Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (37 page)

From working a garden nearly year-round, Glenda’s hands were
sinewy and didn’t tire easily—two attributes that came in handy with the task
at hand. She began working Brook’s lower back—softening her up for the pain to
come—with what the younger nurse had affectionately dubbed her ‘
man’s touch.’
While painful at the onset, Glenda’s self-taught technique worked wonders at
breaking down the built-up collagen fibers, which in turn was helping to
increase the range of motion in Brook’s right shoulder and neck.

For the first few seconds, as her hips were pushed hard into
the thin mattress and the bones there made soft popping noises, Brook was swept
away from all of the madness of the last few months, and she imagined she was
in a high-end spa, enjoying a soothing soundtrack of new-age music accompanied
by the sweet aroma of jasmine and sandalwood. Then, in her mind’s eye—not in a
sexual way at all—she envisioned some guy named
Sven’s
muscled hands digging
into corded tissue on the periphery of the shiny dinner-plate-sized mass.

She closed her eyes, enduring the initial discomfort until the
nerve endings deep within the old wound woke up screaming bloody murder and
sent a tsunami of pain signals flooding her brain. No stranger to this part of
her rehab, with both hands she grabbed the horizontal bar by her head—the same
bar she had zip-tied herself to that fateful day—and, grunting into her pillow,
rode the initial wave out.

Thirty minutes of deep tissue work later, Glenda had
transitioned from
man’s touch
mode and was delivering feathery caresses
on pressure points where energy was supposed to transit the body. This went on
for fifteen minutes, during which Brook drifted off into a near trance-like
state.

The final fifteen minutes or so of the now bi-weekly hour-long
session were dedicated to something Glenda called
reiki
that Brook had
learned just the basics about from one of her coworkers back at the hospital in
Portland. Never one to really deviate from conventional medicine, she initially
had no idea if it was some kind of mumbo jumbo or an established and accepted
alternate therapy. With nothing to lose and a long way to go to getting back to
normal, she had kept her mind open and was the better for it. For this had
become the part of Glenda’s efforts—totally devoid of touch or pressure or
penetrating oils—that seemed most therapeutic.

Now, Brook’s eyes were open and she watched Glenda move her
open hands over certain areas on her body, letting them hover there, her face a
mask of concentration. Before the first session, the older woman had confided
in Brook that she had been practicing reiki for a number of years and, though
she was loath to admit it to her AA fellowship—which didn’t matter now because,
sadly, she figured them to all be dead or undead—she believed it to have been a
great help in her recovery from alcohol addiction.

“Almost finished,” said Glenda. “Once you’re one hundred per
cent I want you to learn this so you can return the favor.”

Brook smiled. “I owe you so much, Glenda. Without your
calming influence on this group, I think we would have disintegrated. Maybe
even ended up all going our separate ways.”

“I was a soccer coach and den mother for the boys. Louie
didn’t want any part of it.” Glenda smiled and sat back in the folding chair.
“I guess it’s in my blood.”

Brook said nothing. She had pulled a tee on and rolled over
onto her stomach.

Glenda covered her with a thin sheet. She looked at Max, who
was curled up on the floor by the door, his bony ribs rising and falling, a
steady rhythm to his breathing. “Get some rest,” she said. “When should I reel
the girls in?”

“Give them a little more time,” mumbled Brook. “Half an hour
or so.”

“Max?”

The dog perked up.

“He stays,” said Brook. “Thanks again for nursing a nurse.”

“Sleep tight,” Glenda said, unclipping the two-way radio
from Brook’s pants that were balled up on the floor by the foot of the bed.
Before she had risen and pocketed the Motorola and halved the distance to the
door, Brook was making snorting noises. And by the time she had let herself out
and was closing the steel door to the Grayson quarters behind her, the
chainsaw-like rattle of Brook snoring was in full swing.

***

Sasha hadn’t been joking about visiting the graves of the
fallen. Her reasoning for venturing up on the sloping hillside was to take a
peek at the flowers Raven had recently adorned them with.

The two spent the better part of thirty minutes playing
island
hopper
. Then, with the back side of the hidden gate in sight, abruptly and
without warning, Sasha abandoned the game and cut another ninety-degree turn to
her right and led Raven on a wild goose chase through the forest just inside
the tree line.

Ten or fifteen minutes spent chasing the redhead around
trees and through thick undergrowth had taken a toll on Raven. When she finally
caught up to Sasha, she found the older girl sitting high up on the corner post
where the fence stopped its parallel run with 89 and at a right angle snaked
back into the forest in the compound’s general direction.

Translucent bars of sunlight filtered in from above. Save
for Raven’s labored breathing, it was quiet here. There wasn’t even a bickering
blackbird or chattering wren to be heard in this lonely corner of the property.

Hands planted on her knees, Raven gulped air until the
throbbing in her head subsided enough so that she could stand up straight. But
when she did so she was met with the much sharper pain of her still knitting
ribs telling her to slow down and take it easy.

“Why did you run away like that?” she asked.

“Would you have followed me if I hadn’t?”

“Probably not.”

“Are you glad you did?”

“Yes,” Raven admitted, a toothy smile creasing her face. The
exhilaration from being alone outside the wire … well, not
technically
outside the wire, but away from all of the adults—her parents especially—was a
feeling unlike any she had ever experienced. The only thing she could remember that
was even close to it was when she and Mom escaped the zombies overrunning Fort
Bragg aboard the hulking twin-rotor helicopter. That wasn’t quite the same, she
supposed. Sure, the danger had been real, but at Bragg there were five or six
armed soldiers and another twenty women and children aboard the ‘
bird’,
as her dad liked to call helicopters, no matter the number of blades spinning
over it.

Her nerves had been afire then, and she was feeling that
same nervous energy crackling through her body now.

“C’mon,” said Sasha. “I saw something over here by the road
I want to show you.” She reached down and offered her hand. Helped Raven up and
over and then swung her own legs past the top post and lowered herself to the
ground.

Once again, Sasha took the lead. Staying inside the tree
line, they continued paralleling the 39, and after ten or so paces the redhead
stopped and pointed through the thinning trees in the direction of the road.

By now, snow was falling off the trees like sailors jumping
a sinking ship. Both girls donned their stocking caps as the fat white clumps
splashed to the ground with audible wet plops.

Raven smelled the corpse before she saw it. Crinkling her
nose against the sweet carrion stench, she parted a spray of ferns bigger than
her and came face to butt with an adult zombie. It was stalled out, kind of
like an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, arms seemingly in motion, both bent at the
elbow but hanging down at its sides. Its ashen white face was stuck in a
permanent scowl, teeth bared and eyes
‘peeled wide’
as silly old Duncan
would have said if he were here.

“Told you they aren’t moving yet,” said Sasha, sliding her
knife from its sheath.

Yet
, thought Raven. Made her think of Glenda
constantly telling Duncan about the
‘yets’
he hadn’t quite gotten around
to. She didn’t quite understand where the term came from, but this thing in
front of her had moved recently. Behind each of its bare heels was a two-inch
scuff in the snow. And as she exited the bushes first to get a closer look, she
could have sworn its milky eyeballs moved ever so slightly.

“Kill it,” said Sasha, thrusting her knife in Raven’s direction,
handle first as Wilson had taught her.

Raven said nothing. Eyes gone as wide as the smelly
zombie’s, she regarded the offered blade and shook her head side-to-side,
delivering a vehement
‘no way Jose’
, charades style.

Arm at full extension and knife held rather delicately—kind
of like a diaper containing an especially juicy load—Sasha’s body language
said:
I’m not doing it.

“We’ve been gone about an hour,” said Raven. “Let’s go
back.”

Putting the knife away, Sasha said, “I still want to see the
graves. Real quick … then we’ll call your mom and tell her we’re coming back.”

“The clearing is that way,” Raven said, pointing to her left
at the oval of light thirty feet down the road.

Once again, Sasha took off without stating her intention.
This time she stalked off across the road at a diagonal in the direction of the
clearing, parted more ferns and disappeared into the forested gloom.

Thankful Sasha didn’t haul into a sprint this time, Raven
shot a final worried look at the putrefying corpse and followed her new friend
dutifully and without question as she delved into the woods opposite of where
they had just emerged.

Sasha had fought through the undergrowth like she had an
idea of where she was going. When the two parted the final phalanx of drooping
ferns and ground-hugging scrub, they were standing on a muddy, snow-dotted,
single-lane road. Left for nature to reclaim long ago, the uneven track rose up
slowly while simultaneously curving right-to-left, where it was eventually swallowed
up by the trees lining it.

***

After a fifty- or sixty-yard uphill slog, where the road
began to level out, Sasha came to a halt and pointed out a scrap of fabric
someone had tied to a low branch of a juvenile tree growing up on their left.

Raven looked at it and shrugged as if to say:
So?

“Do you know where we are?”

“Behind the place where Phillip got bit,” stated Raven,
confidently.

“Nope.”

“Where then? Cut out the spy routine and tell me.” Raven’s
cheeks were flushed, her breathing rapid. She didn’t know it yet, but she was
one cryptic response away from experiencing her first ever full-blown anxiety
attack.

“Jamie brought me up here not long after we all arrived from
Colorado Springs. She said this is where her and Jordan got the jump on someone
who was spying on them. Led to Duncan and Logan setting an ambush down there on
the road. She said they took out a bunch of bandits some bad guy she called
Chance brought back here from Huntsville.”

“I remember hearing about that,” said Raven. “Why didn’t we
just cross the road down below and climb the hill directly?”

“The camera, duh.” Sasha slipped by the tree and her elbow
brushed the fabric, sending it bobbing like a worm on the end of a fish hook.
“If we’re not seen outside the wire … were we outside the wire?

Chewing on that nugget of teen wisdom, Raven followed after,
dodging left and right to avoid clumps of snow suddenly letting loose as Sasha
threaded her way forward.

The hide was half a dozen of Sasha’s long strides from the
forest road. Raven reached it in ten of her own and a couple of seconds after
losing sight of the bobbing yellow and white cap. When the packed dirt trail
went soft underfoot, the instinct to see why drew her eyes toward the dry patch
of ground opening up before her. However, when she looked back up to survey the
graves through the portal in the foliage, there was a green-eyed man with a dark
bushy beard towering over her. One of his large hands was already clamped over
Sasha’s nose and mouth and he was holding her off the ground. The older girl’s
cap was pulled down, partially covering her widened eyes. In the man’s other balled
fist was a black pistol, its barrel pointing right at Raven. The sight of Sasha
in peril and kicking at the man’s legs started Raven’s heart battering her
ribcage and the old injury there aching. In the next beat, her first real
anxiety attack was robbing her breath and choking off any chance of the developing
scream ever escaping her throat. The rest was a blur as her knees buckled and
stars popped and flashed in front of her eyes like a fireworks display. The
last thing she remembered was the cool ground pressing her cheek and hearing the
man telling someone out of sight in rapid-fire delivery about
capturing two
girls
.

The gunfire had lasted all of twenty seconds. There were
three or four staccato ripples as the three survivors chose their targets and
fired. Cade had watched it go down through the high power scope, wincing with
every report, which in his mind equated to one wasted bullet. Kick ‘em when
they’re down is how he had been trained to take the fight to the enemy. With
the enemies of his old life, violence of action applied swiftly and without
mercy had been what kept him tap dancing on the right side of the dirt.
However, in this new world where there would be no factories churning out 5.56
or 9mm rounds by the millions, (at least not in the near future, by any stretch
of the imagination) survival would depend on scrimping and stockpiling, using
the ammo sparingly to train the kids or throwing lead downrange only when there
was no other viable option. And with the arrival of the Chinese scouts on
American soil, the latter, he feared, may happen sooner rather than later.

A dozen Zs coming to life and making that nerve-jangling noise
all at once, while disconcerting as hell, by no means constituted a clear and
present danger to the young trio. But he wasn’t there in the midst of the dead,
so who was he to judge? He wasn’t their leader, that was established the day he
hung his hat at the compound. He made a mental note to bring it up again at
dinner when everyone could contribute to the conversation. A little reminder,
he figured, would be better than an ass chewing. Live and learn—another motto
Mike Desantos favored—would have to suffice.

Five short minutes after leaving the house on the hill and letting
Lev off on the shoulder of Ogden Canyon Road, Cade found himself lugging the plow
truck around in an ungainly three-point-turn. Bones snapped under the weight of
the partially loaded truck, and flesh and internals were ground into a paste as
he man-handled the front wheels over the soft shoulder to get them facing in the
desired direction. Once the wicked blade was facing east, he reversed the rig a
dozen yards until the feeder road to the boat launch/day use area was off his
left shoulder. The 4Runner was just a handful of yards away, backed up the
entry road a short distance, the sun glare winking off its windshield.

Cars, trucks, and SUVs took up every available slot on the
blacktop sprawl. Surrounding the inert vehicles and cinderblock structure
rising up in their midst were tents of every shape and color, a good number of
them collapsed under the weight of the snow. Sprawled out in death poses, the
now twice-dead putrefying cadavers crowded every available square inch of real
estate.

Duncan lowered the Steiners and looked to Cade. “Lev made it
to the others.” He set the binoculars aside and stretched his bowed legs in the
footwell. “East to Eden, young man.”

“Eden is north of our twenty,” Cade replied, not bothering
to look at the older man. “Or mightn’t you be talking about the Steinbeck novel
East of Eden
?”

“Never mind,
Socrates
,” grumbled Duncan. “Just get us
there before the rest of the rotters come back to life. If I remember right,
mister …
we’ll cull them on the way back
… there’s still a few hundred
we left standing on the State Route between here and the compound.”

“Would have had to deal with them regardless,” Cade stated. He
selected
Drive
, lowered the polished plow to within an inch of the
steaming blacktop and, holding the wheel straight, started the multi-ton
snowplow rolling.

The engine whined and Cade imagined the gray-black exhaust
belching from the vertical stacks. As the rig picked up speed, a mixture of
slush and body parts, frothy and reddish-black, shot from the blade in two
different directions. In less time than it had taken him to turn the truck
around, there was a straight path plowed through the dead and nothing but a
steaming stretch of body-free blacktop laid out before them.

“What was that all about?” asked Duncan loud enough to be
heard over the sharp jangling racket that was entering the cab.

Cade worked the controls, bringing the blade up a few
inches. The metallic pinging ceased.

“Last thing I want is for us to have to come back to this
side of the reservoir and help the Kids change a tire.”

“Ounce of prevention …” mumbled Duncan.

“Exactly.” Cade maneuvered the plow truck through the
sweeping left-hander at just under the posted fifty, then swept his gaze
northbound at Huntsville as the Ogden River, glittering silver and gold, flashed
under them. After the river crossing, with Dave’s BBQ and Rhonda’s Reservoir
Requisites standing out like sore thumbs a few blocks west, 39 became Highway
166 where Cade wheeled the rumbling truck through yet another sweeping
left-hand turn.

“I hope Oliver and Daymon made a big dent in the Eden dead,”
Duncan said. “Because this fella’s knees are about shot.”

“My pack,” Cade said. “Side pocket right you’ll find 200
milligram Ibuprofen. Take what you need.”

 They kept to a long and scenic straight stretch west with
the Pineville Reservoir filling up the window on the left, and Duncan popping
pills with a real good view of the snow-peppered foothills ringing Eden to the
right. He was washing the half-dozen little pills down with a bottled water
when 166 jogged back to the north and some unknown mountains, craggy and white,
filled up the windshield. “Eden’s seen better days,” he noted as the fire-ravaged
town became visible ahead.

“Misery loves company,” Cade said. “I saw the fire from the
air. Eden was throwing off embers like crazy and ended up taking Huntsville
down with it.”

“Glenda did say this was the hottest summer they had seen in
a long time.”

“Global warming at work,” Cade said, knowing it would elicit
a response from Duncan.

“Bullshit,” the older man bellowed. “Manufactured fear so
that that loud-mouthed, private-jet-owning enviropuke could jam us up with more
taxes and restrictions. Don’t get me started.”

“Looks like I just did. So, why don’t you tell me how you
really feel,” Cade said, the beginnings of a laugh bouncing around in his ribcage.

“Look out,” wailed Duncan, as a pair of Zs rose up from the
roadside a truck’s length ahead and loped a couple of paces toward the plow’s
edge.

Cade jerked the wheel right. “Got ‘em.” The twin impacts
sounded like gong strikes, deep and sonorous and lasting for a couple of
seconds. The top of the blade vibrated briefly and then, like a big orange
whale that had swallowed something disagreeable, the walking corpses were
catapulted left and right, respectively.

Duncan grimaced. “You missed the point. I was trying to warn
you in time to
avoid
them.”

“I wanted to see what it could handle,” Cade said. “Just in
case.”

Duncan said nothing. He pressed his back into the seat, arms
folded, and looked out the window at the damage wrought on the town by the out
of control wildfire. Charred foundations and skeletal remnants of humans and
vehicles slid by on both sides. The street signs remained, but they had
accumulated so much creosote that reading what was on them was nearly
impossible.
The Earth abides
, he thought darkly.

Cade eased off the gas and looked toward what he guessed had
been the town center. “I don’t see the Land Cruiser.”

Duncan put a hand on the dash and leaned forward. “I’ve got
nothing,” he said.

“Try the two-way.”

Duncan dug it out and thumbed the
Talk
button.
Nothing.
He tried one more time and when there was still no answer, Lev broke over the
channel sounding concerned.

Duncan brought Lev up to speed and told him to stay put
while he and Cade went to check the one obvious place the missing pair might
be.