“Who called in the cavalry then?”
“If the lead element missed the check in time—” Cade began.
“Then the backup comes rolling in automatically,” finished Taryn.
“Exactly,” said Cade as he focused his attention on the other vehicles. Two late-model Chevy Suburbans were tucked in close to the patrol Tahoe. Both SUVs were black and fitted with whip antenna, brush guards, and bright blue HID (high intensity discharge) headlights. Through the front windshields, Cade saw a mix of men and women openly brandishing rifles. Next in line and hanging back from the Suburbans was a blacked-out and jacked-up Ford Excursion, its driver and any occupants hidden behind heavily tinted windows. Bringing up the rear of the procession was a full-sized van that looked to have been stored in someone’s garage since the late seventies. It was black with tinted windows and rolled on mag wheels painted red. It was outfitted with a black grill guard that followed the contours of the bumper and headlights. However, the aftermarket add-on was flimsy looking. All show, no go. A thin red accent stripe stretched from the front fenders to the rear of the sliding door where it doubled in width and then shot up on a diagonal toward the roof-mounted rear-spoiler. The van was adorned with a copious amount of chrome that shone in spite of the gray sky overhead.
“Looks like someone invited the A-Team to tag along with the Presidential motorcade,” quipped Duncan, who was standing on the tailgate and peering through a pair of Bushnell binoculars.
“Thank God those aren’t armored Secret Service rigs,” replied Cade as he looked away from Duncan and fixed his gaze on Taryn. “You good to drive?”
“It’s in my blood.”
“Everyone mount up,” Cade said at the top of his voice. He helped Taryn down from her perch on the snowmobile seat. “Keep your motor off until I start the 650.” He went on, giving her the Cliff’s Notes version of his plan, and then stressed that she was to stay close on his bumper “no matter what happens.”
Taryn took it all in, nodded once, then jumped from the tailgate to the spongy ground.
Duncan had been giving a play-by-play as he watched the convoy cross the street leading to the church and rectory at the far end of town. He tracked the five vehicles for a couple of blocks until they slowed and came to a full stop adjacent to the post office. He saw the blue headlights snap off one pair at a time until only the Tahoe’s were lit. He lowered the field glasses and glanced sidelong at Cade. “You sure that’s how you want it to go down?”
Lifting the Steiners to his eyes, Cade said, “There’s no other way.”
Duncan noted, “They’re going to be dangerously close to the compound.”
“They already have the GPS coordinates. That’s as danger close as it can get.”
Duncan was silent for a long five-count. Finally, he clucked his tongue and began the arduous process of climbing down from the F-650. Once on the ground he looped around the open tailgate and crabbed between the two trucks. Drawing even with the Raptor’s rear passenger door, he cracked it open and peered inside at Jamie and Lev. Locking eyes with the latter, he said, “Cade wants you and me to light them up from the junction. But”—he drew in a deep breath—“we are to disturb the nest without killing the hornets.”
“Roger that,” Lev replied. “Shots across the bow it is.”
From the front passenger seat, Wilson blurted, “What the hell good is that going to do? It’s just going to piss them off!”
Taryn reached across the front seat and rested her hand on Wilson’s thigh. “Cade’s plan is sound,” she insisted. Then she went on, describing the vehicles to him and what was expected from each of them once the plan was set into motion—all of which seemed to do little to assuage Wilson’s fears.
Duncan grimaced at Wilson’s reaction. Without comment, he closed the door, spun a one-eighty, and clambered aboard the F-650. He aimed the Saiga at the floorboard, removed the curved magazine, and cycled the live round from the chamber. From the bag stowed behind his seat, he retrieved the fully loaded thirty-round drum-magazine Daymon had provided along with the new shotgun. Departing from his usual practice of staggering shot and slug shells in the high capacity mag, Duncan had instead opted to go with all 12-gauge rifled slugs.
The heavy drum seated with a solid click. The act of racking the first round into the chamber filled the cab with a satisfying sound. Ready as I’ll ever be, crossed his mind as he looked out across the nearby Raptor’s hood and locked his gaze on a herd of rotters just cresting a rise in the state route a half mile or so south on 16.
Back to glassing the unmoving convoy, Cade imagined a counterpart in one of the rigs doing the same. If they saw the top of his head cresting the bus, they weren’t letting on. Then, as absurd as it seemed, a mental image of Adrian with her injured leg in a makeshift cast sitting inside one of the vehicles and berating the driver popped into his head. God, I hope so, he thought. And though he hadn’t seen Adrian with his own eyes, going by the smattering of descriptions from those who had, he figured a short-statured woman possessing the girth of a pro-wrestler would only be comfortable in the full-sized van—especially if it was a true stabbin’ cabin and outfitted with the requisite bed in back.
Chapter 51
The enemy convoy remained in place on Main Street, Woodruff for five long minutes.
Periodically, Cade would glance over his shoulder at a column of Zs approaching from the south.
Every other minute Wilson would call through the Raptor’s open window and ask what was happening with the cannibal convoy.
Through it all Cade said nothing.
Finally, the patrol Tahoe pulled away from the other vehicles. It was lower to the ground than all but the van. It was also equipped with a souped-up V8 engine and was outfitted up front with a frame-mounted bull bar. Perfect for an occasional PIT maneuver—the art of using the bull bar to nudge a fleeing perp’s vehicle into an unrecoverable spin—the wraparound steel cage was also suitable for clearing disabled vehicles from a roadway.
At first the driver of the Tahoe seemed to be content to allow the idling engine to propel the squat SUV forward at walking-speed. Once the post office was a block behind the creeping vehicle, a puff of exhaust formed near its rear tires, the front end rose up and, with a corresponding roar of the engine that reached Cade’s ears over the distance, rapidly picked up speed. Holding a die-straight southerly heading, the black and white blazed by the street where the first convoy had diverted. With barely three truck lengths to go before what was looking to be an awful collision with the Cadillac and import blocking Main, the unseen driver employed the beefed-up brakes and black stripes of smoking rubber were spooling out behind the SUV’s rear tires. The Tahoe stopped just shy of the angled cars, rocked on its springs one time, then—with the tire smoke wafting right to left across Main—repeated the drag strip theatrics in reverse.
Exhaust puff.
Nose dip and throaty engine roar.
Then the whine of the lower range reverse gears winding out as the three-and-a-half-ton rig reeled the road back in. When the Tahoe finally ground to a halt a dozen feet from the lead Suburban’s front bumper, there was none of the previous drama. No black stripes were laid down. And no white smoke billowed up from the high-performance radials.
Cade thought: They’re trying to draw fire.
The Tahoe remained still, the tick of its engine barely audible from what Cade guessed amounted to about four long city blocks.
***
A quick glance at the Suunto told Cade that ten more minutes had slipped into history. During that time, the lead element of the approaching zombie herd had crested the hill to the south, doddered through the roadside ditch and surrounded the Raptor on three sides.
Up ahead on Main Street the cannibal’s convoy remained in place, dark and silent.
Ignoring the stench and scrabble of fingernails on glass and metal, Cade took a hand from the Steiners and rubbed his neck muscles. As time passed he’d come to the conclusion that
he had chosen a far from ideal spot from which to conduct any kind of prolonged recon. He found he was too tall to use the snowmobile seat in the same manner as Taryn without his head constantly breaking the horizon. As a result, a dull ache had taken root in his neck and shoulders from holding his upright body in the same bent-knee posture while trying to keep his head out of sight and his Danners from slipping off the F-650’s narrow bed rail.
As Cade passed the binoculars between hands and tended to the muscles running up the left side of his neck, the headlights on the lead Suburban flared on and burned bright like twin blue suns. Then, in quick succession, starting with the second Suburban, three more pairs of headlights snapped on.
Cade watched the Tahoe go into motion. It wasn’t reenacting the slow creeping roll forward. Nor was it a mad tire-smoking dash to the roadblock. Exuding an air of confidence on the driver’s part, it motored purposefully forward at a steady pace, falling somewhere between the two.
Cade continued tracking the Tahoe with the Steiners only long enough to be sure the driver was not going to turn off Main and go behind Back In The Saddle. Once the rig was slowing with the bull bar on a collision course for the narrow gap where the front ends of the Cadillac and import came together, he tucked the Steiners away and snatched up his M4. He made a slow pirouette on the bed rails in the direction of the tailgate where a pair of Zs were wedged into the narrow gap. He leveled the suppressed M4 and put a 5.56 hardball round into each of their skulls. Six clear, he dropped down to the ground and crabbed sideways between the F-650 and school bus roof.
Stepping over the pallid hand reaching for his foot from under the truck, he latched onto the grab bar and slipped through the door Duncan had been holding open for him. In one fluid move, he sucked the door in behind him, threw the rifle on the floor, and fired up the engine.
The rumble of the Raptor’s tuned V8 turning over let Cade know that Taryn was on her game.
Duncan asked, “They weren’t at all deterred by the roadblock?”
Eyeing the half-dozen grabby Zs forming around the front of the rigs, Cade said, “I’d call what I saw cautious persistence that’s evolved into confident action.” Throwing the transmission into gear, he leaned forward and shot a glance at the other pickup. Behind the wheel, Taryn wore an expression that relayed equal measures confidence and trepidation. A good thing, in Cade’s book.
Next to Taryn, Wilson was leaning away from the Zs batting at his window. As always, his camo boonie hat was pulled down to its lowest setting: narrowed eyes mostly hidden. Ears tucked up under the floppy brim. Only tufts of his bushy red mane showing around the edges.
In the back seat behind Taryn, Jamie wore a mask of grim determination. The barrel of her carbine was pointed at the roof. Next to her, Lev was holding his Les Baer AR left-handed with his extended trigger finger pressed against the smooth metal above the trigger guard.
On the back end of the quick visual sweep, Cade saw a snapshot of Duncan. The man was holding the Saiga left-handed and close to his chest. His trigger finger traced a slow counterclockwise circle next to the shotgun’s trigger guard. Behind the softly tinted aviators his eyes were far away and distant.
Over the tinny bangs of cold, dead hands slapping the hood and fenders, Cade heard the Raptor’s engine revving. Figuring he’d given the Tahoe driver enough time to get into the act of pushing the inert vehicles aside, he gunned the engine and nosed the big Ford through the throng of Zs and out from behind the makeshift hide. As the truck bounced onto the state route, the sun, already low in the sky due to the season, reached that perfect azimuth in its run toward night where its rays were seemingly swallowed up by the landscape to the west. With the creeping wall of shadow darkening Main and the adjacent killing grounds, he brought the Ford to a halt in the center of the two-lane and alerted the Tahoe driver to its presence with a single flash of the high beams.
Chapter 52
There was no immediate reaction from the convoy. The Tahoe was moving forward slowly and just about to punch through the roadblock when Cade hit the high beams on it. As the westbound stretch of 39 came parallel with the F-650’s left front fender, Cade saw the Cadillac shift on axis and imagined the screech created by its buckling panels. He cranked the wheel left and stopped their forward roll at a forty-five-degree angle where the state routes came together in their less than perfect union.
In the passenger seat, Duncan had already motored down his window. Elbows braced on the channel, he had the Saiga’s muzzle and bulky drum magazine hanging out of the vehicle. Keeping the weapon level with the road looked to be a chore. Cade watched the jagged muzzle brake waver slightly until Duncan took hold of the stubby foregrip—a vital component in keeping the bucking shotgun on target.
“Slugs?” asked Cade.
“Nothing but,” responded Duncan.
Down the road, the second Suburban began to break ranks. Its wheels turned hard right and it rolled up next to its twin. Blocking for the others, Cade presumed. He said, “Do it,” and took his hands from the wheel and clamped his palms over his ears as the cab was rocked by a half-dozen thunderous booms. Spent shells trailing wisps of smoke tumbled from the Saiga’s ejection port. Duncan’s hunched back jerked and rose with each concussion.
Cade glanced in the passenger mirror. Saw brass pirouetting from the open window and orange licks of fire lancing from the right side of the Raptor. Swinging his gaze to the convoy, he imagined what they were thinking. If some of them had had their windows even partially opened at the onset of the one-sided engagement, the distinct crackle-whizz of danger-close lead cutting the air would not have been lost on them. In the event their rigs had been sealed tight, three seconds into the faux attack the roar of the Saiga would have caused them to break their necks trying to discover its source.
Five seconds after Cade’s two words set his plan into motion, there was no doubt the cannibals knew they were being fired on. All at once the vehicles were moving forward. Some were zigging and zagging. A solid tactic, thought Cade.
The import had gotten tangled with the Tahoe’s bull bar and was stuck fast. But the Tahoe didn’t stop. It limped forward and once clear of the Cadillac slewed right, then stopped with the Hyundai partially blocking Main.
Message received. The lead Suburban was picking up speed and angling straight for the rear quarter of the tiny four-door.
Cade didn’t wait to see the result of the collision. No need. The big SUV would certainly emerge the victor. Instead, he ducked low to the wheel, turned it left a hair and matted the gas pedal.
After the opening roar of cool air being sucked into the V-10 tapered off, the pickup’s rear tires found traction and it shot forward. A half-beat later Black Beauty—as Raven had taken to calling the Ford—was tracking for the distant curve where 39 dove into the forest.
The only place Cade figured the cannibals’ return fire could do him or the others any harm was the short stretch near the junction where the vegetation was sparse and the only thing standing between them and the convoy was the Jersey barriers and twenty or thirty feet of steel guardrail. So snowmobile be damned, for the entire quarter mile of two-lane between the junction and where it entered the trees, Cade hauled the wheel left and right, zigging and zagging the Ford in hopes of evading any return fire directed their way.
A handful of seconds removed from sending the flurry of bullets downrange at the cannibals two things happened. First, day seemed to turn to night as the trees crowding the road blocked out the late afternoon light. Then the Motorola locked onto the group’s shared channel issued three words spoken by Wilson that started a cold ball of dread to form in Cade’s stomach.
Duncan answered the frantic call at once. “Jamie’s been hit?” he blurted. “How bad?”
Chapter 53
In the Ford Raptor, Wilson keyed the Talk button and thrust the radio toward Lev so he could answer the question and continue to tend to the injured woman. Shouting to be heard over the engine growl, Lev described the wo
und as flesh and muscle damage to her right cheek and ear. He grunted and muttered something, then plain as day stressed that the blood loss taking place was his biggest concern.
In the F-650, Cade looked away from the road just long enough to fix Duncan with a concerned look. “Ask him if he has a QuikClot.”
Duncan spoke rapid fire into the radio. A tick later Wilson said, “Lev’s got what he needs to keep her from bleeding out. He’s saying that shock is his next biggest concern.” There was a two-second pause during which road noise and pained whimpers—no doubt coming from Jamie—bled from the tiny speaker and filled the F-650’s cab. When Wilson finally spoke again, he said, “There’s so much blood.”
Duncan inclined his head and bounced it off the headrest a couple of times. Muttering, “Why her?” he looked a question at Cade.
“Ask Wilson if the tangos were in pursuit when Taryn turned onto 39.”
As if it weighed a hundred pounds, Duncan slowly dragged the radio to his mouth and asked the question.
Wilson said, “Three of them that I saw. When Jamie got hit, I … we all ducked down. Then we were in the trees and calling you.”
Cade shot a quick look at the right-side mirror. Though the other rig’s reflection was a little jittery he could still see a full two-thirds of the Raptor that was now seemingly glued to his bumper. The word FORD that dominated the center of the matte-black grill was mostly visible. Then there was Wilson in the passenger seat holding the radio to his mouth with his left hand. His right arm was pressed hard against the window, the knuckles on that hand no doubt white from gripping the grab bar near his head. Neither Lev nor Jamie were visible. Which didn’t surprise Cade. He grimaced as he imagined the former hunched over the latter and trying to staunch the bleeding. And just as Cade had on that fateful night with Brook, Lev would be whispering calming words into Jamie’s ear. Only Lev was saving a life—not the other way around.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 28