Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (47 page)

Daymon chuckled. “I just said to bring glasses. And Sarge
here came through with flying colors ... orange and yellow with streaks of
red.”

“I’d wear a pair of Groucho Marx shades if they helped me
see up close like these ones do.”

Laughing, Lev said, “With the big plastic nose and bushy
black ‘stache and brows?”

“Affirmative,” Duncan shot back.

Lev said, “Logan would have gotten a kick out of that.”

“And Jamie and Jordan and Gus. Hell, if we find Jamie alive
...”

Setting his jaw, Cade said, “We will.”

Duncan made no reply. Jordan’s death grimace had just
flashed in front of his eyes. He saw her wildly contorted form, bird-ravaged
and tangled in the briars. Consumed with rage, he suddenly found forming a
coherent thought let alone some kind of positive affirmation way too much work.

Save for the thumping blades and hardworking twin turbines,
the cabin remained deathly quiet as Duncan threaded the bird through the jagged
Sawtooth mountains.

***

Duncan covered the final twenty miles to the end waypoint
with an impressive bit of near NAP-of-the-earth flying. And considering that
Cade had informed him earlier of the presence of two AH-64 Apache attack
helicopters parked on the tarmac at the nearby McCall airport, who could blame
him.

In fact, Cade was rather pleased that from his perspective
in the left-hand seat it appeared that Duncan was flying well within the
edge
of the envelope
, not beyond.

Seeing the lake dead ahead reflecting the afternoon sun,
Cade said, “At least Tran got the lake part of this right.”

“That’s not saying much,” said Duncan. “Even a broken clock
is right twice a day.”

“That’s not fair,” said Daymon. “If it wasn’t for him
fingering the getaway plane I’d still be wrestling with the charts and we’d all
be crisscrossing the state with our dicks in our hands.”

Cade nodded.
The dreadlocked man has a point
.

“Five minutes,” said Duncan.

Cade flashed an open hand at the passengers. Universal
semaphore reiterating what the pilot had just said verbally. Then added, “Lock
and load.”

Lev said, “You can take the man out of Delta ... ”

The other men, Cade included, finished the thought by saying
in unison: “
But you can’t take Delta out of the man
.”

Cade used the duration of the flight pondering the mental
image he’d spent five uninterrupted minutes memorizing. In his mind he saw
Payette Lake, an inverted ‘V,’ the west half larger by half than the east. The
three-mile-long forested peninsula splitting the lake stretched south to north.
At its south end, from shore to shore, the finger of land which was mostly all
State Park was a little over a mile wide. Three miles north of that it
gradually tapered off, leaving a narrow passage between the two halves of the
lake at the point of the inverted ‘V.’ He recalled the arrows and notations
overlaying the precisely rendered imagery, presumably put there by the wizard
of Schriever’s 50th Space Wing herself. On the southeast side of the peninsula were
a dozen very large lake-front homes, each with their own wooden dock and narrow
stretch of beach. And directly across the lake from the homes bordering the
State Park were three dozen west-facing houses, all with big lots and beaches
and docks offering the same instant lake access.

But the biggest tell of all had been the four black
helicopters sitting atop a rectangular landing pad gouged out of the forest
northeast of and equidistant to the west-facing homes.

Yes
, he concluded.
Nash came through once again
.
And now it was his turn to put the intel to use. So, as he’d done hundreds of
times in the past, he drew up the battle plans in his head, ad-libbing for the
time being the bits and pieces of the puzzle she hadn’t been able to provide.
Time
to practice patience
, he thought. Because very soon, if Mister Murphy
behaved, they’d be close enough to have eyes on their target.

Duncan flared the Black Hawk a split second before the
flight computer chimed letting him know he had arrived on target. Hovering seventy-five
feet above what appeared to be a thirty-six-hole golf course with the nearly
dead closely cut fairway grass rustling in the down blast, he asked, “You sure
this is it?”

Cade pointed to his ten o’clock and said, “Affirmative. Put
her down there on the green.”

As the helicopter side-slipped over the fairway, Daymon
elbowed Lev in the ribs and said, “You bring your sticks?”

Lev said nothing for a half-beat as he stared out the window
at the browned grass and stark-white sand traps gliding by below. Then he
shifted his gaze to Daymon and then the crossbow before patting his own
carbine. He smiled and said, “You use your stick and I’ll use mine.”

“I meant your golf clubs. Some people call them
sticks
,”
Daymon explained.

Lev made no reply as the Black Hawk began its descent.

With the gently undulating green rushing up, Duncan began
his countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one. We are wheels down.” And as soon
as the helicopter settled on its suspension and the turbine noise dissipated
and the rotor slowed markedly, he looked to Cade and asked, “Shut her down?”

“Affirmative,” said Cade. “Lev, you and Daymon unload your
gear first. I’ll pull security while you three cover the bird.” He drew his
Glock and twisted the suppressor onto the threaded barrel. “From here on out we
have to be as quiet as possible.”

“Copy that,” replied Lev, passing a Kevlar helmet over to
Daymon.

Nodding his affirmative, Daymon tore off his flight helmet
and shook out his dreads. Tucking them behind his ears, he scrunched the Kevlar
helmet on and muttered, “These things have got to go.”

Hearing this, Duncan halted his shutdown procedures and
looked over his shoulder and said, “You better not. Haven’t you heard? The hair
makes the man.” Then, after delivering one of his trademark cackles, he removed
his own helmet to reveal a wispy tangle of sweaty graying hair.

Sliding open the door, crossbow in hand, Daymon answered
back, “I see your point. Nice glasses by the way.”

***

Five minutes later they’d concealed the helicopter with the
swath of tan camouflage netting.

Now wearing his tactical helmet with a pair of NVGs affixed
and flipped up out of the way, Cade knelt on the edge of the green, head and
eyes moving constantly. On his back was his desert tan pack with the MSR sniper
rifle folded down and secured on the outside by a couple of bungees. In his
MOLLE gear, six spare magazines rode diagonally on his chest in easy-to-reach
pockets. And in his gloved hands was his trusty M4, a stubby tan camouflage
suppressor secured to its business end.

After setting all four of their comms headsets to the same
frequency, Cade passed them out along with the other two pair of NVGs—Duncan
going without the latter. “These are voice activated,” Cade said, tapping the
mike. “Just talk softly and everyone will hear you.”

Slipping the headset on, Duncan said, “Keep the chatter
down, though. I’m still nursing a headache.”

His voice containing a measure of
I told you so,
Daymon said, “You mean still nursing a hangover.”

Duncan made no reply. He snatched up his shotgun and walked
away.

Lev said to Cade, “Want me to grab the Panasonic?”

“Negative,” Cade replied. “With that bulky dish it’s too
much to carry. Besides ... odds of an updated map coming in this late in the
game are slim to none.” Tapping his helmet he went on, “It’s all up here
anyway.”

Duncan said, “Better hope your ‘
up here
’ doesn’t take
a bullet.”

Cade said, “OK Duncan. Grab only the laptop. Hump it along
if that’ll make you feel any better.”

Waving one hand in a shooing motion, Duncan said, “Forget
about it.”

“I’ll grab it,” said Lev. He hustled back to the chopper and
was back in a matter of seconds, stuffing the rugged Panasonic into his ruck.

Daymon looked to Cade and asked, “Wheels?”

Shaking his head, Cade replied, “Five miles on foot. And no
complaining ... I’m three days removed from one hell of a sprained ankle.” He
regarded the map in his head and then the sun over his left shoulder and struck
out to the northeast.

They walked as if on patrol. Cade on point with Duncan and
Daymon in the middle, and Lev bringing up the rear and tasked with watching
their six.

They were barely two fairways removed from the landing zone
when the first wave of Zs found them.

Vectoring in from the north and east, the pallid corpses
trickled from the trees in small groups at first and then in seconds their
numbers increased exponentially; dozens of lurching Zs were spread out across
the fairway, a moaning, moving wall of decaying flesh completely hampering any
chance of forward progress.

So with the odds of backtracking and outrunning these kinds
of numbers dwindling, Cade made a hard and fast decision. He chose their
present location—one particularly wide spot in the dog-leg right—for them to
make their stand.

He dropped his pack on the dying grass and went to a knee.
He passed the suppressed Glock to Lev, then waved Daymon and his crossbow to
the left where the creatures were fewer and farther between. Then, feeling a
trickle of sweat tracing his spine, he snugged the M4 to his shoulder and
settled the Eotech’s holographic pip on the closest Z. As he clicked the
selector to fire, there was a flash of movement in his side vision and a quick
glance over told him Lev and Daymon were in position.

Together, Lev, Daymon, and Cade formed a rough semi-circle
with Duncan in the center, rear-facing, his combat shotgun to be used only as a
last resort.

Opening fire first, Cade engaged the Zs taking up space in
an imaginary slice of the green directly in front of him. His first suppressed
volley sent a half-dozen shamblers to a second death. Brass tumbled lazy arcs
through the sky as he emptied the thirty-round magazine in a matter of seconds.

At the apex of their position, the proverbial
tip of the
spear
, Lev wisely held his fire, opting to wait until the monsters were
within effective range of the Glock—which for him, a fan of the long rifle—was
going to be much too close for comfort.

Meanwhile Daymon was firing and notching fresh arrows as
fast as possible. But these weren’t bear and he found that the trifecta
combination of their sheer numbers, inconsistent and hard-to-predict actions,
and stilted movement made targeting their brains a little difficult. Shooting a
little under fifty percent, he poured through a dozen arrows in just a couple
of minutes without making much of a difference on his side. Five rotters down
and out of arrows, he cursed at the creatures and fell back.

Just as Cade cast a glance over his left shoulder, the fight
on that flank devolved to hand-to-hand combat. He saw Daymon drop the bow and
backpedal to tighten up his side of the arc. In the next instant the
dreadlocked man brought his neon-handled machete into the fight. Then, kicking
and slashing, Cade witnessed him kill another half-dozen abominations. In fact
it seemed as if Daymon was going to be fine until one creature grabbed ahold of
a strand of his dreads and he was toppled off balance.

Hearing Daymon cuss into the comms and then call for help in
the next breath, Lev took his eyes off of his sector and rushed over.

Seeing this, Cade dropped an empty magazine and slammed a
fresh one home. With the rising carrion stench assaulting his nose, he snapped
the bolt forward and resumed firing, fully content to let Lev help where he
could. And as he double-tapped another three Zs, sending a trio of frothy pink
halos airborne, he heard three distinct closely spaced booms directly behind
him.
Duncan
. Forcing himself to concentrate on the task before him, he
put down another three Zs, shifted left a few degrees and engaged the ones Lev
had been forced to abandon.

With a berm of death building in front of the tiny force,
and a haze of cordite wallowing in the still air, Cade turned to help the
others and was surprised to see an equally large drift of ashen-faced corpses
with Lev in the middle swapping out magazines.

“So much for quiet,” said Daymon as he rushed forward to
harvest his arrows.

Cade said, “Cut the small talk. “We have to move out,
now
.”

Loading fresh shells into his shotgun, Duncan quipped, “You
change your mind about the
wheels
yet?”

Saying nothing, Cade engaged the flip-up 3x magnifier,
leveled his carbine, and glassed beyond a burbling water feature a fairway over
and spotted another wave of Zs staggering from the nearby gated neighborhood.
Letting his rifle hang from its single-point sling, he accepted the Glock from
Lev. Then, rethinking the driving thing, he stepped around the pile of leaking
corpses and led them due east towards the clubhouse—a massive stone and wood
structure that looked as if it had been plucked off the slopes of the Swiss
Alps and dropped right here smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Idaho.

Chapter 74

For three hours, wondering where in the hell they were
coming from, Elvis watched the steady procession of dead trudging south towards
McCall.
Surely
, he thought
, the two cities to the west, Lewiston and
Clarkston, with a combined population of thirty-one thousand couldn’t possibly
be the only source
. Then he remembered that the Tri-Cities were just over
the Idaho border in eastern Washington. And though it had been a number of years
since he’d been there, if his memory served correctly, before the Omega
outbreak those cities combined were home to two or three hundred thousand
people. Which went a long way towards explaining what he was seeing now.