Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  Duncan grimaced. “You missed the point. I was trying to warn you in time to avoid them.”

  “I wanted to see what it could handle,” Cade said. “Just in case.”

  Duncan said nothing. He pressed his back into the seat, arms folded, and looked out the window at the damage wrought on the town by the out of control wildfire. Charred foundations and skeletal remnants of humans and vehicles slid by on both sides. The street signs remained, but they had accumulated so much creosote that reading what was on them was nearly impossible. The Earth abides, he thought darkly.

  Cade eased off the gas and looked toward what he guessed had been the town center. “I don’t see the Land Cruiser.”

  Duncan put a hand on the dash and leaned forward. “I’ve got nothing,” he said.

  “Try the two-way.”

  Duncan dug it out and thumbed the Talk button. Nothing. He tried one more time and when there was still no answer, Lev broke over the channel sounding concerned.

  Duncan brought Lev up to speed and told him to stay put while he and Cade went to check the one obvious place the missing pair might be.

  Chapter 65

  The junction where 39 and 16 came to a “T” was for the most part unchanged from the day before when Dregan had come through. The bus was still on its side. The ditch where he had found Lena and Mikhail, though no longer filled in with drifted snow, served both as a reminder to them all as to what went down here weeks ago, and what he still had to accomplish before he could finally achieve that sense of closure he longed for.

  Driving one-handed, he crossed himself and looked out his side window to the blue sky above. The prayer he said was a simple one. Merely a request to God to make sure Lena was taken care of and would rest well with the angels for all of eternity. For he knew that if he carried out this mission the way he had played it out over and over in his mind hundreds of times already, the justice meted out by him under God’s watchful eye, based on his firm beliefs from decades of being reminded of the Commandments, would amount to nothing less for him than a one-way ticket to eternal damnation.

  With that gloomy thought settling in, he slowed and pulled the Tahoe just to the right of the decaying drift of corpses the former police cruiser had been high-centered on when he had found it already stripped of the radio and drained of most of its gasoline. Not a bad find considering the circumstances. All he had to do was scrape the former owner’s brains off the headliner and put a square of foam over the cloth driver’s seat where several pints of the man’s blood had soaked in.

  He rattled the shifter into Park. He looked sidelong at Peter. “Stay here,” he growled as he shouldered the door open and stepped out onto the blacktop.

  He strode down the two-lane past the Blazer and the two middle Humvees and stopped beside the Humvee driven by his brother, Henry. The door was ajar and an awful smelling gray whorl of cigarette smoke was wafting out.

  “Why are we stopping here?’ asked Henry. Smoke curled from his nostrils as he stared his older brother down.

  “Equipment check,” said Dregan gruffly. “Get the launcher manned. I want a round dropped into the middle of the herd.”

  “Futile,” said Henry. “Sure the concussion’ll drop the lot of ‘em, but they’re going to get right back up. Most of them at least.” He blew smoke from his nose. “Chances of a little piece of shrapnel piercing skull and scrambling brain … highly unlikely.”

  “Hank … let me do the thinking. I simply asked that you make sure the thing isn’t going to jam up on us when we get to where we’re going.”

  “You’re planning on using this on breathers?”

  “If I have to,” said Dregan. He stepped back as Henry blew another plume of smoke between the door pillar and flicked the butt past his face.

  “Step back a few more paces, then.” Henry closed his door, jockeyed the Humvee back and forth and pulled the squat rig out of the five-slot and to the head of the column.

  Dregan watched this and then bent his gaze to the herd. It was clear that since he’d dismounted and the dead had become aware of the convoy, the ones still standing were beginning to turn in place, moving about half as fast as normal—which wasn’t saying much, unless you were directly in their path and had no way of changing that part of the equation.

  There was a squeal of brakes as the Humvee with Henry at the wheel came to a halt near the overturned school bus. A figure emerged from the turret. Shoulders and a stocking cap, mostly. A handful of seconds passed before Dregan heard his brother bellow, “Going hot.” This caused a lot of heads at the far away front of the herd to begin a slow swivel his way.

  Three more seconds passed and, in the same gravelly voice, Henry hollered, “Fire in the hole.” There was a hollow thwomp and with his naked eye Dregan saw the projectile arc up—trailing a wisp of smoke in its wake for the first thirty feet or so—and then come down in the middle of the gathered dead. There was a concussive whoomp and bodies toppled in a sort of concentric ring as the middle third of the shuffling procession was slapped to the wet blacktop by the expanding shockwave.

  Dregan put the two-way radio to his mouth. He wanted to get an idea of what he had to work with. He thumbed the Talk button. “Give me one more straight north down the centerline”—nearly all of the solid yellow stripe was visible by now—“maximum range.”

  Henry went through the same procedure, calling out going hot and then fire in the hole. Something he probably lifted from an actor’s dialogue in Band of Brothers or something similar, mused Dregan. He heard the thwomp but failed to track the projectile. However, a handful of seconds later the explosion was impossible to miss as the grenade landed near a stalled-out car and window glass was sent flying to all points of the compass, glittering like chaff kicked out of a fighter jet, before falling to earth and skittering across the roadway.

  Dregan liked what he saw. Though he was no expert with this weapon, he gathered the launcher’s maximum range to be two thousand yards, give or take a few.

  He smiled. “I’ve seen enough,” he said into the radio, even as he was climbing back into the Tahoe.

  ***

  Ten minutes removed from the impromptu firepower display, with the Tahoe back in the lead, the eleven-vehicle convoy had squeezed by the blockage at the junction single file, every one of them trading a little paint with the bus’s undercarriage.

  ***

  Another ten minutes slipped into the past and the convoy was a few miles west of the junction when Dregan slowed the Tahoe and let it coast to a stop adjacent to the lower and upper quarry roads. With Peter looking on expectantly, he called up Gregory on the two-way radio to see what, if anything, he had learned from his captives.

  ***

  A handful of miles west of the quarry, Gregory was dividing a Hershey’s bar into thirds. Keeping the smallest piece for himself—a calculated move he hoped wouldn’t go unnoticed—he offered the two larger squares of milk chocolate to the girls.

  Nose curled, Sasha said, “What’s the white stuff?”

  “It’s past its sell by date … sorry,” said the bearded man. “Most everything is getting that way now.”

  “I’ll pass on being hand-fed by Paul Bunyon,” said Sasha, turning her head away.

  Raven shook her head vehemently at the offering.

  The man shrugged and smiled, big and toothy.

  Fake, thought Raven.

  He wrapped the chocolate in the foil. “I’ll save it in case you change your mind.” The wedge of foil went into his pocket and no sooner had he shifted and scooped up his rifle, there was a soft little chirp emanating from inside the same pocket.

  A phone, thought Raven as she watched with rapt attention. About all she could do. Her arms, like Sasha’s, were bound behind her with a piece of rope the man had unraveled and cut from the bracelet he had been wearing. It was the same kind of thing her dad wore on his wrist, only the man’s was a bright hunter’s orange and Dad’s was olive green. Amazingly, she could feel her fingers.
So far this—her first experience as a hostage—was nothing like she had seen on television. A few minutes after she had walked in on Sasha being taken forcibly, the notion that they were in immediate danger of unspeakable things happening to them vanished.

  In fact, both she and Sasha had already begun trying to work free of their bonds and it seemed as if he was none the wiser. Not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, Sasha had mouthed just a minute ago while the man rooted around in his backpack for the chocolate, with his rifle propped on the dead snag and his back facing them.

  So as the man who called himself Gregory dug into his pocket for whatever was making the electronic noise, Raven situated herself so that her hands were near the jagged end of a broken branch sticking vertically from the fallen log she was seated on.

  The man pulled out a radio similar in size to the Motorola he had confiscated from Sasha—aside from tying them up—the only smart move on his part thus far. He pressed a button on the chirping device and answered with a simple yes. At once a voice emanated from the speaker: “What have you learned?”

  “The girls say they are orphans,” Gregory answered. “They were taken in by missionaries who started mistreating them. They say they were running away when they stumbled onto my position.”

  Watching Sasha bury her face in her knees, Raven suppressed a smile.

  “What?” said the raspy voice, incredulous.

  “That’s what they told me, Dad. The older one … says she’s seventeen. She had a radio and a knife. The younger one … says she’s ten. She had a knife and says she is allergic to bees.”

  Again Raven pushed back against the urge to laugh out loud. She felt the cord hot against her wrists and continued to move it back and forth, short sawing motions, applying as much pressure as she dared.

  “Allergic to bees?” said the voice. “What the hell does that have to do with Lena?”

  “The younger girl … she has one of those EpiPen-looking things hanging around her neck. I let her keep it, though. Just in case she gets stung.”

  “They’re tied up, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “First off, there’s no bees out collecting pollen this time of year. Secondly, you dolt, how’s she going to use it if she’s tied up.” The last part wasn’t posed as a question. Gregory, though, didn’t catch it. He was about to talk but was cut off. “What about Lena?” The voice was gruff and direct and there was no mistaking this as anything other than a question.

  “I didn’t ask about Lena,” answered Gregory, eyes darting to the girls. “I figured I’d leave that to you.”

  “Take the EpiPen thing from the girl and keep your eye on them.”

  The call dropped off.

  “Zombie apocalypse or not ... aren’t you a little old to still be living with your dad?” asked Raven.

  Gregory said nothing. He rose and stretched then took Sasha’s knife from high up where he had stabbed it into the towering pine’s trunk. He wiped the pitch from the blade onto his pants. Then, careful not to nick skin, he cut the EpiPen from Raven’s neck, and without inspecting the metallic cylinder, stowed it in his right front jacket pocket.

  After the blade was no longer near her neck, Raven stared up at him, the look in her eyes more like one she reserved for a stray animal dead in the road or a toddler Z who never had a chance to experience living. Her eyes tracked his hand as he stuck the knife back into the tree next to hers. She figured even if she was standing on a pair of stilts there would be no way for her to reach either one of them—the guy was just that big.

  “This should be over in no time,” the man finally said. “Then you two can go back to wherever you came from.” He smiled and Raven took note, thinking it to be genuine.

  “Why the fuck are you holding us then?” Sasha spat. “Let us go and you won’t die like all the others.”

  “Shut up,” Raven blurted. “You got us into this hole, Sash. No need to keep on digging.”

  “Quit fighting,” said the man, a pained look on his face. “I promise I won’t hurt you as long as you don’t give me any reason to. Just be patient … you are not our problem. Whoever killed my sister is our problem.” The man turned his attention to the curved stretch of road beyond the clearing.

  Sasha and Raven locked eyes for a second. Then Sasha flicked her gaze to her knife, an unspoken message Raven took to mean they weren’t just going to run if given the chance. So, with the cold finger of dread tickling the short hairs at the nape of her neck, she went back to work dragging the rope along the jagged protrusion at her back.

  Chapter 66

  Sitting on a berm of slowly melting snow eight thousand feet above sea level and roughly eight miles northwest of downtown Eden, Utah, Oliver Gladson inhaled mightily and then passed the feather-adorned roach clip to his new partner in crime. Hands now free, he put the tips of both index fingers to his lips and crossed his eyes. Pretending he was new at this, he bobbled his head back and forth like one of those dolls given out as souvenirs at a Jazz game. Finished clowning, he moved his mouth fish-like, producing one ever-growing smoke ring after another.

  Meanwhile, Daymon was simultaneously relighting the joint and puffing on the little nub, trying to get it to spark. “Roll another,” he said, suddenly feeling light-headed from the trifecta of altitude, heavy cardio—the most he’d done in weeks—and good ‘ol Mary Jane, which he had not partaken in since the earliest days of the Omega outbreak.

  “All gone,” said Oliver, choking the words out along with the last little curls of smoke he had been holding back. “There’s some in my bag in the truck. And even more at the house”—his eyes went wide and he smiled—“lots more.”

  Daymon pulled his goggles down over his eyes, more so to guard against the blazing noon sun than the intermittent wind gusts. The temperature was still hovering near freezing at the top of Eden View where they were sitting. Not so much though a third of the way down the black diamond run, where the air had an almost physical presence to it. Inversion layer, he thought it was called. He snugged his new gloves on and picked up his poles. He crossed the poles, speared the tips into the topsoil and lifted himself off the snow. Standing, he turned his head and fixed a stare on Oliver, who was still sitting with his back propped against one of the three Powder Canyon snowmobiles they had liberated from an equipment shed in order to ferry themselves up the ski hill. “Last night you kind of dodged my question,” Daymon said, feeling even more light-headed after standing. “Never did hear how you made it all the way from Oregon to Huntsville unscathed.”

  Oliver pushed off of the snowmobile and stood on his battered skis. “I avoided the deadheads by traveling only at night.” A little buzzed, he laughed at the irony in the name he’d chosen to call the infected. “Ogden was real hairy. If it wasn’t for the night vision goggles along with the rifle and bags of weed I found in a dead redneck’s SUV … I’d be dead myself now, or worse … I’d be a deadhead like them. After making it through the city on foot, I rode a bike up the North Ogden Canyon highway and found it blocked.”

  “Glenda escaped by bike, too,” Daymon said, indifferently. “So you backtracked to the south pass.”

  “Yep,” admitted Oliver. “And lucky for me the deadheads had somehow breached it—”

  “It’s sealed up now,” said Daymon, explaining how they’d left the gravel-filled plow trucks shoring up the containers. He went on, “And your mind’s gonna be blown when you see the setup we have going on at the compound.”

  “I just want to see my mom again. That’ll make everything I went through to get here all worthwhile.” He smiled a dumb stoner’s smile and donned his goggles. They were the two-lens type that made him look like a World War I fighter ace. All he needed to complete the look was a flowing scarf and a Sopwith Camel biplane. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and pointed down mountain with his poles.

  The blaze-orange plow truck was impossible to miss. The plow was in the down position and twin feathery plumes w
ere spewing off to the sides, painting the guardrails and trees with dirty brown snow.

  “Shit!” Daymon exclaimed. He looked at his watch. Quarter of noon. Fuck. He had totally lost track of time. Being high hadn’t helped at all. The plan had been to get one or two runs in and return to Eden and begin clearing dead from the remaining houses. The first part had gone off without a hitch. During the two hours between sunup and when their decision to check out the resort was fomented, they had left ten city blocks strewn with Z corpses. The latter part of their hastily constructed and ill-advised plan, not so much. He reached into his new jacket and pulled the radio from an inner pocket. Found the volume turned way down. Shit, shit, shit. He turned it up halfway and shook his head. “They’ll call when they see the rig in the lot.”

  Pushing off with his poles, Daymon launched down the hill, planted the once-pristine pair of thousand-dollar skis perpendicular to the fifty-five degree incline, and shot for a patch of virgin snow drifted deep between two stunted pines. The skis were parabolic twin-tip models, lightweight and highly maneuverable—all of which didn’t matter one bit with only half a foot of accumulated snow in places and a lot less everywhere else. Sparks lanced from his edges with each rock strike, and the racket of the juddering bases grinding over hidden obstacles was earsplitting. But Daymon was in heaven doing something he thought never again possible.

  The weathered tree trunks whipped by in his peripheral vision, one on each side, and he was making quick turns toward a small outcropping he had been working his nerve up to drop from. In deep powder conditions and on his home mountain he would not have thought twice before hucking off a similar cliff band and attempting the maneuver his newly acquired Salomon 1080 skis were named for. But today, in these conditions and with none of his old Ski Patrol buddies around to scrape him off the hillside if he fucked up, pulling a ten-eighty—with, or without sticking a sick grab—was not going to happen. And there wasn’t enough weed in the Land Cruiser below to get him high enough to take one more run and follow through. So instead he tucked his poles and shot off the outcropping at an angle parallel to the mountain and let his knees absorb the rather hard landing.