Pandora: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (17 page)

“Hey, Tommy. It’s me,” Jack replied. “We just crossed the state line. We’re going to drive straight through to you. Nonstop. Are you set for us?”

“All set, bro,” answered his brother. “When you get to Dad’s place, come to the side entrance by the marina. We’ll let you in.”

“Good deal.” Jack smiled, relieved. “Look, my cell is just about dead. I don’t even have one bar left. I’ll make my last call ten minutes out.”

“Roger that, Jack,” Tommy said. “We’ll be waiting for you.”

Jack turned the phone off and sighed. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. A few hours, and he’d be home.

The three other men were siphoning gas and filling up. Sean spat out the foul-tasting liquid and started to fill the extra fuel containers.

“Man,” he said, making a face and spitting again, “my mouth has more gas than my ass does.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Linda said from the car. “Remember, I sleep with you.”

They jokingly bantered with one another, volleying choice remarks as they hurriedly worked. When they were finished, they hopped back into their vehicles and were off. They hoped this was their final run.

Tommy disconnected and motioned Private First Class Mario Brutolli over. “Hey, Mario,” he said, as the short, muscular man came running up. “Didn’t you used to know your way around a boat?”

“Yes, Sarge,” the swarthy young man said. “My pop owned a nice fishing boat down in Seaside. She was a real beauty. Big too. He used to take my brother Jerry and me on her every weekend in the summer. Let me drive it too. Then, in the winter, we used to dry-dock her and fix her up. Why?”

“You know Jake Fine’s yacht there?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, you’re the new first mate.”

“No shit? The yacht? That rocks!”

Tommy chuckled. “And Luis Martinez was a shrimper in Texas when he was younger. He’s going to be second mate.”

“When’s this happening?” asked the very pleased Mario.

“Right now,” said Tommy. “You’ll work with Jake to make sure everything is shipshape and ready.”

“We…we’re leaving, Sarge?”

“I’m not sure,” Tommy answered. “Maybe down the road. Maybe sooner than we think.”

With that cryptic answer, Tommy went off to find Jake.

Jake was swimming in his pool. As Tommy came up, he got out. “Just getting in my exercise,” he said.

Tommy smiled, put his hand on Jake’s shoulder, and told him his plans. When he finished, Jake nodded thoughtfully, fingers stroking his chin, and said, “I think that’s doable. Let me go to the boat and look at my charts. I have a trip to plan.”

As Tommy walked to check the perimeter, a low-flying helicopter swiftly flew overhead, heading south. He watched the chopper fly toward Fort Lauderdale. That same one had flown over twice yesterday. He imagined someone north of them was as worried about the zombie horde as he was. The helicopter’s coming in low definitely didn’t please
him. He was out on patrol the last time it had flown over. The man in the passenger seat even waved at him. What worried Tommy was the reaction of the Zs as the chopper flew in low. They all looked up and reached for it. As the chopper flew away, some even walked in the direction it was traveling, trying to follow it. He didn’t want those idiots leading the whole horde up here.
Maybe I should take a little ride south
, he thought,
get as close as I can, and see what the situation is down there
.

Sean was cursing. As they reached the outskirts of Jacksonville, they had to stop. The entire city was in flames. Skyscrapers and smaller buildings were burning furiously, and I-95 cut right through the middle of the city. They tried to take alternate routes but found them either impassable either due to the tangle of multicar collisions or because they were packed with zombies.

As they got back on I-95, Sean heard a clunk under his Murano. Looking in the rearview mirror as he passed, he saw a piece of metal in the road.

“Shit!” he said aloud.

As they neared the conflagration, Mike pulled over in a wide, clear area, and the other two cars pulled alongside. Sean, Mike, and Jack got out.

“What do you think?” asked Mike, perplexed.

“I don’t think we have any damn choice,” replied Sean.

“We’ll have those tall buildings on each side, dropping burning pieces down on us,” noted Mike.

“Several cars are already on fire,” Jack added. “We’ll have to try to avoid them all.”

“We’ll have to chance it,” decided Sean, looking behind him and seeing some zombies making their way toward the cars. “We should leave a little space between the cars.” Jack and Mike looked at him. “If anything drops, it’ll only hit one of us,” Sean explained, “and then if the car is badly damaged, the other two can get the passengers out.”

Jack and Mike looked at each other and shrugged. “I guess…let’s do it.”

After the men got back into their vehicles, the trio of SUVs drove into the inferno, maintaining the same formation.

24

M
aster Sergeant Thomas Di Meola was sitting in the shotgun seat of the desert-tan command vehicle. Private Jamal Doakes was driving, and Privates Vincent Pasko and Paul Chen were in the back. Doakes was driving south down Route 1, continually changing streets as either zombies or obstacles impeded their way.

The helicopter from earlier had already headed back north. Tommy wanted to get as close to downtown Fort Lauderdale as they possibly could. He wasn’t worried about being followed home by Zs. They were going to cut west, then back north, on the return trip. He figured any undead following them would head west and not see them turn north.

Tommy turned to Jamal. “The Zs are getting a little too numerous,” he said. “Find the tallest building, and let’s get a bird’s-eye view.”

As they zigzagged through a couple of smaller streets to an insurance building he noticed, Tommy looked up. The helicopter he had seen before was coming back. With it was another copter; there were three men in each.

“Let’s see if we can get to the roof,” Tommy called out to his men.

They went into the lobby and ran to the stairs; the building was seven stories high. As they ran up, they heard an explosion. After reaching the door to the roof and finding it locked, Tommy took out his automatic and shot the lock open. By the time they got onto the flat roof and ran to the edge, two more explosions sounded. Standing at the waist-level
wall around the perimeter of the roof they saw the two copters hovering about three blocks away. An explosion burst beneath them.

Taking the binoculars and looking through them, Tommy clearly saw one of the men in the first helicopter take something baton shaped in his hand. Laughing, the man leaned through the open door, lit the object, and dropped it. Following it with the glasses, Tommy saw it fall among a large group of zombies and explode.

“Those stupid sons of bitches,” Tommy swore. “They’re dropping sticks of dynamite on the Zs!”

“They’re lucky they don’t blow themselves up,” Jamal exclaimed.

“What the hell are they trying to do?” asked Tommy.

Paul Chen looked at them and smirked. “It’s a little bit like redneck fishing, don’t you think, Sarge?”

They watched as the two copters dropped a couple more sticks down.

As one copter veered to the other side of the street, the other bird moved next to a corporate office building. There they began again.

By now, the zombies below were pretty riled up. Between the rotor noise, the explosions, and the birds themselves juking back and forth, the walking dead in the streets were moaning, growling, and trying to reach up to them. The soldiers also observed more zombies pouring in from surrounding streets.

“Stupid assholes,” Tommy swore quietly.

He looked up at the corporate building itself; catching some movement, he focused on the roof line, where he saw two figures. They were coming up to the edge. The copter was now only two blocks away from him. After taking the binoculars from his eyes, he found he could still see the figures clearly. He moved his eyes down and saw the helicopter hovering about five stories directly below the two figures.
No
, he thought.

Putting the glasses to his eyes again, Tommy watched the two figures (zombies, now that he saw them closer) climb the low wall and, one immediately following the other, jump off. Following them down, he saw them both land directly on the copter’s spinning rotors.

The bird spun to the side, then turned around ninety degrees. Smoke was pouring from the main rotors when the tail whipped around and
struck the building. The facade’s limestone flew in one direction and the tail section the other. The collision also threw the bomber out of the open doorway.

As he landed in the middle of the mass of undead, the mortally wounded bird spiraled down twice then dropped like a stone. As it hit the street at the base of the building, it exploded in a huge fireball. The enormous explosion shattered windows for two blocks; broken glass fell like knives on the zombies below. The explosion sent pieces of metal, plastic, and zombies in all directions. One jagged metal shard flew and hit the other copter’s engine. Smoke immediately poured from under the cowling. The bird dropped ten feet then turned and started flying back up north. A long black trail of smoke stretched out behind it like a trail of bread crumbs leading home.

Tommy turned to his men. “We’d better get out of here right now.”

Paul Chen looked over the edge and moaned, “Oh, shit, Sarge. Look.”

They looked over and saw the zombies—first just a couple, then more and more—slowly making their way north, following the thick smoke trail. The men peered all the way down the street to the south. Like a wave in a football stadium, the zombies turned and followed each other northward. The horde was moving.

25

J
ake, Mario, and Luis were aboard Jake’s yacht,
My Time
. They were making sure everything was ready to go if they had to pick up anchor. Jake and his usual crew always kept everything shipshape. All was spotless, shiny, and mechanically perfect, so there was little to do in that regard. Mario and Luis were loading supplies aboard. Rations, ammunition, water, and firearms—they all were stocked on board. Tommy wanted enough brought on so that there would be enough for them to survive on if they left the area. As he said to the men, if they found they didn’t need it, they could always throw it overboard.

Private Travis Cassidy was standing guard on the dock. He looked at the boat morosely. A farm boy from Oklahoma, he didn’t want anything to do with boats. Shaking his head, he thought,
I’m going to be so freaking seasick
.

Meanwhile the three SUVs were in the middle of the inferno. Mike’s GMC Yukon was doing a stellar job of forcing its way through the obstacles. Burning embers and soot continually fell all around them, and the smoke was starting to increase.

Jack was driving the last SUV in the motorcade. Keeping a ten-yard distance from Sean’s car, he continued to follow the snaking formation. A burning piece of paper floated down and landed on his windshield before spinning off to the side.

Malik leaned forward in his seat. Pointing in front of him, he said, “Hey, Jack. Look.”

“What?”