Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

But he’d never know and speculating just reminded him how
far the human race had fallen.

Thankfully, Brook’s sweet voice brought him back to the
present ... the only time that really mattered now. For yesterday was gone. And
he’d learned long before the apocalypse that tomorrow was never a
guarantee—especially in his old line of work.

“Slow down,” Brook said. “We’re closing in on Green River. I
think it’s beyond the next rise off to the right. Hard to tell exactly relying
on Miss Map here ...” She leaned forward and touched the Garmin’s display.
Traced the magenta line representing I-70 with her finger. “... looks like the
city sits at about two o’clock. And I-70 bypasses on the left.” With the visual
of the map burned into her memory, she let her gaze sweep the horizon from
right to left, taking in the red mesas and the smooth stripe of asphalt laid
out in front of them. While not entirely evident on the pixelated screen, she
recognized that the Interstate was about to enter a narrow and shallow canyon
that looked to have been cut into the Cretaceous sandstone. First, she
gathered, by boots and hooves and the steel-braced wheels on wagons carrying
people fulfilling their Manifest Destinies. Then, more recently for certain,
the natural channel had been widened by man and machine so that I-70 and the
vehicles it was meant to accommodate could pass smoothly over the wave-like
geological formations.

“Whatcha looking at, Mom?” Raven asked.

Brook craned around and saw that not only was Raven leaning
forward on the seatback, but so was Max. He had his paws on the leather and was
looking her straight in the face. She gave the dog a scratch and said, “Sit
back and snug your seatbelt tight, sweetie. Mom and Dad have to talk
things
over.”

Feeling the truck decelerate, while not quite understanding
the reason why, was enough to convince Raven to comply without verbal protest.
Pouting, she slumped into the back seat next to Max. Powered on the iPhone
she’d begged off of Taryn, jammed the buds into her ears, and let Lady Gaga
take her mind off of
things
.

Cade pulled the Ford hard left to the breakdown shoulder and
brought the dirty rig to a complete halt amidst a roiling cloud of dust. He
chose to stop just short of the hill’s apex for one reason only. To find a
vantage point well back from the ‘military crest’ of the hill to surveil the
unfolding valley without exposing a profile to anyone watching below. He had
also hoped to find a stretch of asphalt relatively clear, on all sides, of the
seemingly never-ending vehicular gridlock.

One out of two isn’t so bad
, he told himself, fixing
the suppressor onto the business end of the Glock 17. “Stay here for a second,”
he said to Brook. He looked into the back at Raven and saw that her eyes were
closed and she was attached by the ears to an electronic device that looked a
lot like an iPhone. He smiled at the sight. Marveled at her resilience and her
ability to relax where danger abounded.
Ignorance truly is bliss
,
crossed his mind as his smile faded and he swiveled back around.

“Be careful,” said Brook. She reached out and traced the
curve of his cheek with the back of her hand. Her eyes left his and she looked
out the rear window and spotted a handful of corpses stumbling across the
median from the eastbound lanes. “How’s your ankle?”

“Better.”

“You sure? I can take care of the Zs while you scout ahead,”
she said quietly.

“I’m fine. I need to stretch it out anyway. Get the blood
flowing.” He gave her his patented everything’s going to be OK look. The same
lopsided half-grin that she’d received before every deployment overseas and
more recently, whenever he went outside the wire without her. Smile fading, he
gave her thigh a reassuring squeeze, popped the door and stepped gingerly onto
the shoulder.
Not so bad
, he thought, settling his full weight on his
left foot. Simultaneously, the Ibuprofen was lessening the pain and the
swelling.
Maybe Brook’s diagnosis had been wrong
. Happy to be rid of the
crutches and the creaky plastic boot, he took a few tentative steps away from
the truck.
So far so good.

He looked left towards the Raptor, its engine rumbling and
ticking in the hundred-degree heat. He noticed a clear liquid dripping steadily
from somewhere underneath the front bumper, no doubt a byproduct of the
hard-working AC unit. Unconcerned, he looked up and noticed Taryn and Wilson
staring his way, looks of mild concern on their faces. Silently telling them to
stay put, he held up his free hand palm out. After registering a double thumbs
up from behind the grimy windshield, he took a few more steps, testing the
ankle for range of motion, which he found lacking laterally. Front to back,
however, was a different story, and though there was considerable pressure, all
seven bones seemed to be functioning normally.

He looked at his Suunto and did the math. Twenty-eight hours
until Duncan went on his own personal warpath—with or without him.

Regarding the seven flesh eaters traversing the median with
only the runaway vehicle cables keeping them from crossing over, he skirted the
F-650’s front bumper and cut a diagonal right for them. Once he was within five
feet of them he took a hard right and, with every intention of saving his
ammunition for when he really needed it, followed the cable barrier keeping
just outside of their reach. But as luck would have it, Mister Murphy made his
presence known, and inexplicably one of the Zs found a seam between the metal
stakes keeping each of the fifty-yard runs of high tensile cables taut, then
the rest followed.

Hanging his head, Cade stopped in place and squared up to
face the interlopers. “You are some persistent bastards,” he said as the
unblinking eyes devoured him. Then, fully aware of what was riding on the
encounter and with his family watching from afar, he set his feet apart and
leveled his Glock.

Chapter 34

Inside the Raptor, Wilson said quietly, “Thirty seconds.”

Taryn tore her eyes from the scene taking place twenty yards
off the Raptor’s front bumper, shot a confused look at Wilson, and said,
“What?”

“Duh,” replied Sasha. “He’s setting the over-under at thirty
seconds. He’s saying Cade there will take care of all of those pusbags in less
than thirty seconds, and I, for one, want some of that action. Got to go with
the over.” She looked down for a second and pulled a wrapped stack of twenties
from her handbag, and when she looked up two of the zombies had been reduced to
crumpled forms with tiny dust eddies swirling around them.

Wilson chuckled. “You’re on. Two down and five to go. And
twenty-six
looong
seconds left for him to seal the deal. You, Sis, are
hosed.”

“I didn’t even hear his gun go off,” said Sasha, her lower
lip sticking out, the first sign of the pouting session to come.

“Wait for it,” said Wilson.

Shaking her head, Taryn said, “You two are sick.”

Two more seconds were in the books and Cade was nearly
surrounded before the black pistol bucked twice in his fist and the third Z’s
head dissolved into a pink mist.

“Practice what you preach, Captain America,” said Wilson.

While watching Cade step over the fallen corpse and
backpedal away from the rest, Taryn glanced at Wilson and asked him what he
meant by the last quip.

“He dressed
me
down pretty good for letting the
little one get too close to me back there. And then he lets himself get jumped
like that,” Wilson said. “Practice what you preach ... pretty
self-explanatory.”

“Duh,” said Sasha. “Everyone knows the littler they are the
faster they move. Brook mentioned that the other day. Weren’t you listening? Or
were you and Miss Tattoo too busy playing kissy face?”

“That’s enough,” said Wilson. He snatched the stack of crisp
bills from Sasha’s outstretched hand and then glanced at his watch while adding
gleefully in a sing-song voice, “Three down and four to go and only
fifteen
seconds until this is
all
mine.

***

Precisely twenty-four seconds after Cade’s opening salvo,
the last of the unlucky seven Zs were hanging limply, tangled in the cable
arrest barrier like string-snipped marionettes.

“Less than thirty seconds. Come to Papa,” said Wilson as he
made a show of ruffling the crisp bills. Then, to rub the win in further, he
put them under his nose and inhaled deeply. “Ah ... the sweet smell of newly
acquired cash money.”

“Which you’ll never, ever, be able to spend,” Sasha shot
back. “So there.”

“Aren’t you a little old for so-there’s and I-told-you-so’s,
Sasha?”

Sasha made no reply. The pouting ensued.

Pressing the issue, Taryn said, “Nobody likes a sore loser.”

“You don’t get it, Taryn. I was put on this earth to torment
Wilson,” Sasha fired back. She went silent for another second and then added in
a choked-up voice, “Mom told me that all the time.”

Wilson had no reply for that. Instead, he focused his
attention on Cade who had already moved on and was picking his way through the
scrub and tumbleweeds and still staying close to the barrier.

Then the two-way radio beeped and Brook’s voice came through
the speaker. She told them to stay put and continue watching the Interstate
behind them.

Wilson fumbled the Motorola from his pocket. “Copy that,” he
said. After a few seconds with no reply, he saw Brook exit the Ford and
disappear from sight. Then a tick later when she reemerged she was moving at a
slow trot, a pair of binoculars bouncing off her chest, M4 held closely to her
body.

“What are they doing?” asked Taryn. “And why did they leave
Raven all alone in the truck?”

“Safest place for her,” replied Wilson. “Besides, she’s not
alone. Max is in there too.”

Breaking her short-lived silence, Sasha said, “She’s
probably in there armed with a machine gun anyways.”

“Jealous?” said Taryn.

“We’re not a gun family. Mom said so.”

Losing his cool, Wilson craned around and looked at Sasha.
“Mom is dead,” he shouted. “You
have
to let her go and get on with
living. And while you are at it, quit being so damn bitter about anything and
everything ... that’s what Mom would have wanted and that’s exactly what she
would have said if she were sitting right here instead of me.”

Momentarily stunned by the biggest display of emotion she’d
ever seen Wilson display, Taryn opened her mouth to say something, anything
that might diffuse the situation, but for the first time in a long time she was
speechless.

Not finished making his point, Wilson pounded his fist on
the dash and added in a low voice, “I’m done trying to fill in for Mom. You
will
begin to contribute and cease being a liability ... or else.”

Taryn’s brows raised an inch. She mouthed, “Liability.” Then
said, “That’s harsh, Wilson.”

Wilson shot Taryn a sour look, then shifted his attention to
Brook who was just now catching up with Cade. He noted how she moved. How she
practically oozed confidence and wished he could project just one-tenth of
that. Then he turned to Sasha and said, “Next time Brook offers, you
will
let her teach you how to shoot. Because, like it or not, we have to be a
gun
family
in order to survive this thing.”

There was a heavy silence in the cabin as they watched Brook
slow from a trot to walking speed and finally form up next to Cade, who was
moving noticeably slower.

“What now?” asked Sasha.

Taryn said rather sternly, “We do as we were told. We wait
and watch the road behind us.”

Chapter 35

The three men sat in a semicircle, legs crossed, heads
bowed. Not a word had passed between them for a long while. And truth be told,
to a man, deep down, each of them hoped that the others would volunteer to
untangle Jordan’s corpse from the clutching thorns.

Near Duncan, separated by a couple of feet and five minutes
in death, two buzzards lay dead among a bed of their own bloody feathers. Both
birds were plump from feasting on the dead girl’s corpse. And both birds had
fallen victim to an apex predator nurturing a growing resentment and armed with
a Colt M1911.

Lev looked up first. Elbows resting on his knees, his breath
coming in shallow gulps, he looked at Jordan’s corpse through bloodshot, teary
eyes. Let his gaze linger on her face for a beat, taking in the once beautiful
features now twisted into a death grimace. He focused on the red mud ground
into her blond hair and wished he could find the necessary courage to take the
initiative and grab one of the bed sheets and cover her. But he couldn’t.
Instead, he looked at Daymon, then Duncan, and asked, “What happened to her?”

“Death by rapid deceleration,” answered Duncan instantly and
matter-of-factly. “Once I’d finished puking I gave her body—or what’s left of
it anyway—a quick onceover.”

“And?” asked Daymon.

Duncan made no reply. He rose, stepped around the pool of
vomit and grabbed one of Jordan’s dainty wrists. When he lifted the ashen arm
he noticed that either the ulna or radius bone was protruding at nearly a right
angle and had punctured the skin.
Greenstick fracture
, he thought.
Sure
as shit caused by rapid deceleration.
Hell of a way to go.
But that
wasn’t all that he had picked up on. He gently rolled her hand over and showed
them her fingers. Even with his less-than-stellar eyesight, the blood dried
there was obvious. Also, what looked like half-moons of yellowed dermis was
packed tightly underneath her fingernails. And though Duncan was no CSI
investigator, to him it looked like she’d put up a hell of a fight before she
died.