Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

Four minutes out from what was initially going to be
objective number two, Ari said, “Nash couldn’t wrangle updated satellite
imagery so here’s the bird’s eye view of Long Beach Naval Shipyards, also known
as Terminal Island.” A moment later an image flashed up on the cabin monitor.
And as they got closer to the manmade island he swung Jedi One-One wide right
out to sea, leaving the black Osprey behind. A few seconds later Ari had the
near silent stealth helo in a steady hover eight hundred feet over open water.

“Looks like the FEMA folks had the National Guard drop the
bridges,” proffered Haynes.

Manning the FLIR controls, Ari zoomed in on the nearest
fallen span and quipped, “Pardon the pun, but looks like somebody was forced to
take extreme measures to keep the undead citizens of Los Angeles at
bay
.”

A collective groan sounded in the passenger cabin.

Ignoring the quip and unable to see the full scope of the
damage through the port window, Cade shifted his gaze to the monitor and watched
as the camera zoomed out from the fractured concrete pilings and panned slowly
left to right. The place looked deserted and, sure enough, as Ari had already
alluded to, all three bridges—one coming in from the north, another from the
east, and a third from south—had been reduced to rubble, the tons of concrete
and rebar now sitting on the bay floor.

The camera zoomed in to the northwest corner of the
operation where what looked like a couple of acres of once bare concrete,
surrounded by a smattering of shipping containers and rust-streaked cranes on
rails, had been covered completely by thousands of body bags, many of them
containing reanimated corpses. South of the undulating sea of body bags were
more dead bodies than Cade had seen in one place. Heaped two stories high and
host to thousands of white seagulls, the monument to Omega’s ruthless
efficiency was exponentially bigger than the mound of dead Americans he had
come across near the coal plant at the junction to State Route 6 east of Salt
Lake City. And hard as it was for him to wrap his mind around, there were even
more corpses in the water here than there had been lodged against the spillway
of the Flaming Gorge Dam in southern Utah. Of all the monuments to humanity’s
suffering he had seen since Z-Day, this one, by far, troubled him most.

“No wonder they abandoned the place,” said Lasseigne,
breaking a long silence. “Hell of a biohazard down there.”

“Not as bad as this one here,” said Ari over the comms.
“’Cause these ones are still ambulatory.” The camera moved in its gimbal and
zoomed in and focused on the far end of what remained of the east bridge once
connecting the naval yard to the mainland. The crowd of flesh-eaters amassed
there probably could have filled the mall in Washington D.C. ten times over.
They were moving south and filling up both sides of the freeway, their bodies
pressed close enough together to create the illusion that the whole lot of them
were rippling like a human wave at a ball game, only on a much grander scale.

“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that thing,” said Cross.
“That would swallow up the Pueblo horde.”

“Copy that,” said Cade. “Its mass is almost incomprehensible
... probably double the size of the Denver horde Lopez and the boys nuked at
Castle Rock. I’d guess there’s one ... one point five million Zs down there, at
least.”

Griffin added, “And that’s just a fraction of the population
that used to call Los Angeles home.”

The men suddenly went silent and their stomachs and
testicles relocated inside their bodies as the helicopter nosed down and their
altitude and distance to the artificial island was quickly halved. A handful of
seconds later, sending everyone’s anatomy in the opposite direction, Ari flared
Jedi One-One hard and commenced a hover over the southwest portion of the yards
bordered on two sides by water being beaten to a froth by hundreds of pasty
white and horribly bloated reanimated corpses.

Back in the cabin Cade swallowed hard and took a calming
breath. He glanced at the monitor and saw that what had initially looked like
tiny multicolored Legos from their standoff distance were actually hundreds of
intermodal shipping containers like the type the Eden compound was constructed
of. And like the cranes and wheeled contraptions that moved the containers from
the back of long-haul trucks to waiting ships, they were rust-streaked and
showed lots of wear and tear. Stacked three high and several deep, they
completely ringed the FEMA facility. And in the center of the castle-like
walls, erected on what had to be several acres of flat ground crisscrossed by
train tracks and marked up with numbers and letters that amounted to little
more than longshoreman hieroglyphics to the layperson, were white semi-rigid
tents too numerous to count. The first three rows of twelve abutting the
seawall to the south were lined up precisely and looked to have been erected
with care, most likely before the full scale of the outbreak was known. The
next dozen or so rows had been thrown up hastily and stood in ragged formation,
roofs sagging and door flaps waving lazily in the offshore breeze.

A pair of large recreational vehicles, the kind which
snowbirds often traded their homes for in retirement—FEMA command centers, Cade
guessed—were parked nose to tail near the southwestern corner of the seawall,
extensions bulging from their sides. Nearby were a dozen smaller panel vans
tagged with bold blue FEMA logos. Roughly fifty yards north of the tent city
and inert command vehicles, surrounded by temporary chain-link fencing held in
place by removable cement anchors, was a trio of FEMA COWs—Cell tower On
Wheels. The COW trailers were hitched to identical white Peterbilt tractors and
each had a telephone-pole-sized tower rising up through its roof. Sporting all
kinds of shiny angular panels and cylinders all connected by wires and
insulators, the tower looked like a giant-sized royal scepter minus the
ubiquitous gilding and encrusted jewels.

Parked in a semicircle nose-to-nose near the COW trailers
were three white Econoline style vans also with FEMA emblazoned in blue on
their roofs and sides. Hitched to each van was a white windowless single-axle
trailer, and connected to each trailer, umbilical-like by a thick black cable,
was a white satellite dish the size of a backyard trampoline.

The ground from the command vehicles to the fencing
surrounding the COW was littered with shell casings all glittering in the sun.
And here and there among the tents and vehicles were dozens of Zs clothed
mostly in civilian attire or still wearing their blue and white FEMA garb. And
scattered amongst the herd were a number of soldiers who had died clad for all
eternity in their MultiCam fatigues.

Most of the walking dead were covered in blood, theirs or
others. The blood had dried to a glossy black and threw the sun as they moved
about aimlessly. Even viewed from afar and relayed to a monitor in a hovering
aircraft the defensive wounds to hands and arms, likely received during the
frantic egress when ammo was low and tensions were running high, was clearly
evident.

“This is the last known location of our target,” said Lopez,
breaking the shroud of silence. “Z-Day plus five, I believe. These temporary
cell sites known as COWs were still operable then. Same deal though ... the
cell tower here did its part but the commercial communications sats didn’t
relay the signal.”

“Or somebody jammed them,” said Griffin. “With all due
respect, Sir. Z-Day plus five was a
long
time ago. The target could be
anywhere. Palm Desert. Balboa Island. In one of those ... body bags.”

“We’re going on what we
do
know. We’re starting here
because we know the facility was secure a week out. After that ... it’s highly
likely that some survivors were relocated to other camps inland by helo. Also
reports indicate that a larger number of civilians and essential government
personnel were evacuated by sea.”

Incredulous, Griff said, “You’re telling me Nash was able to
sweet talk President Clay into allowing this mission but couldn’t pull any
strings between days one and five to get a lone chopper and team of shooters in
here to secure the target?”

Lopez shook his head. He said, “She had her hands full
moving satellites around D.C. searching for President Odero, who had gone dark.
So proof of life for Nash amounts to only a handful of voice messages all
stamped by the location services in the target’s phone as having originated
from the USC area.”

Cross said, “Doesn’t explain why we’re starting here and not
the target’s last known location.”

Cade said, “Lopez is working up to it.”

Griffin pressed, “So if there was an open line of
communication, why wasn’t the target instructed to egress to a safe exfil
point?”

“Sure the messages came in when the sats were still up,”
answered Lopez. “But you’re going to have to ask Nash why she didn’t call back.
You and I both know that from the get go cell lines were overloaded. Land lines
were overloaded. The Iridium satellite array was overloaded.”

“I can sympathize,” said Cade. “I was in Nash’s shoes by day
two. My phone was working sporadically. The messages I did get out ... I had no
idea if they’d been received or not. And I didn’t find out until days later.”

Ari broke in over the comms, “How’d Nash get a trace on the
pings this far out from Z-day in the first place?”

“Being the computer whiz that she is, somehow she got ahold
of a log of all of the cell tower pings in Southern California ... whether the
calls serviced by the towers were received by the cellular sats and bounced to
another cell tower somewhere in CONUS or not. I don’t know how she thought of
this ... pretty brilliant if you ask me. She went through the pings that
weren’t passed on ... or transmitted, if you will, by the carrier satellites
until she located the target’s number which she found to have sent out numerous
pings after the cellular communication sats went down.”

Lasseigne said, “So the target was here?” He pointed to the
white mast below. “And the phone in question pinged off of
that
mobile
tower?”

“Yes,” replied Lopez. “The pings start up north near USC and
then the target’s phone pinged off of different towers in multiple locations,
and if you connected the dots you’d find a straight line north to south from
USC to here.” He paused for a tick. Then finished by saying, “And here is where
they ceased.”

Cade looked at Lopez, then Lasseigne and finally Griffin and
said, “First off, the
target’s
name is Nadia. Nash’s daughter was a
senior at USC. Secondly, during the shit show that those first few days was
there was continuity of government to worry about ... she oversaw President
Odero’s rescue while D.C. was still going through its final death throes. And
when that rescue went sideways she was the main person responsible for locating
Speaker Valerie Clay.
She
sent Desantos and Lopez to the Greenbrier in
West Virginia to secure our new president and bring her back to Springs. So,
with all due respect,
Griff
, I think second guessing Nash at this point
after we’ve all already volunteered to find
Nadia
is foolish.”

Griffin put his hands up in mock surrender. He said, “No
disrespect intended.”

Nodding, Lopez went on, “So we do a quick search of the
tents with the intent of finding Nadia alive. While you’re at it keep your eyes
open for
anything
resembling Nadia.”

Cade thought:
Anything?
But he said, “Call them what
they are, Lopez. They’re zombies, not humans. They weren’t brought back by the
Devil to stalk the living. God’s not smiting us either. This was a colossal
fuck up started by a man or woman in a bug-making facility thousands of miles
away. No doubt Omega was being weaponized and they succeeded ... but it got
out. So as my theory goes, the Chinese generals, having already been working up
plans for an invasion of Taiwan and possibly Japan anyway, decided to send the
Alpha and an unknown number of human missiles here ... carrying the already
escaped virus as their payload.”

Cross said, “I agree. Just like their and the Russian’s nuke
doctrine. They still subscribe to—or at least they did forty-three days
ago—mutually assured destruction. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. And that’s no different
than a martyr strapping on an explosive vest embedded with nails and ball
bearings and hoping to take as many innocents at a wedding or bazaar or
government checkpoint with him as possible.”

Lasseigne chimed in, “Omega was ...
is
... terror on
an epic scale.”

“They may have succeeded. And I’m sure we haven’t seen the
last of them,” replied Cade as the satellite phone in his cargo pocket vibrated
against his thigh. He extracted it, thumbed a button and, when the screen lit
up, read the brief text message. Finished, he cycled through the half-dozen
contacts, finding
Greg Beeson
just ahead of the entry labeled
Nash
.
He punched out a two-paragraph message, the first three words reading:
For
Duncan Winters
. He finished the message with two words:
Stay frosty
.
He hit the green pad marked
Send
and once he saw the message had been
transmitted, he thumbed the
End
button and watched the screen go dark.
Still clutching the phone two-handed, he looked out over the Pacific Ocean and
revisited Brook’s message in his mind. The words
concussion, collapsed lung
and possible asthma
didn’t put the fear of God in him; however, the part
when Brook indicated that all three together is
like a perfect storm taxing
her remaining good lung
set off the first tingles of worry in his gut. And
compounding that apprehension was Brook’s sentence indicating that she had no
choice but to make a run outside the wire to Woodruff—a town far from the Eden
compound and seemingly light years from Los Angeles.