Jason Campagna: White Ash on Bone: A Zombie Novel

After taking off, it only took them a couple of minutes to find Sulla’s location.

Peggy got out of the news-chopper and asked a young man carrying some kind of machinegun where she could find Paul Sulla. He grinned back at her and extended his hand.

“You’re looking at him, and I need your helicopter.”

“What did you have in mind?” Peggy asked.

“First, let me show you something,” Sulla said.

He led her to the back of a pickup truck and opened a cooler. Peggy looked inside to see a severed head covered in blood. Its eyes looked up at Peggy, and its mouth opened and closed.

“Holy shit,” Peggy said. “Fred, get this on camera,” she said to her cameraman.

Sulla then explained what he wanted. “I need to see what’s coming at us from the air, and I need to see it firsthand. If you want, while we are in the air, you can send your cameraman down the road to where our sharpshooters are. But I need to take your chopper up now.”

Peggy smelled news awards in her future. “I think that sounds reasonable,” she said.

From the air, Sulla’s heart sank as he viewed his hometown of Butler. The dead ravaged the city, and fires burned out of control. Zombies surrounded buildings where the living struggled for survival. Survivors waved franticly at the chopper from rooftops. He observed muzzle flashes from every quarter of the city as people battled the undead.

An over-flight of the hospital showed that it too had been overrun by the ghouls. On the roof of the hospital, a blond girl and a man in blue scrubs waved at the chopper. The roof of the hospital had a landing pad designed for life-flight.

“Let’s pick them up,” Sulla directed.

###

Kimberly had been alone in the dark utility closet for what seemed like forever.

The zombies outside the door continued to try and beat their way in to get at her. Their relentless and voiceless efforts nearly drove the young girl insane. At first, she tried to remain silent thinking they might go away after a while. Then she screamed for help. No one answered except the pounding on the door. After hours of crying and praying, she discovered a steel ladder built on the back wall of the closet. She climbed up in the dark.

During one of the many hospital renovations, the ladder had led to the roof. One of the renovations enclosed the ladder inside, and the new wing was constructed over it. Kimberly could hear other people calling for help through the walls as she climbed up the ladder.

The top of the ladder ended onto a section that had once been the roof. Now, it might have been a balcony from the dungeons of the Phantom of the Opera. Kimberly found a door on the balcony, the doorknob locked from her side. Light poured through the bottom of the door.

Kimberly opened the door and found herself in another utility closet, but the closet featured a window outside of which was the top of the hospital and the landing pad. She had only been up here once, but she knew outside the closet was a small lobby with an elevator and stairwell to the landing pad. She opened the door and screamed as an axe swung at her face.

"No" she managed to scream.

Dr. Carson pulled the axe back at the last moment.

"Oh thank god, Kimberly." Carson took her in his arms and their lips met. The couple shared stories of their respective escapes. Dr. Carson had managed to get to the room unscathed except for a wound to the arm. He neglected to tell her the wound was from a bite.

"We should be safe up here, for now,” Carson said. “I jammed all the access ways.” They settled in on the floor to wait.

"Does your arm hurt?" Kimberly said.

"Yeah, but I think you can help me take my mind off the pain," he said. The young girl smiled, and he pulled her in close for an embrace.

Chapter Four

Captain Anderson's assault to rescue the VA left ten of his men dead. To his new understanding, this meant they were part of the group of zombies trying to kill him.

They had no trouble getting to the VA, but once inside the problems started.

The guardsmen quickly found their rounds nearly worthless against the onslaught of ghouls. Five veteran guardsmen were lost right from the outset. The surviving VA hospital staff urged the guardsmen up a stairwell to a hastily barricaded second floor. Anderson’s platoon managed to break contact with the undead, but not before another five of his men fell.

Of a hospital staff usually numbering around three-hundred, forty-one managed to reach the safety of the barricade. The rest were either trapped in other parts of the VA, or among the undead.

Captain Anderson got busy on his field radio trying to reach military assets on Guard frequencies. Andersen knew that the 911th Air Reserve in Pittsburgh might have one of their C-130's in range. He used his call sign, "Guard Whisky Six-One," and asked for anyone to respond.

"This is Air Force Tango Foxtrot Delta, we read you Whisky Six."

"This is Captain Rick Anderson, Pennsylvania National Guard. The city of Butler is a major Charlie-Foxtrot. We are held up in the Butler County Veterans Administration Hospital; we are under siege on the second floor. I am officially requesting an over-flight of Butler City to confirm crisis and request boots on the ground."

"Roger that ground-pounder, we will bump your request up the ladder, hang-tight. Tango Foxtrot out."

Anderson breathed a sigh of relief; at least someone up the chain of command would know to listen in.

Sergeant Ryan Winters sat in the next room over listening to his field radio. He had it tuned in to civilian emergency frequencies.

" EOC to all ears, Penn Township reports that the only way to stop the things is to shoot them in the head. The EOC should no longer be considered an evacuation point we are being over-" The communication from the emergency center abruptly ended.

###

Sulla heard the final broadcast from the EOC center in the news chopper. After rescuing the two people from the hospital roof, Sulla directed the chopper back over town. Then he swung them over to his men’s position on Route 8.

Halfway there, Sulla saw an explosion from the direction of Sunny View hill and location of the EOC.

Sulla directed the helicopter to fly over the EOC. The pass over of the area revealed a gas line spewing fire into the air. A pickup truck had run into some kind of junction for gas pipes. Bodies littered the ground, several upper torsos stirred in pieces of their former selves.

“The driver,” Sulla said, “must have lost control of the vehicle while being attacked by those things. The explosion then traveled by pipe to the EOC.” Smoke poured out of the dying building.

Sulla’s heart sank for the people killed inside. Their efforts to organize a response would be badly missed in the coming hours. Sulla broadcast the demise of the EOC from the chopper, and then directed the helo back over Route 8 to his men fighting the undead.

“My god, look at how many are coming down that road,” Peggy said. Heading south on the highway, thousands of forms moved.

Sulla got on the radio and asked George to get a hold of the roadblock turning traffic around south of the township. He needed them to find a couple of big-ticket items, and he needed them as fast as possible. He also wanted George to contact the Governor and find out why in the hell the military hadn’t been called in yet.

The chopper landed at the bridge barricade now well into its construction in the middle of the bridge. From the ground Sulla noticed the sun hanging just above the edge of the horizon. Great, it’s going to be dark real soon he thought to himself.

###

"Sir, this Sulla guy on the radio says the EOC just got toasted from a gas line explosion," Sergeant Winters said.