Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (20 page)

“No time,” Cade said. Full of remorse for having left them
languishing in the elements the first time, and cursing under his breath at
being forced to leave them now, he dumped the radio on the seat, released his
foot from the brake, and pinned the pedal to the floor.

Dregan’s chest heaved as his body was wracked by a big,
booming cough. He spit a thick rope of phlegm on the bark dust at his feet and
stood up straight, trying to get his breath. Though he was telling his boys and
anyone else who showed concern for him that the changing of the seasons and the
fluctuations in weather that came with them was the reason for his worsening
condition, deep down under the outer layers of voiced denial, he knew something
was eating away at him from within.

He coughed once more, spat on the ground, and then removed
the stake holding down the corner of the blue tarp. He walked counter-clockwise
around the boxy shape and pulled up three more stakes, watching the edges of
the tarp fluttering in the breeze coming up from the east. Mesmerized by the
gentle movement, he held one corner and watched the thin tarp ripple for a few
short seconds. Once the wind picked up, he pulled sharply on his corner and,
like a magician performing the age-old tablecloth routine, jerked the
waterproof covering clean off the squat desert-tan Humvee. After catching
briefly on the matte-black barrel protruding from the top-mounted turret, the
tarp fell quietly in a bunch on the ground.

Just as he’d been doing bi-weekly since late August when he,
his brother, Gregory and Mikhail returned from the outskirts of Salt Lake City
with this Humvee and three similar vehicles, he climbed aboard and started the
diesel engine. He let it idle for a long while, and once the blue-gray smoke
began to build under the boughs near his head, he silenced the engine and
tapped out a random rhythm on the wheel.

“What are you doing, Dad?” asked Peter. He was standing in
the snow equidistant from their house and picket of fir trees under which the
vehicles were parked. He was wearing fur-lined Sorel winter boots with the
sales tags still attached. His winter jacket and quilted heavy-duty pants were
camouflaged in a typical tree pattern favored by hunters. On his head was a hat
emblazoned with the words
Call of Duty Modern Warfare
and the silhouette
of a soldier clutching a rifle.

“How long have you been there, Peter?” called Dregan. He
hawked again and motioned the boy forward.

Peter replied, “The whole time the motor was running.” He
took his hat off and as he crunched across the snow, tucked his long blonde
locks behind his ears and readjusted the clasp on back of the hat.

“Time for a haircut, boy. Maybe for your birthday I’ll take
you in to see Doc. Get your teeth checked and ears lowered all in one sitting.”

Peter said nothing. Self-conscious of it, he hid his hair
under his hat and snugged it down tight over ears that were already going red
from the chill.

“You forgot about your
birthday
?” Dregan said,
incredulous. “You’ve been crowing about the big one-three for most of the
year.”

Peter opened the heavy door—
up-armored
is what he’d
heard his older brother Gregory call it—and climbed up into the passenger seat.
He looked up at his dad, his azure eyes watery from the fluctuation in
temperature between inside and out.

“Too much bad stuff happening,” Peter said. “Yes … I
forgot.” He smiled, showing off his straight teeth. “But I won’t forget
Halloween, though.”

Dregan tousled his head, setting the cap askew. “You already
got your mom’s short gene. Candy will just stunt your growth ... and ruin your
teeth. She was always proud of how straight they came in, you know. Figured you
were going to save us money on braces on account of it.”

Peter made a face and looked away. “We were going to go to
Disneyland if I didn’t need them, remember?”

“How could I forget? And Peter—”

“Yes,” the boy said, sweeping his gaze back.

“It’s okay to forget your birthday.” He went quiet for a
tick. Covertly wiped a stray tear on his flannel sleeve then fixed his blue
eyes on the boy. Slowly he said, “Don’t you ever forget your mom.”

Consciously changing the subject, Peter looked over his
shoulder. He hooked a thumb at the weapon in the turret. “What’s that?” he
asked.

“That, my boy, is a Mark 19 grenade launcher.”

“Do you have any bullets for it?”

“They’re not bullets like our guns take. It shoots
forty-millimeter grenades,” Dregan absently corrected his son. He reached his
long arm around between the seats and over the transmission hump. He removed
the rectangular lid from a metal canister and walked his eyes across the
ammunition lined up in the bottom. He counted the linked projectiles for the
weapon. They were gun-metal gray with yellow/gold tips and about the size of a
can of soda.

“We have eight rounds left,” Dregan said.

“Is that enough to kill the people who murdered Lena?”

“Perhaps,” Dregan said, the granite set to his jaw suddenly
returning.

“And the other three ... are there guns on them too?”

“You know there are, boy. Don’t play dumb with me.” His
demeanor softened and he said softly, “I’ve seen you under there and the tarps
tenting up. Wasn’t Casper the Friendly Ghost playing soldier, was it?”

“Uh, uh,” Peter said, looking away.

“It’s okay. I woulda done the same at your age. I did,
actually.”

Peter swept his gaze to his dad. “Can you tell me about your
time in the Army?”

For the umpteenth time, Dregan shook his head. And for the
umpteenth time he said, “Not today.”

Peter frowned.

“Go … now. Get back inside the house,” Dregan said with a
shooing motion. “And close the door quick so the heat stays in.”

“Are you coming, Papa?”

“After I start these other vehicles. Now go.”

Dregan watched his youngest tear across the snow-covered
lawn. The boy scaled the ladder like a spider monkey and went inside without
looking back.

***

Forty minutes after the conversation that had left him
choked up and thinking about his dead wife, Dregan was finished prepping the
vehicles for war. The first round of eight was fed into the MK-19, the other
seven resting in the attached ammo box. The other three Humvees were also
armed, fueled up, and had started as easily as the first.

Heart heavy from thinking of his wife and daughter, Dregan
staked down the last of the tarpaulins. He stood and breathed in deep, felt the
cold stabbing his chest. And as he exhaled, the air around his head clouded
from his breath and another coughing fit wracked his body.

The horizontal blinds in the upper-story window were parted,
but Dregan had no idea he was being watched as he set off for the house.
Halfway there, he convulsed again and spat over his shoulder, painting the snow
with a smattering of bright crimson.

In the house, Peter drew his hand back from the horizontal
blinds and let the dusty slats snap together. He lay down on his bed and said a
small prayer to God, asking for his help so his dad would get better. He heard
the
rattle-clank
of footfalls on the ladder treads then the door opening
and closing downstairs.

“Come on down, Peter. Time to go and get your birthday
haircut.”

***

Leaving the Blazer in the carport, Dregan drove the Jackson
Hole PD Tahoe into town. He decided that by flaunting the vehicle directly
connected to the crime scene, he would send a silent message to anyone who
might have gotten wind of his plan that snitching was not an option.
Conversely, showing up on Main in the liberated vehicle would send the
not-so-silent message to the men Gregory had lined up for him that the mission
for tomorrow was still on.

He drove the half-mile to town, slow and deliberate. Along
the way, he stopped at two different homes. At the first, when a young man came
out onto the porch, he made eye contact and delivered a nod and hand signal.
The second was different. He stopped the Tahoe in the drive behind a Humvee
painted in woodland camouflage and when his brother Henry looked up from
whatever maintenance he’d been embroiled in, eye contact was made and Dregan
backed out of the snowy drive. With the details having already been agreed
upon, nothing beyond that was needed.

Catching on after the second seemingly non-exchange of
information, Peter looked at his dad, saying, “The hand signal to the first
guy. Means we’re leaving at noon ... when court is in session, right?”

“Very good, boy. I’m glad you picked up on that. But it’s me
and your uncle and the men me and your brother lined up who are going. You need
to stay and guard our home. If the judge comes snooping around again, you tell
him we went out to cull the roamers.”

“They’re not roaming anymore.”

“Exactly. That’s why the judge will buy the story if you
have to lie to him.”

Peter was thinking of a way to sway his dad to let him come
along when a mud-splattered pick-up sped by on the right then reentered their
lane, cutting them off.

“That’s Mister Newman.”

“Probably tied one on. I would if I were in his shoes.”

“You told me Ford’s going to get his.”

“The judge’s verdict only stopped Newman from killing Ford.
No satisfaction in letting others avenge your kin. That’s why I need to get to
Lena’s killers before the judge and court gets involved.”

“We,” corrected Peter.

Newton’s truck swerved in the snow then jumped a curb
directly across the street from the bookstore-cum-courthouse. It was at that
moment when Dregan realized what was about to happen and could not help but
watch. Part of him wanted to stop Newman, if only to keep the jailers from
being injured or killed. But the other part of him—the majority—decided that
Ford had already cast his own fate and then concluded that Pomeroy’s men didn’t
deserve to be saved.

Like a slow-moving train wreck, the old truck sheared off
one of the porch stanchions and the makeshift jail’s porch roof came hinging
down atop the full-size GMC, effectively blocking anyone inside from exiting
through the double doors.

How I would have done it
, thought Dregan as he pulled
hard to the curb, telling Peter to get his head down. In his mind, he saw Ford
in the cell and Pomeroy’s men watching him. The initial noise would draw the
jailers to the blocked front doors. In the ensuing confusion Ford would be all
alone in the back room, unknowingly awaiting the reaper.

Dregan silently rooted for Newman as all five-foot-six of
him, brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle, leaped from the wrecked truck like a
man on a mission. With short precise strides, the wiry man, dressed only in a
rumpled tee-shirt and jeans despite the cold, peeled around the corner just as
there was movement behind the jail’s clouded front windows. A tick later Dregan
heard a pair of gunshots.
There goes the door lock,
he thought.
And
here comes act three.

No sooner had Dregan thought it than there was a long,
drawn-out fusillade of gunfire. But only the ragged chatter of Mikhail
Kalashnikov’s lethal invention. There was no return fire. Not even a few sharp
pops of a semi-auto pistol neutralizing the threat. There was only a brooding
silence. Like time had ceased rolling forward and the world decided to take a
break from spinning. Then there was the opposite. A flurry of activity behind
the wavy glass. Then raised voices full of emotion and people were spilling
from the buildings on either side of the darkened courthouse.

As the men and women who had no doubt been enjoying time off
in the saloon ran behind the Tahoe, not one of them paying him any attention,
Dregan, still holding Peter’s head below the dash, let the idling engine pull
the rig forward and, steering one-handed, turned left at the crossing street.
Goosing the accelerator, he let Peter sit up and turned another left.

Behind the jail, Newman was sitting in the snow, the
shattered wooden back door hinged open, fingers interlocked and his hands atop
his head. On the sidewalk a yard away, where presumably Newman had dragged him,
Ford was on his back, arms and legs spread wide like he had died right there
making a snow angel. Runnels of blood were seeping out from the cannibal’s
pulped midsection, and around his misshapen head was a rapidly growing crimson
halo.

Peter sat up in his seat and looked at the carnage. Though
based on his dad’s mood, he should have been elated by the sight, instead, he
was feeling equal parts disgust and something he couldn’t put a finger on.
Torn
,
is what he’d heard adults call the inability to decide how they felt about a
certain thing. Only this wasn’t deciding what coat to wear or whether he wanted
white meat or dark at Thanksgiving dinner. A man had died. Or was dying as he
looked on. And to Peter it was all so surreal. Up until now Dad had sheltered
him from the dirty work, as he called it. Skinning a deer. Cutting a rooster’s
head off. Or killing a man. To Alexander Dregan it was all the same—
dirty
work
.

Right here and now, the deep red liquid pulsing from the
multiple holes punched into Ford’s chest and guts looked like the
black
cherry
flavoring the concessions people spritzed onto his snow cone after a
Little League game. And the way it steamed as it cooled and bloomed slowly in
the snow around the prostrate body only served to reinforce Peter’s initial
impression.

Dregan clucked his tongue. “That’s what happens when you
cross the line, boy. And don’t you forget it.”

One of the men Dregan had motioned to a few blocks back
sidled up to the idling Tahoe. The man pulled his hood back, revealing his
slender face and high forehead. He looked over each shoulder and then fixed his
stony gaze on the Tahoe.

Peter looked into those eyes, shuddered, and glanced away.

Dregan pulsed down his window. The man, blonde and blue eyed
like the boy, said, “You better go or you’re going to be called as a witness.”

“Nobody saw me,” Dregan lied. “We lucked out. Tomorrow is
going to be a busy day at the courthouse. And at noon when Newman goes to trial
and Pomeroy is feeling useful, we’ll be at the gate.”