Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  Cursing, he ejected the CD, switched hands on the wheel and rolled the window down with the hand crank. Fucking U.S. Army contracting with Chevy and buying the cheapest base model available. No power anything. Cut its balls by dropping an underpowered diesel power plant in it to save a buck and then turned around and spent the savings on heavy-duty bumpers and a fresh coat of brown, black, and green paint.

  He chucked the CD out the window and then shook his head, thinking it quite ironic how he—an immigrant and naturalized citizen from the Ukraine—was now driving a perfect example of how Ronald Reagan duped the old Soviet Union into spending themselves out of World Super Power status.

  Doing his best to forget Lena for the time being, lest he let his rage get the best of him again, he rolled up the window and let the engine noises replace the pop band, and hopefully the emotion it had dredged up.

  He felt the transmission searching for a lower gear as the Blazer tackled the next hill head on. Then the engine took on a lower tone—going from the usual rattle-clatter to a kind of labored growl as the apex drew near. At the top, he stopped and set the brake. Still a good distance from the turnoff to Helen and Ray’s ranch, he grabbed the binoculars off the seat and glassed the property from left to right. Dotting the pasture were dozens of snow-sprinkled alpaca carcasses, the wisps of hair still clinging to them jumping and dancing along with each new gust of east wind. Beyond the pasture, he saw the turnaround in front of the two-story farmhouse and fifty feet south of there the red and white barn looming over them both.

  The windows of the buildings were darkened, which was to be expected since the power was still out and might never be restored. He noticed the old couple’s battered pickup wedged tight against the house, and for a brief second thought about stopping and sharing his good fortune with them. Maybe tell them where the tracks had led him and pick their brains and see if they knew what type of people inhabited the valley between Woodruff and Huntsville before the walking dead did to the United States in weeks, what all of her enemies had failed to do in the two hundred and thirty-five years prior.

  ***

  While Dregan was in the truck on the hill and looking down on the farm, Ray was just to the right of the dining room picture window, holding the curtain back with one hand, and looking off to the northwest through narrowed eyes.

  Cradling the antique shotgun in the crook of his arm, he craned towards the stairway and said, “Is it him, Helen?”

  “I’m not sure,” she answered, her voice echoing down the gloomy stairwell. “What do you see?”

  Squinting against the glare and unable to bring the dark shape on the distant road into focus, Ray said, “A black blob. Hell, all this snow makes it so bright that it seems like I’m staring down an oncoming train.”

  Upstairs, Helen spun the focus ring on the field glasses, bringing the vehicle into sharp focus. She said, “It’s him again, alright.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Ray called back. “I’m starting to think he knows we aren’t telling him everything.”

  “I sensed it earlier,” conceded Helen. “He seemed on edge. Like a climber whose last rope is beginning to fray.”

  “Well,” Ray said. “If he comes up the drive I’ll walk out and greet him. If I sense any bad intent I’ll give you the signal and distance myself from him.”

  “If I shoot him dead,” Helen called. “We’re going to find ourselves dragged up before Pomeroy.”

  “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six,” replied Ray.

  ***

  Staring intently at the house on the hill, Dregan mulled over the possibility that the group the old couple gave refuge to the day Lena and Mikhail were murdered might return on less friendlier terms than before. And if they did, what would the geriatrics do? The fact that he didn’t truly know where the couple’s loyalty fell was troubling to say the least. On one hand, since Helen and Ray had been beneficiaries of Bear River’s charity when their Alpacas were decimated by the dead, the probability of them calling right away as promised, Dregan figured, was highly likely. However, if the murderous gang surprised them before they could get to the radio, they would probably be forced into giving up the nearby community in order to save their own skin. Sad thing was, Dregan couldn’t quite blame them.

  So with more questions than answers kicking around in his head, and drawing up battle plans and acting on them before the element of surprise was lost first and foremost on his docket, he took his foot from the brake and, to save gas, let gravity pull the Blazer forward. Snickering at the play on words, that he was certain Judge Pomeroy would find no humor in, he let the rig coast all the way down the hill, past the road leading up to Helen and Ray’s house and another couple of hundred yards beyond and then eased his boot down on the gas pedal.

  ***

  Helen propped her carbine in the corner next to the bed. She walked to the doorway and, projecting her voice down the hall, said, “He’s gone.” She shuffled back to the bed where she sat down and listened to the stairs creaking under Ray’s weight as he came up to join her. A minute later he entered the room, sat on the bed next to her and, shoulders rounded from the stresses of their new existence, said, “He’s got to grow tired of the constant searching.”

  “Put yourself in his shoes. You’d be searching too.”

  “The way that poor man talks about Mikhail, I would have never given that boy my blessing.”

  “Not even if she was smitten?”

  Ray said nothing. Just shook his head and sighed.

  Staring towards the window where big flakes were swirling and pattering the glass, Helen said, “We’re going to weather this storm, Ray. Just like we always do ... together.”

  ***

  A quarter-mile away Dregan was beginning to curse the new storm moving in when the answer to his dilemma suddenly dawned on him. Shaking his head side-to-side and angry at himself for not seeing the obvious until now, he wrangled the transmission into Drive and accelerated south in the northbound lane. Steering one-handed, he snatched up the CB and, speaking in his native tongue in case anyone was eavesdropping, hailed his oldest son. There was a long moment of silence during which the sky really opened up, instantly cutting visibility down to a couple of hundred feet. So Dregan flicked on the wipers and halved his speed. Finally a voice answered in Russian and, skipping all the preliminary pleasantries, Dregan bombarded his son, Gregory, with a flurry of orders, delivered rapid-fire and also in Russian.

  With the smile on his face growing wider, and oh so ready to savor the sweet taste of revenge, Dregan signed off and began filling the roster in his head with the names of men he knew who—for a price—would help him move forward with his plan.

  Chapter 18

  When Cade first caught sight of the rest of his party, all six of them were standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the same fallen length of moss-covered old growth, taking in a sight that apparently had rendered them all speechless.

  Cade padded down a beaten path flanked by chest-high stumps on the left and a wall of logs on the right. A few yards later, he came to a steep drop-off and found himself peering down on a creek bed littered with no less than a hundred stiffened corpses, their faces frozen in death grimaces, many of them staring straight up at him. Arms and legs, bent and broken, jutted at odd angles from a thin stratum of wind-drifted snow. It was what he imagined the killing fields of the Chosin Reservoir or Battle of the Bulge might have looked like to the heroes who survived those examples of Hell on Earth. And as he marveled at the sheer number of Zs that had ended up down there on account of too many bodies crowding the two-lane crossing, it dawned on him that no way in Hell could all of the corpses tangled together down there be dead in the real sense of the word. But as awful a scene as it was, it appeared that whatever the others were gaping at had it beaten hands down.

  Interest piqued, he picked his way right along the edge of the cliff, stepped up onto the log and, standing next to Daymon, finally got his first unobstructed look at t
he crossing. And what he saw there, as hard as it was for him to wrap his brain around, easily dwarfed the assemblage of death below.

  Breaking the all-encompassing silence, Daymon turned to Cade and said, “Got a God-sized weed-whacker on you?”

  Cade said nothing. The sight of close to a thousand Zs clogging the bridge and crowding the group’s two vehicles, all seemingly staring the meat from his bones, had stolen the words from his mouth. The only thing going for the group was that the wall of corpses was stationary and not belting out that spine tingling sound he was exposed to earlier. And no sooner than the thought had crossed his mind, Duncan said, “So Cade ... strangely enough, I’m not hearing all of the Pod People screams that you described?”

  Still, Cade remained silent. He was performing a quick headcount using a trick taught to him by the President’s former head of protection, Adam Cross. It was in no way scientific, but by dividing the area occupied by the crowd in question into little parcels and then estimating the number of bodies in each parcel, the task could be boiled down to a simple math problem. And a handful of seconds after seeing the static column in all its gory glory, Cade came up with a number. And that number was worse than he thought.

  “Seven hundred … give or take.”

  “Captain America speaks,” Daymon said.

  “I say give,” proffered Jamie, eyes glued to the monsters and hefting the tomahawk in one hand.

  “There can’t be seven hundred rotters over there,” said Wilson, his voice cracking.

  “I’m leaning on the give side as well,” added Cade. “Let’s get at it.” He edged by the group, grabbed a wrist-sized branch sticking vertically from a fallen old-growth fir, and hauled his hundred and eighty pounds—two-forty total, including the full rucksack and weapons—up onto the next log over, where he found solid footing and proceeded to help the others up.

  “Seven hundred,” said Lev, shaking his head as he accepted Cade’s offered hand.

  Cade smiled. “Plus several dozen that seemed to have gotten themselves in a pickle and are stuck fast to Daymon’s sharpened branches.”

  “My idea,” said Duncan.

  “Those are not punji stakes,” countered Daymon. “Whole different concept. You can take all the credit for those poo-dipped things.”

  Cade gave Taryn and Jamie a hand around a jagged clutch of branches, then watched them follow the men who were slowly picking their way lengthwise along the fallen log. With Daymon leading, they crept along single file, putting one foot in front of the other mindful of the shadowy crevices, all the while battling vertical branches with a propensity to snap back and deliver a stinging reminder to the unaware that this was no proverbial walk in the park.

  “Be careful when you jump down,” warned Cade even before they reached a suitable spot to do so. “There’s sure to be crawlers trapped under there.”

  Eventually the seven survivors had made it unscathed to the midpoint of the first hundred-and-fifty-foot-tall tree Daymon had dropped across the road weeks ago and found themselves looking down on the front row of Zs, where a myriad of different contorted faces and frosted-over eyes stared back. It seemed as if all walks of life were represented here—whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians—the Omega virus didn’t discriminate whom it infected. And once infected, the dead saw everything as meat. Packed in against the barrier, like a bustling crowd leaving a subway train car, were a mix of men, women, and children—the majority of them once able-bodied males, and all of them suffering from the elements and in varying stages of decay. A good deal of the dead were badly burnt, their dermis blackened and contrasting sharply with the blanket of white that had settled over everything.

  Cade swept his eyes over the static crowd and spotted an undead farmer still wearing frayed overalls but sans the ubiquitous straw hat. He saw twenty-somethings in skinny jeans and concert shirts. A gangly soccer mom had died and reanimated and come a long way from home judging by the bloodied tee-shirt declaring her son an honor student at Joseph Smith Middle School in Salt Lake City. There were preadolescents, the elderly, and everything in-between represented there on State Route 39. Also on display were the defensive wounds suffered by many in the herd that spoke loudly of man’s incredible will to fight back. A high percentage of them had suffered horrible bites to the neck and torso—raised purple rings dappled with pale tooth marks. And the craters where mouthfuls of flesh had been viciously ripped away were now crusted with blood, frozen black and shiny. Cade noticed how a large number of the monsters were missing digits, or parts thereof. And standing out from the crowd, flashing macabre toothy grins like the worst nightmares imaginable, were the ones who had lost all of the soft fleshy bits from their faces to the dead before turning and joining their ranks.

  Mercifully dragging Cade from his momentary daymare, Duncan said incredulously, “Where in the hell do we start?”

  Elbowing Wilson in the ribs, Daymon said to him, “Why don’t you jump on down and let Todd Helton start the conversation?”

  Brow furrowed, Taryn craned and shot Daymon a sour look. In the next beat she turned to face Wilson, hoping to hear a strong rebuttal.

  “Eff that,” answered the redhead. “I’ll jump down after you’ve killed enough with Kindness. Besides ... what if we’re all down there and they suddenly reanimate?”

  Jamie delivered a look to Taryn that said it’ll be all right. Then she regarded Wilson and said, “It’s too cold for them to reanimate. I’ll go first and show you all how it’s done. Figure a good place to start would be freeing up the vehicles so Duncan can work on getting them running. Then we just hack our way across the bridge.”

  Daymon nodded. He kneeled and set the chainsaw down, balancing it crossways between two fallen trees. He rose, leaned forward to look at Cade and suddenly the weight from the top-heavy pack started him on a one-way trip toward the mosh pit of death. But Lev’s arm flashed out and he got a handhold of Kelty just before the point of no return. Clutching the ripstop nylon in a death grip, he held on long enough for Cade to spring to action and together they reeled Daymon back from what would have amounted to a back-wrenching fall—at the very least.

  Without missing a beat, Daymon nodded a thanks to Lev then reacquired eye contact with Cade and asked, “So Sarge, are you going to answer Duncan’s question?”

  Purposefully Cade shot him a dumb look and shrugged as if saying I don’t follow.

  “Where are your screamers?” Daymon cupped a hand to his ear and said in a cartoonish voice, “I can’t hear you screamers. Cat get your tongues?”

  “Good thing we can’t hear them,” Cade said. “I figure when these things start screaming again it’ll mean they’re thawing out, and by then if we’re anywhere near a whole bunch of them—” He paused to let the words sink in. Looked over the faces of the others and finished his thought. “We might as well all kiss our asses goodbye.”

  “Enough talk,” said Jamie, throwing a visible shudder. She turned to face Cade. “Where should I start?”

  Cade gripped her right shoulder. Took the tomahawk from her hand and slipped it into the sheath attached to her belt. Then he looked down the line both ways, first at Jamie then Duncan and lastly Lev. Then he shifted his gaze and met eyes with Wilson, Taryn, and lastly Daymon. Once he had their undivided attention, he filled them all in on the next part of his plan.

  Chapter 19

  The closer Dregan got to the fortified community called Bear River, the fewer dead he encountered. However, now and again, drifts of snow on the road concealed the random corpse that when run over broadcast the sickening crackle of breaking bones through the truck’s floorboards. Save for herds and the occasional mega horde transiting north to south and back again on nearby 16, the community had made great strides in keeping the roamers culled. Frequent trips outside of the walls were now the norm. Over the last few weeks, the judge had the foraging patrols pushing farther out on a daily basis. They’d made the most gains south and east, clearing and searching every building they cam
e across, and returning with trucks filled with food, water, firearms, and all manner of useful goods. We’re taking our valley back from the dead and any lawless that we catch in our noose will be questioned and tried by a jury of their peers was the judge’s response to Dregan after denying his initial request to form a posse of sorts to track down Lena’s killers. That was the first time of many when the judge had made it clear that under no circumstances were the citizens to take the law into their own hands. An edict that Dregan didn’t agree with. ‘Rulings,’ is what Pomeroy called his decrees. Of late, after having assembled a sizable group of men he had armed and appointed as court bailiffs who answered only to him, he was acting as if he were a Supreme Court Justice and, like the prestigious nine of the old world, was preparing to rule for life over the burgeoning community.

  Cursing the man under his breath, Dregan turned east off of 16 and followed a meandering tree-flanked two-lane that rose and fell gradually before dog-legging right and cresting a rise, where he brought the Blazer to a crunching halt. Looking at the walled community of Bear River from afar, he saw the squared-off tops of the perimeter guard towers rising up above the trees they’d been constructed in. Though the hard edges and whip antennas sprouting from the nearest were a dead giveaway as to their presence, the heavy weapons hidden behind walls constructed from precast concrete noise-reduction panels sourced from the freeways to the south had already proven adequate to repel even the most determined breathers coming with bad intentions.

  Dregan slowed and brought the Blazer to a halt in the center of the road on the final rise before the long downhill run-out to the turnoff to the front gate. Knowing he was being watched, and that one high caliber sniper rifle was trained on his upper torso and another chambered to fire a much larger round was targeting the Chevy’s engine block, he switched to the guard channel and announced who he was.