Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (34 page)

He unzipped one of the cadaver’s parkas and, in addition to
finding a number of bite wounds suffered to its shoulder through the ripstop
fabric, there was a black pistol and several magazines for a rifle riding in a
chest rig slung over lightweight body armor—all glaringly similar to western
products. Hell, he thought, the bastards copied our latest fifth-generation
jets from plans stolen from various DoD contractors’ computer servers. Why not mine
private sector databases for anything else they didn’t want to design
themselves?

He pulled the coat back and slipped a small black radio from
an inside pocket. One quick glance and it went into his pocket. Then he yanked
the coat off the Z’s shoulder and stared at the olive patch affixed to the
uniform there. No surprise. The stylized sword complete with pommel and
lightning bolt wrapping the blade, at a quick glance, could easily be confused
with the SF patch worn by American Green Berets.

Shaking his head, and not liking this new finding one bit,
he regarded Duncan, who was staring at the Chinese soldier and slowly chewing a
bite of energy bar. “Chinese Special Forces,” Cade said. “Probably part of a scout
recon team.”

“Where’s their weapons?”

“Probably with their vehicles.”

“Why’d they dismount?”

“They were riding motorcycles.”

“That’s stupid,” Duncan said, chuckling. He took another
bite and stuffed the rest of the uneaten bar in a pocket.

“Yes it was,” conceded Cade, thinking back to his own
two-wheeled flight from Camp Williams and the subsequent collision with the
young Z that earned him a dose of road rash and almost got him killed. “Yes …
it … was.”

Duncan grunted and shifted to his knees. “Give me a hand,”
he said. “I’m stiffening up like a pecker in a Viagra factory.”

Smiling at the joke, Cade put his hand on the older man’s
shoulder. “Why don’t you take a load off,” he stated. “I’ll finish what we
started here.”

“I’m tired … not dead,” drawled Duncan.

“I need you to try to get the kids on the horn,” Cade said. “Tell
them to wrap it up and head on back to the house.”

“What if they’re not finished?”

“It’s a short distance to the boat launch from the house.
Figure we can tackle whatever is left there tomorrow.” Cade cast his gaze on
the six corpses, one of which was again making that hair-raising sound. He
narrowed it down to the teenaged girl or the older man. He knelt beside the man
and slid the Gerber into his eye socket all the way to the hilt, silencing the
faint whistling. “Once we’re done in Eden,” he went on. “We can come back and
mop up the leftovers.”

Duncan swallowed. “Copy that, Boss.” He watched,
emotionless, while the former Delta operator added five more souls to his black
Gerber. Teenaged girl, older lady, and all three of what he guessed to be
People’s Liberation Army SF scout soldiers who had been caught by the Zs with
their pants around their proverbial ankles.

As Cade cut across the road, his legs chopped through the
headlight beams, creating a strange strobe light effect that made the handful
of cadavers left standing look all the more like props straight out of a
Halloween house of horrors. Duncan watched him go and dug out the two-way
radio. He made the call and relayed the order in a manner so that it sounded
more like a suggestion. Finished listening to Wilson yammer on about how many
they’d culled and assuring the kid their work was far from done, he stowed the Motorola
and, curiosity getting the best of him, stripped the coat from one of the
Chinese soldiers.

***

By the time Cade had finished putting down the last of the
dead, he was feeling like Duncan looked. He threaded his way through the sea of
bodies, avoiding the obvious collections of fluids that had pooled here and
there on the road’s undulating surface.

He found Duncan in the Land Cruiser. The engine was running,
that much was clear. Wisps of exhaust curled up and were scattered with each
new gust from the east. The driver’s side window pulsed down when he was even
with the front bumper. He put a hand on the rig’s b-pillar, and when he leaned
forward the heated air escaping the rig warmed his face.

“You done?” asked Duncan.

“For today.” He rubbed his shoulders one at a time. Then,
working the kinks out of his neck, he said, “Strange house and hard floor be
damned. I’m going to sleep like a rock tonight.”

“Not after I show you this.” He took something from the
passenger seat and passed it out the window.

Cade removed his glove and took the item. Turned it over in
his hand. It was a laminated sheet of paper roughly eight-by-ten and had a
crease in the middle for ease of folding. Both sides were filled with symbols
that looked like stick-houses to Cade. Opposite the strings of Chinese characters
were English translations. The one that caught his eye first was front and
center. It said:
Surrender and you may live
. Another disturbing phrase
farther down the sheet, near the crease, read:
Are you infected?
Lastly,
he read the words,
We are here to help you
, and lost it. “Bullshit,” he
said. “They’re here to finish what they started.”

“On a lighter note,” said Duncan, “the Kids put down most of
their Zs. Some of them that were still inside their tents started making noises
and moving.”

“I was afraid of that,” Cade said. “Temps should drop back
down again tonight. That’ll buy us some time tomorrow before they fully
reanimate.” In his head he heard Glenda going on about the snow.
It’s too
early for this,
she had said. Then her warning:
Be careful out there. It
might be shorts and tank top weather by tomorrow.
Though he knew she was
being a little facetious with the last part, she wasn’t joking about how the
weather was prone to have wild fluctuations this early in the season. She was
speaking from experience. But, she was only speculating. And that meant that
Cade had a little wiggle room in the decision-making department.

Interrupting Cade’s train of thought, Duncan said, “One more
thing … while we’ve been out here, Urch and Oliver were clearing out the
buildings downtown. They wanted me to tell you they’re going to get a jump on
Eden just before first light. Apparently Oliver’s already gotten a headstart
culling the rotters over there.”

“Knowing Daymon, he’s got something percolating he’s not
letting on about.”

“Give the kid a break. Do those words sound familiar,
Delta?”

“Yes they do, Army.” Cade clapped Duncan’s shoulder. “Go
ahead and turn in. I’m going to give the road a quick plowing. I’ll be back at
the house in twenty minutes … tops.”

Without a word, Duncan pulled the Land Cruiser around in a
three-point turn. He stopped near the opposite shoulder and fixed his gaze on
Cade. “Watch your six, friend.”

Cade nodded and climbed into the Mack. As soon as the SUV began
to slowly pull away, out came the Thuraya and he banged away at the keypad,
composing a quick text message to Brook. Then, repeating a Duncanism, he said
to himself, “Time to make the doughnuts,” and started the gory task of clearing
the two-lane of the twice-dead corpses.

When Cade turned the plow truck onto the street dominated by
the towering Queen Annes, both of the SUVs were parked against the curb out
front. There was no flicker of candles behind the panes of the French doors up
above, and on the ground floor not so much as a stray bar of light escaped
around the front door or the boarded windows. All in all, the house seemed just
as dead as the hundreds of corpses he’d put down this day.

With every muscle in his body afire and the pressure in his
ankle growing to the point that it was almost numb, he grabbed his backpack and
M4 and, using the grab bar situated behind the doorframe, lowered himself from
the truck’s cab.

He opted to take the front steps instead of trying his luck
on the sloped driveway. At the top landing where the snow had been scoured away
by heavy traffic, he paused to put his arm through his pack’s other shoulder
strap. Sensing movement directly above him, he looked up and caught a tangerine-sized
snowball square on the forehead.

“Good shot,” he whispered to Lev, who was peering down from
the veranda and shaking his head, no doubt in disbelief at making the one in a
million shot.

“You looked like you needed a little something to wake you
up,” Lev whispered down. “Meet you in the kitchen with a towel.”

Wiping his face on his sleeve, Cade said, “Don’t bother,”
and hiked off to his right around the side of the house. Limping a serpentine
path through the bodies, he heard a sound he couldn’t quite place. It was
coming from above and to his left and he was hesitant to look up in case a
window was open and he was about to catch another snowball.

Curiosity piqued, he stopped and looked anyway. There was no
window open. And no snowballs came raining down. There was, however, a build-up
of snow on the gutter. And though he couldn’t be sure, it looked as if the gutter
had just arrested a slab that had broken free from raining down on him.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have chalked the incident
up to a roof warmed by the heat rising off the seven bodies taking refuge underneath
it. But he did know better, because the last time he had consulted the thermometer
on the Land Cruiser’s trip computer, the temperature
was
rising and the
wind was dying down. Now, two hours later, the air over Huntsville was calm and
moist—almost humid. This was one of those swings Glenda had warned him about. Tackle
it head on was how he planned on following through with his decision to stay
another day.

Cade was so tired when he got to the short stack of stairs
leading into the back of the house that they may as well have been Kilimanjaro.
He paused at the door and knocked. A moment passed, and when the door hinged
inward, a helping hand was thrust in his face. Noncommittal, he glared at the
hand for a second, then tracked his gaze up and saw Lev staring him down.

“Take it, you martyr,” said the younger man.

Stealing Duncan’s line, he said, “I’m tired, not dead.”

“All the same … take my effin hand.”

And he did. Once in the kitchen, with the boarded backdoor
closed and locked, he also accepted a towel and dried the beaded sweat from his
face. Then he went about shedding his weapons, pack, and parka. He toweled
sweat from his neck and ran the floral scrap of threadbare fabric meant for
drying dishes over his skin under his shirt. Using his Gerber, he cut through
the silver tape securing the makeshift armor of magazines to his forearms.

Lev slid a low stool Cade’s way. “Why don’t you take a load
off,” he said, putting a hand on Cade’s shoulder.

Cade sat down heavily. He put an elbow on the marble-topped
island and ran his fingers through his damp beard. Eyes narrowing, he settled
his gaze on Lev. “You and Duncan been talking?”

“No. Why?”

Cade shook his head.

Taking the nonverbal cue to mean
never mind
, Lev set
his carbine aside and sat on a stool himself. Now eye-to-eye with the operator,
he said, “We’ve got a lot of leftovers to get to tomorrow. A thousand or so—”

“And?” said Cade, cutting him off.

“It’s going to be fifty degrees out there by sunup. I’m
guessing—best case scenario—it’ll be sixty by noon.”

“Someone get their junior weatherman’s badge?”

Lev shook his head. “Nope. Couldn’t tell you it was gonna
rain until it’s hitting my face. This … this is coming straight out of Oliver’s
mouth. He worked the ski hills here for years. Apparently the first snow of the
season only gins up season pass sales. It
never
gets the lifts running. And
it never stays around for long. This, he says, will melt by tomorrow afternoon and
the valley won’t see any accumulation for another few weeks. Maybe not even
until Thanksgiving.”

“Guess we have to make the most of it while we can,” Cade
said. He pushed back from the table. “In the morning, you and Jamie and the
kids ought to go back and finish up at the campground.”

“What are
your
plans for tomorrow?”

“I want to give Eden a look see while the Zs are less of a
threat. Get a feel for what needs to be done there next time we are blessed
with another day like today.”

“While you’re at it,” Lev said, standing up. “You should
send someone up the North Ogden Canyon to make sure the barrier Oliver
mentioned hasn’t been compromised. Maybe leave some vehicles shoring it up
too.”

“I was planning on that. Shouldn’t be far from Eden.”

Lev nodded. “It’s just a couple of miles if my memory serves.
By then the roads will be clearing and you won’t need to fix chains. Hell of a
plus there. Save time and knuckles all at once.”

“I’m hitting the rack,” Cade said, a hangdog look on his
face. “You have anything for this?” He pointed at his left boot. The laces were
taut and the leather wrapping his ankle below where his fatigue pants were
bloused was stretched to its limit and seemingly twice the size of the other.

“Wait one.” Lev disappeared into the gloomy dining room and
returned a few seconds later holding a white plastic pill bottle. “Once again,
Glenda comes through in the clutch.”

“In absentia no less,” replied Cade. He couldn’t read the
label. Based on the muted colors on it, he gathered they were some kind of
generic brand. “Whatcha got?”

“Ibuprofen.” Lev popped the cap and rattled a trio of brown
pills into Cade’s palm.

Cade wiggled his fingers on the other hand, the universal
sign for
keep them coming
.

“Twelve hundred milligrams … you sure?”

Again with the fingers.

Lev tapped out three more and watched as Cade dry swallowed
all six. Then he handed over the entire bottle. “I got first watch. You take
care of yourself.”

“You’re a good man, Lev,” Cade said to the man’s back as he
started for the stairs.

“You’ve earned a break,” Lev called back. “Take advantage of
it.”

Cade nodded to himself. He looked at the stairs disapprovingly.
Shifted his gaze to the dining room and its barely penetrable gloom. He
regarded the stairs once again and decided, for once, to take the path of least
resistance.

Flicking on the headlamp, and feeling a little like a
spelunker tackling a cave, he delved deeper into the innards of Glenda’s home.
He found the dining room crowded with a three-leaf walnut table and chairs for
eight. On the far wall was a china hutch brimming with an antique store’s worth
of fine bone china and a highly polished box, yawning open and filled with what
looked like service for an army, also polished to a high luster and reflecting
his headlamp beam back at him. On through the arched entry was a sitting room
with a pair of antique chairs, sofa and love seat all wrapped in plastic. The
rugs on the floor were thick pile and Persian and did nothing to lessen the
throbbing moving its way up the outside of his left leg.

After the short recon, he hung his head and, exhibiting a
clumsiness that would have earned him a hundred pushups in basic, about-faced
on the expensive rug in the front room. The place was so inundated with end
tables, an ottoman, and a heavy wood coffee table that there was no room for
him to sleep on the floor. Furthermore, the love seat and couch were both
vastly undersized and wouldn’t allow for him to lie in a fetal position let
alone stretch out.

He backtracked through the dining room, hooked a left before
the kitchen, and stood glaring at the seventeen steps running up to the
landing. If the stairs out back were Kilimanjaro, he was standing in the shadow
of K2. Knowing that beyond the landing shrouded in shadow was another stack of
steps, he took a deep breath and began his ascent.

Three minutes after leaving
base camp
he was at the
turn. Another handful of seconds later, and wishing he had a Sherpa to lug his
gear, he mounted the four additional stairs and was in the master bedroom and
surrounded by half a dozen bodies, some snoring, some farting, and all out cold
after a full day’s worth of manual labor in not so ideal conditions.

Cade collapsed to his knees by the vanity. Shrugged his pack
off and stowed it where the chair normally lived in the kneehole under the
tabletop. His rifle went by his side and, using his parka as a pillow, he
stretched out fully clothed and propped his left foot up on his pack,
toes
above the nose
, as Brook was wont to say.

His last thought after saying a short prayer for his
family’s safety was to set his Suunto to wake him at seven, which would afford
him six hours of shuteye while leaving a good chunk of the day to tend to business
before heading back to the compound.

Unfortunately, the thought never made it to the action phase
as his leaden lids—exhibiting a mind of their own—fluttered once, twice, and then
stayed closed.