Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (11 page)

When Cade first caught sight of the rest of his party, all
six of them were standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the same fallen length of
moss-covered old growth, taking in a sight that apparently had rendered them
all speechless.

Cade padded down a beaten path flanked by chest-high stumps
on the left and a wall of logs on the right. A few yards later, he came to a
steep drop-off and found himself peering down on a creek bed littered with no
less than a hundred stiffened corpses, their faces frozen in death grimaces,
many of them staring straight up at him. Arms and legs, bent and broken, jutted
at odd angles from a thin stratum of wind-drifted snow. It was what he imagined
the killing fields of the Chosin Reservoir or Battle of the Bulge might have
looked like to the heroes who survived those examples of Hell on Earth. And as
he marveled at the sheer number of Zs that had ended up down there on account
of too many bodies crowding the two-lane crossing, it dawned on him that no way
in Hell could all of the corpses tangled together down there be dead in the
real sense of the word. But as awful a scene as it was, it appeared that
whatever the others were gaping at had it beaten hands down.

Interest piqued, he picked his way right along the edge of
the cliff, stepped up onto the log and, standing next to Daymon, finally got
his first unobstructed look at the crossing. And what he saw there, as hard as
it was for him to wrap his brain around, easily dwarfed the assemblage of death
below.

Breaking the all-encompassing silence, Daymon turned to Cade
and said, “Got a God-sized weed-whacker on you?”

Cade said nothing. The sight of close to a thousand Zs
clogging the bridge and crowding the group’s two vehicles, all seemingly
staring the meat from his bones, had stolen the words from his mouth. The only
thing going for the group was that the wall of corpses was stationary and not
belting out that spine tingling sound he was exposed to earlier. And no sooner
than the thought had crossed his mind, Duncan said, “So Cade ... strangely
enough, I’m not hearing all of the Pod People screams that you described?”

Still, Cade remained silent. He was performing a quick
headcount using a trick taught to him by the President’s former head of
protection, Adam Cross. It was in no way scientific, but by dividing the area
occupied by the crowd in question into little parcels and then estimating the
number of bodies in each parcel, the task could be boiled down to a simple math
problem. And a handful of seconds after seeing the static column in all its
gory glory, Cade came up with a number. And that number was worse than he
thought.

“Seven hundred … give or take.”

“Captain America speaks,” Daymon said.

“I say
give
,” proffered Jamie, eyes glued to the
monsters and hefting the tomahawk in one hand.

“There can’t be
seven hundred
rotters over there,”
said Wilson, his voice cracking.

“I’m leaning on the
give
side as well,” added Cade.
“Let’s get at it.” He edged by the group, grabbed a wrist-sized branch sticking
vertically from a fallen old-growth fir, and hauled his hundred and eighty
pounds—two-forty total, including the full rucksack and weapons—up onto the
next log over, where he found solid footing and proceeded to help the others
up.

“Seven hundred,” said Lev, shaking his head as he accepted
Cade’s offered hand.

Cade smiled. “Plus several dozen that seemed to have gotten
themselves in a pickle and are stuck fast to Daymon’s sharpened branches.”

“My idea,” said Duncan.

“Those are not
punji
stakes,” countered Daymon.
“Whole different concept. You can take
all
the credit for those
poo-dipped things.”

Cade gave Taryn and Jamie a hand around a jagged clutch of
branches, then watched them follow the men who were slowly picking their way
lengthwise along the fallen log. With Daymon leading, they crept along single
file, putting one foot in front of the other mindful of the shadowy crevices,
all the while battling vertical branches with a propensity to snap back and
deliver a stinging reminder to the unaware that this was no proverbial walk in
the park.

“Be careful when you jump down,” warned Cade even before
they reached a suitable spot to do so. “There’s sure to be crawlers trapped
under there.”

Eventually the seven survivors had made it unscathed to the
midpoint of the first hundred-and-fifty-foot-tall tree Daymon had dropped
across the road weeks ago and found themselves looking down on the front row of
Zs, where a myriad of different contorted faces and frosted-over eyes stared
back. It seemed as if all walks of life were represented here—whites, blacks,
Hispanics, Asians—the Omega virus didn’t discriminate whom it infected. And
once infected, the dead saw everything as meat. Packed in against the barrier,
like a bustling crowd leaving a subway train car, were a mix of men, women, and
children—the majority of them once able-bodied males, and all of them suffering
from the elements and in varying stages of decay. A good deal of the dead were
badly burnt, their dermis blackened and contrasting sharply with the blanket of
white that had settled over everything.

Cade swept his eyes over the static crowd and spotted an
undead farmer still wearing frayed overalls but sans the ubiquitous straw hat.
He saw twenty-somethings in skinny jeans and concert shirts. A gangly soccer
mom had died and reanimated and come a long way from home judging by the
bloodied tee-shirt declaring her son an honor student at Joseph Smith Middle
School in Salt Lake City. There were preadolescents, the elderly, and
everything in-between represented there on State Route 39. Also on display were
the defensive wounds suffered by many in the herd that spoke loudly of man’s
incredible will to fight back. A high percentage of them had suffered horrible
bites to the neck and torso—raised purple rings dappled with pale tooth marks.
And the craters where mouthfuls of flesh had been viciously ripped away were
now crusted with blood, frozen black and shiny. Cade noticed how a large number
of the monsters were missing digits, or parts thereof. And standing out from
the crowd, flashing macabre toothy grins like the worst nightmares imaginable,
were the ones who had lost all of the soft fleshy bits from their faces to the
dead before turning and joining their ranks.

Mercifully dragging Cade from his momentary daymare, Duncan
said incredulously, “Where in the hell do we start?”

Elbowing Wilson in the ribs, Daymon said to him, “Why don’t
you jump on down and let Todd Helton start the conversation?”

Brow furrowed, Taryn craned and shot Daymon a sour look. In
the next beat she turned to face Wilson, hoping to hear a strong rebuttal.

“Eff that,” answered the redhead. “I’ll jump down after
you’ve
killed enough with
Kindness
. Besides ... what if we’re all down there
and they suddenly reanimate?”

Jamie delivered a look to Taryn that said
it’ll be all
right
. Then she regarded Wilson and said, “It’s too cold for them to
reanimate. I’ll go first and show you
all
how it’s done. Figure a good
place to start would be freeing up the vehicles so Duncan can work on getting
them running. Then we just hack our way across the bridge.”

Daymon nodded. He kneeled and set the chainsaw down,
balancing it crossways between two fallen trees. He rose, leaned forward to
look at Cade and suddenly the weight from the top-heavy pack started him on a
one-way trip toward the mosh pit of death. But Lev’s arm flashed out and he got
a handhold of Kelty just before the point of no return. Clutching the ripstop
nylon in a death grip, he held on long enough for Cade to spring to action and
together they reeled Daymon back from what would have amounted to a
back-wrenching fall—at the very least.

Without missing a beat, Daymon nodded a thanks to Lev then
reacquired eye contact with Cade and asked, “So Sarge, are you going to answer
Duncan’s question?”

Purposefully Cade shot him a dumb look and shrugged as if
saying
I don’t follow
.

“Where are your screamers?” Daymon cupped a hand to his ear
and said in a cartoonish voice, “I can’t hear you
screamers
. Cat get
your tongues?”

“Good thing we can’t hear them,” Cade said. “I figure when
these things start screaming again it’ll mean they’re thawing out, and by then
if we’re anywhere near a whole bunch of them—” He paused to let the words sink
in. Looked over the faces of the others and finished his thought. “We might as
well all kiss our asses goodbye.”

“Enough talk,” said Jamie, throwing a visible shudder. She
turned to face Cade. “Where should
I
start?”

Cade gripped her right shoulder. Took the tomahawk from her
hand and slipped it into the sheath attached to her belt. Then he looked down
the line both ways, first at Jamie then Duncan and lastly Lev. Then he shifted
his gaze and met eyes with Wilson, Taryn, and lastly Daymon. Once he had their
undivided attention, he filled them all in on the next part of his plan.

The closer Dregan got to the fortified community called Bear
River, the fewer dead he encountered. However, now and again, drifts of snow on
the road concealed the random corpse that when run over broadcast the sickening
crackle of breaking bones through the truck’s floorboards. Save for herds and
the occasional mega horde transiting north to south and back again on nearby
16, the community had made great strides in keeping the roamers culled.
Frequent trips outside of the walls were now the norm. Over the last few weeks,
the judge had the foraging patrols pushing farther out on a daily basis. They’d
made the most gains south and east, clearing and searching every building they
came across, and returning with trucks filled with food, water, firearms, and
all manner of useful goods.
We’re taking our valley back from the dead and
any lawless that we catch in our noose will be questioned and tried by a jury
of their peers
was the judge’s response to Dregan after denying his initial
request to form a posse of sorts to track down Lena’s killers. That was the
first time of many when the judge had made it clear that under no circumstances
were the citizens to take the law into their own hands. An edict that Dregan
didn’t agree with.
‘Rulings
,’ is what Pomeroy called his decrees. Of
late, after having assembled a sizable group of men he had armed and appointed
as court bailiffs who answered only to him, he was acting as if he were a
Supreme Court Justice and, like the prestigious nine of the old world, was
preparing to
rule
for life over the burgeoning community.

Cursing the man under his breath, Dregan turned east off of
16 and followed a meandering tree-flanked two-lane that rose and fell gradually
before dog-legging right and cresting a rise, where he brought the Blazer to a
crunching halt. Looking at the walled community of Bear River from afar, he saw
the squared-off tops of the perimeter guard towers rising up above the trees
they’d been constructed in. Though the hard edges and whip antennas sprouting
from the nearest were a dead giveaway as to their presence, the heavy weapons
hidden behind walls constructed from precast concrete noise-reduction panels
sourced from the freeways to the south had already proven adequate to repel
even the most determined breathers coming with bad intentions.

Dregan slowed and brought the Blazer to a halt in the center
of the road on the final rise before the long downhill run-out to the turnoff
to the front gate. Knowing he was being watched, and that one high caliber
sniper rifle was trained on his upper torso and another chambered to fire a
much larger round was targeting the Chevy’s engine block, he switched to the
guard channel and announced who he was.

To Dregan, good OPSEC (operational security) meant following
these necessary formalities. There was a saying an old veteran and mentor back
home used to recite that best described who he was before, during, and after
the
Great Fall
—as he and others in the community called the rapid
worldwide spread of Omega and the even faster fall of law and order.
There
are three types of people in the world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. The sheep
cower when confronted with danger, accepting their demise with a banal
indifference. The wolves—murderers, rapists, thieves, and child molesters—are
the predators who take advantage of the sheep. Then, young Dregan, there’s me
and the men like me who are the sheepdogs
, the man had said at the time.
We
were born with an innate ability to harness and channel aggression. We feel the
need to protect the flock from predators, the wolves. You’ll know who you are
early in life, Alexander
. What he said next eventually started Dregan on a quest
to prove him wrong.
It isn’t necessarily imbued through training or
experience. It’s a feeling
... Dregan remembered the man saying while
tapping a finger firmly on his breastbone. And as he sat in the truck thousands
of miles from where it took place, he remembered the moment as if it had
happened yesterday. He recalled the fragrant flowers blooming next to the
parade grounds. Heard the Hind helicopter beating the air far off in the
distance.

Yes, though softened around the edges over the years, Dregan
was still one of them. And this old sheepdog missed the man who had taught him
so much. He wondered if Yuri had ridden out the Great Fall, thinking maybe the
old warhorse, a foot shorter and twenty years older, had found an island off
the Crimean Peninsula and was surviving just like him.

With the memory of his friend fading back into the ether, a
burst of static followed by a voice requesting the password came from the
radio’s speaker.

Dregan keyed the CB to talk. “Jack,” he said with a wan
smile.

“Jill,” came the scratchy reply.

Jack and Jill
, thought Dregan. Easy enough to
remember, but not as clever as yesterday’s
Bart
and
Lisa
.

Dregan set the radio aside and drove down the slight
decline, past a copse of stunted trees, and caught sight of the south gate,
which was nothing more than a Jackson County school bus, all thirty feet of its
passenger compartment filled to the windows with hardened concrete. Through the
mesh screen covering the front passenger window he saw movement and then slowly
the bus reversed to create an opening just wide enough for the Blazer to pass
through.

Parked inside the entry, flanking the narrow road was a pair
of desert-tan Humvees sprouting turret-mounted machine guns. A dozen men milled
about, their reflections rippling in the Hummers’ green-tinted blast-resistant
glass.

Dregan saw a knot of men clothed in civilian attire standing
next to a copse of firs. Two of them were smoking and all were carrying
carbines slung over their shoulders.

He pulled up close and rolled his window down. Looked to the
rearview and watched the bus move back into position, sealing them all inside.
Flicking his gaze back to the men, he put the truck into
Park
and fished
out a cigarette of his own, the first of the day. He flicked a disposable Bic,
lit the Camel and, barking out their first names, called three of the men over.