District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “Ohhhh, you’re Brook’s friend,” Helen said, sweeping the rifle’s muzzle toward the muddy ground. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  No shit, Taryn thought, exhaling sharply. She flashed a fake smile and rested her crossed arms on the window channel.

  “Ray,” Helen screeched. “It’s just those nice kids from Huntsville way.”

  ***

  Inside the house Wilson was already on his knees. Following the old man’s barked orders, he had placed his hands behind his head and interlaced his fingers. Then, though most of the shrill pronouncement from outside was lost on him, he made out the words Ray and Huntsville, which when put together with the grizzled face of the gray-haired oldster were the best two words he’d heard all day.

  Keeping the rifle trained on the redheaded kid’s chest, Ray cupped a hand to one ear and bellowed, “What was that, honey?”

  “Ray,” Wilson said slowly, making sure to keep his hands up. “Your wife …” inexplicably his brain locked up.

  “Helen?” the man said.

  “Yes,” Wilson said, nodding, his eyes gone wide. “Helen was just letting you know I’m ... I mean, we are the kids from down the road.” Paraphrasing, sure. Still, it worked. Because Ray lowered the bolt-action rifle and motioned for him to stand.

  Thinking he may have soiled himself, or at the very least sharted and baptized his newest pair of tighty whities, Wilson lowered his hands to his waist and took a deep breath. Ignoring the strange slickness between his butt cheeks, he extended a hand and reintroduced himself to Ray Thagon.

  ***

  Seeing the exchange inside the foyer ending peacefully via her side mirror, Taryn opened her door and jumped down from the pickup.

  Walking arm-in-arm with Helen, she sidestepped the blood when the woman pointed it out.

  “Ray got a rabbit in his trap,” Helen said. “Won’t you two stay for dinner? You can call your friends up from the road, so long as they’re good people like you and Brook.”

  Explains the blood. Taryn said, “That’s nice of you,” as she helped the woman negotiate the stairs. “But we’ve got to get home before it gets dark.”

  “You sure?” Helen said, fixing her watery eyes on Taryn. “It’s a real big jackrabbit. Lots of him to go around.”

  “Positive.” Taryn smiled—a sincere one this time.

  “Why the unannounced visit?”

  Wilson stepped onto the porch ahead of Ray.

  Taryn noticed at once that Wilson’s face was much whiter than usual. He looked anemic. Ghostly, even. He was also wringing his boonie hat nervously in both hands, which left wildly corkscrewing hair exposed for all to see.

  Taryn winked at her man, then turned toward Helen. “Dregan was concerned because he couldn’t get ahold of you two on the CB radio.”

  “So he sent all of you over here from Huntsville? What a lazybones. Bear River is just a stone’s throw south of us.”

  “It was nothing,” Taryn replied. “We were already in Woodruff anyway.”

  Wilson regarded Ray. “Do you need batteries for the radio?”

  Ray propped his rifle next to the door. Removed his felt hat and stuffed the ratty red number into his back pocket. Running a hand through his wiry, silver hair, he said, “We have plenty of supplies upstairs. Batteries galore, in fact. It’s just that it’s hard for us to remember to turn it on every day at noon like Dregan wants. Heck, I don’t know what time of day it is at any given time. I’m just happy when I wake up in the morning and come to find I’m still among the living.”

  “I’m happy you wake up every morning,” Helen said. She moved closer and grasped Ray’s hand.

  Wilson caught Taryn’s eye and they shared a conspiratorial wink.

  “Let’s go inside,” Helen urged. “It’s cold out here.”

  “I need to call Daymon,” Taryn said, raising the Motorola to her mouth. Leaving out the dinner invitation, she explained the radio silence to the others in the trucks on the road, making it clear that the Thagons were fine and needed nothing.

  “Good,” Daymon said, his voice tired-sounding over the radio. “Duncan just called from the compound. Said Tran and the girls already have dinner started. And for some reason Brook’s calling for a group meeting after dinner.”

  “Go ahead and get the rigs turned around,” Taryn said. “We’re on our way.”

  Wilson wet his sleeve in his mouth then dabbed at the scrape on his neck.

  “Sorry,” Ray said. “But you were about to kick in my door.”

  “No biggie,” Wilson said. “It could’ve been worse.”

  “Thanks for your dinner invitation,” Taryn said. “But we have to head back.” She wanted to mention the booby-trapped buildings and horrific scene in the church before leaving, but thought better of it. Besides, the couple were the ones who told Brook about the bandits up north.

  “The washout was no problem for our rig,” Wilson said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the muddy pickup. “But it looks as if yours might be stuck on this side of the highway. I could get a few guys together and we could come back and fill it in for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” Ray said. “The creek behind the house does that every time a big snow accumulation melts off that rapidly. I’ve got a tractor outfitted with a grader attachment inside the barn. If I fill it in now, I’ll just be doing it again come spring. We’ll be fine. If we don’t see you again before the real snow arrives, we’ll see you when it’s gone.”

  Wilson shook Ray’s hand and then accepted a bear hug from Helen.

  After hugging both of the Thagons, Taryn leaped over the pooled blood and took her place behind the wheel of the Raptor.

  “Our rig,” Wilson muttered. He nodded to the old couple, crushed his hat over his hair, and stalked around the rig’s mud-spattered tailgate.

  Chapter 38

  Having spent a few minutes pacing the hall outside the TOC, Cade tucked the sat-phone into a pocket with the other, put his game face on, and pushed through the door.

  Major Freda Nash was on the elevated stage and already five minutes into the PowerPoint presentation when she saw Cade enter the rectangular low-ceilinged room through the door at her twelve o’clock. At once she noticed the grim look on his face.

  Seeing Nash look away from the sixty-inch plasma-display at the front of the room, he met her eyes, nodded, then let his gaze roam, taking a quick inventory of the room. There was a whisper of warm air coming in from overhead vents. Overriding that was a subtle humming that emanated from the dozens of desktop computers scattered about the room, their processors no doubt crunching information vital to the coming mission. And sitting at those computer stations were a dozen airmen and women, their attention mainly directed at the oversized computer monitors perched on the edges of their individual desks.

  Two long rows of folding chairs were set up at the front of the room. And directly in front of Cade, crowding the hard-working 50th Space Wing personnel from behind, were an additional two-dozen folding chairs. Arranged in a semicircle, most of the chairs were occupied by a mixture of aviators and Army Rangers. Off Cade’s right shoulder was the rest of his patchwork Delta team. Without a word, he padded to his right and sat down on an unoccupied folding chair next to a bearded man he recognized from the Los Angeles mission. The former SEAL Team 6 operator William Griffin—or Griff for short—had proven himself highly capable on that mission. That he had come up through the teams alongside Adam Cross and had numerous deployments in all of the hell holes on earth showed in the way he charged hard and fast at every obstacle they had come up against in the City of Angels. And that he was still alive, albeit a little bushier of beard, came as no surprise to Cade.

  To Griff’s right was Cross, six-foot-four, blond hair and blue-eyed and standing out starkly amongst the other operators. The muscled soldier to Cross’s right was nearly as tan as the Ken-Doll-looking Delta shooter. However, the man’s hair was long and dark and currently tied up into a neat pony tail kept in
check by a sand-colored beret. Affixed to the deflated-looking hat was the hard-to-miss Special Air Service badge emblazoned with a downward-pointing winged Excalibur wreathed in flames. Cade’s eyes moved over the uniform, instantly pegging it as standard-issue British Army in Multi-Terrain Pattern, which, like the MultiCam worn by Delta, was basically a subdued version of the United States Army’s woodland camouflage pattern featuring more tan than dark green. Then he saw the black-stitched chevrons identifying the man as a sergeant.

  Seeing Cade eyeballing him, the shooter, whose nametape read Axelrod, blew the last chance of fitting any kind of stereotype befitting a Brit by flashing a picket of straight, white teeth.

  Without acknowledging Cade, nor the hangdog look on his face, Nash continued droning on about waypoints to target, aerial refueling timelines, standoff reaction-and-rescue forces and then wrapped up the aviation logistics segment of the briefing with a slide filled with the most up-to-date weather predictions which contained very little detail, upper atmosphere wind speed and direction the most glaring omissions.

  “I’ve provided to you all of the intel I’m privy to,” she said, singling out the aviators and their crewmembers seated mostly in the front two rows. “Any new information that comes in from ground observers or other aircraft near your flight paths will be relayed to you en route.”

  One of the airmen near Nash rose and passed her a slip of paper, which she quickly read and pocketed.

  “Our esteemed colleague who just entered missed the beginning of my presentation. For the sake of time I’d normally single Captain Cade Grayson out after the briefing; however, since I just learned one of the SOAR birds is temporarily grounded due to a mechanical problem, I figure I’ll go over it again.”

  The aviators up front groaned.

  Turning in his seat, Ari wadded up a sheet of legal pad and tossed it toward Cade in the back row.

  Face still a stony mask, Cade watched the paper ball arc over an airman’s head and land at his feet.

  “Always coming up short,” he mouthed to the glaring Night Stalker.

  Bellowing to be heard over the rising murmurs and small talk, Major Nash said, “Gentlemen. May I have the floor back?”

  A hush quickly descended over the room, leaving audible only the soft taps of fingers striking keyboards and the whirring of fans hard at work cooling the tower computers.

  “Thank you,” Nash said. “I’m not really going to bore all of you again with that PowerPoint. Air assets, you are free to go. Don’t clean the canteen out. The shooters need to eat, too.”

  A happy-sounding murmur made rounds of the room. Then the sound of chair legs scraping carpet. Finally, the room went quiet again as the group bottlenecked near the door.

  Nash waited until all nineteen men and women, aircrew for six separate aircraft, filed out the door at the rear of the TOC.

  Once the last man was through the door and it had snicked shut, the diminutive major settled her gaze on Cade, then cleared her throat.

  “As you all know, the United States was nearly decapitated three short months ago thanks to the Chinese seeding Washington D.C. with the Omega Virus. Although they didn’t entirely nullify our command-and-control with that first blow, their agents did succeed in infecting enough alpha specimens in the District and a dozen other cities to send the members of government who survived the initial outbreak scrabbling to get out of harm’s way.” She paused to sip a water.

  In his mind’s eye, Cade saw the politicians represented by hundreds of spindly cockroaches fleeing the light across a filthy kitchen floor that was Washington D.C.

  “Bear with me, gentlemen,” she said, still looking solely at Cade. “I’m nearly finished.” She capped the bottle and set it aside. “And as we all know,” she went on, “those initial victims, when combined with man’s natural inclination to not believe the unbelievable, or, normalcy bias if you will, led to the start of the massive rate of infection that has us where we are today: clawing our way back from the brink of extinction. And as if those first despicable acts of war committed by a trading partner professing to be our ally wasn’t enough, thousands of her PLA troops have landed on our shores and as we speak are making a steady march inland.”

  Cross leaned in front of Griff. “We’re all caught up now, Wyatt. Hope you had a good reason for being tardy.”

  His jaw taking a granite set, Cade pressed hard into his chair-back and restrained himself from saying or doing anything he’d likely regret.

  Chapter 39

  “Hurry up,” said Oliver, watching the trees flash by outside his partially opened window. “I don’t want to get caught outside the wire in the dark without my armor and night vision goggles.”

  “It’s pretty obvious to me you were never a Boy Scout,” Daymon said, as he slowed the Chevy to negotiate a near hairpin turn just beyond the quarry entrance.

  “Yes I was. Made Tenderfoot and got bored with it. Either that or Scouting got in the way of skiing.”

  “Doesn’t show,” Daymon said. “A Boy Scout is supposed to always be prepared.”

  “You’re not perfect. You wouldn’t go up into that attic. And you know what else, Daymon?” He removed his stocking cap and raked his fingers through his thinning hair. “A leader is supposed to lead from the front, not the rear.”

  Feeling a vein in his temple begin to throb, Daymon flicked his eyes to the rearview where he saw the mud-streaked Raptor on his bumper. Behind the Raptor was the hulking black F-650 driven by Lev. Having used the distraction to calm down a bit, he parked his gaze straight down 39 and said, “This is about getting you ready … not analyzing me. Besides, I’m effin claustrophobic. There, I said it. I hate enclosed spaces. My mouth went dry, breathing became a chore, and my heart started banging like a jackhammer the moment I set eyes on the attic opening. Are you happy now?”

  “I never get satisfaction out of someone else’s discomfort,” Oliver admitted. “But I do feel a bit of vindication knowing some kind of fear has a hold over you. That there’s a chink in your armor.”

  “Hold over me …” Daymon said, speaking real slowly. “Chink in my armor,” he muttered under his breath as a pair of zombies showed up on the centerline near the next right-hand bend in the state route. He tapped the brakes to warn the others and began to slow down.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not going to push you out again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m not worried,” Oliver said through clenched teeth.

  Daymon chuckled. Your eyes contradict your words.

  He said, “You survived the first time I made you walk the plank. No reason to tempt fate by doing that again.”

  “Pull over,” Oliver hissed, snatching Kindness off the seat before Daymon could react.

  “Careful you don’t get the blade lodged in one of their skulls. It’ll be pretty hard to get it out if you do.”

  “Any pointers, then?”

  “Follow through,” Daymon said. Seeing that Taryn had taken his cue and was lagging back, he sped ahead another hundred feet or so and braked hard broadside to the pair of first turns, roughly the same age at death. Daymon figured the pair could have been a couple in life. She had been wearing denim shorts and a shirt bearing the words Property of Yellowstone on her last normal day on earth. Now torn in dozens of places, the once-white shirt no longer hid her midriff from prying eyes. Red at the edges and oozing yellow pus and insect larvae, numerous welts crisscrossed the expanse of pallid dermis north of her grimy navel. Presumably once mid-thigh items, the faded blue shorts had become crusted with dried blood and rode up in all the wrong places.

  Likely the cause of infection, purple-ringed divots where mouth-sized hunks of flesh had been rent ran up and down both arms.

  The male had suffered horrendous wounds and massive blood loss fending off his attackers. Now dead and sans several fingers and nearly all of the skin, muscle, and underlying tissue on both sides of his neck, the thirty-somethi
ng cadaver plodded alongside the female, matching her step for step and dry-throaty-rasp for dry-throaty-rasp.

  ‘Til death do us part, thought Daymon as Oliver slithered out the door and slammed it behind him. Be careful what you wish for.

  The death dance on 39 lasted much longer than it should have, with Oliver plodding in a never-ending semicircle before finally parting both of the rotters’ heads from their bodies.

  Shouting out his open window, Daymon said, “You made the mess, you clean up the mess.” He watched Oliver kick the heads, eyes and jaws still moving, across the road where they rolled under the guardrail and plunged to their final resting place on the north bank of the Ogden River. Though he felt bad seeing the slightly overweight man struggling to drag the corpses off the road, Daymon remained behind the wheel.

  “What’s the holdup?” Wilson asked over the two-way radio.

  Daymon ignored the voice emanating from his pants pocket. He was busy tracking Oliver across the two-lane and kept his gaze locked on the man until he opened the door and climbed aboard. Remaining silent, Daymon shifted the Chevy into Drive and started them rolling west toward the setting sun.

  Oliver buckled in. Having already wiped the machete clean on the female Z’s jean shorts, he snugged Kindness home into its sheath and placed it atop the center console. Fixing a gaze on Daymon, he said, “Well?”

  “A deep, dark hole in the ground, last I checked.”

  “That it is. So, how did I do?”

  On the final straightaway before the compound entrance Daymon slowed considerably. He remained silent as 39 arced gently into a slight uphill climb. Finally, as he brought the pickup to a complete stop beside the hidden entry, he spoke up. “Still a work in progress, I’m afraid.” He shifted the truck into Park. Squaring up with Oliver, he added in a low, menacing voice, “I watched you getting high at the fix-it shop. That does not happen outside the wire … ever!”