“Good point,” said Seth, letting the binoculars rest atop his beard.
“We better get to where Cade wants us,” she said, goosing the engine and grimacing as more pops and the resulting wet noises filtered up from the roadway. “Coming down?”
“I’ll stay here,” he said. “What’s a few more minutes going to hurt?”
Glenda shrugged and then backed the Humvee in the direction of the right-side guardrail near where she had begun the multi-point turn. She braked and cranked the steering wheel left, muscling it hand-over-hand until the tires were pointing mostly east. One last stab on the pedal got the wide front end past the mound of withered corpses and branches piled up against the left-side ditch and guardrail.
***
Five minutes after deeming the blocked western approach to the Eden compound clear of threats, Glenda was pulling the Humvee to the right shoulder of State Route 39, two miles past the hidden entrance, at a point in the road where she figured Seth would have an unobstructed view of anyone approaching from the east. She killed the motor and set the brake.
Only when the engine growl had died away and the softly blowing west wind had taken its place did Seth relax and thumb the Talk key on his Motorola radio. “Tran, this is Seth. We’ve got the approach covered. You need to keep the girls on their toes and your eyes on the feeds.”
“Copy that,” came Tran’s reply. “All’s clear right now. Max is running free outside. The girls are in the Grayson quarters.”
Craning to see Seth, Glenda said, “You sure you are up to speed on that cannon?”
In reply to that, Seth stood tall and yanked the Ma Deuce’s four-inch-long charging handle towards his gut. There was a metallic schnik-schnik sound as the first massive linked bullet entered the chamber and the bolt slammed home behind it.
“That must be a yes,” said Glenda, brows meeting in the middle.
He handed down the binoculars. “You’re my eyes,” he said. “Are you ready to fire on them if they do come?”
She patted the black AR-style rifle the thirty-something had left propped on the seat opposite her. “Ready as an old lady can be,” she answered ahead of a soft, sad chuckle.
Chapter 41
Cade had hustled down the stairs without a word. After leaving Back In The Saddle Rehab through the back door and locking it behind him, he hustled east to where Center was bisected by another cross street and settled his gaze on the inert Silverado. Satisfied the corpses he’d placed in the cab were clearly visible from nearly a block out, he walked back to the 39/16 junction, along the way pacing off a few different distances and committing them to memory.
Three hundred and fifty yards and five minutes later, Cade was rounding the front of the overturned school bus and being greeted by Jamie and Lev—the latter, while dropping the Raptor’s tailgate—quickly bringing him up to speed on the goings on at the compound.
“Thanks for grabbing this,” said Cade as he spun the long, hard-plastic case a hundred and eighty degrees so that it was oriented lengthwise with its half-dozen plastic catches facing him.
There was a series of clicks as he threw the push-and-pull latches.
There was another noise nearby as the door to the F-650 opened and Taryn jumped down to the spongy ground.
Ignoring the familiar sound, Cade lifted the lid and examined the contents of the Pelican case.
“One MSR rifle,” intoned Lev. “I would have assembled it for you—”
“But you knew better,” said Cade, with a conciliatory nod to the former Eleven Bravo. “I would have afforded you the same courtesy.” He began removing the pieces from the precise cutouts in the charcoal-gray foam they were snugged into.
Taryn formed up next to Jamie, who was cradling a scoped long rifle of her own and looking on with rapt attention. “Ten minutes,” she noted, the slight waver in her voice revealing her nervousness.
“Noted,” said Jamie. “You better get your rifle and take cover.”
Watching Cade thread a suppressor on the Remington, Taryn leaned in and whispered to Jamie, “Are you sure I should leave the keys in the ignition?”
“Short of leaving the trucks running, Cade wants both ready to roll,” replied Jamie in a stage whisper.
Taryn looked a question at her.
“If, God forbid, one or both of us should fall”—Jamie began, turning from the action on the tailgate to look directly into the younger woman’s eyes—“someone is going to have to do the driving. And if the keys happen to be in one of our pockets—.” She let Taryn fill in the morbid blanks.
***
A minute after opening the Pelican case, Cade had the modular sniper rifle chambered in .338 Lapua fully assembled. On the top rail sat a Leupold high-power scope. Up front was a Titan suppressor, the stubby cylinder giving the no-nonsense bolt-action weapon a more menacing appearance. With a ten-round magazine seated into the well and the telescoping stock fully collapsed, he ducked his head through the attached sling and moved the rifle so that it rested diagonally across his back.
Next, Cade fetched his plate carrier and MOLLE gear from the Ford and filled the available front-facing pockets with fully loaded thirty-round magazines for his M4.
Going sans the tactical bump helmet, which he had inadvertently left in his quarters back at the compound, he snugged down his camo ball cap and spun the bill around so that it faced backwards, partially covering his neck. Lastly, he stuffed the pair of Steiner binoculars into his Multi-Cam jacket, nestling them safely inside an interior pocket.
Leaning against the front part of the tipped school bus’s sloping roof, he pointed to the distant blocked intersection, reminding the others individually of their specific roles and his rules of engagement which, compared with what the lawyers and politicians had handcuffed the military with before Omega, amounted to little more than him urging them to wait until either he, Duncan, or Lev initiated contact. “If for some reason you start taking fire before one of us engages,” he said, “return fire at once. We have to make them think the six of us are a much larger force.”
“How do we achieve that?” asked Taryn.
“We do that through violence of action,” said Lev.
“What Lev means,” Cade said, looking first at her, then slowly panning the others, “is you do not show mercy once you start hitting them back.” He paused and looked at his watch. “Eight minutes. Remember your assigned sectors.” Regarding the trio—but mostly singling out Taryn—he asked, “Straightforward enough?”
After blinking twice and swallowing hard, Taryn nodded slowly.
Jamie slung her rifle, adjusted the war tomahawk hanging off her left hip, and then finished the gear check by verifying by feel that the Beretta was snugged safely in the holster on her hip. “Lead the way,” she said, surreptitiously gripping Lev’s bicep and going to her tiptoes.
“Good to go,” said Lev, accepting a kiss on the cheek from Jamie and acknowledging with a subtle nod her whispered plea for him to “Be careful.”
Cade lifted the radio to his lips and thumbed the Talk key. “Comm check.”
A beat later, one at a time, Duncan and Wilson responded, both assuring anyone listening that they were ‘Good to go.’”
Pocketing the radio, Cade set off for the nearby stretch of State Route 39 with Jamie on his heels. MSR held in check with one gloved hand and M4 thumping his chest with each stride, he led her across the wide expanse of grass north of the wrecked bus, both lanes of 39 to the curved wall of cement Jersey barriers where he hooked a sudden left still on the run. Keeping to the foot-wide strip of dirt sandwiched between the frost-heaved shoulder and barriers to their right, they sprinted up the gentle slope. After roughly thirty feet, the Jersey barrier wall was replaced by a steel guardrail supported by creosote-stained wooden posts. The guardrail ended a couple of hundred yards west where the slight incline flattened out and the trees and scrub began to crowd the two-lane from both sides.
“Here,” said Cade. He was still breathi
ng evenly when he cut right and crashed through the underbrush.
A little winded, Jamie followed suit. Eyes locked on the exotic-looking rifle on Cade’s back, she gripped the wooden buttstock on her slung long gun and brushed aside the grabbing branches with her free hand as she pushed in after him.
Cade kept muscling through the bushes until he made it to the copse of trees he’d spotted from the road. Once the going got easier he broke to his right again and ranged ahead until they were just inside the tree line. He stopped briefly, looked left and right, then led Jamie to a similar spot a dozen feet farther north.
The location he finally settled on for them to conduct their overwatch was nearly identical to the patch of bare dirt secreted within the woods overlooking the Eden compound’s hidden gate. And like the hide some twenty-plus miles west, there was a slight downslope here before it reached the target area. However, unlike the Eden hide, this vantage point afforded much more than a lonely stretch of state route and dense wall of trees and assorted foliage to stare at. The view from here was stunning and stretched left to right for two-hundred-and-thirty degrees. The church steeple at the north edge of town was clearly visible. Hidden behind a picket of mature trees, the auto parts store and nearby church rectory was not.
Straight away the lower flanks of the Bear River Range were sandwiched between low cloud cover and rambling wide-open range. Home to groves of pine and scrub, Cade placed the foothills at roughly ten miles out.
Just below the hide was what appeared to be unused grazing land. The grass was competing with mounds of muddy dirt pushed up by an industrious colony of moles and still recovering from the beating doled out by the previous week’s snowstorm.
Atop a rise abutting the dirt road that ran north/south behind the auto body shop’s lot was a massive burn pile. Mixed in with the shriveled husks of radial tires and board ends that hadn’t totally been consumed by fire were dozens of soot-blackened skeletons. On the periphery of the pile, as if someone had cared about them even in death, more bodies had been laid out in a neat line running away from the hide. For some reason, the bodies were arranged with their heads pointing west. A number of the skulls seemed to be staring uphill at him; the hollow shadowed sockets casting silent accusations his way.
Why us and not you?
Why Brook and not you?
Why Desantos and not you?
After the few seconds spent scrutinizing the morbid scene, Cade closed his eyes and threw a shiver.
Upon reopening his eyes, he came to a conclusion: The simple act of trying to dispose of the infected corpses of loved ones had backfired horribly. Hence the unfinished business. Cade had seen the effect a roaring fire and the associated smoke had on the Zs. It was akin to hollering come and get it at the top of your voice just as he had done at the intersection. Yep, he thought. These people did themselves in and the cinderblock building and cars and bushes surrounding it bore the brunt of the undead surge that had either consumed them or run them off. He prayed it had been the latter.
“You OK?”
Cade lowered the Steiners. Sounding tired, he said, “I’m just over all of this.”
“Me too,” answered Jamie.
Still feeling badly for the people who probably hadn’t a clue as to the ramifications of their noble actions, Cade raised the binoculars and glassed the handful of buildings flanking Main Street.
Rising up more than thirty feet over Main and threatening to cast the two-car roadblock out front in shadow, Back In The Saddle Rehab was a wall of weathered white paint home to darkened windows. The south side of the building stretching west to east was much the same. Closed for business. And best of all: There was no sign of Duncan moving around behind the south-facing upper windows.
Cade panned the binoculars down a couple of degrees and locked his gaze on the auto body shop. From this viewing angle, the building resembled an L that had been knocked flat on its back. The foot of the L rose up over a rear lot full of piled-up tires and cars left for repairs that would never happen. The rectangle of dry gravel where the Chevy pickup had been parked stood out starkly against the dirt- and moss-streaked cinderblock wall rising above it. The trio of windows inset in the wall were mirrored and offered no clue as to what was going on inside. And though Cade couldn’t see the younger man because of said wall, he could still imagine him sitting on the roof, legs crossed with the AR-style rifle laid out lengthwise across them.
Breaking the strained silence, Jamie said, “Looks convincing enough.”
Cade lowered the Steiners again and looked a question her way.
“The rotters in the white pickup.” She cracked a half smile. “Spitting images of me and Lev.”
“It is what it is,” replied Cade, resuming the recon by panning the Steiners south. Pausing his sweep at the school bus where the only part of the two trucks visible from his vantage was the roof of the Raptor and its extended tailgate, he said, “Lock and load.”
There was a smooth rasp of metal on metal followed by a soft click. The rasp was repeated and the familiar sound of the bolt closing and throw clicking home reached his ears.
Cade pulled out the radio and pronounced to the others that he and Jamie were in place. Then he requested individual situation reports from them.
A barrage of squelch preceded a trio of replies.
“Copy that,” said Lev. “I’m inside and all alone.”
“I’m ready,” stated Taryn. “Road’s still clear to the north for as far as I can see.” There was a long second of silence. Then, in a voice full of concern, she added, “But I do have rotters coming at me from the south.”
“If it comes to it,” Cade responded, “put them down with the suppressed pistol.”
Taryn made no reply because Duncan jumped on the channel and asked Cade where he was in relation to Back In The Saddle.
“We’re sitting up the hill to the west with a good angle of deflection,” replied Cade. “I put us at about three hundred yards out.”
“Save the sniper lingo for someone who cares,” said Duncan gruffly. “Give me your twenty in layman’s terms.”
Cade was back on the channel. Voice calm and even he said, “Call the intersection at Main six o’clock. Taryn’s position will be ten. And we have eyes on Wilson at your twelve. That would put me and Jamie at your eleven o’clock. Maybe even eleven-thirty. A freak ricochet is the only way anybody is getting dinged by friendly fire. Is that layman enough for you, Old Man?”
Voice betraying his eagerness to get the show on the road, Duncan drawled, “Bring it.”
Satisfied they were as set as they would ever be, Cade put the radio aside. Then he went prone and snugged the MSR to his shoulder, planting its deployed bi-pod in the soft earth before him. Seeing Jamie mimic his actions, her barrel coming to rest on a scrap of decaying tree trunk she had scavenged from the woods nearby, he flashed her a thumbs-up and settled his crosshairs on the stretch of road where the state route became Main Street.
Chapter 42
Five Minutes Prior
Once Lev had finished reciting Cade’s orders to Taryn one final time, he grabbed her gently by the shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and said, “No different than the house on the lake. You’re only responsible for watching our six. Just observe and report. That’s all. When we get back, you do what you do best … you drive.”
“I shall do my best,” she answered as she clambered into the F-650’s crowded bed, hauling an M4 along with her.
“Good enough for me,” said Lev as he shed his parka, revealing that he had on a black, long-sleeved thermal top with a tan loadbearing MOLLE rig riding over top of it. A half-dozen magazines for the inherited Les Bauer AR were snugged vertically in the vest’s pouches and secured with flexible nylon cord.
“Cade wants you to have this,” he said, threading a suppressor on a backup Glock and placing it on the snowmobile seat next to her.
Taryn was on her knees on the black seat and leaning against the bus’s skyward-facing
driver’s side. She reached down and picked up the weapon. “What’s this for?”
Lev pointed at a medium-sized group of shamblers just coming into view south of them where 16 took a slight bend. “For them,” he said calmly. “And anything else you have to put down with discretion.”
She blinked and nodded, the severity of her exposure finally dawning on her.
“I’m running late,” he said, taking off at a full-on sprint.
As Taryn watched Lev go, the clouds decided to part to the south. For a brief moment, just as he changed direction toward the corner of Main and Center a hundred yards or so north of Taryn’s position, a bright bar of light lanced diagonally across the nearby stretch of 39.
By the time Lev was at the spot where both state routes came together, the clouds had snuffed out the ray of sun lighting his way and a cool sheen of sweat was breaking out on his brow and upper lip.
Looking sidelong to his left, he spotted Cade and Jamie just as they were leaving the road and entering the woods. Shoving Jamie’s wellbeing from the forefront of his mind, he broke right and crossed a wide expanse of mud dotted with clumps of grass and home to hundreds of oblong, water-filled footprints left there by the walking dead.
The open ground disappeared behind Lev and he scaled a low fence ringing the backyard of the tiny single-story home half a block east of where Main and Center crossed paths. Since there was no time to burn conducting the typical knock and five-count pause to listen for rotters moving around inside, he scaled the short stack of cement stairs and hit the back door behind a full head of steam.
The locks and doorjamb lost the battle with Lev’s shoulder and all two hundred pounds of flesh and gear behind it. This is going to hurt was just crossing his mind as he careened headlong into a tiny kitchen amongst a shower of paint chips and splintered wood. As he bounced off a tiny white refrigerator and came to rest staring at a sink full of soiled dishes he did a quick check of his extremities. Good to go.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 23