Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  Bishop lounged on the tow truck’s bumper calmly explaining the inner workings in painstaking detail, leaving out only the how to part of arming the thing.

  Elvis listened and nodded and felt the first tingle of adrenaline when the fact that he was being primed on the particulars of the jerry-rigged device became abundantly clear, starting him to fantasize about the havoc something like this could wreak on his enemy. Then the beginnings of a smile curled the corner of his lip, and Bishop’s voice went all Charlie Brown’s teacher as suddenly the possibility of righting his Schriever wrong with a much higher body count was within his grasp.

  Suppressing the urge to blurt out the words, I’ll do it, Elvis returned his attention to Bishop’s technical-jargon-filled spiel.

  A handful of minutes later when Bishop was finished talking about yields and overpressure and blast radius’s, Elvis was invited to have a couple of beers on the porch of the big lakefront house.

  With the sound of approaching helicopters reaching his ears, Elvis, praying his back would hold out a little while longer, helped Bishop lift and arrange the radiation safe box onto the tow truck using its hydraulic lift apparatus. Once it was on the deck, they secured it with the unused straps from the semi-trailer. Then, walking with a definite hitch in his step, he followed the super-fit former operator toward the house, behind which sat a quarter-cord of wood still in need of splitting.

  Looking disdainfully at the dozen rounds of pine, Elvis gripped the rail firmly and scaled the stairs one cautious step at a time. Greeting him at the top stair with a sweating bottle of Corona, Bishop said, “Here. You earned it. And there’s more where these came from.”

  As they walked the length of the rocking chair porch towards the front corner of the house, Elvis called ahead, “One will probably do. I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “More for me,” said Bishop as he positioned a couple of wicker chairs with floral print cushions next to a weathered teak table. Chair legs scraping the pressure-treated wood, he arranged one for Elvis, and added with a nod, “You look pretty beat up. Better take a load off.”

  His back throbbing with pain, Elvis stayed standing for a moment.

  Bishop sat down and studied the former-college football player as he tried to ease his six-foot-three-inch frame into a seated position without throwing a disc.

  Seeing this, Bishop’s face suddenly hardened. And like a drill instructor addressing a recruit, he growled, “For this mission to succeed tomorrow we’re going to need a youthful Elvis to suit up and show up.”

  “Couple of aspirins and some shut eye and I’ll be good to go by morning,” replied Elvis. Then, bracing his back with one hand, the other gripped white-knuckle-tight on the low-slung chair, he lowered his butt slowly onto the cushion.

  Bishop sipped his beer. Gestured with the bottle and said, “You’re moving like the old jumpsuit-wearing Viva Las Vegas Elvis.”

  Though he wanted to explode, Elvis remained tight-lipped and ground his teeth.

  After laughing at his own joke, Bishop added, “You sure we’re not going to find you dead on the toilet, ass up and face down?”

  “Hell, I don’t think I’m ever going to get out of this chair,” answered Elvis with a forced grin. “So I suppose I’ll have to die out here underneath the stars.”

  Bishop said nothing. Wasn’t his joke. He looked west across the lake where the sound of rotors thrashing the warm air carried over the still water. A beat later, moving left to right, four matte-black helicopters appeared on the horizon. Then, sun glinting from their canopies, two egg-shaped Little Bird attack helicopters, one lagging a little behind the first, left the treetops behind and descended until their skids cut the air barely a dozen feet above the lake’s placid surface. And following closely—almost literally—in the smaller craft’s wake, two Black Hawk transport helicopters dipped down over the trees and transited the lake, their wheels also skimming a dozen feet over the now choppy water.

  Elvis covered his ears against the thunderous noise as the choppers, now just two hundred yards away, abruptly took on a nose-up attitude, slowed, and hovered in place over the lake’s edge. “Thousand bucks says they’re going to fit on my clearing,” he said.

  “I hope so,” said Bishop behind a thin-lipped smile. “’Cause it’s your ass if they don’t.” His smile faded as he regarded the impromptu airshow. Then a frown formed when he realized what a Siren’s song to the walking dead the noisy helos were.

  After hovering for a tick, their considerable rotor wash creating a frothy chop on the lake’s surface, the noisy craft turned gracefully, gained some extra altitude and passed over the lake house before settling gently on the newly graded acreage.

  “Like a glove,” said Elvis smugly as the final Little Bird settled to terra firma, leaving room enough for two or three more of the smaller aircraft next to the north gate.

  Collectively the whining turbine noise diminished to a throaty whoosh and the individual rotors gained definition as the rpms bled off.

  When he could finally hear his own voice, Bishop began to go over the looming mission point by point. He let Elvis know that he had already entered the necessary GPS coordinates into the tow truck’s navigation system and then outlined the three tasks that needed completing after reaching the target. The first of which was to lower the delicate device to the ground using the truck’s boom. The second, and most important, was to enter the arming code properly. And task number three, tantamount to Elvis’s survival, was to avoid contact afterward and get the hell out of Dodge. Lastly, Bishop let slip where ‘Dodge’ was, as well as the staggering number of casualties they could expect as a result of perfect placement of the device. When the one-sided briefing was over, Elvis was wearing a Cheshire Cat grin and the helicopters had gone quiet, their massive Nomex and fiberglass blades stilled and drooping under gravity’s pull.

  Bishop asked, “Any questions?”

  His eyes glazing over, Elvis heard the question but said nothing. Then, still in the throes of the mental orgasm from learning that he was finally going to avenge his dead family in grand fashion, and with the beer he had just downed making everything fuzzy around the edges, the knot in his back loosened and everything went dark. He didn’t see the woman emerge from the nearest Black Hawk. He also missed the hood being yanked unceremoniously from her head, allowing dark hair to spill over her shoulders. He was out cold, therefore there was no way he could know that the athletic former soldier named Carson, whom he had met weeks earlier on the Minot mission, was the person escorting the fit brunette towards the house.

  Bishop, however, was clued in the moment he felt the two-way radio vibrate in his pocket.

  However, the warbling that followed had a different effect on a snoring Elvis. At first he was certain he’d failed his mission. That the Guardsmen had found him out and sounded a Klaxon and were mobilizing to mount a hot pursuit. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the Klaxon died to nothing. Elvis heard the sound of boots clomping and scuffing against what he gathered were wooden stairs. They were drawing near. Slow. Deliberate. Then he heard a door suck open. And a moment later there was the distinct sound of a door slamming shut. Next, he heard more voices, strangely distant. Finally, sensing that he was about to be caught red-handed, he felt a tremor that he was certain was the device detonating. It lasted for a second or two and then the crisp images of wonton death and destruction he had wrought on his enemies took on an ethereal quality. The melting faces and contorted and crisped limbs faded away to black. The roaring tempest of radioactive winds calmed, leaving a mushroom cloud roiling up and up and casting a snaking shadow over the destroyed city. Then, out of the blue, the temblor intensified and the imagined vista from where he had witnessed the explosion began to crumble from under his feet.

  Chapter 32

  Elvis came to with Bishop kicking his boots, which were splayed out at an odd angle. There was also a second person shaking him from behind. In his peripheral he could see large calloused hands clamp
ing down hard on both of his shoulders. Then he gazed up and instantly recognized the inverted face staring down at him. A cold ball formed deep in the pit of his stomach. He struggled to rise but couldn’t. Then, still half asleep, he stammered groggily, “I didn’t desert. Robert Christian made me ... he ordered me to leave the convoy.”

  Carson released his grip and walked around the chair and put his hands on his hips. Looked Elvis square in the face. “Relax, ” he said. “You passed out. Started mumbling and smiling and carrying on ... in your sleep. While you were out, Bishop told me how you are going to win back our trust. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not entirely sold that vaporizing a few thousand United States soldiers is going to wipe out your debt to me.”

  Shaking his head wildly, Elvis whispered, “Nothing I could do.”

  The veins in his neck bulging, Carson hinged at the waist and got in Elvis’s face. Then, with the volume of his voice rising with each word, he said, “When I found out you had rabbited and left us a driver short with a long haul ahead ... I wanted to hunt you down and kill you myself.”

  Pulling an irate Carson away, Bishop maneuvered him towards a chair and said, “Sit. Calm down.”

  Carson took a minute to compose himself, then went on, “You got lucky, buddy. Robert Christian started in at once hounding Ian about the nukes. And that was just enough distraction to save your sorry ass ... from me.”

  Bishop put a hand up, silencing Carson. Set his gaze on Elvis and said, “When I found out about RC’s idiotic play on the President—dispatching you and Pug from two different directions—I knew the house of cards in Jackson was about to fall. Then RC really started boozing it up.” He shook his head. Looked at the floor and added in a low voice, “The amount of champagne and gin that he was going through tripled after the dead started walking. And the second I saw him spiraling down that rabbit hole ... blacking out and forgetting things, I made the decision. It was easy. I diverted the nukes. Had Carson truck them here. No sense letting that fool have a truckload of warheads. No use in sticking around to go down with Captain Hazelwood on that sinking ship.”

  Elvis was wide awake by now, but getting bored with the story. Cocking his head sideways, he asked, “Then what happened to RC?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Last I knew he was holed up in his place ... isolating. He was not answering his sat phone. Then, after the bus barrier failed and the dead started pouring in—” Bishop threw a visible shudder and subconsciously his hand went to the butt of his pistol—“that was when I made the tactical decision to cut the drunk’s umbilical cord ... so to speak. I had a duty to my men. Had to save as many of them as possible.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” asked Elvis. “And why in the hell did you wake me up? I was having the dream of a lifetime.”

  “Blonde or brunette?” asked Carson, flashing a sly grin.

  Ignoring the quip, Bishop said, “You risked a lot in order to get here from Schriever. I have to say I’m pretty impressed. And agreeing to put your life on the line in order to take out our common enemies ... should you succeed, will be enough in my book to get you back in my good graces.”

  In one long pull, Elvis finished his warm beer and set the bottle aside. He made a face and belched. “I’ve kind of resigned myself to death one way or the other. Figured I’d either be killed by the soldiers at Schriever. Or be eaten by the dead while running from the soldiers. And to be honest with you ... the second I honked last night to get your attention ...” He went silent for a second.

  Listening intently, Carson steepled his fingers.

  Bishop did the same and said, “Yes. Go on.”

  “I thought I would be crucified before dawn. So living ... no ... that’s not my motivation. And though it would be nice—neither is getting on your good side. I have three reasons of my own why I want to do this and there’s no way I’m going to allow myself to fail.”

  “Two birds with one stone then,” intoned Bishop. He looked up at Carson conspiratorially, then went on, “In one fell swoop this one blow will set things right for you, reduce my enemies to dust, and make the roads between impassable for the next ten thousand years.”

  Elvis paused as if in thought. He regarded the finger of lake in front of the house. It was a strange shade of aquamarine blue with cold-water eddies sullying the reflection of the surrounding landscape. Finally he turned, gingerly squaring up with Bishop and said, “When do I get my gun back?”

  Bishop reclined in his chair and said, “So that you won’t stray again ... you’ll get it back when you leave tomorrow.”

  Not liking the answer, especially after being trapped in the house in Ovid with undead grandma banging around in the basement and scores of walking corpses gathered outside, Elvis shook his head and said bitterly, “That’s a load of crap.”

  Bishop rose from his chair. Stared Elvis down and said menacingly, “It’s the only way.”

  Carson also stood. Made his way to the rail and craned his head right to see how the unloading was coming along. Lined up on the ground near the smaller choppers were several neat rows of black plastic boxes brimming with thousands of rounds of the most sought-after calibers—5.56 hardball for the M4s. 9mm and .45 hollow points for the pistols, as well as a few hundred rounds of 7.62x39 mm for the smattering of AKs favored by a number of Bishop’s Spartan soldiers. Pretty good haul, he thought to himself as he watched the two conscripts do the grunt work. In fact, they were dead men walking. Bishop had ordered them killed for riling up the walkers near the entry—but that could wait. For now, the doomed men were useful, humping the boxes into the abandoned house next door like a couple of pale overweight Sherpa.

  Suddenly Carson’s attention was drawn to one of the Black Hawks, where the pilot, having apparently just finished his post-flight walk around, hauled open the starboard side sliding door. There was a rasp of metal on metal and then a flurry of startled movement in the shadowy cabin. A few seconds passed, then, one at a time, the three women taken from the city near the reservoir stepped clumsily from the cabin to the ground below. Once the pilot had arranged the prisoners shoulder to shoulder, he went down the line and jerked the hoods from their heads. Instantly, eyes squeezed shut against the afternoon sun, all three fell to their knees like falling dominos.

  No reason for the zip ties now, thought Carson. Though their pupils had had the time to adjust, still, all three remained hunched over, shoulders slumped, chins nearly touching their chests. Clearly all three of the twenty-something women were completely broken. Every last ounce of piss and vinegar in them gone the second he tossed the Jordan bitch, kicking and screaming, out of the helo two-hundred feet above the quarry. And to add a visual to go with the audiotrack of that bitch’s last seconds on Earth, Carson had had the pilot descend while he removed the others’ hoods and forced them to look at her broken form on the ground below. So that they would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, precisely what would happen to them if they ever drew blood from him.

  He traced the quartet of raised welts running from the bridge of his nose to his right ear. That he hadn’t lost an eye was a miracle. In a way, giving the petite blonde flying lessons had been more satisfying than gunning down the two armed men at the quarry. Out of nowhere he felt a throbbing down below—the first stirrings of an erection.

  Elvis hauled himself out of the deck chair and took up station next to Carson, eyeing the women. “Well, well. What do we have here?”

  To this, Carson repeated the same three-word-quip he had used earlier. Only delivered not in a joking manner, but with all the seriousness and banality of a host at Thanksgiving offering a serving of white meat or dark. And though Elvis was dead tired, those three words, blonde or brunette, perked him up like a shot of epinephrine. An impish grin crossed his face. He cocked his head and said, “Both?”

  Bishop caught Carson’s eye and nodded subtly, like a trader on the New York Stock exchange floor giving a sell order.

  Taking the cue, Carson turned and said
over his shoulder, “Follow me.”

  Chapter 33

  Interstate 70 dove south for a spell then meandered west by north, paralleling the Book Cliffs through the hardscrabble desert.

  Along the way, Cade couldn’t help but let his gaze wander, for short durations at a time, to the remnants of the frantic eastbound diaspora sitting inert in the opposite lanes of travel. Backed up for miles behind a horrific multi-car pileup were slab-sided SUVs, tiny foreign-made compacts, and just about everything in between. There were the obvious signs of savage zombie attacks and the bloody feeding frenzies that always followed—severed limbs, headless torsos, meat-stripped bones and remnants of shredded clothing flapping in the breeze. Doors were open with skeletal half-eaten bodies spilling out. In some of the vehicles, unfortunate attack victims who had died and then reanimated still thrashed and banged against closed doors trying to escape their metal crypts.

  But this wasn’t the first traffic jam of death Cade had seen, and certainly not the last. Still, he marveled at all of the crap the people had jammed inside of their vehicles prior to fleeing Salt Lake City and, presumably, points further south and west. In fact, visually, it kind of ranked up there on the absurdity scale with all of the trinkets and statues and jewelry the ancient Egyptians sent their dead into the afterworld with. Only these Americans opted to burden themselves of their own free will. A move, in Cade’s opinion, that had hastened their own journey into the very same afterworld. And further making the metal column snaking east look like a modern day desert caravan, it seemed as if the occupants of every fifth vehicle had been in the process of unpacking, having piled most of their worldly belongings: suitcases, sleeping bags, tents, microwaves, televisions, and toys of every shape and size and color atop their vehicles after finding themselves trapped. Or perhaps, thought Cade. Maybe the subsequent waves of survivors had come along and picked through the belongings, attempting to fortify their own provisions.