Speaking into the boom mike snaking from his headset, the highly decorated former member of SEAL Team 6 addressed Ari. “If you dip me into the horde, I’m coming back as a ghost and I will skull fuck you every night in your sleep until the day you die. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” said Ari, his tone all business.
Addressing the mountain of a man up front in the left seat, Griffin said, “Keep your hands on the stick, Mister Haynes. Ari’s known to succumb at any given time to the urge to fondle himself.”
Smile breaking underneath his smoked visor, Haynes said, “God speed, frogman.”
Griffin handed the folded-up will to the stocky, Hispanic captain leading the cobbled-together Delta team. Tugging at his unruly red beard, he said, “Low Rider … you are my executor. If I buy it today, you get my entire collection of X-Men comics. All my other crap, dole it out as you see fit.”
Javier “Low Rider” Lopez, thirty-something veteran of combat ops conducted on nearly every continent, nodded and stuffed the paper underneath his plate carrier.
Pointing to the pair of operators sitting side by side, backs to the rear bulkhead, he said, “I’ll let Cross and Axe fight over your dildo collection.”
Chief Special Warfare Operator Adam Cross, a blond-haired, blue eyed Navy SEAL, responded first. “The Brit can have ‘em.” Cross laughed at his own joke and patted the SAS shooter on the chest.
Staring down at the shuffling masses, Nigel “Axe” Axelrod said, “Thanks all the same, Cross. You can have every one of Griff’s rubber boyfriends.”
Ari’s voice came over the shared comms. “Ready to deploy?”
“Good to go,” Skip replied. The helmeted crew chief, features hidden behind a smoked visor and attached skeleton face mask, turned to Griff and patted the man on the back.
There was a faint whirring noise as Skip drew up the slack in the cable.
Performing the sign of the cross over his chest, Griff leaped into space.
The cable held tight then began to spool out real slow. Griff’s every instinct was to draw his legs up, wrap his ankles around the cable above his head, and order the masked crew chief to reel him in.
But he had a job to do.
The straw gods had spoken. And he was chosen … or, as Ari was wont to say, “The corn holed one.”
Griff reached under his plate carrier and came out with the specialized tool he’d be using to tag Zs.
Collapsed, the tool was a foot in length and U-shaped. A single handle coming off the bottom of the U housed an internal spring and featured an external catch. He slipped the handle’s nylon strap over his right wrist. Next, he undid locking nuts on the ends of the U, pulled the pair of metal tong-looking arms to full extension, then retightened the locking nuts. Finished, the tool resembled an oversized tuning fork.
Griff waved the yard-long item back and forth in front of him. Seeing it remain rigid against the down blast from the rotor disc, he deemed it good to go. Next, he removed a tracking collar from his bag. The collar was three inches wide, made from some kind of reinforced fabric, and was the same safety-orange as the tiny Screamer wailing below him.
Confirming the small solar collection panel faced outward and that the flexible antenna was unfurled and snugged tightly into the transponder housing, he slipped the collar over the forked end of his tool. While holding the collar in place, he squeezed the handle continuously to start the tines ratcheting apart. Once the band was stretched to twice its normal size, he locked the tool open by thumbing its external catch into place.
Looking groundward, Griff saw that, as designed, the knot of dead they’d chosen was stopped in place and actively searching for the source of the shrill screams, for the fresh, warm meat they knew always accompanied the peals of the dying.
Head down and not eyeballing him was exactly how Griffin wanted the pusbags to remain while he worked. However, a number of them were still staring hungrily in his direction.
He selected a nearby female with a relatively small head and sturdy neck. To let Skip know the number of yards of slack he would need spooled out and the direction he wanted Ari to move the Ghost Hawk, Griff held up two fingers and gestured to his fore.
There was a brief pause, then, as requested, the Ghost Hawk crept forward. As a result, Griff went skimming over the heads of the throng. When he was directly above the Z in the floral print dress, he made a fist. Stop. A beat later the helo’s forward movement ceased, leaving him but a meat pendulum, swaying subtly, back and forth, mere inches above a multitude of grabby hands.
“Perfect,” Griff shouted into the comms. Famous last words was what he thought as, either started by the subtle vibrations coursing through the cable, or enacted by a rogue wind gust, he began to spin counterclockwise.
Quickly learning that movements at the end of the cable were nearly impossible for him to arrest once started, and feeling light-headed as a result of the constant change in scenery, he stretched his legs to full extension, keyed in on the tallest Z within reach, and delivered a swift kick to the side of its bowed head.
Three things came of Griff’s desperate action.
First, equal and opposite reactions coming into play, the spinning stopped. Flooded with relief, he saw his surroundings snap back into focus.
The relief was short-lived. Because the zombie Griff had kicked in the head was not only very tall, it also possessed a pretty good wingspan.
Working on getting the collar positioned over the female Z’s lolling head, Griff felt a crushing pressure envelope his right ankle.
Torn between finishing the delicate operation and getting eyes on what he instinctively knew had happened, he chose the former.
Griff bit his lip against the pain and strained against the harness to get an extra couple of inches extension. Just as he felt his body being pulled off axis—his helmeted head and gravity speeding up the process—the collar cleared the Z’s pistoning jaw and he thumbed the catch release.
Unable to celebrate a job well done, Griff drew the Sig, thumbed the hammer back, and rolled his shoulders and head clockwise.
First thing Griff saw was the four long gray fingers encircling the top of his boot. They were opening and closing and slowly inching their way toward his bloused pant leg. He walked his eyes along the spindly arm and got a good look at the snarling creature’s narrow face.
Saying, “Not today, McHale,” Griff parked the Sig’s sights on the bridge of the thing’s nose and pressed the trigger two times.
The pair of pops from the lethal double tap were mostly drowned out by the cacophony of mechanical components keeping the hovering helo aloft. Altered by the rotor wash, the resulting pink mist bloomed wide on a flat plane, then was distributed to all points of the compass.
Free to go about his business, Griff repeated the process of loading another collar onto the tool. With Mister Murphy on hiatus, Griff was able to locate and tag two recently turned male Zs before the Screamer’s battery shit the bed. The timer on his watch read nine minutes and eleven seconds and he was in the process of loading a fourth collar onto the tool when he saw that the horde had drawn dangerously close to the group of pacesetters.
Stabbing a thumb skyward and drawing his knees to his chest, Griff hollered, “Bring me in. Now!”
As the turbine whine picked up and Griff felt the first gentle tug of the winch motor, he dared to look groundward.
The sight of hundreds of dead stares locking on him, and only him, sent a shiver up his spine. Never again did he want to draw the short straw and find himself dangling over a sea of hungry Zs like this.
The cold waves and intermittent spasms continued to assail Griff’s body even after he was safely inside the helo. Only when Jedi One’s door was closed and they were underway did the tremors began to subside. Not until he had buckled in and could no longer see or smell the mega-horde did his breathing return to normal and he was able to fully relax.
“Pinche demonios,” Lopez muttered. “Shit never gets old
, eh, mi amigo?”
Helmeted head resting on the bulkhead, Griff stated, “I’ve never felt so close to death. Pun not intended.”
Clapping the winded operator on the shoulder, Lopez said, “Good work, Griff. You just exempted yourself from the next draw.”
Smiling at the unexpected good fortune, Griff closed his eyes and settled in for the long ride back to base.
Chapter 6
Daymon drove away from the post office expecting Duncan to let fly some smartass comment in reply to Raven’s sharp retort to his suggestion that she exclude herself from the grisly task ahead. When Old Man remained silent, Daymon recognized it as a cue and did the same.
After a short drive west, Daymon brought the Bronco to a full stop a dozen feet shy of the rear of the herd.
Lips pursed into a thin white line, Raven sat unmoving, her gaze directed toward the vast plain to their right. In the front passenger seat, Duncan unsheathed his fixed-blade Bowie-style knife and began to run it across a whet stone.
Once again, Daymon killed the engine and stilled the hula girl with a finger.
During the trip from the post office to the herd, but a stone’s throw east of Yoder, the only noise in the cab had been the steady growl coming from the Bronco’s V8.
Breaking the silence, Duncan had said, “You know we’re going to have to give every one of these things a once-over with the Geiger counter.”
As Raven scrutinized the dead things, in her head she heard her dad say: Work smarter, not harder.
She said, “Once we’re finished culling, why don’t we just lay the ears out on Heidi’s hood and then pass the Geiger counter over them? Then we can just throw away any that cause the thing to spike.”
“Bird has a point,” Duncan said.
Daymon flashed a half smile. Looking to Duncan, he said, “The girl thinks like her dad.”
Nodding in agreement, Duncan said, “Marching orders?”
Daymon shrugged. “Production line? Or we could do the free for all thing and divvy them up on the hood afterward?”
Looking back to Raven, Duncan said, “Anyone have a preference?”
Again, the whole Work smarter, not harder thing informed Raven’s decision.
She said, “I vote for production line. Free for all wastes too much time.” She patted the sheathed Gerber. “And I’ll be doing the stabbing.”
“I’ve got a new edge here,” Duncan said. “I’ll slice.”
Shaking his head, dreads whipping his shoulders, Daymon said, “Negative. No disrespect, but that’ll take forever. Why don’t you guard our six.” Dragging a second machete from under the driver’s seat, he shouldered open his door and stepped to the road.
Mouthing, “That’ll take forever,” Duncan sheathed his knife. Still muttering something about young people and discrimination against the aged, he opened the door and stepped out. Perching the white Stetson on his balding head, Duncan hinged the front seat forward and offered a gloved hand to Raven.
Waving away the chivalrous gesture, she squeezed her small frame through the narrow gap.
A chip off the old blocks, thought Duncan.
Eyes narrowing, Raven said, “You going to take the back seat to Daymon like that?”
Duncan retrieved the Saiga from the footwell and closed the door behind them. Dropping the shotgun’s muzzle to the road, he regarded Raven. “He does have a point. I have lost half a step. Plus, I kind of enjoy watching him work, what with the two different color neon handles. He gets Kindness and Mercy going, damn near looks like an airport worker guiding a 747 to the terminal.”
Slinging her rifle, Raven said, “Aren’t their batons both the same color? When we arrived in Myrtle Beach to see Grandma and Grandpa, the woman guiding us toward the thingy that connects the airplane to the airport was swinging around bright orange ones.”
“Semantics,” said Duncan. “It’s the motion. His long arms windmilling …”
“I get it,” Raven said. “Whatever floats your boat.”
Calling out from the rear of the herd, Daymon said, “Well, Old Man, what’s it going to be?”
“Hold yer pants,” Duncan bellowed. “I’m moving as fast as I can.”
As Duncan and Raven edged around the rear of the herd, she stopped now and again to lean over the already fallen specimens and provide them a second death courtesy of her recently inherited Gerber combat dagger.
Brandishing both machetes, Daymon urged Duncan to stand back, then waded into the herd, his blades blurring into twin lethal arcs of Day-Glo orange and green as he expertly split skulls and cleaved ears.
In a dozen minutes the entire herd was down and Raven had successfully freed another fifty-nine earthbound souls with a proficiency refined over the dozen or so beyond-the-wall excursions already under her belt.
Daymon cleaned his blades on a fallen Z’s shirt and put them away. Regarding Duncan, he called, “A little help collecting the fruits of our labor?”
With a wag of his head, Duncan said, “You cut them, you police them up.”
“It’s like looking for needles in a haystack,” Daymon moaned.
“When you slice ‘em slowly,” chided Duncan, “they don’t go a flyin’ all over the place.”
From the middle of the herd where she was hunched over and plucking ears off the snow, Raven called, “Keep your head on a swivel, Duncan. We got this.”
“Yeah,” quipped Daymon. “Stay frosty, Old Man.”
“No problem there,” Duncan shot. “It’s about twenty-five damn degrees. When’s it supposed to warm up?”
Head down, eyes roaming the ground, Raven said, “Midweek, they say.”
“And how do you know that, Bird of the Apocalypse?” Duncan asked.
“If you’d ever leave the Antlers,” Raven said, “you’d know the Town Crier has added a weather report to his list of announcements.”
Bird has a point, thought Duncan. After living underground for a couple of months, during which he was topside nearly every waking moment, the luxury of having a room with a view and a roof was likely to never get old. Nesting was what Glenda called his new behavior. In his mind, for obvious reasons, hibernating was the better descriptor.
“I get out,” he said. “Every time Max has to go potty and comes scratching at our door, Glenda delegates the job to me.”
Finished collecting ears, Raven began picking her way back through the fallen bodies. Curled fingers caught in her boot laces, stalling her forward progress. Kicking away the gnarled hand, she said, “Sounds like the control my mom had over my dad. They were a good team. He used to say she was using Jedi mind tricks on him.”
Offering her a gloved hand, he said, “That wasn’t control, young lady. That was true love.”
This time Raven accepted Duncan’s offering and leaped off one foot, easily clearing a partially clothed twenty-something. With arms outstretched and a one-eyed stare directed skyward, it looked as if the twice-dead thing had been trying to snatch Raven out of the air.
Walking back to the Bronco via the roadside ditch, Daymon held up a pair of bulging doggie poo bags. “That’s all of them, I think.”
“What were you picking up after,” Duncan joked, “a Great Dane?”
“Nope,” Daymon answered. “A dozen ankle-biting Chihuahuas.”
Cackling at the visual of the lanky man being led along by a pack of little yappers, Duncan looked to Raven. “Could you see D as a dog walker? Maybe someplace like Manhattan? You know that was a thing”—he turned a slow circle—“before all of this happened. Hell,” he added, stifling another laugh, “I may have just found my second calling. Think there’s enough dogs in Springs to make it worth my while?”
Scrabbling back onto the road, Daymon said, “You could bribe the Crier with a couple of these ears. Have him slip an ad for Dapper Duncan’s Dog-Walking Service between the weather and herd reports.”
Shaking his head, Duncan said, “We better go before I get to mulling over the crazy idea. Cause if I do, it
’ll likely take root, and next thing you know, I’ll be the one being led along by a pack of yappers.”
Raven smiled for the first time in a long while. Twinkle in her eye, she said, “Glenda could finally retire.”
Wearing a shit-eating grin, Daymon said, “Well there goes your idea of being a kept man.”
Pointing to the others, one at a time, beginning with Raven, Duncan said, “You hush your mouth, Miss Grayson. And you, Mister Got-a-spider-perched-on your-head, you better shut your pie hole, too.”
Dumping the severed ears out on the Bronco’s hood, Daymon said, “Or what?”
“You give Glenda any bad ideas and I’ll nominate you for burial detail.”
Raven emptied her bag onto the hood. Regarding Daymon, she said, “Better not cross the Old Man. You can smell those burial detail people from a mile away.”
Daymon pantomimed zipping his lips. He went around back of the Bronco and came back with the Geiger counter already powered on and emitting a continuous soft clicking noise. It was a hand-held item readily available before the fall. And though it was a bit bigger than a pack of cigarettes, it looked small in Daymon’s hand as he gave it a couple of slow passes over the shriveled ears.
Peering down at the liquid crystal display, Raven declared the ears good to go and began to push individual ears into three separate piles.
Causing them all to throw visible shivers, a big silver hoop earring pierced through one of the ears created a nail-on-chalkboard squeal as its metal post left a long scratch in the Bronco’s paint.
“Shit,” blurted Daymon. Shaking his head, he ran a finger along the gouge. “It’s a deep one.”
Duncan said, “Not the first, certainly not the last.”
As Raven counted and bagged the ears, she asked, “With all of the vehicles to choose from, why the hell did you pick this relic?”
“Closest thing to Lu Lu I could find. Why? What’s wrong with her?”
“Where to begin?” Duncan said. “It’s cramped and the heater sucks. It wallows when you run over a sheet of paper. Shall I go on?”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home Page 4