“Maybe I could take a champagne bucket outside and fill it up with snow for you. You could take turns icing them down in it.”
“And have pins and needles on top of the itching?” He shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Don’t be a baby. It might help.”
Pick your battles, thought Cade. He made his way back to his room, stepped to the window and opened the curtain. For as far as he could see everything was blanketed in white. The streets north of the Antlers. The Red Zone beyond the curving stretch of I-25 bordering the city’s west wall.
Down below in the park, splashes of color on a low brick wall stood out in the sea of white. Though he couldn’t make out much detail, it was similar to the graffiti he’d seen sprayed on big-city subway trains.
The glare having less of an adverse effect on his eyes than he’d anticipated, Cade left the curtains parted and turned to face Raven. “I’ll go down and fill the bucket with snow if you think it’ll help.”
“I think it will,” she said.
“Couldn’t hurt me to walk a bit more,” he responded. “And the fresh air will do me good.” He paused, then delivered the bad news. “Someone desecrated your park.”
Raven made a face, then edged past him. Placing both hands on the glass, she walked her gaze across Antlers Park.
“They sure did. Bunch of buttholes. Can’t have anything nice, even during the zombie apocalypse. Don’t know how I missed that earlier.”
Cade said, “We’ll paint over it.”
Raven shook her head. “Then I’ll have to stare at a blotch on the wall every time I walk by it.”
A series of thumps sounded out in the hall.
A beat later there came a knock at the door.
Cade said, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Daymon. I come bearing gifts. Open up.”
Knowing precisely what “gifts” were arriving, Raven turned away from the window. On the way to get the door, from the dresser top she took a chewed-on rubber ball and the curved device designed for chucking it. When she opened the door, Daymon was looking down on her. “Bird!” he exclaimed. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”
Raven shrugged. “Here, mostly.”
Presenting his knuckles to Raven, Daymon said, “That’s all about to change now that the hard-charging Captain America is home.”
The two bumped knuckles, then Raven slipped on by him. After urging Max to join her in the hall, she met her dad’s expectant gaze and pointed to where she’d placed the ice bucket.
Wearing a mock frown, Cade asked, “Where are you off to?”
“I’m taking Max to the park to do his thing.” She paused. “I might walk him some, too.”
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“An hour or so.”
Two birds, one stone, Cade thought. He asked, “You have a radio and your pistol?”
Daymon was watching the exchange. Addressing Cade, he said, “That girl goes nowhere without that little Glock of hers.”
Cade nodded. A tilt to his head, he said, “What’s up?”
“Eventually,” Daymon interjected, “your heartrate and lung capacity will be.” He made brief eye contact with someone in the hall, then fixed Cade with a bug-eyed stare. “I’m not a vampire. You going to invite me in, or what?”
Cade made a sweeping motion with one arm.
After disappearing for a short while, Daymon’s back filled up the doorway. In his hands was one end of a high-dollar treadmill. As he tucked his elbows to his sides and reversed his way into the room, he said, “Three brothers and a sister moving … at your service. Where would you like your delivery?”
Though he thought he knew the answer, Cade said, “First tell me whose idea this is and where you got them.”
“It was Glenda’s idea,” Daymon said. “We lifted it from the hotel’s fitness room.”
Backing up from the doorway, Cade said, “Does it work?”
“I didn’t test drive it,” admitted Daymon. “If it doesn’t, there’s seven more where this came from.” When he tilted his end to fit it through the doorway, the treadmill’s metal frame chunked off a six-inch-long piece of walnut trim.
“There goes your tip,” quipped Cade as he moved aside to let Daymon maneuver the bulky piece of equipment past him.
On the other end of the treadmill was a woman who gave up maybe an inch in height to Daymon. Her hair was red and full and equally as unruly as Daymon’s. She fixed Cade with her green-eyed stare. “Where do you want it … Captain Grayson?”
“How rude of me,” Daymon gushed. “Captain Sonja O’Neil, meet Captain America. AKA Wyatt. AKA Grand Poohbah of the world-famous Eden compound.”
Ignoring Daymon’s attempt at humor, O’Neil said, “I’ve heard all about the Castle Rock mission.” Shaking her head, she added, “Two nukes?”
Wearing a sheepish expression, Cade said, “Cover blown. Pleasure is all mine.”
Sweat was beading on Daymon’s brow. Still holding his end of the treadmill, he said, “Where do you want this monster?”
Cade said, “Put it in front of the window.”
Daymon slipped past Cade, crabbed around the corner of the king bed, and set his end down near the corner of the room. “We’ll put them on either side of the window.”
“Them?”
In answer to Cade’s one-word query, Wilson backed his way into the room. He was a bit hunched over and obviously burdened with the lion’s share of the load.
The “load” was an upright exercise bike. And it wasn’t one of the sexy easily stowable jobs sold on television by hard-bodied fitness models sweating to a bass-heavy soundtrack. This thing was a dinosaur and nearly as big and cumbersome as the treadmill.
Carrying the back end of the bike by its adjustable seat was a kid Cade last saw on the day everything went dark.
“Peter Dregan,” Cade said. “So good to see you among the living. I want to thank you for—”
Shaking his head vigorously, Peter said, “I will accept no thanks from you. I did nothing. It was your daughter who saved us. If not for Raven, I would be with my family in Heaven.”
Cade didn’t know how to respond. Until now he’d assumed escaping the Chicoms and getting to safety had been a joint effort between the kid and his daughter.
Peter said, “Where do you want the bike, Captain Grayson?”
Patting Wilson on the shoulder, Cade instructed them to take it into the adjoining room and leave it beside Raven’s bed.
With Wilson taking the lead, more fine millwork was lost as the world’s clumsiest movers did Cade’s bidding.
Chapter 19
“Hard to believe we were ankle-deep in snow just a few hours ago,” Griff noted. “And now, here we are … in the middle of the desert watching heat waves rise off the blacktop.”
“It’s only a thirty-five-degree swing,” countered Ari as he eased back on the stick to bring Jedi One’s airspeed closer to the seventy-mile-per-hour limit posted on the signs a hundred feet below them.
Doing the honors, since he’d won immunity by drawing short straw last mission, Griff made even the tops of the pair of straws clutched in his fist and presented them to Cross.
“I hate going first,” lamented Cross. “I always lose when I do.”
Having already volunteered for one of the two slots the ground mission required, Lopez said, “Fifty-fifty is not great odds, mi amigo.” He swung his gaze to Axe. “You feeling lucky today. Nigel?”
“I predict it’ll be me and Griff on overwatch, mate.”
Cross let his hand hover over the straws for a beat. Then, as if he was conducting some kind of Haitian voodoo ritual, he waved it in a clockwise circle, palm down over the straws, all while uttering some indecipherable incantation.
“Get it over with, already,” Griff mumbled. “My hand could be put to better use.”
Over the shipwide comms, Ari said, “Griff, Griff, Griff … please spare us the sordid details of you
r miserable sex life.”
Griff put the middle finger of his free hand to use, flashing the cheeky pilot the bird while mouthing, “Blow me” in the direction of the curved mirror arcing over the cockpit glass.
After blowing on his hands and briskly rubbing his palms together, Cross plucked a straw from Griff’s gloved fist.
The crew chief formed an L with the thumb and pointer finger on his right hand. Holding it in front of his visor, he said, “Looooser. Now get over here so I can rig you up.”
Shaking his head, Cross said, “We’re not baiting the hook today. Boots on the ground, baby.”
Axe had already removed the high-tech sniper rifle from its case and was in the process of assembling it.
“Just pulling your leg,” Skip said. “Griff put me up to it.” Reaching under the seat, he came out with a collapsible aluminum pole resembling a dog catcher’s tool and a black nylon bag containing a half-dozen tracking collars.
The stretch of Interstate 15 below the Ghost Hawk was occupied by a slow-moving zombie horde. Having originated in Southern California, and just recently gained the numbers sufficient to deem it a threat to anything in its path, the ambulatory mass of decaying flesh and bone aptly dubbed Sierra Charlie—or SC for short—was barreling straight for downtown Las Vegas.
Ari said, “Nash’s team has been tracking this one via drone and satellite off and on for two days now. Intel says two fighting-age males on motorcycles are somewhere out ahead of the pacesetters.” Addressing Haynes, the left-seater for this mission, he added, “Bring up the FLIR.”
“Roger that,” Haynes said. “Bringing up the FLIR.”
“Overtaking the column in thirty,” Ari said calmly. “I want all eyes on our flanks. The PLA bikers could be hunkered down in the desert.”
The tail of stragglers was stretched out a mile or so behind the main body. Roughly sixty feet across at its widest, the main body was a conga line of doddering death that seemed to go on forever. In the far distance was a smattering of low hills backstopped by medium-sized mountains. In the middle distance, rising up from the flat basin, the glass wrapped multi-story casinos of Las Vegas sparkled like pirate’s treasure abandoned on a desert island.
Peering out his port-side hip window, Lopez said, “Ari, now that you have eyes on, how does this compare to Nash’s satellite imagery?”
“My gun-toting friend,” Ari answered, “Sierra Charlie has doubled in size since it left the valley. I’d guess it’s now a good three miles from tip to tail.”
Lopez whistled. “How many demonios is that? Sixty … seventy thousand?”
Shifting his attention from reinspecting his M4 carbine to the undead horde below, Griff said, “A hundred thousand … at the least.”
Adept at crowd-size estimation thanks to his time spent in the Secret Service, Cross looked to Griff and jabbed his thumb at the helo’s ceiling.
Skipper had just punched a button, starting the flush two-foot by three-foot starboard-side gun port to slide out of the way. Right away the cabin was invaded by a blast of air ripe with death and tinged by jet exhaust. Once the crew chief had swiveled the Dillon Aero minigun into place and locked it down, he took a long hard look at the horde. Finally, shaking his head in disbelief, he said, “You mean to tell us that’s more than a hundred thousand dead heads we’re looking at down there?”
All business, Cross said, “Double that and add another fifty thousand.”
Incredulous, Skipper said, “A quarter of a million? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Ari said, “What you’re looking at there, boys, streamed straight out of L.A.’s Inland Empire a little over a week ago.”
Speaking into the boom mike affixed to his comms headset, Lopez asked, “Any sign of the Pied Pipers?”
Haynes manipulated the FLIR pod controls, sweeping the high-resolution camera across the front third of the horde. “Negative,” he responded. “I just see a train of death. Zero breathers.”
Ari said, “See if anything presents on thermal.”
“Copy that. Going to thermal and increasing magnification.” After a dozen or so seconds, during which the Ghost Hawk had halved the distance to the horde, Haynes said, “I’m not picking up any hot spots. Nothing mechanical moving ahead of the leaders.”
“Doesn’t matter. The damage is already done,” Ari noted soberly. “My guess is the PLA scouts peeled off and are already on the hunt for another horde to redirect inland.”
Lopez said, “Pipers or no, we still have a job to do.” He tightened the chin strap on his ballistic helmet, made sure his plate carrier was snugged tight, then verified by feel that the pouches on his chest each held a full magazine and all were secured should he have to go to ground quickly.
Following Lopez’s lead, Cross gunned up and got his gear squared away.
Haynes said, “I have the lead element on standard optical. Piping it back to you, Lopez.”
In the cabin, Lopez studied the high-res image. Finally, he said, “Not much separation. With the speed they’re moving, going boots on is going to be risky.”
Ari said, “If Mother Nature isn’t going to freeze them—”
Interrupting, Lopez said, “You think that thing we did to the Houston herd would work with these kind of numbers?”
“Only way to find out is to try it,” Ari answered. “Question is: What’s on the playlist?”
“I think it’s one you’ll approve of,” Skipper responded.
While the crew chief cued up a song on his iPod, Ari had swung a wide turn to port, maybe a quarter-mile out over open desert, then looped back around so the Ghost Hawk was tracking parallel with I-15, coming in low and slow out of the north, straight for the front of the mega-horde.
As the first guitar riff of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama blared from the Ghost Hawk’s external speakers, a wide grin materialized below Ari’s smoked visor. The second Van Zant’s famous admonition rode over the guitar work, the SOAR pilot repeated along, hollering, “Turn it up!” as his helmeted head bounced in time with the drums.
Once the lead element was in Jedi One’s turbulent wake, Ari added power, dropped the stealth helo’s nose, then worked the stick and pedals so that the aircraft traced a tight serpentine path as it skimmed a dozen feet above the undead procession.
“Is it working?” Ari asked.
Skipper wedged his body against the minigun and stuck his helmeted head partway into the slipstream. Confident the safety line would keep him from an unexpected flying lesson, he craned hard to his right and saw exactly what he had hoped to see. “Dominos away,” he crowed. “I think it’s safe to bring us back around.”
Lopez braced against the bulkhead and let his eyes roam the cabin as Ari threw the helicopter hard to port. Across from him, eyes closed and looking as serene as could be, Griff was sitting upright with his rifle propped muzzle down between his legs. If the shooter had any fear of Ari plowing the bird into the Nevada hardpan, the SEAL was hiding it well.
Sitting across the cabin from Skipper and wearing a wide grin that showed off his artificially white teeth, Cross was busy playing air guitar to the catchy rock anthem that had captured the dead’s undivided attention.
Axe, on the other hand, was a little more pale than usual. His gaze was locked on something outside his window. Lopez figured it likely the man was just searching the ground for a point of reference to anchor to in order to get his equilibrium in check. “You going to be all right, Axe?”
Lips pursed, Axe nodded an affirmative.
Always the smartass, Griff handed Axe one of the airsickness bags Ari had made by a printing shop before everything went to shit. “If you’re about to earn yourself a puker patch,” he said, “better uneat your breakfast in this.”
Axe waved off the bag with an extended middle finger.
In his headset, Skipper heard Ari order him to cut the music and ready the minigun. As soon as the former task was completed and Skipper had ahold of the Dillon’s twin grips, Ari was
back and telling him to “thin out” the lead element as soon as they were broadside to it.
The lead element consisted of about fifty robust specimens, almost half of them just becoming aware of the returning helicopter. A few hundred yards of open interstate stood between them and the front echelon of the main body, which, at the moment, was either already splayed out on the roadway in full repose, or in the act of toppling over. Looking skyward in unison and then tracking the rock-and-roll emitting helicopter as it performed its high-speed low-to-the-ground flyover had started a chain reaction in the mega-horde that was still resulting in bodies far off in the distance falling atop one another, arms and legs akimbo, a decaying drift of death inextricably linked, some already struggling to rise.
Out of the blue, Griff said, “Ari, have Skipper save the ammo for the Dillon.” He looked to Lopez. “I want to go boots on, too. I’ll thin the herd while you two work.”
“We’re short a man, Griff.”
“Axe can handle overwatch. He’s a helluva shot with that tack driver of his.”
Lopez hesitated a second, then agreed. “Once we’re out of the bird, you engage the lead element. We’ll flank right. Make sure you leave us some strong-looking Zs to work with. Once that’s done, you watch our six.”
Griff said, “Roger that,” and proceeded to give his M4 a final onceover.
Chapter 20
With the patch of I-15 that was to be their landing zone coming up fast, over the comms, Ari said, “Wheels down in ten.”
A whirring noise followed by the solid clunk of the landing gear locking in place ran through the troop compartment.
Wearing a serious expression, Lopez said to Griff, “If the horde gets back to moving and gains even an inch of ground … you call for our immediate exfil.”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home Page 11