District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (16 page)

Daymon was down on one knee at the top of the stairs inspecting
the sprung trap, which at this point was no longer caroming off the door jambs
and had come to rest blocking the doorway. Twine looped through metal eyehooks screwed
into the door header kept the medieval-looking contraption suspended roughly
knee-high to the shortest person in the group. A third length of twine that had
triggered the trap now lay in a loose coil on the rectangular cement landing where
a door mat would normally be.

Daymon took the slack length of twine in hand and followed
it up the door frame to where it passed through a series of metal eye hooks
identical to the ones securing the trap to the top header. Near the top of the
frame, a knot stuck fast in the final eyehook had arrested the twine’s travel.

“Check this out,” Oliver said, pointing to one of the
spikes.

Daymon called for Lev to join him outside. He moved out of
the way as Lev stepped over the inert trap. Finally, after making room for the
former soldier on the cement landing, he said, “Aside from a pretty elaborate
shin sticker, what else am I supposed to be seeing, Oliver?”

“This,” Oliver replied, pointing to one of the spikes protruding
from the tree trunk on his side of the doorway. “There’s a moist bit of flesh skewered
on this one. And more on these, here … and here.” He lifted the trap to afford
Daymon, Wilson, and Lev a clear view. “I’d bet this is what came out of Tom,
Dick, and Harriet down at the body shop.”

“From their necks?” Taryn asked, peering over Oliver’s shoulder.

“Yep.”

“Motherfuckers
were
harvesting salivary glands,”
Daymon said, his short dreads keeping time with his bobbing head. “That’s some
devious shit right there.” He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. “Whoever
set this when they left didn’t want to kill any of us right away. Hell, this
thing is so light it probably wouldn’t have killed
Raven
if she had
sprung it.”

“When I was in Iraq, a staff sergeant leading our fire team
liked to remind us before going out on patrol that a wounded man took more
resources to bring in than a dead one.”

“So he wanted you to die instead of getting injured?” Wilson
asked.

Lev stared at Wilson for a long second. “No, dumbass. He
didn’t want any of us to get injured. That’s what this is here for. One of us
gets infected and doesn’t realize it. Brings it home as a slow burn and then he
or she turns and infects a few more of us.
That’s
some devious shit.”

Wilson stepped up to Lev. Glared at him for a second. “Take
it back. The dumbass comment. Take it back.”

Lev merely shrugged.

Wilson shoved him in the sternum, knocking him off the short
run of stairs.

Reacting instantly, Lev found his balance and threw a
looping right that missed Wilson’s nose by a whisker. “You watered those balls alright,”
he said, as Daymon leaped down and pulled him away.

“Name calling? That’s a first for you,” Wilson said, eyes
narrowing.

Daymon stood facing Lev. “Stand down,” he said, moving his
body to keep the shorter man from making eye contact with the redhead crowding
him from behind.

Thinking
boys will be boys
, Jamie looked on
indifferently.

Aiming to defuse the situation, Taryn poked her head out the
doorway. Staring daggers at Lev, she said, “I found this in the attic,” She
handed the empty cigarette pack to Oliver, who in turn passed it between the
taut twine to Daymon.

“So what if the bleeder was a smoker?” Daymon said,
inspecting the crumpled wrapper. “We already knew that by the stink in there.”

“Look inside the wrapper,” she said as Lev and Wilson seemed
to forget about their beef and edged closer to see the item in Daymon’s palm.

Daymon inspected the pack closer and fished a worn book of
matches from the crinkled cellophane sleeve. He spent a moment turning it over
in his hand and reading the words encircling a catchy logo. “These came from
The Lodge Motel in Bear River. A long time ago, from the looks of it. So what?”

“Take a closer look,” Taryn said.

He read the small print on the cover again front and back.
“I stand corrected,” he said. “These came from Bear
Lake.
”

Crouching next to Oliver and looking directly at Daymon, who
had professed to have fought fires all over the west, Taryn said, “OK … so we all
know where Bear River is. Can either one of you enlighten us as to where
Bear
Lake
is.”

“Enlighten you? Hell no … I’m going to take you there,” said
Daymon. “Stand back.” He rose and pulled a folding knife from a cargo pocket.
After thumbing the knife open, he cut the trap down. Being sure to stay clear
of the Omega-infected spikes, he took hold of all three lengths of severed twine
and carried the trap to the nearby fence and tossed it into the brambles on the
other side.

“What now?” Lev asked.

“Check the fence for signs of our squirter.”

“All the noise the trap made, if they were still hanging
around I’m sure we’d have already started taking incoming fire.”

“Humor me while Oliver takes care of the heavy lifting,”
Daymon said. He pointed at Wilson. “You initiated the physical contact with your
friend
. Time to apologize.”

“But he called me a—,” Wilson stammered.

“Sticks and stones,” Daymon said, cutting him off and
folding his arms across his chest.

Reluctantly, Wilson made a quiet amends.

“Apology accepted,” Lev said as he headed off toward the
fence line. “Sorry I swung on you.”

“Doesn’t that feel better?” Daymon said, directing the
question at Wilson.

Wilson nodded and struck off after Lev.

Daymon turned back toward the door. “Oliver …
come on
down
,” he said, trying to impart a little Price is Right-like enthusiasm
into the request. “I want to show you something.”

Daymon led Oliver to the side fence he had spotted earlier
from the sidewalk. He ran the folding knife across the rust-scaled wrought iron
and began to whistle softly.

After a few seconds the sound of clumsy footsteps on wooden
steps filtered around to the side of the house. A tick after the noises
subsided, the bushes at the front corner of the house shimmied and branches cracked
as the two rotters from the front stoop crashed their way through. Maws already
pistoning open and closed on imagined flesh, they hissed and moaned and staggered
toward the waist-high fence.

Daymon handed over his folding knife, blade already locked
open. “What’s the easiest way to deal with these fuckers? I’ll give you a hint:
I’ve put down hundreds of them this way.”

“Wait until they’re trapped on the fence, then stick them in
the eye.”

“Now we’re cooking with gas, Oliver.” Daymon chuckled and
stepped back from the fence. “We’ll make a stone cold killer out of you yet.”

The monsters hit the fence at a full shamble, causing the
old iron to keen and groan and the entire ten-foot run to lean inward a few
degrees.

Breathing through his nose and about to retch from the
stench, Oliver thrust the locked blade into the male rotter’s eye socket,
dropping the snarling beast vertically as if a trapdoor had been opened beneath
it. The sudden second-death and subsequent instantaneous failure of everything
keeping the two-hundred-pounder upright couldn’t have been timed any worse. For
when the thing collapsed and was impaled on the spikes atop the fence, it
pitched forward, the dead weight causing the entire run of fence to cant
forward and stop at roughly a sixty-degree angle.

Damnit
, Oliver thought, seeing the law of unintended
consequences unfolding before his very eyes as the female rotter hit the fence and
started the evenly spaced concrete footings to rise up from the soggy earth. To
keep from being pinned to the ground by hundred-year-old iron, and who knew how
many pounds of dead flesh, Oliver stepped forward and braced the fence with his
left hip. Keeping free of the female’s snapping teeth, he grabbed a handful of
greasy hair and drew her thrashing head toward his leveled blade.

“Not like that,” Daymon blurted, rushing to his aid. “You’re
likely to get bit.”

Grimacing, Oliver said, “I can’t stomach stabbing them
through the skull.”

Daymon shored the fence with his thigh, grabbed a fistful of
hair, and then pushed down on the back of the flailing monster’s head. After getting
Oliver’s undivided attention, he stabbed an index finger at the nape of its
neck. “Right where the spine goes into the skull is where you want to do it,”
he said. “There will be a little grating of bone and such. But nothing like
when you do them in the temple or through the skull cap.” Finished delivering
today’s lesson on how to effectively kill the undead 101, he pulled harder on
the creature’s long auburn locks and increased the downward pressure on its
skull with his other hand.

After a little probing with the tip of the borrowed blade, Oliver
found the sweet spot between the C1 and C2 vertebra and put his weight behind the
single thrust. As promised, there was a cold-shiver-inducing grating of steel
on bone, but nothing akin to what Oliver had felt and heard when Daymon forced
him to put down the rotters earlier.

Muted golf claps sounded from behind Daymon and Oliver as
they let the female rotter down to the long grass.

Daymon let go of the thing’s hair then turned towards the
others and smiled sheepishly. “Did any of you learn anything from today’s
lesson?”

Taryn and Jamie shook their heads, the former nearly pushed
to the point of rolling up another middle finger for Daymon.

Ignoring the quip, Lev said, “There’s nothing I can see by
the fence. The trail in the grass continues west then goes cold.”

“As I suspected,” Daymon said. “I would have run, too, once
I got an eyeful of this motley crew.”

“What next?” asked Wilson. “Are we going to investigate Bear
Lake today or continue searching this booby-trap-infested town?”

“Bear Lake,” Daymon said. “I figure we can catch up with our
Peeping Tom if we get going now. All in favor, hands up.”

“Five for, one abstaining,” Lev said after a quick head
count.

Sounding a little irritated, Daymon said, “Come on, Oliver.
Water your—”

“Balls,” Wilson finished. “Go with the flow, dude. I used to
be afraid of
guns
. Shotguns, pistols, rifles … you name it, I wanted
nothing to do with them.”

“And look at him now,” Daymon intoned. “He’s a stone cold
killer. And you’ve officially been overruled, Oliver. Let’s go back through the
house.”

Scaling the steps, Daymon paused and looked over the rigging
used to suspend the spike-laden trunk off to the side of the door. Then he
turned slowly, regarded Taryn and then settled his gaze on Wilson. “When you
two get back to the Raptor, you better check the backseat for a stowaway.”

“What are you talking about?” Wilson asked, taking off his boonie
hat and rolling it up, then nervously throttling it two-handed.

Looking up from the bottom step, Taryn added, “Who do you
think snuck a ride with us?”

Knowing where Daymon was going with this, Lev smiled and
simultaneously fielded Jamie and Oliver’s confused looks with a dramatic shrug.

“I figure since you two
both
almost bought the farm
today, old Mr. Murphy has got to be tagging along with you.”

Wilson said nothing. He scrunched his hat down and brushed
past Daymon, following the others into the house.

Shaking her head at the tough love Daymon seemed gleeful to
be dishing out, Taryn let her thoughts on the subject be known by cranking up
another middle finger for the man, then swung it to her right and targeted a
retreating Lev with it for a brief second.

“Relax,” Daymon said, wearing a shit-eating grin. “I’m not
picking on you. You just became the next victim of my equal opportunity ball
busting. I still got both of your backs.” Lowering his voice on the outside
chance their watcher was still nearby, he called ahead to Lev. “Fire up the
handheld CB and call Eden. Tell ‘em where we are and what we found … or didn’t
find. Then let whomever it concerns know that we’re pushing north.”

“With friends like these,” Taryn muttered, watching Daymon
reenter the house with a certain spring in his step.

“Daymon’s a ball buster of the highest order,” Oliver said
quietly. “Just be grateful you’re not our
weakest link
.”

***

Iris was rising up from the mound of grass clippings at the
same moment in time that the dreadlocked man was tackling the redhead. While
their hurtling bodies were clearing the steps on the way to a hard landing, she
was edging into the dark shadows on the periphery of the overgrown bramble
patch.

Feeling every bit the
doer
for the first time in a
long time, she defied standing orders and stayed in the gloom long enough to
see the tripwire snag on one of the men’s boots. Then, fingering the gold cross
on the chain around her neck, she risked death at her own hand by remaining rooted
long enough to see the slipknot dissolve and gravity take hold of Ratchet’s tainted
trap. At first it had moved achingly slow. The first few degrees of the arc
seeming to take half a heartbeat. In the second half of that perceived pause it
picked up speed and scythed the air where the men had been, failing in its sole
purpose: to infect living flesh.

With Mother’s final words echoing in her head, Iris rose and
crept west toward the church, being mindful to keep her movement steady and
fluid-like—as she’d been taught. With the harried voices of the two luckiest
men in the world rising above the sound her soft footfalls made crossing the
carpet of rotting leaves beneath the skeletal oak, she decided the bad news wouldn’t
make it into her report. Then, as she padded across the lengthening shadow of
the church’s steeple on her way to the caretaker’s outbuilding, she pulled out
the radio and placed the requisite call.