Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) (28 page)

“Out of the question,” he reiterated.

“I’ll go,” Rebekah announced. “I’ll never forget that face.”

I looked into her stern face and said, “No.”

“Excuse me?” she laughed.

“If anything ever happened to you,” I pulled her close and whispered.

“Nothing will happen to me,” she breathed into my ear. “I love you. Everyone needs to do their part.”

She kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand.

“Major,” she said.

“Head to the LZ and see Captain Tansy,” he replied. “She’s coordinating the air ops.”

“Yes, sir.” Rebekah smiled, grabbed her gun, and scurried out of the tent, shooting one last glance over her shoulder as the tent flap swung closed.

“Contact again,” one of the Californian radio operators said.

“Where?” I asked.

“The whole line, sir,” he said, his face pale.

The sound of gunfire erupted all along the line as the Horde moved across the river. A few of the heavy artillery guns that the Californians had brought erupted from a kilometer behind us. The shells splashed into the water and blasted zombie guts and mud into the air, but still the horde kept moving forward and made physical contact with the first line—the Cascadians still on the front.

“We’re still seventy minutes from an orbital solution and sixty from peak concentration,” Holland reported.

“Taking casualties on the line,” an aide announced from the adjoining tent. “Minor so far, but increasing.”

“Wake up the locals and get them down there,” Christensen said.

The thundering of the helicopters taking off gave me a little bit of hope, until I realized Rebekah was aboard. She called with her helmet-mounted video link.

“I figured y’all would wanna see this,” she said.

I transferred her video feed up to one of the screens by flicking the call from my digibook screen toward one of the large displays.

We could see the shuddering, rattling interior of the helicopter, and her gun across her lap—and the blank faces of a dozen Californian special forces readying themselves to be dropped into hell.

Sparks flew through the cabin and she screamed.

“Taking ground fire. I think it’s a fifty cal,” the pilot yelled over the radio.

One of the special forces troops in front of her was doubled over, bleeding from the abdomen.

“On the ground in ten seconds!” the pilot yelled.

The door in the back of the chopper swung wide and the troops poured out. The ghoul operating the fifty-cal on the flatbed swung it in an arc toward the helicopter and hit a few of the disembarking troops before the door-gunner on the chopper took him out. Another ghoul tried to get up on the gun and was similarly cut down. The truck’s fuel tank ruptured and spouted flames into the air.

Rebekah helped drag a wounded soldier back into the helicopter and then ran with the Californian troops. They fired into the trucks. Zombies started pouring through the parked vehicles and engaging the Californians at point-blank range. A few more of the special ops guys fell and were utterly ripped to pieces. Rebekah was panting, running, searching the trucks.

“The hell is that?” she said, peering into the canvas flap of a big green ancient army truck.

I could see on her camera. It was definitely a piece of older technology. She climbed into the truck. A dial indicated the number of hertz and the pattern. It was an emitter of some type.

“Destroy it, Rebekah.”

She smashed it with the butt of her gun, over and over. Sparks flew, the blue sizzle of electric lightning raced along the edge. The humming stopped.

“Suppose that’s the ULF generator they’ve been controlling the zombies with?” MacDonald asked Christensen.

Christensen nodded.

“But the zombies are still attacking?” I asked one of the comm guys.

“Cascadian forces Two-Alpha and Three-Alpha are falling back behind the locals on the third trench,” he confirmed. “California Bravo and Charlie companies are pushing forward through the line.”

I turned to Christensen. “How are they using the ultra-low frequency to control them?”

He shrugged, “Somehow the frequency syncs with their natural brain patterns. It gives them moments of clarity through the haze of the virus-induced side effects.”

“Ebenezer said that he traced the ULF to at least one of three places,” I mumbled, fidgeting with my digibook. I accessed the Central Library and found an article on old United States Navy ULF stations. They had used these stations hundreds of years ago to communicate with submarines at sea.

“It’s not one of three,” I said triumphantly. “It’s all three! Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia. If you look at the angle and the intensity of the three likely signal vectors….”

I punched something up to the main display screen from my tablet. The trendline from the three stations went west-northwest across the country.

“The signal is pushing them right toward Cascadia!” Holland exclaimed.

We wouldn’t have an orbital solution for another sixty minutes and our line was collapsing under the weight of the zombie attack.

“Holland, you gotta tell Fleet to get a solution on these locations,” I shouted, pointing at the ULF sites.

“Already done,” he said excitedly, reaching for his digibook.

“Rebekah,” I shouted back into my digibook, “good work.”

“Thanks, Pax,” she sighed.

I watched on the screen as she flipped open the canvas tent and saw nothing but zombies. She immediately flipped it closed.

“Shit,” she murmured.

“How’s the strike team doing?” I asked Captain MacDonald.

“They’ve taken heavy losses and are being overrun. They’re retreating back to the chopper.”

“Without Rebekah?” I screamed angrily.

“They’ve got to pull out,” he said.

“Unacceptable,” I said, reaching for a spare rifle.

“You can’t go out there,” Christensen put his hand firmly on my shoulder.

“I’m not leaving her there!” I yelled.

“We’ll get her out,” he said. We’ve got a second team moving in to cover the extraction.”

“Rebekah, you’re gonna have to wait a little bit longer,” my voice quivered into my headset.

“I’ll keep my head down,” she said quietly.

“The Cascadians and the Californians are taking heavy losses now, sir,” one of the comm specialists said. “20 percent casualties. The locals have fallen back entirely.”

One out of every five men and women who’d set in on the trenches were dead or wounded.

“There’s nothing more I can do here,” I said. “You have your orders. I’m heading to the line.”

I’d never fired a real gun in my life, but I knew I’d killed thousands of fake zombies in
Slayers
and hundreds of real ones at Cheyenne Mountain.

No one tried to stop me this time as I ran toward the front, picking up a piece of body armor and a helmet.

Some of the locals were running away from the fight, west toward Magic Valley. I grabbed one by the shirt.

“Where are you going?” I yelled at him.

“If you go that way, you’re dead!” he screamed, pointing toward the fray.

“If you go that way, you’re dead too!” I shouted, pointing toward Magic Valley. “You believe in God, right? It’s not time to meet him just yet!”

Helicopters were now lifting off from the landing zone and strafing into the fray. Grenades popped.

I started running again and noticed a few of the fleeing locals were running along with me through the rows of tents. The trenches were a few hundred meters away. I fumbled with my communicator on my battle helmet.

“Rebekah, are they there to get you out yet?”

“There’s a helicopter hovering a hundred meters away,” she whispered. “The back door’s open and they’re shooting at zombies but I don’t think they’re landing.”

“You’ve gotta run for it,” I urged.

“No,” she said quietly, “I’ll never make it through this swarm. And I still haven’t found the Reverend.”

“We’ll get him later,” I pleaded.

“No,” she whispered harshly. “He killed my family. He killed your family. He’s going to face judgment for his sins.”

I stopped and pulled out my digibook to see her helmet cam feed. She jumped out of the flap of the truck into the thick of the zombies, firing wildly, and running around to the other side of the truck. She climbed under it and the zombies ran past her. One sniffed like he was on to her scent, and inched closer to her position. His head exploded with a Gauss round from her rifle, and she was on the move again.

I heard a scream from somewhere to my left. I watched a Californian soldier get eaten by two runner zombies, even though we were hundreds of meters behind the trenches. I fired a few rounds at the zombies, killing both of them. I was more than surprised by my accuracy.

I rushed over, hoping to help, but it was obviously too late. The Californian soldier was bleeding from a ripped open neck and from several deep gashes and bite wounds all over his body. They’d been eating him alive. He was shaking and twitching. Even if he survived, he’d likely been so infected that not even a heavy round of anti-virals could save him. I picked up my gun, and I’ll never know what made me do it, but I shot him in the head, ending his suffering.

I continued racing into the fray. The living were pulling the dying out of the mess. Enhanced forms, leaking maintenance fluid and missing limbs were stumbling backwards. Some were dragging the bodies of Californians, bleeding bright red and covered with the dark black blood of the zombies.

By the time I reached the rear-most trench, I could finally see the fighting down the hill in front of me. The first and second trench had been completely overrun, and fighting was heavy in the third and fourth. There were countless wounded in the fifth and sixth, still clutching their weapons and ready to give their last.

A helicopter swooped low overhead and hovered for a second above me, then lowered a cable. I grabbed it, and it swung me rapidly up into the air as the chopper turned to the east over the river.

The cable hauled me into the cargo hold. Captain MacDonald was aboard, and he could sense my confusion.

“All of the teams we’ve sent in to get the Reverend have come up empty, and haven’t come back,” he said angrily. “We spotted a small group of heat signatures about a kilometer north of the action. I’m betting he’s out there.”

“What happened to Rebekah?” I asked.

“Her video comm got shattered. We’re gonna swoop low over her last known location and see if we can pick her up.”

I leaned back to the open window and saw us descending over the cluster of trucks, several of which were burning. Two crumpled bulks that used to be helicopters belched flames on the ground. The zombies temporarily cowered back from the dust whipped up by the blades. I took advantage of their pause to fire into their ranks, and the door gunner did the same, dropping rows of zombies. I looked under the truck, and saw Rebekah’s gun, but not her. I scanned the horizon and saw her atop the cab of another vehicle, laying low.

“Go!” I pointed. “There!”

The helicopter lifted off and moved to hover a few meters above the truck. Rebekah reached up and tried to grab the bottom of the cargo door.

“Lower!” I shouted.

I reached down and grabbed her, pulling her up right as the truck was swarmed by runners and ghouls.

“Thanks,” she said. “My rifle stopped working. I thought I was a goner.”

We hugged tight, and the chopper lifted off to the east, surrounded by a full squad of night-vision goggles equipped, body-armored soldiers, clutching their weapons. Two held large rocket-launcher weapons.

“Thirty seconds!” shouted the pilot. The door gunner checked the breech on his minigun.

“I love you, Rebekah,” I said loudly, over the rumble of the spinning rotors.

She kissed me tightly.

“Got a new gun for me?”

MacDonald pointed to a locker over her head. She opened it and there was a hefty sniper rifle in it. She giggled and patted it approvingly.

“Ten seconds!” the pilot shouted.

We dropped low over a single tent. There was no movement around the outside.

“Out the door!” screamed MacDonald, and the chopper disgorged its contents.

The team pushed into the tent.

Inside sat one man on a chair. He wore a black robe. Rebekah raised her long-barreled rifle to shoot him and I pushed it down.

“Why?” she snarled at me.

I pointed at his hand. He held a black metal box in his fist. Wires led back to the stack of grey metal cylinders behind him.

“The nukes….” MacDonald mumbled.

“Indeed,” the Reverend smirked. “And this is a kill switch. If you shoot me, I let go. Poof. Everything goes.”

“How do we get you to stop?” MacDonald asked.

“You don’t,” the Reverend laughed. “I call the shots here.”

My digibook flashed. We had an orbital firing solution on the ULF arrays on the east coast.