“Piss poor recon,” Boone said angrily. “I killed him. I killed him for pork rinds and Cheez-Its that we didn’t even get. He was our God damned corpsman.” He sat down on the bench hard.
“They killed him,” Anna said pointing at the monitor, “not you.”
“Thanks, but no. He was my responsibility, acting on orders from me. The blame is mine.”
8
Salt Lake City may have been on fire, but Cheyenne, Wyoming was gone. Simply gone.
There were craters and lots of rubble, but not much more, and no free-standing buildings in the city proper. Whatever had hit this city had completely destroyed it.
“Dammit, we need to find something,” Rick said angrily. “He’s bad off.”
Androwski and Seyfert had both been cross-trained as corpsman, the Navy’s medics, but neither was as experienced as Usher. The SEALs had given Martinez what medical assistance they could. Androwski had shaken his head at one point and spoken low to Seyfert.
Shattered
was the word Martinez had heard.
Seyfert had used a syrette of morphine on Martinez’s shoulder to counter-act the intense pain. They had also tried to give the injured man a broad-spectrum antibiotic from Usher’s back-up medical pack in the LAV, but when it came to injecting him, Martinez had stopped Androwski. “Allergic to cillins and mycins. Need a flaxin.”
An IV hung from the bulkhead of the LAV, the line ending under some tape in Martinez’s un-injured arm. Seyfert had given him Narcan, a drug to counter the morphine’s respiratory-depressing effects, and Phenergan, an anti-nausea med that would also increase the pain-reducing effects of the morphine.
Martinez raised his pasty face to look at Rick with some flare in his eyes. “I’m fine.”
The man’s face belied his words. He was the color of rancid cream, and he was shivering. His forearm and wrist were swollen to three times their normal size. Both were so purple they were almost black, with yellow bruises blotching the area. His condition had deteriorated significantly during the four hundred fifty mile trip from outside of Salt Lake City to Cheyenne.
The trip, which would have taken less than seven hours when the world was still alive, had taken the better part of three days. The US military had been diligent in destroying roads and other infrastructure during the plague. The idea was probably to contain the contagion by not allowing travel, but as far as the group in the LAVs knew, the plan had failed, as they hadn’t come across a single living person in any of the small towns they had been through since leaving Ben to his fate in Salt Lake. They had seen plenty of dead folks though, both ambulatory and not. They had gotten more diesel in a town along the interstate, and this time Boone had circled the gas station twice before using the pumps Chris had appropriated from the truck stop. The diesel tanks on the LAVs were full, and the cans were almost there as well before the dead showed up in force. They had bugged out without incident.
Then they came across the destroyed roads. The tarmac simply ended, and for quite a while there was no interstate, just broken shards of asphalt and twisted guard rails. The carnage didn’t end at the interstate either; the secondary roads were also destroyed, and there were huge craters making passage slow overland. They had skirted the highway as much as possible, but in some places it was extremely difficult to get by without using I-80.
Now Martinez had a fever, and Cole, who also had some corpsman experience but claimed he was not a medic, surmised that the broken bones in Martinez’s wrist or forearm had cut into some blood vessels. He was bleeding internally. His fingers looked like fat, black sausages, and the pain must have been extreme, but Martinez didn’t give a shit about it because the morphine had kicked in. Cole told Boone and Rick that the fever meant probable infection, and if they didn’t fix the issue, Martinez could lose his hand, or worse. Androwski and Seyfert both nodded in agreement. The bandages that had been on his wrist and arm had to be changed twice, the tightness and swelling restricting the blood flow in his arm.
The occupants of the LAVs popped the rear hatches and Boone unfolded a map as they assembled around him in a semi-circle. He held the map on the hull of the LAV.
“There’s an airport there,” Androwski pointed to the map, “on the other side of the city. Can’t see it from here. They must have some kind of medical facility at an airport, no? Like a med-flight helicopter, or at the airport fire department?”
“Yes, but the thing they definitely have at airports is lots of people.” Boone shook his head and sighed, resigned. “We’ve got a man down, and we need to get him on his feet, but I want full recon of the entire facility before we go in.”
“This is Wyomin’,” Dallas drawled, “and I’m thinkin’ that there wouldn’t be too many folks at the airport, plus I bet that anybody living would have gotten out if they could.”
Boone shifted his weight. “It’s the ones that didn’t get out that concern me. Alright, around the city to the south, then north to the airport.” He traced the route with his finger. “Full circle with LAV One, LAV Two stays in reserve a mile out.”
Joe started whining, and let loose with two puppy barks. He had taken a liking to Anna, and was in her arms or near her most of the time. He started struggling and barked again.
“Never liked beagles much,” Dallas said as Anna put the dog down. “Yippy lil’ sumbitches.”
Anna put her hands on her hips, and glared at him, “Let me guess, you’re more of a bloodhound guy right? You like your dogs big and dumb, and capable of all kinds of howling?”
“Well yeah, actually, I kinda do. The only thing a pissant dog like that is good for is addin’ extra meat t’ my stew.”
As they emerged, Joe ran to the opposite side of the road and barked at a gigantic green road sign. The sign had been toppled into the weeds in a gulley next to the broken highway. He whined and looked over his shoulder at Dallas and Anna, then continued to bark.
Dallas strode over and stood next to the dog. “Well I’ll be god dammed. Friggin’ mutt might prove useful after all.” Anna joined them, followed by the rest of the group. Joe was barking at a pair of legs that were sticking out from under the sign. The legs were moving.
“Guess yer sniffer ain’t busted there, kiddo.” He reached down and scooped up the puppy, and gave him to Anna.
“Back in the LAVs,” ordered Boone. “Last time we thought a place was clear, there turned out to be a hundred Limas playing died and seek.”
The reactions were all the same: Shock. Boone did have a sense of humor.
“Everybody in LAV One. Cole, you stay in Two with Martinez until we get back. Stay here unless we call you for exfil.”
“Copy, sir.”
Rick entered LAV Two to check on his friend. Martinez was stretched out on one of the benches, his broken arm re-bandaged and in a sling on his chest. His chest was rising and falling, but Rick checked his pulse anyway. It was weak, but present.
“I’ll watch him,” Cole said from up front.
“Thanks.” Rick left the LAV and Cole closed the rear hatch from the driver’s seat.
9
After circling the small airport for a half hour, the team of eight pulled up on runway six next to the charred remains of an airliner. It was unlikely that anything stumbled from this wreckage, but Boone was not taking any chances. He ordered everyone to stay in the LAV until they could see a medical facility. There was a Mountain Airways 747 airliner pulled up close to a jet-way that jutted out from a terminal. A ten foot gap or so separated the jet-way from the open door of the plane. Several non-mobile corpses were broken on the tarmac below the jet. The evidence suggested that they had fallen from either the plane or the access tunnel leading to it and smashed their heads on the airstrip.
“I’m not seeing any medical signs,” observed Anna.
Chris pointed at the terminal. “There’s bound to be some meds and stuff in there someplace.”
“Out of the question,” said Boone. “That place is a death-trap. We can’t properly recon it from out here, and look,” he pointed toward the large glass windows on the first floor, “there’s plenty of Limas. We’ll have to find another way.” Many mobile deceased were staggering around on the lower level, some smacking the glass in an attempt to get to the LAV that had driven onto the runway.
The med-flight helicopter was nowhere to be found, and the fire station looked like it had been a failed last stand. Doors and windows were boarded, but the barricades hadn’t held. Part of the station had burned as well. The garage doors were open, and the terrified occupants of the fire station had tried to escape in two fire trucks and an ambulance. The trucks were twisted together just outside the station itself. The ambulance was on its side a bit farther down, a black hulk that had charred to next to nothing. Perhaps some scared folks panicked and smashed the vehicles together, or there had been too many dead to plow the trucks through, and someone had gotten overzealous with their driving. Dozens of shuffling forms, some crispy, were meandering around the scorched station and vehicles.
Rick put his hand to his temple and rubbed. “Boone, I’m not trying to buck the chain of command here, but Martinez is in deep shit. I’ll go alone if I have to, but we need those meds.”
“Rick, we’ll find meds if they’re here, but you’re not going in there, it’s—”
“He’s going to die if we don’t. He needs help now.”
Boone frowned. “I understand that, but we—”
Anna interrupted, “What about the plane?”
Both Rick and Boone looked at her and chorused: “What?”
Anna pointed toward the plane in front of them. “There has to be medical stuff on the plane right? I mean what if there’s an in-flight emergency?” She started shaking her head. “Gotta be. Gotta.”
“There is,” Dallas blurted. “There’s two med stations, one aft of the cockpit in the attendant’s quarters on the second floor, and one to the rear of the cabin by the bathrooms on the first floor.”
Chris looked at him, “How do you know that?”
“Used to work for Shiner Air as a cabin inspector.”
“What kind of supplies are in those stations?”
Dallas began ticking items off using his fingers. “Band-Aids, aspirin, gauze, tape, scissors, bandages, splints, insulin, maybe some single-use morphine injectors, and a defibrillator.”
Seyfert looked disgusted. “All that shit would have been in the LAVs if they were combat ready.”
“Yes, and Usher had most of it too, but he’s gone.”
Cole piped in over the radio. “At the very least, he could use the morphine and a better splint. He still needs an X-ray, and someone who can pin his wrist together though. A real doctor.”
“We don’t have one,” Boone said and looked at Rick, “but we’ll get what meds we can.” Boone glanced to his left into the port monitor and saw three forms staggering toward them. “We already have company. We tow the plane to that hangar,” Boone pointed toward a huge hangar to the side of the runway, “we use those stairs, and get on the plane!”
They sped to the plane inside the safety of the armored vehicle. Androwski produced a fifteen foot length of yellow carrying strap from the bowels of the LAV, and he, Dallas, and Rick affixed the strap between the tow-package of their vehicle, and the pin on the front of the aircraft landing gear. Seyfert plugged a few dead that were getting close with the SAW.
As they were moving back to get into the armor, undead started dropping out of the jet-way and onto the tarmac below. The ones on the bottom broke the falls of the ones to come out after, and the secondaries decided to get up and come for lunch. They were between the LAV and the plane, so Androwski, Dallas, and Rick had to go in the other direction.
“Sir, it’s fuckin’ rainin’ pus bags here! Take off and tow this big bitch, we’ll catch up.”
“Roger that, Andy. Watch your asses.”
The six-wheeled behemoth began to angle away from the concourse, easily pulling the big aircraft with it. The three people on foot ran at a slant to the vehicles, with ideas on a rendezvous a few hundred meters down the runway. Zombies began to pop up from different areas in ones and twos and they all staggered toward the men on foot. One of the glass windows on the lower level of the terminal gave way as well, and the dead emptied out and began the slow chase.
Seyfert opened up on the few creatures in front of the LAV, but couldn’t get a shot at anything behind him as the plane was in the way. The three men on foot slowed to a trot as the immediate danger was behind them. They caught up with their friends as Boone, Anna, and Chris unhooked the tow strap from the plane. “Now what?” demanded a huffing Dallas as they all surveyed their surroundings.
“Now we go to that hangar and pull that mobile stairway over here,” said Boone pointing.
A hundred feet away was the hangar with the doors wide open. Just outside was the stairway on wheels, used to enter and exit aircraft not at a terminal. “We would have pulled the plane all the way, but the front strut got caught when we went over that embankment.” Here Boone pointed again, this time to the strut that held the two front tires of the plane. It was stuck on a foot-high curb. “This is as far as she will go. Anna, you and Chris back in the LAV with Stark, the rest are with me. Stark, get the LAV to the staircase and we’ll hook it up so you can pull it to the plane.”
Everyone did as they were told, but Rick grabbed Boone by the shoulder when they reached the stairs. “Been doing the math here, Boone. We can’t possibly hook up the stairs and get the meds before they get here.” He pointed to the growing horde two hundred meters away and closing.
“Agreed. We’ll need bait.” He looked right at Rick and Dallas. “Androwski and I will herd them off, you two get on the plane and get the materials we need.”
Rick was dubious. “Can’t we just all leave and come back when they’ve dispersed?”
“You willing to bet Martinez’s life that we can get back quickly, or that the Limas will just move on?”
“Dammit!” Rick yelled, but their vehicle arrived and he got to work without further objection. He and Dallas hooked up the set of steps while Boone and Androwski started toward the horde. With help from the LAV, Rick and Dallas maneuvered the mobile stairway so that it was in front of the open door of the airliner. Dallas was armed with a SPAS12 combat shotgun that he had appropriated from Rick, and Rick had his M4. “After you, Hoss,” Dallas told him, and they hurried up the steps.
Rick switched on his tactical flashlight as he took a tentative step toward the dark opening in the side of the plane. He pinched his throat mic. “Stark, do you read?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Pull the stairs five feet back from the plane.”
“We just put the damn thing next to it! What the hell do—?”
“Because if this thing is full of dead folks, or if they come in behind us, I don’t want them to be able get on or off the plane! I don’t think they can jump the gap!”
“Actually, that’s fucking brilliant. Hang on.”
Dallas and Rick grabbed the railing as the stairs jerked slightly then moved a few feet back.
Chris and Anna jumped from the back of the LAV to unhook it from the stairs.
“Stark, pull off about two hundred feet, I don’t want a crowd out here if we need to get out in a hurry.”
Dallas looked at the gap. “More like seven feet.”
“What? You can’t make it, fatty?”
“Rick, I gots me a shotgun, and I’m sensitive about m’ figure.”
Rick smiled then focused on the door. He shook his head. “Jesus…” He jumped the gap with ease, spinning first right, then left, then right again, and motioning to Dallas, who quickly followed. The tac-lights on their weapons illuminated a torn curtain to the right, and a stairway leading up to the left, with another curtain pulled all the way open past the stairs.
There was blood everywhere.
“Thank you for taking me along, sir, this is the best outing I’ve had since training.”
“Secure that shit, sailor,” Boone said with a grimace, “this is about to get real.”
“So what’s the plan?”
Boone stopped walking and Androwski followed suit. “We wait. Check our six.”
Androwski turned around to check behind them. “There are some coming from the sides, but none close. Maybe three hundred meters.” He ran his thumb over the selector switch to double check that his suppressed MP5 was in the single fire position. “I’d feel better if Martinez was covering us with his cannon.”
“Agreed. We back up when the ones in front get to one hundred meters. Keep an eye on the ones behind us.”
“Copy that.”
It didn’t take long. When Boone was able to make out individuals in the undead horde, he told the other SEAL it was time to move back. They moved at a quick trot another hundred meters back and stopped. The horde was closing.
“Sir, firing one.” Androwski shot one creature that had stumbled to close to their nine o’clock. “Danger at sixty meters left, firing one!” He shot at another but missed. “Two!” The second shot dropped the thing.
It had been approximately twenty minutes since the team had separated, and Boone wanted to get back into the safety of his light-armored vehicle, as the two hundred or so zombies were closing faster than he liked. “Okay Andy, this party’s over. They must have found the meds by now. We’re bugging out. Boone to Rick, SITREP! Rick, SITREP!”
“Sir? Let’s go yeah?” Androwski sounded nervous.
“Stark, do you read?”
“Yes, sir, loud and clear.”
“Do you have Barnes and Dallas?”
“Negative, they’re still on the plane.”
“Shit! Androwski, get back to the plane and help them.”
“But sir, we—”
“That’s an order, squid! Move!”
“Copy that, sir.” Androwski sprinted back toward the jet as fast as he could. Boone ran laterally against the crowd, all of whom turned to follow him. He made as much noise as he could, yelling insults at them to egg them on. They were fifty feet away.