He blocked it with his ax as he turned back towards me. The shock of the hit reverberated all the way down my arm. I dropped my badly nicked blade and he dropped his ax.
I still had my empty 1911 in my left hand. I passed it to my right and gripped it by the red-hot barrel like some old time pirate. He was drawing a long curved knife but I dove on him before he could get it out. I hammered the end of my metal pistol grip into his face over and over again until Ethan and William dragged me to my feet.
The zombies were closing in and we had nothing left.
The helo came in low as the three of us readied ourselves for death in the courtyard. It blinded us with its spotlight. On the far side its minigun chewed threw the horde. Flares, fires, and artillery explosions formed the background. We stood there shielding our eyes. Later it would be said that we were saluting. The dead lay all around us. Above us flew the tattered Star Spangled Banner. The Copilot leaned out and snapped the picture.
The rotor wash blew over the rotted wood flagstaff which had stood just long enough. It fell into one of the burning buildings. The facsimile of Betsy Ross’s flag burst into flames. The Seahawk touched down just long enough for us to jump in.
Epilogue… Seattle
“Anyway our picture should be on the cover of the next issue of Time Magazine. William and Ethan decided to join a PBR crew since IST5 is being reconstituted. They didn’t want to serve under the new CO.”
“No wonder you are going to be making speeches. When you tell tall tales like that.” said Doc, who I did not think was still awake.
“My only question is how did the brass find out you could tell such a fanciful story?” commented Nick.
“Are you guys kidding me? Every word of that was true, beautifully poetic, but true. But I can’t help that I have a Liberal Arts Degree. In fact next week I sail for Hawaii to be the keynote speaker for the recommissioning ceremony for the Battleship Missouri.”
“It was good seeing you again, but we really need to head outta here. We start teaching tomorrow.” Nick said.
“Have you started the PowerPoint yet?” Doc asked.
“Nope.” Nick answered as they walked out.
I asked the bartender “Do you know anywhere I can find pretzels?”
He shook his head no and I walked out. I had to get back home and feed my rabbit. As I walked I pulled out my phone and began typing into the database.
Sex—female
Race—Caucasian
Hair—blond
Eyes—green
Age—20-25
Last known location—Austin TX
Identifying marks—scar on bridge of nose…
EAST BOUND AND DOWN
By
Alex McHale
The Evacuation of Manhattan, Z Day + 7
Chapter 1
Stewart Air National Guard base is a post 1996 relic of a joint Air Force / Army base that sits about 60 miles up the Hudson river from New York City. It was once a quiet regional international airport with a few second rate airlines , a heavy lift C-5 squadron on the Air Force side and a VIP helicopter detachment on the Army side. It was pretty disconnected from the rest of world, and a safe haven for senior military aviators to hang out and ride out the dogs days of the Hudson Valley summer to retirement.
Today, it was the busiest airport on the planet. Air Force heavy lift aircraft hogged the tarmac constantly coming and going. Their heavy engines rumbled the cracked pavement and rattled the Plexiglas windows of the bombed out terminal. LMTVs, HEMMET refuelers and maintenance teams scrambled in chaos like pissed off fire ants on an anthill. CH-47 Chinooks and their deep turbine engines and UH-60s roared all over the airfield, landing at PAX terminals and dropping off survivors from the Evac out of Manhattan.
“Clear two?”
“Clear”
“Rodger Starting Two” I pressed in, and release the starter button on the number 2 engine Power Control Lever.
Jackal flipped through some papers and hands me the mission packet “Looks like today is going to be a long one bro” he says with a smirk. I flip through the packet looking at a shitty Google earth picture of the intrepid. “They get the FARP (Forward Aircraft Refueling Point) set up yet?” I asked as I tucked the mission packet under the steel clip on my knee board.
“Almost, a bunch of Zs broke through the security barricade and overran that bitch, rumor has it the FARP guys stuck a flare in his HEMMET tank before they got waxed” Jackal said while packing a lip with chew.
One of our crew chief’s, “Slim” as we called him, keyed the mike from outside. With the ambient noise of the rotor system heard in the ICS he said “Yeah I saw that shit go down sir, talk about a bunch of fucking noobs…. The explosion was really cool.”
Slim was a bean pole of a SGT, standing at 6’7” he had to wear knee pads behind his gun even with the seat jacked all the way back as his long ass legs stuck into the side of the aircraft. He was a funny dude, he had “WARLOCK” spray painted on one side on his helmet visor, and a “Your mom sends me care” packages patch slapped across the other side. Slim is an avid World of Warcraft junkie with an addiction to blasting Zs, he was an awesome crew chief and could build a Black Hawk from the wheel s up if you gave him an aluminum block and a chisel, as an Wyoming native he grew up toting around a level action 30/30 before he would walk. Our other crew chief, SPC Thompson was as cherry as they come, but a good kid. Competent crew dogs were hard to come by, even at 19 and barely 120 pounds soaking wet Thompson knew how to dissect every avionics component he put his hands on and had the midas touch with the hydraulic system.
I advanced both engine control levels forward. The rotor system roared and the engines whined up in a furious roar and get your adrenaline pumping.
“Alright PCLs going to fly, rotor 100% bro, avionics are good, crew/pax.”
“Secure left rear.”
“Right rear.”
I looked back to see Thompson screwing with his seatbelt.
“Jackal you have the controls on the way out bro, I’ll take the radio calls, swap at palisades?”
“You got it Sir.”
“1-2 this 1-1 you guys ready to hit it?”
CW3 Jim Coffee was chalk two behind us, Jim was one of my most experienced pilots, a test pilot by day and a hippie by night. “Grim Jim” was from out west, up in Seattle Washington, back in Iraq he used to do Tai Chi on top of the Phalanx cannon every morning, and had gotten shot down 3 times as the sole survivor, hence his name. He was flying with WO1 “Buck” Baker, the FNG, fresh out of flight school.
“We are ugghhhhhh redcon 1.”
“Fucking new guys…” Jackal sneered and shook his head. “They always suck on the radios.”
“RodgO Calling tower” I tapped the radio selector switch on my ICS panel “Stewart tower, Voodoo 41, flight of two on bravo ramp, requesting present position departure to the south.”
“Rodger, Black Magic 41 you are clear for takeoff winds, 220 at 15 knots gusting 21.”
Jackal pulled in some power and we took off flying low over the airfield. The gigantic FEMA camp was packed full of civilians in temporary housing, aka the tent city, it was gruesome, piles of trash lay scattered everywhere while people slogged through the mud and swarmed LMTVs throwing out boxes of MRES, the smell of burning human remains and feces hovered over the camp like a pestilent smog, we cleared out of it and rolled down low over the Hudson River.