Allegiance (7 page)

Sasha glared, but kept
her brother’s best interests in heart and saved her comments for later.

Ignoring his sister’s
hurt feelings, Wilson rose. He took a calming breath, then looked into Taryn’s
dark eyes. “I’d be happy to do you—” He chuckled nervously at the little
Freudian slip. “Let me try that again. I’d be happy to show you around.” And
wondering what the rest of the afternoon had in store, he followed his new
friend out into the waiting daylight.

Outbreak - Day 15

Yoder, Colorado

Cade made a fist and
pounded violently on the locked door, putting all of his hundred and eighty
pounds behind each blow. He gave the occupants a five count to respond, and
when the store remained quiet, reared back and planted a solid kick below the
door handle. To his amazement, nothing happened, save for the painful resonance
that shot through his size nine Danners and shivered up his right leg.
Undeterred, he tested the jamb by putting his shoulder against the decades-old
hardwood and leaning in. Sensing a little give, he decided to once again
attempt the Danner method of entry.

Boots soles scuffing the
sidewalk, he took a short hop and leaned into the kick, this time with a
healthy dose of follow through behind it. Two things happened at once: the
window sandwiched behind the plywood sheet exploded, depositing a thousand tiny
glass kernels out the bottom slot-machine style. Then, the jamb splintered from
the impact and the door flung inward, sending the brass bell atop the door
jangling. Quickly he reached up and silenced the old-world precursor to the oft
used photo-electric eye, and then he paused for a moment to retrieve his
tactical flash light from a cargo pocket. His head moving on a swivel and his
other senses on full alert, he thumbed it on and entered the hardware store.

The air inside was warm
and reeked of death with an underlying trace of fertilizer and lawn chemicals.
Disturbed by the violent entry, golden dust motes danced by his face. He
stepped out and into the alcove, took two deep cleansing breaths, and then
looked east through the slice of daylight beside the Ford, then west, and then
east once again for good measure. Nothing moved in downtown Yoder.

After padding over the
remains of the destroyed window, he reentered
Abe’s
with the Glock’s
tubular suppressor leading the way. Keeping his eyes scanning his flanks and
the aisles ahead, he nudged the door closed with his right elbow.
Anybody
here?
he thought as he lowered his breathing and strained to hear anything
moving among the shadowy aisles.
Nothing.

He pointed the
flashlight down the nearest aisle, and with two-hundred lumens lancing the
dark, set out to fill his shopping list.

After treading through
the paint section, he came to a T and paused in front of a wall that held
hundreds of metallic key blanks and dozens of colorful fobs to attach them to.
He snatched one that caught his attention and stuffed it in his pocket. He had
no idea where the impulse came from, but the blue and white Ford oval would be
more practical than the gaudy bling currently weighing down his pants.

Feeling the soft give of
worn boards underfoot, he padded deeper into the store. As he heel-and-toed his
way past a display complete with fake plastic grass and a couple of lawnmowers
and rototillers, the air suddenly grew warmer and the scent of carrion grew
stronger—nearly overwhelming him. He stopped instantly and listened intently.
Nothing moved. Except for the steady beating of his heart, there was silence.
His Suunto told him he’d been inside for two minutes.
Time to move.
He
didn’t want to allow the dead enough time to amass outside.

Black pistol in a two-handed
grip, he transited a few more aisles, and where his eyes tracked so did the
Glock. Instantly his hackles arose and he froze in mid-stride. The lingering
stench had become so concentrated that he could almost feel it. Though there
wasn’t a superstitious bone in his body, and he knew the sensation was but a
figment of his imagination, it still seemed like he had walked into a viscous
wall of death. He likened the sensation that caused his skin to crawl to some
kind of inbred prehistoric survival mechanism similar to the fight or flight
instinct. Similar, he guessed, to the tactic employed by department stores
whereby they secretly pumped in pleasant scents like fresh baked cookies,
lavender, or jasmine, all in order to subliminally affect their customers’
spending habits. Only this pong didn’t affect the pleasure center of his brain,
it made him want to bolt to the street and inhale another fresh lungful of
Colorado air, not bust out the credit card and start buying shit.

Breathing only through
his mouth, he pushed deeper into the gloom. As he neared what he guessed had to
be the rear of the retail part of the store, he noticed a sound that had become
very familiar over the last couple of weeks. For somewhere in the dark, the
livewire buzzing of hundreds of insects foreshadowed the scene he stumbled upon
next.

His flashlight beam
caught the pair of tan work boots first and then he walked the cone of light to
the left, revealing the rest of the corpse which he supposed had been there for
a week or more. Stretched across the skull, and pulling his eyes to slits, the
older man’s skin had gone tight. It looked unnatural, waxen-like. The body,
belonging to the man Cade assumed was Abe, was prone on the floor and covered
by a busy black carpet of common houseflies. Abe’s blood had long ago dried
black. That he had eaten the barrel of the dull gray semi-automatic still
gripped in his hand was clearly evident. His front teeth and lips had been
shredded by the blast and peppering the milky white of his chin and cheeks, a
constellation of black powder burns. The epilogue to Abe’s sad story was
revealed as Cade flicked the light up the far wall. Remnants of gray matter and
splintered skull and hair had become embedded in the drywall where the blast
from the .45 had scattered them. The owner’s presence helped explain the gore
orgy out front, and Cade knew from experience that once a pack of Zs had
cornered some fresh meat they rarely gave up until their hunger was sated—or
they died again trying. He eyed the AR-15 and pair of semi-automatic pistols
lying near the man’s body, knowing full well they were the reason his store
still stood while the ones nearby fell. The thought brought back a vivid memory
from Cade’s youth—glued to CNN, watching Korean shop owners protecting their
turf from the mayhem that spread throughout Los Angeles immediately after the
Rodney King verdict had been announced. In his mind’s eye he could almost
picture Abe upstairs, rifle poking between the curtains, fending off the living
by any means necessary, and then watching helplessly as the reanimated corpses
moaned and growled, announcing their hunger-fueled need to get inside. To get
at the meat the primeval part of their brains told them was holed up behind the
brick, mortar, and plywood.

Cade knew the feeling of
being completely surrounded, dangerously low on ammunition, all hope ebbing.
Abe must have been feeling like those Koreans, he reasoned—stuck between
Desperation Avenue and Hopeless Drive, out of ammo and with no officers from
Rampart Division dispatching to save him—at least Abe had spared one for
himself.

With no chance of a
working cure to Omega or a way to reproduce Fuentes’s antiserum on the
immediate horizon, Cade had decided unequivocally that before he became one of
them, putting a bullet in his brain would be his final act on earth.

Brushing the unsettling
picture from his mind was as easy as shaking an Etch-a-Sketch. He’d cross that
bridge when he got to it. Right here and now, he had a task to attend to and
little time in which to complete it.

He shook his head as he
stepped over the rigor-frozen body. The sudden movement scattered the feeding
flies in every direction, their shiny blue and black bodies glinting in the dim
light. They buzzed him, making angry Kamikaze dives at his head, pulling up at
the last moment before zipping back to their carrion meal.
From whence they
came
, Cade mused.

Before continuing on, he
looked at Abe’s body one final time.
Giving back to the food chain
. He
threw a shudder and wondered who the real winner in the room was.
Living,
these days,
he thought grimly,
seems to be nothing more than a holding
pattern of misery to endure while awaiting the inevitable.

The next aisle over
contained the most important item on his list. For a brief moment he stood
stock-still, second guessing himself, wondering if quitting the Unit for the
second time in fifteen months was the right move. Leaving Nash high and dry—the
one desk jockey who always had his back. Then Whipper’s parting barb resonated
in his head: ‘
You’re the fucking hypocrite
.’
No,
he thought,
shaking his head. His family was the most important thing, and if he continued
putting them second, then Whipper’s statement
was
the truth. Family was
what had possessed him to go to these lengths to test himself, and his desire
to return to his family would see him through.

Pushing the mental
flotsam and jetsam from the forefront of his mind, he switched back into
mission mode. He grabbed the rectangular cardboard box which had been stored
next to the fully assembled demonstration model. He scrutinized the shipping
label. The color was correct.
Check
. Size and style,
check, and check
.
Satisfied, he hefted the box which was about a foot deep and roughly the size
of a larger model flat screen TV. He clamped the tactical light between his
teeth, carted the ungainly rectangle through the aisles to the front door, and
propped it across the threshold leaning against the splintered wood casing. At
the very least the thirty pound container might slow down a walker trying to
gain entry and make a meal of him.

The next five minutes
blurred by. He stopped at the lawn care aisle to liberate a four-foot length of
neon orange garden hose. The Gerber’s honed edge made short work and he left
the length of hose in the aisle to collect on his way out. He made a right
turn, and ignoring the plastic snow discs and toboggans that would never see a
ski hill, padded down the automotive aisle. Every type of lubricant, their
colorful labels vying for attention, filled the shelves from floor level to a
foot above his head.
Where to start?
he asked himself. Once again the
flashlight went between his teeth. He opened the lawn debris bag wide and
tumbled several quarts of motor oil—and with the last run of hundred degree
days fresh on his mind—thought it prudent to include two large jugs of Prestone
antifreeze. And then, as an afterthought, he pulled down four Fix-a-Flat
canisters from the uppermost shelf.

From the end cap he
poached three spare gas cans to add to the ones he’d taken from the motor pool.
In fact, most of the items needed for their cross country trek he could have
demanded from Whipper, if push came to shove. But seeing as it already had, and
he’d gone beyond just shoving the first sergeant, he decided to take what he
needed from old Abe instead.

Broken glass crackled
and popped underfoot as he deposited the second lawn bag full of supplies next
to the entry. He slid the bulky box aside and cracked the door a few inches,
causing a new batch of broken glass to cascade from the doorframe. Instantly,
hollow moans began echoing off of the makeshift plywood walls flanking the
shallow entryway. Cade stuck his head around the jamb and stole a glance at the
opening between his ride’s undercarriage and the sidewalk. His blood ran cold,
then, in his head, he heard Desantos’s voice calmly say, ‘
Make it home,
Wyatt
.’

With the specter of
being trapped inside with the proprietor’s rotting corpse, and who knows how
many ambulatory ones on the outside, he kept his feet away from the clutching
hands and heaved his ill-gotten supplies over his head and into the truck bed.
The bulky box went in last, and though it took a little coaxing, he managed to
catapult it up and over where it landed with a crunch atop everything else.

He risked one last foray
into Abe’s final resting place to take a white silk rose from a plastic vase
near the register. He reentered the alcove with a renewed sense of optimism.
Then he went to one knee, and with glass shards digging into his patella and at
least ten hungry eyed Zs worming their way underneath the four-by-four’s
protective off-roading skid plates, he aimed at the nearest creature but held
his fire. A niggling sense of uncertainty gnawed at him because he was aware
that there were a pair of gas tanks mounted somewhere underneath the truck body,
but he had no idea where in relation to the wriggling corpses. The last thing
he needed was for a bullet to ricochet, hit one of the oversize tanks and send
the F-650 up in a blaze of glory, killing him along with it.

But it was a chance he
had to take. He went prone on his stomach with the suppressed Glock wavering
four feet from the snarling faces. “Come and get me. Dinner time,” he called
out, urging them forward, hoping to drop a few in the front that would slow
down the ones behind so he could get inside the truck. Their hissing grew in
volume, a cacophony of insistent cries and snapping teeth. Reacting to the
sound of his voice, the creatures that were out of sight crushed in from the
back—the whole scene reminded Cade of a Black Friday Walmart mob. He waited a
few ticks until the monsters were wedged in one atop the other, smashed
shoulder to shoulder, effectively blotting the daylight between the front and
rear wheels. Keeping his aim level with the ground, he steadied his breathing
and tried his best to ignore the pale hands grasping at the protruding
suppressor. With thirty some odd gallons of gas suspended somewhere above the
writhing creatures, he decided against the mandatory double-tap and instead
walked the Glock methodically from right to left shooting a half dozen of them
squarely in the face.