Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed (41 page)

While their captor, Gregory, continued breaking down his
camp, Raven and Sasha remained seated and directed their attention to the armed
men milling about the line of vehicles down on the road. All at once there was
a burst of static coming from the radio in Gregory’s pocket, the posture of the
men down below changed from relaxed to vigilant, and the nervous chatter
drifting up to their location all but ceased.

As Raven craned to see over the ferns in front of her, the
silence was broken by a pair of closely spaced
thunks
coming from the
cannon-looking thing. Whatever had caused the hollow sounds seemed to have left
the elevated barrel at the same instant. A second later, that notion was
dispelled when two separate and distinct explosions rattled the distant trees,
sending a dozen birds fleeing upward into the hazy blue afternoon sky.

“What was that?” Sasha asked, her brow knitted.

Raven said nothing. She had turned away from the road and
refocused all of her attention on Gregory, who at the moment was standing and
holding the two-way Motorola he had taken away from Sasha. He thumbed the
button and moved the radio to his mouth. Then, for a long moment, he stood
rooted with his mouth open and no words spilling forth.

Collecting his thoughts, is all Raven could come up with. So
with him preoccupied, she went back to working the cord farther down her
clasped hands. And though she couldn’t see the progress made, based on the lack
of feeling in her fingertips, the knotted cord had to have worked down past the
first knuckle on both thumbs.

Eden Compound

Precisely ten minutes after the Dregan guy had delivered his
written ultimatum/warning, Brook felt a sharp jolt travel through the rolling
chair. Then, as if she’d just been in a rear-end collision and had not seen it
coming, whatever just exploded topside vibrated every bone in her body. More
reflex than conscious thought, she grabbed onto the shelf in front of her as
phones and walkie talkies were spilling off of it.

Even as a pair of low rumbles and the distant fireworks-like
crackle made its way through the foyer, behind Brook’s eyelids the capillaries
flared red as a bolt of pain originating in her old wound shot through her
entire body. Once the noise dissipated, a frantic voice came over the radio
that had fallen onto the floor. “Fucking lobbing grenades at us,” Foley exclaimed.

A dull throb still in her temples, Brook bent over gingerly,
snatched up the radio, and cast her gaze to the monitor. “Are you all right?”

There was a foreboding silence and then movement on the
motor pool feed caught her eye as one-by-one she saw a line of heads gopher-up
between the vehicles. There was Foley, with his balding head standing next to
the much shorter and dark-haired Tran. Heidi was there as well, bracing herself
against the black F-650, her contrasting blonde hairdo the dead giveaway. Next
to her was Glenda. Though thinner than the rest, she still had a couple of
inches on them all. Missing was Seth—and the girls.

Finally Foley answered. “We’re all right. Seth ran off to
see where the grenades fell.”

Grenades?
thought Brook. She said, “Where in the hell
are the girls?”

Another voice came over the radio. It was strained and a
little raspy.
A smoker’s voice
? “I have your girls. Send out the killer
and I’ll let them go. No negotiations. No brokering. A straight trade is what
we want.”

Like a line of sails being dropped on a tall-masted vessel,
Brook saw the other survivors slump against the big Ford’s sheet metal flank.

“Brook … you heard that, right?” Foley asked over the radio.

Brook said nothing. The radio was compromised and she was
kicking herself for not thinking of it ahead of time. Plus, the Thuraya sat-phone
was to her ear and the clicks indicating the connection to Cade’s phone was
being established had already begun.

***

Six miles west of the Eden Compound, still slugging it out
with the undead horde, at first Cade failed to hear the phone trilling away in
his pocket. But by the third ring, as he was leaning into his M4 as it hammered
away against his shoulder, he became aware of the phone’s vibration coursing up
his right thigh.

He looked left and saw Oliver with the scoped rifle and firing
controlled single shots down range. Forty feet or so ahead of Glenda’s youngest
son, the fruits of his labor lay tangled on the shoulder, piled three deep with
a frothy soup of blood and snowmelt spreading around them. Passing his gaze
left-to-right while he dug the vibrating phone from his pocket, Cade saw Daymon
and Duncan standing shoulder-to-shoulder by the guardrail and reloading their
carbines, thin licks of gun smoke curling from the hot muzzles.

Next, his eyes fell on Jamie, who had advanced on the right.
Her tomahawk appeared as a black blur at the end of big angry chopping motions
as she cleaved through Z skulls, Ian Bishop’s visage no doubt transposed mentally
on each and every one of them. Finally, as he blindly thumbed the Thuraya’s
Talk
button and brought the phone to his ear, he saw Taryn, Wilson, and Lev moving and
firing, and dozens of spent shells arcing up from their bucking carbines
spinning and tumbling end over end and glinting the sun along the way.

With the stench of gunpowder and death assaulting his
nostrils, Cade dropped the magazine from his M4 and listened to Brook’s voice mingling
with the ringing in his ear. As the click of the fresh magazine seating home
registered, the words
They’re holding Raven hostage
wormed their way
into his ear.

The female first turn bracketed in his sights earned a
momentary reprieve as he drew his carbine back through the window and slumped
heavily on the seat. Though he heard her loud and clear the first time, he
still shot back, “Come again?”

Brook repeated the ultimatum verbatim, then added, “I’m
trading myself for both of them.”

Cade wanted to scream, but held it in check. Instead, he
said, “Have someone get to the road right now and get eyes on the convoy’s six.
Make sure they can also provide cover for you at the gate if it comes to that.”

“Seth’s already on the way.”

“Good.” There was a long silence. Just the nascent
background hiss of radio waves flying into space. “Stall them at every turn,” Cade
finally added. “Take your time getting to the road. Once you’re there … get the
girls if you can and send them back to the compound right away.”

“I’ll have someone waiting for them.”

“OK,” Cade said.

“I’m going to have Foley bring the fifty cal into play if
they don’t honor their end of the deal,” she said.

“No,” Cade said. “That’ll just escalate things.” He looked
over the hood and saw Daymon, chainsaw perched on his shoulder, crabbing over
the fallen creatures. To the right the Kids were fanning out and putting their
blades to great use, killing anything that still moved.

“What do I do then?”

“You are not to go with them, that’s for sure. Stall. Reason.
Lie. Do everything in your power to buy me the twenty minutes I need to get
there.”

Voice wavering, she asked, “What then?”

“I’ll tell them I killed the girl ...
and
the young
man. And they can have me in your place.”

Now there was a long silence on Brook’s end.

“Promise me, Brooklyn Grayson,” Cade said.

“I can’t,” she said. “And I won’t.”

Before Cade could protest, there was a click and the
connection was lost. He tried calling back, but after the requisite rings got
only the strange robotic female voice telling him to leave a message after the
tone. Intent on keeping all of this to himself for the time being, he thumbed
the phone off, laid his rifle on the floor, and worked the control to lower the
oddly misshapen plow blade to the road.

Brook whistled and called for Max to come. A handful of
seconds later there was a ticking of nails on plywood. Then, tail twitching and
with a noticeable hitch in his normally peppy gait, the shepherd entered the
light splash on the floor, sat on his haunches at her feet, and regarded her
with an inquisitive gaze.

“Come on, boy,” she said gathering up the two-way Motorola
and Thuraya. Before heading to the exit, in case they all had to rabbit, she also
grabbed the mate to the long-range multi-channel CB radio Cade had with him.

She took one long last look at the place she had called home
for quite some time now. In doing so, her gaze fell on the monitor and she saw
a new scrawled message from the bearded man filling up the screen. Written in black
on the legal pad in the same stilted hand were the words: YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES
TO COMPLY BEFORE THE REDHEAD DIES.

“Fuck you.” Brook set the stopwatch on her Timex scrolling
forward, then, steeling herself against the pain to come, grabbed her carbine
and Raven’s go bag. With the shooting pain ebbing, she paused in the foyer and
went through the pockets of a jacket hanging there. The item she was looking
for was tucked deeply into an inside pocket. Her fingers brushed the knurled
grip and she brought the Beretta pistol out into the light. She checked the
magazine.
Full.
Braced the pistol between clenched knees and drew the
slide back an inch.
One in the pipe.
Satisfied the weapon was as she had
left it, she thumbed back the hammer and tucked it into her pants by the small
of her back. One deep breath later, with Max at her heels, she was headed
topside.

All eyes were on her and Max as they crossed the clearing,
both walking gingerly, and burning forty-five seconds of the allotted five
minutes. She wasted another precious twenty seconds doling out tasks and
issuing contingency plans in case things went sideways. After making doubly sure
everyone was on the same page, she ushered the shepherd into the F-650 and, with
her left hand, threw her carbine, pack, and Raven’s go bag onto the seat.

With the numerals on her watch indicating Sasha had three
minutes to live, Brook fired up the big V10, dropped the transmission into
Drive
,
and sped off towards the feeder road with a pair of muddy rooster tails
sprouting behind the fishtailing Ford. Entering the break in the forest with
the truck nearly sideways, the last thing she saw when the gravel started its
usual symphony of pings was Foley and Tran sprinting for the Humvee.

State Route 39

Daymon had the trunk cut away from the left guardrail fairly
quickly. Once he had waded through the thick boughs, it took him three minutes
from the chain’s first bite until the trunk was resting on the roadside. With
the Stihl’s motor throbbing at idle, he extricated himself and trudged six or
seven paces to his right, looking for a thin spot in the branches to get to the
trunk.

Seeing movement on the far side of the fallen tree, Cade
shouldered his rifle and settled his crosshairs on the lone burnt corpse. He
caressed the trigger and heard the brass banging around inside the UDOT truck
even before the pink halo blossomed around the thing’s head. He shifted aim and
walked his fire right-to-left, away from Daymon, the sizzling rounds passing
harmlessly over the section of corpse-choked road that lay between the
oblivious firefighter and the others, who were now gathered near the vehicles now
parked bumper-to-bumper on the far left shoulder.

While Daymon worked, Cade kept acquiring and engaging targets
on the far side of the toppled tree. An elderly woman wearing a blood-streaked
blouse and apron—a cartoonish-looking steaming berry pie and the words COME AND
GET IT stitched across her bosom—was first. She fell behind the fallen tree as
if yanked to hell by a demon. A tow-headed little boy was next, losing his face
and top third of the mussed hairdo to a sizzling 5.56 round.

Daymon was tearing into the trunk and a quarter of the way
through when one unfortunate creature tangled with the whirring chainsaw. A
spritz of flesh and brackish blood erupted a dozen feet into the air as the
already one-armed first turn disemboweled itself on the howling Stihl.

Cade flicked his eyes to the scene and noted the grim
determination on his friend’s face as he went on about his task.
Business as
usual.
He dropped three more dead approaching Daymon from the left and then
his weapon was empty, the bolt locked open, a curl of cordite heavy smoke
wafting to the headliner.

After reloading, he stepped down from the cab and was
looking at his watch just as the chainsaw won the battle with the trunk and the
solid thunk of the twenty-foot-long piece of log striking the road reverberated
through his boot soles. With Daymon making a quick pass of the saw over the
upthrust branches to his fore, the grim fact registered in Cade’s mind that only
one minute remained on the countdown.

Wrapping one hand around the grab bar, he shot a thumbs up
to Daymon and made a clearing motion with his arm while hollering for everyone
to mount up.

The next part of the plan had already been discussed, and
though there was still a number of miles and a bridge crossing ahead of them,
if it went off without a hitch Cade figured they just might make it to the
compound in time to make a difference in the outcome.

He climbed back into the truck and dropped it into its
lowest gear. There was a grating of metal from up front as he applied a little
throttle. Then, as the weight of the prone corpses built against the blade, it
vibrated madly one time and bent to the point where it was nearly straight.
Confident that the plow was not going to buckle and fail completely, Cade
tightened his grip on the wheel and pinned the pedal to the floor.

Like a cresting wave, the flaccid drift of death consisting
of meat and bone and detritus curled up in front of the charging vehicle. Though
the blade—no longer an inverted “V”—merely shoved the corpses forward, it still
had the intended outcome as their combined weight hit the severed length of log
and sent it rolling forward. The staccato crackle of the remaining branches
shearing off went on until the trunk had completed one full revolution and began
to roll freely.

Cade eased off the gas and took his eyes from the road long
enough to hit the button to disengage the low gearing. When he brought his gaze
up, he saw the chunk of tree spin away like a Lincoln Log tossed aside by a petulant
child. Next, with nothing pressing them against the blade, he watched the
corpses spill off the blade to both sides of the truck in a mad final tumble of
flailing arms and legs.

Another glance at the Suunto told Cade the time was up and
there was nothing he could do at that moment but trust Brook and trust God.

State Route 39

Near the Eden Compound

Dregan checked the time.
Four minutes down and seconds to
go.
The words in his head sounded like something a football announcer would
say. Only there was nothing sporting about what he was being forced to do.
Shaking his head, he reluctantly motioned his brother Henry from the Humvee.

Muttering under his breath, Henry unfolded his large frame
and stood on the steaming road. He took a long drag off his cigarette and
placed the still-smoking butt on the vehicle’s flat hood for later. He walked
across the road, transited the ditch without getting too muddy, and was bending
down to slip through the fence when the low thrum of a strong-running engine
met his ears. Hinging up, he looked to his brother and shrugged, arms out palms
up, universal semaphore for
what now
?

Suddenly at alert, every nerve ending in his body afire,
Dregan backed away from the hidden gate. Hearing the engine noise as well as a
strange recurring sound of metal striking metal, he put the radio to his lips
and barked orders to his hired help. He ended the call after ordering Gregory
to get the girls ready for the transfer if it were to transpire.

Brook didn’t know what was worse … the continuous
ear-splitting
thunka-thunka-thunka
of the entangled strand of barbed
wire battering the passenger mirror, hood and fender—in that order, over and
over again—or the deafening silence from the electronic devices jostling
together in the center console. The noise would soon stop, that was for sure.
The middle gate she had just destroyed with the F-650’s beefy front bumper could
be fixed. The barbed wire could also be removed from where it had become
embedded in the huge off-road tire. But if further instructions didn’t come
through the radio’s speaker, what was she to do?

The radio remained silent as the F-650 cut a wide swath down
the feeder road. Soon a branch or something stole the piece of wire and length
of fence post and the
thunka-thunka-thunka
ceased.

Still, the radio didn’t emit so much as a burst of scratchy
static.

Though she prayed to hear the electronic trill she so
despised, the Thuraya sat-phone remained silent. However, she did notice a
message on the screen that she had been too preoccupied earlier to heed. On the
final straightaway, while holding the wheel one-handed, she read the short message
sent from Cade’s phone:
Glenda’s son Oliver is alive. Shhhhh … he wants to
surprise her. Back soon.
Good news amongst all the bad,
she
supposed. “Well, well, won’t Glenda be happy.” Her face went slack as the back
side of the hidden gate materialized out of the distance. She thought:
Here
I
am possibly about to lose a child and the old broad wins the maternal lottery.
She smiled at the lady’s good fortune. “What kind of name is Oliver?” she
wondered aloud. With so much death and suffering befalling her circle in the
last few weeks, suddenly she wanted nothing more than to meet the guy. Hear his
story of hope. Who he was. What he was like. And how he’d survived all these
months, alone.

But first she had some surviving of her own to see to.

Gravel spattered the undercarriage like shotgun pellets as
she jammed the Ford to a halt thirty feet from the gate and hard to the right
side of the road. Up ahead in a break in the foliage she could see the light
bar and needle antennas of the patrol Tahoe. And though it was painted woodland
camouflage and blended in with the trees atop the rise, the roof of some other
older model SUV was also visible. “Stay,” she said to Max. She grabbed her
carbine, flicked the selector to
Fire
, and climbed down from the truck.

***

Raven watched and listened intently as Gregory wrapped up
the call and stowed his radio in a pocket. Strangely enough, she noted, even
after the man stopped talking in his gruff smoker’s voice, the black birds hadn’t
resumed their catty back and forth calls. Save for the occasional thump of snow
hitting the forest floor, the woods surrounding them on three sides as well as
the assemblage of men and machine on the road below was deathly quiet—and
remained that way right up until the final seconds were about to tick off of the
new five-minute deadline. Then, from somewhere across the road, deep in the thick
forest, there was a muffled bang, almost like a minor fender bender had taken
place. Immediately following the sudden noise was a ticking of metal striking
metal, and then overriding that was a constant banging mixed in with a third
vaguely familiar sound, mechanical in nature.

The second Raven realized the familiar sound was the distinctive
throaty exhaust note and deep V10 rumble of her dad’s truck emanating from
somewhere along the feeder road, she sat up tall and craned at the road until
her neck hurt. Having just overheard the man on the road telling Gregory via
the radio to ready her and Sasha for release, her hopes were soaring. And now,
hearing the engine noise below growing nearer, she was bubbling over with
nervous energy and could barely sit still. Thus, when the engine finally shut
off and the sound of a single door opening, then closing, reached her ears, she
was on the verge of having her second anxiety attack of the day.

Keying in on Raven’s body language, Sasha kicked the younger
girl’s boot. Once eye contact was established, she mouthed:
What
?

My mom is down there, I think
, Raven mouthed back.

Gregory was now standing at the rear of the hide, fully
loaded pack on his back, radio in one hand and the rifle in the other. Raven’s
eyes flicked from the rifle over to the pistol on the man’s hip, and then moved
up and settled on his bearded face for a brief second. Noticing all of his
attention was focused on the goings on down below, she put extra effort into
somehow channeling Harry Houdini so she could finally slip her hands free from
the knotted cord.