The End: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (17 page)

He did a good job of not showing his first impression of the kid, keeping a stern and steady look. Feeling it too much effort to shout over the noise, Gus just smiled and nodded, stepping out of the way to allow the newcomer onto the bird after awkwardly shaking hands.

Clay’s jacket fluttered abruptly for a few moments right before jumping into the chopper, neck bent slightly showing his personal concern for the blades overhead, a clear sign that this guy had no helicopter experience.

The pilot ready to go, shot his hand in the air, spinning his index finger around and around mimicking the blades. Gus got the cue and hopped in taking his helmet and tossing one to Clay. He took a seat across from Clay, facing him, and buckled in. He glanced up at Clay who was already strapped in and struggling to get the helmet on. Gus just smiled, trying not to look too tense, knowing good and well that this trip was going to be an interesting one to say the least.

Gus leaned up and popped the top of Clay’s helmet shoving it down onto his head the rest of the way. His hand instantly throbbed with pain sending a jolt up his elbow, making him realize he had just used the wrong hand for the job.

Clay gave him a thumb-up for the help.

“We clear for departure?” Watts asked, his voice rang out in their headsets as if he was right on top of them.

“Roger that, take us up,” Gus replied as he slapped the side of the chopper with his good hand.
Stay tight
, he thought to himself as he brought his hand back, not feeling the need to engage the others. His last mission with Bo and Willy came back to haunt him, his mind racing with the loss.

*

The chopper slowly leaned forward and up as it ascended off of the ground and into the air, leading the soldiers toward Jacksonville. As the chopper reached a higher altitude, what was originally not visible from the ground instantly became otherwise, Clay seeing it for the first time.

The base was surrounded, surrounded by the undead.

Here he was for the first time, getting a firsthand glimpse of the situation; how bad it truly was. Sure, he had his run in with the infected earlier that week, when Michaels ate the dirt and that wacko professor Taft had him strapping down a zombie to the gurney. It was just another shit detail job assignment. He had been sent in on several occasions to do grunt work for the white coats, but never anything that outrageous. After that day happened, he knew he was out in two years, no questions.

Peering over the buildings and across the base to the fences that surrounded it on all sides, zombies had gathered around ten and twenty deep in some areas, clinging to the fence line. It was out of control. There didn’t seem to be a single spot of the visible fence line that didn’t have at least two rows deep of those creatures trying their best to get in.

The chopper took a sharp turn to the right and then eventually straightened back out flying over the main gate. Four armed guards stood in control towers on each side of the large retracting electric gates. With each armed man wielding an M-4 in hand, the men held their weapons out and at the ready.

As the chopper flew directly overhead, Clay saw that soldiers were taking shots into the crowd from the towers. From the looks of it, he could almost swear that they had made a game out of it. With that many undead at the gates, it was a futile effort and essentially a waste of ammunition.

Breaking away from the base now pushing forward over the city, Clay also noticed that the majority of the dead were younger people. With Tallahassee being a major college town and the state’s capitol, it was at one time well populated with college kids and people in their early thirties trying to make it in the bigger city. But they were dead now, and reanimated as the undead. The city streets and alleyways were cluttered with walking corpses.

*

With Clay leaned over the side of the chopper just a tad as he looked out at the ravenous plague, it took Gus a few times to get his attention. Having seen it all first hand, Gus didn’t bother even the slightest glance overboard. It was day four for the big man and that was more than enough.

“Clay… Clay… Clay…” He tapped the guy across from him on the knee getting his attention from what lay out there on the streets. “I didn’t see you in the debriefing room this morning. What do you know of this OP, exactly?” Gus asked, aware that Watts could also hear their conversation.

“Nothing, sir. I was told I would get my orders once we took off,” Clay replied slightly distracted, his eyes still fixed on the devastation outside as they passed over it.

After making sure that he had Clay’s undivided attention, which took a little work, Gus started going over what the young man had missed in the debriefing. He started by producing a wallet-sized photo of an old man from his shirt pocket and handed it over to Clay.

“This man is Grech Vonhinkly, founder of GCUR-TECH.”

The two men swayed and bounced in the chopper as it cut through the sky.

Gus continued, “The man is sixty-two years old, but don’t let his age fool you. He is believed to be the mastermind behind more than a handful of biochemical warfare agents, including the one that has currently wiped out almost all of Florida and its two connecting states. Despite that, I don’t expect the man to be dangerous.”

Clay jumped in asking, “How do you know that?”

“Because he’s the scientist type, that’s why. How many white coats do you know carry a gun?”

“Dr. Gibbs carries a gun,” Clay said.

“Besides Dr. Gibbs? None. That’s how many,” Gus said. “Now, the facility we’re dropping at is a secure location. What that means is that we don’t actually know a whole lot about it other than where it’s located. How big the place is or what to expect is unknown. What we do know is that this facility contains large amounts of biochemical agents and bacteria. Not sure on how well guarded the place is or what the staffing situation is either.”

“So basically you’re telling me that we are going into this thing with our eyes closed. Is that it?” Clay asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Gus replied.

“So what’s the mission? Seems like checking the place out for the sake of checking it out would be a big waste of time,” Clay said, still glancing out of the cockpit occasionally, watching the city streets pass by congested with abandoned cars. It was like a huge ghost town.

“Find Vonhinkly, retrieve any useful data on the bacteria or disease or whatever it is, and make it back unscathed all before dinner,” Gus said.

Gus noticed a change in Clay’s body language. It suggested something that he saw couldn’t have been good. He stopped his little speech to peer out the same side of the chopper at what had Clay’s attention.

Watts, the pilot, chimed in for the first time since taking off, “Ashley Fox’s team! Straight ahead.”

The three men peered out as they passed, slightly cutting off course to take a closer look. The black bird, an exact replica of the one they currently rode in, sat atop a large building. The structure looked like it could have been a small mall, but Gus couldn’t think of there being one of those out this way. On the side of the building, the word
Sears
identified it.

The parking lot, along with the streets from above, looked fairly safe, no major signs of the infected. A few stray zombies meandered about here and there, but nothing they couldn’t handle.

“Fox Trot, this is Blue Bravo. Come in. Over,” the pilot said holding his hand up to his helmet with the radio. “Fox Trot, this is Blue Bravo. Come in. Over.”

After a few seconds of watching the lack of activity on top of and around the building, Gus spoke up, “Let’s move on. We have a job to do. Call radio dispatch and make the report.” Without a word, the chopper redirected to its original route, Watts calling in the unexpected find.

“I didn’t realize they didn’t make it in last night. I wonder what happened,” Gus said, still looking out at the helicopter, watching it get smaller and smaller the farther away they got.

“Quite a few didn’t report in last night, actually,” Clay said. “Rob was telling me about it. Something like five or more of the teams didn’t report back in. I imagine they had the same set of issues that you ran into last night as well. I heard yours was rough.”

“Get ready, kid, because the shit is probably about to hit the fan again,” Gus said.

“Speaking of about to hit… what time are we expected to arrive? Feels like we have been riding in this thing for a while.”

Watts chimed in to answer that one before Gus could even speak up, “Not long, maybe another thirty minutes, forty-five at the most.”

When we get there, if for some reason there isn’t a good place to land, we’re turning around and calling it a day. I’m not about to land knee deep in that mess twice in less than twenty-four hours. If Baker has a problem with that then he can eat it, because I don’t care. Just not going to do it.
Gus thought of his lost friends and that was the last thing he needed right before another jump.

*

The three soldiers flew the rest of the way in silence. Clay sat there wondering what it might be that was eating the older, bigger man up so much. It was written all over his face, whatever it was.

Clay glanced down one last time at the photo still held tightly in his hand. Nothing unusual stood out about the man in the photo. He looked like an average civilian. How was it that such an ordinary man was responsible for all of this? He handed the picture back to Gus.

Everything looked the same for miles and miles on end. Large fires billowed out from buildings and in small forest areas. Cars of all kinds littered the roadways. The walking dead scattered everywhere in the streets, the parks, the parking lots. It was all the same.

Clay couldn’t help but wonder if there was anyone left within the quarantined zone. Could this much destruction and chaos actually spread this fast in a few days? This type of power in the hands of man gave Clay a gut-wrenching feeling, one that made him a little lightheaded and overwhelmed. Realizing that he was only a short way out from landing in this stuff and possibly meeting face to face with the creatures drove sharp pains into his stomach. He was having a panic attack.

Clay suddenly unlocked his safety straps and proceeded to vomit out of the aircraft. His hair and jacket fluttered in the wind with half of his body hanging out of the helicopter while he held to the sides with both hands. The light brown heave poured out pushing away from him horizontally. Most of the puke made its way out of the chopper, but almost all of it splashed across its side.

When the moment passed, he sat back down and harnessed himself in again, making eye contact with Gus, helmet slightly lopsided. “I’ll be all right. I just need a minute.”

Gus didn’t say a word. He just leaned forward pushing the thumb and forefinger of his good hand on the bridge of his nose and rubbed it between them.

He let out a big sigh.

4

“So tell me, Gibbs, what did we find out about our visitors?” General Baker asked.

“You can at least wait for me to sit before barraging me with questions. I’m not one of your subordinates.” Gibbs had just entered the General’s office after administering a basic check up on each of the civilians. She held in her hand a manila folder with files on all five of the survivors.

As she sat down in front of Baker’s desk, he turned from his mini-bar with a freshly poured glass of scotch on the rocks. The ice bumped the side of the tumbler as he took a seat before the slightly irritated doctor.

“It’s a little early for that, don’t you think, General?”

“When you’re the general and the world around you is in chaos, you can make up the rules as it suits you. Now, down to business. What can you tell me?” Baker asked, setting down the drink without taking a sip.

She placed the folder on the desk and opened it.

The General raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t look like a whole lot of intel, Dr. Gibbs.”

“That’s because there wasn’t much to find, sir,” she said, her words frostily. “They’re average civilians.”

“Average civilians who managed to avoid the plague that’s affected most of the population in this area. Something’s different about them,” Baker said.

She flipped to the first name in the file. A small profile photo of a young, rebellious-looking man slid across the table finding Baker’s hand as he scooped it up before allowing it to come to a stop.

Gibbs thumbed through the notes for a moment reading over a few details. “Kent Kingsly. Thirty-four years old. Six-foot-two, blue eyes, brown hair. One hundred ninety pounds. Originally from Illinois, picked up and moved to Florida five years ago with a rock band. Spent a couple months in juvenile detention for grand theft when he was younger. Honestly, from what I can tell, this guy is harmless. He plays the card but doesn’t have an ounce of gut to actually back anything up. He’s all talk. Beyond that, he’s as healthy as most Americans. “

General Baker leaned up from his seat passing the picture back, then sat back down, picking up his drink. Spinning the ice around and around for a moment, he eyed it with great appreciation. While taking a deep gulp, he gestured with his other hand for her to continue with the next civilian’s report. Coming away with a half-empty glass from his mouth, the cup reached the tabletop of the desk, leaving a smirk across the General’s face where the alcohol had recently just finished touching his lips. “Ah, that’s some good stuff.”