Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  But he had a plan. So he pushed the loveseat aside, opened the broken door, and let Max outside first. Forgoing the keyless entry for fear the dead might hear the alarm chirp, he opened the Ford with the key and let the dog in. The overstuffed Kelty, unwieldy bag of Purina dog chow, and paper sack full of reading material all went into the backseat area with Max. After spilling out a liberal amount of dog food onto the floorboards for the shepherd, Cade gently closed the rear passenger door, climbed behind the wheel, and pulled his door shut with care.

  Acutely aware of how fast and far sound could travel in the open, before firing the big V10, Cade planned his egress route from the vantage the higher ground afforded. By the time he came to the most obvious conclusion, the dead had seemingly ceased all forward movement and appeared frozen in place due west of the rehab place.

  Adding a mental wrinkle to his plan, which he figured would be doable only on account of this newfound turn of events, he started the motor and jockeyed the truck around on the patch of snow-covered gravel.

  Fear the reaper, crossed his mind as he wheeled the F-650 down the narrow gravel drive and what he hoped to be a quick in-and-out stop at Back in the Saddle Rehabilitation. And if all went as planned there, hopefully an uneventful meet-and-greet with the unmoving zombie herd.

  Chapter 6

  The first missile came extremely close to taking out Daymon’s eye. However, just as he was reacting to the first near miss, the second whizzing projectile, coming from the opposite direction, caught him full force on the top of his head. He let out a yelp and a plume of his own breath enveloped his face as he went to the ground on all fours, numbed hands feeling around blindly for something to fight back with.

  “Incoming,” bellowed Wilson as he dove, joining Daymon on the crushed grass where he instantly began pulling armfuls of heavy snow close to his body.

  Keeping his head down just below the bent grass stalks demarking the edge of his and Duncan’s sad attempt at creating an alien crop-circle, Daymon slowly walked a three-sixty—still on all fours—and was able to locate both enemy positions.

  A blur of white shot by a foot over their heads from the direction Jamie and the others were holed up.

  By the time Daymon was back to facing Wilson, the scrappy redhead had already produced half a dozen perfectly formed snowballs each the size of a navel orange. Then Daymon noticed the twenty-year-old’s breath billow up around his ever-present camouflage boonie hat and knew instantly their position was given away. So he grabbed two of the snowballs, winked at Wilson, and laid flat. Tucking his arms in, he logrolled a few feet left and came up to his knees, throwing arm cocked, eyes scanning for a target. Which he found a few feet left of where he’d initially spotted movement.

  Daymon raised up on his knees, arm cocked and the target in his crosshairs. He let fly with everything he had in him, but before he could see if the snowball had found its mark, there was an explosion of pain behind his eyes and he fell back down onto his stomach, uttering obscenities and trying to blink his eyesight back so he could go kick the shit out of the headhunting waste of skin who had beaned him.

  North of Ray and Helen’s Home

  Dregan drove north on 16 with the venerable Chevy dropped into four-wheel-drive and Helen’s mirthless smile still etched in his mind’s eye. The snow was sticking hard to the road now, and though the military version of the K5 had a fairly strong engine under the hood, keeping it from fishtailing around the corners while rolling on worn tires was a full time job.

  So he took the curves like he imagined Helen would—slow and cautious. On the straightaways, however, trying to make up for lost time, he kicked the speed up a bit. And it was on one of these stretches, moving at a clip above the posted limit, when a sudden gust threw the snow horizontal at the windshield and visibility was reduced to only a couple of car lengths.

  Dregan doubled down on his grip on the wheel and was easing off the accelerator when a human form materialized fast out of the clutter. Facing away dead center in the road, the oblivious biter made no move to acquire the engine noise that Dregan was certain it could hear. Instead, in the few seconds during which he had a decision to make, Dregan saw the thing take only one sluggish step forward. Then, the reaction severely delayed, its head began a slow sweep left in the general direction of the rapidly approaching SUV.

  Turn evasively to avoid the thing and risk driving into the ditch, or mow it over like the ones by Helen’s place?

  Grimacing, Dregan chose the latter. The impact juddered the vehicle to the frame and the unsuspecting shambler folded under the bumper like it had been sucked up by a gigantic Hoover. There was a chorus of bangs and bones crunched as a hundred and some odd pounds of frigid flesh ping-ponged between the undercarriage and road. A tick later the noises ceased and it was spit out, arms and legs windmilling until it finally came to rest face down on the shoulder.

  Cursing himself for choosing the Blazer over the Tahoe or one of the military vehicles, he pulled over to the shoulder, more so out of habit than the possibility a vehicle would rear end him if he chose to do so on the centerline.

  He dropped the transmission into Park and, in the sideview mirror, watched the dead thing for a moment. In its futile slow-motion attempt at standing, hands and feet slipping on the slickened road, its drunken movements made Dregan think of a newborn foal trying to stand—not a biter recovering from a catastrophic collision it neither felt, nor cared one way or the other about.

  Clearly the weather was affecting these things more by the minute. He reached for the stereo and kicked the volume up so he could hear the string section over the buffeting wind. When his gaze swung back to the mirror, the biter on the road behind him was lying flat and not moving. Either it was giving up, he thought, something he had never witnessed the dead do, especially with prey in sight, or the cold shocked it into suspended animation.

  He spent a minute staring at its reverse reflection. One elbow, bent at an impossible angle, jutted out from underneath its body and was pressed against its cheek. Dregan remembered Lena sleeping in her crib all funny like that, oh so long ago. Only her legs hadn’t been twisted around one another, feet pointing skyward like some kind of a freak show contortionist.

  Dregan pushed the memory of his second born from his head and, just about the time he’d been sold on the cold-shocked theory, the abomination pushed its upper body off the road and again started in on the baby foal routine.

  “Fuck me,” Dregan said, banging his palm on the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  After a prolonged effort, somehow the battered creature made it to its knees. A single rib bone, curving unnaturally outward, protruded through its threadbare shirt. A gust of wind kicked up, ruffling the thin fabric and with enough force to topple the creature back to the road where, exhibiting the same blind determination, it began the arduous process of picking itself up again.

  Seeing the tenaciousness on display brought to mind the herd that was somewhere up ahead. No reason to catch up to them just yet, he thought. No matter the effect the dropping mercury was having on them. Handling a dozen semi-sluggish biters by himself, no problem. Being near several hundred all by himself—sluggish or not—that made his skin crawl. Even inside the warm truck he could feel the imagined crush of clammy flesh and the wanting frigid hands tearing at his clothes in search of firm purchase.

  He had seen some of the dead play possum so, until he was sure what he was up against, discretion would have to win out over valor. No reason to go rushing headlong down the State Route. He had nowhere to be. So he turned up the volume a little bit more and, with Bach serenading him, cast his gaze to the east and stared longingly at the thin band of clear blue sky sandwiched between the distant mountains and tail end of the storm.

  Seeing the biter start to crawl hand over road-rashed hand, he locked the door and peered down at the gas gauge, seeing that it was showing three-quarters full. Good! The need to stay warm trumping a few ounces of wasted diesel, he opted to
let the engine idle and again kicked his seat back and savored the Mozart flowing out of the aftermarket set of speakers.

  Chapter 7

  Cade sat in the warm truck at the end of the long drive and watched the herd inch down Main Street. After twenty long minutes it became crystal clear to him that they were going nowhere soon. And at the pace they were moving—if in fact they were still ambulatory at this point in time—the Second Coming would likely occur before the entire column made it north of Main and Center. So with his next stop no longer being dictated by the fear that he might become trapped anywhere by the herd, he hooked a right out of the driveway and onto Center and then headed east instead of west, taking him away from the rehab place. He drove for a short distance, a block or two if measured in the city, and turned right at the next drive.

  The Ford’s tires printed a fresh set of tracks in the new snow and Cade parked it on an identical white rectangle in front of a modular home the same in every way to the one he’d just left save for its exterior paint color.

  Up close he noticed this house had been touched by a woman. There were flower boxes full of drooping brown stalks attached to the siding just under the larger two of the three windows gracing the front of the place. Colorful garden gnomes and Bambi-type deer were arranged around the base of a nearby tree, and a birdbath was erected on the lawn dead center to the large picture window.

  Max growled at something on the passenger’s side, causing Cade to lift up off of his seat and follow the dog’s gaze. Next to the garage, partially obscured by a knee-high burn pile, was an early-model mid-sized sedan. Closer scrutiny revealed it was minus a rear wheel and canted sideways, away from the house. Next to the root-beer-brown vehicle’s rear bumper, Cade spotted a hydraulic jack lying on its side, as well as the poor soul who had become pinned and died there as a result of its obvious failure. On the undead man’s arms, raised purple bite marks stood out in stark contrast against the pallid skin. The Z, whom Cade instantly nicknamed Jack, on account of his unfortunate demise, was flailing its chewed-on arms and swatting at the falling snowflakes. “Good job, boy,” Cade said. He reached back and gave Max a good scratching behind the ears. Still eyeing the trapped creature, he rattled the transmission into Park, stilled the motor, and exited the truck.

  With Max on his heels, Cade skirted around a generic-looking SUV hybrid that, sitting beside the Ford, looked like something from the future. A byproduct of a mini-van’s fling with a Jeep, perhaps. It was bulbous up front and sat a little too low to the ground considering the off-road tires wrapped around the rims. The front windshield was spidered and protruding from it dead center was the lower half of a long dead person. Hips to toes, though the impact with the van’s bumper had left its mark, the bare legs were shapely, pale, and all woman.

  Intrigued as to what the legs’ owner looked like, Cade swiped the snow from the driver’s side window and found himself staring into the clouded lifeless eyes of a long dead Z that had registered in life, in his humble opinion, somewhere between a solid seven or eight on the easy-on-the-eyes scale.

  The passenger door was unlocked, so he quickly searched the mutant SUV and found only the usual: maps, registration, proof of insurance, and papers showing it’d passed the last smog check. There was no chocolate. Strike two.

  He called to Max, “Let’s go.” Then together they made tracks in the snow to the modular home’s front door, where he performed the same routine as before.

  He banged once on the door and called out. Nothing.

  Hackles up and growling, Max pawed at Cade’s right leg.

  “We got us a Wal-Mart Greeter somewhere inside of there?”

  Again, Max with the guttural growl.

  “All right, wingman. We go in hot then.” He rapped on the door again while drawing his Glock. With Max still voicing his displeasure, Cade listened hard for another second and, when there was no discernable sound from behind the door, he delivered the kick, but with his left leg this time.

  The result was the same—but different.

  Equal and opposite reactions happened next as Newton’s Third Law came into play and the door blew inward. Instantly he caught a face full of air heavy with the stench of rotting flesh. However, instead of the knob drilling a fresh hole in the drywall like the house before, this door’s vertical edge hit the source of the stench full on and, after a split-second hitch, continued its inward swing. Cade got a quick glance at the Z as the door began to shear away from its hinges. The hissing thing was massive and female and thoroughly decomposed. It also had caught the door and the full energy from his kick across the sternum and forehead and, like felled timber, had slowly keeled over backwards. A tick after glimpsing the hideous face, Cade felt a thud course through the joists, floorboards, and carpet and vibrate the sole of his boot that he’d just planted on the aluminum threshold plate.

  Wanting to preserve the advantage, he shouldered open the remains of the door and put a boot on the struggling creature’s chest. As he watched his tan combat boot sink into the nightgown-covered folds of flesh there, he started to swing the Glock on line with the enormous target the pasty-white forehead presented. And like clockwork, as it always did when he entered into combat and the fight component of his hardwired fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, time started to crawl. Sights and sounds became more acute as his adrenal glands flooded his body with endorphins.

  Behind him he heard Max growling.

  To his right, a grandfather clock was ticking; then a click sounded and suddenly it began to announce the time with a series of long, sonorous gongs.

  Between the first and second chime, the morbidly obese undead woman was wrapping both meaty hands around his ankle and calf. Before the second chime had dissipated, there was a pair of neat little holes punched into her forehead and both clouded eyes were rolled back. And by the time the clock had finished alerting everyone and everything within earshot that it was ten o’clock in the morning, Cade had swept the house for more dead, returned to the front room, and was eyeing the closed door leading into the garage.

  A sudden wind gust carried some light flakes in through the open front door. So Cade dragged the leaking three hundred pounds of dead weight away from the blood-slicked four-by-four square of taupe vinyl flooring, closed the buckled door as best he could, and then dumped the offending grandfather clock over on its side, effectively barring entry to dead and breathers alike—the latter of which concerned him more than the former at the moment.

  With Max watching his every move and slinking after him through the prefab like a shadow, Cade went to the kitchen and scavenged a box of heavy-duty Glad garbage sacks from under the kitchen sink. He made his way to the bathroom first and raided the medicine cabinet, throwing everything of use into one of the sacks. He opened the cabinet door under the sink and took all of the feminine products there. What he wouldn’t give for the days when Brook would force a mission to the Safeway on him. There was a time in his life when he would gladly have accepted an excursion behind enemy lines over a trip through the Express Checkout with a pink box emblazoned with butterflies or feathers containing items he didn’t quite understand, nor pretend to. Now, however, considering the state of the world, he’d gladly run naked through Safeway stating his mission proudly while waving a bottle of Massengill’s in one hand and the biggest box of Kotex he could find in the other.

  Still pining for normalcy to return to the day-to-day, he stalked from the bathroom and checked out both bedrooms, looking in the closets and under the beds and their mattresses. Finding nothing of use save for a couple of fleece blankets, which went into the bag, he made his way to the kitchen and started emptying everything from the cupboards into a second garbage bag. The big woman had a huge appetite in life. That was for sure. Especially for candy. But not Snickers. Strike three.

  Somewhat crestfallen, Cade dumped a sealed bag of hardened marshmallows (added to the list in Raven’s handwriting) into the second bulging black bag, tied the drawstring, and then pro
mptly peeled a fresh one from the thick Costco-sized roll.

  Empty bag in hand, he approached the door leading into the garage. Performed nearly the same routine as he did on the front. Bang. Call out. Listen hard. Max wasn’t growling at this point and the door was unlocked so kicking it wasn’t necessary, which was good, because now there was a sharp pain stabbing his left leg a few inches below his knee. The beginnings of a shin splint, no doubt. Getting old sucks, crossed his mind as he opened the door, leveled the Glock, and took a quick step back.

  Chapter 8

  Nothing undead or living rushed him, so Cade holstered the Glock and entered the garage, which he found utilized in a vastly different manner than the other. There were a couple of grease stains on the concrete pad, but no cars, because they were both parked outside, one speared through with a twice-dead corpse, and the other atop what had presumably been the dead woman-of-the-house’s husband.

  Against the rear wall, he spotted a pair of multi-speed road bikes, both gently used. Next to the bikes was a pair of modular shelves, the plastic stacking type, brimming with automotive products. It appeared from the diverse selection assembled on them like soldiers at parade rest, that the man liked his car as much as the woman liked her food. And with the weather over the coming months forecast to be worse than normal—at least according to the pre-recorded opinions of some long dead farmers—that was a good thing, because the Black Hawk and other vehicles needed to be winterized. So everything went into the bag. There were bottles of lubricant, spark plugs, air cleaners, two cans of Fix-a-Flat, and cans both of starting fluid and windshield deicer.