Three down, three to go, crossed his mind even as he was acting on muscle memory and dropping them one at a time behind three efficient downward strokes, separated by a barely perceptible right to left pivot, and only a half heartbeat’s time between each lethal blow.
Chapter 3
On the LCD screen in the F-650, north/south-running State Route 16 was represented by a thick yellow line intersected by eastbound 39. As soon as Cade turned north onto the straight stretch of two-lane, he saw a sign indicating 16 would soon turn into Main Street, which bisected the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town of Woodruff. On the screen, the name change was already indicated in blue font and, like seedlings growing in time-lapse photography, smaller yellow lines representing side streets began sprouting left and right off the main drag.
He drove on for a few blocks and, seeing nothing but a burned-out mom and pop store and fields in the distance, shrouded by a gray haze of falling snow, he decided to double back and work his way east, starting with the nearest cross street.
He made a quick U-turn and, nearing East Center Street, turned his attention to a mid-sized passenger car that had been pushed up onto the curb. It was wedged tight nose first between a light pole and a mature oak, the latter doing considerable damage to the passenger side and creasing a sharp V into the roofline. The sheet metal reflecting the image of Cade’s ride was dented and dirty and scratches marred the once-shiny black paint. There was a long dead corpse behind the wheel, its skeletal hands still clutched the misshapen steering wheel and, like a big white tongue, the deflated airbag draped from the torn leather housing and onto the unfortunate victim’s lap. And speaking to the considerable forces that delivered the large Cadillac DTS and driver to their final resting place, all of the glass in the doors was blown out and it sat on four flat tires. On the ground, refracting the newly fallen snow and looking oddly out of place, shards of safety glass thrown under the vehicle’s rockers and bumpers sparkled and shimmered as he let his foot off the brake and started the truck moving again.
Half a block south of the mangled luxury car, Cade’s eye was drawn right to the waist-high hedge paralleling the sidewalk and separating an automotive shop from Main Street. Something about the entire run looked odd, like it had been trampled recently. From the corner of Center to the block’s midpoint, the dense, squared-off shrub angled sharply away from the street, and the snow that dusted everything else—nonexistent.
On the expansive but nearly empty parking lot to the lee side of the shrubs, a dozen or so cars waiting for service they would never receive were pushed up tight against what appeared to be the shop’s office and an adjacent rollup door, which was battered and bowing inward.
Cade stopped the truck, swung his gaze back to the road, and suddenly the cause of the damage dawned on him. Where he was sitting, Main and Center, was the chokepoint on the dead’s migratory route where State Route 16 narrowed, and the roaming hordes, due to their size and mass capable of moving vehicles and shoving houses off their foundations, came against the most resistance. Further scrutiny revealed more damage from the shambling masses. A trio of power poles on the east side of Main were leaning away from the street at about the same angle as the hedges opposite them. The lines once supplying power to the fix-it shop and nearby business were all stretched laser-straight overhead under great tension and looked as if they might give way at any moment. Cade’s eyes touched upon the sidewalk and he couldn’t decide if the upheaved concrete at the base of the poles was keeping them from toppling completely or if the taut supply lines were doing the job. At any rate, sitting in the idling truck anywhere near the listing poles was asking for a Darwin Award, so he continued on and hooked the next left at Center.
A little baffled that so far he hadn’t spotted a single Z in downtown Woodruff, he drove walking-speed east for a full block. At the next intersection, he spied the business where Brook’s foraging foray had nearly been derailed. The words on the shingle hanging over the front door read, “Back in the Saddle Rehab.” Although he knew the major details of the ill-fated stop just off of Main Street, he’d been spared the minor ones, the first of which he now found to be false advertising, because it was here where Wilson had been nearly bucked out of the reversing Raptor and into the arms of the dead. And it was also here where Chief was bit in the saddle, so to speak.
Secondly, the building looked much smaller in person than Wilson’s description of it. It struck Cade as more residence than business. Just a little two-story house on a quarter of the block surrounded by a big unimproved parking lot. A sea of gravel, in fact. Therefore, Cade decided to swing by on his way out of town to procure the items on the list he presumed would be there. A quick in-and-out. Crossing T’s and dotting I’s.
Two minutes.
Tops.
Cade scanned all points of the compass and still nothing was moving. Seeing that Woodruff suddenly ended three blocks east, he brought the Steiners up and swept his gaze over a cluster of buildings just up the road beyond the edge of town.
On a knuckle of land and set back south of the road were a trio of prefabbed homes. The unremarkable single-story items were made from two halves constructed someplace else, trucked here, and then hemmed up on site. They were placed on side by side lots and had identical snow-covered driveways leading up from the road to flatly graded rectangles all white with snow and large enough to accommodate a pair of vehicles. Probably a family plat divided for siblings, Cade guessed.
He snatched up the CB and hailed Seth, who for the day was acting as Chief of Security, a position created by Duncan not only to instill a certain sense of pride in the job, but also to make the solitary experience attractive to others besides just Heidi, who, through the marvels of modern pharmaceuticals, was quickly bouncing back from her month-long malaise and could only be pried off the shortwave radio using the jaws-of-life.
Seth answered at once and, after a brief back-and-forth, assured Cade, save for the wet snow having already accumulated on the CCTV domes, that all was well at the compound.
“I’m going dark for a few minutes,” Cade said. “I want to check out some mobile homes east of the Woodruff main drag.”
“On Main Street?”
“No. About a half a mile east on”—he craned around to see the sign—“looks like I’ll be six or eight blocks east of Main on Center Street. Woodruff isn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis.”
“Roger that,” replied Seth. There was a clicking sound that Cade took to be the younger man’s thumb releasing the switch on the microphone attached to the base unit. Then, out of the blue, the silence in the cab was broken when Max let out a low guttural growl. Cade looked to see the shepherd—ears drawn back and teeth bared—on the seatback and looking focused on something through the truck’s smoked rear window.
With the volume knob trapped between thumb and finger, Cade was about to power off the CB when Seth’s voice came through the speaker. “You still there?” he asked, a sense of urgency in his voice.
“Roger that. What’s up?” Listening for a response, Cade again scanned his surroundings, only to find that he’d drawn some unwanted attention. Attracted to the idling engine, a small group of walking dead had just emerged onto Center Street roughly a block east of Main. After a couple of seconds of dead air, during which Cade kept his eyes locked on the rearview mirror and watched the dead spread out shoulder to shoulder across the yellow line, Seth finally came on and promised he would be right back as soon as he found the list of new requests he had misplaced.
“You gave me the list.”
“These are additions to that list.”
“Make it quick, Seth. I’ve got Zs on my six and I’ve got work to do,” Cade answered back irritably.
Seth made no reply to that. So Cade let his foot off the brake and, driving one-handed with the CB in the other, covered half the distance to the trio of structures on the hill. He soon grew impatient and was on the verge of silencing the radio altogether, more so to conserve the bat
teries than from a reluctance to talk to the kid, when Seth beat him to the punch. “Glenda wants to know if you can read the writing on her list.”
“I learned cursive in school,” Cade replied.
“You are old,” said Seth.
“Spit it out.”
“She wants to add some things to it.”
“Go ahead, I’ll commit them to memory.”
“You sure?”
“Can’t write, I’m driving. And Max isn’t growing an opposable thumb any time soon, so spit it out.”
“Suit yourself.” Seth rattled off a laundry list of stuff Glenda thought of after compiling her first fairly lengthy list. Then Seth tacked on a couple of things for himself: magazines, a handheld video game, batteries—which were already on the first list as well as Cade’s own mental list. There was a pause and then, in a soft voice, as if he was asking for the world, Seth requested a Snickers bar if Cade came across one.
“Who would run from Zs and leave their last Snickers behind?” Cade said, incredulous.
“Good point,” Seth conceded. “In that case, then. Any chocolate will do.”
“Gotta be aboveboard with you, Sport. If I come across a Snickers ... I’m keeping it all to myself,” said Cade, smiling. “Finders keepers. Spoils of war. Besides, what you don’t know, won’t hurt you.”
“Come on,” replied Seth. “That’s not fair. I’ve got a sweet tooth and I’m sick of frickin MRE pound cake.”
Max issued another ominous rumbling warning.
“Any Mounds Bars I find have Seth written all over them,” Cade said, laughing.
“Keep ‘em. Those and Baby Ruth are the worst,” Seth fired back. “Especially after watching Caddyshack.”
Cade wheeled the truck right, muscling it one-handed onto the driveway. “I thought you had a cheese tooth,” he said, eyes scanning the squat dwelling’s darkened windows.
“Fine,” Seth said, dejection evident in his tone. “I’ll take the crumbs.”
“Roger that,” said Cade. He switched the radio off and stowed it in a cargo pocket. He stuffed the yellow sheet torn from a legal pad and completely filled with handwritten requests in another. With the sound of gravel crunching under the rig’s off-road tires, he halved his speed and covered the last thirty feet to the empty parking pad, never taking his eyes off the curtain-shrouded windows, of which there were three. The two windows bookending the dwelling looked to be four foot tall by six wide and situated between them, but closer to the one on the left, was another half their size and frosted. In his mind, working left to right, Cade paired each window with a room: bed, bath and, to the right of the garish-looking bright-red front door, living. Presumably he would find the kitchen at the right rear corner opposite the living room. And if that was the case, then no doubt a hallway and closet and second bedroom, in that order, would finish off the back half of the prefab.
Easy enough.
Cade reached to the passenger side footwell and retrieved the red Kelty backpack he’d borrowed from Daymon. Forgoing the carbine for now, he plucked the Glock from the center console and looked over his shoulder at Max. “Coming or staying?”
Max moved toward the open door, stub tail twitching furiously.
“Coming, obviously,” Cade stated. “I want to check something first.” He toggled out of the navigation system and then fooled with the buttons below the truck’s LCD display. After a few seconds of trial-and-error, he called up a screen displaying the current outside temperature and saw that it was thirty degrees and probably dropping. He sat there for a bit, listening to the soft patter of snow hitting the metal roof overhead. Saw big fluffy flakes alight on the windshield, break apart and begin the slow slide toward the static wipers. The flakes landing on the warm hood, however, didn’t stand a chance, some melting away at once and running off in all different directions, while others collapsed instantly, creating dime-sized pools on the flat portions of the black slab of sheet metal.
He watched the temperature drop another degree from 30 to 29 then climbed from the Ford, waited for Max to bound by him, closed the door and locked the truck using the key.
Max beat Cade to the black Welcome mat in front of the contrasting red door and was sitting there, tail twitching, and staring over his shoulder as his master-for-the-moment approached.
“All clear?”
Max pawed at the mat.
Cade pounded the door with a closed fist, calling out, “Anyone home?” He pressed his ear to its cold surface and listened hard. A handful of seconds passed. He craned and checked the windows for movement then, raising his Glock, flicked his eyes to Max, who was peering up expectantly. “Sounds empty inside.”
As per usual in the zombie apocalypse, the door was locked. So Cade put the sole of his size nine desert boot to work delivering a solid kick just left of the knob and deadbolt. On impact an electric shiver ran up his right shin, a mild ache started in his ankle, and there was a sharp crack as wood split and the door flung open. A second dull thud reverberated about the front room as the inside knob impacted drywall, producing a nice-sized dimple there.
Fingers tented, Cade met the rebounding door, stopping it mid-swing. “Anyone home?” he asked again, the earlier tone of formality gone from his voice.
Nothing.
Once he’d crossed the threshold and was standing on the dingy white square of linoleum passing as the foyer, the former Delta operator cocked an ear toward the back of the house and sniffed the air. Hearing nothing, he shrugged off the pack and, with Max sitting on his haunches and facing the hall to the left, closed the destroyed door and barricaded it with an overstuffed loveseat.
“Smells like mold,” said Cade, the running commentary unnecessary but helping to pass the time. “Much better than death ... eh, boy?”
He pulled the curtains to the living room window and instantly the front room and kitchen was awash with flat white light cast off the fallen snow outside.
The nearby kitchen was small by most standards. It contained the usual stove and fridge in white enamel, but no dishwasher. The sink was filled with soiled dishes and contained an inch of water, the source of the sour smell. In a drawer he found two packages of Duracell batteries, D and C cells, four of each; not enough to satisfy that portion of the list, but a good start nonetheless. He stuffed the batteries in the pack and proceeded to rifle through the cupboards, spilling anything resembling a spice or seasoning into the Kelty’s gaping top opening. A long winter was ahead of them, he figured. The deer meat Tran had dried and squirreled away from the grazers in the group wouldn’t last them long, and the considerable stores of beans and rice Logan had stockpiled in the dry storage would get old real quick without the added kick of the scavenged spices.
In the cupboard were a few cans of various types of soups and vegetables. Strike one. No cheese, Snickers, or chocolate. Done in the kitchen, Cade shouldered the pack, pulled out Glenda’s personal list, and saw that most of the items on it were the kinds of things you’d find in a bathroom. So he walked past his four-legged sentry and down the hall, but not before peering out the picture window dominating the wall above the back of the sofa. He saw the Ford had collected more snow and was now two-tone, white over black. Beyond the truck, still a number of blocks away, the cluster of Zs trundled up the slight grade, seemingly leaning into the driving flurries, looking every bit like they were on the verge of being stuck fast in quicksand.
He turned from the window and padded down the hall to the bathroom, which was only as wide as the tub/shower combo built into the back wall. Compared to the front room this one was a cave, the outside light barely penetrating the frosted window and opaque shower curtain.
On the moldy tile floor was a pile of paper wrappers and the slick backings from a dozen Curad bandages. An empty and partially crushed box labeled “STERILE GAUZE WRAP” sat amongst the hastily discarded wrappers. The sink was empty, but the previous waterline was a crusty reddish-black stripe, and below it the white enamel was tinted pink.
Cade was no Sherlock Holmes, but it was clear, based on the evidence, that someone had cleaned a wound and prepared a makeshift field dressing here.
Feeling around the mirror, he found a catch. Pressing it let the door swing away from the wall, which revealed the contents of a recessed medicine cabinet. Three shelves. Lots of antacids and creams but only four opaque orange bottles, all with childproof caps and instructions and warnings—both in writing and portrayed by symbols—printed on the labels.
After a cursory glance, and finding that only one of the bottles contained some kind of a drug with a long multi-syllable name that matched Glenda’s cursive, he tossed them all, along with the creams, into the pack.
The bedroom at the end of the single-wide screamed bachelor. There was an unfinished lodgepole pine twin bed pushed against the outside wall. A matching nightstand and dresser flanked the bed, which was lit up by horizontal bars of light spilling in through the dust-coated venetian blinds. Nothing he saw from the earth tone covers to the antler lamp on the nightstand suggested a woman lived here.
He rifled through the clothes left behind in the dresser and crammed anything made from fleece or wool into the pack. There was nothing of interest in the closet. He checked under the bed and found only dust bunnies. Lastly, he lifted the mattress off the box spring and looked there only because it would nag at him later if he hadn’t.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Page 3