Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (6 page)

Ignoring the uneasy silence that hung thick between her and
Annie like some kind of invisible force field, Brook propped her rifle against
the bleachers and watched with a widening smile as Raven whizzed by, one hand
on the bars, four fingers thrust into the air indicating what lap she’d just
completed. “
Go girl
,” Brook called out as her daughter rounded the far
corner, pigtails flapping and the shimmering heat waves lending the impression
that she was gliding over hot coals. Sure enough, the day had shaped up just
like the last three or four, another scorcher to add to the record books. Why
she had agreed to let Raven take her new metal steed for a spin under these
conditions, during the hottest part of the day, escaped her. In hindsight,
however, a little toughening up and acclimatizing the girl to the heat before
their upcoming cross-country trip to Utah would do more good than harm. For
there would be no 7-Elevens or Dairy Queens providing a plethora of cold drinks
along the way. And rest areas with complimentary Styrofoam cups of piping-hot
coffee provided by some fraternal order named after an eagle or an elk were a
thing of the past.
No
, Brook thought.
There’ll be nothing but
unforgiving territory and God only knows how many Zs between us and sanctuary
once we’re outside the wire
.

“Come in for a pit stop, sweetie. You need to stay
hydrated,” called Brook. Then she looked to the far end of the bleachers where
Wilson and Taryn were crushed together presumably sharing thoughts and dreams
about their new future. The blissful sight suddenly made Brook pine for her
man’s return. She reached into her cargo pocket and rooted around until she
felt the sharp edge of the death letter. She wanted nothing more than to rip
the thing into a million pieces. Or burn it and pretend it had never existed.
But superseding and dwarfing both of those kneejerk reactions to something that
symbolized a possible outcome to the mission that she never wanted to face—yet
was a risk that she knew came with the territory—was her desire to have the
family back together for good.

As if she had been reading Brook’s thoughts, Annie asked, “When
is Cade supposed to return?”

“Depends upon who you ask. Nash and the President led me to
believe it would be a quick in and out. Half a day tops—”

“Are they ever?”

“No, and I’m
fucking
sick of it,” Brook spat. She
collected her carbine and Raven’s rifle and jumped to the ground, her boots
creating a puff of dust.

There was silence for a moment. Both women knew innately
that they were going in two different directions, so neither made an attempt at
small talk. They stood close but not too close and watched the twins playing
for two or three long minutes.

“Let’s go, girls,” Annie hollered as she held the swaddled
Mike Junior close and began walking away from the parade grounds and towards
her quarters.

“Raven and Sasha,” Brook bellowed. “Time to shoot.”

“OK, Mom. Just a second,” Raven called out as she tackled
one more lap.

“Now!” Brook added, raising her voice substantially. Then, without
another glance in Annie’s direction, she strode toward the lovebirds, tapped
Wilson on the shoulder and with an arch to her brow and a silent nod of her
head, requested the pair to follow.

Schriever AFB

The cheer that resonated inside the 50th Space Operations
TOC—Tactical Operations Center—when Marine Aviator Major Loretta Ripley
announced that her Osprey, call sign Jedi One-Two, was
wheels up
with the
scientists safely aboard shook every flat panel monitor in the room on its
stand.

Then, a handful of minutes later, when word came down that
Jedi One-One—with General Gaines and all of the Delta customers safely
aboard—was also
wheels up
, an equally rousing round of applause circled
the TOC and the previous feeling of accomplishment and joy Nash had felt was
trumped tenfold. And as the sound rippled into silence, Major Freda Nash smiled;
she couldn’t remember ever having been this elated over one event in twenty
years of running satellite overwatch over
her
Special Operations boys.

But seeing as how the possible fate of mankind hinged on
rescuing and returning with enough brainpower to decipher the data contained on
one tiny thumb drive, Nash expected nothing less than ecstatic jubilation from
her young Air Force staff.

She, on the other hand, was reserving the right to celebrate
at a later date. For the jury was still out whether the three scientists from
the National Microbiology Laboratory—Canada’s answer to the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta—would be able to reverse engineer Sylvester Fuentes’s Omega
antiserum. The possibility, she would tell anyone foolish enough to ask, was a
longshot at best.

However, the fist pump President Valerie Clay delivered upon
hearing the good news was going to go down in the history books—hopefully on
the first page of a chapter telling how Omega was finally defeated and how the
country had rid itself of the walking dead.

But that chapter in history had yet to be written. The
helicopter carrying the Delta Force shooters was overdue to check in and
couldn’t be hailed. The mood inside the computer-filled room had instantly
crashed, going from a palpable air of hope and exuberance to an atmosphere akin
to that of a wake—the only thing missing: the casket and the funeral dirge.

Nash massaged her temples, then impatience got the better of
her. “Has Jedi One-One checked in yet?” she asked for the second time in the
last five minutes.

“No, Ma’am,” said a baby-faced communications sergeant
sitting off to the major’s right.

“Keep trying,” barked Nash. “But do not lose contact with
Major Ripley’s bird.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Fearing the worst, Nash kept her game face on. Keeping up
the appearance on the outside was easy. Stilling the Mothra-sized butterflies
in her gut was not. She placed her elbows on the podium and formed a steeple with
her fingers. Staring out over her hard-working staff, she ran the many different
scenarios through her head. After two or three minutes of this she’d boiled
them down to three, and not one of them pointed to any kind of a good ending.

West of the Rockies

Bishop tossed the empty can aside and opened another, poured
the entire five gallons from the plastic container into the generator’s
oversized tank.

Second chore of the day done—cutting a half a cord of firewood
being the first—he walked around to the rear of the chalet-style house and sat
down on his favorite chaise. With a world-class view spread out before him, he
retrieved the sat-phone from the low cedar table, thumbed it on and checked the
display.
Three missed calls
. Two were from Elvis. Recent. Annoying. The
other was left two hours prior by Carson, his second-in-command. He scrolled
down, ignoring the two messages from Elvis, and selected the one from Carson.
But instead of listening to it he hit send, calling him back.

Three rings later the connection was made and always
businesslike his number two simply said, “Carson.”

“Bishop here,” he said, sparing the formalities for
face-to-face communications. “What kind of progress are you making?”

“We loitered in Boise overnight.”

Slightly taken aback, Bishop said, “In the city?”

“No,” replied Carson. “It burned pretty hard. We’re at the
Air National Guard base—”

Bishop interrupted. “What’s the undead situation ... have
you come across any of those large hordes?” he asked, running a shaky hand
through his dark hair.

“Boise is thick with them ... the fencing here is keeping
them out, for now. Figure when we bug out, so will they.”

Carson paused for a tick, trying to decide how to word the
rest of his answer.

“And?” said Bishop, sensing Carson had more to add.

“We overflew a very large horde near the Tri-Cities in
Washington. Nowhere safe to put down there.”

There was another long silence and Bishop changed the
subject. “Did you find any aircraft where you’re at?”

“A couple of A-10 Thunderbolts in the middle of repairs. The
few helos the Guard left behind are a total loss—”

Bishop rose from the chaise and paced the lawn. “Fuel?”

“All of the underground storage tanks were spared from the
fires.”

“Personnel?”

“Aside from a few deadheads, the place was deserted when we
landed."

“And today?” asked Bishop.

“Today we’ll recon Salt Lake and then we’ll square the box
and head north to Ogden.”

“How much more time do you need?”

“A day or two. Then you’ll know exactly what we’re up
against. Both the living and the dead.”

“Carry on,” Bishop said. He stabbed a key ending the call,
pocketed the phone, and walked down to the lake’s edge where he could see going
up on the other side the first of many crosses he was having erected.

The tithing had stopped coming in, yet he and his men
continued to keep the place free from the roaming dead. He feared that if the
locals continued to be ungrateful for all that he’d done for them in such a
short span, then an example would have to be made of someone.

Draper, South Dakota

As the pain doubled down, harsh waves of nausea returned in
direct proportion. Fighting the urge to puke, Cade bent over, bracing his palms
on his knees, and took a number of rapid breaths, expelling each one more
forcefully than the last until the pain ebbed and the blue tracers affecting
his vision began to fade.

He rose, shook his head vigorously, and with the monsters nearly
on top of him informed the men in the helo, in rather optimistic fashion, that
he was
on the move
.

More as an afterthought, the word
maybe
, usually
forbidden from the Delta warrior’s lexicon, stayed trapped in his head as he took
the first tentative step. And as the seven crucial bones and the spiderweb of
tendons and ligaments supporting them compressed under his full weight, the resulting
pain was sharp and unyielding. Sweat beaded on his forehead, yet he willed
himself to put one foot in front of the other. With more than a dozen Zs on his
heels, he continued trudging forward; there was no need for him to check his
six—it would only slow him down, he reasoned. Besides, in dribs and drabs, during
brief lulls in the cacophony made by the feeding birds, he could hear his
pursuers’ low-timbered moans interspersed with the sound their footfalls produced
trampling the brittle grass. In a last-ditch effort to slow their pursuit, he
zigzagged between a pair of waist-high tombstones, using them like static blockers
in a high stakes game of graveyard football.

At the midway point between the helicopter and the fence separating
the church from the cemetery, Cade took a knee and leveled the MP7 at the
ghouls. A thought suddenly occurred to him, and he tried to recall the exact
wording on the warning stickers plastered all over the gas pumps back home. He
knew that any kind of open flame was forbidden in their immediate vicinity. And
if he remembered correctly, the warning stickers stated a safe distance, a
radius measured in feet, inside of which an errant spark was likely to set off
any lingering gas vapors and possibly produce a gigantic fireball.

But his memory failed him. He had no idea how fast or how
far from the source flammable fumes wafted, nor if there was some kind of half-life
he should consider. He supposed every accelerant had its own properties, but the
one he was dealing with was JP-8—a kerosene-based aviation fuel—highly
flammable with its own unique properties that set it apart from the stuff that
used to flow from gas pumps at stations on every other street corner in the
United States before Omega culled the people and stilled their petrol-thirsty cars
and SUVs.

With that in mind, he said a silent prayer, snugged the
carbine in, and tensed his finger against the trigger. The red holographic pip
hovered on the kid’s face. Sunlight glinted from some kind of steel caps
concealing an upper and lower picket of presumably rotted baby teeth—assaulted
in life from too many sweets or merely bad genetics—whichever the culprit was, Cade
had no idea. However, he was certain that he still hated nothing more than the
idea of going to the dentist. And aside from the long dead politicians of the
old world, the
trying-to-converse-with-you-with-their-hands-in-your-mouth
head drillers hovered somewhere around second or third on his list of people he
would
not
miss.

In the half of a heartbeat Cade used to steady his breathing
and take up some trigger pull, he regarded the metalwork someone had performed
on the kid in life. During the second half of the same heartbeat he decided the
shiny beacons were a perfect target to aim for.

The two rounds he squeezed off entered the creature’s parted
mouth, and after contacting enamel and metal, the bullets tumbled upward and,
with an audible pop that could be heard even over the avian din, created a
horrific exit wound. The upper two-thirds of the undead kid’s skull spun
through the air, an uneven wobbly arc of bone and fluttering hair followed by something
resembling moldy cottage cheese—
large curd
.

Save for the pint sized Z’s dome, there was no secondary explosion.
Thankfully his prayer had been answered—he had in fact been a safe distance outside
of the mysterious danger zone, and his teammates had
not
been instantly
incinerated inside the earthbound helo.

As the headshot body spun, its lifeless arms flailing like a
rag doll, Cade snapped the barrel to the right by a degree and dinged the next two
walkers with precise head shots.