Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (11 page)

I dropped into a seat beside her. I was still coming to terms with the fact that this experienced fighter pilot was a woman. Of course, I had known there were women pilots in our Air Force, but I hadn’t expected to meet one who had been assigned combat duty during the zombie apocalypse.

Harper stared at me speculatively, and then narrowed her eyes as though she could read my mind. “Get over it,” she said flatly. “I’m a woman. I drive fighter planes.”

I nodded, somehow feeling guilty, or sexist, or narrow minded.

… or maybe all three.

“Your squadron was one of the first units activated for a particular role very shortly after the outbreak of the infection,” I said. “Did the relocation from Shaw to Langley cause disruptions during those early missions?”

Captain Harper took another sip of her soda, and glanced, distracted, out through the big windows as another F-16 suddenly clawed its way into the air ahead of a blooming heat haze and a mighty roar that seemed to shake the sky. When the fighter was out of sight, she turned her attention back to me.

“We’re a combat ready unit,” Captain Harper explained. “We’re trained to deal with disruption, and even dislocation. We were in the air and on the job an hour after the mission tasking came through.”

I reached into my bag for my notebook. “And the mission itself – the 55
th
were essentially flying combat patrols over the Danvers Defense Line, even before the barrier was completed. Is that right?”

Toni Harper nodded. She set the soda down on a side table.

“We started patrolling the skies above the defensive line just as the first heavy engineering equipment began tearing up the earth,” she explained. “We were tasked with F-15’s from the 336
th
to run the line from the east coast across to Memphis. For simplicity, we flew along the 36
th
parallel north on an east to west route, and then back again.”

I nodded. I knew the 336
th
fighter squadron was based out of Seymour Johnson AFB, near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Unlike the jets of Toni Harper’s squadron, the Eagle squadron’s home base was behind the Danvers Defense Line.

“What exactly was the mission,” I asked. “As I understood it, you were basically enforcing a no-fly zone. Is that correct?”

Harper shook her head. “No. It’s not correct.” She smiled thinly and then scraped her fingers through her hair. “We were tasked with the responsibility of stopping all commercial aircraft and helicopters from flying
into
the quarantined area,” she said. “And for the terms of our mission, that area was basically anywhere below the 36
th
parallel from the east coast across to the Mississippi River.”

I nodded, because I understood what she was saying. But I didn’t understand why.

“Why?”

Harper’s smile became strained. “When the apocalypse first broke out in Florida, everyone who had a light commercial plane, or could charter a helicopter flew as far the hell north as they could,” she said and there was a hint of aggravation in her tone, like maybe I was wasting her time. “But the government didn’t want opportunists swooping into Florida and preying on those left behind. We didn’t want the skies being criss-crossed with gung-ho air jockeys trying to make a fortune by renting out their planes and helicopters like mercenaries. It was too dangerous.”

“In terms of air safety?”

She nodded. “And in relation to the spread of the infection,” she added. “Those first few weeks were chaotic. There were so many rumors and so few hard facts, no one was even sure about the delay between when a victim was bitten, and when the virus re-animated the corpse.”

I was puzzled. “But surely any means of escape from the infection…”

Captain Harper shook her head and her hair swished across her shoulders like the flick of a jungle cat’s tail just before it attacks. “No,” she said adamantly. “The pilots of those helicopters and light aircraft were a risk to themselves, and to everyone they flew – and a risk to the massive military contingency that was trying to establish a defensive perimeter. We needed the skies clear, and that’s what the 55
th
fighter squadron was tasked to do. And we did it.”

“At the cost of civilian lives?” I questioned pointedly.

Harper arched her eyebrow and her gaze became black. She stood up and bunched her fists, her posture defiant and bristling. She glared at me like she was trying to locate my jugular vein. “Listen,” she thrust a finger at my face. “The Air Force had plans to rescue as many refugees as we could, flying them out of designated evacuation locations in transports. But we couldn’t. In the end, the plague spread too quickly, and the danger became too great. Washington tore up the planned operation. But if we had been ordered in, we would have gladly gone.”

Captain Harper turned on her heel and stalked across to the window. She stared silently out across the air base, and I could see the tension in her shoulders as she fought to compose herself.

“I didn’t mean to imply…”

“Forget it,” she turned her head and snapped with frost on her lips. “Just finish asking your questions. I have more important places to be and more important things to do.”

I shrugged. “How did you go about intercepting the helicopters and light planes? Were there a lot of them?”

“AWACs,” Toni Harper said crisply. “It’s an airborne early warning and control system. We had AWAC aircraft high above us. They would pinpoint the threats and we would be tasked with investigating.”

“Were there a lot of incidents?”

“Yes,” Captain Harper said. The woman certainly knew how to hold a grudge. Her tone remained curt, almost seething. “In the first few weeks we were flying non-stop patrols and being tasked to targets almost constantly. Once the light plane pilots and helicopter jockeys understood we were serious, the number of attempted incursions declined dramatically.”

I took a deep breath. “There was one reported incident…” I started to say. “A media report that a Bell JetRanger helicopter was shot down by an Air Force fighter over Tennessee for violating the no-fly zone. Did you hear anything about that?”

Harper shook her head. “It was a lie,” she said with finality. “That helicopter crashed. It wasn’t shot down.”

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “How can you be sure of that?”  I asked.

“Because I was on patrol the day that incident happened,” she said in a flat monotone. “I know the pilot who was involved, and I’m telling you it was a crash. The Air Force has the footage, filmed from the nose of the F-16 that was flying on a course to intercept. There’s no scandal – just confirmation of exactly the dangerous practices we were trying to prevent occurring.”

I let the matter go. Toni Harper might have been a lady, but I sensed that to pursue the shooting down of the helicopter would be like prodding a snake with a stick. I tried to smooth the waters.

“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” I made a placating gesture with my open hands. “I guess I was just surprised that you could be so callous about civilians being left stranded in the middle of the apocalypse, and that you could actually advocate leaving them there… in the hope that a military evacuation might have been orchestrated instead.” I shook my head.

Toni Harper’s eyes blazed with hostility, but also something else – something so fleeting and elusive that I didn’t recognize it – until it was too late.

“I’m not callous,” she said. The anger that was in her voice lost its way and somehow became sadness. “My mother and father, my kid sister, and my grandmother all lived in Orlando.”

She stalked for the door. I thought the interview was over. Just before she left the room, she turned back. There was a glistening tear on her cheek.

“I’m a professional,” Toni Harper’s voice trembled. “It tore my heart out knowing my family had a chance to be saved, but couldn’t be.”

FORT RILEY, KANSAS:

America has always cherished its heroes, turning them into larger-than-life public personalities – even celebrities. And yet the first real hero to be recognized during the zombie war was perhaps one of the most humble and unassuming men I had ever met.

He was waiting for me patiently in a hangar at Fort Riley, a slight tall man, leaning casually against the canopy of his UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.  Chief Warrant Officer Sam Grear, Bravo Company, 2
nd
Battalion of the 501
st
Combat Aviation Brigade shook my hand and smiled with the kind of expression that suggested he was acutely embarrassed by the attention.

He was wearing a ‘pickle suit’, a green one-piece aviation uniform that had been replaced by the Army a few years earlier. Grear had bright blue eyes, and a peculiar far-away gaze. I guessed him to be in his early thirties.

We walked out into the bright sunshine, while all around us mechanics bustled like bees around the huge hulking shapes of 2
nd
Battalion’s helicopters.

“You’re uncomfortable about this, right?” I asked.

Grear gave me a sideways glance, and nodded his head. “I know you want to interview me about the rescue ops we flew during ‘Operation Containment’,” he said. He was softly spoken man. “I just don’t understand why. A lot of crews have done what me and my crew did.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They deserve attention too.”

I nodded. “But I can’t interview them all, Sam,” I said. “And the Army thinks your exploits deserve to be known and appreciated by everyone. They’ve nominated you and your story as being indicative of the heroism our pilots have shown. In a way, you’re a spokesperson for all the other guys. Think of it that way.”

He put his hands behind his back, clasped them together and kept walking. He was frowning thoughtfully. After a hundred yards of stony silence he stopped suddenly and lifted his face to mine.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

I had some prepared questions, based on the newspaper accounts of Grear’s actions I had read. I flipped open my notebook.

“According to what I have read – and what the Army has so far released – you were flying your Black Hawk helicopter on a reconnaissance and rescue patrol when you spotted several survivors, fleeing from a large swarm of zombies. Is that right?”

Grear made a face. “No,” he said, and shook his head. He took a deep breath. “My copilot, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Tolliver was the one who first sighted the refugees.”

I nodded. “Okay… so tell me what really happened. Let’s set the record straight.”

High overhead helicopters circled in the sky like lethal birds of prey so that the air was alive with the distant pulse of beating rotors.

“2
nd
Battalion is GSAB – general support. That means we fulfill a range of different functions,” Grear explained. “So when the plan came for a series of sweeps into the dead zones of Georgia, as part of Mission Hawk’s Wing, our unit was one of the first ones mobilized.” The pilot paused for a moment to see if I understood him. I did. He went on.

“We were flying missions throughout the day, concentrating our efforts around Athens and Atlanta – they were our areas of operation. We went in with four Delta snipers aboard –”

I cut him off. “Your crew? How many men?”

“There was me and Mike Tolliver upfront, and we had two crew chiefs, Staff Sergeant Kim Wilson and Staff Sergeant Paul Rolandson in the back of the bird. They were on the miniguns.”

I nodded. “Right,” I scribbled down the men’s names. “And you had four Delta snipers aboard as well.”

“Correct,” Grear nodded. “The cargo door was open on both sides of the bird and the Delta boys were in the opening as we swept over the dreads.”

“Dreads?”

“Undeads,” Grear shrugged. “That’s what we call ‘em.”

I made a note of that. Grear watched me writing everything down, like it was important to him that the record be accurate. I looked up at him, encouraging him to continue.

“It was just after oh-eight hundred, the second week after the Danvers Defense Line had been finalized,” he began. “The defensive line was beginning to fill out with troops from around the country. We still weren’t ready for a major attack, but we were getting there quickly. The orders came down for us to start flying ops looking for refugees that had somehow escaped the apocalypse further south.”

I studied the young man’s face. “How did you feel about that?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I joined to serve,” he said simply. “I was glad to do my part. My whole crew was. Mike had family in Florida. Most of the men I know were affected in some way or another.”

I nodded, and then remembered something. “You weren’t always a helicopter pilot though, were you?”

Grear looked a little surprised. “How did you know that?”

It was my turn to shrug. “Research,” I said vaguely.

He regarded me carefully for a moment, and then we started walking again. Grear began to talk.

“I was a Marine before I became a pilot,” Grear revealed. “When I was nineteen I went to train in the Marines. I went through Officer Candidates School at Quantico. Every candidate starts out as a sergeant, and I enjoyed the training, but three years later I was injured… and out of the military for two years.”