But he’d never know and speculating just reminded him how far the human race had fallen.
Thankfully, Brook’s sweet voice brought him back to the present ... the only time that really mattered now. For yesterday was gone. And he’d learned long before the apocalypse that tomorrow was never a guarantee—especially in his old line of work.
“Slow down,” Brook said. “We’re closing in on Green River. I think it’s beyond the next rise off to the right. Hard to tell exactly relying on Miss Map here ...” She leaned forward and touched the Garmin’s display. Traced the magenta line representing I-70 with her finger. “... looks like the city sits at about two o’clock. And I-70 bypasses on the left.” With the visual of the map burned into her memory, she let her gaze sweep the horizon from right to left, taking in the red mesas and the smooth stripe of asphalt laid out in front of them. While not entirely evident on the pixelated screen, she recognized that the Interstate was about to enter a narrow and shallow canyon that looked to have been cut into the Cretaceous sandstone. First, she gathered, by boots and hooves and the steel-braced wheels on wagons carrying people fulfilling their Manifest Destinies. Then, more recently for certain, the natural channel had been widened by man and machine so that I-70 and the vehicles it was meant to accommodate could pass smoothly over the wave-like geological formations.
“Whatcha looking at, Mom?” Raven asked.
Brook craned around and saw that not only was Raven leaning forward on the seatback, but so was Max. He had his paws on the leather and was looking her straight in the face. She gave the dog a scratch and said, “Sit back and snug your seatbelt tight, sweetie. Mom and Dad have to talk things over.”
Feeling the truck decelerate, while not quite understanding the reason why, was enough to convince Raven to comply without verbal protest. Pouting, she slumped into the back seat next to Max. Powered on the iPhone she’d begged off of Taryn, jammed the buds into her ears, and let Lady Gaga take her mind off of things.
Cade pulled the Ford hard left to the breakdown shoulder and brought the dirty rig to a complete halt amidst a roiling cloud of dust. He chose to stop just short of the hill’s apex for one reason only. To find a vantage point well back from the ‘military crest’ of the hill to surveil the unfolding valley without exposing a profile to anyone watching below. He had also hoped to find a stretch of asphalt relatively clear, on all sides, of the seemingly never-ending vehicular gridlock.
One out of two isn’t so bad, he told himself, fixing the suppressor onto the business end of the Glock 17. “Stay here for a second,” he said to Brook. He looked into the back at Raven and saw that her eyes were closed and she was attached by the ears to an electronic device that looked a lot like an iPhone. He smiled at the sight. Marveled at her resilience and her ability to relax where danger abounded. Ignorance truly is bliss, crossed his mind as his smile faded and he swiveled back around.
“Be careful,” said Brook. She reached out and traced the curve of his cheek with the back of her hand. Her eyes left his and she looked out the rear window and spotted a handful of corpses stumbling across the median from the eastbound lanes. “How’s your ankle?”
“Better.”
“You sure? I can take care of the Zs while you scout ahead,” she said quietly.
“I’m fine. I need to stretch it out anyway. Get the blood flowing.” He gave her his patented everything’s going to be OK look. The same lopsided half-grin that she’d received before every deployment overseas and more recently, whenever he went outside the wire without her. Smile fading, he gave her thigh a reassuring squeeze, popped the door and stepped gingerly onto the shoulder. Not so bad, he thought, settling his full weight on his left foot. Simultaneously, the Ibuprofen was lessening the pain and the swelling. Maybe Brook’s diagnosis had been wrong. Happy to be rid of the crutches and the creaky plastic boot, he took a few tentative steps away from the truck. So far so good.
He looked left towards the Raptor, its engine rumbling and ticking in the hundred-degree heat. He noticed a clear liquid dripping steadily from somewhere underneath the front bumper, no doubt a byproduct of the hard-working AC unit. Unconcerned, he looked up and noticed Taryn and Wilson staring his way, looks of mild concern on their faces. Silently telling them to stay put, he held up his free hand palm out. After registering a double thumbs up from behind the grimy windshield, he took a few more steps, testing the ankle for range of motion, which he found lacking laterally. Front to back, however, was a different story, and though there was considerable pressure, all seven bones seemed to be functioning normally.
He looked at his Suunto and did the math. Twenty-eight hours until Duncan went on his own personal warpath—with or without him.
Regarding the seven flesh eaters traversing the median with only the runaway vehicle cables keeping them from crossing over, he skirted the F-650’s front bumper and cut a diagonal right for them. Once he was within five feet of them he took a hard right and, with every intention of saving his ammunition for when he really needed it, followed the cable barrier keeping just outside of their reach. But as luck would have it, Mister Murphy made his presence known, and inexplicably one of the Zs found a seam between the metal stakes keeping each of the fifty-yard runs of high tensile cables taut, then the rest followed.
Hanging his head, Cade stopped in place and squared up to face the interlopers. “You are some persistent bastards,” he said as the unblinking eyes devoured him. Then, fully aware of what was riding on the encounter and with his family watching from afar, he set his feet apart and leveled his Glock.
Chapter 34
Inside the Raptor, Wilson said quietly, “Thirty seconds.”
Taryn tore her eyes from the scene taking place twenty yards off the Raptor’s front bumper, shot a confused look at Wilson, and said, “What?”
“Duh,” replied Sasha. “He’s setting the over-under at thirty seconds. He’s saying Cade there will take care of all of those pusbags in less than thirty seconds, and I, for one, want some of that action. Got to go with the over.” She looked down for a second and pulled a wrapped stack of twenties from her handbag, and when she looked up two of the zombies had been reduced to crumpled forms with tiny dust eddies swirling around them.
Wilson chuckled. “You’re on. Two down and five to go. And twenty-six looong seconds left for him to seal the deal. You, Sis, are hosed.”
“I didn’t even hear his gun go off,” said Sasha, her lower lip sticking out, the first sign of the pouting session to come.
“Wait for it,” said Wilson.
Shaking her head, Taryn said, “You two are sick.”
Two more seconds were in the books and Cade was nearly surrounded before the black pistol bucked twice in his fist and the third Z’s head dissolved into a pink mist.
“Practice what you preach, Captain America,” said Wilson.
While watching Cade step over the fallen corpse and backpedal away from the rest, Taryn glanced at Wilson and asked him what he meant by the last quip.
“He dressed me down pretty good for letting the little one get too close to me back there. And then he lets himself get jumped like that,” Wilson said. “Practice what you preach ... pretty self-explanatory.”
“Duh,” said Sasha. “Everyone knows the littler they are the faster they move. Brook mentioned that the other day. Weren’t you listening? Or were you and Miss Tattoo too busy playing kissy face?”
“That’s enough,” said Wilson. He snatched the stack of crisp bills from Sasha’s outstretched hand and then glanced at his watch while adding gleefully in a sing-song voice, “Three down and four to go and only fifteen seconds until this is all mine.
***
Precisely twenty-four seconds after Cade’s opening salvo, the last of the unlucky seven Zs were hanging limply, tangled in the cable arrest barrier like string-snipped marionettes.
“Less than thirty seconds. Come to Papa,” said Wilson as he made a show of ruffling the crisp bills. Then, to rub the wi
n in further, he put them under his nose and inhaled deeply. “Ah ... the sweet smell of newly acquired cash money.”
“Which you’ll never, ever, be able to spend,” Sasha shot back. “So there.”
“Aren’t you a little old for so-there’s and I-told-you-so’s, Sasha?”
Sasha made no reply. The pouting ensued.
Pressing the issue, Taryn said, “Nobody likes a sore loser.”
“You don’t get it, Taryn. I was put on this earth to torment Wilson,” Sasha fired back. She went silent for another second and then added in a choked-up voice, “Mom told me that all the time.”
Wilson had no reply for that. Instead, he focused his attention on Cade who had already moved on and was picking his way through the scrub and tumbleweeds and still staying close to the barrier.
Then the two-way radio beeped and Brook’s voice came through the speaker. She told them to stay put and continue watching the Interstate behind them.
Wilson fumbled the Motorola from his pocket. “Copy that,” he said. After a few seconds with no reply, he saw Brook exit the Ford and disappear from sight. Then a tick later when she reemerged she was moving at a slow trot, a pair of binoculars bouncing off her chest, M4 held closely to her body.
“What are they doing?” asked Taryn. “And why did they leave Raven all alone in the truck?”
“Safest place for her,” replied Wilson. “Besides, she’s not alone. Max is in there too.”
Breaking her short-lived silence, Sasha said, “She’s probably in there armed with a machine gun anyways.”
“Jealous?” said Taryn.
“We’re not a gun family. Mom said so.”
Losing his cool, Wilson craned around and looked at Sasha. “Mom is dead,” he shouted. “You have to let her go and get on with living. And while you are at it, quit being so damn bitter about anything and everything ... that’s what Mom would have wanted and that’s exactly what she would have said if she were sitting right here instead of me.”
Momentarily stunned by the biggest display of emotion she’d ever seen Wilson display, Taryn opened her mouth to say something, anything that might diffuse the situation, but for the first time in a long time she was speechless.
Not finished making his point, Wilson pounded his fist on the dash and added in a low voice, “I’m done trying to fill in for Mom. You will begin to contribute and cease being a liability ... or else.”
Taryn’s brows raised an inch. She mouthed, “Liability.” Then said, “That’s harsh, Wilson.”
Wilson shot Taryn a sour look, then shifted his attention to Brook who was just now catching up with Cade. He noted how she moved. How she practically oozed confidence and wished he could project just one-tenth of that. Then he turned to Sasha and said, “Next time Brook offers, you will let her teach you how to shoot. Because, like it or not, we have to be a gun family in order to survive this thing.”
There was a heavy silence in the cabin as they watched Brook slow from a trot to walking speed and finally form up next to Cade, who was moving noticeably slower.
“What now?” asked Sasha.
Taryn said rather sternly, “We do as we were told. We wait and watch the road behind us.”
Chapter 35
The three men sat in a semicircle, legs crossed, heads bowed. Not a word had passed between them for a long while. And truth be told, to a man, deep down, each of them hoped that the others would volunteer to untangle Jordan’s corpse from the clutching thorns.
Near Duncan, separated by a couple of feet and five minutes in death, two buzzards lay dead among a bed of their own bloody feathers. Both birds were plump from feasting on the dead girl’s corpse. And both birds had fallen victim to an apex predator nurturing a growing resentment and armed with a Colt M1911.
Lev looked up first. Elbows resting on his knees, his breath coming in shallow gulps, he looked at Jordan’s corpse through bloodshot, teary eyes. Let his gaze linger on her face for a beat, taking in the once beautiful features now twisted into a death grimace. He focused on the red mud ground into her blond hair and wished he could find the necessary courage to take the initiative and grab one of the bed sheets and cover her. But he couldn’t. Instead, he looked at Daymon, then Duncan, and asked, “What happened to her?”
“Death by rapid deceleration,” answered Duncan instantly and matter-of-factly. “Once I’d finished puking I gave her body—or what’s left of it anyway—a quick onceover.”
“And?” asked Daymon.
Duncan made no reply. He rose, stepped around the pool of vomit and grabbed one of Jordan’s dainty wrists. When he lifted the ashen arm he noticed that either the ulna or radius bone was protruding at nearly a right angle and had punctured the skin. Greenstick fracture, he thought. Sure as shit caused by rapid deceleration. Hell of a way to go. But that wasn’t all that he had picked up on. He gently rolled her hand over and showed them her fingers. Even with his less-than-stellar eyesight, the blood dried there was obvious. Also, what looked like half-moons of yellowed dermis was packed tightly underneath her fingernails. And though Duncan was no CSI investigator, to him it looked like she’d put up a hell of a fight before she died.
Daymon and Lev moved close. “What is it?” asked Lev.
“Whoever grabbed her lost some skin ... at the very least. I’m sure there’s some shitbag out there with a sore pair of testicles as well.”
“Look where it got her,” said Lev.
“From what Heidi says ...” Daymon went silent. Hung his head. Filter, dumbass, he thought to himself. And though he didn’t want to speak of Heidi’s ordeal without her permission, it was way too late to swallow his words. He looked up, cleared his dreads from his face, and regarded the water-filled quarry, focusing on the sun-splashed ripples moving east to west behind a soft breeze. After a long pause, he drew in a deep breath and went on. “Whenever Robert Christian or one of his cronies weren’t having their way with her ... Bishop’s boys were.”
“I’m so sorry,” Duncan said. “We’ve all got a dog in this fight. I don’t care who gets to do it ... just so long as Bishop dies.”
Breaking through his inhibitions, Lev said to Daymon, “She deserves to have back her dignity. Will you give me a hand?”
Daymon nodded and scooped up the sheets. Knees creaking, he rose and passed one of the stark white items to Duncan, then watched solemnly as the older man knelt next to the petite corpse and covered it from head to toe.
Together Lev and Daymon grabbed Jordan’s rigor-affected arms and pressed them close to her nude body, holding them there while Duncan finished swaddling her corpse in the remaining sheets.
Standing up, Duncan drawled, “Follow me.” Without a backward glance, he trudged around the thicket and set a straight course for the outbuildings.
Daymon watched Duncan walk away. Regarded the body near his feet for a second and then looked at Lev and mouthed, “What the hell.”
Answering with a shrug, Lev double-timed it and fell in behind Duncan, who was obviously on some kind of a mission.
After covering the seventy-five yards of mud-puddle-pocked gravel with two curious stragglers on his heels, Duncan entered the first of the three outbuildings and ten seconds later emerged empty-handed.
With Lev and Daymon still looking on curiously, Duncan entered the middle building, was inside for a handful of seconds and came out wearing a dejected look.
“Third time’s the charm,” he said. He pushed the shattered door of the third outbuilding inward. This time he was inside for a couple of minutes and came out with a flat-bladed shovel in each hand. “Found them in the rafters,” he said, doling out the rusty items. He disappeared inside again and returned with a pickaxe that had seen better days. The head was dulled and red with rust, its wooden handle rife with vertically running cracks. It’ll do, he thought. Then, answering the bewildered looks directed his way, he said, “We’re gonna bury her here.”
Lev made a face. He said, “Why not bury her on the hill next t
o Logan and Gus and Sampson?”
“We will. But later,” intoned Duncan. “We bury her deep enough to keep the critters away. And the same reasoning that went into that thing about the rotters learning needs to be applied here. I see no sense in letting the others know about this until we have to ... especially Heidi.”
“Thanks,” said Daymon. “Good call.” Throwing the shovel over his shoulder, he turned and struck off for the distant briar patch.
Chapter 36
Shoulder-to-shoulder, Cade and Brook walked twenty yards beyond the parked Fords and took up a spot behind an abandoned Chevy fifteen feet short of where I-70 began the long and gradual run out into the Green River valley below.
Instinctively, Brook unlooped the Bushnell’s from around her neck and handed them to Cade. Using him for support, she put a hand on his shoulder, stood on her tiptoes and pointed a few degrees right of a rising column of black smoke and said, “I saw movement.” She pointed. “There ... to the right of the vehicles.”
“What I was afraid of,” said Cade. “And the reason we aren’t rushing headlong down the hill ... yet.” He spun around to check their six and saw the outline of Raven’s head superimposed over the F-650’s rear window. He shifted his gaze to the Raptor and counted three more similarly backlit silhouettes. Then pressed the binoculars to his face, adjusted the focus wheel, and scanned the retreating stripe of gray highway behind the Raptor. Nothing moved. No dead. No vehicles. Not so much as a single tumbleweed twitching in the wind. Satisfied that all was clear behind them, he turned back and squinted into the distance, trying to see anything out of the ordinary on or around the road. He searched a quick grid pattern for the glint of light off of glass that would give away a sniper’s position. Then examined all of the static vehicles, giving any that weren’t wearing a skirt of trapped tumbleweeds three weeks in the making a little extra scrutiny. After seeing nothing that screamed roadside bomb or even looked remotely indicative of an ambush waiting to be sprung, he shifted his gaze up and glassed the first exit servicing Green River. There he saw a pair of SUVs of indeterminate make and model and a trio of stout-looking motorcycles parked near the shoulder. Razor wire was strung up along both sides of the off-ramp and a pile of Z corpses was stacked three deep nearby. He panned south of the Interstate where a much larger drift of death was fully engulfed, red flames licking dozens of feet into the air with fingers of oily black smoke roiling high above them.
Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 18
