Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  The moment Cade rattled the transmission into Park and set the brake, he realized something was not right. Across the clearing, near the compound entrance, wearing parkas and hats and bulky snow boots, Taryn, Wilson, Sasha, and Raven stood in a rough semi-circle over a prone form that, judging by the muscular physique, had to be Lev.

  Cade shifted his gaze to the near side of the clearing, just beyond the motor pool, and saw Daymon sitting in the Black Hawk’s open door. The dreadlocked man was doubled over with his face planted in his gloved hands and to Cade it looked as if he was real close to throwing up. And to further complicate the already confusing scene, Duncan was kneeling on Daymon’s left side, head craned and apparently trying to establish some kind of eye contact.

  Leaving the motor running and his door hanging open, Cade hopped down from the truck. “What’s going on?” he mouthed to Wilson.

  Wilson pointed toward the Black Hawk across the clearing. “Daymon’s what’s going on.”

  “Is Lev OK?” Cade asked.

  Answering the question, Lev sat up and started massaging the left side of his face.

  Wanting to hear it from the horse’s mouth, Cade hustled the thirty yards to the Black Hawk, where he found Heidi sitting inside on one of the canvas benches, sobbing, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

  Daymon peeled off his gloves and looked up. Hands curling into fists, he said, “I’m going to kill that mother—”

  “It was an accident,” said Duncan, cutting him off. He was still on bent knee and trying to make eye contact.

  Cade stood there, neutral, his head panning back and forth.

  “This is no accident,” Daymon shot back, pointing at his right eye. “It’s going to be one hell of a shiner.” He bent at the waist, scooped up a handful of snow, and pressed it to the eye in question.

  “To be honest,” proffered Duncan. “I’ve never seen a snowball fight that didn’t devolve into fisticuffs like that.”

  Daymon ripped off his stocking cap, releasing the rubber-band-bound dreads that were just beginning to grow back. He chucked the cap on the ground by his gloves. “He was aiming for my head.”

  “Looked like it to me,” chimed Heidi, dragging a sleeve across her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Lev called over the distance. “It’s not like I packed rocks inside of them. Besides ... the way you and Wilson were laying low like little pussies, your ugly mug was all I could see.”

  Daymon threw his hands in the air, a wan smile curling the corners of his mouth. “I would have checked my fire.”

  “Just like you checked that right cross?” blurted Sasha, stalking towards the Black Hawk, Raven at her elbow trying unsuccessfully to slow her advance.

  Daymon hopped down from the helicopter. He tossed the handful of snow to the ground, revealing the beginnings of a wicked shiner. “Okay, okay,” he said, arms up in surrender. He fixed his gaze on Sasha. “You’re right. I should have checked my anger. I’m sorry for overreacting.”

  “Late to the fistfight, I see,” Cade said.

  “Not much of a fistfight,” Duncan drawled. “You just missed Urch here not connect a haymaker on Lev’s chin. Hit him on the jaw and temple instead. Shoulda seen Glenda step in like Larry Steel and break them up.”

  Nearby, arms crossed over her chest, Glenda nodded.

  Seeing this, Cade quietly said, “Sounds like you each landed a blow. Makes it even in my book. I don’t care who started it. And I need you both to drop it. Forget it ever happened, because truthfully … with what I’m about to tell you we can’t afford to waste any time on blue-on-blue engagements.” He turned and faced Lev and the others and waved them over. Once everyone who was currently topside had assembled in the shadow of the hulking Black Hawk, starting with Raven, Cade looked each person in the eye, letting his gaze linger for a half-beat on each face before moving on. Finishing where he had started, he threw Raven a covert wink and described what the weather was doing to the dead. Looks of amazement were exchanged all around. There were a couple of muted high-fives. Then Cade answered all of their questions—most of which centered mainly on the sonic tempest he’d endured while in the midst of the immobilized herd.

  Finished, he took Raven’s hand and, with a subtle nod and arch of the brow, summoned Foley and Duncan to follow him away from the babbling crowd.

  At the Ford, he boosted Raven up and into the cab with Max, who was still on the floor in the front and still enjoying the air blowing from the heater. Then he looped around back, dropped the tailgate, and proceeded to unload. He set both the shroud he’d removed at the quarry gate and the gooseneck lights from the outbuildings at Foley’s feet and asked him to get with Seth and rectify the problems with the cameras.

  “Me ... MacGyver?” Foley said. “I specialize in software and computers. Not tasks fit for a building superintendent.”

  “That’s the attitude,” Cade shot, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “You’re right,” Foley said. “It’s just that I’m not looking forward to being cooped up all winter.”

  “The snow is our friend,” Cade said. He smiled and gestured at the Eddie Griswold Winnebago parked under the trees by the road. “Maybe Daymon will let you bunk with him to cut down on the monotony.”

  “No thanks,” Foley said. “Heidi’s got that job now. Besides … I’ve smelled one of his farts.”

  Feigning incredulity, Duncan said, “Worse than mine? Oh, goody.” He rubbed his palms together. “More ball-busting ammunition.”

  “Just don’t tell him I said it,” Foley begged.

  Pantomiming locking his lips and throwing away the key, Duncan said, “Secret’s safe with me.”

  Foley flashed a thumbs-up and scooped up the shroud and gooseneck light standards.

  “You do know there’s fifty thousand of those dead things in Ogden. And according to Glenda, several thousand more in Huntsville and Eden,” Duncan said, watching Foley lope off to start work on the new project.

  “So we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Cade said, matter-of-factly.

  “And then some,” Duncan added.

  “Can you see to rounding up the necessary bodies, weapons and supplies?” Cade asked.

  Duncan chuckled. “Can-do. Should I invite Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed?”

  “Your call.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Cade nodded at Raven in the Ford. “I’ve got a promise to fulfill.”

  “I’m on it,” Duncan said, and ambled off toward the compound entrance whistling the theme from the old Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

  Cade climbed up and slid behind the wheel and in seconds had the F-650 angling for the feeder road.

  ***

  With the widening swathe of blue sky renewing his energy, Dregan threw the aged Blazer through the turns, slowing only for the sharpest of hairpins and on the long uphill sections where the engine left him no other choice.

  Around every corner he imagined the phantom vehicle would be sitting broadside, blocking the road, a half-dozen armed men with angry faces waiting to greet him.

  Thankfully, a dozen minutes removed from the previous stop, so far, each blind corner had disappointed.

  He could see the storm through the slot in the trees. It was moving west towards Huntsville and Eden, the east wind hurtling it towards a collision course with the craggy Wasatch Range where they would be ripped open and deposit whatever snow they harbored.

  Once again, his sixth sense prompted him to slow down. Only now, it was more than a feeling of foreboding in his gut than an imagined vision of his demise.

  A quarter-mile ahead the rig slowed, involuntarily though, as gravity and Mother Nature and the flagging diesel made it unavoidable.

  Eyes glued to the two bluish-white stripes printed in the snow, Dregan held his breath until the shallow hill’s curved apex, where the road widened slightly into a gentle right-to-left sweeper that eventually was swallowed up by the distant gloomy hole in the forest.

&nbs
p; Both sides of the road were hemmed in for the first twenty yards or so. On the right side, a combination of thick undergrowth and dense forest was shot through by a sturdy-looking fence being slowly overgrown by it all. Paralleling the State Route to the left was a long run of triple-strand barbed wire. Rusting and sagging, it was secured every ten feet or so to gray and gnarled chest-high wood posts that formed a picket following the contour of the land all the way to the forest up ahead.

  There was a meadow white with snow beyond the barbed wire fence where he half-expected to see deer or elk loitering. However, that wasn’t the case as he slowed opposite it and came to a dead stop, the only sound the ticking of the diesel.

  He swept his gaze around again and suddenly realized something was missing. A cold chill broke out all over his body as he dropped the transmission into Reverse and slowly backed up a few feet. Caught up in the suddenly changing scenery, he missed the fact that he had stopped the Blazer directly atop the point in the road where the wide set of tracks took an abrupt right turn. At first he couldn’t fathom how the phantom vehicle had passed through the fence and parted the forest without leaving a like-sized hole and knocking every flake of snow off of the diverse flora as it had during its previous off-road deviation. Then he walked his eyes along the fence and several things dawned on him. Attached to one of the gnarled posts was a sturdy vertical hinge. In addition, behind the vegetation, which was real and had been living at one time, he could just make out a trio of horizontal bars, about as thick as a man’s forearm and apparently made of steel tubing.

  Everything was arranged so that to a passerby it looked just like a natural part of the scenery. Then, in his peripheral, a dozen feet above the shoulder, he picked up a pair of plastic half-domes each about the size of a softball and standing out only because of the hazy white rime clinging to them.

  Suddenly his intuition was no longer just a distant voice urging him to pay attention. It was telling him he likely no longer had the element of surprise and had taken an instant one-eighty turn and was screaming ambush and urging him to flee.

  Because Dregan had listened to the inner voice and acted immediately by throwing the truck into gear and backing away, he never heard the growl of an engine approaching from somewhere in the forest to his right. White-knuckling the steering wheel, he tromped the pedal to the floor. The diesel coughed and there was a tinny whine coming from the transfer case as all four wheels tried to obey the command relayed from the action of his foot.

  Trailing a wide plume of gray-black exhaust, the rig fishtailed down the hill in reverse until reaching the run-out, where Dregan wrenched the wheel, put the gearbox in neutral, and spun it around in a sloppy one-hundred-and-eighty-degree bootlegger’s reverse.

  Heart pounding a hole in his chest, more so from the crazy maneuver than the words ambush and flee that had popped into his head, he engaged Drive. Wincing from the obstinate clunk of gears not exactly meshing perfectly, simultaneously he goosed the throttle and flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror, where he saw not so much as a single vehicle in hot pursuit nor a forest full of winking muzzle flashes announcing lethal lead being thrown his way.

  Chapter 13

  Cade pulled the F-650 up to within two truck lengths of the hidden gate. “Stay here for a second, sweetie.”

  Raven nodded. “Jawohl, kommandant.”

  With the driver’s door partway open and just about to leap to the ground, Cade arrested himself with one hand on the A-pillar grab bar and looked over his shoulder. “What? Who taught you that?”

  Raven began, “Taryn has a couple of episodes of an old show called—”

  “—Hogan’s Heroes,” Cade finished, incredulous. “I can see Taryn liking it. She marches to her own drummer. But you?” He adjusted his ball cap and gave her a double take. “You like it?”

  “Not really. But it’s all we have.”

  “Not anymore,” Cade responded. “I brought you something back from Woodruff that should keep you and the gang busy for a long while.”

  Raven instantly switched to Kid-on-Christmas-Eve mode and began needling Dad for intel.

  “I’m not sure what titles I grabbed,” he conceded. “When I take you back to the compound you can dig in and see for yourself.”

  “Is it an iPad?”

  “Just wait.”

  “A TV and PlayStation?”

  “Patience.” He took the truck out of gear and set the brake. “Stay here,” he said, reaching behind the seat. He came out with her Ruger rifle and grabbed his M4. He exited the truck, crunched thirty feet through the snow and then stopped behind the gate to look and listen. Seeing nothing there, he walked back and helped Raven from the truck, closed the door for her and handed over the little rifle.

  Clutching the silk flowers in one gloved hand and the Ruger in the other, Raven followed behind Max to the gate. Once there, she cast a confused look back at the idling truck.

  “Screw the gas,” he said. “It’ll be toasty inside when we’re finished up there.”

  Nodding in understanding, Raven propped her rifle on the backside of the fence and held both arms out.

  Cade leaned his M4 by the Ruger and then effortlessly lifted his daughter over the fence and settled her lightly on the other side. Gripping the Ruger by the forestock and aiming its muzzle away from his face, he handed it over the fence. He did the same with the M4 then said to Raven, “Watch our backs while I come over.” He pulled up on the bottom strand and ushered Max through. Then he padded a few feet to his right and scaled the fence himself.

  Standing on the shoulder in an ankle-deep snowdrift, Cade looked the length of 39. He let his gaze linger west for a few beats, then did the same looking to the east. “Clear,” he called out more from habit than to tell Raven something she could obviously discern herself.

  Once they’d crossed the slickened road, the process was repeated. Raven went over first. Then the guns and the dog. Lastly, after once again checking their six, Cade climbed up and over.

  “Here,” Raven said, handing over half of the bouquet.

  Guns and flowers in hand, father and daughter tramped up the hill, and once they had reached its approximate center, Cade stopped briefly to get his bearings before changing course to his right by a few degrees. Another dozen yards and they were standing before the row of graves where the fallen were buried, the last three of which hadn’t fully settled and stood out slightly from the rest.

  Head down and moving slowly, Raven formed up on Cade’s hip and handed him her rifle.

  Without a word, she approached the first of the three snow-covered mounds. Stood at the grave, wavering for a moment before placing a red flower on the spot where she guessed the foot to be.

  “We miss you, Chief,” she said. “We’re all very sorry that we had to bury you up here. None of us knew where your special place was. Lev had an idea … but he wasn’t totally sure, so—” She went silent and wiped at the tears with the back of her gloved hand.

  “You going to be alright, Bird?” Cade asked.

  Raven said nothing. She merely nodded and shuffled a few paces to her right.

  Even with a persistent inner voice telling him that this supposed attempt at closure was reopening old wounds, Cade decided to refrain from further comment and let her do this how she wanted. So, after looking over his shoulder at the road and then scanning the tree line for threats, he followed in her footsteps and again stood silent sentinel off her left shoulder.

  At the second grave Raven knelt and arranged two flowers, one red, one white, in the shape of a cross, at roughly the same location as the red flower on the previous grave.

  “One for you, Chief Charlie Jenkins. And one for ...” Her voice broke and she went silent for a tick.

  Cade stole a glance and saw her jaw trembling. Still, he restrained himself. Let her feel her way through it. Better here and now in a controlled environment, than later somewhere foreign and all by herself.

  “And one for Pauline,” she went on.
“She knows you tried. And she knew you loved her.”

  Strangely composed, Raven stood up straight and made her way to the final mound in the row of many. Stopped in front of the lonely looking grave on the periphery and placed on the ground near the foot what remained of her half of the bouquet of multicolored flowers. She removed a glove and reached into the front of her coat and came out with the slender aluminum cylinder hanging around her neck on a length of olive-colored nylon cord which contained the Omega antiserum auto-injector that as far as anyone knew—based on its short historical performance—had at most a thirty percent chance of saving whomever it was used on.

  Worrying the cylinder with her delicate fingers, she said, “I’m sorry Duncan and my dad didn’t get to you in time. Duncan liked you ... even though he said you wouldn’t stop talking long enough to get a word in longwise.”

  Edgewise, thought Cade.

  “Edgewise,” Raven said, quickly correcting herself. “We’re all going to miss you, Phillip.” She went quiet and snugged her glove on. Adjusted it so that her trigger finger protruded through the cut off tip and took the Ruger back and held it at a comfortable low ready position.

  To say Cade was pleased at how his twelve-year-old had conducted her business would be a gross understatement. Furthermore, he was heartened to see her know enough to free her trigger finger and fetch her weapon. Smiling inwardly, he asked quietly if there was anything else she wanted to say.

  Wagging her head side-to-side, she said, “Nope,” then knelt and scratched Max behind his perked ears.

  All business, thought Cade. Just like her mom. He walked to his left and divided the rest of the flowers among the other graves. One each for Logan, Jordan, Gus, and Sampson. Just as he finished, the clouds parted overhead and the meadow was awash in blinding sunlight.