Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  She made no reply. Took the radio and crossed her arms and turned her gaze to the scraggly roadside scrub.

  A long, tense second passed in the cab before Taryn extinguished the Raptor’s lights. Simultaneously, mimicking and skewering Cade’s vernacular horribly, Wilson said over the two-way, “Roger, copy that ... loud and clear. The Interstate it is. We’re oscar mike when you are.”

  Feeling like a heel after inadvertently reminding Brook of her late brother, Cade made a silent pact with himself to run anything he might say through a mental filter—twice—before letting a thought fly like that again. So with a heavy heart and fond memories of Carl’s spirited and uplifting banter echoing in his head, Cade nosed the F-650 onto Mack Road and accelerated south. At the next intersection the two-truck convoy made the sweeping right-hand turn, blasting aside an accumulation of tumbleweeds and merging onto the westbound lanes of I-70. Beeson’s Boys did a hell of a job, thought Cade. Both lanes for as far as he could see were clear, the inert cars and SUVs and long-haul trucks having been shoved aside onto the scrub-dotted median. While on the right shoulder the vehicles were left where they had either run out of fuel or broken down after presumably fleeing Grand Junction, Loma, or perhaps even Denver two hundred and fifty miles to the east.

  The opposing lanes, however, were a different story altogether. No care had been taken to move any of the static vehicles or put down the infected still trapped inside. For all intents and purposes, that stretch of two-lane had been largely forgotten by the soldiers at FOB Bastion. And rightfully so, thought Cade. No reason to police more than one viable route of ingress and egress. Furthermore, putting out listening posts was another sound tactical move.

  As they motored west with the AC keeping them all cool and comfortable inside the suddenly spacious cabin, Cade kept close tabs on Taryn’s driving and quickly learned that she was indeed a lady of her word. Even at speeds pushing seventy, she seemed in complete control of the souped-up pick-up truck and never once did she crowd his bumper; instead, she maintained a minimum three-truck-length buffer. And apparently adhering to the adage that four eyes are better than two, she saw fit to keep the Raptor’s left wheels tracking with his passenger side—a sort of vehicular right echelon stack—so that he could keep an eye on both of their sixes and she could also see the vast countryside they’d yet to cover.

  Cade peered left at the Colorado River twisting and turning and glittering silver. For the first few miles west of Mack it had kept them company while the mercury continued to rise, and by the time they identified the first checkpoint shimmering wildly in the heat waves on the horizon, half an hour had passed and the outside temperature according to the F-650’s onboard computer was bumping the south side of one hundred degrees.

  From a hundred yards out, Cade knew that the checkpoint consisted of two opposite-facing Humvees and at least two soldiers who were dismounted and facing the same direction as their respective vehicle. One due west. One facing due east and, judging by the flare from the circular lenses, presently scrutinizing them through a substantial-sized pair of binoculars.

  As the F-650 ate up another fifty yards of roadway, Cade eased off the pedal and noticed that each of the low-slung boxy vehicles had a top-mounted turret with a helmeted soldier sweltering in the sun while dutifully manning what Cade supposed was an M-240 light machine gun. And as those fifty yards were halved, the sun suddenly glared off the oddly canted ballistic-proof panes and the desert tan vehicle blocking their passage reversed onto the outer shoulder. Then, without saying a word, the dismounts stepped aside, nodded and waved both of the pick-ups through.

  Barely ten seconds had elapsed and the two-way crackled to life. Cade nodded and Brook snatched it up and said, “What now?”

  Wilson’s voice came through the speaker. “Sasha has to pee.”

  Cade sighed and applied the brakes and stopped dead center in the fast lane. “Kids,” he muttered. “Anyone else have to go? Raven? Max?” He felt a staccato thumping on the backside of his seat. “Max does.”

  “Me too,” said Raven, a sheepish look on her face.

  No better place than here, thought Cade. Two hundred yards removed from a half-dozen soldiers and a lethal pair of machine guns.

  Doors opened and bodies jumped to the asphalt.

  After averting his eyes, Cade called out, “Make it snappy.”

  ***

  Sasha was back to the Raptor first. Then Raven sprinted across the hot pavement, scaled the F-650 and took her place in the back seat. Finally, after a long ten count, Max bolted from the brush, hackles up and growling. Crossed the two lanes in three long strides and vaulted into the open door and spun a one-eighty, teeth bared and shivering. A tick later the reason for his discontent became obvious as the upper half of a human slithered out of the shin-high scrub. It entered the fast lane five yards in front of Cade, trailing an unidentifiable softball-sized internal organ. Slowly, hand over hand, it advanced, dragging its dust- and twig-coated innards through the steaming puddles where Sasha and Raven had just finished their business.

  The moment the rear door thumped shut, Cade engaged the transmission, turned a slow arcing right to avoid the crawler and then accelerated rapidly to fifty miles per hour. Taking his eyes from the road for a split second, he looked to Brook and said, “That was close.”

  Remembering how Raven had nearly become Z food while peeing outside of a thoroughly looted supermarket in South Carolina weeks ago, Brook parroted something she had heard Cade and every single one of his operator buddies say at one time or another “Close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes.”

  “Copy that,” Cade said agreeably.

  Chapter 28

  With the first checkpoint miles behind them, and Green River nowhere on the horizon, Cade suddenly began to feel for the poor bastards somewhere up ahead baking under the hundred-degree sun. Yep, he thought. Every coal mine had to have its canary. And just like those true patriots back there, he had been on that first line of defense. His stomach clenched involuntarily and just like that he was back in Iraq. There truly was something to be said for loitering behind hastily positioned Jersey barriers at surprise checkpoints, surrounded by restless locals, most hostile, while hoping to get lucky and ensnare an unsuspecting high-value target or low-level Baath party member. Yep, he thought. Being that kind of canary had its own unique pucker factor. Because whether detonated fifty feet or fifty yards away, a SVBIED—suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device—was usually a fatal event for anybody unlucky enough to get caught inside its blast radius. Thankfully though, the higher-ups had decided rather quickly that his unit’s services were needed elsewhere and he had made it through that first deployment without getting caught on the receiving end of the enemy’s most cowardly, destructive, and widely used tactic firsthand. But he had seen the aftermath of several of those suicide attacks up close and personal and right now, much to his surprise, the rapidly approaching scene looked eerily similar.

  In the median, a rectangular swath of scrub brush the size of a football field had been razed by fire, and a handful of vehicles in the adjacent eastbound lanes had been reduced to nothing but soot-covered see-through metal frames resting atop pools of melted dashboard, interior panels, and tire rubber. Left of the freeway, the conflagration had spread and burned, by Cade’s estimation, tens of acres of the bone-dry landscape down to the dirt. And dead ahead, several hundred feet of the once gray Interstate was blackened and had bubbled and boiled and melted in places, leaving large tracts of asphalt resembling some kind of prehistoric tar pit. He abruptly slowed the F-650 to walking speed and then stopped ten feet short of the line of demarcation where the firm roadbed ended and the soupy-looking morass began.

  “Ewwww,” exclaimed Raven. “Bet there are some dino bones in there.” To which Brook chuckled and smiled for the first time since Cade’s verbal faux pas. Then, interrupting the moment, the two-way’s harsh electronic warble filled the cab. “What’s up?” asked Wilson. “I t
hought we weren’t going to stop for anything.”

  Thumbing the talk button, Brook said, “Pull up beside us and take it up with Cade.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Let them know that we’ve got company. Ten o’clock,” Cade said, pointing at a tangle of scorched vehicles in the eastbound lanes.

  Shifting her gaze left, Brook picked up the pair of pale figures. Watched them emerge from the wreckage and trudge across the median, kicking up dust and charred flora with each labored step. While she keyed the two-way and relayed the warning, Cade looked past her and down the embankment and regarded the hulks of a dozen cars and pick-ups that were burned and compacted nearly beyond recognition, the majority of them resting under the skeletal remains of an eighteen-wheel tandem fuel hauler—its thousands of gallons of fuel no doubt responsible for liquefying the road. And though there was no telling VW-sized crater in the road, he still marveled at how strikingly the damage resembled the work of a successful suicide bomber.

  “Didn’t end well for them,” he said off the cuff.

  “Well at least they didn’t end up as one of them,” exclaimed Raven, the resident pragmatist.

  Brook shook her head ruefully and said, “I’m with Raven. I’d rather die quick in something like that ...”—she gestured towards the charred bodies and mangled metal—“ ... than not really die ... like that.” She nodded to her left at the pair of walkers.

  “Let’s not die at all,” proffered Cade just as the Raptor pulled up smartly and stopped on a dime, leaving barely a yard between the two vehicles.

  Wilson’s window was already open and he was looking up and holding the Beretta at a ninety-degree angle, its muzzle almost touching the moon roof glass. Arching a brow, he nodded towards the Zs and, none too convincingly, said, “I got this.”

  Ratcheting the transmission into Park, Cade said, “Whoa ... slow down, Trigger.”

  “You sit up there and figure out how we’re going to get through this sea of crap,” said Wilson, gesturing with the Beretta at the ruined run of road. “And I’ll get out and take care of those two pusbags.”

  “Not yet. There may be more where they came from. And that truck of yours ... ” Cade hitched a thumb at the Raptor. “I’m not convinced it’ll be able to make it across La Brea without getting stuck.”

  Taryn called out, “Let’s find out. You follow those tracks and we’ll follow you.”

  “There’ll be no way for us to dig you out of this shit if you get stuck,” answered Cade. Then you’ll be riding with us again, he thought.

  Hanging halfway out of the rear passenger-side window, Sasha craned her head to see over the side mirror and called out to Taryn, “What do you think it is?”

  “Looks like a lake of oil to me,” replied the tatted brunette as she slipped the Raptor’s transmission into Park.

  Once again regretting his decision to have the younger trio tag along, Cade tried his best to shut out the inane banter and followed the established set of tire tracks with his eyes. The deeply cut chevron patterns ran perpendicular from his vantage point and then straddled the breakdown lane near the center median for a couple of hundred feet before abruptly shooting off into the distance at a diagonal to the point on the shoulder directly overlooking the tangle of burnt-out vehicles.

  Unable to continue following the tracks with his naked eye, he pressed the binoculars to his face and saw that the tread marks continued on straight and true, skirting the remaining stretch of melted roadway before returning to its normal muted gray which was crisscrossed by black tire marks for an additional hundred yards.

  “We’ll go first,” said Cade. He lowered the field glasses and fixed Wilson with a no nonsense gaze. “And when we get to the other side, Taryn can follow our tracks. That way if either one of the rigs gets stuck, one of us will be on firm ground and can use their winch to pull the other out.”

  “Solid plan, Cade,” said Wilson, tugging his boonie hat tight. “Now can I shoot them?”

  Seeing that there were now four Zs that had made it through the maze of static metal clogging the eastbound lanes and were trudging across the dozen yards of car-choked median to their left, Cade went against his better judgment and obliged the redhead. “Got a taste of it back there and now you want more, eh?” And then laying it on thick, he added, “Go for it. Knock yourself out, buddy.”

  Hopping out as if he had something to prove, Wilson winked at Cade and walked calmly in front of the idling Raptor while holding the Beretta two-handed, its business end tracking the closest of the now rapidly approaching cadavers. He shuffled to his left and halted near the truck’s driver’s side front fender and set his feet a shoulder’s width apart. Then, with the heat of the Raptor’s engine warming his skin through his tee-shirt, he drew in a deep calming breath and caressed the trigger.

  Fired at near point-blank-range, the 9mm slug covered the three feet from muzzle to impact in a microsecond and punched a dime-sized hole in the male cadaver’s forehead, starting in motion a picture perfect display of Sir Isaac Newton’s Law that saw the thing instantly crumple to the pavement in a vertical heap.

  Meanwhile, the ‘equal and opposite reaction’ component of the scientifically proven theory, visually more violent than the ‘action’ component, manifested in the form of an eruption of flecked bone and congealed brain matter that fanned out and up amidst an opaque mist before finally raining back to earth in wet little clumps.

  Back in the F-650, where he had a better view and feel for the unfolding action, Cade drew his Glock. He didn’t bother with the suppressor, nor did he check the chamber for a round. Instead he braced the pistol against the massive side mirror, drew back a few pounds of trigger pull, and waited and watched the remaining trio of Zs.

  Wilson sidestepped the first fallen corpse and backpedaled, keeping the next closest—a pre-adolescent female—a few feet in front of him and, wisely, both idling vehicles off of his left shoulder. Good job, thought Cade, as he tracked the delicate dance while keeping the nearest abomination bracketed in his sights.

  Shuffling backward and away from the Raptor while trying to create a better angle from which to engage the Zs, Wilson’s mind began playing tricks on him. Suddenly he saw not matted hair and tattered fabric and bared yellowed teeth, but a little girl in distress, all pigtails and lace and worry painting her face. His pace slowed and he shifted his gaze and fixated on the ashen withered arms peppered by horrible purple-ringed bite marks still glistening red where whole mouthfuls had been rent away. He stopped retreating and inexplicably the outthrust pistol became heavier and wavered in his hand.

  Noticing the barely perceptible downward tilt to the Beretta’s barrel and seeing the definite hitch in Wilson’s gait was enough to set Cade’s sixth sense off. Somewhere in the background—competing with the rush in his ears as adrenaline surged through his body and the scene began to slow and his vision narrowed at the edges—he heard Brook or Raven or maybe both exclaim in unison: “What is he doing?” Then he heard the unmistakable rasp of the tiny Z and, like he was watching a moment of jittery old film footage, time seemingly sped forward and the monster had covered the distance and somehow scaled Wilson’s lower body. In the next instant the thing was clutching the redhead’s tee-shirt with one dainty, clawlike hand, and the other had gotten ahold of the strap on the kid’s ever-present boonie hat.

  Head suddenly bowed under the added weight, Wilson came to, realizing that the Z had him in a two-handed embrace and its teeth were snapping dangerously close to his face. A millisecond later the reptilian area of Wilson’s brain came alive and his fight or flight mode kicked in; fortunately for him, he acted on both simultaneously. Adrenaline now flooding his body, he instinctively leaned back and twisted his torso away while his gun hand traced a lazy half-arc from left to right, loosing a trio of shots rapid-fire out of the Beretta.

  The first slug shattered the thing’s breast bone, lifting its toes off the road. Round number two snapped its clavicle like a twig, the unlea
shed kinetic energy adding a reverse twist to the corpse’s upward trajectory. His third unaimed shot left the gun’s barrel a microsecond after the last, with his arm sweeping downward, and entered an inch lower and right of the newly shattered clavicle. The Parabellum, travelling at 1,250 feet-per-second, tore through three inches of rancid flesh and disintegrated the ball joint and bursa sac behind, and started the newly severed appendage on a flat trajectory around Wilson’s back with all five fingers retaining their death grip on the cotton tee.

  With all twenty years of his short-lived life flashing before his eyes and fifty pounds of snarling one-armed dead weight grating its teeth against his exposed jugular, Wilson heard a foreign sound, a kind of sonic crackle. In the same instant, coupled with the sense of falling and the blue sky tilting strangely overhead, he felt a subtle tug and then an immediate flare of white hot pain enveloped the right side of his face. Next, in his side vision, he saw the Z’s temple crater inward and heard the second disruption of airspace near his face as what he would soon come to learn was the back-half of a vicious double tap.

  In his side vision he saw the latter tear into the undead girl’s forehead at an oblique downward angle, sending a good chunk of cranium with the rat’s nest of blonde hair still attached off in one direction and what remained of the tiny infected corpse cartwheeling away in the other.

  Before the noise of the first two gunshots had diminished and Wilson realized that he was still alive, another half-dozen wasp-like projectiles whistled by him and then more booming reports rolled over his head. Finally, finishing what his flight instinct had started, gravity dumped him to the ground face first. And with the trauma of the first “operation arm removal” fresh in his mind, he let go of his pistol, wrapped both hands around the cold arm and wailed, “Somebody get it off of me!”