Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone

by Chesser, Shawn

  Breaking noise discipline, Taryn said, “Wilson. Stop.”

  Somewhere left of them a woodpecker went to work on a tree. Further off a crow cawed.

  Wilson halted, went to one knee again, then turned his head slowly in Taryn’s direction.

  Taryn saw at once the look of surprise on his face. Eyes wide and mouth agape, he lowered his rifle and motioned with his free arm as if to ask What’s up?

  Lowering her M4, Taryn rose and walked toward him.

  He made a patting motion at the ground. Get down.

  “It’s a snowmobile, Wilson. Gregory Dregan’s snowmobile. It’s not exactly where he said it would be. But then again there was a foot of snow covering everything when he rode it in here.”

  “What about the rocks?”

  “Hard to believe inhospitable spirits decided to choose this particular place to leave their warning.”

  “Music to my ears,” Wilson said. “That Blair Witch flick freaked me the eff out.”

  “How can anything freak you the eff out at this point, Wilson? We are living a frickin’ horror flick.”

  He shrugged, then regarded the road ahead of them. It got real narrow after about a hundred feet or so. There was also some noise coming from that direction. Branches breaking. It sounded as if a grizzly bear might be charging up the road in their direction.

  Wilson hustled forward and crouched down by the garishly painted Yamaha’s front skis. He made room for Taryn, then braced his rifle on the windshield, its business end trained where he figured the source of the commotion was likely to show its face.

  After a few seconds spent kneeling beside the snowmachine, the ground began to vibrate. Something big was coming. And it wasn’t alone.

  Wilson whispered, “What do you think it is?”

  “Not it,” said Taryn. “More like … they.” No sooner had she finished answering, than deer or elk or moose—whatever breed the herd of hooved animals were—blazed by, all coiled muscle and tan fur and mouths frothing white with foam. She saw a huge rack of antlers on one of them. A buck? she guessed.

  The rest, on account they were much smaller and lacked antlers, she supposed were female. Does?

  The thud of hooves dissipated first. The sounds of brush breaking lasted a few seconds longer.

  Taryn said, “Think those are the ones Cade called in?”

  “If so,” he replied. “They sure covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time.”

  She flicked her gun to Safe and rose. Nose scrunched, she said, “You think that smell is the rotters following them?”

  “I wouldn’t put money on it,” he said. “Cade and Raven are supposedly leading the dead out of the valley.”

  “I hate that smell. It gets in your clothes and hair and never leaves.”

  Wilson looked at her and grimaced. Parroting her, he said, “We’re living a frickin’ horror flick, remember?”

  “Yeah, I said that.” She sat on the snowmachine and shrugged off her pack. After fishing out a rectangular item in a thin foil wrapper, she said, “Pop Tart?”

  “What flavor?”

  “Cherry.”

  Wilson put his hands on his knees and pretended to vomit on the ground between his boots.

  “Really?” she said. “End of the frickin’ world and you’re being picky?”

  “Give it here,” he said sheepishly. “I was just messing around.”

  She went to hand him it to him, then abruptly drew it back.

  “Stop teasing.”

  She let him have the treat, then took a big bite out of hers. Crumbs falling from her mouth, she asked, “So what’s your favorite flavor?”

  “S’Mores.”

  Taryn stopped chewing and stared at him.

  “Forgot about those, didn’t you?”

  She nodded slowly. “Wish you hadn’t reminded me.” Changing the subject, she said, “If you could teleport anywhere right now—” What sounded like a tree crashing to the forest floor somewhere far away stopped her mid-sentence.

  Wilson turned and looked down the fire road in the direction the sound originated.

  “Falling tree,” she stated confidently. “Go on.”

  He sat sidesaddle on the seat, his rifle pointed down the road.

  She shifted around so that her hip was touching his and looked him in the eye. “Well? Where is Scotty going to beam you?”

  Wilson finished the bite of Pop Tart. “I want to be beamed to Central Park.”

  “Really? In New York? You know how many zombies will be waiting to eat you?”

  Wilson bugged his eyes at her and popped the last of the cold toaster pastry into his mouth.

  “One point five million people were packed into thirty square miles.”

  Wilson swallowed but said nothing.

  “Seventh grade American history,” she said. “I did a four-page report on the 9/11 attacks.”

  “While I rethink my answer,” Wilson said. “Where do you want to be beamed?”

  “Burbank.”

  “California?”

  Taryn ate the crumbs from the foil, crinkled it up, and stowed it in a pocket. “I didn’t stutter.”

  Closer now, the woodpecker attacked a different tree.

  Wilson thought for a spell. Finally he said, “That’s close to Los Angeles. You know what Cade said about that city.”

  “‘It’s FUBAR,’ were his exact words.”

  Wilson rose off the seat and turned to face her. “Exactly. There are like three or four million people there.”

  “Were,” she corrected.

  “Why Burbank?”

  Something was breaking through the brush down the road. Wilson craned but didn’t see anything. Writing it off as an elk straggler trying to catch up to the rest of the herd, he turned his attention back to Taryn.

  She said, “The Big Dog Garage has been calling me for years.”

  He asked, “What the eff is that?”

  “It’s a huge warehouse where Jay Leno keeps his ginormous car and motorcycle collection.” She removed her cap and ran a hand through her recently shorn hair. “It’s warming up.”

  Wilson unzipped his camouflage coat to his sternum. “What, you going to drive a Ferrari up the Pacific Coast Highway?”

  “A Bugatti Veyron. Electric blue to be exact,” she stressed. “If it’s hemmed in behind a bunch of cars with dead batteries, I’d settle for an Aston Martin DB10 in silver or a Lambo Huracán in red. I figure to get them all test driven the first year. I’d drive American muscle cars on odd days and hypercars on even. The weekends would be reserved for the classics: Duesenbergs, Bugattis, Jaguars—”

  Interrupting her, Wilson said, “You’d be in hog heaven, wouldn’t you?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. Her eyes teared up.

  “Made you think about your dad, huh?”

  She looked at the ground by her feet and took a covert swipe at the tears with a sleeve.

  Branches were being snapped off real close, now.

  The woodpecker went quiet.

  When Taryn finally looked up at Wilson, he was no longer facing her. He was standing rigid. Looking down the road. On his face was one of those thousand-yard stares Cade and Duncan talked about. More troubling than the stoic expression was that his M4 was shouldered and trained on whatever he was seeing. As time started to crawl, she heard the snick of his safety being thrown and saw his finger slip into the trigger guard. Realizing he was about to open fire and she was directly in the path of the hot brass soon to be spilling from the rifle’s ejection port, she rose up off the seat and spun to her left.

  Taryn was mid-turn when Wilson shouted a warning. She was tucking her M4 tight to her shoulder and throwing its safety off when his chilling words were drowned out by a chorus of sonorous moans. When Wilson finally did open fire with his suppressed rifle, she was standing and facing the source of the sounds.

  The clattering bolt and muffled reports rose over the sounds of the dead as spent brass cut the air a foot in f
ront of Taryn’s face. Better than down her collar or front of her shirt, she mused. That had happened one time, the hot shell dispensing a special kind of pain all the way down.

  Wondering how in the hell they were going to deal with all of the monsters filing up the road toward them, Taryn picked a target and added her gun to the fight.

  Chapter 14

  Raven was slouched down in her seat in the F-650, face buried in the leather-bound journal, when the loud trilling of the satellite phone caused her to jump. With the Screamer muted and the hypnotic thrum of the off-road tires infiltrating the cab, she had forgotten all about the recent encounter with the mini-horde her dad estimated was comprised of at least a thousand zombies. Which was perfect. She needed the brief respite from all the awful things that had happened in the span of less than a week. Not a waking moment passed when she wasn’t seeing ghosts wearing the faces of all of the people who were dead and gone—her mom first and foremost among them.

  Raven was totally oblivious of how far they’d traveled along 39 thanks to a pages-long entry describing how Rose and her family had driven cross country from the Boston area all the way to San Antonio only to end up in a FEMA facility set up outside of Houston, Texas. And they were still in that facility when Brody wandered off briefly and got himself run over by a Texas National Guard Humvee. A tear was tracing her cheek as the sat-phone trilled. She only looked up to learn they were almost to Woodruff when Cade pulled to the shoulder to answer the call.

  He answered with a curt, “Cade here.”

  Wiping the tears on her sleeve, Raven closed the journal and set it aside. Only after dragging the rifle up off the footwell and scanning the road in both directions for threats did she regard her dad and continue to watch him as he listened intently to whoever was on the other end.

  Every now and again she could hear the tinny-sounding voice coming from the earpiece, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. Which wasn’t necessary for her to recognize the cadence and pitch as belonging to Tran.

  Cade said, “Why can’t Jamie and Lev double back?”

  Raven saw him nod and grimace. Interest piqued, she shifted in her seat and shot him a questioning look.

  After another thirty seconds spent lips pursed and phone mashed to his ear, Cade said, “The Merlin Drive-In? Nope. I have no idea where that is.”

  He listened for a beat. “Less than a mile from Bear Lake, huh. They’re what … fifteen miles from the airport, then? I agree. Makes no sense having them turn around.” He went quiet and stared out his window. Eyes glued to something north of the junction, he added, “I have to deal with a tire issue first. If I can get that sorted, we’ll go check it out. Least we can do considering all Dregan and his people have done for us.”

  Like a typical twelve-year-old dying to be in the loop, Raven pointed at the phone and mouthed, “Put it on speaker so I can listen.”

  Cade shook his head. He paused for a moment with the phone still pressed to his ear. He tapped the steering wheel as he mulled over how to break more bad news to the already hard hit community of Bear River. Finally, deciding honesty was the best policy, he said, “Tran, this is going to suck, but I need you to call the deputy and tell her I’m going to have to lure the mini-horde south. I’ll make sure they’re well past Bear River’s south gate before I peel away and head back north.”

  Cade paused again to listen. Finally, feeling Raven’s eyes boring into him, he said to Tran, “I’m putting you on speaker.” He jabbed a finger at the keypad and held the slim handset in the air between the front seats.

  “Hi Raven,” Tran said. “How are you?”

  “Squash the small talk,” Cade said, his tone all business. “When we’re finished canvassing Woodruff, I’m going to wait at the intersection for the horde. We’ll lead them away when they show up. I figure we have a good hour and a half, maybe two, before the eastbound horde gets to the junction. After we do the Pied Piper thing, I’ll double back and we’ll resume our search for Daymon.”

  Tran said, “East of Woodruff?”

  Cade said, “Everywhere else is pretty much covered. Remember to give me a sitrep when you hear from Romeo and Juliet.” He paused long enough to take off his hat and worry his freshly cut high-and-tight. “If you hear from Duncan,” he added, “have him call me.” Wearing a look of disgust, he ended the call and jammed the phone into its usual slot in the center console.

  Beating Raven to the punch, Cade said, “What you didn’t hear before I put him on speaker was that a Deputy MacLeod from Bear River asked if we would keep an eye out for the elder Dregan.” He went on to explain how the night before the man borrowed an ice cream truck and led the mega-horde away from the walled community of Bear River. What he didn’t say was that he was wondering how the former Soviet-Bloc soldier managed to fit those King-Kong-sized balls of his behind the wheel of the boxy rig he’d spotted from the air that night. It appeared to have broken down, and he feared the worst.

  “Why can’t his people send out a search party?”

  “Dregan’s brother is damn near on his deathbed with the flu. Hell, the deputy says they have maybe thirty people within the walls who aren’t sick with it. Even to check on the welfare of the man who deputized her, she can’t spare the manpower.”

  “What about Gregory?”

  “He died last night.”

  Raven made a face. Then, with a slight tilt of the head, she asked, “How?”

  Cade said nothing. He couldn’t even hold her gaze.

  “Omega?”

  Nodding, Cade said, “The antiserum you gave him came from the same batch as the one Mom took.”

  Raven was quiet for a long ten-count. As she stared out the window, she realized how close they were to the 39/16 junction. The yellow school bus that used to partially block the turn onto 39 was nowhere in sight. The only evidence pointing to its whereabouts was the continuous field of broken glass sitting atop a ten-foot-wide yellow smudge that began on the shoulder near the junction and ran off to the north, diagonally, across both lanes. As her attention was drawn beyond the debris field to where 16 intersected Center Street, she got an eyeful of the destruction wrought on Woodruff by the northbound mega-horde.

  “If the same unstoppable mass that did that to Back In The Saddle caught up with Dregan in his ice cream truck—” said Cade, his voice trailing off.

  “Then he’s toast,” Raven stated. “So why bother?”

  “Because it’s what we do,” Cade replied. He shook his head as he surveyed the damage done to the small town. He didn’t need binoculars to see that the rehabilitation place from which Duncan had fired down on Adrian’s crew was no longer two-stories. The house-turned-business no longer sat on its cement foundation. The remains of the upper story was a jumble of broken timber supporting a barely recognizable roof and had come to rest a dozen yards north of the windowless main floor.

  The cannibals’ vehicles were no longer lined up facing west on Center street. A 4x4 pickup he recognized was nosed into the rehab place’s basement, its load bed upthrust like the bow of a sinking ship. The rest of the cannibals’ vehicles had been pushed north by east, ending up a jumble of dented metal and broken glass on the gravel lot behind the business. Zombies were trapped between the mix of cars and trucks and under the debris left behind when the structure collapsed. Some Zs were crushed amongst the vehicles. Others had become mired with the upended 4x4 in Back in the Saddle’s exposed basement. Even without the Steiners, Cade detected lots of movement in the shadows.

  Across the street from Back in the Saddle, the cinderblock structure housing an auto body shop had fared a bit better. While it remained on its original footing, wide vertical fissures zigged and zagged up the west-facing walls. Some of the cement blocks had been sheared in half. The cars in the lot not pushed against the rollup doors by a previous tangle with a mini-horde were now wedged against the garage, or stacked atop one another. That the thirty-foot-tall structure still stood was a testament to solid design.
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  “Wow! Look at the telephone poles,” Raven said. Once listing west across Main Street, the picket of creosote-stained telephone poles planted on its east side were now down and had been dragged a half-block north by the horde. Likely stimulated by the Ford’s exhaust note, a number of dead entangled by the downed wires were looking south and struggling against their bonds.

  Cade said, “Those poles may as well have been toothpicks going up against that kind of force.”

  Voice wavering, Raven said, “I hope Daymon wasn’t caught in their path.”

  “He’s a wily survivor,” noted Cade. “I’m convinced he held to his word and pushed east after we last saw him.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was trying to get a handle on how much looting Adrian’s gang did. They pretty much scoured all of the homes and businesses in Woodruff and Randolph. So east is all he really had left.”

  Raven checked her wing mirror. Seeing nothing, she asked, “Where’s Randolph?”

  “A few miles north of Woodruff.”

  Raven nodded but said nothing.

  Testing her, Cade pointed at the Bear River range barely visible on the horizon beyond the Ford’s hood. “What direction is that?”

  “Easy,” Raven said. “East.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The sun rises in the east. Sets in the west.”

  “Good. Then where is Randolph from here?”

  Raven pointed left across the hood. “Randolph is that way. A few miles north of Woodruff.”

  Noting that the hood seemed to be dipping more on his side than before, he said, “Then Bear River is where?”

  Rolling her eyes, Raven said, “The only remaining direction is south.”