19
“We’ve had bad luck with airports,” Rick told Calvin. “We lost a man, technically three, at an airport.”
The doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “I understand your apprehension, but this is just a dirt runway with a small building and a fuel truck. No hangars, no tower, and no zombies. I would call it an air
field
. It’s your best bet.”
Rick looked again at the digital photograph stored on a small point and shoot camera, and passed it to Seyfert. The viewable image was of three small single engine planes, a biplane, and a small helicopter off to the side of a very small outbuilding. Calvin, Ed, and Seyfert had reconnoitered the airfield when Calvin had remembered it was
down the road a piece
, as he had put it. It was entirely zombie free, and only two miles away. Several undead had been shot from the roof of the tractor depot as they made their way toward it, however.
“And you can fly that bird? You’re sure?” Seyfert demanded of Calvin.
“I was a helo mechanic in the army. I thought it was a good idea to learn how to fly, so yeah. I can use a cyclic and a collective.”
“Fair enough. That bird will only hold two, so it’s you and me. Teems, may we borrow your truck for one more jaunt? We’ll need a driver and a man to ride shotgun too.”
“Of course. I’ll drive.”
“And I’m yer shotgunner,” drawled a voice from behind them.
“Dallas,” Rick said with a smile, “nice to see your lazy hillbilly ass is finally up.”
The big man pointed to a bandage on his head. “I busted my noggin, Hoss. Shut it.”
“Which is exactly why you should be laying down,” the doctor interjected. “I can’t properly diagnose your condition with this equipment, but I can tell you for certain, you took a nasty whack and probably have a concussion.”
“A whack says the quack. Damn, doc, I coulda toldja that. I’m fine.”
Seyfert shook his head. “He’s right, Dallas, you shouldn’t even be up let alone going on a foray.”
“I’m goin’.”
“What if you pass out when you’re needed?”
“Then I’m et. I’m goin. Take three in the truck, but I’m goin.”
Teems was grinning. “Now I’m a big man, but this fella here is downright
large
. I for one ain’t telling him he can’t come.”
Forty five minutes later, Dallas and Teems were talking about college football while they fueled a Robinson R22 helicopter outfitted for crop dusting. Ed and Rick watched the area with a hunting rifle and an M4 as the big men worked, using an almost full fuel truck to accomplish the task. Calvin had already removed the wires holding the rotors to the ground, and was using a clipboard he found in the cockpit to fill out an included pre-flight checklist. It only took minutes to fill the chopper with fuel, and Calvin gave a thumbs up when he was ready. He hopped out of the vehicle with a small yellow tube and added a little fuel to it.
“Checking the fuel is all,” he said to no one in particular. “We’re ready,” he announced in short order. They had done a radio check, and the helicopter could be heard on all the radios, but the throat microphones could not be heard by the chopper. “Security reasons,” was all Seyfert would say. The good news is that there was a full radio room in the depot and the bird could receive loud and clear using that equipment.
“You ready, Navy?” Calvin shouted to Seyfert, who was speaking to Rick.
Seyfert came trotting back to the Robinson. “Will the roof at the depot hold this helicopter?”
“That roof would hold a 747. Didn’t you
see
that building?”
“Okay, when our recon is done, we fly back and land on the roof. Rick will take the fuel truck back, and then you guys will have a helicopter at your disposal too.”
“Good plan. Let’s fly.”
Goodbyes were said, and then the helicopter lifted off. The trucks wasted no time in leaving either, and they drove back toward the depot. No signs of undead had been seen at the airfield. For the few minutes of time they spent there, it was like the plague had missed that small patch of land. Until they got in the air.
Looking down into the vast sea of yellow stalks, Calvin could see dozens of shapes crashing through the corn toward where they just were. In minutes, fifty or so undead would be on the runway.
Seyfert must have seen them too. “Jesus, they really are everywhere.”
“Yup,” Calvin said into the headset. “You should see where we came from. Ohio was thick with them. Thousands upon thousands.”
“I came from San Francisco, but I never really went into the city, we went around it.”
“Roger that, Navy, where do you want to look for your buddies?”
“They were travelling east the last time we saw them.” Seyfert held on as the chopper banked to the left and climbed. Seyfert was scanning out the right side window of the helo with his binoculars not three minutes later when he heard Calvin’s voice over his headset. “There’s your huckleberry.”
The biker was pointing down the highway toward a crossroads a mile or so away. The LAV was indeed there. It was pulled off to the side of the road with the rear hatch open, and three large fires were burning next to it. Even from a mile out and three hundred feet in the air, Seyfert knew that the greasy columns of smoke could only be one thing. Bodies. What really got him thinking was the military checkpoint complete with Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle that had most assuredly held up the LAV. There was no sign of Androwski or Stark.
There were two school buses parked to the side of the road, and they appeared to be full of people. A large tent was in front of the buses, with several personnel in black fatigues strutting about near it.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Seyfert said into his headset.
“Ain’t those your friends?”
“That’s the LAV yeah, but I don’t see Stark or Andy.”
“So shouldn’t we go down there and see where they are?”
“Negative. They would have come back to us if they could have, so somebody stopped them. One of the things that could stop an LAV is a tank, and they just happen to have one,” he pointed to the checkpoint. “We return to the depot and come back with guns.”
Calvin spun the helicopter southwest. “What are guns going to do to that tank?”
“Not a damn thing. We still need to get my friends though, so I’ll think of something.”
20
The rotors hadn’t stopped spinning when Seyfert jumped from the helicopter and made his way to the roof stairs. He gathered his people and some of the inhabitants of the depot and told them what had happened.
“But they’re the damned army,” Dallas drawled. “Ain’t they on our side?”
“I don’t know. There’s no law anymore, so who knows what their intentions are. We saw heavy armor and men in black camo. They could be anybody.”
Chris looked at Seyfert. “We can’t just leave them. They’d come for us.”
Anna nodded in agreement, and ejected the magazine from her pistol, checking her ammo. She slammed the magazine home and made sure the safety was on before she holstered it. “Let’s get them.”
“We can get them as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission. If nobody is left alive to get to our destination, then the mission fails. That can’t happen.”
Teems raised a bushy eyebrow. “What mission?”
“Top secret, ya dumb hick,” Dallas said and punched Teems in the arm. They had become fast friends. “Which is why you can’t come with us, Hoss.”
“What? What are you talking about?” demanded Rick.
Seyfert looked at Rick sympathetically, “He’s right, Rick, you can’t go. You have vital information that can’t be lost or the mission could fail.” Everyone was looking at Rick now. “Commander McInerney would have my balls, but Boone might actually kill me if anything happened to you.”
The bikers weren’t brought in on the details of the Boston mission, but there was a discussion about the detained LAV in which Rick got a little heated. In the end, he acquiesced to the fact that he knew exactly which buildings in Boston they would need to visit, and in the case of MIT, the layout of those buildings. He had been a police officer in the New England city, and as such had been to the university on numerous occasions for various reasons. An explosion in one of the labs, two murders, and frequent parties that needed to be rousted when he was a younger patrolman. In addition, his ex-wife had worked in the specific laboratory facility that they would need to gain access to, and he knew how to do it. That building was a fortress in itself, and the lower administration levels were a maze of cubicles and offices that nobody would want to negotiate without a plague of living dead let alone with one.
Seyfert, Dallas, Ed, and three of the other bikers would attempt to gain some intelligence on what had happened to their friends in the LAV. Teems had demanded to go, citing he wanted to help, but his son had come down with something, and had asked his father to stay with him.
Ed, and two bikers named Crackers and Smitty, now looked down from a giant white water tower, positioned under giant red letters reading GARSVILLE. They watched as Dallas and Seyfert drove a beat up blue Chevy Cavalier toward the checkpoint. Two sniper rifles and a scoped hunting rifle were following the Chevy.
“Check, check,” came Seyfert’s voice through the radio.
“We’ve got you,” Ed replied. “We’ll stick to the plan.”
Seyfert stopped fifty feet shy of the checkpoint, and four men in black camouflage approached. There was an emblem on each of their left breast pockets: a simple III embroidered in gold. It was unfamiliar to Seyfert. The turret on the tank swiveled toward the car. “Sirs, would you exit the vehicle please?” asked a young man. He was very polite. Seyfert had doffed his tactical gear for farmer’s clothing, and was in jeans and a white tee shirt with boots traded from one of the bikers. No tactical clothing had fit Dallas at the outset, so he was garbed as always, but had left his webbing with Rick.
This part of the road didn’t have any cornstalks for a few hundred yards, just a crossroads with the tank, tent, buses, and a hastily built wooden guard tower. Men in the tower scanned in all directions with scoped rifles. As Seyfert and Dallas opened their doors, they noticed that the buses were full of people. They were also somewhat armored, with bars on the windows and steel plate covering the back escape door. The SEAL was certain the forward door was also armored, although he couldn’t see it. The bars made the buses look more like prison transports than armored personnel carriers.
Chain-link fence laced with concertina wire had been strung up to surround the area off to the side of the road. The tower overlooked the area, and the tank was manned. There was an anti-vehicle spike mat across the road.
The young man who had spoken before piped up again. “I’m sorry, but we will have to confiscate your weapons.”
“You ain’t takin’ my gun, boy.”
The men raised their rifles slightly but still didn’t point them at the two friends.
“Sir, please, I would rather not have to shoot you. It’s been a good day and I haven’t killed anyone living today. If you resist, you’ll be shot. It is against the law in Nebraska for anyone to carry firearms without the express written permission of the governing body.”
That line sounded rehearsed and was probably used quite frequently. “What body?” asked the SEAL.
“Until such time as the United States is re-formed, all executive and judicial decisions will be carried out by the Triumvirate or a designee of their choosing.”
More rehearsed bullshit
, thought Seyfert. Three more men began to walk forward from the camp. The soldiers in black were getting antsy, and the speaker had started getting loud, when the three other men showed up. “Sir, I will not ask again, please—”
“That’s okay, Corporal, I’ll take it from here.” The younger man seemed startled, and immediately answered with a
Yes, sir.
“Gentlemen, I am Captain Brady of the Triumvirate,” said the newcomer. “This is a military checkpoint, and you must surrender your weapons, for the time being, and be subjected to a search.” A rifle shot sounded and Dallas raised his shotgun slightly. “Please do not be alarmed, the tower will be firing on the Fallen throughout the day. Now will you surrender your weapons or do we need to take this to the next level?”
“The next level?” demanded the big man.
“Yes, that’s the point in time where we shoot you in the head and burn your bodies with the Fallen.”
“Dallas, give up your gun. They’ll give it back to us.”
The Texan put his weapon on the hood of the car and put his hands on his hips. Seyfert followed suit with his pistol. He had left his MP5SD3 with Rick at the depot.
“Search them,” the Captain said.
A quick search yielded Dallas’s rebar and two combat knives on Seyfert. The weapons and Dallas’s belt were put in long plastic bins and labeled. The young corporal approached with two white zip ties.
“I’m sorry, sir, standard procedure until you’re cleared.”
“I got a bum shoulder boy, could you tie me up in the front?”
The corporal looked at the captain, who nodded that it was okay. It was then that the corporal noticed the small bulge in Seyfert’s tee shirt. He reached in and pulled out the small throat mic, which came away with the earpiece that had been draped down his back. He held it up for the captain to see.
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this?”
“It’s so’s we can talk to each other if we get separated.”
“I was speaking to him,” the captain nodded at Seyfert.
“It’s so we can talk to each other if we get separated. Sir.”
“Sir?”
“My father always told me to respect the military.”
“Did he? Corporal, bring them to the tent please.” The officer spun on his heel and the other two followed him.
“Yes, sir!” Dallas and the SEAL were hurried forward and moved into the tent. It was an army medical tent with gurneys and stretchers. Some medical supplies, food, and water were readily available as well. It was good to get out of the heat of the Nebraska sun, and Seyfert thought that the men in the black camo must be dying out there.
They were seated in metal folding chairs and offered bottled water. Seyfert declined, but Dallas accepted, and a man put a straw in a bottle for him.
The captain leaned against a gurney and folded his arms. “Normally I would sit across from you at a desk for this procedure, but desks are hard to come by nowadays. I have only one question for you.” He leaned forward slightly. “What is your mission?”
For the second time in two days, Seyfert absolutely knew he was fucked.