World of Ashes (45 page)

             
“We have to get him to a hospital.” Ethan bit his lip a little before setting about counting his ammo. He had made it out of the plane with four magazines for the M14, one of which had been used during their escape, and just two magazines for his 1911. Lee’s M4 was in similar shape, but with only one magazine for his M9. Allen had no weapons, nor the composure to use one.

             
“So do we conserve ammo, or do we kill as many as we can?” Ethan flipped the moaning zombies the bird and spat a wad of snot on them.

             
Lee stood and put his sunglasses on. Standard issue Oakley’s, not a scratch on them. Ethan wondered how Lee had managed that, he always tore his sunglass up within a month. “I think we should just wait it out.” Lee sighed, “I get the distinct impression that about half the town of Carlisle, Arkansas is coming here for dinner tonight.” Lee turned to face Ethan, silhouetted against the burgeoning sunset. If Ethan didn’t know firsthand what huge a tool Lee could be, the image was almost heroic.

             
Mary sat on a bench outside of the main building of the airfield. Samuel was in her arms, as always, but the one person she really wanted to see was not. She understood that Ethan had had no choice in going to Texas, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t mad at him, or at everyone involved for that matter. She hadn’t said one word to Keith, Reynolds, or Kenly since they’d kidnapped her husband. Instead she’d spent the last week with their newest deputies, Sabrina Johansen and Tammy Werner. The couple had settled in an apartment complex less than a block from Ethan and Mary’s new home, and since Paula was busy at the hospital with an outbreak of chickenpox among the town’s children they were the only ones Mary had left to socialize with. In between their place and the airfield she hadn’t set foot in her own home since the man she loved had flown away.

             
Tammy was at the airfield doing her On The Job training for that sector of the town. The scrawny girl stepped in front of Mary, blocking out the seldom seen sunlight that was warming her skin, which had turned several shades lighter without regular trips to the beach. “They still aren’t back yet?” Tammy smiled. Despite her rough exterior she was actually really nice. The riot had humbled her man-hating, at least toward those she shared a uniform with. She saw Mary’s face sour. “Oh, wait… I’m sorry. I didn’t think before I-”

             
“It’s fine, Tammy. I’m not worried. Ethan survived the Apocalypse and at least three visits from my Aunt Flo, so he’s a tough guy… but there’s been no contact with their plane either. The cadet on the radio has been trying to raise anyone who might know where their fueling stop was, but it’s slow going.” Mary scooted and made room for Tammy to sit. “How are you adjusting to life with more than one person in it?”

             
Tammy rolled her eyes and flipped her shoulder length curly hair over one shoulder. She’d dropped the pretense of a tight-roll bun, the hardened Soldier she’d played on TV was fading into a young woman who liked practical jokes and Nickelback. “There’s still only one person in my life, really. The last year was… Hard. Really hard. Alone in a building surrounded by plague victims and criminals.”

             
“I can sympathize.” Mary noticed Samuel had fallen asleep and removed his mouth from her breast. She noticed Tammy noticing, but it wasn’t a sexual thing, she was watching the baby and considering whether she wanted her own one day. “Being locked up in that power plant was torture, all those big, sweaty, hairy
men
.” She teased. “All of them just… bursting with manly manliness.” Tammy narrowed her eyes. “So, yeah. I can sympathize… Did you ever consider having children?”

             
Tammy seemed surprised by the question. “Huh? No. Not really. Sabrina had a little girl before all this. But her ex had custody because of the civil unrest, and then her job… We don’t know…”

             
“Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. I find Ethan sitting in our rocking chair with Samuel when he thinks I’m sleeping. He takes out his wallet and stars at the picture of his family and his old fiancé. It’s a picture of them at prom, though he assures me she wasn’t his date back then. Apparently he took a girl to prom who left with another girl.” Mary laughed when Tammy professed that it wasn’t her. “He misses them, the mystery still weighs on him I can tell. I guess though, I know what happened to my family… I came to grips with them being dead before the president stopped plugging his Total Safety Package. I know Ethan would like to go into the wild and try to find them, dead or alive. I know he loves me more than just as the woman who had his kid, but I fear what would happen to us if she ever showed up again.” Mary looked at the sky again, and then at her watch. She heard a radio transmission from the office window and stood to look inside. The expression on the face of the boy operating the radio must have been alarming enough because Mary threw open the door and demanded to know what the message was upon threat of his death.

             
The operator in training, Allen’s little brother Billy, paled some when he saw Mary explode into the office like a Marine storming a beach, but more so over that the transmission was also regarding his big brother and only living family. “Their plane went down… It’s… its…”

             
Mary’s suddenly felt horrible, realizing who he was. He had just as much riding on the safe return of the plane as she did. His parents were gone, no one knew where. Allen was all he had left in the world. Taking the seat next to him they would start a vigil until their loved ones came home. Mary wanted nothing more than to break down in tears herself, but she couldn’t. For the sake of Jimmy and Samuel, for Lee and Keith and anyone else who cared about the men aboard that plane, she would remain strong.

              “Well this is some shit.” Lee grumbled, throwing a spent cartridge off the roof. It hit a Zim in the eye. It didn’t blink and the eye started oozing maroon and green bile.

             
“What now?”

             
“I have to take a dump.” Lee sighed, “And they’re inside, I can hear them. So…”

             
“Sucks for you. Don’t MRE’s still come with toilet paper?”

             
Lee narrowed his eyes in the moonlight. “Have you ever used that TP for anything but fire-starter?”

             
“Nope. Oh, wait, I cleaned mud off my barrel with it once, so at least we know it’s absorbent.”

             
“Fuck you.”

             
Ethan laughed despite their dire situation. They had enough food and water for about two days, after that it was a simple matter of the dead either waiting for them to die of exposure, or to make a break for it. The second was more likely given the nature of the Cally brothers, but that wouldn’t happen until or unless Allen woke up… or died.

             
Eventually Lee made his way to the far side of the roof, and after some careful positioning managed to dangle his ass over the edge of the roof with a grip on an exhaust pipe. Unbeknownst to him Ethan had a small video camera out and was recording the entire ordeal. Once Lee was fully engrossed in relieving himself Ethan sprang up and leaned over the edge of the roof to film a giant lump of human waste falling and landing squarely on the face of a Zim with reporter’s tags clipped to his safari vest. Because zombies have no conscious thought, and therefore find any part of a live human appealing, the horde attacked the shit-faced Zim and tore it to pieces within minutes just to feast on anything that tasted like human. They repeated the process for each of the lumps Lee gifted them, and it was their laughter that brought Allen out of his stupor. After a quick wipe job with said MRE toilet paper, Lee was right next to Ethan, helping their friend sit up.

             
“You gonna be okay, man?” Ethan asked.

             
“What’s the last thing you remember?”

             
Allen held up his hand for them both to stop and let him collect himself. Finally he seemed to choke back his body’s desire to vomit and spoke, “Did you seriously just shit in a zombie’s face?”

             
“Yeah, he did. I got pictures. How many fingers am I holding up?” Ethan held up three.

             
“I know it’s three, but I’m still seeing double, man.”

             
“That’s good I guess.” Ethan unscrewed a canteen of water. Allen gulped it down. “Think you can walk?”

             
“Not a chance.” Allen laid back down on the cushion. “The world is spinning hard core, bro.”

             
“I’m going back to the plane.” Lee decided abruptly. “We need medevac. Now. It’s been hours. They might think we’re dead.”

             
“You can’t be serious. It’s too far from here.”

             
“It’s a fifteen minute run, Ethan.” Lee said. Ethan felt disgusted to know the Army’s obsession with the 2 mile run might actually pay off.

             
“Lee, you’re fat and old. You haven’t had to run two miles in under sixteen minutes since you were nineteen. There’s two hundred Zims between us and the wreck, and we don’t even know if the radio works. It could be shattered, and you could sprain your ankle or run out of ammo or-” Ethan became aware he sounded like their mother.
Don’t tie a car hood to the back of a truck and drive around with your brother on it! Don’t duct tape wings to the neighbor kid and push him off a roof even if there was a bush below for him to fall on! Don’t call your teacher a Communist, especially if it’s true!
That sort of thing. They both missed their mother terribly, but this was not the time.

             
“Ethan’s right, Cap’m. Someone will see us up here, I have faith.” Allen said softly. He didn’t seem to have a lot of energy.

             
“Forgive my lack of faith, Allen.” Lee began shedding clothing until all he wore was his boxers, boots and a bottle of water in one hand and an M9 in the other. “You two go to the other end of the building and start making noise. I’ll run from the East. I can get there in under twenty, make the call and get back before sun-up.”

             
“Why don’t you wait until sun-up?” Ethan protested. “We don’t have any evidence these things hunt better or worse at night. You’re just taking the advantage away from yourself.”

             
“Ethan, if I don’t make the call Allen could get worse. Texas may never find us, and we could die up here. Who knows if we were actually speaking to an Air Traffic Controller or some asshole with a radio who wanted to rob us.”

             
Ethan was about to protest that there was no logical reason not to wait, but he knew his brother was dead set on this plan. Helping Allen to the far end of the building they took out their rifles and started selectively shooting the freshest looking zombies while shouting curses and making noise, or in Ethan’s case the recipe to the perfect omelet. Because, why not? Zombies don’t understand English.

             
Just as Lee was about to jump the ten feet to the grass below after the zombies on the east end had thinned to about one every fifteen feet or so they heard the unmistakable
pop pop pop
of the rotor blades of the Angel of Vietnam, the Belle UH1 “Huey.” A spotlight shown down on the rooftop, stopping Lee in his boxers and boots right at the edge. Ethan reached for his camera and snapped a shot of his brother’s stunned face. It was too perfect, it had to go in the scrapbook forever.

             
Back at Little Rock AFB the Airmen and Soldiers guarding the base got a good laugh at seeing Lee traipse around the tarmac in his underwear, but he didn’t give a damn so long as Allen got to the aid station.

             
The airbase’s commanding officer wasn’t available for a rather standard rescue, but the XO was. At first Ethan didn’t recognize him, the man had grown a mustache and gained some weight. Instead it was the voice, distinctive in its New York accent that made Ethan’s blood run cold with fear, and then instantly boil as he remembered he still had a gun. With Allen safely in the hands of trained doctors the silent tension between Ethan and his former First Sergeant, the one he’d been in Iraq with, became so thick it might take the Jaws of Life to cut it. Eventually the man, now a Major, managed to get a word in with Ethan.

             
“I’m honestly glad to see you’re still alive, Mr. Cally.” Ethan didn’t say anything. He couldn’t believe how good, and how bad his luck was. “Look at you. A sheriff.”

             
The fact that they had rescued him and were giving Allen lifesaving medical support was quickly being undermined by Ethan’s desire to stab the man in front of him with an icepick. Eventually Ethan had enough of the silence and stood. “Lee, meet First Sergeant Harmon.”

             
“That’s Major Harmon.” He said as Ethan strolled out of the office, as if the introduction had explained all that needed explaining.