LZR-1143: Redemption (34 page)

“Surrounded by mindless drones, vacant eyes and loud music?”

I laughed.

“Yes, exactly. And the promise of explosions and excitement.”

“Seems like we’ve had enough of those lately for a lifetime.”

I nodded seriously, squeezing her shoulder.

“You can say that again. But I could do with one more night with a really big explosion.”

Ky’s grin was epic. She leaned forward in her chair, making sure to be heard over the rotor wash and the music outside.

“That,” she said clearly, “is what
she
said.”

Kate and I erupted in laughter as she nailed the delivery.

“Who finally told you?” I asked.

“Rhodes,” she said. “He said that he owed you one.”

Kate chuckled again, and I slapped the young girl’s helmet once playfully.

We stayed on station for several more minutes until receiving the order from Finnigan to disperse. The choppers spread out in unison, regrouping in a line a mile north of the train, and listening to the Colonel as he counted down the time based on the clock he had been given by the Portland militia.

“You think a mile is far enough?” I asked the pilot, as we banked slowly away, circling back toward the fort, keeping the train and the massive herd on our left. More than half of the huge group was pawing at the long metal bomb, pulled forward by the sounds of our helicopters and the booming rock music. As the opening chords of my favorite song began, the pilot’s answer was obscured by the shockwave of the explosion.

No, not an explosion.

Armageddon of the best sort.

A cascade of flames and concussions began in the middle of the assembled cars, with a huge blossoming explosion that seemed to eat the night sky, obliterating darkness with orange and yellow fury. The adjoining cars went only milliseconds later, until the entire line was a trail of destruction and flame. Metal shards and pieces of debris rocketed into the sky as if shot from a cannon, and bodies simply evaporated in spurts of flame and clouds of ash. The creatures so tightly packed around the tanks of flammable gas and other sundry chemicals were obliterated entirely, while twice their number were brutally dismembered by the shockwaves, body parts tossed into the air and through the packed undead like flaming spears.

Then, the real fun started.

Our helo rocked as the super-heated air pushed us to the side, and our aircraft lurched hard to the right, alarms sounding momentarily in the night air before the pilots expertly straightened the vehicle. Over the comms, I heard the flight crew agreeing to move further north, as the air turned from orange to bright white, and my ears exploded with the tumult of a volcanic eruption.

The explosions and the flames had found the gas reserves in the large tanks of the refinery.

Destructive blossoms of flame turned into a torrent of surging death as gas spewed from the large tanks, engulfing the herds of undead and shattering their bodies; dry, rotting flesh igniting like kindling before the incredible heat of the burning chemicals.

Densely packed around the train and between the tanks and pipelines of the refinery, the undead had no shelter from the heat, the shockwave, or the incendiary power of thousands upon thousands of gallons of natural gas, kerosene, and fuel oil that had been assembled and ignited as a giant bomb, intent on the ultimate and final destruction of millions of the living dead. The night air was white with the cascading explosions and the very air was alive with heat and flame, pulling the oxygen from the atmosphere with a frightful fury and channeling its energy into the incineration of masses of the assembled ghouls.

“SeaTac, confirm jump off in one mike,” said Finnigan’s voice suddenly over the comms, calm and collected. As I watched the thousands upon thousands of undead ignite and shatter below, I felt like whooping in victory, so I respected the man’s restraint as he began to execute the final stage of the plan that had hastily come together when we decided to trust a hunch—to trust in the goodness of humanity and hope for the best in the intentions of the approaching train.

“Confirmed, Colonel. Stand by.”

The helicopters had moved into position in a slow circle above the northern gate, the site of my erstwhile last stand only hours ago. A slow flame continued to smolder near the site of the breach in the shattered container, as I watched the movement inside the fortress in the darkness below. Under cover of night, and with as little noise as a convoy of this nature could muster, the cavalry of the Western army had arrived.

A string of Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and MRAP’s repurposed for zombie duty were all lined up inside the main gate, engines off and lights out. Behind them, several flights of Cobra attack helos, smaller, waspish gunships, and larger, minigun toting Blackhawks lifted off from the tarmac like a cloud of angry hornets, the buzz of their many rotors like a thunder of insects surging forward.

“SeaTac, my visual confirms prior sitrep. You have my green light for the op. I repeat, green light.” He paused, his voice lifting up with the traces of hope that had seeped into his countenance as he watched the undead burn in droves below his command ship. “Godspeed, and good luck.”

“Confirmed, sir. All units, Operation Clean Sweep is a go. Gates are authorized to open. Backstops, proceed. Authorization Alpha Delta Bravo six five.”

As one, the line of assembled armor awoke. Lights flickered on, like the eyes of sleeping beasts, awakened from a long slumber. The smoke of exhaust clouded into the air, and the gates of the fortress—one of the last redoubts of mankind in the area—opened into the vicious night, as if eager to spit into the eye of the apocalyptic curse outside.

The column thundered forward as the zombies outside stuttered and turned. Eyes that had been glued to the sound and motion and flames from the east turned slowly back to the opening gates as the first tanks began to fire into the crowd.

“Phase Two, initiate,” Finnigan’s voice shot over the comms.

“Copy that,” came the slightly muted response of a different voice, and I started involuntarily as the landing lights of several C-130’s appeared no more than a mile away, droning low and slow over the assembled corpses, who now faced an onslaught from the land and from the air.

As Ky shifted next to me in the vibrating helo, and as Kate gripped my hand with what I knew was a mixture of apprehension and eagerness, the large planes began to deliver their payload as the tanks and armored vehicles streamed out of the backstops and into the blood and gore-soaked concrete and turf outside the fortress. Their thick metal treads smashed the first ranks of the undead as their heavy guns arced large-bore shells in precise trajectories—trajectories designed to shatter bodies and confuse and confound the assembled corpses, splitting their attention between the spouts of flames and roaring fire from the train, and the booming artillery aimed at them from around and inside the fortress.

Miniguns started to fire from the walls and flamethrowers spoke once again. Above, the payloads from the C-130’s were landing, a mist of jet fuel, kerosene and other flammable liquids cascading over the heads of the packed bodies in the cruel semblance of a true Seattle evening. As the liquid landed, coating the bodies pressed into a loose ring around the fortress with a sheen of rancid moisture, the cavalry completed their movements, forming a second ring of firepower outside the eastern and northern sides of the fortress and firing into the tightly packed masses to pull them in and shatter them with a hail of metal.

“Phase Three, go,” said Finnigan, issuing the penultimate order.

I smiled as Kate’s hand tightened on my own.

The creatures below were confused, but they were predictable. The flames from the train explosion had transfixed them, turning their heads and giving the armor enough room to exit and position in a defensive posture, tripling the amount of ordnance that the besieged humans could pour into their ranks. The train had delivered more damage than we had hoped, incinerating, immobilizing, or simply shattering the fragile frames of more than sixty to seventy percent of the assembled creatures.

We had decided to finish the job and take tomorrow off.

Those creatures remaining were in a loose ring around the fortress—a ring that had tightened up now, and was approaching the walls once more.

There was a pause in the rate of fire as the armored vehicles changed munitions. The C-130’s made one more pass before they thundered away, gaining altitude as they made a gentle, graceful curve toward a landing, their missions complete.

“Munitions loaded, sir,” came the voice of the command tent comms operator, relaying readiness from the groups below.

“Copy that,” said Finnigan, as we watched the oily-looking herd of creatures pack tighter, and push again toward the fortified walls.

“Fire, by God,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Fire.”

In a volley worthy of epic poetry, the combined cannons below shattered the night with spouts of flame as incendiary shells fell into the thickly packed ranks of the undead. Flames burst into the night in small explosions as repeated volleys shattered bodies and ignited flames amongst the gathered dead. Flames that did not die. Flames that took on lives of their own, and marched through the tightly packed bodies with the speed of hateful vengeance.

Some of the armor took heat. They couldn’t avoid being hit with the spray from the cargo planes. But there were no infantry units. There were no bodies amongst the defenders to burn. There was only metal. Metal that had long since been hardened against the simple element of fire.

I smiled widely and Ky shouted once as we watched hundreds of thousands of the undead below ignite. The night was yellow and orange with their deaths, and smoke billowed up in a curtain of darkness.

“Clean ‘em up, Five-Nine,” Finnigan said, and in the background of his transmission, I heard the voices of our friends in his helicopter rise in victory.

“Solid copy, Colonel. Happy to oblige.”

The hornets surged into the fray, missiles and tracer rounds hitting the creatures from all sides, tearing into those pockets that hadn’t ignited.

Torn flesh and rotten ligaments were no match for depleted uranium shells and napalm. Dead bodies were no match for the will of the living.

Not today.

Not in this city.

The armor continued to fire.

The helos rained death from above.

The humans were, for once, prevailing.

“Colonel, I must confess,” I said, breaking the comm silence despite the clear instructions before we lifted off to keep the net clear. “You throw one hell of a barbeque.”

Static hissed briefly and then my headphones clicked as someone pressed the transmit button.

“Thanks, Mike,” he said, using my first name. “Just consider it some good old fashioned Northwest hospitality. We can have a few microbrews when we land, on me.”

God, I hoped he wasn’t teasing me.

I could really use a beer.

EPILOGUE

I blinked my eyes, clearing the sleep away.

My feet were warm, and my head clear. Small pinholes of the dark orange sunset lit the roof of the small barn, and I squinted, hand searching the ground for my sunglasses before I sat up, pulling my sleeves down in the late evening chill.

The sleeping bag was empty beside me, and I held up a hand as Romeo licked my face aggressively, his tail thumping contentedly as I scratched his ears.

Rising, I followed the smell of eggs, passing my hand along the smooth metal of our recently acquired toy, a massive, imported hybrid SUV that we found locked in a small shed a week ago. Full of gas, and ready for a journey. As if it had been gift-wrapped. As if we had been meant to find it.

“Save any for me?” I asked, seeing the two women talking softly over the small fire, a pile of scrambled eggs between them. Ky looked up, her sunglasses almost comically large, and made a face.

“Only the ones that fell in the dirt and were so dirty Romeo wouldn’t eat them,” she said.

“Well, now I know you’re lying,” I said, smiling. “Romeo will eat anything.”

“How’d you sleep?” Kate asked, hugging me with one arm and taking a sip of water.

“Okay, I guess,” I said.

I supposed it was true. I continued to have dreams. Maria wasn’t in them anymore, which I simultaneously loved and hated.

I was firmly, deeply in love with Kate, but I missed seeing Maria sometimes. She had been my wife, but she would always be my friend. I would always harbor the suspicion that there was something that I could have done. Some way that I could have prevented what happened.

I thought about Rhodes, who had chosen to stay behind. I wished him the best, and knew he would be an asset if he could move past his own demons. It wouldn’t be easy, but if I could do it, so could he.

I thought about the fortress, and the soldiers. About our chances as a nation.

And then I realized, as I looked at my family, who I had grown to love more than anything in the world, that I didn’t much care. We had done our part. We had delivered what we could. And now, we were doing what we needed to do.

We had asked for a ride to the city limits, and had put down in a small parking lot of a suburban big box store. Finnigan had asked us to stay. To help them expand, and take back more of the city and the countryside. Seattle could be remade, he said.

We could be part of it, he said.

We didn’t care.

We had weapons, and we had food and water.

But more importantly, we had somewhere else to be.

So we thanked him and his crew, and we went north.

The world would get on without us. The fort was well on its way to clearing its perimeters, and the country—the world—had its formula. In the process of saving humanity, we had changed it. We knew that. From today forward, the face of humanity would be forever changed.

We would be part of it, but not in Seattle. Nor in Washington D.C.

We knew that the men and women of our nation would continue to fight. And because of what Doctor Kopland had done for all of us, they had a chance. We all had a chance.

Humanity could survive.

We would be different.

Everything would change.

But we would be alive.

I wondered briefly at whether we deserved to live or not. As a species, we had created this plague. We had developed it as a weapon to feed our paranoia and our quest for power. We had almost ended ourselves as a result.

Did we deserve to live?

It was a question that could only be answered by our own persistence. Our own refusal to die.

We deserved what we got. And today, it might not be extinction.

Today, it was redemption.

I held my hand out to the dying ray of sunlight that peaked through the weathered wood of the small shed.

For how long? And in what form were we redeemed?

That was yet to be seen.

I pulled my hand back, shaking it briefly to cool the burn.

“I don’t know why you do that,” Kate said, glancing over as she finished her water and stood up.

“I keep hoping that it will get better,” I said, staring at my hand.

She looked at the door, where the chain rattled softly. She sighed, knowing that there was at least one of them out there. There seemed to be fewer of them now, and those that had not been drawn to the herds in the cities were thin and hungry. We were in little danger traveling through the country, and on the back roads paralleling the interstates.

“It’s as good as it’s going to get,” she said, tossing her pack into the back seat of the truck and closing the door. She ruffled Ky’s hair, and opened the driver’s side door. “I think it’s time to move.”

I nodded, making short work of the eggs, and throwing the cooking gear into the bed of the truck, where a plastic bin held our dishes and utensils. I sealed the soft cover liner and threw my sleeping bag in the back. Ky jumped in the back seat after watching Romeo leap gracefully into his bed of towels and blankets behind the driver.

He grunted once, as if objecting to having to ride rather than run.

Slowly, I pulled the chain back from the doors, and walked back to the truck.

Kate edged the machine forward and nosed the doors softly, pushing them open and into the evening air. A body fell heavily on the ground and we didn’t pause to look at it.

It was in the rearview mirror soon enough.

Three miles brought us to the interstate—a rare detour for us, made necessary in order to go around a missing bridge. Pulling onto the northbound lane, I couldn’t help but reach over and put my hand on Kate’s shoulder. We passed under a large green sign as she smiled at me, and I took a deep breath, removing my sunglasses as the sun finally dropped below the western horizon and the text above disappeared in the gathering darkness behind.

“Vancouver, Canada 48 miles.”