Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home

by Chesser, Shawn

  Smiling, Griff said, “Good copy, Sir.”

  Ari’s landing was as smooth as they came, the helo barely moving after its wheels contacted the interstate.

  Lopez glanced out the port-side windows. He saw that the main body was dangerously close—a couple of hundred yards distant, at most. As he led Cross and Griff through the open starboard-side door, he found the distance to the lead element to be a hundred yards, at best.

  Lopez was hearing Ari saying, “Boots on!” even as the turbines were spooling up and the Ghost Hawk was getting light on her gear. He was up and running with Cross toward the freeway shoulder when he sensed the bulk of the chopper cleave the air directly over their heads. In his side vision, two things registered at once. To his left, he saw Griff’s shouldered carbine jerking subtly, the brass casings tumbling through the air. To his right, coming across his field of view, the helicopter was banking hard to port and climbing into the blue morning sky.

  If the maneuver that took the Ghost Hawk directly over the lead element was planned by Ari, it was brilliant and came at the right time. Because out of the thirty or so creatures that had gotten back to standing after the initial pass, nearly half of them were blown off their feet by the down blast from the scything rotor blades.

  By the time Lopez and Cross were perpendicular to the lead element, Griff’s accurate fire had already granted a large number of the Zs their forever death.

  Leave us something to work with, thought Lopez as he jogged through a thin haze of exhaust left behind by the helicopter’s low pass.

  Cross followed close behind Lopez with the dogcatcher’s pole clutched in one hand and bag of tracking collars in the other. Halfway to the lead element—only a handful of the Zs aware of the meat flanking them—he began to call out targets.

  “Copy that,” responded Lopez over their shared channel. “Adult male, red shirt, one shoe.” He leveled the suppressed M4, sighted on the emaciated first turn to One Shoe’s immediate left, and pressed the trigger twice.

  Nothing. The first round cleaved a V-shaped chunk of decaying flesh from the Z’s face but did nothing to slow its advance. The second round, he surmised, had missed and continued out over the desert.

  Cursing himself, Lopez slowed his pace, drew and held the breath. Exhaling, he pressed the trigger once more. The old adage the third time’s a charm held true. The screaming hunk of lead made a mess of the first turn’s face, imploding everything from brow to septum in on itself. As the creature fell, he shifted his attention to the Zs on One Shoe’s right flank. Five rounds fired in quick succession dropped three of them.

  Cross was saying “One to go” at about the same time the female Z coming up on One Shoe’s six was cut down by a round fired by Axe in the hovering helo.

  “Owe me a pint, gents,” said the SAS shooter over the open channel. “And it better be a proper pint. Not one of those fourteen-ounce pours in a wanker glass.”

  Cross said nothing. He had already handed the bag of trackers to Lopez and was busy extending the cable noose and maneuvering the pole near One Shoe’s bobbing head.

  “Right here,” bellowed Lopez, freezing the Z in its tracks by waving one hand eye level to it. “Want a piece of me?”

  As Cross was lassoing One Shoe, in his ear he heard Skipper warning that Zs were peeling off the lead element and dozens in the main body were beginning to rise.

  One Shoe had a half a head advantage in height and weighed maybe thirty pounds more than Lopez. The recent turn also enjoyed a three- or four-inch reach, which, as Cross struggled to control its sporadic lunges, made it very dangerous and difficult for Lopez to get close enough to apply and activate the tracking collar. To mitigate the latter problem, Lopez drew the matte-black Gurkha Khukuri from the sheath strapped to his leg. Taking hold of the fingers waggling at the end of One Shoe’s right hand, he swung the knife on a downward arc, the fierce blow from the twelve-inch recurved blade instantly severing the ashen limb at the elbow.

  After removing One Shoe’s other arm with a similar downward chop, Lopez went to work fitting the collar. Bobbing his head side to side like a boxer to avoid being bludgeoned by the flailing, bloodless stumps, he chose an opening, came underneath a scything left-cross, and swept the Z’s legs.

  There was a solid thud as One Shoe face-planted on the unforgiving blacktop.

  Without pause, Lopez placed a boot on each stump. Then, using a process practiced countless times on a CPR dummy, he leaned over and fastened the tracking collar around One Shoe’s neck.

  After making sure the collar’s embedded solar panel was unobstructed by hair or clothing, he cinched it tight. Lastly, to keep the Z from interfering with them as they worked, he cinched a zip-tie around the Z’s ankles.

  Cross loosened the noose and worked it up and over One Shoe’s craning head.

  Target two was a teenaged female with multiple bite wounds on both arms. The tee shirt clinging to her emaciated frame was emblazoned with the PINK logo. It was also punched through with multiple bullet holes and stiff with dried blood.

  The holes bore powder burns around the edges, leading Lopez to believe the shots had been fired up close and personal.

  “That’s got to be the last one,” Ari called over the comms. “Sierra Charlie is Oscar Mike. Initiating immediate extraction. Jedi One inbound.”

  Demonios on the move, was what Lopez heard. The words alone caused an electric current to trace his spine.

  As Griff’s rifle fire cut down the last of the lead element, leaving Pink all alone on the interstate, Lopez issued Cross a silent command.

  Understanding the hand signal for what it meant, simultaneously Cross waved the catcher’s pole in front of Pink and crabbed to his left in order to bring the Z around so that it faced the inbound helicopter.

  Attention momentarily drawn from the fresh meat to the baffled whine of turbines and bass-heavy thwop of Jedi One’s rotor blades thrashing air, Pink froze mid-shuffle.

  Taking full advantage of the diversion, Lopez approached Pink from behind, wrangled her pustule-covered arms behind her back, and trussed them together with a pre-looped zip-tie. Keeping his gloved hands free from the undead teen’s snapping teeth, Lopez fitted a tracking collar around her pencil-thin neck. After activating the tracking package, with the Khukuri he chopped a sizeable clump of greasy blonde locks away from the collar’s rear-facing solar panel.

  Hearing the announcement “Wheels down” come through his headset, Lopez glanced over his shoulder in time to witness Griff boarding the settling chopper. As he turned back and commenced cutting through Pink’s cuffs, he felt something encircle his right ankle and tug backward.

  Seeing the pale hand reach out from the stack of bodies felled by Griff, Cross immediately dropped the pole and rushed toward a falling Lopez. On the run, Cross drew his Sig P226 from the drop-thigh holster and brought it to bear on the pile of corpses.

  Aware of his predicament, Lopez twisted around and drove a knee into the sternum of the dead thing pulling him off balance. As one hand arrested his fall—the gloved fingers plunging through the parchment-like skin covering a sunken belly—the other was swinging the Khukuri at the attacker’s upturned face.

  Simultaneously, as the recurved blade buried inches deep into the Z’s left eye socket, a single round fired from Cross’s Sig punched a quarter-sized hole into its right temple.

  Cross reached Lopez as he was keeling over. Seeing the damage from the dual death blows, he holstered the Sig and then yanked Lopez to his feet.

  Bellowing, “Go, go, go,” Cross took the black blade from Lopez and finished slicing off Pink’s cuffs. Then, like a bouncer jacked up on adrenaline, he tossed the hissing monster away from him.

  With the Ghost Hawk’s turbines spooling up behind him, and Skip’s call that the herd was “Danger close” sounding over the comms, Cross stalked through the sea of bodies to get to One Shoe.

  To escape the encroaching wall of walking dead, Ari was forced to launch and start Jedi One s
ideslipping toward the lone man still on the ground.

  Cross had just cut the zip-tie from One Shoe’s legs when the helo’s shadow eclipsed the sun and he was caught up in its vicious down blast.

  With gloved hands reaching for Cross from above, and a multitude of pallid, bony hands straining to get ahold of him, he dropped the Khukuri and thrust both arms skyward.

  As his feet were yanked off the ground and someone was clicking a carabiner to his chest rig, the reaching hands of the dead gained purchase and he felt his boots and pants being pulled from his body.

  In the end, as the Ghost Hawk powered safely into the sky, the thin nylon line and brute strength of friendly hands won the life and death game of tug-o-war with the surging mega-horde.

  Seeing that the cabin door was still fully retracted, Cross contorted his prostrate body so that he was lying on his chest. Grabbing hold of the metal lip his helmet had come to rest on, he pulled himself forward and peered groundward. What he saw chilled him to the bone: One second there was a helicopter-sized patch of gray interstate separating the advancing mob from the accumulation of twice-dead corpses. In the next, like angry surf blitzing to shore, walking corpses overran the fallen, completely filling the void.

  As the column of death poured over the forty or so head-shot corpses—their pounding feet punishing flesh and bone alike—Pink and One Shoe found their footing, performed clumsy pirouettes, and fell in lockstep with the new leaders of the procession.

  Chapter 21

  Max’s number two was at the bottom of a hole in the snow and still steaming when Raven finally located it. “You couldn’t have taken a dump a little closer to my bench, could you, Max?”

  The dog had chosen a patch of ground underneath a copse of trees where the snow wasn’t very deep. He was sitting on his haunches and directing his multi-colored gaze at her.

  “You want me to throw the ball for you, or would you rather go for a walk?”

  Raven readied a poo bag. Breathing through her mouth, she stooped over and mined the rapidly cooling clump of dog crap from the brown-rimmed oval hole in the snow.

  As if Max understood his options, he jumped up and sauntered toward the park’s south exit.

  A walk it is, thought Raven. Only question is: Who’s walking who?

  After tossing the bulging bag into the trash can near the park’s southeast entrance, Raven hustled to catch up to the shepherd, who had ranged ahead and seemed to know exactly where he was going. With the threat of encountering a zombie inside the walls near to zero, Raven kept her pistol holstered. Her gun hand, however, remained empty, the gloved fingers in constant movement and just inches from the Glock.

  Max paused now and again to sniff at bushes and poles before halting completely and showing great interest in a solitary fire hydrant.

  Having finally caught up with Max, Raven paused and checked her surroundings. Seeing only a lone CSPD Tahoe slipping by a block north, and rising over her the squat Exelis building with its perpetually darkened windows and empty parking lot, she clucked her tongue. Having gained Max’s undivided attention, she said, “Smell a doggo you know?”

  In response, Max lifted his leg and painted the snow around the base of the hydrant the color of banana Slurpee.

  Raven said, “Claimed!” and they moved on.

  ***

  After passing by the rear of Pikes Peak Center, with its chain-link-enclosed loading dock and boarded-over doors, Raven and Max entered the shadow of a four-story parking garage once used by desperate survivors as a temporary refuge from the dead. Knowing it was still home to abandoned vehicles and tents and the mummified corpses of the lucky few who had died of exposure, starvation, or illness caused Raven to shudder. Knowing that those same people did not come back hungering the flesh of the living offered her little solace.

  The screech of what sounded like car-door hinges in dire need of lubricant rose over the subtle squelch of snow being compacted under her boot soles. It came from far away, likely somewhere deep in the bowels of the garage.

  Hackles raised and teeth bared, Max stopped in his tracks. Remarkably, the shepherd made no sound. He just sniffed the air, then directed a glance toward his master.

  “Good boy,” Raven whispered. Looking up at the third level where she thought the noise had originated, all she saw was the multitudes of tarps strung up by survivors to cover the open spaces between floors. Some were blue. Some were red. Most were earth tones represented by several different shades of green, brown, and gray. With every errant gust of wind, the tarps rippled and went taut, straining at the corners where they’d been secured to what looked to be overhanging sprinkler pipes.

  Hand going to the butt of her Glock, Raven stepped onto West Vermijo Avenue, Max by her side and still casting furtive glances at the looming garage.

  “Just the wind,” she said in a soothing voice. In her mind’s eye, however, she pictured a horribly rotted first turn the reclamation crews had somehow missed on their final sweeps after the last of the freeway panels had gone up. It was belted in a car parked deep in the shadows and waiting for someone with their guard down to get near enough to grab hold of.

  Shoving to the back burner the unlikely scenario conjured up by her very vivid imagination, she crossed the avenue on a diagonal.

  Old habits die hard. Favoring the sidewalk bordering a wide-open parking lot, versus the one crowded by trees and the office building attached to the garage of the dead, she trudged east.

  Kitty-corner from the snow-covered parking lot, rising up over South Cascade Avenue, was the former El Paso County Judicial Building. Now being used in a federal capacity, housing the offices of a fledgling government struggling to rise from the ashes of the near Extinction Level Event nobody saw coming, the bunker-like cement structure bearing the name Bureau of Eradication Reclamation and Restoration was accepting a steady stream of people looking to either procure tickets to go outside the city walls or exchange harvested ears for credit to be spent in any number of places within the walls.

  One block beyond the BERR building, its bell tower rising up over a mishmash of FEMA trailers, single-wide mobile homes, and recreational vehicles set up on every available patch of ground, was the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.

  Since most of the government buildings had been lost in the conflagration that left the no-man’s land just outside the east wall, the three-story building dominating the center of the block had become the place where city government conducted its business; and business was certainly booming. A line of restless people Raven guessed to be Snowbirds—the surge of survivors who showed up after every new snowstorm—snaked down the steps and out of sight around the nearest corner.

  Turning the corner, she muttered, “Get used to it, people. Freedom isn’t free.”

  Raven’s destination was the single-wide Fleetwood mobile home bordering the walkway at the Pioneers Museum’s southwest corner. It was positioned at a forty-five-degree angle and sitting on a foundation of concrete blocks. Aside from an OPEN sign ablaze in one of the windows, and the mountain of empty cardboard boxes drooping under the weight of new snow, the only thing pointing to the fact that the place was a store was the hand-painted LOLAMART sign perched above the handprint-stained front door.

  A serious-looking African American man Raven knew from her time spent at Schriever was the gatekeeper for the day. Buck was a few inches taller than Daymon, maybe six foot five, and sported a full beard streaked with gray. Though she didn’t know if he was a SEAL, Green Beret, or member of Delta Force, she did know he was a year or two older than her dad and had fought beside him in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Dressed for the weather, Buck wore all black outdoor gear that would be considered top shelf in most ski shops. Only thing on his body that screamed Army Surplus were his scuffed combat boots and natty black watch cap, the latter pulled down low enough on his bald head so that it covered his ears.

  Slung diagonally across Buck’s barrel chest was a stunted rifle that resembled
an AK-47. Raven thought for sure the smaller model was called an AKS Krinkov. She knew this because her dad had pointed it out when one of Bin Laden’s recorded interviews was showing on the History Channel. The same type of rifle had been leaning against a dirt wall and within arm’s reach of the now-dead terrorist.

  Buck’s Krinkov was positioned on his body so its metal stock rested near one shoulder and the worn pistol grip rode above his belt line, just inches from his dominant hand. The setup told Raven that bringing the AKS to bear on anyone coming at LOLAMART with bad intentions would require a simple shrug of the shoulder and quick upward sweep of the weapon’s stubby muzzle.

  Bad news for them.

  Money well spent by Lola.

  Looking up from the SKILLSET magazine cradled in his mitt-sized hands, Buck smiled wide and said, “Well hello, Miss Raven. Pleasure to see you this fine morning. Buying or selling, today?”

  “Pleasure is all mine, Buck,” was the only adult sounding salutation she could conjure up on the fly. “A little of both, I suppose,” was her answer to his question.

  Buck descended the short stack of stairs and met Raven beside a bank of scratched and dented metal lockers that looked to have been scavenged from a school or gym. “You know the routine,” he said, doing the gimme motion with his gloved hands.

  Raven drew the Glock from its holster. She removed the magazine and racked the slide, intercepting the ejected round with her free hand as it tumbled to earth.

  “Impressive,” Buck declared. “Nowhere close to flagging me with the muzzle, and your booger hook stayed off the bang switch the entire time.”

  Handing the pistol to the man, butt first, she said, “I learned from the best.”

  Voice gone soft, the big man said, “Speaking of your dad … how is he?”

  “He’s home now and getting better by the day.” She paused. “Apparently he’s well enough to start learning how to speak Chinese.” She had screwed up her face as she said Chinese.