Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (4 page)

Hopefully, she thought, Robert Christian’s execution—supposedly
set to take place the next morning—would satisfy the need for revenge openly
called for by the handful of outbreak survivors.
Surely
, Brook thought.
Absent
the real perpetrator of the attack—cutting off the head of the snake would be
better than nothing.

Beginning the day before, scores of injured and badly-burned
civilian refugees had begun arriving from the south, fleeing the dead by car,
bus, and pretty much anything with wheels ahead of raging fires that she had
overheard one shell-shocked man describe as
a great conflagration
.

Most of the survivors, because of infection, injury, or a
combination of both, were still in quarantine and might never make it out
alive. Explaining to Raven why and where all of them came from had been a
little difficult. On the one hand she hadn’t wanted to sugarcoat their new
reality with half-truths or generalities. But if the twelve-year-old was going
to be a hardy survivor going forward, downplaying even the smallest detail
would only prove to leave her at a disadvantage—especially if she faced
something similar in the future. So Brook used their flight from Fort Bragg as
an example; however, she did downplay the numbers significantly since she had
been told the ferocity of the undead attacks on the living during their
diaspora from Pueblo would alarm even the most seasoned combat veteran. Just
last night at dinner she’d overheard an older officer likening the scene on
Interstate 25 to the aptly-named Highway of Death between Kuwait and Basra on
which thousands of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard had been savaged by the
full might of the United States Air Force, Marine, and Naval airpower.

Apparently several thousand survivors had been holed up and
hunkered down, scattered throughout Pueblo, probably cut off from the outside
world and hoping to wait Omega out, Brook explained. Until finally the raging
fires and advancing dead had literally eaten their way north, consuming
buildings and flesh alike. The ones arriving now, she warned Raven, were the
first of many. What she didn’t say was that she had overheard the same officer
mention that tens of thousands of walking dead were shambling north towards
Colorado Springs in hot pursuit of the survivors. Raven would find out the hard-to-swallow
facts soon enough. Hell, thought Brook. Mother and daughter might just find
themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder picking off the dead from within the
same guard tower—a family affair indeed. She shuddered at the thought.

“Finish up, Raven,” Brook said, chair legs screeching as she
rose and policed up her trash. “You
kids
still want to learn to shoot?”
she asked, her gaze lingering mostly on Wilson.

Raven was up first, obviously eager to resume her
studies
.
“Can we bring Max?” she asked excitedly, referring to the stray Australian
Shepherd she had adopted the day before.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” replied Brook. “He can’t
stay in the barracks all day.” Besides, she thought to herself. If Cade was
going to allow the dog to come along with them to Eden, then it would be nice
to know how the stray reacted to prolonged gunfire.

“Yippee,” cried Raven. “Can I ride my bike?”

“Yes you may.”

On the way out the door Sasha sidled next to Raven and
whispered in her ear. “Can I get a turn on your bike?”

Grinning ear to ear, Raven answered, “You can go first. On
one condition.”

“What is it?” Sasha replied, trapping a strand of red curls
behind her ear.

“You have to agree to let my mom show you how to shoot my
rifle. It’s little ...”

Rolling her eyes, Sasha said, “I’m not
afraid
. It’s
just we’re not really a gun family.”

“You’ll have to learn to be comfortable around them if you
and Wilson want to go to Eden with us.”

Listening in, Brook slowed her pace and corrected her
daughter. “Sasha, as far as I’m concerned, you and Wilson and Taryn are welcome
regardless. I think what Raven is trying to convey is that
Cade
would
probably be more comfortable with the idea of you coming along if at least one
of you knew a little about firearms. At least the safety part.”

Throwing her hat in the ring, Taryn blurted, “Count me in.”
Then as the group exited the mess and stood outside awash in sunlight, the
dominos began to fall.

“Me too,” added Wilson, even though the awful memory of the
shotgun-blasted arm gripping his red locks instantly sprang to mind.

“If they all go first ... I’ll give it a shot,” Sasha added
quietly, pun not intended.

“We’re off then,” Raven said, tapping her newfound friend on
the elbow. “You can ride my bike for as long as you want.”

Draper, South Dakota

“
Now
we
are
surrounded,” whispered Jasper. “You
sure I can’t pop a few of them from up top? It’s only a little .22.”

“
Positive
,” said Ari. “JP-8 is
very
flammable.
We’ll go up like a Viking funeral pyre if you do.”

“Surrounded by
demonios?
” Lopez rasped. He cracked
his neck and then rubbed his neck and shoulders. His back throbbed where the
vertebra had been compacted during the jarring impact and subsequent rapid deceleration.
Like he’d just awoken from a nightmare, he surveyed the damaged cabin with a
worried look on his face. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from
what he guessed was a minor concussion, and asked Cross in a near whisper,
“Where did we go down?”

“Somewhere in the middle of
nowhere
South Dakota,”
answered Cross as he unbuckled the stocky operator and helped him down to the floor.

Lopez unclipped his M4, set it aside, and covered his face
with gloved hands. “Tice, Durant, and Gaines ... all dead,” he said quietly.
“Where’d that guy say Tice’s body ended up?”

“Outside somewhere,” Cross replied. “Somehow he got thrown
out when we went down.”

After scrutinizing the seat where Tice had been sitting,
Lopez pointed to the harness and said, “Looks normal to me. Nothing torn...
clasps look OK.”

“Freak accident... just like the bird strike,” replied Cross
shaking his head. “Murphy’s got our number today—”

“We
...
are
... hosed
,” Ari called back matter-of-factly.
“There are at least a dozen Zs up here ... and Durant’s just turned.”

“Can any of them reach you?” Cade asked.

“Negative ... I’m about a foot above their reach,” replied
Ari. “But Goddamn they stink.”

Welcome to our world
, thought Cade as he swiped his
fingers down Gaines’ face, closing his staring eyes forever.

Hoping to hear a different opinion than the one already
voiced by Cade and Cross, Hicks said to Ari, “How long before Ripley misses us
and turns her Osprey around?”

Ari shouted back, “She has a big jump on us. So I don’t
expect her to give us a second thought before she gets the scientists back to
Schriever ...”

Hicks removed his helmet, hung it by its strap on the
mini-gun grip. “Fuck,” he spat, obviously disgusted by the predicament they
were in.

“Shouldn’t a crash beacon have been activated or something?”
inquired Cross.

“Should have,” Ari called back. “But did it? That’s the million
dollar question. I have no way of telling because my electrical is dead. We can
only
hope
that
if
a signal went out, there was a satellite up
there to bounce it back to Schriever.” But after witnessing the Chinese
satellite destroy the ISS at the pre-mission briefing, and then subsequently learning
that Major Nash’s fleet of spy satellites had suffered losses due to similar
attacks—Ari was very reluctant to pin his hopes on a hope filled assumption.

As if he knew what was going through Ari’s mind, Cade piped
up, “Me and Cross are of the same mind back here. Ripley can’t come back until she’s
over the wire and wheels down and her customers have been delivered safely.”

“I concur,” said Cross. “Not to cast blame on Ari or Durant
or the general for allowing it, but the fact that we deviated from the flight
path on that low level shakeout means we cannot wait in place ...”

“He’s right,” said Cade, locking eyes with Lopez, who was the
last living member of Desantos’ original Delta Unit. “More Zs
will
show
up if we loiter here. And when enough of them gather they’ll start to climb
over each other.
Eventually
the tenacious bastards
will
get in
here. And when they do, I intend on being someplace else.”

Cross shifted his gaze upward, looking beyond Jasper who was
still prostrate near the tear in the starboard fuselage. He regarded the birds
swirling like a black tornado overhead and then leaned back against one of the
helicopter’s internal support members and met the Delta operator’s gaze. “So, Captain
Grayson—tell me—what’s your plan?”

Cade waited a beat before answering, and when he finally
did, he had to raise his voice to compete with the unsettling sound of bone and
nail grating on the metal behind his head. He went over his plan in detail and then
asked the survivors to take inventory of their ammo. All combined, for the M4
carbines they had just shy of three hundred rounds of 5.56 hardball loaded into
ten magazines. Each man also had his own personal sidearm with at least two
full magazines for each. Lastly, the
lone wolf
of the team, Secret
Service Special Agent Adam Cross, had two extended thirty-round magazines fully
loaded with 4.6x30mm cartridges that were unique to his suppressed HK MP7 auto
pistol.

“I’m going to need your weapon, Agent Cross,” Cade said quietly.
He knew the stubby carbine like the back of his hand, and had used one like it on
hostage rescue missions when CQC—close quarters combat—was imminent, and necessitated
a quick takedown of multiple targets in confined spaces. He figured its compact
size would be perfect for the looming task, allowing him to move freely between
the headstones. It made no difference that there were only two magazines left
for the weapon. Because if the sixty rounds they held wasn’t sufficient to get
him to the truck in one piece, then he had no business calling himself a member
of Delta.

Without a word, Cross shrugged off the MP7 and handed it
over, dangling it by its single-point sling. He removed the spare mag from his now
empty MOLLE gear and passed it over as well.

“One more thing,” said Cade, looking up through the
starboard doorway at the rectangle of blue South Dakota sky. “I’ll need a leg
up.”

Quick to comply, Lopez laced his fingers like a stirrup and braced
his shoulder against the seat, ready to accept Cade’s full body weight.

But before Cade stepped up, he called forward to Ari, “You better
play possum until I get back or this thing might backfire on all of us.”

Hearing every word Cade had said, Ari made no reply. He’d
been thinking ahead, and already his eyes were shut and his breathing
slowed—all in an attempt to fool his undead co-pilot into thinking he was
already dead.

The dead were congregated mostly near the helo’s nose when Cade
emerged from the gash in the fuselage where the impact with hard Dakota soil
had sheared off the sliding door and a portion of surrounding airframe along
with it. He looked closely at the brown sod and scraps of decayed flesh clinging
to the jagged edges near where Hicks had been sitting, marveling at the fact the
crew chief was still among the living, while Gaines, who had been on the port side
opposite the damage, was the one who was dead. He also found it strange how the
man on the proverbial white horse had chosen to take Tice’s life while sparing
the two operators who had been strapped in on either side of him. Even after having
served in multiple combat zones and surviving many firefights in which others
around him had not, it still never ceased to amaze the Delta operator how unpredictable
the hand of fate could be when it came to dealing out the death card.

With the black composite skin radiating warmth through his
gloved hands, Cade crawled aft along the fuselage. Pausing next to the angular
engine nacelle, he came up on one knee and swept his gaze in a wide arc until
he picked out Tice’s still form lying exactly where Jasper had said it would
be. Twisted up next to the fence a number of yards off of the ship’s nose, arms
and legs jutting at unnatural angles, the camouflage-clad body looked more like
a kid’s discarded G.I. Joe doll than the affable warrior who, for the better
part of a week, had been a recipient of the Delta team’s hazing.

Cade said a prayer for Tice and tore his eyes from the
surreal sight—from the shell of the man he’d just been talking and joking with
minutes ago. He regarded the ancient cemetery, most of which remained pristine
save for the dark furrow the helicopter had made when it went down. Fifty yards
beyond the initial point of impact, which had to be a football field’s length from
where the helo came to rest, was a sizeable white church that he guessed had
been standing sentinel over the deceased of its congregation for the last
hundred years.

He turned and gazed past the clutch of dead gathered around
the nose of the helicopter, judging the distance to Jasper’s truck to be about
seventy-five yards, most of which was hardscrabble earth patrolled by shambling
Zs drawn in as a result of the crash. Then he looked at the grass between where
he stood and Tice’s body, judging it to be no less than twenty feet. He shifted
his gaze to the fence line off of his right shoulder and placed his money on seventy
yards—just a few shy of the truck. Lastly, he ticked off the twenty-two rows of
graves stretching away from the crash south to north and then added up the
columns running west to east. Making a quick calculation, he realized that
interred within the four sagging runs of fence were at least two hundred and
twenty of Draper’s past residents, each of who had been memorialized by small
squares of marble, pointed monoliths, and dozens of chest-high slabs of natural
stone hewn into all manner of shapes: crosses, round tops, pillars, cherubs,
and the occasional Star of David. Scattered randomly among the carved tributes
to lives past were dozens upon dozens of dead bodies, the majority of which had
already turned and thankfully now bore gunshot wounds from having already been
put down.