Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (25 page)

Cade had called for the huddle, and once everyone was
standing in a ragged semi-circle, he began doling out jobs. When he had
finished assigning responsibilities, and to his amazement no questions—inane or
otherwise—were lobbed in his direction, he picked a path through the morass of
fallen dead, careful not to step on a hand or trip on a splayed-out leg and
further aggravate his tweaked ankle, and then climbed aboard the damaged plow
truck.

With the watery sun starting its slow slide behind the
distant Wasatch Mountains and dusk not far off, the group set to their tasks
with a newfound urgency that only being outside the wire among thousands upon
thousands of undead things could instill.

Taryn and Lev boarded their plow trucks, started the motors,
then waited until Cade’s truck was rolling downhill towards the largest
concentration of zombies before conducting three-point turns of their own and
falling in behind.

In the cab of the lead truck, Cade thumbed his radio to
life. “You two are going to have to do the majority of the work. I’ll follow
behind to mop up the ones you miss.”

“With that busted up blade?” Taryn said.

“I plan on fixing it first,” Cade replied. “Out.” He put the
radio aside and drove past the head of the stalled eastbound herd by three
truck lengths. He wheeled left, looped around the handful of Zs that had been
out ahead of the undead troop, and then nosed the truck forward until the
pranged blade was parallel with the shoulder. Slowly he let the Mack roll
forward, checking against the weight of the load with short stabs to the brake
pedal until the top edge of the once-horizontal blade was scraping against the
underside of a rocky shelf no doubt created when the highway was blasted from
the side of the mountain decades ago.

In his wing mirror he saw the other two UDOT trucks finish wide
turns and pull abreast of each other, their plows lowered and facing uphill.

Manipulating the controls, Cade kept the pressure building
behind the blade despite the harsh whining coming from the hydraulics. The
truck shuddered and crouched down up front as the air shocks compressed. He
continued depressing the
Raise Blade
button until there was a drawn-out
groaning of metal and the blade began to move in opposition to the static
granite outcropping. As the pressure being exerted on both surfaces built
further, the weaker of the two yielded first, with the blade bending from the
near vertical “L” to something twisted up and resembling a cross between a
flattened letter “V” and a fancy curly type of pasta of which Cade couldn’t
remember the name.

Roughly half a mile uphill, Jamie and Wilson had lined the
two SUVs up against the rock wall and left them parked there bumper to bumper.

Having taken the Stihl from the back of the Land Cruiser,
Daymon had it running and was working its sharp chain back and forth against
the creosote-stained six-by-six wooden beams supporting the banged-up
guardrail. With the pair of muffs covering his ears dulling the keen of the
saw, he also failed to hear the sound of metal scraping bare pavement and thus
remained oblivious of the goings on at his back until movement in his side
vision drew his attention. However, before he was able to react to the
incomprehensible sight, two things happened at once. The chainsaw blade chewed
through the last couple of inches of the third and final six-by-six support
beam. And then, feeling the chainsaw’s bar break free, Daymon took his finger
from the trigger, stilling the engine, and backpedaled just as gravity took
hold of the twenty-four-foot run of newly severed guardrail. There was a groan
of metal twisting under stress and then in a flash several hundred pounds of W-shaped
steel and wood beam tore free and performed a lazy end over end tumble to the
canyon floor below.

The dangerous part of his job done, Daymon shut off the
chainsaw and set it down. With the steam produced by hot metal contacting snow
swirling above the road, he removed his hearing protection and turned to see
what the commotion behind him was.

“Holy hell,” he shouted, taking a quick step back as half a
lane away from him a slow moving head-high mound of death came to an abrupt
stop, with many of the corpses on top spilling off the pile and landing with
dull thuds near his feet. At first glance, Daymon thought maybe a world-record-setting
game of undead Twister had occurred at his back while he’d been working. Many
of the rotters were folded over on themselves, some face up, their backs
obviously broken like twigs under pressure from the plow. Pasty, road-rash-covered
arms and legs, bent at strange angles in relation to their intended travel,
protruded here and there from within. Scores of lifeless eyes stared back at
him as moist gassy sounds emanated from deep inside the warren of decayed
flesh.

He thought it comical at first what he must have looked like
crouched there on his haunches, ear muffs on and sawing away obliviously, while
a couple of hundred zombie corpses slowly tumbled his way. The humor in it
evaporated the second he realized that if the pile hadn’t stopped where it did,
he could have ended up down below amongst thousands more cadavers just like
them.

Anger building, and not seeing Duncan walking his way from
down the hill, Daymon stormed the plow, jumping on the running boards and
trying to get at the driver.

Hands up, face wearing a look of incredulity, Lev cranked
the window down, yelling for Daymon to relax. In fact ‘Stand down’ were the
exact words and it took a couple of seconds for Daymon to come to the
conclusion that Lev also found nothing funny in what had just happened.

Eyes wide, palms facing outward in a display of surrender,
Lev said, “Duncan told me to put them right there. Said you were expecting them
there.”

“Duncan is full of shit,” bellowed Daymon, loud enough to be
heard above the racket coming from the two approaching plow trucks.

Duncan opened his mouth to shout out an amends for the
miscalculation when the truck with Taryn behind the wheel turned directly in
front of him and added another three dozen corpses to the growing mountain of
arms and legs and staring death masks. He caught her eye and mouthed, “Back
up.”

Taryn immediately punched the transmission into
Reverse
and, like any experienced driver, consulted her mirrors and checked over her
shoulder before backing. And it was a good thing she did, because Cade was
driving his truck behind hers with the plow up and seemingly on a collision
course with the inverted “V” where the containers making up the blockade came
together. At the last moment, hearing the Mack truck’s backup alert jangling
across the entire highway, he swung the truck around Taryn’s and, with the
drawn-out protest of the metal plow again changing shape, wedged all sixty tons
of truck and gravel hard against the Conex containers.

“That’s the way you do it on the MTV,” Duncan said to
himself, riffing a little Dire Straits as he witnessed Taryn back up and nose
her UDOT plow truck against the seam where the stacked Conex containers abutted
the mountain.

Heated, Daymon had already forgotten about Lev and was down
from the truck and loping towards Duncan, who was standing hands on hips
equidistant between the pile of dead and the parked SUVs. Almost to a flat-out
run, his long legs and arms pumping, Daymon only made it halfway across the twenty-foot-wide
river of slush and guts left by the passing plows before his boots lost
traction and the rug was pulled from under him. He was airborne briefly and
then his tailbone and elbows met the unforgiving gore-coated asphalt.

Duncan hustled toward the fallen man, talking in soothing
tones the entire way. “I didn’t time the body delivery right, Daymon. Please
accept my apology … consider this an immediate Tenth Step amends.”

Now Duncan was the one with his hands in the air in full
surrender mode as Daymon—moving slowly, like a drunk at last call—managed to
clumsily work his way back to standing.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Daymon said, slicking human
detritus from his pants with his bare hands.

Duncan stopped his advance two full paces into the debris
field. He looked down, saw the reddish-brown sludge lapping over the toes of his
boots, and burst into laughter, which proved to be as infectious as the soup
they were standing in when Daymon—realizing the absurdity of the
situation—threw his sticky hands skyward and joined in himself.

Unaware of how close Duncan and Daymon had been from coming
to blows, Lev cast a glance at the two. Standing in the morass and laughing
like a couple of fools was a far cry from what he was expecting after seeing
the rage on the younger man’s face. Shrugging, he reversed and oriented the
blade so it was aimed directly at the dead. He said a prayer for the men, women,
and children all tangled up there. Then he tromped the pedal and winced as the
first thud of metal meeting flesh resonated through the truck’s frame. Singing
the Star Spangled Banner loudly enough to mask the macabre sounds, he went
about the grim task of plowing hundreds of bodies off the road and to the
bottom of Ogden Canyon.

***

Twenty minutes after scraping every corpse and severed limb
and scrap of flesh and bone off the road’s edge, Lev was parking his truck
sidelong against the pair of Conex containers now pushed back in place and
hanging a foot or so over the cliff’s edge. He killed the engine and set the
brake. Then, just as Cade and Taryn had done before him, he broke the key off
in the ignition, reached under the dash and sawed through the wires with his
Kershaw’s serrated edge.

Finished disabling the truck mechanically and electrically,
he slid across the seat and let himself out through the passenger door.

Mission accomplished
.

He walked a dozen steps away from the truck, drew his Sig
Sauer P226, and to put the cherry on the sundae, methodically shot flat all ten
of the truck’s monstrous tires.

Peter was sitting on a chair pulled in from the dining room
and warming his hands by the fireplace. The red flicker thrown off the glowing
logs had the cream-colored walls in the front living room looking like the
inside of a forge, yet, save for a semicircle ranging just a few feet out from
the tiled hearth, the rest of the house was, as he had heard his dad say more
than once since summer had abruptly turned to fall,
‘as cold as a witch’s
tit.’
In fact, it was so cold that when he exhaled he could clearly see his
breath and, though he’d been inside for some time, he was still fully clothed
and wearing his boots laced up tight, a practice that had become mandatory for
everyone in the Dregan family since the dead things began to walk.

With the early evening light filtering in through the
horizontal blinds not enough to read by, and television and portable devices a
luxury of the not-too-distant past, Peter passed the time staring out the big
picture window beside the fireplace.

In the field beyond the cement barriers that had been placed
there some time after the outbreak were the same four roamers that had wandered
in from the State Route the day before. At first, watching them dodder around
the field, tripping over molehills and at times each other in reaction to
engine sounds and voices carrying over the wall had provided Peter a little
entertainment. He had especially liked watching them trudge along just outside
the barrier, pausing now and then to scrabble futilely at its rough, textured
surface. But now, standing still as store mannequins, having not moved for
hours, all they did was make the young Dregan boy wonder about who they had
been ... before.

The one among the four he found himself studying most was a
young boy dressed in a shirt gone reddish black with blood congealed and dried
long ago. Missing his left forearm and a majority of the skin and muscle near
the soft underside of his jaw, the undead kid was frozen in place with a
perpetual horrific sneer on his face. In his mind, Peter decided that the boy
and trio of adult dead out there with him were somehow related. Why else would
they stick together? He took his eyes off the biters and regarded the
mesmerizing flames and soon his mind had drifted off to thoughts of his mom and
sister. He could smell his mom’s perfume, and for a second Lena was haranguing
him to get ready for church, which he kind of enjoyed, because he was
guaranteed to see a number of his friends from school there. Suddenly he realized
they were all gone, Mom, Lena, and those friends and, just like that, as vividly
as if he was watching a movie, he was reliving that last normal day.

Grass was swatting his fatigue pants as he sprinted through
the soon-to-be-built subdivision near his home. He was leaping over freshly
poured concrete foundations, wearing his camouflage and goggles and in the
middle of a rowdy game of airsoft when the passenger jet screamed so low
overhead that he saw the big black wheels and then, distinctly, the desperate
passengers beating on the oval windows. He saw their white palms and splayed
out fingers, then his breath was stolen by the explosion and he was thrown
aside, losing his expensive airsoft gun.

The right side of his face was warm and, from where he was
lying, flat on his back surrounded by brittle grass, he saw a fireball rising
quickly over the end of the nearby airport. When he finally got to his feet, he
was aware of only two things. There was a grassfire sweeping his way from the
direction of the crash. And somewhere in the grass, about to be burned to
death, his best friend, Liam, was screaming for help. It was a shrill scream,
kind of like what you’d hear from a five-year-old girl who had seen a snake, he
would later tell his dad.

Ignoring the flames, he ran forward to help Liam, whom he
assumed had been hit by a part of the plane, only to come across the first biter
(before anyone in his family had started calling them that) he had ever laid
eyes on. It was wearing what looked like a fireman or ambulance driver’s
uniform. The uniform was covered with blood and then the snarling blank-eyed
thing came up with a mouthful of guts. Slick and yellowish white. Then more
screaming and kicking and blood. And the blood—Liam’s blood—was turning the dry
bed of grass and tiny clods of dirt from brown to almost black.

The second explosion warmed his face full on and he took one
last look at Liam, who was beyond help. Even a twelve-year-old could see that.
Liam’s screaming stopped abruptly and Peter heard other friends calling his
name.

“Peter”—there was laughter—“caught you daydreaming,” his dad
said. “If you would have leaned over any further I’d be scraping bits of your burnt
face off the hot glass there.”

After yawning wide, Peter flicked his eyes to the field. The
four dead things were still there, the boy still gaping open-mouthed at the
house. The snow hadn’t melted and there was no burning wreckage anywhere to be
seen. He put a hand on his right cheek and it was hot. In fact, he felt like a
chicken that had become stuck in one spot on a rotisserie, the entire right
side of his body, clothes and all, hot to the touch.

“Why don’t you follow the heat upstairs,” Dregan said.
“Should be good sleeping up there tonight.”

Peter protested.

“I have associates coming over. You can’t be downstairs when
they’re here.”

As soon as the order was issued, the front door was rattled
by three dull thuds.

Dregan shot Peter a serious look. “Those were snowballs, I’m
guessing. Go on now.” He nodded towards the stairs. “I have to let the ladder
down.”

Peter rose and was halfway up the stairs when the rasping
and wheezing indicative of another of his dad’s coughing fits filled the front
room. Soon it was echoing up the stairwell and, figuring he might be called
down to help with the ladder, he stopped where he was, three stairs from the top,
and sat down out of sight. A few seconds passed and more snowballs pelted the
door. There was an awful hawking sound and in his mind’s eye he saw his dad
filling up the handkerchief he kept in a pocket with bloody spit and boogers.
Finally his dad shouted, “Keep your shorts on ... will ya?” There was more
spitting and nose blowing then Peter heard the door open followed by distant
voices, all belonging to men, and none of them familiar. A tick after the
squeaky hinges went silent, his question was answered by the distinctive rattle
and clatter of the extension ladder being lowered to the ground.

But Peter didn’t heed his dad’s orders. Instead, he sat
there while conscience and curiosity engaged in all-out war, the former
screaming at him to go upstairs, while the latter, seductive temptress that she
was, whispered in his ear, trying to convince him to stay hidden and eavesdrop
on the clandestine meeting. In the end—aided by the arrival of someone whose
voice he knew all too well—curiosity’s sweet whisperings won out.

Peter heard his dad, in a voice made hoarse from coughing,
welcome the men into his home and offer them seats on the couch. A short while
later there came the sound of more footsteps coming up the ladder and then
another round of greetings and introductions followed by the discordant screech
of chairs being dragged across the dining room floor. The door slammed shut and
a couple more minutes of small talk ensued before finally the serious
negotiations got underway.

Peter’s stomach churned as he learned some of the gory
details of what his dad and the men downstairs were conspiring to do to Lena’s
killers. And though he wanted to stand up and creep to his room and pretend he
hadn’t heard a thing, he couldn’t, because a familiar voice now had the floor,
and he wanted to hear what his Uncle Henry had to say.