Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (15 page)

“If we clear a spot for them,” answered Ari, thinking to
himself how eerie it was to have Cade reading his mind at nearly every turn.
“Road’s pretty choked,” he added. “It’s gonna take some work.”

“Can you drive?”

“I couldn’t scratch my balls even if I wanted to,” said Ari,
both arms still numbed out of commission from hanging inside the helo like a
meat piñata for the dead.

“We better get to it then,” said Cade, downshifting in order
to power through a phalanx of ambling Zs. “Whatever you do, Jasper. Make sure
when you pop them they fall
away
from the truck’s path.” Then,
practicing what he preached, Cade retrieved the Glock from the seat. Swerving
right, he squeezed off half a dozen rounds, dropping four of the dead that were
doing their best to get in front of the truck. Finally seeing a sliver of
daylight, he nosed the truck through and flicked his gaze south of west, where far
off in the distance he recognized the unmistakable form of the Hercules crossing
the sun on a wide banking turn.

“They’re coming back,” said Cade into the comms.

***

Onboard the Hercules, Dover thumbed through his mission
briefing paperwork and found the communications page that listed all of the
call signs and the frequencies the different packages were broadcasting on. He
located the frequency the Delta team had used to communicate with the Jedi
flight and amongst themselves while they were on the ground at the NML.
“Meredith, take this.” He handed the clipboard to his co-pilot. “Since you’re
not getting a copy on the dust-off frequency, why don’t you try and hail them
on their RF comms.”

***

Cade had one eye on the approaching plane and was sighting
down the Glock with the other, when a voice with a slight southern drawl utilizing
a calm, business-like syntax said in his earpiece, “Oil Can Five-Five here.
Anvil Actual, is that you in the civilian vehicle at my eleven o’clock ... how
copy?”

Containing his enthusiasm, Cade answered back, “Anvil Actual
... I have a solid copy. And it’s very nice to hear your voice.”

“Well it just so happens to be your lucky day, Anvil,”
replied the pilot. “Because you, my friend who has already been written off as
dead by the brass, are the very lucky recipient of one off the record and
highly insubordinate final pass.”

“Roger that, Oil Can. We’ll be sure to keep this off the
record. And rest assured if I have to go outside the wire for it—you’ll be
getting more than the case of beer Ari already promised you—” Cade ceased
talking mid-thought and jerked the wheel hard left to avoid a pair of Zs making
one of their patented slow speed lunges into the path of the creeping pick-up.

“That was close,” said Jasper, flinching away from the
window. Then he asked Ari with a quizzical look on his face, “Who is he talking
to?”

“His imaginary friend ... talks to him
all
of the
time,” answered Ari in his best deadpan. “He hears voices as well. And sees
dead people.” Ari wanted to make the universal finger-circling-the-ear gesture
implying Cade was cuckoo, but didn’t want to bring on another wave of nausea by
trying to move his arms. So he said, “Jasper ... I’m fucking with you.”

To which Jasper said nothing. Instead the undertaker powered
his window up and stared straight through the windshield.

Searching for a suitable stretch of road or tract of land
for the plane to land, Cade looked over his shoulder at I-90 stretching off to
the east.
No good
. It was choked with walking corpses and vehicles. Too
many to navigate in this ride. And switching vehicles wasn’t an option. He
glanced in the rearview at Cross, who was kneeling on one knee, swaying to and
fro like he was in a tiny skiff fighting rough seas. The Secret Service man had
one hand wedged under the lip on the passenger side of the bed and the SCAR carbine
gripped tightly in the other, pulling it taught against its sling in order to
steady the front heavy weapon. Hicks was switching magazines while Lopez was
opposite Cross—a near mirror image—his suppressed M4 held steady, squeezing off
snap shots at the creatures within reaching distance.

With the merge to the 90 at the top of the ramp getting
closer one hard-fought uphill yard at a time, Cade pushed off against the sagging
springs and craned to see what lay ahead before committing fully.

“This is Oil Can Five-five,” said Dover in Cade’s ear bud. “We
didn’t pick up a distress signal on the
dust-off
frequency. Is your
transponder activated?”

“It wasn’t at first ... but that’s a long story,” Cade said
back. “It is activated now.”

After fiddling with the radio’s switches for a second, Ari
said, “It’s powered on and looks to be transmitting normally.” Then, after
inspecting the stocky antenna and noticing a fair amount of abnormal play at
its base, he finally conceded that it had probably been broken either in the
crash or when he had unclasped his harness and hinged forward into the choppers
mangled HUD—heads up display.

“No matter,” Dover said back. “Let’s put our heads together
and think of a way to get you all aboard.”

Already several steps ahead in his mind, Cade nosed the
pick-up onto the 90 and felt his heart skip a beat when the entire picture
unfolded. As far as he could see, cars, trucks, and SUVs were spread out at intervals
resembling some kind of a static Indy 500 staggered start. Dotting the lanes
every hundred yards or so were vehicles piled high with worldly belongings, some
of them occupied with moving, festering corpses.

After travelling a dozen yards moving at a school-zone clip,
Cade had an idea. He pulled in tight next to a white panel van that had taken
quite a beating. The rear bumper was hanging precariously, and the three corners
he could see were battered and rounded off, presumably from striking metal and
meat alike during a mad dash from Sioux Falls. Crimson hand prints marked every
square inch of the Euro-styled van, and as he stopped alongside, the distinct
smell of sun-baked carrion wafted from the passenger window. Cade looked left
at the swollen inanimate corpse. Feasting on a gray hunk of rotting tongue,
flies darted in and out of its drooping mouth.
What’s your story,
he
thought, as the sweet treat hinged forward and bumped against the inner door,
sending a buzzing black and green cloud into the air.

Ignoring the nearby creature and its vain attempts to get a
hand on him, Cade said, “Cross, get up on the van and tell me what you see.”

Instantly the gunfire from the bed diminished and the truck
lurched upward on its springs, relieved of a portion of its burdensome load as Cross
launched his two hundred and fifty pound frame at the panel truck, made a
handhold out of the sleek black rail atop it, and easily scrabbled aboard.

A few seconds elapsed before Cross said, “Wait one.
Adjusting optics.”

Then there was another long moment during which no words
were exchanged and everyone seemed to be holding their breath. The only sounds,
dry hisses of the dead and a rhythmic coughing coming from the truck’s bed as
Hicks and Lopez pumped 5.56 rounds from their M4 carbines into the dead.

Finally Cross relayed in detail what he was seeing.

To Cade, none of it sounded good.

Schriever AFB

Catching Airman Davis unaware, Brook hopped from the Cushman
before it had come to a complete stop. Without a backwards glance, and fully
expecting an admonishment from the uptight driver, she set her jaw and squared
her shoulders to lend the impression that she knew exactly where she was going
as she strode towards the rear entrance to the wide, low-slung building.

Built of cinder and glass and finished in a dull battleship
gray, the fifties-era structure housed all of the different elements comprising
the 50th Space Wing, including the bustling TOC which was her ultimate
destination.

Having already been warned that President Valerie Clay would
be in attendance, as would her protection detail, Brook left her M4 behind a
withered bush and shouldered her way through the door without regard to who or
what stood in her way.

The door swung shut behind her, closing with a soft squelch.
She paused for a moment to get her bearings, listening hard for any sounds she imagined
might be associated with a command center: barked orders, the bustle of bodies
in close proximity to one another, perhaps fingers tapping out commands on
computer keyboards.
Nothing.
The only noise evident as she stood
stock-still was the muted hiss of overhead fluorescents and the nearly
subliminal whoosh of conditioned air transiting conduits hidden behind the
ceiling’s drop down tiles. And overriding the building’s mechanical noises was
the steady cadence of her beating heart. She let her gaze follow the hall off
to the left and then she took in the nearly identical view to the right. The floors
were covered with a battleship-gray, institutional-type low wear carpeting— easy
on the feet but not on the eyes—and breaking up the linear flow of the wood paneled
walls, photos of men and women looking important in blue uniforms were affixed
at regular intervals. She ignored their squared-away plastic smiles as she
filed past, instead focusing all of her attention on finding signage that would
point her to the
top secret
satellite command center.

After a winding and fruitless search of the left half of the
building, and finding absolutely nothing, she went back the way she had come.
The entry door passed by on her right, and she padded down the narrow corridor experiencing
a niggling sense of déjà vu. Minus the low-hanging pipes and wires snaking overhead,
this part of the building reminded her of the interior of a submarine she’d
once toured. Wondering why she hadn’t come across any Air Force personnel or a
submariner or two, she walked a straight line past a handful of closed doors
and came to another ‘T’ where another decision loomed.
Left or right
?
she asked herself.

To the left was more of the same: dark wood, gray flooring,
and harsh lighting. To the right, past a stainless wall-mounted drinking
fountain, the hallway doubled in width and continued on for another twenty or
thirty feet before ending at a sturdy-looking door of brushed metal with no visible
handle or hinges. Affixed to the door at eye level was a sign that said
Authorized
Personnel Only,
and coming from the other side were subdued voices engaged
in serious-sounding conversation.
Gotta be here
, Brook thought as she ignored
the sign and leaned against it, leading with her shoulder.
Locked.

She stood there for a moment wondering what could be so
important for Nash to summon her to the back door of the TOC a number of hours
prior to Cade’s supposed return. Maybe the Delta team was coming back empty
handed. Perhaps Nash wanted to put her off balance in order to try and convince
her to allow Cade to go on another mission. She would be in a foreign environment—not
necessarily hostile—but still staffed by Nash’s people which would surely lend
the major the upper hand in any kind of negotiations.
Stick to your guns
,
she told herself. Then she came up with a couple of mental bullet points to use
if she was in fact ambushed:
You can’t be swayed this time because your debt
to Nash and Shrill has already been paid in full—twice. President Clay is a
person, nothing less, nothing more
. With the fear of finding out Cade’s
fate pulling her from the door like some kind of invisible tractor beam, and
her newfound ‘
moxie
,’ something her mother had called
the rare
commodity a female needed to survive in a man’s world
urging her to confront
that fear, she deliberated for a second outside the door.

And as she worked the pro and con columns in her head, she
remembered her mom speaking highly of the women pilots who flew the newly-built
fighters from the assembly lines near Boeing Field in Washington State to their
respective jumping-off airbases during World War 2. According to Mom, those
women had ‘
moxie
.’ Mom had always used
her
mother as an example
of a courageous woman blessed with the very same trait. Gloria had been one of
the famous women known collectively as
Rosie the Riveter
. They were the
women who dropped everything: kids, husbands, a teacher’s job in Grandma’s case,
in order to assist the war efforts by helping to build the Liberty Ships in the
Van Port shipyards.

Brook smiled at the good memories she had of her mom, the
woman who had been her best friend in life. Then, dredging up enough courage to
confront Nash and possibly the President in front of a room filled with Air
Force personnel and Secret Service agents, she closed her fist and pounded resolutely
against the door.

A second later it was opened by an unsmiling man whose eyes
were hidden behind wraparound glasses with lenses that appeared honed from
obsidian and reflected a half-dozen moving images from the flat panel screens
scattered about the room. At six-and-a-half feet tall and easily north of two
seventy-five—except for catching a casual glance at one of the
athletes
in a WWF match on television—this wall of flesh was undeniably the biggest man Brook
had ever seen. And as a nurse who’d had to transfer many a patient bigger than
her from one bed to another, she possessed an uncanny knack for guessing,
rather accurately, these kinds of attributes. There was no doubt in her mind that
if this were a hospital setting and he one of those patients, two or three burly
orderlies wouldn’t be able to budge him.

For a few long seconds he didn’t move or react to her presence
in any way. He just filled the doorway like some kind of bouncer at a Manhattan
nightclub. Resisting the urge to knee the Golem in the nuts and scream
I’m
on the VIP list
, Brook instead, in as nice and cordial of a tone as she
could muster considering the circumstances, demanded to speak to Major Freda
Nash.