Cade looked to the ground. Splayed out like a hand of playing cards near Raven’s boots were a number of rectangular sheets of paper. The one on top was folded over. Visible on the corner was a single tiny footprint, the black ink standing out starkly against the yellowed paper.
Raven knelt down and scooped the papers off the road. They were wet and sticking together. “These are their birth certificates,” she stated. “I saw the mom’s name and year of birth as soon as I opened my eyes.” She put her finger on the top sheet. “It’s right here beneath the footprint. Bad news for you, Dad. Rose McGowan was born March 13, 1972. Makes her older than you.” She glanced skyward, mouth moving, no words coming out. Finally she leveled her gaze at her dad. “She was thirty-nine … point five … ish.”
“You win,” Cade said. That woman was too imposing to be a Rose, was what he was thinking.
Raven worked at the corner of the stack of papers with her thumb. “If I can get these apart without them ripping, we might be able to see how old the dad is.”
“Was,” Cade said. “Don’t bother.” He took the wallet from his pocket and handed it to her.
She tucked the birth certificates inside the journal and handed it to her dad. She flipped the wallet open and stared at the driver’s license tucked behind a yellowed plastic window gone cloudy around the edges.
“Bryan McGowan from Cambridge, Massachusetts was forty-three,” she said, casting a smug look Cade’s way.
“Guess I have dish duty for a week,” Cade said. “Sasha’s going to love that.”
Raven giggled. Adjusting the slung rifle, she said, “You won’t have to get your hands all pruney, Dad. Consider it a gentleman’s bet you just lost. I’ll go ahead and keep doing the dishes.”
Cade was conflicted. Though he was happy to see her powers of observation hadn’t failed her, he still wanted her to lose and have to do the daily exercises. She could surely use the additional upper body strength. He said, “You sure about that? You’d get a week-long break from Miss Motor Mouth.”
“I’m positive,” she said. “I went outside the wire and put the people looking for me in danger. I earned the punishment and I aim to serve out my sentence.”
Cade scanned their surroundings. Still clear. Fixing Raven with a stare, he said, “Very noble of you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Even though I won the bet, I’m going to start doing the exercises tonight.”
Cade looked a question at her.
“I couldn’t budge the dad. I figure the exercise will help me improve my abs and upper body, not to mention my core strength.” She scrutinized the license, thinking how the man with the sideburns, wide forehead, and high cheekbones looked nothing like a Bryan. Joel or Wade, maybe. Bryan? Heck no.
My Bird is channeling her mom, thought Cade.
“Why do you think Mr. McGowan was still carrying a wallet?”
“Hope,” said Cade. “That and the fact that old habits die hard. Especially for us guys.”
“Do you carry your wallet?”
Cade shook his head. “I leave all that behind when I go outside the wire.” Tapping his chest, he added, “I carry a picture of you and Mom in my pocket. Been doing that since day one of this madness.”
“You think hope alone got them this far?”
“It was a good chunk of what kept them alive this long. Especially with three little kids to have to look after.”
“Four,” corrected Raven. “There was a fourth birth certificate stuck to the third. The boys’ names all started with a B. There was Brody, Brandon, Brock, and Bryce.”
“Four or a hundred,” said Cade. “A little hope and resourcefulness go a long way.”
“They kept the kids quiet with the promise of Pokémon cards, didn’t they?”
Cade nodded.
Parroting her dad, Raven said, “Hope and resourcefulness,” and stared at the bodies in the ditch. “Sure didn’t see them far enough.” She looked the road up and down. “Now what?”
“Now we drive down this hill to that van.” He pointed across the hood. “There’s something in back I want to get.”
Now she looked a question at him.
In response, he handed the journal back to her and dragged some cereal bars from a pocket and divvied them up.
With a tilt of her head, Raven said, “What do you want me to do with these?”
“Read the journal. Eat the bars.”
Chapter 3
After speaking with Sasha, Duncan had entered the tree line on the pretense of visiting the outdoor latrines. Muttering about everybody always leaving him behind, he reversed course and picked his way through the trees, careful to steer clear of the pit traps set previously by he and Logan, all the while avoiding the areas covered by cameras watching over the clearing and feeder road.
Still on the pity pot and grousing about recent transgressions against him, most minor and not committed purposefully, nor directly, he arrived at the Eden compound’s hidden entry confident he hadn’t been seen or followed.
He tried the door handle. Incredulous at finding it unlocked, he directed a reluctant thank you at the last person through. Protocol was to have the person manning the monitors in the security station throw the lock behind anyone leaving the compound—most likely Sasha in this instance. The same routine was to be followed for anyone returning to the compound. Cade had instituted this weeks ago. To the best of Duncan’s recollection, lapses had been few and far between, but usually were attributed to the kids who were the lesser experienced among the group. Luckily for him the far between period had just reset.
He lifted the handle and pushed on the steel plate door. Though recently spritzed with WD-40, the years of accumulated dirt and fine metal shavings from months of constant use caused them to emit a soft grating noise as the door swung inward.
Duncan stopped inside the foyer, where he drew a deep breath and closed the door behind him. Hanging on hooks to his left were a dozen coats in different styles and sizes, a chest rig bristling with spare thirty-round magazines, and binoculars. A half-dozen pair of muddy cold-weather boots were lined up toes to the wall below the coats. On the right, propped up in the corner, was a pair of AR-style carbines. The short barrel model equipped with an EOTech 3x scope and stubby suppressor belonged to Tran. The other was a nearly new extra they’d found when looting the prepper compound at the nearby hilltop quarry.
After a couple of yards, a hall branched off to the left. There was no sound coming from that direction. To Duncan’s fore was the heavy curtain separating the foyer from their security station, basically just a plywood desk holding a monitor and ham radio. Above the desk were plywood shelves piled high with radios, satellite phones, and charging cables.
Hearing only the wheels of the rolling chair grinding against the plywood floor beyond the curtain, Duncan slipped around the corner. He heel and toed it down the hall, stopping when he reached the door to his former quarters.
Unlocked. Not surprising, considering Glenda was out and about.
He entered and found the chain on the hanging light by feel.
The flare of light from the 60-watt bulb instantly renewed the banging in his head. Squinting, he raised a hand against the light and swept his gaze the length of the cold Conex container.
Two sets of bunkbeds—formerly pushed together to make one queen-sized bed—were now pulled apart, the bedding taut and tucked in at all the right places. Atop the army surplus woolen blanket was a thick blue book, its spine creased, the corners of the cover bent and rounded from use. Leaning against the book was a single white envelope. It was sealed and bulging. Written in a familiar flowing hand was his full name: Duncan Wayne Winters.
At first glance he knew exactly what it was.
“Might as well put Dear John on the damn thing,” he spat. This wasn’t his first breakup letter. He’d collected two of them during his stint flying Hueys in Vietnam. Nearly a dozen of the breakup letters had landed on his proverbial lap in the
years since. Call this thirteen, he thought as he snatched it off the bed, ignoring the A.A. book altogether.
To read or not to read? was the million dollar question banging around his head.
“Time’s a wastin’, you old coot.” He collected the book. As he did so, he noticed his old combat shotgun hanging by its sling from the bed support. After staring at it for a beat, he decided to leave it.
He listened at the door. Heard what sounded like potato chips crunching. In his mind’s eye he saw Tran sitting before the monitor, an open bag of Lays potato chips on the desk. That vision was fleeting. Seth, maybe. He loved junk food. More than likely it was Tran munching one of the misshapen carrots harvested from his garden.
Walking slow and deliberate, Duncan retraced his path down the hall and through the foyer. Standing before the door to outside, he snatched up Tran’s M4, a pair of spare magazines, and slung the Bushnells over his head. “Munch away, Bugs,” he whispered, the sound from him opening the door barely audible over the noises coming from beyond the curtain.
***
Duncan had already navigated around the clearing and was standing alone by the second set of fencing when Tran’s muted voice emanated from the radio in his pocket.
“This is Tran. Duncan, can you hear me?”
Duncan ignored the call. He was shimmying between the taut wires when Tran came back on.
“Cade? Can you hear me, Cade?”
There was no answer. Only a few seconds of silence.
Standing on the other side of the fence in the trees where he was well clear of the cameras watching the inner gate, Duncan listened to Tran report that the quarters he shared with Glenda had been cleaned out of most of their belongings. After a short silence, voice full of worry, Tran added, “I think maybe Glenda and Duncan went outside the wire without telling anyone.”
“X gets a square,” Duncan drawled. “Just not together.” He studied the ground by his boots. The pine needles scattered about were mostly dry. He looked behind him and noted damp spots mottled with mud left there by his passage. Then he crouched and scrutinized the game trail snaking away in the direction of the hidden exit fronting the distant State Route. Though the light wasn’t optimal, he could still see similar traces of mud and disturbed needles on the ground he had yet to tread on.
Miss Gladson came this way on foot.
A closer look revealed a partial print with a pattern he recognized.
Hi-Tec hikers.
The depression was shallow, which Duncan took to mean she was traveling light.
“Where are you going, Glenda Gladson? Visiting your boy’s grave up on the hill? Or are you going home? All the way to Huntsville?”
If he were wagering on one of the two, his money would be on the latter. Still, he needed to rule out the former.
Sticking to the path paralleling the feeder road, he ducked low to avoid the cameras, then popped back out to the gravel road once he was beyond their range.
The M4 banged against his backside as he trooped toward the camouflaged gate. A couple of hundred feet from the gate he reacquired Glenda’s trail. The gravel was dry in places where she had crossed. He followed the subtle scuff marks to the gate and paused beside a run of knee-high grass growing next to the gate. As was his custom any time he approached from the blind side of the gate—which he secretly considered a rotter magnet—he raised his nose to the air and drew in a deep breath.
Nothing.
No sickly-sweet pong of carrion hit his nose.
No lingering odor of gun smoke from a recently discharged weapon was evident.
Confident he was all alone, he edged around to the west, one-eyeing it past the screen once he reached the spot the gate ended and a chest-high barbed wire fence began. Looking across the two-lane, he focused on a spot a couple of hundred feet uphill. The grass covering the half-knoll had grown very tall and, presumably, was as heavy with dew as the grass bordering the feeder road. There was a trail bisecting it horizontally from west to east. Just as he suspected: Glenda had walked to a spot where a lone person crossing the road would blend in nicely with the fencing and foliage cluttering the background. For someone watching the camera feeds in the security center of the compound to pick up the movement, they’d practically have to be looking at the correlating pane on the flat panel and be keyed in on the exact spot in the road. And that was acting on the assumption the watcher was expecting the crosser. Which he had no reason to believe. Glenda had made a quick and quiet escape. Furthermore, he figured her run-in with Sasha was calculated. Eventually, he gathered, someone would start asking questions and pry the facts out of the fourteen-year-old whom he didn’t include among the sharpest tools in the shed. A little too much bluster on her part. In his experience, the ones who barked the loudest had less to add to the conversation.
The route Glenda had taken to the graves on the hill presented as a barely distinguishable line a shade darker than the rest of the vast green expanse. It arced up slightly from right to left, finally stopping a few yards past the old overwatch post where Phillip had been bitten and turned prior to Duncan granting him second death.
In his mind’s eye, Duncan saw a couple of wildflowers arranged on the unmarked patch of sod containing Oliver Gladson’s last earthly remains. Everything, that is, save for the lower portion of his leg that Adrian and her brainwashed followers had amputated.
Duncan leaned against the weathered fencepost marking the corner of the Eden property and loitered there for a few minutes, watching and listening.
***
Though the two-way radio’s volume was turned to the lowest setting without being totally muted, Duncan had been able to pick up most of what was being said over the open channel.
He grimaced when he heard the Kids report back that they were still roaming the outskirts of the property and had yet to see any signs of Daymon.
Though the signal had been weak, he’d gleaned that Lev wasn’t too concerned about he and Glenda leaving the wire. He smiled when his friend shot back at Tran, reminding the likable fellow of their collective ages and that he figured a couple of fifty-somethings would be just fine on their own. Then his mood turned dark when Lev reported that so far he and Jamie had found no trace of the dreadlocked firefighter north of Woodruff.
Duncan did the math in his head and concluded the radio in his pocket would be at the outside edge of its maximum range before he reached Huntsville. He guessed he would get to the burned-out Shell station east of Huntsville, and then find he was on his own. Which was fine by him. It was how he came into the world. And more and more it was becoming evident to him it was how he was destined to leave it.
As Duncan neared the stretch of SR-39 where deciduous firs and mature oaks crowded it from both sides, creating a creepy flora tunnel, he unshouldered the M4 and thumbed the selector to Fire.
Chapter 4
Cade fired up the F-650 and turned on the defroster. He took his mug of tepid coffee from the dash and drank it down in one long gulp.
“Made quick work of that,” Raven said. She stowed her rifle muzzle down in the well near her feet and fastened her seatbelt.
“Speaking of work,” Cade said. “How’d you do the kids?” He tossed the mug into the back seat and directed a thoughtful look toward his daughter. “Let me rephrase that. How did it go down on your side of the truck?”
“That’s better,” she said. “I did it just like you said to. Light on the balls of my feet. I let the first one get ahold of my arm and draw it toward his mouth. All it took after that was a little poke to the eye.” Pretending to brandish a knife, she extended one arm horizontally over the dash and curled the other over her head and held it there. Holding the mock fencing pose, she added, “Number two was a bit different. He went for the blade and got it in the neck before I could get him straightened around for the killing blow.” Now Raven was shooting her dad a thoughtful look. “I can’t believe you let me out of your sight.”
“Neither can I,” Cade admi
tted. “Then again, you held your own against the adult Z that attacked Dregan’s oldest.”
“With a gun,” she reminded.
“The Dregan fella’s own gun, no less. Made me proud how you handled yourself when I wasn’t around. So did Mom. She diffused that situation with the elder Dregan perfectly.” He paused for a beat. “When you keep your calm, the rest falls into place.”
Entering uncharted territory with her dad made Raven squirm a bit in her seat. Changing the subject, she said, “We’re burning gas. Shouldn’t we be going?”
Cade shifted his attention to the ribbon of road reeling out in front of them. In the span of a few minutes the emerging sun and steady breeze out of the east had scoured the morning fog from the shallow depression.
“Astute observation,” he said matter-of-factly. Dropping the transmission into gear, he eased up on the brakes and let gravity pull the truck forward.
“Seatbelt,” she said.
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He said, “Why bother? We’re stopping by the van, remember?”
Raven made a show of tightening her belt.
Sighing, Cade clicked his seatbelt home. Feeling the truck pitch forward and pick up speed, he grabbed the radio off the dash. It had been silent for a few minutes now. “You were closer to the open window than me. Did you hear what Tran wanted?”
“He was wondering if you knew where Duncan was. He called your name a few times, then tried the others again.” She went on, recounting the entire conversation to him.
“Going by everyone’s reporting, I have a feeling Daymon continued eastbound on Center Street last night.”
Raven didn’t have anything to add. She wasn’t there when Daymon showed up out of the blue. So she kept quiet and focused her attention on the dense woods to her right.
The F-650 reached the transition from hill to flat with a decent head of steam. Cade steered what Raven had taken to calling “Black Beauty” around the destroyed SUVs, avoiding a debris field consisting of pebbled automotive glass, spent bullet casings, and the burned corpse of one of the attackers. Legs bent at the knee and arms reaching skyward, the charred husk barely resembled a human. The skull was hairless, the eye sockets shadow-filled. The intense heat had cooked off most of the fat and flesh, leaving a shrunken carcass with sharp-edged bones pressing against what little of its blackened, leather-like dermis remained.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 3
