LZR-1143: Redemption (10 page)

THIRTEEN

The fast attack helicopters were fierce, and they were powerful.

Hellfire missiles dropped from the sky as small arms fire tore through the night air. Cars that had been outfitted with large machine guns and reinforced fronts and armored wheel wells exchanged gunfire with Bradleys and Humvees. The Army had the edge on weaponry. But they lacked the manpower.

We watched from the roof of the hangar as the battle raged. We had taken the hydraulic fluid back and returned to watch the fighting.

“What’s your status, Granger?” Drexel’s voice was flat, and his face betrayed his impatience.

Rhodes cut in.

“He’s in the middle of something that looks complicated. He said ten minutes.”

A loud grumble from somewhere off microphone followed a loud pop and a crash. Then a loud curse.

“Scratch that, make it twenty.”

I turned back to the battle and stared as the tracers flew from the armored military vehicles, lighting the streets as figures shambled through the battle zone, getting cut down as they walked obliviously through the gunfire.

“What the hell are they thinking?” I asked no one in particular.

From our vantage point, we could see the Army units slowly backing into a defensive formation around a large compound nearly a half-mile from the airport. Drexel squinted in the direction of the battle, but Kate and I could see most of the movements. The militia had an overwhelming force of numbers, and with the dead mixed in, the military was slowly getting overwhelmed. The dead turned on both sides alike, but the military was forced into a defensive position, protecting something. The militia took losses, but from superior numbers with high mobility. It was clear that the military would soon be overrun.

Fighters sprinted between firing positions, and several vehicles smoldered on the streets and in buildings where they had crashed.

This is why we had been shot down.

“Wasn’t there anything on the radio about this?” I asked, watching as a Cobra helicopter dove into a fray where a Humvee was pinned against the wall of a pharmacy, and strafed the attacking pickup truck with a heavy rain of metal. The men inside shattered, and the Humvee was abandoned as the fighters outside sprinted for cover behind their own lines.

“Nothing,” he said. “But we don’t monitor the local bands, and if they didn’t have a strong enough transmitter, or their sat phone is down, or… shit, could have been a number of reasons.”

“What about Seattle command? Shouldn’t they know of this?”

He just frowned. “We checked in with them an hour ago. They didn’t give us a heads up or a divert order, so they must not know.”

“Any idea what they’re fighting over?”

“My guess?”

I watched a helicopter spin out of the air and fall lopsided into the side of a five-story building marked with the call sign of a local radio station. The billboard on top bearing the handsome face of a local broadcaster fell on the chopper as it slid, flaming, down the face of the building.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“The train.”

Kate turned around, making a face.

“The train?”

The pilot nodded, sitting down on the edge of the building.

“There’s one way to travel in the west right now without worrying about blocked roads and fuel stops and unprotected airfields, and the Western army has control of it. We need it for fuel, food and water, hell, even heavy armor resupply—big loads that we can’t haul effectively by air—and we run it between secure facilities all throughout the west and mountains. From Boise, it stretches south and west, and from Seattle, we can get all the way to San Diego and the navy resupplies that are coming in there from all over the continent.”

“But why are they attacking it if they want to use it? I’m assuming they want access to different areas of the country to get supplies, right? Doesn’t attacking the train make it difficult to use?”

“My guess is that they’re making a play for a capture. They don’t want to damage the railways because they’re not sure they can fix them, so they’re trying to take the train in the station, and use it to get to Seattle or Portland or San Diego or any of the other cities up and down these lines. There’s a lot of country out here, and an armored train does a lot to open that up for you, especially as your army gets bigger and bigger and harder to control.”

“Thank god for Amtrak, I guess,” I said, more amazed than anything else. A relic from the past—one that America had stopped putting money into a long time ago, while other nations rebuilt their railways and related infrastructure from the ground up—that relic from when we conquered the west so many years ago, was helping us do it again.

“Colonel Drexel?” the copilot’s voice crackled in our ear buds.

“Go ahead,” Drexel responded.

“Granger says he’s done what he can on the leak, and we’ve finished the fluid replenishment. We need to check the lines, and do a pressure test.”

“Okay, keep me posted.”

“Copy that, sir. But there’s more. We just received a coded message from Seattle command. They ask that we render all possible assistance to Boise local en route. I advised that we were on station, and got the frequency for Boise’s command group. Do you want to patch through?”

I looked at Kate as the information popped through our ear buds.

I was torn, as I saw her look betray the same feeling. We should help them, because we could. But doing so risked the larger purpose at hand, because it risked our lives.

“Colonel…”

“Put me through,” he said, cutting me off.

“This is Major Tom Gaffney,” a harried voice came through on the radio, the sound of gunfire clear and loud behind him. A large explosion in the distance was amplified through the open channel.

“Major? This is Colonel Greg Drexel and we received information from Seattle command on your situation. We are prepared to assist with aerial support, do you copy?”

Static took over the line for several seconds, then, “Copy that, Colonel. Much obliged. We are getting hit hard, and the train is still a good hour from being ready to go. We are evacuating a large number of civilians from town, and the militia hit us while we were engaged in transport ops. We need some more time.”

“Copy that,” another large explosion made the Colonel flinch.

I looked at Kate again.

Civilians.

Children.

That changed everything.

“Colonel, I don’t want to be a pest, but the faster you can render assistance, the better. One of your winged friends helped us take out a large herd of those things a couple days ago, but we’re seeing larger groups of stragglers coming through our lines right now. That means we’re close to another group. We can’t take another hit from them while we’re holding off the militia. We don’t have the ammo for it. If another herd gets here before we’re on the train, we’re goners.”

Drexel’s voice was calm, and it was severe.

“Major, as soon as I’m in the air, I will do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen. Drexel out.”

FOURTEEN

Ky was waiting for us when we got back to the plane.

“What’s going on?” she asked us in an anxious tone. Romeo stood next to her, tail wagging anxiously, and a tennis ball dangling inappropriately from his slobbery mouth.

“Nothing, we just need to do something on our way after we take off.” I kept my voice light, not wanting to worry her. But then I realized, if there was one person on this plane who would relish getting back into a fight, it would be her.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“We’re going to help some kids out of a tight spot.”

Her face relaxed, and she nodded at once in approval.

Kate had already given the stricken young man his dose of Benadryl. He still lay curled up in the corner of the plane adjacent to the bulkhead of the flight deck. But he was finally sleeping, and I saw his chest rise and fall slowly.

Drexel and his crew were furiously getting the plane ready to take off. Rhodes had stationed himself next to the window looking toward the main terminal. We had told him about the fight that was raging and he was eager to join the fray. He would be damned if some up-start militia in bumblefuck Idaho would rebel against the country he had lost his family to serve.

He was staring intently out the window, eyes locked on to the distance, when his voice rose slightly.

“What do you say about expediting our departure, friends?”

I shot to the window, knowing what he was going to report. Outside the windows, the engines began to rumble. Then, the propellers started to turn.

Rhodes was staring down at a portion of the interstate that ran past the airport towards the city—to where the battle raged now. Toward where fire shot into the sky, and flames and tracer rounds lit up a quiet evening.

He was staring at a massive herd of creatures using the interstate as the fastest way to get to their dinner. And a large number of them had just separated from the herd, and were heading in our direction.

“Colonel…” I began, but he interrupted me over the communication system, even as I felt the plane rumble forward and the engines grow louder as power was added to the throttle.

“We’re outbound now, folks. Granger, let’s make sure all our toys are ready to be played with. We need to make some things go boom.”

As the plane reached the runway, I was slammed back in my seat as power was added to the engines, and we began rocketing towards the end of the runway. A severe rattle shook the cabin as two engines on one side of the plane compensated for only one on the other.

Granger moved quickly to the weapons as the plane shot into the air at a 40 degree angle, moving to the 25mm that had saved our asses in D.C. with its 7,000 rounds a minute ferocity.

The plane leveled off, and I peered out the window. In the cockpit, Drexel had locked in to the frequency that the Boise command was using, and the raspy exchange of coordinates, calmly delivered in the midst of pure chaos on the ground, was unnerving.

“Six five, on the ground.”

“Copy, coming to station. Altitude check. Adjusting coordinates. Guns, status?”

“Twenty-five is up, sir. Forty is loading. Half a mike to station, we’ll be ready.”

“Copy that. Boise command, we are half a mike to station. Notify personnel of incoming, over.”

“Copy Iron Eagle, stand by.”

“Standing by.”

The radio crackled and I took Kate’s hand as we tilted to the left as the plane reached firing position. No rockets from the ground yet, that was good. Boise had told Drexel that the militia had raided a National Guard depot two weeks ago, but hadn’t gotten much in the way of heavy arms, since the Guard had taken what they could carry when they started their last counter offensive against the herd. Boise thought they didn’t have any rockets left.

We were admittedly risking quite a lot on what Boise thought.

A scary proposition.

As we banked into position above the fight, the tenuous situation on the ground became even more apparent. The Army was clustered around a large train station, with a massive dark form winding back and away from the station, the tracks enclosed by fencing that appeared far too feeble for the circumstances. The train was smoking, and men ran back and forth into the station carrying boxes, and hauling hoses of some sort. A large crowd of people, probably civilians, was clustered around the tracks near the station, and they were being loaded into large boxcars and passenger cars, as armed men looked nervously around.

Around the large rectangular station, several warehouses and commercial districts were arrayed, with a wide main avenue leading directly up to the main entrance. Armored vehicles were parked behind a massive barricade of wrecked cars, and on the side streets paralleling the main avenue, similar blockages were manned by troops with machine guns and mortars. Clearly, the building had been fortified before the attack against the advances of the zombie threat, and these fortifications were all that had stopped the overwhelming numbers of the militia from taking the train and the station.

On the other side of the tracks, a thick line of parked trains—heavy steel and iron beasts—sat like a vast wall, reinforced by more wrecked cars and steel plates welded to the gaps between the trains. A small force from each side traded small amounts of gunfire in token gestures, but both sides were concentrated on each other on the forward front.

Arrayed in a vast semicircle trying to push into the fenced interior around the train yard, thousands of militia swarmed between buildings, on roofs, and in cars. The steady pop of gunfire couldn’t be heard from our position, except in the backgrounds of the transmissions from below, but we could imagine the rapid fire between the humans on the ground.

But this fight—as brutal as it was becoming—was not what we were looking for. We were looking to save the two sides from a threat they didn’t totally appreciate, even now.

Because as dickish and idiotic as the militia was, and as jacked up on anarchical pride as they were, they were still human. And that counted for more today than it ever had before.

Interstate 90 runs through Boise from east to west on the southernmost side of the city, running merely a hundred yards from the train station and airport. It’s a broad avenue of multiple lanes and off ramps, all designed to facilitate the orderly and rapid movement of people from one place to another, with a conveniently placed off ramp immediately adjacent to the train station, to help serve the public better.

It was definitely serving that purpose today.

At least, as far as the newest definition of the American ‘public’ was concerned.

More than a hundred thousand creatures were clustered together on the roadway, streaming between parked and wrecked cars like a wave of flesh through a canal, appearing as if they were merely ants or small animals from this distance. I knew their smell and their sound from memory—the brittle rustle of dry skin and bone against concrete, the raspy moan of hunger.

The front edge of the group was no more than a mile from the off ramp that would funnel them directly into the back of the militia and the inadequate barricades of the Army.

My hand tightened on Kate’s hand as we began a steady circle above their heads.

In my mind’s eye, I could swear I saw them look up.

If they were wise, they would now begin to curse the sky.

“Position,” said Drexel. “Weapons hot, free to engage.”

“Copy,” said Granger and Rhodes at the same time.

The 25mm was simply a loud buzz, but the rapid fire of the 40mm was much louder, shaking the whole plane each time it discharged. The noise inside was nothing compared to the hurt on the ground.

The AC-130 fired from the left side, which meant that the plane essentially does circles in the air above the target when it’s in a permanent station or firing position. Our first barrage of fire hit the horde in the very front ranks, and the first of the tracer rounds from the Gatling cannon hit the zeds as they were swarming like locusts underneath the large overhead, green signs directing drivers to various points within the city.

From in front of the screens, I watched as large, armor-piercing rounds cut into the soft, rotting bodies as if they were paper, slicing them in half, tearing limbs and bone and flesh. The front rank simply disappeared in a haze of body parts and congealed blood. A mist of liquid and semi-solid detritus rose up as the ranks behind tripped and faltered over the huddled masses of their former comrades. Lacking the sense of human self-preservation that would have prevented them from continuing on in the face of such winnowing fire, they pressed on, thousands of bodies moving forward.

The gun ripped open again, humming as the barrels rotated from a different angle as the plane moved slowly. Hundreds of rounds tore into the supports from the overhanging street sign, and it fell, bereft of its thick steel supports, into the surging crowd below. Many creatures were crushed beneath its weight as several tons of thick steel girders, mangled by the ammunition and the work of the heavy weight pulling it to the ground, fell to the concrete roadway.

Then, the fun began.

The zeds that weren’t crushed when the thick steel fell to the ground were suddenly stopped by the mangled, twisted wreckage and large steel signs blocking the path. Thousands of creatures were massed behind them, and didn’t know enough to stop. The herd started to compress against itself, compacting the slow moving bodies into a thick, writhing mass. Those at the very front were turned to a fleshy pulp against the wreckage and the remnants of broken cars. They were forced against each other, and against the road. Thousands pressed into thousands and thousands more. And they kept coming.

That’s when the large, incendiary rounds of the 40mm cannon began their work.

As we rotated away from the front ranks, where Granger’s withering fire had cut down the leading phalanx, Rhodes began to move his fire from the rear of the group, where he had been thinning out the mass, to the very front, where they had all been packed so closely together.

Where they couldn’t move away.

Where high explosive rounds sprayed final death among the undead.

Bodies disintegrated within the immediate impact zone, shattered into small, flaming pieces. Those not close enough to catch the fire caught the blast. Corpses were thrown into the air, falling apart as they tumbled. Flesh, unable to bind bone together under the deluge of falling fire, was blasted from the weakened bodies.

The rounds were coming from the side of the interstate now, and in groupings of two. Concrete became a tool that Granger used to his advantage, spraying chunks and chips of roadway into the pack, tearing into heads and turning pavement into shrapnel.

Cars were likewise used as secondary explosives, and half-full fuel tanks became small flowers of fire on the packed highway. The flow of bodies forward en masse quickly became a massive fire, and thick oily smoke curled away from the roadway as the plane came around to a new position for the 25mm to fire directly into the advancing herd again.

“Granger, what’s the status?”

Colonel Drexel’s voice revealed a small hint of anxiety and I looked out the window to search immediately for a trail of fire in the night sky that would betray a rocket launch. I knew he had his eyes glued to the advance warning systems and the flare release.

“Kicking ass and taking names, sir,” said Granger, checking a display to get a distance readout.

“Estimates?”

“Sir, hard to tell. Estimate approximately ten to twenty percent down. We also created a little roadblock on the freeway, and we’ve got some nice fires burning. Since this part of the road is an overpass, we’re also making some nice little holes for the fuckers to fall into.”

“We’re going to need to move off station for a while. We’re getting some bad indicator lights from that wing. Standby to retarget.”

I looked outside, but saw nothing. A sudden vibration as the plane changed course rocked through the cabin and Granger looked up, clearly frustrated.

“God damn it,” he said, taking his helmet off and running a hand through his hair. “We have to hit them when they’re clustered… the Colonel has been to enough of these ass rodeos to know th—”

We would never know what he was about to say next.

The bullet that flew through his throat and into a console of avionics on the far side of the cabin punctured the outer wall of the fuselage and lights started to flash.

Kate and Ky screamed as Granger’s body fell to the floor, blood pooling beneath his head as his eyes flashed about wildly, as if searching for a reason or a purpose. Kate moved to get up to help him, but I held her back, pushing her into her seat as I watched the tracer rounds fly up from below.

Granger was trying to breath, but his throat was ruined. Beside him, Rhodes was flat on the floor, trying to reach the mortally wounded airman. I turned to Ky and Romeo, who were closer to the rear of the plane. Ky was staring at the young man in shock, and Romeo simply lay whining on the seat, restraints fastened awkwardly around his chest.

“Don’t move! They’re still—”

Then, the next volley hit, and the cabin was on fire.

We were thrown against our restraints, and then back against our seats. The floor dropped out from under us, then the ceiling rose to meet us. We were torn from side to side, and gear stowed in the back rocketed forward as the nose dipped nearly forty-five degrees.

Rhodes was thrown bodily over the prone remains of Granger’s now lifeless form and into the bulkhead separating the flight deck from the cabin. As we spun on a vertical axis, wings flailing in the air and engines whining in protest, more bullets found their way into the cabin, puncturing the thick frame of the warplane and ricocheting with sharp pinging sounds. I felt a sudden pain in my left forearm, but as I looked down to see what it was, I felt Kate’s hand tighten on my arm, and I looked out the window.

We were nearly perpendicular with the ground, and the lights of the battle outside were very close. We were going down, and we were going down hard.

Glancing up, I saw Rhodes grasping for some canvas restraints that had been used to tie down some gear, and he wrapped the straps tightly around his arms. The cabin pitched backward suddenly as the plane found some stability and the engines roared in protest. Then, the engines sputtered suddenly and died.