A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (32 page)

***

Wilson maneuvered the U-Haul, keeping pace
with the long line of trucks stretching out ahead of him. After a
few minutes spent driving through empty streets lined with juvenile
dogwoods, the lead gun truck abruptly came to a stop behind one of
the nondescript warehouses.

“Too many hiding spots,” Wilson moaned.

“Lots of food,” Brook countered.

“I just want to get this thing loaded and get
back.”

Being a nurse, Brook couldn’t help but offer
advice. “Better stretch—and lift with your knees—not with your
back. You wrench something then you’re done. I’ll leave you for the
dead before I carry you,” she said facetiously.

Not fully aware she had been joking, Wilson
smiled. In his mind he was flipping her the bird.

An annoying reverse alarm sounded as he
backed the Dakota truck closer to the loading dock that stretched
the length of the warehouse. Steel roll up doors painted white and
numbered 1 thru 20 loomed above. He guessed the openings to be at
least thirty feet tall and twenty wide, more than enough clearance
for a fully loaded forklift to move in and out of efficiently.

Wilson looked on as the SF operators led by
Gaines quickly gained entry. And after twenty minutes of
‘
staying frosty,’
whatever that meant, he noticed the doors
begin to roll up. Ten in all. Once they were opened, one of the
military men directed his U-Haul to door number 10 where the
Dakota’s rear bumper met the large rubber fenders attached below
the lip of the loading dock with a bone jarring thud.

“Whoops,” Wilson offered without looking at
Brook.

She donned her helmet and smiled but said
nothing.

***

Brook slid from the truck then scaled the
loading dock. She stood a few feet in front of door number 10 and
cast her gaze inside the shadowy building. Flashlight beams cut the
dark as Gaines led a troop of civilians down the aisles, pointing
out what he wanted to be loaded onto the trucks.

M4 held at low ready, Brook paced the loading
dock. She wove her small frame between pallets stacked high with
cans and boxes, marveling at the sheer enormity of the distribution
center. Row upon row of floor to ceiling shelving containing
everything from cleaning supplies and paper products to all manner
of nonperishable foods covered every available square inch inside
the building. Well before the old consumer driven world ground to a
screeching halt this massive distribution warehouse had supplied
restaurants and grocers all along the Rocky Mountain range. Now the
food was going to allow the small slice of remaining humanity to
survive for a few more weeks. She recognized most of the names on
the delivery invoices—Olive Garden, Wendy’s, Fast Burger and many
more—their shipments sitting in front of her on a loading dock in
Fountain Valley, Colorado, never to be delivered. No more drive
thrus, no more pizza delivery, no more supermarkets—she pondered
the austerity the future held for her family as she walked up the
ramp away from the loading docks to take a look at the road.

During the hour plus that she had been on
watch she hadn’t seen a single walker, and with the forklifts’
backup klaxons blaring and the soldiers barking orders, she had
expected them to show up by now.

She looked down the roadway in both
directions.

Clear.

The sound of chains rattling reached her ears
as all ten doors began to roll down at once, followed by exhaust
notes that echoed off of the building’s ribbed steel walls as
engines thrummed to life.

At a slow trot Brook made her way back to the
Dakota truck and as soon as she slid into her seat Wilson looked at
her and asked if the coast was clear.

Brook nodded. “There aren’t any walkers on
the road if that’s what you mean.”

Wilson breathed a sigh of relief.

“But don’t get your hopes up... all of the
walkers we passed back there will surely
still
be there
waiting for us when we drive back through.”

“Not good. Gaines reversed the driving
order.”
That’s so he can keep an eye on you—Hair-Trigger
,
Wilson thought. “That means we’re going to be the
first
truck behind the Humvees... and the biggest
target
for the
pusbags.”

Just then a few sharp pings sounded on the
steel roof above their heads. Then more patters on the hood and
glass in front of them.

“Summer thunderstorm... that’s good if it’s
heading towards Springs. Might just mask the noise this metal
monster makes on the highway and we can slip past the majority of
the Zs.”

We can only hope
, Wilson thought as he
set the wipers in motion, smearing bugs and who knows what else
into two greasy cataracts on the windshield.

Gaines’ voice came over the Motorola two-way.
“Move em out,” he said brusquely.

Just then jagged fork lightning seared the
sky. A half a second later a clap sounding like two trains
colliding tore overhead. Then the confined loading area amplified
the thunder and it rumbled on for several seconds.

“That hit pretty close to here.”

“You want to know what my husband has to say
about
close
?” Brook asked as Wilson nosed the U-Haul in
behind the two Humvee gun trucks.

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me no
matter what I say.”

“
Correct
,” Brook stated forcefully.
The rain was pounding the truck in earnest. The wipers cleaned the
gore but could barely keep up with the cascading sheets of
rainwater. Over the
whop-whop
of the wipers she said,
“
Close
only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

“I get the horseshoes part...”

“The hand grenade part—you don’t want to know
the details. Cade told me all about it. Not pretty.”

“Ohhh,” said Wilson as he finally got the
picture. “What does Cade do?”

“Sore subject right now—
drop it
.”

“Copy that...”

Wilson stared ahead glumly.

The two vehicles in the lead turned right
onto the highway. Wilson scanned for walkers then arced the turn as
well. He glanced in the side view, noting that the rest of the food
laden trucks were falling in right behind.

Looking over Wilson’s white knuckled grip
Brook could see that the looming thunderheads had merged with the
smoke and haze from the fire, creating a sullen pewter smudge
stretching along the horizon as far as she could see.

Good
, she thought to herself.
The
storm’s going our way.

Chapter 33

Outbreak - Day 11

Fountain Valley, Colorado

Only a handful of zombies roamed the streets
of Fountain Valley Estates when the thirteen vehicles started their
thunder run
through the gated community. As Gaines suspected
would be the case, the dead had taken advantage of the wide open
gates and struck out in search of fresh meat.

In the Dakota truck Brook had remained tight
lipped since leaving the warehouse district, answering Wilson’s
never ending stream of questions with the occasional grunt or head
nod. Then, as they neared the place where they had become trapped,
Wilson noticed Brook start to squirm in her seat, hands opening and
closing around the black rifle between her knees.

“That one looks a lot like the White House,”
Wilson said, trying to divert her attention from the opposite side
of the street and the house with the dead girl still lying on the
front porch. “See the columns... maybe it was the same
architect.”

“Good try kid. The architect of the White
House has probably been dead for two hundred years.” Brook noticed
the Gray Tudor instantly—it had been burned into her memory. She
was sure she would be revisiting it in her nightmares for years to
come. As the U-Haul drew perpendicular to the McMansion, Brook saw
the fuzzy pink robe and one pink slipper cocked at an odd angle.
Then she caught a brief flash of blood and blonde hair and white
bone. She buried her face in her hands, smelling the gun oil on
them. Tears sluiced between her fingers, down her thin wrists and
onto the brown vinyl floor mats.

“All clear,” Wilson said as soon as the
charnel house was out of sight.

Rubbing her eyes on her sleeve, Brook
whispered, “That one was hard because she was still alive,
human
. She
was
someone’s little girl.”

Wilson nodded. “That thing took a bite out of
her. She was already doomed.” Then he remembered his neighbor’s
little girl Sarah who had turned and was probably still thrashing
around inside of apartment 905 in the Viscount Arms back in Denver.
He hadn’t had it in him to finish her then, but if he had it to do
over again he would brain the toddler in a heartbeat. At that
moment his respect for the petite woman to his right shot up
another notch.

The fifty caliber guns remained silent until
the convoy reached the I-25 interchange, where the throngs of burnt
walkers streaming from the south boggled everyone’s mind. The way
their skin washed away as the sheets of rain pummeled their naked
bodies. The way their milk-colored eyes and ivory teeth stood out
in sharp contrast to their coal black outer dermis.

Brook shuddered at the sight of the crispy
diaspora.

“Shit... they’re stopping,” Wilson cried as
brake lights flared and he narrowly avoided plowing into the Humvee
he had been tailgating.

“Gotta clear the road,” the general’s driver
said over the comms. Then General Gaines’s voice came over the
two-way radio as Brook watched the doors on both gun trucks hinge
open. “Civilians must remain in their vehicle,” he barked. Then he
softened his tone and added, “That includes you, Brooklyn
Grayson.”

Sinking in her seat, she looked at Wilson,
then shifted her gaze to the front.

“I knew you were trouble,” he stated
matter-of-factly.

They both watched as Gaines and his men
fanned out across the road.

Brook estimated there were at least fifty
walkers between them and the off-ramp to I-25.

A ripping high pitched whine reached her ears
as one of the soldiers, armed with an M249 light machine gun,
squeezed multiple short bursts of 5.56 bullets into the mass.
Geysers of brain and charcoal coated skull rained down on the
roadway as the soldier leaned forward, bracing against the recoil,
and walked his fire head high across the front line of walkers;
meanwhile, carbine pressed firmly to his shoulder, Gaines calmly
advanced and worked his SCAR from left to right, felling a dozen
walkers with near point-blank head shots. The encounter was over in
a matter of minutes and Gaines and his men walked among the fallen
Zs, delivering final death to the ones that still moved. The
dismounts hurriedly cleared a path wide enough for the convoy,
moving the corpses and body parts and stacking them up beside the
road like some kind of blackened meat guardrail.

***

The remainder of the return trip was
uneventful. The storm shadowed the convoy all the way back to
Schriever, washing most of the evidence of their skirmishes with
the dead from the vehicles. Aside from the occasional ten minute
afternoon thunderstorms that rolled over the Rockies before
descending upon Colorado Springs two or three times a week, this
storm was the first substantial sustained precipitation the eastern
side of the range had seen since the Omega virus blazed through the
valley two weeks prior.

After the Zs at the gate were dealt with, the
guards greeted the foraging convoy with smiling faces and
cheers.

Chapter 34

Outbreak - Day 11

Near Hoback Junction, Wyoming

Ari flew the black helo just a few feet above
the water through all ninety miles of the Flaming Gorge recreation
area, changing altitude only to avoid clusters of boats and the
occasional bridge or high tension wire. It was the type of flying
that required him to not only have full faith in the aircraft, but
also nerves of steel. The hardest part of that leg of the mission,
he found, was trying to keep from gawking at the numerous scenes of
carnage like those at the Flaming Gorge dam.

Scrutinizing the next waypoint on the glass
display, Durant said, “We’re coming up on Hoback Junction, so I
inputted a new waypoint that will swing us around and to the right
to avoid enemy contact.”

“Copy that,” said Ari. “Everyone keep your
eyes on the ground. If we come across any NA patrols they must be
dealt with before they get on the radio and give us up.” He banked
the helo hard right and, staying a few hundred yards away, followed
the road for a quarter mile.

Cade had been staring at a small creek
running parallel to the road when three things happened at once:
Outside the turbines shrieked above and behind his head and he
could hear warnings chiming from the cockpit. Then he felt his body
weight double as he was pushed hard against the bulkhead, and as
Ari dove the helicopter to the deck he found his butt and feet
levitating as he experienced a split second of weightlessness.

An excited exchange of words passed between
pilot and co-pilot. “Two rotor wing contacts, one thousand feet
AGL, ten o’clock heading west by southwest,” Durant said
rapid-fire.

“Taking us to the deck,” Ari fired back, his
voice nearly overlapping his co-pilot.

“Are we going in?” Cade shouted over the
comms as his stomach hit the floor when Ari leveled off.

“No, just hiding in the woodpile,” Ari
quipped.

By the port side window Tice, face like he
had seen a ghost, was staring at the branches dancing thirty feet
away.

Hicks shot Cade a look that seemingly said,
‘no big deal, all in a day’s work,’ then flashed a big shit eating
grin. Obviously his idea of an E-Ticket ride, Cade thought to
himself. While sitting against the opposite bulkhead, Lopez and
Maddox looked to have weathered the abrupt maneuver in stride.