Chapter 76
Near Grand Junction, Colorado
Terra cotta earth and gnarled trees trying hard to survive the unforgiving high desert passed under the thundering Chinook. “We’ll be over Grand Junction Regional in a matter of minutes,” said Ari, his voice broadcast loudly over the onboard speakers. “I’m going to hover for a little while when we get there so that we can observe a moment of silence for a fallen hero. Because in this man’s opinion, if it weren’t for Sergeant Maddox’s ultimate sacrifice, some of us on this ship wouldn’t be here.”
Nodding in agreement, Cade gave Brook’s thigh a squeeze.
Though she truly was grateful for the man’s sacrifice, Taryn’s reaction to the news was different. Instantly she went rigid, the mere mention of her former prison tilling up an entire harvest’s worth of new nightmares—more than enough to last her the rest of her young life. She sat up and drew her legs in and began a subtle rocking motion.
Drawing her near, Wilson matched the gentle swaying of her body and caressed her shoulder the way a mom might console a hurt child.
Phone still in hand, Cade turned it over repeatedly, wondering what good could come from inserting himself into the middle of the Duncan and Logan equation. He looked around the cabin, finally settling his gaze on Raven, who had somehow gotten ahold of some kind of electronic device. White wires snaked from under her helmet and her head bounced to a rhythm he couldn’t hear. Next to her, Sasha was dozing, a large tan handbag filling in as a pillow between her head and the vibrating helicopter. Then he lingered on the two lovebirds across the aisle from him, who were still wrapped in the same mad embrace they’d been in since Taryn had come aboard.
Finally it hit him that if it weren’t for the crusty aviator, Duncan, he might not be sitting here next to his lovely wife, with his beautiful daughter, loving life no matter how difficult it was—or was about to become. Nope, he thought. He’d have died on the highway near Boise if Duncan hadn’t been there. Furthermore, he felt he still owed the man for going out of his way and plucking him and Daymon from either a slow death in the farmhouse attic or a fast death at the hands and teeth of the Zs that’d had them surrounded.
So he extracted the phone and extended the stubby antenna. He shifted his helmet aside and inserted the bud into his ear. Tapped out the unlock code and waited for the phone to indicate it was connected to a satellite. Meanwhile he scrolled through the missed call log, found the missed call entry labeled ‘1’, and renamed it Tice out of respect for the man’s ultimate sacrifice. Finally the compass icon flashed, letting him know a connection had been established.
He looked around the cabin once again. Then he peered out the window as the Chinook traversed the airspace over the outskirts of Grand Junction. Down below he saw dozens of Zs ambling the gray concrete side streets.
“Five mikes to Grand Junction Regional,” said Ari, forgoing the usual hand signal.
No active military mission. No active operators aboard. Therefore, no need, thought Cade as he thumbed the send button.
Chapter 77
Huntsville, Utah
Two hundred and twenty-eight miles away, Daymon had just stowed his shotgun and was trying to find a comfortable angle for his legs.
“Why don’t you adjust the seat?”
“You can do that?”
“Just like a car.”
“All that way from Schriever to Driggs, and then today tooling around with my legs scrunched up like a dead bug, and you couldn’t find it in your heart to tell me sooner?”
After a sharp cackle accompanied by a leg slap, Duncan said, “It’s not my fault the last person riding in that seat was a shrimp.”
Making no reply, Daymon instead fumbled around near the seat’s edge and pulled a lever that sent the seat yawing right and tilting back on its rail a few precious inches. “Ahhh,” he exclaimed at about the same time the electronic trilling of the sat-phone emanated from within his pants pocket.
Duncan watched Daymon squirm in the tight confines, a mad hunt for the phone. “Gonna answer the thing?” he said.
Daymon hit a key to talk and said, “Hello.”
“Daymon?” said a disembodied voice that was hard to place with any degree of certainty.
“It is. Am I speaking with Captain Cade Grayson?”
“Affirmative. No rank is necessary ... Cade will do.”
“Did you listen to my messages, Cade?”
“Affirmative. I listened to them twice,” he replied.
“Well there’s more,” Daymon stated slowly.
The funny thing was that Cade wasn’t at all surprised. Somehow he knew in the pit of his stomach that the two messages couldn’t have contained all of the pertinent information. That would have been way too easy. And as far as he knew, Mister Murphy was loathe to take even a day off—at least where anything having to do with Cade Grayson was concerned. So he sat back, ears perked, waiting to hear whatever Daymon had to add.
“You still there?”
“Affirmative,” Cade said back. “Lay it on me.”
Daymon went over the newest revelations concerning the death cards, as well as the explanation Duncan had provided. Then, leaving no stone unturned, he described the massacre in Huntsville and the similarities it shared with the murders and probable abductions that had happened at the quarry. Once Daymon had finished his three-minute oration there was a full thirty seconds of silence on Cade’s end.
“Hello. You still there?” said Daymon, trying his best to ignore Duncan, who had been sitting in the pilot’s seat, hand out, palm up, mouthing emphatically, “Let me speak to him.”
Playing keep away with the phone, Daymon leaned as far away from Duncan as possible and said, “So what’s your take on the situation?”
“I think Duncan’s a big boy and there’s nothing I can do to help the situation from here.”
“Where’s here?”
Cade looked out the window briefly. “I’m staring at red rocks and walking corpses from a Chinook helicopter—” He looked at the altimeter on his Suunto. “—five hundred and two feet over the suburbs of Grand Junction, Colorado, where I’ve got some important business to attend to. And if all goes as planned, we should be wheels down in Mack within the hour.”
Sweet, thought Daymon. He’d helped fight a complex fire there a number of years ago and knew the lay of the land pretty well. He imagined an overhead view of the area and did a quick mental calculation. “Hell, give-or-take, as the crow flies, you’re only two hundred miles away from the compound. Can’t you pull rank and bypass Mack and have them deliver you and your family to the GPS coordinates?”
Not wanting to go into too much detail, Cade said, “It’s not that simple—”
Daymon interrupted him by saying, “Didn’t seem to stop you from getting that Whipper prick to give up this Black Hawk I’m currently sitting in.”
“That was General Desantos’s doing. And that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms I don’t want to open and revisit.” Concentrating hard on how much he should divulge concerning his leaving Delta, he stared out the window and watched as the massive shadow of the Chinook and the blocky silhouette of the captive F-650 seemed to skim along the contours of the ground. Finally, after another full thirty seconds of dead air on both ends, Cade realized since Daymon stated he was in the Black Hawk, then Duncan had to be within arms’ reach. “Put Duncan on,” he said sharply. “But before you do, I think there’s something you need to know ... and your girl Heidi needs to know. Robert Christian is dead. He’s probably having dinner with Hitler as we speak.”
“Were you there?” asked Daymon.
“No, I watched it on Nash’s laptop. He went way too quick,” Cade said, thinking about how Pug had left the world in an entirely different manner. “Christian didn’t suffer.”
“I’ll tell her he did,” said Daymon.
“You do that.”
There was another long silence, then finally Daymon said, “I’m handing the phone to th
e Old Man.”
Duncan snatched up the phone and drawled, “Hey Delta. How’s it hangin’?”
Cade grimaced and said, “I’m finally free from the Green Machine.”
“Out of the army ... no shit?”
“Affirmative,” Cade said. “And I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Shoot,” said Duncan.
“Daymon filled me in on the happenings in your neck of the woods. I’m truly sorry to hear about your brother.”
There was a long moment of silence on the other end, after which Duncan said, “I wasn’t supposed to outlive him. It’s not right.”
“I figure I still owe you for the exfil in Hanna. I was hoping before you went and did anything you’d wait for me ... so that I can get in on the payback.”
“It’ll take the better part of the day to work up a load out and transfer fuel from the Bell to the Black Hawk. After that ... God knows how long to hunt the fuckers down,” conceded Duncan.
Cade looked left and noticed Brook giving him the evil eye. Ignoring her, he said, “Daymon says you’re pretty close to figuring out where they’re operating from.”
“Roger that,” replied Duncan. “But close only counts if you’re talking horseshoes and hand grenades ... not an entire state-in-the-union.”
“Which state are we talking about?”
“Idaho.”
“Been there, done that,” said Cade, recalling their mad dash through the outskirts of Boise and then their subsequent flight from the dead aboard the National Guard UH-60. “It’s a big state. Without me, who’s going to work the satellite navigation gear for you?”
“You make a good point,” drawled Duncan.
“I’ve still got the GPS coordinates to the compound.” Cade paused for a beat, then went on, “Will you at least afford me forty-eight hours to get there before you go on the warpath?”
After another long spell of dead air, during which Cade could almost feel Brook’s gaze boring into his soul, Duncan finally broke the silence and said in a funereal voice, “I’ll grant you that ... but I will be wheels up if you’re one second late. Even if it means I have to take on Bishop and his boys alone.”
Imagining Duncan doing the same, Cade glanced at his Suunto and marked the time, then risked a surreptitious glance Brook’s way and noted that her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow and steady. Here we go again, he thought, out of the fat and into the fire. And then, almost as if someone else was inhabiting his body and working his mouth, he replied, “Copy that ... forty eight hours. First light I’ll be oscar mike.”
Epilogue
West of the Rockies
Bishop sat bolt upright, swung his legs off the bed, fumbled on the nightstand in the dark and grabbed his pistol. Slowly, he expelled the breath he’d been holding, and then listened hard for any out-of-place noises.
Nothing.
He checked the glowing hands on his Luminox. 0422. That the guards hadn’t called set him at ease. Probably just another nightmare, he thought. So he replaced the Sig Sauer on the nightstand. Grabbed the bottled water sitting there and took a long pull.
Then, from somewhere across the lake, a car horn sounded—two long, drawn-out bursts of offensive zombie-attention-getting-noise. Unnecessary and irresponsible.
Forgoing boots, he grabbed his pistol and radio and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He paused long enough in the kitchen to grab a pair of the newest generation NVDs from off the granite island and power them on. While he waited, he thumbed the two-way and ordered the guards at the gate to investigate. Then he donned the NVDs and padded towards the sliding glass door leading out to the back of the house and the boathouse and lakeshore beyond.
But before he could unlock and pull slider the horn sounded twice again, closely spaced. And just as he was about to locate a rifle with the ability to reach out and touch the asshole, he noticed headlights across the lake flashing a familiar pattern, then the sat-phone on the island came alive, emitting an electronic trill.
He backpedaled, snatched up the phone and looked at the lighted display, recognizing the number instantly. Then he cast his gaze at the flashing headlights and what he was seeing dawned on him. Three short. Three long. Three short.
S.O.S.
Message received.
A smile curled his lip.
Well I’ll be damned, Elvis. You made it.
###
Thanks for reading Mortal. Look for Book 7: Warpath, the forthcoming novel in the Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse series in 2014. Please Friend Shawn Chesser on Facebook.
Table of Contents
http://www.moniquehappy.com
Mortal:
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
KINDLE EDITION
Copyright 2013
Kindle Edition, License
Shawn Chesser on Facebook
Acknowledgements
Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Epilogue
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 36
