Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “Appropriate,” said Cade agreeably.

  “How’s the ankle?”

  “Throbbing.”

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t broken.”

  “I’m lucky I made it home. And grateful you spirited me away before Nash could set her hooks into me.” He activated the light and checked the time on his Suunto. Made a face because it was nearly midnight. “I’ve been out for a while,” he said as the green glow dissipated.

  “The pain killer knocked you on your butt. Do you remember the ride from the flight line?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “No. Just the wheels hitting the runway and then you storming up the ramp ... and then Raven.” A tear, unseen by Brook in the dark, rolled across his cheek and onto the pillow. “I don’t remember much of the flight either. Just that it was a somber couple of hours.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “We did our best. Still ... four men died.” He crossed his arms behind his head.

  She laid her cheek on his bare chest, ran her fingers through the soft hair there.

  Something boomed far away. Muted, like thunder, but definitely man-made.

  Cade cocked his head in the dark and listened hard. Hearing nothing more, he changed the subject and said, “What else did you and Raven do today?”

  “Took her shooting. And you’ll be proud—”

  He interrupted her. “I’m always proud of you two.”

  Brook smiled then said, “I showed Sasha and Taryn and Wilson how to safely handle the M4. Got them shooting a little too.”

  “Zs?”

  “Except for Sasha. She wouldn’t get within five feet of a gun. Not even Raven’s little rifle.”

  “We’ll work on that.” This made him think. “Do they still want to go with?”

  “We’ll find out in the morning. I’m going to send Raven over there to crack the whip. Get them packing.”

  “Not much to pack.”

  Remembering all of the crap Raven had taken to the aborted sleepover caused Brook to smile. She kissed him on the chest. “I hope they come along. Raven needs to interact with people closer to her age.”

  There was another low rumble somewhere distant, south by west. A helicopter transitted the base somewhere closer. Then, nearer still, someone was firing a carbine. Single pops, spaced apart, echoing through the crisp night.

  “Sounds like they’ve got their hands full downtown.”

  “Pueblo Horde,” said Brook. “Saw them on the screen in the TOC. Figure they’ll be thinning them out for days.”

  “One step forward. Ten steps back,” he said.

  She sighed. “We’ll be long gone.”

  “Yes we will,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow. He activated the green glow on the Suunto, held it between their faces and looked her in the eye. “If Murphy doesn’t intervene.”

  The light timed out and they shared a quiet laugh. Then she pushed him down flat. Shifted under the bedding and straddled him, being careful not to jar his ankle.

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  Before he could reply, she leaned in and kissed him hard. Probed his mouth with her tongue. He offered no resistance as her body pressed into his. Even through her cotton tank-top he could feel her breasts brushing his chest.

  Then she took over and guided him into her. They made love like that, quietly, without words, and when they were finished they lay side-by-side listening to the night sounds.

  “What if we get pregnant?”

  “What if?” he said. “Gotta go on living.”

  “Names?”

  Cade didn’t think long. “Jasper,” he said.

  Brook wanted badly to ask where he’d come up with the name. Decided to broach it later. Pick your battles and all. “What if I have a girl?”

  “Gonna be a boy. Call it a gut feeling.”

  She couldn’t resist any longer. Asked, “Why Jasper?”

  “It’s a very long story. But I promise to tell you all about it one day when we’re both old and gray.”

  “I love you, Civilian Cade Grayson.

  “Love you back,” he replied. “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Chapter 45

  Bushnell, Nebraska

  Elvis left the house in Ovid and performed an end-around, bypassing the streaming horde of zombies and returning to Interstate 80 which was dotted with traffic snarls here and there but was still mostly clear of walking corpses. He motored west, putting some miles between him and Ovid, his only company the recurring visions from the basement from hell and his own mind continuously asking him what he was hoping to accomplish by rejoining Bishop.

  Low on gas, he pulled up hard to the curb out front of a tiny, one-story, shotgun-style house. The yard was what caught his eye. Or rather the multiple bird baths and Buddha statues and garden gnomes of all shapes, sizes, and colors in the yard that were slowly being grown over by weeds and rambling vines. Gotta be a hose somewhere in there, was his thinking.

  The search took him around the house where he found a length of hose and a badly decomposed abomination that had become hopelessly tangled up in it.

  He wasted no time or energy on the undead monster. Instead, he cut the hose and was back in the pick-up and again tooling the side streets in no time.

  The gas he siphoned from a couple of cars nosed in next to a darkened bakery.

  He filled the truck’s tank and the spare red can and then left Dix in the rearview, driving west until the sun was nearing the horizon and the sky was beginning to flare yellow and orange. From experience, he knew he had less than an hour of daylight to find sanctuary from the dead.

  So now, six hours after leaving Ovid behind, he got off the 80 after deciding Kimball was too populated to go anywhere near. He jumped to the 30. Passed by a reservoir with a number of small vessels riding its still surface, and stayed on the two-lane for a couple more miles following the signs promising Bushnell, Population 144 was somewhere close by.

  The sun had fully set by the time he reached the town limits, but there was enough ambient light to see by so he ran the truck dark and slow. Passed by a few creatures hanging around the entrance to town. Ignoring them, he turned right on Birch Street. Saw a sign that said Birch would eventually become County Road Seventeen on the north side of town. A good thing, thought Elvis. A town on crossroads usually had at least one convenience store and a gas station. He took a swig of water, trying to placate his growling stomach, and continued cutting the town.

  After driving around for a few minutes, passing the usual suspects dotting every little town in America, and with full dark blanketing Bushnell, he decided to drive back out to the 80 and sleep in the truck’s cab, doors locked, one eye open. Better than getting trapped in a one-story, he reasoned. No way to drive a house away.

  Chapter 46

  Eden Compound

  Sensing the first judder wrack Heidi’s body, Daymon removed the surplus blanket from his shoulder and wound it around her tightly until she looked like some kind of medieval figure ensconced in an oiled travelling cloak. Finished wrapping her blonde hair with the second pass of the fabric, he tucked the trailing corner under her chin and delivered a covert peck to her cheek. He pushed a stray lock behind her ear and gazed intensely into her blue eyes. The simple gesture, though lasting only a handful of seconds, garnered a broad smile from the severely traumatized woman.

  Painted gold and yellow by the licking fire, Heidi’s face looked worlds different to Daymon than it did when they arrived at Logan’s compound earlier in the day. The corners of her eyes had softened considerably and the perpetual set to her jaw had given way to an occasional smile. And amazing as it seemed—considering how bad off she was when Charlie found her on the Teton Pass road, suffering from exposure and a near-death strangling—he’d been able to coax a couple of laughs from her. If only he could turn back time, Daymon thought. He would have never left her alone in Jackson Hole. Alone and at the mercy of Robert Christian, Ian Bishop, a
nd the other buzzards that had descended on his favorite place on earth.

  “Duncan ... you got a thing against the trees?” asked Daymon as he shrugged on his green Gore-Tex shell. Embroidered over his heart in red were the letters BLM, which stood for Bureau of Land Management, the government entity he’d worked for before the shit hit the fan. The fact that his chief and fellow firefighters from the old firehouse in downtown Jackson Hole hadn’t survived the Omega outbreak meant that his well-worn coat was the last link he had to his crew and former profession. I’m probably never going to fight another forest fire, he mused—unless old Duncan continued piling wood on the growing bed of white-hot coals.

  But the flame and heat and the slim chance of an out-of-control blaze were the least of the tall, dreadlocked man’s worries. All of the above couldn’t be detected from the road which was a good distance away and separated by thick old growth. It was the smoke that had him concerned. It could carry on the breeze for miles, and if the wrong people got wind of it then another confrontation like the one he’d heard folks talking about since his arrival would probably happen sooner rather than later.

  He glanced across the flames at the Vietnam-era aviator who apparently had not heard him over all of the crackling and popping. Zippering the green jacket to just under his chin where the collar battled with his lengthening goatee, he repeated his question. “Duncan ... why are you hatin’ on the trees?”

  Caught in the act with one hand curled around a well-seasoned piece of fir, Duncan grimaced and set it back down on the pile. “Ain’t no hugger,” he drawled. “But I don’t hate ‘em neither.”

  Daymon smiled and pulled the hood over his dreads. “The way you keep stoking that fire tells me you aren’t worried about the friends of those dudes you killed showing up.”

  “They pretty much know where we are already,” countered Duncan. “And if they come around we’ve got a few more surprises waiting for them.”

  “When they come around ... not if?” exclaimed Phillip. Punctuating the apprehension he’d just voiced, the rail-thin man ran his hands through his graying hair and shifted uncomfortably in the camp chair.

  Looking up from the impromptu security huddle where Gus, the former Salt Lake County Sherriff, and Charlie Jenkins, the newly-arrived former Jackson Hole Chief of Police, had nosed their folding nylon chairs together, Lev said, “We’ve got to be ready for them. And I don’t recommend we go on the offensive with only Duncan’s Humvee with the Ma Deuce and the handful of small arms we have.”

  “I concur,” added Gus. “Whoever calls Huntsville home was probably just probing us again. What’d you say Duncan ... we’ve only got north of two hundred rounds linked up for the fifty?”

  Resisting the urge to pile another log on the fire, Duncan instead took a long pull from his warm Budweiser before answering. “I linked about a hundred more. Still left Logan with enough for his Barrett, which we’re going to need as a standoff weapon when we do move on Huntsville. Hell, it’d be effective deployed from the Black Hawk if we take her up.”

  Jamie leaned in, pushed a stray strand of dark hair into her watch cap, and walked her gaze from one person to the next before settling on Duncan, whom, in the short span of time since he’d been at the compound, had become the go-to guy for advice amongst the group. “I say we go in quiet and slice their fucking throats,” she hissed, the licking flames sharpening her already-angular features. With her eyes still fixed on Duncan, she went on. “I’m looking at this thing from a woman’s point of view,” she said, throwing a quick glance in Jordan’s direction. “There is no doubt in my mind that those hillbillies we got the jump on at the hunting cabin the other day were part of the gang we ambushed today. Same brand new Toyota SUVs. Same MO, the way they had Jordan zip-tied and hooded. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce what kind of party they had planned for her. And then from Chief and Lev’s description of what happened at the Gudsons’ property the other day ... where once again they were driving the same new SUVs and a couple of National Guard Humvees—it all seems to tie them to the dead National Guard soldiers Duncan and Phil found at the roadblock. But what I can’t shake. What really pisses me off and makes me want to act”—she paused, neck veins bulging, all eyes on her—“is what those animals did to Mr. Gudson and his little boy.” Her words trailed off quietly, and with a rare display of emotion she choked up and then, offering no resistance, she allowed Logan to pull her in close. After a tick she shrugged off his arm, palmed away the tears, and then finished her thought. “My mind keeps going to Mrs. Gudson and her teen daughter. Where are they? Are they still alive? And if they are, what’s happening to them right now? I really don’t want to know the answer to that. Although I think I already do. But you know what? If we stay here with our thumbs up our asses and do nothing, we might as well expect the same treatment when they return and we find ourselves with our backs against the wall. We’re on the side of good ... that means we help the other good folks—or die trying.” Jamie had locked eyes with Lev as she delivered the ‘or die trying’ part of her sermon slash appeal slash call to action. She softened her gaze and then melted into Logan, awaiting a rebuttal from the young combat veteran.

  Taking the high road and choosing not to confront the young woman’s opinion here or now, Lev rose slowly, shouldered his AR-15 and walked in the direction of the compound’s camouflaged entrance.

  Sensing the tension in the air, Heidi tightened her grip on Daymon’s bicep. He gave her a sidelong glance, a quick smile to put her at ease, and resumed following the group’s conversation, waiting for the right time to mention Cade Grayson’s impending arrival.

  Meanwhile, Jenkins, who had been listening intently to Jamie’s heartfelt declaration, peeled away from the LE—Law Enforcement—huddle and claimed a spot a foot closer to the fire. Save for the occasional hiss and pop from veins of pitch cooking off inside the wood, the clearing was quiet. It was if the group had taken a collective breath and had yet to exhale. He looked at the sad sight of Tran warming his battered and broken body by the fire. Then he passed his gaze over the men and women he’d known for only a short time: Seth, Phillip, Logan, and the two women—Jamie and Jordan—all of who seemed capable and had automatic rifles lying by their feet. Finally he locked eyes with Duncan—the fella, he noted, who people seemed to look up to.

  “As much as I’d like to see those vermin eradicated. We’ve got to be careful and not act on emotion—not develop a case of tunnel vision. Because it’s not only the living we have to contend with,” Jenkins said in a low voice. “We’re going to need all the firepower we can rustle up. Except for the one fortified town we passed through ... Etna, if I remember correctly, everywhere else between Jackson Hole and this compound was abandoned and teeming with walking corpses ... or rotters, as you all call them. I hate to sound glum but we are on our own. And I don’t mean just us”—he thrust his hand out palm down and made a swirling motion with his arm which seemed to signify everyone in attendance—“I mean the entire country is on its own, and that means the U.S. Army is not going to reconstitute itself any time soon—if ever—and come rolling through here and restore order. And lastly ... there is a ruthless and vicious killer on the loose.” He went on to describe the siege of Jackson Hole, Robert Christian’s hostile takeover, and how merciless Ian Bishop, the former Navy SEAL, had been when meting out punishment in order to keep the population in line. Without thinking about Heidi’s ordeal in the ‘Valley of the Crosses’, as Daymon had deemed it, Jenkins included a very graphic description of the hundred or so people he had seen crucified next to the Teton Pass road. “Ian Bishop escaped Jackson Hole alive, and I’d bet he and his paramilitary group went west, not east.”

  “I concur,” added Daymon. “I’ve seen his handiwork. That fucker is pure evil, and if any of you cross paths with him, you’ll see what I mean; he and his men will make the goons you’ve been dealing with look like a church group.”

  There was silence.

  “I agree,” Dunc
an finally said. “We’ve got to be very careful whenever we venture away from the compound.” He paused and looked over at the newly-arrived former Police Chief of Jackson Hole, who had been forced by Christian and Bishop to keep the locals in line. “I can think of no good reason Bishop would set up shop closer to Colorado Springs,” he went on. “If I were him and I’d just jabbed a stick in the eye of the United Stated government, I’d surely go the other way as fast as possible. Somewhere densely wooded and sparsely populated with an airport or airstrip nearby.”

  “I would be willing to bet the farm that he’s set up shop somewhere along the Idaho/Washington border,” Jenkins said. “I’ve had dealings with him. He ain’t stupid. And by that I mean he’s nowhere near the coast. Hell, seventy-five percent of the world’s population lives near a coast.”

  “And there’s no way he’d go anywhere near any of the big cities,” said Chief. “Too many rotters ... that’d be same as committing suicide.”

  Leaning in towards the fire, Jamie said, “Why in the hell are we even talking about some dick that we have no reason to believe is anywhere near here?”

  Surprising everyone, Tran sat forward in his low-slung folding chair and said forcefully, “Because you need to be afraid of the man. He is nearby and he is pure evil.”

  All heads turned and all eyes fell on the slight Asian man, whom Daymon’s small group had come across on the outskirts of Victor, Idaho. He had been in the back seat of Daymon’s old International Scout, unconscious, bloodied, and battered, and looking every bit as bad as one of the walking dead—the latter of which had almost earned him a face full of hot lead. However, mere seconds from leaving this world, Tran had snapped out of his stupor and asked for help, a feat the dead were not capable of, but a simple act nonetheless that spared his life on the spot. But the fact that Tran had been Robert Christian’s Boy Friday didn’t sit well with Jenkins and Daymon. Finally, it was Heidi’s revelation that Tran had eschewed the violence and bloodlust the billionaire’s henchmen regularly engaged in that mellowed the contempt both men felt towards him, and the sole reason he was here with them now.