Daymon recognized the signs of exhaustion setting in. Sweat beading on the man’s brow. A slight tremor beginning to show in his left arm. “First step in the interview process. Had to happen.”
“And this?” Oliver hissed.
“Consider it your graduation party.”
A thin sheen of sweat had formed on Oliver’s upper lip.
Daymon leaned over the hedge. Sharp branches gouged his arm, chest, and stomach. Focusing on a spot behind the Z’s ear, he raised the machete to deliver a short downward killing stroke.
In the next beat, making lethal intervention unnecessary on Daymon’s part, Oliver positioned the business end of the Tanto horizontally an inch from the zombie’s face, then, inexplicably, released his grip on its throat.
Newton’s Third Law kicked in.
First, the zombie’s toes found purchase on the rough pavement. Then, gravity, inertia, and an unyielding desire to take a bite of the meat that was so tantalizingly close sealed the zombie’s fate when it lunged forward and swallowed steel.
No sensation of pain or taste transferred through long-dead nerves and taste buds as the Tanto split the thing’s swollen tongue in two. The tink of steel on brittle teeth was also lost as the angular tip made contact and redirected the blade up and through the ghoul’s soft palate, which was especially pliable due to several weeks’ worth of decay.
Instantly the scrabbling feet went still and the grimy fingers that had found their way into Oliver’s open mouth went limp and slithered out. Releasing his grip on both the knife and the rotter’s throat, Oliver stepped back and let the hedges have the corpse.
“Shish. Ka. Bob,” Daymon bellowed. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
With friends like these, thought Oliver, back aching mightily from holding off the beast from hell.
From out of nowhere Lev and Jamie appeared by Oliver’s side and whisked him away from the killing field.
“There’s more coming from the north,” Wilson called from the doorway.
“I’m on it,” Taryn said, stalking toward the fallen Z to retrieve her blade.
Jamie fixed a glare on Daymon. “What the hell was all that?” she asked heatedly, redness spreading about her cheeks and neck.
“Your man co-signed this blanket party,” Daymon said matter-of-factly. “Which went way better than expected, if I don’t say so myself.” He broke eye contact with Jamie and leveled his gaze on Lev. “You agree?”
Oliver hiked his shirt up to inspect where the thing’s broken ribs had raked against his own.
“I did co-sign exposing him to the dead,” Lev said. “And based on what Daymon told me earlier, I thought Oliver needed it. But that four-on-one crap was a little over the top in my opinion.”
Jamie went to one knee and proceeded to give Oliver’s back and sides a thorough onceover.
Grimacing from Jamie’s gentle probing, Oliver waved to the others. “Hello … I’m alive,” he said. “Oliver is standing right here even as you talk about him as if he was invisible.”
“You’re good here,” Jamie said. “There’s no broken skin.”
Oliver sighed and thanked her. Then, as if a switch was flicked, his jaw clenched and he swung his gaze back to Lev and Daymon. “I let the first one slide,” he hissed at Daymon. “You two may have had your reasons for conspiring and doing what you did. But I’ll let you know here and now”—he wagged a finger, mostly in Daymon’s direction—“you’re not going to get away with this ever again.”
Crossing his arms, Daymon said, “You’ve got a long way to go before you’re one of us.”
There was a long moment during which nobody spoke.
Oliver shifted from foot-to-foot and walked his gaze from Daymon to Lev to Jamie, where he paused and said, “You, of all people. You went along with it once it started.”
Jamie said nothing. She looked down at the tomahawk hanging from her waist and fiddled with the worn leather wrapping the handle.
“And you,” Oliver said, singling out Wilson, who was returning with Taryn after having helped her dispatch the pair of curious rotters. “You just stood there and did nothing. If it wasn’t for Taryn sliding me her knife, I would have been toast.”
Wilson opened his mouth to speak, but Taryn beat him to it. “In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done that.” She wiped her blade with the scrap of tee shirt taken off one of the corpses.
“Why?” Oliver asked.
“Because the time may come when you really do find yourself all alone and get jumped by a much larger group of rotters.”
“She would know,” Wilson said. “She’s the queen of opening Pandora’s Box on herself.”
Taryn elbowed Wilson in the ribs. Regarding Oliver, she said, “I’m happy you’re still with us and all … it’s just that I’m afraid I may have just prolonged the inevitable.”
Daymon approached Oliver. He towered over the man by nearly a head’s height. “Everything Taryn just said is on point. You were going to go to guns right away. That would have drawn more rotters to us. Heaven forbid there’s a horde of any size nearby.”
Nodding in agreement, Lev said, “You still have a lot to learn and very little time in which to do so. No telling when the horde will be back.”
Coming off the adrenaline high, Oliver was blindsided by a wave of exhaustion the likes of which he had never felt before. As a result, he nearly lost his legs and leaned hard against the Chevy, his bodyweight making the door panel pop inward. Fully expecting Daymon to react to the affront on his rig, he shoved off the pickup and began to apologize.
“Don’t worry about it,” Daymon said with a dismissive wave. “I stole it … remember?”
Everyone, save for Oliver, looked quizzically at the dreadlocked man.
“Long story best told around a campfire,” said Daymon. “Saddle up. I want to see this place where Taryn almost bought the farm.”
Chapter 16
Duncan’s frame nearly filled up the security pod. He brushed the hanging bulb aside and retrieved a slim black Thuraya satellite phone from the shelf littered with spare long range CBs and multi-channel two-way radios recently supplied to the group by one of Dregan’s faithful scavengers. He thumbed the Power button and saw the little screen flare to life. It was bright in the dim environs. Nearly more so than the sixty-watt bulb dangling between him and Brook.
“When did Nash say I should call the Judge?” he asked, leaning sideways and looking down to meet her gaze.
“Initially she wanted it placed fifteen minutes after Cade’s ride launched. Then she mumbled something about letting “reality sink in” and changed it to forty-five minutes.” She consulted her watch and regained eye contact. “And that’s about where we’re at. Apparently whatever she had in mind has sufficiently sunk in. Might as well get it over with.” She tapped the legal pad on the plywood sheet serving as a desktop.
“What do I say?” he asked, scooping up the pad and adjusting his newly acquired aviator-style glasses.
“Nash was pretty cryptic in her message. Why don’t you just wing it? You’re fairly adept at that.”
Duncan sighed and directed his gaze to Heidi, who had been sitting quietly and intently eyeing the verbal ping pong match. He began to punch in the digits and paused after the area code. “You sure you don’t want to do it? You handled the Dregan guy like a pro litigator. Said all the right things that needed to be said. You know … just the facts, ma’am.”
Brook said nothing. Just shook her head and shot a questioning look at Heidi.
Heidi shrugged and settled an equally quizzical gaze on Duncan.
“Joe Friday. You ladies never heard of him? Just the facts …”
“Put the call through,” Brook insisted.
“I thought Nash said the person in charge here should place the call.”
“Exactly.” Brook’s hands settled on her hips. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“That scowl worked on Dregan,” he said, looking down at the pad. �
�And damn it to hell it’s working on me.” Without further pause, he tapped out the remaining digits and put the phone to his ear. There was a hiss as the sat-phone searched for a high-orbiting military satellite to shake hands with. A tick later there were a couple of audible clicks and the electronic trill was assaulting his ear.
While Heidi and Brook looked on expectantly, Tran and Foley showed up from outside and filled up the front entry anteroom.
“We’ve got a full house,” Duncan mouthed. He was getting hot standing near the hanging bulb and had started to sweat.
After eight rings a man identifying himself as Judge Pomeroy answered. And just as Duncan had already imagined, the Judge sounded aristocratic in his tone and delivery.
“Charlie Hammond, that’s who,” Duncan lied, walking his eyes over the others until settling back on Brook and shrugging at his use of a fake name. Inside his guts were churning at the sound of the name that had rolled off his lips. It was a name he hadn’t uttered since the first days of the zombie apocalypse. The name of a friend whom he had lost to a freak accident on a deserted street in outer southeast Portland, Oregon, but hadn’t actually died until an hour later when he put a Colt Model 1911 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Why he had blurted out that name, he hadn’t a clue. But he had to live with it and improvise, because the Judge had demanded to know who had so rudely interrupted him and there was no way to reel it in now.
“I’m Central Intelligence Agency,” he said. Another lie. “I report directly to President Valerie Clay … your boss, in a roundabout way.” He went quiet and glanced at Foley and Tran, who were both doing the puzzled-dog-look head-cocked-to-one-side thing.
Ball’s in your court.
After a long uncomfortable silence, the tinny sound of a voice talking rapid-fire emanated from the Thuraya’s earpiece.
“I know the helicopter has already left your airspace. But do know that we still have satellites at our disposal. We will be watching. And Judge, you so much as argue with the man about whom he deputizes … or give him grief for commandeering one of your bailiffs for guard duty, we’ll be back with a dozen black helicopters and a company of Army Rangers. Things will get sorted. Are we clear?”
There were a few seconds of silence followed by the same Alvin the Chipmunk voice coming from the phone.
Duncan ended the call and took a deep breath. “I told so many lies in that one conversation, I’m sure I’m going to hell.”
“As if we all aren’t already,” Heidi quipped.
Moving aside to let Tran and Foley by, Brook asked, “Well … what did his Honor have to say?”
“Nothing after I announced who I was. It was so quiet on his end I bet you could’ve heard a mouse pissin’ on cotton if you were in the room with him.”
Brook’s eyebrows arched.
A soft chuckle escaped Foley’s mouth. “I’m stealing that one,” he stated, sounding extremely unapologetic.
Duncan nodded. “Then the Judge said his men were freaked out because the helo that picked up Cade did a couple of low and slow racetrack orbits over his fiefdom. That’s when I hinted that there were more black helicopters where that one came from.”
“And his reaction?” Brook asked.
“Priceless,” Duncan answered, resisting the urge to cackle. “He started to stammer. Not just a one- or two-syllable trip of the tongue. No … old Judge Pomeroy was doing the Porky Pig motorboat routine. I’m sure the phone’s mouthpiece was getting a spit bath. And he continued to do so every time he tried to speak after I delivered the threat. I bet if he wasn’t planning on it … he soon will be in full compliance.” Duncan smiled, obviously pleased with his improvisational performance.
Brook grimaced and began to massage her shoulder, kneading the scar tissue through her Army tee shirt. Composing herself, she rolled her shoulder, stretching the muscles there and said, “Don’t collect your Oscar just yet, Duncan. Now you have to call Dregan.”
North Woodruff
The short drive north to East 100 Street was uneventful. Along the way, the three-vehicle convoy passed by the larger fix-it shop which had suffered major damage due to the migrating horde. The hedges bordering the walk parallel to Main Street had been trampled and were brown and long dead. The rollup doors fronting the building were battered and bowed inward, the porthole-style windows devoid of all but the smallest shards of glass. A handful of older model cars in various stages of disrepair had been displaced from the lined parking spots by the moving crush of dead and now rested sidelong across the garage bay doors.
Across the street from the fix-it place, both the telephone poles lining the street and a once regal Cadillac sedan had failed to escape the wrath of the unstoppable biomass. The former—for as far as the eye could see—had been forced away from the road at crazy angles. Some of the power poles had come to rest against the upper branches of trees lining the road, their multiple black lines inexorably intertwined with the upper boughs. A pair of poles near the end of town were canted so much so that their upper T bars had skewered one building’s entire run of second-story windows.
Daymon wheeled the Chevy onto the lot first, leaving it broadside with the body shop and Oliver staring at the closed front door from the passenger seat. Taryn pulled the Raptor in next, careful to leave it pointed at the curb cut west of the lot. And as if there wasn’t enough American iron taking up space on the body and frame shop’s lot, Lev parked the F-650 beside the Raptor with the sidewalk running under the rig lengthwise and its oversized driver’s side tires resting partially on the street.
All three engines cut out near simultaneously and the six-person foraging party plus dog emerged from their respective vehicles. Doors thunked closed and the group made their way to the closed door in pairs, Max growling low, hackles standing to attention.
Less than ten minutes after rejoining the others at the post office, Daymon found himself standing in front of the body shop door with the rest of the group forming a rough semicircle off his right shoulder.
“You sure everything inside is all the way dead?” he asked Taryn.
She said, “As dead as a few nine-millimeter slugs’ll get them.”
Daymon kicked a spent shell, sending it skittering away into the parking lot. He flashed a wan smile and withdrew Kindness from her scabbard. He stepped back a foot or so and, holding the machete blade vertical to the door, tapped the garish-hued handle against the brushed-nickel doorknob.
No sound came from within the building.
“Looks like they didn’t come back and rearm the trap,” Wilson said, trying to lighten the mood and failing horribly at it.
“Not funny,” Taryn said, shooting him a look that could only be interpreted as: You’re sleeping alone tonight, buddy boy. Then she looked at Daymon and nodded an affirmative. “All three are shot in the head dead.”
Brandishing Kindness one-handed, Daymon grasped the knob. “Well, here goes nothing then,” he said, giving it a solid tug.
Nothing rushed him. The trio of cadavers were sprawled just inside the door where they’d fallen. Even truly dead, the sight of them all trussed up and what it all meant sent a chill tracing his spine. He peered into the gloom and saw that the shelves in the front retail area were mostly stripped clean. Only items useful for minor at-home body repair remained. Which made sense to Daymon. No reason to Bondo a dinged fender with the pickings for a new vehicle so plentiful.
Returning his attention to the three dead bodies, he shuffled by the nearest and went to one knee, careful to avoid the pooling fluids. He probed the areas of their necks where some kind of organs had been removed, then focused his attention on the cables affixed to their ankles. Whoever had prepared them had probably spent some time in the military or a trade where being thorough and precise was expected. There was no way these bonds were coming loose without help from the living.
He shuddered again at the thought of being in the rotter’s place. Had Taryn and Wilson not come along when they had, the former humans
may have remained inside until they eventually rotted away to nothing. Hell on Earth until the bitter end as muscle, sinew and, eventually, the brain putrefied inside the skull. At least that was what he was pinning his hopes on. For if these things never decayed to the point that they stopped roaming, convincing Heidi to move from Eden to his secret place was little more than a pipe dream.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Lev.
Daymon grabbed the counter on his right and rose, his boots slipping on the fluids and shredded papers scattered underfoot. Standing by the counter, his face in the shadows, he met Oliver’s gaze then went face to face until finally locking eyes with Lev. “I’m not so sure that silencing these things was the only motive for removing everything inside of there that they did. I didn’t pay attention during Biology 101, but I’m pretty sure that all they had to do to silence them was saw through their vocal cords.”
Taryn asked, “What was their motive then?”
Singling out Taryn and Wilson, he said, “Do you two remember hearing Cade and Brook mention a bunch of civilians back at Schriever being infected on purpose?”
“There was an outbreak inside the wire while we were there,” Wilson recalled. “Something about a terrorist injecting them with Omega-tainted saliva—”
“Ah,” Taryn interrupted. “I overheard Annie or Brook … not sure which one of them … talking about the saliva being milked from glands harvested from the dead.”
“Bingo,” Daymon said, sliding Kindness back into her sheath.
Lev rested a hand on his pistol. “So what does it all mean?”
Daymon edged past the others without commenting and urged them to follow. Once he reached the street beyond the parking lot and sidewalk, he gazed westward at the pair of zombies that hadn’t been there a couple of minutes ago. Lured from wherever they had been lurking when the noisy vehicles returned, they were now trudging their way toward the body shop in the slow arm-swinging shuffle indicative of first turns. Beyond the ratty road-worn pair of Zs was a long country block with static cars edged up to the curb and trash strewn about the sidewalks and single-lane drive. On the far corner of the block stood a single-level ranch-style home, its lot overgrown with weeds and grass. And backstopping the entire apocalyptic scene was a continuous left-to-right run of low rolling mounds of scrub- and pine-covered red dirt. Though far from mountains, the wave-looking geological features deposited there by ancient glacial movement still mostly obscured the verdant Wasatch-Cache National Forest from view.
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 10