Before long a disheveled looking first-turn stumbled from the narrow alley separating the diner and the adjacent used book store. Meanwhile, movement from the opposite side of the street drew Cade’s gaze as a trio of shamblers emerged through the destroyed double doors of a thoroughly looted mom and pop grocery store. Broken glass crunched underfoot with each unsteady step as they plodded into the sunlight, their milky eyes searching for fresh meat.
Adding to Cade’s welcoming committee, a handful of flesh eaters materialized from the buildings and side streets a block distant. The morning sun at their backs cast long swaggering shadows, further exaggerating their slow and steady advance.
This situation that Cade had purposefully gotten himself into reminded him of a scene straight out of an old spaghetti western complete with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly theme song playing on a repeating loop in his mind. He was Clint and the desperados were closing in.
He took a mental inventory of the approaching dead, prioritizing each one based on its proximity to him, and what kind of cover he had to fall back on if the need arose.
Who needs a kill house for live fire practice, he mused.
Two twists secured the suppressor to his Glock 17. He didn’t mind the extra weight attached to the pistol. In fact, it served to keep down muzzle climb and helped lessen recoil caused by the slide jacking back after each discharge.
In effect, the can turned the polymer semi-automatic pistol—already a natural extension of the Delta shooter’s arm—into a near silent, yet still, deadly accurate weapon.
In his peripheral vision he perceived the undead trio that had emerged from the grocery store nearing the Ford’s passenger side. However, since the dead woman from the alley was nearly at his door, she would have to be dealt with first.
After double checking to make sure the Glock was locked and loaded—which had become the gold standard in the new post-apocalyptic world—he powered down the window and drew a bead between the walker’s lifeless eyes.
“You look like hell, lady,” he said as the Glock popped once. A pink mist haloed the monster’s head and it crashed to the asphalt, limbs askew. The shell casing bounced on the road a couple of times then rolled out of sight.
“I’ll be right back. Lock the doors and keep away from the windows,” he would remember to tell them.
He sprang from the cab, banged the door shut, and for good measure put another 9mm bullet into the Z’s temple. As he stepped over the ghoul’s splayed-out body, he made himself a mental note—always double tap. Then, like clockwork, the adrenaline surged from his adrenal gland as the fight or flight urge took over, and like energy transiting water, the naturally-occurring stimulant pulsed through his trunk and limbs, snapping him into what his instructors at Fort Benning referred to as ‘the zone.’ And as he consciously checked and calmed his breathing, time seemed to slow down, and his surroundings and the emerging threats around him snapped into acute focus.
Crabbing sideways in a combat crouch, he rounded the front of the truck, went to one knee, and waited in ambush for the first of the trudging trio to make his Glock’s acquaintance. As he held the pistol steady in a two handed grip, he could feel heat emanating from the Ford’s ticking engine—warm on the right side of his face and forearm. A sudden eddy of wind tinged with carrion and heated motor oil blasted his nose, causing him to screw his face up in disgust. A heartbeat later a pair of scuffed Nikes shuffled into view under the front bumper, followed closely by the rest of the lurching creature. Cade lined up the front and rear sights, focused on the soft fleshy spot underneath the creature’s chin, and caressed the trigger, sending two 9mm Parabellum slugs screaming upward. Hot shell casings pinged off the grill and ricocheted across his face as the one-two punch lifted the Z off the ground and deposited it into the other two walking corpses.
Failure to feed, Cade thought to himself as he simultaneously dropped the suppressed Glock and withdrew the black combat dagger from the sheath strapped to his right thigh. While keeping a low center of gravity and distributing his weight evenly on the balls of his feet, he waited patiently with the razor sharp Gerber clutched in his right hand. He envisioned Raven, sitting wide-eyed and vulnerable in the truck alongside Brook, who would be clutching her M4 carbine ready to use if he should fall to the dead. He wasn’t being chauvinist by insisting his family remain inside the vehicle. He merely wanted a little insurance when push finally came to shove—because if somehow he and Brook got into trouble and both became infected, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Raven would not survive a day outside the wire by herself—she just wasn’t ready yet.
Two in front, six to go, he thought to himself, keeping the running commentary going in his head.
He paused for a beat to allow the nearest walkers time to regain their footing, and then he mounted a frontal assault. Sunlight glinted off the ten-inch blade as it flashed forward and up, producing a wet sucking sound as it pierced the first ghoul through the eye socket. Cold fingers grazed his wrist as the pale creature went limp and slid from the deadly weapon.
Momentarily ignoring the half dozen creatures still the better part of a block away, he focused fully on the immediate threat to the front—an overweight Z encumbered by a hanging beer gut and a swinging pair of pallid D-cup sized man boobs.
He shifted the Gerber to his left hand and reached for the butt of his backup pistol with the other. Truth be told, since training exhaustively in the Delta kill house at Fort Bragg—shooting with each hand from every conceivable position and angle—he had no equal when it came to pistol marksmanship.
Seeing as how the compact Glock already had one in the pipe and its safety was integral to the trigger, all that was left for him to do was aim and work the trigger.
The booming reports from the 19 were like night and day compared to the suppressed Glock 17 which he had purposefully dropped to the blacktop by the truck’s left front fender. Two bullets travelling at thirteen hundred feet per second cut a V in Man Boob’s forehead, and in an explosion of white bone and greasy hair, peeled his cranium up and away. The resulting rooster tail of gray matter squelched to the ground in a wide arc as the corpse collapsed forward, coming to rest face down at the Delta operator’s feet.
“Double tap,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his upper lip. “Does the trick every time.”
He straightened up, and feeling a little cocky, bellowed, “Who is next?” He stepped over the cold bodies, trying to decide how he wanted to tackle the remaining six Zs. Test out the truck or use the pistol?
He decided to finish the exercise with the thirteen rounds remaining in the compact Glock. He closed the distance, firing as he walked, and after dinging the first two with clean head shots, he dropped the magazine which still held nine shells. Then, with the Zs but a few steps away, he pulled a fresh magazine from the Fobus double mag holder clipped to his belt, slapped it in the well, and released the slide. With the semi-automatic in a two-handed grip, he dropped to one knee and walked fire from right to left. In three and a half seconds he had discharged eight rounds from his Glock, giving each of the remaining Zs a vicious double tap and a much needed second final death.
In less than five minutes, on a lonely road in sleepy Yoder, Colorado, he had answered his own nagging doubts with a solid solo performance. The perceived rust that had accumulated during the fifteen months while he had been away from running hot ops with his Delta unit had been scoured away, and with only his life, and no one else’s on the line, he had passed his own impromptu Q course.
Wyatt’s back, he told himself as he kneeled to retrieve the suppressed Glock and magazine from where he had discarded them.
Once he was back inside the truck, he punched open the glove box and extracted the Thuraya satellite phone, stabbed out ten digits and placed the receiver to his ear.
Chapter 4
Outbreak - Day 15
Near Victor, Idaho
The two-story clapboard house rested on a flat plat of land at the end o
f a rutted gravel drive that ran downhill about the length of a football field to the asphalt two lanes that joined up with State Highway 33 a quarter of a mile away.
The turn of the century affair was in dire need of a new coat of white. Several rundown outbuildings dotted the property, and a number of rusting cars waged a losing battle against the elements on the upslope behind the old farmhouse.
On the west side of the property, a picket of conifers stood guard between the house and SH-33 connecting the Teton Pass nine miles to the southeast and Victor, Idaho five miles to the northwest.
With his saucer-sized belt buckle scraping against the pitted porcelain kitchen sink, former Jackson Hole Chief of Police Charlie Jenkins leaned over the overflowing mess of dirty dishes. He parted the yellowed curtains, allowing a shaft of morning sun to splash across the knotty pine table, brightening the drab cramped space. He pressed the binoculars to his face and scanned the asphalt road that ran perpendicular to the gate at the end of the gravel driveway. Nothing.
Thankfully the feeder road hadn’t seen any zombies since they’d arrived at the house two days prior. He shifted his gaze to the highway. “Goddamnit!” he exclaimed. Another large pack of the rotten beasts, numbering more than fifty he guessed, shambled along the road heading towards Victor.
“Whatcha got out there Charlie?”
Jenkins flinched and let the curtain fall back into place. Then he whipped around, instinctively with his gun hand near the butt of his holstered pistol.
“You’ve gotta cut that shit out, Daymon,” Jenkins said. “You can’t keep sneaking up on a fella like that. Good way to get yourself killed.”
“You’ve been pretty jumpy last couple a days, Charlie. It’s a good thing that pistola didn’t clear leather,” the dreadlocked man replied, nodding towards the lawman’s black Sig Sauer. “If it did, I’d have to ask you to cut back on the coffee and donuts.”
“Cop joke... very funny. I haven’t slept but a few minutes here and there since I left Jackson. Hell, I could use some caffeine right about now. And a big fat maple bar would be heaven.”
“That makes two of us,” Daymon replied. “What kinda bed and breakfast they running here anyway? Coming down from upstairs I expected I’d be walking headlong into the wonderful aroma of bacon and country gravy.”
Jenkins chuckled. “Yeah, I wish these folks hadn’t of cleaned out their pantry before they vamoosed. Not much you can whip up with chicken noodle soup, evaporated milk, and pumpkin pie filling.” He removed his prescription Aviators and pulled a microfiber wipe from his breast pocket. “What the hell am I gonna do when this square of fabric wears out?” he mumbled, giving each lens a thorough wipe. “’Cause I don’t think China’s gonna be pumping these things out anytime soon.”
Daymon said nothing. He could care less about China or Charlie’s second pair of eyes. He just crossed his arms and leaned back against the long dead refrigerator.
“OK, let’s cut the small talk and get down to brass tacks,” Jenkins said. He replaced his glasses, pushed them back onto his nose and shot Daymon a no nonsense look. “How’s Heidi— have you gotten her to eat yet?”
“A little soup, but that’s all. Swallowing seems to be her biggest problem,” he answered slowly.
“Daymon... she needs to eat,” Charlie said, concern creeping into his gravelly voice. “That little lady of yours won’t get her strength back if she doesn’t. And we won’t be able to go anywhere until she can get along on her own. Hell... it’d be even better if she could handle a pistol—or that crossbow of yours. You and I could carry the carbines I took off the NA guards.”
“Yesterday she lifted her head and I noticed her eyes trackin’ me around the room,” Daymon replied, trying to change the subject. “I figure that’s a step in the right direction. Whether she can travel soon is debatable. And she’s pretty messed up mentally... she barely lets me touch her.” He flashed a tight smile that did not go unnoticed by Jenkins.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Based on my experience, victims who have been through what your girl endured all react differently. Some bounce back right away. But most do withdraw for a time. I’m sure she’ll come around. You and I both know she’s been through a lot... just gotta give it some time,” Jenkins said reassuringly.
“The whole thing feels strange... that’s all. It’s like she doesn’t see me most of the time. She practically looks right through me,” Daymon said with a pinched voice.
“Sorry son,” Jenkins said softly. “How has she been sleeping?”
“Not well…” Daymon replied, gazing towards the hall. Straining to hear any sound coming from upstairs, he pinned his dreads behind his ears, wincing noticeably as he did so. “She wakes up a lot... nightmares.”
Jenkins hefted the field glasses and resumed scanning the road below. “How are you doing Daymon... are those gashes on your chest still red and hot to the touch?”
“Yeah, and I’m getting sick of them tearing open damn near every time I sit up quick or make any sudden movements. It’s been a frickin week and the things are still leaking that green and yellow shit. When do you think it’s bound to heal?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Jenkins said. He paused for a long while, like he was contemplating something very serious. Daymon could almost hear gears turning in the former police chief’s head as he watched the balding man watching the dead down on the highway. “Your wounds are not healing,” Jenkins added. “And that could become a real problem down the road—perhaps a lethal problem. I think we ought to stay here at least a couple more days. Be better so the both of you can rest up some more. Do a little healing... if you know what I mean.”
Daymon moved a step closer and slid a chair from under the kitchen table. “No, I’m not following,” he intoned. Then, spinning the sturdy chair around so that its back faced his chest, he took a seat and leaned forward, arms folded, and stared intently at Jenkins. “I’m getting real sick and tired of sitting here in this mothball-smelling house and eating cold soup while you watch those things march by. What the hell are you afraid of, Charlie?”
Jenkins sighed. “I’m afraid of us getting stuck out there with you at half speed and this old man who is slowing down by the second having to pick up the slack. And this mothball-smelling house that you picked out… It has kept us warm at night and out of sight and alive for the last two days. And as long as we don’t do anything stupid that will draw one of those herds up here, we can stay as long as we want.”
“I don’t like how that sounds, Jenkins... you’re allowing yourself to get too comfortable. I do not want to stay here. I want to get to Eden where I know there are good people, where I don’t have to look at dead folk hanging from a cross.” He looked at the floor again, trying to determine how much of the information he had just received via the Thuraya satellite phone he should divulge. Finally he decided to offer up the Cliff’s Notes version. “I got a call from my friend Cade a little while ago. He’s the soldier guy I was trapped with in the farmhouse in Utah. Not unlike this farmhouse.”
Jenkins perked up. “The same guy who stuck a gun in your face?”
“Yeah... did it more than once.” Daymon grimaced at the memory.
“With friends like that…” Jenkins muttered.
“He’s a good guy,” Daymon insisted. “He said he was calling from Colorado Springs and then he gave me the GPS coordinates to the compound.”
“So if the call went through, then that means the satellite network is still up and running. And if it is, then the GPS in the cruiser should still work.”
Daymon eyed the keys to the Tahoe. “I’m ready to go five minutes ago.”
Jenkins lowered the binoculars. “Patience,” he said, looking the younger man in the eye.
“Alright Chief, I’m good with us staying here another day or so,” Daymon conceded. “But that’s it.” He stared at the floor with his dreadlocks hanging around his face. After a beat he looked up and again locked eyes with Jenkins. “Now
that I know exactly where in Utah the compound is, I want to get Heidi there as soon as possible.”
“Before we move on you’re going to need some antibiotics, or by the time Heidi can travel, you are gonna be laid up and about as useful to me and her as tits on a boar.”
“Sounds like something my Daddy woulda said...”
“I’m just saying. You can’t mess with the little itty bitty bugs because they will multiply and put you down for the count.” His face hardened and he added in a low voice. “Maybe kill you if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“The compound is only a half-day’s drive from here,” Daymon pleaded.
“Listen, Daymon, I’m not going to argue with you, but if you take a turn for the worse you’ll be taking chances with all of our lives.”
“I can pull my own weight,” Daymon hissed. “Been taking care of myself for years.”
“It’s not just you anymore.”
Daymon went quiet.
“Does Heidi know how to handle a gun?”
The former firefighter shook his head because he knew exactly where Jenkins was going with this. “She’s a bartender, Charlie,” he replied icily.
“This isn’t going to be anything like Jackson Hole. Those things are going to be everywhere,” said Jenkins.
No shit, thought Daymon. If only Jenkins knew how much death he had seen during the circuitous route he had travelled from Jackson Hole, to Salt Lake City, to Colorado Springs, and finally ending up back in Jackson Hole. If only he knew the half of it.
The floorboards creaked as Jenkins crabbed around the kitchen table and traversed the dining room. Without saying a word he parted the curtains and looked out one of the leaded windows bracketing a built in that was filled with knickknacks, books, and candles.
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