The clutch of Zs in question—maybe five total—was stalled out in the shadow of a roadside fir. Heads tilted back, eyes locked on a shiny Mylar balloon trapped high in the upper boughs, they caught Duncan’s attention a split-second before he saw the tail end of the herd.
Now, as a waifish first turn was sent cartwheeling over the guardrail and into the gloomy forest, Duncan was in the fight of his life to keep control of the SUV. A fight that was nearly stopped in the opening round when a recently turned male—balding, overweight, and middle-aged—was upended by the bumper, all two-hundred-some-odd pounds of him becoming a pasty blur as he left the road spinning head over heels.
The initial impact with the diminutive first turn left a permanent V in the hood’s leading edge.
The portly recent turn crashing face-down atop the hood hammered a man-sized trough down its center.
Because Duncan was still a bit impaired, his reaction time suffered.
The late turn of the wheel and stab to the brake pedal only succeeded in sending the flabby recent turn sliding off the hood and to the road where it hit face first and crumpled like a worn-out accordion. Continuing to haul the steering wheel hand over hand took destroying the guardrail and dying in the ditch out of the equation. The ensuing fishtail, however, sent the Toyota’s entire right side slamming into the shambling mass, starting a chain reaction that had a large swath of the column falling away diagonally from the point of impact.
Through the newly cracked windshield, Duncan saw a path opening up. He figured if the rotters continued to halt in place and perform clumsy pirouettes toward the barreling Toyota, he might just get through them all without further damaging the badly battered rig. The shot of adrenaline entering his system as a direct result of this wholly unexpected encounter helped him to focus on his next action. Which was halving his speed and putting the Land Cruiser into Crawl mode.
The engine growled and a whine came from the geared-down transmission as the SUV bulled through a sea of slapping hands and leering faces.
Thirty seconds after rounding the corner and being swallowed by the herd, the once white Land Cruiser came out the other end with little more than a few new dents on the panels and a pair of folded back side mirrors.
“Screw you, Murphy,” hollered Duncan as the lead element of the herd made clumsy lunges for the rapidly retreating Land Cruiser.
A dozen miles east, on State Route 39, Raven had just completed her roadside business and was cinching her belt when the Screamer abruptly cut out. Instinctively, she regarded the pick-up on the road behind her. She saw her dad standing sentinel by its rear bumper, staring expectantly in her general direction.
After hollering, “I’m coming,” across the road, she scooped up her rifle and threw one leg over the guardrail.
Rifle resting across her knees, she paused for a beat atop the wooden post. Off her left shoulder, at the bottom of the gravel and dirt embankment, was the Ogden River. Swollen from recent rains, its surface was frothed and white. To her fore was the mini-horde. It was maybe a hundred feet from her dad and steadily advancing. She threw a shiver at the sight of hundreds of seemingly unstoppable dead things wanting to rip out their throats and strip the meat from their bones. Cursing under her breath at the current state of affairs, she rose, swung her leg over the guardrail, and then stood staring down at the river for a beat. Unlike her, the river was free. It rushed by without a care in the world. It didn’t have to constantly watch its back. It wasn’t always losing the ones it loved. It had zero worries.
A wave of emotion washed over her. Tears welled in her eyes. Somewhere on the road at her back her dad was hollering for her to get to the truck.
Not wanting to show any weakness, especially now with her mom gone, she remained facing the river and wiped her eyes with a sleeve. Though her vision was a little blurry, she thought the bushes on the far riverbank were beginning to sway back and forth. As she continued to watch, what was at first just a subtle quaking became more pronounced, almost violent. The few leaves not yet claimed by autumn fell from the tremoring branches and fluttered into the racing water. If the trees towering over the river were matching the unexplained movement in the wall of bushes, she would have attributed it all to an earthquake.
Raven was still fixated on the bank of wildly swaying foliage thirty feet to her fore when gnarled hands and pale, welt-covered arms burst through the tangle. Before she could draw a breath and call out a warning, dozens of zombies were spilling through multiple breaks in the bushes. No match for the sheer numbers pouring forth, the grabbing, ground-level branches snapped off, sending loud, gunshot-like cracks rolling up the embankment ahead of the zombies stumbling onto the sandy riverbank.
The first to break through the brush wore no looks of shock or surprise as they were propelled forcefully across the narrow shore and into the turbid water by the crush from behind. They just plunged into the waist-high roil and disappeared from view, unwittingly creating a bridge to the other side for the creatures still pouring from the forest.
All Raven had wanted was a little moment of quiet. A two-second respite from the Screamer. From the calls of the dead. Just her and her thoughts as she caught a breath of fresh air and enjoyed the relaxing murmur of water smoothing river rock.
But the dead couldn’t even afford her that one small luxury.
Turning away from the surreal sight below, she said, “Fuck!” at the top of her voice and stalked toward the truck.
Struck speechless, Cade looked a question in his daughter’s direction.
Ignoring the expression on her dad’s face, she hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “There’s more of these assholes down there.”
Choose your battles, thought Cade as he drew a deep breath. “How many?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Without warning, the Screamer cycled back on.
Raven shot a death glare at the truck bed. She said, “Too many of them to count.”
“Dozens?”
She stabbed a thumb at the sky.
“Hundreds?”
“More,” she said. She opened the passenger door, then paused and looked the length of the truck. After a moment spent studying the slow-moving procession spread out across both lanes and stretching all the way to the distant bend in the road, she pointed at the mini-horde and added, “About a third as many as that.”
“Come here,” Cade said, arms outstretched.
“I don’t need a hug,” she said, sweeping her arm left to right. “I want them all dead. Every last one. I’m so damn sick of them.”
“Me too,” he conceded. “But first I want you to get in back and find that noisy bastard.”
Taken aback at her dad’s use of a swear word, Raven grabbed the bed rail, pumped her knees once, then jumped and planted both boots on the gore-caked rear tire. She shot another cursory glance at the mini-horde, then hauled her slight frame over the side.
Raven was out of sight for a three-count before popping up in the load bed with the Screamer balanced on her upturned palm.
“Turn it off,” Cade mouthed.
Wearing a look of confusion, she popped open the tiny panel on the device and pressed the button to silence it.
“Make up your mind, Dad.” She tossed him the device. “You said we were going to lead them all away to the junction with that stupid thing.”
Cade reached up and helped her down. “A plan never survives first contact with the enemy.” He gestured toward the embankment. “Those newcomers change the dynamic. Exponentially.”
“You’re afraid there’s more of them on the road ahead of us and we might be trapped, right?”
He nodded. “Not so much afraid,” he said. “I just need to know. I figure we’ll wheel ahead and not stop until we get to the 39/16 junction.”
Raven cast a furtive glance at the dead. They had closed to within fifty feet of the F-650. To her right, a zombie was on its stomach and clawing at the road. Its hair and clothes were soaked and coated with sand from the r
iver crossing and subsequent uphill scrabble. Its unblinking eyes never left her as it wormed its way underneath the guardrail.
Cade caught Raven’s eye. He gestured at the truck.
“In. Now,” he said forcefully.
He made a shooing motion as she passed by in front of him. He waited on the road long enough for her to climb in the already open door, then closed it behind her. As he curled around front of the truck, a trio of Zs crested the embankment. Just the tops of their heads, though. By the time he had made it to the relative safety of the F-650’s elevated cab, he was able to see the entire stretch of river. It was teeming with Zs and dozens more were clawing their way up to the road.
A quick estimate of the number of walking dead in the merging columns told him there were enough Zs in one place to jeopardize the Eden compound and maybe even render the surrounding Ogden River Valley uninhabitable. Which meant, he thought glumly, that he not only had to lure them to the junction, but it was also imperative he get them trudging north toward Bear Lake, where the open terrain would greatly improve the odds of tracking them, and, if Beeson could spare the manpower, eventually eradicating every last one of them.
Scooping up the Motorola, Cade called the compound to report this unfortunate new development.
Chapter 12
As 39 transitioned from a long straightaway into a blind right-hand hairpin, Duncan let his foot off the gas and tapped the brakes. Having learned the hard way a few miles back what kind of trouble a fella with a belly full of booze and a head in the clouds could come up against, he slowed the rig to walking speed and started into the turn as wide left as possible. Nearing the turn, both tires on Duncan’s side were riding on the eastbound lane’s fog line and he was craning hard to see as much of the unspooling stretch of two-lane as possible.
The approach to the corner was bracketed on both sides by towering old growth. The ever-present guardrail followed the contour of the road on both sides. Beyond the guardrails, the trunks of towering firs and surrounding underbrush were mostly hidden in shadow.
A perfect place to spring an ambush, crossed Duncan’s mind as, through the detritus-sullied windshield, the vantage ahead was revealed to him in thin vertical slices.
Thankfully there wasn’t a rotter in sight. Nor were there armed foreign soldiers on near-silent motorbikes waiting in ambush.
On the left the forest was rapidly giving way to grass-covered rolling hills cut through by the Ogden River. Here and there copses of trees broke up the monotony.
Duncan saw the landscape to his left for what it was: a perfect place to catch a deer or elk out in the open.
Dead ahead, dark clouds were parked over where he figured Huntsville ought to be. They rose up from the valley floor and seemed to be sucking all of the light from the surrounding landscape.
To the right was a berm of red dirt left behind when the road stretching away into the valley was cut into the soil. As Duncan spurred the Land Cruiser on by giving her a good dose of pedal, the long grass atop the uneven scar in the land seemed to undulate up and down in relation to the level asphalt keeping pace with it. When combined with the effects of the alcohol in his system, the sensation was so unnerving that he used his right hand as a blinder to block it all from view until the slight grade leveled out.
At the bottom of the runout was a flatbed truck with Arizona plates. Its wide, low-to-the-ground front end was facing Duncan. The glint from the sun at his back made seeing inside all but impossible. Both doors were bullet-riddled and standing open. The windows were shattered, the glass remaining in the channels splintered and falling inward. Whatever had happened here was not in the favor of the old flatbed Ford’s occupants. That much was clear.
He slowed and scrutinized the road on both sides. Just long grass and barbed wire strung between gnarled wood posts for as far as he could see. Not the best place to spring some hate on folks passing through. The concealment component was there. Cover was not. Last he checked, blades of grass did nothing to stop effective return fire.
The closer Duncan got to the scene, the more he learned.
Roughly a hundred feet behind the truck, equidistant to the dashed yellow centerline, two long, narrow stretches of 39 glittered with what looked to be broken window glass. The debris fields were a yard wide, at best, and maybe a dozen feet in length.
This got him to thinking about the tactics the Viet Cong employed against soldiers on leave in Saigon. The city was overrun by rickshaws and mopeds. The former were a convenient and inexpensive way to get from bar to bar in the sprawling city. The latter were sometimes used in hit-and-run attacks on soldiers at open air cafes and markets and those riding in rickshaws. It was more common than reported back home. If Duncan had to put money on what happened here, he’d bet the house that the debris fields and stalled-out truck were direct results of a hit-and-run attack.
Sliding up next to the open driver’s side door, he looked through the shot-out window and saw what had become of the occupants. A man had been driving. No way to discern his age. He was shirtless and sprawled across the blood-slickened floorboard. Bullet entry wounds were visible on his left side. Three or four little bloodless holes. A neat line stitched along his ribcage, from hip to armpit. The damage to the other side must have been catastrophic.
The man’s pants were bunched down around his knees, with the pockets turned inside out. He died going commando—sans underwear—hence the positive gender identification.
“Bunch of shit,” Duncan growled. “Assholes left you ass up with your twig and berries showing for all to see.”
He let his gaze roam the cab. Saw that the passenger was dead as well. A boy. Maybe twelve. Slouched way down in his seat. No seatbelt. The single gaping exit wound in the temple facing Duncan was impossible to miss. Once blond hair was matted with blood and brain tissue. A big chunk of hair-covered skull was hinged back and resting on the top edge of the low seatback.
No mercy was shown these two. And they hadn’t been dead long. Their skin had yet to take on a waxen appearance and there wasn’t any apparent bruising due to blood pooling in the downward-facing parts of their corpses—the man’s gut and ribcage, specifically.
Rolling forward a few feet allowed for a better look at the flatbed out back. A blue tarp hung off the rear edge, most of it pooled behind the far-side rear tire. Whatever the pair had been hauling was now gone. Most of it, anyway. There was a cooler, lid open and tipped on its side. Nothing in it. Piles of bedding, all of it earth-toned and looking to be of a high thread count, were pushed up against the cab. Duncan could see the plush comforters and sheets gracing the beds in the rooms of the ski resort above Eden. He guessed these two were on a father/son supply run and got caught with their pants down.
Duncan grimaced as he let his foot off the brake, allowing the Toyota to roll forward powered only by the idling engine. Though he hadn’t given voice to that last thought, his unintentional choice of words were pretty damn callous.
A quick glance at the rearview showed open road, nothing moving on it.
Once the Toyota was even with the broken glass, Duncan parked between the twin fields and got out.
All it took was a quick walk down the centerline to find what he was looking for. A dozen feet down the road from the glass, in the eastbound lane, was a trail of spent brass. Ten casings in all. Every one of them stamped with the symbol of their Chicom manufacturer.
He turned around and faced the rear of the flatbed. Walking his gaze the length of the westbound lane and shoulder he spotted something throwing the sun. Closer inspection revealed a single identical shell casing that had been partially swallowed up by an unruly tangle of roadside grass. He was sure it was only one of dozens and if he tramped off through the grass he’d eventually find them all.
“Yep,” he said as he turned a slow three-sixty in the road, “a couple of dicks on motorcycles did this to you. Question is, where are they now?”
Head on a swivel, he stalked back to the SUV, his thoug
hts divided between the dead, the living, and the sweet temptress bearing a man’s first and last name. And damn if the latter wasn’t winning the battle for his attention.
Chapter 13
Raising his clenched fist, Wilson stopped in his tracks and dropped to one knee dead center of the weed-choked logging road. Holding his M4 close to his chest, finger beside the trigger guard and suppressor pointing groundward, he slowly pivoted on the knee until he faced Taryn.
A few steps behind and a yard left of the redhead, Taryn froze upon seeing the silent signal, then crouched down in the knee-high grass.
Wilson beckoned her forward, one finger pressed to his lips.
Taryn duck walked to his position. She whispered, “You proposing to me?”
Wilson missed the meaning of her quip. He said, “I see something. A stack of rocks beside the road.” He dipped his head for a beat. When he looked up, he added, “Looks like there’s a motorcycle parked under a tree near the rocks.”
She peered over his shoulder.
“That’s how those Chinese soldiers were getting around prior to being bit and turning, right?”
Wilson nodded. “That’s what Cade said. I think I better go and check it out.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “So I guess you’re not going to pop the question.”
Wilson shot her a quizzical look. “What?”
“Never mind,” she said testily. She flicked the safety off and trained her rifle down the road. “You’re not going it alone, Wilson.”
Wilson said nothing. He flicked his selector to Fire and moved over to one of the twin ruts long ago etched into the road by the passage of large tonnage vehicles. The grass was knee-high to him here, but he found it easier to keep from wandering off into one of the many clearings purposefully cut from the forest so that ingoing and outgoing log trucks could pull over to allow for passing.
The pair had taken maybe a dozen cautious steps forward when they left the sun-dappled stretch of road behind and entered a pocket of forest where the air was cold and tainted with the faint odor of death. Drops of water falling from the hundred-foot-tall fir trees pattered all around them. As they crept back into the light, where the road widened and the stack of smooth rocks sat, more of the squat vehicle was revealed. It was neon green with splashes of black and white. A short windshield rose up from a pronounced snout. Yamaha was emblazoned on the side facing them.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 9
