Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,116

the personnel were armed.

RJ soon exhausted the ammo supply for the left gun, with little measurable effect, but still unhooked and moved across, snapping back in at the right door and getting that M240 rolling. It sounded like a chainsaw. Vlad rotated the Blackhawk to give him the best exposure, as the bullets chopped into the mass below. Bodies went down in little groups, heads disintegrating under the high power fire, but the gaps were instantly filled by more.

There was some radio traffic, though nothing from the tower. Another inbound C-130 ten miles out announced that it was turning back towards Nevada. A pair of Navy helicopters which had gone down to Bakersfield this morning transmitted that they would head south and try to reach the USS Ronald Reagan, supposedly now somewhere off the coast of the Baja Peninsula. One pilot reported that he didn’t think he had the fuel to make it, and might have to set down so the other chopper could pick up his crew.

Vlad looked at his own gauge. The trip to Lost Hills and the subsequent time over Lemoore had cost him a third of his fuel. If the Reagan had moved south as the Navy bird reported, it was beyond his reach. Even if the ship was still somewhere off the coast of LA, it would be cutting things close, tight enough that an unexpected headwind could bleed off the last of his fuel right over the city. The additional problem would be finding the vessel in the first place, since the Blackhawk had no direct comms. An aircraft carrier might seem exceptionally large, but on open ocean it was very small indeed, and every minute spent over the water visually searching for it would burn precious fuel. As a pilot, Vlad had imagined his own death many times; fire, crashes, combat. Drowning or being eaten by sharks, however, was not one of the ways he would choose. It didn’t matter; the carrier was too far away.

“Lieutenant, three o’clock,” RJ called.

Vladimir looked to the right across the field. He saw Rocker’s lone Super Hornet still on the ground, and he wondered what had happened to the young fighter jock. That wasn’t what RJ was drawing his attention to, however. Another Blackhawk sat on the deck close to a cluster of buildings, rotors turning, masses of the undead coming in at it from all sides. A small circle of men was falling back to the chopper, firing in all directions. Vlad recognized the tail number as Conroy’s bird, his former co-pilot.

“Hold tight.” The Russian banked hard and roared across the base towards the surrounded helicopter, while RJ loaded his last box of ammo. Ahead of them, the defenders began to fall, and two men with rifles turned and leaped through the open side door as Conroy began to lift off.

Handfuls of the dead galloped after them and scrambled aboard as well.

Groundhog-7 was almost there when Conroy’s bird became fully airborne, close enough to see the side window of the cockpit suddenly splashed red. The chopper staggered and tipped sideways, racing horizontally through the air and dropping. The Blackhawk’s engine made a high-pitched death whine as it streaked towards the ground, and then there was a tremendous blast as it crashed…

…into NAS Lemoore’s tank farm of jet fuel.

“Aepno!” Vlad cried, banking away sharply and accelerating, pushing the turbine for all its power. Behind him there was a deep boom which he felt in his chest cavity as the first above-ground tank erupted, an enormous bomb which sent a flaming pressure wave of shrapnel in a three-hundred-sixty-degree circle. The blast set off others, the giant tanks going off like a string of firecrackers.

The pressure slammed into Groundhog-7, lifting it from behind and hurling the aircraft forward, nose down, trying to knock it out of the sky. Pieces of metal banged and rattled of the fuselage, and a frantic warning buzzer sounded in the cockpit. The helicopter dropped towards the flat roof of a barracks building, turbine intakes sucking at the super-heated air, and the cords in Vlad’s neck and arms jumped out as he hauled back on the cyclic.

The Blackhawk pulled out ten feet above the rooftop, low enough for the wind from its blades to scatter gravel like a dust storm. Then it was roaring across the base.

Vlad whispered something in Russian, a little prayer his mother had taught him, and slowly gained elevation. He shut off the warning buzzer – a caution that his air