“Sir?” Bear followed him and kept an eye out.
He watched Ardent place his mother back in her bed and then he tenderly kissed her on the cheek, after which he looked for a sheet to place over her. There wasn’t one on the bed.
“Here, sir,” Bear said.
Ardent turned to see Bear holding the sheet from the corridor.
He said nothing as he took it and covered his mother.
Ardent stood for a moment as he gazed at her.
Nearby screams and growls echoed throughout the hospital corridors and Bear became increasingly nervous.
“Sir, we need to go. Now!”
Ardent heeded Bear’s call and they left. They proceeded cautiously down the corridor toward the exit and into the sun.
Outside was the back of the hospital, the Bob Wilson Naval Hospital in San Diego. They rushed to the parking lot, which was almost empty, and headed to a parked Humvee. It had a canopy over the door-less cab, and an occupant—
Who was trying to jack the vehicle by hotwiring it.
“Hey!” Bear shouted.
The would-be car thief, a young sailor in uniform, sat up and drew a handgun, but Bear was faster on the pull.
“Not a good idea!” Bear said.
The sailor lowered his weapon.
“What do you think you’re doing, sailor?” Ardent asked him.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I need to get out of here and I thought this vehicle was abandoned.”
“Hop in the back,” Bear told him.
He did as he was told and Bear and Ardent sat in the front. Bear drove.
“I hope you didn’t mess up the ignition, buddy, or this is gonna be a short trip,” Bear said as he put the key in.
“No, sir, I just got to the vehicle when you came out.”
Bear started the Humvee, “Here we go.”
They took off from the hospital parking lot. The base they were at was large, a few miles that stretched along the coast. Had there been some tumbleweeds, it would be a ghost town. No one was around, but there was plenty of chaos everywhere. A few fires licked their flames out of the windows of several buildings, leaving trails of black smoke rising into the sky. There were people sporadically running out of buildings or into them, and gunfire ticked off every few seconds from every direction. Scores of the undead could be seen running people down in the distance. Multiple aircraft were in the air; some leaving, while others circled the base firing their weapons at the streets. The base was lost.
Bear grabbed a radio.
“Where we headed, sir?” the sailor asked.
“The Ronald Reagan,” Bear told him as he clicked on the radio. “Viper Three Two One, this is Mother, over.”
A little over a mile away, at the base’s airstrip, was a Sea Stallion waiting on a helipad with its engines idling, ready to fly in a heartbeat. This helicopter was large and could carry about fifty people. Its two side door .50 BMG machine guns were manned and the gunners were busy firing at targets, the undead, that tried to approach them. Besides the two pilots, the two gunners, and a crew chief, there were about twenty people onboard the chopper. From regular sailors, to officers, and navy staff, also included among them was a U.S. Senator. A very nervous man in his fifties and overweight, he was the perfect example of an ideal politician.
The crew chief answered Bear’s call through his helmet radio, “Mother, this is Viper Three Two One, I copy you, what is your ETA? Over.”
“Viper, we are en route and about five mikes out, over,” Bear answered.
“Mother, be advised, we are in a dire situation. You need to get here ASAP,” the crew chief said. “We are surrounded by hostiles, over.”
“Copy that, we are close. Mother out,” Bear said and the radio went silent.
“We need to take off, sailor!” the senator tried to shout at the crew chief over the noise of the helicopter’s blades.
“We will take off when the captain gets here, sir,” he answered.
“And when will that be?”
“When he gets here, sir.”
“Sailor, do you see those things out there, the ones the gunners are shooting at?” he asked rudely.
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“If they get in here, we’re all dead!” the senator shouted.
“I’m aware of that, sir, but we will not leave without the captain.”
“They’re probably dead by now, I demand that you take off, immediately!”
The crew chief stepped closer to the senator, “I suggest that you calm yourself.”
“Damn it! Do you know who I am?’
“Yes, I do. You’ve reminded me of that fact several times in the last twenty minutes. Now, calm yourself or I will have you removed from my aircraft,
Senator
,” the last part was said with spite.
The senator kept quiet.
And the machine gunners kept firing…
Bear put the radio down. “We need to get there fast,” he said as he increased speed.
“These things are everywhere!” the sailor said.
The Humvee barreled down the road as fast as it could in between the base’s buildings and then—just as they approached a street intersection—
A group of people ran through the street from Ardent’s side, terrified and running from something. Bear tapped the brakes to avoid hitting them.
“Don’t stop!” Ardent said.
And Bear saw why—
A gang of twenty fast moving corpses chased after the people, Bear increased speed but it was too late—
The undead runners slammed right into the side of the Humvee in a series of hard
splats
that pushed the heavy vehicle on two wheels for a moment. Five plowed right into the grill of the vehicle and rolled over the windshield and the rest broadsided the passenger side, Ardent’s side. One almost jumped in on top of Ardent, but hit the doorframe instead. The sailor in the back wasn’t so lucky—two of the undead flew into the back with him. The sailor immediately blocked one with his arm, but the force broke his elbow instantly and he screamed in pain as he shot the corpse in the head. The other was too fast and bit into his neck, also ramming its decayed hand into his face, jamming its fingers into one of his eyes and its thumb into his mouth. The sailor bit the thumb off in rage and then shot the thing under the chin, pointblank.
“Motherfucking pieces of shit!” the sailor shouted after he spat the thumb out.
Most of the dead that hit the Humvee chased after them.
The sailor pushed the dead things off him. One rolled out the door, but the other was too heavy and stayed on his lap. He was gasping in pain as blood gushed down his chest from his face. He was a goner and he knew it.
Ardent and Bear knew it as well.
Ardent leaned around with his gun ready to do what needed to be done, but the wounded sailor snapped his gun up and put it right in Ardent’s face.
“Don’t you fucking dare, sir!” he yelled with deadly intent.
“All right, sailor, let’s keep calm,” Ardent said as he lowered his gun.
After a moment, the sailor lowered his as well.
“Can you believe this shit?” he said as he examined his wounds. “I just reenlisted, too. What an idiot I am. Everyone told me not to, but I didn’t listen.”
“It’s not your fault, son,” Ardent said.
“Then whose fault is it?” the sailor shouted.
Ardent didn’t have an answer.
“You wanna hear the funny part? The irony of it, some smart people would say.”
“What’s that?” Ardent replied.
“My father told me to join the air force,” he said with a bloody grin, “but he’s dead now.”
The sailor wiped some of his blood off his remaining eyelid with his gun hand and then he looked at the weapon in his grasp.
“I don’t even like guns,” he said calmly.
He put the gun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
His head jerked from the impact and he continued to sit there, permanently.
Ardent looked beyond the dead sailor and through the blood-spattered back window at the undead that were chasing them.
“Go faster, Bear.”
He saw them in the rearview, “I am.”
And the horde grew larger as others joined the chase.
As the helicopter waited for Ardent and Bear—two or so miles away out in the naval base’s harbor—something large exploded, creating a thunderous fireball that expanded in the sky.
“What the hell was that?” a door gunner asked.
“It looks like they blew the Coronado Bridge, they’re trying to cut those things off from getting to the wet-side island,” the chief said.
“It’s not gonna help, those dead things don’t breathe, they could just walk on the bottom of the ocean!” a gunner said.
The door gunners kept firing on the undead, non-stop, and they were getting closer. Too many of them were appearing for just one gunner on each side of the helicopter to handle, the crew chief joined in with a rifle. So did anyone else with a weapon at hand.
“I’m running low on ammo, Chief, we’re gonna need to leave soon!” one gunner said in stuttered words from the recoil of his weapon.
“When the door guns run out; we leave!” the crew chief told him. “Hurry up, captain, goddamnit!” he said to himself.
One of the door guns ran out of ammunition, “Shit! Shit!” the gunner said and he abandoned the weapon and picked up a rifle to continue fighting.
The last door gunner continued to fire, but he glanced down at his ammunition supply and saw that he was going to run out in just a few seconds, and then he spied something out in the distance, “There!” he shouted and pointed.
They saw a Humvee come around a corner and speed toward them, and a moment later, they saw what trailed behind it—
A horde of several hundred of the undead.
“Je…sus,” the chief said at the sight. “Get ready to lift off!” he shouted at the pilot.
The helicopter’s engines increased power to optimal as the rotor blades spun faster and faster. The door gunner did his best not to hit the Humvee as he fired at the horde chasing after them, but some rounds came extremely close.
“Damnit!” Bear shouted. “That gunner is gonna kill us before they do!”
“Floor it!” Ardent said.
Bear slammed his foot on the gas pedal and veered to the left so the helicopter gunner could have a clear shot at the dead and it worked—he fired straight into the horde and blew many of them apart. Still, they kept coming. A hundred rounds later, the weapon went silent, out of ammunition. All they had left were rifles and small arms.
“Come on!” the crew chief shouted at the Humvee.
On the other side of the helicopter—a group of twenty people came out of a building a few hundred feet away and ran toward them.
“Chief, we got survivors coming on my side!” the door gunner said.
The chief saw the group running for their lives, there were undead after them. He also saw that some of the survivors were limping and possibly wounded with what looked like bite and scratch marks.
“Give them cover, but listen to me carefully…if any of them have been bitten by those things, shoot them! Shoot them in the head! Do not let them aboard!” the chief said, his eyes hard and cold.
“Yes, sir!” the gunner answered and began to cover the fleeing survivors.
Bear and Ardent were less than a quarter mile away from reaching the helicopter and the horde of fast movers were several hundred feet behind them.
The door gunner on the opposite side of the helicopter stopped firing at the undead as the survivors grew closer and he could see the wounded ones—
The ones that were bitten.
“You there!” the gunner yelled at the closest wounded. “Turn back! Do not come any closer!”
But they kept coming because they couldn’t hear him over the helicopter’s massive, loud engines, so the gunner took careful aim and fired warning shots at their feet. Some stopped in confusion, but most of them kept running toward the helicopter. They had little choice with what was behind them. The gunner ignored the chief’s orders because he wanted to do the decent thing, the morally right thing, but he quickly realized that wasn’t possible.
He took deadly aim and fired.
The first wounded survivor dropped and then a second.
“Goddamit! Fuck! Fuck this shit, man!” the gunner said in disgust as he fired.
All of them cowered to the ground as he killed six of them before he ceased fire and motioned for the remaining ones who didn’t appear to be bitten to come aboard. They ran for their lives, but the last one in the group, a marine, stopped in his tracks and just stood there.
“Come on, you can make it!” the gunner yelled.
The marine shook his head and lifted his arm—exposing the bite mark near his armpit.
“I’m sorry,” the gunner said, but the marine couldn’t hear him.
The marine waved them off as he just stood there and waited to die, he lowered his head in despair and just before a gang of dead runners reached him—
The gunner released him with a single pull of his trigger.
The dead converged on their lifeless feast.