“I used to be really good at counting cards.”
“Sixty it is,” conceded Cade as he walked his gaze and the Browning’s muzzle the length of the column.
With one vehicle fully engulfed in flames, and three more shot to hell and unmoving, only the Tahoe was still a viable threat. It was in the process of jockeying back and forth in an attempt to extricate itself from the trailing vehicles when Cade raked it front to back and back to front with a sustained twenty-round burst.
Feeling the warmth radiating up from the spent brass casings crowding his boots, Cade banged on the hood and bellowed, “Drive!”
Chapter 59
The Excursion was burning and the Tahoe just beginning to catch fire when the Humvee made the flat and coasted to a stop. Cade saw the Tahoe’s rear passenger door hinge open and a person dressed in all black and brandishing what looked to him to be some kind of light machine gun stepped onto the road. Backlit by orange and red flames, making out much more than the individual’s intent was next to impossible. Feeling nothing but hatred for the waste of skin, Cade let loose with what he hoped would be only a five-round burst—anything more would be overkill, and an unnecessary waste of ammo.
The bullets hit the form center mass, picked it up off its feet, and sent it flying head first into the rear quarter of the now bullet-riddled SUV.
The person in black hadn’t made a sound. Just folded at the waist for a split second and seemed to leap backwards with a dexterity usually reserved for the hero in a cheesy late night Kung Fu movie. But Cade knew better. The cannibal was dead. One less loose end. And it felt kind of good. Which, surprisingly, didn’t bother him one bit. For if rage was one of the seven stages of grief, he was going to embrace it and let it fuel him until every last threat to him, Raven, and the others was erased from the face of the earth.
Duncan said, rather tongue in cheek, “Tango down.”
Cade made no comment as he kept the still-smoking weapon trained on the Tahoe.
“Want to dismount here?”
Cade ducked down into the turret so Duncan could hear him over the engine and transmission noises. “Take us closer. I want to assess the damage.” As the truck began to move, he heard Lev come on over the radio and report that he saw nothing moving in or around the disabled vehicles.
Duncan glanced up at Cade.
Cade said, “Doesn’t mean they’re all dead.”
Duncan said, “Roger that,” and brought the Humvee to a complete stop a dozen feet from the woman who had been ejected when the lead vehicle rolled over. “Want me to get on the Deuce?”
“Not if I’m anywhere downrange,” replied Cade. “Wouldn’t want to catch a stray round.”
“You have plates under that vest?”
“Affirmative,” said Cade, as he climbed down from the vehicle.
“M4 or Saiga?”
After a second of thought, Cade said, “Give me the Saiga.”
Duncan opened the door and passed out the weapon.
Cade said, “Cover me with the carbine. And be sure to keep one eye on the van. No telling if anyone is alive in back of the thing.”
“Roger that,” said Duncan. “Eyes peeled and frosty.” He hailed the pair on overwatch with the radio, telling them to cover Cade as he checked the wreckage for survivors. Before signing off he told Lev to not hesitate to speak up if he saw anything move.
“A blade of grass?” quipped Lev.
“Anything,” stressed Duncan. “If a mouse farts downwind from us, I want to know about it.”
“Copy that.”
Cade hefted the black shotgun. He liked its solid feel. He worked the action. Spotting a shell in the breach, he ejected the drum magazine, inspected the load, and then reseated it in the well.
“You’ve got twenty left in the drum and one in the pipe.”
“All slugs, right?” confirmed Cade.
“Like I said … one and all.”
Cade flicked off the Saiga’s safety and approached the unmoving body. Before he made it three steps closer, he could feel the heat coming off the burning vehicle warming his entire left side. Which in turn made him wholly aware of the effect the evening chill was having on the rest of his body.
Throwing a shiver, he thumbed on the tactical light attached to the shotgun and parked the white cone of light on the prostrate form. At first glance it looked as if the woman had lain down face first and was taking a quick nap.
He nudged the body with his toe. Nothing. Confident she was no immediate threat, he knelt down, wormed the fingers on one hand into her matted hair, and plucked her head off the ground. Everything moved real easily. Too easily. There was total range of motion. Like barn owl range of motion. Which wasn’t natural. Catching a glimpse of her shredded face made him remember wrecking his bike as a kid and ending up with skinned knees and elbows. “Street pizza” is what he and his friends had called those kinds of wounds. This woman was lucky, he decided. Looked like her neck was broken well before her face acted as landing gear for her brutal return to earth.
“Dead,” he called back.
He walked as close as he dared to the burning Excursion and went to one knee and eyed the vehicle’s interior. Or what was left of it. Fire had already consumed the headliner and tops of the seats. Hanging upside down from their lap belts, the driver and front seat passenger were both dead and slowly cooking. Due to the crushed-in roof, both bodies were bent over sideways with their arms raised as if frantically trying to ward off the inevitable.
After skirting the Excursion’s front bumper, Cade stopped, bent low, and performed a turkey peek around the passenger-side front fender. All he saw were pockets of darkness and long, dancing shadows. He swung the Saiga around the fender and put some light on the subject. For as far as his beam could reach (nearly the length of the earthen berm), where he figured to see a person waiting in ambush, he saw only fields of sparkling glass and pooled oil and water.
Moving on to the first Suburban, Cade found the driver staring straight ahead, eyes devoid of life. The man was in nearly the same position as when Cade first spied him and still clutching his neck which was awash in blood.
The passenger was a different story. She was still alive, but fading rapidly from blood loss and a noisy, sucking chest wound. Eyes darting about and lips moving a mile a minute, she reached one hand up and batted at the airbag draped over her lap.
Cade snugged the Saiga to his shoulder and settled the sights between the woman’s roving eyes. “Live by the sword”—he squeezed the trigger and held it briefly—“die by the sword.” He felt another tingle of satisfaction as the automatic shotgun bucked blindingly fast against his shoulder. He felt nothing as the three slugs caved in the cannibal’s face and sent her upper body crashing violently against the door pillar. She was already forgotten to Cade as her body slumped against her seatbelt and greasy clumps of pulped detritus started calving from what remained of her face.
Lips drawing back into a snarl, Cade tracked the muzzle around and drew a bead on the backseat occupants who he quickly learned were shredded from having caught the full brunt of at least half-a-dozen .50 caliber rounds.
The five occupants of the second Suburban were bloodied and sprawled across their seats. Only the driver—albeit nearly decapitated—was somewhat upright, having been restrained by his shoulder belt.
Low moans were coming from the backseat area. To silence them, Cade poked the Saiga’s muzzle between the front seat headrest and B-pillar and let loose a six-round salvo into the passenger compartment.
The moaning ceased.
Cade moved on.
Three cleared, two to go.
Padding past the burning Tahoe, he saw that both the driver and passenger had been killed by smaller caliber rounds. After seeing nothing moving in the smoke-filled passenger compartment behind the melting front seats, he let his gaze settle on the dismount. Once a strapping man of about forty, he had been nearly cut in half despite the black and white’s open door having
slowed down the massive bullets before they found his flesh.
He fought the law, and the law won.
After nearly tripping over the weapon dropped by the disemboweled man, Cade stooped over, took hold of the angled handle riding atop the barrel, and plucked the seventeen-pound M249 LMG from the blacktop. He gave the light machine gun he knew all too well a shake and determined the attached two-hundred-round ammunition box was nearly full of linked 5.56 x 45 mm hardball. A cursory glance told him the scope was unbroken and there was no damage to the weapon that he could see.
Looking down the length of 39 toward the van, he slung the Saiga on one shoulder and moved on with the business end of the liberated weapon leading the way.
Crossing the road with the M249 tucked in tight to his shoulder, Cade cast a critical eye on the A-Team van. Out back, the bumper looked like a J lying over on one side. The chromed end farthest from him was bent down hook-like and nearly touching the road. The rear doors were bowed in from the collision and the seam where they came together was far from straight.
Slipping by the passenger side rear quarter, he paused and peeked through the head-high bubble window. Trying to illuminate the inside with the tactical light only threw a glare off the smoked glass. Undeterred, he lowered the LMG, cupped his hands, and pressed his face to the curved surface.
Nothing.
Finding the tint too dark for him to see anything inside the back of the van, he peered one-eyed around the passenger-side window pillar.
The passenger seat was empty. But the driver’s was not. The man wedged against the steering wheel was middle-aged and heavyset. He was still buckled in and gripping the wheel one-handed. Light from the burning vehicles was reflected off the dozen or so rings jammed onto his sausage-like fingers. Strapped to his wrist and sparkling like a disco ball was a diamond-encrusted gold watch. From the looks of the damage done by the opening salvo, his death had been opposite than that of the man at the wheel of the first Suburban. From his right ear on up a good portion of skull was missing. The contents of the cranium had been splashed onto the headliner and inside of the driver’s side window and had already finished the slow downward slide and collected in the space between the armrest and the man’s thigh. Strangely, spattered with blood, hair, and brain matter, a military-grade gas mask rested on the man’s lap. There was also a second entry wound roughly six inches below the first. Though the destruction rivaled that of the kill shot, the lack of blood from the fist-sized hole told Cade that the man’s heart had ceased pumping blood well before the bullet caused the damage.
Another of the lucky ones, he thought as he craned to see into the rear of the van.
Nothing.
All that was revealed in the wash of the tactical light was the dark blackout curtain strung from roof to floor behind the front seats.
Retracing his steps to the back of the van, Cade heard a soft scraping sound coming from within.
Using hand signals, he alerted the others.
“Adrian,” he called. “You in there?”
The noise grew louder. In his head, he pictured the woman mortally wounded and thrashing about on the floor covered in what was most likely shag carpet in some putrid shade popular in the era the van was a prized ride.
“Come out with your hands where I can see them.”
In response to the order, something inside thunked solidly against the rear doors, causing the van to judder subtly on its suspension.
Cade stood staring at the rear doors and mulled over the possibility that a neutral noncombatant was inside the van. In the next beat, his inner voice was reminding him that the line had been drawn with Iris. Letting her come into the fold without any way to verify who she was or where she had come from was a mistake of monumental proportions that he had been part and parcel to. Never again, he thought as he put a dozen feet between him and the rear doors.
“Last chance!” he bellowed.
Hearing nothing close to a declaration of surrender from within, he snugged the LMG tight to his shoulder, flicked the selector two stops forward, and took hold of the front hand guard. Sighting on the lower half of the doors, he leaned into the gun and squeezed the trigger.
Countered by an internal piston, the weapon’s recoil was minimal as the sustained burst left its barrel at three thousand feet per second. Two dozen neat little holes appeared in the sheet metal. Brass and pieces of the breakaway links jangled and skittered across the road as Cade cut a Z pattern in the air before him with the muzzle. He was on the trigger for two, maybe three seconds at the most. Long enough, though, for the LMG to spit out forty rounds.
Illuminated by the flames and propelled by the east wind, the resulting cloud of gun smoke drifted slowly over the inert convoy.
Cade waited and listened hard for a long five-count before moving in to take a look.
Five steps from the van the sound was back. Not as loud as before, but it was no doubt emanating from the rear of the van. Patience eroding quickly—something he wouldn’t have given in to days ago—Cade stalked forward and gripped the handle on the right-side door. SMG held in his left, he flung the door to the right and found himself back on his heels to avoid its sweep.
Easily overpowering the stench of burning plastic and rubber and cooking human flesh, the pong of death wafting from inside the van brought with it a gut-tensing toxicity.
Without warning, a hunched-over Z materialized from out of the van’s gloomy interior. Skin and flesh and fat, putrefied from a long stint underwater, sloughed from the pale arms reaching for Cade’s face. Backpedaling to avoid the scrabbling fingers, he collided with the van door already two-thirds of the way through its return trip. In the next beat—already weighed down by sixty pounds of armor, ammo, and weapons—Newton’s Law came into play and he unexpectedly found himself propelled into the Z’s slimy embrace.
Chapter 60
Alexander Dregan’s breakfast had consisted of cigarettes and coffee. The decision to skip lunch, his body had made for him. Now, just minutes after sunset and with every muscle in his upper body aching from days of nonstop coughing, the idea of eating what passed for dinner in the apocalypse was the furthest thing from his mind.
A fresh round of coughing wracked his body. Hunched over the coffee table with his butt only halfway on the low sofa, he fished out a kerchief and spat into it a ropy plug of phlegm dredged from deep within his cancer-riddled lungs. One glimpse at the quivering blackish-red mass served to further beat down his already suppressed appetite. So much so that even if the pork-and-cabbage-heavy aroma of his mother’s famous Kapusniak came wafting from the darkened kitchen in the rear of the house, he doubted it would arouse so much as one drip from his dried-up salivary glands.
He folded the square of fabric and tucked it away in a pocket.
An oil lamp sat on a nearby table. Its flame danced as it burned brightly, causing the shadows on the walls to shift and distort in unison. For hours, the citizens of Bear River had been practicing the highest level of noise discipline. No one was to drive. Wood cutting was not allowed. Kids were kept inside lest the sounds of play carry to the outer walls. And much to the chagrin of a small percentage of the fledgling community’s population, the only legal watering hole in town was shuttered—both literally and figuratively. It was all necessary to keep the dead from getting overly excited. Which would begin a chain reaction of bodies crushing against each other and cause the cement freeway sound barriers to come crashing down. Which in turn would lead to multitudes of hungry dead pouring into the town. A catastrophic turn of events, indeed.
Hearing the lone exception to the rule round the far corner, Dregan rose from the sofa and went to the windows overlooking the driveway and street beyond.
As he pulled back the drapes, he inadvertently licked his chapped lips. Grimacing at the coppery taste still dancing over his tongue, he watched twin cones of light paint the mailbox and sidewalk in a dim yellow light as the borrowed vehicle rounded the corner. After a brief squeal of bra
kes, the ungainly beast bounded up onto the driveway, jumping the curb and crushing the unkempt parking strip grass in the process.
That’s my boy, thought Dregan, letting the drapes fall back into place.
He heard the engine cut off, then continue running on for a spell in fits and gasps before finally going silent.
Vapor lock. Not a good sign for a vehicle he supposed was maintained regularly during the summer months before the Omega virus killed everyone from the CEO on down to the fleet mechanics.
After stealing a long look over his shoulder at the place he’d called home for several weeks, he grabbed his rabbit fur Ushanka hat and knee-length duster off the coatrack. Moving toward the front door, he plucked his gun belt off the side table and grabbed his sword from its stand on the narrow fireplace mantle.
Out on the porch, Dregan looked over the rail and spotted Gregory crawling underneath the vehicle.
“Is it even going to get me to the north gate?” he quipped.
Not yet committed to the task at hand, Gregory paused with his face partially obscured by the vehicle’s undercarriage. “It will get you much farther than that,” he called back, the beam from his headlamp illuminating the elder Dregan. “And that’s all we’re asking from her. A dozen miles or so and then—”
“All is well in Bear River,” finished Dregan. He doubled over the rail as a spasm rippled through his body.
Wearing a worried expression, Gregory wormed out from under the vehicle and rushed toward the ladder leaning against the elevated porch.
Dregan spat over the rail and drew a deep breath. “Go back to what you were doing,” he said. “I’m on my way down.”
Brow knitted and worrying his beard with one hand, Gregory watched his father buckle his gun belt and shoulder the ancestral steel. Concern rising, and favoring his right arm, Gregory braced the ladder and kept his comments to himself as his father descended on shaky legs.
Once his feet were on terra firma, Dregan said, “You’re going to make one hell of a helicopter parent when the time comes.”
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 32