Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  He dug deep down inside searching for the courage to ignore their scrutiny and trudge into their midst.

  Limbs hanging limply at his sides, he wove his way to the metal gate. He was careful not to touch any of the gathered dead. Partly because they made his skin crawl worse than a pillowcase full of scorpions. But mostly because he had no idea whether their sense of touch remained. He harbored a fear that one brush with his warm body or a simple puff of his breath on their frigid exposed skin would cause them to turn on him. He hadn’t come this far to be torn apart yards from his first taste of sweet revenge.

  Moving mechanically, Tran reached his blood-caked arm through the gate and pulled the metal pin from the slide bolt. He snicked the bolt open and replaced the pin so the chain wouldn’t clank and alert the brothers. Then, feeling the cold steel through his pajama top, he leaned into the gate. It opened effortlessly. Almost there, he reminded himself.

  With cold runners of anticipation coursing through his body, he hobbled painfully along the worn dirt road, point man of the undead procession. Once he was half way between the gate and the house, he picked up his pace to put some distance between himself and the pack. And as he skirted around the yellow SUV he stumbled purposefully into the left front fender. With his left hand he brushed the hood and found it was cold to the touch.

  He fought his desire to use the handrail and gingerly climbed the stairs to the front porch, stopping for a tick on the landing in order to catch his breath. The gash on his brow began to throb and sting as sweat cascaded over his bloody face. He ignored the urge to wipe the perspiration from his eyes as he gazed through the glass pane inset at eye level in the center of the door. Nothing moved except for the shadows cast by the flickering flame atop a partially melted candle. The house was quiet inside, and if the brothers held true to form, Tran thought optimistically, by now they would be their usual inebriated selves, passed out and dead to the world. He smiled at the prospect. Dead to the world—soon, my Neanderthal friends.

  He checked the screen door. It was unlocked.

  The wooden steps creaked behind him as the dead continued to follow his lead. He reached an arm inside the crack between the jamb and the screen door and worked the ornate brass handle. Inexplicably, this door was also unlocked.

  ***

  The door swinging wide made no sound. And as the dead crossed the threshold between the porch and the living room, their footfalls were instantly absorbed by the oriental rug covering the hardwood floor.

  Lucas’s eyes fluttered behind closed lids. He was in the midst of a nightmare that had suddenly become all the more real in his mind. Because now, not only could he see and hear the monsters that had amassed outside of the gated walled compound manifested in his dream—he could smell their carrion stench.

  The nightmare had become so vivid that his subconscious finally had had enough, and he awoke with a start. He put his palms to his eyes and rubbed the sleep from them. Then, when he rolled sideways and tried to rise from the sofa, he was slammed back down onto the worn out springs with three hundred some odd pounds of hungry snarling zombie on top of him.

  It took half a heartbeat for him to realize that his nightmare had been supplanted by the real thing. But half a heartbeat was too late. He found himself in a fix with his arms pinned near his face and the butt of his pistol inaccessible and being ground into his gut. Pushing up against the cold dead weight, he craned his neck at an ungodly angle in order to protect his face from the snapping teeth. He kicked his boots at his assailants and found only the partial bottle of scotch, which crashed to the floor, and the still burning candle that followed it.

  Unbeknownst to him, the evasive move exposed the fingers on his left hand from the second knuckle down to a goon’s sharp canines. The sound of crunching bone reached his ears before the pain signals made it to his brain. And when they did, he let out a shrill howl. The surge of adrenaline following the loss of his middle finger gave him the strength necessary to arch his back and roll out from under the crush of pallid bodies.

  He hit the floor cussing and screaming, and crawled on his hands and knees. He made his way past a patch of rug that had just caught fire. Kept pushing forward, staying low to the floor, towards the hall leading to the old couples’ bedroom. The only room in the house with a bed—the room Liam had commandeered for the night.

  The zombies wormed along the floor after the meat until their bony fingers found purchase.

  Lucas kicked at the dead, oblivious to the fact that his fate had already been sealed when his digit was severed. He rolled onto his back and grabbed at his pistol with his good right hand. As it cleared his belt buckle, his finger brushed the sensitive trigger, sending the hammer down. The discharge was deafening in the enclosed hallway. The large caliber slug entered Lucas’s inner thigh, shredding everything in its way and then punched through the rug before embedding an inch deep into the old growth oak floor. Flesh and muscle was instantly pulped and the femoral artery was severed, resulting in an immediate large scale loss of blood from the gaping through and through.

  ***

  Having just been awakened, not from the initial ruckus, but from the scream and the string of expletives coming from the living room, Liam rolled off of the bed. His knees hit hardwood and he found himself nearest the window and away from the dresser he had propped his rifle against.

  The doorway opened up to the hall that was amplifying the sounds of a life and death struggle happening in the living room. Those telltale grunts and hisses combined with the eye-watering carrion pong told him all he needed to know: Lucas had let his guard down and the house had somehow been compromised.

  “Lucas,” he yelled. “You in there?”

  Nothing.

  Boom!

  The unmistakable report of his brother’s handgun rolled down the darkened hall.

  One shot? Liam thought incredulously.

  Then, spurred into action by his brother’s apparent lack thereof, he dove across the bed, arms outstretched. He landed on the soft queen mattress and sunk in immediately, rolled off, landed on his knees and commando-crawled towards his rifle.

  But the dead beat him to it. As they barged into the room, one of the moaning creatures careened into the dresser, causing Liam’s AR to fall to the floor out of reach.

  As Liam stared at the gun, stiff hands tore into his flesh. He heard fabric rip and felt every vertebra in his back pop as he was slammed face down against the floor. A searing pain stabbed his skull as one of them tore into the exposed nape of his neck.

  “Lucas... help. Help me!” He bawled and pleaded for his life. He begged God. Called out for his mom. During his final moments on earth, the sounds coming from his mouth were unintelligible and had been reduced to an inhuman, high-pitched warble.

  From his spot behind the screen door, Tran witnessed the demons pour into the house and pounce on one of the brothers. Their weight pushed him from the couch to the floor, where he let out a howl like that of an injured animal.

  Tran’s skin crawled from the shrill sound which was followed by a litany of swear words, and then simultaneously the man kicked a candle to the floor and his gun went off in an explosion of light and sound.

  Then he watched with grim satisfaction as the man crawled through the flames to the back of the house with the demons in pursuit. From his spot on the porch, and over the stink of the dead, the metallic smell of hot blood hit his nose.

  As the first man crawled for his life, another voice, baritone and distant, called out from the rear of the house. It only served as a siren song for the dead as they flowed down the shadow-filled hall towards it.

  Having seen enough, and not wanting to get caught in the middle of the feeding frenzy, Tran waited a beat for the last of the zombies to file into the house. He cast a quick glance down the stairs. Surveyed the lawn and the drive. Clear, he told himself as he eased the screen door shut. He descended the steps as he had climbed them—slow and deliberate. He followed the drive to the road w
ith a sense of satisfaction after having fed the brothers to their own bad karma.

  With the screams finally silenced and the fully engulfed house lighting up the night sky, Tran concluded his lonely trek down the rutted road. After two right turns he was on the smooth blacktop heading for the green SUV. And as his boots scraped out a slow steady cadence, his thoughts turned to the brothers. He couldn’t fathom why, with the world in the state that it was, that the two had relied only on the gate by the road to keep out the demons. Hubris rolled down hill he supposed, and like Robert Christian their overwhelming sense of entitlement ultimately led to their downfall. Tran’s only hope was that there was a hell, and that the sadists were already there.

  Chapter 42

  Outbreak - Day 16

  Schriever AFB

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  The numbers glowing green on Cade’s Suunto read zero-four-thirty. He had been awake since zero-three-hundred, and save for the soft steady breathing of the two loves of his life, everything was quiet in the Grayson billet.

  He sat in the chair by the door, lacing his boots and thinking about how he was going to handle the Whipper thing. There had been no witnesses. No security cameras recording his lapse in judgment. So what it boiled down to was that it was between him, Whipper, and the wall, and the only thing he had to answer to was his own conscience. That and the man’s word, of course. The fact that he was taking up Nash’s offer—with a little added encouragement from his family—dictated he would have to make up for his transgression sooner or later. Furthermore, Whipper seemed like the type of individual who might take something like this “up the chain.”

  The main thing Cade had going for him when he had decided to play a little chin music on the crotchety first sergeant was the fact that, at the time, he hadn’t technically been an Army captain. Therefore, he supposed, the likelihood that he would be summoned before General Gaines for a disciplinary hearing hovered somewhere between slim and none—especially taking into consideration the high priority nature of the pending mission. So, for now, the only fallout that he feared would be a loss of respect amongst his peers. And the sad fact of the matter was, that was the consequence he feared the most.

  He passed the bottom bunk he had been sharing with Brook as he made his way towards the rear of the building. Sharing not being the optimal word when under the covers with his bed hog of a wife. She seemed to be sleeping soundly as he padded by. Then he marveled at how just a few days and a new numerical title had changed his daughter as he heel-and-toed it past the twelve-year-old section of the family dwelling where three of the bunk beds had been pushed together (with a little forced Dad labor) and now formed a sort of elevated island sanctuary within the sea of adultness that Raven indicated their living conditions had become.

  He counted two bunks over. Reached up, feeling around blindly in the gloom, and pulled the sheets concealing his secret onto the floor. He stepped up onto the lower bed so he had a better angle and an added measure of leverage, grabbed one of the shiny painted aluminum tubes in each hand, and lowered the mountain bike to the floor. He didn’t want to wake anyone prematurely, so he carried the thing to the front door with one hand on the knobby rear tire to keep the noisy freewheel from giving him away. The purple and white belated birthday present went propped against the wall next to the door where Raven would see it. Then he placed the white envelope addressed to Brooklyn Grayson on the small metal table near the entry. On top of the envelope he left the single white rose for his wife.

  Then he shouldered his pack and strapped on the black combat dagger. Grabbed the M4, clicking it onto its single-point harness, and then holstered both Glocks. And then as he left the billet, he blew a kiss towards his sleeping family.

  0500 Hours - 50th Space Wing Satellite Operations Room

  To Cade, the air inside of the low-ceilinged room where Major Freda Nash and the men and women of the 50th Space Wing would be presenting their briefing seemed like it had been piped in from hell. A run of three uninterrupted hundred degree days, with a possible fourth just dawning, had made even the nights in the high desert muggy and barely tolerable.

  Trying to compete with the phalanx of humming computers, dozens of warm bodies and the multiple heat-emitting monitors scattered about the room would have given the commercial-grade roof-mounted A/C unit a workout, let alone the jury-rigged little wall-mounted box in the corner currently waging a losing battle. And with the base still at the mercy of the half-dozen aging diesel backup generators, and the power hungry electronics inside the TOC—Tactical Operations Center—already a major drain, running the internal air conditioning had been out of the question.

  He ran his fingers between his neck and collar, letting the trapped body heat escape, then took a quick inventory of the room. Next to Nash, standing at rigid attention, his bald ebony pate gleaming in the diffuse overhead lighting, Colonel Cornelius Shrill tracked the moving images on the flat-panel with an intensity Cade had yet to see the base commander exhibit. To his right—a foot and a half shorter, petite, brunette, and with a firm set jaw—stood President Valerie Clay. Though she was unarmed, dressed in desert tan fatigues she could have been mistaken for any one of the female soldiers or airmen who called Schriever Air Force base home.

  As he finished his sweep of the room, his gaze passed Clay’s Secret Service detail and fell on General Ronnie Gaines. The tall SF operator’s attention was focused laser-like on the hundred-inch flat-panel—and the look on his face matched the others in the room—businesslike and deadly serious.

  Cade’s attention wavered momentarily, then returned to the briefing. Nash’s voice faded in and out as the images of insurmountable suffering and wide scale death flashed across the LCD screen. He was becoming numb to it all. He had seen the carnage wrought on the United States by the roaming packs of dead from every angle. Beamed in from a Reaper drone orbiting at ten-thousand feet. From the safe confines of a helicopter roaring by a hundred feet off the deck. He had seen real-time satellite imagery of zombies, six hundred thousand strong, shambling lockstep out of Denver on a collision course with his family. Monsters tumbling like lemmings off of the Golden Gate bridge, much of its span dangling into space, didn’t even register. Nothing was new for the hardened Delta Force operator. A new image graced the flat-panel in front of him, but unfortunately the thousands of watercraft, all shapes and sizes, a sort of floating morgue that dotted Sydney Harbor, failed to make a blip on his give-a-shit radar. The horrific image splashed on the screen was nothing different than the death and misery he had seen recently on the Flaming Gorge Reservoir—just a greater measure of it. Every person out there was suffering—worldwide—and he had seen enough of it since the dead began to walk to last ten lifetimes.

  Death came in many different guises. Yeah, the Pale Rider was an underhanded bastard, Cade mused. The humorless fucker kept coming up with new and extraordinarily horrific ways for man to make his acquaintance.

  He was drawn from his Many Faces of Death moment by Freda Nash’s voice. “This next image was taken by one of our three remaining KH class satellites,” the diminutive major stated. She looked over at Cade, nodding her head ever so subtly. “Watch for the glint in the lower right corner. That is not one of our birds.”

  Cade made a face. Three left? he thought incredulously, as the new image on the screen caught him flatfooted. To his knowledge, the Department of Defense had more than a dozen of the billion dollar crafts in orbit at all times. For early warning as well as an orbital spying platforms. But what the birds were really capable of was way above his pay grade. He had assumed this briefing had been called to go over what was on the newly discovered thumb drive. Maybe touch over any actionable intelligence the President’s men had coaxed or hopefully beaten out of Robert Christian. Instead he was looking at an HD video taken from a low earth orbit in outer space, at what appeared to his untrained eye to be the International Space Station. And as the silver and white speck grew larger, he discerned the monstrou
s array of solar panels and finally the white cylinders that were fastened together to make up the space station’s living and working areas.

  Nash dabbed beads of sweat from her face and then continued. “Although the Chinese have not contacted us since they spread the Omega virus, we believed at first that they had some continuity of government. However, after this incident happened four days ago, our assessment has changed.” She clicked a button on the remote sending the image moving. “Watch the station closely. There are six crew aboard. One Israeli, one Chinese national, and four Americans. Most of you know the commander of the ISS...” She paused, bowed her head momentarily, then continued on. “Many of you knew Colonel Chris Mashfield,” she corrected herself. She wiped her eyes and turned to face the flat-panel.

  Cade marveled at the image captured by the Key Hole satellite. The Earth was a brilliant blue, and the continents and islands looked abandoned and lonely surrounded by vast oceans. As viewed through the high-flying lens, the contrasting white clouds seemed to be randomly frozen in place. And contrary to how fucked up things really were on the surface, the Earth looked peaceful and inviting from two hundred miles up. Then, after roughly ten seconds had elapsed, and with the South Pacific passing slowly underneath the space station, a shiny foreign object moved into view. The KH-12 satellite’s high resolution optics zoomed in and it became clear to Cade that the second object was some kind of satellite. It kind of looked like a kid’s homemade robot costume, square and shiny, like a box wrapped in tinfoil, with shiny sails and bristling with what he assumed were sensors. It seemed to decelerate as it rotated on axis. Either that was the case, Cade thought to himself, or he was mistaken and the difference in size between the trailing satellite and the ISS in the background made the intruding craft only seem like it was making some kind of closing maneuver. Suddenly the screen froze and Nash resumed her commentary.