But as soon as the wind shifted and he could smell the stench of the dead and hear their throaty moans inside his little prison on the hill, the reality of his situation came rushing back to him. The dead were out there. His Moms was dead. And he feared that Heidi was never going to be the same woman he had fallen in love with.
He craned his head away from the open window. She was still breathing steadily. No doubt asleep again. He didn’t know why she was sleeping all the time. His insecure little voice in his head said it was because she wanted nothing to do with him. The rational voice in his head told him she had PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder— and had slipped into some kind of a depression and would recover on her own timetable.
‘Give her time,’ is what Jenkins kept telling him. It was day three and all he’d gotten out of her was a wan smile and a handful of scratchy muffled words. He didn’t know why, but what he really wanted to hear from her were the gory details. What had happened to her while he wasn’t there to protect her? What did they do to her? He had nothing but questions, and part of him feared hearing her answers.
He opened his eyes and gazed towards the main highway. Reality was down there trudging lockstep towards Victor and Driggs and other places in the form of multitudes of rotting former humans. And as he shifted his gaze from the lurching dead to a nearby ash tree, he spotted a hummingbird milking a plastic feeder of its last few drops of red nectar. For a half a second he thought he could actually hear the little bird’s wings beating the air. Then the sound rose in volume and he could tell it was coming from the east. Thrumming tires? he wondered. Then he sensed an accompanying vibration that was so heavy with bass it resonated deep in his chest.
He grabbed the police radio Jenkins had given him. It was set on the same channel as the one the former police chief carried, and had a considerable range—several miles, he guessed. For a second he considered getting ahold of Jenkins and giving him an earful for not checking in sooner and letting him know where he was.
But he decided to heed the man’s advice and practice patience. First he needed more information about the vehicle with the thrumming tires and booming system that was quickly approaching from the northeast. From the direction of the Teton Pass and Jackson Hole.
He put the radio down and bolted for the stairs, took them down two at a time and skidded on the rug in the front room. He cast a cursory look around the room. Nothing. Tromped through the kitchen. Quickly scanned the Formica countertops and the kitchen table. Nothing. Finally he caught sight of them, sitting upright on the lenses between the decades-old refrigerator and a Felix the Cat cookie jar.
Field glasses in hand, he bounded up the stairs three at a time. He passed the bedroom, giving it a sidelong glance, and noticed Heidi sitting upright with a look of confusion on her face. Like she had come to and didn’t remember where she was or what day of the week it was.
“It’s OK honey,” he said while trying to convey a reassuring look. “I heard a vehicle on the road and I’m going to take a look.” There was no time to explain further so he continued on to the end of the narrow hallway, leaving Heidi a bit in the lurch.
He hauled the window up, pressed the field glasses to his face and trained them on the spot in the distance where the highway emerged from between the copse of trees. He braced his shoulder against the window sash to steady himself and waited for whatever was responsible for the raucous rolling concert.
Finally, after a couple of heartbeats, the slab-sided culprit came into view. With yellow paint a tick louder than the stereo, the Hummer straddled the dashed centerline as it closed the distance to the intersection of Bell and 33. And as Daymon tracked the vehicle left to right, it disappeared momentarily behind the grove of trees on the lower part of the property. Trying to match its pace, Daymon kept panning steadily to the right, catching only flashes of the garish colored rig through the densely interwoven branches.
“Better slow down, fool,” he said aloud as the vehicle burst back into view and was now rocketing towards a handful of zombies, all of which were now fanned out across the entire highway. It seemed to Daymon, as he watched with morbid fascination, that the person behind the wheel was oblivious to the impending collision and had to be either drunk or high. He guessed the driver had the accelerator pegged and the rig was topping eighty miles an hour—and at that speed, he reasoned, neither the vehicle nor the zombies would be recognizable after the collision.
He lowered the binoculars and continued watching with the naked eye. The undead didn’t waver. Though they seemed mesmerized by the booming music and the drone of the engine, Daymon knew without a doubt the prospect of getting to the fresh meat in the vehicle was what held their undivided attention.
His brain suddenly received a jolt of dopamine as impulses, Pavlovian in nature, jumped synapses. He felt his stomach clench and muscles tremor as he braced mentally for an impact he knew would have zero effect on him. He wasn’t the unfortunate person about to get a lap full of walker parts when the near-vertical windshield blew inward. There was no danger of him being ejected and eaten by the dead when the Hummer lost control and rolled, becoming a crushed yellow tin can. Still, Daymon’s mind raced out of control, matching the speed of the slow moving train wreck below. Then at the last second the driver course corrected, ran the two passenger side tires onto the shoulder and careened through the intersection, somehow managing to clip only one of the walking dead. The creature’s right arm lost the battle with the stout brush guard and went airborne, trailing sinew and veins and splintered white bone. Meanwhile, the body of the male zombie completed three full revolutions as it cartwheeled face first into the roadside ditch.
“Fucking close call, dude!” Daymon exclaimed. The last thing he saw was a red flare of brake lights as the tin roof on one of the outbuildings blocked the fishtailing truck from view.
He let the curtains drop and thumbed on the police radio which he used to hail Jenkins.
Chapter 18
Outbreak - Day 15
Near Victor, Idaho
The Three Rivers Horse Farm was four miles up 33 to the southwest of the house that Jenkins, Daymon, and Heidi were squatting in. The expansive property had a massive entry constructed of hewn twelve-by-six timbers that were bolted together with industrial grade hardware. Towering no less than thirty feet over the turnoff from the main highway, the only real purpose Jenkins could see for the monstrosity was that it was a proper place to hang the neatly lettered sign letting everyone who passed by in on the nature of the business. As if the vivid green pastures crisscrossed with blindingly white fences, seemingly transplanted straight from the English countryside, weren’t a dead giveaway.
As he made the turn into the equestrian paradise, the handful of walking dead he had just passed took up a slow speed chase.
After a short run out, the drive opened up to a large gravel parking lot contained within the same white three-tiered fencing as the pastures. Save for two late model compact sedans, the parking lot was conspicuously empty. Inside one of the vehicles, a red Hyundai, a putrefying corpse fought against the closed door. The banging intensified as Jenkins nosed the patrol Tahoe in next to the other car, a silver Tercel with Oregon plates.
As he slid from the truck, he thought about putting the former human out of its misery. But he had bigger fish to fry. Daymon was itching to get a move on, and without treating his wounds Jenkins had a feeling they would get worse. Therefore this little excursion was a necessary evil in the big scheme of things. He had even found it amusing when Daymon had had the audacity to question whether it was safe for him to go it alone. Alone was all he knew, he’d told the younger man. In fact, Jenkins hadn’t had a patrolling partner for years. And being the chief had its advantages. He was the one who wrote the schedules, so he was the one who always worked the late shift, and he always preferred to do so solo.
Walking by the car, he caught a whiff of the occupant. The sun had made the rotten thing riper than a tomato in August, and suddenly t
he former chief was pleased with his decision.
The barn doors were wide open, and when he entered a smell twenty times stronger than the car corpse hit him in the face.
Having been brought up on a farm, Jenkins considered himself a country boy. He’d hatched chicks from an egg, raised and tended to cows and pigs, and would even admit (in the right company) that he still was a member of the 4H. But his first love had always been, and still was, for horses—and that was why the scene before him was so hard to accept.
In the barn, which was big enough to board forty or fifty horses, the stench of death hung heavy in the air. He walked down one side of the massive, high-ceilinged building and opened every stall that he came to. A good number of the animals had already died a slow death due to the hot August weather and a lack of food and water. The horses that hadn’t were so severely weakened that instead of seeking freedom most of them remained inside their stalls to wait out the inevitable. The youngest and strongest among them trotted out tentatively and then immediately went for the water trough outside in the fenced-in pasture.
After he had opened all of the stalls, only fifteen of the horses had had enough strength to make their way outside. And of those fifteen, five were near death and collapsed after drinking from the trough. Why the owners of the stables hadn’t set them free before they left had been nagging Jenkins since he first set foot in the big red barn.
As he walked past the open stables towards the far wall where a number of saddles, bridles, and bits were stored, he noticed that fully a third of the tack hooks were bare and a good number of the saddle cubbies had nothing in them. He thought, perhaps, that the owners took their personal horses and equipment and headed for the hills when all hell broke loose in Boise and Idaho Falls. That would certainly explain why he didn’t see a single horse trailer, let alone a vehicle with sufficient enough horsepower to tow one, anywhere on the property. But it still didn’t excuse the actions of the dirtbags who’d left the remainder of the horses locked up, thus sentencing most of them to a slow and miserable death.
Jenkins knew the zombies he had passed on the highway would eventually ramble up the drive hunting him, so he unslung his carbine and hustled towards the small room at the back of the paddock. He guessed it would be a fairly convenient place to store the things necessary to keep a number of horses groomed and healthy, and if there were antibiotics to be had, that was where he would find them.
He switched on his Maglite and swung the beam through the entry. The room opened up to the left and was shaped like a rectangle roughly six feet deep by twelve feet long, and was much bigger than he had anticipated. At the far end of the room a half dozen shelves had been installed above a Formica counter inset with an aluminum sink and faucet. Cupboards adorned with basic ceramic pulls flanked the walls at eye level on both sides. Everything save the ceiling was painted a dingy off-white with uneven brush strokes. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn could’ve done a better job, Jenkins mused as he swept the bright white beam about the room.
Still fuming over the dying and neglected horses, he began to tear through the cupboards. After working both sides of the room and throwing most of their contents on the floor, he turned his attention to the shelving above the sink where he eventually found several foil tubes of some kind of veterinarian triple-antibiotic.
He stuffed the medicine and a few large adhesive bandages into his pockets and then passed the flashlights beam over the floor to see if he’d missed anything important. As he was doing so, his patrol radio squawked and Daymon’s voice filled the air.
“Chief here,” Jenkins said out of habit. Then he listened as Daymon informed him about the vehicle headed his way.
“Roger that,” replied Jenkins. “I’m at the Triple R and I found your medicine. I’m gonna lay low and hope your friends pass on by.”
“You’ll hear ‘em before you see ‘em,” Daymon added.
“Roger that. I think I might poke around the house up here before I return... see if I can find us some food and water.”
“Just watch out for the fools in the Hummer,” Daymon stated. “Chances are they ain’t playing for the good team.”
“I’m a big boy, Daymon. You just watch out for you and your lady friend, and I’ll keep an eye on my own six,” he said wryly. He thumbed off the radio and hooked it on his belt.
Just for shits and giggles, he tried the cold knob on the faucet. Nothing. Not even a drop. Then, as he about faced to leave the stifling anteroom, he found his way blocked by a walking corpse. The male zombie made one clumsy step forward and swiped for his neck but instead only managed to grasp a handful of Jackson PD uniform. Instinctively, Jenkins pulled away from the flesh eater’s bared teeth and poked the monster in the chest with the end of his Maglite. And then, in less time than it took him to bring the hefty black flashlight over his head, a couple of thoughts raced through his mind: he made a quick calculation and figured that a vehicle scooting along at sixty to eighty miles per hour would take less than four minutes to cover the four miles from Daymon’s position. Then he remembered that his patrol Tahoe was nosed in next to the two compact cars outside of the barn, and in plain view of the highway. Lastly, he contemplated pulling his Sig Sauer semi-automatic and blowing the thing’s head off.
But the Maglite was already on its downward arc. He felt a considerable amount of give that went along with the sound of breaking bone as the knurled aluminum shaft, filled with the weight of five D-cell batteries, impacted dead center atop the zombie’s skull. The thing’s frigid fingers released and it collapsed to the floor, still moving.
“Goddamnit,” Jenkins bellowed. “How in the hell did you sneak up on me?” A string of colorful expletives spilled from his mouth as he repeatedly brought his heel down on the abomination’s already dented dome, and he didn’t relent until the monster ceased moving.
He stepped over the corpse and nearly retched at the sight of all the blood and gray matter glistening in the brilliant white cone of light. The entire melee had shaved a minute off of the time he figured he had left to get in the Tahoe and move it out of sight.
Jenkins peeked around the doorway and into the paddock. Clear. He was grateful the zombie had been a lone wolf, but was certain there were more of the flesh eaters where it came from—there always were.
He hooked the Maglite next to the radio, flicked the carbine to safe, and broke into a full sprint with the weapon held at a low ready. In seconds he had covered the length of the barn and broke out into the sunlight. With his head on a swivel, he rounded the front of the Tahoe, quickly wrenched the door open and vaulted inside. As he pulled the door shut, he picked up the thunderous bass notes coming from the approaching vehicle.
The engine fired up and Jenkins backed away, working the steering wheel, accelerator, and transmission in perfect synchronicity—moves learned decades ago at the police academy and perfected since then, patrolling the streets and rural highways of Wyoming. Then, with a spray of gravel, he launched the black and white into the barn. Simultaneously, he put the Tahoe in park, cracked the window, and fixed his gaze on the rearview where he could see a number of zombies ambling up the driveway.
Then, moving fast left to right, he witnessed the boxy yellow Hummer blur by in the mirror and, without slowing, move out of sight and earshot.
Must not be horse folk, thought Jenkins.
A satisfied look on his face, he backed out of the barn and wheeled around facing 33. He sat in the idling vehicle, shifting his gaze between the advancing walkers and the white colonial-style house adjacent to the barn.
Since he’d already dodged two bullets, and with at least a dozen walking dead dangerously close, he powered his window up. He shifted to drive and slowly rolled the two and a half ton vehicle forward, and was greeted with the disconcerting sound of flesh slapping against sheet metal.
At the end of the drive he turned right and, as he steered the Tahoe one-handed northeast along 33, picked up the radio and called Daymon.
Miles away, in the farmhouse on the hill, Daymon’s considerable frame filled the upstairs window. Binoculars glued to his face, he passed the time waiting for Jenkins’s return, watching the dead trudge up Bell Road.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he muttered under his breath. “Goddamn it Charlie.” It had become crystal clear to Daymon that the dead had figured out which direction the Tahoe had come from and were now coming to investigate.
Investigate, thought Daymon as he reached for the radio. Hunt would best describe their actions. It was his experience that the dead equated moving vehicles with the prospect of acquiring human flesh. And it had also occurred to him over the last couple of weeks that even in the zombies’ reptilian minds it was clear that they somehow knew or sensed that meat congregated together.
But before he could pick up the radio to warn Jenkins, it emitted an electronic trill.
Unable to tear his eyes from the procession, and with the awful memories of being trapped with Cade in the farmhouse in Hannah propagating his mind, he answered the noisy device. “Daymon,” he said tersely.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Jenkins stated. “Good news first. The rig passed on by at a helluva clip. And... I think I found you some useful antibiotics.”
Daymon made no reply.
Nonplussed, Jenkins went on. “Bad news is I’m going to get myself trapped if I go in the house looking for supplies. It’s probably best we do it with numbers when we come back this way. At least then we’ll have Heidi as a lookout... even though she can’t yell, nothin’ to stop her from honking the horn.”
Allegiance Page 12
