Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (45 page)

***

Twelve miles and fifteen minutes later, with the visual of
the eviscerated examples still a strong imprint on his mind, the small town of
New Meadow rose from the heat shimmer. Thankfully a few hundred yards shy of the
city, the voice of the Tom Tom had him go right off of Idaho State Highway 55
and merge onto State Route 95, a north/south four-lane that a large orange road
sign warned was currently under construction.

And it had been. But was no longer. For the first three
miles, in addition to a steady stream of southbound zombies, he passed various
colorful pieces of idled heavy equipment. There were diggers, graders, dump
trucks, and a roller with a shiny steel drum big enough to flatten a herd of
walking dead and keep on rolling. The fantastic visual supplanted that of the
crucified and brought a rare smile to his face.

Chapter 68

Refueling at Morgan County Airport was a far cry from what
Cade and his team had experienced more than a week ago at Grand Junction
Regional. For one thing, a fuel-laden jetliner hadn’t landed short and plowed
through the perimeter fence trailing flames and strewing luggage and body parts
the length of the runway.

Here, two hundred twenty air miles removed from the killing
field that was GJR, the total opposite was true. The fencing around the
single-strip facility was intact, and whoever left last had taken care to lock
all points of entry behind them. The asphalt runway and helicopter pads
southwest of it were clear of obstructions.

Duncan brought the Black Hawk in slow and low just over a
copse of forty-foot-tall trees west of the airport, and put it down softly
thirty feet north of a pair of painted-on circles meant specifically for the
airport’s rotor-wing aircraft. After the engines spooled down and the rotor
noise subsided markedly, Cade hashed out a game plan and assigned Daymon and
Lev each a task to perform.

Cade gave the perimeter fencing a quick once-over with the
Bushnell’s. Nearby, just south of the landing pad, a small number of Zs were
clutching the fence and looking in. A few hundred yards behind them, on the
airport feeder road, at least two dozen more flesh eaters slowly ambled closer,
no doubt drawn in from the highway by the helicopter’s noisy entrance. All
total, Cade counted more than thirty and deduced with a cursory glance that the
hurricane fencing would most likely hold them at bay for the time being. Which
was a good thing because he had no desire to experience another hot refuel like
the one at Grand Junction. Then, with one eye on the dead and the avoidable
death of his former teammate Maddox fresh on his mind, he stepped from the
helicopter and instinctively ducked his head as he loped under the blurred
rotors towards the nearby fuel bowser.

He drew his Glock on the move and, once he’d covered the
distance, stretched to full extension and banged the butt of the polymer pistol
high up on the fuel tank’s smooth skin. At the curved apex, near the top fill
line, the sound rang hollow. However, halfway down, just above his eye level,
the raps from his gun returned music to his ears in the form of a bass heavy
report indicating there was still plenty of fuel inside.

He flashed a thumbs up towards the Black Hawk and, as
planned, Lev leaped out and sprinted across the tarmac. Together they ran the
hose to the chopper and Cade plugged the nozzle into the port which contained a
mechanism that automatically opened the valve and started the flammable fuel
flowing into the tanks, a risky proposition under normal conditions made more
so with the howling turbines and a quartet of blades cutting the air overhead.

While the transfer was taking place, Cade cast his gaze
beyond the rubber-streaked runway to the pair of single-engine Cessna
airplanes, the nearest of which bounced up and down slightly on its
tricycle-style landing gear. A minute later the plane stopped moving and Daymon
stepped from the door, wearing a wide grin and clutching a thick stack of what
to Cade looked like the kind of folded maps you’d find for sale at any corner
gas station.

Three minutes later the DHS bird’s tanks were full, and with
Lev’s help Cade ran the hose back to the bowser.

Back inside the chopper, Cade shrugged his harness on and
plugged his helmet into the comms jack. He craned over his shoulder and
confirmed Lev and Daymon were aboard and buckled in, then flashed Duncan a
thumbs up. Instantly the turbines spooled up and whined noisily and the
fuel-laden bird’s wheels parted with the tarmac and it rose steadily skyward,
nose already spinning northward.

Cade said, “How many charts did you find?”

Thumbing through them, Daymon replied, “Four.”

“Nicely done, gentlemen,” said Duncan as he leveled out the
lumbering bird and kicked the turbines up a degree. With the ground and distant
trees whipping steadily by, he looked over at Cade. “Where to, Boss?”

“Boise,” answered Cade. “Closest possible strip I know of
that’ll handle a G650.” Then, addressing Daymon over the comms, he said, “I
need you to go through the charts and find all of the airports in Idaho. Start
at Boise and work north.”

“Done,” replied Daymon as he clumsily unfolded the first map
that was supposed to contain detailed information about every airstrip in the
state, from the small public affairs like Morgan County all the way up to
facilities like Boise with multiple runways capable of handling even large
commercial jetliners.

Shrugging, Duncan said, “The man spoke. Boise it is.”

Chapter 69

The knife-edged ridges of the taller peaks to the west
reflected the rising sun as Elvis left the small towns of Pollock, Riggins, and
Lucile in his rearview. Then, with the Salmon River and the low mountains
scribbling along off his left shoulder, he chose a desolate zombie-free strip
of 95 on which to pull over and piss.

***

Thirty-three miles north up 95 and forty-five minutes after
leaving the puddle of steaming urine on the centerline, the voice in the box
instructed him to deviate from the highway and turn left onto the Johnston Road
Cutoff in order to, he presumed, bypass the nearby city of Grangeville showing
just to the east on the Tom Tom’s display.

Taking the nav unit’s advice, Elvis left 95 behind and
motored due north with huge fenced-in tracts of freshly tilled flatland
scrolling by on each side. He’d only made it three-fourths of a mile down the
straightaway when he came upon a dozen vehicles blocking the road. And behind
the vehicular wall were twice as many walking corpses, a good number of them
pressing against the far fence line.

What to do
, thought Elvis. He stopped the tow truck
and looked the scene over for a good ten minutes. There was not one kernel of
broken safety glass on his side of the block. He didn’t see so much as a smudge
of rubber on the roadway to indicate that any of the associated vehicles had
committed to any kind of hard braking prior to coming to rest in such a
haphazard fashion. And as far as he could tell, the same could be said for the
other side of the snarl. Suddenly he concluded that these vehicles had been
placed here in order to force someone, such as himself, into taking the path of
least resistance. To make turning around and going through Grangeville—where
certainly something more dangerous than twenty-some-odd rotting pusbags—look
like the lesser of two evils.

So he figured he had two options, and no matter which he
ultimately chose he would need to be facing south in order to execute it. So he
K-turned and parked facing south and sat in the cab with the window half-open
and Jerry Garcia serenading him through the speakers. He pulled his hat down
against the sun spilling in the window and balanced out the pros and cons in
his head, unaware that his music had gotten the creatures agitated to the point
where, clamoring for fresh meat, they crushed into one another in such a manner
that two of them—a grade-school-aged male and a petite African American
female—were inadvertently boosted up and over the trunk of an inert Chevy. Both
monsters spilled to the road face first, arms and legs askew, and then somehow
managed to get their sickly looking limbs to cooperate and dragged themselves
to their feet. Mouths working and eyes locked on the fresh meat, they advanced
on the truck from the driver’s side.

As the band harmonized about a long strange trip and Elvis’s
thoughts drifted to a warm tropical beach, something cold brushed his Adams
apple, causing him to start. In the next instant his hat slid from his head and
seemed to levitate its way out the window.

It only took a millisecond longer for him to regain his
composure and lean away from the window without losing a good chunk of flesh in
the process. “Think you caught me sleeping, did you? Well I wasn’t, you
motherfuckers,” he bellowed. “I was just resting my eyes.”

As he fumbled to get ahold of the .45, which lay on the seat
next to him, the undead duo hissed and reached into the window, their hands
leaving greasy slug tracks on everything they touched.

Enraged, Elvis screamed, “You’re gonna pay for that,
bitches.” He jacked a round into the chamber and poked the muzzle through the
open window. Instantly, the female grabbed ahold of both the gun and his hand
and drew them towards its gaping maw. “It’s all yours.” His lips curled up and
he pushed hard, wedging three inches of the barrel in deep and pulled the
trigger—twice. Small bits of vertebrae and flesh and blood sprayed in a flat
arc from the side of its neck as the thing crashed to the asphalt in a vertical
heap, paralyzed from the neck down, spinal cord completely shredded.

He put the smoking .45 on the dash and reached one hand out
the window and palmed the kid zombie on the forehead, a move he’d used
effectively on his kid sister many times when they were growing up. Then with
his free hand he extracted his boot knife and thumbed it open. Finally, with
the little monster flailing and snapping away, behind a brutal thrust, Elvis
buried the four-inch blade into little Johnny’s eye socket.

Pissed off at himself for letting the abominations catch him
sleeping, he donned his Husker cap, kicked open the door, and stepped over the
bodies, taking care to stay well clear of the female’s still-clicking teeth.

Seeing its eyes tracking him, he clucked his tongue and
knelt down on a bloodless patch of highway and in a sing-song voice said, “Look
what we went and got ourselves into.” Two quick thrusts of the blade into one
of the roving eyes followed up by a thorough twist of the wrist scrambled its
brains and stopped the incessant clicking.

Feeling nothing for who they might have been or who they
loved nor who loved them, Elvis cleaned the blood and brains off on the kid’s
Minecraft tee-shirt and clipped it back onto his belt.
What a sorry sight
,
he thought.
Gives new meaning to misspent youth.

Standing there on the lonely stretch of road with the noon
sun beating down and the murmurings of the nearby dead competing with the idling
engine, he came to a decision.

He leaned in and turned the volume to 8, which was more than
loud enough to start the creatures slam-dancing into each other again. He
stalked around to the passenger side and retrieved the AK-47 from the floor and
racked a round into the chamber.

Bracing a thigh on the Chevy’s rear quarter-panel, Elvis
opened fire point-blank on the moaning crowd. With the spent brass collecting
around his boots and the front row of zombies falling fast, the second echelon
unwittingly took advantage of the situation by crawling over the backs of the
fallen. Listening to the awful sound of flesh and bone hitting pavement, Elvis
back-pedaled several feet to a new position against the fence to his left and
watched the zombies spilling over the Chevy’s smooth trunk. After collecting
himself, he resumed firing until the magazine was empty, then switched to the
.45 and finished off the remaining few with single bullets to the brain.

As the sound of the gunshots dissipated, Elvis made his way
back to the truck and, using the lift apparatus, lowered the device to the
road.

After an hour spent hooking and unhooking cars and trucks,
he’d created a passage north. Ten minutes after that he had the device secured
to the tow truck and was accelerating away from the roadblock with the lyrics
sung by the Grateful Dead taking him back to early days of the outbreak.
What
a long strange trip
, indeed.

Chapter 70

From the Morgan airport the Black Hawk hammered a straight
line north through the morning sky, overflying Huntsville, where Cade noticed a
few more Zs patrolling the streets than there had been earlier. He cast his
gaze left at the Pineview reservoir which, contrary to the sad state of the
sacked town below, glistened silver and calm, a sharp contrast to the black
smudge on the horizon a number of miles to the northwest.

Seeing the haze in the distance, Duncan deviated a few
degrees right and a minute later Eden was slipping by off the starboard side.
Down below in an isolated sub-division abutting low hills on the town’s west
side, a raging fire jumped from house to house, the trees, lawns and
surrounding scrub tinder-dry from a long hot summer providing the perfect
catalyst.

By Cade’s estimation, already twenty or thirty structures
were involved and there appeared to be no end in sight. He asked the resident
firefighter, “Think Eden will be gone when we come back this way?”

Looking up from the map spread across his lap, Daymon said,
“Who’s gonna stop it? I just hope it doesn’t jump into the
Cache
. If it
does, the compound could be at risk.”