Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (28 page)

“Better be careful where you cast your stones, Wilson. I
think we’re all in danger of losing some of our humanity.”

The incredibly vivid image of a young couple, their heads
caved in and liquid halos spreading on the carpet around them, flashed before
Wilson’s eyes. He smelled the blood, metallic and imparting a coppery tang on
his tongue. He released his grip on the female rotter’s neck. Looked the
waifish young thing straight in its putrefying face. Lost himself staring into
the darkened sockets.

“What is it?” Taryn asked, her voice gone soft, every
syllable weighted with concern.

“I can’t help but think for every one of these things I’ve
killed today there’s potentially a million more of them still roaming around
out there.” He crushed down his boonie hat only so that he could covertly swipe
away some tears. He regarded her with red-rimmed eyes and then went on. “That’s
like two hundred and fifty million walking dead, Taryn. It makes me tired even
thinking about it.”

She said nothing. Went about putting another five rotters out
of their misery.

Wilson turned in place. A slow circle, taking in the corpse-dotted
landscape. He faced her and said, “That’s what I meant by inevitable. The odds
stacked against us are astronomical.”

“We could move to somewhere that’s cold all the time. What
about Antarctica?”

Wilson cleaned his knife by stabbing it into the hard soil a
few times and then finished the job by wiping the muddy blade on the dead girl’s
tattered tank top. “That’s not living,” he finally said, slipping the knife
into a pocket. “We’re done here.”

Taryn watched him walk away, not quite sure in which context
he meant the words to be taken. Cade walked up a second later and strangely
enough uttered the same three words to her.

She cleaned her knife in the same manner as Wilson had and
then struck out towards the vehicles, following the footsteps in the snow. Halfway
there the wind picked up and a gust from the east slammed her from the side,
slowing her gait momentarily. She put her head down, thrust her hands in her
pockets and forged ahead. As she neared the vehicles and was deep in thought about
her place in the cosmic order of things, suddenly from out of the
blue—shockingly similar to the skull tattoos gracing her arms—she began seeing
in her mind’s eye the gaunt and hollow-eyed faces of the infected that she had
just granted exit from this world. Only these visions visiting her without
warning weren’t a harmless facsimile of death like those which she had purposefully
inked into her skin. Borne of parchment-thin skin drawn tight over angular bone,
the indicting sneers she was imagining represented a real and final passage
from this world and would no doubt haunt her for as long as she lived.

The sunset was a sight to behold as the two SUVs pulled
sharp U-turns and headed east back into Huntsville.

In the rearview, Duncan watched the withdrawing clouds go
from burnt orange to bright red. The transformation transpired in just a matter
of seconds and, as the cemetery gates fell quickly behind and his attention was
drawn to the houses on the hill, he saw reflected in the windows there those
same clouds abruptly turn a deep purple hue that he instantly interpreted as an
ominous portent of things to come.

Physically and mentally tired, Duncan was easily mesmerized
by the scattered clusters of skeletal trees and sooty light standards flicking
by in the waning light. Sitting where they had been abandoned lining the
streets shooting off of Main Street were the hulks of dozens of cars,
windowless and sitting on pancaked rims. Here and there, zombies that had been
present when the wind-driven fire jumped from Eden to Huntsville lay in the
snow, their upthrust gnarled and blackened appendages a sharp contrast to the
early season snowfall now covering the ground.

Main Street took them back past Dave’s and Rhonda’s and the
long wooden bar with nobody bellied up to it. Instead of turning south and retracing
their route to 39, Duncan held the wheel straight and continued east towards
Glenda’s house on the hill, the sky show at their backs still reflected in the
windows and lighting it like a beacon. Three blocks removed from the business
core, Main started a steady uphill climb. More trees seemed to have been spared
on the terrace-like east-end of town.

“Stop here,” Daymon said, an unusual sense of urgency in his
tone.

The two-vehicle convoy stopped dead center of an
intersection four blocks east of the L-shaped commercial building. Daymon stepped
out and left his door hanging open. He strode quickly to the northeast corner of
the four-way intersection and went to bent knee beside a two-door compact burnt
to nothing but a shell and resting low to the ground on warped black rims. And
resembling a tortilla left for too long in a hot pan, its once-white paint was
bubbled in places and charred brown and black all over. In front of the car
were four pallid corpses, two female adults and two kids, one of each sex. The
summer attire—tattered shorts and tank tops and T-shirts—still clinging to the
gaunt forms barely hid the roadmap of welts and open sores whose decomposition had
been temporarily halted. And suggestive of many weeks spent roaming the
countryside hunting the living, their feet were bare, the pads nearly worn down
to bone.

Leaving Kindness in her scabbard, Daymon grabbed the long
greasy locks of one of the Omega-affected women and turned its head until the death
mask was squared up with him. He took a folding knife from his parka, flicked it
open with a thumb, and started to probe one of the thing’s once-blue eyes with
its angled tip.

The soft orb gave way immediately, releasing a congealed
mess of viscous fluid that seemed just south of its freezing point. The other
eye—as he had noticed previously from his seat in the SUV as they drew near—was
already punctured, the fluid definitely frozen. The wound there, when compared
with the one from his knife point, was almost nonexistent. It was as if
something very thin and with enough length to it to reach the brain had been
thrust in quickly and extracted, leaving behind a tiny tell-tale puncture mark.
But as liquid was wont to do, it always found a point of least resistance, and
whatever the fluid contained in the human eye was called, this stuff had done
just that. It looked to have leaked out in a slow trickle from the entry wound and
then frozen dark and jagged, like a Mike Tyson tattoo, mostly around the outer
eye socket.

He released his grip on the rotter’s hair, letting the skull
strike the roadway with a solid
thunk
.

The other adult Z was face down and had frozen to the
pavement—also a victim to the same instrument used on the other.

The kids shared the same injuries to their eyes. However, judging
by the minuscule purple pucker marks on their temples, their brains had also
been skewered and scrambled from the side.
A clean through and through to
the temple
, thought Daymon,
to make doubly sure they would never wake up
.
Which to him was overkill that suggested whoever was responsible possessed a
measure of compassion he didn’t have for the already turned—kids or otherwise.

Over the intermittently gusting east wind he heard doors
opening then thumping closed. During a lull, he detected footfalls squelching
in the snow. Then in his peripheral he saw three pairs of scuffed boots; two
were military issue with identical MultiCam fatigues tucked and bloused. The
third pair were some expensive hiking models with snow-crusted blue jeans
riding over their tops. He turned and peered over his shoulder and saw Cade,
Lev, and Wilson standing between him and the vehicles.

“So Daymon, what’s your finding? Cade asked.

“Great minds run on the same tracks,” he answered.
“Goldilocks seems to think someone’s been culling our Zs for us.”

“And they’re still around here somewhere,” Cade said.

Lev nodded. “I’ve had the feeling we were being watched ever
since we came in off 39.”

“I felt it, too,” conceded Daymon. “Figure when it’s my time
to go ...”

Another door hinged open. There were more footsteps. Jamie
said, “What’s up?”

“We’re being watched,” Wilson answered. “And D here thinks that
whoever it is has already been culling the dead here in town.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, her hand resting on
the tomahawk, carbine held loosely in the other.

Again Daymon took a fistful of the female Z’s hair and
lifted and rotated its head off the ground so the group could fully see its
slack face. With his knife, he probed the older of the two wounds and then
chipped off a quarter-sized sample of the frozen fluids. Next, he moved the tip
around in the other eye, a clockwise motion that showed there was still some
viscosity to the milky fluid there. Without explanation, he let the cadaver
down easy and stood tall. “The two little ones were done the same way.” Then,
pointing to the boy’s temple with the blade, he added, “And they got a little
extra
attention when it came to the brain scrambling part.”

“So they were all put down
before
the temperature
dropped,” Cade said, nodding. “That would explain why the fluid migrated before
freezing.”

“
Bingo
,” Daymon said. “What is that
old ass
saying from that ancient tic-tac-toe game show Duncan is always dropping?”

“X gets a square,” Duncan said as he formed up next to
Wilson. He stared down on the dead for a second then looked up and met Daymon’s
gaze. “What made you think to stop and check ‘em out?”

“It was obvious to me that the wind didn’t knock these ones
down in this perfect little pig pile,” Daymon answered. “And I think whoever
stacked them like that wanted them to stay together ... forever.”

Like some kind of affirmation from on high, a vigorous gust
of east wind swept in, clearing the roof of the once white car of several
inches of snow. Covering the ten feet in the blink of an eye, the tiny razor-sharp
crystals spread like buck shot and blasted the gathered crowd face-high.

Harsh words and snow spilt from Daymon’s mouth as he reflexively
turned away.

The others were dusting themselves off and angling for their
respective rides when the first gunshot rang out.

Thankful for finding a lonely bulging can of something other
than sauerkraut hiding behind the Vienna sausages, Helen stirred the corned
beef and hash with a spatula, added a few dashes of Tabasco and three generous
shakes of ordinary everyday black pepper—just the way Ray liked it—and stirred
it again. She divided it up three ways in the sizzling skillet and then carefully
transferred the portions of steaming hash onto the three plates lined up on the
counter. She placed a pale excuse for a sausage beside each serving of hash and
dusted all three plates with ordinary everyday iodized salt. Nothing fancy in
the Thagon household. Never was and never would be.

She thought back to her first date with Ray and the words he
had uttered that at once had both appalled and endeared him to her. Being an East
Coast city girl, never once in her young life had she heard a person say to a
waitress, in as calm of a manner as he had, what Ray had said that day. After ordering
a steak and potato dinner, the waitress inquired how Ray wanted his steak
prepared. His reply was all country. Short and sweet and to the point. He had said:
Knock its horns off, wipe its ass, and bring it to me mooing.
Helen came
to learn that day for Ray words weren’t meant to be wasted. And that’s what she
loved about her simple man.

Still smiling at the memory, Helen bent over next to the
stove and shut off the flow of propane with a quick clockwise twist of the knob.
Yet another thing to be grateful for, she thought. For just days after martial
law was declared, it seemed as if the utility folks up and discontinued natural
gas service to the entire county without warning. And without Ray and his shed
full of tools and head full of knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of observing
and listening, the conversion to propane would never have happened and she
would be looking at a long winter subsisting on their stockpile of barely
palatable MREs. No amount of seasoning or hot sauce, in her humble opinion,
could make a meal of those things something to look forward to. What a catch
that man was ... ingenious, and never afraid to get his hands dirty.

The propane, however, was a different story. Though Ray had
scoured the county and outlying areas for a truck with a full load to
liberate
and bring back and stash in the barn, he had come up empty. Furthermore, every
little store for miles around that had always had an ample supply of the
ubiquitous white canisters (usually kept in a locked cage out front) had been picked
clean when the first wave of survivors fleeing Ogden, Salt Lake City, and
Jackson Hole breached the National Guard roadblocks established on the
Interstates and State Routes and, like an invading army, swept through the high
country, bringing their infected loved ones along with them. Once the motels
and campgrounds were full, people took to staying in their vehicles or pitching
tents on private property. A week later, the scourge the television talking
heads had started calling Omega knocked those same stations off the air and
dashed what little hope Ray and Helen still held for the government—FEMA, DHS,
the military—to turn the tide on the dead. Remembering how his family had scratched
out an existence during the Great Depression, Ray came up with a plan.

Before the dead had started roaming the countryside in
herds, and later hordes, he and Helen had put that plan into action, making as
many forays from the farm as daylight would allow, oftentimes coming back with the
old truck sagging on its springs, the box brimming with everything
but
propane.

Then, one day roughly two months back, after the herds and
hordes began roaming the countryside with impunity, Dregan and his boys came
poking around the farm. But instead of coming with bad intentions, they had
come as emissaries of sorts, offering sanctuary in Bear River. That day they
had also learned that Dregan was the one who had beat Ray to both of the Bear
Valley Propane trucks locked in the sprawling yard, as well as every pound of
propane on the premises. In the old days that was called a
monopoly
. Even
so, without a second’s thought about leaving their farm, Ray and Helen had
declined the offer; instead, they’d bartered three alpacas, each one a ten-thousand-dollar
animal before the fall, for eight weeks’ worth of fuel—amounting to about
twelve canisters that would have cost all of one hundred and fifty dollars in
the old world.

Now, with the last of their propane dwindling, and no more
alpacas to trade for fuel, a new bargain needed to be struck. A bargain that
might eventually boil down to someone either living or dying.

Helen scooped up the plates and, carrying them with all of
the agility of that waitress Ray had offended all those years ago, delivered
them to the dining room. She deposited one in her usual spot at the table and continued
holding the other two in one hand close enough to Ray’s face so that tendrils
of steam curled about his nose.

“Smells good,” he said. He moved his pocketknife aside and
brushed the accumulation of ash from where his plate was to go. He set the
corncob pipe he’d been cleaning on the table above his plate and regarded
Helen, his face a mask of concern. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“Positive,” she answered. “What’s that old Middle Eastern
proverb? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“No, honey ...” Ray said. “That, my dear, is a
Sun Tzu
quote.”

“Well, I stand corrected.” She smiled and made a play like
the plate still in her hands was burning them.

“Tell me,” Ray asked. “How do we know the difference between
the two?”

“Exactly,” she said, a smug smile forming on her lined face.
“That’s why we don’t ever need to tell Dregan or anybody close to him what we
know.”

“That Brook girl had hard eyes,” Ray said. “I’m certain
Mikhail wasn’t her first.”

“And not her last,” Helen stated, as if she were privy to
future events. Again she nodded toward the side door and did the floating plate
thing.

“He can wait,” Ray said, sampling the hash. He motioned with
the fork. “Sit. Eat.”

She did.

And they talked some more.

Finished with the hash and just starting in on the sausage,
Ray said, “What makes you so sure that if Dregan gets the best of those folk
they won’t tell him that we knew they killed those kids? Because if he does find
out we withheld anything ... the fight we’ll have with him and his kin, no
matter what Pomeroy has to say about it, will require the application of a lot
more of our friend Sun Tzu’s rather unconventional wisdom.” He sliced the
sausage in two and stuffed one-half in his mouth while thinking how nice the
addition of farm fresh eggs would be.
If only the monsters hadn’t eaten the
hens along with the alpacas
.

Helen made no reply. She went on chewing and swallowed, but
still kept her thoughts to herself.

Behind her eyes, Ray could see the wheels turning.
Processing everything he had just said. There was a long pause, then he added,
“I’m just thinking aloud here, Helen. Did the negroes ever give up the people
who hid them along the Underground Railroad?”

“Good point,” Helen said at last. “Switzerland.” She pushed
her empty plate forward and rose with the full one in hand.

“Is it cold?” Ray asked.

She nodded. “It was never going to make it up there any
other way. Now go on upstairs and cover me.”

Ray rose from his seat, grumbling under his breath. The
stairs were not his friend. Especially with a full stomach and loose bowels.
Put forth as more of a statement than question, he said, “Darn it, Helen, why
don’t we just call ‘ol Cleo on down for dinner with the radio. It’s gotta be on
the same frequency as ours.”

“Because Dregan is no dummy. I’m sure they’re all on a
predetermined channel. Like the party lines of old. Remember those?”

“I’ll cover you. Now git.” He started grumbling again at the
foot of the stairs and no doubt would still be bellyaching when he finally
reached the top. And though she would be trudging through the snow when he did,
the old coot would probably still be goin’ on when he opened the window and
placed the bolt-action rifle’s crosshairs right on ‘ol Cleo’s poorly camouflaged
sternum.