There was the familiar creak of metal as Daymon’s door, opened followed by a soft click signaling Lev’s exit. A staccato slamming of both doors came next.
Once the two had bailed out, Duncan dialed down the CRAWL feature, selected drive, and started the SUV—now three hundred and fifty pounds lighter—hurtling forward. A truck’s length later he stood on the brakes and jerked the wheel hard right—an instant and aggressive move that saw the Toyota’s rear end break loose. Finally, wrestling the wheel left against the slide and braking for a fourth and final time in the span of just a few seconds, Duncan let the front bumper kiss the hillside, leaving the roadway mostly blocked.
Frantically trying to create a comfortable shooting position, he clicked out of his seatbelt, clawed the .45 from its holster, and thumbed the hammer back. Motoring his window down, he was hit broadside by the wave of stench preceding the raggedy line of flesh eaters nearing the Toyota.
He braced one elbow on the window channel, had the other pressed against the steering wheel, and was drawing a bead on the nearest rotter when two things registered in his peripheral.
On his right, through the windshield’s curved glass, he saw Lev’s upper body—head and elbows and forearms—and then finally, completing the fluid sequence, a black carbine settled horizontally across the mud-spattered sheet metal with a dull thud, fire lancing star-like from its muzzle.
And on the left, he saw orange muzzle flashes behind a series of thundering booms that rocked the SUV, both reassuring and letting him know that Daymon had just entered the fray.
So he steadied the Colt in a two-handed grip, bracketed a middle-aged male cadaver within his sights, took a calming breath, and let loose a pair of closely spaced shots. Delivered from a dozen feet away, the perfect double-tap ruptured the thing’s skull right where Duncan had been aiming, sending one half airborne behind a cascade of blood and fluid, and the other, still connected by a membrane of skin and muscle, hinging over onto its shoulder with a wet meaty slap. A microsecond later, with his spent casings still pinging off the inside of the SUV’s windshield, Duncan witnessed the two-hundred pounds of dead meat collapse in place. Simultaneously, amid the cacophony of gunfire, he saw two more rotters to his immediate left receive point blank shotgun blasts, ugly face shredders creating translucent halos of airborne brain, blood and tissue.
With all of this happening around him, Duncan added three more rotters to his body count while at the same time witnessing an impressive display of shooting as Lev put down more than his fair share of walking corpses.
As the gunfire ceased and the echoes made their final rounds of the hills before dissipating into silence, Duncan stepped out onto the roadway. His gaze was drawn to the mud uphill where the twin J-shaped tire marks created by his initial evasive maneuver were filling with the blood of the twice-dead rotters. He looked high and noted the buzzards, undeterred from whatever had piqued their interest, still gliding high above the ground-hugging cordite haze. He jammed a finger knuckle-deep into one ear and wiggled, a futile effort to quell the shrill non-stop ringing the raucous gunfire had produced in his head. “Sorry about that, fellas,” he said, giving his lobe a solid tug. Still talking, he repeated the procedure on the other ear. “Bastards kinda caught me flat-footed up there ... gaping at the birds and taking in the scale of the fence. And boom! They were right there in my grill ... literally.”
“No worries,” Lev said behind a half-grin. “Redeemed yourself with that excellent driving.”
“I’ll say,” replied Daymon as he fished a few twelve-gauge shells from his pocket. And as he reloaded his shotgun, he nodded at Lev and asked, “Hell’d you learn how to shoot like that anyway?”
After swapping out magazines and chambering a fresh round into the M4, Lev set the safety, tossed the carbine into the backseat, and said, “Basic is where I learned how to shoot like that. The sandbox is where I learned how to shoot moving people like that. All courtesy of Uncle Sam. And when it comes to the enemy ... my philosophy is kind of like that of an alcoholic taking that first drink. You know the saying, Duncan: one is too many and a thousand is never enough.”
Daymon made a face. He looked at Duncan, who wasn’t biting. “That was a low blow, Lev. But these things ain’t people and I don’t see them as the enemy. They’re kind of like snakes were to me when I was fighting fires, ya know ... if you gotta take off a head or two to be safe then so be it.”
“Close enough comparisons. You see these ones ... how their heads popped. Brains and blood and shit spraying everywhere,” countered Lev. “And they’re still bleeding now. That’s because these ones are fresh. Their blood hasn’t congealed yet. I figure they’re two days dead ... maybe three at most.” He went quiet for a second. Then said, “People,” while staring off into space.
Changing the subject, and for some reason choosing not to address Lev’s jab at his booze-soaked grieving period, Duncan said, “Let’s get these bodies moved off the road. This first one is real big. Lev, any help here?” He strode over to what had been by far the largest of the rotters—a morbidly obese male probably weighing upwards of three hundred pounds. How the undead Bob’s Big Boy in the John Deere shirt had made it up the road, with diminished motor skills and the extra weight, was beyond comprehension. But none of that mattered now, because somehow—judging by the two dime-sized entry wounds near its hairline—the corpse was still moving even after having been struck by a pair of 5.56mm hardballs fired from Lev’s carbine.
So he took a step back and gave it some room as it labored hard to roll over onto its stomach. And then it suddenly struck him as he watched it wallow, fighting against gravity, just how much the chalky white specimen with its rolls of fat leaking from under the hiked-up shirt reminded him of a beached pilot whale. Then it moaned, a bovine-like noise that stood the hair on Duncan’s arms at rigid attention.
“You going to finish what you started, Lev?”
“Consider that one on me,” he replied. “Pretend it’s a chaser if you want.”
“You got something to say to me, boy?” Duncan said to Lev. “If you do you better say it now.” He thrust the Colt out at arm’s length, aiming an inch behind the big flesh eater’s left ear. This got Daymon’s attention. He released the wrists of the corpse he’d been dragging. Left it on the shoulder, walked to the Cruiser and leaned against the rear fender.
The bucking corpse craned around and locked its jaundiced eyes on Duncan. Then it emitted a drawn-out moan that sounded suspiciously like Noooo.
Daymon pushed off of the Land Cruiser and racked a round into his shotgun. “No way,” he said quietly.
After looking each man in the eye, one at a time, Duncan fixed his gaze back on the big rotter. “This is not the empirical proof you were speaking of, Lev. What we just heard was a garden-variety moan that on account of all of this flopping around came out sounding kinda like a word. Nothing more.”
“Hope you’re right.”
Daymon nodded. Returned to his task of checking the bodies for identification.
Duncan’s .45 boomed, shattering the still. And stilling the rotter. He holstered his Colt and said to Lev, “Lay off the booze cracks. I’m not amused.”
“Copy that,” replied Lev as he drew his semi-automatic. Then said nothing more and zippered his way between the fallen rotters, delivering an extra just in case bullet into the back of each of their heads. After the twelfth unnecessary coup de grace, he swapped mags and expended twelve more 9mm Parabellums on the unmoving bodies.
“Smartass,” said Duncan as he and Daymon struggled to roll the now inert whale over the edge.
***
Ten minutes later and still Lev hadn’t said a word. But he had helped clear the road.
“Come and check this out,” called Daymon. “I thought that big one looked familiar.”
Duncan looked up and said, “Whatcha got?”
“I lifted his wallet. ID says he’s from Etna, Wyoming. Name was James Carter. I remember meeting him ... M
r. Carter, he called himself then. Before the dead started to walk he taught fifth grade at Etna Elementary.”
“You went there?”
“No, Lev. We drove through there on our way down from Victor and Driggs the other day. They had us dead to rights. Fifteen guns in our faces and a school bus blocking the way ...”
Duncan was cleaning his glasses. He looked up and asked, “What happened?”
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?” said Daymon. He looked up and regarded the buzzards for a second.
“And?” asked Lev, his hand making a circular reeling motion. Universal semaphore for spit it out.
“My good Karma kicked in ... he let us through.”
“Karma my ass,” said Duncan. “Look where it got him ... and Logan.” Anger building, he jumped into the Toyota. “I don’t need to see a death card to know that the same dirtbags who killed Oops and Gus and took the girls also sacked Etna.”
“That would explain why some of the rotters had GSWs,” added Lev.
“Who’s getting the gate?”
“I got it, Duncan,” snapped Lev. He squared up to the Toyota and looked the old aviator in the eye. “Sorry. I guess being this close to where it happened is kinda getting to me.”
“Makes two of us, kid,” Duncan conceded. He started the Cruiser and performed a series of short maneuvers, a combination of reversing and then pulling ahead in small increments until he had the SUV parallel with the road. Then he pulled forward a few feet and stopped next to Lev. “Apology accepted,” he said.
The passenger door creaked again and Daymon sat in the passenger seat.
A minute later Lev had opened the gate which had been locked only cosmetically, the chain merely threaded through the fence, a piece of previously snipped padlock falsely securing it.
Thirty seconds later the Cruiser was through and the gate was closed and locked behind them.
Once Lev was back in the vehicle, Duncan urged the SUV forward and said, “Y’all ready for this?”
To which there was no reply. Only engine noise and the sound of tires splashing through puddles would accompany them to the scene of the crime.
Chapter 26
After surprising Taryn with the impromptu inquisition, and satisfied for the most part with the answers, Cade had nosed the Ford right and onto O Road, then backtracked nearly two miles west leaving the outskirts of Loma and the still-rising sun in his rearview mirror. Along the way he would occasionally speed up and brake hard, a concerted effort on his part to evaluate her reaction times. A short while later both trucks were stopped side-by-side at the intersection of Mack Road and US-6 which used to be the only thoroughfare connecting Mack with Grand Junction, Taryn’s hometown, thirty miles on a diagonal east by south.
And dead ahead, finished in the late nineties and instantly making US-6 and the unincorporated community of Mack north of it obsolete, Interstate 70 ran away on a parallel tack with little more than bulletproof desert soil and tumbleweeds between them.
With a decision looming Cade, fixed his gaze on FOB Bastion off the right front fender a half a mile distant. Rising up from the desert floor, the hastily constructed front gate and makeshift guard towers all interconnected with newly strung barbed-wire looked more like some kind of World War Two internment facility meant to separate and keep safe the majority from a scant few of the population who were in fact quite harmless—not the polar opposite. He looked the length of US-6 and could see it hadn’t received the same scrutiny from Beeson’s boys as the other connecting roads. Like an afterthought of civilization, a number of abandoned vehicles were scattered here and there in both directions, most on the shoulder, some not. Birds fluttered around one of the nearest vehicles, squeezing their feathered forms through a partially open window to get at the sweet treats festering inside. No go, he thought.
So he hung a left and drove ahead a hundred yards and stopped before the westbound ramp to Interstate 70. Three roadblocks manned by the 2nd ID and then no-man’s land, Beeson had said. And the final one is thirty-six miles west on the I-70 and then you’re on your own. Cade looked down the four-lane which was empty and desolate, a diminishing gray scar cutting through the low scrub towards Grand Junction, over the majestic Rockies and on into Denver to the east.
He looked right and saw more of the same. Only there were no knife-edged crags magnified by the distant haze. There was mainly flat terrain. Miles and miles of desert with scattered hillocks and groves of trees lucky enough to have found a water source near which to flourish. And like the cities of Grand Junction and Denver to the east, which he couldn’t see but knew were there, a number of small towns and communities dotted their route of travel, the writing on the green road sign planted in the hard soil confirming it.
Taryn maneuvered the Raptor alongside the Ford and the window pulsed down; while motioning for Cade to do the same, Wilson stuck his head out.
After Cade’s window seated with a solid thunk, he stuck his head out and looked down at the redhead. “Yeah?” he said.
“We taking the Six or the Seventy?” asked Wilson. “Taryn’s curious.”
Cade stuck one finger in the air—the universal sign shared among his old Delta Unit for wait one minute—and then pulled his head back inside. He hinged over and pointed Brook towards the laminated maps he’d stuffed under the seat and asked her to form an opinion on which route they should take based on the map’s key and the corresponding markings on I-70 and US-6 farther along to the west.
FOB Bastion
The baby-faced corporal lowered the Steiner’s and called down to First Sergeant Laurel Andreasen, urging her to join him up in the guard tower.
After climbing thirteen rickety stairs that amounted to nothing fancier than one-by-fours nailed horizontally to a pair of vertical two-by-fours, she poked her head through the opening cut into the floor and accepted the corporal’s outstretched hand. And once she was standing next to the southern rail on the eight-by-eight platform, she accepted the field glasses from the corporal, looped the strap over her head, and said, “Whatcha got Keefe?”
“I’m not certain,” answered the corporal. He directed her to gaze down the length of his arm. “Two-thirds of a click. You see them? Two vehicles in the shadow. What do you think?”
“The nearest pick-up ... that’s got to be Cade Grayson’s rig. It’s the right color ... plus it dwarfs the other truck. ”
“What do you think about the other truck?”
“Spoils of war left by the fallen for the living to inherit. There were five other people and a dog in his truck when they left the wire. So it makes sense to me that they’d go into Fruita or Loma to liberate another vehicle.”
“Which way did he say they are going?”
Wearing a mask of worry, First Sergeant Andreasen said in a low voice, “West. Towards Salt Lake.”
The corporal whistled, drawn out and hollow and filled with portent. He asked, “Should I alert the pickets?”
“Good thinking,” she said agreeably. Then, while the corporal consulted a laminated sheet with all of the radio frequencies on it, Andreasen put her elevated vantage spot to good use, swept the binoculars left and scanned the area around the perimeter fence. And when she reached the northeast corner where it made the first of the four sharp ninety degree bends, she witnessed a dozen or so Zs stagger lemming-like and disappear in ones and twos into the trench. Cognizant of the Zs new behaviors, and fearful of FOB Bastion being overrun like Camp Williams which had been Beeson’s previous command, she looked over the rail and ordered a pair of camouflage-clad soldiers to gear up and go outside the wire and as she not so eloquently put it: Cull the bastards before they have a chance to climb out.
In the short time it had taken the corporal to call ahead to three different forward listening posts, and while First Sergeant Andreasen was directing the armed response to the new threat, the two trucks had started to move.
Chapter 27
“It has been decided. Interstate Seventy it is,�
� Cade said, casting a sidelong glance at Brook. He rattled the shifter into Drive and asked over his shoulder, “Do you concur, Raven?” Waiting for her answer, he flicked his gaze to the side-view and for the first time noticed the big block letters spelling out FORD centered in the white Raptor’s contrasting matte black grill. Then he stared a little too long at the reflection of the HID—High Intensity Discharge—headlights and the equally bright bumper-mounted driving lights and noted that though the sun was painting everything in a flat light, the eerie blue glow was still very intense and likely visible for miles. Blinking from the glare, he glanced up at the rearview mirror and noticed Raven, head listing a few degrees right and staring back at him like he’d been speaking to her in French or Pig Latin. The quizzical look frozen on her face, she said nothing for a long second, presumably mulling over the question, weighing its context. Finally her face lit up with recognition and she shot back, “I concur. The Interstate is wider and has a lot less stalled cars on it than the old highway.”
Holding the two-way close to his mouth, Cade keyed the Talk button. “The boss ladies are telling me the Interstate is the way to go.” He risked another look in the side mirror just as Taryn acknowledged with a double supernova flash of the Raptor’s high beams.
Wishing he knew where he had misplaced his Oakleys, Cade placed a hand over the side mirror blocking the light hammering into the cab and said, “Before we go anywhere, Taryn is going to have to kill those headlights. Things are so bright everyone and their dead brother is gonna see us coming.” The instant the words dead brother rolled off his tongue he wished he could reverse time and reword that last statement. Grimacing, he handed the radio to Brook and saw tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he mouthed. “Awful choice of words. It won’t happen again.”
Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 13