District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (23 page)

Wilson had been taken completely by surprise when the front door
suddenly swung away from him. To make matters worse, he had also been leaning
forward and about to apply a technique he’d seen Cade employ to gain entry
through a locked door when the human silhouette materialized in the very point
in space the door used to be. With all of his weight in the middle of transferring
off his back foot and into the forward kick, he was left totally vulnerable to
whatever bad intentions the armed person had in store for him.

As he pitched forward, a gnarled hand slick with what
smelled like blood grabbed his gun hand and pressure was applied to the rifle,
causing the sharp iron sight atop the slender barrel to cut into his neck. At
the same time the camouflage boonie hat slid backward off his head and settled
softly between his shoulder blades, its fall arrested by the leather chinstrap.

Furious at himself for succumbing to the same fate that had
already befallen Taryn two times now, he began pleading for the shadowy figure
to let go of him.

***

Behind the wheel of the Raptor, Taryn had given up on her
bid to snatch the radio and call down to Daymon for help. Instead, she powered
down her window and thrust her face and both arms through the opening. “It’s
me,” she said. “Taryn, from the compound west of here.” She watched the face at
the end of the AR-style carbine go slack for a quick second. Then the woman brandishing
the gun raised her cheek off the stock and glanced at the tattoos encircling
Taryn’s forearms. When the woman finally flicked her gaze back to Taryn’s face,
the blank look was gone and in its place one of full recognition.

“Ohhhh, you’re Brook’s friend,” Helen said, sweeping the
rifle’s muzzle toward the muddy ground. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

No shit
, Taryn thought, exhaling sharply. She flashed
a fake smile and rested her crossed arms on the window channel.

“Ray,” Helen screeched. “It’s just those nice kids from
Huntsville way.”

***

Inside the house Wilson was already on his knees. Following
the old man’s barked orders, he had placed his hands behind his head and
interlaced his fingers. Then, though most of the shrill pronouncement from
outside was lost on him, he made out the words
Ray
and
Huntsville
,
which when put together with the grizzled face of the gray-haired oldster were
the best two words he’d heard all day.

Keeping the rifle trained on the redheaded kid’s chest, Ray
cupped a hand to one ear and bellowed, “What was that, honey?”

“Ray,” Wilson said slowly, making sure to keep his hands up.
“Your wife …” inexplicably his brain locked up.

“
Helen?”
the man said.

“Yes,” Wilson said, nodding, his eyes gone wide. “Helen was
just letting you know I’m ... I mean,
we
are the kids from down the
road.” Paraphrasing, sure. Still, it worked. Because Ray lowered the
bolt-action rifle and motioned for him to stand.

Thinking he may have soiled himself, or at the very least
sharted and baptized his newest pair of tighty whities, Wilson lowered his
hands to his waist and took a deep breath. Ignoring the strange slickness
between his butt cheeks, he extended a hand and reintroduced himself to Ray
Thagon.

***

Seeing the exchange inside the foyer ending peacefully via
her side mirror, Taryn opened her door and jumped down from the pickup.

Walking arm-in-arm with Helen, she sidestepped the blood
when the woman pointed it out.

“Ray got a rabbit in his trap,” Helen said. “Won’t you two
stay for dinner? You can call your friends up from the road, so long as they’re
good people like you and Brook.”

Explains the blood
. Taryn said, “That’s nice of you,”
as she helped the woman negotiate the stairs. “But we’ve got to get home before
it gets dark.”

“You sure?” Helen said, fixing her watery eyes on Taryn. “It’s
a real
big
jackrabbit. Lots of him to go around.”

“Positive.” Taryn smiled—a sincere one this time.

“Why the unannounced visit?”

Wilson stepped onto the porch ahead of Ray.

Taryn noticed at once that Wilson’s face was much whiter
than usual. He looked anemic. Ghostly, even. He was also wringing his boonie
hat nervously in both hands, which left wildly corkscrewing hair exposed for
all to see.

Taryn winked at her man, then turned toward Helen. “Dregan
was concerned because he couldn’t get ahold of you two on the CB radio.”

“So he sent all of you over here from Huntsville? What a
lazybones. Bear River is just a stone’s throw south of us.”

“It was nothing,” Taryn replied. “We were already in
Woodruff anyway.”

Wilson regarded Ray. “Do you
need
batteries for the
radio?”

Ray propped his rifle next to the door. Removed his felt hat
and stuffed the ratty red number into his back pocket. Running a hand through
his wiry, silver hair, he said, “We have plenty of supplies upstairs. Batteries
galore, in fact. It’s just that it’s hard for us to remember to turn it on every
day at noon like Dregan wants. Heck, I don’t know what time of day it is at any
given time. I’m just happy when I wake up in the morning and come to find I’m
still among the living.”

“I’m happy you wake up every morning,” Helen said. She moved
closer and grasped Ray’s hand.

Wilson caught Taryn’s eye and they shared a conspiratorial
wink.

“Let’s go inside,” Helen urged. “It’s cold out here.”

“I need to call Daymon,” Taryn said, raising the Motorola to
her mouth. Leaving out the dinner invitation, she explained the radio silence
to the others in the trucks on the road, making it clear that the Thagons were
fine and needed nothing.

“Good,” Daymon said, his voice tired-sounding over the radio.
“Duncan just called from the compound. Said Tran and the girls already have
dinner started. And for some reason Brook’s calling for a group meeting after
dinner.”

“Go ahead and get the rigs turned around,” Taryn said. “We’re
on our way.”

Wilson wet his sleeve in his mouth then dabbed at the scrape
on his neck.

“Sorry,” Ray said. “But you were about to kick in my door.”

“No biggie,” Wilson said. “It could’ve been worse.”

“Thanks for your dinner invitation,” Taryn said. “But we
have to head back.” She wanted to mention the booby-trapped buildings and
horrific scene in the church before leaving, but thought better of it. Besides,
the couple were the ones who told Brook about the bandits up north.

“The washout was no problem for our rig,” Wilson said,
hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the muddy pickup. “But it looks as if
yours might be stuck on this side of the highway. I could get a few guys
together and we could come back and fill it in for you.”

“Don’t bother,” Ray said. “The creek behind the house does that
every time a big snow accumulation melts off that rapidly. I’ve got a tractor
outfitted with a grader attachment inside the barn. If I fill it in now, I’ll
just be doing it again come spring. We’ll be fine. If we don’t see you again
before the real snow arrives, we’ll see you when it’s gone.”

Wilson shook Ray’s hand and then accepted a bear hug from
Helen.

After hugging both of the Thagons, Taryn leaped over the
pooled blood and took her place behind the wheel of the Raptor.

“Our rig,” Wilson muttered. He nodded to the old couple,
crushed his hat over his hair, and stalked around the rig’s mud-spattered
tailgate.

Having spent a few minutes pacing the hall outside the TOC,
Cade tucked the sat-phone into a pocket with the other, put his game face on,
and pushed through the door.

Major Freda Nash was on the elevated stage and already five
minutes into the PowerPoint presentation when she saw Cade enter the
rectangular low-ceilinged room through the door at her twelve o’clock. At once
she noticed the grim look on his face.

Seeing Nash look away from the sixty-inch plasma-display at
the front of the room, he met her eyes, nodded, then let his gaze roam, taking a
quick inventory of the room. There was a whisper of warm air coming in from
overhead vents. Overriding that was a subtle humming that emanated from the
dozens of desktop computers scattered about the room, their processors no doubt
crunching information vital to the coming mission. And sitting at those
computer stations were a dozen airmen and women, their attention mainly
directed at the oversized computer monitors perched on the edges of their
individual desks.

Two long rows of folding chairs were set up at the front of
the room. And directly in front of Cade, crowding the hard-working 50th Space
Wing personnel from behind, were an additional two-dozen folding chairs. Arranged
in a semicircle, most of the chairs were occupied by a mixture of aviators and
Army Rangers. Off Cade’s right shoulder was the rest of his patchwork Delta
team. Without a word, he padded to his right and sat down on an unoccupied
folding chair next to a bearded man he recognized from the Los Angeles mission.
The former SEAL Team 6 operator William Griffin—or Griff for short—had proven
himself highly capable on that mission. That he had come up through the teams
alongside Adam Cross and had numerous deployments in all of the hell holes on
earth showed in the way he charged hard and fast at every obstacle they had
come up against in the City of Angels. And that he was still alive, albeit a
little bushier of beard, came as no surprise to Cade.

To Griff’s right was Cross, six-foot-four, blond hair and
blue-eyed and standing out starkly amongst the other operators. The muscled
soldier to Cross’s right was nearly as tan as the Ken-Doll-looking Delta
shooter. However, the man’s hair was long and dark and currently tied up into a
neat pony tail kept in check by a sand-colored beret. Affixed to the deflated-looking
hat was the hard-to-miss Special Air Service badge emblazoned with a downward-pointing
winged Excalibur wreathed in flames. Cade’s eyes moved over the uniform,
instantly pegging it as standard-issue British Army in Multi-Terrain Pattern, which,
like the MultiCam worn by Delta, was basically a subdued version of the United
States Army’s woodland camouflage pattern featuring more tan than dark green.
Then he saw the black-stitched chevrons identifying the man as a sergeant.

Seeing Cade eyeballing him, the shooter, whose nametape read
Axelrod,
blew the last chance of fitting any kind of stereotype
befitting a Brit by flashing a picket of straight, white teeth.

Without acknowledging Cade, nor the hangdog look on his face,
Nash continued droning on about waypoints to target, aerial refueling timelines,
standoff reaction-and-rescue forces and then wrapped up the aviation logistics
segment of the briefing with a slide filled with the most up-to-date weather
predictions which contained very little detail, upper atmosphere wind speed and
direction the most glaring omissions.

“I’ve provided to you all of the intel I’m privy to,” she said,
singling out the aviators and their crewmembers seated mostly in the front two
rows. “Any new information that comes in from ground observers or other
aircraft near your flight paths will be relayed to you en route.”

One of the airmen near Nash rose and passed her a slip of
paper, which she quickly read and pocketed.

“Our esteemed colleague who just entered missed the
beginning of my presentation. For the sake of time I’d normally single Captain
Cade Grayson out after the briefing; however, since I just learned one of the
SOAR birds is temporarily grounded due to a mechanical problem, I figure I’ll
go over it again.”

The aviators up front groaned.

Turning in his seat, Ari wadded up a sheet of legal pad and
tossed it toward Cade in the back row.

Face still a stony mask, Cade watched the paper ball arc
over an airman’s head and land at his feet.

“Always coming up short,” he mouthed to the glaring Night
Stalker.

Bellowing to be heard over the rising murmurs and small
talk, Major Nash said, “Gentlemen. May I have the floor back?”

A hush quickly descended over the room, leaving audible only
the soft taps of fingers striking keyboards and the whirring of fans hard at
work cooling the tower computers.

“Thank you,” Nash said. “I’m not really going to bore all of
you again with that PowerPoint. Air assets, you are free to go. Don’t clean the
canteen out. The shooters need to eat, too.”

A happy-sounding murmur made rounds of the room. Then the
sound of chair legs scraping carpet. Finally, the room went quiet again as the
group bottlenecked near the door.

Nash waited until all nineteen men and women, aircrew for
six separate aircraft, filed out the door at the rear of the TOC.

Once the last man was through the door and it had snicked
shut, the diminutive major settled her gaze on Cade, then cleared her throat.

“As you all know, the United States was nearly decapitated three
short months ago thanks to the Chinese seeding Washington D.C. with the Omega
Virus. Although they didn’t entirely nullify our command-and-control with that
first blow, their agents did succeed in infecting enough alpha specimens in the
District and a dozen other cities to send the members of government who
survived the initial outbreak scrabbling to get out of harm’s way.” She paused
to sip a water.

In his mind’s eye, Cade saw the politicians represented by hundreds
of spindly cockroaches fleeing the light across a filthy kitchen floor that was
Washington D.C.

“Bear with me, gentlemen,” she said, still looking solely at
Cade. “I’m nearly finished.” She capped the bottle and set it aside. “And as we
all know,” she went on, “those initial victims, when combined with man’s
natural inclination to not believe the unbelievable, or, normalcy bias if you
will, led to the start of the massive rate of infection that has us where we
are today: clawing our way back from the brink of extinction. And as if those
first despicable acts of war committed by a trading partner professing to be
our ally wasn’t enough, thousands of her PLA troops have landed on our shores and
as we speak are making a steady march inland.”

Cross leaned in front of Griff. “We’re all caught up now,
Wyatt. Hope you had a good reason for being tardy.”

His jaw taking a granite set, Cade pressed hard into his chair-back
and restrained himself from saying or doing anything he’d likely regret.