Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 14): Home

by Chesser, Shawn

  He reminded himself that the time was not now.

  All business, he whispered “Clear” and pushed deeper into the Grayson residence.

  Chapter 64

  Raven had remained stock-still, finger on the trigger, while Pirate stalked the length of the driveway. She finally exhaled and drew a breath once she thought he was out of earshot.

  The dead weight crashing to the ground, somewhere out of sight, was louder than the report from Pirate’s suppressed pistol.

  The stocky man tromped back up the drive, muttering to himself in Mandarin. He paused for a tick before reentering the breezeway. Head down, he spent a few seconds standing there alternating between pressing his thumbs into his temples and massaging the back of his neck.

  Clearly Pirate was carrying a huge burden.

  Pixie’s high-pitched voice finally spurred Pirate into action. Once he was back in the garage and work with the power tool had commenced, Raven stepped from the hedges. Seeing nothing but garage rafters through the broken garage window, she trained her weapon on the rectangle where a person’s face was likely to show and backpedaled down the driveway.

  Coming to the face-shot rotter prone on the sidewalk, she looped around the van and made a beeline for her pack.

  Now, some thirty minutes after her near-death experience with the man who she figured needed to see an eye doctor, really, really bad, she was back at the spot where she had scaled the wall.

  The Pikers were gone. The overpass was an above-ground cemetery awash with too many twice-dead Zs to count. A dead sled would eventually arrive and take the corpses to one of the massive graves dug into the hard high-plain soil.

  With several hours to go before the first dark-purple band of dawn showed on the eastern horizon, the probability the people stuck on cleanup detail arriving anytime soon was next to zero.

  Dragging the radio out, Raven hailed Daymon.

  “Daymon here.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Here,” he answered.

  “Where’s here?”

  “Stand with your back to the wall.”

  Raven stuffed the radio into her pocket and pressed her back to the wall. A tick later, a thick, knotted rope appeared in her peripheral. It looped high over the wall then came back to earth a couple of feet to her left. After bouncing off the wall a couple of times, the rope came to rest, hanging laser-straight, the unattached end a couple of inches off the ground.

  Swinging her rifle around to her back, Raven climbed the rope, hand over hand.

  Waiting on the other side, Daymon helped her to the ground.

  NVGs still deployed, Raven noticed that Daymon had already rolled the garbage cans across the street and nosed them both against the restaurant.

  The beach cruiser was propped up on its kickstand.

  Daymon said, “Welcome back, Captain America Junior.”

  Raven made a face she doubted he could see. Gesturing at the three bumps under the ivy, she said, “You put the bikes back wrong.”

  “Do I get an A for effort?”

  She said, “Thank you, Daymon. Now give me a hand.”

  Working together, they got the tattoo crew’s bikes put back in proper order.

  Daymon untied the rope from the storm grate he’d used to anchor it. As he reeled it back in, he said, “Well? What’d you find out?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did you get pictures? Video?”

  Raven said nothing.

  Grimacing, Daymon said, “Tell me you got some video.”

  “I … think I got some video.”

  “Elaborate.”

  Raven flipped up the NVGs and powered them off. She turned the bike around and pushed it into the street. Still tight-lipped, she straddled the seat and pedaled off into the dark.

  A few seconds passed before Daymon caught up to Raven, pedaling a bike way too small for him. Knees jutting to the sides and hunched over the bars, he fixed her with a hard stare. “Well,” he repeated. “What’d you find out?”

  Breaking her silence, Raven told him what she had seen with her own eyes. Then she mentioned the fifty-five-gallon drums they were filling with feed. The second she mentioned the van, Daymon said, “We need to get that phone of yours charged. Whatever you got, Duncan and Tran need to see it right away.”

  Nodding in agreement, Raven said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Saying, “Me, too,” with a certain sense of urgency in his voice, Daymon put his head down and pedaled as fast as he could.

  Chapter 65

  Portland, Oregon

  Keeping his gaze lowered lest he see the pictures on the walls, Cade cleared the rest of his home, alone, and heavy of heart. When he exited the house through the slider five minutes after he had entered, half-a-dozen Snickers bars were clutched in one gloved fist, a couple of Star Trek novels bulged his pants’ cargo pockets, and a treasure trove of photos were tucked safely away in his ruck. He had succeeded in finding in the clutter of his office all of the wedding photos, several of he and Brook on their honeymoon, and dozens of photos memorializing Raven’s birth and each of her “firsts”. He’d even struck gold, finding a few yellowed black and whites of grandparents and some color photos of his mom and dad.

  Cross elbowed Griff. “See,” he said, “Wyatt’s word is always bond. He got into the stash of good stuff.”

  Acting on the not-so-subtle cue, Cade passed out the candy bars, giving two to Nat.

  “Thanks for clearing the deader from the door. I was in kind of a dark place at the moment.”

  “I figured as much,” Nat said, smiling. “You didn’t have to give me an extra treat for doing it.”

  “Consider the extra an upfront thank you. I’m going to need your help to move another stiff outside. Then we have to shore up the living room window with the sofa and love seat.”

  Already swallowing the last of the two Snickers bars, Nat said, “I’m on it,” and entered the house through the sliding door.

  “Come with me,” Cade said, motioning to Griff. “Leave your ruck.”

  Looking up from what he was doing, Nat asked, “Where you going, boss?”

  “Around the block,” Cade replied. “To my old neighbor’s house. It’s close. We’ll remain in constant contact over comms.”

  Cross was peeking out the sliding door, through the vertical blinds. Letting the slats fall back into place, he said, “Doubt if any deaders followed us. I’ll watch the alley, just the same.”

  Cade said, “Zs are the least of my worries. Keep an eye out for foot mobiles. Though Target Alpha is three and a half miles out, we need to stay frosty. Last thing we need is to lose the element of surprise.”

  Cross said, “Copy that,” pulled a chair up next to the slider, cracked it open a couple of inches, and sat down.

  Cade removed the wooden dowel from the slider channel. Handing it to Cross, he said, “If for some reason you have to get up, use this. Damn locks on these are useless.”

  Peering through the peephole, Griff called, “Street out front is clear. You ready, Wyatt?”

  Nodding, Cade made his way through the dining room and paused by the front door to radio the TOC back at Peterson, as well as the QRF waiting at their loiter a few miles northeast of Portland’s city limits. After letting them both know he was leaving the team’s loiter to conduct a ten-minute recon of the immediate area, he led Griff out of the house, down the steps, and paused on the sidewalk fronting the gray Craftsman.

  After powering on his NVGs, Cade walked his gaze left-to-right down Boise Street, from Rawley’s old home to the intersection with 48th.

  Maybe because it just so happened to be his street, for the first time since he’d scrambled from Jedi One, Cade noticed accumulations of windblown trash, scattered drifts of leaves huddling around storm drains, and that most of the cars left at the curb sat on semi-flat tires.

  The neighborhood has gone to the dogs.

  The second he thought it, Cade heard a h
ound baying to the south—the same direction off 48th he and Griff would be turning.

  The hound’s call was soon joined by others. They seemed to be communicating.

  While Cade loved dogs, he had no desire to see if these ones held humans in the same regard. Left alone to fend for themselves, no matter their previous training or dispositions, dogs were usually very quick to get back to their roots, so to speak. To run in packs. Hunt in packs. Cade had seen the results of a lone person caught out and about and descended upon by a hungry pack. In that instance … good ol’ Fido was not man’s best friend.

  “That’s not a good sound,” Griff noted.

  Rounding the corner at 48th, Cade said, “We’re not far. House is fourth from the next corner, on this side of the street.”

  “Color and style?”

  Cade replied, “Blue? Maybe green? It’s a two-story. Detached garage is on the left side at the end of the driveway. Side door should be open.”

  “What were their names?”

  After a short pause, during which Cade stopped at the corner of Cora and 48th to scan the street east to west, he said, “Ted and Lisa were their names. Me and Ted were known to share a pint at the local brew pub. Take in a Mariners or Blazer game.”

  “You don’t talk sports much,” Griff said. “Don’t really strike me as a drinker, either. Hell, Wyatt … you’re as by the book a leader as any I’ve come across.”

  If only you knew the gray areas I’ve visited, Cade thought. He said, “Here it is,” and peeled off to his left.

  Viewed with the full color NVGs, Cade learned that Ted and Lisa’s house was white. He also saw that the dark green British sports car Ted had been constantly tinkering on was still sitting on jacks in the two-car garage.

  After stalking around the car and giving the garage an all clear, Cade’s eye was drawn to the bare hook on the wall where he’d taken down the axe he’d used to put down his neighbors. What a baptism by fire that had been. Surreal, to say the least.

  Ted and Lisa’s twice-dead corpses were on the floor, too. Fused to pools of their own dried blood, arms and legs bent at odd angles, the pair reminded him of the horrors created by the Vesuvius eruption.

  But this was not Pompeii. And he wasn’t here seeking closure or to make amends.

  What was done, was done.

  What Cade had come for was hanging from the rafters, a yard from his grasp, and wrapped in cobwebs. In fact, Ted was the one who had given Cade the idea of suspending his family’s bikes from the rafters.

  Filtering in through the open side door: the raucous sound of dogs barking. This time the noises seemed to come from somewhere south of the garage. While seemingly scattered when first he’d heard them, it now sounded as if the hounds had coalesced into a roving pack.

  “Lend me a hand,” Cade said. Standing on an upended five-gallon bucket emblazoned with Home Depot and drowning warnings, he lifted Lisa’s bike from the hooks.

  Griff took the woman’s lavender ten-speed from Cade and propped it against the project car. Suppressing a chuckle, he said, “This one has Cross’s name written all over it.”

  “He isn’t vain,” Cade said. “He’d ride a unicycle into battle if need be.”

  “No single wheels for this Southie. I’d rather ride a Big Wheel into battle.”

  Manhandling Ted’s Kona mountain bike off the hooks, Cade said, “That can be arranged.” As he handed the eighteen-speed to Griff, he went on, “Don’t mistake my quiet demeanor for weakness. If you bust my chops in front of the others again, you’ll find yourself legless and pushing yourself into battle on a skateboard.”

  Griff took a step back, put his hands on his hips, and hung his head.

  Cade said, “Are we good?”

  Looking up, Griff said, “I meant nothing by it. I’m just used to busting Lopez’s balls. That’s all.”

  Cade smiled and nodded in agreement. “He thrives on the abuse. I think he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if everyone kissed his ass all the time.”

  “This purple rocket is just his speed,” quipped Griff.

  Cade shook his head. Still smiling, he said, “If Lopez was here, I’d try and stick him with my daughter’s bike. At least at first. Just to see his reaction.”

  “You’re all right, Wyatt. Maybe a little stoic at times … but you’re all right, just the same.” He paused and let his gaze roam the garage. Finally, fixing Cade with the four-lens-stare, he said, “I’m sorry. We’re good.”

  The dogs were back at it again. A cacophony of yips and growls, punctuated now and then by the deep-throated baying. It almost sounded as if they were staking out the end of the driveway.

  Cade tested the air pressure in the bike tires by pressing his thumb on each one. While he couldn’t feel the rims when he applied pressure, all of the tires could use some air.

  “We better go,” Griff said. He pulled the woman’s bike to the open door. “I’ll take this one.”

  With no reason to argue with the SEAL, Cade rolled Ted’s Kona into the breezeway. He was throwing one leg over the seat when he heard throaty growls. It sounded nothing like that of the dead, but he detected hunger in there, nonetheless.

  Griff said, “You have an MRE? Cereal bar? Better yet, a bone?”

  “In my ruck back at the house,” Cade answered. He dismounted the bike, then unslung his M4 and threw the selector to Fire.

  If the dogs knew the cover of darkness was not on their side, it didn’t show. They were emboldened and advancing up the drive. Leading the pack was a full-sized standard poodle. Its black coat was grown out and home to twigs and burrs. Teeth bared, it looked left and right. As if on cue, the bloodhound and chocolate Lab flanking the poodle advanced.

  Though he didn’t want to expend one round, let alone burn half of a magazine to put down the fifteen or so mutts facing them, Cade shouldered his M4, drew a bead between the poodle’s eyes, and let a round fly.

  The suppressed report from the M4 was no louder than a book dropped flat on a hard surface. To the dogs, though, it was like the backfire from a car and came wholly unexpected. They all started. A couple of the smaller dogs yelped and cowered.

  To Cade it was apparent the pack had had the run of the neighborhood for some time and wasn’t used to push back from the living.

  The 5.56 hardball round skipped off the poodle’s long, slender snout a fraction of a second prior to drilling the alpha male squarely between the eyes. The poodle didn’t yelp or whimper. It simply collapsed to the driveway, unmoving and no longer holding sway on the pack.

  Primal instincts driving them, the rest of the pack gave up ground.

  To add an exclamation point to the encounter, Cade snapped off a second shot, the round crackling like an angry hornet as it passed harmlessly over the pack. Then, as the mongrels began to fully disperse, he skipped a couple of rounds off the driveway.

  “Let’s go before another one goes alpha and they regroup.”

  Though it was unlikely the reports of the suppressed gunshots had carried past the end of the driveway, to be safe, Cade contacted Cross on the comms. After telling the operator to expect them in a couple of minutes, Cade hopped on the Kona and followed Griff, already slow-rolling the ten-speed past the dead poodle.

  Chapter 66

  In the Founders Suite, back at the Antlers Hotel, Raven had just started her iPhone charging.

  After stowing their bikes in the bushes outside, Daymon had ridden the elevator up with her. Instead of tagging along to see what kind of footage—if any—was captured on the dead device, he had padded off to see if waking Duncan at this hour was in the cards.

  When Raven had inserted the charging cord and saw the iPhone’s screen remain black, she had assumed the worst: that the thing had finally gone brick on her. That it was a useless slab of metal and glass and any footage in its memory, unrecoverable.

  Now, a couple of minutes later, on a black background on the screen was a battery icon. It was an ominous shade of red and flashing
intermittently.

  Coming through the door ahead of Daymon, his shock of silver hair suffering a serious case of bedhead, Duncan said, “Little lady … didn’t anyone teach you that a watched pot never boils?”

  Mockingly, she asked, “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around, does it make a sound?”

  “Touché,” said Duncan. “Bird of the Apocalypse knows her idioms.”

  “Duncanisms,” she corrected. “You used the forest one a dozen times back at Eden.”

  Changing the subject, Duncan said, “Leave that thing alone for a minute and it’ll charge faster.”

  “I’m just grateful it is charging. A minute ago I was worried it had bricked on me.”

  Arching a brow, Duncan said, “Bricked?”

  Daymon was busy getting water for coffee going on a single burner stove. He looked up. “It means your phone has died and it ain’t coming back. Even the techs at the Apple stores say they can’t resurrect a bricked phone.”

  Nodding, Duncan asked, “So … what does that flashing red battery mean?”

  Coming through the door Daymon had left open, Wilson said, “Means it’s taking a charge but doesn’t have enough juice to power up. If you want to keep this from happening again, you should find a solar charger and a couple of those backup batteries like Taryn uses.”

  Daymon spooned finely ground coffee into the French press. “Lola might stock something like that. Shit … she has everything else.”

  Obviously exasperated, eyes still glued to the device, Raven began popping her knuckles.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Glenda as she entered the room. She wore a white flannel nightgown dotted with canary-yellow daisies. It stopped at her knees and clashed mightily with her fuzzy, hot-pink slippers.

  Glenda’s hair was the polar opposite of Duncan’s. It was cut short but still looked as if she had just returned from the stylist.

  Assuming the woman slept with a nightcap on, Raven crossed her arms but said nothing.