Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  Humoring the man, Cade returned the salute. “Thank you, Phillip. But the formalities and calling me sir are not necessary. In fact ... I don’t recommend it.”

  An uneasy smile fell upon Phillip’s face. Quietly he negotiated the fence and, retracing his steps, trudged up the hill and melted back into trees.

  It was a tight fit but Brook succeeded in nosing the F-650 through the gate. After both trucks cleared the threshold, Cade closed the gate and, reversing the process Phillip had just shown him, latched and locked it behind them. As he hauled himself into the passenger seat, his gaze fell on the tree-lined gravel track spilling away in front of them. Then, with the memory of the cars and fencing abusing the Ford at the roadblock outside of Huntsville, he looked sidelong at her, smiled, and said tongue-in-cheek, “Go easy on the paint.”

  Smartass, thought Brook. Unable to think of an appropriate comeback, she ignored the good-natured quip and glanced in the rearview just as the Raptor’s headlights flicked on. Eager to get to the compound and paint job be damned, she committed to the narrow one-lane feeder road and cringed as the spine tingling nails-on-chalkboard-like sounds commenced.

  Inside the compound, headphones snugged on tight, Heidi, who was still scanning the spectrum for ham radio signals, failed to hear the trilling satellite phone on the shelf above. A minute later, however, the two-way radio chimed and skittered and danced all over the desktop, alerting her to Phillip’s incoming call. She listened intently and, a long while later when Phillip had nothing more to add but small talk, said, “Gotta go,” and ended the call.

  Radio in hand, she hustled down the corridor and rousted Lev from a deep slumber. Without allowing him time to rake the sleep from his eyes, she told him about the new arrivals and how Phillip had determined they were who they said they were. Then she asked him to go up and welcome them.

  Lev stretched and yawned. He ran his hands over his closely cropped hair and said sleepily, “Didn’t think they were going to be here until tomorrow.”

  “Well ... they’re here now.”

  “Where’s Duncan?”

  “I haven’t seen him in hours.”

  Pulling on an olive-drab tee-shirt, ARMY emblazoned up front, Lev asked, “And Daymon ... where is he?”

  “He and Charlie are out.”

  Lev asked Heidi to turn away, then he stood and pulled his pants on. “OK, I’m decent,” he said. “What do you mean by out?”

  Crossing her arms, Heidi replied, “They’re hunting.”

  “Rotters?”

  “Dinner.”

  Another yawn. “Oh great,” said Lev. “Hope they bag something other than squirrel this time. And the others?”

  “Chief and Seth are on patrol down by the Gudsons' so it’s on you to greet our visitors.”

  Now, seemingly more awake, Lev showed a newfound sense of urgency. He slipped his boots on and without lacing them grabbed his carbine. As he scooted by her and through the entry, he called back over his shoulder, “The guy’s name is Cade, right?”

  “Correct,” she called back. “And there are five others ... plus a dog.”

  “Well then I hope Daymon bags two of whatever he was gunning for,” replied Lev, his voice trailing off as he wound through the interconnected containers.

  There was a metallic clang in the distance and again Heidi was alone with the lone light bulb and a ham radio seemingly capable of picking up nothing but static.

  Chapter 58

  When Lev finally made it topside, the first thing he saw was the two trucks. One was black and giant-sized, the other white and mean-looking but smaller by comparison. They were parked side-by-side in the center of the clearing far from Duncan’s helicopter and the other assorted vehicles which made up the group’s rag-tag motor pool. As a precautionary measure, he chambered a round and flicked the carbine’s selector from safe to fire. Putting on a smile, he approached the humongous black truck. Seeing him, the brunette woman in the driver’s seat smiled back, thrust a thumb towards the box bed, and told him that her husband was already unloading.

  Getting down to brass tacks. As Lev rounded the rear of the truck, the top of the bed barely level with his eyes, he nearly collided with a man wearing a black ball cap and desert tan fatigue bottoms, who was, judging by the graying goatee and sidewalls, a little older than him by maybe half a dozen years. After composing himself, Lev stuck out his hand and said, “Cade Grayson?”

  Cade lowered the Pelican case from the bed to the ground, wiped his hand off on his pants, and accepted the offering. “You must be Lev,” he said. “I was expecting either Duncan or Daymon.”

  “We were expecting you tomorrow. So for now you’re stuck with me.”

  Leaning against the open tailgate, eyeing the carbine in Lev’s hand, Cade asked when they were expected back.

  “Duncan’s sleeping and Daymon is ... speak of the devil,” said Lev, nodding towards the tree line to the west. “Looks like Daymon has decided to grace us with his presence.”

  Turning and following Lev’s line of sight, Cade picked up the lanky dreadlocked man as he emerged from the tree line. Cade waved and started across the clearing and, as the distance was halved, he recognized the man trailing Daymon from a briefing prior to the Jackson Hole mission. Only now the balding, gray-haired man wasn’t wearing a badge or the blue utilities indicative of a chief of police from Jackson Hole. In fact, there was nothing Cade could see—not even a hint of swagger—that distinguished him as a lawman except maybe the semi-automatic pistol holstered on his hip.

  Upon seeing Cade, Daymon picked up his pace and met the gimpy operator halfway. After handshakes and pats on the back, Cade handed over the note he’d come across in Hanna. After stuffing it in a pocket, the two shared a few words and then Daymon walked them over and introduced Charlie as the former Jackson Hole Chief of Police. “Pleasure,” said Cade. He turned back to Daymon and pointed toward the far side of the clearing near where the Black Hawk sat, its massive rotor blades drooping and casting off strange kaleidoscopic shadows on the grass.

  “Can I have a word with you ... in private?”

  The smile left Daymon’s face. He nodded and turned, following the footsteps he had just left in the grass.

  “Wait up,” said Cade, swallowing a couple of pills. “I’m nursing a tiny bit of a sprain.”

  “Tiny bit?” Brook said incredulously.

  After giving Brook an aww shucks look accompanied by a shooing motion, Cade popped open the case near his feet and took out a slab of black plastic the size of a road atlas only thicker by a couple of inches. Protected all the way around by a kind of rubberized armor, it looked like a panel ripped off of a Transformer robot.

  By then everyone had dismounted both trucks and was walking about and stretching. Max bolted across the clearing and promptly lifted his leg and marked the Black Hawk as his.

  Lev clicked his rifle to safe and set it aside.

  Shoulder-to-shoulder, Cade and Daymon walked across the clearing. Along the way, Cade brought up the fact that earlier that day he’d seen a very undead Hoss, the lawyer in the house in Hanna, and ended by saying, “I finished the job you were supposed to do.” He paused for a beat to let the words sink in. Daymon opened his mouth to apologize but instead Cade raised a hand and cut him off. “Case closed. Hoss was a waste of skin. On to more important business. You kept your word in Jackson and helped me get at Robert Christian. And I in turn held up my end of the bargain and turned him over to the powers that be who honored their word, thus enabling me to get my own pound of flesh.” He paused for another long beat.

  Daymon said, “You’re welcome ... I guess. Care to elaborate?”

  “Negative. It’s classified. However ... ” He hinged open the item he’d been carrying under his arm. Powered it on and waited while the laptop screen flared a brilliant blue that contrasted sharply against dusk’s failing light. “It’s all right here ... on the desktop. It’s labeled RCEX. Not for the faint of heart but it should bring Heidi so
me closure.”

  “This shows Robert Christian’s execution?”

  “All sixteen gruesome seconds of it. From drop to flop to plop. Glad I wasn’t there. Heard his bowels loosened something fierce. Pretty rank-smelling.”

  “Can I take it?”

  Cade hitched a brow. “Sure,” he said. “I need it back as soon as you’re finished with it.” He snapped the rugged laptop closed and handed it over.

  “Thanks again,” said Daymon, a troubled look settling on his features. “About Hoss—”

  Cade said nothing. Locked eyes with Daymon and shook his head slowly side to side.

  Tucking a stray dread behind his ear, Daymon said, “Daylight’s fading fast. Let’s get you unloaded and we’ll fire up some canned chili and vegetables.”

  Cade’s stomach growled at the mere thought of eating anything other than MREs or Schriever mess hall chow, which was barely a notch above a TV dinner in his opinion.

  With twilight falling quickly and everyone helping, the trucks got unloaded and the gear stacked outside the compound entrance.

  Chapter 59

  Stubby carbine in hand, Brook entered the compound a step behind Raven. After pausing a tick to let their eyes adjust, they caught up with Charlie who had paused in the communications room in order to introduce them to Heidi.

  Heidi, who had seemed to find purpose in monitoring the radios, seemed truly delighted to meet them. “Want to see our eyes and ears to the outside?”

  “Sure,” Brook lied. In reality she just wanted to find a dark place and lie down and close her eyes and quiet the little voice that kept reminding her that she had killed three people a handful of hours ago.

  The introduction to the ham radio and Motorola two-way radios was far from necessary. Focusing on an urn of coffee whose aroma had been calling to her since she stepped foot into the room, Brook heard maybe one word in three. Even Raven seemed to tire quickly of the narrative; however, Brook’s interest was soon piqued when she learned the group would soon be returning to a nearby quarry in order to relieve it of its solar panels and high-tech closed-circuit camera system.

  When Heidi had finished, she led them from the communications room to the container the Grayson family would be calling home. The low-ceilinged affair happened to be in the farthest corner, near the rear of the compound, diagonal from where the kids would be staying.

  Heidi opened the door for Brook and said, “The guy who was staying here took his ball and his family and went home.”

  Brook set her canvas duffel on one of the low-slung bunks. Somewhat confused, she looked a question at the blonde.

  “Oh. Sorry,” proffered Heidi. “He was a bit of a pacifist. Didn’t like Duncan’s proactive approach to handling our problems around here. And the fact that Duncan used the heavy artillery against the Huntsville thugs was too much for him to handle... so the day before yesterday he loaded his family into his airplane and flew the coop.”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere but here were his exact words.”

  “What did Duncan do?”

  Heidi paused. Unsure if the lady could handle what she was about to divulge. But hell, the dead were walking the earth topside. If this gun-toting super-fit thirty-something couldn’t handle the truth then what good was she?

  Based on second-hand knowledge, Heidi described the ambush in a Michael Mann fashion. Leaving nothing out, first she exaggerated the propane tanks exploding and catching the vehicle on fire. Her graphic description of Chance’s head and helmet bouncing down the road and spinning away in two separate pieces, even in Raven’s presence, was hardly tempered. Then, to wrap it up, she mentioned the fifty-caliber decapitation job Duncan had wrought on the driver of the Toyota. And when she’d finished telling the tale, she removed her hat, looked up to the ceiling, and waved a little elbow-wrist waggle to an imaginary airplane and said, “Good effin riddance Bob ... and thanks for the empty bunks.”

  Then Brook disarmed Heidi with a smile of her own and, as if she had read the blonde’s mind, finished her thought off with words strikingly similar to the prejudicial thinking her host had engaged in first. “Besides, if they can’t pull their weight then what good are they?”

  Throwing a shiver, Heidi changed the subject and said, “God willing we’ll be cooking some fresh meat over the fire later tonight. Hope to see you there.”

  Salivating at the prospect of flame-broiled anything and barely able to contain her enthusiasm, Brook looked at Raven, smiled, and said, “Yes you most certainly will.”

  ***

  After helping Wilson, Sasha, and Taryn get squared away in their new digs at the end of the wing just left of the front entry, Cade retraced his steps, stopping briefly at the comms container to get directions to Duncan’s quarters. As he listened to Heidi, two things of almost equal importance leapt out at him. One, a thin black satellite phone resting on a shelf just below his eye level. And two, a coffee machine warming a half-full urn of inky black goodness, its pleasant earthy smell filling the room and taking him back to Portland, before all of this mess started. He thanked Heidi, but before carrying on he addressed both of his observations in order of importance. “That phone, he said. “Is it Daymon’s?”

  Heidi nodded.

  “Heard any incoming calls recently?”

  She shook her head side-to-side. “Nope.”

  He took it off the shelf and fiddled with it for a second and then replaced it. “Thing’s no good with the ringer cycled to mute. There’s a missed call ...” He saw her face go pale, then added, “Don’t worry, it was me and it’ll remain our little secret.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a wan smile. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of some ham radio users Logan had been in contact with before word of the black helicopters started filtering in.” The color returning to her cheeks, she went on, “Logan left a whole page full of notes ... all pertaining to different frequencies ... or handles. Whatever they’re called.”

  “Call signs,” said Cade. “Any luck?”

  “Nope.”

  “Keep trying,” he said. Then he touched upon the second item of importance. He asked, “Can I relieve you of two cups of your wonderful-smelling coffee?”

  Without a word she smiled, poured two mugs to the rim and passed them over. Then she placed the headphones over her ears and sat back down, safe and secure, free from all physical contact with the outside world.

  Chapter 60

  Cade followed the map in his mind and arrived outside a closed door mere moments after talking to Heidi. He stood there, a mug in each hand, steam wafting to his nose, barely able to constrain his impulse to drink both on the spot. Instead, he tested the door with his toe. Balanced precariously on one foot, looking like one of the Flying Wallendas—only grounded and with scalding coffee sluicing over his knuckles—he managed to get the door moving without crying out in pain. He stepped over the threshold and crept into the gloom. Inside, the air was still and smelled strongly of whiskey and flatulence. Ragged snoring was coming from a darkened corner.

  Cade took three steps into the room and felt the soft tickle of something dragging across his face. Unable to see a place to set the mugs, he tilted his head sideways and a few passes later, looking no doubt uncoordinated like a kid bobbing for apples, was rewarded for his efforts by finally seizing the dangling length of errant string between his teeth. He backed up until the string went taut and there was a click and the single bulb flared to life.

  The retinas, he was reminded, like everything else, were also affected by Newton’s law. Their sudden contraction and the pain to the optic nerve made him squint, which in turn caused an involuntary flinch that started a new mini-torrent of pain-inducing caffeinated liquid sheeting across his exposed skin.

  Once again stifling a yelp, he set both mugs on a nearby footlocker and cast his gaze over the sorry sight. Still wearing his aviator’s glasses, fully clothed in some foreign army’s surplus uniform, and still clutching a near empty bottle of some kind
of booze, Duncan Winters snored away, presumably stone-cold drunk.

  After unsuccessfully trying to wrestle the bottle from Duncan’s firm grip, Cade resorted to a bit of dirty pool. He grabbed one of the mugs and, practicing guerilla warfare of the highest order, placed it next to the older man’s head, making sure the wispy tendrils curled over his cheek so he would have no choice but to inhale the heady aroma.

  Three slow steady breaths later, Duncan smiled yet his eyes stayed closed. Then, a tick after Cade removed the mug, Duncan’s eyes opened briefly and, retreating from the sixty-watt glare, closed back to two thin slits. There was a long moment of silence and Duncan said, “You, Captain Cade Grayson, are in violation of Army regulation six-seventy-dash-one. Your sideburns must not be below the lowest ear hole.” He cackled and looked longingly at the bottle.

  “You’re drunk,” said Cade. “And I’m no longer taking orders. I’ve gone civilian.”

  “And hippie,” stated Duncan.

  “Far from it,” Cade shot back. He changed the subject and addressed the reason he was here. “Are you going to be good to go tomorrow?”

  “Is a frog’s ass watertight?”

  Cade laughed at that and offered the cup of joe.

  After swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Duncan waited for a couple of beats for his brain to stop bouncing around in his cranium, then worked at sitting upright. He accepted the mug and took a long pull.

  Having been around a few folks battling the bottle, Cade had a feeling he knew what to expect next. And he was right.

  The bottle that Duncan had so firmly clutched during sleep seemed to have a stronger appeal upon waking. With no apparent remorse, he added the remainder, two fingers’ worth of the amber liquid, into his coffee. He stared hard at the floor, as if he were making a decision right then and there. He cupped the mug. Considered chucking it at the steel wall. But he wasn’t ready yet. He hoisted the concoction, looked at the metal ceiling and said, “To Logan.”