Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (37 page)

Somewhere above Utah

The hollow thunk of the Ghost Hawk disengaging from the
refueling tanker jolted Cade awake. Instinctively his hands went for his
carbine. A millisecond later he recognized the white noise of the turbines and
muffled rotor signature and relaxed. A tick after that he opened his eyes and
stretched and noticed the trailing fuel line and fluttering drogue chute
tracking slightly above and right of the stealth helo’s nose.

Through the port side glass he saw the land below gliding
by. From altitude a large swath of ochre desert was crisscrossed by gray
stripes of road that merged and ran through a mosaic of circles and rectangles
in varied shades of browns and greens. Tiny white and red structures, some with
shiny corrugated roofs, rose up here and there.
Farmland going fallow,
he
thought.
Nobody left to eat all that food anyway.
He returned his gaze
to the blue sky visible through the cockpit glass and watched the gray-blue
turboprop, still trailing the refueling boom, gain some altitude. Suddenly
there was a flurry of radio chatter in his headset as rounds of beer were
promised and then, as absurd as it sounded, considering money had lost all
value, an argument broke out over which air crew was buying first. Then there
was a whirr and a clunk somewhere fore and below his feet as the refueling boom
retracted back into Jedi One-One’s fuselage, thus reducing her radio signature
by a large degree.
Not that it mattered
, thought Cade. All of the
threats to the helo and everyone aboard were below them on the ground. And as
long as Ari kept them airborne from here—wherever here was—to the compound and
his family, he didn’t care if every Z they overflew detected the chopper.

Out of left field the girl named Emily asked, “How can you
sleep this close to a dead man?”

Cade answered, “Because he’s one of the lucky ones. He’s not
coming back hungry.”

Emily couldn’t take her eyes off the form so Cade tried
distracting her with conversation. “Where are we?” he asked.

Still staring at the husk that used to be Lasseigne, she said,
“I don’t know.”

But Ari did. And he just so happened to be listening in. He
said, “We just finished our third and final refueling of the trip. We’ll be
setting down in fifteen minutes northwest of Moab.”

“Why are we landing?” asked Cade.

“To transfer the girls. They’ll go the rest of the way to
Schriever in the Osprey.”

Cade nodded. Said, “ETA to home?”

“Wait one,” said Haynes. “I’m working it up for you.”

While Cade waited, he alternated between looking out the
port and starboard windows. For as far as he could see the landscape had a
reddish-orange hue, made more so by the low westering sun. Smooth wave-looking
formations rose up, lending the impression they’d been frozen
mid-geological-break. There were spires of wind-eroded sandstone and canyons and
arches both formed by eons of hydraulic influence.

Haynes finally came back on and said, “Ninety minutes. Give
or take.”

Cade fished out the sat-phone, hit a key to wake it up, and
saw there were no new messages. Which was a good thing to see. So he tapped out
a message to let Brook know approximately when he would be returning to the
compound.

The phone went back into his pocket. Then he lolled his head
right, closed his eyes, and through his lids still detected a faint residual
glow of the sun-splashed landscape flitting by outside the starboard side
window.

FOB Bastion

The two-way radio on Beeson’s desk emitted an electronic
trill. He picked it up, hit the Talk key, and said, “Beeson.”

A voice on the other end came out of the speaker and said,
“The DHS bird is ready.”

Beeson said, “Thank you,” though it was more of a grunt than
two one-syllable words. He looked a question at Duncan.

Duncan said, “I was out of here two hours ago.” He rose from
his chair and thanked Beeson for everything.

Beeson said, “A little nip for the road?”

Shaking his head, Duncan said, “Thanks. But, no. I’ve got a
fella who can take the stick now and again ... but I’ve got to be OK to take
off and land that bird.”

“Are you ... OK?”

“Thanks to you, I am now.” With one hand already on the door
knob, Duncan held his other out palm flat to the ground. It was no longer
jumping like a live flounder in a frying pan.

Beeson tossed the empty cups in the wastebasket and gave the
Vietnam-era aviator a wink and a nod.

***

Daymon rose from the ground, walked from the Black Hawk’s
shadow and met Duncan a dozen feet from Lev and Jamie, out of earshot. Talking
slowly and putting extra emphasis on each word, he asked the older man how he
was doing.

“Fine,” replied Duncan.

“Fucked up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional?”

“Just the latter three,” said Duncan. “I’m OK to fly. Raven,
on the other hand ... is not doing well.” He detailed all that he knew.

Running his hands through his stubby dreads, Daymon asked,
“And Cade?”

“No idea,” answered Duncan. Pointing at Daymon’s hands,
which were grease-streaked, complete with dirty fingernails, he asked, “You
were helping them with the chopper?”

“Yep. And Jamie and Lev also. We learned a lot and helped
shave an hour or two off of our stay here.”

“I owe you then,” said Duncan. “Stick time on the way home
for Urch. Let’s mount up.”

A handful of minutes later the fully refueled Black Hawk was
in the air and the little group of survivors had put FOB Bastion in their
metaphorical rearview mirrors.

Utah Farmhouse

At the end of the rutted drive, after enduring the jarring
return trip to the smooth asphalt of Highway 16, Brook rolled the F-650 to a
crunching halt so Chief could find a more comfortable position for the
thirty-minute ride ahead of them.

The second they wheeled out of the barn and the sunlight
spilled into the cab she had noticed that his deeply tanned skin had taken on a
gray pallor. Now, some five-odd minutes later, he was going white. She saw his
eyelids flutter and said, “Chief. Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Simultaneously, the two-way radio came to life and the
sat-phone vibrated in her pocket against her thigh. “What are we waiting for?”
asked Wilson in clipped syntax, a hard edge to his voice.

Brook said nothing. She thought:
He’s stressed
.
Hell,
who isn’t.
She’d had a swarm of butterflies bouncing around inside her gut
since the realization Chief was dying finally sunk in.

Pressing, Wilson said, “There’s a trickle of rotters coming
from the left. Let’s go.”

Brook said, “Gimme a second, will you, Wilson?” She tossed
down the radio. Pulled up the hinged lid and stuck her arm elbow-deep into the
center console, searching for something by feel. After stirring the contents
and dragging her nails across the very bottom she came up with a handful of
heavy duty plastic zip-ties.

Wilson again: “
Better look up now.”

Shooting the radio a dirty look, Brook snatched up her
Glock, the suppressor still attached, and peered over her left shoulder. Always
amazed by the Zs’ tenacity she shook her head and checked the chamber for the
glint of brass. Then, cursing under her breath, she punched out of her seatbelt
and powered down the window.

There was a guttural groan from the passenger seat. Then,
immediately following, a low rasp from the trio of deaders—as Helen and Ray had
called them—carried to her window.
Deaders. Has a nice ring to it
, she
thought as she squeezed the trigger continuously and the pistol bucked in her
two-handed grasp.

“Good shooting,” said Wilson over the radio. In the
background, Brook heard Sasha up to her usual and hollering at Taryn to drive.
With a looming sadness, Brook flicked her eyes to Chief , half-expecting to see
he had turned. Instead, his eyes were open and he was smiling. He coughed and
whispered, “Good shooting,” then his eyes fluttered once and stayed shut.

Spirits suddenly buoyed, Brook shifted her gaze to the three
fallen deaders. She let it linger on the child-sized monster with the
thoroughly shattered skull and instantly recognized the pink shirt the little
girl had been wearing when she turned. Printed on its front were the likenesses
of six different Disney princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel,
Belle, and Jasmine. In a plastic storage bin under the bed she and Cade had
shared in Portland was an identical shirt Raven had grown out of four years
ago. Just one of the treasures that had no place in this new world.

With Disneyland’s demise and all of the things she used to
take for granted running through her mind, Brook secured Chief’s wrists with
two of the zip-ties. He was unresponsive now and seemed not to notice. Then she
leaned across the console and tightened the seat belt around his waist, and
with her head near his couldn’t help but notice how his shallow breathing had
turned ragged and now contained an underlying wet rattle.

Ten minutes seemed like a lifetime sitting in the Raptor
with so much horsepower at her disposal and nowhere to go. Fingers knuckle
white on the steering wheel, Taryn said, “Do you think Brook is doing what
I
think she’s doing?”

“No,” said Wilson. “If Chief dies we’ll be the first to
know. She wasn’t lying to us about his condition before. I just think she
didn’t want to misdiagnose his wounds. With Jenkins gone she probably didn’t
want to jump the gun and sign Chief’s death warrant.”

Sasha said, “Lying by omission is still lying, Wilson.”

Taryn turned to face Sasha and said, “Me and her have butted
heads ... but I still trust her.”

“And so do I.” proffered Wilson.

Sasha nudged Max aside and leaned over the seat back and
stared at Wilson. “Alright,
Amazing Kreskin
,” she said, a thick vein of
sarcasm in her tone. “Why don’t you tell me what she’s doing in there
right
now
.”

Looking sidelong at his sister, Wilson said, “Cuffing him so
he’s less of a threat if he does turn.”

Knowing there wasn’t a valid argument to counter what Wilson
said, Sasha growled something unintelligible and slammed back into her seat.

In the F-650 Brook rattled the shifter into
Drive
and
steered the big Ford onto the two-lane.

Heading north on 16 with the Raptor on her bumper, Brook divided
her attention between the scattered groups of slow moving Zs and watching the
road a good distance ahead.

With the navigation unit still on the fritz and her gut
telling her Randolph and the junction with 39 was near, she halved her speed
from sixty.

Highway 16 jogged to the west and went laser-straight for a
short distance with familiar-looking farms passing on the right and the
T-shaped tops of power poles and horizontal lines showing through the trees
north of them. Brook picked up the radio, keyed to talk, and said, “Stay
frosty. I see Woodruff to the right so we’re real close now. And if we
encounter Zs around the corner I’m going right over top of them and making a
thunder run for the junction.” She looked at her watch. Thirteen minutes had passed
since they left the farmhouse behind.

When Brook finally cut the corner where 16 became Main
Street, trees and fencing momentarily blocked her view of the distant
intersection. However, she could see the camouflage Blazer listing in the ditch
opposite the southbound lane. But what troubled her most was that Jenkins’s
Tahoe was in the far ditch and the school bus was now perpendicular to 16 with
its bashed-in front end facing her. It was immediately obvious the force of the
passing horde when they emerged from the narrow highway and spread out at the
junction had spun the bus ninety degrees to the north, leaving a fresh arc of
yellow paint on the blacktop and the mess of pulped bodies it and the Tahoe had
been resting atop exposed and drying in the afternoon sun.

Suddenly Taryn’s voice emanated from the radio. Drawing the
words out, she said, “We are fucked.”

“Don’t worry. We have a winch,” Brook stated rather
pragmatically given the circumstances. She stopped the Ford a dozen yards short
of the inches-deep pink and white paste. And to her horror saw movement in
there. A hand protruding skyward twitched and the fingers started kneading the
air. Elsewhere, tethered by a knot of sinew and trapezius muscle and still
receiving nerve impulses, a single left arm pulled along a misshapen head and
length of bare spinal column. Reach. Grip. Pull. The disgusting mess moved at a
glacial pace. Reach. Grip. Pull. She couldn’t believe her eyes, but it was
there—crossing the road from left to right.

Brook slapped the transmission into
Park
, grabbed her
carbine and Glock, and opened the door. She paused and looked over at Chief and
saw the rise and fall of his chest. She also saw the blue veins showing under
his skin. Like runners of ivy they seemed to be climbing up his neck and
branching out on his parchment white cheek.
Just like Archie.
She hopped
down to the road, looked towards the Raptor, and motioned Wilson over.

Once Wilson arrived she gestured at the eighth of a former
human being crawling near the centerline and watched with amusement as he
flinched at the sight of it and made an instant course correction providing an
ample buffer between him and the thing seemingly yanked from his nightmares. He
formed up next to Brook, Beretta in hand, and asked, “How in God’s name is that
thing’s arm still working?”

“The brain is still functioning and the still-connected
spinal cord is delivering impulses to what’s left of it. Simple biology ... or
science.”

Wilson said, “Or evil.”

Brook retraced Wilson’s steps and came at the oddity from
behind and began raining blows with her M4’s collapsed buttstock to its
lopsided skull. After the third resonant
thunk
the futile migration
across the highway had ceased. But for good measure Brook jumped off the
roadway and, with all of her weight in play, delivered a final vicious strike
with her rifle that sent a shiver through her forearms and split the skull
cleanly in two. As fluid and dribbles of brain matter spilled out onto the
blacktop, she faced Wilson and said, “It’s done moving. Satisfied?”