Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (36 page)

“Smart ass,” muttered Daymon.

Duncan spun the cap off the bottle.

“Don’t forget your last promise,” Daymon called over his
shoulder. “’Cause Lucy ... you got some esplainin' to do to the group.” Then,
obviously disappointed, he shook his dreads and stalked off, leaving the
hard-headed aviator to clean up his own mess.

Chapter 54

As Bishop stood still, staring out at the lake’s shimmering
waters, light footsteps on the stairs and then the slap of bare feet against
the travertine tiles behind him signaled a start to the evening’s festivities.
His eyes narrowed as he imagined her brown hair flowing as she walked. He
closed them and focused on the wide smile sure to spread on her face when she
noticed the lengths that Carson had gone to make her feel comfortable. But
since his back was to her approach and the fleeting snippets of her reflection
in the sliding glass door told him little, he opted to remain still and let
their introduction unfold naturally.

“You’re not even going to come over and pull the chair out
for me?” Jamie called ahead, a mixture of incredulity and sarcasm in her voice.

To keep her on the defensive, Bishop said nothing. Based on
three things—the throw of her voice, a subtle rush of air on his right cheek,
and lastly, her reflection relative to his—he put her three paces behind and a
couple of degrees off his right shoulder. He also knew that Carson had a laser
beam dancing between her shoulder blades and would put a .40 caliber hollow
point through her the second she lunged for one of the knives in the block on
the island to her left.

Used to being the pursued, not the pursuer, he remained
motionless and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. As she walked by he got a whiff
of musk riding her wake, then she turned and stood, back to the glass, facing
him.

Anticipation rising, he walked his level gaze up her milky
thighs and then to where the sheer micro-dress clung to her pubic bone and on
up to her flat stomach. Trying to act the part of the gentleman, he skipped
everything from there up and looked directly into her hazel eyes and was a
little disappointed. He had grown fond of the girls in the sandbox. Their deep,
almost impenetrable inky black eyes staring inquisitively, mysteriously, from
behind a hijab. In fact, he had requested brown. And Carson had assured him
that hers
were
brown. Maybe they changed with the light or her mood or
the time of the month. But these were things he didn’t want to immediately
concern himself with. And though she wasn’t anything close to being of Persian
descent, his genes mixing with hers would serve to produce a capable heir. Of
that he was certain.

“Aren’t we going to sit?”

“Allow me.” He turned and followed her to the table. Chair
legs screeched on the tiles when he pulled her chair from the table. He drank
in the sight from behind, taking in the nape of her neck and the small of her
back and the subtle toned curve of her backside as he pushed her chair in.
Then, with a discreet wave, he dismissed Carson, who was standing sentry at the
end of the hall.

“Where did you get the trained monkey?” she said, gesturing
towards Carson.

Full of piss and vinegar,
thought Bishop.
I like
her.
“I trained that monkey,” he said, picking up his glass of red. “A
toast. And then we eat.”

Smirking, Jamie hoisted her glass to his, anticipating a
cheesy one-liner or, judging by his demeanor and bearing that screamed former
military, perhaps a Sun-Tzu quote. Instead, he said, “The honor is all yours.”

“Whatever I want?”

He nodded.

Cocking her head, she said, “Anything?”

“Yes. Anything you want.”

“To the Stockholm Syndrome, then. Cheers.”

He glared.

They tapped glasses, producing a soft resonant ping.

“To Stockholm Syndrome.”

She took a sip. Then, laying it on thick, said, “That’s what
you were hoping for ... right?”

Ignoring her question, he cut to the chase. “We’re going to
have to procreate if we are ever going to dig ourselves out of this hole. A
dozen years from now we can begin training our kids and then take back the
cities and, if we’re lucky, we can reboot the United States. Minus the
politicians and the Federal Reserve and all of the sheep I used to protect, of
course.”

He is military
, she thought.
Good to know
.
Then, cocking her head, she said, “So your plan is to create a utopia starting
here ... wherever here is ... and make babies starting with me? Smacks of the
Lebensborn program. Translated from German it means
spring of life
.”

“The Aryan master race thing?” he said, shaking his head.
“No. Far from it. Blonde hair and blue eyes ... not my thing.”

“Well, whose thing is it then? I haven’t seen my friend
Jordan since Carson split us apart.”

“Just like the other two who were with you, Jordan didn’t
make it. Carson said he was defending himself. She was more trouble than she
was worth. This is a different world. I trust you understand.”

Jamie took a bite of cold spaghetti. Resisted making a face
as she swallowed. “OK. So if a master race isn’t your ultimate plan, what is?”

Debating whether he should divulge anything else, he spun
some noodles on his fork and jammed the golf-ball-sized bite into his maw. He
chewed and swallowed hard and, giving in to his own hubris, said, “Starting
tomorrow I am taking the fight to the enemy. We are going to use the almighty
atom to disinfect every sizable city located at a crossroads in a
five-hundred-mile radius from here.” He saw a look of incredulity light up her
face.

Jamie opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t immediately
form the words.

“Tell me this,” he went on. “Who picked out the dress?” He
shoveled more food into his mouth.

Still trying to wrap her mind around the possibility of
being in the path of fallout from a nearby nuclear detonation—let alone at the
epicenter of a number of them—she answered quietly, “Carson did.”

Bishop took a drink of wine. He made a sour face and tossed
his napkin atop his nearly empty plate. “And why no undergarments? Was that
Carson’s doing?”

The question struck her nearly as hard as the nugget of
nuclear information. “It was my idea,” she answered.

His features tightened, eyes going to slits. “What are you,
some kind of
whore
?”

“No. Far from it. They are the only pair of
undergarments
I own. I figured if I was going to be raped, made sense to leave them behind.”

Practical
, he thought.

“Besides ... whoever this little number belonged to last wore
it in the Carter administration. I doubt if there’s anything but granny panties
and over the shoulder boulder holders in her undies drawer now.”

And funny.

She saw his face soften.
Fish on
. Then her eyes
flicked to the veritable quiver of knives in the wooden block on the granite
island to her left. She also noticed, next to the knives, a phone with a stubby
antenna. It looked nearly identical to the ones she had seen plugged in and
constantly charging in the security shed back at the compound. “What’s your
name?” she said confidently behind a forced smile.

“Bishop. And please, don’t judge me based on first
impressions. Like I said ...”

“These are different times. I get it.”

He said, “Good. We’re on the same page.” He smiled. “To know
me is to like me. Shall I call you Patty? Or do you have a real name?”

“My name is Jamie.”

He admired her beauty and liked that she seemed to possess a
practical nature. That she was smart was icing on the genetic cake. But what he
liked most of all was her honesty. Had she given him any other name than the
one the Jordan girl had screamed while plummeting to her death, he would have
snatched the .38 from under the table and immediately put a third eye in the
center of her forehead. “Now eat,” he said. “You’re going to need the energy.
Because you, my lady, are going places.” He smiled. Then added a mental
asterisk to his statement.

My bed, willingly.

Or up on a cross, kicking and screaming
.

Chapter 55

While Cade and Raven were away, Brook and the kids’ low-key
conversation had somehow attracted more than a dozen dead. Returning just ahead
of their arrival, father and daughter clambered aboard the F-650. A beat later
the tinny calypso-like beat of palms contacting sheet metal started up. And in
just a handful of seconds both trucks were surrounded and the two-way radio in
Brook’s hand crackled to life. “Can we go now?” asked Wilson, his voice
cracking slightly.

Already one step ahead, and with the added sound of nails
scrabbling and scratching the paint, Cade started Black Beauty rolling forward,
its coffin-sized plate metal bumper acting like a cowcatcher and bulling a path
through the entire undead delegation.

After leaving the north side of Hanna behind with more
questions than answers clouding his head, Cade nosed the Ford west by north. In
map view, on the navigation screen, the graphically represented road resembled
a kindergartner’s scribble. It bumped up and down for thirty-four miles all the
way to Francis, where it intersected Utah State Route 32, which then shot straight
north to Oakley where the route took a serpentine course to Peoa and finally
carved a graceful arc to the left as it bypassed the Rockport Reservoir.

After the reservoir the voice in the box directed them to
follow the I-80 four-lane left of a smaller reservoir until it finally merged
with the run of road near Coalville that Cade had been dreading for hours. No
matter how long he looked at the display—pulling it all the way out to see the
big picture, or zooming it in so the unimproved forest roads and fire lanes
were evident—he couldn’t find a route that would let them circumvent Interstate
84.

In comparison to the desolate State Routes they’d been on
most of the day, the fifteen mile stretch of I-80 was a traffic jam—albeit a
passable one. Along the way, the F-650’s bumper proved its weight in gold,
seeing them through several Z-populated snarls without warranting a dismount or
having to utilize the winch. No shots were fired and when they arrived at the
cloverleaf junction with Interstate 84, Cade couldn’t believe their good
fortune. In sharp contrast to the eastbound lanes—where hundreds if not
thousands of vehicles had been abandoned by people trying to escape the killing
fields of Salt Lake City—the westbound lanes they were traveling had been cleared.
In fact, it looked as if Salt Lake County DOT and the nearby ski destination of
Park City had combined forces and employed their fleet of snowplows to create a
viable thoroughfare. The inert vehicles they did encounter, however, were
largely amassed on both shoulders, bumpers crushed in, deep V-shaped gashes
creasing their sides and quarter panels.

Popping one of her ear buds out, Raven asked, “What happened
here?”

Cade took his eyes from the road long enough to look the
question to Brook. After a short pause, Brook said, “I’ve got no idea. But I’m
grateful we’re not going the other way.” She looked at the river of dashed
hopes and death flowing east. Every hundred yards or so, flashes of movement
behind clouded side windows would draw her attention away from the army of Zs
patrolling the warren of shiny chrome and metal.

“How much further?” asked Raven.

Cade flicked his gaze to the dash. He said, “The nav unit
shows twelve miles until Morgan.”

“Eyes on the road, Grayson,” Brook said sharply.

Arms up in mock surrender, Cade said, “Alright Miss Bossy
Pants.”

Ignoring him, Brook zoomed the map out one step and said,
“Exit 96 merges with Old Trapper’s Loop Road north ... looks like Huntsville is
eleven point six miles from the exit. And the GPS coordinates are only a few
miles east of Huntsville.”

“And the compound. Yeahhh,” said Raven, clapping her hands
and smiling wide.

Max put his paws on the back seat and peered through the
windshield, apparently searching for the cause of the girl’s outburst. Seeing
this, Raven grabbed his ears gently and put her face near his and added,
“You’re going to be running wild in no time, boy.”

The proximity of Raven’s face and the pitch and tone of her
voice proved too hard for Max to resist. He lunged up and planted a sloppy dog
kiss on her face, tongue and all.

There was an immediate and opposite reaction to the show of
affection as Raven simultaneously drew back and wiped her face on her
tee-shirt. A tick later her face was wet, the bottled water was half empty, her
head was tilted back and she was gargling away the dog spit. She pulsed the
window down and spat the water into the slipstream where it was carried aloft
and then deposited on the Raptor’s hood and windshield.

“Close the window ... you’re letting the stench in,” said
Cade.

“Max licked my mouth.”

Swerving to miss a corpse splayed across his lane, Cade shot
Brook a sly smile and said, “Wonder what Max was licking before that.”

“Ewwww,” cried Raven.

The smile disappearing from his face, Cade pointed to a
splash of magenta bisected with a pair of parallel lines. “What’s that?”

After zooming in on the item of interest, an icon
representing a stylized passenger jet was evident. “Morgan County Airport,”
said Brook.

“How big is the city of Morgan?”

“We’re about to find out.”

***

Four miles from Morgan, their question was answered by a
sign flashing by on their right.

“Thirty-six hundred,” said Brook. “City center is off to the
left. Our exit is on the right ... and so is the airport. What are you
thinking?”