A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

Just as the bolt on the smoking Colt locked
open, more of the horde surged through the splintered doorway.
Without looking, Brook hit the release on the right side of the
rifle’s lower receiver, sending the spent magazine tumbling to the
ground. Then, in one fluid motion, she jammed a fully loaded mag
home and pulled the charging handle, racking a round into the
chamber. “
Die fuckers!
” she cried, pouring lead into the
approaching zombies. A crazy grin appeared on her face and she
couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at her choice of words. The
walking corpses had already died once. She couldn’t use “
Die
again fuckers”
—it didn’t have the same ring to it.

Slipping and sliding on a crimson lake of
bodily fluids and spilled entrails, the crush of putrid bodies
closed in on all sides as Brook used up the last of her ammo.
“
You can’t have her
!” she screamed, swinging the useless
rifle at the encroaching knot of tooth and nail.

Before the gnarled hands could rip Raven from
her grasp, Brook’s upper body exploded from beneath the sheets. Her
chest heaved and her ripped abdomen glistened slick with sweat.
Still running on the very impulses that had been jumping synapses
milliseconds earlier, her right hand frantically searched the bed,
not for her husband Cade, but for the M4 rifle that she had wielded
in her nightmare.

Gradually coming to her senses, Brook inhaled
fully, held the air in her lungs for a tick, and then gently
exhaled—willing her heart rate to slow. Then she pulled the strands
of sweat-dampened hair behind her ears and listened to the rhythm
of Raven’s breathing.

Brook knew without a doubt that this latest
nightmare was a direct manifestation of her subconscious fears—the
very fears that she kept stuffing, the ones she was neither fully
ready, nor willing to deal with.

She shuddered. This macabre masterpiece had
been the most vivid and horrifying to date. Though she wasn’t
overly superstitious or into psychic phenomenon, she couldn’t help
but think these recurring “creature features” in her brain were
somehow premonitions of things to come.

At that moment as she lay in the dark trying
to analyze the nightmare which was becoming more distant with each
elapsed second, the realization that her brother was dead, his
murder not conjured up by some cruel part of her subconscious,
rippled through her like a 9.0 earthquake. Then the reality that
she was now essentially an orphan clawed for her attention. It had
been only ten days since she had shotgunned her mother and father
in the house that she had been raised in, and now, further
compounding that loss, her brother Carl had just been murdered in
cold blood by an unhinged lunatic whose motives still remained a
mystery. Getting her mind around this, let alone telling Raven
everything that had transpired, was going to be a monumental
task.

Brook felt another cramp forming. The pain
attacked in short bursts, radiating from within like menstrual
cramping, only markedly more intense. In response she rubbed the
tender area above her pubic bone, trying to stave it off. Being a
nurse, she knew the human body had its own way of taking care of a
defective pregnancy, and her body was doing just that.

Shuffling slightly hunched over, the tiny
porcelain tiles chilling the bottoms of her bare feet, she made her
way to the toilet. The nondescript room smelled of chlorine bleach
and the rank wild flower smell of piss-coated urinal cake. The
bathroom, which had been designed when men predominantly made up
the Air Force ranks, had a long row of stand-up urinals and only
half a dozen toilets. The lack of doors on the sit downs made her
feel more than a little exposed. It wouldn’t have been an issue if
she was only
going
to the bathroom. That she was losing her
baby made her long for a half-inch thick piece of wood for privacy.
Sitting alone, feet hovering above the real and imagined microbes
that made the floor their home, she fought the overwhelming urge to
bawl out loud.

A bout of diarrhea,
she had told
herself convincingly.
Maybe you’re hungry
, another voice
chided. All the while,
You are losing your baby,
is what the
recurring spasms in her abdomen were screaming. The hope that she
had been privately clinging to for half a day disintegrated when
she looked in the toilet water between her legs. Gossamer strands
of bloody discharge confirmed her worst fears—she had just lost her
baby. That Cade was gone again made the loss even harder to
accept.

Still sitting on the commode, Brook hailed
her daughter in the other room. “Raven... wake up. We’ve got to
leave in a few minutes. Annie is going to need your help today with
Junior and the twins.”

“Ok... Ok. I’m up,” Raven grumbled from the
other room.

The sound of her daughter’s dainty feet
hitting the floor spread a half smile across Brook’s face.
Be
grateful
, she told herself, fighting to stand erect and pull on
her pants. On a scale of one to ten the pain was about a six. This
Brook could handle. She put her game face on, retrieved the M4, and
greeted her sleepyhead. “Sweetie... did you get enough shuteye? Did
you have any nightmares?”

“Yes Mom... no Mom,” Raven answered, the
irritation from being prematurely roused now absent from her voice.
Then, rubbing her eyes, she asked, “Where’s Dad?”

“Out saving the world I presume,” Brook said
dramatically. Instantly she wished she could take it back. Cade was
Raven’s Super Man, King Arthur and Robin Hood all rolled into one.
She adored her dad and remarkably her world still revolved around
him—he still had the “dad mystique” that usually disappears around
the time a girl turns thirteen.
One more year Mr. Grayson
,
Brook thought to herself.

“I’ve got to pee like a racehorse,” Raven
declared, making a beeline for the toilets.

“Where in the heck did you hear that young
lady?” Brook asked, suppressing a smile.

“Duh... Dad, of course.”

“Wait a minute... I forgot to flush,” Brook
said, cutting Raven off at the pass.

She didn’t want to have to explain all of the
blood. And it wasn’t the right time to further traumatize her by
letting her know that her sibling had just died.

When the shit hit the fan the previous night,
Cade had been away on yet another mission with his Delta team,
leaving her and Raven alone to fend for themselves. During a
deployment in the old world the only life in jeopardy had been
Cade’s. But thanks to the deadly rampage, it had become evident to
Brook that she and her daughter were no safer inside the wire than
out. Since her flight from Fort Bragg she had become extremely
capable of protecting her family, but she still longed to have all
three of them together again for good. The fifteen months prior to
the Omega outbreak had been, hands down, the best stretch of family
time she could remember since Raven was born. That she had given
Cade her blessing to rejoin the Unit and embark on another mission
didn’t soften the blow of losing her brother Carl. The silver
lining to the very dark and brooding cloud hanging over her world
was that Raven hadn’t been murdered along with the others. The big
man up above had been looking out for her daughter, who had somehow
missed crossing paths with the killer by only a few seconds.
Timing is everything
, Brook thought to herself. By the time
she found Raven, sitting on the curb sobbing, the infirmary was
already fully engulfed in flames and there was nothing she could do
to save Carl.

As Brook sat with her arm around Raven
watching the building burn with her brother trapped inside, she
could think of only one thing: it was about time she started
getting her way. The Unit, the Country, President Clay, and the
myriad other forces pulling her husband away were going to have to
take the back seat. Maybe losing the baby now was a blessing, some
sort of sign, she thought. Bottom line, after her family was
together again for good, she
would
be bringing another
Grayson into the world—crawling with dead or not—this she would not
be denied.

Brook found her way back to the tiny slab of
fabric the military called a bed. The side of the lumpy mattress
Cade had fallen asleep on hours ago was now lonely and cold. She
knew her man—either he was jogging around the base or the Delta
operator was at the mess hall filling up on coffee. He rarely slept
the day before an operation, spending every spare moment checking
and rechecking weapons and equipment, poring over Intel and
endlessly running scenarios through his head. He did everything he
could to keep the talented Mr. Murphy (of Murphy’s Law fame) from
worming his way into the equation. One missed detail would be all
it would take to make the upcoming operation go sideways—and spoil
everyone’s day.

She also allowed Cade all the breathing room
he needed during his after-action decompression, when sleep became
especially elusive for the Delta Force operator.

Brook knew that her husband had been on one
constant
operation
since the day the dead began to walk and
that he was running on sporadic bursts of adrenaline and dangerous
levels of caffeine. Whether he was on base or away on a mission,
she wasn’t going to let her resentment build. And considering the
events of the night before, she was determined to be as supportive
as possible, even if that meant not talking about
her
loss.
Cade would eventually open up and grieve for his friend Mike
Desantos, in his own way, and when he did she would be there for
him, all ears, eagerly awaiting her turn to be heard.

***

Three hours earlier.

It was one of the rare instances when Brook
had failed to read her man correctly. Cade couldn’t sleep. The
thoughts of revenge, very graphic in nature, looped through his
mind like a snuff film. It was as if the killer’s face was tattooed
on the insides of his eyelids and the flat-faced mongrel taunted
him every time he closed them.

Cade dressed and laced his boots in the dark,
being careful not to wake his wife and daughter. He gazed at the
woman he loved before leaving to confront the man he truly
hated.

Brook snorted and then grimaced in her sleep.
No doubt she was having a whopper of a survival dream. Cade had
stopped referring to the nocturnal horror movies in his mind as
nightmares. He now referred to them as survival dreams, figuring it
was his mind’s way of staying on the razor’s edge even when it was
supposed to be at rest. At any rate, he hoped Brook was learning a
thing or two from hers.

Easing the door shut behind him, he made
doubly sure the lock was engaged. The fact that there might be
other killers roving freely about Schriever made it entirely
necessary.

Chapter 2

Outbreak - Day 10

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Security Pod

Senior Airman E-4 Croswell snapped to
attention, a crisp salute merging with his blue beret the second he
recognized Captain Cade Grayson’s approach. The leather-bound
ledger that had been used dutifully to document the time and
identity of anyone coming into contact with General Mike Desantos’
killer launched off of the E-4’s lap and slapped the floor
perfectly flat, issuing a loud report.

“At ease, Airman Croswell,” Cade ordered.

The E-4 relaxed slightly, scooped up the
fumbled log book, and plunged his arm under the gray folding chair
blindly searching for his only pen.

“No need for formalities. Colonel Shrill sent
me...
under the radar
,” Cade lied. “This visit stays off the
record,” he continued, glaring at the younger man. Cade didn’t
receive the response he was hoping for. Unlike most enlisted
personnel, Croswell didn’t melt. He gamely deflected the Delta
operator’s attempt at persuasion by saying, “I have orders to
follow. I
cannot
allow you entry without signing in.”

Doubling down on the bullshit, Cade
persisted. “That man in there murdered my friend General
Desantos...” Cade paused in order to let his words sink in. “That
waste of skin also murdered my wife’s brother, and three other
helpless people in the infirmary. And to cap it all off... that
monster killed the doctors and destroyed the lab containing the
antiserum that everyone on this base has been buzzing about.”

“I wasn’t told what the man did to get thrown
in here. I knew it had something to do with the fires... I had no
idea how bad it was,” said the E-4, his glare softening.

Sensing he was almost home, Cade put on a
full court press. “It’s way too late for me to go back... wake up
the Colonel just to satisfy you. Listen, you didn’t achieve the
rank of Senior Airman because you couldn’t follow orders... I get
that. You received that patch because of your ability to make
decisions, the correct decisions, on the fly,” Cade said, locking
eyes with the cleancut young man.

Adam’s apple bobbing like a rowboat in the
ocean, the airman’s heavily lidded eyes broke from Cade’s and
looked at the clock and then back, settling on the two silver bars
pinned to Cade’s beret. “Go on in Captain. You were never
here.”

After exchanging salutes with the airman,
Cade went through the inner door and stood directly in front of the
glass separating him from the murderer.

The man calling himself Pug lifted his head
and stared daggers of rage through the observation glass. A shudder
traced up Cade’s spine; it was as if the seated and manacled
prisoner on the other side of the one way mirror could see him,
head shifting, seemingly following, as the operator paced back and
forth. If he didn’t know any better he would have thought that the
flat-faced mongrel had x-ray vision—or at the very least the
olfactory senses of his canine namesake.