Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (23 page)

The Ghost Hawk encountered a bit of turbulence and shimmied
and lost a dozen feet of altitude, the latter sending Cade’s stomach into his
throat and jolting him from his power nap. He vaguely remembered nodding off
shortly after Vegas and was awakened twice since.

The first time when there had been changes in airspeed and he
heard mechanical whirrs and clunks and a rushing sound under his feet, all
sounds that from experience told him an aerial refueling was taking place.

The second time he was rudely awakened was when, presumably,
based on song choice alone, the flight of two crossed over the Nevada border
and someone next to him—Cross, he guessed, though he didn’t bother to
check—started singing the Eagle’s hit song Hotel California, rather poorly.
Then, with everyone aboard save him belting out the last line of the song:
You
can check out any time you want, but you can never leave,
his eyes again
got heavy, and with the aid of the droning aircraft he drifted back off to
sleep. But that proved to be short-lived because according to the Suunto on his
wrist he’d been sawing logs for less than thirty minutes when Ari’s voice
interrupted, informing everyone aboard that they were five minutes out.

Holding the five by seven in his gloved hand, Cross asked
Lopez, “What’s the building the target is standing in front of?”

“Nash called it the Widney Alumni house.”

“But her daughter wasn’t an alum yet.”

“Nope. That was orientation day ... three years ago.”

Cade sat up straight and corralled his carbine, trapping it
between his knees. He yawned and stretched and looked out both side windows.
Then cracked his neck and placed his clasped hands on the M4’s collapsed
buttstock. Parking his chin on his glove’s rigid knuckle protection, he gazed
straight ahead through the cockpit glass, back among the living. Why the bitch
seat was abhorred by Lopez and then by the late CIA nuke specialist Scott Tice
after he’d been forced into it was beyond Cade. There was great situational
awareness to be had from here. Plus, with the bulkhead at his back and the
sensation of forward momentum not contradicted by terrain moving in opposition,
overall, he felt more in control.

As Cade looked out over the quiet city he couldn’t believe
how far south and north he could see. The lack of traffic, both air and ground,
and the emissions produced by the hundreds of thousands of vehicles in and
around the sprawling metropolis had left the skies shining brilliant blue. Gone
was the chaotic hustle and bustle and with it the gray, city-obscuring haze.

Out the port side glass Cade saw the unmistakable oval of
poured concrete housing tens of thousands of red and white seats.
Los
Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Home to an Olympics games in the thirties and
again more recently in 1984 when at the height of the Cold War the then USSR
balked at attending and eventually boycotted them. The rectangular natural
grass playing field was now a honey-colored shade of brown, the yellow USC
logos and crimson end zones standing out like brilliantly colored bookends.

Through the starboard windows, way off in the distance, Cade
saw the expansive Pacific Ocean, deep blue and appearing deceptively calm from
this altitude. Ari began a gradual descent and a couple of minutes later banked
left. He leveled the Jedi Ride out until the ocean was completely filling the
windows on Cade’s right. So he craned past Griffin, looked down and saw palm
trees and a cement bike path bisecting the white sand. And jutting out into the
ocean bordered by nearly empty parking lots was a wooden pier, home to a
handful of one-and two-story structures shoehorned in between the beach and a
four-lane highway. Beyond the buildings was a Ferris wheel and a dozen other
amusement rides, all colorful and seemingly out of place when compared to the
nearby traffic jam of death clogging what he guessed was the Santa Monica
Freeway.

“Santa Monica Pier,” said Haynes to no one in particular.

Just south of Santa Monica, Venice Beach complete with its
zombie-crowded skate park and sunbaked sports courts slid by. The helicopter’s
shadow clipped along the ribbon of sand and the men sat inside in a brooding
silence, the ocean’s serene Yin on their right not near enough to balance out
the chaotic Yang exemplified by the picket of fire-scorched skyscrapers
scrolling by on their left.

Dead ahead through the cockpit glass Cade could see the
shoreline gradually curling right and noticed a vast marina and another long
pier built on wooden pilings jutting out into the ocean. And as the pier grew
in size it became apparent that like Santa Monica and Venice Beach it also
belonged to the dead. The marina, however, was nearly deserted and it looked as
if all of the vessels once moored there were now anchored and lolling in the
waterway separated from the ocean by a curving, mile-long, manmade rock jetty.
Putting the numerous yachts and their blood-streaked decks from his mind, Cade
continued his counterclockwise one-eighty recon and locked eyes with Lopez.
Saw the knowing look in them. And then knew that though the Delta captain
hadn’t acknowledged it publicly, he was in agreement with Cade’s interpretation
of the intel and, somewhere between Vegas and the California border, had
reversed the order of importance of their two objectives which resulted in Ari
altering their flight plan.

Figuring she was past the halfway point to Woodruff and knowing
there was a down grade after the looming challenge, Glenda tackled the steep
hill with a renewed vigor. “Go, girl,” she said aloud over and over until her
breathing became labored and forced the verbal mantra into her head.

To her left was dense forest consisting of firs and pines
with an occasional aspen or oak breaking up the monopoly. The opposite side of
the road was more of the same, a ravine gradually getting steeper and deeper,
but instead of the creek and its cold waters beckoning below there was more
forest, the tree tops nearly level with the roadway in places.

Taking a much needed break at the crest of the hill, she
straddled the bike and followed the road ahead with her eye. After the long
downhill stretch she was going to savor like a Godiva chocolate, there was a
gradual right hand turn and beyond it a bridge crossing yet another chasm with
what she guessed would be a creek running perpendicular to the road. But
shambling away from her, currently passing through the trees’ angular shadows, was
a group of about a dozen dead, their attention seemingly directed at something
around the bend.

“Now or never,” she said, putting her throbbing left foot on
the pedal. Oh what she would have done for an Ibuprofen—or six—at that moment.
In fact, if the herd of flesh-eaters weren’t still following somewhere back
there she would have been inclined to strip off the hikers, found a shady spot
and cooled them in the afternoon breeze. But the hungry beasts were at her back
and Woodruff, and hopefully one or two survivors—or if there really was a God,
a whole town full of them—was beyond the ones she
could
see.

Then the realization that she had not seen a living soul for
weeks hit her. The loneliness came roaring back as did memories of Louie. As
she stood there cooling off, a dull throb started behind her eyes and moved to
her shoulders. Then the cramping in her calves started and a tenseness radiated
up her back until it felt like all of the skin covering her skull was slowly
being drawn tight. She imagined her eyes as slits and the corners of her mouth
tugged into a straight, thin line. Not wanting to be caught by her pursuers
curled up in a fetal ball and looking like a cosmetic surgery addict—at least
in her mind concerning the latter—she forced herself to straddle the bike and
let gravity have her.

Compared to the Pike’s-Peak-like hill climb, the lee side
run out was better than any Godiva’s chocolate. The pain in her feet lessened
as the wind rushing by invaded her Hi-Tecs. The minor relief of the wind cooling
her feet relaxed her back and, by the end of the run out, she was feeling like
she could ride to New York if need be.

The Glenda Glide had served her again. She whooped it up in
her head as she sped silently by the group of dead. Not wanting to lose the
momentum gained from the long downhill, she tucked and pedaled hard, cutting
the right-hand turn by degrees, the bike leaning over substantially.

With the trees on her left coming to an abrupt end and a
wide slice of daylight taking their place, she wheeled onto the two-lane
bridge. As the bike’s rubber tires met the smooth white surface, the steady
humming ceased and somewhere around the bend in the road she heard an
out-of-place murmuring and, overriding it, the whiny peal of a two-stroke
engine.

In the second or two it took Glenda to process the new
sounds and conclude the latter was coming from a chainsaw engine running
somewhere in the nearby woods, the bike had carried her another thirty feet and
she spotted the source of the former. Which was a waist-high drift of pale
corpses and the writhing black bodies of hundreds of feeding ravens and crows
slowly winnowing it down. And then her stomach clenched and a cold finger of
dread traced her spine as she saw a pair of SUVs, then, standing in an uneven line
crowding in on a head-high snarl of fallen trees, another two dozen
flesh-eaters and no obvious way of getting around them.

With the dead she’d just zipped by now lost from sight, and
the ones to her fore still oblivious to her presence, Glenda let her momentum
bleed off and, once she’d cleared the short span, veered left and quietly laid
the bike down on the shoulder. She cast a furtive glance toward the static SUVs
and the shelter they might afford, but quickly ruled them out based on their
proximity to the dead. She shifted her gaze west and heard hollow moans riding
the wind.
Between a rock and a hard place.

So, with no other logical course of action and risking
sliding into the ravine, she scurried into the underbrush and said a silent
prayer.

SR-39 Roadblock

Chief placed the chainsaw gently in the truck bed along with
the empty gas cans and tools and spare parts, and then sat on the tailgate
wiping sawdust and woodchips from his shirt and face.

Foley climbed over the guardrail and traipsed slowly across
the road towards the truck, drinking from a bottled water. “These are going to
run out pretty soon,” he said. “What are we going to do then?”

“What we always did,” said Chief. He retrieved a military
surplus canteen from the jumble in the bed, screwed off the cap and drank
heartily. The water was tepid and tasted of plastic but hit the spot and he let
Foley know as much.

“I’m no yuppie,” said Foley defensively. “Just used to the
convenience. That’s all.”

“Just razzing you,” Chief said.

The sound of twigs cracking preceded Tran as he emerged from
the forest. Slung over his shoulder and bulging with something he’d foraged was
one of those reusable shopping bags, and screened on its side in colorful
island-themed graphics Jimmy Buffet would be proud of was the name Trader
Joe’s.

“What did you find this time?” asked Foley.

“Mushrooms,” answered Tran, flashing a toothy grin.

“For sustenance or hallucinogenic purposes?”

Tran didn’t answer Foley. He threw the bag in back of the
truck and came out with a water of his own. Cracked the top and drank greedily.

“What do you say we make sure our rifles are zeroed in, city
boy?”

“I may look like I’m just a plump computer guy,” Foley said.
“Truth is ... you don’t really know me, Chief.”

The fifty-five-year-old Native American smiled at that but
said nothing. He turned his ball cap around, rose to standing and, with his Les
Baer carbine in hand, shuffled along the bed and braced his butt against the
cab’s sliding rear window.

Tran moved backward a few paces and covered his ears.

Showing a little shooter’s savvy, Foley rose and formed up
next to the pickup’s bed on Chief’s left where he wouldn’t be catching hot
brass in the face.

Chief shouldered the rifle, put his eye to the scope,
flicked the selector to
Fire
and exhaled slowly while squeezing the
trigger. His first round missed its intended target, going right judging by the
puff of dust that leapt off the roadside beyond the bridge. He waited for a
second or two while the sky went black as the birds winged off, cawing in
displeasure. Aiming for the tops of the bobbing heads, Chief snapped off four
more shots, dropping one rotter to the roadway beyond the fallen trees for each
5.56 round expended.

“Gotta be a nice pile of those things over there by now.”

“Bird food,” replied Chief, snugging his rifle in tight, his
finger drawing back the trigger.

Bringing the binoculars up and focusing on something beyond
the 4Runner’s hood, Foley said, “Do you remember seeing a bicycle on the
shoulder?”

Keeping his eye glued to the scope, Chief tracked the barrel
up a couple of degrees and said, “That red piece of work?” He looked over his
shoulder at Foley with one brow raised and a hint of concern on his face and
shook his head slowly side-to-side.

The screams jerked Brook from a deep spell of REM sleep. Her
eyes snapped open to a gray gloom punched through with needle-thin shafts of
light. As consciousness gripped her firmly her first reflex was to jerk
upright, a move that sent the ball cap flying from her face as if shot from a
catapult. The thought that the shrieks were somehow a manifestation of a
forgotten nightmare or just figments of her imagination were quickly dispelled
when she heard Sasha’s unmistakable voice calling her name.

The shouts of “Brook, help” continued as she sprung up from
the crushed grass circle, carbine in hand.

Following the sounds, Brook ran towards the motor pool, her
legs making a swishing sound against the grass. Suddenly Max was nearby, a blur
of brown and white leaping gazelle-like on a divergent course.

Max made the scene first.

Brook was there a few seconds later. The screams continued
and she saw Sasha, hysterical, kneeling down and tugging at the purple and
white mountain bike.

“Back off, Sash,” Brook said calmly. She gripped the teen’s
shoulder and sat her on her butt and out of the way. She looked back and saw
Raven face down, limbs all akimbo and tangled in the bike’s handlebars.

Heavy footfalls came from the forest behind the vehicles.
They were followed by a flurry of movement as Taryn and Wilson looped around
front of the F-650 and skidded to a halt.

Motioning Taryn over, Brook said, “Help me with the bike.”
She looked at Wilson and nodded towards Sasha, mouthing:
She needs you.

Feet seemingly rooted in place, Wilson’s head swiveled
slowly towards Sasha but returned at once, his eyes falling on Raven’s
motionless form.

“She’s dead. And it’s all my fault,” cried Sasha. “I saw her
crash in the grass. But I kept going around. This is how I found her.” She bit
her lip, turning it white, then added, “I think she hit the bumper head on.”

Brook turned her head towards Wilson and through clenched
teeth said, “Take your sister and sit her in the grass and come right back.”

While Taryn held the weight of the bicycle off of Raven,
Brook supported her daughter’s head with one hand and straightened her legs and
arms out on the grass with the other.

Straining against the weight, Taryn said, “Now?”

Brook shook her head side-to-side and helped brace the bike
with her free hand. A few seconds later when Wilson returned, she said, “Real
easy now ... lift it off of her.”

Taryn picked the bike up, moved it aside, and let it fall
into the grass. When she turned back and saw Raven’s bloodied face, she let out
a gasp, believing that Sasha was right in her assessment. But a tick later
Brook said, “She’s alive. Wilson, I need your shirt.”

Without hesitation he stripped it off and handed it over.

Brook said, “I’m afraid she may have punctured a lung. I
need my stethoscope and the biggest syringe and needle you can find.”

Nodding, Wilson sprang into action.

Brook called out, “Bring a sleeping bag.” Then she hunched
over and checked Raven’s pupils, seeing instant dilation. She peered down
Raven’s airway, finding it clear. Next Brook walked her fingers, spider-like,
around Raven’s slender neck. Then, without the luxury of a backboard, Brook
enlisted Taryn’s help and, working together, they turned Raven over gently on
her side and Brook quickly traced her fingers from the base of Raven’s skull on
down to her tailbone.

After helping place Raven back flat on her back, Taryn
asked, “Is anything broken?”

“Her neck and spine ... I don’t think so,” replied Brook,
grimacing. “But I can tell by the way she’s breathing that something isn’t
right internally.”

Raven’s eyes fluttered open just as Wilson returned from the
compound with Heidi and Seth in tow.

Brook cleared a lock of hair from Raven’s face and said,
“You’re going to be alright, sweetie.”

Wilson handed over the stethoscope and the only syringe he
could find. It was a small item without a needle, useful only for flushing eyes
and irrigating wounds.

Brook took the stethoscope and syringe from him. Turned the
syringe over in her hand and looked up, confused. “That’s it?” she said.

“Yep,” answered Wilson. He unfurled an olive-drab sleeping
bag. “Where do you want this?”

Ignoring him, Brook looked at Seth and then to Heidi and
said, “Who’s in the security container?”

They looked at each other and said simultaneously: “
Nobody.”
Then Seth went on. He held up the two-way radio and said, “Phillip is at the
hide. He’s going to call me if he sees anything out of the ordinary.”

Relaxing somewhat, Brook put her hand under Raven’s shirt.
Spent a moment moving the stethoscope over her chest, stopping occasionally and
looking up and grimacing. Finally, with no kind of good expression on her face,
she addressed Wilson. “Lay the bag next to her.” She scooted over and took a
knee near the crown of Raven’s head. “Everyone get a hand under her body. On
three we’ll
gently
transfer her to the bag.”

With Taryn, Wilson, Seth, and Heidi positioned equidistant
around Raven, and Brook supporting her head and neck, the former nurse started
the count.

Once the transfer was complete Brook took Heidi’s spot,
grabbed hold of the bag, and with the others’ help began moving her to the
compound.

The radio in Seth’s pocket warbled and he looked a question
at Brook.

“Sasha,” Brook said. “Get the radio from Seth’s pocket.”

As the group moved across the clearing in a herky jerky
manner with Raven wrapped up in the bag hammock-like and swaying side-to-side,
Sasha tried to match their speed and gait. Nonplussed by the prospect of
sticking her hand into a man’s front pocket, she finally got over herself,
rooted around in there and came out with the radio just as it went silent.
Sasha held her arms out and looked a question at Taryn that said:
What do I
do now?

Brow furrowed, Taryn looked Sasha in the eye and said, “Call
them back.”

Not quite sure how to work the thing, Sasha fiddled with the
buttons.

Meanwhile, at the roadblock, Chief was peering through the
scope and trying to make heads or tails of the bike and the rustling in the
bushes next to it when the radio chimed in his pocket. He looked at Foley and
shrugged. Propped the carbine against the bed and fished out the Motorola.

Chief thumbed the
talk
button. He whispered, “I can’t
talk now. We have company at the block.”

Sasha asked, “What do you mean by ...
company
?”

As Chief came back on, Phillip’s voice also emanated from
the speaker saying, “All clear at the entrance. How come Seth’s not answering?”

To which Sasha said, “He’s here. This is his radio. Bye,
Phillip.”

After Phillip signed off Chief waited for a two-count and
described the bicycle’s mysterious appearance and after a brief pause mentioned
the movement in the underbrush.

Excitedly, Sasha said, “Do you see the person who was riding
it?”

Still moving across the clearing, Brook, who had been
listening in, tightened her grip on one corner of the sleeping bag and said
incredulously, “Chief and Foley can play hide and seek with whoever it is
later. I need them here five minutes ago.” She looked down at Raven and saw
that her lips were pursed into a thin blue line. Shifted her gaze toward Sasha
and said, “Hit that damn talk button and tell them to get back here ASAP. I
have
to load up the truck and leave. And when you’re done with that I need you to
run
ahead to the compound and get me the satellite phone.”

Trying her best to duplicate the urgency in Brook’s voice,
Sasha depressed the Talk button and relayed the message. A tick later the gears
were in motion and she was hightailing it to the compound.

At the roadblock

Chief turned the volume down and slipped the radio into his
pocket. He whispered, “I think there is someone trying to hide in the bushes
near the bike.”

“Or
something
,” said Foley, glassing the undergrowth
near the bicycle.

In a rare display of humor, Chief replied, “Rotters don’t
ride ... as far as I know. So I’ll give whoever or whatever is wearing those
hikers a warning shot.”

“Brook said she needs us back at the compound ASAP.”

“If there’s a person over there we can’t just abandon them,”
answered Chief as he snugged the carbine to his shoulder and sighted down the
scope. “Besides, if we step on it we can be back there in three or four minutes
with no one the wiser.”

Foley pressed a button on his watch that started the numbers
on the stopwatch scrolling. He trained the binoculars on the road ahead and
said, “What do you make of it?”

“Let’s find out.”

Foley nodded then trained the field-glasses on the scuffed
leather hikers.

There was one single loud report from Chief’s carbine and a
geyser of gravel erupted near the stationary pair of boots.

The sensation of tiny bits of asphalt shrapnel peppering the
magazines taped to Glenda’s shins did little to warn her of what was coming
next. However, the report rolling over her head left no doubt in her mind that
somehow she had become the shooter’s target.

Two courses of action sprang to mind. One, she could burrow
further into the underbrush and still risk taking a bullet, or worse, make too
much noise and die at the hands and teeth of the moaning corpses crossing the
bridge behind her. Or, number two, she could spring up and rely on the Glenda
Glide to see her quickly and silently to the fallen trees on the far side of
the road and then scramble over the jam to take her chances with the living,
whomever they might be.

She winced as more debris pelted her and had made up her
mind even before the second sharp report was echoing off the tree branches
overhead.

One moment Chief was tracking the rifle to the right,
preparing to make the next shot, and the next a gaunt and gray-haired thing was
rising out of the foliage and before he could process what he was seeing it had
risen to its feet and was standing erect, waving its arms mutely.

Foley asked, “Are those
magazines
taped around its
arms and legs?”

“Question is,” Chef said incredulously, “
what
is it?”

Before Foley could answer to that the rotters were turning
and starting off towards the gesticulating figure.

“It’s alive. And I think—

“It’s a woman,” said Chief, finishing Foley’s thought for
him.

Remembering his ordeal walking among the dead from the road
below Robert Christian’s mansion all the way to the Teton Pass, Tran blurted,
“We have to save her.”

Chief nodded and said to Foley, “Grab your rifle. Let’s see
what you’ve got.”

***

After a thirty-second volley, a changing of magazines, and
then another spate of closely spaced single shots, a blue-gray gun smoke haze
hung in the air, and the knot of walking dead were felled and in an unmoving
tangle stretching across the bridge’s east end.

“Good shooting,” said Chief. “I stand corrected on my first
impression of you.”

With a pair of binoculars pressed to his face, Tran
announced, “It’s a woman.”

Foley looked through the scope atop his rifle and watched
the woman mount the bike and pedal the distance to the blockage. She was lost
from view for a tick; then he saw her haul her slight frame up on a horizontal
tree and begin picking her way gingerly through the tangled mess of branches.

He looked at his stopwatch and said, “Three minutes gone.”

“She’ll be here in half that, the way she’s moving. Must be
scared as heck.”

Foley said, “Let’s see. She probably just pedaled through
that group of rotters that came up behind her. Then she comes upon our
roadblock and you start shooting at her. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Good point,” said Chief.

Foley took his eye from the scope and spotted Tran moving
across the fallen trees. He moved with an economy, picking and choosing handholds
and places for his feet with care, but not wasting any time as he did so.

Chief tossed his rifle in the truck. He said, “I’ll go meet
them in the woods and check her for bites. You fire up the truck.”

“Back in ten?”

“Call it five,” said Chief.

At the compound

Brook traded her corner of the sleeping bag to Sasha for the
satellite phone and said to Taryn, “Take her to your quarters so you don’t have
to deal with getting her past the clutter in the security container. I’ll be
there in a few seconds.”

Nodding, Taryn disappeared into the gloom with Seth
squeezing through the doorway right behind her. Bringing up the rear, both
clutching a handful of sleeping bag, Wilson and Sasha negotiated the doorway
and, once they’d cleared the threshold, Wilson reached back with one hand and
pulled the door shut behind them.

Biting her knuckles, Brook cycled through the menus
searching for the one labeled
Contacts
. “Come on. Come on. Come on,” she
chanted until she spotted it. She chose the sub-menu labeled
Compose Text Message
and with the speed of a tween planning a sleepover her thumbs flew over the
keys as she banged out a message for Cade. Without reviewing the inputted text
she hit the
Send
button, pocketed the phone, and rushed into the
compound with a full head of steam.