A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (17 page)

He made out dozens of unmoving zombies
carpeting the ground in a rough semi-circle which extended from the
near side of the tankers. He also noted the staggering walkers,
which numbered no less than fifty, loitering dangerously close to
the spot where Ari needed to set the Ghost Hawk down.

“It’s going to be tight,” Ari cautioned.
“Hold on to your hats, ladies.”

“Switch me places,” Tice said to Hicks.

“Are you familiar...?”

Tice cut off Hicks before he could finish the
interrogation. “I’m proficient with the Dillon mini. Shot the shit
out of them in training... never got a chance to in combat
though.”

Hicks relinquished the gun. “They’re pretty
much idiot proofed,” he said while he unlatched the cabin door.
“Use it
only
as a last resort. And remember...
short
bursts
, short as in a fraction of a second short.”

“Copy that,” Tice said as he clicked on the
safety strap, plugged his helmet into the nearest receptacle, and
started reacquainting himself with the complex weapon system.
Idiot proofed my ass
.
What the hell do I have to do to
earn these guys’ respect?

Cade, Lopez and Maddox swapped their flight
helmets for their smaller and much lighter tactical ballistic
helmets.

In order to communicate with the Delta
operators and act as another set of eyes while they were on the
ground, Durant switched the onboard comms to match their frequency.
“Mic check. How copy?” he said.

Cade flashed the co-pilot a thumbs up; Lopez
and Maddox also followed suit.

Ari, who could now be heard in everyone’s
helmets, said, “We’re good to go... wheels down in three
mikes.”

As he unplugged from the bulkhead, and donned
Tice’s tactical helmet, Hicks’s thumb hinged up indicating he was
good to go.

Ari engaged the Ghost Hawk’s landing gear
which locked into place with a solid clunk.

Hicks hauled open the starboard side door and
immediately a superheated blast of gut churning stench invaded the
helo. Riding the turbulent air, the sickly sweet smell of dead meat
co-mingled with the chopper’s kerosene-tinged exhaust instantly
triggered Tice’s gag reflex which in turn started an unstoppable
chain reaction inside of him. As he fought to hold down the rising
bile, his overactive salivary glands went to work only hastening
the process.

Again the helo shimmied, buffeted by an
invisible pillar of superheated desert air.

Sensing his stomach about to let go and
acting purely on reflex, Tice made the mistake of poking his head
into the slipstream where it was nearly ripped off due to the added
weight of his flight helmet.

“What are you doing?” Hicks yelled. “We’ve
got bags for that—”

Tice heard nothing but the throaty roar of
rushing wind mixed with the subliminal hum of the main rotor before
he vomited. The puke spewed from the CIA man’s mouth and entered
the air vortex surrounding Jedi One-One. Instantly, bits of
undigested spaghetti and meatball MRE, which now resembled an
Orange Julius, were blasted right back into the cabin.

A look of disgust evident, Hicks methodically
wiped the white bits of noodle and reddish-gray meat splatter from
his face, and then dabbed at the particles clinging to the interior
of the Ghost Hawk. “For fuck’s sake Spook, we’ve still got a long
way to go... and now I’m wearing half the contents of your
stomach.”

“Sorry,” Tice sheepishly announced to
everyone aboard as he transferred oily spittle from the corner of
his mouth to the back of his gloved hand.

As the runway unspooled below the helicopter,
Cade shot a stern look, and then took a rare swipe at the CIA man.
“Your shooting better impress me, Tice. In fact, if you want to
live this one down—then you’re really going to have to shine during
this
entire
mission. Once a puker... always a puker,” he
bellowed.

“I’ll second that,” Ari chimed in. “And if
you don’t rise to the occasion, when we get back to Schriever we’ll
get you a commemorative “
Puker
” patch that you can Velcro to
your ACUs.”

More grunt than words, Tice said, “I’ll pass,
but I will accept my ‘
I saved Schriever by jury-rigging a few
nukes,’
patch when we get back to base. Who knows... maybe you
ballbreakers might still be in need of my expertise.” He shot a
smart ass grin at Ari who was eyeballing him in the curved mirror
atop the flight instruments. Then, looking ground ward, he powered
up the electric mini-gun and tested its range of motion by panning
it back and forth. Once he had a general idea of its coverage and
blind spots, he flashed thumbs up to Hicks and said, “Good to
go.”

Durant checked in with the communications
shack back at Schriever, informing the officer monitoring the
mission that Jedi One-One was going wheels down for a refuel. Then
a nagging question struck him,
Why hadn’t Major Nash responded
to the situation report personally?

“Wheels down in one mike,” Ari said, alerting
everyone aboard Jedi One-One. “Stay frosty. I’m taking two slow
passes. Clear as many walkers from the tarmac as you can—and
Tice—make sure you
do not
hit either one of those fuel
trucks.”

No shit, Sherlock
, Tice thought,
wondering who hung the plank labeling him their personal whipping
boy around his neck.

On the initial pass Cade succeeded in felling
a dozen walkers and taking chunks out of several others. Give him a
M249 SAW, he thought, and the numbers would be vastly different.
Unfortunately, like the onboard mini-gun, a light machine gun with
a cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, such as the SAW,
wouldn’t be the weapon to use effectively around a few thousand
gallons of JP-8—especially not from a platform in flight.

When the Ghost Hawk finished the final
approach, Cade and Hicks emptied their mags into the walkers and
prepared for egress.

As the ground rushed up, Cade crouched low
and steadied his breathing. He changed mags and charged his
silenced SCAR, then, following Lopez’s lead, performed a hasty
signing of the cross.

Before the wheels kissed the tarmac, Hicks’s
boots hit the ground running. He took a few long strides aft,
brought his M4 to bear, and engaged three walkers, one female and
two male, who were dangerously close to the spinning tail rotor.
The nearest Z, an elven-featured female clad in a summery ensemble
consisting of a watermelon hued halter top complete with spaghetti
straps and a pair of white, hip hugging short-shorts, caught his
first salvo. Three rounds of 5.56 hardball walked from her pointed
chin to the hairline above her right eye. The petite creature’s
pale emaciated body rocketed from the ground following the same
trajectory as the scrambled contents of her cranium. While
airborne, her corpse completed a half twist compliments of the
triple mule kick delivered by the bullets’ kinetic energy, and
then, arms outstretched performed a perfect face first Pete Rose
slide in her own moist gray matter.

Safe
, Hicks thought as he swept the
black rifle to the right. And with very little room for error sent
a three round burst into each of the flanking male walkers, pulping
their pallid faces in the process. “Ari, your six is clear,” he
said as the monsters’ putrid bodies fell dangerously close to the
whirring tail rotor.

Hicks looked over his shoulder. Satisfied his
backups had exited the black helo, he put the M4 to his shoulder,
and then set off for the nearest tanker truck, engaging targets on
the run as he threaded through the zombie throng.

Durant watched awestruck as Hicks dropped
four walkers in quick succession, dinging the last creature on the
forehead point blank and relocating shards of skull and brain onto
the broiling tarmac. “Didn’t know Hicksy could shoot like
that.”

“Neither did I, Night Stalker,
neither did
I
,” Ari admitted.

Hicks couldn’t see the other two operators
but he knew they were there. He could hear the pings of brass
hitting blacktop, and the rapid-fire clanking coming from the
piston driven bolts on the silenced rifles as the spent shell
casings spit out and live rounds chambered.

Hicks let his rifle dangle from its center
point sling as he navigated the sea of leaking bodies, his boots
sending spent shell casings skittering in all directions.
Lots
of brass,
he thought,
someone fought hard for their
fuel
.

Three left
. He had purposefully left
the creatures nearest the tanker alone. They were going to have to
be killed up close and personal. The last thing he needed was an
errant round igniting the tanker and roasting him, the Ghost Hawk,
her crew, and the dismounts.

“Your six is clear Hicks... just those three
that I can see,” said Durant, starting his play-by-play as Hicks
slowed to a walk and drew his combat knife. Durant remained radio
silent, and watched as the stout SOAR operator covered the last ten
feet in a combat crouch, clutching his Cold Steel blade right
handed.

***

Taryn listened as Dickless clomped down the
steps. Silently, she hoped the monster who used to be her boss
would take a tumble and break a leg. For a heartbeat she
contemplated opening the office door and kicking the pusbag between
the shoulder blades. Anything, she thought, to keep the rancid
thing downstairs permanently.

At least the decomposing asshole would never
again say, “
Another new tattoo Taryn? Better cover that up
Taryn
.”

Nor would he ever again condescendingly talk
down to her, “
What are you going to do for a real job when you
grow up Taryn? Stock the cups Taryn. They’re not going to stock
themselves Taryn.
”

She had never before wished anyone dead let
alone Richard, but judging how things ended up it was obvious
someone had. For Christ’s sake, the asshat wouldn’t even let her
plug her battery challenged iPhone into the kiosk’s extra
electrical outlet while she worked. “
You don’t pay the electric
bill
,” he had said at the time. So she brought her little solar
panel phone charger to work with her just to spite the fucker.

Taryn waited until Dickless was out of ear
shot, then, curiosity getting the better of her, she arose from the
floor and padded across the carpet to the wall of windows that
wrapped around the elevated office.

Dickless lurched over to the floor-to-ceiling
windows where the creature Taryn called Subway Karen (due to her
soiled, garish colored uniform with nametag still attached) stood
with her distended stomach pressed tightly to the glass. As soon as
Dickless formed up next to the former
sandwich artist
a
steady low pitched moan escaped her unmoving lips. And while Taryn
watched from on high, a half dozen other nameless creatures trudged
to the windows and jostled for a spot.

That leaves four of those things
unaccounted for
, thought Taryn. Three passengers from one of
the doomed planes still stalked the concourse, all three of which
she hadn’t seen in a few days. Then there was Chester the baggage
porter. The fifty-something had been a little on the slow side.
Taryn had heard people like Chester described as
touched
.
Although far from politically correct, she preferred saying:
The
wheel is spinning, but the hamster is missing
.

During her grueling three year stint at the
“Bucks,” a day hadn’t gone by when she didn’t serve Chester at
least one black Pikes. He seemed to be at the airport night and
day.
Well
, Taryn mused,
Chester’s had his last Pikes, and
he isn’t leaving for home anytime soon
.

Olivia, one of Taryn’s co-workers, had once
pointed out that Chester lived for the tips—though strangely enough
he never ponied up one as appreciation for his piping hot Pikes.
After hearing that little tidbit Taryn supposed the man was
probably afraid that if he went home he might miss the big one.
Well Chester,
Taryn surmised,
if that gigantic tip hasn’t
hit your palm during your twenty year stint, chances are it never
will.
She had wanted to break it to him earlier but hadn’t had
the heart. And now that he was one of them, she was glad that she
hadn’t. After all, who was she to put the damper on someone else’s
hopes and dreams?

Shoulda gone home when you had the chance
Chester... I wish I would have.

Taryn was pretty sure there were only twelve
walking corpses on this side of the concourse.
Only
, she
thought. Even one of the walking corpses made escaping from the
airport seem impossible. At first, a mere glance at one of the dead
caused her to immediately seize up. Little by little she was
getting used to looking at them. Their stench—not so much.

As for the south side census, she knew the
zombies were there. She had heard them moaning from time to time,
but because of the bend in the building she hadn’t been able to see
them or get an accurate head count.

“What the hell are you two gawking at?” Taryn
said softly as she low crawled to a better vantage point and peered
along their sight lines.
Shit
, was the first thing that came
to mind when she spotted the wasp-looking aircraft sitting adjacent
to the runway with its slow spinning rotors throwing blinding
daggers of sunlight her way.

Looks like the black helicopters that
refueled here the day before yesterday... only silent and
sleek
, she thought to herself. She hadn’t liked the looks of
the men in black who had jumped out of those first two noisy
helicopters, and she didn’t quite know what to make of these guys
in tan and their whisper quiet, spaceship-looking helicopter.

While she watched, a lone man wearing a short
half helmet and carrying a black rifle sprinted to the refueling
trucks, shooting as he went. Three other men wearing the same tan
uniforms fanned out and seemed to be watching out for the first
man.