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Morning, Sunday, May 1
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Kendalia, TX
“How much?” Cobb asked, leaning over the private to examine their haul.
“Maybe 2 gallons,” PFC Colbert said, sloshing diesel in the plastic can.
“Fuck,” Cobb said. He wanted to kick the empty fuel cans all over the fire station’s deserted bay, hear the bonging and crashing off the corrugated steel walls. It would have given him some satisfaction, at least. But he didn’t, because they would have heard.
He’d thought Kendalia deserted when they’d arrived the previous day. But less than an hour after getting the sputtering Stryker APC into the abandoned fire station and securing the doors, they had visitors. First one, then two, then a dozen of the infected methodically swept the area. He’d watched them from the station’s glass office window, looking through a tiny slit in the blinds. They’d move around, stop, listen, sniff the air like animals, and eventually move on. They’d continued to smell around the office door and the big bay door. They knew he and the private were here. Somehow, they knew.
“We can wait them out,” Colbert said again; it was almost a mantra.
“More keep showing up,” Cobb reminded him, “and there’s a lot of glass in this building.” Security in a little rural fire department wasn’t a high priority. “Are you sure you searched thoroughly?”
“Yes, Colonel,” Colbert insisted. The driver was a lazy and complaining SOB, as far as Cobb was concerned, but he had a well-developed sense of self preservation. That was something in his favor. “I wish I hadn’t come along when you grabbed me back in Ft. Hood.”
“Put it in the Stryker,” Cobb ordered. For a change, Colbert just nodded and went to pour the fuel into the big armored transport. They’d searched the entire building. Aside from some firefighting equipment, there wasn’t anything of use to them. No so much as a cracker or a bottle of water. They had MREs and water in the Stryker. With only the two of them, enough for quite some time. They’d been eating in the APC. Cold MREs were no joy, and something else for Colbert to complain about. He should have considered that was too much for the PFC to take.
After Cobb finished checking the windows, carefully monitoring the nearly three dozen infected now endlessly circling the fire station, he washed the diesel off his hands in the restroom. They’d been using the water heater as a source. As he was finishing up, he found himself thinking about his home near the Mexican border. His dead wife had a dinner of turkey and gravy on the table. It was such a vivid memory; the smell filled his nostrils. He was just drying his hands with paper towels when he realized the smell wasn’t a memory.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Cobb hissed as he rushed into the kitchen. Colbert had the windows all covered, but two MREs were steaming in their self-heating pouches.
“I figured since we’re leaving, might as well grab some warm chow.”
“We’re surrounded,” Cobb said, looking around for a way to get rid of the food quickly. He yanked open the cabinet under the sink and reached for a garbage bag.
“It’s just a couple a—”
The glass over the sink exploded as a woman leapt through, sailing over Cobb and crashing into the kitchen table. At the same time, the kitchen door was nearly blown off its hinges by two men hitting it at the same time. The glass in the door exploded, flying across the room and over the two surprised occupants.
Cobb rolled away from the infected who’d flown over him, drawing his M9 from the thigh holster. The infected who’d collided with the kitchen table got back to his feet with amazing speed. Cobb was fast as well, shooting instincts honed from decades of military service. His thumb released the safety and he double-actioned the pistol into the woman’s chest, staggering her, then fired two quick follow-up shots—one into her chest, and riding the recoil, the next went into the bridge of her nose and took the top of her head off.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Colbert screamed and ran out of the kitchen, leaving Cobb with the two who’d come through the door.
“PFC!” Cobb yelled, “Get your ass back—” he was cut off when another infected dove through the window, this time a wiry little guy who could have been a trapeze artist in a previous life. He landed by the dead woman and snarled at Cobb before lunging. Cobb rolled to the side, firing several times and missing. The agile little zombie did the unexpected; he dodged behind the table to avoid the fire!
From the direction of the garage he heard shattering glass. “No!” Colbert screamed, and Cobb heard another M9 perform a mag dump, followed by a scream.
“Fucking idiot,” Cobb said as the circus freak swung out from behind the table. Cobb was ready and put him down with a double-tap. He looked past the crumbling infected to see dozens more racing for the now askew kitchen door. “Time to go,” he said and rolled to his feet.
The kitchen was being swarmed. Even though he’d heard Colbert being attacked in the garage, he chose the uncertain over the certain. He paused just long enough to snatch up Colbert’s M4, which had been left propped up by the door. He’d been so panicked by the attack that he hadn’t even remembered it.
As he shot out the door, he safed and holstered the M9, then took the M4 in both hands. He used his thumb to flip the selector from ‘safe’ to ‘semi’ just as he rounded the corner into the garage. Colbert was still alive. He probably wished he wasn’t. The PFC was keening and weakly trying to beat away two infected who were ripping his intestines out. Cobb shot the two infected in the back of the head.
“Help?” Colbert begged. He tried to reach for his intestines, shuddered, and fell back against the rear of the Stryker. Cobb did a quick assessment and came to the only conclusion possible; he ran up the ramp and stopped, looking over the side and down at the dying PFC who stared up at him in horror.
“You want them to get you, or me to end it?” The sounds of crashing and running feet came back in the direction of the kitchen.
“Don’t leave me?”
“I’ll take that as option two,” he said and shot Colbert in the head.
There was a thump against the front of the Stryker. Cobb flipped the rear ramp control. Electric motors whined, and the hatch began to rise quickly. An alarming stream of infected rounded the corner from the kitchen and raced toward the door. Cobb thumbed the selector to ‘auto’ and raised the gun. You didn’t hip-fire a weapon, like in the movies. Doing that just wasted ammo. He wasn’t wearing battle rattle; they’d taken it off yesterday in the relative security of the fire station. He vowed not to do that ever again. The magazine in the gun was all he had to hand, so those rounds needed to count.
Cobb sighted at chest height to the left, pulled the trigger, and fired a long burst as he tracked to the right. He fought the muzzle rise, an instinct born from firing thousands of rounds. At around 700 rounds per minute, the M4 could empty a magazine in as little as two and a half seconds. In that one burst, Cobb put 14 rounds into the packed group of infected in one second. The door was half way open. Most of them had been hit, but more tried bulling their way through. He took a step onto the rising ramp, and repeated the burst in the opposite direction, emptying the magazine in a most surprising manner.
“That’s for my team,” he said as the bolt locked back, and he stepped off the door and away from the pinch point at the bottom. The door had half a foot to go, and had slowed to finish its closing cycle, when a pair of hands appeared, and a body crashed against the outside. Cobb dropped the M4 on the nearest seat and drew his M9. A second later the door closed, and he heard the sickening crunch of hands being mangled. The infected’s scream was mostly muffled by the inches of composite armor.
In moments, he could hear them jumping on and climbing all over the Stryker, trying desperately to find a way inside. He marveled at their persistence as he moved forward. In the driver’s compartment, one was looking in the armored window at him, beating at the four-inch-thick bullet resistant glass impotently. He smiled and give it the finger as he squeezed into the seat. Cobb had several inches and fifty pounds on the now dead Colbert.
“Drivers are always the small guys,” he said as he flipped the power control to active and pressed the starter. The big Caterpillar C7 diesel turned over a couple times and roared to life. The infected went absolutely insane, pounding, clawing, and prying at every square inch of the vehicle. “No way to open the door,” he said, glad he’d stowed the .50 caliber when they’d parked the vehicle. He slid the transmission into drive. “You might want to get off,” he said to the one outside pounding the glass. It smashed its head against the window, tearing open the skin on its head and smearing blood everywhere. “Fine.”
Cobb reached up, grabbed the control on the shutters, and jerked it down with all his might. The big armored plate smashed the infected, crushing its skull, and the body slid away. He nodded and pulled the plate closed, leaving him only a half-inch-wide slit to see through.
“More than enough,” he said as he released the parking brake and pushed the accelerator pedal. The engine spooled up with a roar, the eight drive wheels squealing a little bit on the concrete as the Stryker lurched forward into the big main doors and through them. The corrugated steel folded around the front of the vehicle, breaking and tearing, and crashed onto the roof. Cobb didn’t slow. The doors’ attachment points held to the building on both sides, and the structure parted in the middle. It acted like huge steel claws and ripped the dozens of infected hanging on the Stryker away, tearing them to bloody rags.
A few who’d been outside the doors were ground under the spinning tires. A few bodies might have been enough to high center or slow a car, a truck, or even a Humvee. The Stryker was 18 tons of steel with six-foot-tall tires. Cobb scarcely noticed the bodies as he crushed them to death and rolled onward.
On the street, he spun the wheel right, aiming the vehicle west. The monitor above showed out the back of the Stryker where at least a hundred infected were giving chase. He accelerated to 35 mph and watched them quickly dwindle behind him. The “low fuel” light was already on, and he did the math. That two gallons of diesel had bought him maybe 15 miles, if he was lucky. Grimly, he drove onward, the last man standing.
* * *
Near Utopia, TX
They covered 20 miles as the sun began to rise behind them. Vance was shaking slightly, petting 80 pounds of panting dog in his lap. Lexus started to whine as the sun approached the horizon.
“Utopia Town Limits” the sign read in the headlights.
“Better stop before we get into town,” Vance told Tim, who just nodded. A short distance ahead on the left was a propane company. “That works,” he said, pointing. The property was a couple acres and had a big stack of propane tanks for placement at homes, a small warehouse, an even smaller office, and a single massive tank used to fill smaller tanks and trucks. Tim angled into the warehouse, its door standing open. Vance glanced over his shoulder and saw headlights following them. Once both trucks were inside, they shut them down.
Tim jumped out and raced back to the bay door. Vance tried to follow, but Lexus was panting and drooling.
“Come on girl,” he said and opened the door. She looked up at him and whined. “Hop down.” The dog shook her head like she’d just gotten out of the water, then jumped down. Harry came out behind him, sliding down to sit on the running board with a groan of pain. Belinda came around the truck with her medical bag. She’d cleaned some of the blood off her head, but still looked like a mess. The other women both went over to help Tim secure the door and check all the other exits.
Belinda spent a few minutes looking over her husband’s new wounds she hadn’t been able to tend to because she’d been unconscious. She looked up from preparing wound dressing.
“Is he bit?” Vance asked.
“No,” she said, “looks like fingernails.”
“They didn’t bite me,” Harry agreed, “but I need some painkillers, dear.” His face was covered in sweat and contorted in pain. Belinda opened an inner pouch on her bag and drew out a single-use syringe, a reusable one, and a small vial.
“Pain killer and antibiotic,” she said as she used an alcohol wipe before injecting him twice. It only took a second for Harry to sigh and lean back against the truck, his eyes going slightly out of focus.
“Oh, thanks,” he moaned. “Too many things hurting.” Lexus had laid down next to them. She rolled on her side and started panting. “Your dog...” Harry said, petting the animal’s side. She whined in response.
“Ann!” Vance said loudly. “Check on the other dogs.” He had a growing feeling of dread.
“They were asleep in the back seat,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” Nicole said, and she went over to open the far side rear door on the crew cab.
“Be careful,” Vance started to say.
“They’re sitting up now,” Nicole said, “they look fine.” Vance could see both dogs staring at Nicole through the back door. “Come on,” she said and took a step back, “hop out! I’m sure you two need to take a piss.” They didn’t move. Vance clearly saw both dogs cock their heads in response to her voice. It was a very non-doglike action.
“Nicole, look out!”
“No!” she screamed as both dogs soundlessly leapt at her, fangs bared.
“Rock, Dewey!” Belinda snapped in a command voice. Neither dog reacted at all. Nicole threw herself to the left. One of the dogs flew through where she’d been, then snapped at her, managing to get a muzzle full of the woman’s BDU sleeve.
“Help!” she called as she fell, kicking out at the dog. Her sleeve tore free and the dog shook the fabric like it was a rabbit.
“Ann, shoot the dogs!” Vance barked.
“No!” Belinda and Harry both cried. An M4 boomed in the confined warehouse. One of the two dogs were blown sideways in a spray of blood, skidding several feet and coming to a stop behind the truck, unmoving.
“Dear lord,” Harry wept. The other dog tried to jump on Nicole’s back, but she rolled toward the animal and it overshot, landing in front of the pickup and spinning toward Ann. Vance drew his handgun.
“I’m sorry,” he said and fired twice, killing the dog quickly. Belinda and Harry fell into each other’s arms, overtaken with grief. Ann ran over to her husband, who was still holding his gun and looking down at their own dog, Lexus. She was panting hard, long tongue lolling out onto the dirty concrete. Drool pooled under her muzzle, eyes wide.
“Oh, no,” Ann said.
“They saved us back at the gas station,” he said, his eyes misting over.
“What can we do?” she asked. “There has to be something.” Lexus let out another whine that changed to a low growl. Her eyes focused on him.
“Only one thing we can do,” he said, and reached into the back of the truck for a muzzle. Moving helped cover the tears running down his face. Memories of bringing the little mixed Doberman/Shepherd puppy home as a surprise for Ann years ago were making it hard to talk. But he had to act. “Help me,” he begged her, “quick, before it’s too late!”
Tim and Nicole ended up having to help. They got the muzzle on her just in time. She became increasingly animated as the seconds ticked by, and almost managed to bite Vance as he tightened it down. The halter was easier. The wrap-around leather harness gave him a lot of control, and the dog seemed to sense it, fighting desperately at the end. Finally, he had the harness by the handle on the back, partially lifting the 80-pound dog so its struggling paws couldn’t find traction.
“You want help?” Tim asked, trying not to stare at his openly weeping friend of so many years.
“No,” he said, “that wouldn’t be right.” He turned to Harry, sniffing and wiping snot from his nose. “Can I have the suppressed .22?” The big man nodded and pulled it from his waistband.
“One in the chamber,” he said. “Full magazine.”
“I’ll only need a couple.” He turned to his wife, working hard to keep the dog’s feet off the ground. His friend, who now wanted to kill him. “Can you...” he said, not able to finish the question.
“Yeah,” she said, a sob racking her like a hiccup. She took the .22 from Harry, instinctively checking the chamber.
“I’ll check that the coast is clear,” Tim said, and his wife went with them. Outside, the desert scrub landscape was in full sunlight. It seemed so foreign from the near-darkness when they’d driven into the warehouse only a quarter hour ago. “All clear,” he said. “What about the other two dogs?”
“We’ll take care of them,” Belinda said. Despite her husband’s injuries, they already had a pair of entrenching tools from the storage rack on the truck and were ready to go out as well. Vance looked and considered saying something, then didn’t. It was worth the risk. They’d suffered a loss, and all needed closure.
“I’m sorry,” he told Harry.
“You did what you had to,” he said. His eyes didn’t look focused. Despite that, he was a Marine, and his mettle showed through. “Let’s do this.”
Outside in the desert, a short distance from a tiny Texas town, two suppressed rim fire bullets made almost no sound. Afterward, if anyone were close enough to hear, all that would have been heard was the chunking of shovels in the hard desert soil, and the sobs of grief as they lay their three dear friends to rest.
* * *
The Flotilla, 150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Andrew had managed to make a few friends among the fighter pilots on the Ford, but then most of them left. Overnight. Without saying a word. As an Air Force pilot with many years’ experience in combat, he knew what that meant. The shit was about to hit the fan. He’d seen all the activity last night and new something was up. The helicopters hadn’t stopped flying that morning. He stood by the Gerald R. Ford’s island and watched as a pair of the huge Sea Dragon MH53 helos took off with massive bundles of equipment. Three Seahawks, the Navy variant of the Blackhawk, were coming in to land.
“What’s going on?” he asked a pair of young men and a woman standing next to a cart with bombs arrayed on it. They all wore bright red vests and matching helmets. The senior among them gave Andrew’s insignia a critical eye before answering.
“Lieutenant,” he said. None of them saluted. Andrew noticed they didn’t do that on the flight deck. “We’re transferring ordnance and spares to the Reagan.”
“Any idea why?” he asked. Andrew didn’t bother to guess the man’s rank. Navy was special in that way.
“No sir, just doing my job.” The two Sea Dragons roared away, and the Seahawks touched down. “Excuse us, sir. Let’s go!” he barked and they all threw their backs into the cart. Andrew was impressed; there were six 500-pound bombs on that thing. Andrew finished his coffee and decided he wanted a refill.
“Lieutenant Tobin, what the fuck are you doing in my PriFly?”
“Just came up for some coffee, Commander Beeker.”
“Bullshit,” the Mini Boss said. He had binoculars pressed to his face and was watching the crew in red load bombs into a carry sling for the Seahawks.
“I must agree with Howard,” Beeker said. Andrew went over and helped himself to some coffee. Andrew dumped in some creamer and stirred slowly. “Tobin!” Beeker barked, and Andrew gave a little guilty jump.
“Captain?”
“I’m a goddamned commander, you fucking zoomie. What is it you want here?” He spoke the last sentence with slow deliberation. “Or do I have to ask Captain Gilchrist to come up here?”
“No,” Andrew said. He tried to take a sip of coffee to delay a little longer and promptly burned his upper lip. “Shit,” he hissed, and Beeker laughed at him.
“Next time steal someone else’s coffee; I like mine hot enough to melt steel.” Andrew decided he might as well ask. Gilchrist wasn’t exactly happy with Andrew after the captain of the Gerald R. Ford had nearly wrecked his carrier to allow Andrew to set the C17 down on deck.
“I’d like to know what’s going on,” he said, and gestured to the retreating Sea Dragons flying toward the group of other carriers a mile or so distant. Beeker and his assistant Howard both turned a sharp eye on Andrew. He thought about taking another sip of coffee, but his lip still throbbed, and he decided not to. “Is it classified?”
“The world is burning down,” Beeker said. “We don’t have long range comms, and insanity has become the fourth horseman.”
“Sir?”
“I can’t give you much detail except we’ve got to start running flight operations in support of land units nearby. My cats aren’t working, or I’d have bulldozed your bus out there into the Pacific by now. As it is, I’m told they’ll be working in 48 hours, so I probably will soon. We transferred almost all our pilots to the Reagan, and now we’re sending what stores we have for their Hornets as well.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” Beeker snapped, then shrugged. “If there was, I’d ask, son.” Andrew shrugged. “Thanks for offering, anyway.”
“And thanks for telling me,” Andrew said. Beeker nodded and went back to his job without another word. Andrew took his coffee-flavored molten lava and headed down into the ship, feeling like a fifth wheel. His stump always hurt when going down ladders on ships. Why did they always have to be almost vertical, anyway? It wasn’t like the carrier was small or anything. He was so distracted, he took a wrong turn and found himself in an area of the ship he’d never been in, then found someone he recognized.
“You’re that reporter,” he said. The woman was good-looking, with medium-length blonde hair and wearing Navy camo (called Navcam) without insignia or a unit patch. She looked up at him from a laptop sitting on a desk. The room had space for four more people, but she was alone. There were lots of cameras and big screens. “Kathy Clifford? Not many reporters here.”
“That’s me,” she said. He’d seen her on GNN news reports several times. She’d even been in Iraq at the same time he’d been injured. Something about her face was different though. She looked preoccupied, maybe even depressed. He guessed, considering what was happening, that made sense. “There aren’t many Air Force pilots around here either.”
“I wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t landed that plane up top.”
“You flew the C17 out of Hood?” she asked, her eyes wide in surprise. He nodded. She completely surprised him by standing and giving him a full body hug. “Thank you,” she said, “you saved our lives.” Andrew wasn’t thinking about saving anyone just then. He was thinking about how good her breasts felt pressed against his chest and not spilling his coffee all over her.
“I was just doing my job,” he said and gently pushed her away. She blushed slightly and looked at his shoulder patch.
“F15?” she said. “An Eagle driver landed that? Okay, I owe you a drink!”
“Good luck what that,” he laughed. Kathy reached into a bag, pulled out a flask of Jim Beam whiskey, and winked at him. He held his mug out without giving it a second thought. “You know United States vessels are dry,” he said as he sipped the now Irish coffee. The whiskey reduced the temperature to a more tolerable level, and he took a big sip. The last thing an Air Force fighter pilot needed was to have a naval officer walk by and catch him drinking on duty.
“Now let’s hear the story,” she said.
“What story?”
“Of how a fighter pilot ended up flying a C17 out of Ft. Hood in the middle of a pandemic.” Andrew wondered if that was allowed. Then he saw where they had her set up and figured it was, so he told her. He left out the part about being transported from Saudi Arabia under custody for violating orders. He told her about how the A-380 he’d been in had had an outbreak and he’d been forced to land it in Monterrey with almost no fuel after the city was nuked.
“So it was nuked,” she said and made a note in a little ledger. “Any idea who?”
“Nukes don’t leave signature cards,” he said. She just nodded and wrote something.
He continued on about meeting professional gamer Wade Watts and Chris Brown, a three-gun champion shooter. They’d linked up with other survivors and found an Air Force AC-130 gunship to fly north. On the way, they’d saved some people in a house, but crashed the plane in the process.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “That was you?”
“What, you were in that house?”
“Yeah, me and my...” she stopped and looked either confused or conflicted. “A friend and I were in there with a bunch of Mexican refugees. We were about dead meat when you came over.” She held out the flask. “I owe you another drink!”
“I better not,” he said, pulling back the cup. He’d been trying to hatch a plot to get back into the air, and showing up smelling of whiskey wouldn’t help his case. “Anyway, we lost most of the survivors with us in the crash. Wade, Chris, and I headed north, pursued by infected crazies the whole way until we were cornered at this tank farm. I figured we were dead, when Colonel Pendleton showed up with a couple Blackhawks and pulled our bacon out of the fire. Say, you haven’t heard where he ended up, have you? I called over to the ship the Army commandeered, but they said he wasn’t there.”
The dark look was back on her face, and she shook her head. “I know about your Wade,” she said, “he’s gotten in tight with the IT people on the Ford. I haven’t heard exact details, but I think they’re making progress in restoring satellite communications.”
“I figured Wade was a hacker or something,” Andrew agreed with a nod. He was beginning to think the pudgy guy might well have some answers. He’d have to look into that. “What are you up to?”
“I’m kinda working for Stars and Stripes, I guess.” He just blinked. “Ford wasn’t in service. They were just kind of...sailing it around, showing off the cool toys, testing new stuff and all. They’d just left Bremerton when the shit hit the fan.” Andrew grinned, the woman did know the military. “Most of the ships here put to sea in a hell of a hurry or were missing people from outbreaks. One thing they don’t have is any entertainment directors.” She gestured to the empty workspace. “Captain Gilchrist sort of pressed me into service. Since GNN isn’t answering the phone, and the phones really don’t even work, I figured it’d keep me from being shipped over to a cruise ship.”
“Chris is handling the ship’s arms locker and working with Navy security,” Andrew said, “he’s not very happy. They have them crammed in a little billet. Ship life. Can’t say I like it much myself.” He paused and then nodded. “Maybe that’s what they’re up to with this shore operation. Will you tell me if you hear anything?”
“Sure,” she agreed, “I have to run programming by the XO, but nobody said I couldn’t talk to Air Force officers.” She grinned, and he grinned back. She would have made a good soldier, he suspected. Hot, too. He left her to do her job while he walked and thought some more. A few minutes later, he found himself entering the rear of the cavernous hangar deck.
When the Ford entered service, it would have been crowded with fighters of all types undergoing maintenance, arming, or just stored. A crowded area of carefully-orchestrated mayhem. It was nearly deserted now. The few helicopters aboard when the ship had left on its shakedown cruise were now airborne, carrying equipment and munitions over to the Reagan, the only carrier that could presently launch fighters.
In the middle of the hangar bay was a single F-18 Super Hornet, its wings folded up and backed up against a bulkhead. Andrew was no expert on naval fighters, but it didn’t look like the fighter was combat-ready. There weren’t even any external weapons pylons. He walked over to look at the plane. A solitary tractor rumbled by, pulling a trailer piled high with crates.
“You’re that Air Farce pilot,” someone said. Andrew looked over and saw a pair of mechanics coming out of one of the maintenance shops.
“That’s me,” he said.
“Captain’s pissed about your plane,” the other said. Andrew chuckled.
“He’s reminded me of that several times.” Both men came over, wiping their hands on their coveralls. The older of the two had a wrench in one hand and gestured with it like a baton. Both men held out hands for Andrew, who shook each in turn.
“I’m PO1 Branden Bowers. This here is PO3 Donald Doveri. Hell of a landing.” Andrew eyed the subdued stripes on their uniforms. PO1 meant Petty Officer First Class—he knew that much—which equated to a technical sergeant in his service. PO3 was probably Petty Officer Third Class, or a senior airman, he guessed.
“It was mostly luck,” Andrew said.
“I’d believe that,” PO3 Doveri replied with a grin. Bowers shot him a glare, but Andrew waved it off.
“You guys working on that Hornet?”
“That?” Bowers asked, gesturing with the greasy wrench at the plane in question. “No sir, our bird is next door.” He pointed to the movable bulkhead separating that portion of the hangar bay from the forward hangar bay.
“What do you have back there?”
Both men beamed. “Show the man, PO3,” Bowers ordered. Doveri bobbed his head and starting walking. Andrew fell in behind him. They passed through a massive door into another cavernous hangar. Andrew was again reminded of just how big the Ford was. This hangar had two helicopters, obviously redlined. One had the engine compartment covers all removed, and the other’s tail rotor was gone. But it was the two sleek planes parked to one side that made Andrew almost stumble and fall.
“You have got to be kidding me!” he gasped, looking back at the PO1. Bowers was grinning ear-to-ear, like a parent watching his kids unwrap Christmas presents. “I didn’t think any had been deployed.”
“Deployed? No, these are evaluation units. They were put aboard at Bremerton by Lockheed Martin right before we sailed.”
“Then they’re experimental? Non-combat?”
“Nope,” Doveri said, “these can be armed. They’re for testing the new catapult under full load. There’s a lot of armament on board for these birds.”
“Damn,” he said under his breath, rubbing his chin. “Any pilots on board?”
“Just one,” a man said as he leaned out of the cockpit of the closest.
* * *
60 Miles South of Santa Catalina Island, CA
The two helicopters finally lifted off two hours late. Jeremiah Osborne was in one of his moods, sitting in the copilot seat of OOE One, which was flying lead. As they’d been warming the birds up, one had blown a hydraulic seal. The birds were high-hour rentals, and the company servicing them seemed to be cutting back on the servicing.
“Maintenance records are probably forged,” his chief air mechanic said, surveying the books stored on the chopper. “This thing is thirty years old, to boot.”
“So we’re fucked?” Jeremiah fumed.
“Naw,” the mechanic said. With a couple assistants, he removed the damaged seal, fabricated a replacement, installed it, replaced the lost fluid, and had the bird airworthy inside of two hours. What was the point of having an aerospace company if you couldn’t fix something like that on short notice? The dust off at dawn didn’t work out, but at least they were away.
“You okay over there, boss?” Jeremiah cast a baleful stare at the pilot, Alex West, who grinned back at him. “Hey, I did warn you it had been years since I flew one of these. I missed that antenna.”
“By about a foot,” Jeremiah grumbled.
“What was that, boss?”
“Nothing,” Jeremiah said.
Immediately after taking off, they’d been questioned by Departure Control from the USS Ronald Reagan. Luckily the Navy man didn’t care why they were going the direction they were, only that they stuck to a course and altitude. As the two helicopters flew northeast, Jeremiah could see the Marine ship USS Essex, one of their amphibious assault ships, launching V-22 Ospreys one after another. The huge dual tilt-rotor craft were the Marine’s aerial workhorse. They were heading east in a line, toward the California coast.
“Looks like the military hasn’t given up on the country yet,” he said over the headset. West glanced at the Osprey, then back at his controls. “Ms. McDill, how’s the signal look?” The rear of their Jet Ranger had three people in it. Two of the team that had disassembled the first alien ship, and Alison McDill, the other surviving veteran of OOE’s first and only outer space trip. She’d helped the others cobble together a unit from the escape boat’s radio, though they’d insisted it wasn’t a radio. The device was tracking the next-closest signal.
“Good!” she said over the helicopter’s intercom. “Can we climb higher?” West looked back toward the flotilla now falling behind them and decided they were far enough from the carriers’ operating zone.
“Sure,” he said, “how high?”
“As high as you can,” she said. “The signal is line of sight. It’s like a radio direction-finder. I have one bearing, but the signal is weak and the needle is moving around a lot. If you can get us a little higher, I can get a better signal as we move to triangulate the origin.”
“Climbing,” West said. Jeremiah checked his safety belts for the umpteenth time. He really didn’t like helicopters very much. No safety margin. “I don’t see why you didn’t ride in back,” West said to him.
“If I’m going to buy it, I want to see it coming.”
West scrunched up his mouth, then nodded slowly. “Okay, I can see that.”
“How high can we go?”
“Until we run out of air. Say about angels ten.” Jeremiah stared at him. “Ten thousand feet.”
“Oh.”
The helicopter flew on, the rotor scream building as Alex West applied power to get the old craft to climb. Jeremiah tried not to think about how long it would take them to hit the water if the blades spun off. Or if the engine quit. Or if the transmission seized. He was an aerospace engineer. Helicopters were nothing but a thousand parts moving in close formation on the constant edge of metal fatigue.
The helicopter took a long time to climb to the altitude West wanted. Finally, he spoke on the headset. “That’s as high as I want to try and push this crate,” he said.
“Thanks,” Alison said from the back. “Maybe we should have taken Azanti?”
“I was worried about showing it off to the military again,” Jeremiah said, trying not to look down through the chin-bubble glass below his feet. It was a clear, cloudless day. The water was so far, far below. It didn’t help that it was getting cold inside the cockpit, and that it was harder to breathe. “Can we just get this done, please?”
“I’m working on it,” Alison said. The tracker was on the seat next to her, computer in her lap as she typed at the program. “Got it. Coordinates 33 degrees, 19 minutes, 54.6 seconds north, 118 degrees, 20 minutes, 13.3 seconds west.” West punched the data into the helicopter’s rather dated navigational system.
“Near Joe Machado Field, about a mile from Avalon. Santa Catalina Island.”
Twenty minutes later the two helicopters flew over the southern edge of the island. West felt a little surer of the controls. He’d occupied his time thinking about the setup they’d used on the Azanti, and how a more helicopter-like control scheme might work better.
Below them, the island was steep hills leading to nearly nonexistent beaches, with almost the entire population living in and around the tiny town of Avalon. The land mass wasn’t even a mile wide.
They passed over the island’s botanical gardens, picking up one of the island’s few paved roads. That led to Avalon, and, before long, Joe Machado baseball field came into view. The helicopters began to circle as Alison used the system to close in.
“Up there,” she said, pointing to a nearby hill. Below them, a few dozen figures were running as if they could catch the helicopters hundreds of feet above. They weren’t waving to draw attention to themselves.
“Looks like the island is infected,” West said as he turned in the direction Alison indicated.
“They get a lot of their food from fresh fish,” Jeremiah said. He’d spent many a summer on the island with his family, diving on the reefs from the family yacht.
The helicopters climbed along a grotto that ran north, off the Avalon Canyon road. Steep ridges followed to either side, with short, scrub-like trees and brush common on the island. As they reached the summit of a small hill, West pointed.
“Over there,” he said, “two o’clock!”
All eyes on the right side of the helicopter looked as the craft banked toward a small burned section of a hill. Jeremiah was immediately reminded of the crash site they’d found in Texas. They wouldn’t have to dig this time.
“There it is!” Jeremiah gasped. Lying in the middle of a circle of burnt brush was another ship. The same flattened, elongated sphere shape. This one didn’t look burned, and the cockpit was closed. Had it made a controlled landing, then?
“At least we don’t have to dig it out while the boss drinks cold water,” West chuckled. Jeremiah shot him a glare, and he found the pilot sporting a toothy grin. “What do you want to do?”
“Is there anywhere to land?”
West looked all around, giving the area a professional appraisal. The other helicopter was hovering perfectly one hundred feet away. West needed to make constant corrections and was struggling to hold their position in a hover. He occasionally let a little curse escape his lips when he overcorrected. Eventually he keyed his radio.
“Patty, what do you think?” Patty Mize, the pilot of the other helicopter, was much more experienced in the craft than West. After a moment, she replied.
“There’s a dirt road on the other side of the ridge to the south,” she said. “The map identifies it as Divide Road. I think we can put down there. It’s maybe fifty yards from the crash site?” West looked at Jeremiah, who was nodding enthusiastically.
“Sounds good, Patty. You go first, and I’ll take my lead from you.” The other bird angled sideways and slid in the direction she’d indicated. West needed to go nose first; his vertical movements were not nearly as flawless.
Patty had been right; it was little better than a dirt trail. However, it was wide and relatively clear of obstructions. “At least there are no power poles or light posts,” West said. Without hesitation, the other helicopter leveled just past a bend and quickly settled down amid a huge plume of dust. The skids had maybe five feet on either side.
“I left the bend for you,” Patty said over the radio. The bend in the road at the peak was about a third wider. West nodded, his jaw muscles flexing and teeth slightly exposed as he came in for a landing.
“Check your belts,” he warned as dust exploded into the air from their rotor wash.
“Is this a good idea?” Jeremiah asked. West didn’t answer; it took all his concentration to fly the helicopter. Jeremiah watched with eyes wide, holding his breath. He had a few hundred hours in small planes and couldn’t imagine the concentration it took to control a helicopter. Alex West had said he hadn’t flown one in years. Great.
Luckily for all on board, West possessed excellent instincts. That and the intervening hour of flight time had quickly helped bring back skills long dormant. There were some updrafts, but it was still spring, so they weren’t nearly as bad coming up the canyon as they would be in July or August. The helicopter’s skids hit the hard-packed tan soil with a thump! They started to bounce, and West worked at the controls, killing their lift and reducing power. They instantly settled back down.
“Thank you for flying OOE Airlines,” he said, “please wait until the pilot has turned off the fasten seat belt signs before getting up. Some baggage may have shifted during landing.”
“I think I left some baggage for you in my pants,” Allison said from the back. The craft’s turbine engine began to wind down as West went through the power-down checklist.
“We’re good,” he said, then examined the fuel gauge. “Plenty of gas, too.” He tapped an instrument. Jeremiah popped the big plastic copilot door, and the warmer Santa Catalina air blew dust in his face. Instantly his nose scrunched up.
“What’s that smell?” he asked.
“Decay,” West said. Everyone froze half out of the helicopter. The turbines on the helicopters were still spinning down, and the blades were whizzing overhead. They all sniffed the air. The smell of rot was subtle and unmistakable. “It’s coming up the canyon,” he said and pointed. A mile away, over the tops of some hills, the town of Avalon was partly visible. It looked normal, complete with several sailboats bobbing in the bay. Normal except for numerous curls of smoke rising from buildings.
“Come on,” Jeremiah said and slid down to the ground. “Let’s get going.” The rest of the men and women hesitated for a moment while their boss began trekking across the hilltop toward the crash site.
“Move it,” West said. “You heard the boss.” In moments, the tools and equipment were unshipped, and everyone was following him. “Stay with the helicopters,” he said to Patty as she was getting ready to leave her bird. “I want someone here to dust us off fast if things get dicey.” She examined the area, then nodded.
“Good vantage point,” she agreed. The woman reached under her windbreaker and drew the small frame semi-auto, checked that the chamber was loaded, then returned it. “You’re packing, right?”
“You bet,” he said. “After that adventure in space, I doubt I’ll ever be unarmed again as long as I live.” He gestured toward the group overtaking their boss. “I didn’t tell him, but most of us are carrying.”
“Don’t be long,” she said and began surveying the surrounding terrain. He shook his head and held up one of the small VHF radios.
“I’m on Channel 5,” he said. She reached into her helicopter and pulled one out, turning it on and switching it to the same channel. They did a quick radio check. “Sounds good, see you soon.”
West jogged along the rough path. It didn’t take long to catch up to Jeremiah. He was already complaining profusely and stumbling over bushes. The man was as wilderness-savvy as a Boston debutante. He managed to catch up well before they reached the crash site.
“Same craft,” Alison said from a few feet away. One of the specialists was sweeping the air with instruments, checking for radiation and dangerous gasses. “The lifeboat theory is more and more valid.”
“No harmful radiation,” the technician announced.
“This one is in a lot better shape,” West said as he stood next to Alison and examined it.
“I wonder if it still flies?” Jeremiah asked aloud.
“You’d have to find a toddler to fly it.” West noted. Jeremiah looked at him sideways, then remembered the pilot of the one they’d found in the Texas desert was tiny. It had resembled a red fox in some regards, a lemur in others. They had the body in a freezer back aboard his ship.
“Can we move it?”
“It only weighs around 100 pounds,” Alison said. They’d used straps to move the first one, though they were still worried about contamination from radiation back then. After taking that one apart, no such concern remained. The men all looked skeptical, but Jeremiah thought it was a grand idea, especially since he wouldn’t be doing any of the lifting.
The team set to work with shovels, carefully dislodging the craft from where it had hit. The one in Texas had been buried almost six feet under the hard-packed desert soil, but the ground here had cushioned the ship’s impact somewhat.
“Must have come in a lot slower,” Jeremiah noted. He had the ‘meteor storm’ data back in his office. All the targets entered the atmosphere at roughly the same speed, and that speed was damned fast. The one in Texas had never slowed a bit, while this one had apparently braked a lot before hitting. It wasn’t until they had it loose, and four strong men lifting it between them, that a thought occurred to Jeremiah. I wonder if the pilot is still alive inside? After a moment, he decided to keep that to himself.
“What’s that noise?” Alison asked as they began moving back toward the landing point.
“What noise?” West asked from his place at the nose of the craft.
“It sounds like a howling,” she said, and stopped to listen better. “Yeah, howling.” Jeremiah came up next to her on the side of the trail and looked down. His blood ran cold.
“It is howling,” he said. “We need to hurry!”
“Easy for you to say,” one of the men grumbled as he staggered and almost tripped over a large rock.
“No, he’s right,” Allison said, “we really need to hurry!” They could all hear the howling sound now as it got closer and more defined. West craned his neck to look and saw the source. A wave of people racing up the hill with stunning speed.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Jeremiah!”
“What?” Currently Jeremiah was doing his best to try to keep up with the now accelerating team carrying the spacecraft. “In my waistband, under my windbreaker, there’s a pistol.”
“A what?!” Jeremiah snapped. “You brought a gun?”
“Look down the damn hill, and tell me I shouldn’t have brought a fucking gun!” The howls were clear enough to make out individual voices. They ranged from young to old, male and female. They all sounded crazed, and the screeching was beginning to make them all wide-eyed with fear. “Take the gun, Jeremiah.”
“I...can’t.”
“Bullshit!” West snapped. “Take the gun, or take the ship from me.” Faced with choosing between two distasteful options, Jeremiah chose what he saw as the least physical. West felt his coat being moved and Jeremiah ineffectively tugging at the gun.
“It won’t come out of the holster thing.”
“It’s a positive retention holster,” he explained. “Push down against the holster with your thumb while pulling the grip.”
“What?”
“Oh for fuck sake, take the ship!” West let go of the nose of the ship. The team all cried out and West caught Jeremiah by the shirt front and pulled him into position. The executive looked like he was being forced to carry a body, or a huge bag of stinky trash. West could tell he was taking less than his load. Still, he appeared to at least be stabilizing it for the other three.
Unburdened of the ship, West reached around and freed the gun from its holster. The weight of the Glock 23 was comforting in his hand as he let the others move on and took up a position near the rear. He could see more clearly now. There were at least a hundred infected scrambling up the hill. Many were nearly naked, while others were mostly clothed. He could see bare feet, torn bloody by the rock scrabble, but their owners were completely unaffected. Many had blood all down their fronts or bite marks on their bodies. Many looked right at him with deadly intent. It was the space station again, times a million.
West lined up the front sights on the approaching horde and fired his first shot. Some twenty yards further on, Jeremiah let out a loud yelp of surprise. His shot hit a naked man in the shoulder and passed through with a splash of blood to take a chunk out of a woman’s face behind him. The woman staggered but kept going. The man showed no reaction at all.
“Jesus Christ,” West hissed. They were less than 50 yards down the hill and running up it like they were on level ground. How could normal people even run up a hill like that? He aimed at the one at the very front of the pack, a Hispanic-looking man in his twenties wearing only a sports jersey and a single shoe. He shot him though the center of the chest. The round destroyed the man’s heart and exited his back to hit another man in the stomach. “No way,” West yelled as the first man continued for several steps, then simply fell face first. Two men behind him were sent sprawling as they fell over his body. Forty yards.
West ran for a moment to catch up with the others. Once he was behind them again, he turned to face their pursuers. Thirty yards. Abandoning precision, he aimed about hip-high and started firing, moving his aim side to side. Bang, bang, bang! the Glock pumped rounds down at the rushing mob. Then he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. He turned the gun sideways to see the slide locked back. There was no way he’d gone through 13 rounds that fast. No fucking way. The result of his mag-dump was four more down, five injured. It’d had about as much effect on the mob as you’d have blowing air from your lungs at a tidal wave. He dropped the magazine, caught it with his right, slid it into a pocket, and reached for one of the two spares on his belt.
“Drop the ship and run,” he said.
“No!” Jeremiah snapped. “We need the ship.”
“We need to live more,” West said. The other men looked down the hill, panic growing on their faces. West had just got the magazine reloaded when nearby another gun started sounding. He glanced over and was surprised to see Alison shooting with a compact semi-auto handgun. She saw him and shrugged.
“After the ISS, I decided I didn’t want to be helpless.”
“Works for me,” he said and began firing as well.
The combination of two guns working the crowd helped. Alison was a pretty good shot too, and quickly caught onto the tactic of aiming low on the lead group to trip them up. She shot out her first magazine and fished one out of a pocket on her vest while West fired the last three rounds in his.
“Last magazine,” he said as he reloaded.
“Me too,” she said.
West checked the team’s progress. They’d abandoned Jeremiah’s help and were manhandling it between the three remaining. The helicopter was a few feet away and they were grunting in effort to lift it high enough to fit into the big central bay. The infected were only 10 yards down the hill. West gritted his teeth and slowly walked toward the first helicopter as he fired. We’re not going to make it, he thought.
“I’m out!” Alison yelled as her gun locked up.
“RUN!” he yelled as the first of the infected broached the top of the hill. He shot the woman in the face and she fell back, knocking the next two spinning back down the hill. A huge man vaulted over her falling body and West shot him through the hip. The man landed and screamed in rage and pain as his leg folded under him, bone shattering and part of his femur jutting out of his abdomen, taking intestines with it.
The blades on the helicopter with the salvaged ship and crew were beginning to spin up. West tried not to think about the fact that his own bird was just sitting there with the engine stopped, and only the generator running. How long to get the blades spun up? Too long. Then he heard the engine on his whine to life. He shot two more infected who were leaping at him as he backpedaled. He tripped on a bush and almost fell over the other side of the hill. He barely caught himself. Another raced at him, eyes wide in insane hunger, teeth bloody, mouth open and reaching. He rammed his gun out, smashing teeth on the man, and pulled the trigger. The back of his head exploded, and he fell away. West’s gun locked empty as still another reached for him.
Boom, a gun report came from near the helicopters and the top of the man’s head exploded. West turned and saw Patty in a classic Weaver stance, gun in both hands, legs apart, leaning slightly forward. She fired again and an infected crashed to the ground at his heels.
“Get to the chopper!” Patty cried. West ran, the enormity of the situation all but overwhelming him. She abandoned her stance and moved sideways, firing as she went. Alison and Jeremiah were already onboard the bird, and the big doors were sliding closed. Free of their load, the two other men also carrying fired at the infected, though none with the skill Patty was showing.
West slid into the seat and slammed the door, latching it. He saw she’d come over and started the turbine in his bird, locking the run control down and setting the throttle. It had been a hell of a gamble, he thought. Another twenty seconds, and it probably would have lifted off, whether he was aboard or not.
“Holy shit!” Alison cried as a pair of infected slammed into the metal rear sliding door with bone crushing force. Blood splattered across the plexiglass window, which developed a huge crack. Three more smashed into the side.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” Jeremiah said from the copilot seat. His eyes were as big as dinner plates, his veins standing out on his neck, and spittle flying from his lips as he yelled.
West took a precious second to scan the instruments, though he knew it made little difference. If anything was wrong, they were dead; however, he needed enough RPMs to get off the ground. He judged there were sufficient ones, pulled up on the collective, pushed forward on the cyclic, and the helicopter lifted off the dirt road and began to accelerate away. When it did, it took a half dozen infected with it.
“Oh shit,” West said as the helicopter began to tilt to one side, climbing unsteadily for a second, then stopping. He gave it more collective and pulled hard on the cyclic, trying to level them out. An alarm started to buzz, and he looked up. “RPM” was glowing yellow, meaning the rotors were losing speed. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said as they started to go down again, and the pitch of the engine rose to an angry scream. The entire top of the hill was alive with infected now. Dozens. Tens of dozens swarmed like angry army ants. He looked around and made a snap decision. He pushed the cyclic forward, and the helicopter went over the edge of the hill and began to fall. Jeremiah screamed like a little girl.
West was dimly aware of Patty screaming instructions at him, the sound distant and muffled from the headset still hanging on the peg over his head. He didn’t even think about reaching for it. That wasn’t an option. Several of his unwanted passengers fell away, spinning and pin wheeling away over the cliff.
The helicopter plummeted over the side, accelerating downward and turning toward the left. West ground his teeth together as he pulled on the cyclic to level them. The ground was only a couple hundred feet below. The right-side plexiglass window exploded inward as a pair of infected smashed it at the same time.
“West!” Alison screamed as they tried to climb through.
“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” he growled, and gave the pedals full left. The tail rotor acted as a counter to the natural rotation induced by the spinning rotor blades. The pedals controlled the pitch of the tail rotor, and enabled a helicopter to yaw left and right, even when just hovering. West’s action spun the craft like a top.
The crazy spin generated so much centrifugal force that everyone was thrown against the outer bulkheads. Alison, who’d been cringing backward to avoid the infected trying to climb through and reach her, was flung face first into the aft of the two door windows, which exploded outward. If she hadn’t been in a sitting position, she would have been launched out like a missile. As it was, she was knocked unconscious, her body above the hips dangling out the hole left by the exploded window. The remaining infected hung on for another second, then were flung away.
West wrenched the craft back under control. He yanked in enough collective to be sure they didn’t smack into a hill and noticed the entire helicopter had an unnerving vibration that hadn’t been there before. “Oh, that’s not good,” he said aloud, then turned and began climbing. The stick seemed slow to respond, and he had to use twice as much pressure on the pedals as before. That vibration was in the pedals as well. “Oh, what did I do to this crate,” he said through gritted teeth. Patty’s voice was still yelling on the headphones, which he finally answered.
“Are you okay?” she called.
“I’m fine,” he said, “though I’m shocked we’re still alive!”
“Me too,” she agreed, “I don’t know if I could’ve pulled that off, and I have three thousand hours in these. It looked like something from the movies. A miracle.” He finished climbing to her altitude and they circled the hilltop as he examined his instruments and alarms. Nothing appeared serious enough to warrant immediate concern. He glanced over and saw Osborne was unconscious. It looked like he’d smashed his head on the side of the door. He’d have quite the bruise when he woke up. Outside, Patty had orbited to his passenger side, inspecting for damage.
“You have a passenger half out the back door,” she said. He looked over his shoulder and saw Alison, still hanging half out the door. It didn’t look comfortable, or safe. “She’s bleeding from the head.”
“The boss is out too,” West said. “We need to set down for a minute.” They’d just passed over the southern edge of the island, so Patty led him into a sweeping bank to the left.
“There’s a place down there,” she said, “seven o’clock. Looks like a wastewater treatment plant, or sand and gravel? Right on the beach.”
After the reception they’d gotten near Avalon, West decided to carefully check the area before landing. He was out of ammo, and Alison was as well (and unconscious). He had no idea how many rounds the other armed men might have. They certainly were in no shape for another fight. As Patty was the better pilot, she flew down to a hundred feet above the ocean, where she hovered next to the buildings.
The water was whipped up and sand from the beach blew into the air as they both watched the buildings for signs of life. Back at the ball park, then the hill top, the infected flocked to the sound of the helicopters. This time, nothing moved.
“I think you’re good for a quick landing,” she said. “Use that big open space next to the water, but off the sand. I’ll land on the road, so if anyone comes down they’ll go for us first.” He agreed that was a good idea, since her helicopter still had all its windows.
Patty put her bird down a little before he did as an extra precaution. When there was still no response, West came in over the water, flared, and set down without a hop this time.
“You’re getting better at this,” Patty said. He wasn’t sure if he agreed.
“Keep a lookout,” he said, “while I sort this out?”
“Will do,” she agreed.
West rolled the throttles to idle, then locked them. He flipped the radio to PA and carefully climbed out of his seat and into the back. Leaving the bird running was insane, but what wasn’t right now? There was blood, hair, and bits of skin all over the front window, the ones the infected broke. The fragments of the rear window had blood on them as well, and he immediately feared Alison had torn her face off when she’d been launched through it. His first look at her seemed to confirm the worst. Her head and face were a mask of blood and matted hair.
“Oh, shit girl,” he said and gently pulled her in through the hole so as not to make it any worse. Plexiglass wasn’t as sharp as regular glass, but you could still cut yourself on it. He expected to find her skin hanging in tatters. It wasn’t. There was lots of blood, some still dripping, but no signs of ripped skin. He went to their supplies and found a canteen. They’d filled it from the ship’s supply of steam boiled water, as instructed by the researcher on the oil rig. Using it, he washed her face with a quarter of the canteen. No blood flooded back over pale white skin. “Thank God,” he said.
“West!” Patty’s voice bellowed over the PA. “Head’s up, inbound.” There was an increase in pitch from the other helicopter, which was lifting smoothly into the air. West gently lifted Alison onto a seat and buckled her in before looking again. A group of infected were standing under the other helicopter, which was hovering just a few feet above their heads. As he gave Alison’s belts a tug, one of them looked his way, realized what it was seeing, and ran toward him.
“Time to go,” West said and quickly slid into the pilot’s seat. As soon as his hands touched the controls he increased the throttle. The engine roared back to life, and he spent a second struggling with his seatbelt while the RPMs came up. Finally, with the throttles all the way open and his belt on, West did a quick visual on the gauges before easing up on the collective.
He’d hurt the bird, probably badly, he guessed. Every bit of his meager helicopter training said you never took off in a compromised bird. Never, ever, ever. But the training didn’t cover cannibal zombies running at you. He silently prayed as the shimmy came back, then the Jet Ranger began to climb. The lead infected made a mad jump at his skids, but they were already a dozen feet up and climbing. Soon, they were just dots in the chin-bubble as he turned south west.
He slipped the headphones back on and switched from PA. “Let’s go home,” he said. “This bird is not in good shape, Alison needs medical assistance, and Jeremiah is out too.” The two helicopters came around and headed southwest.
* * *
Just West of San Diego, CA
“Never liked these fucking things!” Vice Admiral Lance Tomlinson snarled over the headset he was wearing. Seated in the rear observation seat of the MV-22 Osprey, he looked as annoyed as he sounded.
“The Osprey’s a fine bird, Admiral!” Marine Colonel Tad Alinsky said with a grin. “Besides, we’ve only got two Seahawks. We’re using them to move hardware. There are twenty of the Ospreys, so that’s what we use.” The admiral grunted. “The Army is out of this op?”
“Too many factors against them,” the admiral said, shaking his head. “Rose did a hell of a job getting what he did out of Hood when it fell. He has elements of the 1st and 3rd Cav, as well as some people from the sustainment command. Probably better than eight thousand men in and around Hood when the shit hit the fan, and he got less than 500 combat troops out.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine the Army fared well at all nationally. Landlocked, nowhere to go, sometimes right next to major population centers. Anyway, Rose is trying to organize, but Army on a float? We’re also critically short in the ability to put anyone ashore as it is. I’m afraid they’ll just get in the way of rapid deployment.”
“I can only imagine,” Alinsky said. Marines spent a lot of time on the water. “We’d just moved aboard the Essex a week before the first outbreaks. We got orders to anchor offshore and await developments when comms failed.”
“You’re not sure about the Atlantic Command?” The admiral asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, either.
“No sir,” Alinsky said. “I know the Commandant was in talks with the Joint Chiefs as everything started falling apart. I’d like to ask POTUS, but I wasn’t allowed to bring it up.” Tomlinson nodded in agreement. That meeting had been terse, to say the least. There were a half-dozen marine amphibious assault ships based out of Norfolk, along with more naval assets. They could possibly be doing so much to save people, help hold the wall while the scientists worked.
“San Diego coming up below,” the pilot called. The admiral and the colonel both moved to the side door. The Osprey’s huge three-bladed props were all the way forward, a blur to the left as the men looked down. San Diego was a beautiful coastal town of a million and a half; it had numerous beautiful bridges and many districts along hills overlooking the sea. Flying 5,000 feet above the city now reminded the admiral of the time he’d flown over Lebanon after six weeks of fighting had recently finished.
“How many people could we rescue if we weren’t doing this?” Tomlinson wondered aloud.
“Some, at least,” Alinsky replied. “We had an apartment complex a mile from here firing flares to get the attention of a crew just two hours ago.” The admiral ground his teeth as he looked at the war-ravaged city below. A thousand fires burned. Most were just curls of smoke, but others were infernos. A pair of high-rise offices downtown blazed like torches, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air. That fire couldn’t have started back when everything started falling apart. “I try not to think of the rest of the country.”
“That doctor has to find a cure,” Tomlinson said, though he didn’t believe it even as he said it. They’d all listened to Dr. Breda. She didn’t think there was a cure possible. That was one of the most depressing things he’d heard since the news that Pearl was going to fall.
The Osprey angled to starboard, leaving downtown behind. The Naval Base came into view and Tomlinson’s jaw set. More fires burned there. He’d already seen the images from a high-altitude flyover by an F-18 mounting a SHARP multi-function reconnaissance pod yesterday. Two destroyers and a cruiser were partially sunk in the south bay. The fires on the Boxer had long burned out. The Roosevelt looked untouched. He’d like to land a team on her and had made a note to himself to see to it after this operation.
They passed nearby the Coronado Bridge and over the Tidelands Park. The remains of thousands of multi-colored tents lay in the park, covering almost all the grass. Two big white tents with FEMA on them were partially collapsed. With the military SATCOM and civilian internet down, they’d been unable to find out anything about the FEMA presence there. From a mile up, Tomlinson could still see people moving around the camp and streets. They looked like little lines of ants following the roads choked with abandoned vehicles or swarming over yards.
The next half-mile was a densely packed example of the American Dream, a thousand or so very expensive houses with a scattering of small- to medium-sized apartment buildings, mini malls, schools, and everything else civilians needed to be happy. Official population was 20,000, but how many of them were hunkered down, and how many ready to attack?
They passed over a golf course and then the outer perimeter of Naval Air Station North Island, AKA NASNI, and Naval Base Coronado. Tomlinson had served there several times over his career, the longest for three years back in the late 90s when he was captain of DDG-59, USS Russel, his last pre-carrier command. It was the largest complex of military bases in the western United States, and it was home to dozens of ships and squadrons. It was vital to their plan.
“This place is fucking huge,” Colonel Alinsky said, taking in the hook-shaped island through the other window. “We’re sure the other options aren’t a go?”
“Recon confirms,” Tomlinson said. “Catalina is only 3,000 feet, and on a fucking mountain top. San Clemente Auxiliary has at least a dozen jumbo jets parked on it. One of them parked in the middle of the others at high speed. It would take a week and heavy equipment to make it ready. San Nicolas is similar; only three planes there, but two of them had managed to have a head-on collision in the middle of the only runway. The third one looks like it tried to land in a fog a day later and just added to the pileup. Either way, there isn’t any heavy equipment on the island, so it’s just as bad as San Clemente.” He shrugged. “NASNI has the advantage of only two approaches. One is a bridge and naturally limited, the other is narrow and controllable.”
“Don’t try to teach me how to suck eggs, squid, sir,” Alinsky said, then chuckled. “We’ll go ashore at Coronado and the ammo pier. Once ashore we’ll sweep and clear to the middle, while holding the narrow point of the island south at the amphib base. It’s only about 500 feet wide there, and the population to the south of it is minor. Hopefully, we’ll find some tracks, or even a tank or two, at the base we can use to interdict.” Tomlinson knew and approved of Alinsky’s plans. There had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of Marines and sailors still uninfected on the base. It was the only redeeming quality to the President’s insane plan. They would gain a toehold ashore. Living on ships was only a temporary solution at best. The base provided everything from food to fuel. He was going to do his best to make lemonade.
“Landing at the pier and pushing to hold the airbase wouldn’t work?”
“There could be up to twenty thousand in that town,” Alinsky said, “and the perimeter fence could be breached in a dozen places. Besides, we’ve heard the infected are immune to pain. I doubt a little razor wire will stop them. The south perimeter fence is half a mile long. I have 1,800 men to put ashore. I’d have to use them all, with scant few backups.”
“Admiral,” the pilot interrupted, “I just got a message from Reagan.”
“Go ahead,” Tomlinson said.
“Pearl finally fell. They got two more KC-135s in the air from Hickam, but there was an outbreak inside the perimeter last night, and they couldn’t hold.”
“Fuck,” Tomlinson cursed. “Anyone else get out?”
“Three Hercules with personnel and dependents. They were prepping a line of C-17s for when we took the base here, but they never made it.”
“Understood,” Tomlinson said. He did an analysis of how long those two tankers could keep three C-130s and a 747 in the air and didn’t like the results. “Colonel, we need to begin the operation today, or we’ll lose all those survivors.” The Marine looked grim but nodded. He took his own radio and made the call.
* * *
The now USS Pacific Adventurer, a US Army ship, was slowly sailing north. General Rose was taking advantage of the activity in the flotilla to quietly slip away. The newly emerged POTUS had given him no orders, and the admiral in charge didn’t have the authority. Besides, Rose technically outranked the swabbie, so he could go to hell. The former cruise ship, now III Corps mobile headquarters, was going to slide northward and see how Captain Grange was doing. She should almost be to Washington state by now. Rose needed a piece of real estate to operate from. Somewhere to work and reestablish communications with other Army units.
He’d also managed to ‘borrow’ a pair of small barges and a tug, which was following along with his remaining helicopter gunships and some other assets. All his combat personnel and dependents were crowded onto the Pacific Adventurer, and boy were they crowded.
The ship was designed for 1,000 passengers and 300 crew. He’d packed 525 infantrymen on board and another 800 dependents. Add in another 250 odd retired Army he’d picked up from the flotilla along with their own dependents (around 650 total), and he had 2,200 souls on the ship. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting at least four people, a kid, and maybe their dog. Still, it was better than being alone. Having all the dependents helped morale. What he didn’t have was the means to keep them fed. Hopefully Grange was working on that.
“Orders, sir?” Captain Sampson asked.
“Just continue north, keep it under five miles per hour.”
“Five knots, sir?”
“Whatever,” Rose said. The bridge was wide and open, with lots of glass. Not at all like the Navy ships he’d been on. Sampson said they could fix that, given time. Pacific Adventurer would never be a warship, though they could harden her a bit.
“Do you want to report our position to the admiral, sir?”
“Not just yet,” Rose said. The young captain looked at him but said nothing. Rose made a mental note to have Captain Mays keep a closer eye on the good captain. You don’t rise to the rank of lieutenant general without recognizing a potential hitch in a plan. “We’ll check in when we’ve positioned ourselves north of that island.”
“San Clemente, sir?”
“That’s the one. We might be able to clear and set up a temporary base there.”
“Very good, sir.” Placated, the ship’s commanding officer went back to his duties. Rose ground his teeth as he considered options. He wanted to steam north soon. Especially before the fucking President got on the ground. God knows what the woman would have him doing. He really didn’t want to think about it. He’d just have to settle for getting as far away as he could, without letting Sampson know what he had up his sleeve. He needed the Navy people to run the ship, for now.
* * * * *
