Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (43 page)

Without her arms and legs cuffed to the bedposts, sleep came
easy and instantaneously.

Ozzy was back on the stereo and riding the Crazy Train. In
Carson’s mind, he still saw the woman’s silhouette in the window. Then she cast
a surreptitious glance about. And with her dress riding up around her waist,
she was through the door and taking the stairs two at a time. He was on her
heels in a half-beat. Shouting for her to stop. Yet she ran blindly into the
woods.

His hand worked furiously at his crotch, trying to awaken
his flaccid member. To facilitate the lost blood flow’s return. He imagined he
caught hold of her toned, tan arm and was dragging her to the ground, the dress
now over her head.

Another ragged burst of fire shattered his concentration and
ruined the moment. His radio came to life and a voice said calmly:
The Zeds
that squirted around the gate have been contained. Mopping up.

“Copy that,” replied Carson. Nonplussed and unsated, he put
his junk away and zippered his pants. Cracked an energy drink and fixed his
gaze on the empty window, hoping she had only decided to give it some time and
make her run for it at zero-dark-thirty. The witching hour when studies showed
most people let their guard down.

He drained the last of the Red Bull and tossed the can unceremoniously
onto the floor. He traced the welts on his cheek and thought to himself,
Bring
it on, bitch.

Chapter 64

Lying on the bunk, face-to-face with her mom, Raven asked in
a sleepy voice, “When is Dad leaving?”

Brook’s eyes snapped open but the view didn’t change. Though
an impossibility, the space inside the Conex seemed darker than the insides of
her eyelids. After realizing there would be no adjustment to the gloom nor eye
contact to affirm and back up her words, she gave up trying to locate Raven’s
features in the dark and said, “Just know that he will be back.”

“Why is he going?”

“Because some bad men hurt his friend’s brother and some
other people who used to live here.”

“And why does that make it so Daddy
has
to go?”

Brook wanted to say: Because the motherfuckers killed people
for the guy President Clay just had hanged. The same man who was indirectly
responsible for setting back the production of antiserum weeks or months, and
perhaps extinguished that glimmer of hope forever. Instead she said
half-truthfully, “Because those men also had something to do with your Uncle
Carl’s death.”

Raven yawned, then said, “But I thought Uncle Carl died in a
fire.”

Time for the whole truth and nothing but.
“He was
murdered first.”

There was a silence heavier than the oppressive shroud of
darkness.

Forgetting where she’d put her headlamp, and feeling an
overwhelming need to look her daughter in the eye and tell her everything was
going to be OK, Brook searched the bunk for it with one hand. Finding nothing
atop the cool sheets, she batted the air near her head and felt the rubberized
backing and then walked her hand up the elastic band and extricated it from the
spring she’d hung it from.

“I’m about to switch the headlamp on ... shield your eyes.”

There was no answer. She put her arm protectively across
Raven’s sleeping form and, still wearing the headlamp, drifted off to sleep
herself.

***

“Are you sure she’s asleep?”

Wilson said, “Positive.” He shrugged off his shorts and
marveled at the softness of Taryn’s cool skin against his. “Want some covers?’

Nodding in the dark, she pulled on a corner, accidentally
exposing his backside. “As long as we’re quiet,” he said, letting his hands
wander. “There’s no way she’ll know. It’s too dark in here.”

Their legs and arms intertwined, Wilson ran his hands over
Taryn’s tatted bicep, feeling the raised scar tissue and imagining in his
mind’s eye the permanently etched skulls and dragons residing there.

Stifling a giggle, Taryn lost herself exploring his mouth
with her tongue and for a moment she forgot about everything. The walking dead
were of no relevance. The cold pit she’d been carrying in her gut since
escaping the airport disappeared. For a few minutes everything was all right in
the world.

An arm’s length away, everything was not all right. Every
time Sasha nodded off she was awakened by a man’s face splitting in half under
a barrage of bullets. Not a direct representation of the first and hopefully
last human she would be forced to kill, but damn close. And this she knew
because a millisecond after she’d pulled the trigger the first time her eyes
clamped shut on their own accord. But before they did, however, she’d seen the
face of one of the occupants in the second car implode and break in two. And
this, she supposed, was where her subconscious had picked up the horrific image
it had seen fit to cut and paste, seemingly at will, onto the insides of her
eyelids.

Now though, mercifully, she guessed, every time her lids
fluttered the metronomic metallic squeak from a loose bolt in the other bunk
bed dispelled the encroaching visions. So she lay staring in the dark and
listening to the subtle rasp of fabric against skin and trying to decide which
was worse. Succumbing to sleep and enduring the visions of mayhem. Or fighting
it tooth and nail to stay awake and having to endure the sounds of lovemaking
that only served to further remind her how alone she really was.

Chapter 65

Outbreak - Day 19

As dawn broke and the horizon turned from a dark blue to
purple and the sliver of rising sun spilled golden light across the clearing,
Cade was surprised to find Duncan already up and giving the Black Hawk her
pre-flight inspection. He called out from a dozen yards away, “She gonna fly?

Looking up from his task, Duncan adjusted his glasses and
waited for Cade to cover the distance between them, then replied, “Oh she’ll
fly alright ... question is how far.” Cade cracked the seal on a bottled water,
took a long pull and tipped the mouth toward Duncan. Declining the offering, Duncan
went on, “What’s with the all-black getup? Is this some kind of mission
impossible which requires you to look like a modern day ninja?”

“All my other gear is olive or desert. Not going to fly
where I think we’ll be going.”

Interest piqued, Duncan stopped what he was doing. He looked
up and in a serious tone said, “Sounds like you’ve got a handle on where this
Bishop prick is.”

“I got a pretty good lead from Tran last night.” He paused a
beat. Removed a small plastic bottle from his cargo pants. He looked up, arched
a brow and said, “If I heard him correctly. And that’s a big if—”

Duncan said, “Yeah, that boy was pretty busted up and I
guess damn near death when Daymon and his crew found him.”

Working the child safety cap on the ibuprofen bottle, Cade
went on, “Tran said ... well, it was more like a mumble ... but what I took
away was that Bishop escaped Jackson Hole aboard Robert Christian’s G6.” He
swallowed a handful of pills, grimaced, then took a long pull off his water.

“G6? As in Gulf Stream G650 which is one of those sixty
million dollar Learjet-looking planes the CEOs and one-percenters like Donald
Trump used to tool around in?”

“And
billionaires
like Christian. Affirmative.”

“And how are you going to find this G6?”

“Are there any aeronautical maps aboard this bird?”

Duncan shook his head. “Nope. I left Schriever with GPS
coordinates and the DHS manual covering the UH-60 platform. That’s it.”

“Logan stockpiled everything else ... did he have any
detailed maps?”

Hearing Logan referred to in the past tense brought on a
wave of sadness. “Negative,” drawled Duncan. “There’s only a couple of maps of
Utah and Wyoming. One of ‘em has a sliver of Southern Idaho on back.”

“No help there,” replied Cade. “You’re going to need to find
fuel for this bird, correct?”

Nodding, Duncan said, “I was planning on hitting the Air
National Guard base in Boise. There’s gotta be underground tanks there.”

Seeing the devastation, a whole city aflame in his mind’s
eye, Cade said, “Boise burned pretty bad, remember?”

Duncan shivered visibly. “Don’t remind me. We barely escaped
that one with our hides intact.”

Cade unwrapped a breakfast bar and took a bite. Said with a
mouthful, “Wasn’t the first time and surely it won’t be the last.”

“Shhh. You’ll piss off Mister Murphy.”

“Murphy blew his wad in South Dakota,” said Cade. “More shit
went wrong there than I care to remember.” He finished the bar.

“You’re alive. How’d you manage that?”

Cade opened the port door and adjusted the seat forward a
bit. “You got four or five hours?”

“Save it for later ... around the campfire.”

After tossing his pack in the back with the rest of his kit,
Cade said, “I have an idea.”

“Here we go again,” said Duncan. “Do tell.”

Cade described the Montgomery County airstrip he’d passed
the day before, including the fact that he’d spied a pair of fuel bowsers
parked near the hangars. “Figure one of those ought to have some JP in it. At
the very least we’ll be able to obtain an aeronautical chart from the airport
or scavenge one from one of the airplanes there. Use that to find an airstrip
capable of handling that Gulfstream. Can’t be more than three or four of ‘em in
Idaho, anyway.”

Duncan clucked his tongue. “Good idea. Heading back to Boise
held very little appeal for this good ol’ boy.”

“Reminds me,” said Cade. “I brought you a present, Old Man.”
He hustled to the F-650, opened the driver’s door and leaned inside. Coming
back, he handed Duncan a small paper sack, a clatter sounding as something
inside it shifted.

After testing the bag’s weight, Duncan reached in and said,
“Hell is this?”

“Something you couldn’t have benefitted from last night ...
since you were wearing a thick pair of beer goggles.”

“Glasses?” said Duncan, holding up a half-dozen pairs in
different styles and materials and no doubt thicknesses.

“Sneaky Daymon sent a text message to my sat phone.
Mentioned you’re way past due for a new pair.”

“Yeah, but where’d you get them?”

“A lost and found here. A junk drawer there. That old house
you rescued me and Daymon from ...”

“Yeah ...”

“Two pairs in the kitchen drawer there.”

“Well let’s see. Pardon the pun, of course.” He removed his
Aviators and tried on pair after pair, saying, “nope, nope, nope,” after each
one that did nothing to fix his near sightedness. Then, getting towards the end
of the lot, he tried on a pair with large oval rims and the necessary
horizontal line demarking the long distance half of the prescription from the
up close viewing part of the lens. He tried them on and fixed his gaze on the
vehicles thirty yards distant and then focused farther yet at the very end of
the airstrip two football field lengths away.
Wow,
he thought. Then he
peered down at the grass near his feet and could make out the individual
blades.
Holy hell.
“These are going to work just fine. How do I look?”

Suppressing a smile, Cade heard the song
Rocket Man
cue up and begin playing in his head. “Great,” he lied.

Concealed behind the foliage-covered blind, the door to the
compound opened with a resonant grating noise of metal on metal. Soon, Daymon,
Lev, and Seth, all three dressed in surplus woodland camouflage BDUs circa the
late eighties and carrying backpacks and various weapons, emerged from the
gloom. Once they’d crossed the dew-laden grass and stood under the Black Hawk’s
drooping blades, Seth, whose normal job watching the radios and trail cameras
had been recently taken over by Heidi, wished the group good fortune and
continued on his way towards the motor pool.

Duncan snugged his flight helmet on, adjusted his new
glasses, and directed a question at Lev. “Is Seth relieving Chief at the road?”

At first sight of Duncan’s new look, Lev’s eyes bugged.
Holding back laughter he said, “Yep,” then bit his lip, nearly drawing blood.

Testing out his new pair of eyes, Duncan gave the three-man
team a visual inspection. “Looks like we got ourselves a ninja and a couple of
Cold War-era troops here. Y’all said your goodbyes to your ladies?” He fixed
his magnified bloodshot eyes on Cade, who remained stoic and said nothing.
Duncan looked at Daymon, who merely nodded an affirmative. “Well shit. Let’s
kick the tires and light the fire then.”
If I can remember the proper
procedure.

Lev took a seat on the starboard side near a window, donned
a flight helmet, and strapped himself in. Peering sidelong across the cabin, he
watched Daymon climb aboard and slide the door closed. He cracked a smile as
the dreadlocked man battled to tuck his hair into the helmet, finally
succeeding just as the turbines overhead coughed to life. After flashing Daymon
a thumbs up, Lev closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, asking, in a general
way, for his God to see to it that good prevailed over evil.

From the port-side front seat, Cade watched the kids file
into the clearing with Raven and Brook bringing up the rear. He caught Raven’s
eye, smiled broadly, and flashed her a thumbs up. He blew a kiss in Brook’s
direction and then strapped his helmet on and drew down the smoked visor to
hide the welling tears. Then he started the process of shoving all of the
things he held dear—anything and everything that might cause a lapse of
judgment or a moment’s hesitation—deep into an imaginary vault in the deep
recesses of his mind. The dial spun in his mind’s eye and the tumblers clicked
and everything and everyone was on hold for the duration of the mission—or so
he hoped.