Willing the vision away, she swung her head in the opposite direction. Focused her attention two blocks west where Center crossed Main. She saw the same static vehicles from earlier, only from a different perspective. Facing her were tailgates and bumpers and shot-out rear windows. A dozen zombies, likely the ones from earlier, milled about the intersection. More were mired in the vehicles on the auto body shop’s lot. Viewed in phosphor white, the glass littering the street beside the pickups sparkled like the Milky Way. Walking her gaze back, following the sidewalk on their side of Center, she spotted a number of corpses. Skeletons was more like it. These were the cannibals her dad and the others had killed. After the short and violent encounter, her dad told her he guessed their own people returned and butchered them for their meat, leaving behind a bunch of bloody bones and grinning skulls and decaying piles of guts.
Raven threw a shudder at the sight. She nearly gagged from the stench.
“Do they see us?” whispered Peter.
The skeletons or the zombies? she thought to herself.
Confidence in her tone, she said, “No, they can’t. But they know we’re here. Main and Center is crawling with them, too. I think that’s because me and my dad were here earlier. Didn’t help matters that I shot a couple of them. We all know gunfire drives them nuts.”
“Maybe they’re leftovers from the herd you guys came up against.”
All business, Raven said, “Whatever the case, we’re going to have to either creep past them in the dark, or shoot a few in the middle of the pack and charge on through.”
Voice void of all emotion, Peter said, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send some meat right over.”
Stealing Peter’s line, she said, “Not funny. And that’s the only time you’re going to hear me say it.” She grabbed his hand and started walking him slowly down the sidewalk, along the way, saying, “You’re going to want to stay left. Far left.”
Stammering a bit, Peter asked, “Can they reach us?”
She stepped up onto the curb, then helped him to avoid tripping as he followed.
“Who’s they?” she asked.
“Whoever will be on our right, up ahead.”
“Nope,” she said. “They’re all dead. Real, honest to gosh, cold-corpse-type of dead.” No reason to tell him the truth, she reasoned. That’d only spook him further.
As they slipped by Skeleton Row, Raven picked up on movement to their right and instinctively looked in that direction.
Sensing the subtle tug of her hand on his from her panning her head, Peter demanded, “What now?”
“More rotters coming at us from the parking lot behind the rehab place.”
“Back in the Saddle?”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “Keep walking.”
“They’re surrounding us,” he whispered, a rising panic evident in his tone. “There’s a little house across from the rehab place. Can’t we go around it and through the field across from where 39 and 16 meet?”
Again Peter felt the slight tug on his hand. Only to the left this time.
“Negative,” she said. “We’d have to go through a bunch of brambles. No telling how many rotters got themselves tangled up in there. Better we stick to the plan.”
She put her head down and picked up the pace, leaving behind the slack-jawed skeletons and hoping to build their lead on the shambling crowd of undead.
A minute after setting out from the distant intersection, Raven and Peter were nearing the west side of the small house. Though they were keeping to the sidewalk and away from the field of broken glass, Peter was having a hard time moving without making noise. A few feet back he had inadvertently kicked a brass shell casing out into the street. Reacting to the noise, the Zs behind Back in the Saddle began a steady march across Center Street, their bearing taking them on a collision course with the exact spot on the sidewalk the kids were currently traversing.
“How much further?” Peter asked as a kernel of glass popped underneath his boot.
The weight of the NVGs was beginning to take a toll on Raven’s neck muscles. Panning her head right, she said, “We’re going to make it, Peter. We will be just fine. Hold it together for a few more minutes.”
In reality, she doubted her own words, because she was looking a small throng of Zs in the face from less than a dozen paces. They were off her right shoulder and picking up speed in reaction to Peter’s latest transgression in noise discipline.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I can smell them. They’re real close.”
All at once, Raven said, “Get behind me,” and helped him comply to the whispered order with a sweep of her right arm. In the next beat, there was a rustle of clothing and light rattle of metal against metal as she shouldered the rifle.
A sharp metallic click came next.
Peter jumped as the first report from Raven’s M4 shattered the still. He was blinded momentarily by the orange-yellow flash leaving the rifle’s suppressor a yard to his fore. In that split second of time, as his pupils were collapsing to needle points, he saw silhouettes of roamers. There was a whole bunch of them. And they were reaching for him, their twisted faces and claw-like hands illuminated by the strobe effect of the recurring muzzle flashes. Their throaty moans rose to a crescendo just as he lost the ability to see.
Rising over the tinkle of spent brass and calls of the dead were two distinct exhaust notes. They were coming from somewhere behind the auto body shop, more than two blocks west. Hearing this, Raven stopped firing into the dead and set off toward Main, dragging Peter along by the hand, and telling him to “Keep quiet.”
The far-off exhaust burble was soon supplanted by the sound of two different engines seemingly working hard and under load.
One engine was foreign to Raven’s ear. It seemed to be chugging along. Though the engine sounded powerful, the exhaust seemed restricted.
The second engine, its growl low and menacing, was familiar to Raven. She felt the heavy thrum deep down in her chest as a pair of blue-white headlight beams lanced up from the viaduct at their ten o’clock. The shafts of light painted the low clouds for a moment, then leveled out and fell across the field. After spinning its tires at about the same place the F-650 had trouble finding traction earlier, the truck turned east and lit up a long swath of Center with the spill from its headlights.
“That’s Taryn’s truck,” Raven gasped. “But she’s not driving. Lev is.” She scrutinized the passenger. Noted the feminine features partially masked by a white bandage.
Jamie!
Feeling a sense of calm come over her, Raven raised the M4 and emptied the magazine into the dead coming for them from across Center. Swinging the M4 to her back, she grabbed Peter’s hand and set off west, for the intersection with Main. As she angled into the street and the first pebble-sized pieces of glass crunched under her boots, she saw the second vehicle come out of the viaduct across Main. Witnessed the same movement of the headlight beams. The upward tilt to the night sky. The beams leveling to reveal the field behind the first vehicle.
When the second vehicle finally cut around to face Raven, she noted the close spacing of the weak yellow headlights, and realized she was looking at a vehicle she’d never seen before. It was boxy and much smaller than the Raptor. But that didn’t matter. Because the man driving was known to her. He was wide of shoulder and filled up the squared-off windshield. Even taking into account the scarf riding high on his neck and obscuring the lower half of his face, there was no mistaking those spiked dreadlocks bouncing and swaying to a rhythm all their own.
Daymon!
Running now, Peter still in tow, the Glock taking the place of the empty rifle banging against her backside, Raven said, “I know these people,” and opened up with the pistol on the dead things blocking their path.
Sneering faces revealed to Peter by the muzzle flashes passed by on either side as he stumbled and almost fell. But her grip was tight on his hand. He felt her determination leaching into his skin. It inv
igorated him. Made him step higher and pump his free arm that much harder.
Once they were clear of the grabbing hands and on the west side of Main, Raven cut a hard left and led Peter along the stretch of 39 spanning the viaduct. After running another dozen yards, she took a knee next to a sign identical to the one east of town—Entering Woodruff - Pop. 180.
Wasting no time or words, she dragged the Motorola from a pocket, cycled the channel to 10-1, thumbed the Talk key, and said, “This is Raven Grayson … how copy?”
She waited, thumb off the button for a long three-count, listening to Peter breathing hard, before the reply came.
“Good copy,” said a voice she recognized as belonging to Lev. Incredulous, he asked, “Where’s Cade?”
Tears welling in her eyes, Raven radioed back. “He’s gone.”
Chapter 46
Immediately after reuniting with the trio of Eden survivors, while Daymon and Lev were stalking off to dispatch the Zs still in hot pursuit, Raven and Peter were plopping down in the light spilling from the Raptor’s headlights, cracking the tops on bottled waters and tearing into MRE poundcake.
Once Daymon and Lev returned, Raven sat on the Raptor’s tailgate and detailed what had happened between the time she’d entered the farmhouse five miles east, Cade getting into the gunfight with unknown hostiles, and their journey to the 16/39 junction. Finished, she assessed the faces of the adults standing in a ragged circle a yard to her fore. “Well?” she said. “Shouldn’t we all be gunning up and heading east?”
As her gaze settled on Lev, he inexplicably said four words to her that she couldn’t bear hearing. In fact, she couldn’t comprehend how he and the other adults could make a decision whose consequences, should the worst case scenario come to fruition, leave her an orphan.
Looking Raven in the eye, Lev had said: “We’re not going now.”
Only Raven had heard: “We’re not going ever.” And she went supernova, leaping from the tailgate, sprinting past Daymon, and heading north down 16, toward the intersection of Main and Center, where a number of newly arrived zombies owned the blacktop from curb to curb.
In the end, Daymon’s history as a cross-country runner, coupled with his long reach, proved to be Raven’s undoing. He had caught her before she made the north end of the viaduct bridge.
After the dust had settled, Peter climbed willingly into Daymon’s new rig. Though the boxy SUV was a two-door model, he was still able to squeeze into the back seat without moving the passenger seat forward on its tracks.
Raven, on the other hand, after a forced-upon ride over Daymon’s shoulder, was placed in the passenger seat and strapped in while still kicking and screaming.
Now, sitting in the passenger seat with the soft hum of the heater filling the cab, Raven looked to Daymon. The dome light was on and cast the lower part of his face in shadow. He looked calm and rested even after having run a half block to catch up with her and then a country block’s worth of circles on the viaduct bridge to snare her.
“We have to go and find him,” Raven demanded.
Daymon sighed. “We can’t. Your dad’s orders. Not our lack of willingness.”
Face flushed with fury, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me he called? What did he do, call Lev’s sat-phone?”
Daymon shook his head. Illuminated by the beams of his rig’s headlights, he watched Lev take the driver’s seat in the Raptor. “No,” he finally said, “Only person who called on that phone to deliver good news was Tran.”
Eyes red with emotion, Raven said, “Sasha is going to be OK?”
Peter inched his head between the seats. Interrupting, he said, “Looks like your friends are leaving.”
Sure enough, the Raptor’s brake lights flared once, settled back to a muted shade of red, then the truck started rolling west onto 39.
Daymon shook his head. “I don’t know about Sasha.”
Raven wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She said, “So … Duncan found Glenda?”
“Other way around,” said Daymon. “Glenda found his sorry butt. They’re on their way back now. Glenda is going to see to Sash. She’ll be in good hands.”
“And my dad?”
“He left a sealed envelope with Tran. It contained specific instructions we’re to follow to the letter in case something like this happened.”
The fury was gone from Raven’s face. Brow knitted, she said, “What were those instructions?”
He said, “Don’t worry,” as he worked a long-handled stick shift and pumped a pedal on the floor. Alter a gnashing of gears and the truck was finally moving, he looked across the cab at her and added, “Captain America protocol has been enacted.”
A knowing look settling on his face, Peter whispered to himself, “Captain America,” and settled in for the ride.
Having calmed down a bit, Raven said, “Me and my dad saw your message. The head you left looking west on the road by the car hauler.”
Daymon said nothing. He was busy working the wheel and goosing the throttle to catch up with the retreating tail lights.
“That where you got this old … whatever it is?”
“Bronco,” he said. “When I opened the trailer it called to me.” He shrugged. “It’s not Lu Lu. But close enough.”
Raven asked, “Where’d you go after that?”
“West and then north. And if you’re wondering, no, I didn’t find what I was looking for.” He paused and looked out his window. “Instead I found Lev and Jamie trying to pick their way through Fish Haven. What a noisy pair those two are.”
“Do you know about—”
“Heidi? Yeah. Sore subject.” And those were the last words spoken by anyone inside the cab of the booger-green 1968 Ford Bronco during the somber, hour-long drive west to the Eden compound.
Epilogue
Cade came to a few seconds after his initial blackout. His firefight with the advancing Chinese PLA soldiers had lasted all of about thirty seconds. After dumping an entire magazine into their midst, and dropping three of the six soldiers on the field beside the Ford’s passenger side, he had rolled out the door and splashed through the pond, every nerve in his body seemingly on fire. He had nearly reached cover in a nearby grove of trees and was feeling confident his three weeks of escape and evasion training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center were about to pay off when the grenade exploded nearby. Last thing he remembered was leaving his feet, wheeling around in mid-air, and coming back down with little use of his extremities and the cold realization dawning that in addition to the shrapnel his body had just absorbed, he’d also taken a number of rounds to his back and right arm.
He’d already been shot in the chest before crashing the big Ford into the pond, so this was just mortal insult to what he had initially suspected—thanks to the ballistic plate carrier he was wearing—might be a survivable injury.
Cade came to again after the soldiers had stripped him of his weapons. Pain occupied every fiber in his body as they carted him across the field, past the shot-up F-650, through the ditch, and placed him roughly into an idling Humvee, on the side of which Utah National Guard was stenciled. He was losing a lot of blood and sliding in and out of consciousness as the driver navigated a combination of smooth and rough roads. As a result of his inability to remain lucid, keeping track of time or guessing an average speed to establish distance travelled didn’t happen. Therefore, when he regained consciousness tied to a chair with the stink of pesticides in the air all around him, he had no clue at all where he was being held.
Now, willing his swollen eyes to open, Cade learned he was wearing only his boxers. And he saw the pathetic example of a battlefield dressing that had been taped to his abdomen. It was blood-soaked and beginning to unravel. He looked at his forearms. Once bronzed by the last vestiges of tan acquired over long summer months spent outside running and gunning, they were now blanched white due to all the blood he’d lost. Except for the ends of his fingers. They were an angry shade of purple and swollen and they
throbbed crazily with each labored breath. The nails missing from the bloody nailbeds, he saw, had been arranged in a neat row on the floor where they wouldn’t go unnoticed.
He wanted to curse the men on the sofa playing video games a dozen feet to his fore, but he couldn’t. His tongue had swollen to double its original size and it was stuck like Velcro to the roof of his bone-dry mouth.
Just the act of opening his eyes and dropping his chin to his chest had been strain enough to start a sky show behind his partially open lids.
***
Cade came to for the fourth time thinking he was dead and languishing somewhere between Heaven and Hell. There was a deep throbbing in his head and chest. It was caused from something external and seemed familiar to him. Then the flashes of light were back and he was hearing screams. Demons waiting to accept me? Perhaps the souls of the men I sent there early? God, how he hoped preempting the Reaper so many times wasn’t coming back to bite him. For he’d been holding onto the thought—even as the short PLA officer with the eye patch punched him about the head and neck—that a reunion with Brook was coming soon.
He was drifting toward a bright light when he heard, over the distant sounds of gunfire and explosions and bass-heavy beat of rotor blades, voices speaking in English. Something tugged at his chin and the light grew brighter. Then, speaking with an accent he knew all too well, a man said, “Christ, Wyatt. Never thought I’d be rescuing you. Figured you woulda been the one doin’ me the favor.”
Piercing pain flashed through him like lightning as fingers probed his wounds. Then the voice was back. Gone was the jovial tone from before. In its stead, fear had creeped in. And the pitch was all over the place. Cade couldn’t ever remember Griff being scared or rattled, let alone both at once. But it showed in his tone as he said, “Oh man. Wyatt’s lost a lot of blood.”
Unable to keep his eyes open, Cade felt a gloved palm on his cheek.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 13): Gone Page 30
