District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (11 page)

Oliver hiked his shirt up to inspect where the thing’s broken
ribs had raked against his own.

“I
did
co-sign exposing him to the dead,” Lev said.
“And based on what Daymon told me earlier, I thought Oliver needed it. But that
four-on-one crap was a little over the top in my opinion.”

Jamie went to one knee and proceeded to give Oliver’s back
and sides a thorough onceover.

Grimacing from Jamie’s gentle probing, Oliver waved to the
others. “Hello … I’m alive,” he said. “
Oliver
is standing right here
even as you talk about him as if he was invisible.”

“You’re good here,” Jamie said. “There’s no broken skin.”

Oliver sighed and thanked her. Then, as if a switch was
flicked, his jaw clenched and he swung his gaze back to Lev and Daymon. “I let
the first one slide,” he hissed at Daymon. “You two may have had your reasons
for conspiring and doing what you did. But I’ll let you know here and now”—he
wagged a finger, mostly in Daymon’s direction—“you’re not going to get away
with this ever again.”

Crossing his arms, Daymon said, “You’ve got a long way to go
before you’re one of us.”

There was a long moment during which nobody spoke.

Oliver shifted from foot-to-foot and walked his gaze from
Daymon to Lev to Jamie, where he paused and said, “You, of all people. You went
along with it once it started.”

Jamie said nothing. She looked down at the tomahawk hanging
from her waist and fiddled with the worn leather wrapping the handle.

“And you,” Oliver said, singling out Wilson, who was
returning with Taryn after having helped her dispatch the pair of curious
rotters. “You just stood there and did nothing. If it wasn’t for Taryn sliding
me her knife, I would have been toast.”

Wilson opened his mouth to speak, but Taryn beat him to it.
“In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done that.” She wiped her blade with
the scrap of tee shirt taken off one of the corpses.

“Why?” Oliver asked.

“Because the time may come when you really do find yourself
all alone and get jumped by a much larger group of rotters.”

“She would know,” Wilson said. “She’s the queen of opening
Pandora’s Box on herself.”

Taryn elbowed Wilson in the ribs. Regarding Oliver, she
said, “I’m happy you’re still with us and all … it’s just that I’m afraid I may
have just prolonged the inevitable.”

Daymon approached Oliver. He towered over the man by nearly
a head’s height. “Everything Taryn just said is on point. You were going to go
to guns right away. That would have drawn more rotters to us. Heaven forbid
there’s a horde of any size nearby.”

Nodding in agreement, Lev said, “You still have a lot to
learn and very little time in which to do so. No telling when the horde will be
back.”

Coming off the adrenaline high, Oliver was blindsided by a
wave of exhaustion the likes of which he had never felt before. As a result, he
nearly lost his legs and leaned hard against the Chevy, his bodyweight making
the door panel pop inward. Fully expecting Daymon to react to the affront on
his rig, he shoved off the pickup and began to apologize.

“Don’t worry about it,” Daymon said with a dismissive wave.
“I stole it … remember?”

Everyone, save for Oliver, looked quizzically at the
dreadlocked man.

“Long story best told around a campfire,” said Daymon.
“Saddle up. I want to see this place where Taryn almost bought the farm.”

Duncan’s frame nearly filled up the security pod. He brushed
the hanging bulb aside and retrieved a slim black Thuraya satellite phone from
the shelf littered with spare long range CBs and multi-channel two-way radios
recently supplied to the group by one of Dregan’s faithful scavengers. He
thumbed the Power button and saw the little screen flare to life. It was bright
in the dim environs. Nearly more so than the sixty-watt bulb dangling between
him and Brook.

“When did Nash say I should call the Judge?” he asked,
leaning sideways and looking down to meet her gaze.

“Initially she wanted it placed fifteen minutes after Cade’s
ride launched. Then she mumbled something about letting “reality sink in” and
changed it to forty-five minutes.” She consulted her watch and regained eye
contact. “And that’s about where we’re at. Apparently whatever she had in mind
has sufficiently sunk in. Might as well get it over with.” She tapped the legal
pad on the plywood sheet serving as a desktop.

“What do I say?” he asked, scooping up the pad and adjusting
his newly acquired aviator-style glasses.

“Nash was pretty cryptic in her message. Why don’t you just
wing it? You’re fairly adept at that.”

Duncan sighed and directed his gaze to Heidi, who had been sitting
quietly and intently eyeing the verbal ping pong match. He began to punch in
the digits and paused after the area code. “You sure you don’t want to do it?
You handled the Dregan guy like a pro litigator. Said all the right things that
needed to be said. You know …
just the facts, ma’am
.”

Brook said nothing. Just shook her head and shot a
questioning look at Heidi.

Heidi shrugged and settled an equally quizzical gaze on
Duncan.

“Joe Friday. You ladies never heard of him? Just the facts
…”

“Put the call through,” Brook insisted.

“I thought Nash said the person in charge here should place
the call.”

“Exactly.” Brook’s hands settled on her hips. Her eyes
narrowed to slits.

“That scowl worked on Dregan,” he said, looking down at the
pad. “And damn it to hell it’s working on me.” Without further pause, he tapped
out the remaining digits and put the phone to his ear. There was a hiss as the
sat-phone searched for a high-orbiting military satellite to shake hands with.
A tick later there were a couple of audible clicks and the electronic trill was
assaulting his ear.

While Heidi and Brook looked on expectantly, Tran and Foley
showed up from outside and filled up the front entry anteroom.

“We’ve got a full house,” Duncan mouthed. He was getting hot
standing near the hanging bulb and had started to sweat.

After eight rings a man identifying himself as Judge Pomeroy
answered. And just as Duncan had already imagined, the Judge sounded aristocratic
in his tone and delivery.

“Charlie Hammond, that’s who,” Duncan lied, walking his eyes
over the others until settling back on Brook and shrugging at his use of a fake
name. Inside his guts were churning at the sound of the name that had rolled
off his lips. It was a name he hadn’t uttered since the first days of the zombie
apocalypse. The name of a friend whom he had lost to a freak accident on a
deserted street in outer southeast Portland, Oregon, but hadn’t actually died
until an hour later when he put a Colt Model 1911 in his mouth and pulled the
trigger. Why he had blurted out that name, he hadn’t a clue. But he had to live
with it and improvise, because the Judge had demanded to know who had so rudely
interrupted him and there was no way to reel it in now.

“I’m Central Intelligence Agency,” he said. Another lie. “I
report directly to President Valerie Clay … your boss, in a roundabout way.” He
went quiet and glanced at Foley and Tran, who were both doing the puzzled-dog-look
head-cocked-to-one-side thing.

Ball’s in your court.

After a long uncomfortable silence, the tinny sound of a
voice talking rapid-fire emanated from the Thuraya’s earpiece.

“I know the helicopter has already left your airspace. But
do know that we still have satellites at our disposal. We
will
be
watching. And Judge, you so much as argue with the man about whom he deputizes
… or give him grief for commandeering one of your bailiffs for guard duty,
we’ll be back with a dozen black helicopters and a company of Army Rangers.
Things will get sorted. Are we clear?”

There were a few seconds of silence followed by the same
Alvin the Chipmunk voice coming from the phone.

Duncan ended the call and took a deep breath. “I told so
many lies in that one conversation, I’m sure I’m going to hell.”

“As if we all aren’t already,” Heidi quipped.

Moving aside to let Tran and Foley by, Brook asked, “Well …
what did his Honor have to say?”

“Nothing after I announced who I was. It was so quiet on his
end I bet you could’ve heard a mouse pissin’ on cotton if you were in the room
with him.”

Brook’s eyebrows arched.

A soft chuckle escaped Foley’s mouth. “I’m stealing that
one,” he stated, sounding extremely unapologetic.

Duncan nodded. “Then the Judge said his men were freaked out
because the helo that picked up Cade did a couple of low and slow racetrack
orbits over his fiefdom. That’s when I hinted that there were more black
helicopters where that one came from.”

“And his reaction?” Brook asked.

“Priceless,” Duncan answered, resisting the urge to cackle.
“He started to stammer. Not just a one- or two-syllable trip of the tongue. No
… old Judge Pomeroy was doing the Porky Pig motorboat routine. I’m sure the
phone’s mouthpiece was getting a spit bath. And he continued to do so every
time he tried to speak after I delivered the threat. I bet if he wasn’t planning
on it … he soon will be in
full
compliance.” Duncan smiled, obviously
pleased with his improvisational performance.

Brook grimaced and began to massage her shoulder, kneading
the scar tissue through her Army tee shirt. Composing herself, she rolled her
shoulder, stretching the muscles there and said, “Don’t collect your Oscar just
yet, Duncan. Now you have to call Dregan.”

North Woodruff

The short drive north to East 100 Street was uneventful.
Along the way, the three-vehicle convoy passed by the larger fix-it shop which had
suffered major damage due to the migrating horde. The hedges bordering the walk
parallel to Main Street had been trampled and were brown and long dead. The
rollup doors fronting the building were battered and bowed inward, the porthole-style
windows devoid of all but the smallest shards of glass. A handful of older
model cars in various stages of disrepair had been displaced from the lined
parking spots by the moving crush of dead and now rested sidelong across the
garage bay doors.

Across the street from the fix-it place, both the telephone
poles lining the street and a once regal Cadillac sedan had failed to escape
the wrath of the unstoppable biomass. The former—for as far as the eye could
see—had been forced away from the road at crazy angles. Some of the power poles
had come to rest against the upper branches of trees lining the road, their
multiple black lines inexorably intertwined with the upper boughs. A pair of
poles near the end of town were canted so much so that their upper T bars had
skewered one building’s entire run of second-story windows.

Daymon wheeled the Chevy onto the lot first, leaving it broadside
with the body shop and Oliver staring at the closed front door from the
passenger seat. Taryn pulled the Raptor in next, careful to leave it pointed at
the curb cut west of the lot. And as if there wasn’t enough American iron
taking up space on the body and frame shop’s lot, Lev parked the F-650 beside
the Raptor with the sidewalk running under the rig lengthwise and its oversized
driver’s side tires resting partially on the street.

All three engines cut out near simultaneously and the six-person
foraging party plus dog emerged from their respective vehicles. Doors thunked
closed and the group made their way to the closed door in pairs, Max growling
low, hackles standing to attention.

Less than ten minutes after rejoining the others at the post
office, Daymon found himself standing in front of the body shop door with the
rest of the group forming a rough semicircle off his right shoulder.

“You sure everything inside is
all the way
dead?” he
asked Taryn.

She said, “As dead as a few nine-millimeter slugs’ll get
them.”

Daymon kicked a spent shell, sending it skittering away into
the parking lot. He flashed a wan smile and withdrew Kindness from her
scabbard. He stepped back a foot or so and, holding the machete blade vertical
to the door, tapped the garish-hued handle against the brushed-nickel doorknob.

No sound came from within the building.

“Looks like they didn’t come back and rearm the trap,”
Wilson said, trying to lighten the mood and failing horribly at it.

“Not funny,” Taryn said, shooting him a look that could only
be interpreted as:
You’re sleeping alone tonight, buddy boy
. Then she looked
at Daymon and nodded an affirmative. “All three are shot in the head dead.”

Brandishing Kindness one-handed, Daymon grasped the knob. “Well,
here goes nothing then,” he said, giving it a solid tug.

Nothing rushed him. The trio of cadavers were sprawled just
inside the door where they’d fallen. Even truly dead, the sight of them all
trussed up and what it all meant sent a chill tracing his spine. He peered into
the gloom and saw that the shelves in the front retail area were mostly stripped
clean. Only items useful for minor at-home body repair remained. Which made
sense to Daymon. No reason to Bondo a dinged fender with the pickings for a new
vehicle so plentiful.

Returning his attention to the three dead bodies, he
shuffled by the nearest and went to one knee, careful to avoid the pooling fluids.
He probed the areas of their necks where some kind of organs had been removed,
then focused his attention on the cables affixed to their ankles. Whoever had
prepared them had probably spent some time in the military or a trade where
being thorough and precise was expected. There was no way these bonds were coming
loose without help from the living.

He shuddered again at the thought of being in the rotter’s
place. Had Taryn and Wilson not come along when they had, the former humans may
have remained inside until they eventually rotted away to nothing. Hell on
Earth until the bitter end as muscle, sinew and, eventually, the brain
putrefied inside the skull. At least that was what he was pinning his hopes on.
For if these things never decayed to the point that they stopped roaming,
convincing Heidi to move from Eden to his secret place was little more than a
pipe dream.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Lev.

Daymon grabbed the counter on his right and rose, his boots
slipping on the fluids and shredded papers scattered underfoot. Standing by the
counter, his face in the shadows, he met Oliver’s gaze then went face to face until
finally locking eyes with Lev. “I’m not so sure that silencing these things was
the only motive for removing everything inside of there that they did. I didn’t
pay attention during Biology 101, but I’m pretty sure that all they had to do
to silence them was saw through their vocal cords.”

Taryn asked, “What
was
their motive then?”

Singling out Taryn and Wilson, he said, “Do you two remember
hearing Cade and Brook mention a bunch of civilians back at Schriever being
infected on purpose?”

“There was an outbreak inside the wire while we were there,”
Wilson recalled. “Something about a terrorist injecting them with Omega-tainted
saliva—”

“Ah,” Taryn interrupted. “I overheard Annie or Brook … not
sure which one of them … talking about the saliva being milked from glands harvested
from the dead.”

“Bingo,” Daymon said, sliding Kindness back into her sheath.

Lev rested a hand on his pistol. “So what does it all mean?”

Daymon edged past the others without commenting and urged
them to follow. Once he reached the street beyond the parking lot and sidewalk,
he gazed westward at the pair of zombies that hadn’t been there a couple of
minutes ago. Lured from wherever they had been lurking when the noisy vehicles
returned, they were now trudging their way toward the body shop in the slow
arm-swinging shuffle indicative of first turns. Beyond the ratty road-worn pair
of Zs was a long country block with static cars edged up to the curb and trash
strewn about the sidewalks and single-lane drive. On the far corner of the
block stood a single-level ranch-style home, its lot overgrown with weeds and
grass. And backstopping the entire apocalyptic scene was a continuous left-to-right
run of low rolling mounds of scrub- and pine-covered red dirt. Though far from
mountains, the wave-looking geological features deposited there by ancient
glacial movement still mostly obscured the verdant Wasatch-Cache National Forest
from view.

“The attack at Schriever?” Lev prompted.

After turning a one-eighty and peering down the street for a
long three-count, Daymon pointed to a whitewashed church and two-story house
sharing the fenced-in lot due east of it. Regarding the others, he said, “Let’s
go on a little hike and I’ll tell you what I know.”