Brook, on the other hand, let her hair down and lost a whopping twenty dollars before her better judgment kicked in and she began bemoaning the fact they’d gone to the ‘armpit in the desert’ in the first place. ‘Disneyland would have been a wiser choice,’ she had said at the time.
A sentiment to which Cade had instantly and wholeheartedly concurred.
Now the entire place seemed radically altered. He was nearly blinded when Ari trained the camera on a number of buildings skinned with more mirrored glass than he thought existed. There was a copper-hued slab of a skyscraper, its entire southeast side lit up marvelously by the high-hanging sun, and emblazoned prominently on the top floor, but almost lost in the glare, was a sign with huge gilded letters spelling out the name TRUMP.
“You’re fired,” said Ari, chuckling.
Griffin covered his mic and leaned towards Cross. “Is that guy ever serious?” he asked, shooting a glare towards the cockpit.
Smiling, Cross looked the question at Cade.
“He’s all business ... most of the time,” replied Cade, the crash in South Dakota still fresh in his mind.
“I’d ride into hell with him,” said Lopez. He crossed himself and motioned for Cade to take the open seat next to him.
Without hesitating, Cade unbuckled and took a seat. Said, “What’s up?”
Lopez unplugged Cade’s comms, then did the same with his. Cupping a hand next to Cade’s ear, he said, “What’s your take on the intel?”
***
Two minutes later Vegas was behind them. However, the images of the car-choked strip, bloated bodies floating in the fountains and waterparks, partially burned skyscrapers with curtains flapping from their broken-out windows, and the tens of thousands of Zs still caught in the city’s gravitational pull would be forever imprinted in the Delta team and SOAR aircrew’s collective memories.
Chapter 39
Enveloped in a brown cloud of dust and with the raucous sound of a mini avalanche nipping at her heels, Glenda reached the bottom of the decline without twisting an ankle or even a scratch for that matter.
She hobbled the last twenty feet across uneven ground strewn about with rocks and tree limbs, fell to her hands and knees and plunged her face in the water and drank greedily.
When she’d had her fill, she rolled over onto her back and sat up and scrunched around until the water was running by in front of her left to right. She washed her face and neck vigorously, using sand to abrade away the stubborn dried bits of internals still clinging to her skin. She did the same to her hands and wrists and watched the oil-slickened water carry away the scraps of decayed skin and flesh.
She unlaced her hikers, wrenched them off, and tossed them to the side. Didn’t bother removing the blood-soaked socks with any kind of restraint. Just peeled them away, sloughed off skin and all, and unceremoniously tossed them atop one another in the sand.
Perspiring profusely, she decided the soiled sweatpants had to go. Careful not to disturb the taped-on magazines, she pulled the long-sleeved shirt over her head. As she placed it on the ground near her socks, she couldn’t help noticing the horizontal black streaks on both arms and the sooty palm prints incurred when the throng of zombies at the foot of Violet’s drive had nearly knocked her from the bike.
She threw a hard shiver as it hit her full on how close she had been to death. Not once, but three times in one day. Four, if she counted Louie. But that was in proximity only. She had been in no jeopardy in the presence of her bound undead husband.
Counting her lucky stars, and wondering how much longer they’d be aligned in her favor, she eyed the crystalline water that had been so close, yet so far, and subliminally calling her name for miles. Little more than a creek at this location, the burbling water and smooth stones were just what she had envisioned. She let out a little yelp and cast a nervous glance uphill when her bare feet finally hit the ice cold water. Thrust her toes into the sand and rubbed her heels and arches gently back and forth on the pea-sized pebbles. Twice, over the creek’s gentle murmur, she thought she heard the rasps of the dead coming from the State Route above. And both times she held her breath unnecessarily, looked up expecting to see flesh eaters, but, thankfully, only saw the red bike leaning against the guardrail precisely where she’d left it.
She read page 1 through 164 in her blue book and by the time she closed the dog-eared and highlighter-marked tome she figured she’d been soaking her feet for close to an hour. She stuffed the book between her jeans and the small of her back and the sound of her grumbling stomach convinced her it was time to tie on the crimson-splashed Hi-Tecs and tackle the shale incline rising steeply behind her.
Sliding down the hill had been fun—sort of. Equal parts gravity and bravado combined with the near orgasm-inducing sight of the running water made tackling the dangerous decline seem like nothing to Glenda.
Climbing out, however, was a monumentally harder task than the former cross-country runner could have fathomed. Halfway to the road she stopped, feet planted and hands splayed out in the sharp stones, and spewed every ounce of water she’d consumed—and then some.
One step forward and three steps back was how the latter half of what had become Glenda’s own personal Everest played out.
She scaled the last ten feet commando-crawling on her stomach until the squared-off wood post and attached guardrail was within arm’s reach.
Then she rested her eyes.
Chapter 40
Raven won the second race by a nose, her front tire crossing the poorly marked finish line just ahead of Sasha’s.
Chest heaving, Raven jammed to a stop and between ragged gulps of air said, “Best of three?”
“Let’s rest for a few minutes.”
Let’s not, thought Raven. Then she heard Sasha’s whiny voice in her head: Bragging rights are at stake. “Now,” called Raven over her shoulder.
“After a water break?”
Shaking her head side-to-side, Raven said forcefully, “Now.”
“Let’s up the ante,” said Sasha. “How about the loser cleans the winner’s gun next time.”
Still shaking her head, Raven answered, “Dad would be pissed if I didn’t clean mine myself.”
Screwing her face up, Sasha thought hard for a few seconds. She said, “Loser makes the other person’s bed for a week.”
“Deal.” Mimicking something she’d seen the fifth grade boys do, Raven spit on her palm and offered Sasha her hand.
“Uggghhh. I’ll trust you on this one.”
Face a mask of concentration, Raven stood hard on the upright pedal and counted down from three.
At one they were off and pedaling hard.
By lap two Raven had pulled away but multicolored tracers were flashing in front of her eyes.
By lap three she was still in the lead but breathing was becoming difficult.
Lap four was when Sasha made her move, passing Raven on the far corner near the parked vehicles.
Casting her gaze over her shoulder and following the redhead left to right as she passed by was distraction enough to cause Raven to miss the turn. She swiveled her head forward and registered the tree trunks rushing at her and, without thinking about the lesser of two evils, jinked the bike right, putting it on a collision course with several hundred pounds of gore-encrusted steel bumper.
She remembered the blue Ford oval rushing at her face. Then the coiled cable wound vertically on the winch drum flashed by in her side vision as the bike slid from under her and the whirr of the tall grass whipped against her back side. Lastly, she let out a yelp and the angular bumper disappeared under her upthrust arms and met her ribs with breath-stealing force.
The air blasted from her lungs wasn’t replaced. Instead she tasted copper as a fine sheen of blood rimed her lips. And as she struggled to inhale, her forehead met the bumper. In the next beat her body rolled over the bike and a burst of white hot pain flooded her brain, causing it to turn off and sending her mercifully into darkness’s
warm embrace.
Feeling like he was being watched was an understatement. The forest seemingly had eyes, and lying there naked on the soft bed of needles under the low branches of a Douglas fir, Wilson could feel his skin begin to crawl.
Taryn ran her hand through Wilson’s hair and then moved to his cheek, and with the pad of her index finger traced over the scar where Cade’s bullet had grazed him three weeks ago. It had healed to a colorless line of corded tissue four inches in length and stood out in stark contrast on his perpetually sunburned face. She continued the journey down and dragged a fingernail over the uneven line demarking her man’s reddened forearm from the rest of his alabaster torso. Sensing him tensing up, she asked, “What’s wrong, Mister Farmer Tan?”
“I thought I heard something out of place.”
“From where?”
“Back towards the camp.”
“What did it sound like?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson said, the inquisition obviously getting to him. “Something like a hammer banging metal, I guess.”
“Well we all know the rotters aren’t using tools,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow.
“Yet,” countered Wilson as he cast an anxious glance towards the nearby inner fence. “I saw that thing get over the top yesterday. That was no accident. I have a theory.”
“And?” said Taryn. She shrugged on her bra. Made a mental note to keep her eye out for a couple of new pairs, sports bras preferably, next time she left the perimeter. She grabbed her shirt and, seeing Wilson averting his eyes—a gentlemanly trait she had come to admire—pulled it over her head and then gave him a quick peck on the scar on his cheek.
Wilson waited for Taryn to finish dressing then said, “I think some of these things ... at least the ones that turned early on … are getting smarter.”
“It’d look awfully strange if someone stumbled upon us and only you were naked,” said Taryn. “Get dressed while you elaborate.”
He laid flat, arched his back, and pulled his fatigue pants on. Covered his supernova bright upper body with a neon green short-sleeved shirt emblazoned with a giant Mountain Dew logo. Then, thinking about how best to articulate his hypothesis to Taryn, took his time lacing his boots.
Tired of waiting for the slow poke, Taryn helped him out on both accounts. While tying his left boot, she said, “I think the rotters are acting mostly on instinct and their desire to feed. However ...” She paused and watched Wilson tie a double knot on the other boot. Saw the corded muscles under his shirt rippling on his sides. He looked up and she continued, “... if they see something they’ve done a ton of times it’s like Deja vu or something. A certain sight or familiar location dislodges a little bit of something from their memory and they just act on it.”
“So they’re not learning?”
“I don’t think so,” Taryn said. “Remember Captain Kirk at the four-wheel-drive shop? That wrench was in his hand because he was just going through the motions ... like muscle memory. We ever go back there again I’d be willing to bet you a month’s worth of laundry duty he’s still got that same tool in his hand and all of those bolts holding the shelving together down there will not have been touched.”
Wilson smiled. He arched a brow and said, “Throw in two shifts of body disposal duty ... digging and burying both, and you’re on.”
Taryn rose and shouldered her carbine. She reached out her hand to shake on the bet just as a shrill scream rang out.
Looking in the direction of the sound, Wilson sprang from the ground with his fatigue top in hand, grabbed his carbine and sprinted that way, bellowing, “Sasha,” at the top of his voice.
Chapter 41
Beginning to end, Glenda’s climb from the creek bed back to the road burned thirty minutes of daylight. Ninety minutes total squandered since she’d left the old Schwinn on the road.
She wasted another five catching her breath. Then listened hard for almost as long. But between the white noise of the distant creek and the steady breeze jostling the pines and firs rising up on the far side of the road there was no telling whether she was alone or not. So she commando-crawled forward a few more inches and peered through the opening between the frost-heaved roadbed and the underside of the guardrail. What she saw twenty feet away, and stretching at least a hundred feet in the direction from which she’d come, stole her breath away. Between the bicycle’s warped spokes, distorted by the heatwaves rising off the blacktop, she saw an army of dead shuffling left to right—towards Woodruff. Close to a hundred souls were following hot on the heels of the monsters she’d recently given the slip. Cursing under her breath, she put her cheek to the warm ground, did her best to appear twice dead, and watched them pass.
It was a mixed lot, that much was clear. The zombies in the lead, for the most part, appeared to be from Huntsville. However, as badly burnt as they were, trying to tell one apart from another would be an exercise in futility. More than twenty, dispersed throughout the undead parade, were newer specimens, all showing no more than two or three weeks’ worth of rot. And looking like wet linen, the alabaster skin clinging to their bloated bodies contrasted sharply with their brethren’s crunchy, coal black dermis.
Moving with purpose, the stealthy procession passed mere feet from Glenda’s prostrate form. She gave them a five-minute lead and, having learned from past experience, made certain there were no stragglers around to give her away before peeling herself off the hillside and surmounting the guardrail.
Being careful to keep the chain from rattling—which up to now had proven nearly impossible—Glenda wheeled the bike off the gravel shoulder and onto the blacktop. She hopped aboard but refrained from sitting on the seat lest the springs give her away. Slowly she pushed off and stood on both pedals. Let the momentum carry her a short while until she hit the left-hand sweeper and the tail end of the Woodruff death march.
Then, drawing on all of her reserves, she began pedaling like her life depended on it—which it most definitely did. Picking her route in advance, she steered left and right, zippering with ease through the first twenty or so cadavers. However, the rasps and moans began the moment she entered their midst, and in seconds, like a train lurching to a slow-speed halt, the front two-thirds of the herd began stopping. The monsters turned their heads to see what the ruckus was about, and when they fixed their milky eyes on the meat on the bike the clumsy chain reaction only got worse.
Going wide right and risking being shoved over the guardrail and ending up back down the ravine with broken bones or paralysis, Glenda repeated her earlier move, tucked her elbows and knees in tight and became one with the bike.
The move only further confused the zombies on her immediate left, but the throng’s lead element—not so much.
With only thirty feet and about as many flesh eaters between her and the open road, she raised her paper-wrapped left arm, ready to fend off the closest of her attackers.
Twenty feet to go. She leaned left, hoping her weight and momentum would be sufficient to parry the first creature’s lunge. The female, judging by two sagging breasts that looked like a first timer’s failed attempt at roasting marshmallows, missed grabbing her head by a few inches, but still received a forearm shiver and an up close look at the July copy of National Enquirer.
Ten feet to go and a trio of carbon copies of Kingsford were near enough to make a grab. With one eye on the ever deepening ravine, Glenda braced for contact. A tick later, left arm up in a defensive posture, she saw the tips of their burnt fingers—perhaps the same ones that had soiled her shirt earlier—make contact with her forearm, bend back and snap off, one at a time, hollow little pops that left all three creatures with far fewer digits on each hand than they brought to the fight.
Desperate times call for drastic measures, thought Glenda. With only ten feet to go and freedom looking her in the face, she took her left foot off the pedal, straightened her leg, and stared the last cadaver in the eyes. Saw a spark of knowing there. Not cunning, but just a feeling
that the thing knew what was in store for it. And it wasn’t pretty. Newton’s Law was in effect. The action part came into play as her hiker hit a glancing blow on the naked zombie’s package. She felt a great deal of give, like the bloated thing there was a rotten melon. Instantly, started by the impact and furthered by the zombie’s reaction to it, the pasty abomination brought its arms up and began spinning away slowly to her left. The opposite reaction piece of Sir Isaac’s law played out when a torrent of brackish fluid squirted onto the blacktop and the two pus-engorged testes, now freed but still attached by the testicular artery and smaller veins, dropped and swung around like mini wrecking balls. As Glenda wheeled past, inexplicably, caught in her side vision, she witnessed the zombie make a slow motion play at protecting its ruined family jewels.
Some things never change. And some things you just can’t unsee, thought Glenda, as she pumped her legs and pulled away. Once she’d put a little distance between her and the persistent parade of death, and the bike was coasting smoothly on the blacktop, she looked down at the paper armor, saw a number of teeth embedded there, and realized how close she’d come to becoming one of them.
Chapter 42
The Ghost Hawk encountered a bit of turbulence and shimmied and lost a dozen feet of altitude, the latter sending Cade’s stomach into his throat and jolting him from his power nap. He vaguely remembered nodding off shortly after Vegas and was awakened twice since.
The first time when there had been changes in airspeed and he heard mechanical whirrs and clunks and a rushing sound under his feet, all sounds that from experience told him an aerial refueling was taking place.
The second time he was rudely awakened was when, presumably, based on song choice alone, the flight of two crossed over the Nevada border and someone next to him—Cross, he guessed, though he didn’t bother to check—started singing the Eagle’s hit song Hotel California, rather poorly. Then, with everyone aboard save him belting out the last line of the song: You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave, his eyes again got heavy, and with the aid of the droning aircraft he drifted back off to sleep. But that proved to be short-lived because according to the Suunto on his wrist he’d been sawing logs for less than thirty minutes when Ari’s voice interrupted, informing everyone aboard that they were five minutes out.
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 21
