Peering down at her face, he said, “You probably wouldn’t understand if I told you,” and nudged the remaining dirt in with his toe, closing her off from her past life forever.
Chapter 10
Raven was climbing from the backseat to the front when Cade put a hand on her shoulder. “Wait,” he said, talking loud to be heard over the reactivated Screamer. “We’ve got a punctured tire. No doubt about it.”
The angle the F-650’s hood was canted in relation to the horizon showing between the distant trees was all the proof he needed. Suggesting the left rear tire was losing air, in the span of a few seconds the corner of the expansive hood on Raven’s side had risen ever so slightly.
Still straddling the seatback, she said, “We have to change it then.” She craned to make eye contact. “Don’t we?”
“We don’t have enough separation from the Zs to do that.”
“Drive then. We can stop and fix it somewhere down the road.”
“It’s not that simple. For one, this rig is so big that driving just a little ways on a flat might throw the tire from the rim. That happens … the tire could get stuck in the wheel well. Then we’re really up a creek.”
Raven gave him a funny look at the reference. She said, “Why do you have me balancing here on the back of the seat?”
“Get back there and look under the seat. There should be a couple of cans about the size spray paint comes in. They have a clear plastic hose attached to a spray nozzle.”
Raven slithered off the seatback and landed on the carpeted floorboard on all fours. A beat later she said, “I can’t see anything but speakers under here.”
“Do it by feel, then.”
While Cade issued instructions, his eyes roamed the mirrors. In the right-side wing mirror things looked under control. So far it was just the handful of new turns overtaking the main body of Zs and fanning out across the two-lane that had him concerned. They looked to be fifty yards back. But when taking into account the Objects Are Closer Than They Appear warning etched into the mirror, he cut his initial estimate by half.
“Hurry,” he said, palm upturned, fingers waggling. “We’ve got a minute, tops.”
Popping up from the back like a prairie dog, she blurted, “Got ‘em!”
He took the cans from her and elbowed his door open. On the way out, he issued orders he expected her to follow to the letter.
Boots hitting the ground, he slammed the door closed. As he ripped the plastic shrink wrap from the first can of FIX-A-FLAT, he detected the satisfying thunk of Raven throwing the door locks.
Weeks ago, while on a foray outside Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, he had happened upon a boarded-up hardware store in a tiny town named Yoder. It was the same place the Zs had tested him by worming underneath the static F-650.
After doing a little breaking and entering and finding the owner dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Cade had gone ahead and filled up a garbage sack with all of the automotive products on hand. The FIX-A-FLATs were a part of that haul and, until now, had remained out of sight and mind.
Giving the first can a vigorous shaking, Cade inspected the rear tire. Though there was a fair amount of blood and guts coating the wide black sidewall, he didn’t see a puncture or tear in the rubber. Using his teeth to remove the cap, he eyed the tire, looking for a shard of bone or antler protruding from the deep-channel tread. Seeing nothing and unable to hear air escaping over the Screamer wailing in the bed above his head, he spun the cap off the valve stem and threaded the hose coupling onto the tire valve. Holding the can upright, he pressed the button. Nothing. The expected rush of air under extreme pressure didn’t come immediately. However, after a half-beat he felt some kind of movement in the can and saw the clear tube go white.
Two or three seconds after pressing and holding the button down, Cade saw no movement in the tire itself, while out of the corner of his eye, movement was all he saw.
The dead were coming for them en masse. They were spread across the road, guardrail to guardrail—twenty abreast, Cade guessed. Though the elk was but an appetizer for this crowd, the exposure to fresh meat and hot blood had spurred them on.
The F-650’s horn sounded. And though it was an item likely ripped from a semi truck—supersized like everything else on the dead NBA baller’s ride—the foghorn-like blare was no match for the Screamer.
As Cade readied another FIX-A-FLAT, the horn sounded a second time. Then a third. And, finally, a fourth. All closely spaced. Manic in nature. Raven’s anxiety delivered in spades without a word shared between daughter and father.
The ritual was the same for Cade: Shake the can vigorously, remove the cap, unwind the clear hose.
The first can was still sputtering a bit when he swapped it out for the fresh can.
The Screamer went silent. In its place was a rising din of moans and hisses. Even if the tire was still leaking, there was no way for Cade to tell.
Holding the button atop the FIX-A-FLAT down with the thumb on his left hand, Cade slipped the Glock 17 from its drop-thigh holster. Brandishing the pistol one-handed, he lined up the iron sights on the nearest of the fresh turns and started firing rounds head-high into their midst.
Swinging his arm left-to-right with no discernable pause between shots rendered Cade’s initial volley far from accurate. Of the eight Zs he’d engaged across roughly twenty feet of open road, only three went down as a result of accurate head shots. Of the other five, one had taken a round in the chin, another had suffered a through-and-through to the neck, and three caught bullets to the torso. With the Screamer momentarily shut down, sans the suppressor, the three-second fusillade from the Glock had drowned out everything.
As the sharp cracks dissipated and a low ringing started between Cade’s ears, seemingly all at once, a bunch of random things happened.
The tube on the FIX-A-FLAT went opaque as the last of the liquid patch left the can.
The F-650’s V10 revved high up into the power band, the resulting rush of hot exhaust coming from the nearby pipes warming Cade’s face and neck as he rose from the road. Music to his ringing ears, he heard the clunk telling him Raven had dropped the transmission into gear. Finally, with the dead barely a dozen feet away, he hooked an arm and a leg over the top edge of the bed and hammered the Glock against the side of the truck.
Message received.
The truck lurched and shimmied but made no forward progress.
Foot off the brake, Raven.
No sooner had Cade thought it, than the ground began moving in his side vision. He felt the tire brushing his knee and winced at the thought of what was being deposited there, let alone what might happen if his leg somehow got sucked into the wheel well.
Lowering his head and craning around afforded Cade an idea of just how close he’d come to being Z chow. Several of the fresh turns he’d only winged or hit center of mass had avoided tripping over their headshot compatriots, traversed the remaining ten feet under cover of the Screamer, and were already at the spot in the road where he’d been kneeling and trying his best to get the task done without repeatedly checking his six.
As the Ford picked up speed and the ride smoothed out, he watched a male rotter inadvertently kick one of the spent aerosol cans, sending it spinning and bouncing toward the shoulder with the six-inch length of hose whipping the air like a bronco rider’s free arm.
After counting to ten in his head with the road scrolling by a few feet from his left cheek, Cade banged on the truck again. Only this time it was two short blows that triggered a preordained action.
The recent turns were maybe a hundred yards back when the Ford came to a stop on the centerline at the apex of a sweeping left-hand turn.
Cade unhooked his leg and went to his knees next to the truck. Feeling a bit nauseous and suffering from vertigo brought on by the road rushing by his face, he bowed his head and continued holding onto the bed rail until the Screamer went silent.
The driver’s window whirred
down.
“You OK, Dad?”
Meeting her gaze in the wing mirror, Cade said, “I’ll live.”
“That was a close call,” she said. “But they’re still coming.”
“Good,” he said, “That’s the plan.”
Raven put the transmission into Park. “Get in,” she said. “I’ll climb over the console.”
Cade looked over a shoulder. Determining he had a little window before the dead again reached the truck, he raised an index finger to Raven—universal semaphore for wait one minute.
He met Raven’s gaze in the mirror, mouthed “It’ll be OK,” then dropped from the truck, landing cat-like on hands and knees. Still a bit woozy, he rolled over onto his back and drew a deep breath. Senses slowly returning to normal, he grabbed a part of the frame rail near the rear axle that was not thoroughly coated with human detritus and wriggled underneath the lifted 4x4.
The first thing that caught Cade’s eye, was an eye. And it was huge. Marty Feldman, huge. It was looking down on him from the inner wheel well where some kind of vein or nerve attached to it had become entangled in a component of the truck’s long-travel suspension.
Ignoring the accusatory glare of what was clearly one of the dead elk’s eyeballs, he gave the tire a more thorough inspection. Thankfully the inner sidewall was not punctured. And in the ten seconds between going to the road and entering into the unexpected staring contest, he hadn’t heard any hissing noises save for those coming from the first turns off his left shoulder.
Still not one hundred per cent convinced the puncture sealer was working as advertised, he reached into a pocket and came out with a tactical light. Lying prostrate with two-thirds of his body hanging out on 39 as the Screamer reactivated was unnerving to say the least. Throw in the steadily advancing pack of dead several hundred strong and you had the makings of one hell of a Depends commercial.
Though every fiber in Cade’s body was screaming for him to get up and climb into the safety of the truck, he had to be sure. So he thumbed the tactical light on and walked its beam along the tire’s top edge. Seeing a length of something slender protruding from the tire, he stowed the flashlight, then snaked both hands into the cramped wheel well.
Acting against instinct, he gripped between thumb and forefinger what he guessed to be a spike broken off the elk’s magnificent antlers and slowly worked it loose. He grimaced when the shard of yellowed antler came loose. A cold ball formed in his stomach when he heard the unmistakable sound of air rushing from the hole left behind.
He shimmied out from under the truck with a few precious feet of separation between him and the deceptively fast fresh turns. Knowing Raven was implementing the part of his lengthy orders this scenario warranted, he stayed low and hustled to the driver’s door.
Suppressed gunfire sounded from above Cade’s head as he hauled the door open. Spent brass arced from above as he planted a boot on the running board and took a firm hold of the A-pillar grab bar.
One component of Cade’s hastily concocted plan he hadn’t accounted for was how he found the seat when he clambered aboard. To accommodate Raven’s small stature, it was now adjusted all the way forward—likely to the furthest extent of its travel. Then there was the power adjustable pedals. They were at the top of their travel—the exact opposite of how the NBA player would have had them set. And Raven was standing in the cab with her head and shoulders through the open moonroof, boot-clad feet straddling the shifter.
As Cade wriggled behind the steering wheel, he also found the horn-ring-mounted airbag nearly touching his chest.
With no time to make all of the necessary ergonomic adjustments, he ran the seat back a bit, dropped the transmission into gear, and bellowed, “Cease fire,” as he matted the gas pedal.
The gunshots ended at once, leaving the Screamer and V10 competing with the moans and rasps pushing ahead of the dangerously close mini-horde.
Like she’d had her legs swept from under her, Raven crashed into the cab all knees and elbows. Held two-handed and vertical to her body, the rifle came through the moonroof after.
Cade steered hard left to make the corner. In response, the rear end broke free and drifted toward the right-side shoulder.
Losing her balance, Raven keeled over to the left, nearly ending up on her dad’s lap.
Steering counter to the drift, Cade took one hand off the wheel and braced his daughter before she was added to everything else crowding in on him. “Safety on?” he asked as he gently guided her back to her own seat.
“Mom taught me well, remember?” As the Ford straightened out and dove into the nearby curve, she clicked her seatbelt home and regarded her dad. “What about leading them away from the compound? They’re going to lose interest if we get too far.”
“There’s a method to my madness,” he said. Then he went on to explain to her how the FIX-A-FLAT was supposed to work. How they had to let the liquid heat up a bit inside the tubeless tire so that it would coat the inside evenly.
She said, “Just like water, the goo in the can finds the path of least resistance, right?”
Cade said, “Precisely.” He watched the speedometer needle creep past fifty, then maintained that speed through the short straightaway, through two opposing curves, then into another long straightaway, where he pushed the Ford to seventy before stabbing the brakes a couple of hundred feet short of the looming hairpin.
The Screamer had reactivated during the first straight and was bleating on somewhere in the bed behind them.
Finished swapping magazines, Raven trapped the rifle between her knees, and regarded her dad. “Do you think that worked?”
Cade glanced at the instrument cluster. Saw the tire pressure warning still illuminated. “Hope for the best—” he began.
“And prepare for the worst,” she finished.
After getting the truck nosed around with a ragged three-point turn, Cade took it through the paces, getting their speed up to sixty miles per hour for a short stretch, then keeping it above forty until stopping again beyond the opposing curves with a football field’s length of road between the truck and strung-out column of walking dead.
“Cover me,” Raven said. “I’ll get out and check the tire.”
Cade had already found the controls for the pedals and was motoring them forward. He nodded. “Take your rifle. And be quick about it.”
Raven said nothing. She was free of her belt and already out the door when the Screamer went silent. Three seconds later she was on her back under the right rear of the truck and peering into the gloomy recesses of the wheel well. She listened hard for a long three-count. Hearing nothing but a ticking noise coming from the exhaust pipe routed nearby, she shimmied out and rose up beside the truck.
“Good to go?” Cade called.
Meeting his gaze in the wing mirror, she said, “I think so. But I need to go.”
Incredulous, he said, “It can’t wait?”
The Screamer came alive again as she was shaking her head. “All those curves and then the sudden stops. I really gotta go.”
He hooked a thumb at the nearby guardrail. Throwing the transmission into Park, he said, “Make it quick.” He motored the steering wheel forward as he watched her exit the truck. Finished, he set the E-brake and nudged his door open.
Raven was already climbing over the guardrail by the time Cade reached the back of the truck. He kept her in his sight until she dropped her pants and squatted behind the wooden post supporting the long run of guardrail.
“Daaad … a little privacy pleeease,” she called, her voice nearly drowned out by the aural trifecta of the Screamer at his back, Ogden River flowing swiftly by barely a dozen feet below her position, and the steadily advancing mini-horde drawing way too close for comfort.
Keeping the blurry form of his squatting daughter in his side vision, he crossed his arms and bellowed, “Hurry it up!”
Chapter 11
Duncan wheeled the Land Cruiser around a blind corner and found hims
elf braking hard and wrenching the steering wheel to the left to keep from plowing into a knot of dead things at least fifty strong.
“Gawd damn it,” he bawled as he fought to keep control. A rumble rippled through the frame and rocks pinged off the undercarriage as both wheels on his side tore through the shoulder. A tick later a tremendous bang made his ears ring when the Toyota traded paint with the rust-stippled guardrail.
Equal reactions being what they are, the SUV rebounded off the sturdy barrier, bounced and shimmied as it rode back onto the state route, then juddered violently when a number of walking corpses were sent flying from a very violent impact with the front bumper.
Apparently, Duncan thought, as the jarring impact separated a young girl first turn from her tennis shoes, the time he’d spent spilling his guts to the Brook lookalike, killing her for the second and final time, then burying her in the shallow grave, had given the main group of rotters less of a head start than he’d anticipated. A lot less judging by the vehicular mayhem unfolding before his eyes. And though he hadn’t been keeping close watch on the odometer—or much else, obviously—he guessed her grave was barely a mile behind him.
Contributing to the complacency brought on by the low-level buzz softening reality around the edges, during the short drive on the state route, he’d only encountered a handful of rotters. Some were first turns so road-ravaged they shouldn’t have been ambulatory in the first place. A couple were burned and blinded just like the ones at the bridge. Then there were the members of the easily distracted crowd. He’d seen their kind before. Prone to standing in a yard and pawing at threadbare wash still pinned to sagging clotheslines. Or stopping to watch a fellow rotter thrashing away in a car and end up drawing an all-encompassing crowd of undead, three deep around the car. Duncan had seen one zombie in Portland standing and gawking at the colorful banners flapping above a used car lot on 82nd Avenue. Hours later, as he returned from a cross-town trip, the single staring corpse had been joined on the sidewalk in front of the lot by three more fresh turns.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 8
