On the northeast corner sat the auto fix-it shop where Taryn had nearly fallen victim to the restrained and muted zombies. A block and a half east, on the left side of the street, stood the two-story rectory and quaint whitewashed church where Adrian’s people had butchered a man, nailed him to the cross, and left him to turn.
Eyes fixed on the yawning door and rotting corpses spread out before it, Taryn said, “This corner brings back nothing but bad memories.”
“Tell me about it,” said Wilson. “I almost became a human pin cushion.”
“Bunch of babies,” Duncan shot. “Neither one of you had your tongue yanked through a gaping hole in your throat like Oliver did. A bullet didn’t stop your heart and shred it into a dozen pieces as one did to Foley’s.”
For a long ten-count the group sat in absolute silence. If it hadn’t been for the steady hum of the idling engine they may as well have been surrounded by the vacuum of space.
Wilson leaned over the seatback again. With his head and upper body cutting the air between Cade and Duncan, he said, “One of you please tell me you can still see the tracks.”
Duncan sighed. “Not anymore. They die right here.”
“No doubt they continue north to Bear Lake,” stated Cade. “Hard for me to say, but I’m confident the women in the truck were looking for the people who threw the monkey wrench in their operation.”
Head turned toward Cade, Wilson said, “I’d call killing their leader and burning down their compound a little more than a ‘monkey wrench in their operation.’”
Cade leaned forward a few degrees and locked eyes with Duncan. “Lev and Daymon set the fires. They told you as much, right?”
“Saw it with my own eyes.”
“Me too,” said Taryn.
“Real big flames and smoke,” added Wilson.
Still regarding Duncan, Cade said, “You saw all of this, right?”
Duncan nodded.
Cade looked into the rearview, then met Wilson’s eyes, and finally settled his gaze back on Duncan. “Who here saw the Zs sink their teeth into—”
“Adrian,” said Duncan, sounding deflated. “I guess I should have just given her a Columbian Necktie and been done with it. Hell, after all the killing … and what they did to the man in the church …” He slapped the dash, causing Taryn to jump. “I couldn’t let her off that easy. Besides, she was locked in the stocks. And she had an effen broken leg. She was going nowhere under her own steam.”
And the pickup trucks you let drive away without engaging? thought Cade.
As if reading Cade’s mind, Wilson said, “You stopped Daymon and Gregory from lighting up those people fleeing in their trucks.”
“OK, OK. I let them get away. In my defense, there were innocents inside the house next to the back exit.”
“You didn’t know that yet,” said Taryn soberly.
Duncan leaned back and covered his face with the Stetson. Voice muffled, he drawled, “Crucify me for using a little discretion. Maybe I should have popped off a couple of nukes and killed everyone in a ten-mile radius.”
Sparing his friend from any more scrutiny, Cade maneuvered the Ford into a wide U-turn, bouncing over two curbs and splashing muddy water everywhere in the process.
Voice still muffled by the hat, Duncan asked, “Where we going now?”
“South,” said Cade. “Now take that hat off your face so you can show me the way to Daymon’s new place.”
Slowly, Duncan sat forward, allowing the Stetson to fall into his lap. “What do you have planned?”
Cade said, “Figured since we’re already burning fuel, it’d make sense to kill a couple more birds while we’re outside the wire.” He met Wilson’s gaze in the rearview. “For one of the tasks, the extra muscle that weaseled its way into my truck is going to come in handy.”
“Keep going south,” said Duncan. “I’ll tell you where to turn. While you’re doing that, why dontcha come clean about what you have in mind.”
“I’m curious, too,” Taryn said.
“Spill,” demanded Wilson.
Ignoring the trio of questioning looks aimed his way, Cade wheeled the Ford back down Main Street in the direction they’d come.
Chapter 8
“You ate every last crumb of my pound cake,” Tran bellowed over his shoulder. Seething inside, he plopped down on the rolling chair. Then, still shivering from the topside chill, he glanced to where he’d placed the iPhone. Still there. Because he had a hunch of his own that Bridgett had been fooling with the electronic devices, he scanned the satellite phones and radios on the shelf. All appeared to be arranged just as he had left them. Flicking his gaze to the desktop, he came to realize two things. First, Bridgett was a slob. There were sticky fingerprints on everything. The monitor. The HAM handset and headset, which she’d likely set aside so she could get her face close enough to his food in order to Hoover it straight off the wrapper and into her gullet. Then there was the legal pad on which dozens of call signs belonging to survivors scattered around the western United States had been scrawled. It had been folded back, leaving a fresh sheet in its stead.
The clang from Bridgett shutting the door was followed by a metallic snik of the lock being thrown. Then the laughter started up. It emanated from the foyer, deep and sonorous, bouncing off the low ceiling and growing louder as she emerged through the blackout curtain and into the light thrown from the hanging sixty-watt bulb. Without a shred of remorse to her tone, she said, “That I did, little man. That. I. Did. I ate it up. Every last crumb. My only promise was that I wouldn’t get into the goodies in the dry storage, remember?”
Though Bridgett’s tone said ‘What the fuck are you going to do about it?’ Tran left the bait alone. He simply smiled at her and said, “Thanks.” Simple as that. Only his tone—much like that of a boss dismissing a subordinate—inferred that she was no longer needed and she should ‘carry on.’ However, the opposite was true. Tran was far from done with her. In fact, as soon as he had a moment to analyze the video evidence and catch her going to the dry storage and coming back with contraband, he was going to feed her more than pound cake. He was going to jam fucking crow down her throat. Make her eat a big steaming plate of the metaphorical black raptor right in front of the rest of the group.
The former pacifist suppressed a smile as the piece of work hitched up her pants, ran the zipper on the life-preserver-looking orange vest all the way up to the copious amounts of wrinkled flesh passing for a neck, and stormed out the door without bothering to ask how she did as a doer or voice any concern that the door be locked behind her. Hearing the door clang shut, Tran took his eyes off the swaying fabric curtain and regarded the monitor. In the partition showing the expanse of clearing fronting the compound exit, he watched the woman stalking off through the tall grass, cutting a straight line toward the Winnebago, which, at the moment, was sitting all alone near the far tree line. He kept his attention on the monitor long enough to see her hold a short conversation with Glenda and Jamie while taking a bowl of stew from the former. Bowl in hand, Bridgett then turned and threw something into the fire pit before stalking off toward the nearby tree line.
“Bitch,” he muttered as he stood and plucked the iPhone from where he’d secreted it. Phone in hand and with Max on his heels, he brushed past the curtain.
Beating Tran to the door, Max pawed at the metal and whined.
“Gotta go potty?”
The dog eyed him and placed a paw on the door.
“Ok. But stay away from Bridgett.” Then, half in jest, he added, “If you don’t, she might end up eating you.” He cracked the door and watched Max worm through the narrow opening and pad off.
After locking himself in, Tran walked back to the security container and took his seat at the desk. Confident he was the only soul in the subterranean redoubt, he typed the security code into the phone and selected the video icon. Waiting for the video to begin, he looked at the flat panel monitor and prayed for the alone time he needed to fi
nish his mission.
Cade had the F-650 stopped in front of the rehab place, the engine idling. He looked left for a tick. The road east out of town narrowed and rose slightly before finally becoming one with the trees flanking the Bear River Range. The dark clouds from the recent hail-producing storm were just now swarming over the low mountains.
Swiveling his head forward, his gaze was drawn to the not too distant intersection where State Route 39 spliced into 16. The yellow snout and grimy undercarriage of the ever-present overturned school bus was clearly visible just beyond the incoming stretch of 39. Resting on its side, all but its abbreviated front end occupying the roadside gutter, the fifty-seat monstrosity looked more like a beached metal whale than the makeshift barrier it used to be. With its crushed roof and blown-out windows, it now served only as a reminder to what the undead hordes wandering the highways and byways of America were capable of.
Duncan asked, “Are we paying Daymon a visit or not?”
“Which way?” asked Cade.
“Left, if my memory serves.”
Nodding in agreement, Wilson pointed at the nearby street. “There are a couple of nearly identical one-level homes up the road on the right. We see those, we know we’re on the right track.”
“I know the ones you’re speaking of,” Cade said, wrenching the wheel left and accelerating through the debris-strewn intersection. “I found medicine for Heidi there. Movies for Brook and the girls, too.” He went quiet and stared across Back In The Saddle Rehab’s rear parking lot as it was sliding by. Lying among the shimmering puddles dotting the pocked gravel expanse were a dozen twice-dead corpses. North of the prostrate corpses were another dozen of the walking variety, their clumsy footfalls finding puddles and sending sprays of muddy water airborne.
Soon the twin plats of land on which the pair of double-wide mobile homes sat passed by on the right. And just as before, on the left, farms setback from the road and the rusting farm implements marking them scrolled on by.
“Turn right here,” said Taryn, her arm shooting across the seatback at a diagonal.
“It’s unmarked,” Cade answered, slowing and obviously hesitant to commit the large truck to a feeder road where turning around would entail a lot of jockeying of the wheel and perhaps taking out some barbed wire fence in the process.
“Half a mile in you’ll find the driveway behind a rusty sheep fence,” she said.
“It doesn’t look like much,” admitted Duncan. “And that’s the beauty of it. You’ll see.”
“Who do you want to call ahead?” asked Wilson, mainly directing the question at Cade.
“Duncan, you have the honors.”
After cycling the Motorola to channel 10-1, Duncan depressed the Talk button. “Daymon, Duncan here. Do you have a copy?” Figuring Daymon’s radio was either parked on a base unit in the home, or buried deep in one of the man’s pockets, he waited a few seconds, passing the time by staring across fallow fields adjacent to the paved secondary road.
Less than a minute had elapsed before Daymon’s voice spilled from the tiny speaker. “Old Man! Well I’ll be damned. Figured Captain America would come calling before your mangy carcass darkened my doorstep. Good thing I remembered the old standby channel, eh?”
“I’m not alone,” said Duncan. “Cade and the Kids are here, too.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then, the statement obviously directed at Cade, Daymon said, “I’m sorry I ran out before you returned. I had no idea the severity of the situation.” There was nothing jocular about the delivery. Daymon’s voice was soft and the words came across as sincere to all in the F-650’s cab.
Duncan handed his Motorola to Cade who thumbed the Talk button and drew it to his mouth. “You have no reason to apologize,” he insisted. “You were outside the wire with Duncan and the others. No way you could have possibly known. In the end, only Glenda and Duncan knew the truth about Brook’s dose of Omega antiserum coming from the bad batch.”
“Heidi is listening,” said Daymon. “She wants to know how Raven is taking it.”
Cade looked into the rearview mirror. “Raven cussed God and kicked a lot of inanimate objects for the first half of the first day. Then she ran a path in the clearing the latter half of the day. Probably ran a half marathon all total.”
Heidi asked, “How is she now?”
“About as good as can be expected for a twelve-year-old who just lost her mom,” Cade replied, his gaze locked tight on the road beyond the galvanized steel gate.
Duncan flicked his eyes to the wing mirror. Clear. He gestured for Cade to press the Talk button and leaned near. “Let’s finish our jaw session inside the wire,” he drawled, head turned in the radio’s general direction. “Gate’s chained up and secured with a lock. You gonna come and let us in?”
“No need,” Daymon said. “Go to the fence post on the right. At the middle rung, reach around to the back side. Opposite the hinge you’ll find a loose plug of wood. Work it out and you’ll find a key to the lock behind it. If there’s any rotters watching … make sure you put them down and hide the corpses before you do anything.”
“We know the drill,” said Cade. “Be there in a bit.”
“Copy that,” answered Daymon. “On your way in, leave my watchrotter be.”
Shaking his head, Duncan shouldered the door and stepped to the steaming blacktop.
Cade turned toward the backseat. “Watchrotter?”
Taryn grimaced.
Squirming in his seat, Wilson said, “You’ll see.”
Chapter 9
Head bowed and iPhone held close to his chest, Tran watched the covertly collected footage from start to finish. Save for pausing the video a couple of times to check topside activity on the flat panel to his left, the happenings on the tiny screen held his attention all the way to the ten-minute mark when he reentered the security container and Bridgett brushed past him in a blur of hunter orange and bad vibes. Still in disbelief at all the newcomer had been able to accomplish during his brief absence, Tran rolled the video back to the 3:23 mark, hit the Pause icon on the glass screen, and scrutinized the image frozen there.
By the time the captured footage had reached the point in time indicated by the digitally rendered numbers, he had already witnessed enough to know that Bridgett was their food thief. In fact, the second she had come back through the blackout curtain after locking him out she had blown by the iPhone and was out of frame again and moving fast (a conclusion buttressed by the rapid clomp of boots picked up by the microphone) in the direction of the dry storage Conex. A tick later she was back, her face filling up the screen, a mud-brown MRE pound cake package clamped between her teeth. And though Tran couldn’t see much of her vest because she was crowding the lens as she retook her seat, more than likely its inner and outer pockets were bulging with more of the same.
He watched with rapt attention as she shoveled the last of his pound cake into her mouth. Finished with the big pieces, she ripped the foil bag open along the seams and licked the silver lining clean, probing the corners with her tongue to get at every last speck of the moist yellow cake. But she hadn’t stopped there. Barely coming up for air, she tore open another pound cake package and went to town on the contents.
Though he was never drawn to the programming on Discovery Channel during Shark Week, he had seen the commercials. What Bridgett had accomplished in a matter of seconds was on par with one of those Great Whites going to town on a hapless harbor seal—minus the crimson-frothed water, of course. And sticking with the Shark Week theme, the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head and copious amounts of drool sluiced from her mouth and ran down her chin as she chewed slowly, obviously savoring her ill begotten gains.
After hiding the second foil package in a pocket, the confirmed food thief stood and inspected the satellite phones—picking each one up and thumbing it alive and regarding the lit-up screen before moving on. Tran had shaken his head as he saw her fish the unlocked bait phone from the shelf and
sit back down with it clutched in her hand. A little confused as to what she was trying to accomplish, he watched her power it on and push buttons and then scribble something on the yellow legal pad on the desk in front of her. Then, without warning, she bent over and was out of frame for a short while.
Three second rule, thought Tran as he watched her pop back into view, chewing and swallowing what he figured was a dropped morsel of cake.
What Bridgett did next further added to the mystery. As she wiped the drool from her chin onto her left forearm, she reached in the iPhone’s direction with her right hand. As she did so her arm stretched and distorted until she got ahold of something below the shelf the iPhone was positioned on. In the next beat, she donned a pair of headphones and plugged them into the jack on the HAM base unit sitting atop the desk beside the monitor. The second she powered on the unit and her hand went to the frequency tuning knob, Tran knew exactly what she was doing. And when he heard her utter a few muffled words and then go quiet, presumably to listen to someone on the other end, a cold finger of dread raked its nail up his spine.
As Bridgett continued the seemingly one-sided conversation, Tran’s gag reflex was activated by the sight of her digging deep into her nostrils and extracting big hairy nuggets which she promptly deposited into her yawning mouth. The booger mining went on uninterrupted for some time, with her dividing her attention between the monitor to her left and speaking in hushed tones into the boom mike affixed to the headset.
Now, with the reason for Bridgett’s actions still a mystery, he stared at the tiny iPhone screen, squinting hard to read the writing on the yellow pad. Nothing. The angle of the page in relation to the iPhone had rendered the faint pencil scrawl illegible.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 5