To her right lay what she guessed to be a formal dining room. There were built-in shelves on two walls. A partition chest-high to her separated the two rooms.
Though their stink was hanging in the air, there were no zombies in sight. She put herself in her dad’s place. If he wanted to test her to the fullest, he would spread the rotters out and make her hunt for them.
Three rotters.
Three floors, counting the basement.
Speaking softly, she asked herself, “Where would you start, Dad?”
Brook had taken great pains to impart all of her recently learned survival skills on the girl. The tactics she was pulling out of her head were learned from listening to her dad talk to her mom and the other adults. Some had been gleaned from watching how her dad approached each new obstacle the zombie apocalypse threw at him and others.
Though it was her thoughts, she still heard her dad’s voice in her head.
Take out the nearest threat, then look for a secondary exit.
Raven started for the hallway, the worn wood floor creaking under her boots. Cutting the corner and moving down the hall, she heard an out-of-place noise. It reminded her of Max scratching on the metal door to her quarters back home. Since her mom’s passing, begging to be let out into the clearing was a regular occurrence. The going theory was that Max was waiting for Brook to return. Only this wasn’t Max. This was the sound made by Test Number One.
After a twenty-foot walk down the hall, during which she passed the open door to an empty powder room, she ended up in the kitchen. It was twice the size of the one in her old home back in Portland. Save for the oversized gas range and undersized single-door refrigerator—both gleaming white in the NVGs—this kitchen contained none of the countertop appliances she was used to seeing. No toaster. No coffee maker. And worst of all, no waffle iron—a must have, in her opinion.
The cupboard doors were open, the shelves empty. Attached to one cupboard was a hand-cranked tool with opposing gears that she didn’t recognize. The metal arms of an empty paper towel holder opposite the mystery tool reached out at her from the dark like a robotic praying mantis.
As she stood still, surveying the kitchen, the noise came again, off her right shoulder, near the end of the kitchen where she saw three closed doors. She dropped her gaze to the floor by her feet and saw evidence that something had been dragged half the length of the kitchen. The swath of liquid left behind shone brilliant white, thanks to the NVGs. Resembling a reversed J, the mess on the floor curled out from the hallway and continued on in a straight line all the way to the door with the key. Her best guess was that she was looking at bodily fluid belonging to one of the rotters. Which led her to believe her dad had dragged one of them through here. However, the slick trail ended in front of all three doors. Determining which of them Rotter Number One was behind was going to take a bit of detective work.
M4 held at a low-ready, she turned right and approached the trio of doors. The door on the left, beyond the range, most likely led to outside. It was fitted with a formidable-looking deadbolt. Like the rest of the windows on this floor, the one inset on this door was papered over.
Raven turned her attention to the door ahead of her. It was two-thirds the width of the door to outside.
Suddenly the sound was back. A metronomic scritch, scritch, scritch definitely emanating from behind the door to her fore.
To her right, opposite the door to outside, was a similarly sized item she guessed led to the basement. The rounded end of a skeleton key protruded from the keyhole below the doorknob.
For some reason, as she stood there contemplating which door to try first, she recalled advice her dad had offered up during an impromptu bushcraft session held under the awning next to the RV, at the edge of the heat zone radiating off one of Daymon’s famous camp fires. He had been stressing situational awareness. He had said: “Always know your location on the map and where you’ll go if you’re forced to retreat.”
With this advice in mind, she unsheathed the Arkansas Toothpick and scribed a porthole out of the newspaper covering the window on the door to her left. Peering through the makeshift peephole told her the house abutted a picket of trees identical to the ones ringing the clearing back at the compound. She also saw that the door opened onto a small elevated porch. A pair of handrails bracketed a short run of stairs leading down to an unkempt strip of lawn bordering the forest’s edge.
Again the sound from the door ahead of her. Scritch, scritch, scritch. On the heels of that came a muffled bang from behind the door to her right. Not just behind, though. The sound had filtered up from somewhere below the kitchen.
Three rotters.
Three floors, counting the basement.
The new noise all but affirmed to her the other interior door led to the basement, where Rotter Number Two lay in wait.
While tempted to go eeny, meeny, miny, moe to choose which door of the two obvious candidates to open first, she sheathed her blade and brought the M4 on line with the interior door in front of her.
She tested the knob.
Unlocked.
She drew a breath, held it in, then pulled the door open. It swung freely toward her on well-oiled hinges.
The door had just cleared the jamb when the female adult rotter sprang out of what looked to be a pantry lined with bare shelves. Its eyes were white and wild and roving crazily as it searched for prey in the dark. Raven saw that its mouth was thoroughly sealed shut with a copious amount of duct tape. Her dad had also bound the fingers and thumbs on both of its hands together.
The rotter didn’t moan or rasp as it lunged and craned its head all around.
The way the thing moved reminded Raven of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.
Breath still trapped in her lungs, she noticed her heart hammering against her chest. Exhaling slowly—as she’d been taught—she sighted down the rifle and triggered two rounds.
The first bullet struck the Z dead center on its face, driving its upturned nose inward and drawing those crazy eyes together. The weight of the suppressor helped keep the muzzle rise to a minimum. Conversely, the follow-on 5.56 hardball entered the gaping wound behind the first. With most of its kinetic energy intact, upon exiting, the second round split the thing’s skull out back. There was a sound like hail pelting a tin roof as brain tissue and hair and bone fragments peppered the bare shelves behind the Z.
The whiplash effect from the double-tap slapped the Z to the floor where it came to rest supine on a bed of its own gray matter.
Without thought, Raven slammed the door and about-faced right.
The skeleton key in the second interior door turned freely and there was a click as the lock disengaged. She removed the key and looked through the keyhole. There were no crazy roving eyes peering back. All she saw was a flat white surface sloping gently downward. The ceiling to a stairwell.
The door opened as easily as the first. Unlike the first, nothing lunged at her from within. However, the noise of something moving around down there meant she still had work to do.
Work smarter, not harder.
To keep from having to set foot in the basement, Raven crouched by the top of the stairs and hollered, “Here rotter, rotter. Here rotter, rotter.”
She found it strange nothing showed its face at the bottom of the stairs. Theorizing her dad may have somehow added another one of his wrinkles by deafening the zombie moving around down there with a few stabs of his combat dagger, or maybe a couple of layers of duct tape, she entered the stairwell and jumped up and down on the top tread. Though she didn’t weigh much, the old staircase shimmied underneath her boots. Dust and accumulated dirt was dislodged from where the treads and stringers came together. It rained down and settled on the cement floor with soft little patters.
While Raven’s shouting had had no immediate effect, the vibrations from her footfalls instantly drew the attention of the source of the noises. She heard a shuffling and then another loud bang as a long-handled push broom fell a
cross the bottom of the stairs. As she took a seat on the top stair, the teenaged rotter appeared at the bottom of the stairwell. It looked up, white eyes probing the dark in search of meat. It was restrained from reaching further than the lower step by the cables her dad had removed from the gaudy van. Duct tape wound around its head vertically covered both ears and prevented its jaw from opening.
Raven’s breathing had returned to normal, her heart beating only mildly now.
She shouldered the rifle and settled the EOTech’s holographic pip atop the rotter’s head. Instead of red, thanks to the NVGs, the glowing circle was showing up gunmetal gray against the creature’s pale dermis.
Finger tensing on the trigger, she heard her dad’s instructions in her head: Toothpick, Glock, rifle.
“Guess I’m working in reverse,” she mumbled as she threw the M4 around to hang at her back and dragged out the Glock.
To conserve ammo, she discharged just one round from the Glock. One round was enough. The entry hole was minuscule. The internal damage was catastrophic.
Like a marionette with snipped strings, the rotter crashed vertically to the cement where it settled face-down, arms outstretched, unmoving.
Raven rose from the stair, turned around, and closed the door on Rotter Number Two.
Two down, one to go was what she was thinking as the radio in her pocket emitted a burst of white noise and her dad came on, barking orders at her, his tone all business.
Chapter 40
In the F-650, Cade and Peter were embroiled in a spirited conversation initiated by the boy.
Cade had opened Pandora’s Box upon agreeing with Peter that Marvel superheroes held his attention more than those of the D.C. Universe.
After gushing about Thor and the Avengers, Peter said, “Cap or Iron Man?”
Cade grimaced. Said, “Captain America, hands down.”
Wearing a look of amazement, Peter said, “Cap’s gadgets suck. Iron Man is the bomb.”
Thinking, That saying survived all this? Cade said, “But Cap spans decades. My dad had some of his comics from the forties.” He paused and scanned the road in both directions. Nothing moving. He went on, saying, “He got those comics from his dad … who was my grandfather.”
“I know how the family tree works,” quipped Peter. “I still like Tony Stark over Steve Rogers.”
Cade made no reply. He was looking at his Suunto. Seeing that Raven had been inside going on three minutes, he began to grow a bit nervous. Though he’d taken great care to render the Zs mostly harmless, Mr. Murphy was always out there, willing and eager to muck things up.
“OK, then,” said Peter, “Deadpool or Wolverine?”
Wringing a hand on his M4’s forestock, Cade said, “No contest.”
With a tilt to the head, Peter looked side-eye at Cade. “Wolverine?”
Cade smiled and nodded. “Star Trek or Star Wars?”
Peter didn’t respond. He was craning and looking over his right shoulder, his attention on something down the road to the west.
Cade pulsed down his window. “What is it?”
After running his window all the way down, Peter said, “I hear an engine.”
“Get your head down,” Cade barked. Then he poked the M4 out his window and threw the safety off. He fired the Ford’s motor and dropped his right hand to the console, coming up with the radio.
The exhaust note grew louder. Ten seconds after Peter pointed out the distant engine noise, a motorcycle entered the picture, moving fast, right to left on the nearby two-lane.
Cade slumped low in his seat and did two things simultaneously. He set the emergency brake and lifted his foot off the brake pedal so that the red flare of the lights wouldn’t advertise their presence. While he was doing that, he drew the Motorola to his lips and hailed Raven.
Hearing her dad’s voice coming from the radio in her pocket, Raven dragged it out and listened to the instructions being relayed to her. Thinking that this might be part of the exercise, she said, “What? Are you sure?”
He radioed back. “Just do it.”
The radio went quiet.
Raven was still expecting him to come back on and reel her back in to reality when she heard the gunfire. Six or seven shots, total. Because the reports were muffled somewhat at first and the echoes never came, she was confident she was hearing an M4 discharging not too far from the front of the house. From the direction Black Beauty was parked, to be exact.
Cade breathed a sigh of relief when the motorcycle passed the end of the drive without slowing. His gut clenched when a second motorcycle appeared, moving the same direction and roughly the same speed. It was nearly identical to the first. A motocross number with knobby tires, long-travel suspension, and clad with plastic body parts painted in earth tones.
When the second motorcycle slowed, Cade noted that the rider wore camouflage fatigues vaguely familiar to him. The rider also wore a sidearm in a drop-thigh holster. A bullpup-style carbine was slung across his back.
Cade snugged the carbine to his shoulder and sighted on the end of the drive. Waiting for the rider to prove he’d seen the big Ford by committing to the drive, he slipped his finger into the trigger guard and took up some of the pull.
The second bike stopped at the T where the drive met the two-lane. A beat later, the first bike returned and formed up next to the second.
The riders flipped up smoked visors and held a brief conversation.
Hoping the truck’s wide A-pillar would work to break up his outline, Cade remained stock still in his seat. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said to Peter, “Get out and close your door quietly. Keep this truck and the outbuildings between you and the road. Get to the woods as fast as you can. Find a good place to hide and stay there.”
“They’re bad guys, aren’t they?”
“Go,” Cade growled. “I’ll tell Raven you’re coming.”
As the passenger’s side rear door opened and Peter crawled out, the dome light lit up. Though first twilight was still a couple of hours away, the possibility the riders had picked up on the brief light flare against the dark winter sky couldn’t be ignored.
Once Cade saw the boy disappear from view, he regarded the bikes. They were facing opposite each other. Both riders’ heads were turned, their eyes locked on the Ford.
“Damn it,” Cade spat. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.” He steadied his breathing and pressed the trigger. The action sent three rounds downrange at the rider on the left. Blooms of red walked up the rider’s body from hip to armpit. The ejected brass pinged off the inside of the windshield. The gun smoke drifting inside the truck’s cab was strangely reassuring to Cade.
One of those should do it, he thought as he shifted his aim a few degrees right and repeated the process with virtually the same result. However, sometime between the fifth and sixth discharge, two pickup trucks entered his field of vision from the right. They were moving fast. Which meant the riders had likely reported their findings before he’d engaged them.
Time began to crawl. Everything in front of Cade snapped into sharp focus. Before the remaining rider had absorbed the entire three-round salvo, Cade had conducted a rough headcount of the new arrivals. Ten camo-clad soldiers. Save for the drivers, all of them brandished bullpup-style rifles.
Moments Ago
Raven hadn’t immediately followed her dad’s barked instructions as he had ordered. Instead, she had sprinted to the front of the house, toward the sound of gunfire. With the Arkansas Toothpick, she had cut away a long, wide swath of the newspaper covering the window. She had flipped the goggles away from her eyes and, peering through a gap between the boards nailed to the outside of the window, viewed a scene that caused a cold ball to form in her gut and sent her heart rate rocketing.
Chapter 41
The sight of the charred bodies at the failed National Guard roadblock added to the sorrow already weighing heavy on Duncan’s heart. He saluted as he navigated the Jersey barriers and the black smudge of
the impromptu funeral pyre slid by in his side vision. He held the crisp salute as he wheeled past the cars in the ditch. Kept his hand to his bloodied brow until the familiar scene was small in the rearview mirror.
Between the Shell station and turnoff to the street running up to Glenda’s painted lady on the hill, Duncan saw no evidence of her passing. No leaking twice-dead corpses. No dead breathers. Not even a discarded water bottle or cereal bar wrapper to give him hope she had made it beyond the rotters amassed this side of Daymon’s roadblock.
As he slowed to avoid the burned-out shell of a small compact, he thought about Daymon. Wondered if he had burned to death in his shot-up Chevy pickup outside the McMansion he and Heidi had claimed as their own. A place where she could be free of her Jackson Hole demons, and him no longer a prisoner to the crippling claustrophobia triggered by the Eden compound’s cramped quarters. What a short-lived stint that had been. Days, at most. Duncan shook his head at the terrible hand fate seemed to have dealt them both. He truly hoped they’d made the most of those last few days together.
The colorful multi-story house suddenly appeared over the Dodge’s hood. The lower branches of the trees flanking it were home to dozens of birds, their black forms rippling as the engine growl reached them.
Seeing the birds as an omen, a portent of bad things to come, he said, “Go away, or I’ll make you.”
As if privy to the muttered threat, the birds took to the air en masse, cawing and squawking to show their displeasure at being disturbed.
Duncan pulled the rig to the curb in front of the house and shut off the engine. He pulsed down his window and regarded the scenery to his left. Far off to the west, just its snow-dotted lower flanks visible, was the Wasatch Range. Closer in was the rambling secondary Ogden Range which consisted of several smaller mountains, only the tallest of which wore dustings of white on their peaks.
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