Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (35 page)

With the F-650 nosed in close to the two vehicles blocking
the road and the engine idling away, burning copious amounts of precious fuel,
Brook stayed in the driver’s seat, drumming her fingers on the wheel. Finally,
after having come to some kind of decision, she killed the engine. Tapping out
a final verse to whatever tune she’d been replicating she faced Chief, turned
on her nurse’s charm, and convinced the obviously ailing man to stay in the
truck and be their lookout.

She grabbed her carbine, popped the door open, and leaped
down to the road. Covered the twenty feet to the jam with purposeful strides.
Walked around the camouflage K5 Blazer, peering into the windows glazed with
road grime and who knows what else. She noticed after finishing her loop that
the two-door 4x4 was missing a headlight up front and there was dried blood and
hair and scraps of flesh stuck to the grill. Seeing only camping gear and a
couple of long guns inside the rig, she trudged back to the driver’s side and
the body prostrate behind the bullet-riddled door.

She knelt next to the fourth person she’d killed to date,
took a deep breath and rolled the corpse over. The body moved easier than she’d
anticipated. However, a pile of greasy entrails spilled out onto the road,
leaving her face-to-face with a dead man’s gaping abdominal cavity and the
partially digested remnants of his final meal.

Fighting the urge to vomit, she tore her eyes from the
damage the half-dozen bullets fired from her carbine had caused. She shifted
her gaze to the upturned face, which had no kind of a calming effect on her gag
reflex. To the contrary, it made her think of who he might have been. Made the
kill personal. And much like Wilson and Taryn, the kid looked to have been in
his late teens or very early twenties. His slim face was framed by a full head
of wavy dark hair and similar colored sideburns working their way toward a
merger with a week’s old growth of beard. Close set brown eyes, an aquiline
nose, and thin lips seemed to point to some kind of Slavic descent way back.

The corpse was clad in blue jeans and wearing sturdy leather
boots, laced up tight. A simple cotton long-sleeved shirt was blood-soaked and
sticking to its pallid skin. For some reason the once white item was hiked up
to his sternum. Maybe it caught on the shredded door panel when the kid
collapsed vertically to the blacktop. She’d never know. But she would take the
sight and smell of the dead man’s gutted torso to her grave. That was for sure.

“Wasn’t worth it ... was it?” mumbled Brook, closing his
staring lifeless eyes with a practiced swipe of two fingers. “Lonely stretch of
road and you couldn’t share.” Grabbing the corpse by the boots, she leaned back
and lugged it to the ditch, leaving a slimy trail of guts and organs and
streaks of bloody fecal matter.

Walking clear of the gory trail, Brook went around back of
the camouflage rig and knelt by the corpse of what looked to have been a young
woman in life. The parts pointed to it: small breasts and thin hips that child
birth had yet to change. And judging by the long locks of dark hair, Brook
guessed this corpse and the other had been related.

But there was no way to be certain. Like its dead friend,
this corpse’s pockets were also empty. Moreover, Chief’s volley had erased its
narrow face, leaving a half-moon-like chasm displaying gelatinous clumps of
brain and all of the intricacies of the human body’s internal cranial
structures.

Shivering with disgust, Brook relieved the corpse of the
ballistic vest. Knocked it against the road, attempting to dislodge fleshy bits
and shards of bone—some with hair and pale dermis still attached. Suddenly
overwhelmed by the reality of what had just happened, Brook went to all fours
and added the contents of her stomach to the detritus already painting the
road.

While Brook moved the bodies, the Kids, staying true to
their word, had gone about the grim task of wrapping Jenkins’s ruptured head
with a patrolman’s jacket found in the back of the Tahoe. Then, working
together, they managed to man-handle his two-hundred-plus pounds of dead weight
to the Raptor and into its bed.

By the time Brook finished emptying everything in her
stomach onto the road, the Kids had rounded up all of the useful gear and
weapons and loaded it into the back of the F-650.

A few short minutes after the aggressors had initiated the
deadly encounter, the Kids were back in the Raptor—waiting patiently. Business
as usual.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and with a
sadness welling up, Brook rose to standing and made the slow walk to the
Blazer’s open door. She reached in and rattled the transmission into neutral.
Hinged over and found the T-handle and popped the e-brake. Standing on the
road, feet a shoulder’s width apart, she muscled the wheel, fighting against
friction and tonnage and got the big tires moving to the right a few degrees.
Still sweating from exertion and the late afternoon heat rising off the road,
she hurried back to the F-650 and clambered aboard.

“All in a day’s work,” said Chief, “And just in time.” He
pointed past the Blazer across undulating fields and foothills to a point far
in the distance where a sliver of road dipped and rose back up. There,
silhouetted against the blue-gray horizon, was a giant dust cloud created by
what could only be a large contingent of dead which appeared to be bearing
north on 16—straight for them.

She placed her carbine next to her, barrel to the floor. She
sighed and said, “Can’t be that many of them on this lonely stretch of highway.
Can there?”

Wisely, Chief made no reply as Brook fired up the motor,
engaged the transmission, and popped the e-brake.

Only a gentle nudge from the Ford’s heavy-duty bumper was
necessary to get the scavengers’ Blazer moving. A beat later gravity grabbed
the smaller rig and it started a shallow turn towards the ditch, and Brook
accelerated briskly through the newly created gap.

“A dirty job. But somebody had to do it,” said Brook as she
watched the dead kids’ truck slow roll backwards into the ditch and lurch to a
stop amidst a puff of dust, the whip antennas vibrating madly. She kept the
truck rolling slow until she saw the Raptor had successfully negotiated the
narrow patch of blacktop flanked on one side by the inert Tahoe and on the
other by the listing Blazer.

“Which ... the killing or the cleanup?” asked Chief, feeling
the rig accelerate and nose into a right hand sweeper.

Brook returned her gaze to the road. “The killing,” she
stated softly.

They skirted the west side of Woodruff and after a couple of
blocks the overhead lines and power poles kept going straight and Main Street
took a hard jog left and then became Highway 16 again. A short drive later the
gray strip of two-lane curled right and there was a long straightaway hemmed
in by fences bordering fields that pushed up against houses and outbuildings
set way back. The scenery was occasionally split up on the left and right by
gravel drives and the ubiquitous accoutrements of country living: tired-looking
tractors and rusted-out cars. They saw a burn pile stacked high with charred
skulls and knobby vertebra and gnarled limbs. Saw lone Zs traipsing the
countryside here and there.

But the road was clear for the first couple of miles.

Out of the blue, Chief said, “Thanks for taking care of the
girl. That was a girl ... right?”

Brook nodded. Thought about how there was nothing menacing
about the pair—save for the fact that they’d fired on her and her friends
first. She gripped the wheel tight one-handed and swiped some stray tears away
with the other.

“I’m dying,” Chief said, his eyes locked on the low hills
outside his window.

Brook drove in silence for a while. Finally, when the
straightaway was coming up to a slight bend, she said, “I know. But you need to
hold on. Don’t leave us before the miracle.”

Brow furrowed, he said, “What do you mean?”

“Just hang on. I remember you saying you never got sick. How
you had the constitution of a bull elephant. Remember that?” She wiped another
tear.

“I’m Percy Blackwing and I approved that message.” Chief saw
Brook do a quick double take.

“That’s your real name?”

Nodding, he said, “Yeah. See why I preferred Chief?”

Brook smiled. “You have a valid point.”

“Percy was my granddad’s name.”

“Thanks for sharing that with me. But I was serious when I
said
hang on
. Tap that fucking constitution, Chief.”

“Does this have something to do with the antiserum everybody
was going on about right after you and Raven and Cade arrived?”

Keeping her eyes on the road, Brook nodded and, in a low
voice, said, “Just hang on.
Please
.”

Chief pulled his right pants leg up. He showed Brook the
pair of zip-ties he’d fashioned into a big loop. It was cinched down below his
knee and the ragged scratches below it were blazing red. The rest of his leg,
however, from the makeshift tourniquet on down, was turning a troubling shade
of blue. With a granite set to his jaw, he said, “I’m one step ahead of you.
Took care of it when you were chatting with the Kids. I figured it might help
me make it back to the compound ... alive. I’ve got a special place where I
plan to end it.”

Brook shook her head. She said, “The bite is below your
right buttock.”

Inexplicably, he chuckled. “I got bit on the buttocks.” He
said buttocks all nasally and Forrest-Gump-like.

Brook couldn’t smile at that. She just heard:
I’ve got a
special place where I plan to end it
over-and-over and it made her think of
the ending to
Where the Red Fern Grows
. Only that was about a boy losing
his Irish Setter. This was different. She was on the verge of losing a gentle
soul who she’d grown fond of these past few weeks. Not wanting to cry, she kept
her eyes ahead and pedal pinned and dodged the trickle of walkers coming at
them. A short while later, she slowed and negotiated a pair of wrecked cars and
saw another roadblock off in the distance. Only this one wasn’t made of metal,
glass, and rubber. And there were no warm bodies with trained weapons and
shadowy ambitions.

This impediment to further forward travel was the distant
movement responsible for the dust cloud Chief had pointed out just minutes ago.
It consisted of cold flesh and bone. The weapons: tooth and nail. Shadowy or
otherwise, there were no ambitions. Only an unstoppable drive and built-up
lockstep momentum fueled by an insatiable hunger for human flesh. And there
were thousands of them, shoulder to shoulder, still kicking up dust and grass
seed as they came down off the rise nearly a mile distant.

Chief chuckled again and said, “So much for your lonely
stretch of highway.”

Brook said nothing. She braked hard and whipped the truck
into a quick left-hand one-eighty. Gravel was kicked up and pinged the slewing
Raptor as the wheels on Chief’s side came dangerously close to entering the
ditch beyond the shoulder on the southbound lane. But Brook powered through the
turn and merely gestured to a startled Taryn and mouthed
follow me
as
the two trucks passed side on.

A little over an hour and roughly two hundred miles from
east Los Angeles, Cade was awakened by loud voices. Keeping his eyes closed, he
surreptitiously upped the volume on his head set and eavesdropped while Cross
and Griff argued over which of the famous Las Vegas Rat Pack was the coolest.
After a lengthy period of back and forth banter during which Cross proclaimed
adamantly that Dean Martin was
the shit
and Griffin protested by saying
that
the warbling drunk couldn’t carry Sammy Davis Junior’s jock strap
,
a God-like voice boomed from the cabin speakers and Ari settled the affair by
announcing
Elvis Aaron Presley
as the coolest of them all.

Groans filled the cabin and Haynes’s voice rode over them
all as he scolded Ari for not knowing the
Rat Pack
from the
Brat Pack
.

Eyes still closed, Cade smiled and tried to tune out the
verbal melee as it took a new tangent and the aircrew and team of operators
began discussing the cinematic merits of
Weird Science
,
Pretty in
Pink,
and finally
The Breakfast Club
. Cade nodded off after hearing
Ari declare how much of a crush he had had on Molly Ringwald
back in the day
.

If Cade would have taken a peek before drifting off again he
would have seen Nadia sitting on the fold-down seat next to Skipper, the IV bag
now hooked to the superstructure overhead, tubes still delivering electrolytes
into her arm.

And he would have gotten a morbid chuckle from the permanent
look of incredulity projected by Emily, who, ninety minutes into the trip, was
still coming to grips with having had the misfortune of being strapped into an
uncomfortable seat beside an American-flag-draped dead body inside an aircraft
that looked like it had been sent from outer space to rescue her.

But he hadn’t. He was asleep and blissfully unaware of the
trials and tribulations faced by his better half, roughly four hundred miles
away north by east as the crow flies.

To create some distance from the horde, Brook quickly pushed
the F-650 past sixty. With the Raptor keeping pace, she blasted north down 16
for nearly a mile and then braked violently and slewed the rig between a pair
of nondescript wooden fence posts, choosing the drive based solely on how far
off the road the cluster of buildings representing a modicum of shelter were
located.

So as not to create a telltale cloud of dust for the
monsters to follow, she kept the speed down as the truck lurched and bucked over
the pitted dirt track.

Post and beam fencing, gnarled by time and weather, filed by
slowly, left and right. Beyond the fence was a vast beaten-down pasture
corralling the gnawed-on remains of dozens of some species of hooved creature.
And caught in the patches of barbed thistle slowly retaking the land were
softball-sized tufts of fine fur or wool in differing shades of brown and
orange.

The radio in the console vibrated. Steering one-handed,
Brook snatched it up, keyed to talk, and said, “What?”

“What? That’s all you’ve got? What are you getting us into
is what I’d like to know,” wailed Wilson.

“It’s what I’m trying to get us out of, Wilson. Besides ...
I’ve come this far. I’m not going back without the stuff I came for. After the
herd passes, you can get the hell out of here if you like.”

“If the herd passes,” said Sasha in the background.

There was a second of silence on the open channel before
Wilson said, “You saw what happened to Jenkins’s Tahoe. You dang well better
hope they didn’t see us.”

“Even if they did, we put enough distance between us and
them. We’ll lay low and let them pass,” Brook said. “After they do ... you can
do what you want. Go back to the compound ... whatever suits you.”

Ignoring Brook’s offer, Wilson said, “I just hope whatever killed
those animals in the field aren’t still here.”

Chief shook his head.

Brook said, “Chief says they’re gone. I’m hoping there’s no
humans here.”

Again Chief shook his head.

Brook said nothing.

The truck crested a rise and lurched into a deep pothole and
came out the other side with a slight side-to-side shimmy that quickly
dissipated. Dead ahead was a dingy white turn-of-the-century farmhouse. The
two-story swaybacked affair had a wraparound porch and a white picket railing
partially obscuring a pair of wooden rocking chairs. Opposed diagonally, a
hundred yards right of the house, was a brick-red barn connected to a towering
metal silo. The doors were huge slabs of wood painted red with opposing white
timbers marking each with a big X. The doors, which appeared to slide open
horizontally from each other—likely on wheels riding inside a hidden overhead
track—were secured with a pair of industrial-sized padlocks, their chromed
cases gleaming mightily in the sun.

Breaking off from the unimproved approach to the house was a
gently curved left-to-right drive, like a hand scythe minus the straight grip.
A handful of trees, neither small nor large, lined the south side of the
west-facing home. A mess of gravel was strewn about in front for parking on.

Behind the house, providing a natural barrier of sorts east
and north, was a narrow winding river, its blue water making a constant lazy
churn south to an inevitable merger with the Green River.

Brook keyed the radio and said, “We’re here.” And after a
second glance at the impenetrable-looking barn doors, added, “We’ll turn around
and park both trucks out of sight beside the barn.”

“As if we have a choice,” said Wilson. “Wouldn’t
inside
the barn be safer?”

Ignoring the comment, Brook put the radio aside and cut the
wheel to negotiate the narrow opening between a tilling tool adorned with
dozens of rusting discs and a green tractor that looked highly capable of
towing it. A tick later she stopped mid-turn when the door to the home opened
and out stepped a slightly stooped gray-haired man with a long gun cradled
comfortably in his withered hands. The relic, looking to have hailed from the
Hatfield vs. McCoy era, had an ornately carved stock and side-by-side blued
barrels that were presently moving on a steady upward arc.

Staring down the dual muzzles that looked capable of
slinging quarter-sized chunks of lead her way, Brook made a snap decision which
was partially dictated by the last encounter, yet mainly a byproduct of what
her gut was telling her. She stuck her left hand out the window, palm down, and
made a patting motion she hoped the Kids would interpret as
stand down
.
With the barrel still aimed at her open window and unwavering, she stilled the
engine and smiled at the man.

Eyes moving steadily between the two trucks, the man said,
“There’s a high-powered rifle trained on the tattooed girl’s head. You’re
trespassing. Turn around and leave now and nobody gets hurt.”

Brook grabbed her Glock off the seat and made a show of
placing it on the dash. Then she stuck that hand out the door and opened it
from outside.

The man took a step closer to the porch’s edge, but stayed
in its shadow. He said, “You have to five,” and started a count.

Brook lowered herself to the ground and moved into the open,
hands up. She cast a glance at the Kids and locked her gaze with a wide-eyed
Sasha. Slowly, she mouthed, “It’s going to be OK,” then turned back and took a
step towards the old man. “Please let us stay out here, in our trucks, until
those things pass. We’ll be no trouble ... we won’t ask for a thing. And we’ll
leave the second they pass.”

The man was at three when he paused the countdown and said,
“If you leave now, you can get ahead of them and go back the way you came from.
At least you’ll live to see another day.”

“We ... I can’t. My little girl is dying,” she said. “She
might not see tomorrow if we don’t get to the next town south of here. There
has to be a pharmacy or doctor’s office still not thoroughly looted.”

The count didn’t resume. The shotgun barrel drooped a few
degrees and the man just stared at Brook.

Brook could almost hear the gears turning. As if the
pendulum of fate was once again swinging in her family’s direction. Maybe it
was her lucky day and the blade had just cleaved Mister Murphy in half for her.

Finally, after a couple glances at the horde, which by now
was creating a kind of humming sound from their combined footfalls and low
guttural moaning, the old guy rooted in a pocket and tossed a set of keys on
the dirt near Brook’s feet. “I don’t much like tattoos,” he said. “The guy in
your rig goes with the others. I want you to lock them all inside the barn and
then you return
with
the keys... and unarmed.”

I’m his insurance policy
, thought Brook. She smiled
and nodded to the old man and then scooped up the keys and hustled to the barn.
She opened both locks and, with Wilson’s help, parted the heavy doors.

In seconds she and Taryn had wheeled the trucks inside the
barn and, after sharing a few words with Chief and the Kids, Brook was alone
outside the red doors and snapping the locks shut.

“Hurry.
Now
,” called the man from the porch,
gesturing with the shotgun. “They’re real close.”

Once inside and the man had battened up the door behind
them, Brook looked around at the dark wood-paneled walls, letting her gaze
settle on the works of art and ceramics scattered here and there. All in all,
inside, the place seemed a few decades more modern than the impression she’d
gotten upon first seeing the place. Continuing her covert recon, she glanced at
a stairway a dozen feet to her right and following the stairs up caught a brief
glint of light off of metal. As she squinted, trying to see into the shadowy
recesses, the man said, “I’m Ray. I want you to meet my better half, Helena.”

There was a creaking from the direction of the stairs and a
woman with a cherubic face and rosy cheeks emerged into the bars of light
spilling through the rectangular window above the front door. She smiled and
lowered the bolt-action hunting rifle Brook presumed had been trained on her
the entire time.

“Sit. Sit,” said Ray. He motioned to a simple bench pushed
against a plate window overlooking the circular drive, barn and highway beyond.

Brook straddled the bench and said, “Thank you. And though
she doesn’t know it
yet
... my daughter thanks you, too.”

Ray set the shotgun aside and said, “Tell me about your
daughter.”

***

While Brook was recounting the bicycle accident and the
resulting collapsed lung and the type of equipment she needed to fix the
problem without making it worse, Helena was banging pots and humming away in
the other room which had to be the kitchen, judging from the nice aroma wafting
into the parlor.

While the matronly lady set the nearby table with service
for three, Brook started at Z day and told Ray how she and her small family had
survived that hellish nightmare, all the while praying the multitudes of
monsters of their present-day nightmare would stop filing by so she could
continue her quest south.

As if he knew what Brook was thinking, Ray cleared his
throat and said, “Sometimes it takes the deaders hours to pass. We knew they
were coming ... eventually. Helen saw a vehicle pass by shortly before you and
your friends showed up. She figured they were being followed. And she was
right.”

Helen poked her head around the doorway. She said, “I
usually am, Raymond.”

Brook said, “There
was
a vehicle at the 39 and 16
junction.”

“Camouflage paint and Wyoming plates?” asked Helena.

Brook nodded.

Helen entered the parlor and stood in front of Brook, a long
kitchen knife in her hand. She hitched a brow and asked, “What happened to
them?”

Brook stayed silent for a beat. Then she said, “You want the
truth? Or should I tell you what I think you’d want to hear?”

Ray scooped up the shotgun and said, “While I appreciate
your concern for our sensibilities ... considering the bandage on your noggin,
the truth will do just fine.”

Over the course of twenty minutes Brook spilled her guts.
Held nothing back. She cried a little and when she was done she felt like she’d
just emerged from a confessional. Not rejuvenated. But maybe absolved. At least
in her mind.

“You have a trusting look about you,” Helen said, gesturing
with the knife. “And I think you all did what you had to do in order to
survive. And you know, young lady ...” She paused and smiled wide. “I have a
feeling Saint Peter will take that one with a grain of salt.”

Helen disappeared into the other room.

Ray paced over to the window and said, “You see those
carcasses in my pasture?”

Brook followed his gaze and nodded.

“Those
were
Alpacas. Beautiful animals. Me and Helena
are ... were ranchers,” he said. “Those bones out there
were
our
retirement nest egg. Thirty head. Three hundred thousand give or take worth of
animals and future stud fees ... all eaten by former humans that just climbed
in there overnight. I gather they chased them until the poor things were tired
out and then had their fill of them. Most expensive buffet ever were Helen’s
exact words after we awoke and found the monsters eating them. Hell,
we
were planning on eating a couple of them this winter. They’re gone now. No use
crying over spilled milk. Besides ... not much to spend a nest egg on going
forward. There certainly is no trip to Florida in our future.”

Ray liked to talk, that much was clear. As long as he wasn’t
holding the gun and Helen wasn’t hovering nearby with a knife, Brook was happy
to continue listening and nodding. Every few minutes, though, she’d look at the
Zs filing by and wish she had the satellite phone and handheld CB so she could
check in on Raven and maybe throw Cade a text to see if he was alright. But she
didn’t. So she remained passive and patient and sat looking out the window,
willing Ray to keep talking, Helen to keep cooking, and the Zs to move faster.