Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (30 page)

After cutting the corner, hustling south down the cross
street and making it to the shed, all without hearing the angry hornet sound of
bullets scything the air anywhere near him or Duncan, Cade figured one of two
things to be true. Either Lev’s last half-dozen rounds of 5.56 hardball striking
around the windows and raining splinters and glass down on the veranda had
convinced the shooter, or shooter’s, to keep their heads down. Or, the less
likely of the two scenarios, whoever was up there squirted just after the
previous volley.

Shattering Cade’s hypothesis, and the still that had settled
over Huntsville, four more shots came from the middle house. From his new
vantage point, the muzzle flash lancing out from the gloomy confines of the
upstairs veranda was a star pattern of flame that looked a lot like it belonged
to some sort of carbine.
Lots of them hanging around nowadays
, thought
Cade.
And sadly, lots of dead National Guardsmen who wouldn’t be needing
their M4s any longer
. He caught Duncan’s eye and broke squelch on the
radio. “Anyone hit?”

For a brief second the radio crackled with white noise.
“Negative,” Lev finally said. “Another street sign is KIA, though.”

“Check fire, then,” Cade said quietly. He looked at his
Suunto.
Seven on the nose
. That meant sunset was only a handful of
minutes away. That also meant there would be a small window of time during
which the sun would dip below the cloud cover and slide behind the curvature of
the earth. And if all proceeded as it had without fail for millennia, the sunflare
off the snow-covered mountains ringing the valley would be spectacular and
short-lasting, and just the advantage they needed to safely cover the terraced
block and a half to the southernmost home without catching a lethal lead
overdose.

Hastily, so as not to miss the celestial bus, Cade relayed
that part of his plan to Lev, following it up by giving him the green light to
kill anything that threatened them once they were out in the open.

Listening in, just an arm’s reach from Cade, Duncan nodded
soberly. His jaw took a firm set as he jacked the shotgun’s breach back a
couple of inches to confirm a shell was ready and waiting. Slug, shot, slug,
and so on is how he had loaded the shells into the pump gun prior to leaving
the compound. Slug would do just fine for what he figured to be the opening
shot in the upcoming engagement.

At three after seven by Cade’s watch, the angry purple clouds
to the west changed dramatically. Save for a thin horizontal band turning white
at their base, the rest had gone coal black. Cade thought for a second he was
looking at one-half of a giant Oreo cookie suspended in midair. One big enough to
sate Godzilla and which extended all the way across the horizon from left to
right, only the band of white was an optical illusion created by the rapidly
changing play of light, not a layer of sweet creamy filling. The sun’s rays
were piercing the bottom of the clouds and they stayed lit up like that for a
few short seconds until the dropping orb’s aspect in relation to the horizon
hit the sweet spot and the halo effect imparted on the Wasatch Mountains made
them look as if they were cloaked in molten lava. The flare that quickly followed
was brilliant—like that of a million diamonds twinkling around the jagged-edged
range.

Cade was on the move when the clouds above the mountains
were just turning color. By the time the mountain range bathed in coronal flare
was mirrored in all of the west-facing windows to his right, he and Duncan were
another block east and weaving their way northbound through the maze of corpses
littering the streets running up to the homes.

The flare lasted only a handful of seconds and then a rapid
transformation occurred. As if a switch had been flicked, the lower strata of
clouds darkened and seemed to merge with the Wasatch and its shark’s-teeth-like
crags there lost all definition.

Crouched low and ready for combat, Cade continued north past
a waist-high white picket fence and then made a ninety degree cut to his right.
Head on a swivel, and with his ankle throbbing angrily, he made short jabbing
steps in the snow and quickly ascended the slick driveway bordering the first
house in line. After zippering through a number of corpses prostrate on the
level stretch leading up to a one-car garage, he crab-walked to his right,
keeping the M4s suppressor tracking with his eyes. As he cut the corner by
degrees, left-to-right, thirty yards to the fore he spotted a snow-covered
mound with a shovel speared into it vertically. To the left of the mound was
Glenda’s house. To the right was a one-car garage. The door was up, and sitting
inside and out of the elements was the antique Austin Healy roadster he had
heard Glenda telling Taryn all about.

With Duncan still close on his heels, Cade passed through
the open gate and took a knee in the shadow of the two-story house, where, a
tick later, his breathing ragged and labored, Duncan did the same.

“You OK?” Cade asked.

Holding a finger up, Duncan nodded and gulped air.

Taking the gesture to mean the older man needed a short
breather, Cade rose and went through the swinging gate the way they’d come in.
He scurried back and forth, inspecting a few of the corpses on the flat part of
the drive near the garage and learned that they had already been granted a
second death, their primitive brains scrambled by something long, thin, and
sharp inserted into either an eye socket or temple.

Cade padded back through the gate and crouched next to
Duncan. “The Zs on the driveway were all done just like the others,” he
whispered. “Whoever’s claimed Glenda’s place as their own has been cleaning up
the hood.”

“I seem to have missed the
neighborhood watch
sign,”
Duncan quipped.

***

Through the Leupold scope riding atop his M4, at the exact moment
the sun had lit up the entire veranda and most of the elongated room behind it,
Lev got a quick snapshot-in-time look at the shooter. Standing with his back
wedged into a corner that a second prior had been fully ensconced in shadow,
the man had been aiming some kind of a scoped rifle in his general direction. Whether
the man had been able to see him through the 4Runner’s smoked glass was
unknown. And strangely enough, though the shooter had the high ground, which
was a serious advantage in most battlefield scenarios, the look of indecision
and fear etched on his youthful and clean-shaven face was anything but that of
someone determined to make a stand.

Half a heartbeat from acting against Cade’s wishes, and just
when the sun slipped away and shadow again embraced the man two blocks distant,
Lev listened to the gut that had saved his ass many times in the Sandbox and
eased up on the trigger. Instead of putting a bullet into the gloomy corner in
hopes of shattering the man’s sternum and calling it a day, he swung his rifle
to the right and watched Cade and Duncan scurrying up the snowy drive. Multitasking,
he kept tracking his friends through the scope as they neared the garage and,
once they disappeared around the corner behind the first house, he asked Wilson
to get them on the two-way.

Still crouched beside Duncan, Cade felt the radio vibrating
against his thigh and fished it out with two fingers. He held it up equidistant
between him and Duncan, its volume turned to a whisper, and together they
listened to Wilson dictating a situation report via Lev.

When Wilson was finished, Cade turned the volume all the way
down and, obviously contemplating something, looked left and walked his eyes up
the steps, finally settling his gaze on the wooden four-panel door looming over
them.

“Kind of figured there was maybe two at the most holed up in
there,” he said. “Based on what Lev saw and given that the potshots being
lobbed our way were few and far between ... I’d be willing to bet we got
ourselves a lone shooter. A novice shooter at that.”

“And dollars to doughnuts,” Duncan added, “that good ole boy
is hoping to keep us at arm’s reach until full dark. Then he’s gonna squirt out
the back and make a run for it.”

Cade nodded, then, thinking out loud, said, “If we wait for
him to make the next move, chances are he’ll have already worked his courage up
and then he’ll no doubt be operating on a hair trigger and shooting to kill.”

Duncan nodded.

“Right now,” Cade said, “he has no idea he’s been flanked. That
makes me think he’s probably just a Joe Citizen who scooped his rifle up at a
roadblock.”

Duncan said nothing.

Cade said, “Lev’s convinced that our shooter’s got some kind
of a high-powered sniper rifle. It’s not far out of the realm to think that he
also has a pair of NVGs. That would really put us at a disadvantage if we wait
until full dark.”

“Let’s take the house,” Duncan said forcefully, his
respiration now slow and steady.

Cade nodded. “Wait here.” He scaled the four steps. Opened
the screen door a few inches and tapped on the weathered door. A minute crawled
by and nothing went bump inside, so Cade tried the knob and found it locked. He
fished the lock gun from a pocket and had the deadbolt defeated with the
sophisticated lock pick tool in seconds. Carbine leading the way, he entered
through a mudroom of sorts. There were coats and galoshes and a multitude of cobwebs
with a mosaic of bug husks trapped in the wispy strands. Ignoring everything
save for any out-of-place noises, he traversed the kitchen and padded through
the entire downstairs, memorizing the layout. Judging by the fact that two of
the three houses, save for minor changes in the architectural detail—different dentil
moldings and florets and such—looked to be identical in build on the outside, Cade
figured their floor plans, though likely flipped for sake of avoiding monotony,
would be strikingly similar in layout and room dimension. However, what he
really wanted to know was where the stairs were in relation to the front and
back doors.

All total, Cade burned ninety seconds between breaking in
and his return to the back stoop. During that minute and a half, he came across
nothing living, dead, or undead while inside.

Face screwed up in concentration, Cade said, “The stairs are
sandwiched between the kitchen and dining room and are about twenty feet in
from either door ... front or back.”

“Makes sense. The same fella probably built all three of
these Easter-egg-looking things.”

“Copy that,” Cade said. “That’s what I’m banking on.”

After drawing up a plan and hashing out all the ways it
could go wrong—of which there were many—Cade was on the move north, through the
expansive backyard to the waist-high picket fence bordering Glenda’s place. The
fence was easy enough to surmount, and once both men were on the other side
they took refuge with the car in the garage, where they could observe both the
south-facing side and rear of the towering home.

Leaning against the low-slung sports car, Cade scrutinized
the house. The small window set high off the ground on the south side closest
to them had its horizontal blinds parked at half-mast, while, as expected, the
windows closer to the ground were all boarded over. The drapes in the upstairs windows
were pulled tight save for the ones looking out on the backyard and garage. The
smaller of the three, presumably inset in the bathroom wall, was darkened and
looked to be shuttered from the inside. Near the corner closest to them, underneath
a small overhang held up by wrought iron columns, was the newly reinforced back
door. It was shored up with squares of plywood and, as if it had withstood a
lengthy siege of hungry Zs, smeared bloody handprints marred every inch of its
undulating surface.

***

Moving with the urgency of a tree sloth, Daymon had wormed
his way in reverse along the gutter, with the charred car offering him minimal
cover. The rough stone curb grated against his left side the entire way until
he cleared the front tire and rolled to his right, putting the vehicle and
stacked corpses between him and whomever was shooting at them. He locked eyes
with Taryn, who had also crawled to cover from the opposite direction and was
pressed flat next to the corpses, her head resting on the metal bumper just
below the gaping opening where the car’s plastic grill used to reside.

Seeing Lev looking his way and motioning with an open palm
to the ground—universal semaphore for keep your head down—Daymon tore off his
hat and erupted in anger. He was claustrophobic by nature, and though he wasn’t
underground or trapped within the fenced perimeter of a sprawling Air Force
base, being pinned down by the shooter was no different. His freedom had been
stolen and he was pissed.

The diatribe that spewed from Daymon’s mouth was filled with
epithets and death threats, all directed at the shooter. With cheeks gone redder
than Wilson’s, and the short wiry ends of his dreadlocks whipping wildly, he continued
hollering at the top of his voice until the bullet zinging off an abandoned
compact a stone’s throw up the side street silenced him.

After the report dissipated and all Daymon could hear was
his own heartbeat, he called out to Lev, “Cover us,” while making his intention
known by walking two fingers in the snow in the direction of the 4Runner.

Lev shook his head side-to-side. He whispered across the
divide, “Not part of the plan. Keep your head down.”

Still crouched by the 4Runner’s bumper, Wilson mouthed, “I
love you,” to Taryn, who simply shook her head and pointed uphill as if saying
pay
attention
.

Again Daymon called out across the open space. “I know you
don’t give a shit if I get my ass shot off, but”—he was jabbing a finger at
Jamie—“don’t you want your lady here over there with you?”

Glancing over, Lev said, “She can take care of herself. And
regardless of what happened between us earlier … I do give a shit about you.
But right now, I need you to quit distracting me.” He turned back toward the
house and shouldered the scoped carbine.

Wilson had been shifting his gaze between Taryn and Jamie, but
after the verbal sparring he glared at Daymon, who was silent for the moment,
though his face was still wildly contorted. A few seconds went by and strangely
enough the shooter took a page from Daymon’s book.