“That’s what you’ve been saying about the rock underneath those brambles five years running now. When these dead things finally die off you better get the Deere running and pull it out once and for all.”
Not having the heart to tell her those things were likely to be around and walking when both of their hearts gave up the ghost, he merely mumbled something agreeable and made his way back to the dining room and the task at hand.
Helen said nothing. She pulled her plate from the cold soapy water, gave it a wipe, and put it in the frigid rinse.
“Ray.”
From the dining room, softer this time, because there was no weight on it, there came another scraping noise, still wood on wood, and then, “Yes, Helen?”
Wishing she had broken down and bought that snazzy combination shelf organizer/lazy Susan from the city slicker on QVC, she continued moving cans around in the cupboard and let out a sigh.
“What strikes your fancy for dinner ... Vienna sausages and sauerkraut or ... Vienna sausages and sauerkraut?”
“Sounds like we had one too many last suppers, eh Helen,” he called from the other room.
“Yep. Made the last canned ham for Alexander and his boys two Sundays ago. We still have a year’s worth of those MRE things upstairs, though.”
Concluding Helen was bored out of her wits—hence the planning for dinner so soon after lunch—Ray said, “Why don’t you bring some downstairs then. I don’t think there’s any chance of us getting in trouble for purloining them at this juncture.”
“Juncture,” she said. Just the one word delivered all nasally, as Ray oftentimes finished a sentence, caused her to snort. “Say that again, Ray. Sounded like a former Republican president from Texas.” She wracked her brain trying to remember whom.
“Say what?”
“Juncture, Ray. Juncture.” Just thinking about the old world seemed so absurd to her, seeing as how the first snow of the season was on the ground, the pantry was near empty and the front pasture was dotted with alpaca carcasses. She laughed like she was going crazy. A high-pitched warbling.
“I don’t know, Helen. Why don’t you go up and see?” he called again, not really hearing the question, but appeasing her with an answer anyhow.
Why don’t I? she thought, casting another glance toward the brambles.
***
Three hundred yards due east from the farmhouse, Cleo shifted his weight from his left butt cheek to the right. There was no feeling in either now and he couldn’t decide whether a minor case of frostbite was setting in or they were numb from lack of blood flow. After a few seconds spent in the new position, it became abundantly clear that the latter was the case when it started feeling like an army of sprites armed with pins and needles were attacking the area in question.
Adding to the sharp stabs and nettle-like tingling, the mother of all headaches was settling behind his eyes. Nicotine withdrawals, he thought. By now he’d be three-quarters of the way through his first pack of the day and it wasn’t even mid-afternoon yet.
He shook his head, spit the spent plug of tobacco into the snow, and loaded a fresh dip. From another pocket, he took out the long-range CB radio and upped the volume a couple of notches.
As he took a scrap of paper from a pocket and double-checked the channel on the CB, a wave of nicotine hit his brain, producing a sudden pain negating euphoria.
He thumbed the Talk key. “Are you in place yet, Gregory?” He took his thumb off and for a long moment there was only a soft hissing coming from the speaker. He tried again. “Gregory?”
Chapter 30
Ended up being that Glenda was pretty accurate with her directions. The turnoff from 39 to the secondary road leading to the Utah Department of Transportation facility was half a mile west from the Shell station. However, the UDOT facility itself was another two-thirds of a mile due north at the end of an unmarked road Cade presumed was gravel based on the random pings resonating through the Land Cruiser’s undercarriage.
Situated diagonal from the entrance on the far right corner of the neatly graded plot of land were two outbuildings the size of double-car garages. Fronting the two outbuildings was a thirty-foot-tall structure with a shallow pitched roof that was open to the air on all four sides. Sheltered from the elements on the center of the immense poured concrete pad were two gigantic mounds of pea gravel.
A twelve-foot-tall hurricane fence topped by rolled razor-wire surrounded the entire affair. Signs warning that the premises were monitored 24/7 by closed circuit television cameras were attached to the fence chest-high about every thirty feet. And displayed prominently on the front gate was another sign; on it was a crude caricature of a dog and underneath that, in big red font, were the words GUARD DOG ON DUTY.
Duncan parked the SUV nose to the gate and gestured to the white rectangle with the dog on it. “You think?” he said to no one in particular.
“No way in hell,” replied Daymon. He looked at Cade. “Who is gonna cut the lock?”
“I got it,” answered Cade. “Pop the hatch.” He stepped out and, walking gingerly on his tweaked ankle, made it around back just as the rear door reached the bump stops at the top of its travel. Not wanting to dig out his lock gun, he instead fetched the mammoth pair of bolt cutters lying out in the open and made his way to the gate. It rolled left-to-right on what looked to him like a pair of Radio Flyer wagon wheels. A heavy-duty chain was looped twice around the gate’s vertical pole and secured with a heavy-duty padlock.
A quick bite from the cutter’s sharpened maw and the lock was defeated.
Cade let gravity take the chain and watched it coil like a metal snake near his feet. He grabbed a handful of fence, leaned into it, and rolled the door all the way open. He waved the two vehicles inside then shifted his weight to his right foot, wiggled his toes on his left, and rolled it in a slow clockwise circle. Once both the SUVs were inside the wire, he blocked out the breaking waves of pain and ran the gate into the closed position.
Grimacing in pain, he hobbled back to the Land Cruiser, opened the passenger door and fished a near-empty bottle of Tylenol from the side pocket. And while he worked at foiling the childproof feature, he caught Duncan looking over at him. “May I?” he asked.
“Go right ahead,” Duncan said. “I won’t be needing them.”
Daymon was hauling his frame out from behind the driver’s seat when he heard the exchange. Pausing with one leg out the door, he craned around. “You still a quitter, Old Man?”
“It’s none of your dang business ... but … yeah, I’ve been sober since Glenda rolled into town.”
“That’s bullshit.” Daymon motioned towards the dash. “What’s with the fifth of Jack in there?”
Duncan popped open the glove compartment to show that it was empty.
“You were getting loaded while we were chopping skulls and hurling bodies into the canyon?” Daymon asked, incredulous.
Shaking his head, Duncan said, “With Cade and God as my witness ... I swear to you I’m sober.” He balled his hands into fists, reached over and pounded the glove box shut. “Damn it Daymon … you gotta believe me here. I won’t lie to you ... I was thinking about drinking it. Only thinking, though. I did not take one sip. I poured all of it out on the bridge.”
“Poured it down your gullet is more like it,” muttered Daymon. He stepped out, slammed the door and, without a backward glance, stalked off toward the heavy equipment.
Realizing that Lev, Jamie, Wilson, and Taryn were all out of the 4Runner and had been watching the drama, and knowing that he was losing all control of the mission at hand, Cade threw his hands up and in the immortal words of Rodney King—as the story would later be recounted—said, “Can’t we all just get along?”
His question was greeted by mostly dumb looks. Duncan and Daymon, however, were trying their best not to laugh.
Knowing how stupid the plea had sounded, Cade put his hands on his hips, and in his best Mike ‘Cowboy’ Desantos baritone, started issuing orders
.
The rectangular area inside the fence was roughly the size of two football fields laid end-to-end. Where the nearest goalpost would be, off to Cade’s left, close to the gate, was a boxy building about the size of one-half of a doublewide mobile home. The shallow pitched roof was white with snow and the horizontal blinds drawn tight. That was where he sent Taryn and Wilson to look for keys, but first he drew back his left sleeve and showed off the deep bite mark on the magazine taped there. A gentle, yet effective nonverbal way of reminding them to look before they leaped.
He walked his gaze over the yard. Backed in against the north run of fencing was a long row of heavy machinery. There were huge snowplows and graders and bucket trucks, a pair of the latter with wood chippers still hooked to them. Trucks attached to trailers hosting huge spools of wire were nestled in with line-painting equipment and steamrollers of different sizes. It seemed to Cade as if all of Utah’s maintenance and road building chores were dispatched from this little plat of land.
Every piece of equipment on the lot was painted the same traffic-cone-orange and dirty from sitting in the elements unused since that Saturday in July when giving a shit about road improvements and public works projects took a back seat to surviving the dead.
Parked side-by-side to Cade’s fore were a dozen boxy dump trucks made by Mack. They had chrome grills the size of a dinner table and a shiny cast metal bulldog perched atop the hood. Each one was equipped with a massive curved blade out front currently mirroring the white yard back at him. Built to operate on all types of surfaces the big rigs each sported ten huge all-weather tires distributed between three axles—two wheels up front on a single and four wheels each on the tandem axles supporting the rear-mounted dump box. Two birds, one stone, was his first thought. Clear the snow from your path with the blade while scattering gravel on your finished work from the spreader attachment out back. Pretty ingenious. And he currently had Daymon and Duncan vectoring for them, jumper cables in hand, with orders to choose the three best candidates among them based on how well-maintained they appeared and the amount of fuel presently on board.
Meanwhile, Lev and Jamie had moved out along the south fence line, carbines in hand. He had stopped at the midpoint southeast of the gate, out of sight yet still able to see the road beyond. She had continued on to the far northeast corner, and was scrutinizing the dense woods there.
Cade shifted his gaze and watched Taryn and Wilson enter the trailer. The pair remained inside for only a couple of minutes before exiting and jumping down the stairs, each with a pocketful of keys that jangled as they hustled back to the pair of Toyotas parked just inside the gate.
A handful of feet from Cade and still approaching, Taryn pulled the keys from a pocket. “Looks like there were people here after the outbreak. The chairs in there are all pushed around an old television and the garbage can is overflowing with about a week’s worth of food wrappers and empty water bottles and beer cans.”
“But I got these,” Wilson said, bringing his right arm around from behind his back in a grand sweeping gesture. Clutched in his fingers was a six-pack of Diet Cokes. He pried one loose and handed it over.
Cade smiled. Cracked the top and took a long pull. “And it’s cold,” he said. “Been a long time since I’ve enjoyed one of these.”
Wilson followed suit, swallowed, scrunched his face and burped, long and loud, drawing attention from Daymon, who had his machete in hand and was already jimmying the door lock on one of the big plows.
“Feel the burn,” Wilson said, scrunching the can under his boot. He belched again, eliciting a hostile look from Taryn.
Still shaking her head at the juvenile humor on display, Taryn called ahead to Daymon, “We found the keys.”
He jumped down from the truck. “Take ‘em to Duncan, please.”
“The maintenance chores were listed on a white board inside,” Wilson exclaimed. “It says the plows were all prepped for winter in June. The front loader, however, was due for service the weekend all hell broke loose.”
“That’s OK,” answered Cade. “We only need it to run long enough to fill the trucks with gravel.”
“Who’s going to operate it?” asked Wilson, the words dripping with skepticism.
“The surly one,” Cade said. “As time goes I’ve come to learn he’s got a pretty impressive skill set.”
“Oh ... I see,” Taryn shot. “That explains why he gets a pass.”
“I try and treat everyone the same,” Cade said to that. “So far nothing he’s done warrants any kind of punitive action in my book. He has his trailer and he’s supposedly working on his issues.”
“He needs some of the same medicine Heidi is taking—”
Cade raised his hand, silencing Wilson. “We need to get a move on.” He looked to the sky. “I figure we have five or six hours of light left, max. And quite a bit of work yet to do.”
Thankfully, having been designed to sit for weeks at a time and then be ready to go at the first signs of inclement weather, the four pieces of heavy equipment necessary for Cade’s plan to succeed started right up.
Having used earth-moving and clearing vehicles only sparingly on the fires he had fought, Daymon fumbled his way to figuring out the front loader’s controls. After brushing up on the basics of maneuvering the back-asswards-steering vehicle, he spent the next ninety minutes filling three of the Mack trucks with gravel.
When the last full bucket was deposited in the truck driven by Lev, Daymon shut the front loader down on the patch of concrete he’d just cleared of pea gravel and hopped aboard the Mack for the short ride to the front gate, which he saw was already sitting open.
“Raring to go, aren’t they?” Daymon said, a flat affect to his tone.
“Cade spent less than ten minutes getting acquainted with his truck. Since then he’s been muttering and pacing back and forth waiting on you to finish.”
Daymon shook his head. “Hell, there was only one loader,” he said, the hard edge entering his voice. “I’m a firefighter who has used heavy machinery … not a certified heavy machinery operator who has fought fires. There’s a huge difference.”
“Don’t kill the messenger,” Lev said. “We couldn’t have done it without ya.” As the gate drew near, he made a fist and held it up. A conciliatory act that was his unspoken way of burying the hatchet with the other man.
Daymon reciprocated the fist bump. “We’re cool then?” he asked.
Lev pulled up next to the Land Cruiser, the Mack easily dwarfing the SUV. “I’m over it,” he said. “From now on let’s take our aggression out on the dead.”
“Agreed.” Daymon opened the passenger door. He looked back with a grin and added, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back to culling them in no time.”
Lev smiled at the other man’s enthusiasm for taking the fight to the dead. Once the door closed, he waited for Daymon to walk clear of the truck then drove it off the UDOT yard.
By the time Daymon had climbed behind the wheel and punched the Land Cruiser’s Start/Stop button, all three fully laden plow trucks had rumbled through the gate and were moving at a good clip down the feeder road. He waited until Jamie had wheeled the 4Runner through the gate and stopped on the right shoulder; then pulled out and parked in the center of the road a length ahead of her.
With the bulk of the convoy growing smaller off in the distance, Wilson and Duncan closed and chained the gate, after which the former sprinted to the 4Runner and climbed in on the passenger side, and the latter, rather reluctantly, crunched a path through the snow to the waiting Land Cruiser and hauled his old bones into the passenger seat.
“Gotta hand it to Captain America,” Daymon said, waving Taryn around. “He sure knows how to strike while the iron is hot.”
Clicking his belt, Duncan said, “I’m worried this iron you speak of is going to go cold before we have a chance to make much of a dent in the rotters waiting for us in Huntsville.”
Daymon thought about that for a second then cast a q
uick glance at Duncan. “First things first, as Glenda likes to say”—an obvious, though subtle dig at the fledgling relationship—“we’ve got to get these plows to the barrier.”
Like his mom had also taught him, for once, since he had nothing good to say, Duncan bit his tongue. In the side mirror he saw the Toyota creeping by on the right and unconsciously pulled his lap belt tight.
Inside the 4Runner, Wilson was basking in the warm air coming from the vents as Jamie steered the smaller SUV onto the snow-covered shoulder, around the idling Land Cruiser and then back onto the road, where she gunned it in order to catch up with the three plows. A few short seconds and a controlled power slide around the first bend later, the plows were in view and Wilson saw the blade on the first Mack lower slowly and then the truck, which he guessed was being driven by Cade, judder ever so slightly when the massive wedge of polished steel bit into the gravel under the snow. A tick later, like some kind of preplanned maneuver, the blades on the following plows lowered slowly but surely, and simultaneously there were three dirty rooster tails consisting of gravel and soil and snow pummeling the trees lining the right side of the road.
“I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of those,” Wilson said, trying to make small talk.
Eyes fixed on the road ahead, Jamie replied matter-of-factly, “Keep watching and I’m sure you’ll get to see what happens to something that is.”
Chapter 31
Once habitually clean-shaven, thirty-three-year-old Gregory Dregan now hid his lean facial features behind a black beard beginning to show some gray. Underneath the tangled whiskers, Gregory’s cheek bones were high and angular and when his thin slit for a mouth parted in a smile—which it hadn’t in the three weeks since his sister’s murder—his eyes narrowed and a picket of uneven yellowed teeth was put on full display.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Page 18