Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (41 page)

Then Brook disarmed Heidi with a smile of her own and, as if
she had read the blonde’s mind, finished her thought off with words strikingly
similar to the prejudicial thinking her host had engaged in first. “Besides, if
they can’t pull their weight then what good are they?”

Throwing a shiver, Heidi changed the subject and said, “God
willing we’ll be cooking some fresh meat over the fire later tonight. Hope to
see you there.”

Salivating at the prospect of flame-broiled
anything
and barely able to contain her enthusiasm, Brook looked at Raven, smiled, and
said, “Yes you most certainly will.”

***

After helping Wilson, Sasha, and Taryn get squared away in
their new digs at the end of the wing just left of the front entry, Cade
retraced his steps, stopping briefly at the comms container to get directions
to Duncan’s quarters. As he listened to Heidi, two things of almost equal
importance leapt out at him. One, a thin black satellite phone resting on a
shelf just below his eye level. And two, a coffee machine warming a half-full
urn of inky black goodness, its pleasant earthy smell filling the room and
taking him back to Portland, before all of this mess started. He thanked Heidi,
but before carrying on he addressed both of his observations in order of
importance. “That phone, he said. “Is it Daymon’s?”

Heidi nodded.

“Heard any incoming calls recently?”

She shook her head side-to-side. “Nope.”

He took it off the shelf and fiddled with it for a second
and then replaced it. “Thing’s no good with the ringer cycled to mute. There’s
a missed call ...” He saw her face go pale, then added, “Don’t worry, it was me
and it’ll remain our little secret.”

“Thanks,” she said with a wan smile. “I’ve been trying to
get ahold of some ham radio users Logan had been in contact with before word of
the black helicopters started filtering in.” The color returning to her cheeks,
she went on, “Logan left a whole page full of notes ... all pertaining to
different frequencies ... or handles. Whatever they’re called.”

“Call signs,” said Cade. “Any luck?”

“Nope.”

“Keep trying,” he said. Then he touched upon the second item
of importance. He asked, “Can I relieve you of two cups of your
wonderful-smelling coffee?”

Without a word she smiled, poured two mugs to the rim and
passed them over. Then she placed the headphones over her ears and sat back
down, safe and secure, free from all physical contact with the outside world.

Chapter 60

Cade followed the map in his mind and arrived outside a
closed door mere moments after talking to Heidi. He stood there, a mug in each
hand, steam wafting to his nose, barely able to constrain his impulse to drink
both on the spot. Instead, he tested the door with his toe. Balanced
precariously on one foot, looking like one of the Flying Wallendas—only
grounded and with scalding coffee sluicing over his knuckles—he managed to get
the door moving without crying out in pain. He stepped over the threshold and
crept into the gloom. Inside, the air was still and smelled strongly of whiskey
and flatulence. Ragged snoring was coming from a darkened corner.

Cade took three steps into the room and felt the soft tickle
of something dragging across his face. Unable to see a place to set the mugs,
he tilted his head sideways and a few passes later, looking no doubt
uncoordinated like a kid bobbing for apples, was rewarded for his efforts by
finally seizing the dangling length of errant string between his teeth. He
backed up until the string went taut and there was a click and the single bulb
flared to life.

The retinas, he was reminded, like everything else, were
also affected by Newton’s law. Their sudden contraction and the pain to the
optic nerve made him squint, which in turn caused an involuntary flinch that
started a new mini-torrent of pain-inducing caffeinated liquid sheeting across
his exposed skin.

Once again stifling a yelp, he set both mugs on a nearby
footlocker and cast his gaze over the sorry sight. Still wearing his aviator’s
glasses, fully clothed in some foreign army’s surplus uniform, and still
clutching a near empty bottle of some kind of booze, Duncan Winters snored
away, presumably stone-cold drunk.

After unsuccessfully trying to wrestle the bottle from
Duncan’s firm grip, Cade resorted to a bit of dirty pool. He grabbed one of the
mugs and, practicing guerilla warfare of the highest order, placed it next to
the older man’s head, making sure the wispy tendrils curled over his cheek so
he would have no choice but to inhale the heady aroma.

Three slow steady breaths later, Duncan smiled yet his eyes
stayed closed. Then, a tick after Cade removed the mug, Duncan’s eyes opened
briefly and, retreating from the sixty-watt glare, closed back to two thin
slits. There was a long moment of silence and Duncan said, “You, Captain Cade
Grayson, are in violation of Army regulation six-seventy-dash-one. Your
sideburns must not be below the lowest ear hole.” He cackled and looked
longingly at the bottle.

“You’re drunk,” said Cade. “And I’m no longer taking orders.
I’ve gone civilian.”

“And hippie,” stated Duncan.

“Far from it,” Cade shot back. He changed the subject and
addressed the reason he was here. “Are you going to be good to go tomorrow?”

“Is a frog’s ass watertight?”

Cade laughed at that and offered the cup of joe.

After swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Duncan
waited for a couple of beats for his brain to stop bouncing around in his
cranium, then worked at sitting upright. He accepted the mug and took a long
pull.

Having been around a few folks battling the bottle, Cade had
a feeling he knew what to expect next. And he was right.

The bottle that Duncan had so firmly clutched during sleep
seemed to have a stronger appeal upon waking. With no apparent remorse, he
added the remainder, two fingers’ worth of the amber liquid, into his coffee.
He stared hard at the floor, as if he were making a decision right then and
there. He cupped the mug. Considered chucking it at the steel wall. But he
wasn’t ready yet. He hoisted the concoction, looked at the metal ceiling and
said, “To Logan.”

Cade grimaced. He knew from those intervention TV shows that
threats and coercion would get him nowhere. The decision was Duncan’s, and
Duncan’s alone to make. So he hung his head and looked on with disappointment
as his friend took a serious breath and a greedy gulp of the Jack Daniels-laced
coffee. He waited until Duncan drained his cup. It didn’t take long. Then Cade
acquiesced, hoisted his coffee and said, “To Logan.”

Duncan placed the mug next to the empty bottle, hoisted an
imaginary drink and said, “Indeed. To Oops.”

Finished with the coffee and craving more, Cade looked at
the Vietnam-era aviator squarely and said, “None of us are going anywhere and
nobody’s going to pay for what happened if you’re not sober enough to fly by
tomorrow. Forty-eight hours ... that was our deal. Remember?”

“What day is it?”

“The day you got sober ... and stayed sober.”

Shaking his head, Duncan said, “I’m a grown man. I can
handle my own affairs.”

“You need to come to a decision.” Cade let the words hang
for a minute then went on. “If your mind is not made up by twenty-three-hundred-hours
I am going to load my gear into my pick-up and take whoever wants to go and
leave without you.” He didn’t wait for a line of bullshit. Or another excuse.
He had a job to do and he was determined to see it through to the end, whether
he got there by plane, train, or automobile. Without another word, he bowed out
of Duncan’s quarters, closed the door softly behind him, and headed for the
Grayson family’s new billet.

Chapter 61

Grateful his twelve-hour
sentence
was over, Jimmy Foley
parked his Jeep in the driveway. Though he was technically still
‘inside the
wire’
as he’d heard the mercenaries say, he stayed in the rig until he was
confident there were no zombies lurking nearby.

Satisfied he was alone, he hopped out and climbed the creaky
steps to the back door. Beginning his newly adopted ritual, he paused outside
and listened hard.
Nothing.
He slipped his key in the deadbolt, unlocked
the door and went inside. Once inside with the door locked behind, out came the
.40 caliber Springfield XD.

From being sealed up all day, the still air inside the
two-story A-frame-style guest house was hot and made breathing a chore. Pistol
leading the way, Foley transited the hall and stopped at the door to the
stairway leading down to the single-car garage, mudroom, and half-bath on the
lower level. Finding it locked, he padded back the way he’d come, boots tapping
a quiet cadence on the tiles underfoot. Cutting the corner, he made his way
down the hallway that shot straight off the back entry, passed the empty powder
room on his left along the way before emerging into the front half of the
open-floor-plan home. To his immediate left was an open kitchen sporting a
large quartz island with a trio of bar stools pushed against it. Ignoring the
thought of rewarding himself with a warm beer for enduring another day
conscripted to Bishop’s group, he skirted the dining room table and threaded
between the sofa and coffee table to the front of the home. Concluding his
ritual, he inspected the sliding glass door set below the massive wall of
windows that afforded a fair amount of lake view between the waterfront homes
across the way.
Still locked.
And he found the makeshift security bar (a
wooden dowel he doubted a shambler could thwart) still in the channel where he
had placed it earlier. Leaving the door secured, he used a long pole specially
designed for the job and opened all of the upper windows, letting the evening
breeze in. He put the pole aside, turned and looked up towards the loft where
the master bedroom lorded over the living room. Nothing seemed amiss.
Times
like these, one can’t be too careful
.

Something about returning to an empty house when there were
dead things walking the world unnerved the hell out of him. And that was why he
was allowed to pick any home on the peninsula. And that was also why he
eschewed the larger, more opulent homes across the gravel lane in favor of this
one.
The fewer rooms to clear before turning in
, he reasoned,
the
better
.

The stairs to the loft were massive oak slabs perched
centrally on a thick steel beam. A triangular-shaped door below hid a wall of
electronics—his favorite part of the new digs. He thought about watching
Heat
again, but decided against firing up the generator and instead opted for a good
night’s sleep so he would be sharp for some patrol Carson was sending him out
on. Probably another full day as
initial entry
while the Spartan guys
placed bets on whether or not he’d get bitten, or the daily over under on how
many walking dead would scramble from the door as he stepped aside. It wasn’t
fun work, but it beat the alternative. Plus, if there ever was a way of
escaping this fate that had befallen him, getting past the gate was the first
hurdle. And doing so unscathed alongside a dozen heavily armed men carrying a
set of legitimate orders might be the only way.
Marathon, not a sprint
,
he reminded himself. He’d either get bitten and then eat a bullet. Or he’d
catch the Spartan boys slipping and steal away into the forest.

With feet sore and heavy from an entire day of standing,
sunup to dusk at the east gate, he climbed the stairs and sat on the bed and
kicked off his boots. His belt and pistol, still in its holster, went on the
nightstand. He fell heavily into the bed fully clothed and, just before nodding
off, remembered to say a prayer for his wife and kid, both early victims of the
Omega virus.

Chapter 62

The clearing was alive with activity. Raven was zipping back
and forth along the makeshift packed-earth airstrip, the tactical flashlight
Cade had zip-tied to the handlebars casting a blue-white cone of spastically
juddering light dozens of feet in front her. Slaloming through the grass,
instincts suddenly alive, Max would spring from out of the darkness, enter the
light spill and nip at the mountain bike’s front tire just as the diminutive
twelve-year-old initiated a wide looping turn.

Just inside the tree line near the compound’s entrance,
Daymon stirred a big pot of chili-con-carne, all the while wishing it was
instead a haunch of venison roasting slowly on a spit.

As usual, the
security trio
—the moniker Logan had
bestowed upon Lev, Chief, and Jenkins—were sitting on camp chairs around the
fire, talking about their next mission to the quarry and how best to remove the
solar panels off of the high roof without damaging them.

Near the entrance, Cade was getting his kit in order. “Hand
me the night vision goggles and the spare batteries, please,” he said to Brook.

Glancing away from Raven, who up until then had garnered her
undivided attention, Brook rummaged around in the Pelican case and handed the
items over. “Are you going to take my advice and slow down after this one?”

“That’s my plan,” said Cade. “Once the threat is gone.”

“How long do you foresee yourself being out there?”

“One day.”

“Why the comms and NVGs if you’re only gone one day?”

“OK. Twenty-four hours. Give or take.” He placed the goggles
he’d retrieved from his bike in Hanna into the box next to the two pairs
Colonel Cornelius Shrill had given him prior to leaving Schriever. Alongside
the goggles he put an extra box of ammunition for the Modular Sniper Rifle
which would also be accompanying him for this mission.