Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (34 page)

And that thought led to an idea.

Brook asked, “Who’s going to clear the area?”

Cade smiled, “Great minds, honey. Great minds.” He popped a
handful of ibuprofen sans water and grabbed the two-way, then cracked his door.
A tick later the Raptor rolled by and, with the sound of gravel crunching under
its tires, parked on the shoulder just past the driveway.

Cade climbed out of Black Beauty and tested his weight on
the ankle which seemed to be feeling better with each passing hour. Then he
noticed the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees. It was almost
tolerable now. About eighty, he guesstimated. He hiked his sleeves up and checked
the time on his Suunto. Twenty-four hours to go.
No sweat
. Before going
anywhere, he scanned the State road in both directions. There was nothing to
see there so he walked across the road and listened hard. Other than the soft
idles of the distant engines, there was nothing to hear. None of the telltale
moaning or raspy hissing to indicate the dead were on to them. Like Duchesne,
Hanna looked to be a ghost town.
Hell
, he thought.
The whole world
was becoming one big ghost town
.

Wilson and Taryn approached him, walking cautiously, heads
on a swivel, eyeballing every blind corner. Brook had done well with the kids
while he was out. He noticed that they both were carrying a bottled water and
eating something from an olive drab wrapper, most likely straight out of an
MRE.

With gravel squelching underneath her boots, Brook rounded
the front of the Ford and greeted Wilson and his ‘
driver’
with a
half-smile and a hug.

“Gotta rub it in, huh? I’m never going to drive that thing.”
Wilson looked at Taryn and gave her shoulder a playful nudge.

She smiled but made no reply.

“Someone’s got to keep up the pressure.” Brook’s lips became
a thin white line and, still reeling internally from the Green River shootout,
she lowered her voice and asked, “How are you two doing after the encounter
back there?”

Wilson said, “Which encounter? There were half a dozen,
seemed like.”

“The road above Green River.”

Wilson looked away. Went silent for a moment, then said,
“Like I told Sash and Tee. We did what we had to in order to survive. No
telling whose bullets did them in. No sense worrying over it neither.”

Eyes welling with tears, Taryn looked at Brook, then Wilson,
and turned away.

Changing the subject, Brook asked, “How’s the cheek?” But
before Wilson could answer, the F6-50’s rear door swung open and Max bounded to
the pavement and charged over to Cade where he sat at his feet, stubby tail
thumping furiously.

“Go ahead, boy,” said Cade.

Wasting no time, Max shot off like a furry rocket in the
direction of the aspens.

Seeing Raven clamber from the truck, Cade motioned her over.
He slipped his backup Glock from the shoulder holster, checked the chamber, and
handed it to her butt first. “It’s loaded. Keep the muzzle pointed towards the
ground until ... ” After taking the compact pistol from him, Raven finished his
sentence. “Until I’m ready to use it. Keep my finger off the trigger—which
happens to be where the safety is located—until I’m ready to engage the
threat.”

Cade arched a brow, looked at Brook and delivered a covert
wink. Shifting his gaze back to Raven, he said, “Mom sure has you dialed in.
How about we go and see what Max is up to?” He bent down to Raven’s height and
whispered in her ear, “And while we’re at it, find us a real toilet.” He hauled
the Glock 17 from its holster and with a quick twist attached the suppressor to
its business end.

Brook grabbed his attention. She asked, “Do you have a
radio?”

Cade patted a cargo pocket and said, “Roger that,” then put
his arm around Raven’s shoulder and steered her towards the wrecked RV.

Chapter 51

Carson freed her legs first. She was certain, judging by the
scratches on his face and the way he let his rough hands linger on her calves
and ankles, that when the cuffs came off, deep down he wanted her to get out of
line so he could follow through with his earlier threat.

His upper body hovered near as he worked the key in the
cuffs. He freed her left hand first. As her hand fell limply to the bed, Jamie
flicked her gaze up to the side of his neck where she could see the subtle blue
line of his carotid, or jugular, she wasn’t quite sure which, snaking its way
vertically from collarbone to ear just underneath the skin. She parted her
teeth and prayed for him to get complacent. To lean across her body in order to
reach the other cuff and provide her the one opportunity she had been waiting
for.

But Carson was no dummy. He finished with her left and
walked around the bed and repeated the process on her right. Then, without a
word, and never once taking his eyes off of her, he made her pick a dress from
the pile and then ushered her towards the adjoining bathroom.

She saw him in the hall mirror, back to an interior wall,
watching her undress. She peeled off her cotton fatigue pants and shrugged out
of her blood-stained tee-shirt. Standing there in bra and panties, she could
feel his eyes on her. Gathering up her courage, she looked at his reflection
and saw that he was watching her intently. However, due to his body language
and where he parked his eyes, she could tell that he wasn’t doing it just for
jollies. He seemed to be focusing on her hands more than anything. Making sure
she didn’t surreptitiously sneak a nail file, or a pair of nail clippers or
anything else that she could use as a makeshift weapon. He was a professional.
That much was clear. And if the man she was about to meet instilled enough fear
or respect or perhaps a healthy dose of both in him to keep him on his toes,
then she was pretty certain that for her to make it out of the house alive she
would be needing much more than a random mani-pedi tool or sharp piece of
kitchen cutlery. She sighed. Right about now her glass was half-empty, the
waterline steadily receding.

Meeting his eyes in the mirror, she asked, “How does this
look?”

He said nothing.

“It’s kind of seventies chic, don’t you think? Your friend
going to like it?”

He made no reply. Arms crossed, he simply nodded towards the
door.

The number she’d chosen for the big date was low cut,
contained less material than a Scottish kilt, and fell across her thighs even
higher. Due to the sheer nature of the fabric, something manmade, rayon or
nylon she guessed, the thing threatened to reveal her feminine grooming habits
with even the slightest movement.

A lifelong tomboy, jeans and tee-shirts were more in her
wheelhouse than the form-fitting leggings and skorts favored by other girls.
Including the one wedding she had endured as a bridesmaid, she could count on
one hand the number of times she had ever donned a dress. Though she didn’t let
it show, up to this point in her life she had never worn an article of clothing
that caused her skin to crawl more so than this throwback to the disco era.

Time to go ‘all in,’
she thought. Then, with Carson
still watching, she reached back and unhooked her bra and shrugged it off and
let it fall to the tile floor. She adjusted the top of the skanky burnt-orange
dress so that a good amount of cleavage showed. Then she stepped out of her
panties, kicked them away and looked in the mirror while thinking,
What’s
the point?
At best, the no-frills cotton articles were only going to
prolong the inevitable. At worst, one of them would provide the mystery man a
perfect ligature.

***

The tuxedo was on the back wall of the walk-in-closet,
zippered inside a vinyl bag containing all of the necessary accoutrements: bow
tie, cummerbund, dickey, and shoes. Like the jogging clothes, the formal wear
was a couple sizes too small. He buttoned up the white shirt as far as
possible, leaving the top two open and the seventeen-inch collar parted. From a
jewelry box he took a pair of gold cufflinks and secured the starched cuffs.
Then he laid down flat on the bed and zipped and buttoned the high-water
slacks.

The necktie took him three tries to make presentable.

Grimacing, he squeezed the patent leather shoes on and laced
them loosely.

He stepped across the master bedroom and stopped in front of
the floor-to-ceiling mirror and checked his work. Service dress white uniform
this was not. Judging by the recent pictures of the lake home’s former owners,
both well into their fifties, both packing around the extra weight accrued from
half a lifetime of eating without thought of the consequences, and judging by
the white ruffles and powder blue color, he guessed the era of the suit to be
late seventies or early eighties. He did the math and realized that he had been
a kid when the tailor made the tux for its former owner who at the time was
likely in his twenties.

With a bass heavy Bee Gees track looping through his head,
he adjusted the tie, turned and walked stiffly towards the door. He closed the
door behind and drifted down the hall, borrowed shoes squelching against the
carpet. From behind the mystery door he could hear voices. Continuing on past
Elvis’s room he heard a male voice filtering through the door. Then there was loud
snoring followed by silence and a tick later the voice started back up. It was
unintelligible but the inflection was unmistakable—urgent and demanding. Then
the snoring kicked back in.

Figuring Elvis was in the throes of one hell of a nightmare,
Bishop ignored the commotion and continued on downstairs. He had been there. In
fact, the undead visited him every night in the form of ultra-realistic
nightmares that always started with him supine and holding a pistol with no
ammunition. Then like Groundhog Day, minus Sonny and Cher’s opening track, the
sneering faces of the dead descended on him, their cold hands clutching and
tearing. Lastly, he would be out of body and watching as clawlike blood-stained
hands rent steaming entrails from his abdomen. The recurring frequency and
vividness of the images were taking a toll on him. Making him believe that
somehow he was seeing his true fate played out every time he closed his eyes.

Born out of times of stress, he’d suffered before from
similar nightmares. Only in those it hadn’t been the hands of the dead
literally ripping out his guts. It had been a figurative disembowelment during
which his entire SEAL team was decimated by the Taliban because they had been
forced to follow ridiculous rules of engagement foisted upon them by
politicians who only set foot on the Godforsaken soil for a photo-op to add a
sort of unearned street-cred to their own personal dossiers. But everything
happened for a reason. Cause and effect. And his constant bending of those
inane rules of engagement, the worst being don’t shoot until you’re fired upon,
was seen as insubordination in some circles and eventually led to his ouster
from the teams. A life event that left him rudderless and open to accepting
Robert Christian’s financial aid.

While the recent nightmares had yet to come true, he feared
that the former had. He hadn’t heard from his brothers who were still on active
duty since before the outbreak. He feared that the same ROE-instituting
politicians who were responsible for keeping the population in the dark and
holding back the full might of the military early on in the outbreak had in
effect once again tied their hands and then thrown them to the wolves. Lambs to
the slaughter.

Sure, the odds against success were stacked mightily on the
side of failure. Enough to make an ordinary man give up and ‘
ring the bell
.’
But there wasn’t a quitter’s bone in Ian Bishop’s body ... he never would have
completed BUDs in Coronado a decade ago if there had been. So for now he was
content to wear down the dead through attrition. Elvis’s mission tomorrow would
be the first blow towards ridding the United States of the only thing he
feared. And if he used the rest of the devices to their full potential—placing
them near the highest concentrations of the dead—the odds would begin shifting
fast in his favor. He didn’t care to save mankind or get back at the
politicians and cry baby PC crowd who’d tried to micro manage his job over
there. Nope, he just wanted to take out as many of the walking flesh bags as possible.
And if he couldn’t do it in his lifetime, then he wanted to make sure and leave
an heir behind who could finish the job he’d started.

Leaving the seat with a view for his date, he pulled out the
chair opposite and sat with his back to the lake. He poured the 1997 Silver Oak
Cabernet that Carson had selected from the cellar. Noting the shiny label, he
understood why his number two man had chosen it. The selection had nothing to
do with vintage, or terroir or varietal. Simply put, the silver leaf embossed
label screamed
pick me
. Being a beer man himself, Bishop was the
farthest thing from a sommelier. He corralled the pair of crystal Boudreaux
glasses Carson had also set out on the table and filled both of them to near
overflowing, then carefully moved hers back to its proper place.

Satisfied with the arrangement and feeling and looking—on
account of the dated attire—like a kid on a prom date, he put his hands on his
lap near where he had duct taped a compact .38 caliber snub-nose pistol to the
underside of the table and eyed the two rapidly cooling plates of meatless
spaghetti.

Chapter 52

After checking underneath the Winnebago and finding nothing
dangerous, Cade put an ear to the detritus-smeared aluminum skin just behind
the driver’s seat. Nothing stirring. He looked at Raven who was still holding
her weapon correctly, finger braced on the trigger guard. He mouthed, “Ready?”
After receiving a nod to the affirmative he made a fist and thumped on the side
of the RV. Three sonorous blows. They waited a second and, upon hearing no
response from within, crept past and moved along the left side of the
farmhouse.