Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (38 page)

Wilson’s jaw dropped open. Wide-eyed, he said, “Remind me
never to piss you off.”

Brushing off the comment, Brook gestured at the open door.
“Get in.” She pointed out the winch controls; all the while Wilson was eyeing
Chief.

“Pay attention,” snapped Brook.

“Sorry,” he stammered.

“Don’t worry, he’s not going to turn any time soon,” she
lied. Then she repeated what she’d said about the winch operation. Asked, “Got
it?”

Wilson nodded. Pulled his boonie hat down tight over his
ears. “You sure you can haul all that cable?”

“I watched
you
do it all by yourself at the
Huntsville blockage.”

Wilson made a face. He said, “Good point.”

Before setting off, Brook patted the sat-phone in her roomy
thigh pocket and then reached over and corralled the 40-channel CB and stowed
it alongside. Handed Wilson her Glock and, figuring the horde wasn’t too far
down the road, told him to hail Taryn on the two-way and have her guard the
horn with her life.

This time, freeing the hook from the slot in the F-650’s
bumper went easier than the first. She disengaged the tension and, holding onto
the length of cable two-handed, hauled it over her shoulder and leaned forward
in the direction of the bus. Legs pumping, she skirted the pile of formerly
human detritus and, beginning to breathe hard, trudged past the bus’s yellow
roof. With the stubby M4 banging against her back, she curled around the
vehicle’s less-than-aerodynamic front end and dropped the cumbersome hook and
cable to the road. She took a few more paces, propped her rifle against the
greasy undercarriage, and slumped to the pavement, winded.

Sitting cross-legged and crying, she pulled out the handheld
CB and reached Seth back at the compound. She asked about Raven and listened as
Seth told her that the new arrival was a nurse. “Put her on,” Brook said.

There was a rustling and then distant voices followed by a
metallic clang. She heard footsteps and another rustle as someone picked up the
handheld unit.

The lady calling herself Glenda and professing to be a nurse
back in the days before MRIs and CAT scans
said that for the time being
Raven was stable but showing no signs of improvement. Brook interrogated Glenda
a little by asking her questions about diastolic pressure and O2 levels and
then asked to speak to Seth again. When Seth came back on, Brook made sure
Glenda had gone and asked him specifically what his gut was telling him. To
which he said he was inclined to agree with the woman who, after all, said she
was a nurse and, so far, seemed to carry herself as such. Semi-convinced but
powerless to do anything to better Raven’s situation, Brook powered off the CB
and was in the process of putting it away when she heard the scrabbling sound
she knew all too well.
Nails on sheet metal,
she thought as she craned
around, frantically looking for its source.

Seeing nothing and chalking the noises up to a lone Z
trapped inside the bus, she went fishing for the sat-phone. Her fingers brushed
the plastic and the sound came again, followed by a scratchy hiss, and before
she could react the low hanging sun was blotted out.

The blow to her head nearly knocked her unconscious. She’d
heard the sound many times before. Bone on bone. Skull to skull. Instantly
stars swirled behind her eyes her head began to ache. Then something sharp was
raking her neck and back as she struggled to rise. Her eyes flicked to her
carbine and she reached for it. Her fingers brushed the textured fore grip but
Murphy intervened and Newton’s law was enacted and the rifle slid away from
her, the barrel carving an arc in the road grime and clattering to the ground
out of reach.

Fighting tooth and nail, Brook got a hand behind her back
and, clutching something wet and cold and altogether slimy, yanked on it, using
every ounce of strength at her disposal.

Wilson took his eyes off of Chief, whose chest, thankfully,
was still rising and falling. He shifted in his seat to see over the large side
mirror and craned his head looking for movement or shadow or anything to point
to Brook’s position in relation to the bus.

The sun was to the left and shining on the bus’s
undercarriage, so there was no telltale shadow. Moreover, the bus was flat on
its side, so seeing her feet moving about was out of the question.

So feeling a tingle worrying the base of his spine, Wilson
grabbed the Glock and kicked open the door. In half a beat he was on the ground
and running headlong for the bus, oblivious to his own safety.

In the Raptor, Taryn had spent the entire three or four
minutes they’d been sitting there on the road trying to keep Sasha calm. The
girl was backsliding, and Taryn was growing increasingly tired of her antics.
One moment she was praying for a roll of duct tape to apply some over her
future sister-in-law’s mouth and secure her wrists, and the next she was seeing
Wilson out of the truck and sprinting towards the overturned bus.

“Stay here,” she barked, and was out the door before Sasha
could come up with a snarky reply.

Ignoring anything in his way—blood and guts and bone, it
didn’t even register in the moment—Wilson rounded the front of the bus, Glock
leveled, a solid ten feet of spacing between him and the bumper. As his body
cut the plane even with the bus’s undercarriage his gaze fell on Brook. She was
sitting cross-legged and rocking back and forth with the sat-phone in her gloved
hands. As he drew nearer he saw her rifle on the pavement a few feet beyond
her. There was a crawler an arm’s reach away, its eyes gouged out and the back
of its skull nothing but a pulped mess.

With the sun warming the right side of his face, Wilson
approached the scene with caution. “Are you OK?” he asked.

Brook said nothing. She finished tapping something out on
the keypad then looked up. There were tears in her eyes. She said, “How is
Chief?”

Wilson kicked the half-corpse to make sure it was truly
dead. And it was. There was no further movement. So he lowered the Glock and
finally replied, “He’s not looking good.”

Brook sighed and said, “It’s all my fault, you know. I lied
to him. And I lied to you. I lied because I didn’t want to lose Raven ... still
don’t.”

“He likes Raven as much as any of us do. Plus ... he
volunteered.” Wilson helped Brook to her feet. Saw the smudges on her shirt
back. Thought it could be oil or blood. Curious, he asked worriedly, “What
happened here?”

“The Z fell from above and nearly head-butted me
unconscious. Then I snapped out of it and found myself in a life and death
struggle.”

“And?”

“I’m fine.” She powered down the phone and it went into a
pocket. “Let me finish what I started.”

She scooped up her carbine and handed it to Wilson. She
said, “Watch my back.”

“How is your back?” he asked.

She said nothing. Instead, she knelt near the exposed front
wheels, searching for something sturdy to anchor the cable to.

Below the gore-spattered front bumper she found a hook twice
the size of her hand. After closer inspection she determined, based on the way
it was positioned and the size of the bolt securing it directly to the frame,
that it was put there for exactly the purpose she intended on using it for. She
wound the cable around the hook and clipped it to itself. She stood up and
pulled it tight and gazed upon her handiwork.

Good to go.

Limping, Brook made her way to the F-650. She climbed in and
saw Chief, who appeared to be in roughly the same condition as when she had
left him. She retrieved her hat and saw his eyes move behind the closed lids.
“Hang in there,” she said. “Give me one hour.
Please
.” She started the
V10, put the transmission in
Reverse,
and disengaged the e-brake.
Applying very little throttle, she inched the rig back until the cable
straightened and hummed under tension.

Glock in hand and his head moving as if on a swivel, Wilson
backed well away from the taut cable. In case it snapped, the last thing he
wanted was to be cut in half and end up looking like the thing Brook had just
beaten to a pulp.

Feeling resistance building, Brook pressed on the
accelerator and the Ford belched gray exhaust. Ever so slowly the school bus
began to move. It wasn’t sliding so much as it was pivoting on a point
somewhere mid-chassis.

There was a tremendous groan of metal and then a voluminous
grating noise as the nose moved a couple of feet. Seeing progress, Brook
doubled down on the throttle and held the steering wheel as straight as humanly
possible. She saw her efforts pay off when whatever had been creating the pivot
point gave way and the bus spun another ninety degrees and started screeching
across the blacktop tracking straightaway with the reversing F-650.

Waving both hands groundward as if he were fanning a
stubborn campfire, Wilson bellowed, “Stop.”

Brook hit the brakes and watched the bus grind to a halt and
the tension leave the cable. When she looked over at Wilson he was pointing
north down 16 and hoofing it towards the now inert bus.

Taryn saw what Wilson was seeing. Unfortunately so did
Sasha, and she started a new and unusually loud bitch session that started Max
to growling.

While Taryn stared at the advancing herd of dead that had no
doubt been patrolling nearby Woodruff, she tried to calm both the teen and the
dog using an even voice and reassuring words.

But that wasn’t working so she said, “I’m about to backhand
you, Sasha. Then when ... or if ... we get back to the compound I’m going to
kick the crap out of you. And don’t think I’m not capable.” She stared into the
rearview thinking:
Gauntlet thrown.

Suddenly Sasha lost all her bluster. She sat back in her
seat all of a sudden silent, her lip quivering rather perceptibly.

Taryn watched as Wilson unhooked the cable and straightened
it out as it was reeling back into the housing somewhere behind the bumper.
Seeing the herd nearing the intersection and even more undead tottering from
the side streets and beyond, she leaned over the console and popped the door.
“Old trick my dad taught me,” she said to herself. She started the engine and
got her truck rolling slowly to the left and hit the brakes hard when Wilson
was ten feet from the passenger door. Equal and opposite reaction was in play
as the brakes grabbed and the well-oiled hinge gave, allowing Wilson’s door to open
up right in front of him.

“Convenient,” he said as he leaped inside, out of breath.
“Your dad teach you that one?”

“Duh,” said Sasha from behind.

In the F-650, Brook could barely tell that Chief was still
breathing. He was, however, twitching, and that was a good a sign as any. It
was an absence of both that she feared the most because then she figured there
would only be a matter of seconds for her to pull over and uphold her promise
to him.

She took a second to call ahead and alert Seth to have the gate
cleared of dead and open on the outside chance Chief survived the drive there.

Northwest of Moab

With their final aerial refueling of the very long day in
the books and the Herc and her aircrew, who were now owed multiple rounds of
beers, droning away somewhere over the horizon to the east, the Ghost Hawk and
Osprey, their rotors churning lazily, sat fifty yards apart on an expanse of
flat weathered rock in the middle of nowhere, Utah.

Transferring Emily and Nadia, even with the IV still plugged
into her arm, had gone off smoothly. As Cade watched the dual rotors pick up
speed he wondered how the atmosphere aboard the Osprey was, taking into account
that the dozen hard-charging Rangers who had been sitting on their thumbs this
whole time had all basically just been given the job of babysitter.

He looked at Lasseigne’s still form under the flag and said
a prayer for the man. Then he heard the low growl of the turbines change to a
manic whine as they spooled up. Gazing out the window, he saw pebbles bouncing
on the red rock and sand blowing away in sheets. Finally the rotor blades
seemed to lose shape and merge into one solid black overhead disc. Taking
advantage of the nearly empty cabin, he stretched his legs out and, though
Raven had been on his mind for the last few hours, tried to relax for the rest
of the flight—however long that might be.

Then, with timing that couldn’t have been better, Ari’s
voice sounded in his headset saying, “Next stop Huntsville, Utah. Flight time
one hour, give or take.” Then, a tick later, with timing that couldn’t have
been worse, the sat-phone vibrated against his thigh. He retrieved it quickly
and, hitting a random key, brought it to life. The text message was short but
dire. Immediately Cade said, “Can you get me there any faster?”

Ari came back on. “I can shave a few minutes off with the
right altitude and a tailwind.”

“Not good enough,” responded Cade. Then, knowing the bigger
bird’s capabilities, if not the willingness of the aircrew to accommodate him,
he went on, “How about the Osprey?”

“It’ll get you there in thirty mikes,” Ari said.

“I know it can. But will Ripley agree to take me?”

The Ghost’s turbines quieted a little and in turn her rotors
began to slow. A tick later Ari said, “I’ll ask her. But I can’t guarantee you
anything.”

By now a concerned look was on Lopez’s face and he was
mouthing, “What’s up?”

Head craning forward, Griffin was doing his best to make
heads or tails of Cade’s unusual request. He pantomimed smelling his pits as if
his BO was pushing the Delta boy away.

Cade said nothing to Lopez’s query. He was already unbuckled
and asking Griffin to hand over the kit containing all of his medical supplies.

Without a word Griffin thumbed the plastic quick release and
handed it over.