The flightpath itself was the second thing that had been niggling at him. Whereas Colorado Springs was almost due southeast of the compound, based on both the sun’s position—roughly eleven o’clock in relation to the speeding craft’s nose—the first leg of the journey had them tacking substantially more to the north. And further adding to the mystery, once the helo reached the north/south running stripe of highway he knew to be 16, the craft banked sharply to starboard causing the bodies on board—both living and dead—to loll and strain against the restraints holding them in place.
The pilot held the new southerly course and kept their altitude at what looked to Cade to be a constant five hundred feet above ground level. Which at times caused the road below to seemingly rise up toward the helo from where it followed the natural contours of the earth and then fall back down and run flat and true where fenced-in fields and scrub-dotted range dominated on both sides.
A short while after the banking turn, a two-story farmhouse complete with a hulking red barn and tubular silo appeared below Cade’s port-side vantage. And going off of second-hand descriptions of Ray and Helen’s place, the structures, snaking dirt drive, and sloped grazing area, when all taken into consideration, left him no doubt he was looking at the elderly couple’s defunct alpaca ranch.
Shortly after the Thagon place was lost from view Cade felt the craft slow considerably and list slowly to port, the unexpected maneuver pressing him into his seat and causing some of the Rangers who weren’t sleeping to crane around and look out windows of their own.
We’re going to buzz Bear River, thought Cade. No sooner had the words dissipated from his mind than they were spoken by the pilot. He also heard Dregan and Judge Pomeroy’s names uttered in the same breath as the air crew debated the merits and risks of the low fly-by meant solely to add an exclamation mark to the message already delivered by Major Freda Nash via satellite phone the day before.
Nash, he thought. You wily son-of-a-gun. A move like this was just her style.
The next-gen Chinook orbited above the Bear River compound, scribing an elongated oval disturbance in the low-lying cloud cover.
Like the Rangers, all who were now alert and craning toward the windows, Cade was pressing his nose to the Plexiglas and taking in everything he could see on the ground. There was an orchard of skeletal trees north of town, a dirt road cutting through their uniformly spaced ranks. Guard towers, partially hidden behind the tallest of the trees, rose up from all four corners of the makeshift cement wall ringing the entire enclave. Interspersed between copses of small and medium-sized trees growing up inside the wall were dozens of homes. Most sat on large plats of land and appeared to have been built decades ago. The small pockets of one- and two-story dwellings on the northern periphery were obviously of newer construction, most erected around circular cul-de-sacs and facing each other, while others were laid out in a grid pattern with narrow paved streets running neatly between them.
There were static vehicles parked here and there on the streets and nearly every home had a vehicle or two nosed into the driveway against closed garages.
West of town, the lengthening grass between the highway and wall was host to dozens of Zs. A handful could be seen lurching along muddy trails beaten into the low-lying pastures. Dozens more were pressing their chests futilely against the wall ingeniously constructed from dozens of twenty-foot-tall highway noise deterrent partitions. No way anything less than a full-blown horde of thousands was getting inside those walls, he surmised. On one hand he kind of envied the setup. It was like most of the forward operating bases he’d occasionally run ops from in the ‘Stan, only supersized. However, the walled-in town, blessed with good fields of fire and nicely elevated platforms from which to engage enemies both dead and alive, was way too close to the road for his liking. Against a determined sizable force composed of armed breathers it would only be defensible if you had dedicated operators in the towers and more shooters positioned in the upper stories of the tallest homes near the walls.
Too many possible weak links amongst the reported two-hundred-plus individuals calling the place home.
Midway through the first pass, people began filing out of the homes and some of the businesses in the center of town. They stood on the main drag, side streets and handful of muddy alleyways crisscrossing the older part of Bear River.
Cade saw pale faces peering up expectantly. The helo’s faint shadow rippled over the town center causing him to imagine what the former Salt Lake County Circuit Court Judge the message was meant for must be thinking at this very moment. Was he sitting in chambers in denial and trying to decide how he was going to keep his hold on power? Or had he already done the President’s bidding as relayed by Nash during the phone call and handed the reins of town security back to Alexander Dregan?
While only time would tell on the latter, Cade knew the message the menacing chopper’s eerily thwopping blades and deployed minigun barrels delivered went a long way toward discouraging the Judge of attempting the former.
After the second pass over Bear River, the helo dropped back down to near nap of the earth flight and Cade heard the twin turbines overhead spool up and begin whining like a pair of pissed-off banshees.
He watched the school bus blocking the town’s south entrance grow smaller and eventually become a dull yellow pinprick bracketed by slate gray squares the size of Lego bricks. Down below, the State Highway tracking south rippled left and right and up and down like a roller coaster. Soon the where that this new course was taking them dawned on him, but not the why. Which was nothing new in his line of work. For the real mission began when he reached Springs and had his butt in a seat in Nash’s office for the pre-mission face-to-face she had requested via the video beamed to his laptop days ago.
That she had been cryptic with her delivery when making the request didn’t sit well with him. When taking into account the fact that the entire overture for him to undertake another mission had come in the form of packets of information not only encrypted by the 50th Space Wing’s computers upon transmission, but also routed through one of the remaining super secure military satellites before being beamed to the portable dish he’d attached to his rugged laptop, sitting well was a bit of an understatement. In fact, he was damn scared. For if what she had to tell him held the kind of dire information making the face-to-face necessary, he knew said information would be nothing less than life changing. Or—he thought to himself while focusing on a string of static cars, their burned-out hulks contrasting sharply with the gray stripe of road they looked to have been fused to—potentially world-altering if things could possibly get worse in my little corner of it.
Chapter 15
The crushed gravel squelched under tire as Daymon steered the Chevy pickup onto the Woodruff Post Office parking lot. The truck lurched and took a sudden lean to the right before leveling out.
“Jeez,” he said, stopping two car-lengths short of the glass double-doors being pawed at by a handful of rotters.
“Yeah,” chimed Oliver. “Where in the hell did all of those things come from? And why haven’t the others put them down yet?”
“The pusbags aren’t what I was Jeezin’ about.”
“What’s the problem then?” Oliver asked, hefting his AR and racking a round into the chamber.
“Did these cheap Woodruff mofos ever repave anything? You’d think for the United States post office they’d skim a couple of hundred off the annual hootenanny fund and hire a fly by night paving outfit to slap a couple of inches of fresh blacktop down. Or at the very least scrape some gravel off what passes for sidewalks at this end of town and fill in the frickin’ Marianas Trench that just jacked up my lower lumbar.”
That’s the burr under his saddle? thought Oliver, as he gave his rifle a onceover. Safety on? Check. Stock collapsed to the last stop? Check. He blew some dust off the scope lens and shot a sheepish look at Daymon that said: I’m ready as I’ll ever be.
Daymon sighed, killed the motor, an
d put the truck into Park.
“What do you have in mind?” Oliver stammered, his hands nearly as shaky as his voice.
Knowing the others had to be close by because the Raptor and F-650 were sitting a dozen yards away and splashing long shadows across the entry and lower partitions of the building’s painted-over windows, Daymon said, “Get them on the radio.”
Hands steadied somewhat, Oliver thumbed the Talk button and said, “Anyone there?”
“Good copy,” Lev said, almost instantly.
Thinking the others were inside and had been watching as he pulled in, Daymon said, “Ask them what’s up with the welcoming party.”
In the thirty seconds since the Chevy had taken station on the frost-heaved blacktop, the dozen or so zombies had given up their silent vigil at the glass double-doors and cut the distance to the truck in half.
After delivering Daymon’s message, Oliver inched away from his door and threw his gaze to the lock post, which to his relief was in the down position. Then, fearing Daymon might again forcibly eject him with just a knife to take on the advancing mob, he screwed up his courage and tried beating the dreadlocked man to the punch—or shove, whichever the case may be. “Are we going to …”
Oliver’s question was cut off by the burst of white noise preceding Lev saying, “You’re late.”
“Give me that,” Daymon said, snatching the Motorola from Oliver’s hand. He thumbed the Talk button and let the radio hover near his lips for a long three-count as he reined in the rising anger. Finally, after consulting the clock on the dash and doing the math in his head, he said, “We’re only twenty minutes late. I had to stop and give Oliver here an impromptu training session.”
“Well, better late than never,” Lev answered. “We tried you on the two-way but you must have been out of range. So I used the CB and got Seth, who said you’d already come and gone from the compound. That was thirty minutes ago … we were real close to fighting our way out of here to come looking for you.”
“I’m sorry,” Daymon said, the sincerity in his voice coming through loud and clear on Lev’s end. “But I have to ask … why didn’t you guys have a plan B?”
“We did,” Lev said, sounding annoyed. “Then we came to find both of the doors to the loading dock chained and locked from the inside.”
“And the bolt cutters are in my truck,” Daymon said slowly. “Sorry again, bro. To make it up to you, we’ll take care of these things out here.”
Kindness slid from her sheath with a distinct rasp and Daymon was kneeing his door open even before the Motorola had stopped spinning on the center tray where he’d chucked it.
Seeing the man act without any kind of warning, Oliver drew in a lungful of the carrion-polluted air infiltrating the cab and reluctantly cracked his own door an inch.
Most of the Zs were already vectoring for the driver’s side when Daymon stepped onto the lot. The noise from his door slamming shut behind him got the attention of the remaining ghouls, causing them to leave Oliver a clear path out of the cab.
Seeing that he was all alone on his side of the truck, Oliver flicked the AR’s selector to Fire, went into a low crouch, and looped around the right front fender. Barrel slowly tracking with his eyes, he crabbed past the grill and rose over the left front fender just in time to see Daymon’s scything right-handed swing relieve a rotter of its head.
Feeling a rising tide of panic gripping him, Oliver planted his elbows on the hood and lined the carbine up with a female rotter flanking Daymon from the blindside. Finger tensing on the trigger, he was about to fire when the dreadlocked dervish spun and delivered a backhanded chop from Kindness that relieved a second and third zombie of the tops of their skulls.
Momentarily stunned by the vicious effectiveness of the razor-sharp, yet utilitarian blade, Oliver inadvertently relaxed his trigger finger. Which was a good thing, because in his peripheral he saw Taryn in the open doorway flapping her arms up and down as if attempting to fly away under her own power. In the next beat, she held a finger vertically to her lips and mouthed, “Don’t shoot.”
Message received. And not a moment too soon. Whereas the sound of gunfire had no effect on zombies stopped in their tracks due to freezing temperatures, it had just dawned on Oliver that the crash of even one gunshot would echo and travel for blocks, bringing around more of the same currently encircling Daymon.
Seeing Taryn draw her black blade from the scabbard on her hip and fully expecting her, Wilson, and the others filling up the doorway to come running to Daymon’s aid, Oliver released the breath trapped in his lungs and let his hands go slack on the AR.
Expectations shattered by what happened next, Oliver found himself with a snap decision to make. Either bend down to retrieve the black blade skittering and spinning across the blacktop toward him. Or go against Taryn’s admonition and risk drawing a horde by bringing the carbine into the fight against the remaining dead.
In the end he found himself acting without really thinking. Instead of going into a crouch and plucking the noisily jangling piece of metal off the ground before it came to a complete stop, he spared himself diced fingertips by trapping it under his boot prior to scooping it up. Next—as if being directed by some power outside of himself—he bent at the waist and sprinted toward the clutch of dead with the Tanto-style blade clutched firmly in his right hand.
The only thing Oliver felt when he plunged the borrowed blade into the nearest rotter’s concave right temple was the jagged tips of its previously broken ribs poking him in the gut. Trying to ignore the awful sound of Kindness sinking into flesh and bone to his left, Oliver crabbed right, moving on to his next victim.
***
“Daymon was right about him,” Taryn said, peering over her shoulder at the rest of the group crowding the doorway at her back. “He’s definitely a swimmer.” When she turned back around Oliver had already used her blade to send two more former humans to a final death.
Meanwhile, a few feet beyond the knife-wielding Gladson, Daymon was backed up against a wall of unkempt topiary and swinging Kindness head-high into the advancing picket of death.
Hissing, “Back off,” he wiped a thin rope of something slimy from where it had landed on his neck and bulled backward through the dense, chest-high shrubs, eventually making it all the way through to the sidewalk on the opposite side.
Fixated solely on the meat barely a yard to their fore, the mindless automatons tried to follow Daymon into the bushes and became bogged down by the grabbing branches.
Smiling at the sight of so many zombies marching in place and getting nowhere for their efforts, Daymon met Oliver’s gaze over the hedges. “Get over here and finish them,” he said, eyes bugged to get the point across.
Having been wedged in the doorway next to the others and finding it more difficult by the second to stay out of the way—as Daymon had requested earlier when he first spoke of doing something such as this—Lev could take no more of being a spectator to Oliver’s upper level survival course. First off, he didn’t think the man was capable of a two-on-one encounter with a Z, let alone a forced four-on-one melee, especially after what Daymon had told him about the man. Cowardice and dishonesty notwithstanding, he couldn’t stand by and let the guy die right here in front of him. No way he could sleep with that kind of death gnawing on his conscience.
As if reading Lev’s mind, Max emitted a low growl and squeezed his snout past Wilson’s leg.
Telling the Shepherd to “Stay,” Lev edged past the Kids, pulled his blade from its scabbard and set off across the parking lot. But it was all for naught, because one stride into his charge of the light brigade, he saw Oliver handle the first of the remaining Zs with a short but efficient thrust of the Tanto. And before the rotter was crumbling to the ground, its brain scrambled by the intrusion of cold steel through cranial bone, the compact, balding man had moved on to the threat to his immediate left. Then, three strides into his rescue mission, Lev saw Daymon mouthing “Stay back,” while pointin
g at the post office with the tip of his blood-streaked machete.
Unaware that Jamie was on his heels, Lev stopped abruptly, causing a two-person pileup that was at once jarring and enjoyable on account of whose flesh was pressing hard against his. “Looks like he’s got it handled,” he whispered at about the same time Oliver was withdrawing the bloodied blade from the third trapped creature’s temple and squaring up with the last of them.
“And then some,” Jamie said, backpedaling and drawing Lev toward the post office door with her.
***
Winded and with nerve endings afire from the surge of adrenaline the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since bombing down Powder Mountain high as a kite a couple of days ago, Oliver shot Daymon a death look and wrapped his free hand around the fourth zombie’s scrawny neck. Still staring at the man who thirty minutes ago had kicked him from the safety of a truck and into a one-on-one confrontation paling in comparison to this, he tightened his grip and drew the rotter’s snapping teeth close to his face.
“Is this what you wanted?” Oliver shouted, the spittle flying from his mouth landing on the pallid face just inches from his own. The vein on his temple was engorged and throbbing wildly. “Because all I have to do is let go and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Daymon shook his head, causing the spiky dreads to move in accordance. “Not my goal,” he shouted. “I just wanted to light a fire under you. Show you what you were capable of.”
Oliver’s arm was growing tired now. Still, not wanting to show any sign of weakness, he held on as if his life depended on it. And it did. Bicep burning with fatigue, he asked, “What about the stunt you pulled back by the quarry … kicking me out of the truck?”
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 9