District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  Seeing One-One’s gear lock into the full-down position and the wheels settle atop the parkway blacktop, Cade struck out with Axe, Cross, and Griff close behind.

  Leading the operators as they zippered through a multitude of twice-dead Zs and grotesquely twisted and charred PLA corpses, Cade’s thoughts suddenly strayed and he found himself wondering how Brook was faring. Fighting the near irresistible urge to stop right there and fire up his sat-phone to call Eden to find out, he heard the major’s voice on the open comms, which Ari immediately switched to a private channel.

  Though not entirely necessary, but one hundred percent instinctual in nature, as Cade always did during infil and exfil by helo, he leaned forward and clamped his free hand atop his bump helmet as he hustled to the Ghost Hawk.

  After surviving the imaginary low-scythe of the whirling blades, Cade stopped beside the bird and watched the rest of his team board. Once they’d cleared out of the doorway, he hauled himself into the cabin and started the door closing. Quickly shrugging off his pack, Cade stowed his weapon between his legs, then strapped himself into the forward-facing port-side seat opposite Skipper.

  In no time the helicopter had launched, turned ninety degrees to port and was streaking low over the still-scrabbling pack of Zs.

  Cade regarded his team. Fatigue was showing on their faces, Axe more so than the former SEALS.

  “You need a pick-me-up?” Cade said, directing the question at the very capable SAS shooter.

  “Red Bull, Rip It, Rock Star. I’d even tip back a Lucozade if you have one … the warmer the better,” said Axe, puckering his lips at the thought of the latter.

  Cade shook his head. “You want a Five-Hour Energy?”

  “No, mate. I want to sleep on the way back to Bastion.”

  “I heard that,” Ari said. “Pass one up.”

  “You drink another of those, mate,” said Axe, “you’ll be buzzing so hard the walking wankers will hear us coming from a mile away.”

  “That’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Ari quipped. “On the bright side … I’ll be bright eyed and bushy tailed for your upcoming infil.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re moving on to Target Bravo,” Cade said, incredulous. “Wasn’t that Nash calling with an intercept vector to the PLA operators?”

  “Negative,” Ari said. “Bravo is a go.”

  Exhaling sharply, Cade leaned back against the fuselage wall and closed his eyes.

  Lemonade out of lemons.

  Chapter 69

  Duncan won the “less is more” argument by convincing Alexander Dregan that four vehicles would be easier to maneuver and keep from getting separated from each other than seven should they encounter stiff resistance from Oliver’s captors. Besides, he reasoned, keeping a couple of people and vehicles in reserve at the brown house might pay off if the worst case scenario did come to pass.

  Since it had been Duncan’s idea to make contact with the Bear Lake group prior to taking any kind of violent approach to freeing Oliver, he was leading the caravan in his Dodge. In the passenger seat next to him sat Tran, while in the back seat was Foley, who had once again talked his way into going along for the ride.

  Having volunteered to drive the F-650, Jamie tucked the bigger rig in behind the Dodge as Duncan hung a left from the drive behind the lake house. She glanced at her silent passenger. Saw his liver-spotted hands worrying the canvas sling on the scoped long gun trapped between his knees. It was strange to not have Lev in the truck. In the weeks since Logan was gunned down, the two of them had grown close.

  Knowing there was good reason for the seating arrangements, she flicked her gaze to the rearview mirror where she saw the pair of Humvees pacing her while still maintaining a sensible two-truck-length buffer. In the first vehicle she saw Daymon in the driver’s seat, hands gripping the wheel, short dreads framing his pinched facial features. Lev was visible from the shoulders up in the cupola atop the Humvee and in the process of sweeping the Ma Deuce to the right where a smattering of houses were gliding by. Seeing as how Lev was familiar with the Browning heavy machine gun, both Duncan and Dregan had agreed instantly that there was no one more qualified than the young Iraq War veteran to man it.

  Bringing up the rear of the convoy was the second Humvee with Alexander Dregan driving, and his son, Gregory, ensconced in the armored top-mounted turret housing the MK-19 grenade launcher.

  Duncan drove south on Main Street for a short distance then turned right and followed 800 North to where it became Bear Lake Scenic Byway.

  The road signs along the way all bore spray-painted warnings.

  GO BACK.

  CLOSED COMMUNITY.

  TURN AROUND NOW OR ANSWER TO ADRIAN.

  Graffiti-marred signs notwithstanding, the scenic byway lived up to its name. Passing the drive leading to the Rendezvous Beach campgrounds and boat launch, the vantage was stunning. Bear Lake glimmered bright blue in the breaking sun for miles to the north then suddenly turned steel-gray where water and sky merged.

  The byway soon became South Bear Lake Boulevard which snaked north along the lake’s west shore for a stretch, passing a burned-to-the-ground subdivision before splitting off to the northwest. Just prior to the boulevard shooting off toward the foothills backstopping the lake’s west shore, Duncan steered the Dodge into a wide right-hand turn and bounced along an unimproved road with the blue waters of the lake filling up the windshield. A quarter of a mile down the unimproved road, adjacent to a trio of homes that looked to have been built sometime in the eighties or nineties, Duncan ground the Dodge to a complete stop. As he watched in the rearview, Jamie, as planned, did the same and let Ray out beside a copse of skeletal trees.

  After seeing the spry old man loop around the nearest house and disappear from view, Duncan wheeled the Dodge across a freshly graded lot, bounced over a bright white, newly poured cement curb and took his foot off the gas.

  The spooled-up momentum carried the truck forward in near silence for another hundred feet or so before Duncan stopped it dead center on a thirty-foot-wide stretch of recently laid asphalt. A hundred feet beyond the truck, a wall constructed of numerous fifteen-foot-tall cement noise barriers sprang from the ochre earth. A hundred feet to the right where the cement panels ended their run, the shorter cedar and chain-link fence rambled off north toward the nearby beach. Above the textured gray barriers rose half a dozen red-tiled roofs. In the center of the two- and three-story red-roofed lake houses which looked to be the first phase of a sprawling new subdivision was the cul-de-sac Duncan had spotted from the brown house due east of the lakefront properties.

  Duncan flicked his eyes to the wing mirror in time to see Jamie make the turn and bring the F-650 to a complete stop at the mouth of the newly laid feeder road.

  Taking their cue from Jamie’s action, the two trailing Humvees edged past the Ford. Dregan parked his Humvee on the left soft shoulder where no trees or powerlines were in the way of the grenade launcher’s field of fire, while Daymon ground his rig to a halt on the right, leaving Lev a clear shot at the gate, cement panels curving away on either side of it, as well as the cobbled-together run of fence on the compound’s far east side.

  A dozen feet left of Dregan’s Humvee, on a vacant plat of land already graded, surveyed, and marked off for future development, was the fenced-in area where the “baddies to the north”—as the Thagons called them—had stowed a number of vehicles. Parked inside the chain-link enclosure were the log splitters hitched to pickups, a pair of large U-Haul trucks, the smaller prison vans, and a lone gray school bus with the Idaho state seal and the words IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION - POCATELLO WOMEN’S CORRECTIONAL CENTER emblazoned prominently in large black letters on its slab side.

  After seeing the trailing vehicles take up their pre-planned positions ahead of the F-650, Duncan wheeled the Dodge at walking-speed down the center of the feeder road another three or four truck lengths, stopping a mere hundred feet from the makeshift gate fashioned from what looked to be meta
l lids repurposed from institutional-sized garbage cans. With thick welds at the seams and rolls of barbed wire strung around all four sides, the gore- and blood-streaked twenty-by-fifteen-foot wheeled gate looked damn formidable. Whether it would stand up to the firepower Dregan had brought to the table was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question Duncan hoped would not have to be answered today.

  You’re going to lose this one, G.I. Jane, thought Duncan, as a blonde, steely-eyed woman popped up from behind the cement partition left of the gate with Oliver’s scoped, long-barreled AR-15 tucked into her shoulder.

  “Looks like we’ll have no problem communicating with Oliver’s captors,” he quipped, fishing a sheet of paper and pen from the center console.

  “You going to write out your demands?” Foley asked, hunched over the seatback and peering at the gate through the binoculars.

  “Nope,” answered Duncan sarcastically, as the pair of two-way radios on the console between them came to life simultaneously. “I’m going to write her a love letter.”

  Ray’s voice emanated from both radios. “Care if I put a bullet between Debbie Harry’s eyes?”

  Thumbing the Motorola nearest him, Duncan said, “Not really. But you better let Blondie live long enough to hear what I have to say to her.”

  Hear? thought Tran, as he watched Duncan write 13-1 horizontally in black ink across the sheet of paper. The numbers were precise, six inches in height, and took up most of the page.

  “Make it quick,” said Ray. “I’ve got her heart of glass bracketed in my sights.”

  Touché, thought Duncan. “Which house are you in?” he asked.

  “Green one lined up with the road you’re parked on,” Ray said. “I’m on the second floor behind the only north-facing window in the place.”

  As Duncan thumbed Tran’s radio frequency to 13-1, he told Ray to do the same to his second two-way radio.

  “Already done,” Ray said. “Powered on and volume set to ten.”

  “Was the house booby-trapped?”

  “Nope. Just a couple of deaders hanging around the street fronting it,” Ray said matter-of-factly. “Nothing this old man couldn’t handle.”

  “Watch your six,” Duncan said.

  “Always do,” Ray said. “Signing out.”

  As soon as the channel was free, the rest of the group chimed in one at a time over radios set to the usual 10-1. In a matter of seconds, the next phase of the plan was in motion and all of the secondary radios were switched over to 13-1, the previously agreed upon channel.

  Nearly two miles away, eye pressed to the spotting scope, Taryn heard everything over Wilson’s two-way which was already set to 13-1. She scooped up her Motorola, saw 10-1 was showing on the LCD display, then thumbed the rubber Talk button and detailed for everyone listening what she was seeing at the Bear Lake compound. Enunciating the words clearly, she said, “In addition to the blonde with the rifle on the wall, you have six other people heading to the gate … I’m pretty sure they’re all women. Whatever they are, they’re armed with a mix of rifles and pistols.”

  Duncan asked, “Do you see their leader? The big gal … Adrian?”

  “Yes,” Taryn said. There was a brief pause. “She’s bringing up the rear. Leather jacket over blue jeans. And now there’s another fifteen or so women coming out from between the two houses farthest north of you.”

  Though he didn’t expect positive news, Duncan asked anyway. “How’s Oliver looking?” There was another long pause he guessed was due to Taryn having to pan the big scope across the cul-de-sac to where the stocks were located.

  Finally, Taryn’s voice leapt from the tiny speaker. “He’s white as a sheet. And there’s blood pooled on the ground all around him.”

  Kid’s bleeding out, Duncan thought to himself. Knowing that waiting for the supposed leader to make her appearance might sign Oliver’s death warrant, he held the sheet of paper against the inside of the windshield with the 13-1 facing out. He held it there for a long three-count, then laid it down on the dash, numbers facing up.

  “Pasty Face got the message,” Lev said from his perch in the cupola atop the Humvee. “She’s fiddling with a radio as we speak.”

  “Copy that,” Duncan intoned. “Looks like she put her rifle aside.”

  Tran’s radio belched static. “What the fuck do you want?” the blonde hissed.

  Tran handed the radio to Duncan.

  “Tee-pee, wig-wam, tee-pee, wig-wam,” Foley said from the back seat, his elbows parked on Duncan and Tran’s seatbacks.

  Thumb hovering over the Talk key, Duncan cast a quizzical look Foley’s way.

  Smiling, Foley said, “The bitch is two tents. Get it … too tense?”

  “Third grade joke,” Tran said, still clutching the borrowed Beretta in his right hand.

  “Time and place,” Duncan said, depressing the Talk button. “I want to speak to your leader. You have one, don’t you?”

  The radio clutched in the blonde’s hand slowly fell away from her lips as she glanced down and to her left. Then, a half-beat later, she was looking forward again, the radio pressed to her lips. “She’s coming.” There was a pause as the woman stood statue-still, staring insolently at the Dodge. “Whoever you are, motherfucker, you’ve made a big fucking mistake.”

  “Do you kiss your mommy with that mouth?” Duncan chuckled as he scooped up the radio locked on channel 10-1 and hailed Dregan.

  “Yes?” Dregan replied.

  “If they don’t agree to my demands—”

  Dregan interrupted. “What are your demands?” he asked.

  “Give us our man and you won’t die, works for me,” Duncan said.

  “They’re already dead,” Dregan growled. “We all are. Look around. This country is dying. What makes you think that words are going to change minds?”

  Taryn broke in. “They’re moving vehicles around inside the walls. Pointing them all to the northwest. Must be an exit over there I can’t see.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” Duncan said.

  Foley handed the Bushnells forward to Duncan.

  Duncan took the binoculars and trained them on the wall left of the gate where the blonde was being joined by the Plain Jane twins he had spotted earlier. For a brief second the twins both rose above the parapet brandishing what looked to Duncan like Ruger Mini 14s. In unison, the women raised the rifles to their shoulders and, as if they’d been under siege before, crouched low behind the wall, leaving only their rifles, heads, and shoulders visible from below.

  The woman called Adrian showed her pudgy, wind-burned face next. Then Duncan saw her neck and the word MOM tattooed there in black Old English lettering. As she emerged fully behind the wall, the scowling blonde gestured in the direction of the Humvees.

  A gust of wind kicked up from the west, ruffling the head honcho’s close-cropped man-do.

  “Everyone, meet Adrian.” Duncan said over the group frequency.

  “She reminds me more of Rocky Balboa than Adrian,” Daymon quipped. “How the hell does a person keep all that weight on? It’s not as if there’re any all-you-can-eat buffets still in business.”

  In the Dodge, Foley said to Duncan, “I’ve managed to lose a dozen pounds since the dead started to walk.”

  “Doesn’t show,” Duncan said, lowering the binoculars and cracking a rare smile.

  Frowning, Foley leaned toward Tran to get a better look at the upper reaches of the wall.

  Keeping the binoculars trained on the top of the wall, Duncan watched the big woman turn to the blonde and waggle her sausage-like fingers while saying something he couldn’t quite make out. In turn, the blonde handed Adrian a radio and immediately retrieve Oliver’s rifle, swinging its business end back on line with the Dodge.

  This time Duncan clearly read Adrian’s lips as she spoke into the radio. “Can’t you dumbasses read?” she bellowed. “You’re way out of your element. This is my territory and you should not be here.”

  “Understood,” Duncan s
aid into the secondary radio. “How about you release our friend and we’ll grant you your wish.”

  Astride the Humvee with Daymon at the wheel, Lev set his radio down on the cupola rim and shifted his aim up by a few degrees, the iron sights on the Ma Deuce settling on the wall just about where he guessed the bitchy-looking blonde’s navel to be.

  “That man is under arrest for looting,” Adrian spat into the radio. “We caught him red-handed.”

  “You already took your pound of flesh,” Duncan said. “Give him to us and we’ll be on our way.”

  “If I don’t?”

  The radio tuned to Channel 10-1 came alive. Taryn said, “Oliver hasn’t moved a muscle. And the blood stopped flowing from his stump.”

  Duncan sighed. “And the rest of the people inside?” he asked Taryn.

  “The ones who moved the cars and trucks are coming to the gate armed with what look like AR-15s.”

  “Thank you, Taryn,” Duncan said. “Everybody hear that? If Oliver’s gonna live we have go in now.”

  Dregan voiced his approval over the group frequency.

  “Weapons free, then,” Duncan said. “Ray, take your shot if you have it.” After handing the binoculars over the seatback, Duncan selected Reverse and was lifting his foot off the brake pedal when Foley said, “I think Adrian just ordered the blonde to shoot.”

  The second the word “shoot” rolled off of Foley’s tongue, the windshield spidered from a hole punched just below the rearview mirror. A millisecond later, carried on the air escaping his lungs, a pain-filled moan was making the rounds of the cab.

  In his side vision, in quick succession, Duncan saw the binoculars falling to the seat, a spritz of blood paint the air between him and Tran, and Foley’s arms reach for the sky. In the next half-beat, with the crack from the rifle echoing all around, Foley’s limp body crashed to the floorboard behind the seats adding a resonant thud to the volley of gunfire coming from behind the gate.

  They’re just women.