Allegiance (2 page)

With what little fight
he initially had had in him snuffed out, Whipper collected himself from the
cool floor, looked disdainfully at the man loading the truck—
his truck
—and
trudged silently back to the flight line.

***

Cade stowed the bottled
waters and MREs (meals ready to eat) which Shrill had procured for him in the
crew cab, on the bench seat behind the driver, leaving enough room for Raven on
the opposite side.

He clambered aboard the
truck and turned the key. The engine started at once, belting out a dull roar
that echoed in the cavernous hangar. He spent a couple of minutes familiarizing
himself with the controls and gauges and checked the fuel level.
Full.
He made a rough calculation in his head. Including the gas in the tank, and the
extra twenty gallons stored in the four red gas cans in back, he figured the
truck had a maximum range of four hundred miles. Then, considering the sheer
size of the rig, he took a moment to rethink the probable gas mileage and
admitted sullenly to himself that a range of three hundred miles was more
likely the case. That they’d have to do a little siphoning along the way
wouldn’t be such a big deal. After all, that’s how he had made it cross-country
from Portland to Idaho after the outbreak. And besides, he thought to himself,
if they got stuck in the midst of a zombie swarm, being off the ground in the
big four-by-four and out of the Zs’ reach would be a fair trade-off for a
little sucking and spitting.

Once he had motored the
seat back, adjusted the mirrors, and was confident that he knew where the
important gauges, buttons, and switches were located in the cockpit, he levered
the transmission into drive and nosed the truck out of the hangar and into the
early morning sunlight.

After a short drive
along the tarmac, which took him past the blackened and twisted metal framework
that was once the mobile medical until Pug had set it ablaze, he maneuvered the
massive black Ford F-650 up to the main gate on the northwest corner of
Schriever AFB, braked a dozen feet from the twelve-foot high concertina topped
fencing, then powered the window down and waited for one of the guards to come
to him.

He cast his gaze to the
gate where a number of Zs in various stages of decomposition and undress were
clustered together. He noted their bony digits probing the chain-link in a
futile attempt to get at the meat within.

Purging the dead from
his mind, Cade glanced over his left shoulder to take in the sky show. The sun
had just begun to paint the tops of Pikes Peak, Cheyenne Mountain, and the rest
of the eastern side of the jagged Rocky Mountains with broad strokes of yellow
and orange. As he watched the colors morph and creep down the expansive flanks,
a wide swath of burnt umber took over the center of the upthrust prehistoric
mantle, leaving the base in darkness, lending the impression the entire range
was floating in air.

“How can I help you Sir?”
said a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the Ford’s idling power plant.

Snapping out of his
sunrise-induced daze, Cade yanked the transmission into park and silenced the
6.8 liter V10 engine. He acknowledged the camouflage-clad soldier with a brief
nod before producing his credentials along with a sealed envelope.

Shifting his M4 carbine
on its sling, the soldier reached up to receive the offering, then cracked a
wide smile and flashed a sharp salute upon recognizing Cade, whom, since the
Castle Rock and Jackson Hole missions, had become somewhat of a celebrity on
base.

“Good to see you, Captain
Grayson,” the baby-faced 4th Infantry Division soldier said, taking the
paperwork from the man whose exploits, past and present, he had heard a great
deal about. “My apologies Sir... you’re not wearing your cover. I assumed you
were a civilian.”

“No worries Sergeant,”
Cade replied quietly, while wishing they would be done with the formalities
quickly so he could be on his way before anyone else recognized him.

The guard scrutinized
the freshly-minted document closely—so much so that Cade thought he might be
memorizing his vital statistics and military ID number—then, after a long
minute or two, the sergeant held the identification at arm’s length to compare
the face in the photo with the living legend perched high in the truck.

“In the flesh,” the sergeant
added, smiling broadly as he handed back the laminated green ID card. “May I
ask a favor of you, Sir?”

“Yes. What is it?” Cade
replied.

The young soldier
straightened up and ran both hands over his uniform, giving it an impromptu
pressing. “May I shake your hand? It’d be an honor.”

Palming his face with
both hands, Cade sighed audibly then ran his hands through his close-cropped
dark hair. He leaned his upper body out the window and gripped the man’s
upthrust hand firmly. He locked his hard, no nonsense eyes with the staff
sergeant’s. “What’s your name, son?”

“Leeland... Staff
Sergeant Thomas Leeland.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,
Staff Sergeant,” Cade offered. “Now
I
have a favor to ask of you.”

By now several of the
men and the only woman who had been manning the gate had grown curious and were
forming a loose semi-circle around the driver’s door.

A soldier yelled down
from one of the towers flanking the entrance. “Hey Sarge! Who is it?”

Cade winced and
retreated into the shadowy confines of the truck’s cab.

Looking around at his
subordinates and still grinning, the staff sergeant replied, “Anything you need
Captain... just say it.”

“That piece of paper you
have in your left hand...”

Coming to the
realization he was behaving like a star struck groupie, the young sergeant held
the envelope aloft and said with a sheepish look on his face, “This... what do
you want me to do with it Sir?”

White and devoid of
writing, the envelope was the same type in which Cade used to send out the
payment for the lights, gas, and water. Monthly responsibilities necessary to
ensure the luxuries that he had taken for granted then, and feared would be of
no concern to him ever again—at least not in his lifetime—and maybe not even in
Raven’s. It felt strange knowing that the everyday commuting to work and bill
paying normalcy called life that most people had loathed, yet endured, had
disappeared only fifteen days ago—days that now seemed like years.
Old world,
different time
.
The world before Omega. The days before shambling flesh
eaters choked the cities and streets across America. A different time indeed,
Cade thought darkly.

Turning the envelope
over in his hand, Leeland repeated the question. “What do you want me to do
with this envelope, Sir?”

“If for some reason I do
not return before o-dark-thirty,” Cade said, pausing to let the words sink in
before gesturing towards the correspondence clutched in the sergeant’s hand, “I
will need you to personally deliver
that sealed envelope
to my wife,
Brooklyn Grayson.”

“Copy that,” said the visibly
nervous sergeant. “I realize this is way out of line for me to ask you, Captain
Grayson, but given the responsibility you are entrusting me with... I have to
know just in case. Where are you going?”

“A personal fact finding
mission cleared by General Gaines himself,” Cade lied.

“By yourself... without
backup?”

“Yes soldier, and I need
to be Oscar Mike, ‘on the move’ as soon as possible.”

“Wait one, Sir,” said
the sergeant as he strode towards the gate, wading through his troops while
warning them to get behind him and remain there.

Sitting in the cab,
outfitted in desert camouflage ACU pants and a black short-sleeved tee shirt,
Cade used the time to take a final mental inventory of his gear: his 9mm Glock
17 semi-automatic pistol rode low, strapped to his left thigh, right next door
to the Gerber Mk II combat dagger that he never ventured outside the wire
without. The Glock 19, a smaller version of the 17, was suspended under his
right armpit in a Bianchi quick release holster. He’d brought along six magazines
for the two pistols. He reasoned, if a hundred and four rounds wasn’t
sufficient to keep him alive outside the wire, then he had no business
embarking on the upcoming mission, which looked to be the most dangerous one
yet. In fact, he had much more riding on it than the life of one man wearing
three hats: soldier, husband, and father.

The white sun, now
blasting at their backs, cast Schriever’s boxy silhouette in the form of
stretched out shadows across the desert floor.

The guards looked on in
anticipation, Cade included, as the sergeant unslung his M4 and pulled the
charging handle. “Going hot,” he bellowed, and then after emptying his weapon
with controlled accurate shots, the two dozen walking corpses that had
congregated overnight were left lying in a tangled knot, their congealed bodily
fluids leaking black into the talc-like dust.

“Open the gate,”
Sergeant Leeland barked as he presented arms and held a salute.

Though not in uniform
Cade reciprocated, held it for a heartbeat, and then turned the key, bringing
the V10 throbbing to life. Without looking back, he finessed the pedal and
coaxed the beast through the parting metal maw and into Indian Country. He turned
left and then made another left and barreled south paralleling the fence,
dodging random walkers and leaving them in the truck’s dust vortex.

***

He drove south for a
spell and then east for half an hour, following a laser-straight stretch of highway
bisecting the high desert southeast of Colorado Springs. The four-lane black
top took him by ransacked convenience stores, their trash-strewn parking lots
still teeming with walkers. Along the way, stalled cars containing trapped
zombies had become a common sight, and he’d seen too many seemingly abandoned
farm houses for him to count. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t left his iPod full
of classic rock along with his favorite Portland Trail Blazers ball cap inside
his abandoned Sequoia on the road outside of Boise, Idaho, though the items
were merely reminders of the old world. The world of convenience, filled with
meaningless trinkets he’d never truly appreciated; still, he longed for some
Doors
or
Rolling Stones
. Hell, he thought, if it would break the monotony of
the never-ending straightaway, he’d even settle for Raven’s favorite:
Lady
Ga Ga
.

He reached for the dash
and punched the stereo on, instantly regretting the action as bass-heavy rap
music bounced him in his seat. Blaring from what had to be two hundred hidden
speakers—but no less than twenty, he conceded—some long dead hip-hop mogul professed
his undying love for bling, women, and New York City. Cade quickly killed the
music,
thereby sparing his ears and ending the unwanted ass massage. Searching for a
radio signal in rural Colorado after a zombie outbreak, he learned, was a
lesson in futility. Save for a couple of high watt repeaters broadcasting a
looping FEMA message telling the public what they had already learned the hard
way, the only thing emanating from the rest of the dial was a never-ending
droning static of white noise. So he continued on in relative silence, with
only the tires’ hypnotic cadence keeping him company.

He slowed to zipper the
truck through pileups, off-roading only when there wasn’t enough room for the
Ford’s considerable bulk to squeeze by, then after another twenty minutes had
elapsed and fifteen miles of highway had unspooled in the rearview, a sign that
read
Yoder Population 222
flashed by on the right.

Getting close now.

Cade didn’t know
Colorado from the dark side of the moon. The only reason he knew that this town
even existed was because he had spotted it from his seat in the Ghost Hawk when
Ari had buzzed it on their return trip from Sentinel Butte a week prior. And as
he neared Yoder on the ground, he hoped the blink-and-you’d-miss-it town wasn’t
as peaceful as it seemed from the air.

Outbreak - Day 15

Schriever AFB

Colorado Springs,
Colorado

Defeating Brook’s
blackout job, a scalpel-thin ray of sunshine infiltrated the heavy wool
blankets covering the east-facing windows. Lancing into the room, the honey-colored
light fell perfectly across her closed eyes.

For a brief instant she
thought she might have slept through the alarm and was running late for work—a
cardinal sin in the nursing profession. Then a few seconds elapsed and reality
set in—she was still stranded on an island of concrete and gravel ringed with
barbed wire. The fact that Schriever was surrounded by cities and towns that
were slowly but surely being purged of the walking dead and would eventually be
theirs to repopulate brought her no comfort. She wasn’t unique. A few hundred
other survivors, civilians and military, were stuck in the very same situation.

She pushed down the
anxiety rising in her chest, sat up, and swung her feet over the edge of the
bottom bunk. A
Sealy Posturepedic
it was not, but at least it hadn’t
been empty the last two nights. A smile creased her face. The memory of her and
Cade’s tender lovemaking, fresh in her mind, warmed against the morning chill.
It had been quite a while since they had been intimate.

First, three thousand
miles filled with multitudes of infected had kept them apart. She and Raven had
been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina visiting her folks when the outbreak began
and, he had been back home in Portland, Oregon.

Then, after the Grayson
family had finally reunited at Schriever AFB in Colorado Springs, the nonstop
missions began, tugging them all back into the same kind of existence she had
tolerated fifteen months prior to Omega when Cade was still an active member of
the Unit—also known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta—or Delta
Force for short. They were the best of the best: Tier-1 operators who were
pulled from the ranks of the Special Forces or 75th Ranger Regiment.

“Raven... are you
awake?”

A groggy-sounding voice
answered from the dark, somewhere near the rafters, three bunks away. “I am now,
Mom.”

Brook stood and did a
few toe touches, bending at the waist easily. She put her palms to the floor
and arched her back, a move which resulted in a series of soft popping noises. Then
she heard the slap of Raven’s bare feet hitting the floor followed by a soft
patter that echoed off the walls as the diminutive twelve-year-old threaded her
way between the towering bunk beds.

“I heard funny noises
last night,” Raven said, rounding the foot of her parents’ bunk. “Did you hear
them too?”

“I did not hear a thing,
sweetie,” Brook replied with a guilty smile that forced her to look away lest
her overly intuitive daughter get a sense that a little white lie had been
told.

“At least it wasn’t
screaming like the other night,” Raven went on, her eyes widening. “What was
that
all about?”

Brook bit her lip and
said nothing.

“Mom... you promised you
would tell me.”

“After we get up and
motivated and have a bite at the mess...” Brook winced at her choice of words.
Not the best, considering the carnage that had taken place there earlier.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

Brook pulled a clean
shirt over her head. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetie... I just remembered something.
That’s all.” Then quickly switching subjects she continued on, “So, Raven,
after we eat we are going to have some
Mom
and
Daughter
time.”

“About what?” Raven
asked. Then she thought,
Oh no
,
I just turned twelve. Am I going to
get ‘the talk’
?

Brook noticed Raven’s
face tighten. She hadn’t seen a look like that since she’d learned that Uncle
Carl had died.

“What is it sweetie?”
Brook asked in a motherly voice.

“We’re not going to talk
about boys and girls and the birds and the bees... are we? Because you don’t
have to worry, Mom... there’re no boys I like here anyway. Well... there’s
Dmitri. I like him, but not
that
kind of
like
.”

Brook snorted, then
covered her mouth, but still couldn’t hold back the torrent. And as Raven
stared with a mortified look on her face, Brook laughed until her sides ached.

“Mom? Are you all
right?”

“Come with me,” Brook
said. She wiped away the tears of mirth and then cinched the long-sleeved shirt
around her waist. Lastly, she reached under the bottom bunk, collected the
short barreled M4 and the MOLLE rig—a vest with webbing and pouches containing
extra magazines for her rifle—and led her precocious twelve-year-old by the
hand. “We’re eating and then you get your birthday present.”

A little squeal escaped
Raven’s mouth as visions of a foraged iPod loaded with ‘
age appropriate’
music danced in her head. Ugghh,
age appropriate.
She hated when her mom
and dad said that. It was their way of saying anything safe and bland, usually
from the Disney label that was totally devoid of sexual innuendo and any
mention of partying or hooking up. They were the two words that just about
ruled out every song that had been force fed tween girls prior to the outbreak.