A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “Nice work with the bow,” Maddox commented after Daymon had climbed back into Lu Lu. “You grow up hunting?”

  “Yeah, I used to stalk bear and cougar in Idaho... I guess I need to add former humans to that list,” Daymon said as he finessed the clutch and stick and with a clunk coaxed Lu Lu into first gear.

  “That was strange... the demonios in front of us didn’t make any noise,” observed Lopez as Daymon steered his rig around the supine corpses.

  “I figured they couldn’t see us. It’s pretty damn dark under the canopy,” Cade proffered, “but no doubt there are more where they came from.”

  “How would you know Lopez? You were in here on the bitch bump the entire time,” Tice needled.

  “I warned you Spook... I’m tired of this.”

  “Save it for the Zs,” Maddox said, glaring at the bickering duo.

  In less than a minute they arrived at the interchange. Daymon downshifted and took a hard right onto Butte Road which wound uphill disappearing into the darkness. “I can’t see shit,” Daymon blurted.

  “Keep going slow. We’ll be getting out real soon,” Cade said.

  Easing up on the gas Daymon said incredulously, “And walk a mile uphill? The elevation gain is about fifteen hundred feet—that’s an ass kicker.”

  “I noticed some ambient light up on the butte, and since the mansion is the only property up there, that tells me they have a couple of generators running. And if they have electricity, then odds are there are security cameras and motion sensors. Pull over... we’ll go on foot from here,” Cade said. He glanced at Daymon, and though rendered in shades of green, noticed the hangdog look on the man’s face.

  “I have to go with you,” Daymon pressed, desperation evident in his voice.

  “Listen, I’m indebted to you for getting us this far, but you need to leave before more Zs start showing up. Something happened at the river crossing, and from my experience where there are a few Zs there will soon be a lot more.”

  Now that Daymon had painted himself into a corner he finally decided to come clean and tell all about Heidi and the men who shanghaied her from the Silver Dollar. He made it clear that he hoped he would find her alive—and if he didn’t—he would make Robert Christian pay in blood.

  Cade looked at Daymon and paused for a beat, then said, “I’m very sorry to hear about Heidi but I promised President Clay I would bring Robert Christian back to Schriever so he can answer for his crimes. Eventually he will either be hanged or put in front of a firing squad. And from your description of the little bastard who took Heidi against her will, I’m confident that he is the man we have in custody at Schriever.”

  “Promise me you’ll bring her out if she is still alive.”

  “Of course—can you quickly describe her?”

  As they sat in the idling truck, Daymon pulled a photo from the glove box and handed it to Cade, who took a quick look then promptly put it in his breast pocket for safe keeping.

  “The only reason I’m not kicking and screaming... and demanding I go along,” Daymon went on, “is because Duncan spoke so highly of you. I can trust you... right?”

  Cade nodded and slid out of the vehicle, then held the front seat forward until the three operators emerged from the backseat. He pulled Tice aside and held a brief conversation before returning to the Scout. He went around to the driver’s side and passed a portable sat-phone in to Daymon and said, “I will call you either way. You will have closure... I promise. Now git...”

  “How are you getting Christian back to Springs?”

  Cade turned, looking robot-like with the NVG’s four lenses protruding from his eyes. “Don’t worry about us... just get yourself out of here.”

  With that the Delta team crossed the road and like four deadly apparitions melted into the pitch-black tree line.

  ***

  1:55 a.m.

  Daymon turned Lu Lu around then put the transmission in neutral and let gravity power her downhill to the junction.

  At the bottom of the hill he turned right on the Teton Pass Highway and steeled himself for what he might encounter passing through the Valley of the Crosses.

  Chapter 45

  Outbreak - Day 12

  Jackson Hole, Wyoming

  Butte Road Mansion - 1:56 a.m.

  Lucas drained the last few drops of gas into the noisy generator’s tank, then made sure the idle backup generator was also fueled. Good ‘til daybreak, he thought. With a run time of six hours and an output of 10,000 watts, one was more than enough to keep the lights on and in turn keep Robert Christian in his happy space. The second generator was merely insurance to keep him from getting killed.

  He walked the mansion grounds checking the garage, pool house and the two swinging security gates. Lastly, before securing the mansion’s interior he made sure the service door on the east wall was locked.

  Satisfied the perimeter was locked down he climbed the stairs and tried the front door. Locked... for once, a good job Cliff.

  He went in through the open garage, closing the overheads, and accessed the mansion through the mud room.

  After checking in with Cliff, who had three crumpled Red Bull cans sitting on his desk, he passed the master suite to make sure Christian’s door was locked and then completed his lap at the guest house where he found Liam passed out and German porn playing on the flat screen.

  The thought that Paul might have gone back to the Cowboy Bar to retrieve the satellite phone crossed his mind, prompting him to try calling it once more.

  After three rings a man answered.

  “Paul,” Lucas said.

  “Gerald,” a raspy voice replied.

  “Who?” Lucas asked.

  “It’s Gerald... at the Silver Dollar Cowboy Bar and I’m guessing this is your phone.”

  “This is Lucas Brother. Is this the first time its rang since ten o’clock or so?”

  “First time tonight,” Gerald lied with a wide grin creasing his face.

  “Good to hear,” Lucas replied happily. “Hold on to it for me and I’ll be by tomorrow.”

  Gerald continued wiping the bar top and replied, “You’re here every day Mr. Brother. Why would tomorrow be any different?”

  Pissed at being called out on his drinking habits, yet at the same time relieved he wasn’t in Bishop’s dog house, he thumbed off the phone without replying.

  Lucas left Liam drooling on the leather couch and went to his room. The clock read 2:10 a.m. by the time he finally closed his eyes.

  ***

  Valley of the Crosses - 2:45 a.m.

  Daymon grudgingly repeated the same ritual as the day before. He parked Lu Lu in roughly the same spot and grabbed his Maglite and the shotgun and set off on foot. Taking his time and staying close to the barbed wire fence, he walked the bright beam along the rows of decaying bodies, illuminating every crucified person’s final death mask.

  At the end of the mile he found the last cross in the row, standing naked, silently awaiting company.

  During the long walk back to Lu Lu, with the smell of death assaulting his nose, the faces of his Moms and Pop, Heidi and even Hosford Preston ran through his mind’s eye like a chattering old Super 8 movie.

  As he sat inside Lu Lu, in virtually the same depressed state mentally and spiritually that he had spiraled into the moment Cade broke it to him that he would have no shot at retribution—and an even smaller shot at finding Heidi alive—he made up his mind to leave Jackson.

  Punching open the glove box he retrieved the small Thuraya sat-phone Cade had given him and placed it in the change tray between the seats. Then he grabbed the police radio Jenkins had given him and powered it on. He turned the volume up and depressed the talk button. “This is Daymon calling for Chief Jenkins.”

  Static.

  “Fire Chief Bush calling Jenkins...over.”

  “Charlie here.”

  Informal. “I’m getting out of here and I thought I’d touch bases with you while I’m still in range
with this thing.”

  “Well, I dropped in the Silver Dollar earlier and Gerald said I missed you by a couple of hours. Your rig wasn’t at the firehouse and you didn’t answer the radio so I figured I’d stop here and try you one last time.”

  “Where are you?” Daymon asked.

  “I’m on 22 at the pass.”

  “Shit, I’m a few minutes from there. I’m in the valley and just spent the last hour looking for Heidi.”

  “Watch yourself down there... the dead breached the barrier a couple of hours ago... don’t know exactly when they’ll be here... but they are coming.”

  “Did you warn Gerald and the other prisoners—Essentials—whatever they’re calling them these days?”

  “I only gave a heads up to the good guys... the ones who deserved it. Pissed me off seeing Bishop and some of his mercenaries heading for the airport. Saving their own skin I guess. Now let’s see if we can’t save ourselves. So quit yappin’ and get up here—now.”

  “I’m on my way,” Daymon said. He put the police radio aside and retrieved the mini sat-phone Cade had given him. He closed his eyes and slowly tumbled the phone in his hand, willing the thing to ring.

  Chapter 46

  Outbreak - Day 12

  Grand Junction Airport

  Grand Junction, Colorado - 2:45 a.m.

  An artillery-like boom rattled the windows, waking Taryn from her deep sleep. While the thunderclap echoed off the surrounding red cliffs and liquid bullets battered the all glass terminal, she struggled to grasp reality.

  In her dream she had been getting another tattoo—her seventh—this time across her taut stomach. And of all things, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse atop fire breathing steeds, with Death in the foreground, holding by the hair a human head strongly resembling hers.

  Behind her, the door rattled in its frame.

  She glanced hesitantly over her shoulder at the filmed over window, where Dickless stood, alabaster face pressed to the glass, reptile-like eyes following her every move. Shaking off sleep she lifted her shirt and glanced with relief at the still blank canvas that had seemed so realistically inked moments ago.

  Just the momentary flash of skin caused her former boss to bang against the door fervently. In fact, Dick had been a leerer of the first degree before he received his comeuppance; therefore, Taryn wasn’t at all surprised to see that his undead alter-ego also had a staring problem.

  “Go away perv,” she said, waving the revolver at the rotting corpse. Tomorrow, she thought darkly, was going to be payback time.

  She rolled onto her side facing away and closed her eyes, pretending he wasn’t there.

  The banging intensified.

  Taryn sat upright and felt around in the dark for the gun.

  The hissing resumed.

  Her fingers brushed the checkered wooded grips. She pulled the thingy so the cylinder would flip out and one more time counted the bullets. There were six. A machine gun it was not, so all six had to count if she was to have any chance of escaping the terminal.

  ***

  The House - 2:45 a.m.

  Though the four soldiers of the Delta team were in their early to mid-thirties and physically fit, the hump up the steep southwest face of the butte, weighed down with body armor, extra magazines, and the various other tools essential to modern war fighting, had been an ass kicker of the highest order.

  Cade, who had been out of the teams for a number of months before the dead began to walk, was probably the least conditioned of the team. Still catching his breath from the arduous climb, he lay on his stomach in the tall grass and glassed the compound.

  Ten-foot tall stucco walls ringed the entire landscaped property.

  The mansion and outbuildings were illuminated brightly and a generator hummed away somewhere in the distance.

  “I see three camera domes. One on the post adjacent to the gate and one on each corner,” Maddox said, targeting them with the laser attached to his SCAR. “I have a feeling we are going to encounter the same setup in back.”

  “Motion sensors?” Cade inquired.

  Herding a stray lock of sandy blonde hair back under his helmet Maddox answered, “With all of the wild game in this area, having sensors outside the wall wouldn’t make sense.”

  Cade pulled the binoculars down to look at Maddox and said, “Inside?”

  “A crib this size—most definitely,” Maddox said, nodding his head. “Whether they have them activated is anyone’s guess.”

  “Lopez... Tice… you two disable the generator and eliminate anyone who comes to investigate. As soon as the lights go out we go in the front door.”

  “Copy that,” Tice and Lopez said in unison. Then the two operators backed away into the tree line and set off around the western wall in search of the thrumming engine.

  With Maddox shadowing him, Cade faded into the woods and loped off to the east, the SCAR’s green laser bobbing drunkenly with every footfall.

  They crossed the asphalt road that wound uphill from the junction below, then continued another fifty meters around the perimeter, staying in the tree line until Cade halted and took a knee. “There,” he said, painting the inset wooden door with his laser. “And there and there... cameras.”

  “Lopez, how copy?” Cade said into his throat mic.

  “Good copy,” Lopez replied.

  Cade checked his watch. Three minutes had elapsed since the team split into two separate elements. “Situation report?”

  “We’ve located the generator... one hundred meters to the north between the garage and the outer wall. Give us five mikes,” Lopez answered.

  “Copy that,” was Cade’s monotone response.

  As the five minute mark neared Maddox stood poised with his lock gun at the ready.

  Cade’s laser dot skittered on the lens of the closest security camera.

  ***

  “Go time,” Lopez said as the timer hit five minutes.

  The silenced M4 chugged twice as Tice put two rounds into the nearby security camera. A spritz of blue electricity arced from its shattered black cover. He targeted the second dome at his two o’clock, destroying it as well.

  “Cameras down,” Tice intoned.

  Lopez bolted from the woods, crouched by the wall, and brought his SCAR up to cover the Spook’s advance.

  Tice shifted the M4 on its sling, securing it behind his back, and at a dead run crossed the open ground between the woods and the wall; then, squatting with his back pressed against the stucco and his fingers laced together stirruplike, Tice provided Lopez a leg-up, propelling the diminutive Delta operator atop the wall.

  While laying lengthwise on his stomach, left arm and leg gripping the wall—a move learned by every soldier early on in basic training—Lopez reached down and with strength that belied his size helped Tice surmount the obstacle.

  Both men dropped to the other side and scurried to a patch of shadow, rifles at the ready.

  Lopez looked to the north. Two good sized generators sat roughly twenty feet in front of him, humming away, next to the biggest multi-car garage he had ever seen. Though not as tall, the building had a footprint the size of a small airplane hangar, and with eight ornately decorated roll up doors looked like it could accommodate a fleet of vehicles.

  He padded down the ten foot wide breezeway between the outer wall and garage and knelt next to the generators, one running, and one silent.

  Tice followed silently keeping an eye on their six, and anticipating the impending blackout lowered his NVGs.

  “Killing the lights,” Lopez said.

  “Copy that,” Cade replied from the other side of the property.

  Lopez drew his Gerber Mark-II combat knife and deftly sliced the gas line on the running unit, plunging the mansion and its entire perimeter into full black. He flipped his goggles down, and then for good measure cut the other gas line and yanked the spark plug wires from both generators, pitching them onto the garage roof.

  ***

  Wh
en the courtyard lights went out, Maddox attacked the lock. With only a pair of heavy duty Schlage deadbolts and no other surprises on the inside, the thick wooden door proved easy enough to penetrate. It brought him great relief that the security here was nothing like that at the CDC in Atlanta. Maybe the macho movie star really believed he was as capable of kicking ass as the persona he portrayed on the big screen. At any rate, the man couldn’t hold a candle to Chuck Norris, Maddox mused.

  “Blow the charges,” Cade ordered.

  Maddox pulled both detonators from his pocket, quickly armed them, and flicked the switches at once.

  Deadly consequences stemmed from that simple act. Maddox thought briefly about the two men manning the Engagement Control Station, a school bus-sized trailer that had just been subjected to the explosive power of two pounds of C4. He had also rigged the generator, antenna mast and radar array set, all essential components of the air defense system, each with half as much of the malleable plastic explosive. He liked to see things go boom and was known to be thorough when it came to demolitions. That the Patriot systems operators were now incinerated was a certainty.

  While Maddox had been secreting his explosives, Lopez had been on a covert bike tour of the Jackson Elk Refuge. He planted similar C4 charges on the four remote launching stations, each containing four—fifteen hundred pound— Patriot surface-to-air missiles whose solid rocket propellant and two-hundred pound warheads were now cooking off. The muted secondary explosions, sounding like train cars coupling at a rail yard, rolled over the butte.

  ***

  Tapping the monitor with a knuckle, Cliff tried to get the display to refresh. He had seen the whole panel go black before but never patchwork style like this. In the time it took his tired mind to come to the realization that the closed circuit cameras had either been tampered with (which he deemed highly unlikely) or had suffered some kind of interference from the generator, the overhead light flickered off and the entire panel in front of him went dark.

  “Oh damnit,” he muttered as he fumbled around for a flashlight, but instead spilled his last treasured bag of Cheetos. The same family size bag he had been rationing for the better half of the day.