District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (17 page)

Sleep had come to Cade in the form of a half-dozen little two-
and three-minute cat naps that were regularly being interrupted by Ari’s
constant course corrections. The first few times he had been jostled awake and
stole a peek out the window he saw mostly open range and the occasional low-rolling
tree-dotted hill. The latter couple of times Cade had cast his gaze at the
ground, the cover had changed from the sage and cactus that had dominated the high
desert terrain in and around Grand Junction, Mack, and Mesa, Colorado to a more
alpine mix of green pines and firs, from which white peaks jutted. In the low
spots, the occasional snow-covered meadow or deep-blue jewel-like lake flashed
by.

By the time Cade had opened his eyes for good—an hour and a
half after leaving Bastion, according to his Suunto—the Ghost Hawk had already skirted
a number of peaks, overflown lush green national forests and was once again
flying low level on an easterly heading that he figured would take them through
a pass in the southern tip of the Rocky Mountain Range and eventually deliver
them to Colorado Springs.

Returning his attention to the cabin, Cade saw Skipper still
parked by the minigun. The crew chief’s visor was retracted and his eyes were
constantly on the move, probing the scrolling terrain with an intensity dulled
by neither time nor distance. Across the aisle from Skipper, Cross and Lopez
were both awake. Apparently sensing him stir, the operators perked up and both
flashed him a thumbs-up.

“Getting close,” Skipper said. “Keep your eyes peeled,
gentlemen. Springs ain’t what she used to be.”

Hearing this, Cade rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms
toward the cabin roof. Feeling the dull ache returning to his left ankle
despite the new Danners and athletic braces, he fished into a pocket and
brought out the half-full bottle of Ibuprofen.
Vitamin M
, he thought.
Said
to cure a grunt of everything from sore muscles to a sucking chest wound
.
Knowing full well Brook wouldn’t approve of him exceeding the maximum
recommended dosage, he still rattled six of the tiny Motrin into his palm and
swallowed them dry. Seeing Lopez watching him hawklike, he capped the bottle
and lobbed it across the cabin to him.

“Turnaround should be quick,” Ari said over the comms.
“Whipper is going to top us up with everything we need.”

“I’ll make doubly sure we get a full complement of flares,”
Skipper intoned. “And a full loadout for the mini.”

“Copy that,” Ari said, “I never doubted you, Skip. You keep
talking so much and we’re going to have to think up a new handle for you.”

Cade studied Skipper while digging into his own memory for
the crew chief’s
current
nickname. Suddenly, in his mind’s eye he was
back outside the Three Palms in Los Angeles and clambering aboard the Ghost
Hawk with Zs closing in from all sides. Soon to be the very fortunate recipient
of a lifesaving exfil, he recalled how the minigun’s electric motor whined as
shells spilled onto the hot pavement. He remembered seeing Skipper then,
filling up the door, visor covering his eyes, jaw with a granite set to it. No
words accompanied the crew chief’s death dealing. For that matter, the man had
spoken sparingly the entire ride to and from Los Angeles. Then Cade remembered Ari
calling the man
Doctor Silence
. Fitting then, that was for damn sure.
Now, however, not so much.

“President Clay, Colonel Shrill, Major Nash, and one of the
newly appointed Joint Chiefs will be waiting in the TOC for you gentlemen,” Ari
said, breaking Cade’s train of thought. “There will be a Cushman and driver
waiting for you three when we arrive.”

Airman Davis, no doubt
, thought Cade.

“After the briefing I suggest you all grab some chow,”
continued Ari. “Whipper and his crew are going to give Elvira a quick once-over,
so I gather you’ll have an hour, give or take, to get squared away.”

“Copy that,” Lopez said. “Sounds to me like you’re saying we
have time for a four-course meal and then a quick round of golf.”

“Only nine holes,” Haynes shot. “You set foot on the back
nine and you’re walking to the District.”

Cross whistled. “Washington D.C. My old stomping grounds. I.
Can’t. Wait.”

Remembering the mission to the White House to collect the
football containing the codes to the United States’ nuclear arsenal, Lopez shivered
and said, “She’s not the senorita you used to know, mi amigo. All of the snakes
are dead and walking upright now.”

“Once a zombie, always a zombie,” Ari quipped. “Speaking of
Zs. We’re crossing the Continental Divide. Keep your eyes peeled, fellas. The
walkers are real thick on the east side of the Rockies. They seem to collect in
pockets and then get stalled out for a while when they hit the
wall
so
to speak. You might even see a mega horde ranging around the east slope.”

Cade asked, “So the megas aren’t sticking to the roads like
they were early on?”

“Damn things aren’t as predictable in their travels as they
once were.”

Explains their prolonged absence from the state route from
Woodruff to Bear River and beyond
, Cade thought. He said, “What about Springs?
Are the lights really on?”

Ari chuckled as the helicopter slowed and yawed right to
negotiate a treed canyon leading up to a massive peak. “You’ll see, Wyatt.
You’ll see.”

Staring out his window at the Douglas Firs whipping by at
danger-close range, Cross said, “I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. How many
survivors call Springs home now?”

Again, Haynes broke in. “A few thousand if you count all of
the soldiers taking R and R between combat deployments.”

Between combat deployments
, thought Cade, dumbstruck.
Though he longed to know more about what changes had taken place in the days
and weeks since he’d been gone from Schriever, he decided to wait and see it
with his own eyes from the air. There was also that sit-down requested by Nash
herself during which he figured he could mine her for dirt on all of the
particulars that he could think of between now and then.

At the top of the peak, Ari nudged the nose over hard and
skimmed the treetops and rock-covered mountain flank with just feet separating
the tree tops from the helo’s smooth underbelly. After a few seconds traveling
at that nose down pitch Cade felt his body pressed down into his seat as the
helo leveled out and its forward momentum increased greatly.

“Thank you for flying Night Stalker Airways,” Ari said over
the comms. “Jedi One-One will be wheels down at Schriever Air Force Base whenever
in the hell we get there. The current temperature on the ground is nippy with periods
of intermittent rain and sleet expected during your stay.”

“No golf,” Cross muttered.

“No sunbathing,” Lopez quipped.

“I need to visit the armorer,” Cade said soberly.

“Don’t be a buzzkill, Wyatt,” Ari barked over the comms. “While
we’re en route there will be plenty of time to load mags and oil your piece.”

Everyone aboard chuckled at that.

“We need to focus on the mission. The farther east we go,
the more Zs there will be. Just saying a certain level of frostiness needs to
be attained and then maintained.”

“We don’t even know
why
President Clay wants us to go
back to D.C. yet. It could be a cakewalk mission like the Long Beach—.” Ari
drew a sharp breath. Recalling that the Delta team had lost a shooter there to
a freak Z bite, he instantly regretted the comment. The soldier had been a real
solid shooter named Lasseigne. New to the team, he got swarmed and didn’t
realize he was dead until they were airborne. Still, that was no reason to
forget the man, Ari thought. There was no excuse
ever
to forget
any
of the dozens of good men he knew who had fallen to Omega since the dead began
to walk. But there was a tiny silver lining to Kelly “Lasagna” Lasseigne’s
death. For unlike Maddox’s death at the hands of the Zs back at Grand Junction
Regional, Lasagna was buried back at Schriever, not MIA somewhere in the middle
of the Colorado high desert.

“Yeah, right,” Cade answered, “a cakewalk. In case you
forgot … a soldier died there. A good man named Lasseigne. It’s going to be
nothing of the sort. We all saw the same satellite footage of the area in and
around D.C. … didn’t we?”

Heads nodded all around.

“I take back what I said about Long Beach. And no slight was
intended.” There was a moment of strained silence as the helo popped up and
rode over the uneven top of a copse of trees. “However, in my defense,” Ari
continued, the craft now back to level flight, “what I meant to say and failed
miserably is that this one is going to be
nothing
like the last six missions
Nash has sent us on. There’s a good chance we’re going to have
air cover
.”

“Predators from Creech?” Cade asked.

“Nope,” Ari said. “The long knives are coming out. Take my
word for it.”

Lopez grimaced and grabbed for his stomach. “From where?” he
asked, the sudden, sharp pain beginning to subside.

“A-10s owned the skies over the MWTC for hours,” Ari said. “Those
Marine aviators chewed up the PLA armor real good.”

“What about aerial refueling?” Cade said, the memory of two dangerous
hot-refuels conducted on a Z-choked runway in Grand Junction still fresh in his
mind. And though he had already reconciled Hicks’ death, he again relived the
haunting vision of his fellow Delta operator falling in total silence before
disappearing under the crushing tangle of dozens of ravenous dead.

“A given, now,” Ari answered.

Cade shifted in his seat to look groundward. Seeing a road suddenly
appear along their flight path, he said, “Has Whipper
really
gotten his
act together? Or is he still patching his birds together with bubblegum and
bailing wire?”

“Don’t you worry,” Ari said behind a soft chuckle. “The fear
of God you placed in that man is still firmly rooted. I’m convinced he sees
your face and that wicked dagger of yours every time he hears that a Night
Stalker bird is comin’ a callin’.”

Cross nodded.

Lopez smirked, then nodded. “It’s kind of funny seeing a man
of his rank jump as high as he does. Hell, he even cleans the windows and kicks
the tires before we head out.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised that after the man sees you he ups
the ante. I bet he’ll go full on Oil Can Henry Premium Service and haul a vacuum
inside this bird and tidy her up—”

“Hey Wyatt,” Ari said, “see if you can scare Whipper into
cleaning the inside of all the windows. Then tell him we’re not leaving until you
see a Vanillorama air freshener tree hanging from my rearview mirror.”

“I hate vanilla,” proffered Haynes. “Strippers smell like
vanilla. My ex-wife started stripping a couple of months before she left me. I
hate glitter, too. She brought it home on her vanilla-body-spray-smelling-self
every night.” He chuckled sadly at the thought.

“I’m learning more and more about you every day, Haynes,”
Ari said. “Narrowed it down to boxers yesterday.”

“And we learned that Haynes is a
boob
man the day
before that,” Skipper stated glibly.

An incoming call from Schriever’s TOC (Tactical Operations
Center) interrupted the banter.

Cade listened to the female voice in his ear tell Jedi One-One
and any other air assets on the net to be on the lookout for an enemy patrol
spotted by a group of survivors passing through Pueblo the day before.

“How many PLA?’ Ari asked, even as he was autonomously taking
an evasive maneuver by quickly halving the Ghost Hawk’s altitude.

Sensing the craft dip, Cade began to relive the bird strike
and consequent crash that killed friends and left one of the gen-3 Jedi rides a
smoldering wreck in a church graveyard outside of Draper, South Dakota. The
verdant ground cover was rushing up and then the window was filled with a scrub-dotted
expanse of flat land shot with all the colors one usually associated with the
planet Mars: reds and oranges set in a patchwork fashion held together by veins
of mineral a strange, muted ochre-yellow.

“Two armed personnel riding motorcycles,” said the
disembodied voice.

Risking a tongue-lashing from the aircraft commander, Cade
asked, “Were they both men and were they wearing uniforms?”

“Schriever, Jedi One-One,” Ari said, his voice a little
strained. “That’s one of my Delta Boys talking over the open channel. Wyatt’s a
captain, so I trust he’s good to be in the loop on this matter.”

The Schriever controller—a captain herself—drew a sharp breath
that registered loud and clear in everyone’s headsets. “Negative, Captain
Grayson. But that’s about all the detail we could ferret out of the couple who
reported seeing them.”

Changing their tactics
, Cade thought before saying,
“Thank you, Captain Jensen. Good to hear your voice again.”

“Enough back patting,” Ari said. Then, as the comms went deathly
silent, two things wholly unexpected happened. First, a shrill electronic tone
indicating the helo’s sensors had just detected a missile launch filled the
cabin and sounded in everyone’s headsets. Next, as Ari banked One-One hard to
port, the distinctive staccato
whooshing
of multiple countermeasure
flares popping aft and underfoot reverberated through the cabin.

A fraction of a second after the Ghost Hawk began taking
evasive maneuvers, Lopez groaned once and doubled over as far as his safety
harness would allow.

After a cursory search for the person or persons using the
rectory as an observation post turned up nothing, the group moved west across
the expanse of grass between the church and priest’s residence.

“Come on,” Oliver urged. “We gotta see what’s inside the
church. I bet there’s a ton of canned food and stuff in there.”

“He’s got a point,” Lev said. “People in small towns like
this had a little more time to prepare for the infected onslaught than the poor
bastards in and around Salt Lake.”

“Or Denver,” Wilson added.

“Grand Junction wasn’t pretty, either,” Taryn said. “I
watched all of the videos posted to my Facebook by all my friends.” She
swallowed hard then added, “And those posts stopped going up real quick. Still
had them saved though. In a way they kept me going while I waited in that
airport office. Gave me hope … resolve. If I didn’t get out of there, who was
going to tell their story? Remember them going forward?” Her words trailed off
and she began to sob.

Wilson drew her in and held her tight as Daymon stopped
before the church stairs, looking up at the stained glass windows and peeling
paint. The doors were sturdy and looked as if they had been shut tight by the
last person to leave—or perhaps, more troubling, by those still closed up
inside. On the door was a sign that read SERVICES CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER
NOTICE.

Face screwed up as if he was working on solving a big
dilemma in his head, Daymon placed one foot on the cement stairs.

Sidling up next Daymon, Oliver read the sign aloud then
looked sidelong at his tormentor. “What are
you
afraid of?” he asked,
his tone imparting a hint of accusation.

Those five words—or perhaps what they implied—set off a
chain reaction in Daymon that had been arrested since he first set eyes on the
attic access panel in the house next door.

“I’m afraid of nothing,” he hissed, staring daggers at the
shorter man. Speaking real low and slow, he added, “I just don’t like enclosed
spaces. That’s all. End of story.”

Oliver raised his hands and backed away. “Sorry, man. We’ve
put exactly zero cans of food in our trucks. Our supply run isn’t looking too
good. Just saying, though. Plus, I bet there’s really high ceilings inside the
church.”

“And effing spiders,” Taryn said.

Sitting on the sidewalk, his stub tail thumping a hollow
rhythm, Max growled, seemingly in agreement with Taryn that the only good
spiders were of the deceased variety.

Jamie placed a reassuring hand on the younger woman’s tatted
arm. “I’ll stomp ‘em for you.” She smiled and cast her gaze down the road
towards where they had left their trucks. “We’ve got
rotters
,” she
whispered, her smile fading and the war tomahawk suddenly appearing in her
gloved hand.

Instinctively, all heads swiveled to see half a dozen
emaciated first turns of indeterminable gender approaching from the west.

“They don’t see us,” Daymon said, crouching down by the
stairs.

“Yet,” Lev added, going to a knee beside a dirty Pontiac
ravaged by rust and plastered with dried-on leaves.

Then, almost in unison, everyone who was still standing made
themselves small and looked for cover.

Max scurried under the nearest car.

Oliver slipped behind the hedges bracketing the stairs.

Using the tall grass on the parking strip as a blind, Taryn
and Wilson both went to one knee on the sidewalk.

As soon as Jamie had spotted the dead things shuffling
uphill toward them, swaying and lurching and mainly keeping to the center of
the street, she had uttered the warning and also gone to ground next to the
Pontiac.

Now, a couple of seconds later, Jamie was duck-walking past
Lev, one hand tracing the side of the Pontiac, the other moving the tomahawk in
a slow and menacing clockwise circle. She made it to the car’s A-pillar and was
about to rise up and deal with the interlopers when, over the long, gently
sloping hood, she witnessed the rotters inexplicably perform a clumsy left-hand
turn and strike off to the north, hissing and moaning, the lot of them in full-on
hunt mode.

“Let them go,” Daymon said as he rose and watched the
procession cut in front of the trucks. He scaled the steps hesitantly and tracked
their movement along the near side of the body shop until they were lost from
sight.

“Think they’re following our bleeder?” Lev asked.

“Could be a dog,” Taryn said quietly, craning under the car
to get a look at Max. “If it is, our guy doesn’t seem concerned.”

Wilson climbed the stairs. He braced himself by placing a
hand on Daymon’s shoulder then extended fully, craning to see for himself.
“They’re gone now. Doubt it was a dog,” he stated. “I haven’t seen one since we
left Bastion.”

“You have a point,” she answered. “Are we checking the church
out or not?”

Sweeping Taryn aside with one arm, Lev scaled the steps and formed
up behind Wilson, carbine readied, the previous altercation seemingly forgotten.

Without warning the others, Daymon pounded on the dark wood
panel inset into one of the massive doors.

Meanwhile a thin finger of clouds scudded in front of the
sun, casting a dark shadow over the church and causing the stained glass
windows, which a moment prior had shone with all the colors of the rainbow, to
take on a dark foreboding shade of gray.

Seeing the all-purpose weatherproof carpeting at his feet
suddenly bathed in shadow, Daymon whipped around and, half-expecting to see
another spiked tree trunk barreling for his head, shot a wide-eyed glance
skyward.

Nothing
. He saw only Wilson and Lev a handful of feet
away and shooting strange looks at him. Thankful he hadn’t become a human
pincushion, he flipped the clouds the bird and assailed the door with another
barrage of knocks.

Taryn called up the stairs, “Anybody home?”

Daymon pressed his ear to the door and listened hard.
Hearing nothing, he came away, looked at the others and shook his head. “I
think it’s clear. Plus, there’s no X on the door like there was at the rehab
place and most of the farmhouses up Center Street.”

Lev grabbed Daymon’s arm. “Could be more of the silenced
rotters inside. Best be careful.”

Daymon drew Kindness from her sheath, put one hand on the
door pull, and pressed his thumb on the latch release. Feeling some give, he
turned his head and body sideways and said, “It’s unlocked. I’m going to throw
it open and backpedal like hell.”

Lev moved a few steps to his right. After shooing Wilson off
the landing, he clicked off the safety and shouldered his rifle. Training it on
the vertical seam between the double-doors, he raised a brow and said, “Ready.”

The door was indeed unlocked and the paper affixed to it
fluttered and tore away when Daymon heaved the left side open. Then, keeping
his promise, he leaped backwards, spinning a one-eighty in the process. By the
time he was turned around and had cleared the midpoint of the stairs—all of a
half-second later—two things dawned on him. First, he was acutely aware that
cold dead hands were not grabbing at his body. Second, he felt a breeze down
below and saw that to a person the others were staring at his crotch, wide-eyed
and grinning.

As his boots hit the lawn beside the stairs and Lev still
hadn’t opened fire with the suppressed carbine, Daymon looked down and saw the
cherry on his embarrassment sundae—an unbuttoned fly and his manhood hanging
out for all to see.

“Damn,” Jamie said, eyes tearing up with mirth. “It’s true
what they say.” All eyes instantly turned to her; Daymon’s, understandably,
slowly narrowed to dark slits.

“Do tell,” Oliver said, barely able to contain himself.

“If the barn door’s left open … the
hog
will get
out,” Lev said, his gaze locked on the darkened foyer to his fore.

Blushing, Daymon turned to face the church and put his
business away—this time
remembering
to button his camouflage ACU
bottoms. Finished, he scaled the stairs, wariness showing in each step taking
him closer to the yawning door.

“With Kindness in hand, and you flying away from the door
like it was electrified … I must admit,” Jamie said, wiping away a tear. “I was
starting to worry that you’d have nothing left to take home to Heidi.”

“Very funny,” Daymon said, craning around the door jamb,
Kindness clutched in one fist and blindly working the right-side door with his
free hand. “So funny I forgot to laugh. But you know what?”

Humoring him, Jamie said, “Lay it on me.”

“I didn’t get mad.”

“Your Ritalin is kicking in, huh?” Wilson ribbed.

Shooting Wilson a sour look, Daymon crossed the threshold.
Just as he set foot inside the foyer where the ceiling was low and empty coat
closets flanked him left and right, a myriad of vivid colors splashed the floor
and pews and lit up the gloomy aisle stretching away from him.

After drawing in a deep breath and exhaling sharply, he felt
his knees giving out on him.