Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  With every muscle in his body afire and the pressure in his ankle growing to the point that it was almost numb, he grabbed his backpack and M4 and, using the grab bar situated behind the doorframe, lowered himself from the truck’s cab.

  He opted to take the front steps instead of trying his luck on the sloped driveway. At the top landing where the snow had been scoured away by heavy traffic, he paused to put his arm through his pack’s other shoulder strap. Sensing movement directly above him, he looked up and caught a tangerine-sized snowball square on the forehead.

  “Good shot,” he whispered to Lev, who was peering down from the veranda and shaking his head, no doubt in disbelief at making the one in a million shot.

  “You looked like you needed a little something to wake you up,” Lev whispered down. “Meet you in the kitchen with a towel.”

  Wiping his face on his sleeve, Cade said, “Don’t bother,” and hiked off to his right around the side of the house. Limping a serpentine path through the bodies, he heard a sound he couldn’t quite place. It was coming from above and to his left and he was hesitant to look up in case a window was open and he was about to catch another snowball.

  Curiosity piqued, he stopped and looked anyway. There was no window open. And no snowballs came raining down. There was, however, a build-up of snow on the gutter. And though he couldn’t be sure, it looked as if the gutter had just arrested a slab that had broken free from raining down on him.

  If he didn’t know any better, he’d have chalked the incident up to a roof warmed by the heat rising off the seven bodies taking refuge underneath it. But he did know better, because the last time he had consulted the thermometer on the Land Cruiser’s trip computer, the temperature was rising and the wind was dying down. Now, two hours later, the air over Huntsville was calm and moist—almost humid. This was one of those swings Glenda had warned him about. Tackle it head on was how he planned on following through with his decision to stay another day.

  Cade was so tired when he got to the short stack of stairs leading into the back of the house that they may as well have been Kilimanjaro. He paused at the door and knocked. A moment passed, and when the door hinged inward, a helping hand was thrust in his face. Noncommittal, he glared at the hand for a second, then tracked his gaze up and saw Lev staring him down.

  “Take it, you martyr,” said the younger man.

  Stealing Duncan’s line, he said, “I’m tired, not dead.”

  “All the same … take my effin hand.”

  And he did. Once in the kitchen, with the boarded backdoor closed and locked, he also accepted a towel and dried the beaded sweat from his face. Then he went about shedding his weapons, pack, and parka. He toweled sweat from his neck and ran the floral scrap of threadbare fabric meant for drying dishes over his skin under his shirt. Using his Gerber, he cut through the silver tape securing the makeshift armor of magazines to his forearms.

  Lev slid a low stool Cade’s way. “Why don’t you take a load off,” he said, putting a hand on Cade’s shoulder.

  Cade sat down heavily. He put an elbow on the marble-topped island and ran his fingers through his damp beard. Eyes narrowing, he settled his gaze on Lev. “You and Duncan been talking?”

  “No. Why?”

  Cade shook his head.

  Taking the nonverbal cue to mean never mind, Lev set his carbine aside and sat on a stool himself. Now eye-to-eye with the operator, he said, “We’ve got a lot of leftovers to get to tomorrow. A thousand or so—”

  “And?” said Cade, cutting him off.

  “It’s going to be fifty degrees out there by sunup. I’m guessing—best case scenario—it’ll be sixty by noon.”

  “Someone get their junior weatherman’s badge?”

  Lev shook his head. “Nope. Couldn’t tell you it was gonna rain until it’s hitting my face. This … this is coming straight out of Oliver’s mouth. He worked the ski hills here for years. Apparently the first snow of the season only gins up season pass sales. It never gets the lifts running. And it never stays around for long. This, he says, will melt by tomorrow afternoon and the valley won’t see any accumulation for another few weeks. Maybe not even until Thanksgiving.”

  “Guess we have to make the most of it while we can,” Cade said. He pushed back from the table. “In the morning, you and Jamie and the kids ought to go back and finish up at the campground.”

  “What are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “I want to give Eden a look see while the Zs are less of a threat. Get a feel for what needs to be done there next time we are blessed with another day like today.”

  “While you’re at it,” Lev said, standing up. “You should send someone up the North Ogden Canyon to make sure the barrier Oliver mentioned hasn’t been compromised. Maybe leave some vehicles shoring it up too.”

  “I was planning on that. Shouldn’t be far from Eden.”

  Lev nodded. “It’s just a couple of miles if my memory serves. By then the roads will be clearing and you won’t need to fix chains. Hell of a plus there. Save time and knuckles all at once.”

  “I’m hitting the rack,” Cade said, a hangdog look on his face. “You have anything for this?” He pointed at his left boot. The laces were taut and the leather wrapping his ankle below where his fatigue pants were bloused was stretched to its limit and seemingly twice the size of the other.

  “Wait one.” Lev disappeared into the gloomy dining room and returned a few seconds later holding a white plastic pill bottle. “Once again, Glenda comes through in the clutch.”

  “In absentia no less,” replied Cade. He couldn’t read the label. Based on the muted colors on it, he gathered they were some kind of generic brand. “Whatcha got?”

  “Ibuprofen.” Lev popped the cap and rattled a trio of brown pills into Cade’s palm.

  Cade wiggled his fingers on the other hand, the universal sign for keep them coming.

  “Twelve hundred milligrams … you sure?”

  Again with the fingers.

  Lev tapped out three more and watched as Cade dry swallowed all six. Then he handed over the entire bottle. “I got first watch. You take care of yourself.”

  “You’re a good man, Lev,” Cade said to the man’s back as he started for the stairs.

  “You’ve earned a break,” Lev called back. “Take advantage of it.”

  Cade nodded to himself. He looked at the stairs disapprovingly. Shifted his gaze to the dining room and its barely penetrable gloom. He regarded the stairs once again and decided, for once, to take the path of least resistance.

  Flicking on the headlamp, and feeling a little like a spelunker tackling a cave, he delved deeper into the innards of Glenda’s home. He found the dining room crowded with a three-leaf walnut table and chairs for eight. On the far wall was a china hutch brimming with an antique store’s worth of fine bone china and a highly polished box, yawning open and filled with what looked like service for an army, also polished to a high luster and reflecting his headlamp beam back at him. On through the arched entry was a sitting room with a pair of antique chairs, sofa and love seat all wrapped in plastic. The rugs on the floor were thick pile and Persian and did nothing to lessen the throbbing moving its way up the outside of his left leg.

  After the short recon, he hung his head and, exhibiting a clumsiness that would have earned him a hundred pushups in basic, about-faced on the expensive rug in the front room. The place was so inundated with end tables, an ottoman, and a heavy wood coffee table that there was no room for him to sleep on the floor. Furthermore, the love seat and couch were both vastly undersized and wouldn’t allow for him to lie in a fetal position let alone stretch out.

  He backtracked through the dining room, hooked a left before the kitchen, and stood glaring at the seventeen steps running up to the landing. If the stairs out back were Kilimanjaro, he was standing in the shadow of K2. Knowing that beyond the landing shrouded in shadow was another stack of steps, he took a deep breath and began his ascent.

&nb
sp; Three minutes after leaving base camp he was at the turn. Another handful of seconds later, and wishing he had a Sherpa to lug his gear, he mounted the four additional stairs and was in the master bedroom and surrounded by half a dozen bodies, some snoring, some farting, and all out cold after a full day’s worth of manual labor in not so ideal conditions.

  Cade collapsed to his knees by the vanity. Shrugged his pack off and stowed it where the chair normally lived in the kneehole under the tabletop. His rifle went by his side and, using his parka as a pillow, he stretched out fully clothed and propped his left foot up on his pack, toes above the nose, as Brook was wont to say.

  His last thought after saying a short prayer for his family’s safety was to set his Suunto to wake him at seven, which would afford him six hours of shuteye while leaving a good chunk of the day to tend to business before heading back to the compound.

  Unfortunately, the thought never made it to the action phase as his leaden lids—exhibiting a mind of their own—fluttered once, twice, and then stayed closed.

  Chapter 59

  Throughout the night, Brook’s sleep was interrupted by all manner of ghouls. It had started like it always did with her father’s leering face, ashen and slack and scarfing down a slimy rope of her mother’s intestine. Then she saw her brother, Carl, only he was never one of them. He was burned beyond recognition and trudging towards her, relentlessly, and cutting off her every avenue of retreat. Like bergs calving from a glacier, glistening hunks of pink meat cleaved off his bones and fell to the floor where they struck with heavy wet slaps. And just when she had convinced herself it wasn’t really him, her name was carried on a labored breath rising from the depths of his fire-ravaged lungs.

  She awoke with a start, shivering and wrapped in her thin, sweat-soaked sheet. “Raven,” she called. Nothing. “Raven. Sasha.” Her words carried an urgency with them.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” she croaked.

  “Glenda.”

  “Wait one,” Brook said. She cast the sheet aside and pulled the string, setting the single sixty-watt bulb burning. She threw on an ARMY sweatshirt, stepped into her boots and rose from the bunk. Crossing the plywood floor, she looked into the gloom and saw that Raven and Sasha’s bunks were empty. The thrown latch on the plate door confirmed the girls were elsewhere, in the Kids’ quarters watching movies or listening to music, she presumed.

  Glenda was looking her usual spry self, smiling, gray hair tucked under a hat with writing on it that read I’d Rather Be Gardening. Wouldn’t we all, thought Brook. Eschewing a good morning or hello she said, “Have you seen the girls?”

  “They’re in the Kids’ room tending to Max’s paws. Poor guy. I doubt if he had ever been exposed to snow like this before.”

  “I bet he has,” said Brook. “He’s a hard charger. I’ll make sure he takes it easy today.”

  “The girls want to go topside and play in the snow before it all melts.”

  “Melts?”

  “Yesterday’s storm was just a tease of what’s to come. Blew right through late evening, I would guess, and was supplanted by warmer air moving in from the south.”

  Brook looked at her Timex. Quarter of eleven. “I slept in.”

  “Raven said you needed it.”

  “Did they eat?” Brook asked, suddenly realizing her concern for Sasha was growing with each passing minute that Wilson and Taryn were gone.

  “Cold scones and powdered milk. Did I do good?”

  “Perfect.” Brook strapped on her thigh rig and slipped the Glock home. Grimacing as the scar tissue stretched, she scooped her carbine off the floor and followed Glenda out the door and to the right down the cramped hall.

  Seth was manning the security pod and tethered to the HAM radio by a pair of headphones. The Nintendo Game Boy Cade had given him sat on the desk in front of him. When he saw the ladies coming through, he slipped the headset off and greeted them warmly.

  “Hi Seth,” said Brook, squeezing his shoulder with her good hand. Her right arm was slow to wake up and hung at her side, pins and needles still shooting through it. A by-product of the Z attack, anti-serum, or a combination thereof. “Did you pick up any more of those strange radio transmissions?”

  He pulled his long hair back and pinned it behind his ears. “Not since last night,” he said, a pained look crossing his face. “I’ll keep checking all of the obscure frequencies, though. If it’s any consolation … I still think it was a bounce … some kind of anomaly that let us hear something transmitted half a world away. I keep asking myself … why would survivors not even try to pronounce a few well-known English words? I mean … even if they were Chinese speakers fresh off the boat when the shit hit the fan, don’t you think they’d throw in a help us or we’re alive now and again?”

  “You’d think,” Brook said. “How about the road?”

  “Still desolate. The snow is starting to melt.”

  “Already?”

  Glenda was about to recount a similar weather swing in the nineties when Foley and Tran edged around the corner and came to a halt. The security container was now filled to brimming with warm bodies, a couple of them in need of washing and at least a two-minute stint with a toothbrush.

  Wiping sleep from his eyes, Foley said, “Mornin.”

  As usual, Tran said nothing. Just smiled that toothy grin that had gone slightly yellow overnight.

  Brook leaned away from the wall of halitosis. “Going topside?”

  Foley nodded. Then his gaze swung to the monitor. “Is the road steaming?”

  Seth leaned back in his chair and nodded.

  Taking advantage of the brief pause, Glenda launched into her story. “I remember one particular day in early October back in ‘97. It was already a real scorcher of a summer … prolonged through September on into October … classic Indian. I remember my youngest, Oliver, bellyaching about the ski season never arriving. About how he’d never get to meet the Ski Patrol folks before the Ogden crowd invaded the place. He was set to start at the resort that fall … probably food service or something. But … the $5.15 an hour came with a pass good for several different ski areas—”

  “Where’s Oliver now?” asked Foley, taking his eyes off the flat panel monitor and meeting Glenda’s watery gaze. “You don’t talk about your kids much.”

  Brook shot the man a steely glare that shut him up and caused him to look away and subconsciously start to stroke his lengthening beard.

  Glenda swallowed. Her lips were making that dry smacking sound as she went on, “I believe it was ninety degrees that day and only two weeks from Halloween. Louie made a crack about Oliver going trick-or-treating as the Devil. Oliver spouted back about how he’s sixteen and would rather be skiing in a Devil costume. Anyway”—she paused and wiped her eyes on a sleeve—“it started getting real cold just after dinner and was snowing before Buffy the Vampire Slayer was over. Hell of a swing.”

  All eyes were on Glenda and it was getting hot in the cramped confines. There was a clomp of boots on wood and Heidi was there, craning over Tran’s shoulder to see what was going on.

  “Glenda’s telling us a story,” Brook whispered.

  Glenda smiled at Heidi, than winked at the woman she had recently started to think of as a kindred spirit. A real survivor.

  “Go on,” Heidi said. “Sorry for the interruption.”

  And she did. “It snowed all night,” Glenda said. “Got about double the accumulation we saw yesterday”—she smiled and looked at the low ceiling—“but alas, it melted the next day. All gone. I think it was seventy degrees before noon. The look on Oliver’s face.” She shook her head. “He spent hours waxing his skis and getting the edges razor-sharp. His gear was laid out and he woke to sunshine and drips off the eaves. And adding insult to injury, school didn’t even get canceled.” She chuckled, The chuckle petered off, her back heaved, and a mournful wail escaped her lips.

  “Cry it out,” Brook said, wrapping an arm aroun
d the woman’s shoulder. “Cry it out.”

  Foley saw Glenda lean forward and bury her face in the shallow curve of Brook’s neck and shoulder. He crabbed forward, dodged the hanging light, then paused next to Seth to let him know he and Tran were going to clear the snow off the solar panels and then top off the generators.

  Tran also slinked by the two women, who were still locked in an embrace and having a private conversation. He slid past Foley and then under the hanging bulb, clearing it by half an inch. He continued past Heidi, offering only a nod, and disappeared into the gloom of the foyer.

  Being nearly a full head taller and much heavier than Tran, Foley was forced to wait a moment in the breach. He spent the time looking at the different feeds coming though what seemed like miles of new cable he had reeled out to the CCTV cameras in the weeks following his unexpected arrival at the compound. He could see that the road was indeed clear. Clear of vehicles. Clear of wandering monsters. And by the looks of it, clear of snow by noon. Sitting in the shadow cast by the firs and pines ringing the clearing, the helicopter and wheeled vehicles parked in what was commonly known as the motor pool were still coated with three or four inches of snow. The same heavy accumulation flocked the branches and tops of the trees, causing some of them to list over like the Grinch’s sad little Christmas tree. Also affected by the previous day’s dump, the Black Hawk’s static blades—already weighted down by the camouflage netting—were drooping so much so that Foley wondered if even the diminutive Tran could walk underneath them without receiving a haircut.

  Glenda’s cry lasted a couple of minutes until she suddenly stood up straight, dried her eyes and went about smoothing her shirt and jeans. From embarrassment more so than a desire to rid them of wrinkles, thought Foley. Then, feeling a little uneasy, and probably more embarrassed than the older woman, he scooted past her and put a little squeeze on her shoulder, a move that instantly seemed inappropriate in such close quarters, and one that he immediately regretted. He had wanted to offer a word of condolence to go along with the physical gesture, but it had gotten trapped between conception and verbalization. He looked away sheepishly. He was no good at this type of thing and he knew it. He didn’t cry. Never had.