Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (28 page)

“Gotta hand it to him,” Chief answered back. “At least he
went out on his own terms.”

“They’ll meet again ... somewhere,” Brook said, swiping at a
runaway tear.

Chief said nothing. He snugged his carbine to his shoulder
and methodically culled a trio of dead lurching toward them from the south. Changed
the magazine and racked a fresh round into the chamber and then began the long
walk back to the F-650.

Dreading the sad task of breaking the news of their grim
find to the Kids face-to-face, Brook was about to call ahead to Chief and ask
if he would do it when the radio vibrated in her pocket. Taking it as a sign,
she answered and, as she followed Chief back to the truck, provided the Kids
with all the gory details.

As Brook neared the F-650 she saw a south facing sign marked
Randolph 11.

“If Woodruff doesn’t bear fruit we’ll have no choice but to
go there,” she called ahead.

Chief slowed his gait. “Refresh my memory. What kind of
place are we looking for?”

“Any kind of medical facility or veterinarian’s office,”
said Brook.

“Me and Logan and the others did most of our foraging west
and north of the compound. If I remember right from a couple of trips I made
through here before the outbreak there’s really not much to see. It’s like an
unincorporated town. Post office, a couple of fix-it shops, and a gas station.”

“Won’t hurt to look,” Brook said. “I’ve only seen it on a
map. The Kids have never been this way either.”

When they got back to the Ford they stowed their weapons and
climbed in, Brook still driving. She turned the engine over and stole one last
look at the black and white. The place where Charlie Jenkins made his last
stand. Feeling a second round of tears threatening to spill, she nudged the
shifter into
Drive
and made a K-turn in the center of road. Then,
wheeling north past the Raptor, she braked alongside, powered her window down,
and said to Taryn, “Let’s keep a little more spacing between the trucks when
we’re in Woodruff.”

Taryn nodded. She said, “Are you sure both trucks will fit
in Woodruff? Looked like only three blocks of Main Street before we’re back on
the State Highway.”

“We’ll make do,” said Brook as she released the brake and
powered her window up.

They passed a couple of turn-of-the-century farmhouses with
spacious tracts of grass surrounding them like moats guarding against the
desert’s approach. A little farther down the road, 16 became Main Street and
all concerned discovered that Woodruff truly was a blink-and-you-miss-it kind
of town. It was nothing like the towns south of Huntsville where smaller one-and two-story brick structures with awnings protruding over the sidewalks were
the norm. Instead the places of commerce here were spread apart, sometimes by a
block or more.

The post office on Main Street was a single-level affair
painted an awful cream color with an off-putting red shingle roof. It was
separated from the two-lane State Road by a wide pothole-dotted shoulder and,
beyond it, a single strip of sunbaked grass. A flagless pole was planted in
the ground on the corner of an empty L-shaped parking lot and, continuing the
red theme, a sea of crushed lava rock surrounded it all.

Across the street on the left was an automobile repair shop.
A trio of goose neck lights affixed to the flat roof hung out over its gravel
parking lot. Vinyl banners touting cheap and quick repairs and listing their
prices were strung on one side of the building and rippled lazily after a
little gust of wind.

There were early model rust buckets covering two-thirds of
the lot and, like the gas station preceding it, the neon signage in the window
was darkened and the mini-blinds behind were snapped shut, leaving the contents
of its interior up to Brook’s imagination. She slowed the truck and at the next
corner turned right off of Main Street. Head on a swivel, she wheeled the black
Ford slowly around a pair of horribly burned walking dead.

Chief pointed diagonally across Brook’s field of vision. He
said, “My eyes aren’t the best. Does that say physical therapy?”

Brook slowed the truck to walking speed hunched over the
wheel and gazed at the two-story home turned business. In front was a pair of
gnarled bushes flanking a wide cement walk. The walk ran ten feet from the
sidewalk to a half-dozen stairs leading up to a small porch. A wide wheelchair
ramp branched off right from the walk, switched back once, and ran uphill at a
gradual grade to the right side of the porch. The front door was some kind of
dark wood and in its center at eye-level the business name was spelled out in
three descending rows with what looked like raised bronze letters. Sheer white
curtains covered the vertical windows on either side of the door. The curtains
for the two picture windows flanking the entry were also drawn. Hanging from
eyehooks above the front stairs was a hand-painted sign. Red letters over a
white background. Brook read it aloud:
Back in the Saddle Physical Therapy.

“Do you think they’ll have what you need?”

“Doubtful,” said Brook. “But it’s the closest thing to a
medical practice we’re likely to come across in Woodruff.”

“Where do you think folks used to take themselves to be seen
by a doctor?”

Brook said, “Ogden for specialized medicine, surgeries, and
diagnostic type stuff ... X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and the like.”

Chief looked at her and half-jokingly said, “How about shots
then.”

“Most likely a doctor in Huntsville or Randolph would hold a
clinic for flu shots and immunizations once or twice a year. And that’s
assuming the high cost of malpractice insurance didn’t put all of the private
practitioners here in the boonies out of business.”

Chief said nothing.

Brook asked, “What do you think the odds are that there’s
anything dead inside?”

Still eyeing the building, Chief said, “Slim to none. But if
there is ... clearing the place shouldn’t be difficult. I’m guessing there’s
four ... maybe five rooms downstairs. With probably the same floor plan above.”

Simultaneously two radios vibrated. The one deep in Brook’s
pocket and the backup Chief had brought and placed in the center console.

Chief retrieved the one from the console, pressed the
Talk
button and said, “We’re going to check out this physical therapy business.”

“That’s not what I’m calling you for,” Wilson said testily.
“While you two were sitting in the middle of the road burning fuel and
daydreaming, a couple of rotters got wind of us.”

Brook craned around and saw their unwanted visitors
approaching. The same two horribly burned corpses she’d just passed by. Sex
indeterminable. No hair or clothing or shoes. Just crisped skin and gaunt faces
with pickets of off-white teeth and yellowed orbs for eyes staring straight
away. And they were moving forward undaunted. Like a pair of hungry
fire-and-forget missiles.

She took her foot off the brake and made a low speed U-turn.
Pulled past the Zs, causing a clumsy shuffling about-face in the center of Main
Street U.S.A. She parked the truck near the curb in front of the fix-it-shop
and, leaving the motor running, set the brake.

Knowing the crispy Zs would follow them to the ends of the
earth and that a bullet to the brain would be the only thing stopping them,
Chief said, “You doing this or me?”

Letting her actions do the talking, Brook drew the Glock and
deftly screwed the suppressor onto the muzzle. One and a half twists of the
wrist later she punched the button bringing the window down and patiently eyed
the approaching undead duo in the side mirror.

Behind the staggering ghouls she saw the Raptor roll to a
silent halt.

Once the snarling creatures reached the rear tire on the
driver’s side, Brook stuck her arm out the window and, like she’d seen Cade do,
waited until the first rotter reached for the pistol.

The awful crackling sound the crisped dermis made when the
abomination raised its arms made her cringe. With her own skin crawling and
tingling, she waited until it wrapped its skeletal hands around the cylindrical
suppressor then helped guide it along into its mouth and, with a forceful
thrust, deeper yet into its throat.

She pulled the trigger. Said, “Sleep well,” as the
creature’s eyes bugged in its skull and inexplicably two puffs of fine black
powder exited the recesses where its ears used to be. And whereas the
suppressor usually rendered the Glock’s normal report to little more than a
light hand clap, the creature’s abdomen silenced the shot entirely as the
bullet severed its spinal cord and the remaining gasses dissipated to places
inside.

As the Z fell to the roadway in a heap amid a swirling cloud
of carbonized dermis, Brook raised the pistol by a degree and shot the other
shambling mess between its darting eyes.

Cocking his head and checking the mirrors for more interlopers,
Chief asked, “Only one shot each?”

Brook leaned out the window and the gun chugged twice more.
“I was taking my time,” she said, flashing Chief a fake smile. The gun went
under her thigh and she picked up the radio, keyed the
Talk
button, and
thanked Wilson for the heads up.

Brook released the brake and pulled another U-turn, running
over one of the fallen corpses in the process. With the sickening crunch
reverberating through the truck’s undercarriage she heard Cade in her head
reminding her to
Always double tap
.

The drive to the rehab place was short, and pulling into the
cracked asphalt lot behind the white-and-gray-trimmed building they came across
a car with its door ajar. Still trapped behind the wheel was a corpse,
glistening streamers of muscle and flesh and veins hanging from its neck. As
the Z struggled against its seatbelt, a torrent of white maggots spilled from
its working maw and all of the flesh on the left side of its face bounced and
jiggled like an ill-fitting Halloween mask, threatening to slide off its skull
completely.

Chief grabbed his carbine and said, “I wonder why the things
don’t finish their kills once they’ve turned.”

Brook had no answer to that. She pulled the truck in left of
the compact, set the brake, and killed the motor.

The Raptor slid into the spot right of the little car, and
Wilson hopped out and strode to the thrashing cadaver, brandishing his beloved
Todd Helton Louisville Slugger.

Before Brook could say anything the redhead was teeing off
on the Z’s head. The beating went on until a white sheen of pulped maggots
painted the inside of the windshield and there was nothing recognizable above
the corpse’s collar bone.

Wilson wiped the barrel of his bat in some tall grass
growing up through the cracked asphalt next to the building.

“What was that all about?” called Brook, her tone
confrontational.

“Payback for Charlie. I had just started to click with the
old guy.”

Though he knew the answer, Chief asked, “Why the bat?”

Sasha was out of the truck by now and she answered for her
brother. “He saves it for special occasions like this.”

Brook smiled coyly. Said, “Better than taking it home to
Taryn.” Then her tone changed. All business as she hopped down from the F-650,
she added, “Let’s go Chief.”

Bat in hand and with cheeks still redder than the
blood-splashed seats in the small compact, Wilson fell in behind.

Brook stopped mid-stride, turned, and shot him a look that
said:
Where do you think you are going?

“What?” said Wilson, arms spread, the bat still dripping
some of the gore he’d missed.

Brook put one hand on her hip. A move that conveyed she
meant business. One that always worked on Raven. She said, “Stay behind with
the ladies ...
please
.”

Wilson threw the petite brunette a smart ass salute and
turned on his heel feeling like some kind of private in her personal army.
Then, without a word to the contrary, he placed the bat in the Raptor’s bed and
climbed in next to Taryn.

Just a handful of minutes removed from surveying the damage
several five-hundred-pound bombs could inflict on a jam of cars on a United
States freeway, Cade was trying to wrap his mind around the numbers of dead he
was seeing patrolling the sunbaked Southern California sidewalks. They owned
Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard. There had to have been a hundred or more
languishing in the tar pits of La Brea.

The only part of L.A. that seemed unchanged to Cade when
they overflew it was West Hollywood, a seedy area east of Santa Monica known
for its eccentric nightlife and tattoo parlors and the place—from watching TMZ,
which was a hidden guilty pleasure of his—he associated with fighting in the
streets and drugs and prostitutes and bad boy actors in handcuffs.

Down below, like partiers leaving the clubs at closing, Zs
were staggering down the sidewalks and streets and caroming off of palm trunks
and inert vehicles.

Putting words to Cade’s thoughts, Lopez said, “Place hasn’t
changed much. I wonder how Ronnie’s old stomping grounds look.”

“All the guns in Compton and Inglewood,” said Cross. “No way
the Zs stood a chance against ‘em. I bet there’s BBQ shops still cooking
brisket in drum smokers.”

Yet another good man gone too soon
, thought Cade,
trying to tune out the banter. Like Mike Desantos, Ronnie ‘
Ghost
’ Gaines
had pretty much died in Cade’s arms too. Bled out real quick after the helo
crash in South Dakota.

“One of you needs to do it before we set down,” said Ari
over the comms.

“Enough small talk,” said Cade. “Should be Lopez ... but
we’re all volunteers here. So who’s going to step up? Who knew him best?”

Nothing.

There was a long stretch of silence. Fifteen seconds during
which Cade felt the helicopter start to bank right and then watched Lasseigne
fighting gravity as the bird carved out a big chunk of sky leaning hard to
starboard. When the craft finally righted, the SF operator’s helmeted head
lolled right and banged against the bulkhead and instantly his bound hands were
up and pale fingers groped the air in a futile effort to get ahold of Cross and
Griff. Through the cockpit glass Cade saw the downtown skyline and Dodger
Stadium materializing, slowly, like an oncoming car emerging from a distant
heat shimmer. Then where the automobile-choked 110 Freeway took a slight
right-hand bend, Los Angeles Stadium came back into view. And even from this
distance, thanks to the lack of airborne particulates, he could see clear as
day the numbers on the field and, sitting smack dab on the fifty-yard line, the
Osprey with its slow spinning rotors.

Knowing they had little time to spare before they reached
their final objective, Cade decided to heap the unenviable task upon himself.
He’d met the guy once before and the Special Forces sergeant deserved no less
than a quick release from his dead body. So Cade unbuckled from his seat and
unsheathed his Gerber. He retracted the smoked visor and peered into
Lasseigne’s rapidly clouding eyes. And as the undead man strained and his teeth
snapped out an unnerving cadence behind the painted facemask, Cade raised the
dagger and poised its tip an inch from one of the undead operator’s wildly
roving eyes. “I’m sorry, friend,” he said. Shifting his weight forward, he
plunged the blade in and, with a copious amount of blood sluicing around the
hilt, twisted his wrist once or twice for good measure.

Cade extracted the blade and placed the visor in the down
position. He left the zip-ties on. No feelings left in the empty shell to hurt.
He arranged the dead man’s limp legs so they were out of the way, then returned
to his own seat, heavy of heart.

After buckling back in, he said, “A moment of silence for
our fallen brother,” and bowed his head.

Ten long seconds ticked by then the team raised their heads
one at a time. The SEALs peered out their respective windows.

Lopez performed the sign of the cross, his lips moving as he
uttered a final prayer for the dead warrior.

Cade stared at the lifeless body for a second then filed all
of his feelings away. He reached in a pocket, ripped open the square of foil
with his teeth, and went at his dagger with the alcohol swab.

While Ari and Haynes made plans for their next-to-last
aerial refueling, the crew chief unbuckled and moved across the cabin. Cade
watched the sergeant reach into a recessed cubby, come out with an American
flag, and then was caught off-guard when it was offered to him without a word
out of the crew chief.

Also saying nothing, Cade took it with both hands. It was
folded tight into a triangle. Three long equal sides with a handful of stars
floating on a field of blue showing. He found a grommet, pulled a corner, and
unfurled Old Glory.

Lopez removed the fallen soldier’s dog tags and pocketed
them. Then he watched in silence while Cade wrapped the upright body in the
flag, being careful to tuck the ends in just so.

The crew chief turned away first. Returned to his vigil near
the starboard hip window, silent, eyes on the lookout for ground fire that
would probably never come.

***

It was quiet inside the cabin for a long minute and then Ari
said, “Watch the monitor.”

The screen on the bulkhead went blue for a millisecond. Then
an image splashed on the screen. “Four Palms Apartments. Nadia’s off-campus
abode,” Ari said. “That’s the Santa Monica Freeway north of it. And to the east
is the 110 Harbor Freeway; that’s what we’re following now.”

A tick later, someone, probably Haynes, manipulated the FLIR
pod and the building’s roof snapped into view. There were no bulky AC units or
vents to speak of. Just a single ridge running its entire length with red clay
tiles falling away at a steep pitch on both sides.

Griffin said, “There’s no stairway access to the roof. No
skylights. And it looks like there’s too much of an overhang to rappel off and
go in through a window.”

“You’d be a dangling treat in front of them anyway,” said
Griffin. “Hell, there’s not even so much as a satellite dish to anchor to.”

“At only six stories,” Lopez said. “I was half-expecting
this.”

Ari cut the helicopter’s airspeed and started a slow orbit
of the building.

“Courtyard looks to be out of the running,” said Cade. “With
those tall palms and their wide fronds I doubt if even Ari can get us close
enough to rope in.”

“One block south by east,” said Cross, who, thanks to time
spent on Secret Service advance teams, had a great eye for detail and was an
expert in identifying areas of opportunity. Some chink or another in the layers
of protective armor around the principal. A vulnerability. Most notably,
anywhere a threat to the person he was tasked with protecting might ingress and
egress. “Zoom in east of the building. On the crossing over the 110 ... if that’s
what I think it is, then we’re golden.”

Griffin was checking his weapon. He paused and looked up and
said matter-of-factly, “As long as we don’t get trapped up there.”

Lopez said, “Can you put us in there, Ari?”

“I can put you in the bed of a moving pick-up if you want me
to.”

“Settled,” Lopez said. “There’s our ingress point then. Show
us the back of the Four Palms first.”

“Copy that,” said Ari.

The image on the screen grew larger and began a slow and
lazy counterclockwise rotation.

A quick look told Cade that the off-campus apartment was a
for-profit venture meant to appeal to those intent on independence by any means
necessary. Just looking at the hemmed-in property he could almost hear the
whoosh of passing cars in his imagination.
Noisy place. Hard to rent to just
anyone
, he thought.
Perfect for young people prone to making noise of
their own.

The building was shaped like a geometric boomerang. No soft
curvature. Just hard angles and lots of windows and a liberal coating of pastel
orange paint. There was a fenced-in courtyard with a rectangular swimming pool,
its murky green water a far cry from the crystal blue one would expect to see.
And hampering their insertion by fast rope, four majestic palms rose from tired
landscaping to bracket each corner of the swimming pool.

There were glass doors off the courtyard and a pair of solid
doors with no outside handles on the west side opposite the pool.

As the helicopter kept up the distant orbit the rear of the
building came into view. Under the building’s vertical spine was an entrance to
what looked to be an underground garage; however, from the angle and low light
Cade couldn’t see whether it was gated or not. Above ground was a parking lot
with enough spaces to accommodate maybe twenty vehicles. Miserly by L.A.
standards. But impressive considering that most of the nearby dwellings didn’t
have any off-street parking.

The helo slowed and sideslipped and instantly the insertion
point Cross had identified was just below them.

With Ari expertly holding the Ghost Hawk in a steady hover,
the crew chief hauled open the door and a blast of
hot-carrion-and-kerosene-tinged air slapped Cade full on in the face. Through
his side vision he saw Lopez kick the thick nylon fast-rope out his side door.
Then as the crew chief deployed the second rope, Cade checked his gear again
out of habit. Satisfied, he watched the coils at his feet unspooling over the
metal sill and then quickly walked his gaze over the maze of unmoving vehicles
on the sunken eight-lane freeway sixty feet below. He thought:
Focus on the
landing, not the dead.
He mouthed to the crew chief, “
I’m good to go.”

Once the pair of ropes unfurled completely Cade felt the
crew chief tap his shoulder. He nodded and gripped the rope with gloved hands
and stepped into thin air. In the next instant his palms and fingers were
heating up from friction as gravity yanked his hundred and eighty pound
frame—encumbered with an extra forty pounds of gun, gear, and ammo—the thirty
feet from the helo’s open door to the narrow elevated walkway below.

The moment his boots hit cement he released the rope and, in
one smooth motion, sidestepped a handful of feet, took a knee, and swung his
rifle into a ready position.

Looking the length of his carbine, Cade trained the red
holographic pip on a point near the east end of the elevated pedestrian bridge
where the walkway curled out of sight. Seeing nothing there, he called out,
“East ramp is clear.”

A tick later Cade heard the hollow thud of Cross landing on
the same spot he had just vacated. And then Lopez was on the comms and calmly
calling out, “We’ve got Zs inbound. Nine o’clock underneath the west entry
ramp.”

Then, also over the comms, there was a grunt followed by the
unmistakable sound of someone gasping for breath.

Cade glanced over his shoulder and saw the Navy SEAL,
Griffin, lying on his left side and just in the process of righting himself.
And as the fast-rope jerked and bobbed in the rotor wash over the fallen man’s
head Cade quickly deduced that on the way down Griff had brushed the spikes
atop the bridge’s protective fencing. Confirming the hunch, he noticed that the
operator’s MultiCam blouse was torn and showing through the yawning hole in the
fabric was a horrible six-inch gash running down from his right shoulder to
just above his tactical elbow pad. Dark crimson blood spilled from the wound,
instantly misting as the fabric and jagged tear in the skin flapped wildly in
the down blast.

Lopez moved quickly to assess the wound. A beat later he
looked skyward and flashed a thumbs up to the crew chief looking on.

In the next instant the crew chief had pulled the pin on the
starboard fast rope and it plummeted by the skywalk and landed audibly on the
vehicles below. A half-beat later the port-side rope also fell, but instead of
joining the other on the 110 it got hung up in the same run of security fence
that had just taken a bite out of Griffin.

With the Ghost Hawk peeling away, Cade hustled west and
formed up next to Cross, who was on one knee and training his carbine on the
nearby ramp where anything approaching would initially emerge.

“How bad is it?” Cross asked.

“Just gotta rub some dirt on it,” Griff said, grimacing.

Cade kept his eyes and weapon trained westward while Lopez
tended to the injured SEAL. Every couple of seconds he would check their six to
the east. And every thirty seconds or so he would say, “All clear.”

Two minutes after roping from the helicopter, with a
cacophony of moans and groans rising from the freeway below, Lopez had the
unlucky SEAL’s bicep wrapped in three layers of gauze and secured with white
tape and was zippering up the corpsman’s med-kit.

Cade turned his attention to Griffin. Looked him in the eye.
“Good to go?”

Griffin said nothing. Instead, his eyes widened and he
calmly scooped up his suppressed carbine and nodded west.

Woodruff

A quick rap on the back door followed by a long hard listen
had Chief and Brook convinced that there was nothing dead banging around inside
the ground floor.

So Chief felled the wood core door with one kick from his lug-soled
boot. Then, carbines leading the way, they quickly cleared the lower level
starting with a nearby bathroom and small storage closet adjacent to it.

A quick check of the closet revealed only toilet paper for
the bathroom and a myriad of cleaning supplies and a good amount of
disinfectant wipes, no doubt used to clean equipment or mats of sweat and tears
after strenuous rehab exercises.

Moving on, they entered a wide open twenty by forty foot
room awash with natural light spilling in through a pair of windows bookending
a floor-to-ceiling wall-length mirror on the left wall. Parallel to the mirror
was a freestanding piece of equipment with a pair of adjustable wooden
ballet-style grab bars. The floor was tiled with light green squares and in
front of the mirror was a row of thick blue mats secured together by strips of
hook and loop tape. In one corner near the front door was a pair of yoga balls,
large and neon green. Nearby was a dark brown medicine ball, smaller and
partially squashed and no doubt much heavier than it looked.