Zombie Team Alpha (10 page)

Cutter nodded in surprise and let out a held breath.

~21~

BAD TIMING

Cutter wasn’t the first to reach the Mi-8, but he was the first to climb inside through the open rear hatch, which hadn’t been open when they had left. And when he climbed the ramp, his nose told him that something was wrong—
terribly wrong.

Outside, the sun had almost set completely. Nightfall was upon them, which made it even darker inside the helicopter—too dark for Cutter to see anything until his eyes fully adjusted to the dim light. He felt his way along with his feet and with one arm outstretched and touching the right side of the helicopter. His other he waved directly in front of him to avoid running into anything unexpected.

Then his right palm brushed against a damp patch, and he jerked his hand away and flexed his fingers, rubbing them against his thumb. Whatever his hand had landed in was sticky and warm, and the fluid oozed between the tips of his fingers. He sniffed it. The iron and copper scent was unmistakable.
Blood
. But it was what he saw next when he entered the cockpit that sent his pounding heart into overdrive.

Oh, God—

The two pilots that had stayed behind with the craft were still upright in their seats—most of them, anyway. Someone or something had wrenched their heads completely off.
Impossible.
But there it was. Proof that it could be done. And it made a hell of a mess. There was so much blood in the cockpit that the forward windscreens and instrument panels were bathed in spatters of crimson that glittered faintly in the last bit of light. The stink alone was overpowering. Cutter gagged. His stomach roiled, and he had to turn away and collect himself.

He groaned and sucked in a shallow breath as he shoved his forearm against his nose. His eyes were already watering, and he blinked away the tears while swallowing his disgust in one big, fat lump.

Because they had no other readily known means of escape, he had to prepare himself for what he would have to do next. Closing his eyes, he let his stomach settle.
You can do this. Yes, you can.
Reluctantly, he grabbed the pilot by the shoulder straps, pulled him off the seat, and dragged what remained of his body out of the cockpit and set him on the floor.

Morgan, who came up from behind him with a flashlight in hand, touched him on the arm and shook her head. Her eyes were squinted, and her lips had narrowed in disgust. She folded her arm over her nose like he had and ran for the exit, taking the only source of illumination with her. He continued to watch her scramble out of the big Mi-8, wishing he could follow her.

Got a job to do.

Gauge’s square head emerged from the backside of the helicopter. It appeared ghost-like in the beam of his own flashlight as it shone from below, making him all angles and planes. His head seemed to float up the ramp at the rear as if it had become separated from his body.
No.
Cutter shook his own head and shivered to wipe away the terrible vision of a headless Gauge.

Just the dark. That’s it. That’s all.
He sucked a deep breath, realizing his breathing had been too shallow to do much good.

Gauge came forward, crouched low, and pointed his flashlight downward to not blind Cutter. Colonel Suvorov was following directly behind him. Suvorov came to a stop before he reached the cockpit. He glanced at Cutter and the body on the floor.

“Can you fly this?”

Cutter had only flown a helicopter once in his life. The principles, he knew, but the specifics of flying such a big Russian bird, with Russian instruments, through Russian airspace, at night? Everything was so unfamiliar and far, far beyond his abilities.

“Yes, I can,” he said reassuringly.

“Good,” Suvorov said and backed himself all the way out of the helicopter.

With Gauge there to help him, Cutter grabbed the co-pilot’s body from the seat and tried to drag it out of the cockpit to join the pilot.

“What happened to their heads?” the big man asked.

That was the obvious question Cutter did not have an answer for yet, nor had he the time to figure it out, nor could he even imagine how those heads had been removed in the first place. With so much blood everywhere, it was impossible to tell for sure just what had happened.

He located a terrycloth towel the pilot had stashed in the pocket next to his seat, presumably to dry his hands. It had remained relatively free of the twin fountains of blood that had erupted and coated almost everything else in gore. He used the rag to wipe clean a spot on the windshield, but the action did little more than smear and streak the blood around, and soon the cloth became too saturated in wet stickiness to clear much of anything. But he had exposed a tiny section that he could peer through if he kept his head low and tilted to one side.

“
Morgan!
” he yelled over his shoulder and almost into Gauge’s face.

No response.

He yelled her name again.

Grimacing as if she were going to be sick at any moment, she joined him, avoiding all the spattered blood as best she could.

“Do you know how I start this thing?” he asked as he checked the controls. He wasn’t about to start randomly flipping switches until he was reasonably sure what he was doing.

She scanned the forward instrument panel, running her fingers over the various buttons and mouthing the translations as she thought them through.

“No, these,” Cutter said, pointing with Gauge’s flashlight at the switches about his head. She leaned past him, narrowed her eyes, and touched one of the toggle switches. A single drop of blood was transferred to her fingertips, and she drew back with her eyes going even wider.

“Come on,” he said, “we’ve been through this kind of shit before.”

She grunted a nervous laugh. “Not like this,” she said, head shaking. “Never ever like this. This is…terrible.”

“Yeah, it is,” he admitted. “Here goes.” He flipped the switch she had indicated.

There was a mechanical clunk. The entire craft shuddered.

“Try that one,” she said.

“He flipped another switch and the instrument lights all clicked on and started blinking red.”

He flipped the first switch she had indicated again, holding it against its stop. He figured it was an engine start.

But nothing happened. Red lights on the instrument panel continued to flash.

“You sure that was the right switch?”

She checked again. “Yes, it has to be.
Engine Start
, right?”

Cutter sighed and waved a hand in the air. “Then something else is wrong. Short in the system from all this—maybe?”

“Maybe,” she agreed, seeming not so sure.

Suvorov joined them. “You fly? No?”

“I can, yeah, but this Russian shit-pile won’t fire up,” Cutter said. “There’s a fault somewhere and it’s not allowing the engines to start.”

Cutter and Morgan both looked to Suvorov for reaction. He remained blank-faced. Finally, he said, “Outside, maybe? We think they may have gotten to the engines.”

“What the hell?
Who got to them?
” Cutter rose and hurriedly pushed past the others, heading for the back of the craft.

He exited and rounded the helicopter and came to a halt near the front. He aimed Gauge’s flashlight at the outside hull. Dark bloodstains led up to the twin engine intakes above the cockpit, and it appeared that someone had jumped onto the helicopter and somehow had climbed up the side of the airframe.

Impossible.
But, it hadn’t been.

He eyed the path and streaks of blood for a beat. He turned to Gauge. “Give me a boost.”

With locked fingers, Gauge lifted him up the side of the craft until he could twist his foot sideways and use a seam in the aluminum skin to boost himself even higher. He felt wetness seeping into his shirt as he clung to the side.
More blood.
He pushed his fear aside and centered himself again.

The old rituals of quickly regaining self-control were beginning to return to him—and they had picked a damn fine time to start doing so. Still, he would have traded it all for a bottle of tequila, a carton of smokes, and a beautiful, well-tanned, big-breasted island girl. Preferably one he didn’t have to pay for.

By hanging onto the side of the Mi-8 by his fingertips, he was able to work up enough grip to pull himself just high enough to see into the port side engine intake. There was an obstruction. He strained to get closer, scooting up on his belly and toes and practically shoving his entire head into the oblong intake.

What he saw made him flinch and nearly lose his grip on the helicopter. A single lifeless eyeball stared back at him from a head that was covered in blood and had been partially crushed by the engine’s compressor blades.

“I think I found our pilot,” Cutter cried. His voice echoed inside the tube.

“What?” Morgan said from below.

He backed out a bit so he could talk to her. “I found some of him. His head is up here. The colonel was right. It’s the engine. It’s not going to start. The intake’s all jammed up.”

He grabbed the head by the hair and tried to pull it away from the turbine blades, but could not get a good grip while holding himself steady with his other hand. The short, blood-soaked hair kept slipping through his fingers.
Damn. Can’t get it.
He left the disembodied head in place and made his way back down the side of the helicopter. He landed in the soft dirt and stopped to wipe his hands dry on his black cargo pants. He smelled of lifeblood, which was an odor that once experience was never forgotten.

“No idea how anyone could do that to a man,” he said, “let alone two. But the colonel is right.” He drew a breath. “We might just be stuck here for a while, so you’d better start unpacking and setting up a solid perimeter.
Got that?
”

Morgan and Gauge both professionally nodded an affirmative. Wheeling, Cutter grabbed the colonel by the shirt and directed him to the cockpit. When they got there, Cutter grabbed a headset from a hook behind the pilot’s seat, shook off the blood, and held it out for the man.

“Call in reinforcements,” he said. “
Now.
Call in another helicopter. Another hundred soldiers.
Any damn thing!
Whatever it takes to get us the hell out of here before anyone else dies.”

But Colonel Suvorov did nothing, so Cutter thrust the headset at the man’s chest. “I don’t give a good goddamn about this mission any longer. So you call them, and you call them…
now!
”

Suvorov pursed his lips and shook his head, refusing to accept the headset.

“
Seriously?
” Cutter sucked in a long, deep breath, and then in a lower tone said as he nodded his understanding, “There are no reinforcements to call in, are there? These are all the men you have available to you?”

The colonel said nothing.

“
Goddamn it
, what about those taking care of the G4 back at the airfield?”

“We have enough men here with us,” the colonel said. “Plenty. We will find out who killed my pilots and then we will—”

“And your other four that just died screaming somewhere,” Cutter added. “I don’t give two squirts about getting any kind of revenge for this, or even finding out how in the hell it was even possible to rip a man’s head clean off. What we need to do is get the hell out of here before anyone else gets killed. So get on the damn radio—
and call someone!
”

“We have enough men to handle any problem.”

“
That’s total bullshit.
You don’t have nearly enough. Whoever it was that attacked us was able to do so on their terms. Not ours. Don’t you see that? They’re going to pick us off one by one if we don’t get out of here.”

“We Russians are not cowards, Mr. Cutter. We are not afraid. We stick together. Not like you Americans, who always turn tail and run.”

“What the hell kind of comment is that?” Cutter asked. “You think this is about
fear?
I’ll be the first to admit that I sure the hell am afraid. But a little fear and retreat are better than being stupid and dead. Now call someone in, and do it
now!
”

Cutter thrust the headset at the colonel again.

The man refused to take it and turned his back on Cutter and made his way down the aisle and out of the helicopter, leaving Cutter holding the former pilot’s blood-stained headset. He was practically shaking with rage. He gripped the headset and ripped it free from its tether and chucked it as hard as he could toward the back of the helicopter.

The headset bounced off the cargo netting above the bench seats, then caught an edge and started to tumble through the air. And at that precise moment, Gauge had the misfortune of coming up the ramp at the rear of the helicopter at the same time—and got hit square in the face.

~22~

GODDAMNED ZOMBIES

The impact of the helmet had busted Gauge’s nose. This wasn’t the first time Cutter had broken that same nose, but the last time there’d been a valid reason for doing so.

“Shit,” he said as he held out a gauze pad he’d pulled from their medical kit to stop the blood flow.

Gauge grabbed the pad and held it against his nose without comment as he sat on the bench. The large man’s eyes were watering, and he was blinking rapidly, but he wasn’t complaining.

Cutter sucked in a deep breath. “Let me see if one of those guys out there is a medic.” He left the helicopter shaking his head, disgusted with himself for having harmed the guy, who was probably one of the only two friends he had left in the world.
And I left him sitting next to a pair of headless corpses? Great, Jack. Just great.

Outside, it was well past sunset. The purples were already darkening the sky and painting the clouds in shades of black. The first stars were already visible in between the small gaps in the cover, but the moon was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened?” Morgan asked Cutter as she huddled with him.

“I smashed up Gauge good, real good,” he admitted.

“Did he deserve it?” she asked.

Cutter drew a breath. “Of course not. Any of these guys strike you as a competent medic?”

“These guys,” she said, drawing it out, “strike me as the types who are looking for any excuse to pull either us women folk aside for some alone time.”

“Keep a close watch on her, okay?” Cutter nodded toward Dr. Martinez. He knew that Morgan was sharp enough to take care of herself in pretty much any situation, but he didn’t know enough about Dr. Martinez yet.
Too many horny teenagers nearby. Never a good thing.

Cutter left her to her various tasks and went to find Suvorov, who was scanning the distant compound through binoculars.

“See anything?”

“Plenty,” the man said, not taking his eyes away from his binoculars. “But not my men.”

“You have a medic in your outfit?”

“Why?”

“My guy has gone and got his nose all busted up.”

The colonel lowered the binoculars for a moment, returned a puzzled look, then nodded toward one of his men, a short guy with clipped blond hair and a bag slung over his shoulder.

Cutter picked out the guy Suvorov had indicated, and talking to him with hand gestures, got the man to understand what was needed.

“Still think you should have ducked,” Cutter said to Gauge while the medic worked on him.

The big man pushed the scrawny medic to one side with a sweep of his hand. “I didn’t think you could throw so hard.”

Cutter stifled a chuckle, and Gauge leaned back and let the medic work on him again. There were no hard feelings on Gauge’s side. There never were. It was just a stupid accident. They’d share more jokes about it later. Maybe some retorts about payback. But all was good between them. And it was hard to take it either way with a headless corpse just feet away under a blanket.

Morgan soon joined them and examined the work the medic had done as he was finishing up. “I think it will look even better this time around when it heals. Can you breathe okay?”

Gauge grunted once and scratched at the dressing.

Dr. Martinez also reentered the craft, bent forward, and began digging through a satchel she had stowed under the bench seat. Since that put her backside about three feet from both Cutter and Gauge, they both watched her in admiration from behind while Morgan shook her head, scolding them. Cutter ignored her while Gauge just forced a grin and rubbed his jaw and stroked his cheeks around the bandage on his nose.

“There’s no getting out of here tonight,” Cutter said loudly enough to cause Dr. Martinez to turn. When she noticed the angle he had been watching her from, she frowned.

Cutter smiled. “So we need to figure out what is going on here, and do it quickly.”

“You don’t think we should stay here in any case, do you?” Morgan asked.

Cutter shifted so he could look out one of the porthole windows. “We may have to, though. I don’t see many five-star hotels nearby.”

“We certainly can’t stay inside here tonight,” Morgan said. “One of those buildings has to have an area we can secure.”

“Maybe.” Cutter chewed on a thought. “But we would have to get there first. Ideas?”

“Might I make a suggestion?” Dr. Martinez injected into the conversation as she backed herself against the bench across from them.

Cutter nodded. “By all means.” The plan he was hatching in his head was coming out all wings and elbows.

“I know what is going on here,” she said. “I’ve been briefed beforehand, so I know what it was that killed those men.”

“Well, then,” Cutter asked in a slightly irritated tone. “Enlighten us, Doctor. I heard a ‘what’ in that and not a ‘who,’ so how about first telling us
what
the hell is going on? Those two guys up front probably would have appreciated knowing a bit more about the situation they had just flown into before having their damn heads torn off. And, even knowing this as a possibility of what could happen, I’m not sure I would have agreed to come here in the first place. Not after—”

Morgan bumped him. He got her meaning. “Okay, okay. Who?
Who
is doing this to us? It has to be a ‘who,’ not a ‘what.’”

Dr. Martinez said nothing.

Cutter stared at her for a long, hard second.
What the hell?
This was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission. Go in, fetch what they’d been sent for, and scoot the hell out. The guns they’d brought along were only a formality after what had happened in Ecuador. For show, mostly, or so he had first thought.
Now they’re a damned necessity.

A shout came from outside. He tilted his head and held up a hand for silence.

Gunfire.

“Zombies,” Dr. Martinez said.

“What?” Cutter’s head snapped back to stare at her. “Zombies? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

More gunshots.

Dr. Martinez leaned forward. “What killed those pilots—they were zombies.”

“Like TV? Walkers? Biters? Roamers?” Cutter asked.

“No, of course not. Not any of those. That’s a fictional TV show filled with misinformation and certainly n—”

She was cut off when another rapid burst of gunfire came from just outside the helicopter. Cutter pushed himself up and weaved through them all and made for the back ramp in a hurry while raising his weapon.
She had to be crazy. Zombies? That made as much sense as—

As soon as he exited, he spotted a distant shadow flitter past on one of the buildings, a shape in the night. It moved shark-swift against the backdrop and was about a hundred and fifty yards away.

Two of the colonel’s men were kneeling in front of the man. Their automatic rifles were balanced on their knees, their arms bent, rifle straps wound around their arms to stabilize their weapons, just like they had probably been trained to do. But they were doing it wrong. They’d been firing at the fast-moving shapes. Bullet casings littered the ground and reflected what scant light was left.

Now the two men were holding fire. Cutter crabbed sideways to stand beside the colonel and put his fingers in his ears. The men resumed their fusillade of lead, and the gun muzzles flashed in the night—quick bursts followed by assessments of damage.

The salvo had been completely ineffective. The shapes vanished behind another building and out of sight. Even at a hundred and fifty yards, these kids couldn’t hit diddly squat, which made Cutter wonder if these guys had been trained at Stormtrooper School.

When their target had completely disappeared into the night, the colonel struck one of the young soldiers in the back of the head, nearly knocking him over. He said something to the kid in Russian, but it was not hard to grasp the disgust in his voice.

“What was that?” Cutter asked the man.

“
Chudovishe,
” Colonel Suvorov said.

“Monsters?” Cutter asked. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Maybe you should tell me, Mr. Cutter. Do you believe in monsters?”

“No,” Cutter said. “Our ‘guest’ thinks they are zombies. The undead. Like in the movies. You have movies here, right?” He stopped and changed his tone. Now was not the time for jokes. “Those things tore the heads off two of your pilots, so they seem a little more than zombies to me. Whatever the hell those things are, I’d rather we not stick around tonight and find out more about them. Have you reconsidered? Is there another way out of here other than by helicopter? Some other vehicles, maybe? It’s a mining site, right? Where are all the trucks?”

“No,” the colonel said. “We are not leaving tonight. Not yet. Not until I find out what has happened to my men.”

Morgan and Gauge arrived, with Dr. Martinez between them. Cutter jerked his thumb at Dr. Martinez. “She’s the one who claims these things are zombies. I saw something similar to these things once before, but I never got this close to them. We heard them more than we saw them, and that was close enough for me. Natives said they were hopped up on something.”

“Hopped up?” the colonel asked.

“Drugs. Something that turned them into psychopaths. But I’m thinking that was bullshit now.”

The colonel eyed Dr. Martinez carefully while he considered. Then he nodded. “There is a secure space inside the building just past the large one over there.” He indicated the dormitory building. “We should be safe inside for the night.”

“We just have to get there first,” Cutter added. Then he remembered something. The thought that had started in the back of his mind earlier dinged that it had finished baking. He’d been so damn stupid. He’d been relying too much on others to do his thinking, which was always a bad idea.

“Morgan, where’s the sat phone?”

With her help, they rushed to the stacked supply crates and dug the phone out. Cutter pressed the green button to turn the phone on. Then he stared at the dial pad.
Who do I call? And what do I say?
Help, I’m stuck in a Russian mining complex in the middle of nowhere. Please come rescue me from zombies who have already ripped the heads of two men clean off?
Yeah. That was not going to fly.

“Ideas?” he asked.

Morgan grabbed the phone and began to dial a number. Cutter stopped her because the colonel and his men were already heading across the expanse of dirt and scattered tufts of grass toward the dormitory building.

“We can get to that later,” he said to her. “Grab what you can and we’ll follow them. They may be a bunch of chimps with guns, but there’s safety in numbers—if we watch them closely. I don’t want to stick around here waiting for whatever ripped those heads off to come back.”

Grabbing various packs, Gauge and Morgan swung them over their shoulders and handed one to Cutter. The bag weighed about sixty pounds.

“What the hell did you put in these things?” he asked.

“Just a bit of this, and a bit of that,” she said, smiling.

“You coming, Doc?” Cutter asked Dr. Martinez.

“Yes, may I have the phone?”

“Why?”

“I was given an emergency contact in case of troubles.”

He took the phone back from Morgan and slapped it into Dr. Martinez palm. “Call them and tell them to send the cavalry. Horses and all.”

Then he turned away from her and shook his head. A whole lotta things changed in his mind. Their whole mission to Ecuador just took on an entirely new perspective.

“Zombies,” he said to no one in particular. He shrugged to adjust the straps on his heavy pack. “We are going after a bunch of goddamned zombies.”