District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (27 page)

5:06 a.m. EST 4:06 a.m. CST 3:06 a.m. MST

Springfield, Illinois 100 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri

Cade opened his eyes and swept his gaze around the inside of
the gently vibrating Ghost Hawk. Slightly disoriented after coming to all awash
in muted red light, he hitched up his sleeve and triggered the light on his
Suunto. Noting the time on the glowing green display, he made some mental
calculations based on time elapsed since he’d dozed off over Kansas, a
guesstimate at the Ghost Hawk’s maintained airspeed over that time, and,
finally, after adjusting for time spent refueling, he came away thinking they
were over Illinois and—much to his chagrin—he was facing at least four more
hours strapped to the uncomfortable fold-down seat.

No sooner had he accepted his assumption as fact than Ari
came in over the shipwide coms to say they were overflying Springfield,
Illinois and, to add perspective, indicated that they were roughly seventy-five
miles due north of St. Louis, Missouri. Then, yammering away in full-on Night
Stalker Airways mode, he said that barring any unforeseen circumstances, they
should be approaching Target Alpha in less than five hours.

Taking the bad news in stride, Cade wiped the sleep from his
eyes and regarded his surroundings. Across the aisle, on the starboard side of
the ship, Griff and Cross were sound asleep. Heads lolling gently against the
bulkhead, both shooters were clad in MultiCam ACUs with plate carriers and
MOLLE gear snugged on over top of them.
All Velcro and camo
, was how
Brook liked to describe Cade when he was dressed similarly and loaded down with
the battle rattle, or tools of the trade he used to kill bad guys and Zs.
Propped up against the bulkhead between the former Navy SEALS were two vastly
different weapons. On the seat next to Cross was his stunted H&K MP7
submachine gun. A slightly curved 40-round magazine protruded from its pistol
grip, and riding picatinny rails on the suppressed weapon’s top and fore was an
EOTech holographic sight and compact, combination targeting laser/infrared designator.
Threaded onto the short barrel and balancing the weapon out nicely was a
Rotex-II suppressor.

Griff, on the other hand, had come away from the armorer’s
shack with a cleaned and oiled H&K 416 identical to the weapon his Team 6
brethren had used to pop Bin Laden. Also suppressed, this CQB (close quarters
battle) rifle was equipped with a drop down fore grip, holographic sight with
deployable 3x magnifier, and similar targeting laser/infrared designator as on
Cross’s weapon. Chambered in 5.56 x 45mm like the M4 he favored, Cade knew
Griff’s weapon had reliable stopping power, but not the same concealability and
rate of fire its little brother, the MP7, possessed.

To Cade’s right, the affable Nigel Axelrod was slumped in
the forward-facing seat Lopez liked to refer to as the “
bitch seat
.” His
desert tan tactical bump helmet was on the vacant seat next to him. The
sand-colored beret he’d been wearing when they boarded was now canted at an
angle on his upturned face, easily covering most of its narrow expanse.

Finally, finishing off his visual sweep of the passenger
cabin, Cade settled his gaze on Skipper. Seemingly oblivious to the fact he was
being scrutinized, the always vigilant crew chief wore a pair of the newest
four-tube night vision goggles clipped to his helmet and was scanning the
darkened countryside outside his window with them.

Unsure if the other aircraft were still keeping pace with
the high-flying Ghost Hawk or had already gone on ahead as planned in order to
secure the only road in and out of the target area, Cade shifted in his seat
and craned to see out his port-side window.

The crescent moon was behind high cloud cover and did little
to illuminate the ground scrolling by nor anything airborne in the lead craft’s
general vicinity.

“You pick up Jedi One-Two yet?” Skipper asked. “She’s out
there. Your ten o’clock. Stacked two discs left off our six.”

Cade squinted and probed the night sky for the gen-3
twin-rotor SOAR bird carrying the Army Rangers, but saw nothing. Knowing the
crew chief could see him clear as day, he shook his head. “I’ll take your word
for it, though.”

“One-Three is on starboard. Same position.”

Cade dipped his head and tried to find an angle past Axe.

“She’s there, mate,” Axelrod assured Cade. He removed the
beret from his face and peered out the window to his immediate right. “Yep.
Darth-Vader-black Chinook at my two o’clock. Maybe … one hundred fifty meters
off our tail.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Cade said to the SAS operator.
“Anything else interesting?”

“Not really, mate. Just the wide open expanse of your
country’s fly-over states. Isn’t that what most of your ruling class thought of
middle America before middle Americans began eating them?”

“You got that right,” Cade said. “All the meddling by the
powers that be in traditional military affairs was the main reason I was out of
the teams before this mess started.”

“Right,” Axe said agreeably. “Our hands were tied as well.
Whatever bloke thought it a good idea to let Parliament determine our ROEs
needed to be out there eating sand with me and my mates.”

“It’s different now, though,” Cade said. “Gloves are off. No
more haggling with lawyers and waiting for them to tell us whether we can take
out an insurgent on a motorbike or not.”

Axe rolled up his beret and stuffed it in a pocket.
“Different enemy, different rules.”

Cross stirred, but stayed in the same position—head back,
eyes closed—he’d been in since they launched from Schriever hours ago.

 “Different leadership,” Cade proffered. “In my opinion,
that’s the major difference between then and now.”

“I reckon you know the blokes at the controls of this
eggbeater?”

“I heard that,” Ari said over the comms. “I may be poor, but
I’m not
bloke
.”

“Nothing wrong with your funny bone,” Cade said. “How’s the
rest of Ari holding up?”

“Like a sugar cookie in Coronado surf,” he said. “I could
really use another of those five-hour energy drinks Skipper’s been bogarting
since the Kansas line.”

Without a word, Skipper ripped the Velcro on a pocket and
fished out four of the brightly colored bottles. He handed them forward and
dropped them in Haynes’ baseball mitt of a hand.

Cade remembered seeing those small pill-bottle-looking items
on the counter of his local 7-Eleven. And like Tribbles of Star Trek fame,
those garish-colored bottles seemed to multiply between trips there for Diet
Cokes. It didn’t surprise him that Ari needed one of the pick-me-ups. The man,
in fact the entire aircrew, had been incredibly quiet since they’d crossed over
from Colorado into Kansas. The Auntie Em and Toto cracks went on for a couple
of minutes until Cross and Griff checked out. The cockpit chatter ceased
shortly thereafter. And Cade couldn’t blame them; it had been a long time since
Ari had kicked the bottom of his Danners to rouse him, and nearly twelve hours
since they’d lifted off from Camp Bastion.

A burst of static sounded in Cade’s headset. After that
subsided he was amazed to hear someone from Scott AFB welcoming them to
Illinois. He remained silent and listened to the male voice relay details pertaining
to the next aerial refueling set to happen somewhere over West Virginia. He
stared at the ground, trying hard to see anything that might give the base
away. Runway lights. Light spill from an improperly blacked-out window. Perhaps
shielded headlights of a vehicle following a patrol route.

Seeing nothing pointing to the location of the base he knew
was somewhere north of their position, he leaned into the cabin and peered
through the cockpit glass. Framed by Ari and Haynes, way off in the distance,
was a horizontally oriented razor-thin ribbon of light. Just a hint of bluish
purple bullying its way into the vast expanse of blackness all around it.
Chasing dawn was always a cool thing to experience, and this wasn’t Cade’s
first time going into harm’s way doing so.

Chesapeake Bay, 89 Nautical Miles North by Northwest of
Sewell Point, Norfolk, West Virginia - 4:09 a.m. EST

Qi focused on the night sky far off the destroyer’s
starboard side where astronomic twilight was giving way to nautical twilight.
Soon dawn would be mounting its glacial-paced assault on the starless black
void.

He smiled at nature’s beauty, then turned his gaze to the
Yulin
.
Fitted with air defense and anti-submarine rockets, the angular warship, though
smaller than the destroyer
Lanzhou
, still produced an imposing
silhouette when backlit by the diffuse light radiating from the distant rising
sun.

The 440-foot-long Type Fifty-Four-A multi-role frigate was
patrolling the waters near the mouth of Eastern Bay with its powerful Type 382
radar keeping vigilant watch over the rapidly brightening night sky. With the
ability to pick up over the horizon airborne threats within a thirty-mile
radius, the more maneuverable
Yulin
, Admiral Qi had decided, would best
serve as a mobile picket of sorts. Having the pale gray frigate patrol the
narrow stretch of Chesapeake while simultaneously watching out for air or
land-based threats freed the admiral to give his undivided attention to the
unloading of the slab-sided
Kunlan Shan
.

And undivided it had been. He had watched from the bridge of
the
Lanzhou
as the amphibious transport dock eased into position, stern
facing shore, and disgorged the four noisy LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushioned)
from her cavernous well deck. Always a sight to behold, the vehicle- and
troop-laden hovercraft frothed the water as their humongous stern-mounted fans
propelled them at high speed on cushions of air from ship to shore. It had
taken the hovercraft four round-trips to ferry the entire expeditionary force
to the beachhead.

Qi’s chest swelled with pride as for the first time in his
life he saw Chinese boots on the shore of one of her greatest enemies. The two
countries had a history of always clashing through proxies. For as long as he
could remember his desire to see this bully of a nation get her just desserts
had burned strong in his belly. The calculated spread of the so-called Omega
virus had been the first step in this final end game. The march to her once
glorious capital would be the second. And with the information Zhen and his
team were soon to extract, the third step could commence. Leaving behind
manufactured evidence pointing to America’s culpability in the greatest
catastrophe to befall the world since the asteroid strikes that culled the
dinosaurs would serve two purposes. In the near term, once the false proof was
shown to the surviving heads of state the world over, China’s
humanitarian
incursion into the United States mainland could hardly be argued. If all came
off as planned, Qi thought, a smile parting his lips, the results of the
mission would leave China looking like the savior in the eyes of history.

Qi smiled thinking of the surgical attacks the hundreds of
special forces teams already spread about the country would soon be carrying
out. Just like seeing the dead rise for the first time, the American dogs
wouldn’t know what to do nor think when the PLA ghosts showed up unannounced on
their doorsteps.

It would be akin to excising cancerous tumors from a living
body, he thought. A living body that would then be ripe for repopulation. And
after losing untold numbers of men and armored vehicles at the hands of only a
few hundred United States Marines in California, the simple act of moving the
substantial force he was looking at from shore to the nation’s former capital
would go a long way toward restoring the confidence the nearly decimated PLA
forces had recently lost.

Now Qi’s binoculars were trained on a sandy and treeless
stretch of shoreline east of a town on the map called Huntingtown. The four
amphibious landing craft were parked abreast where they had powered ashore the
fourth and final time to deposit the last of the seven hundred marines, Captain
Zhen’s special forces team, and their four specially modified off-road
motorcycles.

“A glorious day, indeed,” he said to no one in particular as
the marines on shore worked their way north through a campground filled with
the tattered remnants of colorful tents and what he estimated to be several
dozen jiangshi. Moving from shore, bayonets fixed, the men worked methodically.
Step. Thrust. Clear. This went on for a couple of minutes and when all of the
jiangshi in the immediate vicinity were put down, other soldiers moved in and
dragged their leaking bodies from the beachhead to clear the way for the troop
transports and armored vehicles.

Always nearby, Corporal Meng said, “If only the Party’s
ruling class hadn’t commandeered our Harbin.”

“The ruling class commandeered
all
of the South Sea
Fleet’s helicopters to save themselves and their families,” Qi replied, grimly.
“Why would
Lanzhou
go unplucked?”

“No matter,” Meng said confidently. “This is a glorious day
for China and truly a great moment in history.”

“And history favors the bold,” replied Admiral Qi in a
measured tone.

Save for the small clusters of lights representing newly
established government redoubts on the outskirts of Springfield, Indianapolis,
and Cincinnati, the vast expanse of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio the Ghost Hawk
had overflown was an impenetrable sea of black. The random structure fires and
burning multi-vehicle pile-ups so commonplace during the outbreak’s onset were
nonexistent. Headlights of vehicles fleeing the dead no longer illuminated the
rural highways and byways. Aside from the flashing infrared lights on the
aircraft engaged in the first refueling, Cade’s constant companions for the
duration had been the three Ds: Doctor Silence perched at his window near his
minigun. The millions of dead he knew owned the land below the helicopter. And
darkness of the magnitude he’d only experienced at night high up in the
mountains of Afghanistan.

With the veil of night finally beginning to peel away from
east to west, Ari’s voice boomed over the shipboard comms. “Rise and shine. Up
and at ‘em. Drop your cocks and grab your socks,” he bellowed ahead of a wicked
laugh.

Cade imagined being a younger sibling to Ari. Oh what a
hellish existence that would have been. Maybe even to the point of rivaling Air
Force boot camp. He grinned at the thought and looked across the aisle where
Cross and Griff both came to in unison. Barely a second removed from the
impromptu wakeup, both men were back to sitting upright in their seats.

Grumbling about being so rudely awakened by such low brow
humor, Griff leaned against his safety harness and flashed the smartass SOAR
pilot a sour look.

Having been awake since the last aerial refuel near the
Illinois border, Cade had watched as the Air Force HC-130J Combat King II
tanker—its flashing running lights illuminating the immediate night sky like a
fireworks display—overtook the Jedi flight and settled off their port side at
his two o’ clock. After dousing the visible lights, the King’s starboard
refueling hose complete with red and white checkered drogue chute and gently
strobing IR light extended and the matte-black Stealth Chinooks drank from the
boom first. After Jedi One-Two received her fill of JP-8, the dual-rotor ship
fell back to make way for One-Three. Once the second helo’s tanks were full,
the SOAR pilot backed his bird away so the Ghost Hawk could take its turn at
the well.

“Jedi Lead moving into position,” Ari had said, his voice
loud and clear in Cade’s headset.

“Copy, Lead,” the tanker pilot had replied. “Make it quick,
our bird still needs to drink. If we don’t … you’ll be making hot refuels in
Indian country all the way back to Springs.”

“Native American country,” Ari quipped as he bled off a
little airspeed to match the Hercules.

“Figure of speech,” the Herc pilot had shot back blandly.

That last exchange had stuck in Cade’s head. During the last
hot refuel he’d been involved in, a man had died. Nothing fluke about his
death: Hicks had been gang-tackled. There were just too many Zs on the apron to
keep track of. And with a fuel bowser nearby, using the Ghost Hawk’s miniguns
to save the operator hadn’t been an option.

Now, four hours removed from the last aerial refueling and
with another one looming, Cade was still troubled by the memories of all the
good men lost to an act perpetrated by the very nation currently invading
America.

Thankfully, bringing his train of thought back to the
mission at hand, through his headset, Cade heard Ari begin coordinating the
current refuel order between the two new tanker pilots and Jedi One-Two and
One-Three. Trying to tune out the jargon-filled exchange, he looked through his
window to the dead world below. Illuminated by the first light of day, but
still partially shrouded in ground-hugging pockets of fog, the fuzzy outlines
of fields and barns and silos made small by distance began to pass diagonally
underneath the Ghost Hawk. As Ari side-slipped the helo to port, Cade glanced
up through the barely perceptible rotor blur and caught sight of the flashing
lights and angular silhouette of the KC-135 Stratotanker shadowing the entire
operation from a seemingly static position high above their current altitude.
Though the multi-engine jet appeared small in relation to the nearby and much
slower KC-130 the flight had just rendezvoused with, he knew the
jumbo-jet-sized Stratotanker keeping pace carried the fuel the Hercules would
need after transferring all it had to the entire Jedi Flight so as to ensure
that the “multiple hot refueling stops at abandoned Z-choked airfields” the
Herc pilot had spoken of would not occur.

***

Ten minutes had elapsed between the time Ari moved into
position and gently coupled with the boom trailing the larger gray turboprop
and their delicate dance was completed. After Ari’s customary promise to buy
the tanker crew beers when they next met, the Hercules serviced the other two helos
and drifted up and away to a refueling rendezvous of its own.

Based on the parting chatter between Ari and the flight crew
of the Stratotanker that had been stalking them, Cade drew the conclusion that
it was one of the last airworthy birds of the 435th Aerial Refueling Wing
operating out of Grissom Air Reserve Base in North Central Indiana, and once it
had finished topping off the KC-130 it would have just enough fuel to return to
base.

***

Ninety minutes after the latest aerial refueling in a string
of many, the Ghost Hawk was crossing over from West Virginia into Maryland.
Suddenly the shoulder straps bit into Cade’s shoulder as the helicopter banked
hard to starboard and entered an ever-steepening nose-down dive that saw the
distance between Jedi One-One and the ground quickly decrease by half. Grateful
he wasn’t hearing the electronic peal of a missile lock-on warning or feeling
the craft judder as flares rocketed from the airframe-mounted dispensers, he
calmly peered out his window and instantly saw the distant sun, big and white
and watery, nudging its way through faraway high-strata. As planned, the two
black Stealth Chinooks full of Rangers kept thundering east toward their
preplanned loiter location to wait as a quick reaction force to be utilized
should Cade’s team find themselves trapped and in need of immediate extraction.

Once the Chinooks were out of sight, Cade cast his gaze
groundward and saw the same pearlescent hue of the sun reflected back at him in
the Potomac River.

Delineating West Virginia and Maryland, the south-flowing
river snaked its way diagonally west to east, twisting and turning within view
of Arlington National Cemetery, the White House, and nearby National Mall,
Ronald Reagan National Airport, and finally the Pentagon, which was blackened
by soot and ringed by dozens of Humvees and various other pieces of military
hardware: Abrams tanks, multi-wheeled Strykers and boxy Bradley fighting
vehicles. Arranged with their barrels aiming outward, the static armor bespoke
of a frantic last stand that had obviously been won by the living dead.

“What a shitshow,” commented Ari, slowing the helo and
initiating a gentle turn to the east.

Just thinking aloud, Cade said, “Amazing that it took an
event such as this to pry the politicians from their hold on office.”

“Cold dead hands,” quipped Skipper. “And I can smell ‘em
from here.”

And Cade could, too. “Thanks for the reminder,” he said,
peering down on the Potomac River that, from five hundred feet in the air,
looked much different than he had remembered it. Maybe it was because the most
memorable image of the District of Columbia imprinted in his mind had come from
a grainy newscast he’d seen nearly thirty years prior. Then the Potomac had
been frozen over and an airliner-sized hole had been punched into its center. A
helicopter had hovered over the shattered ice, its rotor wash creating an
ever-widening concentric circle in the frigid chop. The only thing Cade
remembered seeing floating atop the river’s black surface at the time, other than
the inches-thick shards of broken ice, had been a female survivor and the one
Good Samaritan who had jumped to her aid from the nearby seawall. Something had
clicked inside of him, lending to his desire to help others one day.

Now, perhaps lending to his change in perception, thousands
upon thousands of bloated bodies, many of them reanimated and frothing the
ice-free water with their arms and legs, had become tangled in the remnants of
the 14th Street Bridge jutting from the river off the helo’s port side.

Taking in the macabre sight out his window, Axe said, “Isn’t
that the fuck all,” his British accent making it impossible for Cade to discern
whether it had been question or statement. “Looks just like satellite footage
of the River Thames.”

“Why didn’t you go home?” Cade asked, still staring at the
sights scrolling by below the Ghost Hawk.

“Wifey was in Japan at the time. On business.” Axe shook his
head. “She made it to the embassy but never made it to the waiting birds that
were supposed to take all of the British nationals home.”

Cade saw that they were about to overfly the National Mall.
“Did she get caught up in the Z outbreaks?” he asked.

Axe said nothing for a long while.

Silently contemplating things known only to them, both Cross
and Griff were staring out their respective windows when a call came in
indicating that the two Stealth Chinooks had just been painted by a
ground-based radar of some sort.

Immediately there was a noticeable increase in the turbine
whine and the nimble craft seemed to buck as Ari nosed her toward the deck. The
ground rushed up for a couple of seconds before the Ghost Hawk leveled off
close to the treetops and course-corrected north by east until the Washington
Monument loomed large through the cockpit glass.

Upthrust like a middle finger to the living, the granite
obelisk stood tall and majestic and as bone white as Cade had ever remembered
it being. Thousands of undead marched the National Park, trampling the lawn
into a dark brown morass. Of the fifty American flags once flying at its base,
only a dozen were left, colorful as the day they were made and snapping wildly
atop crazily canted flagpoles. Many more Zs, way too many to count, were mired
in the murky water of the reflecting pool. Suddenly becoming aware of the low-flying
aircraft, pale faces turned to the sky and tracked the near silent helo right
to left as it passed very close to the squat, Pantheon-like Lincoln memorial.

“Haynes, anything?” Ari barked rapid-fire.

“Clear so far.”

Ari said, “Skipper, keep your eyes peeled for missile
launches.”

Skipper said nothing.

Cade added eyes to the vigil off to port and assumed the
other operators were doing the same to starboard.

“Taking her down to NAP flight,” Ari warned. “We won’t be
shot out of the sky on my watch.”

With a recently consumed MRI and pint of water bouncing
around in his system, Cade drew some deep breaths in an attempt to avoid
earning a Puker patch.