Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (20 page)

“Thank you, Lopez,” Cade intoned.

Slowly Ari lowered his sidearm. “Sorry, friend. It was for
your own good.”

There it is,
Cade thought.
Yellow school bus on
the left
. Then he committed and entered the narrow canyon of metal and
glass and colorful camping gear. He powered down the window, craned his head out,
and gaped at the whale-sized vehicle. On its rear end above the clouded-over back
window was a vinyl sign. It was stretched tight and tied down. Hand lettered in
red were the words,
Camp Carefree, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
. Below
that, in much smaller font, was a web address and a phone number, and lastly, an
unfulfilled promise:
You can entrust your little ones with us
. And judging
by the number of pale, stick-thin arms probing the air through the open
windows—about a hundred unlucky parents had.

“Looks like they made it to camp,” said Cade, taking a
sliver of solace from the fact that it appeared the bus had been heading away
from Sioux Falls, which he took as a sign the little ones had enjoyed one final
summer camp fling before joining the ranks of the dead.

“Nothing worse than seeing little demonios,” whispered Lopez
into the comms, while tiny ashen fingers massaged the air inches from his face.
He whistled, long and drawn out. Instantly the rasps of the entombed dead rose
in volume and new faces pressed the glass, filling every available void.

“Fucking wrong,” exclaimed Hicks, who usually left the
talking to others. “Looks like they all died away from their families.”

“That’s why I am so glad I didn’t have any kids before the
shit hit the fan,” added Cross. Then he swung the SCAR around and dropped a
pair of Zs that were creeping up on their six.

Considering himself very fortunate, Cade made no mention of
family as the sneering faces of three dozen undead grade-schoolers slid by.

Always the cruise director, Ari said, “Hands and arms inside
the vehicle, gentlemen. It’s gonna be a tight fit.”

“Hang on,” Cade said, aiming the Chevy at the Prius-sized gap
between the school bus’s right fender and the tubular grill guard wrapping around
the Suburban’s front end. He buried the pedal and after a slight hesitation the
full force of the engine, nearly two hundred horsepower, was applied to the
road. Consequently the nearly half-ton of flesh, bone, and sinew—living and
dead—sardined into the six-by-eight box behind him caused the Chevy’s front end
to rise slowly like a boat planing water. A wisp of steam curled through the
grill and a cacophony of metallic gnashing rang out as a direct result of the
added stresses. Then the rig nosed back down and, with the racket of two
colliding locomotives, punched into the Suburban. Headlight glass shattered. A
length of fender trim was sheared from the mounts securing it, curled back and
probed the air.

In an apparent miscalculation on Cade’s part only the Suburban’s
grill guard budged, bending back at a forty-five degree angle before the Chevy
pick-up was wedged tight between it and the bus’s enormous front tire.

For a few seconds the Chevy fought valiantly to break free,
spinning the rear tires until the engine stalled out and died. Then, lured by
the close proximity of fresh meat, the undead tykes returning from
Camp
Carefree
pulled away from the bus windows and, like a single-minded
organism, surged into the stairwell and crashed headlong into the bi-fold doors.

Eden Compound

Duncan parked the Land Cruiser under the Black Hawk’s
drooping rotor blades, grabbed his radio and shotgun from the passenger seat, and
willed his weary frame from the plush confines of the high-dollar SUV. He slung
the Mossberg, pushed the door closed, and spent a couple of extra minutes
covering the Toyota with some of the excess camouflage netting used to conceal
the helo.

Better safe than sorry
, he thought as he set out
across the clearing, eyes searching for a clue as to the whereabouts of the camouflage
blind concealing the entrance to his brother’s underground compound.

The afternoon sun was just beginning to bake the back of his
already sunburned neck when a fella he’d met a couple of days prior, Edward,
emerged from the tree line laboring to carry a pair of bulging nylon duffle
bags. A tick south of morbidly obese, the man had the neck of a firmly
entrenched politician, wide and rolled with fat. And as he drew nearer, huffing
and puffing, Duncan could see that the man’s clean-shaven face was becoming
redder by the second. Worried Ed might be close to having a massive coronary,
Duncan stopped walking and asked if he could help carry the bags.

Eyes downcast, Edward said nothing and kept up his steady,
lumbering pace.

“Wouldn’t be a problem,” said Duncan as their paths crossed.

Edward still made no reply.

Incredulous, Duncan stopped and watched the man toddle away,
bags swaying, shotgun banging against his considerable backside.

“What the hell did I do to you?” Duncan muttered as he stood
in the middle of the clearing watching Ed approach the two Cessnas chocked adjacent
to the Black Hawk. When Ed reached the nearest of the civilian aircraft—a shiny
white item emblazoned with letters and numbers denoting its FAA identification
and a black stripe running from nose to tail to add some flash to the rather
pedestrian aircraft—he tossed the bags behind the narrow seats, and then with a
great deal of effort climbed up and wedged his frame behind the controls.

We need a bigger plane
, thought Duncan, adapting a
line from Jaws to best describe what he had just witnessed.

***

As always, Duncan had to work at finding the concealed
entrance. Once he located the camouflaged netting, he pulled it aside and
passed on through. On the other side he smoothed and straightened the edges and
corners, making sure the foliage looked as natural as rent-off sticks and
leaves and clumps of bushes could.

With his footfalls deadened by the thick carpet of pine
needles, he padded down the dirt ramp, passing through bars of light and
dappled shadow along the way. The smell of damp earth filled his nose as he
worked at the latches to open the outer steel door. When he entered the
compound anteroom he performed a ritual he’d learned years ago in the jungles
of Vietnam but had dusted off only recently. He stood still, eyes wide, letting
them adjust to the dark. He lowered his breathing and listened hard for any
kind of movement. And while he stood there in the low-ceilinged container, feeling
a little like Indiana Jones invading some other culture’s temple, he caught a
tear-inducing whiff of his own body odor. The sour stink of fear-tinged sweat
mingling with traces of bodily fluids and cordite clung to him like a bad
reputation.

Standing there wallowing in his own stench, with the events
of the day careening through his head like a Michael Man flick, a prolonged
stint under one of those Frisbee-sized shower heads with pinprick jets of
steaming hundred and forty degree water pummeling his skin and soothing his
muscles had never sounded better. Hell, he thought. He’d even defy his own
personal man code and put a loofa pad and some girly-smelling hair conditioner
to use given the chance.

Once his eyes finally adjusted to the low light environs, he
discarded the spa treatment fantasy like an old razor, propped his shotgun
beside the vertical hatch, and tried the handle. And as expected, the door was
unlocked and opened quietly on oiled hinges.
Should be a Klaxon sounding
right about now
, he thought, shaking his head. For some lame brained
reason, before he’d arrived at the compound, the group decided on a show of
hands that during the day the doors would be latched, but not locked from
inside. And given the fact that an average team of operators could neutralize
the outside security, leave all of them cut from ear-to-ear exsanguinating on
the ground and be gone like ghosts in a matter of seconds, he let it be known
whenever possible how adamantly opposed he was to the ludicrous decision.

But since Logan was a big boy and the compound was his,
Duncan had decided to save the battle for another day. Unfortunately for Logan,
today was that day. Push had come to shove, and Duncan had been forced to do
the shoving—albeit with a number of .50 caliber rounds—up on the road, and now
he was going to do some pushing and revisit the issue with his baby bro.

He ducked into the next cramped Conex container which doubled
as the compound’s security and communications center, took two exaggerated
strides, staying in the shadows, and stopped directly behind Logan, who was
tethered to a Ham radio by a pair of bulky Hi-Fi headphones that were cinched
tightly on his head and covered both ears.

While Duncan wrestled with the notion of teaching Logan a
lesson on breaking and entering and the dire consequences that came along with
it, he let his eyes wander over the facing wall; it was taken up by rows of
shelving on which all manner of unused radio gear sat dark and silent. A bin at
eye level was filled with electrical cords, speaker wire, and a myriad of
colorful cables secured by plastic zip ties. Next door to it sat a half-dozen Motorola
two-way radios taken off the bodies of the Huntsville dead. A polymer Glock
pistol belonging to Logan sat within arm’s reach next to the radios. Arranged
side by side on the desk below the shelving were a pair of closed circuit
television monitors, each one partitioned so that six separate feeds could be displayed
simultaneously. Frozen on the monitor on the left were mainly color images of
conifer trees at ground level. The second screen displayed six grainy images.
One showed Duncan and Edward passing. The next was a long, pulled-out view of
the airstrip, mostly greens and browns with trees at the far end of the runway
and a thin sliver of blue sky overhead. At the bottom on the left was another
image, snapped from behind, of him entering the woods near the hidden entrance.
The latter half of the partitioned monitor caught the white Toyota and a flash
of his face in three separate frames at three different locations as he
approached the airstrip via the dirt and gravel road coming in from the State
Route.

Worrying his handlebar mustache with one hand and working
the lighted dials and switches bristling from the ham set with the other, Logan
continued his chat, totally oblivious to Duncan’s presence.

Twenty-five years ago, when Duncan was in his early thirties
helping his aging parents raise Logan, he would have jumped at using a golden
opportunity like this to “
toughen”
the boy up.

Instead he leaned against the cool wall cloaked in shadow
from the waist up and listened to the conversation Logan was having with someone
whom he guessed was a ham radio operator somewhere out in America.

But after less than a minute of eavesdropping on this side of
the exchange, Duncan got bored and acted on his earlier impulse. Slowly but
surely he covered the distance, cutting the angle just right so that he
remained outside of Logan’s field of vision. Forming up behind the man, Duncan
curled his hand into a rigid claw and then clamped it firmly down on his mark’s
shoulder.

Caught totally by surprise, Logan let out a yelp and
involuntarily launched an inch off of his seat, a move that sent the headphones
tumbling from his head crashing into the Pringles can he’d been using as a
penholder, scattering chewed-on Bic pens and Sharpies all over the plywood
floor. Then, teeth bared, the usually demure Logan turned to confront the
unseen prankster.

Laughing at the sight of his baby brother’s dome-shaped
hat-head, more so than the adverse reaction the sneak attack had elicited,
Duncan laughed and slapped his thigh. When he’d finally calmed down he wiped
the tears from his eyes and waited for his comeuppance.

Casting a glare that quickly morphed into a full blown smile,
Logan shook his head and said, “I guess that conversation was over.” He hung
the headphones up on a peg and pushed his chair backward, a discordant screech
of rubber on plywood that could have woken the dead. He reached to the shelf
and retrieved the Glock, which he slipped back into its black leather holster
snugged against his right hip. Snatched the bowler hat off the shelf and
positioned it precisely on his head. Finally squared away, heartbeat nearly
back to normal, he sat back down and made a face at Duncan that said in no
uncertain terms,
Grow the fuck up.

“I’m still not used to how everything echoes down here,”
said Duncan, ignoring the look he knew all too well. “But you gotta hand it to
me, Oops. The way I snuck up on you ... I still got it ... don’t I, baby bro?”

“Lucky I didn’t pop a cap in your ass,” Logan said, patting
his Glock. “Left you to bleed out on the sheet wood.”

“Good thing I wasn’t a real rotter. Or one of those
hillbillies from Huntsville. You would have lost first-blood either way,” drawled
Duncan. “Shoulda had one ear listening to whoever your friend was there and the
other tuned in to your surroundings. Better yet, that main door
should
be secured at all times.”

“Your parenting days are over,
Old Man
,” Logan said.
He switched off the ham radio and stored the folding chair under the desk.
After straightening the papers on the desk, he turned back to face Duncan and
added, “But thanks for caring.”

Looking over the top of his bifocals, Duncan said, “I
thought we were done playing the nickname card.”

“Earlier today, if I’m not mistaken, it was
you
who
referred to me as
Oops
over an
open
channel in front of God and
Jaime and anyone else who might have been listening in.”

“Well you pissed me off by insisting I take Chatterbox Phil
for a ride,” said Duncan. He craned his neck, checking the two adjoining
containers for anyone within earshot. He lowered his voice and went on. “Hell,
halfway to Huntsville I couldn’t decide how I was going to murder the man.
Swear to God, if the Toyota had been a Huey that boy would have been getting
flying lessons ... know what I mean?”