Shouts rose up from inside the walls as the pikers, joined by a dozen more Bear River citizens, surrounded the twenty or so rotters that had gained access before the north entry could be completely sealed off.
A hundred feet left of the guard tower, the half-dozen citizens who had volunteered to dangle from ropes outside the wall above the assembled dead to act as live bait were being reeled back in.
Two hundred feet outside the gate, the white truck, lit up like a police cruiser and emblazoned on the side with the words Brady’s Tasty Treats, ground to a sudden halt.
Though he was worried for his dad, Peter rubbed his hands together. This was the moment he had been waiting for. And he only had to wait a second until the familiar ditty blared from the roof-mounted speakers at full volume. The Pavlovian response to the sight and sound of it all was near instantaneous and he found himself craving one of those multicolored, jumbo rocket pops. As the dead peeled away from the walls below to investigate, despite the awful stink rising off of them, Peter could almost taste the frozen treat.
“Look,” said Gregory, pointing west.
Peter turned and gazed the length of the wall. Even in the dark the undulating movement of the dead things wasn’t lost on him. He saw brief flashes of tattered clothing and upturned faces as someone in the corner guard tower walked a bright light back and forth over the gathered horde. Then, as the ice cream truck with his dad at the wheel sputtered and began rolling along the dirt feeder road, he witnessed the entire undead mass swing their heads in unison and mount a slow shuffling pursuit.
State Route 39
Working in silence, Cade and Lev walked the road collecting the weapons and ammunition and anything else valuable to survival in these trying times.
As Lev rifled through the shot up Suburban’s glove box, he said, “When these two groups don’t return—”
Finishing the sentence, Cade said, “We’re going to have visitors. I’ve been thinking about that.”
“They’ll come during the day.”
Cade slipped the keys from the ignition and dropped them into a pocket. “I agree.”
Lev took a map of Utah and stack of papers from the glove box and folded them in half. He looked up. “Tomorrow?”
Cade said, “I would if I were in their shoes.”
“Then we don’t have much time to waste.” Lev stuffed the map and papers in his pocket to read later in better light. He elbowed the door open then regarded Cade again. “We better get back to the compound. The rigs need to be gassed up. Guns have to be cleaned and oiled. Plus, we’re gonna have to get fresh batteries for the radios and some MREs for the ride. I figure an hour at most and we can be gunned up and Oscar Mike.”
“No ‘we’ this time,” said Cade. “I’m going alone.”
Lev looked west down 39. Saw Jamie, M4 in hand, standing watch near the F-650. Scanning right he picked out Duncan’s head protruding from the turret atop the Humvee. Squinting from the glare of the two sets of headlights aimed his way, he said, “Duncan will never go for that. And neither will Glenda. Even if nobody else presses the issue, she will call for a vote.”
Cade shouldered a pair of semiautomatic rifles and stuffed the spare magazines for them in his cargo pockets. He looked to Lev. Said, “I can appreciate your enthusiasm,” and strode off toward the waiting vehicles.
Lev took one final long look at the destruction, letting his gaze linger on the tangle of enemy corpses Cade and Duncan had shoved none too gently into the rear of the van. Finished, he double timed it to catch up. After running a dozen yards, he slowed and walked shoulder-to-shoulder with the Delta operator. “You can’t go it alone.”
Without breaking stride, Cade said, “This is no longer a democracy. I can … and I will.”
Chapter 63
Dregan braked hard and brought the ice cream truck to a full stop for the third time since his mad dash through the north gate some thirty minutes prior. The trees lining the dirt road on both sides of the Brady mobile pulsed orange with each new strobe of the hazard lights. Peering into the elongated side mirror, he saw gnarled branches bathed in blue and red reaching down from the moonless black void above. And hugging the ground behind the vehicle was a foot-high layer of exhaust fumes. Hell, he thought, throw some Abba in place of the current song on rotation and replace the zombies with Lycra-clad twenty-somethings and the whole experience wouldn’t be far from the euro discos of his youth. And as fond of the drug and drink as some of his contemporaries had been in that era, the closing time exodus sometimes resembled the motor-skill-challenged assemblage he had driven through just outside the north gate.
After sitting there for a long five minutes with the engine idling and Sweet Georgia Brown blasting for what seemed like the hundredth time from the multi-directional speaker, Dregan was starting to think he was in the stands at a Harlem Globetrotter’s game, not playing the Good Humor Man attempting to lure tens of thousands of abominations away from Bear River.
The new attack started as a shooting pain deep within Dregan’s lungs. A second later he couldn’t breathe. It was as if he had been gut punched on the tail end of a long drawn-out exhale and the follow-on breath was never going to happen.
With stars dancing in front of his eyes, the dam finally broke and, like a person on the receiving end of a successful Heimlich maneuver, he spit a wad of mucous, salty with blood and who knows what else, onto the windshield.
There was a noticeable rattle in his chest when he drew in the much-anticipated lungful of crisp night air. Arms wrapping the steering wheel in a loose embrace, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on its cool, smooth surface. Once he got his wind back and the fireworks had abated, he sat up straight and dragged his sleeve across his mouth.
Stealing a look at the side mirror, he spotted the horde’s front echelon. Heads bobbed and lolled and their contorted faces changed to an eerie shade of purple as they emerged from the inky black a hundred feet down the road. Hundreds of zombies poured into the light spill as he watched. Soon they inhabited every square inch of the packed earth road behind the Brady mobile. And as he continued to wait for the first among them to reach the noisy prize, he spotted the long shadows of what he guessed to be hundreds more marching through the trees on both sides of the road.
***
Thirty short seconds after emerging from the dark, the dead on the road were shuffling through the carbon monoxide haze trailing the truck, causing it to roil and begin to dissipate. A tick later hands were slapping the sheet metal and the faint screech of nails raking paint were rising over Sweet Georgia Brown.
Dregan waited until the first ashen face mashed against the sliding window to let up on the brake. Goosing the throttle, he said, “Let’s go, party people. It’s closing time. You don’t have to go home … but you can’t stay here.” As the ice cream truck gained traction in the shallow mud and began to putter forward, he picked up his radio and let them know back at Bear River that he was on the move again with the Washington Generals in hot pursuit. He released the Talk key and chuckled when the woman on the other end asked him to repeat the last part.
Ignoring the query, he locked his eyes on the road ahead so that he wouldn’t miss the left turn that would see him and the undead horde west through a sloping pasture to where it came to a T with State Route 16.
In the guard tower at Bear River, Gregory and Peter were watching the dead streaming north. The majority of them that had been crowding in on the northwest corner and north gate area when the music started up were now angling toward the exact spot in the orchard where the ice cream truck entered. Many more, perhaps numbering in the thousands judging by the grunts and moans and ongoing swishing of wet grass against tattered clothing, were suddenly forgetting about the meat behind the walls and striking off to catch up with the source of the sound most of them had associated with something desirable since early childhood.
Talking loudly so as to be heard over the din of the departing dead, Peter said, “Are they a
ll going to follow him?”
Gregory picked a distant spot to the west where he thought the north/south-running state route should be. He pressed a pair of high-power binoculars to his face and concentrated hard. Finally, after catching fleeting glimpses of the undead horde surging north over the pastures and along the nearby stretch of 16, he said, “That’s the plan.”
“And then Dad loops back around by Ray and Helen’s house?”
“That’s the plan,” Gregory lied.
In the pitch-black of the enclosed guard tower, Big Brother’s pained expression was lost on Peter. Misted-over eyes still glued to the field glasses, Gregory cocked his head and listened to his dad’s voice coming from the nearby guard’s radio. Smiling at the last part of the encouraging report, he tousled Peter’s blond locks and handed the binoculars back to the guard.
“The truck’s sound system is stuck to playing only the Harlem Globetrotter’s theme,” he explained to the female guard. “Dad used to take us to see them whenever they came to the Salt Palace.” Though he missed the guard’s quizzical expression, he went on, explaining, “The Generals are always their opponent. And they’re always the visiting team. They never beat the Globetrotters.”
“Understood,” replied the guard, a former United States Marine. Her smile was lost on the brothers Dregan as she spoke into the radio, telling Alexander Dregan, “Godspeed, sir. The Generals’ losing streak must not be broken.”
Chapter 64
Twenty minutes after leaving the killing fields roughly two miles east of the Eden compound, Cade was wheeling the F-650 into the clearing. Instead of nosing the rig in between the Raptor and haphazardly parked 4Runner, he drove past the Winnebago, then continued on to the lower part of the clearing where the tarp-covered Department of Homeland Security Black Hawk sat all alone.
As soon as the Ford’s headlight beams had swept over the darkened RV, everything that had happened inside there came rushing back to him in a dizzying flurry of sights and sounds and smells. He was still reliving that night of horror—the worst in his thirty-five years on Earth—when he pulled the Ford in broadside to the helo, but just outside of the reach of its drooping rotor blades. As he sat there mulling over the what-ifs and should-haves, the Humvee driven by Lev swung past the Ford’s open tailgate and stopped broadside to the helicopter with its headlights trained on a small copse of mature pines bordering the clearing.
After seeing Lev and Jamie exit the Humvee ahead of Duncan, who took some time extricating himself from the gunner’s position in the turret, Cade did a J-turn and backed the F-650 in until its tailgate was awash in the other vehicle’s headlight spill.
Killing the engine, he climbed from the Ford and felt the night chill through his Crye Precision top. Throwing a shiver, he called Lev over.
“Help me with Ray and Helen.”
Lev nodded and grabbed ahold of the curtain shrouding the bodies.
The men carried the corpses one at a time and placed them inside the helicopter so the animals wouldn’t get to them during the night.
“I’ll bury them in the morning,” said Cade to nobody in particular. He donned his pack and helmet. Heavy from the plate carrier and spare magazines he had transferred from the soiled chest rig, the pack hung low on his back. Leaving the chinstraps to his bump helmet dangling by his cheeks, he started removing items from the F-650’s crowded bed, starting with the ruined and reeking Multi-Cam blouse and MOLLE rig—both candidates for the burn pile.
A dozen feet away, Duncan was stretching and rubbing his right shoulder. Hearing the telltale creak of the compound’s steel door—always a candidate for a fresh spritz of WD-40—he turned his attention across the clearing and picked up a trio of headlamps bobbing in the dark. Though the approaching survivors were only partially front-lit, as they drew near Duncan gleaned from the snippets of silhouette who they were. The lanky form on the left wore the headlamp over a floppy hat. Definitely Wilson. The dead giveaway that the person in the middle was Taryn came from the periodic contact happening with Wilson. An occasional brush of the hip by her. Instant reciprocal contact by him. Clearly the two had no problem with sharing personal space.
The form on the lovebirds’ right was much shorter and moved with an economy Duncan recognized at first sight. If Tran was here in the clearing, he thought, then Seth was in the security pod acting as the eyes and ears of the group.
Leaving Cade to unload the liberated weapons from the rear of the F-650, Duncan walked to meet the trio. Putting a hand up to shield against the competing headlamp beams, he said, “Where’s Glenda?”
Taryn stepped close and adjusted her lamp so the beam lanced skyward. Finished, she said, “Glenda is hanging out with the ‘incorrigibles.’”
“Her word or yours?” asked Duncan.
“Her word,” replied Taryn. “She caught the two of them gorging on the last of the Halloween candy—”
Wilson cut in. “They ate every last piece. And when she asked them why they thought it was acceptable to do so, they both said they didn’t want to carry it out with them when the cannibals came.”
Incredulous, Duncan shot, “When? Not, if? Lot of confidence those two have in the rest of us.”
“Raven just lost her mom,” reminded Tran. “Sasha did, too. They’re forming a bond. The talk is all false bravado.”
“Well la-tee-da, Mister Freud. You gonna install a couch in your quarters? Charge a fee for listening to folks blather while you work a mental Rubik’s Cube?”
Tran shook his head, intermittently blinding Duncan with his headlamp beam. “Just stating the obvious. What do you need help with?”
“I’m half-strength,” said Duncan.
“What’s new?” quipped Wilson.
“You need extra muscle to unload the snowmobile,” guessed Taryn.
Pointing at her, Duncan said, “X gets a square, young lady.”
Yawning, Wilson said, “And it can’t be done in the light of day?”
“I’m Cade’s emissary,” said Duncan. “All I know is that he’s itching to get the thing out of there.” He paused. “Maybe he’s thinking along the same lines as the girls. Our location has been compromised, after all. Found one of those silenced rotters and cables and hardware in the back of that red and black van.”
Wilson started walking toward the F-650. “Everything you need to booby trap a place after you loot it and dispose of the people.”
“That’s their calling card,” said Duncan as he fell in behind Wilson.
***
Using a couple of sheets of muddied plywood as a makeshift ramp, the six survivors, well, five and a half considering Duncan’s injury, managed to unload the Arctic Cat without breaking it or anyone getting hurt.
Lev looked to Cade. “Where do you want it, boss?”
Indicating a spot under the trees, Cade said, “Right there. And tarp it real good, would you?”
While Lev and the others manhandled the snowmobile across the damp soil, Cade slipped the slings of half a dozen rifles over his shoulders, Zapata-style. Rifles hanging off his back and weighing him down considerably, he stooped and picked up the Pelican case containing the MSR with one hand and the M249 with the other. Pulling Duncan close, he said, “Walk with me to the compound,” and strode off into the dark.
State Route 16
Much to Dregan’s surprise, he had negotiated the gently sloping pasture without letting the heavily rutted strips of dirt passing for a road pitch the ungainly vehicle over onto its side. Twice he had come close to losing control due to mushy shocks and its top-heavy nature but had saved himself both times from a painful death to gnashing teeth and clawing hands with a simple lean-countering-jerk of the oversized steering wheel.
Now, forty-five minutes after leaving Bear River behind and having covered a mile at most, he brought the vehicle to a juddering halt where the dirt road came to a T with the paved two-lane.
Looking left, he saw only a hundred feet of SR-16. It was lit up much like the orchard
had been. Beyond the roadside ditches it was bracketed on both sides by barbed wire fencing that shot off die-straight before finally disappearing into the pure black of night. Straight ahead a dirt berm lit up by the ice cream truck’s weak headlights glowed an otherworldly shade of orange. Beyond the fence rising and falling with the berm was open pasture devoid of life. Peering over his right shoulder, Dregan saw more of the same: northbound two-lane and dual runs of fencing all lit up in the undulating red and blue and orange light being thrown off by the rig’s pulsing lights.
Consulting his wing mirror, Dregan saw that the horde was just beginning to draw within his self-imposed danger zone—a guesstimated distance equal to the length of an American football field. Pulse picking up speed, he reached over to the seat next to him and took hold of the handheld spotlight Gregory had procured from one of the gate guards. After making sure it was plugged into the utility receptacle (also wired in by Gregory) he stuck his arm out his open window, checked to see that the spotlight’s lens was clear of the mirror, and threw the thumb switch.
At once, the dancing colored lights on his side were swallowed up by the million candle-power beam as the road stretching for what seemed like more than a mile south of the T was bathed in a detail-revealing bluish-white light.
The sight of thousands of pale, walking corpses surging up the road and over the pasture, the barbed wire fencing and gnarled wood posts falling like dominos, caused Dregan to draw in a deep breath. Which he paid for as the stabbing pain returned to remind him that the deaders were not the only thing trying to kill him.
As he gaped at the contorting faces of the dead lit up like a thousand full moons by the spot, he pondered whether he was going to fall first to total lung failure brought about by the Big C, or have his bones stripped clean by the dual hordes about to merge and become one of the fabled mega-hordes he’d heard mentioned in hushed tones around campfires but had yet to see in person.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 34
