Allegiance
Page 1
Allegiance:
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
By
Shawn Chesser
KINDLE EDITION
***
Allegiance:
Surviving the Zombie
Apocalypse
Copyright 2013
Shawn Chesser
Kindle Edition
Kindle Edition, License
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com or Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.
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***
Acknowledgements
For Mo, Raven, and Caden, you three mean the world to me... love you. And thanks for putting up with me clacking away at all hours... and then letting me sleep in a little. I owe everything to my parents for bringing me up the right way. Mom, thanks for reading… although it is not your genre. Dad, aka Mountain Man Dan, thanks for your ear and influence. Cliff Kane, RIP. Daymon, thanks for introducing me to Grand Targhee and Jackson Hole! Thanks to all of the men and women in the military, past and present, especially those of you in harm’s way. Thanks to all LE and first responders for your service. To the people in the U.K. who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Thanks to Tom Leeland for help with questions about det cord, your service is appreciated. Thanks to Craig Jeffrey for help with military kit and loadouts. Thanks to Mark Lyon for the awesome image... you make a great Cade Grayson! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Larry Eckels thank you for your service. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. Steve H., thanks for listening. All of my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Old St. David’s, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob… you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.
My idea for the cover was interpreted and designed by Craig Overbey to perfection. Thank you Sir! Contact Craig
Special thanks to Craig DiLouie, Gary Mountjoy, John O’Brien, and Mark Tufo. One way or another, all of you have helped me and have provided me with invaluable advice. David P Forsyth, thanks for including me in the Permuted Press published anthology, Outbreak: Visions of the Apocalypse. Being published and all of the proceeds going to charity=WIN+WIN.
Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for taking “Allegiance” and giving it some special attention and TLC while polishing its rough edges. Mo, you rock! Working with you has been a seamless experience and nothing but a pleasure. You are the best! If I have accidently left anyone out... I am truly sorry.
***
Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
mohappy@att.net { http://www.moniquehappy.com
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 1
Outbreak - Day 15
Schriever AFB
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Two days after Pug’s execution
Cade Grayson hinged at the waist, snatched the bulky overstuffed duffel bag, and easily flung it up and into the truck’s bed where it settled with a solid metallic clunk. Two weeks of running and gunning and surviving on mostly caffeine and sheer will alone had quickly transformed his physique. The small amount of body fat (love handles, according to Brook) that had accumulated around his waist during fifteen months of comfortable civilian life prior to the Omega outbreak had quickly melted away, leaving him muscled and lean. His face had thinned out, the tanned skin taut over his cheekbones where gray streaked sideburns were slowly working their way down to an inevitable merger with his goatee. With the exception of his cardio, which he was gradually building up through daily runs inside the base perimeter, he was in the best physical shape of his life and acclimating nicely to the high desert altitude of Colorado Springs. Thankfully, he had been spared the intense headaches and bouts of breathlessness that had plagued him in the Hindu Kush during his first deployment to that beautiful but Godforsaken country called Afghanistan.
Wiping sweat beads from his brow, he took a covert glance over his shoulder to make sure Brook hadn’t been lurking in the hangar, watching, hawklike, as he had just broken one of her many cardinal rules. Inexplicably the petite woman’s distinctive soothing voice echoed in his head. ‘Lift with your knees, not with your back, Cade Grayson.’ Thirteen years of marriage to a nurse had been challenging at times for the hard-headed only child, and over those years he’d found her ever-changing health-related edicts hard to remember and equally difficult to practice.
***
Ninety minutes earlier when Cade had initially arrived inside the hangar and knocked on First Sergeant Whipper’s door, he had been greeted with silence. Then he’d made a good faith effort at finding the cantankerous Air Force lifer. He’d walked the flight line, then nosed around the fuel bowsers and the tool shop, anyplace where he figured a mechanic might be hiding. And after fifteen minutes of searching aimlessly, he’d been back knocking on the first sergeant’s door.
There was still no answer, so he’d tried the handle and found the dented and battered yellow door with the sign that read Authorized Personnel Only unlocked. Undeterred by Whipper’s surly attitude and any fallout he might face from what could easily be construed as breaking and entering, Cade had waded into the cluttered office with one objective: find the keys to the black Ford F-650 i
n which the now deceased terrorist Pug had arrived days ago.
Locating the keys had been easy; the high clarity diamonds that spelled out Property of the Denver Nuggets on the face of the walnut-sized 24k basketball set them apart from those to the other military vehicles. The sheer size of the highly customized 4x4, combined with the super expensive bauble on the key ring all but screamed that it had never belonged to Pug. Who the truck’s rightful owner had been, and how it came into the murderer’s possession, was a mystery that had no doubt died along with the little psychopath.
No matter, Cade had mused. It’s mine now.
***
With the rope handles abrading his calloused fingers, Cade straightened his back, let out a loud grunt, and clean jerked the cumbersome pine ammo box from the floor and lifted it level with his sternum. He struggled with the weight for a second and finally perched one end on the tailgate, then used his shoulder to shove it the rest of the way in.
“What’s a matter Captain... lost your edge?”
Cade turned towards the direction of the approaching footsteps and found himself face to ruddy face with the man responsible for the verbal barb.
“First Sergeant Whipper,” Cade said, unable to temper the sharp edge to his words. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I want to know who gave you permission to break into my office and steal the keys to this truck?” the owlish-looking man said brusquely, his pale blue eyes boring into Cade’s. Then, corralling an unruly wisp of white hair back into its proper comb-over place, and without allowing Cade time to respond, Whipper continued his rant. “Some nerve you have, Captain. You send a couple of your civilian friends here with a note from a general ordering me to give them one of my helicopters... and with a full load of fuel to boot. And now you think that gives you the right to waltz in here and take the rig that I had my sights set on?”
“Spoils of war,” Cade answered matter-of-factly. Because along with the agreement that had him snatch and deliver Robert Christian in exchange for Pug, President Valerie Clay had also granted him an honorable discharge from his Delta Unit along with the promise that he could requisition any ground vehicle that he wanted—thus he chose the dead terrorist’s gargantuan truck.
“You Spec Ops pricks are all the same—and Desantos was no different,” Whipper railed. “You pretty boys take what you want and leave the scraps for the rest of us to fight over.”
With a granite set to his jaw, and a look that said he could do without the headache, Cade slammed the tailgate. He let the echo subside and then shot back. “I had nothing to do with you losing one of your helos—that was General Desantos’s idea—and a good one at that.” He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his ARMY tee shirt.
There was a short silence.
Cade crossed his arms and leaned against the lifted pickup. “Now, First Sergeant, are you going to quit busting my balls and walk away, or is this going to escalate?”
The rotund man shifted nervously from foot to foot, his hands disappearing into the pockets of his grease stained coveralls.
“Sergeant Whipper,” a voice called from the other end of the hangar near one of the flat-black Ghost Hawks. “Sergeant... you in there?”
After casting a furtive glance in the direction the voice had come from, Whipper remained silent, head bowed as if he was stuck trying to make some sort of a decision. Then he slowly panned his head back around but seemed unwilling to meet Cade’s steely gaze. Instead, Whipper studied the gray cement floor.
Cade waited a beat, and then after reading the man’s body language and interpreting it for what it was—a sign of weakness—he pressed the attack. He wanted Whipper to leave with his tail between his legs. Even though he would probably never see the angry little man again, he thought that if he left an indelible negative impression on the prick, he would probably think twice before heaping his shit on the other operators and aviators who would continue running missions out of Schriever.
“In case you forgot... Mike is dead and can’t defend his decision. I should kick your ass just for bringing him into this conversation. Then I should kick it again for leaving Ari and the rest of us hanging in Indian Country with our ride staying aloft on nothing but prayers and fumes.” He drew a deep breath. “Really? An important mission like that and you thought it acceptable to have only one fucking Hercules on the ready line with no other bird standing by as a backup?”
“I read the after-action reports. But it was out of my hands,” Whipper replied.
“Bullshit! Because of mechanical failure and your poor decision making, we had no tanker rendezvous. Ari was forced to put us down at a municipal airport crawling with the dead. And that was our second hot refuel under similar circumstances in as many days because you sent us out light in the first place. And though it might not be clear to your superiors, Mister Cover-Your-Own-Ass, it is crystal clear to me where your priorities lie.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Whipper mumbled.
“A man died,” Cade hissed through clenched teeth.
“Sooner or later all of these birds”—the Air Force first sergeant made a grand sweeping motion that encompassed the static aircraft on the tarmac outside and the stealth helicopters sitting nearby—“are no longer going to be airworthy. I have limited manpower, and lubricants and spare parts are harder and harder to come by.”
“So you have a hard job here, huh? Tell that to Sergeant Maddox—he died so the rest of us could make it home. The fact that you only held one Hercules back for us is borderline criminal. And for that I hold you fully responsible.”
Silence.
Whipper stared daggers at the Delta operator, and then suddenly the 5-foot-5 mechanic rushed Cade, who fluidly pushed off the truck and went into a half crouch with his arms at his sides, hands balled into fists. Then, like a bull and a toreador, the two men crabbed counter-clockwise in the center of the hangar.
With no will to initiate a fight with a superior, Whipper smugly said, “You first, Captain.”
“I’m no longer a Captain,” Cade stated, a sly smile curling the corners of his mouth.
At once, Whipper’s face blanched and his wrathful expression morphed to one of bewilderment. Then his head whipped sideways as Cade’s lightning quick rabbit-punch clipped him on the chin. The single powerful blow dropped the first sergeant to the floor, where he lay on his back contemplating the pulsating blue tracers darting amongst the rafters.
“I’d stay down if I were you,” Cade said. “Because if you do get up... it will be for the last time.”
Glancing at the tall slab-sided rig with its elevated cab and enough ground clearance to drive over a Yugo, it suddenly dawned on Cade why Whipper seemed to covet the truck they had just come to blows over. Small man syndrome, he thought to himself. Just like Pug. Then he realized why the first sergeant wanted the Ford as his bug out vehicle. And it was probably the only thing the two of them saw eye-to-eye on.
“So Whipper, tell me something. Where were you planning to go in this rig?”
Slowly massaging the side of his chin where Cade had delivered his message, Whipper lifted his head from the concrete and regarded the operator with a bland look before answering the question. “Nowhere in particular. But definitely away from here when the dead return. And to be honest with you... I just wanted a little insurance. That’s all.”
“You make me sick, Whipper. So you’re telling me that if another herd of dead happens to come this way, maybe from Pueblo or another mega horde from Denver, then your plan is to bail out? Leave the SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) guys and anyone else that relies on your expertise to just fend for themselves?”
Whipper’s eyes narrowed to slits. He stabbed a thumb towards the black truck. “I saw all of the supplies that you loaded into the back of that thing,” he said accusingly. “You, Sir... are the fucking hypocrite here.”
The truth in Whipper’s statement caught Cade by surprise; hitting him like a one-two punch to the midsection. And
as bitter a pill it was for him to swallow—the man did have a point—his decision to quit Delta, no matter the motives behind it, did contain a fair amount of hypocrisy. Furthermore, there was no way he could hide behind the fact that Brook had been the driving force behind turning in his captain’s bars and walking away from the men he would gladly die for, the very same men that he knew would willingly sacrifice their lives for him on the field of battle.
But he didn’t have the time to debate the first sergeant over semantics, nor did he want to bring up one-tenth of the sacrifices he had made for his country while wearing the uniform. In fact, he had nothing to prove to this puke. No need to go there, he thought to himself. Right now, the only thing that mattered to him was to get his ducks in a row and hit the road. He knew that eventually the dead were going to return and in much larger numbers than before. Whether they came from Pueblo, Denver-Aurora or some other direction didn’t matter, for he was certain the double-wall of fencing around Schriever had no chance of stopping them. And he wanted to be on the road with his family before they arrived. To go somewhere far from Schriever. Far from the big cities and off the beaten path.
“I’m taking the truck, Whipper,” Cade said with a no-nonsense tone to his voice. “And if you have a problem with that, you can take it up with President Clay.”
Whipper said nothing. He remained on his back, staring at the shadows in the rafters.
Giving the supine man a wide berth, Cade strode over to the truck and finished stacking the remaining Pelican boxes into the bed, arranging them snugly so they wouldn’t go sliding around.
With what little fight he initially had had in him snuffed out, Whipper collected himself from the cool floor, looked disdainfully at the man loading the truck—his truck—and trudged silently back to the flight line.
***
Cade stowed the bottled waters and MREs (meals ready to eat) which Shrill had procured for him in the crew cab, on the bench seat behind the driver, leaving enough room for Raven on the opposite side.