by Mark Tufo
While the tussle ensued in the background, the veteran reporter lay face down, spread-eagled, and bled to death. The grisly scene was broadcast live in full HD, on thousands of televisions.
The image on the screen switched from the live remote feed to the ashen, stunned and speechless anchors in the studio. A male reporter stammered and said a few words about his fallen co-worker before he scrubbed his hands across his face and visibly composed himself. The network promptly went to commercial.
It was astonishing that the cameraman had failed to warn the news reporter before her graphic demise had been captured on the live feed. Cade scanned the other news channels and saw that violence was breaking out in other cities. He was astounded as he watched people stand rooted, overwhelmed by fear as the infected overran them. Their fight or flight impulses were switched off by the improbable scenario their eyes and brain were still trying to register.
Chapter 128
Southeast Portland
Cade didn’t sleep at all that night. He was worried sick for his wife and daughter. For the first few hours after the sun had gone down he kept watch out of Raven’s upstairs bedroom window. The trickle of undead ambling up and down his street had increased. After closing all of the curtains and extinguishing the lights he tried to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his dead neighbors. Finally Cade got out of bed, dressed and went downstairs. He didn’t want to but he was drawn to the television. He turned it on and watched all night. So far, the satellite hadn’t failed. He didn’t want to rely on the Portland news anchors for all of his information, given the incessant, high-strung babble and hyperbole coming from them since their colleague’s death.
At first the cable news channels were no better. CNN, FOX and MSNBC were reporting that the outbreak was similar to SARS or H1N1. Their idea of useful information included the use of face masks, plastic sheeting and duct tape to secure against an airborne pathogen. All of the other alphabet news stations were the same. Speculation, guessing and second guessing passed for news. Tensions were at their highest as nations pointed fingers and missiles at each other. Threat levels were raised and armies mobilized. The only consensus was that the origin of the pathogen was still unknown, and every nation’s survival depended on quick thinking and immediate action.
Cade noticed so far Portland as well as the central Rockies and Colorado weren’t being mentioned very much in the news. The massacre in the Square was only big news locally.
Looking at the big picture, the world was in a mess of trouble.
Chapter 129
Day 2 - Portland, Oregon
As dawn broke revealing a bluebird-colored sky, a flight of F-15E Strike Eagles from Portland International Airport roared overhead. They were on full afterburner and flying very low. Windows rattled and car alarms were triggered by the over flight. Two of the fighters peeled off and climbed higher and then resumed CAP (combat air patrol) in a circling series of laps over the city.
Cade remembered that in the days following the 9/11 attacks, there was a constant rumbling of National Guard fighter jets on CAP over Portland. It was apparent things had deteriorated very rapidly overnight.
Not being able to contact his loved ones or any of his other neighbors forced him to make the decision to leave the house and reconnoiter the neighborhood. Cade went out into his backyard, stepped up into an old rusty wheelbarrow, poked his head over the top of the fence and slowly scanned the alley left to right checking for any of the walking dead.
After concluding he was alone, as quietly as possible he eased his aluminum mountain bike over the six foot wooden fence that enclosed his back yard. Getting around on the bike would be faster than on foot and quieter than a car.
He vaulted over the fence to join his bike and crouched down, then inhaled and exhaled through his nose several times. The air smelled of smoke mingled with the distinctive stench of decaying flesh. The odor was most likely from one of his many dead neighbors he had observed ambling about the streets over the last day and a half.
Still crouched down, he swiveled his head slowly, intent on picking up any sounds coming from the grass and dirt alley that ran between the block of houses in the rear. With the back of his hand he wiped the sweat forming on his brow. He didn’t detect any sounds nearby. In the distance a siren wailed.
Since the start of the outbreak the traffic on his street had dwindled to nothing, and the undead began appearing in larger numbers. The neighborhood had become eerily quiet except for the raspy moans of the walking dead. When one of them spotted anything living they would begin their low pitched moaning and alert the other walkers within earshot. It was akin to how dogs started barking at night, one starts howling and soon a string of baying dogs would all join in on the chorus.
In the big sandbox in the Middle East, situational awareness and constant training was what kept him alive. It was especially important now given the fact the dead were walking the streets. Cade knew they greatly outnumbered him; therefore he was very careful to avoid any contact.
Cade was an average sized man. With the exception of his intense hard eyes, he didn’t look like a Tier-One Operator. Most of the soldiers he had trained with and gone to war with looked unassuming as well. There were a few of the moose sized, action star lookers in the teams. During operations they usually paid the price and humped the big guns.
Until fifteen months ago Cade was in country in the “Stan” (short for Afghanistan), hunting HVTs, foreign fighters and al-Qaeda terrorists. After about thirty or so, he had stopped counting the men he had sent to paradise.
Cade travelled light during his neighborhood excursion. His aim was to check out his surroundings and determine if he should shelter in place or bug out.
He wore khaki heavy duty workpants, a black long sleeve tee shirt and a well-worn black Trailblazers ball cap covering his dark, short cropped hair. A pair of black wraparound Oakley sunglasses shielded his eyes. Sturdy, steel toed black leather Danner boots protected his feet. Strapped to his left upper thigh was a semi-automatic 9mm Glock 17 and under his right armpit was a compact semi-automatic 9mm Glock 19 in a quick draw Bianchi holster. Both pistols were polymer, very light and dependable. Within easy reach in a nylon pouch on his belt were four extra, seventeen round magazines. A Gerber Mark-II combat dagger, ten inches of double bladed, hardened black steel, hung upside down from his combat harness. In his free hand he held the lightweight titanium ice axe. It had been worth its weight in gold during his first encounter with the undead. An hour spent with a rasp and file honed the points and blade of the axe razor sharp. Cade knew this was going to be a very effective and quiet weapon.
Even though he was more than a year removed from the Special Forces, he still possessed the tools of the trade; and had not forgotten how to use them.
Chapter 130
Day 2 - Southeast Portland
Straddling the bike, he secured the axe to the frame and rode quietly westward down the alley past his former neighbor’s back fence. Two blocks into the ride he noticed the sickly sweet smell of death. Cade dismounted his bike to seek out the source. Cautiously glancing around the corner, he saw them. One was a balding black man, ashy and gray with sunken jaundiced eyes. Above his collar was a bruised and bloody gaping neck wound with dangling streamers of flesh that left muscle, veins, sinew and white vertebrae exposed. The only thing appearing to hold his head on was a blood soaked necktie. Blackish dried blood fully coated the front of the ghoul’s three-piece suit.
Next to him was a small black woman with no visible wounds. She was undead also. Her formerly pastel yellow bathrobe was now thoroughly congealed with drying blood. Dirt, twigs, hair and all manner of refuse clung to the fabric.
Both of the undead were circling around the base of a large oak tree, hands in the air, reaching, mouths working like two macabre marionettes.
Cade assessed the situation from a distance. Upon further scrutiny he noticed a milled lumber platform about twelve feet off the ground, with a coiled u
p rope ladder attached. It was a tree house partially hidden by the lower boughs and leaves of the old oak.
There was some movement in the middle branches of the tree.
The two undead noticed it as well and started to moan. Barely audible over the chilling sound, a voice yelled, “Help, up here!”
The undead were oblivious to Cade’s presence. Their attention was fully focused on the tree and the meat in it.
Taking advantage of the diversion, he crept up on the male cadaver from behind and to the right, being careful to stay shielded from Bathrobe’s view. Three feet away from the undead businessman, he raised the sharpened ice axe in his right hand shoulder high and swung it in a wide horizontal arc at the creature’s head. Brackish black liquid and putrid gray matter exploded from the baseball-sized hole in its temple. The dead executive collapsed instantly and the ice axe slipped from his head.
The heavy thud of the body colliding with the ground alerted the other ghoul to Cade’s presence. Hissing and biting, she turned and lurched towards him.
In one fluid movement Cade sidestepped her lunge, drew his Gerber left handed and buried the dagger handle deep into the thing’s eye socket. Her flailing arms were unable to get a purchase on him as she slumped towards the base of the tree.
After a quick wipe off on the grass, he put the dagger back in its sheath.
Cade felt something soft and wet squish under his boots. Looking down, he was sickened to see a mound of human-looking remains. Ribs, a spinal column, and scraps of skin, tendon, and flesh and blood lay in a greasy pile on the grass.
Cade was examining the remnants when a high-pitched voice from above shouted a warning, “Watch out behind you!”
Faster than an Old West gunslinger, the Glock was out of the Bianchi shoulder holster and in Cade’s left hand. The pistol barked twice in rapid succession. The lethal double tap removed the frontal lobe and most of the elderly man’s forehead and skullcap. As he fell towards the other two undead bodies, the remaining contents of his cranium painted the ground. The walker was wearing bloody night clothes and clutched a newspaper in its hand. Numerous bite wounds were evident on its arms, face and neck.
“Shooooot. It’s old man Bandon. He was one of them too?” said the faceless voice in the tree house.
Gunfire was guaranteed to attract the dead. As if on cue their eerie moaning started to reverberate from blocks around.
“Get down here,” Cade said, pausing to scan the surroundings. After a lack of response from above, he barked, “If you want to live let’s go... now.”
Two frightened faces peered down from the tree house. The ladder rapidly unfurled and they nearly clambered over each other trying to reach the ground.
At the first sight of the gory pile of remains, the younger of the two blurted out, “Missy’s dead.” He started crying, snot running down his upper lip.
Thinking the worst, Cade asked the boys if Missy was their sister.
The older boy tearfully choked out, “No... Missy was our cocker spaniel.”
Glancing down, Cade was at the same time relieved and momentarily at a loss for words. Then he barked instructions at the two. “Follow me, be quick, but be quiet.”
The older boy grabbed the younger one around the neck and hustled him by the three corpses at the base of the tree, all the while struggling to shield him from the scene using his hands. He wasn’t successful in keeping his younger brother from seeing the bodies of the undead. Tearing away from the older boy, the younger one dropped to his knees and gave forth a guttural wail. “Mom... Dad…”
Cade knelt down and placed his arm around the young boy’s shoulder.
The boy fought off the embrace, landing a fist on the stranger’s temple. “You killed them!” the younger boy screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.
Cade grabbed the boy in a bear hug. He was hoping to calm him down enough to talk the kid’s mind around what he had just witnessed. But also he was seeing stars from the sneak attack and needed a brief respite. The shot he took to the temple was perfectly aimed and had rung his bell.
The boy finally stopped struggling after some quiet, calming words from his brother.
Cade kept his grip firm and whispered into the young boy’s ear. “I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did. You need to understand something though. I am truly sorry for what I did, but as hard as it is to believe, they were already dead.” He paused for a moment to think before finishing out loud. “Why don’t you guys help me understand what happened this morning.” Cade released the boy.
The skinny, younger boy spoke first. “When Mom came home from graveyard shift at the hospital she started fighting with Daddy. They fight a lot but this was the worst ever. We usually just get out of their way until they chill.”
“I hustled Ike up into the tree house. We thought we’d wait until they calmed down,” the older of the two added. “Things got real quiet for a while and then we decided to go back into the house. I opened the screen door and it squeaked like it always does. The next thing I see is those,” he said while pointing at his dead parents.
Cade told the two boys what he had learned, “It’s all over the news. A virus or something is making people die and then come back to life or un-death, or whatever; they only want to eat. You, me, your dog... anything living... they don’t discriminate. They don’t even recognize family.”
“We were wondering why they kept circling the tree and wouldn’t answer us. I was tripping because Dad was all bloody,” the older boy said, wincing as he again looked at the dead bodies. The brothers, eyes tearing, embraced each other and cried.
Cade gave them a moment, then got their attention to add one last important detail. “The people on the news are saying the only way to stop the infected if they attack you is by destroying their brain. Hit ‘em anywhere else and they just keep coming.”
The whole exchange took just moments. Now undead were moaning all around them and it sounded as if they were drawing nearer.
Cade holstered his pistol, secured the ice axe to the bike’s utility rack and quietly whispered to the two boys, “Follow me if you want to live.”
The nerve wracking sounds coming from the large group of walkers, about a hundred yards away, were more than enough to convince the brothers to follow the stranger on the bike.
Chapter 131
Day 2 - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
A woman’s piercing scream came from downstairs. Sitting bolt upright, it took a minute for Brook to remember where she was. The clock read 8:37 A.M. Raven had shared the queen-sized bed with her. She was eleven now, but still a little small for her age. Being a heavy sleeper, she was slower to wake from the commotion downstairs in the kitchen.
Brook kept quiet, fearing an intruder had entered the house and attacked her mom. She stared at her daughter as she awoke with a start. She kept Raven quiet with a serious glare and a vertical finger to her lips. Stillness pervaded the house. She strained to hear anything more. Brook thought, Dad must still be in bed, how could anyone sleep through that?
Brook’s dad was an emergency room physician at Grand Strand Regional Hospital. Yesterday evening about 9:00 P.M. he was bitten by a patient. The feverish, hallucinating man bit him as he was leaning over, probing with his stethoscope to listen to his heart. As the orderlies tried to restrain the combative dying man, the hospital’s first confirmed pandemic victim also bit one of them.
Before her dad came home, one of the other ER doctors cleaned the bite wound, bandaged him up and administered a shot of antibiotics. He had gone to bed before everyone else the previous night. He had cramps and was burning up with a high fever. The superficial bite wound on his abdomen was the least of his worries; he had a strong suspicion he was sick with the new flu pandemic. The man that had bitten him had shown identical symptoms to the ones he was suffering from. Keeping his distance just in case, he had said, “See you in the morning. I love you Brook and my little bird, Raven.”
The noises resumed
downstairs. To Brook it sounded like someone was moving furniture around. She silently ushered her daughter into the adjoining bathroom and gingerly pulled the door shut.
On stocking feet, she crept along the upstairs hall to the closed door of her dad’s study. He kept an antique Ithaca shotgun displayed in his office on the wall behind his desk.
She found the closed office door unlocked. As she entered, the familiar smell of Dad’s personal quiet space greeted her: leather, tobacco and of course Old Spice aftershave. Happy memories of her childhood flooded her brain.
Everything was where she remembered it, a black leather swivel chair behind his big wooden desk, and two maroon red overstuffed leather pub chairs, one in each corner by the door. All types of artifacts filled every nook and cranny. Above the bronze wild bronco statue and world globe was Dad’s prized over and under Ithaca shotgun. Its pale walnut stock gleamed and the light from the hall reflected in the ornate etchings on the blued metal.
Cade had introduced her briefly to the basic workings of a firearm. They practiced a small amount of target shooting every time they went camping together.
Brook retrieved the shotgun and opened the breech. As she suspected, it was unloaded. After quietly rummaging through a couple of drawers, she found some loose shells. Carefully, she loaded both chambers. Then she descended the steps slowly one at a time. Loaded shotgun in hand, she went to investigate the noises, pausing on the bottom step to listen.
What she heard reminded her of a big dog greedily wolfing down wet canned dog food. Gun poised at the ready and safety off, she said, “Mom, Dad... is that you? I’ve got Dad’s shotgun, it’s loaded.”