Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home

by Chesser, Shawn

  “They have nothing to do with cereal. These are all training days I hope to get in. I just chose the symbols at random.” Pointing at week one and two, all the days marked with black capital letter Cs and red hearts, he said, “The first two weeks I’ve been told to take it easy, so I’m just doing cardio. I’ll alternate between bike and treadmill.”

  Raven cocked her head as if to say Slow your roll, Dad.

  Taking the body language to mean she was worried her personal space may be in jeopardy of a dad invasion, Cade said, “If I need to go in your room to ride the bike, I’ll knock first.”

  Raven shook her head. “That’s not the issue. It’s just that I think you need to relax for a bit. At least until the headaches stop.”

  Ignoring Raven’s misplaced concern, he pointed at the different symbols packed firmly into week three. “Blue moons are leg days. Yellow diamonds are low-impact cardio days: stairs, swimming, walks around the hotel. Red hearts are high-impact cardio days: running, medicine ball, weightlifting.”

  “What about the black spades?”

  “Those are days I’ll be away training at the team facilities.”

  “So you’re back?”

  He shook his head. “Not officially. I’ll be working out on my own. Range time, mostly. If I do run some kill-house evolutions with them, it’ll only happen when they’re between missions.”

  You will be back was what she was thinking as she said, “Seeing you so motivated has me wanting to up my own exercise routine.”

  “Going to hit the stationary bike?”

  Raven shrugged. “That or take Max on a walk.”

  “Sounds good,” Cade said. “And the bowel movement thing.” He paused for a beat. “Let’s keep that in house. Just between you and me. OK?”

  Giggling, Raven said, “Of course, Dad. Mum is the word.” She gave him a firm hug and was out the door.

  Part 2

  Chapter 35

  Antlers Hotel

  In tune with her internal clock, Raven awoke just as the unseen sun was chinning itself over low mountains somewhere in the east and turning golden the high plains of Colorado.

  As she had done every morning since her father’s emergence, she moved Max off of her legs, rolled out of bed and padded across her room.

  Arriving at the west-facing window, she gently parted the blackout curtains and dropped her gaze to the park below.

  Shit!

  Someone had painted up her park again. This time the graffiti marred the newly erected granite wall. It looked to be a portrait of a man, the face red and yellow and in profile. Below it was more of the strange writing she felt she had seen somewhere before, yet still couldn’t place where or when.

  “Fuck! Damn it all to hell!” she cursed under her breath. The eff word just slipped out. The rest was a saying of Duncan’s that had rubbed off on her over the previous months. She cast a quick glance at the door separating her room from her dad’s. Seeing that it was closed gave her a bit of relief. Though her mom was gone, and she was closer to thirteen than twelve, cursing was still the one thing her dad did not take well. Even if he didn’t always comment when she slipped up, his displeasure was evident on his face every time she did.

  After all her dad had gone through over the last few months, the last thing she wanted to do was heap more worry on his plate.

  She threw on the clothes from the previous day. Dressed in all black, she donned her coat and laced on her boots.

  She pulled open her door to the connected rooms and knocked softly. “Up yet, Dad?”

  Stupid question. He didn’t sleep much. And nearly every waking hour was spent getting his mind and body into what he called “fighting shape.”

  “Coming in,” she warned as she pushed through the walnut door. It was never locked. Nor was hers.

  First thing Raven noted was the soft hiss of running water. Not wanting to see her dad naked, she turned to exit the room. As she did, she couldn’t help but notice the pair of Asics running shoes. They were identical in style to the first pair he had worn out on the treadmill. However, pointing to all of the miles pounded out within Colorado Springs’ walls, these runners were dirty and scuffed.

  With daytime temperatures average for early spring and the snow gone until autumn rolled around again, Cade had been doing his running exclusively outside.

  After giving the shoes a cursory glance, her eyes roamed the wall. The calendar pages were no longer just marked up with icons denoting daily workouts her dad intended to complete. The days gone by all bore writing detailing his progress along the road to full recovery. Improvement or decline—it was all there.

  Standing out starkly, due to the day-glow ink used to mark the string of days, were January and February’s lunar cycles. Her dad’s satellite phone had remained silent as those windows of missed opportunity had come and gone.

  All of the previous days in March, save for the 13th, were outlined thickly with black ink.

  On today’s date were three icons: a red heart, a yellow diamond, and a black spade. The shoes on the floor were a good indication the former was finished. That her dad was taking a shower told her the yellow diamond was completed, too. He would never waste the water unless he had already finished his daily laps in the Antlers’ pool. That left the black spade. Seeing as how training at Peterson usually happened in the afternoon, once the active Pale Riders had finished their own physical therapy regimens, it was likely her dad’s next order of business.

  Strangely, though, her dad hadn’t noted the true significance of the day. If he didn’t broach the subject first, she decided to stay mum and ask him about it before day’s end.

  Exiting the room, Raven’s eyes fell on the gear laid out on her dad’s crisply made bed. Both Glocks were present. Threaded onto the Glocks was the pair of suppressors made specifically for them.

  The scent of gun oil hitting her nose all but confirmed he would be visiting the kill house on the nearby airbase.

  The distinct sound of the pocket door sliding open reached her ears and she turned away.

  “It’s OK,” Cade said, “I’m already dressed.”

  Stepping back into the room, a sheepish look on her face, Raven said, “I’m sorry to intrude. I just poked my head in.”

  “Mi casa es su casa.”

  Raven tilted her head and looked quizzically at her dad. “That’s not Chinese.”

  He shook his head. “It’s Spanish. Means my house is your house.” Rubbing a towel over what passed for hair on his nearly bald head, he added, “What’s on your plate today? More exploring on the north side?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going out with the boys.”

  Cade made a face. “You see what they did to the park?”

  “They sure did a number this time.”

  “Apparently your chat with Chief Riggleman fell on deaf ears.”

  Another of Duncan’s sayings spilled from her mouth. “She’s worthless as tits on a boar.”

  Grimacing, Cade said, “You watch your six out there. Don’t go letting that little bit of paint left there by what I suspect were drunk teenagers take you off your game. Clear your mind and stuff those feelings before you leave the wire.” After a short pause, he fixed her with a hard stare. “Understood?”

  Nodding, Raven said, “Looks like you’re training with the team today.”

  Waving a dismissive hand at the calendar, Cade said, “I’m just trying to keep the rust off, that’s all.”

  Raven thought, That’s a load of bullshit! She said, “How are your nails?”

  Gazing at one hand, he said, “These old turtle-shell-looking things? They soften up after a long swim. Stay pretty tender for a while afterward. Won’t be long until they’re back to the way they were before all this.”

  Raven made a face as she took his hand in hers.

  “Relax,” he said, “your dad is going to be just fine.”

  She inspected the regrowth without saying a word.

  Sensing the chan
ge in her demeanor, he said, “Besides, I always wear gloves when I go out.”

  Raven released his hands. “Aha!” she said. “We have confirmation. Does that mean you got the call?”

  Cade shook his head. “I feel another swing and a miss coming up.”

  Shifting her gaze to the calendar, Raven said, “Relax, there’s still ten days until the New Moon.”

  After a quick glance at his recently acquired Suunto, Cade started to lace up his newish Danner boots.

  Though Raven thought she would never hope for the call for him to go to actually happen, she did now. Seeing her dad with nothing to do other than work on his recovery and learn new languages was beginning to weigh on her. For she now understood the need for the rush of adrenaline he was missing. She could feel herself going soft, her senses being dulled by monotony, even after just a few days of inactivity inside the walls.

  For someone like her dad, a hard charger used to being downrange and riding the razor’s edge, how it felt to be cooped up for as long as he had must be a thousand times worse than what she was experiencing.

  Looking up, Cade said, “Want to help me stow my gear?”

  Raven put a hand on his arm. Took ahold of the MultiCam blouse and drew him near. Brown eyes searching his, she said, “They’ll take you back. After all you’ve given, all you’ve sacrificed … they have to. They have no choice but to have you back.”

  Cade said, “Whatever happens, happens,” and drew her near and hugged her tight.

  Unable to hold it in any longer, Raven said, “Do you know what today is?”

  Smiling, Cade nodded. “I’m amazed you remember.” He unfastened the chain holding his dog tags and took from it Brook’s white gold wedding ring. He turned Raven’s hand over and placed the ring on her open palm. The diamonds sparkled as they settled there.

  Raven’s eyes misted up.

  “Would have been fourteen years today. Second best day of my life.”

  She looked a question at him.

  “First best was the day we met you.” He paused for a long while. “That’s yours now.”

  Biting her lip, she nodded and threaded the ring onto her necklace.

  “Now help me bag up my kit.”

  As if on cue, they both felt deep in their chests the subtle harmonic thrum signaling the arrival of the stealth Ghost Hawk.

  Looking at the window, she said, “You’re going now?”

  “No,” he answered. “The team’s returning from an op. I’m just hitching a ride to Peterson.”

  “Why aren’t you driving? You could take Wilson’s Tahoe.”

  Wearing a sheepish grin, he said, “Houston, we have a problem. I left Wilson’s rig there the other day.”

  “Why?”

  “We were field testing a new fast attack vehicle. Lopez shanghaied me … all of us, really, and tooled nearly to Pueblo. Since it was getting dark, and we were closer to here than Peterson, I had him drop me at the South Gate.”

  She said, “So this is his way of making it up to you?”

  “Either that, or he has something else up his sleeve.”

  Frowning, she said, “Where are they going to land?”

  Cade slipped on his pack and zipped shut his range bag. “They aren’t. You know Ari … always a flair for the dramatic. I’m getting picked up on the roof.” Flashing her a smile, he said, “Please tell Wilson he’ll get his baby back tonight.”

  I may just let him sweat it for a bit, was what she was thinking. She said, “Will do.” Then stabbing a finger at the ceiling, she asked, “I don’t think there’s room enough for a helicopter to land up there.”

  Cade said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Rolling her eyes, Raven said, “Dinner at five?”

  He said, “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” and was out the door and heading for the stairs.

  Raven waited until the door snicked shut, then picked up a pen and on the calendar drew a big red heart around March 13.

  Chapter 36

  To say Raven was pissed upon seeing the true extent of damage done by unknown entities stealing in during the night would be a vast understatement. In fact, she was livid. For the first time since her dad had emerged from his coma, she wanted to break something. For after having gone to Chief Riggleman more than once to voice her concerns and received from the no-nonsense forty-something with the soft drawl a promise to “put a clamp down on whose hands the paint ends up in” once again someone had desecrated her park.

  It had been five minutes since the helicopter had plucked her dad off the roof. Though her vantage from the park hadn’t been the best, she could have sworn the wheels hadn’t even come out of the fuselage as the black aircraft hovered above the portion of roof where Tran’s garden was to go in. One second her dad was standing on the parapet, the next a pair of men clad in camouflage and wearing helmets were hauling him aboard.

  The smell of kerosene-tinged exhaust was just beginning to dissipate when her two-way radio warbled and Daymon informed her he was running late.

  With time to burn, Raven decided to check on the trail cameras Duncan had installed for her weeks ago.

  The first camera was secreted in a bush near the southeast entrance. She walked the short distance to where the path intersected the sidewalk. She found the camera on the ground underneath the bush, but it had been moved and stripped of its batteries. The person responsible had made a point of leaving the camera where it could only be found by whoever had placed it there.

  Doubting the camera captured anything useful before being disabled, she inserted fresh batteries and powered it on. When the small screen came to life, the only captured image was the distinct outline of a hand flashing the camera the middle finger.

  “Eff you, too, buddy,” she said, powering the camera off and stuffing it into her pack. Adjusting the SBR on its sling, she rose and walked her gaze around the park. At the far corner was a light standard. Protruding from the pole was a metal box containing a Walk/Don’t Walk signal. It was clear straight away, even from this distance, that someone had found the camera Duncan had mounted atop the box. Having come out of the factory with black, brown, and green leaves—a camouflage pattern she thought was called Mossy Oak—the camera now looked like it had been shit out by a unicorn. Painted in every color of the rainbow, the rectangular device stuck out like a second middle finger being directed at her.

  In the middle distance, a pair of workers were already scrubbing paint from a wall they’d been working on for days. Only recently had the stonemasons resumed their work on the ornate base. By engaging them in small talk, Raven had learned the twenty-year-old twins were among the handful of lucky travelers who had survived the tragedy at the wall. They had been at the tail end of what had come to be called the Pueblo Diaspora and were literally snatched from the hands of the dead and dragged aboard a black helicopter returning from a mission somewhere southwest of Springs.

  A week ago, when the temperature had finally crested sixty for the first time since November, Raven had spent an hour watching the young men encase the cement base in sheets of Italian marble and line the edges with rounded tile Duncan called “bullnose.”

  In the week since, even with the temperature dipping back into the forties and fifties, she had seen them out here on hands and knees, every daylight hour of every day, putting to use what they had learned in the family monument business. But instead of chiseling names and dates on individual tombstones, they were adding to the wall the names of hundreds of fellow travelers killed by the ravenous dead, taken all together that day the Pueblo Diaspora met two walls, one static and erected by workers, the other mobile and coming at them, relentlessly, with claw-like hands and gnashing teeth.

  Still fuming, she struck off diagonally across the park, toward the tree she knew held another one of her cameras.

  Chapter 37

  The tree holding the third trail camera rose up over the antique locomotive on display on the west side of Antlers Park.
Nearby, the workers kneeled on brick pavers, backs arched and scrubbing furiously at the fresh paint. If they had seen Raven take down the first two cameras, they didn’t seem at all interested.

  “‘Clamp down on where the paint ends up’ my ass,” she growled as she eyed the camera perched on a branch high over her head. “Thanks a million, Chief Riggleman.”

  To get the camera set up on the branch a dozen feet off the ground, Duncan had climbed a ladder borrowed from the Antlers.

  Raven was standing and staring up at the camera, wondering how she was going to get the ladder and carry it here by herself, when from behind her came the soft scuff of leather on stone.

  At once the lizard part of her brain came alive. Honed from months of living one breath to the next, her first instinct was to go for the Glock on her hip and turn in the direction the noise had originated. Halfway through the turn, the Glock already clear of the holster, she heard a disembodied male voice say, “Need some help?”

  By the time she’d finished the quick one-eighty, the Glock was pressed to her hip, its deadly end aimed where she guessed the man’s midsection to be. Recognizing the man as one of the twins, she said, “Matt … Michael, whichever one you are … you can’t go sneaking up on people like that.”

  Raising his hands, the man said, “Sorry. I’m Matt.”

  Lowering her pistol, Raven said, “What the heck were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t,” he admitted. “Guess I’m starting to forget how things are out there.” He paused long enough to let his gaze roam the park from one end to the other. “It’s this place,” he went on. “It’s special. Takes me back to the way things used to be. Back to when we didn’t have to be so, so vigilant.”

  “I get it,” Raven said. “More than you probably know.” Directing her gaze to the trail cam, she accepted his offer.

  That brought a smile to the young man’s face.

  Holstering the Glock, she asked, “Do you have a ladder?”