Judging by the mess inside the store, Cade figured Rhonda was all sold out on both of the advertised items. In fact, all he could see from his seat in the SUV through the windowless storefront were emptied shelves and a single cadaver standing in the lane designated Express Checkout. But things were going slow for this one. Like the one at the Shell station, it was charred black as night and rooted in place and, as if it knew something Cade did not, its lips curled back over its teeth to reveal an evil, ivory-hued grin.
Wasn’t that the truth about all of humanity? Cade thought as the Land Cruiser turned a left. We were all in effect the worm and little did we know that the hook called Omega was headed our way.
***
In the five minutes it took the group to get from downtown to the entrance to the peninsula called Cemetery Point, as if God had grown tired of punishing them with drab hues of gray and frequent gusts of biting wind, the sun had broken through the clouds and the air had grown calm.
The single swinging gate, presumably used to block off vehicular access to both the Cemetery Point Marina and Huntsville Cemetery during off hours, was hanging wide open. Behind the useless gate and STOP sign was a lonely toll collection station. The way it had been abandoned, with its metal mesh window guards hinged up and battened in place, gave the impression that the last person manning it had no intention of ever returning.
Wary of there being tire-damaging spikes under the snow, Duncan stopped just short of the entry and, under Daymon’s watchful gaze, put the SUV into Park. He exited the Land Cruiser, hustled forward and kicked at the snow, finding nothing. On his way back, he paused for a second and ran his gaze over the scraps of paper that covered every square inch of the little one-person shack. They all contained desperate and very personal messages from people looking to reunite with missing loved ones. Scrawled big and bold in black Sharpie on one weather-beaten paper plate was a particularly poignant message. It read: JOE HUSTED WAS HERE 7-29 LOOKING FOR VALERIE HUSTED. SOMEHOW I MISSED YOU! LOVE YOU HONEY! LEFT FOR JACKSON HOLE 8-1. PS - MY MOM DID NOT PULL THROUGH. Before moving on, he read another note written in old folks’ cursive on a piece of cardboard ripped from a box of Pampers. It was lengthy and penned by a mother named Sue Adler who revealed she was camping in her Volvo in a parking lot nearby. After detailing her escape from Ogden, she expressed her dismay that not one other Adler family member was here upon her arrival. She ended with a plea for whoever read her note that knew her to come and search her out. It was signed with a flourish and a bevy of X’s and O’s. There was no date on the one-sided correspondence, nor was there evidence suggestive of how it had turned out for the anonymous lady called Sue Adler.
When Duncan returned to the idling SUV, he was heavy of heart and lacking the energy to proceed. He took his seat behind the wheel and sighed.
Cade said, “Checking for spike strips?”
“Yep,” Duncan drawled. “Found more than I was looking for.”
“They’re usually facing out on the exit side,” proffered Daymon.
“An ounce of prevention ...” Duncan replied, sounding tired.
Swinging wide right and with the sound of snow squelching under tires, both vehicles left the guard shack behind. A hundred feet beyond the shack on the right side was a matching pair of institutional-sized dumpsters. They were brimming with all manner of trash and, taking dumpster diving to a new level, a moldering corpse that had been stuffed in head first with its horribly twisted legs sticking skyward.
“Damn,” Daymon said. “Someone threw out a perfectly good white guy.”
Chuckling, Duncan swung his gaze forward and said, “It’s not like the cemetery is all the way across town.”
***
From his seat in the 4Runner, Wilson noticed the macabre sight passing by outside his window. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all,” he said, shaking his head.
Lev leaned between the front seats and pointed out the patchwork of colorful nylon tents through the smattering of trees to their left. There were too many to count and looked to have been set up some time ago among the trees near the reservoir’s edge. He said, “That’s some desperation right there ... camping damn near inside a cemetery.”
“No, that’s desperation there,” Jamie said, pointing to an old maroon Volvo wagon stuffed to the gills with half a house worth of belongings. The side windows had been shored up with framed pictures of a large family posing together in happier times. Looked to her like a couple and what appeared to be their three adult daughters. And speaking to the normalcy bias that had been in play when the dead began to walk and led to many a person’s downfall, brown leaves of long dead houseplants pushed up against the car’s long side windows, filling in the gaps between the photos. “Treated the event like a simple cross-country move ... and paid the price for it.”
“That could have been me and Sash if Mom hadn’t been flying that day,” Wilson said, his eyes glued to the overloaded car. “Hell, we even had a Volvo ... and an apartment full of pictures and plants.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jamie said, putting her hand on his shoulder. Next to her, Lev was shaking his head and mouthing, “Don’t dredge it up.”
“It’s OK,” Wilson said. “I’ve let go of the idea she survived her layover and is out there looking for us. Sasha, on the other hand ... when Jenkins took off to find Pauline, she wouldn’t leave the idea of us looking for Mom alone.”
“I won’t mention it again,” Jamie said. “Around you or her.”
Wilson turned forward. Saw Taryn’s chest heaving. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, falling onto her parka and sliding off the Scotchgard-treated fabric.
She saw him eyeing her and immediately started the silent side-to-side headshake Wilson knew to mean she wanted her space.
***
Duncan saw the Volvo as soon as they passed the dumpsters. He instantly put two and two together, but said nothing. He’d already said a prayer for Sue Adler and her outcome and considered it out of his hands now. No reason to mention her plight and drag everyone else into his deepening emotional abyss. So he drove on without slowing. Without casting so much as a second glance at the Volvo, he wheeled the Land Cruiser along a gently curling drive that was choked with abandoned vehicles and trash and corpses, the latter both fallen and upright. To Duncan, who was old enough to remember seeing footage of the Woodstock Music Festival on TV, it looked like the aftermath of that orgy of drugs, drinking, and debauchery. Had he not been eyeing a career in the military at the time, he probably would have made the trek. Hell, who wouldn’t have liked to spend a weekend awash in booze and get to see Jimi and Janis and one of his all-time favorite bands, CCR, live and in person?
***
When the two Toyotas finally passed through the yawning gates and onto the cemetery’s hallowed ground, it was clear that the stiff wind gusts that blew through earlier had toppled all but a handful of the immobilized flesh-eaters. The tops of the tombstones had also been scoured of their crowns of snow and the boats out on the water were now bobbing aimlessly, their anchor lines no longer taut.
Duncan drove deeper into the graveyard and parked the Land Cruiser beside the forlorn-looking hearse. He killed the engine and craned back, looking at Cade. “What now, Boss?”
“We snuff them all,” Cade said, no remorse in his voice.
“I’m down,” Daymon said. He dug his whetstone from a pocket and passed it over Kindness’s long curved blade. Examining the nicks and slight waves in the metal, he added, “I’m going to have to get a hatchet like Jamie’s ... for when this girl gives up the ghost.”
“Nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned lock blade like mine or some kind of a dagger like Cade’s,” Duncan said over the steady schwicking sound of Daymon applying a fresh edge to his blade.
Cade made no reply. He was consulting the barometer on his Suunto and hoping that Mother Nature wasn’t getting ready to edge Glenda’s parting words to the realm of prophecy. The doors opening his cue, he follo
wed suit and once outside got the blood flowing back into his gimpy ankle with a quick set of jumping-jacks, followed by a few squat-lunges—all of which hurt more than they seemed to help.
Taryn rolled up in the 4Runner and parked adjacent to the Land Cruiser, the open grave and hearse taking up the space between the two.
Duncan and Daymon were already standing beside the open grave and looking down on the half-dozen Zs trapped there. Nearby was a snow-covered dirt mound, flashes of the green tarp covering it showing around the edges. All that remained of what once was a spray of sympathy flowers awaiting the unfinished ceremony were scattered stems and a bare wire stand lying on its side and partially covered with snow.
Cade emerged from behind the hearse and waved the occupants of the 4Runner over. After a brief huddle during which everyone had a say in where and with whom they wanted to start, they paired up and fanned out to all four points of the compass.
Daymon started on the southwest tip of the peninsula near where the majority of the dead had become mired.
Duncan and Cade cleared the inner shore of dead, starting south of the hearse and working their way north by east to an eventual rendezvous with Jamie and Lev, who were culling the dead twenty yards east, and on a mirror image tangent that also had them moving north by east.
Starting in the center of the cemetery near the vehicles, Taryn and Wilson picked their way among the tombstone maze. With no real method to their madness, they walked a counterclockwise spiral out from the hearse, kneeling next to each prostrate form. The routine was always the same. First locate the head and clear the snow from the face. Next, pierce the brain through the eye socket until hearing the telltale crunch of bone losing to steel. Wash, rinse, repeat.
“What do you think, Wil?” Taryn asked, taking a break to rub her sore shoulder. “Are we going to be able to appease Cade and get our five hundred kills before nightfall?”
“I figure I’m already a third of the way there.”
“Sorry I asked,” she said. “Let me rephrase that. Do you think we’ll kill enough of these things to even make a difference before it warms up? Or are we just spinning our wheels here?”
He went to one knee and plunged his blade to the hilt into the eye socket of a terribly emaciated first-turn. Without a word nor rising to move, he pivoted to his right and repeated the motion, giving a child-sized Z the sweet mercy of final death. All in all, he put down four former fellow human beings in less time than it took for him to fulfill a drive-thru order at his last job. Fast Burger this was not. He was dealing death on a grand scale, and with every thrust of cold steel a little part of him died. He took a halfhearted swipe with the blade on some grass poking up through the snow. Eyes downcast, he said, “Wanna know the truth?”
About to deliver a coup de gras, Taryn’s hand stopped in mid-air. “Yes,” she said. “The honest to goodness truth. Lay it on me.”
A bar of sunlight lanced down, painting a wide swath of land near the water’s edge a brilliant saffron yellow.
Wilson drew a deep breath. Exhaled and said, “I think we’re just delaying the inevitable.”
She finished the motion, stroking her blade deep into a first turn’s brain. “Death, or undeath?”
“Doesn’t matter. Either way we lose each other.”
A wild whoop carried from somewhere beyond their parked SUVs.
“Daymon’s going crazy,” Taryn said.
“Going? said Wilson, incredulous. “He’s got a shit ton of issues.”
“Better be careful where you cast your stones, Wilson. I think we’re all in danger of losing some of our humanity.”
The incredibly vivid image of a young couple, their heads caved in and liquid halos spreading on the carpet around them, flashed before Wilson’s eyes. He smelled the blood, metallic and imparting a coppery tang on his tongue. He released his grip on the female rotter’s neck. Looked the waifish young thing straight in its putrefying face. Lost himself staring into the darkened sockets.
“What is it?” Taryn asked, her voice gone soft, every syllable weighted with concern.
“I can’t help but think for every one of these things I’ve killed today there’s potentially a million more of them still roaming around out there.” He crushed down his boonie hat only so that he could covertly swipe away some tears. He regarded her with red-rimmed eyes and then went on. “That’s like two hundred and fifty million walking dead, Taryn. It makes me tired even thinking about it.”
She said nothing. Went about putting another five rotters out of their misery.
Wilson turned in place. A slow circle, taking in the corpse-dotted landscape. He faced her and said, “That’s what I meant by inevitable. The odds stacked against us are astronomical.”
“We could move to somewhere that’s cold all the time. What about Antarctica?”
Wilson cleaned his knife by stabbing it into the hard soil a few times and then finished the job by wiping the muddy blade on the dead girl’s tattered tank top. “That’s not living,” he finally said, slipping the knife into a pocket. “We’re done here.”
Taryn watched him walk away, not quite sure in which context he meant the words to be taken. Cade walked up a second later and strangely enough uttered the same three words to her.
She cleaned her knife in the same manner as Wilson had and then struck out towards the vehicles, following the footsteps in the snow. Halfway there the wind picked up and a gust from the east slammed her from the side, slowing her gait momentarily. She put her head down, thrust her hands in her pockets and forged ahead. As she neared the vehicles and was deep in thought about her place in the cosmic order of things, suddenly from out of the blue—shockingly similar to the skull tattoos gracing her arms—she began seeing in her mind’s eye the gaunt and hollow-eyed faces of the infected that she had just granted exit from this world. Only these visions visiting her without warning weren’t a harmless facsimile of death like those which she had purposefully inked into her skin. Borne of parchment-thin skin drawn tight over angular bone, the indicting sneers she was imagining represented a real and final passage from this world and would no doubt haunt her for as long as she lived.
Chapter 47
The sunset was a sight to behold as the two SUVs pulled sharp U-turns and headed east back into Huntsville.
In the rearview, Duncan watched the withdrawing clouds go from burnt orange to bright red. The transformation transpired in just a matter of seconds and, as the cemetery gates fell quickly behind and his attention was drawn to the houses on the hill, he saw reflected in the windows there those same clouds abruptly turn a deep purple hue that he instantly interpreted as an ominous portent of things to come.
Physically and mentally tired, Duncan was easily mesmerized by the scattered clusters of skeletal trees and sooty light standards flicking by in the waning light. Sitting where they had been abandoned lining the streets shooting off of Main Street were the hulks of dozens of cars, windowless and sitting on pancaked rims. Here and there, zombies that had been present when the wind-driven fire jumped from Eden to Huntsville lay in the snow, their upthrust gnarled and blackened appendages a sharp contrast to the early season snowfall now covering the ground.
Main Street took them back past Dave’s and Rhonda’s and the long wooden bar with nobody bellied up to it. Instead of turning south and retracing their route to 39, Duncan held the wheel straight and continued east towards Glenda’s house on the hill, the sky show at their backs still reflected in the windows and lighting it like a beacon. Three blocks removed from the business core, Main started a steady uphill climb. More trees seemed to have been spared on the terrace-like east-end of town.
“Stop here,” Daymon said, an unusual sense of urgency in his tone.
The two-vehicle convoy stopped dead center of an intersection four blocks east of the L-shaped commercial building. Daymon stepped out and left his door hanging open. He strode quickly to the northeast corner of the four-way intersection and went to bent knee bes
ide a two-door compact burnt to nothing but a shell and resting low to the ground on warped black rims. And resembling a tortilla left for too long in a hot pan, its once-white paint was bubbled in places and charred brown and black all over. In front of the car were four pallid corpses, two female adults and two kids, one of each sex. The summer attire—tattered shorts and tank tops and T-shirts—still clinging to the gaunt forms barely hid the roadmap of welts and open sores whose decomposition had been temporarily halted. And suggestive of many weeks spent roaming the countryside hunting the living, their feet were bare, the pads nearly worn down to bone.
Leaving Kindness in her scabbard, Daymon grabbed the long greasy locks of one of the Omega-affected women and turned its head until the death mask was squared up with him. He took a folding knife from his parka, flicked it open with a thumb, and started to probe one of the thing’s once-blue eyes with its angled tip.
The soft orb gave way immediately, releasing a congealed mess of viscous fluid that seemed just south of its freezing point. The other eye—as he had noticed previously from his seat in the SUV as they drew near—was already punctured, the fluid definitely frozen. The wound there, when compared with the one from his knife point, was almost nonexistent. It was as if something very thin and with enough length to it to reach the brain had been thrust in quickly and extracted, leaving behind a tiny tell-tale puncture mark. But as liquid was wont to do, it always found a point of least resistance, and whatever the fluid contained in the human eye was called, this stuff had done just that. It looked to have leaked out in a slow trickle from the entry wound and then frozen dark and jagged, like a Mike Tyson tattoo, mostly around the outer eye socket.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Page 28