“That’s a lot of credits,” noted Griff. “Enough down there for us all to have anything we want. It’ll be like having an open line of credit at the PX. Open bar. All the Rip Its you can drink, boys.” He laughed at the thought of trading ears for the energy drink staple prevalent in the Sandbox. He could already see every operator billeted back at Peterson grimacing at the prospect.
Ari broke in on the comms. “You’re crazy, Griff. I’m not taking this bird anywhere near that buzz saw of gnashing teeth.”
Lopez said, “Ari, think you can just get us a little closer so we can better gauge their heading and nail down a GPS coordinate of their current location?”
“We’re as close as we’re going to get,” Ari said. “As for the other stuff … it’s already done.”
“What did you tell Nash as far as size estimate?”
“I sugarcoated it. Told her we’re looking at enough deadheads to ruin the day if they find their way to Springs.” Turning to Haynes, Ari said, “When we put down at Bastion, I get to piss first.”
Nodding in agreement, Haynes pulled up the navigation pane, inserting it on the glass cockpit where the shocking image of the mega-horde had been.
Enjoying a tailwind since leaving Vegas had helped save fuel, which, in turn, made their stop at FOB Bastion to top off their tanks—and empty bladders—a relatively quick affair.
Forty-five minutes after leaving FOB Bastion, as the three-ship flight neared the southern end of the Rockies where the craggy mountains separating the high desert and high plains of eastern Colorado began to tail off, Ari ordered the Comanche pilots to tighten up their echelon-left formation.
After seeing the two ships suck in closer, he banked right and put Jedi One into a steep dive.
For the remainder of the flight, as the trio of black helos traversed the well-known danger zone where PLA scouts had once deployed MANPADS against Jedi One, Ari flew low and fast toward Springs, all of his senses on high alert.
Chapter 33
Raven stepped into the hall on the thirteenth floor of the Antlers with the Gerber in one hand and her free hand hovering near her holstered Glock. Though she knew that her dad and most of her people were home and getting ready for dinner, four months of surviving outside the wire had taught her that throwing caution to the wind sometimes came with a death sentence.
The noise filtering through the open door to the Founders Suite was not what she’d expected. Knowing that her dad was recuperating from his first full day home from Penrose, she figured the others would be mindful of that and keeping mostly to themselves.
When Raven broke the threshold, she saw that a long table had been moved into the shared room. It sat parallel to the bank of west-facing windows and was set with fancy service and smartly folded linen napkins. In the center of the ash table were bowls and plates loaded with the type of foods that—before normal was set on its ear by the Omega virus—used to grace the table for a normal Sunday dinner at the Grayson home.
Seeing Raven come through the door, Sasha held up a spoon heaping with pasta. “Smell that? That’s real Kraft macaroni and cheese.” She made a show of licking her lips. “I’m going to eat real slow and savor every bite.”
After nodding and flashing the teen a half-hearted thumbs up, Raven took stock of who was present and who was not.
Duncan had taken the elevator up and staked out an overstuffed chair facing one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Antlers Park. From the way his head was positioned, chin nearly touching his chest, she couldn’t tell if he had immediately nodded off or was reading a book opened up on his lap.
Tran had commandeered the other chair by the window. He looked up, flashed her a smile, and said, “Just in time for dinner, Miss Grayson.” As he rose from the chair, his gaze dropped to her hands and lingered there for a beat.
Regarding Tran, she said, “Dinner can wait. What’d you find out?”
“One of the tattoo workers had the same color paint on her hands as you do on yours.”
“You sure it wasn’t tattoo ink?”
“Positive,” Tran replied. “Though my Chinese is rusty, I heard them talking about their artistic conquests.” He made a face. “They didn’t call it graffiti, though.”
Duncan rose from the chair. Setting aside the hardbound copy of War and Peace he’d been reading, he said, “The artists don’t wear gloves while they’re doing their work? That’s got to be some kind of health code violation. Hell, the way the new mayor is reconstituting bureaucracy in this town, if they don’t have a law on the books, it’s soon to come down the pike.”
Tran stirred whatever was in the largest of the half-dozen pots of food arranged randomly in the center of the table. Finished, he said, “I saw her fingers when she changed gloves. They do that between clients.”
“I’m convinced,” Raven said. “If there isn’t a Mandarin word for graffiti, what do they call it?”
Tran said, “Oh, they do have a way to say graffiti. It’s tu ya. But they didn’t refer to it as such. They called it xiao xi which translates roughly to ‘messaging’ in English.”
Sasha regarded Raven. “Any idea why they just don’t call it graffiti like we do?”
Raven shrugged, deferred the question to Tran.
Tran said, “Maybe it’s a cultural thing. But I think it’s just young people being lazy.”
Believing Tran’s “young and lazy” theory to be a dig at her and the others in the under-thirty crowd, Sasha shot the man a sour look.
Duncan spared Tran the teen’s wrath. “What’s really on my mind,” he said, “is what kind of tattoo you chose to take to the grave with you. I’m guessing you got something off their flash wall. A cartoon character?”
Smiling, Tran shook his head.
With a cock of the head, Duncan said, “Barbwire?”
Tran said, “Go fish,” and stirred the food in another one of the pots.
Throwing his hands up, Duncan said, “Just show me the darn thing, already.”
Tran hitched his sleeve up. He picked the corner of a bandage, then pulled it away, exposing a toned bicep with fine black markings on it. Some kind of salve slathered on it really made the line work pop.
Duncan moved in to get a better look. Lifting his aviators, he smiled and fixed Tran with a look of incredulity. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep,” Tran said. “It’s Buddha. Just the outline… for now. I almost passed out when the needle touched my skin.”
“Should have gotten a badass samurai warrior or a Sun Tzu quote,” proffered Duncan. “’Cause Lord knows you’re no longer a pacifist.”
“Maybe on the other arm,” answered Tran. He winced as he smoothed the tape back down on the angry red skin bordering the tattoo. “I’ll have to get through this one first.”
The door to the hallway opened. Wilson and Taryn walked through wearing matching Black Diamond backpacks, pistols on their hips and compact black submachine guns in hand. He took her pack and coat, then shrugged his gear off. The coats went in the closet along with the packs and pair of identical Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns they’d found in the back of an SUV abandoned on a side road southeast of Bear River. The vehicle had been one of three brand-new Tahoes left parked in a neat line on the shoulder, their gas tanks bone dry. Given the amount of camping gear and sentimental items—photo albums, family portraits in frames, stuffed animals and the like—that had been left behind, it looked as if the owners expected to return with fuel and resume their journey.
The accumulated grime on the windshields and side windows had pointed to failure.
Wilson had taken the red Tahoe for himself, leaving Taryn alone with Sasha in the Raptor for the remainder of the overland trip to their new home.
Taryn pulled her fleece sweater over her head and tossed it on a nearby chair. Both of the nineteen-year-old’s arms, from wrists to biceps, were wrapped with white bandages. Looking to Tran, she said, “You almost blew our plan out of the water with your
passing-out routine.”
“Wasn’t a routine,” Tran admitted. “That needle hurts real bad. When the girl asked if I wanted to lie on their couch and gather my strength so she can finish, I figured it would allow me to be a fly on the wall. To listen to them talk with no angry machine buzzing in my ear.”
Looking to Taryn, Wilson said, “Give the man credit. It worked out as planned.” Addressing Tran, he added, “Way to improvise.”
Duncan shot Wilson a questioning look.
Wilson said, “Taryn already had the appointment to get some color added to her old tats. It was Raven’s idea to have Tran tag along and try to find out if any of the artists were involved with bombing the fuel truck. It was Tran’s plan to actually go ahead with the Buddha tattoo.”
Taking a seat at the table, Duncan said, “I have a feeling Bird has an ulterior motive.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Perhaps she wants to bring her taggers to justice, too.”
Raven shook her head. “After talking with the nice man who owns the truck stop, I want to help catch whoever is responsible for destroying one of his trucks.” She thought, And then I’ll follow the trail to the taggers, who are probably one and the same. If Murphy stayed away and it all worked out as planned, she would—as her dad liked to say—be killing two birds with one stone.
Tran said, “I’m sorry, Miss Raven, but I have nothing else for you.”
Duncan picked up his fork and knife. Pointing the knife at Raven, he said, “Connecting the tattoo crew to the spray paint was a good start. Now you’ve just got to catch them in the act. You do that … get their ugly mugs on one of the trail cams, then you can get Chief Riggleman involved. Tell her all about your theory and let her run with it.” He turned his attention to the pot on the table. “Now that that’s sorted—can we eat?”
Raven wasn’t hungry. Planting her elbows on a chair by the window, she looked out over her park. Nothing moved down there. She saw only the tracks in the snow left there by her, Duncan, and her dad.
The sun cast the park in a warm orange glow as it slipped behind the craggy outline of Pike’s Peak.
Fixated on a clutch of rotters just outside the west wall, Raven said, “Where’s Daymon and Glenda?”
“A young woman just arrived from San Francisco went into labor,” replied Duncan. “She’s only seven months along. Glenda volunteered to stay and help out in the NICU in any way she can.”
“She’s a good lady,” Raven said. “Always thinking about others first.” She made a face. “My mom was like that.”
Making her way to the table, Sasha said, “Daymon knows what time we’re eating. He even asked if he could bring his new squeeze.”
“That kid rebounds fast,” Duncan noted. “Heidi’s been dead what … a month at most?”
Pinching away fresh tears, Raven said, “Anyone seen my dad?”
Sasha said, “Not since he came back from downstairs with a Diet Coke in hand. Been real quiet over there for an hour or so.” Regarding Raven, she asked, “You know where a person can find another one of those? And don’t tell me to check the vending machines.”
Flashing a half-smile, Raven said, “For the tenth time … I was joking. I pulled that on you last week. Let it go, Sasha.”
Wilson had already nabbed a seat at the table next to Taryn. Taking advantage of the opening, he said, “The last time Sash truly let something go, I was in the middle of changing her diaper.”
It started with Duncan—just a semblance of one of his trademark cackles. After Taryn buried her face in her hands and snorted, the flood gates were open and everyone present—save for Raven and Sasha—had a laugh at the teen’s expense.
Mouthing “Sorry” at Sasha, Raven closed the blackout curtains, then left to find her dad.
Chapter 34
Cade stood in his room at the foot of his bed, staring intently at an interior wall. The four-by-six mirror that used to hang on the wall above the waist-high walnut dresser was now tucked away underneath the bed. In its place were a dozen pages torn from a 2012 Antlers Hotel calendar. There were no pictures featuring the hotel, its amenities, its once-manicured grounds, or the Colorado landscape one could expect to see outside one of its many windows. Instead, Cade had torn out only the pages representing each individual month and pinned them to the wall with pushpins taken from the bulletin board in the Antlers’ employee breakroom.
On the dresser top was a handful of different-colored Sharpie pens he’d liberated from a drawer at the front desk.
The page for the month of January was at eye-level to him and had already fallen under the pen.
After consulting the 2012 Farmer’s Almanac open on the dresser before him, he selected a red pen and made some additional marks on the page. Moving on, he circled days in February, March, and then April.
There was a knock at the door between the adjoining rooms.
“Who is it?”
“Boo.”
“Boo, who?”
“Don’t cry, Dad. It’s me, Raven.”
Cade said, “That was a groaner,” and threw the lock.
Raven entered the room, slipped past her dad and stepped over the treadmill. Immediately her eyes were drawn to the wall to her right.
Closing the door, two things occurred to Cade. First, having just gotten a good whiff of whatever food was being consumed in the nearby Founders Suite, his stomach growled and he remembered he hadn’t eaten for some time. Then, seeing the last rays of the westering sun playing across the treadmill’s chrome supports, he realized he was no longer at Penrose and that nobody would be coming around to serve him dinner. It also dawned on him, in order to not draw the ire of the handful of other tenants calling the Antlers home, he needed to close the blackout drapes before the sun slipped entirely from view.
The former didn’t break his heart. Though the skeleton crew keeping Penrose running meant well, not a person among them knew how to cook. Cliché as it may be: Bad hospital food had survived the zombie apocalypse.
The latter set him somewhat at ease. Because—walls or no—going from living in subterranean quarters at the secluded Eden compound to a penthouse in the sky was going to take a lot of getting used to.
After pulling the curtains together, Cade regarded Raven. She was standing as he had been moments ago: hands on hips, head tilted back and scrutinizing the items on the wall. Eyes still roaming the months of the year, she said, “Did you eat?”
“I got sidetracked with this.”
Sounding a lot like her mom issuing one of her edicts, Raven said, “You need to eat, Dad. And you should be sitting down while you’re doing whatever this is.”
Cade told her about the message from Nash he’d found scribbled in the fold on the rear of the sticky note.
“So you’re going on a mission?”
Cade shook his head. “Not as far as I know. Nash was just being courteous. Giving me a heads up in case things get hairy around here.”
“So a spring offensive by the Chinese. That’s when the dead are supposed to get real active again, too. That would really suck having to deal with a determined enemy and a mindless flesh-eating enemy all at the same time.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“So Lopez nudges you into learning Chinese. Who’s to say Nash isn’t behind it? She’s always dragging you back in.”
“Can’t blame her. I’m always a willing participant,” admitted Cade.
Pointing at three dates circled at the end of January, she said, “What’s so special about these days?”
“When is the best time to attack your enemy?”
Raven answered with no hesitation. “Zero dark thirty. The hours between midnight and dawn when their senses are dulled, or, better yet, when they’re all asleep.”
“Exactly. I call it throat slittin’ time.”
“Zero dark thirty happens every night. Why did you mark those specific nights?”
Cade sat down on the end of the bed. He looked to Raven. “Give it so
me thought.”
“It has to do with the lunar cycle, doesn’t it? And the farmers knew their stuff and put it in that book.”
Cade nodded. “The lunar phase is the shape of the illuminated portion of the moon as we see it from Earth. I’m just consulting the Farmer’s Almanac to find out what day of the month the night sky will be darkest.” He studied her face. Could see the gears working inside her head. He asked, “What’s the opposite of full moon?”
Raven bit her lip. After a beat, she said, “Sliver moon?”
“Close, but not exactly. You’re thinking of the crescent moon. The opposite of full moon is called new moon. That’s when it’s not visible from our hemisphere. During the days bracketing the new moon, it goes from waning crescent to new moon to waxing crescent. After those three days, the moon is in a waxing phase. Which means each night it shows up a little brighter than the last.”
“Which means night vision isn’t as much of an advantage as it is during the new moon.”
Cade said, “Bingo. How about we get some dinner?”
Raven stood on her tiptoes. Placing a finger on the letters B and M, both written in green ink in the top right corner of New Year’s Day, she said, “What’s this mean?”
Cade said nothing.
Looking questioningly at her dad, Raven tapped her finger on the tiny letters.
Shrugging, Cade said, “Bowel movement.”
“Ewwww,” said Raven. “TMI.”
Now Cade was the one wearing the quizzical look. “TMI?”
“It stands for too much information,” she explained.
Cade hitched his eyebrows to show he understood.
Raven asked, “These other markings between new moons look like Lucky Charms marshmallows. What do they all mean?”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home Page 18
