Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (17 page)

Ended up being that Glenda was pretty accurate with her
directions. The turnoff from 39 to the secondary road leading to the Utah
Department of Transportation facility
was
half a mile west from the
Shell station. However, the UDOT facility itself was another two-thirds of a
mile due north at the end of an unmarked road Cade presumed was gravel based on
the random pings resonating through the Land Cruiser’s undercarriage.

Situated diagonal from the entrance on the far right corner
of the neatly graded plot of land were two outbuildings the size of double-car
garages. Fronting the two outbuildings was a thirty-foot-tall structure with a
shallow pitched roof that was open to the air on all four sides. Sheltered from
the elements on the center of the immense poured concrete pad were two gigantic
mounds of pea gravel.

A twelve-foot-tall hurricane fence topped by rolled
razor-wire surrounded the entire affair. Signs warning that the premises were
monitored 24/7 by closed circuit television cameras were attached to the fence
chest-high about every thirty feet. And displayed prominently on the front gate
was another sign; on it was a crude caricature of a dog and underneath that, in
big red font, were the words GUARD DOG ON DUTY
.

Duncan parked the SUV nose to the gate and gestured to the
white rectangle with the dog on it. “You think?” he said to no one in
particular.

“No way in hell,” replied Daymon. He looked at Cade. “Who is
gonna cut the lock?”

“I got it,” answered Cade. “Pop the hatch.” He stepped out
and, walking gingerly on his tweaked ankle, made it around back just as the
rear door reached the bump stops at the top of its travel. Not wanting to dig
out his lock gun, he instead fetched the mammoth pair of bolt cutters lying out
in the open and made his way to the gate. It rolled left-to-right on what
looked to him like a pair of Radio Flyer wagon wheels. A heavy-duty chain was
looped twice around the gate’s vertical pole and secured with a heavy-duty
padlock.

A quick bite from the cutter’s sharpened maw and the lock
was defeated.

Cade let gravity take the chain and watched it coil like a
metal snake near his feet. He grabbed a handful of fence, leaned into it, and
rolled the door all the way open. He waved the two vehicles inside then shifted
his weight to his right foot, wiggled his toes on his left, and rolled it in a
slow clockwise circle. Once both the SUVs were inside the wire, he blocked out
the breaking waves of pain and ran the gate into the closed position.

Grimacing in pain, he hobbled back to the Land Cruiser,
opened the passenger door and fished a near-empty bottle of Tylenol from the
side pocket. And while he worked at foiling the childproof feature, he caught
Duncan looking over at him. “May I?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” Duncan said. “I won’t be needing them.”

Daymon was hauling his frame out from behind the driver’s
seat when he heard the exchange. Pausing with one leg out the door, he craned
around. “You still a quitter, Old Man?”

“It’s none of your dang business ... but …
yeah,
I’ve
been sober since Glenda rolled into town.”

“That’s
bullshit
.” Daymon motioned towards the dash.
“What’s with the fifth of Jack in there?”

Duncan popped open the glove compartment to show that it was
empty.

“You were getting
loaded
while we were chopping
skulls and hurling bodies into the canyon?” Daymon asked, incredulous.

Shaking his head, Duncan said, “With Cade and God as my
witness ... I swear to you I’m sober.” He balled his hands into fists, reached
over and pounded the glove box shut. “Damn it Daymon … you gotta believe me
here. I won’t lie to you ... I was thinking about drinking it. Only
thinking
,
though. I did not take one sip. I poured
all
of it out on the bridge.”

“Poured it down your gullet is more like it,” muttered
Daymon. He stepped out, slammed the door and, without a backward glance,
stalked off toward the heavy equipment.

Realizing that Lev, Jamie, Wilson, and Taryn were all out of
the 4Runner and had been watching the drama, and knowing that he was losing all
control of the mission at hand, Cade threw his hands up and in the immortal
words of Rodney King—as the story would later be recounted—said, “Can’t we all
just get along?”

His question was greeted by mostly dumb looks. Duncan and
Daymon, however, were trying their best not to laugh.

Knowing how stupid the plea had sounded, Cade put his hands
on his hips, and in his best Mike ‘Cowboy’ Desantos baritone, started issuing
orders.

The rectangular area inside the fence was roughly the size
of two football fields laid end-to-end. Where the nearest goalpost would be,
off to Cade’s left, close to the gate, was a boxy building about the size of
one-half of a doublewide mobile home. The shallow pitched roof was white with
snow and the horizontal blinds drawn tight. That was where he sent Taryn and
Wilson to look for keys, but first he drew back his left sleeve and showed off
the deep bite mark on the magazine taped there. A gentle, yet effective
nonverbal way of reminding them to look before they leaped.

He walked his gaze over the yard. Backed in against the
north run of fencing was a long row of heavy machinery. There were huge
snowplows and graders and bucket trucks, a pair of the latter with wood
chippers still hooked to them. Trucks attached to trailers hosting huge spools
of wire were nestled in with line-painting equipment and steamrollers of
different sizes. It seemed to Cade as if all of Utah’s maintenance and road
building chores were dispatched from this little plat of land.

Every piece of equipment on the lot was painted the same
traffic-cone-orange and dirty from sitting in the elements unused since that
Saturday in July when giving a shit about road improvements and public works
projects took a back seat to surviving the dead.

Parked side-by-side to Cade’s fore were a dozen boxy dump
trucks made by Mack. They had chrome grills the size of a dinner table and a
shiny cast metal bulldog perched atop the hood. Each one was equipped with a
massive curved blade out front currently mirroring the white yard back at him.
Built to operate on all types of surfaces the big rigs each sported ten huge
all-weather tires distributed between three axles—two wheels up front on a
single and four wheels each on the tandem axles supporting the rear-mounted
dump box.
Two birds, one stone
, was his first thought. Clear the snow
from your path with the blade while scattering gravel on your finished work
from the spreader attachment out back. Pretty ingenious. And he currently had
Daymon and Duncan vectoring for them, jumper cables in hand, with orders to
choose the three best candidates among them based on how well-maintained they
appeared and the amount of fuel presently on board.

Meanwhile, Lev and Jamie had moved out along the south fence
line, carbines in hand. He had stopped at the midpoint southeast of the gate,
out of sight yet still able to see the road beyond. She had continued on to the
far northeast corner, and was scrutinizing the dense woods there.

Cade shifted his gaze and watched Taryn and Wilson enter the
trailer. The pair remained inside for only a couple of minutes before exiting
and jumping down the stairs, each with a pocketful of keys that jangled as they
hustled back to the pair of Toyotas parked just inside the gate.

A handful of feet from Cade and still approaching, Taryn
pulled the keys from a pocket. “Looks like there were people here after the
outbreak. The chairs in there are all pushed around an old television and the
garbage can is overflowing with about a week’s worth of food wrappers and empty
water bottles and beer cans.”

“But I got these,” Wilson said, bringing his right arm
around from behind his back in a grand sweeping gesture. Clutched in his
fingers was a six-pack of Diet Cokes. He pried one loose and handed it over.

Cade smiled. Cracked the top and took a long pull. “And it’s
cold,” he said. “Been a long time since I’ve enjoyed one of these.”

Wilson followed suit, swallowed, scrunched his face and
burped, long and loud, drawing attention from Daymon, who had his machete in
hand and was already jimmying the door lock on one of the big plows.

“Feel the burn,” Wilson said, scrunching the can under his
boot. He belched again, eliciting a hostile look from Taryn.

Still shaking her head at the juvenile humor on display,
Taryn called ahead to Daymon, “We found the keys.”

He jumped down from the truck. “Take ‘em to Duncan, please.”

“The maintenance chores were listed on a white board
inside,” Wilson exclaimed. “It says the plows were all prepped for winter in
June. The front loader, however, was due for service the weekend all hell broke
loose.”

“That’s OK,” answered Cade. “We only need it to run long
enough to fill the trucks with gravel.”

“Who’s going to operate it?” asked Wilson, the words
dripping with skepticism.

“The surly one,” Cade said. “As time goes I’ve come to learn
he’s got a pretty impressive skill set.”

“Oh ... I see,” Taryn shot. “That explains why
he
gets a pass.”

“I try and treat everyone the same,” Cade said to that. “So
far nothing he’s done warrants any kind of punitive action in my book. He has
his trailer and he’s supposedly working on his issues.”

“He needs some of the same medicine Heidi is taking—”

Cade raised his hand, silencing Wilson. “We need to get a
move on.” He looked to the sky. “I figure we have five or six hours of light
left, max. And quite a bit of work yet to do.”

Thankfully, having been designed to sit for weeks at a time
and then be ready to go at the first signs of inclement weather, the four
pieces of heavy equipment necessary for Cade’s plan to succeed started right
up.

Having used earth-moving and clearing vehicles only
sparingly on the fires he had fought, Daymon fumbled his way to figuring out
the front loader’s controls. After brushing up on the basics of maneuvering the
back-asswards-steering vehicle, he spent the next ninety minutes filling three
of the Mack trucks with gravel.

When the last full bucket was deposited in the truck driven
by Lev, Daymon shut the front loader down on the patch of concrete he’d just
cleared of pea gravel and hopped aboard the Mack for the short ride to the
front gate, which he saw was already sitting open.

“Raring to go, aren’t they?” Daymon said, a flat affect to
his tone.

“Cade spent less than ten minutes getting acquainted with
his truck. Since then he’s been muttering and pacing back and forth waiting on
you to finish.”

Daymon shook his head. “Hell, there was only one loader,” he
said, the hard edge entering his voice. “I’m a firefighter who has used heavy
machinery … not a certified heavy machinery operator who has fought fires.
There’s a
huge
difference.”

“Don’t kill the messenger,” Lev said. “We couldn’t have done
it without ya.” As the gate drew near, he made a fist and held it up. A
conciliatory act that was his unspoken way of burying the hatchet with the
other man.

Daymon reciprocated the fist bump. “We’re cool then?” he
asked.

Lev pulled up next to the Land Cruiser, the Mack easily
dwarfing the SUV. “I’m over it,” he said. “From now on let’s take our
aggression out on the dead.”

“Agreed.” Daymon opened the passenger door. He looked back
with a grin and added, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back to culling them in no time.”

Lev smiled at the other man’s enthusiasm for taking the
fight to the dead. Once the door closed, he waited for Daymon to walk clear of
the truck then drove it off the UDOT yard.

By the time Daymon had climbed behind the wheel and punched
the Land Cruiser’s Start/Stop button, all three fully laden plow trucks had
rumbled through the gate and were moving at a good clip down the feeder road.
He waited until Jamie had wheeled the 4Runner through the gate and stopped on
the right shoulder; then pulled out and parked in the center of the road a
length ahead of her.

With the bulk of the convoy growing smaller off in the
distance, Wilson and Duncan closed and chained the gate, after which the former
sprinted to the 4Runner and climbed in on the passenger side, and the latter,
rather reluctantly, crunched a path through the snow to the waiting Land
Cruiser and hauled his old bones into the passenger seat.

“Gotta hand it to Captain America,” Daymon said, waving
Taryn around. “He sure knows how to strike while the iron is hot.”

Clicking his belt, Duncan said, “I’m worried this
iron
you speak of is going to go cold before we have a chance to make much of a dent
in the rotters waiting for us in Huntsville.”

Daymon thought about that for a second then cast a quick
glance at Duncan. “First things first, as Glenda likes to say”—an obvious,
though subtle dig at the fledgling relationship—“we’ve got to get these plows
to the barrier.”

Like his mom had also taught him, for once, since he had
nothing good to say, Duncan bit his tongue. In the side mirror he saw the
Toyota creeping by on the right and unconsciously pulled his lap belt tight.

Inside the 4Runner, Wilson was basking in the warm air
coming from the vents as Jamie steered the smaller SUV onto the snow-covered
shoulder, around the idling Land Cruiser and then back onto the road, where she
gunned it in order to catch up with the three plows. A few short seconds and a
controlled power slide around the first bend later, the plows were in view and
Wilson saw the blade on the first Mack lower slowly and then the truck, which
he guessed was being driven by Cade, judder ever so slightly when the massive
wedge of polished steel bit into the gravel under the snow. A tick later, like
some kind of preplanned maneuver, the blades on the following plows lowered
slowly but surely, and simultaneously there were three dirty rooster tails
consisting of gravel and soil and snow pummeling the trees lining the right
side of the road.