Cade was staring into the wide eyes of a naked pre-teen girl when Lopez responded to Haynes by saying he was clearing the upstairs of the administration building. Hearing Lopez inquire if either of the Dagger teams could intervene, Cade sidestepped the fallen corpse, reached past the dumbfounded girl, and stripped the nearby inflatable mattress of one of its blankets. He was wrapping the blanket around the trembling girl and reassuring her that he was one of the “good guys” when he heard the Dagger team leaders answer back saying that they were currently hands full rounding up squirters of their own.
Cade sat the girl on the edge of the bed and asked for her name.
Voice trembling, the girl said, “Katy.”
While Cade was calming the girl, Axe rooted about the messy office-turned-bedroom.
Cradling his M4 in the crook of his arms, Cade knelt in front of the girl and asked, “Who is Toy?”
“That’s what Gary”—she gestured to the corpse on the floor—“and Mama call my little sister, Tory.”
Toy, thought Cade. Highly unlikely the moniker was a nickname. Even harder for him to believe was that they called her Toy only to shorten an already short name.
“Who is Mama?” he asked.
“That’s what Adrian wants us kids to call her.”
“Where is your mother and father?”
The girl tugged the blanket up to her chin and hung her head.
“Did something bad happen to them?” pressed Cade.
“Dad died a long time ago.”
“The outbreak?”
The girl nodded. Tears were welling in her eyes.
Cade glanced at Axe, who was rooting in a pile of clothes on the floor. He asked, “And your mom?”
“Mama … I mean Adrian said she left one night. Abandoned us.” She paused for a beat then added forcefully, “But me and Tory don’t believe her.”
“I don’t either,” Cade replied grimly. Knowing there was a better chance of headshot Gary standing up and doing an Irish jig, he added, “Maybe she will turn up one day.”
Katy was sobbing now.
“Here,” said Axe, handing Cade a wadded-up ball of gray fabric.
Cade separated the two articles of clothing and was handing the girl a rumpled shirt and sweatpants several sizes too big when Haynes came back on the comms to inform the three teams that the Porta John squirters had just entered the barn. Casting a furtive glance at Axe, Cade set the clothing at the girl’s feet and asked her to get dressed.
Though it was pitch-black inside the room, the NVGs still allowed Cade to see everything. So before the girl removed the blanket from around her shoulders, he quickly put his back to her.
A split-second after giving the girl her privacy, someone upstairs bellowed, “Drop the weapon.”
A beat later a booming male voice yelled back, “Fuck you!”
A short volley of suppressed gunshots answered the hollered epithet.
As Cade turned to tell Katy what to expect next, Lopez was back on the comms and ordering him and Axe to search the barn for the squirters.
You mean Adrian, Cade thought to himself.
“You and me, mate,” said Axe. “What do we do with her?”
Cade motioned for Axe to drag the leaking corpse into the hall. Then he turned back to Katy, who was sitting on the bed fully clothed but still trembling and glassy-eyed. “Someone will be back for you real soon,” he promised. Glancing across the room to his left, he added, “Get in the closet and stay there.”
Katy nodded and mumbled, “Don’t let her hurt Tory.”
“I won’t, sweetie.” Before closing the closet door, he told her to stay put until either he or another soldier came for her. Hearing a mumbled acknowledgement, he closed the door and turned back to face Axe.
Wiping Gary’s blood from his hands with the discarded blanket, Axe growled, “Let’s get the cunt.”
Cade said nothing. However, in his head he was already doing unspeakable things to the pedophile waste of skin.
***
Cade followed Axe to the end of the corridor and waited while the SAS shooter peered one-eyed around the corner. Satisfied they were alone, Cade followed Axe down the carpeted hall, passing a half-dozen exterior windows all covered on the inside by black plastic sheeting. Along the way, they stopped twice to check a pair of unlocked closets on their right. The door to the first was labeled CUSTODIAL and held the usual: brooms, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. The closet labeled UTILITY housed the breaker box and some heating and ventilation controls.
Nearly to the end of the hall, Cade spotted the door leading to outside on the left. Because a horizontally mounted metal crash bar bisected it, he concluded it opened outward. Like the rest of the windows in the building, the square item inset head-high in the steel door was also blacked-out.
Cade smelled the Porta Johns before they reached the door. Paired with the eye-watering, ammonia-heavy stench of urine and feces was the pong of the dead things patrolling nearby between the two fence lines.
“It’s propped open,” observed Axe as he stepped to the opposite jamb and peeked through the gap.
From a yard back Cade felt the cold, steady draft responsible for bringing the stink inside. And though very faint, he could hear the dry rasps of the dead carrying on the wind.
Axe produced a fixed blade and sliced the plastic sheeting. Peeling up the corner, he stole a glance outside.
Crouched low opposite the hinge side, Cade watched and waited.
“Clear,” called Axe.
Nodding, Cade pushed through the door, carbine tracking with his gaze. As he crossed the threshold, he nudged the crushed beer can cum door stop aside with his toe so the door would latch behind them. While Axe was exiting the building, Cade was crouched low and surveying the lay of the land.
Extending a few feet from the rear exit was an alcove and gently sloped wheelchair ramp that spilled them into an alley. Fifteen feet to their fore was the row of Porta Johns—at least a dozen total. The outer wall rose up behind the toilets, dwarfing them by at least fifteen feet.
Hustling west past the Porta Johns, Cade sized up the barn. It was slightly shorter than the hangar on its left and stood head and shoulders above the outer wall to the right. Save for what looked to be a metal roof hosting twenty to thirty solar panels, it was constructed entirely with unpainted wood. There were no windows to speak of and entry to the barn was through the double doors facing him.
Cade looked to his left as they covered the hundred feet of open tarmac between the administration building and main hangar. He saw nothing but open ground all the way to the far wall. Glancing right, he saw that the grass from where the tarmac ended to the cement freeway barriers was trampled down and surrounded by post and beam fencing. Eyeing him from within the makeshift pen was a dozen full-grown goats and half as many kids.
Somehow the two men made it from the administration building to the barn at a full run without the goats making a sound.
The metal latch used to secure the barn doors had been thrown open. Expecting to find the doors locked from the inside, Cade grabbed the latch with one hand and gave it a tentative tug. Shocked that it moved freely, he opened up a four-inch gap, went to one knee, and stole a quick look at the barn’s roomy interior. Seeing only baled hay stacked a dozen feet off the floor to the right, and miscellaneous pieces of farm equipment pushed against the wall to his left, he leaned back and whispered his findings to Axe.
They spent a few seconds outside the door deciding on the best approach to clear the barn, then Cade widened the gap between the doors and he and Axe slipped inside.
The air in the barn smelled of hay and hewn fir. Like sediment stirred by a scuba diver’s fins, dust motes scudded the airspace in front of Cade’s NVGs, only beginning to settle once the door was shut behind them.
They stood there in silence for a few seconds letting their senses attune to the sudden absence of the hungry cries of the dead and constant rush of blowing wind.
Chapter 77
As soon as the door sucked shut behind Axe, Cade knew they weren’t alone inside the barn. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the massive structure came a pained whimper. Then, between the intermittent groans of support beams under stress, they heard boards creaking.
Cade looked to his left and spotted a piece of equipment whose technical name he didn’t know. On its side, however, was the word SKYJACK.
Pretty self-explanatory.
The SKYJACK’s chassis was six feet across and three deep with wheels at each corner. The wheels were a quarter of the size of an automobile’s and shod with what looked like rubber bands for tires. The chassis supported a four by eight rectangular steel platform. The platform was ringed on all sides by a waist-high safety cage—also fashioned from steel tubing. Between the two components was a fully extended apparatus that looked a lot like an old-fashioned scissor jack. Providing proof that the panels on the roof were in fact for solar collection, a power cord snaked from behind one of the lift’s rear wheels.
Cade followed the cord with his eyes. It ran up the wall and was plugged into an electrical box nailed to one of the support beams. He continued walking his gaze to the platform and saw that it was even with the lip of an overhead hay loft, which, thanks to the hay bales stacked near the door, he had initially failed to notice.
Cade looked to Axe. Mouthed, “There’s got to be another way up.”
Axe pointed to his eyes, then stabbed a finger at a pair of rudimentary ladders leading up to the loft. Basically just a handful of eighteen-inch-long lengths of two-by-four nailed horizontally to the sturdy loft support beams, the rungs looked capable of supporting his weight. That there was no block and tackle affixed to the rafters above the loft helped explain the need for the motorized lift.
Change of plans.
Cade plucked a flashbang grenade from a pocket and showed it to Axe. Returning the black metal cylinder to the cargo pocket it had come from, he motioned for Axe to scale the support beam furthest from the lift.
Nodding, Axe padded away, swinging his carbine to his back as he went.
Cade made his way to the beam nearest the SKYJACK lift, took hold of a rung, and tested it for movement. Secured to the six-by-six beam with four screws, it barely moved.
Solid enough.
Throwing his M4 around to his back, Cade drew the suppressed Glock 19 from the drop-leg holster. Out of habit he checked the action to confirm a round was in the pipe.
Good to go.
Snugging the pistol home, he glanced to his right. Seeing Axe in position and already grasping a rung of his own, Cade stabbed a thumb skyward and started to climb. The lengths of two-by-four creaked under his Danners as they accepted the combined weight of his hundred-and-eighty-pound frame loaded down with fifty-some-odd pounds of gear.
In between rungs, Cade heard a snuffling noise drifting from the rear of the barn. Strangely, it sounded as if it had come from underneath the loft. Writing it off as sound from the loft being distorted by the openness of the structure, he pressed on, slowly, one rung at a time, until there were only two left and his helmet was in danger of breaking the plane.
To Cade’s right, clinging to a rung of his own and with the carbine swinging lazily from his back, Axe presented a near mirror image. Left arm wrapped around the beam, Cade plucked the stun grenade from his pocket. Using the fingers of his left hand, he pulled the pin from the grenade.
Cade held the grenade so Axe could see it. Directing his voice toward the ground, he said, “I know you’re up there, Adrian.”
Nothing.
“There are only two ways this can go,” he pressed.
Boards groaned near the back of the loft. That it sounded more distinct to his right ear led Cade to think Adrian was nearly equidistant to the ladders.
Good to know.
“Last chance,” he warned.
“Fuck you.”
A woman’s voice. Shrill and obviously stressed.
More whimpering was followed by the faint, faraway sound of a girl pleading to be let go.
Voice seemingly back to normal, the woman said matter-of-factly, “I am not going to be locked up again. Not now, not ever again. I will die first.”
So be it.
Cade let the spoon slip from his hand, counted to one in his head, and one-armed the flashbang over the lip. It was a perfect hook shot. One that he guessed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would let slide without much criticism.
In unison, Cade and Axe looked groundward, both squeezing their eyes shut and covering the multiple lenses of their NVGs with their free arm.
There was a minute concussion followed a millisecond later by a shockwave that Cade felt roll over his head. When he opened his eyes a half-beat later, he found that the washout effect to the goggles from the flash was minimal. In the latter half of that beat he was dragging the Glock from its holster and swinging it over the ledge.
At the exact moment a pair of poorly aimed shots snapped from the hip crackled through the air to Cade’s right, he was acquiring the target and bringing the Glock online. As he did so, the adrenaline dump hit his system, which caused time to seemingly slow to a crawl even as a million and one thoughts were jumping synapses.
Cade’s first glance at the rotund woman confirmed to him that there was no way in hell she climbed the beam to get to where she was. And the longer he studied her—microseconds at best—the more dumbfounded he became knowing that the platform had even budged from the chassis under her weight, let alone made it to full extension.
The woman’s eyes, partly hidden under a deep-set brow, darted about, searching for something in the dark. God almighty, he thought as his gaze finished the split-second recon. She has to be four hundred pounds, if not more. Bra and panties were all she was wearing, or, more like it, the bra and panties were wearing her. Fat rolls spilled over the straining waistband and pooled under her sagging breasts. In her right hand was a large revolver, curls of gun smoke wafting from the gaping muzzle. Her left leg was bowing inward and sported a dirty cast that looked to have been thrown together by kindergarteners dabbling in papier-Mache. That the naked girl trapped in the crook of the woman’s left arm was barely half a head shorter than her captor meant the woman Duncan referred to as “Little Lotta” was Brook’s height, at best. “As wide as she was tall,” Duncan had insisted days ago, the statement, at the time, drawing a skeptical look from Cade.
I stand corrected, thought Cade, already weighing odds and calculating angles in his head.
At first blush he concluded a head shot on Adrian would put the girl in grave danger. Then, taking into account the woman’s considerable girth, he began to doubt how far the 9mm Parabellums would penetrate her torso if he aimed for center mass. Would they make it to her heart? Or any other vital organ, for that matter?
All of this took a fraction of a second for him to process. Then, suddenly, two things happened back-to-back that simultaneously made Cade’s decision for him and sealed the fates of everyone involved.
First, the cast crumbled and Adrian’s leg, buckling under her massive weight, started her upper body on a slow pitch backward, her immense head acting as a wrecking ball. Then, the girl Cade presumed to be Tory latched both hands onto the meaty forearm pressing in on her throat and, elbows jutting in front of her pale, nude torso, arched her head back and presented the clean shot Cade needed.
Without further thought, Cade caressed the trigger two times in quick succession. In his side vision, even before the pair of bullets had crossed the distance, he saw Axe spilling over the ledge, suppressed rifle a blur as the SAS vet brought it to bear.
There were two wet slaps as Cade’s rounds found flesh. But he didn’t see them, for his NVGs momentarily washed out as the pistol in the woman’s hand boomed again, lighting up the entire length of the loft.
When Cade’s goggles returned to normal a half-beat later, the girl was on her hands and knees at Adrian’s feet, Adrian no longer possessed the weapon, and she was
pitching backward toward the vertical seam of light behind her. In that snapshot in time he saw her now free hand going for the right side of her face, which was a mass of shredded flesh after having absorbed one or possibly both of the bullets. Didn’t matter. With the girl safely out of the way, he snapped off another round that punched a hole above Adrian’s right breast.
Having also recovered his vision from the revolver’s muzzle flash washing his NVGs, Axe put two rounds from his M4 into center mass, which in this case ended up being the woman’s rather distended belly.
While Cade’s first two shots had started the ball rolling, the third added to the already spooling momentum, which in turn caused Adrian to spin her arms backward in tight little circles as she fought a losing battle to regain her balance.
The 5.56 mm hardball rounds fired from Axe’s weapon had ruptured flesh and released tightly packed innards.
In the end, Adrian’s head was the wrecking ball that started the loft doors at her back to swing open.
Axe blurted, “Destination fucked,” as the gut-shot cannibal—both arms still frantically rolling the windows up—disappeared through the newly created opening.
Cade lowered his Glock and sprinted the length of the loft, calming words coming from his mouth as he approached the girl in the dark. Finding her shaken, but unharmed, he stole a quick glance over the edge.
The out of place snuffling sounds he had heard from the ladder moments ago now had a face, or, more like it, snouts. And some of those snouts were already buried deeply into the writhing woman’s abdomen.
A rope of intestine spooled from the fissure as a large sow backed away from Adrian’s flailing arms with one end of the juicy prize trapped between her teeth.
“Destination Hell, is more like it,” Cade said, casting a sidelong glance at Axe. “Good shooting.”
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 12): Abyss Page 40