Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

A flurry of white palms slapped the passenger side glass,
jerking Duncan from his alcohol-induced slumber. Going wide eyed, “What the
fu—” was all he could muster before the roar of the 5.7 liter engine joined the
pelting drops in drowning out the rest of the expletive.

“I’m saving our butts. That’s what the fuck,” explained
Daymon as he pinned the throttle and turned hard right, deeply cutting a
clockwise pair of muddy tracks into the spongy earth. Straightening out midway
through, he pointed the center of the hood at the largest concentration of
rotters, running over and pinning a number of them under the two-and-a-half-ton
rig’s undercarriage. Then, bouncing like a ship at sea, the luxury SUV picked
up speed and careened downhill towards the zombie-choked blacktop, spitting out
bits and pieces of pasty arms and legs along the way. Trying to time the power
drift just right, Daymon locked eyes with the hungry throng; at the last
second, he yanked the wheel hard over and with the top-heavy vehicle’s pent up
inertia bleeding away came a crashing of wood against metal. The vehicle
shuddered from an immediate and violent halt.

Chapter 4

Walking with crutches, the half-mile trek from the
double-wide to the base motor pool took Cade fifteen minutes. As he clunked
along the fence line surveying the moat and the handful of Zs that had gotten
trapped there overnight, a brisk crackle of rifle fire drew him off course.
Ignoring the sea of vehicles dead ahead, he veered right and followed along the
newly constructed and heavily fortified front gate he and Beeson had passed
through the night before.

Taking into consideration the recent terrorist attacks on
Schriever AFB and that he was now a civilian and dressed as such, he approached
the razor-wire-topped fence with caution and a smile. Standing in the shadow of
the guard tower, not ten feet from the ladder, one of the soldiers, a female
nearing middle age, peeled away from her post and approached him, exhibiting
the swagger he’d seen in combat veterans with multiple deployments in the
sandbox under their belt. Her eyes locked on his as she challenged him in a
booming voice, the business end of her M4 aimed at the ground near his feet.
The action, exactly what he’d expected from Wilson the night before, actually
came as a relief. Relaxing somewhat, he said, “I’m Colonel Beeson’s guest. Came
in from Schriever last night with my family.”

Unwavering, her face a mask of seriousness, she held a hand
out and said, “ID please.”

Moving slowly and deliberately, keeping his hand clear of
the Glock on his thigh, he retrieved the green military ID from his left hip
pocket and handed it over. “I’m no longer active duty, but this is all I’ve
got. Don’t see any DMV offices opening anytime soon.”

Ignoring the attempt at levity, she took the card and backed
away.

Noting the separation the sergeant had created, Cade glanced
over and saw the other soldiers eyeing him intently.
Good
. After the
speed and manner in which Camp Williams fell to the dead, it was apparent that
Beeson had articulated clearly to the soldiers under his command that
complacency would not to be tolerated.

Waiting patiently, Cade removed his black ball cap and
relaxed on the crutches, settling most of his weight on the rubber pads
pinching his underarms. And as the sergeant scrutinized his ID, he studied her
uniform. It was the newer Multicam style with multiple different earth tones
intermingling over a mostly tan background. The left shoulder sleeve
insignia—an olive drab star on a black shield with a full headdress-wearing
Native American centered inside of the star—indicated she was Second Infantry
Division. Cade guessed that she had probably been stationed at Fort Kit Carson
before Z-Day and had been sent here only recently in order to help
Beeson’s
Boys
(Green Berets of the 19th Special Forces Group) fortify the outpost.
He watched her dark eyes flick rapidly back and forth over the laminated
plastic document, searching it front and back. During the process, he noticed
her look up twice, presumably comparing him with the picture.

“I’ll be damned,” she finally said, handing the ID back, a
broad smile cracking her steely veneer. “
The
Cade Grayson?”

Nodding, Cade donned his cap, snugging it low, nearly
covering his eyes. Then, changing the subject, he glanced at the chevrons on
her chest and addressed her by the name on the tag secured by hook-and-loop
tape to her blouse top. “Can I ask you a question, First Sergeant Andreasen?”

“Fire away,” she answered at once. “And you can call me
Laurel.” She shouldered her rifle and assumed a relaxed stance.

“What’s with all of the shooting this morning?”

Her smile faded. Then she said grimly, “The Zs have been
crawling out of the pits and getting to the fence. Not a lot of them ... but
enough to cause me a severe case of the pucker ... if you get my drift.”

He nodded but said nothing.

Andreasen went on, “Only takes one or two muzzle flashes to
bring them up from the Interstate. So, if we can, we wait until first light ...
put them down all at once.”

“Why don’t you have suppressors for your weapons?”

“A couple of SF teams headed out to recon Salt Lake a week
ago and took all that we had with them. Who am I to question what the 19th
does? Anyway, the colonel probably figured they needed them more than us,” she
explained. Then, no sooner had the words rolled off her tongue, she remembered
that he was no longer a captain in the United States Army, leaned close and
added quietly, “But I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”

“Knowing how Beeson trains his boys, they’ll be back.
Besides, communication’s been dodgy since the Chinese satellites attacked
our
birds.” The sergeant’s face went slack at this bit of news. “But I shouldn’t
have told you that,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.

A Humvee passed them by, throwing up a turbid cloud of dried
grass and ochre dust.

Waving away the choking haze, Cade asked, “How are the Zs
getting out?”

She adjusted her helmet. Fixed her red-rimmed hazel eyes on
his and said slowly, “On the backs of the others.”

“On the backs of the others?” said Cade, barely masked
incredulity riding his words.

The sergeant nodded then looked towards the fence
subconsciously.

“They’re learning?”

She nodded again.

Holy hell
, thought Cade. His gaze was drawn to the
fence. He stared at it, thought for a second and finally said, “Thanks for your
time, Sergeant.”

“Thanks for all that you’ve done,” she replied. “And I’m
truly sorry to hear about Desantos and Gaines. They will be missed.”

Cade nodded but said nothing. He cast another worried glance
towards the fence and then fixed his gaze on the motor pool where he could just
make out the top of the massive Ford in the distance, the sun bouncing off of
its black paint.

***

Three minutes later he was zippering through the maze of
static Humvees and MRAPs. He crabbed between a pair of Cougars, their slab
sides painted desert tan, each towering two-and-a-half-feet over his head.
After navigating by guess and happenstance he emerged from the steel canyon,
pressed the unlock button on the alarm fob, and listened hard for the tone.
Hearing the soft beep, he vectored towards it, hitting the button two more
times before finally finding the truck without a name. Back in Portland, before
the dead had come back to life, upending everything he had known as normal,
Raven had taken it upon herself and named their Toyota Sequoia the
Silver
Beast
; her inspiration derived from a cartoon about a girl named Maggie and
her docile pet monster she called the Ferocious Beast. Seeing her smiling face
in his mind’s eye, he made a mental note to challenge her to coin a similarly
suitable name for the Ford.

Cade popped the door, grasped the grab handle, and climbed
into the seat, hauling the pair of crutches in after. He slipped the key in the
ignition and the Ford fired right up, its throaty exhaust notes banging off the
armored military vehicles parked on either side.
What about
‘Old
Faithful
,’ he thought to himself. Then, a second later, the image of
Jasper’s truck belching steam and trying to die on the South Dakota Interstate
popped into his head, instantly nixing that idea.

It took two tries, forwarding and reversing while cutting
the wheel by a few degrees, before he was able to extricate the rig. Finally he
goosed the throttle and with the truck belching grey exhaust sped from the
parking lot. But instead of going straight, and much to the surprise of First
Sergeant Andreasen and the others manning the gate, he turned left and rolled
up tight to the hurricane fencing and motioned the first sergeant over.

After a quick exchange with the newest member of the Cade
Grayson fan club, and a sour look from the soldier whose job it was to lower
the mobile bridge system, he was outside the wire and on his way.

With the image of the bridge folding away in his rearview,
Cade turned right out of FOB Bastion and drove on for a short while to the ‘T’
intersection he recalled from the night before where another right turn was
necessary. Then, keeping a steady forty miles per hour, he maneuvered the Ford
along a meandering stretch of 10 1/2 Road for almost a mile, dodging small
groups of Zs and wondering the entire way, why, with so much open range, the
CDOT bothered with fractions when naming their streets. As quickly as the
conundrum had come to him, it diminished in importance when he came upon U-13,
a north/south two-lane splitting Mack to the west and Loma to the east. He
ground the Ford to a hard stop on the debris-littered blacktop just as Beeson
had done the night before. He sat there for a beat staring dead ahead, past the
sign reading
Loma Population 1,296
, and recalled the colonel’s words.
Unlucky
thirteen,
Greg had said, referring to the road by its newly earned name.
Then, eyes misting over, shoulders slumped from carrying the added weight
of the newly fallen, the usually unflappable Special Forces officer had added
in a low and chilling tone, ‘
We don’t go beyond thirteen ... Loma belongs to
the dead.’

Hearing those words again in his former mentor’s voice, with
the same inflection and cadence, stirred within Cade a healthy dose of fear
which in turn produced a much needed surge of adrenaline.

Heeding the colonel’s warning, Cade cranked the wheel left
and proceeded down U-13, passing by wide open tracts of browned grass and
tilled dirt, their neglect obviously underway well before the dead began to
walk. A mile later, with the subdivision of houses he’d spotted the night
before shimmering in the distance, he saw a mass of staggering Zs blocking the
two-lane shoulder to shoulder. For a brief second he entertained the notion of
speeding up and sending them flying like so many bowling pins, until the
specter of a shattered femur or tibia puncturing one of the Ford’s tires and
ruining his day entered the equation. So at the last instant he braked hard
and, using the truck’s massive bumper like a cow-catcher, parted the rear
echelon and entered their midst at a little more than walking speed. Then after
enduring what seemed like a non-stop barrage of slapping palms and nails
screeching against the Ford’s sheet metal, he drove out the other end, tires
intact but with every nerve ending in his body suddenly ablaze.

***

Less than a mile north and barely two minutes removed from
the encounter with the undead herd, Cade entered the Joshua tree-lined
subdivision and pulled parallel to the curb in front of a two-story Craftsman
nearly identical to his childhood home back in Portland.

Nostalgia flooded his brain as he took in the sight for sore
eyes. Then he shifted his attention to the late-model mid-sized SUV he’d
spotted during the ride along with Beeson. It was parked on the long driveway
against the left side of the house and the real reason he’d undertaken the
self-centered excursion from FOB Bastion in the first place.

Disregarding the forward shambling mob in his rearview, he
turned the wheel hard right and gunned the Ford over the curb. There was a
harsh squelch as the knobby tires gnashed through the crushed rock parking
strip and a shudder as he pulled a hard one-eighty and ground the rig to a halt
atop the front yard consisting mostly of prairie grasses and ground-hugging
cacti. Rattling the shifter into Park, he pulsed his window down and regarded
the sight that instantly took him back to Portland. As he relived that Z-Day
siege he could literally smell the stink of the dead as they surged through his
front plate window and rode the splintered glass into his family room. Sitting
there with the engine idling, he shuddered as Ike and Leo’s screams rolled
across the porch. Then he saw his neighbor Rawley taking the fight to the
creatures from his front stoop. The rifle fire clear as day as it rolled across
the street. There were long drawn out bursts and the dead falling and clunking
down both flights of steps.

He took a deep breath of hot dry air. Feeling his heart rate
ebb, he removed his hat and swiped the newly forming sweat from his brow.
For
a moment there
, he thought,
the whole thing seemed so real
. Only the
drapes in this Craftsman were open and he could see nothing moving in the gloom
behind the still-intact double-paned windows. There were no screams or rifle
fire. All in all, inside and out, the mocha-brown-and-gray-trimmed house was
deathly quiet. And with no breeze to speak of, the stunted bushes bordering the
side fence and mature trees opposite them were statue-still, making the whole
scene—minus the putrefying monster banging around trapped inside the adjacent
fenced-in yard and the approaching group of Zs still a dozen blocks
distant—seem like something Norman Rockwell could have imagined.