Two birds with one stone , he thought.
Chapter 60
Outbreak - Day 16
Winters’s Compound
Eden, Utah
Duncan glanced at his watch. Less than fifteen minutes had passed, and by his estimation the people who had passively attacked the compound days ago should be rounding the bend down the hill at any minute.
He’d allotted five minutes for Chance to motor away and tell the rest of the group that he had taken a long hard look (a lie on the kid’s part) and that the coast was clear. Then he gathered that another five minutes would probably be burned as the brain trust argued over who was going to do what, when, and to whom. And then, finally, Duncan presumed it would take at least three hundred more seconds for whomever the leader was to give a short pep talk, rally the troops, and make their way east towards the compound all full of piss and vinegar and ready to unleash hell.
Exactly sixteen minutes and thirteen seconds had gone by before Chance and his shiny motorcycle returned.
But this time he was not alone.
With the noon sun flaring from the flat windshields, two tan Humvees emerged from the forested stretch of road. Next, three large SUVs still sporting dealer plates materialized behind the former National Guard Hummers.
Duncan guessed the five vehicles were maintaining about a thirty-five mile-per-hour clip while keeping bumper to bumper in a single file column. Looks good in the movies, he thought darkly. Deadly as hell in real life. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or ancient Carthage, it didn’t matter where, the tactic of ambush—attacking from concealment and with an element of surprise—hadn’t changed much over thousands of years. And travelling so close together, whether on foot, horseback, or in a modern vehicle was, for the people being ambushed, a recipe for disaster.
Duncan kept the field glasses trained on the convoy until the kid on the bike pulled off the road in virtually the same place as he had before.
The plan was coming together, Duncan thought. The zombies on the road near the compound’s hidden entrance had precisely the effect on the bad guys that he was hoping for.
The lead Humvee stopped abreast of the motorcycle just as Chance dismounted.
Through the binoculars, Duncan watched Chance start a conversation with the driver, while at the same time another man, wearing woodland camo and carrying a large pair of bolt cutters, jumped out of the middle SUV and quickly went to work cutting the fence.
“Lev,” Duncan said dryly. “Kill the guy cutting the fence first.”
“Roger that,” replied the former 11 Bravo-Infantryman, U.S. Army.
“You made your bed, Chance,” Duncan muttered. “Now you’re going to take a dirt nap in it.” He tracked his gaze to the left to the fence post with the X scratched into it. Although the second Humvee wasn’t fully bracketed in the kill zone, he decided to spring the ambush anyway. He traded the binoculars for the two-way radio and clicked the transmit button twice. His hands found the twin vertical grips of the Ma Deuce. He swiveled the barrel up and placed the sights a hair above the passenger-side headlamp on the black Toyota at the rear of the column. Then, he took a steadying breath and depressed the paddle-shaped trigger with both thumbs.
Chapter 61
Outbreak - Day 16
National Microbiology Laboratory
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
All twenty-one of the survivors were assembled in front of Cade as he paced the room, thinking about what to say first. He stopped and stood still directly in front of the three scientists, who were each sitting in plush leather chairs taken from the conference room. Before speaking, he looked over their heads and walked his gaze across the worry-filled faces of the others, who were mostly lab assistants and clerical workers.
“I have been sent here to rescue anyone with experience working with pathogens in a lab environment... particularly BSL-4—bio safety level 4.”
At this disclosure, several of the younger people blanched and looked at one another. Cade could hear the gears turn in their minds as they asked themselves if they were expendable or not.
“If we all work together and do our part, each and every one of you will make it out of here alive.” He cringed inside because he knew the probability of that statement coming to fruition was nearly impossible. He looked over the faces and picked out the most likely to become fodder for the Zs, and made a mental note to place them on the inside of the group when they got underway. “The second we step into the stairwell, you must keep quiet, and while we are in there you must not stop moving forward. Everyone on my team has got night vision devices and will guide us where we need to go, so just keep close to one another and pretend we are playing follow the leader. It will be totally dark, so use the handrail or your neighbor’s shoulder for support. And most importantly—and this I cannot stress enough—do not stray from the group. You’ve already seen your colleagues turn in front of your eyes,” Cade said, pointing to the dead Zs lying in the spreading pool of bodily fluids. “Once infected a person can turn in seconds. I have personally seen a man hold out for hours before succumbing to Omega. But as all of you know, it will happen eventually. So if you get bit, I will have no choice but to leave you behind.” Cade let his words sink in for a beat and then said, “Any questions?”
Andy shot his hand into the air. “If I get bit I want one of you guys to finish me off. I watched my friends here go through the process... it’s effed up. Turning into one of them ain’t pretty.” He paused, then realized he still had his hand up and put it down slowly.
“Remember what I just told you. Keep your wits about you and all of us will get out of here alive,” Cade lied.
“Just shoot me right here,” Andy said, pointing at his temple. He looked over his colleagues and then settled his gaze on Cade. “’Cause I’d rather die than become one of them.”
You and me both, bro, Lopez thought as he paced the carpet.
“Just follow our lead, keep breathing, and don’t panic,” Cade said, trying to assuage the tall man’s concern. “We will get you out of here.”
“Where are you taking us?” asked another man. The same man who had implied that America had been the source of the Omega outbreak.
“Colorado Springs,” Cade said, staring the man down. “You will be guests of the United States for a short time. Then you can go wherever you please,” he lied. It sounded promising, but it was all he could conjure up.
“I’m not going to America,” said Mister Conspiracy.
“Anyone who wants to stay here is more than welcome to,” Cade shot back. “We leave now.”
A woman standing on the periphery, who had been quiet until now, blurted out another question. “Why can’t we use a flashlight in there?”
Cade tapped the NVGs attached to his helmet. “The dead are blind in the dark,” he said as the lies piled on. The truth was the Z bodies had piled up two deep in the stairway and he didn’t want any of the civilians to see the carnage he had wrought, get spooked, and start a stampede. Moving them along was going to be a clusterfuck as it was, and doing so if they were panicky would only make matters worse. “These goggles will give us the upper hand. You just have to have a little faith...”
Tice’s voice crackled in Cade’s earpiece. “We have a window. The landing is clear.”
“Let’s go,” Cade bellowed. “I’ll take point. Tice and Cross, you two play sheepdog in the middle. And Cross...” The black-clad Secret Service agent paused with one hand on his NVGs, looked over and caught Cade’s eye. “You guard the principals.” Cade’s emphasis on the word principals wasn’t lost on Cross, who figured out that he was expected to treat the trio of scientists no different than President Clay—and if that meant taking a bite for one of them, he was prepared to do so.
Tice looked up from the LCD screen he had been eyeballing. “Landing and stairwell is still clear,” he said.
Though he didn’t need to state the obvious, Cade looked at Lopez and said, “You get our six and close the door behind you.”
“Roger that,” he replied as he performed the sign of the cross over his tan MOLLE gear bristling with fully loaded magazines.
Cross took charge of the civilians, moving them over into the narrow hall near the door, and then he pulled Mary aside and whispered into her ear. “You and Rita and Virgil have to stick to me like Velcro. We will be in the middle of the pack and that’s where we have to stay.” He pulled away and locked eyes with the lead scientist. “Understood?” Mary just regarded him with wide eyes and delivered a subtle nod.
Thick and sweet, the odor of death invaded the room as Tice opened the door to the stairway.
Chapter 62
Outbreak - Day 16
Randolph, Utah
Daymon wheeled the Tahoe south on 89, following the rural highway as it wove across the border between Wyoming and Utah, transiting 30 in spots over the one hundred and twelve miles. They passed through long stretches of flat farmland dotted with nondescript dwellings and rusted farm implements, while the Bridger National Forest, lush and green, kept them company off the driver’s side. Daymon negotiated a few small pileups with people dead and undead festering in the mangled vehicles. Heeding his earlier mental note, he drove cautiously, head on a swivel, staying frosty, through a number of small towns with names like Thayne, Grover, Smoot, and Cokeville. After having passed straight through without having any contact with other living, breathing humans (good or evil) Daymon was beginning to relax from the pucker-inducing encounter in Etna. Then, just outside of Randolph, Utah, he came to the realization that his eyeteeth were beginning to float and he needed to piss. He slowed as he came to the sign which he presumed marked the city limits, or at the very least the county line.
“Randolph... population four hundred and sixty-four. What do you think?” Daymon queried. “Stop and stretch our legs... get some water?”
“How far to the compound?” asked Jenkins.
After finding the correct button on the GPS navigation unit on the Tahoe’s spaceship-like dash, Daymon waited for the number to display. “Says sixty miles... but I cannot wait. Can’t tie it off. Can’t pinch it while I drive one-handed either...”
“We get the point,” Heidi said. “I’m not holding it for you either, so you pick the place.”
He drove for another mile and pulled into a boarded-up gas station/repair shop called Tony’s. He left the engine running and hopped out of the conditioned air, and was instantly blasted by a wall of humidity. It had to be in the low nineties, and suddenly he coveted an ice cold, unnaturally yellow-hued banana Slurpee. What a thing to crave, he thought as he attempted to write his name in urine on the superheated cement. Not a cold Silver Bullet or a Cadillac Margarita, but a Slurpee. What has the world come to. He smiled inwardly.
As he was in the middle of one of those two minute, when the hell is it ever going to end type of squirts, someone in the Tahoe honked the horn. He jumped and let go of himself, peeing on his boots in the process. Very funny, he thought. He glared back at the SUV and noticed Heidi in the midst of throes of laughter. He thought about throwing her the bird but decided to just be grateful she was making progress. When he turned to resume his business, he caught some movement from behind one of the broken-down cars that Tony was never going to repair. He backpedaled and zipped his pants at the same time as a flesh eater emerged from behind a Ford Econoline Van. By the time he had made it to the Tahoe and jumped inside, the abomination was making its way around the cruiser’s tubular grill-guard.
“That’s Tony,” Heidi blurted out. “Says so on the nametag.”
“Precious, but you almost fed me to Tony,” Daymon barked.
In the late stages of decomposition, the creature was one of the quiet stalkers. Daymon had been seeing more of these lately. He made another mental note to go over some of the finer points of surviving in the new world with his better half. Of which honking the horn was not one.
He reversed away from Tony, slapped the transmission into drive, and powered around the mute shambler. After consulting the GPS, he said in his best Ralph Kramden bus driver’s voice, “Next stop fifty-five miles, Logan Winters’s compound.”
Chapter 63
Outbreak - Day 16
Logan Winters’s Compound
Eden, Utah
Duncan aimed low and walked his fire up and to the right. Finger-sized .50 caliber bullets spewed from the Ma Deuce as the ambush he had just sprung unfolded in slow motion.
In the rear of the column, the black Toyota he was shooting at lost a headlight in a blossom of sparkling glass, and then yellow-green coolant gushed from the pierced radiator and began to pool under the front bumper.
The next two rounds carved foot-long silver channels in the sheet metal, then punched through and became lodged somewhere near the firewall. Finally, the last two shells in the salvo blasted fist-sized holes through the windshield and splattered the driver’s upper half all over his backseat passengers. By the time the first burst—lasting little more than two seconds—had left the muzzle and hit down range, a number of bad guys had bailed from their vehicles.
While Woodland Camo Guy divided his attention between cutting the barbed wire and watching the rotters only a car length from him, he was nearly cut in half by a half-dozen rounds fired from the nearby underbrush. Holding in his guts with both hands, he went hard to the ground, face first. He screamed and writhed and pushed his toes against the road, attempting to crawl the short distance to the perceived safety of the Humvee.
Meanwhile, Logan was splayed out on his stomach in the grass three hundred yards to the east. The first vehicle in the column was bracketed in the scope atop his thirty-pound Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle. His initial shot was low, evidenced by the sparks and vaporized paint as the round, traveling 2,800 feet per second, pierced the steel bumper and the body directly behind it before burrowing under a metal plate next to the rugged vehicle’s wheel well. After the miss, Logan adjusted his aim upwards, exhaled slowly and drew up the trigger pull. He caressed the trigger between heartbeats and then whooped when a geyser of steam erupted from the Humvee’s ruptured radiator. If the .50 caliber round had performed as designed, he reasoned, there was a good chance the slug had also cracked the engine block, thus immobilizing the vehicle. He shifted his aim alongside the vehicle where the motorcycle rider was crouched. He still wore the orange helmet that all but screamed AIM HERE. So Logan did just that. The wedge-shaped muzzle brake was still dispensing wisps of smoke as he snugged the rifle to his shoulder. He went through the same breathing routine and then caressed the trigger. Through the ten-power scope he watched the helmet split like a robin’s egg. One half flew off towards the fence as the other spun down the road, spinning like a gaudy top. His eye perceived Chance’s bone, blood, and brain matter as a spreading pink mist as the near-supersonic bullet decapitated the dreadlocked kid.
Back in the Hummer, on the sloping hill north of the ambush, Duncan shifted his aim left, targeting the vehicle in the middle of the pack. At the same time, across the road on the compound side, Lev and Phillip raked staccato bursts of gunfire right to left along the sides of the thin-skinned SUVs.
“I’ve got a couple of squirters...” said Lev over his two-way, indicating two men who had just dismounted the second Humvee and were sprinting towards the lead vehicle. “But they just fucked themselves,” he added as the men came face to face with the clutch of rotters.
One of the camouflage-clad men panicked and opened up with his AK-47, chattering out an entire magazine with no adverse effects on the monsters.
Dressed for war and clueless, thought Lev as he considered euthanizing the pair, but instead sprayed a full magazine into the occupants of the fourth vehicle.
For a brief moment the kill zone was dead silent, and then the two men who were just overrun began to scream. Their cries, carrying up the hill, sent chills dancing around Duncan’s ribcage and up his spine. In a way, he wished they were on his side of the convoy so he could spare his ears and put them out of t
heir misery.
Once again the telltale boom of Logan’s Barrett reached his ears as his brother opened fire from the hide to the east. The first slug struck one of the buried propane tanks, causing an explosion that rocked the two Humvees on their springs and slapped the crotch rocket on its side.
Two more closely-spaced shots sent one of the canisters spinning heavenward, trailing flames like an oversize firework.
Down the road, Logan shifted his aim and—shoulder be damned—unloaded the remaining five rounds into the other two canisters which resulted in successive explosions similar to the first.
In the meantime, three men had exited the black Toyota at the rear of the column; they took cover behind its open doors and returned automatic rifle fire uphill at the camouflaged Humvee.
Sounding like angry metal hornets, rounds sizzled over Duncan’s head and smacked into the plate surrounding the turret. One errant BB-sized piece of lead caromed off metal and burrowed under his skin, lodging somewhere above his right ear. Close, he thought as the pain began to spread.
Though the ambush, from Duncan’s opening kill shot to his being fired upon just now, had happened in a few short seconds, it still felt to him like half a day had elapsed. Ignoring the throb in his temple and the warm trickle of blood, he popped his head up, aimed the M2 at the Toyota’s driver door and squeezed off a three-second burst, walking it from the door behind the pulped driver to the gas-filler door. Twenty rounds cut through glass and sheet metal alike with ease. Two of the three men were killed instantly, shredded by flying lead and shards of glass and disintegrating body panel. The third man survived the initial onslaught only to die when the SUV’s gas tank caught fire and exploded.
The middle vehicle, a silver Land Cruiser, managed to scrape past the Humvee in front and pull a partial U-turn. The desperate maneuver left his flank fully exposed to Jaime and Chief, who were tucked into the shadows up the hill.
Allegiance Page 35