Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

by Shawn Chesser

  “Agent Cross, I need you to be my eyes and guide us through this shit show,” Cade said as the truck rolled forward under a new head of steam. “’Cause we’re going home.”

  Risking his face being raked by the claw-like hands of the dead, Cross hung his head around the cab into the weak slipstream and began to call out navigable seams through the warren of vehicles. “Take a hard right here and then loop around the silver compact at your one o’clock. Then you’ll have to ride the shoulder a dozen yards. Got to be careful though. The slope on the right isn’t very steep, but as loaded down as we are ... wouldn’t take much to roll us over,” he said.

  “Roger that,” Cade answered back. “Easy does it on the shoulder.” After traveling a dozen yards, he scraped the rear bumper of a dirty gray Hyundai, made the required left and cautiously slipped past a handful of vehicles on the right shoulder with the wheels on Jasper’s side worming dangerously through the browned grass and soft topsoil.

  “Getting close,” said Cross, who at this point had his boots wedged under the weight of Tice’s stiffening corpse and his upper body angling over the pick-up’s roof. “OK ... now you’ll serpentine between a few more cars and then it gets tight.”

  How can it get any tighter than this? thought Cade.

  Then, as if reading Cade’s mind, Cross added, “After you bull through it’ll get even tighter ... we’re going to have to squeeze between a red Suburban and the school bus on its left.”

  Making a face, Cade asked, “And after that?”

  “Wait one,” Cross answered back as he stood tall, and peered through the 3x magnifier atop the SCAR. Beyond the yellow school bus he could see the cause of the roadblock and their objective which lay just beyond it; it appeared exactly as Dover had described. A sight for sore eyes for sure, and the only sane reason to be risking getting stuck in this gridlock of death. “Good news ... it’s mostly clear of Zs,” he said. “Now get us there.”

  Wheeling slowly past a pair of horribly mangled vehicles, Cade swung a hard left at Cross’s insistence and then motored on, the engine still wheezing, ticking, and steaming.

  “Once you split this gap, angle diagonally to the left,” said Cross. “After that, follow along the breakdown shoulder to our objective. A hundred yards is all ... then we start phase two.”

  You’ll serpentine between a few more cars and then it gets tight, Cross had said. Following the vague instructions in his head, Cade maneuvered between a half-dozen small and medium-sized cars, creasing a good deal of sheet metal and smearing a pack of slow-moving Zs in the process.

  “Sounds like we’re riding around in a pinche icebreaking ship or something,” said Lopez to no one in particular as the sound of breaking glass and the unnerving rasp from grinding metal vibrated the air all around.

  “It’s bound to get worse,” replied Cade as a burst of rifle fire rang out from the bed.

  “Ain’t going to make it,” said Ari at about the same time the pick-up’s bumper got tangled with the rear fender of the car to the right.

  “A little more warning next time?” Cade said as he shifted down into the near-worthless towing gear. He gave it gas. Then there was a groan, followed by a loud clap as the two vehicles parted and the truck surged forward a few feet.

  “Didn’t think we were going to get through that one, Captain,” said Ari.

  Jasper grunted, then muttered under his breath, “There’s too many of them. Too many cars. Too many corpses. Too many to bury.”

  Cade ignored the babble. Continued scanning the road forward. What was it that Cross had said in his ear back there? Red Suburban on the left and then turn right? Or was it yellow? All of the running-and-gunning squeezed around the horrific crash was beginning to take its toll on his short term memory. He was about to eat crow by asking Cross for a refresher when the Secret Service man unknowingly bailed him out. “These two,” Cross said. “Part the bus and Suburban and we’re almost home free.”

  Save for a good deal of camping gear visible through the window, the battered Suburban appeared to be empty. On the roof were mounted a pair of hard plastic gear carriers, empty and hinged open like the wings on a beetle.

  Looking at the overloaded rig, Cade said, “Wonder what campground they were headed to?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” replied Ari. “Looks like they didn’t make it ... did they?”

  “Plates are from Kansas,” added Jasper. He buried his chin in his chest and a low ominous chuckle filled the air. Then, sounding eerily like a little girl, he said in a high falsetto, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Which was followed immediately by an over-the-top belly laugh a la Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

  After the bizarre display of emotion from the undertaker, Cade made a fast and hard decision and whispered in Ari’s ear, “Disarm him.”

  Ari nodded subtly, and then, still semi-numb from the shoulders to his fingertips, pitched forward, spilling the broken emergency radio from his lap. “Shit,” he said, feigning disgust.

  Taking the bait, hook, line, and sinker, Jasper leaned forward and grabbed for the radio as it bounced off the transmission hump, slid down the slick plastic slope, and came to rest against his muddy boots.

  Simultaneously Ari squared his shoulders, and in one fluid motion ripped the Velcro, drew his Beretta from its holster, and had the pistol cocked and trained on the undertaker.

  Radio in hand, Jasper hinged up and realized at once what was happening. In half a beat the flat affect disappeared and his eyes went wide and crossed slightly as he stared at the gaping muzzle pointed between them.

  “Pistol first,” said Ari, the Beretta’s barrel wavering slightly.

  Averting his eyes from the gun in his face, Jasper placed the .22 on Ari’s lap and then gently laid the radio next to it.

  “And the machete ... pass it through the slider to them,” said Ari nodding towards the men in back. “Now the shotgun ... butt first. Finger away from the trigger.”

  Jasper complied and then, as if a switch had been flicked, he folded forward and let loose a sorrow-filled wail.

  Cade replaced the Glock on his lap. Steering one-handed, he rooted around in a cargo pocket, withdrew a pair of oversized zip ties, and passed them through the slider. “Stick your arms through,” he said, taking his eyes from the road just long enough to show Jasper he meant business.

  Ari leaned left as Jasper thrust his corded forearms through the opening.

  “Zip him, Lopez,” Cade said. “And make it quick.”

  As the engine hit another low point, nearly stalling, the sound of the Hercules tooling the air somewhere out of sight reached Cade’s ears. He watched through his side vision as Lopez performed a task perfected in training and used in the real world hundreds of times. In seconds Jasper’s hands were bound palms together and he was sitting down in his seat, sobbing like a baby.

  “Thank you, Lopez,” Cade intoned.

  Slowly Ari lowered his sidearm. “Sorry, friend. It was for your own good.”

  Chapter 28

  There it is, Cade thought. Yellow school bus on the left. Then he committed and entered the narrow canyon of metal and glass and colorful camping gear. He powered down the window, craned his head out, and gaped at the whale-sized vehicle. On its rear end above the clouded-over back window was a vinyl sign. It was stretched tight and tied down. Hand lettered in red were the words, Camp Carefree, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Below that, in much smaller font, was a web address and a phone number, and lastly, an unfulfilled promise: You can entrust your little ones with us. And judging by the number of pale, stick-thin arms probing the air through the open windows—about a hundred unlucky parents had.

  “Looks like they made it to camp,” said Cade, taking a sliver of solace from the fact that it appeared the bus had been heading away from Sioux Falls, which he took as a sign the little ones had enjoyed one final summer camp fling before joining the ranks of the dead.

  “Nothing worse than seeing little demoni
os,” whispered Lopez into the comms, while tiny ashen fingers massaged the air inches from his face. He whistled, long and drawn out. Instantly the rasps of the entombed dead rose in volume and new faces pressed the glass, filling every available void.

  “Fucking wrong,” exclaimed Hicks, who usually left the talking to others. “Looks like they all died away from their families.”

  “That’s why I am so glad I didn’t have any kids before the shit hit the fan,” added Cross. Then he swung the SCAR around and dropped a pair of Zs that were creeping up on their six.

  Considering himself very fortunate, Cade made no mention of family as the sneering faces of three dozen undead grade-schoolers slid by.

  Always the cruise director, Ari said, “Hands and arms inside the vehicle, gentlemen. It’s gonna be a tight fit.”

  “Hang on,” Cade said, aiming the Chevy at the Prius-sized gap between the school bus’s right fender and the tubular grill guard wrapping around the Suburban’s front end. He buried the pedal and after a slight hesitation the full force of the engine, nearly two hundred horsepower, was applied to the road. Consequently the nearly half-ton of flesh, bone, and sinew—living and dead—sardined into the six-by-eight box behind him caused the Chevy’s front end to rise slowly like a boat planing water. A wisp of steam curled through the grill and a cacophony of metallic gnashing rang out as a direct result of the added stresses. Then the rig nosed back down and, with the racket of two colliding locomotives, punched into the Suburban. Headlight glass shattered. A length of fender trim was sheared from the mounts securing it, curled back and probed the air.

  In an apparent miscalculation on Cade’s part only the Suburban’s grill guard budged, bending back at a forty-five degree angle before the Chevy pick-up was wedged tight between it and the bus’s enormous front tire.

  For a few seconds the Chevy fought valiantly to break free, spinning the rear tires until the engine stalled out and died. Then, lured by the close proximity of fresh meat, the undead tykes returning from Camp Carefree pulled away from the bus windows and, like a single-minded organism, surged into the stairwell and crashed headlong into the bi-fold doors.

  Chapter 29

  Eden Compound

  Duncan parked the Land Cruiser under the Black Hawk’s drooping rotor blades, grabbed his radio and shotgun from the passenger seat, and willed his weary frame from the plush confines of the high-dollar SUV. He slung the Mossberg, pushed the door closed, and spent a couple of extra minutes covering the Toyota with some of the excess camouflage netting used to conceal the helo.

  Better safe than sorry, he thought as he set out across the clearing, eyes searching for a clue as to the whereabouts of the camouflage blind concealing the entrance to his brother’s underground compound.

  The afternoon sun was just beginning to bake the back of his already sunburned neck when a fella he’d met a couple of days prior, Edward, emerged from the tree line laboring to carry a pair of bulging nylon duffle bags. A tick south of morbidly obese, the man had the neck of a firmly entrenched politician, wide and rolled with fat. And as he drew nearer, huffing and puffing, Duncan could see that the man’s clean-shaven face was becoming redder by the second. Worried Ed might be close to having a massive coronary, Duncan stopped walking and asked if he could help carry the bags.

  Eyes downcast, Edward said nothing and kept up his steady, lumbering pace.

  “Wouldn’t be a problem,” said Duncan as their paths crossed.

  Edward still made no reply.

  Incredulous, Duncan stopped and watched the man toddle away, bags swaying, shotgun banging against his considerable backside.

  “What the hell did I do to you?” Duncan muttered as he stood in the middle of the clearing watching Ed approach the two Cessnas chocked adjacent to the Black Hawk. When Ed reached the nearest of the civilian aircraft—a shiny white item emblazoned with letters and numbers denoting its FAA identification and a black stripe running from nose to tail to add some flash to the rather pedestrian aircraft—he tossed the bags behind the narrow seats, and then with a great deal of effort climbed up and wedged his frame behind the controls.

  We need a bigger plane, thought Duncan, adapting a line from Jaws to best describe what he had just witnessed.

  ***

  As always, Duncan had to work at finding the concealed entrance. Once he located the camouflaged netting, he pulled it aside and passed on through. On the other side he smoothed and straightened the edges and corners, making sure the foliage looked as natural as rent-off sticks and leaves and clumps of bushes could.

  With his footfalls deadened by the thick carpet of pine needles, he padded down the dirt ramp, passing through bars of light and dappled shadow along the way. The smell of damp earth filled his nose as he worked at the latches to open the outer steel door. When he entered the compound anteroom he performed a ritual he’d learned years ago in the jungles of Vietnam but had dusted off only recently. He stood still, eyes wide, letting them adjust to the dark. He lowered his breathing and listened hard for any kind of movement. And while he stood there in the low-ceilinged container, feeling a little like Indiana Jones invading some other culture’s temple, he caught a tear-inducing whiff of his own body odor. The sour stink of fear-tinged sweat mingling with traces of bodily fluids and cordite clung to him like a bad reputation.

  Standing there wallowing in his own stench, with the events of the day careening through his head like a Michael Man flick, a prolonged stint under one of those Frisbee-sized shower heads with pinprick jets of steaming hundred and forty degree water pummeling his skin and soothing his muscles had never sounded better. Hell, he thought. He’d even defy his own personal man code and put a loofa pad and some girly-smelling hair conditioner to use given the chance.

  Once his eyes finally adjusted to the low light environs, he discarded the spa treatment fantasy like an old razor, propped his shotgun beside the vertical hatch, and tried the handle. And as expected, the door was unlocked and opened quietly on oiled hinges. Should be a Klaxon sounding right about now, he thought, shaking his head. For some lame brained reason, before he’d arrived at the compound, the group decided on a show of hands that during the day the doors would be latched, but not locked from inside. And given the fact that an average team of operators could neutralize the outside security, leave all of them cut from ear-to-ear exsanguinating on the ground and be gone like ghosts in a matter of seconds, he let it be known whenever possible how adamantly opposed he was to the ludicrous decision.

  But since Logan was a big boy and the compound was his, Duncan had decided to save the battle for another day. Unfortunately for Logan, today was that day. Push had come to shove, and Duncan had been forced to do the shoving—albeit with a number of .50 caliber rounds—up on the road, and now he was going to do some pushing and revisit the issue with his baby bro.

  He ducked into the next cramped Conex container which doubled as the compound’s security and communications center, took two exaggerated strides, staying in the shadows, and stopped directly behind Logan, who was tethered to a Ham radio by a pair of bulky Hi-Fi headphones that were cinched tightly on his head and covered both ears.

  While Duncan wrestled with the notion of teaching Logan a lesson on breaking and entering and the dire consequences that came along with it, he let his eyes wander over the facing wall; it was taken up by rows of shelving on which all manner of unused radio gear sat dark and silent. A bin at eye level was filled with electrical cords, speaker wire, and a myriad of colorful cables secured by plastic zip ties. Next door to it sat a half-dozen Motorola two-way radios taken off the bodies of the Huntsville dead. A polymer Glock pistol belonging to Logan sat within arm’s reach next to the radios. Arranged side by side on the desk below the shelving were a pair of closed circuit television monitors, each one partitioned so that six separate feeds could be displayed simultaneously. Frozen on the monitor on the left were mainly color images of conifer trees at ground level. The second screen displayed six gra
iny images. One showed Duncan and Edward passing. The next was a long, pulled-out view of the airstrip, mostly greens and browns with trees at the far end of the runway and a thin sliver of blue sky overhead. At the bottom on the left was another image, snapped from behind, of him entering the woods near the hidden entrance. The latter half of the partitioned monitor caught the white Toyota and a flash of his face in three separate frames at three different locations as he approached the airstrip via the dirt and gravel road coming in from the State Route.

  Worrying his handlebar mustache with one hand and working the lighted dials and switches bristling from the ham set with the other, Logan continued his chat, totally oblivious to Duncan’s presence.

  Twenty-five years ago, when Duncan was in his early thirties helping his aging parents raise Logan, he would have jumped at using a golden opportunity like this to “toughen” the boy up.

  Instead he leaned against the cool wall cloaked in shadow from the waist up and listened to the conversation Logan was having with someone whom he guessed was a ham radio operator somewhere out in America.

  But after less than a minute of eavesdropping on this side of the exchange, Duncan got bored and acted on his earlier impulse. Slowly but surely he covered the distance, cutting the angle just right so that he remained outside of Logan’s field of vision. Forming up behind the man, Duncan curled his hand into a rigid claw and then clamped it firmly down on his mark’s shoulder.