Winchester: Over (Winchester Undead) by Dave Lund Read Free Book Online Page A

what we’ll be able to find for gas.” Gunfire rang out in the near distance. “I think we’d better find a safe spot to hole up for the night. We’re not going to make it ‘til tomorrow, and I don’t want to drive through the night, it just wouldn’t be safe.”
    Their son Will sat quietly in the back seat, staring out the window at all the death and destruction. Although he wasn’t able to fully comprehend what was going on, he knew that something was really wrong, and that his parents were scared.
    Jack drove for another half-hour, finally reaching the first turn towards Maypearl. As they passed an RV park, a naked man ran by a large fifth-wheel RV, three undead shambling after him.
    Soon Jack saw a row of industrial buildings on his left, with no cars in the parking lot. “Let’s see if we can get any of those overhead doors open, then we can park and hide in the building for the night. I think it would be a lot safer that way.”
    All of the rollup doors were locked, but Jack found an unlocked door at the back of the building beside a picnic table and a butt-can for cigarettes. Walking into the building, Jack reached out and flipped the light switch next to the door by habit; when nothing happened, he looked around sheepishly, glad no one had seen him trying the light switch. He pulled open the first overhead door and Sandra backed the FJ into the space.
    “ Too bad we don’t need a new countertop,” she said, “those granite pieces would look real nice.”
    “ Yeah they would, but I don’t know when we’ll get to go back to even enjoy our kitchen, if ever,” Jack mused.
    Sandra took out the family’s trusty old Coleman lantern and stove , while Jack shut and secured the doors in the building. The family ate boiled deer sausage in silence, then, wrapping themselves in woolen Hudson Bay blankets, lay down on the hard concrete floor to sleep as best they could in their frightening new world.

CHAPTER 8
     
     
    December 27 th
    Denver International Airport (DIA), Colorado
     
    Shortly after midnight, Air Force One began a hard fast combat approach to DIA. Instead of the usual gentle gliding approach like an airliner, Colonel Olive pushed the nose of the big modified 747 forward while applying some rudder input to drop altitude quickly, making a large spiral towards Runway 34-L. No lights were visible on the airport grounds, and the runway lights were dark as well, although there were some smoldering aircraft wrecks near some of the other runways. In fact, the only light that Colonel Olive had seen while approaching DIA was from Denver, and it was all from fires.
    Col onel Olive hadn’t had to land a plane wearing night vision goggles in some time, but after the many years he’d spent in the Air Force, he was confident just the same; an extraordinary level of skill and confidence had marked his rise through the Air Force ranks, and had paved the way for being given flight command of Air Force One. Olive was confident that the landing would be easy, but he was worried about taxiing across the airport to Concourse C, where the President would exit the aircraft and enter the tunnel leading to the secure structure six stories beneath The Great Hall.
    Landing roughly, Colonel Olive pushed the reverse thrusters as far as they would go while giving some rudder input to move past some debris on the runway he hadn’t been able to see on approach. The input was too late, and two of the tires on the right main were ruptured by the bent aluminum, causing the large aircraft to yaw violently to the right towards a large lump that had just appeared out of the shallow depth of his night vision goggles. That lump was, in fact, an overturned fire apparatus, but in the last few seconds of Olive’s life, he wouldn’t know what happened—that the rightmost CF6 engine had struck the fire apparatus, setting off a chain reaction of disaster.
    The engine was ripped from under the wing and the aircraft spun violently to the