“—we wouldn’t need the extra personnel,” Duncan finished, just as two other voices called out. One followed a burst of static and emanated from his back pocket. The other was a woman’s and had originated downstairs judging by the way the words “come and get it” caromed off the ceiling and filled the landing behind him.
Duncan fished the CB out and said, “Come again?”
More static, then Tran said, “Dregan just called. Bear River is under siege.”
Thinking the worst, Duncan asked, “Breathers?”
“Demons,” Tran replied. “The horde is back.”
Taryn’s mouth formed a silent O.
Heidi called up again. “Fooood’s ready.”
“They’re going to be taking it to go,” Daymon called down, his words competing with the ones still spilling from the tiny speaker.
In less than a minute, Tran had relayed all that Dregan had told him—along with one request that was more like a special favor.
Wilson’s head was instantly filled with visons of the legions of dead circling the Viscount Arms in downtown Denver. He could almost smell the stink rising off of them as his chest grew tighter and breathing became a chore. “With that many rotters a few miles south of here,” he gasped, “do we really have time to do that?”
“Tran said Dregan used the word siege. I’m pretty sure that old warhorse isn’t into mincing his words. And taking into consideration what he said about survivors showing up at the gate ahead of the horde and that they had to call people back from outside the wire …” Cade paused and stared at the floor by his boots. Looking up he added, “Tells me the Zs already know there’s meat behind those walls. With those kinds of numbers, it truly is a siege in the making.”
“And they ain’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Duncan said. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I hope those walls hold until the dead grow tired and move on.”
“Could take a while,” said Cade. “And about that special request of Dregan’s …” His face went stony again. “That was going to happen anyway. Brook asked me to do it … posthumously.”
A confused look settling on his face, Wilson turned and regarded Cade.
Meeting the younger man’s stare, Cade said, “She left me a death letter.”
“What’s a death—”
Taryn clamped a hand over Wilson’s mouth. In quick succession, she looked to Duncan and then Cade. “We’ve come this far,” she said, swallowing hard and letting her hand fall away.
Duncan swung his gaze to Cade. “If we’re going to fulfill Brook’s wish, then we better collect what we came here for and di di mau.”
“And Bridgett and her ilk?” said Wilson. “They know where we live now.”
We deal with them after,” Cade said over his shoulder as he disappeared into the panic room.
Chapter 19
“I’m coming home,” Iris whispered. “You’ll see, Mother. I am a Doer.” She stopped rocking for a moment and swiveled around on her butt to face her pursuers. Purged number one was male. The only reason she knew this was because of the continual appearance of the shriveled-up piece of flesh hanging between the atrophied legs propelling the mindless husk in her direction. With every step the beast drew nearer, its flaccid penis would make another appearance through the foot-long tear in the crotch of its pants.
Tiring of the uninviting game of pee-pee peek-a-boo—hell, she thought, my old Ken doll had a bigger schlong than Mister Flippety-Flop—she pushed herself up to her knees and withdrew the sharpened stake from her back pocket. Now able to see the purged female staggering along behind the male, she picked a spot on the road to take them on, to rid herself once and for all of their continuous ogling and lusting.
“Break’s over,” she called out across the distance. “Come and get some.”
The words alone spurred the zombies into finding another gear.
Dragging her leg along, Iris made her way across the stretch of leaf-covered state route she had chosen to engage them—one at a time, hopefully. She passed the dotted centerline and continued on another half-dozen feet before squaring up on the opposite shoulder.
Closing to within an arm’s reach of their prey, the creatures’ raspy hisses morphed into guttural snarls.
“You sinned,” Iris said. “I’m going to grant you final rest.” Breathing as if she’d run a marathon, when in fact she’d barely limped a couple of yards, she spun the makeshift weapon in her right hand so that its point faced the ground, and extended her left arm.
***
Lasting a minute at best, Iris’s battle for survival had been far from epic. Moving barely a step faster than the purged, she jammed the stake into the female’s temple, then backed away as the twice-dead thing slipped from the blood-slickened length of branch and crashed to the road in a heap.
Moving a little faster than the fallen female, Mister Flippety-Flop got a hold on Iris’s vest and drew itself in. Bad mistake. She was already bringing her weapon up to her face to meet the attack. All it took once the stake was horizontal to the ground and taking up the space between her face and its snapping teeth was to simply to position the sharp tip before one roving eye and let its forward momentum do the rest.
The result was a hollow pop followed by a spurt of foul-smelling liquid that dribbled down the front of her vest.
Spent and grateful she had upheld her promise to Mother, Iris fell to the ground still in the clutches of the male purged. The latter half of the minute she spent pulling the stake from its eye socket and getting herself rolled over onto her back.
Now all alone on the stretch of road, she removed her vest and stripped the shirt from the male purged. The former she balled up and tossed into the ditch. The latter she shrugged on and buttoned to her neck.
Before moving on, she replaced the batteries in the radio, chucking the old ones into the ditch with the vest.
She powered on the radio and set the channel from memory.
Moment of truth.
She pressed the Talk button and asked if anyone could hear her.
Nothing.
Knowing she was still out of range and hours from the time she was told to be at the junction, she powered down the radio and renewed her trek east.
Casa De Daymon
The F-650’s cab smelled of hash browns, fried Spam, French roast coffee, and Frank’s Red Hot by the time Cade closed his door and fired up the engine. In the back seat, both Taryn and Wilson were holding plastic Hollah Chevrolet promo cups and shoveling spoons heaping with Heidi’s concoction into their mouths. In the passenger seat next to Cade, Duncan was clutching his red Hollah to Save A Dollah cup in a two-handed grip and purposefully inhaling the steam wafting from it. A smile on his lips and prescription lenses fogged, he took a tiny sip and declared the java simply delightful.
Still blown away that the panic room’s hidden tunnel had indeed fed into Hollah’s vehicle-packed multi-car garage, Cade flicked his eyes to the rearview and settled his gaze on the Arctic Cat snowmobile shoehorned lengthwise into the F-650’s bed. With every rut and pothole the truck’s oversized tires found, the lime-green Sno Pro 500 shimmied and shook, the movements stretching the already taut nylon tie-down straps and causing the metal ratcheting hardware to vibrate spastically.
“It’s going nowhere,” promised Cade in response to brief eye contact from Wilson. “The packaging said the straps are rated up to five thousand pounds.”
“If you say so,” replied Wilson as he gestured to the cup of hash mixture still balanced on the center console. “You going to eat that?”
With the keen of Daymon’s watchrotter’s nails dragging along the truck’s flank standing the hairs on his neck up, Cade handed the hot-to-the-touch promo cup back to Wilson, the smell of the red-pepper-infused hot sauce radiating from it doing nothing positive for his appetite.
After driving roughly a quarter of a mile, Cade slowed the F-650 and parked it a dozen feet from the sheep gate. On the opposite side o
f the gate were the trio of Zs he remembered seeing in the distance on the main road before they turned in. The child Z with the Pokémon tank top had ventured into the roadside ditch beside the gate and was mired ankle-deep in mud. Opening and closing its black hole of a mouth, the lone female of the group swayed before the gate like a stalk of wheat in a lazy breeze.
Anticipating the meal of fresh meat the mere sight of the vehicle promised, the male first turn, having just finished the long trudge from the main road to the gate, cut a hard left and unwittingly slammed its emaciated body full bore into the fence post beside the gate.
Newton’s Third Law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, instantly came into play. The action part of the equation was the violent collision which started the Z’s head whipping forward. A half-beat later the second component of the timeless truth in physics had the Z rebounding off the post and crashing to the ground as if on the receiving end of a Mike Tyson overhand right. Cade knew the Z wouldn’t be feeling the brain-jarring impact to come; still, he couldn’t help but wince when the rotter’s skull met the road square on. Even inside the truck’s enclosed cabin the hollow thud was heard by everyone.
“I never get used to that sound,” said Duncan as he elbowed open his door and stepped from the truck. “There’s nothing else in the world like it.”
Reminded of the Viscount Arms and the very necessary atrocities he’d committed there with his Todd Helton Louisville Slugger, Wilson said, “Yes there is,” and threw a shudder.
Taking Wilson’s statement into account, Cade looked the others in the face one at a time. “Duncan gets gate duty,” he said. “Taryn, the adults are yours to cull.” And though he knew the story of Wilson braining his neighbors with his prized bat and then leaving their undead toddler to rot in the enclosed downtown Denver apartment, he still tasked the redhead with putting down the undead little boy stuck in the mud.
Sink or swim.
Duncan nodded and stepped from the truck.
“No problem,” called Taryn as she jumped out and drew the Tanto-style blade from its sheath.
Cade watched Wilson follow Taryn out and tracked them all as they made their way to the gate.
Once Taryn reached the gate, without pausing, she grabbed a fistful of the female zombie’s hair and buried her blade hilt deep into its brain.
In the next beat, Duncan had the gate unchained and was swinging it wide.
With no hesitation, Wilson strode through the gap. He’s not a boy, he’s not a boy, he’s not a boy was running through his head as he planted his boots on the crumbling edge of the ditch just out of reach of the tiny rotter’s straining fingers. Batting the pale, stick-thin arms away with his free hand, he leaned in and thrust his blade into the grade-school-aged rotter’s left eye. Viscous black liquid spurted onto his hand and continued to sluice from the wound. Little runners of the brackish fluid snaked over its alabaster cheek, down its bite-ravaged neck, and then was absorbed by the tattered shirt collar.
When Wilson withdrew the blade, the twice-dead boy pitched sideways into the fence but remained standing. Flicking his gaze to the sturdy hiking boots still stuck fast in the mud, Wilson muttered, “Just my luck,” and lashed out with his right foot.
The vicious kick landed and started the upright corpse listing sideways. Gravity did the rest and the boot nearest Wilson came free of the mud with a wet sucking sound.
Watching from the truck, Cade said, “Good work, kid,” then swung his gaze to the right just in time to see Duncan step around the gate and plant an ostrich-skin boot on the sternum of the still-prostrate male Z.
Stepping over the female rotter’s corpse, Taryn said, “That’s my job, Old Man.”
Staying clear of the snapping teeth and kneading fingers, she dropped to a knee. Then, having already slipped into the numb fugue state she wore like a security blanket whenever she faced culling even one former human being, she added the blood of another released soul to her black blade.
Chapter 20
Three minutes after locking the gate and heaving the twice-dead corpses over the opposing fence, the Eden survivors were on the move. At the T junction Cade slowed and steered left without thought of the new load in back. As a result, there came a chirping noise and a loud thump when the Arctic Cat’s rubber paddles broke loose and the five-hundred-pound snow machine juddered across the bed’s raised ridges and came to rest against the passenger side wheel well.
“I’ve got to cinch those straps tighter when we stop,” said Cade.
“Gotta stop driving like a moonshiner high on his hooch,” quipped Duncan.
“Burn rubber, Captain America,” said Wilson, then promptly regretted it.
Content to stay out of the testosterone-fueled banter, Taryn stared out the window and took in the rural scenery scrolling by.
***
A minute after turning at the T they were nearing the pair of houses set back from the road Cade had talked about earlier. At the bottom of the gentle dip in the road were about a dozen Zs. Upon seeing the fast approaching F-650, the small band of first turns performed the same kind of slow, clumsy pirouette Cade had seen them do a thousand times since the early days of the outbreak. Steering wide around them, he sped up and flicked his gaze to the homes he’d already cleared. Since he’d been there last, someone had marked the doors with big white Xs. On the right, a cluster of rusted-out cars in one yard caught his attention. As did the X scribed on the barn doors behind them.
“Adrian’s crew has been looting,” observed Taryn.
Duncan adjusted his Stetson. Said, “We got our share of it back.”
“Didn’t come without consequence,” Cade said quietly.
Duncan shifted his body away and joined Taryn in soaking up the view out the window.
Cade drove and said nothing more until they reached the jog in the road before the 16/39 junction. There he braked gently and stopped the Ford dead center in the two-lane. To the left were about twenty Zs. To his right, Main Street began its short run through what passed for downtown Woodruff.
Cade said, “Volunteer to secure the load?”
After casting a nervous glance at the dead things, Wilson volunteered.
“Quickly,” said Cade.
Wilson hopped out, leaving the door partially cracked open behind him.
Cade regarded the rearview mirror and watched the kid go to work.
After sitting in silence for a minute or so, Duncan looked to Cade and said, “That’s the second test you’ve given the kid in the last ten minutes.”
Cade nodded but said nothing because Wilson was finished with the task and climbing back inside the rig.
As if the previous topic of discussion had never occurred, Duncan swung his gaze around the intersection and said, “We could set up the ambush here. Winch that Cadillac across the road by the auto body shop. Maybe roll out some of the little cars from the lot across the street and push them against the Caddie. I volunteer to set up shop upstairs in Back In The Saddle with a rifle.”
Wilson said, “One of us could lay up in the body shop office.”
Taryn said, “I could probably squeeze through the gap in the rollup doors.”
“We,” said Wilson. “You’re not going alone.”
She shot him a sharp look. “And you’re not calling the shots.”
Wilson bit his lip and latched his seatbelt.
“First things first,” said Cade. “I have a promise to keep.” He dug his satellite phone from his thigh pocket and handed it to Duncan. “The unlock code is my birth date.”
“I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re thirty-five,” drawled Duncan. “But I’m no mind reader.”
“One, one, seven, five.”
“You’re a New Year’s baby,” gushed Taryn, throwing her arms over the seatback. “So am I.”
Cade shook his head. “I was born November of seventy-five.”
Taryn slumped back into the passenger compartment, mutt
ering, “The year is off anyways … by seventeen, to be exact.”
Duncan took his eyes off the phone’s tiny screen and regarded the moaning mass of dead flesh making first contact with the Ford’s bumper and chest-high grill. Grimacing, he said to Cade, “November the what?”
A smattering of hollow thuds and low resonant gong-like sounds entered the cab as Cade started the rig moving against the undead phalanx. As he wheeled left on Main, the monsters fell behind and once again the survivors were left with silence and the troubled thoughts brought about by the sight of the dozens of sneering faces that had been pressing the glass.
Finally, as the overturned school bus where Brook had gotten bit slid by on the right, Cade answered, “November eleventh I’ll be thirty-six.”
Duncan cackled. “Armistice Day. Somebody forgot to tell the dead about the war to end all wars.”
Wilson said, “I thought that was Veterans Day.”
“It is,” conceded Duncan. “Good old WW Two proved Armistice Day wrong. So the powers that be changed it to honor the past and as we’ve all learned since, the future fallen.”
“Always hated being the center of attention on that day,” admitted Cade.
Duncan said, “I can see how that’d be tough on a budding Eagle Scout.”
Cade didn’t respond to that. Instead, he pointed over the wheel. “We’ve got a mini horde.”
“Looks like fifty or more. Probably all first turns,” said Duncan. “Better slow down.”
The speedometer needle dropped and hovered at twenty as Cade halved his speed.
Duncan reached up and wrapped his fingers around the grab bar by his head. “Gonna play icebreaker?”
“No other choice,” Cade admitted as he slowed even more to study the shambling mass and find what might be a point of least resistance. Seeing no obvious chink in their rotten armor, he gripped the wheel tight and aimed the truck for a disemboweled specimen straight ahead and equidistant to the roadside ditches.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 11