Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

He stood outside, trying to get his bearings while lamenting
the fact that his buzz was wearing off and the shakes were close behind.

A staccato burst of gunfire, presumably coming from the
distant front gate, gave him something to orient from. He took a left tack and
after a few minute walk was in front of the nondescript cement block building
Beeson called headquarters.

He loitered outside the door, his hands beginning to tremor,
until the tractor-beam-like pull of the bottle of Scotch he’d spotted behind
the major’s desk overrode the last scintilla of willpower in his body.

Four hundred feet above Staircase National Monument, inside
the speeding Ghost Hawk, Cade burned the minutes of uneasy silence looking out
the starboard side window. Suddenly some movement on the desert floor caught
his eye and he shifted forward and craned his neck. He saw a shadow far ahead
and right of their position and it was keeping steady pace with the Ghost
Hawk’s shadow, which was riding along the broken ground a little ahead and
right of the outer edge of the helicopter’s whirring rotor disc.

He was about to mention to Lopez that the black Osprey was
forming up on their port side when Griffin picked up where he’d left off.

The Navy SEAL said, “In an act of desperation, with their
carriers already on the way to the bottom and their frigates and destroyers
burning ... someone in the Russian or Chinese fleet got skittish and made a calculated
decision. At least that’s what our sub’s XO assumed. Hell, communications had
already been spotty since the EMP airbursts, and he said he couldn’t get
permission to pop a nuke even if he wanted to. By that time I guess President
Odero, his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs had all gone dark. There was no
government. So the bastards launched from a nearby sub. The sonar operator
pegged it for what it was and the entire boat went silent. Like we were all
attending a funeral ... only the poor bastards weren’t dead yet. We heard the airburst
nuke that took out the entire Fifth fleet ... fifteen, twenty thousand sailors,
airmen, Marines. Heard the blast two hundred feet deep. Didn’t even need an
acoustic listening device to hear the hulls popping when they hit crush depth.
Thank God we didn’t hear any screaming when they were on their way to the
bottom.”

Cade asked, “Did you guys get the other sub?”

“Yeah. Took about an hour of running silent before they made
a mistake.”

Lasseigne asked, “The
Texas
torpedoed them?”

“The cocky bastards went to periscope depth. Just as they
were nearing the surface, we let go a couple of Mk-48 torpedoes that were on
the money. Broke the
Akula’s
back. The commie bastards got the longest
ride possible ... all the way from spitting distance with the horizon to the
ocean floor. That one, though,” Griffin said, nodding. “Wish I would have been
listening in when it hit crush depth and imploded.” He went silent and looked
towards the cabin floor.

“Don’t mess with Texas,” Ari said over the comms.

Cade peered past him and out the window. Everything was a
red blur. He heard the SEAL draw a breath and then the man said in a funeral
voice, “It would’ve been satisfying hearing them suffer. Softened the loss of
my platoon. Jolly, Cog, Diesel, Snip, Stewie, and Cooper ... I wouldn’t have
traded three subs full of Russian sailors for a hair on any one of their heads.”

Cross gave his old friend a squeeze on the shoulder. “If
they come anywhere near the CONUS we’ll deal out some payback for them.”

Sitting back, Cade thought how heavy a burden the news of
the loss of an entire carrier battle group and all of the supporting ships must
have been for the new President Valerie Clay, Nash, and Shrill while they already
had their hands full dealing with traitorous snakes on American soil. Wouldn’t
have wished that kind of pressure on anyone. And that they’d kept their cards
close to their vest even when China’s hunter killer satellites were attacking
the International Space Station caused Cade’s analytical brain to wonder what
else they knew and weren’t letting on.

Eight miles east of the garage, her feet and ankles
throbbing like she’d just been hobbled by Annie Wilkes, the specks of flesh and
blood and dermis clinging to Glenda’s body started attracting unwanted guests.
Treating her like a native in a National Geographic documentary, the greedy
insects lit on her face, nosed around her unblinking eyes, and crawled into her
nostrils and mouth without remorse. Before long Glenda was host to an
undulating green and black carpet of hungrily feeding common houseflies. And
though she looked and smelled like one of the dead, and her winged passengers
were undoubtedly exposing her to all of their diseases, the myriad of six
decades’ worth of accumulated aches and pains was telling her different. With
each new step the pain radiating from the soles of her feet had her convinced
that this was what it must feel like to have a belt sander loaded with forty
grit paper taken to them. Not one pass, but several, until the once pink pads
there were gone and, like the exposed innards of a Grand piano, she imagined
she would be able to see the tendons and metatarsals stretching and retracting with
each pain-filled step.

Keep going, Glenda
, she told herself, praying the
endorphins—Mother Nature’s answer to pain—would continue building and eventually
bring on the euphoria she remembered from her days as a world class
cross-country runner.

But something better fell in her lap before she’d reached
that necessary plateau of pain. She saw the glint of sun off of chrome to her
left. Saw whitewall tires and the red outline of a bike frame propped against a
stately pine. She slowed her gait ever so slightly to allow the collection of
charred and bloated creatures to overtake her.

Keeping her eyes locked on the ham-sized hunk of pink
uncooked flesh jiggling on the nearest creature’s backside, she continued
shaving off steps until the lurching cadaver was a few paces beyond the gravel
drive in the pine’s long shadow.

Keep going, you bastards. Don’t look back. Nothing to see
here
, she thought to herself as if those words would have any effect on the
pack of dead or the ultimate outcome of her next move. She figured one of two
things would happen. Either bare buttocks walker would see her deviate from the
State Route and turn and follow suit, the primeval part of its brain fooled
into thinking prey must be nearby. Or the train wreck would be none the wiser
and continue slogging ahead with the others until its oozing butt literally
calved off and met the roadway with a wet resonant slap.

Time would tell.
Six more steps
. She could almost
hear the power tool’s whine and smell the caustic stench of abraded flesh.
Four.
Three. Two. And one
. Inadvertently her left turn became more of an about
face than the dumb shuffle she was aiming for, which resulted in a sharp
squelch
as a handful of gravel shifted under her hiker. She knew a millisecond later
that she was in trouble and, like dominos falling, this sudden revelation
started the familiar cold blast in her gut that radiated to her limbs,
mercifully delivering some of the comfort she’d been praying for.

Alerted by the out of place sound, bare buttocks walker and
his two crisped friends performed wooden, near-simultaneous pirouettes and
stalked her way, their low mournful moans preceding them.

Get a move on, Glenda
.
They’re gaining.

Heeding her inner voice and with the hair on her neck
standing at attention, Glenda straightened up and set her arms and legs to
pumping, leaving a cloud of pissed-off insects swirling and diving in her wake.
Though she was certain her socks were one fine bloodied mess by now, she started
into a slow jog that, as the moans and grunts of her pursuers intensified,
became a frantic uphill slog.

From the turnoff to the house the drive was fairly steep and
rutted by parallel tire tracks. For every hard-earned ten yards Glenda covered
the dead managed only two or three steps, and by the time she could clearly see
the object of her attention she figured she had maybe a minute or two before
the zombies caught up with her.

Though it didn’t dawn on Glenda at first, the house, which was
set back in the trees and partially hidden by shrubs growing out of control,
was well known to her. She’d had a friend named Violet who had lived with her
husband in the dilapidated two-story affair until his passing some years before
and the pull of family drew her back east.

Many a raucous game of Bunko had taken place behind the
darkened picture window staring down on her. And many a bottle of wine had been
uncorked there as well. At first the camaraderie and gossip had been just what
Glenda needed. Later on it was just the wine. Then, after one too many game nights
when she didn’t stop when the dice did, she found she’d worn her welcome out.

After her self-inflicted ouster from Bunko,
game night
continued at home and she drank alone and unencumbered by social mores while
Louie worked graveyard at his plant job in Ogden.

Violet’s husband died the next summer and by autumn she was
also gone, the home up for sale and a U-Haul hitched to the old Caprice. Not
much had changed at Violet’s place, though. The siding showing through the
bushes was still a shade of blue, chalky and fading from the accumulative
effect of past winters and new owners who cared more about slinging paint on
stretched canvas than on their new place.
Priorities
, thought Glenda.
The screen on the front door was closed and the Huntsville Times had piled up
on the stoop, unread, a week’s worth at least. Newly installed stained glass
windows flanked the door, and in the other windows Violet’s God-awful olive green
velveteen curtains had been replaced by those horizontal aluminum things that
screamed modern and were hard to keep dusted.

Nosed in at an angle on the oil-stained cement pad was the
kind of boxy foreign station wagon favored by the artistic set in Ogden. On the
back tailgate, below the oversized window, were dozens of stickers attesting to
some of the places the young couple who’d bought Violet’s house had ventured.
Mixed in among the colorful tributes to
Glacier National Park
,
Yellowstone
,
and
Bryce Canyon
was a who’s who of stickers giving voice to activist
groups whose social values fell farther to the left of Glenda’s—
much
farther.

Watching the dead over her shoulder, she misjudged the
distance and bounced off the Volvo’s passenger-side quarter panel at as near to
a full sprint as her shredded feet—and partial suit of magazine armor—would
allow. Knitting needles in hand, her heart in her throat and a sheen of sweat
wetting her face, she paused to catch her breath.

Leaning on the car, hands on knees and with her chest
heaving uncontrollably, she glanced left and saw the doors to the small
swaybacked garage at the rear of the property hanging wide open. Save for the
cobwebs strung between the rafters, a recycling bin full of newspaper, and an
old-fashioned push mower leaning against the back wall, the structure was
empty. However, Glenda quickly ruled it out as a place to hide due to the
suspect-looking hinges and handful of vertical planks missing from the outward
opening doors.

The house was looking better and better with each passing
second. The blinds in the rear-facing windows were all closed. On the side of
the house the small bay window above the kitchen sink where Violet had sprung
her failed intervention so many years ago held a trio of houseplants, their
leaves browned and drooping in defeat. She craned left and saw no movement
behind the dining room’s large plate window.

Her breath returning, Glenda limped to the side gate and
looked the length of the house and spotted the trio of corpses twenty yards
distant and struggling mightily to navigate the uneven pitted tracks and raised
hump of grass running down the center of them. In an almost comical manner, the
zombie with half its ass falling off would straddle the center ridge then step
into a rut and stagger forward a short distance and repeat the move in the
opposite direction in a kind of perpetual motion, zigging and zagging in front
of the other two rotters.

Blinking the stinging drops of sweat from her eyes, Glenda
tore off the bathrobe and tossed it on the ground.
Served your purpose.
Then, with her flight instinct winning out over the idea of spending another
night alone with the nightmares inside her head and the hungering dead
lingering outside, she looped around the car’s squared-off front end and
snatched up the bike by its red vinyl grips. Grunting, she lifted the heavy art-deco-inspired
behemoth and pointed the front wheel towards the State Route fifty yards
downhill and felt her stomach sink when she saw that the rest of the staggering
pus bags were coming to the dinner party.

Without checking the tires for pressure or even looking to see
if the thing had a chain, she straddled the red rust bucket and, while hoping the
pendulum of good fortune was still on her side, planted one aching foot on a
pedal and pushed off downhill.

As the nearly flat front tire bounced over rocks the size of
baseballs and was tugged left and right, Glenda focused on keeping her butt centered
on the spring-cushioned seat, the bike tracking straight with only one hand on
the bars and her eyes fixed on the closest zombie.

With the front wheel juddering in the right side rut Glenda saw
the wobbling cadaver step over the center ridge and simultaneously applied the
rear brake, leveled the knitting needle like a jousting stick, and plunged it
inches deep into the moving target’s left eye socket.

Instantly there was a sharp pain in her wrist and before she
could release the needle it was ripped violently from her hand. Then,
dangerously close to putting the bike on its side, she regained control with both
hands, rode up on the center ridge and pedaled hard for three full revolutions.
At the last moment, with the other two walkers taking slow telegraphed swipes
for her head, she bent low over the bars and, with the grass threatening to
hang up in the spokes and chain, passed right between the moaning ghouls with no
room to spare.

She sat up and, with the wind buffeting her face and the
drying sweat giving her a chill, nosed the rattle trap off the ridge and back
into the right side rut.

Total time elapsed from mounting the bike and reaching the
bottom of the hill, Glenda guessed, was no more than ten seconds, but probably
closer to five. Ducking low to the bike when the drive connected with the State
Route, she leaned left and zippered through the ragged knot of walking corpses
while letting loose with a guttural war whoop.

With her victory peal hanging in the air, she angled the
bike left on the smooth blacktop and never looked back.

Eden Compound

Raven walked her mountain bike through the tangled grass
near the compound’s hidden entrance and waited in the shade at the forest’s
edge while Sasha fetched hers.

“You’re going to have a big advantage over me,” said Sasha. Then,
referring to the antiquated, battered and rusty piece of work she was pushing,
added, “This thing is a
tank
.”

“Well you’re bigger and stronger than me,” countered Raven,
crossing her arms. “
I
should get a head start.”

“Not going to happen,” said Sasha with a flip of her hair.
“Bragging rights are at stake. And I like to brag.”

Raven thought:
Yes you do. And then some.
Parroting
something she’d heard uttered by her mom, or dad, or perhaps both, she said,
“It would probably level the playing field if you filled your designer handbags
with rocks and put one on each arm.”

Shaking her head, Sasha threw a leg over her bike, pushed
off and, in a move some would call cheating, hollered, “Go,” when she was already
a couple of yards ahead of Raven.

***

Raven lost the first race which consisted of ten full laps
around the clearing, keeping only to the beaten-down grass oval. Slightly
winded and with a subtle rattle evident with each exhale, Raven dismounted her
bike and began pestering Sasha for a rematch.

Shaking her head, Sasha said, “Not yet. I need some water.”

Raven smiled and nodded toward the crop circle where Brook
was. “Follow me,” she said with a noticeable gleam in her eye.

The girls laid their bikes down and crept to the edge of the
crop circle where they covertly took a knee and peered between the stalks of grass.

Still breathing hard, while suppressing the urge to giggle,
Raven mouthed:
The bear’s still sleeping.

“You get it.”

“No. You,” Sasha whispered.

So Raven stepped onto the tamped down grass. Snuck up to her
snoring mom and plucked a sun-warmed bottled water off the spread out sheet.
Snickering, she turned slowly and, with four exaggerated high-steps, made her
way back to the side of her partner in crime.

Sasha wiped the sweat from her brow and regarded the sun
which was climbing steadily towards its high noon position. She took the bottle
from Raven, cracked the cap and took a long pull. Then, passing the bottle
back, she whispered, “Rematch time.”

Eden compound motor pool

Foley drove. Not because he wanted to. On the contrary.
Initially, when he’d learned they would be going in Daymon’s pick-up on account
that all the gear was stored in its box, he had parked himself riding shotgun.
But all that had accomplished was to warm the seat for Chief, who had insisted
he was
not
driving.

So when Tran balked as well, by default the former IT worker
slid behind the wheel and, since his legs were nowhere near the length of
Daymon’s, made the necessary adjustments to the seat and all three mirrors.