Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “Punji stakes is what we called ‘em in Nam, Daymon. Real bad juju if you’re not paying attention and step on one,” added Duncan. “The VC used to dip ‘em in shit. You get stuck by one, worst case scenario is you’re going to bleed out and die. You find a way to free yourself, staunch the bleeding and move on, eventually Mister Gangrene will set in and you’ll lose the leg. But we skipped the dipping ‘em in shit part since the rotters are already basically gangrene walking anyway.”

  “Good to know,” said Daymon, flashing a half-smile. “I’ll be sure to steer clear of them. I had a thought when I was coming in here before I wracked my dome on the top of the doorway.”

  Logan began twirling his mustache and said, “What’s on your mind?”

  “You think we oughta be locking the outside doors after coming and going?”

  Shuffling his feet, Logan met Daymon’s gaze and said, “Funny you should mention it. Me and Duncan were just discussing that before you came in. Solid idea, friend.”

  “That’s some Twilight Zone shit right there,” said Daymon. “You know what they say about great minds.” He folded the map, gave each man a solid fist bump, and then filtered through the space, ducking his head before transiting into the next Conex.

  There was a brooding silence as Daymon’s footfalls faded away.

  Chapter 32

  Logan craned his head and looked down the corridor. “Daymon seems like an OK guy,” he said. Then he pulled a chair over and took a seat and looked up at Duncan still holding the wall up.

  “I’ve seen him in action,” said Duncan. “And he certainly can take care of himself. I think he’ll be a heck of an asset once he gets used to the tight confines.”

  “I trust your judgment, bro,” Logan proffered. Then his face opened up and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he went on, “Now tell me a Cobra Gunship story. Did it have the red and white shark’s teeth on the chin?”

  “Yes it did. And I’m sorry, Logan. There were lots of things about Nam I kept to myself ... better that way. Shit was bloody and brutal even from five thousand feet up.” He went quiet for a beat. “Not to mention the fact that you were young and impressionable. I didn’t want you to start idolizing big bro and get star-spangled-eyes and want to go off to war.”

  “Thanks for that,” said Logan. “You know, Lev came back from Iraq a little different than he was when he left. Can’t quite place how. But I can sense that he lost a part of himself over there.”

  “War has a way of changing a man. It’s changing you too, Logan. You can’t see it as it’s happening, but one day you’ll wake up and see the world through a different shade of glasses.”

  “Enough about me,” said Logan quietly. I want to hear about the Delta guy ... Cade.”

  “Daymon says he spoke to Cade a couple of days ago and he’s supposed to be making his way here. Damn good for us. Good to have a real ass kicker around when the shit hits the fan.”

  “Does he play well with others?” asked Logan.

  “He’s a little like you. Reserved until spurred into action. But his actions ... when he’s spurred speak way louder than words and usually involve a gun, and a knife, and end with a trail of bodies.”

  “OK. Consider him vetted and approved. Can you promise me one thing though?”

  “Depends.”

  “Just promise.”

  “In life, Logan, there are no promises.”

  “If or when he shows up. I was thinking before you go risking your life and anyone else’s who hops in with you we oughta go find us a place to get you a new set of specs.”

  “You’re not getting this old man inside a shopping mall for anything ... not even if my eyes get so bad I’m calling a cat a dog. No way. I ain’t setting foot near one. I’ve seen how those monsters follow the roads. Sometimes staying inside the cars they died in even if they could get out and walk away.”

  “So what’s your point?” asked Logan, a curious look on his face.

  “My point, little brother ... the outbreak went full tilt on a Saturday.” He paused for effect. “Hell, those mall walkers were at one time a couple of dead brain cells away from being a zombie before the outbreak anyway. So where do you think they went after they became real card-carrying, non-breathing zombies?”

  “The mall,” intoned Logan. “But I was talking about the eyeglass place at the strip mall in Eden. That’s a bit different ... don’t you think?”

  Before Duncan could offer up another hell no in response to Logan’s appeal, the equipment on the shelves began to sway minutely. One of the folding chairs skittered along the floor and a thumbtack worked loose from the corkboard, releasing a sheet of paper which fluttered to the floor near Duncan’s boots. Then the vibration became a rushing sound with a resonance like an old box fan on the lowest setting.

  Duncan mouthed, “What the fuck is that?”

  “That’s us losing some more people,” answered Logan.

  “What do you mean?”

  Shaking his head in obvious disbelief, Logan said, “Edward’s following up on his threat and flying his family out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t like how you handled the folks on the road.”

  Duncan shook his head and sighed.

  “It’s not just you, Duncan. Ed thought this would be over in a day or two. And once he gunned down his first rotter and reality set in, he was already one foot out the door.”

  “Where does he think he’s going that will be any safer than here?”

  “Said he’d find someplace where there were no undead. An island or mountaintop.”

  “Swiss Family Robinson-type of pipe dream, that is. I’ve heard how far this thing has spread and how many of us have become them. And it ain’t pretty,” said Duncan. “The Shangri-La he’s looking for doesn’t exist. And the fact that he believes it gets much better than this is what might have just gotten him and his family killed.”

  The noise grew distant. Logan saw the plane in his mind’s eye. Throttles pegged. Bumping along the make-shift runway. Flaps catching the wind. The plane rising slowly and then the moment of truth was near. He looked up at the container’s metal roof and waited for it. Ten seconds went by. Nothing. Then ten more and nothing. No explosion. No sound of rending metal on impact. Thankfully, the not-so-svelte Edward and the loaded-down Cessna had cleared the trees and the fireball remained a figment of Logan’s pessimistic imagination.

  “They made it,” said Duncan.

  Logan replied, “Hope their luck continues.”

  Duncan looked at his watch. He noted the time, then pushed his aviator glasses to the top of his balding head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “In fifteen minutes, meet me in the interrogation room,” he said, adding emphasis as well as air quotes around the word interrogation.

  Remembering the bad cop/good cop ruse they’d played on the dreadlocked white kid from Huntsville, Logan cracked a quick smile. “Lev spells me in a few minutes, then I have to make my rounds outside to check our traps.”

  “I’ll cover for you until Lev gets here. Who is out on security right now?”

  “The girls are still up by the road. Chief is keeping an eye on the aircraft and the strip.”

  “Gus and Phil?”

  “Walking the property,” Logan answered. He handed over the two-way radio he’d been monitoring the others with. “Just changed the battery. 10-1 is the channel we’re using.”

  “Good channel,” Duncan said, remembering the trip through the gorge and high desert of Oregon. “I won’t forget it.”

  “See you in fifteen,” said Logan.

  Duncan called out, “Sharp,” at Logan as he walked off towards the exit. And as soon as the younger Winters was out of sight, curiosity got the better of the older Winters. He listened hard for the distinctive sound of the outside door latching, and a few seconds after the telling snik reached his ears he waited an additional minute, checked both corridors leading away, and then scooped up the paper that had fallen near h
is feet. On it were strings of letters and numbers seemingly thrown together. After a second he realized the column on the left was the call signs of two dozen or so ham operators. And in the next column there were abbreviations, three and four letters long, which Duncan gathered were the operators’ locations. Finally, a third column held other notations scribed in Logan’s clean, easy-to-read hand. Theoretically, thought Duncan, what he was holding in his hand was the contact information for survivors the world over that Logan had painstakingly gathered over the last three weeks. He hinged over, picked the thumbtack off the floor, and then pinned the paper to the corkboard in roughly the same location he remembered seeing it fall from. Then he listened hard again. Heard nothing. He looked down at the pad on the desk to steal a quick peek at the notations his brother had been making before Daymon blew through.

  “Hell, I’m old enough to be his dad,” Duncan said to himself, a weak attempt at rationalizing the transgression. He gave the first three sheets a cursory examination, smoothed them back down, and squared the pad away to where he thought it had been originally. Then, with the information he’d just acquired troubling him greatly, he made a mental note to confront Logan about it later.

  Chapter 33

  I-90 Near Draper, South Dakota

  In order to allow the gas a little extra time to evaporate—or whatever term was applicable when dealing with petroleum products—Cade fought off the urge to turn the key after thirty seconds and instead waited a full three minutes. Sitting in the cab with morbid thoughts trespassing where they didn’t belong, the seconds passed like hours—the entire three minutes seeming to take an eternity. And adding further tension to the wait, the undead bus driver had somehow forced its way past the undead campers and mashed its pale face against the vertical glass in the folding door. Then, as if driven by some leftover snippet of memory, the portly creature worked its fingers between the door’s vertically-running weather seals and was slowly but surely working it open.

  Ignoring the abomination, Cade said, “Fire in the hole.” He turned the key and the starter whirred alive; then, to keep from making the same mistake twice, he kept his foot off the gas pedal, held his breath, and waited. Another couple of long seconds passed before the plugs sparked, setting the fuel in the cylinders afire. With a gunshot-like backfire the engine chugged to life and rattled on, sounding like it was hitting on only six of its eight cylinders. Oh, what a beautiful sound, Cade thought to himself as the power plant emitted a shrill squeal yet somehow maintained a ragged idle that transmitted a harsh vibration through the firewall, through the sole of the size-twelve boot he’d taken from Gaines, and deep into the damaged tissue, tendons, and bones of his newly swollen-to-size-fourteen left foot. Wincing from the incredible pain, he wiped beads of sweat from his brow and said a prayer, asking the Gods of internal combustion to keep the thing running.

  Excited by the noisy engine, the undead driver thrashed against the door, opening it a few more inches. Then with its sneering face wedging the door open, it worked one of its blood slickened arms through the crack into the sunlight, strained forward, and raked its fingernails against the automotive glass.

  With the Z’s mouth longingly opening and closing registering in his side vision, Cade reached down and shifted the Chevy into 4x4 Low. Trying his best to pretend the creature wasn’t there, he shifted his gaze and watched the drama behind them playing out in the rear view mirror.

  At the rear of the bed, his black body armor streaked with glistening fluids, Agent Cross stood tall, racking round after round through the shotgun. Five booming reports sounded and he dropped the empty weapon, drew a bulky-looking handgun and looked back and met Cade’s gaze. Gesturing forward with the pistol, Cross said, “Keep the engine running and we’ll get you through the gap.” He turned, placed his free hand on the tailgate, and leapt atop the mound of fallen corpses.

  The truck shimmied as Hicks and Lopez bounded out, following the agent’s lead.

  “They’re all going to dismount?” Ari said incredulously. “If one of them gets bit, who is left to pull them back in?”

  “If one of them gets bit,” said Jasper. “You don’t want them getting back in.”

  “You don’t need to remind me how this works,” Ari said. He looked at the slider. He looked left at the leering Z and the wall of yellow pressing against the door. Lastly, he looked past Jasper at the Suburban blocking egress on that side. “Newsflash ... we’re stuck in here. And if those guys go down it’ll only be a matter of seconds before the things are banging on the back window. Do you want that?”

  “Relax, Ari. Cross’s plan is solid ... they’ll handle it,” said Cade. “We are going home. I promise.”

  After putting down a dozen Zs and heaping their leaking bodies waist-high into some kind of rotten Maginot Line stretching between the Suburban’s rear wheels and roughly the middle of the school bus, Cross, Lopez, and Hicks sat down hard on the rear bumper with their backs braced against the tailgate.

  “OK Captain,” Cross said into the comms. He paused for a split second to catch his breath, then went on, “I’m going to count to three and then you milk this bitch for all she’s got.”

  “Solid copy. On three,” replied Cade.

  Cross started the count and when he got to three, with all their might, the bone-tired trio braced their boots and pressed a combined five hundred-some-odd pounds of flesh, bone, and muscle against the rust pocked tailgate.

  Hearing Cross say three in his ear bud, Cade mashed the accelerator to the floor and crossed his fingers. Responding to the wide open carburetor, the trapped Chevy squatted under power, and a tick later the transfer case divided and unloaded the newfound torque to the differential, onward to all four hubs, and finally through the tires and onto the road. The truck surged ahead six precious inches, paused momentarily, engine roaring, until the forward motion and energy building behind it was greater than the series of bolts keeping the right front fender attached. A drawn out groan and a series of sharp metallic pings filled the air as the fasteners sheared, zipper-like, one by one and the Chevy’s fender peeled away, freeing the pick-up from the clutches of the Suburban’s twisted grill guard.

  Sensing a little forward momentum building behind the sudden halt, Cross dug his heels in, straightened his legs until every muscle was burning, and yelled, “Push!”

  Following the agent’s lead, backs straining, neck muscles corded, Lopez and Hicks redoubled their efforts and as a direct result two things happened at once. The two-and-a-half ton Suburban rocked on its springs and shifted a few degrees to the right, and the pick-up shot forward, dropping them, to a man, flat on their backs staring at the azure Dakota sky.

  Seeing the men slip from view, Cade jammed the truck to a stop, hollering, “Get in, get in, get in,” at the top of his lungs. As he sat in the truck trying to figure out what was happening with the team, the dead that had been scratching on the rust-streaked hood streamed into the newly-created passage and slammed full force into his window. Momentarily startled, he looked left at the crush of rotten bodies. Then, pushing the first tingling of a rising panic back where it belonged, he popped the testy differential out of 4x4 Low, racked the transmission into plain old drive and gunned the engine to keep it running. “Jump in now!” he bellowed, flicking his eyes up to the rearview expecting to see Lopez, Hicks, and Cross piling aboard. Instead, he noticed a new flurry of movement behind and to the left as the bus door inexplicably hinged open and the undead driver spilled out, arms flailing, face first onto the interstate. Then in the next instant, just when Cade thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, undead kids began pouring from the stairwell, navigating the driver’s prostrate body like a gangplank. “Check your six,” Cade warned. Then, to add insult to injury, he witnessed Cross’s makeshift barrier waver and then topple, corpses rolling like logs as more Zs stumbled and staggered over the top of them. Custer’s last stand came to mind as Cade barked out new and more dire warnings to his diminished team.

>   Turtled, and nearly out of breath, with Cade’s voice booming in his ear, Cross reached to his thigh and drew his Sig Sauer. What next? he thought as he tucked his chin into his chest, spread his feet wide apart and aimed between his boot tips at the creature nearest him. He steadied his breathing and caressed the trigger twice, only a second’s separation between shots. The first .357 jacketed hollow point leapt from the muzzle at a blistering fourteen hundred and fifty feet per second on a diagonal upward trajectory, covering the eight feet to the soft spot under the female Z’s exposed chin in the blink of an eye. Then the five hundred-plus pounds of kinetic energy behind the bullet wracked the stunted creature’s head back at a sharp forty-five degree angle, the intense shockwave tearing an additional vicious half-moon-shaped gash below the initial entry wound. The second round punched in an inch to the right of the first, adding its own kinetic energy into the equation and rocketing the Z off its road-gnarled feet. As Cross shifted aim, he registered the limp body contorting into an upside down ‘U’, its newly misshapen head on a collision course with the pavement.

  As expected, Lopez and Hicks’ training kicked in and they entered the fray before the first Z struck terra firma.

  Pistol bucking, spent shells tracing crazy arcs through the air, Lopez pivoted on one knee, walking fire left to right into the building crowd. Simultaneously, Hicks had noticed the same movement that had caught Cade’s eye and crabbed sideways in order to engage the Zs tumbling from the bus. First, he stilled the undead bus driver with a double tap to the center of its pasty forehead, blowing brain and bone in a flat arc into the stairwell where it hit with a viscous slap. Time seemingly slowing to a crawl, he shifted his gaze to the tiny creatures tumbling from the stairway. He bracketed one about the same size and presumably the same age as his niece, Kylie, who he was certain was no longer among the living. But he found the resemblance uncanny enough to cause him a moment’s hesitation, which had disastrous consequences. The round snapped low and right, and instead of striking the Kylie lookalike in the forehead where he had been aiming, the bullet blasted a hole the size of his fist in the side of her reed-thin neck. Pissed off at himself, and affected by a sudden flood of emotion, Hicks overcompensated and pulled the second shot high and right, sending the blazing lead dead center into the fire extinguisher which according to SDDOT (South Dakota Department of Transportation) mandate was strapped within easy reach alongside the bus driver’s seat. The ensuing explosion of toxic chemicals took the path of least resistance, roiling out the door and coating both him and the Zs with a fine white talc. This isn’t what I signed up for, he thought as the little monster crawled toward him. He fell to both knees with a ringing in his ears, eyeing his pistol. Ignoring the other pint-sized Zs, he stared, fixated on the spot where he’d blown the hunk of flesh from the Z’s neck. She certainly doesn’t look like Kylie any longer, he told himself. With its head attached by a thin cord of shiny muscle, and trailing shreds of yellowed larynx and emitting noises that sounded to him like a pissed off badger, it clawed its way toward him.