Keying in on Raven’s body language, Sasha kicked the younger girl’s boot. Once eye contact was established, she mouthed: What?
My mom is down there, I think, Raven mouthed back.
Gregory was now standing at the rear of the hide, fully loaded pack on his back, radio in one hand and the rifle in the other. Raven’s eyes flicked from the rifle over to the pistol on the man’s hip, and then moved up and settled on his bearded face for a brief second. Noticing all of his attention was focused on the goings on down below, she put extra effort into somehow channeling Harry Houdini so she could finally slip her hands free from the knotted cord.
Chapter 71
Five miles west on State Route 39, Cade was not only coming up against the growing number of reanimated walkers he had opted not to put down on the way in, but he was also having to keep the rig’s speed down because the blade up front was on its last legs. With each new jarring impact, the twisted slab of metal slid lower to the road blurring by underneath it, worrying Cade that it might shear off and flatten a couple of tires as a result.
Less than a mile from the fallen log blockade, Cade swerved to avoid a group of first turns and clipped a number of them, starting a series of irreversible chain reactions. The first application of cause and effect slapped half a dozen Zs to the pavement, where they were promptly run over and pulped underneath the trailing Land Cruiser’s undercarriage.
The second instance was more Newton’s Law of Motion than anything when, as if made of tinfoil, the plow blade folded under the front bumper and broke free of its mounts. Hell—after all of the battering it had endured since the night before—Cade was amazed it had seen him this far.
The rising crescendo of metal on pavement ceased instantly and the rig bucked like a spurred bronco as the massive plow became wedged in its dual rear axles. Surprising Cade completely, the brakes locked up and the Mack veered right and ran up onto the guardrail before coming to a complete and jarring stop, high-sided, leaning hard to the left, and spewing steam from what he guessed was a punctured radiator. The run from the crash site in Draper, South Dakota was again on his mind as he watched the under-hood geyser continue. He collected his radio, phone, and CB and filled his pockets with them. He shrugged on his pack and grabbed the carbine. Then, with the failed dismount from the night before fresh on his mind, he eschewed jumping down to the shoulder from the high side of the cab and instead took the chance of becoming a Darwin Award winner by throwing open the driver’s side door and sliding from the seat to the wet pavement.
He rolled free from the open door of the dangerously listing truck and was engaging the nearby Zs with his Glock when the already loaded-up 4Runner ground to a halt a yard away and its rear passenger-side door was flung open.
A chorus of voices urging him inside rose over the silenced reports from his Glock. So Cade rose from his kneeling position, doubled-tapped a pair of rotters, and relinquished his pack and carbine to Wilson’s waiting hands. Firing one-handed, he walked/half-limped backwards to the open rear passenger door, where he quickly holstered his pistol and planted his butt on the bench seat next to Jamie. Grimacing, he hauled his leg with the damaged ankle over the door sill.
“That was close,” said Lev, as Cade closed the door and the vehicle lurched forward over top of the fallen and leaking corpses.
Leaning forward to make eye contact, Cade said, “The rig had to die sometime.”
“Duncan’s driving the Cruiser like a little old lady,” exclaimed Taryn as a pair of Zs slapped at the 4Runner’s right side.
“Pass him when you can,” Cade said matter-of-factly. “Do it on the right. Then drive like it’s your first race and your dad is watching you.”
Wilson poked his head around the edge of his seat. “You planning on telling us how this is going to go down when we get there?”
“There is no we,” Cade said gruffly. “We get across the roadblock and back to the truck and pile in. Then I’m going to have you drive me to within limping distance of the compound and I’ll go it alone from there.” He looked out the window at the carnage. Zombie bodies, twisted grotesque forms, many of them burned horribly—lay on the road every couple of feet or so. He swung his eyes all around, pausing briefly to scan the woods flanking the road, and couldn’t believe the transformation. In less than twenty-four hours, all of this had gone from a winter wonderland postcard scene Bing Crosby would have crooned about back to a canyon of emerald green firs and pines shot through with lonely stands of white-trunked alder and aspen. Shaking his head, Cade consulted his Suunto and his fear was realized when he saw that that the deadline dictated to Brook and the Eden group had come and gone and the comms devices in his pockets remained quiet.
Eden Compound’s Hidden Gate
Standing in the F-650’s shadow, Brook noted the time on her watch. Then, holding her carbine at the low-ready with a round chambered and the selector set to Fire—locked and loaded, as Cade would say—she looped around the front of the truck and covered the distance to the gate on the far shoulder.
Head on a swivel—another practice Cade advocated as useful to surviving contact with the enemy—she heel-and-toed it forward, stopping every few feet to look and assess. Due to the height of the gate and the encroaching canopy overhead, she couldn’t see the enemy’s vehicles from where she was on the road.
When she finally reached the gate, she heard a low murmur of conversation in the distance and, nearby, the sound of boots squelching on gravel—quite possibly produced by the nervous foot-to-foot shifting of men grown tired of waiting.
“Drop your weapon and step to your right so I can see you.”
The voice was gravelly and belonged to a smoker. It sounded very much like the voice that had spoken to her over Raven’s radio. Close but no cigar. In her mind’s eye, the voice of the person calling to her from the direction of the vehicles matched perfectly with the man who had been issuing ultimatums in writing on the legal pad.
Brook complied with only the latter part of the barked order. She moved farther right where the fencing was chest-high on her and the thick undergrowth and forest nearly pressed against her back.
The bearded man was standing a dozen feet away, dead center on the road, with a line of vehicles and expectant faces trailing away behind him. He was dressed in 1980’s-era camouflage fatigues in a woodland pattern—browns and greens shot through with black. Over the surplus uniform and hanging open was a knee-length Western-style duster. Once black and now faded to dark gray, the coat’s fabric could be canvas or cotton for all Brook knew. The man’s hair covered his ears and merged with a full beard, both of which, like the duster, were once black and now graying considerably. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark glasses and on his head was a black watch cap, also surplus, she presumed.
The man had three weapons that Brook could clearly see. Held comfortably in one hand was a carbine, tan and not much different from hers. In a holster on the man’s hip was a black pistol, and strangely, protruding above one shoulder was the intricately carved ivory pommel of some kind of two-handed sword.
The man said nothing. He removed his dark glasses and fixed his steely gaze on her.
Returning the hard look with one of her own, Brook saw the man’s green eyes flick down to her weapon. So she took a step back from the fence and regarded the line of vehicles, letting her gaze float from vehicle to vehicle and face to face.
Feeling the bearded man’s eyes boring into her, she scrutinized the vehicles and men one-by-one again, only in reverse order. The first two vehicles—Jenkins’ Tahoe and the camouflage SUV she recognized as having belonged to the kids—were of no concern to her. But the next four in line did. They were sprouting enough manned firepower to shred the gun truck and all of the other vehicles in her group’s motor pool. Seeing this made her contemplate saving Seth and Foley’s lives by calling them off—an idea she shelved for the time being.
The expressions on the faces of the people manning the weapons and driving
the vehicles weren’t quite what she had been expecting. To a person—except for a young kid staring doe-eyed from the front passenger seat of the Tahoe and a bearded man strongly resembling the leader—every one of them wore the same bored visage she had seen draped on a person stuck in a menial job and wanting badly to get out.
The blue-eyed boy beaming the bland look of someone waiting out a TV commercial wasn’t a killer, of that she was sure. And the rest of the posse—if the shoe fits, she thought—seemingly punching the time clock, weren’t either. She heard Cade’s voice in her head saying: Trust your gut.
She kept her eyes trained on the dozen or so men and their war machines. Sure, she figured, they would rise to the occasion if need be. After all, they had already survived nearly a dozen weeks of hell on earth since the dead rose. So, gritting her teeth, she locked eyes with the giant of a man and approached the fence, M4 still at the low-ready and every muscle in her body rippling under her clothing.
Gripping the fence with one hand, the rifle barrel conveniently resting on the middle strand of wire, Brook ran her plan through her mind one more time.
Fuck it, she thought. Take the initiative, and try to hit them flat-footed and backpedaling. Another one of Cade’s sayings from the teams entered her head: Speed, surprise, and violence of action. She didn’t know if this was the way to go about this one, but, damn it, she had gotten them into this mess and she was determined to get them out.
The man opened his mouth to speak.
The speed part of Cade’s credo came into play as Brook beat the man to the punch. “Who in the fuck do you think you are, coming here and taking a couple of kids hostage and then throwing around ultimatums based on presumptions I’m guessing you gleaned from watching CSI before everything went to shit?”
Rendered momentarily speechless, even though his mouth was clamped shut, inwardly Alexander gaped at the petite brunette woman who had just emerged from the biggest truck he had ever seen. The black Ford made the Tahoe and Blazer look like toys by comparison. How this woman managed to drive the thing—let alone climb into it—spun through his mind. Clutched in her hands, held southpaw and looking normal-sized given her stature, was a compact version of the M4 carbine.
Where the woman was concerned, his presumptions had been way off base. Fully expecting some kind of toothless, double-chinned, Bubba-looking character in tobacco-stained coveralls to be driving the vehicle behind her, he was thrown a completely unexpected curveball.
Like drawing a face card on a hard sixteen, he was sadly disappointed this attractive woman had anything remotely to do with Lena’s murder. A bust, in blackjack parlance.
“I don’t know this CSI you speak of. Your vehicle”—he nodded toward her truck—“that vehicle, as described by eyewitnesses, was in the area when my Lena and her new husband, Mikhail Rashovic, were killed in cold blood. I”—he pounded his chest, strands of spittle flying from his mouth—“I found her body. The smile had been blasted off of her face. Lena’s lovely smile was just a bloody hole. No lips. No teeth. Your people erased her face and her life on that road. All I have of her now is memories and a few pictures and video clips stored on a pair of phones.”
“Listen—” Brook began.
“No … you listen to me,” bellowed the man. “Who killed my Lena?” The tan carbine’s muzzle rose a few degrees and in Brook’s side vision she saw the turret-mounted machine guns being trained solely on her. On the bright side, she mused, at least death would be instantaneous and final being shredded apart by those things. She let go of the fence and gestured in the general direction of the graves up the hill. “They’re hard to see … but, second grave from the right is where the man who shot Lena … in self-defense … is buried. He died that day too.”
Shaking his head, the man said, “Lena was not a killer.”
“Once again with the assumptions,” Brook said. “Chief was bit earlier in the day. My daughter was hurt as well. We were just trying to go south on 16. Those two you’re speaking of stood between us and what we needed. They were armed and assertive and they fired first. That’s the truth. And as we all know … especially in the current climate, violence begets violence.”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” said the man, his stance shifting, the muzzle rising yet another degree or two. “Matthew 26:52, I believe.”
Brook nodded.
“Still doesn’t bring Lena back.”
“Why didn’t you mention the boy in your makeshift Sharpie Power Point presentation?”
“Lena was my everything.”
“You’re not at all curious how Mikhail died?”
Shaking his head, the man said, “No.” The carbine barrel tracked upward. “Drop your rifle. You and your people ambushed and killed two of ours. Someone has to pay.”
Brook glanced at her watch. Stalling, she said, “Fuck you. I want proof of life. Show me the girls. In fact, let them go and you all live. Go back to wherever you came from and tell your people this is still the United States. We will travel anywhere in this state or any other with impunity. Is that clear?”
“OK,” Dregan said. “Who killed Mikhail?”
Brook stared the man down for a full minute. As soon as she heard the rising engine sounds at her back, she said slowly, “I did. But after he shot at me first.” She raised her right hand slow and deliberate to her cheek and traced with one finger the half-moon scar there. “I caught a piece of lead from his first volley. In addition to this”—she jabbed the thin pink scar, flashing a wicked half-smile as she did—“there are three dimples on my truck’s bumper where the bullets that did this broke apart.”
Looking past Brook, at the feeder road, Dregan said, “Whoever is coming, have them turn back or I’ll send grenades raining down on them.”
“That’s the Tenth Special Forces Group returning from a mission upstate … my husband is with them.” She saw a flash of doubt in the man’s eyes. “Bring me my daughter, now.”
“You are bluffing young lady. That’s only one Humvee … maybe two, and they don’t stand a chance against us.”
“You people already fucked us once,” Brook spat. “The firefight with your kids kept Chief from getting the treatment he needed.”
The man’s brow arched. “A bite is fatal, no?”
Brook went on, “We got trapped by a horde and sought refuge on a farm off the road.”
Helen and Ray’s, thought Dregan, nodding subconsciously. “And you let them live?”
Brook visibly started. “They let us live,” she said. She saw two of the men nearby nod in agreement.
“Drop the weapon, and the girls get to go back with the”—he smiled wickedly, this time—“your husband. And hey! They’ll have the protection of the entire Tenth Special Forces Group.”
Hearing the engine noise drawing nearer and feeling her blood beginning to boil, Brook hissed, “Bring me the girls, now.”
He shook his head, carbine barrel still unwavering.
Now or never. Keeping her eyes locked with the man’s, Brook opened both hands and let gravity have the carbine. As it fell toward the ground, she uncurled her cramping fingers and started her right arm on an upward arc. Then, bingo! she saw confusion on the man’s face and his eyes broke contact with hers to track the black rifle already near her knees. Bad move on his part. Because, you see, a person’s hands usually follow their eyes. And this man’s hands were no exception. And the carbine muzzle followed where they went … to the ground in front of her boots.
Moving lightning quick in spite of the weakness in her right arm, she darted her left hand behind her back and a fraction of a second later—just as the metal clatter of the M4 hitting the ground reached her ears—her left was sweeping back up with the black Beretta clutched in it. Even before her fingers found the knurled polymer grip and wrapped around it, in a vernacular she hoped would make her case, she bellowed, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! Does that sound familiar?” Pistol held steady and aimed at center mass, as Cade
had taught her to do when tangling with the living, she let the words hang, then went on. “Those were Mikhail’s last words … brayed right before I got hit in the face. He shot first … you need to get that through your thick fucking skull. Then, and only then, with blood already running down my face, did I return his fire. I gut shot him through the door of that SUV on the road behind you. It would have been over then and there if your Lena wasn’t hell bent on playing Mallory to Mikhail’s Mickey. For some reason. Love. Youthful indiscretion. She decided to go all Natural Born Killer and follow his lead and poked her rifle barrel out.” Brook felt her face flush, but continued. “Chief was a prison guard in the other world. He was trained to check his fire until a target presented itself. And it did in the form of her face near the SUV’s rear bumper.” Beard notwithstanding, Brook could tell by the softening of his jaw and the look in his eyes that she was getting through to him. However, in order to underline her resolve, and against the voice in her head telling her not to, she tracked the pistol up, her finger drawing up some of the trigger pull—just in case.
He took a half-step back, his carbine still aimed at the road.
“I mourned them both then,” she went on. “And I’ve mourned them both many times since. They were just kids who were out of their element.” Her face softened even as the sound of tires crunching to a halt drifted up from the direction of the feeder road.
West of the Eden Compound on State Route 39
Just when Cade thought Mister Murphy was giving them all a much-needed break, and with the bridge preceding the fallen tree roadblock oh so close, they rounded a bend in the road and found both lanes blocked by a sizeable gathering of mostly burnt creatures. With no chance of bulling through the press of the dead, Duncan and Taryn reversed both vehicles to a standoff distance, where everyone dismounted and began engaging the nearest of the crispy critters.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Page 43