Medora: A Zombie Novel (14 page)

He left the last sentence hanging in the air for the men to digest. One soldier from the back spoke up, “Is it in other cities
now, Sir? Besides the ones we know about?”

Annoyed, Ortega continued, “That is
were we come in right here right now. Our number one priority is containment. D.C. is in a panic with a capital ‘P’ about this disease killing us all off. There is basically a lot of shit we can speculate on, but right now for us, Medora One, there are two facts. Number one, New York City is fucked and number two, a commercial plane from LaGuardia exploded somewhere over New York state three hours ago. We are going to locate the wreckage of that plane and contain whatever presumed infected survivors there might be. When I say contained, I mean kill.”

“Yes, sir
,” shouted Anderson.

“Now as far as reinforcements, there are none. National Guard, military, State Police, everybody else is at or around Manhattan. There is nobody else looking for this plane. If there were infected people on that plane that survived the crash, something that we can all guess is
possible, given how hard it is to take these bastards down, we must find every single one of them to prevent further spread. There aren’t any surprises here. We know how these things act and we know how to exterminate them-”

“So what
? We just going to wander around the woods looking for some wreckage? I mean what the hell do they expect?” A soldier perched on top of a log shouted out.

“Dammit,
Clarence, let a man finish his sentence. I’ve been given precise coordinates of the wreckage so you can get your ass onto the roof of the Humvee for speaking out of turn, you just bought yourself front row tickets to end-of-the-world. Everybody, pack it up, we’re leaving in three minutes.” The group of men erupted into movement, gathering gear and assembling equipment into the Humvee. Dave began to stumble around the area as if he were also part of packing up gear when in reality he had no idea what he was doing.

“You, Sam Malone, get over here
,” Ortega barked at Dave. He sauntered over. “Look, Sam Malone, I know your name isn’t Sam Malone and I don’t really give a shit. You’re David Tripps. You don’t think the first thing I did was check your wallet?” Dave just stared at his sunglasses again, feeling his heart in his chest. “I don’t care why you lied, I don’t care what you’re hiding. Here’s the reality. We don’t have time to take you to far-away-safety land for you to live the rest of your days and D.C. wants us to bring to them whatever survivors we find. I’m giving you two options. Option one, we leave you here. Option two, you come with us to the crash site. You can wait peacefully in the car while we take care of business. I’m giving you six seconds to decide.”

Dave looked at his face, out into the woods and then back at his face. It had the texture of sandstone with the color of brown desert dirt. “I’ll come.”

Ortega swiftly turned around, “Alright, this truck is leaving in ten seconds, and the new guy Sam Malone is on the roof with pretty boy Clarence, so let’s go!”

Dave put one foot on the bumper of the Humvee and then hiked himself up onto the roof as he groaned from his right hip. “You better grab onto these side railings here.” Clarence was already on top, lying flat with both arms hu
gging one of the short railings. “They’re going to drive fast.” Dave copied him by curling up on his side and clutching a side railing with both fists.

The Humvee leapt into full speed and
started to the west, hugging a long curve. Tree branches flew by Dave’s face as he stared into the silent woods. While he was in the woods, they seemed dangerous, but now that he looked through them from afar, he regretted his decision to take a joy ride with the hunters of the infected. The air was clean and green shadows of the forest were now calming his nerves.

The Humvee soared down the roads and made its way out of the wooded area to an open landscape of dried dirt fields. No one spoke, not even Anderson. This team was finally getting to understand the idiosyncrasies of Ortega and they learned not
to talk when he fell silent. His silence to them was premonition. They had seen his silence before and learned to trust that it was his way of mentally preparing for whatever he anticipated next. They knew his silent ways long before this mission and long before Manhattan. They’d met death with silence and seen the bodies of strangers evaporate before, singed with fuel and fire and the surprise of chaos. The only sound in that Humvee was the coarse wind grating at their ears.

The Humvee swept around a long curve in the road through another thicket of trees and out into another exposed plane showing a small ranch house in the middle of a field.
The sun shown off the planes with golden vibrancy. Dave noticed Clarence peering out over the railing of the roof, silently watching fence posts pass by. Dave silently watched, too.

There was some commotion going on the inside the Humvee so Dave stretched his head down a little further over the open window to gather any directions Ortega may have spewing out over his subordinates. “There should be a short bridge over a stream right… there, yep I see it. Anderson, you see it there?”

Anderson was sitting in the driver’s seat with two black leather gloves clutching onto the wheel. “Yes, sir, to the right over there sticking out? I see it. We’ll be there in three minutes.”

“Satellite imaging has confirmed wreckage around the vicinity of the bridge.” Ortega spoke looking down at a GPS screen on his lap. The Humvee roared as Anderson stomped on the gas and hurled them towards a flimsy-looking wooden catastrophe of a bridge. “No way people are using that thing, right?” Anderson asked with no response.

As they approached the bridge, Dave looked out into the field and saw a gigantic stuffed panda bear sitting upright, staring right back at him. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at and was about to ask Clarence about it when he then saw a piece of luggage with clothes bursting out of it on the side of the road. A flight attendant’s serving cart was lying on its side a few moments after it.

“Yep, we’re getting close
,” Anderson declared. Charred fabric, empty seats, and twisted scraps of metal began to scatter across the landscape in front of the crew. Dave even saw a perfectly intact acoustic guitar lying face down on the shoulder of the road.

Ortega called out, “Does anyone see the bulk of the wreckage?
Any fuselage?” Garbage, papers, torn-up luggage and blackened mechanical equipment started to show up along the field beside the road. Then Dave saw what he knew was a coming. A single decapitated arm with its shoulder blade attached was lying beneath a highway sign. They all saw it. “Pull over.”

Ortega got out and approached the arm, crunching the gravel beneath his boots.
Deliberately, he walked up to the arm and rested the tip of his boot right on the wrist. Silently he watched the charred fingers, waiting. The wind blew across the road, sweeping dust up into the air and into his mouth. As he crunched down on the sand granules in his teeth, he saw the charcoal thumb bend inward towards the palm and hold there with the rest of the hand slightly twitching. “Clarence!” Ortega shouted back.

“Yes, sir?”

“Bag it quick and let’s move. Twenty seconds.”

In exactly twenty
seconds, Clarence bounded off the top of the Humvee, snapped a gas mask around his head, produced a black plastic bag from his jacket and disposed of the arm into a container in the back of the Humvee. Once on top of the Humvee, he yelled out, “Let’s move!”

The Humvee sailed along until it finally came to the bridge w
here Ortega ordered another stop. Looking out over the dirt plains, Dave still couldn’t see any sign of the actual body of the plane. The crew disassembled from the Humvee and approached the bridge. It swayed generously with the wind, rocking like a big sailboat on the ocean. Their boots thundered loudly as they stepped out onto it, and from there, they looked down into a shallow raven. Ortega rested one hand on the bridge railing. “There’s our girl.”

From behind the crew, Dave made his way to the edge and discovered what they were all looking at
. It was the tail of the plane with a great big ‘U’ on it. Its silvery paint sparkled from the random rays of the gold tinted sun. It looked like a gigantic white shark that had been gutted with its contents of luggage and bodies strewn from it like the entrails of an animal.

“Anderson, Layton and
Jeremy, gas mask up and get down there. Everybody else, weapons out.” He paused and looked at Dave. “And someone give that guy a gun.”

“Oh, no,
no, I can’t, I have very little experience shooting, and I really shouldn’t be taking a gun.”

“Clarence, put a pistol in his hand.”

Clarence grabbed the Desert Eagle from his side, took Dave’s wrist with one hand and slammed the gun into his palm. It felt like a dumbbell in his hand.

“
Now, take the safety off…” Ortega waited.

Dave switched a lever on the side of the gun that he only guess
ed was the safety.

“Aim it out over the field and pull the trigger.”

Dave lifted the cannon, supported the butt with his other hand and squeezed, firing off a hot flame that pierced his ears.

“There, just do that when you see the infected coming. And don’t shoot me, asshole.”

Dave nodded and looked down at the silver gun resting in his hands.

While Dave was receiving his only shooting lesson, Anderson and Jeremy were making their way down the hill into the ravine with red-haired Layton trailing after them, rifles out and masks on. “Everybody line up on the bridge and give these men some cover.”

Anderson looked out over the two small windows of his gas masks and began surveying the wreckage. It consisted of the tail with maybe one third of the main cabin that holds the passengers. It appeared that at some point, the fuselage cracked in half leaving the tail behind. He could see the splintered floor of the cabin and torn carpet where people would’ve been busily trying to stuff their bags in the overhead compartments while attempting to lunge into their seats before someone else got in front of them. It was chilling, Anderson thought, to see the setting of everyday travel minutia cracked open over a dried up streambed underneath a decrepit bridge.

And then there were the bodies, and they were numerous. Some were still strapped into seats while others had appeared to have been caught into the back of the cabin in then ejected forwarded when the tail finally hit the ground. Most of the human remains were
non-descript body parts that were mingled in with luggage, clothing and blood, all thrown out over the rocks. Anderson stopped and silently waited for movement. He held his breath while slowly swiveling his head.

“Layton… hey Layton, you seeing anything?”
Anderson spoke softly over to Layton who was creeping around with his rifle drawn.

Layton moved over to a woman and tapped her leg with his boot. “No man, nothing, these people are dead as… dead. I’m not thinking they were infected.
Maybe just your run-of-the-mill normal plane crash.”

From above Dave watched the three men stealthily sweeping the area. He sighed heavily and felt the cold metal of his new gun in his hands. He was actually starting to enjoy the feel of it. Behind him by the Humvee he heard the footsteps of someone approaching and turned around to see a woman walking over towards him with her arms behind her back. “Oh hey, lady we need you to…” He trailed off as he realized that the woman actually had no arms and as she approached he saw that her face was caved in at her forehead with one eye dangling from the damage. Ortega turned and saw her approaching but before he could give a command, Dave lifted up his gun and fired three shots straight into the woman’s chest. The kickback made him loose his balance with one foot stumbling over the other, tripping him. The woman smacked the ground but
she kept kicking her legs up into the sky. Ortega walked straightway to her, slumped a gas mask over his face and shot three bullets into her face. Her movements ceased.

“Hey,
hey, Boomtown! I think you actually earned those dog tags, son.” Clarence excitedly said as he helped Dave to his feet.

Down in
the ravine the commotion above began stirring up movement in the wreckage. Anderson could hear groans coming from the pile of bodies and clothing within the cabin of the tail. “Hey Captain!” He yelled up, what the hell is going on up there? I think we got some movement down here.”

Ortega came back to the edge of the bridge, and ripped off his gas mask, “That’s all I need to see, stay down there and w
atch your backs. We had an infected up here. Time to burn and turn.” He turned to Clarence, “you’re up son and make sure you grab that arm we have in the back and throw it on the pile.”

Clarence quickly moved to the back of the Humvee and strapped a four-foot long tank to his back with a black rubber hose and nozzle in his hand. After squeezing a pair of thick rubber gloves on, he slumped the plastic bag with severed arm over his shoulder and marched down into the ravine like turtle with its shell. Dave saw from above the three men move out of the
way, as Clarence released a thick tongue of liquid fire over the wreckage of the plane. He methodically moved the flame over the entire surface of the wreckage until it was encased in flames.