A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (10 page)

Cade recognized Ari Silver from a distance.
The SOAR pilot, immersed in his pre-flight walk around, appeared
totally oblivious of the approaching operators.

“Night Stalker—” said Cade, using the
official nickname of the aviators and aircrew that served in
TF-160, “is she loaded and bloated?”

Ari glanced up, his piercing hazel eyes
flashed recognition as he threw Cade a quick salute. “She was empty
on ammo when we came home last. Hicksy musta poured three thousand
rounds into the Zs when we pulled you and...” The loss of Desantos,
fresh on the aviator’s mind, momentarily caused him to choke up.
“Hicks made it
rain
on those putrid fuckers. Whipper only
had enough ammunition for half a load-out and that’s the good
news,” Ari added.

Cade’s eyes narrowed as he gripped Ari’s
shoulder. “And the bad news is...”

“First Sergeant Whipper indicated he was
bingo on JP-8 for the time being. He has the remainder of his
tanker fleet on forage patrol, and if all goes as planned full
tankers should be wheels down tonight or tomorrow.”

“Ari... that
is
bad news... how much
fuel does she have aboard?”

“Bird’s at nearly sixty percent, but I figure
we can refuel somewhere on the ground. I’ll find a muni airport for
us along the flight plan and a few alternates in case we encounter
too many
ambulatory deceased
at the first option.” Ari
smirked at his own play on words. “I bet if the
paper pilots
were still flying the Pentagon that jargon would stick.” Changing
his voice to a deep baritone mimicking his idea of how a rear
echelon desk weenie would sound, Ari added theatrically,
“
Ambulatory Deceased
, that has a nice ring to it don’t you
think General? Why yes General. It rolls off the tongue. I like
it...
make it so
.”

The newly promoted captain shook his head.
“Ari...you ever consider moonlighting as a stand-up comedian?”

“Before Pandora’s Box opened and the dead
started walking that
had
been my retirement plan. Free beer
and fried food. Up late and sleeping in. What am I gonna do now?”
Ari quipped as he resumed checking the flight surfaces and wiggling
moving parts. Thoroughly satisfied the Ghost was airworthy, he
patted the helo’s composite skin. “Now boarding rows AA through DD.
Anyone needing help with a wheelchair or walker please see a flight
attendant, and a friendly reminder—
no
drinking in row
AA.”

“That means you Langley boy,” Lopez said,
suppressing a laugh.

Cade threw his bulging kit bag into the
helo’s open door and slipped the suppressed SCAR-L SOPMOD carbine
in after, then hauled his weary frame into a seat. He donned a
flight helmet and plugged its coiled wire into the onboard comms
jack.

After having given the helicopter a thorough
looking over, Ari and Durant loitered on the tarmac; they hadn’t
yet begun their usual preflight banter and jovial ribbing. To Cade
the quiet inside the helo was deafening. He closed his eyes and
used the temporary lack of sensory bombardment to run the upcoming
mission by his mind’s eye. This particular operation had been
thrown together on the fly, and considering the possibility of a
spy inside of the base, only essential personnel were allowed to
attend the secret pre-op briefing. Tice had been conspicuously
absent but the Delta boys and flight crew, along with Major Nash
and the newly promoted General Ronnie “Ghost” Gaines, had huddled
in a remote corner of the Satellite operations room and hashed out
a course of action. In a normal real world operation the team would
have had weeks if not months to prepare. Any buildings that were to
be assaulted would have been mocked up in full scale so Cade and
his men could learn the layout and run the mission over and over
until they could execute it blindfolded. Normally, in an urban
operation such as this, the Delta team would fast rope directly on
top of their target and take immediate control through speed,
surprise, and overwhelming violence of action. But for this op, the
presence of Patriot surface-to-air missiles, their powerful radars
guarding the sky, dictated otherwise.

Like a couple of ninjas, Ari and Durant had
silently boarded the helo, gone through their pre-flight routines
and had lit the fire—all without uttering a single word.

Mike’s death is on a lot of people’s
minds
, Cade thought. The pilot’s usual chitchat would have been
preferable to being reminded once again of the fallen warrior.

The familiar smell of kerosene filled the air
as the Ghost Hawk’s dual jet turbines spooled up.

In the pilot’s seat Chief Warrant Officer Ari
Silver’s fingers danced over the glass touchscreen. He keyed in the
GPS coordinates to the insertion point south of Jackson Hole and
then inputted the multiple waypoints needed to fly NOE (nap of the
earth) using the landscape’s natural contours to mask them from
enemy radar.

At the briefing Ari had been informed that
Major Nash’s satellite operations officers had not been able to get
a satellite parked in a geo-synchronous orbit over the mountainous
city, so he would be flying without benefit of the usual real-time
satellite imagery. Since he had to deliver the four-man team as
close to Jackson Hole as possible he would be careful to steer
clear of roads and towns the closer they got to the NA
stronghold.

To sum it up, Cade and his team would be
doing exactly what they were trained to do: operate covertly and
unimpeded behind enemy lines without the luxury of air cover or a
quick reaction force of Army Rangers as a backstop. The four men
would be left to operate down range with full autonomy.

“We’re off,” Ari said.

And with that the black Ghost Hawk leapt into
the air—onboard a payload of rough men eager to deliver a little
payback.

Chapter 10

Outbreak - Day 11

Grand Junction, Colorado

Dickless wavered in front of the window, a
permanent sneer frozen on his decomposing face.

Taryn’s former boss, Richard Lesst, who
inexplicably had preferred that he be called Dick instead of his
given first name, was molesting the door again. The quarter-inch
thick safety glass had taken on a gray sheen due to his constant
feeble attempts to get to the meat within the office still bearing
his name.

The airport scuttlebutt was that Richard
Lesst had probably earned his nickname the first time he announced
himself “
present
” during roll call and correcting his
teacher by pointing out that he preferred to be called Dick.

Though the power had been out for more than a
week, Richard Lesst’s top floor office which Taryn had been forced
to take refuge in was far from dark. Ambient light streamed
steadily through the wall of windows that faced the jet taxiway and
the two runways beyond.

The air inside the main terminal was rife
with humidity, and riding on it was the all-encompassing stench of
death. Taryn guessed that it had to be well over one hundred
degrees inside, and probably a good one hundred twenty on the
shimmery blacktop outside.
Definitely not a dry heat
, she
thought. She hated hearing, “
It sure is hot in Colorado”
or
“At least it’s a dry heat
,” or any other variation of that
same worn out saying nearly every Tom, Dick, and Harriett that
crushed her stand for their
foo foo
coffee drinks thought
mandatory to bleat.

Hotter than a motherfucker outside
,
was more to Taryn’s liking, and if blurted ad-nauseum from the
mouths of her usual clientele—she supposed she could get used to
it. Hell, she thought, some frumpy schoolmarm declaring, “
It
sure is hotter than a motherfucker today... but at least it’s a dry
heat,”
in a matronly warble while ordering her
skinny,
half-caf, almond latte
would be one to spout off about on
Facebook.

Facebook—that reminded her. It was about time
to reposition the solar charger into the direct sunlight.

If there was one thing Taryn was most proud
of when discussing her personality, it was her never-ending supply
of hope. For she was sure that any moment her iPhone, which was
currently tethered to the glossy black panel positioned in the
rectangle of sun blasting through the skylight, would come alive
and start spewing sounds akin to AOL’s old tagline
You’ve Got
Mail
. Beeps that meant she had a voice message from her family
saying they were still alive and busy looking for her. Or the
hollow tone alerting her that she had just received an instant
message from one of her many friends who had already left Grand
Junction and gone ahead to Denver hoping to get the apartment
closest to campus—or as her best friend Miley had declared she was
going to do two weeks ago—“
Bribe someone and get us the best
corner dorm room
.”

Though she could fantasize about such things,
the oppressive heat and the ever-present smell of rotting flesh
served as a constant reminder of where she was and that the
prospect of ever getting to Denver was probably just a ton of
wishful thinking. And as hopeful as she was, the brief messages she
had received that were still stored on her iPhone spoke volumes.
Chilling texts from friends who were trapped and freaking out about
how many of the dead things were walking around their streets.
YouTube footage sent to her showing civil unrest, and worst of all
the horrible zombie attacks that she could barely watch let alone
fully comprehend. Then, just days after the dead began to walk and
all
of her friends and acquaintances had gone totally silent
she received an even more ominous message—her own intuition telling
her she was on her own.

Taryn tore her eyes from the useless smart
phone and sniffed a pit—
ugghhh
. Unfortunately the four
inches of water left in the five gallon water cooler wasn’t
earmarked for sanitation nor improving her olfactory experience.
She was resigned to the fact that a simple luxury such as washing
her pits would have to wait until she made it out of this scrape
alive. Besides, she mused, compared to the dead, her pits smelled
like a dozen long stemmed roses.

Ignoring her former boss and his hungry eyes,
Taryn low crawled across the office floor in order to get a better
look through the terminal windows below. Painted white and splashed
with Tar Heel blue, Allegiant Flight 6651 was still nestled next to
the gate where it had been since arriving from Las Vegas the Sunday
before last, and alongside it, docked to the other gate, sat the
red, yellow, and white twin engine from Salt Lake City. The two
planes, with a combined manifest of two hundred and eighty-nine
people aboard, including crew members, had efficiently delivered
infection and death to Grand Junction Regional.

Landing only minutes apart, the jet liners
disgorged hundreds of terrified people, a host of them already
infected but not yet turned.

Two passengers onboard Flight 6651 from Vegas
who had turned while the plane was still airborne succeeded in
infecting ten other passengers before finally being subdued.

“
The two men were insane or something,
biting and clawing at those heroes,”
was how a stunned flight
attendant had described the incident, hands trembling, as she
waited for the Venti Americano that Taryn was sure would only add
to her shakes.

Adding to the horrific events that had
already unfolded while Allegiant 6651 was still in the air, three
of the plane’s passengers, having had succumbed to their horrific
bite wounds, expired on the paisley carpet in front of Jet Way A.
Within minutes—or seconds—Taryn couldn’t remember, the two men and
the blonde girl with pig tails, who couldn’t have been a day over
six, had reanimated and were stalking people across the gatehouse
floor.

As Taryn watched, with one hand clamped over
her mouth holding in a scream and the other frozen in a death grip
to the espresso machine’s still gushing steam nozzle, an air
marshal who had been on the Las Vegas flight drew his pistol,
identified himself, and then issued a few ludicrous orders to the
pale monsters.

The marshal, whose permanently dead body
still lay where it had fallen amongst his own scattered organs, had
failed to discharge his weapon at the newly turned. He had
seemingly been frozen by the incomprehensible scene he had just
witnessed and his split second hesitation allowed the dead
passengers to get their hands on him and drag him to the
ground.

Taryn watched on as a man in skinny jeans
wearing a painfully trendy felt Pork Pie hat scooped up the air
marshal’s black pistol and scampered away holding it with two
fingers as if he was supremely terrified of the prospect of
protecting his own life with the hated boom stick.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away as the
monsters gorged themselves on the marshal’s neck, tearing large
hunks away and swallowing them whole.

That the marshal still had a second gun
strapped to the outside of his argyle sock next to his right ankle
hadn’t been lost on the young barista. In fact she had been eyeing
it since that fateful day and it figured prominently into her
escape plan—whatever that entailed.

The airport security, EMTs and firefighters
who had been stationed inside of the airport around the clock,
though thoroughly trained to handle death and chaos, fared no
better than Flight 6651’s passengers against the reanimated dead. A
few of the former first responders now shambled the concourse
downstairs and the jet way and tarmac outside.

As Taryn concentrated on braiding her long
jet-black tresses, a fat sweat bead traced the ridge of her nose,
stopped against the gold hoop that had been there since her
thirteenth birthday, and then took the path of least resistance
plummeting onto her knee-length black shorts. The tats on her well
defined biceps moved as she worked, the demons and skulls seemingly
alive. As she stared at the heat mirages performing their ethereal
dance outside on the tarmac an inane thought crossed her mind.
Trapped at work during a zombie outbreak and in the middle of
the worst heat wave in fifteen years — good going Taryn
.