Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (21 page)

“A fifth of hard liquor per,” said the man, glancing at the
commotion.

“Each vehicle?” Dregan did the math. Almost a full case.

The man raised a brow.

Dregan nodded and pulsed up the window.

The man smiled and backed away from the Tahoe, watching as
it cut a U-turn and sped away, slipping at first and then tracking straight
before finally turning right and disappearing from sight a block distant.

The blonde man zipped his jacket up around his scraggly
beard and watched and listened as the jailers—a big African American man and a
smaller Caucasian fella—filtered among the dozen townspeople congregating
around the condemned man’s body. Not wanting to get swept up in the
questioning, Eddy Swain tucked his stubby carbine under his arm and strolled
slowly towards his Subaru. He got behind the wheel, dropped the all-wheel-drive
WRX into gear, and drove away slowly following in the Tahoe’s tracks.

No shots were fired their way as the small convoy left the
roadblock behind. They passed the trio of roads leading north off of 39 into
town, wheeled south for a spell, then looped around and paralleled the reservoir
heading west—still no bullets cleaved the air or spiderwebbed any windows.

All parties were breathing easy when Cade pulled over on the
Ogden Canyon Highway a short drive west of where Trapper’s Loop Road peeled off
towards Morgan and the County airport of the same name, twenty-three miles
through the rolling countryside due south.

While Duncan and Wilson wrapped all eight of the SUV’s tires
with the pain-in-the-ass cable chains
and
topped off the gas tanks
, Cade, Daymon, Jamie, Lev, and Taryn waded into
a throng of roughly two hundred eastbound Zs. Stretching about a hundred yards
west, the shamblers were mostly frozen in their tracks upright, and by the time
Duncan bellowed, declaring the vehicles “
Good to go,”
the small group
wielding a dagger, machete, tomahawk, and pair of folding knives respectively
had felled two-thirds of the dead and left them scattered and leaking onto the
road from one shoulder to the other.

Walking between Lev and Cade, Daymon wiped blood from
Kindness with a scrap of cotton tee-shirt taken off a fallen corpse. He
sheathed the machete and hurled the soiled fabric to the ground. “Too bad we
couldn’t finish the job.”

“Get used to it,” said Cade. “This is nothing. I spotted a
real big herd back a ways. They were a couple of hundred yards south on Trapper
Road. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking left.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Lev. “I did the math and it isn’t
encouraging. Before the shit hit the fan there were fifty thousand people
residing in Ogden. Even if only twenty percent of them found their way through
the canyon and were standing in a neat little line, we would need a bunch of
snow days and every warm body from the compound in order to cull them all and
dispose of the bodies.”

Shaking his head and grumbling about math and snow, Daymon
increased his already long stride and left the others behind.

Slipping her tomahawk into its scabbard, Jamie said, “No
getting through to that man”

“We made our peace,” Lev said. He removed his cap and one of
his gloves and ran a hand through his sweaty, steaming, hair. “If I’m willing
to cut him some slack after what happened back at the compound ... I think you
should let a little bit of whining slide.”

Jamie made a face.

Wisely, Taryn and Wilson also held their tongues. No use
adding fuel to the fire, in case he was still within earshot.

With daylight a dwindling commodity, Cade said nothing. No
use burning precious time debating or arguing about things he had no control
over. Instead, letting his actions do the speaking, he hustled to the truck and
clambered aboard.

Behind Ray and Helen’s Home

The sun had dipped behind the distant trees and their
shadows were seemingly growing longer by the minute. Ignoring the snow falling
all around him, Cleo took a big drag off the unfiltered Camel and held the warm
smoke in his lungs for a long five-count. With the fourth cigarette he’d lit
since his willpower crumbled twenty minutes ago already burnt down to a nub,
and the throbbing behind his eyes not reacting to the introduction of
real
nicotine into his system, he flicked the butt away and cursed himself for
agreeing to help Dregan—no matter how much in the way of reciprocation he had
milked the big man for.

He took out the pack and, seeing how few were left, cursed
Dregan for allowing him to keep sweetening the pot to the point that it had
been impossible to decline this little recon job.

Turning his attention to the job at hand, he put the
binoculars to his face and though as repetitious as the routine had become,
scanned the house from top to bottom, starting at the right and finishing off
at the breezeway. Then he walked the binoculars over the big red barn and still
found nothing out of the ordinary. Lastly, he glassed the turn-around in front
of the house, following the rutted dirt road all the way to the State Route,
and feeling a bit like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, started humming
I Got
You Babe
, swaying to an imaginary backbeat. Fearing he was getting a touch
of hypothermia, he started into another set of seated calisthenics. Partway
through his routine of stretching and rocking, he had an epiphany. His
adrenaline surged and the warmth spread to his limbs as he calculated how many
CDs and the newfangled digital downloads of Cleo’s Calisthenics he would need
to sell to become rich. To sock away a million dollars for a rainy day. The euphoria
dissipated as fast as the thought had come when he remembered the world would
never be the same. That he’d never have the feeling again of standing up from
the poker table in the middle of a crowded casino and crowing about his latest
win also pissed him off. It was the only time he felt comfortable in his own
skin. And now, thanks to some egghead releasing a little microbial bug aptly
named Omega, he would never again attain that level of bliss.

“Fuck you, God. And fuck you, Dregan.” He rattled out
another cigarette and—not giving a shit if he was made by the old couple—struck
a match and puffed away on the stale and crumpled thing until a brilliant red
cherry shone at its tip. 

***

“Ray,” called Helen from somewhere on the second floor, her
voice just above a whisper as if whoever it was freezing their buns off in the
back forty could actually hear across the distance, through the walls and over
the sporadic patter of falling snow, and no doubt the chattering of their own
teeth.

“Yes, dear. What is it?” he called back in a normal voice.
He lovingly ran a lightly oiled rag over the M4 carbine he had just
reassembled, being careful to give all of the metal parts a final pass.
Finished, he inserted a loaded thirty-round magazine into the well and clicked
it home. Expecting to have already heard some kind of reply from Helen, he
looked up at the ceiling and squinted his eyes as if he had some kind of X-ray
vision. And after decades of marriage, in a way, he did. He imagined her a
dozen feet above the kitchen sink and sitting on her sewing chair in the spare
room that overlooked the back yard. She would be in front of the window, her
elbows on the sill and her rounded chin perched on the heels of her upturned
hands. “What do you see now?” he asked, impatiently this time.

Ray had been partially right in his assumptions. A dozen
feet above the kitchen sink in the spare room Helen was indeed sitting in her
sewing chair by the window that overlooked the back yard and sloping pasture
beyond. However, her chin wasn’t cradled by her palms. Her liver-spotted hands
were wrapped around the pair of military-issue field glasses that were trained
on the distant tree line. Finished there, she swept them left-to-right down the
gently sloping hill. Gave the whip-like river a onceover, then settled the
optics on the brambles.

“Our watcher is smoking with impunity now,” she called
downstairs.

“Not a very good watcher, then.” Ray rose from his chair and
stowed one of the carbines, locked and loaded, behind the oddly shaped door to
a small storage cubby under the stair landing. The second M4 he hung by its
sling on a peg and replaced his moth-eaten Navy pea coat over top of it.
Carbine number three was also an M4. It was painted in a tan camouflage scheme
and was outfitted to the nines with doo dads. It had an extremely powerful
optic on the top rail and sported a front grip complete with a rubberized thumb
switch for the tactical light riding next to the slender tan suppressor at the
end of the stubby barrel.

“I’m coming, Helen.” Ray slung the rifle over his shoulder
and made his way to the stairs. Gripping the bannister rail, worn smooth from
thousands upon thousands of trips up and down, he took them slowly one at a
time. A little winded, he made the landing and, without pause, turned the bend
and tackled the next rise. Rosy cheeked and puffing, Ray made the second-floor
two minutes after starting his ascent.

After catching his breath at the stair’s summit, Ray took a
few strides down the hall and entered the room unannounced. Instantly he was
hit by the smell of gun oil and cordite and, underlying those familiar odors,
thanks to Helen and her penchant for keeping in the nearby closet every coat,
cape, and shawl she had ever owned, the ever-present chemical stench of
mothballs.

Scrunching his nose, Ray took in the room. The place looked
like a military surplus store, not an old woman’s crafts room. He shook his
head, amazed, because he didn’t recall them hauling all of the gear up the
stairs by themselves. However, the dozens of harrowing trips they had made to
the towns and abandoned roadblocks south and east of here, and the faces of the
dead men and women soldiers they had taken the gear from, were indelibly etched
in his memory. Adrenaline had been their friend those first few days and weeks.
Like squirrels getting squared away for winter, they had policed up everything
they could, figuring the weapons would be better for protection than the old
shotgun and thirty-ought-six rifle. And when the government went dark, and no
UN vehicles showed up like the Wackadoos were predicting, Ray’s gambit was
validated in his eyes.

Propped up in one corner were a half-dozen nearly new black
rifles, mostly M4s. Lying on the floor in front of the door to Helen’s mothball-scented
closet was an identical pair of black plastic hard-sided cases. Roughly four
feet long and one across, the gun cases thick as a big-city phone book were
filled with foam padding and contained high-dollar sniper rifles. The Leupold
scopes alone, Ray guessed, once cost the taxpayers a thousand dollars or more.
The whole ball of wax—two guns, two scopes, and the Pelican cases—probably cost
more than a week-long Caribbean cruise for two and the accompanying bar tab.

“So the dummy is smoking now,” Ray said, more of a statement
than a question.

“Yep,” said Helen. “Chain-smoking ... lighting the new off
the old.”

“Woulda got shot by my lieutenant if I’d have pulled that
crap,” said Ray, shaking his head. “Either that or the Chinese or North Koreans
woulda done it for him.”

Helen relinquished her chair and binoculars and, once Ray
sat down, hovered over his right shoulder as he trained them out the window.

“If we can see him,” she said, “what makes you think he
can’t see us?”

“Because the room is dark, Helen. And I’m sure he ... or
she, has some kind of sunglasses on to combat the glare.”

“What do you reckon he’s doing out there?”

“Watching the road for Dregan. Probably has orders to let
him know if the others come calling.”

“We haven’t done anything to make him suspicious.” Helen
looked out the window, squinting. She said, “Should we bring that boy in and
tell him the rest of what Brook told us?”

“No, Helen. We don’t know how many Brook and her gang are.”
Ray dropped the field glasses to his lap. Fixed his gaze on Helen. “My gut’s
been telling me that rage is clouding that poor man’s judgment. Furthermore, we
really don’t know who else that young woman is rubbing elbows with.”

Helen stood and paced the room. The boards underfoot creaked
as she wound her way between mounds of tan-colored MRE packages and dark green
ammo cans and military issue backpacks stuffed with all manner of gear.

“For all intents and purposes, we are Switzerland,” Ray
reminded her. He rubbed his eyes where the binoculars had been pressing against
them. “Information is king, here, Helen. All we have to do is remain neutral
and guard our hearth and home like we have been since those things started
roaming around here. We do that and we will hold all of the cards if ... or
when
we have to choose sides.”

Helen harumphed. She said, “I still think that young lady
was being truthful.”

“Everyone is trying to survive this thing,” he reminded her.
“Seems reasonable there were details she might have been holding back.”

“And that’s exactly what we’re doing to Dregan,” Helen
conceded.

“Can’t be helped.” Ray removed his red felt hat and ran a
hand through his closely cropped silver hair.

She sighed and began leafing through the MRE packets,
reading the labels. “Well then, Ray. What do you want for dinner?”

Ray said nothing. His mind was screaming Switzerland while
his every instinct was telling him to be proactive.

“Surprise me, hon,” he said, sensing her presence at his
back. “I’m going to stay right here and do some thinking.”

Helen nodded and squeezed his shoulder. She thought:
You’re
just avoiding the stairs.
But she said, “Come on down when you’re ready.”
As an afterthought, she paused in the doorway and added, “Leave the door open
when you come down so that the gunpowder smell dissipates.”

Beneath the binoculars, Ray’s lips curled into a smile.
So
says the mothball queen.