With Heidi reading over her shoulder, Brook leaned in and devoured every word, sentence, and paragraph on all five pages. After speed-reading the first page, when she saw a hand fill up the screen and turn it over, she knew from the thick fingers and knobby knuckles that a man was stating his case. He had started with evidence first. Apparently whoever had found the feeder road cameras had matched tread patterns from the scene of the perceived crime with identical ones owned by a vehicle he had tracked here the day before. He stated in writing that he had ‘half an army’ and demanded the killer of a person he identified as Lena be brought out to the road. Ten minutes was allotted for the transfer. The last page was filled with instructions that ended with the phrase: “You have ten minutes. If ten minutes passes, a ‘message’ will be sent.” The word message on the sheet had been underlined—twice.
Brook didn’t like the implication the word carried. Hell, the man calling himself Alexander Dregan was pissed, and she sympathized with him. If she lost Raven the same way she wouldn’t rest until the person responsible was dead by her hand and she was the one dumping the last shovelful of dirt on their grave. Unfortunately for the man, that kind of closure would never be achieved. Because the person who had killed his daughter, Lena, was already dead and buried.
What Brook couldn’t wrap her head around as she read the last sentence on the final sheet was why this Alexander Dregan had made no mention of the young man she had killed that day.
Bootsteps sounded and a sleepy voice said, “What’s going on?”
“Come with me, Seth,” said Heidi, grabbing a coat off a hook and tossing it to him. On the way through the foyer, she snatched up one of the backup carbines and passed it back to him. Donning a coat of her own, she caught his eye and began spilling the bad news.
Wasting no more time worrying about the hows and whys, Brook snatched one of the satellite phones off the shelf and, ignoring the new message there—probably Nash again— thumbed it on. She yanked the charging cord off and hit the proper keys to raise Cade on it.
Leaning back in the chair and staring at the lined-up vehicles on the monitor, their contours slightly distorted by distance, she waited for the electronic handshake to happen. There was a series of clicks as the signal cycled through a DoD satellite somewhere far above Earth and there came a hollow and distant sounding ring. The electronic trill went on for three agonizing cycles until a familiar voice answered.
***
With the distinct trilling of the Thuraya sat-phone filling the cab, Cade brought the plow truck to a halt in the exact intersection and adjacent to the car and road sign Oliver had shot up the previous night. As he fumbled in his pocket to retrieve the noisily chirping handset, his gaze was drawn to the houses on the hill where the reservoir and snow-capped Wasatch were reflected in miniature in the west-facing windows. The feeling of being watched he had experienced the day before was gone; however, a creeping feeling of doom had taken root the second the phone began to vibrate and make that ominous sound.
He thumbed the rubber Talk key. “Cade here,” he said under Oliver’s watchful eye. He said nothing more. Just listened without interjecting, his normally stoic expression going stony.
Oliver noticed the transformation and suddenly, like something with leathery wings had taken flight in his stomach, he knew that a good day had just been shot to hell.
“No,” Cade said slow and crisp, enunciating every syllable. “Under no circumstances do you leave the compound on the feeder road. Gather the girls and take the Ford and Humvee and punch a hole through the forest to the old fire road.”
Oliver watched Cade’s brow knit and his grip on the wheel tighten as a response was delivered from the other end.
“It’s your only chance to get away,” Cade answered, exasperation showing. “Arm yourselves and go. Follow the road back to Woodruff. I’ll meet you there and then we’ll find another place to call home.” He listened for a handful of seconds then grunted and said, “Yes,” and ended the call.
The Land Cruiser slid to a stop on the plow truck’s left side.
Oliver sat up in the passenger seat rod-straight, eyes glued to Cade, who was now staring at him directly.
“Coming or going?” Cade asked curtly. He flicked his eyes away long enough to note the time on his big black watch.
“What?” said Oliver. “Going … where?”
There was a light tapping on the driver’s side window. Cade rolled it down and found himself face-to-face with Daymon, who was standing on the running board and gripping the vertical grab bar one-handed for balance.
Eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, Daymon asked, “What’s the plan, Boss?”
Cade closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the headrest. “Get Duncan for me,” he said slowly, the words enunciated perfectly.
One brow hitched, Daymon said, “O … K.” He turned his head. Cupped his hands and bellowed, “Duncan … you’re needed in the boardroom!” He turned back to see that Cade was talking into a two-way radio and heard him calling the rest of the group back to the house.
Duncan was out of the SUV now and shooing Daymon off the truck. He opened the Mack’s slab of a door and stared up at Cade. The look on the younger man’s face struck him right away. Fact is, it puckered him up and set his stomach roiling. He’d seen the steely gaze on many an occasion and it usually preceded a shit ton of Zs and humans both meeting their makers. Already knowing he was not going to like the answer, reluctantly he asked, “What’s up?”
Eden Compound
Eyeing her watch every minute or so, Brook gathered the essentials: Weapons, magazines filled with 5.56 and 9mm, and both her and Raven’s bug out bags containing food, medicine, and more loose ammo. Shouldering the pack with considerable pain, she called out on the two-way to see if the girls had been located yet.
Foley’s response hit her like a mule kick. She’d been expecting to hear a resounding: Yes. Instead, she received a solemn: No, ma’am. There’s no sign of them … anywhere.
Still filling her cargo pockets with spare mags, she asked, “Did you at least track them? Find any footsteps in the snow?”
“It’s mostly melted. What Glenda predicted happened. It’s pushing sixty out here.”
Not liking any of these answers, Brook shook her head. “Are there Zs on the wire?”
“Negative,” answered Foley. “I’m here with Glenda, Heidi, and Tran. I’ve already moved Daymon’s RV and the Humvee started right up, first try. What now?”
Finally a positive among all the negatives. Brook took a deep breath and stole another peek at her watch. “Keep your eyes peeled for the girls,” she said. “I’ll be out in ten.”
“Will do,” replied Foley. “Out.”
“Out,” Brook said, her gaze glued to the tall bearded man whom she had no desire to tangle with. She watched him pacing back and forth and talking into a two-way radio.
Hurry up Cade.
Chapter 68
Cade filled Duncan in about the siege at the compound, closed his door, then drove a couple of blocks east and let Oliver out at the intersection near his house. Seconds later Cade had already looped back around onto Main Street and was steering the truck left to get back to 39. He saw the sun glare from the approaching 4Runner, but didn’t bother to stop. Duncan’s job was to rendezvous with the Kids at the house, load up the smaller vehicles, and catch up with him on down the road.
Ten minutes, he thought to himself. He looked at his watch. Two down, eight to go. Not enough time. Not by a long shot.
He saw the National Guard roadblock and ditch full of half-turtled cars and did two things at once. He uttered a little prayer for his family and the others, asking for them to get to safety unscathed. He also tacked on a little rider, asking God to allow the pranged plow up front to fit through the narrow opening dead ahead.
As bent and battered as it had become from plowing the Zs off Trapper’s Loop Road the night before, Cade wasn’t at all confident the dual blade would clea
r the Jersey barriers at the blown Guard roadblock. He figured the thing had to accept more adjustments—angle, camber, pitch all came to mind—but he hadn’t taken the time earlier to acquaint himself with all of the control’s intricacies, and had no time to do so now.
So he opted to raise the blade to the point where it looked as if the barriers would pass underneath and hope for the best. He heard an odd pneumatic whine overriding the hiss of the radials on the wet pavement. Next came a painful groan of metal on metal when he actuated the Up lever. The hydraulic whine rose in volume and there was a loud bang and the blade started to rise ever so slowly. Once the blade stopped moving, he released the lever, thinking to himself: That’s as good as she’s going to get.
Closing rapidly with the narrow gap, and feeling the diesel engine’s vibration through the firewall a foot from his throbbing ankle, he suddenly reflected back to the hours following Jedi One-One going down in the church graveyard outside of Draper, South Dakota. The similarities between that awful day and the one this was shaping up to be were striking: Ballooned left ankle … check! Unfamiliar and battered truck … check! Having to get to a predetermined location traveling a Z-choked road and precious minutes in which to make it happen … check!
Gripping the wheel two-handed, and entering the cattle chute made up of stalled cars, burned bodies and unforgiving concrete Jersey barriers, he put the pedal to the metal—or in this instance a high-wearing rubber floor mat—and aimed the shiny chromed bulldog hood ornament at a point in the road beyond it all.
There was a gunshot-like bang from the right and the plow vibrated like a grain silo in a cat-5 twister. A little micro-car on the left was peeled open like a sardine can from gas tank to the front door-pillar by the left side of the blade. Then, concurrent with another pair of discordant bangs, two noticeable bends suddenly appeared at the midpoint on each half of the blade.
A tick later, save for the low engine growl, metallic meshing of gears, and steady thudding of his heart, silence ensued until he opened the gravel spreader out back to its most liberal setting and the deluge of rocks began to pummel the pavement at his six.
Fields, fence, and the occasional ambulatory Z flashed by as the rig picked up speed. Nearly emptied of gravel, it ate up the nearby grade, crested the hill, and sped downhill with the blade vibrating wildly and pushing a wind vortex ahead of it.
The road to the UDOT yard blipped by on the left. A half-beat later, the Shell sign and burned-out husk of a gas station was in the rearview mirror and fading into the background clutter.
He alternated between checking the wing mirror for the other two vehicles and the road ahead for the larger groups of walking dead. He knew the latter were somewhere up ahead. He only hoped they had not all resumed their march east and amassed into one big rotting knot of death. Last thing he needed was for the two herds they ignored earlier to have combined into a nearly impassable roving horde. No, actually, as he thought hard on it, the last thing he needed was for the reanimated throng to have made it all the way to Daymon’s fallen tree roadblock and choke off all access to the bridge.
At just under sixty-miles-per-hour, the distance to the bridge rapidly melted away. Cade checked his speed by a third on the corners and pushed the rig hard on the straightaways. On one particularly long stretch, he glimpsed a glint of sun in the vibrating side mirror. Slowing to the point where the mirror stopped vibrating, he soon saw that the others were catching up to him, the bulkier Land Cruiser in the lead and the 4Runner riding close in its slipstream—Taryn at the wheel, no doubt. Damn, that girl could drive, he thought, casting a glance at his Suunto. Five minutes until surprise time—whatever that meant—and the two-way radio, CB, and sat-phone still had not made a sound. Whether that was good or bad, he didn’t have time to decide, for when he looked up and slowed a little more for the next right-hander—the one where he thought the minivan and its long dead human cargo lay—he saw a sea of jostling bodies.
His own words came back to haunt: There’s less than two hundred here … we need to move on.
But there were more now. Crushed against each other, several hundred deep, were the two groups of dead he’d feared would reanimate and eventually converge. Eff you Murphy … why here and now? he mused, as the full scope of the mess he was in came into view.
The blackened corpses from the two burned-out cities were intermingled with the fresher corpses he presumed had at one time ventured east from Ogden either in search of fertile hunting grounds or in hot pursuit of prey. Didn’t matter now, because at the moment they were doing neither. Though he didn’t want to stop, the threat of becoming mired like the minivan was real, leaving him no other recourse. Quickly, he applied the brakes slowing the rig right on the centerline. There was a hissing of air from the hard-working brakes and the tires juddered and chirped—alerting the monsters to his presence. He plucked the two-way off the seat just as Wilson’s voice emanated from the speaker. “What are you stopping for? We’re just catching up with you,” said the redhead.
Grimacing, Cade eyeballed the horde and saw that they were amassed against a sizeable tree that had recently fallen across both lanes of 39. Beyond both shoulders the guardrails were bowed down under its weight, and though the dead were partially obscuring its trunk, he could see its massive and once far-reaching root system reaching skyward. It hadn’t been brought down deliberately, that much was clear. Probably had just succumbed to the heavy snow and high winds of the previous day.
Worst timing ever.
Cade pressed the Talk button on the Motorola. “Lock and load,” he said. “We have a few hundred bouncers guarding the door.” As an afterthought, he added, “Have Daymon start prepping the chainsaw.”
He took another peek at his watch. The LCD numerals indicated less than three minutes remained until the hostiles at the compound were to send Brook and the others whatever message they had planned. He shouldered open his door, planted his boot on the running board, and was hit by a wave of pain. It shot up his leg and started a galaxy of sweat beading on his brow. Grinding his teeth, he braced his M4 against the jam, engaged the EOTech 3X magnifier, and started punching holes in zombie skulls.
A split-second after he began firing, he heard between pulls of the trigger the reassuring sound of approaching engines. And as he dropped a spent magazine and grabbed a fresh one from his chest rig, the noise grew louder. He jammed the mag into the well, released the bolt and shouldered the rifle. In his left and right side vision, the two trucks pulled up, bookending the idling plow truck.
Knowing the others needed no prodding, he continued picking off the advancing wall of snarling flesh. As he dropped one after another, some of the rounds passed through the Zs, causing sparks to fly off the minivan trapped in their midst.
***
Inside the 4Runner, Wilson was thrown against his shoulder belt as Taryn jammed on the brakes. “I knew this was going to happen,” he cried. He tossed the radio aside and grabbed his rifle from between his legs. Drumming up a little courage, he turned his gaze on Taryn and blurted out what he had been thinking. “Stay here … watch the truck. Please …”
Unaware of the drama playing out inches to their fore, Lev and Jamie were already piling out of the SUV.
“I can’t,” said Taryn, shaking her head. “The girls … Brook, Glenda, Heidi, I care about them. I have to give a hundred and ten percent on everything. If something were to happen to any of them and I didn’t ... I don’t know how I’d live with myself.”
Wilson leaned in and kissed her hard on the mouth. For the first time—other than a couple of instances in the throes of ecstasy when he’s uttered the words under his breath—he looked her square in the eyes and told her he loved her.
“I know,” she mouthed. There was a short pause. “I love you too, burger boy.”
A handful of seconds after the rear doors had slammed shut, Taryn and Wilson were armed and joining the others near the plow truck’s right front wheel.
***
With the Land Cruiser parked and idling a yard off the plow truck’s left side, Duncan actuated the tailgate lift and looked over at Daymon. “Better be channeling some kind of lumberjack-superhero chainsaw work, bud. Flannel Man activate.” He turned and stared hard at Oliver. “Time to bury the hatchet, you and I. Go on out there and get yerself some more notches on that fancy rifle of yours, O.G.”
Duncan reached back and grabbed the nearest rifle and a couple of magazines. The sound of carbines hammering away at the dead filtered in as doors opened and closed around him. He pocketed the mags and exited the vehicle, rifle in hand and pulling back on the charging handle.
Warily eyeing the target-rich expanse of highway laid out before the picket of idling trucks, he crabbed a few feet to his left, climbed over the guardrail, and took a knee behind it. With a clutch of undergrowth tickling his back, and the rifle steadied against the rust-streaked barrier, he said a silent prayer and then opened fire.
Chapter 69
While their captor, Gregory, continued breaking down his camp, Raven and Sasha remained seated and directed their attention to the armed men milling about the line of vehicles down on the road. All at once there was a burst of static coming from the radio in Gregory’s pocket, the posture of the men down below changed from relaxed to vigilant, and the nervous chatter drifting up to their location all but ceased.
As Raven craned to see over the ferns in front of her, the silence was broken by a pair of closely spaced thunks coming from the cannon-looking thing. Whatever had caused the hollow sounds seemed to have left the elevated barrel at the same instant. A second later, that notion was dispelled when two separate and distinct explosions rattled the distant trees, sending a dozen birds fleeing upward into the hazy blue afternoon sky.
“What was that?” Sasha asked, her brow knitted.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Page 41