The former move emboldened Cade to stand as well. The latter provided a perfect silhouette for a snap shot at the shooter’s center mass.
The man had turned back at about the same time Cade was getting his feet under him and, with just a hundred feet separating them, like a scene from a Spaghetti Western, they locked eyes. Cade shouldered the MSR. But the shaggy-haired shooter brought his boxy black pistol to bear a hair quicker.
Abs quivering uncontrollably, Brook cursed the first two missed shots. Then she saw the shooter’s head jerk back around and in slow motion he slapped another magazine in his pistol and was tracking it towards Cade. “Make them count,” she whispered, caressing the trigger three times.
With bullets crackling the air near his head, Cade saw plain as day through the scope a triangle of red welts blossom around the man’s sternum. One projectile entered above his breastbone—the other two struck him near simultaneously equidistant from each other but a couple of inches lower. A millisecond after cheating death himself, Cade watched the man disappear behind the import like a trapdoor had been opened under him.
Chapter 41
Reversing the assembly process, Cade broke down his rifle, putting all of the parts in their proper places. He stowed the case in back near Raven’s feet. “You need to get out for a second? Make a real quick pit stop?” he asked, nodding towards the roadside scrub and what little privacy the shin-high bushes might provide.
“Too late,” replied Raven softly. A tick later the tears began to flow.
“It’s OK honey,” added Cade. “Nobody is judging you.”
Max took advantage of the open door, squeezed past Raven’s legs and disappeared into the desert.
There was a sucking sound as the passenger door opened and Brook clambered in. Then the door closed and she said over the idling engine, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” replied Cade as he retrieved Raven’s stuff sack from behind the back seat. Meeting his daughter’s gaze, he pulled her closer and gently wiped away the tears. After a semblance of a smile returned to her face, he made a show of pinching his thumb and pointer finger together and then slowly drew them across his lips, made a locking motion and pantomimed throwing away the imaginary key. “Let’s go before anyone else shows up.”
Brook asked, “Think they’ll send more?”
“I would,” replied Cade. He whistled and scanned the range beyond the road for signs of movement. A few seconds passed and then Max shot from the bushes and leaped into the open rear door, which Cade then closed with a firm push. He hustled back to the cab. Drive was engaged and he cranked the wheel hard to the right, reversed and parked alongside the Raptor so that he was looking down into the passenger side windows.
“What’s up, Boss?” asked Wilson, a measure of self-assuredness now evident in his voice.
Ignoring the greeting, Cade addressed Sasha, who was looking up at him from the back seat area. “Brook’s proud of how you handled yourself.”
Sasha wiped her arm across her face before replying. “One of my bullets might have killed one of them,” she said, brow furrowed, her voice wavering slightly.
Cade stabbed a finger at each person as he spoke. “Or one of hers or his or Brook’s or mine ... doesn’t matter. They made their own bed. The second they gave chase they sealed their fate. You think they came after us the second time looking for an apology?”
Sasha said nothing.
Wilson removed his boonie hat. Ran his hands through his red mane and said, “She’ll be all right.”
“You all carried yourselves very well from start to finish,” Cade said. Then addressing Wilson, he delivered a belated apology for grazing his cheek. He finished by calling out loudly enough to be heard by Taryn over the idling motors. “You’re a hell of a driver, Taryn.”
The Raptor’s motor brapped twice in recognition.
Cade imagined Taryn sitting behind the wheel, her tattooed arm in the air sending his bossy condescending ass a one-fingered salute. But the opposite was true. She was gripping the wheel with two hands, a tear running down her cheek. Not as a result of her first taste of combat but because what Cade had just uttered was what her dad said to her after every single race. Hell of a driver. Four words she would never hear him say in that soothing voice again. But definitely four words that meant a hell of a lot coming from the guy who Wilson had taken to calling Captain America.
Cade tapped a key on the sat phone and, once it flared to life, composed an SMS message and sent it to the number Beeson had written on the map. It detailed the roadblock and the antisocial nature of the people now calling Green River home. At the very least, Cade hoped the message would prevent any more attacks. But deep down he hoped Beeson’s boys would roll down the 70 and deliver the top dogs there some well-deserved curb treatment.
They left the dead bandits where they had fallen, left the Subaru high-centered and still smoking, and left the high desert above Green River with the image of the lone Z, legs protruding from the import car, kicking the air rhythmically like a diver out of water as it gorged itself on the would-be bandit.
Chapter 42
More than an hour in the hot sun, burning fuel to stay cool, had only served to make Duncan feel like a fish in an aquarium. One full hour of leering faces and wanting hands pressing against the window glass. Streaks of blood and mucous and unidentifiable fluids painted every surface the dead came into contact with.
Suddenly the two-way radio sitting on the dash warbled. Daymon said, “Seen anything on your side yet?”
“Nope,” answered Duncan. He released the talk button for a second. Thought about packing it in and calling it a day when one of the creatures—a first-turn thirty-something male—began scrutinizing the passenger side door handle. Then Duncan could have sworn it jiggled.
Wanting to get back to Heidi, Daymon pressed the issue. “Can we go now, Mister Winters?”
“Gimme one more second ... will ya,” drawled Duncan. He released the talk button. Powered the window down a couple of inches. Looking into the rotter’s clouded-over eyes, he said, “Anybody home? Why don’t you hop in ... we’ll hit a drive through.” The creature shifted its gaze from the meat in the truck and regarded the door again. Let its eyes linger there momentarily, seemingly lost in thought. Then it looked up and its lips peeled back, revealing a cracked and chipped picket of teeth. Finally, ignoring the partially open window which Duncan had provided as a path of least resistance, the flesh eater snarled and redoubled its efforts on the door handle. Simultaneously rationalization and reason delivered a knockout punch as Duncan realized that his little experiment had just provided all of the empirical evidence they needed.
Daymon’s voice again: “Well?”
Voice wavering slightly, Duncan said, “We’re fucked.”
“Come again.”
“This thing just tried to open the passenger door ... twice.”
“We telling Lev?”
Duncan said nothing. With the monster still pulling repeatedly on the outside handle, he put the Ram in Reverse and backed up rapidly, simultaneously wrenching the steering wheel left and braking, pulling a ragged looking bootlegger’s reverse.
Lev looked a question at Daymon, who just shrugged and gunned the Tahoe in reverse, following Old Man’s lead.
Monkey See Monkey Do was the order of the day as Lev performed a like maneuver in his purloined Chevy and took up station between the other vehicles.
With the thrumming of the off-road tires reverberating through the cab, Duncan drove on in radio silence thinking about how much—if any—of this new revelation he was obligated to divulge to the others. In no time the quarry entrance blipped by on the right. But Duncan didn’t notice. All kinds of sayings were fighting for space in his head—out of sight out of mind, what they don’t know won’t hurt them, ignorance is bliss—not one of them ethical in this application.
Having finally made up his mind how best to broach the subject of the rotters’ newfound tricks, anothe
r thought began needling him. And as he stopped his rig next to the gate leading to the compound, horrific thoughts of the massive damage a self-aware horde of rotters could do to the remaining pockets of mankind stirred within him an overwhelming urge to make some bubbles and do some much needed forgettin’. He turned the volume up and immediately heard Phillip’s voice urging anyone listening to answer his call.
“Duncan here,” he drawled. “Come on down and Lev will spell you.”
“Aren’t you going to put down the rotters first?”
Lost in thought while approaching the bend, Duncan hadn’t even noticed the knot of fresh turns.
The radio was silent for a tick then crackled with static and Daymon said, “I’ll handle them.” In seconds he had parked the Tahoe between the rotters and Duncan’s truck and was standing on the road, machete in hand.
The throng of monsters split in two—half veered toward the repaired fence and pressed their flesh against the barbed wire, reaching for Phillip, who was steadily walking downhill towards them. The other half, roughly seven or eight, plodded ahead on a collision course with Daymon’s tempered steel blade.
Leading them east down 39, the lanky ex-fire fighter culled the shambling lot one at a time. Skull caps went spinning and bouncing across the blacktop. He decapitated the final two—a gigantic pair of undead specimens rivaling the Brothers brothers who, along with Pug, had originally abducted Heidi from the Silver Dollar Cowboy Bar back in Jackson.
He looked west down the road and saw that together, without firing a shot, Lev, Duncan and Phillip had created their own tidy pile of unmoving corpses.
He bent over and grabbed two handfuls of greasy hair. Hefting the human heads, he was struck by how much heavier they were than he had guessed. Probably a good ten pounds each. Clowning around, he pretended to tightrope walk the centerline, the still chattering heads acting as counterbalance.
A primal urge kicked in, causing Duncan to back away from the clacking teeth. Though he knew a rotter wasn’t dead until its brain was destroyed, the unusual sight always gave him a scrotum-shrinking case of the heebs. “What the hell are you doing with those?”
Daymon hoisted the heads—eyes still moving in their sockets, teeth clicking an eerie cadence—over his own. He said, “Blowing off steam. Let’s have some fun. I figure we’ll keep them and do some experimenting.”
“What are you getting at?” growled Duncan.
Quizzical looks washing over their faces, Lev and Phillip listened intently to the conversation.
One at a time, like flesh and bone bowling balls, Daymon heaved the heads down the road. Landing with solid sounding thunks, they rolled in two different directions until miraculously inertia bled off and both stopped, wobbling right-side up, the wildly different profiles positioned in a classic face-off a couple of yards apart. Shaking his head in disbelief, Daymon said sharply, “You tell ‘em. Or I will.”
“I was going to, goddamnit.” Duncan turned a one-eighty. Faced the fresh graves up the hill and stared for a long silent minute. He turned and squared up with Lev and Phillip. Right off the bat, he apologized for contemplating keeping his findings from them. Then he described his test and his thoughts on the matter and their ramifications, which all together stunk on ice.
“Extinction level event ... supersized,” exclaimed Lev. He walked away from the circle, shaking his head.
“I’ll get everyone together later and tell em’ exactly what I told you all,” Duncan said gruffly.
After a short walk, Lev returned to the fold. He looked at Daymon first and then addressed Duncan saying, “What about what we found at the quarry?”
Duncan said, “Phillip ... earmuffs.”
To which the rail-thin man cocked his head and said, “I’m not following.”
Duncan jerked his chin to the side. “Please, take a walk.”
Sullen. Head down. Phillip took a walk. Along the way he tried to bend it like Beckham with one of the heads but missed horribly, his boot barely grazing the ear of his intended target and setting it spinning like a top.
There was a short huddle and the trio came to a consensus. “Sorry Phillip,” said Duncan. “Help us move the bodies and then we’ll go inside. You’ll drive the Chevy. Lev ... you get the gate. This time close it and lock it.”
Lev’s mouth worked silently, but he decided to let it go. True, Duncan had been drunk at the last change, he thought. And also true was the fact that Lev had been under the impression that the grieving man had wanted to do everything on his own. That the barbed wire wasn’t secured after Duncan drove the Toyota through was a shared responsibility. So Lev vowed to himself to be more vigilant in the future. Learn from his mistakes. A few minutes later, after the twice-dead rotters were piled in the ditch with the others, Lev opened the gate and watched the three trucks disappear down the forest-lined gravel road.
He wrapped the chain, secured the padlock and arranged the foliage to fully conceal everything. Looked down the road to the west. Nothing. All clear. He looked east and saw the severed heads sitting near the shoulder, the mouths still moving nonstop. And though he couldn’t see them, still, he imagined the eyes flicking left and right, following his every move. “Fuck that,” he said aloud as he vaulted the barbed wire fence. “Not my job.”
Chapter 43
Bishop liked to be on his feet. He was always restless as a kid. Riding his bike for hours upon hours around whatever base his father was billeted at the time had been his daily reprieve from the monotony of life as a military brat. And later on—after surviving BUDS and joining the Teams—unlike most of his contemporaries, he lived for long marches with a heavy ruck biting into his shoulders and the reassuring feel of ten pounds of lethal metal in his hands. It allowed him to think, he supposed. So when he was not out in the field and on patrol, he ran to think. Any time. Day or night. Getting his cardio going always helped him clear his mind. See things from a different perspective.
Leaving Carson and Elvis alone at the house, he jogged to the gate, where, with several of his Spartan mercenaries looking on, he took it upon himself to do the job that Carson hadn’t gotten around to yet.
He called Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb over and engaged them in a little small talk. Asked them if they liked the dead. If they wanted to keep one for a pet. If they liked to fuck them when nobody was looking. After all of his questions has been met with a chorus of no’s and no ways and then a couple of simultaneous hell no’s, he ordered them to go into town and clear the marina and retail area of any walking dead and then bring him back a fresh bucket of steam. The latter part of his edict was met with the usual blank stares he had been accustomed to seeing since the two showed up after having been kicked out by a group of local survivors two days prior. That they were both low-IQ dolts led to them being ostracized from the rest of Bishop’s men. But every army, no matter how small it was, needed bottom feeders to burn the shit and bury the garbage—and in the case of Bishop’s fifty-man army—dispose of Omega-infected corpses, a job that, to a man, nobody wanted.
Without another word, as the pair turned to go to their vehicle—to collect the bucket of steam—Bishop motioned one of his men over and relieved him of his rifle. Shouldering the black carbine, Bishop flicked the selector to burst and triggered a couple of three-round-salvos knee-high at the departing duo.
Walking left to right, the slugs chewed up Tweedle Dee’s calves, pulping the muscle and severing one or both of his Achilles tendons, sending him to the dirt screaming and clutching both legs. Then, a half dozen 5.56 x 45mm hardball rounds caught Tweedle Dum a little higher, shredding both hamstrings and his right butt cheek, leaving a mass of bloodied flesh and fat and torn fabric in their wake.
Rooted in place not five feet away, Jimmy Foley’s eyes went wide. And though he didn’t really agree with the way the two men treated the dead, what Bishop had just done was downright evil.
With both conscripts grievously wounded and screaming and writhing on the dirt, Bishop looked di
rectly at the balding conscript named Foley and berated everyone at the gate—including the dying duo. “I don’t want another one of those dead things coming anywhere near the fence ... do you copy?” Foley nodded, as did the others. The men on the ground made no reply. Continued thrashing the dirt and bleeding out. “I want a second roadblock erected farther east. Find some heavy chain-link and string it up in the forest as well if that’s what it’s going to take to keep those things away from me.” As the two men continued bleeding and wailing and calling out for help, Bishop spun a tight circle and looked each of the assembled men in the eye, stopping back at Foley. Then, with spittle flying from his lips, he continued, “I don’t want to see another fucking walking corpse unless I decide to go outside this wire. Am I clear?”
To a man, Foley included, Bishop’s fiery diatribe was met with more nods—all to the affirmative.
“Fresh magazine, please,” he said to Barry, a local kid with a penchant for drinking and speeding, who promptly ripped a black polymer item from his brand new chest-rig and mutely handed it over.
Sensing what was to come, all of the men—save for Foley, who was trying to distance himself from the madness—crowded around the bigger of the two, who had gone into shock, blood pulsing from the wounds where the bullets had carved deep vertical furrows of flesh from his inner thigh. The other man, however, was far from silent. He had been reduced to a blubbering mess, all wound up into a fetal ball. And he was the one who left the world first. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, thought Bishop as he fired a couple of three-round-bursts into Tweedle Dee’s neck and head, causing the man’s body to twitch once and go limp, a dark stain marking the seat of his pants when his bowels loosened.
Handing the rifle back to its owner, Bishop bellowed, “I want them left here as a reminder to anyone who thinks it’s fun to fuck with the Zs.” Once again he regarded each of the men personally, then added, “Let the crows eat what they want and dispose of the bodies at change of guard.”
Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 22
