“Football,” Axe corrected, yet again. “Who’s winning?”
“Manchester United, looks like. Their players are always pasty and covered in crimson, right?”
“Bugger off,” Axe spat.
“Anvil Actual, are we a go?” Ari asked.
Cade leaned toward the display. Using crowd size estimation techniques Cross had taught him some time ago, he pegged the number of Zs leaving the grounds and lots around the target for the vast acres of empty parking lots where the Screamers had been deployed at a thousand or more. Thankfully, the number of Zs remaining around the target were beginning to lean in their favor. However, as he looked closer at the clutter near the base of the building, nearly lost in the debris and a little fuzzy due to distance and the fact that they were moving, he noticed dozens of corpses loitering in and around the ground-level front entry. And the longer he stared into the gloom cast by the nine-story affair, the more concerned he became. For among the shattered glass and uprooted shrubbery and hundreds of already twice-dead Zs heaped in the building’s shadow, dozens of crawlers—partially incapacitated creatures—dragged themselves along the ground.
“Ari, we’re going to need to loiter a bit before going in,” Cade said over the comms. “Give the ones in the lobby a chance to vacate the premises.”
“Copy that,” Ari said. “In the meantime, someone pass another of those five-hour pick-me-ups forward.”
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Skipper said, handing another pair of the small bottles forward. “If it’ll keep you awake and happy and this bird in the air, I’ll keep them coming your way.”
“Copy that, Skipper. Much obliged,” replied Haynes, reaching a long arm back to receive the bottled elixir.
Chapter 52
Minutes after heaving the bent and broken bike into the ditch where they had found it, the four-truck convoy was speeding north by west on 16 with ochre-scrub-dotted flatlands blipping by on the left, and the snow-capped peaks of the Bear River Mountain Range scrolling by a few miles off their right.
While Randolph had just been a smaller version of what they had encountered in Woodruff, with doors marked with tiny chalk Xs which the group took to mean the place was already stripped of anything of value, the two-lane road beyond the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town was a different story.
Speaking to progress made days ago over the cold-affected dead by the same people likely holding Oliver hostage, every mile or so the convoy came upon head-high mounds of twice-dead zombie corpses.
Nine miles north of Randolph, Duncan was forced to slow yet again to negotiate a school-bus-sized pile of moldering bodies. Stretching from one side of 16 to the other, the drift of death all but blocked the north side of the two-lane from view.
Fuck it, Duncan thought, steering the Dodge around the twelve-foot-tall mound. With rigor-stiffened appendages scratching out a mournful dirge on the driver’s side sheet metal, he wheeled his rig past the blockage, partway into the ditch, then four-wheeled up the other side.
After bringing the Dodge to a complete stop to wait for the others, Duncan turned to Tran. “Think the 650 is gonna make it?”
“We’ll see in a moment,” Tran said, as Daymon squeezed his Chevy by the roadblock, its driver’s side wheels fighting to keep purchase on the road while the opposing pair churned the muddy snow in the bottom of the roadside ditch.
Shifting his gaze from Tran to the mirror, Duncan watched the Chevy’s grill emerge from the ditch and saw the determined look parked on Daymon’s. And sitting next to Daymon, Foley had the handle near his head clutched in a two-handed death grip and his mouth forming a silent O as the black 4x4—following the same muddy furrows churned up by Duncan’s passage—clawed its way back onto 16.
Wearing a wide-eyed I thought we were going to roll over look on his face, Daymon rolled the muddy truck around the static Dodge and flashed Duncan a double thumbs-up.
Perfect place to spring an ambush, crossed Duncan’s mind as he returned the gesture. Then, acting on the epiphany, he nodded to the binoculars clutched in Tran’s hands. “While the others come on through I need you to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.” He pointed to the small hillock a half mile ahead on the right where the road cut through twin walls of ochre dirt before veering off sharply to the left. “Start there and work your way back here.”
Meanwhile, inside the Raptor, Taryn wore a grim look as the rig entered the ditch, lurching hard to the right as both wheels on that side became one with the steep, rock-and-gravel-studded wall. Glancing sidelong at Wilson and talking loudly to be heard over the macabre sound of bone and nail raking the truck’s thin steel skin near her left thigh, she said, “We are not going to make this.”
Subtly shaking his head and pressing the flaps of his boonie hat hard over his ears to drown out the awful keening, Wilson said, “You’ve already committed, Taryn. If you don’t gun it now and stop that awful sound … you’re going to have to have me committed.”
“Those places are all gone, Wilson. Suck it up,” she said, sounding way too much like Sasha for her own liking.
Wilson met her gaze. Not wanting this to escalate, he wisely said nothing.
“Just hold on,” she said, her narrowed eyes focused on the narrow gap.
Gritting his teeth, Wilson took ahold of the grab bar near his head and braced himself by placing his other hand, fingers splayed out wide, on the dusty dashboard.
Inching forward in her seat, simultaneously Taryn tightened her grip on the wheel and stabbed the pedal to coax all the available horsepower from the growling 6.2-liter powerplant.
Two things happened as a result. First, quad rooster-tails of dirty snow and rocks exploded from under the beefy tires spinning furiously beneath the lurching Ford. Then the off-road-tuned Raptor launched up the left side of the ditch, went airborne momentarily—albeit by only a few inches—then crashed back to earth on State Route 16 a half truck-length from Foley who was staring wide-eyed from inside the Dodge.
Finally, three minutes after edging his truck past the multitudes of leering dead and their pallid tangle of stick-thin arms and legs, Duncan was about to learn if the F-650 could shoot the gap.
“Twenty bucks says we end up winching them out of there.”
Tran shook his head at that. “No way. If they make it through, you have to gut and dress the next deer for me.”
“What are you going to do if I win?”
“I’ll do yours and Glenda’s wash.”
Shaking Tran’s hand, Duncan cackled then said, “You, my friend, have a deal.”
Tran turned in his seat as the big black grill inched into view around the blockage..
“I want my pants ironed with a hot rock,” Duncan said as he watched the Ford edged out over the ditch and began to slowly list to the right. Then he grimaced as Lev gunned it and somehow got the right side tires tracking on the narrow strip of dirt sandwiched between the yawning ditch and barbed wire fence.
“I want thin, nicely trimmed venison steaks,” Tran countered as the 650’s massive driver-side tires gripped the remaining ribbon of blacktop.
“Freakin’ Flying Wallendas,” Duncan said to Tran as the Ford squeaked through, its rear bumper starting a corpse avalanche in its wake.
Throwing a fist pump in Duncan’s direction, Tran said, “I love cooking. Hate butchering.”
Already imagining the stink of spilt blood, Duncan said, “No wonder Cade and Brook love that beast.”
A tick after mentioning the Graysons, Duncan suddenly reflected on how many Eden survivors he had allowed to tag along. On second thought, allowed was a strong word. How many he had been reluctant to discourage from tagging along was more like it.
In that instant, his stomach did a somersault and he felt a primeval live wire tingling in his scrotum. In his haste to do Glenda’s bidding and find Oliver no matter the cost, he’d been blinded to the fact that Cade was away and with Phillip dead and gone, the only people at the compound at this very moment
were women and children and Seth, who was far from a survivor, and even less adept as a fighter. In fact, the mercurial loner was barely one notch above Oliver in that department.
What would Cade say if he knew Brook had been left behind considering the fluidity of her current situation? Duncan expected no kind of attaboy, that was for damn sure.
He looked over at Tran and caught the man, binoculars partially lowered, staring back with a confused look on his face.
“Watch the road,” Duncan said, cheeks flushing red. “You’re not going to catch anyone sneaking up on us staring at my ugly mug.”
Tran’s face blanched as he raised the field glasses and aimed them at the scrub-covered plain northwest of them.
Embarrassed by his lapse in judgement, Duncan averted his eyes and studied Jamie in the side mirror as the black behemoth pulled even with his smaller Dodge. A tick later the window pulsed down and she stuck her head out. After a few seconds of pained silence, voice cracking with emotion, she said, “My gut tells me Oliver is dead. But my heart says we have to keep looking for him.”
That was all Duncan needed to hear. And it was reassuring to know that someone else cared as much as he did about the troubled youngest son of the love of his life. Staring up at Jamie and feeling as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, he used the two-way radio to call everyone over to his truck for a meeting of the minds, so to speak.
***
It took a couple of minutes for everyone to shut down their vehicles and make their way to the Dodge.
“Why the face to face?” asked Daymon, standing with his back against the F-650.
Ignoring the attitude, Duncan walked his gaze over the assembled survivors. “Does anyone have any idea why whoever is claiming the north would want to block the road here?”
Wilson said, “Because it’s right before a junction?”
“I’m not quizzing you, kid,” said Duncan, suppressing the urge to take him aside and tell him to toughen up and start thinking critically. But he didn’t. Instead, he took the high road. “I’ll take that as a statement and say that I have to agree with you.”
“It’s just another roadblock,” stated Foley. “Only this one is physical and comes with a warning that cannot be misconstrued. The others … the tainted trap. The crucified skeleton and Oliver’s bike and gear …” He paused and looked to the east where dark clouds were building against the Bear River Range. “All of those were psychological roadblocks. I’m willing to bet the next thing that gets in our way is going to kill one of us.”
“That’s deep stuff,” said Daymon, sweeping a stray dread under his black cap. “But I ain’t scared. I’m pissed. I want to make someone pay for what they’ve done. Let’s go. Now!”
“I’ve been thinking,” Duncan said, one finger held in the air outside his window as if he was testing for wind direction. “This incremental security, if you will, reminds me of something I saw on television before all of this. But I can’t for the life of me dredge it up.”
“I’ll be waiting with my hand on the radio and bated breath for you to enlighten me,” said Daymon, the last few words uttered over his shoulder as he strode off to his Chevy.
Duncan was about to say something he might regret, something that had to do with halitosis and general dental hygiene, when Tran tugged on his shirt sleeve.
“What?” said Duncan, irritably.
“There,” Tran said, pointing past the bend in the road while thrusting the binoculars into his hands. “Those are buzzards.”
“And I bet they’re feeding on something dead,” Duncan said slowly, accepting the Bushnells from his passenger.
Tran drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Or someone,” he countered in a low voice.
Chapter 53
Ari called out, “Wheels down in five,” over the comms a split second before drawing Jedi One-One from its steep dive and leveling the ship out directly over a gently sloping hill bristling with what looked to Cade, from his port-side perch, like the last patch of living grass on the sprawling grounds. The clouds above were just starting to part, allowing the sun to paint the National Security Agency’s buildings and muddy grounds of the Fort Meade complex with a muted, gauze-like light. Just off Cade’s left shoulder, almost close enough to reach out and touch, barren cherry trees planted along the building’s north side were bending from the rotor wash.
Outside the starboard-side window, Cade could see six Humvees parked nearly bumper-to-bumper in a bulging half-circle with their turret-mounted weapons trained on the road passing by the front of the target building. Small arms were strewn about the ground among the putrefying bodies of the dead soldiers who had once wielded them. Clearly a stand had been made here. A stand that had folded to an insatiable and ever-growing army of zombies gnashing and tearing their way outward from the nation’s former capital twenty-five miles southwest of here.
Ari called out, “Three,” in his short countdown.
On cue, Skipper hauled open the port-side door, letting the rotor wash infiltrate the cabin and rustle sleeves and beards and nylon rifle slings. The stowed landing gear was just locking into full extension when Ari called out “One” and punctuated the countdown by saying, “For God and country, gentlemen.”
A tick after hearing the SOAR pilot utter those final uplifting words, Cade leaped from the helicopter bellowing, “Weapons free! Go, go, go!” at the top of his voice. To his fore were two dozen Zs that for some reason or another hadn’t gone in search of the fresh meat promised by the feminine wails emanating from the deployed Screamers. At once he had his M4 tucked in tight to his shoulder and he was prioritizing targets in his cone of fire. Assessing the threat of each Z based on its proximity to where the Delta team would enter the looming building, he sighted on a recent turn angling in from his right and dropped it to the cement walk with a perfect head shot. After stepping over the prostrate corpse and inadvertently sending a half-dozen spent shell casings skittering ahead of his boots, he stole a split-second glance over his shoulder and located Axe, a few steps behind and left of him, rifle leveled and on the move. The Brit’s gaze was focused laser-tight as he stared through the holographic sight atop the carbine. In the same snapshot in time, Cade saw that Cross and Griff, having exited the helo nearly shoulder-to-shoulder and tight on the SAS shooter’s heels, were now fanning out and training their weapons on their assigned sectors, Griff’s HK sweeping left, and Cross’s MP7 covering the far right where monsters were spilling from the building’s shot-out lower windows. And on the tail end of that lone, furtive glance, Cade also noted that Ari had let them all egress the Ghost Hawk without even settling its deployed landing gear on the body-strewn ground.
Cade’s new-to-him Danners, however, weren’t so lucky. The tightly cinched boots had attracted the thick sludge like a couple of leather mud magnets and were growing heavier with each successive step he took away from the quietly hovering helicopter.
“Contact left,” Axe called out, his suppressed M4 belching lead.
As Cade registered the call in his ear, simultaneously the soft clatter of the carbine’s bolt, throaty rasps of the nearby dead, and increasing rotor thwop assaulted his ears. In a state of near sensory overload, he zippered between a row of concrete Jersey barriers fronting the static Humvees and then paused for a half-second to gaze upon the NSA building to his fore where he saw the shimmery reflection of Jedi One-One rocketing away from the makeshift LZ, the helo’s new flight path taking her directly over the jostling Zs and upthrust light standards due north of the building’s mirrored facade.
The rest of the team was firing into the approaching knot of dead and converging with Cade at the front entry when he dropped his gaze to the ground-level windows, nearly all of which had been imploded under the crushing weight of God knew how many dead things.
With the sound of glass kernels popping and crunching under his boot soles, Cade slipped through the yawning doors ahead of the team and found himself inside the expansive main lobby
to NSA Building 9.
Every wall here was home to at least one of the ubiquitous black-dome-enshrouded security cameras. Every few yards on the ceiling larger versions of the smoked half-orbs reflected the flat light from outside. And though the windows at ground level were mostly blown-out, the air inside the lobby was damp and stagnant and stunk of cordite from past engagements that had left piles of spent brass shells and bullet-riddled bodies scattered about the wide-open floor.
As Cade took everything in, two things registered at once. First off, Nash’s intel about the emergency lighting being operational was faulty—at least where the ground-level sconces were concerned. Secondly, after fixing his gaze on the pitch-black bowels of the building beyond the sunlight-dappled staircase rising up behind a thick, bulletproof glass partition making up the initial security checkpoint, he came to the realization that the newest generation four-tube NVGs affixed to his helmet were going to come in handy.
Telling the rest of the team to power on their NVGs, he drew in a deep lungful of the last semi-fresh air he figured he’d be privy to for a long while, powered his on and flipped them down in front of his eyes.
Peering into the deeper recesses of the main floor, past the multi-lane security station featuring metal detectors and X-ray body scanners, Cade was able to grasp the sheer scale of the grandiose foyer. Even rendered in a dozen hues of green, the wood and stone comprising the interior design lent it the air of an upscale hotel—not the government-run security behemoth that it was. Throw in the zombies shuffling from the inky shadows beneath the staircase and the scene would be truly baffling to comprehend had he not already memorized the layout somewhat and possessed a folded and laminated map to fall back on should he need it.
Neck hairs standing on end due to the eerie moans and scratchy, dry rasps coming from the advancing dead, Cade shouldered his suppressed M4 and began culling those beyond the wall of metal detectors, magnetometers, and whatever else was contained within the phalanx of cream-colored screening apparatus bracketing the row of turnstiles in front of him.
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 29
