Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (29 page)

Like the items sold in the Scandinavian furniture stores,
floor-to-ceiling cabinetry finished with a faux oak laminate dominated the wall
on their right. And inside their doors, some of which had been hanging open,
Brook found dozens of individual drawers and plastic storage boxes—none of them
labeled with any kind of consistency. Without counting, she guessed there had
to be twenty or thirty of them in each of the ten cabinets.

“I’ll start left,” Brook said. “You work your way over from
the right.”

Chief said, “And we’ll meet in the middle.”

“Remember ... we need a syringe and needle.”

***

Ten minutes later, after rifling through every drawer and
cupboard and cubby and bin, the floor was littered with glossy handouts
detailing every therapeutic exercise imaginable. Colorful tangles of rubber
resistance bands were heaped where they’d been thrown. Dozens of handheld
therapy balls made of highly pliable Nerf-like foam, near bullet-proof hard
rubber and everything in between lay on the floor wherever they’d come to rest.

Brook slammed a door, sending a trio of rubber balls
bouncing away. She looked at Chief and said, “Nothing. Not even a pump and
needle for the effin yoga balls.”

“That would work?” asked Chief, his brow scrunched up.

“No ... I’m just frustrated. That’s all.”

Chief picked his carbine off the padded floor and
straightened up. He moved close to Brook and placed a finger vertically to his
lips. Cocked his head and looked at the ceiling. A tick later he gazed at the
short flight of stairs at the corner opposite the room from the front door. The
narrow treads rose up several feet into the gloom to what was likely a landing
at the back wall where the only way to go from there was to the right and up.

Nodding, Brook went quiet and jabbed a finger at the ceiling
and then pinched her earlobe. “
I heard it too
,” she mouthed. Then she
pulled out the two-way radio and made sure the volume was turned low.

Chief motioned for her to follow and picked his way quietly
through the mess of their own making. He ascended the stairs, keeping his feet
wide and placing them where he imagined they were nailed to the solid wood
stringer underneath.

With a minimal amount of noise the pair made the first
landing and paused there while Chief thumbed on the tactical light affixed to
his carbine. Gripping the stubby foregrip and snugging the rifle in tight, he
took the remaining dozen stairs in the same fashion as the others, but for
expediency, two at a time.

At the top of the stairs the cone of light lancing from
Chief’s rifle illuminated a wooden door with five inset horizontal panels and a
rubbed oil knob set on the right. The striker plate looked original to the
building and it appeared he would be needing either a skeleton key or most
likely—seeing as how kicking in a door is virtually impossible with no
handrails to hold on to and only an eight-inch tread on which to stand—a couple
of rounds from his carbine.

But first things first. Chief put his ear to the door and
heard nothing. Then he tried the handle, and lo and behold it turned. So he
pushed in a bit and felt the heavy wooden door catch on the sill and make a
grating sound before finally swinging inward freely on its hinges. He held it
in a partially closed position and looked down the stairs at Brook and held up
his free hand, three fingers splayed out like a pitchfork, and began ticking
off a countdown.

On one he shouldered the door open, pivoted right, and
brought his rifle to bear. Half-expecting to come face-to-face with a rotter,
he instead found himself alone in a long hallway and squinting against the sun
pouring in from a distant gabled window. Equidistant from the stairs and window
on the left hand wall was a closed door. On the right wall were two doors,
evenly spaced, and also closed. The walls were bare and the ceiling came to a
point far above their heads.
Definitely some kind of a renovation happened
here
, thought Chief.

When Brook closed the door behind her two things happened.
Again she heard the same wood-on-metal squeal and then the radio in her pocket
vibrated against her thigh. It went on as she watched Chief pad to the front of
the building and duck his head through the curtains over the window then crane
left and right, surveying the street through the wavy glass.

At the end of the hall Chief hinged up at the waist, turned
around, and said, “We have to hurry. Same thing as before. You get the left.
I’ll get the right.” Training his rifle on the nearest door, he tested the knob
and found it unlocked. Pushed it inward and stepped forward while walking the
cone of light about the shadowy interior. The curtain was drawn on the window
facing him and allowed only a thin bar of diffuse light. Below the sill were
cardboard boxes brimming with paperwork.
Strike one
, he thought as the
spill illuminated a personal computer, monitor, and printer all perched on a
desk pushed against a wall to his left.

As Chief disappeared into the first room Brook answered the
radio and learned that a small herd was heading their way from the north.
About
a hundred of them. Figure you’ve got five minutes, max
, Wilson said.

Calm before the storm
, Brook thought. She padded
across the creaking floorboards and stopped in front of the lone door on her
side of the hall. She smelled the faint scent of carrion seeping around the
door frame. Held her breath and placed her ear against the door and listened
hard. There was a barely audible rustle and the same squeaking she’d heard from
downstairs, only the responsible party was no mouse.

She tested the knob and it turned freely. Seeing Chief
emerge from the far door, she waited to catch his eye then pointed at the door
and mouthed, “Rotter inside.”

Chief stood nearby, rifle trained on the door, as Brook
pushed it inward and stepped aside.

He said, “Clear,” then lowered his rifle and covered his
nose with his free hand.

Brook walked through the wall of stench and felt bile rising
in her throat when she saw what was making the noise.

An arm’s length to her left, standing half a head over the
top of its crib, was a withered and cadaverous undead toddler. A girl. Maybe
two or three at the most. An electrical cord was knotted tightly around the
thing’s wrist-thin neck. One dainty bicep was wrapped with a crude gauze and
tape bandage. Blood had soaked through and dried to black in a perfect oval.
A
bite
, thought Brook.

Chief said, “Looks like she was bitten first.”

Reacting to Chief’s voice, the thing bared its teeth and
hissed and, reaching for the source, slammed its tiny frame against the
headboard.

“I’m sure Mommy did her best,” said Brook as the squeaking
she had heard from downstairs started up again and quickly rose in tempo and
volume. She walked to the center of what looked like a break room for the owner
or staff—probably one and the same. There was a kitchen table near the window
and on top of it was a microwave and a salt and pepper shaker. Tea packets were
stuffed into a large paper cup. There were wooden stir sticks and creamer and
sugar. One of the four chairs was missing from the table.

The little Z, now with both pale hands wrapped around the
bars, was shaking the drop-down crib gate, which produced a shrill nonstop
metal on metal peal.

Then, coming from the front of the long room behind the
large piece of fabric dividing it into two equal parts, the other noise intensified.

Standing in the middle of some kind of macabre orchestra of
the dead, with the incessant rattling on her left and the nerve-jangling
squeaking to her right, and a good idea of what was beyond the divider, Brook
took a handful of burgundy fabric in one hand and said, “I’ll pull. You cover.”

Nodding, Chief raised his carbine and took a few steps to
his left to better the angle.

With its little feet slipping on the slickened bedding, the
undead toddler hissed and strained and somehow got both arms hooked over the
rail.

Brook yanked the curtain back and her initial expectation
was shattered. Time seemed to slow and again the radio in her pocket vibrated.
In the next second her salivary glands went into overdrive, flooding her mouth
with a bitter acidic taste and she fell to her knees, willing the rising tide
of bile down. Breathing hard through her mouth, she looked at Chief and said,
“This could have been me ... and Raven.”

Suddenly she was reliving Myrtle Beach. Her mother and
father were zombies. Mom was stalking her down the hall. Then a horn blaring in
the parking lot behind the building snapped her back.

Chief said, “We need to get moving. There’s nothing for us
here.”

Brook keyed the radio and said, “Grow a pair and handle
them, Wilson. I’ve got a couple of things to take care of.” She released the
Talk
button and pocketed the radio.

Outside, the Raptor’s horn blipped once.

“You sure you want to?”

Rising up from the floor, Brook shot Chief a look that said:
Don’t go there.
Then she cast her gaze on the young brunette woman who
had obviously not been privy to the rules of the new world. The missing dining
chair was lying on its side a yard distant. On the floor next to it was the
white panel that had been removed from the drop-down ceiling overhead. The
writhing corpse was hanging from a nylon rope knotted around its alabaster neck
and, judging by the nonstop squeaking, secured to a loose ceiling joist
somewhere up there in the gloom.

Partially stuck in the bodily fluids that had pooled and
dried under the dangling flesh eater was a single sheet of white paper, folded
in half.

Brook crouched and took the paper between two fingers and
unfolded it carefully.

Chief saw her eyes moving back and forth, reading something.
Then she looked up at him and, tears welling in her eyes, said, “Her name is
Carol. The little girl is Mia.”

“
Was
,” said Chief. “Let me have your pistol.” He held
his hand out to receive the suppressed Glock.

The horn blared again. Urgent sounding. Three sharp reports.

Chief pointed toward the stairs. Framed by dark hair which
was perpetually pulled back into a tight ponytail, his ruddy tanned face showed
no emotion. No fear. No apprehension. Nothing. He said, “Go.
Now
.”

Brook shook her head. Drew the Glock and checked the
chamber. Seeing the glint of fat brass, she let the slide snap back and raised
her gun arm. With her free hand she spun the twitching corpse around a few
degrees and, with the Glock’s suppressor hovering inches from the base of its
skull, squeezed off two quick shots. Instantly a spritz of congealed blood and
other viscous fluid spattered the ceiling tiles in two wide overlapping arcs. A
millisecond later a cloud of aerated gray matter burst from the ruptured skull
and joined the roiling dust motes riding the once still air. On the back side
of the initial second the weapon’s dual coughs had toured the room and receded
to nothingness and the oak wood flooring was receiving a fine misting of both.
Chest heaving under the bulky MOLLE gear, Brook strode the length of the room and,
sensing a little more of her humanity slipping away, grabbed a tuft of Mia’s
wispy straw-colored hair, forced her face down onto the soiled mattress, and in
one quick motion drew her hand back and put two rounds behind the undead girl’s
tiny button of an ear.

With tears flowing fully down her cheeks and awash in a
feeling of foreboding from not finding the supplies necessary to save her own
daughter, Brook followed Chief out of the building, wary of what awaited them.

In his mind’s eye, Cade pictured Nadia tooling her little
white Miata down the L.A. side streets, confused and terrified and trying to
get to one of the promised FEMA safe havens mentioned in the looping radio
broadcasts that had initially instructed everyone to shelter in place.

He imagined her skirting the freeway south with nothing but
her cell phone and a desire to be reunited with her mom.

He supposed seeing the bridges out and coming to the
realization that all overland access to Terminal Island was gone must have been
a hell of a gut punch. And how the feeling of dread upon seeing the freeway
under attack, or, more than likely, stumbling across the aftermath, must have
been monumental for someone her age to fathom.

Enduring all of this knowing the power and position her mom
held. The unfettered access to spy satellites and secure phones and high-level
government officials—yet nobody had contacted her or come to her rescue.

What a knockout blow that must have been.

Then he put himself in her shoes and instantly came to the
conclusion that if this apple fell anywhere within a mile’s radius of the tree
that was Freda Nash, the young woman was sheltering in place somewhere
familiar. The one place she could eventually be found if her mom mounted a
search. And that place loomed just three blocks to the west.

He looked beyond the curving ramp, over the bobbing heads of
the walking dead at the V-shaped apartment building, and felt in his gut that
she was still alive.

The first salvo of gunfire lanced from Lopez’s carbine.
Pumping suppressed rounds into the dead two at a time, he advanced down the
narrow ramp, stepping over the leaking bodies until he had expended thirty
rounds and the carbine’s bolt locked open. “Next,” he said into the comms.
Standing aside, the stubby suppressor still smoking, he raised the barrel and
changed mags.

Cross squeezed past Lopez and took up where he left off. The
dead were falling and rolling down the widening ramp. A pair dropped
side-by-side, semi-upright and limbs akimbo, blocking the team’s passage.
Improvising on the fly, Cross halted and kicked them onto their backs and then
padded across their prostrate forms.

Bringing up the rear, Cade kept one eye on Griffin and the
other on their six. He noticed the SEAL’s dressing was completely blood-soaked and
asked, “How’s the arm?”

Grimacing from the pain of raising his arm, Griffin flashed
a thumbs up and hung his upper torso over the cement rail and started raining
lead down on the dead from above.

Inside the hovering Ghost Hawk two hundred feet above a
cluster of small two-story homes north of the insertion point, Ari looked on
with a healthy dose of apprehension. Though this was a sticky situation since
the dead had gotten wind of the team, there was nothing he could do. The bird’s
minigun wasn’t suited for the kind of help the team could use. For one, the
noise would only draw more dead to the AO (Area of Operations). Secondly, the
term
‘danger close’
in this situation was a hell of an understatement.
The dead were nearly draping themselves on the advancing team. But such was the
nature of CQB (Close Quarters Battle). And the chalk of rangers swooping in
aboard the noisy Osprey would only add to the confusion. They were along at
Nash’s behest solely as insurance should the cobbled-together team find themselves
trapped in a building like the
Four Palms
where a rooftop extraction was
not an option. So he held the steady hover and drew his own little crowd of Zs.

***

The fight from the pedestrian walk to the east/west street
leading to the Four Palms lasted five minutes during which Haynes was watching
from the helicopter and calling out targets and threats for the team. Twice it
looked as if the dead had them surrounded. Once when the team reached the base
of the ramp, when Haynes did his best smooth talking to dissuade the door
gunner from entering the fight as the team had to resort to a
mad minute
of gunfire to break contact. And then again half a block from the apartment
building where finally he could take it no longer and bellowed, “Guns free,” to
his crew chief.

“That’s danger close,” Ari replied. “Disregard. We’ve got a
different set of rules now, Haynes. Those things aren’t firing back. So
close
has a different definition to the guys on the ground.”

Then Cade’s voice filled the comms, urging the team to turn
and follow him.

“Hold fire until they break,” Ari said. “One quick burst is
all. That should give them the buffer they need.”

The crew chief on the minigun acknowledged with a quick,
“Copy that.”

Keeping the front of the Four Palms in sight, Cade broke for
the corner at a dead sprint. He didn’t look back. Didn’t need to. The sound of
boots and breathing and the subtle rustle of gear and fabric told him the
others were with him.

Then another sound filled the air. A friendly sound
comforting to any foot soldier in harm’s way. The chainsaw-like ripping noise
lasted less than a second. Then hot shell casings were pinging and bouncing off
the cul-de-sac’s circle of blacktop a block off of his left shoulder. He
thought:
There’s the dinner bell.

Once the Dillon fell silent, Ari sideslipped the helo two
blocks east, dumped altitude until the helo was just above the pedestrian
bridge, and then descended another twenty feet. Keeping Jedi One-One just below
the lip of the manmade concrete canyon, he flew over top of the jammed up
vehicles for a block or two. A handful of seconds after pouring a hundred and
fifty 7.62 mm NATO rounds into the throng of Zs, the stealth helicopter had
skimmed the inert vehicles and risen from cover and was holding a steady hover.

To Ari, from the helo’s right seat roughly a block southeast
and a hundred feet above the rear roofline of the Four Palms, the place looked
entirely deserted.

The sun and sky and tops of nearby palms were reflected in
the windows on the southeast wing. On the other wing, displayed in the mostly
westward-facing glass, was a snapshot of the neighborhood and, rising above it,
the azure Pacific Ocean. And as if the city was under some kind of a mandatory
blackout order every window on every floor of the Four Palms was drawn tight.

“Nobody’s home,” cracked Ari.

“Except for the dead,” echoed Haynes.

“I think we’re going to make a good team, Haynes.”

“As if I have a choice,” answered the big African American.

Ari smiled. He said, “Good restraint back there, Doctor Silence.”

Haynes said, “Boom. I think we have a nickname for the quiet
sergeant.”

“Let’s go with Doctor. Or Doc for short,” Ari said. “What do
you think ... you like the sound of that, Doc?”

Sergeant James Skipper’s eyes narrowed behind the smoked
visor. Then, still gripping the minigun and with Lasseigne’s corpse his only
company, he nodded subtly, but said nothing.

High-stepping through the tangle of Zs littering the
sidewalk took Cade right back to basic training. Only this wasn’t a phalanx of
old sun-hardened automobile tires where a misstep meant at best a little hurt
pride or at worst a twisted ankle or knee. No, these were dangerous bio hazards
with blown-apart skulls and broken bones protruding from previous damage. One
scrape from a green stick fracture and it was antiserum time for the
unfortunate victim. And so far Cade didn’t like the odds of survival Fuentes’s
concoction offered. The cooling corpse in the helicopter above was deadly proof
enough.

He led the team along the front of the Palms the way they’d
come for half a block and, with the pedestrian bridge two blocks dead ahead,
took the next right. They moved south for another block, passing by a picket of
palms on the left and a wall of manicured shrubs growing up next to the
apartment building’s east-facing wall which rose more than a hundred feet
skyward on their right.

“Wait one,” said Lopez. “I need to check something.”

Cade raised a closed fist and came to a halt and went down
to one knee. He looked up and noticed the Four Palm’s metal fire escape
twisting back and forth on itself all the way to the top floor.

Filing that bit of info away for later, he looked left past
Cross and Griffin, who had their backs to the shaped shrubs and the barrels of
their suppressed carbines pointing out at opposite angles.

A few feet beyond the SEALs, Lopez was leaning between the
bushes with only his legs and backside visible.

Curious, Cade did the same and found himself peering through
decorative holes designed into the cement block supports and into the Four
Palms’s underground garage. There in the gloom he saw a game-changing sight
that buoyed his hopes and, short of proof of life, all but backed up his gut
feeling.

“There’s a white Miata in the garage here,” said Lopez. “Has
to be Nadia’s.”

“Can’t be too many white Miata’s in Southern California ...
can there?” answered Cade, tongue-in-cheek.

Ignoring the quip, Lopez said, “There’s a few more
vehicles.” He paused for a second. Drew a breath and went on, “And a mess of
demonios
.”

Either the building has been compromised entirely and the
things got down there through an open stairway
, thought Cade.
Or
if
the garage entrance is gated, which, presumably, it would be, then hopefully
someone left it open
. Cade hoped for the latter, because if it was gated
and that gate was down and locked, figuring a way to breach it and then secure
it behind them once they were inside might prove to be a deal breaker.

Still running the contingencies through his head, Cade
started off at a trot past the shrubs. When the foliage abruptly ended and the
building angled away to the right and a low cement wall bordering the outside
parking lot became his only cover, he went into a low-combat crouch and hurried
a dozen yards farther to the corner, where, again, he went to one knee and raised
a closed fist. A moment later three pairs of boots scuffed to a stop on the
sidewalk behind him and the team came to a stop. Given the shit storm they’d
gone through covering the first three blocks of the incursion, that they hadn’t
encountered a walking corpse for an entire city block was refreshing as
hell—but not long-lived.

Feeling the sweat pouring down his back and pockets of
liquid pooling against his chest underneath his body armor, Cade peeked around
the corner, looked the length of the low wall bordering the lot’s south side,
and saw a dozen dead things looking skyward. Following their gaze, he saw the
Ghost Hawk, silent, black, and menacing. It was partially blocking out the sun
and hovering parallel to the building with the starboard minigun deployed and
covering the team’s approach.

“I count thirteen Zs southwest of your position,” announced
Haynes. “I repeat, one-three Zulus to your southwest. The Zulus you just broke
contact with are now turning the corner at your six o’clock.”

“Copy that,” said Cade. “I have the point now.”

“Do we have an Anvil Actual sighting?” said Ari over the
comms.

Cade said nothing to that. He snugged his carbine to his
shoulder and, looking over the barrel, rounded the corner low of profile and
searching for targets.

Leading the team quick and quiet westbound, Cade slowed to a
walk once he was within ten yards of the dead. He put his finger on the trigger
and, with the others at his back, started dealing out lethal double-taps. And
the dead didn’t know what had hit them. They fell vertically. The first five in
a jumbled heap, their near naked bodies intertwined in second death. The next
half-dozen went down in succession, like dominos, as they turned to face the
advancing footfalls. With audible pops their heads exploded one after the other
and Cade stepped over their prone forms and did the final two—execution
style—two rounds each from behind as he rushed by them. In fifteen short
seconds all thirteen rotters littered the sidewalk and parking lot entrance,
their heads caved in from thirteen unlucky pairs of rapidly decelerating and
tumbling 62 grain hardball.

Lopez, Cross, and Griffin rushed through the open gate in a
tight knot and, as planned, Cade stopped underneath it and jumped and grabbed
ahold of its sharp metal lower lip. As the other three continued running down
the ramp there was a strobe light effect on the walls and low ceiling from
their weapons discharging.

Cade felt his rifle banging him in the crotch as he curled
his legs and held on, dangling two-handed from the gate.

But nothing happened immediately.

So, feeling useless as teats on a boar, simultaneously he
watched a new throng of Zs vectoring in from the street and worked out a couple
of hard-earned pull-ups.

Meanwhile, behind him, the distinct soft chugs of suppressed
weapons throwing lead downrange competed with the echoing moans of the dead,
the tinny tinkle of brass on concrete, and the wet slaps of bullets striking
flesh and bone.

As he eyed the staggering corpses homing in from the street,
Cade felt something give in the mechanism somewhere overhead as the combined
weight of his body and gear started the gate moving, achingly slow, on its
downward journey.