District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

Daymon had received the call on the CB while sitting by
himself in the cab of his Chevy. As Brook asked him to check in on the Thagons,
he watched the rest of the group conversing in the parking lot as they waited
for Max to do his business in the tall grass alongside the body shop.

Once Brook was finished with her update, Daymon filled her in
on their findings, leaving out how close they’d actually come to losing Wilson
and Taryn. However, as he talked up his idea of pushing farther north tomorrow
to pay Bear Lake a visit, he noticed that Oliver had somehow disengaged from
the discussion and was partially hidden from view by the Raptor, clouds of
blue-gray smoke rising intermittently.

“Pushing north kind of depends upon what you find at the
farm,” Brook replied. “Sounds like we’re dealing with some breathers who don’t
play nice and have no desire to share what’s still out there.”

“We’re dealing with something evil here,” Daymon reiterated,
visions of the crucified in Jackson worming their way back into his skull.

“How about we talk it over at dinner tonight? Take a vote … is
that acceptable?”

Daymon said nothing.

“You there?” Brook asked and turned her back to Heidi, whose
expression had gone through so many changes in a minute’s time that it was
creeping her out.

Finally, Daymon said, “Yeah, I’m still here, Brook.” There
was another short pause. “You know the weather window is closing. We can’t let
a couple of close calls scare us from what we need to do to get through winter.
I’m sure Cade would be thinking like I am if he were there.”

“I get that,” Brook said. Then, parroting Cade, she added, “Let’s
wargame it thoroughly first. That’s what Cade would recommend if he were here.”

“Touché,” Daymon said. “We’ll roll by the farm and check on
them. Since they know Taryn and Wilson, I figure I’ll let them run point. Me …
I’d probably just scare them.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Daymon. I don’t think everyone
sees you as you see yourself.” Cringing inwardly and pissed at herself for not
employing the filter between her brain and mouth, she turned slowly to gauge
Heidi’s response.

Daymon made no immediate reply. And thankfully, when Brook’s
gaze landed on Heidi the younger woman was nodding enthusiastically and
flashing both thumbs up.

Brook bugged her eyes and jabbed a thumb of her own at the
CCTV monitor.

Message received, Heidi turned her attention back to her
main task.

“Did I succeed in driving you away this time?”

“I’m
still
here,” he said. “Just watching Oliver get
high, that’s all.”

“High?”

“Hitting the weed. Boy’s on edge … like his shoes have
eggshells for soles.”

“Oh,” Brook exclaimed. “Is he driving?”

Daymon chuckled. “Not today.”

“See you in a bit, then,” Brook said. “I’ll try the Thagons
on the sat-phone. If I don’t call you back you can assume I didn’t raise them
and proceed as planned.”

“Copy that,” Daymon replied. “And Brook …”

“Yes?”

“Remember the definition of
assume
?”

Despite the pain behind her eyes and stiffness in her right
arm, Brook smiled and keyed the Talk button one last time. “Touché,” she said
and set the CB aside.

Following through with her promises, Brook called the
Thagons and let the ring tone drone on for a few seconds.
Nothing.
Crestfallen and fearing the worst, she ended the call. Before placing the phone
on the shelf, she jacked the ringer volume all the way up and set the phone in
front of the monitor. A very effective way of telling Heidi to stay vigilant,
without having to engage the woman.

After skirting the airspace over downtown Springs, Ari
steered the Ghost Hawk wide right to make an approach to Schriever from the
south. Flying low and slow, the black helo crossed the fence line over the
corner of Schriever where Mike Desantos was buried, her angular nose aimed for the
painted tarmac near the southernmost hangar of a long row of identical gray
structures.

Referring to the dozen or so football-field-sized rectangles
of freshly disturbed desert they had overflown moments before crossing the
wire, Cade asked, “Those mass graves back there … were those full of dead Zs
from the Springs cleanup or was I looking at the final resting spot of the casualties
from the Pueblo migration?”

Cross arched a brow and said, “How’d you—”

Interrupting, Ari looked over his shoulder and said, “That’s
classified, Wyatt. The whole debacle just goes to show that even presidents are
not immune to the law of unintended consequences.”

Cross reached over and tapped Cade’s shoulder. Covering his
boom mic, he asked, “How’d you hear about it?”

Also covering his mic, Cade said, “Saw it on a video Nash
sent me. All those survivors caught outside the wall … how many? And why no
intel? Someone should have known they were coming toward Springs with ten
thousand ravenous Zs hot on their heels.”

“That was before we started the sensor program,” Cross said.
“After the close call with the Denver horde, President Clay earmarked all available
resources to the building of the wall. I see it as her version of the space
race, only with vastly different ramifications if her promised three-week
completion fell short. Hell, Cade, the speech she gave rallied troops and civilians
alike.”

“How long
did
it take?”

“With the help of the 4th Infantry Division, Eckels and his
men worked around the clock and got the job done in eighteen days.”

“Impressive,” Cade said, his tone softening. “Eckels is the first
lieutenant who stopped the first wave of Zs coming up from Pueblo, correct?”

Cross nodded. “Bottom line, what happened outside the wall that
day couldn’t be helped.” He went quiet and looked out the window at the freshly
paved apron flashing by.

Having been listening to the conversation, Skipper caught
Cade’s eye and nodded agreeably. Then the familiar sound of the landing gear
motoring down interrupted the solemn moment.

Once the gear locked into place, Cross reestablished eye
contact with Cade and finished answering the question. “Had President Clay
known ahead of time, she still wouldn’t have had the engineers breach the south
wall. It was either six hundred deaths on her conscience, or, if she made the
call to breach the wall to let them inside … maybe thousands.” He pinched the
bridge of his nose, grimacing at the images on the footage he’d seen. Which was
the same four-minute clip Cade had alluded to. In his mind’s eye he saw the
shooters on the wall euthanizing American citizens by the scores. He remembered
vividly the licks of orange flame lancing the still dawn air. Twenty-eight 10th
Group shooters following inexplicable orders, thirteen of them now dead by suicide.
He could almost hear the screams of the people as they fought off the dead and
tried in vain to scrabble up the rough concrete walls. Finally, firm in the
belief that his old boss had done the right thing, he added, “Clay’s call was
the right call. Those graves you saw contain only the remains of the horde. The
Pueblo dead are buried in the Garden of the Gods in view of the tallest spires.
We just skirted the park’s south end. You would have been able to see it
clearly on your—”

“I saw it,” Cade said as the helo settled onto the apron
with a slight jounce. “That place is almost as fitting a final resting place as
Mike’s.” He deftly removed his safety harness and crossed the cabin to the
window next to the stowed starboard-side minigun. Peering out, he locked his
gaze on the battered yellow door at the bottom right corner of the closest hangar—roughly
seventy-five yards distant. From past experience, Cade knew that the man
responsible for every aviation asset on base, First Sergeant Whipper, called
the cramped room behind that yellow door his office. And damn if that yellow door
didn’t fly open and a short man in coveralls—full head of wispy white hair
blown about by the rotor wash—didn’t charge across the tarmac before Ari’d even
had a chance to power down the helo’s turbines.

Then, from around the right side of the hangar where the humongous
tracked doors were opened wide, a Humvee painted desert tan and configured as
an ambulance cut the corner at speed and accelerated, its low, rectangular
snout aimed straight for the Ghost Hawk.

Skipper hauled open the starboard door, letting the fifty
degree outside air in.

As Cade helped Cross get Lopez turned around toward the
starboard-side door, he stole another glance and watched the Humvee, lights
ablaze, quickly overtake Whipper and skid to a complete stop just outside of
the helo’s rotor cone.

Perched atop the squat vehicle was a box-shaped cab over-shell,
the ubiquitous red cross on white background painted on its slab sides. In
unison with the Ghost Hawk’s side door opening, both of the ambulance’s doors
flew open and out jumped two airmen wearing camouflage ABUs. One of them
lugging a bulky box, the airmen broke into a sprint and reached the open door
ahead of Sergeant Whipper.

With a brisk wind biting his exposed skin, Cade helped Lopez
to his back on the floor and gave his good friend a fist bump. “I’ll drop by
the infirmary after I jaw with Nash.”

Cade saw Lopez’s smile morph to a grimace as the airmen brushed
him aside as if he didn’t exist. Then, as he spoke to Cross about Lopez’s
symptoms, the airman removed the Hispanic operator’s MOLLE gear and peeled off
his Crye shirt.

“Hey amigo,” Lopez said, wincing as the airman pressed the stethoscope
to his exposed chest. “Give the pretty lady a sloppy wet kiss for me.”

“Roger that,” Cade said. He looked at Cross and nodded
toward the approaching Cushman. “You coming?”

The rotors overhead had slowed to a crawl, the turbine noise
and steady
thwop
silenced. “Go,” Lopez insisted. “If the demonios ain’t
got me yet … my own
pinche
appendix isn’t going to do me in.”

Cross grabbed his MP7 and rucksack. “Suit yourself, Lowrider.
Better not be expecting flowers.”

“A tee shirt from a D.C. gift shop will do,” he said with a
soft chuckle. “Now go. That’s an order.”

“You heard the man,” Cade said as he hopped aboard the
Cushman driven by an airman he knew all too well. “Time waits for no man.”

“Who said that?” Cross asked, tossing his gear into the back
of the modified golf cart.

“I did,” Cade said, putting his gear in atop Cross’s.
“Actually, I’m just parroting what my wife liked to say to my daughter on school
days.”

“To the TOC?” Airman Davis asked.

“Major Nash’s office for me,” Cade replied. “I’ll ride to
the TOC with her from there.”

Turning up his collar against the chill, Cross said, “Mess
hall for me. Has the food gotten any better here?”

“You’d be amazed,” Davis replied, giving the Cushman pedal.
“A lot of things have changed around here.”

And as if to punctuate the younger man’s statement, a
quartet of slate gray A-10 Thunderbolts crossed Schriever proper from the east.
The heavily armored ground attack jets banked hard to the south, showing off
their dual, rear-mounted turbofans and long, narrow wings.

Things sure have
, thought Cade as the vehicle picked
up speed.

The feeder road between State Route 16 and the Thagon home
seemed more rutted than before. There were exposed rocks and deep muddy
channels that kept grabbing the Raptor’s oversized off-road tires. If Taryn had
to make a guess, her money would be on the couple having been visited by not
one—but an army of vehicles. As she turned the corner where before there had
been a rusted old piece of farm equipment, the truck’s forward progress was
impeded by a twenty-foot-wide channel running diagonally across the muddy drive.

Taryn brought the pickup to a halt with the front wheels
perched on the leading edge of the foot-deep washout.

“What do you want to do?” Wilson asked.

“Assess the situation from here, I guess.”

She peered over the wheel at the house and barn. The former
was two stories. The paint was white and weathered. An immense wraparound porch
ambled away to the left and right from the centrally located front door. The
screen door was closed and the wooden door behind it appeared intact. A couple dozen
yards off the Raptor’s passenger side the red barn loomed, its doors still secured
with the same padlock and chain that Ray had employed to incarcerate them while
Brook had played emissary inside the house.

Wilson removed his floppy hat and ruffled his rowdy shock of
hair. “I don’t see anything moving.”

“Neither do I,” Taryn said quietly. “Not from here.”

Just then Daymon hailed them from the road. “I can see you.
Why’d you stop?”

Wilson keyed the Talk button. “There’s a washout here. The
road’s rutted as hell, too. Ray’s blue pickup is here.”

“And?” Daymon asked.

“The place looks deserted. I’m not liking what I’m seeing,”
Wilson conceded. “It reminds me of the Bates house.”

Sitting in his Chevy, Daymon looked at Oliver for help and
received only a glassy-eyed stare in return. After a half-beat of that he said,
“Kathy Bates?”

“
Norman
,” Lev called over the open channel. “You know
… as in
the
Norman Bates from the movie Psycho?”

Daymon consulted his rearview and saw Jamie in the passenger
seat of the F-650. She was laughing and next to her Lev was pretending to bang
his head on the steering wheel. So he keyed the Talk button. Held it down for a
long couple of seconds contemplating what he wanted to say. Finally, he just
spoke his mind. “Sorry,
dick
,” he said. “I wasn’t big on horror when I
was a kid. Still ain’t. Hell, every second goes by nowadays makes me feel as if
I’m starring in my own horror flick.”

Lev came on and started to apologize only to be cut short
when Wilson announced that he and Taryn were going to drive across the washout.

Softly cursing Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers under his
breath, Daymon gazed uphill and watched as the Raptor started to roll forward.
He saw it dip down into the wash, lurch drunkenly back and forth a few times,
then rocket up the other side as if the substantial crossing was little more
than a parking lot speedbump.

“Nicely done,” Daymon said. “You just going to run right up
and knock on the door, Red?”

Wilson came back on. “We sure aren’t going to pull up front
and honk,” he shot back. “That’d just draw out any rotters that are nearby.”

Making a visual tour of his mirrors for said rotters, Daymon
thought:
As if that growling V8 hasn’t already
.

***

In the Raptor, Taryn jockeyed the rig around the gravel
parking pad and parked it diagonal to the porch, leaving the tailgate facing
the front of the old house. In response to the confused look settling on
Wilson’s face, she set the emergency brake and said, “In case we have to leave
in a hurry.”

“Good call.” Wilson handed her the Motorola and unholstered
his Beretta. After confirming the chamber held a live round, he shouldered open
his door.

“Be careful,” Taryn said, placing a hand on his thigh.
“Check for traps.”

“Copy that.” He gave her a peck on the cheek that morphed
into a passionate kiss.

Looking him in the eyes, Taryn repeated herself, but slower
this time. “Be … careful, Wilson.”

“Checking for traps,” he answered as he stepped onto the
muddy drive and shut the door behind him. Hearing the locks
thunk
, he
wrapped around behind the idling truck and skidded to a halt in front of the
short stack of steps.

Blood.
Not just a drop or two, either. It looked as
if something or someone had gotten cut real deep and started to bleed out here.
He’d seen it before. Only that instance, a gusher caused by a horrific Z bite, which
had led to Phillip’s death and subsequent turn. And much like that pool of
drying blood up in the clearing by the compound, this mess at his feet was
pretty substantial.

He stood rooted, head down. Saw his reflection staring back
at him. Behind his reflection, high clouds scudded across the sky.

No need to be quiet now,
he concluded.

He sidestepped the pooled blood and scaled the steps,
thumbing back the hammer on his pistol. From his vantage on the front porch he
noticed that the blinds were closed and there was no light spilling from within.
Wincing as it screeched loudly, he pulled the screen door open.
No need for
a burglar alarm with this thing
, he thought, raising a hand to pound on the
sturdy oak door. After delivering a pair of sharp raps which nobody answered,
he doubled down and pounded with his fist.

Hearing what he thought to be a soft shuffling from behind
the door, he took a step back.

From her seat in the Raptor, Taryn had watched Wilson scale
the steps and approach the door. She had started when the screen door emitted
that cringeworthy sound. Then she had cringed as her man delivered the first
flurry of knocks. The rest, however, because it had happened so quickly, had
been but a blur to her. One moment Wilson was banging on the door. In the next the
door was swinging inward and he was being dragged inside, the barrel of some
kind of rifle pressed hard against his neck.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Taryn chanted, fumbling simultaneously
to draw her Beretta and depress the Talk button on the Motorola. But before she
could accomplish either critical task there was a gaping muzzle of some kind of
assault rifle tapping gently on the passenger side glass. And peering over the
black rifle was a face she vaguely recognized.

Woodruff

Ignoring the spiders and cobwebs and bird droppings, Iris
pressed her shoulder against the weathered wood four-by-four beam and craned to
see around the big brass bell. Once she determined the looters weren’t circling
back, that they hadn’t seen her and were trying some ruse to get her out into
the open, she increased the volume on the long range CB radio and clicked the
Transmit button two times.

After a long stretch of uneasy silence, a woman said,
“Speak.”

“They’re gone,” Iris said. “I’m in the steeple now.”

“Are they really gone … or just moved on?” the voice asked.

“Gone,” Iris whispered. “They drove off in the same vehicles
they came here in. I went to Main and tracked them nearly to the end of our
town. After they made the junction I’m fairly certain they continued south.”

“Were any of them injured?”

“No," Iris answered, sadness in her tone. “All six of
them made it out of the parochial house. They fought with a couple of the Purged
then went straight to their vehicles. I checked their vehicles out while they
were dealing with the husks … nothing. No supplies at all. But they do have a
dog
.”

“A
dog
?” the voice asked, sounding very interested. “A
big breed?”

“No. It was an Australian Shepherd. Male, I think.
Multi-colored eyes. Pretty coat,” Iris said, her salivary glands acting up
again. “Wherever these looters call home, it’s got to be nice. They’re all pretty
clean. Their trucks appear to be running well. Looks to me like they’re eating
well, too. One of them is borderline obese.”

“Perfect,” said the voice. “Keep watching. They’ll be back.”