Chapter 20
Raven had watched her dad intently from the moment he closed the door behind him until he was safely inside the garage. Seeing him bound from car to car to get to the rollup doors made her think of a frog using lily pads to cross a pond. When he slid down the last car and disappeared from view, the realization she was truly alone outside the wire started within her the first stirrings of an anxiety attack. Having no way of self-diagnosing the sudden rapid rise in heartbeat and inability to draw a normal breath, she rose up from the seat and checked her surroundings.
North, along the body shop’s west-facing wall, the view was unobstructed. Nothing moving there. To the west was just the empty field and distant tree-lined ridge to look at. A quick glance in the rearview told her the route they had taken to get here was zombie-free all the way to the 39/16 junction.
The knowledge that her blind sides were clear for now helped to calm the caged animal trying to claw its way out of her chest. Which in turn allowed her to draw a few deep, calming breaths.
Confident her six was clear, she scooped up the Steiners so she could watch her dad’s six. She glassed the corner of the garage farthest from her position. It was adjacent to the sidewalk and just a few feet removed from the right-side rollup door. If any dead things were coming down Main from the north, this was where she would see them first. It was the most dangerous of all the approaches, because if the dead somehow managed to navigate the downed poles and power lines and get to the blind corner, she would have little time to warn her dad, and even less time to react.
The second approach was where her dad said the Zs were most likely to appear. The path of least resistance was what he called it. It just looked like a block-long stretch of Center Street to her. But she knew what he meant.
Beginning at the body shop’s blind corner, she slowly panned right to the intersection of Main and Center, maybe a hundred feet total. From there she walked her gaze slowly eastbound, all the way to the next intersection, which was bracketed on two sides by medium-sized trees. Unable to see the road through the trees, she began the return sweep, pausing here and there for closer looks at the bullet-riddled vehicles sitting on Center beside what was left of Back In The Saddle Rehabilitation. Seeing nothing moving inside the pair of pickups along the building’s south wall and unable to see inside the lone SUV listing precariously over the partially exposed basement, she gave the gravel lot behind the compromised structure a quick onceover.
Determining the lot to be free of dead things, Raven turned her attention to the tiny house across the street from the destroyed vehicles. Behind windows mostly devoid of glass, tattered curtains hung limply from bent rods. Moving on to the door, she saw it was dotted with jagged-edged holes created by what she figured was a large volume of incoming gunfire. The door had taken so many hits in the center that the white X Adrian’s people had scribed there was barely recognizable as a letter, let alone a sign the house had already been cleaned out of anything useful to surviving the zombie apocalypse.
Seeing nothing to worry her inside the house, or roaming about its expansive side yards, Raven reversed the sweep, dragging the binoculars west down Center, then north along Main and, after a seconds-long pause at the blind corner, started the process all over again.
On Raven’s second pass with the Steiners along Main and Center, barely thirty seconds into her first ever overwatch, as Duncan liked to say about any and every situation involving the dead things: The shit hit the fan.
Drawing a deep breath, she settled the binoculars on the first Z to emerge from the lot behind the rehab place. It was definitely a first turn. Affected by time and the elements, its skin had gone tight all over and turned a light shade of gray. As one jaundiced eye roamed the road ahead, the other, suspended by something thin and stringy and about a foot long, jerked to and fro with each stilted step. The only stitch of clothing on its shriveled body were the torn and blood-spattered dress pants. Held up by a wide leather belt buried deeply into decaying flesh and muscle, the pants did little to conceal a penis that looked nothing like the pictures she’d seen in Mom’s nursing books.
As the first turn performed a low-speed step to the left to get past the inert SUV blocking its path, more dead things spilled from the lot behind it. As the rapidly forming group rounded the SUV, she saw it was made up of five road-worn first turns and six recent turns, the skin on the latter still somewhat pliable and pale as freshly fallen snow. While the new arrivals straightened into a ragged line in the middle of Center Street, another three recent turns surged into view from behind the rehab place.
In seconds, all of the hungering corpses had threaded between the pair of abandoned pickups and coalesced into a pack fifteen strong.
Finished counting heads, Raven brought the binoculars to bear on the male Z leading the procession. And though she had dutifully followed her dad’s orders, keeping down in the cab and her movements economical, inexplicably the zombie’s unblinking eyes were locked with hers. There was no emotion relayed, only the insatiable hunger that caused her to throw a hard shiver. Feeling the hair on her arms prick, she moved the binoculars along the line, from sneering face to sneering face, and came to believe they were all staring at her.
As Raven watched their advance, trying to decide when and where to engage them, she noticed the leader’s eyes tracking left of her. The shift from her to the garage came in barely discernable increments; however, the closer the Z got to Main, the more its gaze moved to the latter.
Walking the Steiners up the line, Raven learned they were all following the same pattern.
They weren’t focused on me, she thought. They’re hunting Dad.
The revelation hit her like a gut punch.
How the monsters knew he was in there was beyond her. Maybe the pop-thunk-pop-thunk-pop of car roofs buckling as he traversed the lot had drawn their attention. Did he make noise getting into the garage that she wasn’t able to hear from inside the cab? Maybe. Every little sound carried great distances now that there were no cars driving the state routes, no jet airplanes overhead, and no distant trains blowing their horns.
The only scenario that she could think of was they had spotted him from beyond the blind corner, gotten diverted by the junk blocking the road, and then worked their way around back of the rehab place.
Path of least resistance.
None of that mattered right now. What did was that her dad was exposed and all alone inside the place. And to make things worse, a pack made up of that many first turns, a pack that should be moving painfully slow, was now in hunt mode with the much faster fresh turns setting the pace. And much to her chagrin, the older specimens were, for the most part, keeping up with them.
Screw you, Murphy.
At the speed the pack was moving, Raven figured she had less than a minute to decide what to do and act on it before they made it to the garage.
She couldn’t let that happen. No way. If the pack reached the cars straddling the sidewalk, there was no doubt in her mind some of them would find a way to get to the last meat they set their eyes on—her dad.
Chapter 21
Heart rate ramping up, Raven set the radio aside and hauled the M4 into her lap. She burned a few seconds going through the motions of readying the rifle. Finished locking the 3x magnifier in place, she grabbed the radio and reached up and hit the rocker switch to start the power moon roof rolling back in its tracks. Once the pane of smoked glass hit the stops, she rose up through the opening. After planting her boots a shoulder width apart on the center console’s padded top, she rested her elbows on the flat expanse of sheet metal between the moon roof’s lip and the passenger-door rain channel.
She ripped her stocking hat off her head, positioned it on the roof to lay the M4’s forestock across, then returned her attention to the fast-moving pack, learning straightaway it was about to flow onto Main.
Use your best judgment.
Having made her mind up on a course of action, she was going for the
radio when two distinct clicks emanated from its speaker.
You can’t come out yet, Dad.
She snatched up the radio and thumbed the talk key. “Wait,” she blurted. Definitely not how she heard the grownups begin a conversation, but it got her point across. “There’s a pack of rotters heading right for your position.”
“Copy that. How many?”
While the agreed-upon signal assuring Raven her dad was OK and on his way out of the garage had quelled the rising panic attack, hearing his voice coming out of that speaker bolstered her confidence a thousand-fold.
“Fifteen or so,” she said in a voice firm and full of confidence.
“First turns … or?”
“A mix,” she replied. “I got this.”
“Can you do them with one magazine?”
“I’ll hope for the best.” She set the radio on the roof beside her, snugged the buttstock to her shoulder, and framed the front of the pack with the optics. While the dead looked close enough to touch thanks to the magnification, they came across a bit jittery.
You got this.
She threw the safety off. Put her finger in the well and touched the cool, smooth trigger.
Breathe in.
Draw up some trigger pull.
Smooth on the follow through.
As she went through the checklist in her head, it was her mom’s reassuring voice she was hearing. When she finally tensed her finger on the trigger, she heard her dad in her head.
Work smarter, not harder.
The Zs were two abreast up front and about to round the corner when she let the crosshairs slip from the targeted Z’s face to its crotch and let loose the first 5.56 hardball round.
The report sounded like a textbook slamming shut. The metallic tink of the spent brass striking the closed tailgate was reaching her ears when the rotter went down, its right leg hinged strangely away from its body, and on its ashen face no comprehension whatsoever of what had just happened to it.
In one fluid move, Raven altered her aim right by a few degrees and put another recent turn in her crosshairs. Oblivious of the half-dozen undead falling domino-like to the pavement in its wake, the male fresh turn began making the slight course correction that would see it to the garage.
Ignoring the cluster of Zs writhing on the ground not thirty feet from where her dad was holed up, Raven squeezed off shots two and three. Striking a few inches south of her aim, the first bullet split the new leader’s breastbone and splintered into three smaller pieces of hurtling lead that came tumbling out its back.
Trajectory altered by muzzle climb, the next bullet tracked high and right and carved a fist-sized wedge of flesh and dermis from the creature’s neck, sending it spinning into the trailing first turns that had avoided the initial pileup.
Only three rounds expended and she was looking at half the pack sprawled out on the road and another three or four in the process of joining them there.
Not bad at all was what she was thinking as she set the rifle on its side and scooped up the radio.
The satisfaction Cade felt after realizing he’d likely never do another ballet pose was squashed by Raven’s unexpected situation report. Hearing her describe her situation and how many Zs were coming his way, even delivered calmly and in a cadence reminiscent of her mom, did nothing to make Cade feel good about the situation. The distant reports of a suppressed carbine and familiar snap-crackle sound of rounds cutting the air nearby was no kind of comfort, either.
Sure, Raven was trained to use her weapons and possessed a rudimentary knowledge of tactics, but none of that changed the fact she was twelve years old. No amount of time spent surviving in the current environment could ready a person in her position to bear the weight of the responsibility she had just taken on.
Now, as he lay on his back with the Glock clutched to his chest and counting Raven’s rounds, it was all he could do to keep from popping up for a quick recon. Nothing worse to someone like him who was used to having an eye in the sky and a team of highly trained and very lethal men on his side when facing a threat than to be left completely in the dark where situational awareness was concerned.
Three rounds? That’s it?
The shooting had lasted all of ten seconds and Cade couldn’t imagine a good reason why. He did, however, think of a hundred bad reasons why a shroud of silence now hung over the lot. He was fishing out the Motorola to see what was the matter when Raven radioed to tell him in a calm, somewhat smug-sounding voice that the threat was neutralized.
Thumbing the Talk key, he said, “Thunder,” which was preordained code to assure her he was not compromised.
She replied at once saying, “Lightning.” Then added, “The Zs are starting to get back on their feet. You have to go now!”
Cade didn’t need to be told twice. He sprang up and all in one motion holstered the Glock, dumped the radio in a pocket, and clean-jerked the air tank off the ground.
Raven didn’t need the Steiners to watch her dad’s progress as he bounded from roof to trunk to roof. Though she hadn’t asked if his foray into the garage was successful, the red tank swinging wildly from one of his hands was a good sign.
She watched him until he was safely down from the nearest car before tossing her backpack into the rear seat and popping the locks. Having already swapped out magazines, she double-checked the safety and stowed her M4, suppressor first, into the footwell.
Cade sprinted past the truck’s grille then disappeared from sight by the left front fender.
As Raven sat there in the cab watching the pack of dead scrabbling over each other to get into the lot, she noticed a subtle movement in the truck and thought she detected the horizon out over the hood shifting slightly.
A minute passed and there was a clang in the load box and the door across from her hinged open. Her dad climbed in, bringing with him the visceral stink of rotten meat.
Nodding at the hood that was now level with the horizon, she said, “Tire’s all the way full?”
“Mostly,” he answered.
“You did good,” she said. “And I did, too.”
He said, “With only three rounds?”
She nodded. Smile forming, she said, “Work smarter, not harder.”
He fiddled with his radio then put it back in his pocket. Starting the motor, he said, “After you switch your radio back to 10-1, I want you to tell me all about it.”
Raven switched frequencies, then rolled the volume up.
The F-650 was already reversing away from the cement block wall as she dove into the story.
Chapter 22
Duncan stopped walking and put his hands on his hips. He was a bit winded as he stood there in the middle of the gravel access road with nothing to see but gray sky overhead and the reaching boughs of tall firs flanking him on both sides. Long, fuzzy shadows from the trees fell across the road, adding to the gloom, which invoked within him a strong feeling of foreboding he couldn’t explain.
“Trudging the happy road of destiny, my sagging, lily-white ass,” he drawled as he dropped the empty PBR can at his feet. He stomped it flat, leaned over with a bit of difficulty, and plucked it up with two fingers. In doing so, the M4 cascaded off his shoulder and hit the road with a clatter. This started a string of curse words directed at God as Duncan rose up and adjusted the sling so the rifle fell across his body in front. He was only muttering halfheartedly by the time he was stuffing the hockey-puck-sized chunk of aluminum in his pocket along with the other similarly flattened cans.
Hauling another beer from his coat pocket, his hand brushed paper. The Dear John letter from Glenda. His mood instantly turned as dark as the stretch of road he stood on. Darker, even. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Back in the late ’70s, when a doctor at the Portland V.A. hospital prescribed him Naltrexone and Antabuse and urged him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, was the last time he could remember having slipped this far down the give a fuck scale.
Taking the Antabuse didn’t
deter him from drinking. It only caused his heart to race and made him puke.
The Naltrexone he poured in the toilet on account of a fella in a bar he didn’t even know telling him how it had turned him into an emotionless zombie and stole all the lead from his pencil. Last thing his much younger self wanted to hear at the time. He was still a hit with the ladies at Earthquake Ethel’s and didn’t want to lose his moves on or off the dance floor.
His stance at the time was that Alcoholics Anonymous was full of losers, people with no willpower, and those lacking discipline. That didn’t describe him. He was a decorated helicopter pilot. He had no problem waiting until after five to drink. And he sure as hell knew discipline. The Army had pounded it into his every fiber starting on that bus ride to basic.
He never did set foot inside a dank church basement to drink the prescribed Kool-Aid, and as a consequence of that stubbornness, he had paid the price dearly for almost three decades.
Ignoring the letter, he zipped the pocket and got back to walking.
Duncan had covered maybe a quarter-mile and was nearing the bend in the road ahead when he popped the top on beer number six. The can was empty seconds later when he made it to the bend. Two or three long gulps and the forgettin’ juice was in his gullet. But who was counting? Who even gives a shit about Old Man, now?
He was firmly seated on his pity pot and had already crushed the empty underfoot when he looked up to discover the dense woods had given way to mostly open range. The road ahead was flanked by pickets of juvenile trees and ran away die straight for a hundred yards or so to a razor-wire-topped gate. The gate was closed. Or so he thought. Everything was a bit fuzzy around the edges.
So he removed his glasses and cleaned them with a kerchief. When he put them back on, nothing had changed.
***
Three minutes after downing beer number six and one long pull into beer number seven, he was standing before the gate. It was indeed topped with coiled razor wire. And it was closed. But it wasn’t locked. It was secured with a length of chain. The same one Cade had cut the lock from last time they were here.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 15
