Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  Finished with her breakfast, Raven dropped the spoon and looked up at her mom.

  With a coffee mug clutched in a two-handed death grip, Brook stared blankly into space.

  Wearing a devilish grin, the bored twelve-year-old waved a hand in front of her mom’s slack face. “Hellooo... anyone home?”

  The words had no effect. Pulling out all the stops, Raven conjured up her best hypnotic-sounding voice, regal and high in tone, and said, “When I snap my fingers, you will let me eat as much candy as I want.” Raven tried her best to snap her fingers but it was one of the many grown up abilities she had yet to master.

  Brook snapped out of the daydream on her own, directed a quizzical look at Raven, and then slowly and methodically glanced over her left shoulder and then her right.

  “Why were you staring at me?” Brook whispered.

  Suppressing a smile, Raven answered coyly, “No reason, Mom.”

  Brook cocked her head, thought about something for a second, and then let it slide. “Let’s go then. We’ve got family business to attend to.”

  She extricated her legs from under the low-slung cafeteria table. After all the meals she had taken here, the place still reminded her of elementary school—minus the sloppy Joes of course. What she wouldn’t give for a steaming, greasy, tangy tomato sauce and ground beef slathered hamburger bun. And a cold chocolate milk—real—not powdered. Salivary glands kicking in, she rose and shouldered her M4.

  With Raven in tow, Brook arrived at the door at the same time a pair of civilians entered. A redheaded girl, who was talking a mile a minute, came through two steps—and a mouthful of uninterrupted words—ahead of the twenty-something male. He wore a military-style boonie hat jammed low over a shock of bright red hair.

  Brook recognized Wilson immediately—he was the kid who had driven the Dakota truck during their foraging mission south of Colorado Springs. And because she was still embarrassed at how poorly she had treated him that day, she tried her best to avoid eye contact. Don’t look over here, do not look over here, she chanted in her head.

  Seemingly heeding her telepathic command, Wilson glanced at her weapon and kept his eyes downcast. Meanwhile, like a monkey on Red Bull, the teenager chattered on.

  Raven stepped aside to make way for the redheads.

  Home free, Brook thought as the pair passed by on her right. Then, as if in slow motion, his gaze flicked up and met her brown eyes.

  Her stomach clenched.

  He stopped abruptly, and like he had run into an old, long lost friend blurted out, “Brooklyn Grayson...?”

  She nodded and felt the blood drain from her face.

  Raven scrunched her brow and shot her mom the universal look that said, Who in the hell is he?

  “It’s me... Wilson!” he exclaimed. With an explosion of scarlet hair, he took off the boonie hat and repeated himself. “Wilson... and how have you been, Missus Grayson?”

  “I’m fine...” she lied. “This is my daughter, Raven.”

  Silence.

  “Where are your manners, Raven?” Brook uttered through clenched teeth.

  Raven faced the tall young man and answered shyly with a forced, “Hi.”

  “Hi Raven, I’m Wilson.”

  “You said that already... three times.”

  He winked at Raven, then motioned towards the redhead girl on his left. She was half a foot shorter than he and trying her best to avoid the introduction. “This is my little sister, Sasha,” he said.

  “Wilson,” she cried. “Did you have to say it that way?”

  “Hi,” replied Raven, who by now was warming up to the idea of meeting the strangers.

  Brook smiled and offered her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you Sasha.”

  “Yeah... me too,” Sasha replied with all of the sincerity of an IRS agent. Then, turning towards Wilson, she demanded they go.

  “Bye sis,” he said with a smart ass waggle of his fingers that could be construed as nothing but a blatant shooing motion. Obviously glad to be rid of his sibling, Wilson continued on without missing a beat. “I’ve heard a lot of talk about your husband recently.” He paused for a tick. “And... about what really happened to Ted. He didn’t die in the barracks outbreak... Ted found out from Nash how William really died... and then hanged himself. And that was a direct result of your on-the-fly diagnosis of Pug. Hypothesizing, correctly it turned out, that he had that dual personality thing going on, which led to us collectively putting two and two together and then unwittingly sending Ted into an emotional trap... at least unwittingly on my part.”

  There was a short silence. Brook’s jaw tremored but she remained silent.

  “If you ask me,” Wilson went on, “Ted should have been allowed to continue believing that William died peacefully... not told that his partner had been shot in the face while in the madman’s presence. By Pug... Francis, whoever the hell he thought he was when he pulled the trigger and then set the infirmary on fire.”

  “I had no idea Ted would learn the truth,” Brook whispered. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wanted revenge, I guess.”

  “The truth of the matter is that you withheld information,” Wilson said sharply. “The antiserum, your brother, and God only knows what else. Same as lying. So, now it’s time for you to come clean. What did you know and when did you know it?”

  Brook swallowed, processed the information, yet said nothing.

  Sensing she was being exposed to a whole lot of information that was supposed to remain locked down in the grown up need to know files, Raven tried to remain invisible so she could collect more Intel as she’d heard her dad call secret stuff.

  “I’ve been hoping to run into you for the past two days now,” Wilson went on. “Apparently the few of us civilians who survived the outbreak can’t be seen rubbing elbows with the Army folk. Now me and Sasha are staying where the scientists used to live. Nicer digs... a little haunted though. Like someone left some unfinished business. And seeing as how I now know most of what really happened the day after Pug and the rest of us got here...I understand why you’ve been avoiding me.”

  For a tick Brook stared at him, and then she breathed out and closed her eyes. She heard the clank of service on ceramic. The sound of an industrial dishwasher, sloshing and whirring on ad nauseam, emanated from somewhere in the back of the kitchen. Voices engaged in small talk, serious sounding words and everything in-between—all drowned out by the sound of her rapidly beating heart and the heavy rush of hot blood flooding her head. Sure she could handle getting dirty. Shooting Zs... No problem. They weren’t human anymore. But dealing with the truths that Wilson had just spewed in front of her... Big steaming piles of righteous words that cut to the bone—it was almost too much for her to process, let alone answer to.

  “Mom, are you OK?”

  Brook tried to breathe normally, to calm herself down so she could respond. Short shallow gulps brought air into her lungs. She longed to sit down but her limbs wouldn’t answer the signals from her brain.

  Still waiting for a response, Wilson shifted on his feet and moved aside to let an airman, who had just entered from outside, slip between them. He crossed his arms, hoping for an apology. Anything but silence, he thought.

  “Truth hurts... huh,” he stated. “The outbreak the other night wasn’t isolated to the civilians’ barracks. Sash and me were right here,”—he pointed at the floor—“ and we saw a man get his throat torn out. People are talking, and it doesn’t take an effin rocket scientist to connect the dots—just a former Fast Burger manager—and I’ve been all ears.”

  “Yes. Yes it does. The truth hurts more than you know,” croaked Brook. “I’m truly sorry. I wronged you on so many levels. Some of those things I wasn’t even supposed to know.”

  “Cade?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “If you knew half of the things that I know my husband has done for this country over the years you’d understand why I couldn’t say anything.” She paused and gazed down at Raven, who app
eared to not be listening. She was kind of lost in her own pre-teen world.

  Wilson’s eyes bored into hers.

  “In case you haven’t been keeping score,” Brook added, “just in the last week the President authorized the use of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil...”

  “Forty effin miles from here. And you think that hasn’t crossed my mind, lady? I’m twenty, not stupid... but for what it’s worth, I forgive you. Doesn’t bring Ted back though. But I still forgive you.”

  Brook drew Raven close and swallowed hard, choking back tears. “Why?” she mumbled.

  “Because I saw how you disregarded your own safety and rushed to help that little girl. And then how you handled it when things went sideways... that speaks to your character.”

  How old is this kid? thought Brook. Because what he’d just said made him seem wise beyond his years.

  “Wilson... your breakfast is cold,” Sasha called out, her shrill voice carrying across the mess hall.

  He said nothing, turned, and reluctantly joined his bleating kid sister.

  Then, as Brook and Raven made a second attempt to leave the mess hall, the flat light of summer burst through the door, and in followed another young person. She stood an inch or two taller than Brook, and wore her raven black hair braided into a ponytail that tickled the small of her back. The young woman’s silver nose ring, boldly tattooed arms and black painted fingernails shored up Brook’s first impression: the beautiful creature had to be nearly two decades younger than her. Where are they all coming from? she asked herself. And then suddenly she felt old. Not wise and worldly from her three and a half decades on planet Earth. Not wily and resourceful because she had kept herself and her young daughter alive in the face of so much adversity. No. In the younger woman’s presence, she just felt old. Then, out of the blue, she thought about her mom. Not the Omega-infected being that used to be her mom. Brook had worked very hard at purging that final awful image from her memory—the one featuring the bloody corpse dragging itself down the carpeted hallway in her childhood home in Myrtle Beach. No, the thought that had just popped into her head wasn’t visual. It was her mom’s soothing voice repeating a favorite saying that she had never attributed to anyone in particular. It wasn’t Ralph Waldo Emerson or Louisa May Alcott, it was simple and to the point just like her mom had always been, and she had uttered it at the last birthday Brook had attended and every one prior. ‘Brook my dear,’ she used to say. ‘I’m not sixty; I’m eighteen with forty-two years of experience.’ It was a piece of wisdom disguised in joke form, and always delivered with a happy cackle and a wink.

  God, how Brook missed the woman. She pulled Raven close to her hip, giving her a half hug on the move. The action drew a look from Raven that said, Mom, you’re weird.

  Making a concerted effort to hide her emotion as they finally left the hall, Brook looked toward the Rocky Mountains and covertly erased the forming tears.

  Chapter 7

  Outbreak - Day 15

  Yoder, Colorado

  After talking to Daymon for a couple of minutes and hearing the encouraging news about his girlfriend, Heidi, Cade spent a few moments contemplating his new reality.

  Try as he might, he still found it hard to fathom how suddenly and completely his country had fallen to the dead. He considered that before the onset of the Omega virus there had been upwards of two hundred and fifty million firearms in the United States, and at least half as many citizens ready, willing, and able to use them. That, combined with the vast numbers of people who tuned in to watch prepper TV shows, or were actually actively preparing for a world-changing event like a financial collapse, or for a few more who were on the fringes—the zombie apocalypse—the fact that so few survivors remained was hard to wrap his mind around. It was almost like every man, woman, and child had shit themselves on the spot and then offered up their jugular at first sight of a real walking corpse.

  He sat inside the Ford and observed the upstairs windows for any signs of life. After two or three minutes had elapsed and the curtains remained drawn and hadn’t so much as fluttered, he was confident that the upper story was free of the dead—he could only hope the same would hold true for the downstairs.

  He shifted his gaze to the ground level. This was going to be a tough nut to crack, he told himself. The manner in which Abe’s Value Hardware had been boarded up made the former Delta operator think Scotty had beamed him to New Orleans or Galveston or any number of Gulf Coast cities where hurricanes routinely ravaged the people and structures caught in their path. Here in Yoder, Abe—or whoever had swung a hammer for the store’s namesake—had gone to great lengths to protect the contents of the two-story brick building. Quarter-inch plywood covered the front door glass. Four larger wood sheets covered what Cade assumed were massive panes of plate glass flanking the entry on the ground level. On them, a warning had been rattle can sprayed, in black, and it read, ‘LOOTERS WILL GLADLY BE SHOT ON SIGHT.’ Cade supposed the comedian who posted the semi-humorous message had been witness to the grocery across the street being ransacked, and was merely trying to protect his livelihood from the same animalistic desperation shown by those looters. And judging by the hardware store’s front facade, which had been splattered with dark crimson smudges and scores of smeared bloody handprints, Abe’s fortifications had spared the store and whoever might still be inside from a fate much more sinister.

  The rearview mirror showed Cade that the main drag to his six was still clear. The walkers that he had just dispatched lay where they had fallen, the rotten bodies twisted into various death poses. Lastly, the small throng that had been advancing from the east while he was engaging the others still were half a block distant.

  Getting trapped in the store would be massively stupid. Been there, done that, no thanks to Mister Hosford Preston. Big Hoss had paid the ultimate price for leading the dead to the country home in Hannah, Utah—the type of price Cade wasn’t willing to pay. Plenty of things still left to tackle on the ol’ bucket list, he mused.

  Cade turned the key and the engine roared to life. He powered down the driver’s glass, shifted into drive, and let the idling power plant pull the truck ahead at a walking speed. Keeping his right hand on the wheel, he thrust the suppressed Glock out the window. The F650 had ungodly-sized mirrors protruding from both A-pillars. Good for towing, he thought, but awful for lining up a shot on the move.

  Parking the rig sideways, perpendicular to the half-dozen shamblers in his line of sight, he brought the semi-automatic to bear on them. All but one of the Zs looked to have been dead a long time. Cade’s pistol chugged twice. The freshest member of the group lost its head from the eyebrows up, timbered forward and ceased moving. He shifted aim by a few degrees, aligned the sights on the female walker to his right and squeezed off two closely spaced shots. The first 9mm slug left the muzzle riding three hundred and fifty foot pounds, impacted low and to the right from where he had aimed, carving out a shredded fleshy cavern and taking a sizable chunk of cheek and jawbone with it. A millisecond later the unfazed first turn marched headlong into the second speeding bullet which entered its right eye socket and exited out back along with the entire contents of its cranium. The wet mess, propelled by an incredible amount of kinetic energy, spread out and splashed the four remaining monsters with something resembling rancid ground chuck.

  Cade moved his aim right but found the telescoping side mirror between him and any kind of a reasonable shot, so he backed off the brake and goosed the accelerator. The truck lurched forward a yard or so, leaving him a better angle on target; as he waited their approach, the creatures started in with their raspy snarls, setting the hairs on his neck standing on end.

  He drew a bead on the blinding white pate of the nearest and put a closely spaced double-tap into the center of the horseshoe-shaped clearing atop the Z’s head. Then he walked six rapid-fire shots across a flat plane. Halos of pink mist bloomed into the air as the three flesh eaters fell to the blacktop in a moldering heap.

&n
bsp; Cade changed magazines with practiced movements, placed the pistol on the seat and powered the truck through a tight one-eighty. He rolled up adjacent to the hardware store with the Ford’s pug-like snout pointing west towards Colorado Springs and the thin smudge of mountains on the horizon. Then, with the Ford straddling the curb and blocking the recessed entrance to Abe’s, he slid across the leather bench, popped the door, and jumped out onto the sidewalk.

  Chapter 8

  Outbreak - Day 15

  Schriever AFB

  Colorado Springs. Colorado

  Trying his best to remain calm, cool, and collected—when in fact his guts were churning—Wilson covertly tracked the new girl out of the corner of his eye. The sensation in his stomach reminded him of the teen angst he’d lived with all throughout high school. Wanting so badly to talk to the new girl, any girl for that matter, on the first day of school—the hours spent building up false self-confidence until lunch period—then the shame he’d shouldered because he could never follow through. The pressure cooker build up coupled with the lack of release made him feel like the antithesis of Yellowstone Park’s Old Faithful.

  “She’s coming this way,” Sasha said, a little too loud for comfort.

  Might as well use a megaphone, Wilson thought. His face flushed hot as he panned his head back to twelve o’clock, then tore his eyes from her, panned them forward, slowly, incrementally, only to meet Sasha’s prosecutorial gaze. “Who is she and what the heck are you talking about Sis?”

  “Her,” Sasha said, pointing at the dark haired young woman with a stabbing motion of her spoon. “You’ve been hawking her since she walked in the door. Like a cheetah watching a gazelle. Heck, if you had a tail, Wilson, it would have been twitching. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets past me.” Sasha smiled, then shoveled in another spoonful of oatmeal.