Logan tapped the hood and mouthed, “Lock the doors.”
She smiled. Cast her eyes downward and dogged her head side-to-side. A tick later the siren blared—hitting a shrill note that simultaneously forced Logan, Gus, and Jamie to clamp their hands over their ears. The noise continued, rising and falling unabated, until Logan banged on the hood and drew an index finger across his throat, a frantic slashing motion.
Heeding the pantomimed request, Jordan relocated the switch and silenced the siren.
“Shit,” Gus said, shaking his head. He stuck a finger in each ear and jiggled them rapidly. “If there is someone here and they didn’t know they had company, we sure as hell just lost the element of surprise.”
Ears ringing from the sonic bombardment, Logan said, “She’s a work in progress.” Then he heard the satisfying clunk as Jordan actuated the door locks. He watched her get comfortable, adjusting the seat and mirrors, presumably so she could watch the gate without having to hang her head out the window. Way to take the initiative, he thought. After apparently getting everything dialed in to her liking she flashed the trio another smile punctuated with an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Seeing this, Logan said to Gus and Jamie, “Quickly, let’s go ... same plan.”
Chambering a round into his AR-15, Gus flicked off the safety, nodded at Logan, and with Jamie close on his heels, padded off towards the shed farthest left.
Cursing himself for assuming one of the others had brought along a second two-way radio, Logan struck off in the opposite direction; as he zig-zagged between steaming puddles, Duncan’s voice sounded in his head, chiding him for the oversight, asking what the hell he’d been thinking. Dot your I’s and cross your T’s—one of Duncan’s favorite sayings—resounded loudly, clamoring for attention, albeit a little too late. Then for the third time this morning Logan imagined a fusillade of hot lead lancing the air, every bullet with his name on it. M4 locked and loaded, its business end aimed in the general direction of the looming building, he straightened up and covered the distance in a full sprint.
Upon reaching the green door, he cut left and ducked under the window, slid down with his back against the wall near the corner of the building, and watched Jamie and Gus approach the outbuilding farthest left. Upon arriving, Gus searched the rear of the tiny structure, then reappeared and stood with Jamie by the narrow wooden door. They conferred and then Gus tried the handle. He looked over, met Logan’s gaze and shook his head. He took a step and a half back, and behind a flash of black leather kicked the sweet spot next to the handle, destroying the lock and half the door.
Instantly, Jamie was through, Gus close behind. Just like in the movies, thought Logan. That no rotters or gunfire or screams came out of the shed was a very good sign.
Shifting his focus to the oversized garage, Logan craned his head and peered through the sun-yellowed horizontal blinds. Against the far wall was a low, wide desk, its dark wood lightened by a coating of dust. The rest was basic office equipment. There was a pencil sharpener fastened to one wall, and a bulky PC, probably brand new in the last half of the nineties, arranged on another desk alongside a printer. A water cooler, long dried out, stood close by. And occupying the left wall was a sagging, flame-orange sofa with three threadbare cushions and spindly walnut legs. Pinned above it, still displaying the month of September, last accurate in 2001, was a calendar hawking some kind of mining equipment.
All put together, everything Logan saw in the cramped office worked to negate his theory that the pristine garage doors were newly installed. Like a pendulum, his opinion began to sway away from prepper redoubt and back to this just being a long-idled mining operation.
He turned to check on the progress Jamie and Gus were making and saw that all three shed doors were hanging open on bent hinges, splintered wood where their single locks had been, and the two of them were heading his way.
When they’d closed to within earshot, Logan said, “What did you find?”
“Spiders,” said Jamie, checking her hair and clothing for eight-legged passengers. “Lots and lots of spiders.”
Shaking his head, Gus answered, “Decades-old equipment. Nothing that points to anyone planning on riding out the apocalypse here.”
“I didn’t see anything inside the office that makes me think any different. But these doors are brand new,” added Logan. He looked at them. Long and hard. “But the rest of this. It’s the type of picture I’d try to paint if my place was out in the open like this.”
“Good point,” said Gus. “But I’m thinking we should leave now and check the other site. This just doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Logan cast his gaze towards the Tahoe and saw Jordan, alert, head panning side-to-side every couple of seconds.
“Stay here,” Logan said. “I’m going around back.” He turned the corner at a slow trot, passed the rusting north-facing wall and crabbed sideways through the narrow space between the building’s northeast corner and the chain-link fence to his left. He stopped and gazed down the narrow chute and saw more of the same: razor-wire-topped chain-link on the left, the building’s rusting rear flank to his right. Boots sucking in the mud, he sprinted thirty yards or so, rounded the next corner and spotted something that tugged the pendulum back in the direction of thinking a prepper was at work here.
The six windows on the south side appeared brand new. They were double-paned, with sturdy metal cages on the outside and stark white vertical blinds on the inside. He moved along the wall until he found a window with a finger’s width of clearance between the blind and the sill.
He knelt down and was pressing his face against the warm metal, peering inside, when something slammed violently against the window, vibrating the blinds and visibly bowing the glass outward.
Reacting instantly, Logan leapt backwards as if he’d just come upon a pissed-off rattlesnake. His bowler hat flew from his head and landed in the mud as expletives began to flow from his mouth.
While the trapped rotter continued slam-dancing with the windows, Logan retrieved his hat, brushed it off as best he could, and then rejoined Jamie and Gus around the corner.
First to notice him round the corner, Jamie said, “Whoa, Logan. Looks you’ve seen a ghost.”
“That bad, huh?”
Gus said, “You should see yourself in a mirror. You’ve got the albino look down.”
“What’d you find back there?” asked Jamie.
“Brand new windows. Someone was calling this place home.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, Jamie. Was,” said Logan.
“What’s in there?” she asked with a tilt to her head.
“Something we’re going to have to deal with. I’m going to grab the bolt cutters.”
Chapter 57
Quarry
As Logan worked the cutter’s maw into position to snip the lock, he could hear their friend on the inside banging into the roller door.
“What makes you so sure that thing or those things won’t come storming through the door?”
Stopping what he was doing, Logan rested the cutters on the cement stair and looked at Jamie. “First off, rotters never storm anything. I’d be willing to bet that’s the old guy banging the door. He probably got bit somewhere outside and then came back to his castle and turned inside there all alone.”
“What makes you think that’s only one rotter in there?” said Jamie. “Sounds like five.”
“I was having lunch in Huntsville a while back and I heard a couple of blue hairs talking about him. Supposedly he’s got no family around here except for a daughter and granddaughter in Logan.”
“And a little lunch counter gossip makes you certain that’s him and he died in there all alone?” said Gus, who suddenly went quiet and cocked his head to the west.
Logan made no reply. He also looked to the west.
Crinkling her brow, Jamie asked, “What’s up guys?”
Gus asked, “Anyone else hear that?”
“From this
direction,” said Jordan, pointing across the standing water that had lost all of its On Golden Pond allure and was now as black as midnight. “Maybe a car or truck— but I only caught it for a second.”
Logan listened hard. Shook his head. Nothing. “Stay in the truck ... same routine. Hit the siren only if you see something,” he said to Jordan. He waited a second for her to respond, then, after seeing her nod, turned and addressed Jamie and Gus.
They discussed the best way to go about getting inside without any of them getting bit.
Worst case scenario, Gus argued, was that there were two, maybe three rotters in the garage. Why they were in there, and what they may have been protecting, was a matter of opinion. Even after Logan had pointed out the recent improvements to the building, Gus was not convinced it was worth taking the risk to find out. The girls, on the other hand, were both in Logan’s camp, so sticking with the whole democratic process thing they moved to formulate a plan. After exploring every avenue, they came to the conclusion that the armored windows were a no-go. And since the roller doors weren’t going to budge without utilizing the Jaws of Life, they would have to breach the outer door. With the plan hashed out, the only thing left to decide was which one of them was going to open the inner door and let the dead—however many there might be—come to them. Then, taking everyone by surprise, Gus asked for a volunteer.
Solely to beat Jamie to the punch, Logan agreed to the task. Last thing he wanted was to lose her based on one of his stupid suppositions.
***
Standing on the first step, with everyone watching, Logan swept aside the broken padlock with his toe. Then, mimicking Gus’s technique, he reared back, took a stabbing half-step forward and lashed out, planting the sole of his right boot on the green door dead-center between the two catches.
But the follow through and splintering wood didn’t happen. Instead, the steel door and Schlage bolts held fast. The energy behind the kick—which had to dissipate somewhere—surged back through the waffle-patterned sole, vibrated up his fibula and tibia, and then shot through his femur, an electric current juddering every bone north from there.
A half beat later he pitched backwards off the steps, landing square on his tailbone; the bowler flew off again, adding insult to the pain making his eyes water.
Sitting in a puddle—with the lady he fancied looking on, and the intact door looming over him—was the most humiliating moment of his life.
Jamie went to her knees. “Are you okay, Logan?” she asked, cradling his head with both hands.
Looking her straight in the face, he said, “My brother comes onto the scene and all of a sudden I can’t do anything right. I forget the radios. Ed and his family leaves, and now this ... I’ve always been in his shadow.”
“It’s alright to look up to him, but in my opinion you should stop living in his shadow.”
He said nothing.
Trying to stay out of it, Gus walked away humming a ditty only he knew the words to.
Jamie offered Logan a hand up and said, “We’re only people until we’re one of those things. Then all this bullshit minutiae doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I know, I was the only one counting, but that was strike three right there.” He made a face. Looked at the others one at a time, shook his head and said, “I don’t think I deserve another chance.”
Gus couldn’t hold his tongue. He said, “I was counting. And that was strike four if you take into account Little Miss Premature on the siren over there.”
Logan made no reply. Tried to wipe the mud from his hat but only smudged it further. Red-faced, he gave up and slapped the bowler back on, dirt and all.
Seeing this, Gus said, “Forget about the door. I’ll take care of it.” He made a shooing motion and went on, “I want you two to get behind the cruiser. And tell Jordan to keep her head down.”
With a little help from Jamie, Logan limped back to the SUV, rubbing his backside.
Gus stood at an oblique angle ten feet right of the door, snugged the AR tight to his shoulder, and aimed for the one-inch strip between the locks and frame. He took a calming breath and squeezed off four consecutive shots, a second or two between each.
While the sharp reports were still echoing around the quarry, Gus approached the door and finished the job with one swift kick. He took a quick peek inside and noticed the interior door was shut. He looked over his shoulder at Logan and said, “Step right up. It’s redemption time.”
Logan paused for a beat, put down his carbine and drew his Glock. Pulled the slide checking for brass.
“Just fling it open and get your butt out here.”
“Pronto,” added Jamie, “I wouldn’t want to lose you.”
After limping up the steps, Logan hesitated once again and cast a look at Jamie that said: I got this. Brandishing the Glock one-handed, tucked close to his body, he crabbed past the desk and grasped the brushed-nickel knob. Once again he hesitated. Then for reasons known only to him, tapped the 9mm against the hollow door—an action that received an instant response. The first impact rattled the door, jiggling the knob in his grip. The monster had no chance at a second attempt because Logan flung the door open and backpedaled out of harm’s way, a mass of black flies buzzing after him.
The creature stumbled through the inner door and caromed around the office, moving the flimsy desk a couple of feet and sending the antiquated IBM PC to the floor in the process. Then another rotter—female, elderly, and grossly overweight— emerged from the inner sanctum trailing several feet of its own greasy intestines.
The two abominations pin-balled off each other, causing complete devastation to the small room before finally finding their way through the open door and into the sunlight.
The male rotter, also elderly—early sixties, Logan guessed—and rail-thin with ashen skin and a scraggly white beard, locked on to him like a heat-seeking missile. If these two were a couple in life, he thought bringing his Glock on line, then the age-old adage, opposites attract, must have been at play.
Stumbling down the steps and over the pitted ground, coveralls black with dried blood, the male zombie covered a handful of feet before meeting a pair of 9mm Parabellums head on. The first projectile, travelling at a blistering 1,200 feet per second, struck the monster on the sharp ridge of its lower jawbone. The bullet’s kinetic energy snapped the creature’s head back like a Pez dispenser, discharging a geyser of flecked bone and tooth through the pulpy chasm where its sunken cheek used to be. Strike five, Logan thought pessimistically even before the effect of his second shot had become evident.
A thousandth of a second later, the latter half of Logan’s double-tap found its mark, entering directly under the rotter’s mangled chin and exiting diametrically opposite behind an airburst of skull, hair, and gelatinous gray matter. Relief washed over him as the thing fell in a heap in the red mud near his feet.
No sooner had the remains of the rotter’s brains dribbled from its skull than a flurry of gunshots sounded from Logan’s right flank.
Wobbly and unsteady, like a drunken sailor on liberty, the second rotter had trundled down the stairs on the heels of the first, inexplicably ignored Logan, and trudged directly towards Jamie and Gus and into the hail of hot lead fired from their carbines.
Trying to avoid an imminent tsunami, Logan sprang back as the plus-sized flesh-eater, its face a bloody red mess, fell headfirst into a mud puddle.
But Logan’s reaction time had been lacking and he was deluged with enough displaced dirty water to wet him from crotch to sternum.
Crouched low and moving sideways, Gus stepped quietly over the leaking bodies. Then, craning his head to see through the doorway, he swept the business end of his rifle inside, cutting the room off by degrees. Nothing. Still, he waited and listened and watched the darkened doorway for a full minute, and when nothing else emerged, his law enforcement training kicked in and he called out, “Clear.”
Chapter 58
Schriever AFB
“So wh
at do you think the compound will be like?” Cade asked Raven as he tossed an empty backpack on the bunk and worked at undoing the top enclosures.
She bit her lower lip. Looked at the floor for a second, searching for an answer. Finally she said, “I don’t know,” and looked up and locked eyes with him.
“No idea at all?”
“The word compound kinda makes me think of a castle. Maybe there will be a wall and a moat.” She added a couple of tee shirts and a pair of khaki cotton pants her mom had scrounged up somewhere to the pile of clothes going with them and added, “Sasha thinks we’ll be able to explore city ruins on the way. Says it’s going to be fun ... like their trip from Denver. She says there will be a ton of zombies but she’s not scared at all. I don’t really believe her though.”
Cade rolled up a black tee shirt, stuffed it in a zippered side pocket, and said, “Are you scared?”
“Kind of.”
“What do you think the countryside near the compound is going to look like?” he said as he stuffed the rest of the clothes in the main body of the pack.
“I kinda think it’ll look a lot like where Robin Hood lives ... the Starwood Forest.”
“Sherwood Forest,” said Cade, correcting her. “But you’re close. There’s a lot of trees and a creek and a grassy clearing with a landing strip. I’ve seen it mostly from above ... when I was riding in a helicopter with some people you’re going to get to meet.”
“You think we can build a fort or a tree house in the forest?”
“The compound is more fort than castle,” he said. “But, yeah. I’ll help you build a tree house. With a garage for your bike, how’s that sound?” Then he went over most of the details he knew from Duncan about the compound, leaving out the part about it being buried underground. No telling how she’d take that kind of news, he thought. So he decided to leave her free of worry for now and wait until they actually arrived there and then see how she took to the place and its subterranean nature.
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 29