Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (33 page)

After clapping her hands and doing a happy dance she wheeled
her bike forward. “Dad, can you get the door?”

He creaked over to the door and held it wide as she bounced
the mountain bike down both stairs. Without looking back, she straddled the
bike and pedaled off towards the mess hall.

 After watching her and Max zipper down the walk he went
back inside, popped a couple more Ibuprofens and laid back down, waiting for
Airman Davis to arrive.

***

Max ducked and dodged and nipped at the knobby tires the
entire way, twice almost getting his tail caught in the whirring spokes.

“Beat you, Max,” crowed Raven triumphantly as if Max had
been privy to the challenge. “A personal best unaided by a golf cart.”

Near her feet, Max turned a happy circle. Partly because he
was a dog and had heard his name. But also there were familiar scents on the
other side of the door.

Leaning her bike against the wall beneath the silent A/C
unit, she chased down Max and offered him a sausage—or health missile, as her mom
referred to anything cylindrical and ultra-processed originating from the base
mess hall.

“Stay,” she said to Max. Then she climbed the steps and
tapped a timid-sounding announcement on the screen door.

A handful of seconds passed. Finally the inner door sucked
inward, and Wilson hinged the outer door toward her. He looked down and then
left and right, completing a ragged circle and then said to her, “What are you
doing here, Raven? And where’s your mom?”

Raven processed the questions which, if asked separately and
under the right set of circumstances, would come across as fairly benign. But
the way Wilson posed them—rapid-fire and sharp-of-tongue, their meaning took on
an entirely different context—making the leap from caring and thoughtful to an
indictment of sorts.

“Can the inquisition wait until I’m inside?”

There was a peal of laughter.
Sasha
, she thought.
Wondering what kind of teenage things were going on inside brought her up on to
her tippy toes in order to see past Wilson.

“Come on in,” he said, turning sideways in the doorway.

She walked past him and was nearly blindsided by Taryn, who
had a stack of board games two-feet-high balanced precariously in her arms.

Rushing to her aid, Raven called out, “Hold still.”

“Thanks, said Taryn. “I’m glad you showed up.”

“You are?” replied Raven, more than a little surprised the
seemingly bad girl even knew she existed.

“I’m so tired of losing at Monopoly to the red twins.”

Tilting her head to see the titles, Raven said, “I’ve never
played most of these.”

“How about Candyland?”

“Who hasn’t,” admitted Raven.

From across the room Wilson called, “She won’t play the game
I want to play. That’s why I keep reverting back to good old Monopoly and my
pewter roadster.”

“They stopped making lead toys before I was born, genius,”
said Sasha.

“Quiet, Sash ... bust it out,
Tee
,” he said using his
new pet name for Taryn.

Tee,
thought Raven. So Taryn and Wilson
were
an
item
. At least that’s what she’d heard her mom refer to people who
were dating or going steady.

“Sit down at the table, Raven,” said Wilson. He extracted an
ominous-looking black box from near the bottom of the stack. Pulled up a
folding chair and sat down opposite her. “Tee ... Sash ... look who’s chicken
now?” he called out.

Raven said nothing, just watched him empty the box. Inside
was a folded game board which he opened and placed flat in front of her. On the
cream colored board, in a strange, old-fashioned black font, were the words
Yes
and
No
. Below the words was the entire alphabet, two slightly curved
rows consisting of thirteen letters each. And strangely, below the alphabet
were the words
Good Bye
.

Raven asked, “What kind of game is this?”

“Ouija,” answered Wilson as Sasha and Taryn pulled up chairs
of their own.

“What?”

“Wee-Ja,” said Sasha, sounding it out slowly. “It’s a spooky
game that supposedly lets you talk to the dead.”

“Lots of them to talk to these days,” said Wilson, trying to
be funny.

The room went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

Wilson placed a plastic spade-shaped game piece the size of
a deck of cards on the board. It was white, with three casters and a plastic
window she could see the game board through.

“What’s that?” asked Raven.

“I think it’s called a planchette. Allegedly the spirits of
the dead move it around the board,” said Taryn, sounding highly skeptical.

“Tee, you and me first,” said Wilson. He placed his
fingertips gently on one side of the planchette.

Taryn followed suit.

“Ask a question,” he said.

After a second’s deliberation, Taryn smirked and said, “Dad
... are you there?”

Slowly the game piece moved away from Wilson’s corner on a
diagonal trajectory. It slowed over the words
Good Bye
then continued
upwards and onward and finally parked itself over the word
Yes
.

“Shut up ...” said Sasha, her face going white.

Taryn sat up straighter but made no reply.

After a pause, she said, “Your turn to ask a question.”

Wilson said, “Are we leaving today?”

The planchette began to move towards
No
but reversed
course and resettled over
Yes
.

“Game’s broken,” quipped Sasha. “We’re never gonna leave
this boring piece of asphalt.”

“Wrong,” said Raven, shaking her head.

Looking up from the game, Wilson said, “What do you mean?”

“That’s why I’m here,” answered Raven. “This time we really
are leaving. Dad sent me to tell you all to get ready.”

“When are we leaving?”

“Pretty soon,
Tee
,” said Raven, testing her
item
theory.

Taryn flashed a wan smile. Tilted her head by a degree but
said nothing.

Confirmation
, thought Raven.

“We all can’t fit in one of those golf carts,” Sasha said.

“Mom will figure out something ... she always does.”

Looking up at Raven, Taryn said, “We’ll be ready.”

“Raven, do you want to ask the next question?”

Shaking her head and grabbing ahold of the door handle,
Raven said, “No, Wilson ... I promised my dad I’d be right back.”

Sasha said, “OK. We’ll see you later.”

As Raven was closing the door on her way out she heard
Taryn’s next question, but didn’t stay to see the resulting answer. Taryn had
asked in a soft voice:
Dad, are you still here?

Inside the room the game piece skittered a few inches across
the board towards
Good Bye,
but abruptly changed directions and once
more stopped right over
Yes
. Taryn glared at Wilson.

“I didn’t do that,” he said with a wild-eyed look, “at least
not consciously.”

Taryn pursed her lips. Said, “Besides me and Brother and
Mom, what did you love the most?”

The planchette started moving. It stopped over the letter
H
.
Then it continued on, crossed its own path and stopped on
O
. Finally, in
the span of three or four minutes, it had stopped and hovered over the letters,
T, R, O, and D.

After the last letter was revealed Taryn gasped and released
the game piece like it had somehow burned her.

“Hot rod?” asked Wilson.

Taryn said nothing. She stood up, wearing a look of
incredulity, and bolted for the door with Wilson calling at her to come back.

Schriever AFB

After five minutes had elapsed and Davis still hadn’t
arrived to pick him up, Cade left his billet behind and began to walk aided by
the pair of crutches.

He’d made it a dozen yards before the Cushman, Davis at the
wheel, finally rushed up on him.

A short ride later, Davis pulled the Cushman tight to the
curb just outside the glass and steel facade of the TOC. He stilled the propane
engine and squirmed around, reaching into the back seat for Cade’s crutches.

Seeing this, Cade put a hand on the airman’s shoulder, and
grabbed his own
walking sticks
as Raven had taken to calling them.
Planted his boots on the ground—one a Danner model, the other that ungainly
plastic thing—and then slid off the seat and rose to standing. Wavering on the
crutches, he turned his body a degree, looked over his shoulder and said, “No
telling if our paths are going to cross again, so I wanted to say thank you for
going above and beyond for me and my family the entire time we’ve been here.
Means a lot ... especially when I was away.” He went quiet for a moment,
obviously searching for the right words. “So if there’s anything I can do to
repay you, just say the word.”

“Go easy on the major, that’s all. She’s been beating
herself up for failing to save her daughter, Nadia, on Z Day. For a hell of a
tough lady who is used to running the show, I imagine that was a bitter pill
for her to swallow.”

“Understood,” said Cade, who wasn’t wearing a uniform for
the first time in days. No rank or insignia anywhere on his person. Instead he
had on tan fatigue pants and a black tee shirt. In his pants pocket were the
captain’s tabs he’d ripped from his soiled uniform the night before. Those he
would once again be giving back to Nash.

Though it wasn’t customary, but because he knew Cade was
leaving on another mission, Davis snapped a smart salute.

Seeing this alone sent an impulse from Cade’s brain to his
arm, and because of years and years spent giving and receiving them he almost
returned the gesture. But instead he reached out—and though it felt unnatural
as hell—shook the airman’s hand.

With Davis casting a quizzical look in his direction, Cade
hobbled into the low, squat building through the double doors and made his way
along the warren of halls, passing a number of identical doors set into
walnut-paneled walls. His crutches sounding a creaky cadence, he covered
one-half of the rectanglar-shaped perimeter of the TOC’s nerve center. In his
mind’s eye he could see the airmen and women on the other side of the wall,
tapping away at keyboards, looking up at the multiple big screen monitors,
riding herd over Nash’s diminished fleet of satellites. He arrived outside of
the major’s door and listened hard.

Nothing.

He paused for a moment, massaging his armpits where his
hundred and eighty pounds had been grinding unnaturally against the thin strip
of rubber trying to pass as padding. He could feel his heartbeat throbbing
unnaturally in his left ankle. He looked down at his toes, bruised black and
blue, swollen and tingling. He could hear Brook’s voice in his head as he’d
labored to write the after action report the night before: “
Take two of
these every couple of hours for the pain
.” And finally, every time he’d
tried to perform a task to hasten their exit, she would repeat the following ad
nauseum like some kind of parrot: “
Stay off your feet. Keep it elevated so
the swelling stays down, and most importantly Cade Grayson, quit getting up and
down
.”

But he’d recently come to find that at thirty-five years of
age, the magical healing properties of youth were no longer serving him—no
matter how hard he tried to follow
nurse’s orders
. Still smarting from a
probable fracture to the nose from the ladder mishap in Hanna, and now the
ankle, he was afraid someone else was going to have to do the heavy lifting, so
to speak, for a couple of days. And that person was none other than Nurse
Ratchett herself.

For a full minute he stood in front of the all-too-familiar
battleship-gray door, jaw set firm, hand clenching and unclenching, trying to
work up the nerve to face the diminutive major for the first time since the
Black Hawk down incident. Avoiding her at the sunrise funeral this morning had
been easy. He had arrived late and left immediately after, blending into the
crowd which had been considerably larger than when Desantos was laid to rest.

Then he burned another minute mulling over all of the good
reasons for him to be summoned here on such short notice, and could think of
none. The F-650 was gassed and loaded with food and water and various other
supplies. And thanks to a generous donation from Colonel Shrill and an
off-the-record after-hours free pass into the base armory, he wouldn’t be
wanting for weapons or ammunition for quite some time. So, in his mind, he and
his family were good to go. That the kids would be accompanying them was
something he was going to have to learn to accept. He’d been outvoted by the
girls—Brook’s vote counting for the customary two—and if Max could have voiced
his opinion it would have been a solid four-to-one margin of defeat.

With way too many questions swirling through his mind, and
looking forward to having one of them answered, he removed his ball cap and
delivered three sharp raps to the door.

“Come in, Wyatt,” came Nash’s voice, muffled by the steel
core door.

The door was unlocked. He turned the handle and pushed
through elbow first, aluminum crutches banging against the frame on the way in.

“Graceful.”

“I try.”

“Take a load off.”

And he did. Thankful for the offer, he took the chair
closest to the door. A decision subconscious in nature more so than tactical.
He noticed it immediately for what it meant—he didn’t want to be here. And he
felt a great amount of guilt for allowing Brook to think—through omission—that
while she and Raven were saying goodbye to Annie and the girls he was at the
TOC saying his own goodbyes.

Twisting around, he propped the crutches against the wall.
He returned forward and regarded Nash with an inquiring look.