Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (12 page)

I frowned. “You didn’t go off and find a new career?”

Grear shook his head. “I wanted to serve,” he said again, and I could hear the commitment and passion in his voice. “So I eventually joined the Army to be a pilot, signing on as a specialist at basic training and a sergeant at Warrant Officer Candidate School. After graduation I went to flight training school.”

I was impressed. The man had been dedicated. “Any regrets?” I asked.

Grear shook his head and smiled humbly. “No,” he said. “I love flying.”

We walked for a little ways in silence. One of the circling Black Hawks came in to land, and for several minutes the roaring sound of the chopper made conversation impossible. As the big helicopter’s turbines and rotors slowly wound down, I flicked back to my list of prepared questions.

“Tell me about that operation in more detail,” I encouraged. “What happened when Chief Warrant Officer Tolliver saw the refugees?”

Grear nodded his head. “There were six of them,” he began, “running along the road. We were operating a few miles north of Atlanta. There were burned out and abandoned cars choking the highway. We were flying low, maybe a hundred feet of altitude, certainly no more than that. Mike saw movement and when I looked down through the helicopter’s chin bubble I saw a couple of kids and four adults. The adults were running, dragging the children by the hand, almost pulling them off their feet. I could see the panic in everyone’s faces, even from a hundred feet. One of the men in the group stopped suddenly.”

“He just stopped and did what?”

“Nothing,” Grear said. “The guy just stopped running and stood in the middle of the blacktop for a few seconds. Then he collapsed.”

“And that’s when you decided to land in a nearby parking lot, right?”

“No,” Grear shook his head. “There was a parking lot but we couldn’t land there – or anywhere nearby,” he said. “There were simply too many power poles, lines… strike zones that we traditionally stay clear of.”

“So what did you do?”

“There was a field about a click away,” Grear said. “We started to circle around towards it, but then one of the crew chiefs saw a swarm of dreads, about five hundred yards behind our refugees. They were coming on fast – too fast.”

“You hadn’t seen the ghouls before that moment?”

“No,” Grear said. “We thought the refugees had seen our ship and were simply running towards us. We didn’t realize they were being chased.”

“So what happened next?”

Grear’s eyes became kind of vacant, and his voice changed completely, it was bleak and flat, lacking any timber or resonance, as though he was deliberately trying to sanitize his account of all emotion and simply recall the facts.

“I threw the bird into a tight turn and told the crew chiefs we were weapons free, and then swung the Black Hawk broadside to the road. The guns were 7.62mm miniguns. They fire up to four thousand rounds per minute.”

“And so your men opened fire.”

“No,” Grear said. “They waited until I had put the helicopter between the zombies and the refugees. I dropped to just twenty or thirty feet. We were hovering right across the road. Staff Sergeant Kim Wilson opened fire, and so did the Delta Snipers.”

“You took a great risk,” I said. “I imagine there was no margin for error.”

“There wasn’t,” Grear admitted. “And breaking discipline – dropping that low in an area filled with potential strike zones –was something that frightens the hell out of the best pilots. But at the time I didn’t see any alternative.”

I wrote all this down as quickly as I could. The sun was starting to sink towards the horizon and two more of the helicopters that had been circling high overhead dropped down out of the sky to land. Grear suddenly turned on his heel, and we started back towards the big hangar.

“What happened when your crew chief opened fire?” I asked.

“All hell broke loose,” Sam Grear said, and for the first time I saw a wry smile on the serious young man’s lips. “The minigun tore into the dreads and flung them back like they had hit a wall. It ripped them into pieces and left them spread and spattered across the highway.”

“But they weren’t dead, of course.”

“No,” Grear said. “Some of them went down and stayed down. Some of them were so badly torn apart that they no longer posed an immediate threat. But it wasn’t the end of it.”

“What happened…?” I prompted.

“I swooped along the road and set the helicopter down in the middle of the freeway. It was tight. An eighteen-wheeler had overturned and spilled its cargo of boxes across the pavement. I sat the helicopter down in front of the truck, about two hundred yards ahead of the refugees.”

I had to ask the question. “Were you calm?”

Grear shook his head. “No,” he said. “I was scared. So was Mike, but we were well trained, and in moments like that you fall back on your training. It’s what gets you through. I wasn’t really frightened until later on when I thought about the risks I had taken… but by then we were back at base being debriefed.”

“What happened once you set the Black Hawk on the ground?”

Grear frowned, like suddenly he had to think hard. “Everything happened very quickly,” he confessed. “Like it was a blur. The Delta boys took up firing positions on either side of the road and crew chief Staff Sergeant Rolandson jumped down onto the blacktop and started running towards the refugees.”

I shook my head. I could imagine the bravery of this man and the rest of his crew. I doubted whether I would have been so courageous in similar circumstances.

“What happened?”

Grear narrowed his eyes and frowned. He wasn’t looking at me – he was staring off into empty space. “The noise was chaotic,” the young pilot said quietly. He shook his head as if the horror of that clamor was still reverberating in his ears. “The helicopter, the screaming of the refugees, the sniper fire coming from either side of the bird – everything was a roar of confusion. I could see the dreads through the side window of the chopper. They were gathering themselves around a couple of burned out cars just down the road. The distance was hazed with swirling smoke. The dreads started forward – started to run at us, and I could see the terror on the faces of the children. The sound of the dreads got louder – I could see their bodies were twisted with the madness of their infection. Then, one of the kids fell over. She lay there in a crumpled heap and then got up again, limping and crying. There was blood spilling down her leg. One of the women tried to scoop the child up in her arms but she must have been too heavy to carry. Mike was thumping at his harness, just about to get out of the chopper and run forward to help. I stopped him. Through the coms I told crew chief Wilson to ready the minigun.”

“But you were on the ground, right, and the refugees were running towards the helicopter?”

Grear nodded. “I was prepared to take off, hover just above the road to give the miniguns a clear field of fire over the heads of the civilians if it came to that. We knew we had other birds in the area, and that if we could hold the swarm of dreads at bay long enough, another ship might be able to drop down and pick the refugees up.”

I could see the scene playing out in all of its gruesome horror in my imagination. I could visualize the sheer terrified desperation of the fleeing civilians, and the dreadful fear that must have gripped them as the snarling zombie horde began to spring forward to hunt them down. “But it didn’t come to that?”

“No, thankfully,” Grear said with a sigh. “The little girl got up and took a few staggering steps. Then one of the Delta guys ran forward under the cover of the other snipers. He snatched the child up one handed like she was a sack of rags,” Grear shook his head. “He was still firing from the hip, running back towards the helicopter with the kid tucked under one arm like it was nothing.”

“You got them all?” I asked.

Grear nodded. “Three women, a man and two young girls. We got them all to safety before the dreads were able to regroup and reach the helicopter. Crew chief Rolandson carried the civilian who had collapsed over two hundred yards on his shoulder. That was heroic.”

We walked the rest of the way back to the hangar in silence. There seemed to be nothing left to say. Sam Grear’s modest, humble recollection of his bravery and that of the men with him on that fateful flight had said it all.

I shook the man’s hand and looked him in the eye. “Thank you,” I said, like the words had more meaning than merely my thanks for his time. He looked at me, and then smiled slowly.

“Are you going to interview any of the civilians – the people my crew risked their lives to save?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m just trying to record America’s military response in these interviews.”

There was a brief moment of silence while Grear considered me. Finally he leaned closer, his voice still soft and serene. “Make an exception,” he said. “Talk to one of those people we saved. Because if you don’t at least mention the human aspect of this whole damned horrible war… then what were we fighting for?”

He leaned back, his gaze steady and implacable. “I joined the Army to defend America. Those people are what we’re all fighting for. Let them have a say.”

I thought about that. Grear had a point. But there was a problem.

“I… I wouldn’t even know where to find them?” I gestured.

Grear smiled again, so that for a moment, he almost looked at ease. “They’re less than an hour’s drive away,” he said. “They’re in a temporary refugee camp outside of a little town called Blue Rapids.”

‘CAMP K14’, OUTSIDE OF BLUE RAPIDS, KANSAS:

39°4
0′
5
5″
N 96°3
9′
3
3″
W

‘K14’ was not the kind of refugee camp I was expecting. There were no high wire fences and no armed guards. The camp was made up of maybe a hundred large canvas tents, set out in the kind of precise lines that only the military could have managed.

‘K14’ was spread out across open grassy fields just beyond the limits of a picturesque little town named Blue Rapids in the north eastern corner of Kansas. It reminded me of a massive summer camp. Here were the temporarily homeless and the dislocated – the people who had been fortunate enough to flee from the zombie horde, or, like Gloria Kingsman, been fortunate enough to have been rescued by helicopter pilots like Sam Grear.

There was a family, communal atmosphere. Groups of young children ran through the tented areas, crying out and laughing, while mothers pegged ragged clothes from the guy ropes. There were a couple of trucks parked by the side of a nearby road, and soldiers in green fatigues were unloading food and water supplies onto hand carts. In the middle of each tented line, huge bonfires burned in drums as the afternoon light gradually turned to the radiant colors of sunset. Here and there, I could see the muted glow of lamps burning behind thin canvas walls.

Gloria Kingsman was a woman in her thirties who looked a decade older. She had been living in the camp with her two daughters for over a year since that fateful day on the highway north of Atlanta. The time had not been kind to her. She looked thin, and there were dark shadows of fatigue smudged below her eyes. Her face was pinched with stress. She sat on the edge of the canvas chair with her legs crossed and her hands fidgeting in her lap. She stared at me, and I had the impression there was something hollow about her – as though all the energy and vitality had somehow been drained away.

“You want to talk about the men who rescued us, right?” she made it sound like a question, but it wasn’t. The camp personnel had already told her about my planned visit the evening before.

I nodded anyhow. “That’s right,” I tried a friendly smile. “I just wanted a few minutes of your time to check some details.”

“You’ve spoken to the pilot, Sam?”

“Yes. He suggested I talk to you.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “He thought you might provide some interesting insight,” I offered vaguely. Gloria Kingsman nodded her head like the explanation made enough sense for her to be satisfied. She sighed and pushed at her hair in a heartbreaking moment of feminine vanity. “Where do you want to start?”

I took a breath. “I’d like to know about the events leading up to your rescue,” I said. Gentle voice, another friendly smile. Mrs. Kingsman looked like she was on the ragged edge of a nervous breakdown. “If you feel up to talking about it again.”

She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. She was swinging one leg like it was the swishing tail of a cat. She looked over her shoulder. There was the distant sound of a child crying somewhere in the camp. She listened for just a moment – realized it was not one of her own – and then seemed to shut the sound from her mind.

“Larry – that was my husband – and me were from Grantville, Georgia,” she explained in a soft accented voice. “When the infection broke out down south, we decided to pack up and head as far north as we could. We had two little ones. We packed the car and headed for Atlanta.”

“Did you know about the Army’s defensive line they were constructing?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “We had heard things on the radio, but there was so much confusion, we just didn’t know what to believe. We only knew we had to get the little ones as far away from trouble as we could.”