Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (26 page)

Two birds with one stone, Cade thought, the second Daymon
called ‘
shotgun.
’ For one, during the downhill creep from the Ogden
Canyon blockade, he figured sitting in back of the Land Cruiser where he could
stretch out and elevate his bad wheel would go a long ways towards him being
useful for the rest of the mission. And two, sitting in back with the chainsaw
and the strong odor of oil and fuel wafting toward the headliner was a far cry
from what Daymon smelled like after slipping and rolling around in zombie pulp.
Besides, Cade thought, smiling inwardly, making Duncan drive and suffer up
front with the walking biohazard seemed fitting. After all, it was the
perennial prankster’s fault Daymon had lost his cool in the first place. And
Cade could see how unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a six-foot-tall pile
of dead bodies could do that to a person—especially someone wound as tightly as
the former BLM firefighter.

“Oh boy. Am I ever making amends for setting Lev up like
that,” Duncan said, holding his nose. “You smell like a bag of assholes left
out in the sun for a day.”

Daymon was leaning hard against his shoulder belt. His right
hand was braced on the dash against the pull of the downhill grade. “You only
got yourself to blame, Old Man. Who were you pranking, anyway?” he said,
staring hard at the driver. “Were you busting
my
balls? Lev’s? Or both
... for an epic effin twofer?”

“Whoever’s were hanging out that needed busting,” Duncan
drawled. The Land Cruiser shimmied and bounced as it struck something small and
snow-covered in the road. “I’m an equal opportunity button pusher. Y’all should
know that by now.”

The two-way radio hissed. “Taryn wants to know if we are
going to stop at the same place and take the chains off,” Wilson said, his
voice oscillating. “All four of us are getting sick from the vibration.”

“Tell Taryn to slow down a little,” Duncan shot back.

“For her … this
is
slow,” Wilson said. “She didn’t
think it necessary we chain up in the first place.”

Cade stuck one arm between the seats and gestured for Duncan
to hand him the radio.

In the same camp as Taryn where the need for chains was
concerned, Daymon relaxed and sat back in his seat, arms crossed, content to
watch this play itself out.

Cade thumbed the
Talk
button. “You ever heard the
saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Wilson?”

Wilson didn’t respond.

So Cade said, “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best?
Does that ring a bell?”

Still nothing.

Cade imagined Lev sitting in back of the 4Runner. Being
former Army, the stoic young man no doubt had heard them all. Hell, Cade
thought, Lev probably knew some that he had never heard. In the
Big Green
Machine
everything centered around the
mission
.
Everything
.
And there were procedures put in place to minimize human error. That’s what the
tire chains had been for. To minimize human error, of which Cade had been
guilty of more than once today. Finished venting, he handed the radio forward
to Daymon and told Duncan to pull over where they’d chained up earlier.

Dregan Home, Bear River, Utah

Peter had loitered on the steps, fighting sleep as his uncle
and dad droned on. Promises were made and favors traded in. Bartering was
happening on a grand scale downstairs, that was for sure. And though Peter had
only seen and heard the action on the floor of the now worthless New York Stock
Exchange on television—a Nickelodeon short that aired on take your kid to work
day, to be exact—what was going on downstairs seemed one and the same, only on
a much, much, smaller scale.

The
Dregan Home Exchange
had been in full swing for some
time when a sudden hush fell over the downstairs living room and now only his
dad was speaking. Peter noticed that the hard edge to his dad’s voice was gone.
Good news.
That meant he was no longer in negotiation mode. In fact,
Peter hadn’t heard his dad sounding this happy since Lena’s summer wedding.

Suddenly his dad went silent and Peter heard the static of a
radio-breaking squelch followed closely by his older brother Gregory’s voice,
distant and hollow-sounding. It carried up the stairs, and though he couldn’t
make out every word, he caught enough to know Dad was going hunting tomorrow.
So he rose from the step, his butt and right leg asleep and just starting to
shoot through with pins and needles, and crept to his bedroom, a good deal of
planning of his own yet to be done.

The dead were right where they had left them earlier, laid out
beside the road in various death poses, the fluids that had leaked from them
now frozen. Cade shifted his gaze from the tangled bodies and shouldered open
his door. As he knelt down on the road to take the passenger side chains off
the Land Cruiser, he was hit with an odd sense of déjà vu. In an instant, he
was back in Iraq, pulling dismounted patrol on a rutted litter-strewn dirt road
out in front of a pair of Humvees. Separated by ten to twelve feet each, several
of his brothers in arms trailed in a ragged line behind him.

In one of those defining moments of his deployments, he was
hit in the face by the viciously sweet stench of death. Sticky and thick, it
enveloped him and his squad. Then he saw the source and in a millisecond it was
burned into his memory forever. One of those things that could never be unseen.
In the ditch next to the road, rotting in the blistering hundred-and-twenty-degree
heat, were twenty or thirty corpses, all beheaded, most women and children, their
only crime: belonging to the wrong sect and being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

Strangely enough, that was the first and last time—save for
the littlest kids—that he had ever felt sorry for those people over there. Reap
what you sow, and all that. They didn’t know peace. And they didn’t seem to
aspire to it, either. The callus that formed on his soul that day grew tougher
every time a buddy was lost to a sniper round or scores of fellow soldiers were
vaporized by a vehicle-borne IED or artillery shell deviously concealed in an animal
carcass beside the road. That callus became a near-bulletproof suit of mental armor
as he continued to lose fellow Rangers and Special Forces comrades during his
multiple deployments in the ‘Stan. And it wasn’t until Cade made Delta and
reunited with Mike ‘Cowboy’ Desantos that he started to experience feeling
again. Hearts and minds, and all that jazz,
had
to be back in play to be
a part of a team as compartmentalized as they were. Especially during
interrogation sessions. For one got burned out quick always playing the role of
bad cop.

While fighting to get the tire chain crammed into the
plastic box with the ones already in there, Cade was struck at how in only a
few short weeks his mental defenses had returned stronger than ever. Which he
figured was a good thing seeing as how the good cop/bad cop routine didn’t work
on the dead. And when it came to the living, since all evidence pointed to so
very few of them remaining, anyone willing to rob and kill instead of forage
and fortify to survive the dead—deserved no mercy whatsoever.

Cade got the remaining tire chain in the box and tried
closing it. “Why don’t these things
ever
go back in as easy as they come
out?” Shaking his head, he put a knee on the box and the plastic halves moved
together. He added more weight to the endeavor then pitched forward, nearly
hitting his head on the nearby running board as two of the corners collapsed
with a sharp
crack
.

Like a foreman on the taxpayer’s dime, Duncan had been
standing over Cade and watching him struggle. “Hulk
smash
,” he said, chuckling.

Cade glared but said nothing.

Suddenly changing the subject, Duncan stuck his index finger
in the air. “Hey Delta. Does it feel like the temperature has buoyed a bit
since we were here last?”

Cade nodded. “We’ll have to keep a close tab on it. Wouldn’t
want to get stuck in a town full of these things when they come back alive.”

Duncan threw a visible shudder at the prospect. “That big
‘ol watch of yours tell the temperature?” he asked.

Shaking his head, Cade said, “It does a bunch of useful
things ... but monitoring the air temp isn’t one of them. It’s got a barometer
that is flatline right now. If the pressure starts dropping and the line on
this thing takes a dive, I’m afraid the temperature’s likely to spike big time.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw Taryn putting the boxed chains in the back
of the 4Runner. Unlike his, the box hers had come out of looked to be intact,
the chains, benefitting from a woman’s touch, no doubt coiled neatly inside. Thirty
or so yards east, Lev, Daymon, and Jamie—the self-anointed Clean Up Crew of
this trip—were walking along the shoulder and kneeling here and there,
presumably providing a swift second death to any of the fallen corpses they had
missed earlier.

“Let’s git,” Duncan said, looking in Taryn and Wilson’s
direction. Then he whistled to get the others’ attention and then waved them forward.

With the thin satellite phone in one hand, Cade caught
Duncan’s eye and nodded towards Daymon, who was now walking ahead of the
others, the sheathed machete banging against his hip. “Go ahead and let him ride
up front again. I’m going to call Brook.” Without waiting for an
acknowledgement, Cade thumbed the Thuraya alive and started out across the
road, the new hitch in his step pretty obvious.

He stood on the road looking out across the rolling snow-covered
grassland. The low bluffs to the right shone white on top, while the steep dirt
flanks remained mostly reddish brown, shot through with white—like finely
marbled steak—only where snow had settled in the vertical crevices.

The Thuraya’s call-waiting indicator blinked steadily. The
number indicating that the call had originated from Major Freda Nash’s personal
number now had a small numeral 3 next to it.
Persistent one, that lady
,
thought Cade as he dialed Brook.

There were several electronic trills before she picked up.
After they exchanged pleasantries, Cade filled her in on everything that had
happened up until now, putting extra emphasis on how he thought the
hundred-and-fifty tons of strategically placed gravel-laden plow trucks was
going to hold for some time while conversely omitting the crispy critter in the
Shell garage as well as his newly reinjured ankle. The former would have to
take the spotlight. However, the latter two minor details—
no blood, no foul
,
he figured.

She ran down the day’s events for him, crowing proudly about
how well the girls’ off-hand shooting was improving. Then she spent a second or
two lamenting the fact that she was still far from proficient with her off-hand
and might as well just surrender if forced to rely on her dominant hand.

“It’s going to take time,” Cade said, telling her something
she already knew. “Keep working with the ball and bands. It’ll come.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve got nobody else to
complain to.”

“That’s what I signed up for, honey. For better or for worse
...” His voice trailed off into a long silence.

“What is it, Cade?” Brook asked calmly.

“I’ve got bad news.”

Now there was silence on Brook’s end.

“It’s not
that
bad of news,” Cade said.

Silence still.

“We’re going to have to stay the night in Huntsville.”

“Why?” she said, her voice rising a little.

“Took us longer than we thought to clear the road and seal
the breach.”

“What are you going to do now? It’s not going to be dark for
another hour or two.”

Cade looked at his Suunto. “Ninety minutes … give or take.
Even with the cloud cover the moon should provide the ambient light we need to
work. Brook … we can’t pass up the opportunity to clear as many dead from in
and around Huntsville as we can.”

“What about Eden?”

“We’ll go check it out first thing in the morning.” He went
quiet again. Finally he said, “Brook, it just makes sense doing this now so we
won’t be hunting them down later in the countryside or woods. Less chance of
one of us getting ambushed again.” That last part he regretted saying the
moment it left his lips.

There was dead air for a hard three-count. Brook finally
said, “And we all know how that turned out.”

“Can’t go feeling sorry for yourself,” Cade said. “Bad wing
or not, it’s on you to hold the fort down.” Sensing someone watching him, Cade
peered over his shoulder. Less than ten feet away, Daymon was standing, hands
up and opening and closing his fingers, mimicking a blabbering mouth.

“Don’t worry, we’ll all
stay frosty
,” she said,
erupting in laughter. “Say, the girls are going stir crazy in here.”

Cade turned his back towards Daymon. “After one day?”

“They’re burning through the DVDs at a furious pace.”

“What are you proposing?”

“Let them explore a little while the things aren’t ambulatory,”
she proffered.

“In layman’s terms, Nurse Grayson.”

More laughter on Brook’s end.

Mission accomplished,
Cade thought. “Might not hurt
to give them a radio and let them explore a little
inside
the wire.”

“Weapons?”

Automatically, Cade shook his head. “Not without you or me
around. Not yet. They should be OK without … if they stay close in.”

“Stay safe, Cade Grayson.”

“Always. I’ll check in with you before noon tomorrow.
Earlier if anything comes up.”

“I love you,” Brook said.

“Love you, too.”

Cade took the phone from his ear and was about to thumb it
locked when he heard Brook’s tinny voice calling for him. So he put the phone
back to his ear. “Yes,” he said.

“Nash has called and left messages on both of the sat
phones. Do you want me to check them?”

Cade thought for a minute. Finally he said, “No. What we’re
doing here is more important than anything she might need from me right now.”

Incredulous, Brook said, “Anything?”

“Anything,” he said matter-of-factly. “The troops are
getting restless. Gotta go.”

“Stay frosty and come home to me, Cade Grayson.”

Cade said nothing. He thumbed the phone off and turned to
see that Daymon had given up and Duncan was in his place and tapping his watch
with big exaggerated motions while mouthing, “Let’s go.”

Cade pocketed the phone and raised his arms in mock
surrender when he saw the 4Runner’s occupants also shooting expectant looks his
way. In spite of his troublesome ankle, he jogged across the westbound lane,
wincing noticeably after every other footfall. Seeing Daymon in the passenger
seat, Cade again clambered into the back of the Land Cruiser and sprawled out
on the supple leather.

“Where to now?” Duncan asked.

“Downtown is a good a place as any, I suppose,” Cade said.
“From there we can work our way east to Glenda’s place.”

“Copy that,” said Duncan. “Next stop ... downtown Huntsville.”
He shot Daymon a look that screamed ‘you reek’, then released the brake and
started the Land Cruiser rolling smoothly eastbound with the 4Runner close to
its rear bumper.