Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (18 page)

“I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of those,”
Wilson said, trying to make small talk.

Eyes fixed on the road ahead, Jamie replied
matter-of-factly, “Keep watching and I’m sure you’ll get to see what happens to
something that is.”

Once habitually clean-shaven, thirty-three-year-old Gregory
Dregan now hid his lean facial features behind a black beard beginning to show
some gray. Underneath the tangled whiskers, Gregory’s cheek bones were high and
angular and when his thin slit for a mouth parted in a smile—which it hadn’t in
the three weeks since his sister’s murder—his eyes narrowed and a picket of
uneven yellowed teeth was put on full display.

Though a dismal amount of snow had settled on the
undergrowth-choked fire road he was on now, the Yamaha snowmobile he was
jinking around rocks and fallen branches was having no problem rocketing his
hundred-and-sixty-pound frame and backpack full of forty pounds of gear due
west at an impressive rate of speed.

Branches reached out threatening to tear him from the seat.
So, thankful he had not inherited his father’s stature, he tucked his six-foot
frame closer to the hurtling machine and tightened his grip on the handlebars.

Forty minutes prior he had secured passage from the Bear
River compound with promises of favors payable by the Dregan family at a later
date. Leaving the freshly bribed guards and gate behind, he pushed the
snowmachine hard down a little-used feeder road much like the one he was on now
to where it merged with Highway 16 half a mile north of the old couple’s
spread.

Fifty minutes into his trek, he was skirting the overturned
school bus and blazing west on State Route 39, which twisted and turned all the
way to the small town of Huntsville. Then, a handful of miles from the Woodruff
junction, he had nosed the Yamaha left off 39 and followed a switchback gravel
drive down to the north bank of the narrow Ogden river, where he crossed the
single-lane cement bridge built by the Smith Mining company back in the
eighties when he was still in grade school.

The abandoned mine had held nothing of interest to him, so
he continued on through the facility, passing a dozen outbuildings of different
sizes all with sagging roofs and corrugated metal siding sporting vertical
tendrils of rust.

A mile west of the forever-idled Smith venture, the gravel
road took a sharp right-hand turn straight to the south bank of the Ogden,
where it went left and charged off west again.

With the snow pelting the abbreviated windscreen in staccato
little bursts, Gregory steered the whiny machine along the road as it
faithfully followed the river’s twists and turns.

Before long, the lane veered left and began a long, steep,
southwesterly climb away from the river. The trees crowded in quickly, shutting
out the flat light of late afternoon, and just when Gregory thought the lane
was about to become impassable it leveled off and the trees gave way to a
stunning vista.

Now, thirsty and having to pee, he eased off the throttle
and let the sled come to a stop in the center of the fire lane. With the acrid
smell of exhaust threatening to spoil the moment, he quieted the burbling
4-stroke and reveled in the instant and absolute silence. He sat there enjoying
the heat drifting up from the hard-working motor until the exhaust stench was
replaced by the heady aroma of pines and damp earth. The urge to go building to
an unpleasant pressure, he removed the matte black full-face helmet and hung it
from the throttle. Slipped the rifle off of his back and shrugged the
cumbersome pack to the ground. Why his dad insisted he take so much gear was
beyond him. The rifle, pistol, and knife was a given in this new environment.
The sleeping bag and flashlight ... sure. But food for three days? A one-man
all-weather tent? When he stopped to think about his assignment the extra gear
seemed like overkill. Furthermore, photographic evidence or not, he doubted the
tracks his dad saw going into the woods were made by the people who’d killed
Lena and Michael. Dad knew the gas business, not tread patterns and tire widths
and wheelbases. Hell, if Gregory’s memory served, before the fall, back when
things were normal, the elder Dregan’s eyes were capital O’s every time he
walked into a tire place and tried to tell the attendant what he was there for.
Talking with an auto mechanic, as Gregory recollected, had been much worse,
sending him into a tirade because he thought every little thing added to the
bill was just the shop ‘sticking it to him.’ In hindsight, perhaps he was
right. But that was then and this was now. In the nearly three months at Bear River,
he, his family, and the others had had to learn things and do things they had
never dreamt of in order to survive. To say the men of the Dregan family wore
many hats would be a vast understatement.

Gregory took a few steps away from the sled and tried his
hand at pissing his name in the snow. He made it to the R in his surname and
could go no further. So he tucked his business away and paced back to the
Yamaha, where he unzipped his hunter-green Arc’teryx jacket and pulled a neatly
folded map from the inside mesh pocket. He carefully opened it and spread it
out lengthwise on the sled’s wide seat, weighing the corners down with a
handful of rocks he scrounged from the dry ground under the low branches of a
nearby tree.

He stood tall and looked across the vast expanse of a recent
clear-cut. Mostly snow-covered, the upended stumps and gnarled roots snaking
skyward looked oddly out of place. As he peered to the northeast across the sea
of white at a flat rock mesa with a lonely finger of rock rising up, he got the
sensation that he was on that alien planet Hoth from one of those Star Wars
movies he’d watched on VHS when he was a kid.

He walked his gaze right-to-left, taking in every little
point of reference on the northern horizon, then turned back to consult the
map. With the GPS receivers the group had relied on earlier now acting
strangely, or just plain not working at all, he had no choice but to orient
this way.
Old school
. Everything was old school now, and he missed the
old world terribly. Everything about it. Especially Mom and Magdalena.

He knelt down and removed his glove. Started tracing the
squiggly line representing the State Route he had caught occasional glimpses of
on the ride up. Triangulating between a hillock to the left and the mesa on his
right, he found what he thought was his current position on the smaller dashed
line that he guessed to be the fire road on the topo-map.

He refolded the map and was replacing it in his jacket when
the long-range CB deep down in the pocket emitted a soft hiss followed by a
voice he was very familiar with.

He fished the Cobra from the recesses of his parka, turned
the volume up a couple of notches and thumbed the
Talk
button. “Yes?”

“What was yesterday’s password?” asked the gravelly male
voice.

“Why not today’s? It’s Jack and Jill.”

“Yesterday’s,” said the man, his impatience clearly evident.

“Bart and Maggie.”

The voice softened. “Hi, Gregory. It’s me, Cleo.”

Rolling his eyes, Gregory said, “You just hail me to say
that? Or do you have a reason for making small talk over an open channel?”

“Boy ... you talk to your dad like that?”

Gregory made no reply.

“Are you there yet?”

“Not sure. I just stopped to check the map.”

“Your dad tell you to stop short and walk in?”

“Yeah, a mile or so … but I was going to anyway,” Gregory
replied. “This sled is a noisy beast.”

“Sound carries more than a mile now that nothing else is
competing with it. If I were you, Gregory, I’d err on the side of caution.
Maybe give yourself a
two
mile buffer.” There was a brief silence then Gregory
heard what clearly had to be Cleo spitting out a juicy wad of chewing tobacco.
“Finished?” Gregory asked.

“Shit,” Cleo exclaimed. “I’m all out of Copenhagen.”

“Sucks to be you,” Gregory said. He thought:
And me too.
The walking man. In the snow. With all this gear.

“If I were you, I’d take my advice,” Cleo proffered.

If I were you, I’d give up the smokes and snuff and
vodka.
“Gotta go,” Gregory said. “I’ll check after I find this fabled
camouflaged gate Dad’s vengeance road is hiding behind.”

“Your dad mention the cameras?”

“That he did,” Gregory answered. “He says they’re in the
trees east of the road. Wish he would have had the time to take a picture.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Cleo said. “And make sure to watch
yer back while yer doing the watchin’.”

“Will do. Thanks, Cleo.” There was no response and Gregory
heard a brief burst of squelch as Cleo silenced the call on his end. So he
stowed the radio in his pocket. Put his arms through the pack straps and slung
the scoped Winchester Model 70 across his back, barrel down. He donned the
helmet and snugged on his glove. In the next beat, he spurred the sled to life
just as snow began to fall again.

A blip of the throttle got the sled moving and in no time
the fire lane dove back into the trees; in his mind’s eye he saw the map and
the imaginary X on it where he planned to stop and resume his approach on foot.

Even with the massive plowing blade attached up front, the
Mack truck’s sloping hood made seeing the road ahead much easier than Cade had
imagined. The air suspension smoothed out the ride, swallowing up the ruts and
washboard-like channels in the roadbed that made the initial drive in to the
UDOT yard a little harsh on the smaller vehicles. Furthermore, the automatic
transmission mated to the power plant took all of the guesswork out of
shifting, making the truck that seemed intimidating at first glance nearly as
easy to operate as the F-650 he’d grown accustomed to driving.

After a three-minute’s drive from the UDOT facility, Cade
spotted Route 39 in the distance. Nearly perpendicular to the private feeder
road, the snow-covered section of two-lane cut east to west through the
countryside. On the far side of the road, to the south, were fields backed up
by stands of firs and skeletal white aspens. Closer in, roadside businesses and
a smattering of homes crowded 39’s north flank.

Negotiating a gentle left-to-right S-turn, Cade saw the red
and yellow Shell sign peeking above a stand of juvenile trees to the left.
Coming out of the turn, he let off the accelerator to slowly bleed forward
momentum. Not yet familiar with the vehicle’s stopping distance, he let the
engine compression do most of the work and then cautiously applied the air
brakes a couple of truck lengths before the looming T-junction.

Hissing air and squealing subtly, the brakes engaged and the
pads gripped the cold rotors, bringing the twenty-plus tons of Pennsylvania
metal and crushed Utah rock to a halt a dozen feet short of the junction.

He looked left and well off in the distance saw the black
and white hulk of the burned-out Shell station.

He looked right and spied less than a mile distant the
steeply rising hill preceding the edge of Huntsville proper. In his mind’s eye
he saw the ill-fated National Guard roadblock and the lined-up bodies of the
unfortunate soldiers he knew had died at the base of that hill. Knowing the
paved surface of 39 would be less forgiving than the gravel of the feeder road,
he raised the plow slightly, hoping that once he turned onto the two-lane the
minor adjustment would have it hovering just above the road’s surface.

Out of habit he flicked the stalk up to start the right
blinker strobing and, as soon as he could see the whites of Taryn’s eyes in the
wing mirror, pulled smoothly onto 39 westbound. Once the Mack was tracking
straight and a thin fan of snow was painting the scratched and dinged guardrail
on the right a brilliant white, he toggled the switch that started the gravel
spilling from the spreader out back.

With the steep rise starting to fill the windshield, Cade
took the Motorola from his pocket and thumbed the
Talk
button: “Taryn,”
he said. “How does the road look?”

As a long silence ensued, he listened to the different
sounds made by the truck. In front the big diesel’s growl was throaty and he
could feel its subtle vibration in his bones. The plow blade, however, was
strangely silent. Nothing like what he was expecting. There was no crazy
bone-jarring vibration transferred from the road to the blade to the frame. The
only evidence the plow was employed was a constant humming—which could as
easily have been from the tires—and the bloom of white powdery overspray as it
did what it was designed to do: scoop snow off the road and spit it out on the
truck’s passenger side.

Beginner’s luck on getting the blade elevation correct
,
he was thinking when the radio finally crackled to life and Taryn said she was
seeing patches of bare pavement and confirmed that the gravel spreader was
attaining a lane-plus of coverage.

Cade smiled at the good news. Save for the crispy rotter in
the Shell garage and his tweaked ankle as a result, it seemed to him that good
old Mister Murphy had taken the day off.

Seeming to counter that thought, up ahead where 39 began its
climb over the rise, Cade saw a group of twenty or so Zs, the majority of them
stalled out upright in a ragged formation taking up most of the right lane. He
looked at the passenger side mirror and saw through the hoary chaff caught in
the truck’s turbulence that the other four vehicles were lined up, each
practicing a safe following distance.

So he veered slowly left and, using the top right corner of
the blade as a reference point, aimed it for the four inert forms standing
approximately where he guessed the centerline to be.

He gently applied more pedal. Simultaneously he heard a
whine from the motor and felt the transmission gear down and then at once start
ticking up incrementally. As the speedometer hit forty miles-per-hour, he
thumbed the Motorola’s
Talk
button and informed the others of the impending
experiment.

He put the radio in his lap and gripped the wheel
two-handed. Amazingly, he found the successive impacts less violent than he had
anticipated. And as he exhaled slowly, the white showing on his knuckles was
the only proof he’d been expecting worse. Though four forms met the blade, he
discerned only three consecutive bangs, each sounding like a garbage man
slamming galvanized cans around. And what transpired next happened so quickly
it was mostly lost on Cade. He saw one snow-flocked body, mostly a pale white
blur wrapped in a couple of scraps of blue and red fabric, enter his cone of
vision; then, as quickly as it had, like a whirling dervish it flashed to the
edge of his peripheral and was gone from sight.

There was a small fraction of a second between the first and
last impact, which left a vague impression of ashen skin and fluttering fabric
and maybe wisps of hair, of the latter Cade wasn’t certain. And though he
didn’t see the faces of the dead in those action-filled seconds, he was certain
they would be starring in his nightmares in the near future.

***

Hearing the warning and seeing Cade’s truck closing with the
dead, Lev slowed and slipped his plow truck far left, putting the driver’s side
wheels where he figured the white line tracing the shoulder would be. Last
thing he wanted was a rotter going through his windshield and getting a face
full of zombie guts—or worse—as a result.

***

At roughly the same time Cade’s initial warning was tailing
off and the truck in Taryn’s left side mirror was dropping back, she had
reflexively jinked her truck left a few inches in order to avoid the coming
carnage. Then, as the ragdoll forms were careening away in different
directions, she steered back on line and watched the lead truck’s turbulent slipstream
topple the rotters that had escaped the reach of the front-mounted blade.

***

Lagging the 4Runner a good distance behind the three plow
trucks, Jamie gripped the wheel tight in anticipation of the show to come.
“Here you go, Wilson,” she said, edging the SUV a yard farther to the right,
putting the tires on his side all the way on the shoulder. “Your wish just came
true.”

Wilson shifted his gaze from the field full of rotters he
had been fixating on to the road dead ahead just in time to see the damage
inflicted by Cade’s plow truck. Instantly, like a circus performer shot out of
a cannon, a rotter rocketed near horizontally to the road’s surface before,
inexplicably, it started a series of perfect cartwheels. Hands first, then nubs
for legs, the extremities slapped the snow repeatedly and finally the perfectly
proportioned corpse bounded gracefully over a distant fence without touching a
thing.

The next meeting of metal and flesh was by no means graceful
nor Olympic in caliber as a second creature, also with newly amputated legs,
hit flat on its back and slid head first and face up along the shoulder, its
severed legs painting two bold black stripes over the churned up snow.

***

Lost from everyone’s view, the third rotter of the four was
shortened at the ankles by the blade on Cade’s plow. A millisecond later, like
a smack down from God, it slammed flat on its back, spun a one-eighty, and its
arm and ribcage and leg on the right side were instantly pinched and sucked
into the sliver of space between tempered metal and snow-slickened asphalt.
Trapped fast, the adult-sized corpse was rapidly disintegrating under tons of
pressure, its friction-heated dermis and flesh becoming a wide and shiny red
slug track in the lumbering truck’s wake.

***

In the 4Runner, Wilson’s jaw had hinged open while the first
Z was settling beyond the fence and the second had just finished plowing snow
of its own. Then he noticed the wide swath of red kick out the back of the lead
plow truck and mingle with the bouncing gravel. And if things couldn’t get any
more macabre, the whole scene was punctuated by a third rotter making
acquaintance with the unforgiving plow.

Child-sized and no match for the Mack’s Gollum-like forward
momentum, the pale runt of a corpse flipped up and was thrown off to the right
likely without contacting the top of the blade. Arms and legs flopping like a
sock monkey’s, the tiny form flew through the air for what Wilson guessed to be
twenty feet or more, closed with terra firma like a meat missile, skipped once,
then jerked violently as the triple strands of a barbed wire fence arrested all
forward travel.

“Flying fucking Cirque Du
Saa-lay
,” cried Wilson. He
looked at Jamie, his eyes capital O’s. “You see that kid go airborne?”

“Wish I hadn’t. And FYI ... the word you were looking for is
So-leil
,” she said, correcting him.

“I meant to say
saa-lay,
slay … get it? That was so
damn wicked.” He rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Bowling with a big rig.”

***

In the second truck, Taryn’s radio broke squelch. She kept
her eyes on gravel spilling and bouncing about the road. Found it soothing and
mesmerizing at the same time. The spell was broken when Cade said, “Slow the
gravel spread. We’re taking both of these to the Ogden Canyon roadblock and I
want them to be as heavy as possible.”

***

Bringing up the rear in the Land Cruiser, Duncan was
listening to Cade’s chatter just as the first evidence of the damage a Mack
Truck could do to the human body—living or undead—slid by on the right. Eyes
taking in the trail of broken and toppled corpses, he scooped up the radio and
in his characteristic drawl, said, “You better take it easy on that rig of
yours, soldier. We’ll be needing all three of them for what we talked about.”

“Roger that,” Cade replied. “No more experiments.”

“Outcome?”

“She passed with flying colors,” Cade replied.

Then as expected, Duncan quipped, “That’s not all that was
flying.”

With the older man’s cackle filling the Mack’s cab, Cade
took a breath and began to steel himself for what lay on the other side of the
rise.