Free The Night Sweeper: Assassin: A Zombie Conspiracy Novel (The Sweeper Chronicles Book 2) by J. Steven Butler Page A

“I’m a quick study.”
    “Good. This way.” He moves off without waiting for me
to a small enclosure off of the main hangar room that’s filled with computer
banks and flight equipment. “Here,” he says, gesturing to a low chair. “Let me
show you your destination. Then we'll go over the details you'll need to know.”
     
    The airfield I was given instructions to land on is
nothing of the sort. It’s not much more than a strip of cleared land nestled
amidst the encroaching trees surrounding it. At the end sits a small,
weather-beaten storage shed, the kind you can buy at hardware stores. There's a
narrow, semi-overgrown path leading out of one end, just large enough for a
small automobile. Other than that, it's just a big field of grass, but it's
level enough, and obviously has been tended to recently. Someone’s
keeping the grass cut short, and large drifts of it have been pushed up against
the tree line on all sides. I wonder how often Damian and his group fly
here.
    I taxi the Wraith as close to the tree-line as possible
on the east end of the field as Damian's crew instructed, power everything
down, pop the canopy, and drop to the ground below, bending my knees to absorb
the impact. I glance up and scan the grayish haze of the sky overhead. It
feels wrong leaving the jet so easily visible from above, but I know the
chances of it being seen here are astronomically slim, and I force myself to
relax.
    Air traffic is reserved almost entirely for government
and military personnel, and they stick to the cities of refuge. No one
will by flying over here.
    I'm in upper New York State and it's cool this time of
year, but in comparison to the Fortress and the surrounding glacier, the breeze
blowing briskly across my skin feels warm and comforting. It carries the rich
aroma of evergreens, and I’m struck with memories of sitting by a warm fire
during the Christmas season, snuggling in my mother’s lap as we read stories
together and laughed.
    But the feeling of comfort dissipates as
quickly as it arrived. I gaze around, unable to shake the feeling of
being watched, and it suddenly occurs to me why I would feel that way.
Festers. I’ve been away for a while, and with my mind so preoccupied on
Mira and my mission to kill Archer, I didn’t immediately register the threat that
the noise of the jet would attract any Festers within earshot.
    I scan the field again in all directions,
this time carefully and systematically. Nothing out of the ordinary that
I can tell. I hope that maybe there just weren’t any infected close by,
but I’m not going to dawdle and take chances.
    I set off at a run, and it only takes
a minute to cross the field to the little aluminum shed. It sits in isolation
on the edge of the field, a spattering of brown paint hanging on doggedly to
the sides and roof, losing the relentless daily battle with the elements.
    Pulling the key Damian gave me from my pocket, I insert
it in the rusty padlock that secures the doors, expecting the lock to stick,
but to my surprise, the key turns easily, and the lock disengages with a small
pop. I open the doors wide, and the pungent smell of gasoline rolls out to meet
me from where it’s been trapped in the confined metal space with no windows and
no ventilation. For the second time in as many days, I gawk at an unexpected
piece of machinery.
    Before me, in this middle-of-nowhere excuse for a
landing strip, in a pitiful little junkyard-reject shed, sits a jet black X132
Hellcat motorcycle, sleek and powerful-looking, cocked to one side on its
kickstand. From the looks of it, it's been retrofitted to carry additional
gasoline, and the walls of the shed hold several gas cans of various sizes on
hooks.
    The Hellcat was a rare find back in the early part of
the 21 st century. At a price tag of $60,000, it was a
masterpiece of engineering from a small company in Alabama. It’s a speed
demon, and despite its age, this one looks brand new. There seems to be no
limit to