Allegiance (38 page)

Like a mini light saber,
the green beam lanced out when Cade depressed the thumb switch. He flicked the
weapon from safe to single shot and trained the bouncing dot on the nearest Z.
He tensed his finger on the trigger, pulling up a few pounds of pressure, and
said a silent prayer. He waited for Cross to activate his laser, and when the
President’s top agent had a Z painted with his beam, Cade opened fire.

Instantly the creatures
looked upward toward the muzzle flashes which illuminated their ghastly
features. Shadowy green gave way to a strobe-like effect as Cade and Cross
pumped deadly accurate fire into their midst.

The lead creature caught
a round from Cade’s M4 between the eyes; its brains and skull painted a glowing
Rorschach pattern on the cool cement wall. He shifted aim and double-tapped a
couple of twentysomething shamblers. The fact that they wore tattered everyday
street clothes sent a shiver of worry down his spine.
I sure hope the bottom
floor isn’t open to the dead in the plaza, because if it is,
he thought,
then this was going to be a long day.

The time for noise
discipline had passed. “Lopez, go back up and prop open the door to five. It’ll
give the Zs somewhere to go,” Cade said. “Tice... watch our six and when Lopez
returns scope the door.”

There was no response.
None was necessary at this point. Each man had been trained to operate
autonomously and think critically.

Cross continued firing
4.6x30mm lead into the living corpses, and by the time he’d expended the entire
twenty rounds in the mag he had put down seven or eight of them.

The echo of boots
clomping down the stairs preceded Lopez’s reappearance on the landing. “Done,”
he said over the comms.

“How many, Tice?” Cade
bellowed.

“Not there yet.”

“Hurry it up.” Cade
swapped out mags and added more fire down the stairwell at the Zs as they kept
coming, scrabbling through the fallen flesh.

“Half a dozen Zs
inside,” Tice said from above.

“Pop the door,” Cade
said, handing over the lock gun. “You and Lopez start clearing the floor. Watch
for collateral damage. The survivors should be in the northwest corner...
inside the fishbowl.”

A few seconds after Tice
had defeated the lock and the two operators had disappeared inside, Cade tapped
Cross on the shoulder and stabbed a thumb towards the open door.

Cross, understanding the
hand signal, backpedaled up the stairs, watching as Cade commenced firing on
the advancing pack.

A moment later the
stairwell was drowned in silence as the bolt on Cade’s carbine locked open. He
blinked at the cordite haze hanging in the air and punched the mag from the M4.
As it clattered to the stairs amongst the expended brass, he ripped the Velcro
securing the fresh mag to his MOLLE gear and with a little tug let it fall into
his palm. Finally, in one practiced motion, he slapped it home and charged a
fresh round. Then, seeing that more Zs were clambering to get over their
fallen, he turned and took the stairs two at a time, legs pumping like pistons.
Once he made the landing and crossed the threshold into the bright room, Agent
Cross, who had been waiting for him, slammed the door shut.

Cade put his back to the
door, pushed the goggles from his face, and looked around the room. And as his
eyes adjusted to bright sunshine, he noticed the dozens of shell casings
scattered about the light gray carpet and then he spotted the leaking bodies
lying in various death poses not five feet in front of his face. Then his gaze
drifted to Lopez and Tice, who had their backs to him. Finally, he looked
beyond them at the weary faces staring through the sheen of dried bodily fluids
and bloody handprints smeared on the thick glass walls of the conference room.
On those faces he saw a mixture of emotions: relief, fear, happiness, and for
reasons unknown to him—a few of the faces displayed looks that seemed scathing
and angry. Then, something else dawned on him—somehow the thirteen people he
had counted from within the hovering chopper now amounted to, by his
estimation, more than twenty.

Outbreak - Day 16

Etna, Wyoming

Daymon slipped the
transmission into park and reluctantly killed the engine. There were too many
weapons pointing his way to do anything but.

He remembered the road
sign they had passed a mile back promising that “Etna, Wyoming, Population 200”
was a mere two miles ahead.
So close, yet so far
, he thought bitterly.
Having not eaten for twenty-four hours and totally out of bottled water, they
had pinned their resupply hopes on breaking into an uninhabited house on the
outskirts of Etna.

Not gonna happen now,
Eagle Eye G.I. Joe,
Daymon
thought. Truth be told, he was heated at himself for not being on high alert
this close to a population center. And even more so because he hadn’t noticed
the roadblock before it was way too late to do anything but stand on the
brakes.

He gazed along the full
length of the looming yellow school bus and quickly determined there was no
going over , under, or through it—there was no way to turn the Tahoe around.
For a second he contemplated backing down the rise that had cleverly hidden the
choke point and wrenching the police cruiser into a blistering J-turn and
speeding away, but thought better of it seeing as how he was no stunt driver
and outrunning bullets was always a losing proposition.

Blocking egress to his
left was a large bulldozer and a half-filled mass grave. To the right was a
sturdy guardrail, and beyond it a substantial copse of trees clinging to a
hillside that fell off sharply.

He regarded the
unsmiling faces and the muzzles protruding from the windows of the bus. He
walked his gaze over the armed men and women, and then noticed the vivid red,
white, and blue of Old Glory hanging limply from a standard planted near the
front of the bus. The sight of it alone gave him a modicum of hope.

“What should we do?”
asked Heidi, directing her question at Daymon.

Without answering her,
he took matters into his own hands. He powered down his window and slowly stuck
both arms outside of the vehicle where the people with guns pointed at him
could see his empty hands. This sudden surrender garnered a frantic look from
Heidi, who was still badly shaken from her first and hopefully last stint in
captivity.

Daymon matched Charlie’s
gaze in the rearview. He figured since they were outgunned and between a rock
and a hard place, at the very least they still had two things working in their
favor: the fact that the vehicle he was sitting in was a bona fide black and
white police cruiser complete with the low-profile light bar riding on top, and
the words Jackson Hole Police Department plastered on nearly every flat surface
was one. The other was the bona fide credentialed chief of police hailing from
said city who just happened to be riding in the back of said police cruiser.
Plus, with no fewer than fifteen rifles of indeterminate calibers aimed at the
windshield, he thought by extending an olive branch on his end, the forced
relationship might get off on the right foot.

Then the United States
flag unfurled and a strong wind gust hit the Tahoe broadside. Daymon fought the
urge to cover his nose and mouth as the sweet smell of death wafted in through
his open window.

As soon as Daymon’s
hands came into view, a man in the driver’s seat of the bus stuck a bullhorn to
his lips and began his spiel. “
Driver
, keep your hands where they can be
seen.”

Duh
, thought Daymon as he rested his forearms on the
window channel.

Then the man belted out
a series of nearly identical orders directed at the other three passengers. In
a matter of minutes the Tahoe was inundated with the stench of death and there
were four pairs of hands sticking out of the SUV’s open windows.

After holding the
posture for a couple of minutes with the sun tanning their forearms, the man
who had been issuing amplified orders stepped from the bus, causing it to rear
up noticeably on its shocks.

Another man with a
Freedom Arms ball cap riding low over his eyes, clad in blue jeans and a tee
shirt, mounted the bulldozer, fired it up and let it idle for a moment. Then
with a belch of oily black exhaust the giant orange tractor reversed, providing
a sizeable gap between its blade and the front of the school bus.

After a few seconds, the
man who had been talking on the bullhorn lumbered through the opening, followed
by four ordinary-looking men toting an assortment of shotguns and automatic
rifles.

“Pretty good security,”
whispered Jenkins as he watched from his seat behind Daymon.

“Keep them where we can
see them,” the big man said as he approached the Tahoe on the driver’s side. He
walked with a slight shuffle and was nearly as wide as he was tall. He brought
his mass to a halt a foot away from Daymon. He regarded everyone in the truck,
pausing on each face for a beat. He dabbed some sweat from his brow and said,
“That grave you see there.” He stabbed his thick thumb over his shoulder. “That
is where we put the walking dead when they wander in here. And if you all don’t
do as I say and cooperate fully you could find yourselves rotting away in there
as well.”

“Be ready,” Jenkins
whispered.

Suffering a severe
charley horse, Tran fell back in his seat, causing his arms to retract into the
cab.

In less than a second
one of the security men had reacted and had jabbed his AR-15 inside the truck.

Jenkins stared down the
muzzle and decided to stand down. Words were just that, after all. And the big
man struck him as a talker. Not a killer.

Holding onto his
spasming calf with both hands, Tran bowed his head and looked away from the
weapon.

“State your business,”
the big man said, gazing at Daymon.

“Just passing through.
That’s all.”

“How did you acquire the
vehicle?” he demanded next.

Daymon said nothing.
Instead he tilted his head toward the backseat.

The big man addressed
Jenkins directly. “Why aren’t you driving
your
own cruiser?”

“We were on the road
between Victor and Alpine siphoning fuel when we were jumped by a large
group... he just happened to be closest to the wheel,” Jenkins answered as his
gaze drifted from the apparent leader to the two armed men flanking him.

“Let me see your
identification
and
your badge.”

With slow precise
movements, Jenkins complied without taking his eyes from the unwavering
muzzles.

After a moment of
scrutiny the big man returned the badge and credentials and the questioning
resumed. “So,
Chief Jenkins
... where are you all headed and why’d you
leave your jurisdiction?”

Jenkins eyed the rotund
man and felt his blood run hot. Being on the other side of the questioning was
uncharted waters for the Jackson police chief. “We’re on our way to Salt Lake,”
he lied. “Daymon here has reason to believe his family is still alive. And my
jurisdiction no longer exists... Jackson Hole is finished. The dead overran our
roadblock. Hell, from the looks of yours I shoulda taken a play out of your
book,” he added, trying to remain on the big man’s good side.

“How do you fit in with
those contractor New American whackos that have been roaming all over
our
Wyoming?”

Finally a chance to
tell the truth
, Jenkins thought.
“I distanced myself from them on day one, and I ran away as soon as the
opportunity presented itself.”

The big man studied
Jenkins for a long minute. “I believe you, Chief Jenkins,” he finally said. “In
my line of work a fella has to have a finely tuned BS detector.”

Jenkins said nothing.

“You do realize that
you’re taking the long route to Salt Lake,” the big man stated.

Jenkins nodded slowly.
“We had the 89 bridge over the Snake barricaded pretty good... or so we
thought. The dead overran Jackson three days ago. We had no choice but to
escape via the Teton Pass.”

The big man attempted to
bend at the waist. His upper body only hinged over a few degrees and his gut
leapt from under his John Deere tee shirt. He looked past Daymon and locked
eyes with Heidi.

Heidi’s blood ran cold.
But before she could act on her fight or flight impulse, the big man smiled and
said, “I don’t have the
heart
to send you all around the long
way...”—Daymon and Jenkins exchanged glances but remained stoic. The time would
come later when they could laugh at the inside joke—“... so when Harley moves
the tractor I want you all to drive through real slow and follow the first
vehicle you see. Follow it all the way through to the edge of town and they’ll
let you on through to the other side. We can’t help you with supplies or fuel
so don’t ask.”

Leaning out the rear
window, Jenkins caught the big man’s attention. “Can I ask you a question?”

“What is it?”

“First off, thanks for
letting us pass.”

The man winked.

“What’s your name and
what do you do here in Etna?”

“Name’s Mr. Carter. I
taught fifth grade at Etna Elementary.”

Jenkins smiled at the
teacher and powered his window shut. “Truth’s stranger than fiction,” he said.

“I couldn’t help it,”
Tran said. “My calf knotted up. I thought we were doomed.”

Heidi exhaled sharply.
“Me too. But damn it feels good to know that not everyone is on the side of
darkness,” she said.

Daymon started the
truck, and for some reason something that Cade had said days ago popped into
his head. He vowed to himself he’d follow the man’s sage advice and remember to
stay frosty
from this moment forward.

***

Daymon followed close
behind the old slant-back Chevy Nova as they passed through the tiny downtown
core of Etna, Wyoming. Nothing stood out. Every building and house looked to
have been transplanted from another era. There were no traffic lights. There
were no billboards, and most importantly, there were no dead.

“Want to switch places
with me?” Daymon asked Jenkins.

“You go ahead. I’m going
to kick back.”

“After that screw up
back there?”

“No Daymon... that was
no
screw up
,” drawled Jenkins. “I didn’t see the roadblock neither. And
I was
lookin’
.” He donned his hat and pulled it over his eyes, then
added, “You done good. You drive the rest of the way.”

“How far?” Heidi asked.

The Nova pulled aside
just prior to an old green bridge, crossing some anonymous creek. On the other
side was a roadblock nearly identical to the one at the other end of Etna. The
driver waved them across about the same time the bus pulled away from the far
end of the bridge, leaving an inviting stretch of tree-lined highway beckoning.

Tipping his hat up,
Jenkins looked at Daymon in the rearview and said, “That, my friend, was a
First
Blood
moment. Only this time John J. Rambo was escorting old Galt out of
town.” He let the hat cover his eyes and slumped into the seat. He doubted if
his comment meant anything to the other three, but to a small town chief like
him—the leniency showed them by Mr. Carter was a Godsend.