A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (12 page)

“Over my dead body... tough guy!” Ari
jokingly spat back.

“Calm down Night Stalker,” Tice said,
suppressing a grin. “I wouldn’t want to get between an aviator and
his stick.”

The Ghost Hawk’s comms crackled with
laughter, and that was the best medicine for men going into harm’s
way against an unknown foe.

Ari spurred the bird on. Taking the airspeed
beyond 100 knots, he pointed her on a westward heading towards the
towering Rocky Mountains and the New American enclave that lay
beyond.

Tice lowered the Nikon lens, silently hoping
the topic of drone aircraft wouldn’t be revisited any time soon. If
it did, he was certain his input would not be well received.

Chapter 13

Outbreak - Day 11

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Jackson Firehouse

Daymon awoke to a new day of the apocalypse.
His knees still ached from running several miles in heavy thick
soled boots and his body felt like a side of beef worked over by
Rocky Balboa.

Though he didn’t know what day of the week it
was, somehow in the back of his mind he remembered that he was back
in Jackson Hole, and in a near state of panic, with the nagging
feeling that he had overslept hovering on the periphery of
conscious thought, he bolted from the bed. He knew that in order to
escape Chief Kyle’s wrath, and possibly a week’s worth of kitchen
duty, he had to be dressed and down the pole before the
transgression could be logged and duly noted. As he rifled through
his closet for a fresh uniform, he shrugged off the shroud of
sleep. In the next instant the realization that he was alone in the
firehouse, and Chief Kyle and the guys were gone and probably never
coming back, struck him full force.

Daymon quelled the impulse to scratch the
four vertical gashes. Instead he gently plucked at the cotton tee
shirt which had fused to the discharge during the night. The wounds
he had suffered going over the wire at Schriever two days prior
were starting to knit and itched like hell and his abdomen, still
viciously red and hot to the touch, needed attention. First Aid was
the furthest thing from his mind as he trotted off towards the
bathroom to relieve his full bladder.

After a three minute piss he washed his hands
thoroughly then opened the medicine cabinet perched above the sink
looking for something with which to clean and dress his wounds. He
spotted just what the doctor ordered tucked away behind a couple of
canisters of Barbasol shaving cream.
Perfect
. The
unmistakable brown plastic bottle with the white cap sat right next
door to a full tube of Neosporin antibiotic ointment.

As he studied his wounds in the mirror, he
asked himself,
Are you sure you want to go through with
this?
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he doused the infected
gashes running from his navel to just below his sternum with half
of the bottle’s contents.

“
Motherfucker
...” he gasped between
pursed lips. “
That shit stings.
” He gritted his teeth,
letting the invasive foaming napalm do its thing for a couple of
minutes. The pain was so intense he envisioned the piranha-toothed
creature from
Alien
about to burst from his gut.

After allowing the hydrogen peroxide to
bubble in the wounds for as long as he could stand, he wiped away
the foamy yellow pus and slathered on a liberal amount of the
antibiotic ointment. Then, grimacing through more pain, he labored
to pull a clean black tee shirt on over his dreadlocks.

Walking gingerly he made his way to the brass
pole where for a New York second he lingered, entertaining the
crazy notion of taking the fast way down.
Pole or stairs?
he
asked himself. Since he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of
the pole contacting his chest all the way to the first floor, he
picked the latter; then, after trudging down thirty-four stairs, he
paused at ground level, light headed and winded.

Never before had a handful of simple tasks
caused him to expend so much energy. Hell, he thought, that was the
first time he had ever gone down the stairs empty handed. Only a
couple of instances came to mind: once after he tweaked a knee
jumping from a perfectly good airplane and the other time after he
sprained his ankle tripping over a root while fighting a back
country wildfire.

While Daymon wolfed down a cold can of Chef
Boyardee raviolis, he allowed his mind to drift back to the fateful
sundrenched Saturday when he left Jackson Hole. The day had started
off on a bad note with Chief Kyle hunting him down, then rousing
him out of bed and going ballistic on him (which was at least a
once a day occurrence in the firehouse) over a formal ‘Request for
Leave’ chit that Daymon had sneaked into his in-box the day
before.

A rash of shit over a leave request was to be
expected—especially in the middle of summer—but his tirade had been
one for the books—until the Chief paused, face flushed, and said
“Yes.”

Daymon remembered scraping his jaw from the
floor and the Chief’s next action — which still baffled him to this
day.

The Chief tossed him the keys to the mint
green BLM Forest Service Suburban that had been recently retired
and was destined for public auction. “Just fucking with you, take
the old Suburban. She’s parked out back,” Kyle had said with a sly
smile. “Shit, the color might even trick you into thinking you’re
driving your Lu Lu.”

“I doubt that Chief... but thanks for the
wheels,” Daymon had replied. He was taken aback to say the least,
to the point that he had contemplated pinching himself to make sure
he wasn’t still asleep. Though the fire season up to then had been
an unusually slow one, he still hadn’t expected to hear the one
word that up until that morning rarely came out of the Chief’s
mouth. But before the last consonant rolled from Chief Kyle’s
tongue he was up and halfway dressed.

“And Daymon...”

“Yeah Chief.”
Here it comes
, Daymon
thought.
This other shoe that’s about to drop oughta fit
Shaquille O’Neal
.

“Keep your phone on. In case the big one
happens... I want to be able to get ahold of you and reel you back
in,” Chief Kyle said prophetically.

Daymon shouldered his pack before saying,
“You got it Chief... thanks again.”

As the iron door sealed off the last few
inches of daylight he remembered hearing Chief Kyle yell at his
back, “Give your Moms a hug for me.”

He left without acknowledging Kyle’s last
order. He didn’t want to hang around lest the mental sadist was
playing some cruel joke and planned on revoking the liberty pass.
He left Jackson Hole with a sense of serenity (a rare occurrence
for him.) He had been known to say, “My mind is like a bad
neighborhood, I go to visit, but I try to keep my visits short.”
Leaving with the knowledge that the Chief hadn’t really been angry
made it easier to reconcile the survivor’s guilt that had been
festering within him since he first heard about the entire crew’s
one way journey to Idaho Falls. The fact that there had been no
further communication from them didn’t bode well. Little did Daymon
know at the time, but his growing the cajones to actually ask for
the leave to see his mom in Utah, coinciding with Chief Kyle having
a rare good day, were the two things that saved his life.

That Saturday had been the world’s final
normal day.

Chapter 14

Outbreak - Day 11

Winter’s Compound

Eden, Utah

Camera 6 tripped first, its electronic alarm
warbled loudly and grabbing the attention of anyone within earshot
of the compound’s security center. Seth reached across the desk and
lowered the volume, spilling his bottled water in the process.

“Motherf...” he reined in the eff bomb just
in time.

“What do you have?” Logan cried, ducking his
head as he burst into the low ceilinged room.

“I was just getting there and this—”

Logan cut him off. “Forget about the water...
what do you see on the monitor?”

“There’s not a cloud in the sky, so the
capture is pretty washed out from the sunlight.... Let me try
something...” Seth fiddled with the contrast until the grainy image
on the flat panel resembled two people walking side by side in the
direction of the concealed airstrip. “Oh no! How in the
fuck
did they get inside the fence line?”

Lev burst through the door, went to a knee,
and peered over Seth’s shoulder as the room filled with the sounds
of clomping boots and excited voices all chattering in tense,
clipped syntax.

Though the image on the monitor was less than
perfect it was evident one of the bipeds captured by the digital
game camera was missing an arm.

“
We’ve got rotters!
” Lev bellowed.

Seth snatched up his radio. “Come in Gus.
Camera 6 just picked up movement. Be careful... looks like we have
rotters inside the perimeter.” He released the transmit button and
waited for a response.

Nothing.

He tried again. “Gus... this is Seth, if you
cannot talk click your mic.”

Click. Click.

Lev and Logan exchanged knowing looks.

***

Gus smelled carrion riding the air just
moments before Seth’s frantic voice came through his earpiece. Not
wanting to give himself away he ignored the call and remained
silent. His first thought was that a lone straggler, a crawler or
maybe a child zombie had somehow wormed its way through or under
the barbed wire and tripped the nearby trail camera.

Once again, but with more urgency, Seth’s
voice invaded his earpiece confirming there were rotters inside the
fence.

Gus acknowledged what he already knew by
clicking the transmit button on the two-way radio twice then
continued scanning the forest floor twelve feet below for the
source of the stench.

The well concealed two-person tree stand was
in a copse of trees overlooking both the gravel road that connected
with State Route-39 roughly two miles to the north, and the
primitive airstrip bisecting the lush green meadow in front of him.
For a brief moment he entertained the idea of climbing down and
scouting on foot, then, remembering the wandering packs of rotters
he witnessed tearing people alive in Salt Lake City he wisely
decided to stay put.

Gus pressed the Bushnells to his eyes and
glassed the clearing in the foreground. Then he panned along the
tree line beyond where the compound’s entrance was hidden and
continued on to the right scrutinizing the single engine Cessnas
and the two helicopters secreted under the canopy at the forests
edge. With no walkers in sight he set the binoculars aside and
fetched his LaRue Tactical M4. Chambered for the 5.56 NATO round
and outfitted with an Eotech close quarter battle holographic sight
with a flip down 3x magnifier, it was a perfect all-purpose
weapon.

Ironically, Gus had liberated the rifle from
its last owner a few miles south of Arsenal, Utah, moments after
Dispatch in Salt Lake City had gone eerily quiet. He had just fled
the National Guard’s temporary triage center and the hastily
erected FEMA shelters, both of which were overwhelmed with dead and
dying, and had driven a few miles down I-15 when he made his final
traffic stop.

***

The thirty-eight-year-old Salt Lake Sheriff
pulled his cruiser alongside the parked Ford F-350 to perform a
welfare check.

The truck was the same type of gun
rack-equipped obscenely lifted 4x4 nearly every male in rural Utah
owned or aspired to own one day.

Unfortunately the driver had already been
infected and was beyond help, so with Glock drawn Gus opened the
driver door, being careful to stay out of the male zombie’s reach.
Being a full thirty pounds lighter and a head shorter than the
infected creature, he didn’t want to get anywhere near its grabby
hands and snapping teeth.

As the zombie fought and struggled to get to
the
meat
, Gus went around and leaned in the passenger side
and with the pointed end of his telescoping baton unlatched the
good ol’ boy’s seatbelt. Before that day, he never thought he’d use
the baton for anything other than ruining knees or elbows or
skulls—anything he had to do in order to gain submission from
unruly bad guys.

As soon as the belt popped the
two-hundred-and-fifty pound monster slid off of the slick leather
seat and hit the blacktop face first with a resonant snap. By the
time Gus had closed the passenger door, the lurching, beer bellied
cadaver was already up and stalking him around the truck.

Gus steadied his Glock on the truck’s side
mirror and methodically put two rounds into the center of the
creature’s already cratered face. Then, instead of returning to his
patrol car, he took the dead man’s Ford and his customized rifle
and continued north to SR-39 then East to Eden, Utah.

That day it seemed like someone or something
was directing his actions. Like he was a marionette and fate was
pulling the strings.

Some called it divine intervention—others
called it desertion.

***

Heavy footsteps combined with the firecracker
like reports of snapping branches brought Gus back from his ten
second journey to the past. He flicked up the 3x magnifier, tucked
the rifle into his shoulder, and sighted on the spot where he
guessed the culprit or culprits would emerge.

The one armed walker bulled its way into the
clearing beneath the tree stand. The flesh on its remaining arm and
legs bore deep lacerations from its one-sided battle with the thorn
studded undergrowth. As Gus watched from above, the creature
abruptly stopped and cocked its head like a dog. Then after swaying
in place for a few seconds, apparently hearing something that Gus
didn’t, the one armed walker altered course and staggered off into
the forest, moaning as it went.