Raven coughed again, a phlegm-addled fit that caused Sasha to venture over from her brother’s side. She offered Raven a tissue then sniffed the air. “Smell that? she said. “Smells like smoke.”
Raven’s coughing bout subsided. She said, “It stinks like Schriever to me. Dad says it’s from the JP something or other burning.”
Sasha turned away. Stuck her nose in the air and said, “That’s not just fumes from the helicopter.” She completed the circle, sniffing the air as Wilson and Taryn looked on. “No way. That’s wood burning ... somewhere. We better tell an adult.”
“You’re almost an adult,” proffered Raven. “Said so yourself.”
Shaking her red mane, Sasha stalked off towards the resident firefighter for confirmation.
Tugging Raven along by the hand, Brook took a few tentative steps towards the chopper and craned her head as the cockpit door facing her hinged open. A black boot emerged and planted on the grass.
Chest swelling, Brook walked her gaze up the tucked and bloused black pants leg and then over the like-colored load-bearing vest. A tick later a helmet broke the plane and she saw the short beard and ready smile underneath the smoked visor and was one hundred percent certain that the man in black was indeed her Cade.
Reuniting with him was always the same. She withheld all celebration until she had eyes on target—another of Cade’s sayings. The call that had come in earlier indicating that he and his team were en route carried no water at all. It only told Brook that he hadn’t died before the chopper was wheels up. There was no way for her to know if he’d been bitten or taken a bullet on the ground and died mid-flight. She’d been around the teams long enough to know that chickens weren’t meant to be counted until they were back in the coop, so to speak. So up until now she had remained stoic and reserved for Raven’s sake. But the instant she saw Cade’s face, all of that went out the window and she let go of Raven’s hand and sprinted into his arms with tears, hot and salty, flowing freely down her face.
***
Leaving the bulk of his gear in the chopper, Cade took the rugged Panasonic laptop and his M4 and walked with his ladies toward the compound entrance. There would be ample time tomorrow to go over the mission and debrief with Lev, Duncan, and to a lesser degree Daymon, whom Duncan had nothing but praise for, yet Cade wasn’t completely sold on. Cade supposed spending more time with the dreadlocked firefighter might eventually bring him around to Duncan’s way of thinking, but until his gut changed its tune, all of his training and life’s lessons told him to take a kid gloves approach to their already strained relationship. That he hadn’t let Daymon come along on the snatch and grab mission to Robert Christian’s mansion in Jackson Hole was probably not completely forgotten, and figured into the man’s sometimes surly demeanor. Time would tell.
For now, family and a good night’s sleep called. The former needed much attention first. The latter, however, though as exhausted and road weary as he was, would never be attainable so long as the dead walked the earth.
Chapter 1
Outbreak - Day 40
Winters’s Compound near Eden Utah
Three weeks had passed since justice was meted out inside the charnel house on the shores of Payette Lake in central Idaho. After returning to the compound aboard the DHS Black Hawk piloted by Vietnam veteran Duncan Winters, and with the night sky north showing an unnatural radioactive glow, Cade Grayson and his cobbled-together team were welcomed home like World War Two returnees—minus the tickertape parade, of course.
Jamie, who by all accounts should have had the hardest time readjusting after her short yet intense time as Ian Bishop’s hostage, literally hit the ground running from the Black Hawk as if nothing had happened. And as far as the people who had been there were concerned, nothing had.
So with nothing to do but struggle forward putting one foot in front of the other, the small group of survivors circled their wagons, determined to honor Duncan’s brother Logan in death by fortifying the compound as he would have wanted it—a task he was working towards the day he and Gus and Jordan were murdered at the abandoned mining quarry east of the Eden compound.
***
A handful of miles west of the compound, Daymon placed the chainsaw on the State Route 39 blacktop, removed his worn leather gloves and with both hands ruffled his newly formed beard, a move that sent tiny chips of pine and dogwood launching into the air. He removed the sun-heated metal hardhat and trapped it between his elbow and ribcage. Ran his free hand through the picket of short wiry dreadlocks and found the credit-card-sized patch of scar tissue where the dead had relieved him of a handful of his tightly braided locks. He had wanted nothing to do with it when Heidi mentioned cutting the dreads. He’d been wearing his hair that way—more out of convenience and ease of care than any kind of statement—since his late teens. But in order to suture the ghastly wound he’d suffered, literally, at the hands of the dead, and to prevent the twisted locks from being torn from his scalp again, Heidi convinced him to let her cut the tangle of dreadlocks down to three-inch nubs and allow Brook to clean and suture the wound. In hindsight, Daymon thought, as he worried the area of semi-numb and fully hardened skin, he should have fought harder to keep them as they were.
Now, three weeks later, with the wound fully healed and two dozen rubber bands securing the baby dreads, he looked at his shadow on the gray asphalt and pondered the new nickname the ballbuster-in-chief, Duncan, had given him. Sea Urchin had stuck for the first week. Week two saw it shortened to just Urchin or Urch if Duncan had a few belts of whiskey in him. And the harder he lobbied the crusty Vietnam veteran to drop the moniker that made him bristle like the namesake sea creature, the more glee Duncan derived from uttering it. In fact, some of the other survivors had taken to calling him Urch. Behind his back at first. Then over the last couple of days, starting with Phillip of all people, he was being called Urch, often and unashamedly to his face.
Daymon stared hard at the shadow tentacles and decided that they did in fact seem to have a life of their own when he moved his head suddenly. Snorting in disgust, he tossed his helmet to the road where it clattered and spun before coming to rest upside down near the shoulder.
“Keep it down, Urch,” cackled Duncan. “Or the rotters might find saws of their own and start cutting through yer barrier.”
The buzz of the chainsaw was far more appealing to the dead than a simple clatter of metal on asphalt. Of this Daymon was certain. In fact, fifty yards to the east, over the interwoven tangle of trees blocking the two-lane, he could see the blackened and hairless heads of the dead lolling side-to-side as they jostled for position. And though he couldn’t see the condition of even the tallest rotter’s body from sternum on down, in his mind he imagined their crispy naked bodies pressing futilely against the tons and tons of fallen timber. Only if he stood up tall, on his toes, could he make out the darting whites of their eyes seemingly hovering in space above pickets of stark white teeth—an illusion created when their lips and eyelids and all the other dangly fleshy bits cooked off when the nearby town of Eden burned down around them.
Daymon tilted his head back, closed his mouth, and drew in a deep breath through his nose. No smoke. Also gone was the awful stench of burning flesh that had sullied the air for a full week after the conflagration burned itself out.
He sat on the tailgate with the saw on his lap and started running a file over its dulled teeth. Lost in the monotony of the task, his thoughts wandered back over the events of the past three weeks.
He would never forget the first days back from the mission north. Exhuming Jordan’s body and reburying her next to Gus and Logan and the others had also dug up dead and buried emotions. He spent the next two weeks in a funk thinking about his mom and all of his new ghosts while he and the other men went about stripping the quarry of anything useful, all the while breathing in the gray haze hanging low in the valley. And equally imprinted in his memory over those two weeks were the stunning red sunsets—byproducts of t
he unhealthy particulate-laden air.
Listening to the rasps of metal on metal competing with the dry rasps of the dead, Duncan rooted in a cargo pocket and extracted a battered flask emblazoned with the yellow and black image belonging to the First Air Cav, Airmobile, his old Army Aviation unit. With a practiced swipe of the thumb, he spun the cap off then tilted his head back and took a long pull, fully aware that he was being watched.
“Whatsa matter, Urch? I need to ask your permission before bellying up to the bar?” He shot Daymon a sidelong glare and added, “Don’t worry. I’ll be sober when we take the bird up.”
Looking away, Daymon answered quietly, “No worries. That’s your thing. I was just thinking about my Moms ...” He went quiet. Then, obviously deep in retrospective thought, he looked down and resumed his monotonous task. Slow even strokes. One, two, three. Then on to the next jagged gap down the line.
Duncan adjusted his glasses, stared incredulously at Daymon, and asked, “You ... had two moms?”
“No,” answered Daymon, his brow furrowed. “It’s not Ebonics speak. I just liked to call her Moms. Always have. That’s all.”
“She didn’t make it?”
From the far end of the makeshift barrier, as if offering an emotional-filled yet wordless answer to the question, one of the newer turns milling there emitted a guttural, mournful moan.
Goose flesh rising on his arms, Daymon cast a glance towards the sound and said, “She was too close to Salt Lake. I tried, but—” He went silent and attacked the chain. The muscles on his forearms rippled as his grip tightened on the gnarled tool and the pace quickened. Then the file jumped from the channel and a raspberry-sized plug of flesh was left behind on one of the newly sharpened teeth. “Motherfucker!” Daymon hissed. Wishing he’d been wearing his gloves, he tossed the file to the ground, balled his hand into a fist, and watched the blood run around his wrist and hit the asphalt with soft little patters.
“Let me see that,” drawled Duncan.
Tentatively, Daymon uncurled his fist. He flexed his hand, shrugged, and shot an I’m OK look Duncan’s way.
Having none of the tough guy routine, Duncan sauntered over, took hold of Daymon’s hand and, without warning, doused the wound with a liberal torrent of sour mash whiskey.
Flinching, Daymon said, “Thanks for the warning. Wanna kick me in the nuts too?”
“Just put your gloves on and we’ll have Brook take a look at it later.”
“Nurse Ratched?”
Both men broke out in laughter.
The dead joined in with scratchy cat calls and moans of their own.
Still smiling, Duncan said, “How’d such an easygoing fella get hooked up with a ball-breaker like her?”
“She’s easy on the eyes.”
“Heck yeah,” said Duncan agreeably. “Coming and going.”
Somewhere down the draw off to their left a pair of crows struck up a conversation. The cawing and chortling rose to a crescendo that lasted only a handful of seconds.
Daymon flipped the birds the bird then went on, “Lift with your knees, I heard her tellin' him. Put some Neosporin on that cut, she told Wilson. Check the hammer on that thing, she told me the other day.”
“You’ve gotta admit she fixed you up after your fight with the razor wire back at Schriever.”
Daymon nodded in agreement.
“And she sutured your noggin up pretty good. Don’t see as how Cade could do himself much better than that.”
Chuckling, Daymon said, “I concur.”
“And you had it coming, you know,” Duncan said. “Can’t go walking around with your piece hot and ready to go.”
“I’m sorry. Hell, this thing is new to me,” Daymon said, patting the Sig Sauer. He snatched the file off the road and laid it on the tailgate. Grabbed the gas can and swished its contents around. And, as if a light bulb just went off in his head, turned slowly and fixed his gaze on Duncan. “You told her? You were the one who narked me out?”
“Don’t be sore. I’m just more observant with my new eyes.”
“Next time tell me yourself ... spare me the embarrassment.”
Duncan waggled the flask near his ear. Put it to his lips and drank the contents in one pull.
Daymon sighed audibly. He said, “I’ve got enough fuel to drop another dozen trees.” He nodded at the pickup. “Then I’m driving us back. Agreed?”
“Understood.” Duncan moved forward, alert for any of the newly discovered semi-aware creatures that may have crawled through the tangled warren of trunks and branches. “Clear,” he said, eyes shifting, constantly scanning the forest on both sides of the roadway.
Without a word, Daymon yanked the Stihl to life and, like he was back to fighting wildfires, went to work on a nearby medium-sized fir.
Chapter 2
For the first time in a long time day-to-day living had settled into a normal rhythm for most everyone calling the Eden compound home. And since Jordan, Logan, and Gus were murdered at the quarry, the Grim Reaper had been conspicuously absent.
Heidi, unfortunately, was one of the few exceptions to this new normal. And though she hadn’t actually met the Reaper, she was, however, slowly dying inside. Haunting memories of the terror-filled weeks as Robert Christian’s concubine left her reluctant to leave the perceived safety of the subterranean compound. That she had watched a video clip of the man’s execution by hanging made no difference. She claimed she could still smell his aftershave weeks after being dragged from his bed and dumped and left for dead beside the Teton Pass road. And though she never spoke of the horrors she’d endured at the ‘House’ on the hill in Jackson Hole, their effects on her fragile psyche were glaringly evident. Since she was constantly battling one anxiety or another, she didn’t eat regularly and it showed. By her own account her weight had dropped to the fudged number she’d declared on her first driver’s license fifteen years ago. Sleep was something that only came for her in the early morning, and though there was a total absence of natural light inside the compound she only got three to four restless hours and spent the rest of her time trying to connect with the outside world via the high-powered ham radio.
So she took a big gulp of tepid coffee, adjusted the headphones down to their smallest setting, and placed them over her head, leaving one ear uncovered. Before powering up the ham radio she glanced at the trio of wall-mounted flat panels recently installed by a middle-aged man named Jimmy Foley, the Eden compound’s newest arrival. On the center screen both lanes and a hundred feet of the nearby east-west running state route were rendered in full color. Though the surveillance equipment taken from the quarry compound was state-of-the-art and beamed the video wirelessly from the cameras mounted in various locations about the property, the cameras themselves had a couple of weaknesses. The first being how the lens lent a gentle funhouse-mirror-like bend to the curving road near the gate. The second glitch was less annoying but still troublesome. Even though the feed was in HD it was virtually impossible even with optimum lighting to see who was driving the Police Tahoe straddling the centerline, let alone, to any degree of certainty, discern how many occupants were inside the vehicle. However, Heidi could tell who the two men standing near the vehicle were. On the left was Phillip, achingly thin and a hair under six feet. He held an AR-15 comfortably at low ready and was shifting his weight gently, foot to foot. Though she could hear nothing but the low rumble of the idling engine it was apparent that Phillip was talking to former Jackson Hole Chief of Police, Charlie Jenkins. So she picked up the Motorola two-way radio, checked the channel, and thumbed the talk button. “You hear me, Charlie?” After a moment of dead air she saw a flurry of movement in the gloom inside the police cruiser. Then her radio hissed and Charlie’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Charlie here. What’s up, darlin’?”
Heidi choked up momentarily. She imagined herself in the former police chief’s shoes. Just the thought of traveling the roads east to the Woodruff junction, which based on
eyewitness accounts was clogged with vehicles and teeming with dead, made her chest go tight. Venturing there in a group amounted to a huge risk. Going there solo, by her estimation, was little more than a death sentence. But Charlie was through feeling useless, he’d told her as much. And the last time she’d tried to talk him out of the foolish odyssey of his, he insisted he wasn’t just chasing ghosts. He was hell bent on finding his daughter—or dying, whichever came first.
On the monitor she saw Phillip’s head swivel around and his eyes seemed to lock with hers. Then a shiver wracked her body and she was back in the security pod, physically and mentally. Feeling the anxiety attack ebbing slightly, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and again keyed the talk button. “You sure you won’t reconsider, Charlie? Just stay through fall and winter? Maybe those things—”
Cutting her off, Charlie craned out the cruiser’s window and, looking in the direction of the black plastic dome housing the security camera, said matter-of-factly, “The rotters are here to stay, Heidi. And as far as the cold killing them ... Brook said the scientists at the Air Force base already tried and failed.”
Heidi bit her lip, hard. She glanced at the Dollar Store shower mirror taped to a shelf just above eye level. The nearly bald woman staring back through eyes shot with tiny blood red capillaries made her shudder. She was practically bald by choice. She’d cut her hair weeks ago in solidarity with Daymon. But unlike his coerced trim job, she’d gone overboard and sheared her once long blonde locks down to stubble. And as she kept her hair short with a pair of electric clippers, the ensuing weeks spent underground lightened her already pale skin to the point where she looked like a concentration camp victim or, from a distance and in the right lighting, one of the living dead.
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 2
