Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2 page)

A minute after the engine noise lessened, the Black Hawk’s rotor
blades became discernable as four separate spokes and began to droop noticeably.
Finally the turbine whine died out completely, leaving the clearing in a
crushing vacuum of silence.

Raven coughed again, a phlegm-addled fit that caused Sasha
to venture over from her brother’s side. She offered Raven a tissue then sniffed
the air. “Smell that? she said. “Smells like smoke.”

Raven’s coughing bout subsided. She said, “It stinks like
Schriever to me. Dad says it’s from the JP something or other burning.”

Sasha turned away. Stuck her nose in the air and said,
“That’s not just fumes from the helicopter.” She completed the circle, sniffing
the air as Wilson and Taryn looked on. “No way. That’s wood burning ...
somewhere. We better tell an adult.”

“You’re almost an adult,” proffered Raven. “Said so
yourself.”

Shaking her red mane, Sasha stalked off towards the resident
firefighter for confirmation.

Tugging Raven along by the hand, Brook took a few tentative
steps towards the chopper and craned her head as the cockpit door facing her
hinged open. A black boot emerged and planted on the grass.

Chest swelling, Brook walked her gaze up the tucked and bloused
black pants leg and then over the like-colored load-bearing vest. A tick later
a helmet broke the plane and she saw the short beard and ready smile underneath
the smoked visor and was one hundred percent certain that the man in black was
indeed her Cade.

Reuniting with him was always the same. She withheld all
celebration until she had
eyes on target
—another of Cade’s sayings. The
call that had come in earlier indicating that he and his team were en route
carried no water at all. It only told Brook that he hadn’t died before the
chopper was wheels up. There was no way for her to know if he’d been bitten or
taken a bullet on the ground and died mid-flight. She’d been around the teams
long enough to know that chickens weren’t meant to be counted until they were
back in the coop, so to speak. So up until now she had remained stoic and
reserved for Raven’s sake. But the instant she saw Cade’s face, all of that
went out the window and she let go of Raven’s hand and sprinted into his arms
with tears, hot and salty, flowing freely down her face.

***

Leaving the bulk of his gear in the chopper, Cade took the rugged
Panasonic laptop and his M4 and walked with his ladies toward the compound
entrance. There would be ample time tomorrow to go over the mission and debrief
with Lev, Duncan, and to a lesser degree Daymon, whom Duncan had nothing but
praise for, yet Cade wasn’t completely sold on. Cade supposed spending more
time with the dreadlocked firefighter might eventually bring him around to
Duncan’s way of thinking, but until his gut changed its tune, all of his
training and life’s lessons told him to take a kid gloves approach to their
already strained relationship. That he hadn’t let Daymon come along on the
snatch and grab mission to Robert Christian’s mansion in Jackson Hole was
probably not completely forgotten, and figured into the man’s sometimes surly
demeanor. Time would tell.

For now, family and a good night’s sleep called. The former
needed much attention first. The latter, however, though as exhausted and road
weary as he was, would never be attainable so long as the dead walked the
earth.

Outbreak - Day 40

Winters’s Compound near Eden Utah

Three weeks had passed since justice was meted out inside
the charnel house on the shores of Payette Lake in central Idaho. After
returning to the compound aboard the DHS Black Hawk piloted by Vietnam veteran Duncan
Winters, and with the night sky north showing an unnatural radioactive glow,
Cade Grayson and his cobbled-together team were welcomed home like World War
Two returnees—minus the tickertape parade, of course.

Jamie, who by all accounts should have had the hardest time
readjusting after her short yet intense time as Ian Bishop’s hostage, literally
hit the ground running from the Black Hawk as if nothing had happened. And as
far as the people who had been there were concerned, nothing had.

So with nothing to do but struggle forward putting one foot
in front of the other, the small group of survivors circled their wagons,
determined to honor Duncan’s brother Logan in death by fortifying the compound
as he would have wanted it—a task he was working towards the day he and Gus and
Jordan were murdered at the abandoned mining quarry east of the Eden compound.

***

A handful of miles west of the compound, Daymon placed the
chainsaw on the State Route 39 blacktop, removed his worn leather gloves and with
both hands ruffled his newly formed beard, a move that sent tiny chips of pine
and dogwood launching into the air. He removed the sun-heated metal hardhat and
trapped it between his elbow and ribcage. Ran his free hand through the picket
of short wiry dreadlocks and found the credit-card-sized patch of scar tissue
where the dead had relieved him of a handful of his tightly braided locks. He
had wanted nothing to do with it when Heidi mentioned cutting the dreads. He’d
been wearing his hair that way—more out of convenience and ease of care than
any kind of statement—since his late teens. But in order to suture the ghastly wound
he’d suffered, literally, at the hands of the dead, and to prevent the twisted
locks from being torn from his scalp again, Heidi convinced him to let her cut
the tangle of dreadlocks down to three-inch nubs and allow Brook to clean and
suture the wound. In hindsight, Daymon thought, as he worried the area of semi-numb
and fully hardened skin, he should have fought harder to keep them as they were.

Now, three weeks later, with the wound fully healed and two
dozen rubber bands securing the
baby dreads
, he looked at his shadow on
the gray asphalt and pondered the new nickname the ballbuster-in-chief, Duncan,
had given him.
Sea Urchin
had stuck for the first week. Week two saw it shortened
to just
Urchin
or
Urch
if Duncan had a few belts of whiskey in him.
And the harder he lobbied the crusty Vietnam veteran to drop the moniker that made
him bristle like the namesake sea creature, the more glee Duncan derived from
uttering it. In fact, some of the other survivors had taken to calling him
Urch. Behind his back at first. Then over the last couple of days, starting
with Phillip of all people, he was being called Urch, often and unashamedly to
his face.

Daymon stared hard at the shadow tentacles and decided that they
did in fact seem to have a life of their own when he moved his head suddenly. Snorting
in disgust, he tossed his helmet to the road where it clattered and spun before
coming to rest upside down near the shoulder.

“Keep it down,
Urch
,” cackled Duncan. “Or the rotters
might find saws of their own and start cutting through yer barrier.”

The buzz of the chainsaw was far more appealing to the dead
than a simple clatter of metal on asphalt. Of this Daymon was certain. In fact,
fifty yards to the east, over the interwoven tangle of trees blocking the
two-lane, he could see the blackened and hairless heads of the dead lolling
side-to-side as they jostled for position. And though he couldn’t see the
condition of even the tallest rotter’s body from sternum on down, in his mind
he imagined their crispy naked bodies pressing futilely against the tons and
tons of fallen timber. Only if he stood up tall, on his toes, could he make out
the darting whites of their eyes seemingly hovering in space above pickets of
stark white teeth—an illusion created when their lips and eyelids and all the
other dangly fleshy bits cooked off when the nearby town of Eden burned down
around them.

Daymon tilted his head back, closed his mouth, and drew in a
deep breath through his nose.
No smoke
. Also gone was the awful stench
of burning flesh that had sullied the air for a full week after the
conflagration burned itself out.

He sat on the tailgate with the saw on his lap and started
running a file over its dulled teeth. Lost in the monotony of the task, his
thoughts wandered back over the events of the past three weeks.

He would never forget the first days back from the mission
north. Exhuming Jordan’s body and reburying her next to Gus and Logan and the
others had also dug up dead and buried emotions. He spent the next two weeks in
a funk thinking about his mom and all of his new ghosts while he and the other
men went about stripping the quarry of anything useful, all the while breathing
in the gray haze hanging low in the valley. And equally imprinted in his memory
over those two weeks were the stunning red sunsets—byproducts of the unhealthy
particulate-laden air.

Listening to the rasps of metal on metal competing with the
dry rasps of the dead, Duncan rooted in a cargo pocket and extracted a battered
flask emblazoned with the yellow and black image belonging to the First Air Cav,
Airmobile, his old Army Aviation unit. With a practiced swipe of the thumb, he
spun the cap off then tilted his head back and took a long pull, fully aware
that he was being watched.

“Whatsa matter, Urch? I need to ask your permission before
bellying up to the bar?” He shot Daymon a sidelong glare and added, “Don’t
worry. I’ll be sober when we take the bird up.”

Looking away, Daymon answered quietly, “No worries. That’s
your thing. I was just thinking about my Moms ...” He went quiet. Then, obviously
deep in retrospective thought, he looked down and resumed his monotonous task.
Slow even strokes. One, two, three. Then on to the next jagged gap down the
line.

Duncan adjusted his glasses, stared incredulously at Daymon,
and asked, “You ... had two moms?”

“No,” answered Daymon, his brow furrowed. “It’s not Ebonics
speak. I just liked to call her
Moms.
Always have. That’s all.”

“She didn’t make it?”

From the far end of the makeshift barrier, as if offering an
emotional-filled yet wordless answer to the question, one of the newer turns
milling there emitted a guttural, mournful moan.

Goose flesh rising on his arms, Daymon cast a glance towards
the sound and said, “She was too close to Salt Lake. I tried, but—” He went
silent and attacked the chain. The muscles on his forearms rippled as his grip
tightened on the gnarled tool and the pace quickened. Then the file jumped from
the channel and a raspberry-sized plug of flesh was left behind on one of the
newly sharpened teeth. “Motherfucker!” Daymon hissed. Wishing he’d been wearing
his gloves, he tossed the file to the ground, balled his hand into a fist, and
watched the blood run around his wrist and hit the asphalt with soft little
patters.

“Let me see that,” drawled Duncan.

Tentatively, Daymon uncurled his fist. He flexed his hand,
shrugged, and shot an
I’m OK
look Duncan’s way.

Having none of the
tough guy
routine, Duncan sauntered
over, took hold of Daymon’s hand and, without warning, doused the wound with a
liberal torrent of sour mash whiskey.

Flinching, Daymon said, “Thanks for the warning. Wanna kick
me in the nuts too?”

“Just put your gloves on and we’ll have Brook take a look at
it later.”

“Nurse Ratched?”

Both men broke out in laughter.

The dead joined in with scratchy cat calls and moans of
their own.

Still smiling, Duncan said, “How’d such an easygoing fella
get hooked up with a ball-breaker like her?”

“She’s easy on the eyes.”

“Heck yeah,” said Duncan agreeably. “Coming
and
going.”

Somewhere down the draw off to their left a pair of crows
struck up a conversation. The cawing and chortling rose to a crescendo that
lasted only a handful of seconds.

Daymon flipped the birds the bird then went on, “
Lift
with your knees
, I heard her tellin' him.
Put some Neosporin on that cut
,
she told Wilson.
Check the hammer on that thing,
she told
me
the
other day.”

“You’ve gotta admit she fixed you up after your fight with
the razor wire back at Schriever.”

Daymon nodded in agreement.

“And she sutured your noggin up pretty good. Don’t see as
how Cade could do himself much better than that.”

Chuckling, Daymon said, “I concur.”

“And you had it coming, you know,” Duncan said. “Can’t go
walking around with your piece hot and ready to go.”

“I’m sorry. Hell, this thing is new to me,” Daymon said,
patting the Sig Sauer. He snatched the file off the road and laid it on the
tailgate. Grabbed the gas can and swished its contents around. And, as if a light
bulb just went off in his head, turned slowly and fixed his gaze on Duncan.
“You told her? You were the one who narked me out?”

“Don’t be sore. I’m just more observant with my new eyes.”

“Next time tell me yourself ... spare me the embarrassment.”

Duncan waggled the flask near his ear. Put it to his lips
and drank the contents in one pull.

Daymon sighed audibly. He said, “I’ve got enough fuel to drop
another dozen trees.” He nodded at the pickup. “Then
I’m
driving us
back. Agreed?”

“Understood.” Duncan moved forward, alert for any of the
newly discovered
semi-aware
creatures that may have crawled through the
tangled warren of trunks and branches. “Clear,” he said, eyes shifting,
constantly scanning the forest on both sides of the roadway.

Without a word, Daymon yanked the Stihl to life and, like he
was back to fighting wildfires, went to work on a nearby medium-sized fir.

For the first time in a long time day-to-day living had
settled into a normal rhythm for most everyone calling the Eden compound home.
And since Jordan, Logan, and Gus were murdered at the quarry, the Grim Reaper
had been conspicuously absent.

Heidi, unfortunately, was one of the few exceptions to this
new normal. And though she hadn’t actually met the Reaper, she was, however,
slowly dying inside. Haunting memories of the terror-filled weeks as Robert
Christian’s concubine left her reluctant to leave the perceived safety of the subterranean
compound. That she had watched a video clip of the man’s execution by hanging made
no difference. She claimed she could still smell his aftershave weeks after
being dragged from his bed and dumped and left for dead beside the Teton Pass
road. And though she never spoke of the horrors she’d endured at the ‘House’ on
the hill in Jackson Hole, their effects on her fragile psyche were glaringly evident.
Since she was constantly battling one anxiety or another, she didn’t eat regularly
and it showed. By her own account her weight had dropped to the fudged number
she’d declared on her first driver’s license fifteen years ago. Sleep was
something that only came for her in the early morning, and though there was a
total absence of natural light inside the compound she only got three to four
restless hours and spent the rest of her time trying to connect with the
outside world via the high-powered ham radio.

So she took a big gulp of tepid coffee, adjusted the
headphones down to their smallest setting, and placed them over her head,
leaving one ear uncovered. Before powering up the ham radio she glanced at the
trio of wall-mounted flat panels recently installed by a middle-aged man named
Jimmy Foley, the Eden compound’s newest arrival. On the center screen both
lanes and a hundred feet of the nearby east-west running state route were
rendered in full color. Though the surveillance equipment taken from the quarry
compound was state-of-the-art and beamed the video wirelessly from the cameras
mounted in various locations about the property, the cameras themselves had a
couple of weaknesses. The first being how the lens lent a gentle funhouse-mirror-like
bend to the curving road near the gate. The second glitch was less annoying but
still troublesome. Even though the feed was in HD it was virtually impossible
even with optimum lighting to see who was driving the Police Tahoe straddling
the centerline, let alone, to any degree of certainty, discern how many
occupants were inside the vehicle. However, Heidi could tell who the two men
standing near the vehicle were. On the left was Phillip, achingly thin and a hair
under six feet. He held an AR-15 comfortably at low ready and was shifting his
weight gently, foot to foot. Though she could hear nothing but the low rumble
of the idling engine it was apparent that Phillip was talking to former Jackson
Hole Chief of Police, Charlie Jenkins. So she picked up the Motorola two-way
radio, checked the channel, and thumbed the talk button. “You hear me, Charlie?”
After a moment of dead air she saw a flurry of movement in the gloom inside the
police cruiser. Then her radio hissed and Charlie’s voice came through loud and
clear.

“Charlie here. What’s up, darlin’?”

Heidi choked up momentarily. She imagined herself in the
former police chief’s shoes. Just the thought of traveling the roads east to
the Woodruff junction, which based on eyewitness accounts was clogged with
vehicles and teeming with dead, made her chest go tight. Venturing there in a
group amounted to a huge risk. Going there solo, by her estimation, was little
more than a death sentence. But Charlie was through feeling useless, he’d told
her as much. And the last time she’d tried to talk him out of the foolish odyssey
of his, he insisted he wasn’t just chasing ghosts. He was hell bent on finding
his daughter—or dying, whichever came first.

On the monitor she saw Phillip’s head swivel around and his
eyes seemed to lock with hers. Then a shiver wracked her body and she was back
in the security pod, physically and mentally. Feeling the anxiety attack ebbing
slightly, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and again keyed the talk button.
“You sure you won’t reconsider, Charlie? Just stay through fall and winter?
Maybe those things—”

Cutting her off, Charlie craned out the cruiser’s window and,
looking in the direction of the black plastic dome housing the security camera,
said matter-of-factly, “The rotters are here to stay, Heidi. And as far as the
cold killing them ... Brook said the scientists at the Air Force base already
tried and failed.”

Heidi bit her lip, hard. She glanced at the Dollar Store shower
mirror taped to a shelf just above eye level. The nearly bald woman staring back
through eyes shot with tiny blood red capillaries made her shudder. She was
practically bald by choice. She’d cut her hair weeks ago in solidarity with
Daymon. But unlike his coerced trim job, she’d gone overboard and sheared her
once long blonde locks down to stubble. And as she kept her hair short with a
pair of electric clippers, the ensuing weeks spent underground lightened her
already pale skin to the point where she looked like a concentration camp
victim or, from a distance and in the right lighting, one of the living dead.

Her eyes darted to the trio of satellite phones sitting
silent on the shelf near the mirror. For the third time in an hour a quick once-over
confirmed they were powered on and plugged in, charging. Not wanting to risk
another missed call, she picked up each phone individually and confirmed all of
their ringers were turned on.

“You still there?” came Charlie’s voice, sounding distant in
the confined space.

Snapping out of her funk, Heidi keyed to talk and said, “You
be careful out there, Charlie. I guess I just wanted to thank you for saving my
life and reuniting me with Daymon.” Up on the monitor she saw Charlie stick his
hand out the window and wave. Then Phillip stepped back and the Tahoe started a
slow roll east down the state route. As the engine rumble and soft hiss of
tires faded away, Charlie said, “To serve and protect.” That he was chasing
ghosts and had a better chance of being struck by lightning than finding his
daughter alive wasn’t lost on Heidi as she wiped away a stray tear and watched
the Tahoe crest the rise and disappear altogether.