World of Ashes (43 page)

             
“There’s one more thing. During our last census of military units within our boarders, we discovered there are actually two platoons of various MOS’s of the Missouri Army and Air National Guard stationed near the Rio Grande.” Vierling pulled a slip of paper out of his pants pocket. “This is their mailing address. Your city council can send mail to them now, and they can mail back to you. It would probably raise moral in their unit if they knew there was something to go home to after the war.”

             
“So you’re using Missouri citizens to fight your war?”

             
“No, we’ve been at war every day since October 2000 when those fucking sub-human shitbags hit the
U.S.S. Cole
. Our enemy has changed more than slightly in almost two decades, but we still stand.” Vierling smiled again.

             
“Kenly will want to know when those units can return.” Lee memorized the address, just in case the paper was lost.

             
“I intend to see to it personally that they are part of the security detail that will escort the construction crews North to Ely. Once they reach your town, they’ll either be allowed to muster out or to serve in your unit, or to come back here. There’s a plan to have National Guard units from every state liberate their own homes. It’ll look good for the press and go a long way towards bringing people back into the fold.”

             
“Is your press a bunch of un-American, Liberal Progressive Communist fucktards like they were before?” Ethan joked.

             
“You, Sheriff, listened to entirely too much Mark Levin.”

             
“But… but he’s in a secret underground command post…” Ethan pretended to whine, but Lee jabbed him in the ribs.

             
“I like you boys. Don’t get killed before I can see your town for myself.” Vierling and Lee exchanged salutes, and Ethan put his hands in his pockets.

Allen was just outside the building smoking a cigarette with a couple Airmen when Ethan reached out and took the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it on the ground. “Those things’ll kill ya.”

             
Allen rolled his eyes, “So what’s the news?”

             
“I’ll tell ya on the way home.” Lee waved to Sgt. Winters, who was busy reading a book inside the Humvee, a book Ethan had found for the Fobbit* at a gift store:
Killing Zombies for Dummies
. They loaded up after he brought the truck to them and they drove back to the airstrip without much conversation. They shook Winters’ hand after gathering their stuff from their room and walked towards their plane. It was a Cessna 310 twin engine, as small as you got without downgrading to a Piper Cub.

             
The pilot stepped out, unlike most people he was still pretty fat. A job that kept him sitting most of the day hadn’t done him any favors. He hadn’t bothered to get new clothes either, or even wash the ones he had. The end of all things seemed to include personal hygiene with this guy. “C’mon, I want to be back before Friday.” Was all he said, pointing to where to stow their gear. It almost didn’t fit. Ethan took the co-pilot’s seat while Lee and Allen got better acquainted in the cramped back seats. It was like being in a smelly Geo Metro with wings. The pilot didn’t offer his name or a second headset to any of them. In a way that was just fine, none of them really wanted to talk to him either. When the plane took off it noticeably leaned to his side and nearly took out a man on a bicycle at the end of the runway.

             
They had a layover for fueling at a different airfield than the one they’d stopped at on the way in. This time the pilot didn’t care what they did, and so they were free to get out and use the restroom. Ethan looked over and read the sign on a building, Tupelo Regional Airport, Mississippi. The doors to the bathroom were locked for whatever reason, so the three of them hurried behind a hangar and emptied their overfilled bladders. Allen, naturally, had to write his name on the gravel.

             
“Oh… My… God…” Allen closed his eyes and leaned his head skyward, acting like he’d just had the greatest orgasm of his life. “…I needed this… Yes, just like that.”

             
“If that guy could smell worse, I’d say he
was
a zombie.” Lee finished, buttoning his trousers.

             
“Anything more than three times is playing with yourself.” Ethan said to Allen.

The runway and a couple han
gars and an office building seemed fairly safe. But outside the wire, as was usual, hundreds of decaying bodies clung to the metal chain-link fence, swaying and moaning in the wind. There were a few spots where someone had gone along and shot or stabbed the zombies that were making trouble, but most were left alone. The Mississippian Zims didn’t seem any more interested in the plane or the people on the ground than the oldest Zims back home, as if the notion of chasing down new victims bored them. The worst of the Plague was running the last of its course, soon Man could go back to his favorite pastime: Killing other Men.

             
“Why are these Zims so much more lethargic than the ones back home?” Ethan said to himself, stepping up to the fence, but keeping more than an arms distance.

             
“No idea. But when’s the last time the Zims were a real threat? I mean, the last time I saw one make any effort to chase one of us was, shit, before the frost?” Lee put his hands on his hips. “If we redouble our efforts to keep people from getting bitten, we might be able to stamp out the Plague in our area. No new victims, no new zombies.”

             
“Shit,” Allen picked up a long piece of rusted rebar and leaned it through the fence. He poked a zombie that was laying face down in the mud. It moaned, but only just barely. Allen kept poking it until finally, with some real effort a nearly skeletal woman dragged herself to her knees and clawed at the fence. Judging by the undead corpse’s clothing and general appearance, if one could reverse engineer in his head how old clothing might have looked new, it had been a female in her late fifties wearing bright red golf pants and a pink polo that probably wasn’t stylish to anyone but yuppies. “These fuckers ain’t got nothing left.”

             
“Stick your hand through the fence and see if Doris really is done with you.” Surprised that someone had gotten the drop on them, the men spun around to lay eyes on a girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She’d dyed her hair several different colors that were now fading to show her almost white roots. She reminded the three men of Luna Lovegood, a character from
Harry Potter
.

             
“You knew her?” Lee asked.

             
“No. I don’t even know if that’s her name. It’s just what I call her.” She said, sitting on the wing of an abandoned and mostly gutted plane. “I’ve named almost all the people at our fences.”

             
“Why?”

             
She shrugged. “Just makes them seem friendlier I guess.” The girl stuck a hand in her jean vest’s pocket and pulled out a notebook with fairies and dolphins printed on it. “I wrote all their names down, that way I can keep track of them.”

             
“Again, why?”

             
She shrugged again. “I guess I really don’t have much else to do.”

             
“You live here I take it?”

             
“Yeah, my dad was the janitor at the country club over there.” She sighed, “So what are your names? I’ll add you to the guest book.”

             
“This is Ethan and Lee Cally, and I’m Allen Broadwick.” Allen said, stepping to the front of the group. He was letting his little head do his big head’s thinking again. “We’re sheriffs from Missouri.”

             
The girl smiled, though she seemed unimpressed, “Aren’t you a little young to be a sheriff?”

             
“He is.” Ethan laughed, “I’m the town’s sheriff. He’s just a deputy.”

             
“I was
the Deputy Sheriff
until
Mrs. Sheriff
showed up and took ma job!” Allen imitated the episode of
South Park
where the men complain that people from the future are taking their jobs, eventually their accents get out of control and it becomes “DeyTRRRKMAJERRRRBS!” He was playing up the joke for the benefit of entertaining their new acquaintance. Allen was already 19, so it wasn’t like the girl was old enough to garner any real interest from him, but she was cute and that at least got him talking. He wasn’t a totally immoral after all, he liked to think anything younger than 16 was a just a little too young for what he wanted. (What? At least he’s honest, ladies.)

             
They were about to joke more when they heard the zing of a bullet, the snapping sound so close Ethan and Lee were both certain they’d be on the receiving end of that bullet. Before anyone could react the girl nosedived to the ground with a thud. Ethan felt something warm running down his face and swatted it off. He couldn’t believe he was sweating, and after touching his face he knew he wasn’t sweating. The girl’s chest and rib fragments were all over his face, his uniform, his hands. In a whirl of commotion Lee tackled his brother as automatic gunfire tore into the plane the girl had been sitting on. For those who know it, the sound of an M249 is unmistakable, the buzz-saw echoing was coming from the wood line, the din of truck engines starting up surrounded the airfield from every direction.

             
Regaining their composure, Ethan and Lee both reached out and dragged Allen away from the girl’s body as he tried in vain render aid. She was dead, the damage to her small body beyond hope of repair. He thrashed at them, desperate for the horror before him to not be real as he tried to roll her over to start CPR. Only her torso bent with him, her hips and legs didn’t budge. Allen let go with a scream, hysterics taking over as he hyperventilated while being dragged away. Not every man is emotionally equipped to witness beautiful girls take a bullet, or breaking in half when said bullet separates their spine. Reaching to his holster Allen jumped up with the two M9’s he carried and opened fire in the direction of the woods, a fierce war cry irrupting from the scrawny boy. He’d emptied both magazines before the brothers could drag him back down again, a firestorm of tracers exploding on the derelict planes around them.

             
Falling to his knees and then to his haunches, Allen looked at the girl’s body from afar, transfixed on the tragedy that had befallen them, oblivious to the gunfire. Deciding to make a run for it when the undisciplined gunner ran out of ammunition, they dragged Allen along with them behind the office building. Catching their breath Lee ran towards the fueling station and found their pilot with an AK47 returning controlled sniper shots at whoever was shooting at them. For not caring about personal hygiene, the man was an excellent shot. Little clouds of pink mist sprayed from one attacker’s head after another, the demented old man making a game of it.

             
“What the fuck!?” Lee shouted, dragging his M4 out of the plane. “Who’s fucking shooting at us!?”

             
“I don’t know, a bunch of fuckin’ Beaners!” The pilot said, taking aim and shooting again. Their attackers weren’t so far off you couldn’t see them, and the pilot was right, they were all dressed in stereotypical Hispanic gang markings and baggy clothing. They reminded Ethan of a combination of the Mexican gang in
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
if they were lost on the set of
Mad Max
. They were only an effective fighting force because of their sheer numbers, not one of them having any idea how to lead an invasion.

             
“Look,” Lee pointed to the Humvee the gang had near their center, the SAW mounted in its turret. The idiot gunner was trying furiously to reload it, but like a cherry fuckin’ virgin couldn’t figure out what hole the pointy end of the bullet goes in. “Fucking MS13 man!” The letters were spray painted crudely on the doors, the gangbangers apparently not taking the time to use the stencils provided at whatever motor pool they’d stolen the truck from.

             
Ethan shoved Allen into the plane and strapped him in. He shut the door on the kid after grabbing his M14. The young man sat in silence, his eyes wide, seemingly no more concerned about what was going on around them than a bored child on a commercial flight. “Get the plane started!” Ethan shouted to the pilot, who had just run out of ammunition. The unkempt man jumped in his seat and began to ply the needed controls. Ethan drew a bead on the gunner just as he managed to close the feed tray of the machine gun. Ethan put a round through one temple and out the other. “That’s for the girl.” He said through gritted teeth. The remaining 19 rounds of the magazine took down another 19 gangbangers, but there were hundreds of them in cars, Humvees and motorcycles. The gang dispatched the Zims around them and started lobbing Molotov cocktails and grenades onto the airfield. The people who lived there tried in vain to defend their home, but were slaughtered almost as quickly as the Zims on the fence.