"Kenny what the fuck do have in mind?" Cowboy radioed back.
"We're going to ditch one of the Blackhawks, maybe two."
"We could have done that back at the mall, what's your real reason for stopping now?"
"Actually that is my real reason for stopping. Not everything I do has an ulterior motive Cowboy, don't be so suspicious," she responded coyly.
"Just most everything has an ulterior motive for you, is that it?"
"More or less."
"You're so full of shit," he laughed finally.
"I'm so glad we have that settled," she paused for a moment, smiling slyly to herself. "Oh,
and while we're transferring the supplies off the Blackhawk, I may as well try to see if I can pick up any signals with the satellite up-link. Since you suggested it and all."
"You little bitch!" he laughed again, "I knew there was an ulterior motive there somewhere."
Briggs was smiling and laughing softly until, glancing over at the seat beside her, she saw that CJ was awake and listening to her half of the conversation, a puzzled look on his face. The laughter ceased and the smile disappeared from her face. "We'll discuss it on the roof Cowboy. Out." She ended the transmission and turned to CJ again, this time sighing. "What's on your mind CJ?"
"What was that all about?" he asked.
"I think we'd be better off to ditch at least one of the Blackhawks. We'd be able to have two pilots on each helicopter then, it'll give us the ability to stay in the air longer without having sleep deprivation become an issue."
"I meant the part about the satellite up-link. How long have you had communications with the someone in the outside world?"
"We found it on board the Stallion along with the other supplies. It's what led me to believe my old boss was behind it's being there. Cowboy and I were able to pick up some communications from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. They're holed up on and around New Berne Island, off the coast of North Carolina. They've got the President with them, along with some of the cabinet. So basically, some of our government still exists. That also leads me to the assumption that if they've been conducting search and rescue operations along that part of the coast, the units would be under orders to bring any survivors there too. It could be just the place you and your friends are looking for."
"Is that who you want to communicate with this time?"
"Not really. I want to see if I can pick up any more signals. There was a National Guard Battalion prepping to deploy to Iraq in the Janesville vicinity. They may have been able to put up some defenses at the airport there. It's back towards the northwest from here, but it may be worth the flight. Another option may be that if our naval units at sea got through all this unscathed, some of our Coast Guard ships out on patrol could have got through it too, if they managed to come up with a food source to sustain them this long. I'm also having a hard time believing that all of our military and research facilities have been compromised. Somebody had to have had the brains to realize how this thing spread, understand that a good ninety-five percent of the wounded should have been abandoned to the fates instead of brought in," she grew silent with her musings.
"Is that it?"
"I get the impression that you don't trust what I say anymore."
"Let's just say I don't consider you to be the most honest person in the world," he told her diplomatically, not wanting to alienate her from him.
"That's good, you should look at everyone you meet that way from here on in because down below my friend is the new world order. Humans have lost their spot at the top of food chain."
"You still didn't answer my question."
"No I didn't," she admitted, unable to hide her grin. "If you must know, what I want to learn is who sent those AH-6's after us and where they're hiding out."
"Do you think they're still looking for us?" he asked, staring out through the windshield into the darkness of the night sky.
"Most likely."
They were quiet for a few moments, CJ digesting the information she had shared with him. He desperately wanted to believe that she was telling him everything, but there was a part of him that held serious reservations about her honesty. "So what else is there that you're not telling me?" he finally asked.
She looked towards the back of the helicopter, seeking out Sanchez who was seated beside Randall. Both appeared to be sleeping, but she couldn't be sure, even with the noise of the helicopter's engines helping to muffle their conversation she refused to take a chance. "Now's not the time CJ."
Seeing where her attentions had wandered, CJ left it alone. "Then can you at least tell me where we're going?"
"Absolutely, once I figure out where we're going."
Shaking his head, CJ smiled briefly, looking out at the night sky once again. "All right. Do you think you can tell me where we're at?"
"Yea, we're just north of Chicago."
"The Windy City, maybe we can stop in, get some pizza or something," CJ tried to joke.
Briggs smiled at his effort. "Pizza again! But I wanted to go to the theater, or maybe the ballet."
"You're a cruel woman Sergeant Briggs."
They continued to converse in a similar vein the remainder of the trip to the school. Sometime during the last leg of the journey Michael awoke to the sounds of muffled laughter coming from the front of the helicopter. He smiled, as he rested his cheek on the top of Ana's head. Her head was nestled against his shoulder, using it as a pillow while she slept. It was while enjoying this stolen moment with Ana that Michael realized the helicopter seemed to be losing altitude.
"Ana, wake up!" he whispered softly, yet insistently into her ear, shaking her slightly. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Michael! What time is it? What's going on?" She asked, looking disoriented, she glanced around the helicopter's interior.
"I don't know. I think I fell asleep around the same time you did, when I woke up we seemed to be landing." He glanced at the watch he wore on his wrist. "It looks like it's about 12:30. We can't have gotten too far."
"What could we be stopping for?" Ana asked, her confusion apparent on her face.
"My question would be where are we stopping," Michael said in reply.
Ana's eyes widened at the thought. "Where do you think she's taking us?"
"I don't know, but I'm starting to think that we're putting a little too much faith in people who haven't exactly been telling us the full truth about things."
"Do you think we should have stayed at the mall, Michael?"
"I don't know. Maybe whoever it was that blew up the fuel depot is just after Briggs' group. Maybe they would have killed us if they had found us at the mall had we stayed, there's just no way of knowing."
They felt the helicopter finally touch down on the roof below. After a few moments, Briggs and CJ climbed from the front seats and made their way back to where the supplies had been loaded. She pulled two metal suitcase looking items out and proceeded to exit from the helicopter, sparing CJ a glance, but without a word to any of them.
"CJ, what's going on?" Michael asked, standing and moving towards the doorway where CJ stood watching Briggs walk away.
"I think we're ditching one of the Blackhawks."
Ana joined the two, "But why?"
A voice called out from the back of the helicopter, startling them. "Strategic unloading of unnecessary equipment," Sanchez declared, drawing Ana and Michael's attention. While the others were distracted, CJ swiftly stepped from the helicopter, intent on following Briggs.
Henry, Kenneth, Roger, Peter and Glen were unloading supplies from their Blackhawk when CJ emerged from the door of the Stallion. Masters and Marshall were directing their own crews to rearrange the supplies, and Cowboy was nowhere to be seen, so CJ surmised he was with Briggs on the far side of the building. As he began walking in the direction he'd seen Briggs last headed he could hear Sanchez taking command inside of the Stallion.
"So what's the real story Scarecrow? Who has AH-6's at their disposal, and why the fuck are they blowing my only secure fuel supply all to hell?" Briggs was demanding of what appeared to be a laptop computer when CJ walked up behind her. A man's voice that he'd never heard before answered.
"It was none of my people, I assure you. Dr. Steiner obviously had an extensive reach and influence with our military."
"Bullshit," Briggs replied. "Steiner was a fucking patsy. He may have created that goddamn virus and brought mankind to its knees, but he wasn't smart enough to be able to keep those kinds of connections from my team for any length of time. He was answering to somebody."
"She's right," Cowboy added, stepping into CJ's view.
"I didn't have anything to do with it, I swear that to you," the voice came again, tinged with anger this time. "If you remember I told you the president and some of the cabinet survived. So did the Joint Chiefs and most of their staff."
"Don't tell me that the rumors were true Scarecrow."
"Still unsubstantiated, but in light of what you're telling me, it's definitely looking like more than just a possibility."
"Sonuvabitch!" Cowboy said in disgust.
"So whose side are you on Scarecrow?" Briggs asked.
"The three of us have been together for too long to turn our backs on each other now," he said by way of reply.
"Suitably vague, but let me get to the real point here, those maps on the helicopter, can I trust any of them? Or am I going to burn out my fuel to make it to one of those airfields, only to find it swarming with those things when I arrive? My choicesat that point of course, are either make an emergency landing and be eaten by zombies, or crash the damn things and serve up twenty-four people as a barbecue. Either way we still seem to be ending up dead."
"I don't know, my information on them is inconclusive." On the screen of the laptop Scarecrow could be seen looking around himself. Leaning close to the camera he added quietly, "Remember that place we did that thing the one time?"
Briggs narrowed her eyes for a moment, thinking. Suddenly her eyes brightened, something resembling a smile touching her lips. "Yea, I remember."
"If you can make it there, you'll find what you're looking for, to an extent anyway."
"Understood. Your call on whether or not Dillon knows. I'll be in touch," Briggs said, reaching out and terminating the connection.
"What was that all about?" CJ called out to them.
Briggs turned to look at him and sighed. "I'll take care of this, pack the equipment up Cowboy and get it loaded back up on the Stallion. We're dropping two of the Blackhawks tonight. I want you and Henry on board the Stallion with me, I don't care how the other 10 get split up. When you're done loading up the link come find us." She walked towards CJ, "I guess you probably feel the need to talk."
"I'd say your right."
She lead him over to the edge of the building where she looked down to the parking lot and streets below. The power had long since gone down in the city, but in the pale light of the moon she could still make out the dead walking, searching out food. "Where do you want me to begin?"
"How about you tell me who Scarecrow is," CJ told her.
"Co-worker. We've worked for the same employer the last 7 years or so, give or take."
"And?" CJ prodded.
"We fucked each other a few times, a couple years back. Is that what you want to hear about?"
CJ looked away for a moment. "Just tell me what's going on and how it affects the rest of us."
"I trust Scarecrow to an extent, but I don't know where he's been getting his information or if it's reliable, and judging by what he just said, neither does he. From his body language, I got the impression that he knew who was behind the AH-6's that took out our fuel depot, but obviously he couldn't give me anything concrete proving that, probably means someone is having him watched."
"What about that bit with the Joint Chiefs?"
"There's been some suspicions for awhile now that person or persons unknown on the staff of the Joint Chiefs was playing for someone else's team. We were close to finding out who the guilty party was when this shit happened. We also suspect that those behind the spill are still alive. That's why we'd infiltrated so many different positions where survivors were holed up, we were searching for traitors."
"But you told us that it was an accidental spill, that that Steiner guy was responsible for it all," CJ said.
"Yea, well, I stretched the truth a little bit. The secondary round of infection, with your Olympic athlete zombies," she flung an arm out gesturing randomly at the city of infected people below, "those were the ones he was responsible for. The original infection on the East Coast, that was something a little different."
"And why should I believe you now?" he asked.
"You have absolutely no reason to," she said matter-of-factly.
After a few moments of silence CJ said, "So tell me the rest of it anyway."
"Steiner really was about to start working on a vaccine to try to prevent further infection,
at least with the minor bites."
"What do you mean about to start working on it?" CJ cut in. "I thought you'd said that was the whole reason for his experiments there on the island."
"Do you want me to finish giving you the facts or are you going to keep interrupting?" she asked.
"Sorry, I'll shut up."
"Good boy. Steiner had always been a crazy fucker, so he'd delayed developing the vaccine and instead went to work on the virus itself, seeing if he could make it better. I guess you could say he was the virus mutation I told you about. Anyways, just before we blew outta Pastor for the last time I received orders from my boss to terminate Steiner. He was too much of a liability to have out there, killing untold numbers of survivors with his little research project."
"Why couldn't Cowboy and the others have done it?" CJ asked.
"Because I had no way to communicate with anyone outside of the facility without the high risk of it being intercepted by the wrong people," Cowboy said quietly from behind CJ, causing him to jump.
Whirling around CJ demanded, "How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to get the gist of what I've been telling you," Briggs said from beside him.
"And long enough to be able to say that if you betray us and tell anyone what you've been told tonight, I won't hesitate to kill you," Cowboy added, staring coldly at CJ.
"Nobody's killing anyone unless it's under my orders," Briggs interceded, stepping between the two men. "Now, instead of standing here with you two and your pissing contest, let's go get the shit moved off of your helicopter Cowboy, we're ditching two of them tonight." She walked away leaving the two men alone.
When Cowboy and CJ finally joined her, Briggs was fielding questions from Ana and the others about the sudden change in plans.
"But what is the point of stopping now and abandoning helicopters?" Ana demanded.
"I have two hopes. One, if we're spotted airborne, they'll assume that we split up into two teams. They'll be forced to expend more manpower and possibly spread their search teams thin trying to determine which route we've taken. Two, if instead they find the birds here first, they'll come in and investigate. Maybe check to see if we did indeed split into teams, and had people stay behind here. If, and this is a big if, they decide to come in for a landing and check out the birds, they're going to be rigged to blow, take them down."
"That's a lot of hoping, any chance that it's actually going to work?" Michael asked.
"There's always a chance. Realistically, they'll also know that there's a good chance that we ditched them for just that reason. Either way, I'm fairly certain that they're going to be looking for us to move to the southeast, so any search teams coming after us will be going in that direction."
Kenneth stepped forward, "What makes you so certain of that?"
Smiling Briggs pulled a map from her uniform pocket. Squatting down she unfolded the map and laid it on the roof in front of her, shining a flashlight onto it. Those close enough saw the clearly marked sites throughout the southeast between Wisconsin and North Carolina. "What's all that?" Kenneth asked.
"This is one of the maps that we found along with the equipment on the Stallion. These sites," she gestured towards the map, "indicate possible locations to refuel."
"Then is that where we're heading?" asked Monica.
"No. We're heading west," Briggs stated confidently.
"West? Why, what's out there?" Michael said, stepping forward.
Simultaneously Steve uttered, "Who the hell put you in charge? I don't recall ever saying,
'yes, please make all the decisions, drag our asses all over the countryside with people shooting at us and dead people trying to eat us.' Hell, we're worse off with you around then we were before you showed your faces at the mall!"
Looking at Michael, Briggs replied. "There may be a safehouse in Colorado where we can hide out for a little while. It's up in the mountains, where the closest neighbor is miles away. The house is essentially a fortress, if it hasn't been breached yet, we'll be safe there for awhile"
"Well I say we go east," Steve declared. "We have a map showing us where fuel is," he gestured to Peter and Fran, "those two said the zombies move slower there so I think we stand a better chance there then searching for some mysterious secret house."
"You're forgetting something Steve," Roger said.
"What's that?"
"The east coast has a much higher population density, that means there are more of those things there. We fled Philadelphia because even though they were slower than us, the sheer number of those zombies overpowered the living," Roger said.
"Roger's got a point," Michael said.
"So there's your options people. We're taking the Stallion and one of the Blackhawks and heading west. If you choose not to, you can stay with the Blackhawks we ditch and do whatever you want with them," Briggs declared. Leaving the map where it lay, she rose to her feet and started walking through the group towards the Stallion, calling over her shoulder as she went, "If you decide to stay, keep in mind the weapons and supplies come with us."
In the end, all twenty-four of them flew out towards the west.