Sasha opened the sliding window and called Max inside.
Following Brook’s lead, Taryn slipped the transmission into Drive, caught up to the larger Ford, and tucked her ride in close to its bumper.
Inside the F-650 Chief recommended having the Kids stay at the intersection while he and Brook motored down the State Highway to get a closer look.
In response, Brook said, “I don’t think I want to know the final outcome.”
He said, “All the more reason for the Kids to hang back.”
She responded at once, “Put a positive spin on it, though. Say we need them to watch our backs.”
Which wasn’t altogether a lie.
While Brook swerved in order to bypass the first of the rotters, Chief grabbed the radio and broke the news which, as expected, went over inside the Raptor like a lead balloon.
Keying off the radio, Chief said to Brook, “That’s not going to fly with them very much longer. One of these days ... real soon ... you’re going to have to let them go. Let them sink or swim.”
“Not right now,” Brook said as she tapped the brakes and squeezed the F-650 past the overturned school bus that had been there since before the incident. With barely an inch to spare between the right side mirror and bell housing protruding from the bus’s massive rear axle, the Ford slipped past and Woodruff’s small town center, just a short distance ahead, came into view. But she fought the urge to just motor on through and start the search. Instead she turned right onto State Highway 16, the Ford tracking straight for the grim task awaiting her. Thirty feet south of the school bus’s crumpled front end, facing away from them and high centered on a mass of writhing bodies, was Jenkins’s Tahoe. Standing near the driver’s side window was a large male Z. And clutched in its clawlike hands was a smooth river rock the size of a cantaloupe.
Brook pulled up twenty feet short and watched as the big rotter bashed the rock repeatedly against the SUV’s B-pillar, to no great effect.
“It’s using a tool,” Chief whispered, as if saying it any louder would prompt the handful of Zs approaching the idling Ford to find a like-sized rock and adopt the practice themselves.
Meanwhile, in the Raptor, which was parked diagonally on the junction where 39 and 16 met, Wilson was watching the action through binoculars and providing a play-by-play of what he was seeing.
Shaking her head, Taryn said in a skeptical tone, “A rock?”
“Yes ... a rock,” confirmed Wilson without looking away from the surreal scene. “A pretty large one, too.”
“Why is it still attacking the truck if the window’s already shattered?” Sasha asked.
Wilson said, “I have no idea. But it looks like Brook and Chief are going to intervene.” He kept the binoculars glued on the F-650. He saw Chief’s boots hit the roadway a second ahead of Brook’s and, when their doors closed behind them near simultaneously, fifteen gaunt faces swung away from whatever had their attention in the Tahoe. Quickly rising to a crescendo, their plaintive murmurs became a strained chorus of throaty moans.
Arm hairs standing at attention, Brook picked her targets as she stalked through the minefield of pulped body parts leading up to the inert Tahoe. The oversized rotter wielding the rock went to his second death first. A quick double tap from Brook’s M4 sent the rear half of its skull spinning away in front of a rapidly expanding cloud of pink mist. Zs number two and three each caught a pair of lethal 5.56 mm hardballs traveling at 3,100 feet per second. The kinetic energy absorbed by the second and much smaller female Z was sufficient to send it flying into the SUV’s rear hatch, its newly misshapen head absorbing the full brunt of the impact. And as the sheet of glass imploded with a bang that nearly drowned out Chief’s steady controlled fire, Brook’s second volley smacked the next rotter in the mouth and right eye and exited out back of its skull with another aerated spritz of gray matter and tooth and finely flecked bone.
To clear his side of the Tahoe, Chief moved in a crouch, firing continually, and by the time he reached the dented passenger door more than his share of the rotters were sprawled on the roadway, rivers of their bodily fluids trickling slowly toward the dusty shoulder.
Simultaneously, leaving a trail of bodies sprawled on the centerline, Brook fought her way to the driver’s side door where from underneath the listing vehicle pale hands reached out and groped her shins and ankles. Ignoring the grabby Zs wedged under the rig, she went to her tiptoes, looked through the bashed-in window and saw Jenkins. She lowered her weapon and was hit by a wave of grief when she realized he was dead. That feeling lingered for but a second and then strangely enough she felt gratitude for the simple fact that he wasn’t coming back as one of them. He had spared himself from that hell on earth. That was for sure. The flesh that was once his lips and cheeks was specked black from the blowback of superheated gunpowder. The back of his skull was sitting nearly intact, ring of graying hair and all, next to a gym bag full of his clothes in the back seat. His blood and brains painted the headliner crimson, and here and there dangling tendrils of semi-dried detritus provided the flies a place to land and feed.
Looking in the passenger side, Chief saw that the semiautomatic belonging to the dead former Jackson Hole Chief of Police was still clutched in his lifeless right hand. And in the other was a cherished picture of his wife and daughter, at Christmas time, wrapped up in his loving embrace. Seeing it clearly for what it was, he called to Brook, “Charlie told me he knew he was never going to find them.”
Brook bit her lip. Said, “He gave it a shot.”
“Gotta hand it to him,” Chief answered back. “At least he went out on his own terms.”
“They’ll meet again ... somewhere,” Brook said, swiping at a runaway tear.
Chief said nothing. He snugged his carbine to his shoulder and methodically culled a trio of dead lurching toward them from the south. Changed the magazine and racked a fresh round into the chamber and then began the long walk back to the F-650.
Dreading the sad task of breaking the news of their grim find to the Kids face-to-face, Brook was about to call ahead to Chief and ask if he would do it when the radio vibrated in her pocket. Taking it as a sign, she answered and, as she followed Chief back to the truck, provided the Kids with all the gory details.
As Brook neared the F-650 she saw a south facing sign marked Randolph 11.
“If Woodruff doesn’t bear fruit we’ll have no choice but to go there,” she called ahead.
Chief slowed his gait. “Refresh my memory. What kind of place are we looking for?”
“Any kind of medical facility or veterinarian’s office,” said Brook.
“Me and Logan and the others did most of our foraging west and north of the compound. If I remember right from a couple of trips I made through here before the outbreak there’s really not much to see. It’s like an unincorporated town. Post office, a couple of fix-it shops, and a gas station.”
“Won’t hurt to look,” Brook said. “I’ve only seen it on a map. The Kids have never been this way either.”
When they got back to the Ford they stowed their weapons and climbed in, Brook still driving. She turned the engine over and stole one last look at the black and white. The place where Charlie Jenkins made his last stand. Feeling a second round of tears threatening to spill, she nudged the shifter into Drive and made a K-turn in the center of road. Then, wheeling north past the Raptor, she braked alongside, powered her window down, and said to Taryn, “Let’s keep a little more spacing between the trucks when we’re in Woodruff.”
Taryn nodded. She said, “Are you sure both trucks will fit in Woodruff? Looked like only three blocks of Main Street before we’re back on the State Highway.”
“We’ll make do,” said Brook as she released the brake and powered her window up.
They passed a couple of turn-of-the-century farmhouses with spacious tracts of grass surrounding them like moats guarding against the desert’s approach. A little farther down the road, 16 became Main Street and all conce
rned discovered that Woodruff truly was a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of town. It was nothing like the towns south of Huntsville where smaller one-and two-story brick structures with awnings protruding over the sidewalks were the norm. Instead the places of commerce here were spread apart, sometimes by a block or more.
The post office on Main Street was a single-level affair painted an awful cream color with an off-putting red shingle roof. It was separated from the two-lane State Road by a wide pothole-dotted shoulder and, beyond it, a single strip of sunbaked grass. A flagless pole was planted in the ground on the corner of an empty L-shaped parking lot and, continuing the red theme, a sea of crushed lava rock surrounded it all.
Across the street on the left was an automobile repair shop. A trio of goose neck lights affixed to the flat roof hung out over its gravel parking lot. Vinyl banners touting cheap and quick repairs and listing their prices were strung on one side of the building and rippled lazily after a little gust of wind.
There were early model rust buckets covering two-thirds of the lot and, like the gas station preceding it, the neon signage in the window was darkened and the mini-blinds behind were snapped shut, leaving the contents of its interior up to Brook’s imagination. She slowed the truck and at the next corner turned right off of Main Street. Head on a swivel, she wheeled the black Ford slowly around a pair of horribly burned walking dead.
Chief pointed diagonally across Brook’s field of vision. He said, “My eyes aren’t the best. Does that say physical therapy?”
Brook slowed the truck to walking speed hunched over the wheel and gazed at the two-story home turned business. In front was a pair of gnarled bushes flanking a wide cement walk. The walk ran ten feet from the sidewalk to a half-dozen stairs leading up to a small porch. A wide wheelchair ramp branched off right from the walk, switched back once, and ran uphill at a gradual grade to the right side of the porch. The front door was some kind of dark wood and in its center at eye-level the business name was spelled out in three descending rows with what looked like raised bronze letters. Sheer white curtains covered the vertical windows on either side of the door. The curtains for the two picture windows flanking the entry were also drawn. Hanging from eyehooks above the front stairs was a hand-painted sign. Red letters over a white background. Brook read it aloud: Back in the Saddle Physical Therapy.
“Do you think they’ll have what you need?”
“Doubtful,” said Brook. “But it’s the closest thing to a medical practice we’re likely to come across in Woodruff.”
“Where do you think folks used to take themselves to be seen by a doctor?”
Brook said, “Ogden for specialized medicine, surgeries, and diagnostic type stuff ... X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and the like.”
Chief looked at her and half-jokingly said, “How about shots then.”
“Most likely a doctor in Huntsville or Randolph would hold a clinic for flu shots and immunizations once or twice a year. And that’s assuming the high cost of malpractice insurance didn’t put all of the private practitioners here in the boonies out of business.”
Chief said nothing.
Brook asked, “What do you think the odds are that there’s anything dead inside?”
Still eyeing the building, Chief said, “Slim to none. But if there is ... clearing the place shouldn’t be difficult. I’m guessing there’s four ... maybe five rooms downstairs. With probably the same floor plan above.”
Simultaneously two radios vibrated. The one deep in Brook’s pocket and the backup Chief had brought and placed in the center console.
Chief retrieved the one from the console, pressed the Talk button and said, “We’re going to check out this physical therapy business.”
“That’s not what I’m calling you for,” Wilson said testily. “While you two were sitting in the middle of the road burning fuel and daydreaming, a couple of rotters got wind of us.”
Brook craned around and saw their unwanted visitors approaching. The same two horribly burned corpses she’d just passed by. Sex indeterminable. No hair or clothing or shoes. Just crisped skin and gaunt faces with pickets of off-white teeth and yellowed orbs for eyes staring straight away. And they were moving forward undaunted. Like a pair of hungry fire-and-forget missiles.
She took her foot off the brake and made a low speed U-turn. Pulled past the Zs, causing a clumsy shuffling about-face in the center of Main Street U.S.A. She parked the truck near the curb in front of the fix-it-shop and, leaving the motor running, set the brake.
Knowing the crispy Zs would follow them to the ends of the earth and that a bullet to the brain would be the only thing stopping them, Chief said, “You doing this or me?”
Letting her actions do the talking, Brook drew the Glock and deftly screwed the suppressor onto the muzzle. One and a half twists of the wrist later she punched the button bringing the window down and patiently eyed the approaching undead duo in the side mirror.
Behind the staggering ghouls she saw the Raptor roll to a silent halt.
Once the snarling creatures reached the rear tire on the driver’s side, Brook stuck her arm out the window and, like she’d seen Cade do, waited until the first rotter reached for the pistol.
The awful crackling sound the crisped dermis made when the abomination raised its arms made her cringe. With her own skin crawling and tingling, she waited until it wrapped its skeletal hands around the cylindrical suppressor then helped guide it along into its mouth and, with a forceful thrust, deeper yet into its throat.
She pulled the trigger. Said, “Sleep well,” as the creature’s eyes bugged in its skull and inexplicably two puffs of fine black powder exited the recesses where its ears used to be. And whereas the suppressor usually rendered the Glock’s normal report to little more than a light hand clap, the creature’s abdomen silenced the shot entirely as the bullet severed its spinal cord and the remaining gasses dissipated to places inside.
As the Z fell to the roadway in a heap amid a swirling cloud of carbonized dermis, Brook raised the pistol by a degree and shot the other shambling mess between its darting eyes.
Cocking his head and checking the mirrors for more interlopers, Chief asked, “Only one shot each?”
Brook leaned out the window and the gun chugged twice more. “I was taking my time,” she said, flashing Chief a fake smile. The gun went under her thigh and she picked up the radio, keyed the Talk button, and thanked Wilson for the heads up.
Brook released the brake and pulled another U-turn, running over one of the fallen corpses in the process. With the sickening crunch reverberating through the truck’s undercarriage she heard Cade in her head reminding her to Always double tap.
The drive to the rehab place was short, and pulling into the cracked asphalt lot behind the white-and-gray-trimmed building they came across a car with its door ajar. Still trapped behind the wheel was a corpse, glistening streamers of muscle and flesh and veins hanging from its neck. As the Z struggled against its seatbelt, a torrent of white maggots spilled from its working maw and all of the flesh on the left side of its face bounced and jiggled like an ill-fitting Halloween mask, threatening to slide off its skull completely.
Chief grabbed his carbine and said, “I wonder why the things don’t finish their kills once they’ve turned.”
Brook had no answer to that. She pulled the truck in left of the compact, set the brake, and killed the motor.
The Raptor slid into the spot right of the little car, and Wilson hopped out and strode to the thrashing cadaver, brandishing his beloved Todd Helton Louisville Slugger.
Before Brook could say anything the redhead was teeing off on the Z’s head. The beating went on until a white sheen of pulped maggots painted the inside of the windshield and there was nothing recognizable above the corpse’s collar bone.
Wilson wiped the barrel of his bat in some tall grass growing up through the cracked asphalt next to the building.
“What was that all about?” called Brook, her tone confrontational.
“Payback for Charlie. I had just started to click with the old guy.”
Though he knew the answer, Chief asked, “Why the bat?”
Sasha was out of the truck by now and she answered for her brother. “He saves it for special occasions like this.”
Brook smiled coyly. Said, “Better than taking it home to Taryn.” Then her tone changed. All business as she hopped down from the F-650, she added, “Let’s go Chief.”
Bat in hand and with cheeks still redder than the blood-splashed seats in the small compact, Wilson fell in behind.
Brook stopped mid-stride, turned, and shot him a look that said: Where do you think you are going?
“What?” said Wilson, arms spread, the bat still dripping some of the gore he’d missed.
Brook put one hand on her hip. A move that conveyed she meant business. One that always worked on Raven. She said, “Stay behind with the ladies ... please.”
Wilson threw the petite brunette a smart ass salute and turned on his heel feeling like some kind of private in her personal army. Then, without a word to the contrary, he placed the bat in the Raptor’s bed and climbed in next to Taryn.
Chapter 52
Just a handful of minutes removed from surveying the damage several five-hundred-pound bombs could inflict on a jam of cars on a United States freeway, Cade was trying to wrap his mind around the numbers of dead he was seeing patrolling the sunbaked Southern California sidewalks. They owned Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard. There had to have been a hundred or more languishing in the tar pits of La Brea.
The only part of L.A. that seemed unchanged to Cade when they overflew it was West Hollywood, a seedy area east of Santa Monica known for its eccentric nightlife and tattoo parlors and the place—from watching TMZ, which was a hidden guilty pleasure of his—he associated with fighting in the streets and drugs and prostitutes and bad boy actors in handcuffs.
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 27
