A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (40 page)

Cade, who had been out of the teams for a
number of months before the dead began to walk, was probably the
least conditioned of the team. Still catching his breath from the
arduous climb, he lay on his stomach in the tall grass and glassed
the compound.

Ten-foot tall stucco walls ringed the entire
landscaped property.

The mansion and outbuildings were illuminated
brightly and a generator hummed away somewhere in the distance.

“I see three camera domes. One on the post
adjacent to the gate and one on each corner,” Maddox said,
targeting them with the laser attached to his SCAR. “I have a
feeling we are going to encounter the same setup in back.”

“Motion sensors?” Cade inquired.

Herding a stray lock of sandy blonde hair
back under his helmet Maddox answered, “With all of the wild game
in this area, having sensors outside the wall wouldn’t make
sense.”

Cade pulled the binoculars down to look at
Maddox and said, “Inside?”

“A crib this size—most definitely,” Maddox
said, nodding his head. “Whether they have them activated is
anyone’s guess.”

“Lopez... Tice… you two disable the generator
and eliminate anyone who comes to investigate. As soon as the
lights go out
we
go in the front door.”

“Copy that,” Tice and Lopez said in unison.
Then the two operators backed away into the tree line and set off
around the western wall in search of the thrumming engine.

With Maddox shadowing him, Cade faded into
the woods and loped off to the east, the SCAR’s green laser bobbing
drunkenly with every footfall.

They crossed the asphalt road that wound
uphill from the junction below, then continued another fifty meters
around the perimeter, staying in the tree line until Cade halted
and took a knee. “There,” he said, painting the inset wooden door
with his laser. “And there and there... cameras.”

“Lopez, how copy?” Cade said into his throat
mic.

“Good copy,” Lopez replied.

Cade checked his watch. Three minutes had
elapsed since the team split into two separate elements. “Situation
report?”

“We’ve located the generator... one hundred
meters to the north between the garage and the outer wall. Give us
five mikes,” Lopez answered.

“Copy that,” was Cade’s monotone
response.

As the five minute mark neared Maddox stood
poised with his lock gun at the ready.

Cade’s laser dot skittered on the lens of the
closest security camera.

***

“Go time,” Lopez said as the timer hit five
minutes.

The silenced M4 chugged twice as Tice put two
rounds into the nearby security camera. A spritz of blue
electricity arced from its shattered black cover. He targeted the
second dome at his two o’clock, destroying it as well.

“Cameras down,” Tice intoned.

Lopez bolted from the woods, crouched by the
wall, and brought his SCAR up to cover the Spook’s advance.

Tice shifted the M4 on its sling, securing it
behind his back, and at a dead run crossed the open ground between
the woods and the wall; then, squatting with his back pressed
against the stucco and his fingers laced together stirruplike, Tice
provided Lopez a leg-up, propelling the diminutive Delta operator
atop the wall.

While laying lengthwise on his stomach, left
arm and leg gripping the wall—a move learned by every soldier early
on in basic training—Lopez reached down and with strength that
belied his size helped Tice surmount the obstacle.

Both men dropped to the other side and
scurried to a patch of shadow, rifles at the ready.

Lopez looked to the north. Two good sized
generators sat roughly twenty feet in front of him, humming away,
next to the biggest multi-car garage he had ever seen. Though not
as tall, the building had a footprint the size of a small airplane
hangar, and with eight ornately decorated roll up doors looked like
it could accommodate a fleet of vehicles.

He padded down the ten foot wide breezeway
between the outer wall and garage and knelt next to the generators,
one running, and one silent.

Tice followed silently keeping an eye on
their six, and anticipating the impending blackout lowered his
NVGs.

“Killing the lights,” Lopez said.

“Copy that,” Cade replied from the other side
of the property.

Lopez drew his Gerber Mark-II combat knife
and deftly sliced the gas line on the running unit, plunging the
mansion and its entire perimeter into full black. He flipped his
goggles down, and then for good measure cut the other gas line and
yanked the spark plug wires from both generators, pitching them
onto the garage roof.

***

When the courtyard lights went out, Maddox
attacked the lock. With only a pair of heavy duty Schlage deadbolts
and no other surprises on the inside, the thick wooden door proved
easy enough to penetrate. It brought him great relief that the
security here was nothing like that at the CDC in Atlanta. Maybe
the macho movie star really believed he was as capable of kicking
ass as the persona he portrayed on the big screen. At any rate, the
man couldn’t hold a candle to Chuck Norris, Maddox mused.

“Blow the charges,” Cade ordered.

Maddox pulled both detonators from his
pocket, quickly armed them, and flicked the switches at once.

Deadly consequences stemmed from that simple
act. Maddox thought briefly about the two men manning the
Engagement Control Station, a school bus-sized trailer that had
just been subjected to the explosive power of two pounds of C4. He
had also rigged the generator, antenna mast and radar array set,
all essential components of the air defense system, each with half
as much of the malleable plastic explosive. He liked to see things
go boom and was known to be thorough when it came to demolitions.
That the Patriot systems operators were now incinerated was a
certainty.

While Maddox had been secreting his
explosives, Lopez had been on a covert bike tour of the Jackson Elk
Refuge. He planted similar C4 charges on the four remote launching
stations, each containing four—fifteen hundred pound— Patriot
surface-to-air missiles whose solid rocket propellant and
two-hundred pound warheads were now cooking off. The muted
secondary explosions, sounding like train cars coupling at a rail
yard, rolled over the butte.

***

Tapping the monitor with a knuckle, Cliff
tried to get the display to refresh. He had seen the whole panel go
black before but never patchwork style like this. In the time it
took his tired mind to come to the realization that the closed
circuit cameras had either been tampered with (which he deemed
highly unlikely) or had suffered some kind of interference from the
generator, the overhead light flickered off and the entire panel in
front of him went dark.

“Oh damnit,” he muttered as he fumbled around
for a flashlight, but instead spilled his last treasured bag of
Cheetos. The same
family size
bag he had been rationing for
the better half of the day.

His left hand finally found the rubberized
handle and he thumbed the switch, wincing at the intensity of the
stark white beam. With the Glock in his right hand counterbalancing
the hefty flashlight in his left, he waddled down the hall on soft
soled shoes. Just as he made the top landing and brought the beam
to bear on the marble staircase, a low distant rumble reached his
ears.

Thunder
, he guessed, as he double
timed it down the nearest set of circular stairs. His breathing
quickened—a combination of anxiety, stress and fear—primarily the
latter. He needed to get the generator refueled before anyone
realized he had let the tank go dry. “Fucking brothers,” he
muttered. If one of them would have taken care of this earlier he
wouldn’t be facing the prospect of upsetting Robert Christian and
finding himself nailed to a cross feeding the birds. That poor
houseboy Fredrick. He caught R.C. in the wrong frame of mind and
under the wrong set of circumstances. The screams seemed to go on
forever. It was something Cliff would take with him to the
grave.

He froze in mid-step halfway down the stairs.
In the distance, from somewhere near downtown, he heard a series of
muffled explosions echoing across the valley.

Better wake the boss, he thought to himself
as he fought the urge to go to the garage and steal one of the many
toys parked inside. Who was he fooling, before being conscripted
into NA service he had worked as an armored car driver, and if he
had been at home in Chicago when the shit hit the fan instead of
vacationing in Yellowstone there was no way he would still be
alive. Furthermore, he was certain that if he left alone right now
with only his Glock and a bag of Cheetos to see him through, he’d
be zombie bait within the hour. Nope. Better to be safe than sorry,
he thought to himself. Wake the boss first, and then his henchmen,
was the strategy he decided would probably keep him breathing.

***

Cade followed Maddox through the doorway into
the courtyard and paused to get his bearings.

The ski chalet-styled mansion rose in front
of him, blotting out the stars; its circular drive and front entry
was off to his left. Tinged green by the NVGs, moonlight played on
a sliver of water visible between the rear of the mansion and what
he guessed had to be a pool house.

“Going in the front,” Cade said. “Team two...
sit-rep
.”

“Clear so far,” Lopez whispered.

“Give it two mikes then rendezvous at the
front door.”

“Copy that,” replied Lopez.

Cade padded to the east side of the expansive
porch. Sitting in the drive was a dark colored SUV. Crouched low,
he dashed to its front fender and placed a palm on the hood.

Cold.

He crept back to the porch and up the stairs
and slid next to Maddox, who was already hard at work on the
intricate lockset on the wide wooden double doors.

***

Tran’s eyes snapped open. The low distant
rumble that had jerked him from a deep slumber sounded nothing like
thunder. His worst fear had come to fruition. The man-demon Bishop
must have blown the bridge, which Tran knew was the only thing
keeping the walking monsters at bay.

He slowly climbed from bed, knelt on the cold
wood floor, and began to pray.

***

The moment the flat screen flashed to blue
and finally total black, Greta’s moans and Hanz’s Neanderthal
grunting ceased. Liam stirred and opened one eye, wondering where
in the hell he was. He barely remembered leaving the bar.

Did I drive?

Thankfully he didn’t remember the awful
German porn he had been watching before he passed out.

Suddenly he wanted a drink of water more than
anything. He sat up, but his brain seemingly stayed on the couch
for a second before slingshotting back into his skull throbbing
painfully—a nauseating reminder of his overindulgence from the Gods
of Scotch whisky.

He knew the explosions for what they were the
second he heard the bass heavy report.

And so did Lucas, who barged from his room
seconds later zipping up his black jacket.

“Let’s go,” he said, pistol in hand, “that
was
not
the bridge.”

“Wait one,” Liam whined. “I’m still getting
sorted.”

“Hell of an understatement little bro,” Lucas
stated. And as the secondary explosions echoed outside, he visibly
stiffened and shot Liam a look that screamed,
Hurry up.

Laying an M4 on the couch next to Liam who
was busily lacing his boots Lucas said, “Stay sharp—the dead don’t
blow shit up. We’ll check the
jennies
first... I filled both
tanks earlier so I think we probably have visitors.” He opened the
door and stepped from the darkened guest house, his big black
Beretta leading the way into the inky blackness.

***

Maddox popped the lock open in under a
minute. The two operators crouched low, awaiting the return of
Lopez and Tice.

Cade heard Lopez’s voice in his earpiece,
“Approaching the front.”

“Roger that,” Cade answered.

Once the team had reunited, Maddox pushed the
door inward and inched his way into the foyer.

The air inside was only a few degrees warmer
than outside and an eerie silence seemed to permeate the
mansion.

“Team two takes the right stairs,” Cade
ordered.

Silence.

Cade watched Tice peel away and shadow Lopez
up the stairs, lasers sweeping the front as they cut the corner and
crouched down, waiting for him and Maddox to summit the thirty-plus
stairs on the other side of the foyer.

Cade ran point as the Delta team moved down
the hall, the carpeted runner swallowing up the sound of their
footfalls.

Putting a clenched fist in the air Cade took
a knee.

The other operators followed suit. Lopez
turned to keep an eye on their six.

Using hand signals Cade alerted the others
that he detected movement around the corner.

As he inched his head around the corner, one
degree at a time, the sound of rapid knocking filtered to his
position.

“Mister Christian,” a distant voice called
out.

More knocking, louder.

Cade signaled that they were moving on the
source of the noise. He crept around the corner and trotted swiftly
down the hall; oil paintings rendered in washed out greens,
portraits and landscapes, blurred by in his peripheral vision. The
knocking continued and as he rounded the corner the source of the
racket came into view. Holding a black pistol and dressed head to
toe in dark clothing, a man of average height who was in dire need
of a Gut-Be-Gone continued to bang on a door thirty feet down the
hall.

“You have to wake up Robert!” the man
bellowed.

Walking the green laser beam down the hall,
Cade settled it on the man’s temple then advanced swiftly to within
ten feet of the guard and said in a low voice, “You move and you’re
dead.”