Cade said, “Show off.”
Max rolled his head left and right and back again.
“You’d make a damn fine owl.”
Tongue lolling, Max just stared.
“Take me to your other master.”
As if he understood fully, Max spun a one-eighty and sauntered back the way he’d come.
Chapter 31
After a short walk that seemed much longer than it actually was, Cade came upon a scene even Norman Rockwell would have a hard time transferring to canvas. Still, he interpreted it immediately. And if he had the chops to paint the scene himself, he’d call it “Foreman.”
Duncan was seated on a bench in front of an antique locomotive and coal car. He was sipping from a thermos and watching Raven scrub graffiti from a low brick wall.
Looking up from her task, Raven braced her hands on her knees and flashed a wan smile.
Cade said, “Couldn’t that energy be applied to something more important? I think a foraging mission outside the walls while the Zs are mostly immobilized would be a better return on investment.”
“No wheels,” Raven said. “Daymon’s on a date.” Though she was wearing yellow rubber gloves and holding a scrub brush in one hand, she still made air quotes around the word “date.”
Max had chosen a spot on the walk equidistant to the three humans and seemed to be following the conversation.
Duncan said, “Good to see the gimp out and about.”
Ignoring Duncan’s sad attempt at humor, Cade regarded Raven. “What about him?” he asked, hooking a thumb at his friend. “Can’t he drive you in the Jimmy? You need to capitalize on every opportunity you get to work on your skills.”
Duncan said, “Nope, muchacho. Glenda took my wheels to ‘work.’” Mimicking Raven, he made air quotes around “work,” because, clearly, he was doing nothing of the sort. “And speaking of your daughter’s skillset … you should see how she wields that Gerber pig-sticker of yours. Like a chip off the old block, this kid.”
Cade shuffled through the snow to get to the bench. Taking a seat next to Duncan, he looked long and hard at the graffiti. It was obviously painted by a person with some kind of background in art. It consisted of a turntable, a glossy black vinyl record in motion, and a disembodied hand in the process of manipulating it.
A gold four-finger-ring with the word PAIN running across it hovered over the knuckles.
Below the turntable was a long string of archaic writing. If falcons, cats, dogs, and boats were interspersed with the strange characters, a person might think he was looking at ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The longer Cade scrutinized the script, the more he felt as if he’d seen it before. Filing it to the back of his mind, he said, “Why are you doing all the work?”
Raven said, “Oh, I already put Duncan to work. He just finished a couple of minutes ago.”
“I’m not the only one,” Duncan muttered. “She’s got people all over town doing her bidding. Raven’s a crafty little lady. Go on,” he said with a nod, “tell your dad about all the balls you currently have in the air.”
Cade said, “What work were you doing, Old Man? Drinking coffee?”
“I was making sure your daughter didn’t run out of paint remover.”
Looking sidelong at Duncan, all business, Cade asked, “That is just coffee in the mug, right?”
Duncan raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor,” he said. “No more booze for this guy. Glenda promised to have Daymon and Wilson toss me on the street if I so much as look at a bottle of Jack Daniels.” He took a sip of coffee. Steam wafting around his face, he lowered the thermos and said, “I believe the old gal’s every word. You could say I’m a pole cat who, at this very moment, is livin’ out life number nine.”
Noting the toolbox under the bench, near Duncan’s feet, Cade made a slow visual recon of the park, picking out a couple of things along the way and making some mental notes on other things that piqued his interest. Finished, he said, “If the person or people you hope to catch in the act know a thing about surveillance, they’re likely going to spot those trail cameras.” He regarded Duncan. “Great placement if you’re dealing with Bambi or Zs.”
Offering Cade his coffee, Duncan said, “Well, my eagle-eyed friend, what would Cade do?”
Now sitting cross-legged and fully invested in the conversation, Raven said, “In Duncan’s defense, I didn’t see them right away. And I knew what I was looking for.”
Cade sipped from the thermos. Wiping his lips, he said, “I’m acting on the assumption the people who are doing this are the ones who tagged the tanker at the fuel depot. You did say the graffiti was, using your words, ‘super similar,’ right?” He handed the thermos back to Duncan.
Raven nodded. “It was the same color. Same line quality, too.”
Duncan capped the thermos and set it by the toolbox. Regarding Raven, he said, “Was it this same …” he paused as if he was searching for the right word.
Speaking in unison, Cade and Raven said, “Gibberish?”
Raven smiled, pointed at her dad. “Jinx,” she blurted. “You owe me a Coke, Dad.”
“At this point,” Cade replied, “after having been on a Diet Coke desert island for so long, I’d have already sucked down that Coke if I had it.”
Smiling, Raven pulled her new backpack close to her. She dug around inside it and came out with something cupped in both hands.
Cade’s eyes got big. “You didn’t.”
Duncan said, “If that’s what I think it is, you know what the doc said about those.”
Raven tossed the item across the divide.
Catching the silver and red can one-handed, Cade regarded Duncan. “Now who’s being the mommy?” Again going real serious, Cade said, “If the people responsible for this vandalism also knew enough to build the bomb used to blow up the tanker, you need to let the authorities in on whatever you find out.” He stared at Raven for a long three-count. “I don’t want you taking things into your own hands. Are we clear?”
Raven nodded.
“I’m not saying you can’t hold your own,” said Cade. “Especially if it came to a gunfight. Mom trained you well. It’s just that confronting them by yourself puts all of us in their sights. Wilson, Sasha, Tran … ”
“My money is on our little Bird of the Apocalypse.”
“No betting,” shot Raven. “You know how Glenda feels about that.”
Muttering something about being a grown ass man, Duncan rose from the bench, both of his knees sounding like popcorn popping as he did so.
“That’s how I feel all over,” admitted Cade, whose radio decided to come alive with a burst of squelch.
All at once, Tran’s voice was coming from all three radios.
Duncan lifted his radio to his lips. Once Tran had finished informing them that he and the others were home and dinner would be ready within the hour, Duncan asked the man about his new ink.
“Long story,” Tran replied. “I’ll show you at dinner.”
Duncan grimaced. “Copy that.” Releasing the Talk key, he looked to Cade. “Hell, I could have used a good belly laugh about now. No doubt Tran chose something off their flash sheets. If I was still a betting man … my money would be on Yosemite Sam or the Tasmanian Devil. I’m sure he didn’t get anything as prescient as that infidel tat across your back. Considering all that was going on at the time, that was a well-thought-out piece.”
Not at all interested in what Tran decided to have added permanently to his body, nor the tattoo he got between one of his many deployments, Cade rose on creaky legs. “If I can make it upstairs before dinner,” he joked, “I’m going up to squeeze in a quick nap.”
Raven pushed herself up off the ground. “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”
Shaking his head, Cade said, “I got it. Besides, I’m taking the stairs.”
Smiling wide, Duncan said, “That’s the Cade we all know and love. Remember what you told me, amigo?”
Cade
looked a question at the man.
Smile fading, Duncan went on, “Pain is just weakness leaving your body.”
“That it is,” agreed Cade.
“I may have a remedy for that,” Raven beamed. She rooted around in her new pack and came out with two tubes of Ben Gay. Passing them out, she said, “Compliments of Lola.”
Cade said, “Lola?”
“Keeper of the shop near the square,” Duncan said. “And if Glenda didn’t already have her meat hooks in me …”
“Ewwww,” said Raven. “She’s way older than you.”
“Way older? I beg to differ,” Duncan said. “Besides, nothing wrong with a man having a sugar mama.”
“Well, she’s a bit older than you. And you better take back the meat hooks comment, or I’m telling Glenda.”
Cade stood there, head panning between Duncan and Raven. He couldn’t lie, he was finding amusement in the old wiseass veteran being dressed down by his tween daughter.
At Cade’s feet, Max had been doing the same.
Showing his palms, Duncan said, “Cool your jets, little lady. I was just jaw jackin’. I meant nothing of what I said. Consider it stricken from the record.”
Cade loved the immediate capitulation on Old Man’s part. And he really loved how his daughter had brought it about. Sowing a healthy dose of fear every man had of hurting the feelings of the woman they truly loved.
Suppressing a grin, Cade started off for the sidewalk, the hitch in his giddy up more pronounced than ever.
Weakness leaving my body.
As the banter behind Cade continued, the tug-o-war inside his tired mind was back, with the neat handwriting on the yellow sticky note in his pocket winning out over the Siren’s call of the pillow-top mattress awaiting him on the thirteenth floor.
Chapter 32
Before entering the Antlers’ lobby, Raven clomped her boots on the drive to remove packed snow from their lug soles. Pushing through the door, she held it open for a trailing Duncan.
“Thank you, Bird. I’m taking the elevator. If I don’t make it to dinner, send out a search party.”
Raven nodded, then regarded the guard on duty.
“Temperature holding?” asked the man she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t immediately answer. Instead, she slowed her gait and sized him up.
She figured the man was about her dad’s age: somewhere between thirty and forty. That was where the similarities ended. While her dad was about five foot ten and a hundred and eighty pounds, this man was several inches shorter and looked to be carrying an extra hundred pounds.
Survivors with similar attributes had been showing up with increasing regularity. While news of the formation of the new capital was old, the overwhelming numbers of zombies migrating from the eastern seaboard and points south had made getting to Colorado Springs a deadly endeavor during the summer and fall in the heartland and high plains.
Small groups of survivors arriving on foot early on had told horrific tales of starting their treks east and north and west in convoys dozens of vehicles strong only to be winnowed down after coming up against zombie hordes and roving pack of marauding breathers.
Some who had shown up alone told of losing entire families. Adults, kids, pets—the ravenous dead did not discriminate.
Other survivors who had made it through the initial attacks, scattered into the winds, and then banded together down the road, had fared much better. These were the people showing up armed and driving liberated vehicles filled with food and supplies. And these were the people Colorado Springs needed if it was to become the place the President said it could be: a shining beacon of hope on the high plains.
What the once-dead city needed now, thought Raven, was to have a replica of the Statue of Liberty built and erected in the badlands outside the eastern wall.
What Colorado Springs didn’t need at this point, was more survivors like this marshmallow squeezed into a rent-a-cop uniform two sizes too small for him. It was people like this Daymon called “Prestons”—named after the pudgy lawyer who’d damn near gotten him and her dad killed in Hanna, Utah way back at the start of the apocalypse.
With the Zs slowed or stalled out altogether, the chance of inadvertently running into the path of a mega-horde greatly diminished, survivors like the rent-a-cop, Prestons who had previously bugged-in, were coming out of the woodwork—so to speak.
Word on the street was that the population of Colorado Springs was likely to double or triple before spring.
Not happy with the delayed response, the man whose nametag read Dagwood rose and repeated his inane question concerning the weather.
After answering the man with a simple nod—more than she felt was warranted—Raven followed Max as he padded along the length of narrow, red carpet rolled out from the entry to the elevators.
Where is President Clay going to get the food to feed all the arriving mouths? was on Raven’s mind as she left the carpet and made her way to the stairwell.
As if wondering why they weren’t taking the elevator, Max paused by the stairwell door and glanced up at Raven.
Seeing the side-eye look directed her way, Raven said, “If my dad climbed all these stairs a week after emerging from a coma, I’m sure you can handle them.” Half-expecting a yip or growl in response, and getting neither, she opened the door and shooed Max through.
Ninety minutes after launching from Caesar’s Palace, Jedi One was making 180 knots and just forming up with a flight of two prototype RAH-66 Comanche helicopters. Recently rescued from a climate-controlled warehouse at Fort Rucker’s U.S. Army Aviation Museum, the black helos were designed with stealth in mind and painted with radar-absorbing paint. Internally stowed weapons and landing gear blessed the two-seaters with a radar signature that rivaled the much larger Ghost Hawk.
With noise signatures nearly that of their big brother, the AH-64 Apache, their rotor hum and turbine whine could be heard inside Jedi One.
“I always wanted to strap on one of those,” Ari stated. “I was angling for my shot all the way up until the day they axed the program.” He shook his head. “That bird sure is easy on the eyes.”
“Yeah,” said Axe sullenly. “I always wanted to meet Mike Tyson. Give the cunt a proper verbal thrashing for beating Frank Bruno. My dad was devastated that our mate lost. Never saw him as angry as he was that day. School boy Nigel was affected by it all. Got into two or three fights over it before the school year was out. All due to an outcome I couldn’t change.”
Griff said, “That happened twenty-three years ago, Axe. Old history. Let it go, bro.”
“What was he like?”
“Once he got over the mess Skip made of the lobby, he was pretty soft-spoken,” Cross replied.
Axe shifted in his seat. Settling his gaze on Cross, he said, “Just like he was in the Hangover. Lisp and all.”
Lopez had been looking out the ship’s hip window, his attention divided between listening to the commentary and ogling the beautiful landscape hundreds of feet below the speeding Jedi ride. The wide-open expanse—Arizona, he guessed—was broken up by plunging canyons, debris-choked arroyos, and mesas bristling with brush and the occasional cactus.
Seeing a feathery ochre plume rising off the desert floor a good distance off the ship’s starboard side, he broke in over the shipwide comms.
“You seeing that, Ari?”
“Roger that. Probably another mega straying over from the Plains states.” Addressing Haynes, he said, “Get the FLIR on it.”
“Copy that,” Haynes replied.
A few seconds, later an image of the plume was filling up the rectangular partition centered on the glass cockpit.
Ari said, “Zoom, please.”
Haynes complied, the action revealing a knot of Zs trundling across a barren landscape. Because the horde was coming straight at the optics, and the dirt kicked up was rising and spreading like the Haboob sandstorms Ari had encountered in the Sandbox, only the lead element, numbering in the tens of thousand
s, was evident on the helo’s monitors.
Switching from shipwide comms to a secure channel shared only by Haynes, Skipper, and the Comanche pilots, Ari alerted the latter of his intent to break formation and get eyes on the horde.
The Comanche flight came back at once, the female aviator in the lead bird saying she would like to accompany Jedi One on its short jaunt east.
Though he didn’t want to have to constantly monitor the ships on his flanks, Ari agreed, saying, “Form on me echelon right. Rolling in.”
Both pilots acknowledged the order and the three-ship flight banked to starboard and dove for the deck.
Closing the distance at near maximum speed and barely a hundred feet off the desert floor, they covered the handful of miles in just a matter of seconds. Now within visual range of the mega-horde, Ari hauled back on the stick and applied left pedal. As his actions were relayed to the rotors, the bird slowed considerably and nosed around ninety degrees to port.
What was once a dot on the horizon trailing a dirt cloud was now a hundred yards to the fore and presenting as a seemingly never-ending train of flesh and bone in full locomotion. The desert soil kicked up by the pounding feet rose and roiled, the prevailing wind pushing it the length of the column.
Speechless, Ari spun the helo parallel to the horde, dipped the nose, and proceeded forward at a crawl, counter to the horde’s direction of travel.
As the undead procession marched on, its ultimate destination a mystery to all aboard the three helos, it left in its wake trampled cacti draped with scraps of dirty fabric, bent and broken corpses leaking organs and black fluids, and a long, wide swath of churned-up soil a shade or two darker than the rest.
In the troop compartment, Lopez said to Cross, “What kind of numbers are we looking at?”
The former Special Agent to the President didn’t look away from the window. Small Town Boy probably couldn’t tear his eyes from the train of death, thought Lopez.
The helicopter hit a pocket of turbulence and jounced everyone in their seats.
Shaking his head, Cross matched Lopez’s gaze. “I’ve seen nearly a million bodies packed between the Capitol Building and Lincoln Memorial. There were so many people on the mall at one time that some people resorted to wading into the reflecting pond to get from point A to point B.” He regarded the mega-horde, stared hard for a beat, then said, “There’s at least a million down there. Hell, maybe two million.”
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home Page 17