Tower of Charles
04 Jun
2221
I have been arguing with our group over the past three days about whether I should attempt to find the Davis family at Lake Charles. I have checked my charts and it is not that far. Of course if this becomes a reality, I will calculate the exact distance and fuel required to make the journey. The others seem to think that the risk far outweighs the benefit of finding them. John is neutral but Jan, Tara and Will are adamant that this could swiftly develop into a suicide mission.
We were able to charge up the satellite phones but unfortunately, as previously determined, there is no one to call with them. They seem to work fine, though, when we use them to dial up the other phones. It didn’t take long to figure them out. I just don’t know how the billing works. I know the phones belong to the airlines and I know that no one is left to send a bill for the satellite usage; I am just worried that there may be some sort of automated system shutoff when the phones reach a certain number of minutes.
I wonder what they are doing at Lake Charles airfield right now. I wonder if they even knew their note would be found. I feel the need to establish communications with them, even if it means just dropping one of the satellite phones out of the aircraft door with a makeshift parachute. At least it would be something. We could communicate with them, get more information, more ideas.
08 Jun
0226
I am leaving this morning. John and the others are staying behind in the event I bring someone back. I don’t want to terribly overstress the aircraft. I hope they have stayed near the airfield at Lake Charles. As I sit here and stare at the yellow piece of paper that is almost a month old, I wonder if they still live or if they were taken under siege as John and I that day at the tower. William almost begged to come with me but as I mentioned before, I may be bringing back survivors. I have no way of knowing, so I cannot take the chance on extra aircraft weight. I am bringing two fully charged satellite phones and my usual load out of one pistol with fifty 9mm rounds and carbine with a few hundred rounds. A couple days of food and water will also make its home in the avionics bay of the aircraft. In this journal, I thought I would write something pithy and creative in the event they would be my last written words. Since I am neither pithy nor creative I shall borrow great words from a man long (really) dead:
“To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”—Melville/Ahab
Off I go to the Pequod.
2201
One hundred and seventy miles as the crow flies, that was the distance to Lake Charles. It wouldn’t be a straight shot for me, as I had decided to fly over Hobby airfield again to see if the fuel truck would still be available in the event I needed it on the way back. I had five hundred nautical miles before my aircraft would start dropping out of the sky, very permanently.
As I buzzed the Hobby at two thousand feet, I could see the fuel truck below just as we had left it. I could also see that one of the terminal windows had shattered and numerous undead were streaming in and out of this new opening, which spilled out onto a rooftop roughly twenty feet above the concrete taxiway below.
I couldn’t see any of them near the fuel truck area. However, I knew that they had no fear of heights and would walk freely off the roof if they thought they could make a meal by their efforts. Satisfied with what I saw, I headed northeast toward Lake Charles. The sun was up fully and shining right into my eyes as I leveled off at seven thousand feet. After thirty minutes I could see the remains of the city of Beaumont in the distance. I decided to go lower and possibly find survivors. According to my chart this was a medium-sized city.
Smoke and fire swirled about and inside the taller buildings. They looked like large matchsticks of varying height, each with its own unique shape of fire and smoke. This trip could have been avoided if the satellite photography system in the compound was working properly. We lost the Louisiana pass (satellite footprint) two weeks ago. I would have loved to have typed in the coordinates of Lake Charles and found my answer without ever having to leave.
Power was off in this area. All of the red anticollision beacons installed on the tall radio towers were out, compounding the fun. I was flying low and slow, scanning Beaumont’s city streets and buildings that were not on fire. I strained my eyes best I could but saw no survivors. The only things out walking on this nice summer day are them . . . those that are not us.
After three passes over what I thought was the center section of the city, I was convinced that no survivors remained. At least none that had any way of signaling. Lake Charles airfield was roughly fifty miles east of Beaumont. At current rate of speed, I would be there in twenty-eight minutes. This turned out to be a very long wait. I was apprehensive about meeting new survivors. I had no idea what to expect. The note in my pocket clearly says “Davis family,” but I still didn’t know if this Davis fellow would turn out to be friend or foe. Hell, the note was dated for the fourteenth of last month, I had no guarantees they were even still vertical or at least living vertical.
It didn’t take long before I could see the boot-shaped lake getting bigger off the nose of the aircraft. On the chart, this lake was just south and a little west from my destination. I had to find them. Having another pilot in the event anything happened to me would be useful to the others. At least having Davis around would be sort of an insurance policy. The sun was still high in the sky. It was almost two o’clock when I arrived in the area of the airfield. It took a little window shopping to pick it out over the clutter and smoke of the urban areas below. Lowering my nose, I slowed to seventy knots and began my descent. I could see numerous figures below near the runway.
From where I was it appeared that there were numerous survivors. I could see their brightly colored clothing even from this distance, unlike the soiled, worn clothing of the undead. It even seemed that they had people working, as I could see someone carrying signal cones—the cones that have a flashlight attached to them and are used to signal the flight deck to a parking spot.
I don’t know what had caused me to see what I wanted, but I soon realized that I had been fooled. This airfield was overrun. A large section of fence was out on the eastern side of the airfield and the undead had overwhelmed the area. Leveling my nose, I attempted a pass at the tower in the event they had made a stand inside. Nothing. Nothing but them. They were everywhere, even inside the tower. As I neared the departure end of the runway I could see a small aircraft sitting below. The doors were open and there were bodies strewn all around the aircraft. I lost count of how many. Several of them were gathered around the propeller section of the aircraft as if they’d walked into it and were sliced up on the spot. I could also see numerous body parts, arms mostly, around the forward section of the aircraft.
My suspicions were confirmed as I began my climb out of the area. Practically the moment I had decided that it was time to leave and go back home, I spotted them. I could see two people waving frantically from the catwalk that surrounded the airfield’s main water tank tower. Waving for their lives below were a young boy and a woman. I made another pass and rocked my wings to signal that I had seen them. There was a sleeping bag and some boxes sitting on the tower with them. It seemed unlikely that they had survived after being exposed to the elements for who knows how long, trapped on the tower. I was moving too fast to be able to get a good look at them, but slow enough to know that they were alive.
The tower was positioned off the airfield on the other side of the broken chain-link fence. I would have found them sooner by the masses of undead that were pawing on the pillars below if it were not for the bottom of the tower being shrouded in trees and smaller undergrowth. I could see the undead, relentlessly begging upward, when I flew nearly on top of the water tower.
Landing at the airfield was not an option. With the break in the fence the scores of undead gathered below the survivors would pour in and easily swarm me. They would be drawn to the noise of the engine. An even bigger problem would be taking off again without hitting one with catastrophic effect. I wanted to figure out a way to tell them I was coming back for them but with my adrenaline rushing at the prospect of dealing with the undead, I could not.
I brought the aircraft up and departed the airfield, searching for a suitable landing strip. I cruised east, flying as low as possible looking for anywhere within ten miles that I could set her down. According to my chart and the view from the cockpit, I was flying directly over Interstate Highway 10. I could see cars all over the highway in the eastbound lane. However, the westbound lane was relatively empty. I kept a mental note of how long and how fast I was flying so as to anticipate my hike back to the water tower.
As my mental calculations kept spinning in my head, I noticed yet another post-apocalyptic odyssey on the ground. A large section of I-10 was missing, along with an adjacent overpass. There was a green military vehicle parked near an explosion crater and numerous “Danger” signs posted around the area. I suppose that either the highway was intentionally blown in the days after the outbreak or the bridge collapsed and chronic erosion took the rest of the highway. Either way this was my opportunity and I had to commit. I commenced an emergency landing on the interstate. I remembered driving this very strip of highway two years before when I was transferred for military training and now I would be landing an aircraft on it.
It was clear. I could see some debris in the distance, but I would be well clear of it before it became an issue. I brought her down, but not without complications. I began to apply my brakes to slow my speed down the strip of road. One, two, then four of them shuffled out of the high, grassy median of the highway. Not as many as I would have thought. As I pressed the brakes a little harder, I felt a jolt in the pedals and the aircraft turned sharply to the right. I had lost one of my brakes. I had no choice but to apply opposite rudder to straighten the aircraft out and just ride it out until the aerodynamic drag stopped me.
Now, the debris that I thought would not be a factor suddenly became a big one. I tapped the good brake while applying opposite rudder to straighten my yaw, each time kissing the grass on the right side of the highway. I stopped barely short of the debris that would have resulted in a likely fatal crash. The obstruction and mess blocking my roll fifty meters in the distance was nothing more than another blast hole, a green army truck and collapsed overpass. I doubted that two overpasses would coincidentally collapse like that. They were likely a result of professional demolition. I barely had enough room to turn the aircraft around and get it set up for takeoff. That is, if I made it back. I shut the engine down, taking special care to keep an eye on the small numbers approaching as I readied my pack for the expedition.
I reached into the backseat of the aircraft and pulled out my carbine and magazines. I stuffed the extra magazines in my pack and put the other four “go-to” mags in easily accessible pockets. My sidearm was already at my side. I placed four bottles of water and two MRE packages in the pack also. I had no idea how long they had been surviving on the tower or if they had been without water for very long.
I shut the aircraft door and turned around, shock-startled by the snarling, decomposing face of one of the creatures. I struck it in the temple with the butt of my rifle and kicked it hard in the knee, bringing it to the ground. That one wasn’t worth the bullet or the byproduct of the loud rifle report. It didn’t move again as I walked away from the aircraft.
I walked perpendicular to the interstate into the woods. I would shadow the road from here, safer from their ever-searching, always vigilant gaze. I could see them through the trees intermittently as I passed. They seemed confused, knowing something of interest was near, but unsure how to benefit from it. It was hot and humid but I kept on; my soul had no choice. I finally made it to the point where the first demolitions had occurred. I hadn’t noticed the undead soldier on my first flyover, as he was in my blind spot on the other side of the truck when I made the pass. It wasn’t difficult to tell what happened to him. The back of his green coat was shut in the driver’s-side door, prohibiting movement. His coat was zipped up to his chest and he was wearing a Kevlar helmet strapped to his chin. He was missing large chunks of flesh and muscle from his shoulder and neck. It was apparent that he had rushed out of the truck only to shut his coat in the door, inviting catastrophe. I suppose the Darwin award had a winner for this month.
No point in letting him see me, as he would only pound on the truck like a drum and invite more creatures. I needed to leave him just as he was. Part of me wanted to put him out of his misery, as he was a fellow military man. I quietly walked around to the passenger side of the large truck and had a look inside. Sitting in the seat was an M-9 pistol. The window was rolled up and the door was locked on my side. I only had my rifle and pistol and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the survivors to have a weapon for the rescue operation. I changed my mind and made the decision to kill the soldier as a trade for the pistol. I stepped down off the running board of the truck and walked to the rear. It was a transport truck with a canvas-covered wagon-type bed. I peered into the bed. I could see nothing of use in the back of the truck—just wooden crates full of God knows what. Probably explosives. That wasn’t my field of expertise.
I picked up a large chunk of leftover interstate and tossed it on the concrete near the creature’s feet to make it look the other way as I advanced. It worked. I quickly approached the thing and shoved the muzzle of my weapon underneath the helmet, getting around the Kevlar protecting its head. I squeezed off one round. The creature went limp and just hung there until I opened the door. I checked its pockets. Nothing of value. I took the M-9 and left the scene.
I didn’t have much time to figure out a way to get them off the water tower. We needed to be out of here before sundown. Neutralizing the creatures was not an option. I had the advantage of a brain and firepower, but there were just too many of them. I needed another way. It seemed the only option was to run up to them and start screaming or shooting, drawing them from the tower, which was similar to the way I extracted the Grisham family. That was also too dangerous, as I did not have a working car to lead them away. More lack of planning. I had planned only to land at Lake Charles, make contact and possibly transport survivors to Hotel 23. I didn’t plan for another ridiculous rescue effort.
The water tower was in view. I could see one of them on the catwalk. I tried to wave my arms and signal but there was no response. It almost made me second-guess myself. I wondered if I had gone through this trouble only to be saving two corpses. It was then that my efforts were reaffirmed. I could see a small male figure urinating off the edge of the railing onto the corpses below. Although I could not see the corpses through the undergrowth, I knew what the boy was doing. He was mischievously aiming for their heads.
I briefly chuckled to myself and got back to business. The water tower was only about ten meters from the airport perimeter fence. The top of the fence was not barbed and I could easily climb over it, so I jogged to a section out of view of the creatures and did just that. As soon as I hit the ground I started running toward the hangar. I saw a row of electric-powered luggage carts plugged into a charging bank behind the hangar. I slowly moved over to them. I had no idea how long the power had been out in this area so I didn’t know if they would still operate. I unlatched one of them and pulled it out to the side of the hangar so that I could get a good look at it. I had drawn a curious corpse on the other side of the fence. It must have seen me jump over.
There were no keys for the small luggage cars, I suppose to avoid foreign object debris (FOD) damage to the aircraft engines in the event the keys were dropped on the taxiway. I turned the switch to the on position, sat down and pressed the accelerator. The electric engine jolted over but the cart did not move. I tried another. There were several, all in a row behind the building. On the third cart, I was successful. It hummed to life and I immediately hopped on and drove toward the broken section of the fence near the water tower. I stopped on the center of the runway and got out, leaving the luggage cart on. I shouldered my rifle and began shooting at the base of the tower, taking down as many as I could before every undead eye in a two-mile radius looked my way.
I kept firing until the mass of them started pouring out of the opening in the fence, arms outstretched and wanting me. I waited until they were fifty meters distant before I got back into the cart and drove away, drawing the undead away from the tower. As I sped down the runway I reloaded my magazine. I couldn’t tell but if I were to guess I would say there were at least two to three hundred of them behind me.
I was at the end of the runway. I got out and started shooting at them again. They were about three hundred yards away at this point. I had some time. I killed the ones near me that were already inside the airport perimeter first. Then I started selectively picking off the large crowd, aiming for the ones most distant first. That would buy me more time before they caught up to me when I made my transition back to the tower.
They were now at one hundred yards. There were so many flies buzzing around the mass it was sickening. I could easily hear the flies’ collective buzz over their moans. I would have to say that the worst thing about them is their dried, decomposing faces. Their lips locked in a permanent snarl with bony hands reaching for purchase. It was time to roll. I jumped back in the cart and circled around the mass and put the accelerator to the floor. This thing had limitations on its speed for safety. I was only going ten or fifteen miles per hour at best. As I neared the tower I screamed for them to get ready. I couldn’t tell if they heard me or not. The bulk of the creatures were almost one thousand yards away. We had time, but I still had to take care of the dozen or so that had remained at the base of the tower. The battery in the cart was beginning to show signs of drain.
I was at the break in the fence. The foliage was restricting my view and I had no way of knowing exactly what was hiding inside. I opened fire on what I thought was a head. I gave up on this tactic and carefully walked into the undergrowth under the tower. The ones that were left behind were probably deaf, as they were in advanced stages of decomposition. They probably didn’t even hear my gunfire. Many of them had only one eye, or none at all. They were easy targets. It was not long before the base of the tower was secure. I called up to the survivors to get down as fast as they could.
I heard a woman’s commanding voice say, “Danny, do as the man says.”
Then the boy replied nervously, “Yes, Granny.”
The boy went first. He was about twelve years old with brown hair and dark brown eyes with a light complexion. Then came the female. She looked to be in her late fifties or even early sixties. She had red curly hair and was slightly overweight. They were both on the ground holding what few belongings they had, looking to me for answers. My confidence seemed to drain along with the golf cart battery after seeing so many of the creatures. I mustered up what acting ability I had (Abraham Lincoln in kindergarten) and feigned confidence, telling them to follow me. Before we left I took a zip tie out of my pack and went over to the luggage cart.
They were closer now, about six hundred yards, and closing fast. I climbed into the luggage cart and put it into reverse. A loud warning beep sounded. I zip-tied the pedal down so that it would go until it hit something or the battery was completely depleted. I jumped out and rolled to avoid injury as the cart drove off, beeping loudly, in the direction of the undead mass. We headed back to the aircraft the same way I had come in, taking special care to remain undetected as we clumsily traipsed through the foliage parallel to Interstate 10. I could hear loud moans coming from behind us from the direction of the airport. We were upwind from them. No doubt they could somehow smell us, even though I admit I never bothered to examine one closely enough to see if it even breathed.
As we journeyed through the woods in the general direction of the aircraft, I handed the woman the M-9 that I had stolen from the army transport truck earlier. She told me that her name was Dean and that this was her grandson, Danny. I shook both of their hands and pulled out the yellow handwritten note that I had found hidden in the fuel truck at Hobby Airport.
The woman looked at the note. Her bloodshot eyes began to tear up and she stopped for a moment, looking into my eyes. She reached out her arms and hugged me while she cried. My first thought was that Mr. Davis was a close friend and family member of hers and that the note had somehow surfaced painful recent memories of his untimely demise.
“I know you are unhappy, but we have to keep moving. There are many of those creatures around. The golf cart won’t fool them for long,” I told her.
She insisted that she needed a minute or two to get her bearings. What could I say? If my mother ever found out I had disrespected my elder I’d get my ass kicked.
I asked the woman what had happened to Mr. Davis and his family.
She replied, “Danny and I are the Davis family. I left the note at Hobby Regional last month, right before we flew here.”
Puzzled and feeling the ever-so-slight sting of sexism in the back of my mind, I humbly inquired who flew the plane.
She smiled and for a brief second looked a little younger and said, “I did. I am a certified pilot, or used to be, when being a certified pilot meant something.”
Holding back my look of jackassery, I scanned the area for any threat and continued talking to the woman named Dean. Danny sat on the ground in front of her feet, his small head scanning all around for threats.
I felt peaceful as I spoke to this woman, almost as if she was the last grandmother left on the planet and I wanted to hear her stories.
. . . Now wasn’t the time.
My main reason for stopping was to give them an emotional rest from what had just happened at the water tower. Although the woman was more than capable of handling herself, she was still an older woman and I felt that they had needed this brief break in the action. The woman called Dean showed obvious signs of malnutrition. Loose skin hung from her arms and legs as a testament to her love for her grandson. Danny didn’t look great, either, but I could tell that food had been given up for his survival.
With guilt and a little sorrow in my voice, I made the suggestion that we keep moving and get to the aircraft as soon as possible. It would be very difficult to find the fuel truck at Hobby if we were forced to fly at night. As we walked, I tried to keep Dean’s mind off today’s events by quietly asking her why she learned to fly. She was eager and happy to talk about it. As she whispered, I kept glancing past her face into the breaks in the trees that intermittently revealed the interstate. From time to time during our move to the plane I saw them.
She quietly spoke as she walked of how she was a retired pilot, formerly of the New Orleans Fire Department, and how she missed flying and helping people in need. She also mentioned her age in the conversation, saying that she had retired ten years ago when she had turned fifty-five. I couldn’t believe that the woman had survived as long in this, keeping this young boy alive. I was truly in awe and fully respected this woman’s will to survive.
There were a few creatures up the interstate toward the airfield between the aircraft and our group. The moans of the dead were almost to the point of imagination at this distance. I told Dean how I had lost my left wheel brake in the landing and said that I hoped we wouldn’t have to abort takeoff because there would be a nice, big, green army truck waiting for us at the end of this strip of interstate. She didn’t seem to worry and never questioned where my piloting skills came from. She just seemed thankful to be alive. After arriving at the aircraft, I opened the door and almost caught myself shielding Danny’s eyes from the corpse I had killed near the aircraft earlier. What was the point? The boy had probably pissed on more of the undead than I had ever seen.
After inspecting the aircraft and strapping in we started the takeoff checklist. Both Dean and I put on the internal communications headsets and she helped me run the checklist, as she had over two hundred hours in this particular model aircraft, much more than I had. The engine started with no problem. I gave the aircraft power and began my forward roll. There was no use testing the brakes. The area was clear; I kept my roll to fifty knots. A single corpse was approaching the concrete of the interstate from the grassy median separating I-10 east and west. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.
I then felt the yoke controls of the aircraft being pulled back to me. Dean’s voice over the internal communications said, “We can make this climb.” I couldn’t believe it. This climb was even steeper than the time John and I had to fly out of the dirt track back before San Antonio was rocked off the map by nukes. It was not the engines that pushed me back into my seat. It was gravity. We had missed the corpse and taken off nearly a thousand feet before I would have. I had to buck up and admit to myself she was better at flying this plane than I was.
As we passed the truck, crater and collapsed overpass, the airport once again came into sight. Out of pure curiosity I asked Dean to take us over the airfield. As we flew over I could see them huddled around the electric cart at the opposite end of the airfield. It was wedged into the fence and I assume was still beeping, because the corpses were quite interested in it, trying to rip it apart. Maybe it was the smell, maybe the noise, maybe both.
She asked where we were headed. I told her to fly us to her fuel truck. She did.
Curious how she came to be on top of the water tower, I began asking some questions now that we were safely in the air. They landed at Lake Charles on the night of May 14. She didn’t go into detail, but her hands started to shake on the controls as she spoke of how she had to leave the aircraft running and both she and Danny had to run as fast as they could to the tower to avoid being eaten by them. All they had on the tower was what they could carry in one trip. I asked why she just didn’t escape in the aircraft. She answered my question with another by saying, “Didn’t you see all the bodies lying around the aircraft near the propeller when you flew over?” I could see that she was uncomfortable talking about it.
She told of how she used her sleeping blanket to get water for the both of them. She had climbed up to the top of the tower from the catwalk on the side at day six, one day after they had run out of their rationed potable water. Somehow, she unscrewed the plug on the top of the tower that was commonly used to test the water inside the tank. Using the blanket, she dipped it down into the tank and was able to get it submerged approximately six inches into the tank without dropping it in. She and Danny had lived off “freshly squeezed Louisiana blanket water” for nearly a month while enduring the endless moans of the dead below. She cried again when she spoke of this.
Over Hobby, we were in need of fuel. We might have been able to make it back to Hotel 23 on fumes, but I didn’t think it necessary to take the risk. I knew the fuel truck worked, I had used it recently and I knew it had plenty of fuel. The sun was approaching the western horizon as we circled Hobby to take a look. There were undead on the roof adjacent to the shattered terminal window and I did see a few of them on the ground below the roof. Some of them had rendered themselves immobile from the fall. Kinetics is a bitch.
I landed the aircraft and taxied it dangerously close to the fuel truck and told Dean to stay inside. She didn’t like this idea and wanted to help, but I could see in her eyes that she knew I was right. She wasn’t one hundred percent after starving, baking and freezing for a month on that tower, which is why, despite her high flight hours, I kept my hands on or near the controls the entire time she flew. She may have been a better stick, but she was worn down to the wire.
Leaving the engine running, as is my standard operating procedure for a situation like this, I made my way to the fuel truck. It wasn’t long before I had the tanks full and the aircraft positioned to take off again. At the hold short line on the Hobby runway I realized that I hadn’t checked in with Hotel 23 for nearly ten hours, nor did I have the headsets tuned to the VHF radio. Dean and I were talking on the way to Hobby and we were out of range of Hotel 23 anyway, so I’d switched the VHF off after taking off from the interstate to avoid the static. Dean was using the copilot’s controls to get the aircraft airborne in the same manner that she had used them to give control inputs to avoid the corpse on last takeoff. I kept my hands on the pilot controls, shadowing her.
On a side note, as we were taking off and as I began to tune the radios to contact Hotel 23, I noticed a corpse hanging out of the large Boeing aircraft cockpit window that John, Will and I had attempted to explore weeks ago. It was obviously stuck at the waist and I could see its arms moving in a futile attempt to drop itself to the tarmac. All of the recent activity at this airfield must have excited the undead entombed in that large, multi-million-dollar sarcophagus.
I keyed the microphone: “H23, this is Navy One, over.” John came back. He was borderline frantic. Using the proper radio discipline so as to not reveal any names or locations, he came back. “Navy One, this is H23, we have been trying to reach you for hours. It is not safe to land at H23 at this time.” I asked John what was going on. I was instantly worried that the only enemy more dangerous than the dead was attacking again.
He came back and told me that there had been a recent influx of undead to the landing area and the area surrounding the back fence and that it would not be safe to land as there were currently over one hundred of them standing where I would be attempting to touch down. I asked him if there was any way he could clear it out, as I was coming back with “one plus two souls onboard.” He replied that it would be too dark to do anything in twenty minutes. I agreed. It would be suicide to go out there at night and attempt to herd them out of the way, and even then there would be no guarantee that it would work. It would only take one of those things to hit the aircraft at eighty knots to cause terrible structural/engine damage and quick death to all onboard. We had to find somewhere to stay tonight, fast.
Eagle Lake airfield was out of the question for obvious reasons. I would not be willing to take a chance and land the aircraft in an unknown field. I had to find an airfield. I began scanning my chart for any possible candidates. On the chart was a very small airstrip called Stoval about fourteen miles southwest of H23. That would have to do. The sun would be down by the time we were there, so it was going to have to be another NVG landing.
This time I was not willing to cut the engines, as we had no guaranteed shelter to escape to if this went south on us. We had to take our chances with the engine noise. Not knowing how Dean would react, I asked Danny to reach into my bag and pull out the hard plastic green case. He did. Dean was at the controls. I began to explain to her what we had to do and that we basically had no choice in the matter. I asked her to cut the exterior collision lights and be prepared to give me control when it became too dark for her to see any detail on the ground. I pointed out the airfield we were heading for. She slightly altered heading and we made way.
I pulled the NVGs out of the case and strapped them on my head. I wanted to give my eyes plenty of time to adjust, just to make sure. I turned the intensity down so low that the goggles were acting more as a blindfold than a night vision aid. It was getting very dark outside. I asked Dean for the controls just as I adjusted the NVG intensifiers. The landscape below came alive in the familiar green color to which I had become so accustomed.
I began searching for the airfield. It wasn’t there. I kept searching and searching, checking the chart. I was looking for an airstrip with a tower. It took twenty minutes before I realized that we had flown over it several times. This field was abandoned, and didn’t have a tower. The strip was almost grown up to the point that the aircraft could nearly cut the grass with the prop as it landed. I could, however, still see the concrete and make out the strip. There was nothing in the area of this field except one lone hangar. I flew near it to see if any of the doors on it were open. It seemed secure. I brought the plane around for the landing. I had become acclimated to the depth perception problem I was having with the NVGs and made a better landing this time. I positioned the aircraft for tomorrow’s takeoff, cut the engines and kept a vigilant watch.
They are sleeping right now. We landed at about 2100 hrs. I contacted John and told him our coordinates. He said that he and Will would take care of them in the Land Rover tomorrow and not to worry. He laughed and told me to make sure that I turned the radio on in the morning and said that he would be up monitoring his all night. I asked how Tara was doing. John said that she was sitting right next to him and that she said she misses me.
9 Jun
0218
I see movement in the distance at the outer perimeter of the airfield. Not sure what it is. The cabin doors are locked and I am sleepy but refuse to nod off. Dean is awake. I am not telling her what I see.
0354
The movement in the distance turned out to be a family of deer. I could tell they were living creatures by the mirrorlike reflection of their eyes caused by the effects of night vision. The undead do not share this comforting quality.
0622
The sun is up and the radios are on. I have already spoken to John and he will be giving me the go-ahead within the next hour. There is no movement in this area and the family of deer has moved out. Dean and Danny have already eaten much of the food that I have brought. Can’t say that I blame them.
0740
Call made; John says it’s clear. We are taking off shortly.
11 Jun
0940
We arrived at Hotel 23 on the morning of the ninth without incident. Jan stayed in touch via the VHF radios and relayed John and Will’s position to us in the air as they herded the undead mob safely away from our landing spot. Before we touched down at H23, I told Dean not to expect much of our shelter and that there would now only be nine of us (including Annabelle). Danny was wearing a headset in the backseat. It was too big for him and I found it funny how it kept slipping off as he asked the question, “Who is Annabelle?” I told Danny that we had a puppy at Hotel 23 and that her name is Annabelle and she loves little boys. Danny began to tear up in happiness at the prospect of touching something truly good again and not having to look at the “ugly people,” as he had been calling them.
I saved Laura as a surprise for him. I can’t imagine the joy in his heart when he saw another child to play with, even though she was a girl. Although it only comes to me once in a great many years, a flash of memory, a familiar smell from an old cedar chest of keepsakes . . . I still remember what it was like being twelve.