District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

Now, slowed by the unlikely combination of mud sucking at
their oversized boots and waterlogged fleece and nylon weighing them down like suits
of armor, the young couple were no faster than their
new
pursuers—nearly
a dozen moaning and hissing dead things all in various stages of decay and
undress.

Nancy and Sid trudged a rough semi-circle around the things
to get to their car. Once there, they found only ashes and charred skeletal
seat frames inside the metal shell that had once contained all of the memories
of their past lives.

“Let’s go, Nance,” Sid urged.

Shaking her head, Nancy pounded on the car’s flat roof with
her good hand, sending blackened, scaling paint flying in every direction.

“We’ll make new memories,” Sid called, as he led the slow
procession of dead things around the front of the Volvo and away from Nancy.

“Fuck memories,” Nancy hissed, as Sid returned, grabbed her
elbow, and lead her toward the fence.

“We can’t stay on the road. They’re coming back … sooner or
later.”

The dead were hissing and moaning louder than ever as Sid
dragged Nancy away from the now low-to-the-ground car.

Sid reached the snipped wire fence and ushered Nancy
through. He burned the ten-second lead over the zombies by working feverishly
to wind the longest of the rusty strands around a post as a makeshift barrier.

Falling short by less than an inch, Sid gave up and reentered
the pasture through the breach and began shedding his leaden layers of clothing
the same way he had donned them: on the run.

“Fucking Pineapple Express,” he shouted, tugging at a sleeve
to extricate his arm. “Thought these kinds of wild weather swings only happened
near the ocean.”

“Help,” Nancy called out, one arm bent at an awkward angle
and stuck fast in the sleeve of her goose-down parka.

Sid stopped in his tracks and, as he turned at the waist to
regard Nancy, there came a string of hollow popping sounds. In the split second
between realizing what the noises were and opening his mouth to tell Nancy to
duck, his side vision registered two slender women rising up from the roadside
a hundred feet south. In the next beat he was delivering the warning and staring
directly at winking muzzles as the two shooters advanced along the state route
toward them.

Turning back to help Nancy with her coat, a bullet grazed Sid’s
cheek, sending him to the ground where suddenly he found himself within arm’s
reach of an emaciated female cadaver. Drawing in a mouthful of carrion-tinged
air, his eyes were drawn from Nancy to the creature’s bare feet and on up to
its horribly shredded mid-section that, judging by the advanced state of decay
the remaining organs had suffered, had been exposed to the full wrath of the elements
since the early days of the outbreak.

Hearing Nancy cry out, Sid scrambled backwards on hands and
feet toward her.

More bullets scythed overhead, crackling and hissing. Two of
the advancing dead fell under the withering fire, landing equidistant between
Sid and his wife. Still locked onto Sid like a meat-seeking missile, the female
zombie plodded through the sucking mud.

Finally, lamenting the fact that his vision was blurring and
he was unable to move faster on his back across the open ground than the undead
woman with what amounted to barely bungee cords for core muscles, Sid raised
his hands defensively and focused his gaze on the hollow of her neck.

Feeling the sting where a flying fragment of rock or, God
forbid, bone shard from one of the fallen zombies had cut a jagged inch-long
wound on her shoulder, Nancy extricated her forearm and hand from the sodden
sleeve. With the angry noise of bullets flying by her head, she turned toward
Sid just in time to see the female zombie’s toothy sneer erased by a final long
fusillade of gunfire coming from the direction of the state route.

The pasture suddenly went deathly quiet.

Casting her eyes groundward, Nancy waited for the bullets to
tear into her and Sid. But none came. Which caused her to wonder why.
Reluctantly, she swung her gaze up and around and saw that the other walking
corpses had been cut down before they could fully flank her husband, who was now
on his hands and knees and surrounded by their bullet-riddled corpses.

From out of sight a familiar, gruff female voice said,
“Don’t move!”

Nancy could feel the beginnings of an icy ball forming in
her gut. She looked at her good right hand and it dawned on her why the dead
had been gunned down instead of her and Sid.

“Stand up,” the same voice ordered.

Nancy saw black combat boots in her peripheral. Then a long gun
barrel, a curl of smoke wafting from it, entered the picture. Finally, she walked
her eyes up the woman’s quilted snow pants and regarded her silver and
turquoise belt buckle which struck her instantly as Native-American-made. It
was very ornate. Dozens of light green shards of stone had been fashioned into
the shape of a gecko. Zuni in nature, maybe. Nothing bought in a New Mexico
gift store, for sure.

She felt the rough leather of a black glove brush the soft
flesh under her chin. Then iron fingers gripped her jaw and lifted her head up,
forcing her to meet the woman’s steely glare.

“Don’t take us back there,” Nancy said breathlessly, as the
noise of engines firing carried from far off down the state route.

“I have no plans of doing anything of the sort,” the woman
said, grinning wickedly as Sid, already bound at the wrists and ankles with
thick plastic zip ties, was thrown to the ground near her muddy boots.

Nancy lowered her gaze and delivered a look to Sid that
said:
I love you
. A tick later, in her peripheral vision, she saw the woman
gripping her jaw receive a black parcel handed to her by one of the others.

Mercifully, the woman let go of Nancy and in the same motion
set the kit on the uneven, soggy ground. Then, with the slow, calculated precision
of a Swiss watchmaker, the big hulk of a woman pulled the thick leather cords
and unrolled the foot-long item with a practiced underhanded flip.

There was a rattle of metal on metal as the four-foot-long rectangle
of treated black leather unfurled. A strong odor of cowhide fought with the
stench of the gunned-down corpses.

Sid saw Nancy’s rigid body go limp. The fight was gone from
her. As was the last shred of dignity their escape had fomented in the
strong-willed woman. He craned his neck and regarded the big woman everyone
called
Mom
. Though nearly every square inch of her was covered in black
leather, it didn’t hide the fact that she was morbidly overweight. Her lips curled
at the corners, showing off pristine enamel, as she withdrew a wicked-looking knife
from a slot amongst the squared-off bone saws and myriad other stainless steel
rendering tools.

Sid looked at Nancy and was relieved to see that she had
apparently fainted. Which was a good thing, because he would be first to go and
wouldn’t have to witness what they had in store for her body. And as he steeled
himself for the first sting of the butcher’s blade, he relived the moment the
woman brandishing the knife had severed Nancy’s hand and awarded it to the blonde
and blue-eyed woman who had captured them at the farmhouse outside of Eden,
Utah the day before.

Suddenly a thumb found its way into Sid’s eye socket, bringing
him back to the present and causing a flash of white hot pain to flood his
brain. Next, gloved fingers clamped over his mouth and his head was drawn back,
the corded muscles in his neck stretched to their limits.

Through his one good eye, Sid saw the patch of snow below
him go red with his steaming blood. A biting metallic odor hit his nose and
suddenly there was a strange warmth coursing through his body. In the end there
was light. And in that light the faint outline of what had to be his boy, tiny
arms outstretched, a knowing smile on his face.

Strange what endorphins could do to a man, was Sid’s last
thought before the lifelong atheist’s wildly flailing arms and kicking feet
ceased moving, the mud angel beneath his prostrate corpse truly a work of art.

Cade Grayson rattled four 200-milligram ibuprofen into his
palm, popped them in his mouth and washed them down with a swallow of water. He
leaned forward on the folding chair and set his plate and fork on the small
table next to the door of the particular Conex container in the subterranean
redoubt that had come to be known affectionately by all of its tenants as the “
Grayson
Quarters
.” With room enough for a trio of bunkbeds—and not much else—the
place was about as close to home as anything Cade had known since fleeing the
Graysons’ two-story Craftsman in Portland, Oregon on that fateful day in late
July when the newly dead began to rise.

“Raven,” he called through the open sheet of steel serving
as a door. “Time to police up the dishes. And bring your partner in crime with
you.”

There were footsteps on the plywood floor and suddenly Tran
was standing an arm’s reach from Cade. Wearing his easy smile, the slight man
tucked a graying lock of his dark hair behind an ear and raised a brow.

“What’s up, Tran?”

“I’ll get your plate.”

“Oh no you won’t, Tran,” Brook Grayson called from her perch
on the top bunk of the nearest set of steel Army-issue equipment. “Those girls
earned the privilege of ninety days KP.”

Cade piped up, “At
least
ninety days. Besides … you
did all of the work whipping up dinner for ... twelve?”

“Thirteen, counting you,” Tran said, his smile growing
wider.

More footsteps approached from down the corridor, out of
sight behind Tran.

“Damn fine meal. Venison?” Cade asked.

Tran nodded. “You can thank Daymon for the meat. He bagged
it up at the quarry late last night.”

Propped up on one elbow, her face lost in the gloom near the
ribbed metal ceiling, Brook said, “What was he doing at the quarry?”

Tran shrugged as first Raven, then Sasha—a head taller than
the Asian man, on account of her wild thicket of red hair—squeezed past him and
edged sideways into the Grayson Quarters. Silently, without making eye contact,
the girls took the camp plates and silverware and left the narrow room as they
had arrived.

Back pressing the corridor wall, Tran watched them go. When
he looked back through the door, he glanced up and met the dark-haired woman’s
gaze.

“Chilly reception,” Brook said. “How’s it going topside?”

“It’s been real quiet. Heidi and Seth are manning the
cameras. A few of the others are gearing up. They’re going to use the break in
the weather to go foraging north of Woodruff.”

Grimacing, Cade leaned forward and snatched his water from
the table. “Who all’s going?”

Tran shrugged. “I saw Daymon, Lev, and Jamie cleaning
weapons. But there were at least six packs on the ground under the Raptor’s
tailgate.”

Since the Raptor was Taryn’s ride, Brook cocked her head and
asked the obvious, “Taryn and Wilson are going, too?”

Again, Tran shrugged. Then he flashed Cade and Brook an
arched brow look. “Anything else?”

“Yes, there is,” Brook said. She crawled down from the bunk
and approached Tran. Standing toe-to-toe with the man she matched in height and
basic build, she whispered, “Me and Cade have placed the girls under a pseudo
house arrest until further notice.”

With Cade looking on silently, Tran nodded.

Buying a moment to think, Brook adjusted her ball cap.
Finally, after meeting Cade’s gaze and seeming to have read his mind, she said,
“I need you to be our eyes and ears when we’re not around. If you see or hear the
girls scheming or going near the entrance without one of us—or Wilson, in
Sasha’s case—you have my permission to detain them.”

Face wearing a look of understanding, Tran nodded, then backed
away from the door and disappeared down the corridor to the right.

Cade pulled the folding chair nearer to him and adjusted the
pillow his still swollen left foot was propped up on. “I hate to do that to the
girls. Especially Raven, but pardon the pun on this one, our Bird doesn’t have
a leg to stand on after that stuff she pulled. Nor does Sasha for instigating.”

“Thank God it ended well,” Brook noted. “I think Raven may
have learned her lesson.”

Cade nodded in agreement. “I concur. Raven’s following days
are over, that’s for sure.”

“Keep that foot up, Cade Grayson … or this nurse isn’t going
to sign off on your next mission.”

Smiling, Cade said, “I’ll just go and get a second opinion.”

Brook guffawed. “Glenda Gladson is
not
going to take
your side of this matter.” Issuing a playful glare, she put her hands on her
hips.

“I’ve got an ace in my hand.”

“Duncan?”

Cade nodded.

“He’s of sound mind now. He’ll do
whatever
his lady
friend tells him to do.”

Conceding her point, Cade said, “I might just have a little
dirt on Old Man.”

“Liar.”

Cade tried to keep a straight face, but in the end he
couldn’t lie to Brook. Never had. Never would. So his lips parted with a
revealing shit-eating grin.

Brook wagged a finger at her man. “Toes above the nose,
Grayson. You’re almost there.”

“By tomorrow?”

“By tomorrow, do you mean during the day?” Arching a brow,
she took a deep breath. “Or tonight at one minute after midnight?”

Cade’s game face was back. “Closer to the latter,” he
replied, flatly.

Exiting the room, Brook shot Cade a no-nonsense look and
repeated her earlier admonition. “Toes above the nose, Mr. Grayson.”

Smile fading, Cade threw a crisp salute at the closing door
and, without missing a beat, rose from the folding chair, testing the ankle.

Good to go
, he told himself, the grimace fading along
with the resulting stab of pain. However, rather than following
nurse’s
orders and getting back under the covers on the bottom bunk and propping his
foot up on the tubular metal footboard, he looped around the bunk, unlatched
his Pelican gear box, and hinged the lid open.

Instantly the familiar and comforting smell of Hoppe’s #9 gun
oil filled the air. The grimace returning, he knelt next to the box and,
working on a sort of autopilot mode, grabbed his gear and weapons from the box
and started in on the time-consuming process of getting each piece of kit ready
for his upcoming mission.