Left With the Dead (6 page)

Gartrell shrugged. “Not sure—they’re waiting for helicopters to come in from Pennsylvania. I don’t know if they’ve left their home airfield yet, or if they’re even ready to launch. I’ll make contact again in an hour and try to get an update, but lots of stuff is going on in the world. We’re pretty low on the list of priorities right now.”

Jolie’s brow knitted. “Did you tell them I have an autistic son?”

“I mentioned that, yeah. Look, they’re going to try, but they’re also trying to stop those…things…from getting out of the city. You know what happens if one bites you, right?”

“No. What?”

Gartrell sighed. “You die. And then, you turn into one of them.”

Jolie stared at him for a long moment, then looked away. “Dear sweet Jesus.” She put her hands over her face. “Oh dear sweet
Jesus
, you mean—” Her voice broke and her shoulders shook as she sobbed. She tried to suppress it, but the emotion overwhelmed her. She wept as silently as she could, and Gartrell stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“What’s wrong? Have you been bitten? Are you all right?”

She shook her head and pulled away from him. He let her, and stepped back so he could keep an eye on Jaden. The boy still sat in front of the DVD player, watching a cute animated dog named Blue cavort about with her human owner. Gartrell looked back at Jolie, and waited for her to get herself under control.

“What is it, ma’am? If you’ve got something to say, pull yourself together and say it.”

She reached for a roll of paper towels and tore off a sheet. She spent another moment drying her eyes, then sniffed and turned back to him. Her blue eyes gleamed in the wan light that made it past the shaded windows.

“My husband called me from downtown. He’d been bitten by one of those things, but he’d gotten away from it. They didn’t kill him. He was still making his way uptown.”

Gartrell didn’t really know how to respond to that in any meaningful way. “I’m sorry.”

She sniffed again. “So he’s one of them now?”

“I don’t know. Probably better to keep your mind on your son now.”

She looked at him, hard-faced once again. “You
do
know! You’ve probably got more experience with those things than anyone else in the city!”

Gartrell said nothing, and she turned away from him with a heavy sigh. She rubbed her eyes, then crossed her arms and hugged herself in the gloomy darkness.

“I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t mean to fight with you. I’m just wrapped up a little tight right now, you know?”

Gartrell knew all about it, and he felt the same way himself. “It’s not a problem. I get where you’re coming from. But thinking about your husband right now…well look, there are other things that are more pressing.”

Jolie nodded slowly. “Yeah. There are.” She turned back to him and tried to relax, but it didn’t work. She still looked uptight. The kind of uptight where people start to fray at the edges, and that worried Gartrell a bit. He really didn’t need her melting down on him.

Jolie leaned against the stainless steel stove and regarded him for a long moment. “So tell me why you’re in New York City. Because I’m thinking you’re not really a city boy, are you?”

Gartrell smiled. “Kind of. I’m from a place called Savannah, down in Georgia. Not as big as New York, but not some hick town with a population of six, either.”

“I’ve never been there.”

Gartrell shrugged. He figured Jolie wasn’t the kind of person to leave NYC for places like Georgia.

“So tell me why you’re here,” she asked.

Gartrell looked back into the living room. The boy was still fixated on the DVD player, but had taken the straw out of his mouth and had the cup in his lap. Jolie walked toward Gartrell and looked in on her son, then turned back to the first sergeant.

“He’ll be occupied for a bit longer.”

“Good.”

“So tell me what you were doing in New York, Dave.”

“Sure.”

Gartrell wasn’t much of a story teller—his wife said that whenever he had read his once-small children stories, it sounded like he was reading from a chemistry textbook—so he didn’t embellish anything, just made a straight, unpretentious report. Working to keep the military acronyms to a minimum, he told Jolie how he was tapped to join Major McDaniels on the mission to New York City, where they linked up with Operational Detachment Alpha 331, call sign OMEN. He had known some of the Special Forces troopers from his time as an instructor, so he had gotten along well with them and had no problem inserting himself into their detachment. He also told her of his history with McDaniels, how he felt the black officer was hidebound by regulation and had only a limited ability to adapt. He had the chops to lead a Special Forces unit; but when it came time to step out of the box, he had problems with his emotions clouding his ability to focus on the mission. When he told her of what had happened in Afghanistan, of how the death of one boy might have saved the lives of five Special Forces soldiers, her eyes widened in surprise.

“You would have killed that boy?”

“If so ordered, yes.”

“Was…was that really necessary?”

“He went back and told his people where we were. They came after us with Taliban. Five of our guys went down fighting.” Gartrell smiled grimly. “Of course, we sent about two dozen of the stinking Talibs to meet Allah in the process. But that’s what we were there for. You understand what I’m saying? McDaniels had the opportunity to balance the scales, and he couldn’t do it. No one wanted to kill that boy, not really. Killing kids isn’t what we’re all about. But letting him go free got a good number of other folks killed. I don’t care about the Taliban, they’re roaches. But our guys? And the whole village, which the Air Force flattened? That didn’t have to happen. The choice was a tough one, but McDaniels called it wrong.”

Jolie nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I see…”

Gartrell went on, relaying how the team had linked up with Wolf Safire and his daughter Regina at Safire’s office building. He had come up with a compound, some sort of vaccine, which would prevent humans from transitioning to the walking dead after they had been bitten. The discovery was obviously quite high-value, so an entire Special Forces Alpha Detachment was dispatched to ensure Safire’s safety; McDaniels and Gartrell were Special Operations Command’s appointed babysitters to ensure the Safires made it out. And they had almost done just that. They’d actually made it to their helicopters when the stenches overwhelmed the security forces at the assembly area in Central Park. They had even taken off, while the team’s second helicopter crashed as the zeds rushed it. The surviving helicopter carrying Gartrell, the Safires, McDaniels, and some other soldiers was on its way out when one of the “window divers”—what Gartrell explained were zeds who literally jumped out of buildings to try and get at food—crashed into their helicopter’s main rotor, forcing it to crash land on Lexington Avenue.

So the team took refuge in an office building and waited for aerial extraction from a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey. But the timing supremely sucked; the building storm that had lashed out at New York City during the night had caused the tiltrotor aircraft to crash as well, leaving the team stranded overnight.

And then, the zeds got inside the building.

Gartrell told her how the Coast Guard had dispatched a cutter to try and evacuate them, and he described in very plain language how the team had fought constantly to cross three city blocks just to get to the East River. It had been the stuff from which nightmares were made; an implacable, seemingly unstoppable enemy numbering in the thousands, intent on running the soldiers and civilians to ground, attacking them again and again. Even as the bodies piled up, the zeds harried them, ignoring their injuries, ignoring the firepower leveled against them, cognizant only of their insatiable hunger. They would go to any length to feed. They were totally, 100% committed in a way that no human being could be. They stripped away the military defenders, a man here, a man there, until finally it was just McDaniels, the civilians, and Gartrell.

And when the final push came, when they had finally made it to the East River, Gartrell diverted the zombies away from the survivors. The mission had to succeed, so that humanity would have a chance against the rising horde. And if that meant First Sergeant David Gartrell had to sacrifice himself, then so be it. Gartrell didn’t paint any flourishes, nor did he tell her just how deeply terrified he had been, striking off on his own, leading the legion of ghouls away from McDaniels and the civilians with a burning flare and not much else. It was just something that had to be done. The mission had to succeed, or else it was lights out for the entire country.

Maybe the entire world.

“And then, I found you at that Starbucks. And here we are, ma’am.”

Jolie shook her head slowly. “That…that was some story, Dave.”

Gartrell couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or truthful, so he just nodded. He looked back at Jaden, still staring at the DVD player with rapt attention. His gaze happened upon the dining room table, and the box of shotgun shells sitting there.

“Those shotgun shells. Where’s the shotgun that goes with them?”

“I couldn’t find it. I found the bullets in one of the open apartments—some young IT guy who thought he was some kind of big game hunter. Disgusting, really.” Jolie shook her head in obvious disapproval, and Gartrell didn’t volunteer that he was a hunter himself. “Anyway, I meant to go back and look some more, but then it got dark.”

“Which apartment?”

She pointed at the ceiling. “On the sixth floor. Apartment A.”

“You mind if I go up and take a look around? I might be able to find it. And maybe some other stuff. If this becomes more of an open-ended engagement, we might be here for quite some time, and we’ll need to use anything we can find.”

Jolie reached for a peach in a nearby bowl and began peeling it with a small paring knife. She worked quickly, expertly, despite the wan light in the galley kitchen. She sliced the peach up and put it in a small plastic bowl.

“His DVD is almost over. Let me give him some food and keep him distracted, and then you can leave. Take one of the backpacks with you. Knock on the door when you come back, and I’ll let you in. Just three knocks, okay?”

He nodded. “Three knocks it is.” After a moment, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, and he smiled as reassuringly as he could.

“I’ll be back. I won’t be very long.”

“I know.”

“We’re going to get out of this. Believe me, we’ll make it.”

“Okay.”

It was obvious she didn’t believe him, but Gartrell didn’t waste any time trying to change her mind. He just returned to the bedroom, got the AA-12 and his body armor, helmet, radio, and knapsack. He went back into the dining area and grabbed one of the backpacks. As soon as Jolie began feeding Jaden his peach, Gartrell quietly let himself out of the apartment.

###

The stairwell was as dark in the day as it had been during the night. Gartrell had brought his night vision goggles with him, so he flipped them down over his eyes and navigated through the all-encompassing darkness as if the stairwell was lit by a sunny day. He went directly to the sixth floor and slowly eased open the stairway door. Switching off the NVGs, he stepped into the hallway beyond, blinking because of the bright light that poured in through the windows at either end. He walked to the apartment marked 6A and tried the door knob; it twisted easily beneath his hand, and he slowly pushed it open with his foot, his AA-12 at the ready.

The apartment beyond had the same layout as Jolie’s below, so he was able to conduct his search quickly and efficiently. He kept his distance from the windows, as the drapes were open and he didn’t want any of the zeds below to see him. One bedroom had been converted into a sitting room; the other held a master bedroom and the décor indicated it belonged to a bachelor. Gartrell could still smell a faint hint of cologne in the apartment. An expensive multimedia setup was in the living room, dark without power and a little dusty from inexperienced housekeeping. Gartrell went through the bedroom first, casing the closet and attached bathroom. He found nothing terribly useful, so he moved on to the sitting room next door. A large bookcase held many tomes on a wide matter of subjects, from geography to biography. He found a letter opener and tossed it into the backpack—it could serve as a bladed weapon when the time came. He also found several tools: hammers, chisels, screwdrivers, even a small hatchet. He added those to the pack as well. The kitchen yielded nothing, and the vague stink emanating from the closed refrigerator compelled him to ignore it. He searched through the closets and found some rugged outdoors clothes on hangars and a couple of pairs of work boots on the floor. The top shelf had scarves, hats, and a box of old photos. Gartrell ignored all of it and moved on to the small bedroom in the back.

He was startled to find a lion staring at him.

The bedroom had been converted to an office, a true man cave if ever there was one. A lion’s head was on one wall. Next to it was an impala’s. Facing the lion was a huge water buffalo head, and beside that, a leopard caught in mid-snarl. Gartrell was no stranger to game hunting, but finding these trophies in a small room in New York City was decidedly odd.  In the middle of the room sat a desk and a padded chair. Beside the door was a gun cabinet, open and empty. He went through the desk and the built-in bureau, but found nothing other than collectibles from foreign countries, and pictures of a pudgy man in his early thirties posing with various dead beasts: grizzly bears, buffalo, wildebeests, and a huge marlin which must have weighed a thousand pounds.

Guy’s gonna need to get himself a bigger room to mount that one
.

But still no weapons. Gartrell wouldn’t have been surprised if the apartment owner had taken every firearm he had when he left. It would have been the smart thing to do.

Still…

Gartrell returned to the bedroom and shoved the king-sized mattress off the box spring. And there it was—an old but refinished Winchester 42 .410 gauge shotgun, worth probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000. Gartrell picked it up and examined it. The weapon was decades old, definitely a collectible. But to a big game hunter on the run from the zombie horde? Probably not the first weapon of choice, which was why he’d stuffed it under the mattress. No sense leaving it in plain view for it to be stolen by looters, just in case the zeds were defeated before the owner could return to his apartment.