Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (42 page)

“How’s the ankle?”

“I’ll live,” he replied.

“I hope so,” Brook said. “For Raven’s sake.” She rose and
without another word stalked off towards the fire.

Cade watched her go. Then he shifted his gaze and regarded
Raven for a second. Burned her smiling face into his memory for later
retrieval.

Daymon sauntered over and placed the armored laptop inside
the open Pelican container.

Cade stopped what he was doing, arched a brow, and looked a
question at the taller man.

 “She’s still processing it. And you were right ... it was a
messy affair. I could almost smell the puddle of shit through the display.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She needed to see it.” He tucked an errant dread
behind his ear. His face suddenly softened as he added, “
I
needed to see
it.”

There was an uneasy silence between the two men.

“Ten minutes,” said Daymon as a smile cracked his face.
“This ain’t no mess hall. So bring a plate and a spoon.”

Simultaneously Cade nodded and realized his salivary glands
were going crazy. The smell of smoke and the sound and aroma of the pot of
chili bubbling twenty feet away was distracting him from the task at hand.

As he removed a tangle of communications gear from the box,
there was a mellifluous rustling in the darkness next to him. Instinctively his
hand went to his Glock and suddenly a wiry Asian man whom he hadn’t yet met
invaded his personal space and hammered down onto his haunches, butt an inch
from the ground—a cultural thing, Cade guessed. The man stared for a second.
Liquid black eyes studying and gauging. Assessing threat perhaps.

Cade’s headlamp illuminated the man’s face from the nose up.
Slightly misshapen, his upper cranium looking like a ball peen hammer had been
applied to it in random places. And from the long horizontal gash between brow
and hairline, foul-smelling yellowed puss oozed between the puckered skin. Cade
finally broke down and introduced himself.

After a quiet few seconds the man said, “I’m Tran.”

“Good to meet you,” said Cade. “You worked for Robert
Christian, right?”

Tran nodded.

“He was a piece of work, wasn’t he?”

“
Was?
” whispered Tran through swollen lips.

Shaking his head, Cade said, “
Was.
” He opened the laptop
and, while it powered on, transferred a few smaller items from the big box into
the one that would be going with him in either the truck or the helo—the answer
to which would be evident shortly. He glanced at his watch: 2145 and still no
Duncan.

Tran crowded closer as the screen flashed blue and the
Schriever logo and desktop icons appeared.

Cade opened the file labeled: RCEX. There was a whirring
sound as the hard drive went to work. After a moment a box with an opaque
Play
button hovering over a blurred image filled the entire screen. Placing the
pointer over the arrow, Cade clicked the button and turned away, leaving Tran
to watch the execution alone.

As Cade arranged the remaining items in the box, he heard
the charges being read aloud to Robert Christian. Then the pleading he
remembered followed by a loud
thunk
and silence. A second later the clip
was replaying and Tran was watching as tears streamed down his face.

After clicking the case containing his gear shut, Cade heard
the
thunk
again, then Tran asked, “Bishop?”

Meeting the smaller man’s gaze, Cade shook his head and
said, “Not yet.”

Tran’s face tightened. His eyes looked up and away. He
appeared to be trying to draw something from his memory.

“Do you know where Bishop is?”

Tran shook his head. He said, “Gee six.”

Cade thought for a half second and said, “Gee six ... you
mean Gulf Stream Six?”

Tran nodded and smiled, showing off a mouthful of broken
teeth.

“What happened to you?”

Tran said, “Bishop’s men beat me.”

Cade made no reply but seethed inwardly.

“Time to eat,” called Daymon.

Tran rose and wandered off towards the wildly dancing
firelight.

Cade saw Brook herding Raven over and made a mental note to
ask Brook to see to Tran’s wounds. Then from behind he heard the steel door
hinge open, followed at once by Sasha chattering excitedly about something. His
eyes followed as the girl and the new lovers, Taryn and Wilson, walked by,
barely acknowledging him. He pressed the light button on his Suunto and checked
the time in its soft blue glow: 2210. There was another rustling from behind
and a hand gripped his shoulder. A voice from the dark, low and with a southern
drawl said, “I owe you one, Grayson.”

Cade said, “You owe yourself. I had nothing to do with it.”

Hands on hips, Duncan said nothing. He swiveled his head
towards the fire.

Seeing the fire reflected off Duncan’s glasses and reading
the body language as belonging to someone not entirely defeated, Cade said, “We
better get it before it’s gone.”

Nodding, Duncan left Cade alone with his gear and walked off
towards the gathering crowd.

Cade watched him go and pulled out his satellite phone.
After powering it on and acquiring a signal, he scrolled through the menus and
selected a preset. He tapped out an SMS message and hit send. Leaving the phone
powered up, he locked the keys and stuffed it back into his pocket. Stomach
growling like a cornered wolverine, he rejoined the small band of survivors to
enjoy his first good meal in a long while.

Chapter 63

After many hours of conversation—most of it forced—Bishop
led Jamie back to her room. With the soft steady hum of the generator
serenading them, there was a moment outside of the door when she could tell by
his body language that he wanted to lean in and kiss her. She sensed him
exuding a certain nervousness totally out of character for someone who had
survived SEAL training and several deployments in the recent wars.
Hell
,
she thought.
Someone who survived the Omega outbreak and rose to lead his
own group of mercenaries should be fearful of no man—or woman
. But now that
she knew he was one of those naturally awkward ones, she decided to use it to
her advantage. String him along to a certain degree. She said, “I think it’s
working.”

He said nothing. But his head cocked a little, showing a
measure of intrigue.

“The Stockholm thing. I’ll never forgive Carson for what he
did. But you ... like my mom always said ... life gives you a bowl of lemons,
you make lemonade.” Guts churning, full of disgust at what she was about to
initiate, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. In the process,
the shred of fabric passing itself off as a dress rode up to the small of her
back, leaving bare everything below. She figured him falling for her advance
was perhaps a 50/50 proposition. And if he did, she put the odds of him
grabbing her and dragging her into the room caveman-style at probably 80/20
for.

The former happened at once as his inhibition crumbled. His
hand went to her bare backside. Her stomach clenched and adrenaline flowed
freely in her body. She saw lust in his eyes, indicating the latter was
dangerously close to happening. Until she had a split-second epiphany. She
gently pushed his hand away and said the four words that in her experience had
the power of kryptonite to even the horniest of men. “I’m on my period.”

There was a moment’s hesitation on his part. She could
almost hear the gears turning in his head. However, the lust leaving his eyes
was impossible to miss. His smile turned to a grimace.
Throw him a bone,
she thought to herself. “It’s at the end, though.”

Still he made no reply. He seemed to be wavering on some
kind of decision she knew would end badly for her so she pushed all of her
chips in and said, “I haven’t been fucked since the world went to shit.” Which
was the truth and it appeared that he bought it. “So what’s one more day? You
reserve the table and pick out the wine, and when we retire tomorrow night it
will be together in the same bed. Deal?”

More hesitation on his part. The same amount of words—none.
His eyes were boring into hers. Finally he said, “Deal.” He opened the door and
made a grand sweeping gesture indicating she should enter.

Rubbing the welts on her wrists, Jamie asked, “Are you going
to handcuff me?”

Outside there was a long burst of gunfire. It resonated for
a moment, the echo amplified by the proximity to water. Then a tick after it
dissipated a wicked grin appeared on Bishop’s face. He said, “We’ll save that
for tomorrow. Consider tonight a test of your loyalty.”

Definitely one of the tactics employed by the Symbionese
Liberation Army who had held the newspaper magnate’s daughter hostage. They
gave her some rope but not enough to hang herself. Let the sense of inclusion,
over time, help win her over. Breaking Jamie’s train of thought, Bishop’s grin
disappeared. He promised, “If you so much as crack this door I’ll let the boys
have you. And when they’re done ... if you survive ... I’ll have them feed you
to the dead.”

Somehow remaining stoic despite the visual his threat
conjured in her mind, she mouthed, “Thank you,” flicked on the light and backed
into her room.

After the door closed, Bishop remained there for a moment,
listening, half-expecting to hear the slider hauled open followed by hasty
footsteps across the porch roof. In fact, deep down he welcomed it. Welcomed
the chase that would ensue. After all, like she’d said,
‘What is one day?’
And that’s all it would take for him to find her and take what he coveted
anyway. But, slightly disappointed, he heard nothing. Not a peep.

Before retiring to his room, he padded to the door by the
stairs and heard the loud rumble of Elvis’s snores. Then he went downstairs and
retrieved the pistol from under the table. He stuck it in his waistband near
the small of his back and blew out the candles, leaving only the faint glow of
the moon off the lake’s surface to guide him. He negotiated the furniture
carefully, their placement still foreign to him. Scaled the stairs and paused
in front of Jamie’s room.
Nothing.
Not even a choked sob or the sound of
crying reached his ears. Not that he really expected it. She was proving to be
a worthy opponent—and after he had finally broken her completely—she’d be a
worthy mother to his children as well.

He made his way to the master bedroom and, once the door was
closed behind him, called Carson on the two-way to let him know that the usual
test was a go. It was a kind of controlled experiment that up until now had
ended badly for every single one of the women he had deemed worthy to bear him
children.

The .38 caliber revolver, now relieved of its bullets, he
left in plain view on the nightstand closest the door. His semi-automatic Sig
Sauer went under the pillow that was to be Jamie’s if she lived to see the day.

Content in the knowledge that the next day was going to be
glorious—in more ways than one—he put his head on his pillow, closed his eyes,
and let sleep take him.

***

Ten minutes after the shock of being left to her own
recognizance without any form of restraint had worn off, and a full twenty
since being let into her room, Jamie decided the second shoe wouldn’t be
dropping tonight. So, willing herself to breathe normally, she leaned over and
put her ear to the door. She heard nothing in the hall. The Jack and Jill,
however, was a different story. The snoring coming from the room beyond was the
loudest she’d ever heard.

She searched the room and discovered that her clothes and
boots were gone. The closet was full of bedding and curtains and crafting
supplies. There was nothing useful under the bed—unless dust bunnies counted as
a deadly weapon. The lamp was a flimsy item branded as Scandinavian but made in
China.
Useless.

Fuck it
, she thought. She padded to the door and
tried the knob. It moved freely. She pulled the door slowly toward her,
exposing the hall in small slices. Expecting to find herself staring down the
barrel of a gun, she poked her head out and looked first left and then right.
Seeing nothing there, she tiptoed down the hall and took the stairs down at a
glacial pace, one at a time, pausing for half a minute on each tread to listen
hard.

At the bottom she saw a blue rectangular spill of moonlight
on the floor by the back door. She paused there, bathed in its glow, gazing
into the inky black outdoors.

“Do it,” said Carson softly. He turned Ozzy down and shifted
in the Escalade’s supple leather seat. “Please do it. You want to run. And I
want to catch you in the act.”
The act
, he thought with a sly grin,
would
be a messy affair
. He would have nothing less.

Her hand touched the cool brushed nickel knob. The generator
throbbed outside. Then there was a long burst of automatic rifle fire. It died
off quickly but, as she stood frozen in front of the door peering out the
glass, sporadic single shots continued for a full minute after the initial
volley.

Seeing the dark-haired beauty’s resolve crumbling before his
eyes, Carson chanted, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He pounded the steering wheel softly
and, along with the distant gunfire, felt the throbbing erection tenting his
pants slowly subside.

Standing at the door, knob turned halfway to freedom,
another of her mom’s sayings popped into her head.
Slow and steady wins the
race.
And slow and steady would let her live to see another sunrise. And
tomorrow or the next or the day after that, she’d find a vulnerability that
would allow her to extract her revenge.

Reluctantly, she let the knob snap from her grip. Then she
pushed away the earlier thought of getting a knife from the wood block—he would
notice it missing anyway—and about-faced and crept back up the stairs to her
room.