Allegiance

by Shawn Chesser

  It was your standard-sized stairwell, four feet from wall to rail. Just enough room for the team to traverse one at a time while practicing proper spacing. Cade counted seventeen stairs from where he stood to the next landing where the run doubled back to the right.

  He took the stairs slowly, keeping his Glock moving wherever his eyes went. Nearly to the next landing, he looked over his shoulder. Four stairs separated him from Tice. Similarly spaced, Cross was in the three spot with Lopez a few steps up from him keeping an eye on the team’s six.

  Satisfied everyone was inside, Cade inched over to the rail and peered down the well. On the next flight down, a corpse was wedged in the door, allowing natural light to filter in. He put his gloved hand on the handrail and felt subtle vibrations transferring through the metal. He shifted his gaze straight down between hundreds of feet of serpentine handrail where he could hear scraping noises echoing upwards as an unknown number of dead things negotiated the stairs.

  He pressed forward, made the landing and stood over the headless corpse. Pressing his back to the wall next to the fifth-floor door, he flipped his goggles up and peeked around the door’s edge. Ringed with windows letting in a copious amount of light, the expansive rectangular-shaped room spread out before him. There was sturdy gray carpet on the floor, and overhead a white drop-down ceiling housed scores of long dead florescent tubes behind frosted plastic panels. There were numerous offices fronted with opaque glass doors running away on the left. In the far right corner there was an immense glass enclosed meeting room with a long dark wood table and comfortable-looking high-backed chairs arranged around it. In the center of the office were row upon row of unoccupied desks in various stages of clutter.

  In the center of it all, he counted a total of three zombies, all of which were not dressed in office attire. One had on a tee shirt and shorts, and the other wore tattered blue jeans and a bloodied tank top. The third creature was large by anyone’s standards and wore a tent-sized floral muumuu revealing much more than Cade needed to see.

  “Contact, three Zs. Going in solo,” Cade said in a stage whisper. His voice was amplified and transmitted via his throat mike to the rest of his team as well as Gaines, who was monitoring the mission from Jedi One-One which was either at a standoff position close by, or orbiting the facility high above.

  Cade pushed the door inward, fully flooding the stairway with bright light. Pistol clutched tightly in his gloved hands, he stepped over the dead body and padded into the room across the forgiving carpet. He picked his targets by order of awareness and proximity. When he had closed to within ten feet of the tee-shirt-and-shorts-wearing Z, he promptly put it down with two rounds to the back of its head, sending its skullcap and half a head of hair careening end over end across the room.

  As he crabbed sideways cutting the room, he targeted the portly female Z that had obviously suffered a terrible attack at the hands and teeth of the dead. He made a face at the sight as the creature lumbered around on tree-trunk-sized legs and faced him. The muumuu that the woman had been wearing before she died had been reduced to strips of fabric where the feeding Zs had torn into her abdomen. Raised teeth-marks a vicious shade of purple peppered its pale abdomen. All of the organs needed to sustain life were missing, leaving only yellowed fat framing the empty chest cavity. Feeling more than a little sorry for the pathetic sight, he put a round in each eye and ended her hell on earth.

  The third monster was still a few yards away and had turned at the sound of the first suppressed salvo. Simultaneously it snarled and raised its arms, then caromed off a desk and staggered towards the operator.

  Keeping a three-desk buffer, Cade went to one knee, steadied his aim atop a computer printer, and caressed the trigger twice. The Glock rocked in his grip sending lethal lead into the walking cadaver’s open mouth, and sending teeth, tongue, and blood erupting through a shredded cheek. The muzzle-climb from the first discharge changed the angle minutely, sending the second round into its left eye and peeling a flap of dermis and skull backwards as the bullet and its considerable kinetic energy was absorbed by bone and brain.

  Ten seconds had elapsed between Cade’s solo entry and the third Z hitting the ground. “Clear,” he called out. “Last man through secure the door.”

  No effin way, el Capitán, thought Lopez when he heard this. He was rear guard, therefore he was the one whom Cade expected to manhandle the dead body out of the way. Still recovering from the ordeal of carrying the wriggling Alpha specimen up fourteen flights of stairs at the CDC in Atlanta, the prospect of touching another Z corpse—moving or not—didn’t sit well with the highly religious operator.

  Cade felt his heart rate returning to normal as he swapped magazines in the Glock and racked a new round into the chamber. He swept his gaze around the room, waiting for the rest of the team to file in.

  “Clear,” was called out by both Tice and Cross as they stepped over the decapitated woman and hustled through the doorway.

  Lopez reached the landing last. He checked the stairway to ensure he was alone. Clear. He regarded the task waiting near his feet. Fuck. His nose crinkled at the sight of the shredded and decapitated body. Nonplussed, he swung his M4 behind his back, letting it hang on its sling, and reluctantly grabbed the clammy corpse by its bloated ankles. Muttering a few Spanish curse words, he dragged it the rest of the way inside and clicked the door shut, then announced that the door was cleared and secured.

  Calling out more orders, Cade sent Cross to check out the fishbowl-looking conference room. He told Lopez and Tice to hang tight. He went down the row of offices on the left, checking them for survivors, then came back empty-handed with a look of resignation on his face.

  “Clear,” called Cross from across the room.

  “Moving to four,” Cade stated calmly. He flipped down his night vision goggles, approached the door to the stairs, and held up a fist.

  The three other team members donned their goggles and quietly waited.

  Cade put his ear the metal door. Nothing. He gently pushed the panic bar, and entered the well with the silencer on the Glock’s business end leading the way.

  The team made both flights of stairs and the landing in between without running into trouble.

  Cade stood in front of the fourth-floor door with the team stacked up behind him. He cocked his head and listened to the sounds in the stairwell. They seemed to have increased in volume, though thankfully not in tempo. From past experience he knew stairs gave Zs trouble, so he figured the multiple flights might buy the team enough time to get to the third floor without having to fight a bunch of them in the close quarters of the stairwell.

  He pressed his ear to the door. “Lots of movement,” he whispered. He rose and motioned Tice forward.

  Without a word Tice descended the stairs, crabbed past Cross and went to a knee in front of the steel door. He pulled a flexible fiber-optic periscope from a pocket and manipulated the lens with the small trigger at the base of the cable.

  Cade watched through his NVGs as what resembled a glowing green eye on the end of a bendable stock swiveled around like something alive.

  Tice squeezed the lens under the vinyl door sweep affixed to the bottom edge of the door, powered up the four-inch-square LCD screen and mated the display to the fiber optic mast.

  “Contact,” Tice called out as he swept the lens back and forth.

  Master of the obvious, thought Lopez, who had glanced over the Spook’s shoulder. Though the ‘Contacts’ on the screen appeared but an inch tall, there had to be at least twenty of them stumbling around the sunlit room which looked to be identical in layout and furnishings to the one they had just cleared.

  Still affected by his decision to abandon the survivors on the dam at the Flaming Gorge Recreation area, and with the desperate looks on the faces of the lady and her kids adrift on the sailboat still visiting him nightly, Cade weighed the odds and made the difficult call. “Wrap it up Tice... I’ve seen enough.” He paused for a moment, second-gues
sing his decision, then continued. “Five and four are cleared... There are no survivors. Moving on to three.”

  “Copy that,” replied Gaines.

  Thank God, thought Lopez, pushing the flashbacks from the CDC mission to the back of his mind.

  A few seconds later, when the team had reached the landing between floors four and three, Cade spied the source of the scuffing sounds. Glowing green in his goggles, on the flight below the door to the third floor, at least a dozen undead were climbing upwards on shaky legs, one stair at a time.

  Holstering the Glock, he pressed his left shoulder to the wall, and using hand signals which only the team could see in the dark, ordered Cross to engage the rear of the pack and Tice and Lopez to hold fire and continue watching their six.

  He swung his M4 around and thumbed on the infra-red laser pointer attached to the weapon’s Picatinny rail. About the size of a pack of cigarettes, the device emitted a beam in the light spectrum that could only be seen with a night vision device.

  Like a mini light saber, the green beam lanced out when Cade depressed the thumb switch. He flicked the weapon from safe to single shot and trained the bouncing dot on the nearest Z. He tensed his finger on the trigger, pulling up a few pounds of pressure, and said a silent prayer. He waited for Cross to activate his laser, and when the President’s top agent had a Z painted with his beam, Cade opened fire.

  Instantly the creatures looked upward toward the muzzle flashes which illuminated their ghastly features. Shadowy green gave way to a strobe-like effect as Cade and Cross pumped deadly accurate fire into their midst.

  The lead creature caught a round from Cade’s M4 between the eyes; its brains and skull painted a glowing Rorschach pattern on the cool cement wall. He shifted aim and double-tapped a couple of twentysomething shamblers. The fact that they wore tattered everyday street clothes sent a shiver of worry down his spine. I sure hope the bottom floor isn’t open to the dead in the plaza, because if it is, he thought, then this was going to be a long day.

  The time for noise discipline had passed. “Lopez, go back up and prop open the door to five. It’ll give the Zs somewhere to go,” Cade said. “Tice... watch our six and when Lopez returns scope the door.”

  There was no response. None was necessary at this point. Each man had been trained to operate autonomously and think critically.

  Cross continued firing 4.6x30mm lead into the living corpses, and by the time he’d expended the entire twenty rounds in the mag he had put down seven or eight of them.

  The echo of boots clomping down the stairs preceded Lopez’s reappearance on the landing. “Done,” he said over the comms.

  “How many, Tice?” Cade bellowed.

  “Not there yet.”

  “Hurry it up.” Cade swapped out mags and added more fire down the stairwell at the Zs as they kept coming, scrabbling through the fallen flesh.

  “Half a dozen Zs inside,” Tice said from above.

  “Pop the door,” Cade said, handing over the lock gun. “You and Lopez start clearing the floor. Watch for collateral damage. The survivors should be in the northwest corner... inside the fishbowl.”

  A few seconds after Tice had defeated the lock and the two operators had disappeared inside, Cade tapped Cross on the shoulder and stabbed a thumb towards the open door.

  Cross, understanding the hand signal, backpedaled up the stairs, watching as Cade commenced firing on the advancing pack.

  A moment later the stairwell was drowned in silence as the bolt on Cade’s carbine locked open. He blinked at the cordite haze hanging in the air and punched the mag from the M4. As it clattered to the stairs amongst the expended brass, he ripped the Velcro securing the fresh mag to his MOLLE gear and with a little tug let it fall into his palm. Finally, in one practiced motion, he slapped it home and charged a fresh round. Then, seeing that more Zs were clambering to get over their fallen, he turned and took the stairs two at a time, legs pumping like pistons. Once he made the landing and crossed the threshold into the bright room, Agent Cross, who had been waiting for him, slammed the door shut.

  Cade put his back to the door, pushed the goggles from his face, and looked around the room. And as his eyes adjusted to bright sunshine, he noticed the dozens of shell casings scattered about the light gray carpet and then he spotted the leaking bodies lying in various death poses not five feet in front of his face. Then his gaze drifted to Lopez and Tice, who had their backs to him. Finally, he looked beyond them at the weary faces staring through the sheen of dried bodily fluids and bloody handprints smeared on the thick glass walls of the conference room. On those faces he saw a mixture of emotions: relief, fear, happiness, and for reasons unknown to him—a few of the faces displayed looks that seemed scathing and angry. Then, something else dawned on him—somehow the thirteen people he had counted from within the hovering chopper now amounted to, by his estimation, more than twenty.

  Chapter 57

  Outbreak - Day 16

  Etna, Wyoming

  Daymon slipped the transmission into park and reluctantly killed the engine. There were too many weapons pointing his way to do anything but.

  He remembered the road sign they had passed a mile back promising that “Etna, Wyoming, Population 200” was a mere two miles ahead. So close, yet so far, he thought bitterly. Having not eaten for twenty-four hours and totally out of bottled water, they had pinned their resupply hopes on breaking into an uninhabited house on the outskirts of Etna.

  Not gonna happen now, Eagle Eye G.I. Joe, Daymon thought. Truth be told, he was heated at himself for not being on high alert this close to a population center. And even more so because he hadn’t noticed the roadblock before it was way too late to do anything but stand on the brakes.

  He gazed along the full length of the looming yellow school bus and quickly determined there was no going over , under, or through it—there was no way to turn the Tahoe around. For a second he contemplated backing down the rise that had cleverly hidden the choke point and wrenching the police cruiser into a blistering J-turn and speeding away, but thought better of it seeing as how he was no stunt driver and outrunning bullets was always a losing proposition.

  Blocking egress to his left was a large bulldozer and a half-filled mass grave. To the right was a sturdy guardrail, and beyond it a substantial copse of trees clinging to a hillside that fell off sharply.

  He regarded the unsmiling faces and the muzzles protruding from the windows of the bus. He walked his gaze over the armed men and women, and then noticed the vivid red, white, and blue of Old Glory hanging limply from a standard planted near the front of the bus. The sight of it alone gave him a modicum of hope.

  “What should we do?” asked Heidi, directing her question at Daymon.

  Without answering her, he took matters into his own hands. He powered down his window and slowly stuck both arms outside of the vehicle where the people with guns pointed at him could see his empty hands. This sudden surrender garnered a frantic look from Heidi, who was still badly shaken from her first and hopefully last stint in captivity.

  Daymon matched Charlie’s gaze in the rearview. He figured since they were outgunned and between a rock and a hard place, at the very least they still had two things working in their favor: the fact that the vehicle he was sitting in was a bona fide black and white police cruiser complete with the low-profile light bar riding on top, and the words Jackson Hole Police Department plastered on nearly every flat surface was one. The other was the bona fide credentialed chief of police hailing from said city who just happened to be riding in the back of said police cruiser. Plus, with no fewer than fifteen rifles of indeterminate calibers aimed at the windshield, he thought by extending an olive branch on his end, the forced relationship might get off on the right foot.

  Then the United States flag unfurled and a strong wind gust hit the Tahoe broadside. Daymon fought the urge to cover his nose and mouth as the sweet smell of death wafted in through his open window.

  As soon as Daymon
’s hands came into view, a man in the driver’s seat of the bus stuck a bullhorn to his lips and began his spiel. “Driver, keep your hands where they can be seen.”

  Duh, thought Daymon as he rested his forearms on the window channel.

  Then the man belted out a series of nearly identical orders directed at the other three passengers. In a matter of minutes the Tahoe was inundated with the stench of death and there were four pairs of hands sticking out of the SUV’s open windows.

  After holding the posture for a couple of minutes with the sun tanning their forearms, the man who had been issuing amplified orders stepped from the bus, causing it to rear up noticeably on its shocks.

  Another man with a Freedom Arms ball cap riding low over his eyes, clad in blue jeans and a tee shirt, mounted the bulldozer, fired it up and let it idle for a moment. Then with a belch of oily black exhaust the giant orange tractor reversed, providing a sizeable gap between its blade and the front of the school bus.

  After a few seconds, the man who had been talking on the bullhorn lumbered through the opening, followed by four ordinary-looking men toting an assortment of shotguns and automatic rifles.

  “Pretty good security,” whispered Jenkins as he watched from his seat behind Daymon.

  “Keep them where we can see them,” the big man said as he approached the Tahoe on the driver’s side. He walked with a slight shuffle and was nearly as wide as he was tall. He brought his mass to a halt a foot away from Daymon. He regarded everyone in the truck, pausing on each face for a beat. He dabbed some sweat from his brow and said, “That grave you see there.” He stabbed his thick thumb over his shoulder. “That is where we put the walking dead when they wander in here. And if you all don’t do as I say and cooperate fully you could find yourselves rotting away in there as well.”