Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (12 page)

Loathing the fact that he knew what he knew but couldn’t
share, he returned to his vehicle and slumped in his seat, wiped the sweat from
his brow, and then waited patiently on the newly-widowed woman.

***

In three minutes, not five, Brook was standing in the
doorway, hair pulled tight into a high ponytail. She had on the same black
short-sleeved tee shirt with newly-formed puddles of sweat under her arms and a
damp strip down the middle of her back. The shirt was tucked into the waistband
of a pair of women’s slate-blue and gray digital tiger-striped Air Force issue camouflage
pants, the cuffs of which were stuffed neatly inside her fully broken in desert
tan combat boots. In her right hand, she clutched the short barrel M4 carbine,
its muzzle trained near her feet. Crushed in her left hand was a stark white
envelope crisscrossed with a roadmap’s worth of creases.

Leaving the square patch of shade provided by the Cushman’s
small roof, Davis dismounted and approached Brook. Noticing that Raven was within
earshot he leaned in and said, “There’s something else I need to tell you and I
don’t think you’re going to like it.” Detecting a degree of worry settle on the
petite woman’s features, and reading the look of dread in her eyes, Davis stated
Nash’s two conditions as delicately as possible. “Two things. One, you’re going
to have to find someone to watch your daughter ...”

“And?” Brook asked hitching a brow.

Davis said, “Since the President will be in attendance, you
won’t be allowed to bring any weapons into the command center.”

Brook made a face. “You mean the TOC,” she said, correcting
him. “As far as weapons go ... you’re looking at it. And I feel damn naked
without it—” Then, turning and addressing Raven who had been hovering in the
doorway, she asked, “You want to hang out with Sasha, Taryn, and Wilson until
your dad comes back? It might be late when he does, so it could
end up being
a sleepover
.” Even though Brook thought Raven would jump at the chance of
hanging out with the cool crowd, still, she stretched out the latter half of
her offer, making a once-ordinary occurrence seem like some kind of forbidden
fruit.

Instantly the first traces of worry dissolved from Raven’s
face and, as any pre-teen would, she immediately began planning her night of
freedom without a second thought as to why it was being offered in the first
place. “Affirmative,” she said with a wry smile.

In the brief seconds between question and answer, inexplicably
Brook’s mind flashed back to the last sleepover Raven had attended, or hosted
for that matter, and sadly the details eluded her.

The events of the past two weeks had also blurred together
into one long stream of consciousness consisting of combat-induced spikes of
adrenaline sandwiched between way too many emotional valleys for her to count,
and if she could print out a graph detailing them it would undoubtedly resemble
a cardiac patient’s EKG strip with a little red arrow stating
you are here
at the very lowest axis on the readout. That’s how far down the scale the
airman showing up at her doorstep had just taken her. And if she were to sink
any lower emotionally she feared that the reptilian part of her brain—the lump
of gray matter also known as the
basal ganglia
that drives innate survival-related
instincts such as aggression, dominance, and territoriality, which had not only
been switched on, but ratcheted up a few hundred notches—might never return to
its normal state.

Lately she’d started noticing dangerous situations a few
steps before they devolved into deadly ones. Reacting to those threats had become
an almost instantaneous muscle-memory-type of response—a far cry, she admitted,
from her pre-Omega protocol of observe, analyze, overanalyze and then
maybe
act. She mused sadly that the things that
used
to come naturally, like remembering
the names of two dozen of Raven’s friends and classmates from school, or who
had been slated to be her daughter’s fifth grade teacher, were all lost to her.
Brook had known sooner or later she’d start forgetting the minutiae from her old
life, but the fact that it was happening just two weeks out left her worried
whom she would be once she finally reached Eden. The last thing she wanted to
be was a cold, emotionless lump of flesh able to protect Raven but nothing more.
That led to the question she’d been meaning to ask Cade; yet, despite his open
door, ask anything policy, she’d never worked up the courage to do so. Had he
been taught some kind of technique that allowed him to switch off his combat
instincts each time he walked back into their home after a mission, or was it
something that came naturally?

Suddenly Brook was yanked off the couch, figuratively
speaking, and snapped out of her Sigmund Freud moment when Raven slammed the
door and bounded down the steps with all of her worldly belongings stuffed into
one oversized canvas leave bag.

“Grab a change of clothes just in case?” Brook said with a
chuckle.

“This is stuff I need for the sleepover, Mom.”

“See if Davis can help you with that. And don’t forget to
tip the man.”

Raven made a face and handed the bag to the airman, then hopped
aboard the golf cart. “I don’t have any money, Mom. Besides ... where would he
spend it?”

From the mouths of babes
, thought Brook. She took a
seat next to Raven, placed her rifle between her knees, and exchanged a look
with the driver that begged him not to say anything to further complicate
matters.

“I’m the same as your dad. I work for the government, therefore
I can’t accept tips. It’s the thought that counts though. Thanks all the same,”
he said with a little wink meant for Brook. He returned his gaze forward, set
the engine sputtering, and after a lurch they were barreling across the base
towards a cluster of squat gray buildings bristling with antenna and a number
of VW-sized satellite dishes.

Ovid, Colorado

Two fucking days
, Elvis thought. That’s how long he
had been trapped inside the two-story house outside of Ovid, Colorado. With no
one else to talk to and nothing to keep him occupied, he was just about at the
end of his rope.

Two and a half days thinking through his options in this
house seemed like a year. To pass the time and remain somewhat sane he’d taken
to reading Harlequin romance novels he’d found—hidden like some kind of
contraband—in a brown grocery bag in a corner upstairs, behind an old fashioned
push-pedal sewing machine. They had already been thoroughly thumbed through,
spines cracked, pages dog-eared. Obviously the interactions on those pages had
kept someone else company for quite some time.

He looked out the kitchen window at the bobbing heads.
Watched the zombies pressing against the waist-high chain-link. Over time they
had thoroughly trampled the shrubs and flowers the owner of the house had
planted there, leaving only churned-up earth in their stead.

He looked down at the kitchen table. In front of him were
three items.

The black .45 he’d taken from Private Farnsworth and
subsequently killed him with was there. With only eight bullets remaining in
the single stack magazine, it was all but useless against the numbers he faced.
At this rate, he figured, one would suffice. He’d stick the pistol in his
mouth. Do it right the first time so there would be no chance of him coming
back as one of them.

Then there was the Iridium satellite phone, now all but
useless, its display a blank gray crystal, its keys darkened. He’d made his
final call to Bishop less than an hour ago. And for the tenth time today the
call had gone unanswered. And then the phone had died. And the charger was in
the truck, in the glove box. Worthless. As was the truck now, seeing as how
there were thirty of the things between it and the fence blocking the path
leading to the back door.

Lastly, there was the scrap of paper with a set of GPS
numbers scrawled in silver pen in his hand. Also worthless.

And then there was the road where even more flesh-eaters
were shuffling by in what Elvis preferred to call
packs,
which he
thought a better term than
herds
as the soldiers at Schriever preferred
to call them. Hell, he thought, herd just sounded too bovine in
nature—docile—almost as if you could stand back and let them pass and you’d be
totally ignored.
Bullshit. What did the stupid soldiers know anyway.
Though the creatures around the perimeter and trudging the road did move slow,
in a herd-like follow-the-leader manner when there was no prey around, Elvis
knew nothing could be further from the truth once they got sight of meat.

And that’s what had happened two days ago. Thirty seconds
out back taking a piss was all it had taken for him to get noticed. At first
the group of offending creatures had been inconsequential. But by morning he
was General Custer and the Sioux were all but knocking down the fence. And to
make matters worse, he had company in the cellar. Every so often he’d tread on
the floor wrong, producing a squeak not too uncommon in a house a century or so
old, and each transgression elicited a whole new round of banging against the
cellar door.

Casting furtive looks at the dead
walking the road, he wolfed down the last of some kind of meat-filled raviolis
straight from the can. Finished, he tossed the spoon in the can and the whole
lot in the sink which was piled to overflowing with dishes, dirty and rancid.

He rose from the table and
pocketed his belongings, putting the .45 in the small of his back, then moved
through the kitchen to the living room, its airspace cut up by bars of
afternoon sun. To the left was the front door, a substantial piece of oak inset
with three thin works of stained glass which he had already deemed sufficient
protection against one or two monsters but no better than rice paper against
many more. Next to the door, facing east by south, was a plate window bordered
by heavy drapes in burgundy with a paisley print. To his right was a hall that
he’d already explored. It led to a small powder room, and, of no use to anyone
over four feet, a tiny bedroom painted pink that housed a princess-themed
toddler bed, atop its taut bedspread a pair of frilly pink pillows adorned with
Snow White and Cinderella, respectively.

Drawing his attention to the fore was a brick fireplace he’d
not yet given much scrutiny. It was mantled with a two-foot by six-foot golden
slab of old growth that had been polished to a high luster. Arranged on its top
with surgical precision were a dozen pictures, some of an elderly gray haired
lady—probably a widow, he guessed. Or the world’s oldest carpet muncher. He
chuckled and looked over the rest of the framed pictures, most of which
chronicled nearly every watershed event during the first few years of some
little girl’s life. One was of the girl as an infant in the arms of a pretty
hot-looking nurse, swaddled in a pink blanket, readied for the first handoff.
Come
to mommy,
mused Elvis, eyeing the nurse while ignoring the baby. His gaze
fell on another photo of the same baby reclining in a plastic tray of some sort
in a kitchen sink, wearing a perplexed look that clearly said “What the hell is
going on?”
First bath.
He replaced the frame and regarded the next—the
obligatory picture of the infant spitting up baby food. Cute and disgusting all
at once. Lastly, he eyed the inevitable photo of the anonymous tot’s first
wavering steps, her little hand fully enveloped by a wrinkly, liver-spotted,
hand.
Grandma, is that you downstairs?
thought Elvis.
Are you alone?
he wondered. He hoped so. Just the thought of the toddler in the photos banging
around, all rotten and slimy in the root-cellar, brought on an involuntary
shudder.

Eyes tearing, Elvis remembered how on every birthday and
holiday nearly identical photos starring him and his sister would materialize
out of Mom’s secret stuff-from-the -past vault. And how she would reminisce for
hours over a bourbon hot toddy about the good old days and openly wonder where
they’d all gone. Sadly, Elvis knew the answer to that question, and it had been
eating him alive since that final phone call—the mother of all dropped
calls—when his family had been sent via demolition charges set off by the
California National Guard to their watery graves, along with most of the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

He removed the
first-steps
photo and tossed the frame
to the floor, eliciting a fresh barrage of flesh impacting the cellar door beyond
the kitchen. Though the pig-tailed girl in the photo wasn’t really his younger
sister, she would have to suffice. He folded the photo in two and put it in his
pocket, where it would remain until the smoldering ember of hatred within his
heart grew dim. Then, with his resolve beginning to waver, he’d unfold it and
stoke that ember with the memories of days gone by.

He plopped down on the overstuffed earth-tone
daveno. An
absurd old folks’ name for a sofa if he ever heard one
. He put his boots on
the veneer-topped coffee table, scattering ornamental figurines and spilling a
bowl full of age-hardened ribbon candies in the process. Once settled in, he
pressed the field glasses to his eyes and adjusted the focus ring. Immediately
the virtual river of walking dead filled his field of vision, lurching and
bouncing along the shimmering blacktop. Men, women, and kids were all
represented in the mix. Not a horde but deadly just the same.

He panned up and left and acquired US-138, which snaked in
front of Ovid feeding Sedgwick to the west and Julesburg to the east, and was
but one small piece of the asphalt marvel of engineering the hundreds of dead
had taken to following.

Bracing his elbows on his chest helped stop the minute
shaking that was keeping him from seeing the whole picture. And once he focused
on the scene it was evident he was looking at a true horde in all sense of the
word. Hundreds of monsters all headed in the same direction with no discernable
destination. He keyed in on a telling piece of information. A good number of camouflage-clad
zombies were scattered amongst the civilian shamblers. He made a cursory tally
of bodies from the shoulder across to the passing lane. Eight was what he came
up with. Then he swept the binoculars to the left, ticking off a quick head
count along what he guessed to be about a quarter-mile of westbound 138. Eight
multiplied by forty. “Let’s call it two fifty,” he said softly. Two days ago
the sheriff and her merry men of Julesburg had turned him away. But that had
been a good thing in hindsight. There was no doubt the city had been overrun.
Fine tuning the focus, he walked the binoculars from right to left, noticing
that the majority of the walkers appeared to have turned recently. Their skin
wasn’t flagging off in places like the weeks’ old first turns.