“I’m not,” Daymon shot back. “I drove us here from Victor in that thing. Seems like a switch was flicked and Charlie has put his policing days behind him.”
“Grateful just the same,” said Logan. “I figure the light bar alone gives us a little clout if we encounter any survivors. Besides, I can’t stand those creampuff luxury Toyotas.”
“You’ll like this one. She sure drives nice. Lots of power and the beast will stop on a dime and give you a nickel change,” said Daymon. “Years ago, who would’ve thought that the po-po would be rolling around in lowered SUVs.”
“Sorry, Daymon. I’m going to help them push the chopper,” Logan said. “You coming?”
Saying nothing, Daymon pulled up his shirt and exposed the wormy-pink scar tissue forming over the wounds where the fence at Schriever had chewed into him. Shiny and thick as a lamp cord, he’d carry them for the rest of his life as a grim reminder of the hold his fear of captivity and confined spaces had on him.
Logan made a face, turned away, and jogged across the dirt strip, carbine banging his hip with each footfall.
Shivering against the morning chill, Daymon watched Logan toss his rifle into the police cruiser’s open window, methodically roll up his sleeves, and join in the effort.
Wishing he’d had the foresight to don something thicker than a tee shirt, Daymon rubbed the goose flesh on his arms and set out towards the action—partly to get his blood flowing, but also to see if there was anything he could offer in the way of help.
Aside from the manual labor there was nothing else he could do. And he’d already learned the hard way how even the slightest bit of exertion could reopen the vertical gashes on his abdomen. So he stood back and gawked at the men as they struggled and cursed and pushed until finally the Black Hawk’s rotor disc and tail boom was clear of the tree line. Amused, he watched as Lev and Gus ran around the chopper policing up the half dozen plywood sheets that weren’t still trapped under its big tires, then carted them over and stacked them neatly near where the ship had originally been parked. On the return trip, they dragged the camouflage netting back to the chopper and tossed it over top and stretched it taut so that it covered the drooping blades and vertical tail rotor.
Getting Duncan’s attention wasn’t easy. The way the grizzled aviator had been walking around issuing orders and slapping backs like some kind of conflicted shop steward prevented Daymon from just walking up and tapping him on the shoulder and asking for a minute of his time. So Daymon waited and watched Logan pass a couple of emergency gas cans into the back of Jenkins’s black and white. Then he looked on as Duncan and Logan held a brief huddle, arms around shoulders, faces stuck well into each other’s personal bubble of space. Oh, to be a fly on that bowler hat, thought Daymon, wondering what kind of master plan those two were hatching.
Then the girls entered the vehicle—Jamie, whom he barely recognized out of her ghillie suit, riding shotgun, and Jordan, taking the spot behind Logan. Thanks to a shaft of daylight lighting the squat vehicle’s interior, Daymon could see Gus in the back seat opposite Jordan.
The doors thumped shut and the Tahoe’s tuned engine burbled to life. Daymon saw Duncan clasp Logan’s hand and give him a parting hug through the open window. Finally the loaded-down Tahoe pulled away and bumped across the spongy soil towards the gravel feeder road, its needle antennas whipping the air. Then a white Toyota SUV with Chief at the wheel and Lev in the passenger seat transited the clearing and entered the feeder road close on Logan’s bumper.
***
Approaching with a broad grin on his face, Duncan locked eyes with Daymon and said, “What are you doing out here dressed like that? You’re gonna catch cold.”
Wanting nothing more than to regurgitate Logan’s who’s the helicopter parent now quip, Daymon restrained himself and said, “I didn’t remember the Farmer’s Almanac calling for an early autumn.”
Duncan cackled morbidly and replied, “I didn’t remember that worthless rag predicting an undead outbreak either.”
The comment brought another half-smile to Daymon’s face. Rubbing his shoulders he said, “Touché’. Still think we ought to cut a few more cords of wood. Probably gets pretty cold up here in winter.”
“That’s near the top of our to-do list,” said Duncan. “Hate to change the subject on ya, but I’m gonna. What are you really doing out here? Everything OK with you and the girl?”
“It’s getting to be more OK day by day,” Daymon said. He palmed his chin, thinking, What are you my dad? Then he grabbed the back of his skull and, twisting against the resistance, cracked his neck. Rolling his head in a full circle, he grimaced and then asked matter-of-factly, “You taking the chopper up?”
“After I thumb through this,” said Duncan, holding up an inches’ thick ream of papers held together by three enormous silver rings, on its cover the words: Aircrew Training, Utility Helicopter, H-60 Series, and under the header in bold red letters the warning: Property of Department of Homeland Security, United States Customs and Border Protection.
“That kind of reading is bound to put a fella to sleep,” quipped Daymon.
“This old guy doesn’t need any help,” said Duncan behind a guttural chuckle.
“You gonna want an extra set of eyes when you go up?” asked Daymon.
“More than you know,” Duncan said, clapping the taller man on the shoulder. “You’re more than welcome to tag along.”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Watch out for the traps,” said Duncan, hitching a brow.
Daymon pulled out the crude map Logan had drawn for him. “I think I’ll be able to steer clear of them thanks to this,” he said.
Duncan made no reply. Instead handed over his two-way radio.
“What’s this for?”
“Call if you get in trouble,” answered Duncan. “It’s OK to ask for help.” He winked and turned an about-face and, carrying himself like he didn’t have a worry in the world, ambled towards the compound’s entrance.
After drawing in a couple of deep lungfuls of crisp morning air, Daymon consulted the map, racked a round into the stubby combat shotgun that used to be Duncan’s, and then bled into the forest, quiet and confident as could be.
Chapter 53
Bushnell, Nebraska
Interstate 80
Elvis woke up with an immediate need to empty his bladder, but quickly found a more serious and deadly problem staring him in the face.
Overnight, more than a dozen walking cadavers had surrounded the GMC, and now the truck’s windows were completely blocked by their ashen faces.
He tried to figure out where his plan had gone wrong. The road had been clear when he stopped here hours ago in the dark. Therefore the only logical answer was that they’d followed his taillights all the way from downtown Bushnell. Tenacious fuckers, he thought as he did a modified pee-pee dance on the bench seat while gripping his junk tightly with both hands.
He thought about driving away and finding a spot nearby to hang it out, but he really had to go. So, with the dead banging the hood and both doors, he whipped it out in the truck and shot a steaming yellow stream into the passenger footwell.
“Sorry, Farns,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ll have the motor pool guys clean that up.”
While he pissed, he looked out the windshield at what, the night before, had been nothing but gray asphalt illuminated by the truck’s headlights. Now he had a panoramic view of flatland dominated by farms with faded patches of lawn and waving fields of corn. And in the distance, illuminated by the rising sun, he saw even more lurching corpses moving about the roadway in loose knots.
He started the engine, turned his Huskers cap backwards, and in no time the dead were behind him and he was pushing eighty down the center of the interstate belting out an awful rendition of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law.
***
After Bushnell came Pine Bluffs, and that was where he saw it. Blaze-orange and sitting on the side of the road with
the driver’s last service call, an earth-tone Chevy Malibu, still attached to the wheel lifts.
Elvis pulled ahead of the wrecker, a newer model Dodge 550, and parked his urine smelling pick-up, and jumped out.
He found the tow operator a dozen yards away. In the grass beyond the shoulder. The old fellow had been attacked and died, and then apparently reanimated paralyzed from the chest down.
Elvis spun a circle and didn’t see any additional threats, so he ignored the crawler and inspected the truck. He found the doors unlocked, a half-eaten PB and J sandwich on the seat and the keys still in the ignition.
He climbed inside and found what he’d been looking for. A square navigation unit hardwired somewhere behind the dash. He cycled the ignition. Nothing. Not even the last gasp whir of the starter draining the final volt from the battery. WWFD?
Elvis jumped from the cab. Checked the crawling corpse, and found it had moved only a few inches along the hardscrabble ground.
He jumped in the GMC, performed a K-turn and nosed it to the Ram. Sourced a pair of jumpers from the wrecker and attached them to the two trucks. Red on positive. Black to ground. Kinda like ‘lefty loosy, righty tighty’, mused Elvis. Some things you’re taught stay with you forever.
The Ram started up right away. And so did Elvis’ relationship with his new road dog when the GPS came online and a voice, soft and feminine but with a tiny bit of robot thrown in, said: Searching.
When the display finally refreshed and the unit appeared operational, Elvis cycled through the menus until he found one where it appeared ready to accept a string of coordinates. He dug in his pocket and withdrew the scrap of paper covered with a mess of numbers written in his hand.
He input the numbers exactly as he’d written them down, hit enter, and watched as the computer brain set to thinking.
Thirty seconds later a new map refreshed, on it a wealth of information. His current location was noted, and connecting it with the final destination were a trio of squiggly yellow lines denoting the routes available to him.
One look at the driving mileage, though, made his heart skip. He zoomed in by tapping the + button on the screen. Scrutinized the offerings and then chose the one that would take him farthest away from the large cities.
He hopped down from the cab, went around back and gaped at the controls, trying to determine how to release the disabled Malibu.
It took a moment but he worked the correct levers and the vehicles parted ways.
Heading to the cab, he noticed a number of plastic gas cans strapped next to the rear of the cab with rubber cords. A quick tap on each told him they were full.
After transferring his meager belongings from the GMC and climbing back into the idling truck, he adjusted the seat and mirrors, checked his watch, and said aloud, “Well, little lady. If I’m gonna get us there before tomorrow then I’m gonna have to drive like a trucker on meth.”
Chapter 54
Eden Compound
Coming and going from the compound had always been stressful for Logan—more so now after learning that the stretch of two-lane fronting the feeder road had been under surveillance by the Chance kid, who was now lying dead a dozen yards away, his bullet-riddled carcass buried under two feet of dirt.
Logan brought the Tahoe to a crunching halt short of the foliage-covered lattice that served to keep the compound’s entrance safe from prying eyes. Leaving the engine running, he slid out of the driver’s seat and jogged to the fore, parted the makeshift blind, and looked the length of the state route, east and then west. For as far as he could see nothing moved. The air was still and heavy with a ground-hugging fog that was just beginning to burn off. He brought his binoculars to bear, walking his gaze up the grassy slope before settling on the distant tree line. Swept them left to right, and then, using hand signals, silently motioned Lev forward. The two men conferred for a moment; then, after setting their radios on the same frequency as Phillip’s, who was on duty in the security container, they shook hands, and Lev darted across the road in a low crouch.
With a couple of quick twists, Logan removed the wire holding the blind in place. He unlocked the padlock and pushed the hidden lever that allowed the gate, lattice and all, to swing freely on well-oiled hinges. It was a pretty elaborate set up which he had designed to keep the place hidden from humans during a world-rocking financial crunch brought upon by the supposed computer-killing Y2K bug. And for the first few weeks of the zombie apocalypse it had been worth its weight in gold, as fleeing survivors and the rotters following them from Ogden had passed right on by. Now, however, it was merely a pain in his ass as he stood out in the open vulnerable to attack.
With the specter of a set of crosshairs settling on his forehead, he pushed the gate open and hustled back to the Tahoe. Climbed behind the wheel and rolled forward at walking speed as Chief closed and latched the gate and secured the lattice in place.
After taking a left into the rising sun, he lowered his visor and flicked his eyes to the rearview, where he saw his old friend scale the fence and disappear from sight.
***
Logan watched the odometer tick ahead, and when three miles had spooled out behind the truck, thumbed his two-way and informed Lev that they were nearly out of radio range. To save batteries he powered down the device. A steady clicking sounded to his right as Jamie thumbed all thirty rounds from the earth-toned polymer Magpul magazine. She corralled the loose shells on the seat between her legs, where they produced a brassy tinkling with each dip in the road. She turned the spare mag upside down, blew into it a few times to dislodge any debris that might gum up the workings, and then painstakingly clicked all thirty shiny cartridges back into place. Tapped the mag against her palm to seat the rounds, swapped the mag with the one in her carbine, and repeated the process until all of her spare mags were good to go.
Like a kiddie rollercoaster, the two-lane wove through forested hills, rising and falling minimally, and then shot a straight line for a couple of miles before taking on a steeper pitch where the road snaked through, what were obvious to Logan, man-made slots in the hills.
Getting closer, he thought. Patches of reddish rock where the elements had eroded the native grasses and topsoil were becoming more evident the farther away they went from their valley.
As the Tahoe’s transmission geared down, a sign flashed by on the right. It was the usual beehive cutout with writing in black indicating they were currently travelling on Utah State Route 39. The first heading on the sign read: Woodruff, 11 miles. The next line had a smaller beehive that was labeled SR-16 with Randolph, 22 miles and an arrow indicating the town lay to the left. And below that, using the same reflective letters and numbers, the third entry read SR-16, I-89 South, Bear River, Wyoming, 24 miles with an arrow indicating the town was to the right.
From the back seat, Gus said to no one in particular, “Where do you think all the rotters went?”
“No idea,” answered Logan. “But I’m grateful we’re not in the thick of them. I had a feeling we’d be seeing herds of them this close to the junction.”
“Well, Logan, I’m glad your hunch is wrong,” said Jordan. “Feels strange being out here all alone, just the four of us.”
“Not to worry. As long as we keep moving we’ll be alright,” he said back.
Stowing the extra magazines in a cargo pocket, Jamie asked, “What about humans?”
“In our neck of the woods? Aside from Huntsville, Etna, and a few other holdouts still broadcasting on ham radio, there’s nothing but rotters left.”
Suddenly Logan slowed the cruiser, hunched over the steering wheel and said, “The roads aren’t clearly marked so keep your eyes peeled. One of them climbs off to the left and the other is on the right ... both are probably a little grown over.”
“My money is on the left mainly because staking out the high ground makes more sense to me. With just a couple of competent snipers it’d be way easier to defend.”
“I like the way you think, Jamie,
” said Gus, earning himself a quick jealous glance from Logan via the rearview. “But on the other hand”—he added, meeting Logan’s eyes—“the Ogden River runs along 39 to the south. Water is necessary for mining. And from a survivalist’s perspective, definitely a must have for any kind of self-sufficiency.”
There was a break in the scrub brush on the left and Logan slowed to a walking speed. “Left now or do we look for the river road? Let’s put it to a vote. Jamie first.”
“Left,” she said.
“Jordan?”
“I don’t know, Logan.” Then, after seeing an animated Gus pointing towards the passenger side, she added, “I vote for a right turn.”
Stopping the SUV on the centerline, Logan twisted around and caught Gus’ eye. “How do you vote, Gus?”
“The river side makes the most sense to me.”
“I’m with Jamie,” said Logan. She cracked a smile and placed her hand on his thigh. He went on, “It’s a tie, so why don’t we flip a coin?”
“Here,” said Gus, handing over a gold-hued Sacajawea dollar coin he carried around with him for occasions such as this.
“I hated those things,” stated Jordan. “Always mistaking them for a quarter.”
“Heads or tails, Jordan?”
She looked to Gus for help. He shrugged. She said, “Tails.”
Flipping the coin, Logan said, “C’mon heads.” He caught the coin rather theatrically, peeked under his palm and blurted out, “Heads. Left it is.” He reversed a few feet, set the brake and stepped from the truck.
Jamie watched from her seat as Gus exited from the rear passenger door, looped around the hood, and joined Logan on the road’s shoulder. The two scrutinized tire tracks in the crushed red rock of the entry, scuffing the chevron-patterned ridges with their boots. They looked closely at the puddles remaining from the night’s thunderstorms. Then Gus crouched down on his haunches, fussed with the low scrub on either side of the rutted track, turning the branches over in his hand. He looked up at Logan, shook his head, and then rose.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 27
