Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

Shifting his gaze back to the helicopter, he saw his hopes
of an easy out dashed when the other pilot, who he’d thought was dead, brought his
gloved hands up and began batting away the tangle of wires hanging in front of
his face. Then, obviously fighting both gravity and the weight of his bulky flight
helmet, the pilot lifted his head to horizontal and held it there for a tick before
once again going limp in his harness.

“Your mercy mission just got more complicated,” Jasper said
to himself, as he silently picked his way through jagged wreckage resembling pieces
of honeycomb ripped from a scorched beehive. His approach undetected, he stood
over the lower half of the prostrate creature’s squirming body, feet a shoulder
width apart, and thrust his pistol through a crack in the cockpit glass. Heart
racing crazily, he took a deep breath and aimed for the rear of the
abomination’s skull—just above the base of the neck where the pencil eraser-sized
.22 caliber bullet had the best chance of penetration. And as he said a silent
prayer and drew back the final half-pound of trigger pull two things happened
simultaneously. First, the pilot went deathly quiet, all of the fight leaving
his body. Then, from somewhere deep inside the helicopter, someone bellowed, “
Hold
your fire!
”

Complying with the barked order, Jasper eased off the trigger,
and put his pistol in a back pocket.

Then the disembodied male voice calmly added, “There is a fuel
leak. You smelling it?”

Jasper clamped his mouth shut and breathed in through his
nose. Sure enough, barely perceptible, under the oppressive carrion pong, was a
hint of kerosene. “Yeah. But just barely,” he replied.

“Your gunfire would have ignited the vapors, killing us all.”

Stunned into silence by the revelation of just how close
he’d come to finally making St. Peter’s acquaintance, Jasper shifted his weary gaze
to the lurching troop, still half a football field away, and vectoring unwaveringly
towards the wreckage.

With a calm air of authority, the male voice asked, “What’s
your name?”

Dividing his attention between keeping a tab on the deadly creature
near his feet and probing the chopper’s gloomy interior for the source of the
voice, he answered, “Jasper ... Jasper Hasp.”

“OK, Jasper Hasp,” said the voice. “Do you have a knife?”

“A machete,” answered Jasper.

“Then
kill
the thing,” the male voice stated calmly.

Jasper hinged at the waist,
looked under the pilot’s visor. He noticed the man’s eyeballs darting around behind
closed ashen lids. “Sorry friend,” he said softly. “You’re going to turn and
there’s nothing anyone can do for you now.” Then the big-boned undertaker regarded
the zombie. He shuddered at the sight as the thing continued burrowing—pulling
its emaciated body forward—inch by inch past the broken glass and twisted metal
of the shattered cockpit. Finally he bent down and wrapped his calloused hands
around the zombie’s cold, clammy ankles. He hauled back and straightened his
legs, and tugged the soulless monster through the jagged glass, inflicting deep
half-moon shaped lacerations along both sides of its ribcage. Then, after dragging
the writhing abomination clear of the pooled fuel, he crushed his knee against
its knobby spine, took a handful of matted hair, and behind a short economical
swing, buried the machete inches deep into its exposed temple. “It’s done,” he
said as gray matter and brackish blood bubbled around the blade.

“Good job,” called the person from inside the helicopter. “What
kind of shape are the pilots in?”

“The one who
was
screaming nearly lost his arm to one
of those
things
,” Jasper said. He crouched down and peered through the
glass and the space between the two pilots and finally caught sight of a man-shaped
silhouette deep in the bowels of the aircraft. “I’m sorry ... it’ll only be a
matter of time before he turns.”

Save for the moaning and hisses of the nearby dead, there
was a short silence. Jasper felt very alone. He wanted the stranger to keep talking.
To tell him what to do. He stood up and looked the length of the wreckage, walked
a half dozen feet to his right, and regarded the underbelly of the aircraft.
Weeds and grass hung in clumps where they had been worked into panels split presumably
upon impact. That Jasper could see no markings on the craft’s fuselage, and the
fact the man inside of it was wearing some sort of camouflage uniform that he
didn’t recognize, left a whole lot up to his imagination—most of which made him
wish he’d followed his gut instinct and hadn’t gotten involved. Ignoring the
flight impulse, he took a sidelong glance towards the advancing flesh-eaters and
said, “What are
you
going to do about the infected pilot?”

“Unless you’ve been under a rock the past three weeks,” the
shadowy form said, “you know what must be done. But first things first. My foot
is trapped, so I’m going to need your help in here. Then I’ll see to Durant’s
condition and do what’s necessary.”

“He could turn any second,” said Jasper excitedly. “His
fingers are beginning to twitch.”

Hearing this, Ari’s head again levered sideways and his entire
body went rigid. He mumbled something indecipherable and shot his gloved hands to
the safety harness suspending him at a precarious angle mere feet from harm’s
way. “
Durant’s hurt
...” he called out frantically, eyes fixed on his
good friend to his left. “I need to help him. I think he’s bleeding out ...”

“Ari
, stand down
,” the shadowy form bellowed. “Durant
is
gone
. He’s infected, and if you unbuckle yourself now you will be too.”

“Do something then,” Ari said sharply.

“He’s beyond our help,” answered the voice from within the
helicopter.

Nodding in agreement, Jasper flashed the inconsolable pilot
an empathetic look, and once again performed the sign of the cross.

Apparently resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere
anytime soon, Ari composed himself and reached down near his feet, manipulating
something there. He hinged back up, swiveled his head left and yelled back into
the cabin, “I took care of our leaking fuel problem.”

Not gonna help us much now,
Jasper thought to himself,
looking at an ever-widening moat of fuel and other viscous fluids forming around
the aircraft. He backed up a step and shifted his gaze to the right, spotting
the body of a man lying several yards away. The prostrate form was wedged up
against the iron fence surrounding the cemetery, but didn’t look to be in an
advanced state of decay like the infected citizens of Draper that Jasper had
been depositing here for days. This one looked newly dead and was wearing some
kind of tan fatigues that rendered him nearly invisible amongst the sun-scorched
grass. And if it hadn’t have been for the wide-open staring eyes, which were now
merely black dots sunken into a slack ashen face, he would have missed seeing
it entirely.

Projecting his voice into the fuselage through cupped hands,
Jasper called out, “We’ve got more pressing problems out here.”

“What kind of problems?” the man asked from deep within the
wreck.

“Your friend Ari here says he stopped the leak, but I’m
afraid there’s still a fairly deep pool of gas that’s formed up around the
helicopter.” He went silent for a second, took a deep breath. Then, wishing
he’d lugged the shotgun along, added, “Also ... there are more than twenty of
those dead things heading our way, and no doubt more following behind them. I
reckon that’s way more than I can handle by myself ... with only my pistol and
a machete.”

“How far away are the Zs?” croaked Ari, trying to crane his
head around.

“Quarter mile ... give or take. I figure we’ve got two ...
three minutes tops to get you two out of there and get around to my truck. But
there’s also something else you need to know.”

There was a short silence, after which the voice inside the
fuselage said, “Spit it out.”

“There’s a dead man out here ... and he’s wearing the same
camouflage get up as you. Anybody missing from inside there?”

There was another short silence.

Finally the man inside the helicopter replied, “My name is
Cade. And I need you to forget about everything out there for
now
. I have
plenty of problems of my own and I need your help inside here. Right now I’ve
got a man trying to bleed out on me and three more who are either unconscious
or dead ... hard to tell ‘cause they’re wearing body armor and helmets.”

After casting one last furtive glance at the approaching
pack of dead, Jasper walked his gaze over the jagged metal edges still dripping
with the zombie’s blood. Then, noting wisps of acrid smoke wafting from the rear
half of the wreckage, he said, “How do you expect me to get inside there?”

“
Improvise
,” Cade said sharply.

Utilizing the titanium frame like
the rungs of a ladder, Jasper scaled the listing helicopter. When he reached
the top—which was really the helicopter’s right side—he saw a gaping hole where
some kind of a sliding door had once been. He ducked under a drooping slab of rotor
blade, lay flat on his stomach on the warm black fuselage, and stared down into
the crumpled crew compartment. Instantly he was hit full in the face with the reek
of fear-laced sweat and the metallic tang of spilt blood.

Arms blood-slickened and fighting a losing battle to hold Ronnie
Gaines’ guts in, Cade looked up at the man whom so far he’d only seen reflected
in miniature scale on Ari’s smoked visor. “Jasper, I need you to jump on in
here and start seeing to them,” he said, gesturing with a nod of his helmet
towards the limp forms strapped in across the way. “Check for a pulse, and if
you don’t find one right away, move on to the next person.”

Jump? Yeah right
, thought Jasper.
I’m forty-five going
on sixty
. Gingerly he scrabbled over the edge, placed his feet on the frame
of the shattered flat-panel display mounted to the fore bulkhead, and then
reached for the neck of the closest of the three still strapped-in bodies. The
second his fingers grazed the man’s carotid, a gloved hand shot upward and
grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip. Then the soldier—who was clad head-to-toe
in black body armor and matching helmet—opened his eyes and whispered two words:
“What happened?”

Good question
, thought Jasper as he pulled free from
the man’s clutch, and with a flick of the eyes deferred the question to the man
calling himself Cade.

“I’m certain I heard Durant say “
Bird strike
” and the
cockpit went black just before the helo went lawn dart on us,” replied Cade.
“None of that matters now. How are
you
doing, Cross?”

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” the man responded. “Probably
gonna have some serious whiplash. Maybe gonna need a massage when we get back
to Schriever.”

With a dog-like tilt to his head, Jasper followed the
conversation.

“We’ve got to make it out of here alive first,” intoned
Cade. He ripped another trauma bandage from its packaging, tossed the blood-soaked
one aside, and pressed the fresh item into Gaines’s abdomen, eliciting a groan
from the ashen general. “Cross, my hands are full here ... you’re going to have
to triage Lopez and Hicks.”

“Copy that,” answered Cross as he gripped the airframe above
his head and released the harness that had most likely saved his life. Holding all
of his weight with his upper body, he ducked his head around a dangling wiring
harness and lowered himself down, careful not to step on Cade or the general.
Carefully, he placed the sole of one boot on the hand grip of the port side
mini-gun, and then toed the other securely into some nylon webbing hanging off
the aft bulkhead. Then he wrestled his gloves off, reached up and grabbed
Sergeant Hicks’ wrist. He worked his fingers under the glove and detected a
very strong pulse there. He let go of Hicks’ arm, and then, like some kind of aerial
contortionist, or an astronaut in space, performed a slow motion pirouette. Now
in a position where he could reach Lopez, he grabbed a handful of webbing to
steady himself, lifted the operator’s limp arm and wormed two fingers under his
glove and blindly felt his wrist in search of a radial pulse.
Nothing.
The operator’s skin was cool and slick to the touch.

With a sick feeling washing over him, Cross released the
dead man’s arm and let gravity take it. As he watched it fall away, a flash of
purple showed between the man’s camouflage sleeve and his tan tactical glove.
Then a conversation he’d had with Lopez prior to boarding the Ghost Hawk at
Schriever came rushing back. He remembered the stocky operator saying that since
the CDC mission during which Desantos ordered him to carry the decaying Alpha
specimen up thirteen flights of stairs, he
always
wore at least two pair
of surgical latex gloves underneath his tactical gloves.
Protects against
the demonio blood
, Lopez said as he snapped them on. So Cross reached over
and checked the man’s carotid and felt a strong pulse there. “These two are
alive,” he said, looking about the cabin, “but where the hell is Tice ...
anyone see the Spook?”

“Could be the body I saw out there—near the fence,” Jasper
said to Cross. “I’m certain that he’s dead. He was pale as a ghost and his eyes
were stuck wide open.”

“
Dead?
Are you certain?” asked Cross incredulously
while holding the compress to the general’s abdomen with one hand.

“Positive,” the undertaker replied from his perch atop the
wreck. “He’s all contorted and hasn’t moved a muscle since I first saw him.”

“What happened?” asked Lopez groggily.