Looking at Wilson but nodding towards the other corpses, Brook said, “See how Cade did his? Nice and clean. That’s what you’ve got to work on next. Because now we’re going to have to bury the gore and churn the blood into the dirt since it’s inside the wire.”
Coming to the redhead’s defense, Cade said, “He did fine, Brook. And so did Taryn. She dropped hers before I finished with the mom there.”
Brook said nothing.
Taking that as his cue, Cade said, “I think that’s all of them. Come on, Wilson ... let’s get these ones disposed of.” Pushing off the tree, Cade rose to standing and checked his pants and boots. Then he examined his arms and chest for blood or minuscule scraps of detritus that might have gone airborne and landed on him. After running his fingers through his hair he asked Brook to inspect his back.
Taking swipes at the wood chips and moss accumulated between his shoulder blades, Brook went to her tip toes and whispered in his ear, “Just a little bark. That’s all. You’re good as new ... Infidel.” Then, oblivious to the group of young people now gawking at them, Brook grabbed one of Cade’s muscled shoulders, spun him around to face her and went up on her tiptoes. The kiss, taking him by surprise, was one for the books. Greta Garbo, eat your heart out, she thought, her tongue probing his mouth, both hands cupping his face. But, sadly, it was over before it got real good. She pulled away and delivered the look that he knew all too well. Those smoldering brown eyes had just issued him a rain check to be redeemed later for a private rendezvous. And since the new world hadn’t changed Brook’s libido one bit, Cade was confident that he’d be cashing in his chit before the day was done. Finally, with more than a little color spreading to his cheeks, he looked over at Taryn and Wilson and said, “Move along here. Nothing to see.”
***
Back at the compound, inside the security container, Heidi was losing her battle against a rising tide of guilt. Though she’d grown fairly thick skin as a result of her longtime bartending job, after the outbreak the things she’d endured at Robert Christian’s mansion in Jackson Hole had broken her down completely and changed her perception of people in general. Now, reluctant to open up to anyone but Daymon and bound by an unrealistic fear of the outside, she eschewed any prolonged human interaction and had come to embrace fully the subterranean safety of the compound. And as a result, due to the lack of daylight and whatever vitamin it normally provided, she was moody and quick to anger. And that anger, recently unleashed by the perceived snub brought on by Cade’s no-nonsense attitude over the radio, had hijacked all rational thought for a short while and was now just beginning to ebb. Unable or unwilling to admit she had been wrong in ignoring the incoming call, she thought up a creative way of absolving herself of the transgression. A little white lie wouldn’t hurt anybody, she reasoned as she thumbed the radio and tried to hail Daymon or Duncan or whoever happened to pick up first.
After three tries Duncan’s familiar drawl came back at her. That there was a little bit of a slur to his words went over Heidi’s head and, forgoing a hello or any type of small talk, she instead immediately—with little warmth or inflection in her voice—asked to speak to Daymon.
Coming across to Heidi like Cade had earlier, Duncan said nothing. He held the radio up and paced a few steps left of Daymon and waved the Motorola back and forth, trying to get the dreadlocked man’s attention.
The warbling whine of a hardworking chainsaw somewhere in the background sounded in Heidi’s ear for a handful of seconds. Suddenly there was silence and she heard static and the rustling noise indicative of the phone changing hands. Finally Daymon said, “What’s up, hon?”
Heidi asked Daymon to switch over to a channel where they could expect a degree of privacy.
Daymon took off a glove and manipulated the rubberized keys until he found the channel and sub-channel Heidi requested he go to. “What’s up?” he asked.
The words came out of Heidi’s mouth rushed and at times unintelligible as she rehashed the events leading up to the moment the satellite phone registered the incoming call.
Shaking his head, Daymon said nothing for a short while. Then he said, “I think you’re reading into it too much. He’s all business. And so is Duncan when he’s not half in the bag drunk.”
“But ...”
Daymon keyed the talk button, cutting her off. He said, “Drop it. You’re projecting. I’ll be back when I’m finished here and we can talk it through.”
“Whatever,” she said.
Daymon turned the volume back up to max and glanced at Duncan, who had been feigning disinterest, rather poorly.
“Everything OK?”
“Same old same old,” answered Daymon. He switched the radio back to the previous channel. Sat down hard on the Chevy’s tailgate and cracked a water.
Smiling, Duncan took a seat next to Daymon on the dusty tailgate. He pulled out his flask and said, “Would misery like company?”
Back in the compound, Heidi slapped a palm on the plywood desk. “Men are such assholes,” she said, switching the two-way back to the agreed upon community channel, 10-1. Then, alone in the dimly lit container with only her conscience and a crushing silence, reluctantly, she pressed the talk button and asked for Cade.
***
Radio in hand, and about to deliver a sit-rep back to the compound, Cade smiled when the unit vibrated for a second time in as many minutes. Hearing Heidi asking for him, he said, “Great minds,” and depressed the Talk button. “I was just about to call you. Everything is OK,” he said. Then he went on and described the encounter at the inner fence and added that someone would be returning to the compound shortly to get a couple of shovels. He released the Talk button and heard a click, presumably Heidi, followed by the soft hiss telling him the channel was open. Finally Heidi spoke up. “I’m sorry, Cade. Everything is not going to be OK. A call came in on your phone a little while ago and I ... I kind of sat on it.”
“Why?” asked Cade, disbelief evident in his voice. “And who was it?”
Eyes bugging from her head, Brook mouthed, “What the hell?”
Putting a hand up, Cade shook his head and repeated the questions.
“Because everybody ignores me,” replied Heidi. “And I’m getting sick of it.”
“I don’t ignore you,” said Daymon, breaking in over the conversation. “But what you did was wrong so answer the man’s questions.”
There was a brief silence.
Taryn’s eyes were locked on the radio clutched in Cade’s hand and, reacting to the exchange, her brows arched and her mouth formed a silent O which she quickly covered with one hand.
“Spit it out, Heidi,” railed Brook into her own radio.
Inside the comms container Heidi retrieved the sat-phone from the shelf. She hit a random key and, once its screen lit up, thumbed the Talk button on the two-way and read aloud the eleven numbers.
Brook was leaning against a tree and staring at her radio and listening to the numbers being read off. Once Heidi was finished and the radio was silent, Brook’s face went slack, her arms went to her sides, and she pushed off the tree. Scooping up her carbine, she let loose with a couple of choice curse words and stalked off the way she’d come, with Taryn following closely and trying to talk her out of killing the messenger.
“Repeat the number, please,” said Cade as he watched the women disappear down the game trail leading back to the clearing a quarter mile distant. Listening closely, he stared at the Motorola in his fist, and once he’d heard all eleven digits his head started to bob and he whispered, “Nash?”
***
A few minutes after Heidi’s pseudo come-to-Jesus moment, Cade heard distant engine noise and then the two-way radio started warbling. He answered the incoming call and when he learned that Duncan and Daymon were returning for the day he asked that they stop at the inner ring of fence. A tick later, preceded by the same growling engine, the nearby sound of gravel popping under tires reached Cade’s ears. Then there was a slight brak
e squeal and the engine shut off. Next came two, near simultaneous, resonant clangs. Cade listened to the sounds of the men breaking brush along the fence line, and so that nobody would be mistaken for rotters, guided them in the final twenty yards over the radio.
***
Moving the bodies through the brush to the feeder road took time and considerable effort, even with Duncan and Daymon pitching in. During the process Cade let it be known that the number of the call he’d missed belonged to Major Freda Nash, who he presumed was still running the show back at Schriever Air Force Base.
Hearing this, Daymon abruptly dropped his half of the corpse he and Duncan were lugging, turned and, with his hands on his hips, asked Cade, “What do you think she wants?”
Punctuated with a grunt as he and Wilson heaved the male rotter with the crushed head onto the road, Cade replied, “I’ve got no idea, Daymon. But knowing Nash ... she’s not calling to invite me to the Officer’s Ball.”
“Well, well, Mister Glass Half Empty,” slurred Duncan. He let go of the corpse’s bloodied bare feet he’d been holding onto. “Did you think maybe she’s calling to tell you the scientists you shanghaied from Outer Mongolia have perfected the dear departed doctor’s antiserum?”
Shaking his head, Cade said, “Doubtful.”
“That would be a game changer,” countered Wilson.
Cade didn’t answer to that. Guessing the reason for Nash’s cold call was the last item on his agenda. Instead he said, “Why don’t you go and stay with Sasha and Taryn. When you get there send Seth back with another pickup so we can get these things to the pit and bury them. And have him bring me a shirt.”
Wilson perked up. He asked, “I’ll bring you a shirt if I can operate the excavator.”
“Sheeit, Wilson,” drawled Duncan. “Ole ham-fisted Daymon here pilots that Black Hawk better than you work that booger green piece of digging machinery.”
“To answer your question, Wilson,” Cade said. “No. Can’t risk having that thing break on us. Plus ... I have zero desire to go poking around Woodruff or anywhere else looking for parts.”
Wilson nodded and took off toward the compound.
Daymon shot his reluctant flight instructor an icy glare, brought his hands together at neck-level and pantomimed strangling him.
Swaying noticeably, Duncan fumbled in his pockets for his flask. He spun the cap, took a long draw and grimaced from the burn. Then, apparently having already forgotten his barbed comment, gazed confusedly at Daymon.
Hands by his sides now, Daymon said, “It’s not like riding a freaking bike. Not even close. So forgive me if I can’t land the thing yet.”
“Can’t hover it worth a damn either,” muttered Duncan. “You know how many hours I logged watching and learning before I even got to touch a stick?”
“No ... but I have a feeling you’re about to tell us.”
“Daymon, my boy …” Duncan paused and took another belt of Jack Daniels. Wiped his mouth on a sleeve and went on, “a month of Sundays. That’s how many.”
“That’s days, not hours,” said Daymon, lips curling to a smile. “And you’re drunk.”
The radio in Daymon’s pocket suddenly blared and Seth said he and Wilson were a minute out.
Thumbing the Talk button, Daymon said, “We aren’t going anywhere. And neither are the rotters.”
“Copy that,” replied Seth.
As the Dodge Ram Dually approached on the narrow road, underbrush and branches slapped and scratched at its bulbous rear fenders, making the sheet metal sing. After squeezing the rig through the opening between a pair of hewn timber posts that didn’t look wide enough for the full-sized pick-up, Seth, who was alone, stopped it perfectly with the open tailgate right beside the stinking mound of twice-dead cadavers.
***
Five minutes later the seven corpses were stacked in the box bed like cordwood, their scuffed shoes and twisted and stubbed toes resting on the tailgate.
After shrugging on the tee shirt, Cade slapped the wheel well and moved aside and watched Seth back the truck in a mirror image of the way he’d arrived. A dozen yards down the feeder he found a wide spot in the road, made a three-point-turn, crushing ferns and assorted ground-hugging flora, and sped back towards the compound.
Carbine in hand, Cade looked at Duncan and Daymon and said, “Let’s go. Time to open Pandora’s box.”
Chapter 12
Leaving the two men at the forest’s edge near the motor pool Cade hustled across the clearing and ducked into the compound. After letting his eyes adjust to the low light, he noticed Heidi seated a dozen yards away, the glare from the flat panel monitor bathing her face with an eerie blue light.
That she was still at her post led Cade to believe that his wife had wisely taken the high road—a good thing for everyone involved. A confrontation with Brook, who was becoming more hardened to their new world with each passing day, would have been grossly one-sided, and served only to further alienate the already skittish woman from the group, sending her scrabbling and scratching, like a hermit crab, ever deeper into the comfort of the shell the subterranean compound had become to her.
Partially closing the recently oiled door behind him, Cade stood statue-like in the gloom of the foyer and watched the woman going about her work. Though he spent only a minute evaluating her, for the most part she seemed to still be in command of all her faculties. Every few seconds she would ignore the short wave radio, look up and pay close attention to the out-of-sight monitor to her left. And when she did Cade noticed her eyes move by degrees, as if following a grid-like search pattern. He saw the blue glow reflected in them intensify when she paused and leaned in, no doubt scrutinizing each individual partition on the screen.
The new system, which was far superior to the archaic linked game trail cameras it replaced, provided full video coverage of State Route 39, a long straight stretch of the nearby gravel feeder road, all four corners of the vast grass-covered clearing, as well as the vehicles, aircraft, and dirt airstrip cutting between them. Throw in the camera’s rudimentary night vision capabilities, and the round-the-clock need for a warm body manning the over watch near the hidden entrance seemed a bit redundant.
But as this incident had just made crystal clear to Cade, having a level-headed person—not someone running high on emotion—monitoring the live feeds which were the compound’s first line of defense and tantamount to everyone’s survival had to be priority one going forward. Heidi’s first mistake—forgetting to turn on the ringers and missing his call before they’d all been reunited—could be forgiven. No blood, no foul. But ignoring an incoming call because of a personality conflict was, in his book, abject failure and grossly negligent. However, as inept as the action was, and since the compound still ran on a kind of group conscience which required a vote for all major decisions, he too would be following Brook’s lead and taking the high road. So he made a mental note to meet with Duncan, who, since Logan’s murder, had become the de facto leader of the group, and recommend that she be given something to do to keep her busy and from underfoot. One where failure couldn’t get anyone killed. And if she refused the overture and it came to a vote to oust her, then, and only then, would he bring the issue up with Daymon—who saw her involvement in the day-to-day operations of the compound as the only thing keeping her somewhat sane.
Clearing his throat, Cade cracked the door open behind him a few inches and then made a show of closing it. Ducking through the passage, carbine trained at the floor, he waited for Heidi to make the first move.
She said nothing.
So he walked through the wall of brooding silence, hearing only his mom’s voice in his head urging him to not say anything unless it was good. And at the moment he couldn’t think of anything in that column worthy of him stopping and being cordial so he kept on going, mouth shut, lips pursed into a thin white line.
After a quick right turn he stood outside of the Grayson quarters. The door was dogged shut and with no sound coming f
rom the other side of the three by six plate of steel he decided that better safe than sorry applied here. So he rapped softly, his knuckles producing a sonorous gonging tone that echoed in the cramped corridor. Far from any kind of a Zen-like state, he stepped back and waited.
A half beat later there was a rasp as the inside bolt was drawn. Then the door hinged inward and Raven’s tanned face, barely noticeable in the corridor’s low light, peered out at him.
“Who goes there,” she asked, erupting in giggles.
Feeling twelve feet tall while looking down at his daughter, Cade placed the backs of both hands on his forehead, twisted his fingers to represent antlers, and answered in a silly voice, “I’m the Knight who says ‘Ni.’” Usually the first to laugh at one of her dad’s random juvenile outbursts, Raven instead pursed her lips and said nothing. Injury, thought Cade. Then, after suffering the added indignity of being on the receiving end of a long blank stare from his twelve-year-old, which he chalked up as the insult component of the one-two sucker-punch that had just shaken his usually impenetrable daddy aura, he hung his head and inched past her. If he had a tail, he conceded inwardly, it would be firmly tucked between his legs.
Sat-phone in hand and shaking her head at her husband’s dated attempt at humor, Brook patted the bunk, beckoning him to join her.
Cade didn’t budge.
Craning her neck to see around him, Brook said, “Raven. I need you to go and visit with the Kids for a while.”
“Take your rifle,” said Cade, grabbing the Ruger from its spot behind the door and handing it over.
“Muzzle down. And keep the safety on,” added Brook, nodding.
Flashing them both a look that said, I got this, Raven grasped her rifle by its walnut stock, checked the safety, and, after seeing that it was indeed engaged, slung it over her shoulder with the slender black barrel aimed at the wood floor.
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 6
