***
Less than a minute after overflying Huntsville and the glassy waters of the Prineville reservoir, a natural slot appeared in the mountains where from more than a mile out Cade could see movement on a large scale. “Put us in a hover,” he said sharply.
Duncan said, “Roger that,” and nosed the Black Hawk up and quickly dropped some altitude before holding a semi-steady hover. “I’m going bring the FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) camera on line. You’ve got a hat switch on the stick to move the pod.”
“Copy that,” replied Cade. He grasped the stick and found the switch with his thumb. A half-beat later the center display facing him lit up, showing a full color view of the canyon ahead. He gently thumbed the hat switch until the slot was centered perfectly on the monitor. To the right of the road rose a steep, nearly vertical cliff face, scrub and gnarled trees clinging to it tenaciously. Opposite the face, beyond the guardrail, the canyon dropped off sharply an indeterminate number of feet. And entirely blocking the dull gray four-lane in between the two was a wall of rust-colored shipping containers. Four abreast, three deep, and stacked two high in an inverted ‘V,’ the twenty-four steel Conex containers created a formidable-looking barrier, its point facing a jostling logjam of death that looked to be at least a thousand strong. Not enough to move the barrier, Cade thought to himself. But still something worth keeping a close tab on.
Duncan whistled slowly; a mournful sound befitting the sight. He said, “Zoom in on the outside guardrail.”
Cade panned the FLIR pod left and zoomed in on an eight-inch gap between the scraped and dinged white metal rail and the vertically ribbed wall of the nearest container. One thing that stood out to him instantly, because of the sun glinting from them, was the carpet of spent brass covering the road several feet in every direction on the near side of the barrier.
In the span of less than a minute, they witnessed a Z being pushed through the gap under force from behind. It fell hard to the road face first and then clumsily picked itself up and marched east, joining the ragged line of creatures preceding it. Consequently, as a result of the sudden forward surge, a half dozen Zs went over the guardrail, cartwheeling into space.
Giving voice to Cade’s thoughts, Duncan said, “I figure those Huntsville bandits had to come out here pretty regular to keep their numbers down. And these things have been accumulating since Bishop and his boys dealt those death cards here the other day.”
Lev entered the conversation, “What do you figure, a couple hundred new ones show up every day?”
“At least,” replied Cade. “Good for us more spill over than squirt through.”
“Just a matter of time before enough of them show up and that gap starts getting wider,” added Duncan. “Someone should have dynamited the hell outta that wall and sealed it off for good.”
Great minds, thought Cade. Then he said, “Everyone seen enough?”
Duncan switched off the FLIR feed and nudged the stick. As the helo took a sharp left turn and started to descend, he said, “Next stop Morgan County Airport.”
Chapter 66
Nearly thirteen hours of uninterrupted sleep had left Elvis with a banging headache; a sort of hangover minus the reward of a wild night of partying.
He dressed quickly, pulling on a pair of Levis and then a red Huskers tee-shirt he’d found hanging in a destroyed truck stop south of the Nebraska state line. Laced up his boots and donned his lucky Huskers ball cap.
Feeling naked without the .45 pressing the small of his back, he took the stairs down two at a time, walked through the house and joined Bishop outside on the deck overlooking the cobalt blue lake.
“Take a seat,” said Bishop, his voice devoid of the menacing tone from the night before.
Feeling the rising sun warming his chin and cheeks, Elvis pulled a chair out and took a load off. There was a pot of coffee and a couple of mugs as well as a six-pack of canned energy drinks, dew rolling off their aluminum skin. In the center of the table was a platter containing some kind of sausages, a rasher of bacon, and a fluffy mound of scrambled eggs. “May I?” asked Elvis, reaching for an energy drink.
Bishop smiled, obviously pleased with himself for procuring such a meal. “Help yourself. Mi casa su casa,” he said. “And thanks to our neighbors to the east, the eggs are always fresh.”
Elvis took a Red Bull and filled a plate. He held aloft a stiff strip of well-marbled bacon, examining it front and back.
“No cook bacon,” admitted Bishop. “Who knew it would take a zombie apocalypse for me to stoop so low.”
Elvis chuckled.
“Did you enjoy the girls?”
“I was so tired I had to make them do all of the work.” Then, changing the subject. “When am I leaving?”
Bishop flicked his wrist. The key fob arced from his hand, hit the table, bounced once and then skittered under the lip of Elvis’s plate. “After you’ve had your fill, you’re free to go. The tank is full and the spare cans are strapped down in back. Gives you about fifty gallons total ... more than enough to get there and back. There’s a couple of MREs and some waters up front and you’ll find your pistol and two spare mags in the glove box. And to make it easy on you, the coordinates are already programmed into the Tom Tom. Get within one mile of your final destination and lay up somewhere safe until just after sunset ... twenty-one-hundred hours ... or nine o’clock, and then proceed the rest of the way. I want you to activate the device at nine-eleven sharp.”
Cocking his head with a harried look on his face, Elvis asked, “Won’t they see me coming ... be using some kind of night vision goggles or overhead drones or something?”
Bishop shook his head. “Negative. You won’t see their base because it’ll be blacked out. Besides, the coordinates I inputted are BVR of the base.”
“What’s a BVR?”
“It means beyond visual range. So unless you do something stupid and honk the horn or trigger the light bar or set off fireworks, you can go in all the way and deposit the device and arm it without anyone seeing or hearing you.”
“Why nine-eleven?”
“Easy enough to remember, don’t you think?”
Nodding, Elvis said, “What if I come up against a patrol?”
“They lock the base down at dusk. No one goes in or out.” Bishop smiled. “So no patrols.”
“No patrols.” Elvis was the one smiling now. Thinking about the damage he was going to inflict, he asked, “What’s the code to arm the device?”
“One, two, three, four. Also easy enough to remember. Input that and you’ll have one hour to get twenty miles away.”
Grinning ear to ear, Elvis stood up, extended his hand and said, “Thanks for believing in me, sir.”
“No. Thank you, Elvis,” said Bishop. He rose and shook Elvis’s hand. “We’re stretched pretty thin here. Carson and the guys have their hands full with the dead and locals alike. What you are doing for me will be remembered and rewarded ... handsomely.”
Chapter 67
Bishop was a man of his word, that was for sure. Elvis found the fuel needle pegged at full. The .45 and the spare mags for it were right where they were supposed to be. Resting demurely in the passenger side footwell was an AK-47 with a folding wire stock and two full thirty-round magazines for it. Bonus. Apparently, Elvis thought, I’m back in Bishop’s good graces and thusly there will be no bullet to the brain to account for my past transgressions. And when all was said and done, the only thing more staggering than the body count will be the amount of tail he was going to get upon returning.
Wearing a big I belong here grin and without being given so much as a second look, Elvis pulled up to the southwest gate and put the transmission into Park. I really am one of them now, he thought, as Carson smiled big and approached his side of the truck.
Inside the lake house
For the first time in nearly three weeks, Jamie awoke to something other than the dark insides of a dirty sack or the pitch-black interior-of-a-casket kind of
darkness she’d gotten used to at the subterranean compound. Now, after being dragged from her sleep by the throaty exhaust of a diesel engine working laboriously somewhere outside, she found herself squinting against the onslaught of early morning sun spilling in from the skylight above.
The split second of feel good was instantly supplanted by a wet blanket of dread as she realized what was most likely in store for her at the day’s end.
Southwest Gate
Unable to sleep soundly the night before, Foley was now paying dearly. He felt his lids getting heavy and then, as was par for the course whenever he was saddled with the mind-numbing task of manning the gate, his mind began to wander. Suddenly he was on a beach somewhere tropical, his family by his side, a cold beverage in hand and white sand underfoot. And best of all, for the time being, the walking dead were out of sight and mind and he wasn’t beholden to a bunch of Lord of the Flies-type thugs—grown men who operated as if everything was for their taking and every survivor their subject. Suddenly the crunch of tires on gravel tore him from the blissful moment and a full-sized American-made tow-truck sat idling on his side of the gate.
He straightened up and waited for the inevitable order to open the gate, but oddly enough none came. A tick later, a shiny Escalade pulled in behind the tow-truck and Carson (who was rarely seen around this gate) stepped out and hustled forward. Stopping at the driver’s door, he shot the driver a forced smile, then, further confusing Foley, the two shook hands and shared a quiet conversation.
Watching the glad handing with mounting disgust, Foley sized up the new guy in the blood-red Cornhusker hat and wondered to himself what kind of pillaging mission he was being sent out on. Most likely batteries and ammunition, which, next to cigarettes, were the new gold these days. But the more he thought about it the more unlikely that seemed. The vehicle was all wrong. No bed or crew cab to stow the loot. And then he got a glimpse of the sturdy looking trunk on the back of the truck. Instantly he recognized the radiological symbol affixed to it and felt a cold tingle charge up his spine.
Then the order he’d been expecting was delivered. “Foley,” bellowed one of the Spartan mercenaries who was known to be excessively cruel to the McCall conscripts. “Open the gate.”
Seething inwardly, Foley checked for dead and, seeing none, nearby, pulled the three pins and laced his fingers through the blood-and-detritus-streaked chicken wire. Putting his back into the effort, he dipped his shoulder and kicked imaginary postholes into the gravel roadbed as he drove the steel and wood barrier outward. Slightly short of breath, and dreading the forthcoming order to close the gate, he watched the wrecker cross the threshold, turn left and speed away, its heavy-duty radials thrumming against the pavement.
Leaving the enclosed perimeter behind and not knowing where in the hell he was going, Elvis resorted to following the directions doled out by the sultry female voice. After passing through the deathly quiet resort town of McCall, where the only things moving were a roving pack of flesh eaters, he saw in the distance a gauze-like haze hovering over the road. As he got closer to the edge of town it became evident that the blight on the sky was an enormous flock of ravens, crows, starlings, and many other carrion-feeding birds he couldn’t name. And traveling another quarter of a mile Elvis saw what was drawing them. Nailed to crosses made from railroad ties and stuck upright into the hard soil, a trio of naked men had been left to die a painfully slow death. Already gone to the birds were their eyes and ears and lips. The cavities once containing soft organs vital to sustaining life had been mined of everything save scraps of sinew and glistening ribs and knobby vertebra. As he passed by the warnings to anyone contemplating crossing Ian Bishop, he found it impossible to tear his eyes from what could have easily been his fate if Carson had had his way.
***
Twelve miles and fifteen minutes later, with the visual of the eviscerated examples still a strong imprint on his mind, the small town of New Meadow rose from the heat shimmer. Thankfully a few hundred yards shy of the city, the voice of the Tom Tom had him go right off of Idaho State Highway 55 and merge onto State Route 95, a north/south four-lane that a large orange road sign warned was currently under construction.
And it had been. But was no longer. For the first three miles, in addition to a steady stream of southbound zombies, he passed various colorful pieces of idled heavy equipment. There were diggers, graders, dump trucks, and a roller with a shiny steel drum big enough to flatten a herd of walking dead and keep on rolling. The fantastic visual supplanted that of the crucified and brought a rare smile to his face.
Chapter 68
Refueling at Morgan County Airport was a far cry from what Cade and his team had experienced more than a week ago at Grand Junction Regional. For one thing, a fuel-laden jetliner hadn’t landed short and plowed through the perimeter fence trailing flames and strewing luggage and body parts the length of the runway.
Here, two hundred twenty air miles removed from the killing field that was GJR, the total opposite was true. The fencing around the single-strip facility was intact, and whoever left last had taken care to lock all points of entry behind them. The asphalt runway and helicopter pads southwest of it were clear of obstructions.
Duncan brought the Black Hawk in slow and low just over a copse of forty-foot-tall trees west of the airport, and put it down softly thirty feet north of a pair of painted-on circles meant specifically for the airport’s rotor-wing aircraft. After the engines spooled down and the rotor noise subsided markedly, Cade hashed out a game plan and assigned Daymon and Lev each a task to perform.
Cade gave the perimeter fencing a quick once-over with the Bushnell’s. Nearby, just south of the landing pad, a small number of Zs were clutching the fence and looking in. A few hundred yards behind them, on the airport feeder road, at least two dozen more flesh eaters slowly ambled closer, no doubt drawn in from the highway by the helicopter’s noisy entrance. All total, Cade counted more than thirty and deduced with a cursory glance that the hurricane fencing would most likely hold them at bay for the time being. Which was a good thing because he had no desire to experience another hot refuel like the one at Grand Junction. Then, with one eye on the dead and the avoidable death of his former teammate Maddox fresh on his mind, he stepped from the helicopter and instinctively ducked his head as he loped under the blurred rotors towards the nearby fuel bowser.
He drew his Glock on the move and, once he’d covered the distance, stretched to full extension and banged the butt of the polymer pistol high up on the fuel tank’s smooth skin. At the curved apex, near the top fill line, the sound rang hollow. However, halfway down, just above his eye level, the raps from his gun returned music to his ears in the form of a bass heavy report indicating there was still plenty of fuel inside.
He flashed a thumbs up towards the Black Hawk and, as planned, Lev leaped out and sprinted across the tarmac. Together they ran the hose to the chopper and Cade plugged the nozzle into the port which contained a mechanism that automatically opened the valve and started the flammable fuel flowing into the tanks, a risky proposition under normal conditions made more so with the howling turbines and a quartet of blades cutting the air overhead.
While the transfer was taking place, Cade cast his gaze beyond the rubber-streaked runway to the pair of single-engine Cessna airplanes, the nearest of which bounced up and down slightly on its tricycle-style landing gear. A minute later the plane stopped moving and Daymon stepped from the door, wearing a wide grin and clutching a thick stack of what to Cade looked like the kind of folded maps you’d find for sale at any corner gas station.
Three minutes later the DHS bird’s tanks were full, and with Lev’s help Cade ran the hose back to the bowser.
Back inside the chopper, Cade shrugged his harness on and plugged his helmet into the comms jack. He craned over his shoulder and confirmed Lev and Daymon were aboard and buckled in, then flashed Duncan a thumbs up. Instantly the turbines spooled up and whined noisily and the fuel-laden bird’s wh
eels parted with the tarmac and it rose steadily skyward, nose already spinning northward.
Cade said, “How many charts did you find?”
Thumbing through them, Daymon replied, “Four.”
“Nicely done, gentlemen,” said Duncan as he leveled out the lumbering bird and kicked the turbines up a degree. With the ground and distant trees whipping steadily by, he looked over at Cade. “Where to, Boss?”
“Boise,” answered Cade. “Closest possible strip I know of that’ll handle a G650.” Then, addressing Daymon over the comms, he said, “I need you to go through the charts and find all of the airports in Idaho. Start at Boise and work north.”
“Done,” replied Daymon as he clumsily unfolded the first map that was supposed to contain detailed information about every airstrip in the state, from the small public affairs like Morgan County all the way up to facilities like Boise with multiple runways capable of handling even large commercial jetliners.
Shrugging, Duncan said, “The man spoke. Boise it is.”
Chapter 69
The knife-edged ridges of the taller peaks to the west reflected the rising sun as Elvis left the small towns of Pollock, Riggins, and Lucile in his rearview. Then, with the Salmon River and the low mountains scribbling along off his left shoulder, he chose a desolate zombie-free strip of 95 on which to pull over and piss.
***
Thirty-three miles north up 95 and forty-five minutes after leaving the puddle of steaming urine on the centerline, the voice in the box instructed him to deviate from the highway and turn left onto the Johnston Road Cutoff in order to, he presumed, bypass the nearby city of Grangeville showing just to the east on the Tom Tom’s display.
Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 33