-17s were not available. The general looked at the map board.

“What do we do when we get to LA?” Tobey asked.

“Link up with whoever is holding the city,” the General said, “and fight.”

Andrew met the other pilots and they spent an hour going over the one set of manuals they had for the C-17. The older Air Force pilot had more hours in the air than Andrew, though as the general’s aide with an out of date C-5 Galaxy. Regardless they were all game to be prepared to get out of there as soon as possible. The airfield was surrounded by an ever growing number of infected.