Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  Shaking his head and grumbling about math and snow, Daymon increased his already long stride and left the others behind.

  Slipping her tomahawk into its scabbard, Jamie said, “No getting through to that man”

  “We made our peace,” Lev said. He removed his cap and one of his gloves and ran a hand through his sweaty, steaming, hair. “If I’m willing to cut him some slack after what happened back at the compound ... I think you should let a little bit of whining slide.”

  Jamie made a face.

  Wisely, Taryn and Wilson also held their tongues. No use adding fuel to the fire, in case he was still within earshot.

  With daylight a dwindling commodity, Cade said nothing. No use burning precious time debating or arguing about things he had no control over. Instead, letting his actions do the speaking, he hustled to the truck and clambered aboard.

  Behind Ray and Helen’s Home

  The sun had dipped behind the distant trees and their shadows were seemingly growing longer by the minute. Ignoring the snow falling all around him, Cleo took a big drag off the unfiltered Camel and held the warm smoke in his lungs for a long five-count. With the fourth cigarette he’d lit since his willpower crumbled twenty minutes ago already burnt down to a nub, and the throbbing behind his eyes not reacting to the introduction of real nicotine into his system, he flicked the butt away and cursed himself for agreeing to help Dregan—no matter how much in the way of reciprocation he had milked the big man for.

  He took out the pack and, seeing how few were left, cursed Dregan for allowing him to keep sweetening the pot to the point that it had been impossible to decline this little recon job.

  Turning his attention to the job at hand, he put the binoculars to his face and though as repetitious as the routine had become, scanned the house from top to bottom, starting at the right and finishing off at the breezeway. Then he walked the binoculars over the big red barn and still found nothing out of the ordinary. Lastly, he glassed the turn-around in front of the house, following the rutted dirt road all the way to the State Route, and feeling a bit like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, started humming I Got You Babe, swaying to an imaginary backbeat. Fearing he was getting a touch of hypothermia, he started into another set of seated calisthenics. Partway through his routine of stretching and rocking, he had an epiphany. His adrenaline surged and the warmth spread to his limbs as he calculated how many CDs and the newfangled digital downloads of Cleo’s Calisthenics he would need to sell to become rich. To sock away a million dollars for a rainy day. The euphoria dissipated as fast as the thought had come when he remembered the world would never be the same. That he’d never have the feeling again of standing up from the poker table in the middle of a crowded casino and crowing about his latest win also pissed him off. It was the only time he felt comfortable in his own skin. And now, thanks to some egghead releasing a little microbial bug aptly named Omega, he would never again attain that level of bliss.

  “Fuck you, God. And fuck you, Dregan.” He rattled out another cigarette and—not giving a shit if he was made by the old couple—struck a match and puffed away on the stale and crumpled thing until a brilliant red cherry shone at its tip.

  ***

  “Ray,” called Helen from somewhere on the second floor, her voice just above a whisper as if whoever it was freezing their buns off in the back forty could actually hear across the distance, through the walls and over the sporadic patter of falling snow, and no doubt the chattering of their own teeth.

  “Yes, dear. What is it?” he called back in a normal voice. He lovingly ran a lightly oiled rag over the M4 carbine he had just reassembled, being careful to give all of the metal parts a final pass. Finished, he inserted a loaded thirty-round magazine into the well and clicked it home. Expecting to have already heard some kind of reply from Helen, he looked up at the ceiling and squinted his eyes as if he had some kind of X-ray vision. And after decades of marriage, in a way, he did. He imagined her a dozen feet above the kitchen sink and sitting on her sewing chair in the spare room that overlooked the back yard. She would be in front of the window, her elbows on the sill and her rounded chin perched on the heels of her upturned hands. “What do you see now?” he asked, impatiently this time.

  Ray had been partially right in his assumptions. A dozen feet above the kitchen sink in the spare room Helen was indeed sitting in her sewing chair by the window that overlooked the back yard and sloping pasture beyond. However, her chin wasn’t cradled by her palms. Her liver-spotted hands were wrapped around the pair of military-issue field glasses that were trained on the distant tree line. Finished there, she swept them left-to-right down the gently sloping hill. Gave the whip-like river a onceover, then settled the optics on the brambles.

  “Our watcher is smoking with impunity now,” she called downstairs.

  “Not a very good watcher, then.” Ray rose from his chair and stowed one of the carbines, locked and loaded, behind the oddly shaped door to a small storage cubby under the stair landing. The second M4 he hung by its sling on a peg and replaced his moth-eaten Navy pea coat over top of it. Carbine number three was also an M4. It was painted in a tan camouflage scheme and was outfitted to the nines with doo dads. It had an extremely powerful optic on the top rail and sported a front grip complete with a rubberized thumb switch for the tactical light riding next to the slender tan suppressor at the end of the stubby barrel.

  “I’m coming, Helen.” Ray slung the rifle over his shoulder and made his way to the stairs. Gripping the bannister rail, worn smooth from thousands upon thousands of trips up and down, he took them slowly one at a time. A little winded, he made the landing and, without pause, turned the bend and tackled the next rise. Rosy cheeked and puffing, Ray made the second-floor two minutes after starting his ascent.

  After catching his breath at the stair’s summit, Ray took a few strides down the hall and entered the room unannounced. Instantly he was hit by the smell of gun oil and cordite and, underlying those familiar odors, thanks to Helen and her penchant for keeping in the nearby closet every coat, cape, and shawl she had ever owned, the ever-present chemical stench of mothballs.

  Scrunching his nose, Ray took in the room. The place looked like a military surplus store, not an old woman’s crafts room. He shook his head, amazed, because he didn’t recall them hauling all of the gear up the stairs by themselves. However, the dozens of harrowing trips they had made to the towns and abandoned roadblocks south and east of here, and the faces of the dead men and women soldiers they had taken the gear from, were indelibly etched in his memory. Adrenaline had been their friend those first few days and weeks. Like squirrels getting squared away for winter, they had policed up everything they could, figuring the weapons would be better for protection than the old shotgun and thirty-ought-six rifle. And when the government went dark, and no UN vehicles showed up like the Wackadoos were predicting, Ray’s gambit was validated in his eyes.

  Propped up in one corner were a half-dozen nearly new black rifles, mostly M4s. Lying on the floor in front of the door to Helen’s mothball-scented closet was an identical pair of black plastic hard-sided cases. Roughly four feet long and one across, the gun cases thick as a big-city phone book were filled with foam padding and contained high-dollar sniper rifles. The Leupold scopes alone, Ray guessed, once cost the taxpayers a thousand dollars or more. The whole ball of wax—two guns, two scopes, and the Pelican cases—probably cost more than a week-long Caribbean cruise for two and the accompanying bar tab.

  “So the dummy is smoking now,” Ray said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Yep,” said Helen. “Chain-smoking ... lighting the new off the old.”

  “Woulda got shot by my lieutenant if I’d have pulled that crap,” said Ray, shaking his head. “Either that or the Chinese or North Koreans woulda done it for him.”

  Helen relinquished her chair and binoculars and, once Ray sat down, hovered over his right shoulder as he trained them out the window.

  “If w
e can see him,” she said, “what makes you think he can’t see us?”

  “Because the room is dark, Helen. And I’m sure he ... or she, has some kind of sunglasses on to combat the glare.”

  “What do you reckon he’s doing out there?”

  “Watching the road for Dregan. Probably has orders to let him know if the others come calling.”

  “We haven’t done anything to make him suspicious.” Helen looked out the window, squinting. She said, “Should we bring that boy in and tell him the rest of what Brook told us?”

  “No, Helen. We don’t know how many Brook and her gang are.” Ray dropped the field glasses to his lap. Fixed his gaze on Helen. “My gut’s been telling me that rage is clouding that poor man’s judgment. Furthermore, we really don’t know who else that young woman is rubbing elbows with.”

  Helen stood and paced the room. The boards underfoot creaked as she wound her way between mounds of tan-colored MRE packages and dark green ammo cans and military issue backpacks stuffed with all manner of gear.

  “For all intents and purposes, we are Switzerland,” Ray reminded her. He rubbed his eyes where the binoculars had been pressing against them. “Information is king, here, Helen. All we have to do is remain neutral and guard our hearth and home like we have been since those things started roaming around here. We do that and we will hold all of the cards if ... or when we have to choose sides.”

  Helen harumphed. She said, “I still think that young lady was being truthful.”

  “Everyone is trying to survive this thing,” he reminded her. “Seems reasonable there were details she might have been holding back.”

  “And that’s exactly what we’re doing to Dregan,” Helen conceded.

  “Can’t be helped.” Ray removed his red felt hat and ran a hand through his closely cropped silver hair.

  She sighed and began leafing through the MRE packets, reading the labels. “Well then, Ray. What do you want for dinner?”

  Ray said nothing. His mind was screaming Switzerland while his every instinct was telling him to be proactive.

  “Surprise me, hon,” he said, sensing her presence at his back. “I’m going to stay right here and do some thinking.”

  Helen nodded and squeezed his shoulder. She thought: You’re just avoiding the stairs. But she said, “Come on down when you’re ready.” As an afterthought, she paused in the doorway and added, “Leave the door open when you come down so that the gunpowder smell dissipates.”

  Beneath the binoculars, Ray’s lips curled into a smile. So says the mothball queen.

  Chapter 37

  Cade reversed the Mack truck off the bodies it had come to rest upon. Then, intent on clearing a path through the twice-dead Zs, he let the truck roll slowly forward until he heard the hollow thunk of the bent plow making contact with flesh and bone. Feeling the resistance of Lord knows how many pounds of frigid meat building against the truck’s forward momentum, he gave it more pedal.

  In his wing mirror, he saw the diesel exhaust hanging heavy over the road. Dropping his gaze lower where the words OBJECTS IN THIS MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY MAY APPEAR were etched, he couldn’t help but see the reddish-black ribbon of polished snow unfurling at his six. At first, as the plow truck picked up speed, the limp arms and legs of the fallen Zs flailed and banged into the curved metal blade, creating a morbid cadence that set his teeth to singing. Once enough of them were concentrated up front and the truck gained momentum, the discordant clanging stopped and the packed drift of dead meat simply slid along the road, emitting an awful squelching noise not unlike that of calloused fingers rubbing corduroy. What a sight this Zamboni of death must be to whoever had eyes on it at the moment, thought Cade as the transmission downshifted and there was a grunt from the hard-working power plant.

  “Leaving a lot of chum in your wake,” said Duncan over the two-way. “You should see it from our vantage.”

  “Saw it from mine,” Cade said.

  Thinking out loud, Duncan keyed the Talk button and shared with everyone. “Sure puts the blood trails in Nam to shame.”

  Ignoring the morbid observation, Cade flicked his gaze at the burned-out town off to his right. He still couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on him. Earlier, at the top of the hill overlooking Huntsville, he had been expecting shots to be fired their way but none came. Then the entire time they were exposed on the road culling the dead so they wouldn’t have a hundred crawlers to deal with after the thaw, he had been anticipating the sonic crackle of hot lead cutting the air around them. And now, even after getting through all of that unscathed, as he was clearing a swath through the dead and the convoy began picking up speed, he half-expected to see a group of marauders roaring toward them from Huntsville as it passed on their right.

  Shifting his gaze back to the road ahead, Cade keyed the two-way. “Just in case we’ve got breathers watching us, I want to use the plows as a rolling shield for the SUVs. Jamie and Daymon … I want you both to get ahead of Taryn’s truck. Lev and Taryn … once they’re in, you two slip right a little and tighten up the formation. Grills to bumpers until Huntsville is behind us.” There were no replies back. Just actions taken. Flicking his eyes intermittently to the side mirror, Cade watched as the truck Lev was driving slowed and a gap was created between it and Taryn’s. Then, slowly, like fighter planes escorting a bombing sortie, the smaller SUVs passed Lev’s plow truck and tucked in tight behind Taryn’s plow. And it wasn’t until they had driven another half a mile in this tight grouping and the gradual sweeping left-to-right turn was behind them did the feeling of being watched go away.

  Suddenly neglectful of radio silence, Duncan said, “Was everyone else’s butt puckered as tight as mine through all that?”

  “If I’d have had a piece of coal up there, I’d be shitting diamonds later,” Taryn replied. “Felt like I was being watched on the hill, for sure. Same creepy sensation I felt twenty-four-seven at the airport with old Dickless eye-humping me.”

  “Should have said something to somebody,” Cade said, as the dull gray reservoir and bordering picket of snow-dusted dogwoods drifted by on the right. “’Trust your gut always’ is what my old friend Desantos preached.”

  She asked, “Did you feel it, too?”

  Cade said, “Of course I did. But I didn’t want to distract you and the others from the task at hand. So from now on, just act on the assumption that we are all being watched whenever we’re outside the wire.”

  “Roger that,” replied Taryn, having adopted Cade’s vernacular, if not the ability to process at all times what her sixth sense was telling her.

  In the lead vehicle, Cade put the radio aside and cracked a half-smile. Though they had been in constant peril and faced death on a daily basis, the small band of survivors had continually stared it down. Day-by-day they were becoming less of a frayed rope—only as strong as its weakest strand—and more of a cohesive unit, able to act without having to be micromanaged, as evidenced by Wilson, the least tactically seasoned of them, acting without instruction on two separate occasions so far.

  Cade cast his gaze right, where on the reservoir’s choppy surface, lolling and straining against their lines, he spotted three familiar sailboats staggered a few yards apart and at anchor a good distance from shore. The trio of angular bows were all pointed due east and nothing moved above deck on any of them. Judging by the razor-sharp shadows cast across their decks by main masts and the upper portion of their cabins, Cade deduced that the layer of snow there was untracked. And further pointing toward the likelihood there were no survivors aboard, like a shark’s unblinking eyes, the oval portholes on all three vessels were darkened and there was no signs of movement below decks. Just seeing the vessels produced a sharp pang in his gut, for weeks ago on a trip from the compound to Morgan County Airport, from his seat in the DHS Black Hawk, he had witnessed a group of gleeful survivors waving at him from these same uninhabited teakwood decks.

  Now, less than a minute since leaving Huntsville and the
feeling of impending doom behind, he was experiencing emotions that normally would stay stuffed deep down in the back of his brain until he was wheels down and home in his family’s loving embrace. Maybe the time away from his Delta brothers was making him go soft again? Though the slim Thuraya sat-phone was tucked out of sight inside a pocket, he could still sense the missed call light strobing in there like a lonesome heartbeat he imagined was pounding a message in Morse from Major Freda Nash saying: “Come back into the fold, Wyatt. I need you. The team needs you. Your country needs you.” Country, he thought, looking in the passenger side mirror at a rapidly shrinking Huntsville. Not much of it left to fight for.

  The reservoir’s wind-rippled waters slipped behind and soon Cade could only see the road and snow-flocked trees in his wing mirrors. The plow kept scraping the road ahead free of snow and the spreader continued dropping the sand-gravel mixture on the newly cleared asphalt; soon a natural slot appeared in the mountains ahead. He gently eased up on the gas pedal and pulled over, stopping adjacent to another large contingent of inanimate dead.

  Keying the radio, he said, “Knock yourself out, Kids.” He put the truck in Park, jumped from the cab and, employing the Gerber, dropped every single Z in his general vicinity with a swift jab to the eye. By the time the others had dismounted and come forward, a couple of dozen former humans were dead again and hopefully the souls of who they used to be were going in the correct direction for a happy rendezvous with those preceding them in death.

  Cade walked toward Daymon, Jamie, and Lev, who were jawing with the Kids, and in passing said, “You all take care of rest of the dead while me and Old Man chain up the SUVs.”