District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (26 page)

Expecting the other shoe to drop, all eyes settled on Brook.

“Dregan was elated to hear that Ray and Helen were safe and
sound. He just adores those two.” Brook peered over her shoulder at the girls,
then went on. “He told me to hug and kiss each and every one of you who went
along on the welfare check.”

Wilson pointed at his pursed lips. Smiling and a little
flushed of cheek, he said, “Those two are tough as nails. Hard to believe
anything or anyone could get the drop on them.”

“I’ve been on the wrong end of Ray’s rifle,” Brook conceded.
“Just crossing T’s and dotting I’s, that’s all.”

Silently solidifying the pact they had made earlier
concerning their slip-up at the farm, Wilson and Taryn locked eyes.

Max cut a path through the scattered camp chairs and sat on
his haunches at Tran’s feet.

Tran loaded his plate last and closed the grill lids. He
knelt and shoveled a third of his venison onto the ground for Max. “Good boy,”
he said, watching the hungry Shepherd wolf down the food. “You get anything I
don’t finish.”

In response, Max’s stub-tail thumped the ground.

From the west, a cold wind knifed through the clearing,
rattling the overhead awning and making the tarps covering the Black Hawk and
Humvee snap and pop.

Good decision,
gang
, Brook thought, staring at
the darkening clouds.

She said, “Get a plate, girls.” And as Raven and Sasha took
their plates to their low-riding camp chairs, she added, “How’s a sleepover at
Sasha’s tonight sound to you, Bird?”

Her mouth full of food, Raven glanced up from her plate and
flashed a thumbs-up.

Brook took a bite of venison, chewed and swallowed. “Good,”
she said. “I’m going to stay topside and talk with the adults after dinner.
Think you can tuck yourself in tonight?”

Another thumbs-up from Raven.

Tweens
, Brook thought, her mood suddenly going dark.
She took another bite and moved her gaze from face to face, seeing expressions
on them mirroring exactly how she was feeling inside.

8:09 p.m. Mountain Standard Time 9:09 p.m. Central 10:09
p.m. Eastern

Naval Station Norfolk, Norfolk Virginia

Aboard the
Lanzhou

“Admiral on the deck,” Corporal Meng said, snapping off a
smart salute.

“Stand down, Corporal,” Admiral Qi said, turning to the
radio operator hunched over a touch-screen monitor. “Lieutenant Shou, did you
intercept any military communications?”

Shou rose at once, but dropped his notepad onto the floor.

Waiting for the radio operator to compose himself, Qi
shifted his gaze to the steel plating above his head and pressed his thumbs
against his temples.

Embarrassed, Shou collected his notes and stood. He snapped
off a salute, then, speaking rapid-fire, brought the admiral up to speed,
leaving nothing out, even going so far as beginning to read the random musings
of an obviously deranged HAM radio operator he had been eavesdropping on since
his watch had started. He rounded out the situation report by stating that the
sonar had detected no seaborne contacts and the 360-degree active-phased array
radar had picked up no airborne threats since the destroyer had dropped anchor.

“A simple
no
would have sufficed,” Qi said
dismissively. “I didn’t need to know the details of your long range radio
fetish.”

Wondering what had gotten into the usually stoic, yet
even-keeled admiral, Shou looked to the second in command, Jow Yuan, a slightly
overweight man with the rank of captain on his uniform.

Qi was also regarding Yuan with a look bordering on
uncertainty. After a few seconds, he said, “Alert the rest of the fleet we are
pulling anchor. I want us to be underway in five minutes and steaming north up
the Chesapeake in fifteen.”

Yuan nodded an affirmative then snatched up a red handset
and began relaying Admiral Qi’s orders to the rest of the taskforce.

Still standing at attention off of Qi’s right elbow,
Corporal Meng asked, “Shall I alert Captain Zhen that we are soon to be
underway?”

Never one to let a subordinate have the satisfaction of
knowing beforehand that he had been second-guessed, Qi shook his head. “Don’t
bother. Unless Zhen sleeps like a sun bear, he already knows that preparations
to embark are proceeding.”

***

There was a fingernail-thin band of dark purple crowding the
starless black void when destroyer
Lanzhou
, multi-role frigate
Yulin,
and amphibious transport dock
Kunlan Shan
, the latter of which carried a
dozen armored vehicles, nearly a hundred PLAN marines, and Zhen’s special
forces operators, hauled anchor simultaneously.

And well within Qi’s allotted fifteen minutes, under cover
of full dark, the three vessels were steaming a steady twenty knots up the
Chesapeake.

***

An hour after rounding Sewell Point and entering the
Chesapeake Bay, the
Lanzhou’s
excursion into enemy territory took a
terrifying turn. For three straight miles the three ships were forced to slow
to a crawl to navigate a channel clogged with all manner of watercraft. Inside
the
Kunlan Shan
, whose hull rose from the waterline at less of an angle
than the frigate and destroyer, sailors reported hearing the eerie keening of
fingernails transmitting through the steel plates just above the waterline.

By the time the warships were clear of the undead flotilla,
dozens of the smaller boats and their undead cargo that had been anchored in
the path of the much larger warships were either already at the bottom of the
bay, or were taking on water and soon would be.

All through the ordeal, Qi had been focusing a pair of
high-powered binoculars on the eastern shoreline, certain the enemy was
training a full battery of ship-killing missiles on his tiny flotilla.

Schriever AFB, 10:09 p.m. Mountain Standard Time

As it turned out, Ari’s declaration of
wheels up in one
hour
failed to happen. A routine inspection brought upon by an error
message had revealed that a vital component of one of the Ghost Hawk’s turbines
was close to failing. Thankfully, the compromised part was universal to the
UH-60 Black Hawk, and Whipper’s aviation techs were able to come up with a
replacement part to install in the Ghost Hawk. However, all combined, the
briefing, refuel, rearming, and maintenance on the turbine had grounded the
bird and detained the Delta team for several hours more than expected.

In the big green machine, known formally as the United
States Army,
hurry up and wait
was the norm. Having endured more than
his share of the latter, Cade had learned to sleep anywhere and at any time. So
he had grabbed a patch of concrete in the corner of the hangar, curled up into
a ball with his head on his rucksack, and quickly succumbed to Mr. Sandman’s
pull.

Now, having been rudely awakened by the vibration from a
strategically placed kick to his boot sole, Cade raised his head off his
rucksack and fixed a death glare on Ari. For the first time in a long while he
saw the aviator without sunglasses or a helmet visor covering his hazel eyes.
There was a twinkle of mischief in them and the man’s lips were parted slightly
as if he were about to deliver a punch line. Which, when taking the man’s
general outlook on life into consideration, didn’t seem outside the realm of
possibility.

“You don’t even have
one
knock-knock joke
locked-and-loaded?” said Cade as he worked at rubbing a kink out of his neck.

“Saving ‘em all for the long flight,” Ari said, donning his
helmet. “We launch in five.”

***

10:15 p.m. MST Leaving Schriever

Cade had policed up his gear and was strapped into his usual
port-side seat in the Ghost Hawk in a little under two minutes. Fact of the
matter, he was itching to get the show on the road. The sooner the job was
done, the sooner he could get back to Eden and see to Brook and Raven. Best
case scenario, Brook was going to have to be quarantined until more was known.
However, worst case scenario, grim as hell as it was, if what Nash had told him
earlier about how the 4th ID soldier’s death had any truth to it, he could be
going home to a freshly filled grave. But for now, there was nothing he could
do about it. And where he was going, it would be suicide to dwell on it. So he
pushed it all back where it belonged. All of the emotion attached to the slim
possibility of the latter had to remain in that black hole of his where a stray
thought was less likely to escape. Because stray thoughts had been known to
jeopardize good judgment and sound decision-making. Which could lead to him
getting killed. Or even worse, someone on his team going down due to his
negligence.

“You’re zoning out like a Zed, mate,” Axe said, waving a
hand in front of Cade’s face.

The turbines fired up off to Cade’s right. He heard the
cough and sputter then felt the slight vibration he knew was the rotor overhead
beginning to spool up.

“Sometimes I feel like one,” Cade said.

“You and me both,” Axe conceded as he buckled himself into a
seat near the internally stowed starboard minigun.

Cade nodded to Cross and Griff when they boarded.

“Launching in one mike,” Ari said over the comms.

While Skipper was helping the other Delta shooters stow
their gear, Cade was rehashing the last part of his private conversation with
Nash. The part in which she ran President Clay’s very risky, yet hugely
rewarding side mission by him. It was doable, that much they had agreed upon.
But the onus was on him to get the consent of the other involved parties. “All
of them,” Nash had said, a no-nonsense look parked on her face. Then, without
breaking character, she had added, “I’m behind you one hundred per cent,
Grayson. God speed to all of you.” Recalling the initial look of surprise on
her face when he’d accepted the task, even with the specter of Brook’s
condition weighing heavily on his shoulders, he cracked a little half-smile and
shook his head in disbelief. Looking to his left, he saw Ari craning around in
the right seat. “You working on a knock-knock joke of your own?” the aviator
asked.

Allowing his smile to dissolve slowly, Cade said, “Not my
style, Ari.”

Ari turned his attention to the switches and gauges laid out
all around him. After a moment of silence, he came back on the comms and said,
“That’s OK, Wyatt. I’ve got enough yuks for the two of us combined.”

Feeling the full press of gravity on his body when the
fuel-laden Ghost Hawk sprang from the tarmac, Cade honored Lopez by making the
sign of the cross over his chest. Finished, he settled his gaze on the hulking
silhouette Pikes Peak presented and then took in the majestic breadth of the
distant Rockies as the ship, once again dubbed Jedi One-One for this mission,
nosed down and swung a hard one-eighty.

By the time the Jedi ride was level and tracking nearly due
east, Schriever’s northern fence line was a barely visible strand of silver
rippling below Cade’s window and the siren’s song of sleep was beginning to
call to him.

Eden compound, 11:20 p.m. Mountain Standard Time

Brook awoke with the gauze-like remnants of a nightmare
clinging to the edge of consciousness and the all-too-real startled yelp that
it had produced echoing inside the RV’s confined sleeping area. Shivering hard,
she searched for the missing blanket in the dark, which, inside the RV with the
curtains pulled, was absolute and inky, like she imagined the bottom of the
ocean must be.

Teeth chattering an eerie cadence, she finally snagged hold
of a corner of the fleece blanket, drew the supple fabric up to her neck, and
trapped the loose end to her chest with her chin.

Truth be told, being separated from Raven and Cade—not only
by distance, but also the chasm of not knowing what Nash’s revelation presented
her—was the hardest thing she’d yet to face in this new Omega-affected world.

But she wasn’t truly alone. She was wearing Cade’s Army tee
shirt and Raven’s stocking cap. Both items radiated their individual scents,
and though one was a hundred yards away under tons of dirt, and the other,
hundreds of miles to the east of the Eden compound, in spirit they were right
here in the Winnebago with her.

Eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling she knew was there but
couldn’t see, Brook revisited the after-dinner exchanges she’d had with every
one of the survivors, save for Oliver, who hadn’t been seen since stalking off
during her impromptu confession.

Beginning to come to her softly on the periphery of sleep,
like whispers in a cavern, the conversations she had had earlier, some only a
word or two in passing, most lengthy and bordering on some kind of pre-death
eulogy, barged their way back into her head.

Having stuck with her at the time as genuine and heartfelt, Duncan’s
offer to “do whatever is necessary” in Cade’s absence was the most important
declaration echoing in her head. And second only to that delicately veiled,
albeit morbid promise, what Glenda, Jamie, and Taryn had said to her in no
uncertain words during a private late-night huddle, left her feeling that no
matter what happened going forward, Raven would not only be safe and cared for,
but most importantly, she would be loved unconditionally.

A tear ran hot and fast down her cheek. More followed, wetting
her pillow.

Sobbing silently, she rolled over to her left side, drew her
knees to her chest, and wrapped them up as best she could with her weakened
right arm. The wind subsided for a brief two-count and she thought she heard
something moving outside the trailer. There was a swishing sound, like grass
being parted. Then that not too unusual noise was followed by a brief rasp of
metal-on-metal. She listened hard and thought she could detect a constant
clicking noise that seemed to be steadily retreating. But before she could be
certain, or work the courage up to arm herself, put boots on and investigate,
the wind kicked back up and whistled unabated through the motor pool, making
the tarps crackle like a far off barrage of heat lightning.

During the follow-on-lull between gusts, Brook rolled to the
edge of the bed abutting the wall and pressed her ear hard to the wood
paneling.

Nothing.

So she felt around in the gloom atop the nightstand until
her hand found the satellite phone. Clutching it near to her chest, she powered
it up and bit her lip in anticipation. After a short, albeit nerve-wracking
three-second wait the vibrant display came alive with color. She cycled through
to the message screen and, sadly, learned that there was no voice or text
message from Cade. For a half-beat she considered sending a brief SMS message
to his sat-phone, but quickly decided against it. He’d undoubtedly processed
the information about the suspect antiserum and was back into mission mode.
Busy being
frosty
, and she wanted it to stay that way. Besides, though
she was feeling a little under weather—and had been since being bitten and
subsequently saved with a dose of antiserum—she had no reason to fear the
worst. So for now, she decided grudgingly, until the final chapter was written
and she was left with no other decision than to end her own life, a protocol of
quarantine—with an electronic lifeline, of course—was the only way to see this
play out. Whether it would last a day, week, month or more, she had no idea.
Best to take it one day at a time was the mantra going through her head when
the tiny screen on the phone still clutched in her left hand went dark.

She put the phone back and lay there for a moment, eyes
closed and praying to her God that her new friends followed through on every
one of their promises, whether spoken or tacit.

Five long minutes after being yanked from sleep by a boogie
man she couldn’t put a finger on, her breathing and heartrate slowed and sleep
once again took her.