Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (25 page)

Eckels shifted his gaze to the dirt egress route the
engineers had fashioned with their graders and diggers. Sandwiched between the
ponds of fuel and the mini Great Wall, and barely wide enough for a single
vehicle, the crude dirt path spooled out from West Colorado Boulevard and ran
north several blocks past three more fuel-filled moats to where it disappeared
underneath the West Bijou Street overpass which was the final piece of his
elaborate puzzle. Holes had been drilled at all of the critical load-bearing
points and then filled with high explosives. Once the charges were detonated,
gravity, loading, and shear working together would bring hundreds of tons of
concrete and rebar falling into the path of the dead.

“This is Jumper One-One, I have eyes on target. The lead
grouping is nearing the first moat,” said a sergeant who was manning the
furthermost picket from inside one of the carefully-hidden M-ATVs. “The Zulus
are four hundred meters from my position. How copy?”

“Solid copy, Jumper One-One. Hold and report any deviation,”
Eckels said, feeling a slight charge of adrenalin that was but a precursor to
the flood he would experience once the operation was fully underway.

He ran through what
should
happen next. The squirter
teams would continue to operate autonomously, continuing to communicate to each
other while eradicating any Zs that broke ranks. And barring a big change in
the direction of the horde, he would only listen in and keep up with their
maneuvers on the continuously updating BFT. On the other hand, the movement of his
pickets had to be timed just right because once he ordered them to spring into
action, they would be close enough to reach out and touch the rotting tide of
death. And to further complicate things, the moment the drivers in the
forward-most pair of M-ATVs fired up the growling 7.2-liter diesel power
plants, their positions would be broadcast to every walking corpse in the area
and all bets would be off. One wrong move, Eckels conceded to himself, and the
whole plan would fall apart. He looped around the front of his M-ATV and slid
into the passenger side, gently ushering Hudson to the rear area of the vehicle
usually taken up by a gunner or additional soldiers. He swiveled the BFT screen
and double-checked Jumper’s intel against the information already on the
display.

“Two hundred meters,” said the sergeant in Jumper One-One,
tension evident in his voice.

Bearing in mind that the drivers in both Jumper One-One and
Jumper One-Two were chomping at the bit and raring to go, Eckels checked the
display one last time but at a greater magnification and then ordered them to
engage the enemy at will.

South Dakota

As Second Lieutenant Meredith finished crossing T’s and
dotting I’s, Cade felt the cold tingle of anticipation course his spine. Six
minutes.
Hell
, he thought to himself, marking the time on his Suunto.
Six
minutes is barely the length of a Super Bowl commercial. Hardly enough time to
take a piss, visit the fridge, and grab a fresh beer
. But to him and the
rest of the men who had just been told by the co-pilot of the Hercules what
needed to happen and when before an exfil was possible, those three hundred and
sixty seconds were going to seem like a lifetime.

“This is Oil Can Five-Five,” said the co-pilot Second
Lieutenant Meredith. “After one final go-around we’ll be light enough to come
down and scoop you all up. I can’t stress this enough, though. You only have
six minutes to make it happen on your end.”

Pounding softly on the steering wheel, Cade answered back,
“This is Anvil Actual, solid copy on that. But would you please tell me why you
can’t give us more than
six minutes
to get the job done?”

There was a long silence. In his mind’s eye, Cade could see
the aircrew conferring. Going over the good-news, bad-news options before
deciding how much the guys in the truck
needed to know
. But when
Meredith finally answered back he gave it to them straight. No smoke was
getting blown up anyone’s keister. There was no gray area to be considered, and
the co-pilot pulled no punches. “Not to put any added pressure on you Delta
boys, but if you were up here and could see how many Zs are closing in on your
position from the west, you and I wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Six minutes
is
the fastest we can prepare the aircraft in order to carry
out this type of landing. You take longer than six minutes to clear that
stretch of I-90 and I’m afraid there will be too many Zs on the rollout for the
pilot to even consider this extremely difficult proposition.”

Cade heard a click and some static, then the droning white
noise returned and Meredith added, “There is no cowcatcher on this bird. Only
four very large guillotines ... so if you don’t give us at the minimum two
thousand feet to land we’ll be forced to abort.”

Cade did the math in his head. Two thousand feet equaled a
distance slightly less than seven football fields. He thought harder. Converted
that and came up with just over a third of a mile. “Solid copy,” he said. “Do
you have eyes on a suitable spot farther west or east of our location? Just in
case? That is, if I can wring another couple of miles of forward travel out of
this truck.”

“Negative, Captain. That clusterfuck you just squeaked
through goes on for miles behind the pileup. Farther on ahead of you is a no-go
as well. Closer to the center of town, both lanes are choked up, not to mention
the fact that some genius at SDDOT decided it’d be a good idea to erect what
look like sodium halide lights down the center of the interstate every hundred
yards or so.”

Suddenly second guessing his decision to follow the
interstate, Cade asked, “What if I go off-roading and get us to one of those
feeders? Can you land and pick us up there?”

Hearing this and knowing from experience that the truck
wouldn’t survive an overland stint as loaded down as it was, Jasper came out of
his funk and shook his head noticeably.

“Negative,” said the pilot this time. “Side roads are too
narrow. Plus there’s more dead down there than you can imagine. They’re all
over. It’s a good thing your bird didn’t come down a half a
click
further. Because if it had ... all of your bones would be picked clean by now.”

Cade made no reply. He let his silence do the talking.

“Captain, I assure you this is the only viable spot ... your
only open window,” added the co-pilot. “Use it or lose it.”

“One miracle coming right up,” Cade intoned, starting the
timer in his head ticking off the precious seconds.

Ignoring the quip, Meredith craned his head and watched
precious jet fuel sluicing from each wingtip and into the atmosphere. At 500
gallons per minute, per wing-mounted dump mast—of which there were two—a quick
calculation told him the Hercules would be 13,500 pounds lighter in just under
four minutes. And if all went as planned, the internal tank would be emptied
and Dover would have them turning back to the west to start on final approach
which would take a minute and change from touchdown to a complete stop.

Cade’s ear bud crackled again. It was Meredith this time and
he said: “
Just to be on the safe side, the flight engineer recommends an additional
three hundred yards
.”

Cade shook his head and didn’t bother replying or
reconverting the new distance. With the odds already stacked as highly against
them as they were, what was an added football-field-length between friends. A
little under half a mile of I-90 with Zs crushing in from both sides, four
vehicles that needed to be moved, and a hair under six minutes in which to
accomplish the feat.
No pressure at all
, Cade thought as he ground the
pick-up to a sudden stop alongside a garish-looking lime green Camaro. Suddenly
the truck’s engine, which was ticking like a time bomb, seemed to have
developed a mind of its own; the rpms fluctuated wildly between nearly stalling
out and racing into the red. And to make matters worse, Cade saw another delicate
curl of vapor waft from underneath the hood. “Go, go, go,” he said into the
comms while simultaneously holding the brake and applying a little throttle in
order to keep the engine from dying. He watched Hicks, pistol in hand, leap
from the back of the truck and hit the ground at a slow trot. “Stay frosty,”
Cade said to the SOAR crew chief, who had lobbied for this first leg after
claiming to have run cross-country in high school and insisting he could still
pull down a consistent sub-six-minute-mile. A tick later, Hicks was crouched
low and peering inside the low-to-the-ground American-made muscle car. A second
after that he flashed a thumbs up and called out that the car was
clear
and indicated that he was
going in
.

Cade experienced a sudden flood of relief as he witnessed
Hicks fold his frame inside. A third second passed and he saw Hicks’s upper
body tilt sideways, searching the column and dash no doubt. Another two seconds
passed and then Hicks said, “No keys.” He put a hand on the sleek roofline and with
a disgruntled look on his face pulled himself to standing.

Shit
, thought Cade upon hearing the news he had been
dreading. Who in the hell takes the keys with them during a viral outbreak when
there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting roadside assistance?

“What now?” asked Hicks.

“Gotta push it,” Cade replied. Then he did a quick
computation in his head and figured the distance between the Camaro and the
rally point to be a little over a half of a mile. So if Hicks hadn’t been
bullshitting about his running prowess, then making it from here to the rally
point in less than two minutes was doable, and that was assuming he could first
complete the most important part of his task in under four minutes.
A slim
margin indeed.

“Get it done,” Cade said, shifting his focus to the second
vehicle of the four which were spread across I-90 like a right leaning ‘Z’. The
green Camaro had been on the right-hand shoulder—the
tail
of the ‘Z’.
Their next objective, a copper-colored sub-compact sat in the breakdown lane
diagonally opposite the Camaro, two hundred yards ahead.

As they motored along, Cade kept the wheel steady and the
truck vectoring toward the distant compact. Then he shot another look over his
shoulder just in time to see Hicks with his head down, back bowed like the St.
Louis Arch, pushing the Camaro towards the embankment.

One down, three to go
, Cade thought. Then he hailed
the Hercules which had continued west, hanging a brilliant corona around the
sun as the aerated fuel drifted gently groundward.

The reply from Oil Can Five-Five came back at once, with the
co-pilot indicating the mission was still a go and the play clock was ticking.
With the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders, Cade checked his
watch, duly noting the quickly diminishing time rendered in liquid crystal
display.
Four minutes and thirty seconds
. He shook his head.
Not a
lot of time,
he concluded glumly.

With one foot hopping between the gas and brake to keep
Jasper’s truck running, Cade took multitasking to another level by flicking on
the wipers and giving the windshield a liberal spraying of cleaning formula.
And as the blades scoured a portal in the thick glaze of detritus and bodily
fluids, a quick glance towards Hicks sent a cold chill running the length of
his spine. Dozens of monsters, having pursued them through the automotive maze,
were now fanning out on the desolate roadway. Hicks, who seemed oblivious of
the interlopers, was hunched over, hands on knees, his back visibly rising and
falling with each labored breath as the Camaro slowly rolled away from him. A
tick later gravity took over and the car rocked gently as it crossed over the
rumble strips. Finally it cleared the shoulder, slid over the gradual
embankment, and disappeared from sight like a ship swallowed by the sea.

“Good going, Hicks,” Cade said into the comms. “No way I can
come back and get you. So you’re going to have to crack off a sub-two-minute
third-of-a-mile. Can’t let the Zs get in Oil Can’s way ... so I’m going to need
you to thin them out a bit before you bolt.”

“Roger that,” Hicks answered back. “Give me ten seconds and
I’ll be Oscar Mike.”

With a fusillade of hollow-sounding gunshots coming over the
open channel, Cade flicked his gaze forward and pulled in tight alongside the
copper, two-door Japanese econo-box. Still belted inside the static Honda Civic
were two very rotten creatures, and snugged down in the rear were a pair of
unoccupied car seats. Whether the absence of the little ones who usually rode
in them was a good sign or meant something more ominous Cade couldn’t decide.
“Lopez,” he said. “I’m afraid you get the honors on this one.”

“Why me, Wyatt?” the stocky operator asked. “You gave the
flyboy the
empty
sports car. And I get this stinking
demonio
mobile?”

Not wanting to add fuel to the fire, Cade made no reply.
Then, after a second of silence, the truck jounced slightly, a sign that Lopez
had bounded out and was on the move. A quick peek in the mirror told Cade that
the operator had forgone the M4 and was working his way around the Honda with a
black semi-automatic pistol clutched in his right hand.

“What if there are no keys?” asked Jasper.

“He’ll improvise. He’s got plenty of time,” Cade lied. A
quick peek at the Suunto confirmed this, telling him another twenty seconds had
slipped into the past.

As he pulled away from the Civic, he gazed towards the stark
white Budweiser logo emblazoned on the flank of the eighteen-wheeler truck he’d
already deemed the next greatest obstacle to their success or failure. But
before he had driven twenty yards, a burst of static followed by Lopez’s voice
sounded in his ear. “Wyatt, I have a feeling you’re discriminating against me,”
the Hispanic operator intoned. “First Desantos ... may he rest in peace ...
makes me carry a demonio up from the CDC basement, and now I gotta deal with
these.”