Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (31 page)

Already on the move, Cade said over the comms, “Couple of
hundred stairs to go and a length of hall and we’ll probably know one way or
the other how Nadia fared.”

Silently the others fell in behind and, after tackling the
next several flights as cautiously as the first, they were on the top landing in
front of a door identical to all of the others from the parking garage on up.
It was wide and windowless and the dents and scratches marring the skin
dispelled any notion that they were inside a hotel as the building’s clean
facade and swimming pool might suggest.

Cade put his ear to the door. Listened hard and detected
what he thought were soft footfalls. Many of them in fact. And they were coming
and going and seemingly stopping and starting at random.

Zs.

Lots of them.

Cade relayed his suspicions to the team in a hushed voice
and called them into a huddle, and together they formed a semblance of a plan.

When the brief strategy session concluded, Cade turned away
and retrieved the pick gun from his pocket. Without another word he took a knee
by the door next to the bold tabby cat and attacked the lock.

Three miles north of Woodruff, Brook hailed the Kids on the
radio. Thirty seconds later the two trucks were pulled over tight on the
shoulder, bumper to bumper, on a straight uphill stretch of 16, the Raptor
still in the lead. Grasslands dominated on the right and there were no Zs or
cars or dwellings for as far as the eye could see. A good distance away to the
east some unnamed mountains rose up from the already high elevation of central Rich
County. To the left, close in, hardscrabble foothills of another small range
rose gently up and away from the road. Hardy ground-hugging plants dotted the
ochre soil from the road to where the muted tan of the hills began.

Brook threw the transmission into
Park
and said,
“Let’s get this over with.” She opened her door and jumped down to the road.
Stalked the length of the truck, approached the idling Raptor and held a brief
conversation with Taryn, informing her why they had stopped. When Brook walked
away and looped around back of the Raptor, all three of its passengers were
picking their jaws off the floorboards and a heated argument was underway—the
topic: whether any of the businesses in Randolph would bear fruit. With Sasha
the major proponent of them continuing on.

“No matter what,” she said, both arms hanging over the
seats, her red hair unruly and moving proportionately with her arms and hands,
which were going in all directions as she pled her case. “It was my fault Raven
got hurt in the first place. I should have known better ... I’m two and a half
years older than her. And now Chief is hurt too.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Taryn. “Chief is an adult. He
knew what he was getting himself into. And Raven ... she rides that bike like
the devil whether she’s in competition or not. Hell, she’s Cade’s daughter.”

Wilson flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror. Said,
“Brook’s no slouch herself. I’ve seen her mad.”

“What we’re saying, Sash ...” Taryn glanced over her
shoulder and saw the F-650’s slab of a passenger door hinge open, Chief emerge,
sans pants, and assume a stance against the front fender that looked more like
something from an episode of
Cops
than a cursory inspection for zombie
bites.

Wilson said, “I think what Taryn was trying to say is that
the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Raven is going to be just fine when
all is said and done.”

Sasha shot him a glance that seemed to say:
What the hell
does this have to do with fruit and gravity?

Eyes still on Brook and Chief, Taryn added, “Wilson has a
point, Sash. She’ll probably kick your butt in the same race tomorrow with one
hand tied behind her back. Let’s all just pray that Brook is right about Chief
and he’s only got a few scratches and all he needs is a little antibiotic
ointment.”

Sasha said nothing. With the fate of two people resting on
her shoulders, she melted back into her seat.

***

A full minute passed and not a word was spoken in the
Raptor.

Wilson sat back tight against the seat and felt a rising
tide of embarrassment for what Brook was having to do. Then he saw Chief’s
features. The tightly drawn lips and clenched jaw. Then Chief shifted,
stretched out and put his palms up on the side of the hood. Empathizing wholly
with the man for the indignation he was likely feeling from having to
drop
trou
in front of God and nature while Cade’s wife stooped near his dangling
junk, Wilson tried his best to look away. But just like happening upon the
broken glass and torn metal and yellow tarps of a fatal car wreck, he just
couldn’t tear his eyes from the life and death measures taking place.

When all was said and done and Chief was cinching his belt
tight, Wilson didn’t know any more about his status than when Brook had dropped
the bombshell in their collective laps and turned and walked away without
fielding questions.

All three Kids craned and watched Brook and Chief get back
into the big truck. Then three heads swiveled forward and down and stared at
the two-way radio in the console. Which remained silent even as the black Ford
F-650 pulled onto the road and passed them by on the left.

The band of light painting the first quarter-inch of chipped
concrete in front of the sixth floor doors was proof enough the team would not
be needing their night vision goggles from here on out. So each man took a
second to flip them out of the way and then stacked up in a tight bunch next to
the inward-swinging door. Each operator had his weapon at a low ready position
and his free hand resting on the shooter’s shoulder to his fore. A tactic employed
for situational awareness, mainly. But also to keep the target four soldiers in
bulky gear represented as small as possible. A vertical rectangle, two feet
wide by four tall, ideally.

But a small target was the least of their problems. The dead
wouldn’t be shooting at them when they flowed through the doorway in a move
rehearsed by each man hundreds of times over their varied careers. The
flesh-eaters would, however, be onto them at once, ‘
Like stink on shit,
’
as Desantos would have so eloquently put it if he were here.

Cade looked at the strip of light on the floor and waited
for the shadow to transit past, then ticked off thirty seconds in his head to
give whatever it was plenty of time to move off to the west, away from the
stairwell door.

Having volunteered for point—or first man through the
door—Cade counted down quietly from
five
and upon arriving at
one
hauled
the door toward him, letting it skim close to his nose and chest before
releasing the handle and creeping over the threshold, full of barely harnessed
adrenaline and a healthy dose of fear.

He saw a sliver of threadbare mustard yellow carpet first.
Saw that swirls and dots in a light turquoise were staggered here and there.
Paisley
,
he had heard it called. Then he saw the blood trail. Or to be precise, blood
trails. Plural. And that they were almost black and stood out starkly, like the
paisley pattern, against the awful base color, told him that whatever had
caused them was over and done.

Halfway through the door and moving, Cade tightened his grip
on his carbine and swung the stubby suppressor right. He took a quick snap shot
in his mind of everything there and saw only a door with a plastic sign
featuring white stairs and next to them someone’s stylized representation of
licking flames—universal semaphore for fire escape. With no immediate threat in
the short hall right, and seeing that the door opposite the stairwell labeled
601 was closed, Cade ducked low and craned his head left.

In the split second he spent assessing the danger in the hall,
the gloved hand on his shoulder belonging to Cross never moved. In his
peripheral Cade saw the four-inch suppressor attached to the pig snout of a
barrel on the SEAL’s MP7 holding steady.
Cool as ice
, thought Cade as he
took a step left and swept his weapon with his line of sight, his situational
awareness ratcheting up ten notches and everything in his cone of vision
sharpening and seemingly slowing to a crawl. A fifth of a second later
additional training kicked in and he said, “Right clear. Contact, left.
Numerous Zulus ... three yards. Engaging,” into the comms and a steady stream
of brass began spewing from his carbine’s ejection port.

The once beige walls and white ceiling instantly received a
makeover as Cade took a knee near door 601 and walked accurate fire into the
phalanx of Zs angling his way. He dropped three in quick succession. All
co-eds. The brains and blood once contained inside the skulls of a pair of
twenty-something males struck door 602 with a wet smack and instantly began a
slow slide towards the carpeted floor. The third monster, a once darkly tanned
bleached blonde with a large pair of paid-for boobs crammed into a
blood-smeared tank, stumbled over the recently fallen and fell face first into
a rectangle of light spilling from a nearby open door. Cade aimed for the crown
of her head where a stripe of black roots presented a perfect vertical target
amidst the peroxide affected tangle of hair. As he drew up the last couple of
pounds of trigger pull the tabby cat bounced off his leg, took two long,
stretched-out strides, and used the flailing undead student as a springboard.
Tail big as a feather duster, the cat bounded down the hall, passed through a
half-dozen similar bars of light streaming in through still more doors that had
been left ajar, and disappeared through an inches-wide fissure at the base of a
makeshift wall of furniture.

A half beat after the tabby made its escape, the rest of the
team was in the hallway and a quick three-round burst from Cross’s weapon
stilled the Barbie-doll-looking Z.

Lopez and Griffin checked fire and watched as Cade and Cross
dumped the rest of their ammo into the advancing dead.

Sticking to the plan, the first two through the door fell
back to change mags and Lopez and Griffin filed ahead and engaged the remaining
rotting corpses, leaving another half-dozen human shells leaking brains and
body fluids on the soiled carpet.

While the Delta boys covered the hall, the SEALs cleared the
four rooms on the left, starting at the nearest door which was labeled 602 and
hanging wide open.

The pair was inside for a hard two-count before one of them
bellowed
clear
and they were both exiting, weapons at a low ready, Cross
in the lead, with Griff leaving the door hanging open to take advantage of the
added light.

The door to 604 was locked so Cross picked it with Cade’s
tool. Inside he found the lone occupant in the bathtub. Cause of death: one
jagged vertical wound starting at the left wrist and ending mid-inner forearm.
Imperfect in its execution. But deadly just the same, resulting in a tub full
of crimson water that contrasted sharply with the young male’s alabaster
pallor.

Rivulets of colorful melted wax from a handful of burned-out
candles ringing the tub streaked its sides to the water line. The blade used to
seal the deal was nowhere to be found. Cross guessed it had to be in with the
wrinkled, decomposing corpse.

“Clear,” Cross said into the comms. Then, taking a page from
Lopez’s book, performed the sign of the cross and said a prayer for the kid,
both uncharacteristic moves for the laid-back operator.

The doors to rooms 606 and 608 were open. Once again Cross
and Griff did the honors. Both rooms showed signs of being lived in after the
outbreak. And, like the two apartments they’d already cleared, the toilet tanks
here were bone dry and empty water bottles and junk food wrappers littered the
floor.

Both rooms also showed signs of some kind of struggle. There
were bloody handprints on the carpet and crimson black smears on the walls.
Dirty clothing was strewn about and most of the inexpensive fiberboard
furniture was overturned and in splinters.

In the hall Cross said to no one in particular, “Someone
rode it out for quite a while in zero six and zero eight.”

Lopez said, “And?”

“They bought it ... of course. Signs of a struggle. Blood.
Same old same old.”

“The domino effect,” said Griff. “Seen it a hundred times.
One turns and nobody has the stomach to do it in ...”

Cade said, “Eventually that one gets another, and another,
and so on.”

“Rinse and repeat,” said Lopez, shaking his head. “Four
down, five to go. Know what that means?”

Across the hall with his ear pressed to 603, Cade answered,
“610 is on the other side of the elevator banks.”

“Correct,” said Lopez. He let his carbine hang from its
tactical sling and sipped from his hydration pack. Clipped the tube to his
shoulder, craned his head at the bend sixty feet in front of them. And finally,
in a low voice tinged with impending doom, added. “To get to the west wing
we’re going to have to go through
that
.”

Looking directly at Chief while keeping the F-650’s
monstrous tires tracking true, Brook flat-out lied, “Yes ...
really.
I
don’t think any of them look like bites or even puncture wounds for that
matter. Those are gouges made by fingernails. Hell, if I had a phone I’d take a
picture and show you. Short of me tearing one of the mirrors off this beast ...
as if I even had the strength to accomplish a feat like that ... you’re going
to have to take my word for it.”

There was a ten-second stretch of silence filled only with
the sound of tires thrumming on asphalt. Then the radio came alive. It was on
low volume and the needy voice sounded distant.

Ignoring the radio, Brook went on, “But to be safe ... you
know the drill. You do your part. And I promise. If it comes to it. I’ll do my
part.” She could feel Chief’s eyes boring into her.

He said, “
Promise?
”

Although she wanted so badly to tell Chief about the most
important reason for Cade going on his latest mission, she held back and said
only, “Cross my heart.”

Adding to that, Chief said, “And hope to die ... a natural
death.”

Brook snatched up the Motorola two-way. “What?” she said,
sounding annoyed.

Wilson said, “Sasha has to pee.”

Having a hard time holding her tongue, Brook said, “OK.
There’s a real clear stretch coming up. Max could use a pit stop, I’m sure.”
She pulled over gradually. By the time the gravel crunched under the tires Max
was on the seat beside Brook and sniffing Chief up and down, paying particular
attention to his lower extremities.

Chief scratched Max between the ears. Said, “Turning crotch
hound on us?” Oblivious to his condition, he opened his door and let the dog
out. “Let’s see what resides in the next town.” He powered on the truck’s
navigation device and found some kind of an error code splashed on the screen.
Short of calling the 1-888 number connected to it he was at a loss getting it
to work.

***

Chief hit Brook with the bad news when she returned to the
truck. “Just going to have to keep our eyes open, then,” she said, still
avoiding eye contact.

A beat later they were on the road. Same thrumming of the
tires. Same uneasy silence. And the same driving order. The F-650 in the lead,
with Taryn keeping the Raptor tucked in tight to the black truck’s
blood-streaked bumper.

All the while the three purple punctures Brook had located
under Chief’s right butt cheek wouldn’t leave her mind. Not a good liar, she
was surprised he hadn’t called her on it.

So she locked her eyes forward and prayed for two things.
One, that she was wrong about the wound. And two, if she wasn’t, that Cade was
on his way home with the proper remedy.

***

Three minutes later, a bullet-riddled road sign, the words
on it reading
Randolph, Pop. 476,
zipped by on the right. The State
Highway became another Main Street. It seemed to Brook some old rule book must
have mandated every town and city include a Main Street in order to be
recognized by the state or perhaps even the Union itself. But she knew that
that was probably incorrect. The abundance of Main Streets was probably due to
equal parts lack of imagination and mankind’s natural inclination to cling to
the familiar.

Some farmhouses with rusting farm implements and more
broken-down cars than one residence needed sat near the town’s outskirts.
Barbed wire fences, some constraining small numbers of Zs inside their
perimeter, bordered the road. Telephone poles, wires drooping under the weight
of dozens of ravens and crows, paralleled the fencing overhead.

They crossed over a winding creek on a flat two-lane bridge
with narrow sidewalks bordered by waist-high railings. Main Street stretched
ahead of them and was lined with more telephone poles with thin wires crossing
perpendicular to the road every few hundred feet.

Craning his head and peering east down a side street, Chief
said, “Not much to this town either.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” replied Brook.

“There’s no other way to help Raven?”

“There are a couple of last resort things I think might
work. But due to the fact she’s pre-asthmatic I don’t want to go that route
unless I have to. Risk of infection runs pretty high.” She slowed the F-650 to
walking speed and let the truck’s bumper nudge a small group of rotters out of
their path. The hollow bangs of palms slapping along the truck’s side rang out
but thankfully the spine-tingling crunch and squelch of bone and internals
pasted under the Ford F-650’s tonnage never came.

Seeing Taryn successfully negotiate the cluster, Brook sped
up to match the posted thirty-mile-an-hour limit. The end of town came and a
Zions Bank and auto parts place slid by left and right, respectively. Brook
continued on 16 looking for a place to turn around. Ahead, the low hills on
their left curled around and caressed the horizon. A patchwork of some kind of
crop, inexplicably still green, swung by outside the windows as Brook cranked
the wheel and pulled a modified U-turn.

With the Ford’s grill pointing south now, Brook stopped in
the right lane, let the motor idle, and powered her window down.

The white rig pulled tight next to the black rig and Taryn
pulsed her own window down. She said, “What now?”

“Hate to do it,” Brook answered. “Since time is of the
essence we have to split up.”

The window aft of Taryn’s rolled down and Sasha’s tightened
features framed by her wild red mane filled the opening. She asked softly, “How
is
Raven?” She thought:
And Chief?
But deathly afraid of the
answer she might receive, couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“No word yet,” Brook answered. “But for now ... I’m taking
that as good news.”

Sasha nodded. Swallowed hard but still couldn’t find the
courage or words.

Taryn asked, “Where do you want us to search?”

“I’m going to canvas the town east to west starting with the
first cross street. You go one more street south and start off to the right and
then skip every other street.”

“A modified grid pattern,” added Chief.

Wilson’s brow furrowed. He looked past Taryn, locked eyes
with Chief, and asked, “Are you OK?”

Unsmiling, Chief merely nodded and again powered on the
navigation unit to no positive result.

Seeing this, Brook released the brake and made room then
waited while Taryn put the Raptor into a K-turn in the middle of North Main
Street. When she saw the white truck’s grill with its big black lettering
spelling out FORD in her side mirror, she tromped the gas and was off to the
races.

The first pass on East Field Street took Brook and Chief by
a number of them on the left, fallow and brown, and then a few two-story houses
ringed mostly with white picket fencing on the right. Another pass took them by
a high school with darkened windows and brown grass and ringed by a
six-foot-tall run of chain link. In there somewhere was a Mormon tabernacle.
The tallest structure by far, and obviously the reason the town had continued
growing for, presumably, an entire century after the building’s foundation had
been laid.

There were few Zs and even fewer places resembling a medical
office. The only one of note was a squat brick building with a shingle hanging
outside with one name on it—Jerry Layne—and the letters MD preceding it.
Private
practice
, thought Brook as she pulled into the lot.

Chief hailed the Kids and filled them in. A beat later he
and Brook were armed and picking their way over broken glass and ducking
through the still locked but windowless front door.

Mainly to rouse any dead lurking in the gloom, Chief called
out, “Hello,” and trained his carbine at the darkened doorway to their fore.

Ten long seconds ticked by during which they heard nothing
coming from the rooms in back. No moans. No rasps. No footfalls.

Then the unmistakable low rumble of the Raptor’s motor
filtered in from the street.

The radio crackled, and in case Brook and Chief had suddenly
been struck deaf, Wilson said, “We’re here. Want us to wait ... same as
before?”

Chief keyed the radio and, adopting a firm tone, said, “No
honking. And stay in the cab.”

“Copy that,” said Wilson.

***

Three minutes later Brook was in the parking lot, her chin
touching her chest and both hands on her hips. To say she was utterly dejected
would be an understatement. Old magazines and medical records weren’t going to
do her daughter, or Chief for that matter, any good.

Understandably, the place had been cleaned out of anything
of use. There wasn’t so much as one tiny gauge needle used for administering a
diabetic a dose of insulin. And there wasn’t even a tube of Neosporin that had
gone overlooked.

However, in one drawer Brook had found, and quickly
pocketed, a few blister packs of Celexa meant to be distributed as samples
only. Twenty-four pills in total that she hoped to pass discretely to Daymon or
Heidi as soon as possible.

“Nothing?”

“Nope, Taryn,” Brook said, lying again. “Just a couple of
six-year-old Sunset magazines and handouts pushing Viagra.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sasha, tears running down her cheeks.

“For the last time, Sasha. It was not your fault.”

“How can I help?”

“Keep your eyes open for anything you think might have what
we’re looking for ... a store, vet’s office, anything,” answered Brook. She
clambered aboard the Ford and slammed the door. She looked into the Raptor and
locked eyes with Sasha, who was biting her quivering lower lip and nodding in
acceptance to the task given her.

***

They’d been back trolling side streets for a couple of
minutes and passed by the courthouse, a squat structure with far fewer stairs
than its cousins in larger cities. There were no cars with county plates in the
lot and so far the two-vehicle convoy had come across not one emergency vehicle
in the entire town.

Trash, however, had accumulated underneath the front and
rear bumpers of the handful of static cars left in places against the
low—almost non-existent—curbs bordering both sides of Main. On one corner up
ahead Brook saw what looked like a mom and pop general store.
Promising
,
she thought to herself. But the positive feeling she’d felt in her gut
disappeared a beat later when she spotted the twinkle of broken glass and
realized the place had already been looted—and set fire to afterward. The door
hung from one hinge and the flames had blackened the overhead sign leaving inky
vertical streaks of soot obscuring the business’s name.

Brook snatched up the radio. “Find anything?” she growled.

“Negative,” said Wilson. “Just more rotters.”

Brook hissed into the radio. “We’re done here.”

“Where to now?” asked Chief.

“Depends upon how you feel.”

“I’m a little shaky,” he conceded. “Probably because I
haven’t eaten for hours.” And to confirm that his stomach made a low rumble.