Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (19 page)

A low murmur filled the room.

A quick look at the other monitor told her nothing had
changed where Cade was concerned. Nothing she could do for him, so she rooted
for the others—they needed it. While she’d looked away a Black Hawk, blades
cutting a blurry arc, had moved in and was hovering over the surging dead. Then
streaks of yellow and red, seemingly interconnected, blazed groundward,
shredding into the dead. Dozens of Zs fell, but in seconds others took their
place and were clambering over each other and grabbing and tugging at the
remaining soldiers. And as Brook witnessed the Zs swarm overtop the MRAP, she
prayed the doomed men would not have to suffer. It was all over in seconds.
Death playing out in front of her eyes. Silent and exaggerated like some kind
of old Charlie Chaplin film. Averting her eyes from the feeding frenzy, she
glanced at monitor three, where the scene seemed to have been paused while
she’d been watching brave men perish on the other. She’d had enough. Though
part of her screamed to stay here and watch and root for Cade, she couldn’t.
The state of limbo was killing her. Time to shift focus and move forward
because right here and now, from some four hundred miles away, there was
nothing she could do for Cade and she knew it. Furthermore, she was out of her
element. An interloper. Shut out of the loop, and judging by the actions of Nash,
Shrill, the President, and every single person in uniform in the stifling hot TOC,
she might as well be invisible. So, in order to avoid another
Faces of Death
moment like the one she had just witnessed—especially one featuring her husband
and the rest of the Delta operators who had already risked so much for the
country—she rose from her chair and bolted for the door.

The unsmiling Secret Service Agent, having already been spared
a knee to the nuts twice today, instead received a laughable hockey check as
Brook blazed by.

Then, succumbing greatly to Newton’s applied law of physics,
Brook bounced off the big man and redirected the unspent inertia—via her
opposite shoulder—into the door’s horizontal push bar. Squinting against harsh
light thrown from the fluorescent tubes, she stopped in the wide corridor and
heard the door shut with a soft squelch punctuated by a solid click that seemed
to say,
You didn’t belong here anyway. Now stay out.

But she didn’t want to show Airman Davis, who was most
likely still waiting outside, that she’d been defeated. And going back to Raven
knowing more than when they’d parted, but having nothing good to report, was
out of the question. So she put her back to the wall and slid slowly to the
floor. Extended her legs and bounced her head against the wall. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Trying to knock some sense into her own head.

Under the watchful gaze of Schriever’s finest from days gone
by, Brook drew her knees up, planted her face in her hands, and listened for
any kind of sound from the other side of the door that could possibly be interpreted
as positive.

South Dakota

Before the flesh-eaters could close the noose any tighter,
Cade urged the gearbox into drive, tromped the pedal, and wrenched the wheel
right. The truck jumped forward under power and then shuddered like it was
suddenly starved of gas. Instinctively Cade checked the gauge.
Quarter tank.
Easing off the accelerator stopped the lurching but brought on an unusual
wheezing sound. Then, after letting off the throttle entirely, the ticking intensified
and the idle started to fluctuate wildly. Quickly he diagnosed the death rattle
for what it was—the kind of sound an engine makes under duress just before it
throws a rod and blows a piston into a hundred-cylinder head-killing fragments.
It was no kind of sound any of them needed to be hearing in the middle of
nowhere surrounded by the living dead.

“Sounds like a bad lifter,” said Jasper.

Ari asked, “Checked the oil lately?”

“No reason.”

“Why not?” queried Ari.

“Plenty more trucks just sittin’ around,” was Jasper’s monotone
reply.

“Well I hope this one doesn’t die yet,” Cade said under his
breath. “It’s got more problems than a bad lifter and
I
don’t see
plenty
of suitable replacements in the vicinity.”

Jasper made no reply. Remained stoic, seemingly unfazed by
Cade’s obvious jab at his provincial nature. Then, as quickly as the engine started
acting up, it settled back into a rough idle.

Goosing the throttle, Cade said, “What do you think ... is
she going to make it?”

Once again Jasper said nothing. Simply stared a thousand
yards into the distance, with the same type of flat affect worn by the
condemned.

A sharp elbow got Ari’s attention. Cade mouthed, “Watch
him.”

The simple fact that the man had recently lost his wife and two
kids to Omega made him a liability. A strong candidate to snap from the
pressure. Cade had seen it before—before and after the dead began to walk. The
saying ‘
You’re only as strong as your weakest link,’
came to mind. Over
the years, remembering this simple truth had saved his life on more than one occasion.
In fact the words had been drilled into his head, early, and often. First by
every grim-faced instructor at boot camp. Then by his future peers during the
lengthy training process required to be accepted into the Ranger family. And most
recently, by his friend and mentor, the late General Mike Desantos, during
nearly every waking moment Cade served with him on the
Teams
.

Jogged by the thought of Mike and what his family must be
going through, the realization that Brook and Raven must already know that he’d
gone missing behind enemy lines hit him blindside like a three hundred and
fifty pound nose tackle.
What does Brook know?
he thought.
Was she even
aware that Oil-Can made contact with us?

Considering how quickly this could go tits-up, not to
mention the fact that Brook and Major Nash had already butted heads—on more
than one occasion—Cade figured there was no way in hell a woman as calculating
as Nash would be stupid enough to bring Brook into the loop at this stage of
the game. At the very least, out of respect for him, the major would probably play
the CYA—cover your ass—card and inform Brook of the very minimum and then sugar
coat it until more information came to light. But whatever the case, Brook was
pretty good at reading between the lines. She’d intuitively know something was
wrong the second the Osprey thundered over the base without the slower Ghost
Hawk in tow. Then he pictured her big brown eyes and million dollar smile, and
at that very moment the urge to be with her had never been stronger. Just the thought
of his family so far away and how all of this would affect them should they get
overrun by the dead set his guts to churning.

“Agent Cross, I need you to be my eyes and guide us through
this shit show,” Cade said as the truck rolled forward under a new head of
steam. “’Cause we’re going home.”

Risking his face being raked by the claw-like hands of the dead,
Cross hung his head around the cab into the weak slipstream and began to call
out navigable seams through the warren of vehicles. “Take a hard right here and
then loop around the silver compact at your one o’clock. Then you’ll have to ride
the shoulder a dozen yards. Got to be careful though. The slope on the right isn’t
very steep, but as loaded down as we are ... wouldn’t take much to roll us over,”
he said.

“Roger that,” Cade answered back. “Easy does it on the
shoulder.” After traveling a dozen yards, he scraped the rear bumper of a dirty
gray Hyundai, made the required left and cautiously slipped past a handful of
vehicles on the right shoulder with the wheels on Jasper’s side worming dangerously
through the browned grass and soft topsoil.

“Getting close,” said Cross, who at this point had his boots
wedged under the weight of Tice’s stiffening corpse and his upper body angling
over the pick-up’s roof. “OK ... now you’ll serpentine between a few more cars
and then it gets tight.”

How can it get any tighter than this?
thought Cade.

Then, as if reading Cade’s mind, Cross added, “After you bull
through it’ll get even tighter ... we’re going to have to squeeze between a red
Suburban and the school bus on its left.”

Making a face, Cade asked, “And after that?”

“Wait one,” Cross answered back as he stood tall, and peered
through the 3x magnifier atop the SCAR. Beyond the yellow school bus he could
see the cause of the roadblock and their objective which lay just beyond it; it
appeared exactly as Dover had described. A sight for sore eyes for sure, and the
only sane reason to be risking getting stuck in this gridlock of death. “Good
news ... it’s mostly clear of Zs,” he said. “Now get us there.”

Wheeling slowly past a pair of horribly mangled vehicles, Cade
swung a hard left at Cross’s insistence and then motored on, the engine still wheezing,
ticking, and steaming.

“Once you split this gap, angle diagonally to the left,”
said Cross. “After that, follow along the breakdown shoulder to our objective.
A hundred yards is all ... then we start phase two.”

 
You’ll serpentine between a few more cars and then it
gets tight,
Cross had said. Following the vague instructions in his head, Cade
maneuvered between a half-dozen small and medium-sized cars, creasing a good
deal of sheet metal and smearing a pack of slow-moving Zs in the process.

“Sounds like we’re riding around in a
pinche
icebreaking ship or something,” said Lopez to no one in particular as the sound
of breaking glass and the unnerving rasp from grinding metal vibrated the air
all around.

“It’s bound to get worse,” replied Cade as a burst of rifle
fire rang out from the bed.

“Ain’t going to make it,” said Ari at about the same time the
pick-up’s bumper got tangled with the rear fender of the car to the right.

“A little more warning next time?” Cade said as he shifted down
into the near-worthless towing gear. He gave it gas. Then there was a groan, followed
by a loud clap as the two vehicles parted and the truck surged forward a few
feet.

“Didn’t think we were going to get through that one,
Captain,” said Ari.

Jasper grunted, then muttered under his breath, “There’s too
many of them. Too many cars. Too many corpses. Too many to bury.”

Cade ignored the babble. Continued scanning the road
forward.
What was it that Cross had said in his ear back there? Red Suburban
on the left and then turn right? Or was it yellow?
All of the running-and-gunning
squeezed around the horrific crash was beginning to take its toll on his short
term memory. He was about to eat crow by asking Cross for a refresher when the
Secret Service man unknowingly bailed him out. “These two,” Cross said. “Part
the bus and Suburban and we’re almost home free.”

Save for a good deal of camping gear visible through the
window, the battered Suburban appeared to be empty. On the roof were mounted a
pair of hard plastic gear carriers, empty and hinged open like the wings on a
beetle.

Looking at the overloaded rig, Cade said, “Wonder what
campground they were headed to?”

“Doesn’t matter,” replied Ari. “Looks like they didn’t make
it ... did they?”

“Plates are from Kansas,” added Jasper. He buried his chin
in his chest and a low ominous chuckle filled the air. Then, sounding eerily
like a little girl, he said in a high falsetto, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not
in Kansas anymore.” Which was followed immediately by an over-the-top belly laugh
a la Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

After the bizarre display of emotion from the undertaker,
Cade made a fast and hard decision and whispered in Ari’s ear, “Disarm him.”

Ari nodded subtly, and then, still semi-numb from the shoulders
to his fingertips, pitched forward, spilling the broken emergency radio from
his lap. “Shit,” he said, feigning disgust.

Taking the bait, hook, line, and sinker, Jasper leaned
forward and grabbed for the radio as it bounced off the transmission hump, slid
down the slick plastic slope, and came to rest against his muddy boots.

Simultaneously Ari squared his shoulders, and in one fluid
motion ripped the Velcro, drew his Beretta from its holster, and had the pistol
cocked and trained on the undertaker.

Radio in hand, Jasper hinged up and realized at once what
was happening. In half a beat the flat affect disappeared and his eyes went wide
and crossed slightly as he stared at the gaping muzzle pointed between them.

“Pistol first,” said Ari, the Beretta’s barrel wavering
slightly.

Averting his eyes from the gun in his face, Jasper placed the
.22 on Ari’s lap and then gently laid the radio next to it.

“And the machete ... pass it through the slider to them,”
said Ari nodding towards the men in back. “Now the shotgun ... butt first.
Finger away from the trigger.”

Jasper complied and then, as if a switch had been flicked, he
folded forward and let loose a sorrow-filled wail.

Cade replaced the Glock on his lap. Steering one-handed, he
rooted around in a cargo pocket, withdrew a pair of oversized zip ties, and
passed them through the slider. “Stick your arms through,” he said, taking his
eyes from the road just long enough to show Jasper he meant business.

Ari leaned left as Jasper thrust his corded forearms through
the opening.

“Zip him, Lopez,” Cade said. “And make it quick.”

As the engine hit another low point, nearly stalling, the sound
of the Hercules tooling the air somewhere out of sight reached Cade’s ears. He watched
through his side vision as Lopez performed a task perfected in training and
used in the real world hundreds of times. In seconds Jasper’s hands were bound
palms together and he was sitting down in his seat, sobbing like a baby.