Never taking his eyes from the ground below, Sergeant Maddox queried, “Why aren’t they deploying drones for this TMZ overflight? If they did, then we wouldn’t be hovering over Chernobyl getting unwarranted x-rays.”
Ari interrupted. “You bozos think I would fry my balls so you all can get some digital shots?”
“Misery loves company,” Cade replied grimly.
“The pilot is correct,” Tice said reassuringly, patting his portable rad meter. “If this baby was humming I assure you I would have barged up there and taken the stick myself.”
“Over my dead body... tough guy!” Ari jokingly spat back.
“Calm down Night Stalker,” Tice said, suppressing a grin. “I wouldn’t want to get between an aviator and his stick.”
The Ghost Hawk’s comms crackled with laughter, and that was the best medicine for men going into harm’s way against an unknown foe.
Ari spurred the bird on. Taking the airspeed beyond 100 knots, he pointed her on a westward heading towards the towering Rocky Mountains and the New American enclave that lay beyond.
Tice lowered the Nikon lens, silently hoping the topic of drone aircraft wouldn’t be revisited any time soon. If it did, he was certain his input would not be well received.
Chapter 13
Outbreak - Day 11
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Jackson Firehouse
Daymon awoke to a new day of the apocalypse. His knees still ached from running several miles in heavy thick soled boots and his body felt like a side of beef worked over by Rocky Balboa.
Though he didn’t know what day of the week it was, somehow in the back of his mind he remembered that he was back in Jackson Hole, and in a near state of panic, with the nagging feeling that he had overslept hovering on the periphery of conscious thought, he bolted from the bed. He knew that in order to escape Chief Kyle’s wrath, and possibly a week’s worth of kitchen duty, he had to be dressed and down the pole before the transgression could be logged and duly noted. As he rifled through his closet for a fresh uniform, he shrugged off the shroud of sleep. In the next instant the realization that he was alone in the firehouse, and Chief Kyle and the guys were gone and probably never coming back, struck him full force.
Daymon quelled the impulse to scratch the four vertical gashes. Instead he gently plucked at the cotton tee shirt which had fused to the discharge during the night. The wounds he had suffered going over the wire at Schriever two days prior were starting to knit and itched like hell and his abdomen, still viciously red and hot to the touch, needed attention. First Aid was the furthest thing from his mind as he trotted off towards the bathroom to relieve his full bladder.
After a three minute piss he washed his hands thoroughly then opened the medicine cabinet perched above the sink looking for something with which to clean and dress his wounds. He spotted just what the doctor ordered tucked away behind a couple of canisters of Barbasol shaving cream. Perfect. The unmistakable brown plastic bottle with the white cap sat right next door to a full tube of Neosporin antibiotic ointment.
As he studied his wounds in the mirror, he asked himself, Are you sure you want to go through with this? Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he doused the infected gashes running from his navel to just below his sternum with half of the bottle’s contents.
“Motherfucker...” he gasped between pursed lips. “That shit stings.” He gritted his teeth, letting the invasive foaming napalm do its thing for a couple of minutes. The pain was so intense he envisioned the piranha-toothed creature from Alien about to burst from his gut.
After allowing the hydrogen peroxide to bubble in the wounds for as long as he could stand, he wiped away the foamy yellow pus and slathered on a liberal amount of the antibiotic ointment. Then, grimacing through more pain, he labored to pull a clean black tee shirt on over his dreadlocks.
Walking gingerly he made his way to the brass pole where for a New York second he lingered, entertaining the crazy notion of taking the fast way down. Pole or stairs? he asked himself. Since he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of the pole contacting his chest all the way to the first floor, he picked the latter; then, after trudging down thirty-four stairs, he paused at ground level, light headed and winded.
Never before had a handful of simple tasks caused him to expend so much energy. Hell, he thought, that was the first time he had ever gone down the stairs empty handed. Only a couple of instances came to mind: once after he tweaked a knee jumping from a perfectly good airplane and the other time after he sprained his ankle tripping over a root while fighting a back country wildfire.
While Daymon wolfed down a cold can of Chef Boyardee raviolis, he allowed his mind to drift back to the fateful sundrenched Saturday when he left Jackson Hole. The day had started off on a bad note with Chief Kyle hunting him down, then rousing him out of bed and going ballistic on him (which was at least a once a day occurrence in the firehouse) over a formal ‘Request for Leave’ chit that Daymon had sneaked into his in-box the day before.
A rash of shit over a leave request was to be expected—especially in the middle of summer—but his tirade had been one for the books—until the Chief paused, face flushed, and said “Yes.”
Daymon remembered scraping his jaw from the floor and the Chief’s next action — which still baffled him to this day.
The Chief tossed him the keys to the mint green BLM Forest Service Suburban that had been recently retired and was destined for public auction. “Just fucking with you, take the old Suburban. She’s parked out back,” Kyle had said with a sly smile. “Shit, the color might even trick you into thinking you’re driving your Lu Lu.”
“I doubt that Chief... but thanks for the wheels,” Daymon had replied. He was taken aback to say the least, to the point that he had contemplated pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t still asleep. Though the fire season up to then had been an unusually slow one, he still hadn’t expected to hear the one word that up until that morning rarely came out of the Chief’s mouth. But before the last consonant rolled from Chief Kyle’s tongue he was up and halfway dressed.
“And Daymon...”
“Yeah Chief.” Here it comes, Daymon thought. This other shoe that’s about to drop oughta fit Shaquille O’Neal.
“Keep your phone on. In case the big one happens... I want to be able to get ahold of you and reel you back in,” Chief Kyle said prophetically.
Daymon shouldered his pack before saying, “You got it Chief... thanks again.”
As the iron door sealed off the last few inches of daylight he remembered hearing Chief Kyle yell at his back, “Give your Moms a hug for me.”
He left without acknowledging Kyle’s last order. He didn’t want to hang around lest the mental sadist was playing some cruel joke and planned on revoking the liberty pass. He left Jackson Hole with a sense of serenity (a rare occurrence for him.) He had been known to say, “My mind is like a bad neighborhood, I go to visit, but I try to keep my visits short.” Leaving with the knowledge that the Chief hadn’t really been angry made it easier to reconcile the survivor’s guilt that had been festering within him since he first heard about the entire crew’s one way journey to Idaho Falls. The fact that there had been no further communication from them didn’t bode well. Little did Daymon know at the time, but his growing the cajones to actually ask for the leave to see his mom in Utah, coinciding with Chief Kyle having a rare good day, were the two things that saved his life.
That Saturday had been the world’s final normal day.
Chapter 14
Outbreak - Day 11
Winter’s Compound
Eden, Utah
Camera 6 tripped first, its electronic alarm warbled loudly and grabbing the attention of anyone within earshot of the compound’s security center. Seth reached across the desk and lowered the volume, spilling his bottled water in the process.
“Motherf...” he reined in the eff bomb just in time.
“What do you have?” Logan cried, ducking
his head as he burst into the low ceilinged room.
“I was just getting there and this—”
Logan cut him off. “Forget about the water... what do you see on the monitor?”
“There’s not a cloud in the sky, so the capture is pretty washed out from the sunlight.... Let me try something...” Seth fiddled with the contrast until the grainy image on the flat panel resembled two people walking side by side in the direction of the concealed airstrip. “Oh no! How in the fuck did they get inside the fence line?”
Lev burst through the door, went to a knee, and peered over Seth’s shoulder as the room filled with the sounds of clomping boots and excited voices all chattering in tense, clipped syntax.
Though the image on the monitor was less than perfect it was evident one of the bipeds captured by the digital game camera was missing an arm.
“We’ve got rotters!” Lev bellowed.
Seth snatched up his radio. “Come in Gus. Camera 6 just picked up movement. Be careful... looks like we have rotters inside the perimeter.” He released the transmit button and waited for a response.
Nothing.
He tried again. “Gus... this is Seth, if you cannot talk click your mic.”
Click. Click.
Lev and Logan exchanged knowing looks.
***
Gus smelled carrion riding the air just moments before Seth’s frantic voice came through his earpiece. Not wanting to give himself away he ignored the call and remained silent. His first thought was that a lone straggler, a crawler or maybe a child zombie had somehow wormed its way through or under the barbed wire and tripped the nearby trail camera.
Once again, but with more urgency, Seth’s voice invaded his earpiece confirming there were rotters inside the fence.
Gus acknowledged what he already knew by clicking the transmit button on the two-way radio twice then continued scanning the forest floor twelve feet below for the source of the stench.
The well concealed two-person tree stand was in a copse of trees overlooking both the gravel road that connected with State Route-39 roughly two miles to the north, and the primitive airstrip bisecting the lush green meadow in front of him. For a brief moment he entertained the idea of climbing down and scouting on foot, then, remembering the wandering packs of rotters he witnessed tearing people alive in Salt Lake City he wisely decided to stay put.
Gus pressed the Bushnells to his eyes and glassed the clearing in the foreground. Then he panned along the tree line beyond where the compound’s entrance was hidden and continued on to the right scrutinizing the single engine Cessnas and the two helicopters secreted under the canopy at the forests edge. With no walkers in sight he set the binoculars aside and fetched his LaRue Tactical M4. Chambered for the 5.56 NATO round and outfitted with an Eotech close quarter battle holographic sight with a flip down 3x magnifier, it was a perfect all-purpose weapon.
Ironically, Gus had liberated the rifle from its last owner a few miles south of Arsenal, Utah, moments after Dispatch in Salt Lake City had gone eerily quiet. He had just fled the National Guard’s temporary triage center and the hastily erected FEMA shelters, both of which were overwhelmed with dead and dying, and had driven a few miles down I-15 when he made his final traffic stop.
***
The thirty-eight-year-old Salt Lake Sheriff pulled his cruiser alongside the parked Ford F-350 to perform a welfare check.
The truck was the same type of gun rack-equipped obscenely lifted 4x4 nearly every male in rural Utah owned or aspired to own one day.
Unfortunately the driver had already been infected and was beyond help, so with Glock drawn Gus opened the driver door, being careful to stay out of the male zombie’s reach. Being a full thirty pounds lighter and a head shorter than the infected creature, he didn’t want to get anywhere near its grabby hands and snapping teeth.
As the zombie fought and struggled to get to the meat, Gus went around and leaned in the passenger side and with the pointed end of his telescoping baton unlatched the good ol’ boy’s seatbelt. Before that day, he never thought he’d use the baton for anything other than ruining knees or elbows or skulls—anything he had to do in order to gain submission from unruly bad guys.
As soon as the belt popped the two-hundred-and-fifty pound monster slid off of the slick leather seat and hit the blacktop face first with a resonant snap. By the time Gus had closed the passenger door, the lurching, beer bellied cadaver was already up and stalking him around the truck.
Gus steadied his Glock on the truck’s side mirror and methodically put two rounds into the center of the creature’s already cratered face. Then, instead of returning to his patrol car, he took the dead man’s Ford and his customized rifle and continued north to SR-39 then East to Eden, Utah.
That day it seemed like someone or something was directing his actions. Like he was a marionette and fate was pulling the strings.
Some called it divine intervention—others called it desertion.
***
Heavy footsteps combined with the firecracker like reports of snapping branches brought Gus back from his ten second journey to the past. He flicked up the 3x magnifier, tucked the rifle into his shoulder, and sighted on the spot where he guessed the culprit or culprits would emerge.
The one armed walker bulled its way into the clearing beneath the tree stand. The flesh on its remaining arm and legs bore deep lacerations from its one-sided battle with the thorn studded undergrowth. As Gus watched from above, the creature abruptly stopped and cocked its head like a dog. Then after swaying in place for a few seconds, apparently hearing something that Gus didn’t, the one armed walker altered course and staggered off into the forest, moaning as it went.
***
In an identical tree stand near the far eastern edge of the property close to SR-39, Glenn Sampson, a forty-year-old former ski instructor from Park City, Utah, stood watch, listening to a pair of crows cawing overhead bickering like an old married couple.
Seth’s voice, sounding stressed and nervous, crackled from the two way radio. “Rotters are coming your way and there are too many to count... better stay in the stand.”
No shit. “Roger that,” Sampson said. “Can we get some help out here?”
“They’re two minutes out.”
“Well tell them to fuckin’ hurry—I can already smell the rotters.”
The noisy birds went silent.
Sampson poked his head through the square cutout serving as a window.
Gasping for air, two men, one obviously helping the other along, wormed their way through the shadow filled underbrush.
Sampson shouldered his AR-15 and tracked them briefly before they melted back into the forest. Holy shit... those weren’t rotters, Sampson thought to himself.
Just then, the smaller trees near the road began to quiver and sway. The moans and groans began, followed by what sounded to Sampson like a herd of blind elephants making their way up the slight rise from the fence line bordering the road below.
Then he detected engine sounds in the distance—like one or more vehicles were on the move, heading south on SR-39.
The moans and breaking twigs and rustling leaves rose to a crescendo as the rotters emerged from the forest all at once. Clearly the uphill battle with Mother Nature had taken a toll. Weeping purple fissures covered every exposed inch on their bodies. Still they continued on, trudging lockstep in unfaltering pursuit of their quarry with only one thing on their collective minds—fresh meat.
***
“Alert everyone and make sure you break out weapons for all of the adults,” Logan barked as he absentmindedly twirled his black handlebar mustache, something he did when he was under a great deal of stress.
As soon as the order left Logan’s mouth a symphony of electronic alarms sounded as the remaining game cameras concealed around the perimeter tripped in rapid succession.
Seth darted his eyes over the eight separate camera feeds displayed on the monitor, and after a few seconds said frantica
lly, “We have rotters infiltrating from the northeast corner, the east perimeter near thirty-nine, and from the south. The cameras west and north near the entrance are still quiet.” And I hope they stay that way, he thought. The idea of rotters and possibly bad guys with guns fully encircling the compound stood the hairs on his neck at attention.
“Just walkers?” Logan queried.
Seth pressed his face closer to the flat panel scrutinizing each individual pane. “As far as I can tell, but it’s hard to tell from these images... at least none of them appear to be armed.”
“Especially not this guy,” Lev cracked, tapping the feed from camera six.
“The rotter’s still got one arm, smartass,” Seth shot back.
“Come on Lev... not now,” Logan added as he snatched half a dozen Motorola radios off of the shelf near Seth’s head. “Who’s on security?”
Seth answered, “Sampson and Gus are in the stands. Jamie and Jordan are on the ground.”
As he passed the handful of two-way radios to Lev, Logan said, “Here... distribute these and grab me a rifle.” Then twirling his ‘stache like a propeller, he added, “Who said it was OK for Jamie to take Jordan out there with her—considering the dirtbags we just killed? And Jordan is as green as they come.”
“Jamie’s a big girl. She knows the score. Don’t worry Logan... Chief and the rest of his quick reaction force should be topside in a moment,” said Lev, trying to reassure his friend who had done a poor job of keeping his crush on Jamie under the radar. “Besides, if it’s just a few rotters Jamie can handle them with one of her foliage-covered arms tied behind her back.”
The mere thought of his favorite woman dressed head to toe in her ghillie suit brought a brief smile to Logan’s face.
“Seth... go get my brother. I don’t care what he says, or how much he argues with you... and he will argue. Just make sure he comes back here with you,” Logan said as he took the taller man’s post.
A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 9
