Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  With the image of the driver’s corpse staining the road crimson in his side vision, Elvis said nothing, accepting the job with a tilt of his head.

  “Good,” said Bishop. “It’s going to be a cold winter up here ... you finish splitting all the rounds and then we’ll sit down and have some beers. After that you can turn in. I want you well rested because I’ve got big plans for you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be ready,” lied Elvis. In fact, now more than ever he wanted to bolt. He looked towards the north gate at the half-dozen guards there. Then he watched the former Navy SEAL walk the length of the semi-truck, crab between it and the tow truck and disappear from sight. Finally, shaking his head and mired in a quicksand pool of indecision, Elvis took his seat on the dozer and fired up the big diesel motor. There was a roar and thick exhaust belched toward the blue sky. He spun a one-eighty in place, dropped the dozer’s blade and with the clank of treads filling the air and another few hours of backbreaking manual labor on the horizon, put his head down and started in on the final half-dozen passes.

  Chapter 16

  In the rearview, Cade watched Brook and Wilson close the distance to the truck. He opened the center console and retrieved a Big Box store-sized bottle of 250 milligram Ibuprofen. Defeated the child safety feature on the lid and then rattled three of the rust-colored pills into his palm. He popped them into his mouth and swallowed, then chased them down with a long pull off a bottled water. While stashing the pill bottle in the center console, he looked into the rearview, met his daughter’s gaze and asked, “Were you scared back there, Raven?”

  Instantly, as she was prone to do, Sasha inserted herself into the conversation. “Didn’t scare me a bit.”

  Looking at her dad, Raven smiled and delivered a conspiratorial wink. “I was a little scared,” she conceded.

  “And that’s a good thing, sweetie. A little bit of fear keeps us sharp. Too much and you’re prone to freezing up.” He looked over his shoulder at the slender redhead still clutching her designer bags. “Can’t be too brave, Sasha. Gotta find a happy medium for yourself.”

  Knowing in a roundabout way that she had just been called out, Sasha made no reply.

  Taryn, however, parked her elbows on the seatback and asked Cade how he kept his cool at the airport surrounded by all that death.

  “Mind over matter. I put all the things I care about into a vault in my mind and heart ... seal it up and forget about them until I’m safe again. If you can’t wrap your mind around that, then try envisioning the Zs in their underwear—”

  “Most of them already are,” quipped Raven.

  Shaking her head, Taryn said, “This is not the same as getting over the fear of public speaking. Not even close. Those things wanted to eat me ... Dickless, the Subway girl Karen.” She shuddered and whispered to herself, “All of them.”

  “Then pretend you’re on the set of a George Romero movie and the dead are just extras wearing makeup.”

  Sasha said, “Last time I checked you couldn’t shoot extras in makeup for real.”

  Ignoring this, Cade looked away. In the side mirror he saw Brook nearing his door, a certain swagger in her step. He glanced right and noticed Wilson in the other mirror, the Louisville Slugger held loose in one hand, sweat-stained boonie hat riding low over his eyes. He returned his gaze to Taryn and added, “Whatever works. But ultimately it’s up to you to find out what that is ... or die trying.”

  There was a loud bang on the sheet metal and the rear passenger door hinged open. A beat later, Wilson tossed the bat in and with a subtle air of confidence said, “Gate’s all locked up.”

  Brook stepped onto the running board on the driver’s side and performed a mini pull-up in order to see in. “Get your rifle, Raven. You’re coming with.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Wouldn’t expect anything else from you, Taryn,” said Brook.

  “Give me a second to get things sorted,” Cade said quietly to Brook.

  She made a face. Gave him a look he knew all too well. One that said a lot without actually saying anything.

  “I want to test the ankle in my new boots.”

  “Better here than out there.”

  “I knew you’d see it my way, honey,” he said with a wry smile.

  She smiled. Blew him a kiss and hopped down.

  “Max. Out,” ordered Cade.

  The Australian Shepherd’s claws rasped against the truck’s bed as he launched to the asphalt. Landing on all fours, the brindle-furred pooch performed a thorough recon of the truck’s exterior, sniffing the tires and bumpers and undercarriage along the way. Stub for a tail chopping the air, he looped under the lifted vehicle one time and then returned and sat outside the driver’s door and regarded Cade with a dutiful look.

  “Good boy.”

  Max cocked his head. Shook his body expectantly.

  “Sorry bud. Words will have to suffice until I can find you some treats.”

  Keying on the tone in Cade’s voice, Max turned and trotted off towards the building where his female master and the youngsters were.

  Cade reached across and grabbed the well-worn pair of size nine leather boots that one of Beeson’s officers had procured for him. He loosened the laces and, as an afterthought, punched the radio on and selected the AM band and let the auto seek feature scan the spectrum.

  He ripped the three hook-and-loop straps loose and removed the hard plastic boot and tossed it unceremoniously in back. As he wiggled his toes and enjoyed the cool air on his damp sock, the low hiss coming from the speakers was suddenly replaced by a human voice. He paused midway through unlacing the Danner and listened for a second. He’d heard this one before. Some Emergency Broadcast item out of D.C. Still looping, weeks old and unchanged. He guessed it was running off of solar somewhere and it would continue doing so until someone turned it off. Doubtful. Or, most likely, some random small part in the system failed, taking it off the air for good. Once again he hit the Seek button on the head unit, hinged over and resumed unlacing the Danner. He yanked the old boot off and slipped the new one on and laced it up. Surprisingly, it fit perfectly, like it had been custom made for him by some old world cobbler. The other boot, however, was a different story. After the first unsuccessful try, he loosened the laces entirely and forced the issue. Sweat beads breaking out on his brow and swollen ankle be damned, he jammed his foot into the new boot, forcing his toes into the cap first and then, using all of his weight, got his heel down. Success. The fit was beyond tight. Without the jaws-of-life or a plasma cutter he wasn’t taking the thing off anytime soon. He saw plenty more Ibuprofen in his future.

  As he tucked the laces inside the boot tops, the green digits on the head unit stopped scrolling and a mournful-sounding Mariachi song came through the truck’s speakers. The signal was faint so Cade jacked up the volume and listened intently until the last guitar chords were strummed and the song had faded. Then, fully expecting the programming to be prerecorded and looping like the D.C. broadcast, he waited for the next south-of-the-border ditty to ramp up before yanking the keys from the ignition. Instead, taking him completely by surprise, a Caucasian-sounding male voice, deep and resonant, replaced the dead air and in an unusually cheerful manner—as if the dead weren’t walking around eating people in his neck of the woods— rattled off the day, month, and year, which Cade confirmed as accurate with a quick glance at his Suunto. Inexplicably, the man continued on saying the temperature wherever he was broadcasting from was holding at eighty-nine degrees. There was a moment of dead air followed by a rustling of papers, after which the man relayed a forecast for the coming week. And judging by the ungodly high daytime temperatures coupled with the plunging nighttime lows, Cade guessed the signal was being beamed from a distant state like New Mexico, or, Arizona, or even further south than that, somewhere inside of Mexico perhaps.

  The Dee Jay finished the weather report, then switched to fluent Spanish and, presumably, repeated all of the same information to his non-English
speaking listeners. Pretty optimistic, thought Cade. Either the man spinning the records had gone crazy and was continuing his daily routine oblivious to the world outside, or some kind of sanctuary from the dead had sprouted up somewhere in the desert southwest. One safe and secure enough to embolden the Dee Jay with enough hubris to expect to outlive a week’s worth of weather yet resourceful enough to keep a radio station on air in order to broadcast the fact.

  After listening to the rest of the Spanish update and understanding only a few of the words, Cade assigned the station to one of the three dozen available presets and took the keys from the ignition. They went into a cargo pocket and he fished the sat phone from the bottom of the center console where it had settled. He thumbed it on and waited for it to power up. The device ran through the familiar boot-up sequence after which he checked the display, which showed that he had one new SMS text message and a single missed call with a new voice mail attached to it. He scrolled down to the call log and determined that the text message originated from the same number he’d called the day before when he had spoken with Daymon and Duncan. The missed call, however , had come from Major Freda Nash, back at Schriever, presumably. First off he read the text message and, thinking maybe Daymon was pulling his leg, smiled and said to himself, “Roger that.” Next, after a moment’s hesitation, he selected the voice mail, thumbed the call button and placed the phone to his ear. Through the windshield he watched Brook and Wilson conducting a preliminary recon of the building’s exterior while he listened to Nash’s unapologetic voice dictate a list of very explicit instructions.

  Leaving the Thuraya powered on and plugged into the outlet, he tossed it in the console and out of sight. Old habits die hard, he thought to himself. Who the hell is going to steal the thing out here, Grayson?

  Without answering to his inner smartass he closed the console, looked up and saw Brook staring at him, animatedly tapping her watch. Getting the hint, he pushed open the door and slipped off the seat, supporting most of his weight with a firm two-handed grip on the grab bar near his head. As he pivoted left, his gaze passed over the aluminum crutches stowed behind his seat. Too noisy. Too encumbering. But most of all ... too easy, the same inner voice lectured.

  So he met terra firma without them. Right foot first, settling the majority of his weight on it. The moment of truth came and instead of his own voice he heard Desantos’s in his head. Suck it up, the gravelly voice said as he let go and planted his left foot on the ground. Grimacing, he gritted his teeth as a runner of pain shot up his leg. Bearable. He distributed his weight evenly and, like a baby wearing that first pair of flat-soled shoes, took his own baby steps forward. Fake it ‘til you make it, looped through his head as he walked half-speed towards Brook with a forced yet somewhat reassuring smile on his face.

  Chapter 17

  Duncan pulled the battered Land Cruiser up tight next to a dirt-encrusted 4Runner, also a spoil of war taken after their one-sided skirmish with the Huntsville gang.

  He shut off the motor and looked to the right past Daymon. Squinting hard and craning his neck further, he said, “What do you make of that?”

  “That red thing between the helicopters?”

  “You call that red? Looks kind of brown to me,” drawled Duncan, instantly regretting the damning admission. Then, trying to recover, added, “Someone set the thing up in the shadows. I knew it was red.”

  “That’s not a shadow, Mister Magoo. That’s Tran and he’s been at it like that since I came up to the road.”

  After a quick mental calculation in which he was forced to perform a little long division, Duncan said, “Hell ... he’s using a hand pump, not a garden hose and gravity. Even at half-speed he should have transferred all four hundred and fifty pounds of fuel into the Black Hawk half an hour ago.”

  “Be grateful, would you, Duncan? He’s been out there cranking that thing with a couple of cracked ribs ... or bruised ... whatever. After the way you lit into him because he couldn’t recall exactly where in Idaho Bishop was setting up shop, I’d have expected him to get out of Dodge ... or murder you in your sleep. One or the other. I’d of gone with the latter, myself.”

  Sounding a little like Steve Martin, stretching out his words, Duncan shook his head side-to-side and said, “Well forgive me ... I was drunk.”

  “Hell of an excuse,” said Daymon. “I’m regretting letting you drive us here from the road.”

  “I ain’t drunk no more,” drawled Duncan, handing over the keys. “If it’ll make you feel any better, you can drive us to the quarry.”

  “After I check in on Heidi.”

  Duncan grunted, then, favoring his lower back which was suffering greatly from digging the two graves, popped open his door and stepped gingerly onto the flattened grass. Immediately he noticed the heat from the rising sun. It had to be nearing seventy degrees and a million candle watts seemed to be focused on one area—the bald spot on the crown of his head, beneath which his brain was still throbbing from the aftereffects of his last drunk. Squinting against the sun, he looked inside the rig at Daymon, expecting another probing question, but instead saw the dreadlocked former firefighter pointing animatedly at the passenger-side door.

  Ignoring the pantomimed plea for help, Duncan said, “Let’s see what kind of progress Tran is making.”

  “A little help with the door,” said Daymon, jiggling the handle. “Thing doesn’t want to open.”

  Duncan chuckled. “You’re the one who ruined it on account of your fine display of demolition derby driving.”

  “I saved our asses.” There was a loud bang and then the drawn-out squeal from the pinched hinges grinding metal on metal. Rubbing his shoulder, Daymon unfolded his body from the truck, rose and stretched catlike. He snatched up his bow and machete and began walking towards the pair of helicopters where Tran was still hard at work in their shadow, his entire body hinging up and down, invested fully in spinning a pie-sized metal wheel in slow-motion revolutions.

  ***

  Five minutes after touching bases with Tran, Duncan and Daymon were in the compound’s cramped security container, drinking coffee and watching Heidi manipulate the lighted dials and knobs on the Ham radio.

  “Hey hon,” said Daymon to deaf ears.

  Twisting in the folding chair, Heidi removed one ear pad and asked, “You get some good rest last night?”

  Since he hadn’t gotten good rest for weeks, he hesitated a moment to weigh the pros and cons of plopping an extra helping of worry on her plate. Then, rather reluctantly, he decided a little white lie would hurt a lot less than burdening her with the truth. Looking straight at her, he took a quick sip of his coffee and added, “Like a baby. Feels like I’m getting the old circadian rhythm back on track— ”

  Unwittingly saving Daymon from digging an even deeper hole for himself, Duncan interrupted. “Did you contact anyone on Logan’s list?”

  “I’ve been able to get ahold of a couple of them. I chatted with a man who is holed up with his elderly mom somewhere near Pocatello,” she said. “He even mentioned seeing three or four helicopters heading west a couple of days ago.”

  “Pocatello,” said Duncan, more statement than question. Then he looked at her over his bifocals and asked, “He say what kind of helicopters?”

  “He didn’t say. And I didn’t think to ask. We talked very briefly, then rather abruptly he said he had to go. I’ll be sure to grill him about it later.”

  “Later?”

  “Yeah,” answered Heidi, pinning her blonde bangs back under the headphone strap. “He promised he’d call me back sometime this afternoon.”

  “I bet he did,” said Daymon, who was leaning against the cool metal wall, chin resting on his chest. He looked up and drained his coffee and then added, “It’s amazing the effect the soothing voice of the fairer sex has on us cooped-up fellas.”

  Giving Daymon an affectionate pat on his thigh, Heidi held aloft a spiral-bound notebook spilling over with papers. “Then you better leave me alo
ne, hon,” she said playfully. “’Cause if we’re going to find out where those creeps took the girls, I’m going to have to learn how to use this radio. And from the looks of this manual ... I’ve got some serious learning to do.”

  “One thing to be said about Oops,” proffered Duncan. “He always was an anal little bastard when it came to saving paperwork and receipts and manuals. Hell, the pink slip for his first Big Wheel is probably still tucked away somewhere in here.”

  “Bless him,” said Heidi. A pained look settled on her features as she snugged the headphones on and buried her head in the radio manual.

  Taking a quick swipe at the forming tears, Duncan said to no one in particular, “I really miss the little bugger.”

  “We all do,” Daymon replied. “Now finish your coffee, Old Man. We’re going back to the quarry.”

  “First I need to fetch a bottle of aspirin from the storeroom.”

  Daymon looked to make sure Heidi couldn’t hear what he was about to say. He saw her slowly moving the large dial on the radio, no doubt trying to tune in some far away frequency. Finally he said to Duncan, “There’s no more of that Jack Daniels squirreled away in the storeroom, is there?”

  “There is,” Duncan said. “But I’ve done all of the forgettin’ I’m going to do for now. I’ll properly mourn the boy later ... maybe even pour a little out and say a few words over that pile of dirt up there.”

  “When is later?”

  “After I put the fuckers who killed him under a pile of dirt of their own.”

  His face a mask of resolve, Daymon said, “Meet you topside.” He kissed Heidi atop her head, gave her shoulder a soft squeeze, then ducked under the door arch and was lost in the gloom.

  Duncan made no reply. Couldn’t think of anything smartass to say to soften the mood. Not even one barbed quip came to him. So he took a second to study the still images from the cameras topside and then marched off in the opposite direction.