After a long sixty seconds, finally composed and breathing somewhat normally, Brook unlocked the door and stepped into the afternoon sunlight. She looked at Airman Davis, who was one of the few people on the base whom she’d gotten to know fairly well during the past week, yet without the comforting heft of the M4 clutched in her newly-calloused hands, she still felt somewhat naked and vulnerable. Stay frosty, she heard Cade whisper in her head as she waited for Davis to deliver the bad news.
But he said nothing. Instead, he broke eye contact, tilted his head and smiled.
Brook followed his gaze and spotted Raven, face pressed to the glass, mugging at the airman. “Spit it out, Davis,” she said sharply. “What happened to my husband?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he said, wearing a sincere Sergeant Schulz look on his face. “I don’t know anything.”
Brook didn’t believe him, but did notice that he held her gaze. In her experience, most liars usually looked away. But he didn’t shift or shuffle or fidget and, most importantly, maintained direct eye-to-eye contact. By all outward appearances he was telling the truth—but Brook’s gut still led her to believe the opposite.
Again she looked over her shoulder and saw that Raven was no longer peering through the window. Fearing the inquisitive twelve-year-old was preparing to join the party, Brook reached behind her, grasped the door handle firmly, and leaned forward with all her weight so it wouldn’t budge even if she tried. “I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “Not for a second.”
Davis sighed, looked at the ground, and shook his head. “I’ve been ordered to say nothing.”
“That I believe,” she admitted. “Then who do I thank for the pleasure of your company?”
“Major Nash. She ordered me to come and get you.”
“Are we going to her office?”
“No. She’s at the TOC ... I mean the command center,” Davis said. He removed his cover and wiped his brow. “It’s hot, Ma’am. Can we go now?” He replaced his hat and squared it away and then shot her a look that said: I won’t be leaving without you.
Taking just enough time to convey the message that she was the one in charge, Brook uncoiled the towel from her head, tousled her damp hair, and said, “I’ll need five minutes. You’ll have to wait out here.”
After consulting his watch, Davis nodded and mouthed, “Five minutes.” And as he watched Brook go back inside and close the door, he wondered to himself how she was going to take the bad news. Would she calmly accept the facts and melt down later in private? Or would she instantly attack the major, the President, or both for goading her husband into accepting the ill-fated mission?
Loathing the fact that he knew what he knew but couldn’t share, he returned to his vehicle and slumped in his seat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and then waited patiently on the newly-widowed woman.
***
In three minutes, not five, Brook was standing in the doorway, hair pulled tight into a high ponytail. She had on the same black short-sleeved tee shirt with newly-formed puddles of sweat under her arms and a damp strip down the middle of her back. The shirt was tucked into the waistband of a pair of women’s slate-blue and gray digital tiger-striped Air Force issue camouflage pants, the cuffs of which were stuffed neatly inside her fully broken in desert tan combat boots. In her right hand, she clutched the short barrel M4 carbine, its muzzle trained near her feet. Crushed in her left hand was a stark white envelope crisscrossed with a roadmap’s worth of creases.
Leaving the square patch of shade provided by the Cushman’s small roof, Davis dismounted and approached Brook. Noticing that Raven was within earshot he leaned in and said, “There’s something else I need to tell you and I don’t think you’re going to like it.” Detecting a degree of worry settle on the petite woman’s features, and reading the look of dread in her eyes, Davis stated Nash’s two conditions as delicately as possible. “Two things. One, you’re going to have to find someone to watch your daughter ...”
“And?” Brook asked hitching a brow.
Davis said, “Since the President will be in attendance, you won’t be allowed to bring any weapons into the command center.”
Brook made a face. “You mean the TOC,” she said, correcting him. “As far as weapons go ... you’re looking at it. And I feel damn naked without it—” Then, turning and addressing Raven who had been hovering in the doorway, she asked, “You want to hang out with Sasha, Taryn, and Wilson until your dad comes back? It might be late when he does, so it could end up being a sleepover.” Even though Brook thought Raven would jump at the chance of hanging out with the cool crowd, still, she stretched out the latter half of her offer, making a once-ordinary occurrence seem like some kind of forbidden fruit.
Instantly the first traces of worry dissolved from Raven’s face and, as any pre-teen would, she immediately began planning her night of freedom without a second thought as to why it was being offered in the first place. “Affirmative,” she said with a wry smile.
In the brief seconds between question and answer, inexplicably Brook’s mind flashed back to the last sleepover Raven had attended, or hosted for that matter, and sadly the details eluded her.
The events of the past two weeks had also blurred together into one long stream of consciousness consisting of combat-induced spikes of adrenaline sandwiched between way too many emotional valleys for her to count, and if she could print out a graph detailing them it would undoubtedly resemble a cardiac patient’s EKG strip with a little red arrow stating you are here at the very lowest axis on the readout. That’s how far down the scale the airman showing up at her doorstep had just taken her. And if she were to sink any lower emotionally she feared that the reptilian part of her brain—the lump of gray matter also known as the basal ganglia that drives innate survival-related instincts such as aggression, dominance, and territoriality, which had not only been switched on, but ratcheted up a few hundred notches—might never return to its normal state.
Lately she’d started noticing dangerous situations a few steps before they devolved into deadly ones. Reacting to those threats had become an almost instantaneous muscle-memory-type of response—a far cry, she admitted, from her pre-Omega protocol of observe, analyze, overanalyze and then maybe act. She mused sadly that the things that used to come naturally, like remembering the names of two dozen of Raven’s friends and classmates from school, or who had been slated to be her daughter’s fifth grade teacher, were all lost to her. Brook had known sooner or later she’d start forgetting the minutiae from her old life, but the fact that it was happening just two weeks out left her worried whom she would be once she finally reached Eden. The last thing she wanted to be was a cold, emotionless lump of flesh able to protect Raven but nothing more. That led to the question she’d been meaning to ask Cade; yet, despite his open door, ask anything policy, she’d never worked up the courage to do so. Had he been taught some kind of technique that allowed him to switch off his combat instincts each time he walked back into their home after a mission, or was it something that came naturally?
Suddenly Brook was yanked off the couch, figuratively speaking, and snapped out of her Sigmund Freud moment when Raven slammed the door and bounded down the steps with all of her worldly belongings stuffed into one oversized canvas leave bag.
“Grab a change of clothes just in case?” Brook said with a chuckle.
“This is stuff I need for the sleepover, Mom.”
“See if Davis can help you with that. And don’t forget to tip the man.”
Raven made a face and handed the bag to the airman, then hopped aboard the golf cart. “I don’t have any money, Mom. Besides ... where would he spend it?”
From the mouths of babes, thought Brook. She took a seat next to Raven, placed her rifle between her knees, and exchanged a look with the driver that begged him not to say anything to further complicate matters.
“I’m the same as your dad. I work for the government, therefore I can’t accept tips. It’s the thought that c
ounts though. Thanks all the same,” he said with a little wink meant for Brook. He returned his gaze forward, set the engine sputtering, and after a lurch they were barreling across the base towards a cluster of squat gray buildings bristling with antenna and a number of VW-sized satellite dishes.
Chapter 18
Ovid, Colorado
Two fucking days, Elvis thought. That’s how long he had been trapped inside the two-story house outside of Ovid, Colorado. With no one else to talk to and nothing to keep him occupied, he was just about at the end of his rope.
Two and a half days thinking through his options in this house seemed like a year. To pass the time and remain somewhat sane he’d taken to reading Harlequin romance novels he’d found—hidden like some kind of contraband—in a brown grocery bag in a corner upstairs, behind an old fashioned push-pedal sewing machine. They had already been thoroughly thumbed through, spines cracked, pages dog-eared. Obviously the interactions on those pages had kept someone else company for quite some time.
He looked out the kitchen window at the bobbing heads. Watched the zombies pressing against the waist-high chain-link. Over time they had thoroughly trampled the shrubs and flowers the owner of the house had planted there, leaving only churned-up earth in their stead.
He looked down at the kitchen table. In front of him were three items.
The black .45 he’d taken from Private Farnsworth and subsequently killed him with was there. With only eight bullets remaining in the single stack magazine, it was all but useless against the numbers he faced. At this rate, he figured, one would suffice. He’d stick the pistol in his mouth. Do it right the first time so there would be no chance of him coming back as one of them.
Then there was the Iridium satellite phone, now all but useless, its display a blank gray crystal, its keys darkened. He’d made his final call to Bishop less than an hour ago. And for the tenth time today the call had gone unanswered. And then the phone had died. And the charger was in the truck, in the glove box. Worthless. As was the truck now, seeing as how there were thirty of the things between it and the fence blocking the path leading to the back door.
Lastly, there was the scrap of paper with a set of GPS numbers scrawled in silver pen in his hand. Also worthless.
And then there was the road where even more flesh-eaters were shuffling by in what Elvis preferred to call packs, which he thought a better term than herds as the soldiers at Schriever preferred to call them. Hell, he thought, herd just sounded too bovine in nature—docile—almost as if you could stand back and let them pass and you’d be totally ignored. Bullshit. What did the stupid soldiers know anyway. Though the creatures around the perimeter and trudging the road did move slow, in a herd-like follow-the-leader manner when there was no prey around, Elvis knew nothing could be further from the truth once they got sight of meat.
And that’s what had happened two days ago. Thirty seconds out back taking a piss was all it had taken for him to get noticed. At first the group of offending creatures had been inconsequential. But by morning he was General Custer and the Sioux were all but knocking down the fence. And to make matters worse, he had company in the cellar. Every so often he’d tread on the floor wrong, producing a squeak not too uncommon in a house a century or so old, and each transgression elicited a whole new round of banging against the cellar door.
Casting furtive looks at the dead walking the road, he wolfed down the last of some kind of meat-filled raviolis straight from the can. Finished, he tossed the spoon in the can and the whole lot in the sink which was piled to overflowing with dishes, dirty and rancid.
He rose from the table and pocketed his belongings, putting the .45 in the small of his back, then moved through the kitchen to the living room, its airspace cut up by bars of afternoon sun. To the left was the front door, a substantial piece of oak inset with three thin works of stained glass which he had already deemed sufficient protection against one or two monsters but no better than rice paper against many more. Next to the door, facing east by south, was a plate window bordered by heavy drapes in burgundy with a paisley print. To his right was a hall that he’d already explored. It led to a small powder room, and, of no use to anyone over four feet, a tiny bedroom painted pink that housed a princess-themed toddler bed, atop its taut bedspread a pair of frilly pink pillows adorned with Snow White and Cinderella, respectively.
Drawing his attention to the fore was a brick fireplace he’d not yet given much scrutiny. It was mantled with a two-foot by six-foot golden slab of old growth that had been polished to a high luster. Arranged on its top with surgical precision were a dozen pictures, some of an elderly gray haired lady—probably a widow, he guessed. Or the world’s oldest carpet muncher. He chuckled and looked over the rest of the framed pictures, most of which chronicled nearly every watershed event during the first few years of some little girl’s life. One was of the girl as an infant in the arms of a pretty hot-looking nurse, swaddled in a pink blanket, readied for the first handoff. Come to mommy, mused Elvis, eyeing the nurse while ignoring the baby. His gaze fell on another photo of the same baby reclining in a plastic tray of some sort in a kitchen sink, wearing a perplexed look that clearly said “What the hell is going on?” First bath. He replaced the frame and regarded the next—the obligatory picture of the infant spitting up baby food. Cute and disgusting all at once. Lastly, he eyed the inevitable photo of the anonymous tot’s first wavering steps, her little hand fully enveloped by a wrinkly, liver-spotted, hand. Grandma, is that you downstairs? thought Elvis. Are you alone? he wondered. He hoped so. Just the thought of the toddler in the photos banging around, all rotten and slimy in the root-cellar, brought on an involuntary shudder.
Eyes tearing, Elvis remembered how on every birthday and holiday nearly identical photos starring him and his sister would materialize out of Mom’s secret stuff-from-the -past vault. And how she would reminisce for hours over a bourbon hot toddy about the good old days and openly wonder where they’d all gone. Sadly, Elvis knew the answer to that question, and it had been eating him alive since that final phone call—the mother of all dropped calls—when his family had been sent via demolition charges set off by the California National Guard to their watery graves, along with most of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
He removed the first-steps photo and tossed the frame to the floor, eliciting a fresh barrage of flesh impacting the cellar door beyond the kitchen. Though the pig-tailed girl in the photo wasn’t really his younger sister, she would have to suffice. He folded the photo in two and put it in his pocket, where it would remain until the smoldering ember of hatred within his heart grew dim. Then, with his resolve beginning to waver, he’d unfold it and stoke that ember with the memories of days gone by.
He plopped down on the overstuffed earth-tone daveno. An absurd old folks’ name for a sofa if he ever heard one. He put his boots on the veneer-topped coffee table, scattering ornamental figurines and spilling a bowl full of age-hardened ribbon candies in the process. Once settled in, he pressed the field glasses to his eyes and adjusted the focus ring. Immediately the virtual river of walking dead filled his field of vision, lurching and bouncing along the shimmering blacktop. Men, women, and kids were all represented in the mix. Not a horde but deadly just the same.
He panned up and left and acquired US-138, which snaked in front of Ovid feeding Sedgwick to the west and Julesburg to the east, and was but one small piece of the asphalt marvel of engineering the hundreds of dead had taken to following.
Bracing his elbows on his chest helped stop the minute shaking that was keeping him from seeing the whole picture. And once he focused on the scene it was evident he was looking at a true horde in all sense of the word. Hundreds of monsters all headed in the same direction with no discernable destination. He keyed in on a telling piece of information. A good number of camouflage-clad zombies were scattered amongst the civilian shamblers. He made a cursory tally of bodies from the shoulder across to the passing lane. Eight was what he came up with.
Then he swept the binoculars to the left, ticking off a quick head count along what he guessed to be about a quarter-mile of westbound 138. Eight multiplied by forty. “Let’s call it two fifty,” he said softly. Two days ago the sheriff and her merry men of Julesburg had turned him away. But that had been a good thing in hindsight. There was no doubt the city had been overrun. Fine tuning the focus, he walked the binoculars from right to left, noticing that the majority of the walkers appeared to have turned recently. Their skin wasn’t flagging off in places like the weeks’ old first turns.
He heard it before seeing it. And so did the dead. Ashen faces turned cheek in unison, looking east towards the sound.
Elvis trained the binoculars on a spot where 138 made a bend and adjusted the focus ring. A tick later a flatbed truck with three people crammed into the cab came around the corner, geared low, slowly zippering through the dead, swerving from shoulder-to-shoulder, seeking the path of least resistance. He could see fear and stress and all manner of emotion set on the trio’s faces as the dead tried to close ranks on the rig.
“Thank you,” blurted Elvis. He rose from the daveno and went back into the kitchen and peered out the window; he noticed that the dead out back had forgotten about him and the house and trampling the shrubs. Now all he could see was the back of their heads as they negotiated the drive towards the road beyond.
Hustling back into the living room, he caught the tail end of the truck, brake lights flaring, as it bulled through the front end of the herd, then the reassuring droning of the motor as it disappeared from sight. Now or never, went through his mind as he stowed the binoculars. Leaving the case behind, he shouldered the pack and pushed through the kitchen, heading for the back door and the woodland camouflaged GMC he had parked in the detached two-car garage.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 9