Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (8 page)

Eager to spill about the new development, and wanting to do
it in person so as to accurately gauge the reactions of the other survivors,
Cade threw the truck through the corners and met the speed limit on the straightaways.
A handful of minutes after leaving the quarry road he was through the main
gate, had negotiated the middle barrier, and was pulling the Ford in tight next
to a row of snow-covered trucks and SUVs.

The moment Cade rattled the transmission into
Park
and set the brake, he realized something was not right. Across the clearing,
near the compound entrance, wearing parkas and hats and bulky snow boots,
Taryn, Wilson, Sasha, and Raven stood in a rough semi-circle over a prone form
that, judging by the muscular physique, had to be Lev.

Cade shifted his gaze to the near side of the clearing, just
beyond the motor pool, and saw Daymon sitting in the Black Hawk’s open door.
The dreadlocked man was doubled over with his face planted in his gloved hands
and to Cade it looked as if he was real close to throwing up. And to further
complicate the already confusing scene, Duncan was kneeling on Daymon’s left
side, head craned and apparently trying to establish some kind of eye contact.

Leaving the motor running and his door hanging open, Cade
hopped down from the truck. “What’s going on?” he mouthed to Wilson.

Wilson pointed toward the Black Hawk across the clearing.
“Daymon’s what’s going on.”

“Is Lev OK?” Cade asked.

Answering the question, Lev sat up and started massaging the
left side of his face.

Wanting to hear it from the horse’s mouth, Cade hustled the
thirty yards to the Black Hawk, where he found Heidi sitting inside on one of
the canvas benches, sobbing, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

Daymon peeled off his gloves and looked up. Hands curling
into fists, he said, “I’m going to kill that mother—”

“It was an accident,” said Duncan, cutting him off. He was
still on bent knee and trying to make eye contact.

Cade stood there, neutral, his head panning back and forth.

“
This
is no accident,” Daymon shot back, pointing at
his right eye. “It’s going to be one hell of a shiner.” He bent at the waist,
scooped up a handful of snow, and pressed it to the eye in question.

“To be honest,” proffered Duncan. “I’ve never seen a
snowball fight that
didn’t
devolve into fisticuffs like that.”

Daymon ripped off his stocking cap, releasing the
rubber-band-bound dreads that were just beginning to grow back. He chucked the
cap on the ground by his gloves. “He was
aiming
for my head.”

“Looked like it to me,” chimed Heidi, dragging a sleeve
across her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Lev called over the distance. “It’s not like I
packed rocks inside of them. Besides ... the way you and Wilson were laying low
like little pussies, your ugly mug was all I could see.”

Daymon threw his hands in the air, a wan smile curling the
corners of his mouth. “I would have
checked
my fire.”

“Just like you
checked
that right cross?” blurted
Sasha, stalking towards the Black Hawk, Raven at her elbow trying
unsuccessfully to slow her advance.

Daymon hopped down from the helicopter. He tossed the
handful of snow to the ground, revealing the beginnings of a wicked shiner.
“Okay, okay,” he said, arms up in surrender. He fixed his gaze on Sasha.
“You’re right. I should have
checked
my anger. I’m sorry for
overreacting.”

“Late to the fistfight, I see,” Cade said.

“Not much of a fistfight,” Duncan drawled. “You just missed
Urch here
not
connect a haymaker on Lev’s chin. Hit him on the jaw and
temple instead. Shoulda seen Glenda step in like Larry Steel and break them
up.”

Nearby, arms crossed over her chest, Glenda nodded.

Seeing this, Cade quietly said, “Sounds like you each landed
a blow. Makes it even in my book. I don’t care who started it. And I need you
both to drop it. Forget it ever happened, because truthfully … with what I’m
about to tell you we can’t afford to waste any time on blue-on-blue
engagements.” He turned and faced Lev and the others and waved them over. Once
everyone who was currently topside had assembled in the shadow of the hulking
Black Hawk, starting with Raven, Cade looked each person in the eye, letting
his gaze linger for a half-beat on each face before moving on. Finishing where
he had started, he threw Raven a covert wink and described what the weather was
doing to the dead. Looks of amazement were exchanged all around. There were a
couple of muted high-fives. Then Cade answered all of their questions—most of
which centered mainly on the sonic tempest he’d endured while in the midst of
the immobilized herd.

Finished, he took Raven’s hand and, with a subtle nod and
arch of the brow, summoned Foley and Duncan to follow him away from the
babbling crowd.

At the Ford, he boosted Raven up and into the cab with Max,
who was still on the floor in the front and still enjoying the air blowing from
the heater. Then he looped around back, dropped the tailgate, and proceeded to
unload. He set both the shroud he’d removed at the quarry gate and the
gooseneck lights from the outbuildings at Foley’s feet and asked him to get
with Seth and rectify the problems with the cameras.

“Me ... MacGyver?” Foley said. “I specialize in software and
computers. Not tasks fit for a building superintendent.”

“That’s the attitude,” Cade shot, a hint of sarcasm in his
voice.

“You’re right,” Foley said. “It’s just that I’m not looking
forward to being cooped up all winter.”

“The snow is our friend,” Cade said. He smiled and gestured
at the Eddie Griswold Winnebago parked under the trees by the road. “Maybe
Daymon will let you bunk with him to cut down on the monotony.”

“No thanks,” Foley said. “Heidi’s got that job now. Besides
… I’ve smelled one of his farts.”

Feigning incredulity, Duncan said, “Worse than mine? Oh,
goody.” He rubbed his palms together. “More ball-busting ammunition.”

“Just don’t tell him I said it,” Foley begged.

Pantomiming locking his lips and throwing away the key,
Duncan said, “Secret’s safe with me.”

Foley flashed a thumbs-up and scooped up the shroud and
gooseneck light standards.

“You do know there’s fifty thousand of those dead things in
Ogden. And according to Glenda, several thousand more in Huntsville and Eden,”
Duncan said, watching Foley lope off to start work on the new project.

“So we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Cade said,
matter-of-factly.

“And then some,” Duncan added.

“Can you see to rounding up the necessary bodies, weapons
and supplies?” Cade asked.

Duncan chuckled. “Can-do. Should I invite Rocky Balboa and
Apollo Creed?”

“Your call.”

“What are you doing?”

Cade nodded at Raven in the Ford. “I’ve got a promise to
fulfill.”

“I’m on it,” Duncan said, and ambled off toward the compound
entrance whistling the theme from the old Western
The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly
.

Cade climbed up and slid behind the wheel and in seconds had
the F-650 angling for the feeder road.

***

With the widening swathe of blue sky renewing his energy,
Dregan threw the aged Blazer through the turns, slowing only for the sharpest
of hairpins and on the long uphill sections where the engine left him no other
choice.

Around every corner he imagined the phantom vehicle would be
sitting broadside, blocking the road, a half-dozen armed men with angry faces
waiting to greet him.

Thankfully, a dozen minutes removed from the previous stop,
so far, each blind corner had disappointed.

He could see the storm through the slot in the trees. It was
moving west towards Huntsville and Eden, the east wind hurtling it towards a
collision course with the craggy Wasatch Range where they would be ripped open
and deposit whatever snow they harbored.

Once again, his sixth sense prompted him to slow down. Only
now, it was more than a feeling of foreboding in his gut than an imagined
vision of his demise.

A quarter-mile ahead the rig slowed, involuntarily though,
as gravity and Mother Nature and the flagging diesel made it unavoidable.

Eyes glued to the two bluish-white stripes printed in the
snow, Dregan held his breath until the shallow hill’s curved apex, where the
road widened slightly into a gentle right-to-left sweeper that eventually was
swallowed up by the distant gloomy hole in the forest.

Both sides of the road were hemmed in for the first twenty
yards or so. On the right side, a combination of thick undergrowth and dense
forest was shot through by a sturdy-looking fence being slowly overgrown by it
all. Paralleling the State Route to the left was a long run of triple-strand
barbed wire. Rusting and sagging, it was secured every ten feet or so to gray
and gnarled chest-high wood posts that formed a picket following the contour of
the land all the way to the forest up ahead.

There was a meadow white with snow beyond the barbed wire
fence where he half-expected to see deer or elk loitering. However, that wasn’t
the case as he slowed opposite it and came to a dead stop, the only sound the
ticking of the diesel.

He swept his gaze around again and suddenly realized
something was missing. A cold chill broke out all over his body as he dropped
the transmission into Reverse and slowly backed up a few feet. Caught up in the
suddenly changing scenery, he missed the fact that he had stopped the Blazer
directly atop the point in the road where the wide set of tracks took an abrupt
right turn. At first he couldn’t fathom how the phantom vehicle had passed
through the fence and parted the forest without leaving a like-sized hole and
knocking every flake of snow off of the diverse flora as it had during its
previous off-road deviation. Then he walked his eyes along the fence and
several things dawned on him. Attached to one of the gnarled posts was a sturdy
vertical hinge. In addition, behind the vegetation, which was real and had been
living at one time, he could just make out a trio of horizontal bars, about as
thick as a man’s forearm and apparently made of steel tubing.

Everything was arranged so that to a passerby it looked just
like a natural part of the scenery. Then, in his peripheral, a dozen feet above
the shoulder, he picked up a pair of plastic half-domes each about the size of
a softball and standing out only because of the hazy white rime clinging to
them.

Suddenly his intuition was no longer just a distant voice
urging him to pay attention. It was telling him he likely no longer had the
element of surprise and had taken an instant one-eighty turn and was screaming
ambush and urging him to flee.

Because Dregan had listened to the inner voice and acted
immediately by throwing the truck into gear and backing away, he never heard
the growl of an engine approaching from somewhere in the forest to his right.
White-knuckling the steering wheel, he tromped the pedal to the floor. The
diesel coughed and there was a tinny whine coming from the transfer case as all
four wheels tried to obey the command relayed from the action of his foot.

Trailing a wide plume of gray-black exhaust, the rig
fishtailed down the hill in reverse until reaching the run-out, where Dregan
wrenched the wheel, put the gearbox in neutral, and spun it around in a sloppy
one-hundred-and-eighty-degree bootlegger’s reverse.

Heart pounding a hole in his chest, more so from the crazy
maneuver than the words
ambush
and
flee
that had popped into his
head, he engaged
Drive
. Wincing from the obstinate clunk of gears not
exactly meshing perfectly, simultaneously he goosed the throttle and flicked
his eyes to the rearview mirror, where he saw not so much as a single vehicle
in hot pursuit nor a forest full of winking muzzle flashes announcing lethal
lead being thrown his way.

Cade pulled the F-650 up to within two truck lengths of the
hidden gate. “Stay here for a second, sweetie.”

Raven nodded. “Jawohl, kommandant.”

With the driver’s door partway open and just about to leap
to the ground, Cade arrested himself with one hand on the A-pillar grab bar and
looked over his shoulder. “What? Who taught you that?”

Raven began, “Taryn has a couple of episodes of an old show
called—”

“—Hogan’s Heroes,” Cade finished, incredulous. “I can see
Taryn liking it. She marches to her own drummer. But you?” He adjusted his ball
cap and gave her a double take. “You like it?”

“Not really. But it’s all we have.”

“Not anymore,” Cade responded. “I brought you something back
from Woodruff that should keep you and the gang busy for a long while.”

Raven instantly switched to Kid-on-Christmas-Eve mode and
began needling Dad for intel.

“I’m not sure what titles I grabbed,” he conceded. “When I
take you back to the compound you can dig in and see for yourself.”

“Is it an iPad?”

“Just wait.”

“A TV and PlayStation?”

“Patience.” He took the truck out of gear and set the brake.
“Stay here,” he said, reaching behind the seat. He came out with her Ruger
rifle and grabbed his M4. He exited the truck, crunched thirty feet through the
snow and then stopped behind the gate to look and listen. Seeing nothing there,
he walked back and helped Raven from the truck, closed the door for her and handed
over the little rifle.

Clutching the silk flowers in one gloved hand and the Ruger
in the other, Raven followed behind Max to the gate. Once there, she cast a
confused look back at the idling truck.

“Screw the gas,” he said. “It’ll be toasty inside when we’re
finished up there.”

Nodding in understanding, Raven propped her rifle on the
backside of the fence and held both arms out.

Cade leaned his M4 by the Ruger and then effortlessly lifted
his daughter over the fence and settled her lightly on the other side. Gripping
the Ruger by the forestock and aiming its muzzle away from his face, he handed
it over the fence. He did the same with the M4 then said to Raven, “Watch our
backs while I come over.” He pulled up on the bottom strand and ushered Max
through. Then he padded a few feet to his right and scaled the fence himself.

Standing on the shoulder in an ankle-deep snowdrift, Cade
looked the length of 39. He let his gaze linger west for a few beats, then did
the same looking to the east. “Clear,” he called out more from habit than to
tell Raven something she could obviously discern herself.

Once they’d crossed the slickened road, the process was
repeated. Raven went over first. Then the guns and the dog. Lastly, after once
again checking their six, Cade climbed up and over.

“Here,” Raven said, handing over half of the bouquet.

Guns and flowers in hand, father and daughter tramped up the
hill, and once they had reached its approximate center, Cade stopped briefly to
get his bearings before changing course to his right by a few degrees. Another
dozen yards and they were standing before the row of graves where the fallen
were buried, the last three of which hadn’t fully settled and stood out
slightly from the rest.

Head down and moving slowly, Raven formed up on Cade’s hip
and handed him her rifle.

Without a word, she approached the first of the three
snow-covered mounds. Stood at the grave, wavering for a moment before placing a
red flower on the spot where she guessed the foot to be.

“We miss you, Chief,” she said. “We’re all very sorry that
we had to bury you up here. None of us knew where your special place was. Lev
had an idea … but he wasn’t totally sure, so—” She went silent and wiped at the
tears with the back of her gloved hand.

“You going to be alright, Bird?” Cade asked.

Raven said nothing. She merely nodded and shuffled a few
paces to her right.

Even with a persistent inner voice telling him that this
supposed attempt at closure was reopening old wounds, Cade decided to refrain
from further comment and let her do this how she wanted. So, after looking over
his shoulder at the road and then scanning the tree line for threats, he
followed in her footsteps and again stood silent sentinel off her left
shoulder.

At the second grave Raven knelt and arranged two flowers,
one red, one white, in the shape of a cross, at roughly the same location as
the red flower on the previous grave.

“One for you, Chief Charlie Jenkins. And one for ...” Her
voice broke and she went silent for a tick.

Cade stole a glance and saw her jaw trembling. Still, he
restrained himself.
Let her feel her way through it
. Better here and now
in a controlled environment, than later somewhere foreign and all by herself.

“And one for Pauline,” she went on. “She knows you tried.
And she knew you loved her.”

Strangely composed, Raven stood up straight and made her way
to the final mound in the row of many. Stopped in front of the lonely looking
grave on the periphery and placed on the ground near the foot what remained of
her half of the bouquet of multicolored flowers. She removed a glove and
reached into the front of her coat and came out with the slender aluminum
cylinder hanging around her neck on a length of olive-colored nylon cord which contained
the Omega antiserum auto-injector that as far as anyone knew—based on its short
historical performance—had at most a thirty percent chance of saving whomever
it was used on.

Worrying the cylinder with her delicate fingers, she said,
“I’m sorry Duncan and my dad didn’t get to you in time. Duncan liked you ...
even though he said you wouldn’t stop talking long enough to get a word in
longwise.”

Edgewise
, thought Cade.

“Edgewise,” Raven said, quickly correcting herself. “We’re
all going to miss you, Phillip.” She went quiet and snugged her glove on.
Adjusted it so that her trigger finger protruded through the cut off tip and
took the Ruger back and held it at a comfortable low ready position.

To say Cade was pleased at how his twelve-year-old had
conducted her
business
would be a gross understatement. Furthermore, he
was heartened to see her know enough to free her trigger finger and fetch her
weapon. Smiling inwardly, he asked quietly if there was anything else she
wanted to say.

Wagging her head side-to-side, she said, “Nope,” then knelt
and scratched Max behind his perked ears.

All business
, thought Cade.
Just like her mom.
He walked to his left and divided the rest of the flowers among the other
graves. One each for Logan, Jordan, Gus, and Sampson. Just as he finished, the
clouds parted overhead and the meadow was awash in blinding sunlight.

Shielding his eyes against the instant and overwhelming
glare, Cade fumbled in his jacket pocket and came out with a pair of scratched
and abused Oakley sunglasses, which he donned just as an epic sneezing fit
wracked his body.

With Raven’s repeated
bless you’s
trailing off, he
wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked uphill towards the break in the trees
where the hidden overwatch was. He regarded Raven for a moment then, in a voice
meant to leave nothing open to interpretation, said, “I want you to stay right
here with Max while I take a quick peek at the old hide.”

Raven said nothing. She just nodded and stomped her feet,
trying to keep warm.

“Be right back.” Cade turned and hiked a couple of dozen
yards up the hill and when he finally arrived at the hide he found the place
undisturbed. Apparently, in the weeks since the position had been abandoned,
nothing, dead or alive, had found its way here from the nearby fire lane.
Whether that last incursion by the dead that precipitated Phillip’s death could
be chalked up to just dumb luck or cunning creatures on the hunt, Cade hadn’t a
clue. However, the decision to abandon it afterward had nothing to do with the
attack. Manpower issues and the changing weather were the driving factors. And
the vote to do so was nearly unanimous, with Cade and Lev being the only
dissenters.

Shaking his head, he gazed at the back of the hide where the
creatures had entered. The undergrowth was trampled and the branches that had
gotten broken in the struggle were now hanging limp, the leaves on them wilted
and brown. The red clay soil ringing the abandoned shooter’s position was
scarred from the struggle. And as if to punctuate the life and death battle that
took place here just a week prior, the lake of blood that had drained from
Phillip’s body at a lethal rate was still evident, albeit dried to black and
reflecting the tangle of branches and snippets of blue sky overhead.

“Come on, Dad,” Raven called. “I’m freezing my you-know-what
off. And so is Max. His tail is
not
wagging.”

Cade looked downhill and saw her kneeling and draping the
shepherd with the bottom of her woolen army surplus coat.

“One more second, sweetie.” He went to one knee and
double-checked for new footprints, anything indicating the place had been
visited—by the dead or the living.
Nothing.
He hustled back to Raven,
shouldered his carbine, and gripped her gloved hand. He gave it a soft squeeze
and helped her stand. “Feeling any better?”

“Yesh,” she said, the word coming out garbled as she wiped
her nose off on her shoulder. “I’m still real sad about Phillip, though. He was
funny.”

“I lost that bet,” Cade conceded, hanging his head.

“What bet?”

“Oh ...” He looked at the State Road for a beat. West and
east before meeting her eyes. He saw a steely determination in them—just like
Brook. Finally, he went on, “The bet I made with your mom. I thought you
wouldn’t make it past the Chief’s grave without losing it. Bottom line, Raven.
You’re a lot stronger than I give you credit for. You’re a lot stronger than I
think even you know. You’re a survivor with ... as Mom used to say ...
an
old soul
. Just like my pal Mike Desantos. Only he
was
old.”

Raven stopped and fumbled around for the antiserum canister.
Once she grasped it with her glove, she stuffed it back inside her coat and
zipped that up to her chin.

“No reason to be embarrassed you have that,” Cade said. “I
earned it for you. It’s yours. And yours, only.”

She said nothing. Didn’t stop walking. Didn’t look up. Kept
her eyes on the white ground.

He put his hand on her shoulder and in a somber silence—a
silence possessing an almost physical quality—walked side by side with her down
the hill. They climbed over the fence, crossed the road and were back at the
truck and ensconced inside with the heater blowing on them before either of
them spoke.

Raven said, “I won’t tell Mom that she was
totally
right. Cause’ she’ll never let you live it down.”

“You got that right,” said Cade. “And that’s mighty big of
you.” He rattled the transmission into gear and started reversing to a spot
wide enough to turn around. They drove in the same silence, through the inner
fence—which Cade closed and locked behind them—and almost all the way to the
clearing before Cade, unable to help himself, asked, “So,
what
are you
going to tell her?”

“The truth,” Raven said. “I wanted to run but my legs
wouldn’t work.”

So you toughed it out?”

“Yep.”

That’s my girl.

***

By the time Cade was wheeling the F-650 toward the compound
motor pool, Alexander Dregan was passing by the quarry entrance and no longer
looking in his rearview every few seconds. Moreover, the more miles the
still-grieving father put between himself and his recent discovery, the more
the anger that had trumped patience and driven him to follow the tracks in the
first place had diminished. And when he finally made it to the junction with 16
and the scene of Lena’s death, he was feeling a Zen-like calm and in the first
stages of planning his long awaited revenge.