Allegiance (16 page)

From his seated position
Wilson had to look up to meet her eyes. “Take a look at this...” He held up the
drive and pointed to the words ‘Property of the C.D.C.’ “The C stands for
Centers, the D is for Disease—”

“The other C stands for
Control,” Taryn said, finishing Wilson’s sentence. “And why would that be here
in Colorado Springs?”

He turned the drive
over.

“Do you know who
Fuentes
is?” Taryn asked.

“I recognized the name
but the letters didn’t make sense... at first. Now, I think I know the answer
to both of your questions... but I need to go see somebody to be certain.”
Gripping the drive between his thumb and forefinger he held it in the air. “And
I need to take this with me.”

He snagged his boonie
hat off of the desktop, crushed it over his hair pulling it down tight, and
then in passing gave Taryn a quick peck on the cheek.

“You’ll need this too,”
she proffered.

Wilson turned back to
see what he was being ordered to take. She was holding the silver key that
worked the lock to her lonely quarters.

“Come back and stay the
night here. And please bring Sasha if she’ll come... let her know that she’s
welcome here too.”

He glanced at his watch.
More than three hours had passed since they’d left his sister in the mess hall.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll see what she says. But if she doesn’t accept your olive
branch I won’t leave her alone. She’s family.” He paused for a second and then
jounced down the steps. And with that the door closed after him, cutting off
the stark white light streaming in from outside.

Taryn stood alone in the
trailer, stock still, allowing the cool conditioned air to flow over her. “You
better come back to me Red,” she said aloud. “Or I’m going to have to come and
get you.”

***

Twenty miles east of
Yoder, Colorado

The needle edged past
eighty.
Smooth,
Cade thought. He abruptly changed lanes and marveled at
how the F-650’s body exhibited a lot less roll than expected.

Next, still clipping
mightily along the laser-straight interstate, he steered directly towards an
unmoving human form laying spread-eagle perpendicular to the centerline. And as
the truck passed over the supine Z, its stout suspension shrugged off the
rotten obstacle as if it hadn’t even been there.

In the distance, the
Rockies were becoming more pronounced, meaning that Schriever wasn’t far off.
Farmhouses blurred by, rusting farm equipment and old cars languishing in the
sun.

But the clear
straightaway didn’t stretch on forever. So Cade chose an arbitrary spot which
he guessed to be about a football field’s length away, and then, gripping the
wheel tightly, he eased off the gas and stood on the brakes.

A violent judder rocked
the truck, vibrating from the road through the massive tires, ran through the
frame and right up his spine. It lasted for a fraction of a second and then the
ABS—antilock braking system—began to automatically pump the brakes faster than
any human being could.

The massive pick-up
slewed minutely and then stopped short of the pair of wrecked SUVs he had
chosen as the imaginary end zone of his imaginary three-hundred-yard run out.
“I’ll take it,” he said jokingly to the imaginary salesman sitting in the
passenger seat. “Put it on my AmEx.” He let himself enjoy a rare moment of
uncontrollable laughter.

As the blue-gray smoke
from the superheated rubber wafted by the driver’s side window, he reached back
and gripped his M4. He popped the door and slid out of the cab. Once he was
standing on the hot asphalt, he shifted his gaze, letting his eyes follow the
dual black stripes painting the road some seventy yards behind the idling Ford.

Keeping one eye peeled
for Zs, he hopped up onto the rear tire, collected the empty gas cans and the
length of hose from the bed, and then jumped back down, his Danners sticking
slightly to the sun-scorched asphalt.

Returning his attention
to the tangle of American iron, he strode purposefully toward the back of the
vehicle that did the rear-ending. Noticing some movement up the road to the
west, he propped the M4 against the rig’s rear tire and set the hose and cans
in the shadow of the big red Suburban. He popped open the filler door with his
Gerber and twisted off the cap. He inserted a couple of feet of hose, and as
much as he hated this part of a necessary evil, sucked until the vile-tasting
liquid hit his lips.

One after the other, he
filled the four extra cans while ignoring the handful of walkers that were now
only a dozen yards away.

“Bring it,” he growled
at the noisy monsters as he returned to the Ford and deposited the liberated
fuel into the bed.

Without a moment to
spare, he turned back to face the creatures. He snicked the M4’s safety off,
and in his best Eastwood said, “Not your lucky day.” Starting with a leathered
first turn, he worked the muzzle left to right, emptying the entire magazine
one accurate head shot after the next into the moaning crowd.

Barrel still smoking, he
tossed the carbine on the seat ahead of him and clambered aboard his new ride.
Leaving the interstate littered with twice-dead zombies, he set a course west.
Next
stop Schriever
.

Outbreak - Day 15

Winters’s Compound

Eden, Utah

Grateful only for the
bulging white clouds scudding through the summer sky and the brief shade-filled
moments each one afforded, Chance squinted against the sun and took a long pull
from the olive-drab surplus canteen. For reasons unknown, he fully expected the
last few ounces of water to be cool and refreshing. But after sitting in the
elements for hours, the super-heated liquid might just as well have been Earl
Gray tea. Cursing under his breath, his thirst far from sated, he slammed the
empty canteen against the ground.
If only P.J. wasn’t Dad’s favorite
, he
thought,
then I would be the one riding around in the air conditioned SUV
doing the shooting and looting
. That he had been sweltering in the same
spot since dawn only added insult to his injured pride. It almost seemed like
Dad was further punishing him for being a fat ass with a shoe size IQ. And now,
well after noon, he was bored to death, drained of energy, and unable to keep
his eyes peeled.

***

The low growl echoing up
the valley interrupted his afternoon siesta. And like a triple shot espresso,
the adrenaline surge that followed quickly brought him to his senses. Mouth
spewing expletives, and thoroughly pissed at himself for nodding off, he
brought the spotting scope to his eye.

Though still out of
sight, he could hear vehicles approaching from the west. As the engine sounds
drew nearer, he recognized one of them as belonging to the Toyota that had
exited the woods hours earlier via the cleverly hidden access road. The second
vehicle had him stumped, and though he thought of himself as a car guy, for
some strange reason he couldn’t place the torque-heavy low-end growl and
gearbox whine that he was hearing.

He shifted slightly to
the left to make for a better viewing angle. Took his eye from the lens for a
moment to make sure his AK-47 was within arms’ reach, then reacquired the
vehicles just as they emerged from the tree-lined curve in the road.

He had been dead-on
about the first vehicle. The Land Cruiser that had left earlier with two men
inside now appeared to have only a driver behind the wheel. His heart twisted
in his chest as the second vehicle emerged. “Chance, you dumbass...” he muttered.
“You know what a Humvee sounds like.”
Dad’s not going to like it when he
hears about this
, he thought. And considering the military vehicle had what
he guessed was some kind of a large caliber machine gun mounted on top, Dad was
really gonna be pissed off.

The two vehicles stopped
unexpectedly a hundred feet short of where Chance believed the hidden gate was
located. He watched the Humvee driver open his door and step onto the
shimmering blacktop. Though he was terrible at guessing a person’s age—and
equally as bad at remembering first names—Chance supposed the man had to be
somewhere in his fifties.

While keeping the tree
line at his back, the Humvee driver walked towards the zombies with a
distinctive swagger—or limp—Chance couldn’t be certain. And to say the man
seemed at ease against the lopsided odds he faced would have been an
understatement. With the short-barreled shotgun resting on his shoulder, Chance
thought the man looked like some kind of stagecoach driver or maybe even that
guy Mad Max from those post-apocalyptic movies Mom wouldn’t allow him to watch
as a kid.
Yeah, Mad Max
, the eighteen year old decided. Minus the spiked
leather jacket and the ever-present mutt, that’s exactly whom the guy brought
to mind.

After communicating
something to the driver who was still sitting inside the Toyota, Mad Max
sidestepped to his left, keeping the zombies off to the right.

Looking like workers on
strike, albeit rotting and disheveled, the dozen or so zombies paced the road.
It was the same staggering uncoordinated lot that had been patrolling the same
quarter-mile stretch since the lone Toyota exited earlier in the day.

No sooner had the
vehicles reappeared and Mad Max emerged from the Humvee, did the shambling dead
begin to move in unison towards the meat. Chance’s eyes widened when he
realized that even though he was a couple of degrees uphill, he would still be
in the gunman’s line of fire. And if the man was shooting with shot shells then
there was a slim chance he could catch a deadly dose of lead pellets. So with
self-preservation at the forefront, he flattened his offensive lineman-sized
frame and tried to be one with the earth.

But the ground was
unyielding and Chance was not a gopher. Truth be told, he was closer to two
hundred and fifty pounds.
Fuck it
, he thought.
If a golden BB catches
me right here, then so be it
. He raised his head a few inches and trained
the scope on the action, and as he watched the melee unfold three things
happened simultaneously: Mad Max leveled his weapon at the advancing dead, a
lick of red-orange flame vented from the shotgun muzzle, and the nearest
rotter’s head erupted, sending a slow motion arc of liquefied gore airborne.
Chance shuddered at the ghastly sight. He still hadn’t gotten used to the
damage a firearm could inflict on the human body—living or dead—especially
point blank and to the head. A fraction of a second later the booming report
rolled uphill like a thunderclap, then quickly echoed to silence. Chance kept
his eye pressed to the scope and watched, wholeheartedly rooting for the
monsters to prevail. The fewer men with guns that he and the others would have
to deal with when Dad finally sent them in, the better, he reasoned.

As he continued to
observe, he found it amusing how the monsters jostled against one another to
get to the shooter, who merely sidestepped and backpedaled while keeping a good
amount of spacing between him and the hungry throng. Dude probably had some
kind of military training, Chance concluded. “But why the hell aren’t they
using the big machine gun?” he wondered out loud. After all, Dad had shown him
firsthand what something similar could do, and he never ever wanted to be on
the receiving end of one of those flesh shredders.

As he worked the
scenario over in his mind, it suddenly dawned on him what the two were trying
to accomplish. Mad Max was luring the monsters into position, and while they
blindly followed, another man, who was very thin and looked to be middle-aged,
had emerged from the Toyota and was silently flanking the zombies in order to
put them in some kind of a crossfire. “Goddamnit,” Chance muttered. The more he
saw of how these guys handled the rotters, the less he wanted to tangle with
them.

A cold void formed in
his gut as he contemplated what Dad had in store. He said a little foxhole
prayer, easing away from the scope. He pushed his fledgling blonde dreadlocks
from his face, then dabbed more sweat from his brow. He could feel his
tee-shirt, wet with alcohol-infused sweat, sticking to the fat rolls on his
back and sides. A gust of hot wind rife with carrion and exhaust fumes ruffled
the brittle grass surrounding his hide. And then, when he finally put the scope
back to his eye, Shotgun Guy’s back faced him squarely. For just a split second
he entertained the idea of popping up and screaming “
Wolverines!
” and
hosing them down with his AK. But that brilliantly crafted idea dissipated
instantly when the thin man opened fire and had already dropped three more of
the dead with accurate double-taps to the head before the shotgun rejoined the
chorus.

Outbreak - Day 15

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Tran came to, fearing
that he had become a meal for the dead. He had no idea what time it was or how
long he had been out. Tree branches rustled in the wind, and somewhere above him
in the lush canopy a murder of crows engaged in a noisy debate. Despite the
fact that he didn’t yet have a craving for human flesh—the pain flooding his
body could mean only one thing—he had died and was reanimating as one of them.
Then a chilling sound drew his attention, like the desperate spit of an angry
tomcat cornered by a menacing Doberman. A dozen feet to his left and half that
distance uphill, a first turn was emitting the noise while doing a sort of
clumsy mechanical looking breast stroke—a pitiful thing to watch indeed. The
pale, one-eyed demon would thud one arm forward, lancing the dirt with bony
fingers, scrabble its knees like some kind of insect, and then slowly pull
itself along, advancing only inches at a time. Clearly, gravity combined with
the steep grade was giving it fits.

Suddenly it occurred to
Tran that he must
not
be one of them. Because from what he had seen
firsthand in the Elk Refuge—the dead didn’t eat the dead.

He spent a few agonizing
minutes breathing deeply, trying to get oxygen-rich blood flowing to regain the
equilibrium he’d need to confront the threat. Meanwhile, the simple act of
tracking the thing with his eyes brought on agonizing pain—like someone jabbing
an icepick repeatedly with metronomic precision into his brain. So intense was
the pressure behind his eyes that he began seeing double—like looking through
someone else’s prescription glasses.
Concussion
, he thought to himself.
And as he lay there fighting to remain awake, the events leading up to this
moment came rushing back to him with acute clarity. The mental movie picked up
a millisecond after he had been shoved from the moving vehicle, when every
nerve in his body instantly came alive—the adrenaline blasting through his body
urging him to act on the fight or flight instinct—the life-saving mechanism
that had been hardwired into humans since saber-toothed tigers were the alpha
predator. In that do or die moment, he’d decided that flight was in his best
interest. He remembered taking the full brunt of the fall on his shoulder, and
then recalled seeing the big off-road tires whir by at the edge of his vision.
And as he scrambled forward on his hands and knees, searching for a sliver of
daylight amongst the sharp knees and shredded feet, he had yearned for nothing more
than a shot at revenge against the two brothers who were sacrificing him to
ensure their own survival.

The tomcat hiss
resounded, dragging his attention to the present. Fully aware the one-eyed
zombie was near, and with every intention of fleeing, he rolled over onto his
chest and tried to stand. It started out well, but by the time he was on all
fours, an all-encompassing tsunami of nausea slapped him back down. And like a
kid determined to see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, he fought to stay awake—to
somehow stay in the light. The last thing he remembered before succumbing to
the subdural hematoma pressing against his brain was the sickly sweet stench of
death and the steady, seismic thumping of ol’ One Eye coming his way.