Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (15 page)

Four miles West of Bear River, Cleo nosed his late model
Jeep Grand Cherokee between two trees and jockeyed it around until it was under
cover and facing perpendicular to the road. Off to the left he could see his
tire tracks but wasn’t too concerned; with the rate at which the snow was
falling, any evidence of his passage would soon be erased.

The copse of trees he’d chosen would serve two purposes:
keep the Jeep from being easily discovered and save him from having to dig the
rig out in the morning should the steady snowfall continue.

He killed the motor and pocketed the keys. Took a small
canister from the same pocket and, holding the hockey-puck-sized item in one
hand, thumped the tin lid with a finger to pack the granular tobacco inside. He
popped the lid and got a big whiff of the earthy-smelling tobacco then put a
generous amount between his cheek and gums. He brushed the particles from his
silver moustache that hadn’t quite made it into his mouth, and then stuffed the
snuff can into his breast pocket. He figured the nicotine buzz of a fresh dip
every couple of hours would help him stave off Mister Sandman.

His lengthening ghost of a shadow told him the sun was up
there somewhere, but the diffuse light it was throwing lent little in the way
of definition to the rolling countryside and even less to the Bear River
mountains off in the distance.

Forgoing the fur-trimmed hood for now, Cleo zipped his white
parka to his neck. He slipped a compact semi-auto pistol along with two spare
magazines full of 9mm into a pocket. Next, he checked to see that his handheld
CB radio was switched off and then put it and a sealed package of new batteries
for it into the other pocket. No way he would hear it over his footsteps
anyhow. Finally, he nudged the door open and stepped out casually onto the
soft, needle-covered ground, dragging a desert-tan-colored carbine after. His
eyes passed over the snowshoes resting on the back seat and, after half a
second’s contemplation, decided bringing them would be a good idea. They went
on the outside of his small rucksack, held in place by a couple of bungees. He
shrugged the pack on, drew a deep cleansing breath, and grabbed his carbine
from where he’d propped it against the Jeep.

He stepped from cover and continued north on foot through
the pasture. To his left, he saw small, snow-covered hillocks rolling away to
the west. Twin runners of fencing stood out against the snow. They stretched
off to the north, bordering the State Route as it undulated away, twisting and
turning like a big white snake.

Keeping Cleo company off of his right shoulder was a wide
expanse of grazing land that eventually butted up against low foothills,
normally scrub-covered red rock but now just a hazy white blur.

Fifty paces into his trek, he spat a big ugly black hole in
the snow, then watched the warm tobacco-juice-laden saliva burn all the way
through to the grass as he passed it by.

***

Ten minutes had passed since leaving the little oasis of
trees behind, and off to the northwest Cleo could see the big metal dome on the
silo and the steeply pitched roof of the red barn, the two big white X’s on the
southwest-facing hayloft doors marking the spot.

Running right to left, almost as crooked as the road beyond
was the Bear River, which he would be crossing rather reluctantly when the time
came. As he trudged ahead, he worked up a good sweat. The high-end hiking boots
he’d scored from an abandoned house in Bear River were treating his feet well.
They were dry, blister-free, and his Plantar Fasciitis, usually aching to the point
of being debilitating, was only a low-level current of pain arcing between the
big toe, along the arch and into the soft flesh of his heel.

He continued north for another quarter-mile until he came to
a low spot in the pasture and cut a sharp ninety-degree left turn. The tack he
chose took him between two large mounds, usually bright green and host to cows
favoring the high ground. Now they were white with snow and the cows, having
fallen victim to the corpses roaming the countryside, were but rib bones and an
occasional skull poking through the vast carpet of white.

As the land sloped away toward the narrow river—actually
little more than a creek—he said a prayer of thanks for the weather presently
keeping the dead at bay. Though the momentary respite would allow the residents
of Bear River to shore up defenses and cull many of the dead things currently
in a state of stasis, he held no reservations the world was out of the woods
yet. In fact, if his last run to the towns on the periphery of Salt Lake City
was any indication as to what the future held for him and the others, he wanted
this snow to be the first of a new Ice Age. Dying cold and hungry, he mused,
was far better than the alternative.

The image of the dead streaming out of the overhunted metropolitan
areas in droves was forever etched in his memory. He’d even heard talk of a
mega horde, in the hundreds of thousands, pushing across the Great Salt Lake
and completely razing Wendover, a little gambling town on the Nevada side of
the border with Utah.

Though he had his doubts, there were other rumblings that
said the lights were working in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but that experiment
was drawing the dead there from Pueblo and Denver like bugs to a zapper.

Lost in thought, Cleo nearly walked right into the
slow-moving water. He stopped short of the bank and emitted a low whistle.

“Almost got wet there, Cleo.”

He picked up a rock and chucked it into the crystal clear
water and counted slowly as it sank, stopping the count only when it finally
settled on the bottom.

Two seconds. Over the cuff.

“Dammit!” He pulled a handful of plastic garbage sacks from
the front pocket of his white ski pants. He placed one on the riverbank and sat
on it. Then, using care not to puncture the thin black plastic, he double-wrapped
his boots with the sacks, duct taping the tops just over his knees.

Good to go.

Grunting from exertion, he pushed off the ground and started
fording the river.

Aside from a couple of slick rocks trying their best to
pitch him into the drink, he arrived on the other side dry, wiggled his toes,
and proclaimed his makeshift waders a success.

He sat down and ripped off the plastic sacks. Still sitting,
he cast his gaze left and right and back, settling on a distant clump of
brambles roughly twice as wide as it was tall. After tucking the sacks away in
a pocket, he rose, covered the thirty yards up the gently sloping hill, and
approached the tangle of vines from its west-facing side. He stepped into them
with no hesitation and stomped a man-sized patch in the bare vines. Finished
with that, he dropped his rifle and pack, and took a seat atop the latter.

“Home, sweet home,” he muttered as he dug out his
binoculars.

From his vantage on the stunted hillock he could see the
entire rear of the two-story farmhouse and a portion of the south-facing
elevation, where a small porch had been tacked on opposite the side door going
into the two-car garage. In addition to being able to see comings and goings
from the rear of the old couple’s house, he had a view of 16, the front drive
and level gravel parking area where an old truck sat, and the barn’s
north-facing doors.

Cleo settled his gaze on the house. The four ground-level
windows facing him were dark, as were the pair on the rear of the garage.
Upstairs, more of the same: four windows with the curtains closed, not a sliver
of light showing.

He lowered the field glasses and looked behind him, quickly
determining the gnarled runners rose at least a foot over his head and would
hide his silhouette from prying eyes as well as afford a modicum of cover from
anything or anyone approaching from behind.

Satisfied with the hide, he started clearing the snow in a
semicircle in front of where he would be camped out for the next dozen hours.
After a few minutes’ labor he had exposed a refrigerator-door-sized rectangle
of browned and matted grass and built ramparts on three sides with the snow he
had displaced. The sides were roughly a foot in height, while the front he
built up until it came up to his sternum when he was seated. Lastly, he pulled
the plastic bags from his pocket and sat down on them.

Breathing hard from the exertion, and wanting nothing more
than to light up a Camel, Cleo instead fished in a pocket for his snuff and
freshened up the gobstopper-sized plug bulging his cheek.

All squared away, with a pair of hand warmers activated, one
stuffed into each glove, he pulled the white blanket from his pack and draped
it over his shoulders. Tucked the corners into the top of his parka and pulled
the fur-trimmed hood up over his head.

Snug as a bug in a rug, and just catching a small buzz from
the chewing tobacco, he put the binoculars to his eyes. There was movement now
on the ground floor, and when he adjusted the focus ring, from nearly the
length of a football field away he saw the woman of the house flitting back and
forth in front of the ground floor windows.

Big heavy flakes, suggestive of a slight bump up in
temperature, were falling all around as the two-vehicle convoy hung a right off
of Route 39. Making parallel tracks in the untouched field of white, the
Toyotas cut a sweeping left-to-right arc in the parking lot and stopped side-by
side in front of the partially burned-out Shell gas station.

On the passenger side of the 4Runner were nearly a dozen
corpses. Partially obscured under six-inch drifts and with limbs poking through
all akimbo, they reminded Wilson of National Geographic pictures he had seen of
the bodies of abandoned climbers frozen in place on the inhospitable slopes of
Mount Everest. He stepped out and closed his door, and as he did so he heard a
chorus of thumps from all around as the other survivors dismounted, Taryn the
first among them. Ignoring the bodies and oblivious to the metal rollup door to
his right, which was bowing in and out minimally as if the garage itself were a
living thing, he looped around front of the 4Runner and met the young
brunette’s stare.

“Are you going to be able to shake that visual ... the baby
and the boys, I mean?” He put his arm around her shoulder as they walked by the
Land Cruiser’s warm grill.

“Yeah,” she said. “In a year or two ... maybe. If I’m one of
the lucky ones who doesn’t get bit or blow my brains out first.”

The prospect of either happening to the woman he was growing
to love instantly numbed Wilson to the core.

“How about you?” she asked. “You looked a little green
around the gills when we pulled in.”

“Those rottercicles by the garage? Nope, they didn’t even
register. The herd we drove through, though …
that
was disconcerting.
However, nothing, and I mean
nothing
has come remotely close to trumping
my first couple of kills ...
yet
.” And as he was saying it, in his
mind’s eye he was seeing the snarling faces of the undead parents he was forced
to brain with his Todd Helton. Running over the vivid memory, like a macabre
soundtrack broadcast in full on Dolby, he heard their undead toddler repeatedly
ramming the baby gate behind closed doors. That day back in Denver was as
surreal as a memory now as it had been then in person. The sound of wood on
bone echoing in the hall outside his apartment, however, would never leave him.
Nor would the
thunka, thunka, thunka
and what it represented emanating
from the next door apartment ever be forgotten.

Approaching from the couple’s blind side, Duncan said,
“Sorry to spoil your Hallmark moment.”

“If you only knew,” Wilson replied.

Duncan grimaced. He said, “Taryn ...
come on down
,”
trying his best to mimic that long dead game show announcer from
The Price
Is Right
. Then he nodded at Wilson and shifted his gaze to Lev and Jamie,
who were just exiting the 4Runner. “The rest of y’all stand guard out here
while we search the garage.”

Wilson nodded and walked towards the road, head tilted, eyes
scanning the yellow and red vacuum-formed sign. “Three oh three for Supreme.
What I wouldn’t give to bitch about rising gas prices again ...” he said, his
voice trailing off as he neared the skeletal carcasses of the burned-out gas
pumps.

Meanwhile, Jamie and Lev had split up, each taking a corner
of the station—Lev to the east, by the corpses and static hulks of burned-out
cars, and Jamie to the west, amid a sea of vehicles all singed by the fire that
had consumed the contents of the minimart, yet inexplicably spared the high
ceilinged double-garage.

Watching the three move out in pretty much the directions he
had hoped they would, and without needing any extra input from him or Duncan,
suddenly elevated Wilson, and to a lesser extent Jamie—who could pretty much
hold her own by now—a few notches upward on Cade’s
there’s-hope-for-them-yet
barometer. He waited until Wilson was kneeling on the cement island between
pumps before motioning for Taryn, Duncan, and Daymon to follow. Once all four
of them had ducked under the locked panic bars, Duncan having the most
difficulty on account of the weather’s effect on his decrepit knees, they
skirted the burned-out shelving and formed up at a door on their right, its
sooty surface all marked up and sporting a road map’s worth of squiggles from
the previous week’s torrential rainfall.

Duncan traced his finger over the remains of the warning
Glenda had etched there weeks ago. “Supposed to have read something like
danger,
dead inside
,” he pointed out. “At any rate, it don’t now. And I figure by
now the critter she said she left trapped inside there has been reduced to
nothing but a
starer
like all the others.”

“Definition of assume?” said Taryn, regarding the three men,
one at a time.

Duncan smiled. He said, “Touché, young lady.”

Shrugging, Daymon put his palms up and looked a question her
way.
And your point is?
is what it seemed to convey.

“Ass. You. Me.
Assuming
makes an
ass
out of
you
and
me
,” said Cade. He banged a fist on the metal-skinned door.

Nothing.

He turned the knob.

Unlocked.

Taryn worked her way next to Cade. She looked up at him,
head tilted to one side. “Let me go first,” she said emphatically.

“Something to prove?”

“No,
Daymon,
” she answered, throwing him an
over-the-shoulder glare. “You trying to get your ball-busting Merit Badge?
Always talking shit.” She looked away, shaking her head.

“Stand down,” said Cade. He let his carbine hang on its
center point sling and glared at Daymon. “First
you
and Lev. That dustup
ended in fisticuffs”—Daymon tried to protest—“and now
you
and Taryn
going at it.” Cade looked at Taryn and half-joking said, “My money is on her.”

Duncan said, “I want in on this action.”

“That was a joke,” Cade replied.

“Better work on your delivery then, Wyatt,” Duncan said,
flashing the man a toothy grin.

Daymon glared at the three, who were seemingly standing
together in opposition to him.

“However, my man,” Duncan added with an extra syrupy
drawn-out drawl, “a hundred simoleons says she can take Urch. And a hundred
more says Wilson can take him ... if she won’t.”

“We’re all under a ton of stress. Nerves are frayed … I get
it,” Cade said. “But we need to work together if we’re going to make the most
of this blessing the weather dropped in our laps.” He looked at them one at a
time and got nods from two out of three. Daymon didn’t make eye contact.
Shaking his head, he stalked off down the aisle toward the counter, kicking
cans and piles of drifted snow as he went.

Also shaking his head, Cade turned the knob and pushed the
door inward by a degree, listened hard and heard nothing. So he nudged the door
inward another three inches, letting in a sliver of light that illuminated the
nearly pitch-black interior. The first thought that entered Cade’s mind as
Taryn edged past him and into the gloom was a positive one. Maybe her mounting
displays of bravado weren’t a false façade as he kind of suspected. His next
thought, however, as a pair of black hands grabbed the ponytail snaking from
under her stocking cap and began dragging her inside was:
Cade, you’ve just
officially made an
ass
of yourself.

Taryn’s shrill scream shattered the silence and then there
came a dry huffing sound from the inky black.

To avoid becoming stuck when both he and Duncan stormed the
narrow door simultaneously, Cade shifted his body sideways—an impromptu move
that caused him to miss the initial step down and turn his left ankle on the
garage’s concrete pad.

Thanks to Cade’s half-pirouette, Duncan squirted through the
doorway a fraction of a second after, his near two hundred pounds hitting the
door full force near the middle hinge and sending it sweeping inward, quietly,
on soot-lubed hinges.

To Daymon, who was now skulking back down the aisle,
watching Duncan following Cade through the door just as Taryn’s shriek died
away was like viewing a rocket launch on television with the volume on mute. As
he reacted, rushing toward danger as Cade and Duncan had, there was a loud clap
and the door rebounded, knocking Duncan off axis as if a giant hand had come
from nowhere and slapped him down.

Recovering from the bone-jarring shiver that started a dull
ache in his previously injured ankle, Cade released his grip on the carbine and
drew his Gerber. And as he lunged for the black apparition draped over the
struggling young woman, looking like a drunken superhero in flight Duncan
passed in front of his eyes, nearly horizontal with the floor, arms flailing
and hands clawing for something to arrest his fall.

The dull ache now a shooting pain, Cade, canting sideways,
focused on the picket of white teeth inching near Taryn’s nose and thrust his
left forearm into the creature’s widening maw. Just as the pressure of the
teeth clamping down registered in his brain, a string of curse words blasted
from Taryn’s throat near his left ear. Then, as the three of them fell as one,
he saw the immolated creature’s eyes, wide and lidless, sweep for him,
right-to-left. Next, his forward momentum ripped the creature off of Taryn and
carried them both away from the door to a cold and unforgiving impact with
Portland cement.

As they rolled around on the floor, the listless creature
was working its fingers into Cade’s back and continued gnawing hungrily on his
left arm. Cade craned around and noticed Duncan recovering from his fall and
crabbing along the floor toward Daymon, whose silhouette was now filling up the
open door. And as motes of carbonized skin and flesh knocked off the creature
during the ongoing struggle filled the air near his face, Cade simultaneously
dug the Gerber’s serrated edge into the Z’s spine from behind and pressed his
forearm forward with all his strength. There was a crackling noise. Then he
heard Duncan lamenting the fact that he was a dead man as simultaneously the
Gerber severed muscle and windpipe and the head came away from the body with an
awful, wet, tearing sound. Finally, with Duncan still going on about them not
having any more antiserum on his right, and Taryn sitting on the floor to his
left and wailing about how sorry she was for barging in ahead of them all, Cade
rolled out from under the thing’s lifeless body and pried the jaws open with
the Gerber. And though the head was no longer attached to the body, the eyes
still scanned the room and the teeth chattered on, producing an unnerving
clicking
noise that rode the cold air inside the metal echo chamber. The noise continued
on even as Cade got to his feet and placed the twenty-some-odd pounds of pure
nightmare on the workbench, where the neck continued oozing black congealed
blood. With the thing’s jaw thumping a morbid rhythm on the oily bench top,
Cade met Duncan’s wide-eyed stare, drew back his tattered sleeve and showed off
the magazines he had taped there in the morning before venturing out to
Woodruff. “Looks like these things’ trial run paid off, huh?”

Taking her hands away from her face, Taryn blurted, “Thank
you, Lord.”

After he finished crossing himself, Duncan whispered, “You
are one lucky mo-fo, Grayson. And so am I … I was
not
looking forward to
breaking the news of your demise to Raven and Brook.” Then, knees be damned, he
crossed his legs, and clasped his hands limply in his lap.

A flashlight beam lanced into the room and there was a
murmuring of voices coming from the doorway as the others, reacting to Taryn’s
scream, crowded around Daymon and started shooting questions Cade’s way.

“Everything is under control,” Cade said. “Go on back
outside.”

As Lev and Jamie complied, Wilson remained rooted and looked
a question at Taryn.

“Cade’s right,” Taryn said. “It’s under control now. I’ll
tell you about it later.”

Wilson opened his mouth as if to say something, then, seeing
Taryn’s expression go serious, wisened up and ducked away from the door.

Cade pulled his sleeve down and then helped the young woman
to her feet. “Murphy must have been napping,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Taryn said, her eyes starting to go moist.

“What’s done is done,” Cade said. “Just know that from here
on out we’re all going to have to be extra careful entering and clearing
buildings.” He stuck the Gerber’s black blade into the thing’s mouth. The
tinkling sound produced by the teeth coming down on it was ten times worse in
the enclosed space than them chattering together.

“I’ll never get used to a severed head doing that shit,”
Duncan said, brushing pea-sized briquettes of blackened detritus from his
jacket and fatigue pants. The stuff was everywhere. There were smudges of black
on the floor. On Cade. On Taryn. It was almost as if the zombie had shed its
bark-like skin on everything it came in contact with.

Cade pulled a small flashlight from a pocket and illuminated
the head, then walked the cone of light over the floor and the rest of the
crispy critter, revealing pink flesh showing through the black shell in places,
mostly around its joints.

“So Cade, tell me this,” called Duncan as he rose to his
feet. “Why wasn’t this one in a state of suspended animation like the others?”

Taryn poured some water from a bottle onto her hands. Then
she splashed it on her neck and face. Finally, looking like she’d just spent a
day in the coal mines, she leaned forward, hands on knees, and regarded the
head on its level, nearly eye-to-eye. “Better yet,” she butted in, a sense of
wonder to her tone. “Why didn’t it start making noise until I was inside? Was
it waiting to ambush us?”

Cade ran his dagger through the head’s eye socket, silencing
the chattering teeth and stilling the one good roving eye. He pried a piece of
sooty matter away from the scalp and rolled the head under the workbench out of
sight—but not out of mind. He turned the specimen over in his hand. It was
about the size of a credit card and had all of the properties of one of those
dry cedar chips folks scattered around their hydrangeas and rhododendrons back
home. He passed the chunk of dermis off to Duncan and knelt next to the
prostrate corpse. With the dagger’s tip, he probed the creature’s skin, which
had partially solidified, becoming like a cross between a rhino’s hide and suit
of armor. It was brittle outside, and flaked off as he poked around the
distended midsection. And as he inserted the blade a couple of inches deeper,
he found the resistance more sponge-like than anything.