“That’s the way you do it on the MTV,” Duncan said to himself, riffing a little Dire Straits as he witnessed Taryn back up and nose her UDOT plow truck against the seam where the stacked Conex containers abutted the mountain.
Heated, Daymon had already forgotten about Lev and was down from the truck and loping towards Duncan, who was standing hands on hips equidistant between the pile of dead and the parked SUVs. Almost to a flat-out run, his long legs and arms pumping, Daymon only made it halfway across the twenty-foot-wide river of slush and guts left by the passing plows before his boots lost traction and the rug was pulled from under him. He was airborne briefly and then his tailbone and elbows met the unforgiving gore-coated asphalt.
Duncan hustled toward the fallen man, talking in soothing tones the entire way. “I didn’t time the body delivery right, Daymon. Please accept my apology … consider this an immediate Tenth Step amends.”
Now Duncan was the one with his hands in the air in full surrender mode as Daymon—moving slowly, like a drunk at last call—managed to clumsily work his way back to standing.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Daymon said, slicking human detritus from his pants with his bare hands.
Duncan stopped his advance two full paces into the debris field. He looked down, saw the reddish-brown sludge lapping over the toes of his boots, and burst into laughter, which proved to be as infectious as the soup they were standing in when Daymon—realizing the absurdity of the situation—threw his sticky hands skyward and joined in himself.
Unaware of how close Duncan and Daymon had been from coming to blows, Lev cast a glance at the two. Standing in the morass and laughing like a couple of fools was a far cry from what he was expecting after seeing the rage on the younger man’s face. Shrugging, he reversed and oriented the blade so it was aimed directly at the dead. He said a prayer for the men, women, and children all tangled up there. Then he tromped the pedal and winced as the first thud of metal meeting flesh resonated through the truck’s frame. Singing the Star Spangled Banner loudly enough to mask the macabre sounds, he went about the grim task of plowing hundreds of bodies off the road and to the bottom of Ogden Canyon.
***
Twenty minutes after scraping every corpse and severed limb and scrap of flesh and bone off the road’s edge, Lev was parking his truck sidelong against the pair of Conex containers now pushed back in place and hanging a foot or so over the cliff’s edge. He killed the engine and set the brake. Then, just as Cade and Taryn had done before him, he broke the key off in the ignition, reached under the dash and sawed through the wires with his Kershaw’s serrated edge.
Finished disabling the truck mechanically and electrically, he slid across the seat and let himself out through the passenger door.
Mission accomplished.
He walked a dozen steps away from the truck, drew his Sig Sauer P226, and to put the cherry on the sundae, methodically shot flat all ten of the truck’s monstrous tires.
Chapter 42
Peter was sitting on a chair pulled in from the dining room and warming his hands by the fireplace. The red flicker thrown off the glowing logs had the cream-colored walls in the front living room looking like the inside of a forge, yet, save for a semicircle ranging just a few feet out from the tiled hearth, the rest of the house was, as he had heard his dad say more than once since summer had abruptly turned to fall, ‘as cold as a witch’s tit.’ In fact, it was so cold that when he exhaled he could clearly see his breath and, though he’d been inside for some time, he was still fully clothed and wearing his boots laced up tight, a practice that had become mandatory for everyone in the Dregan family since the dead things began to walk.
With the early evening light filtering in through the horizontal blinds not enough to read by, and television and portable devices a luxury of the not-too-distant past, Peter passed the time staring out the big picture window beside the fireplace.
In the field beyond the cement barriers that had been placed there some time after the outbreak were the same four roamers that had wandered in from the State Route the day before. At first, watching them dodder around the field, tripping over molehills and at times each other in reaction to engine sounds and voices carrying over the wall had provided Peter a little entertainment. He had especially liked watching them trudge along just outside the barrier, pausing now and then to scrabble futilely at its rough, textured surface. But now, standing still as store mannequins, having not moved for hours, all they did was make the young Dregan boy wonder about who they had been ... before.
The one among the four he found himself studying most was a young boy dressed in a shirt gone reddish black with blood congealed and dried long ago. Missing his left forearm and a majority of the skin and muscle near the soft underside of his jaw, the undead kid was frozen in place with a perpetual horrific sneer on his face. In his mind, Peter decided that the boy and trio of adult dead out there with him were somehow related. Why else would they stick together? He took his eyes off the biters and regarded the mesmerizing flames and soon his mind had drifted off to thoughts of his mom and sister. He could smell his mom’s perfume, and for a second Lena was haranguing him to get ready for church, which he kind of enjoyed, because he was guaranteed to see a number of his friends from school there. Suddenly he realized they were all gone, Mom, Lena, and those friends and, just like that, as vividly as if he was watching a movie, he was reliving that last normal day.
Grass was swatting his fatigue pants as he sprinted through the soon-to-be-built subdivision near his home. He was leaping over freshly poured concrete foundations, wearing his camouflage and goggles and in the middle of a rowdy game of airsoft when the passenger jet screamed so low overhead that he saw the big black wheels and then, distinctly, the desperate passengers beating on the oval windows. He saw their white palms and splayed out fingers, then his breath was stolen by the explosion and he was thrown aside, losing his expensive airsoft gun.
The right side of his face was warm and, from where he was lying, flat on his back surrounded by brittle grass, he saw a fireball rising quickly over the end of the nearby airport. When he finally got to his feet, he was aware of only two things. There was a grassfire sweeping his way from the direction of the crash. And somewhere in the grass, about to be burned to death, his best friend, Liam, was screaming for help. It was a shrill scream, kind of like what you’d hear from a five-year-old girl who had seen a snake, he would later tell his dad.
Ignoring the flames, he ran forward to help Liam, whom he assumed had been hit by a part of the plane, only to come across the first biter (before anyone in his family had started calling them that) he had ever laid eyes on. It was wearing what looked like a fireman or ambulance driver’s uniform. The uniform was covered with blood and then the snarling blank-eyed thing came up with a mouthful of guts. Slick and yellowish white. Then more screaming and kicking and blood. And the blood—Liam’s blood—was turning the dry bed of grass and tiny clods of dirt from brown to almost black.
The second explosion warmed his face full on and he took one last look at Liam, who was beyond help. Even a twelve-year-old could see that. Liam’s screaming stopped abruptly and Peter heard other friends calling his name.
“Peter”—there was laughter—“caught you daydreaming,” his dad said. “If you would have leaned over any further I’d be scraping bits of your burnt face off the hot glass there.”
After yawning wide, Peter flicked his eyes to the field. The four dead things were still there, the boy still gaping open-mouthed at the house. The snow hadn’t melted and there was no burning wreckage anywhere to be seen. He put a hand on his right cheek and it was hot. In fact, he felt like a chicken that had become stuck in one spot on a rotisserie, the entire right side of his body, clothes and all, hot to the touch.
“Why don’t you follow the heat upstairs,” Dregan said. “Should be good sleeping up there tonight.”
Peter protested.
“I have associates coming over. You c
an’t be downstairs when they’re here.”
As soon as the order was issued, the front door was rattled by three dull thuds.
Dregan shot Peter a serious look. “Those were snowballs, I’m guessing. Go on now.” He nodded towards the stairs. “I have to let the ladder down.”
Peter rose and was halfway up the stairs when the rasping and wheezing indicative of another of his dad’s coughing fits filled the front room. Soon it was echoing up the stairwell and, figuring he might be called down to help with the ladder, he stopped where he was, three stairs from the top, and sat down out of sight. A few seconds passed and more snowballs pelted the door. There was an awful hawking sound and in his mind’s eye he saw his dad filling up the handkerchief he kept in a pocket with bloody spit and boogers. Finally his dad shouted, “Keep your shorts on ... will ya?” There was more spitting and nose blowing then Peter heard the door open followed by distant voices, all belonging to men, and none of them familiar. A tick after the squeaky hinges went silent, his question was answered by the distinctive rattle and clatter of the extension ladder being lowered to the ground.
But Peter didn’t heed his dad’s orders. Instead, he sat there while conscience and curiosity engaged in all-out war, the former screaming at him to go upstairs, while the latter, seductive temptress that she was, whispered in his ear, trying to convince him to stay hidden and eavesdrop on the clandestine meeting. In the end—aided by the arrival of someone whose voice he knew all too well—curiosity’s sweet whisperings won out.
Peter heard his dad, in a voice made hoarse from coughing, welcome the men into his home and offer them seats on the couch. A short while later there came the sound of more footsteps coming up the ladder and then another round of greetings and introductions followed by the discordant screech of chairs being dragged across the dining room floor. The door slammed shut and a couple more minutes of small talk ensued before finally the serious negotiations got underway.
Peter’s stomach churned as he learned some of the gory details of what his dad and the men downstairs were conspiring to do to Lena’s killers. And though he wanted to stand up and creep to his room and pretend he hadn’t heard a thing, he couldn’t, because a familiar voice now had the floor, and he wanted to hear what his Uncle Henry had to say.
Chapter 43
Two birds with one stone, Cade thought, the second Daymon called ‘shotgun.’ For one, during the downhill creep from the Ogden Canyon blockade, he figured sitting in back of the Land Cruiser where he could stretch out and elevate his bad wheel would go a long ways towards him being useful for the rest of the mission. And two, sitting in back with the chainsaw and the strong odor of oil and fuel wafting toward the headliner was a far cry from what Daymon smelled like after slipping and rolling around in zombie pulp. Besides, Cade thought, smiling inwardly, making Duncan drive and suffer up front with the walking biohazard seemed fitting. After all, it was the perennial prankster’s fault Daymon had lost his cool in the first place. And Cade could see how unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a six-foot-tall pile of dead bodies could do that to a person—especially someone wound as tightly as the former BLM firefighter.
“Oh boy. Am I ever making amends for setting Lev up like that,” Duncan said, holding his nose. “You smell like a bag of assholes left out in the sun for a day.”
Daymon was leaning hard against his shoulder belt. His right hand was braced on the dash against the pull of the downhill grade. “You only got yourself to blame, Old Man. Who were you pranking, anyway?” he said, staring hard at the driver. “Were you busting my balls? Lev’s? Or both ... for an epic effin twofer?”
“Whoever’s were hanging out that needed busting,” Duncan drawled. The Land Cruiser shimmied and bounced as it struck something small and snow-covered in the road. “I’m an equal opportunity button pusher. Y’all should know that by now.”
The two-way radio hissed. “Taryn wants to know if we are going to stop at the same place and take the chains off,” Wilson said, his voice oscillating. “All four of us are getting sick from the vibration.”
“Tell Taryn to slow down a little,” Duncan shot back.
“For her … this is slow,” Wilson said. “She didn’t think it necessary we chain up in the first place.”
Cade stuck one arm between the seats and gestured for Duncan to hand him the radio.
In the same camp as Taryn where the need for chains was concerned, Daymon relaxed and sat back in his seat, arms crossed, content to watch this play itself out.
Cade thumbed the Talk button. “You ever heard the saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Wilson?”
Wilson didn’t respond.
So Cade said, “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best? Does that ring a bell?”
Still nothing.
Cade imagined Lev sitting in back of the 4Runner. Being former Army, the stoic young man no doubt had heard them all. Hell, Cade thought, Lev probably knew some that he had never heard. In the Big Green Machine everything centered around the mission. Everything. And there were procedures put in place to minimize human error. That’s what the tire chains had been for. To minimize human error, of which Cade had been guilty of more than once today. Finished venting, he handed the radio forward to Daymon and told Duncan to pull over where they’d chained up earlier.
Dregan Home, Bear River, Utah
Peter had loitered on the steps, fighting sleep as his uncle and dad droned on. Promises were made and favors traded in. Bartering was happening on a grand scale downstairs, that was for sure. And though Peter had only seen and heard the action on the floor of the now worthless New York Stock Exchange on television—a Nickelodeon short that aired on take your kid to work day, to be exact—what was going on downstairs seemed one and the same, only on a much, much, smaller scale.
The Dregan Home Exchange had been in full swing for some time when a sudden hush fell over the downstairs living room and now only his dad was speaking. Peter noticed that the hard edge to his dad’s voice was gone. Good news. That meant he was no longer in negotiation mode. In fact, Peter hadn’t heard his dad sounding this happy since Lena’s summer wedding.
Suddenly his dad went silent and Peter heard the static of a radio-breaking squelch followed closely by his older brother Gregory’s voice, distant and hollow-sounding. It carried up the stairs, and though he couldn’t make out every word, he caught enough to know Dad was going hunting tomorrow. So he rose from the step, his butt and right leg asleep and just starting to shoot through with pins and needles, and crept to his bedroom, a good deal of planning of his own yet to be done.
Chapter 44
The dead were right where they had left them earlier, laid out beside the road in various death poses, the fluids that had leaked from them now frozen. Cade shifted his gaze from the tangled bodies and shouldered open his door. As he knelt down on the road to take the passenger side chains off the Land Cruiser, he was hit with an odd sense of déjà vu. In an instant, he was back in Iraq, pulling dismounted patrol on a rutted litter-strewn dirt road out in front of a pair of Humvees. Separated by ten to twelve feet each, several of his brothers in arms trailed in a ragged line behind him.
In one of those defining moments of his deployments, he was hit in the face by the viciously sweet stench of death. Sticky and thick, it enveloped him and his squad. Then he saw the source and in a millisecond it was burned into his memory forever. One of those things that could never be unseen. In the ditch next to the road, rotting in the blistering hundred-and-twenty-degree heat, were twenty or thirty corpses, all beheaded, most women and children, their only crime: belonging to the wrong sect and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Strangely enough, that was the first and last time—save for the littlest kids—that he had ever felt sorry for those people over there. Reap what you sow, and all that. They didn’t know peace. And they didn’t seem to aspire to it, either. The callus that formed on his soul that day grew tougher every time a buddy was lost
to a sniper round or scores of fellow soldiers were vaporized by a vehicle-borne IED or artillery shell deviously concealed in an animal carcass beside the road. That callus became a near-bulletproof suit of mental armor as he continued to lose fellow Rangers and Special Forces comrades during his multiple deployments in the ‘Stan. And it wasn’t until Cade made Delta and reunited with Mike ‘Cowboy’ Desantos that he started to experience feeling again. Hearts and minds, and all that jazz, had to be back in play to be a part of a team as compartmentalized as they were. Especially during interrogation sessions. For one got burned out quick always playing the role of bad cop.
While fighting to get the tire chain crammed into the plastic box with the ones already in there, Cade was struck at how in only a few short weeks his mental defenses had returned stronger than ever. Which he figured was a good thing seeing as how the good cop/bad cop routine didn’t work on the dead. And when it came to the living, since all evidence pointed to so very few of them remaining, anyone willing to rob and kill instead of forage and fortify to survive the dead—deserved no mercy whatsoever.
Cade got the remaining tire chain in the box and tried closing it. “Why don’t these things ever go back in as easy as they come out?” Shaking his head, he put a knee on the box and the plastic halves moved together. He added more weight to the endeavor then pitched forward, nearly hitting his head on the nearby running board as two of the corners collapsed with a sharp crack.
Like a foreman on the taxpayer’s dime, Duncan had been standing over Cade and watching him struggle. “Hulk smash,” he said, chuckling.
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