“That’s not all they were licking up north,” said Michael, the disgust evident in his tone.
Lev said, “I heard the crap that was going on at the airport compound. Sickens me someone could do that to a child.”
“Speaking of the airport,” Jamie said. “Daylight’s burning. We need to get going.” She looked to Fiona. “Be careful … you have two hordes of rotters north of here. Thanks to the lake being so close, you’re probably safe here.”
“I’m going nowhere,” Fiona stated. Jaw set, she regarded her male friends. “You two can stay if you want. With Jim gone, I could use the help.”
While Jamie helped lower the kids from the truck to the driveway, Lev asked Fiona, “Was that Jim by the stocks?”
Fiona nodded. “He tried to shore the fence. He went down when the first wave of roamers surged into the development. He didn’t live long enough to learn there was nothing he could have done to stop the dead. Hell, a semi-truck would have been swatted aside like a toy. The surge was immense.”
“Overwhelming,” Michael added.
Payton shook his head. “We barely made it upstairs before the door folded in. Our only gun was in the kitchen. We’re just lucky the upper floors were well furnished. It all went into the stairwell to keep the zombies from climbing ‘em.”
Lev said nothing. He’d seen it all before. Firsthand, unfortunately.
Jamie climbed behind the wheel and closed the door. She beckoned Fiona over and covertly slipped her a Beretta pistol and one fully loaded spare magazine for it.
“You sure?” said Fiona.
Jamie nodded.
“I’ll give it to the guys,” said Fiona. “Thank you. I’ll never forget your act of kindness.” She leaned closer. “You two be careful up north. We saw some soldiers on motorcycles and more riding in some trucks.”
“Ours?”
Fiona shook her head. “They’re all the same.”
“What do you mean?”
Voice hushed, Fiona said, “They’re Japanese … or Korean or something. All of them.”
The Chinese, thought Jamie. Glancing at the rearview, she called, “Cut your story short, Lev. We have to go.”
Arms outstretched, Lev looked to the men, then nodded toward the cab. “I’m hurtin’ here. A little help, fellas?”
Chapter 33
The access road to Daymon’s burned-to-the-ground chalet-style home slipped by on the right. Cade didn’t slow or let on he knew anything about where the southbound drive led. There was no visible smoke, yet he could have sworn there was a detectable gray smudge lingering in the general vicinity.
Nobody spoke for another five minutes. During that time the road jogged north then back east and they passed a number of farmhouses, some of them with barns and outbuildings—all of which bore big white Xs on their front-facing doors. Victim to the elements and relentless march of time, farm implements and old cars wasted away in yards and fields. Signs at the ends of overgrown drives offering Fresh Eggs by the Dozen, Cords of Seasoned Fire Wood, and other rural goods flitted by on both sides of the Ford in blurs of garish color.
Along the way Cade consulted the rearview three times. The first two stolen glances revealed Peter lying on his side on the back seat, legs drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tightly around his knees. On the third furtive glance Cade found himself staring into the boy’s ice-blue eyes. Though they were red-rimmed and swollen, the irises pierced like twin lasers. “Thirsty?” he asked.
Without blinking, Peter nodded.
Cade nodded to Raven. Pointed to a water stuffed in the door pocket. Looking back at Peter, he said, “It’s clear you’re not spiking a fever. You can lose the mask.”
Peter peeled off the mask and took the water from Raven.
Raven waited for him to finish drinking, then said, “Your dad didn’t suffer.”
Nothing from Peter. He was directing the thousand-yard stare out the passenger window.
Changing the subject, Raven turned to her dad and said, “Isn’t the place Daymon and Heidi were staying around here somewhere? We’re east on Center. And I figure we’ve gone well over two miles.”
“We passed it. Back before the jog in the road. I’m pretty sure we’re on a state route, now.”
“Why did you pass it? Wouldn’t that be the logical place to start?”
Cade shook his head.
She asked, “Why not?”
He said, “Because if we find him there, he’s dead. I want to find him alive. I’ll revisit that house when I’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”
Raven nodded, then looked out her window.
The satellite phone emitted its usual electronic trill.
Cade fished it from the center console, looked at the screen, then thumbed the Talk button.
“Cade here.”
He listened intently for a few seconds. Jaw taking on a granite set, he said, “Understood,” and ended the call.
Sensing the abrupt change in her dad’s demeanor and tone, Raven said, “What is it?”
“This thing is nearly dead, that’s what. Plug it in, please.” He tapped the console lid with his right elbow. “Charger’s in there somewhere.”
Raven double-checked the display. Sure enough, the battery was nearly depleted. She found the end of the cord that fit the phone, plugged it in, and replaced the phone in the console. Closing the lid, she said, “Well … what’s up? Why the stony face?”
Eyes narrowing, Cade said, “Wilson and Taryn were ambushed on the fire lane by a second herd of Zs. Either the Zs or the elk they were hunting breached the wire somewhere near the compound. They drew the dead to the road and were met by Sasha and Tran. Sasha was injured somehow. They took her to the compound where they found Seth in a bad way—”
Raven shifted in her seat. “Sasha was outside the wire?” She made a face. “And Seth went out by himself, too?”
“It was just him and Max left inside,” Cade said. “He had to go out to deliver a first aid kit. Looks like a Z was lingering near the compound blind and caught him as he came out.”
Words coming real slow, Raven said, “Did … they … both get bit?”
“Tran said they were both injured. Only thing he’s certain of, is that Seth was bitten.”
“Shouldn’t we go back?”
Cade glanced over his shoulder. The boy was still lost in thought. Or mourning in his own way. That two more people may be lost to the Omega virus didn’t seem to register. Swinging his gaze forward, Cade indicated they would drive until they came to a point in the road where at least two homes with no Xs on the door were visible. His plan was to search both for clues, then start back toward the compound, stopping at Daymon’s final residence if they found nothing in the homes or immediate vicinity to suggest the man was still alive.
Coming up on a slight rise where twin pickets of firs bookended the two-lane, the first of Cade’s boxes got checked. The house on the left was a solitary two-story clapboard affair set back from the road. There was no X on the front door. The windows were boarded over but appeared to be intact. Parked on the drive was a small RV. It was maybe twenty feet in length and leaning slightly to the left. Grass growing beside the drive rose to the lower edge of the Itasca’s side windows. Victim to rust and rot, dozens of old cars sitting on flat tires dotted the landscape all around the house and RV.
As the Ford motored onto the spot in the road where the incline transitioned to a short run of level road even with the drive harboring the RV, the second box was checked when a sprawling operation came into view on the left at the bottom of a long runout.
“What’s that?” Raven asked even as she was grabbing up the Steiners to see for herself.
Squinting at the boxy red object hogging the road a few hundred yards beyond the fenced-in parcel of land dotted with a house, barn, silo, and numerous outbuildings, Cade said, “Looks like a car hauler.”
Cade put the distance from the front of the trailer abutting the cab to the tail end currently
facing away from them at seventy feet or more. The trailer sat on twelve wheels distributed evenly, two to a side, between three axles. The axles were positioned close enough together at the rear of the trailer to lend the impression the massive tires were touching. At first blush, he guessed maybe twenty feet separated the trailer’s glossy red roof from the road’s pale gray surface.
“A what?” Raven asked.
“Exactly what the name implies,” Peter said.
Raven lowered the binoculars and spun in her seat to face him. Her expression said Elaborate already.
Taking the cue, Peter said, “We had one back home. Dad bought it at auction. Said he was going to use it to transport a racecar to Bonneville Salt Flats one day. He was always dreaming up a new adventure. That trailer was much smaller than the one here and would have held only four cars. That one looks to be twice the size.”
Raven asked, “How do you fit eight cars in there?”
“The trailer is divided horizontally,” Cade said. “I’d guess there is a hydraulic ramp that allows access to the upper loft.”
“I’m not sure,” Peter admitted. “I never went inside it. Dad frowned on me messing around on the trucks. He was afraid I’d let some gas out or something.”
“Well, yeah,” Raven said. “I’m afraid to go anywhere near the tank thingy your dad’s friend delivered. And Tran cooks on a grill not too far from the big shiny bomb on wheels.”
“Like I told you,” Cade said. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Raven didn’t respond to that. Instead, she drew in a breath and said, “There’s a body on the road by the right front wheel.”
Cade said, “On the shoulder?”
“Yep,” she said. “Almost buried in the grass. It’s not moving. Which means it’s probably not a rotter.”
“I agree,” Cade said. “We’re close enough now, if it was one of them, it would probably be up and looking for us already.”
Peter was hanging over the front seats now, elbows braced on the seatbacks. His long blond hair spilled over his forearms as he rested his chin on his stacked fists.
“Looks like it has no head,” Peter noted.
“He’s right,” Raven said. It wasn’t the first decapitated body she’d seen since that awful Saturday in July. And it surely wouldn’t be the last. This one, however, was special. Because if it was a clean cut and if the head was arranged on the road or shoulder somewhere nearby, they just might have found a clue to Daymon’s whereabouts.
“Gun up,” Cade ordered.
Raven swapped the binoculars for her M4.
Peter said, “What about me?”
Simultaneously, Cade and Raven shook their heads.
Cade said, “We’ll revisit you and guns later.” He left it at that and focused solely on his driving.
At the bottom of the decline, with still a hundred of feet to go before reaching the semi-tractor hitched to the trailer, he brought the truck from forty miles per hour to a walking-speed—three miles per hour or so. Once the distance to the auto hauler was halved, Cade saw the decapitated head. It was on the road behind the trailer. He also saw that a ramp was deployed behind the trailer. The two lengths of perforated metal looked to be a couple of feet wide. Black strips of traction tape ran horizontally across them.
As the F-650 came even with the semi-tractor, which took up most of the westbound lane, it became clear to Cade the severed head was facing his way, the eyes tracking his approach.
Cade was out of the truck first. Calling over his shoulder, he told Peter to stay put. He approached the rear of the trailer, M4 held at a low-ready, his own eyes mimicking the movements of those in the head on the road before him.
Materializing from around the front of the Ford, Raven immediately voiced her displeasure at the sight and feigned as if she was about to kick it into the ditch where a sleek red sports car wallowed in the tall grass.
“Wait,” Cade said, extending an arm to slow her approach.
“Joking,” she said as she crouched next to the head. Wisps of gray hair encircled a balding crown. Wrinkles, crow’s feet was what she’d heard them called, swept from the corners of each roving eye. The man looked to have been about Duncan’s age. The gnashing of its yellowed teeth produced a faint grinding noise that caused the hair on her neck to prick.
“Looks like Duncan,” observed Cade.
He had Raven back away, then snatched the head off the road by its hair. It had the trademark look of a first turn: gray-green dermis gone mostly dry and stretched tight over atrophying muscles. The whites of its eyes were jaundiced, the pupils twin pinpricks framed by irises the color of fine opal. He held the weighty item at eye level and saw the decapitation was real clean. No jagged edges on the ashen skin to suggest anything other than the blade had been razor-sharp and lot of force went into the single swipe that did this.
“Kindness?”
“No doubt.” Cade looked west. “Daymon did this.” He peered into the trailer. Saw a half-dozen car-sized shapes in the gloom. There were four vehicles parked nose to tail on the top loft. All were wrapped with lots of chrome and bore fancy lines. Classics bound for auction, no doubt. Parked in the front two spaces on the lower level were a pair of ground-scraping wedge-shaped Le-Mans-style race cars. The two spaces closest to the ramp were empty. One of the missing vehicles was in the ditch. It was red and bore a prancing horse logo on the front fender facing the road. At once something clicked and Cade heard a familiar theme song start up in his head. For a split second he was transported back to his childhood home in Portland. It was 1986 and he was Raven’s age and sitting on his beanbag chair on the floor. Dad and Mom had the couch. On the television was a show that transported him to a tropical island where for an hour he lived vicariously through a swarthy private investigator named Thomas Magnum and a brash helicopter pilot called T.C. If there had been another vehicle in the trailer, it was long gone.
Raven said, “Think Daymon took the missing car?”
Cade shook his head. “Not one hundred percent.” He drew the Gerber and thrust it into one of the head’s wandering eyes. Brain sufficiently scrambled, he tossed the decapitated head to the ground under the truck’s rear wheels. It bounced once, then rolled out of sight. He regarded the truck, then locked eyes with Raven and went on. “This truck has been parked here a long time. There’s a fine coat of dust on the cars inside. And the windows on the tractor are coated with grime. For all I know, Adrian’s people could have done this. Daymon’s not the only one with a machete and whet stone.”
“The head was left the way we found it on purpose, right?”
Cade looked to the F-650. Saw Peter staring back at him from between the front seatbacks. He worked the equation for a second.
“Adrian’s people were pretty methodical. But I don’t think this is their doing.”
Raven’s lips curled into a wide smile. First real one Cade remembered seeing grace her face in some time.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re heading back to the farmhouse without an X on its door.”
“To look for supplies?”
“That, and—”
“And what?”
“You’ll see,” Cade said cryptically.
Chapter 34
Coming out of the shallow sweeper, Otto jammed the brakes. The pickup juddered on the washboard gravel and then came to a complete stop a couple of hundred feet from the UDOT lot.
“Fuck, Nate. You had one motherfuckin’ job.” Otto shoved Holly’s upper body hard into the seatback with his extended right arm and fixed the younger man with a look cold enough to freeze water.
Palms upturned, Nate said, “I was gonna get around to it.”
“You were supposed to get around to it be-fuckin-fore the meat sacks got all the way around the motherfuckin’ fence.”
The veins on the sides of Otto’s neck were standing out. His suddenly tensed neck muscles rippled and distorted the spider webs tattooed there. Saliva launched from his mouth as he spit the dam
ning words had landed on Holly’s cheek. Nonetheless, she remained motionless between the two men, every muscle in her body primed with adrenaline. Amazingly, her eyes had remained forward, locked on the assemblage of dead things gathered before the gate.
Nate swallowed hard but said nothing.
“I spent twenty minutes of my morning luring those shabby motherfuckers to the back fence so you could take care of them,” Otto bellowed. “I. Am. Not. Pleased.”
Stammering slightly, Nate said, “I’ll take care of them.” Lips moving subtly, he jabbed a finger at the zombies. “There’s eight of them. That’s half of a magazine. We can afford that.”
The truck’s motor idled down a bit as a fan under the hood kicked on. The added noise caused the zombies not already aware of the truck to turn their heads in unison.
Otto was shaking his head as he said, “You don’t get that luxury, Nate. You fucked up. Better get that blade of yours out now and get busy before they spread out on the road. Wouldn’t want you to get surrounded and get bit.” Finished with his diatribe, he turned to Holly and gently wiped his saliva from her cheek.
Nate elbowed his way out the door.
Otto called after him, “I’ve watched people go through the change. It ain’t pretty.”
Dispatching the first three zombies went well for Nate. Grab the neck, stick the eye or temple, let it fall where it had stood. From the safety of the truck it looked easy. Otto regarded Holly as Nate seemed to struggle with a real big meat sack. He said, “Might just be you and me tonight.”
Holly exhaled as Nate lashed out with a wild overhand right and the Ka-Bar in his hand speared the big zombie in the temple. She drew in a deep breath and held it as Nate backed across the road, leaving two more bodies in his wake. As the last of the dead things fell to the blood-soaked blade, she released the trapped breath and sank into her seat.
“You didn’t want to be alone with me,” Otto stated. “I get it. I don’t like being alone with me.” He let loose a wild throaty howl and leaned forward and plucked three beers off the floor. He cracked one and drained it down as Nate unchained and hauled the gate open. Otto reached across Holly and placed a beer meant for Nate on the passenger seat.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 22
