Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (43 page)

“Let’s take a gander,” said Duncan as he increased altitude,
bringing the rapidly-approaching top of the stunted peak directly into their
line of sight. He was watching the Black Hawk’s shadow riding over the tree
tops, dipping and falling between breaks in the canopy, when suddenly his eye
was drawn to a dirt road winding like a sprung coil up the southeast side of
the red peak.

As the Black Hawk’s rate of approach quickly halved the
distance, Duncan nudged the nose gently to port in preparation for a high speed
flyover. He leveled the bird out and passed his gaze over what he guessed to be
a mining operation, its water-filled quarry reflecting the handful of clouds
scudding through the cobalt sky, and sitting in front of an L-shaped grouping
of buildings shielded by a grove of dogwoods was the black and white Tahoe,
unmistakable with its blue and red light bar and needle antennas.

“That’s Jenkins’ ride,” observed Daymon. “And they left all
four doors open. Which I think is kind of strange, ‘cause I can’t see any
movement down there.”

Saying nothing, Duncan slowed the chopper and scrutinized
the rest of the hilltop operation. Blocking access to the only road coming into
the place was a good-sized hurricane fence on wheels. It was topped off with a
double wrap of concertina razor wire. With his eyes, Duncan followed the lone
set of tire tracks as they passed underneath the fence, ran up to and ended
with the inert Tahoe. To the right of the quartet of buildings was a second
fence bordering a massive briar patch with numerous vehicles trapped in its
thorny clutches. As they got to within fifty yards of the trio of rundown
outbuildings, Duncan held the bird in an unsteady hover and spun the helo on
axis to give Daymon an unobstructed view.

“The biggest building looks like some kind of garage,” said
Daymon, confirming what Duncan was already thinking. “Slide us closer. I think
I see something in the shadows between the garage and those three sheds.”

“What do you see?” asked Duncan, trying to squint the scene
below into focus.

Reverting back to the slang used by the soldiers at
Schriever, Daymon replied, “Looks like a couple of dead Zs ... and someone took
it to them pretty good.”

“Setting her down in five.”

The ground drew closer, the ripples in the puddles becoming
white caps.

“Four.”

The smaller rocks and pebbles became airborne under the
force of the rotor wash, sandblasting the Tahoe’s paint, making a mess of the
interior on the driver’s side.

“Three,” said Duncan, half-expecting a hail of lead to be
thrown their way, his hand ready to pull pitch and get them away to safety if
the need arose.

The cyclonic wash emptied the nearby puddles of every drop
of coppery-tinted water.

“Two.”

Finger off the trigger, Daymon crunched a round into his
stubby combat shotgun. He patted his thigh, double-checking that the machete
was strapped there, and then placed his free hand on the harness release.

“One,” said Duncan as the big Black Hawk’s tires met terra
firma and she bounced and crunched along the red dirt for a couple of feet
before coming to a halt, the rotors still blurring the sky overhead. “I’m going
to keep her running. I want you to stay here and be a lookout while I check out
the big building.”

Nodding an affirmative, Daymon twisted his torso around and
plucked the binoculars from his bag on the floor.

Leaving his flight helmet on, Duncan unplugged it from the
jack and then exited the noisy machine. With no means of communicating with
Daymon, he flashed a thumbs up, hustled around the helo’s nose, and made tracks
for the abandoned Tahoe.

Schriever AFB

The Chinook’s interior was Spartan to say the least. Fold-up
center-facing seats consisting of red nylon mesh pulled tightly over simple
aluminum frames lined both sides of the fuselage. Though far from comfortable,
Cade conceded, ninety minutes or so in the air and a slightly numb ass was a
hell of a lot better than driving all day through a countryside teeming with
roving groups of hungry dead.

He noticed Raven fidgeting in her seat. Gave her a gentle
nudge to get her attention, and when she looked up, he planted a kiss on her
oversized flight helmet.

The simple gesture prompted a toothy smile from the
twelve-year-old. Already gone was the tight set of her jaw, thanks to a
smooth-talking Ari who had taken her and Sasha around the outside of the
hulking Chinook, pointing out all of the designed-in safety features. Then they
received a grand tour of the flight deck, with Ari even allowing each of them
to sit for a spell behind the controls. Then, pretending to be a male flight
attendant, he had guided them to a pair of seats situated side-by-side, far
enough away from the windows so they wouldn’t be able to see the true nature of
Omega’s effect on the outside world—a brilliant move in Cade’s humble opinion.
Finally, after playing the attendant role to the hilt, Ari switched back into
pilot mode and elicited a few laughs from them with the promise that he would
fly like a “
grandma”
all the way to their destination.

Cade palmed Raven’s helmet, gently turned her head, looked
deeply into her eyes and said quietly, “This trip will be just like the time
you and me and Mom flew Portland to Seattle. We’ll go up and then we’ll be
landing in Mack before the drink cart gets halfway down the aisle.”

Hearing this, Sasha flashed Cade a conspiratorial smile that
implied that she knew what he was up to but wouldn’t spill the beans.

Then, after looking the length of the helicopter, Raven shot
back, “There is no drink cart,
Dad
.”

Cade smiled at her retort and the manner in which she said “
Dad
”
which could be construed in one of many ways. But this time, judging by the
inflection and tone, his mind automatically inserted the word
silly
.
Could
have been worse
, he thought to himself. Thankfully she had never been prone
to talking back like some of the girls who had attended sleepovers at the
Grayson house. He rummaged in a cargo pocket. Pulled a Capri Sun he’d been
saving for this occasion, and said, “Dad’s drink cart is on board.” Framed by
the helmet, Raven’s beautiful smile made another appearance.

He burned the image into his memory, then swept his gaze
right. He caught Brook’s eye and winked at her; a simple gesture that cracked
the usual granite set to her jaw, producing a rare smile—also archived for use
on a rainy day.
Because going forward
, he told himself,
things are
certainly going to get tougher before they get better, and I want something I
can call up—to get me through those tough times when things start getting dicey.

He looked at his Suunto and felt a barely perceptible
vibration pulse through the Chinook as the auxiliary power unit came to life
somewhere within the airframe, powering the hydraulics and lighting the
twin-turbines.
Right on time,
he thought as the rising high-pitched
whine of the jet-turbines spooling and the slow but steadily rising
thwop-thwop
of the rotor blades reached his ears. A moment later the kerosene-tinged odor
of jet exhaust wafted in from outside. Once again he got Raven’s attention with
a gentle nudge, plugged his nose, and mouthed, “Pee-eww,” at her.

Suddenly the airframe groaned as power was applied to the
engines. Consequently, Cade imagined the massive rotors feet above his head
gaining rpms, their characteristic droop disappearing as centrifugal forces at
work flattened them out and bowed them upward slightly.

As the noise inside the cabin rose, Cade regarded Brook. Her
eyes were closed, the flight helmet making her look a little like a bobble head
doll—albeit a very beautiful one. He passed his gaze over to Wilson, who was
seated across from him next to one of the four widely-spaced porthole-style
windows on the port side, wearing the same stoic
the-world-has-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket look on his face. A look that aged
him a decade at the least.

Through the porthole, above and left of Wilson’s shoulder,
Cade could see Cheyenne Mountain—President Valerie Clay’s fortified redoubt—and
the undulating spine atop the Rockies’ western front stretching north toward
Denver. Then he craned around and regarded the Ford which was sitting on the
tarmac a dozen feet from the Chinook’s starboard side.

Sun flared from the copious amounts of glass and chrome and
black sheet metal. The thick straps of the cargo sling securing the truck to
the helo’s underbelly were fluttering madly, buffeted by the hurricane-strength
rotor wash. On the tarmac, one of Whipper’s men was standing near the Ford,
sending some kind of instructions via hand signals to the aircrew in the
cockpit.

Suddenly, in his flight helmet which was connected to the
ship-wide comms via a thick cable plugged into the bulkhead, Cade heard the
co-pilot—who was a doppelganger to Agent Alex Cross—call out, “Thirty seconds
to launch.” Then Ari broke in over the co-pilot and said, “Welcome aboard Night
Stalker Airways
and
vehicle transport. Next stop, Mack, Colorado. We
will be cruising at one hundred and thirty knots at one thousand feet above
ground level—”
Let’s keep it that way
, thought Cade, “—with an estimated
flight time of one hour and forty-five minutes. Please stow your tray tables
and put your seats in their upright positions, and then after a brief test
hover we will be underway.”

Reacting to the announcement which everyone else heard
broadcast inside their helmets, Cade mimed folding up an imaginary tray table,
an impromptu act which seemed to lighten the mood, drawing laughs from the
girls but not from Wilson, who was now bent at the waist, face buried deep in
his hands.

As the rotors bit into the air and the turbines strained to
generate the torque necessary for lift off, the noise in the fuselage rose
exponentially. Then, simultaneously, as if the move had been rehearsed in
advance, both Raven and Sasha shot furtive wide-eyed looks around the cabin and
clamped their hands over their ears on the outside of their loose-fitting
flight helmets. Brook, however, merely closed her eyes and settled in for the
harsh flight—this being her third stint aboard a Chinook since the outbreak and
all.

As Cade looked on, the horizon outside the window seemed to
shift slightly as the Chinook’s front gear left the tarmac. Then the craft leveled
off, and the buildings and perimeter fencing in the distance steadily slipped
from sight. In his mind’s eye, Cade could picture the strapping affixed to the
pallet under the truck going taut and the cargo finally leaving the ground. But
instead the comms crackled, and he heard the co-pilot say, “Four o’clock
starboard.” Then the engines powered down considerably and Ari said, “Everybody
brace. I’ve got to put her back down.”

Suddenly the helo juddered and yawed sideways, losing a few
feet of altitude in the process.

Hover test my ass,
Cade thought to himself. With the
cold presence of impending doom tickling his stomach, he regarded his family,
and then uttered a prayer, asking the Man upstairs for a soft wheels-down
landing. Because from experience he was well aware that it would only take a
few degrees list to port or starboard to bring the rotor blades into contact
with the asphalt tarmac and send thousands of pieces of disintegrating steel
and carbon fiber flying through the air like angry hornets. Hoping for the best
while bracing against the worst, Cade grabbed a handful of webbing between his
thighs with one hand, and wrapped his left arm around Raven’s narrow frame. “
Hold
on
,” he said sharply.

Quarry

Colt .45 in hand, Duncan climbed from the Black Hawk, ducked
his head against the perceived threat of decapitation, and hustled in a combat
crouch towards the Chevy Tahoe. After covering the distance as fast as his old
bones would allow, he pulled up short next to the truck’s rear quarter panel
and peeked inside. Shoehorned in behind the rear seats was a black plastic
Pelican case the size of a typical piece of wheeled carry-on luggage. The
cruiser’s molded-plastic back seat was empty; moving toward the front of the
rig, he found the window rolled down and, like the others, the door hinged
open. The keys were still in the ignition and apart from a half-full bottle of
water, a poorly-folded road map, and a bolt-action rifle that he thought might
belong to Jordan, he found no other personal effects.

But most importantly, what he failed to find in and around
the SUV was what gave him a modicum of hope. Thankfully missing were obvious
signs that a struggle had taken place. He saw no traces of blood. And there
were no shell casings inside or around the SUV. And so far, other than the two
dead rotters between the farthest of the three outbuildings, there were no
other corpses in sight.

After deciding to check the swaybacked structures first, he
met Daymon’s gaze; knowing that the former firefighter had no military
training, decided that dumbing down the hand signals was the best way for them
to communicate. So he pantomimed his intentions by pointing at the shed on the
left and then walking his fingers across his palm.

Message delivered, Duncan left the temporary shelter of the
SUV’s door and endured the blasting sand and water and continual popping of the
rotors as he sprinted to the nearby building. Pressing his back against the
roughhewn boards, he steadied his breathing and listened hard. But nothing
distinguished itself over the noise of the chopper and the whoosh of blood
surging between his ears, so, seeing as how any element of surprise had been
squelched by their less-than-ninja-quiet arrival, he called out for his
brother, quietly, at first.