Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (40 page)

Once inside, she closed and locked the door and stood in the
inky black listening to her heart beat. She found the hanging string after the
second swipe for it and yanked the light on. Pulled over the folding chair and
positioned it near her bunk. She placed the sheet from the yellow pad on the
seat and emptied her pockets of the sat-phone and two-way radio, the latter two
which she put on the bed next to the pillow. Slowly and methodically she
stripped off her MOLLE gear and gun belt and placed them along with the Glock
on the floor underneath the chair. She sat on the bunk and unlaced her boots
and nudged them under the bed. She took a calming breath, pulled out the pen
and, using the seat of the chair as a writing surface, jotted down a message
and capped the pen.

After a short internal debate she decided to leave the light
on.
Safer that way for all concerned
.

Exhausted, hungry, and feeling shaky, she stretched out on
top of the sheet. Lying there she realized her hands were trembling and felt a
little numb, like she’d been out in the cold for an extended period sans
gloves.

She rubbed them together and blew on them a couple of times,
then grabbed ahold of the upper bunk supports and shook the bed as hard as she
could. Pleased to find it both sturdy in build and stable on the floor with her
body weight added, she thrust a hand into her right thigh pocket and came out
with a handful of zip-ties. She sat up and fashioned six of them loosely into
three identical pairs of handcuffs. She slipped her feet into one pair and
cinched them tight. Then she zipped one pair of cuffs around each wrist and
tightened them down. Using a couple of the loose ties, she secured both cuffs
to the bed’s vertical support farthest from the door, bit down on the ends one
at a time and yanked them tight, removing as much of the play as she could.
Lastly, she thrashed and bucked atop the thin mattress, trying to free herself.

Satisfied she was going nowhere—alive or undead—she slid her
left hand close to her right, rolled onto her side facing away from the door,
and drew her bound legs up tight against her chest.

As she lay there thinking about Raven and Cade and all of
the good times they had shared, a lightning bolt of pure mind-numbing cold
coursed through her body, momentarily paralyzing her.

In a matter of seconds she could feel nothing in her hands
and feet, and a sensation, like her skin was being slowly peeled away, began
creeping up her four limbs.

I’m dying
, she thought.
I’m really dying.

A spasm wracked her body and her fingers and toes curled up
tight. As the pounding behind her eyes increased from a heartbeat-like rhythm
to a rapid-fire strobe of pure unadulterated white hot pain, the likes which
she’d never experienced before, she inadvertently bit down on her tongue and
mercifully lost consciousness.

Thirty minutes after the desert transfer, and with, by
Cade’s rudimentary calculations, roughly fifty miles yet to cover, the VF-22
Osprey began to descend slowly. And as Cade looked out the window and watched
swaths of wide-open desert and the occasional lonely copse of trees blaze by, a
woman’s voice came over the shipboard comms and all but confirmed what he
already knew. “Thirteen mikes to insertion,” she said. “Am I putting my bird
down or should we kick a fast rope out for Mister Cade Grayson?”

In his side vision Cade saw the loadmaster staring at him.
When he turned to face the man, he realized the Rangers were staring at him as
well. A long couple of seconds rolled by, then a few half-smiles broke out and
some of the men flashed him a thumbs up.

The loadmaster, a fireplug of a man with thick trunks for
legs and arms that looked like they belonged to a MMF fighter, approached Cade
and leaned real close. Loud enough to be heard over the incessant droning of
the twin Rolls-Royce engines, the man said, “Your reputation precedes you. And now
I know why Major Ripley signed us all up to ferry you from the middle of
nowhere to the middle of Bumfuk Egypt. What’s your preference ... rope or
wheels down?”

Loudly, Cade said, “Rope.”

The loadmaster, whose name tape read
Tanpepper,
flashed a thumbs up and said, “Thanks for your work out of Schriever.”

Nodding, Cade said, “Thanks in advance for getting me out of
this bird ASAP.”

Tanpepper nodded and went about attaching one of the coiled
thirty-foot-long fast ropes to an anchor point near the rear ramp.

Some of the Rangers were still casting glances Cade’s way,
which made him think they were the ones who’d kicked the shit out of Bishop’s
men a few weeks ago. He wished he knew for certain so he could thank them for
doing the heavy lifting that allowed him to roll in unscathed to interrogate
the waste of skin. But he didn’t have time nor the energy. Getting to the
compound was first and foremost on his mind. And rolling around in there trying
to break free from where he had stuffed them was the memory of Desantos
fighting the good fight against Omega before ultimately succumbing to the
indiscriminate little virus. To have gone up against long odds so many times
before and come out the other end the better for it and then end up going out
the way he had was extremely hard for Cade to wrap his mind around—even after
the passage of time and distance.

Over the comms Cade heard:
Five mikes.
He saw
Tanpepper prepping the rear ramp for deployment. The loadmaster held up four
fingers. Cade thought:
Hang on, Brook
. He checked the sat-phone one last
time. Saw no new messages. So he read the last two again. The oldest of which
read:
Jenkins is dead. Chief was bitten and doesn’t have long to live. My
fault.
Then, as if Brook had been fighting some internal battle or contemplating
taking her own life to somehow, however misguided the notion was, atone for the
perceived transgression, the final message, sent thirty seconds after that
first gut punch, consisted of only six possibly life-changing words that read
simply:
I was bitten also. Hurry back!

Tanpepper was now holding two fingers up, like a peace sign,
and the ramp had started the slow movement downward.

Cade tightened the nylon lanyard securing the carbine and
swung it around his chest until it was behind his right shoulder next to his
pack. Made certain his Glock was snug in its drop-leg holster. Tightened the
hook and loop straps on both tactical gloves. Then flashed the ruddy-faced
Marine loadmaster a thumbs up.

Tanpepper, who was now tethered to the bird with a safety
strap, hinged over and grabbed the rope, took a step down the ramp into the
eddies created by the prop-driven slipstream, and waited while the aircraft
simultaneously pitched up and slowed noticeably.

Cade was tethered as well and had been watching the ground
rush up. When the bird pitched back he noticed the gentle curve of the highway
drift past, then came the treetops, pointed and seemingly reaching up for the
Osprey. Through the canopy he caught snippets of the gravel feeder road now and
again. Once all forward movement had ceased and the ground was spinning counter
to the bird’s clockwise rotation, Tanpepper heaved the coiled rope into space
and stepped out of the way.

A veteran of hundreds of insertions such as this, most in
the dark, some under fire, Cade grasped the rope and disengaged the safety
strap. Though not in uniform, he flashed a crisp salute to the Rangers who were
once again staying behind. He bumped fists with the loadmaster before stepping
out into the void.

During the five-second slide to the wind-whipped clearing he
was bombarded by a dozen different stimuli.

In the first second, painted yellow and orange by the
setting sun and looking like an Old West snapshot, he saw the blue and gold
Black Hawk at rest near the tree line, its blades already tied down. His eyes
flicked to the motor pool where, save for the Police Tahoe and the battered
Land Cruiser, all of the vehicles looked to be accounted for. As his body spun
around a few degrees clockwise he saw that the solar panels were on their newly
constructed frame and facing south.

As seconds two and three rolled by he saw expectant faces
staring up at him. Duncan, and Heidi, and Daymon with his shortened dreads
whipping about in the rotor wash, were all accounted for. Near the white and black
Ford pickups, he saw Taryn and Sasha and Wilson standing in a loose knot, the
latter redhead’s boonie hat whipping wildly in the down blast. And nearby,
prostrate on the ground, its face obscured by a flapping jacket, was a husky
male body that by logical deduction had to be Charlie Jenkins’s.

During the fourth second Cade’s palms and fingers grew hot
due to the friction of the fast rope ripping through his gloves.

And finally a wave of sadness hit him as the faces of the
recently lost flashed in front of his eyes like a jittery film reel. It sped
forward, frame-by-frame, one face at a time until his boots hit earth and he
was left with the final indelible image of Desantos staring skyward, eyes open,
features frozen in a death grimace.

Praying that he wouldn’t be splicing Brook’s visage into the
feature anytime soon, Cade let go of the rope and, oblivious of everything and
everyone, clicked the quick release and let gravity steal his carbine. He
leaned into a full sprint towards the compound’s entrance and began shedding
gear. Legs pumping furiously, he slipped out of his ruck and it bounced and
skidded and came to rest on the faux crop circle. He unbuckled his helmet and
didn’t look back as it fell hard to the dirt airstrip, took a weird bounce, and
spun crazily into the long grass, NVGs and comms headset still attached.

Sixty pounds lighter than Cade, Tran failed to heed passage
and took an unintentional hockey check near the door that sent him caroming off
the metal jam.

“Brook,” Cade hollered, his cracking voice preceding him and
echoing in the tight corridor.

Startled for the second time in an hour, Seth stood up from
his chair and suffered Tran’s fate. He went sprawling, his buck-fifty losing
out to Cade’s bull-in-a-china-shop charge through the space. Flat on his back,
Seth bellowed, “She’s in the Kids’ quarters.”

Cade said nothing as he retraced his steps. He didn’t stop
to help Seth. Just stepped over him. He was on a mission. After a right and a
left he barged through the door and into the container without a knock. He saw
Raven staring at him wide-eyed. He thought she looked a little pale. Or it
could have been the light. But overall she seemed to be OK. “How are you,
sweetie,” he asked as he went to one knee next to her bunk.

“I’m peachy, Dad,” she said in a smarty tone. Then she
smiled and Cade’s gut told him she’d get by without him for a few minutes. So
he shifted his gaze to the woman on the folding chair at the end of the bunk.
He had no idea who she was, but seeing how she was alone with his daughter,
someone had already vetted her—most likely Brook. He had lots of questions that
would have to be levied later. And a very pressing matter just a few footsteps
away. So he smoothed Raven’s hair and gave her a peck on the forehead and rose,
giving her the look he always did upon leaving.

And she took it for what it meant. He always returned when
he said he would. Then her face morphed and the smile was replaced with a frown
as she looked about the room.

Sensing a question coming, Glenda beat Raven to the punch.
“Your mom wasn’t feeling well.” She shifted her gaze to Cade and said, “She
went to lie down. She stressed that you should go see Chief in the dry storage
room first. Said he needs your attention ... she didn’t elaborate further.”

Cade went into the medic pack at his hip and retrieved the
antiserum. He exited the Kids’ quarters and in seconds had negotiated the
underground warren and was banging on the dry storage door. He stood there
waiting. Heard some sounds behind the door. Hushed voices. Then a chair’s legs
screeching against the wood floor. Then there was only the sound of the three
aluminum cylinders rattling in his palm as he worked them like a pair of worry
beads.

The latch clanked and there was a creak of metal on metal as
the door swung inward. Lev was staring out at him, a pained look on his face.

Cade handed Lev a cylinder. Figured after serving in Iraq
he’d seen all kinds of medical treatments administered in the field. So he
didn’t waste words or time. “It’s a modified auto-injector on steroids. Goes in
the femoral artery.” He didn’t stick around for a question-and-answer session.
He turned and, as he strode down the corridor, he heard Jamie say, “Oh no. Oh
no. I’m losing his pulse.”

He kept going. Found the door to his billet latched from the
inside. So he took a step back—which was all the room there was between
walls—and planted a size nine boot next to the spot where he imagined the latch
snugged into the stop was tack-welded to the container wall. And he found it.
There was a resonant clang—like a mini-gong had been struck. But the stop’s
weld was stronger than his first kick. So with the return energy still coursing
through his bones and chattering his teeth, he took another step back and
eyeballed the smudge of mud left behind from his first attempt. He took a deep
breath and coiled his muscles and imagined he was kicking through a board at a
Tae Kwon Do exhibition. It had been years since he’d set foot in a dojo, but
muscle memory made up for the passage of time, and as he started his leg moving
forward, for good measure, he pushed off of the wall behind him with both
hands.

The weld on the stop must have been big enough to hold a
battleship hull together. Because it held again. However, the pivot point where
the latch was connected did not. There was a ping and a muffled clatter as
metal parts rained down on the plywood floor inside.

Everything slowed and like his descent from the Osprey—when
all of his senses had been fine-tuned—the scene inside came to him in little
revelatory snippets.

He saw the left wall with articles of clothing held up by
hooks welded there. As the door opened further he saw Raven’s bunk pushed back
against the far wall.
Her own little parent-free oasis.
Then he saw
stocking feet and noticed they were trussed. And the ties binding them were
secured to the bed rail by more of the sturdy ties. His eye traced right and
saw Brook on the bed, her back to him. He was a step into the room and the door
was coming back at him—fast.
Equal and opposite reaction.
He stepped
left and the door missed him by an inch on its return travel.

He slid on his knees and saw the chair by the bed and his
mind registered the bold black writing against yellow that said:
I love you
both. Take care of my baby bird.
His eyes flicked back to her and saw that
her small frame was trembling. Sharp tremors interspersed by a kind of nonstop
judder. Then the bed moved half a foot as his pelvis hit the lower rail.

With one hand on her shoulder he tried to roll her towards
him. Simultaneously he was biting the cap of the cylinder clutched in his left
hand.

Realizing her hands were also secured to the bed corner and
her body wouldn’t move very far without them being cut through, he readied the
injection and climbed on the bed and straddled her body.

Her skin was hot to the touch but there was a pulse, however
faint. And like Desantos when Cade had carried him from the Ghost Hawk towards
the infirmary at Schriever so many weeks ago, Brook was in the danger zone.

Cade removed the plastic cap with his mouth, exposing the
needle, and spit the cap onto the floor. Without a nanosecond’s hesitation he
ignored her thigh and instead plunged the needle into her neck where her
snaking carotid bulged just under her ashen skin. The antiserum transferred
into her bloodstream with no noticeable effect. And like Lasseigne’s plight
many hours before, only time would tell.

Cade drew his Gerber from its sheath and started to
carefully saw through the ties binding his dying wife. With each swipe of the
blade he said a prayer. And during the entire process there was an overwhelming
feeling of gratefulness that the blade was only cutting through thin strips of
hardened nylon.

Once her feet and hands were freed, Cade stretched out on
the bed next to her and, without concern for his own well-being, wrapped her in
a bear hug from behind and clasped his hands below her sternum, locking his
fingers.

As he nuzzled her neck and basked in her scent, he whispered
into her ear, “Fight it, Brooklyn Grayson. For Raven. For me. There’s no room
in our lives for another ghost.”

###

Thanks for reading
Ghosts
. Look for a new
novel in the
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse
series in 2015. Please feel
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