Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (16 page)

Smiling at her and putting a hand up, like he expected order
in the court, Cade said, “I hate to drop this on you, but—”

Interjecting, Daymon said, “There’s always a
but
with
you, Sarge.”

Ignoring the barb, Cade continued, “I’m going
solo
from here on out. I hope I won’t be needing them ... but just in case ...
they’re going with me.”

Obviously blindsided by the news, Jamie’s eyes went wide and
her jaw dropped. In the next beat, as the helicopter slowed, as if she’d
embarrassed herself again, her mouth snapped shut and her jaw muscles bulged.
After a second of looking like she was about to attack Cade, she crossed her
arms and sat back hard in her seat without uttering another word.

Taking the revelation in stride, Lev placed his tactical
helmet on the cabin floor and, looking at Cade, said, “I’ll help hold down the
fort while you’re gone.” He handed over three of his own magazines. All full.
Ninety rounds in total. “Just in case.”

Cade pocketed the mags. Then, with a modicum of regret for
not coming clean earlier, he nodded toward the cockpit and mimed hoisting a
flask to his lips. And to make himself crystal clear—while enduring a withering
barrage of stink eye from Jamie—he covered Lev’s boom mic with one hand, pulled
the earpiece away with the other, and whispered, “Watch the Old Man’s drinking.
And keep an eye on the satellite phone for me, will you?”

Lev nodded. And though it was already an unspoken protocol among
all of the Eden compound survivors to watch each other’s backs, he said, “I’ll
look out for Brook and Raven.”

“Thanks,” said Cade. He thought:
Brook can take of
herself. And Raven’s getting there.

After a moment of silent introspection, he added, “Much
appreciated.”

Unexpectedly Jamie clicked out of her harness and leaned
forward, her face growing several shades of red. “I saved
your
ass,” she
said, her voice rising an octave.

Cade said nothing. Gave his M4 a once over and patted the
magazines on his chest, making sure the hook and loop was holding.

Speaking directly at Jamie, Daymon said, “I saved his ass
too,
once
. And I’m as pissed off about being left out as you are. Truth
is, though, I should be grateful for him putting the heat on Christian and
Bishop. If he hadn’t I would have never seen Heidi again ...
alive
.”

“I saved his ass too,” said Duncan. “Welcome to the club,
Jamie. It’ll pay off in spades. Dollars to doughnuts before all is said and
done that humble fella sitting back there with you ... and, I’d like to note
for the record, saying nothing to his own defense ... will one day save our asses
ten times over. I’m already over the snub. Now quit yer grumbling so I can land
this tub o' tin.”

A shroud of silence descended on the cabin.

Bleeding off airspeed, Duncan flared the Black Hawk and leveled
off ten feet above the desert.

Cade removed the flight helmet and passed it to Lev. Then he
pulled out a pen and quickly scribbled something akin to a small novel on the
other half of the scrap of paper that the first set of GPS numbers were written
on. Handed it forward to Daymon just as the Black Hawk touched terra firma and
its heavy duty suspension swallowed up the uneven ground. Still saying nothing,
Cade shouldered his ruck and donned his tactical helmet. M4 in one hand, he
hauled open the starboard door, squinted against the gritty rotor driven blast,
and leaped out.

Once his boots hit the ground, Cade turned and helped Lev
close the door. Felt the latch catch and through the scuffed Plexiglas saw the
younger man flashing him a textbook salute. Which he promptly reciprocated.
Suddenly movement over Lev’s left shoulder caught Cade’s eye. Craning his neck,
he noticed Daymon staring at him through the channel between the cockpit and
crew cabin. His visor was up and, incredulous, he was shaking his head and mouthing
the words:
Thanks a lot
.

“Sorry,” mouthed Cade, palms up and shrugging, the universal
semaphore for
it’s beyond my control
. Without warning, the rotor
revolutions increased rapidly until the disc was a blur and sand was once again
abrading every square inch of his exposed skin. Imagining how bad Daymon must
be feeling for once again being excluded from the mission, and hearing in his
head the verbal tantrum likely taking place inside the Black Hawk, Cade made a
mental note to thank everyone later for working so well together as a team at
the airport. And as he ducked away from the forty grit facial peel and subconsciously
put a hand atop his helmet, it came to him that the right thing to do when next
they spoke would be to make amends to not only Daymon, but all parties involved
for him not being forthright from the start.

And then, to add insult to injury, he recalled telling Raven
that withholding information is just the same as lying.

What’s good for the goose ... hypocrite.

In the Black Hawk, which was now a dozen feet off the desert
floor, Jamie buckled in and promptly apologized for her outburst. Then,
singling out Daymon, she said, “Want me to try and talk to Heidi when we get
back?”

Daymon snapped the visor down, craned right and peered back
into the cabin but said nothing.

“I’ve been where she was,” added Jamie. “I don’t know
exactly what went on at the mansion, but I can guess. I’ll go slow.”

Behind the smoked visor Daymon’s eyes misted over. Nodding,
he said, “At this point I’m open to anything.”

Perplexed, but not surprised that Cade had thrown them all a
late-breaking curve ball, Duncan leveled the helo thirty feet above the rocky
ground, looked at Daymon, and shrugged as if saying:
Let’s make the best of
this
. As he spun the helicopter on a flat plane the better part of ninety degrees
to the left, he caught a brief glimpse of Cade sitting near the canyon edge,
left hand still raised against the blowing sand. Once the turn was complete and
the juddering helo was pointing into the sun, Duncan pulled his visor down over
his eyes and stole a last glance through the toe bubble at the lone operator
who was now flashing a thumbs up.

Sure you’re good to go
, thought Duncan. With the
uncertainty of leaving Cade alone in the desert with little water and the
hottest hours of the day ahead, he was hit with an intense and nearly
overwhelming desire to extract the flask. Like energy coursing through a
breaking wave, the urge grew and then ebbed but never fully dissipated. With
his intellect losing the pitched battle in his head, he looked at Daymon and
said, “Punch in the new waypoint.”

Daymon said nothing as he carefully unfolded the scrap of
paper Cade had given him and began punching in the new string of GPS numbers. A
tick later, sensing the lack of forward movement, he looked up from his task and
said, “Old Man. You’re sandblasting the poor guy.”

Releasing his grip on the cool smooth metal of the flask,
Duncan removed his left hand—which seemed to be acting of its own volition—from
his cargo pocket and rested it on the controls. With the craving momentarily
vanquished, he flicked a quick salute at the operator and nudged the stick
forward.

A few seconds after leaving Cade alone in the Utah desert,
Daymon read the message scrawled below the GPS coordinates. “Looks like we’re heading
to a base called Bastion. Cade wrote here that you need to talk to a Commander
Beeson. Says he agreed to have his men do a remote-field once-over on the
helicopter before we go back to the compound.”

Chuckling, Lev said, “PMS.”

Arms still crossed over her chest and crushing the empty
fabric sleeves where she should be feeling the reassuring hard edges of
her
three fully loaded magazines, Jamie shot Lev a death look and mouthed, “Don’t
go there.”

Cade watched the Black Hawk drop below the canyon rim and
thunder off to the east, hugging the undulating contours of the land until it
was a tiny speck. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the crisp morning air suddenly
lost its edge. In the next half beat Cade’s exposed skin and gear started to
soak up the heat from the rising sun. In the latter half of the beat he felt a
fat bead of sweat roll from under his helmet and down his spine.

With the rotor noise still banging off the ancient arroyos
and sandstone mesas, he continued squinting into the sun until the helicopter
and its trailing shadow was lost altogether in the ground clutter. A few more
seconds slipped into the past and a heavy silence fell over his elevated perch.
He swiveled his head, taking inventory of his surroundings at all points of the
compass. Behind him nothing stood taller than the exposed rocks and ground-hugging
sage and tumbleweeds he’d already surveyed from the helo. To his right a tiny
lizard of some sort scurried from the flat stone where it had been basking in
the sun to another that offered a little more in the way of concealment.
Farther off to the right, beyond his newfound friend’s hiding place, the mesa
he was on continued west for a quarter mile before dropping off into what he presumed
was the canyon with State Route 6 cut through it south to north before
meandering on a northeast tack. And down there on the road somewhere were the
trashed cars and festering bodies of the Green River bandits that he and Brook
and the Kids had dealt with handily. Dead ahead was the Green River basin,
where ridges and veins cut by ancient runoff had left the sandstone features
looking like giant overlapping ochre-colored waves. And less than a mile as the
crow flies, off to his left, was the newly created ghost town of Green River.

Thankful the sun wasn’t as brutal now as it had been the
first time through these parts, he removed his helmet and glasses. Tapped the
excess dust from both and fished a microfiber cloth from a pocket and first
gave his glasses a thorough wipe. Then he cleaned the optics on his M4
beginning with the flip away 3x magnifier and finishing with the EOTech holographic
sight perched atop the carbine’s upper rail.

Finished, he tucked away the cloth and shrugged off his
hydration pack then the ruck. Rifled through a side pocket and extracted his
armored Bushnells and the satellite phone which he’d left locked and powered
on. He keyed in the code and watched the screen come to life. After noting the
time and seeing there were no messages or missed calls, he found Beeson’s
number and sent a lengthy text message. After sending the message he thumbed
the screen dark and slipped the phone into a cargo pocket where it’d be easier
to access.
No turning back now
, he thought as he snugged the binoculars
tight and began glassing the city and valley below.

Off in the distance, south by east, he recognized the
tablelike rock formation and I-70 which ran through it west to east towards the
FOB Bastion and Mack, Colorado, ninety miles distant. And in the shadow where
the blacktop cut through the red rock formation he spotted someone staring back
at him through an impossibly large pair of field glasses. A staring match
ensued until the camo-clad soldier dropped the glasses from her face and he
recognized the sergeant named Andreason whom he’d met previously at Bastion.
She was leaning over the hood of a desert tan Humvee sporting a pair of whip
antennas reaching a dozen feet into the sky. She was accompanied by five heavily
armed soldiers and nearby was another Humvee with a turret mounted .50 caliber
heavy machine gun, one of the five soldiers manning it.

Message received
, thought Cade.
Don’t fuck with
Beeson. The town of Green River now belongs to the Big Green Machine.

With nothing else to do but sweat it out and wait, both
literally and figuratively, he leaned back on his ruck and fixed his gaze dead
ahead.

Still a fair distance out, Duncan saw that what was once
just a single strip facility perched atop a desert mesa was now a bustling base
servicing fixed and rotor wing craft. A handful of static aircraft sat in a
neat line near a row of windowless hangers, all identical and rust-streaked and
abutting the north fence line. A safe distance from the flight line were four
fuel bowsers, and going by the logos painted on the side of the rounded tanks,
two of them hailed from Grand Junction Regional Airport a few miles to the east.

All around the base, running parallel with the hurricane
fencing, a deep moat-like trench roughly the width of a Humvee had been carved
into the red soil. As Duncan reduced altitude and airspeed, more details
emerged. First impressions went out the door as it became evident the trenches
were not empty. He saw dead eyes staring up and pale hands clawing at the smooth
walls. In places he saw rotters that had managed to crawl out and were either
still clutching the fence or in the process of being culled by roaming pairs of
armed soldiers.

East of the airstrip Duncan saw a pair of armored personnel
carriers reentering the base over a mobile bridge system, its retractable apparatus
currently deployed across the trench.

Bringing the Black Hawk low and slow over the west fence line,
Duncan saw the welcoming party at the same instant Lev said into the comms,
“We’ve got company. And it looks like they’re meeting us at the flight line
locked and loaded.”

“Couple of Humvees is all,” added Daymon from the left seat.

“Lev’s right,” conceded Duncan, “Those things sticking out
of the turrets are fifty cals with shells big enough to knock us out of the
sky.”

Jamie said, “They’re just like the Humvee at the compound.”

“Only they’re here and they’re manned and that makes them twenty
times as deadly,” stated Lev.

“We’ll be OK,” Duncan said. “Cade wouldn’t send us into an
ambush.”

A hush fell over the cabin as the Black Hawk entered the
airspace over the base.

Just past the fence line, sitting idle near the row of squat
hangars, was a matte black twin rotor Osprey and, as Duncan applied left pedal
and leveled upon seeing a vacant landing pad, he also spotted a Ghost Hawk
helicopter crouched low on the bigger aircraft’s lee side, its black skin and
angular lines adding to its already menacing appearance.

The static aircraft slid by on the left and Duncan shifted his
gaze forward and saw a person on the ground waving him in. Following the
directions doled out silently via the day-glo batons clutched in the helmeted
figure’s gloved hands, he set the helicopter down parallel to the Ghost Hawk atop
a square of blacktop marked out as a landing pad. A beat later the pair of Humvees
jammed to a quick stop nearby. But the passengers remained inside with the
doors closed.

By the time Duncan had powered the DHS bird down and the
rotor chop diminished he saw why nobody was coming to greet them. Nearby, the
Ghost Hawk’s rotors were making lazy revolutions. Seconds later, with no discernable
sound entering the Black Hawk’s cabin or cockpit, the stealth helo’s overhead
disc was nearly a black blur.

Duncan thought it a strange sight. Dust kicking up but no rotor
sound nor the usual heat mirage produced by hardworking turbine engines. There
was, however, a strange harmonic vibration he could feel deep in his chest.
Before long the silent black craft was hovering a dozen feet over the tarmac.
In the next couple of seconds the wheels disappeared inside the airframe and, concealing
them, a triangular black panel motored into place.

Duncan imagined himself at the controls as he watched the
helicopter ascend and glide slowly over the hangers and pick up speed, its
prism-shaped nose aimed at Grand Junction and the rambling Rocky Mountain range
a hundred miles distant.

Steeling himself for the upcoming meeting with base
commander Major Greg Beeson, Duncan unbuckled and removed his flight helmet,
setting it on the console between the seats. Then, with the need to see clearly
more important than keeping his ego intact, he removed the yellow and orange
oddities, gave both lenses a meticulous cleaning, and squared them away on his
face.

Stating the obvious, Daymon said, “We’re keeping the guys
with the gun trucks waiting.”

Flask in hand, Duncan unscrewed the lid with a flick of his
thumb. He growled, “Let ‘em wait,” and took a prolonged drink just as the
behemoth tiltrotor’s engines roared to life and, slowly at first, the trio of composite
blades making up each prop began chopping the air overhead. In the span of a
few seconds the revolutions increased and a hurricane-like roar was picking up
outside the Black Hawk.

“That’s what our welcoming party was waiting for,” said Lev,
pressing his face against the cabin glass while pointing out more of the
obvious.

Barely two minutes after starting its engines and while
churning up twin clouds of blowing gravel and ochre dust, the matte black
Osprey rose into the air with a thunderous fury.

“Like night and day,” stated Jamie.

More of the obvious
, thought Duncan, taking another
swallow from the flask.

Once at hover, a hundred feet above the flight line, the
twin teardrop nacelles swiveled slowly forward, increasing the engine roar tenfold.

In one moment, as Duncan watched through the overhead cockpit
glass, the aircraft above and now to the fore of the Black Hawk seemed to go
weightless. In the next, the rotors became forward facing propellers and the VTOL
(Vertical Takeoff and Landing) bird was nose down and charging south by
southeast, the rising sun glinting sharply off the port side windows.

As the dust slowly settled, Duncan continued watching the
Osprey as it rapidly closed with the Ghost Hawk. In a few seconds the two silhouettes
had grown so small he had to squint to see them. He was just about to look away
when he detected a flare of light. In the next second he saw the two aircraft
make what he thought was a drastic change in course.

“Binocs,” said Duncan, holding a hand out, eyes locked on
the two black dots.

By the time Lev had handed his Steiners forward, a gray-haired
man in faded MultiCam patterned fatigues had leapt out of the lead Humvee and
was striding purposefully towards the Black Hawk.

“What do you see?” asked Daymon, squinting at the retreating
aircraft.

“I see some sleight of hand. And now I know why Cade had us
drop him off alone where we did.”

“At least where he is there’s almost no chance of him
encountering Zs
or
humans,” proffered Jamie.

“He’ll have what ... an hour or so with nothing but
tumbleweeds and geckos for company,” added Daymon, removing his flight helmet.
“And I hope he gets sunburned after the crap he just pulled on us all.”

Out of the corner of his eye Duncan saw the approaching soldier
wave and loop around to his side. Acting as if he hadn’t seen the greeting, he
said, “We served our purpose. Sometimes, that’s just how it’s got to be. Me ...
I’m getting too old to be tear-assing all over the country anyway. I just want
to kick back and count off the days and leave the fighting—” he looked away
from the two in the cabin and fixed his gaze on Daymon sitting next to him “—and
the
flying
to you younger folk.”

“I’m down. And I’ve been poring over the manual,” Daymon
said. “Just give me the stick time.”

There was a knock on the Plexiglas and when Duncan looked
over his shoulder and saw the man’s name on the tape on his breast and the
black oak leaf front and center on his fatigue blouse, everything fell into
place. He opened the door and said, “Major Beeson, pleased to finally meet you.
Cade’s had nothing but good to say about you.”

“
Bullshit
,” Beeson growled. “Cade is a man of few
words. And if he were spending some of ‘em, he sure as hell wouldn’t be puffing
up my old carcass.”

Daymon leaned forward and ran a hand through his stubby dreads.
Then he said matter-of-factly, “Don’t mind Duncan. He’s been drinking.”

Staring daggers at the dreadlocked tattletale, Duncan
drawled, “Now that’s
bullshit
. I better get my hip waders on ... it’s
getting deep in here.”

Interrupting the spat, Beeson said jokingly, “Pleased to
meet you, Duncan. Why don’t you give the keys to Sergeant Clare there and come
along with me. We’ll get some coffee and while my men give your bird a checkup
I’ll give you the nickel tour. How’s that sound?”

Duncan nodded. Shrugged off his flight harness and felt his
hand brush the hard outline of the flask.
Empty
, he thought.
And hours
to kill.
But he said, “Show us around? Sure. I want to thank you for having
this old girl in for her physical. Lord knows she needs it. And yes, I could
use some fresh brewed pick-me-up.”

Daymon found himself staring at the razor wire atop the
perimeter fencing. Subconsciously he slipped a hand under his shirt and rubbed
the vertical scars on his chest and had a sudden and brief flashback to the pit
of death outside of Schriever. How he’d wallowed amongst the corpses, not all
of them fully dead. He imagined hearing the ghostly moans again. How they’d
filtered up between the cold and intertwined rigor-affected limbs. A shiver ran
up his spine. Finally he looked at the base commander and nodded.
Nothing
else to do out here in the middle of nowhere
, he reasoned as he opened the
door and a stiff cross breeze polluted the cabin with a super-concentrated
blast of carrion-infused hot air.

Voicing her displeasure at the stench and clamping a hand
over her nose, Jamie yanked open the side door and piled out, coughing and dry
heaving.

Lev grabbed their rifles and Duncan’s shotgun and met the
others on the tarmac.

Once everyone was out of the helicopter and assembled,
Beeson said, “Follow me,” turned on his heel and stalked away with the
comportment only a lifetime in the military could instill in a person.