Cade handed the Declaration of Independence through the yawning bronze doors to a Ranger and watched the master sergeant from the 75th Regiment pass it to another Ranger. Bucket-brigade-style, the documents a proud nation was founded on made their way down the stairs, overtop the snarled traffic, and were handed off to the crew chief on the ramp of the helo expertly piloted by an unknown aviator from the 160th SOAR.
As the last case containing the United States Constitution left Cade’s hands and started down the stairs, there came a ripping sound as the minigun on One-Two’s port side opened up with a short, three-hundred-round burst.
One by one the empty-handed Rangers descended the stairs to the sidewalk, negotiated the static cars, and boarded the helicopter tasked with bringing home the Charters of Freedom.
In his earpiece Cade heard Ari warning the Chinook pilot that he was in danger of being overrun from his blind side.
As One-Two responded by going light on her gear, the Rangers on the ramp began firing their carbines at the Zs slithering through the jam on the helo’s six.
To Cade’s right, Cross and Griff were busy engaging the monsters coming into view off of 14th Avenue. On his left, Axe was firing and changing magazines faster than Cade had ever seen. At the SAS trooper’s feet was a growing pool of body fluids and a mound of twice-dead Zs nearly waist-high to him.
The increasing turbine whine drew Cade’s attention back to the Chinook. The ramp was motoring up and the rear wheels were no longer resting on the car roofs.
“Jedi Lead, Anvil Actual. Requesting immediate exfil. We’re about to be surrounded on three sides.”
“Copy that, Anvil Actual,” Ari answered back. “Hold onto your bonnets. Coming in hot.”
After calling the rest of the team to his position on the sidewalk paralleling Constitution Avenue, Cade dumped his empty mag and reached for another, all while looking skyward at the black obelisk blocking out the flat light.
The harmonic tremor of three sets of rotors bashed Cade’s chest as One-Two and One-One crossed paths at different altitudes, the former launching with the mission’s objective and full complement of Rangers safely inside, the latter coming in at a steep angle, the minigun laying down a curtain of lead a dozen feet in front of the soon-to-be-compromised Delta team.
“Go, go, go,” Cade bellowed, pushing Axe ahead of Cross and Griff. He watched them negotiate the chewed-up concrete and body parts of the Zs Skipper had just decimated with the mini. He was relieved to see them scale the same cars the Chinook had used as a platform. Then he dumped the remaining rounds from his magazine to cover them as Jedi One-One, its wheels still stowed internally, filled up the airspace Jedi One-Two had just vacated.
Like the last man off a sinking ship, putting his trust in both Skipper on the mini, and the brace on his still-healing left ankle, Captain Cade Grayson broke into a sprint for the hovering Ghost Hawk. Once he reached the car Griff had just scrambled atop, he bashed the M4’s semi-collapsed stock into a first turn’s head, put a boot on the car’s rear tire, and performed an improvised half-barrel roll onto its dented roof. With gnarled fingers tugging at his fatigues, Cade rose to a knee and lunged for Cross and Axe’s outstretched hands.
The rest was a blur of black blades overhead and colors of the rainbow spinning below as he was yanked forcibly inside the cabin. There was the metallic click of his M4 being unclipped from its sling and then hands were guiding him to a seat as the door began motoring shut.
“I’d say that’s one for the close column,” Axe said, wiping hair and rotten dermis from Cade’s still-smoking carbine.
Cade nodded at the quip, but couldn’t conjure up a smile, because, like the ring of Tolkien lore, the satellite phone in his pocket was calling to him.
Chapter 73
The parking lot and road out front of Merlin’s Drive-In was crowded with vehicles. The two U-Haul trucks and Dregan’s Humvees were lined up on 30 pointing south. Parked side by side next to the restaurant were the Raptor, F-650, Bear River patrol Tahoe and Daymon’s black Chevy. Laden down with supplies stripped from Adrian’s compound, all four vehicles sat low on their springs.
Traveling order was established and with a low rumble and puff of diesel exhaust the Humvees driven by the senior Dregan and his oldest, Gregory, grabbed gears and slowly pulled away. Next in line with Cleo at the wheel was the fully loaded seventeen-foot U-Haul package truck bound for Bear River. And after figuring how to get his new set of wheels into gear, Ray pulled the patrol Tahoe off the lot and formed up on the U-Haul’s bumper.
Once the first group was underway, Duncan struck out after them driving the U-Haul containing the bodies of their fallen. Close behind was the Raptor with Taryn at the wheel and Wilson riding shotgun. The seventh vehicle in line was the F-650 with Lev at the helm and Jamie navigating. The black Chevy pickup being driven solo by Daymon brought up the rear.
The multicolored convoy rumbled along on 16, radios quiet, the conversation inside the individual vehicles practically nonexistent.
Randolph proved to be quiet and free of rotters when the vehicles motored through.
A few miles farther south not a thing was stirring in Woodruff.
Forty-five minutes after leaving Merlin’s behind, the convoy parted ways at the 16/39 juncture.
The orange glow from the burning lake houses was still on Duncan’s mind when he watched the U-Haul, two Humvees, and the patrol Tahoe—gifted by the elder Dregan to Ray as a replacement for the rickety blue pickup—roll on south down State Route 16 towards the Thagon farm.
After steering the U-Haul onto westbound State Route 39, the dam broke inside of Duncan and suddenly he was awash in emotion the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since the Sunday in July when his best friend in the world, Charlie Hammond, took his own life. As the road began to climb and the package truck began to bog down under weight of the full load in back, hot tears rolled down his cheeks. Starting with Charlie and ending with Foley, the faces of the dead scrolled through his mind like an old silent film.
“Want me to drive?” Tran asked as the road crested and leveled out.
Startled by the sudden inclusion of sound into the cab, Duncan jerked involuntarily, causing the truck to cross the centerline as 39 swept into a blind right-hander a few hundred feet before the quarry entrance. Then, coming at the worst possible time on the heels of Duncan’s course correction, Daymon’s voice emanated from the Motorola in the center console. “Drinking again, Old Man?”
Muttering an expletive under his breath, Duncan’s gaze was momentarily drawn from the road down to the radio.
“Look out, demons,” said Tran.
Looking up and seeing a dozen rotters draped over a tiny green compact, Duncan blurted, “Shit.” In the next beat he realized the things Tran had taken to calling demons were about five seconds from making violent and destructive acquaintance with the seventeen-foot U-Haul’s squared-off grill.
Before Duncan could get his right foot to the brake pedal, his arms were acting as if they had a mind of their own. Hauling hand over hand to the left started the rig to slew crazily. Thankfully, as the vehicle went up on two wheels, the brakes grabbed, slamming them back down, which started the vehicle slewing in a serpentine pattern for another thirty feet before coming to a screeching halt with Tran staring at the dead things and Duncan staring straight at the Raptor’s rapidly approaching grill.
Because throwing his arms up in front of his face seemed to be his last mortal defense against several tons of hurtling American iron, Duncan missed seeing Taryn jink the wheel at the last possible moment. Instead, when the anticipated meeting with St. Peter didn’t materialize, he opened his eyes, dropped his hands, and saw a flash of white in his right side vision as the Raptor’s bed hit a glancing blow off the U-Haul’s front bumper. Turning his head instinctively he watched the white Ford roll another fifteen feet and come to a sudden and grinding halt balanced precariously on the soft shoulder.
With the Raptor still rocki
ng on its springs, Duncan remembered there had been two other vehicles following behind the Raptor.
As the monsters started raking the sheet metal on Tran’s side, Duncan turned his head left just in time to see the hurtling F-650’s front end nose down hard. Then, for the second time in a handful of heartbeats, he watched his life flash before his eyes as the rig went from forty-five miles per hour to a complete stop in less time and distance than he fathomed possible.
Thank God for adequate following distances, he thought, eyes flicking from the looming grill next to his door to his oversized side mirror, where he witnessed Daymon swerve his Chevy pickup around back of the U-Haul, its off-road tires leaving a spray of gravel in its wake.
Prying his hands off the wheel, Duncan looked to his right and took in the aftermath from Daymon’s evasive maneuver. Zombies were scattered like bowling pins across the road. The left front end of the Chevy had clipped a rotter and sent it airborne like a meat missile straight into the little Toyota Tercel’s rear window.
“There’s someone in the car,” Tran said, his voice rising an octave. “It’s a woman, I think.”
“So close to home,” Duncan said, shouldering his door open, shotgun in hand.
Meeting Lev and Jamie on the road, Duncan hurriedly told them about the breather. Next he radioed the others and told them to stand down, lest the thing moving in the car really was a breather. From experience, he had reason to believe Tran had seen what he had. During all of his travels after that day in late July when the dead began to walk, he had never seen a rotter interested in one of its own. Especially not one trapped in an automobile in plain view.
“There’s a woman in there, all right,” Daymon said. “We’ll take care of the rotters.”
Tran flinched when the machete scythed the air in front of his face. Blood spritzed the window and one rotter collapsed vertically.
Wilson spilling out of the Raptor a dozen feet to his right caught Tran’s attention. In the redhead’s hand was a lock-blade knife. On his face was a look of determination as he waded into the dead from their blind side.
In less than a minute the zombies were prone on the road, legs and arms akimbo, faces frozen masks of true death.
“Nine,” Daymon crowed.
“You got eight. I got four,” Wilson insisted.
“Quit arguing,” Duncan bellowed, as he split the two men and leveled his shotgun at the compact car’s drivers-side door.
Hands raised in surrender, the person behind the wheel yelled something that sounded to Duncan like “Bee hive.”
Duncan looked a question at Daymon.
“She said she’s alive,” Daymon said matter-of-factly. He sidestepped a corpse and approached Duncan. “What do you want to do?”
“Let her say her piece.” Keeping the shotgun aimed at the window glass, Duncan motioned for her to step out. “Slowly,” he said, as soon as she lowered her gloved hands.
The woman nudged the door open and stepped onto the road. She looked to be in her mid-forties. Close-cropped blonde hair framed a full face, marred with crow’s feet and frown lines. The apocalypse hadn’t been easy on this one, Duncan decided. Craning past her, he saw that the car was full of belongings, mostly clothes from the looks of it.
“Hands up,” Duncan ordered. “What’s your name?”
“Bridgett,” she replied.
“Well, Bridgett. We’re not going to reciprocate,” Lev said. “That’s just how it is these days.”
Holding her hands up at shoulder level, the woman regarded Duncan. “I ran out of gas.”
“Poor planning can get you killed,” Daymon said, moving her aside to get a look inside the car.
“I was trying to get to Huntsville before dark. Planned on siphoning gas and moving on to Eden,” she said, still looking at Duncan, who was half a head taller. “Though I might stay the night at the ski resort. But some assholes dropped a bunch of trees across the road a few miles west of here. So I had to turn back.”
“Asshole … right here,” Daymon said, raising his hand. “Guilty as charged.” He looked to Duncan. “She’s telling the truth. Gas gauge is on E. There’s garden hose and a gas can in back, too.”
Duncan saw a mental image of a coin in his head. Heads she gets mercy, he decided, closing his eyes briefly. The imaginary coin spun end over end and landed on heads. “Jacket, shirt, pants, shoes … take them off, now,” he said, all business.
The woman stripped down to her bra and panties as ordered.
Taryn and Jamie moved in at once, checking her for weapons and bites.
“What are all of these from?” said Jamie, gesturing to the crisscrossing red welts running up and down the woman’s arm from knuckles to elbows.
“Last time I tried to get some gas … back by Woodruff, I got jumped and had to hide from the gawkers in some roadside brambles.”
Jamie looked to the others. “What do you all think?”
“Seems legit,” Wilson said.
After a second or two, Lev nodded in approval.
“Nice tattoo,” Taryn remarked, eyeing the multicolored, tri-petal flower snaking around the woman’s bicep. “What is it?”
“A flower,” replied the woman.
“What kind?” asked Wilson, inching past Taryn to get a closer look.
“An iris,” said the woman, as she threw a shiver. “Can I get dressed now?”
Duncan nodded to the woman. Then, looking to the girls, he said, “When she’s decent, blindfold and zip-tie her.” He thought for a second. “Go ahead and stick her in back of the 650 with Max.”
While Daymon and Wilson cleared the road of the dead and the stalled car, Jamie and Taryn were tying fabric around Bridgett’s eyes and binding her wrists together with plastic cuffs. The woman didn’t fight. She simply let it happen then allowed Jamie to lead her to the waiting truck.
Chapter 74
The TOC at Schriever was a beehive of activity. Airmen and women of the 50th Satellite Space Wing sat hunched over their workstations, some banging away at their keyboards sending instructions to their birds orbiting high above the United States, while others sat, eyes riveted on images splashed on the humongous monitors to their fore.
The color image on the sixty-inch plasma display at the front of the room was of a tributary of the Chesapeake. Three warships sat at anchor off a curving white stretch of zombie-covered beach while a landing craft of some type, a white wake spreading slowly from its bow, motored away from the gray vessel nearest to shore.
On the smaller screen near where Nash stood, rendered in black and white, was an overhead shot of open ocean complete with white caps and angry rollers giving off intermittent puffs of spray.
“Five steps in on Two,” Nash said.
An airman nearby repeated the order, hit some keys in front of him making the image on the smaller screen change, the waves and spray becoming more noticeable as they contrasted against something sleek and shiny.
“Eight steps on One,” she ordered.
Again the verbal confirmation and key tapping which resulted in the color image on the main screen going slightly grainy as everything on it grew larger.
On the top right corner of the screen were the three motorcycles the men and women of the 50th had been tracking for the better part of an hour. Using four separate satellites, each one handing off the job to the other as it passed out of range, they were able to follow their movement from an overpass south of Fort Meade all the way to where they were now. Tiny as ants in relation to their surroundings, the three soldiers dumped their bikes on the beach and sprinted for the approaching landing craft.
A ripple went through the dead crowding the beach as what looked like several hundred of them reacted in unison to the rendezvous taking place a short distance northeast of them.
Looking rested compared to Nash and Shrill, both of whom had been awake for more than thirty hours, the President rose from her chair and stood next to Nash.
After doing a quick mental calcul
ation that took into account two converging objects both moving at different speeds, Nash nodded to the President. “On your command.”
Her face conveying not one iota of emotion, President Clay said, “Do it.”
Acting on the verbal command, the same airman responsible for changing aspects and magnification on the moving satellite images spoke into the red handset pressed to his ear.
On Screen Two the water directly above the sleek object churned and the image was momentarily wrought blurry. In a sort of ripple effect walking left to right on the screen the action was repeated sixteen times, once every couple of seconds, and then suddenly the ocean was back to normal, the sleek object having disappeared entirely.
The President turned to Nash. “What now?”
On the larger screen, the motor launch had seemingly swallowed up the three men and was already backing away from the encroaching zombies.
“Now we wait,” said Nash.
“And root for the landing craft,” added Shrill, as the color image on the screen became distorted, flattening somewhat and seeming to stretch at the edges.
“Pass it off to the next bird,” Nash said, her eyes never leaving the bank of screens above the dais.
“Passing to KH-11 Misty,” she heard a disembodied voice say.
Suddenly the image on the center screen switched to one being taken from a slightly different viewing angle. Nash picked up the landing craft and saw that it had turned itself around and was steaming away from shore, the water at its stern frothy and white.
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 44
