Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (9 page)

Glancing sidelong at Carson, she realized he’d been ignoring
her. He was looking out the window to his right, and beyond him, through the
hazy swirls on the glass, she could see several more helicopters land and from
them disembarked a half-dozen armed men. She craned her head and was able to
see enough to conclude they were conducting a raid similar to the one on the
quarry. A target of opportunity had presented itself, and like a raven swooping
to collect a shiny bauble, the human predators were on to new prey.

There were yellow-white flashes lancing from the
mercenaries’ muzzles as they advanced on the log-cabin-like structure. Then a
heartbeat later, Carson’s men fanned out into a rough semi-circle and one of
them began motioning towards the building and yelling what she guessed must be
orders to surrender. And this was confirmed on the back side of that heartbeat
when the front door opened and a grizzled-looking older man emerged, holding
aloft some sort of long rifle, and was instantly cut in half by a hail of
bullets. Jamie closed her eyes and worked on her bonds and asked, “Why?”

“Because he might have something that
we
need,”
replied Carson coldly, his eyes glued to the action taking place twenty yards
away.

“And taking it is OK ... after all they’ve gone through to
survive this long? You just
snuff
them out like that?”

“Dead men tell no tales. And they can’t come seeking
vengeance either.”

“Well that’s where you fucked yourself.”

“How so?”

“Because the men you killed ... Logan and Gus—”

“You mean the
homo
with the bowler hat?” He paused
for a second and looked out the window, focusing all of his attention on the
two camo-clad men who were dragging a blonde woman along the ground.

Burning with hatred for the man next to her, Jamie said
nothing. Instead she bit her lip, drawing blood, and leaned forward to get a
better angle on the helicopter that looked strikingly similar to the DHS Black
Hawk parked at the compound.

“That
had
to have been Logan,” continued Carson. He
sat back in his seat. Fixed a cold stare on Jamie. “Only a guy named Logan
would feel the need to accessorize to the point of looking like one-half of
Laurel and Hardy.” He shook his head in disgust. “And the handlebar mustache.
G-A-Y.”

Ignoring the baited trap, Jamie said nothing and watched the
looting taking place, grateful that the raiding party hadn’t dragged out any
young boys or girls.

Disappointment showing on his face, Carson continued his
verbal barrage. “So, the other one was Gus, eh? Typical middle-aged former cop.
Paunchy around the waist from sitting in a cruiser. Clouded in the head from
toeing the line for most of his adult life. Gotta give it to him, though. He
almost got a shot off. Logan on the other hand ... he wet himself.”

Pursing her lips to hide the self-inflicted wound, Jamie
said quietly, “Gus was ten times the man you are. And Logan ...” Her voice
trailed off. She ran her tongue over her dry teeth and finished her sentence.
“Logan was a gentle soul. He didn’t deserve whatever you did to him.”

Carson chuckled as he watched his men loading cardboard
boxes into the idling helicopters.

“You’re not finished with them. You know that ... don’t you?
His brother and best friend are hunting for you as we speak. And when they find
you you’re going to wish you were never even born.”

“On that, my lady, you are sadly mistaken. All of your
friends’ corpses were cooling thirty minutes before Logan and Gus bought the
farm,” he said smugly. “Hell, maybe big brother gave Logan the guided tour when
they were reunited ... in hell.”

One of the pilots called back, “Five mikes.”

Carson flashed the pilots a thumbs up. After shooting Jamie
a wolfish grin, he repeated her own words. “A marriage of convenience my ass.
You were an integral part of that group.” He looked her over from head to toe
and fished a four-by-six-inch scrap of paper from his chest pocket. It was
creased and tattered around the edges and had uniformly spaced words printed in
light blue on the back. He held it up, long side vertical, oriented like a
portrait, then craned around and looked her full in the face. His eyes flicked
back to what had to be a photo and back to her face, lingering there for a
moment until the pilot called back a one-minute warning. Finally, holding the
photo at arm’s length, Carson made one final side-by-side comparison before
putting the paper back in his pocket. Shattering the Hallmark moment, one of
the pilots shouted back, “We’re wheels up.”

Carson nodded and looked Jamie in the eye and said, “You’re
right up his alley.”

As the engine whine and rotor chop increased, Jamie cocked
her head and asked, “Whose alley?”

“My friend’s.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That’s what the other girl said. And somehow through all of
the whimpering and screaming that came afterward we got a name out of her. Said
her name was Jordan.” A knowing, almost conspiratorial smile creased his face.
“You know, as in
Air
.”

Instantly the puzzle pieces fell into place. The fresh
scratches and recent comment combined with the fact that she hadn’t seen Jordan
since the quarry led her to the heart-wrenching conclusion that she was never
going to see the impressionable young lady again.
Fucker is going to pay if
he lets me near that pistol
, she thought as she watched him extract a knife
and flick it open. Her hopes welled but were instantly dashed when he retrieved
a new zip tie. After fashioning it into a dinner-plate-sized ‘O,’ he maneuvered
it over her hands which by now were an angry shade of purple, and secured it
somewhat loosely before slicing off the old ties. Then, with a sly grin, he
mouthed,
“You’ll do,” and pulled the soiled hood over her head.

Breathing in the acidic stench of her own bile, Jamie called
out, “Do I have a choice?”

She sensed his presence first and then felt his body
pressing against hers. Then he whispered through the burlap. “You have two
choices. Unfortunately a quick death isn’t one of them.” Jamie didn’t indulge
him with a response. Then as the helicopter became light on its wheels and
wavered subtly, Carson spoke again, his words filtering into the hood. “You can
give yourself to one. Or be taken by many.”

Chapter 14

“Under my seat,” Cade called over his shoulder as Wilson
popped open the rear passenger door. “Snip the lock and then wrap the chain
around the posts once we’re all inside.” He dangled a zip tie out the window
and added, “Secure the chain with this once we’re inside.”

Grunting an affirmative and none too happy to have been
conscripted for the job, Wilson hit the pavement at about the same time Brook,
who was armed with a short and lethal-looking carbine, emerged from around the
front of the truck.

After taking the zip tie from Cade, Wilson cast a furtive
glance at the Zs they’d just passed. Thinking,
Hope it holds
, he stuffed
the thin plastic fastener into a pocket, rummaged under the seat and came away
with the biggest pair of bolt cutters he’d ever seen. He slammed the door,
then, with Brook close on his heels, looped around front and approached the wheeled
gate. Once there, Brook spun on her heels and squatted next him. Wavering on
her haunches, she leaned in close and said in a low voice, “Cade says there may
be dogs inside ... so watch your six.”

Without skipping a beat, Wilson ran the long-handled cutter’s
gleaming jaws back and forth over the chain-link. He locked his gaze on the
distant building and when the discordant jangling finally ceased, looked back
at Brook and said, “No Fido.”

Focused on the approaching dead, Brook said nothing. Instead
she urged Wilson to pick up the pace with a slight nudge from the collapsed
butt stock of her M4.

After shooting her a sour look and again eyeing the walking
corpses that were by now only a handful of yards away, Wilson went to work on
the industrial strength Schlage padlock.

In the box bed, teeth bared and hackles up, Max was growling
and spinning circles atop one of the Pelican containers. At the gate, attacking
the lock with the bulky bolt cutters, Wilson heard the guttural growling at his
back suddenly become a veritable Hounds of the Baskerville’s kind of baying.

Hearing the commotion, Cade looked into the rearview and saw
pale hands reaching for the snarling and snapping dog.
Not good
, he
thought. In his experience there were a handful of noises the dead were
especially drawn to. Mechanical sounds and gunfire and especially anything
associated with fresh meat: people’s voices, a baby’s cries, or a dog’s
bark—the latter of which he decided needed to be silenced.

After threading the hefty cylindrical suppressor to the
business end of his Glock, he checked for a round in the chamber and powered
down his window. The stench slapped him in the face as he called out, “Max,
quiet now!” Then after a quick two-count he added, “Max, down!” Then he waited,
hoping two things would result from the barked orders. The first of which
depended solely on whether Max had received any kind of command training from
his original owners. And the second part of his plan was directly correlated to
the outcome of the former. In theory, Max would cease howling and lie down out
of view. Then Cade would quietly deal with the handful of dead that had been
getting after the dog—which were a pittance compared to the numbers likely to
be drawn if Max continued to bark.

Suddenly, as if Max knew the battle was lost, he went silent
and disappeared from sight.

Then Cade’s prediction came true and the dead lost all
interest in the dog and filed towards Wilson and Brook, who by now had her
carbine trained on them. Cade met her gaze and waved her off with a vertical
finger pressed to his lips.

While all of this was unfolding, Taryn had crawled across
the bench seat and sat up behind Cade just as the tops of the zombies’ heads
passed outside her window. “Do something,” she hissed.

Cade whispered over his shoulder, “Gotta have faith ... and
a
lot
more patience.”

“Thanks,
Yoda
,” she mumbled, casting a worried look
at her man.

Cade flicked his eyes from Brook, who was now crabbing
around the front of the truck, and then back to the side mirror and watched and
waited as the trio of Zs tramped through the colorful flower beds. Without
taking his eyes off the Zs, he gave Raven’s forearm a reassuring squeeze and
eased the Glock out the window. A tick later he extended his arm fully and
pressed the cold steel to the first flesh eater’s equally cold skin, barely an
inch behind its right ear, and squeezed off a single shot.

The pistol bucked and the creature collapsed into a vertical
heap, scrambled brains dribbling from the quarter-sized exit wound. The report,
though not as quiet as portrayed on TV or in the movies, garnered the next Z’s
full attention, and before Cade could react, the monster had grabbed ahold of
the suppressor and was drawing it into its open maw.

Smiling, Cade simultaneously caressed the trigger and said,
“Careful what you wish for.” Instantly a pink mist vented from its neck as the
9mm Parabellum caromed off jawbone and lodged somewhere in the monster’s spinal
column. Before the now paralyzed flesh eater hit the ground, Cade had swept the
pistol to his left and double-tapped the straggler, putting one bullet into
each eye socket. Lastly, he shifted in his seat, leaned out the window aiming
down and delivered the coup-de-grace: a single shot to the prostrate Z’s
forehead.

In all, from Max’s first bark to Cade’s final shot, only a
dozen seconds had ticked into the past. And while those twelve seconds elapsed,
Wilson had cut the lock and unwrapped the length of chain.

“Let’s go,” Brook hissed through clenched teeth. “There’s
more coming.” Then, leading by example, she placed the M4 at her feet, grabbed
the chain-link in both hands and drew in a deep lungful of carrion-infused air.

“On three,” said Wilson, grabbing some fence as well.

Eschewing the countdown, Brook bellowed, “Now!” and leaned
forward, driving her feet furiously against the asphalt driveway.

Behind both of their efforts a grating sound emanated from
within the channel and the wheels began to roll; finally, after what had seemed
like an eternity, the entrance was clear and Cade was driving the Ford over the
threshold.

Seeing the tailgate glide by, Brook grabbed her carbine and
placed it on her side of the fence. Then, summoning the strength necessary from
somewhere deep inside her, she grabbed hold of the fence and drove it forward
until it clanged shut. She fell to the asphalt, winded and totally spent.

After looping the chain and securing it with the zip tie,
Wilson called out to Brook who was now sitting Indian-style on the cracked
asphalt and breathing hard. “You know that thing is supposed to be motorized.”

She said nothing at first. Kept her head bowed, back arched.

Wilson didn’t know if she was praying or staring at the
weeds growing up through the frost-heaved cement. Finally, after a few long
seconds, she said, “Just our luck,” and rose shakily on rubbery legs.

Walking slowly side-by-side towards Mesa View 4x4, Wilson
said matter-of-factly, “I’m afraid to find out what your husband is getting us
into.”

“Copy that,” mumbled Brook.

Chapter 15

For the better part of an hour, as Elvis put the dozer
through its paces, curling layers of topsoil away to make room for Bishop’s
small fleet of helicopters, the former Navy SEAL had been observing from the
elevated porch behind the massive lake house. After casting cautious glances
and never seeing a change in his boss’s rigid stance or stoic facial
expression, Elvis began to think that Bishop had somehow slipped away and left
a lookalike mannequin in his stead.