Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed

by Chesser, Shawn

  “These ones are moving faster than the others,” said Cade, referring to the Zs left twice-dead on the road along with the disabled plow truck some miles back. He dumped an entire magazine of 5.56 through his M4 in a matter of seconds, resulting in a mess of sooty dead things jumbled together on the double-solid centerlines up ahead.

  To the right of Cade, who was steadying himself on the 4Runner’s open rear passenger-side door, his rifle braced on the window, the Kids were lighting up the charred abominations with fairly accurate fire.

  “Good job! Just keep firing and reloading,” Lev said, his words of encouragement—aimed at Wilson and Taryn mostly—nearly drowned out by the raspy moans of the dead.

  Shell casings pinged the road all around the four of them. Assembled in a ragged semi-circle a dozen feet off the 4Runner’s right front fender, they, along with Cade’s precision shooting, had succeeded in making a sizable dent in the throng moving towards them.

  Left of the centerlines, the trio of Oliver, Duncan, and Daymon were embroiled in a battle with the dead that had rapidly devolved from a one-sided gunfight to a hasty retreat.

  “Mount up,” hollered Duncan, his shotgun booming twice, the buckshot sending big chunks of charred flesh and splintered bone skyward and two headless corpses to the roadway. He fired into the advancing assemblage head-high until the stubby pump gun was empty and smoking, then clambered aboard the Land Cruiser.

  “Get your ass in here, Daymon,” bellowed Oliver as he slid into the back seat and banged the door shut.

  The dreadlocked firefighter—who was back to his old surly self now that the pot buzz had worn off—ignored the plea long enough to decapitate a trio of Zs with Kindness.

  Duncan dropped the transmission into Reverse and watched Daymon backpedaling and swinging away with the polished machete. Once the kid’s skinny butt was in the passenger seat, he passed some shells for the shotgun over and reversed again to create a buffer.

  Juggling the shells, Daymon said, “You shoot ‘em, you reload ‘em. Isn’t that the old rule?”

  Duncan didn’t indulge the man with an answer.

  ***

  Cade guessed the three minutes burned on the stretch of road fighting the Zs crawled by normally for the others, but to him, knowing how many bad actors were on the road outside the compound, the hundred and eighty seconds had seemed like an eternity. With the horizontal trees in view and the 4Runner weaving through the fallen human shells, he swapped mags in both the M4 and Glock, then tapped the Gerber on his hip to make certain it hadn’t been knocked loose in the midst of battle. Satisfied he was ready as he’d ever be, he gripped the door handle, ready to bail the second the rig stopped at the far end of the distant span.

  Chapter 72

  Staring into the gaping muzzle, Dregan relived the last couple of minutes in his head. First, kind of like Eastwood playing Harry Callahan, the woman’s hard-set brown eyes narrowed. The death flinch, he had thought at the time. Then, as if she’d come to some kind of conclusion, he saw a change in the windows to her soul. They went impossibly dark and narrowed to slits. Next he heard the words ‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,’ but didn’t immediately associate them with the situation at hand. In the seconds between hearing those words, all crawling by at a glacial pace, and that piece of the puzzle locking into place, he took his eyes from hers and swept them down and saw her right hand let go of the carbine’s foregrip. The fingers uncurled one at a time, kind of like a cat flicking out its claws. Just as he realized the raised hand looked a little crippled, the stubby black rifle was slipping from her other hand and on the way to the ground.

  Naturally, his attention was drawn there and his rifle barrel followed suit. In the next half-beat, like some kind of David Copperfield sleight-of-hand shit, her left hand swept up and suddenly a black pistol was pointed at his sternum. He remembered flicking his eyes from the gun on the ground to the pistol, impossibly large in her hand. At that moment the words fuck you and the horse you rode in on replayed in his mind in Mikhail’s voice, and as they sank in a huge weight slid off his shoulders and he relaxed his grip on his rifle.

  Bring me the girls, or you die, the woman had hissed, believably.

  He remembered mumbling something about it all being a big misunderstanding.

  He remembered his brother Henry moving forward, rifle trained on the woman, screaming for her to lower the weapon.

  He remembered the woman’s eyes, glittering … tears? Then the pistol swung up to his face close enough that he smelled cordite off the muzzle.

  Now, Henry still screaming “Drop the gun,” the other men all bristling and bringing rifles to bear, he heard over it all the distinct sound of a round the size of a baby’s arm being chambered into the .50 caliber machine gun atop the Humvee that had just bulled past the Ford and ground to a halt behind the gate. Realizing the turret-mounted weapon was trained on the assembled men, Henry and Peter included, he said, louder this time, “This was all just a big misunderstanding.”

  A man will say almost anything in order to keep from getting shot, Cade had told Brook once. Anything to stay on the right side of the dirt. Robert Christian had. Pug had. As had countless others Cade had used as examples. Funny thing was, thought Brook. Though her man was probably still miles away, the words in her head came to her in his voice with the usual crisp delivery and even tone.

  “Misunderstanding, my ass. Bring the girls out or you get a third eye,” she hissed, still holding the pistol rock steady.

  He said nothing. Just put his tan rifle down on the steaming pavement. Real slow, he hinged up and put a raised palm towards the other bearded man, silencing him. Then he turned towards the convoy and motioned for his men to stand down.

  The radio in Brook’s pocket broke squelch. “I’ve got you covered,” said Seth.

  Brook’s eyes moved along the convoy, and far off down the road past the trailing vehicle she saw movement and a man’s head and shoulders sticking out from behind a canted fence post. Protruding from the shin-high grass next to it was the long barrel of Logan’s Barrett sniper rifle, easily recognizable by the boxy muzzle brake and Hubble-telescope-sized optics perched atop the long gun.

  “My name is Alexander,” said the man. “I’m going to reach into my pocket for my phone and radio.”

  Brook nodded. Her eyes remained locked on the man as he reached into the left pocket of the well-worn duster and came out with a two-way radio, its case scratched up and weathered from constant use. Then, slowly, he plucked a shiny slim smart phone from the opposite pocket and handed it across the fence.

  “Thumb it on and start the video playing.”

  The gun was growing heavy in Brook’s hand. She wanted this all to be over, but she shook her head. “Release the girls first.”

  The man called Alexander brought the radio to his mouth and ordered a man he addressed as Gregory to bring the girls out.

  Out, thought Brook. She flashed a glance at the convoy. Nothing. The doors remained closed.

  Seeing this, Dregan said, “My oldest son has them in the woods behind me. Play the video … please.”

  Brook lifted her gaze to the woods behind the clearing and saw nothing moving there. Then, to humor the man still staring into the business end of her Beretta, she took the phone from him, powered it on, and hit the translucent play arrow hovering there on the small screen.

  There was sound first, laughter and the clinking of glasses. She was watching the bar scene unfold with one eye and Alexander with the other. She saw the boy she had killed. He was being an asshole to the bartender. True colors. Then he said it: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Half-expecting the hail of bullets that followed those words the first time she heard them, Brook flinched. Her eyes went from the screen to the bearded man’s face—and on it was an expression of complete resignation. His posture had changed as well, shoulders and back slumping like a Macy’s Parade float slowly deflating.

  Guilt eating away at her, Brook was about to
offer her condolences when she heard a chorus of piercing screams. They came from the tree line beyond the row of graves and died out quickly. Then, before she could say or do anything, she nearly blew the top of Alexander’s head off when, from the same grove of trees, two closely spaced gunshots crashed the stillness.

  ***

  Grateful that the ongoing shouting match between her mom and a man she assumed to be Gregory’s father had ceased before ending in gunfire and screams, Raven was delivered a second miracle when she felt her right hand slip free from the blood-slickened paracord wound about her wrists. As she fought the overwhelming urge to look and see what kind of damage was causing the wild throbbing on primarily her right wrist, she heard the distinct soft warble of Gregory’s radio emanating from inside his pocket.

  Raven mouthed, “I’m free,” to Sasha. Keeping her hands behind her back, and thus the illusion that she was still captive alive for the moment, she turned back to eavesdrop on the conversation. She heard broadcast through the tiny speaker details about a shooting on the Woodruff Highway that she knew nothing about. Next, just when the conversation seemed to be steering to the part pertaining to her and Sasha’s freedom, she heard a racket in the bushes behind Gregory that was not falling snow.

  Gregory Dregan was standing with his back to the foliage and stuffing the radio in his pocket when he saw the younger girl named Raven visibly stiffen then roll backwards off the log. Strangely, his first impression was that the girl looked like a scuba diver falling from a boat’s gunwale. And in the next half-beat, as she worked to right herself from the clearly deliberate maneuver, he witnessed her face twist into a wide-eyed mask of terror and one of her tiny blood-slicked hands slip free of her bonds.

  Simultaneously, the redhead, Sasha, rocketed up from the log, her jaw hinging open and closed with no words coming out.

  The stench of decay entered the small hide right behind the initial sound Gregory had pegged as more snow falling off the trees. Everything after that from the girls’ impromptu display of acrobatics to them both belting out horrific screams lasted two short heartbeats. Immediately following the auditory assault, Gregory Dregan felt something deathly cold brush his face and he was hit blindside by roughly two hundred pounds of damp dead weight.

  Newton’s Law of motion was in full effect at that point, and the loaded-down pack on his back precipitated and sped up his crashing to the ground. His head brushed the log and suddenly he was facedown with a mouthful of dirt and twigs choking off the startled yelp building in his throat.

  ***

  From her vantage point, kneeling behind the log in a clutch of ferns, Raven saw the same rotten creature from the nearby road hit Gregory amidships and drive the larger man into the ground, face first by the log. At that point she forgot all about the blood painting her forearms from wrist to elbow and focused solely on surviving the encounter. Flicking her eyes right, she saw Sasha, arms still trussed behind her back and staring at the hissing creature like she was under some kind of hypnotic spell.

  With nothing to lose but everything, Raven dove over the crumbling log with one objective: yank the boxy pistol from the holster on Gregory’s belt. Mid-flight, she twisted to her right and the second she hit the ground, with her shoulder and hip absorbing the impact, both hands went to work. With her right, she stripped the pistol from the holster. At the same time she shot her left hand out, laced her fingers in the monster’s hair, and pulled back mightily.

  Too little, too late. The coppery smell of freshly spilt blood hit her nose and Gregory started grunting and spitting mud and kicking her in the side with one of his thick-soled boots.

  Time slowed further and three things seemed to happen all at once. Realizing the pistol was a Glock like her mom’s, she didn’t bother looking for a safety, because she knew it was built into the trigger. So she swung the pistol up and pressed it to the snarling zombie’s temple and in one motion rolled onto her back, let go of its stringy hair and squeezed the trigger two times. Real quick. Back to back. And they blended together, sounding as one, like the cannon thing going off earlier.

  The first bullet entered the thing’s head and its eyes bulged out under pressure. One of the jaundiced orbs launched out, splatted on its cheek, and dangled there from a thin ropy membrane. Raven’s eyes were squeezed shut by the time the second report hit her ears, and she totally missed seeing the top of the Z’s skull separate and spin away into the undergrowth. The spritz of putrid gray matter and flecked bone following nearly the same trajectory was also lost on her.

  When she opened her eyes, Gregory was already wriggling out from under the twice-dead human, the damage done instantly apparent. There was a single deep fissure on the side of Gregory’s neck. It was oozing hot sticky blood. Raven pushed up off the ground and spotted the fist-sized plug of flesh on the ground near the rotter’s still gaping mouth.

  “I’m dead,” stammered Gregory, his face gone slack and ashen. He stole a glance to the pistol still clutched in Raven’s hand.

  “Mom,” Raven hollered over her shoulder. “I’m OK.”

  “Shoot me. Please,” Gregory pleaded in a funereal voice.

  Raven looked at the pistol and shook her head. “Sasha, help me roll him over.”

  There was the sound of boots thudding the ground and her mom and the man with the beard burst through the opening, caromed off each other like bowling pins, and came to an abrupt stop beside Sasha.

  Brook pushed past the redhead, looked down, and saw the bloody wound. “Help me,” she said to the bearded man.

  Together they tore off the backpack and rifle then succeeded in getting Gregory rolled over flat on his back.

  “It’s going to be close,” said Brook, her hand outstretched toward Raven. “Antiserum.”

  Raven went into the stricken man’s pockets and came out with the cylinder.

  Dregan’s mouth fell open. With the noise of the others scrabbling to a halt outside the hide, he crabbed out of the woman’s way and fixed his gaze on his dying boy.

  “Fucking guys and their beards,” said Brook as she parted the thicket searching for the proper site. “Got it.” In the next instant, like the trained professional that she was, the auto injector was out of the cylinder and she was jabbing the short needle into the man’s neck.

  Peering over Brook’s shoulder, the elder Dregan asked, “Is that for real?”

  Brook nodded and tossed the spent injector aside.

  “Will he live?”

  Showing little emotion, Brook replied, “Fifty-fifty … at best.”

  “I owe you,” he said, tears rolling over his cheeks and into his bushy beard.

  From the direction of the compound feeder road came the sound of a couple of hard-working engines.

  “On your way back to wherever you came from, stop in and see if Helen and Ray are getting along. I haven’t been able to. So I figure sending you is the least I can do … after all they did for us.”

  “I still owe you a life debt,” Dregan said. “And you needn’t worry, I won’t mention another word about you or your people to anybody.”

  Brook nodded to the men assembling at her back. “And them?”

  “I’ll make sure they don’t talk.”

  Just then, the youngest Dregan, blonde and blue eyed, crashed through the brush and slid on his knees next to the stricken man. He looked closely at the wound and, oblivious to the antiserum working its way through the man’s system, said, “How do you feel, brother?”

  “Hot,” replied, Gregory, weakly. “I’m burning up.”

  “That’s a good sign,” said Brook. She removed his stocking cap and pressed it against the wound as a makeshift bandage. “Somebody get this man some water.”

  “Got it,” said a man. Another came forward and offered to hold the cap in place.

  Breathing deeply and looking around at the dozen faces wearing worried looks, Brook went from her knees to her butt, then suddenly was flattened by sixty-some-odd pounds of twelve-year-old and fo
und herself suffocating in Raven’s iron embrace.

  After savoring the attention and returning it tenfold for a couple of minutes, Brook sat up and looked around. “I heard engines. Glenda. Is Glenda out there yet?”

  The crowd parted and the older woman stepped up and shot Brook a bewildered look.

  No reason to beat around the bush. Brook said, “Oliver is alive. He and the others should be back any time now.”

  Hearing this, Glenda fell to her knees. “How?”

  Brook checked her patient’s pulse. Smiling and looking at Glenda, she said, “That’s all I know. And Mister Dregan … this one’s not out of the woods yet but, based on firsthand knowledge, I think he’s going to pull through.”

  She dug the Thuraya from her pocket. After dredging the code word for safe from her memory, she tapped out a short message and sent it to Cade’s sat-phone. It read simply: Stand down. We are peachy.

  Epilogue

  The first part of the promised life debt arrived an hour after the convoy of mostly military vehicles turned around and headed back to Bear River with Gregory Dregan’s feet still firmly planted in the realm of the living.

  Now, hours later, Brook gazed to her left at the tanker truck partially blocking Daymon’s Winnebago from view. Emblazoned on its polished stainless flank, barely discernable because of the licking flames of the roaring campfire being reflected there, were the words BEAR VALLEY PROPANE. And not to be missed beneath those two-foot-high red letters was rattle-canned writing in black that read: Alexander Dregan – Gas Baron of Salt Lake City.

  “That will easily outlast winter,” she said to Cade, who was sitting on the grass in front of her with his left ankle entombed in snow that once made up the main body of Raven and Sasha’s snowman.

  “You did good,” Cade said, following her gaze to the tractor-trailer and shiny tank hitched to it.