Cade felt his rifle banging him in the crotch as he curled his legs and held on, dangling two-handed from the gate.
But nothing happened immediately.
So, feeling useless as teats on a boar, simultaneously he watched a new throng of Zs vectoring in from the street and worked out a couple of hard-earned pull-ups.
Meanwhile, behind him, the distinct soft chugs of suppressed weapons throwing lead downrange competed with the echoing moans of the dead, the tinny tinkle of brass on concrete, and the wet slaps of bullets striking flesh and bone.
As he eyed the staggering corpses homing in from the street, Cade felt something give in the mechanism somewhere overhead as the combined weight of his body and gear started the gate moving, achingly slow, on its downward journey.
Chapter 54
The scene behind Back in the Saddle Rehab wasn’t quite as bad as Brook had envisioned prior to stepping out the back door. Immediately she learned Wilson couldn’t count—at least not from the shotgun seat of the Raptor.
There were dozens of rotters advancing from three points of the compass: north, east and south—not hundreds. And she learned another thing—Wilson had grown a pair as she’d recommended and was standing alongside Taryn in the Raptor’s bed bludgeoning the creatures crowding the truck with his Louisville Slugger.
Black Beretta pistol in hand, Taryn was crouched low and firing point blank into the dead.
Then more gunfire rang out and Sasha was shooting at the Zs with her .22 caliber rifle from her usual perch right behind the driver’s seat.
Before Brook could react, Chief was down the stairs to the left, rifle leveled at the Zs and running and firing.
So she turned right, ran down the shallow ramp and at the sidewalk came face-to-face with a putrefying first turn. Without breaking stride she swept it out of her way with the M4’s buttstock, skidded to a stop, tracked the stubby rifle around, and put two bullets into its brain before it could rise up off the ground. She stepped over the mess of blood and brains and cleared the corner of the building unchallenged. She looked right toward the State Highway and saw a handful of dead a dozen yards away. Sweeping her gaze to her left, she spotted three more Zs blocking her path. Beyond the trio of first turns, near the rear of the F-650, another ten to fifteen walking corpses were angling straight for her in little clusters of twos and threes.
Feeling his ponytail thump against his back with each stride, Chief peeled left around the Raptor at a slow trot. Rounding the bumper, he saw the clutch of zombies reaching up towards Wilson and Taryn and began pumping round after round into their heads at near point-blank range.
Suddenly the sporadic gunfire coming from the Raptor’s cab ceased and in his peripheral Chief saw Taryn holster her pistol and dive head first into the open slider. He saw her feet kicking the air and watched her dark form disappear inside. A tick later the big V8 throbbed to life and Chief’s eye was drawn to Wilson, who had stopped swinging the bat and seemed to be focusing on something out of sight. Recognizing this for what it was, Chief made his way by the idling Raptor’s rear bumper, stepped through the fallen corpses, and rounded the F-650’s towering tailgate.
Simultaneously two things happened. Chief heard a clunk and roar as the Raptor’s transmission engaged behind him and the motor revved. In the next instant, with exhaust fumes mingling with the stench of the dead, he rounded the F-650’s bumper and saw Brook in danger of being surrounded near the truck’s left front fender.
Ignoring a still-writhing corpse nearby, he took a knee and peered through his rifle’s holographic sight. He put the red pip on the back of the head of the flesh-eater closest to Brook and caressed the trigger. Bone and brain went airborne, and without verifying the kill he repeated the process, walking his fire to the left away from her.
When Brook saw the rotters start crumpling to the ground right in front of her, she immediately went into a crouch and crabbed left towards the tiny Z blocking her path to the truck. Judging by the way the skin had tightened around its eyes and mouth, and taking into consideration the condition of the clothes hanging off its emaciated frame, she guessed the undead pre-adolescent had turned near the very beginning of it all.
Fearful of a stray round finding one of the truck’s gas tanks, she lashed out with the M4’s buttstock and connected solidly, sending shards of yellowed teeth into the air and the little monster on a one-way trip to the blacktop. Coming around on the follow-through she saw a lone rotter trip over the yellow wheel chock under the Ford’s front tire and come stumbling at her, head down, arms flailing, and on the verge of a major face plant. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she stepped back, shouldered the M4 and, with an arm’s length to spare, stilled the floundering creature with a quick double-tap to the top of its head.
However, her gift horse turned Trojan the second she spun back towards the truck and saw that the juvenile Z was already up and facing her with a sneering mouthful of jagged teeth.
Brook felt a cold shiver rack her body and time seemed to come to a screeching halt as two things happened simultaneously. First off the undead kid found another gear and closed the distance and had the front of her cotton shirt wrapped up in a two-handed death grip. Then Max came flying out of nowhere, clamped his teeth around the thing’s thin neck and took it down to the pavement all in one fluid movement.
Still not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—even after the last surprise—Brook leaped over the prostrate Z and lunged for the F-650’s door handle.
Still crouched in the Raptor’s bed and unable to see Brook, Wilson witnessed Max squirm from the cab through the slider, leap from the truck bed to the compact car’s roof and, in one final bound, clear the F-650’s bed and disappear from sight. And before his brain could process what he was seeing, the Raptor lurched backwards at tremendous speed and he was flat on his back and rocketing towards the cab. A fraction of a second later when the truck finally jammed to an abrupt stop, he sat upright, stomach reeling from the unexpected spin cycle, and saw Chief prying a twice-dead rotter off of his leg. Then, to his relief, Wilson saw the stocky Native American reach the other truck’s passenger door, open it unaccosted, and climb up on the running board. But before he made it inside, Max had slinked out from under the truck and wormed his way past the man’s legs and inside the cab. Then again, without any kind of warning, tires were screeching, the Raptor was moving forward, and Wilson was sliding uncontrollably towards the tailgate. Like a kid in a bouncy house, he found himself being thrown up and down along with his bloody Louisville Slugger and a couple dozen loose shell casings.
The F-650’s cab smelled of gunpowder and dog and sweat laced with fear when Brook finally slid her petite frame into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. She glanced at Max as she started the motor and said, “You saved me, boy. I owe you a venison steak ... or three.”
“I think we spent a little too much time upstairs,” said Chief, his hands visibly shaking.
“No comment,” replied Brook, breathlessly, as she slapped the transmission into reverse. “But I bet that was you who saved my ass, wasn’t it? None of the Kids can shoot like that.”
Chief said nothing. He had kicked off his boots, loosened his wide leather belt, and was busy stripping off his denim jeans.
Sensing Brook’s eyes on him, Chief said, “Avert your eyes, please. And get us away from here.”
And she did. Following Taryn’s lead, Brook reversed hard and left the compact car and dead rotters alone in the shadow of the two-story. The F-650’s big knobby tires pulped the corpses and spewed meat out the back as she pinned the accelerator and, ignoring the driveway entrance, drove over the sidewalk and grass parking strip. Threatening to get away from her, the Ford lurched and bounced and skittered sideways before she reined it in.
At the junction with 16, Brook let off the gas, braked hard and, with the tinny pinging sounds of dead hands striking the sheet metal, jerked the wheel hard right, putting the rig into an unintentional power slide.
Once she got the truck tracking straight again and was closing the distance to the Raptor’s white tailgate, Wilson rose up from the bed. Instantly the slipstream grabbed his boonie hat, ripping it off his head. But he didn’t lose it entirely. The camouflage number was arrested by its thin leather chinstrap, which was now wound around his neck and chafing his Adam’s apple. As he worked his way toward the cab, the hat spun wildly to and fro, battering his back and head like a parachute deployed behind a dragster.
Taking her eyes from the road for a beat, Brook said, “Are you OK?”
“I don’t know yet,” replied Chief. “You have a mirror?” Then, sitting there in his boxers, he stripped off his socks.
As Brook watched Wilson squeeze his lanky frame through the back window, she said, “I’ll pull over in a minute and check you for bites. Once I declare you good to go, we’ll pull Randolph up on the navigation system and see how far they made it into the twenty first century before Omega slapped them back into the dark ages.”
Chief said nothing. He was contorting his body trying to see the back of his calves. There were deep red welts running vertically up and down his right leg from mid-calf to just below his groin. “At the least these wounds are going to need some antibiotic.”
Brook didn’t even want to think about the worst case because Cade was hours—at least—from returning with the antiserum. And that was assuming Nash had come through and given Cade some in the first place.
So with the grain of salt accompanying Nash’s word growing boulder-sized the more Brook thought about the antiserum’s very existence, she snared the radio from the console and, though she had a good idea who was responsible for the transgression, keyed Talk and said, “I don’t know who laid on the horn back there ... but it cannot happen again. Shoot the bastards for Christ’s sake. Do not invite them to dinner.” She chucked the radio back where she got it and listened as the apologies poured in over the open channel.
Chapter 55
Cade hung from the lip for thirty long seconds while the gate traveled the advertised ninety-six inches from ceiling to floor. By the time the metallic clang signaling his task’s completion was echoing through the subterranean garage, the rest of the team’s weapons had gone silent and the Zs were slamming their decayed torsos against the gate and thrusting their pale arms through its horizontally aligned metal links.
With fingers grasping at air inches from Cade’s chest, the dozen hissing first turns strained mightily against the gate, bowing it inward.
Ignoring the gathering crowd, Cade turned and faced Lopez, Cross, and Griffin. He proceeded to swap out magazines and then asked Lopez what he knew about the stairs.
Letting his carbine dangle from its tactical nylon sling, Lopez spread his arms like he was preparing to fly. He answered, “One in each corner. I heard movement behind the door to the west wing. It was closed but unlocked like someone might be coming back. I left it the way I found it.”
Cade nodded. “And the east?”
Shaking his head, Lopez said, “Locked.”
Cross held up a small leather pouch. He said, “That’s why I brought these.”
Cade reached into a cargo pocket. Tossed Cross the lock-picking gun. “Use that. It’ll save us all a lot of time.”
“And headache,” conceded Cross, holding up his gloved left hand. “I’ve got these big ol’ mitts. Not very conducive to doing the old pick and tensioner two-step.”
Now that he was out of the sun and not running for his life, Cade noticed that the temperature twelve feet underground was a good ten degrees cooler than topside. For that he was grateful, but as the adrenaline surge of a few minutes ago ebbed he felt his body cooling off a touch and the damp shirt under his armor making his skin go clammy.
While Lopez and the SEALs swapped magazines and readied their weapons for the next push, Cade formed a three-dimensional image of the building above them in his head. He saw the inverted V-shaped structure from the front. Two glass-enclosed elevators ran up the outside of the building, and on the first flyby he’d noticed that both were parked on the bottom floor. He saw the wide sidewalk leading to a metal mesh security gate and the barricaded front entry beyond. To the right of the gate, behind a high wall paralleling the entry walk, was a pool ringed by palms and a sea of stark white cement on which all kinds of outdoor furniture was arranged. And though it was far from Olympic size, when viewed from the air, the rectangular-shaped pool area dominated the front two-thirds of the property. And like most of the oddities he’d seen so far in Southern California, the need for an amenity like that at off-campus student housing totally escaped all reason.
Thanks to the rudimentary floor plan Nash had beamed via satellite to his laptop, Cade had a decent grasp of the building’s layout. For instance, he knew that the first five floors had twenty-four units each, mostly efficiencies that were divided among the front and back of the V and separated by a central hall with the elevators located where the east and west wings met. And according to the architectural plans the sixth floor where Nadia’s apartment was located housed eighteen two-bedroom units, nine to a side. He figured whoever designed the place numbered the rooms like every high-rise building he’d been in. Conditioning from the way we read or dictated by some universal building code, he hadn’t a clue. However, the numbers invariably started lowest on the left and counted higher to the right. So Cade figured, if past experience held true within the Four Palms, the rooms on the ground floor would be numbered 101-124 with the apartments of the identical floor above numbered 201-224. On the penthouse level, Nadia’s floor, the two-bedrooms would also be numbered, presumably, left to right, 601-618. And if that assumption was correct, Nadia’s room, 610, should be near the elevators. Cade thought: Only the best view for a fourth year student and daughter of a major in the United States Air Force. A bigwig in the 50th Space Satellite Warfare, to be more specific.
Once he’d finished with his preps, Lopez called Ari with a brief situation report, letting him know they were about to ascend the stairs and that their comms might be compromised by the inches-thick steel-reinforced concrete walls once they entered the well.
Nearby, Cross and Griffin stood facing the rectangle of daylight. Scrutinizing the mass of Zs and going over options of egress aloud and wondering how, if they had to leave the way they had entered, they were going to get past the crowd with Nadia Nash in tow.
Suddenly remembering Raven’s situation, Cade faced Lopez, raised his hands, and stated the obvious, “Time to make a call ... east or west? We need to get a move on.”
Lopez didn’t immediately speak. Instead, he looked to the SEALs for input.
Holding his suppressed carbine at a low ready, and shifting his weight from foot to foot unconsciously, Griffin said, “I’m thinking east wing first.”
“I concur,” said Cross. “We pick the lock and back away. See what comes out.”
Nodding his approval, Cade glanced at the hollow-eyed corpses gathered at the gate. He said, “And if there are a hundred of those things in the stairway?”
Smiling and patting the half-dozen magazines Velcroed snugly in their sleeves on his chest, Lopez said, “I’ve got a hundred rounds of five ... five ... six for the demonios, right here.”
With the metal gate rattling discordantly at their backs, the team powered on their night-vision devices. Leaving them flipped up, for now, they zippered single-file through the fallen corpses at a fast trot while taking care to avoid slipping on the pooled blood and detritus covering the already oil-stained cement.
Running point, Lopez ignored the elevator, hooked a right, and led the team through the gloom to the scratched and dented fireproof metal door.
“Opens outward,” said Cross.
The door was labeled: Stairs East to Floors 1-6. Below that, most likely to alert emergency personnel, a warning—NO ROOF ACCESS—was emblazoned in large raised white lettering. And just outside the door, rising vertically from the cement floor, was a waist-high concrete pole sheathed wit
h thin steel. About as wide around as Cade’s arm, he figured it was placed there to protect a tenant who might happen to be emerging from the stairwell into the path of a moving vehicle. Or to spare the door from careless backing.
While Cross worked on the lock, Cade checked the sat-phone for any new messages. Finding nothing recent on the screen, he stowed it away in a thigh pocket.
Seconds later Cross had the lock defeated, passed the pick gun back to Cade, and was striking the door lightly with his open palm.
“Dinner bell for the dead,” he said, looking back at the assembled team. But there was no immediate reaction from within. However, ten seconds later, when Cross reached out for the knob, a slight shuffling noise sounded from the other side of the windowless door. As the men brandishing guns and wrapped in body armor looked questions at one another, a repetitious scratching sound started up. Faint but determined. Like a woodworker finishing a prized piece with the finest grit paper.
“There’s something in there,” said Lopez, swallowing hard. “Wish Tice was here with his high-tech periscope thingy.” Then, seeing a brief flash of the stairwell of death at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg in his mind’s eye, he shivered and performed the sign of the cross on himself and prayed to God that he wasn’t about to relive that foray through Hell all over again.
“I just wish the Spook was still with us, period,” stated Cade. “Let’s do this.”
With the other three operators standing a few feet back, in a semicircle a shoulder’s width apart, and training their weapons on the door, Cross hauled it open and crouched down and crabbed sideways out of the line of fire.
But the rifle fire never came.
However, the something that was on the other side of the door, a dirty orange tabby cat—easily fifteen pounds of purring, fur-covered fat—strutted past Lopez and into the garage. Green luminescent eyes sized up the team. Then the feline eyeballed the flesh-eaters rattling the gate. After a few seconds spent licking futilely at its fur and paws, the cat turned a circle and trotted nonchalantly back into the darkened stairwell.
Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 30
