This late in the year, the weather was fantastic as we headed out onto the roof of the plane. About seventy degrees, with no humidity to speak of, and the sun was bright, shining down on all the decrepit flesh moaning and jostling below us. We spaced out several feet between us, and readied ourselves for the task ahead. I did a rough count, and stopped when I got to around sixty walkers. I’d never seen so many in one place, like cattle in a pen. Except these cattle were deadly.
I tried not to look at the bloodstains and chunky bits all over the wings, especially around the engines.
It’s just red paint
, I thought.
They painted the front red as a warning, that’s all. Red paint. With bits in.
I felt the nausea boiling up and turned away, closing my eyes and taking deep, deep breaths. Which, as it turned out, was a mistake, as there was nothing like taking a deep breath of the rotting odor of nearly a hundred corpses.
Fortunately, no one said a word or even batted an eye as I heaved over the side. Markinson—next to me up here as well—handed me a canteen, and I gratefully took it, wiping my mouth with my sleeve before taking a swig, rinsing and spitting, then taking a longer drink. I handed it back to him with a nod that he returned, then made ready to fire. I, too, hefted my own rifle.
Anderson had to shout to make himself heard over the din coming from below. “All right, ladies, we’ve got fish in a barrel down there. Take your time and pick your shots carefully. One shot, one kill. Conserve your ammo.” He crouched down near the emergency exit, over the cockpit, and held up one hand. He’d have the more wide range of targets there, by far, being at the front of the plane, but we were all going to need to reload at least once. “Fire!” he yelled, throwing his hand down and suiting action to words himself.
The noise was nearly deafening, or it would have been had I not been on one of the loudest planes ever made for several hours just prior. Walkers died by the handfuls, gore splattering everywhere as the bullets laid them to their final rest. I must’ve shot at least two dozen myself. It took nearly ten minutes of concentrated fire to kill all the ones we could see, but the design of the plane kept us from having a shot on the ones closest to it. So we carefully and slowly crept out onto the wings, lying on our stomachs, some facing forward, some back, and we were just getting ready to fire again as I noticed the smaller Gulfstream moving toward us on the runway. Nowhere near as loud as our own plane, the new sound was still loud enough to draw some of our assailants toward the smaller craft.
The command to fire came again, and a ripple of shots cracked out, along with quite a few ricochets. I ducked lower as one zinged past, and I saw a crack spreading in the windshield of the Gulfstream. I couldn’t tell if anyone was hit, but I did see Gaines and Reynolds leaning out the open door. They’d somehow managed to tie off the ramp to the interior so it didn’t provide access to the oncoming walkers, which I thought was ingenious. They were making their standard excellent shots, picking off the few walkers moving their way. The din and rattle of gunfire died down, and eventually stopped. I looked back to my own plane, the C-5, and that was when I got my first real sight of the carnage I’d created with my ‘plow the field’ idea. The walkers crowding around the plane had blocked my view at first, and then added to the mess with their own deaths, but this… this was horrible.
The entire lower third of the plane looked like it had been painted red, and the wheels… I wasn’t the only one heaving over the side, this time. The entire suspension system of the plane looked like it had been dunked in marinara sauce—with meatballs. Bits of bone and tissue dripped off the struts and wheels.
Horrific isn’t the right word. There
is
no word for this. Massacre, decimation, carnage… none of them are strong enough for this
.
The soldiers, including Reynolds and Gaines, were piling out of the other plane onto the tarmac, occasionally firing at slower walkers nearby. Gaines looked somehow different without his .50-caliber sniper rifle, and the smaller FN SCAR was toy-like in his hands. A deadly toy, to be sure. He and Reynolds looked up at us as we lay on the wings of the big plane and the others created a perimeter around it.
“You planning to get some work done today, boss?” Reynolds asked me, a grin on his face.
“Fuck you,” I said, my intelligence and large vocabulary naturally coming to the fore. “I need a drink.”
“No time for that, I’m afraid,” said Anderson, walking over and squatting down near me. “As soon as we’re refueled, it’s time to get these birds back in the air.”
“No can do, sir,” said Gaines. “I’m afraid Myers is in no shape to fly. Neither is the G5, for that matter. Windshield’s busted.”
“What’s wrong with Myers?”
“A round took him in the shoulder, sir. Must’ve been a ricochet. It’s not too bad, but he can’t handle a plane now. One of the medics is looking him over.”
“Shit,” Anderson replied. “Well, I’ll send Archer over, and he can follow us over to the fuel. We’ll move all the gear over to the C-5 and leave the Gulfstream behind. Reynolds, Gaines, you’ll be escort for Archer. The rest of you down there, mount up as soon as the personnel doors are opened.”
“Yes, sir,” both men said, and moved toward the side door of the plane.
The rest of us stood up and moved back to the emergency hatch, still walking carefully.
A fall from this height wouldn’t kill you, probably, but it’d still fuck up your day
.
Soon enough, we were taxiing over to the fuel dump for the airport, hoping that the relatively mild southern California weather had been kind enough to keep it useful. The planes maneuvered around, the G5 off to one side, as it would no longer be needed.
As the others began transferring gear to the bigger plane, I helped Gaines move the injured Myers onto the C-5 and up to the passenger compartment. One of the medics made sure he was taken care of as I stood back.
“Well done, Myers,” Myers said to himself, for our benefit. “Never even left the plane and you still got shot.” He laughed and then winced as the movement jarred his injured left shoulder.
It was a nasty wound, or at least looked nasty, but apparently the round had gone through-and-through, burying itself deep into the bank of electronics behind the pilot.
“Shaddup, man. You’re lucky. A few inches to the right and we’d be burying you,” I said.
“Yep. Gotta look on the bright si—ow! Shit, Doc, that hurt worse than the bullet! What’d you give…” His voice trailed off and he slumped back and began snoring softly.
I looked over at the medic, and she shrugged.
“Just a mild sedative. He’ll stop moving around and worsening the injury, this way.”
“Good thinking. His voice was beginning to grate, anyway,” I said, laughing as I went back down the ladder.
Williams and Archer were outside, supervising the fueling into the plane’s tanks.
“How long will this take?” I asked.
Williams had lightened up some in the past couple months, and I’d discovered he wasn’t nearly the stone-cold hard-ass I’d thought. He was actually a nice guy, if a bit anal-retentive. Couldn’t fault him for that, though. “Oh, I’d say at least a couple hours with these improvised systems. We have to make sure we get every drop. Christchurch is right at the end of our range. We’re likely to be on fumes when we get there, and even that’s only because we’re unloaded.”
“What about the Humvees?”
“Negligible, in this case. What worries me is getting
back
.”
“Could four hundred and fifty people really weigh all that much?”
“Hell, yes. Even if they each weighed only a hundred and fifty pounds, that’s sixty thousand pounds. That makes a difference in our fuel consumption. Add another twelve thousand pounds in the Humvees, and we could
probably
make it back, but there’s no guarantee.”
“We’re not bringing those back, but still…” I was suddenly very, very nervous. “No one mentioned this in the briefings.”
“That’s because no one bothered talking to us, sir,” he said with a look that spoke volumes. He moved away to check on the fueling, and I looked around for Anderson. I didn’t see him, so I toggled my radio on.
“Anderson, this is Blake.”
“Anderson, go ahead.”
“Meet me at the plane. We may have a problem.”
“Acknowledged.”
I looked over where Williams was trying to appear like he wasn’t listening. “Hey, Williams, you up for some mission planning?”
He turned my way and grinned. “Thought you’d never ask, sir. The first thing we’ll need is some maps…”
A few minutes later, I spread a large world map I’d brought along from Bunker One over the hood of one of the Humvees, laying various objects close at hand on the corners to keep it from rolling up. Anderson, Williams, Archer, and I all looked at where I was pointing—Hawaii.
“So here’s my plan,” I said, looking at each of them in turn. “Once we’ve picked up the people at McMurdo, we can get back to Christchurch without a problem, right?”
The pilots glanced at each other, and Archer spoke. “We’re probably fine getting there, sir. It’s at the extreme end of our range, but we should be OK.”
“Good. So, what if we filled up in Christchurch, as much as she’ll hold, and then took off on a course back here to LAX, plotting the most fuel-conservative course we could? Assuming we’d removed all extraneous weight from the plane—and I mean absolutely
everything
we don’t need—how far would we get?”
“It all depends on how many people, how much they weigh…” Williams held up his hands. “I wouldn’t like to guess, sir. In my opinion, we would
not
have enough fuel to make that trip.” Archer nodded in agreement.
“OK, so what if we get about
here
,” I said, pointing to a spot over open ocean due south of Hawaii, “and do a status check? We can see how our fuel looks at that point, then make the turn for Honolulu if we need to, or keep going if you two feel we have enough of a safety net.”
Anderson spoke up. “That’s assuming there’s any fuel at Christchurch, and that it’s usable.”
“We’re all forgetting something with this fuel stuff. All it has to do is run the engines for two trips. It doesn’t matter if it’s lower-grade and will eventually deteriorate the equipment. It just needs to work for a little while, long enough to get us there and back. After that, the plane will likely be rotting on the runway, anyway.”
Both the pilots looked annoyed at that.
“Come on, guys, what did you think was going to happen? We don’t have the infrastructure in place to keep these things in the air, or even maintained, for that matter. You know that as well as I do.” I sighed and tapped the map again. “So? What do you think?”
Anderson shrugged and looked at the pilots. “Sounds fine to me; it’s up to you guys.”
The pilots pulled notebooks out of their pockets and began measuring distances and doing calculations, and as much as I was trying to learn how to fly one of these things, this stuff was way over my head.
A mathematician, I’m not
.
“I think it’s doable, sir,” Williams said, after a nerve-wracking few minutes for the rest of us. “Depending on the weight of the people we’re picking up, and if we strip out everything that we don’t need… we can look at Honolulu as an option if need be.” He laughed as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t, but I keep forgetting that there’s no such things as ‘flight plans’ or ‘refueling tankers’ any more. Guess Air Force training dies hard, sir.”
“Not a problem, Colonel.”
“One thing, though, sir,” Archer said, glancing around. “It’s going to get damn cold for the folks that are down here in the cargo area, sir. There’s no way to heat this.”
I grinned. “Don’t worry about that, Colonel. If there’s one thing that these people we’re picking up know how to deal with, it’s the cold.”
The sun was beginning to set as the plane finished refueling, and I took a moment to soak up the warmth of its rays. It was going to be damned cold in Antarctica, and this was probably the last time I was going to be warm for quite some time.
“We’re ready to go, boss,” said Reynolds, standing next to the open personnel door in the side of the plane. “Just waiting on you.”
I sighed. “Tom, when we get back, remind me never to go anywhere cold, ever again.”
“Dude, you live in
Washington
. The
average
temperature is fifty-one degrees.”
“Shut up, Tom,” I said, climbing into the plane and heading for the forward ladder.
“Righty-o, boss.” I heard him secure the door as he followed me in.
“Hatch secure. Ready for takeoff,” he said.
“I’ll let ‘em know.” I climbed the ladder, moving to the engineer’s station. “Ready for takeoff when you are, Colonel.”
Archer was pilot on the first leg of this trip. “Roger. Let’s hit the list.” He and Williams began going through the pre-flight checklist.
I leaned down to Mahoney. “When we’re airborne, get me a line to Bunker One, will you?”
“Yes, sir, but it’ll have to be soon. That commsat is still out over the Pacific, remember. I can’t promise anything after a couple hundred miles.”
“That’s fine. Just wait until everything is settled and we’re steady on course.”
“Yes, sir.”
I moved back through the passage to the galley, where some angelic soul had already brewed a pot of coffee. I grabbed a cup and filled it, snagging two sugar packets. Somehow, whether through the tight seals of the plane or just sheer dumb fucking luck, there had been a virtual treasure trove of little luxuries onboard.
I guess, when you think about it, worrying about sugar packets is sort of the last thing on the list when the zombies come at you. I suppose they had better things to do, like dying
en masse
with everyone else. Good for us, though
.
It seemed like I’d only just finished my coffee when I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. Apparently, the coffee hadn’t worked, and I’d taken a nap. Mahoney stood over me. “Your call’s ready, sir.”