“That was close, Cade Grayson,” said Brook, stress evident in her wavering voice.
“Hand grenades and horseshoes,” he replied, tires chirping as the truck leapt backwards and, in keeping with Newton’s law, their heads jerked forward. He drove fast and wobbly one-handed while looking over his shoulder and, after about twenty yards, and with the Raptor closing fast, he whipped the wheel left and hit the brakes, executing a bootlegger’s reverse that Special Agent Adam Cross would have been proud of. And as the world spun a one-eighty in front of Cade’s face, he saw from the corner of his eye, Taryn behind the wheel of the white truck. That it wasn’t fully engulfed by the dead as he had feared brought him a palpable sense of relief. Finally feeling the inertia bleed off and the truck get light on the springs, he slammed the shifter into Drive, released the brake and sped south towards the off-ramp and a rendezvous with downtown Price, Utah.
Chapter 46
Though their small two-truck convoy had sped through the previous town unscathed, Cade attributed it to how little commerce there was in Wellington: a Gas-n-Sip, a crusty tavern with plate windows full of unlit neon, and a couple of restaurants catering to various ethnicities was about it. But Price, a college town with a population of eight thousand before Omega swept through, was a different story entirely. The going was much slower—they trudged along, barely able to make half the posted speed limit. The streets were patrolled by roving groups of flesh eaters and littered with trash and bits and pieces of putrefied corpses. Every business lining yet another street named Main had been ransacked, most of the windows reduced to razor-edged shards that littered the sidewalks.
A few blocks in, Cade was beginning to think that taking their chances with the horde might have been the more sound decision. For on two different occasions he was forced to use the F-650’s angular plate bumper and tremendous amounts of horsepower and torque and fuel to bull through the clusters of abandoned vehicles clogging the main drag.
Wilson’s voice came through the radio. “How much more of this?”
Brook answered back, “A few more blocks and then one more smaller town is all.” She shifted her gaze right down a side street and spied a throng of Zs easily numbering over a hundred. She keyed the radio and went on, “Company on the right ... do not stop.”
They slipped by the dead and a block later, near the edge of the business district, Main Street jogged diagonally north by west and became a razor-straight stretch of two-lane called Carbonville Road. After transiting eight straight miles of two-lane unimpeded by dead or static vehicles, passing by houses and fields and lastly a sprawling out-of-place country club complete with a lush green golf course and driving range, they came upon a Y-juncture in the road where Cade jammed the Ford to a stop.
A sign planted equidistant at the fork indicated that the ramp to the left merged with Utah State Route 6. Below that useful piece of information was an arrow pointing right towards the city of Helper, population 2000.
Cade let the truck roll forward and merged left. A tick later the voice in the box said: Helper, one mile.
A name that meant nothing to Cade or Brook, but nonetheless, upon hearing it pronounced in robotic syntax through the truck’s speakers, the two-syllable word made Raven think of hamburger, and the two words, helper and hamburger, when combined and transposed brought to mind the talking white glove from the television commercials . Then, unable to resist the urge, she began to sing the inane jingle in a high falsetto. And as Cade negotiated the onramp and wheeled the Ford onto what he hoped would end up being a zombie-free stretch of interstate bypassing Helper, the source of his daughter’s amusement, he depressed the Motorola’s talk button and succeeded in infecting the heads of the kids in the Raptor with the poorly sung but commonly known ditty.
The bypass was relatively free of vehicles and walking dead and once Helper proper was behind them and the State Route had merged back onto 191, yet another country club with driving range and clubhouse all ringed by a vast empty parking lot slid by on the left. No better time than the apocalypse to play a round, thought Cade darkly. No groups wanting to play through. No marshals tooling the fairways looking for rules to enforce. And best of all, no one keeping count of his Mulligans. But sadly that fantasy evaporated when he noticed, with no greenskeepers to combat the desert climate, just how ratty and brown the fairways and greens of these links had become. There wasn’t a single cart burdened by overstuffed bags and overweight golfers traversing the course. There were no beer girls maneuvering their carts against the grain in search of thirsty customers and the possibility of cash tips. Like the world and most of her population, this golf course was history.
Glancing in the mirror, Cade saw that Raven had her head buried in Taryn’s iPhone again and was busy scrolling through the music. He looked over her head and saw the Raptor still keeping pace. Finally he let his gaze skim over the navigation system, prompting him to say to Brook, “Looks like the road splits up ahead.”
She zoomed in one stop and replied, “U.S. Route Six goes off west to Salt Lake. This road we’re on curls to the right past those ...”
Casting a shadow over the juncture, a coal processing plant loomed on the right. Two hundred yards beyond the towering machinery and idle conveyor belts and rust-streaked hoppers and silos was an impressive mountain of already processed coal. Seemingly sucking up every ray of sunshine, the black pyramid-shaped mound made the two trucks look like toys in comparison.
To their left was a sobering and contrasting sight that explained where the majority of Helpers’ population had ended up. Stacked seven or eight deep and twenty across and stretching at least a block, the faces of dead Americans staring out of the tangle of death spoke to the harsh measures undertaken by the National Guard early on during the outbreak. The bullet-riddled bodies of infected mothers and fathers and kids and grandparents, all having been put down after the body bags had run out, had suffered greatly from scavengers and exposure to the elements.
With Raven still distracted by the device and humming away none the wiser, the F-650 and the Raptor crept by the drift of death, thumped over a set of railroad tracks and came to a complete stop, side-by-side, at yet another ‘Y’ in the road, where, erected in the shadow of the coal plant at the point of divergence, yet another road sign presented them with two options. After a short deliberation, eschewing the left fork that would take them straight through the heart of Salt Lake City one hundred and seven miles distant, Cade opted to suffer a few added miles and the associated time delay and backtrack slightly on US-6 and then pass through Duchesne, a town the navigation unit said was forty-six miles away north by east. After which they would stay to UT-35 and chase the GPS coordinates through a handful of small towns east of the Wasatch front to their ultimate destination a hundred and thirty-seven miles north by west near Eden, Utah. There, at the end of the proverbial rainbow, hopefully, they would find their pot of gold in the form of a fortified compound and rendezvous with Duncan and Daymon before nightfall.
Chapter 47
Duncan left his new 4x4 parked near the compound’s entrance. There was a resonant thunk when he let the tailgate hinge open and fall to the stops. He scooped up an armful of the weapons they had taken from the quarry and made his way to the hidden entrance.
After delivering a series of knocks in the agreed-upon order, metal grated against metal as someone worked the inner locking mechanism. Thing needs another shot of WD-40, Duncan thought as the door hinged open and Heidi greeted him with a smile. Stepping up, arms outstretched, she offered to lighten his load. “I got it,” he replied. “These are going into the dry storage for now.” He stood in the gloom for a second and then went on, “Any luck with the ham radio?”
She shook her head. “Nothing north. I tried all of the frequencies your brother had written down. Then I freelanced a little. Talked to a guy in Nevada. Big group of survivors from Salt Lake now calling some Naval Air Base home. I guess there are a couple of hundred Marines there as well. We c
ould use something like that near here.”
Visibly bowing under the weight of the weapons, Duncan nodded and moved sideways past her and through the narrow passage. He looked over his shoulder and called, “I’ve got news too. We’ll have to catch up as a group a little later. Thanks for lettin’ me in.”
“Me too,” said Daymon as he stepped over the threshold, thick locks of braided hair swishing pendulum-like in front of his face. Also weighted down by an armload of long guns, he paused in front of his lady and leaned in, puckered lips parting the veil of dreads.
After pinning the unruly do behind his ears for him, she kissed him, smiled and said, “You need a hat to control that nest, my little Sherpa. Now carry on.”
With Daymon hot on his heels, Duncan navigated the labyrinth and bent at the knees in front of the pantry/dry storage and placed his load on the plywood floor. Then he relieved Daymon of the half-dozen rifles he was carrying. “I’ll store these,” he said. “Why don’t you go and get another load.”
“Good call, Boss,” Daymon said. “I might be a minute though. Gonna get a little more drive-by lip lock.”
Duncan made no reply.
“You OK?”
Again, Duncan said nothing.
Trying to lighten the mood, Daymon said, “What was I thinking? This isn’t your first rodeo. Been there, done that, right? And I do believe that you’ve got a Zippo older than me.”
Still, Duncan remained stoic, tight-lipped, as if he were wrestling with some kind of monumental decision.
Sensing this, Daymon said, “Don’t renege on your promise. Everyone needs to know what we’re gonna be facing down the road.”
Duncan nodded. Scooped a rifle off the floor and stepped into the darkened room. There was a flare of light as he pulled the chain dangling from the lone bulb. Squinting, he propped the rifle against a stack of five-gallon buckets. He looked at the doorway and Daymon had already gone, his footsteps faint. Receding. Then the echoes died away and Duncan found himself alone—physically and spiritually.
The voice in his head piped up a millisecond later. Deriding. Condescending. Telling him he was a failure. Telling him he’d killed Logan through negligence and dereliction of brotherly duty. He listened hard. Succumbed to the voice that seemingly had taken a contract out on his ass. The voice that wanted him dead.
It was right where he’d stowed it the day before. Insurance. His gateway to oblivion. His fingers curled around the slender familiar neck. He hefted the sack with his right and pulled the smooth vessel free with his left. Breaking the paper seal produced a brittle tearing sound, like a newly struck match igniting. Appropriate, he thought. ‘Cause I’m about to start a fire that all the water in the quarry couldn’t extinguish.
The cap spun off smoothly. Hand shaking, he lifted the square bottle to his lips. Going down, Old No. 7 never tasted better. “To you, Oops,” he said between gulps. After one last long pull of the amber liquid—during which he fulfilled his earlier promise to himself by producing a long string of roiling bubbles— he reversed the ritualistic process, spun the cap on slowly and secreted the bottle on a top shelf where it would be out of sight yet easily accessible.
Chapter 48
No matter how Jamie positioned herself on the bed or which particular wrist she chose to support her weight, she couldn’t quell the dull ache deep down inside her rotator cuffs. And no matter how close she scooted to the headboard, there was no stopping the constant throbbing in her deltoids.
Entirely by design, in order to strain her muscles and stretch ligaments and hobble her, Carson had returned with two more pairs of handcuffs and had left her spread-eagled, one on each ankle secured to the footboard with lengths of nylon rope. Then he’d repositioned the handcuffs attached to her wrists higher up on the headboard, leaving her very little room for lateral movement. Finally, unable to sit on her butt and reclining flat an impossibility, she realized that the pseudo-crucified position she was being forced to endure was meant to hobble her not only physically but mentally as well. To send a message. To say: We own you. Get used to it. And it was working—on both accounts.
She craned her head and saw how the sunlight was now angling in off the lake from the left and illuminating the wall to her right. It told her that the sun was falling away past meridian and that west was to her left. And if everything she had been taught about the directions on the compass still held true, her feet were pointing north and the mouthwatering aroma hitting her nose was wafting under the door from the south, presumably a kitchen somewhere downstairs. And she also knew from past experience that where people cooked they also stored knives and cleavers and meat-tenderizing mallets—all high on her must-have-to-escape wish list. Hell, she thought. A wine bottle would do. Going out swinging was also high on that list. The opportunity presented to her in the helicopter had been fleeting. In hindsight she should have done it there and then. Risked everything. Gone down with the ship, so to speak.
But her mom had always said: Good things come to those who wait. And Mom had been right. The good thing finally did come to her—his name was Logan. And then the animal named Carson had killed him.
She drifted into a fantasy in which she was the captor and Carson the trussed captive. And she had the knife—a ten-inch single-tang item. Razor sharp. Folded metal. Tempered. She was sharpening it, the steady clatter of metal against metal comforting because she knew that to skin a man one needed a finely honed tool. The first nick drew blood. The second pass curled, scroll-like, an inches-long graft of dermis—along with it a number of veins and capillaries. Blood was spritzing on her face. Aerated droplets at first. Then a pulsing fan, hot and crimson.
But before she got to watch him die, her eyes fluttered open and she was back to being trussed and utterly helpless.
Carson hovered over her, holding a cup in one hand and in the other a half-dozen articles of ladies clothing. He said, “You were in deep REM sleep. Your eyes were going like crazy behind the lids. Creepy as hell. Had to splash you with water to wake you. Still thirsty?”
Wishing their roles really had been reversed, Jamie answered groggily, “Yes ... and I’m starving.”
“Ever been to northern Africa?”
She shook her head side to side on a horizontal plane.
“You don’t know starving then.” Carson grinned and threw the clothing on the foot of the bed. Produced the keys to the cuffs from a pocket and started with her left foot. He paused and shot her an icy glare. He said slowly and menacingly, “You try anything and I’ll strangle you to unconsciousness, then fuck you ten ways from Sunday. Then I’ll throw more water on your face and wake you up and wash, rinse and repeat until you beg me to kill you. Then I’ll oblige you. But only after you beg. Or ... ” He let the word hang in the air.
Jamie, wide awake now, swallowed hard. She saw the boxy pistol holstered on his hip. She saw the keys pinched between his fingers.
After a long dramatic pause, Carson went on, “Or you can choose a nice outfit from that pile of girlie clothes there. I’ll get you a washcloth so you can clean up a bit ... and then you doll yourself up a little and we’ll go downstairs and you play nice and break bread with my friend. He’s real nice. Tall. Dark. Some say handsome. I’m not one to judge.”
She made no reply. Just stared at him trying to determine if she had enough fight in her to opt for the former. After a second spent assessing her injuries and deciding that fighting the good fight would have to wait, she nodded subtly.
“I’m no mind reader. Which will it be,” he said behind a wolfish grin.
In her mind, she saw herself walking down the hall past the door to the room where something evil had happened a short while ago. Then taking the stairs down and turning a left, where her true fate would be revealed when she emerged into presumably an open living room with every available seat occupied by drooling men with bad intentions, all wearing the same disconcerting look as Carson. She threw an involuntary shudder, composed herself somewhat and lied through h
er teeth. “I’d love to meet him.”
Chapter 49
The small group of survivors covered thirty-seven miles of State highway labeled Indian Canyon Scenic Byway between Helper and Duchesne in just under an hour, stopping once to top off their tanks at a quiet roadside turnout near the thirty-mile marker.
Circumventing the sage-covered natural basalt benches rising south and west of Duchesne, the State highway jogged right and the city was dead ahead. The two-truck convoy slowed, then, following the directions in their navigation units, turned right and then swung the mandated left onto Center Street North which cut the downtown core for a handful of blocks before crossing over yet another Main Street—the third so far, if Cade’s memory served.
He thought about reissuing his previous warnings to the kids in the Raptor but quickly deemed it unnecessary considering what he was seeing. Duchesne City, Gateway to the Uintah Basin as the sign on the roadside had proclaimed, looked more post-nuclear-disaster downtown Chernobyl than a gateway to anything. A majority of the storefronts were boarded up. Some bore spray-painted apologies for closing during trying times. Most had short missives scrawled in paint warning of dead barricaded inside. Scores more were just the ventings of people pissed off at the bad cards the town had been dealt. ‘Why us God?’ could be seen on more than one vertical sheet of plywood. There were also a couple of businesses papered with warnings stating: ‘Looters will be shot on sight,’ which to Cade seemed highly likely considering the proliferation of firearms in most of the western states and consequently a bit odd considering all that he knew about human nature and how tight-knit most of rural America had been before the shit hit the fan.
Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 24
