A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (16 page)

Gaines cut her short. “Brook, Brook—take a
deep breath.”

At once Brook became cognizant that Wilson,
who had been able to hear the entire conversation, was looking at
her with one arched brow and his head cocked aside. Then he mouthed
the words “
murderer”
and “
sent here
” and a look of
bewilderment parked on his face. Still locking eyes with the
redhead, Brook took Gaines’ advice and refilled her lungs.

“I don’t give a rip if that man’s mommy
didn’t breast feed him long enough. That crazy
son of a gun
is still a
murderer
no matter how you spin it... so what
in the hell
is a second look into his mind going to divulge,
Missus Grayson?” Gaines asked in a tired sounding voice.

The two-way radio stayed silent for half a
minute as the U-Haul’s tires hummed along the blacktop.

To Brook it sounded like Gaines wanted her to
butt out and keep her hypothesis to herself. After all, who could
blame him? Though it hadn’t, the stunt Brook had pulled sneaking
onto the CH-47 amongst the chalk of Rangers could have ended badly.
She became his problem then—and she was his problem now. But Brook
had a stake in the game—she had lost her big brother and she owed
it to Carl to call the general’s hand on the issue. “Cade told me
Pug is not the only personality inhabiting that man’s mind. If Ted
what’s-his-name notices a drastic change in Pug’s demeanor... or
picks up on what Cade mentioned to me, then he might know a way to
get him to talk. Maybe—if you pump the right pills into the man,
you just might be rewarded with a
lucid
prisoner—one that
you can properly interrogate.”

“You are going to owe me one Brooklyn
Grayson. I will do this for you... I’ll do this because I know you
aren’t crazy...
are you
?”

That’s two favors I owe the brass
, she
thought. Then as the Motorola went silent she glanced sideways at
Wilson who had been hanging on every word, and exclaimed, “I can’t
believe it. The general is on board...”

Shaking his head Wilson said, “I’d be excited
but I’m lost... now I think it’s
your
turn to tell
me
the
whole
story.”

Brook recounted to Wilson everything that had
happened between Pug’s release from quarantine until the soldiers
in bunny suits found him bawling like a baby alone in his tent.

She omitted only two facts: that her brother
Carl had been among the victims and that both the stocks of
antiserum and the data used in its manufacture had been lost in the
conflagration.

Shuddering with revulsion and trying to come
to grips with the fact that he had been rubbing elbows with the
psychopath, Wilson stated in a low voice, “Wow... he killed all
those people
and
William in cold blood. That is
so
hard for me to believe... he didn’t seem like a deranged
murderer.”

Brook tilted her head back until her helmet
touched the seatback and stared at the stained headliner. After a
mile or two of silence she said, “It’s a lot to process... but
all
of it
was
his doing. However, there may be more
like him on the base. That’s why my husband and the others need to
interrogate him further.”

Wilson, who was still paying more attention
to Brook than the road, replied, “You know... I assumed both of the
fires were accidental. Now I’m effin pissed that I didn’t notice
the coincidence. I guess I was still tired and in shock from our
run from Denver.”

“Pug and the fires that he set took us all by
surprise... ” Brook said in a voice tinged with sadness.

Suddenly remembering that Ted probably hadn’t
seen his partner since they all had been put in quarantine, Wilson
blurted, “Oh man. When Ted finds out Pug killed William he’s going
to tear him limb from limb. Ted’s a
big
bear of a
guy...”

Trying to sound reassuring Brook added,
“Don’t worry. Shrill and Nash will treat Ted with kid gloves...
they will tell him
everything
he needs to know...”

“You mean
after
they
use
him—
right?
” Wilson stated, narrowing his eyes.

“Probably,” Brook conceded, looking away.

Chapter 19

Outbreak - Day 11

Grand Junction, Colorado

In the grand scheme of things, the city of
Grand Junction, Colorado didn’t fully live up to its name.
Established alongside the Colorado River, which received the
smaller Gunnison River from the south, Grand Junction had been a
crossroads for commerce between Utah and Colorado and a place to
stop and resupply for wide-eyed expansionists heading to Nevada and
beyond.

Compared to Denver and Colorado Springs, the
city of sixty thousand people failed to peg the
grand
meter
anywhere near the top of the scale. Although not Grand Canyon
grand
, or Grand Central Station
grand,
the city still
spread out across a sizable plot of western Colorado.

To the north, Book Cliffs stood sentinel,
while backstopping the western edge of Grand Junction, Colorado
National Monument loomed. Painted red and orange by the mid-morning
sun, the series of cliffs, canyons, and red rock mesas looked like
they were transplanted from the surface of Mars; like arthritic
fingers, huddles of gnarled Joshua trees probed skyward. Ari jinked
the black helo around the taller specimens while diving in and out
of the many weather-scoured arroyos. The SOAR (Special Operations
Aviation Regiment) pilot was in total control of the helicopter,
and seemed to have formed a symbiotic relationship with the Ghost
Hawk dubbed Jedi One-One.

Ari halved his airspeed on approach to the
city, and, in a gut wrenching maneuver, popped the helo to five
hundred feet AGL (Above Ground Level) in order to survey the
rapidly advancing sprawl through his smoked visor. After a drawn
out whistle, he said, “That’s a
bigger
city than I was
expecting. I sure as hell hope the Zs aren’t congregating anywhere
near Grand Junction Regional.”

Craning his neck to see the ground through
the port side glass, Tice added, “I’ve been in and out of most of
the airports in the CONUS when I was assigned to the Joint
Terrorism Task Force... took the grand tour just after the 9-11
attacks. Since then
all
of the airports have added pretty
formidable fencing. The Department of Homeland Security and the FAA
mandated the extra security measures to keep unwanted folk from
sneaking in with
deadly
stuff.”

Ari couldn’t resist. “Yeah... like the
genius
underwear bomber. How’s that working out for you,
Mister Sits to Pee?”

After hearing about the fall of Fort Bragg
first-hand from Brook and the fall of Camp Williams similarly from
Duncan, Cade had a hard time putting any faith in fencing. A few
feet of chain-link topped with razor wire keeping out a small cadre
of terrorists or drug smugglers
maybe
, but a thousand
hungry, determined, and mindless ghouls,
no fucking way
.
“Where is your secondary forage location if this one is no go?” he
asked.

Durant consulted the flight computer, which
was still being fed GPS (Global Positioning System) and other
necessary navigation information from the series of GPS satellites
controlled by the 50th Space Wing back at Schriever AFB. “Well
sir,” Durant replied, “we’d have to probe further into Utah. Moab
has a smaller airport
and,
more importantly, a much smaller
population—about five thousand, give or take...”

“Moab... been there. The place has awesome
slickrock tracks and
microbeers
... anyone bring a mountain
bike?” Ari quipped.

“We aren’t on vacation, Night Stalker. We’re
on safari,” Lopez said darkly.

For the interruption, Cade shot both men an
annoyed look.

After the peanut gallery piped down, Durant
continued. “The downside of the Moab facility is that it caters to
general aviation only. The chance of us getting a full load of JP-8
at Canyonlands is a crap shoot at best.”

“Besides, from where we are now...” Ari did
some calculations in his head and continued, “that’s about a two
hundred and twenty mile round trip, and it looks like we would be
backtracking to the south to boot. Even for this numb ass aviator
that
is a lot of flying for a whole lot of maybes.”

Cade chimed in. “I’m not comfortable with
maybes
. Since we don’t have eyes on Grand Junction Regional
yet... why all the hypothesizing?”

“It’s what we do, Sir. Cover all the bases,”
Durant replied.

“How bad can it be down there?” Tice
asked.

Ari finessed the controls, making course
corrections as a hot thermal updraft bounced the helo like a ship
at sea. “
Jesus Christ
...” Ari cried. “Did the
spook
just say what I think he said? You
never, ever,
say jinxin’
words like that in my presence.”

Tice greeted the comment with a casual shrug
of his shoulders.

As the Ghost Hawk rapidly cut the distance to
the city, Cade tilted his neck in order to see through the cockpit
glass between Ari and Durant. Wisps of smoke curled into the air.
The entire southernmost part of the city was obliterated; the
conflagration, having already burned itself out, had left standing
only the scorched shells of a handful of concrete structures. The
metal streetlight standards and the few scattered trees that had
somehow escaped the cleansing fire cast shadows over the
soot-covered thoroughfares. Like alabaster soldiers trudging
through a blackened battlefield, scattered groupings of zombies
moved about on the ground.

“We are approaching the airport. It’ll be on
the port side. I’m going to orbit once and set down quickly when we
find what we need,” Ari said via the shipboard comms. “All eyes
need to be on the lookout for a fueling station or a mobile fuel
bowser.”

“We’re going to have to do a hot refueling.
Meaning the pilot
will not
cut power. Since a fire would be
very
baaad
I’m going to have to egress with the shooters,”
Hicks added. “If we see
any
Zs roaming the grounds, one of
you will have to stay on the mini-gun and the other three are going
to have to watch my back while I work.”

Durant’s voice invaded the comms. “Don’t look
now, but I think... the airfield is full of Zs.”

“OK, heads up gentlemen,” said Ari. “Make
sure you watch yourselves around the tail rotor.
Very
important
, at all costs keep the Zs away from our ride... the
last thing I need is for one of those things to martyr itself into
my tail rotor. Be advised—if that happens—
we will all be walking
home
.”

Cade stole a look. The scene below started a
dull ache in the pit of his stomach. It was the small dose of fear
that always came along for the ride whenever he went into harm’s
way.

“Hey Lucy, you’ve got some esplainin’ to do,”
Ari deadpanned over the comms. “Looks like someone crashed the gate
and left it wide open...
literally
.”

In order to let the operators come up with
their game plan, Ari kept the bird close to the deck and moving at
a crawl. As soon as the black helo crossed over the southwest
corner of the airport, the walkers’ point of entry became
evident.

Tice spotted the deep furrow in the black
earth first. He cut in, “Wow... she came up
waaay
short.
Must have been moving at a helluva clip too, judging by the dirt
she plowed after the initial impact.”

The debris field started roughly one hundred
yards before the crushed cyclone fence, where a piece of the
plane’s landing gear, seemingly intact and with the wheels still
attached, had become embedded in the churned up sod. The jetliner’s
nearly unscathed tail section, emblazoned with the glossy scarlet
and royal blue Delta Airlines logo, lay canted to one side,
directly on the center line of the rubber-streaked runway. The
majority of the jetliner’s burned out skeleton rested some four
hundred yards farther and off to the right of Runway 11/29.
Littering the distance between the site of impact and the scorched
earth marking Delta 1221’s final resting place were jagged pieces
of fuselage, greasy hunks of scorched human flesh, and fluttering
in the oppressively hot desert air—hundreds of colorful fabric
scraps and the ruptured pieces of luggage that once contained
them.

“Shouldn’t they have at least foamed the
runway?” asked Maddox, his visor partially obscuring his bewildered
look.

“I’d be willing to bet the airport was closed
and the emergency personnel had already vamoosed. There was nobody
left
to
foam the runway when the
heavy
came in,” said
Durant, pointing out the dayglow yellow emergency vehicles still
parked next to an oversized aviation hangar directly adjacent to
the rambling airport terminal.

“I concur,” Ari said solemnly as he circled a
hundred feet above the blackened wreckage. “Poor bastard probably
had no one in the tower to talk to, no one on the ground, and
probably no glideslope to follow. As for the fire guys... if I were
in their boots I would have gone home too.
I woulda been looking
for my family
.” Ari spoke the last sentence in a small voice.
Then, with a tear caressing his cheek, he thought how grateful he
was for the flight helmet’s smoked visor.

“Eleven o’clock port side,” Durant
intoned.

“I see them,” Ari grunted as he pulled heavy
g’s nosing the near silent Jedi Ride around in a tight circle.

Cade also saw the two white tanker trucks,
the words
West Slope Aviation
plastered in big red letters
on their sides. The vehicles sat on the tarmac positioned in a
manner that told Cade someone had recently refueled from them, and
he silently prayed that they hadn’t already been sucked dry.