Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  ***

  Ten minutes after the shock of being left to her own recognizance without any form of restraint had worn off, and a full twenty since being let into her room, Jamie decided the second shoe wouldn’t be dropping tonight. So, willing herself to breathe normally, she leaned over and put her ear to the door. She heard nothing in the hall. The Jack and Jill, however, was a different story. The snoring coming from the room beyond was the loudest she’d ever heard.

  She searched the room and discovered that her clothes and boots were gone. The closet was full of bedding and curtains and crafting supplies. There was nothing useful under the bed—unless dust bunnies counted as a deadly weapon. The lamp was a flimsy item branded as Scandinavian but made in China. Useless.

  Fuck it, she thought. She padded to the door and tried the knob. It moved freely. She pulled the door slowly toward her, exposing the hall in small slices. Expecting to find herself staring down the barrel of a gun, she poked her head out and looked first left and then right. Seeing nothing there, she tiptoed down the hall and took the stairs down at a glacial pace, one at a time, pausing for half a minute on each tread to listen hard.

  At the bottom she saw a blue rectangular spill of moonlight on the floor by the back door. She paused there, bathed in its glow, gazing into the inky black outdoors.

  “Do it,” said Carson softly. He turned Ozzy down and shifted in the Escalade’s supple leather seat. “Please do it. You want to run. And I want to catch you in the act.” The act, he thought with a sly grin, would be a messy affair. He would have nothing less.

  Her hand touched the cool brushed nickel knob. The generator throbbed outside. Then there was a long burst of automatic rifle fire. It died off quickly but, as she stood frozen in front of the door peering out the glass, sporadic single shots continued for a full minute after the initial volley.

  Seeing the dark-haired beauty’s resolve crumbling before his eyes, Carson chanted, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He pounded the steering wheel softly and, along with the distant gunfire, felt the throbbing erection tenting his pants slowly subside.

  Standing at the door, knob turned halfway to freedom, another of her mom’s sayings popped into her head. Slow and steady wins the race. And slow and steady would let her live to see another sunrise. And tomorrow or the next or the day after that, she’d find a vulnerability that would allow her to extract her revenge.

  Reluctantly, she let the knob snap from her grip. Then she pushed away the earlier thought of getting a knife from the wood block—he would notice it missing anyway—and about-faced and crept back up the stairs to her room.

  Without her arms and legs cuffed to the bedposts, sleep came easy and instantaneously.

  Ozzy was back on the stereo and riding the Crazy Train. In Carson’s mind, he still saw the woman’s silhouette in the window. Then she cast a surreptitious glance about. And with her dress riding up around her waist, she was through the door and taking the stairs two at a time. He was on her heels in a half-beat. Shouting for her to stop. Yet she ran blindly into the woods.

  His hand worked furiously at his crotch, trying to awaken his flaccid member. To facilitate the lost blood flow’s return. He imagined he caught hold of her toned, tan arm and was dragging her to the ground, the dress now over her head.

  Another ragged burst of fire shattered his concentration and ruined the moment. His radio came to life and a voice said calmly: The Zeds that squirted around the gate have been contained. Mopping up.

  “Copy that,” replied Carson. Nonplussed and unsated, he put his junk away and zippered his pants. Cracked an energy drink and fixed his gaze on the empty window, hoping she had only decided to give it some time and make her run for it at zero-dark-thirty. The witching hour when studies showed most people let their guard down.

  He drained the last of the Red Bull and tossed the can unceremoniously onto the floor. He traced the welts on his cheek and thought to himself, Bring it on, bitch.

  Chapter 64

  Lying on the bunk, face-to-face with her mom, Raven asked in a sleepy voice, “When is Dad leaving?”

  Brook’s eyes snapped open but the view didn’t change. Though an impossibility, the space inside the Conex seemed darker than the insides of her eyelids. After realizing there would be no adjustment to the gloom nor eye contact to affirm and back up her words, she gave up trying to locate Raven’s features in the dark and said, “Just know that he will be back.”

  “Why is he going?”

  “Because some bad men hurt his friend’s brother and some other people who used to live here.”

  “And why does that make it so Daddy has to go?”

  Brook wanted to say: Because the motherfuckers killed people for the guy President Clay just had hanged. The same man who was indirectly responsible for setting back the production of antiserum weeks or months, and perhaps extinguished that glimmer of hope forever. Instead she said half-truthfully, “Because those men also had something to do with your Uncle Carl’s death.”

  Raven yawned, then said, “But I thought Uncle Carl died in a fire.”

  Time for the whole truth and nothing but. “He was murdered first.”

  There was a silence heavier than the oppressive shroud of darkness.

  Forgetting where she’d put her headlamp, and feeling an overwhelming need to look her daughter in the eye and tell her everything was going to be OK, Brook searched the bunk for it with one hand. Finding nothing atop the cool sheets, she batted the air near her head and felt the rubberized backing and then walked her hand up the elastic band and extricated it from the spring she’d hung it from.

  “I’m about to switch the headlamp on ... shield your eyes.”

  There was no answer. She put her arm protectively across Raven’s sleeping form and, still wearing the headlamp, drifted off to sleep herself.

  ***

  “Are you sure she’s asleep?”

  Wilson said, “Positive.” He shrugged off his shorts and marveled at the softness of Taryn’s cool skin against his. “Want some covers?’

  Nodding in the dark, she pulled on a corner, accidentally exposing his backside. “As long as we’re quiet,” he said, letting his hands wander. “There’s no way she’ll know. It’s too dark in here.”

  Their legs and arms intertwined, Wilson ran his hands over Taryn’s tatted bicep, feeling the raised scar tissue and imagining in his mind’s eye the permanently etched skulls and dragons residing there.

  Stifling a giggle, Taryn lost herself exploring his mouth with her tongue and for a moment she forgot about everything. The walking dead were of no relevance. The cold pit she’d been carrying in her gut since escaping the airport disappeared. For a few minutes everything was all right in the world.

  An arm’s length away, everything was not all right. Every time Sasha nodded off she was awakened by a man’s face splitting in half under a barrage of bullets. Not a direct representation of the first and hopefully last human she would be forced to kill, but damn close. And this she knew because a millisecond after she’d pulled the trigger the first time her eyes clamped shut on their own accord. But before they did, however, she’d seen the face of one of the occupants in the second car implode and break in two. And this, she supposed, was where her subconscious had picked up the horrific image it had seen fit to cut and paste, seemingly at will, onto the insides of her eyelids.

  Now though, mercifully, she guessed, every time her lids fluttered the metronomic metallic squeak from a loose bolt in the other bunk bed dispelled the encroaching visions. So she lay staring in the dark and listening to the subtle rasp of fabric against skin and trying to decide which was worse. Succumbing to sleep and enduring the visions of mayhem. Or fighting it tooth and nail to stay awake and having to endure the sounds of lovemaking that only served to further remind her how alone she really was.

  Chapter 65

  Outbreak - Day 19

  As dawn broke and the horizon turned from a dark blue to purple and the sliver of rising su
n spilled golden light across the clearing, Cade was surprised to find Duncan already up and giving the Black Hawk her pre-flight inspection. He called out from a dozen yards away, “She gonna fly?

  Looking up from his task, Duncan adjusted his glasses and waited for Cade to cover the distance between them, then replied, “Oh she’ll fly alright ... question is how far.” Cade cracked the seal on a bottled water, took a long pull and tipped the mouth toward Duncan. Declining the offering, Duncan went on, “What’s with the all-black getup? Is this some kind of mission impossible which requires you to look like a modern day ninja?”

  “All my other gear is olive or desert. Not going to fly where I think we’ll be going.”

  Interest piqued, Duncan stopped what he was doing. He looked up and in a serious tone said, “Sounds like you’ve got a handle on where this Bishop prick is.”

  “I got a pretty good lead from Tran last night.” He paused a beat. Removed a small plastic bottle from his cargo pants. He looked up, arched a brow and said, “If I heard him correctly. And that’s a big if—”

  Duncan said, “Yeah, that boy was pretty busted up and I guess damn near death when Daymon and his crew found him.”

  Working the child safety cap on the ibuprofen bottle, Cade went on, “Tran said ... well, it was more like a mumble ... but what I took away was that Bishop escaped Jackson Hole aboard Robert Christian’s G6.” He swallowed a handful of pills, grimaced, then took a long pull off his water.

  “G6? As in Gulf Stream G650 which is one of those sixty million dollar Learjet-looking planes the CEOs and one-percenters like Donald Trump used to tool around in?”

  “And billionaires like Christian. Affirmative.”

  “And how are you going to find this G6?”

  “Are there any aeronautical maps aboard this bird?”

  Duncan shook his head. “Nope. I left Schriever with GPS coordinates and the DHS manual covering the UH-60 platform. That’s it.”

  “Logan stockpiled everything else ... did he have any detailed maps?”

  Hearing Logan referred to in the past tense brought on a wave of sadness. “Negative,” drawled Duncan. “There’s only a couple of maps of Utah and Wyoming. One of ‘em has a sliver of Southern Idaho on back.”

  “No help there,” replied Cade. “You’re going to need to find fuel for this bird, correct?”

  Nodding, Duncan said, “I was planning on hitting the Air National Guard base in Boise. There’s gotta be underground tanks there.”

  Seeing the devastation, a whole city aflame in his mind’s eye, Cade said, “Boise burned pretty bad, remember?”

  Duncan shivered visibly. “Don’t remind me. We barely escaped that one with our hides intact.”

  Cade unwrapped a breakfast bar and took a bite. Said with a mouthful, “Wasn’t the first time and surely it won’t be the last.”

  “Shhh. You’ll piss off Mister Murphy.”

  “Murphy blew his wad in South Dakota,” said Cade. “More shit went wrong there than I care to remember.” He finished the bar.

  “You’re alive. How’d you manage that?”

  Cade opened the port door and adjusted the seat forward a bit. “You got four or five hours?”

  “Save it for later ... around the campfire.”

  After tossing his pack in the back with the rest of his kit, Cade said, “I have an idea.”

  “Here we go again,” said Duncan. “Do tell.”

  Cade described the Montgomery County airstrip he’d passed the day before, including the fact that he’d spied a pair of fuel bowsers parked near the hangars. “Figure one of those ought to have some JP in it. At the very least we’ll be able to obtain an aeronautical chart from the airport or scavenge one from one of the airplanes there. Use that to find an airstrip capable of handling that Gulfstream. Can’t be more than three or four of ‘em in Idaho, anyway.”

  Duncan clucked his tongue. “Good idea. Heading back to Boise held very little appeal for this good ol’ boy.”

  “Reminds me,” said Cade. “I brought you a present, Old Man.” He hustled to the F-650, opened the driver’s door and leaned inside. Coming back, he handed Duncan a small paper sack, a clatter sounding as something inside it shifted.

  After testing the bag’s weight, Duncan reached in and said, “Hell is this?”

  “Something you couldn’t have benefitted from last night ... since you were wearing a thick pair of beer goggles.”

  “Glasses?” said Duncan, holding up a half-dozen pairs in different styles and materials and no doubt thicknesses.

  “Sneaky Daymon sent a text message to my sat phone. Mentioned you’re way past due for a new pair.”

  “Yeah, but where’d you get them?”

  “A lost and found here. A junk drawer there. That old house you rescued me and Daymon from ...”

  “Yeah ...”

  “Two pairs in the kitchen drawer there.”

  “Well let’s see. Pardon the pun, of course.” He removed his Aviators and tried on pair after pair, saying, “nope, nope, nope,” after each one that did nothing to fix his near sightedness. Then, getting towards the end of the lot, he tried on a pair with large oval rims and the necessary horizontal line demarking the long distance half of the prescription from the up close viewing part of the lens. He tried them on and fixed his gaze on the vehicles thirty yards distant and then focused farther yet at the very end of the airstrip two football field lengths away. Wow, he thought. Then he peered down at the grass near his feet and could make out the individual blades. Holy hell. “These are going to work just fine. How do I look?”

  Suppressing a smile, Cade heard the song Rocket Man cue up and begin playing in his head. “Great,” he lied.

  Concealed behind the foliage-covered blind, the door to the compound opened with a resonant grating noise of metal on metal. Soon, Daymon, Lev, and Seth, all three dressed in surplus woodland camouflage BDUs circa the late eighties and carrying backpacks and various weapons, emerged from the gloom. Once they’d crossed the dew-laden grass and stood under the Black Hawk’s drooping blades, Seth, whose normal job watching the radios and trail cameras had been recently taken over by Heidi, wished the group good fortune and continued on his way towards the motor pool.

  Duncan snugged his flight helmet on, adjusted his new glasses, and directed a question at Lev. “Is Seth relieving Chief at the road?”

  At first sight of Duncan’s new look, Lev’s eyes bugged. Holding back laughter he said, “Yep,” then bit his lip, nearly drawing blood.

  Testing out his new pair of eyes, Duncan gave the three-man team a visual inspection. “Looks like we got ourselves a ninja and a couple of Cold War-era troops here. Y’all said your goodbyes to your ladies?” He fixed his magnified bloodshot eyes on Cade, who remained stoic and said nothing. Duncan looked at Daymon, who merely nodded an affirmative. “Well shit. Let’s kick the tires and light the fire then.” If I can remember the proper procedure.

  Lev took a seat on the starboard side near a window, donned a flight helmet, and strapped himself in. Peering sidelong across the cabin, he watched Daymon climb aboard and slide the door closed. He cracked a smile as the dreadlocked man battled to tuck his hair into the helmet, finally succeeding just as the turbines overhead coughed to life. After flashing Daymon a thumbs up, Lev closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, asking, in a general way, for his God to see to it that good prevailed over evil.

  From the port-side front seat, Cade watched the kids file into the clearing with Raven and Brook bringing up the rear. He caught Raven’s eye, smiled broadly, and flashed her a thumbs up. He blew a kiss in Brook’s direction and then strapped his helmet on and drew down the smoked visor to hide the welling tears. Then he started the process of shoving all of the things he held dear—anything and everything that might cause a lapse of judgment or a moment’s hesitation—deep into an imaginary vault in the deep recesses of his mind. The dial spun in his mind’s eye and the tumblers clicked and everything and everyone was on
hold for the duration of the mission—or so he hoped.

  As the RPMs spooled up and the blades overhead became a seemingly solid moving disc, Duncan craned around and said, “Mike check?” To which he received a chorus of ‘Copy’s’ and three thumbs up. Satisfied, he pulled pitch and the Black Hawk juddered slightly and left the earth amidst a rising cacophony of sound and the pungent smell of kerosene-tinged exhaust.

  Then, inadvertently blasting the nine upturned faces with rotor wash, Duncan dipped the helo’s nose and began a gradual left-hand turn across the clearing, gaining elevation while positioning the rising morning sun at his six.

  Speaking into his boom mike, Cade said, “Before heading to the airport will you please take us west?”

  “To Huntsville?”

  “No, beyond. I want to see what the Ogden Canyon pass looks like from up here.”

  Duncan said, “I’ve only been as far west as the National Guard roadblock this side of Huntsville. Any guess how much farther the pass is?”

  “According to a sign I saw near the reservoir, Ogden is fifteen miles west of Huntsville. I figure the pass is somewhere in between.”

  Lev entered the conversation. He asked, “What’s at the pass?”

  Cade answered, “I’m not certain. But whatever it is, it’s holding eighty thousand of Ogden’s finest at bay.”

  Duncan said, “Three mikes and you’ll have eyes on the pass,” then, with gloved hands finessing the stick, he finished the turn, straightened the Black Hawk out and resumed level flight, following the two-lane until it disappeared into the verdant forest below. The DHS bird thundered west, and near the burned-out gas station he’d seen earlier, Cade picked up a group of Zs at least thirty strong lurching eastbound. A tick later, the Black Hawk overflew the gawking creatures and then the roadblock and the ditch filled with listing vehicles slid by on their left. Pressing his helmet to the glass, Cade regarded the tangle of charred corpses lining the south side of the raised roadbed and said a second prayer in as many days for the men and women who’d died in service of their country.