A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

With the window that had been supporting
Subway Karen now scattered about the concourse in a thousand
pea-sized bits, the decaying corpse tumbled into the void face
first.

As Dickless and the other creatures teetered
on the edge, Taryn silently chanted
Go, go, go,
urging them
to follow Karen’s lead. With the newly created opening she had
expected the high pitched whine and popping rotor sounds to invade
the concourse. Instead she heard only a strange harmonic whirring
emitted by the helicopter. She thought about yelling out for help
but quickly shelved the idea. The men were far too distant;
furthermore, the only attention that her screams would garner would
be from the dead.

***

Meanwhile, near the fuel trucks, Hicks, knife
firmly gripped in his right hand, waited for the creatures to close
the gap.

Tie-Dye lunged first, leaving his destroyed
throat vulnerable. Hicks dipped his hips and exploded off of his
right heel. The well-muscled sergeant’s body uncoiled as he
followed through with a Cold Steel uppercut. The triple hardened
blade easily pierced the soft flesh under the big zombie’s chin,
and continued on through the upper palate scrambling the monster’s
brain.

“Hicks—ten o’clock,” Tice called out as his
finger hovered longingly near the mini-gun trigger.

Hicks shuddered at the sight of the skewered
creature—a pre-puke dry heave caught in his throat. He let the dead
walker slide from his knife, and then squared his shoulders, feet
spread slightly, ready to accept the next threat.

As Speedo lurched closer, a trio of 5.56
hardball crackled by Hicks’s right ear and hammered the nearly
naked walker to the ground. With its jaw pulverized and shredded
left arm hanging limp and of no use, the Z struggled to stand.

“You trying to kill us all
Captain?
”
Hicks hollered without taking his eyes from the struggling
corpse.

“It was nearly on top of you... I had the
angle,” answered Cade calmly. “I didn’t seal the deal though—finish
him for me, will ya.”

Taking a calculated risk Hicks drew his
Beretta with his off hand, took a stride forward, and, risking
conflagration, delivered the kill shot point blank to the rear of
the Z’s head.

While he estimated the spacing between the
female zombie and the two fuel trucks, Hicks quickly mulled over
which weapon he should use: gun or knife.

A second wave of nausea wracked his body. He
was used to the stench from the air—not up close and personal.
Gun it is,
he thought as he sheathed his gore slickened
blade.

Truth be told, Hicks didn’t want to earn his
“Puker” patch. He had avoided that
Scarlet Letter
for more
than a decade—while engaged in combat aboard a jinking, jiggering
helicopter—pulling high-g maneuvers while hanging into the
slipstream secured by only a wire that seemed as thin as a piece of
dental floss. Even a couple of autorotations followed by very hard
landings hadn’t taken his cookies.

While the Z in the Vegas shirt closed the
distance, Hicks crabwalked to the right, and when the walker got
between the Ghost Hawk and the two refueling trucks—which he hoped
held thousands of gallons of JP-8 aviation fuel—he double tapped
her in the forehead.

Then he then went to all fours to look for
rotten feet shuffling around on the opposite side of the parked
vehicles.
Good to go
. The coast was clear.

Cade and Lopez loped ahead, separated by a
dozen feet, stopping only after they were a few more yards removed
from the spinning rotor. Each man then went to one knee as their
silenced rifles started dealing final death to the walkers.

“Wyatt, your six is clear,” said Maddox, who
also was on one knee alternating between watching the port side of
the helo and keeping an eye on Cade and Lopez’s backs.

“Copy that Maddox,” Cade answered back. Then
he looked toward Hicks, who was now striking the tanker with the
synthetic butt stock of his M4 starting near the top and tapping
every six inches or so while walking it down.

Then Hicks, his breathing labored, said into
his mic, “Left tanker is half full. Rough estimate—fifteen hundred
gallons—more than enough to top the bird off... and then some. I
was worried that the fueling nozzle might not be compatible—but
gentlemen it looks to be our
lucky day
. I like being
wrong—
sometimes
.”

“Anyone spots a 7/11 en route... be sure and
remind me to land so we can buy a few bucks worth of Mega Millions
tickets,” Ari deadpanned, clapping his gloved hands and stretching
in his seat to try and get the blood moving again in his
extremities.

“Your six is still clear... you’re good to
go,” Cade proffered as he continued dinging Zs.

After a moment’s hesitation Hicks answered,
“Copy that.” Though he trusted his life to the Delta operators
explicitly, and relying on others to watch his back had been
drilled into him over the years of training and then practiced
successfully in combat—still he felt compelled to check his own
ass. Then, after peeking over each shoulder, he holstered his
pistol and spun around and began trudging towards the helo with the
nickel plated fueling nozzle clutched in his gloved hands, and the
large diameter hose steadily unspooling behind him.

***

Inside Grand Junction Airport

As Taryn looked on, one of the men ran
towards the helicopter and plugged a hose into its side. In the
years she had worked at the airport she had witnessed a refueling
or two, but never while the helicopter’s blades where still
spinning.

The other soldiers had retreated closer to
the black aircraft and Taryn could make out their orange muzzle
flashes as they held off the monsters during the ongoing refueling
process.

The entire surreal event, from the moment she
had started watching and the soldiers initially fanned out on the
tarmac until they finished their task and the black helicopter
bolted from the ground, took less than eight minutes.

That’s about how long it would take me to
make two lattes, a cappuccino extra foam, take the money, and
pocket the tips,
she mused.
Whoever those freaking badasses
were—I hope they’re the good guys.

Chapter 23

Outbreak - Day 11

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Southwest Jackson Hole, I - 189 Crossing

Ian Bishop hated a fair fight, and during his
days in the teams he rarely got caught on the wrong side of that
equation. He and the SEALs he went down range with had always been
blessed with the best intelligence: human and electronic—giving
them the edge in almost any situation. Through superior training,
overwhelming firepower, and sheer determination they oftentimes
tackled a far larger force, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred
they emerged victorious.

This was an entirely different scenario. On
the south side of the bridge, the horde of walking dead numbering
several thousand strong were being held at bay by a steel wall of
city busses.

Overnight the zombies had successfully
breached Bishop’s first line of defense. Man-sized gaps had
appeared between two of the busses allowing two or three hundred of
the persistent creatures to squeeze through every hour.

This enemy was like no other, Bishop thought,
as he watched the line of vehicles across the way shimmy and shake
behind the crushing dead. Truth be told, he was deathly afraid of
the abominations and had been fighting the urge to cut and run the
entire twenty-four hours he and his skeleton crew of defenders had
been hammering away at the steady stream shambling across the
bridge towards him.

Moving his combat boot side to side with a
sweeping motion, he cleared a spot in the midst of the growing pile
of spent brass. The sturdy scaffolding, pilfered from a commercial
painting outfit, had been erected along the back side of the city
busses serving as a second line of defense across the north side of
189. The scaffolding, while sturdy enough to support several men on
each section, was not tall enough to allow the shooters the proper
angle to cull the zombies that made it across the span. In order to
do so a defender had to crawl along the semi-sloped roofs of the
city busses, dangerously close to the edge, in order to fire down
on the creatures.

Keeping his eye to the scope and a steady
rhythm to his fire, Bishop asked the well-muscled shooter to his
right, “How many rounds do you have left?

“Two hundred loose rounds and four full mags
Sir!” Daly said, shouting to be heard over the moans of the dead
and the staccato fusillades of gunfire echoing up and down the
battle line.

Bishop raised the binoculars, and through the
gray veil of cordite haze surveyed up and down the line of Teton
County busses. The cobalt blue Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit or
START busses were low slung Gillig models parked end to nose,
stretching from the woods on the west side of the choke point
across the four lane highway and finally abutting the strip mall to
the east. If the first line failed then these ten people movers
were the only thing standing between the living dead that had been
arriving in large numbers during the last three days, and the few
people still living in the city of Jackson Hole. He scanned the
shooters to the left and the men positioned every few feet to his
right. After confirming that indeed his orders were being followed
and all of his men were wearing their makeshift harnesses tethering
them to the tops of the vehicles they were shooting from, he let
the binoculars hang around his neck and ran both hands through his
dark hair.

He fished the Vicks Vapor Rub from his thigh
pocket, slathered a liberal amount under his nose, and then chucked
the empty blue jar at the moaning dead. His gaze followed the jar
as it bounced then landed in a pool of blood next to someone he
knew.

Bishop grimaced at the sight. Jacob’s corpse
was splayed out as if afloat in the crimson pool of his own drying
blood. With tangles of the man’s glistening entrails still clutched
in their pallid hands, a half dozen unmoving zombies lay scattered
around the black fatigue-clad body. As Bishop stared at the gory
sight he relived the younger man’s death. In his mind’s eye, he
watched Jacob’s arms flail and his face contort as he realized he
had just lost his footing and there was no recovering from his
inevitable fate. Jacob dropped his rifle and fell hard to the roof,
then rode its slick curvature face first into the waiting arms of
the dead. He screamed and pleaded to the other shooters for help,
then his mom became his savior of choice; as he chanted her name,
the dead pulled him down.

Bishop had reacted quickly but before he
could draw a bead on the closest Z the creatures were already into
his friend’s chest cavity, their greedy white hands stuffing
steaming entrails into their mouths. Bishop shuddered at the
recollection.

One bite, he thought, and there is no such
thing as help. The dead had an effect on the former Navy SEAL that
no man had been able to accomplish.

Violence of action had been SEAL Team 10’s
calling card. The dead weren’t affected by violence or
intimidation. All of the tools of modern warfare that Ian had been
taught in BUDs and had since refined on the battlefield weren’t
applicable to the dead. And just as Bishop was about to revisit his
single mercy shot to Jacob’s forehead, Daly’s words saved him from
reliving that dreadful moment.

Daly looked at Bishop, who was seemingly
zoned out gazing at the dead SEAL’s body, and gave him a quick
inventory of his remaining ammunition.

Bishop didn’t respond.

Thinking his words had been drowned out by
the cacophony of the one-sided gun battle, Daly repeated his
update, “I’m down to four mags.” Then he punched an empty to the
ground and inserted a fresh thirty rounds of 5.56. “Down to three
mags now Sir!”

Bishop snapped back to the present and said,
“Here, take these.” He placed five full magazines near the younger
man’s feet. “I’ve got to talk to the boss man.”
And this may be
the last time if all goes according to plan
.

Since that frigid gunmetal gray day in
Coronado when he had finally earned the coveted Budweiser pin,
which featured a golden eagle clutching a U.S. Navy anchor,
trident, and flintlock style pistol, which acknowledged his
completion of BUD/S or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training,
he had been unflinching in battle and confident under duress—in one
word, Ian Bishop was unshakable. He had been the best of the best
that the U.S. Navy had to offer. He was a predator of men and had
never before faced such a driven, emotionless force, one that was
not deterred by injury and was merely slowed by missing limbs.
Unlike the living, this adversary didn’t bleed to death and never
stopped in its relentless drive for human flesh. Worst of all, Ian
thought, this enemy could only be felled by a bullet to the brain,
and supplies of those were dwindling fast. He supposed this feeling
of vulnerability, which was foreign to him, was precisely what
every one of his previous adversaries on the field of battle had
felt like going up against him and his former Navy SEAL
brethren.

Ian Bishop knew he had a difficult decision
to make. It wasn’t in his nature to cut and run—never had been—he
finished what he started, always seeing things through to the end
no matter how hard the task. That drive and work ethic came from
somewhere else in the family tree—it definitely hadn’t been passed
down nor instilled in him by his father, who had disappeared when
he was nine. The man, Ian had been told, had been a first class
fuck up of the royal order and for all Ian knew was rotting in some
prison somewhere.

Staring at the hungry eyes coming across the
bridge had made up his mind for him, and when he talked to Robert
Christian next he was going to hold nothing back. He hadn’t signed
on for this and neither had his most trusted brothers in arms—most
of whom were still disgruntled at the previous two Presidential
administrations and the stuffed shirt politicians for meddling in
the two wars in the sandbox. No, this time things were going to
change, Ian told himself. Nothing would be gained by staying around
and continuing to do Robert Christian’s bidding.
Yes my Liege.
No my Liege
. He felt he was compromising what little he still
stood for by sticking around against such insurmountable undead
odds. Hell, he thought, this whole Extinction Level Event wasn’t
what he and his dwindling group of men were hired to guard
against—nor prepared to deal with.